Jonathan Franzen - The Twenty-Seventh City - A Novel

“May I help you?”

She ran past the typewriter and the red nails of the woman’s outstretched hands and into his office and closed the door. She kneeled.

“Now, Devi—”

He didn’t understand. She couldn’t reason with him.

“I told you on the phone, now. You can’t deny I’ve been dashed square with you. Be a big girl.”

He pulled her to her feet. He pulled her to the door, and she said one last—

“All over, Devi.”

He didn’t understand. One last — Give me one last—

“The game is over. Wash your face, and do try and get that silly color out of your hair. You’ll feel ever so much better.”

One last — She was wearing his first present, and she guided his hand down under and then inside, using her nails to make sure he didn’t leave until he felt. The maid was nice. The maid asked about her things. The maid listened and said chippying, which meant economizing. She wished!

She locked the door with her other hand and went down to the floor. Martin always said Rolf was a prick. Rolf told her he always did. She could see it now. She hated it. She’d go back to Martin and apologize to him. Martin would be madder than ever when he found out that prick had done this to her on the floor even though its mind was made up and she knew it would call the police because it had said so on the phone. Its teeth unclenched.

“That was it, now. Happy?”

Yes happy. Good-bye forever! (She couldn’t wait to count it.) When she ran through the glass doors again the woman was gone and her red nails with her. It was still noon. This time she ran down the stairs. She lost a heel. She stopped to break the other heel and knock it off and ran the rest of the flights flatfooted. The guard said, You’ll never learn to manage. You should learn to drive your own car. His telephone rang as she revolved through the doors onto the pink sidewalk. She began to run.

“Stop right there, young lady!”

She heard the guard running, and she ran floating like a deer. The credit cards were perishable. He was gaining on her, and she didn’t see any cabs on the circular drive. For forty dollars he at least could have waited three minutes! Fortunately a white car pulled over and a back door opened. She got in and turned around in time to see the guard draw up and stick his hands on his hips and his chest heave and his cheeks scarlet and his mouth say, hoo boy, hoo boy. She knew the driver in the front seat. He had a friend she hadn’t met.

“We stopped and picked up your bags.”

He said in a foreign language she understood, catching her breath. They were driving her to the airport. Jammu had said. She hadn’t expected the royal service and she wouldn’t tip them. They drove on the freeway. They didn’t say anything except the friend was coming along with her. She looked in the wallet still warm from the seat of the only one besides Martin she’d done it with. In the front seat they were eating pills and they gave her one which she noticed was different from theirs. She smiled and put it in her mouth and took the can of Crush.

“Dramamine for your flight.”

“You’ll feel calmer.”

She put her compact up to her face to work on her personality and dropped the wet, crumbling pill in the compact. She snapped it shut. At the airport the driver and his friend got out and set her bags on the sidewalk. She got out. Her feet were flat! The driver tried to take her purse away from her, and somehow the strap broke and people were looking. The two friends looked at each other and tried to reason her back into the car for a minute.

“Do you know theeth men, young lady?”

One man was very interested. The two friends jumped in the car. She told the man they were harassing her, which was funny because the car drove away.

“Can I give you a lift thumplace?”

She read the chrome words COUNTRY SQUIRE. His car was older, a station wagon with weathered plastic wood siding. The Country Squire smiled and held the passenger door for her. They left the airport. The Squire was driving awfully fast.

“What’th your name?”

She wasn’t sure right now. She hadn’t ever met the Squire, and she was coming down with the afternoon flu. Wait a second. She opened her purse, zipped the wallet into a pocket and arranged things for the cure. On her right the Marriott disappeared. People didn’t understand Barbara, and when they gave her no credit there was no one left to turn to except Martin. She didn’t believe Martin was really on Rolf’s side.

Trying to reason with her the whole way, the Squire took her downtown. Was she cold? No, she said she only thought she might be coming down with something for the moment. He finally stopped for a light. His mouth widened, a smiling prick. She sprayed Mace in his face and kept spraying until the car behind them honked at the green light. She got out of the car and looked up the street for another cab. Get well soon! she told herself, hopeful even in her chills.

In the first light of Friday, before the city rose, Probst climbed the central staircase at his South Side headquarters. At two or three o’clock he’d stopped trying to sleep. At five he’d stopped trying to keep his eyes closed. He was behind even with his personal tasks at the office, and he knew that the phones at every place where he could conceivably be reached would start ringing at eight. He also felt he owed it to Cal and Bob, who of late had effectively been running the company for him, to come in and work some early mornings in the name of the team.

Mike Mansky, at his desk in Engineering, nodded to him and in the same motion leaned forward to kill a cigarette in the ashtray on his blotter. They had a night crew out rebuilding a bridge on Route 21, otherwise Mansky wouldn’t be here.

Probst negotiated the dark, windowless corridor to his office and opened the door. Carmen’s battened-down desk and typewriter were gray in the light of the new day. The same gray of imminence dwelt temporarily in walls soon to be white, carpeting soon to be blue, file cabinets soon to be more indigenously gray. Already some color was coming out — a spot of red enamel in the corner, a small electric coffeepot. Carmen liked a cup of instant soup on cold afternoons.

The door to his inner sanctum stood ajar, its polished surface reflecting the light rectangle of one of his windows. He pushed it open and walked in.

General Norris was sitting at his desk. He was reading some sort of large-format technical journal. He flipped it onto the desk and looked at Probst. Probst looked at the floor, but the General’s features, the grooves on his forehead, at his eyes and around his mouth, his disappointment, had left an imprint on his retinas. He sighed. “You have a thing about showing up on other people’s property, don’t you?”

“You mind?”

“No-o-o—” Probst set his briefcase on the floor. He wasn’t used to being received in his own office. He did mind that.

“You probably got work you want to do,” Norris said. “I won’t keep you. I just wanted to ask why you done what you done.”

Probst looked out the window at the stark precinct house. “I think the papers will state my case pretty clearly.”

“Oh, your case, yes. Yes indeed. You’ve always got a case. You know something, Martin? I never seen anybody like you before. I’ve seen a lot of self-interest and a lot of cynicism and a lot of weakness, but you — you’re the feller with the finger in the dike who somebody offers you a sandwich and you take your finger out to eat it. And you know the water’s gonna drown you too. You’re really something.”

“Was there anything else?”

“Yes, there was. Like to give you a piece of good advice.” The General stood and rolled his magazine into a tube. “Call it a sixth sense, but I ain’t giving up on you just yet. I’d like you to stay in one piece for what’s gonna happen pretty soon.”