While imported goods were still out of stock, the shortages of American products the previous year had given way to shortages of income. You could now buy eggs and broccoli and even meat—for a price. Emboldened by the deposit that had only cleared that morning, Lowell refused to check the scribbled price tabs, and bought whatever he wanted. That was how men shopped. The mounding cart drew even more envious glances than the pink loafers.
After the last of his swag swept through checkout—where all the trusting self-service machines had been removed, stealing having grown too socially acceptable—Lowell froze. Hands on his padded pockets, he had to ask the girl to repeat the bill; her second iteration was snide. So that’s why Ellen Packer had relented when he once more threatened to sue: back pay from one of the foremost universities in the country meant to cover four months of prestigious employ could not now cover one tank of gas and a week’s food.
Lowell marshaled his most theatrical indignation and marched coolly from the store, leaving its minions to put the groceries back. The stylish exit meant sacrificing the canvas shopping bags, already packed with flank steak, for which he was sure to get it in the neck from Florence. The least he could get out of the humiliation was a parking space, so he left the Jaunt where it was and launched farther down Utica Avenue. It wouldn’t do to return empty-handed. He could pick up enough eats for the next couple of days at the Quickee Mart on Foster.
“Spare some change.”
A snatched side glance at an unshaven young man with greasy hair gleaned only that he was wearing the same sort of collarless tunic-style suit jacket in which Lowell had looked so snazzy during his final year at Georgetown. The fellow had sidled so close that the sleeve brushed Lowell’s arm.
“No, thank you,” Lowell said, a bit insensibly, eyes straight and gait stiff.
“Nice shoes, pal.”
The compliment hailed from the opposite side, as a second under-washed gentleman brushed the other arm. He’d noticed both of these young men nearby him in the supermarket, where they’d idly picked up lamb chops and put them down again. Lowell wasn’t born yesterday, and inferred some sort of hustle. Yet it took him a beat too long to register that the white guys bracing him weren’t swindlers but hoods. Though no one else witnessed this moment of being hopelessly dim, the slow uptake embarrassed Lowell in front of himself. He shouldn’t have had to lay eyes on the knife to get it.
A mere kitchen knife but of excellent quality, one of those German-steel numbers of which his wife had bought whole butcher-block sets, all forsaken in their ignominious scuttle from Cleveland Park. Not the chef’s but the utility knife, that’s what the contents list on the box would call it, was pointed at Lowell’s gut. Lo, it did seem very useful.
Perhaps their routine was sufficiently established that the duo was bored by it, for rather than focus on the business at hand, Lowell’s new friends chatted between them about an all-agricultural mutual fund that was doing improbably well, then commiserated over their favorite sushi bar on Liberty Street in lower Manhattan having finally closed. Were they indeed former Wall Street financiers, the segue from one form of larceny to another could only have been graceful. Keeping their target tightly between them, as the second fellow pressed the knife tip just below the ribs, they steered him onto Avenue D and up East Forty-Ninth. They needn’t have bothered to get off the main road; other pedestrians took no more notice of that blade flashing in the sun than they would have of a glinting rearview mirror. His escorts pushed him through the gate of the overgrown front yard and kicked him onto a mound of briars. The thugs would score more handsomely than usual, though as he emptied his pockets Lowell had never been happier that the US Federal Reserve had debased the banded stacks into fancy green insulation.
It was worse that they found his fleX, hidden in Lowell’s left loafer. Worse still, they found the fleX because they took the shoes. Wiping beads of blood from his briar-torn cheeks and limping back to Green Acre Farm in socks, Lowell rehearsed the gratitude that he would underscore on return to the Darklys’: thank God he’d kept walking toward the Quickee Mart, and they hadn’t got the car.
“They’re only objects,” Willing said patiently. “You’re confusing the objects with what they mean to you. With objects, you can take the meaning back. They return to being empty things. Cuboids. Heavy cuboids that take up a lot of space.”
They were in the attic, to which Willing alone was admitted. This was the warmest room in the house, which wasn’t saying much. Though headroom was restricted, his great-aunt commanded more square feet for her personal use than anyone else. No one objected, because she was also the only resident besides his mother who contributed to their tiny economy. Other than by drawing Social Security—and the stipend was too modest to explain her generosity—he was not sure how. He did not know how much Nollie had left or where it came from. But of course he was interested. Nollie was the only one who didn’t spend her money as fast as possible, before it turned to ash. Yet she didn’t run out. This, too, was interesting. All the same, she was very particular about what she would pay for. It had to be a strict necessity.
“They’re not ‘cuboids,’” Nollie objected. “They’re my life’s work.”
She was balled on her mattress like a kid. The laces on her tennis shoes had broken and been knotted back together several times. The bulky red sweater was too big for her. She was wearing gloves, though they all wore gloves indoors. It was gloves that Avery should have bought up in Walgreens. The fingers of his own had holes.
“It’s getting cold.” He would speak slowly and clearly. She had to be coaxed. “It’s only December. It’s going to get colder. The natural gas costs too much to use through the whole winter. We have to save it for emergencies. Medical emergencies. Meanwhile, we have to keep warm, and cook, with the oil drum out back. The snow has covered the cemetery and the park. Which have been picked clean of firewood anyway. Even if we found any, the sticks would be wet. You can help.”
She was sulking. “Book burning is the end of civilization.”
“All your novels are available online.”
“The pirated versions.”
“Piracy is a compliment.”
“Forgive me if I’m not bowled over.”
“Your copies.” He would push his luck. “They say the same thing over and over. You have boxes and boxes of the same books.”
“I save them, to give to special friends. They’ll never be printed again.”
“They are produced in an obsolete format,” Willing said. “Most of these ‘special’ people would regard a present like that as a burden. They’d take it home and burn it in an oil drum.”
“So if I gave you one of my novels, you’d march downstairs and burn it.”
“Yes,” he said steadily.
“You’ve never expressed the slightest interest in my work.” She sounded peevish.
“No,” he said. “Maybe later, on the other side of this.”
“Will there be an ‘other side of this’?”
“That’s up for grabs,” he conceded. “But now isn’t a time for novels. Nothing made up is more interesting than what’s actually happening. We’re in a novel.”
She seemed to like that.
“You’re sort of old,” he said, quickly amending, “but not immense old. I mean, you’re in malicious shape. All those jumping jacks. No one would think you were seventy-four.” This was pro forma flattery for her generation. It should have raised a red flag for boomers: obviously the fawning lickspittle plying them with hackneyed compliments wanted something. Yet it always worked. “But you don’t live in the past. One of the things I like about you. You seem to be following the plot, more than the others. Lowell not hiding his fleX in a smarter place than his shoe. Avery mooning about how careless it used to be, ordering groceries online. They don’t get it. You seem to. Maybe it’s all those books you wrote. Maybe you’re used to staying a step back, keeping track of the larger arc, aiming for that final chapter. So holding on to these old-format hard copies, when we need them to boil pasta—it isn’t like you.”