Generosity

drags Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s illicit government down into places too dark for primetime fiction.

Late into the nights when he doesn’t teach, Russell descends that spiral. He takes strange comfort, sitting at his maple writing desk under the knockoff Milton Avery seashore, in confirming the worst about Thassa Amzwar’s country. He jots down notes, as if to quiz the girl on Algeria’s grimmest particulars. Ten years of organized bloodbath have reduced a country the size of western Europe to a walking corpse. And Thassa has emerged from that land glowing like a blissed-out mystic.

He writes in his journal: She takes intense pleasure in autumn. Simply writing that makes him feel like Homeland Security.

When the weather turns foul, her pleasure just swells. She comes to class in a chill downpour, her smock and slacks soaked, her chocolate hair hanging in strings on her shoulders. She stands in the doorway, he writes, laughing like she’s just been to Disneyland. “It’s ridiculous out there! Fantastic!”

She tells the class about last night’s party-three hours of tea and cookies with five strangers including her UPS man and a Ukrainian woman who camps out at Thassa’s bus stop and speaks no English. “Nice people, Chicago people. So friendly.”

She sits dripping contentment as Artgrrl reads a journal entry about how America’s real divide is not conservative versus liberal, rich versus poor, or rationalists versus Christians, but people with passports versus people without. At every third turn of phrase, Thassa smacks both cheeks and says, “Yes, yes-perfect!” And the object of her praise starts to levitate.

Their ninth night together, she brings a Tupperware wheel of pastry to class: honey-soaked clouds of semolina with a name-timchepoucht-the others can’t even repeat after her. “What you can’t find in life,” she tells them, “you have to make yourself!” The rest of them eat freely, hoping that whatever chronic, viral euphoria infects her has also contaminated her kitchen.

That night, the group-so protective of one another when reading aloud their raw journal entries-has its first fight. It starts with the evening’s assignment from Make Your Writing Come Alive: Frederick P. Harmon’s smug insistence that everything ever written derives from one of only twenty-four possible plots.

“I have a little theory about that theory,” Counterstrike Mason announces. “I’m thinking that’s what you might call a fucking brain fart.”

Russell says nothing. He has preached freedom for weeks; he can’t police them now.

Spock Thornell does the calculus. “Disagree. If anything, the man’s being generous. I’d put it at half that number. A dozen story lines, tops.”

“You’re shitting me!” Counterstrike bangs the oval table. “It’s billions. As many stories as there are-”

“Everyone’s a major motion picture,” Princess Heavy sneers. “Every life, based on a true story.”

“Listen ” Counterstrike sounds desperate. “I’m not saying everybody is interesting. I’m just saying that no two This whole mathematical permutation thing is bullshit.”

Artgrrl raises her fist. “Exactly! How many times have you seen this story? Nine people argue about how many plots there are. One of them gets up and throws herself out the window, just to prove-”

“That’s Harmon number twelve.” Spock holds up the page. “Personal Sacrifice for Moral Belief.”

“Or, or, or ” Roberto stresses his way down the list of possibilities. “Or number seventeen: Passion Disrupts Judgment.”

Princess Heavy oozes mock approval. “Or number twenty: Audacious Experiment. Choose your own adventure!”

Lumpers and splitters square off, as if victory here will decide things out in the unplotted world. They nibble at Thassa’s timchepoucht, which tastes of ancient oases.

Kiyoshi, the Invisiboy, sets down his pen and looks up. He’s the last person Russell expects to wander into the crossfire. “There’s something I don’t get about this class. I mean, are we supposed to be making up stories, with a plot and everything? Or are we just supposed to put down what actually happens?”

The others go on arguing, as if Invisiboy’s confusion is just one more available story line.

“When you really stop and think about it,” the Joker concludes, “there have to be something like three? I mean: happy ending, miserable ending, and ‘Watch me get all arty.’ ”

It’s two, Russell thinks, though no one bothers to ask him. It’s the old, elemental two, the only two that anyone will read: the future arrives to smack around the past, or the past reaches out to strangle the future. Hero goes on journey; stranger comes to town.

Here in front of him, at any event, is one plot no one will ever bother writing down: A happy girl passes through the world’s wretchedness and stays happy. The hung jury turns to Miss Generosity, who hugs herself against their combined outrage. By tacit agreement, Thassa’s vote is now worth any three of theirs.

“Yo, Genie!” Charlotte corners her. “What do you think? Lots of stories, or not?”

Her radiant face insists, This one is easy. “No hurry!” she tells them. “The time to choose that is after we’re dead.”

I search for Russell Stone all over. I read the almanac for that year. I read his class textbook, of course. I read back issues of his magazine. I even loot those hall-of-mirrors avant-garde novels whose characters try to escape their authors, the kind he once loved, the kind he thought he’d write one day, before he gave up fiction.

He’s nowhere, except in his work. On the day shift, in between classes, he puts in his stints on Becoming You. He sits motionless in his shared cubicle in the refurbished River North warehouse, pruning effusion back to the root.

According to many of the two thousand new self-help titles that appear every year, once a person rises above poverty, income influences well-being only slightly, and social class affects it just a little more. Marriage counts for a bit, and volunteering works wonders. But nothing short of pharmaceuticals can help sustain contentment as much as a satisfying job.

What pleasure does he get from his selfless editing? Stone strikes me as the kind of guy who might not know what his pleasures are. He’s not alone. No one does: the happiness books are adamant on this. We’re shaped to think the things we want will make us happy. But shaped to take only the briefest thrill in getting. Wanting is what having wants to recover.

Russell phones his brother-the first call he’s made from work since the half-minute dinner negotiations he used to make with Marie. He reaches Robert’s cell; it still amazes Stone that his own flesh and blood even has a cell. All the remaining hunter-gatherers on Papua New Guinea will be packing loaded smartphones before Russell goes mobile. Mobile is the last thing in existence he wants to be. His every original thought is already being interrupted by real time.

His brother is camped on some stranger’s pitched roof in Oak Brook. It’s what he does-crawl around on strangers’ roofs, installing satellite receivers. He tells people he’s in the throughput business. It troubles Robert that a lot of the general public is still getting only a few dozen stories an hour. His company can get anyone up to a couple hundred plus. And then there’s retrieval and on-demand and downloading. As he often tries explaining to Russell, it’s all about shifting. Time shifting and place shifting. Taste shifting and mood shifting. And if you get the throughput up high enough, it’s like nobody’s even telling you stories anymore; it’s like you’re making them up yourself.

“You busy?” Russell asks. “Got a minute?”

“No problem,” his brother tells him. “Parallel is more efficient than serial.”

For some reason, Robert always has time for Stone. He still thinks that Russell is going to be famous someday: a famous writer, whose hilarious stories will pour through the pipes of all the need-shifting, narrative-addicted strangers in the country.

“Bro?” Robert prompts, when Russell says nothing. “’Sup?”