Zenith of Desire: The Hollywood Incubus

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Marvin skipped to the bottom of the column to find the bolded number.

Score: 7/10

Marvin slowly folded the newspaper and placed it neatly on the glass table.

He didn’t particularly like the fact that the review wasn’t entirely glowing, but the ancient tactician inside him recognized the absolute value of a dissenting voice. A perfect sweep of 10/10s across every publication in the country would smell manufactured; it would invite backlash. A cynical, slightly pretentious 7/10 from a Midwestern critic added a necessary, grounded authenticity to the overall consensus.

Furthermore, the critic had spent half the article complaining about the implausible wealth of the characters, yet still couldn’t help but lavish absolute, unfiltered praise on Marvin’s acting.

The boy had transcended the film’s flaws. It completely redeemed the review.

Marvin ran the rapid mathematics in his head. A 9.5 from the Times, a 10 from the Journal, and a 7 from the Tribune.

That made an average score of 8.8 out of 10 from three of the most brutal, unforgiving major publications in the United States. For a live-action Disney family comedy, an 8.8 wasn’t just good. It was historically, astronomically unheard of.

”Not bad,” Marvin murmured, his lips curving into a breathtaking, perfectly calculated smile. ”Not bad at all.”

”Not bad? It’s a total triumph!” Grant announced, walking over to the mahogany wet bar to pour himself a celebratory glass of sparkling water, seeing as it was still before nine in the morning. ”Celebrations are in absolute order, love,” Grant called out to Linda, seeing that Marvin was done reading the last paper.

”Yes, they certainly are!” Linda agreed brightly. She sat beside Marvin on the leather couch, wrapping her arm around his shoulders and pulling him into a warm, maternal hug. Even she, a woman accustomed to the highest echelons of society, found herself momentarily mesmerized by the sheer, magnetic glow radiating from her son this morning. The Incubus was feeding on the critical adoration of millions, and his aura was spilling over, making him look impossibly radiant.

”Why don’t we go out to that nice little, exclusive Mexican restaurant in West Hollywood you were telling me about yesterday, Grant?” Linda suggested, affectionately rubbing the back of Marvin’s head. ”We can get a private booth. Make a quiet family afternoon out of it.”

”Better yet,” a bright, his father chipped in.

”Why don’t we go to Disney Studios?” Grant proposed, ”We wanted to go together for such a long time.”

---

Grant Meyers returned to Los Angeles from New York on the fourteenth of July.

He was the only son of Irving Meyers, Grant Meyers has become an investment banker. Not a generalist — Irving had called him on July 3rd, the day after the Bangkok announcement.

The conversation had been characteristically brief and characteristically direct. Irving had said three things. He had said: your son has a thesis about the Asian crisis that I believe is correct. He had said: I am transferring ninety-five to a hundred million dollars into Zenith Trust over the next sixty days. And he had said: I need you to be his banker.

Grant sat in the chair across the desk — the visitor’s chair, the one that Andrew normally occupied during in-person meetings — and spent forty-five seconds looking at Marvin with the specific quality of attention that professionals in high-stakes disciplines develop over years of evaluating the difference between people who know things and people who think they know things. Then he said:

”The Old man says you understand the won.”

”I understand the whole sequence,” Marvin said. ”The won is the climax of it.”

”Walk me through the chaebol debt structure son.”

Marvin walked him through it. Twenty-two minutes, no notes, precise figures from memory. The Samsung Electronics foreign currency debt position. The Hyundai Motor dollar-denominated borrowings outstanding as of the most recent quarterly filings. The Daewoo Group’s extraordinary leverage — a debt-to-equity ratio that had become, by 1997, one of the most extreme in global corporate finance, hidden in plain sight within the conglomerate’s sprawling and opaque financial statements. The LG Group’s exposure. The SK Group’s. The aggregate picture, when you assembled the individual pieces, was a foreign currency debt burden across the major chaebols that exceeded, on Marvin’s estimation, seventy billion dollars in short-term and medium-term obligations, much of it rolling over in 1997 and 1998 at a time when the regional currency environment was about to make dollar-denominated debt significantly more expensive to service.

When he finished, Grant Meyers was quiet for a moment.

”Those numbers,” Grant said. ”The aggregate chaebol foreign currency exposure. Are those your estimates or are they from published sources?”

”Both,” Marvin said. ”The published figures are almost certainly understated. The off-balance-sheet structures that several of the chaebols use to manage subsidiary debt create material understatements in the consolidated figures. My estimates adjust for this.”

”How are you adjusting for it?”

”By reading the subsidiary filings independently and building the consolidation myself, rather than relying on the reported consolidated statements.” A pause. ”Some of it requires inference. I’ve been conservative in the inference.”

Grant looked at his son for another extended moment, as he also saw the shadow of his own grandfather in him. He realized that Marvin Meyers might be his crowning achievement, and yes, it made him smile. Ultimately, every father desires recognition from his son, so that upon seeing him, he thinks, ’That is Marvin Meyers’ father.’

”Right.” Grant leaned back in the chair. ”All right. Tell me what you need from me specifically.”

---

What Marvin needed from his father was not analysis — he had the analysis — but infrastructure. The positions he intended to establish in the Korean and Indonesian and Malaysian markets required entities on the ground, local brokerage relationships, access to instruments that were available only through domestic market participants, and the navigational expertise to move capital efficiently through regulatory environments that were, in several cases, actively trying to restrict the kind of foreign speculative positioning that Marvin was intending to pursue.

Grant Meyers held a senior executive position at JP Morgan, which is an excellent source for these services.

Grant had the relationships. He had the regulatory knowledge. He know people who had the specific expertise in Korean financial structures that had been, for Marvin, the one genuine gap in his own preparation — because understanding the Korean market from financial statements and published research was one thing, and understanding it from years of doing business in the country, in Korean and English, with the Korean banks and the Korean chaebols and the Korean Ministry of Finance, was another thing entirely.

They spent the afternoon at the desk together. Grant asked questions. Marvin answered them. Occasionally Grant offered corrections or additions from his own knowledge that Marvin noted carefully — with the eagerness of a student receiving instruction, This brought an even wider smile to his father’s face, as he felt proud of guiding his exceptionally talented son.

By six o’clock, Grant had two telephone calls scheduled: one with his senior contact at Korea Exchange Bank in Seoul, and one with a former colleague now running the Tokyo office of a major American investment bank whose relationships in the Korean market were among the deepest in the expatriate financial community.

”I need to ask you something,” Grant said, as he was preparing to leave for the evening.

”Ask.”

”The thesis is sound. I’ve checked enough of the specifics to have high confidence in the directional analysis. The execution plan is—” he paused, selecting the word carefully ”—more aggressive than anything I would have structured, but within the range of defensible given the quality of the thesis.” He paused again. ”But I want to understand something. You’re eleven years old. You have the old man who adores you and a trust account and apparently the analytical capabilities of a senior macro strategist. How much of this is theory and how much of this is —” he searched for the word ”— something else?”

Marvin looked at his father with the dark, composed eyes that everyone who spent time with him eventually commented on — not the colour, but the quality of the attention behind them, the sense that the person looking at you from behind those eyes was processing considerably more than what you had given them.

”Dad, it’s structural analysis,” Marvin said. ”Based on available data. The data says what it says.”

”The data says what it says,” Grant repeated. A small pause. ”All right.” He picked up his jacket from the back of the chair. ”I’ll have the Korea Exchange Bank contact brief me on current won market conditions tonight. We’ll talk in the morning.”

He got up and walked out of his son’s study.

Marvin turned back to the terminal. The Reuters wire was running the evening’s Asian market summaries. The rupiah had fallen further. Bank Indonesia had intervened twice during the trading day, burning through an estimated two hundred million dollars in reserves to defend a rate that the market continued to test with the patient, methodical persistence of water finding the level it will eventually reach regardless of how many obstacles are placed in its way.

He read. He watched. He made notes.

He did not trade.

Not yet. While the big guys gobbled up the glory, he was perfectly fine being the shadow.

After all, he certainly didn’t want to create a rift or any kind of division between himself and these various countries, which could ultimately present significant obstacles and challenges in the path of his future entertainment enterprise. Such a rift could lead to misunderstandings, strained relationships, and even negative public perception, all of which could hinder the success and expansion of his business endeavors in a globally interconnected market.

It was essential for him to maintain positive relationships and foster goodwill, as these connections would be vital for securing partnerships, collaborations, and opportunities within the entertainment industry.

---

The morning sun poured through the massive, floor-to-ceiling windows of the Meyers estate’s formal dining room, casting long, golden geometric patterns across the imported Italian marble floor. The sprawling mahogany dining table was set with flawless precision—heavy silverware, crystal juice glasses, and a sprawling breakfast spread of artisanal bread, imported prosciutto, and freshly roasted Colombian coffee.

At the head of the table, Marvin sat with the immaculate, relaxed posture of a young king. He wore a crisp, dark navy polo shirt that perfectly accentuated his impossibly striking features. Even his mere presence in the sunlit room carried a dense, magnetic gravity.

The Incubus within him hummed quietly, satisfied by the sprawling success of the past few weeks, lazily absorbing the ambient, overflowing pride radiating from his human parents.

Grant Meyers sat to his right, obscured entirely behind the expansive, pink-tinged pages of the Financial Times.

Suddenly, the newspaper was lowered. Grant peeked over the rim of his reading glasses, a wide, deeply amused smile spreading across his face.

”Hey, Marvin,” Grant announced, his booming voice echoing lightly in the vast room. ”I was thinking. Your mother and I have a relatively open schedule this evening. How about we all go see the movie tonight?”

Marvin had just taken a delicate, perfectly measured bite of toasted sourdough and ham.

At his father’s words, the demon actually faltered. He choked for a microscopic fraction of a second, a delicate frown marring his flawless brow as he struggled to swallow the sudden, dry lump in his throat.

He reached for his crystal goblet of iced water, took a slow, elegant sip to clear his airway, and fixed his father with a look of absolute, chilling deadpan.

”Watching a movie?” Marvin asked, his smooth, velvety baritone laced with a heavy dose of aristocratic dread. ”Tell me, Dad. It is not going to be The Parent Trap again, is it? Because if it is, I am issuing a formal, non-negotiable veto. I absolutely refuse.”

It wasn’t that Marvin harbored a teenage rebellion against family activities. He generally found the role of the dutiful, brilliant son to be highly effective and occasionally entertaining. But this specific request crossed the line into psychological warfare.

He had been watching this exact movie so many times over the past three days that he was practically sick to his stomach.

First, there was the massive, chaotic premiere at the TCL Chinese Theatre. Then, he had endured a grueling, private screening with his wildly excited Aunt Nancy to analyze the final cut’s color grading. Following that, he had been forced to attend a chaotic, hormone-fueled outing at the Westfield Century City multiplex with Mark, John, Lindsay, Dorothy, and Jessica—an excursion requiring a small army of bodyguards to keep the screaming fans at bay.

And then... then came the true torture. He had been dragged to the local luxury cinema five more times by his dear, fiercely obsessed parents.

*****

It seems people took the Fact in the last Chapter as if they would happen in this world, but that’s not the case. Why would I do that? It was based on our world facts.

Fact : In The Woman in Me, Britney Spears talks about a moment where her dad, Jamie Spears, basically told her ”I am Britney Spears now.”

Not in some dramatic speech. Just straight up control.

Like—he runs everything, so what she wants doesn’t matter.

That’s why people reacted to it.

Because it sounds insane when you hear it plainly.

A grown woman, one of the biggest pop stars ever, and someone else is saying they are her in terms of decisions.

*****

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