“Working.”
“No, you’re not. You’re sitting here, reading about yourself.” And then he went off on a tirade. “It’s the neurosis of the new millennium. It’s not self-absorption. It’s self-addiction. And that’s why”—he began sputtering—“that’s why I wrote about David Bushnell.”
“Huh?” Mindy said.
“David Bushnell wasn’t about the self,” James said. He sat down on her couch, leaning back as if preparing to engage in a long discussion about his book. “Unlike the bottom-feeders who now populate the world, the publicists, the stockbrokers, the lawyers, everyone trying to make a buck off someone else…”
Mindy stared at him, unable to fathom what the hell he was going on about. She changed the topic back to herself. “I can’t get over it,” she said. “How dare they? Why me? Why are they making fun of me?”
Once again, James thought, Mindy was refusing to talk about his book. Usually, he let it go. But this time, he wasn’t in a mood to be solicitous to his wife. He stood up and started messing around with her CDs. “Why shouldn’t they make fun of you?” he said, examining a CD of the Rolling Stones’ greatest hits. “Mother’s Little Helper” was on it, he noted; perhaps he should have a listen.
“Excuse me?” she said.
“Because you’re special and better than everyone else?” James asked casually.
“I am genuinely hurt,” Mindy countered. “I am humiliated.” She gave James her most withering look.
“All I’m saying,” James said, “is that in your twenty years as a journalist, you’ve never hurt anyone?”
“Are you saying this is some kind of retribution?” Mindy asked.
“It could be. Maybe it’s karma.”
Mindy snorted in derision. “Maybe it’s just that young people these days are nasty and jealous. And disrespectful. What did I ever do to them?”
“You’re somewhat successful. Or seen as successful, anyway,” James said. “Don’t you get it? We’re the establishment now.” He paused and, pointing a finger at her, said, “Us. You and me. We’re the so-called adults now. The ones the young people want to knock down. And we were exactly like them when we were in our twenties.”
“We were not.”
“Remember the stories you used to write? About that billionaire. You made fun of his fingers! Woo-hooo. ‘Short-fingered vulgarian,’ you called him.”
“That was different.”
“It was exactly the same. You only think it was different because you wrote it. And every time you ripped someone, you said it was okay because they were successful, ergo, they were an asshole. And everyone thought you were so clever, and you got attention. It’s the easiest way to get attention, Mindy. Always has been. Make fun of your betters. Disrespect the successful, and you put yourself on their radar. It’s so fucking cheap.”
Any normal person, James thought, would have been slain by this comment. But not Mindy. “And you’re so much better?” she said.
“I never did that.”
“No, James,” Mindy said. “You didn’t have to. You were a man. You wrote those long, endless pieces about…golf. That took a year to write. Ten thousand words about golf, and it takes a year? I was working, James. Making money. It was my job.”
“Right,” James said. “And now it’s these kids’ job as well.”
“That’s great, James,” Mindy said. “I ask for your support. And you turn on me. Your own wife.”
“I’m trying to put things into perspective,” James said. “Don’t you get it? These kids are just like us. They don’t know it yet, but in twenty years, they’ll wake up and they’ll be us. It will be the last thing they were expecting. Oh, they’ll protest now. Say it will never happen to them. They’ll beat the odds. Won’t change. Won’t end up tired, mediocre, apathetic, and sometimes defeated. But life will take care of them. And then they’ll realize they’ve turned into us. And that will be their punishment.”
Mindy pulled at a strand of hair and examined it. “What are you really saying?” she asked. “Is there something wrong with us?”
The fight had gone out of James. “I don’t know,” he said. He slumped.
“What’s going on?” a voice asked. Mindy and James looked up. Their son, Sam, had come into the apartment and was standing in the door to Mindy’s office.
“We were just talking,” Mindy said.
“What about?” Sam asked.
“Your mother was on Snarker,” James said.