His lunch had come with a free copy of the New York Post, and he swiveled his hands inside their plaster to leaf through the pages. The headlines were all bleak. Stocks down. Fraud on Wall Street on the rise. A precarious future predicted for social security and Medicare, now that the baby boomers’ health was failing. A line from an economist caught his eye: “This generation has inherited an enormous debt, and I can’t believe that it will survive the weight. Indeed, what we may be witnessing is not a recession but the end of an empire.”
He thought about that, and he decided that the economist was wrong. Every generation faces its own extinction, and for that generation, it always feels like the end of the world. But somehow, for thousands of years, life has gone on, and even gotten better. Despite the wars and stupid decisions, the racism and despots, people have gotten better, too.
Just then, the phone rang. It took some maneuvering, but he managed to lift the receiver in time. “Hello?”
“Yeees?” a woman’s high-pitched voice asked.
“Uh, yes.”
“Is this Bobby?”
“Saraub. I think you have the wrong number.”
“Oh, no. I mean that other name. That’s what I mean. Audrey’s gentleman?”
He grabbed the remote, but his fingers couldn’t press the mute button, so instead he cricked his neck tighter against his shoulder, so he could hear better. “That’s right. Is something wrong?”
“Yes. She’s not feeling herself, and she wanted me to call you and ask you to come over. Don’t bring anyone. You know how she is—so private.”
“What’s wrong with her?”
“510 West 110th Street, #14B. Buh-bye!” she shouted, like maybe he was deaf, then hung up.
Saraub held the phone in his hand. What the hell? He thought about Nebraska and the way he’d left her while she’d slept. He realized that his anger had clouded his judgment. She was a little nutty, but she wasn’t cruel. There could be only one reason she hadn’t called or visited upon hearing he’d been in a plane accident: something was very wrong.
He pressed the call button for his nurse and started looking for his pants.
43
The Red Ants Will Carry Away Even the Last of Your Line
Martin Hearst lay broken and unmoving at the top of a garbage heap. Red ants swarmed his skin. It seemed fitting that his family had made its fortune out of digging holes, and he would meet his end inside one, too.
He’d studied the history of this building for years. For instance, Edgar Schermerhorn was his great-great-great-great-great-grandfather’s first cousin. If not for that kinship, The Breviary’s strange design would never have gotten funding. In 1932, The Breviary was nearly sold by its shareholders after an eruption of suicides, but spared by one dissenting vote: his great-great-grandfather: Martin Hearst III. In Marty’s lifetime, the building’s foundation had finally begun to buckle, top down. There was a reason no one had lived on the fifteenth floor: since the fire ten years ago, the plaster under the copper roof had caved in.
Martin Hearst the First: The Civil War newspapers joked that the name was fitting, one letter off from a heart. The stories about him passed down over the generations had become legend. A hardened, self-made man with no patience for the meek, who took what he wanted, and from his neighbors inspired awe. By the time Marty VII was born one hundred years later, the legend was a God.
During the Gilded reign of Martin Hearst II, The Breviary thrived. Crystal chandeliers sparkled, mahogany wood shone, glass gleamed; even the copper roof defied its atmosphere, and for decades stayed the color of freshly minted pennies. The children of The Breviary’s elite attended the same summer camps and private schools, shared governesses, and married each other, too. The address became fashionable, and as the building’s population swelled, they broke up apartments, smaller and smaller. Twelve bedrooms became six, then four, and finally, two. And if sometimes, the lights flickered, or the doors flew open, such happenings served only to enhance The Breviary’s charm.
The third generation started new businesses that brought them to the West Coast or the oil fields of Texas. They intended to return, but never did. The rest inherited family fortunes or found local occupation as bankers, Broadway actors, writers, sculptors, critics, and gossip columnists. They were the first to indulge in the rituals of Chaotic Naturalism: sacrificed animals, séances, dream sharing, scholarship in the occult.
The flapper generation cast aside petty drudgery and