AS I INCHED home down the Jersey Turnpike—eight lanes each way and still a parking lot every rush hour—I felt conflicting emotions. On the one hand was the unwelcome realization that Kuni and I might have been barking up the wrong tree. On the other was an incipient excitement: Had I just seen a man with a big future?
I had plenty of time to ponder, surrounded as I was by four static stinking SSSUVs: a twenty-five-foot Ford Pharaoh, an even larger Nissan Nebuchadnezzar and—at a mere nineteen feet each—two cute Mitsubishi Magogs. And here was I, saving the planet in my 500-watt Suzuki Sulky, which weighed less than one of their gas tanks.
If there was a them behind Jay, would they have let things get this bad? Wouldn’t they have bailed him out or provided him with an attorney so he wouldn’t have talked himself into jail? Going to jail might be a calculated risk to give him street cred, but why? He had plenty already. Plus, jailbirds were ipsofacto sinners. No messiah sponsored by men of God could have that on his résumé.
Just as damaging to our theory was what he’d said to get himself into such deep shit. The faith-hope-and-no-charity brigade had “reformed” health care into Superb (the ruling class), Basic (the ruled class—including yours truly), and None (the class ruled by the ruled class). Would a right-wing-sponsored messiah say publicly that their reforms were a crock?
The possibility that he was for real, in some as yet unclear way, presented just as many problems. For me the miracle thing was a huge sticking point. To date none of the “miracles” I’d heard about could be explained, except as cons. Even if Jay had paranormal powers of some kind—and I’m convinced that certain people do have the power to cause changes in external phenomena—the results aren’t miracles. As the health authorities pointed out, Jay might be alleviating people’s symptoms, but that didn’t mean he was curing them. And a miracle, I would think, must involve a cure, a dramatic one, preferably of something incurable.
For me, miracles didn’t matter. I would never believe in them, however dramatic. What drew me to him was much simpler. I liked the look and sound of the guy. It wasn’t charisma—quite. He had a face like something at the bottom of the shoe closet, but I wanted to know him better, and that can be said of very few members of the human race. (The human race, I’m told, feels much the same way about me.)
My attraction was as much political as personal. It seemed to me he might have hit on a formula the post-liberal left—neoprogressives or radical centrists or neocoms, whatever the pathetic remnants of opposition were calling themselves that week—had been seeking for a long time. He could do the Religion Thing.
Over the years, “our side” had rung endless changes on the Fundamentalism Lite approach—the notion that all you had to do to win over the Christian Right was to add a little Evangelical catnip to your left-of-center agenda and they’d desert their fundamentalism like a shot. Formerly lefty pols were always trying to coin right-wing-friendly oxymorons like those the Republicans used to be so good at before they stopped bothering: “Relative Prejudice,” “Compassionate Militarism,” “Neo–Jim Crow,” “Situational Bigotry,” “Creative Creationism.” The woman who came up with that last doozy—an ex-president of Wellesley who still runs the MacArthur-Brookings Foundation—once proposed an Evolution Summit between prominent Darwinists and Creationists to discuss a “deal.” Everything before the Jurassic: created in one Judeo-Christian work week. Everything after: as per Darwin. Fair enough?
A very seductive idea suddenly sidled through my mental doorway and leaned against the lintel, batting its eyelashes at me. What if Jay was—potentially—a new breed of populist leader, with spiritual bona fides that in today’s God-inclined world were necessary to be taken seriously? With the help of a little judicious journalism—I could handle that—he could be a sizable thorn in the side of certain people. The selfsame people who, a few hours earlier, I’d thought were controlling him.
This guy had always had a major story in him. Now I was sure I had the angle.
As if to signal that excitement was in the air, the traffic suddenly loosened up. The ten-mile jam hadn’t been caused by rush-hour volume after all but by an accident. Braking hard on a tight curve coming into the Fort Lee tolls, a BMW Babylon, the biggest SSSUV on the road, had jackknifed.
Twenty minutes later, I was home in my tiny pigeonnier high atop the Trump NJ Towers in Hoboken. It consisted of an astronomically priced living box and sleeping box with an eating carton in between. From my living-box window I could stare across the mighty Hudson at the Great Wall of Trump Towers marching up Manhattan’s West Side, guarding it from the barbaric onslaught of sunlight. Once I had lived there, looking at where I lived now. Perhaps one day soon I’d be back over there again.
Blinking on my vidi-message was a Southern Asian woman of mature years. Judging by her haughty demeanor she was a Brahmin. She was Mrs. A. Purna, from Human Resources at NewsWeb in Bangalore, and would I return her call promptly? I hit CALLBACK and identified myself. The screen zoomed out to a lavish office in bright morning sunlight. It was already tomorrow in India. How symbolic.
Seated on a maharajah’s throne on a swivel stand, was, according to the sign on her faux–Louis Quinze desk, Mrs. A. Purna. She was enormous and dressed in a rich purple sari. She looked like a giant gold-trimmed eggplant.
“Good morning, Mr. Greco,” she said, with that hauteur Brahmins affect, as if all of Lord Krishna’s creation was an exclusive prep school they run, on whose front gate they’ve caught you pissing. “Would you give me, if you please, a status and viability report on the Mysterious Stranger story?”
“Um . . . sure. In a nutshell, I don’t think it has legs. But—er, how do you know about it?”
“Your colleague, Mr. Yamamoto-Young, has been documenting for us the inordinate number of hours you spend researching it and likewise the amount of his time that you demand for same.”
Kuni, Kuni, you treacherous little shit!
“Has he indeed? Documenting inordinate hours indeed?” I said, trying to keep up prolixity-wise. “He’s jolly ambitious, you know—”
“He has credibly reported that today you traveled to the State of Connecticut, there to attend a legal proceeding concerning same—and, to boot, trespassing on the territorial perquisites of the Connecticut Inquiring Mind. Further, that you told him of a media organ—other than the one that pays your annual emolument—which would consider publication of the Mysterious Stranger story.”
“Absurd! I’m utterly dedicated to the Inquiring Mind!”
“Mr. Yamamoto-Young e-mailed us an MP-9, on which you are indisputably heard to say, ‘I know who might run it.’ ”
“Preposterous! Audio forgery!”
“I never relish being the bearer of untoward tidings, Mr. Greco, but you have brought this unfortunate exigency upon yourself. I regret to say we are compelled to let you go.”
“What’s this really about, Mrs. A. Purna? Payback for the British Raj?”
“In the long view, yes. Good day.”