The Wangs vs. the World (14 page)

Banker #1, Charles’s old nemesis, Marsh, shook his head. “Lipstick sales have been steadily declining since 2007.”

These literal-minded motherfuckers were ruining America.

“Lipstick do not just mean lipstick!” shouted Charles. “Lipstick mean all makeup! Anything that make a woman feel good, feel rich, feel like she is taking care of herself but not cost too much, that mean lipstick! We think it going to be nail polish this time around! Everybody get creative! A canvas on your pinky! Small luxuries! Manageable delights!”

“Please, Mr. Wang,” said Banker #2, reaching out one bony hand and placing it on Charles’s shoulder. “There’s no need to get so riled up. Let’s just carry on this discussion peacefully.”

Charles stood up.

“No more discussion.”

He slammed together his notes and pushed away his small glass of water.

“Your no is only a no, is that correct?”

Banker #3 had a bit more fight to him. “Mr. Wang, it is a no. It’s your decision now whether you want to look for another investor or whether you want to cut your losses and fold the business immediately before things get worse. Because it’s going to get worse.”

Pessimistic fools,
Charles had thought.

“I come to you as a courtesy,” he said. “If you are not interested in getting for yourselves a larger stake, then I go elsewhere.”

“Our recommendation would be to restructure your existing loan and then fold the business. If you do that, you’ll still be able to retain your personal assets. But if you decide to take your chances, then we sincerely hope that you have better luck elsewhere,” soothed Banker #2, before shutting the door behind Charles.

But he didn’t. There was no better luck.

Other loan institutions, entrepreneurial investors, larger beauty companies, current manufacturing clients, old friends—not a one wanted to invest in the Failure.

Another payment due date came and went. Two months of payroll came out of Charles’s personal accounts, a loan to himself that demanded a bitter interest. A third. A fourth. The ads, the international fashion week sponsorships, they were cut, bits of ballast flung out into a stormy financial sea. In the end not one of them weighed enough to make any real impact.

And then, against all reason, the bank called the entire loan—factories and house included. A phone call, a notarized letter, and that was it. Back to nothing.

Even in failure, Charles Wang was a success. Looked at from one level up, from a perspective devoid of good or bad, where action trumped stasis, this was a perfect failure. Swift and complete. None of the usual built-in fail-safes managed to float him—instead, Charles had somehow tricked himself into erecting a needless financial deck of cards that went up only to be toppled by a historically anomalous financial tornado.

I couldn’t rescue the Wangs,
Charles had thought then.
The Wangs will never win. Our failures will ever be epic and our sorrows will ever be great.

十六

ALL ACROSS THE COUNTRY, one by one, foreclosed house by shuttered business, in cold bedrooms and empty boardrooms and cars turned into homes, people had the same thoughts.

I couldn’t rescue myself.

I will never win.

My failure will always be epic and my sorrow will always be great.

I alone among all people am most uniquely cursed.

In the intervening weeks, as they slowly began to poke their heads out of their own private failures, each would come to find that the curse was, in fact, not theirs alone. Instead, it was spread across the country: a club, a collective, a movement, a great populist
uprising
of failure in the face of years of shared national success.

十七
Phoenix, AZ

THE LAST THING Andrew had done the night before was to slip his top five pairs of sneakers—original issue Infrared Air Max 90s, Maison Martin Margiela Replica 22s, Common Projects Achilles Mids, beat-up checkerboard Vans, and a pair of never worn Air Jordan 4 Undefeateds—into felt dust bags and roll those in T-shirts before laying each mummified pair heel to toe in his duffel. Everything in his minifridge went into a big Postal Service bin that he’d left out in the lounge area. It would all be demolished by now. He’d sold his flat screen to poor Mac McSpaley, who was always trying to hang out with Andrew and his friends. He knew that Mac would buy the TV even if it was with tips that the skinny double-E major earned working at the sandwich stand on the quad. A job where he had to wear an apron. Poor, poor Mac McSpaley. Now Andrew had a soft wad of small bills stuffed in his back pocket and a vaguely guilty feeling that he expected would dissipate once he left campus.

His collection of vintage comedy albums—Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Lenny Bruce—and extra clothes were neatly packed into a cardboard box taped and labeled with Saina’s address in upstate New York. Grace said that she’d just given away all of her other clothes, but that seemed like the worst decision if they were going to be poor now. It would only cost something like forty dollars to mail everything, otherwise he’d have to buy new clothes; he couldn’t just wear the few things that fit in his duffel forever. Andrew wondered what had happened to his snowboard and gear, to everything in his room at home. Probably nothing. Probably it was just sitting there, locked up, and if he could just climb through a window and break it out, it could all be his again.

He was sitting on his naked mattress, holding Emma’s spiky heels in his hands, looking at his bare walls, when his alarm went off.

9:15.

Fifteen minutes before Econ 201. Most Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings he hit snooze at least once, which made it 9:22 by the time he rolled out of bed. Another five minutes to brush his teeth and take a piss, one to choose a pair of sneakers, eight minutes to walk to class, four for an egg-sandwich stop, another five to say hi to people along the way. By the time he got to class, it was usually 9:45.

But not this morning. He pressed snooze, put down the heels, picked up his backpack, and walked straight to class, not even pausing to talk to that cute Pi Phi girl who’d smiled and said, “Good morning.”

It was weird being there so much earlier. Who knew that so many people got anywhere on time? A solid five minutes before class started, the hall was already three-quarters full of fed, caffeinated students with laptops at the ready. From his unaccustomed vantage point in the back—usually he had to slip into one of the last open seats right in front of the lectern—Andrew could see that almost everyone was on Facebook, clicking through photos from last night.

The professor finally walked in at 9:40, carrying a cardboard box. Andrew knew it. You really didn’t need to get to things on time. Not only had he not missed anything with all those added seven minutes of sleep, he’d probably tacked an extra year onto his life because he was more well rested than everyone else. Mental note: Stop wasting time worrying about being late.

“Make no mistake, we are in a recession,” said Professor Kalchefsky slowly, holding up a copy of the
Wall Street Journal.
He read the headline: “‘U.S. to Take Over AIG in $85 Billion Bailout.’ You heard it here first. No one is willing to admit it, but we are smack-dab in the midst of a giant, ball-breaking recession, and every one of you ought to be furious because you are the unfortunate generation who will be graduating and trying to obtain jobs in a busted economy that we might as well pack up and sell to the Chinese.”

Andrew opened up his laptop. He wasn’t sure why he was even there, but if he was in class, he might as well take some notes. People liked jokes about the economy, right?

Kalchefsky 201,
he typed.

Recession.

W. T. F.

Oh shit
. He was going to have to work! Actually
work
. At some uninspired, uninspiring job. Maybe with an apron on. For money. Money that he would need to pay for things like rent and phone bills and air-conditioning—or maybe air-conditioning was free? It seemed like one of those things that should be a basic human right for people living in the Southwest.

Forget it.
He wasn’t going to leave. After class, he’d call Saina and ask her to pay his tuition, then he’d call and tell his dad not to come, tell him that they could stop by for a visit if they wanted, but maybe suggest that they just drive past Arizona altogether. Andrew wanted to skip out on Econ and call everyone immediately, but if he was going to finish school and then get a job, it was probably time he started doing better in his classes.

And Emma. He’d bring her shoes back tonight and tell her that actually he loved her. He did. He must. Definitely. Why was he always trying to be such a good guy all the time, anyway? Nothing stayed perfect forever. Being a good person hadn’t kept his mom from dying. Being some kind of business star hadn’t kept his dad from messing it all up after all. He’d make himself love Emma, and then he’d finally get to have sex.

Kalchefsky was writing on the board now.

Our first big mistake—we believed that money was rational.

Andrew sat up. Kalchefsky was a mess. Stubble and dark circles. Some sort of yolky residue on the corner of his mouth. Cuffs undone. He looked like an older person, a tired adult. Like he’d gone from being somewhere around Saina’s age to Andrew’s dad’s age overnight. More than that, though, he looked wired—pissed off and strangely awake, his slight Eastern European accent suddenly strong.

“The market doesn’t lie. How many times have you heard people say that? The market doesn’t lie. People who have no business knowing what the market is capable of are nonetheless convinced that it is somehow bound to the truth. That things will always cost exactly what they should because of some sort of free-market fairy dust. Why did shares in the East India Company trade for £284 in 1769? Why did a single streaky tulip bulb fetch the equivalent of more than £25,000 at auction in 1637? I’ll tell you what—it’s not because people used to be dumber.”

With that, he picked up the cardboard box by his feet, held it over his head, and gave it a desperate shake, releasing a shower of purple stuffed animals. The class burst out laughing. Beanie Babies! Andrew had one when he was a kid—a tie-dyed bear from some client of his father’s. Kalchefsky picked up one of them and held it out to the class, squeezing its soft plush body.

“A Princess Di Beanie Baby, $2.50 plus $.99 shipping and handling on eBay. But go on there right now and you’ll find an auction where one of these guys is listed for $45,000. Forty-five thousand dollars! For a little purple toy bear with a white rose sewn on its chest, mass manufactured in a Chinese factory.” Kalchefsky shook his head violently, his shaggy hair flying, as the class laughed.

“I bought all twenty of these on the same day, which was enough to set off a rumor that Beanie Baby prices were back on the rise. Here’s what one Beanie Baby message board reported.” He looked out at the class and slowly raised an eyebrow. “Oh yes, they still exist. For a furry few, the dream lives on.”

Kalchefsky picked up a piece of paper and peered through his glasses. “And I quote, ‘OMG. What up, doubters. Looks like a new wave of collecting has been unleashed—eBay trackers say that Princess Di Beanie sales are up 1,100 percent. Time to buy, bitches.’”

Andrew let out a laugh.

“Throughout history we have believed that markets determine worth and that bubbles are eternal, despite ample evidence to the contrary. In the midst of each bubble, we believe that this time it will last forever. We have all been complicit in our own deluding.”

The professor paused.

“It’s all bullcrap. There is no market. The market is people, and people are dolts. Even the smartest people are moronic. You’re all a little too young to remember that there were people—educated people, people with serious careers—who chased down ‘rare’ Beanie Babies. Who bought heart-shaped plastic-tag protectors. Who told themselves that their massive collections of
plush toys
would pay for their children’s college tuitions.

“In fact, you
were
those children, and I’ll wager that none of you are being floated in this fine institution with proceeds from Beanie Baby auctions. We all mocked those assholes, but their only mistake was that they chose to believe, as we all have, that money is rational. That price is truth. That the market doesn’t lie. But it does. It lies. Or, at least, it will stretch the truth for a very, very long time.

“Real estate. That’s our present-day delusion. More than that: Mortgages. Because a mortgage is never just a mortgage, is it? It’s a promise. A promise that your life can change. A promise that you can be the sort of person who should live in that house no matter how far it is from your real price range. And let’s be truthful, shall we? What is a promise like that but your world-famous American Dream?”

Kalchefsky looked out at the class, breathing hard, jaw clenched, like a wolf in some sort of intellectual standoff over a carcass. “You can grow up to be anything you want. Isn’t that what they told you? Your mommies and daddies in the front seat of their SUVs while they were driving you, their special snowflake, to soccer practice? Except that you got it mixed up and thought that it meant ‘You can grow up to
own
anything you want.’ Not the same thing, America. Nowhere near the same thing.”

Maybe Saina was right.

Maybe people from other countries really did hate Americans.

Why was Kalchefsky being such an asshole? How surprised would he be if he knew about Andrew’s SUV, how it had just been towed by a shiny black truck with gold fangs painted on the grill, the keys pocketed by a wiry repo man Andrew hadn’t even bothered to argue with? If he knew that Andrew
had
owned everything he wanted and that now maybe he was going to grow up to own nothing at all?