Tom Rachman - The Rise & Fall of Great Powers

“How happy you were when I saved you!” Sarah said.

“How do you mean?”

“In Bangkok, when I saved you.” Sarah perceived the flicker of irritation. “Oh, come on — don’t act like you’re still loyal to Paul.”

“Anyway,” Tooly said.

A bang came from the door downstairs.

“Probably Humph,” Tooly said. “I’ll go check.” She hastened downstairs, frigid air rushing in from the open door.

“Hello, darlink,” Humphrey said. “You come out in pajamas? I would not believe it, if I do not hear it with my own eyes.”

She leaned in to whisper, “The empress is back.”

His expression transformed to disappointment, then annoyance. “I have to talk to you about important things,” he said. “Why empress is coming now? She is staying?”

“Seems so.”

He stared miserably.

Sarah opened the apartment door. “Talking about me?”

“No, no,” Tooly said.

“Liar.”

In the following days, Sarah rarely left, reading fashion magazines purloined from nearby stores. She was short on money, until a wire transfer came from Valter in Italy. After this, she vanished into a bar on Hoyt Street, finding overnight lodgings with the younger men carousing there, followed by awkward scenes in the morning when they said versions of “Gotta run to work; mind leaving?” Sarah returned to the apartment, where Humphrey hid behind his books, and she chain-smoked at the window overlooking the expressway, waiting for Venn to call.

THE BOOKSHOP WAS CLOSED on Sundays, so when Tooly phoned from Connecticut, intending only to test her borrowed cellphone on a familiar number, she expected no answer.

“World’s End,” Fogg said.

“Oh,” she responded, “you’re not supposed to pick up.”

“Isn’t that the custom when these things make noise?”

“Why are you at work today?”

“Not really working, to be fair. Just popped my head in to see everything’s in order.”

“Very conscientious of you. But, sorry, I should go. This isn’t my cellphone and I was only—”

“You’ll be chuffed to hear I did the Honesty Barrel this morning even though it’s Sunday,” he said. “I’m admiring it through the window as we speak — a thing of beauty. No rain this morning. There are miracles, yes, even in Wales. What’s the time by you? Middle of the afternoon in America, is it?”

“It’s six here.”

“Is that tomorrow morning? Or yesterday evening?”

“It’s six in the morning. And it’s today.”

“It may feel like today to you. But you’re still in yesterday.”

“Fogg — we’re on the same day, you nut. It’s Sunday in both places.”

“Can’t take a joke now you’re in America. And what on earth are you doing awake at six o’clock on a Sunday morning, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“That’s when I get up.”

“Don’t believe a word of it. It’ll be the jet lag. I’d like to try that one time — nice bit of jet lag on a holiday to America.”

“I’d happily trade places,” she said. “And this isn’t a holiday. Actually, I miss the shop.”

“Shop didn’t say a word about you.”

“I’m slightly surprised that you haven’t burned it down yet.”

“Burning’s not scheduled till Thursday, I’m afraid.”

“Fogg,” she said, “aren’t you at all impressed that I’m calling you with a mobile phone?”

“I can barely contain myself. Utterly jubilant. You’ll be ringing on a daily basis now. I’ll be a bag of nerves.” He took down her number and provided his own in case of emergencies. In the background, the bell above the shop door tinkled.

“Customer?”

“Probably wanting directions. Yesterday was beyond busy — three people came in,” he said. “Well, should be off and deal with this.”

“You’ve become disconcertingly attentive.”

Children’s footsteps thundered above her — Duncan’s triplets awake and running across the floor.

“I should go myself,” she said.

Tooly took an early train into Manhattan to allow the McGrory family a little time together. She attempted to rest at the hotel but was too anxious, running through her questions for Humphrey, shaky to know that answers were hours away now. To expel tension, she set forth on the long hike to south Brooklyn.

Her walk took hours, yet she arrived in Sheepshead Bay early, so continued onward to the Russian enclave of Brighton Beach, wandering down its main avenue, shadowed by the elevated-train platform. Whenever subway carriages clattered overhead, sunlight strobed over the street-level nail parlors, clothing wholesalers, bankruptcy consultants. Side streets provided distant glimpses of sand — this was as far south as Brooklyn went before hitting ocean. Along the boardwalk, stubby seniors in wraparound shades gripped radios that crackled in Russian. The Atlantic sloshed now and then.

To prepare her, Duncan had insisted on meeting a few minutes beforehand. “We have to be punctual,” he informed her, locking his BMW outside the Sheepshead Bay station. “Your dad gets agitated if people are late, thinks he’s got the time wrong.”

“This apartment he lives in — you said it’s not great, right?”

“Well, the building got attention in the local press when a couple of Uzbek guys there were arrested for playing tennis with a mouse.”

“That’s horrendous.”

“It’s a weird place. You’ll see.”

Graffiti covered the glass entrance door, spray paint having run in long streaks under each tag. Duncan punched a code into the digital access pad and shouldered inside, finding a nervous Chinese man who’d just emerged from an apartment, key still in lock. The man said, “No, no,” waving them away.

They climbed the winding staircase, passing grimy windows that overlooked the street from ever-higher aspects: cars, then electrical poles, then rooftops. The floor got dirtier as they went, litter everywhere, an abandoned kiddie bike with training wheels, a broken umbrella, cigar ash.

The place she shared with Humphrey in Brooklyn a decade earlier had been run-down, as had Duncan’s apartment share on 115th Street. But they’d all been passing through; the squalor was transitory. Here no one was going on to better things. They were staying and rotting. It was a flophouse, one person to a room, shared bathroom at the end of each floor, communal kitchen at the other. Most of the inhabitants were men, jobless, addicted, ill. “Your dad has been here a few years now. I thought you should see it,” Duncan said, as if she deserved a little guilt for this.

Many of the gun-metal doors were dented, as if kicked repeatedly. A torn Tigres del Norte poster hung from one. Another was open, a fat shirtless man with a hair net seated in a deck chair, chewing his hand. From other rooms, conversation emerged in various languages along with the pungent scent of food. “This is him. Door’s always open. I tell him to lock it, but you know what he’s like.”

“Should we knock?”

Duncan just pushed in. The door hit an obstacle but he squeezed past, disappearing from sight. Tooly, who hesitated in the hall, heard him asking, “Did I wake you?”

In response came, “Hmm?”

Tooly turned her back, closed her eyes, heart pounding.

Duncan called to her, “You coming in?”

The door was impeded by a white leather armchair. She turned sideways to edge in, and saw first the back of Humphrey’s head, then his rheumy eyes. The room contained a bed piled with documents and books, a window with blinds down, a small television on a chest of drawers, a bar fridge, microwave, and sink, above which hung graph paper with Duncan’s distinctive handwriting: TURN OFF TAP! Around the room, he had posted further exhortations: LOCK DOOR AT NIGHT!; TOILET PAPER IN DRAWER! A stench, like spoiled stew and floral air spray, filled the room.