Burning Down George Orwell's House (20 page)

“Thank you,” Ray said.

“I accept tips,” Kimagure said.

“Tips?”

“A hundred is standard. From you twenty looks correct.”

Ray removed twenty dollars from his wallet and handed it over. “Any advice how to hook this up?” he asked, but Kimagure had already faded soundlessly into the mood-lit gloam of the shop. He followed the blinking white dot back through the maze and, two grand poorer, got birthed onto the crowded sidewalk.

He stepped out of the elevator and turned the corner to find
Flora sprawled out on the floor in front of his door. When she removed her headphones, the violins were broadcast all the way down the hall.

“How did you get in the building?”

“Nice to see you too, Ray.”

He put the record player down and unlocked the door.

“New turntable?” she asked.

“I went to buy some new music, but I don't know what you like so I got some help.”

“I hope you went to see Kim.”

“He shook me down for twenty bucks.”

She poked him in the chest. “You got off easy. He supplies every decent deejay in the state. He must have liked you. Nice place—what do you have to drink?” Her tongue stud clacked against her teeth.

“Let's see. Tap water, spring water, mineral water, vitamin-enhanced water, diet cola, milk, beer, and whisky.”

“Glass of milk please. Is your apartment always this clean? I had you pegged as a slob.”

“I only clean up when guests are coming over.”

“Do you entertain often? I bet you're a regular pussy magnet.”

“You're the first in a long time. Guest, I mean.”

“What is this?”

“It's milk.”

“I was joking, dumbass. Get me a whisky. What kind of single malt do you have?”

“What do you know about single malts?”

“Enough.”

“Will a twenty-one-year-old suffice?”

She sat down. “That's a loaded question. I'm twenty-one.”

“That didn't come out right. It's from the Isle of Jura.”

“Isn't that where Orwell wrote
Nineteen Eighty-Four
?”

“I can't believe you know that.”

“Make mine neat, please. Have you been there?”

He dumped the milk down the drain and poured Flora a whisky as old as herself. “Not yet.”

“What's stopping you?”

“What do you mean what's stopping me? I have other obligations. A job, a wife. I can't just pick up and go.”

“Sure you can.”

“I thought the exact same way when I was your age. Everything was a lot simpler. I really want to see Jura, but I also worry about being disappointed. I mean, I have this image in my mind of the Scottish Hebrides being a kind of paradise—islands off the grid and away from the world. Everyone says that the Highlands hospitality makes their residents the warmest and most generous people in the world, but what happens if I get there and there's just as much bullshit as everywhere else? Then there would be no place left I could dream of escaping to.”

The scotch tasted really good.

“If I ever start making excuses like you do,” Flora said, “I want you to hunt me down and slap me.”

“Why do I get the feeling that you'd like that?”

“Believe me, I get it. You've got it made. Good job, fancy apartment, a big SUV to cruise around town. They love you at Logos.” Her expression made it clear that she didn't share his enthusiasm for the advertising world.

“Apart from being pure, concentrated evil.”

“Oh I didn't mean that.”

“Yes you did—and you were right. You know, the reason I wanted to catch up with you tonight was I was going to offer you a job and a lot of money, but I've changed my mind. I can't do that to you.”

“Are you aware that you're not making much sense? You want me to stay at Logos? Start at the beginning so I can say no.”

“I'm putting together a team to work on a pro-fracking campaign.”

“You can't be serious.”

“I can be and I am. Logos is going to do it whether I'm involved or not, so I decided that having someone with some common sense involved would be the lesser of two evils. I was going to offer you enough money that after a year you could take off for South America or wherever with enough cash to open your art gallery or homeless shelter or whatever it is you want to do.”

“It will be for abused women, not necessarily homeless people, and what you're saying is total bullshit. You don't have to choose between two evils. There are always other options. Always always always.”

“I want to believe that,” Ray said. “I really do. The more I think about it, the more I want you to get away from this bullshit I'm mired in. I want to get away too. I need a change.”

He poured another round.

“Yet you're taking on a fracking campaign? You should tell Logos to go fuck itself.”

“I know it sounds crazy.”

“It's worse than crazy, Ray. What is wrong with you?”

“My wife … my estranged wife … wants me to quit too.”

“So why don't you? What are you afraid of?”

“I'm afraid of what my father would say if he was still alive and I'm afraid of admitting to myself that I've wasted my entire adult life pursuing some stupid career because George Orwell told me to. The truth is that I'm fried. I'm so burnt out I can't even think straight anymore. I'll put it this way: a few days ago, a building right here in the neighborhood got torn down. They must have had a wrecking ball, bulldozer, the whole scorched-earth deal. It took no time at all. The entire lot got cleared as if the building had never even existed. Now here's the thing. Looking at the empty space, I couldn't even remember what had been there. I could not remember. What kind of shops? Were there apartments upstairs? Were the tenants evicted? Where did they go? So I'm walking past the site and someone had graffitied the next building over. Big letters: ‘Orwell was an optimist.' I couldn't believe it—but it's absolutely true. Orwell
was
an optimist compared to what we have now.”

“That was me,” Flora said.

“What was you?”

She took a drink of her scotch. “The spray paint. My friends and I did that. I finally read that copy of
Nineteen Eighty-Four
you gave me, and I see why you're always raving about it.”

“I love that! I mean … As your boss, I can't condone the wanton defacement of public property—”

“That's the thing,” she said. “It's not public property. It's just a private business owned by some rich asshole who probably doesn't even live in Chicago, and you're not going to be my boss much longer. I appreciate the job offer, if that's what this was, but I'll be arriving in Quito two weeks from tomorrow.”

“That makes me very happy. I mean, I hate to see you go, of course, but it's the right thing to do.”

“I'm super excited, obviously, but I'll admit—and I haven't told anyone this—that I'm also scared. Before I leave I need to go spend some serious quality time with my dads. They're going to store my stuff in their basement, not that I have much.” She helped herself to the bottle and poured them each large measures. It was going down way too easy.

“Let me ask you a question,” Ray said. “Why are you here?”

“Chicago?”

“My apartment!”

“You asked me to meet you, remember? I wanted to see where you live—don't read any more into it than that. It doesn't have to be weird. As much as I hate Logos, you personally aren't without one or two redeeming qualities. I bet
that buried deep inside your miserable-ass self there's a joyful and charming and funny human waiting to get released. Too bad I never really got to see it.”

“What if that's not true? What if this miserable-ass me is who I really am?”

“I've wondered about that, but you're one of the few men I know who has treated me like a person instead of as an object.”

“I'm sure I've done that too a little bit.” His phone rang in his pocket. “Sorry,” he said. “It's Bud.”

“Speak of the devil—he's a pig. Ignore it.”

“Sorry,” Ray said. “I really need his help with something tomorrow.” He took the call. “Hey, Bud … What do you mean you're here? Here where?”

A loud knock came at the door. He got up and let Bud in. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Ray-dicchio. I thought we were going to steal your truck.”

“That's tomorrow!”

“Hello, Bud,” Flora said.

“Holy shit. How long has this been going on?”

“This is not going on.”

“She just got here.”

“Sorry to break up the party,” Bud said. He took a beer from the fridge and twisted it open. “Place looks great. You already got her cleaning up? Nice.”

“Fuck you.”

“Relax, missy. I'm just teasing you. If my daughter turns out half as smart as Raypunzel tells me you are, I'll be very
happy. Now I smell whisky. Pour me one and let's go steal this truck of yours.”

“You just opened a beer.”

“We're stealing a truck?”

“It's in the garage at my wife's place and I need to pick it up. On second thought, maybe it would be better if you stayed here.”

“No way.”

In the time it took to pour another round, Flora had hooked up the turntable and put on an LP that sounded like a series of vintage soul songs sampled down to incoherent syllables, their tempos warped and mashed, and then reconstituted again into songs that weren't really songs, but weren't really not songs either. It was a revelation. It made all the sense in the world.

“The fuck is this?” Bud asked. “It sounds like someone changing the radio dial.”

“What's a radio dial?”

“It's perfect,” Ray said.

“It's terrible. Don't you have any old-school hip-hop?” Ray gave Bud a glass, which he sniffed. “Islay?”

“Very close—Isle of Jura,” Ray said. “It's right next door.”

“Nice,” Bud said.

“We talked about it and Ray's going there,” Flora said.

“Really? Where?”

“Jura.”

“No I'm not.”

“That's a great idea. I like this girl.”

“Woman.”

“Woman, sorry.”

“I never said that. It's not—”

“He's going to see where Orwell wrote
Nineteen Eighty-Four
and then quit the advertising business because he's—what did you say?—burnt out?”

“That's where you're spending your week off?”

“I'm not really … I don't know. I haven't thought about it until now. I'd like to go, but I'm not sure it's feasible.”

“Not feasible? That's a shitty excuse.”

“Unlike your decade-old plan to visit Asia?”

“This isn't about me.”

“I can't go to Scotland now. I'm paying for two apartments, remember? Money's tight as it is.”

“Don't play that—I know how much you make. What do you mean you're burnt out?”

“Why are you two trying to get rid of me?”

“We're not trying to get rid of you, we're—”

“Because you've turned into a miserable fuckface, Ray. Because you need to get away and refocus on your career. We did great with your Oil Hogg thing, don't get me wrong, but I have to be honest with you: that play clock has expired and we need to come up with the best next thing for these fracturing people if we want to keep shitting in the tall cotton, but all you do is talk about it and make excuses. I need more time. Wah! I need more money. Wah! So go get your head right and then we'll get started on this sweet new deal.”

“Does it bother you,” Flora asked, “that you're a raging asshole?”

“Not one bit,” Bud said.

Ray took a large gulp from his whisky and poured another round, emptying the bottle. The spinning record sounded like it was changing speeds all on its own.

Ray broke the seal on a ten-year-old. The three of them drank steadily and with conviction. Flora sat on the floor next to the turntable and spun a few minutes of every record in the pile, then went through them all again. The music, for lack of a more precise term, lacked structure or even recognizable time signatures. It was glorious: without boundary—other than that of duration—and liberated from the narrow conceits of the pop-music vernacular. One of the LPs had two grooves on each side so that depending on where she dropped the needle it would play entirely different tracks. She placed the whisky cork on the center of the record to watch it rotate.

The whisky flowed downhill and they soon stopped with the pretense of using glasses, opting to pass the bottle until, good and liquored up, they went for a joyride in Bud's vandalized SUV. Nothing about the trip was a good idea. The vehicle smelled like wet dog. Bud was the proud parent of an untrained Jindo named Curly, whose red fur clung to every interior surface of the truck and, now, to Ray's clothes. The ride downtown was a blur of streetlights and sirens.

His former home was wedged on the eleventh floor of a neo-gothic high rise. The mortgage was unrealistic—if he
didn't move back in soon he and Helen would need to sell it. She would have to recognize that she couldn't maintain it herself on an educator's salary. He still possessed the keycard that allowed Bud to navigate a subterraneous network of parking facilities. They found his assigned spot, and he was glad that his truck remained where he had left it. Helen's boxy station wagon sat in the next spot, which meant she was at home upstairs at that moment. He didn't relish the thought of meeting her now, all drunk and in the company of Bud, who she had always despised, much less with the sexy coworker into whom—his reconciliation with Helen notwithstanding—he was pretty sure he wanted to insert his penis.

Ray looked at his truck, unsure of his next step. “What do you think?”