Moe Zaire blows up the Kyiv Poster to collect the insurance on a terrorist attack
The man who looks amazingly like David Lynch sits quietly in the Kyiv Poster newsroom waiting for Chief Editor Bret Boner to get in from whatever important event or engagement he’s been at this time.
This is the third week that the David Lynch-looking man has been waiting like this for Boner and nothing much has changed over the period, except for the occasional renewed promise from Boner that he will indeed help the man find a location for the Transcontinental Meditation Center the man so desperately wants to open in downtown Kyiv. Also, the weather’s gotten a little warmer.
And the David Lynch man always takes Boner’s word for it and continues to stay even though he should have been on his way out of the country a while ago and has rescheduled his departure a number of times, losing money each time, not to mention the large amounts of money he’s losing, or so he says, back home as his supposed production company – Unsymmetrical Reactions, secretly located somewhere in the starry hills of California, with special misdirection built into Google address searches to throw off any nosy curiosity seekers – is paying all sorts of parasitical movie people for the time they’re putting into the man’s next alleged film project without doing anything.
In the Kyiv Poster newsroom a dwarf who, in his turn, looks amazingly like the David Lynch-looking man and who actually insists on being referred to as David Lynch – naturally, in the nastiest terms imaginable – is climbing up old-fashioned filing cabinets and kicking his little feet noisily into the metal drawers as he fights and claws his way upwards.
The newsroom’s overstaff of young empty-headed Ukrainian chicks – all handpicked by Boner, clearly for no other reason that the sex he imagines he could have with them if he could only finally manage the skillful deception of casting his megalomaniacal abusive power in the guise of friendly experienced older (ahem – a lot older) mentor looking out for their best interests before their evil oligarch publisher and within the cruel and brutal Ukrainian business environment – surf their smartphones for worthless information – laughing stupidly to themselves, which is now the modern-day norm – or click and clack away at social media on laptops supplied by the paper’s aforesaid clueless money-losing publisher Moe Zaire; money-losing thanks to Boner.
By now, the newsroom staff is no longer star-struck. For them, the David Lynch excitement and novelty has long worn off and they pay the man and his dwarf no mind. In other words, they ignore them. Except they are also really, really annoyed with the dwarf.
Walks in Boner.
“Oh, hello, Bret,” says the man.
“Oh, ah, yeah, yeah, hello.”
“So, when do you think we can go look at some of those spaces you said you know about that might work for my Transcontinental Meditation Center?”
“Spaces? What spaces? What are you talking about?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I meant, you know, when we spoke a few weeks back, there was the possibility of you helping me find a location, you know, premises that would be ideal for –”
“Oh, yeah, right… aaahh…”
“You said you knew people who –”
“Yeah, right, right, I know what I said. Aaahh…”
“Maybe this afternoon we could –”
“Ah, look, you gotta understand, I’m really busy. I’m –”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I just thought that, you know, after we spoke a while back, it seemed to me at least that –”
“No, no, I’ll be really happy to help, but you gotta understand. Okay, look-it, just now I got back from a corporate power breakfast with the foreign movers and shakers of this town. They needed to be reassured about rule of law and freedom of speech in this country, and I’m the best-qualified to do it.”
“Oh, I… I…”
“And right now I’ve got a shitload of work, what with running this paper and all, and there’s also a website…”
“I… I know just what you mean. I’ve got a website too, and a line of coffee that sometimes I find so –”
“And tomorrow, I got another breakfast with the leaders of the small and medium foreign startup business community, and after that another meeting with potential foreign investors into this country – my third one this week. All these people, they’re looking for a good word, some hope, a light at the end of the tunnel, some reassurance, that everything will be okay, that they’re not misdirecting their money and energies, as long as they know I’m here to guide this country on its way.”
“I mean, I never… I’m a musician, too, and my next –”
“Western standards and transparency in doing business… and if all of that isn’t enough, all of this information also has to get into the paper…”
“Okay, Bret, I’ll just extend my stay in Kyiv for another week, and when you have the –”
“Democracy…”
“I’ll just push back my departure for another week, or maybe two, and then when you’re –”
“That’s what they want! That’s what they cry out for! And if it wasn’t for me –”
“Boner!”
It’s Kyiv Poster publisher, near-billionaire Moe Zaire.
“Oh, uh, er-uh… duuuhh…”
“Yeah, Boner, I’ve got a little surprise for you and the entire Kyiv Poster staff right here in this old-fashioned high-quality leather sports bag I’m hoisting just now onto this desk in the middle of this newsroom.”
“Ur, a surprise, uuuhh…”
“Yeah, that’s right. I’m locking you and everyone in here into this room, and then at exactly two o’clock, undo the clasp and open it. When you see what it is, call our Acting CEO Anoyla Zombietska, who will then come down and unlock you and then we will all go to our gala conference room, which is large enough to host a small chamber orchestra concert for 50, and we’ll celebrate and talk all about it.”
“Oh, ah, ur, ah, but why do you have to lock us in? I mean, ur…”
“Because that’s just the way it has to be done, otherwise it won’t work and there won’t be any surprise.”
“Oh, uh, er, duuuhh… all right…”
“Okay, good. Mr. Lynch, you come up with me.”
“I’M DAVID LYNCH!!!” screeches the dwarf as he scrambles down from a filing cabinet and runs after the David Lynch-looking man and Zaire, who turns with a key to lock up the newsroom, closing the door one final time on Bret Boner’s dumbstruck mug.
The David Lynch man sits in Moe Zaire’s office, which is well removed from the Kyiv Poster newsroom by one or two floors and an entire long hallway, sipping coffee.
“I just love to drink coffee,” he says to Zaire across the publisher’s desk.
Over in another part of the room, the dwarf who calls himself David Lynch stands on a chair viciously thrusting a long wooden pointer into the cage of a large multi-colored parrot, who perches in one of the cage’s upper corners, apparently taking the assault rather mildly and squawking mockingly down at the dwarf.
Not so, a beautiful large blue cat, who, severely unnerved, has retreated from the dwarf behind the couch.
At exactly 2 p.m. a major explosion shakes the building.
“Well, that’s that,” says Zaire.
CONTINUED TO BE…
Filed by Jack Step, CTFSA, April 20, 2016