Iron Gut, Golden Lung Pt. 7

25

Jeremiah dreamed of water. He watched the dark waves, like arms on a kraken, descend from the melted ice caps in wave after relentless wave. He saw them consume islands, then fields, then towns—saw them from above, because he had his own airship. With him on it were Nanna, Jaelin, the Wavers, his uncle Shawn. And his mother was there, like in most dreams. From the air, he watched the silhouettes of drowned people underwater, splayed like starfish and spinning underwater.

He dreamed this every night, the only thing that changed the size and grandeur of his airship. It made him happy.

Friday was a busy day.

“The human brain has sixty-two hundred thoughts a day,” he told Oprah that morning, while shaving in his suite. “That means, no matter how brilliant your idea, there is a hundred percent chance somebody currently living has had that same idea.”

“There’s a ninety percent chance they have the capability to make that idea a reality,” he told Gwyneth Paltrow while pooping in the men’s room. “If you wait even a day, somebody else will beat you to the punch.”

“And then that idea is worthless,” he told Bob Costas in his head as he sat down for Business. “Bye. Nice while it lasted. Hope you had fun thinking about doing something.”

He put the media scrum on hold for the morning’s lecture. The professor—who looked like a well-fed Confederate colonel—talked about “New Thought,” the 19th century philosophy that said reality could be shaped through positive thinking, an inspiration for utopian capitalists like John Kellogg. The professor connected New Thought to the Bill Gates term “creative capitalism,” Gates being the most prominent example of someone who advanced philanthropy through acquisition of vast wealth. Secretly, Jeremiah disagreed with the professor’s tone; the man had that academic habit of positing everything as debatable when, for Jeremiah, the connection between outlook and success was undeniable fact.

The ‘Miah Freeman Breathing Plan was, after all, a spiritual enterprise for holistic improvement of the self. Beyond teaching his adherents better respiration, he would offer a full range of clean living methodology such as organizing their living space, choosing their friends, nutrition and even how they defecated.

Just yesterday, he ate dinner in the Union with Donyelle and a man in his cohort, an Indian named Ganesh. He took it as a sign that Ganesh was named for the Hindu god of removing obstacles, also the elephant god, his spirit animal.

To really achieve his dreams, however, he needed stans. More important than a fanbase, they would lift him up. They would spread his word. Every Instagram follower was one step closer to transcendence. It had become clear that the average person had given up on ever building something for themselves, so they devoted their lives to exalting people who mattered—billionaires. And for a certain group, Jeremiah would be that billionaire.

26

“Talk to Mr. Delacroix,” said Coach Guidry over the phone. “He’ll hook you up.”

“You’re not coming?” asked Jeremiah. He felt somewhat nervous attending a donor luncheon alone.

“You’re not alone,” said Coach cheerily. “Steffi’s with you. It’ll just be a quick demonstration.”

So, that afternoon, he bussed to the Baton Rouge Hilton garage. There he met Steffi, one of the team meds, in a fifth floor suite. They had a brief catch-up on their summer activities and then got to work. The short, plump girl had the miserable apprehensiveness of someone terrified at failing in her duties, and Jeremiah could tell she harbored secret artistic aspirations from the excess cans of body paint she’d brought. He undressed in the bathroom. When he came out in a Speedo, her eyes dimmed and her lips became a slit. How her fingers trembled as she painted him, her gaze constantly flickering to the oversized anatomy book on the floor, gave him weary flashbacks to his first time handling a cadaver.

This exactly like that book I told you about, he heard Jaelin say. The Battle Royal scene. They made the niggas fight on an electric carpet and beat on each other.

There a difference, he countered.

What?

I don’t care. I’ll shuck ‘n jive if I has to. You ain’t gone see me cry ‘bout it.

These people sentenced our dad to hard labor! she yelled. Their ancestors lynched us—

Lynchings. Castrations. Massacres. Miss me with your torture fetish.

The donor lunch had been going for an hour when he arrived in the ballroom wearing a white terrycloth robe. The Degeyters, the Andruses and Beuchamps made him think of albino turtles snapping their beaks to consume shrimp étouffée served by black waiters in a scene out of Jim Crow. Jaelin would have called him a slave at auction. Consequently he would have told her he had no illusions about these ruthless, scheming, mendacious, vain, criminal grifters who swelled their coffers with the blood of negroes, hypocrites, false Christians, slovenly beneficiaries of inherited wealth, lushes, jailers, torturers, despoilers of the earth given to burning ballots, stirring mobs, buying politicians, clogging the wheels of government, so banal in their evil they acted less from the joy of conquest than the unstoppable urge to consume everything in their path.

But when he disrobed to unveil every inch of his miraculous youth, save spandex to protect the inert, face-lifted eyes of the women from his cock and anus, his limbs and torso colorfully detailed in anatomical systems, the satiation of their bellies did nothing to prevent a newfound hunger in their eyes to witness Nature in his flawless form. These were the boosters—the bayou rich who supported LSU sports above and under table. Gazing over them, he located the Delacroixs of the Delacroix Shrimp Company, easy to spot from their excessive smiles.

Wielding a baton, Steffi pointed out spots on his body one by one and explained how the central and peripheral nervous systems, cardiovascular, and respiratory systems worked in concert to create the Louisiana Special. Graceful and poised, Jeremiah expelled cool like a starfish expelling its gastronomical organs and every millionaire in the room breathed with him. He could hear Jaelin say people like that held their bodies together with hate. How else to explain Trump? Evil fantasies came to him in which the donors rose from their scallop-backed chairs, and, having let go of their grasping ways to live in the now, having found peace, exploded into dust and heaps of castoff skin.

After the exhibition, donors approached the chair where he scarfed down a plate of greasy cuisine, praising him for a fine young man. John Delacroix was a human lump of mayonnaise with bright blue eyes, clutching the waist of his wife, a statuesque brunette whose huge bouffant dripped goop on the shoulders of her red pantsuit. She sported swollen collagen lips and the alertness of a basset hound. Together, husband and wife smothered Jeremiah in compliments. Mr. Delacroix handed him an envelope.

“Anything you need,” he said. “Here’s my number.”

Later, in the bathroom, Jeremiah counted. One thousand dollars cash. With barely time to spare before closing, he made it to the post office and mailed Nanna five hundred. Then he went to the dorm for The Wild Bunch.