A Hologram for the King (13 page)

—Well, I better head out, he said.

They offered no argument. He stood and made his way to the tent door.

—I'm heading this way, he said, indicating north, so if you see the King, look for me up here. He smiled, and the young people smiled, and he knew they saw him as useless, and he left.

Outside the tent, he looked up to the pink condominium and saw a silhouette in the window. He did not believe it at first. But the shape was human and was moving in a fourth-story window. Then another shape. Then they were gone.

He had a thought that he might go to the building, find a way in, and listen for voices. He had not thought it through any further than that. He walked around the building and almost fell in a pit. It was as big as a quarry — an acre, surely. They had dug a foundation, apparently, for a structure to stand next to the Florida condominium. It was about fifty feet deep, and it had nearly become his grave.

There were wire frames for columns, giant ducts and pipes that would eventually carry water and heat. There was a makeshift stairway made of wood and mud. For no good reason, he decided to walk down. As he descended, the air cooled. It was wonderful. Every ten feet, each ostensible floor, the temperature dropped ten degrees. He continued down until he reached the bottom, where the air was positively civilized. The floor was cement, though there were patches of sand and piles of dirt. In one corner of the foundation, he found a simple plastic chair. It seemed made for him, for him at this moment, so he sat in it. He was sitting on a plastic chair on the floor of a foundation in the city by the Red Sea, and the air was cool, and the color of everything was grey, and he was deeply content.

He sat and stared at the concrete wall.

He listened to his own breathing.

He tried not to think of anything.

—I forgive you, Charlie Fallon said.

He said it many times. He was forgiving Alan for helping Annette move out. They'd fought too many times, and Charlie had made threats, Annette said. Alan had to hear about it every day, from both sides. He couldn't sort it out. But when Annette decided to leave, one weekend when Charlie was out of town, she asked Alan for help, and he provided it. He helped her empty most of the house.

The next day Charlie called. —That loony took all our stuff.

Alan went over, walked through the house. It looked like high winds had swept the contents away, leaving only papers, rolls of tape, some pillows.

—Got to hand it to her, Charlie said. I didn't see this coming. Can you believe how efficient she was? I'm gone one day and the house gets emptied. She is a fucking smart gal, always was.

Charlie didn't know Alan had helped and Alan couldn't find a good way to tell him. So for a while he didn't. What good would it do?

Eventually he found out. Annette probably told him. Charlie was angry for a while. But then he said he understood, and that he had forgiven Alan.

—She has a power over weak men like you and me, Charlie said.

Alan got up from his chair. He paced around the perimeter, counting his steps. The building would be huge. Two hundred feet on one side, a hundred and twenty on another. Alan felt good about being there. About being part of the project. There was nothing as good as this,
being there at the beginning of something. When the city was another Dubai, another Abu Dhabi or Nairobi, he could say he'd walked the foundation of the buildings, he'd laid the groundwork for all the IT in the whole damned place. But he couldn't get ahead of himself.

He sat down again on his white plastic chair.

Terry Wren had gotten ahead of himself.

—Jesus, Al, it feels good.

Alan had seen Terry a few years ago, while passing through Pittsburgh. Alan had known Terry for twenty years, since the Olney, Illinois days. Terry had gone from bikes to steel to glass, and was working for PPG Industries, a large glass manufacturer outside of Pittsburgh. It seemed a brilliant move. What business could be more recession-proof than glass? Housing starts could go up and down, but there will always be broken windows.

They'd eaten dinner by Three River Stadium, and Terry was crowing. PPG had gotten the contract to provide the glass for the first twenty floors of the new World Trade Center building. Twenty floors of blast-resistant glass, the technology painstakingly developed right there in Pennsylvania.

—It's like we were made for this one job, Terry said, his mouth full of ribeye, the fork in his hand like a sword raised in victory.

Terry had worked his ass off to get the contract, and now he couldn't wait to begin. The guys on the factory floor couldn't wait to begin. To be involved in Freedom Tower! It was the reason you go to work in the morning.

—Biggest thing we've ever done, he said. The work would be done with care, with urgency. Terry was wearing an American flag pin on his
lapel. It all meant something. Until it didn't.

The next time Alan saw him it was over. They were both in New York, and PPG had just been pushed out. Terry was falling apart. They met for drinks. Alan thought Terry would cry.

Untangling it all was near impossible. Apparently, the Port Authority of New York had accepted a bid from another company, Solera Construction. That seemed fair enough. Their bid was lower, and they were a New York firm. It seemed simple to Terry — until he dug deeper.

—Oh, God, it's so fucking sick, Alan!

Terry grabbed him by the arm.

Turns out Solera was contracting the glass out to a Las Vegas firm. Terry was annoyed, but he still felt that they'd been plain old beat. He didn't know the Vegas people, but he assumed they were operating on some cheap real estate in the Nevada desert, probably employing some undocumented workers, keeping their costs low.

—Fair enough, right? Terry said, spilling his drink on his shirt.

But it turns out the Vegas people weren't manufacturing the glass. They were a front. The glass was being made in China. Sixty vertical feet of blast-resistant glass in the new World Trade Center was being made in China.

We accepted the lowest responsible bidder
. That was the public statement from the Port Authority spokesperson.

—Goddamn, Alan said.

—Can you fucking believe it? Terry said.

But then there was a kicker, a big one: the Chinese glass maker was using a PPG patent. PPG had developed the glass, applied for and gotten a patent, and shortly before the bidding began, they'd licensed the patent to firms around the world. And one of those firms was Sanxin
Façade, based on the South China Sea. And Sanxin Façade, it turned out, would be the firm building the glass in Freedom Tower. So PPG had invented a new type of blast-resistant glass, only to have a Chinese company use that technology to build the glass, cheaper, and sell it back to the Port Authority, which was attempting, at least, to resurrect something like pride and resilience in the center of the white-hot center of everything American.

Alan was pacing now. He was walking around the floor of the new building, working up a sweat, wanting to punch the walls.

Maybe Terry would have retired either way. He was sixty-two. But the WTC deal did him in. It wasn't fun anymore.

—Call me a fool, Terry said, but I cared about that Freedom glass. I fucking cared about us being part of that building.

When Terry quit, that was the end of Alan's patience. The dishonor of it all. Not just the business aspect, the fact that the Port Authority had dragged PPG along, had indicated a dozen times that of course PPG, the originator of the technology, would be the supplier. It was the fact that they would go abroad for such a thing, would knowingly lead PPG on — millions in equipment upgrades and retooling to enable them to build the glass — my God, the whole thing was underhanded and it was cowardly and lacking in all principle. It was dishonor. And at Ground Zero. Alan was pacing, his hands in fists. The dishonor! At Ground Zero! Amid the ashes! The dishonor! Amid the ashes! The dishonor! The dishonor! The dishonor!

—Man!

Alan looked around. He stopped pacing. Who was talking to him?

—Man! You!

He looked up. There were a pair of workers in blue jumpsuits, looking down at him. Mister Man! No! No! they said, disapproving. They were gesturing, making big scooping motions, as if conjuring him from the underworld by urging him up, up, up. Their faces said, You are not supposed to be there, fifty feet under the earth, walking like that, pacing, angry, recounting unchangeable events from not just your own past but that of the country as a whole.

But Alan knew this. He started up the steps to the surface. He was well aware of everything he was not supposed to be doing.

T
HE DAY WAS OVER
, and Alan rode back to Jeddah in the van with the young people, all of whom slept on the way home, or pretended to sleep. It was a quiet ride. At the hotel, they disembarked, more or less wordlessly, and Alan was back in his room, alone, by seven. He ordered a steak, ate it, and walked to the balcony. He could see a few figures, a few hundred feet below, trying to cross the highway and get to the shore. They made attempts, retreated. The traffic was moving too fast. Finally they made it, rushing and weaving, and Alan had learned nothing.

He leafed through the hotel guide and saw pictures of the fitness center Rachel had mentioned. Having no interest in exercising, he took the elevator to the basement, where he was greeted by a fitness person behind a crescent-shaped desk, a fluffy white towel around his neck. Alan told him he was just looking around,
to plan his regimen
, he said earnestly, and so was allowed to walk in wearing his business attire.

There were five people exercising, all men, running on treadmills
and wrestling with Nautilus machines. The smell was a chemical clean and the TV, showing CNN, was loud. The fitness person glanced Alan's way, and Alan nodded seriously while looking at one of the machines, as if to say Yes, I will do some of this tomorrow in my fitness clothes.

Then he left. He wandered the lobby for a while, and decided to sit and observe. He ordered an iced tea and watched as Saudis and Westerners glided across the reflective surface of the floor. He listened to the fountains, the occasional raised voice echoing a hundred feet up into the atrium. The hotel was really without any character whatsoever. He loved it. But it was also a hotel without a bar and so there was very little to do down there. Upstairs, the bottle was waiting. So he stepped back into the glass elevator and floated back up to his floor.

Inside, he poured a few fingers in and began.

‘Dear Kit, Something is different about me. Either this thing on my neck is causing me to lose my mind, or I've already lost it.'

No, he told himself. Stop the blubbering. Do something useful. He took a sip. It burned his tongue, strained his gums. His eyes watered. He took another long pull.

‘Dear Kit, I have made some mistakes. That's why you won't be in school this fall. It's simple, true. I fucked up. But they do not make it easy on guys like me.'

He started again.

‘First of all, let me tell you the good news. It looks like this Saudi deal is going through. You can sign up for classes in the fall. I'll have the money. I'll have enough to pay full-freight. The whole year up-front, if those bastards want it that way.'

Now he was lying. She didn't deserve that. She'd done nothing wrong. And yes, the economy was this, the world was that, these schools were overpriced, ridiculously overpriced — my God, did they simply pull that tuition number out of the wind and then add ten percent? — but still. Had he planned better, had he not been so incompetent, he would have whatever she needed. He had twenty years to save $200k. How hard was that? It was ten thousand a year. Much less assuming any kind of interest on the money. All he had to do was save $60k and leave it alone. But he didn't leave it alone. He played with it. He invested it, invested it in himself and others. He thought he could make the $200k at will, in any given year. How could he have predicted the world losing interest in people like him?

A year ago, he'd had the idea that he'd pioneer a new line of bikes — classic, durable, for the collectors and the tinkerers and the families who just wanted something indestructible. And so he went looking for a loan. He figured half a million would allow him to rent a small warehouse, some machinery, hire some engineers and designers, get a few prototypes made, buy a few trucks. He knew what he wanted — strong simple bikes with clean lines, tons of chrome, everything built to last a thousand years and never look weary.

He came up with a viable business plan, but the banks laughed him
out the door. You want to make what? Where? I want to make bikes, he said. In Massachusetts. That amused everyone. Lots of amusement from the people holding the cash. One venture capital guy had actually laughed, a big and genuine laugh, on the phone — laughed a good long time. Alan, if I gave you five grand, let alone five hundred, that would be the end of us both! They'd have us committed!

This was not a good time to be asking banks for money for what they deemed a project of quixotic dimensions. The kindest among the loan officers referred him to the government. Have you heard of the Small Business Adminstration? they asked. Check out their website. It's very informative and easy to use.