The Rise And Fall Of Great Powers Part 25

"Can I have a cheating opportunity?"

"Is cheating opportunity number nine."

She counted in her head. "Eight," she said, then chose another move, equally disastrous.

"You are swimming on thin ice."

She moved again.

"Now you are skating on hot water."

Two moves later, it was checkmate. He reached across the board, sandwiched her little hand between his. "Thank you, darlink. Even though I beat pants onto you, you are high-quality intellectual." He sent her off to fetch his wodka as a prize, writing the word in blockletter printing for her to show the barman, and providing a banknote, too. She declined this, explaining that everything at the bar was free.

At the top of the stairs, she hesitated, worried about leaving her book bag with someone from the Soviet Union. Might he look inside? Actually, he had a good nose to draw. She pushed through the drinks scrum and slipped behind the bar, ticking her stumpy fingernails on the bottles, stopping at Smirnoff. To the amus.e.m.e.nt of Jaime, who watched but didn't intervene, she raised it with both hands and poured it into a plastic cup, filling it nearly to the top.

"You paying for that?"

She shook her head.

"What is it with you and Sarah?"

"Did you see her?"

"I saw her when you got here. Then I saw her making out with Venn, but I ... what?"

Tooly couldn't suppress her horror. "You saw her smooching?"

A tipsy woman shouted for Jaime's attention, and he turned to take the order, noticing too late that Tooly had again walked off without paying.

The plastic cup of vodka was too full to safely carry with one hand, so she held it with both, her mouth to the rim, the liquid burning her lips.

"Is good," Humphrey said, taking a sip. "Now I help you find her." He stood from behind the table, smoothed down his tie. "I sit for too long. My leg goes to bed."

"To sleep?"

"Thank you, small person. At rare time, I am making mistake in English-language speaking, so thanks for accurate fixation. Now we find Sarah. You follow. Stay near. There are trivial beings everywhere."

Once downstairs, they needed five minutes just to cross the room. Identifying anyone in that crowd was impossible for Tooly, whose height limited her to views of guts and b.u.t.ts. As for Humphrey, he had height but his vision was weak. So they agreed to get Tooly to a higher vantage point: the stepladder. A couple sat on its lower rungs but moved when Humphrey hoisted her up. She climbed the rest of the way, grasping each next rung. He stood at the bottom, keeping it steady, ready to catch her. "Is okay?"

"Yes. But hold it!" she said from the top.

Everyone looked so different up there: Jaime at the bar and the serpentine queue for service; the deejay was going bald; a clownish drunkard slow-danced with a poster of King Bhumibol. The Thais watched this scene, smoking faster. They revered their monarch, a man known for humility and for playing the jazz saxophone. He was considered the sole blameless public figure in a country of corruption and coups. When the drunkard tongue-kissed his poster, it was too much: a katoey rushed him and a brawl exploded, spreading fast. Bystanders shrieked. Tooly looked down at Humphrey.

From his vantage point, he saw nothing, only heard cries, clothes tearing, the smack of knuckles on flesh. "Come down!" he said. The crowd surged like rough seas. "Down, please!" He raised his arms to catch her, but the crush of people pushed him off balance and toppled the ladder.

The ceiling flew away from Tooly, bodies spinning closer, the floor rushing at her. Her shoulder struck concrete, her head whipped back. As legs trampled around her, she curled up, teeth chattering, thinking how much trouble she was in. A high heel trod on her hand; a shin clipped her in the mouth.

Then someone grabbed her, pulled her upward. She clung to his arm, as the man pushed away the crowd and called out orders, which cut through the frenzied din. Gradually, the panic eased-just a few late shouts and shoves. Even after the man had released her, Tooly clasped his sleeve.

"All right?" he asked, cupping his palm under her chin, thumb across her cheek to her earlobe. His voice and eyes had an odd effect on her, seeming to silence the music that thumped in the background.

She hesitated, unsure how to respond to this stranger, with wild brown hair and mountain-man beard, whiskers parting above his lips as he grinned at her. She looked away, then at him again, realizing only after two glances what was odd about his eyes: one was green, the other black. (That pupil was permanently dilated, she later learned, due to a fistfight in his teens.) "I'm Venn," he told her. Others sought his attention, called to him. The room still twitched from the spasm of violence. He paid no mind, dealing only with her. "You got a bit of a knock there."

The back of her head throbbed where it had struck the floor. "It's okay," she pretended.

"Good girl," he said. "Good girl. You smack your head and not a word. That's what I like to see."

Disheveled and fraught, Humphrey reached them. "You are hurt, little gurul?"

"I'm fine," she said, emboldened, glancing up at Venn.

"I am relief," Humphrey said. "Very relief to hear this."

"Do you know Sarah?" she asked Venn. "She invited me to this party, but I can't find her now."

"I know Sarah. And I know who you are, Matilda."

He summoned the two bouncers and ordered them to guard the little girl-what the h.e.l.l had they been doing, letting her walk around on her own? They were far larger than Venn, yet both listened, heads down. They led her by the hand to the front door, sat her on the floor, and amused her with silly jokes, letting her light their cigarettes. After an hour, she fell asleep, the toasty smell of smoke mingling with a dream about calculators.

Upstairs, Venn found a group of backpacking former Israeli soldiers who were sharing a joint, and he deputized them to clear everyone off that floor so it could be used by the girl to sleep. As he carried Tooly up there, she stirred but kept her eyes closed. The delicious sensation of being placed on a soft bed-he slipped the book bag under her head as a pillow.

"I'm a bit worried," she said, sleepy eyes flickering. "I'm supposed to go home."

"Nothing to worry about," he a.s.sured her, kicking the last stragglers downstairs and leaving her there to rest. "Nothing to worry about."

And she wasn't worried anymore. She woke just once more that night, the house nearly silent by then, traffic distantly audible, dawn light rising pinkly through the holes in the wall.

2000.

THE DINER WAS at the corner of Atlantic and Smith, in the shadow of the Brooklyn House of Detention, a high-rise jail whose grated windows concealed any sign of the torments within. In there, cuffs and toughs; out here, milkshakes and pancakes.

Tooly took a booth by the window and opened the plastic menu, watching the street, delivery trucks trundling past. Since New Year's Eve, the snow had melted away, as had the millennial panic. They'd said a computer glitch would humble the industrialized world come midnight December 31, 1999. But the Y2K problem proved no problem, notwithstanding the billions spent to avert it. Nor did terrorists blow up New Year's celebrations in Times Square. The only notable events of December 31, 1999, were the conclusion of an airline hijacking in India, its pa.s.sengers exchanged for imprisoned militants, who took refuge with the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan; and the resignation of the Russian leader, President Boris Yeltsin, who'd overseen the replacement of Soviet Communism and now left his little-known prime minister, Vladimir Putin, in charge of the largest country in the world.

But more immediate to Tooly's concerns was Sarah. This was a goodbye lunch, after which Sarah was to depart for Italy, following weeks of unwelcome inhabitation. In typical fashion, Sarah had nagged about having a "girls meal out" before leaving, yet now appeared unlikely to turn up for it.

After an hour, the remains of a fried-egg sandwich sat on Tooly's plate. She raised her hand for the check. At which point Sarah walked in, yawning from one table to another as if to trumpet her entrance. She dropped her handbag on the banquette, shoved her suitcase under the booth table-she was heading to the airport straight from here. Rather than address Tooly, she turned to a group of hipsters in the next booth. "Don't have a cigarette for me, do you?"

One did, a short guy in a porkpie hat, who fumbled in his overalls pocket for a compressed pack of Parliaments, which he shook out before her, two smokes jutting. She took both, placing one in her lips, the other between his. "You have to keep me company now," she told him. Out on the sidewalk, she twirled away as smoke ribbons rose, pranced on the b.a.l.l.s of her feet down the length of the diner window and back, chatting with the young man. Amazing how Sarah-still furious that Tooly had been avoiding her-now reversed the burden of impatience.

"What are we having?" she asked, sliding back into the booth. She took Tooly's hand, rubbed it.

"Are you doing that because you're freezing?"

"h.e.l.lo!" Sarah said, waving to each member of the waitstaff, concluding with the head waiter. "We'll have two large, hot coffees." She behaved as if time began only once she entered a room, mindless of the dirty plate and half-drunk egg cream on the table. Tooly didn't want coffee. Nor did she want to disagree this early on. So she sipped hers, which was tepid, sour, too long in the carafe.

Sarah peppered her monologue with references to her rich boyfriend in Italy, Valter, as well as others involved in his leather shop. She had to keep an eye on certain characters, though it was never specified why. As with many of her tales, this one contained puddles of truth, but these accounted for little of her rainfall.

"Sarah?"

"Yes?"

But Tooly had only wanted to interrupt the flow. She had nothing to say, so sounded like a child who states an adult's name just to see if it works. She played with the metal milk jug, replaced it, invented a question. "Do I seem like the same person from when I was little?"

"Who else would you be? Anyway, who cares, my dearest darling thing. Memories are so boring. They're always wrong, and only cause trouble. Remembering is the most overrated thing. Forgetting is far superior. Anyway, your childhood is over now." She scanned for a busboy. "Got to work to keep your cup full in this place. Waiter!"

He replenished hers, black coffee slopping into the enamel saucer, dripping when she raised the cup to her lips. "Whole time I've been here, Venn hasn't bothered to call."

"I haven't heard from him, either," Tooly lied. "He's busy."

"Now that I'm not here with money to give him, he's nowhere to be found."

Tooly rolled her eyes. "You with money for him? Please. Get serious. He looks after you, and you know that."

"If that makes you feel better."

"Not feel better. It's true."

"I'm a liar now? Can't believe you just called me a liar."

"I didn't say that. I said-"

"It is what you said." Sarah slammed down her coffee cup, chewed nail polish off her pinkie. "You want me gone? Well, you can just ... All right? Because ..." A tear trundled down her face, cleaning a line through her makeup. "I'm the one who kept all this going. I could have snapped my fingers," she said, "and your world tour would've been over years ago. You want to think I'm awful? Fine. You've turned twenty-one now, so I can't stop you."

"What difference does it make that I turned twenty-one?"

"That's why I came back here."

"So we could go shopping on my birthday?"

"Not for that. Because, after twenty-one, everything changes for you. I've been trying to tell you. My only advice is make yourself indispensable to him."

"Sarah, I don't have the messy feelings you have about Venn. I am not you. Not everyone is you. Okay?"

"Pay attention. Otherwise, things are changing."

"Seriously. It's stuff like this that makes him avoid you. Stop acting up, okay?"

"Acting up? You are, my dear. Not me. You are the one who's humiliating yourself. You don't understand half of what's going on here. Don't think you're above me. Because you are the worst kind of manipulator. You can't even look me in the eyes. There we go, that's better. Oh-gone again."

"Because I don't want to look at you."

"What a disappointment. We all liked you, Tooly. What a disappointment."

"You're saying things just to be hurtful now."

"I," she said, pointing at Tooly, "I was here before you. Okay? And I get you completely. Each time you make out like you're all nice and sweet, remember in the back of your head: I know you. I know what you're like inside." Sarah spun around, sweetly asking the hipsters for another cigarette. The guy in the porkpie hat, who'd supplied her before, did so again, though he declined to keep her company. When outside, she beckoned to him through the window. He pretended not to notice; his two friends stifled laughter.

Tooly resolved never ever to see Sarah again. She submitted to a hug and a peck on the cheek, paid (Sarah claimed to have no American currency left besides cab fare for the airport), and speed-walked back to the apartment to escape the pollution of that woman.

When Tooly came home, Humphrey placed his finger on the page before him and issued a woebegone sigh, which was his way of communicating serenity, an impossible sentiment while Sarah had been in residence. He dragged the chess set from under the Ping-Pong table and set it up on the couch, laying out all the pieces, placing each at the precise center of its square. "When is last time you win me?" he asked Tooly.

"The last time we played."

"If I play tennis against monkey, he also wins sometimes, because I am very surprised he even holds racket." He scrutinized her a moment, perceiving that she longed to go, to be uptown with the students, not here with him. "Why I bother?" he said. "You do not even sit and read anymore. Trivial being-that is what you are now. Trivial being, like everyone." He shifted about on the couch, eyebrows b.u.mping into each other like two b.u.t.ting caterpillars. He had to retract his charge. "Even to say you are trivial being, darlink, breaks my heart."

"I should go."

The muscles of his face stilled. His brown eyes clouded, gazing fondly upon her. He gave another sigh.

"What?"

"I am happy. This is all. Not happy you are going; I am sad you go away, of course. But I am happy you are here now." He smacked his lips together. "Remember, I am counter-revolutionary and nonconformist. Why I should care about time? Why I should care that later you are not at this place? We are together at same time and in same place for many hours, even if mostly it is in past. What difference? Those events are still there, even if I am not."

"What are you talking about, Humph?"

"Trivial beings think there is only present-that past is gone and future is coming. But past is like overseas: it still exists, even when you are not there anymore. Future time, too. It is there already."

"Well, I'm not there yet. But I do need to get moving."

"First, I have idea I must run over you."

"To run past me?"

"No, I run idea right at you, and you tell me what you think. Okay?"

"I'm all ears."

"I work up to it."

"Humph, I have to go!"

"Do you accept I jump from window?" he said. "Or you get angry with me?"

Humphrey had a long-standing fascination with suicide, alternately romanticizing and recoiling from the idea. It was the ultimate expression of will, he claimed, the mind overcoming the body. Yet the act was tragic, too, given how often suicide was due to the Moron Problem: that simpletons could and did harm intellectuals, that foolish ideas became crazes, that babble was mistaken for brilliance. The Moron Problem made Humphrey want to quit life. Yet this granted victory to the morons. It was a dialogue he had conducted with himself for decades-a debate rendered absurd by the impossibility that he would ever act on it.

"If you jump from here, Humph, you'd just break your leg. We're only one floor up."

"This is accurate statement." He knitted his hands over his belly. "You become like Venn now, always going somewhere. Why this is?"

"I have things to do. I know you like doing nothing, but don't make me watch. Can you accept that?"

During her reproach, he curled his head till his chin grazed his chest, as if it snowed on him.

She prepared to leave. Had no duty here-they had been company to each other over the years, but she refused to pity him. Pity was the opposite of friendship. Venn had said that, and she repeated it in her head, arming herself against Humphrey's hunched silence. She fastened her duffle-coat toggles, feigning indifference to him, until something changed, and the indifference felt real. There-perhaps you could turn off sympathy.

DUNCAN APOLOGIZED FOR failing to invite her to his family home for the Christmas holidays-this whole break, he'd felt like c.r.a.p.

"I was fine," she said. Indeed, she'd have hated it there, a stranger among those who'd known one another forever. Plus, Duncan's remorse had worth-Venn always advised her to watch for others' guilt, which had many practical uses.