Tom Rachman - The Rise & Fall of Great Powers

“For part of it.”

“I’m around, too,” she said, skating back.

Tooly had no seasonal festivities at her place in Brooklyn. Humphrey boycotted public holidays, considering them rank conformism. But when she stopped in they did play Christmas Ping-Pong. Even that was ruined by the presence of Sarah, sulking because Tooly hadn’t come for a shopping expedition on her twenty-first birthday. Worse still, Venn hadn’t been in touch — never had he ignored her like this. She’d waited weeks . Her flight to Italy was in a few days, and she pressed Tooly to come along. When the invitation was rejected, Sarah stormed off into the night.

Humphrey looked up from his book and wiggled his eyebrows, which made Tooly laugh. He called her over to the couch and wondered if perhaps she should consider Sarah’s offer, especially since there was a job there at that leather-goods store.

“I’m not going anyplace with the empress,” Tooly responded with irritation. “And you just know there’d be no job waiting once I got there. There probably isn’t even a leather-goods shop. Can you imagine Sarah running a store? You can’t shoplift from yourself.”

He ducked behind the book.

After a minute, Tooly prepared him a smashed-potato sandwich, an edible apology for having snapped.

“I have items,” he muttered, as she delivered his food. “Items for discussing purposes.”

“I’m sure. Let me guess,” she said. “We should run away together?”

“If I tell you,” he said, “then you get cross at me. You hate me, maybe.”

“Whatever you have to say,” she said, amused, “I think I can handle it.”

He frowned, on the verge of speaking, wet lips flapping for a moment — then he curled forward and resumed his book, The Unreality of Time by J.M.E. McTaggart.

Tooly preferred that he keep reading. His “items” were only ever pretexts to keep her at the apartment, which saddened her, since she longed to be elsewhere.

Yet she couldn’t entirely spurn Humphrey. Mostly, it was from pity. But another motive lurked, one she denied: she had no money to manage alone, and he’d always helped with small amounts. She had too much pride to ask Venn for cash, and, anyway, she saw him too irregularly. On occasion, Venn noticed her penury and slipped her a few banknotes. But she regretted those occasions, which only reinforced her uselessness. She could have taken a job, of course, and wouldn’t have minded. But something was always afoot with Venn and she had to remain available — he could call at any minute and say, “I’m leaving tomorrow. Coming?”

THE DAY BEFORE New Year’s Eve, the city awoke white. A blizzard hit overnight and sanitation trucks plowed the streets at dawn, driving snow into gritty ranges that rose from the gutters and sank to the cleared sidewalks. Tooly strolled through the West Village, stepping between two parked cars on Hudson Street, up an icy hillock whose peak collapsed underfoot. She stamped her snowy sneakers on the pavement, causing the automatic glass doors of a residential building to part. Right past the doorman she went, with such confidence that he merely returned to his horoscope. On the ninth floor, she found a low-lit hallway, doors all the way down. One was ajar, and she entered.

A man stood at the far end of the room, his back to her, gazing through floor-to-ceiling windows at the view of Manhattan.

“Excuse me,” she said, hesitating in the doorway. “So sorry to bother you but — this might sound weird — but I actually grew up in this apartment. I happened to be walking by and was wondering, would it be insane if I asked maybe to peek inside? I’m getting a flood of memories even just standing here. Is that—”

“Very nice,” Venn said. “You’ll ask to use the toilet next.”

“I’m too old for that line,” she said, closing the door behind her. “Pity, I wouldn’t mind walking into random apartments when I need a bathroom. Actually, yes — why don’t I?”

The place was sumptuous, floorboards and walls brilliant white, a white orchid on the coffee table before a leather divan, a braided pachira tree in a pot. Tooly checked out the bookshelf, which contained only volumes about beads, buttons, and Bakelite jewelry.

She joined him at the windows. The panes were four times her height and as wide as the entire apartment, a crystal cityscape of West Village rooftops steaming, high-rises crammed in higgledy-piggledy.

“Who lives in this place?” she asked. His eyes looked so intently ahead that she followed his gaze, only for him to turn to her, a grin creasing his cheeks.

“Who lives here?” he repeated back.

“Yes, here. The place where we’re both standing right now. The apartment that — I think I can confidently say — isn’t yours.”

“You mean this place, where you grew up?”

“Seriously, whose?”

“Just a friend, duck.”

“Speaking of your ladyfriends, Sarah is still holding out hope of hearing from you. And Humph is going nuts dealing with her. Could you just see her before she leaves? Or at least phone her at the apartment? It’s easy for you, hiding out here in luxury. But we have to deal with her.”

“And the boy-lawyer?” he asked, meaning Duncan. “How’s that?”

“I’m making friends with the whole place.”

“Friends? Make them fall in love with you.”

“I might have something for you from there.”

He pointed a remote control at the shutters, which lowered with an automated whirr, wiping out the city. “We ready to go?” He often spoke of “we” like this, as if he and Tooly were akin, which flattered her, since she viewed her personality as so small and his as so large. He understood her character and spoke of it so convincingly. When she was little, and he praised her as brave or uncomplaining, she sought to become that way. Until, gradually, she adopted the traits he claimed to have seen from the start.

They set forth into the snow. Venn went most places by foot, and she had assumed this habit. He was as likely to walk for three hours as three minutes, and never informed her of their destination. They tracked north today, past Fourteenth Street, through Chelsea, east at Penn Station, along secondary streets uncleared except over subway grates or where muddy footsteps had preceded them. For blocks, he said nothing.

“So,” she asked, to break the silence, “the owner of the white apartment? Anything special?”

“No, no.”

“Don’t you get the urge to stay with any of these women?”

“Absolutely not. You know me.”

“I know you,” she said. “But I don’t get you. You seem to be cutting out more and more stuff these days.”

“That’s exactly what I’m doing. I try to distance myself from things.”

“What for? I don’t see what you gain from that.”

“I achieve a peace in it, I suppose,” he said. “It’s about recognizing how little I need and sticking with that, as forces around (and in me) tempt me to set it aside. I try to get rid of everything unnecessary.”

“Meaning what?”

“Everything possible. Even unnecessary thoughts,” he explained. “Fear, for example. The only way I was able to deal with fear was to reconcile myself with death. And no longer fearing death makes it so much easier to live how you want, without the interference of conventions, so many of which are just ways of staving off death anyway.”

“How so?”

“Things like family, kids. Some people have children expressly so they’ll be looked after in old age. They want adulation guaranteed, even when they’re no longer worthy of it. The love they give is only because they expect it in return. There’s always that condition, and it’s at the root of failed love, marriages, friendships.”