The Kingsbury Club
A humor short story
I’ve had a bit of a fallow period the past several months but I’ve got a new story in the works. This one I wrote a while back and is my entry for the Soaring Twenties Social Club annual fiction symposium.
Here follows the first edition of the Irregular Transactions of the Society of Idle, Lax, and Libertine Youth (ITSILLY for short, published by Cambridge University Press) founded in Chicago, Illinois in the Year of our Lord Two Thousand Twenty One. This account has been obtained through testimony from the involved parties (members of the Kingsbury Club) as well as having been recorded by club secretary, Christopher Howard, when he himself witnessed events.
***
One Friday evening in June in Carter’s, a fashionable bar in the Gold Coast neighborhood of Chicago, five friends gathered for drinks.
There were among them:
Christopher Howard, a young banker who had obtained for himself the completely unmonitored job of reading the ticker tape basement of Madison Ave Bank after Reginald, the old ticker tape reader, had retired, and now made a comfortable eighty thousand a year never having to report to work or report to anyone for anything.
Jack Flanagan, Christopher’s tall and handsomer friend who had worked at the bank but whose new wife, the beautiful and dominant Lisa Galva, gently invited him to retire so she could have a home cooked meal when she got home from work. Jack now spent his days doing what little housework there was in their apartment, cooking, or otherwise being idle around the city.
Langford Haversham, the tall, lanky, sandy-haired heir to the fortune of the Chicago Havershams who had never worked a day in his life and liked it that way but still found life a bit boring.
Xavier Shift, a local artist who didn’t have two nickels to rub together, lived in a commune on the west side, and painted and sold counterfeits of the great masters in his spare time. He bummed drinks and cigarettes left and right from the others but they thought nothing of it since he was a good friend to all and they admired and envied his bohemian lifestyle.
And there was Damien Brown who played a mean, though also kind, guitar and was well-known in the Chicago blues circuit and carried a guitar and a harmonica with him everywhere he went. He had toured with B.B. King later in life (B.B.’s life, that is) and regularly played at the House of Blues and enjoyed a steady stream of royalties from his work with B.B. such that he was able to play when and where and with whom he wanted.
***
Young Langford Haversham lit a lazy cigarette and sucked on his dry Martini. “Carter’s is getting a bit busy these days, isn’t it? Noisy too. It’s one thing to go out but it’s another to have your ears assaulted for the pleasure of paying for your drinks in public.”
“I’m happy just to get out,” Jack said. “Doesn’t much matter where it is.”
“Oh come on. I know you like your set up,” Christopher said.
Everyone knew that Jack’s new wife, Lisa, had made him quit his job and keep house at home, which was fine by him since he liked to cook and she was a knockout and rewarded him handsomely with as much sex as he could eat.
“It’s just a big change, that’s all,” Jack said. “One day I’m climbing the corporate ladder at the bank, the next I’m more or less retired and married—”
“Imprisoned, more like,” Damien said.
“Go ahead, laugh it up,” Jack said, looking around the table. “You all know you’d kill to be married to Lisa for a day. I go where I like, do what I like. She does not control me. We have a mutual understanding.” He took a long drink from his beer.
“There’s nothing wrong with submitting to the feminine mystique,” Xavier said. “It’s the root of all creation, all creativity—art, sex, music—”
Jack held up a hand. “I didn’t submit to anything. I just got married.”
“Is there a difference?” Xavier said.
“Gentlemen,” Langford said, holding up one long finger, “we’re straying from the topic at hand.”
“Which is?” Christopher said.
“Carter’s is too loud. And too busy.”
“We can’t keep changing spots every month like this, Langford.”
“I agree completely. That’s why I propose we found a club.”
Silence, except for the omnipresent restaurant noise.
“What kind of club?” Xavier said.
“What?”
“You said you found a club. What kind of club?”
“No, I said we should found a club. Create. Establish. Found.”
“Ah. Go on.”
“Yes, as I was saying, we should establish,” Langford shot a look at Xavier, “a club where we can have a quiet drink, read, smoke, play cards, eat, even exercise, swim, shower, shave—a club for us, our friends, whomever we want to invite. A quiet, civilized place.”
“Where’s the money coming from? It’s going to take a lot,” Damien said.
“Money, and time, are the two things I have. That and boredom. We would charge a modest membership fee. Nothing prohibitive, it’s open to all. All that we invite, of course. But my investment would get the thing off the ground.”
“I like it,” Christopher said.
“What about women?” Jack said.
“I like them,” Xavier said.
“No, yes, we all do, I have nothing against them, but is this strictly a men’s club or are women allowed in?”
“I see the appeal of it being just a men’s club, but it’s a bit old fashioned, isn’t it?” Christopher said.
“Shall we put it to a vote? All against allowing women into the club?”
Jack raised his hand.
“All in favor?”
The other four raised their hands.
“That’s settled then. Jack, you don’t need to invite your wife.”
Jack grimaced.
“Now we just need a location,” Damien said.
“Hold that thought,” Langford said, jumping up suddenly. “I have an idea. I’ll text you guys the address. Let’s meet there at ten tomorrow morning. That is, unless you guys have to work.” He looked around the table with an arched eyebrow.
The five of them burst into laughter.
“Good, good. See you there,” he said, and legged it out, taking long strides in his navy suit.
***
The next day the newborn sun saw the five of them standing in front of a run down apartment building four stories tall on Kingsbury Avenue a cigarette’s flick from the Chicago River. The only thing wrong with that particular June morning in Chicago was the building before them: the façade was brick that was sloughing off in places, all the windows were broken, and the front door was made of plywood. Langford was the only one grinning but his glee was enough to make up for the others’ lack.
“Leave it to the Havershams to hide a gem like this,” Langford said, rubbing his long-fingered hands together. “And it backs onto the river! That’s prime real estate.”
“The land but not the building,” Damien said doubtfully.
“Ah, yes, about that. We can have the building but the old man wouldn’t open his wallet to fix it up.”
Langford grimaced at the looks they gave him. “I tried everything I could but the bank of Haversham is closed tighter than a clamshell at high tided right now. Might have something to do with my father’s failed investment in my mobile 3D printed 3D printer business.”
“Was it the investment that was a failure or the business?” Jack said.
Langford sniffed. “He invested in a business which did not succeed according to plan. Turns out it was too recursive. The printers couldn’t print the printers. And putting the whole thing on wheels was a nightmare. So, we’ll just have to have a whip round and raise the funds.”
They looked at each other.
“I don’t work,” said Jack.
“I don’t have much in the way of savings,” said Christopher.
“I just had to replace my old guitar,” said Damien.
“I’m an artist,” said Xavier.
“Gentlemen, gentlemen. Where’s your backbone? Where’s the gumptious American spirit? This is merely a minor hiccup. We have this fantastic building—well, we have this building—the hard part is over. Xavier, you and your artist friends could help paint, right?”
“I paint but the others I know are more post-postmodern artists. My friend Jenathan’s latest piece was a hundred blank CDs scattered on a gallery floor. He mailed them to the gallery. Called it portable art.”
“They can hold paint brushes, right?”
“Yes, they have hands.”
“With opposable thumbs?”
“Yes.”
“And presumably they once had some artistic talent before they wasted it on postmodern flotsam?”
Xavier corrected him. “Post-postmodern.”
“I take that as a ‘no’ but I still think you’re selling them short on their ability to slap paint on the walls.”
“Paint doesn’t get us very far,” Christopher said. “This place needs a major renovation.”
“My cousin’s a contractor,” Damien said.
“See! That’s what I’m talking about,” Langford said.
“But he died a couple months ago.”
“I’m sorry for your loss but that’s not helpful.”
“My other cousin is a contractor too.”
They all waited. “Is he alive?” Jack said.
“Yeah.”
“See, guys? We can do it,” Langford said.
Christopher sighed. “We just need a couple hundred thousand dollars.”
“Million,” Langford said.
Xavier said, “A couple hundred Million? Good God.”
“No, just a couple million and god will have nothing to do with it. We’ve got to get this money on our own.”
“We could just go back to Carter’s,” Jack said.
“And give up? Never!” said Langford.
“You’re pretty fired up about this,” Christopher said.
“Indeed. I haven’t felt this alive since my base jumping days. Let’s explore the place.”
Langford had a key for the padlock on the plywood front door.
Inside were abandoned apartments, livable in a pinch but very tired and worn out and, by the looks of it, not updated since the ‘80s. There was a basement full of miscellaneous junk and four floors of apartments. Everywhere they went Langford proclaimed things like “this is where the pool will be” and “here’s the sauna” and “coat check there” and “we’ll knock all this down and that wall too, open this up for some cathedral ceilings, take out the second floor altogether, there’s the bar and the dance floor, we’ll have live music, obviously, cigar lounge over there, and the library of course” and so on. You get the idea.
Of course, no one had any idea where the money would come from for the construction and renovations and, despite showing apparent confidence that it could be done, Langford was mum on the specifics.
“Don’t you have money?” Christopher said to Langford.
“Me personally? I suppose in a sense I do. But I mostly survive off my father’s largesse with a modest allowance. Nothing near enough to cover the costs here,” Langford said, coughing from the dust that had been kicked up in the basement.
“There must be something we can do, guys. What skills do we have? Xavier paints, Damien plays guitar, I don’t do much, Jack doesn’t do much—”
“Hey!” Jack said.
“I said I don’t do much either,” Christopher said.
“That doesn’t make it better.”
Christopher continued, “Langford you also don’t do much.”
“Ah, ah.” Langford held up a finger. “I’m a fair hand at whist and I can play the harpsichord.”
“Somehow I don’t think a duet between blues guitar and the harpsichord will make for a record-breaking concert. This isn’t the Blues Brothers.”
Damien shook his head. “No way.”
“Xavier paints, you say?” Langford said to Christopher.
“I’m right here,” Xavier said.
“Sorry, the light’s so dim down here.”
“I’ve been here the whole time.”
“Can you do Claude Lorrain? Goya? Rembrandt?”
“Which one?”
“My father’s crazy for Claude Lorrain. Loves his pastorals.”
“And you want to sell one to your father to raise the funds we need?”
“Maybe.”
“I mean, I can do anything. It’ll just take several months. And the right paint. And the right canvas.”
“Several months?”
“At least. How well does he know his art?”
“Who?”
“Your father.”
“Ah. Very. Very well. Very well, indeed.”
Xavier sucked in through his teeth. “I don’t know. My stuff usually goes to private collectors who think they’re buying lost masters stolen by the Nazis in World War Two. They’re not experts and they’re not getting them evaluated by experts.”
Christopher chimed in. “Why don’t you just have Xavier make you whatever your father might like best then give it to him as a gift to butter him up and ask for money.”
“Why would I give Xavier the painting?” Langford said.
“No, give him, your father, the painting. Give the painting to your father.”
“Mm, interesting idea. Xavier?”
The artist shrugged. “It’s worth a shot.”
“Agreed. And in the meantime, I’ll work on another plan I have.”
“What’s that?” Christopher said.
“Ah ah. All in good time.”
***
Langford rode up the elevator to the fortieth floor, painting in hand, the brown paper crinkling around it concealing Xavier’s Claude Lorrain’s Seaport at Sunset. Langford hoped that it would be enough to please his father.
Travers Haversham was seated at the spacious glass-top desk facing the double doors. On his right the Chicago skyline gave way to the blue-blue waves of Lake Michigan. Behind him there hung an original Claude Lorrain, The Roman Campagna. Cattle, sheep, and goats grazed in the shade in the foreground of the painting while a shepherd, seated on a log, played his flute. Behind a river stretched off into the distance, a fishing boat in its midst, and the road, running parallel, ran to the gatehouse and ancient wall of the city.
The man himself was an older version of Langford: tall and lanky with the same half-amused, half-quizzical, half-Dionysian face.
“The prodigal son returns!” he roared and rose to hug Langford, who accepted and returned his father’s embrace.
“Hello, pater. I just saw you this morning.”
“What? I can’t be happy to see my son? What have you got there?”
“Just a little something for you.”
“Me? The last thing you got me was getting me involved in that mobile 3D printed 3D printer business, and we both know how that went.”
“It was flawed in concept but not execution.”
“Same thing, my boy. It’s the same damn thing.”
“This isn’t a business venture. Just a gift.”
Mr. Haversham narrowed one eye at his son. “Just? No such thing.”
Langford handed him the package. “You might say it’s a matter of how you frame it.”
“How I frame it?” Mr. Haversham said, tearing open the package. “Ah! Aha, ha ha, very good, very good. But Seaport at Sunset is in the Louvre. Langford, don’t tell me you stole it.”
“Of course not. It’s a copy. A very good copy. An excellent copy. You know my friend Xavier? He’s an excellent artist and I commissioned him since I know how much you love Seaport at Sunset and in all likelihood the Louvre would never sell it.”
Mr. Haversham shook his head. “They’re really quite touchy about their art, the Germans.”
“You mean the French. The Louvre is in Paris.”
“I know that! But it’s the Germans that’re the problem. They’ve got their fingers in everyone’s pie, just like always.”
“Please don’t say everyone’s pie, father.”
“Why not? That’s what they do.”
“It’s just—never mind. How do you like it?”
“Like it? I love it. I’d go to bed with it if your mother didn’t disapprove.”
“Don’t say that.”
“So what’s the catch? Still on about that club of yours?”
Langford shoved his hands in his pockets. “I can’t put anything past you.”
“Never could,” Mr. Haversham said, chuckling.
Langford knew that timing was everything with his father and also that, since the jig was up, not that there had been much of a jig to begin with, he might as well strike the hot iron and see if he might walk out with a victory, which is mixing metaphors, but who’s counting?
“Pater, how would you feel about making an investment in the Kingsbury Club?”
“Eh, Kingsbury Club?”
“That’s what we’re calling the club we’re starting. It’s on Kingsbury Ave., hence the name Kingsbury Club.”
“I already let you have the property, how much of an investment do you want?”
“Whatever you feel comfortable with.”
“Smart boy. Never be the first to give a number in a negotiation. Well, I already said no, didn’t I?”
“You did.”
“And this painting was supposed to get on my good side?”
“It was.”
“Hmm,” Mr. Haversham said, rubbing his chin and grimacing. “Investment suggests I’m going to get something out of it. So what am I getting out of it?”
“How about free access?”
Mr. Haversham’s eyebrows touched his hairline. “Free access? I own the place.”
Langford made conciliatory gestures. “I know, I mean as a start of course. Anyone else you’d like to invite could have a free membership as well.”
Mr. Haversham looked thoughtful. “Hmm, I have a few friends who might like to check it out. Duffy Cairnwell has been complaining about the Chestnut Club for months, says it’s all tech brothers and MBAs with too-white teeth. You won’t have any tech bros at the Kingsbury, will you?”
“No, probably not. A couple guys work at Madison Ave Bank.”
“Oh bankers are okay in my book. Everyone needs a good banker and they’re good straight-laced traditional moneymen, unlike these tech brothers and MBAs at the Chestnut. They’re only being let in because their fathers are members of course. The techies come up to you like they know you and start asking about your wallet like a Capital One commercial until you finally realize they’re talking about your crypto wallet which is some kind of digital thingummy on a thumb drive or the MBAs ask about your portfolio or your EBITDA—a nonsense figure, by the way—or they want to know if your team is agile and how you can make it more agile. I had one agile employee in my life and that was Sterling and he won his class for agility at the dog show, ha ha! all the rest are good solid desk-men who do their work and pass it up the food chain.” Mr. Haversham shook his head. “I won’t have any truck with these agility MBA types. I mean, what do they really do after all? If you’re going to get an advanced degree, get it in something really valuable, something useful like Archaeology or Alchemy, not business. And another thing, they’ve all got the same haircut!”
Langford, lulled to the verge of sleep, was shaken awake at the word ‘haircut’ as it exploded from his father’s mouth. These tirades about people his father didn’t like were commonplace in the Haversham household. It wasn’t that easy to find yourself in the ‘people Travers Haversham doesn’t like’ camp—he was a fairly easy going fellow—but it was not easy to escape once you did, especially when you belonged to a class such as the undereducated MBA.
Mr. Haversham was so against the MBA as both concept and education path that he forbade Langford from ever going to graduate school for business and instead made him choose between English literature or classical philology, which were, in Mr. Haversham’s august opinion, the two of the few paths for a truly modern gentleman. Langford had taken one look at Greek and ran back to English lit. faster than a racoon with its tail on fire.
“So what do you say?”
Mr. Haversham shook his head. “I’m sorry, son, I can’t spare another dime for your pet project. You are welcome to the place and you can fix it up however you like but things are tight at the moment.”
Things were never tight for Mr. Haversham but he perennially used this as an excuse to keep his wallet, digital or leather, closed.
***
It was a somber group that gathered in its usual booth at Carter’s that night. Xavier had done his part wonderfully, all present recognized that, and Langford had tried his best but the scheme had come up against a fatal flaw: Mr. Travers Haversham. If he had been more circumspect, Langford might have realized earlier that his father’s beneficence had its limits but he had succumbed to the flaw all children have in their attitude toward their parents: that mothers and fathers have unlimited patience, time, and money for their children despite all the indications to the contrary.
Langford stared into the dregs of his Old Fashioned. Christopher tried to get Jack to say something to Langford but Jack asked why Christopher didn’t say something instead and the muffled bickering went back and forth with no one helping their depressed leader.
Xavier met Damien’s gaze and the two, sharing an understanding glance, stayed quiet.
The silence, deafening in the busy restaurant, went on for some time.
Langford snapped his fingers. “I got it! Base jumping. I’m going to base jump off the Sears Tower.”
“Willis Tower,” Jack said.
“For God’s sake, how long have you been in this city? No one calls it the Willis Tower. No one has ever called it the Willis Tower. I’d only call it the Willis Tower if Bruce Willis bought it, not some British insurance brokerage fund.”
“Why are you so attached to the name?”
“Are you from this city or not, Jack? I call it the Sears Tower because that’s its name.”
“Can I interject? If I may, how is base jumping going to raise money?” Christopher said.
“Off the Sears Tower.”
“What?”
“You forgot ‘off the Sears Tower.’”
“Okay, off the Sears Tower. How is that going to help?”
“Isn’t it obvious? Publicity. Advertising.”
They stared at him.
“I don’t get it,” Christopher said.
Langford sighed. “People will give money to anything with a name and a face and a cool video and marketing potential and—”
“Don’t let your dad hear you talking about marketing. That’s MBA territory,” Xavier interjected.
Langford continued undeterred, “—and virality. I hate it but we need a stunt that will go viral and get people talking. Then the money will just flow in. I have to prepare. What’s today?”
“Friday,” Jack said, sounding depressed.
Langford clapped his hands together. “Excellent. Tomorrow. Noon sharp. Be on the Jackson Boulevard bridge. Keep your eyes on the top of that tower,” Langford shouted as he sprang from the booth and disappeared into the night.
Christopher yelled after him, “How are you going to get up the—he’s gone. Unbelievable.”
***
Christopher, Xavier, and Damien were standing on the Jackson Boulevard bridge over the Chicago River, the green water flowing lazily beneath their feet as they joined the throng filling the bridge.
“Are all these people here to watch Langford jump?” Damien said.
The crowd was, indeed, huge. People packed the bridge, sidewalks, roadway and all. The road had been closed with orange traffic cones and a police officer was stationed at either end of the bridge (two different police officers, not the same guy at both ends; although humorous it would be difficult for the cop to do his job).
“How the hell did he pull this off so quickly?”
Xavier nodded. “It’s a lot. You know, when my dad was starting his carpet cleaning business—this was years ago—he personally went around to every house, every business, every building with carpet in a five mile radius and introduced himself and handed out coupons. It was huge for generating business.”
“Yeah but how long did it take him?” Damien said. “You can’t go around to five thousand houses and businesses in a single night like Santa.”
“Probably two or three years.”
“I don’t think Langford had two or three years worth of time between last night and today.”
“It’s the Chicago Regatta,” Christopher said without looking up from his phone. “He didn’t get anyone. All these people, which includes us I guess, are here to watch the regatta.”
“What’s a regatta?” Xavier said.
“Boat races,” Damien said working his way over to the railing to look over the side into the water. “What?” He said to their skeptical looks. “I rowed in college. You know, crew?”
“Anything down there?”
“No, just water right now.”
Xavier looked past Damien and upriver. “The river’s not even straight here. How do they race?”
“Not everything is rowing in a straight line. They can race other small craft that can steer,” Damien said.
“Don’t they run into each other?”
“Not if they don’t want to break their oars.”
“Do you think he’ll end up in the river?”
“It’s a distinct possibility,” Christopher said.
Damien came back from the railing. “Where’s Jack?”
“Don’t know,” Christopher said with a grin. “I’m not his keeper anymore.”
Damien checked his watch. “Quarter to twelve now. Almost time.”
Xavier pulled a small blanket from his messenger bag, spread it on the ground, sat down, and started eating.
“Seriously?” Damien said.
“What? I like deviled ham.”
“Not that; you’re having a picnic here? Now?”
“I’m hungry.”
“Apparently.”
In the distance upriver there was a growing commotion, announcements from a loudspeaker, whistles, the hum of the crowd over the quotidian city noises. A splitting air horn and cheers from the one of the bridges several blocks north.
“It’s noon now. Keep your eyes on the tower,” Damien said, craning his neck to look at the top of the blocky black steel and glass tower less than a half block away.
Xavier shielded his eyes and looked skyward. “I can’t see anything with you in the way.”
“Then cancel the picnic and stand up. I’m not moving.”
They waited breathlessly, Xavier on his chequered picnic blanket, Damien standing, and Christopher glancing back and forth between the tower and his phone.
The moments dragged on with the cheers of the crowd growing louder and louder.
“There he is!” Xavier sprayed the back of Damien’s pants with deviled ham as he shouted.
“Xavier!”
“Sorry.”
“It stinks. Gah! Where is he?”
“He’s right there. Just look.”
Sure enough a black dot was quickly becoming larger and larger, slowly coalescing into the shape of a man dressed head to toe in green-screen green and speeding relentlessly toward the ground.
Christopher felt his eyes hiccup as Langford pulled his parachute (also green-screen green) and suddenly seemed to stop in midair before proceeding to waft lazily toward the Chicago River.
Speeding down the river were three rowboats each with one rower and a bosun at the stern, rudder in hand (the one for steering the boat not the other one). Lithe, wiry men heaved on the oars to jerkily propel their boats forward as young and old cheered madly.
And right in their path, as if out of thin air, there had appeared what looked to be an air mattress with a bullseye painted on it. A dark figure swam away from the mattress toward the underside of the Jackson Blvd bridge.
Christopher looked at the mattress, then up at Langford, then back at the mattress. He tapped furiously on his phone.
The three watched the inevitable scene with a mixture of wonder, horror, delight, and nausea as Langford, as impossibly green as the Yorkshire countryside, glided like a lime green condor across the river, turning and swooping down, and at the final second cut the lines and dropped like a coconut onto the center of the bullseye.
Screams of shock and delight. Laughter. Running feet and pointing fingers. There was Langford attempting to wave to the crowd all around on the bridge, on the riverwalk when the first boat turned hard and skimmed the edge of the mattress in an attempt to not skewer the hapless base jumper with the bowsprit. The boat turned hard left into the next boat, shattering its oars and the two swung in a jumble into the third boat and drove it into the pylons that lined the river. With all the shattered wood, it was no surprise that the mattress was punctured and Langford sank unceremoniously into the water.
It was just then that Jack ran up behind the Christopher, Xavier, and Damien looking over the railing in abject astonishment. Puffing, Jack said, “Hey guys, what did I miss?” He pushed between Christopher and Xavier to look down in the water. “Oh my god, what did I miss?”
***
“What do you mean you didn’t record it?”
Langford and his erstwhile friends were standing outside the 1st District Station of the Chicago Metropolitan Police Department. Langford was sopping wet but otherwise none the worse for wear, except for his consternation.
His lanky body seemed to coil into a fist. “I’ll repeat. What do you mean you didn’t record it?”
“You didn’t tell us to record it,” Damien said.
“Wha—wha—how—I come up with the great idea to jump off the former tallest building in the world dressed only in a green screen so anyone can edit it to be anything and…who doesn’t pull out their phone when they see someone jump off a building? How am I supposed to make a viral video to earn money off if there’s no video?”
“Don’t blame me,” Jack said. “I wasn’t even there.”
“And that’s better?” Langford said. “Something funny, Xavier?”
Xavier stifled a laugh. “No, no. Well, yeah. I was just thinking you look like the Hulk’s skinny cousin, Stringbean.” Langford’s face hardened. “I thought it was funny—ah, no, no, not funny at all.” Xavier turned away and burst out laughing.
“I don’t know, I think he kind of looks like an asparagus,” Damien said.
Landford fumed. “This is no laughing matter! I just did all that for nothing. Not only that but apparently the organizers of the regatta want my pelt for their new flag that they’ll wave to warn off any and all base jumpers who might consider disrupting regattas of the future.”
Christopher cleared his throat. “Not for nothing.”
“Not for nothing. What do you mean? What are you talking about?”
Christopher grinned. “Your stunt paid off without you even knowing. I like a flutter now and then and when I realized your jump and the regatta were likely to collide I put a bet on the outcome.”
“What bet?”
“That the race wouldn’t finish. That it’d be disrupted and no one would win.”
“You can do that?”
“Sure, you can bet anything these days. Not just winners and losers but all kinds of crazy custom bets.”
Langford gripped Christopher tightly by the shoulders, a wild look in his eyes. “What were the odds?”
“A thousand to one.”
“A thousand! What did you bet?”
“Ten thousand.”
“That’s—that’s—”
“Ten million dollars.”
Langford struggled to breath. Jack, Xavier, and Damien stared at Christopher in disbelief.
“As far as I’m concerned,” Christopher said, “the money’s yours.”
“Ours, Christopher, ours,” Langford said, taking a deep breath and putting his arm around Christopher’s shoulders. “Ten million. My god. The Kingsbury Club lives!”
“By the way,” Christopher said, “who was the guy that put the mattress in the water? I saw him swimming away.”
“That’s my buddy, Jerry.”
“I don’t know Jerry.”
“Sure you do. He lives in the park across from my place. You’ve probably seen him there all the time.”
“He’s homeless? You bribed a homeless man to commit what was probably a crime?”
“He’s not homeless. He’s more of a free spirit. Does what he wants. Goes where he wants, which is mostly in the park. He gets a place in the winter and then moves back outside when the weather gets warm. I don’t know what he does for money but he never asks and it seems like he has enough stashed away somewhere. He’s a great swimmer and I told him he’d get free membership to the club. Who’s hungry? I’m starving. Giordano’s?”
“That’s like ten blocks,” Jack said.
“C’mon, you can’t say no to deep dish on a Saturday afternoon. Besides,” Langford grinned, “Christopher is buying.”
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction, strictly a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance, perceived resemblance, or similarity to any other fictional works, to actual events or persons, living or dead, and any perceived slights of people, places, or organizations are products of the reader’s imagination. This fiction is the result of a partnership between a human writer and the character(s) he accessed with his creative subconscious as he raced through the story with them. No AI of any kind, generative or otherwise, was used in any way to write this story.
Great to wake up to a Kozak story in my inbox. Shades of PG. ha! Nicely done
Perfect. Chuckled a lot.