Freedom полностью

In the afternoon, after sandwiches had been ordered and eaten and Patty had come home and gone out again without interacting with them (Katz caught a quick glimpse of her black gym-greeter jeans as her legs receded down the hallway), the four-member advisory board of Free Space hammered out a plan for the twenty-five summer interns whom Lalitha had already set about attracting and hiring. She’d been envisioning a late-summer music and consciousness-raising festival on a twenty-acre goat farm now owned by the Cerulean Mountain Trust on the southern edge of its warbler reserve—a vision that Jessica immediately found fault with. Did Lalitha not understand anything about young people’s new relationship with music? It wasn’t enough just to bring in some big-name talent! They had to send twenty interns out to twenty cities across the country and have them organize local festivals—“A battle of the bands,” Katz said. “Yes, exactly, twenty different local battles of the bands,” Jessica said. (She had been frosty to Katz all day but seemed grateful for his help in squashing Lalitha.) By offering cash prizes, they would attract five great bands in each of the twenty cities, all competing for the right to represent their local music scene in a weekend-long battle of the bands in West Virginia, under the aegis of Free Space, with some big names there to do the final judging and lend their aura to the cause of reversing global population growth and making it uncool to have kids.

Katz, who even by his own standards had consumed colossal amounts of caffeine and nicotine, wound up in a nearly manic state in which he agreed to everything that was asked of him: writing special Free Space songs, returning to Washington in May to meet with the Free Space interns and aid in their indoctrination, making a surprise guest appearance at the New York battle of the bands, emceeing the Free Space festival in West Virginia, endeavoring to reconstitute Walnut Surprise so that it could perform there, and pestering big names to appear with him and join him on the final panel of judges. In his mind, he was doing nothing more than writing checks on an account with nothing in it, because, despite the actual chemical substances he’d ingested, the true substance of his state was a throbbing, single-minded focus on taking Patty away from Walter: this was the rhythm track, everything else was irrelevant high-end. Smash the Family: another song title. And once the family was smashed, he would not have to make good on any of his promises.

He was so revved up that when the meeting ended, toward five o’clock, and Lalitha went back to her office to begin effectuating their plans, and Jessica disappeared upstairs, he consented to go out with Walter. He was thinking that this was the last time they would ever go out together. It happened that the suddenly hot band Bright Eyes, fronted by a gifted youngster named Conor Oberst, was playing a familiar venue in D.C. that night. The show was sold out, but Walter was keen to get backstage with Oberst and pitch Free Space to him, and Katz, flying high, made the somewhat abasing phone calls necessary to get a pair of passes at the door. Anything was better than hanging around the mansion, waiting for Patty to come home.

“I can’t believe you’re doing all these things for me,” Walter said at the Thai restaurant, near Dupont Circle, where they stopped for dinner along the way.

“No problem, man.” Katz picked up a skewer of satay, considered whether he could stomach it, and decided no. More tobacco was a very bad idea, but he took out his tin of it anyway.

“It’s like we’re finally getting around to doing the things we used to talk about in college,” Walter said. “It really means a lot to me.”

Katz’s eyes restlessly roved the restaurant, alighting on everything but his friend. He had the sense that he had run right off a cliff, was still pumping his legs, but would be crashing very soon.

“You OK?” Walter said. “You seem kind of jumpy.”

“No, I’m fine, fine.”

“You don’t seem fine. You’ve gone through a whole can of that shit today.”

“Just trying not to smoke around you.”

“Well, thank you for that.”

Walter consumed all of the satay while Katz dribbled spit into his water glass, feeling momentarily calmed, in nicotine’s false way.

“How are things with you and the girl?” he said. “I got kind of a weird vibe off you guys today.”

Walter blushed and didn’t answer.

“You sleeping with her yet?”

“Jesus, Richard! That is none of your business.”

“Whoa, is that a yes?”

“No, it’s a none-of-your-fucking-business.”

“You in love with her?”

“Jesus! Enough already.”

“See, I think that was a better name. Enough Already! With exclamation point. Free Space sounds like a Lynyrd Skynyrd song.”

“Why are you so interested in seeing me sleep with her? What’s that about?”

“I’m just going by what I see.”

“Well, we’re different, you and me. Do you get that? Do you understand that it’s possible to have values higher than getting laid?”