Andreas, Ltd.

Upon landing at his private airport outside Palm Springs, a valet slapped a carpet on the landing-stairs. God forbid the valet’s timing should be off, thought Andreas Baader, remade and remodeled: he’d lose his job. He was in town to open a chain of exclusive unisex spas, dedicated to total wellness, a “natural extension of the joy through strength programmes of the Old Reich,” he’d quipped once to a local New York fashion journal, not too much to his detriment, however, since the primarily fashion-conscious readership could have cared less about that cross-reference. “How about guerilla chic” he thought, appearing pensive before his host, the Donald, “bandoliers, old army clothes, hair unkempt in bangs? Can a joint venture with Karl Laagerfeld be far behind? Can you imagine Ulrike Meinhof’s mug shot at all the point of purchase centers, above display cases, brightly lit, Laagerfeld’s logo beneath this so iconically charged image? How about the wanted posters?” thought Andreas Baader as the Donald pointed out key landmarks on the Florida coastline, a luxury hotel here, a hotel there, another place where stars watch other stars?

The Egyptians built tombs with this in mind, Andreas had wanted to say, but didn’t, letting this rather self-important and garish fellow with a bad toupee expostulate about the benefits of cash flow. Donald turned the radio down to “Feeling Stronger Every Day” so he could be heard. And to be heard was to be king. No ordinary stiff can speak to the crowd, you know. First-rate hotels were private prisons if you didn’t supply that special touch, he reminded his guest. But it takes a magic wand to bring that about, sometimes more than one, and not just Daddy’s money, which no doubt helps some. “An empire of gold and glass does not by fiat raise up on its heels and bark like a poodle.” It takes that special touch, the Donald insisted, his finger pointed in the air.

It’s true the toupee ill suits him, Andreas Baader thought. To have admitted baldness would have been better (besser). But he guessed it was a trademark, what his admirers expected of him, a man who’d built more towers than Nimrod, whose fleet of private jets could smash them into mounds of masonry, jumbo serifs and gold dust, who had the power to destroy what he’d created with a word whispered to his cellular, and who could view the resulting debris with his trophy model by his side, a woman whose face displayed at once blank incredulity and calculated intelligence.

But the revolutionary apocalyptic subsided with one martini stirred and shaken at the limo bar. Andreas Baader remembered his remodeling, his remolding from mounds of funereal clay. He was an experiment more interested in a hieratic play of signs than in some half-baked foco theory. Flows of cash could expire after all.

Andreas Baader thought he’s be wasting time talking to any of the maids or barkeeps at the hotel triplex. What menial worker wouldn’t be completely suffused with the facts on the ground that generous tips and false consciousness had created? Yes, false consciousness had created facts on the ground. Who could resist? Who would willingly choose otherwise, say the bleak little picnic of the GDR under barren trees? He flipped through a packet of his gold-rimmed business cards on the glass elevator. Each one said WELLNESS in stretched capitals of silver, and beneath wellness, his Christian name only: Andreas, LTD.

“Check this out” said the Donald at the amphitheatre entrance, grabbing a handful of pistachios at the concession stand and munching them as he continued to talk. “Tiles” he said, pressing a control that swept back a grey and regal velvet curtain with his initials emblazoned in each corner. The screen was larger than an ordinary movie screen. It was segmented into tiles, as the Donald called them. Each tile contained a scene. Several scenes could be played at once the Donald smiled at Andreas Baader expectantly, handing him the control. “Posse” the Donald said in bad French, an affectation he reserved for Europeans only. When pushed the buttons unleashed barrages of noise and visual spectacle: 20 channels appeared on the screen, one per tile. But he could adjust the screen so that fewer appeared. Four channels among the twenty screens, one channel among four screens, then one channel only. “You can preview, then select” added the Donald as Andreas Baader somewhat unwittingly segued between the Home Shopper’s Network and Carson Daly’s show.
Andreas Baader had derived the idea of using only his Christian name for his business from Dr. John, the advocate of whole-brain learning who sold a series of mail-order meditation tapes. Andreas had tried to call Dr. John for more of his tapes, but kept getting disconnection messages. He carries some of the earlier tapes with him however, as well as some CDs in case he didn’t have his Walkman. The tapes he felt had made a difference in repairing his disconnected synapses, in allowing the brain to heal itself, as well as to conceive of its lost segments, irretrievable since the prison incident, but reparable using the meditation techniques of Dr. John, at least to the extent that the remaining parts of his brain constructed among themselves a ghost image of the lost parts, which they seemed to agree upon consensually through the exchange of data. Andreas Baader’s full physical reparation however was inconceivable; he would always be a somewhat diminished version of his previous self. And thankfully, he had no memory of the prison incident. But Dr. John’s method was essential to recovery. The old canals and channels that made association and recollection possible were unclogged; the plaque or residue material flushed from memory forever, all so that he could work in his new career as a wellness expert among the rich and famous. Even Robin Leach had threatened to profile him: Andreas, therapist and life coach of the stars, in that East London carnival barker’s voice he’d used for segments on both the Donald and the Don as with others. After the shower, the luxury and suite's long silences sent him into a nap without dreams.

With his Great Dane straining on a studded leash, Don almost walked into the office of the Donald but the security guard stopped him with a hand held before the great aspen and birch veneer doors. But then, alas, the Donald crashed through them with a hand extended toward Don, his good friend from Idaho. They’d do a ski resort together. The Donald waved away the security guard with a sweep of his hand while the mouth of the security guard tightened and his eyes swept the carpet with its giant Donald logo wreathed in laurels. He bowed and fled to his regular position at the cloakroom, walking backward all the way. “Very conscientious new guy” apologized the Donald.

“Andre, meet Don” said the Donald, after which Don said “meet my mutt Dan.” “Sometimes I think he was Scooby-Doo’s understudy,” Don laughed, while the Great Dane drooled on the alpaca carpet, the white strips upraised to spell the Donald logo. Andreas Baader did not enjoy how the Great Dane licked his face, his knobby front paws pressing Andreas against the wall, the cotton batting of which he did not wish to strain with his carefully slicked down hair, his barely concealed bald spot. “Get off Dan” Don urged, pulling the leash until the dog relented and sat as trained in his plush obedience school. Don dropped the dog a treat that looked like a turd. The great Dane gobbled with a lubricious loud chomp. Only then did the Donald introduce Andreas Baader to Don Johnson, lately of Nash Bridges, CEO of Don Johnson Enterprises, Inc., currently developer of a number of ski resorts in Sun Valley, real estate investments primarily for high rollers, guys who’d designed miniature geographical positioning systems for snowboards, gals who’d pioneered alternative herbal medicines for pets. This is what he did, when he wasn’t developing some TV pilot or some made for TV movie starring Yours Truly.

“I want to talk about your spas, Andreas, as soon as I can get Dan to his professional walker.” A winsome Asian woman whose hair concealed her eyes walked into the room as if on cue, and took the leash from Don, who grinned as he surveyed her vertically. But her loose diaphanous robe layered with tangerine and rose revealed little. The logo fluttered on her back as if it were written on clouds in an evening sky with a searchlight. The giant designer dog walked eagerly, his huge frame bowed. As they walked a pedestrian thoroughfare in the hotel triplex between swimming pools, some Olympic and long and rectangular, others for the family bladder-shaped, Andreas Baader felt slender, boyish, but also vulnerable before Don. He let him talk.

The sum of what Don said to Andreas was as follows:
“I’m impressed by your roster of investors….”
“I have a little difficulty, however, with…
“But maybe the test run could be made at this one select little spot about an hour from Denver….”
Where the biggest target audience just might be…”
“the new agers, the professional ski-bums, the finance people and the techies, who, from my market analysis, have not been completely decomated, anyway…..thank goodness for the Dod and the airbases….”

And it all boiled down to the following as the dog was being walked:
“Andreas, I think we can pull it off!” Don pivoted and extended his hand to add, after theatrically pregnant silence: “partner.” Andreas himself didn’t quite catch the connotation of the word.

His hand felt weak in the hand of Don. His knuckles felt as if they were crumbling, like porous stones in upturned clay. Don reminded him of those giant tomatoes of Southern California that Brecht wrote about (he’d a vague memory of reading it in gymnasium) tasteless, bulked up with water, unreal in its dimensions. He was also a man who could fornicate his way out of a grave.
[Insert?]

What Andreas had in mind was a synergy of Wiccan festival, Marat/Sade with switches of birch instead of whips, as in a sauna bath. Also disciplinary Shinto rites combined with the nudity of the Berlin communes, a touch of Wandervogeln even: where ideology and praxis met to melt among bodies. It was a reconstruction of the Neolithic culture of the forest Tacitus had documented and it wasn’t the exclusive property of any ideology anymore!
The baths were heated by submerged grills of nichrome that seared your feet if you didn’t wear the special shoes that he supplied. Some conspired to take them home so they could walk coals for their askance friends. When hot, on snow or vinyl tile they spelled, in capitals that burned brighter than even the initials of the Donald: Andreas, Limited.