Oliver.
13. Henny Newton stole her out of NY, and had made of their romance a lucrative comeback in the world; when we met later he told me he was finished in pictures, and had stumbled badly pitching a picture about Bridge and Tunnel Day. They're still counting bodies, he's painting the re-creation in ninety minutes. Do you know how they got the subways, Maggie? How they hit so many? On Bridge and Tunnel day? Hack Bridge and Tunnel boys set the explosives. They've covered all that up by now, but that's who did it. Nineteen Tacticals: A, Q, B; ding, ding, ding.
Somewhere, not far from here, a man named Elric Schmidt sang his last song as the Q caved in and sucked him down. The song was "Oneida", about a girl who leaves him for the slick promises of a con artist. Therese was in France with the Henny Newton convoy when the island shit itself.
I MET HENNY NEWTON the day he married my daughter. It was on a beach in Boothbay. It was the middle of January with all the hangers-on dressed like Eskimos. He had invited me, Worcester too close to Maine not to, I guess.
Therese was kind to me. The old drama forgot. And Mr. Henny offered me a job with the circus. Security detail. In those days Henny Newton traveled with a lot of heels, all kinds of phoney intellectuals, drug dealers, poets, porno actresses -- feasters. There was this Count Olof who would brag to me about one million acres in Romania, then borrow five dollars to buy a Cola Roba. It was a big tour; all after-party, no show. But see, with Henny, I'll give the kid credit for vision: he was biding his time, he knew something was coming. Because here was this other count, or duke, or something, but importantly he was Russian, not Romanian, and with him Russian money cloudied Henny's way. They wanted Afghan pictures. A trilogy, with the first to take place on the Silk Road, the second to resume the story with the Russians fighting the Taliban, and of this second movie Henny should really do it Gunga Din style, because the third movie would be a tragedy on Marines stomping towels, not nearly as fun-loving as the Spetsnaz. These Russians were looking to get PMC contracts for Afganistan -- Maggie, these oil barons wanted to be poppy barons -- they wanted the USA to sell them back the right to waste ordinance in Toar, Boar, and Loar, and Henny would be their sonneteer and heavyweight annunciator. They wanted to burn bullets, and pick poppies.
THE RUSSIANS GAVE HIM all the money, and as you probably know he made one picture, not three, and it was not about Cossacks' right to transact heroin, but US Enlisted men kicking ass in Iraq; a full frontal hymn to American military exceptionalism funded completely by serendipitous Russian oil fortune. Look, Henry is sick. Maggie? He took their money, and made a film everyone saw. It did business. Just the right amount of years to tie a bandana around Iraq, and blow up some buildings. But these were Russians he duped. Russians aren't a good mark for this kind of thing. He asked me to accompany him to New York. He knew I had been down here in the garbage looking for Therese, we had long whiskey sessions, him interviewing me about it. Now suddenly popular again in the country, and these people, your people, finally wanted to hear this movie about the Bridge and Tunnel that had been too soon ten years ago -- but two years ago, after the Iraq movie, they were keen for: Henny was the tragedian of the moment . He asked me to come with him. Protection. We met your boss, Alan Marybella, and walked around.
There was something else: Two years ago there was no place safer for Henny Newton to hide from the Russian outfits than right up there. The tower. That's why he asked me so often about the garbage dump, and between the bugs and the cops, he felt untouchable here. But the Russians didn't want their cut of the Iraq thing: they let him know he needed to take this UDP money, the big check Alan Marybella got him, and make their Afghan movie with it. And Henny told them he would. It's an interesting tournament if you take the meanest Russians from every era of cool pale-eyed nasty Russian history, and tried them off against each other. That's a tournamet. Send some Russians to New Mexico, they won't consider too long the size of their combatant. The best rock-chucker in the business, the Russian.
We put Therese with Henny's friends in Maine. Close enough. Better than France. I went up to visit her twice. She was managing this great house on the ocean, all Henny's people were there. It was nice there. We would walk along the cliffs, and watch the water, that kind of horseshit people do. We talked about New Mexico. We talked about the good years in Mass before that punk Elric wrote her those songs. She would hold my hand, and she was happy. Something of this holiday, for her, was the interim between the stages of your life, and she knew, as she was now Therese Newton, the trotting days would slow down soon enough, Henny would lose his guts for galavanting, and they would do the family thing. She made it clear to me that I should plan to retire up there. To be near the family.
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