The Imperfectionists

by Tom Rachman

  "Excuse me," Abbey says, rising without explanation. She walks down their aisle, up the other, then back again. She spies the crown of Dave's head from behind. Going bald. What is wrong with guys? Half are molting; half are nothing but undergrowth. Is there some link between baldness and assholishness? Or hairiness and being dumb? It wasn't by chance that she got Dave fired. Kathleen had wanted all nine layoffs to come from the technical staff. But Abbey insisted that at least one come from editorial--time to teach the newsroom a lesson. She checked that Dave's performance evaluations were impeccably mediocre and that he had no insurmountable allies--i.e., Kathleen or Herman--then filed the paperwork for dismissal. Thank God, too. Imagine if she had to see this jerk every day at work now.

  She goes over her files until they arrive in Atlanta. The plane taxis toward the gate, the seat-belt sign turns off, the economy-class detainees unfold themselves, arms shooting for the overhead bins. By contrast, Dave stretches casually and yawns. "Can I get your bag for you?"

  "No, please just leave it. I have some fragile stuff in there."

  The front exit opens and the crowd inches toward it, disembarking to the plodding rhythm of the cabin crew's "Bye now ... bye now ... bye now."

  Dave waits for her to gather her belongings.

  "Please--go ahead," she says.

  "It's no problem."

  She stalls for as long as possible. "No need to wait for me. Seriously."

  "It's fine."

  In the terminal, he veers toward the baggage carousel.

  "Well, take care then," she says.

  "You only had carry-on?"

  "Always."

  "Where you staying, by the way?"

  "I forget. Some hotel."

  "Which one?"

  "Can't remember. The Intercontinental, possibly."

  "Maybe we could share a cab."

  "Don't you have to get going to wherever it is you have to go? Your hometown? Anyway, I'm expensing the ride, so I'll get my own. Otherwise, the receipts get too complicated."

  "Oh," he says. "Well, hey."

  "Yup. Take care."

  He leans in to kiss her cheek.

  She pulls back. "Don't want to give you my cold." She shakes his hand.

  At the Intercontinental, she lays out her work on the desk. She wasted too much time yakking to that idiot. She keeps yawning. She needs to stay up, to adjust to the time difference immediately--it's the only way. She checks the clock. Too late to call the kids. But how can you not mention that your new job is in San Jose? Whatever. When's the first meeting tomorrow morning? A breakfast thing. Welcome back to the land of bad coffee and doughnuts the size of toilet seats. What was the point of him flirting the whole time if he lives in another city? Her desk in the hotel room is backed by a mirror. She catches sight of herself. She'd kill to have a chat with Henry. Travel coma is making her weepy.

  A ringing. She opens her eyes, disoriented. It's dark. What time is it? The alarm is blinking. Has she missed the meeting? Fuck! That ringing. It's not the alarm, though. She reaches for the phone. "Hello?"

  "Finally, I get you!"

  "Hello?" she repeats.

  "It's Dave Belling. I'm downstairs. I'm being real rude here. Taking a chance. But I decided, you know, my folks can wait a few hours. I didn't want us to not see each other again. I was all the way down at the bus station. Then I was, like, this is too dumb. So I came over here. I hope you weren't sleeping. And listen, if this is an imposition at all, please just say so and I'll be on my merry way, no problem. But if it isn't, I was figuring on maybe buying you a drink or something. Even some dlunch. Or a spot of slupper."

  She laughs, rubbing her eyes. She flicks on the desk lamp, blinking. "What time is it?"

  "Slupper time."

  "I think I dozed off. I thought it was tomorrow."

  "If this isn't good for you, I can get going. No problem."

  "Hang on, hang on, wait. Can you stay there a minute? I'll come right down. Don't come up. Where are you?"

  She hasn't got time for a shower, so she freshens up as best she can in the bathroom, working in the skin moisturizer as if kneading dough. She should be preparing for the board meeting. She should be getting an early night.

  "Hey," she says, tapping his shoulder from behind.

  He is by the concierge desk, flipping through a magazine. "Hey there," he says, his face lighting up. "Sure I'm not imposing?"

  "Of course not."

  "What do you feel like? A drink? Something to eat?"

  "After that pink mystery cake on the plane, I'm off food until October."

  "I hear that. A drink it is."

  They take a booth at the hotel bar. A television mounted on the wall is showing CNBC, with a headline that reads, "Markets Crash Over Fears of China Slowdown."

  "It'll go fine tomorrow," he tells her. "You're obviously going to be the smartest girl in the room, so don't sweat it."

  They talk and talk, him about his divorce, her about hers. After three Bacardi Breezers, she tells him: "It's like you were saying on the plane. I'm too romantic for my own good. And okay, you get kicked in the butt sometimes. But, frankly, I'd rather have, you know--actual sentiments. Than. You know? You know what I mean?"

  "I hear that."

  "Well, hey," she says.

  "Hey," he says.

  They laugh.

  He says, more softly, "Come here," and leans across the table. He kisses her. He sits back slowly, as if he hadn't been expecting to do that.

  "Well," she says.

  "Well then," he says.

  "No kidding."

  They go up to her room. She rushes into the bathroom, mouthing at her reflection: "You're nuts."

  When she emerges, he reaches out for her. She moves into his embrace, expecting a kiss but he only hugs her, tightening, then slackening as he breathes out serenely. He leans back, looks into her eyes.

  "Mmm," she says. "I needed that."

  "I needed that," he says.

  She kisses him, tenderly, then with passion. Lips locked, they lumber to the bed, tripping, giggling. She flops onto the mattress and hits the remote control, turning on the television. "Oh God, I'm sorry!" she exclaims, suddenly serious.

  He turns it off, tosses aside the remote. He unbuttons her top and pulls it off. He unzips her trousers, tugs them down and off. She's wearing only the funereal black bra and the blue granny panties. She folds her arms to cover her chest and crosses her legs. "Can we turn off a light?"

  "Let's leave it on a second," he says.

  "But aren't you getting undressed?"

  "Hey, don't cover yourself."

  "It's kinda bright in here."

  "I want to look at you," he says.

  "But you're still dressed. And I'm in my, in my, in this bra and these." She laughs uncertainly.

  "Wait, wait, hang on. Don't pull up the covers."

  "How come? Can't I?"

  "One point of order first." His tone changes. His voice goes cold. "One small thing." His eyes track down her body. He proceeds, "Tell me this, Accounts Payable."

  She freezes at the name.

  "Why," he says, "why of all the people there, Accounts Payable, did you go and get me fired?" He stands at the foot of the bed, staring. "So?" he says. "Explain me that."

  2004. OTT GROUP HEADQUARTERS, ATLANTA

  Newspapers were spiraling downward.

  Competing entertainments abounded, from cellphones to video games, from social-networking sites to online porn. Technology was not merely luring readers; it was changing them. Full printed pages didn't fit onto monitors, so portion size shrank, dicing news into ever-smaller morsels. Instant updates on the Internet bred contempt for day-old headlines in ink. Even the habit of exchanging money for information dwindled--online, payment was merely an option.

  As readership plummeted, advertisers fled and losses mounted. But, doggedly, the pay-per-view papers kept at it. They made their daily judgments, produced their digests of the world, laid them out across
pages, printed tonight and delivered tomorrow, to be flapped open before bleary breakfast eyes. Fewer eyes, each day.

  Despite all this, Boyd was not about to let his father's paper go under. He had rescued it once before, when he'd hired Milton Berber. The trick was to find the right leader. This time, he chose Kathleen Solson, a former protegee of Milton's. Kathleen had risen through the ranks in Rome, then jumped to Milton's old newspaper in Washington, progressing fast. She covered a suburban beat, joined the Pentagon team, became national reporter for the Southwest and then national editor, all in less than a decade.

  But at that level in the Washington hierarchy, competition stiffened. To climb the masthead, she'd need to play politics for years. Or she could gamble, jump to the top job at a smaller newspaper, and use it as a proving ground. She flew to Rome to meet with the current crop of senior editors, a sparse breed by then, their numbers diminished by years of attrition.

  If she was to take the job, she told Boyd, much would have to change. The paper needed to fill those empty cubicles, buy new computers, bulk up its coverage abroad: a Chinese speaker for Shanghai, an Arabic speaker for the Middle East, and so forth. This was too critical a time in history--the war on terror, the rise of Asia, climate change--to be reporting about the fat folds of celebrities at the beach. "We can leave that to the Internet," she said.

  Boyd agreed, and she made the move back to Rome, bringing along her deputy from the Washington national desk, Craig Menzies.

  Soon she had cause for concern. The Ott Group--despite Boyd's promises--proved reluctant to fund her plans. She found herself hamstrung by increasingly restrictive budgets and Boyd himself ignored her, leaving everything to underlings--above all to the swinging ax of the paper's chief financial officer, Abbey Pinnola. First, Abbey ordered yet another hiring freeze. Then she abolished merit raises. Then she demanded layoffs.

  Kathleen appealed for color pages and for a website, and she hammered on about hiring more correspondents overseas. The Ott board rejected every request. It was only when she sought to contact Boyd through private channels that she learned how ill he was.

  It was cancer, the same that had killed Ott. When Boyd heard his diagnosis, he experienced something close to pride: he and his father were allied in this. But as Boyd's symptoms worsened, any such fancy abandoned him. He seethed at those around him, those who would outlive him, who did not deserve to--his grown children, typing asinine messages into mobile phones, idiots who understood nothing. Eventually, even fury failed him, giving way to dark days. His life had been wasted, second-rate beside his father's. No time to fix it.

  As chairman, Boyd had transformed the Ott Group. But he had not enriched it. At the time of his death, the company was worth one-third as much as when he had taken it over.

  Not one of his four children was an obvious successor. His eldest son, Vaughn, was widely disliked; his two daughters were intelligent but wild; and the youngest boy, Oliver, was so weak-willed as to have recused himself from the Ott board.

  That didn't mean Oliver had been left alone. It was he who had cared for Boyd during the illness, and his siblings felt uncomfortably indebted. They intended to discharge their obligation and sought a role for him. The Ott Group holdings were varied enough to offer something. How about this paper they owned in Rome? No one in the new generation could explain why their grandfather had founded this money-losing operation. He must have lost his touch. But now, at least, the paper would come in handy. It would be ideal for Oliver: no pressure, since it could scarcely do worse. Plus, Europe was artsy, which would appeal to him. And he could live in Grandpa's empty old mansion in Rome. Perhaps he would even stun them and turn the paper around.

  Oliver himself had no such illusions. He opposed the appointment, reminding his brother and sisters that he knew nothing about business and had scarcely read a newspaper in his life, except to check the arts listings. Vaughn said a business is a business.

  "But I don't know anything about any business," Oliver replied.

  "You'll learn."

  On his arrival, the paper was in an uproar. Kathleen and Abbey leaped at Oliver like polar bears on a walrus--he was an actual, live Ott, and they had him in their midst. Their demands, boiled down, were this: money. Chippy staffers beset him, too, protesting the wage freeze, the threat of layoffs, the filthy carpeting (unwashed since 1977, they said). He rushed off to phone Vaughn.

  "Not gonna happen," Vaughn said. "You know how much the paper is losing?"

  "Not exactly."

  "Well, they're lucky we're still paying their salaries."

  Oliver avoided the office after that, dropping by only after hours to sign documents and pick up mail. Otherwise, he hid out at the mansion, his sole daily excursion to walk his basset hound, Schopenhauer.

  "GUNMAN KILLS 32

  IN CAMPUS RAMPAGE"

  * * *

  PUBLISHER--OLIVER OTT

  THE PHONE RINGS IN THE LIVING ROOM. HE KNOWS WHO IT IS, SO he puts on his coat, summons Schopenhauer, and leads the dog outside for a walk.

  Oliver is a lanky man, not quite thirty but already hunched, his head dangling forward as if from a coat hook rather than mounted upon a spine. An oily blond fringe curtains his blemished forehead and pale blue eyes, while a turnip nose bobs between strands of hair as he walks. His lips bear nibbled indents, and his chin wavers as he mumbles to his dog. He gazes fixedly down the line of the leash, witnessing the world from Schopenhauer's vantage point--life at sniff level.

  A scent catches the basset hound's attention and he jumps toward a urine-drizzled tussock of grass. He pulls this way, wrenches that, braiding Oliver into ever more intricate tangles. "I'm beginning to think," Oliver says, "that the leash is here largely for irony."

  Their walks take them all around the city. To the Botanical Gardens on the slopes of the Janiculum. To the Valle dei Cani in Villa Borghese. To the parched turf of the Circus Maximus, where tourists trudge the ancient chariot circuit, chugging bottled water. On the hottest days, Oliver and Schopenhauer cross the Tiber, making for the shaded alleys of Trastevere. Or they stroll up Via Giulia, whose resolutely tall buildings stand up to the sun. Or they saunter through the Protestant Cemetery in Testaccio, where Oliver's grandfather is buried.

  The headstone is an uninspiring affair--"Cyrus Ott. Born 1899. Died 1960"--so Oliver proceeds to more diverting tombs, reading under his breath the inscribed names: "Gertrude Parsons Marcella ... Lieutenant Colonel Harris Arthur McCormack ... Wolfgang Rappaport. Dead at age four." He tells the dog, "Michael James Lamont Hosgood died at fifteen. That's him, beside his mother. But she died twenty years later in Kent. She must have asked to be buried back here, alongside her son. Don't you think, Schop?" The tomb of Devereux Plantagenet Cockburn is adorned with a life-size statue of the deceased, a young fop reclining with a cocker spaniel in his lap and his thumb inserted in a book, as if every visitor to the grave were a pleasant interruption from his studies. Oliver reads the lengthy inscription, which concludes: "He was beloved by all who knew him, and most precious to his parents and family, who had sought his health in many foreign climes. He departed this life in Rome, on the 3rd of May 1850, aged 21 years."

  The sun resigns its position in the sky and the mosquitoes assume theirs, so Oliver and Schopenhauer head back to the Aventine Hill. Their home is a sixteenth-century mansion that Cyrus Ott bought cheap in the early 1950s. Oliver punches in the digital code and the mechanized steel gate parts squeakily. Inside, the telephone rings.

  Oliver releases Schopenhauer, winds up the leash, and enters the living room. The ceiling is even higher than in the entrance hall, paneled with rococo reliefs, with starbursts and peach cherubim gamboling around the corners. The oil paintings on the walls are too poorly lit for their subjects to be immediately discernible--from a distance, all appear to depict woods at night; only the gilt frames glint. Into the Oriental rugs, deep paths have been worn from pedestrian traffic: to the kitchen, to the shuttered windows, to the bookshelves, to the tete-
a-tete settee, to the old telephone whose antiquated bell at this moment rattles against the wallpaper. The answering machine kicks in.

  "Hi, it's me again," Kathleen says. "I'm at the office. Please give me a call. Thanks."

  Oliver plucks a paperback Agatha Christie from a stack on the floor and settles himself and the dog (lured with a chocolate cookie) on the settee. At 7 P.M., the housekeepers announce dinner. It's some sort of stew. Too much rosemary and too little salt, but perfectly edible. Schopenhauer sniffs the meat-scented air beseechingly, his droopy eyes bloodshot, spittle on his chops. Oliver fetches that day's paper--the subscription department insists on sending it, though he never reads the thing. He spreads it across the table and places his plate of leftovers on top. He pulls up a chair for Schopenhauer, who leaps up and shoots his snout across the table. The dog turns his muzzle to one side to snap up meat and carrots, then jerks his head back, flinging the food down his throat.

  "A knife and fork would be preferable," Oliver says. "But there's no teaching you."

  Once the plate is clean, Oliver scrunches up the paper, specked with gravy and gobbets of gristle. He disposes of the mess in the kitchen as Schopenhauer drinks from his bowl, tongue and ears slapping the water.

  The phone in the living room rings again. And, again, the machine gets it. "I'm headed home now," Kathleen says wearily. "You can get me on my cell. Appreciate if you'd call tonight. Kinda urgent. Thanks."

  Schopenhauer noses open the door and wanders off, padding upstairs.

  "Time alone is good for any relationship," Oliver comments as if the dog were still in the room to hear it. Oliver lies on his belly on the floor, piles of books ranged around him like tall grass: Miss Marple's Final Cases, a Taschen monograph on Turner, Sotheby's twentieth-century British art-auction listing, The Penguin Complete Father Brown, a catalog from Caravaggio: The Final Years at the National Gallery, and The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes. "Where have you gone?" he asks the absent dog. He checks in the kitchen. "Schop?" He peers into the dining room. "Where in the devil's name are you?"

  He climbs the darkened staircase with a flashlight. (Oliver inhabits only the ground floor; the rest of the mansion is all darkness, covered by tarpaulins.) The beam of his torch sweeps across the second-floor landing. "Schopenhauer, where are you?" Oliver is swallowed into the black belly of the house; a chandelier twinkles; the telephone in the living room rings. The answering machine beeps, its message number flashing permanently at "99" because the display lacks a third digit.