The Fugitivities Read online

  The launch took place at the magazine’s new offices, located in a refashioned Greenpoint warehouse right on the East River. Octavio and Jonah rolled up a little after eleven, entering into a scene that was sumptuous and well attended. The guests were balkanized into tiny groupuscules, each in their corners, accentuating the negative space of the floor plan, which in city psychology was also, of course, a supreme assertion of luxury.

  All around the open cross section of the loft were the faces of the sad young literary men, each in their own way terribly preoccupied with the unbearable whiteness of being. Jonah knew them. Not personally, but almost by osmosis; and he felt a measure of ironic sympathy for their plight. They had self-consciously constructed themselves as a force for good. They had good politics, went to good schools (where he had first crossed paths with the tribe); they were good readers of the best reviews (which they hoped to emulate and rival), copies of which further advantaged a vintage mid-century credenza. They all wanted change and hated racism: principally in politics, and geographically in the vast hinterlands (starting in Long Island and New Jersey). The greatest shame of all was the racism in their own families. Sometimes, a good few drinks in, they wanted to confess those unpardonable horror stories in hot breathy convulsions that Jonah had some practice in compassionately, but firmly, evading.

  He felt for them because what could be wrong with them, really? They wanted what he wanted, more or less. To see good ideas and good art triumph, especially their own. The only problem was that the ascendant power blocs didn’t seem to care a whit what they said. Those with the real power—the consulting firm types, the I-Bankers, the DC apparatchiks and the math majors gone to Wall Street that they knew from college—wanted art, if they ever thought about it at all, to be a larger, more expensive version of a desktop background. They were too busy rigging up massive systems that would liquidate the old printing-press jobs to worry about what was being said by the last cohort to have them.

  The sad young literary men were the most despised men of their time. They held a declining share of even those few perches they had once held like grand viziers in the days of the Plimptons, the Mailers, the Updikes; when shuttling between mistresses in Connecticut and dipping down to Greenwich Village to drink with famous war correspondents was all in a day’s work. Most of the top jobs in their circles were held by women now, and the proclivities associated with fashionable narcotics were starting to be scrutinized and sometimes even openly deplored. There was still money, of course, but without status it was an enfeebled collateral glare. They formed, ironically enough, a genuinely besieged class; and presumably in their minds they constituted an oppressed one too, since whatever largesse and goodwill among the Midtown Maecenases remained was reserved strictly for identities that would appear charitably treated upon its disbursement. Since they would never be in that number, the spoils of a wilting branch had to be fought over ever more bitterly. It was the main reason such events were to be avoided. Over a shitty mixed drink, the knives come out: friends and colleagues cruelly humiliating each other while desperately trying to appear relaxed and popular. There was no direct danger to Jonah in this; he would be safely ignored. Unless he spoke up. But to what end? It was perfectly typical for him to spend a great deal of these tense soirées finding ways to say nothing at all.

  Instead, he listened. To the cornered woman agreeing overenthusiastically; to the political argument; to the chopped ticker-tape phrases indexing the fait divers of industry gossip. Apparently, African child-soldier narratives were trending and there was speculation that one of them might snag a Pulitzer. The perennial topic, however, remained real estate. And on this point, there was much woe. For it is a truth generally observed that everywhere white money moves, it does so in the same settler-colonial pattern. Like so many before them, the sad young literary men had attempted to desert from the advancing army. They had crossed the river and set up camp in the desolate streets of postindustrial Brooklyn, only to find like Dances with Wolves that the army was close on their heels. Within a few years, the frontier would be closed. The chill of enclosure and amenities would dominate this once savage ground. It would be ready for unparalleled comfort, saplings and lit walkways, constant surveillance, delivery of goods and services, yoga studios, the good life in all of its passionless expenditure. The sad young men would have to decamp to a farther zone or give up the struggle and put their trust funds into homesteads of their own, get tattoos, strollers, take comfort in ethically sourced and shockingly expensive garlic scapes. Of all the seven and a half billion people in the world—who else carried such a burden?

  On the other hand, didn’t they, on balance, have a rather desirable existence? The things in this apartment were expensive and they were pretentious. But they were also nicely made; they looked cool, better yet they looked right. Hadn’t Jonah, in truth, been trying to make his own apartment look essentially just like it, only on the cheap? And couldn’t he, if he made the right connections, perhaps at this very party, have a loft of his own one day? Sure, it would mean living in a place where he’d have to turn the stereo down at ten o’clock or have the cops called on him for a noise complaint. And the cops might even be called on him as he was trying to enter the building, if, say, he decided to wear a hoodie. And it would mean having to listen to This American Life and other boring but important shows on NPR in order to make small talk over Pabst Blue Ribbon and hummus. But wouldn’t that possibly be worth it?

  Even in its decline, there was a lingering aroma of achievement in this lettered world. Its nicer and more adult clothes; its confident intelligence and cosmopolitan circulation. It would snugly envelop his life, like a boutique-hotel bathrobe, making it richer and ready to be enjoyed discreetly, without the loud vulgarity that some other lifestyles would necessarily require. And naturally he would bring to it just enough of a mocha touch, the crucial note, so that his own contribution would be immensely and inevitably appreciated, perhaps without him even having to try that hard. With the right glasses (those being naturally the correct accessory), he might pull off a move like his father had in the art world—propping himself up on the stepladder of white guilt and taking the journey for all it was worth.

  Jonah was drinking steadily, standing next to Octavio, doing his best to look interested and supportive as they talked to Sasha, an attractive reader for the magazine. The three were comparing college experiences, and Sasha was explaining the “rapey” social scene and how many times she had blacked out at parties. They had moved on to a vividly confessional discussion about antidepressants and feats rumored to have been accomplished under the influence of Adderall when Jonah excused himself to make an expeditionary foray back to the beverage lineup.

  By now he was three or four drinks in, operating with a pleasurable motion that felt more graceful than it looked. On his way back to Octavio, a curator from a swanky Chelsea gallery thought she recognized him. She wanted to know what he was doing these days. “Teaching,” he said.

  “That’s great!” she said. And since it was clear she had made a mistake and that he had nothing to offer her, she immediately broke off, leaping like a salmon toward whoever had the real pull, maneuvering adroitly across the trench lines of her possibilities.

  Jonah needed to get some air. Smokers were directed back to the landing and up an extra flight of stairs that opened to an expansive rooftop. The view was tremendous. Midtown in profile. Power suit lines cutting into the darkness, the whole fabric softly pulsating. There wasn’t anyone around. Jonah lit a cigarette and walked to the far ledge.

  He thought about Uncle Vernon’s letter, what Octavio was saying about cutting out altogether, and what Isaac meant about making oneself responsible to something here, now, where it mattered.

  His life was absurdly gifted with choices, and here he was, lonely, drunk, growing increasingly bitter. Just then, he felt a tap on his shoulder.

  “Excuse me, do you have a light?”

/>   The man asking must have come across the rooftop without a sound. He had what Jonah thought was maybe an Australian accent and fine, pale features that made him suspect the high station and poor diet of English boarding schools. His eyes appeared preternaturally fatigued.

  “Yeah, I got you.”

  “Thanks, mate, so kind. I’ve been dying for a smoke, and I can’t seem to find anyone who does. My god, it’s ridiculous, you’d think at a launch party in New York…”

  “Yeah, times change.”

  “So, what do you do?”

  “I, uh…I teach.”

  “Oh, I see—like in bad areas type of thing?”

  “Yeah, something like that. You?”

  “I’m an editor at Minos Press.”

  “Oh. Nice.”

  “Yeah, I was in banking for years, and then I thought, ‘What am I doing?’ You know? I’ve always loved books, loved reading. So I changed it all up and now I’m practically running the place. Hit the jackpot. You know Esteban Riocabo?”

  “I haven’t heard of him.”

  “You will.”

  “Oh.”

  “He’s going to blow up, mate. Huge, and I’m the one that got him for us at Minos. The thing is, it’s all about timing. It’s a prestige economy, and what you do is you wait until these writers die, you know, and then their value explodes, right through the roof, man. He’s dead, plus he’s Latin American, like Uruguayan Mexican, so it’s got all the mystique built in. The edge becomes the product, the whole package. Practically markets itself, really.”

  “Sounds like a good setup.”

  “Best thing about it is that we bought all the material, and now we can just trickle it out whenever we want, control the buzz around it and so forth, extend the life of the brand, so to speak, so it keeps generating revenue long-term. I expect we’ll get about a decade’s worth of earnings out of it by the end, if not more. Ah, it’s a bloody great view, isn’t it?”

  Riocabo’s editor gestured toward the scintillating skyline and aspirated violently on his smoke as Jonah pondered the view.

  “Right, got to be off, then. Thanks for the light, yeah?”

  Jonah watched him flick the butt in a high arc toward the street, and then the editor slicked his fingers through his hair as he marched resolutely back to the stairwell and down to the business below.

  When he got back to the party, Octavio and Sasha were nowhere to be found. He made himself another drink, downed it, and drank another. People were staring; he didn’t give a damn. He was going to get faded, and this shit was free. The luminaries of the literary world and their sour complexions felt as alien and irrelevant as the savage customs of some obscure tribe whose way of life only really tells you how you read your own, how you think, and what you care about—or what you don’t care about. An ethnography of rarefied social gatherings in New York City could make an interesting volume someday. Or maybe it wouldn’t.

  He stumbled out into the night. Traffic honking, hipsters yelling on Bedford Avenue coming at him, nice white couple out on the town. Racist bastards. He hailed a cab and hoisted himself inside. Too hot. The West African up front asked too many questions. “Ay, yo, open the window! Turn the radio up, man! I said turn that shit up!” Hot 97, Funk Flex playing throwbacks. RIP J Dilla tributes still pouring in. Dilla dead at thirty-two. All that Motor City soul leaking out, all that warm fuzz on the tracks he blessed…so many things lost and found in hours of head-snapping beats, all those years knocking Tribe, Illmatic, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx, Uptown Saturday Night, scattered mixes taped off the radio, the nineties boom bap, with its Christmas chimes, clunky rhymes, and fat piano licks, blowing smoke over the yellow Discman with the skip protection, practicing gangster gestures with the earphones in…Can it be that it was all so simple then?…Mecca to Medina. Harlem to Brooklyn. Queensbridge. Exodus of the Afrocentric Asian. The Sunz of Man. Trife Life. Wu-Tang. The Chef. Shine like marble. Rhyme remarkable. Time is running out…Ay, man, I said turn that shit up! Rush of lights and blasted air like a wind tunnel…we moving. Through the night. Like Gladys. Singing “The Way We Were.” Can it be that it was all so simple then?…What happened? What happened to all that was and all that was supposed to be? All that beauty. What did it all mean? And how would it ever all get remembered? My Nigga! My Nigga! Time is running out…

  The cab hit the bridge, and the clunk knocked him back like a slug to the chest. He drank in the sheet of lights slashing from all sides now, the effect nightmarish, like the strobe of a muted television in another room. A swelling breathless rage seemed on the verge of splitting him apart. Then they were in city traffic again, lurching ahead violently in breakneck spurts. At a slow corner, he had the car pull over, ready to be sick. The cabbie demanded money. Give him the money. Blood-thirsty vampires. Just needed another drink anyway, whatever was left. Whatever. So many things incoherent. Like this other man sleeping behind the fucking Citibank planter. He entered another bar. Pricey, glossy sign, beefy arms. A Gorgon manned the cobra-headed taps. Music crashed overhead. Television aspirants, underage girls on safari, squealing, blurting obscenities, ordering Jell-O shots that cost twice what the Mexican barback would make in an hour washing their vomit off the floor later as they passed out in private cars on their way back to the upper echelons that flank Central Park. And then this moronic automaton shoving him out, ready to swing. Outside again, colder than before. Everyone in the street a sad clown. Everything ugly. Shrieking homeless man. Poor bastard shoving his raggedy-ass Rocinante under the aquiline noses of the Abercrombie & Fitch flagship. Pale mannequins floating in the twinkling windows. Unbothered as this wretched man, reeking of filth, howls and pounds his fists against the glass.

  He was leaning heavily against a wall, breathing hard. Screaming into his cell phone. But there was no call in progress. Who was he dialing? Did he get her digits at the party? Sasha? He sat down in a damp cool place. Next thing it was like his head was leaking. Slush. Toppled, flattened out. The blur was general for some time, he had no idea how long.

  A man appeared towering over him. For a moment he was sure it was Uncle Vern, but that couldn’t be. Was it his father? No, it was Phineas! It was the jazz pianist! The genius of Phineas watching over, up above his head, playing sweet music in the air. And it was all rhythm. Rhythm! Flowing in time like a river. Like the whole frame, conceived in motion. America, a mighty river rhythm. World moving, pulling everything into its fated direction, debris digested, every broken limb jigged up, dead matter as welcome as the live, as likely to proliferate unspeakable wastelands of ruin as to float the delirious chandelier of a paddleboat. A river rhythm swallowing belly-up even its sucking countercurrents, its bubbling froth nurturing settlements of moss, loosely girdled banks soused in green shades, the long-bearded current animating the living underbelly right down to the bottom. Nothing on solid ground. Everyone floundering, everyone grasping like looters for whatever might be at hand. Not only the poorest but even the richest families in the land busy making a raft for themselves, doing their best to paddle along, facing the wilderness, knowing nothing of where they are, knowing nothing of the way back. Only the slaves holding a tattered map to join the sundered worlds—their vision grown deep. And here was one. Could it be? Yes, Phineas standing overhead, astonishingly tall, like some warrior god of Meroë enrobed in a pulsating sheet of blue light.

  “Either he can walk and he goes with you, or we’re booking him.”

  “You bastards! I didn’t do nothing…I’m innocent…tell them they can’t take me…tell them I have rights goddamnit…I’m a teacher!”

  “Look, we don’t want to waste our time, but he needs to get off the street.”

  “I understand the situation, sir, but it’s okay, he’s with me. I take full responsibility for him. Got my car right around the corner, he won’t bother no one, I promise.”

  “You understand normally we would have to take him
in…”

  “Sir, I understand that perfectly, but I can assure you I can handle my baby cousin. You know how the kids is these days. Ain’t like back in the day, right? Hey, you guys probably too young to even recognize me, but, you know, I used to ball back in the day…Yeah, in the league, check this one out right here, always keep it in my wallet.”

  “No shit, hey, check this out.”

  “So listen, Imma get this young fella home, and we’re all good here, right?”

  Phineas, sweet Phineas, always in time, just a little behind the rhythm so that it carries you ahead, carries you away until the level is passed, and the flood is everywhere, and the flood is all things.

  6

  Nathaniel Archimbald placed the boy on the couch in the living room with a pillow under his head. He went into the kitchen to make some energy drink. In the sink a frying pan streaked with grease lay stranded like a supertanker. No matter. Doing dishes, for Nathaniel, was a pleasing exercise, an operation that allowed him to ventilate his mind, to see before him those magic hands splendidly at work, the rhythm and practiced improvisation like smooth handles on the dribble. When he returned to the living room, the youngster was lying on the rug. Now how in the hell did he end up on the damn floor? The kid looked too clean to be a dopehead, dressed in that eccentric preppy style he often saw downtown or in Brooklyn. He found a teacher’s ID in the wallet, though that hardly proved anything in New York City.