a visit from the goon squad (excerpt)

8/7/2019 A Visit from the Goon Squad (Excerpt)

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JENNIFER EGAN

A Visit from the Goon Squad

Jennifer Egan is the author of The Keep, Look atMe, The Invisible Circus, and the story collectionEmerald City. Her stories have been published in

The New Yorker, Harpers Magazine, GQ, Zoetrope:All-Story, and Ploughshares, and her nonfictionappears frequently in The New York Times Maga-zine. She lives with her husband and sons inBrooklyn.

www.jenniferegan.com

Jennifer Egan is available for lectures and readings.For information regarding her availability, please

visit www.rhspeakers.com or call 212-572-2013.


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A Visit from the

Goon Squad

JENNIFER EGAN

Anchor BooksA Division of Random House, Inc.

New York


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FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, MARCH 2011

Copyright 2010 by Jennifer Egan

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Anchor Books,a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House ofCanada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States

by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2010.

Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are theproduct of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to

actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Portions of this work originally appeared in the following: The Gold Curein Granta; Forty-Minute Lunch: Kitty Jackson Opens Up About Love, Fame,and Nixon as Forty-Minute Lunch in Harpers; Ask Me If I Care, Found

Objects, and Safari in The New Yorker; and Out of Body and You (Plural) inTin House. Selling the General originally appeared in This Is Not Chick Lit,

edited by Elizabeth Merrick (New York: Random House, 2006).

Grateful acknowledgment is made to Hal Leonard Corporation for permissionto reprint lyrics from The Passenger, written by Iggy Pop and Ricky Gardiner,

copyright 1977 (Renewed) by Bug Music (BMI), Ricky Gardiner Songs(PRS)/Administered by Bug Music and EMI Music Publishing Ltd.

All rights for EMI Music Publishing Ltd. in the U.S. and Canada controlledand administered by Screen Gems-EMI Music Inc. All rights reserved.

Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:Egan, Jennifer.

A visit from the Goon Squad / Jennifer Egan.1st ed.p. cm.

1. Punk rock musiciansFiction. 2. Sound recording executives and producersFiction. 3. Older menFiction. 4. Young womenFiction.

5. Psychological fiction. I. Title.ps3555.g292v57 2010

813'.54dc22 2009046496

Anchor ISBN: 978-0-307-47747-7

Book design by Virginia Tan

www.anchorbooks.com

Printed in the United States of America10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1


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For Peter M.,with gratitude


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1

Found Objects

It began the usual way, in the bathroom of the Lassimo Hotel.Sasha was adjusting her yellow eye shadow in the mirrorwhen she noticed a bag on the floor beside the sink that musthave belonged to the woman whose peeing she could faintlyhear through the vaultlike door of a toilet stall. Inside the rim

of the bag, barely visible, was a wallet made of pale greenleather. It was easy for Sasha to recognize, looking back, thatthe peeing womans blind trust had provoked her: We live in acity where people will steal the hair off your head if you givethem half a chance, but you leave your stuff lying in plain sightand expect it to be waiting for you when you come back? Itmade her want to teach the woman a lesson. But this wish

only camouflaged the deeper feeling Sasha always had: thatfat, tender wallet, offering itself to her handit seemed sodull, so life-as-usual to just leave it there rather than seize themoment, accept the challenge, take the leap, fly the coop,


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throw caution to the wind, live dangerously (I get it, Coz,her therapist, said), and take the fucking thing.

You mean steal it.He was trying to get Sasha to use that word, which was

harder to avoid in the case of a wallet than with a lot of thethings shed lifted over the past year, when her condition (asCoz referred to it) had begun to accelerate: five sets of keys,fourteen pairs of sunglasses, a childs striped scarf, binoculars,a cheese grater, a pocketknife, twenty-eight bars of soap, and

eighty-five pens, ranging from cheap ballpoints shed used tosign debit-card slips to the aubergine Visconti that cost twohundred sixty dollars online, which shed lifted from her for-mer bosss lawyer during a contracts meeting. Sasha no longertook anything from storestheir cold, inert goods didnttempt her. Only from people.

Okay, she said. Steal it.

Sasha and Coz had dubbed that feeling she got the per-sonal challenge, as in: taking the wallet was a way for Sashato assert her toughness, her individuality. What they neededto do was switch things around in her head so that the chal-lenge became not taking the wallet but leaving it. That wouldbe the cure, although Coz never used words like cure. He

wore funky sweaters and let her call him Coz, but he was oldschool inscrutable, to the point where Sasha couldnt tell ifhe was gay or straight, if hed written famous books, or if (asshe sometimes suspected) he was one of those escaped conswho impersonate surgeons and wind up leaving their operat-ing tools inside peoples skulls. Of course, these questionscould have been resolved on Google in less than a minute,

but they were useful questions (according to Coz), and so far,Sasha had resisted.

The couch where she lay in his office was blue leatherand very soft. Coz liked the couch, hed told her, because itrelieved them both of the burden of eye contact. You dont

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like eye contact? Sasha had asked. It seemed like a weirdthing for a therapist to admit.

I find it tiring, hed said. This way, we can both lookwhere we want.

Where will you look?He smiled. You can see my options.Where do you usually look? When people are on the

couch.Around the room, Coz said. At the ceiling. Into space.

Do you ever sleep?No.Sasha usually looked at the window, which faced the

street, and tonight, as she continued her story, was rippledwith rain. Shed glimpsed the wallet, tender and overripe as apeach. Shed plucked it from the womans bag and slipped itinto her own small handbag, which shed zipped shut before

the sound of peeing had stopped. Shed flicked open the bath-room door and floated back through the lobby to the bar. Sheand the wallets owner had never seen each other.

Prewallet, Sasha had been in the grip of a dire evening:lame date (yet another) brooding behind dark bangs, some-times glancing at the flat-screen TV, where a Jets game

seemed to interest him more than Sashas admittedly overhan-dled tales of Bennie Salazar, her old boss, who was famousfor founding the Sows Ear record label and who also (Sashahappened to know) sprinkled gold flakes into his coffeeasan aphrodisiac, she suspectedand sprayed pesticide in hisarmpits.

Postwallet, however, the scene tingled with mirthful pos-

sibility. Sasha felt the waiters eyeing her as she sidled backto the table holding her handbag with its secret weight. Shesat down and took a sip of her Melon Madness Martini andcocked her head at Alex. She smiled her yes/no smile.Hello, she said.

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The yes/no smile was amazingly effective.Youre happy, Alex said.

Im always happy, Sasha said. Sometimes I just forget.Alex had paid the bill while she was in the bathroom

clear proof that hed been on the verge of aborting their date.Now he studied her. You feel like going somewhere else?

They stood. Alex wore black cords and a white button-upshirt. He was a legal secretary. On e-mail hed been fanciful,almost goofy, but in person he seemed simultaneously anx-

ious and bored. She could tell that he was in excellent shape,not from going to the gym but from being young enoughthat his body was still imprinted with whatever sports hedplayed in high school and college. Sasha, who was thirty-five,had passed that point. Still, not even Coz knew her real age.The closest anyone had come to guessing it was thirty-one,and most put her in her twenties. She worked out daily and

avoided the sun. Her online profiles all listed her as twenty-eight.

As she followed Alex from the bar, she couldnt resistunzipping her purse and touching the fat green wallet just fora second, for the contraction it made her feel around herheart.

Youre aware of how the theft makesyou feel, Coz said.To the point where you remind yourself of it to improve yourmood. But do you think about how it makes the other personfeel?

Sasha tipped back her head to look at him. She made apoint of doing this now and then, just to remind Coz that shewasnt an idiotshe knew the question had a right answer.

She and Coz were collaborators, writing a story whose endhad already been determined: she would get well. She wouldstop stealing from people and start caring again about thethings that had once guided her: music; the network offriends shed made when she first came to New York; a set of

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goals shed scrawled on a big sheet of newsprint and taped tothe walls of her early apartments:

Find a band to manageUnderstand the newsStudy JapanesePractice the harp

I dont think about the people, Sasha said.

But it isnt that you lack empathy, Coz said. We knowthat, because of the plumber.

Sasha sighed. Shed told Coz the plumber story about amonth ago, and hed found a way to bring it up at almostevery session since. The plumber was an old man, sent bySashas landlord to investigate a leak in the apartment belowhers. Hed appeared in Sashas doorway, tufts of gray on his

head, and within a minuteboomhed hit the floor andcrawled under her bathtub like an animal fumbling its wayinto a familiar hole. The fingers hed groped toward the boltsbehind the tub were grimed to cigar stubs, and reachingmade his sweatshirt hike up, exposing a soft white back. Sashaturned away, stricken by the old mans abasement, anxious to

leave for her temp job, except that the plumber was talking toher, asking about the length and frequency of her showers. Inever use it, she told him curtly. I shower at the gym. Henodded without acknowledging her rudeness, apparentlyused to it. Sashas nose began to prickle; she shut her eyes andpushed hard on both temples.

Opening her eyes, she saw the plumbers tool belt lying on

the floor at her feet. It had a beautiful screwdriver in it, theorange translucent handle gleaming like a lollipop in its wornleather loop, the silvery shaft sculpted, sparkling. Sasha feltherself contract around the object in a single yawn of appe-tite; she needed to hold the screwdriver, just for a minute. She



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bent her knees and plucked it noiselessly from the belt. Not abangle jangled; her bony hands were spastic at most things,

but she was good at thismade for it, she often thought, inthe first drifty moments after lifting something. And once thescrewdriver was in her hand, she felt instant relief from thepain of having an old soft-backed man snuffling under hertub, and then something more than relief: a blessed indiffer-ence, as if the very idea of feeling pain over such a thing werebaffling.

And what about after hed gone? Coz had asked whenSasha told him the story. How did the screwdriver look toyou then?

There was a pause. Normal, she said.Really. Not special anymore?Like any screwdriver.Sasha had heard Coz shift behind her and felt something

happen in the room: the screwdriver, which shed placed onthe table (recently supplemented with a second table) whereshe kept the things shed lifted, and which shed barely lookedat since, seemed to hang in the air of Cozs office. It floatedbetween them: a symbol.

And how did you feel? Coz asked quietly. About hav-

ing taken it from the plumber you pitied?How did she feel? How did she feel? There was a rightanswer, of course. At times Sasha had to fight the urge to liesimply as a way of depriving Coz of it.

Bad, she said. Okay? I felt bad. Shit, Im bankruptingmyself to pay for youobviously I get that this isnt a greatway to live.

More than once, Coz had tried to connect the plumber toSashas father, who had disappeared when she was six. She wascareful not to indulge this line of thinking. I dont rememberhim, she told Coz. I have nothing to say. She did this forCozs protection and her ownthey were writing a story of

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redemption, of fresh beginnings and second chances. But inthat direction lay only sorrow.

Sasha and Alex crossed the lobby of the Lassimo Hotel in thedirection of the street. Sasha hugged her purse to her shoul-der, the warm ball of wallet snuggled in her armpit. As theypassed the angular budded branches by the big glass doors tothe street, a woman zigzagged into their path. Wait, she

said. You havent seenIm desperate.Sasha felt a twang of terror. It was the woman whose wal-

let shed takenshe knew this instantly, although the personbefore her had nothing in common with the blithe, raven-haired wallet owner shed pictured. This woman had vulnera-ble brown eyes and flat pointy shoes that clicked too loudlyon the marble floor. There was plenty of gray in her frizzy

brown hair.Sasha took Alexs arm, trying to steer him through the

doors. She felt his pulse of surprise at her touch, but he stayedput. Have we seen what? he said.

Someone stole my wallet. My ID is gone, and I have tocatch a plane tomorrow morning. Im just desperate! She

stared beseechingly at both of them. It was the sort of frankneed that New Yorkers quickly learn how to hide, and Sasharecoiled. It had never occurred to her that the woman wasfrom out of town.

Have you called the police? Alex asked.The concierge said he would call. But Im also wonder-

ingcould it have fallen out somewhere? She looked help-

lessly at the marble floor around their feet. Sasha relaxedslightly. This woman was the type who annoyed people with-out meaning to; apology shadowed her movements even now,as she followed Alex to the concierge desk. Sasha trailedbehind.



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Is someone helping this person? she heard Alex ask.The concierge was young and spiky haired. Weve called

the police, he said defensively.Alex turned to the woman. Where did this happen?In the ladies room. I think.Who else was there?No one.It was empty?There might have been someone, but I didnt see her.

Alex swung around to Sasha. You were just in the bath-room, he said. Did you see anyone?

No, she managed to say. She had Xanax in her purse,but she couldnt open her purse. Even with it zipped, shefeared that the wallet would blurt into view in some way thatshe couldnt control, unleashing a cascade of horrors: arrest,shame, poverty, death.

Alex turned to the concierge. How come Im asking thesequestions instead of you? he said. Someone just got robbedin your hotel. Dont you have, like, security?

The words robbed and security managed to pierce thesoothing backbeat that pumped through not just the Lassimobut every hotel like it in New York City. There was a mild rip-

ple of interest from the lobby.Ive called security, the concierge said, adjusting hisneck. Ill call them again.

Sasha glanced at Alex. He was angry, and the anger madehim recognizable in a way that an hour of aimless chatter(mostly hers, it was true) had not: he was new to New York.He came from someplace smaller. He had a thing or two to

prove about how people should treat one another.Two security guys showed up, the same on TV and in life:

beefy guys whose scrupulous politeness was somehow linkedto their willingness to crack skulls. They dispersed to search

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