Architects Are Here

by Michael Winter

  Youve been let go, I said.

  Let me just think it’s the travelling.

  WE DROVE HARD ALL DAY and arrived in Bethlehem by early evening. Sasha Twombly was at the university and we could see from monitors in hotel lobbies that the president was visiting the campus. We found a room and checked in, then David called Sasha and she said if we knew how to get to the college. The hotel had a map.

  Sasha Twombly had married a man who studied economics and set up a wing of research at the college that studies nuclear power. In the seventies, when they let go of the gold standard, they tried to use power as a standard for money. How much power a thing had. The Bethlehem public school had a whirling atom for a logo.

  Sasha was excited to see us, and then the excitement focused on its true cause: the president’s visit. Her husband, Kenneth Mosado, had been in Washington sponsoring a lobby group to downgrade the latest environmental bill passing through congress. The opposite of progress? Congress. The president got wind of the college, the Middle East was tightening oil production, Iran was considering getting rid of the dollar and pegging the barrel to silver. Hydro was a hard issue with Canada and the Quebec separatists, and the high-grade unpolluting coal was vanishing from Virginia railways. Nuclear, the president had decided, was the fuel of the future, and Bethlehem, New Hampshire, was the birthplace of nuclear. He had arrived on Air Force One that very day to take a tour of the facilities, and David and I could go through the clearance wands and pat-downs and meet him.

  Jesus, we just met the Prince of Wales.

  Perhaps, David said, this is our time to visit heads of state. Remember when we played puddies?

  And, while I had thought of those days, neither of us had mentioned them out loud.

  Remember what our names were? You were the King and I was the President.

  That’s right, I said. Is the Prince the head of England?

  David: He’s the head of faith.

  This stunned me, this blurting out of an intimate, childish time. We had to wait in a small room. This huge facility and they lock us down here. Kenneth Mosado brought in headsets for us to wear—we could take a little tour of the nuclear facility by blinking our eyes. Kenneth wore a white turtleneck and a suit jacket. He was amiable and I liked that he was to meet the president wearing his everyday clothes. This man had married Sasha Twombly, amazing. I put on the headset and looked for the president, but he was in a room that I could not enter, not even virtually.

  David:This is bullshit, Gabe.

  Me: How long have you waited for anything?

  It was pissing me off, David’s inability to wait his turn. I have patience. I dont expect the world to always turn its head and see me coming and open the door. But part of it for David was physical. He grew anxious when his body had to sit down and wait.

  You know what I’m going to ask him, he said.

  You think you’ll get to ask him something.

  I’m going to ask him about Goldman Sachs. I’m going to watch his face and see if he feels betrayed.

  Goldman Sachs, I said, means nothing to me.

  They reduced the gasoline component of its commodity index right into the November elections. I just want to see if he thinks it was politically motivated.

  An hour passed. There was a whirring in the air. David’s impatience was making my mind think that the box of a room we were in was being slowly cooked, or sterilized. Like every bacterium was being swept away.

  It would have been nice of them, David said, to tell us it could be an hour.

  And I agreed with him on that. It was a lark to see the president, but being next door to the president for an hour is tiresome.

  Me: Should we go?

  Let’s tell Sasha we’ll meet her at the campus bar.

  And just as we got up the door opened and Richard Text came in. It was the man I’d seen in the penthouse off Bloor with the birthday cake and the two pianos. He was carrying a luminescent wand. He waved it over David’s body and then mine. He left it a second too long, I thought, between my legs. You may view the president, he said.

  Kenneth Mosado was showing the president the virtual room. The president had on eyewear and a glove and he was waving the gloved hand above his head. He looked like he was about to be shot by firing squad.

  I could have brought the Taser, David said, and be done with him.

  The president is short and I got that buzzing feel that comes when youre too close to something youve only ever seen in the media. It could be a pyramid or a painting or a president. Sasha arrived, her bright head, animated.

  Sasha:You want to ask the president anything?

  David asked him (he called him Mr President) if he thought the human animal and his emotions change much from age to age. He must change now, David said, or he faces absolute and complete destruction and maybe the insect age or an atmosphereless planet will succeed us.

  It was a heavy line. It was a quote, David told me later, from some earlier president.

  The president turned to David, the heavy eyewear distorting his face, and said, I care a lot about atmosphere and insects.

  David, when he hates someone, usually invites them to join him for a drink. David had reached, I could tell, the outer limits of his generosity. I might meet up with you, the president said, though we both knew the president did not drink.

  I drank with your father, David said.

  The president took off the eyewear. Youve met my father.

  Your father likes to fish in Labrador. I met him at a lodge in Pine River. He was shooting caribou from a helicopter and he had pizzas and beer choppered in.

  That’s my dad, the president said. Then realized what David had described might be illegal. He composed himself. He returned to the script that had been prepared. David, he said. About Goldman Sachs. I heard your question earlier. Youve got to think about the restructuring of Japan, the aging American population, water shortages, global outsourcing, the internet hub, emerging markets. Youve got to consider if the price collapse in oil will break the continuity of bullish thought on energy, dont you?

  He knew what David’s criticism and warning was. It was as if the eyewear had given him an insight—they were the x-ray specs David and I had ordered as kids. They were the fulfillment of that comic promise.

  We walked to a campus bar with Sasha and Richard while Kenneth Mosado debriefed the president’s attaché. When I heard this I realized where the words briefcase and attaché case come from. I bought a round.

  He has small hands, I said.

  Richard Text: A lot of fascists do.

  Down the street was a ferris wheel. David noticed we were all a little uncomfortable with the static responsibility of drinks around a table. So when we were about to order more drinks he said, Let’s drive to it. He meant the ferris wheel.

  We took Sasha’s car. It was a modified ferris wheel. You brought your car aboard it.

  Sasha drove up to the gate and docked the car.

  Kenneth’s not going to find us up here.

  Me:Tell us about Kenneth.

  She looked at her watch. I said to Kenneth five years ago this week, If you want me you have to shape up. And he did.

  Richard:What makes a successful marriage.

  Sasha: Difference.

  Yes, the two of you are very different, Richard said. Youre—

  Sasha: Age difference.

  And Richard and David laughed at that and looked at me. Richard knew who I was. That he’d had an age difference with Nell. It made him uncomfortable and so I got his life story. When Nell met him, he said, he was still in love with an impoverished duke, an Austro-Hungarian living in Germany.

  Then he paused and Sasha said, Whatever happens in the ferris wheel stays in the ferris wheel.

  We were slowly moving. The car was ascending. And we could look out over the roofs of Bethlehem.

  The duke, Richard hasnt heard from him. Could be dead or married. His title is worth a precise amount, Richard said.

&n
bsp; Sasha:Tell us who you first fell in love with.

  There was a Spanish businessman. I was about twenty-two. He kept having boys over when I left town. Then a rich man in Santa Fe whose house was a museum. Candlesticks worth a hundred thousand, it was all garish, I had to leave.

  But Richard’s big love was a Bollywood actor who was on the way down and had trouble living with that. He had dyed his hair blond in India and was trying to write a screenplay. So Richard moved to London and worked at Canary Wharf. All this before his stint in Corner Brook. He’s fifty-one now.

  So Nell’s with you, I said.

  Richard: Nell called but I havent seen Nell.

  I got an email from her that was sent from Los Alamos.

  I think she’s looking for a piece of equipment.

  Do you miss her.

  Youre her boyfriend.

  I just learned about Dave and her.

  Richard understood this. He was making calculations. Nell, he said, tried to adopt her son. We tried to get him. But it’s a pretty fucked up bureaucratic nightmare to adopt a child youve given up for adoption, he said. I mean we’re all crazy. But she’s. I’ve said enough.

  I let that sink in. David was asking Sasha if Virginia was the most northern southern place in the States.

  The most important thing to govern where people live, Sasha said, is air conditioning. Power used to move east-west, but now, with air conditioning, it can move to the south.

  That made me think of Nell’s condition. She had moved south. She was of northern air. She had a lot to grapple with and, in the end, she managed to be lighthearted with me. Why didnt I try to get to this, why did I let her keep this depth of trouble over Anthony to herself. She was good, she didnt want it to weigh me down.

  David: Do you feel like youre in a war?

  Sasha: Me personally? Yes I do.

  Richard: At war or in a war?

  WE ENDED UP back at the bar but the president and Kenneth had not shown up. The bar closed its door but we continued to drink. Then the windows were shut with grey shutters and someone, perhaps David because he is the first to get antsy, said, Let’s find something to eat.

  We walked across the street to an upscale diner. It was dawn now and the regulars were having their first of the day. A man who looked like Elvis served us.

  I’m alone, David said, chuckling.

  Youre alone and enjoying it, Richard said.

  We ate eggs with feta while six tons of rain slammed against the cars parked outside. I thought about Bucephalus alone in that car with a tinny roof. I didnt like to think of her worried. She was my responsibility in a world where I had little of it. I was next to Sasha in the booth and I retrieved her adult story while the men talked money. Sasha, after leaving Corner Brook, went out with a man for five years. Decided to get married. They were living a very conservative life. He mowed the grass every Saturday. This was in Winnipeg. She smoked pot behind his back. Three months before the wedding she called it off. They had a house—she put her half into living in Asia for a year. Came back to Canada and made some money and headed again to Thailand. That’s where she met her first husband, Carl Hoover. They drove their motorbikes to her parents’ in Corner Brook. Then ran out of money, but Sasha’s father really liked Carl. On the day of her wedding she ended up in a coffee shop with a guy she knew in school, in her red dress. She knew it wasnt right, but would prefer to get married and perhaps divorce a couple of years later than call off the wedding.

  She looked at Richard and David. You never know how different people’s histories can be from what they are now.

  Do you know, David said, Itinerant Knowledge Workers made six hundred million last year.

  You must have made some too, Richard said.

  I was in line to get a fifth of one share.

  Sasha:What’s a share, brother.

  She did not seem to mind that he was not listening. She had, you could see, an unwavering deep love for David.

  A fifth, he said, of six hundred million.

  So you made a fifth of a fifth of six hundred million dollars.

  That’s what I lost. I made a lot and lost a lot. I about broke even.

  Me:What’s a fifth of a fifth?

  Gabe money is water.

  And David put out his hands, his fingers stretched apart.

  Me:Itinerant Knowledge Workers. Three guys with an idea.

  No, good ideas. Lots of them.

  Richard paid the bill and I left the tip. It’s satisfying to peel off those American dollars, I hope they keep them. We stepped outside. Pale morning now. To our left was a shopping centre’s movator, a man walking beside it, his wife on it. Above us a floating oval sign that read UNISEX. It was one of those words that made me uncomfortable as a kid. We were near some huge all-night supermarket. The man said, Where you going, Marge. Where you going, Marge.

  Marge slowly got ahead of him. She was concentrating like she hoped that movator would take her way the hell away from him.

  I can’t help but notice, I said, that the two of you havent said a word about your father.

  I didnt like growing up in Newfoundland, Sasha said.

  Richard: Is something wrong with Arthur?

  TWELVE

  RICHARD DIDNT KNOW a thing about Arthur. He’d heard that Nell was in Los Alamos looking for a piece of hi-tech machinery. Richard’s involved in the biggest secrets on the planet and yet he’s not informed about the people that are deep in his life. The rain abated and Bucephalus did not seem perturbed so Dave and I drove and slept then kept on to Newport, where we watched a movie for nine dollars. David judged the screen was forty feet wide so we sat in a row forty feet deep. That’s how you pick a seat, David said.

  There was a fear, in one scene, of gum disease. When you have a sore jaw, all art looks like it’s about gum disease. It’s an honest selfishness, whereas David.

  He said, When I saw the president, I wanted to shout out, The architects are here. You dont know what I’m talking about.

  You were thinking about killing the president of the United States.

  As you know I’ve had a quiet ambition to be president.

  So if youre never to be one you can at least kill one.

  In the old days the future king usually killed the old king.

  There was something untruthful about this tapping into feeling.

  Dont ever lie to me, I said.

  David: Only lies of omission.

  You didnt have to say that.

  He was selfish. It’s true he didnt talk much about his son. I mention his son because the old king is the father and the young king is the son. Once, when Owen was four months old, Sok Hoon said to Dave, Take him. And at eleven oclock Dave woke Sok Hoon up. Youre going to have to take him.

  The more demands Sok Hoon made—after the separation—the more easygoing Dave got.

  We skirted the Canadian border and then decided to head south to get clear of the dirty old weather, like a bum stock (Dave’s words). We avoided low pressure fronts in newspapers. We pitched in a state park and cooked on our fireplace. We were delighted with ourselves: two whole tilapia, corn in their husks, tuna steak with onion and garlic, corn tortillas toasted right on the flat steel—the fish grilled on the bars. We ate in the dark with a flashlight balanced on top of a paper towel roll. Pancakes and bacon for the morning. The tent on hard ground and it wakes me up, the dog trying to sleep on top of me. Stars, bright Mars. A man came by to see how we lit our fire—his just smoke. He admired it with one of those big battery flashlights. Then the morning. It was hard to sleep in long, as the tent fabric allowed a lot of light and Bucephalus got anxious and her tail began to motor. The floor was thin. A clear sky last night, so no rain fly. The wind blowing through the nylon. I felt the wind and perked up and saw dark clouds from the west. I made coffee on the stove while David sat up on his blue foamy and watched the sun intensify on the green fabric. I just want to hang on, he said, to see if this will be one of those moments that change my life.


  It wasnt.

  So we collapsed the tent. All of our clothes smelled of smoke. That’s when David came at me with his pebble in hand.

  The hospital called me, he said. My father’s not doing well. They need me there. They need to know my blood type. They want to look at my kidneys.

  I took the wheel all day and then, after we crossed the border back into Canada, I put Bucephalus in the front seat which she loved and folded myself out in the back while Dave drove. I’d lean up sometimes to see what we were passing, the homes of the unemployed and then through the junctions to valleys where millionaires lived. Those little upside-down Vs in the pavement slipped by. What were they called. Every three weeks I remember the word. The same as stripes on a sergeant’s sleeve. There was a noisy hay operation and then a town dedicated to selling you back your hubcaps. The surnames here would start to be solid and go back generations. The land felt older even though I know that’s not true. We’d driven over the Canadian Shield and now it felt like we were heading back in time. Booth Tarkington’s novel came to mind, his musings on automobiles, for The Magnificent Ambersons is nothing if not an examination of what the automobile has done to change civilization. With all their speed forward, Booth Tarkington wrote, they may be a step backward in civilization—that is, spiritual civilization. Booth Tarkington thought the car would alter both war and peace. And that our very minds would be changed because of the automobile. That’s true of most things we feel apprehensive about—we know they will change us but we’re not sure how.

  The road smoothed out which meant a politician had a cottage in a pine thicket and then there was a field of school buses almost as if that was a retirement home for school buses, and then that thought of school buses growing old while children remain the same age. My eye opened to these fast-forward colour fields that David drove through at a constant speed and it felt as if the world were on a spool that reeled out rough edits devoted to panels of colour and it made me realize that we all do things that will be undone. You hammer a painting to a wall that, if left, will fall off before a hundred years pass. So on another scale, say a hundred years to the second, you stick something to the wall it will fall off the wall. It’s a futile, temporary act that only seems permanent and then a neon sign rages across the slant of that thought, followed by the rough hills of abandoned rubber tires and a stinky teepee of a camouflaged smelter operation followed by the gradual buildup of a pulp mill’s spruce farm making way again to pasture as we hit the sun’s porch off the Nova Scotia causeway, the Scottish success and mowed gardens and well-painted fences and David yanks us up to a halt at a coffee shop and unclicks his seatbelt. Who knew at this juncture that we had hundreds of miles of windowless taverns and rain to get through yet.