CHAPTER

30

My father devoted all of his (very limited) free time to Ismail’s defense, such as it was. He would not be allowed to defend Ismail because of conflict of interest issues, though these issues proved irrelevant since Ismail was being denied any kind of lawyer at all. I was extremely angry with my father about this, but I spent winter break in Westchester anyway. I was terrified of being attacked in Manhattan, either by Al Qaeda or by people who were angry at the epiphany machine and wanted to take it out on me. (Some drunk, fratty types had tried to knock down my door one night.)

My father had turned my room into what amounted to a giant filing cabinet—papers everywhere—so I slept in what had been my grandmother’s room, the house’s second master bedroom. I spent a lot of time draping myself in the bright, itchy afghans she had painstakingly knitted throughout my childhood. I realized how extraordinarily fortunate I had been to have had an intelligent woman devote herself to taking care of me, and I realized, too, how little I had appreciated it.

I was occasionally aware that I was thinking about my grandmother as a way of not thinking about Ismail, but feeling sad over someone you’ve lost is a very effective way of distracting yourself from what a prick you are. Or maybe I’m just speaking for myself.

On Christmas Day, Leah rang the doorbell, holding a cardboard box under one arm.

“I’m not here to see you,” she said.

“I’m glad you’re here. Whatever the truth is about Ismail, we should be here for each other.”

“Venter, this box is heavy and I’d like you to get the fuck out of my way.” I did as she asked and tried to take the box from her, but she yanked it out of my reach and carried it to the dining room.

“Mr. Lowood, I have some documents for you,” she called out. The door to my father’s den slid open.

“What are these?” I asked.

“Ismail’s emails to me. A lot of the writing that he’s done in the last few years.”

“And what are you hoping to prove with all this?”

“I don’t know. That he was a human being, maybe.”

“Being a human being isn’t going to count for much in court,” I said. “And besides, Ismail has been refused a lawyer.”

“Leave us alone, Venter,” my father said, entering the room. “We have work to do.”

•   •   •

Exiled as though I were half my age, I had nothing to do but watch television. At some point that day, or at any rate that week, I saw Adam’s commercial for the first time.

The commercial, which looked like it had been shot using incredibly cheap equipment, showed Adam standing in the epiphany room, patting the machine like it was a child or a dog, and holding a coffee mug that, for all I knew, did not contain whiskey.

“You’ve heard a lot about this baby in the past few months, and not all of it has been good,” he said. “In fact, none of it has been good. It’s all been very bad.” There was a dissolve now to one of those gauzy shots of the World Trade Center that were already becoming the second-most common images of the new century, right after images of the planes hitting the buildings. A few notes of soft patriotic treacle played on the soundtrack. “Just like those in our government, I think day and night about what I could have done to stop that tragedy. Of course there’s no way for me to go back in time. But here’s something I can do.”

Adam put his hand over the sweat stain on his left shirt pocket.

“For the next six months, I will refuse all donations. I will not accept a dime from anyone who comes to see me to use the machine. A monster used my machine and it told him he was a monster. New Yorkers are strong, and right now they need to hear that they’re strong. So come let the machine tell you how strong you are, in a way you won’t forget.”

Big smile, missing tooth, dissolve to black, next commercial.

Well, I thought, Adam’s done now. This will not salvage the machine and will lead to many attacks on Adam for using a tragedy to gin up publicity.

Those attacks did come—but so did many people eager to use the machine.