“Bubbles have been popping since the seventeenth century, and we've known since at least the early twentieth century how to avoid the worst consequences. The central bank loans the private banks money so they can cover withdrawals, which makes everyone feel secure and willing to keep their accounts open. It's a masterstroke of psychological hacking, really. Maybe the best one we know about.
“What surprised everyone was that this time the government didn't intervene, and let all the banks fail. The idiots in charge said the markets were supposed to sort it out themselves, and only the strongest companies would survive, which would make the economy even stronger when it recovered. Which it never did, and here we are today.
“Of course, with a fucked up economy the government didn't have any taxes coming in. So they cut spending, saying it would save money and increase business confidence, which would jump-start the economy and the whole problem would solve itself. How? Magic, that's how. And when it turned out that magic isn't real they sold everything to Liberty Bell in a fire-sale and made federal employees work half-days. So, in my final estimation, I would say it was the government's fiscal responsibility that turned a panic into the Panic.”
The Merchant had restocked the bar by the time Dimitri finished his version of the story. We bought our cheap beers and went back to the table, where James was telling Mary how all of these conspiracies kept him out of the market and how he could find a lower paying job most people would kill for in like two seconds, but he wasn't ready to give up on his dreams just yet.
Mary patted my leg and whispered into my ear, “Calm down, I'm only being friendly. I still like you best.” She strengthened her reassurance with a kiss before turning back to James, who wanted to continue discussing his personal favorite conspiracy, a Chinese and American collaboration called PACIC, pronounced passic and standing for Project for American and Chinese International Cooperation. In James's mind, the two most powerful countries on the planet were screwing their citizens because they had nothing better to do.
Dimitri pored over his tablet and I sank into my beer. We'd arrived thirty-eight minutes ago, and it had taken us about twenty minutes to walk here. That made Ruth an hour late. More likely she'd skipped out on us. I asked Merch to put on some music. Classical piano filtered in through speakers mounted in the corners of the room.
“Any idea who this is?” James asked.
“Mozart?” I supplied unhelpfully.
“Bach?” Mary guessed.
“It's definitely Tchaikovsky,” James pronounced.
“It's Schubert,” said Dimitri. “Piano Sonata #16 in A minor. Maybe the first movement?” He moved his fingers on an imaginary set of keys. “Yeah, I'm pretty sure it is.” The three of us gaped at him. “What?” he said defensively. “I learned to play the piano when I was six. And regardless, it's really, really famous.”
“Bullshit,” James said. “You're only saying that because they don't know what song it is. It's Tchaikovsky, like I said. Of course it's going to be the first movement—the Merch put it on thirty seconds ago.”
“Which song?” Dimitri asked.
“I don't know, I have a bad memory for that stuff.”
“We can ask Merch,” I said. James called him over, and when we asked he went to check. “It's Piano Sonata #16 in A minor, man. Composed by the wonderful and glorious Franz Schubert.”
James began arguing with him over the music, suggesting it had been mislabeled and wondering aloud if it didn't sound more like Tchaikovsky than Schubert. Merch admitted it was possible, and excused himself to go serve his other customers.
Fifty-one minutes after we arrived—at the start of the second movement, according to Dimitri—Ruth walked into the Well-Tempered Clavier. She looked like a celebrity in disguise, hiding behind monstrous sunglasses and wearing scintillating, golden teardrop earrings that diverted attention from her face. She had on an aquamarine halter top and pressed tennis skirt, and looked like she belonged on a yacht with some young East Coast aristocrat and not in an underground drug den in an impoverished Brooklyn neighborhood.
She scanned the room, mouth turned down in a grimace. When she spotted us it flared up into a smile that I returned involuntarily. The Germans paused to watch her cross the room. Ruth kissed me, then James, on the cheek. Dimitri stared at her with glazed, stupefied eyes—he hadn't seen her since graduation and seemed torn between holding a deep-seated, trivial grudge and giving her another chance. In a normal state of mind he would've ignored her the entire time, but high Dimitri placed a lower priority on projecting his conscious, cultivated self-image. She smiled at him and his face brightened into a dopey grin. For the moment the past was past.
“Hi Mary, it's nice to see you.”
“Glad you could make it.”
“Sorry I'm late. I had lunch with this guy. He's an actor in Othello.”
“The play?” I asked.
“No, you idiot,” James said. “She means the show. Who is he?”
“It doesn't matter,” she said, sitting down next to him.
“Well it has to be based on the play, right?” I inquired, but no one was paying attention. James was engaged with Ruth and Dimitri was trying to butt in. Mary rocked back and forth, holding herself and blankly gazing down at the table. She must have smoked while Dimitri and I were at the counter. The two Germans were talking, eyes fixed on Ruth. Probably discussing how to get her attention and peel her off from us. She'd broken the flow of our conversation and focused all attention on herself, and I resented her for it.
Mary mumbled something. “What was that?” I asked.
“This table—it used to be a living tree.”
“So what?”
“And... and... Cliff do you think any animals died when they cut it down?” she blurted.
“I dunno. Yeah, I bet some did.”
“That's terrible!” she cried. “Poor animals. Minding their own business and then,” she made a buzzing sound, “they're all dead!” I wished I'd smoked. When I'm high I become paranoid and cynical to the point of nihilism, but at least I'd be wrestling with magnified, sublime interior fears instead of feeling awkward and out of place.
“Ruth, you gonna smoke?” I asked.
“There's pot in there?”
“Mhm.”
“I don't think so. Have you been smoking?”
“No, but I was about to start.”
“Go ahead. I don't really like to.”
“What, since when?” In college she'd been something of a closet stoner.
“Since always. I don't feel anything from it.”
“Everyone gets high. It's a chemical reaction, it's not like you can avoid it.”
“I don't know about any of that. I know it doesn't work for me."
“In that case, you can smoke and it won't matter.”
“No thanks—don't feel like it. Don't let me stop you.”
“I'm good.”
“I'm glad,” she said, and turned to Mary, “How've you been?”
“Good. Very good,” she said, drawing me to her and feeling my face. “You're skin is so soft. You should shave and be gone with those nasty whiskers. Don't you think so?” she asked Ruth.
“When Cliff shaves he looks so young. Are you still in school?”
“It's the summer.”
“Of course it is, dearie. I mean have you graduated?”
“I will next spring. Right now I'm working for a graphic design company.”
“Are you? I hear they pay pretty well.”
“They pay alright.” I hated Ruth's vaguely accusatory compliments. If her and James ever dated, I'd be interested to see who killed the other first. I put my money on Ruth—a poisoned drink, or a helping hand off their penthouse balcony.
“I'm sure they do,” Ruth said. To me, “How's Elly?”
“Who's Elly?” Mary demanded.
“The girl I tutor, remember? She's fine. School's over, so her schedule is a bit hectic at the moment.”
“
Of course. Am I ever going to meet her?”
“I don't see why you would.”
“Don't you take her to the park? I could meet you two there. I'll take her out for ice cream afterwards. I bet she's adorable.”
“I can't see you being good with children,” Mary said flatly.
Beside us, James and Dimitri were hunched over the table. I couldn't see James's face, but Dimitri had assumed the philosopher's pose, chin stuck between his thumb and index finger. He would nod every so often and whisper into James's ear, then lean back.
“I have three younger siblings I practically raised myself. Anyway, call me sometime you're out with her. Kids love me.” Ruth tugged on James's shirt sleeve, stealing him from Dimitri. He almost said something, a feeble protest, but smoked instead.
“She's such a snob,” Mary said. “Why invite her?”
“Don't take it personally. It's how she is.”
“I don't like her.”
“She feels threatened. It's because the she's runner up at this table.” That made her feel better, and she pecked me on the lips. I slipped my arm around her waist. I liked Mary—she was cute and interesting and sensible, but when she left after a date I didn't care. After that first afternoon the initial rush had evaporated, as yet unrepeated.
Ruth twirled her hair, laughing at a joke James told and touching his leg. She'd leave in a bit—the first to go. Her arrivals and departures were calculated for maximum effect, I was certain. An explosive burst and she was gone, leaving me with no idea when I'd see her next.
I wanted another drink. So did James, Dimitri, and Ruth. Not Mary. I put it on James's tab—four beers and a shot of whiskey that I gulped down at the counter. When I returned, the table was listening to Dimitri share an epiphany he'd had.
“...poorly designed machines. We break all the time, but society can't throw a person away like you can a bad motherboard. Plus, even broken, we can still function. We just look away until that weird guy in the office shoots his wife and himself. Hell, it doesn't have to be the outcast. How many uptight suits are closeted pedophiles or drug addicts?” I sat down and passed out the beers. No one paid me any mind.
“If... if... say you collect things,” He continued. “Snowglobes, or stamps, or even like guns or antiques. Whether or not you're broken depends on what you obsess over, and how hardcore you are about it. If you break enough to have a negative impact on society then you get scooped. But if you get lucky, if you break in the right way—that is you obsess over the right thing—then you're hailed as a genius or as a visionary. Say, instead of obsessing over stamps you obsess over stock prices... or neo-barbaric a-retinal videography. You see what I'm saying? But most people don't obsess over useful things, they pick knickknacks or fandoms... or the internet. That isn't doing any good for anybody. It's a waste of time and effort, and if your society is optimizing for efficiency, who cares wgat your employees' or citizens' like if it doesn't contribute to the bottom line or the collective good? You're a piece of the machine, and to think you have rights over it is... frankly it's naive.”
“So you think they have the right idea with Valley Forge?” I asked.
“No, no that's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying homo sapiens is obsolete. Computers and machines take the pressure better than us, but they're too dumb. And, as the airborne toxic eventshowed us, when they become murderous there's no easy fix. You can't give a disgruntled machine intelligence an anti-depressant and send it on its way. We know the answer. It's been in front of us for fifty—hell a hundred—years. We know what works. Math works. Science works. Markets work.” He paused to take another hit. “What doesn't work? It's people, fallible, irrational human beings. Who needs a jury-rigged society with flawed, overly emotional components when you can create the perfect alternative? Man... and woman... can be improved in all the ways artificial intelligence cannot. Genetic manipulation and drugs can increase intelligence, rationality and, most importantly, emotional stability. It's been proven. The salvation of human society shall be the perfection of homo pharmaceutical.”
He leaned back into the booth, arms crossed and triumphant.
James and Mary sat in stunned silence. Ruth looked uninterested.
“Whoah, that's intense,” James said, and burst out laughing. “Shit.” He cracked open his beer and sipped at it. “You think somewhere out there, there's a biologically engineered, docile, obedient James waiting to replace me?”
“Don't worry,” I said, “I wouldn't let him. The couch is yours.” Everyone laughed, James harder than the rest.
“How do you all know each other?” Mary asked. “College?” The four of us grinned at each other in turn, then all spoke simultaneously. Nothing beats telling war stories to fresh meat.
“We met Freshman year.”
“The four of us lived on the same floor.”
“Cliff and I were roommates.”
“Dimitri and I met in Introduction to Macroeconomics.”
As the writer, I fell into the role of the poet, singing the rise and fall and rise again of the fortunes of our loose-knit fellowship. After Freshman year Dimitri, James, and Ruth split off to join three different groups, while I straddled all three. Dimitri and James had a deep disdain for each other, due to their mutual insufferable nature. They found this hilarious, and said their dislike stemmed from all the shit I talked about one to the other. Now they were best friends for life. After graduation, Dimitri and I came to a mutual agreement to live together as aspiring creatives—me as a novelist, he as an unreliably funded quantum cryptography researcher or when he explained it to people who weren't in the business, a mathematician. I explained about the deal I'd made with James, who I hadn't seen since graduation, and how I'd felt obligated not to renege on my promise, no matter how flippant.
Ruth kept her eyes on me, waiting. Mary was as well—I'd hoped her attention had lapsed. I averted mine as I began. “I was something of a hermit my Freshman year because of a vestigial, long-distance relationship from high school.”
“You're something of a hermit because it's who you are,” Ruth said.
“Anyways, we broke up over the summer and I came back sophomore year depressed and lonely.” Mary tried to ask a question, but I cut her off. “No, Ruth and I never dated. Good friends—on and off because Ruth was always so busy.”
“You never called me. I always had to contact you.”
“Do you want to tell the story?” James and Dimitri had lost interest in us, and amused themselves by taking turn snapping beer tabs at one another.
“After graduation, it got complicated. We saw each other once a month, then every few months, then barely at all. The last time I saw Ruth was because Dimitri started seeing a girl we'd known in college. She had a boyfriend, however, who was going to law school in Boston. I said nothing, figuring it wasn't my place.
“Some time after they'd started dating, Ruth texted me out of nowhere and invited me out to lunch. I hadn't heard from her in a while and jumped at the chance to reconnect with a good friend, but the entire operation was a ploy so she could ambush me and ask if it was all true. She'd heard about Dimitri and the girl from a third party and wanted to confirm the story with a reliable source. Not thinking anything of it, I told her the truth and she told me she was going to tell the guy, who she sort of knew.”
Ruth frowned. She began to say something, then stopped. Then, “We were friends. Wouldn't you want your friends to tell you if they found out?”
“Not from a 'friend' I talk to twice a year.”
“You're biased. You only say that because you lived with Dimitri and didn't want to upset him.”
“Well, I told her it was none of her business and we fought over whether she should tell him. She did, and the girl broke it off with Dimitri, then told her boyfriend he'd gotten her drunk and made a move on her. That was the last time I saw Ruth until she barged into our house looking for James.”
“That's why you stopped talking to me? I barely even remembe
r that conversation.”
“Are you serious? I was screaming. Outraged. Livid. How can you not remember that?”
“You're always so dramatic, it's impossible to tell when it's for real.” I was ready to start cursing at her, explaining how she'd ruined someone's life and how could she shrug that off? But Mary asked:
“None... none of you ever dated Ruth?” She seemed perplexed.
“Ha!” James exclaimed. I hadn't known they were still listening. The Germans were watching us too—I must have raised my voice. “Not in a million years. She's the biggest cocktease.”
“Oh yeah,” Dimitri added. “Ryan... before he... you know. Every time he got drunk around Ruth she would dance with him, flirt, all that. Then when he went for the kiss she'd bend back and he'd topple over. Sober, he knew what was what, but five beers in and he'd forget the lesson he learned countless times.”
Ruth murmured, “That's not how it was.” She drummed her fingers on the table, and shifted in her seat while the three of us awaited her response. “I don't have to defend myself to you,” she snapped.
“Hey Ruth,” I said. She sneered at me, her eyes defiant and lips parted to reveal unfriendly teeth. She'd curled her hair—for her date, I assumed. The uncensored emotions skittering on the surface of her face gave it a depth her bland smiles lacked, like her features had been drawn with a feel for perspective that brought her deep humanity into focus. The unconscious loss of control made her more real, and more desirable, than any other person in the room.
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