Read A Hologram for the King Online
Authors: Dave Eggers
A Hologram for the King
A
HOLOGRAM
FOR THE
KING
A
HOLOGRAM
FOR THE
KING
A NOVEL
DAVE EGGERS
McSWEENEY'S BOOKS
SAN FRANCISCO
McSWEENEY'S BOOKS
SAN FRANCISCO
For more information about McSweeney's:
www.mcsweeneys.net
Copyright © 2012 Dave Eggers
All rights reserved, including right of reproduction
in whole or part in any form.
Cover art by Jessica Hische
This is a work of fiction. Though many of the places and companies mentioned in this book exist, all events depicted herein are fictional and should not be construed to be connected to any historical events or actual people, living or dead.
McSweeney's and colophon are registered trademarks of McSweeney's, a privately held company with wildly fluctuating resources.
ISBN: 978-1-938073-31-1
First Printing
Manufactured at Thomson-Shore printers, Dexter, Michigan
For Daniel McSweeney, Ron Hadley,
and Paul Vida, great men all
It is not every day that we are needed.
âSamuel Beckett
I.
A
LAN
C
LAY WOKE
up in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. It was May 30, 2010. He had spent two days on planes to get there.
In Nairobi he had met a woman. They sat next to each other while they waited for their flights. She was tall, curvy, with tiny gold earrings. She had ruddy skin and a lilting voice. Alan liked her more than many of the people in his life, people he saw every day. She said she lived in upstate New York. Not that far away from his home in suburban Boston.
If he had courage he would have found a way to spend more time with her. But instead he got on his flight and he flew to Riyadh and then to Jeddah. A man picked him up at the airport and drove him to the Hilton.
With a click, Alan entered his room at the Hilton at 1:12 a.m. He quickly prepared to go to bed. He needed to sleep. He had to travel an hour north at seven for an eight o'clock arrival at the King Abdullah
Economic City. There he and his team would set up a holographic teleconference system and would wait to present it to King Abdullah himself. If Abdullah was impressed, he would award the IT contract for the entire city to Reliant, and Alan's commission, in the mid-six figures, would fix everything that ailed him.
So he needed to feel rested. To feel prepared. But instead he had spent four hours in bed not sleeping.
He thought of his daughter Kit, who was in college, a very good and expensive college. He did not have the money to pay her tuition for the fall. He could not pay her tuition because he had made a series of foolish decisions in his life. He had not planned well. He had not had courage when he needed it.
His decisions had been short sighted.
The decisions of his peers had been short sighted.
These decisions had been foolish and expedient.
But he hadn't known at the time that his decisions were short sighted, foolish or expedient. He and his peers did not know they were making decisions that would leave them, leave Alan, as he now was â virtually broke, nearly unemployed, the proprietor of a one-man consulting firm run out of his home office.
He was divorced from Kit's mother Ruby. They had now been apart longer than they had been together. Ruby was an unholy pain in the ass who now lived in California and contributed nothing financially to Kit's
finances. College is
your
thing, she told him. Be a man about it, she said.
Now Kit would not be in college in the fall. Alan had put his house on the market but it had not yet sold. Otherwise he was out of options. He owed money to many people, including $18k to a pair of bicycle designers who had built him a prototype for a new bicycle he thought he could manufacture in the Boston area. For this he was called an idiot. He owed money to Jim Wong, who had loaned him $45k to pay for materials and the first and last on a warehouse lease. He owed another $65k or so to a half-dozen friends and would-be partners.
So he was broke. And when he realized he could not pay Kit's tuition, it was too late to apply for any other aid. Too late to transfer.
Was it a tragedy that a healthy young woman like Kit would take a semester off of college? No, it was not a tragedy. The long, tortured history of the world would take no notice of a missed semester of college for a smart and capable young woman like Kit. She would survive. It was no tragedy. Nothing like tragedy.
They said it was a tragedy what had happened to Charlie Fallon. Charlie Fallon froze to death in the lake near Alan's house. The lake next to Alan's house.
Alan was thinking of Charlie Fallon while not sleeping in the room at the Jeddah Hilton. Alan had seen Charlie step into the lake that day. Alan was driving away, on his way to the quarry. It had not seemed normal that a man like Charlie Fallon would be stepping into the shimmering black lake in September, but neither was it extraordinary.
Charlie Fallon had been sending Alan pages from books. He had been doing this for two years. Charlie had discovered the Transcendentalists
late in life and felt a kinship with them. He had seen that Brook Farm was not far from where he and Alan lived, and he thought it meant something. He traced his Boston ancestry, hoping to find a connection, but found none. Still, he sent Alan pages, with passages highlighted.
The workings of a privileged mind, Alan thought. Don't send me more of that shit, he told Charlie. But Charlie grinned and sent more.
So when Alan saw Charlie stepping into the lake at noon on a Saturday he saw it as a logical extension of the man's new passion for the land. He was only ankle-deep when Alan passed him that day.
W
HEN
A
LAN WOKE
in the Jeddah Hilton he was already late. It was 8:15. He had fallen asleep just after five.
He was expected at the King Abdullah Economic City at eight. It was at least an hour away. After he showered and dressed and got a car to the site it would be ten. He would be two hours late on the first day of his assignment here. He was a fool. He was more a fool every year.
He tried Cayley's cellphone. She answered, her husky voice. In another lifetime, a different spin of the wheel wherein he was younger and she older and both of them stupid enough to attempt it, he and Cayley would have been something terrible.
âHello Alan! It's beautiful here. Well, maybe not beautiful. But you're not here.
He explained. He did not lie. He could no longer muster the energy, the creativity required.
âWell, don't worry, she said, with a small laugh â that voice of hers implied the possibility of, celebrated the existence of a fantastic life of abiding sensuality â we're just setting up. But you'll have to get your own ride. Any of you know how Alan will get a ride out here?
She seemed to be yelling to the rest of the team. The space sounded cavernous. He pictured a dark and hollow place, three young people holding candles, waiting for him and his lantern.
âHe can't rent a car, she said to them.
And now to him: âCan you rent a car, Alan?
âI'll figure it out, he said.
He called the lobby.
âHello. Alan Clay here. What's your name?
He asked names. A habit Joe Trivole instilled back in the Fuller Brush days. Ask names, repeat names. You remember people's names, they remember you.
The clerk said his name was Edward.
âEdward?
âYes sir. My name is Edward. Can I help you?
âWhere are you from, Edward?
âJakarta, Indonesia, sir.
âAh, Jakarta, Alan said. Then realized he had nothing to say about Jakarta. He knew nothing about Jakarta.
âEdward, what do you think of me renting a car through the hotel?
âDo you have an international driver's license?
âNo.
âThen no, I don't think you should do this.
Alan called the concierge. He explained he needed a driver to take him to the King Abdullah Economic City.
âThis will take a few minutes, the concierge said. His accent was not Saudi. There were apparently no Saudis working at this Saudi hotel. Alan had assumed as much. There were few Saudis working anywhere, he'd been told. They imported their labor in all sectors. We must find someone appropriate to drive you, the concierge said.
âYou can't just call a taxi?
âNot exactly, sir.
Alan's blood went hot, but this was a mess of his making. He thanked the man and hung up. He knew you couldn't just call a taxi in Jeddah or Riyadh â or so said the guidebooks, all of which were over-wrought when it came to elucidating the dangers of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to foreign travelers. The State Department had Saudi on the highest alert. Kidnapping was not unlikely. Alan might be sold to al-Qaeda, ransomed, transported across borders. But Alan had never felt in danger anywhere, and his assignments had taken him to Juarez in the nineties, Guatemala in the eighties.