The Mandibles: A Family, 2029–2047. Lionel Shriver

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      “I don’t care. There have been places and times where everyone rats on everyone else, and nobody trusts anybody. They were bad places, and bad times. This is the United States, and we don’t operate that way, got it? If I had some gold I wasn’t handing over to the feds, would you turn me in?”

      “Are you hiding any?”

      “Given this discussion, I wouldn’t tell you if I were.” The levity fell flat.

      “But if people who surrender their gold get a roachbar price from the Treasury, like you said … And then the recalcitrant”—Goog gave the recent addition to his vocabulary an emphatic flourish—“not only get away with hiding their gold but can get a better price for it on the black market, or overseas …” Lowell was bursting with pride that his son had mastered the basics here without any help. “Doesn’t that mean that the people who follow the rules get punished?”

      “As your father, I shouldn’t be letting you in on this rather ugly fact of life, but people who follow the rules are almost always punished.”

      On that mournful note, Lowell headed downstairs, where the guests had arrived.

      Word of warning,” Ryan advised. “It slows down security something fantastic.”

      Avery was a bit exasperated that their company didn’t sink into the plenitude of seats in the soft chocolate living room. Everyone remained standing with their wine, instinctively encircling the dark, striking man in a trendy bronze-weave tie. He employed the flamboyant hand gestures of a VIP accustomed to holding court. Receding hairline, true, but Ryan Biersdorfer exemplified that good looks were 50 percent conviction. He was neither as smart nor as entertaining as he thought he was either, but since he did think he was, other people did, too.

      “We flew out of Reagan last week, since I had to give a lecture in Zurich,” he continued. “The lines were staggering. I’d say add two hours. Even in ‘Fast’ Track.”

      “Naturally,” Lin Yu said. “Business travelers are the worst offenders.”

      Half Chinese, Lin Yu Houseman had reaped the best of both worlds—with the smooth, purified lines of a classic Asian face, but a Westerner’s slender nose and wide eyes, which women in China were once eager to endure plastic surgery to mirror. (Avery had read that the younger mainland set now considered eyelid augmentation pandering and undignified.) Barely thirty, she combined that hint of the orient that fifty-ish men like Ryan found sexy with a relaxingly straight-up American accent. Intellectually as well, she’d melded the diligence of an Asian upbringing—she’d been one of Ryan’s star grad students—with the earnest political passion of the East Coast liberal. Avery would have admired the young woman more had she parted ideological ways with her partner-cum-mentor even occasionally.

      “But you should see the scene,” Ryan said. “It’s almost worth the aggravation for the theater. They’re searching every bag, not only the belongings of an unlucky few.”

      “Thank God that, ever since the Shaving Cream Bomber, you can’t check luggage anymore,” Avery noted. “Or security could take a week.”

      “Right now, the TSA couldn’t care less about bombs!” Ryan said. “But they are checking the inside sleeves of suitcases, and sometimes ripping the linings out. They’re prying into the folds of every wallet. They’re authorized to do hand searches, too; they slide their palms into your pockets, right next to the groin—unsavory, to say the least. You don’t only take off your shoes but your socks. They examine the heels for signs of tampering, and pull out the insoles. You could haul a rocket launcher through Reagan, and nobody would blink. But don’t try slipping out with an extra ten bucks!”

      “It’s amazing how many cheats they’re catching,” Lin Yu said gleefully. “You wouldn’t believe how brazenly corporate fat cats are trying to walk onto planes with briefcases bulging with cash. It was so gross. Stacks of thousand-dollar bills everywhere. All these supposedly upstanding citizens, and it looked like a drug bust.”

      “Except the bills scattered around the X-ray machine aren’t necessarily illicit,” Tom said. “I mean, we can at least presume that it is their money.”

      “We can presume nothing of the kind,” Lin Yu said. “That’s wealth that this entire country helped to create.”

      Tom took an it’s-going-to-be-a-long-night breath. “According to that reasoning, no one owns their money. The funds in your bank account actually belong to everybody.”

      The pleasantness of Tom’s tone sounded forced. Wearing an outdated suit jacket with a collar, he was a rumpled, easy-going, good-humored man, more inclined to defuse tension with a joke than to ratchet it up by getting personal. Ordinarily, his gentle Maryland accent—that would be Murrelun accent—further beveled his tactful opinions, but events this fall had put even the laid-back on edge.

      “Morally, your money does belong to everybody,” Ryan said. “The creation of capital requires the whole apparatus of the state to protect property rights, including intellectual property. Private enterprise is dependent on the nation as a whole for an educated workforce, transportation networks, and social order. No country, no fortune.”

      “Yadda, yadda,” Lowell said. “We’ve all read Fair Game.” (Liar. In his resentment of the fuss made over it, Avery’s husband had never brought himself to read past a few pages of the introduction.)

      “I’ll grant you this much.” Tom was making an almighty effort to remain affable, for which Avery was grateful. “’Kay, for the last several years inflation has bounced between 3 and 4 percent. I realize that to experts like you folks, I’ll sound dumb as a coal shovel. But the figure I tripped across the other day came as a shock to me: with 3 percent inflation, the dollar halves in value every twenty-three years. That’s from Fed money printing. So when I don’t control what ‘my’ money is worth, maybe it isn’t really mine in the first place. At best, it’s a loan. Which Krugman can zap into ashes while it’s still in my pocket, like a superhero.”

      “I’m afraid that’s a layman’s reading, Tom.” When amateurs trod on his patch, Lowell rarely heeded Avery’s admonition that he would better beguile his companions by acting humbly receptive, not haughtily authoritative. “And too simplistic. Inflation has to be kept positive, to prevent deflation, which is the real bogeyman. Most of that 3 to 4 percent hails from rising commodity prices, not loose monetary policy. In fact, increasing the monetary base has had all sorts of benefits for our economy. Everyone got so excitable about quantitative easing back in the teens. What happened? Jack. Most of the cash seeped, profitably for everyone, to emerging markets.”

      “Look, I won’t argue about money supply, which is outside my purview.” Tom was now sounding testy. “I was trying to make a point about these airport searches. Because in the olden days, meaning two months ago, you could take what was, by popular conceit, delusional or otherwise, your money out of the country or back in again, as much and as often as you wanted. So I don’t see why y’all are getting het up about these terrible, criminal businessmen”—tear-ble, crimnal bidnessmin—“who have the gall to try and transport their own cash overseas, when in October the same behavior was perfectly legit.”

      “I thought there was a limit,” Avery said. “Like on those Customs forms—”

      “Lotta people misunderstand that, hon,” Tom said. “Before Alvarado’s Renunciation Address, you only had to report carrying over ten thousand dollars on a FinCEN 105. So long as you СКАЧАТЬ