“What kind of loose ends?” says Sarah.
“Nothing you need to worry about. Go ahead and have a good time with your friend. Do you have your cell phone?”
She nods.
“Do you mind telling me where you’re going tonight? You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
She shakes her head. “No, no, it’s all right,” she says. “I think we’re doing Cafe Coyote for dinner. It’s a Mexican place in Old Town.”
“I know it,” I tell her.
“And then I think we’re going to a club somewhere in the Gaslamp area. I don’t know the name. Jenny’s been there before.”
“That’s okay.”
“If you want me to stay home, I will,” she says.
“No. That’s all right. You go and have fun. And don’t worry about anything. It’s fine.”
The doorbell rings. Sarah grabs her coat and opens the door.
“How are you?”
“Sorry I’m late.” There is a lot of chatter and giggling at the door.
“Come in. I want you to meet my dad.”
A second later a tall, blond young woman, nicely dressed, long legged and a little ungainly, steps through the door and under the lights in the entry hall. She looks well scrubbed, blue eyes and rosy cheeks, wearing a nervous smile and high heels that make me think of a newborn fawn trying to find its footing. She is gripping a tiny sequined bag to her stomach with both hands so tightly that the little glass beads are about to pop off.
“Jenny, I’d like you to meet my dad. Dad, this is Jen.”
“Is it Jen or Jenny?”
“Either one,” she says.
“Well, it’s good to finally meet. Sarah’s told me so much about you I feel I already know you.” I reach out. She releases the death grip on her purse and gives me a fleeting fingertip shake.
“Same here.” She nods and smiles and does a little nervous genuflection on the tall stiletto heels.
Take off the makeup, put her in tennis shoes, jeans, and a T-shirt, shrink her down ten years, and Jenny could pass for any in the battalion of Sarah’s “little friends.” This was the legion of noise, the siege of laughter and yelling that rampaged through the neighborhood with light sabers and squirt guns a decade ago. Even now sometimes when I see one of them, grown and tall, and I have to look at them to say hello, if someone asks me who they are, I will slip and refer to them as “one of Sarah’s little friends.” My daughter gets angry. She tells me not to say it, especially in front of them; her dad, the loose cannon. Of course I would not. But if I live to be a hundred and see them with grandchildren, in the crevices of whatever is left of memory, to me they will always be part of that lost and noisy brigade-“Sarah’s little friends.”
“So you guys are doing Mexican tonight, is that it?” I ask.
Jenny glances at Sarah and smiles. “And then I thought we’d go to a place downtown.”
“A club?” I ask.
“Yeah. Place called Ivy. They have good music.”
“Listen, you guys have a good time,” I tell them. We all head toward the door.
“I’ll be home by two.” Sarah kisses me on the cheek. “Don’t wait up.”
“You have your key?” I ask.
“Got it, Dad. And don’t worry. We’ll talk more tomorrow,” she says as they head to the car.
“Good night. Have fun.” I stand outside under the porch light watching as Jen’s Camry slides down the driveway and backs into the street. A few seconds later the taillights fade into the distance and disappear down the block.
He sat in a rickety ladder-back chair that wobbled and teetered just a little each time he leaned forward to type.
The room was small and dark. It resembled a closet more than an office. A single naked lightbulb hung from a wire dangling from the ceiling, just above his wispy strands of unkempt gray hair. The shiny crown at the back of his balding head gleamed with illumination, revealing only a subtle hint of the energy and purpose that blazed within.
The Old Weatherman could almost feel the political ground shifting beneath his feet as he pounded the letters on the computer’s keyboard. Outside, turbulent public attitudes turned like a weathervane in a cyclone. It was a sign of the times, a measure of people’s fears and their uncertainty about what lay ahead.
The window of opportunity was already beginning to close. He had only months for the entire train of events to play out. The doctors had told him that he would be dead by then. The cancer was already in his lungs and brain. No matter. He had time. He would set in motion the change that would take America into the future, a transformation of the system that no politician or political party could ever bring about; he would “breach the monastery.”
Back in the late sixties and early seventies, when they were young and stupid, they set off isolated bombs in federal buildings and courthouses around the country. Such a waste. None of it had any effect except to give Nixon the excuse to crack down on all forms of dissent. Other than to cause some localized terror and largely regional headlines, their actions failed entirely to bring about their ultimate goal, a permanent change to the system. One that would take the country in an entirely new direction, away from the corporations and the capitalist underpinnings that had taken America down the wrong path since its inception.
Then, in 2001, foreign terrorists struck the World Trade Center. Flying commercial jets loaded with fuel and passengers into the twin towers, they killed more than three thousand people. They also hit the Pentagon, causing hundreds more to die. And what was the effect? Did they bring down the country? No. Did they destroy the U.S. economy? No, at least not immediately.
Economic markets recovered in less than a year and came raging back to hit peaks never before seen. The damage to the Pentagon was repaired in a few months and the U.S. military set about to crush two of the regimes thought to be most antagonistic to American interests.
As he clicked on the keys, the Old Weatherman thought about his old comrade, Senator Joshua Root. He had voted for the war along with the rest of them. Back in his day, when he was young, Root used a different name. He didn’t call himself Josh to pander to voters. No, back then he was spouting a different rhetoric, the words of revolution-power to the people, throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails. That was before he saw the error of his ways and sold out.
The Old Weatherman wondered if Root had ever seen him coming, or if the good senator had been completely blindsided by the first e-mail message. Of course, like himself, Root had a number of private e-mail accounts where he hid out in dark corners, places where government censors, auditors, and investigators could not see his personal musings and sins. The Old Weatherman had found them all. Even if Root closed one, the Old Weatherman could go to another. It was because the Old Weatherman had an inside connection, someone Root could never get rid of.
People like Root never expected to be held accountable for anything. Their sense of privilege and entitlement blinded them. And, of course, Root couldn’t go to the police and tell them that he was being blackmailed. The truth would destroy him.
The Old Weatherman stopped the pounding of the keys for a moment and thought about it. It had to be the work of the gods, all of it. It was too perfect.
The attack on the World Trade Center accomplished something that no one realized at the time. What became a series of protracted and unpopular wars distracted many in Washington, particularly in the White House, from the real danger. A rapidly expanding bubble of false fortunes and speculation in the nation’s housing market was threatening to take the country where it hadn’t been in more than seventy years, into the grip of another Great Depression.
When the bubble burst on the eve of the national election, it came with such swiftness and public shock that the country was left reeling. Overnight the reactionary forces in the White House and Congress were swept from power in a way that hadn’t been seen almost since the Civil War. It was something that no one could have predicted even a month before.
