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And part of Denise was thinking, as the tea went cold: Shit, she's really into me now. This part of her considered, as if it were an actual threat of harm, the exhausting circumstance: She wants sex every day. This same part of her was thinking also: My God, the way she eats. And: I am not a "lesbian."
At the same time, another part of her was literally awash in desire. She'd never seen so objectively what an illness sex was, what a collection of bodily symptoms, because she'd never been remotely as sick as Robin made her.
"Why is nobody ordering country ribs?" Denise asked Rob Zito. "Why are the waiters not pushing my phenomenally delicious and unusual country ribs?"
"Americans don't like sauerkraut," Zito said.
"The hell they don't. I've seen my reflection in the plates coming back when people order it. I've counted my eyelashes."
"It's possible we get some German nationals in here," Zito said. "German passport-holders may be responsible for those clean plates."
"Is it possible you don't like sauerkraut yourself?"
"It's an interesting food," Zito said.
Expensive people of a sort formerly scarce in Philadelphia were three-deep at the bar when Brian came by with a dozen roses. He hugged Denise and she lingered in his arms. She gave him a little bit of what men liked.
"We need more tables," she said. "Three fours and a six at a minimum. We need a full-time reservationist who knows how to screen. We need better parking-lot security. We need a pastry chef with more imagination and less attitude. Also think about replacing Rob with somebody from New York who can handle the kind of customer profile we're going to get."
Brian was surprised. "You want to do that to Rob?"
"He wouldn't push my ribs and sauerkraut," Denise said. "The Times liked my ribs and sauerkraut. I say fuck him if he can't do the job."
The hardness in her voice brought a glow to Brian's eyes. He seemed to like her like this.
it'sa silly fantasy maybe but i really like the implied shrewdness and know-how in this. as if she was ready for this all along
She sat on a southbound train while rain-glazed local platforms flashed by at intercity speed. Her father at the lunch table had looked insane. And if he was losing his mind, it was possible that Enid had not been exaggerating her difficulties with him, possible that Alfred really was a mess who pulled himself together for his children, possible that Enid wasn't entirely the embarrassing nag and pestilence that Denise for twenty years had made her out to be, possible that Alfred's problems went deeper than having the wrong wife, possible that Enid's problems did not go much deeper than having the wrong husband, possible that Denise was more like Enid than she had ever dreamed. She listened to the pa-thum-pa-thum-pa-thump of wheels on track and watched the October sky darken. There might have been hope for her if she could have stayed on the train, but it was a short ride to Philly, and then she was back at work and had no time to think about anything until she went to the Axon road show with Gary and surprised herself by defending not only Alfred but Enid as well in the arguments that followed.
Whenever she was with Brian she would pine for Robin's body and sincerity and good works and be repelled by Brian's smug coolness, and whenever she was with Robin she would pine for Brian's good taste and like-mindedness and wish that Robin would notice how sensational she looked in black cashmere.
• time-shares in ministerial beachside villas at Palanga!
• pro rata mineral rights and logging rights to all national parklands!
• appointment of selected local magistrates and judges!
• blanket 24-hour-a-day parking privileges in perpetuity in the Old City of Vilnius!
• fifty-percent discount on selected rentals of Lithuanian national troops and armaments on a signup basis, except during wartime!
• no-hassle adoptions of Lithuanian girl babies!
• discretionary immunity from left-turn-on-red prohibitions!
• inclusion of the investor's likeness on commemorative stamps, collector's-item coins, microbrewery beer labels, bas-relief chocolate- covered Lithuanian cookies, Heroic Leader trading cards, printed wrapping tissue for holiday Clementines, etc.!
• honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Vilnius University, founded in 1578!
• "no-questions-asked" access to wiretaps and other state-security apparatus!
• the legally enforceable right, whilst on Lithuanian soil, to such titles and honorifics as "Your Lordship" and "Your Ladyship" and "Your Grace," with non-use by service personnel punishable by public flogging and up to sixty days in jail!
• last-minute "bumping" privileges for train and plane seats, reserved-seating cultural events, and table reservations at participating five-star restaurants and nightclubs!
• "top-of-the-list" priority for liver, heart, and cornea transplants at Vilnius's famed Antakalnis Hospital!
• no-limit hunting and fishing licenses, plus off-season privileges in national game reserves!
• your name in block letters on the side of large boats!
• etc., etc.!
god
Chip was struck by the broad similarities between black-market Lithuania and free-market America. In both countries, wealth was concentrated in the hands of a few; any meaningful distinction between private and public sectors had disappeared; captains of commerce lived in a ceaseless anxiety that drove them to expand their empires ruthlessly; ordinary citizens lived in ceaseless fear of being fired and ceaseless confusion about which powerful private interest owned which formerly public institution on any given day; and the economy was fueled largely by the elite's insatiable demand for luxury. (In Vilnius, by November of that dismal autumn, five criminal oligarchs were responsible for employing thousands of carpenters, bricklayers, craftsmen, cooks, prostitutes, barkeeps, auto mechanics, and bodyguards.) The main difference between America and Lithuania, as far as Chip could see, was that inAmerica the wealthy few subdued the unwealthy many by means of mind-numbing and soul-killing entertainments and gadgetry and pharmaceuticals, whereas in Lithuania the powerful few subdued the unpowerful many by threatening violence.
The Lithuanian with the most guns was an ethnic Russian named Victor Lichenkev, who had parlayed the cash liquidity of his heroin and Ecstasy near-monopoly into absolute control of the Bank of Lithuania after the bank's previous owner, FrendLeeTrust of Atlanta, had catastrophically misjudged consumer appetite for its Dilbert MasterCards. [...]
god this is funny
And still the land produced and the litai circulated. A slasher flick called Moody Fruit opened at the Lietuva and the Vingis. Lithuanian drolleries issued from Jennifer Aniston's mouth on Friends. City workers emptied concrete-clad garbage receptacles on the square outside St. Catherine's. But every day was darker and shorter than the day before.
i like the wording
He understood what modernity expected of him now. Modernity expected him to drive to a big discount store and replace the damaged string. But the discount stores were mobbed at this time of year; he'd be in line for twenty minutes. He didn't mind waiting, but Enid wouldn't let him drive the car now, and Enid did mind waiting. She was upstairs flogging herself through the home stretch of Christmas prep.
Much better, Alfred thought, to stay out of sight in the basement, to work with what he had. It offended his sense of proportion and economy to throw away a ninety-percent serviceable string of lights. It offended his sense of himself, because he was an individual from an age of individuals, and a string of lights was, like him, an individual thing. No matter how little the thing had cost, to throw it away was to deny its value and, by extension, the value of individuals generally: to willfully designate as trash an object that you knew wasn't trash.
Modernity expected this designation and Alfred resisted it.
Unfortunately, he didn't know how to fix the lights. He didn't understand how a stretch of fifteen bulbs could go dead. He examined the transition from light to darkness and saw no change in the wiring pattern between the last burning bulb and the first dead one. He couldn't follow the three constituent wires through all their twists and braidings. The circuit was semiparallel in some complex way he didn't see the point of.
:(