Well, we can all kiss our fees goodbye, right out the window, she said. But what you want to do is find existing organizations to give the money to, not set up some cumbersome operation yourself. Of course my firm would be glad to help.
This last she delivered with a smile and all four of the other attorneys hooted at her.
I can’t believe you’re actually hooting in my meeting, George said.
The woman lawyer said, Oh, it’s okay. It proves I’m one of the boys now.
George looked at her and wondered. Where was her left hand? Ah, the ring.
When the coffee and fruit and pastries were brought in, a break in the proceedings, he said to her, in a low voice, Would it be rude to ask someone who’s wearing a wedding ring whether they mean it?
She jerked back a bit, looked at him. A slow smile.
Then, she said, we must further ask, wouldn’t it be equally rude to ask if it were rude to ask? I think so.
Well then, he said. I withdraw the question and propose never to have spoken the words.
But funny, she said. I’m separated. The golden ring’s days are numbered I’m afraid. I’m also amused that you propose never to have spoken words you’d just spoken. You should have been a lawyer. Or a president.
George felt himself visibly lift, brighten. Enough that she laughed.
Well, he said. My mother always said I should be a lawyer. I started working with this guy on his coffee truck in Brooklyn instead.
And the rest is history, she said.
Yes, it’s history. Entrepreneurialism and cutthroat marketing. The American legend. Killing all the bad guys with no help from anyone legitimately representing the law. It’s great. Like Natty Bumppo. Bruce Willis. Clint Eastwood. Et cetera. I’d like to call you but I should consult my counsel.
Your counsel says go right ahead, she said. What have you got to lose? Except half your marital assets?
I’m not married, he said.
Her name was Rachel: they went out a few times. They made it about four weeks, then she called to tell him she was ending it.
You’re a good man, she said, a decent man. But you’re not actually present. I’ve seen this before. I’m going to leave it for someone else to try to cure.
* * *
THOUGH HE’D OFFICIALLY separated from the company, in retirement, he acceded to Burke’s request that he troubleshoot problems at the larger stores—he’d agreed to do New York metro area only for a year, then train others what to do out of town. He wanted no travel. Stores that had been profitable and now weren’t, stores with one kind of difficulty or another, mismanaged, without leadership, not performing. One store had given birth to five lawsuits for mistreatment over three years and not even under the same managers: the place just bred hard feelings. He spent maybe four weeks at most in any one place, didn’t work for a month or two after, until Burke’s assistant Alice called him and said, Hold for Mr. Burke! She was always so excited, she was part of the new sincerity, everybody talked and messaged in exclamation points all the time. And Mr. Burke! He was a famous man after all, now. He might even run for president. Not yet. Probably 2020.
Burke came on the line.
While you were gone, he said. Where were you? One of your trips skiing or sailing in the tropics?
I wish I could ski in the tropics but I went to see Nate in North Carolina, George said.
Nate was teaching politics and literature at UNC. The politics of literature, with an emphasis on postcolonial literature, was his distinct specialty. Appointment in two departments. Twice the departmental bullshit! he’d said.
He’d spent his first sabbatical in Nigeria. Now just back.
Yeah, whatever, Burke said. While you were gone, there was a New York Post story. People are going to our bathrooms to die. That’s the kind of country this is now. You know what we spend on prisons in this country? Do you have any idea?
Fifty billion? George said.
Eighty. Eighty fucking billion. I swear to god I’m going to quit this, run for president, lose, then go to Tuscany. I swear. In any case there’s a store uptown: Hamilton Heights. A fucking mess.
George went in only after the manager was released. He wouldn’t do the firing: he didn’t have the stomach for it. All the ones fired before his arrival, he had made Burke promise, got three months’ pay and six months’ health insurance, with the offer of a return to barista level at another store if they wanted. Generally they didn’t want.
On the way uptown George was chatting with his Russian cabdriver. Not that many lifer drivers anymore. Guy had come over in the ’80s when Brezhnev had let out a few thousand Jews and a sprinkling of low-level dissidents.
The driver said, When I came here, twenty-five years ago, this was a free country. He looked at George in the mirror. It’s not a free country anymore, he said.
Freedom scribbled in the subway. A line Anna had liked. He’d have to remember from where. He kept waiting to see it now. You kept expecting to see the samizdat, the slogans and graffiti signifying a pulsing subcutaneous revolution in the works. Instead what you saw now were sixteen new luxury condominium towers in every neighborhood of Manhattan and the nearer, more fashionable districts of Brooklyn and Queens; eighty or ninety stories if possible. Who was paying off the zoning boards was what he wanted to know. Surely these people could be reported on by the papers. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a zoning board story. The whole fucking skyline had changed. Coming up the New Jersey Turnpike from North Carolina or DC, visiting Nate or Marina, for a time he had seen the painful absence of two astonishing towers. Now there was some putzy little Flash Gordon thing there and the whole rest of the skyline, all the finger-thin towers, like a bunch of kids behind some short hedges flipping him the bird. And what possibility was there for revolution when most of the people who went to college graduated already married to their debt; and when those who didn’t go to college got shot by the cops for a missing taillight or selling loosies on the street? Answer: none. When those two stupid kids bombed the Boston Marathon, what proved more memorable as their violence was the instantaneous military occupation of the city. Any major city apparently could be put under curfew and held under martial law within hours of some outbreak, any outbreak.
George said to the cabbie, I’m glad someone’s noticing.
Nobody’s noticing, the driver said. Nobody’s doing nothing. I know what it looks like. I know how, how, how it taste in the mouth. How it taste. Like this. Putrid.
* * *
THE INELUCTABLE MODALITY of the visible. Today’s visible comprised a liter can of olive oil, now empty, and a paring knife, with which George was attempting to pry from the lid of the can its plastic nozzle, so as to wash the can and recycle it, and recycle the plastic nozzle, too, but separately from the aluminum can—even though the knowledge had been brought home to him at least two years prior that all their plastic shit, the bags and bags of it they—Lourdes mostly, of course—dumped into the basement blue bins wasn’t in fact being recycled anymore but crushed like cars and put up in bales in various zones of poverty around the world, a reality that was up front in his mind, that was doing battle against the fantasy inherent to tossing another plastic item in the bag. But honestly what was he supposed to do about it? This fantasy was still legally required. And nowadays too, he couldn’t look at most basic objects to be disposed without thinking how precious they would become, after the upcoming eco-apocalypse and breakdown of postindustrial hypercapitalist civilization. The modalities, in other words, were becoming considerably more fluid. This Tunisian olive oil can—perfect to the hand, compact, light, holding a liter of precious liquid, would be like gold to the frightened and bereft, those who survived, squatting in the woods, drawing water from diminishing streams.
* * *
SIX MONTHS LATER, George, invited to the opening of Arthur Towne’s new show, Natur/Nurtur, brought the phonetically-appropriate Nate, who was visiting for the weekend. Clarissa and her son, named
Andrew, his grandfather’s middle name, would join them for dinner later. Perhaps Burke too. Marta was in the country apparently. What country was that? George always wondered. He and Nate stood outside the gallery after. Nate asked, regarding some new construction on 25th Street, I suppose that’s being built for rich people?
Everything built here is for rich people, George said. The answer came automatically but then it struck him: what an extraordinary thing to happen to a society. Every single construction, for rich people only. Bankers. Russian thieves. Rich Chinese from the world of Communist capitalism.
And there are no revival houses anymore, George said, apropos of not much—rich people somehow. There used to be—
Don’t tell me, I already know them all, Nate said.
Then he grabbed George by the shoulders. Dad, he said.
Yes? George said.
I’m only going to tell you this once, Nate said.
Yes? George said.
The revival houses are all in your phone now.
Oh fuck that, George said. But, so okay, yeah. Good point. But the city is pathetic and self-deluded now. Have you seen the new world trade center?
Just in passing, Nate said. Like on the Jersey Turnpike. Blink and you miss it.
It’s a piddling little thing, George said. More than a decade in the making. And everyone is pretending it’s a glorious patriotic victory. Twelve years to put up that? George hated the sight of it on the skyline. It was like seeing a man in the locker room with a freakishly small penis. One shuddered.
That was us, he realized. His country had become the man in the locker room with a freakishly small penis. And a mean expression on his face, to compensate. Probably a cop, that man. Forever turned down for promotion.
At George’s level of wealth there was no way he was not part of the problem but he felt at least he’d gotten rich and bought a rich person’s apartment; he hadn’t turned a teacher’s apartment, a librarian’s apartment, a photographer’s apartment, a whole neighborhood once middle class, into an investment banker’s enclave, a whole borough of investment bankers. He hadn’t forced or participated in the destruction of city blocks so that the developers could make him a tower to live in. He understood that he was likely fooling himself. When it came time to gather up the rich and take them out in white Ford Econoline beat-to-shit vans like the one he’d driven those—what, almost forty years ago, shit—gather them up like cordwood and take them out to Citifield and shoot them all, they weren’t going to spare him because he lived in a nice old building on Riverside Drive. The one he’d kept, no matter how much his Brown and Apple stock was worth.
* * *
HE TOOK OFF Monday and Tuesday. Nate flew back to North Carolina on Monday afternoon. George had taken over managing a shop on Fifth and 18th Street; something sweet about it if he could save it: that store was among their first. The Tuesday afternoon after Nate flew out he went in just to check on things; he saw a man, an old man with a walker, and looked twice. He was indeed very old now, this man, but George had him inside a second, from recognition of face to placement of identity—the identity came with recognition of the eyeglasses, the traditional tortoiseshell you never saw anymore. Mr. Goldstein. He sat with a vestigial bony elegance at one of the tables, a walker folded beside him and a vigorous-looking caretaker, large and self-confident, sitting across. Goldstein was reading the Times, he had it folded and was leaning over it with a glass. She was doing something on her phone.
George walked to the table, stood over it a moment and then said, Mr. Goldstein? Goldstein looked up at him.
You will likely not remember me, sir—
A little louder, son, Goldstein says. He pointed to his hearing aid.
You probably don’t remember me, George said again. I was at Columbia when your son was there. I worked for the newspaper.
Goldstein stared at him wet-eyed through large glasses.
I remember you, he said. You came to the apartment.
Yes, sir, I did.
I don’t remember your name, Goldstein said.
George, George Langland.
There was a third seat. George took it.
Langland, the old man said. Pilgrim’s Progress.
Yes, sir, same name.
Did you ever read it?
No, George said. I tried. It was impenetrable.
Even when you penetrate it I’m not sure it’s worth the time, Goldstein said. There was a pause. Like certain women, I guess, Goldstein said, and when he laughed he showed long yellow teeth. This made George laugh too.
Listen to you two, the nurse said. There’s a lady here. So act like gentlemen.
This is Julia, Goldstein said. She rebukes me several times an hour.
Hardly, Julia said. Only when you need it.
Goldstein said to George, I read about you in the Columbia magazine. You’re a high-up with these people. He nodded up and down to indicate the space.
Yes, George said. I’m kind of retired now though. Half-retired. He looked down at the front page of Goldstein’s Times. The Russians were arming the Taliban. Oh good.
What are you going to do with yourself? You’re young.
I’m thinking of taking up sailing again. Boats and water, it’s where I started out.
Goldstein blinked at him. Finally he said, Well, the city has changed. Profoundly. Since then.
Yes, George said. It has.
Money, Goldstein said.
I know, George said.
You’re not innocent of it, Goldstein said. All this.
He gestured over his head, toward the counter.
You do your part to hold the system aloft.
I know, George said. It didn’t seem that way when we started, but now it is, and yes, I do.
So did I, Goldstein said.
Goldstein was the type of man you could sit with in silence, and this George did for a while. And then George said, This is an intrusive question, but I have to ask, have you found any peace? I used to see the ads in the classifieds every year, seeking information, and feel so sorry.
Found peace? No. Not peace. The old man stared down at the table for a second, two, long enough for George to formulate an apology, then he looked back up with his watery old eyes. Our gaze is submarine…
It was torture, Goldstein said. Torture, not knowing what happened. And you never get over being tortured, I suppose. Look at Primo Levi.
Another bit of silence, George let it rest. He didn’t apologize. An apology seemed unnecessary. Goldstein touched his hand: the almost powdery softness of old people’s skin.
Here it is, Goldstein said. I’ve thought of it this way before. Imagine you lose your legs. So much of what you do for the rest of your life is constricted, or painful. Or humiliating. You feel ashamed. But over the years despite all that you still hear a good piece of music or read something fine or successfully make love to your wife—without legs that really must be something but never mind—
George laughed at this. Julia said, Listen to you now still going on.
So at these times you feel what other people feel, you know. Satisfaction. Pleasure. Happiness. Even joy. You can see the largeness and beauty of life. You have snatches of happiness. And does anyone have more than that? Visionaries maybe. Ecstatics… Otherwise no, they have the same little passing lovely moments of happiness as this, but they have it or don’t have it or strive for it or forget it—with legs. But you have no legs. Every day you wake, having dreamt of your legs, and you find again you have none. Every morning that flash of hope, every morning that smash of truth.
He made a small gesture, as if to say, that’s it.
George nodded at him.
Can I get you anything? George said.
Goldstein looked at him, amused, as if George had offered him a little something, a piece of fruit maybe, to compensate for a lifetime of pain.
A little more tea would be fine, he said.
George turned to Julia. Oh yes, she said. We’ll have a piece of
that chocolate cake if you’re offering now. That big one they have there in the case.
George spoke to the head barista, returned to the table.
I told her to bring two forks, he said to Julia.
We don’t need any two forks, Julia said. Unless you’re having some. Look at him now, does he look like he eats cake? He hardly eats, just pecks like a chicken.
Goldstein said, I still talk to him, you know. And I feel as if I hear him.
Really? George said.
Not as if he says, Hi, Pop. I talk sometimes, I wander around muttering, imagining him as he might be now or as he was then, it depends, different times. And then sometimes I feel something. A goodness in the air. Like love. Like a fine, thin joy, a scent. He’s joyful. I’m a mess but he’s joyful. Being dead is like finding the right religion, apparently.
The old man talked very slowly, considering his words as he had considered them so carefully when he’d been interviewed in his apartment forty years ago. With long pauses, as he paused here.
After a time, he said: The cliché is, like all clichés, true. The years do fly by. But they are years after all and eventually one has had enough of them. One dies.
Not yet, George said. Just not yet.
Right. Exactly. That’s what we all say.
Another pause.
Goldstein said, You’ve reminded me of Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, remember when Max Von Sydow, the knight, says to the death figure, wait, hold on—and Death replies, that’s what everyone says.
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