Jonathan Franzen - The Twenty-Seventh City - A Novel

Another shot.

“General, stop !” he yelled.

Another shot.

Its engine groaning afresh, the plane banked up and away from the smoke without releasing its load. It veered off to the south at a dangerous angle. Buzz lost it in the trees, and the General, his magazine empty, ceased his fire.

“Martin? It’s Norris.”

“Oh.” Probst’s eyes fell shut. “Morning.” Saturday morning, eight o’clock. Raindrops were inching down the windows, the gutters were creaking, and water splashed quietly in the bathroom as Barbara showered. “What can I do for you, General?”

“Martin, are you busy?”

“I was sleeping.”

“Reason I’m calling so early — you mind looking out your front window?”

“Maybe you could just tell me what’s out there,” Probst said.

“My car. I’m speaking from my car. Are you busy?”

“I have a tennis date at eleven.”

“We should be back by three or four.”

“I see.” Probst stretched his leg into the cool territory on Barbara’s side of the bed. “Where are we going?”

“Mexico.”

“Mexico. I see.”

“I’ll explain,” the General said. “Don’t worry about breakfast. I’ve got that under control.”

“You’re under the impression I’m going to Mexico with you?”

“Just come on out. I’ll explain.”

“Look, General. I can’t go waltzing off for the entire day.”

“I would’ve called yesterday, Martin, but the element of surprise.”

“I’m surprised all right.”

“Not you. Them. It won’t take but a few hours. This is important.”

“If it’s about Jammu again—”

The General hung up. Probst kicked back the covers and rolled out of bed. His head ached. Last night they’d had hot Szechuan platters and a lot of beer with Bob and Jill Montgomery, out in Chesterfield. He strode to the bathroom and turned the doorknob.

Locked? Locked?

“Just a minute!” Barbara sang.

What the hell? Locked the door?

He stormed back across the room, around the corner, down the hall, and burst into the bathroom through its unlocked flank. The Vitabath-saturated steam took his breath. Barbara poked her head through the shower curtain and gave him a puzzled, smiling frown. “What?”

“I want to shave.”

She frowned more deeply, hurt. “Go ahead.”

“Haven’t you been in there long enough?”

Her head disappeared. The water stopped. She never gave a thought to how much of it she used. “Hand me a towel.”

He grabbed a towel from her rack and parted the curtains. She jumped, shuddering, to make him feel like a stranger and a brute.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “General Norris is sitting in his car out in front.”

She wrapped herself in the towel without drying off and left with a slam. He opened the door and called after her, “I’m sorry!”

“Whatever for?”

Things had been bad since Luisa left.

He wet his beard with an inefficient one-handed tossing motion. Water coursed down his chest to the waistband of his pajamas, and he tried to hip-check it into the sink, but it had already gained the inside of his leg, trickling down as if unzipping him. He squirted a blob of shaving cream onto his left wrist, above the curved aluminum splint, and lathered his face with his right hand. He’d always used his left hand for lathering. His face felt unfamiliar, full of inaccessible nooks and crannies.

After he’d fought his way into the clothes he’d worn the night before (they smelled like restaurant), he went down to the kitchen and had Barbara tie his laces. She double-knotted them. The General honked the horn of his Rolls long and loud.

Probst was halfway down the front walk when Barbara spoke his name. He turned back. “Call me?” she said.

The horn honked again. He smiled in her direction and nodded. The door shut, and Barbara walked into the green gloom of the living room. She watched the car, the black hearse, swallow her husband. Alone, she let her gaze travel the length of the living room and back, and wished Luisa might step out of the closet, might step out and say anything, anything at all, say, “The big bowl was too hot, the middle bowl was too cold, but the little bowl, it was ju-u-u-u-u-u-st right”: Luisa, the conditional Goldilocks who’d arrived to steal the porridge and break the chair and left again to live happily ever after elsewhere, in the land of human beings…. Mama Bear padded through the enchanted forest to the kitchen and poured herself some coffee. She sat down at the table, and wiped her eyes, and sniffed. She would write Goldilocks another letter. Although they spoke on the phone every day, she and Goldilocks, it wasn’t enough. She wrote the date on the top page of her letter pad, December 9, and smoked a Winston, reworking her addiction, doing it consciously this time, noticing how. She never begged Goldilocks to come back. Goldilocks wasn’t an object, wasn’t an appliance. She was a person. She was acting one way now, but someday, soon, she’d act another way. For now, it pleased Mama Bear to see Papa Bear’s equilibrium upset. She wasn’t going to fix his life for him. But she wasn’t going to shut up, either. In an hour she’d call. For now, Dear Luisa. I’ve been Christmas shopping.

The smoke was bothering Probst. “Can I open a window?”

The General opened his own window and threw his cigar into the rain. It landed in the far gutter, like a roll of dog dirt. The traffic light turned green. Through the green-tinted windows it looked almost white. The engine hummed as the General accelerated up a wet empty ramp onto the Inner Belt. Probst looked again at the note he’d been given when he got in the car.

Probst slapped his thigh. “Gosh, it’s been ages since I was in Mexico .”

Norris gave him a severe look, but handed him another doughnut.

“So how’s Betty?” Probst said, munching.

“Betty’s well. President of the school board now.”

“I guess that means textbook hearings?”

“Not if she can avoid it.”

The northern extension of the Inner Belt cut between young apartment complexes and young windowless commercial facilities and brown morsels of parkland. In St. John, in the rain, Probst caught a glimpse of a tall old man in a bathrobe hanging a wreath on his balcony railing.

“Do you mind if I use your phone?” he asked.

“Go right ahead.”

He punched in the Ripleys’ number and got Audrey. He couldn’t resist telling her: “I’m calling from a car.”

“Oh really.” Her voice was dull.

“Could you tell Rolf I have to cancel this morning?”

He hung up with a pleasant feeling of irresponsibility. He turned to the General, who was wearing a black raincoat and, underneath, a very fine-looking cotton shirt with broad vertical stripes, maroon and black.

“Where’d you get that shirt?”

“Neiman.” The General was now driving through an industrial park somewhere east of the airport. At the rear of the park was a high fence with green plastic slats woven through its mesh and a cantilever gate at one end. He lowered his window, consulted a card, and pecked a string of numbers onto a telephone plate. The gate rose and they entered a lot in which eight or nine cars were parked. Behind the cars stood an unmarked hangar-like building with bulging Plexi-glas skylights. The pavement ran straight up to the bottom tier of its cinder-block walls without even token bordering, as if the building, like the cars, merely rested on the surface and could be moved.

Stepping out, Probst caught his bad hand on the door. His knee jerked, knocking the door into a neighboring car and making a sizable crease. The car was a green LeSabre, with rays of mud behind the wheels. He considered his responsibility to leave a note, but found himself following Norris instead. It wasn’t much of a car anyway.