Up In The Air Part 9

"It's supposed to be confidential, but secrets bore me. An airline out of Phoenix hired me."

"Not Desert Air?"

"You've heard of them?"

I nod. "They compete with the airline I fly."

Pinter coughs. A volume of smoke rolls out and keeps on coming, as if his whole body is filled with it. "Good company?"

"You tell me."

"They have a problem," he says. "They built their business on price and price alone, which is effective but risky. I've written on this. A woman of easy virtue will soon grow popular, but she'll fail when it comes to attracting a loyal mate. Long term, it's better to be good than cheap. Wanton discounting is a downward spiral, so I've urged them to reinterpret their ident.i.ty. Hauling warm bodies from point A to point B inspires no one. It's a form of trucking. Promoting human togetherness, however, ignites the vital flame in all involved, the worker as well as the customer. Agreed?"

"A marketing angle."

"Much deeper. A first principle. It starts with seating. Like should sit with like. Parents of small children with other parents. Young singles with young singles. No more jumbling. We learn who the pa.s.sengers are through detailed surveys and task a computer with mixing them appropriately, the way a good hostess would seat a dinner party."

"Manipulation like that can breed resentment."

"People won't know we're doing it," says Pinter. "All they'll know is that they feel more comfortable. Friendlier, closer. We've run some live experiments."

My toes curl in my boots. I feel invaded, as if I've just opened the curtains in my living room and discovered a neighbor with binoculars. Thank heaven I haven't flown Desert Air this month, though if they're doing this, Morse's Great West will follow. I have to admit that, lately, I've felt watched.

"You'd be amazed how well it worked," says Pinter. "We ran a satisfaction survey afterwards and couldn't have been more pleased with the responses."

"What else are you suggesting that they do?"

"Closed-circuit televisions in the gates connected to video cameras in the cabins. To shorten those anxious minutes when people deplane. You're waiting for someone, perhaps you're holding flowers, but it seems to take ages before you see his face. You worry he missed his flight. You don't know what to think. This way you see him the moment he's in range."

He looks to me for a reaction, and I blink. His ideas are pure foolishness, born of arrogance. The man hardly flies, yet he's das.h.i.+ng off prescriptions for a growing regional carrier. This is hubris. This is too much fame. I'm of a mind to pocket my proposal and tailor it for one of Pinter's critics-for Arthur Cargill, maybe, of the Keane Group, the father of Duplicative Skills Reporting.

"Help me," says Pinter. "You're skeptical. Speak up."

"With all due respect, sir-"

"Don't kowtow. It's beneath you. I made a few inquiries after your call and discovered you're very well thought of. An up-and-comer. I agreed to share a meal with you because I expected a peer-to-peer exchange."

I don't dare ask him who spoke so highly of me. Someone at MythTech? I've heard he's close to them. There's a story that he attended the Child's wedding, an exclusive affair in Sun Valley, Idaho, and presented the newlyweds with a silver cheese knife given to him by a Saudi prince in appreciation for his work untangling supply lines in the Gulf War.

"I come to this as a consumer," I say. "A pa.s.senger. I appreciate your spirit, but frankly I feel like you're toying with people's lives here. An aircraft is not a gla.s.s beaker."

"The world's a beaker. This is axiomatic in our field."

"Churches? Are churches beakers?"

Pinter glares. I've violated the code of our profession by invoking the sacred. I'm out of bounds.

"You're religious?" he says.

"Not conventionally."

"Of course not. No one's conventionally anything anymore. But do you believe in the image of G.o.d in man?"

"I see where you're going with this. I slipped. I'm sorry. I've been surrounded by Mormons for a decade."

"It's leaching in. You insulted me," he says. "You implied I'm corrupt. A Faustian. Untrue. Helping this little airline find an edge in an increasingly cutthroat industry offends not a single commandment, that I'm aware of. In truth, it's a moral act par excellence par excellence."

"I repeat my apology."

Pinter sighs, gets up. The difference in his stature sitting and standing is remarkably slight. He's all torso and no legs, though his long baggy jacket conceals the fact. We face each other. He addresses my chest, as if we're the same height, and in my weakness I play along-I crouch.

"Margaret and I have been cooking. A request: none of your G.o.d talk at supper. And no business."

"You do understand why I've come, I hope. My concept?"

"Afterwards. At the table we stay 'on topic.' "

"And what's the topic?"

"That's up to you. The guest."

"I've taken your cla.s.ses. I want to thank you for them. You were on satellite. You couldn't see me."

"That's an a.s.sumption you have no basis for."

"I know how satellites work."

"The old ones, maybe."

Because the street-side entrance to his house is blocked by landscapers and mounds of earth and because the front porch has been removed, leaving the doorway suspended in a wall, Pinter parks his new German sports coupe in an alley. It's been a long ride. Ontario has traffic, uniformly frantic in all directions, like a stepped-on anthill, and Pinter has no business being out in it. His driving style combines inattention to others with a deep absorption in his own car. Even while cruising, he fussed with the controls, tilting the wheel and pumping up the lumbar and adjusting the louvered vents of the AC. He'll die in that car, and I suspect he knows it, which is why he's so eager to enjoy its gimmicks.

Margaret stands on a step by the back door holding an old-style c.o.c.ktail with a cherry in it. She looks like a girl in her twenties who's been aged by an amateur movie makeup artist using spirit gum for wrinkles and sprinkled baby powder to gray her hair. She greets me too kindly, kissing both my cheeks, yet barely acknowledges her co-domestic, who knifes past her into the kitchen and pours two drinks. The kitchen is one of the two inhabitable rooms, the other being a bedroom whose door is open, through which I can see a ma.s.sive four-poster bed dressed with paisley sheets and furry blankets like the type you once saw on water beds. Access to the remainder of the house is blocked by thumbtacked sheets of dusty plastic. Behind them, a shadowy carpenter fires off bursts from a pneumatic nail gun. The noise is piercing.

"Sandy tells me you live in Colorado, out on the frontier."

"I used to live there. I had an apartment, that is. I gave it up."

"Where do you live now?"

"Just here and there."

"Literally?"

"People do it. And not a few."

"So this is a trend?"

"Not yet. You'll see it soon, though."

A drink is placed in my hand. It's sweet and strong and tastes of 1940s Hollywood. Pinter lights another cigarette and resumes his peculiar smoking trance while peppery Margaret continues with the questions, timing her words to avoid the nail gun's volleys. Over the royal bed I glimpse a picture: some mythical scene of a semi-naked virgin being chased through a dappled glade by randy goat-men.

The table is set, but I detect no cooking odors. Pinter wraps an ap.r.o.n around his waist and opens a curvy vintage refrigerator packed solid with convenience food. His cigarette smoke mingles with the frost cloud, a sight I find profoundly unappetizing.

"We're dining alfresco this afternoon," says Margaret. "The construction draws so much current our stove is useless. Did Sandy describe our project to you?"

"No. It looks like it's fairly extensive."

She motions me forward, then peels back the curtain of plastic. I peek through. The living room walls have been stripped back to the studs and a circular hole the size of a small swimming pool has been cut in the hardwood floor.

"Our arena," says Margaret. "Sandy thought it up. See where the ceiling's gone? That's where the lights go. We'll surround it with comfortable seating, pillows, throws. A stage for our debates, out little theatricals. We proportioned it after the Colosseum, actually."

"Your guacamole's skinned over," Pinter says.

"Squeeze lemon juice on it."

"I can't find the chips."

"You ate them in the night. Just use saltines."

Margaret refastens the plastic in the doorway. I have questions, but don't know where to start; the syrupy c.o.c.ktail has turned my brain to sludge. The puzzle of the arena aside, what happened to Pinter's dietary discipline? The spread he's begun to a.s.semble on the table-plastic tubs of pre-made onion dip, lunchmeat slices rolled and pinned with toothpicks, a dish of canned fried onions, a jar of olives-reminds me of sample day at a small-town supermarket or the grand opening of a Chevy dealer. I wonder if its wealth of additives holds the secret to Margaret's pickled youthfulness.

Pinter refreshes our drinks and we sit down. The china and silver are real, the napkins linen. Pinter, since coming home, has gained in stature, and as we toast-"To the life force," Margaret says-I see that both the table and the counters stand at wheelchair height. I tower beside them. I feel fatherly, monumental. Normal-sized Margaret's the mother and Pinter's our son.

"So," she says, "did you select a topic?" She's poised to start eating, but there are rules, apparently.

"An actual formal topic."

They nod.

"I'm blank. Politics?"

"Anything," Pinter snorts. He's hungry. "Our last guest-"

"Don't lead him," says Margaret. "Let him a.s.sociate."

My gaze drifts to the bedroom painting. "Pursuit."

They smile and dip their crackers. I'm a hit. I take a rolled slice of bologna as my prize.

"I think it's important to start experientially. Now which of us at this table," Pinter asks, "has actually been pursued?"

"I have," Margaret says.

"Ryan?"

"Romantically? Professionally?"

"You chose the topic. What was on your mind?"

"Omaha."

"Them," he says. "No business talk."

"You know them, though?"

"We've mingled. No business talk."

Margaret dabs guacamole off her lips. "Sandy, you've heard this, so try not to jump in. It happened in London, England, in the sixties. Sandy was there as a guest of British Railways."

"Rationalizing their timetables," he says.

"I'd read about Carnaby Street in all the magazines and wanted to buy an outfit. I took a bus. I rode on the top deck, to see the sights. There were a couple of boys with Beatles haircuts-Sandy had one himself once-"

"Oh go to h.e.l.l."

"You did did."

I reach for a black olive. My drink is empty. Why is Pinter staring at my crotch?

"Anyway, two moptops. Drinking beer. Out of those extra large cans the English favor. And I, in what I'd guess you'd call my innocence-"

Pinter's eyebrows arch. His nostrils flare.

"-approach these two lads to ask about their fas.h.i.+ons. You know, their 'scene.' Can they point me to a shop, say-some place that's out of the way and not for tourists? They tell me of course, if I'll buy them a beer. A deal. So off we go into the streets, those crooked streets, and before I know it, well, they're groping me. Against a wall. Beside a garbage can. And they take all my money."

"The money that you paid them."

"You're out of rotation, Sandy. You'll have your chance."

"She was shopping for new experiences, not clothes. You weren't around then, Ryan. The LSD years. My Margaret was something of a cosmic voyager. Dragged me out to meet Huxley, Leary, all of them. Hot tubs under the redwoods. Puppet shows. I thought it might break my writer's block. Astrology. And maybe it helped. The visions. The new perspectives. Maybe it helped me turn DuPont around. But what did not help, I solemnly a.s.sure you, were Margaret's suspiciously picturesque a.s.saults in all the European capitals."

"I slept with Henry Miller once," says Margaret.

My phone rings in my jacket, a m.u.f.fled trill. Pinter sneers at me, says "Pff . . ." I reach in and turn off the ringer and apologize, blus.h.i.+ng even deeper than I have been.

"Thank you," Pinter says. "I loathe those gadgets. The sins man commits in the name of keeping in touch."

"I normally leave it behind on social occasions. I'm in a fog today."

"The topic," says Margaret.

"Are we ridiculous?" Pinter asks me. "Do we seem ridiculous to you? Our insistence on keeping the dinner hour holy? Our love of discussion? Our odd erotic pasts?"

"No," I say, not audibly.

"If we do, it's because we don't buy it. We just don't buy it. This wireless wired hive of ours. A sinkhole. No one can be everywhere at once, and why should they want to be? We'll come close, of course. We'll come within a hair, then half a hair, then half of a half. But we'll never ring the bell. And that's their plan, you see. Progress without perfection. The endless tease, slowly supplanting the pleasures of the s.e.x act."

"An hour ago you said the world's a beaker."