Native Believer

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This is the story of an apostate’s execution. It begins two years ago, under Mars, when I invited the people of Plutus Communications to our apartment and served prosciutto palmiers, braised ram shanks, and bull-tail stew. The aim of the festivity was to welcome, to bewitch, to charm one George Gabriel, the Philadelphia branch’s new boss sent from New York. By appealing to him I hoped to circumvent the hierarchs who had prevented me from getting my own team at work, who had sequestered me in the wrongly named Special Projects.

The deeper I got into my thirties — the decade where choice replaces chance as the Prime Mover of life — the better I became at such supplicatory hosting. I wore charcoal slacks and an off-white cardigan with silver buttons. In America, those who want something have to dress like those who already have everything.

I pulled open the curtain and confirmed the snow outside. The art museum, with green streaks in its fading copper, sat on its stony plinth like an old country dame, once a beautiful golden goddess, now crisscrossed with varicose veins, incapable of getting up. Chipped stairs fell like an aged necklace at her feet. A solitary man trudged up the steps, the gauzy snow-curtain a wedge that perforated around him. It was cold outside, but within me there was warmth.

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