When Legal came into the office, the Founder had his feet on the desk and a grin on his face.
‘Looks like someone got some last night’, Legal said.
‘Look at this’, the Founder said. He crackled the papers of a high-brow tabloid read primarily by educated Jews on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
‘It’s 2025’, Legal said.
‘What – now?’
‘Only losers read newspapers in print.’
The Founder opened the paper, folded it inside out and handed it to Legal. When Legal turned the pages, he thought of licking his thumb, like his grandfather. Then, he remembered that he didn’t know where the paper had been. God only knew what the Founder had been doing with it before he came into the room. His brow furrowed. ‘How does this page update’, he asked. ‘And who the hell is Chloë Clifton-Wright?’
‘Nobody’, the Founder said.
‘I liked you better when you said, ‘A great army will fall’, or ’A pledge brings trouble.’’
‘Seriously’, the Founder said. ‘She’s made-up.’
Legal looked at the contributor biographies on page four. ‘Chloë Clifton-Wright is one of Peckham’s most freelance journalists. Any similarity between her Hughesian exegetics and those of the risible Richard Ayoade is entirely coincidental.’, he read.
‘What is Peckham?’
‘Fuck if I know.’
‘What is Hughesian, and who is Richard Ayoade?’
‘Wikipedia says that Richard Ayoade is a British comedian, actor, writer, director and presenter. Inter alia, he played the role of the socially awkward IT technician Maurice Moss on the Channel 4 sitcom The IT Crowd.’
‘And he is not Chloë Clifton-Wright.’
‘He is Chloë Clifton-Wright, dumbass, or Chloë Clifton-Wright is the name he wrote that article under.’
Legal looked back at the tabloid. His brow furrowed and his lips moved.
‘We pay you way too much’, the Founder said.
‘What do you do with this paper when you are alone in here’, Legal asked. ‘You spend an awful lot of time with it.’
‘Read.’
The door opened and the Founder’s Assistant poked her head in. ‘A man from the New York State Insurance Fund is here for your workers comp audit’, she said. ‘He wants to know if you filed an NYS-45 for 2025 Qs 3 and 4 yet.’
‘Give him an evasive answer’, the Founder said. ‘Tell him to go fuck himself.’
The Assistant’s head popped back out.
Legal looked up from the paper. ‘This is about a now-forgotten playwright from the mid twentieth century named Harauld Hughs’, he said.
‘Harauld Hughs is made up, too.’
‘The fuck?’
‘Ayoade wrote a book that Faber and Faber brought out last year called The Unfinished Harauld Hughs. It’s a book about Ayoade stalking a made-up doppelganger who looks like Ayoade and is in the same business as Ayoade and who has a name that rhymes with that of a reclusive American mid-century millionaire and whose first name pays tribute to Ayoade’s Norwegian heritage.’
‘A million dollars was a lot of money in 1950.’
‘Yes, it was.’
‘Is Ayoade a Norwegian name?’
‘His father was Yoruba.’
‘So a journalist named Chloë Clifton-Wright writes a review of the made-up playwright and publishes it in a tabloid read by high-brow New York Jews?’
‘Did you know what I had to pay to get the word ‘dumbass’ painted on the ceiling?’
Legal looked at the ceiling, and back at the Founder.
‘Under a pen name, Ayoade writes a review of the doppelganger he made up in his own book. He even refers to himself and the book, in a footnote. He publishes it in a tabloid read by New York liberal types famous for its earnest tone.’
Legal furrowed his brow and moved his lips. ‘The Unfinished Harauld Hughes (Faber and Faber, 2024) a ‘personal biography’, written by the nasal nonevent Richard Ayoade, didn’t make much of an impression either’
‘Ayoade’s dialogue is brilliant. I mean, it’s worthy of Beckett, or Kevin Barry. Here’s a random clip –‘
“Hello? Who’s calling?”
“It’s me.”
“Who’s me?”
“Your daughter.”
“Which one?”
“Your only daughter. Chloë. I’m Chloë.”
The rain seeped under the rust-wracked wall of the phone box, releasing the aroma of its urine-darkened floor.
“Shouldn’t you be in school?”
“I am in school.”
“Don’t they have lessons?”
“It’s Saturday.”
“What about Saturday lessons?”
“Those are in the morning.”
“I thought it was the morning.”
“Did you just wake up?”
“No. I woke up earlier.”
“When?”
“When the phone rang. Someone called me.”
“Who called you?”
“Don’t know. Someone called Chloë.”
“I’m Chloë.”
“So you keep telling me.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“You just have.”
‘So, that’s Chloë Clifton-Wright speaking with her mother’, Legal asked. ‘When? Was it before or after Ayoade wrote the book?’
‘The deception has at least three layers’, the Founder said. You have Ayoade making up a character to write a review of a book written by himself about a doppelganger that he made up.’
Legal’s eyes lit up. A penny dropped.
‘It’s like an option on a VIX future’, the Founder said. ‘The derivatives are at least four levels deep. You have an option on a futures contract that references an index that measures the volatility of options on an index that tracks a basket of shares in five hundred names. If you want to drill further down, the shares are fractional interests in entities that own businesses. So you have to drill long and hard before you reach brick and mortar. And if one of the names is Palantir or Disney, fuck if you will ever get to brick and mortar.’
‘What did Angleton call it? A wilderness of mirrors?’
‘Only in America.’
‘That was Don King, not Angleton.’
Legal folded the tabloid right-side out and placed it on the Founder’s desk. The pages, as far as he could tell, seemed pretty clean. ‘So, why the smile’, he asked. ‘It can’t be just because of a funny article in the Upper West Side Review’
‘We switched payroll providers’, the Founder said. ‘We got rid of ElCheapoPayroll4You and hired Patriot Software. We did the first payroll yesterday.’
‘How did it go?’
‘Surprisingly well. Employees have access to an employee portal where they can see and download their pay stubs. We were able to transfer mid-year data from ElCheapoPayroll4You to Patriot quite easily. The graphic interface is intuitive and the actual process for running payroll is simple. When you have questions, you can call and a person who speaks English and knows answers picks up. And we don’t have to put up an escrow to secure direct deposit payments.’
‘Did ElCheapoPayroll4You refund our escrow deposit?’
‘I have asked for it.’
‘How does the Comptroller feel about the change?’
‘That’s why I’m smiling.’
.
The phone on the Founder’s desk rang once. When he pressed the speaker button, his Assistant’s voice said, ‘I have a representative from Metron Farnier on the line. The firm will be assessed a new charge for integration with Rent Manager.’
‘They have been feeding data into Rent Manager for us since time out of mind for free.’
‘They say that we have owed these fees since time out of mind, but we were not charged because of an administrative oversight. We will not be assessed fees for past services retroactively.’
‘You know what to tell them.’
When the Founder pushed the silence button, Legal made eye contact. ‘Bonnie is really good’, he said.
‘Who is Bonnie’, the Founder asked.
‘Your Assistant’, Legal said. ‘The lady you just spoke with.’
‘I never learn their names’, the Founder said.
Legal put an ankle across a knee. ‘What would you do without her’, he asked
The Founder looked at him blankly and said, ‘Replace her with an AI bot, dumbass. Same as I will do to the General Counsel’s office.’
Why has a payroll software to be patriotic ?
I believe Mr. Angleton took that to his grave.