Burning Down George Orwell's House

IV

The doors chimed to signal his arrival. Mrs. Kletzski sat on a stool behind the counter staring at her television screen. Through the tinny warble of the built-in speakers, the talk show sounded like a domestic dispute conducted through faulty bullhorns.

“Hello, Mrs. Kletzski.” Nothing. “Hello, Mrs. Kletzski!”

“Raymond, where have you been hiding?” She didn’t turn the volume down and had to yell over a commercial for a budget airline. The racks behind her, typically full of plastic-sheathed clothes, were all but empty. Only a few suits, dresses, and laundry sacks remained.

“I was here on Saturday, Mrs. Kletzski.”

“Do you have your ticket?”

“No, Mrs. Kletzki, I’m sorry. I don’t.”

“Let me see if I can find your slip!” She kept her receipts in a tall metal box with cardboard tabs for each letter of the alphabet. She flipped through each of them. “Let me see here,” she said. “I’m not responsible for garments left over six weeks!”

“It’s only been two days, Mrs. Kletzski.”

“They drop off their clothes — wedding dresses! — and leave them here like I’m supposed to look after them. What are they saving them for? Their second marriages? So do you know what I did?”

“What’s that, Mrs. Kletzski?” He needed coffee.

“When I got back from church yesterday, I rented two dumpsters and took everything that was here for longer than six weeks and threw it out back.”

“Did you call the people? Maybe they just forgot.”

“I’m not responsible for garments left over six weeks! Here’s your ticket. Says so right here! I let the bums come and take it all. Kept the hangers though — I can use those again!”

“Smart thinking. What do I owe you?”

Her show came back on and distracted her. She punched some numbers into the old cash register and the drawer opened with a cha-ching. “Twelve dollars and fifty-five cents.” She placed his credit card in a plastic tray and slid a bar over it to produce a three-ply impression and he signed the one on top. She handed him a carbon copy and went to retrieve his things. “Welter! What day is today?”

“Monday, Mrs. Kletzski.”

“How’s Wednesday?”

“Perfect.”

“After ten o’clock!”

“After ten, Mrs. Kletzski, got it. Have a nice day,” he said, but she didn’t hear him.

He spent the morning devising new and unusual ways to separate unwitting people from their paychecks and public-assistance payouts. His job, as he understood it, was to funnel money upward from the masses of consumers and into the already deep pockets of Logos’s wealthy clients. He was performing a small, supporting role in a rebranding campaign for two banks that had merged. Nothing interesting.

The shitstorm arrived shortly after lunch. Ray’s phone vibrated with a text from Bud:

MR. WELTER — COME HERE — I WANT TO SEE YOU

The TVs in Bud’s office were muted, maybe for the first time. “Have a seat,” he said. “I just got off the phone with Detroit.”

“The entire city?”

“No, just the part that was providing those big paychecks you were enjoying so much. Our friends the SUV makers have sold out.”

Was providing? Were enjoying?

“What do you mean sold out?”

“I mean sold-out sold out. Bought-by-another-company sold out. Took-the-money-and-ran sold out. Moving-to-China sold out.”

“What does that mean for us?”

“It means there’s no ‘us’ anymore, champ. You’re off Oil Hogg.”

“What are you talking about? It was my idea.”

“Technically speaking, the idea is the property of Logos. The manufacturer will be moving operations to China. Chongqing, to be precise. I’m told it’s in the south. Apparently the Chinese are crazy about SUVs — who knew? Looks like your little clusterfuck Oil Hogg idea helped speed along the sale.”

“What does that mean for the factories in Detroit? There have to be thousands of people working there.”

“What do you think it means? Those grease monkeys better start packing their bags and learning Sichuan or they’re shit out of luck.”

Ray had never wanted a drink so bad. Thousands of honest, hardworking Americans — people a lot like his father — were going to be out on the streets looking for jobs. He had cost those people their livelihoods.

“Also,” Bud said, “you’re getting promoted. You’re going to take the lead on our next major strategic partnership. It’s a doozy. It’s the corporate sector and the federal government rolled into one big, spicy meatball of profit. We’re talking the big time here and you, my man, are going to run the show.”

Ray was afraid to ask. “I’m afraid to ask,” he said.

“We are talking horizontal directional drilling for a big dog playa in the emerging geo-thermal solutions sector.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

“I’m fracking serious. Do you see what I just did there? Fracking, get it? It’s short for hydraulic fracturing.”

“I know what it is. The answer is no.”

“What do you mean no? Don’t be a dick.”

“Bud, I … thank you for the offer … but …”

“But what?”

“Have you seen what these companies do? They are literally destroying the ground beneath our feet. People have gas flames shooting out of their kitchen faucets.”

“Try to look at the big picture. If you can do for these guys what you did for the SUV manufacturers — and the board is convinced that you can — you will own the advertising world. We’ll have to call it rayvertising from now on. Think of your career.”

“I can’t even believe you’re serious. Fracking? I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night.”

“You can’t sleep at night anyway. It’s also a bit too late for moralizing, don’t you think? Whether you’re in charge or someone else is, this partnership is going to happen. Your petty hang-ups won’t stop anyone from drilling for natural gas. The circus doesn’t shut down because an elephant tramples one clown. They paint some other jerk’s face and shove him out there.”

“Leave me out of this. I’ve done enough damage. I’d rather go back to rescripting the same three cereal ads and toothpaste commercials.”

“No you wouldn’t. We really need you on this and I might be in a position to sweeten the pot. What if just as soon as we’re done with these motherfrackers I can convince the board to let you take on an environmental charity, pro boner? Would that make it worth it to you?”

“No, I don’t know. I need to think about it.”

“Save the trees! Hug the whales! We’ll get all of the resources of Logos behind whatever dumbshit charity will help you put your crybaby concerns to rest. We wouldn’t want the company to be seen as a horde of savages willing to despoil the planet for a few lousy bucks. We are that, of course — we just don’t want to be seen that way. Did I mention the large raise this promotion will entail?”

“How big of a raise?”

“You are going to become wealthy beyond the dreams of mere mortals, I promise you.”

Maybe … just maybe … this was the exact break Ray needed. Making more money would put him in a better position to reconcile with Helen if he could prove once and for all that he was a responsible, levelheaded adult capable of compartmentalizing his work and personal life. He would gladly put any moral qualms aside if it meant patching things up and moving back home. It was time to grow up and be a professional as well as a great husband. It would be a new beginning for both of them. They could start over. “I want to think about it.”

“What’s this ‘think about it’ shit? I’m bestowing upon you the creative and financial opportunity of a lifetime.”

“I appreciate that — I really do — but after I have my appointment with Helen on Wednesday I’d like to get out of town and clear my head. I’m thinking about going up to Wisconsin, maybe drying out for a few days. I’m hoping to bring her with me. I can use the time to do some research about the benefits of clean, natural gas, and if it turns out I have something useful to say that won’t make me want to hurt myself I promise you that I will build the best market-driven solution this company has ever seen.”

“That’s what I’m talking about, Rey Momo. You’ll need to assemble a team and we’ll start the initial meet-and-greets when you get back.”

“I’ll consider it, but I’m not saying I would feel good about it.”

“No one gives a flying fuck how you feel.”

“See you next week,” Ray said. He stood to leave. “Thank you.”

“You deserve it.”

Ray packed his things and shuffled back to his neighborhood with his thought processes trapped in an infinite feedback loop. Logos was going to take on this project no matter what. Maybe he could hold his nose and do the work. He passed an empty lot that a few days ago had been a store or office or apartment building. Someone had stenciled ORWELL WAS AN OPTIMIST in huge letters on the exposed wall.

He stopped. The sight was beautiful — and so true. Things were even worse than what was described in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Not even Orwell could have even predicted the absolute disintegration of privacy. Or the emergence of social media as a means of control. Instead of telescreens, we had smartphones. Instead of thoughtcrimes we had political correctness. What was the Internet if not a way for Big Brother to track our very thoughts?

Could he really help a hydraulic fracturing company repair its public image? To refuse the job would mean letting his father down and letting himself down too. If Ray could pull this one off it would definitively prove his theories about Orwell’s usefulness to the advertising sector. Building on what he had done with Oil Hogg, he could revolutionize the entire goddamn industry.

ORWELL WAS AN OPTIMIST. That was what did it. He had to accept Bud’s offer. He could suck it up, bide his time, and ride it out. The fracking campaign couldn’t go on forever and afterward he would partner with a wind farm or whatever would help him pay down some of his karmic debt. With his tech skills and the company’s clout, Ray would be able to create the world’s most effective campaign to raise awareness about global warming.

He was going to do it. Of course he was going to do it. Fuck. He would deal with the personal ramifications later. He took out his phone and texted Bud:

I’M IN.

Even if he did hate himself for the rest of his life, there would be plenty of time to deal with that and plenty of scotch to help him do so.

Bud wrote back right away:

I KNOW

Ray powered off his phone and went home. The apartment smelled like old coffee. His face stared back at him from the metal door of the refrigerator. It had a million questions. What is it you want? Where are you going? It was insane — he had just received an enormous promotion and yet it was the worst day of his professional career. He filled a rocks glass with ice, covered the cubes with his first scotch of the afternoon, and stirred it with a finger, which he sucked dry.

TUESDAY AFTERNOON ANNOUNCED ITSELF with an excess of sunlight and another bad dream about some hooded figure hammering hot iron nails into his eyelids. An idea had come to him in the night so he texted Bud on his way out the door:

HELP ME COMMIT GRAND LARCENY. COME OVER TMW NIGHT. BRING JUMPER CABLES.

It wasn’t really stealing, but Bud was more likely to help if he thought there was something illegal involved. The response came right away:

HELLZ YES

In the sunlit coffee shop, serenaded by world music so goddamn redemptive it bordered on torture, Ray inched forward in line. Since moving to the neighborhood he had come in every morning on his way to work and had never seen the same barista twice. A gargantuan child strapped into a stroller behind him kicked at him while its mother negotiated on the phone with a series of unwilling nannies and babysitters. By her fifth call, she pleaded and tripled her usual payout, but to no avail. Zithers and harps and a chorus of ethereal female voices conspired in Icelandic or Welsh or Hindi to beat him into more senseless consumption. Steam hissed from a machine behind the counter as if the whole place was about to explode and take a city block with it. It would have felt so good to turn around and kick that little fucker right back. His pre-ordered coffee waited for him to get to the front of the line.

He sat in the front windows, the shop’s sunniest spot. The table teetered and threatened to spill his drink. He removed his favorite, disintegrating white oxford and draped it over his chair. His T-shirt said OIL HOGG in dripping letters. He was halfway through his coffee when one of Helen’s colleagues from the Department of English walked in. He had met Dr. Walter Pentode at any number of department functions. He looked out of breath. The man sweated even on the most blustery days of winter, and on a day like this one the stains on his shirt looked like deflated basketballs tucked in his armpits. The sunlight made his freckled head glisten beneath his comb-over. A scholar of Victorian literature, Pentode insisted upon speaking in air quotes in order to maintain a winking distance from the world beyond his fleshy borders and to avoid intellectual commitments of any kind. He came from old money and was said to be worth millions. He was also counted among the nation’s foremost experts on operetta librettos. He kept an apartment in Vienna and as a matter of routine flew around the globe for the sake of attending his prissy concerts. He oozed stable mediocrity; academia was a hobby that suited him perfectly. He squeezed past a few tables and joined the end of the line with a huff.

Ray didn’t want to be spotted so he ducked his head and turned his chair to face the window, but a shadow fell over the table. Pentode loomed above, holding a grasso-sized iced chocolate-malt coffee and a trio of crumbling selections from the dessert case. Ray’s table was one of the few with an unoccupied chair.

“Hello, Raymond. Fancy seeing you here. Do you mind if I sit?”

“I—”

“I’m so sorry I’m late!” Flora said. She maneuvered herself around Pentode, then dropped her messenger bag onto the floor and flopped onto the chair. She had on a red hoodie and matching sweatpants. She had appeared just in time and read the scene perfectly.

Ray smiled at Pentode. “I’m terribly sorry, but this is my colleague Flora. We’re holding an important business meeting right now.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Flora said. She had a habit of wearing multiple men’s colognes at once, which she would rub on from magazine samples. Pentode’s mouth twitched, sending wave-like ripples through his jowls. “And later, we’re going to Ray’s apartment to have consensual sex.”

Pentode dropped his coffee, splattering the sneakers at the surrounding tables with syrupy goo. People stopped mid-sentence to stare. Ray’s white shirt took the brunt of the blast. Pentode stammered something incomprehensible through his bacon-greased lips.

“She’s … she’s only joking, Dr. Pentode, I assure you. Tell him you’re only joking.”

Pentode stared down at the stains on his boat shoes. His mouth continued to open and close like that of a puffer fish about to be rendered into fugu.

“I’m only joking,” Flora said. She raised her arms to high-five Ray over the table. “It won’t be consensual at all!” she yelled. “Woo, yeah!”

“That’s … that’s terribly inappropriate,” Ray said. He covered his mouth with his fingers, but a small laugh leaked out. It wasn’t funny, but he couldn’t help it. Pentode turned and left a trail of coffee-colored footprints. Flora, fake pouting, dropped her arms. She had been out of line, but laughter rattled in Ray’s lungs. “Holy shit,” he said. He couldn’t breathe. He laughed because he could, and he kept laughing because he couldn’t help it. Pentode’s version of events wouldn’t go over very well with Helen. “And aren’t you supposed to be at work?”

“Aren’t you?” Flora asked. “I snuck out to go to the gym.”

“I’m glad you’re here — I’d actually like to talk to you about your future.”

“My future? That sounds serious.”

“I’m building a team for a new project, and I want to bring you on full time.”

“That’s very sweet, but I have other plans. I’ve decided to quit. As soon as I can save up some money, I’m leaving the country. I want to open a battered women’s shelter/art gallery in the slums of Caracas, maybe start a non-profit to hand out reusable feminine hygiene products to impoverished girls. Not to be rude, but I don’t want any more part of your corporate death culture.”

“I respect that more than you probably realize, but can we at least talk about it?”

“I’ll hear you out, but trust me — I’m going to say no. Let’s get dinner tonight.”

“Dinner?”

“Yes, it’s the meal that happens in the nighttime. I’ll meet you at your place at seven.”

“My place? Are we really going to have consens—?”

“No. You asked me to hear you out and I will. I just want to see what you’re like in your native habitat. Text me the address.” She stood and when she picked up her backpack Ray caught himself involuntarily looking down the scissored-wide collar of her sweatshirt. She had nothing on underneath. “I need some caffeine,” she said. “See you at seven.” With the line now gone, she stepped straight up to the counter. A little cloud of cologne lingered behind. The letters on the seat of her sweatpants advertised the sorority Alpha Sigma Sigma. Flora stood at the condiments bar, where she poured half of her coffee into the garbage and refilled it with soymilk and four packets of brown sugar. Ray waved to her on her way out the door, but she looked straight through him. Bovine splotches covered his shirt and they appeared permanent. He wrung some coffee onto the floor and stopped at the dry cleaner’s on his way home.

RAY SPENT THE REMAINDER of the day trying to straighten up again. Even though nothing was going to happen between them, the idea of Flora coming over carried with it the fear of transgressing some boundary. He needed to stay on his best behavior. Pentode had likely already told Helen about the scene in the coffee shop and Ray’s apparently sexual relationship with a woman over a decade his junior. Thanks to that asshole’s flapping gums, she would assume that he was sleeping with Flora.

So that was it.

If Helen was so sure he was screwing Flora, the worst thing Ray could do was to confirm her suspicions. Not fucking Flora was the same thing as fucking Flora as long as his wife believed that he was fucking Flora.

Of course, there was no reason to consider the possibility that Flora was interested in that kind of relationship, and in the morning Ray would get the opportunity to set the record straight with Helen even if it meant lying to her.

Music — Flora would want to listen to music. Ray hadn’t purchased a CD in five years and didn’t like the idea of downloading songs because he found it difficult to spend money on immaterial products. Helen had maintained possession of all their jazz and soul albums. Another example of poor planning on his part. What little music he owned consisted of rap from his adolescence and college days. Time had relegated it to oldies stations and infomercials. Companies like Logos were now using the edgiest and most radical music from his youth in ads for luxury cars.

The sign above the windowless store said P.M., which served as both the name of the place and its daily hours of operation. Ray had walked past it a hundred times and never seen anyone come or go. Were it not for a tip from one of the interns he would have thought it was an exclusive nightclub or an illegal, happy-ending massage parlor. It looked like no music store he had ever been in. The shelves were arranged to form a maze and their immense height made it impossible to see other parts of the shop.

A series of round blinking lights built into the clear plastic floor tracked his movement. He followed them toward the checkout counter in the center of the shop, zigzagging past every manner of analog and digital recorded media, from vintage video-game cartridges to 8 mm movie reels to computer floppy disks in unrecognizable sizes. A tribal-tattooed fourteen-year-old sat at the counter attaching sticky notes to his knuckles with a stapler. “Yeah?” he asked.

“I need some music,” Ray said.

The kid blinked at him. “Good thing you’re in a music store. Ow!” On his nametag, beneath HELLO MY NAME IS he had written in “Hello My Name Is.” He fingered the buttons of an unseen keyboard built into the glass counter. “Follow the red light. The upload stations have everything you need,” he said and dismissed Ray with a wave of his bleeding hand.

The white light at his feet turned red and then the subsequent ones did too, one after the other, directing him deeper into the maze.

“But I don’t have anything to upload to.”

“Try your phone. Ow!”

“Why would I want to listen to music on my phone?”

The kid put the stapler down and twisted the buds of his nascent dreadlocks. “I’m guessing you’re too old to spin vinyl.”

“Too old? What? I was spinning vinyl before you were ev—”

“Do you have a CD — excuse me, a compact disc — player at home?”

“Yeah, where do you keep the—?”

“The old-school hip-hop is in zone six. Follow the red light,” he said and returned to his stapler.

The bulb at Ray’s feet blinked impatiently. He went the opposite direction and browsed the shelves. P.M. was equal parts record shop, museum, and graveyard haunted by the ghosts of technologies past. Not including the clerk, he heard at least three other people brush through other parts of the store, but he didn’t see any customers. The sound of the stapler and the yelped obscenities helped him maintain his bearing. The whole place smelled like fruity air freshener. He went back to the checkout counter. A sticky note reading “Ow!” was stuck to the back of the clerk’s hand. “How about some new music? What’s current?”

“Kimagure.”

“Never heard of them.”

“I’m Kimagure,” said a scrawny bleach-blond Asian kid behind the cash register who Ray hadn’t noticed. His skin was so pale that he looked translucent even in his ugly patterned T-shirt. He might have been standing there the entire time. “You need a turntable,” he said. “Follow me.”

The clerk glided through the shop without the slightest hint of bodily motion. The lights in the floor followed behind him like a trained pet. He stopped at a glass display case containing twenty-four record players of monstrous complexity. “This one,” he said, pointing. “Wait here.” He left Ray to admire the machines. The model he had pointed to had a $1,200 price tag. It was the cheapest of the bunch.

Kimagure reappeared from the opposite direction and handed over a box with a label printed in a language Ray didn’t recognize. “Follow me,” he said.

He led Ray through the store, plucking a dozen plastic-wrapped record albums from the sleek shelving units. Ray lost his breath and any sense of direction. His footsteps sounded labored, which made him realize that the place was silent: a music store that didn’t play music. Kimagure twisted past miles of reel-to-reel spools and MP3 players and even a small section of player-piano rolls, and then stopped back at the cash register, where Ray charged $1,900 to a credit card he still shared with Helen.

“These will get you started,” Kimagure said. “It’s all underground shit. Limited pressings. Very collectable.”

“Thank you,” Ray said.

“I accept tips,” Kimagure said.

“Tips?”

“A hundred is standard. From you twenty looks correct.”

Ray removed twenty dollars from his wallet and handed it over. “Any advice how to hook this up?” he asked, but Kimagure had already faded soundlessly into the mood-lit gloam of the shop. He followed the blinking white dot back through the maze and, two grand poorer, got birthed onto the crowded sidewalk.

He stepped out of the elevator and turned the corner to find Flora sprawled out on the floor in front of his door. When she removed her headphones, the violins were broadcast all the way down the hall.

“How did you get in the building?”

“Nice to see you too, Ray.”

He put the record player down and unlocked the door.

“New turntable?” she asked.

“I went to buy some new music, but I don’t know what you like so I got some help.”

“I hope you went to see Kim.”

“He shook me down for twenty bucks.”

She poked him in the chest. “You got off easy. He supplies every decent deejay in the state. He must have liked you. Nice place — what do you have to drink?” Her tongue stud clacked against her teeth.

“Let’s see. Tap water, spring water, mineral water, vitamin-enhanced water, diet cola, milk, beer, and whisky.”

“Glass of milk please. Is your apartment always this clean? I had you pegged as a slob.”

“I only clean up when guests are coming over.”

“Do you entertain often? I bet you’re a regular pussy magnet.”

“You’re the first in a long time. Guest, I mean.”

“What is this?”

“It’s milk.”

“I was joking, dumbass. Get me a whisky. What kind of single malt do you have?”

“What do you know about single malts?”

“Enough.”

“Will a twenty-one-year-old suffice?”

She sat down. “That’s a loaded question. I’m twenty-one.”

“That didn’t come out right. It’s from the Isle of Jura.”

“Isn’t that where Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four?”

“I can’t believe you know that.”

“Make mine neat, please. Have you been there?”

He dumped the milk down the drain and poured Flora a whisky as old as herself. “Not yet.”

“What’s stopping you?”

“What do you mean what’s stopping me? I have other obligations. A job, a wife. I can’t just pick up and go.”

“Sure you can.”

“I thought the exact same way when I was your age. Everything was a lot simpler. I really want to see Jura, but I also worry about being disappointed. I mean, I have this image in my mind of the Scottish Hebrides being a kind of paradise — islands off the grid and away from the world. Everyone says that the Highlands hospitality makes their residents the warmest and most generous people in the world, but what happens if I get there and there’s just as much bullshit as everywhere else? Then there would be no place left I could dream of escaping to.”

The scotch tasted really good.

“If I ever start making excuses like you do,” Flora said, “I want you to hunt me down and slap me.”

“Why do I get the feeling that you’d like that?”

“Believe me, I get it. You’ve got it made. Good job, fancy apartment, a big SUV to cruise around town. They love you at Logos.” Her expression made it clear that she didn’t share his enthusiasm for the advertising world.

“Apart from being pure, concentrated evil.”

“Oh I didn’t mean that.”

“Yes you did — and you were right. You know, the reason I wanted to catch up with you tonight was I was going to offer you a job and a lot of money, but I’ve changed my mind. I can’t do that to you.”

“Are you aware that you’re not making much sense? You want me to stay at Logos? Start at the beginning so I can say no.”

“I’m putting together a team to work on a pro-fracking campaign.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I can be and I am. Logos is going to do it whether I’m involved or not, so I decided that having someone with some common sense involved would be the lesser of two evils. I was going to offer you enough money that after a year you could take off for South America or wherever with enough cash to open your art gallery or homeless shelter or whatever it is you want to do.”

“It will be for abused women, not necessarily homeless people, and what you’re saying is total bullshit. You don’t have to choose between two evils. There are always other options. Always always always.”

“I want to believe that,” Ray said. “I really do. The more I think about it, the more I want you to get away from this bullshit I’m mired in. I want to get away too. I need a change.”

He poured another round.

“Yet you’re taking on a fracking campaign? You should tell Logos to go fuck itself.”

“I know it sounds crazy.”

“It’s worse than crazy, Ray. What is wrong with you?”

“My wife … my estranged wife … wants me to quit too.”

“So why don’t you? What are you afraid of?”

“I’m afraid of what my father would say if he was still alive and I’m afraid of admitting to myself that I’ve wasted my entire adult life pursuing some stupid career because George Orwell told me to. The truth is that I’m fried. I’m so burnt out I can’t even think straight anymore. I’ll put it this way: a few days ago, a building right here in the neighborhood got torn down. They must have had a wrecking ball, bulldozer, the whole scorched-earth deal. It took no time at all. The entire lot got cleared as if the building had never even existed. Now here’s the thing. Looking at the empty space, I couldn’t even remember what had been there. I could not remember. What kind of shops? Were there apartments upstairs? Were the tenants evicted? Where did they go? So I’m walking past the site and someone had graffitied the next building over. Big letters: ‘Orwell was an optimist.’ I couldn’t believe it — but it’s absolutely true. Orwell was an optimist compared to what we have now.”

“That was me,” Flora said.

“What was you?”

She took a drink of her scotch. “The spray paint. My friends and I did that. I finally read that copy of Nineteen Eighty-Four you gave me, and I see why you’re always raving about it.”

“I love that! I mean … As your boss, I can’t condone the wanton defacement of public property—”

“That’s the thing,” she said. “It’s not public property. It’s just a private business owned by some rich asshole who probably doesn’t even live in Chicago, and you’re not going to be my boss much longer. I appreciate the job offer, if that’s what this was, but I’ll be arriving in Quito two weeks from tomorrow.”

“That makes me very happy. I mean, I hate to see you go, of course, but it’s the right thing to do.”

“I’m super excited, obviously, but I’ll admit — and I haven’t told anyone this — that I’m also scared. Before I leave I need to go spend some serious quality time with my dads. They’re going to store my stuff in their basement, not that I have much.” She helped herself to the bottle and poured them each large measures. It was going down way too easy.

“Let me ask you a question,” Ray said. “Why are you here?”

“Chicago?”

“My apartment!”

“You asked me to meet you, remember? I wanted to see where you live — don’t read any more into it than that. It doesn’t have to be weird. As much as I hate Logos, you personally aren’t without one or two redeeming qualities. I bet that buried deep inside your miserable-ass self there’s a joyful and charming and funny human waiting to get released. Too bad I never really got to see it.”

“What if that’s not true? What if this miserable-ass me is who I really am?”

“I’ve wondered about that, but you’re one of the few men I know who has treated me like a person instead of as an object.”

“I’m sure I’ve done that too a little bit.” His phone rang in his pocket. “Sorry,” he said. “It’s Bud.”

“Speak of the devil — he’s a pig. Ignore it.”

“Sorry,” Ray said. “I really need his help with something tomorrow.” He took the call. “Hey, Bud … What do you mean you’re here? Here where?”

A loud knock came at the door. He got up and let Bud in. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Ray-dicchio. I thought we were going to steal your truck.”

“That’s tomorrow!”

“Hello, Bud,” Flora said.

“Holy shit. How long has this been going on?”

“This is not going on.”

“She just got here.”

“Sorry to break up the party,” Bud said. He took a beer from the fridge and twisted it open. “Place looks great. You already got her cleaning up? Nice.”

“Fuck you.”

“Relax, missy. I’m just teasing you. If my daughter turns out half as smart as Raypunzel tells me you are, I’ll be very happy. Now I smell whisky. Pour me one and let’s go steal this truck of yours.”

“You just opened a beer.”

“We’re stealing a truck?”

“It’s in the garage at my wife’s place and I need to pick it up. On second thought, maybe it would be better if you stayed here.”

“No way.”

In the time it took to pour another round, Flora had hooked up the turntable and put on an LP that sounded like a series of vintage soul songs sampled down to incoherent syllables, their tempos warped and mashed, and then reconstituted again into songs that weren’t really songs, but weren’t really not songs either. It was a revelation. It made all the sense in the world.

“The fuck is this?” Bud asked. “It sounds like someone changing the radio dial.”

“What’s a radio dial?”

“It’s perfect,” Ray said.

“It’s terrible. Don’t you have any old-school hip-hop?” Ray gave Bud a glass, which he sniffed. “Islay?”

“Very close — Isle of Jura,” Ray said. “It’s right next door.”

“Nice,” Bud said.

“We talked about it and Ray’s going there,” Flora said.

“Really? Where?”

“Jura.”

“No I’m not.”

“That’s a great idea. I like this girl.”

“Woman.”

“Woman, sorry.”

“I never said that. It’s not—”

“He’s going to see where Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four and then quit the advertising business because he’s — what did you say? — burnt out?”

“That’s where you’re spending your week off?”

“I’m not really … I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it until now. I’d like to go, but I’m not sure it’s feasible.”

“Not feasible? That’s a shitty excuse.”

“Unlike your decade-old plan to visit Asia?”

“This isn’t about me.”

“I can’t go to Scotland now. I’m paying for two apartments, remember? Money’s tight as it is.”

“Don’t play that — I know how much you make. What do you mean you’re burnt out?”

“Why are you two trying to get rid of me?”

“We’re not trying to get rid of you, we’re—”

“Because you’ve turned into a miserable fuckface, Ray. Because you need to get away and refocus on your career. We did great with your Oil Hogg thing, don’t get me wrong, but I have to be honest with you: that play clock has expired and we need to come up with the best next thing for these fracturing people if we want to keep shitting in the tall cotton, but all you do is talk about it and make excuses. I need more time. Wah! I need more money. Wah! So go get your head right and then we’ll get started on this sweet new deal.”

“Does it bother you,” Flora asked, “that you’re a raging asshole?”

“Not one bit,” Bud said.

Ray took a large gulp from his whisky and poured another round, emptying the bottle. The spinning record sounded like it was changing speeds all on its own.

Ray broke the seal on a ten-year-old. The three of them drank steadily and with conviction. Flora sat on the floor next to the turntable and spun a few minutes of every record in the pile, then went through them all again. The music, for lack of a more precise term, lacked structure or even recognizable time signatures. It was glorious: without boundary — other than that of duration — and liberated from the narrow conceits of the pop-music vernacular. One of the LPs had two grooves on each side so that depending on where she dropped the needle it would play entirely different tracks. She placed the whisky cork on the center of the record to watch it rotate.

The whisky flowed downhill and they soon stopped with the pretense of using glasses, opting to pass the bottle until, good and liquored up, they went for a joyride in Bud’s vandalized SUV. Nothing about the trip was a good idea. The vehicle smelled like wet dog. Bud was the proud parent of an untrained Jindo named Curly, whose red fur clung to every interior surface of the truck and, now, to Ray’s clothes. The ride downtown was a blur of streetlights and sirens.

His former home was wedged on the eleventh floor of a neo-gothic high rise. The mortgage was unrealistic — if he didn’t move back in soon he and Helen would need to sell it. She would have to recognize that she couldn’t maintain it herself on an educator’s salary. He still possessed the keycard that allowed Bud to navigate a subterraneous network of parking facilities. They found his assigned spot, and he was glad that his truck remained where he had left it. Helen’s boxy station wagon sat in the next spot, which meant she was at home upstairs at that moment. He didn’t relish the thought of meeting her now, all drunk and in the company of Bud, who she had always despised, much less with the sexy coworker into whom — his reconciliation with Helen notwithstanding — he was pretty sure he wanted to insert his penis.

Ray looked at his truck, unsure of his next step. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know,” Bud said. “You’re fucking this monkey, I’m just holding it down.”

“Lovely.”

“Will it start?”

“I still don’t know.”

“Did you bring the jumper cables?”

“No.”

“Then it better.”

He got out. The paint of the truck was very dusty, except for the Ten Commandments — shaped spot on the windshield that attested to the range of the wipers. That was strange. Some jokester had written “Warsh me” in the grime of the driver’s side door. He unlocked the vehicle and climbed up inside. The interior smelled funny. He switched on the overhead lights. A sports coat laid neatly folded on the backseat. He got out again and opened the back door. A tweed coat with professorial elbow patches. Definitely not his — it was way too big.

“What’s that?” Flora asked out the window. She had moved up to the front seat of Bud’s truck.

Ray held the jacket away from his body like it was radioactive. In the glow of Bud’s brake lights it looked like a bullfighter’s cape. Based on its size, it clearly belonged to Dr. Pentode.

Pentode had been driving his SUV? That meant that … Ray didn’t even want to consider the possibility. It also meant that Helen was …? It was impossible, yet here was the evidence.

Dr. Pentode was fucking his wife.

That fat piece of shit was probably upstairs in Ray’s condominium at that very moment with his pork-chop fingers all over Helen.

Ray tossed the coat back into his truck. Goddamn it. He got behind the wheel and it started up. He would check the GPS later to see where Pentode had driven. “What now?” he wanted to know, unsure whom he was speaking to.

“Let’s go get some grub,” Bud yelled. “Meet us at McCrotchety’s.”

“I’m not going to that yuppie hellhole,” Flora said. “I know a better place. Follow us, Ray.”

Bud took off with a squeal of his tires and Ray did the same. Pentode of all people. Goddamn it. He stayed on Bud’s tail until they got to the bridge, at which point Bud ran a red light and dared Ray to follow him, but he chickened out. By the time the light changed, Bud was out of sight. Ray reached for his cell phone but instead of calling Flora for directions he powered it off, plunging the interior of the vehicle into darkness. He drove home and threw up in the elevator.

The apartment reeked of scotch and he felt sick from the booze and the thought of Helen’s affair and the realization of just how drunk he was and that he had driven in this condition. The turntable’s needle spun in the inner groove of an LP, kicking up an ambient, low-level static from the speakers. He ran to the bathroom and vomited until he cried, and then vomited some more.

HE BINOCULARED HIS EYES against the glass, but couldn’t see anyone inside. The shop was empty, the hanging labyrinth of clothes gone. Only a local realtor’s FOR SALE sign remained. He knocked a few times and then banged on the door with the butt of his fist. The counter and shelves and racks had been stripped bare. He took a step back. In addition to carrying his coffee-stained shirt, he had that fat asshole Pentode’s sports coat draped over his arm like a blanket. He planned to return it, though he would’ve preferred to tear it to ribbons and tie them to the nearest maypole.

The appointment with Helen was in a little bit. They had a lot to discuss. He would give her every opportunity to explain why Pentode’s coat was in his truck. He walked around the corner, pushing through the morning crowd. Scores of plastic trash cans, each with a street number painted in sloppy white letters, had spilled their garbage all over the narrow alley that ran behind the row of shops. The names of the stores appeared on the back doors, but he didn’t need the signs to find Kletzski’s Kleaners. Two dumpsters halfway down the block overflowed with clean clothes. Hundreds of the bags inhaled and exhaled in the wind. The bins seethed with plastic. Mrs. Kletzski had thrown everything away, the entire contents of her store. His beloved shirt was somewhere in there.

He turned his cell phone on to check the time. Bud had left four messages, but Ray would catch up with them when he returned to work. Other things occupied his mind. Despite everything that had happened — and everything that hadn’t happened — Ray still wanted Helen to let him move back in. He had made enough mistakes of his own and couldn’t hold her adultery against her. Still, the word sounded acidic and vile in his mind: adultery. In forty-five minutes he would make one final attempt at reconciliation. She had to let him come home.

Late commuters and early loiterers filled the sidewalk while the automobile traffic wore him down with a circus-orchestra repertoire of horns and sirens. It was sickening — physically sickening — that he needed an appointment to see his own wife. The weather, however, remained perfect, as if the clear sky above existed to spite the congestion around him. A half dozen new construction sites had appeared in the neighborhood since the weekend. The skyscraping windowpanes reflected a false, second sky adorned with video cameras that perched above every intersection. The authorities made no effort to conceal them. If anything, their ubiquity served as a threat, and a reminder that he lived within the confines of Total Empire, as horizon-to-horizon vast as language itself. Ray’s every step, every phone call, and every keystroke was recorded, his spending habits, downloads, and library rentals entered into electronic databases housed somewhere in vast server farms. The commercial entities, like Logos, headquartered in these buildings predicted his ideas before he even thought them. It was too much. He felt this close to losing his shit. The whole city conspired against him. Chicago had become a police state with no need for policemen. On the grid, under constant surveillance, every individual was Big Brother incarnate. That was true of him too — he was made to feel corrupted just by living his life. He had built his career by exploiting all these poor proles, and he couldn’t stop dwelling on those out-of-work assembly-liners up in Detroit. They were real people with real lives and families, and they were unemployed because of him. He couldn’t take it anymore.

The pedestrian sea parted, and from it a homeless man appeared wearing a full bridal gown and a frilly white veil. He carried a pile of plastic-wrapped designer clothes. Ray stopped to take a photo. “What, you never seen a dude in a dress before?” the man asked. He paraded past, the long train of his gown dragging coffee cups and debris behind him down the sidewalk.

The humanities building enjoyed a temporary stillness reminiscent of the atmospheric conditions that preceded a tornado siren. Classes were in session so the hallways were deserted save the stray bathroom-bound slacker. Fluorescent tube lights glared against the fishbowl exterior of the English office and the wall-mounted display cases half-empty with faculty publications. Ray stopped to use the men’s room and collect his thoughts.

The time had come for him to straighten himself out. The most wonderful moments of his life had been spent in Helen’s company, and he could be that person again. They both deserved to be happy, and he would commit every effort to making it happen, maybe even quitting his job. He was washing his hands when in the mirror Pentode emerged from a toilet stall.

“Hello, Dr. Pentode,” Ray said. He dried his hands on the sports coat and handed it over. “I found this in my truck,” he said.

“Raymond, oh, I—”

“Which is kind of strange, isn’t it?”

“Listen, Raymond.”

“If the next words out of your mouth are not ‘I apologize for fucking your wife,’ I will flush you down the toilet one fat body part at a time,” Ray said, but didn’t stick around long enough to hear what Pentode had to say. The temptation for violence was too great. Pentode of all people. It made no sense. It made no goddamn sense at all.

The hallway lights buzzed like a swarm of locusts presaging some half-assed apocalypse. The class bells rang, and faster than he could say Ivan Petrovich Pavlov the corridor teemed with rival tribes differentiated by the number of beats per minute throbbing around their precious heads and the corporate logos advertised on their too-tightly clothed chests. A hundred cell phones chirped all at once, a collaborative ringtone technique destined to put Schoenberg and Webern out to pasture.

Nan, the departmental secretary stationed next to the door, glowered at Ray without looking up from her video game. She had the restless look of someone standing in the rain waiting for her cocker spaniel to finish taking a steaming dump. Helen’s office sat next to the mail room. He entered without knocking — she was on the phone.

The esteemed Dr. Maas, the departmental chair whose job Helen presently occupied, was recuperating from chemo; she kept a webcam next to her sickbed and every week she and her partner emailed updates to the entire faculty about the progress of her deterioration. Helen was scheduled to fill in for her through the summer and fall term, when either Maas would return from the living dead or the provost would appoint a permanent replacement. Helen had the inside track on the job, the financial rewards of which might have tempted less compassionate souls to cheer on the cancer.

More grey hairs had sprouted since he last saw Helen. She looked tired, but also — he had to admit — beautiful. Her hair was longer and it accentuated the shapely bones of her face. “Can you hold on a moment?… Thanks. Raymond, you can see that I’m on the phone.”

“Do you find it strange that I need an appointment to see my own wife?”

“Sorry, I’m going to have to call you back.” She hung up. “Listen, Raymond, don’t make this any more difficult than it has to be.” She got up and closed her office door. A framed photo of Dr. Maas, completely and defiantly bald, hung on the wall.

“Why do people keep telling me to listen?”

“Everyone’s trying to help you, but you won’t let us.”

“I want to come home,” Ray said. “I know I was impossible to live with. I got a promotion and I’m learning to take on more responsibility, just like you wanted. I’ll get some help.”

“That’s … that’s not going to happen.”

“Just for one month. If it doesn’t work out, fine. I’ll never bother you again. I’ll go get a job somewhere else. Another state. One month — that’s all I ask.”

“Please, Raymond. This is difficult enough as it is.” She wiped at her eyes with a wrinkled tissue. “I think we’ve had a breakdown in communication. You’ve put me in a very difficult position.”

“I’ve put you in a difficult position? I’m not the one fucking somebody else.”

“Oh no?”

“No! Though I freely admit that I wanted to.”

“See this is what I’m talking about. Some things are serious, Raymond. You come strolling in here and try to make my life as miserable as your own. You think you’re so clever that you can just explain away your rotten behavior with some kind of clever mumbo jumbo, but you can’t. This isn’t some fictional Oceania or Eurasia, this is real. Your actions have real consequences in the real world. I’m sorry.”

“You don’t even know what real means. It means nothing. You think reality is something objective and external, but that’s delusional. Nothing is real, Helen, not my career or this university or that fat fuck Pentode. Not you or me, not our marriage. These are just constructs.”

“I filed for divorce,” Helen said.

“You did what?”

“We’re getting divorced. I called Jacobson and started the process.”

“Why would you do that?”

“What do you mean why? You’re a mess, Raymond.”

Through the window behind Helen’s head, a large metal dumpster was being borne aloft into the heavens by hundreds of inflated plastic bags. Ray rubbed at his eyes. When he looked again it had floated upward and out of view.

He needed to leave. He needed to leave this office and he needed to leave this entire rotting, putrid city and this entire corrupt system that he had contributed to all these years. If he was to stay, Ray would spend the next year working for Big Brother and espousing the benefits of fracking and then hate himself for the remainder of his life. He didn’t want to be part of the problem any longer. He had been so wrong. There was no goddamn way he could fix it by himself, not from the inside and not with a thousand pro bono environmentalist campaigns. He stood and walked out.

“Where are you going?” Helen called after him.

“I don’t know,” Ray said, but in fact he did. For the first time in his life, he knew exactly where he was going. Instead of heading straight home, he went to the front desk at Logos and handed in his company ID card. A week later, he was on the Isle of Jura.