Turn of the Century (59 page)

“No, first get me Glenn Murkowski.”

“Glenn Murkowski.”
She says unfamiliar American names as if they are self-evidently amusing, like Engelbert Humperdinck or Mortimer Snerd. She’s even worse about all the freshly concocted African-American names that contain
sh
. Daisy joked to George the other day that she was considering changing her own name to Dayshara. “Mr. Murkowski is on the Rolodex, I presume?”

“I presume. He’s at
The Wall Street Journal
.”

George was yelling
at her when she left home, and Sarah was crying about the music in her civil rights video. Now Alexi is crying about the “Worst Downtown Workplaces” story in today’s
Voice
, and Bruce is about to come in and yell at her. The
Voice
has declared that it’s launching “a tough but fair-minded investigative war” targeting the “so-called ‘hip capitalists’ and ‘alternative entrepreneurs’ who abuse the cachet and informality of the so-called ‘New Economy’ to exploit young and non-native North American workers.” Lizzie, described as a “member of a glitzy Wall Street and millionaire media crowd,” is accused of brewing $10.95-a-pound Starbucks for herself, but serving $7-a-pound Chock Full o’Nuts to her staff. She is also, apropos of the woman who peed in the reception area, accused of “sadistic callousness” toward “employees seeking help for substance abuse problems and special psychiatric needs.” She is accused of contributing money to a “Republican-dominated Washington group lobbying to increase the number of H1-B visas to allow more foreign workers into cyber-sweatshops like Fine Technologies.” She is accused of “pressuring non-native-English speakers to speak English” despite an “informational warning letter” from the ACLU Language Rights Project. She is accused of “willfully ignoring” an “off-gassing e-mail alert” from the
Occupational Safety and Health Administration concerning an employee’s complaint about fumes the new office carpet was allegedly emitting. And she is accused, finally, of refusing to allow employees’ “animal companions to accompany them for any part of the workday.”

“Pull yourself together, Alexi. I’m not a fascist because I wouldn’t let Reginald bring his fucking ermine into the office last winter.” There is a trace of déjà vu. “This is bullshit. And, Alexi? Why don’t you start buying Starbucks for
everybody?
”

“I’m so sorry, Lizzie. Shall I send a memo to the staff saying it was my decision? Or a letter to the
Voice?
”

“Neither. Ignore it. Forget it.” The thing in the article that bothers her is the toxic carpet business. For one thing, she worries it could make her insurance go up. It is also wrong—she was
delayed
in responding to OSHA because Max accidentally deleted the e-mail, but she has not “ignored” it. All the other charges are factually correct. “Leezy?” asks Markus, one of the German programmers, as she walks to the bathroom this morning, “is it correct that you are aligned with the Republican party?”

Forty-eight hours ago, Lizzie felt charmed. Forty-eight hours ago, Fine Technologies’ public relations challenge was whether to give the news of her Microsoft acquisition to the
Times
or to George’s friend Greg at the
Journal
. Forty-eight hours ago, her major legal problem was figuring out how best to share some of her Microsoft profits with her employees.

“Forty-eight hours ago,” Bruce declares, “you told me you had a completely open mind about doing a deal with Buster Grinspoon. And that evidently wasn’t so.” His weirdness is all of a piece: Bruce with the door closed, Bruce raising his voice, Bruce in brand-new jeans and T-shirt.

“Come
on
. I did have an open mind. I did.
Sit
.” She wants to convince Bruce. So she pushes her luck. “That was also before the Microsoft deal died. I no longer have a few million extra in the bank to pay for five years of AI R and D.”

Lizzie knows she’s revising the truth, since the Microsoft offer was jerked away the morning
after
her dinner with Buster Grinspoon. She hopes Bruce won’t notice the chronology problem.

And Bruce doesn’t, because he thinks he’s caught her in a larger lie. On Tuesday afternoon, while she was away, he went into her office
looking for an
Industry Standard
article about web gaming. Buried under a stack of paper on her desk, he happened to see the furious Post-it note she wrote weeks ago, reminding herself to tell Bennett Gould about the original Microsoft lowball: “2/28/00 BG—
NO $!
” Bruce, however, believes BG is Buster Grinspoon. He believes that “2/28/00 BG—
NO $!
” means Lizzie decided against a deal with Buster on February 28, long before Bruce put together his proposal.

“Lizzie, don’t lie to me. You were just humoring me about Buster. I know that. And I suppose in some sense I do appreciate that.” He doesn’t.

“I wasn’t humoring you.” She was.

“Well, in any event,” he says, “the time has come for me to light out for the territories.”

“No.
Bruce
. No.”

“Buster and I talked on the phone all night after you told him he was crazy. And most of yesterday.”

“I didn’t tell him he was crazy.”

“Well, anyway, we’re starting a company, Lizzie. I can fund it for a couple of years. And you won’t be able to make fun of me for owning my ‘ridiculous empty piece of shit building on the Bowery’ anymore. It’s going to be the corporate headquarters of Terraplane.”

Bruce smiles. She shakes her head.

“You’re serious.”

“Lizzie!” It’s Alexi’s voice on the intercom. The intercom! More weirdness. “Molly Cramer is on two, and says she needs to talk with you. On deadline.”

Molly Cramer is the weaselly right-wing syndicated columnist and TV commentator; she must be doing an attack on the
Voice
attack on downtown businesses. Lizzie is eager to tell her side of the story to a sympathetic conservative, and she’s dismayed by her eagerness. The day is dismaying. (
Weaselly:
it wasn’t déjà vu before, Lizzie realizes, it was Reginald’s ermine companion and this crazy weasel motif—ermines are weasels. If George wasn’t being such a nincompoop, she’d call and tell him.)

Bruce stands. “It’s your fault,” he says, still smiling, “you’re the one who convinced me running a business can be fun. Don’t worry. I’ll stay until we move Warps to beta.”

“I’ll take it!” she shouts to Alexi, and then says to Bruce, “See how fun?”

As Bruce opens the door, she notices the tiny oval XL sticker on his new T-shirt.
Terraplane
. The company name, she figures, is a Buster Grinspoon idea, another stupid, made-up sci-fi word like Compaq or Intel or Microsoft. Not only is Bruce leaving her, he’s disappointing her, which makes the abandonment a little easier to take. In fact, “Terraplane Blues” was Robert Johnson’s first hit recording, his signature tune, but Lizzie has no idea. She doesn’t know anything about the blues.

George sits in shirtsleeves on an old warped granite step of the broad front stoop of St. Andrew’s School, flipping through a copy of the
Entertainment Weekly for Kids
he picked up from the stack in the lobby. He notices a double-page spread comparing four young blond actresses—Dominique Swain, Melissa Joan Hart, Reese Witherspoon, and Becky Tipton, the actress who plays Little Jo on
Bonanza: The New Generation
(and who, he reads, is about to start shooting a “teen noir” Nancy Drew film). He also wonders if all the stories in the monthly
EW for Kids
are simply repackaged from the regular
EW
for adults. When he and his
Journal
friend Greg Dunn, who is black, were at
Newsweek
in the eighties, they used to joke about proposing to their bosses a brand extension called
Newsweek for Negroes
.

“Hi,” Lizzie says. “I’m late.”

He stands. They don’t kiss.

“Hold on,” she says, “I want to smoke a cigarette before we go in.”

George looks at her, but not in a charmed or charming
tsk-tsk
-you-rascal way.

“Yes,” she says, “I bought a pack. In Seattle. I’m bad.”

“I saw the
Voice
piece,” he says. “Not so horrible.”

She gives a minimal one-shouldered shrug, lighting her Marlboro and squinting down the street toward the bright disk of sun behind the clouds.

In her twenties, Lizzie gave up reading short stories. Right now she remembers why. They all felt just like this moment.

“So,” she says, tossing the match into the rhododendron, “what exactly does
canoodling
mean? Alexi showed me ‘Page Six.’ ”

George smiles. “I guess it can cover pretty much anything from a friendly job interview to fucking under the cocktail table.” George is glad she’s caught him by surprise. Otherwise, if he’d been expecting it, his smile would have that nervous, frozen tilt. “In my case, it was the former.”

“What’s the thing about Las Vegas? ‘Heavy petting’?”

For the record, dear, ‘semi-heavy petting’ is the phrase the
Post
used
. “An actress at Ben’s party who wanted a part on the show. Some crazy white-trash girl. She tried to pick me up, and she was kind of all over me—I mentioned it to you on the phone the night it happened. I didn’t kiss her or anything.”

“Ah.” Lizzie takes a last drag on her Marlboro Light. “You didn’t tell me about Mike Milken, either. What’s that about?”

George rolls his eyes and checks his watch. “We can continue this, but we should get inside. Rafaela’s saving seats.”

Lizzie flicks her cigarette into the gutter, hefts her tote bag, turns away from George, and heads up the stairs toward the door.

“I have no idea what Milken wants,” George says. “But don’t I have the right to consult with an attorney? And if I can’t afford an attorney, won’t one be appointed for me?”

Lizzie doesn’t smile.

“Emily is being extremely unpartnerlike,” he says.

She looks at him. “Hey, it’s
synchronicity!
” she says, her tone for that instant all rancid pseudo-glee, making him wonder if she means their marriage. Fortunately, no. “Bruce is leaving me to start his own company with that jerk from Seattle, the cat telepathy guy.”

George holds open the door for Lizzie. He’s not even aware that he makes a point of holding open doors for people, men as well as women, since he doesn’t do it as a matter of antifeminist chivalry.

“What’s Emily’s problem?” she asks.

“
Real Time
. She thinks it means she’ll have to abdicate as the princess of the Hollywood liberals.”

The entrance hall is empty but for the security guard, so they walk faster toward the chapel, which is what the school still calls its auditorium.

“Do you think it has anything to do with the Mose stock price going down? You know, because of the announcement of the show?”

“No,” he says. “No.” And then, “How’d you know about the stock thing? Ben says it isn’t dropping because of
Real Time
, by the way.” And then, as they approach the big double mahogany doors, he asks again, “How did you know about the stock price, Lizzie? And about Milken calling me?”

“Iris told me about Milken. She called to tell me”—as he opens the door, she lowers her voice to a whisper—“that she’d try to talk her PETA chapter out of putting me on their Most Wanted list for my crimes against ermines.”

They scan the pews full of parents, searching for Rafaela and the children. Lizzie’s sudden good humor, as well as the polite twitches required by wholesale acquaintanceship (quick nods, arched eyebrows, little shrugs, a few mouthed “Hi”s), almost make George forget that she never answered his question about Mose’s stock price and
Real Time
.

Rafaela went home right after the last Unfortunate American History video. George has chatted briefly with a few parents, including the Williamsons (who referred to their son as Flip, which must be the public compromise between Philip and Felipe), and now stands alone in a corner, sipping ginger ale with Max. Louisa is hanging on to Sarah, who is talking to Ms. Perez-Morrison. Lizzie is somewhere in the crowd.