After three days of waiting for documents, of expectations of newly-arrived packages clad in shrink-wrap and swathed in padding, conveyed in corrugated cardboard and transported via air freight, Timon received word that Jonathan Clarligne would instead be bringing the materials to him directly. The younger Clarligne would be in Seattle the following day, Timon was told, for reasons unrelated to this assignment. Timon’s father had called with the news. “Buy him a meal,” he said. “Somewhere generous. Impress him. And make sure you get a receipt.” Timon acquiesced to this plan of events.
The night before Jonathan’s arrival, the nature of their meeting still unclear, tentative plans circulated for a brief conversation at a sophisticated establishment, Timon ventured to a distant venue to watch a trio of bands clatter and roar their way through three-minute pop songs, sneers in tow; the chords played staccato, the vocals barked, the lyrics composed of accusations and denunciations. The beer present at the venue wasn’t enough to get Timon drunk, and the beer wasn’t enough to provoke movement. He stood toward the back of the space and nodded his head and wondered about running, either into the fray before the stage or for the door. The night and a handful of confused pedestrians would be there to greet him if he walked out front or stumbled out front.
He had met Jonathan Clarligne once before. Jonathan had been twenty, which still earned him the tag of prodigy. It had been in Los Angeles, and by chance: Timon had followed a friend of his there, had gone there to profess something like love, had been carefully deflated and had stumbled out of a bar at five in the afternoon not wanting any sort of company, no matter how politely an expression of honesty had been delivered. And halfway down the block, Jonathan Clarligne had been there, a face he knew from photographs and a name he knew from familial conversations. In Los Angeles for his sideline in business, Timon later learned, the genius-boy consultant. Jonathan had been at the center of a beautiful crowd and Timon had been devastated, and their conversation had been brief and formal and, if not traumatic for either man, than certainly something neither of them saw fit to repeat.
Timon occasionally heard rumors and legends of Jonathan Clarligne. Never via his parents, but through siblings, through colleagues he had met through the family business. Gossip clustered around Jonathan Clarligne like scab to a wound: talk of a child, talk of a brief marriage, of a dawn-lit Vegas wedding. Jonathan Clarligne had made an album in secret. Jonathan Clarligne had made an album in secret that was amazing; bootleg recordings circulating on file-sharing sites under half a dozen aliases. Jonathan Clarligne had left his family’s firm in disgrace. Jonathan Clarligne had folded his consulting business in disgrace. Jonathan Clarligne had returned to the family’s firm in prodigal fashion. Jonathan Clarligne had purchased a Manhattan apartment for an exorbitant sum. Timon heard all of them, declined to make assumptions about which were true and which were not. All he could say with certainty was that Jonathan Clarligne was his junior by several years and yet possessed the gravity of someone a generation older. This fact, unassailable, set Timon on edge.
Onstage, the band had taken up a song that invited the crowd to shake. Timon drained his beer and moved forward and decided to reciprocate. As he moved, his head bobbing and body twisting and legs, yes, shaking, he scanned the crowd and saw no one familiar. He rarely saw those he knew at shows such as this, but he never quite lost that hope, that flash that comes when one sees a familiar face transposed to a new environment and receives a gloried onrush of potential, a kind of renewal of faith. He kept moving for as long as he could before his energy flagged, his eyes still on those around him, hoping for some sense of recognition.
Marianne worked at a job that had not existed a decade earlier. On sporadic visits to her family she often found herself describing it in surreal terms, the disbelief surrounding her fueling her own disbelief, a thought burrowing away into her that this was somehow transient, that this line of work was ephemeral, might vanish at any point, that she might yet find herself in a telemarketing cubicle or offering upgrades of fast food to disinterested customers; these were the kinds of jobs friends of hers had baited her with during her collegiate years, and those old anxieties had never entirely left her. Marianne structured websites, essentially: developed plans and charts and outlines for how information might be navigated. She had been in this job for three years and found a reliable comfort in it.
In her office, she cued up a cover of “Wall of Death” and listened to it again and again. It cleared her head, its repetition summoning a sort of meditation, and soon she was ready for the day’s work: two meetings within the office and one with a prospective client. A third meeting would follow to discuss the result of that, and how the company’s interests might be advanced. There was, Marianne supposed, an aptitude one should have for scenarios such as this. She assumed on some level that she possessed it, though never felt cognizant of it as such. There was a comfort she took in travel, an ease in the moments when she felt her life transitioning from one city to the next, and a shelter triggered by the presence of maps. None of those feelings arose here; the closest she came was the charting, the creation of paths, the documentation of navigation. It never matched up; she felt at times like a documentarian shooting pop videos or a long-haul driver in an off-road vehicle. And yet there was an ease to it, and a comfort in that.
Sometime past eleven, her boss Archer knocked on her door. Archer had an old-money look: he always dressed impeccably, tailored suits that stood in sharp contrast to the casual appearance of the rest of the office, a mode Marianne recognized from celebrity photo shoots and New York Times Men’s Fashion supplements. He ushered himself in and, closing the door, began by saying, “I wouldn’t be putting this on you if we didn’t believe you couldn’t do it.”
Marianne counted the negatives and hoped she had correctly interpreted that which Archer was trying to say, then considered that Archer himself was stumbling. She thought of his expression and trusted in that. “We have a meeting today with a prospect. Not a firm that’s universally known, but one that has prestige; more to the point, we’re also talking about a not-insignificant amount of money to add to our proverbial coffers. Apparently, the fellow we’re meeting with is also something of a patron, so there’s been talk of that trickling down into something as well.”
Marianne nodded. “So how do I figure into this?” she asked. “I don’t normally get involved until the dotted line has been signed.”
“I know,” said Archer. “I know. But the usual crew that handles these is down a couple: Whitsun’s on his honeymoon and Renata’s on maternity leave. And I’d say you’re good at eyeing people, good at sussing people out. And you know what we’re about, and you can hold a decent conversation.”
Marianne did not dispute any of this. “So do we have information on them? I think I should research some of this.”
“I’ll send it over,” said Archer. “The meeting will be offsite—the theoretical client gets into town in a few hours, so he’s asked that we meet him at his hotel’s restaurant. Five-thirty’s the start time; I’ll be by at six.” Marianne looked at him quizzically. “Board meeting,” he said, his cheeks reddening. Archer was on at least five, by Marianne’s count: two charities, two arts organizations, and something that existed in a realm of the nebulously well-off, an entity that clung to the affluent and seemed to exist in conditions perceptible only to them.
She traveled home at lunch to find clothing more suited to the coming meeting. She worked until four-thirty, reading about the firm whose emissary she was slated to meet, searching for additional information on them, and readying the materials she hoped to have on hand for their meeting. She had been invited to a handful of these over the years, though never as the primary representative, and their formality and content differed radically from client to client.
At five-fifteen, a cab pulled up outside their office to convey her to a downtown hotel. She stepped inside and walked toward the agreed-upon meeting place. The restaurant and bar were nearly empty, and so her contact was easy to locate. Seated in a booth was a fresh-faced young man with a gleam in his eyes, his clothing the Platonic ideal to which Archer’s aspired. A manila folder and a laptop sat on the table before him; Marianne placed his age at twenty-four, and a young-looking twenty-four at that. Beside the young man sat a woman dressed casually, tall and thin, with short red hair tied severely atop her head, some strands beginning to make their escape. Marianne introduced herself and sat. Her contact indicated his companion.
“This is Dana,” said Jonathan Clarligne. “She’s a muralist.”