Jonathan Franzen - The Twenty-Seventh City - A Novel

Without Martin Probst, the resistance would have had a very feeble core, consisting of Sam Norris, County Supervisor Ross Billerica, and assorted extremists. But with Probst aboard, they no longer seemed like a minority. If St. Louis public life was the court of a Mogul, then Probst was the elephants. Jammu had to steal him. But in losing herself she was also losing the capacity to view others as mere characters. Some at least were people, and the knowledge oppressed her. She couldn’t muster the resolve to give Singh the final go-ahead for continuing the assault on the Probsts. It wasn’t fear that stopped her, it was a thing more like awe, the unasked-for awe of the saboteur who, in some corporate vault, comes face to face with an instrument whose very complexity or delicacy acts as a charm against damage. In this context, any tampering at all, no matter how sophisticated, becomes an act of violence.

She ran, avoiding ice. Her running confused her, this activity of her childhood, this helter-skelter dash along a road. It did not become a chief. Her foot fell on ice — black ice.

She went flying through the air. She twisted and landed hard on her shoulder in the clean snow beyond the road. It was more than a foot deep. She realized she was warm.

She moved her arms. She flapped them, packing down the snow and making wings. Twenty-five years ago in Kashmir her mother had taken her skiing where few Indians went. They’d seen American children on their backs in the snow, and Maman, the expert on all things American, informed Jammu that they were making butterflies; but to Jammu they looked more like angels, Christian angels, with skirts and wings and halos, fallen from the sky.

The image pleased her. She felt restored to herself, indomitable again. Just after three o’clock she rang Singh out of bed and told him to go ahead with the job.

“Thanks, Chief,” he said. “It’ll be a piece of cake. Candy from a baby.”

Earlier that Thursday night, Luisa and Duane had spent some quiet time in the laundromat. Luisa had woefully inadequate supplies of underwear and socks; she could wash them once in the sink, but she drew the line at twice. And sheets and towels required a machine. By nine o’clock, the last students and singles had packed up and gone, bequeathing Luisa and Duane a luxury of available dryers. Duane was reading messages on the board by the door. Luisa, her French notebook open on her lap, was looking out through the beaded window at Delmar Boulevard, closing one eye and then the other. This fall, her eyesight had gone from not-the-best to needing-correction. Duane’s father had recommended an ophthalmologist, and yesterday after school she’d had her appointment, and let them dilate her pupils, and felt burdened with responsibility when Dr. Leake kept changing lenses and asking her, “Is it better this way…Or this? Now…Or now?” She finally asked him to define “better.” He laughed and told her just to do her best. She told his secretary to send the bill to her parents. When she bought glasses she could use American Express. Duane gave her a hard time about the card, he called it antiseptic, but she personally didn’t see anything wrong with using it.

Outside, a bus plunged past. Duane, minus both his sweaters, was copying something from the message board into his journal. Whenever Luisa saw his journal she felt lonely. One time, right after they’d gotten together, she’d asked if she could read it. He’d said no; if he knew she was going to be reading it, he’d be too self-conscious to use it. She was hurt, but she didn’t say anything more.

In the second dryer, one of their green sheets had fallen against the round window and seemed in its invertebrate way to be struggling back over the socks and towels to reach the center of the bin. They only had one set of sheets. Kelly green was the first color Luisa saw when the alarm clock rang at 6:30. She said he didn’t have to, but Duane always got up and ate breakfast with her.

He sat down in the bucket chair next to hers and zipped his journal into the outer pocket of his knapsack. “How’s the essay?”

“Unwritten,” she said.

“You want a job? There’s an ad there. It’s a widow who needs her house cleaned once a week.”

“I don’t know how to clean houses.” She shut her notebook on an unfinished sentence. “How do you know she’s a widow?”

“It says. There’s another ad from a retired army colonel who’s selling a Nova. A 350.”

She rested her hands on his shoulder and held his bare upper arm with both her hands, rubbing her cheek on his neck and taking in his smell. At close range, his ear was funny. She slung her arm around his neck, and lifted a leg and lowered it over his knee, and watched the dryers.

Cold air flooded into the laundromat. The newcomer was a thin black man in brilliant yellow pants and a red leather jacket. He tossed a duffel bag onto the nearest row of washers and looked around slowly and theatrically, aware that they were watching. He wore a ruby stud in his ear.

“Good evening,” he said, bowing slightly to Duane. Then he bowed to Luisa and said it again: “Good evening.” She bowed a tiny bit herself. The only thing worse than being mocked was being mocked by a person who scared you. She untangled herself from Duane.

The man unzipped his duffel and pulled out a pair of bright purple pants and a purple sweatshirt. He put them in a washer and moved to the next. That was all? He dropped in another pair of pants and another sweatshirt, both orange, and continued down the line, whipping out matched clothes, green, red, black, and blue with the flourish of a magician producing scarves, until he’d divided twelve articles among six washing machines. With spidery fingers he unscrewed a jar of blue powder and tapped a little into each machine, like a chef with salt. Then he filled the machines with quarters and started them all up. Water jets rushed in unison as he zipped the empty jar into his bag, shouldered the bag and headed for the door. He stopped. He took three quick steps to his right and snapped his fingers, explosively, right under Luisa’s nose.

She squeaked. Her ears burned. He was already gone.

Duane buried his face in a book, a Simenon mystery, keeping his palm on the spine and four fingers curled over the top to hold the pages open. With his other hand he smoothed Luisa’s hair and rubbed her neck.

One of the dryers stopped. She went to check. “Duane, these are soaking.”

“What’s it set at?” he called, turning a page.

“Argh.” She turned the selector to Normal and added money. They’d be here all night. She walked around and around the core of washers, deliberately stubbing her rubber toes. “I don’t like it here,” she said, in passing.

“You should find a laundry service that takes Amex.”

She turned. “Fuck you.”

His eyes rose calmly from his book. “I beg your pardon?”

“I said it’s awful here.”

“Then why don’t you go and get some more clothes from your house?”

She didn’t have an answer. She started crying. Then she stopped. They were in a laundromat. There was nothing she could do but go out to Webster Groves and clean out her drawers. Being with Duane wasn’t as much fun as she’d thought it would be — a lot of times it wasn’t fun at all — but after what had happened on her father’s birthday she couldn’t imagine going back home.

The door blew open in Barbara’s hand. She fell through the entering breeze towards a man prepared, it was clear at once, to catch her. The day was warm, an instance of the weakness of winter, its willingness to turn to spring. She swayed a little.