Burning Down the House (18 page)

Let me see the plans, said the minister.

Jonathan spread them out again on the table. The three men gazed at the exquisite mall.

I suppose we could eliminate this, Jonathan said, taking a pen and striking a line through the hammered steel. And this, he said, rubbing out the mosaic archway. And in the interests of speed and therefore the well-being of the community we could remove these, he said, drawing an
X
over the walnut trees. We could do the whole thing in something solid and lasting, like concrete.

The minister adjusted his glasses. Suleyman looked at him.

I like it, said the minister. Very simple. Modern.

Excellent. I believe that we have worked out a compromise, said Jonathan. And to make it all go quickly we'll make sure you get the cranes you need, decent equipment, not this crap you've been using. We can figure something out, swap some of the stuff we've been using in New York. Of course the really good machinery is in Dubai now, but we'll figure something out. Gentleman, I respect your concern for your city, its people, and its architecture. It is a pleasure doing business with you.

As the waiter came to serve their entrées, Suleyman picked up the thick envelope and made it disappear. Then he did the same thing with the two boxes.

I am blown away by how delicious this birdshit is, said Jonathan. This is the best birdshit I've ever tasted.

Back at the hotel Jonathan sat on his square balustraded terrace and called his father. He got Steve's voice mail and left a message. Totally worked, he said. They fell for it completely. We got the permits and we saved a lot, and I mean a lot, of money. Then he let a long pause go as if he were hoping that his father would pick up the phone. Proud of me, Pop? he said into the air. His words floated over the terrace and rocked on the breeze that sashayed across the river. Into the night of salty, perfumed, and polluted air. Out to sea.

Angel's first day as a crane operator was quite possibly the most exciting day of his life. Maybe not as thrilling as the days each of his kids were born, but those long hours had been filled with anxiety, and today he felt no such fear. Aloft, swinging high above Second Avenue in his primary-colored flying car, he could see every borough. There was no wind and far above the streets there were moments of silence when he believed he was an astronaut and moments when the terrain flattened out around him and he felt like a symbol on a map. Either way, he experienced a new dimension, a new relationship with the landscape and to the world. He could hear his thoughts. He could see farther than he had ever seen, a distance calibrated in miles, counties, a quilted planet that seemed more hospitable than he had ever imagined. He thought he could see a baby smiling on Roosevelt Island. And an old woman dying, comfortable, accepting, taking her time, in Crown Heights. And a family eating dinner in Yonkers. And a man, anywhere, everywhere, beginning his life.

P
OPPY STOPPED
seeing her psychiatrist sometime in March. Their last session had been yet another rehashing of her relationship with Ian, trying to understand it, trying to sort through the memories which besieged her at uncertain hours, bits of glass in a sweet dessert, if by “sweet” one meant “escapist.” The doctor had provided several interpretations of Poppy's actions and for her ensuing behavior, especially for the promiscuity and the drug use, and the various forms of denial, only some of which the doctor even knew about. But the sessions had become repetitive, wore Poppy down, until leaving the office and opening the door onto Park Avenue she would be slammed with a sugar low so deep she thought she might collapse on the sidewalk. She stopped going.

The chef, Kiki, having been given instructions that the whole family would be eating together at seven, finished putting the last touches on the oval dining table. Dinner was family style tonight, not plated or passed, a casual evening and a rare occasion on which both Steve and Patrizia would dine with the kids, and Steve's older children would be present as well. The well-nourished clan, seeing the delectable offerings, approached the spread, each in his or her specific manner. Roman ravenous, Felix with a book, Patrizia unhurriedly, Poppy distracted. Jonathan and Miranda were joining tonight, he arriving at his place in a style both entitled and uncomfortable, she sliding into her seat self-consciously. Alix had come too. Steve sat down last, as if a conference were being called to order, figures to be reported, depositions to be read. He closed his eyes momentarily, in a reflexive, unconscious action that could have been interpreted as a private microprayer but which was in fact a response to anticipatory chest pain. He caught a glimpse of Poppy out of the corner of his eye and smiled at her, with just the tiniest curl of his mouth, and she didn't see it, didn't see in that moment his specific love for her. These days she sensed it but felt she had no proof and therefore dismissed the idea that she meant something distinctive, something special, to him. Was it because of his grandeur, his overpowering shadow cast over every interaction? Or was it because what she wanted was too much? She knew he did love her, in his way. He had taken her in, loved her as his own. But now his love for her did not seem to extend outward toward her in the warm embrace she needed. It was as though his love was a feeling that never quite left the depths of him.

Poppy scanned the offerings. It was impossible not to smile, slightly, involuntarily, at the sight of so much bounty, and beauty, the starched white napkins, the glistening plates, the food like a tapestry embroidered on the tablecloth come to life, animated and in 3-D. Poppy took all this in and served herself, answered perfunctory questions about her day, tasted the sweet and savory flavors expertly mingled, but the communal experience made it clearer and clearer that her feelings for this collection of people, compared with the feelings that had been aroused by Ian, were not exactly love. Perhaps for Felix what she felt was love, a gratitude and respect that grew into love. What she felt for Steve was fierce, foreboding, a passionate yearning for love. And what she felt for all of them was kinship, closeness, warmth, even when they were their most selfish, cruel, and cold. Everything about them had formed who she was, and she appreciated it. But her early struggles and losses, her particular mental machinery, these factors prevented her from feeling connected to these people in the deepest part of her heart. Everything about them demanded her attention, defined her existence, and more than anything she pitied them their paltry happiness, their chronic unhappiness, but all the force of her unsatisfied need for love, all her longing, had gone to Ian. What she had felt for Ian was what she now considered to be love. It was impossible to change that.

These thoughts were not conscious for Poppy. They rumbled far beneath the surface of her inner dialogue. But passing the shaved-fennel-and-artichoke side dish to Alix, she caught sight of Alix's watch, a large man's Omega, gold with a brown leather band, that she knew had been Ian's grandfather's and which had been given on permanent loan to Alix for one of her birthdays. The white numberless face marked with thin gold lines reminded Poppy instantly of Ian. Blank yet meaningful, unpretentious, solid, true. Suddenly she remembered who had been the cause of her current suffering, the instrument of her grief. She had not thought of him, consciously, specifically, for days. But now, seeing that timeless face, so familiar and so close to her, she experienced an unexpected wave of love for him.

But where was he? Why had he left her? How could he have done such a thing? she thought, reproachfully, as if their parting had taken place only moments and not months ago. She wanted to ask Alix about him, and yet she knew that there was no possible response that could please her. And Alix wouldn't know to soften any blow because Poppy had concealed everything from her. Perhaps Ian had told Alix, but Poppy didn't think so; he had made such a point of keeping their relationship a secret. She imagined Alix leaning over to her and whispering that Ian missed her desperately and wanted to see her. But then the real Alix pursed her lips and looked down at her forkful of wilted greens, unimpressed. Roman was explaining something about Minecraft to Miranda, who listened semipolitely. Jonathan was trying to get Steve to discuss a transaction while Steve ate silently and breathed with increasing deliberateness. He seemed to wince at Jonathan's business suggestions, lowering his lids patronizingly, impatiently, but in such a way as to defy any accusation that he was not being entirely open to the ideas. Suddenly a painful thought occurred to Poppy: What if Ian had never loved her?

And, recounting events in her mind, she felt that there existed confirmation of this sickening thought in her every memory: in his hidden courtship, his devotion to his work, and even in his decision to cut her off completely, as if to avoid the very idea of her.

He should have never told me that he loved me, she thought. If I'd only known that I hadn't mattered to him I wouldn't be in so much agony now.

It had never crossed her mind before that his love for her had been a lie and now convincing herself of his indifference she came close to despair. Her struggle had seemed miserable up to this moment. Now it was agitating, excruciating, terrifying. She ate her soufflé with an aggressive cheerfulness, practically flirting with everyone at the table at one point or another. She waved the sparkling dessert spoon in the air as she spoke. She giggled desperately, almost defiantly, at Roman's only mildly humorous remarks. She spilled cappuccino on the table. She understood nothing, felt nothing, loved nothing one moment, and then found herself wanting to provoke a scene. Before she could act on the unfortunate impulse, dinner had ended. Back in her room she located some texts that he had sent her long ago. Reading them over and over and over, she calmed down.

She's still part of the family; it's where her body lives. Its brutality, its coldness, feel essential to her. But in her heart she lives someplace else, someplace with him, someplace bordering on the unreal it seems so warm. Tropical in its lushness, enveloping. The slick and lanky palm leaves dangle down. The mad sun, feverish, melts against the water.

April 1 and the fools rushed into one another's arms, squealing, some teary, sharing the news of where they would be going to college. Poppy watched and complimented and commiserated with people she had known since kindergarten, kids whose faces she remembered from when they were still unformed, shining, sweet and silly monkeys' heads, children with whom she had refined the characteristics of curiosity and social aptitude that had enabled her to attend this school in the first place, boys who'd pressed against her at dances, girls who had viciously excluded her from parties and gleefully posted the pictures on Instagram, young adults who had debated mock congressional bills with her and who had explained over lunch in the cafeteria or while watching R-rated movies in their families' media rooms more than she wanted to know about music and television and Internet porn. These were her peers and she felt a compatriot's closeness to them, to their dreams and destinies, but she could not understand their deep, unquestioning, and devout desire to go to college. And they could not understand her refusal. Wasn't this what she had worked for? Hadn't she been a top student, give or take a few scandalous missteps? Didn't she want to be set free? To mingle and daydream in echoing lecture halls? To attend off-campus parties? To speculate in the wee hours of the morning about what kind of work would possibly be left for her generation when it was belched out into the world, and to share the confusions of an uncertain future from the comfort of a wood-paneled, squishy-couched, leafy-viewed dorm room?

Poppy could see their point. She also recognized that some of them would continue their studies in a serious, genuinely academic, or even scholarly way and would go on to truly contribute to society, but for the most part she felt like a lapsed member of some highly ritualized sect, a sinner in the face of tithes or punishing ordeals or the very idea of the elect. She could no longer get on board, play the game, believe in the system, even if there was no other system. This put her in the awkward position of having to feign excitement or disappointment as her classmates told her where they would, or would not, be undertaking their higher education, as if she were a Native American listening politely to a Puritan explain a recent experience of awakening. Her position was also awkward because she had come to school a little drunk. And with several pills in her bloodstream. And with the feeling that today might be the day when she started mixing drinks in the Seniors' Lounge or ran down the sixth-floor hallway naked or smeared herself with paint in the art studio and then swung from the basketball hoop in the gym. It was going to be a long day.

During study hall a big group of seniors decided to go out for a celebration, but Poppy spent the time in the library. She looked wretchedly elegant with her thin wrists sticking out of her long sweater sleeves and her now-cheekbone-length bangs fringing her big eyes. One other person, a junior, was reading in the library too, a boy who'd come in tenth grade and whom she'd never gotten to know, a cute, shy, stoner type who wore hoodies and seemed like he might be interesting if he weren't younger than she was and so weirdly quiet. He raised his head slightly from his book and spoke without looking directly at Poppy. Why aren't you out with the rest of them? he said.

Not looking up at all from her book she answered, Because I'm learning. I am actually interested in the classes I'm taking. This is the homework and so I'm doing it.

Cool, he said.

She lifted her eyes from the page to see him. He was too big for the chair he was sitting in and his legs stuck out like a promontory, thick and strong, in their beat-up jeans. He smiled the tiniest microscopic smile with one corner of his mouth. His hood shadowed his face. He dug his fingers into the pocket of his sweatshirt and took out a pill. He slid it across the table to her.

Oh, thanks, but I have plenty of those, she said, going back to her book.

Doubt you have this one. Brand-new. Exceptional. Guarantee it'll make the story even better.

She eyed the round disk with a slash across its middle, a compacted powder of possibility.

No thanks, she said.

C'mon, he said. It's a present. Take it whenever you want.

An hour later they were unexpectedly close friends and their hunger had motivated them to stagger out into the cold spring air in search of nourishment. By noon they'd had pounds of sugar and salt in various disguises and they sat on a brownstone stoop studying the stringy abstract shadows cast by trees against the side of a postwar white brick building. A chilly breeze blew down the street. Poppy's mouth was dry. The city encircling them had sun and oxygen but seemed devoid of some essential element and there was nothing Poppy could do to feel necessary, needed, as if her progress mattered to anyone in any of the thousands of buildings that spiraled out from where she sat. The world fell away from her in volcanic chunks, as if an earthquake were in the process of decluttering the universe, breaking off pieces of New York all around her while she sat, her head on this boy's shoulder, staring vacantly into the trunk of a tree. The travelers marching along the sidewalk moved erratically, seemed to walk up a steep hill, slid like marbles down a marble chute, flew by like the black-and-white characters that sailed past Dorothy's window during the tornado in
The Wizard of Oz.
Consciously she knew that they were walking at a normal pace with an average speed on a flat surface, but she could feel their panic, and their movements appeared to her like a front, and she could see two worlds happening at once: the everyday scene on a side street in Manhattan and also the hallucinatory revolution that registered in her brain. In the moment it seemed to her that every moment existed this way, that this was reality, or a glimpse of it, this multiplicity of viewpoints, interpretations, experiences. As information entered her mind one variable at a time, color, distance, timing, perspective, and her brain reconstructed it along separate pathways to make meaning, she felt as though she were witnessing the process in action, the whole coded miscellany shattered to smithereens and then resurrected by the cells and synapses that each worked separately to create a whole. It was beautiful.

We should hide, the boy in the hoodie said to her. She thought his name might be Jasper, but she wasn't sure. She would just think of him as Jasper.

Why?

Because they'll find us, Jasper said.

Okay, said Poppy.

Where do you want to hide? asked Jasper.

I don't know. Where do you think? How about here?

Here? We can't hide here, he said.