Katz, as he endured this bombardment, was feeling sad and remote. Walter and the girl seemed to have snapped under the pressure of thinking in too much detail about the fuckedness of the world. They’d been seized by a notion and talked each other into believing in it. Had blown a bubble that had then broken free of reality and carried them away. They didn’t seem to realize they were dwelling in a world with a population of two.
“I don’t know what to say,” he said.
“Say yes!” Lalitha said, glittering.
“I’m going to be in Houston for a couple of days,” Walter said, “but I’ll send you some links, and we can talk again on Tuesday.”
“Or just say yes now,” Lalitha said.
Their hopeful expectancy was like an unbearably bright lightbulb. Katz turned away from it and said, “I’ll think about it.”
On the sidewalk outside Walker’s, taking leave of the girl, he ascertained that there was nothing wrong with her lower body, but it didn’t seem to matter now, it only added to his sadness about Walter. The girl was going to Brooklyn to see a college friend of hers. Since Katz could just as easily take the PATH from Penn Station, he walked with Walter toward Canal Street. Ahead of them, in the gathering twilight, were the friendly glowing windows of the world’s most overpopulated island.
“God, I love New York,” Walter said. “There is something so profoundly wrong with Washington.”
“Plenty of things wrong here, too,” Katz said, sidestepping a high-speed mom-and-stroller combo.
“But at least this is an actual place. Washington’s all abstraction. It’s about access to power and nothing else. I mean, I’m sure it’s fun if you’re living next door to Seinfeld, or Tom Wolfe, or Mike Bloomberg, but living next door to them isn’t what New York is
“I will remind you that Bad Brains and Ian MacKaye came out of D.C.”
“Yeah, that was some weird historical accident.”
“And yet we did admire them in our youth.”
“God, I love the New York subway!” Walter said as he followed Katz down to the uric uptown platform. “This is the way human beings are supposed to live. High density! High efficiency!” He cast a beneficent smile upon the weary subway riders.
It occurred to Katz to ask about Patty, but he felt too gutless to say her name. “So is this chick single, or what?” he said.
“Who, Lalitha? No. She’s had the same boyfriend since college.”
“He lives with you, too?”
“No, he’s in Nashville. He was in med school in Baltimore, and now he’s doing his internship.”
“And yet she stayed behind in Washington.”
“She’s very invested in this project,” Walter said. “And, frankly, I think the boyfriend’s on his way out. He’s very old-school Indian. He threw a huge, huge fit when she didn’t move to Nashville with him.”
“And what did you advise her?”
“I tried to get her to stand up for herself. He could have matched somewhere in Washington if he’d really wanted to. I told her she didn’t have to sacrifice everything for his career. She and I’ve got a kind of father-daughter thing. Her parents are very conservative. I think she appreciates working for somebody who believes in her and doesn’t just see her as somebody’s future wife.”
“And just so we’re clear,” Katz said, “you’re aware that she’s in love with you?”
Walter blushed. “I don’t know. Maybe a little bit. I actually think it’s more like an intellectual idealization. More father-daughter.”
“Yeah, dream on, buddy. You expect me to believe you’ve never imagined those eyes shining up at you while her head’s bobbing on your lap?”
“Jesus, no. I try not to imagine things like that. Especially not with an employee.”
“But maybe you don’t always succeed in not imagining it.”
Walter glanced around to see if anyone on the platform was listening, and lowered his voice. “Aside from everything else,” he said, “I think there’s something objectively demeaning about a woman on her knees.”
“Why don’t you try it sometime and let her be the judge of that.”
“Well, because, Richard,” Walter said, still blushing, but also laughing unpleasantly, “I happen to understand that women are wired differently than men.”
“Whatever happened to gender equality? I seem to recall that you were into that.”
“I just think, if you ever had a daughter yourself, you might see the woman’s side with a little more sympathy.”
“You’ve named my best reason for not wanting a daughter.”
