Noah Cicero - Best Behavior

We got to the bookstore. Margo wasn't there. There was some sort of speech being given by an author of a book about military contracts. She stated that George W. Bush ruined America and had given military contracts out to all of his friends. That Bush was obsessed with giving federal tax money to his buddies. The worst thing was that the tax money didn't even exist. He actually took out loans to give money to his friends. Everyone was very happy to be shitting on Bush. Bush was a good person to hate. He was Republican. He was from Texas. He was white; he went to Harvard. He talked funny, he mispronounced words. He enjoyed baseball and golf. He hardly ever did anything right; he was completely human except for the Harvard thing. Jason and I went outside and stood on the sidewalk. It was cold and snow was falling. I said to Jason that I thought Bush was just the end result of Reagan and Clinton excess. Everybody had money and it made them apathetic and decadent and everybody seemed fine with it. Everyone played along. And this guy shows up, the king of decadence and nihilism, George W. Bush. Everyone was like, okay, whatever, because they were just as decadent and nihilistic. Jason said that Clinton didn't do anything about the stock markets; Clinton didn't care about regulating anything. All he did was get his dick sucked and tell wonderful stories about Arkansas. I said people act like this is something new. It started with Reagan, the banks became deregulated; everyone started dreaming up dreams that weren't based in reality. They took out loans instead of worked. They got credit cards instead of saved. There was no long term thinking, no long term sense of justice.

Hu Chin came out of the bookstore and said Margo would meet us at Petra's apartment. Petra's apartment was several blocks away. We walked down the street. John Walters came over to me and said, “Are you fucking Petra?”

“I don't know,” I said.

“That means you are.”

“It might mean that.”

“I have a Japanese girlfriend.”

“Oh yeah?” I said.

“Yeah, I keep living with her, and we keep arguing and we call that our life together. One time I sat in a chair drunk in the living room and yelled for 45 minutes about stuff I can't remember. Then she came over and punched me in the face.”

“That sounds romantic.”

“It was. She reminds me of Mom.”

We got to Petra's apartment. Everyone found seats in the kitchen. I remained standing. Petra opened a bottle of cheap wine. John Walters drank a huge glass of it. I sipped on it. It was red and tasted like piss.

Petra turned her iPod stereo thing on. It played indie bands the normal population of humans would never have recognized.

Margo arrived. She was a white woman wearing a nice coat. Her face was pale with brown hair. I didn't trust her. She wrote for a major corporate magazine making decent money. She was just starting out. Her article was to interview some unknown writers. The magazine she worked for interviewed such people as Scarlet Johansson and Rihanna. Margo was young though: still in her late twenties. In her thirties, after years of doing the right things and paying attention to detail and showing up on time, they would allow her to interview whoever was famous in 2016. Margo had goals. She had always had goals. She went to a nice Catholic school and then went to college at Columbia for journalism. She worked hard, got mostly As except for math class which she got a C, and her Modern biology class which she got a B. But for the most part her academic record was perfect. At school she made connections; she made friends with professors that wrote her wonderful recommendations. She did community service and in her senior year won an award for journalism. She did an internship at the New York Times, doing mindless stupid things for the journalists. But she did them with pride and precision. Margo was a hard worker. She believed in corporate media.

Margo grew up in a nice community in Connecticut. Her parents got divorced when she was 12. Her dad went across town and she lived with her mother. Her dad was busy with work. And her mother was busy with work. Margo had a lot of time alone because her parents wouldn't let her play sports because they thought sports were dangerous and she should be studying. When Margo graduated from high school her parents bought her a new car. Margo hugged her father and Margo's father paid the bills on the car. Nobody was really happy at Margo's house. Margo would come in after school; her mother would be working at a computer. Her mother would say hi, how are you. Margo would say something and that was it. Margo would go to her room and write or read and listen to indie music. When Margo would visit her dad, he would be working at a computer and really no talking could take place. Nobody believed in religion, witchcraft or even sports. Everyone just worked all the time making money and maintaining a very successful life. Margo's parents would go out with their friends sometimes. They would go to lunch or dinner at a nice clean restaurant. Everything was very organized, the conversation went easily; nothing serious was discussed, only moderate complaining and some discussion of the kids. Margo's mother would find a boyfriend through an online dating site. She would date the guy for six months and then break up. There was never any real reason for the break up. They would just break up out of boredom. Margo's father dated a woman from his office for several years. Margo would come home and they would be sitting on the couch watching television together. Margo would look at them, feel bored and go to her room. There were no family activities. Margo's relatives lived out of state. When her parents graduated from college, they took the first jobs that were offered that paid the most and went to Connecticut. Margo never got to know her grandparents or cousins. During Christmas time and sometimes in the summer she would visit her relatives, but it meant nothing. Everyone would ask what she had been doing for the last six months. She would tell them her accomplishments and that was it. Margo had no sense of community. She lived in a neighborhood but no one spoke to each other. There was a neighbor girl who lived down the street she hung out with when she was little. But they haven't spoken in years. They were Facebook friends though. Most of the neighbors she had she didn't even know. She would see them mowing their grass or getting the mail but she never spoke to them and they never spoke to her. Margo never did yard work with her parents. Her father would mow the grass and weed whack himself without ever asking her to help and her mother paid landscapers to come and do the work. When something broke in her house her parents never fixed it themselves, instead they would pay someone to come and fix the water heater or furnace. When the car broke, they paid someone to fix it. There was no father and daughter out in the driveway with their hands covered in grease trying to fix the water pump. Margo's mother rarely ever cooked. Most of the time, she would order out or stop somewhere and get something. There was no mother and daughter cooking together. Her mother did not teach her the family recipes. Margo had no ethnic heritage. She was white. Her family had come over several hundred years ago and all the traditions of the old country had been lost. She knew she was predominately Hungarian which explained her height and bulbous butt. But she had no love for cabbage soup and chicken paprikas.

Margo sat down on the futon. Petra handed her a glass of wine. Margo looked nervous. She had a strange job. Her job was to go to places and rooms she had never been, sit in them, and interview people she had never met before. She was surrounded by four very weird writers and a very weird girlfriend of a writer. She was seeing a 19 year old white kid who seemed on the verge of public suicide. A small unkempt nervous man from out west who seemed like he might commit a very disorderly suicide. A small Asian man who seemed very well-ordered and that one day he would commit a very well-ordered suicide. Myself, a bulky man with uncombed hair and indifferent eyes from Ohio who seemed like he might commit a very tragic suicide involving a large shotgun. A half Asian woman who looked Native American drunk off of wine who seemed like she might a commit suicide while in a drunken stupor.