The Great Man Theory, page 24
“And he sucks at driving.”
“Because he’s used to driving two miles an hour through marketplaces full of goats and shit.”
They were saying these things not just out of their native racism, not just because they were granted permission by their president, but also as a power play, a test: would Paul chime in, would he dissent, or would he merely sit there, quiet and timorous, afraid to provoke a confrontation or say anything that might tarnish his rating.
Their remarks grew more rancid as they drove, touching upon women, homosexuals, transgender people. It wasn’t possible they were this ghastly, even while drunk or on coke; they had to be ratcheting it up for their captive audience.
At a stoplight three blocks from their drop-off, one of them, observing a lineup outside a bar, said, “Check out the one in the green skirt.”
“She’s twelve years old,” his friend sang.
“My point exactly,” the first sang back in the same melody.
They tittered like schoolboys.
He hadn’t said anything that time the couple had had sex in his backseat, and they’d still given him a bad tip.
The light turned green, but Paul didn’t hit the gas. The car behind honked.
“Dude, it’s green.”
“Out,” Paul said.
“What?”
“Get out of my car.”
“We’re not there yet.”
“Yeah, Dad, we’re not there yet.”
“I don’t care,” Paul said. “I don’t want to listen to another one of your vile comments.”
“Ooh, vile comments,” one of the men said. “Keep fucking driving. We paid for the whole ride.”
Paul put the car in park. “I’ll refund your money. You can walk the rest of the way.”
His back was to them and he felt exposed. It was a terrible sensation, the anticipation of being struck while defenseless.
The driver behind him leaned on the horn.
He waited, tense and braced, more jammed cars joining the chorus. This was unlike all the other verbal confrontations he’d had. There was a potential for violence, and his anger and anxiety bubbled mostly in his body, not his mind.
He’d never been in a physical altercation in his life. If they made a move, he’d grab the ice scraper, untouched this winter, from the floor on the passenger side. It wasn’t much of a weapon, and he was outnumbered, but he could jab with it, and they were intoxicated by something.
They didn’t hit him, though. They didn’t even speak until, just before they slammed the door, one tossed in, “Get a real job, fucking loser.”
As he drove up the FDR Drive to head home, the prick’s parting words lingered. Maybe it was that the elision of “you” had felt like an erasure of his personhood.
No, that was euphemizing it: even at forty-six, it still hurt to be insulted, however generically. Words matter.
At Thirty-fifth Street, instead of continuing north, he swerved off the FDR and onto the Long Island Expressway.
75
It wasn’t hard to find the address on his phone, and the drive took just over half an hour without traffic, through progressively exclusive waterfront hamlets, until he reached a bucolic two-lane road that funneled into a stiletto of land. No movement anywhere, no cars out; in the summer you’d likely hear crickets and peepers. Hedges barricaded all the houses. Occasionally a fraction of tennis court or swimming pool peeked through a gap.
Paul’s car crawled past the home, which was completely hidden, likely set back hundreds of feet from the road. A security gate with a darkened booth blocked a driveway. Tall wooden fences, their coiled tops silvered in the moonlight, further discouraged intruders.
If only his viewers could see where Colin Mackey lived, the costly lengths he went to for segregation and protection from the barbarians—though they probably deluded themselves into the fantasy that they, too, could someday attain such wealth and would also have to defend their ten-million-dollar homes like medieval lords stocking a moat with alligators.
He executed a three-point turn and scoped out the property from the reverse direction, in the closer lane. As he inched toward the security gate, a figure stepped out of the booth, the white cone of a flashlight preceding its advance. Paul’s instinct was to flee, but that would only arouse suspicion, maybe occasion a call to the authorities. He stopped and rolled down his window.
“Can I help you?” said the man, his face obscured in the beam of light trained on Paul’s face.
“I’m a little lost,” Paul said. “Trying to find my way back to the LIE and my phone’s not getting service.”
The man gave him directions. Paul thanked him and took off before he could get his license plate.
He’d sometimes wondered why the super-rich were fine with causing societal collapse; they had to know that the chaos would eventually boomerang around to them, too. They must figure their money meant they’d always be able to insulate themselves from cataclysm, with curlicues of barbed wire and security personnel and surveillance systems for their remote homes. They never had to experience the primitive fear Paul had with his passengers earlier, completely vulnerable to attack while their backs were turned.
76
He was awarded a zero-star rating and no tip from the obscene duo, and, as punishment from the ride-sharing company for “verbal abuse of a passenger,” one month’s suspension. He could dispute it, but the injustice inflicted upon him by the college would be replicated even more heartlessly here, under amoral profiteers who viewed him as anonymous disposable labor. If he’d had proof, if he’d had the presence of mind to record their comments on his phone, he would have had a chance. That was all anyone believed anymore—and even then, not always, not when the latest technology could fool anyone, not when the administration had convinced the citizenry to discredit their own lying eyes and ears.
Forget them all. He was a writer, a lone wolf, no conforming institutionalist or timid company man. He wasn’t made to operate in their exploitative systems. His wits, and The Luddite Manifesto, would save him.
77
Paul eased up on the Adderall and slept late for a few days, cruised around Van Cortlandt Park on longer jogs spliced with intervals of sprinting, augmented his push-ups and pull-ups, watched DVDs, reread some of the books from college that had gotten him into writing. Self-care, it was now called. An already cosseted, solipsistic nation convinced that the remedy to its woes was further pampering.
On Saturday afternoon he saw Mabel. She wore, for the first time in his presence, the cashmere sweater he’d bought her. She asked to see a new animated movie, so he took her to the Nitehawk Theater off Prospect Park, then, at her request, a café that served overpriced organic food.
“What’d you think of the movie?” he asked as they were served a grilled chicken sandwich for him and a farro salad for her.
“I thought it was really good,” she said. “Thanks for taking me. What did you think?”
Her Emily Post routine was conspicuous, as if Jane had coached or bribed her to be nice to him. She’d probably forced her to wear the sweater, too. Paul almost wished she were sullen; at least he’d know he was seeing the real her. As she forked a ladylike bite of farro into her mouth, he could envision her a few years ahead, a teenager with her own life that she didn’t share at all, thoughts and feelings she jealously guarded from him like a diary with a lock. He’d turn into one of those divorced men who dropped in on birthdays and holidays and graduations, a living ghost in his daughter’s life, the dad she barely saw and rarely talked about, until one day she’d be an adult who wanted nothing to do with him and sourced all her psychological defects to her absent father.
He should confront the issue head-on. Acknowledge his failings without letting her off the hook for her own behavior. Ask questions and let her speak her mind and listen. Above all, emphasize that he loved her, would always love her, and though things weren’t great now between them, she was what mattered most to him, and he’d do everything he could to repair their relationship. It would be an uncomfortable conversation for them both, but he’d screw up his courage and get through it. That’s what a good father did.
“I thought it was good, too,” he said, cleared his throat, and took a bite of his sandwich.
78
He had emailed his book editor a few times, hinting that he had some free time for edits without mentioning the reason for it, and each time Charles had apologized floridly (more than one use of “alas”) for not getting to it yet.
Paul was preparing to leave for a date with Lauren when his ringing phone displayed the name of Charles Haskell. He picked up excitedly; it had been a while since he’d had a business call in which real work was conducted, and the drought had left him feeling increasingly unnecessary, a person without whom the world of commerce could rotate quite merrily.
“Do you have some time to talk?” Charles asked, his cautious pitch reminiscent of Nathaniel’s when he’d called to say his position had been downsized.
The book was not what Charles thought he’d be getting from the proposal or Paul’s original opening chapters. It was a jeremiad, a freewheeling tirade, the arguments scattershot, and not in a way that fruitfully resonated with the theme of distractibility. He had expected a carefully reasoned and restrained book for fellow academics, something evenhanded. This, frankly, was not that.
Paul hadn’t met Charles in person, and they’d spoken only a couple of times over the phone, but his editor’s picture on the university press site—bow-tied with thick owlish glasses, like a computer programmer from the 1980s—and email prose style suggested the disposition of a man who’d never gone a day without shaving. He’d wanted Cole Porter and Schubert, and Paul had given him the Clash and the Sex Pistols. But Paul wasn’t daunted by laborious edits, and if a stylistic overhaul was what it took to get The Luddite Manifesto published, he would do it.
“Well, I wrote this draft pretty quickly, so I expected it might be a little rough. My apologies for the extent of the roughness. I’m happy to make edits, of course. Do you want to take a pass at it, or should I just start revising with this in mind?”
“My email to your school address bounced back yesterday,” Charles said in a curious tone. Paul hadn’t checked his inbox since his firing. Already erased from institutional memory with his body barely cold.
“Yeah, I’ve left it, now the semester’s over. I’m focusing full time on writing these days. I’ll send you my personal email.”
“Then I called you, but your phone was disconnected.”
“You had my landline. I moved over the summer and I just have my cell now. I had to upgrade to a smartphone, actually.” Paul chortled. “I suppose I should revise the prologue.”
Charles didn’t laugh. “Your agent had an out-of-office email, so I called your department to track you down. And I was told you no longer work there. When I asked why, they said it was an internal matter. I asked to speak to your department chair, and after I explained who I was, he said he was obligated to tell me.”
“It’s not true,” Paul said.
“The student’s lying?”
“She’s not lying, per se. She has a vendetta against me, motivated by a bad grade on a paper, and she twisted my words out of context.”
“Your chair said you’re not disputing it.”
“Because of the legal costs. And it would just drag my name through the mud, and even if I didn’t do anything—I mean, I didn’t do anything—but even then, once the rumor’s out there—”
“When I raised the issue in a staff meeting, some of the younger women expressed their fears over working with you.”
“Their fears? Are you kidding? I’m never even going to meet them in person! What do they think I’m gonna do?”
“I have to remind you,” Charles said in a calm voice, as if trying to subdue a toddler throwing a tantrum, “that we have a morality clause here, which you agreed to in your contract, that stipulates that we can revoke a book’s publication if the author does something that might diminish our reputation. You can keep the portion of the advance we’ve already paid you, but we think you’ll be best served by publishing the book elsewhere.”
A sickly sensation seeped through him akin to when Julian Wolf’s book had taken off, the feeling of squandered and irrecoverable opportunity.
“I know I don’t know you all that well, so maybe this isn’t my place to say”—Charles paused—“but I was a little concerned by . . . the tenor of your writing. Is everything . . . fine for you right now?”
“Absolutely,” Paul said. “Everything fine for you?”
“For me? Yes, but I wanted to make sure—”
“Then everything’s fine for everyone. The whole world is fine. Hunky-dory. Let’s not upset anyone or do anything to diminish their reputations.”
He pressed the red icon to end the call, the recompense of prematurely and loudly hanging up eliminated on a cell phone. He felt even more wronged for initially apologizing to him for the state of his manuscript—after essentially being told it was unreadable.
But maybe Charles’s issues with his writing had just been cover for the morality clause. He should have expressed more remorse about the incident with Elena, said it was a misunderstanding that he felt terrible about, to both Charles and Nathaniel. And to Elena, if necessary. He’d been too pugnacious, too lawyerly. If the slew of controversies like this in recent years had shown anything, it was that defending yourself never went over well.
Nor did apologizing, though, in the end. Nothing would have satisfied them short of renouncing his manifold privileges with theatrics of kowtowing and self-flagellation, the hara-kiri of autocancellation. Of amenability. At least if you stood up for yourself, you could maintain your pride.
And fusty Charles was wrong about the manuscript. He’d find another publisher, one with more subversive taste, not to mention courage. He’d get his voice out there, somehow.
79
At dinner, Lauren told him a long story about how Colin’s chair had gotten stuck at the wrong incline just before airtime Thursday, and she’d had to personally hunt for a suitable backup, finding one with only a minute to go.
He waited for an opening. It had been a few weeks since he’d last inquired about his chances of being booked on the show, plenty of time for them to reach a decision.
“I don’t suppose Emily has said anything about whether they want to have me as a guest?” he asked.
“She did,” Lauren said without looking up from the dessert wine menu. “They didn’t think it’d be a good fit. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.”
He tried to appear impervious. “I thought you said she liked my book.”
“She read another thing you wrote, too. Something about global warming. She didn’t think Colin would like it.”
“Global warming?” Paul couldn’t remember addressing the topic directly, and nothing in his sweep of his online writing had touched on it.
“In some magazine I hadn’t heard of—I forget the name? She showed me the copy. It had a picture of a mountain on the cover. I didn’t read the article.”
It was an environmental journal he’d written a short essay for, when Mabel was a toddler, about having a child in the midst of impending natural apocalypse. The journal had a minuscule circulation, had paid him probably a hundred dollars plus a few contributor copies, and was now defunct, with no website of its archives.
“They found a copy?” he asked, stunned that they’d managed to track one down. Then, afraid it sounded like he’d had his cover blown, he said, “I wrote that a long time ago, and I’ve really changed my thinking on it, if that’s what they’re afraid of.”
“She was also confused that when she looked into your book, it had a different title with the publisher. The Luddite Manifesto, I think she said.”
“We thought about giving it an ironic title at first, but we’re sticking with The Technophile’s Manifesto. Not enough people know what Luddites are, anyway.”
“And she said it’s being published by some small college. They usually only book authors with the New York publishers.”
“It’s a highly respected academic press,” Paul said. “They publish much more serious work than the corporate houses.”
Lauren didn’t say anything.
“You can’t lobby for me at all? You’re the senior producer. Don’t they listen to what you say?”
“Sometimes.” She smiled slyly. “But things are about to change next week.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t want to tell you and jinx it until I get the official offer on Monday”—the smile broadened—“but I’m finally going to be an executive producer.”
If she were executive producer, then she could override the booker’s rejection—it might just take longer.
“That’s amazing!” He waited a beat so he didn’t look too single-minded. “So your title changes next week?”
“No, I’ll give my two weeks’ notice once I accept it, which runs through Christmas vacation, then I’ll start in the New Year.”
“Two weeks’ notice . . . for a promotion?”
“A promotion?” She was also confused. “Oh, you thought the job’s at Mackey.” The position, she informed him, was for a daytime talk show at another network.
That was it, then: months of this pricey charade, all to be rejected and with no shot in the future.
He couldn’t break up with her immediately; he didn’t want to have to defend himself against truthful accusations of using her for access to Mackey. He’d do it over the phone later that week. Cowardly, but less painful for them both.
He was unable to come up with a plausible excuse to go back to Riverdale at that hour. Or perhaps the desire to role-play professor and student and sleep with the enemy one more time was too strong. The moment he stepped through Lauren’s door, though, surrounded by her high-end furniture, about to drink a cocktail he didn’t want, his libido softened. Maybe the booker’s rejection was for the best. If he spoke his mind on the air, he’d just be dismissed as a leftist kook, mocked on social media, reduced to a risible meme. He’d been kidding himself to think it would accomplish anything; his appeals to his mother had only made her position more hidebound. He’d simply wanted a moment of glory to distinguish himself from the Russes and Larissas with their courteous protests.
