Jonathan Franzen - Purity

Someone showed the words to Tom, who was sitting on the bench now, his head in his hands.

“This should suffice, don’t you think? The confession itself provides the motive. If need be, you can corroborate the confession. But I don’t think anyone will question it.” Someone extended a hand to Tom. “Will you do it?”

“No.”

“I’m asking you as a friend. Do I have to beg?”

Tom shook his head.

“Do I have to drag you along with me?”

“No.”

“Don’t lie to me, Tom. You know what it’s like to want to kill someone.”

“The difference is I didn’t do it.”

“But now you can. You want to. At least admit you want to.”

“No. You’re psychotic, and you can’t see it because you’re psychotic. You need to—”

The sound of Tom’s voice stopped. It was curious and abrupt. Tom’s mouth was still moving, and there was still the distant rush of water, the screeching of parakeets. Only human speech had ceased to be audible. It was very disorienting and had to be the Killer’s work somehow. But someone was the Killer. Had the Killer always been deaf to speech?

In the mysterious selective silence, he wandered away from Tom, out to the edge of the cliff. He heard a scrabble of feet on gravel and looked back to see Tom standing up, gesturing to him, apparently shouting. He turned back to the precipice and looked down at the tropical treetops, the large shards of fallen rock, the green surf of undergrowth crashing against them. When they began to drift slowly closer, and then moved rapidly closer, and more rapidly yet, he kept his eyes open wide, because he was honest with himself. In the instant before it was over and pure nothing, he heard all the human voices in the world.

Fog spilled from the heights of San Francisco like the liquid it almost was. On better days it spread across the bay and took over Oakland street by street, a thing you saw coming, a change you watched happening to you, a season on the move. Where it encountered redwoods, the most local of rains fell. Where it found open space, its weightless pale passage seemed both endless and like the end of all things. It was a temporary sadness, the more beautiful for being sad, the more precious for being temporary. It was the slow song in minor that the rock-and-roll sun then chased away.

Pip was feeling not so temporarily sad as she walked up the hill to work. Sunday morning, early, the streets were empty. Cars that in sunshine might have looked merely parked looked abandoned in the fog. From some direction and some distance, a raven was croaking. Fog subdued the other birds but made the ravens talkative.

At Peet’s, she found the assistant manager, Navi, loading pastries into the display case. Navi had wooden disks the size of poker chips in his earlobes and was scarcely older than Pip, but he seemed completely at peace with corporations and retail. It was her first day of work post-training, and the way he oversaw her, as she booted up the register and filled receptacles with liquids, was all business and no indulgence. She felt almost weepingly grateful to have a boss who was nothing but a boss; who let her be.

Three customers were waiting in the fog when she unlocked the front door. After she’d served them, a lull came, and into this lull walked a person she recognized. It was Jason, the boy she’d tried and failed to sleep with a year and a half ago, the boy whose texts she’d read. Jason Whitaker with his Sunday Times . She’d thought of him, their Sunday mornings, when she’d applied for the Peet’s job. But she’d figured that by now he’d found some other coffee place to be enthusiastic about.

She waited, with the particular exposure of a barista, while he claimed his preferred table with his paper and came over to the pastry case. To herself, she was no longer the person who’d left him waiting forever in her bedroom and then rained abuse on him, but he had no way of knowing this, because, of course, she was also still that person. When he stepped up to the cash register, he saw this person and blushed.

She gave him an ironic little wave. “Hello.”

“Wow. You work here.”

“It’s my first real day.”

“It took me a second to recognize you. Your hair is short.”

“Yes.”

“It looks nice. You look great.”

“Thank you.”

“Wow, so.” He looked over his shoulder. No one was behind him. His own hair was shorter, his body still skinny but less skinny than before. She remembered why she’d wanted him.

“What can I get you?” she said.

“You probably remember. Bear claw and a three-shot cappuccino, tall.”

She was relieved to turn away from him and work on his drink. Navi was occupied at the back with a large plastic drum.

“So are you part-time here?” Jason said. “Do you still work for the alt-energy place?”

“No.” She tonged a bear claw from the case. “I’ve been away. I just came back.”

“Where were you?”

“Bolivia and then Denver.”

“Bolivia? For real? What were you doing down there?”

She got the milk steamer squealing so she didn’t have to answer.

“This is on me,” she said when she was finished. “You don’t have to pay.”

“No, come on.”

He pushed a ten-dollar bill at her. She pushed it back. It lay there on the counter. Keeping her eyes on it, she said, “I never apologized to you. I should have apologized.”

“God, no, it’s OK. I’m the one who should have apologized.”

“You did. I got your texts. I was so ashamed of myself I couldn’t write back to you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Not as sorry as I am, I suspect.”

“It was like a perfect storm of wrongness, that night.”

“Yah.”

“That guy I was texting? I’m not even friends with him anymore.”

“Seriously, Jason, you are not the one to apologize.”

He left the money on the counter when he went back to his table. She rang up his purchase and put the change in the tip jar. A year and a half ago she might have resented him for being cavalier about the money, but she was no longer that person. Somewhere she’d lost her capacity for resentment, and for hostility as well, and thus, to some extent, for being amusing. This was a real loss, but there was nothing she could do about it except be sad. She was pretty sure the loss predated the knowledge that her mother was a billionaire.

For a while the stream of customers was steady. Navi had to pull her out of the weeds more than once; accidental coffee and dairy wastages were running high. During another lull, Jason returned to the counter. “I’m taking off,” he said.

“It was nice to see you again. I mean, discounting my excruciating embarrassment.”

“I still come here every Sunday. But now you can think, ‘Oh, that’s just Jason.’ I can think, ‘Oh, that’s just Pip.’”

“Is that something I said?”

“It’s something you said. Will I see you next Sunday?”

“Probably. It’s not a popular shift.”

He started to leave and then turned back to her. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That sounded like something I didn’t mean. Asking if you’d be here next week.”

“It just sounded friendly.”

“Good. I mean — I’m kind of with someone else. I didn’t want to send the wrong message.”

She felt a small pang but no surprise. “Message of friendliness received.”

He was walking away when she found herself laughing. He turned back. “What?”

“Nothing. Sorry. Unrelated.”

When he was gone, more laughter escaped her. A stupid condom! Was anything funnier than a condom? If she hadn’t left Jason and gone downstairs to get one, a year and a half ago, she might never have taken Annagret’s questionnaire, and everything that had happened to her since then wouldn’t have happened. If she’d had a boyfriend, she wouldn’t have wanted to leave town. She would never have learned about the other condoms, the comedy of that . The comedy of her even existing. Navi was giving her a chiding look, but she couldn’t stop laughing.