The New Republic. Lionel Shriver

save in an ardent, collusive, or sycophantic spirit.

      Hitherto Edgar had been the Falconer’s counterpart, that symbiotic creature without which a Falconer could not exist. The much admired required the admirer, and to his own dismay Edgar had more than once applied for the position. While he’d have far preferred the role of BMOC if the post were going begging, he was eternally trapped by a Catch-22: in yearning to be admired himself, he was bound to admire other people who were admirable. Which made him, necessarily, a fan.

      To date, the only weapon that had overthrown a Falconer’s tyranny was cruel, disciplined disillusionment. Sometimes a Falconer turned out to be a fraud. Lo and behold, he could be clumsy, if you kept watch. At length it proved thoroughly possible, if you forced yourself, to laugh at his foibles in a fashion that was less than flattering. Wising up was painful at first, but a relief, and when all was said and done Edgar would be lonely but free. Yet taking the anointed down a peg or two was a puzzling, even depressing exercise, in consequence of which he reserved his most scathing denunciations for the very people with whom he had once been most powerfully entranced.

      Edgar’s public manner—gruff, tough, wary, and deadpan—was wildly discrepant with his secret weakness for becoming captivated by passing Falconers, and he worried privately that the whole purpose of his crusty exterior was to contain an inside full of goo. He couldn’t bear to conceive of himself as a sidekick. Having ever been slavishly enthralled to an idol of any sort shamed him almost as much as having once been fat. Hence of Edgar’s several ambitions at thirty-seven the most dominant was never to succumb to the enchantment of a Falconer again.

      It was in the grip of precisely this resolution that Edgar Kellogg had marched out of Lee & Thole six months ago, determined to cast off the dreary Burberry of the overpaid schmo. At last he would grow into the grander mantle of standard-bearer, trendsetter, and cultural icon. It was in the grip of this same resolution that Edgar set off for his four p.m. job interview with the National Record. He’d had it with being The Fan. He wanted to be The Man.

       chapter 2

      Saddling Up

      “Win, that you? Guy Wallasek at the Record. I know it’s been three months, so this is a formality—I’m way past the mother-hen stage. But Saddler hasn’t deigned to show his face in Barba, has he? … Here? At this point, he wouldn’t dare … I stand corrected. Whatever Saddler lacks in consideration, he makes up in gall.” The lardy editor covered the receiver’s mouthpiece and murmured to his four p.m. appointment, “Be right with you.”

      Edgar squinted at framed Pulitzers, nodding, pretending to be impressed. These props exhausted, from the lamp table he picked up a rectangular coaster, laminated with a reduced front page from the National Record, RED ARMY OVERTHROWS GORBACHEV GOVERNMENT. The byline, hard to make out, began with a B. He’d change places with that reporter in a New York minute. Chasing tanks with a microcassette beat the dickens out of filing another prospectus for public offering. The window behind Guy Wallasek afforded an uninspiring view of solid green glass; soon Edgar would run out of ostensible fascinations. He didn’t want to seem to lose himself in the copy of today’s Record, implying that he hadn’t read it.

      The desk chair squealed as Wallasek leaned back. “I’d sure like to give him a piece of my …” The big man chuckled. “Yeah, I’m kidding myself. I’d probably fix our prodigal a cup of tea. I’m only his boss, right? … Me? At first I assumed it was a stunt. Another one. But what would Saddler do with more attention? Keep it in jars? And that peninsula of yours is such a snake pit …”

      Edgar’s face was stiff from keeping an unnaturally pleasant I’m-in-no-hurry expression in place for ten minutes. Wallasek could easily have made this call before their appointment. And why bother with the power play? Edgar would have stripped to his boxers and danced the cha-cha for a chance to write for Wallasek’s foreign desk.

      The editor guffawed, shooting Edgar a glance to make sure he felt left out of the joke. “You do see him,” Wallasek went on, “tell Barrington next time he takes a vacation maybe he could send a postcard. Lucky for the Record the story’s gone into deep freeze. The SOB hasn’t claimed so much as a faulty Chinese firework since Saddler went AWOL, right?

      “… Rich, isn’t it? That bastard has drawn slack-jawed adulation by the drool bucket—not to mention apoplectic rage. But worry is new. Must be the odd champagne glass raised in his absence, yeah? … Cer-ve-ja de puka pera?” Wallasek pronounced with difficulty. “Sounds revolting. Thank the Lord for you brave foreign correspondents and your sacrifice for the world’s hungry need to know … Sarcastic, moi?” Chortle-chortle. “Yeah, they don’t make nemeses like they used to, Win. Ciao.”

      Edgar’s amiable grin had, he feared, slid to a grimace. His girlfriend Angela always ragged on him for slouching, and his erect I’m-just-the-man-you’re-looking-for posture in the director’s chair was hurting his back. Meanwhile, Wallasek fussed with papers on a desk that was every job applicant’s nightmare: crumpled piles doubtless dating back two presidential administrations, grease-stained with Danish crumbs. You’d never get away with a desk like that at Lee & Thole.

      “So!” Wallasek exhaled, locating Edgar’s clips and CV. Their binder was missing, the photocopies disheveled. An uncomprehending gaze betrayed that Wallasek hadn’t read a paragraph of Edgar’s articles. Next time he wouldn’t bother with the color photocopying, which looked nifty but cost a buck a page. Edgar squirmed. Maybe clued-up hacks never sent color clips. The bright borders beaming from the editor’s hands looked overeager. Edgar welcomed the common charge that he was a wiseass—rude, surly, and insubordinate—but the prospect of appearing a rookie was mortifying.

      He slouched.

      “Mr.—Kellogg!” Wallasek exclaimed, with the same sense of discovery with which he’d looked up to find that a stranger had been sitting in his office for the last fifteen minutes. “No trouble finding the place?”

      “The Equitable Building is bigger than a breadbox.” Edgar chafed at pre-interview chitchat and its artifice of relax-we-haven’t-started-yet, when empty schmooze was really one more test to pass. He had to stop himself from fast-forwarding, this summer has sure been a hot one and that’s a mighty fine wife in your desk photo there and you don’t have to ask where I live since the address is on my résumé and no I don’t want a cup of coffee.

      “Can I get you—?”

      “Nothing, thanks.” To encourage a cut to the chase, Edgar shot a pointed glance at his chunky gold-plated diving watch. In the context of Edgar’s current average income of $300/month, its gratuitous dials spun with a dizzying exorbitance that until this spring he’d taken for granted.

      “Second in your class,” Wallasek muttered, running a finger down the CV. “Vice president … Honorable mention … Salutatorian … Second prize … Second-chair … Say, you’ve almost snagged a lot of things.”

      “I’m one of life’s runners-up.” Having failed to keep the edge from his voice, Edgar moderated pleasantly, “We try harder.”

      Wallasek pulled back the arm on a pair of nail clippers and stuck the end in his ear, digging for wax. “A book review for Newsday,” he ruminated, spreading the photocopies. “The Village Voice—that’s a freebie now, isn’t it?”

      “Yes, sir,” Edgar said stonily.

      “Washington Times … The Moonie paper.”

      Since the early eighties the Washington Times had been owned by a fat Korean evangelist. “The staff does maintain independent editorial control.”

      “Yes—or so they claim. Still, it’s not the Post, is it?”

      “No, sirree,” Edgar agreed, clicking his eyeteeth, “it ain’t the Washington Post.”