Fifty Degrees Below (57 page)

Charlie felt a bit drained, perhaps even a bit exorcised, as it were—as if something strange had been inside him as well as in Joe, and Drepung and Rudra’s ceremony designed to remove them both. That was a new thought for Charlie—he had not considered the matter in any such light before—but it was certainly true that a feeling of oppression that had been weighing on him for a long time had lifted somehow, leaving a lightness that felt also a bit empty perhaps. He didn’t know what he felt.

He saw that Drepung too was keeping an eye on Joe.

Frank sat on the couch across from them, chewing a toothpick and looking tense. The evening wore on. Eventually the Khembalis said their goodbyes and left. “I’ll be home in a bit,” Frank said to them.

When they were gone, Frank glanced at Charlie. “Mind if I stay and see it out?”

“Not at all. As long as it doesn’t go on for three months.”

“Ha. It is looking close.”

“I think California will put us over the top.”

“Maybe so.”

They watched on. Eastern states, central states, mountain states. Joe fell asleep on the floor; Nick read a book, lying sleepily on the couch. Charlie went to the bathroom, came back downstairs. “Any more states?”

Anna and Frank shook their heads. Things appeared to be hung up out west. Frank sat hunched over, eating his toothpick fragment by fragment. Anna sighed, went out to the kitchen to clean up. She did not like to hope for things, Charlie knew, because she feared the disappointment if her hopes were dashed. You should hope anyway, Charlie had told her more than once. We have to hope.

Hopes are just wishes we doubt will come true, she always replied. She preferred waiting, then dealing with whatever happened. Work on the moment.

But of course it was impossible not to hope, no matter what one resolved. Now she clattered dishes nervously in the kitchen, hoping despite herself. Therefore irritated.

“I wonder what’s up,” Charlie said.

“Hnn.”

Frank was never a big talker, but tonight the cat seemed to have got his tongue. Charlie always tried to fill silences made by other people, it was a bad habit but he was helpless to stop it, as he never noticed it was happening until afterward. “Okay, here’s what’s going to happen,” he said now. “All the west is going to go for the president except California and Oregon, but that’ll be enough for Phil to win.”

“Maybe.”

They watched the numbers on the screens get bigger, barely attending to what they were saying. The minutes dragged by. Anna came back in and sat by Charlie, began falling asleep. Even before the boys had arrived nothing had been able to keep her awake past her bedtime, and now she had ten years of sleep deprivation to catch up on.

Then Charlie clicked away from a commercial to find that NBC was declaring California had gone for Phil Chase, which gave him 275 electoral votes and made him the winner. They got to their feet, cheering. Anna woke up confused, “What? What? Can it be? Can it be real?” She made them click around and confirm it on the other channels, and they all confirmed it; “Oh my God,” she cried, and started to weep with joy. Charlie and Frank toasted with beer, got Nick a soda to toast with them. Joe woke up and climbed into Anna’s lap as she channel-surfed, being suddenly eager to soak in all the information that she could. “How did this
happen
?” There were claims of irregularities in Oregon voting machines, apparently, where the margin of victory was especially tight. But Oregon, like California, had voting machine safeguards in place, and the officials there were confident the result would be validated.

Charlie gave Roy a call, and in the middle of the first ring Roy came on singing “Ding dong, the witch is dead, the witch is dead, the witch is dead, ding dong, the wicked witch is dead!”

“Jeez Roy I could be a Republican staffer calling to congratulate you—”

“And I wouldn’t give a damn! The wicked witch is
dead
! And our boss is
president
!”

“Yes, we’re in for it now.”

“Yes we are! You’re going to have to come back to work, Chucker! No more Mr. Mom for you!”

“I don’t know about that,” Charlie said, glancing over at Joe, who was burbling happily at Anna as she leaned forward to hear the TV better. A traitorous thought sprang into his mind: That isn’t my Joe.

“—get yourself down to the convention center and celebrate! Bring the whole family!”

“I don’t know,” Charlie said. “Should we go down to the headquarters and celebrate?”

“No,” Anna and Frank said together.

“Maybe I’ll go down there later,” Charlie told Roy.

“Later, later, what’s with later? This is the moment!”

“True. But it’s a party that will last a while.”

“All night my friend. I wouldn’t mind seeing you in the flesh, we need to confer big time now! Everyone in the office is going to get a new job, you realize that.”

“Yes,” Charlie said. “Advisor to the president.”

“Friend of the president! We’re his friends, Charlie.”

“Us and twenty thousand other people.”

“Yes but no, we’re in the God-damned
White House.
”

“I guess we are. Jesus. Well, Phil will be great. If anyone can stay human in that job, he can.”

“Oh sure, sure. He’ll be human, he’ll be all too human.”

“He’ll be more than human.”

“That’s right! So get your ass down here and party!”

“Maybe I will.”

Charlie let him get back to it. The house suddenly seemed quiet. Joe was still playing cheerfully on the couch next to Anna. She got up, grinning now, and started to clean up. Frank got up to help her.

“This should help all your projects big time,” Charlie said to him. “Phil is really into them.”

“That’s good. We’ll need it.”

“He’ll probably appoint Diane Chang to a second term at NSF.”

“Huhn,” Frank said, looking over at him. “Really?”

“Yeah, I think so. I’ve heard that discussed. He likes what she’s been doing, of course. How could you not?”

“I hadn’t thought of that.” Frank picked up a plate, looking distracted.

They finished cleaning up. “I guess I’ll be off,” Frank said. “Thanks for having me over.”

THE DRIVE BACK TO KHEMBALI HOUSE took a long time. Frank chose to drive down Wisconsin and cross the Potomac on the Key Bridge, the shortest route by far, but it was a mistake; the streets were packed with people, literally packed, so that cars had to inch along, nudging their way forward through a mass of celebrating humanity. The District of Columbia had voted nine to one for Democratic candidates for many years, and now a good proportion of the ninety percent were in the streets partying, and cars be damned. Frank had seen this once long before, when he had happened to visit an old girlfriend in D.C. on the Fourth of July, and they had gone down to the Mall to see the Beach Boys. The crowd that day was estimated at seven hundred thousand, and when the concert and fireworks were over everyone had left at once. The Metro being overwhelmed, Frank and his friend had walked up 17th and then Connecticut to her place near Dupont Circle, and the entire way they had strolled with the rest of the crowd right down the middle of the street, forcing the helpless cars among them to creep at a pedestrian pace.

This was just like that—a sudden Carnavale, bursting onto Wisconsin. It had the feel of that day in the cold snap when everyone had gone out on the frozen Potomac. The city surprised by joy.

Frank watched through the windows of his van, feeling detached. No doubt it was good news—parts of him knew it was very good news—but he could not feel it. He was still too disturbed by what had happened with Caroline and her husband.

Inching forward, he gave Edgardo a call.

When Edgardo picked up, Frank’s ear was blasted by the sound of one of Astor Piazzolla’s wild tangos, the bandoneon leading the charge with such scrunching dissonances that Frank’s phone howled. “LET ME TURN IT DOWN” he heard as he held the phone at arm’s length.

“Sure.”

“Okay I’m back! Who is it?”

“It’s Frank.”

“Ah, Frank! How are you!”

“I’m okay. So, what happened?”

Edgardo laughed. “Didn’t you hear?” he said. “Phil Chase won the election!”

Behind his voice the tango kept charging along, and the shifting static in the phone led Frank to think that he might be dancing around his apartment.

“I know that, but how?”

“We will certainly be talking about how this happened for a long time, Frank, and I’m sure it will keep us entertained on our runs. But I predict right now that no one will ever be able to say exactly why this election came out the way it did.” He laughed again, seemingly at the way he could use such innocuous pundit clichés to convey exactly what he meant:
not now.
Of course. And maybe never. “Meanwhile just enjoy yourself, Frank. Celebrate.”

In the background the tango band twirled on. Frank pushed
End
on his phone; he could tell Edgardo about the new set of disks later. Best not to use phones anymore, as Edgardo had reminded him. He shook his head: his leap-before-you-look strategy was not capable of noticing all the possible consequences of an act. It was not working.

He dropped into Georgetown. It was even more crowded than upper Wisconsin had been; but soon he would cross to Arlington, and presumably over there it wouldn’t be like this. Frank wasn’t certain Arlington would be celebrating at all. That would be all right with Frank.

Then just before the Key Bridge traffic came to a complete halt. Downstream to the left he could see fireworks, shooting up off the levee next to the Lincoln Memorial, bursting over their own reflections in the black Potomac. All the celebrants crowding the street and sidewalk were cheering, many jumping up and down. Drivers of cars in front of Frank were giving up and getting out to stretch their legs or join the party. Some of them climbed on the roofs of their cars.

Frank got out too, smacked by the cold into a new awareness of the night and the crowd. Every boom of the fireworks brought another cheer, and all the skyward-tipped faces shone with the succession of mineral colors splashing over them. Frank was seized by the arms by two young women, pulled into their dance as they sang, “Happy Days Are Here Again,” kicking out in time before him. To keep step he started kicking as well, adding gibbon hoots to the general din. So what if sea level was rapidly rising, so what if there were lichen out there sucking carbon out of the sky—so what if the whole world had just seized the tiger by the tail! They were under a new dispensation, they were entering a new age! Oooooooooooop!

Then traffic was moving again, and Frank had to smooch his dancers and dash to his van. Into its warmth and over the bridge, creeping forward slowly, the fireworks still showering sparks into the river.

Over in Arlington it was entirely different: dark, empty, a little bit spooky. Streetside trees bounced and flailed on the wind. Snow blanketed the big open spaces downtown. Wilson Boulevard was deserted, just as he had thought it might be. There were two countries bound together now, and one of them was not celebrating. A cold and windy night to be sure. Hard to sustain being out on such a night, if one were not in Carnavale mode. Where would the knitting woman be tonight, for instance? And where was Chessman? Where would the bros sleep on this night? Did it matter to any of them that Phil Chase had won the election? In a system that demanded five percent unemployment, so that fifteen million people were going hungry, without jobs or homes, and an ice age coming on—did any election matter?

By the time Frank drove up to the curb outside Khembali House it was well after midnight, and he was exhausted. All was dark, the wind hooting around the eaves. The house had a presence in the night—big, solid, and he had to say comforting. It was not his home, but it did feel like a place he could come to. Inside were people he trusted.

Through the gate and around the back. Thank God they did not go in for those great Tibetan mastiffs that terrorized Himalayan villages. All was peaceful in the snowed-over autumn garden. Little scraps of prayer flag flapped on a string in the breeze.

The light was on in their shed. He turned the doorknob gently and urged the door in with its most silent twist.

Rudra was sitting up in bed reading. “It’s okay,” he said. “No need to be quiet.”

“Thanks.”

Inside it was nice and warm. Frank was still shivering, though it was not visible on the surface. He sat down on his bed, cold hands between his legs and tucked under his thighs. Like sitting on two lumps of snow.

His main cell phone was on his bedside table, blinking. He pulled a hand out and flipped it open to check it. Message from Diane. Called; would call back. He stared at it.

“You also got call tonight on phone in house.”

“What? I did?”

“Yes.”

“Did they leave a message?”

“Qang say, a woman call, very late. Said, tell Frank she is okay. She will call again.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Frank sat there. He didn’t know what to think. He could think this, he could think that. Could, could, could, could, could. Diane had called. Caroline had called.

“Windy.”

“Sure is.”

“Good night?”

“I guess so.”

“You are not happy at election result?”

“Yeah, sure. It’s great. If it holds.”

“Good for Khembalung, I think.”

“Yes, probably so. Good for everyone.” Except for fifteen million of us, he didn’t say.

“And your voyage, out to the salt fleet? Went well?”

“Oh, yeah, sure. Yeah, it was very interesting. We seeded the ocean. Poured five hundred million tons of salt in it.”

“You put salt in ocean?”

“That’s right.”

Rudra grinned. Once again the thousand wrinkles in his face reconfigured into their particular map of delight. How often he must have smiled—

“I know I know!” Frank interrupted. “Good idea!”

Rudra laughed his helpless deep belly laugh. “Salt to ocean! Oh, very good idea!”

“Well, it was. We may have saved the world with that salt. Saved it from more winters like the last one, and this one too.”