The Imperfectionists: A Novel

by Tom Rachman

  What an education! He could talk about absolutely any period, and in such a captivating way. Though he didn't fancy contemporary art--he had a bee in his bonnet about Pollock and just about everyone who came after that. I used to ask him about artists, and he'd respond with the exhibition, as in, 'Mr. Deveen, what do you think of Klee?' To which I'd get: 'The Collections of Sir Edward and Lady Hulton at the Tate in 1957--top shelf.' I'd bring down the catalog and he'd flip through, explaining it all, sipping his Irish whiskey with milk, which I had to keep warming on the stove. (It's harder heating milk than you think, Schop--it keeps sticking to the bloody pot.) That smell, though--I'll never forget it.

  And the same chipped mug. He used to say, 'Don't destroy it, I beg you!' Had the finest baritone voice, too. Did radio plays for BBC Manchester in his day, and you could hear why. Ah, well," Oliver says. "It was the whiskey, I think. Not anything else. He wasn't. It wasn't. I mean, I don't condemn him. He was alone and ... Yes, and the whiskey. Not his fault. Well, anyway, enough fussing."

  Oliver asks the housekeepers to make involtini di vitello for dinner. He isn't crazy about the dish, but his wagging companion is an avid consumer. Schopenhauer eats almost all of it--too much, it turns out, for he suffers an upset stomach. Oliver plays nursemaid for the next twenty-four hours, cleaning up puddles of dog vomit.

  Once the worst is over, he reads aloud from The Hound of the Baskervilles as the Hound of the Aventine dozes at his hip. Oliver knows this book so well that "reading" is hardly the word--he wanders about in it, renews old acquaintances, allows Dr. Watson's lank thread to reel him gently forward. This evening, however, the pages remain dry and yellow. He raises Schopenhauer's chin.

  "You must get well!" he says. "You must be better soon!" He pulls Schopenhauer nearer. "I've spent too much time as a nursemaid already." He strokes the dog. "And I'm awful at it. When I nursed Boyd, I was constantly bothering him. I tried not to, but I couldn't help it. He used to tell me, 'You must be thrilled that I'm sick--you can use me as an excuse to drop out of Yale. You'll never have to graduate now.' But I thought he'd wanted me home to look after him. I mean, I thought so. I sometimes wonder if he called me back home to test me--to see if I'd comply. And, being such a softie, I did, of course, and he hated that. He used to say, Women comply, men defy.' Ah, well," Oliver says.

  "And, I mean, was I really going to end up as an academic? Me, lecturing? Can't see it. I hope I was useful to him. He certainly adored you, my little friend! Do you remember my father? He liked to throw that squeaky rubber rat of yours. Do you remember him throwing it down the lawn for you in Atlanta? And you'd just sit there, doing nothing, staring at the thing with such disdain." Oliver smiles. "Oh, come on--you know exactly the look I'm talking about. And my father--hardly a man to fetch objects--going down the garden with his cane, picking up your silly rat, throwing it again. And you sitting there, yawning!"

  The phone rings, and Kathleen leaves another message: she has set a date for the staff meeting and Oliver must address the employees about the Ott Group's plans.

  "What plans?" Oliver asks Schopenhauer.

  Vaughn calls that evening, and Oliver picks up this time--if there are plans, perhaps he should be apprised.

  "So," Vaughn asks, "are we going to sell that house?"

  "Which

  house?"

  "The house you're living in."

  "Grandpa's?

  What

  for?"

  "Well, you are coming back, I assume."

  "What are you talking about, Vaughn?"

  "Ollie, you do know we're putting the paper out of its misery, right? Abbey recommended that we shut it. How can you not know this, Ollie? What are you doing out there?"

  "But why close it?"

  "Money, basically. Maybe if we'd got more layoffs a few months back we could've dragged it out. But they fought us on everything--all they agreed to in the end was one job cut from editorial. And they're expecting capital infusions after that? It's crazy. We kept Kathleen going for a while, dangling the possibility of fresh investment.

  But what's the point? You guys don't even have a website. How can you expect revenue without a Web presence? We could have ditched Kathleen, I guess. But let's be honest: the paper is a lemon. Time to move on."

  "Don't we have enough money to keep it going?"

  "Sure we do," Vaughn responds. "We have enough money because we make a habit of not keeping shit going that's a lemon."

  "Oh."

  "I want you at that staff meeting. Kathleen is adamant about it. And we need to keep her happy for now--we don't want bad publicity, okay?"

  "What do they want me there for?"

  "We need an Ott rep on-site. No way out of this one, Ollie."

  The morning of the meeting, Oliver asks Schopenhauer, "If they come at me as a mob, will you bite them?" He tickles the dog. "You wouldn't, would you--you'd be useless. Come on."

  They walk all the way there, up Via del Teatro di Marcello, through Piazza Campitelli, along Corso Vittorio, Oliver muttering to Schopenhauer as they go: "I mean, we all know that I don't understand this sort of thing. The rest of the family does. But I seem to be missing it somehow. Missing the chromosome for it. The cleverness gene. I'm faulty. So here's my question, Schop: can I be blamed for my defects? I mean, are my faults my fault?" The dog glances up at him. "Don't give me that condescending look,"

  Oliver says. "What have you ever done with your life that's so spectacular?"

  They arrive at the scribble-gray building that has housed the paper for a half century. Employees smoke industriously before the towering oak door. Oliver hurries past them all, through the hinged portal, down the frayed burgundy runner to the elevator cage. Upstairs, he learns that Kathleen and Abbey have gone out. Thankfully, most of the editorial staffers are occupied piecing together copy on a shooting at Virginia Tech. But a few employees attempt to buttonhole Oliver about "the big announcement" they have been promised. Is it good news? Sinkingly, he realizes that they don't know yet. He touches his cold hands to Schopenhauer's coat for warmth. The dog licks them.

  Kathleen returns, escorts him to her office, and says he will have to run the meeting alone. Abbey joins them and seconds Kathleen's position: he will get no help.

  "But I don't know anyone here," he says.

  "I'll introduce you," Kathleen replies.

  "And I don't know anything about the media industry."

  "Maybe you should have learned something," she says. "You've been here two years."

  They check the clock: a few minutes until the meeting.

  "I'm really sorry," he says, "about this."

  Kathleen scoffs. "Sorry? Come on--you could have averted this. You've been totally indifferent."

  "No, no, I'm not."

  "Oh, come on--you've made no effort here. The paper has been going all these years, and it's ending with you in charge. Your grandfather started this place. Doesn't that bother you? He wanted to build a newspaper for the world. Now you're closing it."

  "But I'm totally useless at this sort of thing--they shouldn't have given me the job in the first place."

  "Yeah, but they did, Oliver. They did. You were it."

  "But I'm--I'm faulty, if you know what I mean. I don't work right." He laughs nervously, sweeping hair from his spotty forehead, still staring down at Schopenhauer, not once looking up at the women. "I lack the right chromosome or something."

  "Cut it out."

  "We should probably go in there," Abbey says.

  Oliver moves toward the door, but Kathleen halts him with her forefinger. "You're not bringing the dog in."

  "For moral support, I thought."

  "Absolutely not. Show some respect."

  Oliver ties Schopenhauer's leash around a leg of Kathleen's desk and strokes his friend quickly. "Wish me luck." He closes the door after himself and follows Kathleen and Abbey into the newsroom.

  They lead him to a central position and retreat several paces. The staffers gather bef
ore him. How dirty the carpeting is, he notes. Whispers emanate from the crowd. He fills a plastic cup from the watercooler.

  "We should probably start," Kathleen says.

  He offers a wobbly smile.

  "You know everybody here?" Kathleen asks.

  "I think some faces might be familiar," he says, looking at none. He leans in to shake hands, murmuring, "Thank you ... thanks ... hi ... thanks for coming."

  Most of the paper's employees have worked here for years. They married based on their earning prospects, took out mortgages because of this place, started families knowing that the paper would fund their children's lives. If this place folds, they're ruined. All these years, they have vilified the paper, but now it's threatening to quit them, they're desperately in love with it again.

  "Everyone here?" Oliver asks. He speaks extemporaneously for a minute, then loses his nerve and grabs for a copy of the Ott board's confidential report on the paper. As he scans its pages, he glances imploringly in Kathleen's direction. She looks away. He clears his throat and locates a relevant passage. He reads it aloud, adding, "That's what the board decided." He clears his throat again. "I'm really sorry."

  The room is silent.

  "I don't know what else to say."

  A question rips from the back of the room. The crowd turns, makes a gap. The questioner is the head technician, a broad-shouldered American who appears even taller because he happens to be wearing Rollerblades that day. "What the fuck is this?" he says.

  "In plain English, tell us what's happening."

  Oliver stammers out a few words, but the man interrupts: "Stop bullshitting us, man."

  "I'm not. I'm trying to be clear. I think that--"

  Ruby Zaga breaks in: "So, the Ott Group is pulling the plug? Is that what you're saying?"

  "I'm afraid that's how I read it," Oliver answers. "I'm incredibly, incredibly sorry.

  I know that's inadequate. I do feel terrible about this, if that makes you feel any better."

  "No, it doesn't actually," the head technician says. "And what the hell do you mean, 'That's how I read it'? Read what? You guys wrote it. Don't give me that, man.

  Don't give me that."

  "I didn't write it. The board wrote it."

  "Aren't you part of the board?"

  "Yes, but I wasn't at this meeting."

  "Well, why didn't you go?"

  Someone else mutters, "Who appointed this guy publisher?"

  "The report says," Oliver continues, "that ... that it's a question of the business environment. It's not solely the paper--it's the whole of the media. I think. I mean. All I know is what's written in the report."

  "Bullshit."

  Oliver turns to Kathleen and Abbey.

  "Wait a second," Herman Cohen says. "Before we all fly off the handle here, is there something that can be worked out? I'd like to know how final this decision is."

  The head technician ignores this and clomps in his Rollerblades closer to Oliver.

  "You're an asshole, man."

  The situation teeters on the edge of violence.

  Oliver steps back. "I ... I don't know what to say."

  The technician storms out, taking a dozen furious employees with him.

  "My kids are at private school," Clint Oakley says. "How am I supposed to pay the fees now? What are they supposed to do?"

  "Is the Ott Group offering buyouts?" Hardy Benjamin asks.

  "I don't know," Oliver says.

  "Not to be blunt," Arthur Gopal interjects, "but what's the purpose of this meeting if you're not able to tell us anything?"

  "Would it be possible to talk to someone who can give us a bit more information?" Craig Menzies asks. "Kathleen? Abbey?"

  Abbey steps forward. "Mr. Ott is the only person authorized to speak on behalf of the Ott Group." She steps back.

  More enraged employees walk out.

  "How long have you known this was coming?" someone asks.

  "I just found out," Oliver answers.

  Several staffers roar with incredulity.

  "Total waste of time," someone says.

  More people leave.

  "Maybe if the Ott Group had tried investing in the paper at some point instead of running this place into the ground, we wouldn't be in this mess."

  Oliver leans toward Kathleen. "What do I do?" he whispers. "I think this is getting out of hand. Should we end the meeting?"

  "That's your call."

  He turns back to the crowd, though it's not much of a crowd any longer. Only a few people stand before him. In various corners of the newsroom, employees commiserate, make unauthorized long-distance calls, put on their coats to leave.

  "I'm incredibly sorry," Oliver says. "I keep repeating that, but I don't know what else to say. I'm going to try to get answers to all your questions."

  "Could you bring in someone who actually knows something?"

  "Yes," he says, nodding at the floor. "Yes. I'll try to get a proper person to come and talk to you."

  Even Kathleen and Abbey have gone. It is him alone now, before the last few bewildered staffers. "Uhm, bye," he says.

  He is lost for a moment, then stumbles toward Kathleen's office. But midway there he pauses. He turns his head, sweeps the hair from over his ears.

  A noise is coming from down there.

  Oliver hurries into her office. Abbey and Kathleen are kneeling on the floor.

  Between the two women is Schopenhauer, looking not at Oliver but at the wall, in the direction that someone has twisted his neck.

  The dog wheezes, his jaw hangs limply, he emits a curious sound. He cannot seem to draw a breath: his lungs expand partly, he winces, his chest falls. He is still lashed to the leg of the desk and Kathleen yanks at the leash. "Damn it!" She pulls the knot apart finally, but to no useful end: Schopenhauer has stopped moving. "Damn it,"

  she repeats. She slaps the leg of the desk. "Damn."

  "What happened?" Oliver asks. "I don't understand what happened."

  "Someone came in, I think," Kathleen says, "while we all were out there."

  But Oliver didn't mean that--he meant, What just happened? He meant, Why is Schopenhauer so quiet?

  "This is sick," Abbey says. "Completely sick. And it was someone who works here. Did you notice who left the meeting early?"

  "Almost everyone left early," Kathleen replies.

  Abbey says, "I'm really sorry, Oliver."

  "Extremely sorry," Kathleen says.

  "Is he badly hurt?" Oliver asks.

  Neither woman responds.

  "We have to call the police," Abbey says.

  "Don't, please," Oliver says.

  "We have to find who did this."

  "I'm going to take him now. Let's not," he says, "let's not blame people. I don't want to know who did it. They were all angry with me."

  "That doesn't make it okay. This is disgusting."

  "It's not anybody's fault," he says.

  "Yes, it is," Kathleen insists.

  Oliver slides his arms under Schopenhauer's limp body and, with a grunt, lifts the animal. "He always weighs more than I think."

  He carries the dog across the newsroom, tugs open the elevator cage with his baby finger and enters, straining for the ground-floor button. But he cannot reach it and must put Schopenhauer down. "Good boy," he says, lowering his friend to the floor. "Good boy." He presses the button and stares up at the ceiling. The elevator rattles for a moment, then descends.

  2007. CORSO VITTORIO, ROME

  The final days of the paper were fraught. Some employees stopped turning up.

  Others looted computer equipment in lieu of future wages. A few drank openly, missed deadlines, even scuffled in the newsroom. Then the last day arrived, ended, and they were all, abruptly, free.

  Some had jobs lined up, but many did not. A few planned to take time off. Others aimed to get out of journalism altogether. Maybe this is a blessing in disguise, they said, though it was hard to say how.