Bleeding Edge

by Pynchon, Thomas

  She should have tumbled before this to the peculiar lightlessness in his eyes today, a deficit beyond secular fatigue. “Retirement” is a euphemism, and somehow she doubts he’s up here on any midlife cardio-fitness program. This is coming more and more to feel like a checklist of winding-up chores he’s running through before moving on.

  In which case, Maxine, enough with the date-night ditzing around, she can feel a cold draft through some failing seam in the fabric of the day, and there is no payoff here worth any further investment beyond, “Let’s see, you had how many, three? Gigaccinos, and then the bagels . . .”

  “Three bagels, plus the Denver omelet deluxe, you had the plain toasted . . .”

  Out on the sidewalk, neither can find a formula that will let them separate with any grace. After another half minute of silence, they end up nodding and turning in different directions.

  On the way home she passes the neighborhood firehouse. They’re in working on one of the trucks. Maxine recognizes a guy she sees all the time in the Fairway buying huge amounts of food. They smile and wave. Cute kid. Under different circumstances . . .

  Of which as usual there are not enough. She threads among the daily bunches of flowers on the sidewalk, which will be cleared in a while. The list of firefighters here who were lost on 11 September is kept back someplace more intimate, out of the public face, anybody wants to see it they can ask, but sometimes it shows more respect not to put such things out on a billboard.

  If it isn’t the pay, isn’t the glory, and sometimes you don’t come back, then what is it? What makes these guys choose to go in, work twenty-four hour shifts and then keep working, keep throwing themselves into those shaky ruins, torching through steel, bringing people to safety, recovering parts of others, ending up sick, beat up by nightmares, disrespected, dead?

  Whatever it is, would Windust even recognize it? How far has he journeyed from working realities? What sanctuary has he sought, and what, if any, given?

  • • •

  AS THANKSGIVING APPROACHES, the neighborhood, terrorist atrocities or whatever, reverts to its usual insufferable self, reaching a peak the night before Thanksgiving, when the streets and sidewalks are jammed solid with people who have come in to town to view The Blowing Up Of The Balloons for the Macy’s parade. Cops are everywhere, security is heavy. In front of every eatery, there are lines out the door. Places you can usually step inside, order a pizza to go, and wait no more than the time it takes to bake it are running at least an hour behind. Everybody out on the sidewalk is a pedestrian Mercedes, wallowing in entitlement—colliding, snarling, shoving ahead without even the hollow-to-begin-with local euphemism “Excuse me.”

  This evening Maxine finds herself abroad in this pageant of classic NYC behavior, having made the mistake of offering to spring for a turkey if Elaine will cook it, and compounded it by putting in an advance order at Crumirazzi, a gourmet shop down toward 72nd. She gets there after supper to find the place jammed tighter than a peak-period subway with anxious citizens gathering supplies for their Thanksgiving feasts, and the turkey line folded on itself eight or ten times and moving very, very slowly. People are already screaming at each other, and civility, like everything on the shelves, is in short supply.

  A serial line jumper has been making his way forward along the turkey line, a large white alpha male whose social skills, if any, are still in beta, intimidating people one by one out of his way.

  “Excuse me?” Shoving ahead of an elderly lady waiting in line just behind Maxine.

  “Line jumper here,” the lady yells, unslinging her shoulder bag and preparing to deploy it.

  “You must be from out of town,” Maxine addressing the offender, “here in New York, see, the way you’re acting? It’s considered a felony.”

  “I’m in a hurry, bitch, so back off, unless you want to settle this outside?”

  “Aw. After all your hard work getting this far? Tell you what, you go out and wait for me, OK? I won’t be too long, promise.”

  Shifting to indignation, “I have a houseful of children to feed—” but he’s interrupted by a voice someplace over by the loading dock hollering, “Hey asshole!” and here cannonballing over the heads of the crowd comes a frozen turkey, hits the bothersome yup square in the head, knocking him flat and bouncing off his head into the hands of Maxine, who stands blinking at it like Bette Davis at some baby with whom she must unexpectedly share the frame. She hands the object to the lady behind her. “This is yours, I guess.”

  “What, after it touched him? thanks anyway.”

  “I’ll take it,” sez the guy behind her.

  As the line creeps forward, everybody makes sure to step on, not over, the fallen line jumper.

  “Nice to see the ol’ town gettin back to normal, ain’t it.” A familiar voice.

  “Rocky, what are you doing over in this neck of the woods?”

  “It’s Cornelia, she can’t get through Thanksgiving without this one brand of stuffing mix she grew up with, Dean & DeLuca ran out of it and Crumirazzi’s is the only other place in NYC.”

  Maxine squints at the giant plastic sack he’s carrying. “‘Squanto’s Choice, Authentic Old-Tyme WASP Recipe.’”

  “Uses antique white bread.”

  “‘Antique’ . . .”

  “Wonder Bread from back before they started sellin it sliced?”

  “That’s seventy years, Rocky, it doesn’t get moldy?”

  “It gets hard as cement. They have to take jackhammers and break it up. Gives it that extra something. Why are you waiting in this line, I took you for more of a Swift Butterball person.”

  “Thought I’d try and help my mom out. Wrong as usual. Look at this fuckin zoo. Karmic crime scene. You think it won’t find its way into the food?”

  “Family all gettin together this year, huh?”

  “You’ll be seeing it in the Post. ‘Among those being held for observation . . .’”

  “Hey, your friend from Montreal? That Felix guy with the antizapper? We’re givin him some bridge money, Spud Loiterman has a sixth sense, he says go.”

  “So you want to hire me now, or wait till Felix is what Bobby Darin calls ‘beyond the sea’?”

  “Yeah, OK, he’s working a hustle, so what, I was like that once, I can relate, and anyway who am I to second-guess the Dean Martin of Dissonance?”

  35

  As things turn out, Thanksgiving is not so horrible after all. Probably 11 September has something to do with it. There is an empty space set seder fashion at the table, not for the prophet Elijah but for one or any of the unknown souls whom prophecy failed that day. The sound ambience is subdued, edgeless. Ernie and the boys settle in in front of the annual Star Wars marathon, Horst and Avi talk sports, smells of cooking fill the rooms, Elaine glides in and out of dining room, pantry, and kitchen, a one-woman army of woodwork-dwelling elves, Maxine and Brooke by the end of the afternoon have reached zinger parity with no lethal weapons appearing, the food is, as so often with Elaine, a form of time travel, the turkey mercifully unjinxed despite its Crumirazzi origins, the pastries somehow escaping Brooke’s fatality for the overelaborate and even including what Otis in a rave review calls a normal pumpkin pie. Ernie spares everybody a speech and only gestures at the empty chair with a glass of apple cider. “Everybody who should’ve been celebrating today but isn’t.”

  As they’re leaving, Avi draws Maxine aside. “Your office—is there some kind of a back entrance?”

  “You want to drop by without anybody seeing you. Maybe . . . should we do breakfast someplace?”

  “Um . . .”

  “Too public, OK, here’s what you do, go around the corner, there’s a delivery gate that’s usually open, go in the courtyard, bear to the right, you’ll see a door painted with red lead, the service elevator’s right inside, I’m on three. Call first.”

  • • •

  AVI COMES CREEPING up to the office in disguise, jeans way too skinny for him, T-shirt reading ALL YOUR B
ASE ARE BELONG TO US, a fuzzy white Kangol 504 at which Daytona does a triple take, pretending to adjust her glasses. “Thought it was Sam the King of Cool in here, walkin amongst us. Clients is gettin way too hip for my ass, Miz Maxine!”

  “You never met my brother-in-law?” Avi takes off his hat, and there’s his yarmulke. The two shake hands warily.

  “I’ll just whup up a mess of coffee, then, shall I.”

  “Good timing, Avi, the danish guy was just here a minute ago.”

  “Been meaning to ask, where in this neighborhood anymore? We come back to the city, now the Royale on 72nd is gone.”

  “Tell me. We have to get these schlepped up from 23rd Street. Sit, please, here, coffee, thanks, Daytona.”

  “Only got a minute, have to go punch in. I’m supposed to pass on a message to you.”

  “From the Ice Man himself, I bet. Neither of you could just phone?”

  “Well, it’s not only that. Something weird I need to ask you about, also.”

  “If your boss’s message is stop looking into the audit trails at hashslingrz, consider it done, that ticket’s been dormant really since September 11th.”

  “I think he has a job for you.”

  “Respectfully decline.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Everybody’s different, Avi, maybe I’ve worked for a lowlife or two over the years, but this Ice specimen, I hope you guys haven’t become dear friends, he’s how shall I put it—”

  “He speaks highly of you also.”

  “So what kind of a gig could he be offering me—get run over by a truck?”

  “He thinks he’s being ripped off by persons unknown, inside the company.”

  “Oh, please. And needs an ex-CFE to make that story look legit? Let you in on a big secret, Avi, these persons unknown happen to be Ice himself, along with the missus possibly duked in, being you’ll recall company comptroller? Sorry to be the bearer, but Ice for months, maybe years, has been robbing his own shop blind.”

  “Gabriel Ice is . . . embezzling?”

  “Yes contemptible enough, but now he’s whining about Dishonest Employees? oldest con in the book, he wants to pin it on some poor zhlub who can’t afford a good enough lawyer. My diagnosis? Classic fraud, your employer is a fraudster. That’s ten billable seconds, I’ll send an invoice.”

  “He’s under investigation? He’ll be charged?” So plaintive that Maxine finally reaches over and pats her brother-in-law on the shoulder.

  “Nobody’s about to go forensic with it, maybe some curiosity at federal level, but Ice has his own friends down there, likely at some point they’ll all be dealing in secret and nothing’ll ever get as far as the courts or outside the Beltway. You and me, the taxpayer, will of course end up a tiny percent more impoverished, but who gives a shit about us. Your job is safe, don’t worry.”

  “My job. Well, that’s the other thing.”

  “Ooh, somebody’s not happy?” in a voice she likes to use in the street with screaming toddlers she hasn’t necessarily been introduced to.

  “No, and I’m not Dopey or Doc either. If this city was a nuthouse, hashslingrz would be the paranoid ward—help, help, the enemy, look, they’re out there, they’re all around us! Like being back in Israel on a bad day.”

  “And as seen from inside your workplace, this business-world analogy to being surrounded on all sides by criminally insane Arabs would be . . .”

  An uncoordinated, slightly desperate shrug. “Whoever it is, it’s no delusion, somebody’s actively engaged, mystery stalkers, hacking into our networks, social-engineering us at bars.”

  “OK, setting aside what could be a, forgive me, deliberate company policy of keeping all the employees paranoid . . . How about Brooke, any reports there of stalking, molestation, lapses of taste above and beyond the usual in this town?”

  “There’s these two guys.”

  “Uh-oh.” Hoping this time her intuition circuit board really is on the fritz, “A sort of Russian hip-hop act?”

  “Funny you should mention.”

  Pizdets. “Listen, if it’s who I think, they’re probably not into inflicting harm.”

  “‘Probably.’”

  “Can’t give you a figure, but I can make a phone call. Let me see what’s going on, meantime tell Brooke not to worry.”

  “Actually, I haven’t been sharing any of this with her.”

  “Such a mensch, Avi, always thinking of her stress level, lucky her.”

  “Well, not exactly . . . the nondisclosure agreement says no wives?”

  As he’s going out, Daytona flashes her nails. “Loved you in Pulp Fiction, baby. That Bible quote? Mm-hmmm!”

  • • •

  ABOUT 5:00 A.M. MAXINE WAKES from one of those annoying recursive subnightmares, this time something about Igor and an oversize bottle of vodka, named after a Lithuanian basketball player, which he keeps trying to introduce her to as if it’s a person. She slips out of bed and goes into the kitchen, where she finds Driscoll and Eric sharing their usual breakfast, a bottle of Mountain Dew with two straws in it. “Been meaning to mention this,” Driscoll begins, and gazing at each other like two country singers at a benefit, she and Eric start to sing the old Jeffersons sitcom theme, “Movin on out.”

  “Wait. Not ‘to the East Side.’”

  “Williamsburg,” Eric sez, “actually.”

  “It’s all goin over to Brooklyn. Feels like we’re the last of the old-time Alley folks.”

  “Hope it’s nothing we’ve done.”

  “Isn’t you guys, it’s Manhattan in general,” Driscoll explains. “Not like it used to be, maybe you’ve noticed.”

  “Greed situation,” Eric amplifies. “You’d think when the towers came down it would’ve been a reset button for the city, the real-estate business, Wall Street, a chance for it all to start over clean. Instead lookit them, worse than before.”

  Around them, the City That Doesn’t Sleep is beginning to not sleep even more. Lights come on in windows across the street. Drunks out too long after closing time scream in discontent. Down the block a car alarm starts in with a medley of attention signals. Over in the flanking avenues, heavy machinery roars into standby mode, preparing to move into position beneath the windows of citizens incautious enough to still be in bed. Birds too clueless or stubborn to get out of town before the winter now creeping upon the city begin discussing why they’re not in avian therapy yet.

  Maxine, busy with the coffee routine, observes her own migratory birds with regret. “So in Brooklyn will you guys be living together or separately?”

  “True,” reply Eric and Driscoll in unison.

  Maxine regards the ceiling briefly.

  “Sorry. Nonexclusive ‘or.’”

  “Geek thing,” Driscoll explains.

  • • •

  THERE HAVE ALREADY BEEN a number of panicked, not to mention abusive, calls from Windust by the time Maxine shows up at work. Daytona is strangely amused.

  “Sorry you had to deal with that . . . he didn’t get racial, I hope.”

  “Maybe not him, but . . .”

  “Oh, Daytona.” Maxine takes the next one. Windust certainly seems perturbed. “Calm down, you’re blowing out my speakerphone here.”

  “That fucking destructive irresponsibile bitch, what does she think she’s doing? Does she know how many people she’s just put at risk?”

  “‘She’ being . . .”

  “You know what I’m talking about, goddamn it, Maxine, did you have anything to do with this?”

  “With . . .” She can’t help it, it does her spirit good to see him this way. Eventually she gets him to splutter it out. Seems March Kelleher has finally gotten around to posting Reg’s footage from The Deseret roof on the Internet. Well, thanks for the heads-up, March, though it is about time.

  “Let me just look, here.”

  March—Maxine can imagine with what kind of a mischievous glint—trying to maintain a class-act approach, “Many of us need
the comfort of a simple story line with Islamic villains, and co-enablers like the Newspaper of Record are delighted to help. Poor, poor America, why do these evil foreigners hate us, must be all this freedom of ours, and how twisted is that, to hate freedom? Really thinking about all those buildable lots where the demolition’s already been done. If you’re interested in counternarratives, however, click on this link to the video of a Stinger crew on a Manhattan rooftop. Check out theories and countertheories. Contribute your own.”

  No invitation needed, really. The Internet has erupted into a Mardi Gras for paranoids and trolls, a pandemonium of commentary there may not be time in the projected age of the universe to read all the way through, even with deletions for violating protocol, plus home videos and audio tracks including a lilting sound bite from Deseret spokesman Seamus O’Vowtey, “Our buildin security’s the best in the city. This has to be an inside job, likely somethin to do with certain o’ these tenants.”

  “Wow, bummer,” Maxine somewhat insincerely.

  “That doesn’t begin to—”

  “No I mean The Deseret, it took me years to get in their front gate, and here’s a whole missile crew just moseys on in and up to the roof.”

  “No use telling her to take the video down, I imagine?”

  “There’s already a million copies out there.”

  “Shit’s hit the fan down here. I’ve come in for an episode of inconvenience myself, effectively I’m a fugitive now, need to sneak in and out of my own house, last I heard from Dotty was back in the middle of the night, reporting unmarked vans out in front, now she’s gone totally offline and who knows when I’ll see her—”