Barry put the crown wheel back under the train bridge, his fingers trembling and his sleepless eyes dry from the strain of his all-night work party. At exactly 6:00 A.M., two elderly people, both in white tees and jeans, began driving their John Deere tractors in the light of the rising sun. They had headphones on and seemed like they were enjoying their solitary duties. These were the neighbors who hated him for his Kyoto-style pool pergola, which had blocked their Hudson views. Maybe it was time to give this place up, knock down the pergola, and move back to the city. Maybe it was time to get as much of Shiva as he could before his son went off to college.
The Tri-Compax’s movement had been reassembled. It was time to insert the balance cock into place, to see if the balance wheel would spin back and forth, giving life to the movement, reawakening the forgotten city. Barry held his breath. He gently inserted the balance cock into its proper slot. As soon as it found its place the wheel began to spin, back and forth, back and forth, at a ridiculously fast clip, as if guided by an impatient soul. The second hand started in its subdial. Then the minutes began to accrue, as soon would the hours, the days, the months, the waxing crescent, the waxing gibbous, the full moon.
Barry sat back and looked at his work. He had built something with his own hands. He had made a beautiful thing whole again. He was responsible for this. And he had not done it with feelings or ideas. He had given life with his fingers and his memory.
He would have the case back engraved TO SHIVA COHEN, FROM THE BIRD DADDY.
And so the great shadow lifted. And the sun rose over the estuary known as the Hudson with its flooded banks and the endangered estates perched low upon them.
And the Bird Daddy watched over all of it, satisfied with the remains of the world, before he, too, picked himself up, washed the oil and dirt off his steady hands, closed up his light-filled mausoleum, and flew home for good.
JUNE 6–DECEMBER 21, 2016
New York–Baltimore–Richmond–Atlanta–Jackson–El Paso–Ciudad Juárez–Phoenix–La Jolla–New York
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THERE ARE so many people to thank for their time and work on Lake Success that I feel like writing a companion volume dedicated to the efforts of these kind individuals. I’ll start with Susan Kamil, my editor, who spent countless hours on the phone with me eliminating commas, encircling clauses, and basically making sure that I had performed my daily CPR and breathed life into the many maddening characters in this book. Clio Seraphim was another great editor, not to mention winner of the “most awesome name in publishing” award. Other folks at the House of Random were terrific, including Gina Centrello, Avideh Bashirrad, Denise Cronin, Barbara Fillon, Ruth Liebmann, and Leigh Marchant. And huge thanks to Nicole Counts.
Denise Shannon has been my agent for sixteen years, an eternity in publishing. She’s as good as it gets agent-wise and has kept me in clothes, food, shelter, and now watches with sage advice and a minimum of fuss.
I owe a tremendous debt to my longtime readers, as well as members of the journalistic, legal, horological, culinary, and financial communities (some of the latter have wisely asked me not to list their names, but their contributions are appreciated). A partial list would include Ezra Cappell, Mary Childs, Doug Choi, Neil Chriss, Ben Clymer, Tishani Doshi, Joshua Ferris, Jack Forster, Rebecca Godfrey, David Grand, Cathy Park Hong, Binnie Kirshenbaum, Paul La Farge, Matt Levine, Suketu Mehta, Carlo Pizzati, Shilpa Prasad, Prateek Sarkar, Jonathan Shapiro, Anjali Vasudevan, Dario Villani, and Eric Wind.
Lastly, my thanks to Greyhound for existing and for spiriting me from one coast of our troubled land to the other with a strange, almost melancholy competence.
BY GARY SHTEYNGART
LAKE SUCCESS
LITTLE FAILURE
SUPER SAD TRUE LOVE STORY
ABSURDISTAN
THE RUSSIAN DEBUTANTE’S HANDBOOK
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
GARY SHTEYNGART is the author of the novels Super Sad True Love Story, which won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize and was selected as one of the best books of the year by over forty news journals and magazines around the world; Absurdistan, which was chosen as one of the ten best books of the year by The New York Times Book Review and Time magazine; and The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, which won the Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction and the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction. His memoir, Little Failure, was a top-ten New York Times bestseller; was named one of the best books of 2014 by more than forty-five publications, including The New Yorker and The New York Times Book Review; and was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle award. He was chosen as one of The New Yorker’s top twenty writers under forty as well as one of Granta’s best young American novelists. His fiction and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Granta, Esquire, GQ, Travel + Leisure, and many other publications. His work has been published in thirty countries.
garyshteyngart.com
Facebook.com/Shteyngart
Twitter: @Shteyngart
Instagram: @Shteyngart
Gary Shteyngart is available for select readings and lectures. To inquire about a possible appearance, please contact the Penguin Random House Speakers Bureau at [email protected] or visit www.prhspeakers.com.
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