—
Gossip heads and tabloids speculate on who she’ll wear, but Gavril’s already tipped me off that President Meecham’s tapped Alexander Porta this year, the Natalia Valevskaya protégé, and that tonight’s executions will feature at least seven full costume changes to coincide with the fall couture shows. I’ve scanned the League of Women Voters app—the U.S. Communist Party, the Greens, the Teas, the Army of God and the Mid-Atlantic Socialists aren’t even participating—show trials, they call them, a spectacle. Nine men will be executed tonight, federal criminals: alleged jihadists, traitors, multistate spree killers. I’ve accepted Timothy’s offer for a ride to Waverly’s for his viewing party. Standing in the rain, the streams exceptionally vivid in the overcast light—rioters in San Francisco are already burning city blocks in Hunters Point, rioters in Chicago are already burning police cars in Millennium Park. Timothy pulls up in the Fiat and tells me to get in before I catch pneumonia.
Timothy listens to light jazz, stuff like the Fontainebleau Quartet and Slim Vogodross. He asks how I’ve been and I tell him I’ve been busy searching for Albion, but I don’t mention Mook, nothing of the threat against my wife. I’m planning to tell Waverly myself, when we meet about his daughter—I’m planning to collect what I’m owed and quit. Timothy merges onto the Beltway and pushes the Fiat, weaving through congestion at eighty, eighty-five miles an hour until he takes an exit about forty-five minutes outside DC.
Virginia. An hour-and-a-half drive, Timothy exits the interstate and once off main roads, we drive through woods. Late afternoon, but the night falls heavy and gathers around the slim black trunks of trees. I’m tired, I haven’t shaved in days and my scruff’s grown thick down my neck, but it feels nice, like I’m half hidden and soft. The road narrows, begins to climb. Timothy’s dressed in a tuxedo and I’m nervous I’ll be conspicuously schlubby at the party—I wore what I thought would blend in, charcoal slacks and a flannel shirt, tucked in. A tweed jacket I’ve had for years. Timothy’s headlights illuminate the trees. He’s taking the turns close, driving breakneck through the rain. His windshield’s lit with night vision augments and I watch the pale green shapes of deer clustered at the edges of the woods, dozens if not hundreds of them. A miserable icy slush congeals on the windshield before the wipers push it away—if any of those deer bolt, I’ll die. I’d hit a deer once, years ago, and pulled over to the side of the road. Mine had been a doe, I’m fairly certain—it seemed small when I was near, but I don’t know how to tell much about deer. The middle of the night, in Westmoreland County. The deer moaned and whined—bleating, I guess you’d call it. I’d seen movies where calm men broke the neck or killed dying animals with one shot to ease their suffering, but I had no gun and I couldn’t bring myself to kill it, let alone touch it. The sight of my shoe prints in its blood froze me. I withdrew a pace and simply watched the doe die. When she was silent I said a prayer over her body and left. What else could I have done? My windshield was cracked and buckled inward where the deer’s spine must have ricocheted from me.
“He lives far,” I say.
“But it’s a nice drive,” says Timothy, “and Waverly doesn’t commute much. Every so often he has business in the city—”
Timothy slows for a private drive—a strip of pavement winding through a thicket of pines, footlights illuminating the drive like a runway. The drive must be heated, I suppose—slush sticks to the boughs of pines and the ground on either side, but melts into a wet shimmer on the drive.
The pines fall away like a robe to reveal Waverly’s house—built on a bluff overlooking a shallow valley. The house itself looks like a haphazard stack of frosted glass cubes, illuminated. Valet parking’s offered in the turnabout, but Timothy follows the driveway as it dips and curves around the far end of the house. We plunge into an underground garage large enough to accommodate twenty cars, at least.
“Usually this place is empty,” says Timothy.
Timothy circles once before settling for a rear space. His Fiat rattles when he cuts the engine, the sound almost offensive among the silent Maseratis, Porsches and Ferraris filling out the other spaces. A uniformed attendant wipes the slush from Timothy’s car with a white towel, never minding that the Fiat’s a piece of shit. Timothy’s quieter than usual—nervous, maybe.
“Don’t like parties?” I ask him.
“Not much,” he says.
An elevator with a parquet floor lifts us into the glass foyer. The doors slide apart and we’re washed in gold light—the interior of Waverly’s house is like a dream of art deco, the guests in slim-cut tuxes and flapper-style gowns shimmering like precious coins. Waverly’s there to greet us—he’s already flushed pinkish with drink.
“Have you fallen in love with her yet?” he says as he shakes my hand.
“I’m sorry?” I ask.
“Have you fallen in love with Albion?” he says, breath sour with alcohol. “You can’t spend time with her and not fall in love, apparently—”
“Not now,” says Timothy.
“I haven’t,” I try to say, but Timothy’s taken Waverly’s arm and nudges him away from me, separating our conversation.
“Drinks are in the blue room,” says Waverly as we part. “We’ll stream the executions in the Caraway room, I think—”
A hundred or so on the guest list, it looks like, and I’m as exposed in my flannel as I feared I would be. Pathetically underdressed. Timothy’s already abandoned me, disappeared somewhere. Adware profiles hover over each guest, names I recognize from the streams, Elric Broadbent, a presidential adviser, and Michelle Frawley, from Arizona, host of the God and Guns stream. Actresses I recognize from Disney sitcoms and reality-stream girls, Donna from Hello Pussy, season 3, and the guy from Truth or Dare. I ping Gav to see if he recognizes anyone here and he pings that I should watch where I step and be sure to clean my shoes when I leave. Everyone’s wearing those Meecham pins that were popular following Pittsburgh, her profile portrait like a cameo and twin crimson ribbons in the shape of a heart. A bit overwhelming, I suppose, but nothing I haven’t seen before—I’ve been the wallflower at celebrity-studded parties Gavril’s dragged me to, nothing terribly novel about gawking at recognizable faces. Zelda Kuhn, host of Buy, Fuck, Sell is talking with the Republican whip from Texas. Christ, there’s a lot of power gathered here—
I drift to the blue room for a drink, the blue room easy enough to find—a dining hall with expansive walls papered in royal blue damask. I pluck sushi from a passing tray—the waitresses look like they’ve been bused in from a modeling agency rather than a catering company, as much a decoration here as the Louis XIV chairs and oversize landscapes in gilt frames. The dining room table’s been converted into a bar and a waiter pours me a finger of brandy. I swallow quickly, cutting the edge off my anxiety. He pours another. Waverly’s not playing the Gatsby tonight—no melancholia for his lost wife and daughter—he’s practically giddy with his guests, if anything, glad-handing and laughing, already a bit sloppy with drink. Difficult not to notice when he corners one of the waitresses in a dim hallway and kisses her hard enough to force her head against the wall, massaging her breasts through the front of her uniform while she holds a tray of champagne flutes, trying to keep them from spilling.
One of the guests watches me—she’s across the room, leaning against the blue damask, her silk gown the color of cream, her hair dyed a rich Albion-shade of crimson. She sends gentle pings my way. Vaguely familiar, but her profile’s blanked and I can’t quite place her. I’m meant to notice her—I feel she’s like an invitation, if I want her, but I can’t help but feel repelled by the gag. She’s meant to resemble Albion with that red hair—did Waverly do this? Timothy? She knows I’ve noticed her. She accepts a drink from a passing waitress. She leaves the blue room and I’m invited to follow, but I hesitate. I finish off my brandy and go for a refill. The last glance I catch of her is so similar to Albion I’m convincing myself
there’s a glitch in the Adware, that maybe there is no woman here, that maybe I’ve spent too much time studying Albion and now I’m hallucinating her.
I leave the blue room and find her—she leads me down a frosted glass hallway lined with black statues of nude women on white pedestals. Another hall—I’ve lost her somewhere in this maze of rooms, the design eighteenth century in style, stuffy despite the sleek modernity of the architecture. Framed photographs are arranged on a decorative mantel—many are of Waverly as a young man, his hair a dark sweep, his eyes the same color as the sea behind him. Most of these pictures were taken on the bow of a sailboat called, of all things, The Daughter of Albion. I can’t quite place the reference—Housman? Tennyson? Scroll through my e-library and search the Norton Anthology—find the poem: Blake, William. Visions of the Daughters of Albion. A few photographs show a woman, Waverly’s wife, I assume but can’t be sure. She’s younger than Waverly, but not by much—handsome rather than beautiful, with a square jaw and chestnut-colored curls. She appears only twice in these pictures, glancing at the camera but never smiling. There aren’t pictures of his children here, no images of the two sons I found listed in the census and none of his daughter. I roam through to another room and find the woman I was following sipping a drink lounging on a settee.
“Forget me already?”
Hearing her voice—Twiggy. “I didn’t recognize you, not with the hair color,” I tell her. “Twiggy, isn’t it? Gavril’s friend, right?”
“That Twiggy’s just a stage name,” she says.
“Your valentine landed me in a heap of trouble. It was heroin, for Christ’s sake. A felony charge. I lost my job. You should have warned me what it was—”
“What’s that you’re drinking?”
“I don’t even know anymore,” I tell her. “Brandy, I think—”
She raises her glass to me. “Kentucky bourbon for me, straight. Cheers, Gavril’s cousin. Life’s on the up-and-up and I want someone to celebrate with. Come over here and sit by me—”
I take the far edge of the couch and she smiles at my hesitancy, extending her feet so her toes touch my slacks.
“What happened to the American Apparel sponsorship?” I ask. “There aren’t commercials blaring from you.”
“That’s Mr. Waverly,” she says. “He pays for commercial-free living. What are you doing here, anyway? I wouldn’t have taken you for a big baller. Shopping for birds, like everyone else? You look like shit, by the way—”
“I think it’s a mistake that I’m here at all,” I tell her. “I came with a friend, I guess to stream the federal executions. I usually stream this thing with Gavril, because it kicks off Fashion Week—”
“Executions? You think that’s why they’re all here?”
“Why else would they be here?”
“Pussy,” she says.
“Christ,” I tell her, and finish off my brandy.
“I love how bashful you are,” she says. “Look, you’re blushing—”
“It’s just the drink—”
“I won’t need American Apparel soon, anyway,” she says. “I’m having a series of brilliant fucking breaks that’s lighting up my career. You ever have a run of luck like that? What is it Plath says? ‘I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.’ I fucking am, that’s what my heart’s screaming right now—”
“Someone hire you for another ad campaign?”
“I’m Theo Waverly’s favorite girl,” she says. “Steady work until I’m too fucking old, that’s what that means. His company placed me with American Apparel, placed me with Gav. His request for the red hair, do you like it?”
“It resonates—”
“He has me up to an eighty-three percent click-through rate in the streams, that’s pretty fucking unbelievable. Chanel and Dior already contacted his company about me. Everything’s happening so fast—”
“I thought you were interested in poetry,” I tell her. “You texted me a while ago, asking for poetry recommendations—”
“Just because a girl gets looked at doesn’t mean she can’t think,” she says. “I finished that Adelmo Salomar book you recommended to me, by the way. I’ve never been much for Surrealism or automatic writing, all that stuff. I’m much more interested in the ‘Confessional School,’ all that Surrealism rings heavily of bullshit—”
“Salomar was writing about the Chilean Revolution—those poets had to invent ways to write around the censors, so they readapted Surrealism. ‘Tonight I write the voice of a serpent devoured by a thousand doves.’ Liberation Theology—”
“Well, anyway, poetry’s immortal, but beauty’s devoured by a thousand doves,” she says. “Plenty of time to study Chilean Surrealism once no one wants me to wear their clothes anymore—”
“I’d actually like to read some of your poetry,” I tell her, but before she answers, Waverly finds his way into the room with a bottle of wine.
“There you are,” he says. “Timothy was afraid you’d gotten lost—”
“Not yet,” I tell him.
“Why don’t you run along back to the party,” he tells Twiggy.
She swallows the rest of her bourbon and leaves the glass on the end table. “Makes me shivery,” she says.
“Dominic, let’s freshen up your glass back at the office,” he suggests. “We’ll finish up our business for the night so we can relax and enjoy ourselves—”
“Mr. Waverly, I actually have something I need to discuss with you about my employment—”
“Over drinks,” he says. “Not here—”
Waverly’s office is in a lower tier, through another frosted glass hallway, down a flight of stairs. A techie’s paradise—VR cams, an editing suite, a Bride 3120 stack with a fifty-two-inch monitor on the desk, a rat’s nest of ports and Adware jacks, sets of Adware like a tangle of mesh and a workbench with a soldering iron and motherboards and spools of wires and cable. One wall’s covered with built-in shelves stacked with books, leather-bound classics—Hesse, Blake—some Baudrillard, Schopenhauer, and yellowed paperback technical manuals, manila folders of printouts. A few framed photographs are propped up among the books—some shots of the Pittsburgh skyline, more of Waverly sailing on The Daughter of Albion, another of the woman I take for his wife, sitting on the lawn of the Frick near a rosebush in bloom. One of the photographs is a group portrait, Waverly with other suits—they’re clustered around a young Meecham, a radiant blonde electric with her pageant-trained smile.
“You’ve met her?” I ask.
“I know Eleanor very well. Let’s see—that must have been taken fifteen years ago or so,” he says. “We were at a campaign event in Canton, Ohio—at the McKinley Grand Hotel. This was during her first presidential bid—”
“You were with her from the beginning of her career, then?”
“She was just a stray before I adopted her,” he says. “I’m sorry, that sounds harsh, but Eleanor wasn’t realizing her full potential. She was shallow, but we saw potential in her. She was articulate—we knew that from the pageants—intelligent when she wanted to be. Compassionate. Much of politics is simply manipulating broad symbols. Here was a beauty queen who grew up not far from Pittsburgh, conservative politically, a Christian. She was what the country needed at the time. Still does—”
“Timothy says you’ve figured out how people will behave, can manipulate the outcome of their free will—”
“I see no reason why Eleanor Meecham would ever lose an election,” he says. “The ammendment passed with enthusiasm, and the votes are there—”
Another photograph. “I recognize this picture,” I tell him, of a view of a house in Greenfield, in Pittsburgh, a part of the neighborhood that cuts toward the river called the Run. A clapboard Victorian huddled with other houses in the shadow of the 376 overpass, worn out and unpainted, odd because of a whitewash cro
ss and a Bible quote slathered in white paint on the broad side of the house: Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God. “We used to call this the Christ House—”
Waverly sits at his desk, tinkering with wires that have been pulled from a miniature motherboard—in his slumped posture, I think I see what he may have looked like as a young boy, lonely, I’m guessing, or maybe I’m reading too much into what an old man looks like when drunk.
“It’s a church,” says Waverly, “or was. You remember that house? I guess with the lettering, it doesn’t surprise me it’s somewhat infamous. Tact and lying low were never that congregation’s strong suit. My wife’s congregation. Speaking in tongues, that sort of thing. An old farmhouse. Most of the rooms were used as a Christian women’s shelter. That was my great-great-grandfather’s first house in America. My family came from nothing. My great-great-grandfather came to Pittsburgh for the mills, and eventually my father owned the mills—Pittsburgh, Birmingham. I bought back that house, and when Kitty asked for a place to start her shelter, a place for her congregation to meet, I signed it over.”
“You don’t have any pictures of your daughter—”
“No,” he says. “I don’t. I don’t display any pictures of my children here. They all passed away in Pittsburgh, all three. I prefer to keep my past and present separate, private—”
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