Mr. Daark (4)
(Part 4 of 15) First encounter: the broken elevator and the handkerchief/slap incident
4
Jax overslept, which was not only a cliché, but a bad omen too. His wife either hadn’t bothered to wake him, or she had and Jax overslept regardless of her efforts. Either option seemed plausible, and whichever Jax chose to believe had entirely to do with how upset he was with Taylor. For some reason, he felt that she hadn’t even bothered to glance at him as she got up to make breakfast. The sour feeling came to Jax again when he sat up in bed. Jax couldn’t see himself, but he thought his own face might look like Oscar the Grouch, with the furrowed unibrow and everything.
She’s got no place to be, Jax thought in the shower. Jake’s not up yet. She could’ve checked twice.
The time discrepancy wouldn’t kill Jax so long as he skimped out on shaving. Who important would see him anyway? This supposedly comforting thought appeared to be shallow to Jax. He could feel God’s finger poking down at him from heaven as if to say: “Fuck him up.” There had to be some form of irony attached here. Why not now? Daark would spring something for him to meet the higher ups, and then he would split his pants. Or maybe he’d drive his car into a vat of Krazy Glue, Junie B. Jones style.
Down in the kitchen, Jax intended to give his wife a kiss goodbye, but she was nowhere to be found. What was it now? Daylight savings? On a Wednesday?
Whatever, Jax thought, the way today is going I’ll open my lunch to find pudding cups and fruit snacks.
Just to be sure, Jax checked the brown paper bag in his hand on his way out the door. It was, in fact, his lunch; not that he would have time to pack one if it wasn’t. The rest of Jax’s commute was smooth sailing. No T-bone or rear-ending to send him to the Emergency Room.
His paranoia should have begun to wear off, but he hadn’t forgotten the sticky note in his drawers. A private elevator meeting awaited him, but that couldn’t be right. Not when five other men in suits joined Jax on the elevator. He thought for a second that he must be going mad. Mr. Daark didn’t want to chat with the accountant; he wanted to sell his land. Perhaps Jax, in his madness, had placed the sticky note under Jake’s bed. Why not? Give Taylor another reason to divorce me, Jax thought, yet the thought didn’t sound quite right. Surely it was his own voice, but not really his own thought. He had never before thought of Taylor divorcing him, and Jax didn’t intend to start now. Jax must’ve been going mad indeed. Unless…
Unless the five other men got off on different floors, leaving Jax alone in the elevator car. By the eighth floor, Jax was alone, and the elevator doors seemed reluctant to close. He peeked his head out for a moment to see if anyone was coming down the hall. What would really be nice would be for the door closing/opening cycle to reset after Jax peeked his head out. His more paranoid senses told him to get out before his really bad day could begin with an hour trapped in the elevator. Jax took a step and the doors slammed shut.
“Jesus!”
The elevator should have resumed its ascent, and though Jax’s hopeful side wanted to wait for the elevator to start up again, his better senses told him it was stuck. A small metal box with Jax trapped inside. He leaned against the wall and sighed. Of course, he hadn’t taken the scenic elevator with the plexiglass windows. The main visitor entrance was a short hallway away, but Jax’s paranoia didn’t think that far ahead. He had been too focused on hypothetical split pants to think that the hiccup would be in the most obvious place. Jax kicked the wall and it clanged in reply.
“Why not!? Why don’t the walls just close in on me!?”
Jax slid down to the floor in a sitting position, and a single tear began to ride down his cheek. He wiped it away and laughed uncomfortably. The answer to his conundrum sat right in front of his face, the elevator’s panic button. He wondered if it had been long enough to start panicking, or would he get shit at lunch for trying to get help after only a minute or so? Jax waited a few more minutes, sure that his work could wait up on him. This might be a funny story one day, and if not that, then a liability scheme. Perhaps Jax could fake a panic attack. Was that too far? He’d already played the game once with that slippery floor. Jax fell for real that time. He didn’t feel like risking a security camera catching him in the act of lying down and crying for help in a half-assed way. Jax knew someone hated him for the first scheme, but they couldn’t say a thing, because he really had fallen. This time, Jax believed he liked his job, and two schemes would end with a pink slip somewhere down the line.
Jax was a man, and supposedly a man had to deal with problems on his own. When the lights began to flicker, he finally stood up to press the button. Jax put his hand out to press the button.
“Don’t!” Daark commanded, appearing before his face during the flicker of the fluorescent light bulbs.
Jax stepped back from the control panel and reached for his chest as if this surprise appearance was causing a heart attack.
“Right, right.” Jax muttered.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Of course, this is what you do. You powerful people never want to waltz into my office or have some polite elevator talk. You all have to have thunder sound off at the mention of your names.”
Daark grinned. “Would you believe in the boogeyman otherwise, or would you dismiss me as your descent into madness? We are bound by fate, Mr. Jax. I suggest you get used to the theatrics.”
“Fate? What, like the staring contest?”
He grinned that devilish grin as if his lips knew no other way to smile. “I’m glad you’re remembering. That’ll help speed things along. Did you ever figure out what I meant about adults not believing in the boogey man?”
Jax shrugged. “Not really. I get that the impossible is hard to believe in, but you were talking about something else. Complex fear.”
“You’ll notice that I make people—for lack of a better word—jittery. Everyone reacts differently to fear, but mainly, they try to stuff it down; deny it even exists. So, you hear about my business deal, and maybe you hear about the contingencies. Big whup. But no one really wants to talk about how I’m getting a large portion of Pax Co’s stock in return for my sale. I’m not an idiot. I know I could start up a monopoly with all the oil I’ve got. Your superiors are shaking in their wing tips every time there’s a meeting about me. They’re trying to play me as the fool, but you and I know who the real fools are. They don’t know why they’re afraid, but I do. For some, they don’t want to hand over their company to me, but they’ll do just that. They know if I move on, it’s the death of Pax Co.
“See, just last night, I did the same thing to you. Do you know it? You get all sour, like a lemon. When you’re anxious and you shove it down, you pucker right up. I got into your house, and you got so damn upset you started getting mad at things that had nothing to do with me. That’s what adults do because they don’t want to believe there’s someone out there to grab ‘em by the pussy.”
“You stay away from my son,” Jax growled out of anger.
“See there you go,” Daark gestured toward him. “I got your goat. I don’t want any business in your family life. I just needed to send you a message, that’s all. Soon enough, you and I can walk all over together like old drinking buddies, but right now, if I shake your hand in public, all hell breaks loose. They’ll murmur about you until you think they’re the ones in your house. How about this? If I need to contact you, the note will be under your bed.”
“Fine.”
Mr. Daark adjusted the black tie on his white suit. “I’ve got a hypothesis. I think the more exposure you have to me, the sooner the mysticism wears off.”
“The what?”
“It’ll wear off sooner or later because you believe in me, but I can’t say when that’ll happen. The short explanation is that you’ll experience some psychological side effects.”
“For example?”
Daark sighed. “I told you about getting sour. Now, that’s just straight-up fear. Sometimes being around me will escalate fear. One of your bosses, um, white guy, balding, gray hair—what’s his name?”
“Gary Kyng.”
“Gary’s gonna start accusing his wife of cheating real soon. The thought has been bouncing around his head, and something’s gotta give.”
“Great. I definitely needed more family drama.”
Daark put his hand on Jax’s shoulder and looked directly into his eyes. “Just remember it’s all in your head, and maybe you won’t file for divorce. Oh, right. Speaking of things to remember, I gave you a message thirty years ago. Do you remember it?”
“No, I—” Jax stopped. To his surprise, the words came back. “I’m in control. It’ll only burn again if I let it.”
“Good.”
“I’m guessing you have an explanation.”
“No, this is only the preliminary stage. You’ll understand when you need to.”
Jax rolled his eyes. “That’s helpful. How long do you think you can keep the white suit charade up?”
“Can’t exactly walk in wearing all-black and expect to get an oil deal. People would be too wary.”
“I mean your name is Dark with two a’s.”
“Your name is Aron with two a’s and people call you Jax. The big leaguers call me Austin. I can keep this up till the grown-ups start wetting their beds again and crying for mommy and daddy.”
The elevator began moving again, and Jax looked up at the lights for a moment to see if they would flicker again.
“Till next time, Mr. Jax.”
“I guess we’re partners now?”
“I wouldn’t say that just yet. You have no idea the places we’ll go or the things we’ll do.”
The elevator doors slid open as the elevator came to a gentle stop. The two men left the room like strangers, splitting off into two separate paths. Austin Daark’s path led him to another negotiation meeting.
Jax’s path led him back to the numbers, which was the more interesting of the two. Daark just had to work on slowly taking more power; this was nothing new for him. Jax discovered what those powers might entail. The buying/selling account had funds that almost reached a couple billion dollars. Right now, Pax Co. was trying to get Daark to settle for a hundred million dollars, which was adequate for the purchase, but it severely low-balled what Daark might be rightly owed for his oil. Both parties expected this outcome, but now that Daark was psychologically worming into Jax, he would have more insight into what kind of numbers he should bring up in negotiations.
Pax Co. dipped its toes into shady business from time to time. Jax felt that he didn’t fall under the whistle blower type, and he fell on the long end of the stick, so he was content to keep malpractice out of the IRS’s sight. Pax Co. tanker-semis had a nasty habit of disappearing as one truck and reappearing as another with a new serial number. Business losses have some tax deductibility. Sometimes they legitimately went up in balls of fire, but that amounted to a larger issue for their legal team rather than their financial team. It all boiled down to more money for them. Another easy road out came from charities that the company both owned and donated to (under different names of course). Their money cycle was tight with only small losses here and there.
At lunch, Jax ate with a few people he had loose relationships with. They spoke in low tones at sparse intervals, always about business or family. Jax could never convince himself that he liked where he was other than the food and seating that came with the territory. Perhaps no one at his table liked their seat, and they spent all their time dreaming of the popular table. Children, all of them, Jax thought abstractly. The lunch room looked like an elementary school cafeteria with bigger tables and better funding.
Let’s play a game. Daark inserted this thought into Jax’s head gently, worrying that the sudden thought would surprise or even hurt Jax. I sneeze and the first person to offer me a handkerchief gets slapped across the face.
Jax didn’t wonder why because the idea intrigued him with or without any explanation. He believed Daark could get away with it at this point in time. The handkerchief insulted him in some way, and everyone would see Daark’s side of things. The instinct was a primal feeling, something the nature channel would explain as dominance. The handkerchief man would be weakly asserting himself above the others. Jax wondered if anyone would have a handkerchief today, a Kleenex seemed more likely, but a few of the people around the table had gray hair, the kind of color that went with the age of the handkerchief.
Daark messed with Jax’s expectations by beginning sneezes he didn’t see through to the end. One sneeze ended in a yawn, and Jax thought he heard someone offer to make coffee. But that wasn’t the game. It had to be a sneeze. The beginnings of sneezes set Jax off and made him feel incomplete, like one of those mildly infuriating video compilations. He almost wanted to yell: “Just sneeze already, you jackass!” Jax wanted the sneeze, the handkerchief, and the slap. He needed it all. Jax bit at his left thumbnail without thinking. The men around Daark were similarly anxious without knowing what exactly they were waiting for. They paid attention to every beat of his motions like a dog waiting for a release command. Seeing this play of overzealous actors taught Jax the real lesson behind the slap. Daark had each and every one of them focused on him. They spoke to him directly, seeking his validation. No matter where he sat, that chair was the head of the table. Time and death would pause for Daark if only he asked them to. Jax imagined this was what a meal with Jesus would be like. But once the sneeze came, it would be a meal with the devil.
The sneeze was not loud, yet it had the effect of a sonic boom on Jax. Grown men stuttered bless yous, and the women looked at the table to avoid Mr. Daark’s gaze. Jax himself mumbled a bless you, though he wasn’t anywhere near Mr. Daark. The handkerchief had to come next, didn’t it? Mr. Daark knew his table well enough to guess their behavior, but maybe the handkerchief was hyperbolic exaggeration. Daark had to have some humor, didn’t he? He liked to make a messed up joke now and again. Now that the slap was so close, Jax couldn’t believe that it was coming at all. This had to be another fake out. Daark had already taught his lesson clearly about everyone’s attention being directly on him. Whether the lesson was intentional or not, it had been taught.
“Here take this,” One meek man offered his handkerchief.
Daark stood up from his chair and walked around the table to the man. The room grew quieter as more people focused on Mr. Daark. Some forgot their words at the sight of the situation. The meek man turned in his chair to face Daark, still holding the handkerchief out before himself. There was no wind up to the slap, just a sudden twist at the waist, and the sudden clapping sound of Austin Daark’s open palm against the meek man’s face. It had power and grace, and not a soul in the room knew how to react. It seemed like everyone looked to Daark for what emotion they were supposed to have. His face showed a neutral tone without any anger or malice. Then Daark spoke quietly, and the room was quiet enough for everyone to be able to hear them.
“If you’re going to lower yourself to me like that, then save that for wiping my semen from your daughter’s face.”
The man’s face paled except for the red handprint that appeared to engulf half of his face. He almost asked why not his wife as if that were any better, but the answer was clear to the entire room. He wouldn’t say it or hardly think it, but his wife was fading. Her hair was poorly dyed, and her rolls of stomach fat showed through every outfit she had. Not ugly, not unlovable, just losing touch with her youth. The meek man stifled tears then, and he couldn’t muster up any rage toward the insult.
He wanted to be mad. His daughter was seventeen and good-mannered. Sometimes he had her around at the office parties as an object of pride. She never touched her phone during these parties, and she talked to the adults at their level. No one asked her directly about her plans for college; there were other things to talk about with her, so they always asked the meek man. He’d puff right up and say she was going to be a business major. Pax Co. had a nasty habit of nepotism, and he almost expected his daughter to be at this lunch table one day, but definitely never at this table with him.
Daark always had a way of rooting out a person’s deepest insecurities and cutting them down into a sentence or less. For men, the topic of sex often popped up on the list. He thought that almost every man felt impotent from time to time. It seemed typical of the culture as if boys were taught that their value came from their performance in bed. The rarer types like Jax didn’t value those things as much as other men. Jax’s fear was rooted in the fire from his childhood. Not necessarily fire itself, but the idea of anything coming into his life and tearing it apart from the inside out like a cancer. So, you could say that Jax feared fire in any other way than literally.
It saddened the table, the whole room in fact, to see the meek man shamed like that. They weren’t just embarrassed for him, but rather, embarrassed with him. It shamed them all to think that a man so, for lack of a better term, unmanly existed among them. The essence of man did not come from the penis, it came from action and inaction.
Perhaps that’s why so many men feel impotent. To be impotent is not always to lack the performance in bed, but rather to be completely ineffective. The impotent man worries that his spouse speaks to others. He doesn’t worry that they’re cheating; he worries that they’re poking fun at him behind his back. The impotent man knows that he is not good enough for his partner, yet he is lazy and sluggish to change. There is no action to make someone manly or potent, but there are actions that make an impotent man.
The meek man lacked confidence. He submitted himself to everyone who might give him a step up. He was not kind; he was a yes-man. He would have joined the Nazi party to get a step up in life. He let his guard down around his wife, allowing her to know that he felt useless and untalented. She did her best to convince him otherwise, but over time her speech became lame and repetitive. “You are useful. Remember that time you had the idea for…” she droned on till she could do no more than hug and kiss him.
In this instance, he looked for someone to save him, but no one dared stand up to Austin Daark. In a way, they all checked with one another for what was to be done, but since everyone was looking for someone else to act, no one acted against Daark. Jax thought he would have stood up to Daark if he were in that position, but right now he convinced himself that he wasn’t a part of this. It wasn’t his turn to speak out. Besides, Daark conveyed his message to Jax in a way that words could only graze. Speak up or be trampled. Jax couldn’t tell if these elites feared for their jobs, or if they were just glad that Daark hadn’t slapped them.
It will all burn again if you let it, Jax thought, beginning to understand the message.
The lunchroom tried to resume as if there had been no handkerchief incident. No one wanted to talk about it, and the scene wouldn’t leave the room by word of mouth. It simmered in the back of everyone’s minds as a question of reality. Did anyone really want to standup in the face of chaos? The scene was dream-like, a break from reality that could go in two ways: let it happen or stand up against it. They had chosen to let it happen like elementary school kids watching a bully. Few things ever really change. Jax wondered what this scene meant for him. He wondered how often in the future he would have to choose to submit or reject the dealings of Austin Daark.