“We happened to arrive at the same time, and before we went in, he pointed out to me an unusual sight. In front of what looked like a private house what you call a doorman was standing, in full doorman regalia, as if he were lording it over the entrance to some grand Fifth Avenue hotel. But the house wasn’t even a boarding house, no more than a three-story slim-fronted place that I’d never even noticed. ‘Never seen that anywhere,’ was Sean’s comment.
“Inside Willy’s office we found more aldermen. Straight off I saw they were all part of our ‘don’t wait till it’s broke to fix it’ clan, as opposed to the partisans of ‘let sleeping dogs lie,’ our very wet (as you say) antagonists. We were meeting that morning to confirm our majority on the town council for creating an innovation unit in the town government.
“Do you know what an innovation unit is? It’s sometimes called an innovation lab, or team, or an incubator, an accelerator, a nudge unit, and so forth. They’re all pretty much the same. The best big companies started having them years ago, and now public bodies are starting to use them as well. In most cases a few chosen employees are extracted from their daily grind and told to go out and find ways of renovating the world. I backed the local initiative from the gitgo; Sean and a couple of others came on board pretty soon and as of this morning we’re sure of our majority on the council.
“So far so good. But having a majority to vote for an idea is one thing, finding one to raise taxes wouldn’t be so easy. We have to look for the money elsewhere, which means borrowing it in the financial markets; theoretically that’s feasible but there aren’t many precedents, especially in the matter of guarantees — we could hardly use the town’s treasury as collateral.
“It was, nevertheless, the town treasurer who intervened in our discussion of possible solutions and ended it: ‘I believe I can lead you to someone who will know how to get the money’; and preceding us out of the building, where do you think he carried us but across the street to the place with the doorman! Who, after a few words with the treasurer, let us all inside, where we were taken in by a Warden of the Interior Domain and led into a spacious if rather Spartan office at whose center, standing to greet us with a broad smile and outstretched arms, was a slender gentleman whom I immediately recognized as Michael Bloomberg. His presence in our remote town was known to few of us; he apparently visited it incognito from time to time because he appreciated the pragmatic good sense with which it ran itself. Some of us knew of his enthusiasm for innovation labs — Bloomberg Philanthropies had funded several.
“After an exchange of courtesies and encomiums, Mr. Bloomberg quickly rescued our project from the realm of virtuality by offering, first, to make us a small but significant loan to show that he seriously backed our initiative, and second, to sign an agreement to personally cover the interest on any bank loans our group took out. ‘It sounds generous, but I assure you it won’t cost me a cent. You’ll have my loan to start with, and as well as paying your star researchers to invent the future, you’ll start a few very small businesses that generate cash streams — I’ll give you specifics another time, things like health kiosks and dating services. Then you’ll be able to make the interest payments yourselves, and meanwhile my notorious name will make the banks feel virtuous and safe — that’s a bank’s definition of happiness. Your worries are over.’ And next day — today — when we had breakfasted together, we aldermen went in a body to the bank. To all three banks. We didn’t want to cause any hard feelings. There were absolutely no hard feelings to be seen. Our bankers insisted we were doing them a favor in requesting these Bloomberg-hallowed loans. They offered us more than we wanted, more than we needed. We went out into the world as elated as schoolboys who’ve been given a surprise half-holiday. Sean is calling a meeting of the whole council next week. We’ll wake up those sleeping dogs with a shameless blast. That’s what happened, dear Andreas, before I met you here. What do you think of ‘innovative matrix’ as a name for our unit?”
“I do get one point. You’re happiest working with people. I’m happy you got what you want and I can’t wait to see where you’ll go with it. I still can’t see why what happened in Paris made you quit writing poetry. You could have had two careers — there was Wallace Stevens/insurance executive, William Carlos Williams/country doctor, and now there’s Geoffrey Hyde/trade expediter (or whatever you call yourself).” “But it couldn’t work like those others. Here’s what happened.
“I came back to Paris about May 10th. I told you how astonished I was. I’d gone to New York a month before hoping to get a first collection of my poems into print. No luck with that. Then after the police occupied the Sorbonne (a sanctuary since the Middle Ages), the student-worker revolt began. The American press as usual got everything wrong — the usual student riots or civil war, with De Gaulle as their main target. I didn’t yet know what was going on, but I’d been close to people involved in the demos that led up to May to be sure it wasn’t what I was reading in the papers. Also I was worried about a cousin, a woman I was very fond of, and when she didn’t answer half
