Elliot Allagash by Simon Rich Page A

rumored to have a personal brothel with more than seventy full-time employees.
    Cornelius Allagash forgot about his little experiment, gave up chemistry, and opened up a tavern in the Bowery. Then, five years later, a hardworking German tinkerer thought to press Cornelius’s pulp into sheets and let it dry. He was amazed: The sheets retained the strength of wood, but they were polished and smooth. The wood levels could be adjusted to change the sheets’ thickness; dye could be added to change their color. They looked like the linens you found in a rich man’s bed or the smooth fabric you found in a minister’s Bible. But this material was so cheap to make, you wouldn’t even have to go to church to see a Bible anymore. You could make your own.
    Cornelius Allagash had invented paper.
    From that date forward, every paper manufacturer in the western world had to pay the Allagashes for the privilege of turning wood into pulp. Elliot’s family owned a small percentage of every cardboard box in existence. They owned a portion of every envelope, a fraction of every baseball card. They made money when people wrapped gifts and collected every time they used toilet paper. They made money from ticker tape parades, whether they took place in Times Square or Nazi Germany. They made money when Japanese schoolchildren sent paper cranes to flood victims and when lonely people wrote their suicide notes. They made money off of every page of every book ever written—textbooks and comics, pornography and Bibles, fat city phone books and little girls’ diaries. The Allagashes made money whenever anybody jotted down notes or signed a bill. They owned wallpaper and Kleenex, magazines and newspapers, cards and checks and stamps.
    They even owned money itself.
    • • •
    Elliot carried around a leather-bound book in his breast pocket. It was small but very thick, and its edges were frayed from use. The cover was solid black, except for a single word that had been stitched onto the center with golden thread:
Enemies
. Elliot rarely laughed, but when he did, it was usually while looking though the pages of this book. Terry had given it to him as a present for his seventh birthday, and he had kept it on his person ever since.
    Sometimes, after hearing some news from James on his cell phone, Elliot would take out his book and make a check mark next to one of the names listed inside, using a tiny silver fountain pen he kept specifically for this purpose. He made these check marks slowly and deliberately, as if savoring the gesture. It was a terrifying book and I’ll never forget the first time I saw it.
    Elliot’s first act as my campaign manager was to organize a celebratory lunch.
    “Shouldn’t we wait until we’ve won?” I asked.
    Elliot ignored me and dragged me outside to his waiting limo. He barked out an address, and James sped us over to a windowless midtown restaurant with giant brass doors. Elliot hopped out and motioned for me to follow.
    “What is this place?” I asked.
    “It’s the Winchester,” Elliot said. “The most exclusive restaurant in Manhattan, if not the world.”
    Elliot had lent me his largest suit for the occasion, and it was so tight, I could only take short, shallow breaths. We had changed beside each other in his private dressing room, and it had been adisturbing experience. I knew Elliot was the skinniest kid in the grade, but I didn’t know
how
skinny until I saw him without his shirt on. When he bent over to slip on his socks, I could count all the vertebrae in his spine. And when he reached up to grab his waistcoat, I thought I could see his rib cage pulsing in time with his beating heart.
    He checked his cuff links, and mine, and led me into the Winchester’s mahogany vestibule.
    “We could just go to a regular place,” I pleaded.
    Elliot flashed me one of his more intense and terrifying stares. I took a deep breath and followed him to a table in the back.
    “This is an historic location,”