Very Recent History: An Entirely Factual Account of a Year (C. AD 2009) in a Large City (10 page)

They fired the first few people. No one came out crying. Everyone else sat in the
bullpen anxiously. One guy, Mark, was cleaning out his desk preemptively. In the bottom
of his desk, he found a strange thing left behind from some previous employee who’d
used the desk before him. It was a plastic bib, designed to be tied around the neck,
that covered one’s shirt while one was eating. This bib was specifically intended
for the eating of lobster, a hard-shelled sea creature that you cooked and then broke
open, usually with tools. It was once considered something gross that poor people
ate but was then an expensive delicacy. The bib had a picture of a lobster on it.
It also had the words “Let’s get crackin’ ” written across it. Mark put on the bib
and tied it around his neck. It was already midday, the layoffs had been proceeding
all morning, and it was finally his turn to be called into the office. He came in.
There was a moment of quiet while Timothy and the man in the office considered the
bib. Mark just sat there. He had succeeded in not being a good soldier, in making
the moment as profoundly uncomfortable and as ludicrous as possible. They gave him
his folder. He left the office and put his things in the bag he brought. He wrote
some notes to his former coworkers and left them in envelopes. They were supposed
to be supportive notes, well-wishing notes, but they were also a bit aggressive, even
hostile in a few cases. Timothy offered to call a car for Mark, and Mark declined.

John helped Mark take his bag downstairs, and they waited in the heavy rain for a
car for hire. The cabs kept passing by, and those that stopped wouldn’t take him where
he wanted to go. Mark yelled at a cabbie. Finally he got one and then he left and
was gone forever, and John went back inside all wet to the broken office, where no
one was doing any work at all. No one was even sure how many people had been let go.
It was at least a dozen, everyone was sure. When people did the math, they knew the
company had saved much more than three hundred thousand dollars. It was easily five
hundred thousand. It could have been close to a million dollars. The math was all
fuzzy and impossible to know. “Let’s get crackin’,” someone said in the bullpen. Eventually,
they all just left for the day.

IT WAS FRED’S
twenty-eighth birthday party. Chad met John at John’s office, and they took the subway
out to a neighborhood they didn’t know well. They had to wait for a while. “There
was a burst in the Lincoln Tunnel and traffic was backed up ninety minutes?” said
Chad, recounting the news.

“There was a birth in the tunnel?” John asked.

“No, a burst!” Chad said. Chad was wearing shorts and an ungainly, oversize white
tank top with strange, deeply scooped armholes.

They got off the train and walked out into the sun and wandered in what they thought
was the right direction, up a rundown street with lots of islander BBQ joints and
big long older cars, toward the bar where Fred was having his afternoon party. It
was hot but pleasant, kind of dreamy.

That morning Fred had gone to the beach and was extra relaxed, which for him was very
relaxed indeed. As they were looking for the bar, Fred shuffled through traffic toward
them.

“Don’t get hit!” said Chad.

“He’s the kind of guy, Fred, the driver would get out of the car, apologize, and hand
him the keys,” John said to Chad.

Fred led them to the bar. “So are any of your interesting friends going to be there?”
John asked.

Yes, the twenty-year-old that Fred was seeing would be there. And? “Tyler Flowers.”

“Oh, he’s very interesting,” John said. John had met this Tyler once before and found
him really attractive.

The bar was mostly like a long alley between two buildings, like a beer hall with
picnic tables, mostly shady, and its cavernous inside areas were dark and empty.

John ordered a white wine and came back outside. Hardly anyone was there yet. “I had
the shakes this morning, I was like Edward smoking,” John said.

Soon enough Tyler showed up. Tyler was very thin, tall, gangly, with brown curly hair.
He was in hipster jeans and big white sneakers and a thin faded flannel shirt and
a braided belt. He had huge ears and skin like a glass of milk and was pretty. There
was also something sort of ugly about him. Not ugly like he was a mean person, just
there was something about his nostrils or the slope of his forehead that made him
look like somewhat squished and frail. And his skin seemed so pale that you could
see into his head a little.

John sprang into action and went to say hello. John was doing that thing where he
smoked with his middle finger over on top of the cigarette and with his index finger
beneath it. They talked for a while and then others showed up and horned in on Tyler.
John gave up on his flirting for a while.

There were more drinks and time passed and a whole bunch of people showed up. Fred
knew a lot of people. The main topic of conversation was Fred’s upcoming move out
of the country. Fred’s departure had been some time coming, it had already been months
since he’d first started talking about going, it was sort of like he had already left.
In the way that people, when they know that someone’s going to be leaving, protect
themselves from a looming absence, they had already written off Fred. Years before
this, all the leases in the City would expire on the same day of the year, and almost
everyone would move at the same time. But because there was no Internet yet then,
when you moved, you sometimes didn’t see your friends again because they were too
far and there were too few ways to keep in contact. So some people changed their friends
every year. But at least now when Fred left the City, people could keep in touch with
him fairly easily.

One of the women there had gone to professional school with Fred and John, but somehow
she and John had never met. Everyone was talking about ordering food for delivery,
in a lazy, slightly drunken yet definitely hungry way, and Chad got fed up with it
and walked off to find a restaurant. Jason showed up.

After a really long time, Chad reappeared with his own food. Chad’s burrito was disappearing
down his gullet in huge, horrifying gulps.

“Oh my God, have you never seen Chad eat?” John asked the table.

A guy named Matt walked into the bar. He was a comedian, which meant that Matt performed
in front of other people, for money, as often as was possible, in order to make them
laugh. “I hate that guy so fucking much,” Chad said. Disgusted, they watched Matt
flirt with Tyler in the middle of the alley-patio.

“How a guy who studies baroque architecture”—for that is apparently what interested
Tyler—“can talk to a guy who can only come up with skits about early onset diabetes
is beyond me,” Chad said, taking a break from his burrito.

“Let her rip!” John said. Chad was, in fact, just getting started. This weird thing
happened where, instead of becoming exhausted by the onslaught of the burrito, something
scary happened with his blood sugar and he got more and more manic.

Meanwhile, Matt and Tyler were deep in it. “I’ve never actually had sex like that!”
Chad said. “It’s like his penis is coming out the back of his head.”

Fine, John thought. He was disillusioned, after Edward’s refusal to be present, sort
of angry, and to his mind relationships had become perhaps more transactional.

“You know what?” he said. “You’re going to see the comeback of the century. I feel
like Hillary in New Hampshire right now.”

“Your direct mail campaign is unparalleled,” Chad said. “You’re a long-term strategist.
Hours? Days? No. It is months.”

Diego showed up. Chad had gotten him a burrito too. Diego looked on sort of blankly
while John was getting revved up to go steal Tyler away from Matt.

“You’re the Neil Armstrong to his Christa McAuliffe,” Chad said.

“I’m the Chamberlain to his Churchill,” John said.

“Too soon!” Chad said.

Fred stumbled by, adorably. “Thank you for coming to my party!” he said. “Oh, I’m
a little drunk!”

The party was full; it was unclear where it stopped and started and where the regular
attendees of the bar began. A man showed up and took a seat at the edge of the picnic
table where John and Chad were scheming. He had gotten a beer and now was reading
an exceedingly obscure and storied intellectual journal. Some inexplicable sort of
awkward moment happened that involved a recent arrival to the party: some boy who
John had gone on one date with, who was now someone’s paramour, and both Chad and
John were expecting some drama, some awkwardness.

“And nothing cuts through awkward like John,” Chad said.

“Like a hot knife through cheese!” John said.

“Like a hot knife through roast beef,” Chad said. “Like a hot knife through Tyler
Flowers.”

“Hey, you want to see what a long-term strategy looks like?” John said, and then he
got up and went to greet the recent arrival, who was just then talking to, yes, Tyler
Flowers.

So he hugged the guy, who had a bunch of money in his hands. The guy looked awkward.
“Oh hey, how are you,” said the guy. Then John and the guy and Tyler Flowers were
in a little conversational triangle.

“He is wading into a situation that one would normally avoid at all costs and that
is his audacity,” Chad said.

Chad sat and watched this all going on like it was on TV.

Then Matt, the sketch comic, came up and sidled into the triangle—right between John
and Tyler.

John was telling a story. “Look at him, he looks like Rumsfeld in those meetings,”
said Chad.

There was incredible body language going on. For instance, John’s body was ejecting
the sketch comic from the group, by keeping a shoulder somewhat in front of the sketch
comic and by turning directly toward Tyler.

“He has to deal with three people while subtly destroying two of them,” Chad narrated.

Tyler was clutching a beer. The sketch comic now had one leg bent, using the knee
next to John to form a barrier between John and Tyler Flowers.

John was talking, and the sketch comic was pressing his own pint glass viciously against
his own face, in a strange and angry gesture. It was sharp-toothed animals in a tank.
Then a fifth person entered the group, and polite introductions were made, and the
tension evaporated and John saw that he was done. He rejoined Chad at the table.

“Ya gotta give ’em a break!” he said. Then: “Smokesies!” he said, mocking Jason.

Chad and John watched Tyler, apparently delighted by some new arrival. The sun had
begun to set. Everyone had had more than a few. “You know what the problem is? He’s
too easy,” John said, watching Tyler. “It’s like Russian roulette. He could go home
with him or him or him. I’m rather disappointed.”

There was a young guy in some sort of soccer shirt and white, white pants, very flash
and sporty. “You know who that guy is? A coin dealer,” Chad said. “He just bought
three million—in coins! He’s like the owner of John’s company, an ‘independent real
estate operator.’ All on his own!” He said that sarcastically, meaning the opposite.
At this time, the number-one predictor of future wealth was current wealth and, therefore,
inherited wealth.

It was by now eight thirty p.m. The twenty-year-old NYU student that Fred was sleeping
with showed up. Trevor was redheaded and pimply and dressed in what could only be
described as a costume. Little tiny shorts and boots and a gray shirt with black pocket
linings and sleeves and collar. He looked ridiculous yet brave.

“Only four and a half hours late,” John said.

The kid came up and sort of mumbled at Chad, who was aggressively, rudely polite to
him, and the kid mumbled something unintelligible, and then picked up a chair from
the table and carried it over to where Fred was sitting.

It was now fully dark. Over by Chad, Matt the sketch comic was down on the ground,
putting himself in the yoga posture called “side crow,” balancing on both hands, elbows
bent ninety degrees, his face toward the ground, his knees twisted to the side and
supported on one elbow.

“God!” Chad shouted in disgust.

LATER THAT NIGHT,
they went to Sugarland. Somehow, John started dancing with the little twenty-year-old,
the one who was seeing Fred. It got very flirty, for no good reason. He was drunk.
Well, they were all drunk.

And then that weekend John and Fred were in the park and John had gone to show some
picture on his mobile phone to Fred, but the phone was open to Facebook, and there
was a friend request from the twenty-year-old.

“What’s that?” Fred asked. “Why?”

“Oh, I don’t know, that’s so weird!” John said.

IT WAS EASIER
to not have a home in the summer than to not have a home in the winter, due almost
entirely to the weather. Not having a place to live wasn’t “bad” in itself. But people
wanted to know why, and then they could say, “That is why you have no home, because
you did that thing”—went to jail, or hurt someone, or became addicted to drugs, or
went crazy—and then they could think that reason was why such a thing would never
happen to them.

JOHN HAD A
week of vacation. This was rare for him. As an employee, he was guaranteed a certain
allotment of vacation days, something like ten of them a year. But it was pretty common
practice for employers to discourage workers from actually using them. An employee
would put in a request to use them on certain dates, and sometimes the boss or owner
would tell the employee that they couldn’t be spared then. It was also common for
these earned vacation days to expire: that if you didn’t use them within a certain
amount of time, like within the calendar year, they were no longer available. There
was also an arcane process through which, when employees worked on extra days, such
as weekends or holidays, they were to accrue “comp time,” and then they could use
this to not work on workdays. In practice, this rarely happened. In any event, with
the tension of the last two months, John hadn’t had a vacation in ages, and Timothy
did not deny him.