by Walter Kirn
I recognize Faithful Orange as a project code, but I can only guess what it refers to. ISM’s founders came up through the military, a crew-cut cadre of logistics specialists who took what they’d learned supplying Vietnam with freeze-dried beef stew and tents and bayonets and applied it, in their first big contract, to the global distribution of auto parts. The corporate culture they spawned is leakproof, rigid. No shoptalk, no gossip. Dungeons inside of dungeons. For all I know MythTech is our subsidiary, and Great West itself is run by our alumni, with Morse as their strutting puppet. Faithful Orange. Orange is the airline’s official color, and considering that it’s at war with Desert Air, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re our client.
I’ve never trusted ISM. My position in the firm has never been clear to me, and the path to promotion is winding and obscure. Some people advance by leaving and returning, and the people who don’t advance . . . well, they just vanish. Two years later you hear they’ve opened a bed-and-breakfast or bought out a Kinko’s franchise in Keokuk. That’s what you hear, but it seems more like they’ve died.
RB in place. I’m part of something big.
Julie, God bless her, is back at the buffet, spooning more yogurt onto her granola. She looks better already, less sunk inside herself. The rain has picked up and it’s sheeting the tall windows, distorting the silhouette of the control tower. I check the departures monitor. Bad news. Our flight, 119, is twenty minutes delayed, and twenty minutes is almost always a lie. It means we’ll get back to you. It means buzz off.
“Is that our old friend Ryan Bingham? How’s he been?”
There’s a hand on my shoulder—I turn in its direction. The face is a jolt, collapsing time and space. Its white poreless nose hooks almost to its lips and the eyes have a blind and stony quality, like the eyes on Masonic temples and dollar bills. It’s the face of my ex-wife’s husband, my replacement, with whom she had two children, just like that, proving that I, not Lori, was the barren one. She took his last name after refusing mine, and from everything I know about their life together, the highest councils of heaven have sanctioned the match. I was merely a pit stop, a wrong turn, on the way to their preordained union.
“Mark,” I say. I take his extended hand and briefly squeeze it. His other hand grips the handle of a briefcase. Antiqued nickel hardware, natural, top-grain hide. One of Boulder’s top real estate salesmen, and still rising.
“How are the girls?”
“They’re fabulous. They’re dolls. Little Amy is quite the marksman, for her age. That’s our family obsession lately: shooting sports.”
“Lori, too? I thought she hated guns.”
“It must be the country air. We’re out of town now. Sixty acres up against the foothills. I subdivided the old Lazy W Ranch and took a nice slice for myself. You have to visit.”
“Lori firing a gun. I can’t imagine.”
“Still renting that one-bedroom?”
“I gave it up.”
“You own now?”
“No.”
“But you’re looking?”
“Not really. No.”
Mark’s face twists in on itself. He bites his lip. Homeownership is his church, and he feels sorry for me. He divides the world into two camps, those with equity and those without, and his calling is to unite them. A noble soul.
“There’s something I’d like to show you. An opportunity. Do you have a minute to sit and hear me out?”
I do, and he knows it; the airport’s at a standstill, pent up under an iron lid of clouds. The soft leather couch is like sitting on a body as we settle in diagonally, knee to knee, and Mark snaps open his case and reaches inside with a smooth and lotioned hand. This is the man who took up where I left off and carried my wife past a biological threshold that I lacked the strength for. His confidence is spellbinding. If I didn’t dislike him so, I’d hire him to stand up at hotel banquets and teach his system. I doubt he has one, though. Mark is all instinct and genetic mastery, shot from a cannon at birth. If he had antlers, they’d spread past his shoulders. He’s my natural superior.
He opens a folder and lays it flat between us. “These homes will go in the high four hundreds soon, but until the community’s finished—and be aware of this, it is a community, not just a development—we’re slipping people in in the mid-threes.” He gives me a moment to absorb the photos; crisp early-morning shots of pillared facades surrounded by spindly staked aspens and split-rail fences. The houses are set at odd angles to one another as though they grew up without a plan, organically, and each has a horse paddock with a lone brown steed that I’d swear is the same animal, duplicated. I detect a computer graphics program at work, but I’m charmed and drawn in despite myself. These happiness professionals know their jobs, and theirs is the sort of art I most admire, because it’s effective, because it gets things done.
“The concept is turnkey everything,” Mark says. “You buy a maintenance contract with the home. You’re traveling five days a week? It doesn’t matter. We’ll whack your weeds, we’ll even change your lightbulbs. Furniture? Buy your own or choose a package. High-speed Internet, too.”
“Garages?”
“Hidden. A seamless traditionalism, yet all the perks.”
I’m interested, though I’m not sure if it’s sincere. Part of me might like to signal Lori through Mark that not only do I qualify financially to own a burnished cube of paradise, but that I’m actually capable of filling it. She knew me just as I was starting to fly and developing my system for compact living, for keeping a portable and tidy camp. She accused me of smallness, of tightness. It wasn’t fair. If anything, my spirit was too far-flung. I lived out of a pack because I owned the plains.
“You’re concerned about interest rates,” Mark says. “Aren’t we all? You can’t think short term, though. This is an investment. How are your stocks doing?”
“Miserably.”
“I’m sorry. Do you have any tangible assets?”
“Not to speak of. A ’96 Camry in a long-term parking lot.”
I’m trying to sound pathetic on purpose now, to test the depths of Mark’s pity. He’s always liked me. He met my ex in a supermarket aisle a month before our divorce was finalized, but instead of asking her out immediately, he came to me for permission. Unprecedented.
“Here’s what you do if you’re interested,” he says. “Put down some earnest money, any amount, and I’ll hold a unit until you can come see it. I have one in mind. The viewscape’s just spectacular.”
“I may be relocating soon. To Omaha.”
“You hold this house six months, you’ll clear a profit. That’s guaranteed. If you don’t, I’ll buy it back. Ryan, we all need a place to call our own. This is America. This is what we’re promised.” He pushes the folder closer. “Are you all right?”
“Something strange is happening.”
Mark leans closer. His breath has the sweetness of a man who jogs, who squeezes his own juice and eats his vegetables. He may be too sane for what I’m going to tell him.
If you fly enough and chat with enough strangers, you hear some crazy things. They stretch your sense of what’s possible. Some examples. That a study was done about forty years ago of the chemical makeup of the soil in major American grain-producing regions which found that due to the overuse of fertilizers the soil was bereft of certain key particles and was therefore incapable of yielding even minimally nutritious food. That a science exists by the name of psychotronics which seeks to influence mass human behavior via the beaming of powerful radio waves from a network of secret transmitters located above the Arctic Circle and aimed at Russia during the cold war. That the American Medical Association, soon after issuing warnings about the effects of sodium consumption on high blood pressure, realized that there was no evidence for the warning but declined to retract it out of stubbornness. That contrary to popular belief, cocaine remained an ingredient in cola drinks well into the 1950s. That the odds of winning at blackjack in Las Vegas shift ever so sli
ghtly in favor of the player for an average of seven weeks per year and that there exists a high-priced newsletter which alerts well-heeled gamblers to these trends.
Now it’s my turn to float a far-fetched theory. Though not as far-fetched as Pinter’s dream reports.
“I think someone high up is toying with me.”
“Who?”
“It might be the airline. Or ISM. It might be an outfit in Omaha. Or all of them.”
Mark’s eyes go wide and tender. “Toying how?”
“You know how biologists will tag an elk so they can follow and analyze it’s movements? They do this with people, too. Not always openly. One of the Big Three auto companies hired my firm once to follow five new car buyers for their first three months of ownership. How fast did they drive? Did they change their oil on schedule? How many miles did they clock per week? You can do surveys to gather this kind of data, but you’ll never be able to guarantee their accuracy. No, what you want is behavior in the raw. That’s how you target your ads, create your profiles. Is this making any sense to you?”
Mark nods. “Why you, though? Why would they shadow Ryan Bingham?”
“Because I’m an interesting case to them just now. Uniquely interesting. By Friday night I’ll have a million frequent flyer miles, making me one of their most loyal customers. That’s the grail in this industry: loyalty. To keep you on board, buying tickets.”
“I understand that.”
“To them, I’m an optimal outcome,” I explain. “If they could create, say, a thousand more of me, just think of the earnings. The market share. I’m gold. There’s only one problem: Who am I?”
“I’m losing you.”
“How do they re-create me? They need a model. But how do they build this model? They can’t. Too complicated. Because what are the crucial variables? My age? My income? Some mysterious psychological quirk? No, the only way to make new mes, new Ryan Binghams, is to track and study, whole, in real time, in my ‘native environment,’ the actual Ryan Bingham. Right?”
“Okay.”
“You look confused. Your face.”
“I’m fine. Keep talking.”
“I’m everything they dream of in a customer, and that makes whatever I do worth studying, down to how many hours of sleep I get, what sort of rooms I stay in, what I eat. And also worth testing, if possible. They’re testing me. They’re throwing scenarios at me right and left and seeing how I react. A ticket agent rebuffs some special request—do I get angry or do I accept it? A flight attendant spills coffee on my jacket—do I switch to another airline, or threaten to? These are things they’d pay a lot to know.”
“So what are you going to do? If this is true, I mean.”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“What can I do? I’m powerless.”
“Tell them to stop it.”
“Tell who? It’s not one person. And it’s not like they’re trying to control me. The elk, remember? They tag it with a beeper, and let it roam. The data I’m providing is only valuable insofar as I’m acting freely, naturally.”
“A beeper. I think that’s crazy, Ryan. I’m sorry.”
“In my case all they’d probably have to do is put a note in their computer system. It comes up whenever I check in for a flight and tells the agent to ask me this or that and call a certain number afterwards. A researcher answers, asks them certain questions, then forwards the answers to whoever’s running this.”
“And who do you think that is?”
“Management. Management and whoever’s advising management. Assuming that this is happening at all.”
“You’re admitting you might be dreaming this.”
“I might be.”
Mark cuts his eyes at the monitor. “My flight.”
I’ve made a mistake. I’ve chosen the wrong confessor.
“You run along. Forget this stuff,” I say. “I’ll think about the house. I really will.”
“I want you to call me, Ryan. Promise me? Make it a social call, forget the house. I’d like to sit down with you. Just two men. No business. There’s a book I read once that really changed my outlook, that pulled me out of a hole I’d stumbled into—maybe we could get together some night and read a few chapters?”
The Bible study come-on. Why won’t they ever just come right out and say it?
Mark shuts his briefcase, stands. “You’ll call? You promise?”
“Mmm.”
“You’re in our thoughts, you know.”
“Hers too?”
“Constantly. Listen, I’m sorry I’m rushing here. About the house, though—it might be what you need. A house can be a real anchor in this world. Take a good look at that literature.”
“Will do.”
Mark’s handshake leaves a moist spot on my palm that I blot on my trousers as I watch him go. In a couple of hours he’ll be home and in her arms, welcomed by jumping dogs and squealing kids, and his decency will forbid a full reporting of what I’ve told him this morning. Tonight they’ll sleep. The stars will wheel forth from their daytime hiding places, crowning their mountainside neighborhood with lights, and one of those lights, slightly brighter than the rest, will be my wingtip, passing over, blessing them.
Sealed in a tube again, but going nowhere. The rain strikes the windows like handfuls of dry rice as a flight attendant stows the wardrobe bags and another who might be her twin takes Julie’s drink order: club soda with a wedge of lime, no ice. The engines aren’t on yet, so no air conditioning. This is the trick they play that I least appreciate: pushing back from the gate to lock in a departure time, then parking while the cabin steams and swelters.
Julie doesn’t seem bothered. She’s in heaven, claiming every inch that she’s entitled to by gripping both armrests and kicking out her legs and tipping her head back like a sunbather. This trip is already doing wonders for her. She’s loosened her shoes, which hang from her bare toes, and spread her knees in acceptance of what’s coming: G-forces, liftoff, the future. Poor Keith is screwed. His fiancée has discovered her inner princess.
Me, I’m panicking. I shouldn’t be here. This is one flight too many. My hands are gloved in sweat. Until today my momentum was my own, but I’m at the top of the arc now, pitching over, and my seat belt feels thin and flimsy across my middle. I could use a quick blast from the oxygen mask. A beer.
“Unclench your jaw,” says Julie. “You’ll get a migraine.”
“I’m nervous. I’m meeting my publisher today. Assuming we ever take off.”
“We will.”
“We won’t. I’ve developed an instinct—they’re going to cancel us. We’ll sit here, they’ll string us along, and then they’ll cancel. Meanwhile, this man I’m seeing is like the wind. I’ll never catch him again. Eternal tag.”
Julie refuses to let me bring her down. Her eyes glide around the cabin the way they used to during long driving vacations when we were kids, passing the hours by playing games with license plates. My father was a rigid driver, maddeningly steady on the pedal and unwilling to stop, except for fuel. He’d announce a time of arrival when we set out and do whatever it took to hit his mark—starve us, dehydrate us, torture our bowels and bladders. Everything but speed up. Speed scared my father; delivering flammable liquids had made him timid. There was a bumper sticker on his propane truck: “Don’t drive faster than your guardian angel can fly.”
I turn on my HandStar and dial up Great West’s customer information site, according to which our flight is still on time. How do they keep their lies straight in this business? They must use deception software, some suite of programs that synchronizes their falsehoods system-wide. No wonder I’ve grown suspicious of them lately—they haven’t spoken the truth to me in years. How many times have I gazed up at blue skies and been told that my flight’s being held because of weather?
Julie opens Horizons to the page where Soren Morse, or whoever does his writing for him, expounds each month on his visionary quest to make Great Wes
t “your total travel solution.” His photo up top is quasi-presidential, with a soft-focus background of globes and flags and bookshelves. Welcome to my kingdom. I own you here. His face is soap opera handsome. Full lips. Sleek forehead. A scar on his chin to remind you he’s a male. His management style, from everything I’ve heard, is smooth but abusive. Interviewed by Fortune, he called himself “process-centered to the core” and a “humanist reengineer,” but I’ve heard tales of tantrums and vendettas, of intimidation campaigns against VPs that left their targets medicated wrecks.
The pilot has an announcement. I was right. Our plane will be returning to the gate. “Please inquire inside for further information.”
Julie says, “What does that mean?”
“Nothing good.”
Morse is making this personal. He’ll pay.
“What do we do? Go back to Utah now?”
“That never works.”
“What doesn’t?”
“Going back.”
ten
i work quickly, rebooking us to Phoenix through Denver. The only available seats are in economy. The agent snickers delivering this news; I’ve dealt with him before, and he’s a pest. He’s sickly, always sniffling and coughing, and handing out infected boarding passes gives him a sadistic thrill, no doubt. If only Morse knew how poorly his employees, as grudging as nineteenth-century clerks, with no higher sense of process or brand goodwill, reflect on his credentials as a leader. Commissioner of baseball? Not a chance. Commissioner of youth league soccer, maybe.
The agent picks up his phone when I walk off—reporting to his masters? No way to know.
On our way to the gate we buy mochas and cinnamon rolls. Twelve dollars. Julie is outraged. She tastes her coffee and tells me it’s not even hot. Mine’s not hot either, but I had no expectations that it would be. That’s the secret to satisfaction nowadays. Julie asks me about my book and I say, “Later.” I was supposed to talk with her. I haven’t. A rowdy bunch of uniformed marines shoves past us on the moving walkway, running. A cart glides by with a blind man in the back, his cane sticking over the side and nearly swiping people.