Unpopular Science

“Your Margo is an obese idiot. Secondly, you probably buy that junk for pennies.”

Fastbinder shrugged. “True. The postcards cost me eight cents each in boxes of a thousand. The shot glasses are thirty-nine cents each wholesale in two-hundred-unit lots. However, if you will read zee disclaimers posted in zee store it says, ‘You Break It, You Bought It.’ It does not say, you ‘You Break It, You Will Be Charged Zee Wholesale Price For It.’”

The attorney was stunned. “You know what. Fastbinder, I wouldn’t pay you fifty-six dollars and twenty- five cents if it would save my life. I’ve had enough of you desert freaks.”

“Yes. I see. Good day.” Fastbinder strolled to his gift shop and the multimillion-dollar check fluttered out of his hands.

“Hey! Your check!” The attorney raced to grab it, then ran huffing after Fastbinder. “I need a receipt for this!”

Fastbinder stopped on the wooden front porch of the Museum of Mechanical Marvels and Gift Shop. “No, thank you.”

“You gotta take it!”

“I’ll take it after you pay what is owed.”

“It’s worth millions!”

Fastbinder made a haughty shrug.

“I told you I am not paying for the postcards!” the attorney sputtered.

“Come back when you have changed your mind.”

The attorney knew he couldn’t go back to the law firm without a signed receipt for the check. He’d be out of the firm. So he swallowed his pride—his last tiny morsel of pride, as it turned out—and went inside to pay the $56.25.

“You should also say ‘I’m sorry’ to Margo,” Fastbinder suggested.

The attorney apologized to Margo the museum manager, and then Fastbinder took the check.

By the time he returned to the law firm in New York, the attorney had convinced himself that he should return to prostitution, the career that got him through law school. Being sodomized by old men was unpleasant, sure, but it was less degrading. Plus, he had made some great contacts in business and government during six years of practicing law—he knew senators, CEOs, lobbyists, hundreds of well-to-do potential customers. He’d make a lot more than he ever did while attending Harvard.

A classy man-whore with his boyish good looks would have clientele up the yin-yang, and more self- respect to boot.

Self-respect was a subject near to the heart of Jacob Fastbinder III. These days he had a lot of it, but he was no stranger to self-loathing. Once, for a while, he’d seen himself as lower than dirt.

It was in Cologne, Germany, at the company headquarters. Fastbinder’s first clue that things were not right was when he was told to sit and wait. His father was in a meeting, but would get to him eventually.

In the few years he was with the family company, Fastbinder had never before waited for his father to finish a meeting.

“He requires that you make a study of this document,” said his father’s assistant as she handed him a leather-bound book. Fastbinder took the book, then glared at the assistant, who shrugged and poked at the bridge of her glasses. “This is what he said.” She went back to her desk.

Fastbinder began reading the book. The History of Fastbinder Machine Werks Through A.D. 1975, published by the company on its half-century anniversary. Fastbinder had read it before, when he was a teenager, and had done so under duress, and he knew most of this history anyway. His father talked about the company history at the dinner table, incessantly, as if he thought somebody besides him cared.

After an hour, Jacob Fastbinder III was allowed in to see his father, who was not in a meeting at all. “How was your reading?” asked Jacob Fastbinder II.

“Dry as stale bread,” his son complained. “The only amusement I received from it was finding important gaps in the history. For example, there was another World War. A second one, after the first one. It was in the forties, I believe, and my understanding is that Germany played a part.”

His father was not amused. “You are a smartmouthed punk.”

“I’m exaggerating, of course. There’s a whole quarter of a chapter devoted to the Second World War, but not one use of the word ‘Nazi’. Quite skillful of the author.”

“And necessary. But did you learn anything new, Jacob?”

For an answer, the younger Fastbinder sneered and dropped the book with a thump on the oak-and-glass table in front of his father’s overstuffed sofa, then dropped himself in the sofa. “What’s this about. Father.”

“History.”

“I mean, this meeting,” the younger Fastbinder said.

“So do I.” His father turned, clasped his hands behind his back and began to pace the office somberly. “We are here to discuss history, and your place in it.”

“I hope I never become one of the lifeless slugs who fill the pages of that piece of trash.”

The elder Fastbinder nodded as he walked. “Nor do I. But that is not the true and complete history of this company, as you observed, Jacob. There is more to the story.”

“Yes. Nazis, for example.”