Before the Fall(104)

We are the enemies of industrialization, killers of the mass market. No more “10 billion served.” Now it’s one meal at a time, eggs cooked from your own chickens. Seltzer infused by your own CO2 tank. This is the revolution. Back to the soil, the loom, the still. And yet the struggle is hard, the way each man has to claw his way into some kind of future. To overcome the obstacles of youth and establish himself without getting lost along the way. And the money would help with that. It would remove the worry, the risk. Especially now, with the kid, and how hard that can be—like, say, if you weren’t really ready yet to have that much responsibility, to put your own needs aside for the needs of something small and irrational that can’t even wipe its own butt.

In the chair he’s starting to sweat. The makeup lady blots his forehead.

“Maybe take off your coat,” she suggests.

But Doug is thinking about Scott, about the snake in his home, and how this f*cking guy just drives up like he owns the place, like just because he’s got this bond with the kid he’s invited somehow to move in. And what did Doug ever do to deserve being thrown out of his own home? Yeah, okay, he came home drunk after midnight and maybe he was a little pissed off and yelling, but it’s his house, after all. And she’s his woman. And what kind of bizarro world are we living in if some has-been painter has more of a right to be in a man’s home than he does? So he says all this to Eleanor, orders her to send the guy packing as soon as the sun comes up. Tells her that she’s his wife and he loves her, and they have a beautiful thing, a thing worth protecting, cherishing, especially now that they’re parents, right? That he’s a father.

And Eleanor listens. Just listens. Sits very still. Doesn’t get upset. Doesn’t seem scared or pissed or—anything. She just listens to him rant and stomp around the bedroom, and then—when he runs out of gas—she tells him she wants a divorce and that he should go sleep on the couch.

Krista comes back smiling. They’re ready for him, she says. Bill is ready, and Doug is so brave for coming in, and the country, the world, is so grateful that there are men like Doug out there who are willing to tell the truth about things, even if it’s hard. And Doug nods. This is him in a nutshell. He is the common man, noble, hardworking. A man who doesn’t complain or demand, but one who expects the world to be square with him. Who expects a day’s work to earn a day’s pay. Expects that the life you build, the family you make, is your life, your family. You earned it and nobody should be able to take that away from you.

A lottery won should stay won.

So he takes off the paper bib and goes to meet his destiny.

*



“Doug,” says Bill, “thank you for being here today.”

Doug nods, trying not to look into the camera. Just focus on me, Bill has told him. And this is what he does, focuses on the other man’s eyebrows, the tip of his nose. He’s not handsome, Bill Cunningham, not in the traditional sense, but he has that alpha bravado—the indefinable nexus of power, charisma, and confidence, the unblinking gaze and crotch-forward carriage of a man at the height of his visceral global impact. Is it physical? Pheromonal? An aura? For some reason, Doug thinks of the way a school of reef sharks will scatter when a great white appears. The way some woodland deer will simply surrender to the jaws of the wolf, ceasing their struggles and lying still, subdued by inevitable and irresistible forces.

And then he thinks, Am I the deer?

“These are troubling times,” says Bill. “Don’t you agree?”

Doug blinks.

“Do I agree that the times are troubling?”

“For you. For me. For America. I’m talking about loss and injustice.”

Doug nods. This is the story he wants to tell.

“It’s a tragedy,” he says. “We all know it. The crash and now—”

Bill leans forward. Their feed is being beamed by satellite to nine hundred million possible screens worldwide.

“For people who don’t know the story as well as me,” he says, “give a little background.”

Doug fidgets nervously, then becomes conscious that he’s fidgeting and gives an odd shrug.

“Well, uh, you know about the crash. The plane crash. And how only two people survived. JJ, my nephew. My, uh, wife’s nephew. And this painter, Scott, uh, something, who supposedly swam to shore.”

“Supposedly?”

“No,” says Doug, backpedaling. “I’m just going off something you—I mean, it was heroic—definitely, but that doesn’t—”

Bill shakes his head imperceptibly.

“And so you took him in,” he says, “your nephew.”

“Yes. Of course. I mean, he’s only four. His parents are—dead.”

“Yes,” says Bill. “You took him in ’cause you’re a good man. A man who cares about doing the right thing.”

Doug nods.

“We don’t have much, you know,” says Doug. “We’re—I’m a writer, and Eleanor, my wife, she’s a, like a physical therapist.”

“A caregiver.”

“Right, but, you know, whatever we have is his—he’s family, right? JJ? And look—”

Doug takes a breath, trying to focus on the story he wants to tell.

“—look, I’m not perfect.”