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SEPTEMBER ALL YEAR LONG

When the new great depression began, NW was hardest hit. Its merchandise was meant for the affluent class, but after the Chicago riots, even the wealthy stopped ordering, some of them because of the unstable economic situation, but most of them because they just couldn’t face their neighbors. The shares lay on the stock-market floors of the world and bled out, percentage after percentage. And NW turned into a symbol of the depression. The headline of The Wall Street Journal ’s story about it was “Hailstorms in September,” a takeoff of its ad “September All Year Long,” which showed a family clad only in bathing suits on a sunny autumn day decorating a Christmas tree. The ad caught on like wildfire. A week after it was broadcast for the first time, they were already selling three thousand units a day. Wealthy Americans bought, and so did the less wealthy who were faking it. The NW weather-control systems became a status symbol. The official stamp of a millionaire. They now signified what executive jets used to signify in the ’90s and into 2000. Nice Weather, weather for the wealthy. If you live in Arctic Greenland, and the snow and grayness are driving you crazy, all you have to do is swipe your credit card and, with a satellite or two, they’ll set you up with a perfect autumn day in Cannes on your balcony every day of the year.

Yakov (Yaki) Brayk was one of the first to buy the system from them. He truly loved his money and had a hard time parting with it, but even more than he loved the millions he earned from selling weapons and drugs to Zimbabwe, he hated those humid New York summers and that icky feeling when your sweaty undershirt sticks to your back. He bought a system not only for himself but for the whole block. Some people mistakenly saw that as generosity, but the truth is he did it just to keep the great weather with him all the way to the corner convenience store. That convenience store wasn’t only the place to buy unfiltered Noblesse cigarettes they imported from Israel for him; more than anything, it marked for Yaki the boundary of his living space. And from the minute Yaki signed the check, the block turned into a weather paradise. No dismal rain or sweltering heat. Just September all year long. And not, God forbid, that annoying New York September, but the kind he grew up with in Haifa. And then suddenly, out of the blue, there were the riots in Chicago and the neighbors demanded that he turn off his perfect autumn weather. At first, he ignored them, but then those lawyers’ letters turned up in his mailbox and someone left a slaughtered peacock on his windshield. That’s when his wife asked him to turn it off. It was January. Yaki turned off the autumn and the day instantly became shorter and sadder. All because of one slaughtered peacock and an anxiety-ridden, anorexic wife who, as always, was able to control him through her weakness.

The recession just got worse. On Wall Street, NW stocks hit rock bottom, and so did shares in Yaki’s company. And after they hit rock bottom, they drilled a hole through the rocks and fell even lower. It’s funny, you’d think that weapons and drugs would be recessionproof, but actually the opposite turned out to be true. People had no money to buy medicine and they rediscovered what they’d long forgotten: that live weapons are a luxury, just like electric car windows, and that sometimes it takes only a stone you found in the yard to smash somebody’s skull in. They quickly learned to manage without Yaki’s rifles, much more quickly than Yaki could get used to the gloomy weather of mid-March. And Yaki Brayk, or Lucky Brayk, as the financial columnists liked to call him, went bankrupt.

He kept the apartment (the company’s accountant managed to retroactively put it in the anorexic’s wife’s name), but all the rest was gone. They even took the furniture. Four days later, an NW technician came to disconnect the system. When Yaki opened the door for him, he was standing there completely rain-soaked. Yaki made him hot coffee and they talked for a while. Yaki told him that not long after the Chicago riot, he’d stopped using the system. The technician said that a lot of customers had stopped. They talked about the riot, when a furious mob from the slums stormed the summery homes of the wealthy residents of the city. “All that sun they had drove us crazy,” one of the rioters said on a news commentary show a few days later. “Let’s see you freezing your butt off with no money for heat and those bastards, those bastards …” At that point, he burst into tears. The camera blurred his face to hide his identity, so you couldn’t actually see the tears, but you could hear him wailing like a wounded animal. The technician, who was black, said he was born in that neighborhood in Chicago, but today he was ashamed to admit it. “That money,” he said, “all that fucking money just fucked up the world.”

After coffee, when the technician was ready to disconnect the system, Yaki asked if he could turn it on just one last time. The technician shrugged and Yaki took that as a yes. He pressed a few buttons on the remote and the sun suddenly came out from behind a cloud. “That’s not the real sun, you know,” the technician said proudly. “What they do is image it, with lasers.” Yaki winked and said, “Don’t spoil it. For me, it’s the sun.” The technician nodded and said, “A great sun. Too bad you can’t keep it out till I get back to the car. I’m sick of this rain.” Yaki didn’t answer. He just closed his eyes and let the sun wash over his face.

JOSEPH

There are conversations that can change a person’s life. I’m sure of it. I mean, I’d like to believe it. I’m sitting in a café with a producer. He’s not exactly a producer, he never produced anything, but he wants to. He has an idea for a film and he wants me to write the screenplay. I explain that I don’t write for films, and he accepts that and calls the waitress over. I’m sure he wants to ask for the check, but he orders himself another espresso instead. The waitress asks me if I want something else, and I ask for a glass of water. The wannabe producer’s name is Yossef, but he introduces himself as Joseph. “No one,” he says, “is really called Yossef. It’s always Sefi or Yossi or Yoss, so I went for Joseph.” He’s sharp, that Joseph. Reads me like a book. “You’re busy, right?” he says when he sees me glance at my watch, and immediately adds, “Very busy. Traveling, working, writing e-mails.” There’s nothing malicious or sarcastic in the way he says it. It’s a statement of fact or, at the most, an expression of sympathy. I nod. “Not being busy scares you?” he asks. I nod again. “Me too,” he says and gives me a yellow-toothed smile. “There must be something down there. Something frightening. If not, we wouldn’t be grinding our time so thin on all kinds of projects. And you know what scares me most?” he asks. I hesitate for a second, thinking about what to answer, but Joseph doesn’t wait. “Myself,” he continues, “what I am. You know that nothingness that fills you up a second after you come? Not with someone you love, just with some girl, or when you jerk off. You know it? That’s what scares me, looking into myself and finding nothing there. Not your average nothingness, but the kind that totally bums you out, I don’t know exactly what to call it …”

Now he’s quiet. I feel uncomfortable with his silence. If we were closer, maybe I could be silent with him. But not at our first meeting. Not after a comment like that. “Sometimes,” I say, trying to return his frankness, “life seems like a trap to me. Something you walk into unsuspectingly and then it snaps closed around you. And when you’re inside—inside life, I mean—there’s no escape, except maybe suicide, which isn’t really an escape, it’s more like surrender. You know what I mean?”

“It’s fuck-all,” Joseph says. “It’s just fuck-all that you won’t write the screenplay.” There’s something very weird about the way he talks. He doesn’t even curse like other people. I don’t know what to say after that, so I keep quiet. “Never mind,” he says after a minute. “Your saying no just gives me the chance to meet with other people, drink more coffee. And that’s the best part of this business. I don’t think the actual producing is for me.” I must have nodded, because he reacts to it. “You think I don’t have it, right? That I’m not really a producer, that I’m just some guy with a little money from his parents who talks a lot.” I must still be nodding, unintentionally, from the pressure, because now he’s laughing. “You’re right,” he says, “or maybe not, maybe I’ll surprise you yet. And myself.”

Joseph asks for the check and insists on paying. “What about our waitress?” he asks while we wait for his credit card to be swiped. “You figure she’s trying to escape too? From herself, I mean?” I shrug. “And that guy who just walked in, with the coat? Look how he’s sweating. He’s definitely running away from something. Maybe we’ll form a start-up. Instead of the film—a program that finds people who are trying to run away from themselves, who are afraid of what they might find out. It could be a hit.” I look at the sweaty guy in the coat. It’s the first time in my life I see a suicide bomber. Afterward, in the hospital, foreign journalists will ask me to describe him and I’ll say I don’t remember. Because I’ll think it’s something kind of personal, something I should keep between me and him. Joseph will survive the blast too. But not so the waitress. Not that there’s any culpability on her part. In terrorist attacks, character is not a factor. In the end, it’s all a matter of angle and distance. “That guy who just came in is definitely running away from something,” Joseph says, and laughs, rummaging around in his pockets for some change for the tip. “Maybe he’ll agree to write the screenplay for me or at least meet for coffee.” Our waitress, laminated menu in hand, dances her way over to the sweaty guy in the coat.

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