The Merchants of Zion (29 page)

“So I take it we're done drinking?” I said.

James mumbled something, but I chalked it up to sleep talking. ““Yeah I guess so,” Ruth said. “Do you think he'll be okay?”

“Except for the soul-crushing hangover? Yeah, he'll be fine. Cigarette?”

“No thanks.”

“Keep me company while I smoke one?”

“Sure.”

Ruth turned off the light as we snuck outside.

The parking lot contained a whopping three cars, James's, the clerk's, and one other. An occasional semi passed on the forlorn highway—there was no reason to drive through upstate New York except to move freight. For the past fifty years people had been migrating towards urban hubs with public transportation, a trend that showed no sign of abating. The age of rural America was over, and had been for a long time.

“What are you thinking about?” asked Ruth.

“Huh? Oh, just how empty it is.”

“No kidding. Who would ever want to live up here?”

“It's much more peaceful than the city. And there is one nice thing about living away from everybody else. You can see the stars. It's easy to forget how inconsequential mankind is when you're surrounded by skyscrapers.”

I walked out from under the concrete overhang. Out here, with so little light pollution, the stars stretched into the horizon like a million pins stuck through a dark blanket—a bright world concealed in the city by its own suffocating shroud. Even if, all things considered, they were no more significant than us—scattered concentrations of matter suspended in an infinite void—their distance lent them a purity no object closely inspected could ever have.

Ruth sat on the curb and hid her face in her hands. I knelt and touched her shoulder.

“What's wrong?”

“They're—they're so beautiful.”

“Are you drunk?”

She laughed and dropped her hands. Her make-up dribbled down her face. “It's not that, you jerk. This is the first time I've been far enough away from the sprawl to see the stars since I was a kid. I'd forgotten all about them. They go on and on. I can't even imagine... it makes everything seem so pointless.”

“It's sublime.”

“What's that?” she sniffled, and wiped her face with her sleeve, transforming the black tear-trails into whirls and streaks.

“Imagine the planet Earth, for example. Now in your mind, keep moving further and further away. Past the moon, the Sun, Mars and the other planets. Past the furthest flung comets who complete their orbit every hundred thousand years. Going further still, the vast gap between our solar system and our neighbors. Now we're in our part of the galaxy, and we see red giants, white dwarfs, and nebulae. Then the whole galaxy, with its hundred billion stars and a supermassive black hole at the center. But it goes beyond that. There are other galaxies, all with their own hundred billion stars. Thousands, millions, billions of galaxies, on and on until you reach the edges of the observable universe. Your brain can't do it—it's too big to fit—and at some point you mind realize this and give up. That feeling—the feeling of failure—is sublimity.”

“That's depressing.”

“Sort of. The human mind can do what the most terrifying spectacle cannot.” Either out of interest or politeness, she had tucked her knees into her chest, and rested her head on them so she could watch me.

“And that is?”

“Nature can't think. It doesn't know its sublime. Lacking consciousness, it's not nature in nature that sublimity originates, but the human mind. Also,” I grabbed her arm and pointed it up. “Do you see that star moving across the sky?” She nodded. “It's a satellite. And those specks of light on the dark parts of the moon? Lunar bases. So, even if the universe dwarfs us, we're carving out our own niche up there.”

She rested her head against my arm. “You're such a nerd.”

“I can't help it if I like books more than grubbing for money. You know, James wants me to leave you here and head back tomorrow. He asked me when you were in the bathroom.”

“I see.”

I finished my cigarette and threw it out into the parking lot. It skipped across the ground, spraying embers. “Well, are you going to?” I asked.

“What do you want me to do?”

I wanted to say no, to tell her James was a scumbag and the sooner we rid ourselves of him the better. Instead I said, “I don't care. It's your decision, not mine.”

“Okay.” We sat on the curb, holding each other and looking up at the stars. I wondered what she was thinking, and if I should say or do something to break the silence.

After several minutes, she said, “Let's go inside.”

James was in the position we'd left him, sprawled across the bed and one arm hanging off its edge. Ruth and I slipped into the other bed and cuddled. She whispered something, but I was too far gone to hear it.

From:
 James Newsom

To:
 Dahlia Sparks

Subject:
 Dinner

Hey babe, just wanted to let you know that I'll be late getting home for dinner. This pre-acquisition risk assessment Liberty Bell is running is the most grueling audit I've ever seen. I swear at some point they're going to bring in a prison guard to shove his hand up my ass and make sure I'm not hiding any MI-ABS up there.

The whole thing is shit, and they're going to stick me in the pushdown subsidiary once the deal goes through. $750MM in debt disappears into a dead-man walking and they still get the tax write-off. The worst part is, I came up with the whole plan and now they're tossing me out with the garbage. It's criminal.

I have some good angles though, and I promise you that this is going to work out great for both of us. I don't want to put anything into writing, but let's just say they don't know that I know what I do, and leave it there until I make it home to your hot-as-fuck body.

Can't wait to see what your surprise is. Hoping it's something sexy or tasty. Preferably both ; )

12. Rockford New York, Part 2

My hangover in the morning was a small one. Ruth was gone and James was still asleep. At some point in the night he'd taken off his shirt and rolled over onto his back. His hands were clasped around his belly, which swelled with each breath, then deflated as the air whistled out his nose. It looked like a separate organism, a hairy beast resting on a slender man. It gurgled.

The shower was running, solving the mystery of the missing Ruth. I texted her, “Gone for coffee. Hope they have a complimentary continental breakfast. Join me?”

A dining room was attached to the hotel lobby. Six cheap tables were scattered across a beige room with purple-and-green speckled carpeting. Two vending machines and an ice machine flanked a long table with an off-green tablecloth. The staff had set up a perfunctory breakfast: two canisters of coffee and trays of scrambled eggs, bacon, and croissants. An elderly man in a tattered sports coat sat at the far table, watching Common Sense on an ancient LCD TV.

On its screen, the CEO of Liberty Bell was hosting a press conference. He was thin, had silver, coiffed hair and possessed no wrinkles to speak of, despite almost being one hundred. I was pretty sure he had a battalion of scientists dedicated to maintaining his health and correcting the idiosyncrasies of his genome. James thought he was a clone.

A press flunky called on the lone reporter with a raised hand. He was about my age, impeccably dressed, and impossibly handsome. The young stud stood up and asked, “Sir, how is the Minutemen initiative proceeding?”

“For the first two quarters this year the outfit has performed beyond expectations and come in twenty-three percent under-budget, which is good news for the American taxpayer. Our innovative border security strategy has reduced the inflow of aliens into the country to less than one-percent of what it was before Liberty Bell assumed the contract. The Minutemen are continuing their efforts to catalog those aliens currently within the country and process them through resettlement camps as quickly, and humanely, as possible.”

The old man lit a cigar and puffed away, unbothered by the “NO SMOKING” signs plastered around the room.

“Food's free?” I asked.

“Yessir.”

“Thanks.”

I scooped a plateful of scrambled eggs, skipped the soggy bacon, and took a biscuit. After pouring myself some coffee I sat with my back to the television. Having seen the Minutemen's particular brand of humanity, I wasn't impressed.

What I couldn't see, however, I could still hear. Next they picked a woman, no doubt once again the only person with a raised hand. She asked a question about Operation Empire for Liberty. Steady progress was being made, and Liberty Bell had just secured a major contract from the sovereign Mexican government to to provide security for its inhabitants. When he was finished, another reporter began speaking and the ritual repeated itself.

Pieces of foam stuck out from the chair's ripped upholstery and the table's enamel was stripped off, exposing the particle board underneath. I tasted the coffee—sewage. No surprise, it had probably been brewed a week ago. The croissant was spongy and the scrambled eggs cold and runny. I tried to ameliorate the situation with salt and pepper, generously provided in tiny packets, but my fingers were also hungover and the contents of the two packets I tried to rip open exploded across the table. I ate the croissant and left the eggs alone.

I followed the old man's lead and smoked a cigarette, ashing it over the uneaten eggs.

“Are you the manager here? Did you make the food?”

He grunted. It said neither yes nor no. After finishing the cigarette I gulped down my coffee and went for a second cup.

Ruth walked through the lobby door. Her wet hair was up, held in place by a wooden needle. She was wearing a baggy orange t-shirt and cotton shorts. The old man leered at her as she walked to my table. His neck turned around so far I began to worry for his health.

“Good morning,” she said.

“How are you feeling?”

“Full of regret. My head's killing me.” She helped herself to a plateful of terrible food. “Oh, I know him,” she said, pointing her fork towards the TV. A male model—different from the one before—was asking about a research project involving freezing water at room temperature. It was a novel solution to global climate change.

“Know him from where? Who is he?”

“What, are you jealous? His name's Allen; he worked at the place I interned Freshman year. They'd hired him right out of college and he was their junior employee, and was sort of in charge of telling me what to do.”

“Did you two ever, you know... date or anything?”

“That's none of your business.”

Ugly tendrils of irrational jealousy crept up my spine, and I swiftly changed the subject. “So are you coming back to the city with me or what?”

“I haven't decided.”

“What do you mean, you haven't decided? The train leaves in like an hour.”

“Why are you in such a rush to get back, anyway? James invited us up here. It's kind of rude to leave so soon, don't you think?”

“Who cares? He isn't exactly a paragon of good manners himself, is he? Besides, you don't want to be groggy and hungover for your first full week in the new position.”

“I don't have to be in until three, so I'll have time to recover.”

“But with the trains the way they are, you might leave at the crack of dawn and not make it until after dark.”

“If it's my company you're after, why don't you just say so?” she asked, grinning.

I was willing to tell her anything to get her away from James. Anything, of course, except for how I felt. I was worried James, with his newfound success, was going to steal her from me. And honestly, the two of them made more sense than the two of us. She was always having lunch with television actors and dating national reporters, so why was she wasting her time with poor and unsuccessful me? I had a sneaking suspicion that for her it was no more than a fling, and I was a toy to be tossed away once she became bored. Knowing all this, I wanted to keep her as close as I could, to drag this out as long as it would go. But I could not—absolutely would not—ask her to return with me in a way that she or James could see as her granting me a favor or as an act of indulgence shown to a petulant child. I wanted her to come of her own volition, without being asked.

“It doesn't matter to me one way or another. I'm only looking out for your best interests,” I said.

A look came across her face like she'd seen a star explode. A split-second of shock, followed by vacancy, then a return to her normal, cheery state. “We should get back to the room so we can pack.” she said, and rose to throw away her untouched food.

We found James with his head under the pillow. He'd drawn the curtains, and yelled at me to turn the light off. I spied a patch of vomit between the two beds. Ruth had some painkillers in her purse and gave him two, along with a glass of water.

“Hate to break it to you, but we need to get back to New York and you're going to have to drive us to the train station,” I said.

“I can drive you. I'll stay here and make sure he's okay,” Ruth said.

“I thought you were coming?”

“I don't know what gave you that impression.”

“What about work tomorrow?”

“Like I said, I'll be fine.”

I lost a beat, but recovered—there was no way Ruth was staying with James and his toxic charm instead of coming back with me. I'd convince her at the station. “Okay. Sorry James, but I'm going to need the light to get my stuff.” He groaned when I turned it on and I packed my bag as slowly as I could. I was missing a sock, I exclaimed loudly, which I knew was under the bed covers. Ruth found it within thirty-seconds, took the car keys from James, and we were off.

She turned the radio to crappy pop music and refused to engage with my entreaties for her to stay. By the end of the ride I hated her, the vileness of the feeling making my periodic dislike of James puny as a lonely satellite compared to the sun.

We arrived at the train station. Ruth stepped out with me and we said good-bye. She gave me a hug.

“Are you trying to punish me or something?” I asked.

“What are you talking about?”