The Rise & Fall of Great Powers

2000

EMERSON OPENED the living-room window to shout at Tooly, who sat on the fire escape. “Put that cigarette out when I’m talking to you,” he said. “The smoke is blowing inside, you dick.”

“You’re the one who opened the window.”

“Excuse me, do you pay rent here? Put that out and get inside.”

She was not in the habit of obeying Emerson, so finished at her leisure, and even contemplated climbing down the fire escape to the sidewalk, going back into the building, and entering the apartment by the front door, just to defy his command. But it was freezing, so she climbed in.

Presumably, his complaint pertained to a recycling infraction. Or did he have a suspect in the plunder of his peach Snapple? She stood before him, struggling to take seriously the remonstrations of a shirtless man in flip-flops. Until she grasped the subject.

“Wait, wait, wait. What?” she said, to delay matters. “What are you even talking about?”

But she knew. This had come from Noeline.

“You never grew up in this apartment at all,” he said. “You’re trying to rip off Duncan. He’s been talking about getting his parents to invest in your little scam. You’re a fraud, and I’m telling him. You’re lucky I don’t call the cops.”

“This is crazy. Can I talk to Noeline, please?”

“So you admit it!”

“I didn’t admit anything. I’d just like to speak with her.”

“Are you telling Duncan,” he demanded, “or am I?”

Tooly had assumed that indiscretions on both sides during that lunch had canceled each other out. If anything, it was Noeline who’d made the most damning statements.

“Can you ask her to come in here, please?” Tooly said. “I’d like to talk to her alone.”

He marched off. After a minute, Noeline entered the kitchen, avoiding Tooly’s gaze.

“Your boyfriend just threatened to call the cops on me.”

“You lied to Duncan, to Xavi, to me. You’ve been living here for weeks without paying, eating their food. You falsely represented yourself.”

“Are you serious? What if I told him a few of your comments? How you wrote half his thesis?”

“I find it sick that you’re trying to harm my relationship with Emerson. I actually love him, an emotion you don’t have, according to what you told me. If you’re suggesting — if you’re even considering claiming — that I helped him inappropriately, I will aggressively deny that. If I said anything that was exaggerated — and I don’t recall doing so — it’s because my relationship was in a difficult position, and I was upset. If you want to take advantage of that, then you’re way more sick than I thought.”

“I’m not telling anyone what you said, Noeline. I’m not a snitch. I’m just saying that I thought we were—”

“A snitch? What is this, jailhouse lingo? The stuff you told me wasn’t blurted out in a state of distress. You were totally calm — just another day for you. You don’t have an ounce of feeling for any of us. Willing to mess with Duncan’s family for some scam you’ve got going with this older boyfriend of yours.”

Tooly shook her head. These accusations were an offense to her self-perception, and she retaliated with an offense of her own: “Just — go screw yourself, okay?”

“Duncan is an ‘opportunity’ for you, right? This hobby of slithering into people’s homes for ‘opportunities’? It’s parasitic, okay? We’re telling Duncan if you don’t.”

“What I said isn’t what you’re making it out to be. I really, really like Duncan. I’m friends with Xavi and, I thought, friends with you. I don’t know Emerson that well, but if you think he’s great now, maybe there’s more to him.”

“What’s that supposed to mean, that I ‘think he’s great now’? See, this is why you need to leave.”

“I was never going to tell anyone what you said.”

“What, exactly, did I supposedly say?”

“You remember what. But who cares?”

“Just leave. You know? Just say goodbye to Duncan, if you have to, then leave. You’re here to mess with people. For some of us, this is our actual life.”

Emerson appeared again. “Is she telling Duncan, or do I get to?”

“Since when are you concerned with Duncan’s welfare?”

“Hey,” he shot back, “I don’t appreciate some high-school dropout like you questioning my intelligence behind my back.”

Tooly looked at Noeline, who looked away.

“This is a moral issue,” he continued. “Possibly even criminal.”

“What are you talking about? What crime?”

“Entry by false trespassing,” he improvised, making his way out. “I’ll be raising this with Duncan in the next twenty-four hours unless you do. You’d better start thinking up excuses.”

Tooly looked at Noeline, and her anger drained away. “You’re one of the most interesting people I’ve met in this city. One of the most interesting in years. I don’t know what I did to make you mad. And I’m not trying to change your opinion. I’m just — I don’t know — just so sorry this is happening.”

Blushing, Noeline rushed into the bathroom, slammed the door after herself, and turned on the faucet, which ran for several minutes.

Tooly looked down the corridor toward the bedroom where Duncan was studying. But she found herself knocking on Xavi’s door. “Emerson has gone nuts,” she said. “I need your help.”

“What now?”

“Seriously. He’s lost it. Can we strategize?”

“Wrecking Emerson’s plans is my favorite pastime. What’s he up to, that stupid man?”

She gave a summary of Noeline’s accusations.

“Well,” he responded, unconcerned, “there’s no swindle. Wildfire is my idea, you’ve offered good suggestions, and the project is progressing. I don’t care what Emerson says. Don’t care where you came from or how you ended up here.”

“Thank you, Xavi. Thanks. Really.”

He told her about incorporating the company, which he’d researched, and that it looked possible that Duncan’s father might contribute money for them to set up at the Brain Trust. “But, before that, I do want to check something with you. Something I’ve been wondering for a few weeks now,” he said. “No, wait. I’m embarrassed.” He shook his head, raising his hand to hide the smile.

“Come on. Tell me.”

“I just was wondering. I just wanted to know,” he said, looking directly at her, “just want to know before we go any further. If I walked over to you right now and kissed you, would you be okay with that? We wouldn’t have to do more if you didn’t want,” he said. “Or we could.”

Tooly — who lacked much of a figure, who eschewed sexy outfits, who crossed her legs in a manly way because it was more comfortable — believed that any guy who expressed sexual hunger for her was either unselective or a compulsive womanizer. Perhaps Xavi was the broad-minded type, and didn’t care if a lover had already hopped into bed with his best friend. But Duncan would mind — he’d mind painfully — and he was next door.

She needed Xavi, though. He’d advocate on her behalf, puncture Emerson’s claims when they came. If she spurned him, she risked losing that support. If it was just a question of allowing her body to be used, she didn’t care — she had indulged a few men over the years, when it had been useful to learn more about them. She had just let it happen, and joked about it afterward with Venn. This would be no different. Plus, Xavi was handsome. Though far less attractive now than he’d ever seemed.

“Right this second?” she said.

He smirked. “I just want to know if we could. After you answer me, we do whatever we want, or maybe nothing.”

“Okay, then.”

“Okay what? What does that mean?”

“Okay means yes.”

“Okay,” he said, nodding, looking at his dress shoes. “What a disappointment.”

“What is?”

“You know,” he said. “You know.”

“I was only joking, Xavi.”

“You were not.”

“I was.”

“I noticed all this little flirting you’ve been doing with me for a while now,” he said. “But you must understand: Duncan is my brother.”

“Wait, wait,” she said. “You misunderstood. We’ll keep things businesslike now. Seriously.”

“No more business between me and you.”

“Come on.”

Xavi shook his head. “It’s okay,” he said, meaning no.

“I didn’t even …” It wasn’t worth finishing the sentence. She left, stood there in the corridor, looking at the front door.

Gathering her courage, she entered Duncan’s room. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

“Will you come outside with me? I need to take Ham for a walk.”

“Got tons more work. Is later okay?”

“Can it be now, Duncan?”

“You just called me ‘Duncan’ instead of ‘horrendous blob.’ You’ve got me worried,” he kidded.

“I’m sorry to interrupt your work. You know I normally never do. Just need to talk.”

“Wildfire stuff?”

“Something else. Would you mind?”

Duncan — pleased to be needed, an emotion she so rarely exhibited toward him — closed his textbook. He wanted someone to rely on him; it was what he sought most. In a way, she had, taking refuge in his bedroom, finding status at his side and food in his refrigerator, making his place a home of her own in Manhattan. And, by mistake, she had grown so fond of this boy.

She tugged Ham’s leash to hurry him outside, wanting to escape the building, as if Emerson might leap out and ruin everything.

“What,” she asked, to establish an easy tone before the tense explanations to follow, “what would you do if you could do absolutely anything with your life?”

“You always ask me that.”

“I do not.”

“Well, versions of that question.”

“Because you never answer to my satisfaction.”

“How about you tell me what you think I should do,” he suggested, “and then I’ll say for you.”

“If it was up to me, I’d say you should be involved in music. That’s what you love most.”

“Music? Never.”

“What, then? And I want a proper answer, not this I-don’t-really-know-but-law-school-isn’t-so-bad stuff.”

He pondered. “Okay, here’s my honest answer: architecture. That’s what I always wanted to do, what I thought I’d do.”

“Then you should. Why can’t you?”

“I’m twenty-four. Too late in the game.”

Before Duncan could guess at her ideal future, she interrupted to inform him that Emerson was making all sorts of claims about her as a result of things she’d said to Noeline. Tooly readied herself for the obvious next question: If those two are twisting your words, what did you say?

But he sought no details. She handed him the leash. They walked in silence through Riverside Park. “Don’t really know what you’d want to do, if you could do anything,” he said belatedly, the pig yanking him around the other side of a tree trunk.

“Will I do well?”

“At what?”

“In my life.”

“You could. Why not.”

“I never thought so either.”

He looked at her, studied her. “Tooly,” he said, “I don’t care what you said or didn’t say to Noeline. I don’t care about their opinions. I’m not listening, even if they try to tell me something.”

She looked down. To lose ascendancy in this relationship made her want to hide till he left. But what was so terrible? Did she consider Duncan so beneath her that to be vulnerable before him was intolerable? After all, wasn’t vulnerability the point of a love affair?

But she lacked the courage to tolerate it. She reminded herself that she and Duncan owed each other no debt; that it was kinder to conclude this now than to keep implying, as she often had in small, subtle ways that he wasn’t quite for her, that his choices — law, for example — were somehow less meritorious than her chosen lifestyle, which consisted of avoiding choice altogether.

Removing herself from this relationship, as in mind she was trying to do, provided a sharper view of its elements, including a suspicion she’d long harbored that, while Duncan had love for her, was intrigued by her, amused by her, cared deeply for her, he lacked the sexual passion that fused two strangers. He found her body of interest, but little more, and she hadn’t wished to know this before. As they strolled, she almost told Duncan her explanation for why this was, to ease his mind by articulating what might have been a dreadful secret for him: that he was in love with someone else and seemed to have been for many years, someone whom he had followed from high school to college, whom he had joined back in New York under the pretext of attending law school, allowing them to share quarters again — a best friend residing in the next room, who, Tooly felt certain, had no idea of Duncan’s attachment, nor would ever have accepted it. She wondered if Duncan himself did. She suspected that, had she dared cite this now, he’d be furious, and their final moment of companionship would be ugly. She put her mittens onto his icy hands, though he protested. At the corner of 115th Street, when he turned toward his building, expecting her to follow, she kissed him at length. “Be sweet to the pig,” she joked, winking at him, and continued alone, hastening as she went, pinching herself in punishment at such sentimentality.

A FEW FEMALE customers looked up, tracking Venn toward the purple sofa, off which he plucked a crushed newspaper. The furniture in the café was elementary-school chic: primary colors, hard plastic, initials scratched into wood. Tooly stood before the counter, perusing a jar of oversized cookies. “Plain coffee?” she called to him, her question unintentionally broadcast to the hushed room, consisting largely of lone customers flipping through ring binders. As the barman fiddled with a faulty multidisc CD player, Tooly opened one of the ubiquitous binders herself, expecting a drinks list but finding dating profiles. This Upper West Side hangout, which she and Venn had entered at random, seemed to be a matchmaking café.

To demonstrate that her relations with Venn were not of this nature, she sat on an armchair opposite him rather than sharing the sofa — although calculated distance probably resembled a first date even more. As he scanned the newspaper, she leaned forward to read the back page, a story about the presumptive Democratic nominee, Vice President Al Gore, on a visit to Texas, talking up the inexperience of his opponent for the White House, Governor George W. Bush.

She informed Venn that Wildfire had come to nothing.

“Ah, well,” he responded, folding the newspaper. He appeared amused, as if he’d wagered on this outcome and, although it was unfavorable, enjoyed having been right.

“Does this put you in a bad position now?” she asked.

“How would it?”

“Well, I told you to reserve space at the Brain Trust. That guy you’re overseeing it for, is he going to expect rent and joining fees now?”

“Which guy?”

“The guy who owns the place. I forget his name. That venture-capital guy.”

“You mean my friend Mawky Di Scugliano? Who got shot as a kid when gunmen tried to rob his folks’ Italian restaurant?”

“Yeah, him.”

“Dear Tooly, I’ve never met such a person.” He had no idea who owned the property where the Brain Trust was based. That school bus in the center of the office space, he’d heard, had been left there by a dim-witted fashionista who’d set up an atelier there two years earlier and ended up in rehab. The floor had been empty since. Until, without permission, Venn sent in cleaners, had technicians hook into existing phone and power cables in the building, moved in desks, hired a bum off the Bowery to operate the freight elevator, and started renting out those cheap cubicles. “I never spent much time there in case someone turned up who actually did own the place!” he said. “I suspect it belongs to the Buddhist temple downstairs, but the monks never complained. Vow of silence: priceless.” He laughed. “Thing about the Brain Trust is that it sort of worked. Those kids were having a great time coming up with stuff. Ridiculous ideas, of course, but one might hit the jackpot. There’s nothing to say that ideas must be good to succeed. Somebody could make a fortune yet because of the Brain Trust.”

“So, wait — there is no cooperative?”

“I hardly even know what a cooperative is. And if there was a cooperative it’d be ridiculous. It’d mean the most inventive kids would have to split their proceeds with the duds. How is that fair? This way, it’s all spoils to the victor.”

“So those guys there were essentially paying you thousands of bucks to turn up each day in an abandoned office space?”

“And paying in cash, Tooly. In cash.”

“Can’t be safe for you to keep that place open.”

“I agree.”

“Could we go somewhere else now, Venn? I want to leave this city. Not telling Sarah this time. Maybe not telling anybody,” she said, too cowardly to specify Humphrey.

“I agree,” he said. “I think it’s time.”

“Yes!” She leaped from her seat with excitement. “Yes!” She sat, beaming. “I want to plan a whole project together, start to finish. We could pull off something amazing. Don’t you think?”

“I’m certain of it.”

“You pretend that it’s everyone for themselves,” she said, “but I owe you tons. I know all that you’ve done for me. I know you better than anyone.”

“You do,” he said. “We’re the same, me and you.” He took out a cellphone and rose from the sofa, then knelt before her and tied the laces of her Converse sneakers, one shoe to the other.

“What are you doing?” she asked, smiling.

He cupped his hand against the side of her face. “You’re the softest person on the planet, Tooly. You couldn’t kill a wasp if it stung you on the nose. Even then, I see you shooing it out the window.”

“I can be horrible and dishonest if I put my mind to it.”

“If only!” he said. “Don’t let anyone take my newspaper. There’s something I need to show you in it. I’ve got a surprise for you. I’m tempted to say a great surprise, but I’ll call it an interesting one.” Venn raised his finger, indicating that she must remain quiet, and he stepped from the café onto Amsterdam Avenue. He opened his flip phone, dialed a number, and sauntered down the sidewalk, passing from view.

All sounds were louder suddenly: a rock CD playing, the smack of the snare, the repetitions of the singer. The café was filling up now, and not just with lonely hearts.

“Some guy was in our lab today. Don’t know what he was, a resident or something. And the professor was, like, ‘You don’t knock, you don’t stay.’ ”

“He’s like that.”

“I’m really surprised at the level of detail in this class.”

“The teaching quality this year is so superior to the first year.”

“I know!”

At another table:

“He interviews a lot of people for the school.”

“He’s such a dad.”

“He is a dad.”

“The funny thing? The woman who wrote that book is a friend of the Heckers.”

“Hey, when are you going to the shower Saturday?”

“I think I’m going to go on Saturday.”

And another:

“Finally, after months of anxiety I called her, bless her heart. She’s in Detroit. So I call her last night to see what happened. She said she’ll find out tomorrow.”

“Wasn’t she up for a job?”

“Lots of jobs.”

Tooly could never have conversations like these. The only place in the world where she fit was beside Venn. She watched the window, sitting upright each time a man entered her field of vision. She smirked, looking at her laced-up shoes, realizing how much like those nervous daters she must have seemed, glancing up whenever the door opened. He never did come back.