24
Nate had built himself a fort. He had covered the table with the blankets from the ladder. There were cords running from the
outlet into the new development.
Stevie had only been gone a little over an hour and already there was real estate happening in the living room.
It also smelled strongly of Lysol and the windows were open wide, blowing in freezing air. She flopped on the sofa and found
that she wasn’t inclined to get up again. The news of Benny—and the things that had happened—had taken it out of her.
David was texting, though. She could text.
David: how’s my princess
Stevie: sitting in a cloud of Lysol
David: I don’t judge
do you want to meet up today?
Stevie: here’s the thing . . .
someone died
David: I know you told me
Stevie: no I mean someone else
David: you’re joking right?
Stevie: it wasn’t murder
David: this isn’t a joke?
There was another text, but this one was from Loretta: I asked around the group and someone knew the name right away. It’s Dean Grant. He always shortchanged when he was buying
grass and gave everyone the creeps. One person said he runs some kind of self-help group thing now.
David: it’s a joke right ha ha funny times
if not then you are 100% murdering people
Stevie: it’s not a joke and not murder. hang on.
She did some quick searching. Dean Grant. It was too common of a name to have any meaningful results. She tried Dean Grant Ellenville, Dean Grant Melissa Long. Nothing. What had Loretta said though? They were less a commune, more like a cult. Worth a shot.
Dean Grant cult
Amazingly, something did come up. It was in a Reddit thread. Is Monument Movement a cult? Stevie clicked on it.
Is Monument Movement a cult? My sister was doing this for a while when she was trying to get into acting in NYC. It just seemed
like an acting thing where you get out your feelings but it felt weird to me.
It’s definitely a cult. It’s a mishmash of lots of self-help and exercises where you shout at people and open up and confess your faults.
They tell you that everything is a game, so you make up the rules to your own game, so if things go wrong in your life it’s your fault.
They break you down. Then you pay to take more classes and they make you bring in more people.
Anything that makes you bring in more people is an MLM or cult every time same difference.
It’s also really expensive.
I thought this was just some kind of acting exercise thing?
Dean Grant is the guy who started it. He got hooked up with some theater director at some school, so the school started to
require that the acting students go through the first level, which is called The First Game. It’s a weekend program where
you are all stuck in a room and can only go to the bathroom or eat during two breaks. You only sleep three hours over the
weekend. It seems to mostly be in New York and in the acting community. It’s predatory. Stay away.
Stevie immediately looked up Monument Movement. They had a slick website, with lots of pictures of people in circles of folded chairs, eagerly talking, groups of people jumping in the air at once, people laughing and pointing and looking thoughtfully at an older but extremely well-maintained guy.
DEAN GRANT is a teacher. A lifelong student. A lover of games. As a teenager and young man, Dean was in trouble. He was a
pickpocket who targeted the rich, a vagabond, someone with a dream of happiness for all. He served time in prison for theft
and spent his time reading works of philosophy. After getting out, he attended New York University, where he got his degree
in psychology. He began Monument Movement as a way of translating his life experience, fused with his education. Thousands
of people have come through Dean’s program and found a new way of navigating life’s challenges with confidence, strength,
and most importantly . . . a sense of fun. Come play with us!
Monument. Where had she seen that before? She had, and recently. Whatever the case, she now had an idea.
Stevie: there’s a diner downstairs. can you meet me there tomorrow around noon?
When she woke up, it was clear that something was not right. First, it was almost noon, and she had a greasy ache oozing over
different parts of her body. Her head seemed to have been packed with sand.
Nate lifted a blanket wall and regarded her from the safety of his fort. He had located an air filter and had installed it
outside his fort.
“You’re getting it,” he said. It was not a question.
“I’m okay,” she said, pushing herself up to a seated position. It felt like someone had whacked the low back of her skull with a mallet, and every instinct told her to go back to sleep. But something needed to happen today. She picked up her phone and sent a text.
“You have it now,” Nate said. “You look bad.”
“Gotta do something.”
Some of the over-the-counter medicine Janelle had bought was on the kitchen counter. She popped two of the pills from the
blister pack and swallowed them with tap water, then took a hot shower that only made her feel colder. Nate wasn’t wrong about
how she looked. Her lips were swollen and dry and her eyes were red and puffy.
Down in the diner, the lights were too bright. The window she sat next to was too bare without its drugstore garland, and
there was too much cold air coming from the door. Stevie’s stomach churned, partially from queasiness and partially from hunger.
She ordered a cup of chicken noodle soup, because you were supposed to eat that when you were sick, along with a ginger ale.
David appeared soon after her arrival, in answer to her text summons, and sat down across from her.
He looked particularly handsome today. He had dressed in a somewhat tight Fred Perry knit top in a deep green that made his
eyes seem to shine brighter. The old watch he always wore drew her attention to the beautiful strength of his wrists, his
hands with their long fingers.
Had her head not been filled with steel wool, her feelings may have given way to a physical urge. As it was, it only made
her sneeze.
“Should you be out of bed?” he said, accepting a massive menu. That was a nice way of saying that she looked pretty terrible.
“I need your help,” she said. “I have to go see a guru.”
“Sure,” he said, nodding. “That seems about right. Time to get into something weird.”
“I think he murdered at least one person,” Stevie said. “But I’m not sure.”
“Right,” David said.
The waiter came by, and David ordered a plain hamburger and fries and a coffee.
“Nothing on the burger,” he said, handing back the menu. “Dry.”
“Still afraid of ketchup?”
“No one needs the blood-looking sauce,” he said. “You know my position on this. Give me actual blood or give it to me dry.
Black coffee and a dry burger.”
It was so easy now to slip back into how it had been before. In fact, it felt exactly like it had been before, just without
the kissing and other things, and without—a nebulous quality. The trust. Like she had walked on ice and fallen through, and
now she was back on the ice and probably safe, but she would always know about the cold water underneath.
Which was why she had to keep her mind on the present, even as it throbbed.
“He ran a cult. Helen was in it. I know people in that cult died. And now he runs some self-help thing here in the city. But it’s really fancy. I don’t think I’m getting in the door. But this guy likes people who are rich and messed up . . .”
“Most people do. It’s a thing.”
“. . . like someone whose dad is a famously evil senator. I think if you called and asked to see him today, he’d make time. And then I will ask him questions.”
“So you’re using me for my problems,” he said.
“A hundred percent,” Stevie said, taking a long sip of ginger ale. How had she not known the magic of ginger ale over crushed
ice before? “Will you do it?”
Stevie didn’t want to admit this to herself, but there was something delicious about having him at her beck and call. It wasn’t
revenge, exactly. She wasn’t doing anything bad. It just felt good, seeing him on the other side of the table, coming when
she called.
“Of course I’ll go,” he said. “What else am I going to do? Let you go see murder guy yourself? Also, you sound like you’re
dying. Are you sure this is the day to go see the murder guy?”
“Have to.”
“Why?”
“Because two people are dead,” Stevie said. And it would have sounded cooler if she didn’t punctuate it by sneezing into her
soup. It just came upon her too quickly. She couldn’t reach the napkin in time. If David noticed that she had also hit him
with her spray, he didn’t show it.
“I think that’s maybe a reason to wait until you feel better?”
“No time,” she said. “We’re only here for a few more days. I don’t know what he did yet, so I have to find out what I can.
Now. Which is why I’m eating soup.”
There was an amoeba-shaped trace of chicken fat on the surface of her soup that was probably delicious and simply needed to be stirred in to enjoy its unctuous goodness, but her stomach lurched at the sight.
As David’s black coffee and dry burger arrived, he pulled up the number for Monument Movement and spoke to someone, explaining
his predicament—he was Edward King’s son, in town for just a short time, and full of issues.
“They’re going to call me back,” he said, setting down his phone and biting off about a third of the burger in one go.
They didn’t have to wait long. His phone rang as he took the last bite of the burger. David made lots of positive sounds before
hanging up.
“We’re in luck. That was Dean. He’ll squeeze us in. How did I do?”
Stevie gave a thumbs-up and sneezed.