Burning Down the House (15 page)

These figments: her mother, Ian, her self, they shift inside her. The movement of tectonic plates, continental drift, human change.

It's one of those long dead streets in Bushwick that's getting trendy, with a restaurant that has no door and warehouses covered in spray paint. It's always deserted on this street even though everyone comes here and the bars are crowded. That evening, like most evenings, she feels herself about to break down and so she leaves the restaurant to smoke a cigarette by herself. An unplanned unpleasantness meant to distract her from the planned unpleasantness of her social engagement. As soon as she heads into a doorway she senses that she has made a mistake. The black paint, the men emerging from the shadows, the scene as if she's dreamed it, someone grabbing her arms, speaking softly but unkindly. A cold fear that comes sweeping over her, beyond her strength, beyond her understanding. A feeling that she could enter a place beyond death, enter fully into the madness she has been circling, narrowly avoiding, or at least disguising. And suddenly she's hearing another voice, the voice of the private-equity guy whom she would no more have expected to intervene in a dangerous situation than she would have expected her mother to reappear in the dark doorway, dove gray, angelic, wings made of feathers, tubes still dangling from her nose and mouth.

Somehow he talks the men out of it, whatever it was, and gives them some bills and they leave her alone. But the fear hasn't left her and when they go back to his loft in the Financial District she finally accepts the drugs he's been urging on her for weeks. He says they'll be good for her. He calls them by their scientific chemical names as if that makes them medicinal, clinical, FDA approved. She believes that she will know when she has gone too far, when the time has come for her to recognize that enough is enough, that she will be able to change course. But the surprising thing about this situation is, the thing she is most struck by as she sits slumped in a matte-velvet-upholstered original midcentury French chair staring at the quarter-sawn oak floorboards in a herringbone pattern is that it is actually extremely difficult to change. Once on a highway it is remarkably difficult for a person to exit. If she had said this aloud in English class she would have felt like an idiot, it was such an obvious idea. But she was not herself, she was now that foolish girl who said foolish things, and so who was she to judge? That no one has noticed what she has become lends this experience its darkest terror. That no one would realize she had lost her mind, that some substitution had taken place and her identity had been plucked away and that she was powerless to replace it, this must be worse than insanity. The worst, she thinks, is when you go crazy but you are completely aware of what has happened.

A
LIX MET IAN
at an exquisitely appointed bistro in the West Village. All rustic industrial and so tasteful that she felt as if she had slipped into a design blog. The furniture and objects glowed with a fanatic essentialism that attempted to wordlessly explain why they were so expensive. Ian had arrived first. He was at a table by the window, nursing a hot beverage and looking more unkempt than usual. He seemed to be having a private moment, and Alix almost didn't want to intrude, privacy being so scarce, practically illegal these days. What was troubling him? she wondered. What would she find if she could undertake surveillance of his brain, his thoughts, his mind? Of course, what she really wanted to know was what was in his heart. However, even entry into his neural synapses could not have told her that.

Could she see how his heart ached and his head hurt? He groped for thoughts but they were pulled under by waves of disturbance, guilt, regret. He was riding wave after wave and yet from the outside he appeared only slightly messier, somewhat tired, preoccupied, stressed, overworked, distracted. Not like a drowning man.

She sat and it took him a moment to notice that she was there.

Hey, said Alix. Hello.

He didn't say anything for a long time.

Then, quietly, his head tilted: So this is middle age, he said.

I'm skipping middle age, she said, picking up the menu and squinting at it. I'm going straight to aged.

Ian's forehead rippled and twisted in eddies of understanding.

I know what you mean, he said. Aged is more dignified.

Exactly.

But the thing about middle age is—he leaned forward—it is undignified. It just is. And you can't skip it. I thought you could too, by not even getting to full-grown adult, but—

What? Ian are you crying? Have I ever seen you cry?

But you really don't have a choice. We don't. Trying to skip middle age is like trying to go straight from child to adult and not stopping at teenager.

That's exactly what I did!

He was letting his eyes well up, not fighting it.

And how did that work out for you?

Oh, she said, sighing. You know how.

She reached her hand across the table for his.

Listen, best friend, you can tell me anything.

His whole face contorted and his eyes shut as if blocking out an image beyond horror, beyond death, something that should never have been seen. He gripped her hand. He covered his face with his other hand. This went on for a while.

Pretty undignified, huh? he said, when he had finished.

That's okay, she said. It's totally okay.

Thank you, he said. I really don't deserve any of this.

Any of what?

You, your friendship, listening to me.

Don't be ridiculous. I'm not even listening to you. That's because you're barely saying anything.

The waitress had hovered in their orbit for a while and by now had given up.

I can't, he said.

The contortion again, rivers and mountains of a textured globe furrowing his brow, like the world being born.

Did you kill someone?

No.

Then I think you can tell me.

The mountains rolling into hills, then prairies. His face relaxing. His gray eyes staring into hers.

For him the whole room, the whole city, the whole world is inhabited by Poppy. She's laughing, mocking. She's crying, brooding. Her wide eyes. His heart a mess, a raw organ laid out on a chopping board. He can see it quiver. This is the ache of actually loving her. Not knowing how she is, if she is okay. How long can he keep this secret? He thinks about telling Alix, about showing her his heart, taking a bite out of it right in front of her. But for the same reason he doesn't tell Poppy who he is he doesn't tell Alix: he is afraid to hurt them. Afraid for whom?

Finally he said, I really can't. But you've been very helpful. I feel better, or at least a little stronger.

Okay, I'm puzzled, but that's okay.

Thank you.

What has gotten into you that you are so polite all of a sudden? You don't have to thank me. I'm offended that you would thank me.

I'm sorry—

No, don't apologize I don't like that either. You do look better though. Hungry?

No, he said. I'm not sure I even deserve food. But you eat.

Thank you. See, your manners are contagious. Yes, well, I think I'll order now that you've decreed that I am worthy of sustenance.

He smiled a little and laughed.

Good, she said. You're laughing at me.

His eyes were tilting downward at the edges, sorrowful, handsome, helpless, but showing the tiniest signs of strength in the steadiness with which they held her gaze.

You really have been able to get away with a lot with those eyes, she said.

He nodded.

She continued: Being immature, an asshole, not growing up, acting helpless, feeling sorry for yourself, being passive-aggressive, playing dumb, not taking responsibility.

Oh go on, he said, drily.

I love you, pal, but you're too old for it, she said as she buttered a sourdough roll. And you're also too old for this bullshit crying. Whatever you've done, and I'm sure it's pretty bad, don't kid yourself that these tears are real. Unless, that is, you actually plan to do something about whatever the hell it is you've done. But of course I'm not asking what that is.

Thanks.

Miss Manners again. Does she even exist anymore? Alix held the piece of bread aloft, midbite. I feel really old this week. I keep getting ads on my computer regarding different diseases: multiple sclerosis, cancer, fibromyalgia. It must be because I'm searching for things that a person with those ailments would search for, don't you think? What else could it be? It's like the Internet—and by Internet I mean of course whoever or whatever is following my whereabouts on the Internet—it knows on the basis of what shoes I'm lusting over and what gossip I'm scarfing, which out-of-print authors I'm hunting down and what esoteric journals I'm pretending to read, it's as if it knows what is going on in my body, what I'll get sick from, when I'll die.

When?

Well, from what. And the next thing you know it's when.

You're more morbid than I am.

That's always been the case.

Thank you for trying to cheer me up.

Will you stop with the thank-yous?

I'm sorry.

That too. Enough apologizing. I don't want polite from you.

But I am sorry.

But it isn't helpful.

I'm sorry anyway.

J
ONATHAN STOOD
at the top of the Spanish Steps and thought: Europe is Disneyland now. He surveyed the exquisitely rendered panorama of elegant proportions and found it lovely, but too familiar, too charming, precious. He remembered coming as a kid when the Continent still felt foreign, exotic, when products in every country announced themselves with different logos, packaging, typography. Today the streets were lined with the same global citizens swinging the same shopping bags from the same luxury brands. He could just as easily have been in New York as Rome. But it was a cliché to complain about such things, and the truth was he didn't much care. He made a note of it, that was all. Nostalgia, yearning, these feelings didn't penetrate him. He experienced them as observations only, information which he might use, or more accurately misuse, in order to further his plans, objectives, desires. At the moment he desired a macchiato before his next business meeting. Mission in mind, he scampered down the long flight of stone steps, shiny new shoes striking the stairs like black keys on a piano slipping between the ivories.

He decided to take the scenic route, or rather his favorite route, since every route was the scenic route in Rome. All roads led to Rome, and all roads in Rome led to beauty, pleasure, an opera set around every corner, a quiet narrow snaking
via
opening suddenly onto a stage lit with the softest colors, a solemnly beautiful church, an empty restaurant, each piazza a new location for delight, a fresh setting for a dream, as if dancers in chiffony skirts and dolce vita bodices might unfurl from the church door and spin on the trattoria tables, or a line of clergymen in jewel-toned robes might march through from stage right, incense swinging, or ancient philosophers might walk out of the Forum, or step out of the paintings in the Vatican, and find themselves facing the perplexing question of how they had arrived in the Renaissance. These ideas manifest themselves in Jonathan's mind as a backdrop, as a pleasing scrim against which more-urgent matters stretched themselves out, his mental exercises needing a comfortable setting, a kind of hotel-bar environment—artificially costumed, a mélange of periods—in which to lounge and strategize, display themselves, and size up the competition.

His upcoming meeting was not exactly authorized and therefore required a fair amount of mental preparation. It wasn't exactly his first unauthorized activity, but now he was aggressively taking his career into his own hands, to the next level. He hoped to do something to impress his father, benefit the organization in an unexpected manner, and thereby overcome the boringly predictable control Steve exercised over him, the rigid, manipulative, domineering behavior which Jonathan both raged against and interpreted as love. He had begun his secret campaign in Laos, when he'd taken it upon himself to have the zip liners assassinated. It was bold. Beyond the call of duty. And unknown to Steve. Jonathan had wanted to get the job done right, eliminate the obstacles completely, so that Grant could get his permit, build his restaurant, and the profits, a large percentage of which went to Steve, could begin rolling in. If he had left the job half done, leaving room for the local authorities to doubt him, to think he might bend to their pressures or submit to their customs, he would have opened himself up to potential failure. Had he overdone it? Sure, but in his mind that had been necessary. Did Steve have to know? No. Did Jonathan accomplish his mission? Yes. He had returned home proud and arrogant, expecting to be praised and, in Steve's eyes, elevated. Instead, he returned home to discover that Steve had developed a vigorous fascination with and unexpected closeness to Neva. This came as more than a surprise to Jonathan. It was an affront and marked the onset of a rivalrous anger and childish shame, a feeling of rejection, humiliation, and narcissistic mortification. Jonathan was no more prepared to manage these feelings than he was prepared to actually run the family business, but in squelching his emotions, in strangling, suffocating, decapitating, and disemboweling them, he found himself plagued with a thirst for revenge that admitted no reason. He would have to take over. This was his only redemption. So when two men named Warren and Wolf approached him with a financial opportunity, he seized it. Fortune favors the bold. Jonathan had heard as much.

He turned a corner and emerged in Piazza di Sant'Eustachio, his destination. He drank his macchiato, and then walked to the Pantheon, where, ambling in circles around the perimeter of the building, the light from the perfect hole at the top streaming in milky-white rays of liquid cloud—weightless, angelic, fresco light—he and the man with whom a meeting had been arranged by Warren and Wolf's people detailed for him the intricacies of transit through Italy. The country had become a popular way station for women on their journeys from Russia, Moldova, Ukraine, and other locations to the United States and other developed nations. A prime stop on a grand tour, much like the tours of the nineteenth century, only not. On these twenty-first-century tours the passage was involuntary and the sightseeing limited. The gentleman explained to Jonathan how Steve's hotels could be of service, in Italy and elsewhere. He either did not know or did not mention Steve's earlier refusals, about which Jonathan had not been made aware. But there was the understanding between this adviser and Jonathan that their plans would be orchestrated without Steve's approval. It was a matter of efficiency. And discretion.

They celebrated with a drink. It was a new beginning for Jonathan, or so he felt. Yes, there were many more real estate deals to be made, but this was where the smart money was. This was the future. There was no fighting it: the very newspapers that ran editorials condemning such practices and demanding action by the UN carried classified ads for women. Women for sale. The gentleman cupped his hand and lit a cigarette as he explained. Jonathan looked around and imbibed the Roman air, the Roman elegance, the Roman women walking their Jack Russell terriers and the men eternally tan. The buzz of a Vespa as it swerved around a corner, a woman's dagger heel balanced steadily on the runner, her leg the length of the road, her black hair flying out from the back of her helmet in swift, brilliant brushwork. He made no connection in his mind between these women he admired and those women whose exploitation he would be facilitating. His was an inconsistent mind. A mind in which principles gave way to expediency. Actually, a mind which did not recognize principles.

After their drink Jonathan walked and walked, all the way to the Coliseum. As he approached it at dusk he could make out a gray cloud lifting up from the majestic structure, smoky and billowing against a pink sky. Coming closer he realized that the cloud was made of bats, hundreds of bats, rising above the city.

Their jittery view: quick fragments of ruins, sharp sightings of cypress, jagged jump cuts of slow buses and shuffling crowds of tourists, the sloping rise and fall of the hills as seen from the slanted perspective of a winged, nocturnal creature.

He looked at the cloud of bats dispersing into the night. Nothing was pure, thought Jonathan. We are all complicit. This idea was his version of believing that everything is connected. It was almost spiritual. Almost.