On the station bar’s sound system, “That’s What I Like About You” was playing. It seemed to Katz the perfect soundtrack for the neon Bud Light signage, the fake leaded-glass lampshades, the durably polyurethaned crap furniture with its embedded commuter grime. He was still reasonably safe from hearing one of his own songs played in a place like this, but he knew it was a safety only of degree, not of category.
“Patty’s decided she doesn’t like anybody under thirty,” Walter said. “She’s formed a prejudice against an entire generation. And, being Patty, she’s very funny on the subject. But it’s gotten pretty vicious and out of control.”
“Whereas you seem quite taken with the younger generation,” Katz said.
“All it takes to disprove a general law is one counterexample. I’ve got at least two great ones in Jessica and Lalitha.”
“But not Joey?”
“And if there are two,” Walter said, as if he hadn’t even heard his son’s name, “there are bound to be a lot more. That’s the premise of what I want to do this summer. Trust that young people still have brains and a social conscience, and then give them something to work with.”
“You know, we’re very different, you and me,” Katz said. “I don’t do vision. I don’t do belief. And I’m impatient with the kiddies. You remember that about me, right?”
“I remember that you’re often wrong about yourself. I think you believe in a lot more than you give yourself credit for. You’ve got a whole cult following because of your integrity.”
“Integrity’s a neutral value. Hyenas have integrity, too. They’re pure hyena.”
“So, what, should I not have called you?” Walter said with a tremor in his voice. “Part of me didn’t want to bother you, but Lalitha talked me into it.”
“No, it’s good you called. It’s been too long.”
“I think I figured you’d outgrown us or something. I mean, I know I’m not a cool person. I figured you were done with us.”
“Sorry, man. I just got really busy.”
But Walter was becoming upset, nearly tearful. “It almost seemed like you were embarrassed by me. Which I understand, but it still doesn’t feel very good. I thought we were friends.”
“I said I was sorry,” Katz said. He was angered both by Walter’s emotion and by the irony or injustice of needing to apologize,
“I don’t know what I expected,” Walter said. “But maybe some acknowledgment of the fact that Patty and I helped you. That you wrote all those songs in my mother’s house. That we’re your oldest friends. I’m not going to dwell on this, but I want to clear the air and let you know what I’ve been feeling, so I don’t have to feel it anymore.”
The angry stirring of Katz’s blood was of a piece with the divinations of his dick. I’m going to do you a different kind of favor now, old friend, he thought. We’re going to finish some unfinished business, and you and the girl will thank me for it.
“It’s good to clear the air,” he said.
WOMANLAND
Growing up in St. Paul, Joey Berglund had received numberless assurances that his life was destined to be a lucky one. The way star halfbacks talk about a great open-field run, the sense of cutting and weaving at full speed through a defense that moved in slow motion, the entire field of play as all-visible and instantaneously graspable as a video game at Rookie level, was the way every facet of his life had felt for his first eighteen years. The world had given unto him, and he was fine with taking. He arrived as a first-year student in Charlottesville with the ideal clothes and haircut and found that the school had paired him with a perfect roommate from NoVa (as the locals called the Virginia suburbs of D.C.). For two and a half weeks, college looked like it would be an extension of the world as he had always known it, only better. He was so convinced of this—took it so much for granted—that on the morning of September 11 he actually left his roommate, Jonathan, to monitor the burning World Trade Center and Pentagon while he hurried off to his Econ 201 lecture. Not until he reached the big auditorium and found it all but empty did he understand that a really serious glitch had occurred.
