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  WORTHY OF THIS GREAT CITY

  A NOVEL

  MIKE MILLER

  WORTHY OF THIS GREAT CITY

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons either living or dead, or businesses, companies, events, or locales, is purely coincidental.

  ISBN 978-0-9982759-0-1

  Copyright 2016. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  PROLOGUE

  “Everybody thinks God is on their side.” Ruth put her coffee cup down on its heavy white restaurant saucer very deliberately, watching herself. Then she sent me this look full of drama, her huge blue eyes wary but defiant.

  I’m a journalist, I should explain, and I knew this woman just well enough to be immediately dismissive. But she was very intense, now I noticed; waiting for me like it mattered. That was interesting. Here I’d always considered Ruth one of those breezy, satiric women proficient at deflecting curiosity.

  Only I didn’t need it and I didn’t really care. Frankly there were things I never wanted to hear from her. We’d met by accident at one of those ubiquitous Center City cafes that’s all calculated simplicity: quinoa salads, homemade soups, cranberry muffins, that kind of crap. It was lunch hour and the place was loud with competing conversations in those well-educated downtown voices, the entire scene as fundamentally deceptive as casual business attire. You could practically feel the pervasive atmosphere of unacknowledged cynicism on your skin, the deodorized vinegar emanating from all those dissatisfied young professionals amazed to have already acquired such long yet mysteriously undistinguished pasts.

  So Ruth Askew, running into me in those exceptionally ordinary surroundings, flat imprisoned me in unwanted intimacy in order to entrust me with a revelation of startling profundity and enormous human significance, effectively summoning me into history, granting me an unprecedented experience that would surely transform my life - or anyway something along those lines. Because she’d been all too impatiently awaiting a sign from Heaven and was toying with the idea that God had delivered me to her for use as disciple and authoritative witness. They’re always looking for witnesses.

  In all modesty, this type of situation isn’t exactly unusual for me. I have this reputation for being brutally honest, so insecure types are constantly trying to impress me. I’m their living touchstone, a merciless judge that people frantic for confirmation can’t resist. They need me; they can’t keep away. Just as I’m reciprocally unable to resist exploiting my fatal magnetism, generally to express contempt but sometimes not.

  That particular afternoon I’d been in a fairly perverse mood to start with, plus any opportunity to deny that insatiable, manipulative ego was delicious. Or maybe there was something a little too disquieting about her attitude. Whatever, my response was immediate and satisfying: I sat back on a vaguely admiring but indifferent little smile and stared blankly into the middle distance, allowing the moment to dissipate into that stale ambience of premium coffee and wasted lives, which is why this little scene is going nowhere.

  To continue: before that summer I never considered Ruth worthy of much attention, although highly original and shrewd and determined, which isn’t the same thing as consequential or talented but only a decent simulacrum. She’s a tall, fair, raw-boned woman of thirty-odd, Irish in her bones and not pretty but rather gaunt, with an aggressive but loose and uncoordinated physical presence, an unspecified oddness that gives you second thoughts. (You’ll note I’m not about to be discreet in the name of neutrality because that’s just digging the lie deeper and I’m through with all that.) I figured her performance that afternoon, to the extent I thought it through at all, either a preamble to an unwanted revelation about her marriage, or more probably rationalization for sharing some nasty piece of secondhand political gossip. But then the truth was hardly imaginable to the strictly sane.

  She’d been prattling on, a little desperate.

  “No one should simply expect to see good old Saint Peter welcoming them with this huge loving smile and throwing open the pearly gates because it’s you! And then presumably all your dead relatives finally appreciate you and grovel. No one for one second questions their basic goodness or imagines they might have everything backwards.” That with increased emphasis, in fact actually pleading because clearly I wasn’t seeing how intriguing and insightful she was and offering the required encouragement.

  I mean, who pays attention to that kind of shit anyway, mere justification for something profitable and concrete? Ideas, and abstract ideas at that, never imply anything important anymore. Why pay attention to them? It’s not like there was some portent of crucial real-world consequences in her moralistic maundering, some numinous harbinger of disaster arising like fog from her self-serving conclusions. Great thinkers don’t sweat out their seminal philosophies in wishful suburban isolation; genuine epiphanies are not inspired by inadequacy and neediness.

  A noise of traffic outside our corner window, and an angled view of grungy sidewalk along a narrow side street of trendy storefronts illumined by thick afternoon sun: a strangely intimate scene at once self-important and impossibly spent in that way cities have. One random bar of light cut across our table, reminding us of the outside heat, adding to the general confusion.

  That disjointed lunch in that pretentious location perfectly encapsulates my relationship with Ruth, which was and still is a lunchtime acquaintance at best. It naturally follows that much of the critical action recounted here occurred during exactly this sort of innocuous activity, right in front of the whole world but invisibly. We overlook how commonplace places do produce extraordinary drama, sometimes even for someone you know. Also much of what supposedly happened never really happened at all, despite what you’ve heard rumored or even concluded to your own satisfaction. That’s my main point. Another important point is that nothing would be any different now if I had listened and flattered her before kindly deflating her daydream that afternoon. She wouldn’t have listened for long. Ultimately my dismissed opportunity meant nothing because all the vital processes were already well underway, the outcome inevitable one way or the other. I think you’ll have to agree with me there.

  Ruth was a moderately successful morning radio personality and the wife of a very popular politician, therefore an experienced professional practiced at public behavior. And she certainly didn’t appear imbalanced or anything. She was more like a little girl clutching a magical secret or a million-dollar lottery ticket: all suppressed glee and opportunistic scheming.

  That swift glance up for my reaction! That almost imperceptible flush! Ignorantly incarnating such magnificent, such perfect irony! Those months before she walked onto a literal stage, outdoors on a cloudy country night, alone against the virtuous horde. And despite all this vaunted modesty I suspect that during this period Ruth wasn’t so much obeying God as striking out on her own, testing Him the way toddlers test their parents.

  “That kind of moral
complacency makes me sick to my stomach. To my soul.” Expounding all this unsolicited nonsense to a mere professional acquaintance, what’s more a reporter. Plus listen, whatever anyone says about themselves, you can safely assume the exact opposite is true

  “Maybe that’s just a little bit broad,” I said. “Maybe not everyone on the planet thinks that way. I know I don’t.”

  “Absolutely everyone on earth, because no one can tolerate seeing themselves in the wrong. And that matters more than anything.”

  But even Ruth could tell I meant it. Apparently I wasn’t the predestined confidante after all, nor this not her appointed hour. I remember she laughed, but probably she was secretly relieved, probably she did know better in some remote, rational corner of her mind. What she actually wanted was to hoard her alleged wisdom, to gloat over it deep in a cave in a mountain in the wilderness. But you see, forces were already building.

  She was giving me this annoyed laughing exasperation while eying me surreptitiously, maybe suspecting the real irritation beneath the companionable patter, certainly furious with me for acting like a self-involved asshole. Although I am a self-involved asshole so what did she expect? Then she faced me full on with a kind of pugnacious, coy defiance - the automatic, intellectualized flirting of her kind. “You see it’s just simple survival or evolution. Nature decrees the things we need to do, so naturally doing them defines what’s right. It’s like Noah being considered moral because he’s the survivor, not the other way round.” She had her chin on her fist, a reflective pose. “Anyway, I’m finding it fascinating, I’m thinking more and more about false righteousness. I’ve been absolutely obsessed with this stuff.”

  That pale face somehow too exposed: prominent arched nose, narrow lips, brutally vulnerable gaze. A peasant’s face with thick dirty-blond hair flying every which way as though excited for its own reasons.

  What can you do with people like that? I mean, where would you even start? They’ve gotten hold of something that feels true to them, which means power, so they’re done listening.

  And they get really intense.

  “Well, it’s interesting, I’ll give you that.” I said. “I’d enjoy talking about your ideas someday when we can make time.” I threw her another falsely admiring little smile and fled.

  My name is Constantine Manos. As a writer I specialize in politics, which obviously includes issues of character, but until recently I never thought too much about how the personal dictates the political. The culture insists on assigning political ideas a misplaced dignity, as if these theories are just out there floating around, pure abstract concepts, when the fact is everyone’s politics are about self-image and justification. What you feel decrees what you let yourself think; ideas themselves are powerless.

  Physically I’m a small, trim man with too much wiry hair, a gigantic salt-and-pepper halo, a veritable Einstein corona. I’m third generation Greek-American on both sides, I was born in Chicago on Bicentennial day, and I’ve lived in or around Phil-a-delf-ya my entire adult life, yet I’m often mistaken for a tourist and not infrequently for a foreigner. It’s been happening since college; I guess I’m just doomed to present as a stranger. These days I exaggerate the quirk, imitating the stereotypical visitor from abroad because it’s effective both as an investigative technique and as a way to handle rage, including my own. I drop into a suitably quizzical posture and peer up into people so that they think me rudely inquisitive, or overly skeptical, or humble to the point of being legitimately liable to mockery if also endearing and comically brilliant. At public functions someone invariably imitates me this way, as a presumptuous sparrow hopping along a city sidewalk. I appreciate the recognition and so far I manage to tolerate the condescension, but it hurts.

  Some part of this ineffable foreignness is simple physiognomy: I naturally appear saturnine, and people mutter that I glare, clearly an un-American activity. They really mean I don’t take the proper steps to negate the negativity, don’t smirk optimistically at every occasion. They always confuse honesty with aggression.

  But I think the vital difference between myself and the typical Philadelphian is my exoneration from the unique local guilt. This is very real and not what you think, not that compensating blue-collar bravado of the stoops you get in all big American cities. This is a great chasm, a sharp disconnect that comes from having too much glorious past right in your face and knowing you’ve let everything go to hell in some unforgivable manner nobody ever really explains. Except that somehow this city has become a discredited nonentity deteriorating in a wasteland between two largely obsolete rivers.

  Unlike Boston, where they still cling to their pretensions. The problem here is that what’s supposed to matter to us, all those values we’ve been instructed to wholeheartedly endorse like reason and rule of law, just don’t claim our attention right this very minute. But they lurk, these ideological ancestors, behind our busy little lives, disenchanted and watchful. They wag their finger, and their stink leaches out to saturate the gray air of our learned town with something oily and gritty and censorious that urges us to remember while there’s still time. That’s our characteristic smell.

  That’s the closest I can come to describing it. Only remember I’m protected from all this self-disgust to a pretty decent extent; being the servant of plain truth I automatically reject unrealistic expectations, they just promote hypocrisy.

  Philadelphia’s facade is a muted gray-brown as opposed to bright red brick or skyscraper silver; we bear the dull coloration of a side pigeon. Our modest elevations and well-spaced parks speak of ancient forethought and somewhat ameliorate the stench, so although it’s true we’re an unusually dirty city in various ways, beneath the grime we remain naturally vibrant, twinkling along beside our gray rivers, winking out of mica-flecked fieldstone. We blush with roseate sandstone, we flaunt a complexion of creamy, veined marble.

  Now in speaking of the city I mean the polis, the living community and political body combined and inseparable. It’s still a kindly thing, too, despite the current roaming viciousness. Popular outrage is tempered here, and sometimes we can still hear each other well enough to disagree without condemning.

  That’s only my Philadelphia, of course, not anyone else’s, and naturally it’s symbolic and revelatory, a straightforward self-portrait, and you can make of it what you want. It’s real and it’s highly relevant. And don’t go denigrating me because you’re the self-important habitué of some asshole dive in Port Richmond who gets to say what real Philadelphia is, because you’re just exposing your own ignorance. Also don’t remind me about that other violent, desperate city. I’ve written about it, which arguably I don’t have the right to do. But this is a different kind of report, concerning my own world and carrying a more ordinary kind of importance.

  There are some other things I want to explain up front. To begin with, this book is a reinterpretation of fairly recent local events. I wrote it because I find the official version inadequate. Not inaccurate, mind you, so much as critically incomplete. I don’t have any new facts so this is not a new theory but more of a correction of emphasis, an attempt to turn the tide. It reads pretty much like a straightforward recounting, but that’s deceptive: this is my own creation, an arrangement with numerous additions in the way of personal histories and pertinent observations and naturally my own biased deductions to help you put things in perspective. You can’t tell the truth without resorting to some degree of trickery.

  Despite having an overall strategy I wanted to write in the immediate, unfiltered voice I use to myself. So obviously I’m not terribly concerned about Hemingway’s weather or how there’s too much exposition or anything that panders rather than serves, because first this is a report, an examination of a series of compelling flashbacks, and there’s a lot that has to be explained before things speed up and there isn’t time. And second, where’s that jazz edge that stays ahead of you and leads you to the truth? I’d hoped to present something clumsy and troublesome with lame
language that actually speaks, not just another of the honored walking dead, another obedient child maybe elegant enough to make your brain ache, maybe disguised with some trendy media shit or street jargon but with no real voice because indisputably deceased.

  Lame is good – I sing of lame, glorious lame! I claim liberty from smooth editing and cosmetics and strategic marketing. No, give me free, fluid text! It’s a revolution, isn’t it? Let’s unearth the bare bones of it, discover and vanquish the assumptions. Except I kept getting dragged back into the infinitely demanding past and I’ve shown myself for a coward; I’m ashamed by how traditional this has turned out because I’m suffocating. We all are. Suff-o-ca-tion. Instead I’ve been obsessed with how this little defense of the disappointing truth will be received by the city and naturally by Ruth in particular. How I have to get everything right.

  Again, why I’m doing this: I intend to finally refute the crazy conspiracy shit being spread by our needy, brain-dead citizenry, all that cowardly electronic flocking, that irresponsible hubris. Probably not you, then, because who reads the opposition’s argument, right? But touted by some clearly responsible citizens, people directly involved who chose to tolerate the mumblings, thereby permitting so much outrageous opportunism to take root. It’s becoming canon; pretty soon schoolchildren will be repeating it to my face.

  Another reason I wanted to keep this immediate was so I could be careless and let in insights I didn’t have myself. I wanted to be absolutely fair. I’ve said it and said it: ultimately we’re all completely, inescapably blind; we don’t just overlook a few points or perspectives, we always miss everything.

  Of course all these theories and suspicions exist because there’s plentiful room for speculation; there was so much going on concurrently, all stupid if not illegal and often both, with so many indications pointing in different directions that finally people thought it more intelligent to doubt the obvious. When sheer noise carries validity the only possible response is to shout even louder to more people, to force reason on the barbarians to the extent that’s ever possible. I’m reasonably terrified that the world’s running away from me, with even the basic categories of fact versus fiction organized by popular whim. Which actual apocalypse is not only widely acknowledged but actually approved by people who should know better but have gotten themselves confused. And yes, I know how clichéd this is but it happens to matter to me.