The Future Won't Be Long: A Novel - Hardcover

Jarett Kobek is a Turkish American writer living in California. He is the author of the novella ATTA (2011) and the novel I Hate the Internet (2016), an international bestseller that has appeared, or is scheduled to appear, in seven languages.

Back on 12th, the street lights weren’t working. With so many empty lots and abandoned buildings, I experienced a new sort of darkness, a city dark. A homeless guy stood near a wire trash can. He was filling it with debris that he’d gathered, shaking garbage out of a bag that he held over the can’s open mouth.

—Hey, I said to him, where’d you get that bag?

—Fuck you, he said.

—Can I buy it? I asked.

—Five bucks for you, Dracula.

I turned my back to him and counted out the bills. Adeline had walked on ahead without realizing that I’d stopped. She noticed that I wasn’t beside her and came back. She stood a few feet away. I got the five bucks together. I held them out.

—You first, I said. Don’t worry, I won’t rip you off. I’m an easy mark.

—Take it, he said.

He threw the bag at me and snatched the money.

—Where’d you find this? I asked.

—Trash can on C, he said.

None of my clothes were in the bag, but of course they weren’t. Fresh stains decorated both the outside and the interior, complimented by a pervasive scent of urine.

—What the dickens? asked Adeline. Why would you want such a thing?

—My mother gave me this bag, I said. Do you have a washing machine?

—There’s a communal one on the fourth floor, she said.

We reversed the path that I’d taken to David’s place. At Second Avenue, there was a theater on the corner. Its marquee read: HAVE I GOT A GIRL FOR YOU! THE FRANKENSTEIN MUSICAL.

—Have you seen that play? I asked Adeline.

—Why, she snorted, would I possibly see that? It’s vulgar, Baby. But do you know, a friend of a friend lives above the theater. The artist David Wojnarowicz. Are you aware of his work?

—No.

—It’s très sinister, she said.

We crossed Second Avenue. A surprising amount of women were on the next block, standing alone, wearing garish makeup and scandalous dresses. A few talked with men, creepy older guys with thick eyebrows.

—We’ve passed through the veil of a prostitution zone, Adeline said. NYU is building a dorm at
Third Avenue. The construction has displaced the hookers. They’ve trickled down, darling.

The prostitutes weren’t glamorous and many looked very sad, but this was more like the New York of my dreams. Dirty and seedy but not quite as desperate, as empty, as cruel as Alphabet City. Prostitutes! Whores! I couldn’t believe it. The shining sequins on their dresses cheered me up, putting energy back into my walk.

—Is it much farther? I asked.

—Not so very much longer, she said.

—Adeline, I asked, is there any food at your place? Should I buy some before we go in? I’m starving.

—My roommates always keep some scrap of something in the Frigidaire, she said.

We walked into Union Square. I still didn’t know its name. We cut through the park, passing beneath an equestrian statue of George Washington. The First President’s sword was missing. So was his bridle strap. His curled left hand held nothing. Black spray paint scarred the pedestal, two big bubble letters: SD.

—Can you see that building? asked Adeline. She pointed at the narrowest, tallest building on the park’s west side. Green copper ringed its roof. Each storey had three windows facing the park.

—That’s my dormitory, said Adeline. Not the whole thing. Parsons only has floors four through eight. I live on the sixth.

When we arrived at the building, I read the words carved along the length of its marble portico. BANK OF THE METROPOLIS. The address was 31 Union Square West, next door to 33, the building where Valerie Solanas fired 32-caliber slugs into Andy Warhol’s exploding plastic inevitable torso.
But I didn’t know anything about Andy. Not then.

Adeline passed through the first door, stopping in the antechamber. Behind a glass window, a tired old man sat at a makeshift desk. He didn’t do anything, didn’t say anything. Just sighed and buzzed us through the second door, waved at Adeline and returned to his black-and-white television.

The lobby was narrow, with a set of steps at the back. There were two elevators. We rode in the one on the left.

—This is my first time in an elevator, I confessed.

—How do you find it, Baby?

—It’s faster on television, I said.

The front door of her suite opened into a big, dusty space that was half living room, half kitchen. The stove was filthy, caked with the debris from years of careless frying and boiling. A small hallway led to the bathroom and two separate rooms. Every wall painted dead white.

Adeline’s room was at the front of the hallway. The second bedroom, farther back, was shared by two girls from South Korea, Sun-Yoon and Jae-Hwa. They’d both adopted American names. Jane and Sally, respectively. It fell on Jane to try and keep the suite clean, but some places are too old. Even the carpeting rotted with mold. What could one girl do against decades of urban decay?

—Welcome to 6B, said Adeline.

We went into her tiny room. The floor was bare linoleum. Adeline’d covered her walls with images and photos. Famous people, fashion photographs, cheap reproductions. A poster of Max Ernest’s The Robing of the Bride. I didn’t recognize it. Another announcing performances by Siouxsie and the Banshees at the Hollywood Palladium on June 6 and 7. A full string of Christmas lights stapled around the window, casting a soft glow.

At the room’s center stood a ladder that went up a good ten feet before disappearing into a dark oblong space. I climbed up and poked my face through the hole. The ceiling was three feet from the crown of my head. Twin mattress, sans boxspring, on either side, recessed into crude wooden containers.

People lived like this, sleeping three meters off the floor.

—Put down your bag, said Adeline. We’ll find you food.

I planted myself on a half-broken couch in the common area, watching her slap lunch meat atop some very dubious bread. I noticed her toenails, their jagged edges and chipped black polish.

Sun-Yoon came out of her room.

—Jane, said Adeline, this is my friend Baby.

—Hi, I said.

Sun-Yoon didn’t respond. The mustard bottle made a wet farting noise.

—Baby will be staying with us for some small while, until he gets his act together. He rode in tonight from Wisconsin.

—Hello, said Sun-Yoon. She closed the bathroom door behind her. She turned on the shower.

—Sun-Yoon’s food is the one sacred commodity of this suite, said Adeline. She and Jane voice frequent complaints to the head of housing about my scavenging.
Sitting on the pillows in Adeline’s room, stuffing myself, it came to me that I hadn’t eaten since I’d stepped off the bus. Adeline handed me a cup.

—What’s in it? I asked.

—It’s liquor, Baby, what else would it be?

I sucked it down like Coca-Cola, burning the back of my throat. Alcohol takes hold fast, but I never know when it’s hit. What killed me was the tiny size of her room. There wasn’t any shelving for her clothes, so Parsons had provided an upright closet. That, combined with the crummy desk, occupied half the usable space.

The upright closet made me shudder.

We talked, we talked, we talked.

Adeline told me that she was from Pasadena, a city outside of Los Angeles. I asked if her family was in the movie business. She scoffed and said, no, her dad had been a well-regarded dentist and oral surgeon. He’d invested heavily, and wisely, in real estate. He practiced on famous clients. I squealed, asking who he’d worked on, but Adeline couldn’t think of anyone other than the time when her dad put a cap on the lower left incisor of two-time Academy Award winner Jason Robards. A few days later her father fell down dead in his office, victim of a burst heart, leaving Adeline alone with her mother.

—A month ago I ran into Mr. Robards, said Adeline. He lives outside of the city, in Connecticut. He hadn’t the slightest who I was, but I told him about Daddy. He felt sorry enough that he bought me ice cream at Serendipity. It was so kitsch.

After her husband’s death, Adeline’s mother sublimated her grief by entering a wild period of excess. I pressed for details, curious about the potential decadences of a middle-aged woman, but Adeline demurred, saying it was old news. Only recently, her mother’d calmed down and settled into a period of comfortable, blurry alcoholism.

—Mother’s become a pleasant enough souse, said Adeline, very much like Myrna Loy in The Thin Man. But Mother’s so much older than Myrna was when Myrna ran with William Powell. It’s a bit pathetic.

—Why don’t you have a roommate?

—Mother and I conspired, she said. I visited Dr. Jacobs, Mother’s analyst. I told Dr. Jacobs that I’d go simply mad if I had to have a roommate. The good doctor sent along a note saying that I suffer from an unspecified mental condition and must at all costs live alone.

Ashamed that I lacked any good stories of my own, no wild periods of excess, I talked about farming. About the empty lives in the middle of this American continent. Adeline gave me the impression that she’d only ever been in California and New York, leapfrogging her way over the great nothingness of the U.S.A., never confronting the dumb, open faces of this country’s people.

Through her window, I caught my first glimpse of New York daybreak, when the sky lightens and strips the earth of its color. Adeline pulled down the cheap plastic shade, plunging us back into off-season Christmas illumination.

—Time for bed, she said.

—Adeline, I said, why did you invite me here?

—You’re a sailor without any port of call.

—But you aren’t expecting anything, are you?

—Expecting?

—You know, I said. Expecting.

She leaned forward. I stiffened, freaked out that I’d made an accidental pass. I didn’t want to be kicked out, not now, not after she’d been so nice.

—Baby, she asked, don’t you favor men?

My bag was still on the linoleum floor, beside her yellow shoes. A lot of good clothes in that bag.

—Yes, I said.

Which was the first time aloud.

—Then why should I expect anything?

—But how can you tell?

—You put up a decent front, said Adeline, but you won’t be able to hide here. This city is queerer than a three dollar bill. Take the spare bed and tomorrow we’ll cut that hair and find you some reasonable clothes.

—What’s wrong with my hair? I asked, but Adeline climbed the ladder without answering.