Jonathan Franzen - The Twenty-Seventh City - A Novel

“He’ll be thrilled.” Elaine tucked the pile of notes into a niche in the wall unit. “He forgot to vote, but he’s just around the corner. Can I offer you something?”

“No, thanks.”

She left to attend to matters in the kitchen, and Probst, dumped on the sofa as if by time machine, scratched his head and looked around. The furniture had new slipcovers, but the shapes of the major pieces, of the couch and the three larger chairs, hadn’t changed since the last time he’d sat in the DuChamp living room. The closest thing in sight to plant life was a giant blown-glass snifter half filled with waxy plastic fruit. Little joysticks from a computer game protruded at cocky angles from the shelf above the television.

He turned and studied the three pastel portraits in brass frames on the wall behind him. They must have been done at least seven years ago, because the younger girl didn’t look any older than ten. A spot of white chalk in each eye made her radiant. The boy had sat for the artist in a blue blazer, a white shirt, and a red necktie, each of which unraveled into squiggling chalkstrokes at the bottom of the portrait, above the artist’s black initials. The older girl had worn a pale pink dress with a high lace collar; she’d already had some chest, seven years ago, and the sheen on her lipstick was yellow-orange. Probst recalled that once upon a time the major department stores like Sears had hired portraitists who gave appointments at the various branches on a rotating basis and turned out drawings at very reasonable prices. It seemed to him that these itinerant artists had rendered something essential, that these three children would always live as they looked here, forever happy.

“This has been one hell of a pincer movement. One half a pincer and nobody to pinch.”

“At leatht we got Nithing trapped.”

Herb’s brother Roy was parked on the far side of the target, ready to spot any and all action on that side and to follow anyone who tried to leave. In case things were still hopping in Missouri, Herb had also assigned three operatives to cover the Indian outposts that had looked the most heavily used. He’d assigned a fourth to keep an eye on Jammu.

“Sure,” Sam said, peering down into the mirrored depths of the thermos. “After we give the rest of ’em four whole days to ditch their equipment and fly home to Katmandu.”

“I’m thorry, Tham. You’re free to dithcontinue our relationship.”

“Oh, never mind me.” Sam patted the small detective on the back. “We got a good enough shot at nailing Jammu if we quit right now. But I can just see ’em in there with their shredders.”

“You’re free to terminate.”

“No need to cry, Herb. You reckon there’s an open liquor store in these parts?”

“Shhh!”

Sam heard the zoom of Herb’s video camera. “What is it?”

“Nithing!”

Eagerly Sam pressed his eyes to the chink. Nissing was standing on the street under a red and white golf umbrella, looking left and right as though checking to see if the coast was clear. Sam raised the telephoto lens to the chink, aimed through the viewfinder, and depressed the shutter release, letting the auto-advance motor whiz while Nissing walked purposefully west towards the river. In his mind he was already writing the caption for the photos: John Nissing, close Jammu associate, leaving property owned by Hammaker. Property contains— What did it contain? Sam looked at his watch; it was 5:15. A swarm of heavily armed aliens? Regardless, in another four hours he and Herb were going in.

It was bound to happen one of these years. The chief executive of a publicly held corporation couldn’t expect to continue running things forever. Buzz regretted only that he hadn’t stepped down before they forced him to. His failing grasp of the concept of profit should have tipped him off. How could he ever have made the mistake of letting his feelings for Asha and Martin influence his policy decisions? What had he been thinking this spring? At the time, to be sure, his actions had made sense. And now they didn’t matter. He was retiring on Friday. Of course, as the major stockholder, he’d surely be allowed to continue whatever personal projects he chose. If need be, he could liquidate a few assets and fund the research out of his own pocket. He looked forward to having more time for his dear friends, and better yet, in a way, to having time to devote to the queer assemblage that was his family. When the top priority ceased to obtain, all the lower priorities moved up a notch.

He escaped headquarters in a company car without being accosted by the press. Rain was spattering the ground with forsythia petals. He’d long envisioned himself being retired on a different sort of day, a crisp and blue Novembery day, with a warm fire and brandy at the end of it. Spring was more the time of year when great men died.

He drove first to the Hammaker complex to inquire after Asha. She hadn’t been seen at the office all day. He called the Hammaker estate once more, spoke with the same vague servant he’d been speaking with since 9:00 in the morning, who said that no, Asha wasn’t there yet either. She’d gone out with her maid. Shopping? Buzz drove home.

Finding Bev’s Cadillac parked by the gatehouse, he smiled a small smile of gratitude, his lips joining like a fortune cookie. When all else failed, he could count on Bev. He went inside, called to her, went upstairs, and saw her lying on the bed. On her nightstand stood an empty Seconal bottle and an empty fifth of Harvey’s Bristol Cream.

As soon as she saw that her father’s car wasn’t in the garage, Luisa lost interest. She inched back through the crowd. In the bad light, none of the neighbors recognized her, not even Mrs. LeMaster. Though she saw something familiar and significant in Luisa’s face, though she stared, screwing up her eyes until it seemed she might cry, Mrs. LeMaster was so unsure of her identification that she couldn’t bring herself to collar a cop and say: that’s no towhee, that’s Luisa Probst, she used to live here. Luisa turned and walked back up Baker. It wasn’t her mess.

She thanked her luck that she’d moved all her favorite things into Duane’s apartment before this happened. She thought of various dresses and purses in her closet that were better off burned. She wondered what it would be like to move to another city and introduce herself using a different name. Her first name would be McArthur. Her last name would be Smith. She tried to imagine what kind of job she could get, and then for some reason she thought of her father’s National Geographics .

She stopped on the sidewalk and set down her purse, turned to an oak tree and socked the trunk as hard as she could. She bit her lip and looked at her knuckles. Shreds of white skin were bunched up and hanging ragged from the edge of pits into which blood was starting to seep. She hit the tree again with the same hand. It stung more but overall hurt less. She hit the tree two more times, and with each blow she could feel how solid it was, how its roots went deep enough to hold it powerfully vertical. The smell of burned wood was strong in her nose.

On Lockwood she sat waiting for a bus while cars rolled by, the commuting men shadowy in their interiors. Car after car, man after man, always one driver, starting up from the Rock Hill intersection. If you put together all the men in Webster Groves in the darkness of their cars at five o’clock, it added up to a mystery with the power of a crowd, but divided and more secret, a mystery like the business section of the newspaper and its esoteric concepts, like futures and options, which every day the men were privately assimilating. Did they understand it? In libraries Luisa had looked into just about every kind of field at least once, a psychotherapists’ journal, the bulletin of the Missouri Historical Society, invertebrate morphology, the works, and the only kind of thinking she couldn’t begin to follow was the kind the men with their loosened neckties in their expensive cars were presumably involved in as she watched.