Ellis Weiner - Atlas Slugged AGAIN - The Secret Sequel to the Towering Masterpiece

She allowed herself to be guided to where John Glatt stood, watching the journalists ask fawning questions of Hunk Rawbone. The reporters, supposedly of a professional class concerned with discovering and communicating the truth, had long ago ceased to pursue such matters. Their only concern now was the unearthing of scandal and the publication of innuendo, gossip, and triviality. All of them hated their profession and, therefore, hated its allied professions as well. They hated their editors. They despised their art directors. They loathed their circulation staffs, advertising departments, and press operators. The crowd surrounding the journalists, conscious of the moral bankruptcy of their profession, hated them.

“Hunk seems to be holding his own with the jackals of the press,” Sanfrancisco said.

Glatt’s reply hinted at a vast reservoir of emotions held in check by his will. “Yes.”

“John,” Dragnie said. She spoke with her eyes on the crowd. It was not necessary to look at her husband, as she had just addressed him by name. “I’ve been thinking. Once our strike against the rest of the world begins, I’d like to travel around the country on a fact-finding mission, to monitor how it progresses.”

“All right.”

“Of course, I’ll need an assistant to help me take notes and compile my findings. I think that boy I told you about, at the Glatt School, who made the speech—I think he’d make a fine assistant.”

“Very well.”

“Of course I’ll have to consult with his parents, but that shouldn’t be a problem—“

The rest of her words were drowned out as the crowd began several rhythmic chants at once. “LET’S MURDER ALL THE OTHER COUNTRIES,” went one, while another announced, “HURRAY FOR US BECAUSE WE’RE THE BEST!” Across the tarmac, Dragnie saw Nathan A. Banden watching her. A sleek limousine slowly crept through the crowd and stopped. Its door opened. Dragnie climbed in and was followed by the others. As the car pulled out, the mob cheered and waved.

“You wish to take Nathan with you on a trip around the country, Miss Tagbord? How odd a request.”

The person speaking, Nathan A. Banden’s mother, was one of those individuals who believe that a woman’s most exalted purpose in life is to adorn a husband and give birth to his children. She consequently regarded Dragnie with a combination of personal suspicion and moral disapproval.

“Yes,” Dragnie replied. “For about a month.”

Mrs. Banden was a slim, tightly-coiffed woman with a showily blasé attitude, the kind of person for whom appearance was reality and reality was an illusion. She regarded Dragnie from a complacent divan, on which she lounged in a lazy caftan crafted of haughty material. “But do please be seated, Miss Tagbord,” she said, indicating an antique wing chair of unquestionable confidence. The Banden home, a large Tudor-style dwelling in a suburb of New York City, occupied several acres whose gardens and landscaping were designed to celebrate man’s dominance over Nature and over his fellow man. “Don’t you agree that the idea is somewhat unusual?”

“Not particularly, no.”

“Well, I must say, I do. Of course, Nathan is about to graduate high school, and will have to find something to do before starting college in the fall. Does one say ‘graduate high school’ or ‘graduate from high school’? No, don’t bother trying to answer. I wouldn’t expect you to know matters of proper grammar and syntax. You work on a railroad, after all. I wonder, Miss Tagbord, do you work ‘all the livelong day’? Or is that merely a misconception propagated by the familiar folk tune?”

“I work during the day and often at night.”

“Yes, I believe you do. For what else is a woman without children to do? In any case, you are a grown woman, Miss Tagbord. Indeed, if one is to credit the news reports, you are married—to none other than John Glatt, the man who, we’re led to believe, single-handedly saved the economy and our country ten years ago. Do you deny it?”

“I do not deny it, although we are not married.”

“Nathan is, of course, a teenager, and teenage boys are notoriously immature. Although of course all men are. All men are at bottom children, don’t you think so?”

“I do not.”

“You must not know very many men, then. I assure you, I do know many men. Mind you, I’m not saying I’ve had sexual relations with all of them, although you are of course free to infer such a thing and, in fact, I’m not saying I haven’t. You will find it interesting, perhaps, to learn that my husband and I happen to be married to each other. And yet I will tell you that he, like the other men I know, is an overgrown boy. Well, then, in that sense, I suppose there’s no harm in allowing Nathan to accompany you on your journey.”

Dragnie nodded her head slightly, in acknowledgment of the woman’s consent and in full awareness that such a gesture meant “yes” to men. “I would like him to move in with me and Mr. Glatt in preparation for our trip, if you don’t mind,” she said.

Mrs. Banden laughed gaily with a sort of carefree cynicism, as though implicitly confessing the depravity of her values. “Oh, you’ll have to ask Nathan if he is willing. As for me, Miss Tagbord, it can hardly come as a shock to you to hear that I don’t mind a whit. Nathan’s absence will afford me increased opportunities to pursue my customary activities, such as shopping, attending luncheons and cocktail parties, participating in high-stakes auctions for cultural artifacts deemed important and valuable by noted experts, and arranging charity events featuring famous entertainers and attended by individuals whose great wealth has been obtained, not via the messy and arduous invention of a new process, material, or device, or, as indeed you yourself do, by attending to the affairs of an industry, but by intelligently manipulating the financial instruments that all corporations and individuals require to pursue their business in our modern economic system. I speak, of course, of investment bankers, currency speculators, financial planners and advisers, and the other experts in the vital field of finance. That is my social set, Miss Tagbord, and although it may seem somewhat pallid and bloodless to a woman whose daily labor concerns the movement of massive and filthy railroad cars and their cargo, I assure you it is as essential a service to society as that provided by you or, indeed, your renowned boyfriend. In that sense, I suppose it would be interesting to Nathan to spend some time with you, to observe how other people live—people who care about such things as railroad ties, and lengths of track, and roundhouses and switches and the sundry other equipment that plays so important a role in your life as a childless executive.”

“Thank you.”

“You will find Nathan in his room.”

Following his mother’s instructions, Dragnie discovered Nathan upstairs, reclining on his bed, reading. His room was the embodiment of order and precision, and Dragnie was unable to resist the thought that this clean tidiness, this exact and meticulous arrangement of his personal effects, was merely the outward manifestation of the clarity of his mind.

He did not look up from his book. “Hello, Miss Tagbord. Did you enjoy meeting Mother?”

Dragnie felt provoked by his rude insolence. A grown man would have had no business lounging in bed when an adult woman entered the room; far less did an eighteen-year-old teen. She felt compelled to correct him, yet she found herself speaking in defense of a person whom she found detestable, and a part of her consciousness wondered how this callow youth had the power to unsettle her. “Your mother is a remarkable woman,” she said.