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OFFICIAL TIMEKEEPER

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THE COLD OPEN

TOM BRADY DIED FOR OUR SINS

By Charles P. Pierce
The National Football League, which begins its ninety-sixth season of play next
month, has proven itself to be one of the doughtiest enterprises in the long history
of hullabaloo and ballyhoo. (Its history extends back to when people actually used
words like hullabaloo and ballyhoo.) That character never has been tested the way
it has under the NFLs current commissioner, Roger Goodell, a man who never has
seen a problem he couldnt turn into a crisis and never has heard dissent he
couldnt turn into a pitchfork-waving mob. Under his occasionally distinguishable
leadership, the NFL has found itself, in only the past few years, on the wrong side
of domestic violence, child abuse, pharmacology, neuroscience, and, most notably,
its own silly rules regarding the Ideal Gas Law. Under Goodell, the leagues
response to all of these has been reflexively wrong, reflexively dilatory, and
reflexively tin-eared. Only when public outrage became audible on Jupiter did the
league and Goodell take even half measures to address any of these problems, and
by God Goodells solutions were inadequate when it mattered most and crushingly
excessive when it didnt really matter at all--as in the case of Tom Bradys
deflated footballs.
And yet the NFL survives and prospers. It is what Chuck Yeager once called the
space program. The NFL is a pooch that cannot be screwed.
Of course Brady will be allowed to play in the exhibition games, including a
high-profile one against the Green Bay Packers on August 13. This is because, in a
spectacular bit of ongoing consumer fraud, the NFL insists you buy tickets to these
burlesques as part of your season-ticket package. And speaking of burlesques, more
than a few cynical souls have pointed out that whenever Brady is finally allowed to
suit up in a regular-season game this fall, it will be a ratings bonanza, proving
at last that God does not play in these affairs at all.
Through all these years, as the nations attention span has shrunk with the
acceleration of new technologies--shifting from televisions that dominated the
countrys living rooms to those you can hold in your hand, from gambling with the

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WorldMags.net
THE COLD OPEN

local bookie to gambling online with someone in the Bahamas--the NFL has managed to
protect the Shield, as the leagues logo is called, and the Shield has protected it.
This is where the ultimate liberation of Tom Brady is to be found. There is nothing
he can do to the league and nothing the league can do to him that will prevent either
one of them from continuing to succeed.
Fundamentally, Bradys place within the league is set in stone, and he earned it
the hard way. He worked his way up, going from splitting time at Michigan and
being a sixth-round draft pick to becoming arguably the greatest player ever at
the most high-profile position in American sports. He is accused of, at worst, an
unsophisticated act of gamesmanship that had no bearing on the outcome of the game
in question, an offense so minor it barely qualifies as venial. His career is one of
the leagues finest ornaments, one of its greatest products ever. He knows it and the
league knows it. Ultimately, all of the outside bloviating will vanish on the autumn
breeze. And the Lilliputians who tied him down will again cheer their little cheers.
The only possible crisis the NFL would not be able to weather is the rising notion
in the country that American football is simply too destructive to the human organism to be worth playing. The Shield is largely illusory to the Pop Warner leagues and
to high school football and even to the huge college franchises. The Shield will not
protect your sons spine, or the ligaments of his knee, or the obscure corners of his
hippocampus, where the essence of his individuality is stored. If that realization
ever came to critical mass, the NFL would be in authentic trouble.
But the NFLs luck remains astounding: Right in the middle of the second stage of
the whole Patriots frenzy, authorities on two continents raided the offices of FIFA,
the extraordinary collection of freebooters who run international soccer. Given an
actual scandal to illuminate, the national spotlight shifted from the NFL to what the
rest of the world calls football and the criminals who run it.
Without the place that the NFL has carved out in our national life, without
the hold that the NFL has on the national culture, the passion play that is
Bradys balls is a brief kerfuffle, dismissed with a fine and an admiring
chuckle from the fans.
But this is the NFL, as self-serious an operation as ever has existed. It has
succeeded in attaching itself to other major cultural and political institutions so
well that any controversy--be it Ray Rices inclination to violence or Tom Bradys
alleged preference for underinflated footballs--becomes a threat not just to the
league but also to all of its corporate partners. These, we discovered in May,
include the United States military, which paid various NFL franchises hundreds of
thousands of dollars to stage the patriotic pageants that are now as much a part of
NFL game presentations as classic rock and overpriced domestic light beer. But that
doesnt seem to matter. The Shield remains intact, and Tom Bradys glorious career
goes on. The pooch remains unscrewed.
4

ESQUIRE AUGUST 2015

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WorldMags.net
THE TABLE OF CONTENTS

AUGUST 2015

T H E

VO LU M E 1 6 4 / N O. 1

E S Q & A

Dwayne
Johnson
Aka the Rock. Aka the Peoples Champion. Aka an American Treasure.
With Scott Raab
PAGE 15

GUIDE
SUMMER

THE OVERLY

SPECIFIC
TO

W H AT M A K E S A G O O D S U M M E R
The places, things, and times of the day that matter only now.
By Tom Chiarella

T H E OV E R LY S P E C I F I C M A P
A couple dozen American cliffs, river bends, roadsides, and barstools where
bliss resides. The place, the hour to go, and the thing to do there.

Climatologist

PTSD

Among many climate

scientists, gloom has set in.
Things are worse than
we think, but they cant
really talk about it.
By John H. Richardson
PAGE 82

THE

SECRET
LIFE
OF AN ALMOST
FAMOUS
MAN

Do you know who

James Wolk is?
Grinning Bob Benson
on Mad Men? Often
compared to Clooney?
The one who should
have been a star by
now? Well, let us
introduce you.
By Anna Peele
PAGE 90

PAGE 56

THE ESQUIRE SUMMER

Fiction Festival

New fiction from Colum McCann, about a woman confronting the one
memory that will not fade. Plus, excerpts of classic fiction from Philip Roth, Saul
Bellow, Adam Johnson, and others. (More on the other side of this page . . . )

THE
D E AT H O F
P AT IE N T
ZERO

Because she curses while sipping hot water with lemon. Because she deftly
talks trash. Because she took the time on a Saturday afternoon. By Nate Hopper

A year and a half ago,

we wrote about Stephanie
Lee, a mother and war
widow facing advanced cancer who had become a pioneer in exploring the promise of what the president
calls precision medicine.
Hope is a dangerous thing.
By Tom Junod

PAGE 76

PAGE 102

PAGE 62

K AT E M A R A I S A WO M A N W E LOV E

ON THE COVER: DWAYNE JOHNSON PHOTOGRAPHED EXCLUSIVELY FOR ESQUIRE BY NIGEL PARRY. TWO-BUTTON JACKET BY MASSIMO ALBA; V-NECK SHIRT
BY CALVIN KLEIN; JEANS BY LEVIS; BELT BY ISAIA. STYLING BY ERIC NICHOLSON FOR ATELIER MANAGEMENT. GROOMING BY RACHEL SOLOW. SET DESIGN BY KENT
CASEY FOR THE REX AGENCY.

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Dwayne Johnson would like to welcome you. Watch the cover video by scanning here with the free Esquire2 app.

WorldMags.net
THE TABLE OF CONTENTS

AUGUST 2015

THE
COLD OPEN

S H OWS O N
T E L EV I S I O N

PAG E 3
Footballs back.
By Charles P. Pierce

PAG E 20
For watching.

T H E N E W,
M O O DY E RA O F
TELEVISION
PAG E 24
What holds us
to great TV now? Its
not the writing.
By Stephen Marche

SHOULD
YO U C U T T H AT
CORD?

E D I T O R S
LETTER
PAG E 1 2

VO LU M E 1 6 4 / N O. 1

PAG E 2 1
The overabundance
of cableless options.
By Jennings Brown

BOOKS

late food correspondent.

By Joe Keohane

you. And its fun.

By Benjamin Percy

appointment television,
featuringno, starring
The Bachelorette.
By Tom Junod

THE ESQUIRE
M A N UA L :
T H E B E AC H
PAG E 28
There are rules.
About the gulls.

THE THINGS THEY CARRIED

BY T I M OB R I E N ( AU G U ST 1 986 )

First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a girl named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian
College in New Jersey. They were
not love letters, but Lieutenant
Cross was hoping, so he kept them
folded in plastic at the bottom of
his rucksack. In the late afternoon,
after a days march, he would dig
his foxhole, wash his hands under
a canteen, unwrap the letters, hold
them with the tips of his fingers,
and spend the last hour of light pretending. He would imagine romantic camping trips into the White
Mountains in New Hampshire. He
would sometimes taste the envelope flaps, knowing her tongue had
been there. More than anything, he
wanted Martha to love him as he
loved her, but the letters were mostly chatty, elusive on the matter of
love. She was a virgin, he was almost sure. She was an English ma-

(page 62), weve dropped excerpts from

eleven pieces of classic Esquire fiction
works were excited to republish in full this
summer on classics.esquire.com. Oh, and
heres another onedown and to the left.

PAG E 3 2

MY WEEK
AT T H E

T V: A N E S Q U I R E
R E P O RT
T H E 2 6 ( ! ) B E ST

ABOUT THOSE EXCERPTS

> Throughout Colum McCanns new story

jor at Mount Sebastian, and she

wrote beautifully about her professors and roommates and midterm
exams, about her respect for Chaucer and her great affection for
Virginia Woolf. She often quoted lines of poetry; she never mentioned the war, except to say, Jimmy, take care of yourself. The letters
weighed ten ounces. They were
signed Love, Martha, but Lieutenant Cross understood that Love was
only a way of signing and did not
mean what he sometimes pretended it meant. At dusk, he would carefully return the letters to his rucksack. Slowly, a bit distracted, he
would get up and move among his
men, checking the perimeter, then
at full dark he would return to his
hole and watch the night and
wonder if Martha was a virgin.
Read the rest at classics.esquire.
com.

FUNNY JOKE
FROM A
B E AU T I F U L
WO M A N
PAG E 34
By Annaleigh
Ashford,
of Masters of Sex

DRINKING:
THE TEQUILA
DA I SY
PAG E 3 6
A smooth forebear
of the margarita.
By David Wondrich

SEX WITH
S TAC E Y WO O D S
PAG E 3 8
Marriage and porn;
dating and rap sheets;
Siskel & Ebert.

THE JOSH
OZ E R S KY
WE KNEW
PAG E 4 2
A farewell to Esquires

PAG E 4 5
Chicago leather
by way of Detroit,
an Alabamans sweater,
and the mature preppy.

M A I N T E NA N C E :
SW E AT
PAG E 54

W H AT I V E
LEARNED:
BILL MAHER
PAG E 74
People sometimes
say to me, Oh, Bill, its
so easy to mock religion.
And I always say, Yes,
thats the point. Its not a
coincidence that its a
comedically rich target.
Bill Donohue, the head
of the Catholic League,
wants to fight me again.
Literally fight me . . .

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love

new
Flame

old
chase

new
pursuit

old new
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horses

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one cant just build
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ONLY HISTORY CAN

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A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR

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Blindsided

SENIOR EDITORS;

prison. He could see the harm that would

come with jail timeloss of job, hardship on his familybut Colum was having a hard time seeing the good that might
come from a harsh penalty.
The protagonist of his ctional story on
page 62 is in a similar position. She was
the victim of an unimaginable wrong and,
many years later, has the opportunity to
confront her assailant. I am not going to
spoil the story, but I am going to tell you
that Colum, the man, our friend, did not
seek revenge. He asked the judge to spare
his attacker imprisonment.
peatedly. Colum was hospitalized with
a concussion, shattered teeth, and a broken cheekbone. Eventually the man was
arrested and charged. Eventually he was
convicted.
Colum was telling us about this experience because his recovery from his injuries and then the adjudication of the case
occurred at the same time he was writing
the story in this issue. And because each
the story and the eventcame to inform
the other.
He told us that hed been asked by the
court to write a victim impact statement, part of which would be his recommendation to the judge for sentenc-

Note: In our prole of defense attorney

Judy Clarke in the June/July issue, we inadvertently transposed the name of one of
the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing, Martin Richard, for which we deeply apologize.

DAVID GRANGER
EDITOR IN CHIEF

COMING IN THE SEPTEMBER ISSUE

ON NEWSSTANDS AUGUST 11

Keith Richards submits to the

ESQ&A. Ted Danson helps us write
about him. Our fashion director
goes where no fashion director
has ever gone before: the geographic center of the United States.
Dwyane Wade looks amazing
in fall fashion. And, of course,
a little football.

JOHN KENNEY, MANAGING EDITOR; RICHARD DORMENT, ROSS M C CAMMON,

EDITOR AT LARGE; ART: STRAVINSKI

PIERRE,

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12

ESQUIRE AUGUST 2015

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P H OTO G R A P H BY TAG H I N A D E R Z A D

Colum McCann, one of the worlds great

novelists, was in the building a couple
weeks ago. Colum is a longtime friend of
Esquires. Way back in 2003, we named
him one of our Best and Brightest, and
he agreed to contribute an original story
to that issue to mark the occasion. And
so began a long relationship. Weve held
writing contests together; we helped
him launch a charitable enterprise,
Narrative 4, dedicated to storytelling in
the service of what Colum calls radical
empathy; together we published a collection of stories about being a man. And
over the years, weve published his stories
and pieces of his novels; weve also taken
great delight in and toasted his many accomplishments, like the National Book
Award he won in 2009 for his novel Let
the Great World Spin.
On this day a couple weeks ago, hed
come to the building to read to the Esquire staff a chunk of the story you can
nd on page 62 of this issue. Its an amazing and surprising tale. But when Colum
stood up to read it, he began by telling us
another story. He told us about the blindside assault hed suffered in the summer of
2014 at the hands of a man whom he had
seen hitting a woman. Colum had come
upon them outside the hotel where he was
staying and had shouted, Thats enough!
The man stopped and walked away. Later, when all seemed resolved and Colum
was standing outside the hotelI had
done my Boy Scout deedthe man re-

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Man at His Best

The ESQ&A

DWAYNE JOHNSON talks to SCOTT RAAB about the Rock, football, acting,
working out, self-doubt, success, gratitude, Ballers, and balls
Photographs by NIGEL PARRY
Over Skype. Johnson in L.A.,
Raab in Cleveland.
SCOTT RAAB: Man, youre
gorgeous.
DWAYNE JOHNSON: Awww.
SR: That smile speaks a
universal human language.
Do you ever think about how
huge you are right now?
DJ: I just came back from the
gym, and Im driving down
Sunset and I see a massive
billboard that says San
Andreas, and Im like, Wow,
thats great! This worked out!
I get corny like this. And I
swear to God, I turn my head
and theres an even bigger
billboard that says Ballers.
Man, I cant believe it.
SR: What a path. You look like
an old wrestler I used to see
every once in a while.
DJ: Ive been fortunate to have
had the life I had prior to
Hollywood. I wasnt starving,
I was going to eat the next
day. I came to Hollywood
wanting a career that had
longevity, and I wasnt afraid
to take risks because I had
a dollar in the bank. I wasnt
driven by money as much as
I was driven by making a
successful transition. And I
was smart enough to know
that I certainly didnt have all
the answers and I needed to
surround myself with smart
people and be willing to take
risks and be willing to fail.
[His assistant brings him a
plate of food.]
SR: Whaddya got?
DJ: Potatoes and chicken.
A postworkout meal.
SR: How are the potatoes
prepared?
DJ: Theyre cut like french
fries, but theyre baked.
Phenomenal. And the chicken
is just a grilled chicken with
a little bit of some sort of
CONTINUED

INSIDE MAHB
TV ................................................................. 20
More TV ......................................................... 22
Just a whole lot of TV .................................... 24

Beach etiquette .............................................. 28

Books .............................................................. 32
A Funny Joke from a Beautiful Woman ....... 34

A cocktail ....................................................... 36
Sex .................................................................. 38
Josh Ozersky .................................................. 42

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15

CONTINUED

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barbecue sauce.
SR: You want ten minutes to
eat? I dont want the food to
get cold.
DJ: No, its fine. Im rarely sitting and eating, so this is nice.
SR: As long as youre
comfortable.
DJ: Its funny, journalists will
come in and say, Thank
you so much for sitting with
me; I know your days been so
long. Ive got to be honest
with you, were literally sitting
here talking. Its the easiest
thing. Everythings free, were
at this hotel, youve got
free food, were just talking
about things.
SR: I was talking to Mickey
Rourke a long time ago, after
he quit acting for boxing. He
felt that acting wasnt manly.
Ive talked to other actors who
seemed tortured by the work
for other reasons. Youre having nothing but fun.
DJ: I think wrestling for $40
a night and eating at the
Waffle House three times a
day, wrestling every weekend at a flea market, then at a
state fair or a car dealership or
in barns, blade jobs, where
I cut my forehead with razor
blades...These days I never
question, Oh, do I deserve it?
Am I a real man? No.
SR: How accurate is The Wrestler? All that stuffs for real?
DJ: Its very accurate. I would
do blade jobs. I get a call once
from the WWE, saying, Vince
[McMahon] would like to see
you in Stamford. I went to
his office and he says, I
really think you have a lot of
potential, but youre not ready
for the WWE. You should go to
Memphis, Tennessee. Thats
where I want you to learn the
business. And as I was leaving, he said, You keep work-

Clockwise from top: Wrestling Hulk Hogan as the Rock

at WrestleMania in 2002; as retired athlete Spencer
Strasmore (with Rob Corddry) on HBOs Ballers; as a University
of Miami Hurricane defensive tackle in 1994.

ing hard, but dont go down

there and cut your fucking
forehead with razor blades,
you understand me?
In the 60s and 70s and
early 80s, the trainers would
grind you and eventually they
would break somethingthey
would break an ankle in ways
that it would heal. It was just
the way of the business, to ensure that you learned respect
for wrestling. It was crazy. My
dad [Rocky Johnson, a WWE
Hall of Fame grappler] didnt
break anything on me, but
he grinded me out every day
for months.
SR: Do you enjoy making movies as much as you enjoyed
wrestling?
DJ: Wrestling is intimate. You

The trainers would grind

you and eventually they
would break something
they would break an ankle
in ways that it would
heal. It was just the way of
the business, to ensure
that you learned respect
for wrestling.
16

ESQUIRE AUGUST 2015

can reach out and touch the

wrestlers. I dont get that
connection in movies, but the
impact is so much greater.
Youre able to craft a longer
career in movies. In wrestling,
theres a shelf life, and some
wrestlers dont pay attention
to the shelf life. Mickey
Rourkes character in The
Wrestlerthat was my dad,
that was my uncles, that was
so many members of my family. It was the only thing they
knew. And then they would
end up wrestling for a hundred
bucks, go to autograph signings for two hundred bucks.
SR: Did you feel self-doubt as
you were building your career
as an actor?
DJ: When I first came into acting, I had great opportunities
to make a decent movie. I had
a run there in 2005, 06, 07
for a long time it was Oh,
hes the best thing in the
movie thats not that good.
I started questioning: Did
I make the right choice?
Should I have stayed in wrestling a bit longer? And then
budgets became lower
and lower and the pay kinda
stayed the same and there
wasnt a lot of growth.
SR: You also got smaller.
Literally.
DJ: The big stars didnt look
like meand I didnt look like
them. There wasnt a blueprint or a model. Well, heres
a former football player who

once wrestled and hes this

height and this weight. Hes
black and Samoan and he has
tattoos....And then it was
slim down, stop working out
as much, get distance from
wrestling and the moniker of
the Rock. There were a lot of
changesthe people around
me at that time felt like it was
the best thing to do, but by
the way, I bought into it. I
embraced it. Well, like anything, when you start being
someone else, not being yourself, you may get lucky and it
may work for a little while,
but its gonna come back and
bite you in the ass eventually.
So there was a big moment
of clarity in about 2010I just
felt, Yeah, this isnt working. I
need to stop, readjust, reassess, and change everything
around meand I gotta take
one more shot, but at least
Im gonna take a shot with me
being myself.
SR: What do you weigh
these days?
DJ: Two-forty, 250, 260,
depending on the role. I think
for San Andreas I was 240.
But I think whats interesting
is when you finally make that
decision and clarity becomes
king in your life, the weight
doesnt become an issue.
Like, who gives a fuck how
much you weigh?! Just go
out there and put on a great
performance.
SR: That must be liberating.

You can practically smell it: Watch the Dwayne Johnson supercut by scanning here with Esquire2.
WorldMags.net

to make sure this happens

and lets go type of energy
comes from.
SR: I wonder if fatherhood
makes that feeling even more
pronounced.
DJ: Absolutely. I feel that way
for my little girl. I never want
her to experience that at all.
SR: Were you taken seriously
when you started transitioning into being an actor?
Did people think of you as a
lunkhead?
DJ: When I sit in these big
meetings with the head of
marketing, head of distribution, looking at the big boards
to figure out how were gonna
deliver the movie and where
were gonna go, where were
strong, where we need to
see some upticktheres not
much of an issue that can
come across my desk where I
really go, Wow, I dont know
how to handle that! Its like,
Ive been through all this
other shit before. I never quite
understood why if youre
successful in something, and
then you want to make the
transition to Hollywood, why
wouldnt you apply the same
discipline and processes
that you did with wrestling
and football? Which meant:
surround myself with great
acting coaches; definitely get
a good director; I need great
actors around me to help
me raise my game; I dont
know what the fuck Im doing.
I need great acting coaches,
I need good directors, I need
help. I have been told I have
potential. I think I do. Lets
give it a go. And that allows
more people to say, Okay,
lets give it a shot. Compared
to: I think Im gonna be
great. Im gonna make 30,
40 movies.
SR: Nobody whos ever
referred to themselves as
humble seems humble to me.
DJ: Good point.
SR: Am I gonna like Ballers
[currently on HBO]?
DJ: Youll get a kick out of it.
The guy, Spencer Strasmore,
is everything I dreamed of
being. I dreamed of being an
NFL player, All-Pro, making
money, buying my parents a
house, the whole thing, like
he has done.
SR: Thats delicious.
DJ: That is who I failed at
being! Thats the irony of it.
SR: The name of your production company is Seven Bucks
Production because you literally had seven bucks to your
name? Those stories always
seem apocryphal. Did you
really have only seven bucks?

WorldMags.net
What Dwayne is drinkin:
For information on
a beverage that looks
surprisingly like this
one, see page 36.

Working out has to have been

a way of life for you.
DJ: At a very young age, at
five, I was with my dad down
in the wrestling ring and in
the weight room, watching
all these guys wrestle, jack
iron all day. It was a different
world. Everything was dirty:
dirty gym, dirty mats. My dad
said, Im getting up at six;
youre gonna get up at six,
too. Im having my coffee; you
have your orange juice. Im
going to the gym; you come
to the gym with me. And
then on the mats, I would roll
around and these guys would
throw me around and wrestle
around with me. It was always
What you want? You gotta
get up in the morning, you
gotta get after it, you gotta
put in the work, you gotta
T- S H I R T B Y J O H N VA R VATO S .

sweat. Theres gonna be

heavy iron and theres gonna
be a lot of sweat, and its
gonna be dirty.
SR: Have you ever gone
wrong trusting your gut, trusting your instincts?
DJ: Ive never gone wrong
trusting my gut. It was really
the only thing that I had
going into acting. I didnt
have the background
Juilliard or performing-arts
school or anything like that.
You can get great people
around you, smart minds and
great resources, but its still
from here [points to heart].
Steven Spielberg has this
great quote: Moviemaking is
always about noise. Theres so
many voices that youve gotta
listen to. But youve always
got to pay attention to the

one voice thats in your gut

that always tells you its still
not good enough.
SR: That voice can do a lot
of damage.
DJ: There was a time in my
life when opportunities were
so few and far between they
were like little cracks in the
wall, and if one opportunity
came my way, I would scratch
and claw and bite and I would
do anything I could to make
sure that I grabbed that opportunity by the throat and I
did not let it go. Theyre a bit
more frequent these days, I
have more coming my way,
but I still look at it like its a
crack, and I attack it.Im a
long way away from ever getting evicted again, but man,
I think about that so much.
Thats where my weve got

WorldMags.net

CONTINUED

17

CONTINUED

When you start being

someone else, not being
yourself, you may get
lucky and it may work for
a little while, but its
gonna come back and
bite you in the ass
eventually. There was a
big moment in 2010...

WorldMags.net

DJ: I did. In 1995, I called my

old man when I landed in
Miami [after getting cut
from the Canadian Football
Leagues Calgary Stampeders] and I said, Dad, you gotta come get me. I didnt have
a car at that time. He drove in
his little truck from Tampa to
Miami, picked me up, and we
were on our way up I-75, the
famous Alligator Alley, and
I thought, Shit, how much
money do I even have? Pulled
out my wallet, and yeah, I
had a five, a one, and some
change. I remember thinking,
Fuck, all I have is seven bucks.
At that time I wanted so much
more. Warren Sapp had just
signed for millions of dollars
in the draft. He was the one
that actually beat me out of
my position [at Miami] two
and a half years earlier. Not to
begrudge him at all; were
still good buddies today and
Im very happy for him. But it
was like the success I wanted
so badly and worked so hard
for for years was happening
all around me to everyone
else but me. And Ill never
forget that. The term seven
bucks has a lot of meaning.
SR: I just watched a YouTube
video of you singing to
[former WWE manager] Vickie
Guerrero [in the ring]....You
have a very delicate voice
for a man who presents
physically the way you do.
DJ: Thank you. In Polynesian

culture, the men run 300, 350

pounds and the women are
even bigger. But Polynesian
men are known for singing in
a pitch that is soft falsetto
singing. It sounds amazing.
Thats just how they sing, at a
very high pitch in an octave
thats very falsetto and soft. I
fool them with my voice. Im
singing in Disneys next animated musical, called Moana.
SR: Has there been any
single special moment when
you knew youd made it as
an actor?
DJ: About three weeks ago,
Im here at the house and I get
a letterBeen enjoying your
movies over the years. Very
entertaining. I feel like Ive
really gotten to know you over
the years, most recently after
watching you host Saturday
Night Live. Great job. You continue to go for it. Proud of your
work and look forward to meeting you. Steven Spielberg.

SR: Whoa.
DJ: It took me back to being
just like a kid. I was so blown
away.
SR: In old clips of you wrestling, you have a line in the
ring: Rutherford B. Hayes,
bitch! Its one of the funniest
things Ive ever heard.
DJ: There was a time in the
WWE when it wasnt a publicly
traded company. It was a
great time. Because you flew
under the radar. No one was
covering it. We said whatever
we wanted. My writer and I
would challenge ourselves
every night: What is the most
insane, entertaining, fuckedup, crazy shit we can say
tonight in an entertaining
way? Maybe we could sing it;
maybe we can say it in a
nursery rhyme. Rutherford
B. Hayes, bitch!
SR: You used to say jabroni a
lot in the ring. I love that word.
DJ: When I was a kid, it was an

THE ESQUIRE DOSSIER

DWAYNE JOHNSON
Date of birth: May 2,
1972
Which makes him: 43
Aliases: The Rock;
D.J.; the Great
One; the Peoples
Champion; the Most
Electrifying Man in
All of Entertainment.
Birthplace: Hayward,
California
Kids: One; Simone
Alexandra, 13
WWE Hall of Famer
heritage: Grandfather
High Chief Peter
Maivia; father Rocky
Johnson.
A legacy celebrated
in: A traditional
Polynesian tattoo
spanning his back,
arm, and chest.
Which took: 60 hours
to complete.
Production

18

inside term that guys would

use. When wrestlers wanted
to have a private conversation
when fans were present,
they would start talking
carny because they used to
wrestle in carnivals. I thought
it was so cool. Jabroni was a
word that was always used in
the derogatory sense. Oh,
this jabroni, that jabroni. But
the Iron Sheik was famous
for saying the word constantly
backstage. Jabroni, jabroni,
jabroni. Around 1998, I
thought, Why cant I say it on
TV? So I started saying it
publicly, but the Iron Sheik
was known for it.
SR: You appear in The Sheik,
the new documentary about
the Iron Sheik. I didnt realize
how influential he was.
DJ: He was an incredible,
world-renowned wrestler. He
was a bodyguard for the
shah of Iran. Incredible life.
He was one of the guys who
took me under his wing and
bestowed some goooood
knowledge. And one of the
things that he told me was:
Keep your fucking mouth
shut when you come in. If
youre gonna be good in this
business, then learn how to
keep your mouth shut and
your ears open, and when
you get in the locker room,
you just listen to everybody
else. And it was great
advice. You can apply it
wherever you go.
SR: Hollywood, for instance.
DJ: These young bucks
come in and think they
know everything when they
really dont know shit. The
best thing you can do is be
quiet and open your ears. Let
everybody else talk.
SR: Anything else you want to
get off your chest?
DJ: Yeah. Ive lived with my
longtime girlfriend, Lauren
Hashian, going on, like,
eight, nine years now. Shes a
singer-songwriter. We spend
a lot of time with my daughter
in Florida, Simone, whos 13.
We do these stories and
we talk so much about the
business end, the success
end, but then Lauren isnt
mentioned and my daughter
isnt mentioned. I always like
making sure we find the
balance and my home life is
in there and Lauren Hashian
is in there and my daughter is
in there.
SR: Wise man.
DJ: You gotta get the better
half in there. With all the cool
shit and success that Ive
been lucky enough to get?
That doesnt happen unless
the home life is solid.

company: Seven
Bucks Production
Which he runs alongside: His ex-wife,
mother of his child,
and close friend,
Dany Garcia.
And is named after:
The amount of cash
in his wallet the day
he was cut from
the Calgary Stampeders in 1995, effectively
ending his football
career.
Which opened the
door to: A wrestling
career boasting seven
WWE Championship
reigns, five World Tag
Team Championship
reigns, and two
Intercontinental
Championship reigns.
WWE catchphrases:
Layeth the smacketh

ESQUIRE AUGUST 2015

down; Know your

role and shut your
mouth!; If ya smell
what the Rock
is cookin...
Typical film role:
Hulking, shirtless
action hero.
Conspicuous outlier:
Derek the Tooth Fairy
in 2010s Tooth Fairy.
Which, presumably:
Played a part in his
2011 decision
to ditch his talent
agency and turn his
career around.
And not that hes
taking credit, but:
His first film in the
Fast and the Furious
franchisethat years
Fast Fivenearly
doubled the boxoffice numbers of
the series previous

offering.
Has the charm worn
off? Furious 7 became
the fastest film in
history to reach
$1 billion in worldwide
box-office earnings.
So, no.
Further miscellaneous credentials: A
B.A. in general studies;
a ministers license in
the state of California.
Which he put to good
use by: Officiating a
surprise wedding this
year for one of his
biggest fans.
Next steps in cementing his A-list status:
His new series,
Ballers, now airing on
HBO; a 2016 comedy
alongside Kevin
Hart; and, of course,
Furious 8.

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net
THE HEAD SAYS
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TV

guests drunk and theyll irt

and dance.

WorldMags.net
5

19

16

9. T H E C O M E D I A N S ( F X )

Skinny straight man, fat

doofus. Still works.

1 0. P E E P S H OW ( H U LU )

Jez: Zahra says we have only

one thing to fear and thats
fear itself. Mark: What
about losing all your money?
Or shitting yourself in public? Or the tabloid press
mistakenly outing you as a
pedo[phile]? Or Alzheimers?
Or all of those things plus
youre drowning?

21

E S Q U I R E I N V E S T I GAT E S : T E L E V I S I O N

The 26 Most
Watchable TV Shows
Not for recapping. Not for reckoning with. For watching. Like old times.*
1. T H E O LY M P I C
100-METER FINALS
(NBC)

The only sporting event

everyone understands.

2. S I L I C O N VA L L E Y
(HBO)

Jobs was a poser. He didnt

even write code. Richard
Hendricks (Thomas Middleditch, left)
3. A N T I Q U E S
ROA D S H OW ( P B S )

People are monetarily

rewarded for their ancestors
tangential relationships
with famous people and for
shopping at garage sales.
4. CAT F I S H : T H E T V
S H OW ( M T V )

Better than the movie.

5. H A N N I B A L ( N B C )

Better than the movie.

20

ESQUIRE AUGUST 2015

6. FA RG O ( F X )

Not as good as the movie, but

still pretty good.
7. N A K E D A N D A F R A I D
( D I S C OV E RY )

A nude coed duo spends three

deeply unarousing and inspiring weeks in the wilderness,
turning a cynical premise into
an incredibly entertaining
journey to the poles of human
experienceyou will see people go from starving in a primitive shelter to almost weeping with joy at the discovery of
a grub nest. The survivalists
relationship, like a sexless version of romantic love, transitions from initial euphoria to
resentment of the other persons aws to learning to live

11. A R R A N G E D ( F Y I )

A teenage Gypsy couple

models marital commitment.
12. FORENSIC FILES (HLN)

If you get married, your body

will eventually be dumped in
a marsh off the N. J. Turnpike.

together for mutual benet.

After an episode, depressed
by the realization that you
couldnt survive 21 days in a
four-star hotel room with another person, you will think, I
should learn how to make re
with sticks.
1 3. A DV E N T U R E T I M E
( CA RTO O N N E T WO R K )

Like someone animated

the imaginary world you
created with your neighbors
when you were a child. Or
a particularly vivid mushroom trip.
8. T H E G R A H A M N O RTO N
S H OW ( B B C A M E R I CA )

14. M AST E RC H E F
J U N I O R ( FOX )

Graham Norton hosts a latenight show the way you

throw a good party: Get the

The most earnest show

on TV.
1 5. A M E R I CA N
M AST E RS ( P B S )

Imperative to
watch live.
31%
On HBO.
20%
An episode
in which two
characters
become closer
after being
trapped together
overnight.
16%

CR I TE R I A

Guest
appearance by
John Hawkes.
8%
Vital quest for
cosmically
meaningless
goal.
23%
Theme-song
hummability.
2%

You will know more about

history after watching.
1 6. D RU N K H I STO RY
( C O M E DY C E N T R A L )

You will know more about

history after watching.
1 7. F R I DAY N I G H T T Y K E S
( E S Q U I R E N E T WO R K )

Would be included on the

WorldMags.net
*Esquire cannot guarantee that no lessons will be learned upon viewing.

list even if it werent in our

mutual interest to do so.

WorldMags.net

1 8. F ROZ E N P L A N E T
( D I S C OV E RY )

David Attenborough narrates

polar-bear humping in his
bedtime-story murmur.
19. BOBS BURGERS (FOX)

In one episode, the son forms

a brief, profound friendship
with an electronic Japanese
toilet, voiced by Jon Hamm.
The only worthwhile family
sitcom.

20. E M P I R E ( FOX )

The best show that this many

people watch.
21. H OW TO G E T AWAY
WITH MURDER (ABC)

The second best.

2 2. T H E FA L L ( N E T F L I X )

As engaging as porn, except

the foreplay is a detective
chasing a serial killer around
Belfast, and they never actually have sex.
2 3. O U T L A N D E R ( STA R Z )

Porn.

24. GA M E O F T H RO N E S
(HBO)

Peter Dinklage.
2 5. I N S I D E A M Y
S C H U M E R ( C O M E DY
CENTRAL)

Amy Schumer.
2 6. M A RC H M A D N E S S
( C B S/ T B S )

Verne Lundquist.
I L LU ST R AT I O N BY O L I V E R M U N DAY

CORDLESSNESS:
AN UPDATE
THE ALLURE OF NONCABLE TELEVISION SERVICES IS THEIR SIMPLICITY.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THAT GOES AWAY?

By JENNINGS BROWN
I havent owned a TV set since college, and Ive
never set up cable. This will probably flabbergast
people over 31, who, on average, consume 80
percent of their TV on a TV. But Im not alone.
Half of people under the age of 31 watch most
of their TV on a device that is not a TV.
Theres much ado in the cable industry about
my cord-cutting millennial kin, who are ditching traditional packages. The truth is many of
them never had cords to begin with. Im in the
group that Sling TV CEO Roger Lynch calls cord
nevers. If I want to watch something, I turn to a
friend, a bar, my phone, or my tablet, and I probably always willespecially now that there are several new services, like Sling, designed to appeal
to people like me, who dont want to commit to or
pay for the increasingly pricey traditional cable.
According to the FCC, the average price for
expanded basic cable in 2013 was $66.61 a
month ($799.32 a year). From 1995 to 2014, the
price of expanded cable increased by more than
double the rate of inflation (5.9 percent versus
2.4 percent). This is largely because TV operators kept adding channels, making the bundles bigger and pricier. Then networks that air
sports and live events started charging more
because they draw a large captive audience.
If regulators approve the AT&T merger with
DirecTV and the Charter merger with Time Warner Cable, then matters will likely get worse for
customers. There arent many industries that
have reached maturity without differentiation
and segregation of the market, says Slings
Lynch, but the paid-TV industry has. Or did until Hulu, Netflix, and YouTube fragmented their
viewership. People are putting their own content puzzle together. They think, I want a little bit
from here. I want a little bit from there.
Sling allows you to watch 22 channels on

your phone, tablet, computer, or TV for $20

per month ($3 cheaper than the average cost
of traditional basic cable); its inclusion of ESPN
and ESPN2 has made it a hit among sports fans.
Subscribers can also add other sports, movie,
news, lifestyle, and kids channels, each package costing $5 extra.
Sony PlayStation Vue is more similar to a
traditional cable package. It requires a PlayStation device ($400), after which the standard
$50-per-month package provides more than 50
channels, the $60 version adds regional and Big
Ten sports, and the $70 includes more than two
dozen additional minor channels. Although its
price is closer to traditional cables for far fewer
channels, Vue offers a slick interface, unlimited
DVR storage, no restrictions on overlapping recordings, and no contracts or cancellation fees.
Our whole goal here is to take friction out of the
TV experience, says Eric Lempel, vice-president
of Sony Network Entertainment. Weve also taken friction out of commitments.
And then there are the others: HBO Now ($15
per month), CBS All Access ($6), Amazon Prime
Instant Video ($8.25), and Netflix and Hulu Plus
(both $8). And Apple TV will likely launch a package of 25 channels for $30 to $40.
All of which is, well, a little overwhelming. It almost makes me consider getting cable. But then
I think about choosing a provider and a package, calling to create an account, waiting on
the installer, dealing with ugly black boxes and
cords and even uglier interfacesand, really,
Im just afraid of commitment and know that
when my fees inevitably increase, Ill be too lazy
to call and put up a fight.
Screw it. Im just going to binge-watch Wet Hot
American Summer: First Day of Camp on my iPad
before anyone spoils it on Twitter.

WorldMags.net

21

TV: AN ESQUIRE REPORT

WorldMags.net

How to
Watch TV Like an
American
Youre never alone when you tune in with 300 million friends
BY TOM JUNOD
Call me shallow: I
was so #TeamBritt,
even though Im normally a #TeamKaitlyn kind
of guy. I wasnt for Britt just because she is hotter than Kaitlyn. I
was for Britt because she was more
committed than Kaitlyn. She kept hoping
that shed be wife material. She said that
at rst she wanted to be the Bachelorette;
now she needed to be. That was touching.
Of course, having never watched The Bachelorette, I didnt know that Britt was a notorious schemer. I didnt even know what
everyone on Twitter seemed to knowthat
she didnt like taking showers. . . .
But then, there was a lot I didnt know
about watching television. It wasnt simply that I hated reality TV. It wasnt simply
that I was one of those guys who watched
one prestige show a season, and only one
show. It wasnt simply that when I bingewatched, I typically did so alone, long after
everyone else had binge-watched. It was
that I viewed television watching itself as
an isolating activity. I had grown up being
told that TV was the harbinger of our fragmentation, the rst technological engine of
22

ESQUIRE AUGUST 2015

Americas atomization. We used to talk to

one another at the dinner table! We used
to go to movie theaters, where we sat together in the dark, laughing and crying as
one! Then TV wormed its way into our living rooms and all we did was stare at the
screen, eating chips and getting fat. We used
to be great. Now we sucked. Thanks, TV.
It never occurred to me that I might be
doing it wrong until I called a friend to discuss the problematic third season of House
of Cards.
House of Cards was four months ago,
she said.
But isnt that the whole thing about
TV now? You can watch it whenever you
want?
You can watch it whenever you want,
she said. But you can only talk about it
when everybody else is talking about it.
She began to worry about me. She didnt
think I needed to get out more. She thought
I needed to get in moreand change how I
watched the tube. People dont watch TV
alone anymore, she said. They watch it
communallyto engage each other. Although she often attended viewing parties, thats not what she was talking about.

She was talking about watching TV with a

sense of others watching. She was talking
about TV changing from the cause of our
fragmentation to its corrective.
And so I watched. For one week, I watched
TV every day, live, the way its supposed to
be watched.
I have always wondered how TV has
survived the Internet when other forms of
art and entertainment havent. You can go
on Twitter for a week and not know that
something called music exists. But people still talk about TV, and not just because
it abounds in great dark dramas. In many
ways its still as schlocky as ever. But now
if you watch Dancing with the Stars or The
Bachelorette, the Internet tells you the
same thing it tells everyone about everything: Youre not alone. On the night of The
Bachelorettes premiere, former Bachelorette contestant Chris Bukowski tweeted
the following: If the guys dont pick
Kaitlyn then I will lose all faith in humanity.
He got 250 retweets and 533 favorites. I
always thought America celebrated one
communal-viewing experience a year. But
if youre #TeamKaitlyn, you get to make every Monday night Super Bowl Sunday.
And if you obsessed over the Mad Men
nale or saying goodbye to Davewell,
Im not sure if I connected to other Americans by watching TV with them. But I sure
felt more American, and when I watched
Letterman for the last time he was more
American, too. Here was a man who survived more than three decades on TV by
incorporating the cultural criticism of TV
into his TV show. Here was a man who
knew that what united the people who
watched him night after night was the suspicion that they really ought to be doing
something else. Cranky Dave, cynical Dave,
ironic Dave, self-aware and self-lacerating
Daveand now thousands of Americans
went on Twitter to bid him farewell, as if,
all along, he had been Mister Rogers, and
we had been waiting only for a chance to
say #thankyou.

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I L LU ST R AT I O N BY O L I V E R M U N DAY

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TV: AN ESQUIRE REPORT

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The End of Writing

in Modern TV
An era is over
By STEPHEN MARCHE
Television is reinventing itself so thoroughly
and so rapidly that even the
most profound changes, inconceivable a few years ago, go almost
unnoticed. Take the new season of
True Detective, airing Sunday nights at
9:00 on HBO. As far as I know, its the rst
series in American history, or any other for
that matter, with an entirely separate cast,
a new director, and a stand-alone story line
for its second season. Only the creator behind it and the title above it are the same.
The tacit acknowledgment is that more
than a continuous narrative or an ensemble of characters, True Detective is a style.
That style, an overblown, self-conscious,
cosmically cool pessimism, is what people
will return to watch this summer.
True Detective is only the spearhead of
a mode of television that relies on sensibility far more than it does on narrative or
24

ESQUIRE AUGUST 2015

character. With the success of True Detectives spiritual siblings, Fargo (same setting, virtually all different characters) and
American Horror Story (different genre,
similar cast), the anthology show is more
popular now than it has been since The
Twilight Zone. You dont tune in to see

how things turn out or to hang out with

the characters you love. You tune in to
immerse yourself in a feeling, in a look.
The newfound dominance of style on
television comes at the end of a longstanding obsession with who makes what
we watch on television, and the trends
are intertwined. The cult of the showrunnera once obscure gure known strictly to industry insidershas been building
for ten years into a whole new iconology.
Matthew Weiner and David Simon occupy the cultural space once inhabited by
the likes of Norman Mailer and John Updikebeing called upon to comment on
political events they are only tangentially
connected to. Obama interviewed Simon.
Even Vince Gilligan did a spot on Conan.
Creators from all other media are hustling to join the televisual gold rush, carrying their various sensibilities with
them. Alfonso Cuarn, who is an outand-out cinematic genius, cocreated the
disappointing Believe in 2014. And Steven
Soderbergh, who has retired from making movies but is so movie-besotted that
he cant stop himself from re-editing other peoples, will begin the second season
of The Knick in October.
That show encapsulates the promise
and danger of the new breed of stylish
television perfectly. Under Soderbergh,
who is the director of photography and
the editor, as well as the director, The

THE PRETTIEST SHOWS ON TELEVISION

THE KNICK
Soderbergh does
all of the camerawork and
none of the writing.

TRUE DETECTIVE
To quote Rust Cohle, the
dialogue is in a muddy
swamp here, man.

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HANNIBAL
Much of the acclaim
lavished on the show is for
its food styling.

I L LU ST R AT I O N BY O L I V E R M U N DAY

Knick makes medicine visceral: the

sight of surgeons cutting open a womb,
the stickiness of their bare ngers as they
gauze the scalpeled esh. You can almost
smell the stench of the septicemia. And
yet The Knick is really, when you get right
down to it, just another medical drama
doctors screaming that they need their
instruments, administrators squabbling,
workplace racial tension, sexual secrets,
drug addiction, fascination with weird
techniques. Nothing you havent seen
before on Greys Anatomy. If it werent
Soderberghian, would anyone care?
Its a new rule: The more stylish the
show, the more clichd the story it tells
the narcotic visual sensibility of Hannibal hides the fact that it delivers the same
serial-killer plot everybody has seen before, and many times. The greatness of the
golden age of television lies in the novelty
of the stories it told. The Wire was a copsand-robbers show that was also incisive
social commentarya ludicrous idea before it became what it was; The Sopranos,
equally bizarre, was a gangster-family sitcom. And yet the withdrawal of emphasis from the narrative has been swift. Mad
Men started as a study of secret identity
and the possibilities of historical reconstruction and devolved into a moody vehicle for GIFs in its nal season.
The source of the change isnt hard to
gure out. Because Netix releases all
of a seasons shows at once, it requires a
greater sense of aesthetic cohesion. But
the way Netix chooses its shows also has
altered the medium: Famously, it requires
no pilots. It just picks up whatever David
Fincher or Jenji Kohan or Ricky Gervais
or Mitch Hurwitz offers and knows who
will watch what from past behavior. The
numbers allow Netix to nd the exactly correct pose; there is a preexisting current of fandom that it can simply fall into
and ride out. Obviously theres a danger
here, because its exactly that algorithmic
spirit that made bland blockbusters the
curse of our summers. When art becomes
predictable to the suits, it eventually becomes predictable to everybody else, too.
Something is gained, however, as much
as is lost. Maybe television isnt supposed
to offer all-swallowing communion with
an artist, like a lm or a novel does. Maybe
the new stylish shows are ghting against
the basic fact of their genre: that television
is supposed to be art only accidentally. But
with the references to Nietzsche, the complex literary allusions to The King in Yellow,
and the Great Acting Duel between McConaughey and Harrelson, who really cares
what True Detective is all about anyway?

WorldMags.net
THE NFL DRAFT:

A POSTMORTEM
With its last-minute trades and backroom deals, the NFL draft can be overwhelming
(and occasionally mind-numbing) to the untrained eye. So we talked to Sunny Shah,
a Wall-Streeter-turned-NFL-agent profiled on Esquire Networks new documentary
series, The Agent (premiering July 21 at 10:00 P.M.), before and after draft day to get
some predictions and find out why even the pros dont always call it right.
J U L I A BL AC K
SUNNYS PREDICTION
Jameis Winston and
Marcus Mariota (both QBs)
will be drafted first, to
the Buccaneers and
Titans, respectively.

Six wide receivers will be

drafted in the first round.

There will be at least

three draft-day trades in
the first round.

Leaked information
about players off-thefield behavior will affect
their prospects.

Teams will use top draft

picks to send a message to
slacking veteran players.

The Agent will be as vital

as Jerry Maguire.

WAS HE RIGHT?

WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

YES

Since the new collectivebargaining agreement means firstround rookies dont get paid like
they used to, drafting a top quarterback is less risky than ever.

YES

This groupAmari, White, Parker,

Agholor, Perriman, and Dorsett
definitely has talent, but it
will be interesting to see how it
stacks up to last years unbelievable class, which included Sammy
Watkins, Odell Beckham Jr.,
and Kelvin Benjamin.

NO

It wasnt until the middle of round

one that lower-ranked teams
started trading up to get top players whod been snubbed. In one
of those trades, the Broncos gave
three picks to the Lions in order
to snag Shane Ray, whose
marijuana citation had burned
his top-ten prospects.

DEPENDS

Lael Collins, a projected firstround pick, fell out of the draft

entirely after his name was floated
in a murder investigation, while
Jameis Winston managed to
hold on to the top spot despite
rape allegations.

YES

Vets like Rams running back Zac

Stacy took the hint when
their teams drafted highly ranked
rookies into their position
Stacy tweeted Yikes before
demanding to be traded.

UNCLEAR

The show lacks Tom Cruise

screen time, but the caliber of the
agents rosters, which include
players such as Adam Pacman
Jones and Lamarcus Joyner, might
just make up for it.

Watch the trailer for The Agentscan here with the Esquire2 app.
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WorldMags.net
THE ESQUIRE MANUAL

No. 84: The Beach

This month, how to negotiate with predatory seagulls, partially naked

neighbors, the tide, and cops in shorts

R E GA R D I N G
NUDITY

PLACES YOU CAN ASK PEOPLE TO PUT SUNSCREEN ON YOU IN DESCENDING ORDER OF APPROPRIATENESS: Back Shoulders Pecs Nose Lips

Partial: A given.
The beach is
a place where
strangers roam
and recline near
one another in
nylon underwear.
Full: In only the
most specific of circumstances. Nude
beach. Seclusion.
Darkness. A rogue
wave stealing your
shortsat which
point, avoid children and signal to a
friend to bring you
a towel, but not in
a way that attracts
the attention of a
lifeguard.

VISUAL RULE
The ultimate trip to the beach is a serendipitous one. A grand and unknown force of the gracious

universe draws you to the shoreline on a magnicent cloudless day. You dig your toes into the soft,
grainy sand, plant yourself, and throw away your cares.
Theres no need to overachieve. Dont bring a U-Haul full of stuff; take no more than you can comfortably carry. Leave home the portable WiFi speakers and the cute little red wagon with balloon
tires you ordered online. A couple beach chairs, some towels, a boogie board, a thermal lunch box,
plenty of sunblockthats all you need. Listen to the sound of the waves, the scree of the oceangoing birds. Keep your snacks secure lest you nd yourself cast in a Hitchcock remake. And pour
your alcohol into a water bottle. Cops in shorts do write tickets; the nes can be high. Smoking of
any kind is usually illegal, too.
In general, personal conduct should resemble elevator behaviorkeep your party conned to
your own encampment, unless youre visiting an aggressively social venue like the Hamptons, in
which case the rules of the singles bar apply. And remember: Even when youre wearing sunglasses, women know youre staring.
Most important, try to relax; allow the forces of nature to work their magic. Let the buoyant water
envelop you. Bake dry beneath the sun; baste and turn.
MIKE SAGER

TEQUILA

BELLY
BUTTONS

Okay

Not okay

VISUAL RULE: FOLLOWING

A LWAYS
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ESQUIRE AUGUST 2015

SOMETIMES

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NEVER
I L LU ST R AT I O N S BY P E T E R O U M A N S K I

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THE ESQUIRE MANUAL

PA R K I N G LOT

W H Y YO U
DONT FEED THE
S E AG U L L S

F
E

THINGS YOU CAN DO IN THE WATER IN DESCENDING ORDER OF APPROPRIATENESS: Float Surf Urinate Wear a T-shirt Play dead

When you feed seagulls,

the easy calorie becomes
their preferred food source.
They start to specialize.
They figure out who has
the food, where the food is
kept, in what type of container. They become tame
enough to approach humans. They peck through
plastic bags. Some target
children because theyre
smaller and less intimidating. Others fly at people so
that they drop their french
fries. Gulls watch other
gulls. If one finds a food
source, the rest will follow.
To quote an esteemed
ornithologist, Kevin J. McGowan, Dont help a good
bird go bad.
As for healthare they a
risk to humans? No. Does it
harm the seagulls? Not really. Though all birds are

Netting
Cut it out and
feel the clinging;
leave it in and
feel as if a crab
were playing
the castanets
in your shorts.
Both result in
discomfiting
fussing in front
ofwell, people.
That is, unless
you invest about
$80 in something with highquality nylon
described with
terms like
microfiber
and quick-dry
technology.
Until then,
choose clinging.
Quick-dry nylon trunks
by Bonobos.

30

ESQUIRE AUGUST 2015

NO-MANS-LAND

OCEAN

TERRITORIES

Towel positioning, tent pitching, and boom-box listening in crowded vistas

Beachgoers share a responsibility when staking
their claim: Look behind you. Even rst comers constructing the front line should do this
(though, yes, after they account for high tide,
which arrives 50 minutes after it did the day
before). They will see that if they leave gaps in
the front line [A]about four towel widths, at
leastthen the second and even third rows can
still get a view. It applies to second comers, too;
they shouldnt position themselves centered behind the gap left by the rst comers, but instead
stagger some. If they do this, slanted lines form
[B], along which several tiers can see the shore.
There are a few other factors, too. Like the
height of your setup. The higher you are, the

How to Build
a Somewhat Less
Destructible
Sand Castle
WITH PROFESSIONAL SAND
SCULPTOR BERT ADAMS

harder it is to see, so chair-sitters [C] and umbrella-baskers [D] should situate themselves a
few rows back. Big ol tents [E]? Too wide and
too tallto the back. And boom-box listeners,
whose noise creates a disruption as large as anything, should remain in the parking lot [F]. Unless
they intend to play a CD of ocean waves crashing,
though that seems best left to their hotel room.
How to Insert Your Umbrella
Its not the force of the thrust into the sand,
its the motion of the rocking back and forth
one performs in order to let the sand pack
around the base, creating a powerful (and
essential) counterforce.

> Build as the tide goes out so

you can get close to the waters edge.
> Get a five-gallon bucket and
cut out the bottom so it has two
openings. Turn it upside down.
> Fill with three inches of sand,
then cover with three inches of
water. The surface tension of
the water holds the grains together. Swirl, surrounding each
granual with water so that it
bonds to all its neighbors.
> Add more water and sand
in three-inch increments, always swirling, until the bucket
is full of sand. (The extra water
will drain.)
> Dig a ridge around the edge
with your finger, fill it with wa-

WorldMags.net

ter, and tap the bucket on the

side to loosen. Slide off the
bucket. You have your base.
> Pillars: Take a piece of threeto four-inch PCV tubing. Repeat what you did to make the
base. Place the full tube where
you want a pillarthe sand will
stay inside the tube if theres no
water on top. To free the column, top with water, tap the
side, and slide off.
> Details: Find something with
a flat edge. Instead of making straight cuts, angle your
tool to carve into the sand you
want to remove. Mist the area
youre about to cut with water
to prevent deep cracks. Blow
away residual sand.
I L LU ST R AT I O N S BY C H R I S P H I L P OT

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WorldMags.net
Our
Books
Lie
Believe me. Or dont.
By BENJAMIN PERCY
We havent been this paranoid since the Vietnam/
Watergate eraand no wonder.
Drones whir through the air. The
NSA eavesdrops on phone calls. The
police say one thing, a shaky cell-phone
video says another. My neighbor les his taxes
and the IRS informs him he already has, the refund sent to a post-ofce box on the other side of
the country. Weve been Snowdenizedwe dont
trust the people were supposed to trustand our
stories reect this age of anxiety and distrust: The
rst season of HBOs True Detective resonated with
audiences because of its splintered point of view.
Showtimes The Affair employed a similar structure,
though in this case you couldnt trust what you saw or heard. And
now comes a slew of fall books with narrators and structures as
(possibly) unreliable as the White Houses recently questioned
(Come on, really?) version of the Osama bin Laden raid.
Lauren Groffs new novel, [1] Fates and Furies (Riverhead, $28),
is the story of a marriage. Fittingly binary in its design, the rst half
gives us the husbands perspective, the second half the wifes. She
has a very different view of what has happened between them, challenging and complicating everything we have read. In Ben McPhersons [2] A Line of Blood (William Morrow, $26), a close-knit family

ished woman and a police investigation. And it also kaleidoscopes

its perspectives, in this case among three characters, the most
notable of them Rachel, who is wonderfully messyshe drinks
too much and suffers memory lapses and pines creepily after her
ex. The deeper we go, the murkier the truth.
These stories would be compelling but familiar if told credibly
and in a standard chronological design. But their unreliable narrators and nonlinear format make the audience lean forward. We
become detectives ourselves, piecing together gaps and reconciling contradictions, debating the plausibility of different theories.

leads to a murder investigation,

and the husband, wife, and son all
have something to hide from the
reader, the police, and one another.
This years big book[3] The
Girl on the Train (Riverhead, $27),
by Paula Hawkinshas been successfully marketed as the next
Gone Girl. It too involves a vanSENTENCE OF THE MONTH (EGYPT EDITION)

Several times I have put an imaginary tape

recorder inside the mind of someone I encountered on Tahrir: What is the captain sitting on top of his tank thinking? Is he thinking
about his wife who no longer wants to make

32

ESQUIRE AUGUST 2015

love to him, the possibility of koshari for

lunch...how many tightly packed people a
tank shell would actually kill? What does the
fourteen-year-old slum kid think with his hair
gelled into spikes and a concrete brick in his

hand? Is his heart filled with the great joy of

revolutionary fervor or is he calculating how
to steal my mobile phone? From Circling
the Square: Stories from the Egyptian Revolution (Ecco, $27), by Wendell Steavenson.

Always Be Readingscan this page with Esquire2 for purchase links to these books.
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WorldMags.net

haveKINDLE willTRAVEL
@ ANASBARROS, ISTANBUL |

Amazon asked me to take the Kindle Paperwhite

with me on my next trip. I found my way up to the rooftops to read Kafka on
the Shore. Its a book I keep coming back to because, like this beautiful city,
it means something new to me each time I visit.
Follow more journeys on Instagram @ AMAZONKINDLE

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WorldMags.net
Funny*Joke
from a Beautiful Woman
AS TOLD BY ANNALEIGH ASHFORD
WHAT HAPPENED WHEN the drum kit fell off the cliff? It went ba-dum-chh!
was more like performance art. These days, Ashford has graduated from artistic exotic dancing to artistic public brawling: She
and her actor husband have gotten into the habit of running lines
from one of their favorite plays, Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,
on the subway. If you catch us shouting on the F train, were not
fighting, were just practicing. We can only hope the next interruption to our morning commute is so charming.
J U L I A BL AC K

LO OK FO R OU
SP EC IA L OC TO BE R RIS

SU E

TH E 1,0 00 TH
IS SU E OF

ON NE W SS
SE PT EM BE R TA ND S
15
YO UR CO PY . RE SE RV E
NO
GE T 70 % OF W AN D
NE W SSTA ND F TH E
PR IC
ES QU IR E.CO E AT
M/
SU BS CR IB E

cannot
*Esquire
guarantee
that this joke
will be funny
to everyone.

34

ESQUIRE AUGUST 2015

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PHOTOGRAPH BY CHRIS MCPHERSON

To watch videos and see extra photos of Annaleigh Ashford, scan this page with the free Esquire2 app.

ABOUT THE JOKESTER: Even when shes not racking up Tony

nominations on Broadway (two so far) or starring as prostituteturned-accountant Betty Dimello on Showtimes Masters of Sex,
Annaleigh Ashford has a tendency toward the theatrical. As a college student in New York City, she skipped a typical work-study job
to go-go dance on the Lower East Side, where she was prophetically christened with the stage name Hollywood Starr. But it
wasnt like thumpa-thumpa, club go-go dancing, she insists. It

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An Irish
bartender
named Madden
invented this
drink around
1930 at the
Turf Bar in
Tijuana, when
he grabbed the
wrong bottle.
Genius.

The margarita got Americans drinking tequila. Thats as close to a settled fact
as drink history can come. But (as holds true
for just about every categorical statement of this
kind) its not the whole story. Before the margaritawhich rst saw print in the pages of this magazine
in December 1953there were more than a few brave souls
who liked their tequila, despite its (mostly undeserved) nasty reputation. There was also the Tequila Daisy, which served as
the margaritas John the Baptist, as it were, preparing American
drinkers for the good news to follow. Even more, it may have actually spawned the margarita, as one of the ways to make a Daisy,
an American drink of the 1870s, involved citrus juice and orange
liqueur, and daisy in Spanish is margarita.
That possible margarita connection has in fact almost completely overwhelmed the original Tequila Daisy. Thats a shame, since
made properly its a delightful, refreshing drink that slides down
the throat like buttered honey while still letting you taste the tequila. That made properly is the problem. For a drink that was
pretty widely knownthere was even a B-24 named after it during
World War IIits remarkably mysterious. For whatever reason,
36

ESQUIRE AUGUST 2015

TEQUILA DAISY

it didnt appear in a real cocktail book until 1958.

Shake well with ice:
The 1958 version is refresh> 2 oz 100 percent agave
ing
enough, in a simple sort
reposado tequila
of way. But further rummag> oz fresh-squeezed lime juice
> oz artisanal/natural grenadine
ing through old newspapers
Strain into 8-oz highball glass
and Mexican drink ephemera
full of cracked ice. Top off with
1 oz chilled sparkling water.
discloses that in the Tequila
Stir briefly; garnish, if you like
Daisys heyday there was a
garnishing, with lime wheel; and
add a straw.
great deal of variation in how it
Optional but recommended:
was made: with lemon or lime
Add 1 dash absinthe and
strain instead into a chilled
juice; with cherry brandy incocktail glass, adding only
stead of grenadine; with the
oz sparkling water.
soda, without the soda; with
chipped ice or rocks or no ice at all; some even turned it into a
straight-up cocktail and threw in a dash of absinthe.
On a hot summer afternoon, we like it as a tall drink with ice
and soda, as simple as possible. Before dinner, though, we kinda
prefer the cocktail version, but lightened up with a little splash of
soda. Either way, the Tequila Daisy is an excellent reminder that
even in the world of drinks, progress comes with its own costs.

Watch, listen, share, and morescan any page with the free Esquire2 app.
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WATCH US
DELIVER
MORE
PAJAMA
TIME.
Easier ways to ship from home with our
free scheduled Package Pickup service.*

*For details on free Package Pickup, visit usps.com/pickup.

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All Rights Reserved. The Eagle Logo is among
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Private browsing:
Much more
discreet and no
loss of quality
upon rewatching.

Sex
with Stacey Woods
My wife and I
watched porn
together when we
started dating,
but we tried it the
other night after
eight years of
marriage and
it was totally
awkward. Why
would things feel
so weird now?
My God, its happened:
Youve progressed past porn.
Weve never seen this before.
I mean, weve envisioned it,
and theories abound about
what might cause ithave
you been eating too much
kale? were you listening to
NPR at the time?but nonetheless its fascinating.
My theory is that it has to
do with the shape your lives
have taken these eight long
years: a sort of impenetrable,
suffocating bell curve that
does not allow porn or perhaps all joy to thrive. In other words, your sex life has
dwindled, surmises feminist-porn pioneer Candida
Royalle. (She surmised it, not
me.) Aggressive research on
both your parts is what she
38

ESQUIRE AUGUST 2015

advocates until you nd the

kind of carnal entertainment
that speaks to you. Maybe
you could even do like a Siskel-and-Ebert-type thing,
she suggests. But I dont
recommend that. Ive played
S&E before, and it can get
pretty nasty. In case your
wife lags on her end, you can
pick up something or things
THINGS THAT
DO NOT REQUIRE
DISCLOSURE
Your middle name.
Your dream last night.
That youve never
seen Titanic.
That the reason youve
never seen Titanic
is seeing Kate Winslet
with someone else
hurts you so.
That the porn you
actually want to
watch together is the
Titanic parody.
That youre totally
sober. No, really.
A hangover.

you think shell like. Remember that the woman is going

to be more says Royalle,
breaking off before she says
annoying. She wants a
scenario, she wants context,
she wants to know why these
people are together. Its a
little more complex. So
probably anything with
Toni Collette is ne. Until
then, youre free to view
porn during your personal
time or to disregard it entirely. Outside the San Fernando
Valley, I dont think youre
even required to watch it,
and a small monthly gift to
your local pornographer
should alleviate any lingering guilt you might have.

At what point in the

dating process should
I disclose that Ive
done time in prison? It
was for a white-collar
crime, but still.
My advice is probably of no
use here, since most of my
readers meet and date in prison, but ex-white-collar felon and current felon and nonfelon consultant (oh, thats
a real job; check LinkedIn)

Justin Paperny thinks you

should be quick about
it, similar to how you were in
prison. Indeed, dropping it
before the wine is the most
efcient and cost-effective
way, but if you dont intend
to break the law with your
datethat is, if he or she isnt
part of whatever heist or
scheme youre currently
planningyou might let it
brew for a while. To get that
piece of information early
on, says New York sex therapist Ursula Ofman, will
certainly be prejudicial and
problematic. And I think at
least one of those is illegal.
(Youd know.)
When you do confess, Id
lead with the white-collar
aspect of your crime, emphasizing its whiteness and
crispness, and stressing any
relevant details: Was it madeto-measure? On Savile Row,
perhaps? How are the stays?
Are they stiff? Do they taper?
Your dates reaction should
rise and fall in proportion to
the value of the shirt. (There
is a theorem that proves
this, but it escapes me just
now.) And though theres no
law against withholding
this information, I wouldnt
wait too long. When she
notices you eat with your
arm around your food,
shell know somethings up.
Got a sex question of your
own? E-mail it to us at sex@
esquire.com.

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How do you Very Perry?

Over the months of April and May, Esquire and Perry Ellis hosted a
contest to find champions of distinguished style on Instagram. The ask?
Simple: show us your Very Perry style for a chance to be featured in
Esquire and win a $250 wardrobe upgrade. We were blown away with
the playful, stylish, and Very Perry-inspired looks submitted from around
the country. Congratulations to our first-place winner, Levi Higgs of New
York (@levi_higgs), who won based on the originality, composition, and
overall impact of his image. Follow @PerryEllis and @Esquire for more
style inspiration.

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PROMOTION

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Esquire has partnered with Ford to bring you The Code, a new
editorial program inspired by the all-new 2015 Ford F-150, and the
men who drive them. From the skills every man should have and the
latest in gear to smart news and entertainment, The Code brings the
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WHAT ITS LIKE TO BE

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veraging close to 7 feet tall and weighing well over 400

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strength is admirable without a doubt, though the work
that goes into getting to the top level of strongman
competition is a whole other story. To learn more about what
it takes to be a professional strongman, well dig into the top
contenders daily regimens, from workouts and meals to sources
of inspiration.

5 Kitchen Skills Every Man Should Know

How To Build a Proper Toolbox
Inside the Workshops of American Craftsmen
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Pictures from
Joshs Instagram.

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The Ozersky We Knew

A eulogy for Esquire food correspondent Josh Ozersky, who died unexpectedly in May
By JOE KEOHANE
The day Josh Ozersky and I became
friends started off poorly. We had worked
together for a year, when I was editing Esquire
Weekly and he was writing for the Weekly and
Esquire.com, and we had come to regard each other
with a certain wariness and even to feel the odd ash
of dislike. He was a literary man, a lover of sentences, and
though I am, too, digital editing is often less about slow and careful consideration and more about blackjacking your way through a
zombie parade. Anyway, wed had our disagreements. He thought
I was a bullying hatchet man; I thought he was too precious. Ever
thus the writer-editor dynamic.
So that day: We had planned to get dinner at the Cecil, the great
polyglot eatery in Harlem, to talk about the upcoming Esquire
American Food & Drink Awards. He showed up 45 minutes late, citing numerous obscure and implausible subway difculties. I was furious. But then, once the desire to murder him succumbed to a river
of drink, we got into it. Dinner with Ozersky, as youd expect, was
a workout, an intensely physical, even comic experience. We got
everything on the menu and probably most of the drinks, too, with
Oz providing running commentary on the food and all other mattersdeclaiming, announcing, deriding, teasing, schmoozing,
fulminatingand swinging a martini around like a tennis racket.
This went on for hours. He was a real bon vivant. An actual one.
After an unending local C train ride from Harlem back to
Brooklynduring which Ozersky demonstrated the durability

of his new watch (he was a watch nerd) by repeatedly slamming it

against the metal wall of the packed trainwe parted. As I got up to
leave, he shouted, That was actually fun! And then we were pals.
Ozersky carried the banner of Ignatius Reilly: the bonkers opinions; the wild swings between towering arrogance and agonized
vulnerability; the constantly turning up at my desk soaked in
sweat in the summer to rant about Brooklyn and the MTA, raid
the vending machine, raid the coffeemaker, and then circulate
through the ofce, breathlessly hoovering every spare bit of interesting conversation he could.
He was compulsively himself, alive in a way that few are, his
person and bearing inextricable from his writing, for good and
for ill. Mostly good. Often great. Of all his pieces, there is one
that really stood out for methe introduction he wrote to this
big sandwich package we did last year. He led a rst draft, and
it was good, not great. I suggested some changes. He began to
worry he had missed the mark and wanted to try again. What he
led the next day was a perfect piece of writing, full of knowledge, feeling, wit, and history, and including a gratuitous slap
at people with dietary restrictions (who were, in Ozersky-land,
guilty of the most damnable of heresies).
I still think about that little essay, and there he is. Was. The world
will be a less interesting place without him. I wish him an eternity
of good food and good company, and I wish the same for all of us
here still. So tonight, in his honor, lets all eat. And eat something
good. None of that tweezer bullshit. Lifes simply too short.

FROM THE UNITED STATES OF SANDWICHES

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN ESQUIRES SEPTEMBER 2014 ISSUE

Sandwiches are the

default food for every
part of a mans life here.
You eat them after you
come back from a funeral, when some thoughtful person lays out a big,

42

somber plate of cold

cuts. You gnaw nervously on a thrown-together
meatloaf on potato
bread someone hands
you while you fret in
the waiting room of the

ESQUIRE AUGUST 2015

OB ward, waiting to see

the baby....There was a
flank steak, olive oil, and
mozzarella di bufala
hero on semolina bread,
wrapped in sandy newspaper, that you shared

with your new bride on

the beach during your
honeymoon; ten years
after that, a pork roll,
egg, and cheese marked
the morning you got
back together after a

bad spell....Even in the

most alien and inferior
sandwich is an echo of
the ones we love best.
Ah, to be an American with a big appetite
and no gluten issues!

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Daily Mail/Solo Syndication

ABKCO Archives

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ABKCO Archives

They say he broke up the Beatles and robbed

the Rolling Stones, but the truth is bigger,
badder and more fascinating.
The notorious music manager, Allen Klein, taught a generation
of brilliant musicians from the Beatles and the Stones to
Sam Cooke and the Kinks the business of being a rock
star. In the process he made millions for his clients and
changed music forever. Allen Klein is the real story of the man
who transformed rock & roll, opening the door on the private
dealings and backroom battles of some of the biggest bands
in history.

WorldMags.net
An Eamon Dolan Book

www.fredgoodman.net

WorldMags.net

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WorldMags.net

NOW
FU LLY
UP DATE D!
THE ESQUIRE REGISTER OF

F E AT U R I N G

T H E M A N : The wide receiver

for the New York Giants and the
best-dressed player in the NFL is
also an ambassador for the first-ever
mens-only New York Fashion Week.
For more on Cruz and his predictions
for fall (re: both football and fashion),
go to esquire.com/cruz.
T H E C L O T H E S : The latest
all-American goods from Todd
Snyder, a designer who hails from
Iowa and works in Manhattan and
stands for everything righteous and
good about mens wear in the U.S. ofA.
He is also one of the main attractions of the inaugural New York Fashion Week: Mens, the four-day event
this summer that is finally recognizing that theres more than enough
great mens clothing coming out of
New York (and, by extension, America) to warrant a fashion week just for
us. Snyder will be there. Cruz will be
there. And so will most of the great
designers and brands featured over
the following pages, each of them
an agent and engine of this very fine
moment in American mens wear.
PHOTOGRAPH BY

AARON RICHTER

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Style

THE

WorldMags.net10

E SQUIRE

Jacket
Wool-and-alpaca
jacket ($495)
by Bonobos.

Shirt
Cotton oxford
shirt ($195) by
Hamilton.

STANDOUTS FROM
SOME OF THE BEST
AMERICAN BRANDS AT
NEW YORK FASHION

Sweater
Wool Donegal
sweater ($118)
by Bonobos.

Then

Gable, S.

Pants
Cotton-twill
chinos ($88)
by Bonobos.

The Field
Jacket from
Tommy Hilfiger
See the faded, lived-in effect?
Thats the result of pigment
dyeing, and this lightweight,
two-tone, deep-pocketed field
jacket was built to look like
youve had it forever.

Banks, C.

Cotton jacket ($189).

Shoes
Leather shoes
($1,050) by
Thom Browne.

3000, A.

How to Dress American Now / Part I

THE RECOVERING
PREPPY
K I C K O F F YO U R LOA F E RS A N D P O U R YO U RS E L F A G &T. W E N E E D TO TA L K .

WEVE COME A LONG WAY from Biff and

Muffy, those tribal-minded swells who wore
argyle and madras, whale-covered belts, and
elbow-patched, gold-buttoned blazers so they
could both stand out and show they belonged.
To channel preppy impulses without looking
46

ESQUIRE AUGUST 2015

like an extra from Caddyshack, ease up on Easter-egg colors in favor of deeper, rich shades
(the sweater above is teal, the chinos golden
brown) and try subtler patterns like this jackets shadow plaid. Thinner-wale cords are good.
Slim-t, at-front chinos are better.

The Bag
from Shinola
An optimally sized tote
from the Detroit brands
new leather-goods capsule
collection. The leather is straight
out of Chicagos Horween factory, which means its some of
the toughest stuff around.
Leather bag ($895).

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I think American style is much like our country itself: A melting pot of several ideas, whether thats traditional, street, denim, tailored, sporteverything blending together with freedom of expression. Billy Reid

Style

Jacket
Cotton-blend
denim jacket
($325) by AG.

GETS AN
UPGRADE

B ECAU S E H E R I TAG E H AS STA RT E D

TO LO O K A L I T T L E DAT E D
IT BEGAN AS A WAY

Pants
Cotton-blend
pants ($178)
by AG.

Boots
Leather boots
($571) by
Alden for
J. Crew.

Malloy, T.

Z, Jay

Gyllenhaal, J.

The Sweater
from Billy
Reid

The ButtonDown from

Thom Browne

Were not sure what wed

call the pattern on this
chunky knit, but as with
most things Billy Reid, it
will mark the man wearing
it in the best possible way.

Browne has always upended

our expectations of how things
should fit, and this trim button-down shirt will follow your
bodys natural contours so well
that the rest of your shirts will
start to feel loose.

Wool-blend sweater (price

available upon request).
48

ESQUIRE AUGUST 2015

Cotton shirt ($350).

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P R O M O T I O N

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FOR THE MAN WHO UNDERSTANDS THE IMPORTANCE OF FIT

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WorldMags.net

Style

Tie
Wool-flannel
tie ($105) by
Freemans
Sporting Club.

Shirt
Stretch-cotton
shirt ($125) by
Michael Kors.

Then

The Sweatshirt
from Public
School
Nobody is doing tailored
sweatshirts better than
Public School right now, and
this blend of acrylic, viscose,
and polyurethane feels like
cashmere and fits like nothing
else in the world.
Knit crewneck sweatshirt ($525).

Jacket
Two-button
cotton-blend
jacket ($495)
by Theory.

The Gray Flannel

The Weekender
from Coach

Pants
Cotton-blend
pants ($545)
by Orley.

Shoes
Leather oxfords ($125) by
Florsheim.

The pebbled leather. The

earthy shade of green. The soft
and sturdy shell. This is what
Coach does best.

Browne, T.

7
How to Dress American Now / Part III

R.I.P., MAD MEN

T H E S H OWS B E E N OV E R FO R M O N T H S N OW. I TS T I M E W E M OV E D
PAST T H E M I D C E N T U RY ST Y L E T H AT I T C H A M P I O N E D.

MORE SPECIFICALLY: THE DARK SUIT, plain

white shirt, and dark-tie riff that Don and co.
worked the rst few seasons. For a man looking to project some midcentury, Draperesque
elegance, gray suits and tie bars are no lon50

ESQUIRE AUGUST 2015

ger the answer. In fact, the answer might not

even involve a suit at all but rather a jacket and
trousers that complement but dont match; a
nonpatterned shirt that isnt white but rather
beige or gray; and a tie with some texture to it.

WorldMags.net

The Gray Suit

from John
Varvatos
Four-button jacket? Distressed
wool? A freakin vest? Varvatos
channeling 1960s Dylan looks
right at home today.
Virgin-wool four-button jacket
($1,498), virgin-wool trousers
($598), virgin-wool vest ($598), and
cotton-and-linen shirt ($228) by
John Varvatos; leather shoes ($185)
by Johnston & Murphy.

WorldMags.net

ALL THE MAGAZINES YOU LOVE.

One place. One price. Unlimited access.

Try it for free at nextissue.com

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WorldMags.net

Style

Vest
Denim-and-nylon
reversible down
vest ($1,295) by
Michael Bastian.

The Bomber
from Michael
Kors
The shell is soft wool,
not tough leather, and with
its detachable shearling
collar, its unlike any other
bomber out there.

Shirt
Cotton shirt
($475) by
Michael
Bastian.

Jeans
Selvage jeans
($395) by
Michael
Bastian.

Wool-blend bomber jacket ($595).

Shoes
Suede boots
($298) by Cole
Haan.

This Whole
Weekend Rig from
Michael Bastian

10

The Blue Suit

from Ovadia &
Sons

Well let Bastian, whos been showing his luxurious all-American clothing in New York for
almost a decade now, explain it: American style can mean a lot of things, but mainly it means
a particular way of putting yourself together without looking like you tried too hard. It doesnt
mean that any less effort goes into pulling ourselves togetherit just means that the final product
needs to look approachable and effortless. You need to notice the guy first before you register
his clothes. As the world gets smaller and were all dressing more alike no matter which country
youre from, this still remains the American giftthat sense of approachability.

Ask Nick Sullivan

OUR FASHION DIRECTOR WILL NOW TAKE YOUR QUESTIONS

What with Instagram, why does anybody go to fashion

shows anymore?
MITCHELL STEVENS
LOS ANGELES

Look: I love Instagram as

much as the next Instagram
end, but theres no substitute for seeing clothes with
your own eyes. And also, in
New York, Milan, et al., the

52

runway shows are only half

the story. For every big-budget show there are ten lowkey events where I can see all
the clothes up close and actually touch them. To feel their
weights and textures and get
a good sense of their nuancesyoure never going to get
that from a screen.
I have friends who make a

ESQUIRE AUGUST 2015

All soft curves and easy lines (up

to and including the drawstring
waistband), this is as relaxed
and comfortable as suits come.
Wool jacket ($795) and
wool trousers ($275).

big deal about wearing only

Made in America clothes.
Are clothes made here actually better made, or what?
JOSH WEISS
PENSACOLA, FLA.

In my mind, Made in Anywhere is not a universal

guarantee of quality, but its
potential evidence of something possibly more important. Over the past ten years
or so, Billy Reid, Rag & Bone,
and Filson, to name a few
brands, have been trying to
make as much of their stuff
as possible in the U. S., and

WorldMags.net

that has brought jobs to parts

of the States where manufacturing had all but packed
up. I cant guarantee these
clothes are better made
than if theyd been made elsewhere, but their provenance
speaks to a kind of integrity that is all too missing from
the clothes we wear. Thats
worth something.
Whats the most American
piece of clothing?
S. ATKINS
CHICAGO

Jeans.

F O R STO R E I N F O R M AT I O N S E E PAG E 1 1 4 .

GOT A QUESTION FOR NICK SULLIVAN? E-MAIL HIM AT ESQSTYLE@HEARST.COM, OR TWEET HIM AT @ESQSTYLE.

Sweater
Cashmere
sweater ($1,395)
by Michael
Bastian.

WorldMags.net
THE
VODKA
THATS A
PERFECT
TEN.

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Style

WorldMags.net
[5]

[1]

[4]

[3]
[2]

No Sweat
when youre 15 minutes
into a date or a presentation and your shirt is
already soaked or your
brow glazed. In those
cases, sweat makes you
look not so much like a
man whos arrived as a
man whos just been running from a large animal.
Fortunately, you can
take control of when
you perspireno matter where it happens.
Heres how.

Back sweat
Anyone whos peeled
his back off a leather
drivers seat and then
speed-walked to his
desk chair before any54

the same antiperspirant

for your back as you use
for your underarms. Unless youre some kind of
yogi who can rub a stick
on your spine, youll
want to try a spray, like
[1] Axes new Dry Spray
antiperspirant ($5; axewhitelabel.com).

Pit sweat
If youre already spraying your back, you might
as well spray your armpits, too. Do this routine
at night, when you sweat
less and your glands are
more easily suppressed.
Also, on warm days,
avoid colognesweat
strengthens its scent to

ESQUIRE AUGUST 2015

wrapped in leather and

fresh tobacco.

Crotch sweat

Face sweat

Finally, pat some [5]

Jack Black Dry Down
Friction-Free powder
($20; getjackblack.com)
between your legs. Like
other body powders, it
has cornstarch, which
absorbs sweat and other kinds of moisture
down there before it
starts to smell or, God
forbid, chafe. It also has
green tea, cucumber,
lavender, and chamomile, all of which soothe
the skin, making it quite
refreshing.

In the summer, switch to

a light facial moisturizer,
like [4] Kiehls Mens
Oil Eliminator 24-Hour

With thanks to dermatologists Paul Jarrod Frank

and Whitney Bowe.

Foot sweat
Runners like myself
know foot stench is a
menace that can threaten a mans relationship
with his loved one. They
should use the odortaming [3] Lavilin foot
deodorant cream ($19;
lavilin.com). Apply it only
once a week to help preserve your sneakers (and
your relationship).

STILL LOOK LIKE

YOU JUST RAN
FROM A BEAR?
If pharmacy antiperspirants dont
work, consider visiting a dermatologist. They might
recommend clinical-strength antiperspirant or pills.
You can also get
Botox injections in
your pits or palms,
which will keep you
from sweating for
three months, or
you can try MiraDry, an in-office
treatment that
permanently kills
sweat glands by
microwaving them
to death.

Really, no sweat: For purchase links to these products, scan this page with the Esquire2 app.
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WorldMags.net

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WorldMags.net
THE BUTTERFLY
CENTER AT CALLAWAY
GARDENS

PINE MOUNTAIN, GEORGIA

Wearing bright colors, go at
9:30 in the morning, when the
sun shines. Photograph the
butterflies before and then as
they erupt over the next few
hours; theyre most active
when the sun is its highest in
the sky. Seek out a blue morpho, whose iridescent blue
atop its wings flashes and disappears and flashes anew with
each flutter. Or wait till September, when the planets largest collection of them is here.
Hope one lands on the shiny
bald dome of your head.

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Y
L
R
E
OV

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THE

C
I
F
I
C
E
P
S

E
D
I
U
GSUMMER
TO

o.
What to d
.
e
r
e
h
t
e
to b
.)
go. Whenutterfly to behold
o
t
e
r
e
h
W
hb
(And whic
ARRY
PHOT

P
N I G E LJ O Y C E
Y
B
H
P
W
ANDRE
OGRA

ILLUST

R AT I O

NS BY

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57

WorldMags.net

The state park. And always coolers, sloshing

and overloaded. Sandwiches made with the
best intentions in the earliest hours.
There are swims in some excessively cold
lake with a name that seems to belong to only us, to our own private history: Long Lake,
Lake George, Lake Superior, Source Lake. Every summer a new lake.
There are ballparks, third-base side, slipping the usher a twenty to sit in an empty box.
Big brimming beers in overly waxy cups. A
huge pretzel, one little pack of Frenchs. The
shamelessly shed peanut shells like a pile of
dead skin at your feet. Openly wishing the
game were better in the eighth. Putting your
feet up. Looking into the lights and beyond at
the popping blue night sky.
up
d
n
e
u
Most summers Im lucky enough to nd myo
y
r
whereve
r
o
f
self
in the worn-smooth wooden grandstand
n
o
s
The sea
at Saratoga, watching the races and drinking
LA
L
E
R
A
M CHI
sweating, swirling gin and tonics with their
BY TO
blessed wedge of lime. My jacket pocket full
I once worked for a university, at the northern fringe of the Ad- of neon tip sheets, a roll of cash snug against my thigh, me staring
irondacks, regrading a soccer eld. Pointless summer work, craft- out from the glorious wedge of shade into the ungodly green of
ed at the minimum wage. Most of the time there were four of us, the ineld, wishing for a second that I had spent my life learning
walking behind a slow-moving pickup truck, icking rocks from to understand thoroughbreds. Twelve races seems like so much
the large tilled eld into the bed of the truck until it was full. Then on a warm summers day.
we drove to a remote spot of land and we dumped out the rocks.
But not every summer day is warm. I once hiked west with a
Same thing, every day. It was not any kind of hell, though. After friend, in Scotland, Glasgow to Fort William, the better part of
work we swam in a cold river, cooked meats on borrowed grills, each day walking straight into the evening sun. This was in June,
drank iced-down Canadian beer, drove to distant mountain vil- in the days creeping up on the summer solstice. Roman roads,
lages, music bawling from the windows of our cars just because shepherds paths, miles of moor, or highland, shoreline of the
we could. It was summer.
loch. Sun shone, rain swept through, the occasional deafening
Now I stand in the mouth of my garage on summer nights, wait- wind blew. It was a kind of misery. His knees hurt. I was a huffing for some heap of charcoal to burn itself into readiness. Rib ing, pufng mess.
eyes, foiled pouches of vegetables, ribs Ill get too much praise
And we made mistakes. We once spent an hour searching for
for, all sitting in wait on the back of my car. (Ribs cant be bad in Robert the Bruces sword with a hailstorm imminent. Another
summer.) This is 5:30 P.M., a time of day to which I normally pay time we lost half a day looking for Rob Roys cave on the isolated
no attention, and Ill drink an icy can of beer, listening to birds I northeast shore of Loch Lomond. The day passed, without our
dont otherwise give a shit about, taking in the relative absence appreciating the light, and soon we were trudging well into the
of movement. Someone, somewhere nearby, mows their lawn. twilight, with miles to go to the nearest inn. The rain began to
Everything smells familiar. Some dopey, lovable kids might join fall like Gods holy wrath, and we slogged, slower and slower. At
me. Theyll jump rope badly, or throw dirt clods against my ga- one point, we came upon a bothy, a bare-bones shelter for the
rage. I will yell at them. The sun drops straight down out of the wayward traveler. I walked straight in and sat down heavily, ready
tops of the trees. This is summer.
to quit for the night. Its over, I told him. Lets just stay here.
Every summer of my life, theres been some big, unexpectedHe looked at me with the eyes of an owl. No, he said. We
ly overgrown grassy eld in some place I never thought Id be. cant. We gotta keep moving. Summers not going to last forevNew Hampshire, or Idaho, or Nova Scotia. I always walk too far er. And he turned on his heels and walked straight out of the
how easy it is to get lost on a summer dayand Ill nd myself bothy, into the sheet of rain. And after a bit, I followed. The prosin a place with superior shing, or solitude, or mushrooms, or a pect of shame, I suppose.
family of otters, or a place to have sex. Once I found a dead dog
I was cold, wet, windblown; I hurt in places I dare not describe.
and buried her. Another time I convinced a woman to take off But we made it to the inn, hours later, and once I got some soup
her clothes and walk ahead of me awhile, her sandals dangling and a beer, I started to see he was right. There was a rugby team
from her ngertips.
at the bar. Eventually they sang. My friend ordered haggis. The
Every summer there are long car rides to places huge and un- adventure was still on, and it was still summer. Things will always
discovered. Drives by the dam. Drives to the quarry. To the beach. be good when you get to the place you were going.

W H AT

MAKES

D
O
O
G
R
E
M
SU M
A

OVERLY SPECIFIC SUMMER JOYS / THE SUNDRESS SPAGHETTI STRAP

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THE MORNING-AFTER-A-BONFIRE SHOWER THE HEAT SHOCK

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T H E OV E R LY S P EC I F I C G U I D E

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THE

DISCUSS THIS HERE:

W E ST

The tallest living tree, named

Hyperion, is 379.1 feet tall
and in California.

SUNRISE, THE SUMMIT OF

THE SUNRISE ROAD
MOUNT RAINIER NATIONAL PARK,
WASHINGTON
In mid-Julythe only time you
can drive up to this view of
Mount Rainier, when the wildflowers below have blossomed
and when you can chew a justpicked Rainier cherry, invented
a half century ago.
LOGAN PASS, AT THE
18.1-MILE MARK OF THE
GOING-TO-THE-SUN ROAD
GLACIER NATIONAL PARK, MONTANA
Logan is the exact point where
the Sun Road, possibly the
most majestic scenic drive
in the world, crosses the
Continental Divide. See it in
late July, from a middle-row
passengers-side seat on
one of the red jammers,
a fleet of restored 1930s-era
open-top touring buses that
work the park. The entire
country is spread out on
either side of you.
THE FERNWOOD TAVERN
BIG SUR, CALIFORNIA
Sit on a stool, beneath the sun
through the skylights, with a
glass of Anchor California lager.
Look out the window behind
the bar to the redwood forest.
Jesus, those trees.
FIVE HOURS ON A
HALF-MILE STRETCH OF
MONTANA AVENUE
SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA
4:30, Friday: Go see Vic at
the Esquire Barber Shop for a
shave or haircut. Look at the
Jack Dempsey portrait.
5:15: Having called in advance,
head to the Massage Place,
four blocks west. Have a therapist walk on your back.
6:15: Get the Office Burger and
sweet-potato fries at Fathers
Office. Take your pick of the
Belgian beers.

AND DISCUSS
THIS HERE:
The song Route 66
was composed by
Bobby Troup, husband
of the late Julie
London. Though he
wrote it on a road
trip with his first
wife, Cynthia.

7:30: Watch Jaws or a French

noir or whatever is playing at
the Aero.

GAZING FROM THE

RIO GRANDE
SANTA ELENA CANYON, TEXAS
Pack the rafts and put in at Lajitas, a sleepy wide spot on the
Rio Grande that has a beerdrinking goat as mayor. Camp
on the bank of a narrow, windy
part of the river, at the bottom of the Santa Elena Can-

AND DISCUSS THIS HERE:

The man in this illustration
is drinking a cup of Blue Star
Brewing Companys Texican
white lager, poured from
a stainless-steel sixty-fourounce growler.

yon, where its sheer walls soar

straight up fifteen hundred
feet and make you feel swallowed in the earth, the roaring fire but a tiny spark in the
night. Crack a bottle of port to
follow the Cornish hens, eaten almost whole (navigating
rapids makes you hungry), let
the fire die. Lying flat on your
back, see what youve actually
come for: Fifteen hundred feet
above, the canyon carves out a
perfect river of stars.

ONE THING FOR

ANYWHERE
Zach Galifianakiss
Bangs

Masterminds,
premiering on August 19
The best amber
waves in America.

OF GRABBING A STICK SHIFT SIMMERED IN THE SUN FOR SIX HOURS THE LUKEWARM THIRD BURGER FINGERNAILING APART A DIXIE PAPER PLATE

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THE PORCH OF THE

MALIBU KITCHEN AT
THE MALIBU COUNTRY
MART
MALIBU, CALIFORNIA
From this spot at this New
Yorkstyle deli owned by Frank
Sinatras tour managerthe
most misunderstood man in
Malibu, say someyou can see
a eucalyptus tree with three
species of heron nesting in it,
all beside the wonders of...
a parking lot. Sublime.
ANGELS LANDING
ZION NATIONAL PARK, UTAH
The southern edge of the
small summit of this towering
sandstone formation, looking
down Zion Canyon, at about
eleven in the morning. Drink
some water. A 2.7-mile sometimes-demanding hike up
through rock carved by the
river below from Jurassic sand
dunes. Welcome to America.
THE OTHER
SHELL BEACH
TOMALES BAY STATE PARK,
CALIFORNIA
Walk past the first beach, up
the little winding path over a
hill, then to the second beach
facing Tomales Bay. Wade a little. Take a nap. Eat the Hearts
Desire sandwiches you picked
up at Perrys Inverness Park
Grocery on the way over.

CHRISTMAS ON A
CARNE ADOVADA BURRITO
NEW MEXICO
The word you say when you
orderand you are ordering
both red and green chiles.
THE CIMARRON RIVER
COYLE, OKLAHOMA
Take Sammy Davis Jr. Drive
(OK33) to North Triple XXX
Road, then a left onto Triple
XXX Road, at the end of which
youll find an idyllic stretch
where the water flows brickred, deep enough to swim.
Squelch your toes in the banks
of clay for a moment. Hop
on an inner tube and float a
lazy path east. Wear dispensable shoes.

TH E

PACIFIC

FIVE YARDS FROM THE

EDGE OF THE HALEAKALA
VOLCANO
HALEAKALA NATIONAL PARK, HAWAII
Where the Sliding Sands trail
first peeks over the edge of the
massive crater. Feels like youre
about to step onto the moon.

THE

ONE THING FOR

E AST

ANYWHERE
The Night Sky

Anywhere out of town,

10:00 P.M., August 20
The Milky Way at its
brightest, along a big arc
from northern horizon to
southern horizon. Also
Vega, one of the brightest stars this time of year,
high to the north, one of
the points of the Summer
Triangle of bright stars,
which also includes Deneb just to the east (the
brightest star in the constellation Cygnus, or the
Northern Cross) and then
Altair, a bright point to
the southeastand just
sixteen light-years from
where youre lying. And
drinking. And playing with
the amazing Star Walk
app on your phone.

THE ZIEGFELD THEATER

NEW YORK CITY
Balcony, middle section, row
AAA, seat 103.
SUGAR HOUSE CREAMERY
UPPER JAY, NEW YORK
A tiny self-service farm store,
up a short gravel road in the
eastern Adirondack Mountains, not far from Lake Placid.
All white wood and sunshine.
Youre buying a wedge of robust Dutch Knuckle raw-cowmilk cheese (or farm eggs or

ONE THING FOR

ANYWHERE
The White-Hot Heart
of Summer
Outside, August 7

July Fourth is for in-laws

and amateurs. August seventh is the true peak of
summer, exactly midway
from solstice to equinox.
You still have half the summer ahead of you. Make it
a holiday.

meat or milk). No cashier, no

salesperson, no person. Take
the cheese, leave the money.

CYBERSPACE, AT THE
VOYAGE BAKERY CAFE,
GATE C31, LAGUARDIA
AIRPORT
QUEENS, NEW YORK
Your flight is delayed again and
again and the AC in your terminal is broken and youre wearing clothes meant for Canadian
weather. Go to this bar, with its
menu on iPads, plop down on a
seat directly in front of a screen,
and order ten Tom Voyage
drinks without having to deal
with any human interaction.
BENEATH THE DIPLODOCUS CARNEGII AT THE
CARNEGIE MUSEUM OF
NATURAL HISTORY
PITTSBURGH
One of the best American
roomsbeautiful, towering, and
bright. The fact that its filled
with massive dinosaur fossils
almost seems like a bonus.
THE LAWN OF THE PRIDWIN BEACH HOTEL, ON A
WEDNESDAY EVENING
SHELTER ISLAND, NEW YORK
Shelter Island draws so many
visitors as a proud Un-Hampton that it has become liable to Hampton-ish scenes like
those at the Sunset Beach Hotel and Vine Street Cafe. But
sharing the same crescent of
sand as Sunset Beachand
the same sunsetsis the Pridwin, family-owned and venerable and as genuinely unHamptony as they come. Go
to its lawn facing the bay on a
Wednesday night, when it has
a barbecue featuring a lot of
smoke, a lot of fresh-caught
tuna, a lot of kids running free,

a lot of parents getting caught

actually relaxing. Take in the
community boat races. The
boats line the bay with white
triangular sails, but also with
a message at once subliminal
and unmistakable: All of them
are headed home, in a place
that still offers shelter.

CATFISH BAR &

RESTAURANT
BROOKLYN
Nab the corner bar seat on a
Sunday nightafter the dinner crowd has cleared and the
weekend warriors have departed. Find Brian, the manager
who looks like a pirate. Order
a bread pudding and a Makers Mark, neat. Help him fold a
few napkins. Talk about...well,
anything. If you pass his test,
hell raise an eyebrow and say,
Shots? Say yes.
110 MILES OF THE
SCENIC 61
MINNESOTA
Start at Duluths North Pier
Lighthouse, first lit in 1910.
Drive north, along the North
Shore of Minnesota, particularly in early September, when
the foliage starts to change.
Stop at Lutsen Mountains and
head to the alpine slide. Take
in the sights on the chairlift
ride up; blur them on the half
mile of track down. Farther
north, in Grand Marais, stand
at the edge of Lake Superior,
throw rocks, spot an otter, explore the Gunflint Trails lakes
and forestssome of the most
pristine in the U.S. Return as
the sun sets. Or dont.
THE FOOT OF THE FRANK
WHITE STATUE AT
KAUFFMAN STADIUM
KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI
In one of Americas great underrated ballparks, a statue
of Frank White stands beyond
the wall in center field. Time
your visit with the sun setting and the fountains splashing, and youll feel as though
youre playing catch with the
man himself, or with anyone
else you might wish to imagine or remember.
THE OCEANFRONT
PENTHOUSE AT THE
HAMPTON INN
MYRTLE BEACH, SOUTH CAROLINA
The most reasonable way for
an ordinary family to feel like

THE FOOTFEEL OF WET POOLSIDE CONCRETE AN UPSLOPE SOFT-ICE-CREAM TWIST LICK THE 8:00 P . M . SUNSET A BOTTLE ROCKETS SCREECH

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T H E OV E R LY S P EC I F I C G U I D E

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THE MAGNOLIA TREE AT

SARAH P. DUKE GARDENS
DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA
Go to the gardens early,
before the students arrive. Or
early in the morning, before
they wake. Spend the day. Wander. Get lost. Find the magnolia tree on the south lawn. There
is a bench under the big canopy of low branches. Sit on that
bench, by yourself or with the
one(s) you love. Sit calmly, quietly, and for a while. It will then
become apparent.

AND DISCUSS THIS HERE:

There is enough water in Lake
Superior to cover all of the United
States more than four feet deep.

AND DISCUSS
THIS HERE:
Launch Complex
39, at the
Kennedy Space
Center, home
to the biggest
launches from
Apollo to the
space shuttle,
is also the launch
site now for
SpaceX.

SIXTEEN OUNCES IN
THE HISTORIC DISTRICT
SAVANNAH
Grab a Moscow Mule at Rocks
on the Roof, a bar at the top of
a river-facing hotel. Then, after
the copper mugs chill wanes,
pour it into a plastic cup and
walk out the door. Sixteenounce nonglass open containers are legal in this section of
one of Americas great small cities. Repeat wherever: Most bars
have cup dispensers positioned
at the door.
AT PARTY COVE,
TAKING IT ALL IN
ANDERSON HOLLOW COVE,
LAKE OF THE OZARKS, MISSOURI
The revelry here has been called
the oldest established permanent floating bacchanal in the
country. Shyness is unaccommodated. Bring a friend or
find one.
ON CHIMNEY ROCKS JUTS
LAKE MARTIN, ALABAMA
The lower ledges. Below you is
the graffiti of the locals, many
of whom have traveled in their
boats to the water below you,
too. Jump in.

AND DISCUSS THIS HERE:

There is no shame in eating
a poboy while watching the
San Fermin in Nueva Orleans,
which features not livestock
but roller-derby skaters and
starts at 8:00 A . M .

And Finally, the Most

American Spot
in All of Canada:
ONE THING FOR

ANYWHERE
The Center Cushion of Your Couch
7:10 P.M. (PST), Last Day of August

Or the first day of September. Or the second. Whichever in

the series whenwe hopea Dodger named Kershaw heads to
the mound while a Giant named Bumgarner is warmed up and
waiting. Beside you: two companions youd take to a ballpark.
Before you: a six-pack that cost the same as one ballpark beer.

ballers. A fourteenth-floor view

of the Atlantic Ocean and the
miles-long expanse of Myrtle
Beach. A fireplace. Puffy white
beds. A bunch of pools. And
you can make your own waffles
in the morning.

BEFORE A PLATE OF
BLACK-PEPPER
BISCUITS AND SAUSAGE
GRAVY AT HUSK
CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA
Worth the future clogged artery.

The front-right seat

of the Leviathan

Canadas Wonderland,
Vaughan, Ontario.
The opening drop of this
roller coaster is 306 feet
high and 80 degrees. The
ride lasts more than three
minutes. No loops, no
gimmicks. It is plain American exceptionalisma
hundred miles beyond the
border in Buffalo.

THE DRIP OF A HALF MOON OF ICE DOWN THE SPINE THE PUMP ACTION OF A SUPER SOAKER THE WHITE DAHLIA CATCH-KILLING A MOSQUITO

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THE

ESQUIRE

FICTION
FESTIVAL

BEGINS HERE WITH A STORY ABOUT CRIME AND

FORGIVENESS BY COLUM MCCANN AND CONTINUES
ALL SUMMER ON OUR NEW ESQUIRE CLASSICS SITE, WHERE WE
ARE REPUBLISHING ESQUIRES GREATEST SHORT FICTION OF
ALL TIME. FLANNERY OCONNOR? YES. PHILIP ROTH? YES.
SAUL BELLOW, JOHN CHEEVER, JOY WILLIAMS,
DAVID FOSTER WALLACE? YES, AND MANY MORE. (MAILER?
YES.) HAVE A TASTE IN THE PAGES THAT FOLLOW AND THEN
READ THEM ALL AT CLASSICS.ESQUIRE.COM.

TREAT Y
By Colum McCann
he is falling, ever so faintly, into age. It is not the slowness of
rising in the morning, or the weariness of eyesight, or the chest
pains that appear with more and more regularity, but the brittleness of memory that disturbs her nowhow the past can
glide away so easily, how the present can drift, how they some-

times collideso that

when she sees her torturer on television, she is
not sure if her imagination is playing tricks, or if he has simply sifted through
the sandbox of memory, slid headlong down the channel of thirty-seven years to tease her into a terrible
mistake, or if it is truly him, appearing now on the late
Spanish-language news, casual, handsome, controlled.
A crisp blue shirt with an open neck. His teeth white
against the dark of his skin. A poised offhandedness

62

ESQUIRE AUGUST 2015

to the manner in which he holds himself, at a conference, with several others, a row of microphones set
up in front of them.
His appearance is so sudden at the tail end of the
news that she pulls back sharply in her armchair, startling the two other Sisters on the couch.
Beverly holds her hand in the air to reassure them:
All right, sorry, only me, go back to sleep.
She leans to turn up the volume on the remote but his
image is gone, the report tailing off, a young blond reporter staring condently into the camera. A shot from

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A D U LT
WORLD (I)

By David Foster
Wallace
( J U LY 1 9 9 8 )

The way she finally concluded that

something was wrong with her was
this: either something was really wrong with her, or something was
wrong with her for irrationally worrying so much about whether something was wrong with her. The logic of this seemed airtight. She lay at
night and held the conclusion in her
mind and turned it this way and that
and watched it make reflections of itself inside itself like a fine diamond.
Read the rest at classics.esquire.com.

along the River Thames. How is that possible? Perhaps she has garbled the images,
confused the reports? The geography alone
is too dizzying to contemplate.
The slippages of memory have happened
so often recently. Mangled sentences, mislaid keys, forgotten names. Rain showers
of words and then drought. Only last week,
she got lost on a walk along the beach in the
bay, took the wrong path out of the dunes,
the wind whipping the grass around her
feet. Three miles from the house, she had
to ask someone to phone a cab. Even then
she couldnt remember the exact address.
Too many uncertainties, so that even
the absolute certaintiesthe day of the
week, the tie of a shoelace, the rhythm of
a prayerhave been called into question.
And yet theres something about the mans
faceif only for a split secondthat sluices
a tunnel of ice along her spine. The one brief
close-up. The way he held himself on the
screen, amidst a line of dignitaries. What
was it exactly? The peculiar poise that age
had brought upon him? The access to the
microphones? The agrant manner of his
reappearance? The single quick close-up?
Her torturer. Her abuser. Her rapist.

n the half-moonlight at the back

of the house, Beverly reaches into her cardigan pocket for
her lighter.
She is the only smoker
amongst the Sisters. An ancient habit from her childhood
in Ireland, she has carried it with her all
these years: Belgium, Marseilles, Colombia, St. Louis, Baltimore, the girls home
in Houston, and now the southern shore
of Long Island.
A quiet getaway, she was told. A retreat
for a month or two. Fresh sea air. A time

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ESQUIRE AUGUST 2015

for repose. But she had felt the doom of it

all: seventy-six years old, arriving with a
single suitcase to a place of nal worship.
She taps a cigarette, rolls the int on the
lighter, inhales deeply. The smoke is dizzying. Already the tin coffee can is quarter full of ash and butts. Her fellow Sisters
have grown to tolerate her weakness, even
grudgingly admire it, the tall thin Irish nun
with her routine of maverick aloneness.
She watches the cold and the smoke
together shape the air. Behind her, the
lights in the house icker off, one by one,
the other Sisters off to their prayers. The
trees stand stark against the sky. It is fall,
or autumn: Sometimes she loses track of
which word belongs where. Small matter,
it is that time of year when the dark comes
down early.
Beverly smokes her second cigarette
and scrunches it out in the grass at her
feet, leans down, searches among the cold
blades for the lter, drops it in the hanging coffee can.
That was him. It was most certainly him.
A gust of wind shuts the screen door
sharply behind her. She reaches out her
arms like someone recently blind. The
darkness more visible as her eyes adjust.
In the living room she pauses at the large
digital television. A row of lights shine from
the contraptions underneath: a cable box,
a DVD player. She slips her hand along the
edge of the television but can nd no buttons. She fumbles around in the dark for the
remote, bumps against the side of the coffee table. A musty smell rises from the carpet. A dropped spoon. A fallen newspaper.
Only then does she think to strike her
lighter.
In the bright are she spies the head of
the remote slipped down between the sofa cushions. A row of menu items, HDMI1,
HDMI2, PC. One needs to be a nuclear engineer these days just to bring a machine
to life. She clicks through. Vampires. Baseball. Cop shows.
There are three Spanish-language chan-

nels all in close proximity to one another. Surely, at some stage during the night,
there will be a repeat. She pulls a cushion
tight against her stomach. The digital clock
ickers. There is, she knows, a way to record the show, even to freeze the screen,
but she might lose the image altogether.
When the report nally comes on, she
slides off the couch, onto the oor, sits
close to the television. London. A series
of peace talks. Representatives from all
sides gathering together. An array of microphones set up on a table. A line of ve
men, two women.
The hairs along her arm bristle: Please,
Lord, let it not be him.
The words tangle and braid. Guerrilla,
peace accord, land rights, low-level talks,
reconciliation, treaty.
Then it is him. For three short seconds.
She reaches to put her hand forward toward his face. His heavy-lidded eyes. His
pixelated mouth. He does not speak. He
is close-shaven, sharp, his hair neatly cut.
He is a little heavier, more compact, but
there is no mistake. He has taken on the
aura of a diplomat.
She sits back against the couch, fumbles
for her cigarettes. Make Yourself present,
Lord. Come to my aid.
When he slapped her face, he would
call her puta. In the jungle cage he pulled
back her hair, yanked it so hard that her
neck felt as if it would snap. A whisper. In
her ear. As if he himself couldnt afford to
hear the words. Pendeja. In the safe house
where she was taken for four weeks, in the
white room where she watched the caterpillars crawl along the cracks in the walls,
he would read to her aloud from the newspaper before he yanked open her blouse
and bit her breast until it bled.

he is woken in the early morning by Sister Anne, who sits

quietly at the side of the bed.
The curtains have been slightly parted.

PA R K E RS BAC K
By Flannery OConnor
(APRIL 1965)

Parkers wife was sitting on the front porch floor, snapping beans. Parker was sitting
on the step, some distance away, watching her sullenly. She was plain, plain. The skin
on her face was thin and drawn as tight as the skin on an onion and her eyes were gray
and sharp like the points of two ice picks. Parker understood why he had married her
he couldnt have got her any other waybut he couldnt understand why he stayed
with her now. She was pregnant and pregnant women were not his favorite kind. Nevertheless he stayed as if she had him conjured. He was puzzled and ashamed of himself.
Read the rest at classics.esquire.com.

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She pulls back the bedcovers, swings her

legs out, fumbles for her slippers. She can
tell by the angle of light that she has missed
morning prayer.
I overslept. Im so sorry.
Theres something we must talk about,
Beverly.
Of course.
Sister Anne is a woman who has aged
gracefully, apart from a shallow set of
accordion lines that seem to hurry towards her cheekbones, giving her a
vaguely scattershot look.
By the television, she says. Last
night.
It takes Beverly a moment for the evening to return, as if from one of those
ancient sets she knew as a child in Galway, a quick flare of light and then a slow
bromiding outwards. The recollection
of his face, the chill that ripped along
her body. There is something she should
saycertainly there must be a way to say
itbut it feels to her as if all the words
have been dropped back down into that
singular patch of original light, youth,
no way to break its edges.
She cannot shake the image from her
mind. The manner in which he was constructed, square upon digital square, all
the new edges to him.
I think I must have woken from, I
might, I may have been dreaming.
Well, its unfortunate, but Im afraid
Im going to have to ask you to stop.
Of course.
She is unsure of what it is that she
must stop. The house is meant as a retreat. The slate is empty. None of the
Sisters have been told of her background, only that she lived in South
America once, that she has come from
Houston, that she is suffering exhaustion, she is here to rediscover sleep, that
is all.
What she needs now is to get beyond
the first bruised moments of waking.
To make her bed, to take a shower, to
say her dailies.
Sister Anne rises from the chair and
only then does Beverly notice that she
has brought her a cup of coffee and a biscuit on a saucer. Ah, the small mercies.
Thank you.
Sister Anne turns at the door, haloed
in fluorescence from the hallway, and
says gently: There will be no need to pay
for it, of course.
Pay for it?
There are, Beverly, two cigarette
burns in the carpet.

SOMETHING TO REMEMBER ME BY
By Saul Bellow
( J U LY 1 9 9 0 )

When there is too much

going on, more than you
can bear, you may choose
to assume that nothing in
particular is happening,
that your life is going round
and round like a turntable. Then one day you are
aware that what you took
to be turntable, smooth,
flat, and even, was in fact
a whirlpool, a vortex. My
first knowledge of the hidden work of uneventful

days goes back to February

1933. The exact date wont
matter much to you. I like to
think, however, that you, my
only child, will want to hear
about this hidden work.
When you were a small boy
you were keen on family
history. You will quickly understand that I couldnt tell
a child what I am about to
tell you now. You dont talk
about death and vortices to
a kid, not nowadays. In my

t the home in Houston

the girls had been surprised to nd a nun they
could smoke with. They
thought her so tall. Sister Stretch they called her. The home
was set up next to a clinic. Theirs was
an open-door policy. The girls came and
went. The corridors hummed. Mornings
in the kitchen, afternoons in the counseling room, evenings out combing streets of
half-lamplight: Hermann Park, Montrose,
Sunnyside, Hiram Clarke, the Fifth Ward.
Whole nights spent awake in the convent
house. The protests outside. The shouting. The placards. The bullhorns. She and
her Sisters were condemned from the pulpit of their own Church. They were radicals, dissenters. They never thought themselves anything of the sort. It was simply a
home, a place for the girls to stay. She counseled them. Children with children. She
made no political stance. It was not language that concerned her: abortion, prolife, anti-woman. Language seemed interested only in merchandising their esh.
She wanted to be mute in everything but
action. To take an elbow. To give a shoulder. To feel her feet strike the ground. She
worked late into the night. She listened in
church to the thin priest railing against her,
his voice high and indignant. She bowed
her head. She accepted the invective. She
still took the sacrament. On principle, she
never escorted the girls to the clinic, but
she watched them go and collected them
afterwards, took their arms, walked them
through the gantlet. Sometimes the same
girls returned, months later, bearing children once more. Exhaustion got her. Three
times she collapsed in the community
room. They found her eventually in the
chapel, slumped over, a trickle of blood
from her nose. She was shocked when, in

time my parents didnt hesitate to speak of death and

dying. What they seldom
mentioned was sex. Weve
got it the other way around.
My mother died when
I was an adolescent. Ive often told you that. What I
didnt tell you was that
I knew she was dying and
didnt allow myself to think
of ittheres your turntable. Read the rest at
classics.esquire.com.

the downtown hospital, a nurse showed

her a mirror: the darkness beneath her
eyes looked tattooed in. The emergencyroom doctors had mistaken her, at rst,
as homeless. They ripped off her clothes.
She struggled to pull the sheet back across.
What perplexed them were the scars on
her breasts, how she hid them, the hard
jagged lines, their peculiar tracery.

he wind ripples the dune

grass. She walks along, her
hair pulled back in a bun.
An umbrella for a walking stick. She wears a long
blue skirt, a dark cardigan, an orange windbreaker. Lay clothes, always. She has not, for
forty years, worn any formal clothing, just
the simple wooden cross beneath her blouse.
A clean, plain silence rolls along the
shore, made cleaner and plainer still by
the occasional screech of gulls. It seems
to her that some vast hand lies behind the
dunes, inging the birds in patterns out
over the Atlantic. Far out on the horizon,
a tanker disappears from view, as if dropping off the edge of the sea.
She has crumpled her last cigarettes in
the cardigan pocket. She likes the feel of
the grains, the fall of them from her ngers,
sprinkling them now in the cold sand. She
cannot remember a time, even in captivity in the jungle, when she went without
cigarettes. She places a few tobacco grains
upon her tongue. Raw. Bitter. They will be
of no comfort. What was it about his voice
that had corralled her so easily? Why had
she stayed up so late with the other Sisters? Why had she watched the Spanishlanguage news? The odd little magpie of
the mind. Nothing is nally nished, then?
The past emerges and reemerges. It builds
its random nest in the oddest places.
She struggled for so many years with ab-

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65

solution, the depth of her vows, obedience,

poverty, chastity. Working with doctors, experts, theologians to unravel what had happened. Every day she went to the chapel to
beseech and pray. Hundreds of hours trying
to get to the core of it, understand it, pick it
apart. Forgiveness for herself rst, they told
her. In order, then, to forgive him. Without
hubris, without false charity. Therapy sessions, physical exams, spiritual direction,
prayer. The embrace of Christs agony. The
abandonment at the hour. Opening herself
to compassion. Trying to put it behind her
with the mercy of time. The days slipping

EXPECT THE
VA N D A L S
By Philip Roth
(DECEMBER 1958)

by. Small rooms. Long hours. The curtains

opening and closing. The disappearance
of light. The blackened mirrors. The days
spent weeping. The guilt. She shore her hair
again. Swept the rosary beads off the bedside table. Took baths fully clothed. It was
no burning bush, no pillar of light. More a
pail of acid into which she wanted to dissolve. Here he is, back now, once more. Or
perhaps she has simply dreamt it? One of
those momentary aftershocks, rippling under the surface? A small pulse of the wound
where there used to be a throb? They had
told her, years ago, that it might happen. In
St. Louis, in the convent hospital, along the

66

ESQUIRE AUGUST 2015

dark waters of the Mississippi. The anger.

The shame. The false pride. The disgrace. It
would return. She built up a wall of prayer.
Neither life nor death, nothing can separate me from Your love and mercy. If I pass
through raging waters in the sea, Lord, I
shall not drown. She repeated the prayers
over and over. Stone upon stone. A nished
wall. Yet why is it now that she has allowed
him to scale it? He is, after all, only a man on
television, the image of an image. But so well
dressed. So poised. So public. What right
does he have to talk about peace? What had
he done to achieve such grace?

On the beach it had been slaughter. He lay in the wet sandit was duskplaying dead, listening to the cursing and crying around him, and feeling certain that by the time he counted
five he would be dead. Three hours he lay rigid counting off fives and praying that darkness
would come. And finally when night and the tide eked in and water soaked inside his boots,
he began to crawl, inch by inch, pulling at sand. He did not know where he was headed, but
pulled along the beach figuring that moving was better than nothinggambling in a way, for
though he knew he might run smack into death, there was a fifty-fifty chance he was leaving
the bastard behind. Read the rest at classics.esquire.com.

Back along the roadway, she passes a

deck chair left over from the summer, its
innards uttering in the wind. The sand
blows in swirled patterns on the footpath.
She pulls the padded hood up around her
face, reaches up and presses the bridge of
her nose between her ngers.
A two-mile walk back to the convent
house. She has, at least, a sturdy pair of
shoes. Not ip-ops.
Made from car tires they were. Slapping
against the sole of her foot. The sound of
them now. She was dragged from the jeep.
Blindfolded, driven away. Rushed down a
mud road. A clearing in the bamboo. On

the absence of the mole. Why had she not

thought of it before? Why hadnt she recorded the program? She could have destroyed it, rid herself of him. What have I
done? Forgive me, Lord.
Once he took off his bandanna and
stuffed it in her mouth to stop her from
making noise, so that towards the end she
just lay there, compliant, a vague freedom
in the shame, the thought of elsewhere, the
west of Ireland, the stone walls, the rain
permanent across the elds, her mothers
face, ushed with disgrace, the shape of
her father moving out into the laneway,
her brother walking down the road, away

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I M A G E S P R O V I D E D B Y T H E J . P A U L G E T T Y M U S E U M , L O S A N G E L E S . C O P Y R I G H T M A N R AY T R U S T /A R T I S T S R I G H T S S O C I E T Y ( A R S ) , N Y /A D A G P, P A R I S 2 0 1 5 .

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the rst night her feet swelled with insect

bites. By the second night, they had bled
and festered. Eventually they gave her rubber boots for the marches. Always on the
move. From one clearing in the jungle to the
next. They thought her rst a human-rights
worker. She wore lay clothes. She worked
alone. Word ltered out on the radio: She
was a Maryknoll, a nun. He didnt believe it.
He ripped the wooden cross from her neck.
She said nothing. Other nuns had been shot.
She was nothing special. He spat when she
prayed. He was so young then. No more
than twenty-three, twenty-four. Already
a commander and the hatred had hardened in him, but she thought for sure that
she could nd some point of tenderness.
She used to imagine dropping her words
behind his eyes to nd a soft point, in his
memory, some prayer, some word, something maternal she could jolt from him. He
knew none of the rhythms of prayers: He
had grown up without them. No nursery
rhymes. Only the right-wing paramilitary
songs, none of which she knew. She would
somehow reach him, she was sure of itbut
he remained aloof, absent. Even when there
were others alongside her in captivity, aid
workers, radicals, professors, and once, for
a month, a left-wing senatorial candidate.
Five months in the jungle, four weeks in a
safe housesix months in all. His ability to
stare. That thousand-yard remove. He had
a mole on the right side of his nose. Was it
still there? Last night she had reached out
and touched the ghost of his face, the television static. Surely she would have noted

WorldMags.net
T

from her, that childhood, gone, a bead of

his sweat dripping down on the bridge of
her nose, puta, he pushed her head down
against the dirt, puta, the sound of his
voice, quiet, controlled, puta.
She is startled by the toot of a horn
behind her and the hiss of car tires. It has
begun to gently drizzle.
Coming home?
As if in sync, Sister Anne and Sister Yun
lean towards her, earnest, expectant. Such
an odd word, home. She nds herself trying
to speak, but the words are lodged inside
her somehow, not so much in her throat
but in the hollow of her stomach, and when
she responds, she is startled by the rise of
the sounds through her: S, gracias, a casa, es un poco fro, so incongruent and displaced, she has no idea how she has lapsed
so easily into Spanish, how she has allowed
him so immediately back into her life when
she was sure that he had died, or faded into the jungle again, or disappeared.
Carlos had escaped. That much was certain. Rumors of death squads, retribution.
She kept up on the news in sporadic bursts,
but she never allowed it to slip under her
skin, not since St. Louis anyway. After that,
a shelter in Baltimore, then the girls home
in Houston. Deeper wounds, other lives.
The life of a Maryknoll. There were some
over the years who had tried to make of
her a heroine, a gurehead, a political autograph, and she knew that they whispered
behind her back of book deals, of movie
contracts, but she preferred to think and
talk of other things, life in the village before she was captured, the volume of blue
sky, the children in the schoolhouse, the
fall of rain on the tin roof, the dust rising
from the dirt oor of her shack, the yellow barrel at the back of the classroom,
the wooden ladle dipping for rainwater,
the stick of chalk in her cigarette box, the
faulty carburetor in the jeep, she was always trying to x it, she leaned across the
engine, the chalk dissolving in the rain.
Hurry up now, Beverly.
She slips her hands from the pockets of
her cardigan, slides into the backseat. The
window powers up.
Youll catch your death.
On the front dashboard Sister Yun performs a little drumroll with long thin ngers.
We must not miss the three oclock.
The Hour of Great Mercy, the most fervent of her prayers, the time of Christs dying on the cross. In the jungle she would
listen for a guards radio and it grew so she
could almost tell the time by the angle of
sun through the trees.

T H E D E AT H O F
JUSTINA
By John Cheever
(NOVEMBER 1960)

On Saturday the doctor told me

to stop smoking and drinking and
I did. I wont go into the commonplace symptoms of withdrawal, but
I would like to point out that, standing at my window in the evening,
watching the brilliant afterlight
and the spread of darkness, I felt,
through the lack of those humble
stimulants, the force of some
primitive memory in which the
coming of night with its stars and
its moon was apocalyptic. I thought
suddenly of the neglected graves
of my three brothers on the mountainside and that death is a loneliness much crueler than any
loneliness hinted at in life. The soul
(I thought) does not leave the body,
but lingers with it through every
degrading stage of decomposition
and neglect, through heat, through
cold, through the long winter nights
when no one comes with a wreath
or a plant and no one says a prayer.
This unpleasant premonition was
followed by anxiety. We were going
out for dinner and I thought that
the oil burner would explode in our
absence and burn the house. The
cook would get drunk and attack
my daughter with a carving knife,
or my wife and I would be killed in
a collision on the main highway,
leaving our children bewildered
orphans with nothing in life to look
forward to but sadness. I was able
to observe, along with these foolish and terrifying anxieties, a definite impairment to my discretionary
poles. I felt as if I were being lowered by ropes into the atmosphere
of my childhood. Read the rest at
classics.esquire.com.

Are you sure youre all right, Beverly?

Youre hardly wrapped up at all.
You must be freezing.
She watches as Sister Anne adjusts the
rearview mirror.
Whats that you were saying?
Sister Annes rosary beads click against
the steering wheel as she guides the car
into the road.
Oh, nothing really. My mind wanders
sometimes. Forgive me. Fro. I think I said
its cold.
The two elderly nuns lock eyes in the
mirror a moment. She glances away, grateful for the silence, until Sister Anne reaches forward to put NPR on the radio: a drone
attack in Afghanistan, a typhoon in the
Philippines, a wildre in Australia.
The car slides through the quiet Long
Island town, the small boutiques, the coffee shops, the travel agency, the owerarrangement store, the pastelera.

he house is a recent gift to the

Church. It has not yet been
fully renovated, or consecrated, so it is still a place of mirrors. She sees herself everywhere. One in
the front hallway, gilded and ornate, catching the reection of the front steps, so that
at the doorway one seems to be coming
and going at the same time. A mirror, too,
at the top of the winding stairs, near the
Sacred Heart, with a fresh vase of owers
beneath it. A series of oil paintings along
the corridor, with glass frames, so that at
the wrong angle she can catch sight of herself as she moves along. In her bathroom
there is another mirror which runs the
length of the wall.
She thought rst of obscuring it entirely,
draping it with a cloth, but did not want to
be rude, it was simply best to ignore, let it be.
Beverly stands pale, white, naked,
scarred. She turns quickly from the mirror,
steps into the shower, pulls the sliding door
across. Frosted glass. The water pumps cold
at rst and then the heat deepens. A strong
pulse of water at her stomach, her shoulders, her neck. She applies the conditioner,
rinses, holds, stands back once more, soaps
her feet, her toes. Puts her head against the
fresh cool tile of the wall. Feels the last drips
fall down upon her back.
She steps out on the cold oor, turbans
a towel around her head. After he bit her
breast, he stitched it crudely himself,
pulled the ap of it together and shoved a
heated needle into it, pulled the medicated thread through. Wrapped up a bottle of
antiseptic, ribboned it, gave it to her like a
gift. When it became infected, he took her
to the camp inrmary, where they ripped
her breast open again. He didnt go near
her again for weeks afterwards. Twice she
cut it open herself just to keep him at bay.
With her back to the mirror, she towels herself off.

he late news. The

last moments of
the day. The world
at its least consoling. The dark falling outside. Everything moving
toward sleep, or its lack. The elderly Argentinian Sisters half-doze on the couch
together. The Clarn spread out in front
of them. Trays and teacups. Magazines.
The carpet has not been xed, but the armchairs have been scooted forward to cover the cigarette burns. How was it that
she didnt even notice? Not just once but

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67

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twice. So reckless. She could have burned

the whole place down. She cannot even remember lighting up.
A pulse of need whips through her. They
say it is the most addictive drug of all. She
will go tomorrow to the local pharmacy.
Nicotine patches. Chewing gum. A matter of willpower.
She likes it here with her elderly Sisters,
the informality, the openness, the sense
that so much of their work has been done,
that now it is time to sit back and watch
time unfold, to pray in the face of the sorrows to which the world is still bound.
She watches the Sisters stir, bound to
each other.
Can we watch the . . . a ver las noticias?
S, s, por qu no?
A report on the disappearance of the jaguar species in the Amazon. A mine collapse
near Valparaiso. News of the elections in
Guatemala. Towards the end of the news
there is a small report on the London conferenceminimal progress in the talks, something about narco-trafc, mining rights, a
timeline for further peace talks in Havana
but there is no sight or mention of Carlos.
She should check the Internet, but for
all these years she has managed to avoid it,
leave it in the background, she is not even
sure how to use it: The prospect is mildly terrifying.
Demasiada tristeza, says Sister Maria,
rising from her chair.
Buenas noches.
Beverly watches as the two elderly women climb the stairs, shadow to shadow,
their cardigans twined.
She waits all the way through the second
repeat of the program, just in case. Ridiculous. As if the repeat might change itself
and he might somehow appear, changed
once again.
Has he become a man of peace somehow? Has he offered his cheek, Lord? Has
he turned himself around? How many oth-

er things run counter to the life he once

had? Who is he now? An elegant man in
a blue shirt? A participant at a peace institute? What accident of circumstance
brought the conference to London? How
did he manage to shuck his past?
Once she saw him almost crack. At the
safe house near Puerto Boyac. The windows were sealed and blackened. Whatever light came in crept under the door. Vague
sounds from outside the door. A distant radio. She tried to remember words, old poems, prayers, psalms, the way the words
looked on the page. He unchained her one
day and brought her a glass of coconut milk.
She had no idea why. He came across the
hard dirt oor. A slight limp. He wore black
laced boots, his camouage trousers tucked
into them. A sheathed knife dangled from
his belt. He kneeled down in front of her.
His eyes heavy-lidded and brown. His
cheeks unshaven. The ashlight stung her
momentarily. She drew back. Carlos put
one hand on the back of her neck and tilted her chin with his forenger and had her
drink: The milk was cool, though there was
no fridge in the house. She could feel the
coolness, a whole childhood of it, falling
through her. Rain on the coral beach in Galway. White tennis balls on the broken court.
Her brother at his shortwave radio. A nest
of wires and voices. Her fathers cattle huddled on a laneway. The broken church bell.
A grass verge of green. High windows. Too
tall for the school chairs. The milk came
in small silver cans. She would not cry or
whimper. She had always refused him that.
Carlos sat back against the wall and looked
at her, his own lip quivering. She thought
the milk to be the harbinger of some abuse
a punch to the ear, the knife to the throat, a
heave against the wallbut he simply fed it
to her, then drank from the same glass, muttered something that sounded like an apology, and left, closing the thick steel door behind him, a little rim of light underneath.

THE BULLETS FLIGHT

By Denis Johnson
(MARCH 1989)

It was a long straight road

through dry fields as far as
a person could see. Youd
think the sky didnt have
any air in it and the earth
was made of paper. Rather than moving, we were
just getting smaller and
smaller.
What can be said about
those fields? There were

68

blackbirds circling above

their own shadows, and
beneath them the cows
stood around smelling one
anothers butts. Dundun
spat his gum out the window while digging in his
shirt pocket for his Winstons. He lit a Winston with
a match. That was all there
was to say.

ESQUIRE AUGUST 2015

Well never get off this

road, I said.
What a lousy birthday,
Dundun said.
MacInnes was white and
sick, holding himself tenderly. Id seen him look like
that once or twice even
when he hadnt been shot.
Read the rest at classics.
esquire.com.

t is two in the morning by the

clock on the DVD player when
she rises for bed. She shuffles
across the kitchen oor, reaches
to switch off the outdoor porch
light. The ashtray still hangs there, the tin
can moving ever so slightly in the breeze.
Beverly pushes open the screen door.
The ashtray has not been emptied. She tilts
it. The odor is foul.
She walks the length of the porch in
the hard cold. The stars out, nailheading
the night. A few clouds drifting. The trees
shaped against the dark. She squeezes her
thumbs against her forehead once more:
To abase the self in such a way, no, she cannot. I must resist.
An alarming silence. There was a while
in St. Louis, years ago, when she simply
could not stand to be outside: The very
sound of insects drilled into her.
She reaches deftly into the bucket,
smooths the crush from a misshapen cigarette, lights up.
On the lawn, a sudden square of light falls
from an upstairs window, like the frame of
a painting thrown onto the ground. She nishes the cigarette in three hard draws.
A swell of revulsion stabs her stomach
and she sways, dizzy with regret.
Inside, she locks the door, puts her head
against the frame. Is this what awaits me,
Lord? Is this where I nish? Is this where
You have led me?
There is a ick of shadow at the top of
the stairs. A creak. Flecks of light ordering and reordering themselves. She moves
through the darkened living room, grabs
ahold of the bannisters.
Sister Anne is sitting in the middle of the
stairs in her dressing gown and slippers.
No disapproval in the broad pale expanse
of her forehead. No tightening of the lips.
No shake of her head.
Cant sleep?
Im just dgety.
Beverly is well aware of the pungency of
the cigarette. She pulls her breath in, turns
to the wall, squeezes herself past the staircase mirror. Her face is lean and spectral,
her neck striated.
You know, Beverly, that I am here at
any time, if you need to talk.
Of course.
We are, in large measure, the prayers
we share.
She turns quickly from her reection,
pauses at the top of the stairs in the red
light from the Sacred Heart.
Actually, I was thinking of making a
little journey.

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WorldMags.net
THE L ANGUAGE
OF MEN
By Norman Mailer
(APRIL 1953)

In the beginning, Sanford

Carter was ashamed of
becoming an Army
cook. This was not from
snobbery, at least not
from snobbery of the most
direct sort. During the two
and a half years Carter
had been in the Army
he had come to hate
cooks more and more.
They existed for him as a
symbol of all that was corrupt, overbearing, stupid, and privileged in Army life. The image which
came to mind was a fat

cook with an enormous

sandwich in one hand,
and a bottle of beer in the
other, sweat pouring down
a porcine face, foot on a
flour barrel, shouting at
the K.P.s, Hurry up, you
men, I aint got all day.
More than once in those
two and a half years,
driven to exasperation,
Carter had been on the
verge of throwing his
food into a cooks face as
he passed on the serving
line. His anger often
derived from nothing: the

Sorry?
London. I was thinking of making a
little journey to London.
A surge of panic: It is an idea so sudden
and unplanned that she feels as if she has
been sideswiped by her own shadow.
Whyever so?
A cellar, an airless place, a mineshaft, a
caterpillar crawl, a chain across the oor,
a single bead of light underneath the door.
I have a brother there.
But you only just got here. Didnt the
doctors say that you need to rest?
To bend, to shape, to break the truth.
Have I become the liar I never wanted to
become? Why not tell Sister Anne that
she has just, quite simply, been knocked
off balance? That she has seen a man she
knew long ago? That he has resurfaced?
That she must afrm that it is him? That he
is representing himself as a man of peace?
That he is there in London now? That she
must leave? That this is all she now knows,
all she can tell?
Is anything the matter with him?
Sorry?
Is something the matter with your
brother?
Hes ill.
To survive one mistake she has committed herself to the next. She shifts her foot
slightly on the stair.
As a child, her brother spent a year in bed
with spinal tuberculosis. His room was full
of crystals, coils, wires: He taught himself
how to build model radios. He was six years
younger than her but she sat by his bed with
him, listening to the chatter of ships on the
Atlantic. Years later she wrote him letters,
once a week, until he too left, rst for Dub-

set of a pair of fat lips,

the casual heavy thump of
the serving spoon into his
plate, or the resentful
conviction that the cook
was not serving him
enough. Since life in the
Army was in most aspects
a marriage, this rage over
apparently harmless details was not a sign of unbalance. Every soldier
found some particular
habit of the Army spouse
impossible to support.
Read the rest at classics.
esquire.com.

lin, then Edinburgh, and then he drifted

down to London to review literature for the
BBC. They fell into that life of distant brother and sister: the yearly Christmas cards, the
occasional phone calls, the funerals of their
parents. Drifting further still until she was
kidnapped. He had organized petitions for
her then. Marches on the Dil, the House
of Commons, the Colombian embassy. Afterwards he wanted to make a radio documentary about what had happened to her,
but she couldnt do it. They chained you?
They beat you with a wooden board? They
kept you locked up in a room? They fed you
from a metal dish? Paralyzed by the truth.
He allowed her the silence. They fell into
the old patterns again, talking once or twice
a year, not so much out of neglect or embarrassment but simply because thats how
it seemed families worked, their seepage.
Hes ill, you say?
Yes.
Is he a smoker then, too?
There is no malice in Sister Annes question, but it stings her. So, you were watching me? You opened your curtains so the
light fell on the lawn? You saw me reach
into the coffee can? You smelled the smoke
drifting up to your room? Have I become
hostage yet again? Is this where I end up,
after all these years? A room on Long Island, at the end of the continent, the water
falling silently against the shore?
Hell be in my prayers.
Youre very kind.
Youll have to get permission from
your order.
They will pray alongside me, Im sure.
God measures us. He truly does.
Yes, He does.

Is there anything else you need to tell

me, Beverly?
He put a chain around my neck. He
ripped my breast. He violated me.
No, she says, stepping through the
guttering red light, along the landing.
She pauses a moment at her door, leans
against the frame, hears the click of Sister Annes door.
The house falls quiet and the shadows
fold down, dark.

2:

Victoria Station. A crush of faces. A salmonalong of tourists. Her long skirt brushes
the oor. Her suitcase has no wheels and
the handle is unhinged so that she has to
drag it behind her, reluctant, unwieldy. She
would like a moments respite. To sit down
and take the weight off her legs. Find a refuge. A travelers chapel maybe, or a small
caf with a quiet corner.
She is startled by a pigeon apping along
past a piano. The piano is, it seems, an art

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THE LOVER
By Joy Williams
( J U LY 1 9 7 3 )

The girl is twenty-five. It has not

been very long since her divorce but
she cannot remember the man who
used to be her husband. He was probably nice. She will tell the child this,
at any rate. Once he lost a fifty-dollar
pair of sunglasses while surf casting
off of Gay Head and felt badly about it
for days. He did like kidneys, that was
one thing. He loved kidneys for weekend lunch. She would voyage through
supermarkets, her stomach sweetly
sloped, her hair in a twist, searching
for fresh kidneys for this young man,
her husband. When he kissed her,
his kisses, or so she imagined, would
have the faint odor of urine. Understandably, she did not want to think
about this. It hardly seemed that the
same problem would arise again, that
is, with another man. Nothing could
possibly be gained from such an experience! The child cannot remember him, this man, this daddy, and she
cannot remember him. He had been
with her when she gave birth to the
child. Not beside her, but close by, in
the corridor. He had left his work and
come to the hospital. As they wheeled
her by, he said, Now you are going to
have to learn to love something, you
wicked woman. It is difficult for her
to believe he said such a thing. Read
the rest at classics.esquire.com.

69

WorldMags.net
TOWEL SEASON
By Ron Carlson
( M AY 1 9 9 8 )

The Hanovers party was

like all the parties, a ritual
that Edison knew well. The
kids swam while the adults
drank, then the kids ate
and went off into the various corners of the house
primarily for television,
then the adults ate their
grilled steaks or salmon or
shish kebab and drank a
new wine while it got dark
and they flirted. It was easy
and harmless, and whoever was up was sent to the
kitchen or the cooler for
more potato salad or beer
and returned and gave
whatever man or woman whatever he or she had
asked for and said as a hus-

band or wife might, There

you are, honey. Can I get
you anything else, dear?
And maybe thered be
some nudging, a woman
punctuating the sentence
with her hip at a mans
shoulder or a man taking a
womans shoulders in both
hands possessively.
At some point, thered be
Janny Hanover and Scott
Plum coming out of the
house holding hands and
Janny announcing, Scott
and I have decided to
elope, with him saying,
Ive got to have a woman who uses mayonnaise
on everything. In their
swimsuits in the dark, arms

project, left in the train station for anyone to play.

The pigeon hovers, then lands a moment
on the lid, walks along the beveled edge.
At a food stall Beverly buys herself a croissant and a cup of tea in a paper cup. Awful to
drink tea from paper, the little tab of the teabag hanging down. There is nowhere to sit,
so she drifts across toward the piano, perches on the edge of the bench.
A pulsing pain in her lower back. The
journey has been arduous, a two-hour delay in JFK, a runway incident in Heathrow,
the wrong direction in the tube from Paddingtonshe was woken only when she got
to the end of the line.
The pigeon returns and pecks at her feet.
It is, she notices, extraordinarily fat, the color of a thing into which no color goes. How
odd to think that it might live inside the station, a nest in the rafters, its whole life without a tree of any sort.
She lays her head against the lacquered
edge of the piano and is shaken awake moments later by a pale young boy whose
mother stands nearby, vaguely apologetic, wanting to play. For a moment she cannot recall where she is, or how she has gotten here.
Dont forget your tea, Missus.
She pats the young boy on the head. A
blessing upon him. Used to be, long ago, we
could make the sign of the cross. Gone, those
days. Maybe just as well: Who knows what
the mother might say if she attempted to
bless the child?
Outside, the light pours down hard and
clear and yellow. The tea has grown tepid
but she drains the last cold mouthful any-

70

ESQUIRE AUGUST 2015

around each others waists,

now parting and rejoining
the group, they did look
as if it were a possibility.
The eight adults were interchangeable like that, as
swimsuit silhouettes, Edison thought, except me
Im too skinny and too tall;
Id look like a womans father walking out of the patio doors like that. Id scare
everybody. Around the
pool, the towels glowed
in random splashes where
theyd been thrown. Edison
listened to the men and
women talk, and when they
laughed, he tried to laugh,
too. Read the rest at
classics.esquire.com.

way. No rubbish can in sight. She crumples

the cup and stuffs it in her cardigan pocket, moves towards the taxi line, nudging the
suitcase along.
From a distance she is sure she hears the
faint rumor of the piano: The boy is condent and agile beyond his years.
She nudges forward in the queue, pats her
cardigan pocket, icks through her passport,
searching for her brothers address. A ticket
stub, a few receipts, nothing else. Lord, help
me now. I must nd his address. Near Victoria Station. I remember that.
She lays the suitcase at on the ground,
thumbs open the steel lock. Three dresses,
an overcoat, a change of shoes, a Thomas
Merton book, a biography of the new Pope.
An acute wave of helplessness sweeps over
her, a nausea that begins in the pit of her
stomach, rises, and spreads.
You all right there?
There is a tattoo at the collar of the taxi
drivers shirt, the extension of a vine or a
bramble of some sort. She ips the suitcase
closed, snaps the locks, pushes down on the
lid to keep herself from toppling forward,
stands shakily.
He gazes up at her with mild alarm. She
is a full head and shoulders taller than him.
If she were to fall she might topple him
completely.
I lost the address. My brother. It was written down. Its...a cog in my head. It just comes
and goes.
Sorry love, he says, cant help you there.
She watches as the driver opens his car
door for another customer. A vine. Dark
green. A line through the trees. The sound
of a radio. A small steel lock on the door. Es-

cape. It was easy enough to cut through the

bamboo: once with a sharpened coat hanger, once with a piece of corrugated metal.
She squeezed herself through the gap, crept
along in her rubber-soled shoes. She got as
far as the river, but it was so swollen with
rain that it terried her: She simply sank
to her knees and waited, slumped against
the trunk of a tree. They found her, covered head to toe in ant bites. When she recovered, she was beaten. He pulled a hood
over her head. Darkness folded around her.
The cloth smelled of rotting fruit. More
than once she vomited and he left her in
the hood a few minutes, to stew. Afterwards
she mumbled her prayers. Rosary after rosary. Her body ached. She bled. It seeped
through to her dress. Carlos allowed her
to wash. The appalling embarrassment. Always turning away, hunched over, covering
her breasts, her groin, bent into whatever
shadow she might nd. Someone watching from afar. She wondered what might
happen if she ever conceived of child. One
time, the clock of her body stopped for two
months. It terried her, then she bled again.
She was not forsaken. She cleaned herself.
Immerse yourself in prayer wherever you
happen to be.
Beverly shufes out from the taxi line
and back under the awning of the railway
station. The ambush of the mind. She has
grown unreliable even to herself. These
turnings, these slippages. The distant piano still sounds out. Perhaps thats the piped
music of the station? What was the name of
Ians street? How did I get here? I had his address when I was at the airport. On the train.
On the tube. Maybe it uttered to the oor.
She wishes a moment to be back again
with the girls in Houston. To conjure a safe
place out of nothing. To return to the known,
the benign, the easy. To stand with them at
the back entrance. Sister Stretch. Perching
on the back steps, smoking. Kneeling in the
small basement chapel alongside her Sisters.
Or even the simplicity of the convent house
on Long Island. To walk along the beach and
watch the gulls drawn through the dawn.
Sister Anne. Sister Camille. The other Sister, the Argentinian, she cannot recall her
name, what is it?
At the trafc light on Vauxhall Bridge
Road, she pauses. It catches then, and she
remembers: John Islip Street.

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e has gained a small

paunch and his eyes
are puffy, as if sleep has
eluded him for a while
now, but he is still tall

WorldMags.net

and elegant and silver-haired, the sort of

man who insists on a tie even while alone
in the late afternoon.
Bev, he says.
Her childhood name. It reminds her of
the stone bridge over the river in Oughterard, the water running quick and shallow and light-veined beneath her.
What in the world are you doing here?
He reaches immediately for her suitcase.
She stands a moment on the precipice of
the apartment: The river ran swiftly west.
Copper-colored in summertime. Fly shermen stood at the bend where the oak
trees bowed. A low plain of red sky cupped
over them.
He takes her arm and guides her towards
the musty living room. An ancient coat of
books on the walls: novels, photography
collections, advance reading copies, poetry. Stacks of them piled every which way
on the oor also.
He sweeps ve or six books from the
lumpy brown couch. They skitter across
the carpet to meet their fellows.
Collision, she says.
Ian takes her hand. His ngers, cold to
the touch. What is it that he lls his days
with now? What gives him pause? What,
apart from books, jostles his mind? Even
from a young age he never really believed
in God, or ideas of poverty, purity, piety.
There were times, in recent years, on the
phone, that he railed against the Catholic Church. The abuse. The scandals. The
Magdalene Laundries. The deceitful morass of bureaucracy. The lives bought, he
said, on the condition of the buyers ignorance. She knew the aws, the awful
shame, the flagrant greed. She had no
need to defend it, to protest. She too had
doubted the Churchmore deeply, perhaps, than her brother could ever have
known. Not so much in the jungle, but afterwards, in the crisp sheets of the St. Louis
hospital, where she admitted the terror, as
if it had been set on delay. What was it that
she herself had desired? What mirror had
He thrust at her? There were days that the
blame hit her with such force she could
hardly stand. She told herself it was her
fault: her body, her mind, her failure. She
had enticed him. Asked for it. Deserved it.
The days withheld their light. Her mind
was an empty seed. The despair swelled
in the husk of dark.
Are you okay? What happened? Bev?
You said collision.
I did?
Ill make tea. Ill get you a cup of tea.
Id like that, yes.

The rattle of teacups. He pokes his head

around the corner. Just checking, he says.
Ill be right there, dont fall asleep.
She hears, then, the high whistle of the
kettle and the soft sigh of the fridge door.
On one bookshelf stands a photograph
of their parents sitting on the front bumper of an ancient motorcar, the large white
headlights, the curved panels, the airhorn.
An impossible era. They stand remote from
her, more photograph than memory. Somewhere, deep in the apartment, she hears
another voice, and then a burst of classical music from the radio.
Ian carefully places the tray down on the
table. Two china cups, a plate of biscuits, a
teapot in a cozy. He is still a man of the ancient ways. He was married once, long ago,
to a woman from Scotland, but they never
had children. A woman of short hair and
spectacles. A psycho-linguist by profession. They divorced. Ian had been afraid
to tell Beverly at rst. What was her name
again? All of it escaping.
He pours the tea through a small metal strainer and holds the jug of milk up as
if to measure not just her preference but
her demeanor.
I think I might be forgetting things, Ian.
Oh God, no.
Its not Alzheimers, not that.
She pauses with the teacup at her
mouth: I mean, I might be forgetting what
happened to me. Or not forgetting. A sort
of remembering, I suppose. Losing words
sometimes.
Whatever do you mean?
He came back, you know.
Who came back, Bev?
A curtain opens up on her brothers face

then, when she tells him: the exhaustion

in Houston, the move to Long Island, the
appearance on the television, the confusion, the doubt, the night she stood on the
stairs with Sister Anne, the constant return of Carloss face as she walked along
the beach, how he was a man of peace now,
it rattled her, she could not shake it, she
had to come see him, she had to see if perhaps it was true, is it possible to nd peace
when all along you have sought to destroy
it, how is it that a man can change so entirely, where did the shift within him occur, what was the word she was looking
for, reconciliation?
And now hes at some peace conference?
An institute, yes.
And you want to see him?
I dont even know for sure if its him.
The quick it of Ians eyes: green, same
as her own. A brother, then. Perhaps that is
it? Perhaps Carlos had a brother? A cousin?
She has never even entertained the notion.
A twin even. The panic claws her throat.
What if its the simplest error of all and
there is someone identical? An exact duplicate who is, in fact, the opposite?
Ian picks a biscuit from the plate, bites
down softly, and lets it dissolve on his
tongue.
What day is it today?
Sunday of course.
A sharp breath escapes her: Oh, I missed
mass. The rst time in my life. I missed
mass, Ian. I cant believe I missed it.
Youve been traveling.
Im tired, Ian. So very very tired.
She lifts the saucer towards the teacup
to calm the shake in her hands.

N I R VA N A
By Adam Johnson
(AUGUST 2013)

Its late, and I cant sleep.

I raise a window for some
spring Palo Alto air, but it
doesnt help. In bed, eyes
open, I hear whispers,
which makes me think of
the President because we
often talk in whispers. I
know the whisper sound is
really just my wife, Charlotte, who listens to
Nirvana on her headphones all night and tends
to sleep-mumble the lyrics. Charlotte has her own
bed, a mechanical one.
Yes, hearing the President whisper is creepy
because hes been dead
now, whatthree months?

But even creepier is what

happens when I close my
eyes: I keep visualizing
my wife killing herself.
More like the ways she
might try to kill herself,
since shes paralyzed from
the shoulders down. The
paralysis is quite temporary, though good luck
trying to convince
Charlotte of that. She
slept on her side today,
to fight the bedsores,
and there was something
about the way she stared
at the safety rail at the
edge of the mattress. The
bed is voice-activated,
so if she could somehow

WorldMags.net

get her head between the

bars of the safety rail, incline is all shed have to
say. As the bed powered
up, shed be choked in
seconds. And then theres
the way she stares at the
looping cable that descends from the Hoyer
lift, which swings her in
and out of bed. What can
really keep a guy up at
night is the knowledge
that she doesnt need an
exotic exit strategy, not
when shes exacted a
promise from you to
help her do it when the
time comes. Read the rest
at classics.esquire.com.

71

WorldMags.net

Im sure theres some sort of dispensation, isnt there? Isnt there some sort of
Catholic word?
He toes around in his books as if he might
nd the word in the mess on the oor.
Indulgence, he says, snapping his ngers. Isnt that it? Indulgence?

he wakes in his bed: She

has never once slept in a
double bed before. An indulgence, yes. She stumbles, fully clothed, to the
window, parts the blinds
to the yellow streetlight. A sheen of wet on the ground. The
light skids in patches along the footpath.
She hears the laughter of two young women, tottering arm in arm down the street.
A black taxicab trawls slowly through
the rain. Monday morning. A plenary
indulgence.
In the corridor she hears the whirr of a
computer printer. A light leaks out from a
gap in the living room door. Through the
gap she sees Ian caught in a blue light,
books scattered around him, bent into
whatever work is at hand.
She returns to her room, kneels at the
bed for her morning lauds. For the needs
of those who are confused. For the needs
of those who are without hope. For the
needs of those who have no one to pray
for them.
It is still dark when she hears the clatter of cutlery and the whistle of the kettle. He sits bleary-eyed at the breakfast
table.
For you, he says, guiding a file across
the Formica table.
She fingers the sharp edge of the folder, then turns to the first page. Ian has
printed out all the information he can
find from the Internet. Three pictures
of Carlos, one a headshot, one with government ministers, one taken outside the
Institute for Peace.
His name is Euclides Largo. I mean,
thats what he calls himself.
Euclides.
Fifty-nine years old. Hes with a
small left-wing party.
That cant be.
Ive been researching all night.
Theyve a lot of support in the countryside, it seems. Theyre left wing.
But hes right wing. I mean thats . . .
Go figure.
Are they Catholic, his party?
They dont seemI dont know, I dont
think so. Who knows. Im sorry, Bev. All

72

ESQUIRE AUGUST 2015

I can tell is that hes moved up through

the ranks over the years.
A surge of bitterness at the base of her
spine.
He was a lawyer before he got into
politics. His main thrust is coal mining.
He represents the miners. Copper deposits, corporate access to the mines, that
sort of thing. He makes his argument for
peace on the basis of economics.
She drags the file a little closer and
runs her fingers along the edge of his
photograph. She has a sudden urge for a
cigarette: She has not craved one in days.
To smoke, to cough, to burn and
disappear.
Its him.
Are you sure?
She is pierced by the thought that it is
all a delusion stacked against her faith,
a test of her ability to believe.
Sure as God, she says.
You could go to the newspapers.
And what?
I can call some friends at the radio
station. The embassy. You should call the
embassy
And say what?
He raped you, Bev.
Thirty-seven years ago.
A trapezoid of morning light crosses the kitchen floor. She hears a shout
from farther along the street and a blast
of laughter, then the smash of a bottle on
the pavement: so early, so late.
Ian rises to the kitchen window to part
the curtains to look down the length of
the street.
Hooligans, he says.
He waits at the kitchen curtains, opening and closing them as if there is some
Morse code that he might reveal to the
street below.
You dont still smoke, do you? she
asks.
He shuffles into the living room, returns moments later with a small blue
bag of tobacco and rolling papers. He
fumbles with the paper, licks the edge,
smooths it down, passes her the roll-up,
takes a box of matches from the kitchen drawer. The smell of sulphur jags her
awake.

t is a four-story townhouse fronted by a black ironwork fence, on

the eastern side of the river. The
walls of the Institute look recently painted, perfectly white. Flowerpots in the windowsills with red owers, hydrangeas. A large brass plate on the

wall. She had expected something grander, more surprising. Nobody gathered outside. No mothers with placards. No cameras or waiting limousines.
A feeble rain drizzles down. She stands at
the curb and looks up to see the dark outline
of a lamp in the front window. The vague
shadow of gures crossing and recrossing
the room. It strikes her as a place more of
silence than peace. She is at the door before
she even catches herself. Her hand on the
intercom button. The buzzer sounds. She
glances up at the security camera. A silence
and then a second buzzing. Longer, more
insistent, impatient even.
Can I help you?
What vanity brought me here, what conceit? She sees a shape in the window, someone looking out at her.
Sorry, she says into the intercom.
She turns her face into her damp head
scarf, descends the steps, walks quickly
away, an old woman, the cost weighed in
every tendon.
At a corner sandwich shop, she stops.
Newspapers on a rack outside. An Irish paper too: She has not seen one in many years.
The red light of a camera blinks as she steps
inside. She buys the paper and a coffee, sits
at the counter to read.
From a distance she watches the front of
the Institute, the quiet comings and goings,
the shapes of shapes.
The hours drift. The shop is quiet. She
scans the paper, even the sports pages, but
cannot recall a single word of what she has
read.
In the late afternoon she stops at the
church in Westminster. From his accent the
priest is young, African. Formal. Correct.
Mannered. Even in the darkness she can
tell he is one who stiffens his collar. She has,
she says, failed in the most ordinary way
to embrace forgiveness. She has lied about
her whereabouts to others. She has failed
His grace. She has spent her time in sloth.
She has not sought out her fellow Sisters
in London, nor any solace from her family
within the Church. She has missed her duties: mass, prayer, the holy sacrament. She is
unsure now if any of her service is towards
the Lord. It is, in the end, she thinks, the
shallowest of confessions: all of the truth,
none of the honesty.
After penance, she wanders out into the
city, along the Thames. The river sweeps by,
turbulent and bulging, but without sound.
In Ians apartment she moves out from
his room, allows him his double bed. She
takes a blanket to the couch. She sleeps,
surrounded by books.

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he repeats the ritual three

days in a row, standing outside
the Institute, waiting, watching, shufing away, her head
scarf pulled tight. From the
corner table in the sandwich shop she can
see the length of the street. Always a urry of activity in the morning. Black cars.
A series of shapes hustling up the steps.
The lights inside ickering on and off. At
lunchtime, too, the men and women coming down the steps. From a distance any
number of them could be him. In the evening, when the dark descends, it is harder
to tell, the street shiny with rain, the lamplight carrying the shapes away.
It seems to her that she could sit here for
seasons on end: watching the street leaf
and unleaf itself.
Decades ago, in Bogot, there had been
a time when she waited for a bus to return
her to the village. She remained in the station for two and a half days. Diesel fumes.
The screech of brakes. She sat on a wooden bench, clutching her ticket. She had not
eaten and carried only a small ask of water. She read from the Scriptures. Peter the
Apostle. Manacled to that same post. The
Mamertine.
On the fth day she sees him.
It is late afternoon, in the corner of the
shop, her hands curled around a cold coffee mug. The newspaper is spread out in
front of her. The headlines of a foreign
country.
The shop is small and quiet, monitored
by the series of cameras set up high around
the corners.
She is about to nish her coffee and
return to Ians apartment when the bell
sounds out on the door.
A gust of cold wind. The small hint of a
cough. She bends forward and grips the
counter when he glides past her. It takes a
moment to even realize that it is him. The
back of his hair is perfectly combed. His
suit is rumpled but smart. There is a click
from the heels of his shoes. At the fridge
he takes out a cold coffee drink. He has,
under his arm, a Spanish-language paper.
Why did she not see him walking along
the street? Where has he appeared from?
He says something, she is sure, to the Pakistani shopkeeper: She cannot quite hear.
He drops a coin in the small tray at the side
of the register.
She removes her dark cardigan, folds it
in her lap, swivels on the chair, places her
hands in the well of her skirt, watches him
in the shop-window reection, all of him
reversed, right to left.

A smell of aftershave rolls from him as

he passes. Is it enough to have seen him?
To just be here? I should allow myself, in
the obedience of faith, to be used by Gods
love. Make of myself a prayerful absence.
She reaches out to tug the side of his
jacket. The ap end, close to his hip. The
cloth feels so terribly expensive.
He turns. A surge of heat pulses through
her. A bristling of the hair on her arms.
World without end. The mole on his
cheek. The tilt of his eye.
Euclides Largo?
Yes?
She can tell straightaway that he has
become the sort of man who is happy to
be recognized. His skin has grown lighter, as if he has come indoors, drawn the
curtains on that other life. He arches an
eyebrow, reaches out a political hand.
She does not take it. She grips her cardi-

MARRY THE
ONE WHO GETS
T H E R E F I RST:
O U T TA K E S
FROM THE
SHEIDEGGERKRUPNIK
WEDDING
ALBUM
By Heidi Julavits
(APRIL 1998)

She lied to Louis, telling him shed

picked up a private tutorial in Queens.
Shane insisted on paying her to offset suspicions. Maybe thats why she
let him touch her the way she did. He
had a signet ring that he liked to press
over her eyelids, branding her with his
initials so that his ownership would be
clear every time she blinked. Read the
rest at classics.esquire.com.

gan instead. No language at all. To bless

him now, to forgive him, to let him go on
his way?
Youre at the Institute?
Yes.
I saw you on television. Spanish language. In New York.
A wonderful city.
He favors the door a moment, glances
outside, but then turns: And you are . . . ?
Im justan interested observer.
He leans back as if to put her in focus.
Journalist?
Im far too old to be interested in jour-

nalism. Im just watching from a distance,

Mr. Largo.
But you speak Spanish?
Just a little.
He peels back the cellophane from the
lid of the drink, taps the bottom of the bottle against the heel of his hand. It strikes
her that he wears no rings on his ngers.
No marriage, then, no children.
A tightness cramps Beverlys chest
when he brings the coffee to his mouth.
She lets out a small sound: something
trapped, hidden. He nods as if about to
leave, but she leans forward in her chair.
Am I supposed to directly bestow my forgiveness, Lord? Am I to reconcile with
evil? Is that what is being asked of me?
Is that what You demand after all these
years? Apokatastasis panton. The restoral
of all things. To what, then, shall I be
restored? Is there no wisdom? Is that
what I have to learn? That there is nally none at all?
It has, she notices, begun to rain outside, a steady patter against the window.
She speaks slowly, the words emerging,
small stones of sound: The television said
youre working at the draft of a treaty?
We are.
Youre aligned with the miners?
And their families, s. Were struggling, but we are, how you say we are
getting along, bit and bit. Well have a
statement . . .
Poco a poco.
So, you do speak Spanish?
Its coming back to me. And your English? Its good now.
Excuse me?
Your English is good now, Carlos.
She stands. She is a full head taller than
him. Still she does not offer her hand.
Excuse me?
Its good, Carlos. Your English.
Euclides, he says. Largo.
Sister Beverly Clarke, she says.
He glances over his shoulder toward a
waiting car outside, a small fan of smoke
rising from its exhaust, the rain bouncing off the roof. Two young boys enter the
shop: When they remove their hoods one
of them looks remarkably to her like the
boy who played the piano in Victoria Station how many days ago nowve, six, a
full week?
Youve become a man of peace, Carlos.
Im not sureexcuse meI think
youve maybe mistaken me
I dont think so.
You must excuse me. I have a car
waiting.
[continued on page 116]

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WHAT IVE LEARNED

WorldMags.net

BILL MAHER
COMEDIAN, COMMENTATOR, 59, LOS ANGELES

INTERVIEWED BY CAL FUSSMAN ON MAY 6, 2015

> My definition of the truth is whatever I tell you.

> Heres a piece of advice my dad gave me: You can get a lot more out of somebody if instead of saying Let me tell you something! you ask: Can I share something with you?
> I should think about that more.
> A great party room has a horrible rug that you cannot destroy.
> My mother didnt intend to teach me this lesson, but I vividly remember when she told me there wasnt a Santa Claus. I can
still see myself lying in bed around Christmas when she said, You know, Dad and I talked about it and we think you really should
know at this point that theres not a Santa Claus. And I was like, Whaaaaaaat?! And she said, Well, how could there be? How
could one man really y all the way around the world with presents for everybody? And I remember thinking, Then why did you
tell me there was? Why set people up for a fall, you know? Isnt that just going to make them cynical?
> People sometimes say to me, Oh, Bill, its so easy to mock religion. And I always say, Yes, thats the point. Its not a coincidence that its a comedically rich target. Bill Donohue, the head of the Catholic League, wants to ght me again. Literally ght
me. Like MayweatherPacquiao. Yes, two sixty-year-old men in the parking lot. As Jesus would have wanted . . .
> Laughter is a drug. I remember the rst time I performed for real on a stagea high school talent show. I dont know if Ive
ever been that high.
> One of my show-business lessons is that it never hurts in a talent meeting to show that youre talented.
> Some people say there isnt a difference between love and sex. Those people are called women.
> I think I know what love is. Its when selshness goes out of a relationship. Thats love. Anything short of that is not.
> I feel like I learned more about love when relationships ended. That may have been truer love because we took the
sex out of the equation.
> Of all the bad things Ive done to my bodyall the drugs and I smoked for twenty yearsfor me, nothing is going to be worse
than the fact that I lived over a fucking bus stop on Eighth Avenue between Fifty-fth and Fifty-sixth Streets for three years,
with those early-eighties bus fumes coming through the window. There was a Blimpie across the street. I used to eat there, in the
bus fumes, and its amazing I am talking to you nowit really is. Its a testament to how the human body can repair itself.
> You know as much as anybody, very often, about things you may not think youre the expert in.
> Bill Gates said, When you look back on what happened in a two-year period, you always think nothing has changed. But
when you look at ten years, everythings changed. I nd that to be so true. A two-year period just seems like Mmm, were stuck.
But ten years is unrecognizable. In 2005, we werent taking pictures of cops beating people up with our phones.
> When we talk about disrespect in the comfort of our cushy lives, its nothing nearly as brutal as what happens to poor black
people in the ghetto. I mean theres disrespect, and then theres disrespect at the end of a nightstick.
> Youre a different person every decade, and every decade you have different needs and desires and values. In my fties,
what became important to me was comfort and acceptance. I wouldnt have said those two things in my twenties.
> There are certainly aspects of my life that I would like to take back, but you cant. Ive probably spent too much time saying,
Oh, God, I hate myself for doing this or that. . . . But were all in a state of evolution.
> If you want to be a buttery, you have to spend some time as a worm.
> We cant let ISIS bait us into another giant war the way Al Qaeda did after 9/11. Thats what they want. They know the only
way they can bring down this giant is by getting him to do something stupidwhich is what Al Qaeda did. They got us to invade
Iraq. They got us to spend trillions of dollars and only create more terrorists by bombing and droning. Just leave them alone.
Mike Huckabee says, When you see a snake, the way to deal with it is to cut off its head. . . . Ive never had a snake problem that
couldnt be solved by distance. Distance. Just walk away. Leave the snake alone.
> Theres definitely a time when the best you can do is look good for your age.
> I always think Im very lucky, and I dont mean just me. I think I was born in a very sweet spot: after electricity, antibiotics,
ush toiletsI wouldnt want to live without any of thatand before the deluge, before the climate changes.
> I hope theres no such thing as reincarnation, cuz I will never pull a better life.

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Real Time with Bill

Maher is in its
thirteenth season
on HBO. The Mets
baseball team,
which Maher owns
a stake in, is in its
fifty-fourth.

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8/2015

WE
LOVE

A WOMAN

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P G.

77

P H O T O G R A P H S BY A B B E Y D R U C K E R

By Nate Hopper

Between film shoots,

international flights, and a family
crisis, a lovely afternoon
with Kate Mara.
(Thats Mare-uh. Not Marr-uh.)

Is a Woman
We Love

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WorldMags.net
What
a

delight.
Kate Mara
and I swallowed up by a couple quicksand
cushions, on the open-air back patio of a
Manhattan hotel on a Saturday. The weather: coolly humid. The birds: chirping without concern. She seems in a bit of a rush,
checking out in between shaking my hand
and leading us here. Shes been in New York
for ve days. Tomorrow she will y to Belfast to shoot a lm for two months. Her plan
after this interview is to take a car back to
her familys home upstate.
Ah. Thatll be nice.
Well, my familys dog, Betty Boop, died
a couple days ago.
And with that, the birds stop chirping.
Not that she seems down. Theres a steady
hum to her cadence. It was kind of crazy.
Im here doing a little Fantastic Four press.
I went to the Met [Costume Gala], and I
planned on going to see my family for two
nights. The day I got there, the dog passed.
I felt lucky to be there.
The Maras are a dog family. Oh, my gosh.
Weve never not had them. Kate has two.
She got them about twelve years ago. Theres
Bruno, and theres Lucius, who is a rescue,
like Betty, who was four years younger than
both of them. I hate to say this, because
I love my dog whos not a rescue, Bruno,
but I got him before I really understood how
desperately dogs need to be rescued, she
says. Now were obsessed with the breed.
Boston terriers are like little gremlins. But
thats why I love them.

You want to see?

The picture is the background of her
phone, which she hands to me. The dogs
could be twins.
Can you guess which one is Lucius?
Uh . . .
You can do it.
I point to the terrier with the slightly more
austere cheekbones. Looks like a Lucius.
Wow, she says. You got it wrong.
Her drink is hot water with, like, lots of
lemon on the side. She sips it, in between
curse-laden sentences and sniggers. She lies
slack on the couch, legs uncrossed. We talk
about whether shell visit her familys Dublin
farm in between workdays; her wisecracking Fantastic Four costars (I dont really fuck
with them. They fuck with me); the serial mispronunciation by her more proper
sister, Rooney, of the rst a in Mare-uh (We
give her shit all the time); her support of the
Humane Society and Oceana; her veganism
and gluten-freeism and belief that movietheater-popcorn butter is sacrilege. (That,
to me, is gross. It makes the popcorn soggy, too.) She takes offense at my hypothesis
that when shes training for a lm and cannot eat movie-theater popcorn but brings a
popcorn-pang palliative snack with her, she
chooses carrots. (No. Not carrots.)
So, how did it feel to lose to the Philadelphia Eagles 270 last year?
(The Eagles are the rivals of her, well, genealogy, which comprises two cornerstones
of the National Football League. They are
the intrastate rivals of the Pittsburgh Steelers, founded by her maternal great-grandfather in 1933, and the chief rivals of the New
York Giants, founded by her paternal greatgrandfather in 1925 and, gloriously, the losers
of both games against the Eagles last season.)

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A WOMAN

WE
LOVE

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A WOMAN

WE
LOVE

80

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ESQUIRE AUGUST 2015

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I didnt play in the game.

Well . . .
Yes, I am wearing a Giants shirt. Of
course Im a huge fan. Its never nice to lose
against the Eagles. Never.
Im an Eagles fan.
You didnt hurt me. Im not giving you
the satisfaction.
She once said that her contract stipulates
she cannot work during the Super Bowl
People love thatbut she claries that its
an issue only if shes shooting in February.
Though, yes, she asks to have the days surrounding the Super Bowl off, because one
timewe hypothesize (incorrectly, it turns
out) its the championship game in which
the Steelers defeated the Arizona Cardinalsshe was working. Its like missing
the biggest family event of your life. I share
a brief anecdote about a Steelers-loving
friend who, a half hour after that game, returned home screaming with joy.
Well, Im sure you can relate to that . . . if
your team won.
She lets the line sit there.
But they havent.
If they won, I said.
Shes now spent more than half her thirtytwo years working as a professional actress
and is well past Brokeback Mountain and
24 and Entourage. After playing a powerthirsty reporter/seductress on House of
Cards, giving such nuance to her characters neediness and savvy and posturing that
she received an Emmy nomination (see: episode ten, in which she shrinks when confronted by her paramours wife in one scene
but in the next attempts to milk the confrontation for dominion over him); earning a preemptively scheduled-for-a-sequel
superhero blockbuster in Fantastic Four and
a Ridley Scottdirected space epic in the autumn; and wrapping two other lms, Mara
has a new agency. She can decide how she
spends her time.
I think Ive become more aware of whom
Im going to spend three months of my life
with, she says. Why do I want to have that
experience with that person? And what will
it give me? Will it help me grow? Ive started
actually making a list of directors that Im
excited aboutand now Im not just waiting
for them to have a movie but maybe creating one myself. The list is in the Notes section of her phone.
She motions for the checknot to cap the
conversation but to prepare for maximal
efciency whenever it does end. Though
soon after the waiter arrives, I tell her to go.
She bounces up. Well, listen, thanks so
much for my lemon water, she says. It was
a treat. She slicks the line and offers a hug
and is gone.

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81

WorldMags.net

BALLAD OF THE SAD CLIMATOLOGISTS

When the end of human civilization is your day job, it can be hard to sleep at night
BY JOHN H. RICHARDSON
PG. 82 / ESQUIRE / AUGUST 2015

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Glaciologist Jason
Box, left, at work on
the Petermann
Glacier on
Greenlands northwest coast, which
has lost mass at an
accelerated pace in
recent years. Box
and his family left
Ohio State for
Europe a couple
years ago, and he
is relieved to have
escaped Americas
culture of climatechange denial.

HE INCIDENT WAS SMALL, BUT JASON BOX

doesnt want to talk about it. Hes been skittish

about the media since it happened. This was
last summer, as he was reading the cheery blog
posts transmitted by the chief scientist on the
Swedish icebreaker Oden, which was exploring the Arctic for an
international expedition led by Stockholm University. Our rst
observations of elevated methane levels, about ten times higher than in background seawater, were documented . . . we discovered over 100 new methane seep sites. . . . The weather Gods are
still on our side as we steam through a now ice-free Laptev Sea. . . .
As a leading climatologist who spent many years studying the Arctic at the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center at Ohio State, Box
knew that this breezy scientic detachment described one of the

nightmare long-shot climate scenarios: a feedback loop where warming seas release methane that causes warming that releases more
methane that causes more warming, on and on until the planet is incompatible with human life. And he knew there were similar methane releases occurring in the area. On impulse, he sent out a tweet.
If even a small fraction of Arctic sea oor carbon is released to
the atmosphere, were fd.
The tweet immediately went viral, inspiring a series of headlines:
C L I M A T O L O G I S T S AY S A R C T I C C A R B O N R E L E A S E C O U L D
MEAN

WERE

FUCKED.

CLIMATE SCIENTIST DROPS THE F-BOMB AFTER STARTLING

A R C T I C D I S C OV E RY .

CLIMATOLOGIST: METHANE PLUMES FROM THE ARCTIC

MEAN WERE SCREWED.

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Box has been outspoken for years. Hes done science projects with
But gloom is the one subject he doesnt want to discuss. Crawling
Greenpeace, and he participated in the 2011 mass protest at the White under a rock isnt an option, he responds, so becoming overcome
House organized by 350.org. In 2013, he made headlines when a mag- with PTSD-like symptoms is useless. He quotes a Norse proverb:
azine reported his conclusion that a seventy-foot rise in sea levels
The unwise man is awake all night, worries over and again.
over the next few centuries was probably already baked into the When morning rises he is restless still.
system. Now, with one word, Box had ventured into two particuMost people dont have a proverb like that readily at hand. So,
larly dangerous areas. First, the dirty secret of climate science and a nal try: I do think I should come to see you, meet your family,
government climate policies is that theyre all based on probabili- and make this story personal and vivid.
ties, which means that the effects of standard CO2 targets like an 80
I wanted to meet Box to nd out how this outspoken American is
percent reduction by 2050 are based on the middle of the probabil- holding up. He has left his country and moved his family to witness
ity curve. Box had ventured to the darker possibilities on the curves and study the melting of Greenland up close. How does being the
tail, where few scientists and zero politicians are willing to go.
one to look at the grim facts of climate change most intimately, day in
Worse, he showed emotion, a subject ringed with taboos in all and day out, affect a person? Is Box representative of all of the scienscience but especially in climate science. As a recent study from the tists most directly involved in this dening issue of the new century?
University of Bristol documented, climate scientists have been so How are they being affected by the burden of their chosen work in
distracted and intimidated by the relentless campaign against them the face of changes to the earth that could render it a different planet?
that they tend to avoid any statements that might get them labeled
Finally, Box gives in. Come to Copenhagen, he says. And he even
alarmists, retreating into a world of charts and data. But Box had promises a family dinner.
been able to resist all that. He even chased the media splash in interOR MORE THAN THIRTY YEARS, CLIMATE
views with the Danish press, where they translated were fucked
into its more decorous Danish equivalent, on our ass, plastering
scientists have been living a surreal existence. A
vast and ever-growing body of research shows
those dispiriting words in large-type headlines all across the country.
The problem was that Box was now working for the Danish govthat warming is tracking the rise of greenhouse
gases exactly as their models predicted. The
ernment, and even though Denmark may be the most progressive
nation in the world on climate issues, its leaders still did not take physical evidence becomes more dramatic every year: forests rekindly to one of its scientists distressing the populace with visions treating, animals moving north, glaciers melting, wildre seasons
of global destruction. Convinced his job was in jeopardy only a year getting longer, higher rates of droughts, oods, and stormsve
after he uprooted his young family and moved to a distant country, times as many in the 2000s as in the 1970s. In the blunt words of
Box was summoned before the entire board of directors at his re- the 2014 National Climate Assessment, conducted by three hunsearch institute. So now, when he gets an e-mail asking for a phone dred of Americas most distinguished experts at the request of the
call to discuss his recent gloomy statements, he doesnt answer it. U. S. government, human-induced climate change is realU. S.
Five days later: Dr. Boxtrying you again in case the message be- temperatures have gone up between 1.3 and 1.9 degrees, mostly since 1970and the change is already affecting agriculture,
low went into your junk le. Please get in touch.
This time he responds briey. I think most scientists must be water, human health, energy, transportation, forests, and ecosysburying overt recognition of the awful truths of climate change in tems. But thats not the worst of it. Arctic air temperatures are increasing at twice the rate of the rest of the worlda
a protective layer of denial (not the same kind of destudy by the U.S. Navy says that the Arctic could lose
nial coming from conservatives, of course). Im still
Box takes temperaits summer sea ice by next year, eighty-four years
amazed how few climatologists have taken an advocature and conductivity
ahead of the modelsand evidence little more than
cy message to the streets, demonstrating for some polreadings at Kane
a year old suggests the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is
icy action. But he ignores the request for a phone call.
Basin, near the
Humboldt Glacier,
doomed, which will add between twenty and twenA week later, another try: Dr. BoxI watched
Greenland. The custy-ve feet to ocean levels. The one hundred milyour speech at The Economists Arctic Summit. Wow.
tomary scientific
role is to deal
lion people in Bangladesh will need another place
I would like to come see you.
dispassionately with
to live and coastal cities globally will be forced to
data, but Box says
that the shit thats
relocate, a task complicated by economic crisis and
going down is
faminewith continental interiors drying out, the
testing my ability
to block it.
chief scientist at the U. S. State Department in 2009
predicted a billion people will suffer famine within twenty or thirty years. And yet, despite some encouraging developments in renewable energy and some
breakthroughs in international leadership, carbon emissions continue to rise at a steady rate, and for their pains
the scientists themselvesthe cruelest blow of allhave
been the targets of an unrelenting and well-organized attack that includes death threats, summonses from a hostile Congress, attempts to get them red, legal harassment, and intrusive discovery demands so severe they
had to start their own legal-defense fund, all amplied
by a relentless propaganda campaign nakedly nanced
by the fossil-fuel companies. Shortly before a pivotal climate summit in Copenhagen in 2009, thousands of their
e-mail streams were hacked in a sophisticated espionage
operation that has never been solvedalthough the of-

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cial police investigation revealed nothing, an analysis by forensics experts traced its path through
servers in Turkey and two of the worlds largest
oil producers, Saudi Arabia and Russia.
Among climate activists, gloom is building.
Jim Driscoll of the National Institute for Peer
Support just nished a study of a group of longtime activists whose most frequently reported
feeling was sadness, followed by fear and anger. Dr. Lise Van Susteren, a practicing psychiatrist and graduate of Al Gores Inconvenient
Truth slide-show training, calls this pretraumatic stress. So many of us are exhibiting all
the signs and symptoms of posttraumatic disorderthe anger, the panic, the obsessive intrusive
thoughts. Leading activist Gillian Caldwell went
public with her climate trauma, as she called it,
quitting the group she helped build and posting
an article called 16 Tips for Avoiding Climate
Burnout, in which she suggests compartmentalization: Reinforce boundaries between professional work and personal life. It is very hard
to switch from the riveting force of apocalyptic
predictions at work to home, where the problems are petty by comparison.
Most of the dozens of scientists and activists
I spoke to date the rise of the melancholy mood
to the failure of the 2009 climate conference and
the gradual shift from hope of prevention to plans
for adaptation: Bill McKibbens book Eaarth is
a manual for survival on an earth so different he
doesnt think we should even spell it the same, and
James Lovelock delivers the same message in A
Rough Ride to the Future. In Australia, Clive Hamilton writes articles and books with titles like Requiem for a Species. In a recent issue of The New Yorker, the melancholy Jonathan Franzen argued
that, since earth now resembles a patient whose terminal cancer
we can choose to treat either with disguring aggression or with
palliation and sympathy, we should stop trying to avoid the inevitable and spend our money on new nature preserves, where birds
can go extinct a little more slowly.
At the darkest end of the spectrum are groups like Deep Green
Resistance, which openly advocates sabotage to industrial infrastructure, and the thousands who visit the Web site and attend the
speeches of Guy McPherson, a biology professor at the University
of Arizona who concluded that renewables would do no good, left
his job, and moved to an off-grid homestead to prepare for abrupt
climate change. Civilization is a heat engine, he says. Theres
no escaping the trap weve landed ourselves into.
The most inuential is Paul Kingsnorth, a longtime climate activist and novelist who abandoned hope for political change in 2009.
Retreating to the woods of western Ireland, he helped launch a
group called Dark Mountain with a stirring, gloomy manifesto calling for a network of writers, artists, and thinkers who have stopped
believing the stories our civilization tells itself. Among those stories: progress, growth, and the superiority of man. The idea quickly spread, and there are now fty Dark Mountain chapters around
the world. Fans have written plays and songs and a Ph.D. thesis
about them. On the phone from Ireland, he explains the appeal.
You have to be careful about hope. If that hope is based on an
unrealistic foundation, it just crumbles and then you end up with
people who are despairing. I saw that in Copenhagenthere was
a lot of despair and giving up after that.

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Personally, though he considers them feeble gestures, hes planting a lot of trees, growing his own vegetables, avoiding plastic. He
stopped ying. It seems like an ethical obligation. All you can do is
what you think is right. The odd thing is that hes much more forgiving than activists still in the struggle, even with oil-purchased
politicians. We all love the fruits of what were giventhe cars and
computers and iPhones. What politician is going to try to sell people a future where they cant update their iPhones ever?
He laughs.
Does he think it would be wrong to take a transatlantic airplane
trip to interview a climate scientist?
He laughs again. You have to answer that yourself.
L L T H I S L E AV E S C L I M AT E S C I E N T I S T S

in an awkward position. At NASAs Goddard

Institute for Space Studies, which early in the
year was threatened with 30 percent budget
cuts by Republicans who resent its reports on
climate change, Gavin Schmidt occupies the seventh-oor corner
ofce once occupied by the legendary James Hansen, the scientist
who rst laid out the facts for Congress in 1988 and grew so impassioned he got himself arrested protesting coal mines. Although
Schmidt was one of the victims of the 2009 computer hacks, which
he admits tipped him into an episode of serious depression, he now
focuses relentlessly on the bright side. Its not that nothing has
been done. Theres a lot of things. In terms of per capita emissions,
most of the developed world is stable. So we are doing something.
Boxs tweet sets his teeth on edge. I dont agree. I dont think
were fucked. There is time to build sustainable solutions to a lot
of these things. You dont have to close down all the coal-powered

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85

stations tomorrow. You can transition. It sounds cute to say, Oh,

were fucked and theres nothing we can do, but its a bit of a nihilistic attitude. We always have the choice. We can continue to make
worse decisions, or we can try to make ever better decisions. Oh,
were fucked! Just give up now, just kill me now, thats just stupid.
Schmidt, who is expecting his rst child and tries to live a low-carbon existence, insists that the hacks and investigations and budget
threats have not intimidated him. He also shrugs off the abrupt-climate-change scenarios. The methane thing is actually something
I work on a lot, and most of the headlines are crap. Theres no actual
evidence that anything dramatically different is going on in the Arctic, other than the fact that its melting pretty much everywhere.
But climate change happens gradually and weve already gone up
almost 1 degree centigrade and seen eight inches of ocean rise. Barring unthinkably radical change, well hit 2 degrees in thirty or forty
years and thats been described as a catastrophemelting ice, rising
waters, drought, famine, and massive economic turmoil. And many
scientists now think were on track to 4 or 5 degreeseven Shell oil
said that it anticipates a world 4 degrees hotter because it doesnt
see governments taking the steps now that are consistent with the
2 degrees C scenario. That would mean a world racked by economic and social and environmental collapse.
Oh yeah, Schmidt says, almost casually. The business-as-usual world that we project is really a totally different planet. Theres
going to be huge dislocations if that comes about.
But things can change much quicker than people think, he says.
Look at attitudes on gay marriage.
And the glaciers?
The glaciers are going to melt, theyre all going to melt, he says.
But my reaction to Jason Boxs comments iswhat is the point of
saying that? It doesnt help anybody.
As it happens, Schmidt was the rst winner of the Climate Communication Prize from the American Geophysical Union, and various
recent studies in the growing eld of climate communications nd
that frank talk about the grim realities turns people offits simply too

much to take in. But strategy is one thing and truth is another. Arent
those glaciers water sources for hundreds of millions of people?
Particularly in the Indian subcontinent, thats a real issue, he
says. Theres going to be dislocation there, no question.
And the rising oceans? Bangladesh is almost underwater now.
Do a hundred million people have to move?
Well, yeah. Under business as usual. But I dont think were
fucked.
Resource wars, starvation, mass migrations . . .
Bad things are going to happen. What can you do as a person?
You write stories. I do science. You dont run around saying, Were
fucked! Were fucked! Were fucked! It doesntit doesnt incentivize anybody to do anything.

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C I E N T I S T S A R E P R O B L E M S O LV E R S BY

nature, trained to cherish detachment as a moral ideal. Jeffrey Kiehl was a senior scientist with
the National Center for Atmospheric Research
when he became so concerned about the way the
brain resists climate science, he took a break and got a psychology
degree. Ten years of research later, hes concluded that consumption
and growth have become so central to our sense of personal identity and the fear of economic loss creates such numbing anxiety, we
literally cannot imagine making the necessary changes. Worse, accepting the facts threatens us with a loss of faith in the fundamental order of the universe. Climate scientists are different only because they have a professional excuse for detachment, and usually
its not until they get older that they admit how much its affecting
themwhich is also when they tend to get more outspoken, Kiehl
says. You reach a point where you feeland thats the word, not
think, feelI have to do something.
This accounts for the startled reaction when Camille Parmesan of the University of Texaswho was a member of the group
that shared a Nobel prize with Al Gore for their climate workannounced that shed become professionally depressed and was

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ened him with federal prosecution, along with sixteen other scientists.
Now, sitting behind his desk in his ofce at Penn State, he goes back
to his swirl of emotions. You nd yourself in the center of this political theater, in this chess match thats being played out by very powerful guresyou feel anger, befuddlement, disillusionment, disgust.
The intimidating effect is undeniable, he says. Some of his colleagues were so demoralized by the accusations and investigations that they withdrew from public life. One came close to suicide. Mann decided to ght back, devoting more of his time to press
interviews and public speaking, and discovered that contact with
other concerned people always cheered him up. But the sense of
potential danger never leaves. Youre careful with what you say
and do because you know that theres the equivalent of somebody
with a movie camera following you around, he says.
Meanwhile, his sense of personal alarm has only grown. I know
youve spoken with Jason Boxa number of us have had these experiences where its become clear to us that in many respects, climate change is unfolding faster than we expected it to. Maybe it is
true what the ice-sheet modelers have been telling us, that it will
take a thousand years or more to melt the Greenland Ice Sheet. But
maybe theyre wrong; maybe it could play out in a century or two.
And then its a whole different ballgameits the difference between
human civilization and living things being able to adapt and not being able to adapt.
As Mann sees it, scientists like Schmidt who choose to focus on
the middle of the curve arent really being scientic. Worse are
pseudo-sympathizers like Bjorn Lomborg who always focus on
the gentlest possibilities. Because were supposed to hope for the
best and prepare for the worst, and a real scientic response would
also give serious weight to the dark side of the curve.
And yet, like Schmidt, Mann tries very hard to look on the bright
side. We can solve this problem in a way that doesnt disrupt our
lifestyle, he says. Public awareness seems to be increasing, and there
are a lot of good things happening at the executive level: tighter fuelefciency standards, the carbon-pricing initiatives by the New England and West Coast states, the recent agreement between the U. S.
and China on emissions. Last year we saw global economic growth
without an increase in carbon emissions, which suggests its possible to decouple oil and economic growth. And social change
can happen very fastlook at gay marriage.
But he knows that gay marriage had no huge economic downside, and the most powerful companies in the world are ghting
to stop any change in the fossil-fuel economy. So yes, he struggles
with doubt. And he admits that some of his colleagues are very depressed, convinced theres no way the international community
will rise to the challenge. He gets into that conversation in bars after climate conferences, always pushing the side of hope.
Dealing with all of this has been a long emotional journey. As a young
scientist, Mann was very traditional: I felt that scientists should take
an entirely dispassionate view when discussing matters of science,
he wrote in a book called The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars. We
should do our best to divorce ourselves from all of our typically human inclinationsemotion, empathy, concern. But even when he
decided that detachment was a mistake in this case and began becoming publicly active, he was usually able to put the implication of
all the hockey-stick trend lines out of his mind. Part of being a scientist is you dont want to believe there is a problem you cant solve.
Might that be just another form of denial?
The question seems to affect him. He takes a deep breath and answers in the carefully measured words of a scientist. Its hard to
say, he says. Its a denial of futility if there is futility. But I dont
know that there is futility, so it would only be denial per se if there
were unassailable evidence.

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Gavin Schmidt
in his office at
NASAs Goddard
Institute for Space
Studies. Boxs dire
forecast annoyed
him. You dont
run around saying, Were fucked!
Were fucked!
Were fucked! It
doesnt incentivize anybody to do
anything.

leaving the United States for England.

A plainspoken Texan who grew up
in Houston as the daughter of an oil
geologist, Parmesan now says it was
more about the politics than the science. To be honest, I panicked fteen years agothat was when the
rst studies came out showing that
Arctic tundras were shifting from beKayaking the melting a net sink to being a net source of
water, Petermann
CO2. That along with the fact this butGlacier.
tery I was studying shifted its entire
range across half a continentI said
this is big, this is big. Everything since then has just conrmed it.
But shes not optimistic. Do I think it likely that the nations of
the world will take sufcient action to stabilize climate in the next
fty years? No, I dont think it likely.
She was living in Texas after the climate summit failed in 2009,
when media coverage of climate issues plunged by two thirdsthe
subject wasnt mentioned once in the 2012 presidential debates
and Governor Rick Perry cut the sections relating to sea-level rise
in a report on Galveston Bay, kicking off a trend of state ofcials
who ban all use of the term climate change. There are excellent
climate scientists in Texas, Parmesan says rmly. Every university in the state has people working on impacts. To have the governors ofce ignore it is just very upsetting.
The politics took its toll. Her buttery study got her a spot on
the UN climate panel, where she got a quick and hard lesson on
the politics when policy makers killed the words high condence in the crucial passage that said scientists had high condence species were responding to climate change. Then the personal attacks started on right-wing Web sites and blogs. They just
at-out lie. Its one reason I live in the UK now. Its not just been
climate change, theres a growing, ever-stronger antiscience sentiment in the U. S. A. People get really angry and really nasty. It was a
huge relief simply not to have to deal with it. She now advises her
graduate students to look for jobs outside the U. S.
No one has experienced that hostility more vividly than Michael
Mann, who was a young Ph.D. researcher when he helped come up
with the historical data that came to be known as the hockey stick
the most incendiary display graph in human history, with its temperature and emissions lines going straight up at the end like the blade
of a hockey stick. He was investigated, was denounced in Congress,
got death threats, was accused of fraud, received white powder in the
mail, and got thousands of e-mails with suggestions like, You should
be shot, quartered, and fed to the pigs along with your whole damn
families. Conservative legal foundations pressured his university, a
British journalist suggested the electric chair. In 2003, Senator James
Inhofes committee called him to testify, anking him with two professional climate-change deniers, and in 2011 the committee threat-

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There are moments, he admits, ashes that come and go as fast

as a blinking light, when he sees news reports about some new development in the eld and it hits himWait a second, theyre saying
that weve melted a lot. Then he does a peculiar thing: He disassociates a little bit and asks himself, How would I feel about that headline if I were a member of the public? Id be scared out of my mind.
Right after Hurricane Sandy, he was in the classroom showing The
Day After Tomorrow with the plan of critiquing its ridiculous story
about the Atlantic conveyor belt slowing down so fast that it freezes
Englandexcept a recent study he worked on shows that the Atlantic conveyor belt actually is slowing down, another thing thats
happening decades ahead of schedule. And some of the scenes in
the wake of Hurricane Sandythe ooding
of the New York City subway system, cars
No scientist has come
submergedthey really didnt look that difin for more threats
ferent. The cartoon suddenly looked less
and abuse than
Michael
Mann, whose
like a cartoon. And its like, Now why is it
hockey stick graph
that we can completely dismiss this movie?
(so named because
the temperature and
He was talking to students, so it got to
emissions lines for
him. Theyre young, its their future more
recent decades curve
than his. He choked up and had to struggle
straight up) has
become the target
to get ahold of himself. You dont want to
of the most powerful
choke up in front of your class, he says.
deniers in the world.
About once a year, he says, he has nightmares of earth becoming a very alien planet.
The worst time was when he was reading his daughter Dr. Seusss The Lorax, the story of a society destroyed by greed. He saw it
as an optimistic story because it ends with the challenge of building a new society, but she burst into tears and refused to read the destroyed by ooding within thirty-ve years.)
Box is only forty-two, but his pointed Danish beard makes him
book again. It was almost traumatic for her.
look like a count in an old novel, someone whod wear a frock coat
His voice cracks. Im having one of those moments now.
and say something droll about the woman question. He seems deWhy?
I dont want her to have to be sad, he says. And I almost have to tached from the sunny day, like a tourist trying to relax in a strange
believe were not yet there, where we are resigned to this future. city. He also seems oddly detached from the things hes saying, laying out one horrible prediction after another without emotion, as if
HE SPRING DAY IS GLORIOUS, SUNNY AND
he were an anthropologist regarding the life cycle of a distant civcool, and the avenues of Copenhagen are alive ilization. But he cant keep his anger in check for long and keeps
with tourists. Trying to make the best of things, obsessively returning to two topics:
Jason Box says we should blow off the gettingWe need the deniers to get out of the way. They are risking evto-know-you lunch and go for a bike ride. Thirty eryones future. . . . The Koch Brothers are criminals....They should
minutes later he locks up the bikes at the entrance to Freetown, a lo- be charged with criminal activity because theyre putting the profcal anarchist community that has improbably become one of Copen- its of their business ahead of the livelihoods of millions of people,
hagens most popular tourist destinations. Grabbing a couple beers and even life on earth.
at a restaurant, he leads the way to a winding lake and a small dock.
Like Parmesan, Box was hugely relieved to be out of the toxic atThe wind is blowing, swans ap their wings just off the beach, and mosphere of the U. S. I remember thinking, What a relief, I dont
Box sits with the sun on his face and his feet dangling over the sand. have to bother with this bullshit anymore. In Denmark, his reTheres a lot thats scary, he says, running down the listthe search is supported through the efforts of conservative politicians.
melting sea ice, the slowing of the conveyor belt. Only in the last But Danish conservatives are not climate-change deniers, he says.
few years were they able to conclude that Greenland is warmer
The other topic he is obsessed with is the human suffering to come.
than it was in the twenties, and the unpublished data looks very Long before the rising waters from Greenlands glaciers displace the
hockey-stick-ish. He gures theres a 50 percent chance were al- desperate millions, he says more than once, we will face droughtready committed to going beyond 2 degrees centigrade and agrees triggered agricultural failures and water-security issuesin fact, its
with the growing consensus that the business-as-usual trajectory already happening. Think back to the 2010 Russian heat wave. Mosis 4 or 5 degrees. Its, um . . . bad. Really nasty.
cow halted grain exports. At the peak of the Australian drought, food
The big question is, What amount of warming puts Green- prices spiked. The Arab Spring started with food protests, the selfland into irreversible loss? Thats what will destroy all the coast- immolation of the vegetable vendor in Tunisia. The Syrian conict
al cities on earth. The answer is between 2 and 3 degrees. Then it was preceded by four years of drought. Same with Darfur. The mijust thins and thins enough and you cant regrow it without an ice grants are already starting to stream north across the seajust yesage. And a small fraction of that is already a huge problemFlor- terday, eight hundred of them died when their boat capsizedand
idas already installing all these expensive pumps. (According to the Europeans are arguing about what to do with them. As the Pena recent report by a group spearheaded by Hank Paulson and Rob- tagon says, climate change is a conict multiplier.
ert Rubin, secretaries of the Treasury under Bush Jr. and Bill ClinHis home state of Colorado isnt doing so great, either. The forton, respectively, $23 billion worth of property in Florida may be ests are dying, and they will not return. The trees wont return to a

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warming climate. Were going to see megares even more, thatll

be the new onemegares until those forests are cleared.
However dispassionately delivered, all of this amounts to a lament,
the scientists version of the mothers who stand on hillsides and keen
over the death of their sons. In fact, Box adds, he too is a climate refugee. His daughter is three and a half, and Denmark is a great place
to be in an uncertain worldtheres plenty of water, a high-tech agriculture system, increasing adoption of wind power, and plenty of
geographic distance from the coming upheavals. Especially when
you consider the beginning of the ood of desperate people from conict and drought, he says, returning to his obsession with how profoundly changed our civilization will be.
Despite all this, he insists that he approaches climate mostly as an
intellectual problem. For the rst decade of his career, even though
hes part of the generation of climate scientists who went to college
after Al Gores Earth in the Balance, he stuck to teaching and research.
He only began taking professional risks by working with Greenpeace
and by joining the protest against Keystone when he came to the intellectual conclusion that climate change is a moral issue. Its unethical to bankrupt the environment of this planet, he says. Thats
a tragedy, right? Even now, he insists, the horror of what is happening rarely touches him on an emotional level ...although it has been
hitting him more often recently. But IIIm not letting it get to
me. If I spend my energy on despair, I wont be thinking about opportunities to minimize the problem.
His insistence on this point is very unconvincing, especially given the solemnity that shrouds him like a dark coat. But the most
interesting part is the insistence itselfthe desperate need not to
be disturbed by something so disturbing. Suddenly, a welcome distraction. A man appears on the beach in nothing but jockey shorts,
his skin bluish. He says hes Greek and hes been sleeping on this
beach for seven months and will swim across the lake for a small
tip. A passing tourist asks if he can swim all the way.
Of course.
Let me see.
How much money?
I give you when you get back.
Give me one hundred.
Yeah, yeah. When you get back.
The Greek man splashes into the water and Box seems amused,
laughing for the rst time. Its the relief of normal goofy human
life, so distant from the dark themes that make up his lifes work.
Usually its a scientic development that smacks him, he says. The
rst was in 2002, when they discovered that meltwater was getting
into the bed of the Greenland Ice Sheet and lubricating its ow. Oh,
you say, it can be a wet bed, and then the implications sunk in: The
whole damn thing is destabilizing. Then in 2006, all of the glaciers in
the southern half of Greenland began to retreat at two and three times
their previous speed. Good Lord, its happening so fast. Two years later, they realized the retreat was fueled by warm water eroding the
marine base icewhich is also whats happening to the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Just thinking about it makes him gloomy. Thats
unstoppable, he says. Abrupt sea-level rise is upon us.
The Greek man returns with surprising speed, emerging from
the sea like a god in a myth, laughing and boasting. The Greeks are
masters of the waters! Pay me!
Im gonna give this guy a hundred kroner, Box says.
He makes sure the tourists pay, too, and comes back smiling. He
knows a Greek guy whos just like that, he says, very proud and jolly. He envies him sometimes.
He leads the way to a quieter spot on the lakeside, passing through
little hippie villages woven together by narrow dirt lanesby consensus vote, there are no cars in Freetown, which makes it feel pleasantly

medieval, intimate, and human-scaled. He lifts a beer to his lips and

gazes over the lake and the happy people lazing in the afternoon sun.
The question of despair is not very nice to think about, he says. Ive
just disengaged that to a large degree. Its kind of like a half-denial.
He mentions the Norse proverb again, but a bulwark against
despair so often cited becomes its own form of despair. You dont
dredge up proverbs like that unless youre staying awake at night.
He nods, sighing. This work often disturbs his sleep, driving him
from his bed to do something, anything. Yeah, the shit thats going
down has been testing my ability to block it.
He goes quiet for a moment. It certainly does creep in, as a parent, he says quietly, his eyes to the ground.
But lets get real, he says, fossil fuels are the dominant industry
on earth, and you cant expect meaningful political change with
them in control. Theres a growing consensus that there must be
a shock to the system.
So the darker hopes arisemaybe a particularly furious El Nio or
a carbon bubble where the nancial markets realize that renewables have become more scalable and economical, leading to a run
on fossil-fuel assets and a generational crash of the global economy
that, through great suffering, buys us more time and forces change.

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H E B OX FA M I LY D I N N E R I S N T G O I N G T O

happen after all, he says. When it comes to climate change at the very late date of 2015, there
are just too many uncomfortable things to say,
and his wife, Klara, resents any notion that she
is a climate migrant.
This is the rst hint that his brashness has caused tension at home.
Well, she . . . He takes a moment, considering. Ill say something like, Man, the next twenty years are going to be a hell of a
ride, or These poor North African refugees ooding to Europe,
and how I anticipate that ux of people to double and triple, and
will the open borders of Europe change? And shell acknowledge
it . . . but shes not bringing it up like I am.
Later, she sends a note responding to a few questions. She didnt
want to compare herself to the truly desperate refugees who are
drowning, she says, and the move to Denmark really was for the quality of life. Lastly, the most difcult question to answer is about Jasons
mental health. Id say climate change, and more broadly the whole host
of environmental and social problems the world faces, does affect his
psyche. He feels deeply about these issues, but he is a scientist and a
very pragmatic, goal-oriented person. His style is not to lie awake at
night worrying about them but to get up in the morning (or the middle of the night) and do something about it. I love the guy for it :)
So even when you are driven to your desk in the middle of the night,
quoting Norse proverbs, when you are among the most informed and
most concerned, the ordinary tender mercies of the home conspire in
our denial. We pour our energy into doing our jobs the best we can,
avoid unpleasant topics, keep up a brave face, make compromises
with even the best societies, and little by little the compartmentalization we need to survive the day adds one more bit of distance between the comfortable now and the horrors ahead. So Box turns out
to be a representative gure after all. Its not enough to understand
the changes that are coming. We have to nd a way to live with them.
In Denmark, Box says, we have the resilience, so Im not that worried about my daughters livelihood going forward. But that doesnt
stop me from strategizing about how to safeguard her futureIve
been looking at property in Greenland. As a possible bug-out scenario.
Turns out a person cant own land in Greenland, just a house
on top of land. Its a nice thought, a comforting thoughtno matter what happens, the house will be there, safely hidden at the top
of the world.

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Watch, listen, share, and morescan any page with the free Esquire2 app.

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Watch a (short) supercut of James Wolks best rolesscan any page with the free Esquire2 app.
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Double-breasted
wool-and-viscose suit
($3,125), jacquard
shirt ($575), and
leather shoes ($775)
by Giorgio Armani;
tortoiseshell sunglasses ($430) by
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Cotton shirt ($345)
and silk tie ($195) by
Dolce & Gabbana;
cotton-blend trousers
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steel Black Bay watch
($3,100) by Tudor.

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Cotton sweatshirt ($120)

by Tommy
Hilfiger;
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E S Q.

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Wool turtleneck ($175)

and wool pants (part
of suit, $1,045) by
Boss; leather belt
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Leather bomber
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sweater ($820), and
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by Gucci; leather
oxfords ($125) by
Florsheim.
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E S Q.

JIMMY WOLK WHO NOW?

BY ANNA PEELE

A M E S W O L K I S N O T actually a James. Hes a

Jimmy. Hes always been a Jimmy, even though
back in 2010, as a twenty-ve-year-old actor
without much more than soap-opera and TVmovie credits to his name, he decided to start going by James professionally. This producer says
to me, You know Jimmy Stewart? Now: I love
Jimmy Stewart. I fucking love Jimmy Stewart.
Guess what he was billed as? Lo, Jimmy Wolk
became James.
Its possible that one day he will become
the kind of famous person people feel familiar enough with to call by a nickname, and its
possible that his new summer event series on
CBS, Zoo, will be the thing that does this for him. But for now Jimmy has been a lead on enough failed showsthe 2010 double-life
series Lone Star, canceled after two excellent episodes; the 2012
USA Network miniseries Political Animals; the 201314 Robin Williams comedy The Crazy Onesthat hes careful not to be like, This
is it, this is the show, the one that will make him more than a greatlooking guy on a Venice Beach boardwalk or someone occasionally recognized as Bob Benson from Mad Men.
Jimmy is great-looking, affably handsome, with hazel eyes edged
by creases, evidence of a nearly permanent smile. His teeth, straight
and white with outsized incisors, arent capped. He never had braces
even. Jimmy has thick eyebrowshe knows he has to be careful
when hes older or those things will be crazy Mr. Miyagi bushes
like his uncles. His hairstyle was copied from his grandfather and
the Elvis movies his father watched with him when he was a kid.
There have been few modications, although he no longer uses
Vaseline and a combination comb/switchblade to slick it back.
Jimmys pretty masculinity is a throwback; he appears to be the
only man in Venice Beach with chest hair.
Jimmy projects comfort. As hes having his picture taken for Esquire,
hes comfortable handling a basketball, a bicycle, a cup of tepid iced
coffee, a prop script. A busker is given twenty dollars to vacate his
bongo drums and Jimmy is comfortable stepping in, slapping the
skins, bobbing around, jamming with the guitarist, slipping his ngers along some nearby chimes. Jimmy is feeling his ow. When
a prop is suggested that he is not comfortable witha longboard,
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to be ridden down the boardwalkJimmy smiles. Ill be honest

I have no idea what the fuck Id do with that. Hes polite but rm
about it. He is not going to look like an asshole at this shoot, because
Jimmy is not an asshole.
Jimmy is an extrovert, talking to everyone during the eight-hour
shoot, from the PAs to the stylist to his managers daughter, who
has a part in an upcoming production of the musical Babes in Arms,
which Jimmy is very interested in. He says his motivations are
selsh: If everyone feels respected in the creative process, theyre
more invested in it turning out well, which means Jimmy looks
his best. But its also that he just cant abide disrespect. If someone
was getting picked on at high school, I would nd that person and
have a conversation, ipping the whole situation on its head so that
the person picking on them would be like, Wait a minute, this guy
who I was thinking Im better than is all of a sudden chatting with
Jimmy? Id make the kid getting picked on feel like a G and the other guy feel like an idiot.
Jimmy learned the art of positive vibe setting at the womens shoe
store his dad, Rob Wolk, owns in Michigan and still runs with Jimmys sister. Jimmy was put to work there when he was ten. At thirteen, he started slipping high heels onto the feet of middle-aged women, chanting lines his father had fed him in the storeroom: Theyre a
hot number, those shoes. Sundance Shoes was where Jimmy learned
how to make a sale, where the motto was Never Come Out EmptyHanded. If he knew he didnt have the shoe the customer wanted, he
would tell them he was going to get it and then bring back different
options. He created needs and set moods. Its the same set of skills
Jimmy employed as a party starter on the Eastern Michigan barmitzvah circuit between 2001 and 2008. The man can start a party.
His friends these days are mostly people from Michigan, like his
core seven, whom he has known since middle school and spends every New Years Eve with at someplace like Tahoe or Salt Lake City
just hanging out and playing beer pong. He was in a fraternity while
studying theater at the University of Michigan, but it was the kind
of frat that let him out of pledge activities to go star in a play, as long
as he promised to come back and drink until he got sick the next
night. Tonight, and most nights hes not working, Jimmys drink is
Titos with lots of ice and lots of lime, and if it comes out without
enough of either he will politely send it back for more, with a smile.
Jimmys major onscreen talent is harnessing this charismatic

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Cotton shirt ($443) by Etro.

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earnestness, and he knows better than most when to talk and when
to reveal. It may be a midwestern thing, or the self-preservation of
someone who has a lot to gain, but he doesnt always come across
as totally direct. Like with Zoo, an action drama based on a James
Patterson book about animals turning on and hunting humans: Is
the show any good? Uh, Jimmy hasnt actually seen it. Intentionally. Its a way to retain plausible deniability, because if it was bad
and he knew that, he might have to start lying to people who write
magazine proles about him.
But! Its a great experience. The shows scripts are good and hes
having fun and the international buyers tell him they really like it.
And even though its not, you know, Mad Men, Jimmy thinks that
sometimes the shows that dont sound like theyll be the big breaks
are the ones that will be. Or, at least, he knows better than most that
the shows that sound like they will be the big breaks sometimes
turn out not to be. And when that happens, it hurts.
It sucks.
He tries not to take it personally, because he cant control the outcome. All he can do is try to have a great creative experience and
get paid and tell himself that if this one doesnt work out, hell get
another chance. He is not the rst actor to fail his way through his
twenties. The good thing is Clooney had, like, ten canceled shows. A
million things. He literally had nine pilots that didnt go. (In reviewing the pilot of Lone Star, critics from both The New York Times and
The Washington Post likened Jimmy to George Clooney, a comparison that Jimmy has clearly internalized but struggles to admit out
loud without sounding like a dick. What are you supposed to say to
that? All I can say is thank you.)
Its hard to process all of the hope and nerves and disappointment. Bill Burr has a bit that Jimmy likes about men dying earlier
than women because they just hold it all in, but Jimmy has some
outlets: a meditation app that describes itself as a gym membership for the mind; 6:00 A.M. runs between the streetcar tracks in
New Orleans, where hes lming Zoo; surng when hes home in
Santa Monica. Theyre all just ways to empty his brain, to calm
himself after a ght or to shut off the constant judgment of his own

thoughts, standards he holds only himself to.

Life is good right now for Jimmy. Most days he goes unrecognized, and his fiance has to point it out to him when it happens. He rents his two-bedroom apartment in downtown Santa
Monica. Its in the middle of a busy shopping area, but its just a
couple blocks from the beach and has wide views of the Pacific
Ocean, which Jimmy loves to watch the sun set into while walking his rottweiler-shepherd mix, Flea. He eats and drinks local. He would never drop his own name to get into a restauranthis dad is a no-reservation kind of guy, so if Jimmy cant
get a table, hes used to camping out at the bar until one becomes available. (And really, what are the odds that the host
knows who Jimmy Wolk is, anyway?) Jimmy is doing just fine.
Better than most. But.
At thirty he has a comfy seat in the waiting lounge of fame. He is
like countless other young (though no longer quite so young) men
in Los Angeles, reminding themselves that Jon Hamm didnt land
Mad Men until he was thirty-four, and Kyle Chandler was forty
when he took Peter Bergs call for Friday Night Lights, and who the
fuck wants Zac Efrons life, anyway? They tell themselves theres
no reason that they, if they work hard enough and the acting gods
bestow grace upon them, cant be the ones to beat the odds. That
when the right project is given unto themno, when they take the
right part, the right role to display their leading-man-nessthey,
too, can enter the pantheon, or at least Vanity Fairs Oscar party.
And that if this role doesnt work out, they will always get another
chance. That last part is important. Opportunity is the air these actors breathe, and without it they might as well head back to whereverMichigan, the family shoe storeempty-handed.
No need to tell Jimmy any of this. He knows. And he nods at
the suggestion that with the right opportunity he could very well
emerge as a leading man, a Clooney-level star, a Jimmy forever
and never again a James. If he is surprised by the audacity of such
a thought, especially from someone he barely knows, he does not
show itits not like its the rst time hes been compared to Clooney. Instead, he takes a sip of his drink and compliments his dining partner on her ability to see clearly what too many others miss.
Thats a very astute way of looking at it.
Jimmy smiles at her. He knows. And he changes the topic to
something more pleasant.

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FOR STORE INFORMATION

SEE PAGE 114. PRODUCED
BY YUSUF YAGCI AND
MIKE STACEY FOR ROSCO
PRODUCTIONS. GROOMING
BY KIM VERBECK FOR
THE WALL GROUP. STYLIST
ASSISTANT: JASON SCIARA.

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Stephanie Lee on her way home to Mississippi from Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York on January 29.
Stephanie died six days later.

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By Tom Junod

Stephanie Lee had been hospitalized since the day before Christmas Eve 2014, at Mount Sinai, in New York. She had
a room on the palliative-care oor. The doctors who cared for her were at pains to say that they could make her more
comfortable but that they could not treat her cancer. She was taking massive doses of powerful pain medications. She
was eating much less and sleeping much more. When a doctor described his hopes for her in terms not of getting bet-

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ter but simply of getting home to Mississippi, she was at peace

with both what he said and what he didnt say.
Then, not quite a week after she was admitted, everything
changed. On December 29, a scientist and the oncologist who
worked with him walked into her room and announced that they
might have something for her. The scientist had been working a
year and a half to devise a treatment for her and for her alone
a personalized treatment for Stephanie Leeand now, nally,
his lab had seen what he called a hit. It was an interesting hit,
it was a promising hit, and he came to her room with the oncologist not only to tell her about it but also to see if she remained
healthy enough, alive enough, to endure the treatment it entailed.
She was alive enough. Since her hospitalization, she had gone
long stretches without speaking, long stretches when she stirred
only to press a pump and give herself the medication that caused
her eyes to roll back in her head. But she never lost the awareness
that she had honed over a lifetimeher daunting gift for seeing
people and situations plainnor the voice that always said the right
thing, the true thing, the honest thing, the thing that cut to the bone.
Now she heard the scientist and the oncologist out, and, with her
eyes closed and her face turned to heaven, she spoke as if from the
deepest well of exhaustion and relief and said, simply, At last.
It was a development that, encountered in a work of ction,
would have stretched credulity. Without prelude, a deus ex machina had arrived upon the scene, and the race against time had begun. As it happened, the scientist needed exactly what Stephanie
had left. He needed three weeks, and so what ensued was nothing less than a trial by last hope, with every day bringing the treatment closer to fruition and Stephanie closer to the end. She was
a small woman of formidable presence, but the cancer had started distorting her, whittling her wrists down to laments and inating her legs into monumental things so swelled by uid that
they had to be moved by attendants. She suffered setback after
setback and infection after infection, and yet she hung on for four
more weeks in the hospital, far too sick to be discharged, until another oncologist who worked with the scientist walked into her
room and told her that the treatment was ready, if she wanted it.
If she wanted it? It was all that she had wanted for so long.
And now she had only to say yes, she had only to reach for it. . . .
And that was when she began to die.
She had contracted the gastrointestinal infection C. difcile
early in her hospital stay. It had been treated with antibiotics and
had receded; but then, as she got weaker, it came roaring back,
with the advantage of being the only bacteria left in her gut. She
became incontinent, and, as luck would have it, the side effect
associated with the rst phase of the treatment devised for her,
a drug called trametinib, was incontinence. It could make her
condition even worse; it could even kill her. The treatment was
ready, if she wanted it...and if she regained control of her bowels.
It seemed an impossibility, akin to asking a person experiencing
an asthma attack to breathe normally as a condition of getting an
inhaler. But then a Sinai gastroenterologist introduced himself
to her, as well as his specialty: fecal transplants. His name was
Ari Grinspan, and he proposed delivering healthy excrement to
her GI tract, thereby seeding it with ora that could ght the C.
difcile infection. It was a procedure that had a dramatic success
rate. The problem was in the delivery. Dr. Grinspan preferred to
do fecal transplants by way of a colonoscopy, but Stephanies colon was comprehensively blocked. That left the introduction of
a nasogastric tube, which he would feed into her nostrils, snake
down her esophagus, and . . . would we step outside?
We followed him out into the hall, my colleague Mark Warren
and I. We took off the gowns, masks, and gloves we had to wear

in her room. We listened to Dr. Grinspan detail the risks and benets of such a procedurethe possibility of aspiration and the
certainty of painand then ask us if we wanted him to proceed.
For an instant, I thought that he had to be talking to someone
standing behind us, maybe someone with medical qualications.
But nothere was no one else. He was talking to us. We had met
Stephanie as journalists, then had become her friends and advocates when she got sick. We had introduced her to scientists and
doctors at Sinai and had written about Sinais effort to make her
a test case for the potential of what has come to be called personalized medicine. We had tried to do nothing less than save her
life and now stood face-to-face with the responsibility that that
required of us. The only way Stephanie Lee could get the treatment we had once written about was if we, as her health-care
proxies, consented for Dr. Grinspan to push the tube up her nose
and induce her to swallow it down her throat. He described himself as an aggressive doctor, a doctor who likes to err on the side
of treatment. But Stephanie was so very, very sick: too sick and
fogged by drugs either to give or to refuse her informed consent.
The decision was ours.

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It is a story about hope and its

consequences. It is a story about promises, scientic and otherwise, and about journalism and its limits. But mostly its a love story.
Ten years ago, Mark Warren and I went down to Mississippi to write a story about the doubly devastatedabout families dealing simultaneously with the depredations of the war in
Iraq and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrinaand met Stephanie Lee. She was twenty-eight years old. She had lost her husband, Terrance, to an IED outside Baghdad shortly before our
visit, when she was seven months pregnant. She had given birth
to her younger daughter, Marchelle, three days after Katrina
swept through the Gulf Coast, and the measures she had taken
to make sure Marchelle was born in safety and security formed
the basis of our story. She was small, strong, smart, proud, erce,
forthright, direct, and utterly clear-eyed about herself and her
situation. What I remember most was the conclusion that Mark
and I drew after meeting herthat she and her daughters, Kamri and Marchelle, were going to survive, were going to be ne.
Two years ago, Stephanie wrote to Mark on Facebook. Now
thirty-six, she had colon cancer. A few weeks later, she wrote
him again with the news that the cancer had spread to her liver
and that her oncologist estimated she had up to twenty-eight
months to live if she tolerated chemotherapy and six months
if she didnt. She asked Mark only to pray for her.
I remember when Mark told me about Stephanie because I was
on my way to see another person I had previously written about.
His name was Eric Schadt, and he was an evangelical Christian
turned mathematician turned biologist turned genomicist who
had become one of the evangelical forces behind the Big Data
revolution. When I rst met him, he was working at a small company in Menlo Park, California, and trying to leverage both his Silicon Valley connections and the exponential increase in computing power accessible from cloud services to change the way health
care is practiced in this country. Now he had come to Mount Sinais medical school in New York to open a lab dedicated to using genomic sequencing to invent new treatments for diseases
that had proved resistant to conventional therapy, particularly
cancer. I had been planning to talk to Eric for a story I was writing about Google. Instead, I told him about Stephanie Lee, and
he said immediately, Thats exactly the kind of patient we take.

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Thats how the story began. But its not how it ended. Mark
began talking to Stephanie, as a friend and condant. He talked to her nearly every day, and shortly after Eric Schadt promised to do what he could for hershortly after it became clear
that Stephanie Lee was going to go from being cancer patient
to experimental subjectshe asked Mark, Will you take this
walk with me?
Mark and I had a lot of ambitions for the story of Stephanie Lee,
not all of them journalistic. We wanted to live it rather than simply write it. We wanted to connect the disparate worlds of Eric
Schadt and Stephanie Leeof New York and Mississippifor the
benet of both of them. We wanted to give Stephanie access to
the cutting-edge medicine generally available only to rich people.
We wanted to see what happened when a powerful medical institution like Mount Sinai devoted
the full weight of its nancial and
intellectual resources to saving one
patient, even one with an incurable
form of cancer. And all those things
happened, pretty much. But only
Mark and Stephanie took the walk
all the way to the end.
A lot of people try to help Stephanie in this story. A few even try to
be heroes. But they are all human,
and so they do only what they can.
It is left to Mark and Stephanie to
give everything they have.

alone. It made her feel less like a number. It made her feel less
isolated. It made her feel important, special, and, yes, loved. She
suffered terribly. But she was willing to suffer if it meant somethingif she meant something in the grand scheme of things and
wasnt just another person dying of cancer.

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It came in Palm Beach, Florida, and in many ways, it was her

momentas good as it ever got, a fulllment of a promise though
not, alas, of promises. It was February 19, 2014, eight months after she received her terminal diagnosis. She was, for one thing,
alive. She was, for another, as healthy as she would ever beshe
had responded to the conventional chemotherapy and liver resectioning that constitute the standard of care for metastatic colon
cancer, and her CT scans and blood
markers showed her to be nearly
cancer-free. And she was happy,
for she had started to enjoy the life
she had gained as the Patient Zero of the article Mark and I published in the December 2013 issue of Esquire. The week before,
she had been own to a party in
Austin, and there shed met Lance
Armstrong, whom she and many
other cancer patients still greatly revered. Now she was staying at
a historic Palm Beach hotel, in a
about herwhat it was about Stephroom that was practically her own
anie Lee that inspired the devotion
villa, with a walled patio. She was
of so many that she met. Its a hard
eating in a restaurant bearing the
question to answer without rename of a famous New York chef,
lying on a list of adjectives, withandas if to prove her standing as
out saying that she was beautiful,
the one natural aristocrat in a room
and brave, and willful, and strong.
full of rich peoplewas turning up
Eight months after receiving her terminal diagnosis,
Stephanie was at a peak and enjoying a
She was all those things, but those
her nose, with a literal crinkle and
kind of celebrity as a face of personalized medicine.
things in themselves dont inspire
tiny pursed-lip shake of the head,
With Lance Armstrong in Austin.
scientists to devote month after
at most of a $500 meal. . . .
month searching for ways to treat
She was on Sinais tab. She was
her, or hospitals like Mount Sinai to spend hundreds of thou- Sinais guestas were weas a participant in a fundraising event
sands of dollars caring for her, or people shed just met to keep scheduled for the next afternoon, a panel discussion intended
daily vigils in her hospital room, or musicians like Ben Harper to inspire an audience of heavy hitters to help bankroll Sinais
to dedicate songs to her, or two journalists to become involved aggressive investment in personalized medicine. And so in the
with every aspect of her life. Mark says its because she never morning, after breakfast on her patio, she put on a pink blouse
asked for anything, except a supply of Dr. Pepper that had to be printed with the image of a buttery and talked to a lm crew Sicontinually replenished, no matter what time of day or night. nai had commissioned for the occasion about all Sinai had done
But thats not true. She asked for everything, because she asked for her. It was a lot. Since rst receiving Stephanies blood and
for love. So many people had failed her in the course of her life tissue samples, Eric Schadt had successfully sequenced the gethat she was naturally distrustful. But if you loved herif you nome of both her tumor and her germ line, which is to say the
showed her you loved her by giving her exactly what she asked genes she was born with. He had identied the genetic mutations
for, nothing more and nothing lessshe gave you her trust in re- driving her cancer, and another scientist, Ross Cagan, had used
turn, and by the softening in her ever-vigilant eyes let you know those mutations to create a simulacrum of her tumor in a fruit
it was the only gift she had to give, purchased dear.
y for the purpose of testing a wide variety of treatments against
Its what makes this story so hard. She trusted us. She trusted it. Ross called his y model the Stephanie Fly. There had alSinai. She trusted Eric Schadt and the promise of personalized so been the Stephanie Event, which was the meeting during
medicine. It wasnt that she rested all her hopes on a cureshe which Sinai oncologists formally recognized the clinical potenwas too smart for that, too much of a realist. But she liked the tial of Schadt and Cagans brand of personalized medicine. There
personalized part of personalized medicine. She liked that peo- was also Team Stephanie, which is what Sinai called Schadt,
ple she knew and respected were working for her and for her Cagan, and the oncologists who had started consulting on her

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case. There was, however, an absencean omissionthat troubled Stephanie, and when she got on camera, she asked about it.
What I want to know is what I need to do to get treated, she
said. What I want to know is what I need to do to get in.

involved with some drug companies. I was desperately searching for a new treatment. But we ran out of time. I knew what we
were going through trying to help patients like Stephanie, and I
saw the potential personally, but we ran out of time.
That Charney remains undeterred by his loss, and by the losses of patients who stood as emblems of personalized medicines
early potentialthat, indeed, he continues to make personalof getting personal. It calls for pa- ized medicine his personal missionsays something about his
tients to be treated in accord with their own specic genetic nger- deep grounding as a research psychiatrist and his understanding
prints and signature; for patient A to be treated somewhat differ- that all scientic progress rests on a foundation of setbacks and
ently from patient B; for patient As and patient Bs colon cancer to failures. But it also says something about the money and brainbe treated rather than colon cancer itself. Bepower already devoted to
cause under the assumptions of personalized
personalized medicine,
medicine there is no such thing as a typical
which has emerged as a
disease, there is also no such thing as a typicombination of new faith
cal patient. Doctors have to get to know their
and gold rush for a datapatients genetic information from scientists,
driven age. Calling it preand scientists have to get to know patients in
cision medicine, President
a way that often goes well beyond the level of
Obama extolled its potenintimacyand distance
tial in his 2015 State of the
afforded by the lab.
Union Address and then
As the dean of the
ten days later announced
Icahn School of Media $215 million Precision
cine at Mount Sinai, Dr.
Medicine Initiative, with
Dennis Charney had to
its goal of sequencing a million
make a commitment to
American volunteers through
personalized medicine
the auspices of the National
without knowing who might
Institutes of Health. Google,
benet from it. It was his job
Apple, and IBM all have their
not only to see the future but
own initiatives, based on the
to make sure that Mount Siidea that no data is more esnai had a place in it, and to that
sential or valuable than the
end he has built what he calls
data generated by the human
an entire infrastructure debody. There is indeed a sense
voted to making good on perof inevitability to personalsonalized medicines promise.
ized medicines rise, a proud
Weve invested an enormous
sense that machines have amount in genetics. I dont
nally gotten smart enough to
know what the exact number
understand how complicated
In 2013, with personalized care in its infancy, a major research
is, but its well north of $100
each one of us is, how endlessly
hospital in New York mobilized to try to save Stephanie.
million. He has put Sinais
and fascinatingly and irreducClockwise from bottom: Lee with Eric Schadt, whose lab at
money not only into a superibly complex.
Mount Sinai did the deep analysis of her genetic data; Ross
computer and into an indepenBut Stephanie Lee was one
Cagan, who grew Stephanies tumor in more than one
hundred thousand fruit flies for drug screening; in January of
dent gene-sequencing facility;
of the rst. You have to unthis year, the president announced his Precision Medicine
long before he heard anything
derstand that if you want to
Initiative at the White House.
about Stephanie Lee, he hired
understand what she went
Eric Schadt and Ross Cagan.
through, the hopes and promThen, last year, he found out exactly how personal personal- ises she had to endure. She was the second cancer patient in the
ized medicine could be.
world whose tumor was sequenced and then re-created in a y.
During the fall, I had a granddaughter who was born with a She was not part of any existing treatment protocol; she did not
very serious genetic decit, he told me when I visited his ofce. join others in a clinical trial; anything that Eric Schadt and Ross
Ill show you her picture. He handed me a framed photograph Cagan did with her they learned how to do through her. Team
of a dark-haired baby girl with a limpid gaze. So this was my Stephanie? She taught Team Stephanie, and what she taught
granddaughter, he said. She didnt make it. She did not make them, most of all, is that the standard of caresurgery, chemoit. She was born with a surfactant deciencyvery rare, one in therapy, and radiationis not going to give way to personalized
a million. She was born in Mass General. So I started thinking medicine without a ght.
This is my granddaughter. How am I going to help? So I asked
EricEric Schadt. I said, What do you think? Look at the pathways and maybe youll nd some unexpected treatment. There
was no real treatment, only supportive treatment. So we did a Stephanie had asked in Palm Beach, and it was a question she
little bit of what we did for Stephanie. Eric came up with a long never stopped asking, because the answer never made any sense
list of possible genes active in the pathways. I had the doctor at to her. For her to be treated, she had to suffer a recurrence. She
Mass General who was treating her get involved with Eric, get had to get cancer again. She hated the standard of care: hat-

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ed the FOLFOX chemotherapy treatments she received every

other week and feared the despondency and fatigue they unleashed in her. They made her want to cry, and worse. But theyd
worked. Her numbers were way down. Maybe the chemotherapy worked too well, because now the standard of care had to
fail before Sinai could treat her. She had to start dying for them
to be able to make her well.
Thats what Team Stephanie had said, anyway, almost from
the beginning, almost as soon as they began consulting on her
case. Theyd even had a big meeting about it, all the oncologists
who wanted to start working more closely with Eric Schadt and
Ross Cagan. That was the Stephanie Event. They wanted to start
using the treatments indicated by the sequencing done in Erics
lab and the modeling done in Rosss, but those treatments were
still experimental, with no data and no statistics to back them
up. The doctors all wanted to replace the standard of care. But
as primitive and cruel as the standard of care is, at least it was
proven to extend patients lives, within certain predictable parameters. It was predicted to allow Stephanie to live almost another two years. They couldnt ask her to give that up for what
could turn out to be a dangerous fantasy.
It felt as though they were asking her to take a test that she had
to fail in order to pass. But they were all so condent. When she
went to Palm Beach to appear at the fundraiser, she approached
a member of Team Stephanie after the event, Dan Labow. He was
the head of surgical oncology at Sinai, and shed always liked him.
He was always attentive to her. He was a compact man whod
operated on hundreds of cancer patients but still had the bright
face of a boy, with an undimmed light in his eyes. She asked him
if she could take a break from chemotherapy for a while, because of what it did to her. Hed surprised her by saying sure
If the cancer comes back, it will present itself, and at least well
know what were dealing with. And Ross Cagan had said they
were readythey were ready for her when the cancer returned.
And then it did. It returned three weeks after Palm Beach, in the
form of lesions on her liver. She decided to forgo chemotherapy
and go back to Charles Conway, the surgeon at Ochsner Medical
Center in New Orleans who had resectioned her liver in the fall.
It turned out to be a fateful decision, because the chemotherapy she was receiving before the operation turned out to be the
last round of chemotherapy she would ever be able to complete.
The surgery went well, but the recovery didnt. She began experiencing abdominal pain. She began dealing with a devilment
of a sensation, the feeling that she never successfully completed a bowel movement. She began bending over as she walked,
like an old woman. So she went back to the hospital at Keesler
Air Force Base, in Biloxi, where her cancer had been diagnosed,
where the tumor on her colon had been surgically excised, and
where shed gone for chemotherapy. And she remained in the
care of her rst oncologist, Major Owen Roberts.
It was always the aw in Sinais approach to Stephanies
carethe fact that the members of Team Stephanie didnt actually care for her. The scientists devised treatments for her,
and the physicians were apprised of what was going on in the
e-mails that Mark and I sent them, offering occasional consultation in return. But while Team Stephanie was in New York,
waiting for the standard of care to fail, Stephanie was in Mississippi, enduring its failure. The disconnect was fundamental and devastating. Team Stephanie was made up of scientic
and medical minds who were trying to do nothing less than reinvent cancer care. Team Keesler was rooted in a troubled system of military hospitals investigated last year by the Department of Defense, with Keeslers own mortality ratios deemed

worse than expected in the DODs report. Stephanie found

herself in Team Keeslers hands.
We called it the Death Factory, Mark and I. Not Keesler, but
traditional oncology in general. And not because we suspected
that anyone wanted Stephanie to die or worked out of malign
intent, but rather because we knew that they believed that dying was what you did if you were as sick as Stephanie wasthat
everybody died, and that cancer always won. In March, we began sending e-mails to Dr. Randy Holcombe, the presiding clinician on Team Stephanie and an oncologist of unquestioned
eminence in the eld of colorectal cancer, pleading with him to
become Stephanies admitting physician rather than simply an
interested onlooker. From the beginning, that was the plan as
described to us by Eric SchadtRandy Holcombe would be her
accepting physicianand now we urged the doctors at Sinai
to make good on that plan and that promise. We even began trying to convince her military insurance company to agree to pay
for her treatment at Sinai if she were to be admitted. And we began to sound a little desperate, because even as we were asking
Randy Holcombe to take over her care, she was being cared for
by Keesler, where she was in terrible pain; where she was being told that her problem was nothing more than scar tissue or
simple constipation; where night after night she was desperately checking into Keeslers emergency room and being sent home
with nothing but laxatives.
She was not simply sick. Her CEA countthe most useful blood
marker for colon cancerhad dropped to nineteen when she visited Palm Beach. By the end of April 2014, it had climbed back to
eighty-six. A scan revealed a blockage in her descending colon,
which Dr. Roberts proposed to treat with radiation and as much
chemotherapy as she could tolerate. She feared the chemotherapy. But Dr. Roberts assured her that the radiation would have
minimal side effects and help with her pain. Without delay, he
scheduled ve consecutive treatments for her with only a weekends respite, and after the rst one, Stephanie told Mark that it
wasnt so bad: You just lie down in a darkened room with a ceiling illuminated like the night sky, and the stars are so pretty.
She completed the radiation therapy on May 13, but the pain
didnt go away or relent. It intensied. It began to crumple her
and torture her and reduce her at night to a shuddering heap,
curled in the fetal position on the bathroom oor. Her daughters,
Kamri and Marchelle, would nd her in the morning. She went to
the hospital; she tried to go to the hospital, night after night, only to be sent home. Once, she was admitted only to be discharged
by a resident who scolded her that she wasnt sick enough.
Im dying of cancer, and he tells me Im not sick enough, she
told Mark. I cant eat for the pain, and he tells me Im not sick
enough. Kamri is fussing at me that I have to take the appetite
stimulants because Im losing weight. You need to take those
pills because I can see your spine, she told me. But Im not sick
enough for that man.
On May 27, Mark and I both traveled to Ocean Springs for Kamris high school graduation. She was a junior, but when shed
learned of Stephanies illness, she had intensied her course load
so that her mother could see her graduate. It had been one of the
occasions Stephanie used to keep herself going and to see her way,
somehow, into the future. Now it had arrived, and in all the photographs there is Kamri, in every way a match for her mother, in
her slight stature, her strength, her determination, her vigilance,
and her capacity for a sort of warriors joy; and there is Stephanie, wincing, in her sleeveless print dress and her sheen of glamour, and looking off to the side, as if shed just noticed a beckoning
shadow away from the lens, a few steps out of the frame.

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107

She was contending not simply with the pain but with her
knowledge of what the pain signied, and before Mark returned
to New York, she asked him to take away her handgun and deliver it to the sheriff. I stayed in Ocean Springs and accompanied her when she visited Dr. Roberts at Keesler. She had never
quite trusted him, ever since hed delivered her original prognosis in what she regarded as a heartless way and ever since hed
refused to let her see her rst CT scan. On this day, however, he
was tremendously solicitous of her while at the same time adopting a posture of laid-back intimacy, leaning back in his chair and
crossing his sneakered feet, pleased to see her, yes, but also apparently pleased that she had come to see him.
Do you still have thoughts of hurting yourself? he asked.
Of course I do, with what Ive been through, Stephanie said.
But I would never take my own life. I couldnt do that. Then
she told him about the night the resident sent her home, and
began to cry.
He handed her tissues and apologized for the residents behaviorWhat he said wasnt appropriate. In fact, it really pisses me off. But when Stephanie asked if the standard of care had
failed, he came forward in his chair and reproved her with a sudden snap of authority. Youre still well within the standard of
care. In fact, the only times the cancer has progressed are the
times when youve gone off the standard of care to pursue a cure.
He put air quotes around the last word, in case shed missed his
skepticism about the entire idea. Well, the surgery you had only has a 15 percent cure rate. And now the cancers back. So you
probably wont be getting surgery again.
He recommended a new and aggressive course of chemotherapy,
including Avastin. The previous summer, hed put her on Avastin
when she was having her period, and she had to be hospitalized
because of blood loss. Now she told him that she wanted to go to
New York and visit Sinai, and he said, If you want to go up there
and see what ideas they have now, ne. But its not worth delaying your treatment. The last time you went to New York was easy.
Youre a lot sicker now. Its in your liver. Its in your lungs. And they
dont have anything for you. They dont even have a clinical trial.
Stephanie had always thought that Dr. Robertswho declined
comment for this storyresented her relationship with Mount
Sinai. She believed that, above all, he wanted to keep her at Keesler, and get the chance to prove himself to her. Now he spoke as
if he had been right about her prospects all along, and its difcult to admit, even now, that in fact he was.

gone to Keesler the night before, and they had once again sent
her home in acute distress. The friend took the phone and told
Mark about her own oncologist, Brian Persing, at Ocean Springs
Hospital. Take her to the emergency room at Ocean Springs,
he said. It was the end of Stephanies relationship with Owen
Roberts and Keesler, and the rst medical decision Mark had
made on her behalf.

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left her doctors

appointment at Ocean Springs Hospital and thought of Stephanie. Stephanie, Kamri, and Marchelles rented house was nearby, and the friend gured shed drop by to see how they were all
doing. She arrived to nd the girls in tears and Stephanie curled
up on the bathroom oor, bleeding from the nose and mouth.
Shed broken out in a rash before shed resumed chemotherapy. It had manifested itself on the palms of her hands, and shed
shown it to Dr. Roberts, worried that the chemotherapy would
exacerbate it. The rash turned out to be a dangerous case of
erythema multiforme. Within a day of her treatment, it began
spreading into her mouth and nose, until at last she couldnt eat,
couldnt drink, couldnt stand, could barely speak. Her friend
called Mark and put Stephanie on the phone with him. He told
her that she had to go back to Keesler, and she begged him not
to make her go back there.
Theyll just send me back home! she cried. Stephanie had
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ESQUIRE AUGUST 2015

the morning, Mark

Warren had sent an e-mail to Dr. Randy Holcombe at Mount Sinai, copied to each member of Team Stephanie. It contained the
news that Dr. Roberts had found a new mass growing in her descending colon and had scheduled her to begin radiation at 9:00
A.M. this morning, Biloxi time. A few hours later, he wrote to Eric
Schadt with a message for Drs. Labow and Holcombe: Please advise Dan, Randy, and the team that the doctors at Keesler did the
mapping for her radiation today, and that the actual radiation therapy starts tomorrow. The plan is for ve consecutive days of radiation, followed by a two-day break and then a resumption of chemotherapy. Stephanie would very much appreciate any thoughts
or second opinion Randy might have about this proposed course
of action. A few days later, on a Friday, he corresponded directly with Dr. Holcombe and told him that Stephanie had received
radiation daily throughout the week and that after a weekend
break, she was scheduled to nish her rst ve radiation treatments on Tuesday. Dr. Holcombe wrote back: Are ve radiation
treatments all that are planned at this time?
It seemed an unremarkable few days of correspondence, part
of the back-and-forth that had evolved between Mark and members of Team Stephanie as Mark had evolved into Stephanies ofcial advocate, with a signed health-care proxy. We didnt know
that it was anything but unremarkable until, at the end of June,
Stephanie traveled to New York to be evaluated by the members
of her team. Mark and I accompanied her and were surprised to
hear from Ross Cagan that Randy Holcombe had strongly disapproved of Dr. Robertss decision to irradiate Stephanies abdomen and was, in fact, ranting about it. We were surprised
when we visited Dr. Holcombe to hear him tell Stephanie that
radiation to the abdomen is pretty toxic, and he believed that
a lot of your symptoms are related to the radiation. Radiation
inames, radiation scars, radiation creates adhesions, radiation
damages nerves and blood vessels, radiation wreaks such havoc
on abdominal tissues that it works best when shrinking tissues
due to be excised surgically. Not only does radiation rarely offer
a benet commensurate with its potential for damage; worst of
all, its irreversible. Indeed, the American Society of Clinical Oncology has said that radiation is rarely used for the treatment
of colon cancer, although there are specic situations when a
doctor may recommend it. And there, that afternoon at Sinai,
Dr. Holcombe said, I havent given radiation for colon cancer
in years. Its not something I normally do. Because this is what
happens. People get really sick.
Since Stephanie Lee had rst met Eric Schadt and Ross Cagan,
shed had high-level scientists working on her behalf at Mount
Sinai. What she needed, quite simply, was a doctorand in that
regard she could have hardly done better than Randy Holcombe.
But he was also a doctor navigating his own transition from the
standard of care to personalized medicine, and so was the soul of
caution. He is the most negative person I know here, Ross Cagan
said at the time. His rst reaction is No. But thats a good thing.
Because if we can convince Randy, we can convince anybody.

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Holcombes reserve extended not only to the innovations of per- for the drug screening to be concluded. We understand that the
sonalized medicine but to every aspect of his relationship with biological processes of their work simply cannot move any fastStephanie and to the very face he projected to the world. He wore er. We also understandand hope you understandthat Stepha simultaneous air of absolute condence and absolute weari- anie is running out of time. . . .
ness. He had seen a lot of death as an oncologistI have more
patients die in a week than the average GP does in an entire career, he told us several months laterand his eyes viewed the
world from a certain remove, under gray-blond hair parted careWhen she
fully to the side. And so he stayed involved with Stephanies case had trouble with school administrators, he talked to them. When
but not with Stephanie; he never failed to answer our e-mails but Stephanie brought her truck to a car dealer for routine servicing
did so tersely and without elaboraand was talked into trading it in for
tion; and he did not intervene even
a brand-new car and a seventy-twowhen Stephanies doctors in Mismonth loan that she couldnt afford,
sissippi proposed a treatment he
he called the owner of the dealerthought calamitous.
ship, explained her situation, and by
Indeed, Stephanie had traveled
the time they were done, the man
paid off the loan and gave her the
from Mississippi to New York with
the hope that Holcombe would
car. When she overextended herbecome her doctor and that she
self on her credit cards, he called the
credit-card companies and asked
would become his responsibility.
them to forgive the debt. When
But now, at the end of her visit to
Stephanies landlord sold her house
his ofce, he said, Stephanie, Im
out from under her, he shamed her
going to give you a few suggestions.
into giving Stephanie extra time to
You can take them or leave them,
move. There was simply nothing
because Im just a consultant.
he wouldnt do for her or
His suggestions were, as always, sound and proher daughters, no ght he
wouldnt take on, no errand
vided a clear path forhe wouldnt perform, no eward. Stephanie would
mail he wouldnt write, no
resume chemotherapy,
phone call he wouldnt anwith Brian Persing; Dr.
swer, no matter what time
Holcombe would conof day or night. It is hard to
sult with Persing and
judge anyone else who aptell him when Sinai had a
pears in this story, because
treatment for her. And if
his devotion represents
Stephanie comes up here
some kind of absolute, but
for treatment, will you
it is also hard to judge him,
be her admitting phybecause theres no accountsician? I asked. There was a siStephanie in first grade, center; and with her family:
ing for absolutesbecause his delence, and then Randy Holcombe
Kamri, at graduation last year, above; Kamri and Marchelle,
votion seemed at times like both
said, Well sort it out when the
right; her brother, Tregnel, in 2012.
an obliteration and a completion of
time comes.
himself, a process that, once started, had to be seen through. And so when he visited Stephanie in
August, to be with her after a surgeon at Ochsner installed a metal
Hello all. stent in her intestine in order to resolve her blockage, and he found
This evening, Tom and I write with an update on Stephanie, and her in her house nearly passed out with pain, he couldnt know
with an urgent plea.
what had happenedhe couldnt know that the stent had failed
It has been a month since Stephanie was last at Mount Sinai, and was pinched at the topbut he helped her to his rental car and
and we need to tell you that her condition is now dire.
drove from Ocean Springs to the hospital in New Orleans at one
Her CEA count as of ten days ago stands at 197, the highest it hundred miles an hour, singing to Stephanie Lee the whole time.
has ever been. . . .
And so perhaps not surprisingly, her CT scanand a brandnew scan taken Sundayalso shows that her cancer has spread,
with more spots on her liver and several in her lungs, including
with condence. Indeed, his
one which yesterday was described to her by the surgical oncol- condence was like his clothes, something that set him aparta
ogist at Ocean Springs Hospital as large. . . .
scientist who dressed as though going out for a night of hipster
When Stephanie came to New York a month ago, she expressed bowling. He was tall, narrow, goateed, ironically polyestered, and
her fervent desire to be treated at Mount Sinai, and to make the he spoke of his intelligence in frank terms; as such he offered an
transition from the standard of care to the alternative therapies eternal counterweight to the endlessly collaborative Eric Schadt,
being researched for her at Sinai. Yesterday, we visited Rosss lab who was squat, spit-curled, bustling, and wore a uniform of khaand were apprised of their progress and their projections. They are ki shorts and a white polo shirt no matter what the weather or
working on Stephanie Fly 3.0, and it will take at least two months the occasion. Cagan would be the rst to tell you some things

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109

about himselfthat he had worked in the lab of a Nobel-prize

winner who had named some of the signaling pathways fundamental to the malign transformation of healthy cellsand when
he sat down with Schadt, Stephanie, Dan Labow, and Sinai president Ken Davis at the Palm Beach fundraiser, he announced that
he thought he might have broken colon cancer. A few minutes
later, when the conversation turned to his guitar playing, I asked
him to name his heroes. Im too arrogant for heroes, he said.
And yet, by last summer, he had been humbled by both Stephanie and her cancer. He and his lab had built a series of y models
for her, each of increasing complexity and specicity, each loaded with more of her mutations than the previous iteration, each
Stephanie Fly closer to the essence of what was tearing Stephanie apart. Stephanie Fly 1.0; Stephanie Fly 2.0; Stephanie Fly 3.0:
What they all had in common were the tumors that Ross Cagan
had given them, and their dim prospects. The tumors kill the
y, he explained later. What was killing Stephanie killed the
y. Having a big tumor in the gut kills the y.
Cagans idea, however, was not to kill iesit was to save them
by seeing how they responded to a vast library of FDA-approved
treatments. He wasnt looking only at drugs that had already
been indicated for use against colon cancer; he was looking at
everything in order to nd anything at all that worked, especially in combination. The drugs he tested, as he would later
write, had been approved for diseases across most classes, including cancer, neurological diseases, cardiovascular diseases,
infection, inammation, diabetes, endocrine diseases, respiratory problems, and even digestive issues. By themselves many
of these drugs may not have shown much activity against cancer, but we are hoping to nd cocktails with unique activities.
Although intended to embrace complexity, his screening process was also ruthlessly empirical: We feed the y the drug,
and after six days we look, and if something is alive, thats a hit.
A hit: how he, and Stephanie, would come to live for that word.
He thought he had one with an early version of the Stephanie Fly,
but that y model was too simpleeverything worked, and then
when he added another mutation, nothing did. Then he found
a drug that seemed promising until the company that made it
stopped making it. And then with Stephanie Fly 2.0, he had what
he calls a weak hit that didnt really hold up. It was a crappy hit,
and that was when we thought of abandoning the whole thing.
That he didnt is testament to his commitment not only to his
y model but also to Stephanie: his awareness of her intensifying agonies. He had thought she, and he, had time. Eight months

earlier, the clinicians gathered for the Stephanie Event had given
him a guardedly optimistic prognosis, based on the expected outcome of her rst liver surgery and her response to the standard of
care. Now Mark was sending him e-mail after e-mail recording
her nearly daily decline, and Cagan realized that the timeline, as
he called it, had collapsed: This woman went from No problem,
she has three to ve years to Shes desperate, can you help us?
He proceeded with his screening, weak hit and all, and when
Mark visited his lab in late July, he learned that it would be at least
two months before Stephanie Fly 2.0 would yield a result. Then we
began hearing that he was working on Stephanie Fly 3.0 because
the hit from Stephanie Fly 2.0 didnt validatebecause hed modeled the tumor based on information from Schadts lab derived
from a tissue sample of insufcient purity. He had to start over
again, and on September 10, I received an e-mail from Eric Schadt:
Tom, talked to Ross. The news not so great. The straight answer is that they carried out the rapid screen on a focused set of
compounds and they got no hits on the Stephanie y 3.0. Ross
characterizes Stephanies tumor as a tough combo. He has started a more expansive screen, but unfortunately that is not a fast
process given it is a much broader set of compounds (6 weeks).
By this time, Stephanies CEA count had risen to eight hundred. By this time, she had tried to resume chemotherapy, but
the initial round had left her so weak that Brian Persing, her
doctor, was switching treatment protocols. By this time, Mark
and I began to fear that Stephanie was going to die without ever being treated by Mount Sinai and began asking Team Stephanie to put us in touch with doctors conducting clinical trials
relevant to Stephanies cancer.
A year had passed since Sinai had sequenced Stephanie Lees
tumor, and we had nothingStephanie had nothing, and we had
to start from scratch. Back in July, Schadts lab had issued a report with ndings and recommendations based on its genomic analysis of Stephanies tumor, and we had barely noticed it
in our fervor to push Ross Cagan to nish his work with the y.
The report had recommended that Stephanie explore her eligibility for clinical trials investigating a class of drugs known as
MEK inhibitorsbut for all we knew of MEK inhibitors it might
as well have urged us to look into the efcacy of baby aspirin.
Now the report was all we had, and when Eric urged Mark and
me to shop it around, we did so, dutifully calling investigators
at MD Anderson and Johns Hopkins who with all due respect
let us know they were accustomed to talking to physicians, or at
least people who had some idea of what they were talking about.

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It is easy to get excited about

personalized medicine, easy to
anticipate the miracles to
come. But personalized medicine
is nascent, and its embrace of
complexity shows how galactically
complex diseases really are.
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It was early October when Mark received a call from Marshall Posner, an oncologist from Mount Sinai, checking in on
Stephanies condition. Posner was working with Ross Cagan,
and he wanted to know if Stephanie was still healthy enough
to tolerate treatment.
A y had lived.
Ross had a hit.

pain with no end, it was pain with no limit. She writhed with silent screaming, and he became the haunted gure roaming the
empty hallways, looking for someone to offer Stephanie relief.
Text from Mark Warren, the Saturday after Thanksgiving,
middle of the night: These fuckers do not learn and they never act
as with any urgency. Her nurse is terrible, so I went to the charge
nurse and demanded to talk to the doctor. Just nally talked to the
fucking doctor after waiting forever, and got him to agree to bump
her dosages. And THAT was 20 minutes ago, and nothing. I am
about to start breaking shit.
But the fear that
She asked the doctor, Do you guys think Im a pill head or someStephanie was enduring pain because she had hopebecause we thing? Why wont you treat my pain?
And yet even as Stephanie underwent her holiday-season
had given her hope, had insisted on hopemade us reconsider
what we were doing. You dont have to do this for us, Mark and ordeal, I was corresponding with Ross Cagan about the prospects of her receiving treatment.
I both eventually told Stephanie.
He had written on ThanksgivYou dont have to keep on ghting because you think you owe us
ing Day not only about the technical challenges he was facing as
something. You dont owe us anything. We owe you. Pain and hope
he screened his ies but also about
had become hopelessly entangled,
the funeral hed attended for a man
and there was a level of horror, and
named Mark Beeninga, who was
terrible consequence, to the prosthe very rst patient to receive perpect of telling Stephanie to hold on
sonalized cancer therapy at Sinai.
because help was on the way.
Ross had screened ies for Mark;
Text from Stephanie, two days
he had come up with a treatment
before Thanksgiving:
for Mark; he had given Mark hope.
Sinais not going to hurry are they
And so he had gone to the service
Mark?
wondering whether our failure to
Text from Stephanie, Thankscure Mark would make the funergiving morning:
al awkward. It had not; indeed,
I cant do this anymore I cant
Beeningas wife had told him to
take this pain. Im sorry, Mark.
keep going, to keep pushing, to
She wasnt even texting him
keep moving forward.
from home. She was texting from
We are screening Stephanies
Ochsner, in New Orleans, where
avatar until we hear otherwise,
she lay in bed, alone. Her stent had
he concluded, and I wrote him
failed again; more precisely, her tuback telling him that Stephanie
mor had claimed it, wrapping its
was planning to come up to New
greedy fingers around its metYork for Christmas. When [Dr.
With Mark Warren on the Shelter Island ferry, summer
2014, returning to New York City from the authors house.
al throat. She was scheduled for
Posner] rst inquired into StephThis was the last good period for Stephanie, as
another surgery. Back in August,
anies health eight weeks ago, Mark
her life soon would be taken over by debilitating pain.
when Dr. Persing had rst sent her
and I thought there might be reato Ochsner, he had sent her for a
son for hope. We pray there still
surgical bypass, also known as a colostomy, and to have the tu- ishope that Stephanie might still be connected to your great
mor debulked, or cut away, to make a passage and restore func- ongoing enterprise at Sinai. . . .
tion to her GI system. The attending surgeon had installed the
But if hope and pain were intermingled in the person of Stephstent instead. Now Persing was trying again to get her an osto- anie Lee, so were faith and science. She was raised in the Pentemy, in the hope that it might win her some comfort, though shed costal church and could recall with tearful immediacy the strichave to wear a bag for her waste.
tures it placed upon her: I wanted to be a sprinter in high school,
On the day after Thanksgiving, Mark ew down to New Or- because I was fast. But they wouldnt let me. They wouldnt let
leans so that Stephanie wouldnt be alone in the hospital for the me wear shorts. I had to wear a dress. . . . She was no longer a
weekend. She underwent surgery that afternoon and woke up not churchgoer. But she loved her Lord, and she loved her Bible, and
with an ostomy but with a second stent. Back in Ocean Springs, she often called upon the rst and remembered the second when
Dr. Persing had been sensitive to her pain and had given her dos- her pain rose to its greatest intensity. Her faith never took the
es of Dilaudid that might have killed her had she not developed place of her trust in what was being done on her behalf at Sinai;
a tolerance for it. He had sent her dosage information to the rather, it intensied it, and gave her belief in science a religious
doctors at Ochsner. But they had either not read what he wrote dimension. And yet when her pain immobilized her at Ochsner,
or not believed it, for they looked at the eighty-ve pounds of it was the sight of the pastor of her mothers Pentecostal church
Stephanie Lee in their care and decided that no woman so small that lifted her. He slipped in the room with his wife, and before
could survive so large a dose of opiates. They treated her pain as Mark Warren knew who he was or what was happening, Stephif to wean her from her pain medications, as if there were a mor- anie recognized him and rose to her knees, there on her hospital
al component to pain management. Mark, at her bedside, had bed. Her arms were as thin as dowels, and laced with all manner
never seen another human being in such pain, for it was not just of tubes and hoses, but she threw them at him, over her beds

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Stephanie Lee

protective railings, and accepted the blessing he offered with silent tears.

Ive never been to a Broadway show. I

think Id like to go to a Broadway show.
She said this in September, when the sickness was spreading through her body, but
before the shattering began. Mark had suggested she come to New York, with the girls,
and the trip became one of her goals, one of
the things that pushed her through the pain.
But she had gotten sicker and sicker, until
nobody thought it was a good idea for her to
make the trip and nobody had the heart to
tell her not to. She and Kamri and Marchelle
arrived at LaGuardia on December 18, and of
course Mark didnt just have three tickets for
Cinderella for the next night. He had called
the producers and made arrangements for
Stephanie and her daughters to come backstage after the show and meet the star, Keke
Palmer, in her dressing room.
They stayed with Marks familyhis wife,
Jessica, and his children, Zeke and Oona
in Harlem. But the trip had depleted Stephanie, and she took to Oonas bed and stayed
there. The next morning, Mark brought
her to meet Dan Labow at Sinai. He sent
me this text before leaving: Just now, Stephanie, weeping, took my hand, and put it to her
belly, like an expectant mother might do. I felt
a fearsome lump, Tom. A terrifying presence.
Labow knew exactly how sick she was,
and tenderly he took her anklesalready
starting to swellin his hands. Am I going to die? she asked. He answered that he
didnt know, but held both her hands and
said, Whatever happens, well be with you
every step of the way. She began to cry and
to tell Mark, as if in apology, I cant go, I
cant go tonight, I cant go.
The girls went to Cinderella with Oona
instead and met Keke Palmer backstage.
On Sunday, December 21, I went to Marks
apartment with my family and my dog for
Stephanies thirty-eighth birthday. She
stayed in her bedroom most of the time, and
when she emerged it was as a woman much
older than her years, with not only the tiny
steps of the aged but the admixture of fragility and ferocity, the air of containment
that both protected and demanded all that
she had left. And yet still she saw everything
happening in the room, particularly what
lay out of the line of sight: He never takes
his eyes off you, Tom, she said of my dog,
and when I gave her the standard answer
Hes a good boyshe corrected me. Oh,
Tom, she said. He your son.
The next morning, wearing the necklace
that Mark and Jess had bought her for her
birthday, she went back to Sinai for an appointment with a palliative-care specialist
who changed her medications and began extending her the mercy of viewing her pain
and not her canceras her primary malady.
When the appointment ended, Mark pushed
her in her wheelchair to a car he had hired
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ESQUIRE AUGUST 2015

to take her home and then asked, Are you

up for not going home right away?
He folded the wheelchair and put it in
the trunk, then asked the driver to lower
the windows and drive the car as slowly as
he possibly could all the way down Fifth
Avenue, which was to Stephanies delight
dressed up beautifully for Christmas. And
they didnt stop until they reached the one
place she most wanted to see, the 9/11 Memorial that she so closely identied with
her husband Terrances sacrice.
The next day, she stepped out of the bathroom in Marks apartment with her arms extended and her palms wide open. Twice she
had tried to resume chemotherapy, and twice
the demon of erythema multiforme had punished her for it, taking advantage of her hobbled immune system to invade her nose, her
lips, her gums, her tongue, her throat. Now
Mark sat at his dining-room table and saw
that it had returned, with spots of it etched
in the center of her palms like nails.
I have to go home, Mark, she said.
She didnt go home. Not then. Mount Sinai admitted her on December 23, and she
stayed ve and a half weeks.
You could write the story of Stephanies
time in the hospital by listing all the things
that went wrong with her and all the things
that Sinais palliative-care specialists, cancer specialists, kidney specialists, heart specialists, infectious-disease specialists, and
gastrointestinal specialists did to help her.
You could write it by tracking the steady
increase in the pain medications she required, the astonishing doses that she ended up taking.
You could write it by naming everybody
who came to visit her and by saying that
Marks assistant at Esquire, Natasha Zarinsky, and her friend Vicky Jordan came to visit her every day, combing her hair, massaging her feet, holding her hand, helping her
walk to the bathroom.
And of course you could tell it by telling
the story of Mark. You could tell it by totaling
the hours he stayed with her and the days he
missed from work and the holiday celebrations he missed with his family. You could
tell it by naming the reality-TV programs he
watched with her or by listing the foods he
brought her from all corners of New York
Citythe fried catsh and panfried chicken
and chicken wings from Harlem, the chicken nuggets from McDonalds and the burgers from Burger King and the tiramisu from
Mezzaluna. You could tell it by saying that if
the bags of oatmeal cookies he bought didnt
t her increasingly particularized and fanatical standards, he kept buying them until he
found the right oatmeal cookie, and then endured without complaint her accusations
when he ate what she wouldntMark eating my cookies! You could tell it by saying
that, in the end, Marks wife, Jessica, contracted C. difcile from her visits to Stephanie and had to go to the hospital herself.
You could tell it by repeating all the things

that Stephanie said in her sleep and in her

delirium, and that before she got her nephrostomy, she moaned, Im doing this for my
kids! Im doing this for my kids!
You could tell it by painting the picture
of Stephanie sitting at the edge of her bed,
her feet dangling over the side, her hospital
gown open, the tattoo on her lower back still
declaring, in some Gothic font, G O D B L E S S .
But really, it needs to be told in terms of
the question that Stephanie asked almost a
year earlier and kept asking, in one way or
another, during the entirety of her stay at Sinai. What do I need to do? She never lost faith
that her question would be answered, for
she never lost faith in science or the scientists working on her behalf. But she would
learn that faith in science is not so different from the faith she grew up in, dependent on forces bound by necessity and ultimately indifferent to the human need for
miracles. So when, on January 21 of this year,
she nally got an answer, it was no less befuddling than what she had heard back in
Palm Beach. A doctor by the name of Krzysztof Misiukiewicz came to her room because
he was in charge of the protocol by which
the results of Ross Cagans research with
fruit ies found their way into patients. He
was a wary, nicky man of saturnine countenance, but he believed he had a treatment
with the potential to extend Stephanies life.
He even had the medicine from the drug
company. But he couldnt give it to her, because she had been battling a kidney infection since the beginning of January, and she
was simply too sick. Not today, not tomorrow, Dr. Misiukiewicz told her. Maybe the
next day.
She had once been given to understand that
in order to receive her treatment, she had to
get sick. Now she had to get better, and three
nights later she asked Mark to sit by her bed.
She could barely speak, but he could understand her words clearly enough. Mark, she
asked, have I been kicked out of the study?
Back in September, we lost our faith in
Ross Cagans ability to nd a new treatment
for Stephanie with his y model, and tried
to nd a clinical trial for her based on Eric
Schadts genomic analysis and its recommendation that MEK inhibitors might prove
efcacious against her cancer. A month later, we regained our faith in Cagan and forgot about Schadts analysis and MEK inhibitors altogether. After all, Cagan seemed to
be doing something extraordinary in his lab,
something heroiche was never giving up.
He had come as close as anyone ever had in
seeing Stephanies cancer face-to-face, and
he understood, as he wrote to us, that it was
driven by a palate of mutations . . . somewhat unusual and particularly aggressive,
a point that seems to be borne out by the
growth of Stephanies tumor.
He did not think that a MEK inhibitor
would work against her cancer. Stephanie
had a ras mutation, he said recently. Its
one of the main drivers of cancer. She had

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ras, they all have ras. You turn on ras, youre

going to transform cells. Since there are no
drugs currently available that block the malign signaling of a mutant ras gene, many researchers have tried to target other points in
the ras pathway, the MEK enzyme being one
of them. Basically, ras equals MEK inhibitors. If that worked, I wouldnt have to open
my centerthat is, the Center for Personalized Cancer Therapeutics, which Cagan
started at Sinai in 2013. The whole purpose
is to go beyond MEK inhibitors. Or if youre
going to use them, use them in combination with other drugs, for synergistic effect.
In the end, he says, we screened a hundred thousand ies against twelve hundred different compounds. And yet as late
as Christmas Eve 2014, with Stephanie already admitted to Sinai, he sent an e-mail
detailing what he had found for Stephanie
in his lab: Nothing. He was working with
his labmates to make one of the y models
more sensitive to rescue, but after that, he
said, we are out of y tricks.
It is what made the events of December
29 so remarkable, and feel so nearly miraculous. When Cagan and Dr. Marshall Posnerthe oncologist in charge of cancer clinical trials for Sinaiwalked into Stephanies
hospital room, they might as well have materialized out of thin air. No one was expecting them, least of all Stephanie, and no one
could have possibly anticipated Posner announcing that there had been a very promising result in Cagans lab. Suddenly, hope
had made its fraught entrance, causing one
of Stephanies oncologists to exclaim brightly, Those fruit ies have been working so
hard for you! Cagan blanched at her comment, out of fear, as he said, of overpromising. Later, Cagan met with Stephanie in
private, and Stephanie reported to Mark afterward that Cagan had told her that he had
found a combination of two drugs, the rst
of which reduced the size of the tumor in
the ies and the second of which provided
a powerful one-two punch. Then on January 14, Cagan met with a panel of experienced clinicians who determined a protocol
for administering the treatment to Stephanie. Since there were two drugs, she would
take them in stepwise fashion, moving on
to the second only if she tolerated the rst.
The second was axitinib, used in the treatment of renal cancer.
The rst was trametinib, a MEK inhibitor.
Ross Cagan has since described the hit
that led to Stephanies treatment protocol as
very weak, the best of a sorry lot. But the
discrepancy between the excitement that attended its creation and the realization that
it was never anything more than a long shot
tells the story not just of Stephanie Lee in
particular but of personalized medicine in
general. It is easy to get excited about personalized medicine, easy to accept its triumph as inevitable, easy to anticipate the
miracles to comeall those big brains, all
those Schadts and Cagans reinventing medicine on the y, almost on a case-by-case ba-

sis, for the benet of individuals like Stephanie, or Mark Beeninga, or the granddaughter
of Dennis Charney: How can such an effort
inspire anything but, well, belief? But personalized medicine is also nascent medicine,
and if anything, its embrace of complexity
has shown just how galactically complex the
forces driving disease really are.
Personalized medicine even turns out to
be ethically complex, as Ross Cagan found
out on January 26, when Sinais internalreview board conducted an ethics review
of his participation in Stephanies case. He
was a scientist, not a doctor, and yet he was
having contact with patients. He had to convince the board that he was not conducting
a clinical trial it hadnt yet approved. He did,
but when he left that meeting, it was with
the understanding that Sinai had drawn a
line against even the perception that scientists might be urging the results of their research upon Sinais patients. Stephanie was
still in the hospital and had, in fact, begun
to die. But on the next day, Cagan wrote to
Mark that for Stephanies sake, I am stepping away. An hour later, he materialized
again in her room and told Stephanies
friend Vicky Jordan, I shouldnt even be
here. But that didnt stop him from hugging her, for the very last time.
The day that Cagan went for the ethics
review happened to be the day that Mark
and I stood outside Stephanies hospital
room and had to decide whether to approve
the fecal transplant that might have resolved
the C. difcile infection. We were aware that
by now we were open to our own ethics reviewwe had already written a story touting the prospects of Stephanies treatment
and now had to make a decision on which
Stephanies prospects for treatment rested. As Cagan described himself as all-in on

Her back scarred on both sides by

nephrostomies, misshapen by the cancer,
emblazoned with GOD BLESS , Stephanie
receives an injection of Dilaudid,
January 26, 2015, three days before being
evacuated home to Mississippi.

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Stephanie, we could describe ourselves as

all-in on Cagan. We had believed, and Stephanie believed, and now, as we spoke to Dr.
Grinspanthe expert in clearing C. difcile
infections with fecal transplantswe could
see into her room from our vantage in the
hallway, fully aware of her presence just out
of our sight. She was tiny, spindly, jagged,
disheveled, lost amidst her bedding, wearing diapers. But she was still Stephanie. By
God, she would always be Stephanie, forever
the hopeful realist, and so she would always
want the treatment she deserved. But in order to get that treatment, she would have to
be pierced again, this time by the snake of
a nasogastric tube that without anesthetic
would deliver a parcel of possibly nauseainducing fecal matter to her stomach. . . .
She had been tortured enough.
Two days later, we attended a meeting
in her room that more closely resembled a
religious service, all of us ringed about her
bed, the palliative-care team, the oncologists, the residents, the chaplain, the social
worker, Krzysztof Misiukiewicz, and, yes,
Eric Schadt, to hear Stephanie declare, in a
voice softened and deepened by pain and
exhaustion, her nal intention:
I need to go home to be a mother to my
baby.
And that night, Mark sent me a text she had
written a week earlier, after hed texted her
with the words Lets get you home, okay?
They had been ghting, Mark and Stephanie. They were, in Marks words, like an old
married couple, and Mark offered the only outlet for her recriminations and accusations and obliterating torrents of despair.
But now she wrote him back, as she wrote
everything back then, slowly, against the
steep gravity of illness, sometimes slumping into sleep between characters, and she
wrote him this:
I miss my Marchelle and I miss hom. Thank
you for the Love yours has shown to us. I love.
Death is the supreme ironist. It specializes in the long haul and is unblinkingly alert
to what the long haul makes of human endeavors. We tried to save Stephanie Lee. We
tried to inspire and challenge and prod and
browbeat others into doing the same, and
wound up taking our place in the ranks of
those who devoted themselves to her, who
worked ceaselessly for her, who did what
they thought was best for her and came so
close to success that theyweeach wound
up doing our part in an annihilating failure.
There was some very important science
committed in her name, an endeavor that
gave purpose to her suffering and made her
feel special, and much was learned from this
failure that may well be turned to the benet
of sick people who come after her. For everyone who tried to be heroic for Stephanie, she
herself was the hero. And there is no procedure that will take place in the name of personalized medicine at Mount Sinai that will
not in some way bear her imprint.
When she nally went home, Stephanie
113

Stephanie Lee

Credits

was herself days away from receiving personalized, or targeted, therapy at Sinai. A
year later, everything might have turned out
differently, Ross Cagan would say. With
more time, Stephanie would have been one
of the 150 patients Cagan says he expects to
have soon in clinical trials at the Center for
Personalized Cancer Therapeutics. But she
didnt have more time, and so wound up the
central gure in a drama that took eighteen
agonizing months to unfold. In the end, the
ironies were all that were left:
That the doctor in Mississippi who treated her with radiation and two devastating
rounds of chemotherapy with Avastin was
more accurate in his prognosis than the doctors in New York.
That for all the brilliant scientists at her
beck and call, what she needed at the most
crucial junctures of her illness was the rm
hand of a doctor.
That Sinai never treated her cancer but,
when it was too late, threw every resource
it had at her case without asking for a penny.
That the only miracles available to her
turned out to be the human and ancient
onesfriendship, loyalty, and love.
The ironies accrue like compound interest; the more one contemplates them, the
more they keep propagating themselves, and
if sometimes they are brutal, sometimes they
represent a kind of justice, the sound of the
universe clanging into place. Thats exactly the kind of patient we take, Eric Schadt
had said when he rst heard about Stephanie Lee, and so it was Eric Schadt, at the
end, who signed the promissory note that
allowed an air ambulance to y Stephanie
home to Mississippi, on January 29 of this
year, ve weeks and two days after she got
too sick to make those Christmas memories
with her girls and entered the hospital for
what we all thought would be a short stay.
She was not alone, of course. She was with
Mark Warren, at the end of his walk with
her. He climbed into the Learjet with her,
and sang to her, and spoke to her, and took
her picture, wrapped as she was in sheets
white as the Piet, her face aged, ageless,
whittled down to the beauty of her bones.
And when they touched down at the airport in Gulfport, Mississippi, there was an
ambulance on the runway with its lights already whirling, as if waiting for the arrival
of a dignitary. The ambulance would run its
sirens all the way to Ocean Springs, and the
trafc would part for her.
Youre home, Miss Stephanie, Mark
said to her.
We changing planes?
No, youre home. In Mississippi.
She looked out the window, to the light
pouring in.
For real? she asked.

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Stephanie Amanda Lee died on February 4,

2015, at Ocean Springs Hospital, in Ocean
Springs, Mississippi.
114

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Treaty

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[continued from page 73] It strikes her

how ordinary and extraordinary both,
then, this moment, a street corner shop,
the rain, a London sidestreet, her rapist,
thirty-seven years ago, the sound of a distant piano, a pigeon apping through a
railway station, her brother, the books on
the oor, a collision, that ancient river in
Galway where she made her decision to
join the Church, so young then, the way
the light shone even on the underside of
the bridge, bouncing up from the coppercolored river.
I am not here to hurt you, Carlos.
You have more important things to do. Im
not here to ruin what you are doing.
What is it you said your name was
again?
Sister Beverly Clarke.
Well, Sister Beverly Clarke, its a pleasure to meet you, but I think youve mistaken me
But Id like to know how you achieved
it.
Im afraid youre wasting your time.
Where did you nd it, Carlos? That
grace?
Encantado. Let me go. My jacket.
Youre holding my jacket.
Beverly is surprised to feel the tug in her
ngers, that it is true, she has brought him
closer, that there is the faint smell of coffee from his breath, that she has bridged
this space, caught him so unaware. She
knows now that it will haunt him forever, this moment.
She lets go of him, hears the high ping of
the cash register and the fumble for money, a laugh from one of the young boys as
they leave the shop.
Do you recognize me?
Por supuesto no le . . .
She touches the top button on her
blouse, opens it. He steps back, attempts
an ease into his face.
Are you sure, Carlos?
No me llame Carlos.
Im interested in what it means to you.
When you sit there and you talk about
peace?
A second button, the necklace at her ngers. The shopkeeper has not moved, his
dark hands spread wide on the countertop.
I would be happy to talk to you in my
ofce, Miss
Sister Beverly.
You could arrange it with my secretary.
Youre doing good work, Carlos.
Stop it.
Im not going to harm that.
He leans towards her: No s quin diablo eres, t.
She opens the third button on her blouse,
her esh cold to the touch. He turns, panicked, towards the shopkeeper, then glances back to Beverly.
No puedes hacer esto.
It healed, see?
116

ESQUIRE AUGUST 2015

Sultame.
No embarrassment. No shame. She is
surprised by the banality of it, how naked,
how ordinary it is to her, the small ruin of
her breast in her hand.
Qu quieres conmigo?
Nothing.
Tell me what you want.
Nothing, Carlos. Nothing. I just want
you to know that Im here, I exist, thats all.
He backs, panicked, towards the door. A
small hitch in his step as he leaves. He grasps
for the handle. The door swings slowly closed
behind him.
She watches through the window as Carlos yanks the rear door of a car. Something apparitional in the moment. A man immune to
himself. It looks to her as if he is stepping into a caisson of his own loneliness. He slams
the door. The tinted window powers down.
She begins to rebutton.
From the rear seat Carlos stares out. He
gestures with an open hand and the car lurches forward, the small rope of exhaust fumes
dispersing into the air. But ve yards along
the car stops again and the door opens. His
suit jacket swings in the wind. He steps over
the curb, his hands above his head as if he
might stop the rain.
The shop bell sounds again. The top of his
shoes are wet and dripping. He stands, his
face red, the veins in his neck shining. Something shifting and buzzing in his eyes.
He looks up at the shop ceiling, turns his
back to the camera. So, he does not want to be
seen, then. For how many years has he walked
in this wilderness?
He leans forward, a sheen of sweat or rain
on his brow, she cant tell which. He hovers
a moment close to her, his breath sharp in
her ear, the word too quiet for the shopkeeper to hear.
Puta, he says.
The word is immediately meek and useless, it grazes against her, dissolves, tumbles,
something graceful even about its fall.
Beverly turns her back, steps towards the
counter, the tea, her newspaper. No nerves
in her ngers. No shake in her hands. She
closes the nal button of her blouse.
She is aware, now, exactly what sort of
man he has become. No peace about him.
No great swerve in his life. He has polished
all his lies.
She could, now, do anything at all: arrange a conference, expose him to the
newspapers, call him to task, let others
know, create a revenge out of justice.
But she will, she knows, just sit at the
counter, slowly sip her tea, let the minutes pass, fold the newspaper, rise, leave
the shop, shufe down along the Thames,
return to her brothers at, sit with him,
talk, allow the night to fade away, and later
she will slip into the warm bath, rise, towel, glance at the mirror, look away again,
dress, sleep in the chair instead of the bed,
listen to the evening tap against the windowpane, rise then, leave, return to Houston, a long ight across the Atlantic, a re-

turn, up the steps, those young girls, that

small bakery of love and death.
There is a silence behind her, then she
hears the sound of the shop door closing,
a car door, an engine, and Carlos is gone.
Beverly runs her nger around the rim of
the saucer, folds the newspaper, smooths
out the creases, moves towards the counter.
Rows of cigarettes, lottery tickets, sweets.
She slides the folded newspaper across the
counter. She will leave the paper for the
shopkeeper now, allow him to sell it again,
why not: She has no more use for it.
She returns to her seat, ties her head scarf,
lifts her coat into her arms, brings the empty
teacup across to the cash counter.
The shopkeeper remains still, his hands
spread wide. There is, she notices, a copy
of the Koran on the counter, thumbed,
used. On a black-and-white television
screen behind him, she sees the front door
of the shop, the aisles of food, the cash register, a small coin of baldness in the back
of his head.
He has about him the air of a man prone to
bruises and scars. There is a dark mark in the
center of his forehead. A prayer bruise. She
feels herself shiver. She has stepped into his
world, showed herself immodest.
Im sorry, she says.
I didnt see anything, madam. I assure you.
I did not see a thing.
She likes him for the quickness of the lie.
She glances upwards at the ceiling camera.
Those tapes?
Yes madam?
I dont suppose you could give them to
me?
Excuse me?
I wouldnt like anybody else to see them.
He seems to ponder it a moment, weigh it
like an ancient coin. He reaches out and pats
the newspaper on the counter, nods at her
with a sharp cordiality.
Im afraid not. They record on the drive.
Theres no actual tapes. I cant give them
to you.
He touches his hand to his chest where a
row of pens sit in his shirt pocket.
But nobody will see them, I promise
you.
Beverly pulls the cardigan around her
shoulders, hitches her coat, catches a
glimpse of herself in the cubed screens, two
or three versions, standing in the store, from
the front, from behind, caught in the chorus
of light and dark.
She steps through the shop, pauses a moment, spies the reection of the shopkeeper in the window. At the cash register. The
blinking red camera light above him, immutable, sacred.
It is, she knows, an agreement of faith
with a man whose name she does not even
know.
Thank you, she says without turning.
She reaches for the door handle, pulls up
the collar of her coat against the chill, steps
out toward the dim street into the hard free
fall of rain.

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