It’s one of those dreary skies where the sun is a torch beneath a blanket fort: small as the star we forget it is and not at all wish-worthy. Even so, the trees are vivid with memories of summer sun and are only beginning to dwindle from frog green to lizard.
It’s that proud poor thing, she thinks. It’s a fucking religious thing. Don’t fear poverty; don’t fear death. But he’s subjecting his kids to his values: deprivation in the short term for the payoff of infinite abundance in everlasting life. Which, anyway, sounds like a consumerist ideal to Gael. And what if the kids don’t believe in his short term; what if, for them, life on Earth is all the term there is. Yes, it’s short, so it should be celebrated and lived abundantly as means allow, until it’s spent.
She drinks from a water fountain and realizes how hungry she is. She’s not running as fast as her heart rate suggests. She’ll speed up. Catch the body up to the mind, rather than trying to calm herself. She was doing something good for his family. It’s not as if she took the talent itself, took his unique sensibility and inclination and experience and sold it. It’s not a commodity. He should know that. She knows it. She’s just managed to convince other people – powerful people – that the paintings are goods. Really, they’re just a pretty snapshot-insight into Guthrie’s faculty, which cannot be sold.
He can make more paintings.
Yeah, yeah, she hears his counterargument. The reverence he has for the fits, as if they’re hallowed and each aura is an absolution – a benison – and not just a synaptic blip. It’s egregious, to give them this status in his life when all they’ve done is persecute him. They’re a gift’s opposite. That’s the truth of it: they’re something he gives himself. He couldn’t possibly treasure the five auras his sister is selling if he knew he could experience them again at the click of a finger, like orgasms; have as many fits as he wants, as many as he chooses to endure, because they’re self-fucking-induced and even if they weren’t, even if he really were physically sick, isn’t it self-pitying to hold fast to one’s damage? It’s all so exasperating and loss-making and always has been. She picks up her pace to kill all concentration. Like a kitchen spray that kills ‘all known bacteria.’ The unknown will just have to wrangle with the gut.
Onto the dirt trail that runs along the far side of the park, parallel to West Drive, she’s turned back to the city. Her stomach grumbles, contending with what might just be the germ of an idea. The kind that does well without the mind for scrutiny. Passing fast under a long bridge and then another, the cold hits her like a core memory. The buildings are there now, impending behind the trees to her right – tall enough that she would have to crane her neck to see a patch of sky and recall that they’re not the backdrop to everything. Trade coruscates all year round. Is it not the one-season system we live by?
From it, the idea stems.
Caricaturists are reliable, is Gael’s feeling when she stops by one on 59th near Columbus Circle and asks for information. But she phrases it badly.
‘Where would you go in this town to find an artist?’
‘Fuck you too.’
She breaks into laughter, which she often does uncontrollably when she’s tired and hungry.
‘The fuck off my porch.’
Once she’s apologized every way she knows how, he still seems sure that this Irish pot of gold is drunk on her own lucked life and spitting up judgment on every corner. She says she can explain but he’s welcome to hurl insults at her for a while if it would help. ‘Tell me how you’d draw me.’ She points to his cartoons, whose clean, Picassoesque lines are pitiless. ‘What bad features you’d exaggerate.’
‘I’d have your nasty-ass tongue hanging out like a bitch’s, covered in boils.’
‘Seriously. The truth.’
‘Oh, for real, you want abusing? That’s your kink?’
‘Listen, I’m sorry for the accidental insult. I was genuinely asking you – as an artist – if you happen to know … but never mind. I’ll figure it out.’ She starts to run off again and he watches her for a few ass-bouncing steps before calling, ‘What sort?’ She jogs back. ‘You looking for what, a graffiti artist?’
‘An oil painter. A good one.’
The guy shakes his head. ‘Don’t know no oil painter. But you know painting-decorating pays more than that shit.’
‘I’m not looking for a job or a date.’
‘You sure about that?’ The guy kisses his teeth.
‘I’m sure. It’s for a project.’
Now, he’s checking out a lady parade passing by, all soft lines and shading. ‘Now you mention it,’ he says, ‘I heard something. Yeah. Tha’s right. I do know where you find that sorta artist right now. Yeah, they hit up one spot. I know where they at. But it’s too far to run.’
‘Where is it?’
‘Financial district. You go all all all the way downtown.’
‘Yeah?’ Gael gets the sharp feeling she’s being mocked. ‘Do you have an address?’
‘Called Zuccotti Park.’
The chanting carries from blocks away, before Gael stops running or notices the NYPD officers in front of barricades and motorbikes, with crossed arms and wide stances – PlastiCuffs hanging from their belts by the dozen. ‘Whose street? OUR STREET.’ ‘Wall Street, shut it down.’ Random tourists and pedestrians gravitate towards the crowd, unsure of what’s going on but intent on documenting it with smartphones. ‘Human need, not corporate greed.’ ‘No justice; no peace. OCCUPY WALL STREET.’ Approaching from Greenwich Street, Gael takes a left past the 9/11 Tribute Center and onto Liberty Street and that’s where she can see the edges of the demonstration and things get so busy she can no longer jog. It had taken her an hour to run here from the park. ‘Banks got bailed out, we got sold out.’ ‘People, not profits.’
‘Too lazy to march the whole way to Wall Street,’ one passerby says with delicious scorn.
It’s hard to judge how many people are protesting and how many are just passing through or prying, but everyone is looking around, for what to run away from or towards. It’s a little close to the 9/11 memorial for ease of atmosphere, with the new World Trade Center under construction on one corner of the square. Zuccotti Park itself, which is grassless and small and shadowed by the black grate of One Liberty Plaza on the north side, the statelier Trinity Place to the south, the Bank of America building, the Marine Midland Building, the Equitable Building … all this and change roaring into the sky in capital hurrah.
Once Gael gets close to the barricades preventing people from spilling out and blocking traffic, she sees the scale of it. At least a thousand protesters are assembled in the granite park, in little scrums of discussion and performance. Placards bob above the crowd like cormorants on a chockfull sea. ‘We. Are. The 99%.’ Other messages are scrawled on cardboard signs laid out on pavements and against the honey locust trees, which provide a softer roof than a glass ceiling. There are blue tarpaulins and sleeping bags near a confrontation going on with the police.
There are block tables and stools made from granite and lights built into the ground, which are on, though it’s not quite evening. These areas are being used as podiums for group leaders who have come together and brought with them their online audiences. Gael must have moved inside the encampment’s confines, because she’s in the middle of the park now, exploiting body heat, looking up to three young people stood on the seating area behind a flower bed. One wears a Guy Fawkes mask. The young woman, wearing an army surplus jacket, a backpack, black-rimmed glasses and jeans with the number 9 spray-painted onto each leg in luminous orange, speaks out:
‘Protesters are being arrested for using sound equipment without permits. Mics, amps, megaphones. Occupy needs to be lawful, so we can remain here. Friends: we plan to stay. We plan to set up tents and kitchens, stage general assemblies and peaceably occupy Wall Street for the months it takes until President Obama forms a commission to address our concerns and commits to financial reforms. We will demonstrate that the ninety-nine per
cent won’t tolerate the greed and corruption of the one per cent. So, our first issue is our biggest issue: how to be heard. To be heard, we’ll have to demonstrate our ability to respect one another. One another’s right to speak and to be heard. We have to organize if we want to have the conversations the one per cent doesn’t want us having. So. If you hear the words “mic check,” this means someone has a message they need to share with you. If you hear those words, repeat them. This will be our people-powered sound system. Let’s give it a go. MIC CHECK.’
‘Mic check,’ Gael finds herself saying, along with everyone. The drums have stopped and more people gather round this ad hoc lectern. The demographic is predominantly young. Lots of kaffiyehs and rucksacks and hoodies and iPhones and layered clothing and a kind of edgy look of expectation. The sides of the speaker’s head are shaved and the dark brown hair in the middle is flicked backward. In small chunks of speech, repeated by the crowd, she explains that police are prohibiting tents, citing loitering laws. Occupy plans to work with the police. The police are the ninety-nine per cent. They’re looking for workarounds. For now, don’t erect tents. There are loose tarps for shelter for those who’ll stay the night. People are donating blankets. This park is private property. ‘The police led us here. They fenced off our two first locations. But they let us come here. That’s because …’ (the crowd echoes ‘that’s because’) ‘… they can’t legally force protesters to leave … without being requested to do so … by the property owner … And Zuccotti Park … which we rename Liberty Plaza … its original name … is not subject to city curfews … Meaning no one has to leave.’ She smiles cautiously. ‘We welcome you. Thank you for being here.’
‘THANK YOU FOR BEING HERE,’ echoes the crowd.
Some people peel away into smaller rinds of conversation. Others cheer and jump with arms thrust into the air. A pain stabs the base of Gael’s skull so suddenly, she clasps the back of her head to feel for a knife. She gropes whoever’s in front for something to hold on to, but it’s canvas and there are so many people her hand can’t make lasting contact with anything. Sit … till it passes. The only seat she knows is where the speaker stood so she pushes towards it on legs now cramped and stiff. She must be holding her head in her hands, doubled over, because the mohawked speaker hunkers before her, trying to get Gael’s attention without touching her. ‘Where did you run from?’
Gael squints and holds up a finger to indicate it’s a little too painful to talk just yet.
‘I’m Nina. I’m going to get you water. Stay here.’
Sweat has formed a grit between her skin and her clothes. It’s not water she needs. It’s salt. She bashes her quads to ease the lactic acid burn. There’s so much talk going on with a tenor of vital import that she’s not quite able to tune in. It’s all loose ends and unvoiced counterarguments and so much jaw; facts thrown around like ugly heirlooms among siblings. Hey Fed: here’s the end of free-market capitalism. Catch. Here’s the blame for fifteen million jobless people. Here’s the inevitable reinstatement of labour camps.
Here’s a pretzel.
Gael drains the water and the fog in her vision begins to clear. Her headache subsides from blinding stab to general throb. She stands, wincingly. Though the warm pretzel held out to her in a napkin, with its giant white salt crystals atop the glossy dough, makes her salivate so that she has to pretend to wipe her nose, she doesn’t take it. That’s exactly the kind of debt a new credit card won’t cover. ‘Thanks, I just needed water.’ She’d taken the bike path all along the Hudson River, to incessant heckling, because she wanted to avoid traffic lights on every block. Otherwise, she’d be freezing before reaching downtown. But she’ll take the direct route back, all along Broadway and onto Park Avenue. It’s another eight kilometres, enough time to come up with a plan. The only artists here are the ones sitting around paint cans, improving the placards’ accessibility. Not exactly the disposition needed for the job. Gael balances on one leg, pulling her other foot to her bum to stretch.
‘Do me a favour. Eat half this pretzel. I’m on a mostly protein diet to build my abs.’ Nina flashes Gael her belly, which is indeed muscular. Before the crowd, Nina had been playing up her intellectualism. Now she’s playing up her street. The smile crookeder. The syllables sloppier.
Gael switches the leg she’s balancing on. ‘Are you hitting on me?’
‘Listen. This pretzel was straight too before I touched it.’
‘Ha!’ Gael takes the piece held out. ‘I owe you, but don’t expect interest.’ She stuffs the whole portion into her mouth and is rendered beatifically silent for the next minute. During which Nina urges her to stay. They’ll find her a sweater. She looks cold. Has she heard of Adbusters? There’s a talk about to start she has to hear. And there’ll be pizza. To have been here from day one … it’ll be something to tell grandkids. ‘Or nieces and nephews. Whatever.’ In the background, Gael can smell burnt falafel. Harper’s favourite. She looks around and regards this less, now, as a mecca for discontent and more as a carnival.
She catches her breath and sees Nina’s spectacle-shrunk eyes awaiting the verdict. That’s the thing about nearsightedness. It makes the future seem further away than it is, so you can see it how it should be; when, in fact, it’s already upon you.
‘Honestly, Nina?’ She thinks about saying it: I’m an aspiring one-percenter. It’s only sane to be appalled at the country’s dysfunction but, come on, kid. Calling it out gets you nowhere. Enormous calamities cause change. Civil wars. Natural disasters. Not street marches. Once customs are established and prejudices rooted, reform is a dangerous and fruitless enterprise, said Rousseau. The truth brings no man a fortune; and it’s not the people who hand out embassies, professorships and pensions. The people give out pretzels, used clothes and coping mechanisms. Gael wipes the crumbs from her chest and admits, instead, ‘I wouldn’t have your best interests at heart.’
The run back doesn’t feel good, but she’ll manage it. The muscles will tear and repair as is their bent. Tomorrow will do for interviewing job candidates. She’ll comb the classifieds on Craigslist for gay men whose profiles imply fine art degrees, consumerist aspirations and studio living. America will have one more job provider. One more tax-evading entrepreneur making a magic hankie out of red tape.
II
October 2011
A picture is worth a thousand words or fifty thousand banknotes. That Monday morning marked the beginning of a busy two-week period. Gael had made for the bank bright and early, unable to check out of the Plaza until the cheque cleared. She’d begun to think of the hotel as a costly gaffe, even if its plutocratic crowd had been available to her as a place bet. The credit extension on her card wouldn’t have come close to covering the bill. The cheque not clearing could be, she’d thought, the trivial logistical failure that scuppers the whole enterprise. ‘We charge a six-dollar transaction fee,’ the teller had announced. Gael must have stared blankly at him while she tried to work out his meaning. ‘What demonination?’ he’d said, then, ‘Sorry. Bleugh. Mondays. Denomination.’ Fighting the urge to sing ‘Hail Wally,’ Gael had said calmly: Hundreds. The teller didn’t put her through the awkwardness of counting out five hundred notes one by one. An electronic gadget measured ten wads of five thousand. Each was parcelled into a separate envelope, placed inside a larger envelope, on Gael’s request, so that when she went to pay for the hotel, they wouldn’t surmise she’d been operating a drug cartel from the seventeenth floor.
When she’d returned to pack up and settle the bill, she regretted not having at least considered her drug cartel options. Laundry, rare room services, daily Palm Court coffees, along with taxes and city charges brought the eight-night stay to $7,083.22. No time to mourn the fourteen per cent burned – she had to get to work.
Though already checked out, she’d spent most of that Monday interviewing candidates in the Palm Court beneath the diffused light of the stained-glass ceiling. Seated at a green velvet-cushioned seat with her back to
a palm tree encircled by orchids, Gael reassured herself that she had only to find the right bearer to carry this thing off. Everyone having high tea had high-tea posture, reviewing the epicurean contents of their brass birdcages. Gael was hunched over her laptop, which the wait staff overlooked, now that she’d been established as a pays-cash person-about-the-Plaza.
She’d thought it a savvy move to target classified ads on Craigslist for several reasons, but out of the three artists who turned up, none were too pleased to have been misled, nor were they interested in becoming intern to any artist, differently abled or otherwise. The fourth, however, had had a long day. ‘At least you’re manlier than my last date.’ He’d ordered a glass of Nero d’Avola and told Gael he knew the direction to point her in, if she bought him lunch. She’d relaxed her posture and said, ‘The squid ink spaghetti’s delicious.’ Slate-toothed and loose-tongued from Sicilian wine and squid escape mechanism, this stranger let her in on a black market called Silk Road. Hidden in the deep web, the site is uncrawlable by search engine algorithms, and cryptographic software is required to access it. The interface is anonymous. Payments are traceless. Transactions are made with the cryptocurrency Bitcoin. It’s a libertarian business model, he’d explained. The founder, or founders – no one knows – based the whole idea on an Austrian economist’s philosophy; Ludwig von Mises, who said that citizens need economic freedom to be politically and morally free. Silk Road’s founder interpreted this as citizens’ rights to buy and sell whatever-the-fuck, without monitoring or regulation. From black tar heroin to firearms; social security cards to hitmen. Everything shy of human hearts. ‘And you’re saying I can find an artist on this underground eBay thing, to copy paintings?’
The guy had gotten her to scoot over on the velvet cushion. He’d turned her laptop a fraction, dimmed the screen lighting and spoke furtively. ‘First thing is to install a Tor browser, so your IP can’t be sniffed.’
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