The Rise & Fall of Great Powers

1999

DUNCAN HAD BEEN LIVING at 115th Street for months before his parents visited. Naoko urged her husband to go, but Keith left Connecticut only grudgingly. Finally, she prevailed — it was this or invite their son’s new girlfriend to Darien for the holidays. So he agreed to tolerate New York for one day, attending a midday Christmas concert at the Met, then scheduling a drop-in at Duncan’s apartment to meet this female. At each metropolitan inconvenience Keith encountered — holiday shoppers, the impossibility of parking, the accent of a garage attendant — he turned irritably to his wife, as if she were to blame for the world.

In the week before their arrival, Duncan had considered tidying his room but opted for passive rebellion. His defiance dissolved when Naoko called from a phone booth outside Lincoln Center to say they were on their way. He spent the next twenty minutes stuffing soiled laundry under his mattress, wiping down the bathroom basin with paper towels, hiding dirty dishes in the cupboards.

“I can offer you white wine or …” Tooly said, hands clasped before her, looking from Naoko to Keith, then back at Naoko, who presented the more sympathetic countenance. “Actually, white wine is all we have. That okay?”

“Plus, we got three types of chips,” Duncan added.

Keith, an unblinking lump of middle-aged Scottish clay, looked askance at the sofa, where his wife invited him to sit. “I only drink if I’m getting drunk,” he said. “And I’m not getting drunk with my son.”

“I’ve gotten drunk with him,” Tooly said, “and I can recommend it.”

Duncan gave an embarrassed cough.

“Diet soda,” Keith ordered. “Can we get the TV going?” He did the honors, switching to NBC Nightly News, which was broadcasting a segment on New Year’s security measures after the arrest of an Algerian caught with explosives at the border, possibly for a terrorist attack in Los Angeles.

“Wrong,” Keith told the television, when the anchor spoke of the upcoming Year 2000 celebrations.

“What is?” Tooly asked, handing him a soda can.

“The Year 2000,” he said. “If the counting starts at one A.D., you don’t reach the millennium till 2001. Not like there was a Year Zero. How hard is that for people to understand?” He looked at the TV again, which now showed footage of Bill Clinton joshing with a foreign dignitary. “Can this guy just go?” Keith said, meaning the president.

Naoko’s wandering gaze suggested that it wasn’t the first time she’d heard such laments.

“It’ll take industrial cleaners to get this guy’s stench out of the Oval Office,” Keith continued. “It’s time to restore dignity to our country.”

“I like hearing such patriotic American views delivered with a Scottish accent,” Tooly said, offering a smile.

“Give me one iota of evidence changing anything I just said to you,” he said, glaring at her.

Late that night, Tooly lay in Duncan’s bed, thinking about his father, who, during a hundred hectoring minutes, had not once looked at his son. While Tooly knew it to be unfair, she couldn’t help but like Duncan slightly less for having this man as his father.

Duncan hugged her back, sliding his legs up to spoon with her. She felt vaguely unsafe with anyone behind her like that when sleeping. “Flip!” she said jovially, as if he were an egg. Their positions reversed, she pulled herself against his back, warming it with her naked front. “Your spoon was a travesty,” she told the nape of his neck. “I had to act.”

“You’re a spoon fundamentalist.”

“I support traditional spooning values. You have cheapened the office of the spoon and it’s my job to restore honor and credibility to the spoon.”

He twisted around, laughing. “Tooly?”

“Duncan?”

“I completely fucking love you.”

She smiled and poked his cheek, then got out of bed and lay on the floor among dust balls, printer paper, socks under the bedframe. “It’s boiling in here tonight.”

“The super went away for the holidays and left the heat going so that no one complains.”

His arm hung over the edge of the mattress, and she encircled his wrist with her thumb and forefinger, holding still for a minute. But, eventually, you must do things with things. She pulled his wrist closer and nipped the bumpy bone, causing him to yelp and laugh. Tooly stood, stretched, and put on yesterday’s outfit, then went to the living-room window, peeking onto the fire escape for the pack of house cigarettes. None left, and Noeline had gone for the holidays.

She gazed down at the street. Seemed ages since her first night here, when — contemplating an icy walk home — she had preferred the warm bedcovers (and the warm man) in Duncan’s room. She could’ve slipped those credit cards from his wallet then, and concluded it. Instead, she’d nested here, they mistaking her for one of them, she making the same error — until that pre-Christmas dinner, when Tooly observed anew the division between her and other people.

Venn was the only person who protected her. And she wanted to have something for him, to justify her time up here. Duncan was the obvious target, yet she couldn’t bring herself to do that. The others? Emerson was her preference, yet gaining his confidence required stroking the man’s ego, and she refused. Standing in the dark corridor, she noticed the light under Xavi’s door. She rapped with one knuckle, as if her others weren’t so sure. “Hey,” she said, as he opened. “Want to walk the pig with me?”

They borrowed the animal and were off, footprints and hoofprints down the frosted sidewalk. Xavi was skittish about touching Ham, but she forced him to pat the creature, which seemed to cause the pig to fart, sending them into tears of laughter. Composure regained, they continued to the red-brick path across the Columbia campus, which was nearly deserted this close to the holidays — just the distant hollers of a few frat boys. Ham kept bumping into her leg, like a child jealous when the grown-ups chatted.

“I’m a detective,” Xavi remarked.

“How’s that?”

He named a street in Brooklyn — to her alarm, the street where she and Humphrey lived. Weeks earlier, Xavi explained, he had found a city map in the corridor by the front door, amid all the Chinese menus and America Online marketing disks. At first, he’d assumed it was garbage, because it was covered in pen lines. But he’d never owned a map of all five boroughs, so he’d kept it. Problem was that the lines made navigation nearly impossible. What were those? Delivery routes? There was a pinprick hole where ink had saturated and loosened the fibers of the page. Everything radiated out from that point, at the end of a small street in Brooklyn, just off the Gowanus Expressway.

He took her map from his inside pocket. So there it was: must’ve fallen from her pocket on that first visit, when she’d opened her coat and flopped atop Duncan on the floor. “Never seen it before in my life,” she said.

Xavi grinned. “I’m a detective!” To celebrate, he took a cigarette from his velvet jacket and lit it grandly. He had a peculiar way of smoking, cheeks filling, as if not to inhale. He inquired about her place in Brooklyn, but she diverted the conversation to his studies, and how he was going to make the fortune that they all knew would one day be his. Pure finance was extremely lucrative, he explained, but it left him cold. Entrepreneurship was what appealed. A dot-com, maybe.

“Can I get a drag off that?” she asked.

“Only if you give me a million-dollar idea.”

“I have a ten-cent idea,” she responded, grabbing the cigarette.

He took out his PalmPilot, which he flipped open with a flourish, rapping the stylus pen on the screen, like a conductor’s baton on the music stand. “Go.”

“Well,” she said, exhaling smoke. “What about a dishwasher-like product, but for the whole apartment, so you pour detergent into a hole in the floor, press a button, and leave for an hour, then return, and the house is clean.”

“I like it,” he said, smiling. “Very practical.”

“I notice you’re not writing that down. Oh, and I always think about how they should make it so that cars run on tracks and are controlled electronically, which would end accidents and traffic jams.”

“This idea already exists. It’s called a train.”

“Spoilsport,” she said. “What about the salt shaker?”

“What about it?”

“I hate salt shakers. I don’t want a little heap of salt on my mashed potatoes,” she said, paraphrasing Humphrey. “I want salt evenly over the whole area. A salt sprayer. Make it happen!”

“I’ll do my best.”

She took another drag, returning the cigarette. “What’s your big idea?”

“You are not the only one who can be secretive.”

“Oh, come on! I gave you solid gold. The salt sprayer! And the train — I just reinvented the train! Don’t I get credit for that?”

“Okay, okay. My big idea,” he said, “is Wildfire.”

As they walked, Xavi delivered a version of the presentation he’d done in class. “The greatest impediment to online commerce is that the modern consumer is afraid to input bank details on a website. Both sides — sales point and client — want to do business. But they need a secure way to take the next step. That is where Wildfire comes in: a new form of money, for all transactions conducted on the information superhighway. You send a credit-card payment to Wildfire, mail a check or bank order, and in exchange you get tokens redeemable with cooperating businesses on the World Wide Web. Consumers get security and vendors get income. Furthermore, Wildfire tokens offer protection against instability in the world. You are safe from currency fluctuations, from government irresponsibility in monetary policy, from devaluations. Keeping money in the currency of the country where you happen to be born makes no sense in today’s globalized world. We need a virtual currency for a virtual future: Wildfire.”

“Xavi!”

“What?”

“That sounds like an actual idea.”

“Yes, of course.”

“How did you come up with that?”

“You like it?”

“I mean, I don’t know anything. But it sounds insanely great.”

He laughed shyly.

Tooly — calibrating her effect on him — considered commending him even more lavishly, or kissing his cheek, or saying they must go into business together. She inhaled the bracing air. “I always wanted a hand muff, like in those glamorous movies about the tsars,” she said, then unglamorously lost her balance and snatched his arm to steady herself. She held it all the way to the corner of 115th Street. Outside the building, she handed him the leash and pushed away, skating down the frosty sidewalk in alternating black streaks. “Are you staying in the city through Christmas and New Year’s?” she shouted.

“For part of it.”

“I’m around, too,” she said, skating back.

Tooly had no seasonal festivities at her place in Brooklyn. Humphrey boycotted public holidays, considering them rank conformism. But when she stopped in they did play Christmas Ping-Pong. Even that was ruined by the presence of Sarah, sulking because Tooly hadn’t come for a shopping expedition on her twenty-first birthday. Worse still, Venn hadn’t been in touch — never had he ignored her like this. She’d waited weeks. Her flight to Italy was in a few days, and she pressed Tooly to come along. When the invitation was rejected, Sarah stormed off into the night.

Humphrey looked up from his book and wiggled his eyebrows, which made Tooly laugh. He called her over to the couch and wondered if perhaps she should consider Sarah’s offer, especially since there was a job there at that leather-goods store.

“I’m not going anyplace with the empress,” Tooly responded with irritation. “And you just know there’d be no job waiting once I got there. There probably isn’t even a leather-goods shop. Can you imagine Sarah running a store? You can’t shoplift from yourself.”

He ducked behind the book.

After a minute, Tooly prepared him a smashed-potato sandwich, an edible apology for having snapped.

“I have items,” he muttered, as she delivered his food. “Items for discussing purposes.”

“I’m sure. Let me guess,” she said. “We should run away together?”

“If I tell you,” he said, “then you get cross at me. You hate me, maybe.”

“Whatever you have to say,” she said, amused, “I think I can handle it.”

He frowned, on the verge of speaking, wet lips flapping for a moment — then he curled forward and resumed his book, The Unreality of Time by J.M.E. McTaggart.

Tooly preferred that he keep reading. His “items” were only ever pretexts to keep her at the apartment, which saddened her, since she longed to be elsewhere.

Yet she couldn’t entirely spurn Humphrey. Mostly, it was from pity. But another motive lurked, one she denied: she had no money to manage alone, and he’d always helped with small amounts. She had too much pride to ask Venn for cash, and, anyway, she saw him too irregularly. On occasion, Venn noticed her penury and slipped her a few banknotes. But she regretted those occasions, which only reinforced her uselessness. She could have taken a job, of course, and wouldn’t have minded. But something was always afoot with Venn and she had to remain available — he could call at any minute and say, “I’m leaving tomorrow. Coming?”

THE DAY BEFORE New Year’s Eve, the city awoke white. A blizzard hit overnight and sanitation trucks plowed the streets at dawn, driving snow into gritty ranges that rose from the gutters and sank to the cleared sidewalks. Tooly strolled through the West Village, stepping between two parked cars on Hudson Street, up an icy hillock whose peak collapsed underfoot. She stamped her snowy sneakers on the pavement, causing the automatic glass doors of a residential building to part. Right past the doorman she went, with such confidence that he merely returned to his horoscope. On the ninth floor, she found a low-lit hallway, doors all the way down. One was ajar, and she entered.

A man stood at the far end of the room, his back to her, gazing through floor-to-ceiling windows at the view of Manhattan.

“Excuse me,” she said, hesitating in the doorway. “So sorry to bother you but — this might sound weird — but I actually grew up in this apartment. I happened to be walking by and was wondering, would it be insane if I asked maybe to peek inside? I’m getting a flood of memories even just standing here. Is that—”

“Very nice,” Venn said. “You’ll ask to use the toilet next.”

“I’m too old for that line,” she said, closing the door behind her. “Pity, I wouldn’t mind walking into random apartments when I need a bathroom. Actually, yes — why don’t I?”

The place was sumptuous, floorboards and walls brilliant white, a white orchid on the coffee table before a leather divan, a braided pachira tree in a pot. Tooly checked out the bookshelf, which contained only volumes about beads, buttons, and Bakelite jewelry.

She joined him at the windows. The panes were four times her height and as wide as the entire apartment, a crystal cityscape of West Village rooftops steaming, high-rises crammed in higgledy-piggledy.

“Who lives in this place?” she asked. His eyes looked so intently ahead that she followed his gaze, only for him to turn to her, a grin creasing his cheeks.

“Who lives here?” he repeated back.

“Yes, here. The place where we’re both standing right now. The apartment that — I think I can confidently say — isn’t yours.”

“You mean this place, where you grew up?”

“Seriously, whose?”

“Just a friend, duck.”

“Speaking of your ladyfriends, Sarah is still holding out hope of hearing from you. And Humph is going nuts dealing with her. Could you just see her before she leaves? Or at least phone her at the apartment? It’s easy for you, hiding out here in luxury. But we have to deal with her.”

“And the boy-lawyer?” he asked, meaning Duncan. “How’s that?”

“I’m making friends with the whole place.”

“Friends? Make them fall in love with you.”

“I might have something for you from there.”

He pointed a remote control at the shutters, which lowered with an automated whirr, wiping out the city. “We ready to go?” He often spoke of “we” like this, as if he and Tooly were akin, which flattered her, since she viewed her personality as so small and his as so large. He understood her character and spoke of it so convincingly. When she was little, and he praised her as brave or uncomplaining, she sought to become that way. Until, gradually, she adopted the traits he claimed to have seen from the start.

They set forth into the snow. Venn went most places by foot, and she had assumed this habit. He was as likely to walk for three hours as three minutes, and never informed her of their destination. They tracked north today, past Fourteenth Street, through Chelsea, east at Penn Station, along secondary streets uncleared except over subway grates or where muddy footsteps had preceded them. For blocks, he said nothing.

“So,” she asked, to break the silence, “the owner of the white apartment? Anything special?”

“No, no.”

“Don’t you get the urge to stay with any of these women?”

“Absolutely not. You know me.”

“I know you,” she said. “But I don’t get you. You seem to be cutting out more and more stuff these days.”

“That’s exactly what I’m doing. I try to distance myself from things.”

“What for? I don’t see what you gain from that.”

“I achieve a peace in it, I suppose,” he said. “It’s about recognizing how little I need and sticking with that, as forces around (and in me) tempt me to set it aside. I try to get rid of everything unnecessary.”

“Meaning what?”

“Everything possible. Even unnecessary thoughts,” he explained. “Fear, for example. The only way I was able to deal with fear was to reconcile myself with death. And no longer fearing death makes it so much easier to live how you want, without the interference of conventions, so many of which are just ways of staving off death anyway.”

“How so?”

“Things like family, kids. Some people have children expressly so they’ll be looked after in old age. They want adulation guaranteed, even when they’re no longer worthy of it. The love they give is only because they expect it in return. There’s always that condition, and it’s at the root of failed love, marriages, friendships.”

“Not always a condition,” she responded. “Isn’t that the point with stuff like marriage and children? It’s supposed to be unconditional.”

“ ‘Supposed to be’ is just a way of saying ‘isn’t.’ The reality is that people marry and procreate because of pressure from friends, from family. But there’s something vital lost the moment couples define themselves by an achievement anyone — good, bad, bright, or boring — achieves with the same simple act. For me, starting a family would be capitulation. Not least because it’d force me to have lunch with uninteresting people whose only point of reference is that our kids take the same dance class.”

They walked on in silence. “I don’t want kids, either,” she said, looking at him.

“Why would you? Children are not remotely interesting till they grow up,” he said. “Even then, few turn out to be.”

“I was interesting, wasn’t I?”

“But you weren’t much of a child. Like I never was. We were hanging around in kids’ bodies, waiting for time to rectify the mixup.”

“Some children must be nice.”

“How many did you like when you were one? I defy anyone to tell me that having them is meaningful,” he said. “It’s supposed to make you more loving and nurturing. But those are things I aim to be irrespective. People who must have a child to be kind are missing something in their emotional setup; they require someone’s neediness to give their lives meaning. Life has enough meaning and beauty already. Discovering that is a proper pursuit. Not just making helpless little organisms. Or marrying whoever once turned you on. Bonds between people form in particular circumstance and times, and ought to end once those pass. But people are so frightened of being left alone that they collect all these malformed relationships. Accepting loneliness is everything.”

“You’re crazy,” she said, laughing.

He chuckled. “I’m challenging my crazy self,” he said. “Testing my limits and getting stronger in the process. Can I go without friendship, pleasures, warmth? Can I walk for twenty-four hours straight through the night? Can I challenge a tyrant? If yes, what have I achieved? An insight? A vanity? A change somewhere in me? To pursue my own life satisfies me in the way that parenthood must for mothers and fathers. Most of them would find my views offensive. But later they’ll find themselves attracted to me.”

Rounding the corner, they confronted a peculiar scene. At the entrance of a closed office building across the street, a bum stood, tottering over a sleeping bag, which he jostled with his foot before unzipping his filthy black jeans and, right there, urinating on it.

“I think there’s someone in that sleeping bag,” Tooly said. “He’s pissing right on them.”

“Stay here.”

“Wait a second.” But he was already crossing the street.

The bum — knuckles covered in blue tattoos, face inked, too — zipped his fly, cursed the sleeping bag and kicked it, provoking a howl from within. He grabbed the end of the nylon bag and dragged it, a body flailing within. Noticing Venn, the bum paused, glaring from under a scabby brow. “Guy’s a faggot,” he said, by way of explanation. “He’s blocking my house.” He hammer-fisted the sleeping bag, prompting another muffled wail.

Venn pointed down the street. “Go that way. Now.”

“It’s my motherfucking door, man.”

A toothless face jutted from the sleeping bag, nose bleeding, greasy comb-over flopping in the wind. “Aren’t you just Mr. Sunshine,” he babbled. “I think we’re in love now.”

“See?” the bum told Venn. “Guy’s a fag.”

“Leave it.”

“Tell the fag to leave.”

“Now,” Venn said. “Or I rip your ears off.”

“What you say?”

Venn didn’t repeat himself.

As the bum unleashed another kick at the sleeping bag, Venn rammed him against the building. The bum struck the wall with a thud and fell to the snowy pavement. Venn dropped atop, knee in his chest, pinning him, muscles straining as he pushed downward.

“Hurting me, asshole!” the bum hollered. “Can’t fucking breathe!” After futile squirming and howling, he went limp. When Venn dragged him to his feet, the bum lunged for a head-butt. Venn caught him by the throat and eye socket, jutted a leg behind his, thrust forward his shoulder, knocking the man to the pavement, against which he bashed his face twice, before pulling him to his feet and frog-marching him a short distance away. “You’re done.”

Bleeding, the bum stumbled off, stopping at the corner to shout back curses.

Tooly knelt before the madman in the sleeping bag: a little person, sweet-faced, effeminate, and so damaged that he could have been thirty or seventy. “You okay?” she asked.

“Why,” he answered, “why don’t you go screw yourselves.” He cackled and pulled his head back inside the urine-drenched sleeping bag.

“A lunatic,” Venn said calmly, and turned to Tooly. “Ready?”

He resumed their walk as if nothing had happened. She hastened to match his pace, shaky but determined to exude nonchalance. “Look.” She held up her hand. “I’m trembling and I didn’t even do anything! You’re completely calm.”

“Does no good to get frightened in a situation like that.”

“I don’t get frightened because I think it’s a good idea.”

“Always best to keep your wits about you — a big man like that could have fallen and cracked his head, especially on a snowy day. Anyway, nobody walked past.”

“You were watching for bystanders during all that?”

“Well, I can’t count on you to be my lookout,” he said cheerfully.

“Venn,” she said, “did you tell that guy you’d rip his ear off? Please tell me I misheard that.”

“I never said that.” He paused. “I said ‘ears,’ plural — there’s no point taking just one.”

“How do you even think of a thing like that?”

He threw an arm around her, pulled her over, knuckled her ribs, earning a squeak.

To witness violence but be spared — to stand behind his shield — always left her giddy. It made her talk and talk. She boasted lavishly of all she’d gathered for him about the students. Venn listened intently — he’d always shared her curiosity about the lives of strangers. Indeed, he was the one who first stirred that interest in her.

“This Duncan likes you?”

“He does.”

“He’s in love with you, duck!” Venn said. “How could he not be! How could he not be.”

“But wait — listen.” She returned to Xavi, detailing his idea for the online currency. Venn knew all sorts of business guys. Could he make something of this?

“Are you saying take his idea?”

“No,” she responded. “Would you want to?”

“Much rather get him involved. Could fit beautifully at the Brain Trust.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“But there’s the fee to join, plus the monthly rental,” Venn reminded her. “The kid has that kind of cash?”

“He’s on scholarships, I think, and gets help from friends.”

“Plus, he’s buddies with your boy-lawyer, who has funds.”

“Don’t know,” she said, hoping to move this away from Duncan.

“Dear me. What are you doing up there?” he teased. “You don’t know if the boy-lawyer has funds? I know already, and I never even met the guy! His father’s an architect in Connecticut. His folks are covering his law school and lodgings comfortably. Is he getting student loans?”

“Not sure.”

“Tooly, Tooly,” Venn said affectionately.

“What?” she replied, amused.

“These are things you should know by now!” Delighted, he told her, “What would I do without you, duck? You’re still the only person who makes me laugh.”

“You’d be a wreck without me.”

“Exactly right. I was saying before how I test myself by going without, right? Doing that shows me what I do need.”

“Which is?”

“Just walks like this. Conversations like this. Humor like ours.” He looked at her, earnest now. “I depend on you.”

She nodded fast, heart racing. He walked on, and she kept in stride. “But Venn,” she asked, “do you like this Wildfire idea?”

“I’d give your African friend a cubicle at the Brain Trust for nothing. Unfortunately, they’re not mine to give. I only look after that place.”

“For your venture-capitalist guy, right? Maybe he’d be interested.”

“Mawky is looking for companies that are ready to launch — not looking to hand-hold, as he puts it. But if your friends are serious, if they can rustle up basic funding and get this moving, it might be interesting.”

“You like the idea, then?”

“Listen, send me the African kid. We’ll have a chat. Then if you and your friends raise enough for membership and a few months’ rental, I’ll find a place for you. And if you get that far I’ll put you together with Mawky.”

“Seriously?”

“I’ll always help you, Tooly.”

“But not if you’re just being nice. Not as a favor. I want us to do a proper project together.”

“My project with you, as far as I’m concerned, is our friendship.”

“Who cares about your lousy friendship.”

“I know, you want glory. Why not? You’re in New York. Ambition is the municipal pastime. If you want, just keep tickling those boys uptown. It’ll produce something.”

“You think?”

“The lawyer’s parents must be shelling out fifty thousand a year for NYU already. If their son loves you, they’d be open to funding your future.”

“Don’t know if going through Duncan is a good idea. The father is a massive lump of jerk.”

“That part, duck, is up to you.”

Alive to the tremors of her mood, he patted her cheek, which made her smile. “Tooly, neither of us is interested in stuff like this. You won’t find anybody who cares less about money than me. How much do I need for a year of living well? How much do I spend? Nothing. Money is totally uninteresting. What you and me want is freedom from fools. The less cash, the more you have to deal in fools. Money is dull. But independence? That is interesting.”

Her life among the students seemed so distant and frivolous when she was with Venn. Those kids had no clue — all their debates about the left and the right, as if ideology mattered anymore. Despite their dinner-table bravado, none of them would have stepped in to help that battered man back there, though all would have wanted to. But Venn intervened. He didn’t act for praise; he cared nothing of what people thought. Nor did he fear spittle or punches, if suffering them was necessary in order to live as he intended.

They reached Times Square, where the glittering ball drop and the fireworks installations were in place, vendors hawking Year 2000 paraphernalia, tourists stumbling around in sensory overload. She and Venn passed unnoticed through the crowd. They could have chosen almost any of these strangers and spun them in knots within minutes. Venn and she had engineered many people in the past. It was intoxicating, the unholy control of another human. They never did so with cruel ends, however — engineering another’s fate was not necessarily destructive. Often, Venn knew better than they what was best. After all, he had been engineering her for years.