Wakefield (24 page)

“So you think that's what it's all about? Stupidity?” Wakefield is quite stunned, by Jackie's eloquence and the manifest truth she's revealed.

Susan doesn't say anything and Wakefield knows that she can't. It's too much to process.

“I'm sure Teleskou was stupidly killed by some very stupid people,” Jackie continues. “These guys probably think that the fables he published in obscure literary magazines are coded descriptions of their conspiracies.”

“And here we are having a nice time under the Freedom of Speech tower,” sighs Wakefield.

“Ah, yes, freedom of the press,” says Jackie. “A fragile concept. The paper I work for exercised that freedom with some honor when it defended Lincoln during the Civil War. Later in its history it became a mouthpiece for the publisher's protofascist leanings, campaigned against America's entry into World War Two, and was totally ready to dispense with freedom of the press.”

“Didn't
his
family force him to retire?” Susan asks, refering to the fascist-leaning publisher.

Jackie nods, a master of the political history of her world.

Wakefield admires her authority and the ease of her command in the light of day. But there is always the night, and its ill-defined terrors.

Susan takes Wakefield home to her apartment in a hip part of town, a former bohemian ghetto now gentrifying. A few years ago there was a thriving art scene in the neighborhood: small theaters, guerilla publishers, music studios, galleries, and coffeehouses, all because of the cheap rent. One day the neighborhood became fair game for real estate speculators attracted by the colorful improvements artists made to their lofts and apartments, and now there was war (another one!) going on between the original settlers and the profiteers.

“Some artists are putting up a fight, but mostly they are migrating in search of lower rents,” Susan explains. She lives in a loft in a former dry-goods warehouse that a few years ago was a warren of studio apartments. Her neighbors are bankers, lawyers, and art administrators.

Wakefield knows that this process has happened in many cities; what's new is the speed of the displacement. Almost overnight, the artists who established the studios were cut out by heavily capitalized developers.

“The vanguard of real estate doesn't even have to be art at all, just a threat of art, a soupçon of style,” Susan tells him, teacherlike. “Any hint of an emerging arts community, the speculators smell blood.” There is a fundamental reason, Susan thinks, why living art communities should take precedence over profit, and she's got a point. Artists use the available materials of a place to fashion a city's identity, an identity that is an evolving collaboration between the past of the buildings they inhabit, the present of new technology, and the esthetic of the future. No urban planner or real estate developer, no matter how enlightened or forward-looking, can do the job as well.

“What they should do is protect cheap-rent areas from indiscriminate development,” she concludes, unlocking the double-bolted door of the airy loft. Inside are two lemon trees in wooden barrels, one spidery-looking exercise machine on the floor, a futon bed surrounded by art books, and a striped cat named Maggie.

“Why did you name her Maggie?” Wakefield asks, scratching the cat behind her ears.

“Oh, you know. Tennessee Williams. Maggie the cat on a hot tin roof.”

Jeez. Wakefield can't possibly make a move on a woman who has a cat with the same name as the last woman he slept with. Not possible, as the French say, though he suspects that Susan is truly in need of comfort after all that has happened in the past twenty-four hours. But watching her open a bottle of red wine, he doesn't feel any sexual attraction. She makes him nervous, and his unease grows when she puts on a CD of Spanish guitar, classically seductive music, and lights a scented candle.

The apartment is dim and cozy; beyond the large windows, street lights and swirling snow. If she asks, he'll say yes out of politeness, not desire. He can draw on the libidinal store of images that always arouse him: a girl (he'd picked her up hitchhiking) taking a bath in a motel tub, Marianna dancing in her panties to a pop tune on the radio. There are also some not-yet-tested arrangements in his storehouse, among them the entwined but blurry shapes of Milena and Tiffany, mostly Milena. He turns on the small television on top of the bookcase, and a CNN anchorwoman bursts into the room, dispelling the atmosphere of intimacy. There are images of streets filled with demonstrators. “Milosevic has abandoned the palace,” exults the anchor, “and the protesters have occupied the former presidential suite. NATO bombing has ceased everywhere in the former Yugoslavia.”

Susan leaps up and throws her arms around Wakefield's neck. “Jackie was right. The madness is over for now! Let the boredom begin!” She grabs her wineglass and waits for Wakefield to raise his. They toast. “To Mommy and Pop,” Susan says.

“To you,” adds Wakefield, relieved to see the (temporary) end of Susan's anguish and a nation's suffering. The end of the war will not be the end of her heartache, but for now she can celebrate along with the world, and Wakefield rejoices with her.

A high-level meeting on the New World Order has been called, and our Devil knows he can't afford to miss this one. He's one of the few old-timers left who is allowed, by virtue of seniority, to indulge in private whims such as the making of deals with individuals. Everyone else works full time on bigger and far more boring projects—problems involving hundreds of thousands, even millions of souls at a pop. Global work, no micromanaging. The bosses have sent out a rambling memo taking the workforce to task for various lax practices.

“You've got to take yourselves more seriously,” the T-memo says, “at least as seriously as aliens who, hick reports notwithstanding, communicate not with individuals but with
species
. Contrary to popular belief, they do not extract kidneys and sperm, they
instruct
kidneys and sperm, with consequences for
all
humans. In the end, this whole human thing has to be deemphasized and we must research alternative biounits for heat and information storage. Many of you are attached to the old forms of demonic appearance for ontological reasons. Desist and imagine! You can look like anything you want. The upcoming conference concerns the New World Order. Not, of course, the one proposed by certain American politicians, but the
real
New World Order, ours. Attendance is absolutely required.”

Our Devil shows up for the meeting on time because the meeting place, Mount Eumenides in Thrace, is just above his favorite cave. This place has been chosen because there is a natural amphitheater big enough to accommodate thousands of devils, and inside the hill itself are layered Celtic-Roman-Gothic-Greek-Avar-Bulgarian-Hungarian-Serbian-Croatian-Turkish-German-Austrian and Russian bones, the bones of Swedish, Tartar, French, Swiss, Mameluke, Syrian, and Persian warriors. In other words, the remains of every people in recorded history that has ever occupied the site.

His pride at arriving so promptly vanishes almost immediately: several hundred devils have already taken their places, and more keep coming, shoving from every side like hooligans at a soccer match. He catches snatches of their pretentious conversation, buzzwords like
telekinesis, and synergy
. These new corporate types make him gag, chasing every new fad, flicking their firm young tails and flashing their perfectly polished horns. And they are willing to work 24/7 for the greater glory of the company.

When the meeting is called to order, the Devil has already decided to speak up on behalf of liberty. No less than human beings, devils should not have to work any more than eight hours a day for the collective. The rest of the time they should be able to do what they please. Wasn't free time the issue that had gotten him hurled out of Heaven and into the prison of Time? God had assigned him some mindless task he has long forgotten, counting apples or angels or something, and he'd protested that he needed time off to think, read, and invent. The Lord thought that He had done all the inventing that ever needed to be done when he animated his clumpy clay dolls. So when Lucifer continued complaining,
blam!
the Pinkertons of Heaven all fired on him at once. And now here he is, reexperiencing an attempt on his liberty. No fucking way. Why does everything have to be so complex anyway? Can't a poor devil just enjoy a slice of stupidity strumming his lute or chewing a blade of grass with a thoughtless nymph gyrating on top of him?

The first point of order taken up by the demonic council is the problem of sexual reproduction. They declare it obsolete. Reasons: clumsiness, inefficiency, an excess of unproductive pleasure. That's it for him. The Devil rips off his name tag and, stepping on hooves and tails, makes his way out of the amphitheater and heads straight to his cave, where he seethes for an immeasurably long time. In the end he'll have no choice but to return to the damned meeting, but they'll have to drag him to it screaming and kicking. Which he knows how to do, believe you me.

PART FOUR

WEST

Wakefield points his rental car west out of the city, drives it through still-sleepy suburbs covered with snow and Christmas lights, past houses built of nothing more than fragile boards of pressed wood wrapped in twinkling light bulbs. The people in them sleep well, though they fell asleep watching war on TV, and Wakefield is grateful that these people, crammed together in shaky shelters by the freeway, are able to trust one another that much. They aren't afraid that their neighbors will kill them and burn down their houses. They probably don't even know their neighbors, because they rarely meet. And yet they trust one another enough to sleep, and their peaceful sleep is strong enough to wash over Wakefield as he drives past them.

What makes it possible for people who barely know each other, who live in straw houses, to sleep in America? It's amazing, he says to himself, amazing.

The Devil chuckles. Oh, Wakefield, you are a naïve soul! What about the billion-dollar home security industry? I get ten percent of the profits! What about the locks and bolts and floodlights and video surveillance and fireproof safes and gated communities and bomb shelters? What about the gigantic gun business that's been arming the populace since the founding of the republic? And what of the immense insurance racket that rakes in jillions from people's fear? Even the poorest of the poor sleep with revolvers under their pillows.

Nothing has profited the Devil so much as the fear of crime: he gets his cut from every gun sold, every insurance policy, every security system installed, every lock, every fence, and every pepper-spray cannister in every women's purse.

Wakefield has the luxury of time before his next gig for the art collector out West. When Wakefield was a young man he had made a generational right of passage: he drove to California a 1957 Oldsmobile called OhMy. It was 1966 and he was alone, like now, and sad. His girlfriend was supposed to go with him, but she changed her mind (another guy) at the last minute. He drove across the country with the Kinks, the Beatles, the Beach Boys, Iron Butterfly, the Mamas and the Papas, his father's well-thumbed road atlas, and worn paperbacks of
The Journals of Lewis and Clark, Leaves of Grass
, and of course
On the Road
, published, wow, in 1957, the same vintage as OhMy. His memories of that trip are mostly visual, though: the night sky in New Mexico, a starlit immensity that made him dizzy; a downpour outside Denver that turned the road into a river sweeping smaller cars down the mountainside but not bothering OhMy a bit; a gigantic cowboy hat on top of a gas station in Texas where he bought jerky and beer; the softening of the light in the early morning desert. And that hitchhiker, a dirty, brown girl who took a long bath in the motel and spent the night. He left her at the Second Mesa turnoff to Old Oraibi in Arizona, by a sign warning white people to venture no farther. She gave him a turquoise stone he's kept ever since.

Mostly he'd driven alone, and the people in diners and gas stations were not all that friendly, but reading his books late at night with his flashlight, he felt part of a tribe, traveling with like-minded explorers, hobos and bohos for whom the road was not simply a means to get from one place to another but a state of being, a symbolic way of viewing existence itself. The road had its own residents, drifters, wanderers, people made ill by suburbs. Born and raised in one himself, Wakefield saw the suburb as a metastasizing megamonster, the incarnation of nowhere, neither city nor country, a place that reduced people like his mother and father to appendages of their automobiles and the new interstates. In the days of Kerouac, when his Olds was new, the highways were slow and eccentric, and Wakefield found them: roads where gas stations with old-fashioned red pumps were powered by flying Pegasus, where motor courts had vibrating beds (fifteen minutes for a quarter), drive-in burger joints had flying saucers parked on top of them and peaches-and-cream cheerleaders on roller-skates flew with milkshakes between cars. He found rock shops with treasures in dusty trays untouched since the bearded, filthy prospectors had dropped them off; a museum built especially for “the largest snake in the world,” entry fifty cents, where the snake was handled by the oldest woman with the hugest boobs in Oklahoma; enormous cowboys, lassos flying beside steak joints in Texas; jackrabbits with Christmas lights strung between their ears; tepees filled with mounds of arrowheads, fringed deerskin vests, Navajo blankets, and Hopi baskets in Arizona; lipstick-red motel neon in the California desert glowing in the lavender sunset.

Camped beside a rushing river in a canyon in northern New Mexico, he read the journals of Lewis and Clark and imagined everything they'd seen—the strange plants, the new animals, the wild rivers they charted, the bluffs and bays they named, the tribes they met or ran from, the strange things they ate—and he saw how they nearly died and made it anyway.