Private Citizens
Page 33
“There’s more to it than that,” Henrik said. “We didn’t—”
“Nope, I don’t want to hear it,” Cory said between heaves. “What you said is perfect.”
When she caught her breath the heat of her heart was on the skin on her face. She mouthed a few syllables, to establish that she could: luh, guh, buh. She dragged her hands down her cheeks. “Linda. What. The hell. Was in that weed?”
“I really don’t know,” Linda said, attempting a headstand. Her dress fell down over her head so she was all bare belly and legs. “Definitely something!”
“So if you’ve moved out of Iniquity,” Henrik said to Cory, “where are you staying tonight?”
“Here,” Cory said.
“Um, you can probably stay with us. Will?”
Will shrugged.
“No, I’m staying here,” Cory said.
“Oh shit, are we sleeping over?” Linda said. “We’ll need more food and drugs. Someone give me their phone.”
Nobody had one. Linda proposed a supply run; Henrik was the only one with a license, and they made Will come along. “Cory, vamanos.”
“I have to finish moving and cleaning.”
“Tomorrow!”
Cory’s mouth started to talk. “I can’t because I’m driving home in the morning to move back home with my dad and it’ll probably cost too much for me to ever move back. So I won’t be around anymore.” Everyone looked at her like she’d said something very wrong, and she decided to go with that. “I feel so great that we’re here and so bad we weren’t here, you know? It’s so stupid how that works. I fucking hated you guys so much for having nicer lives and I spent so much time obsessing over how unfair it was, but why should it matter, you know? It’s just not a real thing, because the world will not be around much longer, I’m very sorry to say. God, I actually love you guys. I love you.”
It became apparent that the music had stopped a while ago. She wondered if she’d made it stop and laughed and wiped her eyes. Will nodded, feigning comprehension; Henrik and Linda sight-checked each other. Linda’s mouth kept opening, her rosacea aflame. The air grew rich with delay. Cory laughed. “It’s fine, it’s fine,” she said, “take your time. No, don’t even say anything, I know how it is. You can’t say I’m wrong, though.”
Linda went over and kissed Cory’s cheek. “Back in a bit,” she said.
They left. Actually there wasn’t much to do besides sweep and bring out the last chairs and cleaning supplies—plastic crates, mop buckets, a dolly. She filled some crates and took them outside, thinking she might catch up. She looked for where she’d stacked the other office remains in an unobtrusive heap that afternoon, at the alley’s inlet. But they were gone, everything was claimed: file cabinets archiving nothing, pencil caddies, desk phones bound up in their cords, obsolete computer towers. All that was left was the whiteboard, face up, where she’d written in permanent marker over the faded green, red, and blue of erased plans:
FREE
HELP
YOURSELVES
Acknowledgments
The latest of continual thanks for the support of my writing groups and the writing of my support groups: Daniel Levin Becker, Mauro Cardenas, Max Doty, Jen duBois, Anthony Ha, Alice Sola Kim, Reese Kwon, Greg Larson, Karan Mahajan, Anna North, Vauhini Vara, Esmé Wang, Annie Wyman, and Jenny Zhang. And no less, the fearfully symmetric MFA cohort: E. J. Fischer, Evan James, Carmen Machado, Ben Mauk, Mark Mayer, Rebecca Rukeyser, and Bennett Sims.
An unrepayable student loan debt is owed to Adam Johnson, Elizabeth Tallent, Sam Chang, Michelle Huneven, Wells Tower, and Marilynne Robinson. Endless praise for the administrations of Deb West, Jan Zenisek, and Connie Brothers; the Jentel Artist Residency Program; the MacDowell Colony; and the Copernicus Society of America for the Michener-Copernicus Fellowship. And I sure won’t leave out my agent Ellen Levine, my editor Margaux Weisman, and my copyeditor Laura Cherkas, all of whom I’ve exhausted at various points in the process just by being myself.
But my first thanks are to my mother, father, and sister, beloved enablers.
About the Author
TONY TULATHIMUTTE has written for VICE, AGNI, The Threepenny Review, Salon, The New Yorker online, and other publications. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and Stanford University, he has received an O. Henry Award, MacDowell Colony and Truman Capote Fellowships, and the Michener-Copernicus Society of America Award. He lives in New York.
www.tonytula.com @tonytula
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.
Praise for
Private Citizens
One of Flavorwire’s Most Anticipated Books of 2016
“Witty, unsparing, and unsettlingly precise, Tulathimutte empathizes with his subjects even as he (brilliantly) skewers them. A satirical portrait of privilege and disappointment with striking emotional depth.”
—Kirkus (starred review)
“Tulathimutte’s debut is poetic and verbose as his characters sardonically and intellectually upend every contemporary topic presented to them. . . . Private Citizens is an impressive start for an edgy new writer.”
—Booklist
“Private Citizens is a freak of literature—a novel so authentic, hilarious, elegantly plotted, and heartbreaking that I’d follow it anywhere. Tony Tulathimutte is a singular intellect with an uncanny 40/20 vision on the world.”
—Jennifer duBois, author of Cartwheel and A Partial History of Lost Causes
“Private Citizens is a combustible combination of acrobatic language, dead-on observations and hilarious, heartbreaking storytelling. Tulathimutte has created characters that are hard to forget—first they’ll make you want to strangle them, then you’ll end up falling in love with them.”
—Angela Flournoy, National Book Award finalist and author of The Turner House
“Tony Tulathimutte’s Private Citizens is my favorite kind of novel: an entrancing narrative in which important ideas lurk around the corners and behind the curtains. It enchants, entertains, sometimes makes me chew my nails in dread, sometimes makes me laugh my ass off, and never, ever doubts my intelligence.”
—Benjamin Hale, author of The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore and The Fat Artist
“From a Here and Now that lends itself all too easily to caricature comes Private Citizens: a hilarious and gutsy novel that does the braver thing, reinvesting the world we know with humanity. Tony Tulathimutte’s satire cuts deep, but has a tender belly—and this book will leave you raw with feeling and aching at the ribs.”
—Alexandra Kleeman, author of You Too Can Have A Body Like Mine
“A spot-on rendering of contemporary San Francisco in all its numinous hippie-hipster-techbro-burnout-activist-ridden glory. But it is the book’s style that makes it stand out. Tony Tulathimutte writes sentences with a reckless verve that reminds one of the best of David Foster Wallace. He’s a major American talent.”
—Karan Mahajan, author of Family Planning and The Association of Small Bombs
“Private Citizens is the product of a whirring intellect with brilliance to burn. It examines the anxieties and privileges of the millennial generation as well as any book I’ve come across. Reading Tony Tulathimutte is like watching a mad genius at work in his laboratory, conjuring the magnificent and the monstrous into life.”
—Anthony Marra, New York Times bestselling author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena and The Tsar of Love and Techno
“Rabidly intelligent, subversive, and heartfelt, Private Citizens is a comedy, a love story, and a horrifyingly adept critique of life in the digital age. With humor and grace, Tulathimutte brings clarity to characters who might otherwise be blurred in the whirlwind of self-performance. An important and deliciously readable book by a brilliant new voice that poignantly upends contemporary ideas of authenticity."
—Jen Percy, author of Demon Camp
Credits
Cover design by Amanda Kain
Cover photographs: © Lu
kas Gojda / Shutterstock (burst); © gio_banfi / Getty Images (houses)
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
PRIVATE CITIZENS. Copyright © 2016 by Tony Tulathimutte. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
ISBN 978-0-06-239910-6
EPub Edition February 2016 ISBN 9780062399113
16 17 18 19 20 OV/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers Australia Pty. Ltd.
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
www.harpercollins.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor
Toronto, ON M4W 1A8, Canada
www.harpercollins.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers New Zealand
Unit D1, 63 Apollo Drive
Rosedale 0632
Auckland, New Zealand
www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF, UK
www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
195 Broadway
New York, NY 10007
www.harpercollins.com