The Empire of the Dead (12 page)

He had, and three weeks later a section of the roof collapsed above the school's gymnasium, killing a fifth grade boy and a third grade girl. Bern still remembered their names: Matthew Wein and Sue Ann Brownly. Afterward, for over two years, the courts tried to apportion blame. Lousy design? Shoddy workmanship? That summer before New York, the incident shadowed Bern all the way across England, France, and Spain. Once he'd settled in Manhattan, he had to fly back to Houston, twice, to testify at trials. Finally, he and the firm were exonerated; engineers, coached by lawyers—or vice versa, who could tell at that point?—determined the fault lay in construction, not design. Bern took little satisfaction in this. Should I have dogged the workers even harder? he thought.
Did
those bastards set me up?

No. With every nail, nut, and bolt, children's lives were at stake. He couldn't believe anyone would pursue a personal vendetta that far. And though the courts cleared him, Bern would never escape the fact that his first built project resulted in the deaths of two kids. In his mind, and for the sake of his marriage and career, he tried to shove Brazoria County into a bottom drawer.

Throughout the ordeal, his bosses in New York championed him. They had studied his plans for the building and found nothing
wrong with them. All along, they felt confident he would be vindicated. This fact secured his loyalty to the firm, even after he started getting passed over for promotions and merit raises. At first, Marla had also been supportive, though her eyes were often downcast around him (did he imagine this?). Bern couldn't believe that none of them—Marla, his colleagues and bosses—didn't harbor
some
passing doubts about him. He had much to prove. Thus, his focus, his drive, his commitment to public projects (
see, I'm not in it for the money! Forgive me, forgive me
), his strictness with Marla about taking care of Becky, or the possibility of a baby. He tried to micromanage his marriage the way he'd overseen every weld in Brazoria County. In neither case did the connections hold.

The beer-drinking bulldog approached the pub's doorway and let out a bark. Bern feared he had caused the creature's distress, but then he noticed the woman in the miniskirt. She had emerged from the darkness of the stripped-down garage and was yelling at passersby. They screeched back at her. This scene perturbed the dog. What
was
her agony? Momentarily, Bern entertained the fantasy that she was a lonely preservationist, distraught at the loss of the old stable and the new use to which the structure had been put. “A car is not a
horse
!” he imagined her shouting at officials in a meeting of the Landmarks Preservation Committee. Over the years, Bern had attended numerous planning hearings where the fate of a building was at stake, or the development of pristine land—emotional issues—and it was easy to make fun of folks whom sentiment seized in public, citizens nostalgically attached to a parcel, with no conception of complex legalities. In truth, Bern thought, watching the woman struggle with herself, people slammed by emotion are usually clear about what they want; they're heartfelt and sincere and they tend to say what they mean. The ones to watch are the Haircuts and Ties who learn the rules just to shatter them.

You're a fine one to talk, Bern thought: What did you do in Brazoria County, shaving every angle …

The woman in the parka pulled her bulldog back into the bar. He
whimpered until she gave him more beer. Bern crossed the street, approaching the garage-woman slowly. She slumped halfway down a wall, searching for something in her purse, shivering from the cold. “Excuse me?” Bern said. “Ma'am, do you need some help?” The woman tried to look his way. She aimed her gaze at the windows over his left shoulder. “I need you to go fuck yourself, buddy,” she croaked. Her mouth never stopped grinding, even when she'd quit speaking.

“All right,” Bern said. “Just checking.”

“Check
this
, asshole!”

Bern braced himself for pepper spray, a penknife, a can of mace. The woman made no move. She just stood there, working her mouth. A faint musk wafted from the maw of the garage—a trace of the old stable?

In 1880, fifteen thousand horses dropped dead, of various causes, in the streets of New York.

By the mid-1900s, five hundred thousand pounds of horse shit were piling up in the streets each day. The gutters ran with forty-five thousand gallons of horse piss.

Bern had read all this when he first came to the city and, obsessed with origins, taught himself the lay of the land.

He left the woman at the entrance to the garage and ambled up the sidewalk toward home. As he walked, he recalled the first planning meeting he'd ever witnessed. It was back in Texas. He was a teenager. A Dallas real estate outfit had purchased the land north of Houston where the cemetery sat, his grandfather's burial plot. Condos was the plan: six of them, each with thirty-six units. Four shared parking lots. The outfit's lawyer claimed that plenty of open space, including the graveyard, would be preserved within the design, but few locals believed this. Bern's mom dragged him to the hearing, at which she railed against the project. “All those moss roses,” she said, her voice rising, “acres and acres of orange and yellow blossoms … irreplaceable …”

As he moved along Tenth, he paralleled the rusty High Line,
caught a glimpse of the new Frank Gehry building (a shining, multistory banana float). He was tempted to stop for a nightcap at La Luncheonette, its simple décor a powerful lure, the warm yellow light a balm to his eyes. But no, he'd imbibed quite enough tonight.

On Twenty-third, a pink plaster pastry the size of an old Volkswagen beetle revolved on a pole above a bakery. To bed, to bed, Bern thought. This city is too much! A young couple kissed in front of the Big Booty Bread Company. A high-tech boy (slick hair, Armani suit, iPod plugged into his ear) rushed from a pharmacy with about an aisle's worth of Tylenol in his arms.

Deep golden light swept through the Hotel Chelsea. Bern paused by its glass doors then stepped into the lobby for warmth. The large fireplace loomed, cold and sooty, but the ceiling chandeliers radiated electric heat, palpable if unfelt on the skin, a spiritual condition (Bern thought) rather than a physical atmosphere. The chandeliers glistened, icy. Dark, murky paintings brooded on the walls above the gritty carpet. Given the hotel's storied past and his slight inebriation, Bern expected ghosts: ectoplasmic raging against the dying of the light.

The lobby was empty except for a young Japanese man sprawled on a leather couch, Googling images of Condoleezza Rice.

He dreamed he was living with Marla again in her house, sleeping in her bed, but everything was wrong. He didn't want to hurt her feelings, but when she opened her arms to him, he pulled away, gently. “We can't do this,” he said. “Of course we can,” Marla replied. “I've made us a reservation at that little Italian restaurant.” “I'm promised to someone else,” Bern said. Marla wept. “Who?” she said. Bern didn't know. No one. Marla asked again, “Who?” He was doomed to a sad and freighted love. For the rest of his life, he would sleep chastely next to Marla, wounding her night after night with his presence—somehow, this was the arrangement now.

He woke, shaken and parched. He reached for a glass of water on his bed stand, recalling his fears of falling asleep in the hospital, in
the worst days of his illness. He sat on the edge of his bed, breathing deeply. Then he paced the room to try to steady his heartbeat. At the window he watched four blind men from the Clinton flash white canes by the curb. As they laughed and talked, they moved around one another in a circle, like ponderous players in a midnight hockey game.

“No,” Murphy said. “Whatever we build, it has to challenge its context.”

Landau, Chris Henderson, Raymond Davis, and Bern were sitting in the break room at work, sipping coffee, “getting to know each other,” Landau had chirped. The room smelled of bananas and wet coffee grounds. Weak sunlight slanted through the single, east-facing window, onto the portable fridge, microwave oven, and scarred wooden table. As Murphy held forth, Bern stared at three drops of half-and-half spilled on the tabletop. One of the drops was about to seep into a scratch in the wood.

“Self-reflexive gestures,” Murphy continued. “An open space, say, just off the street, reminding us of the city's disorder by offering a break from it. Public sculptures evoking industrial decay—”

“Why?” Henderson asked.

“Social criticism. You know. Through aesthetics.”

Landau clapped. “I just
love
the way this guy
thinks
!” he said.

Henderson stared at his arms. Before this meeting, he had told Bern his white blood cell count had dropped drastically in the last few days, and his doctor feared he was anemic. He was slated for further tests this week, and worried about a recurrence of his cancer. The left side of Davis's face swelled, purple and black. Yesterday, he had fallen in the street. A stranger had helped him home, and now he had no memory of the incident. As for Bern, his stomach sang murky arias. Per instructions for his colonoscopy prep, he had eaten no solid food this morning. Here we are, he thought. The morgue.

The half-and-half was viscous and blue, its movement toward
the nick in the table tantalizingly slow. “What about daily life?” Bern said.

“Daily life?” Murphy repeated.

“Well, while you're scattering industrial waste on the streets, how are we supposed to go about our business? Let's say I'm an old woman, all alone here in the city, running late, trying to catch the A train—how are your sculptures going to teach me anything? I certainly don't have time to contemplate their ‘lessons.' Besides that, they're blocking my way.”

Landau scowled at him. You're penning your obit, Bern thought. Shut up, old fool.

Murphy smiled. Bern was sure some of his colleagues had taken Murphy aside and told him how they teased the “Old Man—Bern, the Utopian.” “Here's the deal, Wally. Most of us are bored in the city now. We have to strain to find mystery on the sidewalks.”

“I don't think we're bored with cities,” Bern said. “I think we're afraid for them.”

Landau turned away from him, clearly irritated, and went all dewy-eyed, staring at his Boy Wonder. He was a sucker for this faux-theory grad school crap. You really
must
shut up, Bern thought.

The half-and-half found its groove. Bern was strangely thrilled. His stomach
grrr
-ed.

“I'm thinking probably nothing maps our challenges more than memorial designs, am I right?” Murphy said. “Witness the WTC site. I mean, these days, in American culture, nothing goes uncontested. You know what I'm talking about. Everything is politicized. Even war memorials, tributes to our dead … they can't be designed straightforwardly, because you risk offending someone. What does ‘straightforward' even mean nowadays? So we get mute black walls. Maya Lin's Vietnam. Silence. Ambiguity.”

Oh please, Bern thought. Let me out of the goddamned Seminar Room. “The 1930s were an extremely politicized time in this country. Maybe you didn't study that in school,” he piped up, goaded by the smile on this little
macher
's face. “No one agreed on solutions
to the Great Depression, impending war … but WPA murals seized the nation's imagination: those blocky figures of working men and women. You've seen them, I assume. And why were these murals so powerful?”

Murphy held his smile, but the corners of his mouth trembled.

“They showed the dignity of human labor,” Bern said. With his fingers he brushed away the half-and-half. “But we also had the feeling we were witnessing something ancient, about to go extinct. Frankly, I don't know many young designers with the courage or the skill to pull off that sort of thing.” He licked the liquid from his hands. Well, Cro-Magnon. If you're going out, go out with a bang, he thought.

“Okay, okay,” Landau said, rising, tossing his Styrofoam cup into a wastebasket by the window. “It's good for us to kick around ideas, keep the old nervous systems humming, but we want it to stay constructive.” He glanced at Bern. “A spirit of cooperation, got it? I expect you all to make Sam feel welcome.”

“Thanks, guys,” Murphy said. “I enjoyed it!”

In the narrow hallway outside the break room, Davis tugged Bern's coat. “How about it, Wally?” he said. “Tequila, after work? Kiss the old green worm?” Bern wondered if booze had caused the poor bastard's recent stumble. As he spoke, Davis held his jaw stiff. He resembled a shabby wooden marionette. Bern explained about his procedure and said he'd take a rain check. “Me, I don't believe in diagnostic tests anymore,” Davis said. “Who wants to hear bad news at our age? Better to just whistle past the graveyard until the day you stumble into the hole.”

“Maybe so,” Bern said.

Davis slipped away.

Behind Bern, Henderson made loud clicking noises with his lips. Bern turned. “Oh. I'm sorry,” Henderson said. “My gums ache. It's the GVH. Side effect from the bone marrow transplant and all the goddamn medications I'm taking. I just wish I could taste food, you
know? Well. No complaints, no complaints.” He smiled unconvincingly.

By the time Bern reached his office, his chest hurt. Too much time in the Sick Ward. Whatever happened to routine? he thought. The taken-for-granted? We are bored with the city? Boredom is possible only when you're healthy.

“Wally?”

Murphy stood in his doorway.

“Yes?”

The young man laughed self-consciously, put his hands on his hips, and glanced at the floor. “I mean, you
really
don't like me, do you? What's the deal, man?”

Bern stared at the pencils on his desk.

“Is there something I can do to … I don't know, make peace?” Murphy said.