The Merchants of Zion (17 page)

“I can't see you being good with children,” Mary said flatly.

Beside us, James and Dimitri were hunched over the table. I couldn't see James's face, but Dimitri had assumed the philosopher's pose, chin stuck between his thumb and index finger. He would nod every so often and whisper into James's ear, then lean back.

“I have three younger siblings I practically raised myself. Anyway, call me sometime you're out with her. Kids love me.” Ruth tugged on James's shirt sleeve, stealing him from Dimitri. He almost said something, a feeble protest, but smoked instead.

“She's such a snob,” Mary said. “Why invite her?”

“Don't take it personally. It's how she is.”

“I don't like her.”

“She feels threatened. It's because the she's runner up at this table.” That made her feel better, and she pecked me on the lips. I slipped my arm around her waist. I liked Mary—she was cute and interesting and sensible, but when she left after a date I didn't care. After that first afternoon the initial rush had evaporated, as yet unrepeated.

Ruth twirled her hair, laughing at a joke James told and touching his leg. She'd leave in a bit—the first to go. Her arrivals and departures were calculated for maximum effect, I was certain. An explosive burst and she was gone, leaving me with no idea when I'd see her next.

I wanted another drink. So did James, Dimitri, and Ruth. Not Mary. I put it on James's tab—four beers and a shot of whiskey that I gulped down at the counter. When I returned, the table was listening to Dimitri share an epiphany he'd had.

“...poorly designed machines. We break all the time, but society can't throw a person away like you can a bad motherboard. Plus, even broken, we can still function. We just look away until that weird guy in the office shoots his wife and himself. Hell, it doesn't have to be the outcast. How many uptight suits are closeted pedophiles or drug addicts?” I sat down and passed out the beers. No one paid me any mind.

“If... if... say you collect things,” He continued. “Snowglobes, or stamps, or even like guns or antiques. Whether or not you're broken depends on what you obsess over, and how hardcore you are about it. If you break enough to have a negative impact on society then you get scooped. But if you get lucky, if you break in the right way—that is you obsess over the right thing—then you're hailed as a genius or as a visionary. Say, instead of obsessing over stamps you obsess over stock prices... or neo-barbaric a-retinal videography. You see what I'm saying? But most people don't obsess over useful things, they pick knickknacks or fandoms... or the internet. That isn't doing any good for anybody. It's a waste of time and effort, and if your society is optimizing for efficiency, who cares wgat your employees' or citizens' like if it doesn't contribute to the bottom line or the collective good? You're a piece of the machine, and to think you have rights over it is... frankly it's naive.”

“So you think they have the right idea with Valley Forge?” I asked.

“No, no that's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying 
homo sapiens 
is obsolete. Computers and machines take the pressure better than us, but they're too dumb. And, as the airborne toxic eventshowed us, when they become murderous there's no easy fix. You can't give a disgruntled machine intelligence an anti-depressant and send it on its way. We know the answer. It's been in front of us for fifty—hell a hundred—years. We know what works. Math works. Science works. Markets work.” He paused to take another hit. “What doesn't work? It's people, fallible, irrational human beings. Who needs a jury-rigged society with flawed, overly emotional components when you can create the perfect alternative? Man... and woman... can be improved in all the ways artificial intelligence cannot. Genetic manipulation and drugs can increase intelligence, rationality and, most importantly, emotional stability. It's been proven. The salvation of human society shall be the perfection of 
homo pharmaceutical
.”

He leaned back into the booth, arms crossed and triumphant.

James and Mary sat in stunned silence. Ruth looked uninterested.

“Whoah, that's intense,” James said, and burst out laughing. “Shit.” He cracked open his beer and sipped at it. “You think somewhere out there, there's a biologically engineered, docile, obedient James waiting to replace me?”

“Don't worry,” I said, “I wouldn't let him. The couch is yours.” Everyone laughed, James harder than the rest.

“How do you all know each other?” Mary asked. “College?” The four of us grinned at each other in turn, then all spoke simultaneously. Nothing beats telling war stories to fresh meat.

“We met Freshman year.”

“The four of us lived on the same floor.”

“Cliff and I were roommates.”

“Dimitri and I met in Introduction to Macroeconomics.”

As the writer, I fell into the role of the poet, singing the rise and fall and rise again of the fortunes of our loose-knit fellowship. After Freshman year Dimitri, James, and Ruth split off to join three different groups, while I straddled all three. Dimitri and James had a deep disdain for each other, due to their mutual insufferable nature. They found this hilarious, and said their dislike stemmed from all the shit I talked about one to the other. Now they were best friends for life. After graduation, Dimitri and I came to a mutual agreement to live together as aspiring creatives—me as a novelist, he as an unreliably funded quantum cryptography researcher or when he explained it to people who weren't in the business, a mathematician. I explained about the deal I'd made with James, who I hadn't seen since graduation, and how I'd felt obligated not to renege on my promise, no matter how flippant.

Ruth kept her eyes on me, waiting. Mary was as well—I'd hoped her attention had lapsed. I averted mine as I began. “I was something of a hermit my Freshman year because of a vestigial, long-distance relationship from high school.”

“You're something of a hermit because it's who you are,” Ruth said.

“Anyways, we broke up over the summer and I came back sophomore year depressed and lonely.” Mary tried to ask a question, but I cut her off. “No, Ruth and I never dated. Good friends—on and off because Ruth was always so busy.”

“You never called me. I always had to contact you.”

“Do you want to tell the story?” James and Dimitri had lost interest in us, and amused themselves by taking turn snapping beer tabs at one another.

“After graduation, it got complicated. We saw each other once a month, then every few months, then barely at all. The last time I saw Ruth was because Dimitri started seeing a girl we'd known in college. She had a boyfriend, however, who was going to law school in Boston. I said nothing, figuring it wasn't my place.

“Some time after they'd started dating, Ruth texted me out of nowhere and invited me out to lunch. I hadn't heard from her in a while and jumped at the chance to reconnect with a good friend, but the entire operation was a ploy so she could ambush me and ask if it was all true. She'd heard about Dimitri and the girl from a third party and wanted to confirm the story with a reliable source. Not thinking anything of it, I told her the truth and she told me she was going to tell the guy, who she sort of knew.”

Ruth frowned. She began to say something, then stopped. Then, “We were friends. Wouldn't you want your friends to tell you if they found out?”

“Not from a 'friend' I talk to twice a year.”

“You're biased. You only say that because you lived with Dimitri and didn't want to upset him.”

“Well, I told her it was none of her business and we fought over whether she should tell him. She did, and the girl broke it off with Dimitri, then told her boyfriend he'd gotten her drunk and made a move on her. That was the last time I saw Ruth until she barged into our house looking for James.”

“That's why you stopped talking to me? I barely even remember that conversation.”

“Are you serious? I was screaming. Outraged. Livid. How can you not remember that?”

“You're always so dramatic, it's impossible to tell when it's for real.” I was ready to start cursing at her, explaining how she'd ruined someone's life and how could she shrug that off? But Mary asked:

“None... none of you ever dated Ruth?” She seemed perplexed.

“Ha!” James exclaimed. I hadn't known they were still listening. The Germans were watching us too—I must have raised my voice. “Not in a million years. She's the biggest cocktease.”

“Oh yeah,” Dimitri added. “Ryan... before he... you know. Every time he got drunk around Ruth she would dance with him, flirt, all that. Then when he went for the kiss she'd bend back and he'd topple over. Sober, he knew what was what, but five beers in and he'd forget the lesson he learned countless times.”

Ruth murmured, “That's not how it was.” She drummed her fingers on the table, and shifted in her seat while the three of us awaited her response. “I don't have to defend myself to you,” she snapped.

“Hey Ruth,” I said. She sneered at me, her eyes defiant and lips parted to reveal unfriendly teeth. She'd curled her hair—for her date, I assumed. The uncensored emotions skittering on the surface of her face gave it a depth her bland smiles lacked, like her features had been drawn with a feel for perspective that brought her deep humanity into focus. The unconscious loss of control made her more real, and more desirable, than any other person in the room.

“Do you still have the scar? From the cigarette,” I asked. Her mouth shaped into an 'O' of surprise and she regained her composure.

“Yeah. I don't think it'll ever go away.” She lifted her shirt above her bellybutton and pointed to a pale spot on her tan skin.

“What—” Mary began.

“James gave it to me,” she said. “Freshman year, we were all drunk and hanging outside the dorm smoking. He wanted to know if a cigarette stayed hot after you put it out. It does.”

“Oh my God,” Mary said.

“I forgot what a dumbass he was,” she added.

“Some things never change,” Dimitri added. The needling moved to James. Ruth, no longer the center of attention, tapped away at her phone concealed beneath the table.

“I need to go,” she said abruptly.

“But we've barely started—” James protested.

“I know. I'm really sorry, but I'm meeting this guy for dinner and I don't want to smell like pot.”

“You don't smell like pot,” James said.

She smiled. “Still, I need to change and shower. Cliff, can you come wait for the car with me?”

Mary gave me a “go ahead” look. “Sure, I guess.”

“Thanks hun,” she said to Mary. “It was really nice to see all of you. We should do this again some time.”

One of the Germans got up at the same time as us. At first I thought he was going to get another drink, but he followed us to the door.

“Excuse me,” he said.

“What is it?”I asked.

“Are you,” he said, pointing at Ruth. “Are you...” he searched for the word. “Are you the news speaker with the Puppies and the Politicians?”

“Why yes,” she said, smiling broadly. “Yes I am. Ruth Lee. And what's your name?”

“I am Jens,” he said. “I cannot believe it. Only in New York!”

“Indeed,” she said. “It was very nice to meet you, Jens, but I have to get going.”

“Of course.” As we turned to leave, he said “Ruff ruff.”

Outside, I asked, “Do you get that a lot?”

“You have no idea.”

“Did you have fun today?”

“I did. You?”

“More or less.”

“That's pretty impressive for you,” she joked.

“It is, isn't it?” A silver hatchback with opaque windows stopped at the curb.

“Cliff,” she said, dragging one toe in a circle on the pavement. “My friend is performing at a show next week. You want to come? You can bring Mary if you'd like.”

“You don't need to play shy to entice me. I'll go.”

“Okay, I'll text you the info later.” She hugged me and gave me a kiss on the cheek before climbing into the car. The vestigial steering wheel and driver's seat were missing, and four seats faced each other like in the back of a limousine.

“Greetings, Ms. Lee,” a toneless, feminine voice said. Ruth waved goodbye and the door closed itself. The car drove off. I smoked a cigarette, puzzling through whether machine intelligence was as dead as Dimitri and James thought and, more importantly, why Ruth had wanted me to come with her to the street. Alone. So she could ask me to the show? She could've done that with a text message if she were sensitive to Mary's reaction, whom I did in fact plan to invite. The old lady from earlier flashed me a toothless grin. The little girl and her tricycle had disappeared, back inside and away from the sun.

I picked up a beer from the Merch on the way to my table.

“Those girls are very cute,” he said. “You are quite the ladies man, I had no idea. They both are yours?”

“Nope, neither. Which one do you like better?”

“The Asian girl, she is very charming, but she does not carry herself like a lady should. I would pick the white girl.”

“But the former is ineluctable.”

“By that, what do you mean?”

“She's like gravity. You can't escape her.”

“I understand completely what you're saying.”

The German girl was sitting at our table when I returned. Her two travel companions were making out in their booth. Dimitri was slumped in the corner, eyes closed. Mary had collapsed facedown into her arms. James ignored me as I slid next to Mary—he was fixated on the platinum blond.

She said something in an accent so thick it was incomprehensible. It reminded James of something unrelated to her. He said, “Oh yeah,” and shook Dimitri from across the table. “Cliff, wake up your girl.”

“Come on Mary,” I said, patting her on the back.

“What? Oh, hi Cliff. I dreamed—uh, I dreamed... what was it?”

“I dunno, but James has something he wants to share.”

“Hem, hem,” he said, tapping the hookah with an empty beer can. “Do you know why I brought you here today?”

“I brought you here,” I said.

“Don't spoil the fun, Cliff. You always spoil the fun,” he replied. “Thanks to Ruth, where'd she go? Oh, right. She left. Her loss. Anyway, I've established business relations with a high-profile investment group. It appears I will soon be making a baking conglomerate's amount of dough, and I wanted to share the good news with my good friends.”