by Hari Kunzru
I knew we could make a killer album. I had a lot of unused material that I didn’t know what to do with. Because of Carter’s voracious and well-funded collecting, I was sitting on super-rare breaks that would lose their value the instant someone else ripped them off. We could make tracks that sounded like 1973 because we had tracks from 1973, hyper-rarities no one else possessed. Secret knowledge. Gnosis. I couldn’t understand why Carter wasn’t excited. Outside on the sidewalk, I confronted him.
—What the fuck was that? I asked. He lit a cigarette.
—He can kiss my ass.
—He’s huge. Everything he does charts.
—So? We’re doing him a favor even talking to him.
—Come on, man. Don’t screw this up. It’s what we’ve been dreaming about.
—This is our music, Seth. We live it. We feel it. He thinks he can just swan in and buy it off the shelf?
—Do you know how insane you sound?
He shrugged.
We stood around, awkwardly, smoking and shuffling our feet. Then he summoned a car on his phone, got in it and drove away.
I DIDN’T SEE CARTER AGAIN until the next morning. I had slept badly, so when he burst into my room, I was groggy and disoriented. He pulled the sheet off the bed and made an announcement: his brother Cornelius was having a weekend party at the family place in Virginia and we were going.
—Taking off from Teterboro in three hours, so pack a bag.
—What?
—Corny chartered a six-seater for his friends, and some of them dropped out. My God, you look disgusting. Were you drinking last night?
—No.
I sat up, yawning and picking gunk out of my eyes. I didn’t want to know why he was suddenly so charged up when he had been completely apathetic at our meeting. He was operating at an atypically high intensity, full of plans and designs, stalking around the apartment wearing a dress shirt and neat khaki slacks dug out from God knows what forgotten corner of his closet.
Put me under a man called Captain Jack, he sang. Wrote his name all down my back.
I padded into the kitchen and fumbled angrily with the coffee machine.
—Why are you dressed like a Mormon? I thought you hated your brother.
—I never said that, Seth. I would never say that.
—Pardon me for asking. Look, are you OK?
—Sure. Come on, hustle hustle, finish your cereal. One thing, the guys traveling with us are douchebags, but you can relax because Leonie is coming too.
Leonie. A wound in my side.
I only met Carter’s sister after we came to New York. We went to an opening at a little storefront gallery on the Lower East Side. The place had been a leather goods wholesaler, and the signage was still on the window and over the door. Bags, shoes, belts, fancy goods. The sidewalk was blocked by smokers, bikes clamped to every sign and lamppost. I shouldered my way in behind Carter, fishing for the last few bottles of beer at the bottom of a giant bucket filled with mostly melted ice. Leonie was an artist. Or trying to be one. Carter couldn’t decide how seriously to take her. She’s very solemn, he warned. She drops a lot of French names. We squeezed through a crowd of kids in thrift store clothes ironically referencing the nineties suburbia they’d escaped to come and make it in the city. Here and there were signs of money: an older couple protected from the rabble by a slick young man who I assumed was the gallerist, another couple smoking outside, studiously ignored by everyone around them, an instantly recognizable musician and her actor boyfriend.
It was almost impossible to look at the show, which had work by a dozen young artists, but since the place was so small Leonie’s contribution wasn’t hard to find. She’d made a video of herself dressed in exercise clothing and ski boots, stomping about in a studio, crushing pills and capsules underfoot. She kicked about bottles of vitamins and nutritional supplements. After a while, she started to pour big tubs of protein powder on the floor.
—How long did that take to make, Carter fake-whispered. Ten minutes?
—Oh, much less.
Stricken, we turned round. There she was, making a sarcastic face at us. Her tangled blond hair was tied back with a scarf. She wore jeans and a battered biker jacket, downtown uniform for someone who doesn’t want to look like they’re trying too hard. I’d seen pictures, but the sight of her and Carter together was still a visual shock: the same high cheekbones and straw-blond hair, the same blue eyes contradicted by heavy darkish brows. A single image, strobing. As I looked more closely, I saw that her mouth had a slight irregularity, a warp or cast that pulled up her top lip and exposed her teeth, marring what would otherwise have been classical Northern European perfection. It was as if she’d heard unpleasant news, a betrayal or disappointment that had left a permanent trace of sourness. She was three years older than Carter, and though his remark had clearly annoyed her, she leaned over and kissed him in the time-honored gesture of indulgent big sisters, bringing her hand up under his chin and squeezing his face to make his lips bulge.
—You’re an ape.
Carter said sorry.
—I liked it, I said, distancing myself from his rudeness. She looked starkly at me and turned back to her brother.
—If you make the right gesture, craft doesn’t matter. It could take ten seconds.
—You know you’re just covering your ass because you can’t draw.
She punched him hard in the shoulder.
—Go fuck yourself, you’re supposed to be here to support me, not give me a crit.
—So are you going to stay on here for a while? Or do you want to go get a drink?
We ended up at dinner with a big crowd, a waiter’s nightmare of people shifting seats, going outside to smoke and take calls, arriving late and disappearing early. All Leonie’s friends seemed to be from somewhere else, some other city in some other country. It was the first thing they talked about, their geographical otherness. They found Carter intermittently charming, asking him questions about music and listening intently to his answers, yet there was something patronizing about their interest. The conversations were not sustained. Me, of course, they treated with barely disguised contempt. In the pecking order of that table, it was clear who was on top. A trio of artists in haute redneck attire, with full-sleeve tattoos and unruly facial hair, were ordering steaks and expensive red wine, roistering, playing to the crowd. When they spoke, the others turned to listen, particularly when the alpha, a bearish man with dark circles under his eyes and a drinker’s paunch, began to enumerate his beliefs about art. They seemed standard enough to me—he was for tearing down the old and bringing in the new—but he delivered his platitudes as if they were important and shocking, something to be shouted through a megaphone at a Happening. When he finished, his trucker buddies refilled his glass and clapped him on the back like a soldier returning from patrol. In the momentary silence, Leonie tried out a joke.
—I have a simple aesthetic. As long as my mother hates something, I know it must be worth doing.
She sat back, expecting laughter, but the table took its cues from the important painter and he seemed irritated.
—You show your mother your work?
—No, of course not. What would she say? She likes the Impressionists. She carries round a little bag she bought at Giverny.
I thought this was funny, but only one or two other people smiled. The important painter shook his head.
—You probably went there, right? To see the waterlilies.
—Yeah, so? I went to Giverny with my mom.
—She probably took you to Florence too, and the Parthenon and Basel and Venice for the Biennale.
—You want to see my passport?
—No, I don’t have to. I’m saying that, you know, everyone has a role. A position. Maybe you should bow to the inevitable and get into collecting.
The table treated this as a killer punch line, a zinger. Leonie didn’t show she was angry by anything she said or did, but I could see a cord of muscle standing taut
in her neck, and her laughter wasn’t well-acted. Soon afterwards she left. Carter sat there, rocking slightly in his seat, giving the important painter filthy looks, rehearsing putdowns he was too tongue-tied to deliver.
It was a thing you soon noticed about Leonie, how she would bring up her mother at inappropriate moments, always to mention some difference of opinion, some disagreement. For Carter, the parent he needed to overcome was his father, but the differences between these two were clear-cut. It was obvious the son would never sit on a board or manage a business. Leonie’s lines were less distinct. I would later find out that her mother was an amateur painter, a patron of DC galleries and museums. Art school was something they had agreed on.
After that evening, I always tagged along when Carter was going to see her. We went to more openings, a dinner in someone’s loft. I was fascinated by her arcane social rituals, the ever-changing pecking order of artists and curators and collectors that governed where she went and what she said there. Before I met the Wallaces I had no idea any of that even existed. Carter, who grew up flicking finger food at movie stars and captains of industry, thought his sister’s scene was lame. Full of Eurotrash, he said. A lot of nobodies pretending to come from money.
When Carter told me Leonie would be traveling with us to Cornelius’s party, my face must have betrayed me, because he laughed.
—Now you want to go.
I knew my interest in his older sister was ridiculous, but I didn’t like to be mocked. I grabbed a book from my nightstand and threw it at him. It went wide, clattering against the door. As he sauntered into the kitchen he sang:
Went to the Captain with my hat in my hand
Went to the Captain with my hat in my hand
Said Captain have mercy on a long time man
Then he changed out of his teenage church clothes into something more like his normal attire, jeans shorts, a broad-brimmed hat that made him look like a Rough Rider, and a poetic linen shirt with big sleeves gathered into the cuffs. With the car waiting outside, and me in the living area, a weekend bag packed and a coffee in a thermos mug ready in my hand, he shut himself in his room and didn’t come out for forty-five minutes. As usual, the driver had my number as the contact, and he kept calling to warn me that we couldn’t be late for wheels-up. I went to the door to knock and heard Carter hissing under his breath. He was having an argument about money with Betty.
—Did you try the other account?
I was never sure how much I was supposed to know about Betty. She handled things. Booked travel, researched, offered options. Carter only talked to her when he thought I wouldn’t overhear. I’d never met her, never even found out where she was located. All I had to go on was his hand cupped over the phone, the shameful masturbatory hunch of his back as he tended to the logistics of his charmed life. Later he told me, in a casual tone of voice, that the reason we were going down to Virginia was because he wanted to talk to his older brother about investing in the studio.
—He’ll be cool, he said, half to himself, as we were driven through the Midtown Tunnel. He won’t want to be hanging around in the control room. He has no actual interest in music.
—He’d be like a partner?
—God no. At worst we’ll have to get him and his asshole friends comped at some clubs, so they can come on to chicks by telling them they’re in the music business.
In the five years we’d known each other, Carter had never invited me to his family home. There were other houses (in Aspen, on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, Paris) but his parents lived in this place for much of the year, in a DC exurb that was popular with wealthy government and business people. Carter occasionally disappeared there on summer weekends, hungover and grumbling, required to appear at some clan summit. I imagined an informal lunch, a lawyer dropping by. Documents to sign over coffee.
—The trouble with my family is there’s always some angle.
The tunnel lights flickered in the window.
—It’s the company. It poisons everything. You know. Different people have different levels of control. None of us can speak to each other, not really.
—What about you and Leonie?
—Especially me and her.
The car pulled up at the airport, and a doorman with an earpiece showed us into a modest terminal, furnished as blandly as a regional hotel lobby.
—Finally!
Carter didn’t enter Leonie’s embrace, raising a hand in limp benediction.
—In your usual fragile mood, I see, Carty.
—I wish you wouldn’t call me that.
—Seth, I’m so honored you’re here with us to celebrate our older brother’s surgical transformation into our father.
Leonie always used my name in a vaguely insulting way, as if testing it for impurities. She turned her eyes away and I felt as if my face had been seared on a grill. I tried to make bright conversation.
—So what’s the occasion? Is there a reason for this party?
Carter smiled at his sister.
—He is a great son.
—Such a great son.
—I mean really.
—No really.
—So great.
—A great son.
Neither of them answered my question. I didn’t mind. I always loved to hear them talk like that, finishing each other’s thoughts. I would have gone on expeditions, waited hours and days in a camouflaged hide.
—The rest of your party is here, said the pilot, who had been hovering in the background. This way.
Corny’s three friends had all been at Princeton with him and now they were in finance. That was about as far into their lives as I cared to go. They didn’t like the look of us either, and after introductions were made and interest faked, we all stood around, not making eye contact. Then the pilot escorted us to the plane and waited patiently as each of them took a picture of himself and set about posting it to social media. Hashtags #flyprivate #highlife #goodlife. No doubt their feeds also had pictures of their watches and bar bills.
Leonie handed a large straw hat to the hostess, who put it in a locker. We settled into the cavernous calf-leather seats.
#wheelsup
—What can I get you gentlemen to drink?
The hostess knew the answer before they said it. She opened the champagne and the bros clinked glasses, congratulating each other on whatever it was they thought they were experiencing.
—This is it!
—The shit!
—The shiznit.
Carter and Leonie hunched down instinctively in their seats. Leonie asked for a mineral water. Carter, one-upping the bros, rolled and lit a joint, which made the hostess instantly nervous. She conferred with the captain, who closed the cockpit door. Poker-faced, she produced an ashtray. I nursed a cold beer and looked at Leonie, at the sunlight streaming in through the Gulfstream’s window onto the contours of her face. Carter prodded her with his foot, to get her attention.
—You go first. Why are you here?
She rolled her eyes.
—Why get into it?
—Because I want to know.
—I’m just here to congratulate Cornelius on his important new job.
—Oh, sure.
—Get off my back. Anyway, what about you?
Carter gave a theatrical shrug and pursed his lips. We sat in irritated silence, listening to Corny’s friends talking about bottles and models. Once the champagne had kicked in, they began to pester the hostess.
—Got any beats?
—Now you talking!
—We should have some sounds all up in here!
Leonie turned round sharply.
—No beats. No music. No nothing. This isn’t some shitty beach party.
They had zero comeback. Not a squeak. For the rest of the short flight they sat and sullenly checked their phones.
We landed at a small airport somewhere outside Washington. The young bankers got into a waiting limo van, which Carter and Leonie ignored, stalking across the tarma
c to a car rental place, where they picked up a little Japanese convertible. I crouched in the bucket seat with the bags, holding Leonie’s delicate hat on my lap to protect it as we drove at high speed out into the suburbs, past farmhouses and white fences and flagpoles flying the Stars and Stripes. Carter switched on the sound system and the car was flooded by the last thing I wanted to hear. Believe I buy a graveyard of my own. I asked if we could have something else, but Carter pretended he couldn’t hear me. Believe I buy me a graveyard of my own. Put my enemies all down in the ground. Eventually after a few repeats, Leonie leaned over and switched to a DC hip hop station.
Gradually the fences got higher and the houses vanished from view. At last, Carter took a sharp corner onto a side road, then up a driveway barred by a wrought iron gate. He spoke into an intercom and the gate slid back to reveal a scene like an eighteenth-century print, a tree-lined avenue winding away towards an unseen house.
Gravel crunched beneath the wheels; solitude unfolded over us.
To my surprise, when it revealed itself, the house was on a modest scale, more like a summer place than the enormous mansion I’d been expecting. Old, though. Not old-style or “olde” but actually old, with white plaster columns along a wide porch and little windows set in the gables of a tiled roof. A vivid lawn ran downhill towards woodland that blocked all view of the outside world. The earth rolled pleasingly, as if landscaped solely to frame that view. I think the meaning of private property had never quite sunk in for me until then; its weight, its peculiar authority. Privacy was disconnection, the power to take a section of the world offline.
—It’s not that we own it, said Carter, as if reading my mind. We’re just maintaining the asset for future generations.
We parked the car, and a man in a golf cart came to take our bags down to the guesthouse, a two-story building screened by trees. As we ambled down towards the pool, I wondered idly what kind of electronic security measures were in place. Did motion sensors cover the green lawn? Were there cameras in the hydrangeas? Whatever they had was artfully disguised. The pool itself looked like a pond in a fairy tale, with lily pads and a weeping willow and great rounded mossy boulders on its banks. Around it, thirty or forty people were hanging out on chairs and loungers. Most were in their twenties and thirties, dressed in casual clothes and swimwear. A few of the younger women wore bikinis, posing and laughing to attract the attention of the men, who were mostly engaged with their phones and their drinks. Here and there I spotted older faces, a cluster of substantial sixty-somethings at a picnic table, two skinny middle-aged women stretched out on loungers like a pair of lizards, eyeing up the boys from behind their dark glasses. A large grill was tended by three sweating black chefs, wearing tunics and white gloves to turn over steaks and burgers. At the bar, they were serving juleps and iced tea. Two men were lining up tequila shots, watching the girls in the pool.
