BOOK ONE : LISTENERS AND READERS

:: WINTER 2000

possible combinations :: 12/30/00

It’s Friday. The radio has announced a Winter Storm Warning for tonight; they’re expecting eight to ten inches. She uses two crooked fingers to pull the curtain back; inspects the leaden sky. That guy Jakob had said that he and Fletcher were getting together tonight for beers at Nick’s. She should probably give him a call if she’s planning to go, but she knows that the confirmation call will communicate interest, and she’s still not sure if she is actually interested. She just feels tired of the way that the whole mechanism of a relationship springs into action. She’s been fed through that machine so many times (an impulse to count up past relationships here; she ignores it) and the ride is fun, but she feels like there’s only so many major permutations that relationships can contain, and she feels like she’s been through all of them at least once. Like a Choose Your Own Adventure book that she’s read too many times. (She used to love those books, though, especially the one where you fly in a balloon over the Sahara.)

People are quite aware that some neighborhoods are sad and others pleasant. But they generally simply assume that elegant streets cause a feeling of satisfaction and that poor streets are depressing, and let it go at that. In fact, the variety of possible combinations of ambiances, analogous to the blending of pure chemicals in an infinite number of mixtures, gives rise to feelings as differentiated and complex as any other form of spectacle can evoke.

Jakob’s phone rings and he sets the book down.

—Hello?

—Hello, is Jakob there?

—Speaking. It’s a woman’s voice, and he doesn’t immediately recognize it as one of the normal woman - phone - voices that comes into his house. This gives him an immediate sense of who it might be. He sits up straighter, rubs his face, mentally moves from reading-space to phone-space.

—Hey, it’s Freya. From Tympanum?

—Hey, he says, and then goes terrifyingly blank. He doesn’t want to start off by saying something ordinary (“how are you?” “what’s up?”) for fear that this will confirm some sense that she has of his banality. Of all the affairs we participate in, with or without interest, the groping search for a new way of life is the only aspect still impassioning.

—How are you doing? Freya says.

—Oh, fine, he says.

—Listen, are you and Fletcher still thinking about going to Nick’s tonight?

—Yeah.

—Not going to let the snow stop you?

—This is Chicago, he says. If we let the snow stop us, we’d all have to resort to, I don’t know, being hermits or something.

—Yeah right? What time are you thinking about meeting down there?

—I don’t know: nineish.

—Okay, she says. I can meet you guys down there around then.

—Why don’t, Jakob says (and he pauses for courage), why don’t you give me your number, so I can call you if there’s any change.

—Well, she says. Fletcher has it. Then she realizes how this sounds, and something in her decides that it's OK to give it. —But, yeah, um, do you have a pen?

—Yeah.

She gives him the number and he jots it down in the margin of his notebook.

—So I’ll see you tonight, then? he says.

—Nineish at Nick’s.

—Right.

—Yeah, see you tonight.

—Alright, bye.

—Bye.

Jakob goes over to the window to check the sky, and he spends a minute looking out at the tangle of trees and poles and wires and bricks out there, as though he’s never seen it before. One phone call, and the city is transformed. Is it really that easy to create a new world?