The Long Game

Daedalia: Chapter 35

Daedalia is a serialized novel, with a new chapter released every Monday morning. The story is designed to unfold slowly, the days in between, a space for it to settle into your imagination. Each chapter is a 10–15 minute read/listen. Check out the Table of Contents if you want to jump to a specific chapter. Want something to binge while you wait? Three novels, complete with audio narration are ready for you to dive in.

Previously…

Greta flew to New York on Lefty's call and found him unconscious in the studio, then nursed him through a fever in a hotel room. When he demanded her price for the secret, she said money wasn't it — she wanted Daedalia resurrected, and she wanted to know how Kelly did it. By evening they had struck a bargain neither admitted was a negotiation.

The following transcript is an interview with Lefty Moody recorded on July 5, 2036.

MM: I get why you kept everything from me back then, but why did you keep it from Mom?

LM: I was ashamed. It’s no mystery. I let my own ego drive us into the ditch. You know how much money I lost, right?

MM: Yeah, but you had a problem, Dad. And you were alone with that. Did you ever ask for help?

LM: Your mother helped me.

MM: I don’t remember it that way. I remember her screaming at you and calling you horrible names. I think she would’ve hit you if your arm hadn’t been in that cast.

LM: She was angry, and she had a right to be. I betrayed her trust in so many ways. She counted on me, and I let her down.

MM: But you didn’t do those things on purpose, did you? They were symptoms of something deeper.

LM: Do we really need to psychoanalyze me? I’m not that interesting.

MM: You know I want this book to be good, right? I want it to be real. Can you please open up just a little? Give me something to work with.

LM: Okay. You want me to talk about my addiction? It’s not gambling or alcohol. My addiction is greatness. I don’t know why it matters. I used to blame my dad, but I don’t think it’s his fault. I think it was baked into me, some kind of Viking gene—this need to conquer. I wanted to produce something legendary that would leave my mark, that would inspire people for generations. It’s okay, you can laugh. It’s pretty fucking absurd. Are you done? I hope you don’t laugh at everyone you interview.

MM: No, just the ridiculous ones. Sorry, please go on.

LM: I grew up with this thing—I thought I was special. Things came easy for me, so it just confirmed my theory. I always had a girlfriend, never made a C in school unless I really just didn’t care. And I could throw a baseball pretty damn good. Sure, I practiced and my dad pushed me, but no more than I could handle. I knew I was the coach’s son and he had to set an example. For years, the equation worked. Potential plus opportunity plus practice equals success equals greatness.

MM: Until it didn’t.

LM: Yeah. I didn’t expect to hit a wall at twenty-five years old. I remember waking up in a shitty motel room the day after I was sent back down. I remember feeling so fucking sorry for myself and also, I remember that voice—that hard voice all of us have that said: what did you expect, you fuckin’ idiot? You put all your hopes and dreams into an arm that’s supposed to throw a ball at seventy-five miles an hour about a hundred times a day into a box that’s seventeen inches wide by twenty-four inches high for the rest of your life and hope you get it past the guy standing there with a stick more times than you don’t. It’s ridiculous. But I did it for more years than most anyone could and it still wasn’t enough.

MM: So you felt like a failure.

LM: I felt like a fool, like the overconfident guy in all those comedies that doesn’t get what a stupid asshole he is. I had invested my youth in something that didn’t matter. Even if I’d been the greatest pitcher in the world, what did it matter? I had this genetic predisposition to aspire to greatness, and I’d bet on the wrong fucking thing. What? You’re making that face.

MM: It’s just funny to hear you talk about greatness like it’s something you can hold in your hand. Like it’s a currency that can be exchanged.

LM: I think it kind of is.

MM: So, when you met Mom, you thought you’d found a winning bet.

LM: Yeah, I did. Anyone could have seen what she had. I just saw it first.

MM: Did you love her? I mean when you first met her.

LM: No. I saw an opportunity. I saw something I could use like I used my arm.

MM: That’s harsh, Dad. I don’t think that’s how you are.

LM: Maybe, maybe not, but I’m trying to be honest here. You know what’ll be on my tombstone one day? He did all the right things for all the wrong reasons.

MM: What would have been the right reasons?

LM: I don’t know, but I made it all about me and all the while I was pretending it was about her and her art.

MM: Is that why she left you after I went away to school, because she figured that out?

LM: I don’t know, maybe. Did you get a chance to ask her?

MM: We talked about it. I think she knew you a lot better than you think she did, and she loved you anyway. She told me she just needed time to figure out who she was, independent of you. And then you completely bottomed out. I think that shocked her, seeing you fall like that. She… we just thought you were invincible.

LM: I think I used to believe I was. I don’t anymore. After that week, then seeing the horrified look on your face when you and your mom came to see me.

MM: I remember I was cruel to you. I’m sorry.

LM: You could never be cruel, sweetheart. You had a right to be disgusted. I was pathetic. I wanted to crawl under a rock.

MM: You kind of did, didn’t you?

LM: That’s not a very generous description of Greta, but I did go into hiding for a while.

MM: It’s so strange. She hardly seems like the caretaker type.

LM: No, she’s not. But we were alike in many ways, and we saw eye-to-eye on one very important thing.

MM: Mom’s work.

LM: Yes, that was a big part of our connection.

MM: And you had your mission…

LM: Yeah, we did. It made us both equally sick to have those panels sitting in a climate-controlled basement on a private island when their whole purpose was to live in the open air, where everyone could see them any time of day or night.

MM: You kept that plan to yourself, didn’t you?

LM: Yeah, I did. You don’t tell someone you love and let down your plans for redemption. What if it fails?

MM: I guess not. And it took you a long time. I really missed you during that time, and Mom was a lot.

LM: You missed me? You never let on. If I had the skills of an interrogator at Guantánamo, I don’t think I would’ve been able to get more out of you on those phone calls.

MM: Fair. So tell me about the mission.

LM: We had some power and influence, Greta especially, but only in the art world. Not the kind of money and power Trevor Gaines possessed at the time. He basically owned the fucking internet. $500 billion in net worth. There was no way we were going to buy the panels back from him, so we had to find some way to force his hand and make him give them up.

But this was impossible too because he was a shameless man. You have to have some notion of honor to care about protecting it. We weren’t going to unearth some sordid affair or corruption that most of the world wasn’t already aware of and didn’t seem to care about.

MM: Greta must have been friendly with him, right? I mean he had invited her to see them. He didn’t do that for anyone. Had she told him she knew the identity of Daedalia?

LM: No. Greta is a masterful tease. She didn’t just give up her leverage out of the gate. Plus, she wasn’t one hundred percent sure yet. I mean she was, but she hadn’t confronted me yet so she couldn’t take it to the bank. She strung him along, didn’t give him anything. After that weekend when she saw the panels, he wanted to know what she thought, wanted his return on investment. She said they were great, but not Daedalia’s best work and, besides, she said she wasn’t convinced they weren’t forgeries.

MM: But she believed they were the real thing.

LM: Yes, she did.

MM: When did you meet Gaines?

LM: It was a long time, maybe a year after that. He asked Greta plenty of times for an introduction. He had his people reach out to me directly, but I ignored their calls. We were playing the long game. There’s nothing more arousing to someone who can have everything than something that’s beyond their reach. I stayed beyond his reach.

MM: What was the long game for you, I mean besides winning Mom back?

LM: That was really it. But your mom’s complicated. It wasn’t going to be two dozen roses or a European vacation or even a six-figure commission that would bring her back to me. She wanted something I couldn’t really give her. Something she couldn’t even articulate. But that was always the case. She operated on a different plane with different stakes. I always wanted to make my mark, but your mother, she wanted to change the world. She’d never have admitted as much, but that’s exactly what drove her.

My role in her life had always been to focus all that energy into something, but she wouldn’t allow me back in her life to do that, so I had to find a way to give her what she needed from a distance.

MM: I’ve heard her version of your pitch to her, but I’d like to hear you tell it.

LM: What if you could make the wealthiest man in the world give everything away? That was it. That was the pitch. I had no idea if such a thing was possible, and it really didn’t matter.

MM: And what did she say?

LM: She said she didn’t care. She said she was done with all of it. She wanted to reinvent herself and wanted nothing to do with our enterprise anymore.

MM: You think she was still punishing you?

LM: One hundred percent, but there was something else. Maybe somehow she knew her time was running out. She didn’t want to repeat herself. I think she was tired of all of it. I don’t pretend to understand artists, but I did know your mother, so I knew nothing would happen until something moved her. I couldn’t manufacture that for her. I could only help her channel it if it came.

MM: But you didn’t just sit idle. You were on your own kind of manic quest. I remember. Mom allowed you to go back and live at the house while she was away and you started your little landscaping project.

LM: Yeah, I went a little around the bend. I had nowhere else to go, and I was trying to stay sober. Trying to find some meaning again. This project, this mission, as you call it, was all I had, and it wouldn’t work without her, so I got a crazy idea about how I might get her to come around.

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