"Everything's changing. I mean, Gyro Gearloose just died, for heaven's sake. This whole country's going down the drain."
Duck Noir
Donald was marching through a forest of signs so thick he could barely see the sun. Simple-minded, hand-written banners and badges saying “Screw Scrooge” or “Unscrooge the Economy”. Above it all some sort of weather balloon or zeppelin hovered.
“Donald”, a voice cried out.
He lowered his head and tried to push and shove and squeeze his way through the crowds, but as if directed by some unseen hand, the bodies tightened up around him, steering him in the direction of the voice:
“It’s me, Herbert.”
“Hello Herbert.”
“Hello sir, it’s good to see you out here.”
“I’m not in the demonstration.”
“You are in the middle of the demonstration.”
“No, I am just passing through. Excuse me. Excuse me?”
The boy was following him.
“This castle will fall”, he said, gloomily, as he gazed at the dark outline of the mansion in the horizon.
“It changes nothing”, Donald said, wryly. The protesters were bumping into him as if he was not there. There was police battering away at some in the outer rim, herding them in the opposite direction of where Donald was headed.
It meant he would have to pass through the police. Hopefully they wouldn’t think of him as a trouble-maker.
“I think it changes everything, sir.”
“Really?” Donald sneered. “You don’t know Scrooge. I know him. He’d have you all…”
Thunderous applause rose from around him, drowning out his words. Some girl was speaking from a box, a slim newcomer of sorts, perhaps a nightingale or a mockingbird.
It wasn’t plain to Donald what business a nightingale had to be talking in public in his city, but times had changed.
They should change the name of this city, he thought. What use to pretend any longer. Cornelius’ vision was long gone.
And then he was out of the woods, facing the police officers who briefly scanned his appearance, correctly assumed he was not a protester and on his way out of the crowd he had been caught up with for while, spreading out their batons to create a gateway for him to pass through.
“Free, free at last”, Donald mumbled.
Herbert was still hanging on Donald's skirts. The boy had long legs now. He had grown tall. He had no trouble keeping up with anybody.
“Grandma’s here too. Since the banks took her farm she’s been bitter as Hell. Bitter as Hell. You wouldn’t recognize her. She doesn’t open up for anybody, except Gus and I. We’re the only ones she lets in.”
“Grandma…”
He’d heard about it. It was unfortunate, very unfortunate. He liked the old woman. She had hired all that foreign labor, but that was also the worst you could say about her: She had a big heart. She didn’t deserve what had happened to her.
“Why aren’t you marching, Donald, if I may ask?”
“No, that’s not for me. I just try to run my company, you know, make the best of my life.”
“You got a company now?”
“I’ve had that for several years now.”
“I didn’t know that. How is it working out for you?”
Donald didn’t answer. They were passing Jones’ house. The fence and the window frames were newly painted, the lawn well kept.
Embarrassed, Donald said:
“So, Herbert, don’t you have some protesting to do?”
“I was hoping the guys could join us.”
“The kids are working for a living.”
“I work for a living, I do. I know a lot of people are unemployed, but that’s not why I am demonstrating.”
“Why are you demonstrating?” Donald said with sudden fury. He realized that what he really wanted to ask the kid was why he kept following him.
They’d stopped on the sidewalk. Donald had stopped. He hadn’t seen Herbert since he was a school boy, and the house – he wasn’t too proud of how it looked. It was certainly not a place to invite anybody inside.
“Our economy is completely screwed, and we all know whose behind it. I mean no offense, but it’s not like you ever had any real advantages from being in the same bloodline.”
“I don’t give a damn about Scrooge, but if you kids think you can do better… if you think you yelling and shouting at the police will make any difference… I can’t be bothered with that. What is your plan? How will you bring the economy back on track?”
“I don’t think the economy is really in that much trouble. I think it’s being done to it. It’s being done to us.”
“Aarrh”, Donald said and turned around and walked towards his house. Now he didn’t even care about his decrepit home.
“Okay”, Herbert shouted. “I tried to talk to you, Donald. I tried.”
Now I am the duck who turned his back on duck-kind. Ha. And he is the good coot, the noble defender of the rights of the working poor.
He grabbed a beer in the fridge, sat down on the couch and turned on the TV. More of the same.
“Protesters are squatting illegally in an empty storage house. They have painted their symbols and slogans on the walls, as we can see. Some are playing music, and others are creating these… interesting pieces of art, we see all around us here… they seem to intend to stay for a long time. The problem is, of course, that the building is owned by a company owned by McDuck, the very person these squatters are demonstrating against…”
There was a knocking on the door, and Donald missed the rest. He passed by the chest with the drawer, where he kept his gun, resisting the temptation to pull it out and wave it at the annoying youngster.
What the fuck did he know about anything? What kind of trouble had he ever seen? Kid had never even gotten laid, Donald was sure. At best he’d had his cell phone robbed, gotten ridiculed by some cheerleader, when he tried to present his love in the form of poetry, and been chewed out by the manager in the local McDuck, where he was flipping burgers. The sum of his life experience. And he had the audacity to teach him about protesting, about anger?
“You”, Donald said.
“Me. You didn’t expect to see me, did you?”
Donald glanced beyond the dapper gentleman in the leisure suit, to the car sloppily parked by the curb.
“What kind of car is that?”
“It’s temporary”, Gladstone said. “Just until my luck returns.”
“Don’t tell me. Your luck has run out.”
“The stock market is… it’s fickle. Even the best minds… It’ll come back. It’ll come back.”
“I don’t have any money.”
“I’m not here for money. This is not business.”
“If it’s not business, what exactly is it?”
“I want to say something to you in person. Can we step inside or go somewhere to talk? It will only take a minute.”
“We can talk here, on the porch. The weather is quite nice.”
Donald looked up. It was cloudy, and the clouds looked mean. The sky looked like god was frowning and wanted to piss on them all. But there was some sunshine, dripping down in spots over the slumped city.
“I just want to say that I congratulate you. We haven’t been on the best of terms, to say the least…”
“To say the least…”
“But I hold no grudge. In a sense you’re the better man. Even I can see that. You have been very persistent, I have to give you that. So, congratulations.”
Gladstone reached forth his hand. As if in a hypnotic trance, against his will and in spite of his contempt, Donald took it and shook it.
“Me, I’m a travelling man”, Gladstone said. “I suppose that’s my curse. I always seem to be the guy who just swerves out of trouble, always landing on my feet, don’t I?”
“Okay”, Donald said. “Thank you.”
“There’s a downside to all that. I mean, look at me. I got a car, but it’s leased and all I could afford. I’m going to a job interview Thursday, a sales position, and I think I’m gonna get it.”
“Good for you, man. Good for you. Thanks for dropping by.”
“So, maybe I get a second chance. Or a third chance, or a fifth or a sixth, whatever it is by now”, the guy continued.
He is not going to stop talking, Donald thought. Once again he pictured himself with the gun, shoving it up Gladstone’s beak, hissing “I said thank you for dropping by, motherfucker. Have a nice life”.
But he wasn’t gonna go to jail again. That trip had done more for him than all the anger management sessions Daisy had forced on him. So he smiled, sighed, and said:
“I’m sure your luck will return. I hope you get the job. You were born to sell stuff.”
“You don’t understand”, Gladstone said, moving his feet uneasily and turning his head, almost like a mad man who had trouble recognizing what he saw around him. “Nobody really understands, not even Daisy. I mean, we had a nice time, a good run. But I never established that mutual understanding… you know, the relationship you long for… or maybe it’s just me… I just always thought everything would be… different… better somehow. Do you think I grew up dreaming to become a snake oil salesman? You think this is me?”
Gladstone made a pathetic gesture, showing off all his façade, as if it was at once pitiful and glamorous. As if to say, “I too am a tragic character.” It was ridiculous. Donald felt a chuckle rising from within, from deep inside his belly.
He wanted to hear more. He didn’t want Jones to see him standing on his porch, talking to a man in tears – Gladstone was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
This is priceless, Donald thought. I ought to record it for posterity. The invincible Gladstone, brought low by the depression.
“Come in”, Donald said. “You look like you need a drink.”
He got him beer, a fresh one for himself, and urged him to sit down in the ragged leather arm chair.
“Cheers buddy”, he said. “You’ll get back on track. Just you wait and see.”
Gladstone sighed.
“Everybody says that, but the thing is: It’s like it no longer matters. Everything's changing. I mean, Gyro Gearloose just died, for heaven's sake. This whole country's going down the drain."
"To Gyro. He was a great guy."
Gladstone raised his glass too, sighed deeply and said:
"I don’t know. I am thinking about leaving town.”
You should do that, Donald thought.
“Oh, why do that. Don’t be so dramatic. You belong here. You can be a son of a bitch, you know that, but you’re a part of this place.”
Gladstone was hunched over, with his arms resting on his thighs, and staring at the engagement ring on Donald’s finger.
Donald was happy he hadn’t taken it off. It was a vain, superstitious, romantic thought that had made him keep it on, but now that came in handy.
“The irony is that you’re the only friend I have. Even if I don’t expect you guys to invite me to the wedding – that would be awkward, wouldn’t it – I sure appreciate this.”
Gladstone raised the beer. He was drinking without enthusiasm. Donald nodded magnanimously.
“This thing happening to the world”, Gladstone mused. “It’s like it is centered, somehow, around this city. It’s like it starts and ends here. Your uncle has expanded his political lobbyism drastically over the past decade. Did you know that?”
“I don’t know any details.”
“I do”, Gladstone said. “I was one of them. He hired me for a while. Did you know that?”
“Didn’t know that either. He’s just an uncle. A distant relative.”
Donald made a gesture to the living room they were sitting in.
“At least you can’t accuse him of nepotism.”
“You can say that again.”
Gladstone got up and somehow manage to stand in the trapeze of sunshine bursting through the window at the same moment. It was like the universe conspired to put him in the spotlight, even when he was gloomy, desperate and introspective.
“I worked for the bastard, yea. He had me travelling a lot. 100 days a year, in one of his private jets. I have to admit I enjoyed it. I felt like James Duck. The women were very attentive, I can tell you that… but what I did, I feel bad about. In a way I helped set up all of this. The protesters out there… if they knew what I had done, they’d be warming up tar for me right now.”
The sun cast highlights in his hair. This was Sir Lancelot confessing, the collapse of the round table.
“What did you do?”
“I can’t tell you what I did, but it’s an awful thing. If there is a hell for ducks, some sort of world where other creatures serve ducks for dinner, then I am going to be roast.”
Donald sighed. He was tired of how his little prank had worked out. Even in vice, he thought, this guy always manages to outdo me. Somehow his stories are always more spectacular.
“So, that’s what I am. I just wanted you to know. I’m not trying to make myself interesting. It’s too late for that. I am just a mercenary for the super-rich, Donald. Everything about me is façade. But I want you to know that I always sort of respected you. You have a lot of integrity. You took care of the kids all this time, and that cannot have been easy. Me, I just… this is what I am. This is all I am. Now all I can do is live with it.”
And then he was gone. He rushed out after a brief, befuddled goodbye, leaving Donald so puzzled he forgot, for a moment, his own frustration.
Was it some sort of trick? Did he just pretend not to have spoken to Daisy? Could it be some way to get back at him, or to rub it in?
No, this was genuine. The cards were being shown. True colors were coming out. It was Gladstone’s mad attempt at redemption.
Against his will Donald felt some effect of it, some appeasement to his mind.
At least we all suffer. It’s a mirror, this age. It’s the end of an era, the end of innocence. We’re all adults now, faced with ourselves, with our conscience.
It was, to Donald, as if life was becoming real after a long time of living in a sort of fantasy world, where everything just returned to normal by itself, no matter what happened.
He wanted to call Daisy again, but reaching for the phone no words he could defend came to mind. He only sensed the barrier, a barrier so thick, composed by all his deficiencies, and all her impossible, unachievable standards, the dreams someone had installed in their minds to trip their reality.
Still, reckless as he was, he pushed the digits.
“It’s Daisy”, she chippered.
“It’s Donald.”
“I know. I saw your name on the phone.”
“Did you talk to Gladstone recently?”
“Oh, please, not this conversation again.”
“No, no, it’s not about that. He just visited me. It was a very strange conversation. Really, I have had the weirdest day.”
“Things are weird all around these days.”
“He seems really out of it.”
“What do you care? I thought you hated him.”
“I do hate him, but not for the reason you think. He came to congratulate me.”
Silence.
“Well, that’s ironic.”
“I’m glad you can appreciate the irony.”
“So, you call me to tell me Gladstone came to have a beer with you.”
“What? How did you know we had a beer?”
“You always have beer in the house.”
“Yes, but…”
Donald got up and began to wander around.
“…but how did you know I invited him in and offered him beer?”
“I didn’t know. I just assumed it.”
“You just assumed it.”
Donald sighed. Something was off, but he no longer had the strength to push through for the truth. Not with her, not with anybody.
I’m like a billiard ball, content to be bounced around, he thought.
“Okay”, Daisy said. “I did talk to him, but only just now. Just before you called me, he called. I told him we had nothing to talk about. I told him that you and I breaking up changed nothing between him and me.”
“He called you just now?”
“I just told you. Yes, he called me, and I pretty much hung up on him.”
“Why did you hang up on him?”
“I got nothing to talk to him about. He’s a player. I should have seen that all along.”
“He’s a player. Yea, that would accurate. What does that make me?”
“You’re a good guy. Donald. You’re a dear soul. I love you very much, but… you’re a good guy.”
“Good guys finish last?”
“Something like that. Don’t think I am evil, please. Try not to remember me that way. I am just in that age of my life… I got to look out for myself, for my future, and the future… it’s getting shorter every day, if you know what I’m saying. I think this is my time to live a little.”
As usual he had no clue what she was saying. Long ago he had accepted her mind would remain a mystery to him. Her ability to compartmentalize, to say one thing and believe it, but do an entirely different thing and believe it as completely… it baffled him always.
Even her voice, so tender, almost as if they were still lovers, threw him off. It muddled his thought processes, drained him of the capacity for lucid, scientific thought.
“So, was there anything else, Donald. I got to get back to… to something… I was doing.”
“No, I was just trying to figure out…”
They said their goodbyes, awkwardly and without coordination at all, and his feet took him to the drawer with the gun.
He thought of shooting somebody, first himself, and then Gladstone, and then his famous uncle. He pictured himself walking through the tight security, magically capable of reaching his uncle and, in a glorious, pointless moment, putting three bullets in the renowned billionaire.
They’d pull their guns on him, perhaps shoot him dead in a rainstorm of led, like they’d done to Duck Dillinger. Or they’d disarm him, slam him on the ground, put a piece of black cloth over his head as they drove him to court and marched him through the crowd of vultures, barking questions at him with their microphones held over their heads.
It was a revolver. He could remove half the bullets and make it a gamble. Push his luck. Aiming at the television and pulling the trigger, he heard the click that informed him the next one would be lethal.
It’s all about luck, he thought. Some guys have it, and some guys don’t, but in the end, everything comes out the same, exactly as it is, and exactly as it must be. Nothing can change, ever. So, it’s not luck. It’s something else, something bigger, a hand hidden inside the chest fold of some dark silk suit in a corner office somewhere, far from here.
A script writer, you can never get in touch with. A person in another dimension, dreaming up everything that takes place, a sinister god.
The knocking on the door started again. He held the gun to his temple.
What would it be like to cheat this script writer? What would it be like to do something of consequence, something absolutely irrevocable? Something that is not a gamble, not a game of chance, but entirely a manifestation of your own will power.
Of course, that too, he reasoned, could be just a part of the plot against him, the final insult to his character.
The damn knocking on the door continued.
Why did everybody want to talk to him just today, when he was seeking peace to contemplate these important matters?
“Donald, it’s Herbert again”, the kid yelled through the mail slot.
“I was just thinking… maybe I didn’t approach you right, before. I didn’t mean to offend you. Could you let us in for a moment?”
“Who’s us?”
“It’s me, uncle. I came back to join the protests.”
“Are you awol?”
“No, no… I am a free range duck now. The doctors can’t fix me or they won’t, not enough to send me back in. The rats got me good, but I’m glad. I’m done with the army. I’m with the protesters now.”
“Hold on, I’m coming.”
On his way to the door, turning his head to look out the window, he could see Gladstone’s car and, inside it, the dapper duck leaned over the wheel, sobbing.
“Donald”, a voice cried out.
He lowered his head and tried to push and shove and squeeze his way through the crowds, but as if directed by some unseen hand, the bodies tightened up around him, steering him in the direction of the voice:
“It’s me, Herbert.”
“Hello Herbert.”
“Hello sir, it’s good to see you out here.”
“I’m not in the demonstration.”
“You are in the middle of the demonstration.”
“No, I am just passing through. Excuse me. Excuse me?”
The boy was following him.
“This castle will fall”, he said, gloomily, as he gazed at the dark outline of the mansion in the horizon.
“It changes nothing”, Donald said, wryly. The protesters were bumping into him as if he was not there. There was police battering away at some in the outer rim, herding them in the opposite direction of where Donald was headed.
It meant he would have to pass through the police. Hopefully they wouldn’t think of him as a trouble-maker.
“I think it changes everything, sir.”
“Really?” Donald sneered. “You don’t know Scrooge. I know him. He’d have you all…”
Thunderous applause rose from around him, drowning out his words. Some girl was speaking from a box, a slim newcomer of sorts, perhaps a nightingale or a mockingbird.
It wasn’t plain to Donald what business a nightingale had to be talking in public in his city, but times had changed.
They should change the name of this city, he thought. What use to pretend any longer. Cornelius’ vision was long gone.
And then he was out of the woods, facing the police officers who briefly scanned his appearance, correctly assumed he was not a protester and on his way out of the crowd he had been caught up with for while, spreading out their batons to create a gateway for him to pass through.
“Free, free at last”, Donald mumbled.
Herbert was still hanging on Donald's skirts. The boy had long legs now. He had grown tall. He had no trouble keeping up with anybody.
“Grandma’s here too. Since the banks took her farm she’s been bitter as Hell. Bitter as Hell. You wouldn’t recognize her. She doesn’t open up for anybody, except Gus and I. We’re the only ones she lets in.”
“Grandma…”
He’d heard about it. It was unfortunate, very unfortunate. He liked the old woman. She had hired all that foreign labor, but that was also the worst you could say about her: She had a big heart. She didn’t deserve what had happened to her.
“Why aren’t you marching, Donald, if I may ask?”
“No, that’s not for me. I just try to run my company, you know, make the best of my life.”
“You got a company now?”
“I’ve had that for several years now.”
“I didn’t know that. How is it working out for you?”
Donald didn’t answer. They were passing Jones’ house. The fence and the window frames were newly painted, the lawn well kept.
Embarrassed, Donald said:
“So, Herbert, don’t you have some protesting to do?”
“I was hoping the guys could join us.”
“The kids are working for a living.”
“I work for a living, I do. I know a lot of people are unemployed, but that’s not why I am demonstrating.”
“Why are you demonstrating?” Donald said with sudden fury. He realized that what he really wanted to ask the kid was why he kept following him.
They’d stopped on the sidewalk. Donald had stopped. He hadn’t seen Herbert since he was a school boy, and the house – he wasn’t too proud of how it looked. It was certainly not a place to invite anybody inside.
“Our economy is completely screwed, and we all know whose behind it. I mean no offense, but it’s not like you ever had any real advantages from being in the same bloodline.”
“I don’t give a damn about Scrooge, but if you kids think you can do better… if you think you yelling and shouting at the police will make any difference… I can’t be bothered with that. What is your plan? How will you bring the economy back on track?”
“I don’t think the economy is really in that much trouble. I think it’s being done to it. It’s being done to us.”
“Aarrh”, Donald said and turned around and walked towards his house. Now he didn’t even care about his decrepit home.
“Okay”, Herbert shouted. “I tried to talk to you, Donald. I tried.”
Now I am the duck who turned his back on duck-kind. Ha. And he is the good coot, the noble defender of the rights of the working poor.
He grabbed a beer in the fridge, sat down on the couch and turned on the TV. More of the same.
“Protesters are squatting illegally in an empty storage house. They have painted their symbols and slogans on the walls, as we can see. Some are playing music, and others are creating these… interesting pieces of art, we see all around us here… they seem to intend to stay for a long time. The problem is, of course, that the building is owned by a company owned by McDuck, the very person these squatters are demonstrating against…”
There was a knocking on the door, and Donald missed the rest. He passed by the chest with the drawer, where he kept his gun, resisting the temptation to pull it out and wave it at the annoying youngster.
What the fuck did he know about anything? What kind of trouble had he ever seen? Kid had never even gotten laid, Donald was sure. At best he’d had his cell phone robbed, gotten ridiculed by some cheerleader, when he tried to present his love in the form of poetry, and been chewed out by the manager in the local McDuck, where he was flipping burgers. The sum of his life experience. And he had the audacity to teach him about protesting, about anger?
“You”, Donald said.
“Me. You didn’t expect to see me, did you?”
Donald glanced beyond the dapper gentleman in the leisure suit, to the car sloppily parked by the curb.
“What kind of car is that?”
“It’s temporary”, Gladstone said. “Just until my luck returns.”
“Don’t tell me. Your luck has run out.”
“The stock market is… it’s fickle. Even the best minds… It’ll come back. It’ll come back.”
“I don’t have any money.”
“I’m not here for money. This is not business.”
“If it’s not business, what exactly is it?”
“I want to say something to you in person. Can we step inside or go somewhere to talk? It will only take a minute.”
“We can talk here, on the porch. The weather is quite nice.”
Donald looked up. It was cloudy, and the clouds looked mean. The sky looked like god was frowning and wanted to piss on them all. But there was some sunshine, dripping down in spots over the slumped city.
“I just want to say that I congratulate you. We haven’t been on the best of terms, to say the least…”
“To say the least…”
“But I hold no grudge. In a sense you’re the better man. Even I can see that. You have been very persistent, I have to give you that. So, congratulations.”
Gladstone reached forth his hand. As if in a hypnotic trance, against his will and in spite of his contempt, Donald took it and shook it.
“Me, I’m a travelling man”, Gladstone said. “I suppose that’s my curse. I always seem to be the guy who just swerves out of trouble, always landing on my feet, don’t I?”
“Okay”, Donald said. “Thank you.”
“There’s a downside to all that. I mean, look at me. I got a car, but it’s leased and all I could afford. I’m going to a job interview Thursday, a sales position, and I think I’m gonna get it.”
“Good for you, man. Good for you. Thanks for dropping by.”
“So, maybe I get a second chance. Or a third chance, or a fifth or a sixth, whatever it is by now”, the guy continued.
He is not going to stop talking, Donald thought. Once again he pictured himself with the gun, shoving it up Gladstone’s beak, hissing “I said thank you for dropping by, motherfucker. Have a nice life”.
But he wasn’t gonna go to jail again. That trip had done more for him than all the anger management sessions Daisy had forced on him. So he smiled, sighed, and said:
“I’m sure your luck will return. I hope you get the job. You were born to sell stuff.”
“You don’t understand”, Gladstone said, moving his feet uneasily and turning his head, almost like a mad man who had trouble recognizing what he saw around him. “Nobody really understands, not even Daisy. I mean, we had a nice time, a good run. But I never established that mutual understanding… you know, the relationship you long for… or maybe it’s just me… I just always thought everything would be… different… better somehow. Do you think I grew up dreaming to become a snake oil salesman? You think this is me?”
Gladstone made a pathetic gesture, showing off all his façade, as if it was at once pitiful and glamorous. As if to say, “I too am a tragic character.” It was ridiculous. Donald felt a chuckle rising from within, from deep inside his belly.
He wanted to hear more. He didn’t want Jones to see him standing on his porch, talking to a man in tears – Gladstone was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
This is priceless, Donald thought. I ought to record it for posterity. The invincible Gladstone, brought low by the depression.
“Come in”, Donald said. “You look like you need a drink.”
He got him beer, a fresh one for himself, and urged him to sit down in the ragged leather arm chair.
“Cheers buddy”, he said. “You’ll get back on track. Just you wait and see.”
Gladstone sighed.
“Everybody says that, but the thing is: It’s like it no longer matters. Everything's changing. I mean, Gyro Gearloose just died, for heaven's sake. This whole country's going down the drain."
"To Gyro. He was a great guy."
Gladstone raised his glass too, sighed deeply and said:
"I don’t know. I am thinking about leaving town.”
You should do that, Donald thought.
“Oh, why do that. Don’t be so dramatic. You belong here. You can be a son of a bitch, you know that, but you’re a part of this place.”
Gladstone was hunched over, with his arms resting on his thighs, and staring at the engagement ring on Donald’s finger.
Donald was happy he hadn’t taken it off. It was a vain, superstitious, romantic thought that had made him keep it on, but now that came in handy.
“The irony is that you’re the only friend I have. Even if I don’t expect you guys to invite me to the wedding – that would be awkward, wouldn’t it – I sure appreciate this.”
Gladstone raised the beer. He was drinking without enthusiasm. Donald nodded magnanimously.
“This thing happening to the world”, Gladstone mused. “It’s like it is centered, somehow, around this city. It’s like it starts and ends here. Your uncle has expanded his political lobbyism drastically over the past decade. Did you know that?”
“I don’t know any details.”
“I do”, Gladstone said. “I was one of them. He hired me for a while. Did you know that?”
“Didn’t know that either. He’s just an uncle. A distant relative.”
Donald made a gesture to the living room they were sitting in.
“At least you can’t accuse him of nepotism.”
“You can say that again.”
Gladstone got up and somehow manage to stand in the trapeze of sunshine bursting through the window at the same moment. It was like the universe conspired to put him in the spotlight, even when he was gloomy, desperate and introspective.
“I worked for the bastard, yea. He had me travelling a lot. 100 days a year, in one of his private jets. I have to admit I enjoyed it. I felt like James Duck. The women were very attentive, I can tell you that… but what I did, I feel bad about. In a way I helped set up all of this. The protesters out there… if they knew what I had done, they’d be warming up tar for me right now.”
The sun cast highlights in his hair. This was Sir Lancelot confessing, the collapse of the round table.
“What did you do?”
“I can’t tell you what I did, but it’s an awful thing. If there is a hell for ducks, some sort of world where other creatures serve ducks for dinner, then I am going to be roast.”
Donald sighed. He was tired of how his little prank had worked out. Even in vice, he thought, this guy always manages to outdo me. Somehow his stories are always more spectacular.
“So, that’s what I am. I just wanted you to know. I’m not trying to make myself interesting. It’s too late for that. I am just a mercenary for the super-rich, Donald. Everything about me is façade. But I want you to know that I always sort of respected you. You have a lot of integrity. You took care of the kids all this time, and that cannot have been easy. Me, I just… this is what I am. This is all I am. Now all I can do is live with it.”
And then he was gone. He rushed out after a brief, befuddled goodbye, leaving Donald so puzzled he forgot, for a moment, his own frustration.
Was it some sort of trick? Did he just pretend not to have spoken to Daisy? Could it be some way to get back at him, or to rub it in?
No, this was genuine. The cards were being shown. True colors were coming out. It was Gladstone’s mad attempt at redemption.
Against his will Donald felt some effect of it, some appeasement to his mind.
At least we all suffer. It’s a mirror, this age. It’s the end of an era, the end of innocence. We’re all adults now, faced with ourselves, with our conscience.
It was, to Donald, as if life was becoming real after a long time of living in a sort of fantasy world, where everything just returned to normal by itself, no matter what happened.
He wanted to call Daisy again, but reaching for the phone no words he could defend came to mind. He only sensed the barrier, a barrier so thick, composed by all his deficiencies, and all her impossible, unachievable standards, the dreams someone had installed in their minds to trip their reality.
Still, reckless as he was, he pushed the digits.
“It’s Daisy”, she chippered.
“It’s Donald.”
“I know. I saw your name on the phone.”
“Did you talk to Gladstone recently?”
“Oh, please, not this conversation again.”
“No, no, it’s not about that. He just visited me. It was a very strange conversation. Really, I have had the weirdest day.”
“Things are weird all around these days.”
“He seems really out of it.”
“What do you care? I thought you hated him.”
“I do hate him, but not for the reason you think. He came to congratulate me.”
Silence.
“Well, that’s ironic.”
“I’m glad you can appreciate the irony.”
“So, you call me to tell me Gladstone came to have a beer with you.”
“What? How did you know we had a beer?”
“You always have beer in the house.”
“Yes, but…”
Donald got up and began to wander around.
“…but how did you know I invited him in and offered him beer?”
“I didn’t know. I just assumed it.”
“You just assumed it.”
Donald sighed. Something was off, but he no longer had the strength to push through for the truth. Not with her, not with anybody.
I’m like a billiard ball, content to be bounced around, he thought.
“Okay”, Daisy said. “I did talk to him, but only just now. Just before you called me, he called. I told him we had nothing to talk about. I told him that you and I breaking up changed nothing between him and me.”
“He called you just now?”
“I just told you. Yes, he called me, and I pretty much hung up on him.”
“Why did you hang up on him?”
“I got nothing to talk to him about. He’s a player. I should have seen that all along.”
“He’s a player. Yea, that would accurate. What does that make me?”
“You’re a good guy. Donald. You’re a dear soul. I love you very much, but… you’re a good guy.”
“Good guys finish last?”
“Something like that. Don’t think I am evil, please. Try not to remember me that way. I am just in that age of my life… I got to look out for myself, for my future, and the future… it’s getting shorter every day, if you know what I’m saying. I think this is my time to live a little.”
As usual he had no clue what she was saying. Long ago he had accepted her mind would remain a mystery to him. Her ability to compartmentalize, to say one thing and believe it, but do an entirely different thing and believe it as completely… it baffled him always.
Even her voice, so tender, almost as if they were still lovers, threw him off. It muddled his thought processes, drained him of the capacity for lucid, scientific thought.
“So, was there anything else, Donald. I got to get back to… to something… I was doing.”
“No, I was just trying to figure out…”
They said their goodbyes, awkwardly and without coordination at all, and his feet took him to the drawer with the gun.
He thought of shooting somebody, first himself, and then Gladstone, and then his famous uncle. He pictured himself walking through the tight security, magically capable of reaching his uncle and, in a glorious, pointless moment, putting three bullets in the renowned billionaire.
They’d pull their guns on him, perhaps shoot him dead in a rainstorm of led, like they’d done to Duck Dillinger. Or they’d disarm him, slam him on the ground, put a piece of black cloth over his head as they drove him to court and marched him through the crowd of vultures, barking questions at him with their microphones held over their heads.
It was a revolver. He could remove half the bullets and make it a gamble. Push his luck. Aiming at the television and pulling the trigger, he heard the click that informed him the next one would be lethal.
It’s all about luck, he thought. Some guys have it, and some guys don’t, but in the end, everything comes out the same, exactly as it is, and exactly as it must be. Nothing can change, ever. So, it’s not luck. It’s something else, something bigger, a hand hidden inside the chest fold of some dark silk suit in a corner office somewhere, far from here.
A script writer, you can never get in touch with. A person in another dimension, dreaming up everything that takes place, a sinister god.
The knocking on the door started again. He held the gun to his temple.
What would it be like to cheat this script writer? What would it be like to do something of consequence, something absolutely irrevocable? Something that is not a gamble, not a game of chance, but entirely a manifestation of your own will power.
Of course, that too, he reasoned, could be just a part of the plot against him, the final insult to his character.
The damn knocking on the door continued.
Why did everybody want to talk to him just today, when he was seeking peace to contemplate these important matters?
“Donald, it’s Herbert again”, the kid yelled through the mail slot.
“I was just thinking… maybe I didn’t approach you right, before. I didn’t mean to offend you. Could you let us in for a moment?”
“Who’s us?”
“It’s me, uncle. I came back to join the protests.”
“Are you awol?”
“No, no… I am a free range duck now. The doctors can’t fix me or they won’t, not enough to send me back in. The rats got me good, but I’m glad. I’m done with the army. I’m with the protesters now.”
“Hold on, I’m coming.”
On his way to the door, turning his head to look out the window, he could see Gladstone’s car and, inside it, the dapper duck leaned over the wheel, sobbing.
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