A Young Man's Guide to Late Capitalism (37 page)

"I worked at the World Bank for a long time, since I was in my twenties, and I enjoyed the work. When I was hired, Robert McNamara was in charge and the World Bank was a different institution. We were smaller, for one thing. But, ahm—" He hesitated, as if he'd lost his place. Then, after a brief pause, he said, "I'm going to skip ahead." Another pause. Gabriel could hear pages ruffling. He wondered if it was a speech that the man had written for a different occasion. It almost sounded like something he'd have read at his retirement party.

"It's, ahm—okay, here: the World Bank was conceived in 1944 by the Allies, because they needed..." He paused again.

The awkwardness spiked. Gabriel blushed as the horror congealed. It was just too painful. After another false start, D'Orsi gave up and said, "I'm sorry, I can't read this."

The crowd chuckled uncomfortably. Some people applauded. The man didn't speak for a while. Gabriel and the others in the atrium exchanged agonized looks.

Then D'Orsi pressed on. "I quit the World Bank because I hated what had become of my life while I worked there. It wasn't the job, per se. I know that this won't be a popular thing for me to say here, but I think that the World Bank is a good institution. It's more useful than NATO, probably. Everyone who works there, including the president of the World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz, who I and many of my colleagues was prepared to hate, means well. Believe it or not, Paul is a good person. He is a smart person, and he cares about the world more than most people. He works hard. He—well, I don't know. All of my colleagues there worked hard. Me too. I did it for more than two decades."

Some in the audience were hissing. Most, though, were too stunned to move.

"But I worked too hard. I gave too much of myself to this thing. And I came to resent it when my life fell apart. I'm middle-aged now and I—I am very angry. I thought that we should be doing better. And when this man, this representative of the Bush administration, came up to me one morning and asked how 'we' were going to respond if Evo Morales won the election, I was infuriated. I was more than that. I was so upset. I felt—I was not
with him,
this man. I hated him and I hated his boss, George Bush."

Gabriel heard scattered laughter, applause, and wished he could see the man's reaction.

"But I'm here to tell you that the World Bank is a big and complicated animal. You know, many of my colleagues..." He stopped for a moment again, then said, "I congratulate Evo Morales on his win. I hope he can do more for this country than those who have come before him. His job is very difficult. I wouldn't wish it on
anyone.
" He paused for effect. "The odds against him making it a full four years are substantial, but I know he means well too. He is here because he cares about Bolivia. He has said he's going to slash his own salary by half, and I believe him. I spoke to Evo earlier today. We had lunch together and he is a very kind person and he is sensitive, and I know he means what he says. That means something. It should, anyway. I've met quite a few presidents in South America, and most don't mean what they say, not in this way. He is
real.
I hope—I hope that doesn't change. I hope that it makes a difference."

The crowd hovered, motionless, uncertain of what to do now. The applause began inside the narrow room and spread out to the atrium. Gabriel whistled and howled overenthusiastically; he applauded over his head, laughing and hollering more.

When the applause finally settled down, Gabriel wiped his eyes, still grinning. Then he pulled a cigarette from his pack and started pushing his way through the crowd in search of one of the courtyards.

An hour later Gabriel saw her. She was upstairs in the atrium, talking hurriedly to assistants about something. He put his glass of wine down and rushed for the stairs, hoping to catch her before she moved along to her next battle. By then the crowd had started to thin. He'd seen the Italian ex—vice president of the World Bank leave, semi-disgraced for failing to embrace the party line with proper gusto.

She looked preoccupied in a way that reminded him of how she'd looked on Christmas, at her house—how much seeing her there that day, in that pantsuit, had turned him on—and he wished he could go over and kiss her, help her relax. He wished he could offer to get her some food or some wine. He couldn't. Still, he approached.

She saw him and averted her eyes, continued talking. She looked serious. In a subsequent pause, she chewed the corner of her lip. This was Lenka at work, apparently. She was an intense presence; she was powerful and alert. Newly in charge, she was a senior officer in the army of Evo. Gabriel stood back and waited his turn. Meanwhile, he admired her preoccupation, the severity of the angles of the elbows on her crossed arms as she addressed her assistants.

Eventually, when the two hurried away to do her bidding, she looked at Gabriel, and her look said it all. She wasn't angry. She wasn't confused about him. She didn't feel conflicted because she secretly loved him. He saw hatred, and nothing else. There was no uncertainty there. It was all very straightforward. Still, she did stay long enough for them to speak once more.

"You leave tomorrow for the tour?" he said. She said nothing, ignoring his attempt at small talk. She was concerned only with the business that remained between them. So he said, "I gather you talked to my mother."

She just looked at him, and he could see some sadness in her eyes. Was it regret? Probably not. She was simply sad that she had had to break his mother's heart, but she knew she was just the messenger. The message itself was Gabriel's responsibility.

"And you've been spilling my secret to people?"

"Yes, to whoever would listen."

"For what it's worth, I didn't do that to you. I didn't tell anyone about us. I just spoke to Mr. Catacora and I didn't tell him that you'd been the one to leak his job title to me."

"Am I supposed to be grateful?" she said.

"No. I just wanted you to know. I didn't tell anyone about you."

She nodded, staring at him. "I understand."

"You look beautiful too."

As if she had not heard him, she said, "I wanted you removed from the guest list, but I am not that surprised that you found a way inside."

"I made a tunnel from Hotel Gloria."

She didn't even start to smile. "Did you lose your job?"

"No." He wasn't sure if he should tell her what had happened, that her scheme had backfired. He decided he might as well, as long as they were being honest. "Actually," he said, "it was quite the reverse. Before, I was just simulating. Now, I am a real employee. Thanks to you."

"Thanks to me?" She shook her head, incredulous. He noticed the reverse freckles on her chin. He'd stopped noticing those after a while. But now, he knew, it was time to pay attention again. "Gabriel, I don't know what you've done. Whatever it is, you owe your place to no one but yourself. Thank yourself. Don't thank me. You made this for yourself."

"I'm not as bad as you think I am."

"No. You are worse than you think you are."

The fact was that she'd parlayed her decision to tell people about Gabriel into a point-scoring moment for herself. Catacora had been impressed by her intuition, her ability to ferret out Gabriel's true intentions. In fact, she'd lied to them all, while using Gabriel as a professional stepladder. He could have pointed this out, and maybe it would have bought him a redemptive moment, but it also would have killed the conversation faster, and he wanted to prolong it, so he lingered. "It's not so simple," he said.

"I'm sure it's not simple," she said. She checked her BlackBerry. It was a new phone. It was not unlike his phone, a slightly older model, but close. It was an appropriate phone for the press secretary of a president. She tucked her hair behind her ear as she stared down at the screen, and in that simple gesture, he was reminded of their drive through traffic during their first interview. He remembered how distracted she'd been, the way she'd steered her Datsun with her knee.

There was nothing to be done about it. It was a loss, a straightforward loss. There were no more plays left. Still, there was time left—time to stretch the encounter out a few moments longer. "The speech was interesting."

She put her phone down, looked at him, and said, "Your people—they would never
really
invest here, would they?"

"Not in the way you mean, no." She glared at him, so he went on. "They would, and they
have
invested here, actually, but not in a way that"—he searched for the right words—"not in a way that
contributes.
"

She stared at him for a while. He could see the halogen lights dangling nearby reflected in her black eyes. Her expression was harder than he'd ever seen it before. It killed him to see her like that. It was visceral, an aching in his chest; it rang out in his collarbone, specifically. He scratched at the stitches on his cheek. No one had stared at his wounds all night. No one even seemed to notice.

In the end—and this was the end, he had to admit—both he and Lenka had survived. They had each been tested by circumstances grand and unforeseen, and they had each survived. There had been damage inflicted along the way, but they'd made it through, more or less intact. She seemed, in fact, to be thriving. Maybe he was thriving too.

She blinked, and he admired one last time the too-long eyelashes. He glanced at her shoulders and knew that she had the most perfect shoulders he'd ever seen. He knew already that whenever he saw a woman's shoulders from that point on, he'd compare them to Lenka's. And although there were a million different ways he wanted to apologize, to explain, he knew there was no point. It was done.

Her phone rang and she checked the number. She looked at him. "While Evo Morales is president, you will not be allowed back into this country. If you try to come here, you'll be arrested on charges of espionage. Do you understand?"

"Espionage?" he said, stunned. He'd been devious—obviously—but he wasn't a spy, and she knew it. He felt sick hearing her say that. He shook his head. He hadn't been disappointed by her until now. "Are you serious?" he said.

She just glared at him, quite comfortable with her new power, it seemed.

Bewildered, he looked across the room and shook his head again.

She put the phone to her ear and walked away.

Back at the hotel, Gabriel put his name into Google News and saw that the story hadn't broken yet.

He went upstairs and packed. He smoked a cigarette and watched CNN International. The television's aqueous light flickered on the walls. He called the front desk and asked for a bottle of red wine.

Alejo arrived with the wine and two glasses ten minutes later.

Gabriel opened the door and let him inside. He stood by in silence and watched Alejo uncork the bottle. Once the bottle was open, he said, "I'll need only one glass."

Alejo poured him a glass.

"Do you want the rest of the bottle?" Gabriel said.

"Excuse me?"

"I'll take the one glass and you can have the rest, if you want."

Alejo shook his head and set the bottle down.

"Fine." He regarded Alejo for a second, and then said, "I just want to ask you something."

"Yes."

"Did you really think that if you ruined her feelings for me, she'd run into your arms?"

Alejo frowned and shook his head. "No, I never thought that. I was not trying to impress her, or whatever you think it was. This is the problem with you gringos: you are so used to being concerned about shallow things that you think everyone thinks this way. She is an important person for this country and I have seen you, and I think you are dangerous. This is why I told her what you did. It has nothing to do with her beauty, or my love for her, or any of those
huevadas.
"

This was utter bullshit, but it was heartfelt bullshit. Gabriel nodded, not caring to explain about the outcome—that Alejo's move had accidentally spared Gabriel and expedited the destruction of some companies that had invested in Bolivia. He picked up the full glass of wine and then turned to Alejo and said, "Are you sure you don't want it? I'm just going to dump the rest down the drain."

"You are a shitty person. Do you know that?"

"I do, actually." He lifted his glass in salute.

Alejo turned and headed toward the elevators, then stopped and turned back for a parting shot. "I'm not like you," he declared with the conviction of a true believer. Gabriel envied the earnestness and purity of that perspective, the tender idea that the world was a place where good people and bad people were locked in an epic struggle—

What a gorgeous notion!

The following morning, Gabriel Googled his name again. It wasn't that bad, but it didn't have to be that bad to be fatal. There were a handful of articles that mentioned a Gabriel Francisco de Boya, analyst for the Calloway Group, who was in Bolivia. One was on a liberal blog, FDR Opines, and the rest were near-clones of a Reuters brief about investors seeking opportunities in politically unstable countries. The original piece had been published by Horace Calloway, whom Gabriel had met twice at the Lookout and who, other than his rigid blandness, had seemed like a pleasant enough guy.

In any case, Gabriel's name was out now. If his mother had doubted Lenka, this would erase that doubt. He could try to head it off, call her and tell her this rumor was just the crazy manifestation of some lovers' quarrel, but it was too much. He could be honest, say he'd lied because he didn't want her to write him off. But it was going to be too many lies. It would only make it worse.

He walked up to Café los Presidentes Ahorcados for a cappuccino and one last salteña. As he walked, it dawned on him that he'd not done any touristy things. When he'd come to Bolivia with his mother five years earlier, they'd gone to several museums and seen the hoodoos in the Valle de Luna. They'd had a tour of San Francisco Church, with its second-story garden and its dozens of portraits of malnourished saints and monks. In colonial Latin America, they'd been told by their guide, Saint Francis was always shown holding a skull, a symbol of poverty. It had seemed odd to Gabriel then—in the first days of his youthful, rapturous infatuation with Bolivia—that the skull, symbol of death, would also symbolize poverty. That confusion had been resolved for him now.