The Deluge, page 48
In closing, it is the recommendation of investigators that limited resources be expended upon Morris, Stanton, and Yudong going forward. Several of these POIs have received over four thousand days of surveillance and [Redacted X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X] while that does not mean that they have no operational contact with the Weathermen/6Degrees, [Redacted X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X].
NEW ENERGY HORIZONS
2032
Fred was in a bad mood because security at the Tribeca Rush took nearly twenty minutes. Huddled under awnings while the rain blew sideways, we had to produce picture IDs and submit to a full body scan. Once upstairs, the event space was too crowded. Few people were willing to go out on the rooftop because an early tropical depression was still in the middle of dumping two days of rain on New York City. Event staff had erected a tent outside, but the force of the water kicked up a spray that made walking in heels a slick disaster. I watched Jennifer Lawrence and Ben Affleck come back inside, arm in arm, Affleck’s pant legs soaked, Lawrence clutching her emerald gown so it wouldn’t get the same treatment, the two of them tipsy and laughing.
I still loved these fleeting encounters with celebrity, even though we’d paid the same $300,000 for dinner, a few stand-up routines, musical performances, and cocktails on a flooding rooftop.
“Like have your act together,” Fred went on. “You’re throwing one of the most important charity events of the season, and you’ve got the Pink fucking Panther doing security.”
He was still peeved about our table at dinner, which included a couple of bobbleheads from Fox News, their spouses, and a California marijuana magnate. Fred claimed he was fine sitting at a Nobody Table, as long as the people were good conversation, but well before the tenderloin arrived we understood the chatter was to be a root canal without anesthesia. My sister called twice, and I was almost bored enough to answer. Thankfully, the food came and the conversation dwindled. Now that I attended dinners like this, I always tried to think of the farms this food came from before I put it in my mouth, certain no one else in the room ever did.
Images of the Golden State were projected on walls and in holograms above our heads. Bouquets of California poppies adorned every surface. The charity event was expected to raise close to $100 million for the rebuilding of Los Angeles, with some of that money going to goad developers to build low-income housing and the rest earmarked for the restoration of famed institutions and landmarks: the Hollywood sign, Griffith Observatory, and the vanquished Getty Museum, now a pile of ash and rubble with more than half its collection incinerated. For all its precautions, including a million-dollar sprinkler system, the heat, flames, and smoke of the El Demonio-Los Angeles Complex Fire had overwhelmed the Getty’s defenses.
On entering the event space, each attendee was met by a series of enormous photographs: twin fire tornadoes drilling through the Hollywood Hills, a truck vacuumed up into the vortex. A bobcat and other wildlife fleeing down a mountainside. A Tesla melted into a freeway, the shape of the vehicle barely recognizable except the badge. All the images had been taken by a heat-resistant drone piloted by an artist in Berlin.
Tragedy transmogrified into an A-list gala. Hollywood royalty, from washed legends to impish teen stars, decorated the party, while senators and CEOs clinked martini glasses and traded encrypted messages on their phones, watches, and glasses. Fred needed to be there for the sheer volume of business being done by the slightly boozed wealth circulating. Talk of who’d lost homes in the blaze (Lachlan Murdoch, LeBron James, and Shonda Rhimes, but with Bel-Air incinerated, who hadn’t?). Waiters delivered tray after tray of cocktails, and I caught a tall Black woman in a matte-black tuxedo, her hair done in a swooping bouffant with her skull shaved on the sides. Her smooth brown eyes were embedded in deep blue eyeshadow, and for a moment I was so struck by her beauty I thought I’d made a mortifying mistake, and she was a guest instead of a waiter.
“Hi,” I said neutrally.
“Can I get you something?” she asked, and I breathed heavy relief.
“Just a plain old Negroni.”
She smiled and walked off.
“I’m too tense,” I told Fred.
“Pshaw,” he said, somehow already with a drink, sliding a maraschino cherry off the plastic toothpick with his teeth. His eyes cased the room. “You’re stunning. What’s to worry about?”
“Who are you looking for?” I asked, slipping my arm around his waist and rubbing the tip of my nose into his soft beard, tasting those thin whiskers briefly. Since leaving Palacio-Wimpel, the PR firm he’d founded that made him his first “mid-minor” fortune, most of his time was spent on the lookout for investors. He turned to kiss my lips carefully because he knew of the lipstick’s pairing with my earrings. Pink lipstick and rose gold achieved a delicate, detailed look that I didn’t want smeared by his inability to keep his mouth off mine.
“Not sure yet. Norm Nate is here model hunting, but he’ll be in Venice. Are you actually anxious?”
“No, I’m fine. I’d just like to get you home.”
He smiled and kissed me again, softly on the side of my mouth.
“Nothing would make me happier. Let’s give it one hour, huh?”
The waitress found me to deliver my drink, and we circulated.
California congressman and supreme dud Warren Hamby asked Fred what he thought about the plight of the Washington Nationals, while his blinking wife complimented my gown and earrings. Goldman’s top trader, Noah Hosch, caught Fred’s elbow, hastily filling his ear with news of the crisis in China (apparently the government was in dire straits as strikes crippled the mines where his firm had made sizable investments in rare earth minerals). Gombo Bolorchuluun, the golfing sensation, held forth for a gaggle of mostly blond women, including our Fox News tablemates from earlier. I recognized top talent from the law firm DLA Piper speaking with Renaissance CEO Rory Baumgart (the “alt-right Ted Turner” as he was known). I could see the rest of the room bending to avoid him, but you couldn’t kick a billionaire out of a charity event. A Fierce Blue Fire’s director, Rekia Reynolds, looked like a starlet in traditional African dress, while her partner, Tom Levine, wore a simple white tuxedo. In a sign of the times, they were speaking to none other than the president of the Sustainable Future Coalition, Emii Li Song, and I felt a small swell of pride. Three years earlier, the SFC had been sure FBF was going to replay the French Revolution in the role of the sans-culottes, and now they were rubbing elbows at the same party. With this less antagonistic posture toward industry, I was sure they’d start seeing better results. Emii’s eyes met mine from across the room, and we exchanged smiles. I’d been an ally in goading the SFC to replace Tom Duncan-Michaels with a woman of color, and as the legislation inched closer, they finally submitted. “Sister Power,” I’d told her at the time, and I mouthed these words to her now. Her mouth spread in an uncharacteristic grin, and she winked at me before returning to her conversation. I thought of Kate Morris then, which I didn’t do much anymore now that she was gone from the limelight. It turned out she didn’t need as much help as we’d thought, mostly kneecapping herself. However, I held a complicated portfolio of emotions from that effort. I almost missed her. Though she didn’t know it, we’d been playing a chess game, and it almost made me wistful that I’d won so easily.
I heard his voice before I saw him, and I was stunned by a surge of déjà vu. I saw the past and future at once. It was only then I remembered that his voice sounded different in person. Lighter, cleaner. The Pastor wore a tuxedo so perfectly tailored it had the lines of a sports car. Slicked-back hair, skin flawless, surely from an expensive chemical peel, hand tucked casually in a pocket while the other moved fluidly for a crowd of spectators listening to him talk. I moved closer to do the same.
“President Randall is failing to beat back this challenge, but if you look at what the RNC did—they’re shielding her. She’s going to come away with more delegates even though she lost Iowa, and New Hampshire was basically a coin flip.” Half the crowd appeared as rapt as the people who bought his “Bibles” while the other half stood on their toes as if ready to interject. He wouldn’t allow it. “Now you can say that Braden’s an inappropriate candidate, that you can’t let her get the nomination, but there are consequences to bottling up the popular will like this. Especially with the illegal refugee situation.”
It was almost more eerie to hear him sounding off about politics, to hear what a calm, reasonable presence he was in person. Since the LA fire he’d been all over his new TV network and Slapdish worlde, replaying his prediction that Hollywood would burn. I knew because my mom was one of those people who believed he was a prophet.
“You endorse the religious registry,” a man accused him. “You said everyone in the country should have to enter their religion in a government database. You know what that reminds me of—”
The Pastor cut him off. “So what? The BIPOC-GND endorses a racial registry to allocate reparations payments. This is not an idea outside the mainstream, and we will have it soon in one form or another.”
The man got fed up and walked away, leaving The Pastor to quip, “Can’t get away from politics anywhere, can you?” His crowd laughed politely. The practiced self-deprecation was gone. He oozed wealth and confidence, fully grown into his role as the de facto leader of the Christian Right, surrounded by every Republican politician trying to chisel him for an endorsement in a primary race. He’d come a long way since finding his name trending beside a #Cancel for decrying “the ideology of wokeness infecting film like a plague.” No longer chasing Hollywood tinsel, no longer a happy warrior for his version of Jesus, now he generated prophecies. From what I understood, his “Bible” was a strange alchemy of the book of Revelation and climatic apocalypse. Watching him from afar all these years, I’d thought it impossible that he actually believed his own bullshit, that he was anything but a grifter, but now, watching him, I had to wonder. I never told Fred about my night with him.
I was standing behind two people, clutching my drink with an arm crossed over my breast, and as if he heard that thought, his head turned, and his eyes found mine. His gaze was an unnerving horizon. He stared at me for so long with those crystal-blue contacts, I felt I had to say something. Uncertain words formed in the back of my throat, and now I was the one who felt infected.
“Jackie, come meet my friend.” I flinched as Fred touched my elbow. He didn’t notice, and when I looked back, The Pastor had resumed inveighing about the election. Maybe I would have dwelled longer on this surreal encounter were it not for whom Fred was dragging me to on the other side of the room.
“How you doing?” said Barack Obama, as Fred guided me into the former president’s circle. “Good to see you.”
I made a dumb sound with my lips, laughed at myself, held up a finger, and said, “Hold on. Let me swallow my spit.”
The people gathered around us laughed, though their faces might as well have been blurred out. In a room of people who prided themselves on influencing the workings of the world, it was transparent how much each individual felt the need to effect a gravitational pull. Yet Obama displayed none of this need, and the way he simply tucked himself into a conversation with myself, Fred, and the small crowd around us, it was almost a more powerful display. As he shook my hand and I introduced myself, I studied the deepening wrinkles of his face. He looked old, his hair entirely white, and yet he still bounced within himself, as much energy and vigor as when I watched him, at seventeen, take to the podium of the Democratic National Convention to become a historic fixture in American life.
“You were the first vote I ever cast,” I told him. “When I was living in Chicago, my boyfriend at the time, we had tickets to election night and waited nearly two hours to get in.”
“To Grant Park?”
“No, it was 2012, so that convention center—um.”
“McCormick Place.”
“Yes!”
There was a small gap in the conversation as everyone stood around smiling, and I realized I’d begun a story without a conclusion.
“So how was it?” Obama teased.
“Not bad,” I said, my face as bright as the red of his tie. I pretended to look over his shoulder. “So is Michelle coming? I only voted for you to get more Michelle.”
Our little crowd roared at this, and Obama’s laugh seemed genuine. “We all know she’s the entire reason I became president twice. Actually, Michelle is in Texas working with a new voter turnout project, and I’m stuck wining and dining all the barnacles on the side of our democracy.”
Obama gave a playful slap to Fred’s shoulder, and even though I wasn’t sure the quip was entirely playful, Fred was beaming almost as hard as I was.
“No, no,” said Obama. “You’ve got a good one here. Fred’s an amazing businessman, and one of the few people left who can talk to both sides of the aisle. Although, having only just met you, Jackie, I can already tell you’re the brains behind the whole operation.”
Hearing my name come out of his mouth was undeniably sexual, and I knew I’d be shamelessly thinking about this moment for days. The way Obama’s tongue struck the consonants, that timbre in his voice, the unfathomably deep eye contact he made. If he asked me to go home with him, I would have entirely forgotten about how much I still loved Michelle.
I felt my phone buzzing relentlessly in my clutch, and one of the two people flanking Obama—his body man, perhaps—touched his shoulder and pointed him to another man standing in the group. As Obama reached for a new handshake, I saw the text. WHERE ARE YOU?! CALL ME BACK! EMERGENCY
Only my sister could summon so much dread and annoyance simultaneously. To my dismay, by the time I looked up, Obama had already been cocooned by the group. That I’d so quickly gained and lost this proximity pushed a flush into my face. I told Fred I needed to make a call. Furious, I slipped outside to escape the din, not that the rain was much quieter. Hugging myself in the cold air beneath the center of the tent and away from the splash of the rain, I dialed Allie.
“Where the hell are you?” My sister’s voice in middle age had the sonic quality of an aggrieved stork.
“I’m at an event. What happened?”
“You’re supposed to visit Mom.”
“What?”
“When are you visiting Mom? You were supposed to go see her?”
“Huh? I am. In three weeks. After I’m back from Venice.”
“Three weeks? Are you kidding me, Jackie? I’ve been driving up from Saint Louis every other weekend for a year. I’m exhausted. The kids have so much going on, and I don’t have time to be Mom’s only support—”
“What’s the emergency?”
“When we moved down here, I told you I was going to need you to help! Hell, even Erik’s been up to see her more than you, Jackie. And he’s a deadbeat!”
“Allie, what’s the emergency?” I repeated.
“That you haven’t seen Mom in nearly six months. That she’s a mess and you can’t be bothered—”
“So there’s no emergency? Mom’s still Mom, and this is not, in fact, an emergency?”
“After Venice?” she screeched, circling back to the point I knew had upset her the most.
“It’s for work. Stop stressing out.”
“I’m stressed out? I have three kids! What do you have to look after? Who do you have to take care of? Our mother, Jackie. Our goddamn mother!”
“Okay, Allie! Christ!” I said it too loudly, so that a man smoking a cigarette paused from contemplating the rain and glanced at me. “Jesus. Okay. I’ll get a plane and go see her next weekend.” I immediately regretted the phrase even as it was leaving my mouth.
“You’ll get a plane.” Allie snorted.
We hung up. Of course, what really bothered my sister was the fact that she’d married a doctor, and they still found themselves struggling to pay for all their kids’ cars as they came of driving age. That I lived in a penthouse overlooking Central Park, and they lived in a chintzy McMansion in a St. Louis suburb. Through the glass I saw that Obama and Fred had been swallowed by the crowd. Rubbing my arms in the cold, I turned back to the falling rain, the sound it made against the city like the breath of a massive beast at slumber.
* * *
The following weekend I flew on one of Tara Fund’s company jets to Chicago then had my assistant arrange a driverless to Amber. Though I lived in the penthouse with Fred, I’d kept my condo in Chicago. I could have flown to the Quad Cities Airport, but I preferred the flat, bare scenery of the drive, a route I’d been taking since I was in college and my friends and I would journey to Chicago for music festivals. With the driverless, I could nap and then have my phone wake me just before my favorite part of the trip: crossing the Mississippi River near Moline. The windshield wipers pushed the drizzle aside, but the sun was breaking through in the west, and its light beamed across the river valley. A low cloud cast a shadow across the water and streaks of sunlight shot through as the car rumbled over the bridge that spanned Iowa and Illinois. The river was high, pushing right up to the yards of the dollhouse homes that dotted the banks. Allie was right that I didn’t make this trip too often, but each time I did, I’d feel melancholy nick at my heart.
