Final junior english creative writing project on The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon. This serves as the backstory to the book in the perspective of Pierce Inverarity.
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Pierce Inverarity was rich; or as some others may call it, filthy rich. The liquid assets he owned totaled up to a grand sum costing more than half the middle-class Americans’ wealth combined, making him one of the richest, yet hidden from public perception, men in the world. How the media managed to graze by and miss his potential to become a world star, many were curious about, but it was only inevitable that the most elite in the society who wanted to keep their identities secret could feed the press enough dollars to mute any troubles.
Once one gets to this level of wealth, however, any man, no matter how strong or self-determined, falls into the trap of boredom from the sickly sweet stimulants that money can provide only up to a certain threshold above the line of rich, chocolatey goodness of power that those who had not experienced so desired. Pierce was no exception. The one digression that he enjoyed focused on a small town in southern California, San Narciso. It fit his needs, being the perfect size, not too urban, not too small to make a joke out of his pool of wealth. With every idle passing day, he looked into new housing models or companies, buying shares, swallowing businesses. Within years, he had owned some part of all property in the San Narciso, and wherever he went, he had become a local superstar. Pierce Inverarity, owner of San Narciso. He decided to build a series of buildings there, his supposed headquarters, where employees did nothing but sit around and manage his estates and shares. Days, weeks, months, years passed, his presence grew, and his joy in his digression shrunk, the excitement of a five-year old opening a pile of Christmas presents decreasing with the shrinking mound of boxes.
Then he met Oedipa Maas. The day he met her was not a special occurrence; it just happened to be that they were both sitting in the same coffee shop, too busy with tired businessmen to give the two people a table each. They sat together, talked, and found that they clicked like two puzzle pieces in an expensive 1000-piece jigsaw. Pierce brought her to his house, a mansion of a home complete with the most exorbitant pieces of furniture; statues of translucent ivory, Michelangelo triptychs lined with a heavy golden frame. Oedipa would comment on various items, but especially in the bedroom. “Pierce, I swear to god, no amount of money would keep you alive once that Jay Gould head tips over,” she would say, laughing. Pierce would always laugh back, of course, but he never removed the statue.
Later into their relationship, Oedipa started deviating from her perfect cut-out. Of course, it may have been him, not her. Maybe he didn’t flaunt his credit cards wildly enough. Maybe it was him never introducing her to San Narciso and his extravagant buildings. She was not at all that jigsaw puzzle that fit in with Pierce’s crooked personality. Coming in the front door, she swayed side to side, stumbling on the stairs and collapsing onto the bed. “God,” she mumbled, holding a single-stemmed red rose—something that Pierce had gotten too familiar seeing recently. What is with that Wendell Menos or whomever? Why is he asking to see you so often? He would ask her, and she would just shrug. The shrug signified something more than a simple I don’t know, and one day, she delivered. “Pierce, baby, I—”
Oedipa had caromed him and that Wendell Menos. Two men, with the other being significantly worse off than himself, Pierce sighed in disappointment. “I hope you find your freedom outside my grasp,” he said finally, kissing her palm. One year later, Oedipa became Oedipa Maas. The day the couple married, Pierce did not attend their wedding, and instead sent a check of a thousand dollars congratulating their marriage. Salty, sad—a true Inverarity would never. However, the same day, he did end up taking the very last piece of property within the borders of beautiful San Narciso. What was to do now? All presents had been opened, ripped, enjoyed, abandoned, and all there was left was a bare Christmas tree with sad ornaments hanging like fallen angels. A new hobby, that was what Pierce needed, anything that would take use of his pool of dragon vaulted coins and give him a fresh new holiday to enjoy. The wedding just happened to be that day. Taking a pen and a blank piece of paper, a smile crept over his face as he scribbled away at random ideas; he began planning something big, something that would shake their lives forever. To Mrs. Maas, he would give her more than a grand and linger within the deepest corner of her life forever. If he could not have left a mark and let her chase off to another man, he would leave a mark now. A mark to demolish her tower and shatter her mentality, liberating her soul and salvaging her perception of what should be right and what should be wrong. But also, a short fling to keep his mind at play while he sat back to enjoy the show. His celebrity companions joined in almost immediately. He mailed a short potscard to Metzger in a few hours, inviting him for a chat, perhaps by going to a play that was happening around town together.
With a final call to his ex-lover late at night, he gave a challenge to himself, that within three hundred and sixty five days, he would have everything set up to start her journey. He sincerely hoped that she would enjoy this as much as he would.