Collecting Mr. Epstein

The worst man is still a man, and one can flip the gender for Nannie Doss or Lucrezia Borgia. The reckoning makes that truth clear. Consider Adolf Hitler in his bunker, when he knew the Reich was truly gone. He died in terror, in pride of his achievements, in love with Eva Braun. Half rabid with fear, he still possessed shreds of that charisma that could have moved and aided millions, had he not chosen to burn millions instead. I heard it all in his voice. He was, to be clear, evil. Thoroughly so. Still, if one read his thoughts as he aimed the gun at himself (and I did), a little part of him imagined another life, painting landscapes along the Rhine. I’d ballpark that part at four percent of him.

I collect them: reckonings. Someone needs to.

That, of course, is why I sat on a 727 about to touch down in New Jersey on July 6, 2019: Jeffrey Epstein’s “Lolita Express.” He took me for a journalist profiling his philanthropic endeavors. They always explain me to themselves somehow; running from the Moscow mob, Rasputin believed me a woman he had “purified” a few nights before.

“You can’t pigeonhole the future,” Epstein said, clinking the ice in his tumbler. “It doesn’t belong to science, or architecture, or art, or technology – no matter what the Google crew would tell you. It’s the nexus.” He pointed his finger for emphasis, then noted the paltry level of liquid in his glass. He raised the finger upward, and the stewardess approached with more pomegranate juice. He never drank; he’d seen too often what drink would do, growing up near Coney Island.

“The future is in the nexus,” he said. “That’s why I’ve given so much to the MIT Media Lab. You have to believe in something. I believe in the future.” The stewardess dropped in more ice cubes. Epstein said, “Thank you, Stacey,” as she walked away.

“You’ve given elsewhere, too,” I prompted.

“I have. I have…” He watched the ice cubes swirl in the deep red. “I made my first donation to Harvard nearly thirty years ago. For Rosovsky Hall, the new Hillel building. My name’s on the plaque there.”

“Does that matter to you? The name on the plaque.”

“No. Sort of…” Another sip, another moment watching the cubes. “Everyone dies, you know. Someday I’ll die. Stacey there. The pilot. You.” Three out of four, I thought. “A man wants to leave something. Something that will last. Matter.”

Buildings rushed by quickly outside the window, but I waited. Questions channel thinking. To truly know a person, one must silently wait.

“We all need to balance the scales,” he said.

He turned to find me when the feds and the NYPD accosted him, but I was already gone, and already he had mostly forgotten me. I’d collected his reckoning; I knew who he was.

There was fear, as always, and anger. A little bit of regret, even on the flight. The question of legacy truly mattered to him; I felt it as he talked of the future. If one listened to his words very closely—and many people had—one could hear that genuine concern and zeal; so loudly that one might not realize how much Stacey’s backside preoccupied him, or recognize how viciously part of him wished to own her.

I’d ballpark that part at 88 percent of him.