Jonathan Franzen - The Twenty-Seventh City - A Novel

At 8:25 Stone finished the lead-off factual questions and put away his pen and clipboard. Probst took a seat in the wing chair by the sofa, threw one leg over the other, and turned to Stone. It was time to get into the meaty issues. Stone stood up and said, “Thank you, Mr. Probst.”

“That’s all?”

“Sure.” Stone nodded. “Appreciate it. You’ve been very helpful.” He turned off the tape recorder. “Unless there’s something you’d like to add.”

“Well-no. No. I do have some thoughts on the city-county—”

“They’re well documented.” Stone locked his briefcase and spun the combination wheels. “ And I had a very productive talk with John Holmes this afternoon. We hate to take your time when there’s already so much on the record. You’ve been very eloquent in the past.”

Very eloquent. Rabbits know instinctively the meaning of the shadow of a hawk; Probst felt the shadow of New York.

Stone was waiting for him to stand up. “But if there’s anything else you think might help us—”

“I had a question, actually.” He didn’t stand up.

Stone looked down at him patiently. “Sure.”

“What kind of story is this you’re writing?”

“ Well .” Stone hitched his pants up over his hips. “You’d be surprised how many people have mentioned that CBS documentary ‘Sixteen in Webster Groves.’ I think CBS really traumatized this area. Everyone’s afraid we’re going to smear you. Don’t worry. None of the media are, not this time around. I myself have been uniformly impressed here.”

“That’s not exactly what I mean.” Probst made himself comfortable in his chair. “I mean more specifically. How you’re going to fill up the pages.”

“Sure.” Stone buried his hands in his pockets. “You never know what the editors will do, so I can’t really give you a point-by-point rundown, but you can expect to see, oh, the political dynamics of the region. Chief Jammu, of course, in many different contexts. The downtown redevelopment and the philosophy behind it. Crime, welfare, the new federalism. Possibly Municipal Growth, its demise. And you can’t run a story on St. Louis without the Arch. Within the rubric of St. Louis we’ll also do a spread on other up-and-comers. Knoxville, Winston-Salem, Salt Lake, Tampa.”

The Arch? Probst had built the Arch. Perhaps Stone was unaware of this. George Snell of Newsweek had been aware of it. He’d interviewed Probst for ninety minutes and cited him liberally in the article, calling attention to the key role he played in shaping public opinion.

Stone’s watch pipped again.

Probst stalled. “The special election?”

“The referendum, the Baltimore situation. Sure. It’s interesting. We’ll treat it. But at this point it’s mainly news because it’s divided the region, not because it’s united it. And what we’re interested in is the forces of unity.”

Probst stood up and walked to the fireplace. He was so in love with her he couldn’t see straight, but he could see how generous she’d been on the phone, talking like he mattered. “You want a scoop?” he said.

“A what?”

He raised his voice. “Do you want me to tell you something?”

Stone was listing slightly to the left, as if his nodding would eventually topple him. He grinned. “Sure.”

“I’m calling a press conference tomorrow.” Probst wet his lips. “I’m quitting Vote No and supporting the merger.”

“Really. That’s very interesting. Because of course you’ve been instrumental in opposing it.”

“Yes.”

“If it wasn’t clinched before, this should certainly do it.”

“Yes.”

“Can I ask if you’re planning to divorce your wife?”

“No comment.”

When Stone had gone, Probst began to pace the dining room and living room. Chief Jammu, of course . He could still renege. He could still vote no. If he didn’t follow through, Time wouldn’t tell. But having made his little declaration of love in Stone’s presence, as if by a slip of the tongue, a guilty blush, he was much less inclined to back out than to go on and shout the same declaration from every street corner in St. Louis County, so good did it feel to have the secret shared at last. In many different contexts . She was all over the living room. He threw himself onto the sofa and saw her in all the places she hadn’t ever been, stretched out on the window seat, leaning on the mantelpiece, standing on the arm of the sofa to inspect the three still lifes above him. She outnumbered him. He was very small. He let the telephone ring a long time before trudging to the kitchen to answer it.

“Hello,” he said.

“Martin.”

“What,” he said.

“Is Stone still with you?”

“Ah, no.” It was no accident she was calling now. She knew he couldn’t have called her himself. “Mr. Stone left. I didn’t have much to say to him, and he didn’t need much that he didn’t already have. Something like that.”

“The same thing happened to me. He took some quotes and a picture.”

“Oh really.”

“Yes.”

“If you lie to me,” he said, “I don’t know what I’m going to do. Stone spent three hours with you if he spent half a minute.”

After a long, wounded pause, she said, “What’s the matter?”

“Read the paper on Friday.”

“What did you say about me?”

“You know what the matter is.”

“You changed your mind?”

“For the last time, Ess, don’t pretend . Of course I changed my mind.”

“And how, may I ask, was I supposed to know that?”

He sighed. She was still pretending. “How thrilled you sound,” he said.

“Just wait a minute. Let it register. This changes things.”

“No it doesn’t.” He began to speak with some authority, to save his pride. “If I quit Vote No tomorrow, I do it because I want to and because I think it’s right. I like you, but I would certainly never let a thing like that affect my decisions. I want that understood. The merger wasn’t the only obstacle between us. I’m also married. I have a wife. And I’ve changed my mind about dinner. It’s the price you pay. A lot of people love you, but not many of them trust you. I’d have to count myself among the majority there.”

Excessively pleased with having said he loved her without having to say it, he looked at the clock. For a moment he believed it was 9:00 in the morning. Jammu was speaking.

“My name is Susan, Martin. Susan Jammu. And I haven’t changed my mind about dinner. I know you aren’t going to work for the referendum on account of me. I thought that sort of thing was understood between us. I thought we respected each other more than you make it out we do. I know you’re married. I wish I didn’t have to be saying this on the telephone. If I don’t sound shocked that you’re planning to sell out John Holmes and the rest of them, it’s because I felt you never belonged there in the first place. Obviously it isn’t an easy thing to do, what you’ve done. I’ll understand if you want to cool it for a while, cool it for as long as you want, but I think you owe me a dinner, tonight of all nights.”

Susan. It was pathetic. A name was such a tiny thing — so tiny that she couldn’t have expected him to be impressed if she weren’t impressed herself already. She must have considered it her big secret, her ace in the hole. Probst felt sorry for her. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” he said.

The cabdriver tried to give her forty dollars back from her fifty, but she slammed the door and let him keep it as a tip. Maybe it was too big a tip. Was it too big? Her shoe heels conveyed the force of the ground pleasurably into the center of her foot heels as she ran up the pink sidewalk to the entrance of Rolf’s headquarters. It was noon. The lobby was empty. Was it too big? Four hundred percent! That was much too big. But no one would find out, and next time she’d make it up by not tipping at all. The lobby guard, who knew her, didn’t smile this time. He looked at her as men look at women who can’t manage money. The elevator came and she got on, but she had to get off because people wanted out. She got on. On the phone Rolf had called her — and then he’d called her Devi, but they’d quarreled before, but then the maid had said — and then the desk had said the bill wouldn’t be paid after 2:00 p.m., and then she’d hit an artery, and then Jammu had called and reasoned with her and told her the flight number and the gate number and the airline desk to get her ticket at, and she’d reasoned with Jammu. Everything was happening at once. Everything was the same when she went to bed and different in the morning. Jammu said Martin was on Rolf’s side. She said that wasn’t possible. Jammu said pack. The elevator door opened. Four hundred percent. That was four times everything! She ran down the hall and pushed open the glass doors.