The Subprimes (15 page)

I see Gemma coming in. She's bandaged, her hands and arms wrapped and bruised. She has a dime-size welt on her forehead, and her neck is red and scratched.

“I thought I saved you from the coyotes,” I say.

She shakes her head—“I'm so sorry”—and gestures toward
herself, the sling, the bandages. “I should have listened to you about the coyotes.”

“You do seem to attract them. I was actually warning you the other day—they were following you,” I say. “What happened?”

“We were down in the Bowl,” she says. “They went after Ginny. I got in between them. My hand was, at one point, apparently, inside a coyote's mouth.”

“You're a hero,” I say. “Who fights off a coyote?”

“Like I had a choice? She was going after my girl.”

“Strange, because you usually seem so quick on the draw with the pepper spray,” I say.

“Again, I'm sorry, oh my God,” she says. “And, of course, because of that, I didn't have any with me when I really needed it.”

She recounts the story: visiting her old high school friend, the kids going outside to play, finding Ginny, fighting the dogs, and then the nightmare of the hospital and the bills.

I am strangely inspired by Gemma and her ability to fight off these wild animals. She's a warrior momma, like Grendel's mother, or Joan of Arc, or Jessica Lynch (the first, made-up, heroic version, not the real story that emerged later). I imagine her taking coyotes by the neck and smashing their heads together.

“The fucking coyote killer,” I say. “You're so cool. You're, like, I don't know. Forget Tiger Mom. Coyote-killer mom.”

I sound like a fucking idiot. Like a ten-year-old.

“Let's get a drink.”

“I thought we were having coffee,” she says.

“Come on, we're celebrating your successful vanquishing of the beasts.”

“Then I'll have a Beefeater martini, up.”

“I'll join you.”

When the drinks arrive, I ask how she likes being back.

“It's not that different from being back east. I'm a single mom . . . there are whales on the beach.”

“Have you heard from Arthur?”

“That asshole? What do you want to know?”

“Um, where is he?”

“He made bail, went down to Texas. He's got some high-roller ultra-cons funding his defense.”

“They're talking him up like he's a hero,” I say.

“My philandering husband, the hero.”

I can't tell if Gemma is wearing makeup around the bruise and the red marks on her chin, the deep, pink racing stripes that run up her neck. She looks, I realize, like a battered woman, a survivor of some sort of awful, abusive marriage, which she is, in a way. Her light dusting of freckles shows a beautiful sort of russet in the afternoon light streaming in through the horizontal window above the bottles behind the bar. I have to stop myself from staring at her.

“How are your girls?”

“Besides being attacked by coyotes?” Gemma smiles. “They're with my mom.” She puts down her drink. “Jesus, what is happening?”

“What? Now? Nothing, we're just having a drink—”

“I mean, in the world, coyotes attacking people, and everyone's, like, ‘it's normal.' Whales? Whales killing themselves? The West Side Highway is underwater. The prairie is on fire. Rome is burning.”

That is true, literally. The Seven Hills are actually on fire. Millions of Italians are fleeing the capital.

“But they're building a seawall in New York,” I say.

“We spent so much time thinking about sanctuary, about escape, that I never really thought what all this meant. It's that we're screwed. I mean, aren't we?”

“Yeah, but it will take some time.”

“Just enough so that when our kids grow up, they'll die of cancer or starve or drown or get eaten by wild dogs?”

She's pissed off, and I like it. I can see she must spend much of her time around her kids holding it together, and now, with me, she is unloading. I take some pleasure in her seeing me as a confidant.

“We just need to do the best we can,” I say.

“Thank you for the platitude.”

“I'm sorry, I'm not the best person at figuring out how to save the world. I'm mostly good at fucking it up. But, hey, you know, I bring my own bags to the grocery store.”

She frowns.

“Okay, not funny,” I say. “What I mean is, it's hard enough just keeping my own shit together.”

We order two more, and when they arrive, we clink glasses.

“To what?” Gemma says. “Saving the world?”

“We'll see.”

We sip.

“How is it living back with your mom?”

“Ha.” She smiles. “You know what it's like, to see, like, an old Duran Duran sticker in your bedroom, and at the same time hear your daughters in the next room, and think, How did I end up back in my teenage bedroom, only with kids? I'm a single mom, living at home with her parent. It's like a KIK-TV reality show, only it's so much sadder than any of those
Sixteen and Pregnant
shows. I'm forty and—”

“Don't be hard on yourself. I mean,
I'd
watch a show where a lady fights coyotes with her bare hands.”

“So would I, I guess.” She smiles. “So, do you want the goods on my dirtbag of an ex-husband?”

I shrug. “Sure.”

“First, I have to ask you: Do you really care?” Gemma says.

“About what?”

“About the world, about what's happening.”

“It's already happened.” I hold out my hands. “We're not going to go back and stuff all this crap back into the box. I'm not political. Maybe that's my problem.”

“But you should write about what's happening. About how fucked we all are.”

I tell her that I was looking at one of my old books—my best book, I add—and realize that I miss that guy, the writer who cared, who was invested.

“I want to read
What You Wish For
.”

“I'm flattered. I have it in my office. Upstairs.”

I pay the check and we go up to my office. When I hand her my first book I have to resist the urge to touch her neck where it is bruised. Instead, I stand there, sort of nodding.

“Hey, do you happen to have a joint?”

“I've stopped.”

“When?”

“Last week.”

“Why?”

I tell her about the football game, the police arriving, the accusation of inappropriate interaction with a minor, my impending court date.

“So you're, like, a child molester?”

“That's not funny. My ex-wife sees the whole thing as my fault. My son won't speak to me anymore. So I thought I should see about cleaning up my act a little.”

She weighs the book in her hand. “That's a good idea.”

“Before I get put away for life.”

Her phone rings. She ignores it.

Then she receives a text, which she reads.

“My husband is here,” she says.

“Here? Like downstairs?”

“No, here, in L.A. He's coming to my mom's house. He's terrible at texting, but look.”

She holds her phone out to me so I can read it: “Hney, les get bik together? Pliz!”

A good journalist, a real journalist, would have seized on this opportunity to write a great story about a famous financial villain. Instead, I just stand there, and I'm jealous that Arthur Mack has had this woman, while she remains for me a receding fantasy.

She has to go. “I'm going to tell the kids the truth. And tell Arthur it's over. Again.”

I walk her out into the hall and down the stairs to where she is parked.

“So, um, meet again?” I ask.

She climbs into an old Camry. She answers, but I don't quite make it out. And then she is gone.

THE NEXT MORNING IS MY
court appointment, downtown on Temple Street. My Über Justice attorney, who according to my Kik map was ten minutes away, turned out to be twenty minutes late, which is not bad considering how difficult it is to move around Los Angeles. What is more worrying to me is that she looks like she is about twenty.

“You're my attorney?” I ask.

“Paralegal,” she says. “Almost the same thing.”

She is an immense black woman who wears a vast blue jacket over a pink shirt and blue slacks that must take up an entire eight-man
tent's worth of fabric. She has a pretty face, long braided hair, and a cheerful smile that fades as I ask my question.

“I'm Miss Glenda Solay, and yes, if you are Richie Schwab, then I am the Über Justice consultant here to represent you regarding your nuisance summons for . . .” She scrolls through her tablet screen. “Misdemeanor Endangerment of a Minor.”

Upstairs, the arched hallway is crowded with defendants. Glenda and I have a quick conference, standing inside the recessed area formerly used as a pay phone bank.

“You paid for our Total Innocence and Exoneration package, and at Über Justice there is nothing more important to us than your freedom from unjust prosecution,” Glenda reads from her screen. “Now, can you describe in forty words your exculpatory circumstances.”

“What?”

“Why you're not guilty. Speak into the tablet.”

“I can't.”

“You can't speak into the tablet?”

“I can't do it.”

“Mr. Schwab, you paid for the Total Innocence and Exoneration package,” says Glenda. “If you wish to change your plea, we cannot refund the difference.”

“No, not that, it's forty words or less that's hard.”

“It's not exactly forty words. It can be forty-three or forty-four.”

I try. “I was walking up the street and saw some children playing football and we stopped to join them. Oh, and I was with my son, Ronin. We played tackle football for a while and then—how many is that?”

“Thirty-nine.”

“Including ‘how many is that'?”

“Now you're at forty-four.”

“The important thing is that what we were doing was playing football. Nobody was hurt.”

Glenda sighs and switches off the recording. “I can't do my job if you can't explain the exonerating circumstances. The complainant who called the police reported hearing squealing, and then reported seeing you, Richie Schwab, tackling young boys and rolling on the lawn with them.”

“We were playing football. That's what football looks like.”

“Were you wearing pads? Helmets? Was there a stadium? Because
that's
what football looks like.”

“No, we were playing football in the front yard, for fun, without helmets or uniforms because who uses those things?”

“Every time I've watched football, there are helmets and uniforms and, for that matter, commercials and announcers.”

“That's professional football, or maybe college, but this was kids—”

“Ah, Mr. Schwab,” she interrupts and points to something on her screen. “I have to relay to you a plea being offered by the district attorney's office. If you plead no-contest right now, your fine will decrease to $350.”

“What do you mean, right now?”

“You have forty seconds to accept this offer, after that, the fine will increase.”

“Wait, what?”

“How do you plead?”

“Not guilty.”

“As your Über Justice adviser, I recommend you take the state's plea. The next offer will be higher.”

My phone rings. I recognize the number: Ronin's school. I answer.

“Mr. Schwab, this is Vice Principal Nakamura at the Subway Fresh Take Paul Revere Middle School.”

Oh no. Not now. “Yes?”

“I'm calling to inform you that the police have been called to the school because a weapon was found in Ronin's possession after he threatened to stab a fellow student. School policy dictates that a law enforcement officer be present when a weapon is found.”

“He had a knife?”

“No, it was a comb.”

“What do you mean?”

“A comb, but it was a comb in the shape of a flick knife.”

“What are you talking about? One of those switchblade combs? Those aren't weapons.”

“Mr. Schwab, can you come and pick up your son?”

“Um, I'm a little tied up. Can I talk to Ronin?”

“He's in police custody.”

“For a comb?”

“For a knife-shaped comb.”

“Jesus, I'm—” I almost tell him where I am but catch myself. “I'm kind of tied up. Let me see what I can do.”

I look around the crowded hallway, the attorneys in their suits, the bailiffs standing in a cluster near the window, and the defendants and jurists and families. Next to me is a young tattooed woman handcuffed to a wooden bench, an older, uniformed black woman next to her.

The young woman looks up at me. She's overheard my attorney-client conversation. “Hey, if I had the money, I would take the first plea. After that, they run it up like a goddamn taxi meter.”

I turn to Glenda. “I don't want a record as—what is it? Child endangerer?”

Glenda is looking at her tablet. “Mr. Schwab, the latest plea is for $400. As your adviser, I recommend you accept this offer.”

“But am I admitting guilt?”

“You are pleading guilty to a misdemeanor of endangerment of a minor.”

I think about Ronin. “If I agree to do this, can I go right now?”

“Just sign here.” She holds out her tablet.

I look at the e-doc. The plea has gone up to $425. I click on the signature box.

“You're free to go,” Glenda says.

A
RTHUR MACK WAS NOT A
man easily discouraged. He had not built an empire, or a pseudo-empire or faux-empire, by taking rejection to heart. But this was different. For one thing, Gemma wasn't responding to his texts or answering phone calls, and her mother, when he called the landline, would say, “Nobody home for you,” and hang up, which didn't make sense but which he generally understood to be unwelcoming. He thought about the girls, and he had to admit a twinge of guilt at their misunderstanding of his current situation. Why, even he had misunderstood his current situation until Pastor Roger and the Pepper Sisters had explained it to him. He wasn't a criminal or a con man or incompetent, he was a job creator, a capitalist, a—what had the Peppers called him?—an entrepreneur in God's free market, and soon his wife and children, or at least his children, would see that they were among the many who had him all wrong, and soon the New York
district attorney would be dropping the charges and the tracking anklet would be removed and, who knows, maybe Arthur would even get his broker-dealer license reinstated and he could once again ply his trade.

But he needed to see Gemma, to straighten her out. Like so many, she was mistaking his persecution as being evidence of his wrongdoing, while actually it was proof of his righteousness. Pastor Roger had such a clear way of explaining the upside-downness of it all, that he wished he could remember the exact words, but he had a good enough grasp of the ideas to present a compelling argument. As he drove in the cheap rental, the bubble-shaped compact the Freedom Prairie Church had reserved for him, he admired above him the elevated expressways skying out toward Malibu or arcing in a midair bow up into Beverly Hills. These celestial toll roads were so elegant and traffic-free, and the view from there, Arthur knew from experience, spanned from the mountains to the oil rigs offshore, and he was awash with regret that the temporary diminishment in his circumstances had him motoring with the deadbeats and subprimes on the old, decaying freeway system. If those people knew what they were missing, they too would become job creators. Why wouldn't they?

He was confident that once Gemma saw him, the father of the girls, his long legs and burly forearms and pleasingly dimpled chin—the Arthurness of Arthur would win her over and they could all return to Texas, where he would take up his rightful work with Pastor Roger and the Pepper Sisters. As he nosed the compact up the unwashed masses of the 405, he ran through his new narrative. Of course she knew, as any loyal wife would, that Arthur Mack was no more capable of what the lamestream media had accused him of than he was of shacking up with a mistress upon making bail—or, he had actually done that but
was now realizing, from an image standpoint, what a mistake that had been and, really, what a great learning experience that kind of mistake can be in that he wouldn't do it again, not immediately, or not until he had totally won over Pastor Roger and the Freedom Prairie folks, or, no, he wouldn't do that no matter what, and, more relevant, he would be glossing over that part of his recent history to get to the really important parts where he would portray himself as a misunderstood hero. At no point in his cramming for his upcoming confrontation with Gemma did the words “I'm sorry” cross his mind.

He finally merged onto the 10, crossed beneath the Malibu Skyway, and, after forty-five minutes, cleared the tunnel onto the PCH. Where there had once been a panorama of table-flat sand extending from the Santa Monica Pier toward Point Dume, now sat the Pacific Sino Sands Casino and Resort, hunkered along a half-mile of Santa Monica shoreline, its shiny glass arabesque minarets towering over the soon-to-be-refurbished-by-AEG pier complex. The traffic crawled up the coast, the Santa Monica palisades buttressed by cement-and-steel girders on one side, the hastily erected amphitheater around the beached whales on the other. But even Arthur noticed that the drive time between the airport and North-of-Montana Santa Monica now took three hours and twenty-eight minutes. These hardships, he knew, were essential to a well-run economy. Why else would men or women strive to rise out of this class of subprime freeway riders to that of job-creating entrepreneurs who could ride the skyways to their private jets and fly to their sanctuary islands? That class warfare meme about the top one percent was nothing more than the sour grapes of those who did not want to do the hard work of lifting themselves up. Here Arthur Mack's reasoning always broke down. Why, exactly, didn't they want to do the hard work? They were lazy, and they
were socialists. But how exactly did socialists make money? From the government, right? That's right, they got those free hotel vouchers and health-care credits from Uncle Sam, and they lived like Subprime Sultans in their fancy hotel suites.

He pulled up in front of Gemma's mother's house. With a wince he recalled, vaguely, the long holiday vacations they spent out here so that Gemma's mother could spend time with the girls. Arthur had to have the house wired for broadband so that he could continue to run his business during those early West Coast mornings. Even so, Doreen always made him feel as if he was doing something wrong, was a fool and a clod and not good enough for her daughter.

He walked up the curling, cracked concrete pathway across a drought-dried lawn. Dusk covered his approach, and through the windows he could see the glow of a television and hear, from the kitchen, the clang of a lid being potted. Gemma passed in front of the living room windows, wearing a green sweater and jeans. But her face? He froze at the sight of her bruises, the black eye. She would have to take him back, considering her unattractive condition.

He knocked on the door, listened at the approach of footsteps. There was silence as he was regarded through the peephole.

“Oh my God, it's the flimflam man,” Doreen's gravelly voice called out through an open window. “She doesn't want to see you, Arthur. And I want to shoot you.”

“Doreen, I'm the father of your granddaughters,” Arthur said. “You can't kill me. That would make for childhood drama.”

“You mean trauma, you idiot,” Doreen said. “And you've already managed that.”

“Is Gemma here? The girls?”

He heard more footsteps and then the door opened. Gemma stood in front of him, her injured face stern and unwelcoming.

“I want a divorce, Arthur,” Gemma said.

“No ‘Hello. How was jail?'”

“I don't really feel like catching up, Arthur,” Gemma said.

“Where are the girls?”

“Asleep.”

At that moment, high-pitched voices squealed from another room. “Who is it, Mommy?”

“Ginny? Franny? It's Dad,” Arthur shouted.

Little bare feet made wet smacking sounds against the hardwood floor as the girls ran out and hugged their father, who dipped down into a catcher's crouch to return the embrace. “Where were you? Mommy said you were away on business, but Gam said you were in the slammer.”

Gemma glared at her mother. Doreen shrugged.

“I'm misunderstood,” Arthur Mack said. “I'm an honest businessman caught up in the socialist conspiracy to enflare job creators.”

“Enflare?” Doreen said behind Gemma. “You mean ensnare, you idiot.”

Both girls looked confused.

Gemma guffawed. “Are you serious? I can't believe they let you leave the state. Or are you jumping bail?”

“I'm legal.” He stood and lifted his chino cuff to reveal the tracking anklet. “Vouched for by an American hero: Pastor Roger.”

While the particular Arthur Mack thread was finally subsiding into the general, swirled, chaotic weave of the American media quilt, there was now a thick knotting around the completely insane argument that Arthur Mack was some kind of capitalist hero. She had heard Pastor Roger himself making that case.

“Say hi to the girls, explain yourself as best you can, and then be gone.”

Arthur Mack squinted as if noticing his daughter's injuries for the first time. “What happened to Ginny?”

“We had some trouble with some coyotes,” Gemma said.

“What kind of trouble?”

“Attacked. Ginny got bit. We both got cut up. But we're fine. No rabies.”

“Oh my God,” Arthur said, “you let our daughter get attacked by wolves?”

“Coyotes. Jesus, don't start with me.”

“Mom knocked them out,” Ginny said. “She was actually punching them in the face.”

Gemma shook her head. “What kind of father—you know what? Never mind.”

Doreen went over to Arthur, wagging a finger in his face. “She rescued Ginny from a goddamn coyote. How many women can do that? Do you know how many kids get snatched every day? Every night on the local news they have stories about kids being taken, and your daughter is here because Gemma saved her, you dumb flimflam man.”

Arthur shook his head. “Don't say that in front of the girls.”

“They don't know what that means,” Doreen said.

“It sounds like a candy,” Franny said.

Arthur took a step into the house but Gemma blocked him. “You can visit with the girls on the lawn. Mom will step out there with you.”

Arthur was angered by the conditions but could see that he had no leverage to negotiate a better arrangement.

He held the girls' hands, and as they all sat down on the wooden bench on the front patio Ginny told him about the coyote attack, and Franny said to her father that if Ginny had been listening like she was supposed to it would never have happened to begin with.

WHEN I WALK INTO VICE
Principal Nakamura's office, which has become distressingly familiar to me, I see that Anya is already there, seated with Ms. Ramos.

“Hey, we're getting the band back together!” I lamely joke and am met with the usual stern expressions.

“Where were you?” Anya asks me accusingly. “Your son is taken into custody—”

“I had my court thing, you know about that? My court thing?” I say.

“Ah yes, for molesting the boys.”

Now everyone turns to me, suddenly wondering if it is even legal for me to be on school property.

“She jests,” I say, only Anya looks very serious. She is squinting with such intensity that horizontal lines are appearing down the middle of her forehead. “Not molesting, no, that's not the correct
English
term. The, uh, actual charges, well, not charges, because they have already been dismissed, were for inappropriate—for causing—they were nuisance charges.”

Then I stop myself, because that also sounds bad. “The, uh, there are now no charges, okay? Dismissed! Can we talk about Ronin?”

“Mr. Schwab, Mrs. Moller”—he uses my wife's maiden name—“Ronin's issues are conforming to a pattern. There was the inappropriate touching issue, and now we have his bringing a weapon into school—”

“It was a comb,” I say.

“Airplanes have been hijacked with fake guns,” says Vice Principal Nakamura.

“The 9/11 hijackers used boxcutters,” adds Ms. Ramos.

“But they didn't use combs,” I say.

“They didn't
have
combs,” Ms. Ramos says.

I look at her. “What? That doesn't make any sense.”

“
Exactly
,” Vice Principal Nakamura says. “That's why we don't allow students to bring fake weapons onto campus.”

“I get that, I totally get that,” I say. “But this doesn't seem like, you know, the biggest deal.”

“He threatened to stab someone,” Vice Principal Nakamura says. “That's not a big deal?”

“But he doesn't have a knife,” I say. “So, how is that a threat?”

“What if that weren't a comb?” Ms. Ramos says.

Vice Principal Nakamura nods thoughtfully. “We need to consider all the possibilities.”

“But he didn't, he doesn't—he had a comb! We already know that, so his threat—what was his threat, exactly?”

“He and another student were discussing the Youth Sexual Conduct and Guidance Program—”

“Freaks,” I say.

“Mr. Schwab, we don't use that term.”

“But the kids do,” I say. “They call it Freaks. And Ronin should never have been sent there. For what? For pinching a girl's—”

Vice Principal Nakamura interrupts me. “There was a conversation about Ronin's participation in this program, and—”

“You mean another boy was making fun of him, right? Was teasing him.”

“Ronin responded by making the threat.”

“But Ronin was being teased about Fre—about that program. Ronin should never have been sent there. Have you seen those kids? They're, they're, not normal.”

“Mr. Schwab, we don't use that word to describe any of our students, developmentally or neurologically typical or atypical,” Ms. Ramos says.

“You must see this, right? How hard it is for the kid, to be in that program, when, come on, all he did was pinch a girl, a girl
who, by all accounts, actually likes him anyway, so, and now this, where, he feels bad about himself and a kid picks on him for it so he, you know, makes a dumb threat, but—”

Anya has been sitting uncharacteristically quietly for some time, her black purse on her lap, listening to the conversation and torn between her loyalty to her son and her hatred of me.

“If you hadn't bought him this comb,” she says, turning to me.

Did I buy him a novelty switchblade comb? I honestly have no recollection. But does it matter?

“Who cares where he got the comb from?” I say. “It's a toy.”

“It's a fake weapon,” says Vice Principal Nakamura. “A weapon.”

“I couldn't believe that you would buy such a thing,” Anya says. “For a child.”

Ms. Ramos adds, “Age inappropriate.”

“I don't remember when I bought it,” I say. “Or if I bought it, but that doesn't matter.”

“I would recommend a careful reading of the Subway Fresh Take Paul Revere Middle School code of conduct,” says Vice Principal Nakamura, “and Ronin will have to serve a two-day suspension and attend a weekly after-school Youth Anger and Violence Program.”