Benjamin Markovits - You Don't Have to Live Like This

“I still don’t understand how you figured out the connection.”

“She asked me where I lived and I told her and she said her ex-boyfriend lived on the same street. She seemed like the kind of girl who gets excited by coincidences.”

“She’s a very bad artist.”

“I believe that.”

“She makes videos. She made this film about race relations in Detroit.”

“I believe that, too.”

Mrs. Smith had left the radio on, and you could hear the talk show voices arguing and laughing underneath the other noises. Nolan switched it off.

“There’s this rap she uses as a voice-over,” I said. “Maybe you can tell me where it’s from. “All of my brothers live by the trigger. But nobody cares so long as. .” I stopped. “I can’t remember the rest.”

“What, you don’t want to say it? Pussy. What are you smiling at, Dutch Boy?”

“I’m just enjoying the pregame show.”

“Whatever.” He kicked Buster into the garden and said, “If you want some real coffee you can make it yourself,” and carried his cup into the living room.

“I guess we follow him. What are you smiling at?”

“He got you whipped, boy,” Brad said.

“Where’d you learn to talk like that? River Oaks?”

“You can sit here,” Nolan told us, when we came in. “But this is what I’m going to do. I’m going to finish my coffee and then I’m going to do some work.”

The living room was shaded by the balcony over the front porch, so that even on hot days it felt pleasant. The windows looked bright, though, against the daylight. They were open, too, and you could hear some of the trees outside.

“Robert James asked me to talk to you about something,” I said. “About this Meacher business. If there’s racial tension, the people who get hurt won’t be the people you want to hurt. You should lay off Tyler Waites.”

“Tyler Waites isn’t the problem, Tyler Waites is the symbol. You people are the problem — Goddamn colonizers.”

“I don’t want to start an argument about the whole thing. But you have to admit, your life has got better since we moved in. Just ask your mother.”

“Give me a break, Marny. Somebody’s making money off of this, and it isn’t the people of Detroit. Meacher’s just a way to get us a piece of the pie.”

“Nobody’s making money, it’s not about money.”

“Then what the fuck is it about?”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to ask him,” Brad said.

“Not everybody wants to live the way you live,” I told my brother.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Private schools and country clubs. A hundred-hour week. And then on the weekends, just to relax, a couple of rounds of golf, so you don’t have to see the kids.”

“Of course that’s how people want to live.” Then he said, “Okay, big shot. Tell me what the people want.”

“Small-town life, free time. People have this idea that they hate big government. But what they don’t like is national government. It’s a category mistake. And if you keep things local, if you pool together, if you help each other out, you can live pretty well without chasing the buck.”

“Somebody’s always paying.”

“Why? What you’ve got in Detroit is cheap real estate. And the rest doesn’t cost that much. What else do you spend your money on? Private school? That’s probably sixty thousand dollars a year. A live-in nanny? Another thirty grand. Andrea doesn’t work; she can look after the kids. What do you bill people? Three hundred dollars an hour? How many hours is that?”

“Three weeks. You just bought me a three-week holiday I don’t want.”

“Brad, I don’t understand this. You’re a smart guy, you have general interests. When’s the last time you read a book?”

“I don’t want to read books. I want to relax, I want to play golf.”

“So how much golf do you play?”

“Not enough. You know what I do on my weekends. I drive five hours to Baton Rouge and five hours back on Sunday night. And then on Monday morning I get up at six and go to work.”

“And this makes you happy?”

“I don’t expect to be happy. The happiness is for my kids. I expect to make money.”

“This is what I’m trying to tell you. What people want is basically pretty simple. That’s why kids are happy, they don’t worry about everything else. Shelter, food and community. None of these has to cost much. You read Walden in college, you know what I’m talking about.”

“That’s not what people want,” Brad said. “They want to make money, and they want to make more money than their neighbor does. That’s how you know you’re winning. And you’re kidding yourself, Greg, if you think that Americans want to help each other out. That’s not what I pay my taxes for. I pay my taxes so that other people are not my problem, and I pay as little tax as I can get away with. Have you met my neighbors? That’s why we invented the automobile, to get away from them. That’s why we move to the suburbs. That’s why we spend half our lives in cars and the other half watching TV. If we wanted to see our neighbors we’d move to Europe.”

“This guy makes you look good,” Nolan said. “He’s like a first-rate asshole. This guy makes you look second-rate or third-rate.”

“And by the way, Thoreau didn’t have any kids.”

“That’s not the point,” I said.

“And he didn’t give a damn about community.”

“Do I have to stand here listening to this shit?” Nolan said. “Do you guys need like an audience or something?”

“Well, I promised Robert I’d talk to you.”

“You talked. Now fuck off. I don’t mean that in an impolite or angry way.”

It was hotter than before when we got outside, and I noticed that the shadows of things, trees and cars, kept coming in and out of focus. There was a bit of wind, too.

“What happened there?” I said to my brother.

“You know he’s flaming, right?”

“What are you talking about?”

“He’s gay.”

“He’s got a six-year-old son.”

“Of course he does. He’s an African American male who played football in college. You don’t expect him to come out in the locker room?”

“Are you saying he’s out now?”

“What the hell do I know?”

“Then what are you talking about?”

“I’m just giving you a heads-up.”

I was too pissed off to say much at lunch. We made mustard-and-salami sandwiches and ate them with slightly stale potato chips in front of the TV. The second round of the US Open was on. Brad seemed in a good mood — he was looking forward to his reunion. There was a drinks party at the Art Institute on Saturday night and dinner afterwards at the Peninsula.

“I haven’t taken time off like this in five years,” he said. “I mean, when I wasn’t on some work thing or looking after the kids. It’s good to see you.”

“Obama was there, wasn’t he, when you were at law school?”

“We overlapped a couple of years.”

“Did you take any of his classes?”

“Con law. I liked him. He was a young guy, he knew when we were bored.”

Afterwards I drove him to the Hertz outlet on East Jefferson. I parked and waited with him at the counter, then carried his garment bag to the rental car. In certain public spaces, airports, for example, you can sometimes see people you love the way a stranger would. Brad looked like the kind of guy waitresses and flight attendants start a conversation with. Like somebody who makes good money but also knows how to have a good time. His deck shoes flopped a little on his feet; they looked comfortable. But his Dockers were clean and new and sat tight on his ass. He wore an Astros T-shirt and Ray-Ban sunglasses.