The Twenty-Seventh City

by Jonathan Franzen

  “I admit it. But what if I stick to my guns?”

  “You know that won’t matter either.”

  “Why not.”

  “Because you’re special to me.”

  He rested his head on the hard back of the chair and released the controls in his head, let it throb. The ceiling was a solid white but consisted of an infinity of points; without betraying their individuality, all of them began to glow. “What about dinner?” he said, with effort.

  “Call me when you’re through with Stone. I’ll be here.”

  It was somewhere between fifteen and ten before 8:00, a crooked time, the minute hand marking a fractional. Probst stood up and ate a handful of salted peanuts from a blue Planter’s can. He reached for the liquor cabinet but didn’t venture in. He understood her. She was in no more hurry to see him abandon John Holmes and Vote No than he was to see her undressed: all in good time.

  Of course he didn’t trust her. He wasn’t born yesterday. He suspected that Quentin Spiegelman had been told he was special to her, that Ronald Struthers had been told he was special to her, and before that, Pete Wesley. That was how coalitions were formed. But now at least he had a sound alternative to General Norris’s theory of conspiracy. Jammu didn’t need to plant bugs or bomb cars when there was a handier point of access: she made people love her.

  He could smell his peanut breath. Up the stairs he went again to brush his teeth. His gums were sore, it was ridiculous. Then again, an aura of peanut butter might easily have undermined his credibility with Brett Stone. He didn’t plan to get into a discussion of Jammu. He did, however, plan to hint that he wouldn’t actually be all that disappointed if the merger went through. He’d recently come up with a good new twist on his American Revolution analogy, just the sort of thing Time would go for. The doorbell was ringing as he came down the stairs.

  On the doorstep stood a rosy-cheeked thirty-year-old whose head came up as far as Probst’s shoulders. The photographer? Wisps of vapor trailed away from his nose; the night was cold and wet. Probst didn’t see anyone else.

  “Come in. You’re—”

  “Brett Stone.” Nodding, Stone stepped inside. The hand he put out for Probst to shake had short black hairs on the knuckles, and puckered white palms. Apparently he hadn’t brought a photographer.

  “Shall we get right to it?” Probst said.

  “Sure.” Stone led him into the living room, nodding.

  “Can I get you something?”

  “Thanks, no.” Stone’s watch pipped eight o’clock. He had curly hair the color of motor oil, and pale green eyes. His nodding was rapid and barely perceptible, as though residual from some big bang earlier in his day or life.

  Probst was fascinated. “Any trouble finding me?”

  “Nope!” Stone had opened his briefcase on his knee and placed a microcassette recorder on the coffee table. Probst stationed himself at the fireplace, and Stone began to ask him questions. Why had Westhaven gone bankrupt? Of Municipal Growth’s members of a year ago, how many were still active in the group? Was Probst making any effort to expand it now? Apart from being a chief executive, what other criteria were there for membership? Had Probst been asked to join Urban Hope?

  Probst fielded the questions thoughtfully, crafting his sentences with an eye to the tape recorder, and threw in as many interesting sidelights as he could before the next question arrived. Soon he was sweating with concentration. Yet there remained in his head a whispering voice. You’re special to me, Martin. You’re special to me…

  At 8:25 Stone finished the lead-off factual questions and put away his pen and clipboard. Probst took a seat in the wing chair by the sofa, threw one leg over the other, and turned to Stone. It was time to get into the meaty issues. Stone stood up and said, “Thank you, Mr. Probst.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Sure.” Stone nodded. “Appreciate it. You’ve been very helpful.” He turned off the tape recorder. “Unless there’s something you’d like to add.”

  “Well-no. No. I do have some thoughts on the city-county—”

  “They’re well documented.” Stone locked his briefcase and spun the combination wheels. “And I had a very productive talk with John Holmes this afternoon. We hate to take your time when there’s already so much on the record. You’ve been very eloquent in the past.”

  Very eloquent. Rabbits know instinctively the meaning of the shadow of a hawk; Probst felt the shadow of New York.

  Stone was waiting for him to stand up. “But if there’s anything else you think might help us—”

  “I had a question, actually.” He didn’t stand up.

  Stone looked down at him patiently. “Sure.”

  “What kind of story is this you’re writing?”

  “Well.” Stone hitched his pants up over his hips. “You’d be surprised how many people have mentioned that CBS documentary ‘Sixteen in Webster Groves.’ I think CBS really traumatized this area. Everyone’s afraid we’re going to smear you. Don’t worry. None of the media are, not this time around. I myself have been uniformly impressed here.”

  “That’s not exactly what I mean.” Probst made himself comfortable in his chair. “I mean more specifically. How you’re going to fill up the pages.”

  “Sure.” Stone buried his hands in his pockets. “You never know what the editors will do, so I can’t really give you a point-by-point rundown, but you can expect to see, oh, the political dynamics of the region. Chief Jammu, of course, in many different contexts. The downtown redevelopment and the philosophy behind it. Crime, welfare, the new federalism. Possibly Municipal Growth, its demise. And you can’t run a story on St. Louis without the Arch. Within the rubric of St. Louis we’ll also do a spread on other up-and-comers. Knoxville, Winston-Salem, Salt Lake, Tampa.”

  The Arch? Probst had built the Arch. Perhaps Stone was unaware of this. George Snell of Newsweek had been aware of it. He’d interviewed Probst for ninety minutes and cited him liberally in the article, calling attention to the key role he played in shaping public opinion.

  Stone’s watch pipped again.

  Probst stalled. “The special election?”

  “The referendum, the Baltimore situation. Sure. It’s interesting. We’ll treat it. But at this point it’s mainly news because it’s divided the region, not because it’s united it. And what we’re interested in is the forces of unity.”

  Probst stood up and walked to the fireplace. He was so in love with her he couldn’t see straight, but he could see how generous she’d been on the phone, talking like he mattered. “You want a scoop?” he said.

  “A what?”

  He raised his voice. “Do you want me to tell you something?”

  Stone was listing slightly to the left, as if his nodding would eventually topple him. He grinned. “Sure.”

  “I’m calling a press conference tomorrow.” Probst wet his lips. “I’m quitting Vote No and supporting the merger.”

  “Really. That’s very interesting. Because of course you’ve been instrumental in opposing it.”

  “Yes.”

  “If it wasn’t clinched before, this should certainly do it.”

  “Yes.”

  “Can I ask if you’re planning to divorce your wife?”

  “No comment.”

  When Stone had gone, Probst began to pace the dining room and living room. Chief Jammu, of course. He could still renege. He could still vote no. If he didn’t follow through, Time wouldn’t tell. But having made his little declaration of love in Stone’s presence, as if by a slip of the tongue, a guilty blush, he was much less inclined to back out than to go on and shout the same declaration from every street corner in St. Louis County, so good did it feel to have the secret shared at last. In many different contexts. She was all over the living room. He threw himself onto the sofa and saw her in all the places she hadn’t ever been, stretched out on the window seat, leaning on the mantelpiece, standing on the arm of the sofa to inspect the three still lifes above him. She
outnumbered him. He was very small. He let the telephone ring a long time before trudging to the kitchen to answer it.

  “Hello,” he said.

  “Martin.”

  “What,” he said.

  “Is Stone still with you?”

  “Ah, no.” It was no accident she was calling now. She knew he couldn’t have called her himself. “Mr. Stone left. I didn’t have much to say to him, and he didn’t need much that he didn’t already have. Something like that.”

  “The same thing happened to me. He took some quotes and a picture.”

  “Oh really.”

  “Yes.”

  “If you lie to me,” he said, “I don’t know what I’m going to do. Stone spent three hours with you if he spent half a minute.”

  After a long, wounded pause, she said, “What’s the matter?”

  “Read the paper on Friday.”

  “What did you say about me?”

  “You know what the matter is.”

  “You changed your mind?”

  “For the last time, Ess, don’t pretend. Of course I changed my mind.”

  “And how, may I ask, was I supposed to know that?”

  He sighed. She was still pretending. “How thrilled you sound,” he said.

  “Just wait a minute. Let it register. This changes things.”

  “No it doesn’t.” He began to speak with some authority, to save his pride. “If I quit Vote No tomorrow, I do it because I want to and because I think it’s right. I like you, but I would certainly never let a thing like that affect my decisions. I want that understood. The merger wasn’t the only obstacle between us. I’m also married. I have a wife. And I’ve changed my mind about dinner. It’s the price you pay. A lot of people love you, but not many of them trust you. I’d have to count myself among the majority there.”

  Excessively pleased with having said he loved her without having to say it, he looked at the clock. For a moment he believed it was 9:00 in the morning. Jammu was speaking.

  “My name is Susan, Martin. Susan Jammu. And I haven’t changed my mind about dinner. I know you aren’t going to work for the referendum on account of me. I thought that sort of thing was understood between us. I thought we respected each other more than you make it out we do. I know you’re married. I wish I didn’t have to be saying this on the telephone. If I don’t sound shocked that you’re planning to sell out John Holmes and the rest of them, it’s because I felt you never belonged there in the first place. Obviously it isn’t an easy thing to do, what you’ve done. I’ll understand if you want to cool it for a while, cool it for as long as you want, but I think you owe me a dinner, tonight of all nights.”

  Susan. It was pathetic. A name was such a tiny thing—so tiny that she couldn’t have expected him to be impressed if she weren’t impressed herself already. She must have considered it her big secret, her ace in the hole. Probst felt sorry for her. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” he said.

  The cabdriver tried to give her forty dollars back from her fifty, but she slammed the door and let him keep it as a tip. Maybe it was too big a tip. Was it too big? Her shoe heels conveyed the force of the ground pleasurably into the center of her foot heels as she ran up the pink sidewalk to the entrance of Rolf’s headquarters. It was noon. The lobby was empty. Was it too big? Four hundred percent! That was much too big. But no one would find out, and next time she’d make it up by not tipping at all. The lobby guard, who knew her, didn’t smile this time. He looked at her as men look at women who can’t manage money. The elevator came and she got on, but she had to get off because people wanted out. She got on. On the phone Rolf had called her—and then he’d called her Devi, but they’d quarreled before, but then the maid had said—and then the desk had said the bill wouldn’t be paid after 2:00 p.m., and then she’d hit an artery, and then Jammu had called and reasoned with her and told her the flight number and the gate number and the airline desk to get her ticket at, and she’d reasoned with Jammu. Everything was happening at once. Everything was the same when she went to bed and different in the morning. Jammu said Martin was on Rolf’s side. She said that wasn’t possible. Jammu said pack. The elevator door opened. Four hundred percent. That was four times everything! She ran down the hall and pushed open the glass doors.

  “May I help you?”

  She ran past the typewriter and the red nails of the woman’s outstretched hands and into his office and closed the door. She kneeled.

  “Now, Devi—”

  He didn’t understand. She couldn’t reason with him.

  “I told you on the phone, now. You can’t deny I’ve been dashed square with you. Be a big girl.”

  He pulled her to her feet. He pulled her to the door, and she said one last—

  “All over, Devi.”

  He didn’t understand. One last—Give me one last—

  “The game is over. Wash your face, and do try and get that silly color out of your hair. You’ll feel ever so much better.”

  One last—She was wearing his first present, and she guided his hand down under and then inside, using her nails to make sure he didn’t leave until he felt. The maid was nice. The maid asked about her things. The maid listened and said chippying, which meant economizing. She wished!

  She locked the door with her other hand and went down to the floor. Martin always said Rolf was a prick. Rolf told her he always did. She could see it now. She hated it. She’d go back to Martin and apologize to him. Martin would be madder than ever when he found out that prick had done this to her on the floor even though its mind was made up and she knew it would call the police because it had said so on the phone. Its teeth unclenched.

  “That was it, now. Happy?”

  Yes happy. Good-bye forever! (She couldn’t wait to count it.) When she ran through the glass doors again the woman was gone and her red nails with her. It was still noon. This time she ran down the stairs. She lost a heel. She stopped to break the other heel and knock it off and ran the rest of the flights flatfooted. The guard said, You’ll never learn to manage. You should learn to drive your own car. His telephone rang as she revolved through the doors onto the pink sidewalk. She began to run.

  “Stop right there, young lady!”

  She heard the guard running, and she ran floating like a deer. The credit cards were perishable. He was gaining on her, and she didn’t see any cabs on the circular drive. For forty dollars he at least could have waited three minutes! Fortunately a white car pulled over and a back door opened. She got in and turned around in time to see the guard draw up and stick his hands on his hips and his chest heave and his cheeks scarlet and his mouth say, hoo boy, hoo boy. She knew the driver in the front seat. He had a friend she hadn’t met.

  “We stopped and picked up your bags.”

  He said in a foreign language she understood, catching her breath. They were driving her to the airport. Jammu had said. She hadn’t expected the royal service and she wouldn’t tip them. They drove on the freeway. They didn’t say anything except the friend was coming along with her. She looked in the wallet still warm from the seat of the only one besides Martin she’d done it with. In the front seat they were eating pills and they gave her one which she noticed was different from theirs. She smiled and put it in her mouth and took the can of Crush.

  “Dramamine for your flight.”

  “You’ll feel calmer.”

  She put her compact up to her face to work on her personality and dropped the wet, crumbling pill in the compact. She snapped it shut. At the airport the driver and his friend got out and set her bags on the sidewalk. She got out. Her feet were flat! The driver tried to take her purse away from her, and somehow the strap broke and people were looking. The two friends looked at each other and tried to reason her back into the car for a minute.

  “Do you know theeth men, young lady?”

  One man was very interested. The two friends jumped in the car. She told the man they were harassing her, which was funny because the car drove aw
ay.

  “Can I give you a lift thumplace?”

  She read the chrome words COUNTRY SQUIRE. His car was older, a station wagon with weathered plastic wood siding. The Country Squire smiled and held the passenger door for her. They left the airport. The Squire was driving awfully fast.

  “What’th your name?”

  She wasn’t sure right now. She hadn’t ever met the Squire, and she was coming down with the afternoon flu. Wait a second. She opened her purse, zipped the wallet into a pocket and arranged things for the cure. On her right the Marriott disappeared. People didn’t understand Barbara, and when they gave her no credit there was no one left to turn to except Martin. She didn’t believe Martin was really on Rolf’s side.

  Trying to reason with her the whole way, the Squire took her downtown. Was she cold? No, she said she only thought she might be coming down with something for the moment. He finally stopped for a light. His mouth widened, a smiling prick. She sprayed Mace in his face and kept spraying until the car behind them honked at the green light. She got out of the car and looked up the street for another cab. Get well soon! she told herself, hopeful even in her chills.

  In the first light of Friday, before the city rose, Probst climbed the central staircase at his South Side headquarters. At two or three o’clock he’d stopped trying to sleep. At five he’d stopped trying to keep his eyes closed. He was behind even with his personal tasks at the office, and he knew that the phones at every place where he could conceivably be reached would start ringing at eight. He also felt he owed it to Cal and Bob, who of late had effectively been running the company for him, to come in and work some early mornings in the name of the team.

  Mike Mansky, at his desk in Engineering, nodded to him and in the same motion leaned forward to kill a cigarette in the ashtray on his blotter. They had a night crew out rebuilding a bridge on Route 21, otherwise Mansky wouldn’t be here.

  Probst negotiated the dark, windowless corridor to his office and opened the door. Carmen’s battened-down desk and typewriter were gray in the light of the new day. The same gray of imminence dwelt temporarily in walls soon to be white, carpeting soon to be blue, file cabinets soon to be more indigenously gray. Already some color was coming out—a spot of red enamel in the corner, a small electric coffeepot. Carmen liked a cup of instant soup on cold afternoons.