Jonathan Franzen - Strong Motion - A Novel

I’m going to kill you, Louis thought. I’m going to smash your fucking nose.

“That’s right,” Renée said sweetly. “We have no sense of humor.”

The enemy looked at Louis, who thrust his head out invitingly. “I’m not going to fight with you,” he said.

Louis understood then that he was losing, had lost, in fact. “Love your pants,” he said futilely as the enemy walked away.

It appeared that Eileen hadn’t seen any of this. She was doing a little dance by one of the stereo speakers, her beer bottle swaying back and forth, her bottom wagging at the rest of the room. It was like a worker bee’s coded dance of good tidings, very self-absorbed and yet very public: significant honeysuckle to the north-northwest. Louis had the thought, as he and Renée passed by the bandaged females, that in her own circle Eileen was probably considered a free and quirky spirit.

“Charming fellow,” Renée said.

Louis lowered his shoulder and bumped her so hard that she had to take a step sideways for balance. She didn’t seem to appreciate this.

The apartment was huge. The only people in the room behind the living room were three extremely pretty girls, three jumbo girls, the kind with long legs and long arms and long hair. (In Homer’s world, a god among strangers could be recognized by its unusual beauty and unusual height.) Renée suddenly began to act as if she didn’t know where she was going; she almost went back into the living room. Evidently it hadn’t escaped her attention that one of the jumbos was in exquisite mourning, an ensemble that included a silk shawl, a pert little hat, and a sheer black veil. The girl looked Renée over with negligible interest and then buried her head in the consultations of her companions, who were methodically taking food from a well-stocked table and putting it in their perfect mouths.

The people in the kitchen were pretty clearly Peter’s friends. Pale nightclub arms were aiming cigarette ashes at various receptacles. Drinks were being raised to urban palimpsest faces — punk-yuppie hybrids, pixyish women in thematic costumes, a tank-topped Homo nautilus with slicked-back hair. Three middle-aged New Englanders with mustaches sat at the table drinking Jack Daniel’s, and Peter himself, in a faded Blondie T-shirt and the billed cap of a Boston city cop, was seated on the rim of the sink. His head had nodded onto his chest.

“Case in point,” he said, raising it with effort, “is my old man’s company, old Sweet-Ass Incorporated.” He glanced at the doorway. Seeing Louis in his dust mask, he rolled his eyes.

Louis blinked innocently. Renée offered him a dripping bottle of Popular Import, which he declined. He was pretty sure the table and chairs here were Eileen’s.

“For fifty years,” Peter went on, to an apparently appreciative audience, “they’ve been making their little contribution to the GNP and not incidentally doing some very dubious shit indeed to the environment. I could tell you a fact or two that you would not believe, repeat, not believe. And then suddenly it’s the nineties, and that environment which they’d always thought was this nice soft thing they could screw over any way they felt like turns around and does a little damage to their property in Lynn and also keeps the heat on so their stock price falls and they aren’t sure if they really ought to be operating that plant with all its nasty byproducts because what are they gonna do if one day it cracks wide open—” Peter gasped for breath. “And then it’s: Incredible outrage! Mother Nature, dearest Mother Nature dear, what’d we ever do to you to deserve a thing like this? I told my old man, Hey, maybe you had it coming, and he did not take kindly to that point of view. He told me: We are an asset to the Commonwealth. No lie, I’m telling you: an asset to the Commonwealth.”

There were joyful noises in the living room as the reggae gave way to a fifteen-year-old Bruce Springsteen recording. From behind Louis someone asked Peter in a loud, clear voice: “What are you talking about?”

It was Renée. Peter swung his head drunkenly and smiled as if to say, What have we here?

“Sweeting-Aldren,” a woman in a hard hat and a see-through chemise answered for him.

Renée’s mouth formed the word “oh.”

“That’s right,” Peter said. “The company from which all blessings flow. We are blessed with fruits and vegetables that don’t have brown spots. We’re blessed with Warning Orange price stickers, Warning Orange road cones, Warning Orange gym socks. We’re blessed with Asian jungles that don’t have foliage.” He snapped his fingers. “You — what’s your name?”

“Renée. What’s yours?”

“Renée.” Peter turned the name over in a toying tone. “Tell me, Renée. You buy a swimsuit in the last ten years? Be cool, I’m serious. You must have bought one. And right, you’re offended, OK, but chances are it was made of the miracle fabric, the one that doesn’t sag or pinch. Stuff called Silera.”

“Spandex,” an apocalyptic horseman said.

“Silera spandex,” Peter said. “The miracle bathing-suit fabric. It’s another of those Sweeting-Aldren blessings. You see, that’s what my dad means about their being an asset to the Commonwealth. No sag, no creep. And hey, really, I’m a little drunk, OK? It’s cool?” Renée stared at him with no expression at all.

“But listen,” Peter continued generally, “I’m telling you what I can’t wait for is the total blast, Richter magnitude nine point oh, that makes the whole company go belly up. And oh shit — I just had this flash — let me—” His aged face was lit by the brightness of the idea before his eyes. “I just had this flash of nude beaches, after the cruncher. No more Silera, no more swimsuits, no more buildings. Naked nature — can you feel it? Can anybody get at that?”

“I feel it,” said the horseman.

“Oh yeah. Yes indeed,” Peter said.

“They’ve gotta be insured to the gills, though, Peter,” one of the whiskey drinkers pointed out.

“What?” Peter suddenly became more reasonable. “No, that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m not talking about money. All these execs like my dad, they’re totally protected, they’d hardly feel it. And the stockholders, they lose a little, but it’s just a part of their portfolios, a good risk that didn’t pay, I mean everybody’s ass is double-covered. I’m talking about poetic justice. I’m talking about how pious these people are. You’ve got to believe me, there is nobody more pious than somebody in the chemical industry. Sure they’re rich as pigs, but that’s not what they’re in the business for. They’re in it as a public service. They’re making the world a better place to live. They’re doing all the nifty things that nature can’t do by herself. And who cares about a million gallons of toxic effluents annually if you never find a worm in your Boston lettuce? That’s what I’m talking about. That’s why I’m just waiting for the cruncher, just to shove all that shit back up their ass.” Peter turned to Louis, who had discovered Eileen’s dishes in a cupboard by the refrigerator. “You looking for something?”

“Found it,” Louis said. He took Renée by the shoulders and moved her out of his path. As he left the kitchen he heard Peter say, “Renée, yo. You’re not mad at me, are you? You understand.”

“Why should I be mad at you?”

“Hey, absolutely. What’s to be mad about. Absolutely.”

The jumbo girls had vanished, off to greener pastures. The bathroom door was closed, and when Louis failed to find Eileen in the living room he stationed himself by the food table to wait for her. The wall above the table was festooned with yellow-and-black not cross police line do tape. Some of the food didn’t seem intended for consumption. There was a map of greater Boston attached to a piece of cardboard and decorated with whole, white, upright mushrooms, the biggest ones — a Siamese-twin pair — rising from downtown. There was also a plate of raw vegetables selected for their deformities, tomatoes with lingual protuberances, cleft carrots, gnarled peppers. Also an iced flat cake with stylized barbed wire dribbled on in mocha. Also a crystal bowl full of punch the color of old radiator water, with an iridescent film on top and a sheet of self-adhesive notepaper saying love canal punch try some!! Also a bowl of chocolate-chip cookies broken and piled up like rubble, with a toy bulldozer on top and the arms and heads of plastic men sticking up through the crumbs. Also a dish of cinnamon ATOMIC FIREBALLS.