Kim Robinson - New York 2140

“I can’t believe she wants to do it,” Mutt says.

“I don’t think she does. She’s just mad right now.”

“Somebody’s got to do it,” Jeff pontificates.

“We can be her finance ministers without portfolio.”

“I want a portfolio.”

“Then you’d have to go with her to D.C.”

“Okay, not. But I always wanted a portfolio.”

“Well, she is going to need some finance advice. Because the shit is hitting the fan.”

“It’s working,” Jeff says. “I knew it would. It’s like that Franklin says, the only problem is if it works so well it wipes out civilization. Aside from that it’s working fine.”

“Banks must be freaking.”

“Totally. The line between cash and not-cash has abruptly moved. Like only cash in hand is cash now. Because people are definitely not paying their rents and mortgages.”

“And student loans?” Mutt inquires.

“They never paid those. So now there’s nothing at the bottom of the house of cards. The dominoes are falling.”

“The falling dominoes are knocking over the house of cards?”

“Exactly. The whole shithouse is coming down.”

“Good. And look, meanwhile we have our little home back!”

“I know. It’s good.” Jeff stands in the open doorway of it, looking south at Wall Street. “If only everyone realized all you need is a hotello.”

Mutt moves past him and stops by the south railing. “The view helps.”

“It does. It’s a nice view.”

“I love this city.”

“It’s not bad. Especially from the thirtieth floor. Here, I’m going to build another planter box.”

“Watch your thumbs.” Mutt regards Jeff moving slabs of wood into position on a long worktable. “You’re a carpenter now, my friend. Have you noticed that we’ve gone from being coders to being farmers? It’s like one of those dreadful back-to-the-land fantasies you kept giving me. Everyone goes Amish and all’s right with the world. Unreadable horseshit, I’m sorry to say.”

Jeff snorts as he lines up two slabs. “Hold this sucker in place while I nail it.”

“No way.”

Jeff shrugs and tries to do it himself. “The idiocy of village life, isn’t that what Marx called it? The idiocy of rural life? Something like that.”

“And here we are.”

“Come on, I need a hand here. And we’re at Twenty-third and Madison in New York City, on the thirtieth floor of a grand old skyscraper, so it’s not as rural as you’re saying.”

“And you like hammering nails.”

“I do,” Jeff admits. “It’s like hitting the head of your worst enemy, over and over. And you drive them right into a fucking block of wood! You can feel them go! It’s very satisfying. So get over here and help hold this piece in place.”

“We call it a vise, my friend. Two vises and you’re set.”

“Two vises don’t make a virtue. Come hold this!”

“Hold it yourself! Practice your William Morris craft skills, your Emersonian self-reliance!”

“Fuck self-reliance. Emerson was a fool.”

“You’re the one who made me read him,” objects Mutt.

“He’s a holy fool, and you should read him. But he couldn’t string two thoughts together if his life depended on it. He’s the greatest fortune cookie writer in American literature.” Jeff snorts with amusement. “Self-reliance my ass. We’re fucking monkeys. It’s always about teamwork.”

“That would make three very good fortune cookie fortunes. Maybe we could start a company.”

“Teamwork, baby. You do the work and I’ll join the team. Come hold this slab of wood here!”

“All right already. But then you owe me.”

“A dime.”

“A dollar.”

“A call option on ten zillion dollars.”

“Deal.”

It took about a week for Stefan and Roberto to eat their way back to weight, and after that Roberto got restless and began to plot their next move. Whatever this project turned out to be, it was going to be complicated by the fact that now they had about a dozen adults in the Met paying attention to them and bringing up the foster parent thing, the guardian thing, the paper thing, the gold thing, trying to make them “wards of the co-op,” as Charlotte put it at one point when they refused all supervision. Neither of them liked any of these ideas, and they agreed it was getting dangerous to speak openly to anyone but Mr. Hexter, who had his own ideas about what they should do, and described himself as being, in relation to them, avuncular, meaning “unclelike” in Latin. Seemed to them that it must be a cool language to have a specific word for being unclelike, as uncles were nothing as far as they could tell. They were happy to let him take on the role on that basis.

He was still trying to teach them to read. It wasn’t much harder than understanding his maps. Maps were great; they were pictures of places from a bird’s-eye view, easy to comprehend. Mr. Hexter wanted Amelia Black to give them a ride so that they would be able to see how much the land looked like the map of it when you were up at the bird’s level. They were agreeable to that, in fact it sounded great. But even without that, the principle of maps was obvious and they got it. And it had been the same with written words, which were like pictures of the spoken words, in that each letter was the picture of one or two sounds, and once you had memorized those, you could sound out any word and know what you were reading. That too had been easy. It had turned out to be way easier than they had thought it was going to be. It would have been even easier if English spelling were less stupid, but whatever.

“I wonder if all of school would have been this easy?” Stefan said.

“You can still find out,” Mr. Hexter said. “But I don’t recommend it. You guys are too quick for school. You might die of boredom and get in trouble, and you’re already in enough trouble as it is.”

“What do you mean, we’re not in trouble.”

But it was true that Franklin and Vlade and Charlotte had melted their gold coins and were taking care of the money the gold had been bought for. And Franklin in particular was insistent that from now on when they went out to do things, they had to take their wristpad with them, always, no exceptions.

“In fact,” he said, “I think that idea of locking ankle beepers on you like they do with people under house arrest is a good idea. I bet Inspector Gen would bring home a couple for us. That way you wouldn’t accidentally forget and go out and get yourself killed without us knowing how you did it.”

“No to that,” Roberto said. “We are free citizens of the republic!”

“You have no idea whether you are or not. No birth certificates, right? No last names, for God’s sake. In fact, Roberto, how did you get any name at all, being orphaned at birth and self-raised from out of a lobster trap?”

Roberto got his stubborn look. “I am Roberto New York, of the house of New York. The dockmaster called me little robber, so I figured my name was Robber, and then later a guy told me about Roberto Clemente. So I decided I was Roberto.”

“And you were how old at this point?”

“I was three years old.”