by John Raymond
She went through the list one more time, ranking the options. The best ones were brown people, of course. Not only were they a little cheaper; they also hailed from tribal village cultures that ostensibly valued the elderly and paid them due respect. Fijians had an especially good reputation. Mexicans were also highly rated. Russians were to be avoided, though Bosnians were all right. All the new arrivals were in the game, it seemed, elder care being the new immigrant grocery store, America’s entry-level rung on the ladder to fortune.
She had her eye on Temo. He was Fijian, with a long line of illustrious clientele, the most recent being Mark Felt, a.k.a. Deep Throat, the Watergate informant—yes, that one. If Temo was good enough for Deep Throat, she figured, he was surely good enough for her dad, a much less renowned and demanding character. From what she’d discovered, Temo’s current charge, a Mr. Dimond, was on the verge of entering hospice care and likely didn’t have long to go, though who could really say? It was also possible that Mr. Dimond would hang in for a long while yet. These end-of-life ordeals were so hard to predict. He might die and come back to life or take refuge in an iron lung like some immortal hot dog under a heat lamp. The life-extension technologies these days were truly appalling. She was starting to think her own generation might never die at all. They might nurse themselves along forever, cloning their organs and filtering their blood, surviving on the cusp of death until the sun exploded and they all evaporated in a wave of solar heat. Which meant the search for a live-in nurse would only get worse.
She stared out the window at the building across the quad. It had once been such a vivid, pleasing view, the palms abutting the silver rectangle of the building’s face, the bellies of the distant clouds lopped by the building’s roofline, but today it all looked dim and unmagical. Ugly architecture hosting scenes of endlessly boring, futile effort. An affront to the human spirit. Or even worse than an affront. Less than an affront. Nothing at all.
She called Aaron, her son, but he didn’t pick up, and upon putting down her phone, she decided, for no more reason than she’d had two seconds before, that Temo was the one. The others all had some kind of problem, and she was willing to wait a little longer. In the meantime, she just had to figure out some temporary measure. So far, the only idea she’d come up with was Aaron.
Aaron was such a complaining little shit, she hated to ask him to take out the trash, let alone tend to her deteriorating dad, but she really needed somebody present in case of emergency. He had the time, what with his half-day senior schedule, and in a few weeks, once summer started, he’d have all the time in the world. Plus, there were other motives, too. Aaron would be leaving home soon, and this could well be his last chance to store away the old family memories, and it could be the last chance for her dad to bask in his grandson’s presence. It would be a mitzvah for both of them, she thought, and possibly even for humanity at large. The stories had to be passed down, as terrible as those stories might be. And so it was decided. She would ask Aaron to lend a hand, if not for her father, if not for her son, if not for herself, then for the legacy of the Holocaust itself. The only question now was how much to pay him.
That done, she got down to real work, zipping off a memo to Susan, currently in Atlanta, providing a bullet list of updates on the seven projects she was interminably shepherding through the bureaucracy, positive it would go unread but wanting the memo placed somewhere in the data stream as proof of something or other, her existence, maybe.
Midmorning, she sat through a meeting that epitomized everything she despised about her current station in life. It took place at a nearby state building, in a windowless conference room, at a much-too-large table, with four representatives of overlapping regulatory agencies tasked with formulating strategies on how best to increase public awareness about the solarization pilot project in the Richmond neighborhood. The agenda should have been incredibly simple to address. The solution, obviously, was door flyers. And yet, unbelievably, the people at the meeting refused even to directly address this strategy, instead veering sideways and filling the whole late-morning time slot with a vapid, aggravating, willfully stupid exchange of abstractions upon abstractions about abstractions. The “communication” with the neighborhood would have to incorporate a diversity of languages because the assumption that English was the common language was Anglocentric and offensive to the realities of the current public sphere. The “communication” would also have to be carefully phrased so as not to offend renters, who likely did not have the power to decide upon their property’s fate but who could be construed as allies in the larger campaign. The “communication” would also have to avoid any reference to public funding, as suspicion of the government was rampant at every level of society, for different sociopolitical reasons, some of them quite legitimate in the larger historical frame. Anne was amazed by the energy expended simply to ensure the complete inoffensiveness of the designated “communication,” as if all the lavender-scented padding against any possible scrape or bruise or hurt feeling weren’t fundamentally offensive in itself. In the end, the meeting was adjourned, like so many, without consensus, the nature of the “communication” to be decided at a later date, after all the bureaucrats had returned to their respective cubicle farms and polled their colleagues about what form of media best served their common constituencies, by which time Anne would have the fucking flyer ready to go.
She went back to the office and extracted her sack lunch from the refrigerator and decamped in Victoria Boberg’s empty office for some privacy. Victoria Boberg was on maternity leave, and her glassed-in office space had become a favorite tank for personal phone calls among the staff. Every day, it hosted a revolving cast of secretaries, architects, HR people, and interns scheduling their children’s pickups and confirming their blind dates, the pictures of Victoria’s kids and husband privy to all manner of secret dealings.
Anne’s agenda wasn’t secret, per se—she just wanted to clear her head—but as long as she was taking space in Victoria’s office, she felt compelled to look busy. Thus, she took out her phone, and once her phone was out, she decided to go ahead and make a few calls, lunch being a good time to dispense with some of her most desultory obligations. Since most people were out of their offices during lunch, she could usually leave some quick return-messages without becoming entangled in unnecessary conversation. She found a nearly masochistic pleasure in the nonproductive, zero sum game, especially since she’d recently learned the real definition of “masochism.” It wasn’t pleasure in pain, as she’d always been led to understand, and which had never exactly squared logically in her mind, but rather the hastening, the controlling, of inevitable pain. Pain would come, that much was a given. The masochist simply preferred to get the pain over with on his or her own schedule. Now, that was a deviancy she could understand.
The first name on her list was Mark Harris, whom she’d been ignoring in her email queue for going on two months and who, in the past week, had escalated his attack to phone calls, a bold move, and one she had to admire. She could sort of recall meeting Harris at a conference in Denver. She had a picture of a tall, energetic, golden-haired man with a confident, thrusting jaw. Like a Greek discus thrower or a javelin hurler, someone in a short toga. A quick googling informed her he was a “green developer” hailing from Portland, Oregon, known best for erecting an entire neighborhood of LEED platinum high-rises on some brownfields along the riverfront. In Denver, they’d talked about—now she remembered—bioswales.
She was midway through her first granola bar when his selfassured voice suddenly leapt into her ear: “Anne! Fantastic!” he said. “Thanks so much for getting back! I was just thinking about you. Seriously. How are you doing? It’s been a long time. Too long.”
Mark Harris’s sporty bark ignited a whole branch of suppressed memories in the recesses of Anne’s head. Now she remembered him, all too well—how he’d dominated her for a solid half hour in the Denver Marriott, selling her on the carbon-neutral grocery store cha
in he was trying to develop. The banks were afraid to touch him with a ten-foot pole, he’d complained, stuck too deep in their old, industrial-era paradigms, thus unable to manifest a truly radical future vision. Now she remembered why she hadn’t been answering the calls. His eco-salesmanship had been so unabashed, so craven, she’d never wanted to talk to him again. She coughed, forcing down the last granola bite, wincing as the rough corner scraped along the back of her gullet.
“Mark,” she choked. “Hi.” She pounded her sternum, holding the phone away from her face. “I’m fine, fine.” Cough. “Sorry if I’ve been kind of hard to reach lately. Busy times around here.”
“No worries, Anne!” Mark spoke like a carnival barker, intolerant of any doubt. “You’re an important person, I know. I’m low on the list. I get it. No problems. I’m just glad we’re on the phone now. I have to tell you, I’ve been blown away by your work for a long time. That coalition you organized to stop the marina development in Santa Monica, I don’t think anybody saw the numbers there, but wow. I almost shat my pants when they pulled the plug on that one. That was some David and Goliath shit, seriously.”
“Oh, well, you know . . .”
“It seems like every solid piece of city legislation I read has your fingerprints all over it. So thank you again so much for taking this time. I’m truly grateful.”
“Okay, Mark, whatever,” she said. “I’m glad we caught up with each other today, too. So what’s on your mind, anyway? What’s happening?”
“Well, it’s complicated,” Mark said, slowing down the pace. If she’d been hoping for some brisk volley and a rapid sign-off, she was already disappointed. He was launching into a long preamble about how delicate the coming subject matter was going to be, how he’d really like to talk to her face to face if possible, and before she knew it she could feel the time burning away. She could tell she was going to have to manage the pacing herself if she wanted to keep this conversation moving, even at the risk of sounding like a rude bitch.
“What are we talking about here, Mark?” she broke in. “My lunch calendar is packed for six months out. Tell me what’s on your mind.”
“Well,” he said, with undiminished good cheer, “I can tell you it involves your city’s wastewater supply, I can tell you that much right now.”
“Uh-huh. And?”
“And I can tell you I’m looking for some help landing a permit to put that wastewater to good use. That’s the short version. But seriously, Anne, I’d much rather give you the details in person. This is a big project. It isn’t something I can really describe in one go.”
“It sounds like you need someone in the Sanitation Department,” she said decisively. “They’re the wastewater people. How about I give you the number of Damon Hardy, all right? He’s been over there ten years. Very good guy. Let’s see, let’s see . . .” Wastewater, she was thinking, scrolling through her contacts. No, thank you, Mark. The subject of wastewater had dominated her life for a solid ten months back in 2003. She’d had enough talk of brown water, black water, filtration, and repurposing to last the rest of her life. This was Sanitation’s problem, and she couldn’t wait to throw it in their lap.
“I’m telling you . . . ,” she said, struggling to cue the right contact on her screen, “I just . . . I just . . .” Her mind, divided between the phone and the monitor, was having trouble concentrating in either realm.
“I’ve been doing research, Anne,” Mark said, breaking in gently. “I’ve been watching you for a long time, and talking to a lot of very smart people, and everyone agrees you score really high marks on getting things done at city hall. I’m pretty sure you’re the one I want to talk to. Come on. Have lunch with me. We’ll enter into a discussion and see where it goes.”
“No, it’s Sanitation you want, believe me . . .”
“I talked to them. I know Hardy. Seriously, I’ve been calling you for a reason.”
“Well, then, you probably want to talk to Susan, my boss,” she offered, going for one of the most common weapons in her arsenal. A conversation with Susan was almost impossible to schedule, and few people had the patience to wait. If she couldn’t pass the buck to Sanitation, she’d pass the buck up the ladder to Susan, and up there the buck was as good as lost.
“No,” he said, still genially, but with unshakable conviction. “I know all about Susan. We’ve met a few times. I know Susan’s a big name and everything. She’s moving up in the world. But let’s just be honest here for a second, all right? We all know how the big names work. The big name isn’t really a doer at a certain point. The name is just the brand. The people doing the actual work and making the actual decisions all live under the big name. I happen to think you’re the one who does most of the work and makes the decisions for the brand named Susan Jacoby these days. In fact, I’m pretty sure about that. She might be the name, ‘the mayor whisperer’ and all, but you’re the Susan whisperer. That’s who I want to talk to.”
“The mayor whisperer whisperer,” Anne said, unable to resist. Apparently Mark had read the Los Angeles magazine profile of a year ago that had caused so much loathing among the staff.
“Right. That’s where the leverage is.”
Anne was flattered by Mark Harris’s interpretation of her power. And what he was saying was not even entirely untrue. In fact, his opinion confirmed a long-held fantasy she had of herself as a political consigliere in the classic mold. The power behind the throne. The adviser providing the theoretical frameworks, creating the literal verbiage so the queen could appear informed. The interviews she’d ghostwritten for Susan had been quoted publicly by cabinet members! But part of her job was also concealing that fact, and she had the presence of mind to demur.
“I think you’ve got the wrong person, Mark,” she said. “I’m a member of a team, that’s all. And we don’t have any power over the water.”
“Just have lunch with me, Anne,” he said. “Worst case, you eat a nice lunch. Best case, there’s something in this idea for both of us.”
Everything in her body told her to say no to Mark just one more time. One more no and the natural, rhetorical structure of their conversation would have run its course and they could respectfully hang up and move on. They might pretend some later conversation was in store, but they’d both understand that the fundamental rejection had been established. On a basic, subverbal level, she could already feel herself turning away, forgetting that Mark Harris had ever existed. And yet, sitting there in the private cell of Victoria’s office, watching Megan Pong biding her time to take her place and Alex Mead jockeying for the next position, seeing the green architects at their standing desks, these sullen, defeated eunuchs of sustainability, knowing her own shit desk was waiting for her ass to return, Anne had another thought, too: maybe, just maybe, it was time to quit listening to her own goddamn intuitions so much. What good had her intuitions been doing her lately? Maybe it was time to finally start acting against her intuitions, to zag instead of zig, and go have lunch with a clown like Mark Harris. Why not? And it was under this counterintuitive logic that she went ahead and agreed to put something on the books.
She returned to her desk and succumbed once again to generalized hate. Her coffee was cold, the smell of someone’s bean dish was overpowering, the succulents on Alice’s ledge were tired and dusty, as always, and as they always would be. Her phone buzzed angrily near her hand, a series of dumb spasms against the wood. According to her monitor Aaron had taken approximately three hours to return the call. Or maybe Temo’s client had died—how wonderful that news would be.
But the call wasn’t her son, or Temo. It was Ben, her brother. How very odd, she thought, to see his name on her tiny screen.
5
The Pentagon wished it could design something as perfect as a hawk. With the slightest tip of its wing, the raptor navigated the open sky, cutting cruel pathways across the turbulence of the rising thermals. It swooped and turned. It floated. It sank. And for long moments at a time—sometimes t
en breaths, Ben counted—the hawk would pause, hovering like a geosynchronous satellite over the arid earth, scanning with its black, stony eyes for any moving food on the ground below.
Ben sipped from the canteen and watched the mild rocking in the hawk’s body as it held its airspace. He admired the bird’s single-minded resolve, the stark hunger that drove every movement, every turn. Whatever beauty the bird shed was a mere side effect of its overriding killing motive. Ben watched as the feathers tippled again and the sleek body arced out over the cracked lake bed on another sweep for prey. On any other day he would have waited for it to return, taking in the fast, graceful chase of shadow over earth until the taloned bird screamed overhead like a B-25 Mitchell, but on this day he had to go. He still had seven miles of desert to walk, and a hundred fifty miles to drive, just to get to dinner.
He didn’t want to go to dinner, but he didn’t see how to avoid it. The dinner was at his sister’s house, with his dad and nephew, too, none of whom he’d seen for going on five years, and thus not showing up would be an insult of the most grievous sort. Three days ago it had sounded like a great idea. After a month in the desert, basking in the deep silence and solitude, he’d assumed he was ready. He’d become serene and untroubled by all the ghosts and violent death visions that had plagued him so badly in the city. He’d even become happy, in a way, visited by regular upwellings of love for his family. At times he’d almost been overpowered by the gushing feeling, as if his soul were physically attached to theirs at the ends of invisible, thrumming strings. Space and time seemed to disappear, and they all found each other in a warm alternate dimension, laughing and hugging in the dappled sun. It had been during one of those tender surges that he’d called his sister and agreed to have dinner at her house. But within about a minute of hanging up, he’d begun doubting it was for the best.