BARRY HAS RETURNED from Barbados and called an “urgent non-emergency meeting.” One of Barry’s philosophies, as he explained it to me, is that there is no such thing as an emergency, just varying degrees of urgency. “If you think about it,” he said, “emergencies don’t really exist.” He even said the word like it tasted bad on his lips.
“Break it down,” he continued, “look at the root, emerge. Now, emerge means to come forth, to come into existence, but why should that be a cause for panic? If you plant a seed in the ground, eventually a stalk with emerge, but this should not be a surprise, since after all, you knew the seed was down there and it’s a seed’s job to grow, so when the stalk appears it’s simply an expected arrival. Or babies. Often, when a baby is on the verge of being born it is treated as an emergency, a cause for panic and worry, but again, the root, emerge. The baby, along with some very explicable, very natural goo, is going to ‘emerge’ from the birth canal. Unless you’re talking about one of those self-deluding high school girls that drops the kid behind the Dumpster during lunch, everyone knew the damn thing was in there, right? And at some point it’s got to come out. What is so goddamn surprising?”
“You don’t have kids, do you,” I said.
Barry frowned. This was early on before he had agreed to take me on as a client and for a moment I worried that I’d fucked up the audition. “You don’t choose him,” my manager warned. “He chooses you.”
“My belief,” Barry continued, “is that with proper planning and vision and foresight and vigilance, there will never be an ‘emergency.’ All events are foreseeable. Everything is predictable, not for everyone, but for me.”
“Like a psychic?”
Barry frowned even deeper this time. “No, nothing like a psychic. There is nothing mystical about it.”
“Sorry.”
“Even when you see an ambulance, siren howling, lights blazing, zooming through traffic, all appearances to the contrary, that is not an emergency.”
“No?”
“Look at what’s probably inside, some fat ass who for forty years started his day with a rasher of bacon and half gallon of coffee with cream. Not even half-and-half, cream. That his coronary artery exploded like a sabotaged Iraqi oil pipeline shouldn’t be surprising, should it? Or maybe it’s one of those bike messengers who refuses to wear a helmet and when he flips over a taxi, whoops! There go his brains all over the street. Who could’ve seen that coming?”
Barry had worked himself into a pretty good lather. He wiped the back of his suit sleeve across his chin. Frankly, I liked the passion. I was in a pickle.
“These are not emergencies, they are eventualities and that’s not no voodoo.”
During the months of my trial I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about Barry’s little philosophy, about how it manages to reconcile both free will and predestination. In Barry’s world, there are two categories. Barry types who embrace their role as agents of change, influencers of events, controllers of destiny. Then there are others who allow themselves to be nudged inexorably toward their preas-signed fate, their eventualities.
And yet, because he had agreed to take me on after that first meeting, by implication, I was being invited to the other side.
BARRY’S OFFICE IS expecting me and I am shown into a conference room with an even better view than my apartment. The carpet is thick and springy enough for a floor exercise routine and on one wall I see a buffet that would embarrass the Sunday brunch at the Ritz. There is a carving station with steaming rounds of ham and prime rib, a shrimp tree, and at the end, after a full array of sides of both the starch and green vegetable variety, what looks to be a fully outfitted sundae bar. I am alone in the room.
At first I figure the spread is for some kind of office celebration they’re having later, but when Barry walks in followed by a guy in whites topped with a chef’s hat, I realize what’s going on.
I’m in a pitch meeting.
In entertainment, whenever two parties meet, one of them is empowered to say “yes,” and because that yes turns into action they are very important. That person is the one who is being pitched. On one’s way up the ladder, you do the pitching and when you do the pitching it is necessary to prepare the proper tribute prior to delivering of the pitch. Sometimes this can be dispensed with using mere flattery over a recent creative endeavor, or small tokens like cigars or especially good prostitutes. Other times, you prepare a sumptuous feast like the one in this conference room. I have to say, this is a surprise, because even as I am on trial for my life, Barry has had the final say-so on all matters of tactics and strategy. Until now, apparently.
Barry is clearly excited, pacing the room as our chef prepares and then places a plate in front of me. I am not particularly hungry, but I thank him and Barry gestures him from the room.
“I had a vision,” Barry says.
“Vision?”
“I was on a reef dive, really beautiful, like two-hundred-million-year-old coral there, thinking about your case and it came to me, the perfect defense.”
“I thought we already had the perfect defense.”
“We did, but now this one is more perfect.”
I feel one of our Abbott and Costello routines coming on. “How do you get more perfect than perfect?” I ask.
“The old thing was perfect, the new thing is better, therefore, more perfect. The perfect defense … plus.”
I decide to let it drop and try a bite of the mashed potatoes. They are warm and buttery and agreeably lumpy with just the right hint of chives. Judging from the way my suit hangs I have not been eating all that much, and as I try the beef (succulent, tender), I realize I have no real memory of any recent food ingestion. It is, in short, hitting the spot.
“Now, it’s a risk, which is why you’ve got to sign off on it, why we’ve got to commit, but I’ve been thinking about it nonstop. I couldn’t even enjoy the magnificence of the giant sea turtles. I think it’s a risk worth taking. I think it’s at least precedent-setting, if not history-making.”
Barry and I share a dramatic pause that only one of us is interested in.
“Not guilty by reason of celebrity.” When he says it there is a pause between each word and he spreads his arms apart, like he is viewing it on a marquee from across the street.
“I don’t get it.”
Barry doesn’t seem surprised at this.
“Okay, you’ve heard of being not guilty by reason of insanity, right?”
I can only nod because my mouth is full of perfectly pink beef. The food appears to be stoking my appetite like I didn’t know I wanted it until I tried it. It’s just a little better than a cold can of beans.
“This is like that, only it’s not guilty by reason of celebrity.”
“It sounds like you’re saying that being famous is some sort of disease, or defect.”
“I’m not like saying that. I am saying that.”
“I don’t know if I like the sound of this.”
“I can’t believe I didn’t see this before,” he says. I am superfluous now. He is an avalanche making its way to the bottom of the hill. “It’s practically already in the law. It’s just that nobody’s put it quite so plainly. I’ve got some clerks working on the briefing, but I’m pretty sure it’s going to fly. The judge is no-nonsense, but she’s fair, and she’s got to really take a hard look at this. The law is allowed to recognize a de facto affirmative defense ex post facto its establishment. Look at the precedents. If an average person took a nine-iron to some dude’s car in the middle of the road, what would happen to him? Criminal mischief? Felony property damage? When Jack does it, what happens? Nothing. If Bob Smith saws three quarters of the way through his wife’s neck and takes out an innocent bystander to boot, what happens to him? Life? Death? O.J… . nothing. Ergo, not guilty by reason of celebrity.”
Barry goes on and on, citing case after case: Michael Jackson, Mel Gibson, Kobe, Rush.
“The one or two times one of you actually did go to jail, pretty goddamn quickly everyone realized it was a big mistake and they got her the hell out of there.”
“Paris Hilton? Lindsay?”
“Exactamundo!” Barry says.
“Fonzie.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Gary Coleman, kind of,” I said, “but you’ve to say it differently. It’s more like, what chu talkin’ about?” Barry looks like he wants to break me over his knee. I take a moment and gather my shit.
“But what about Martha?” I said.
“I’ve thought of that,” Barry says, rubbing his chin in contemplation. “But it’s an aberration. I made some calls and looked into it. Number one, that was federal; federal is different. Number two, because she thought it would look tacky, they were ordered to play down the celebrity thing. She wanted to be treated like everyone else. It killed her. Terrible strategy.”
“Sounds like you’ve got it all covered,” I say.
“Think about it,” Barry says. “Celebrity is just like a disease. You can catch it, so it’s communicable like a disease. It can also be hereditary like a disease. And I know I don’t have to explain to you how it does its damage. The world is fundamentally different for someone with celebrity, an honest-to-god alternate reality. An irreality, even. Also, celebrity is tenacious, incurable. Once it has you in its grasp, it will not let you go. At the very least any celebrity by definition has a prima facie case of diminished capacity.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you’re never wholly responsible for your actions. There will always be some mitigating factor.”
I polish off the last of my meal. “This sounds crazy,” I say.
Barry waves his hand in front of his face like he’s swatting a mosquito away. “Think about it,” he says. “All we’ve got to do under this theory is first prove that you’re a celebrity, which they’ll basically stipulate to. After that, it’s just a matter of illustrating what we all know to be true, that celebrities are not like the rest of us.” I could’ve pointed out that Barry was himself pretty famous. Self-awareness was not his forte. He continued.
“The judge may not go for it, in which case we’ll stick with plan A, but I’m telling you, the briefs look good, very convincing, and I think she’ll see a little lasting legacy juice for herself in this. If we get this through, we’re talking permanent history in the annals of law, real Plessy v. Ferguson, Brown v. Board of Education, Roe v. Wade stuff here.”
“So why do you need me to decide anything?”
“Because of the risk. Either way, win or lose, it’s going to appeal, maybe even all the way up to the Supreme Court. We’re talking years before this case is resolved. Years and years and years. This is going to hang over your head forever and beyond. This is your obituary. This is your tombstone. The good news is that win or lose, you’ll be out on bail. If we win, you’ll be as free as anyone else who can’t go anywhere without being stared at and generally loathed. If you lose, you’re looking at more home confinement.”
I do some of my own contemplating. “You said the original plan is perfect, right, that if we do that, we’ll win.”
“That’s right.”
“And you’re sticking by that?” I say. “That’s still a winning strategy.”
“Of course.” He looks offended that I might think otherwise. “So why would I sign off on this new strategy, this strategy that’s going to paint me as some kind of defective?”
Barry smiles because he has foreseen this, just as he promised. He has directed everything right where he wants it to go, true master-of-the-universe style. “Because I’m going to waive all of my fees.”
This is the most interesting thing Barry has said to me and I chew slowly as I consider it. Bonnie’s wristband missives have made it clear that one of the prerequisites for a successful execution of our plan is a pile of money. My pile is severely depleted. Barry is offering me a way to rebuild it. It won’t be enough, but it’s a start.
I do the only thing I can. I say, “You’ve got a deal,” and make myself a sundae to go.