How beautiful that was! How wonderful to imagine what America had been like in 1831, before the strip malls and the highways, before the suburbs and the exurbs, back when the lakeshores were “embosomed in forests coeval with the world.” What had the country been like in its infancy? Most important, where had things gone wrong and how could we find our way back? How did decay give its assistance to life?
A lot of what Tocqueville described sounded nothing like the America Kendall knew. Other judgments seemed to part a curtain, revealing American qualities too intrinsic for him to have noticed before. The growing unease Kendall felt at being an American, his sense that his formative years, during the Cold War, had led him to unthinkingly accept various national pieties, that he’d been propagandized as efficiently as a kid growing up in Moscow at the time, made him want, now, to get a mental grip on this experiment called America.
Yet the more he read about the America of 1831, the more Kendall became aware of how little he knew about the America of today, 2005, what its citizens believed, and how they operated.
Piasecki was a perfect example. At the Coq d’Or the other night, he had said, “If you and I weren’t so honest we could make a lot of money.”
“What do you mean?”
Piasecki was Jimmy Boyko’s accountant. He came on Fridays, to pay bills and handle the books. He was pale, perspirey, with limp blond hair combed straight back from his oblong forehead.
“He doesn’t check anything, OK?” Piasecki said. “He doesn’t even know how much money he has.”
“How much does he have?”
“That’s confidential information,” Piasecki said. “First thing they teach you at accounting school. Zip your lips.”
Kendall didn’t press. He was leery of getting Piasecki going on the subject of accounting. When Arthur Andersen had imploded, in 2002, Piasecki, along with eighty-five thousand other employees, had lost his job. The blow had left him slightly unhinged. His weight fluctuated, he chewed diet pills and Nicorette. He drank a lot.
Now, in the shadowy, red-leather bar, crowded with happy-hour patrons, Piasecki ordered a scotch. So Kendall did, too.
“Would you like the executive pour?” the waiter asked.
Kendall would never be an executive. But he could have the executive pour. “Yes,” he said.
For a moment they were silent, staring at the television screen, tuned to a late-season baseball game. Two newfangled Western Division teams were playing. Kendall didn’t recognize the uniforms. Even baseball had been adulterated.
“I don’t know,” Piasecki said. “It’s just that, once you’ve been screwed like I’ve been, you start to see things different. I grew up thinking that most people played by the rules. But after everything went down with Andersen the way it did—I mean, to scapegoat an entire company for what a few bad apples did on behalf of Ken Lay and Enron…” He didn’t finish the thought. His eyes grew bright with fresh anguish.
The tumblers, the minibarrels of scotch, arrived at their table. They finished the first round and ordered another. Piasecki helped himself to the complimentary hors d’oeuvres.
“Nine people out of ten, in our position, they’d at least think about it,” he said. “I mean, this fucking guy! How’d he make his money in the first place? On twats. That was his angle. Jimmy pioneered the beaver shot. He knew tits and ass were over. Didn’t even bother with them. And now he’s some kind of saint? Some kind of political activist? You don’t buy that horseshit, do you?”
“Actually,” Kendall said, “I do.”
“Because of those books you publish? I see the numbers on those, OK? You lose money every year. Nobody reads that stuff.”
“We sold five thousand copies of The Federalist Papers,” Kendall said in defense.
“Mostly in Wyoming,” Piasecki countered.
“Jimmy puts his money to good use. What about all the contributions he makes to the ACLU?” Kendall felt inclined to add, “The publishing house is only one facet of what he does.”
“OK, forget Jimmy for a minute,” Piasecki said. “I’m just saying, look at this country. Bush–Clinton–Bush–maybe Clinton. That’s not a democracy, OK? That’s a dynastic monarchy. What are people like us supposed to do? What would be so bad if we just skimmed a little cream off the top? Just a little skimming. I fucking hate my life. Do I think about it? Yeah. I’m already convicted. They convicted all of us and took away our livelihood, whether we were honest or not. So I’m thinking, if I’m guilty already, then who gives a shit?”
When Kendall was drunk, when he was in odd surroundings like the Coq d’Or, when someone’s misery was on display in front of him, in moments like this, Kendall still felt like a poet. He could feel the words rumbling somewhere in the back of his mind, as though he still had the diligence to write them down. He took in the bruise-colored bags under Piasecki’s eyes, the addictlike clenching of his jaw muscles, his bad suit, his corn-silk hair, and the blue Tour de France sunglasses pushed up on his head.
“Let me ask you something,” Piasecki said. “How old are you?”
“Forty-five,” Kendall said.
“You want to be an editor at a small-time place like Great Experiment the rest of your life?”
“I don’t want to do anything for the rest of my life,” Kendall said, smiling.
“Jimmy doesn’t give you health care, does he?”
“No,” Kendall allowed.
“All the money he’s got and you and me are both freelance. And you think he’s some kind of social crusader.”
“My wife thinks that’s terrible, too.”
“Your wife is smart,” Piasecki said, nodding with approval. “Maybe I should be talking to her.”
*
The train out to Oak Park was stuffy, grim, almost penal in its deprivation. It rattled on the tracks, its lights flickering. During moments of illumination Kendall read his Tocqueville. “The ruin of these tribes began from the day when Europeans landed on their shores; it has proceeded ever since, and we are now witnessing its completion.” With a jolt, the train reached the bridge and began crossing the river. On the opposite shore, glass-and-steel structures of breathtaking design were cantilevered over the water, all aglow. “Those coasts, so admirably adapted for commerce and industry; those wide and deep rivers; that inexhaustible valley of the Mississippi; the whole continent, in short, seemed prepared to be the abode of a great nation yet unborn.”
His cell phone rang and he answered it. It was Piasecki, calling from the street on his way home.
“You know what we were just talking about?” Piasecki said. “Well, I’m drunk.”
“So am I,” Kendall said. “Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m drunk,” Piasecki repeated, “but I’m serious.”
*