And then, against all reason, the bank called the entire loan—factories and house included. A phone call, a notarized letter, and that was it. Back to nothing.
Even in failure, Charles Wang was a success. Looked at from one level up, from a perspective devoid of good or bad, where action trumped stasis, this was a perfect failure. Swift and complete. None of the usual built-in fail-safes managed to float him—instead, Charles had somehow tricked himself into erecting a needless financial deck of cards that went up only to be toppled by a historically anomalous financial tornado.
I couldn’t rescue the Wangs, Charles had thought then. The Wangs will never win. Our failures will ever be epic and our sorrows will ever be great.
十六
ALL ACROSS THE COUNTRY, one by one, foreclosed house by shuttered business, in cold bedrooms and empty boardrooms and cars turned into homes, people had the same thoughts.
I couldn’t rescue myself.
I will never win.
My failure will always be epic and my sorrow will always be great.
I alone among all people am most uniquely cursed.
In the intervening weeks, as they slowly began to poke their heads out of their own private failures, each would come to find that the curse was, in fact, not theirs alone. Instead, it was spread across the country: a club, a collective, a movement, a great populist uprising of failure in the face of years of shared national success.
十七
Phoenix, AZ
THE LAST THING Andrew had done the night before was to slip his top five pairs of sneakers—original issue Infrared Air Max 90s, Maison Martin Margiela Replica 22s, Common Projects Achilles Mids, beat-up checkerboard Vans, and a pair of never worn Air Jordan 4 Undefeateds—into felt dust bags and roll those in T-shirts before laying each mummified pair heel to toe in his duffel. Everything in his minifridge went into a big Postal Service bin that he’d left out in the lounge area. It would all be demolished by now. He’d sold his flat screen to poor Mac McSpaley, who was always trying to hang out with Andrew and his friends. He knew that Mac would buy the TV even if it was with tips that the skinny double-E major earned working at the sandwich stand on the quad. A job where he had to wear an apron. Poor, poor Mac McSpaley. Now Andrew had a soft wad of small bills stuffed in his back pocket and a vaguely guilty feeling that he expected would dissipate once he left campus.
His collection of vintage comedy albums—Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Lenny Bruce—and extra clothes were neatly packed into a cardboard box taped and labeled with Saina’s address in upstate New York. Grace said that she’d just given away all of her other clothes, but that seemed like the worst decision if they were going to be poor now. It would only cost something like forty dollars to mail everything, otherwise he’d have to buy new clothes; he couldn’t just wear the few things that fit in his duffel forever. Andrew wondered what had happened to his snowboard and gear, to everything in his room at home. Probably nothing. Probably it was just sitting there, locked up, and if he could just climb through a window and break it out, it could all be his again.
He was sitting on his naked mattress, holding Emma’s spiky heels in his hands, looking at his bare walls, when his alarm went off.
9:15.
Fifteen minutes before Econ 201. Most Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings he hit snooze at least once, which made it 9:22 by the time he rolled out of bed. Another five minutes to brush his teeth and take a piss, one to choose a pair of sneakers, eight minutes to walk to class, four for an egg-sandwich stop, another five to say hi to people along the way. By the time he got to class, it was usually 9:45.
But not this morning. He pressed snooze, put down the heels, picked up his backpack, and walked straight to class, not even pausing to talk to that cute Pi Phi girl who’d smiled and said, “Good morning.”
It was weird being there so much earlier. Who knew that so many people got anywhere on time? A solid five minutes before class started, the hall was already three-quarters full of fed, caffeinated students with laptops at the ready. From his unaccustomed vantage point in the back—usually he had to slip into one of the last open seats right in front of the lectern—Andrew could see that almost everyone was on Facebook, clicking through photos from last night.