Third Avenue onto the Queens Midtown Tunnel. By day the window cast a narrow rectangle of light onto the floor; at night the tunnel’s marigold glow suffused the living room like a nuclear sunset. This was an unhappy apartment. It was not just depressing—it was itself depressed. The baleful wide-screen television glaring at the melancholy mouse-colored couch. The metal desk as heavy as a tombstone, supporting the computer’s glassy slab. The unvarnished teak coffee table supporting a pile of withered science magazines and heavily fingered books (on top lay Becker’s The Denial of Death : “The irony of man’s condition is that the deepest need is to be free of the anxiety of death and annihilation; but it is life itself which awakens it, and so we shrink from being fully alive.”). And in the corner of the room, the pelican mouth of the forlorn brown briefcase that Tibor had bequeathed him as a graduation present. Every object was despondent, numb, heavy with exhaustion.
Things outside weren’t any better. Seattle had inspired a new wave of street preachers to evangelize midtown Manhattan. They must have been having success with their donation boxes because they were fruitful and they did increase. They competed for the busiest intersections, standing across the street from one another, raising the volume on their loudspeakers until they drowned out the honking horns. They preached apocalypse and lifted signs written in magic marker: GOD IS ANGRY WITH THE WICKED EVERY DAY. THE STARS WILL FALL FROM THE SKY. IT REPENTED THE LORD THAT HE HAD MADE MAN ON THE EARTH, IT GRIEVED HIM AT HIS HEART. But it was the crowds that surprised Mitchell. They weren’t merely assembling—they were listening. This was a notable development in the world capital of cynicism.
Charnoble’s check arrived within the hour. Mitchell took it straight to his bank and decided to celebrate with a lunch at Chosan Galbi. On Lexington Avenue he passed a particularly animated preacher who balanced himself precariously in the basket of a shopping cart. He was cloaked in nothing but a brown canvas tunic cinched around the waist with a dirty string. Not a bad idea—it was another hydrant-bursting, brownout-warning, macadam-melting summer day, the kind of day when people went to movies for the air-conditioning. But this urban apostle had attracted a crowd, roughly a dozen people. They removed the pods from their ears, the sunglasses from their eyes, and peered up at this man. Even Mitchell paused.
“Meat?” said the preacher. The cart was unsteady beneath his feet, skipping on the pavement with each violent swing of his arms.
“Meat and bones and water?”
“No!” shouted a young woman, sitting erect on her bicycle seat.
“Is that all we are?” It was a loud voice, a rhetorician’s voice. He spoke like someone accustomed to standing at a pulpit in a mega-cathedral somewhere, lecturing a suburban congregation attired in their Sunday best. This shopping cart, his manner suggested, was only a temporary embarrassment. Sweat beaded under his eyes and dripped over his cheeks. The sides of him, visible through the tunic’s gaping armholes, were also wet.
“Intricately wired meat? Meat sending signals to meat through electricity? Where is the mystery in that?”
His audience nodded. It wasn’t just a performance. These people were paying witness. A feeling was building. An urban malaria, a future-affected anxiety disorder. Whatever kind of disease it was, it had become infectious.
The bi bim bap at Chosan Galbi that day tasted rancid. Mitchell couldn’t finish it. Next to the register the restaurant offered a stack of free postcards. Mitchell chose one bearing an image of bi bim bap and, using the cashier’s pen, addressed it to Elsa Bruner.
“By the time you get this,” he wrote, “I’ll be a futurist.”
7.
After a tense exchange with one of Sandy’s secretaries (“Mr. Sherman will not be pleased,” she said breathlessly when he
Things outside weren’t any better. Seattle had inspired a new wave of street preachers to evangelize midtown Manhattan. They must have been having success with their donation boxes because they were fruitful and they did increase. They competed for the busiest intersections, standing across the street from one another, raising the volume on their loudspeakers until they drowned out the honking horns. They preached apocalypse and lifted signs written in magic marker: GOD IS ANGRY WITH THE WICKED EVERY DAY. THE STARS WILL FALL FROM THE SKY. IT REPENTED THE LORD THAT HE HAD MADE MAN ON THE EARTH, IT GRIEVED HIM AT HIS HEART. But it was the crowds that surprised Mitchell. They weren’t merely assembling—they were listening. This was a notable development in the world capital of cynicism.
Charnoble’s check arrived within the hour. Mitchell took it straight to his bank and decided to celebrate with a lunch at Chosan Galbi. On Lexington Avenue he passed a particularly animated preacher who balanced himself precariously in the basket of a shopping cart. He was cloaked in nothing but a brown canvas tunic cinched around the waist with a dirty string. Not a bad idea—it was another hydrant-bursting, brownout-warning, macadam-melting summer day, the kind of day when people went to movies for the air-conditioning. But this urban apostle had attracted a crowd, roughly a dozen people. They removed the pods from their ears, the sunglasses from their eyes, and peered up at this man. Even Mitchell paused.
“Meat?” said the preacher. The cart was unsteady beneath his feet, skipping on the pavement with each violent swing of his arms.
“Meat and bones and water?”
“No!” shouted a young woman, sitting erect on her bicycle seat.
“Is that all we are?” It was a loud voice, a rhetorician’s voice. He spoke like someone accustomed to standing at a pulpit in a mega-cathedral somewhere, lecturing a suburban congregation attired in their Sunday best. This shopping cart, his manner suggested, was only a temporary embarrassment. Sweat beaded under his eyes and dripped over his cheeks. The sides of him, visible through the tunic’s gaping armholes, were also wet.
“Intricately wired meat? Meat sending signals to meat through electricity? Where is the mystery in that?”
His audience nodded. It wasn’t just a performance. These people were paying witness. A feeling was building. An urban malaria, a future-affected anxiety disorder. Whatever kind of disease it was, it had become infectious.
The bi bim bap at Chosan Galbi that day tasted rancid. Mitchell couldn’t finish it. Next to the register the restaurant offered a stack of free postcards. Mitchell chose one bearing an image of bi bim bap and, using the cashier’s pen, addressed it to Elsa Bruner.
“By the time you get this,” he wrote, “I’ll be a futurist.”
7.
After a tense exchange with one of Sandy’s secretaries (“Mr. Sherman will not be pleased,” she said breathlessly when he
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