Chronic City

“See you later,” Perkus said at last.

I nodded at that sack, making small talk. “So how is old Biller, in this cold?”

“He’s fine.”

“He could always build a bonfire out of your books,” I joked.

“Actually, I think Biller got a bed in a rooming house,” said Perkus, with a dryness evidently restraining sarcasm. “He’s not selling books on the street anymore, he got a job on the Internet.”

“I’ve seen him at his computer. He looked like a real wizard.”

“When was that?” he said, scowling. Our fight wasn’t over. I was still under suspicion of all sorts of skulduggery-rustling waitresses might be the least of it.

“Some night,” I said, not wanting to specify. “Outside, in your little alley.”

I saw I’d only fueled his suspicions. Yet I also saw him shiver. Though I wore a coat, I too felt the wind ripping at me. Actually, I felt horrendous, like I wanted to lie down.

“Don’t you have anywhere to be, Chase?”

“Not for a couple of hours.” I might as well have begged for an invitation inside.

“Then go home,” he said acidly.

“Of course, sure, hey, uh, what are you doing for Thanksgiving?”

“Nothing, out of respect for Sacheen Littlefeather.” He abruptly pulled out his keys and went through the door, taking my cheeseburger with him.

CHAPTER

Eleven

Some member of the Danzigs’ staff arranged a limousine to pick me up at my apartment. The driver needed to have my doorman ring me twice, as I’d fallen into a toxic slumber with the early nightfall, my rooms dim as midnight, and I’d lapsed back to sleep between the ringings, then staggered out into the lobby, through the frigid margin of outdoors, and into the backseat of the feverishly overheated limousine. There I wiped my ru

“Isn’t Norma’s just a breakfast place?”

“It’s open for you tonight, sir.”

Ironically, I hadn’t shaved or showered, failing to do for billionaires what Perkus had done on account of a hamburger waitress whom he couldn’t even bring himself to speak with-that is, primp. Or maybe it wasn’t ironic, since Perkus, in his feeble and conflicted way, was trying to make an impression, while I was just collecting my due, going through my regular paces. I saw everything in light of Perkus’s contempt, helplessly heard my self-loathing narrated in his scorning tones.

So the Danzigs had paid to have the place to themselves, impressive, I suppose, except it had probably cost a tenth of what they’d spent to secure my presence. The windows of Norma’s were shuttered, a dim light glowing from within. Escorted inside, I found Rossmoor and Arjuna already seated at a large round table in the restaurant’s center, spotlit like the set of a one-act. Each nodded and smiled as I approached, and neither rose.

“Mr. Insteadman,” said Rossmoor Danzig. “Truly an uncommon pleasure.” Rossmoor, leaning into the table’s light to reach for my hand with a chubby paw that extended from what appeared to be a maroon pinstriped pajama top, at first seemed a giant cherub, a scruffy grimacing infant in gigantic black-framed glasses and mad-flowing hair. Massive as his head was, his hair and glasses made it look small. Like me, the cherub needed a shave. Taking that flabby hand in mine, I felt woozy, dislocated, still stuck in my nap and even further behind, in my sidewalk conflagration with Perkus, his burger-girl’s phone number still nestled in my pocket, my tongue thick with afterthoughts. I’d need to collect myself, find some way to summon my charm to the occasion-a measure of charm, if not fifty grand’s worth.

“The feeling is mutual,” I said robotically. “You’ve… ensured we’ll… have the time tour selves.”

“I don’t like eating at restaurants that are open,” he said. “We’ve got a four-star chef in our basement, we never need visit a restaurant at all. But there’s a specialty here I thought might amuse you.” Rossmoor Danzig pronounced this word spesh-ee-ality. “I really do hope it will. It amuses me very much.”

Rossmoor Danzig wasn’t young, much less a homunculoid infant. He was old, his skin parchment, wrinkled and powdery, his magnified orbs eggy in their scrotal sockets, yet his barge of hair seemed naturally, even obscenely, thick and dark, barely salted, the stubble on his chin also mostly dark. He did wear, as I got a closer look, pajamas, top and bottom. They were beautiful pajamas, but still. Figures flitted at my vision’s edges, outside our table’s golden circle: waitstaff working after hours, slaves of weird opportunity. I wondered what they made of us. I had to remind myself it wasn’t midnight or three in the morning, but an ordinary di

“Ross doesn’t eat anything except breakfast,” Arjuna Danzig explained painfully. Rossmoor’s wife seemed designed to compensate for his oddity, dressed with elegant simplicity, black high-necked dress and pearls, hair upswept, eyebrows sculpted into arches as persistently surprised as her eyes were infinitely weary, her olive skin a ghost of the exotic beauty her name had seemed to promise, all the rest of her defeated, folded neatly in its sarcophagus of makeup. Rossmoor was a desiccated toddler, age floating unfixed; Arjuna’s fifty-some years were pi

“At a certain point, Chase, I determined I didn’t have to eat anything I didn’t care to,” said Rossmoor. His self-regard was like a grand pipe organ visible in the air between us, which he played with shameless gusto. “And I don’t care to eat anything but breakfast. I eat it three or four times a day. Once a year I do a weeklong grapefruitjuice purge, again, simply for the pleasure it brings me.”

“That’s enough of that,” said Arjuna.

“Arjuna doesn’t countenance mention of poop,” said Rossmoor, merrily taunting. “We have such a number of toilets in our home, Chase, that you could go without flushing for a month if you liked. Conversely, my dear wife will frequently flush an empty toilet, just out of nervous energy.”

“I… I’ve done that myself,” I said stupidly.