The Hazards of Good Fortune Read online

  ALSO BY

  SETH GREENLAND

  The Angry Buddhist

  Shining City

  The Bones

  I Regret Everything

  Europa Editions

  214 West 29th St.

  New York NY 10001

  [email protected]

  www.europaeditions.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2018 by Seth Greenland

  First publication 2018 by Europa Editions

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  Cover Art by Emanuele Ragnisco

  www.mekkanografici.com

  Cover photos © tedmochen/Pixabay and StockSnap/Pixabay

  Cover treatment by Emanuele Ragnisco from photographs

  by tedmochen/Pixabay and StockSnap/Pixabay

  ISBN 9781609454630

  Seth Greenland

  THE HAZARDS

  OF GOOD FORTUNE

  THE HAZARDS

  OF GOOD FORTUNE

  To Susan, Allegra, Gabe, and Drew.

  PART I

  “Now there arose up a new king

  over Egypt, which knew not Joseph.”

  —EXODUS 1:8

  CHAPTER ONE

  From his customary sideline seat at the center of the brightly lit basketball court, Harold Jay Gladstone surveyed his kingdom. He was trim and good-looking with an open face and outstanding posture. His brown eyes might have been a little too closely set; his prominent nose revealed a slight bump. Dark, wavy hair was thinning at the crown. But the white teeth were straight in his wide mouth and the warm confidence with which he displayed them put those who observed him at ease. They recognized a serious and gracious man, one born to take care of his responsibilities. He wore a gray chalk stripe suit, a pale pink shirt with a tasteful silk tie. The silver buckle of his alligator belt was discreetly engraved with the initials HJG. His wingtips were well worn but agreeably polished. Other than a wedding band, his only jewelry was a simple gold watch, a gift from his parents, decades earlier on his twenty-first birthday. That was the year he jettisoned “Harold,” the name he had been known by since boyhood, and declared himself Jay Gladstone. Jauntier, more heedless, “Jay” hinted at soaring possibilities in a way the more earthbound Harold never would. Now in his fifties, he was a picture of understated elegance, nothing too new and flash, or too old and rumpled, at once approachable but slightly remote.

  He faced both benches and the chattering broadcasters, in plain view, front, side, and back, of the eighteen thousand-strong crowd, no one paying attention, much less deference, to him. He didn’t sit courtside because he wanted anyone’s attention. He sat there because he had loved basketball since he was a child.

  And because he owned the team.

  It was a frigid Wednesday night at Sanitary Solutions Arena in Newark, New Jersey, and his players were battling for a spot in the NBA playoffs. With two minutes left in the fourth quarter, the game was tied 96-96. The Celtics had just knotted the score on a jump shot by Rajon Rondo and Alvin “Church” Scott, the coach of the home team, had called a timeout. There was a palpable buzz tonight because the franchise was currently battling for the eighth and final playoff seed in the Eastern Conference.

  The players ambled toward their benches and crossed paths with the Lycra-sheathed cheerleaders strutting toward center court. Hip-hop blasted over the P.A. system and the nubile young women—white, black, Hispanic, Asian, every racial permutation one could reasonably expect to find in the Tri-State Area in 2012—began their gyrations. The squad was there because research had shown fans liked cheerleaders. They were good for business.

  To own a professional sports team was a privilege of the fabulously wealthy. But ownership wasn’t all victories, fawning media coverage, and locker room championship celebrations where excited players sprayed champagne, dousing each other and their ecstatic overlords. The possibility of thorny headaches abounded. The press could decimate you and once they established an owner’s tabloid identity—egotistical moneybags was the preferred caricature—it was hard to shake. Then there were the decisions that had to be made involving the commitment of hundreds of millions in salary to players with balky joints, or a tendency to consume too many cheeseburgers during the offseason, or personal lives that distracted from professional responsibilities. To lure these players, luxurious pleasure domes had to be constructed at even greater cost. While Jay watched the cheerleaders throw a petite redhead into the air where she executed a triple somersault before landing in a net of arms, his mind was on real estate.

  Everyone hated Sanitary Solutions Arena. Built with public funds at the dawn of the Reagan Era, the concrete edifice was outdated almost as soon as the contractors finished their work. Concession areas too small, hallways too narrow, and the cramped squalor of the restrooms suggested the need for vaccinations before entering. The roof leaked. The acoustics were dreadful. The too-small size of the skyboxes made it difficult to entice free-spending corporate clients who could max out their platinum cards at a safe remove from actual fans. Naming rights had been sold by the State of New Jersey to the giant waste management company whose role as a near-constant defendant in a series of environmental litigations had earned them the nickname Sanitary Pollutions. Yes, the Rolling Stones had performed there. U2 and a reconstituted version of The Who had all blasted through. One year Bruce Springsteen played so many dates he might as well have moved in. Still, Sanitary Solutions Arena was a dump, a poor relation of the shiny new sports and entertainment palaces in cities like Phoenix, Atlanta, and Dallas.

  Despite all of this, it was with a sense of optimism that Jay turned to the goateed African-American seated on his right, Mayor Major House of Newark, and in a voice mellifluous and full of casual assurance said, “We’re going to win this game, Major.” Recently he had learned that the politician’s mother had named him Major so people would address her son with respect and Jay always made a point of using it.

  “Always been a positive thinker,” the mayor replied, a grin spread across his broad face. In a charcoal gray off-the-rack suit, white shirt, and striped tie, House looked like a school superintendent, his occupation until a few years earlier, when politics presented itself as a viable alternative.

  “Do you think the game’s going into overtime?” asked Nicole Gladstone, Jay’s second wife, seated on his other side.

  “I have no idea. Why?”

  “Because I want to order another glass of wine.” One of the attempts at upgrading the amenities at the current arena—with its rudimentary design and great swaths of exposed concrete it exuded all the charm of an apartment block in Bucharest—was VIP courtside service. Fans could order sushi, nachos, and beer or wine from waitresses sporting formfitting team gear while they watched the action unfold. “Will you order me another, or do you want me to do it?” A tincture of hostility betrayed Nicole’s attempt at sober composure. She believed Jay kept too close an eye on her alcohol consumption.

  Nicole was in her late thirties and through a religious devotion to daily yoga, the right genes, and a diet free of fat and sugar (copious intake of white wine excepted) had retained the beauty of her youth. She wore an olive-green silk bomber jacket, slim black pants, and stiletto heels. Expertly cut, subtly colored blonde hair pulled into a chignon. Golden hazel eyes delicately shadowed, and cheekbones that could slice a pineapple. There was an air of mischief around Nicole, a feeling that you never knew quite what to expect, but it had been a while since her husband found this quality charming and he suspecte
d more wine would only heighten it. She had already consumed several glasses, and he worried about her volubility on the ride home to Bedford in the far reaches of Westchester County. A little too much to drink and his otherwise amiable wife might take offense at an innocent comment or become argumentative over a remark she would ordinarily let pass. He knew it was useless to point out there was no alcohol served after the third quarter. She would remind him that he was the owner and if he wanted to procure an additional dose of chardonnay it could be arranged.

  “I’ll take care of it,” he said.

  While pretending to look for a member of the wait staff, Jay glanced across the court at D’Angelo Maxwell, the team’s star player. Everyone, the fans, the media, his mother, called Maxwell “Dag.” Built for headlines, the handle was quick, terse, and contained a hint of lethality. Like Michael or Magic, it was all that was needed to convey his mastery of basketball skills, the self-confidence he exuded, the cultivated detachment that suggested—even when the television cameras were trained on him and millions watched—he was balling alone in his driveway.

  When Jay purchased the team, he hired Church Scott as the coach and general manager and challenged him to win a championship. Then he opened his checkbook. Scott proceeded to rebuild the team, and his splashiest acquisition was Dag Maxwell. Although Jay loved attending the games—the improvisational genius of professional basketball, its hypnotic combination of speed, potency, and an aesthetically charged physicality so pure it had the power to alter the psychological state of those who witnessed it, was a quality absent in his own life—to the owner’s displeasure, the team had fallen considerably short of expectations.

  Jay noticed Nicole staring intently at the bench where Church Scott kneeled in front of his players, pointing at a clipboard. His three nattily attired assistants (the league mandated business attire for the coaching staff) stood at a respectful distance. The twelve-man squad consisted of ten African-Americans, a Frenchman of Senegalese extraction, and a 7’1” Lithuanian tank. But it was the charismatic Dag who held the world’s attention.

  “Are you going to get me the wine?” Nicole asked.

  There were no waitresses in the immediate area, so to forestall his wife wandering off in search of it, Jay told her he would go to the concession stand. It was a stalling maneuver. And he liked to mingle with the fans, not so much to glean what they were thinking about the team but, rather, to imply that he was one of them. He prided himself on doing it without a single body man, much less the herd-of-bison security detail that routinely surrounded men of his importance when they ventured out in public. The vox populi, even when slightly discordant, was music to his democratic (small d) consciousness.

  When Jay rose from his seat, his regal bearing conveyed above average physical stature, although he measured slightly less than six feet, the exact height he had reached as a sixteen-year-old. Mayor House was surprised to see him get up and reminded his host there were only three minutes left in the game.

  “I’ll hustle,” Jay said and started walking.

  A fan called out, “Yo, Mr. Gladstone!” The owner smiled in the direction of the voice and gave a slight nod. Someone yelled, “Mayor Major!” and House waved and smiled. The politician was popular here, and Jay liked to think at least some of that popularity reflected on the team owner. Another fan yelled, “Go, Jay!” and Jay turned toward that person, touched two fingers to his forehead, and pointed in a jaunty half-salute. He didn’t mind the familiarity. If the paying public wanted to be on a first name basis with him, that was all right. These interactions enabled Jay to tell himself that rather than being another inaccessible magnate separated from the masses by a vast fortune, he possessed the common touch. He might not show up at the games in the man-of-the-people fashion of owners who wore jeans and T-shirts while they capered around the sidelines like Ritalin-deprived teenagers, but the fans seemed to like him just the same.

  “YOU SUCK, GLADSTONE!”

  The voice was froggy, basso, and it cut through the arena hum, this malediction, rendered in fluent Jersey.

  Jay had the presence of mind to call out, “Thank you, sir!” and this engendered laughter from the surrounding seats. He was satisfied with how he handled the catcall. Knew it wouldn’t escalate. Interchanges like this between owners and fans were simply an outgrowth of the egalitarian age so Jay let it slide off his well-tailored back as he headed up a short row of steps which led to a tunnel that would bring him to the lower level concourse. He calculated the time it would take to do his errand and quickened his pace.

  Because the game was tied and there were only a couple of minutes left on the clock, no fans wanted to abandon their seats, so the hall was mostly deserted. A janitor tied off a plastic garbage bag, a soda vendor thumbed through a thick wad of bills. Neither noticed Jay as he passed. He would buy a bottle of water for his wife and tell her the concession stand had run out of wine.

  Jay pondered how the culture had descended to where a fan at a professional sporting event believed that it was socially acceptable to yell insults at the team owner. It reflected the coarseness that seemed to metastasize every day, manifesting as road rage, feverish Internet comment threads, and the turbo-charged political discourse that rendered all opponents as mortal enemies, developments Jay found deplorable. He made every effort in his conduct to be nonadversarial.

  The sight of three black teenagers headed toward him interrupted these ruminations. Jay’s first thought was: What are these kids doing on this level? Access was allowed only to those seated in the arena’s lower bowl, the most expensive seats in the house, so Jay assumed these boys had snuck down. But he quickly upbraided himself for this reaction. One of them might have been the son of a season ticket holder. Or perhaps they were successful rappers and had purchased the tickets themselves. Jay didn’t know much about pop culture but was aware that young entertainers could be economic juggernauts. The three boys were dressed nearly identically in baggy jeans that hung low revealing what appeared to be acres of boxer shorts, oversized flannel shirts, and spanking new white high-top sneakers accented in various tropical colors. The kid in the middle was Jay’s size, and two glowering beanpoles flanked him. He realized the beanpoles were twins. All of them wore baseball caps turned sideways. The cap belonging to the one in the middle bore a Lakers logo. The twins were Knick fans, apparently.

  “Yo, Jewstone,” the one wearing the Lakers cap said. “Wassup?”

  The three stared at him.

  Had Jay heard this correctly? Jewstone? Had it suddenly become acceptable to hurl an ethnic slur at a complete stranger during a public encounter? Yes, anti-Semitism was on the rise around the world, there had been tension between blacks and Jews, and as evinced by the fan that yelled You suck, the public sphere was an indecorous place, but Jewstone? This was an affront that beggared the imagination. So unexpected, so . . . so crude and frontal and . . . ugly! Jay could not ignore this the way he had ignored the hostile fan. He wanted to drag the kid by the band of his low-slung boxer shorts to the nearest Holocaust museum and school him about the deportations, the camps, the chimneys spewing human ash, but that was not practical. Should he summon security and get him ejected from the building? Calling for aid would show weakness. Offer a stern rebuke to his rudeness and continue toward the concession stand? They would laugh at him. How did they even know he was Jewish? It wasn’t as if they had seen the annual check he wrote to the Anti-Defamation League. Jay felt his neck muscles constrict. Adrenalin rousted his heart causing it to leap and buck. Was he about to be mugged? This could not be happening on the lower concourse of his team’s arena. The Beanpole on the left angled his head as if to say, You gonna talk? The other Beanpole nudged Lakers Cap and whispered something in his ear.

  “Gladstone!” Lakers Cap declared. “Mr. Gladstone! Dang!” He laughed at the faux pas, if indeed it were a faux pas, as if he, the Beanpoles, and Jay were playing the dozens backstage at the BE
T Awards.

  “Dang!” the twin on the left echoed.

  “What do you want?” Jay said.

  “You gonna re-sign Dag?”

  “We’ll see,” Jay replied and pushed past them toward the concession stand.

  “Yo, Gladstone!” It was Lakers Cap again.

  The kid left out the Mister, but at least he had called him Gladstone this time. After a split-second internal debate about whether he should ignore him anyway, Jay turned around.

  “Stick a fork in that nigga. He done!” More laughter and the trio moved toward the tunnel that would take them into the arena. Jay shook his head. It was impossible to fathom why black people would refer to each other using that word. It would be like Jews calling each other “kike.” Certain African-Americans could talk all they wanted about reclaiming the slur, repurposing it, snatching it from the hands of the bigots and performing the same sleight of hand gays and lesbians had done with “queer” but Jay believed their reasoning to be specious. Rap moguls, bejeweled pop culture titans who pumped their product into millions of ears, tossed nigga back and forth like it was a beach ball. Jay couldn’t understand it. But as a white man, he was prohibited from having an opinion on the subject. As a white man, it wasn’t his word to parse, much less throw around. To weigh in on the subject was paternalistic, so mind your own. If he said anything about race, some right-minded person was going to label him a racist. The whole business was a proverbial “third rail” that Jay did not want to touch.

  The crew was totting up the receipts at the concession stand. Jay ordered a bottle of water, paid for it with cash, and dispensed smiles and thank-yous to the two women and one man working there. The women were black, the man Latino. They knew who he was, had seen him in Sanitary Solutions Arena many times, and the respect with which they responded to the boss’s presence returned Jay’s world to its former equilibrium. He knew what the concession workers thought of the word nigga.