“I have no idea,” said Bake. “I have no idea where my own is.”
“Here is my real problem: this country was founded by and continues to be held together by people who have worked very hard to get where they are.”
Bake shrugged and wagged his head around. Now would not be the time to speak of timing. It would be unlucky to speak of luck. Could he speak of people having things they didn’t deserve, in a roomful of such people? She continued. “And if you don’t understand that, my friend, then we cannot continue this conversation.”
The sudden way in which the whole possibility of communication was now on the line startled him. “I see you’ve researched the founding of this country.” He would look for common ground.
“I watched John Adams on HBO. Every single episode.”
“Wasn’t the guy who played George Washington uncanny? I did think Jefferson looked distractingly like Martin Amis. I wonder if Martin is here?” He looked over his shoulders again. He needed Martin Amis to get over here right now and help him.
Linda looked at him fiercely. “It was a great miniseries and a great reminder of the founding principles of our nation.”
“Did you know George Washington was afraid of being buried alive?”
“I didn’t know about that.”
“The guy scarcely had a fear except for that one. You knew he freed his slaves?”
“Hmmmm.”
She was eating; he was not. This would not work to his advantage. Nonetheless he went on. “Talk about people who’ve toiled hard in this country — and yet, not to argue with your thesis too much, those slaves didn’t all get ahead.”
“Your man Barama, my friend, would not even be in the running if he wasn’t black.”
Now all appetite left him entirely. The food on his plate, whatever it was, splotches of taupe, dollops of orange, went abstract like a painting. His blood pressure flew up; he could feel the pulsing twitch in his temple. “You know, I never thought about it before but you’re right! Being black really is the fastest, easiest way to get to the White House!”
She said nothing, and so he added, “Unless you’re going by cab, and then, well, it can slow you down a little.”
Chewing, Linda looked at him, a flash in her eyes. She swallowed. “Well, supposedly we’ve already had a black president.”
“We have?”
“Yes! A Nobel Prize — winning author said so!”
“Hey. Take it firsthand from me: don’t believe everything that a Nobel Prize winner tells you. I don’t think a black president ever gets to become president when his nightclub-singer mistress is holding press conferences during the campaign. That would be — that would be a white president. Please pass the salt.”
The shaker appeared before him. He shook some salt around on his plate and stared at it.
Linda made a stern, effortful smile, struggling to cut something with her knife. Was it meat? Was it poultry? It was consoling to think that, for a change, the rich had had to pay a pretty penny for their chicken while his was free. But it was not consoling enough. “If you don’t think I as a woman know a thing or two about prejudice, you would be sadly mistaken,” Linda said.
“Hey, it’s not that easy being a man, either,” said Bake. “There’s all that cash you have to spend on porn, and believe me, that’s money you never get back.”
He then retreated, turned toward his left, toward Suzy, and leaned in. “Help me,” he whispered in her ear.
“Are you charming the patrons?”
“I fear some object may be thrown.”
“You’re supposed to charm the patrons.”
“I know, I know, I was trying to. I swear. But she’s one of those who keeps referring to Brocko as Barama.” He had violated most of Suzy’s dinner talk rules already: no politics, no religion, no portfolio tips. And unless you see the head crowning, never look at a woman’s stomach and ask if she’s pregnant. He had learned all these the hard way.
But in a year like this one, there was no staying away from certain topics.
“Get back there,” Suzy said. The sculptor was tapping Suzy on the arm again.
He tried once more with Linda Santo the evil lobbyist. “Here’s the way I see it — and this I think you’ll appreciate. It would be great at long last to have a president in the White House whose last name ends with a vowel.”
“We’ve never had a president whose last name ended with a vowel?”
“Well, I don’t count Coolidge.”
“You’re from what part of Chicago?”
“Well, just outside Chicago.”
“Where outside?”
“Michigan.”
“Isn’t Michigan a long way from Chicago?”
“It is!” He could feel the cold air on the skin between his socks and his pant cuffs. When he looked at her hands they seemed frozen into claws.
“People talk about the rock-solid sweetness of the heartland, but I have to say: Chicago seems like a city that has taken too much pride in its own criminal activity.” She smiled grimly.
“I don’t think that’s true.” Or was it? He was trying to give her a chance. What if she was right? “Perhaps we have an unfulfilled streak of mythic hankering. Or perhaps we don’t live as fearfully as people do elsewhere,” he said. Now he was just guessing.
“You wait, my friend, there are some diabolical people eyeing that Sears Tower as we speak.”
Now he was silent.
“And if you’re in it when it happens, which I hope you’re not, but if you are, if you are, if you are, if you’re eating lunch at the top or having a meeting down below or whatever it is you may be doing, you will be changed. Because I’ve been there. I know what it’s like to be bombed by terrorists — I was in the Pentagon when they crashed that plane right down into it and I’ll tell you: I was burned alive but not dead. I was burned alive. It lit me inside. Because of that I know more than ever what this country is about, my friend.”
He saw now that her fingernails really were plastic, that the hand really was a dry frozen claw, that the face that had seemed intriguingly exotic had actually been scarred by fire and only partially repaired. He saw how she was cloaked in a courageous and intense hideosity. The hair was beautiful, but now he imagined it was probably a wig. Pity poured through him: he’d never before felt so sorry for someone. How could someone have suffered so much? How could someone have come so close to death, so unfairly, so painfully and heroically, and how could he still want to strangle them?
“You were a lobbyist for the Pentagon?” was all he managed to say.
“Any faux pas?” asked Suzy in the cab on the way back to the B and B, where warm cookies would await them by their door, and snore strips on their nightstand.
“Beaucoup faux,” said Bake. He pronounced it foze. “Beaucoup verboten foze. Uttering my very name was like standing on the table and peeing in a wineglass.”
“What? Oh, please.”
“I’m afraid I spoke about politics. I couldn’t control myself.”
“Brocko is going to win. His daughters will like it here. All will be well. Rest assured,” she said, as the cab sped along toward Georgetown, the street curbs rusted and rouged with the first fallen leaves.
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
He was afraid to say more.
He did not know how much time he and Suzy might even have left together, and an endgame of geriatric speed dating — everyone deaf and looking identicaclass="underline" “What? I can’t hear you? What? You again? Didn’t I just see you?”—all taking place midst bankruptcy and war, might be the real circle of hell he was destined for.