Read Online The Dismal Science by Peter Mountford - Free Book Online Page A

sight of his understanding of what was happening here, said nothing for a moment. So Paul said, “Is that it?”
    â€œYes, that’s it,” Vincenzo said, and then he saw that it would be better to clarify this all with Paul now than let Hamilton, who now would be roped into the conversation, do the clarifying, so he added, “Except that I told him that if he managed to get me fired over this, I’d go to the press. I said I’d talk to the Washington Post.”
    â€œYou did?” A firm pause. “Why did you say that? ”
    â€œI was concerned about my job.” This was how things disintegrated.
    â€œWell. Then let me be clear: Bill Hamilton has absolutely no control over your job. None at all. But for you to threaten to go to the press—that’s not very sportsmanlike. I appreciate your position, he was trying to bully you, but I hope you don’t feel like talking to the press about sensitive issues is a parachute for you. It’s not going to save you. If anything, it’s got more in common with a kamikaze’s strategy.”
    â€œI understand.” He looked at the phone, aware that something was shifting in the conversation, and in his understanding of his situation. This wasn’t new information, it was old information seen anew. “But you are saying you support me in this?” he clarified, although already he sensed that Wolfowitz wasn’t interested in working out détente.
    â€œI support you as long as you don’t make a goddamn scandal out of it, yes,” Wolfowitz said. “Hamilton is a friend of mine, but he had no place threatening your job.”

    Half an hour later, Vincenzo called Walter and told him that he wanted to go on the record about something that had happened that day at the Bank.
    Walter was silent for a moment, then cleared his throat. “You aren’t trying to put me into a difficult position, are you?”
    â€œNo,” Vincenzo said. “But I am serious.” If the moment he’d made the decision had to be pinpointed, he’d say it happened while he was talking to Paul. Or maybe just after. Or there was no specific moment, really, just the entire circumstance, just everything about the year, too, and the year before, and the one before that. It was time to drive the boat ashore. In case Walter was still vacillating, he added, “I’m just going on the record about something.”
    â€œYou’re kidding?”
    â€œNot at all.”
    Walter laughed nervously and then sighed. A little silence ensued while Walter thought it through. “Is this something where I have to weigh your interests against my interests? That’s not something I want to do.” He was a barker on the phone, unnecessarily loud all the time. Even in person, he tended to be argumentative and brash and unnecessarily loud.
    â€œNo, we have the same interests.”
    â€œOh, I doubt that.” There was another long pause while Walter groaned, mulling it over. Walter verbalized, perhaps unknowingly, his harsher emotions: groaning under his breath (but nonetheless audibly) at boring people, sighing loudly at exasperating conversations and also, evidently, at friendssteering themselves into the weeds. At last, he said, “Fuck it. Okay. Go on.”
    Much of the rest of the conversation was a blur, as are most of the truly important moments in life. Those great events always seemed to be formalized in interactions that, when recalled, appeared bright and blurry—like an iridescent watercolor left out in a rainstorm. The memory of his proposal to Cristina was like that, as was the conversation when she told him that she was pregnant. Leonora’s birth: the only remaining image was of the thick dark blood seeping slowly from the freshly cut umbilical cord—and later, in Italy, when Leonora lost her leg, he remembered only huddling with Cristina, her nails digging deep into his wrist, while