The Twenty-Seventh City (Bestselling Backlist)

by Jonathan Franzen

  Singh rolled a chair up against Jammu’s desk, sat down, and looked across the papers at her. “Not at all. Never met him. He has no connection with us—‘no taint.’ Luisa knew him from school. It came as a rude shock, because I’d spent an entire week setting her up to meet me—”

  “For you to seduce.”

  “Correct.”

  “Good.” Jammu liked to see her employees planning in accordance with their capacities. Singh was seductive, and she was glad he knew enough to exploit it.

  “I lured her to a bar, and she came alone, which was gratifying. Unfortunately I’d stepped into the bathroom when she arrived. When I came out she was talking to Thompson. They stuck together. I had no chance. And forty-eight hours later they—”

  “Were having intercourse, yes. Why did you step into the bathroom?”

  “It was an error.”

  Interesting. Singh didn’t usually make errors like that. He had bladder control. “I ask again,” Jammu said. “Who’s Thompson?”

  “A youth. Unrelated to us, apart from the fact that I got him his photo job.”

  “When?”

  “The same night they met.”

  “Why?”

  “When a man wins a million dollars, he kisses the first person he sees.”

  “So I take it you weren’t opposed to their liaison.”

  Singh smiled. “I wasn’t looking forward to the mechanics. Your dictum, Chief. Nothing fancy. An affair with a local boy was clearly preferable. A matter of verisimilitude. If I take credit for the results, it’s only because I did get her to the bar. And she met him there.”

  “If you didn’t know him before that night, how did you know he had pictures to sell the Post?”

  “I eavesdropped. Thompson was whining about it. I left, confirmed the story at the Post, and—forged ahead.”

  “Amazingly quick thinking. Will she go home again?”

  “Judge for yourself. To me it sounded as if she was making plans for an extended stay.”

  “Are there precedents for this? Sociologically?”

  “Yes and no. No, it isn’t normal for ‘better-class’ girls, or boys, to move out of their homes while they’re still in high school. Certainly Probst thinks it’s abnormal. On the other hand, Barbara is at pains to accept it. Her niece—Ripley’s daughter—moved out at age fifteen. She had a clinical problem, of course,” Singh added, “but there is a precedent in the family.”

  “She’ll be homesick. She’ll be back in a week.”

  “I agree it’s difficult to imagine her missing the ‘holidays.’ But she may very well hold out until then. She has her pride. She’s been away before, in France. I’d guess a month. Thirty days. That gives us time.”

  “Time for what?”

  “Well, assuming that the State is developing—”

  “You’ve given me no evidence to suggest that it is.”

  “Well, naturally, the signs are small. But I assume they’re significant, what with Probst having lost both his dog and his daughter. As early as October twenty-four—but not before, not in the September recordings—I picked up a line like this from Barbara: What’s wrong with you? You haven’t heard a word I’ve said.”

  “From Barbara,” Jammu repeated grimly.

  “And he’s begun to sermonize with Luisa. It sounds a bit mad when he does it—speaks of ‘opportunity’ and ‘self-discipline.’ Masterpieces of irrelevance. He isn’t paying attention. Other men talk about him—they even set him up in opposition to you, as if already there are, de facto, two camps, yours and his. And I listen to him every day, I listen for an awareness of what you’re doing to the city, for a leaning one way or the other, any glimmering of historical consciousness—and there’s nothing. Zero. This could be last year, or the year before that. Your name simply isn’t spoken, except to tell someone else to forget about you. It isn’t unreasonable to believe we’re getting results.”

  Jammu gave Singh a long, hard look. “And how, exactly, are you planning to get him to start working for us? What is the next step you plan to take?”

  “We should go for the kill right away,” Singh replied. “Someone from your syndicate should approach him. Mayor Wesley, for example. Sometime before Luisa gets homesick—sometime in the next month—Wesley should hit Probst hard. To begin with, Probst is in trouble with Westhaven. Wesley can play on this, if you think he’s capable. He should press urban rejuvenation, the forces that lead to new growth, new solidarity. But keep your name out of it, and nothing explicit about the city-county merger either. Let Probst draw that conclusion himself.”

  “So basically you’re saying that Probst is in the State and will be susceptible to our suggestions.”

  “Basically, yes. It’s a situation waiting for him to walk into. He’s been sleeping on a train. You wake him up, tell him he’s in Warsaw. He’ll start speaking Polish.”

  “Assuming he knows the language.” Jammu twisted in her chair to see the wall clock. It was noon. “Prepare an abstract,” she said. “I’m seeing Wesley at three so I’ll need it by two. Not that I’m certain your plan is even close to being acceptable.” She fed some notes to her shredder, by way of illustration. “You say Probst hardly knows my name. What do you expect me to do, congratulate you for that? You say he’s vague and irrelevant when he talks to his daughter. To me it sounds like he’s an ordinary father. You say that killing his dog and making his daughter run away from home hasn’t bothered him. Well? Perhaps he’s a thick-skinned individual. You say he lacks historical consciousness. May I ask what St. Louisan doesn’t? What you have painted, Singh, is a portrait of a man in excellent mental health.”

  Singh had assumed an expression of dignified deafness that was reminiscent of Karam Bhandari. Jammu went on.

  “You say Probst isn’t on good terms with Barbara. But maybe that’s only on the surface. She sounds like she still must be a force. Maybe she pays attention for him. She sounds like a bad person for him to rely on. I want him hearing my voice, the voice of what I’m doing. Not hers.”

  “Go see him.”

  “No time. Not yet. I’d need a pretext.”

  “Well.” From his shirt pocket Singh produced an unusually fat-looking clove cigarette. He inspected it and put it back. “If Probst is by some chance not yet in the State, there’s more that can be done. I can step in and get Barbara any time. The groundwork is laid. But I’d prefer to hold off until we’ve seen how Probst reacts to Wesley. I recommend that you brief Wesley soon, in case Probst comes to see him of his own accord. Then if he hasn’t by the fourteenth, you can ask Wesley to approach him after Municipal Growth.”

  “All right.” Jammu rose from her chair. “Bring me an abstract at home, by two.”

  Barbara returned to pulling tendons with the pliers. In the stumps of the turkey’s legs there were tiny white eyes. She pressed down on the pink tissue surrounding one of them, worked the pliers into an acceptable grip, and began to tug. The phone rang. She lost her grip.

  “You son of a bitch.”

  She took hold of the tendon again and tugged hard as the phone rang a second and third time.

  “If that’s Audrey…”

  Abruptly the tendon ripped loose and slithered out, lavender and rigid like a hard-on, and trailing a maroon feather of flesh. She grabbed a dishtowel, a clean one, and rubbed the grease off her hands. She took the phone.

  “Hello,” she said.

  There was a silence, and she knew right away who it was.

  “Oh baby, hi,” she said. “Where are you?”

  “I’m at Duane’s.” The voice was very small.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes.” The volume surged, as if the line had cleared. “YES. HOW ARE YOU?”

  “We’re fine. Daddy just left for the football game. I’m putting together the turkey. It’s a big one. You and Duane want to come over?”

  After a silence, Luisa said, “No.” Her throat clicked.

  “That’s OK, you don’t have
to. I just thought—was I that horrible to you?”

  “Doe.” There was a long sniff. “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry, then. I’m truly sorry. Will you forgive me sometime?” Barbara listened to her daughter cry. “Oh baby, what? Do you want me to come over? I can come right over.”

  “Doe.”

  “No, OK. You know I worry about you.”

  The turkey, which had been propped against the faucet, slid with a slap to the bottom of the sink.

  “Is Duane making you a nice dinner?”

  “Yes. A chicken. He’s stuffing it.” Luisa swallowed. “In the kitchen.”

  “We had a really nice talk last night—”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “He was really charming, I’d love to meet him sometime. I had—”

  “I’ll call you back, OK?”

  The line went dead.

  Barbara looked around as if awakening, and it was morning, very bright. She hoisted the turkey back up onto its rubbery wings and found another tendon. The phone rang.

  “Can I come and get some clothes tomorrow?”

  Since parking promised to be a problem, Probst was walking to the football game. From the chimneys of houses on Baker Avenue, smoke rose a few feet and hooked down, as it cooled, to collect in bluish pools above the lawns. There was no light inside the little stores on Big Bend Boulevard—Porter Paints, Kaegel Drug, the sci-fi bookshop—to compete with the bright sunshine on their windows, but Schnucks, the supermarket, was still doing business. Probst stopped in to buy the pint of heavy cream that Barbara had asked for. Then he joined the stream of fans issuing from the bowels of Webster Groves.

  There was a throng at the gates of Moss Field. The Visitors bleachers were packed with red-clad Pioneer fans, and the home stands, much larger, were also nearly full. Under the press box sat the Webster Groves Marching Statesmen, their brass bells and silver keys gleaming in the sun. Probst found a cozy seat near the south end of the stands, by the southern end zone, three rows from the top. To his right was a group of girls in tattered blue jeans, smoking cigarettes, and to his left was a rosy-cheeked couple in their forties, wearing orange. He felt anonymous and secure.

  “Are you for Webster?” asked the woman on his left. Mrs. Orange.

  “Yes.” Probst smiled courteously.

  “So are we.”

  He nodded in a manner indicating that he hadn’t come to the game to talk with strangers, and let the bag with the heavy cream in it slide between his hands and knees to the tier of concrete on which the bench rested. Up at the doors to the swimming pool locker rooms, where the teams were suiting up, students swarmed purposefully, as if some quality item were being handed out for free inside. Down by the field the Statesmen cheerleaders, a dozen girls in ivory-colored skirts and sweaters, began a cheer:

  The Pi - o - neers

  Think they’re real - ly tall,

  But the bigger they are,

  The harder they fall.

  Probst scanned the faces around him in search of Luisa, but he was certain she wasn’t here. He wondered if she might be at the Washington U. game, sitting with Duane Thompson. Barbara made much of the fact that Duane went to Washington U.; she liked to inflate the worth of whichever boy Luisa happened at the moment to hold stock in. Probst wasn’t fooled. It was clear to him that a girl who jumped out bathroom windows had a vision of her future radically different from the one he himself had entertained. As far as he was concerned, Thompson could be a total dropout.

  A great roar greeted the Pioneers as they trundled, like Marines, down the stairs to the playing field. A greater roar erupted when the Statesmen followed. Mr. and Mrs. Orange leaped to their feet, fists clenched and arms outstretched. “All right!” they yelled. Everybody stood up. Probst stood up.

  Kirkwood won the toss, and a Pioneer receiver, a loping black youth, took the kickoff at the 10-yard line. At the 35 one of the Statesmen tripped him from behind, sending him in a cartwheeling somersault to land, gruesomely, on his head. The ball squirted out of bounds.

  “All right! All right! All right!” the Oranges yelled. There was a queasy silence in the Kirkwood stands. The trainer and coaches ran to look after the fallen runner, who writhed on his back.

  “ALL RIGHT!” the Oranges bellowed. Probst gave them a critical glance. Coarse blond hair clung to their heads like wigs, and the orange Webster jerseys they were wearing heightened the impression of fakeness. The woman’s cheeks were scarlet, her lips blue and retracted. The husband’s head swiveled back and forth as the Statesmen cheerleaders started up a new chant—

  That’s all right.

  That’s OK.

  We’re going to beat you

  Anyway

  —an incongruous message, since the Pioneers had just lost one of their better players. The trainer and coaches were carrying him towards the sidelines on a stretcher.

  After two losses and an incomplete pass, Kirkwood had to punt. The Statesmen took over at their own 20-yard line, and Probst was happy to immerse himself in the game, to count downs in his head and watch the line of scrimmage ebb and flow. He was happy not to be at home. At home, the night before, Barbara had given him the distinct impression that she expected him to take some kind of action regarding Luisa. He was an active businessman, wasn’t be? Be firm with her! Be hurt! Go get her! Or at least comfort your wife…But action was impossible. Luisa made him angry like a woman, not a daughter. As he lay awake in bed a single thought monopolized his mind: I have the strength not to be selfish and deceitful while she, apparently, does not. And it was clear that Barbara, lying next to him, didn’t want to hear about this. “She’s only known Duane a month,” she said. “I’m sure he’s OK, though. I can’t blame this on him. You know Luisa. She wouldn’t be there if she didn’t want to be…Oh Martin, this just tears me apart.”

  Probst did not know Luisa. He began to stroke Barbara’s hair.

  The Oranges sprang to their feet. “ALL RIGHT! ALL RIGHT!”

  A referee thrust his arms in the air and the Marching Statesmen struck up the school song. A touchdown. How wonderful.

  Deducing that he loved her, or overlooking his gall in desiring her if he didn’t, Barbara had reached down with her cold, strong fingers and adjusted the angle of his penis, leading him in. “I’ll call Lu tomorrow,” he lied in a whisper. She turned her head away from him. Her mouth was opening. He increased his pressure, and then, glimpsing her teeth, he remembered a late afternoon in September. A Friday. A van with a bad muffler driving down Sherwood Drive. Dozer, his three-year-old retriever, chasing it. Dozer who never chased things. A thud and a yelp. The driver didn’t stop, probably didn’t even know he’d hit something. Probst knelt in the street. Dozer was dead, and his teeth, the incisors and canines and molars, were grinning in bitter laughter, and his body was hot and heavy, his splintered ribs sharp, as Probst picked him up. The embrace was terrible. He hurried to get home, pushing, pushing, pushing, but it was too late: Dozer had become evil, staring in a crazy angle at the ground, which rose up mechanically to meet his feet. He dropped him on the grass. Eventually Barbara lost her patience, shed him roughly, and rolled away.

  The Statesmen were lined up for another kickoff. Mrs. Orange clutched her husband’s arm and looked around pugnaciously at Probst and the people behind him, as if they didn’t deserve to live in Webster if they wouldn’t even stand up for a kickoff.

  Kirkwood took the touchback and started at the 20-yard line. On the very first play the stands exploded in confetti and streamers. A Statesman safety had picked off a pass and run it all the way back for a touchdown. Mrs. Orange seemed ripped by convulsions. “ALL RIGHT! ALL RIGHT! ALL RIGHT! ALL RIGHT!”

  Probst decided he’d had enough. He rose determinedly. “ALL RIGHT!” He pushed past knees and elbows, hurrying. “ALL RIGHT!” The cry was fainter now. He reached the end of the row and descended to the black cinder track. There he realized, from the lightness of his hands, that he’d left the heavy cream under the
bench.

  “Hey Martin!”

  It was Norm Hoelzer, sitting in the second row. Hoelzer was a local small-timer. Kitchens and bathrooms. “Well hi,” Probst said.

  “Some game, isn’t it?”

  “Oh. It’s…” He didn’t know what it was.

  “You here with Barbara?”

  How dare Hoelzer know his wife’s first name?

  He shook his head: no, he wasn’t here with Barbara. Hoelzer’s wife’s name was Bonnie. Grew roses. Probst forced his way through a group of boys in letter jackets.

  “Hey Martin!” A hand waved from deep in the stands. Joe Farrell. Here with what looked to be his daughter and son-in-law. “Well hi,” Probst said. (At this distance Farrell of course couldn’t hear him.) He kept walking. It was a tight squeeze, with the cheerleaders taking up half the track, and fans, mostly kids, lining the cable between the cheerleaders and the Statesman benches. “Hey Martin!” another voice called from the stands. Probst—well hi!—ignored it. “Martin!” The noise, after all, was terrific. Cheers came in sheets, like the avalanching calls of katydids. Most of the cheerleaders were idle at the moment, but a few of them did flying dutchmen out of sheer high spirits. How splendidly these girls were built. Probst followed a man in a wool coat slowly, content for once to proceed at the going speed.

  “Martin!” A large hand gripped his arm. The man in the wool coat had turned around, and when Probst saw his face his heart sank. It was Jack DuChamp, his old friend from high school. Probst hadn’t seen him in a good ten years.

  “I wondered who was stepping on my heels!” Jack grabbed Probst’s other arm and beamed at him.

  “Well!” Probst said. He didn’t know what else to say.

  “I should have guessed you wouldn’t miss this game,” Jack said.

  “I’d missed it for a couple of years in a row, actually.”

  Jack nodded, not hearing him. “I was going to get a Coke, but the lines were too long. Do you want to come sit with me?”

  The invitation closed on Probst like a bear trap on his leg. Sitting in the stands with Jack DuChamp—reminiscing about their South Side youth, comparing their utterly divergent careers—was the last thing in the world he felt like doing.