Jonathan Franzen - The Twenty-Seventh City - A Novel

“The advice.”

“Don’t be snippy with me. I’m civil, you be civil. My advice is, do whatever you have to in private with that woman but don’t make it public.”

“Uh huh.”

“Don’t make it public.” With his magazine Norris tapped a black plastic binder on Probst’s desk. “I’m leaving you a copy of the interim report we sent the IRS and FBI yesterday, and you can judge for yourself. Maybe you’ll get the idea of handing it over to her. I hope you don’t. But I can tell you we’ll find out if you do and it won’t hurt the investigation any but it’ll sure as hell hurt you. Don’t be any stupider than you been already.”

The General left.

Probst read the label on the binder. Preliminary Report on the Indian Presence in St. Louis. Commissioned by S. S. Norris. H. B. Pokorny & Sons . He riffled through the pages and saw lists, transcripts, financial breakdowns, in all about 250 pages, a bulk that scared him. If this was all make-believe, their imaginations must have been working in very high gear. He decided to read one page. He opened to what looked like a Who’s Who section.

MADAN, Bhikubai Devi, born 12/12/61, Bombay. Prostitute. Residing Airport Marriott Hotel, St. Louis, 9/19—present. Visa #3310984067 (tourist) exprd 11/14. Indian psprt #7826212M. Documented encounters: Jammu, 10/8, 10/22, 10/24, 11/6 (am & pm), 11/14, 11/24, 11/27, 12/2, 12/12, 12/14, 12/29, 1/17, 1/21, 2/20, 2/27, 3/15 (see chronology, Appendix C). Ripley, 50 + encounters beginning 9/19 through present. A probable heroin addict, Madan would appear to be the primary and perhaps sole liaison between Jammu and Ripley. (See Transcript 14, Appendix B.) Justiciable offenses: possession of Class 1 narcotics, violation of visa (Sec. 221 [c], Act of 1952, 8 U.S.C. [c]), prostitution. Criminal record in India: not available.

The phone was ringing, and he read no more. He could guess who was calling.

“It takes guts to do what Martin did,” Buzz Wismer said.

Friday had passed without Martin’s having backed away at all from the severe pro-merger stance he’d adopted on Thursday. It was Saturday now, and Martin had been selected at the eleventh hour to deliver the keynote speech at the pro-merger rally to be held on the Mall downtown at three o’clock.

“It takes real guts,” Buzz repeated. With a spoon he depressed the cheese skin on the French onion soup Bev had taken out of the oven. He wanted lunch, but lunch was molten and dangerous. The single-serving earthenware crock was too hot to touch. “Yes sir,” he said, pinching his napkin in hungry frustration. “It takes real guts.”

Bev cut the cheese strands out from under her raised spoon with a stoned-wheat cracker and took her first bite. Her mouth slackened at the corners. He heard the unwillingness in her swallow. She coughed, explosively, and gagged. Something in her throat. He leaned across the table to slap her on the back but she waved him away, coughing and shaking her head. When she’d recovered, she picked up her crock with a pot holder and set it in the sink. She sat down and broke a cracker in two.

“You shouldn’t have made yourself any if you weren’t going to eat it,” Buzz said.

“It takes guts all right,” she said. “Now that he’s done it, you can do it too. Right? Now that he’s done the hard part. You can follow suit. It would take guts not to. Wouldn’t it.” She’d broken each half cracker into halves. Four equal squares lay on her placemat. She took another cracker from the basket. “You can follow suit. If he leads clubs, you play a club. Just follow suit. Except for the fun part. Barbara made that easier for him. Didn’t she.”

She swept the eight squares of cracker into a cupped hand and went and dropped them in the wastebasket. Buzz managed a bite of soup, shuttling it around inside his mouth before it could burn anything too badly. He took a gulp of Guinness. Bev sat. “I’d like to help you, Buzz, I honestly would. I’m your helpmeet. But there’s no one in sight to take me off your hands. Not for miles around.”

“Maybe you should lie down.”

“I just got up.”

“Oh.”

Once he’d emptied the crock, he got hers from the sink and ate most of her soup, too. She served him a large slice of Grand Marnier-impregnated Bundt cake for dessert. (Her cooking was too rich for him, but it gave her something to do, measuring the substantial pounds of butter, the substantial cupfuls of grated cheese.) He put the crocks in the dishwasher, making a mental note to check after the dishwasher had run to see if it had actually cleaned the crusted cheese from the rims. (Their latest maid had quit after six days.) It was one o’clock. He gargled with Listerine and put on a leather jacket and called to Bev that he was leaving for the office. She came to the front door with a glass of sherry on ice.

“I guess I’ll see you when I see you,” she said. “Guess I’ll be seeing you around. Be seeing you. See you later.”

He smiled. “I won’t be gone that long.”

There was no practical reason for Buzz to copy Martin and make public statements in support of the referendum. The campaign had for all intents and purposes come to an end at noon on Thursday. It was now just a matter of waiting another nine days until it was official. Nevertheless, Buzz wanted to do something. In the first place, it never hurt one’s public image and executive credibility to be on the winning side. In the second place, Martin had done a brave thing, and Buzz felt that giving him his full support was the least he could do to make it up to him (“it” was a litany of shadowy, late-night offenses). In the third place, there was Asha. As he drove up the road to headquarters he saw a cream-colored Rolls-Royce idling in the middle of the vast empty parking lot, and as he coasted up to it he could almost hear the news: Edmund “Buzz” Wismer, chairman of the board of Wismer Aeronautics, today stunned the city by announcing his intention to move his operations, based for the last forty years in suburban St. Louis County, to downtown St. Louis. The announcement, following on the heels of a related announcement by Wismer’s longtime friend and confidant Martin Probst, comes at a time when Asha was growing impatient with him. Her engine was running, after all, and he wondered whether if he’d come a few minutes later she still would have been here. From the smile on her internationally renowned face, however, Wismer can tell she was glad she’d waited.

The countdown to Election Day had entered the single figures. On the whole, Probst’s former allies at Municipal Growth and Vote No had shown commendable understanding and patience with him, at least to judge by their silence. Partly, no doubt, they were recalling his refusal to sully himself with the practicalities of the campaign. They wouldn’t miss his labors, and he’d made himself so unlikable (he knew this) that not many would miss him personally either. Beyond that, St. Louisans naturally respected well-reasoned changes of heart, even surprising and hurtful changes, and perhaps especially in the case of a man with a reputation so unimpeachable. People were used to Probst by now. Their latest reaction, as he imagined it, amounted to an Oh jeez, Martin Probst, he’s done it again. As usual, events had conspired to keep his actions in character.

By Sunday night there remained only one last unpleasant task. He had to clean out his desk at Vote No headquarters and turn in his keys. He’d put it off as long as was seemly, and then a little longer still; it was midnight by the time he left the house on Sherwood Drive.

The night was warm. He pulled on a switch to lower all four of the Lincoln’s windows, allowing in air that had risen off soft, recuperating lawns and banks of daffodils and jonquils and snowdrops. Spring had come all at once and in full force, having sent no red herrings in February or January. This spring, the city had earned.