The same morning...
Fugo glanced down at the new jar of Baxter of California Clay Pomade sitting unopened on the brushed steel surface.
What Fugo's parents didn't know, wouldn't hurt Fugo.
(Not that he cared.)
After shaving his chest and knuckles, Fugo studied his reflection in the mirror of his private bathroom with its oversized Cararra marble bathtub, and then brushed his teeth.
He picked up and studied the jar with its sleek black lid.
He put it back down.
Mr. Fugo, his father, always told him everyone would kill to be him, but Fugo, as he sat eating breakfast alone as usual earlier in morning at the chromed steel dining room with its floor to ceiling plate glass windows, honestly couldn't understand why anyone would want to live in what might as well have been a morgue minus the dead bodies.
And the nonstop academic grind.
Not that his parents had asked. As far as they were concerned, from birth Fugo was going to be a high powered attourney.
From there, a judge.
From there, State Senator, and then Governor.
From Governor to D.C. Senator, Secretary of State, and then the White House.
As in, "My son, the POTUS."
All Fugo, with his genius I.Q. had to do to earn this bright future was to do what he was told.
Fugo had done just that. Fugo was a Good Boy.
However, Good Boy jumped the rails of that bright future after a kindly-seeming older teacher in an exclusive school back East, decided that if obedience was good enough for Fugo's parents, it would be good enough for him and what he liked to do with Vaseline and attractive underage boys during long school holidays.
Eyes rudely opened at 12, Fugo took one look at the world that his parents had built for him without ever asking what it was that HE wanted and at what the teacher wanted.
And rebelled.
Blood was spilled, a textbook ruined, money was used to mop it up and charges were dropped.
Fugo was sent to another prestigious school.
And another.
And another.
Until the last one – he'd actually beaten his parents home and was waiting angrily for them on their perfect white couch in their perfect white living room with its Mondrians and Duchamps – he'd flown by himself all the way back from England on a stolen credit card. First class.
On Etihad Airways.
Fires, fistfights, and openly announcing to anybody who would listen that NO he didn't want to be president, he wanted to be a pediatrician specializing in rape and abuse victims, perhaps a social worker, or even a paramedic in some backwater town nobody'd ever heard of – meant no more exclusive schools.
Fugo's parents all but disowned Fugo.
So, no bright future for Fugo.
No Harvard.
No Yale.
Not even Cornell.
As for Fugo? Fugo LIKED it this way, forging his parent's signatures and enrolling himself in Merston High just to rub it in.
"Public school? Anyone who's anything never went to public school!"
"Good! I'll go to Chemeketa Community College after that, maybe get a two year degree and become a L.P.N. Better yet, a pharmacy technician or phlebotomist!"
So the boy who wasn't allowed to join the Scouts or be a camp counselor for the local YMCA because neither would contribute to his (now dim) bright future, was now looking forward to going to PUBLIC school.
That, and a job.
Any job.
Especially if it humiliated his parents who'd seen his high IQ as a status symbol while ignoring the sad, lonely child hidden behind the numbers.
He'd already contacted Mr. Kakyoin, the school librarian. Mr. Kakyoin needed a paid assistant if he could squeeze it into the budget.
If the budget said, "No!", Fugo'd see if they needed a janitor.
Now THAT would really, really piss his parents off.
Hoping that Mr. Kakyoin had run out of funds, Fugo scooped up a glob of pomade and worked it into his hair, watching himself in the mirror.
When it began to resemble some slippery sea-creature, he stopped.
Perfect.
With an evil smile Fugo aggressively mussed his hair, making sure to get as much out of his pomade as possible.
He stopped when his hair looked like someone had styled it with a weed-whacker instead of its usual neatly parted on one side "I do everything I'm told because I'm a pussy." submissiveness
(That'll fix 'em!)
Deliberately leaving body hair all over his bathroom and pomade smears on the mirror, Fugo strode down the white marble and steel hall connecting his bedroom to the living room and spidered his hands across the keys of the white Steinway D-274 that dominated it, banging out the opening riff of Jimi Hendrix's Purple Haze onthe way past before slamming the heavy front door designed by Frank Lloyd Wright behind him as hard as he could in the hopes that it might make something irreplaceable fall off its pedestal and shatter.
Outside, Fugo adjusted his new silk tie printed with strawberries and popped in a set of Airpods, Another Brick in the Wall flooding his brain.
Looking like David Bowie in his prime, the tarnished Golden Child aggressively started his fully restored green vintage Salsbury Model 72 scooter and loudly buzzed past weird-looking Officer Abbacchio with his white hair and dark lips who was ticketing some Karen towards Merston High on streets where he'd knew be recognized.