The Bend of the World: A Novel (11 page)

Believe it or not, I said, but I think my buddy Johnny knows him.

Is your buddy into weird shit?

It’s his main hobby.

Then they probably do know each other. People who are into weird shit always find each other. It’s addictive behavior. Leonard was in recovery and believed deeply and zealously in everything but the anonymity. It’s the same as addicts, kid, he went on. When you’re an addict, you’ve got to find other addicts because they accept and understand your irrational behavior. To a crazy person, other crazy people are normal, and normal people are crazy. That was my main realization when I got sober. It’s not the spiritual shit, or the higher power shit. That shit’s important, but it’s not the main shit. The main shit is when you figure out that I’m not crazy because I’m on drugs, I’m on drugs because I’m crazy. That shit is the necessary diagnosis. Until you pinpoint that shit, everything you try is treatment for the wrong disease.

10

But I wasn’t worried about Johnny’s addiction to weird shit; I was worried about his other proclivities. I hadn’t heard from him all week other than one phone call early Wednesday morning. Silence otherwise, which was troubling, because he usually couldn’t go six hours without at least texting. The call had come at three-thirty in the morning. Your phone is ringing, said Lauren Sara with her eyes closed. I reached over blindly and silenced it. It rang again. I picked it up this time to look at the screen, saw Johnny’s name, and silenced it again. It rang again. Jesus Christ, I said, do you know what time it is?

Morrison, he said. Mooooorison.

Johnny, I said.

Morrison. Morrison. Lessison. Someison. Floorison, Doorison, Poorison, Goreison, Snoreison.
Bore
ison.

Johnny, I said, what do you want?

What do I want? What do I want?

Yeah, what do you want? I was awake now, my feet slung over the edge of the bed, scratching idly at a shoulder that didn’t itch. It was raining, slowly and steadily, each drop against the windows the soft echo of a distant bell.

Morrison.

Fucking what? I snapped. I closed my eyes and felt the deep desire of my whole body and being to keep them that way.

Listen, he said.

I’m listening. I opened my eyes again.

Listen.

Yes. I’m listening. What?

My mind is a quantum computer.

Oh yeah?

My mind is a quantum computer.

Right. Will it still be a quantum computer during normal business hours?

A quantum hologram.

Oh, so not a computer.

Shut up. Listen. Shut up. Listen. A computer and a hologram.

Yeah, I said. Okay. What’s the upshot?

The upshot? he said. The upshot? He turned the word over like a plum pit you haven’t spit out yet, sucked on it as if it still had some sweetness attached. The upshot?

You sound like you could use an upshot yourself.

His voice changed. Wouldn’t it be cool, he said, if we could project a quantum hologram over Heinz Field for the Super Bowl? When I say his voice changed, I mean he sounded lucid in spite of the sentiment.

I rubbed my nose. A hologram of what? I asked.

A hologram of a hologram.

Johnny, I said, I’m going to hang up. I’ve got to go.

Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me.

Yeah, I’m going to leave you. Why don’t you try to get some sleep and call me when you’ve come down or whatever? Preferably at a more civilized hour.

Listen, Johnny said. The tide is turning.

I think you may have mentioned that to me before.

The tide is turning.

Good night, Johnny.

Don’t leave me.

Good night, Johnny.

Morrison! he cried.

Yes?

I’m dead, he said.

No, Johnny, I told him. I regret to inform you that that’s not the case.

Are you sure? he asked.

Not yet, I said.

Not yet, he repeated. Not yet. And then there was a pause on the other end that grew into a long silence. I could hear him breathing, and when I was sure that he’d forgotten he was still on the phone, or forgotten that he had a phone, or forgotten how a phone worked and what a phone was, I ended the call and lay back down beside my girlfriend.

Johnny, I said.

Yeah, she said to her pillow.

Totally fucked up, I said.

Yeah, she said.

I’m an alien, I said. I came in a flying saucer.

Yeah, she said.

I love you, I said.

Aw, she said. That’s nice.

We should move in together.

Mm, she said. Cool. Let’s talk about it later. I knew from the way she said it that we probably wouldn’t. I kissed her shoulder. I think you’re the most normal person I know, I told her.

She turned her head and kissed my nose. Then you are fucked, she said.

11

On the bus the following Monday, because Lauren Sara had the car again, and two dudes were loudly comparing the merits of different strains of weed while the rest of the passengers tried to ignore them. Yo what about the FGD, man? You ever hear of that? No, man, what’s the FGD? That’s the Federal Government Dope, man. That’s the shit the Bill Clinton used to smoke. No shit? No shit. Me, I like the K2. Why’s it called the K2? ’Cause that’s how high it gets you, man. I turned my head. They were about my age, a black dude with dreads and a white dude in a flat-billed Pirates cap. What the fuck are you looking at? the white one said. I may have rolled my eyes. Don’t roll your eyes, man, he said. I’ll roll those eyes out your head. Man, shut up, said the black guy. Leave the man in peace. I turned back around. They got off at Wood Street, my stop as well. The white guy disappeared around the corner. The black guy walked up beside me and said, Hey, my man, you got three dollars you could lend me for bus fare? No, I said. You smoke weed? he asked. I shrugged. Sometimes, I said. You want to buy some? Dude, I said, really? Yeah, man. You got that corporate look about you, but I can tell you burn it down. I don’t have any cash on me, I said. Go get some, he said. How do I know you’ve got any? I asked. How do I know it’s any good? How do I know you’re not just trying to rob me? Rob you? He opened his hands. Because I’m black? I’ve got to be honest, I said. That’s one of many factors. He laughed, a hoot followed by a surprisingly girlish giggle. One of many factors, he said. I like you. Thanks, I said. It’s real and it’s good, he said. I’ll tell you what, I told him. I’ll buy it if you deliver it to my office. Where’s your office? Up there. I pointed. No way, my man. How am I supposed to get in there? There’s security and shit. You think they’re gonna let a nigga with dreads walk up in there with a backpack—he patted his old JanSport—full of weed? Tell them you’re a bike messenger, I said. Security guards don’t give a fuck. I’ll tell them I’m expecting you. Ask for Peter Morrison at Global Solutions. That’s you? That’s me. I’m gonna charge extra, man, for delivery. How much? Seventy an eighth. That seems a little steep. Delivery, he said, pronouncing each syllable emphatically. Right, I said. Come by around nine-thirty. You’re a weird dude, he told me. If you knew my friends, I said, you wouldn’t think so.

12

Hey, Rick. Happy Monday, I said. Is that what day this is? he replied. It feels like a Monday, I said. I wouldn’t know, Rick said. I only work here. You and me both, I said. Maybe one of us, he said. Hey, Rick, I said. I’m expecting a package around nine-thirty. Just send him up. Sounds suspicious, Rick said. Drug deal, I told him. Haha, he said. I’ll keep him away from the dogs. This place is buttoned up tight, I said. Oh yeah, said Rick. We’re a regular fucking Alcatraz.

13

I deleted some emails and agreed to some meetings and checked out the latest affronts to liberty on the Reason site and saw that one of their writers had picked up the story of the mayor and Marissagate, so-named for his estranged wife, in which the Growing Trend of Important Public Officials utilizing the tools and technologies of the Surveillance State for personal ends was flogged around the track for a few laps. Then Ted stopped by my desk and asked if I’d come to his office, and when I did he said, Close the door, and I said, Ted, are you firing me? and he said, Hell, no, you’re my main man around here, Pete. Okay, I said.

He tossed his jacket on the back of his chair and we sat down. He was a car nut, and his office was full of framed pictures of exotic Italian cars and signed portraits of drivers; I always thought it looked like a ten-year-old boy’s bedroom.

Pete, he said.

Yes, I said.

You’re buddies with the Other Pete, right?

I wouldn’t say buddies.

You get along, though. He doesn’t suspect you of anything.

Suspect me? I said.

You know what I mean.

I didn’t know what he meant, but I nodded.

I think he’s trying to make a move.

A move?

Has he said anything to you?

Last week he told me that I should try interval training if I wanted to improve my resting heart rate.

What?

No. He hasn’t said anything about making a move.

I heard his name up on twenty-six last week.

Maybe they’re talking about me, I joked.

He frowned. No, they’re talking about the Other Pete.

What are they saying?

He threw up his hands. He looked simultaneously older and younger than thirty-seven. He had good hair and a broad, dumb face and an air of clumsy athleticism that reminded me of a certain type of lawn-mowing dad—not my own, obviously—a certain type of clunking suburban prosperity that both my poor friends in the city and my family in their rich old Ohio River town viewed with varying kinds but equal degrees of contempt. He was aggressively conventional, and I felt that I ought to hate him, but I liked him, the dummy; for all the injustices that sustained his life, America’s wars and overseas empire, the depredations of business and the inequalities of income, the immiseration of the world’s poor, the destruction of the environment, the extraction of resources, the heedless burning of carbon fuels, the poisons in the water, the collapse of global fisheries—for all these things, which in large and small ways undergirded his four bedrooms in Treesdale and his elementary-school-teacher wife and their daughter and their OBX vacations, I found myself sometimes hoping that none of this would change; that it would all roll on as it was then rolling on, in order that he not be thrown into a different and unfamiliar world in which he couldn’t have exactly what he had and therefore wouldn’t be able to be happy, or to sustain, at least, that facsimile of happiness that so often passes for the real and original thing.

Well, anyway, I asked him what they were saying about the Other Peter, and he said, It’s nothing specific, but I just get the feeling that he’s trying to leapfrog. These kids, he said—he often referred to these kids, as if he and I were the same age looking down on the twenty-somethings coming up after us, and in this particular case I was pretty sure that the Other Peter was actually a few years older than me—these kids have no respect. You know, they’ve all been told they’re special. Trophies for everything. Everyone gets a prize. And they just expect everything to be handed to them without having to work for it.

Helicopter parents, I said, because the best way to converse with Ted was to pull a current, topical phrase out of the air and toss it into the air whenever he paused.

Exactly, he said. My dad, boy. You didn’t get any of that from him.

You have to pay your dues, I said.

Of course, on the other side, there’s the gray ceiling. These guys have been here forever, and they’re never going to change. They don’t want the new ideas. Do it our way, don’t rock the boat.

It is what it is.

Exactly, he said. Exactly.

I didn’t imagine that there could be a plot between the oldsters in the executive suites and the Other Peter; even in the abstract, taking Ted’s beliefs about the old and the young employees at face value, it made no sense; but Ted lived, I knew, in a world of self-created anxiety about his status; he’d risen, I gathered, very fast at first and then stalled. Most of the other vice presidents were in their mid-thirties. He felt his few years on them acutely. I promised that I would keep him posted.

Yeah, he said. That’d be great. Keep me posted. Keep your ear to the pavement.

I said I would keep an eye out.

By the way, Pete, he said. Someone told me you’ve been seen palling around with that dickhead Mark Danner. You oughta watch that guy.

I will, I said.

He’s not a team player.

Then there was a knock on the door and one of the administrative assistants poked her head in and said I had a visitor. I headed back to my desk. It was twenty after nine. You’re early, I said as I turned the corner into my cubicle.

You were expecting me? Mark said. He was sitting in my chair. He was wearing a pale gray suit and there was a
VISITOR
tag on the lapel.

Yeah. No. I was expecting someone else.

I like your area, Mark said. No photos, no tchotchkes, no indication of a human presence.

I like to keep my life and my work separate.

Hm, he said.

I find it hard to believe that your office is full of mementos.

I don’t have an office. My office is my immediate surroundings, wherever and whatever they happen to be. I’m a starship fitted out for distant voyages of exploration, armed when necessary.

That’s an interesting turn of phrase.

I thought you’d like that. So. He gestured to my spare chair, and I saw, despite the smirk, despite the mockery, what he meant about his office, because I felt immediately as if I were the visitor instead of him. So, he said, what Global Solutions have you come up with today?

I don’t really come up with the solutions, I said. I’m more of a licensing agreements and contracts kind of guy.

A fake lawyer, Mark said.

That’s a fair description. I’m probably cheaper than a real one.

Lawyers are pretty cheap these days. You’d be surprised.

You’re a lawyer, I said, and I don’t imagine you’re especially cheap.

I’m a recovering lawyer. The first step is admitting that you’re powerless to control your professional degree.