The Corrections: A Novel (27 page)

Curly Eberle had reappeared in his intracranial desk chair with a
plastic model of an electrolyte molecule in each hand. “A remarkable
property of ferrocitrate/ferroacetate gels,” he said, “is that under
low-level radio stimulation at certain resonant frequencies the molecules may
spontaneously polymerize. More remarkably yet, these polymers turn out to be
fine conductors of electrical impulses.”

The virtual Eberle looked on with a benign smile as, in the bloody animated moil
around him, eager waveforms came squiggling through. As if these waves were the
opening strains of a minuet or reel, all the ferrous molecules paired off and
arranged themselves in long, twinned lines.

“These transient conductive micro tubules,” Eberle said, “make
thinkable the previously unthinkable: direct, quasi-real-time digital-chemical
interface.”

“But this is good,” Denise whispered to Gary. “This is what
Dad’s always wanted.”

“What, to screw himself out of a fortune?”

“To help other people,” Denise said. “To make a
difference.”

Gary could have pointed out that, if the old man really felt like helping
somebody, he might start with his wife. But
Denise had
bizarre and unshakable notions of Alfred. There was no point in rising to her
bait.

“Yes, an idle corner of the brain may be the Devil’s
workshop,” the pitchman said, “but every idle neural pathway gets
ignored by the Corecktall process. Wherever there’s action, though,
Corecktall is there to make it stronger!
To
help the rich get richer!
”

From all over Ballroom Β came laughter and applause and whoops of
appreciation. Gary sensed that his grinning, clapping left-hand neighbor, Mr.
Twelve Thousand Shares of Exxon, was looking in his direction. Possibly the guy
was wondering why Gary wasn’t clapping. Or possibly he was intimidated by
the casual elegance of Gary’s clothes.

For Gary a key element of not being a striver, a perspirer, was to dress as if he
didn’t have to work at all: as if he were a gentleman who just happened to
enjoy coming to the office and helping other people. As if noblesse oblige.

Today he was wearing a caper-green half-silk sport coat, an ecru linen
button-down, and pleatless black dress pants; his own cell phone was turned off,
deaf to all incoming calls. He tipped his chair back and scanned the ballroom to
confirm that, indeed, he was the only male guest without a necktie, but the
contrast between self and crowd today left much to be desired. Just a few years
ago the room would have been a jungle of blue pinstripe, ventless Mafiawear,
two-tone power shirts, and tasseled loafers. But now, in the late maturing years
of the long, long boom, even young suburban galoots from New Jersey were buying
hand-tailored Italian suits and high-end eyewear. So much money had flooded the
system that twenty-six-year-olds who thought Andrew Wyeth was a furniture
company and
Winslow Homer a cartoon character were able to
dress like Hollywood aristocracy …

Oh, misanthropy and sourness. Gary wanted to enjoy being a man of wealth and
leisure, but the country was making it none too easy. All around him, millions
of newly minted American millionaires were engaged in the identical pursuit of
feeling extraordinary—of buying the perfect Victorian, of skiing the
virgin slope, of knowing the chef personally, of locating the beach that had no
footprints. There were further tens of millions of young Americans who
didn’t have money but were nonetheless chasing the Perfect Cool. And
meanwhile the sad truth was that not everyone could be extraordinary, not
everyone could be extremely cool; because whom would this leave to be ordinary?
Who would perform the thankless work of being comparatively
un
cool?

Well, there was still the citizenry of America’s heartland: St. Judean
minivan drivers thirty and forty pounds overweight and sporting pastel sweats,
pro-life bumper stickers, Prussian hair. But Gary in recent years had observed,
with plate-tectonically cumulative anxiety, that population was continuing to
flow out of the Midwest and toward the cooler coasts. (He was part of this
exodus himself, of course, but he’d made his escape early, and, frankly,
priority had its privileges.) At the same time, all the restaurants in St. Jude
were suddenly coming up to European speed (suddenly cleaning ladies knew from
sun-dried tomatoes, suddenly hog farmers knew from crème
brûlée), and shoppers at the mall near his parents’ house had
an air of entitlement offputtingly similar to his own, and the electronic
consumer goods for sale in St. Jude were every bit as powerful and cool as those
in Chestnut Hill. Gary wished that all further migration to the coasts could be
banned and all midwesterners encouraged to revert to eating pasty foods and
wearing dowdy clothes and playing board games, in order that a strategic
national reserve of cluelessness might be maintained, a
wilderness of taste which would enable people of privilege, like himself, to
feel extremely civilized in perpetuity—

But
enough
, he told himself. A too-annihilating will to specialness, a
wish to reign supreme in his superiority, was yet another Warning Sign of
clinical D.

And Mr. Twelve Thousand Shares of Exxon wasn’t looking at him anyway. He
was looking at Denise’s naked legs.

“The polymer strands,” Eberle explained, “chemotact-ically
associate with active neural pathways and so facilitate the discharge of
electrical potential. We don’t yet fully understand the mechanism, but the
effect is to make any action the patient is performing easier
and more
enjoyable
to repeat and to sustain. Producing this effect even
transiently would be an exciting clinical achievement. Here at Axon, however, we
have found a way to render that effect
permanent
.”

“Just watch,” the pitchman purred.

As a cartoon human figure shakily raised a teacup to its mouth,
certain shaky neural pathways lit up inside its cartoon head. Then the figure
drank Corecktall electrolytes, donned an Eberle helmet, and raised the cup
again. Little glowing micro tubules hued to the active pathways, which began to
blaze with light and strength. Steady as a rock the cartoon hand that lowered
the teacup to its saucer.

“We’ve got to get Dad signed up for testing,” Denise
whispered.

“What do you mean?” Gary said.

“Well, this is for Parkinson’s. It could help him.”

Gary sighed like a tire losing air. How could it be that such an incredibly
obvious idea had never occurred to him?
He felt ashamed of
himself and, at the same time, obscurely resentful of Denise. He aimed a bland
smile at the video screen as if he hadn’t heard her.

“Once the pathways have been identified and stimulated,” Eberle said,
“we are only a short step away from actual morphologic correction. And
here, as everywhere in medicine today,
the secret is in the
genes
.”

Three days ago, on Friday afternoon, Gary had finally got through
to Pudge Portleigh at Hevy & Hodapp. Portleigh had sounded harried in the
extreme.

“Gare, sorry, it’s a rave scene here,” Portleigh said,
“but listen, my friend, I did talk to Daffy Anderson per your request.
Daffy says, sure, no problem, we will definitely allocate five hundred shares
for a good customer at Cen Trust. So, are we OK, my friend? Are we
good?”

“No,” Gary said. “We said five thousand, not five
hundred.”

Portleigh was silent for a moment. “Shit, Gare. Big mix-up. I thought you
said five hundred.”

“You repeated it back to me. You said five thousand. You said you were
writing it down.”

“Remind me—this is on your own account or
CenTrust’s?”

“My account.”

“Look, Gare, here’s what you do. Call Daffy yourself, explain the
situation, explain the mix-up, and see if he can rustle up another five hundred.
I can back you up that far. I mean, it was my mistake, I had no idea how hot
this thing would be. But you gotta realize, Daffy’s taking food from
somebody else’s mouth to feed you. It’s the Nature Channel, Gare.
All the little birdies with their beaks open wide. Me!
Me!
Me! I can back you up for another five hundred, but you gotta do your own
squawking. All right, my friend? Are we good?”

“No, Pudge, we aren’t good,” Gary said. “Do you remember
I took twenty thousand shares of refinanced Adelson Lee off your hands? We also
took—”

“Gare, Gare, don’t do this to me,” Pudge said. “I’m
aware. Have I forgotten Adelson Lee? Christ, please, it haunts my every waking
hour. All I’m trying to say to you is that five hundred shares of Axon, it
may sound like a dis, but it’s not a dis. It’s the best
Daffy’s going to do for you.”

“A refreshing breath of honesty,” Gary said. “Now tell me again
if you forgot I said five thousand.”

“OK, I’m an asshole. Thank you for letting me know. But I can’t
get you more than a thousand total without going all the way upstairs. If you
want five thousand, Daffy needs a direct order from Dick Hevy. And since you
mention Adelson Lee, Dick’s going to point out to me that CoreStates took
forty thousand, First Delaware took thirty thousand, TIAA-CREF took fifty, and
so on down the line. The calculus is that crude, Gare. You helped us to the tune
of twenty, we help you to the tune of five hundred. I mean, I’ll try Dick
if you want. I can also probably get another five hundred out of Daffy just by
telling him you’d never guess he used to be shiny on top, to see him now.
Whuff, the miracle of Rogaine. But basically this is the kind of deal where
Daffy gets to play Santa Claus. He knows if you’ve been bad or good. In
particular, he knows for whom you work. To be honest, for the kind of
consideration you’re looking for, what you really need to do is triple the
size of your institution.”

Size, oh, did it matter. Short of promising to buy some arrant turkeys with
CenTrust money at a later date (and he could lose his job for this), Gary had no
further leverage with Pudge Portleigh. However, he still had
moral
leverage in
the form of Axon’s underpayment for
Alfred’s patent. Lying awake last night, he’d honed the wording of
the clear, measured lecture that he intended to deliver to Axon’s brass
this afternoon:
I want you to look me in the eye and tell me that your
offer to my father was reasonable and fair. My father had personal
reasons for accepting that offer; but I know what you did to him. Do
you understand me? I’m not an old man in the Midwest. I know
what you did. And I think you realize that it is not an option for me
to leave this room without a firm commitment for five thousand
shares. I could also insist on an apology. But I’m simply proposing
a straightforward transaction between adults. Which, by the way,
costs you n o t h i n g. Zero. Nada. Niente
.

“Synaptogenesis!” Axon’s video pitchman exulted.