Walking back to the hotel, Frank turned this over in his mind. Is that really what Lizzie had been thinking? She was angry? She was indignant? It was hard for Frank to see his daughter in this way-as someone who was independent, informed, and politically aware. Possibly because of the divorce and the years of minimal contact, his image of her was stuck back in the early teen years.
She was his little girl.
Sweet, smart, spiky… vulnerable, but also belligerent-a dangerous combination, but what Frank had to face now was that these were characteristics Lizzie had obviously carried with her into adulthood, and that if he wanted to understand her, it would have to be on her terms.
The other thing he realized walking along Fifty-fourth Street was that he himself wasn’t really angry or indignant. This was probably because he knew next to nothing about the financial crisis. Sure, he’d read the papers and watched the news and shared a certain amount of received indignation, he’d rolled his eyes and passed remarks like everyone else, he’d been appalled at the numbers, he’d seen the ripple effect in the economy, he’d lost his motherfucking job, for Christ’s sake-but he hadn’t ever focused on what had actually been happening, he hadn’t tried to figure any of it out. When he was at Belmont, McCann he’d been too busy working, trying to hold on to his job, and after he got laid off he’d been too busy feeling sorry for himself and scrambling around to find a new source of income. In other words, like a lot of people, he’d been too inward-looking and self-absorbed to pay attention.
So when he got near the hotel he went into what was now his local Duane Reade and bought a few magazines, business titles-Forbes, Fast Company, Bloomberg Businessweek, The Economist-with the vague intention of boning up on the crisis. But it didn’t take him long-back in his hotel room, flicking through these glossy, ad-heavy mags-to understand that there was a closed lingo here, that a lot was taken for granted, and that he’d have to dig a little deeper. His laptop was in the apartment in Mahopac. There were one or two Internet cafés near the hotel, but they seemed really busy and touristy, and he couldn’t see himself sitting in one of those for too long-or in the business center here in the hotel lobby. What he did was go out and head for the Barnes & Noble on Fifth Avenue, where he stood for a while in front of what turned out to be a dedicated section, a display actually called “Understanding the Crisis.”
The weightiest and most hyped book here seemed to be The Dominion of Debt, so he picked that one up first, along with Money Down and a copy of Galbraith’s The Great Crash, 1929. Back in his room, he started reading, but was soon switching from one book to another, growing ever more impatient, constantly suspecting that he was reading the wrong one, that the books he’d bought were the wrong ones, that all the learning and illumination were happening somewhere else.
The next morning he went back to the Barnes & Noble, to the now altar-like “Understanding the Crisis” display, and loaded up on more tomes with urgent-sounding titles such as Financial Catastrophe 101 and Buddy, Can You Spare a Trillion Dollars? The same thing happened, and he made a third trip in the afternoon-stopping at that liquor store on his way back.
Now, as evening settles in, he feels simultaneously gorged and empty. He admits he’s learned some stuff, but really, more questions are raised by what he’s been reading here than answers. He detects in himself a growing resentment, too, an anger even, about what he’s discovering. But there’s a muffled quality to it, a reticence. What’s driving him first and foremost is this obsessive curiosity, this burning need to know what Lizzie knew.
To see what Lizzie saw.
He hasn’t opened the Stoli yet, and he mightn’t.
He looks around the room.
These books and magazines are all very well, but what he could really use here is Internet access, high-octane hyperlinks to take him where he needs to go. Someone mentions Bretton Woods? Glass-Steagall? Jekyll Island? Fine, he can go there, follow the thread, not be confined to the impenetrable thickets of some forty-page chapter on collateralized mortgage obligations. Because it seems to Frank that the financial crisis of 2008-its origins stretching back over decades, its aftermath unfolding into the foreseeable future-is a huge, unwieldy subject, a web of interconnecting narratives that cannot be contained in a single text or contemplated at a single glance.
He thinks about this for a while and then just heads straight out. There’s a place he’s passed on Forty-eighth Street called Café Zero, and that’s where he goes. With so many free Wi-Fi hotspots around now, these dedicated Internet cafés are becoming a thing of the past-but this one is still pretty busy, and although he’s not comfortable here, he settles in at a table and starts surfing.
He goes to Google and types in “Glass-Steagall Act.”
In less than a tenth of a second more than two million results come up.
It’s a foggy night in the early spring of 1865 and he’s crossing the Brooklyn Bridge on foot-vaguely aware somehow that construction of the bridge will not in fact be commencing for another five years-when he bumps into a tall, gaunt man in a frock coat and a shiny top hat. Then, curiously, and without any warning at all, it’s 1915 and the two men are in an IRT train, rattle-tattling, lights flickering, hurtling over the bridge, the president fumbling in his pocket for a greenback-
Vaughan says, “Sir, I-I-”
“Sshhh… listen to me now, don’t… don’t tell anyone about…”
Hhhnnn.
“Don’t-”
Hhhnnnn.
He opens his eyes. Looks around. Shit. That was intense.
He shakes his head.
Vivid, lucid, almost hyper-real.
It was like…
He glances around the room, at the red leather armchairs, and the bookshelves, at the Persian rug and the Matisse. He holds up his old, soft, mottled hand and stares at it.
Like this… like reality itself.
But it’s not only his dreams-ones he might have dozing off for ten minutes in the library, say, as he’s just done now, or denser, longer ones fresh in his head after waking in the morning-it’s his memories, too. These are more directed, and rational, which is hardly surprising, but they’re just as vivid and cinematic. He can glide back over past times and recall details he would never normally have access to. In the last couple of days, for instance, he’s had a flood of memories from the late 1950s-that office he had in the Century Building, with its art deco fittings, walnut and ebony throughout, and those baggy, double-breasted suits he used to wear. And that sterling silver cigarette case he had, that Kitty gave him… with the ribbed pattern on the outside and the gilt yellow swirled finish on the inside…
Shit.
When was the last time he thought about that?
In a reverie now, he stares into space.
Transported back.
Of course, in those days he was constantly at war with the old man.
He can just see him, striding into the office in his vicuña overcoat, declaiming, waving his cigar around.
The generally held view back then was that William J. Vaughan was a great man, a business titan of the old school who’d be a hard act for his son to follow. But really, what was so great about him? Apart from his one big coup in 1929, what did he ever achieve? The fact is that all through the thirties, forties, and fifties William J. oversaw the steady decline of the family business, undoing through recklessness and negligence everything his own father had ever done to build it up (before dropping dead during a recital in Carnegie Hall in 1938). And yet because he was this big personality who played golf with cardinals and fucked movie stars he was perceived by everyone to be a great success.