RAT PARK
Author’s note: In this chapter, a Hollywood super-agent struggling with sexual addiction arrives in Tunisia for a set visit with his client—the biggest movie star in the world. What follows is the moment that changes everything for Lester Barnes at the hands of militant jihadists Islamic Martyrs Darnah Brigade.
After flying seventeen hours on Air Ambien with a three hour layover at DeGaulle, Lester Barnes arrives at Carthage International Airport in Tunis looking like a Norwegian resistance survivor of Nacht und Nebel. At the International Arrivals gate, he spots the six-foot four close protection officer sent to ferry him to set. Oakley sunglasses, shaved head, hailing from Lagos, Nigeria, ex-Cruiserweight champion Terrondus Oyelowabi holds up a SISYPHUS, KING placard and greets his client in a rich bass voice:
“Welcome to paradise, Mister King.”
“Sisyphus is my name when I travel. Call me Lester.”
“Yes sir! You can call me Allstate or Terrondus. Either way, you’re in good hands.”
Lester Barnes catches a glimpse of the Sig Sauer SP2022 combat pistol holstered inside his leather jacket over a black T-shirt: ONE MAN ARMY YOU’RE SO PEACHY.
“Wasn’t Sisyphus the dude stuck in Hell pushing a giant boulder up a mountain and then when he gets to the top the rock rolls all the way down and he’s got to do the same damn thing over and over again for all eternity?”
“Sisyphus was also the father of Odysseus,” says Lester Barnes.
“Odysseus was the guy trying to get back with his wife like John McClane, right?”
“I thought the movie was called Army of One.”
“That was last week’s T-shirt,” replies Terrondus.
Lester Barnes climbs into the armored Escalade, plops into the backseat, scrolling texts like graffiti in the men’s room stall at Resolution.
<Netflix sending script around with enthusiasm>
<I read this and didn’t find it as impactful as hoped>
“So, what’s your story in twenty-five words or less?”
“Cradle to grave, or you want the sizzle reel?”
“Terrondus, when Saint Peter texts you a link and Hell looks fantastic, don’t believe him, it’s the sizzle reel.”
<Ethel called about high tide. Confirming we’re passing?>
“You know the K.O. gym on Vine and Santa Monica?”
“Never heard of it,” says Lester Barnes.
“I used to train an agent there who got murdered. His brother showed up asking questions like Matlock but he got sidetracked by a piece of tang—”
“What did Hugo tell you about me?”
“He said they’re probably going to fill the Coliseum at your funeral.”
“Is that right?”
“Hugo said that’s how many people in Los Angeles would buy two tickets to make sure your ass is dead.”
“Hitler said it was better to be feared than loved.”
“Machiavelli, sir.”
“I thought it was Hitler,” says Lester Barnes.
“Machiavelli. Safer to be feared than loved.”
<In a pre-emptive situation, we have sold action spec RIP VAN WINKLE to MGM. Interest in Hugo Slater>
<Really hoping to get yer read whether Hugo wants to pursue>
<Let’s give it the eye>
“Speaking of funerals, if a psychic could tell you the date of your death, would you want to know?”
“Hell, no. That’s an appalling question.”
“Why is it appalling?” asks Lester Barnes.
“That knowledge would drive me insane. You can’t live your life knowing your expiration date.”
“We all know that day is coming. It’s no big secret,” says Lester Barnes.
“That don’t mean the same thing as the exact date!”
<Who leaked Rodney Muir/Libra texts???>
“Get back to the sizzle reel.”
“Yes, sir. I was training actors at two hundred dollars an hour when I got a life-changing text message asking if I wanted to step in as a last-minute opponent for the undercard of the Pacquiao fight. I told my manager my detached retina hadn’t completely healed. He said he would buy me a Harry Winston eyeball if I agreed to fight the IBF Cruiserweight champ. Monday morning, I showed up at the K.O. wearing the belt”
“Shut up, you won?”
“The champ disrespected me, sir. So, I took his title. Now he fights in prison. Vehicular manslaughter. Then I got knocked out in Munich trying to unify the division, followed by a life-changing phone call to protect Hugo Slater, now I’m guarding your sweet ass.”
Driving past the set ruins of Tatooine, Lester Barnes takes in the igloo where Luke Skywalker’s adoptive parents got slaughtered in Star Wars when a walkie-talkie warns Terrondus to avoid Sabathra after a roadside bomb wiped out a caravan of international aid workers.
“Any problems with the locals I need to know about?”
“Sometimes our boy Hugo goes beyond the city limits when everybody else is nighty-night.”
“Is my client finding his character hunting terrorists?”
“It ain’t terrorists his character is fucking, sir.”
“Terrondus, you ever thought about being a motion picture agent?”
“I could never do that job, sir.”
“Why not?”
“You can’t be an agent when you want to be the star.”
The not-untalented director of One Man Army, a bandana-wearing shooter named Gore Kitaj, became a studio favorite when The Exorcism of Private Slovik over-performed at the box office, surprising everyone with its $200M worldwide cume and Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay (it lost to Wheelie). The movie star selected Kitaj over the objections of producer Benny Pantera who wanted Ignition director Thør Rosenthal, recently sacked from the aborted desert thriller Golgotha. A millennium ago, the script created a rare bidding war among buyers when upstart Bellerophon Pictures took it off the market for a million dollars before misbegotten rewrites made Army of One so unreadable nobody wanted to make the picture except Hugo Slater and distributor Cinema Shares, an Omniscience affiliate.
Waking up in his suite at the Hôtel duLac from a nine hour nap, Lester Barnes puts on a tropical fruit-pattern Ted Baker suit, no tie, and heads to set, where a child soldier with bloodied Adidas clocks the outfit as the super-agent enters his client’s trailer.
“You look like the host of QUEER EYE FOR THE STRAIGHT GUY wearing that fruit bowl. I can’t be seen in public with a strutting peacock designed by Andrew Weitz! Do you want to get raped for three years by the power forward of the Islamic State? I wouldn’t wish that kind of brutality on my second wife!”
“Bodyguards are a nice touch,” says Lester Barnes. “Think Musical Youth. Think Hitler Youth. Now stop thinking.”
The box-office warlord recently hired a platoon of child soldiers from Mali as his security team, first reported on www.dailymail.co.uk, which offered top dollar for any pics of Hugo Slater during production of One Man Army. The child soldiers instilled fear among the crew members on set after the craft service guy was summarily executed by a conscripted fighter for some perceived infraction against the star.
“There’s no Cheesecake Factory here.”
“Hugo, I don’t think the people of Tunisia can afford Orange Chicken.”
“You know what we can afford, Lester? New writers.”
“You go through writers like snot rags.”
“I need a rewrite. Like, today.”
“Tomorrow better,” says Lester Barnes, texting Bramley Nazarian, the lit agent on Hugo’s team.
<Need a closer to Skype with Hugo for production polish. Studio will pay>
“Can we fire Kitaj?”
“Frankenheimer is unavailable.”
Summoned to Hugo Slater’s presidential suite in the dead of night, Terrondus yawns while Lester Barnes listens to his client’s tales of woe. Plates of Lamb Tagine ignored, mint tea cups untouched, Hugo Slater and his agent of fourteen lucrative years fire up Cohibas.
“During one of our scouting trips, the Islamic Martyrs’ Darnah Brigade grabbed our camera operator. They would have sent us his head if the studio hadn’t paid four hundred thousand out of our contingency for his release. That’s when I decided to hire Mali child soldiers to protect our crew from anybody who might get the idea to fuck with us. In the script I have to save like, seventy-five strays. We found, no joke, in Tunisia, a million orphans. I decided with this movie we are going to find these kids families for real, around the world, and the premiere will benefit my foundation which I’m calling Hugo’s Army. Some people promote clean water, Special Olympics, maybe they’re anti-fistula, whatever, I want this movie to create global awareness for these lost children and make sure they all get adopted.”
“You’re a One Man Army,” says Lester Barnes, texting the agency’s corporate communications chief at his treadmill desk in the New York office.
<Need Omniscience Impact to nominate Hugo for Boutros-Boutros- Ghali Foundation Peace Award>
“I told Director Kitaj I want new pages where one of these orphans saves my life, teaches me a few things in order for Harry Blank to undertake a journey worth watching. I want emotional set-pieces inside the caves where they shot Episode IV. Instead of Harry rescuing the orphans, who cares, make it the kids who go in guns blazing, take out the jihadists!”
“Self-absorbed to redeemed, a blank fulfilled,” says the super-agent.
“Redeemer, now there’s a better title. I smell refund. Come on, let’s go to Scylla.”
“What’s Scylla?”
“It’s an all-you-can-eat buffet. Better than Golden Corral. There’s third world snatch, and then there’s Scylla.”
“Is it open?”
“It’s never closed.”
Pitch black outside, no street lamps, only the stars. Alert, driving a fortified SUV Escalade, Terrondus navigates the desolate streets like Charon until he slows in front of an institution surrounded by olive trees torched by a recent fire or explosive device.
“What is this place?” asks Lester Barnes.
“The Last House on the Left,” says Hugo Slater. “They got this one hustler who’s unbeatable at Leonard Maltin. Terrondus, what’s the name of our star?”
“I think they call him Mahmoud. Any kid who loves movies that much is the one you should adopt.”
“We’re here. Flash your lights five times.”
Across the street from the Green Apple convenience store, Terrondus shadows Lester Barnes and Hugo Slater as they greet the Tutsi bouncer at Club Scylla.
“My man, Gianni Roastbeef!”
“Gianni Roastbeef?” whispers Terrondus.
“That’s what he calls everybody,” shrugs Lester Barnes. “Term of endearment.”
Entering the medieval brothel, a dance track called Step Off My Dick by Bantunani blasts like a West Hollywood nightspot (why are there so many flies?). The institute radiates mortuary vibes. The peeling wallpaper reeks of urine, body odor, and semen. Flickering light bulbs dangle like nooses (is that blood spatter on the ceiling?). Sickened by the sight of a deflated FIFA official soccer ball with a used condom pasted on its side, Lester Barnes stops when he hears the laughter of children upstairs. He does not follow his client into the orphanage beyond the beaded curtain where Hugo Slater pays homage to a criminal named Kharib, whose bone white vitiligo stripes the blackest skin Lester Barnes has ever seen. As Zebra Man offers Hugo Slater a bump of gorilla dust (the local synthetic qat), Lester Barnes walks out of Club Scylla with his close protection officer and locks himself inside the SUV to avoid being kidnapped. Two hours later, Lester Barnes is fast asleep on top of his California King in the Hôtel duLac when a text arrives from his wife.
<Dinner with Nikolovski>
The next day, on his way to set, the bodyguard checks his iPhone when a lime green van filled with unsmiling jihadists snatches Lester Barnes off the sidewalk. Emptying his Sig Sauer at the Mystery Machine blasting Algerian hip-hop, IMDB driving off with their hostage, Terrondus knows all is lost.
Adam Novak lives in Los Angeles. He is the author of the novels Take Fountain, The Non-Pro, and Freaks of the Industry.