All that matters right now is the box I’m carrying. A cardboard box, held together with pieces of string. What’s in it? A four-hundred-and-ten-page manuscript.
I keep running. I look around. So this is what SoHo’s become … neat and clean and very rich. Give the people what they want. And what they want is SoHo as a tourist attraction—high-tech gyms and upscale restaurants. Not much else. The cool “buy-in-bulk” underwear shops and electronics stores selling 1950s lighting fixtures have all disappeared. Today you can buy a five-hundred-dollar dinner of porcini mushroom foam with frozen nettle crème br?lée, but you can’t buy a pair of Jockey shorts or a Phillips-head screwdriver or a quart of skim milk.
I stop for a moment in front of a restaurant—the sign says PORC ET FLAGEOLETS. The translation is high school easy—“pork and beans.” Adorable. Just then I hear a woman’s voice behind me.
“That’s gotta be him. That’s the guy. Jacob Brandeis.”
I turn around. The woman is “old” SoHo—black tights, tattoos, Native American silver jewelry. Eighty years old at least. Her tats have wrinkles. She must have lived in SoHo since the Dutch settled New York.
“I’m going to call the police,” she says. She’s not afraid of me.
Her equally hip but much younger male friend says, “Let’s not. Who the hell wants to get involved?”
They deliberately cross the street, and I hear the woman speak. “I have to say: he is really handsome.”
That comment doesn’t surprise me. Women like me a lot. Okay, that’s obnoxious and arrogant, but it’s true. The old gal should have seen me a few years ago. I had long dirty-blond hair, and, as a girl in college once told me, I was a “hunky nerd.” I was. Until all this shit happened to me and wore me out and brought me down and …
The old lady and younger man are now across the street. I shout to them.
“You don’t have to call the cops, lady. I’m sure they know I’m here.”
As if to prove this fact to myself, I look up and see a camera-packed drone hovering above me, recording my every step. How could I have forgotten? Drones zoom through the sky—in pairs, in groups, alone. Tiny cameras dot the corners of every building. In this New York, a person is never really alone.
I stumble along for another block, then I stop at a classic SoHo cast-iron building. It’s home to Writers Place, the last major publisher left in New York. Hell, it’s the last major publisher in all of America.
I clutch the box that holds the manuscript. Dirt streaks my face. My back and armpits are soaked. You know you smell like hell when you can smell your own sweat.
I’m about to push my way through the revolving door when I pause.
I feel like I could cry, but instead I extend the middle finger of my right hand and flip it at the drone.
ANNE GUTMAN, EDITOR in chief and publisher of Writers Place, greets me with her usual warmth.
“You look like shit,” she says.
“Thank you,” I say. “Now let’s get the hell out of your office and go someplace where we can’t be watched.”
“Where’d you have in mind, Jacob? Jupiter or Mars?” “Christ. I can’t stand it,” I say. “They watch me 24-7.” She nods, but I’m not sure she agrees with me. I’m not even sure she cares. I lean forward and hand her the box.
“What’s this?” she says. “A gift?”
“It’s the manuscript! It’s Twenty-Twenty!” I yell. Why am I yelling?
Anne tosses her head back and laughs.
“I can’t remember the last time I received a hard-copy manuscript,” she says.
Then I look at her intently. I lower my voice.
“Look, Anne. This book is incredible. This is corporate reporting like it’s never been written before.”
“You know my concern, Jacob,” she says.
“Yeah. I know. You don’t think the Store is worth writing about; you don’t truly think it’s morally bankrupt.”
“That’s not it. I think it may very well be morally bankrupt, but I can make a list of forty companies that are just as bad. I don’t think the Store is inherently evil. It’s a creative monopoly.”
“Read my book. Read Twenty-Twenty. Then decide.”
“I will.”
“Tonight?” I ask.
“Yes. Tonight. Immediately.”
“Immediately? Wow. That’s fast.”
Anne smiles at my minuscule joke. I try to remain calm. I’m sure if she reads the book she’s going to be blown away. Then again, maybe she won’t be. Maybe she’ll toss it after a few chapters. What do I know? After all, I’ve been wrong about this sort of thing before.
Suddenly there’s noise. A scuffling of feet. Indistinguishable but loud. It comes from outside Anne’s office. Then a very quick knock on the door. Before Anne can say anything, her assistant opens the door and speaks.
“Ms. Gutman, there are three policemen and two NYPD detectives outside here with me.”
“What do they want?” Anne asks.
“They’re here to arrest Mr. Brandeis.”
Anne and I look at each other. I’m about to fall apart. As always, she’s in take-charge mode.
“You go out through the conference room. Then take the back stairs down and outside. Find a place to stay.”
Anne hands me some money from the top drawer of her desk. I turn toward the conference room.
“I’ll handle the cops,” Anne says.
“Read the book, okay?” I say.
“Damn it, Jacob. Of course I’ll read the book.”
She walks out her office door. I also start walking. The last thing I hear her say is: “Good afternoon, officers. How can I help you?”
EIGHT MONTHS EARLIER
MY WIFE, MEGAN, wrote an e-vite to our dinner party that was like Megan herself: funny, sharp, and a touch mysterious:
MEGAN AND JACOB BRANDEIS
INVITE YOU TO OUR
“LAST GASP IN MANHATTAN” PARTY
TUESDAY EVENING, AUGUST 30
8:00 P.M.
322 PEARL STREET
We had invited our eight best friends to have dinner with us in the big goofy-looking loft space that we had carved out of half a floor in an art deco building. If you’re thinking when you hear the word loft that the space was glamorous, hightech, and modern, you’re thinking wrong. Our very long, very narrow apartment was in what had once been an old insurance company building. After that, it was vacant for five years. Then it was home to a bunch of squatters. Then it was bought by a bunch of would-be writers and artists. Each apartment had a tiny view of the East River and a fabulous view of the garbage barges docked at the South Street Seaport. We could afford the apartment only because the area at the time (then the Financial District, now very chicly called FiDi) was a no-man’s-land. The nearest grocery store was two miles away in Greenwich Village. We could also afford it because we were making fairly decent money writing everything from ad copy to catalog copy to an occasional piece for New York magazine and the New York Observer. Like everyone else in Manhattan who hadn’t founded a tech company or managed a hedge fund, we made do. What’s even better is that our kids seemed to have no problem making do.