Read Online American Spirit: A Novel by Dan Kennedy - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Dan Kennedy
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come back, so there’s some comfort in that. And if a day like this is going to happen, good that it should happen on a day of the week when everyone in the entire building was being belched out of the revolving doors downstairs, being blown out to a two-day tiny taste of freedom. It would be hard to notice one who has been asked to not come back on the third day. A weekend seemed like the best way to ease into the abyss, if one had to be met with a fate like his, as if every weekend up until this one was rehearsal; the way every night of sleep is rehearsal for one’s death; one tiny little termination after another, all of it, really. And here, now, in the car reminiscing as one does, the Steely lyric that comes earthbound from the satellite in space, out of the speakers as a sound, like a tattoo the way it has stuck around, is going around again seductively crooning about how black Friday has got to come eventually and then the lyric accepts this, but simply asks that it not fall on the guy singing. Well, fair enough, but if it fell and missed him, then it certainly nailed somebody.
8
The Problem with Leaving One’s Phone On
T HE PHONE, THANK GOD, interrupts remembering how all of this happened. The small typing device nesting between the seat and center console is, one forgets, first and foremost, a telephone. Matthew regards its ringing with the cool reserve of any terrified isolationist; on the first ring he looks down at it, as if there’s no chance he would stop reading about his new craft class and consider answering it; on the second ring his resolve weakens just a bit; on the third ring he lifts the device out of the dark little fjord in between the seats where it is wedged in order to at least investigate what name appears on the screen. He sees TIM. MOBILE backlit, and he caves in, presses the little green button that will let someone in. He says hello into the little distractionpressed to the side of his head; in the distance the meditation instructor is leaving, rubbing just a bit where the punch struck him above the ear. Matthew puts his free arm out the window and waves while he stays on the call, and the instructor waves, a little hesitant and uncertain, ideally just because of the distance making it difficult for him to recognize Matthew. The instructor ducks into a beat-up Japanese econo-box that limps and sputters to the far exit of the parking lot and Matthew is left with his call from Tim.
Tim, it turns out, is also a little bit down on his luck and embarking on his own personal recession. Which is comforting in the happens-to-the-best-of-us sense, even though Tim Kell is not exactly the best of us. Tim isn’t exactly a friend, mostly because he runs in circles about two atmospheres above mid-six-range media cogs like Matthew. The only reason the two of them met is because ten years ago Tim spilled a drink on Matthew at the restaurant downstairs in Black Rock, the building a block north of New Time, and the only place to get a drink during lunch without looking like hard luck ducking into one of those Irish pubs on Fifty-fifth. And when this spill happened, Tim was more than cool about it. Whipped out cash on the spot, eight hundred bucks, and when Matthew looked at him stunned, he added a couple hundred bucks to make it a grand and also added that he was pretty sure Matthew’s sweater wasn’t 100 percent cashmere. Tim’s clients were well fed and gone, but he stuck around, bought himself and Matthew a round, and they sat drinking it.
Tim nailed pay on Wall Street; the kind of thing where bonuses stacked, a couple months earned like a year of whatever anyone else was doing, and the fringe benefits were weighed in grams and girls with names like Destiny, Cheyenne, and Blue. He came from a long line of that type of thing apparently, his dad made a killing, his grandfather made a killing, by the time Tim came of age he was drafted in, automatic bones, a made man. They exchanged cards that day
8
The Problem with Leaving One’s Phone On
T HE PHONE, THANK GOD, interrupts remembering how all of this happened. The small typing device nesting between the seat and center console is, one forgets, first and foremost, a telephone. Matthew regards its ringing with the cool reserve of any terrified isolationist; on the first ring he looks down at it, as if there’s no chance he would stop reading about his new craft class and consider answering it; on the second ring his resolve weakens just a bit; on the third ring he lifts the device out of the dark little fjord in between the seats where it is wedged in order to at least investigate what name appears on the screen. He sees TIM. MOBILE backlit, and he caves in, presses the little green button that will let someone in. He says hello into the little distractionpressed to the side of his head; in the distance the meditation instructor is leaving, rubbing just a bit where the punch struck him above the ear. Matthew puts his free arm out the window and waves while he stays on the call, and the instructor waves, a little hesitant and uncertain, ideally just because of the distance making it difficult for him to recognize Matthew. The instructor ducks into a beat-up Japanese econo-box that limps and sputters to the far exit of the parking lot and Matthew is left with his call from Tim.
Tim, it turns out, is also a little bit down on his luck and embarking on his own personal recession. Which is comforting in the happens-to-the-best-of-us sense, even though Tim Kell is not exactly the best of us. Tim isn’t exactly a friend, mostly because he runs in circles about two atmospheres above mid-six-range media cogs like Matthew. The only reason the two of them met is because ten years ago Tim spilled a drink on Matthew at the restaurant downstairs in Black Rock, the building a block north of New Time, and the only place to get a drink during lunch without looking like hard luck ducking into one of those Irish pubs on Fifty-fifth. And when this spill happened, Tim was more than cool about it. Whipped out cash on the spot, eight hundred bucks, and when Matthew looked at him stunned, he added a couple hundred bucks to make it a grand and also added that he was pretty sure Matthew’s sweater wasn’t 100 percent cashmere. Tim’s clients were well fed and gone, but he stuck around, bought himself and Matthew a round, and they sat drinking it.
Tim nailed pay on Wall Street; the kind of thing where bonuses stacked, a couple months earned like a year of whatever anyone else was doing, and the fringe benefits were weighed in grams and girls with names like Destiny, Cheyenne, and Blue. He came from a long line of that type of thing apparently, his dad made a killing, his grandfather made a killing, by the time Tim came of age he was drafted in, automatic bones, a made man. They exchanged cards that day
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