easily,” Nick pointed out.
“No, I don’t.” Nick missed the point. George didn’t tire, he was constantly disappointed. Dissatisfied. He was always looking for the next thing. He had the mind of a researcher, restlessly turning corners, seeking out new questions. But he was not a researcher; he was simply rich.
Nick parked at Inspiration Point with its view of hills and reservoirs like winding rivers far below.
“I don’t like kids,” George grumbled.
“You’re great with kids,” Nick countered with a new father’s evangelism. “Henry loves you.”
“No, I mean the kids who work for me. I don’t like dealing with them. I’m supposed to be, you know, employer, confessor, personal banker. It’s ridiculous. And they’re so ignorant. God.”
“You’re talking about the new one.” A little of the old Nick came through here, a smile, as if to say, You bring her up a lot, when of course George had only mentioned Jess once, or possibly twice, in passing.
“All of them,” he said doggedly, and Nick knew, even as they walked up to the trailhead and stretched and started jogging up the Ridge Trail with its canyon views, that George was in one of his apocalyptic moods, half bemused, half horrified. Pedantic. Of course Nick had heard George fume before about the end of Western Civilization, the death of books, the literary tradition either forgotten or maligned. Unfortunately, George didn’t quietly despair about these matters; he wrote letters on the subject and served on the board of something called the Seneca Foundation that opposed bilingual education in the schools. George was always reading, not just voraciously, but systematically, the way scientists read, the way technocrats read when they decide to take a position on Western Civilization. Plato first, then Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas—chronologically, George had built his portfolio of great books. Years ago, he’d read Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg and Thomas Pynchon. Now he pored over Dante and Herodotus. He’d become one of those people who felt he had to defend Shakespeare. He had not aged gracefully. “They’re all ignorant,” George said. “The new one actually reads, but only to pass judgment. This is the way kids learn today. Someone told them how you feel is more important than what you know, and so they think accusations are ideas. This is political correctness run amok.”
Nick picked up the pace, hoping to outrun George’s rant. He passed a man walking a brown and white beagle, and an elderly couple in straw hats.
“What was it Jess said today …?” George panted, trying to keep up. “Ruskin is a dogmatic, self-indulgent, sexually repressed misogynist with an edifice complex.”
Nick smiled. “Sounds just like you.”
Was he dogmatic? George asked himself as he drove home on switchbacks between trees, Bay views, and sky. Maybe, but only for good cause. Self-indulgent? Only sometimes, and at least he admitted to the fault. He should get some credit for that. Sexually repressed? No, easily bored. Misogynist? He took a hairpin turn. Hardly. He loved women!
George pulled off Buena Vista onto Wildwood, then parked halfway over the curb and collected his mail. Edifice complex hit close to home. George adored his house, and as Nick could attest, he had become obsessed with its restoration. He’d spent years and more money than he cared to admit. Still, even here, he pleaded innocent. Obsession, yes. Self-indulgence, no. The restoration was about Bernard Maybeck, not George Friedman. He was just a steward to Maybeck’s vision. The research he and his designers had done, the ceramic tile, the salvaged wood, the light fixtures, and the hardware had been a labor of love, not ego. He had been patient, looking for the perfect door hinges. He had allowed his shingles to weather naturally, enduring months when his Californian beauty looked like a molting bird, until at last the cedar darkened and his wisteria came into its