Fourth Comings_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [112]
“Who’s ‘we’?” I asked. “The Social Activists?” I glanced at the other faces at the table, trying to get them involved in the conversation. But they were all talking among themselves, not paying one bit of attention to the current performer—a portly, bald Tenacious D type doing a spectacular Freddie Mercury. (“I’m a sex machine ready to reload…Like an atom bomb about to oh oh oh oh oh explode!”) But Cinthia spoke to Dexy and me as if we were the only people in the room, a skill that no doubt helps her when it comes to persuading people to part with their money. Only we had no money to part with.
“The Social Activists can only do so much. We can raise money, sure, and social profiles, but we’re not raising consciousness. I founded the Social Activists hoping I could exploit the conspicuous one-upmanship that is so pervasive here in the city and do some good. No one here cares about where the money is going”—she gestured around the table here—“they only care that they are among those being seen giving it away. And I figured that as long as the money was going to worthy causes, the dubious intentions of the donors didn’t matter.” She paused and leaned in closer. “But it does matter.” Cinthia let out a sigh. “I know, it’s all so sincere,” she said, screwing her lips into a sneer on the last word. “Well, what’s wrong with sincerity? Why is it such a dirty word?”
Dexy stood up, curled her lip, and swiveled her hips. “Well, you gotta be sincere,” she sang in a horrid rockabilly twang that cut through all conversation. “Oh my baby, oh yeah!”
“Save it for the stage,” I said, yanking her down into her seat.
“Bye Bye Birdie!” Dexy explained.
“Go on,” I insisted. I was genuinely, daresay, sincerely interested in hearing what Cinthia had to say.
“Er, right,” Cinthia said, unfailingly polite. “Irony has become the language of our generation. And the problem with irony, and sarcasm, and its evil twin, snark, for that matter, is that nothing is too sacred for a funny punch line. If people spent one tenth the amount of time thinking about, oh, I don’t know, the midterm elections as they did trying to find pictures of Firecrotch’s umpteenth upskirt, maybe our country wouldn’t be so completely fucked up.”
Right at that moment, a bubbly blond Nickelodeon starlet who last year, at the age of sixteen, legally emancipated herself from her parents, took the stage wearing a fedora, a flannel shirt, and fishnets. If this young lass had begun her evening with pants, or shoes for that matter, she was without them now. The crowd thundered their approval as she giggled and hiccupped through “I Touch Myself.”
“Okay,” Cinthia said with a knowing raise of her eyebrow, “what are you thinking? I know you’re thinking something. Say it.”
I contemplated her question.
You have urged me to practice “the art of compassion.” Whenever I come across an annoying target for snark, I’m supposed to take a moment to consider the confluence of biological, psychological, sociological, and anthropological forces that have made this person who he/she is today. Being mindful of my fellow man’s struggles is supposed to make me less likely to take him out with my sniper tongue. What could be the downside to practicing the art of compassion? Shouldn’t we all try to be more mindful of others’ struggles? Especially in New York City, in which mythic comedies and epic tragedies can be witnessed on a single street corner while impatiently waiting for the right moment to jump the go signal and jaywalk to the other side?
You have been warning me about my callousness for years, though you’ve graciously blamed the city’s cruel influence, and not what I suspect is an inborn character defect. You see, it’s not that I don’t want to be a more compassionate person; I do. But that requires a certain sensitivity that doesn’t come naturally to me. And so what usually happens is that I overcompensate by being super-duper empathetic, often with ridiculous results. Like this:
Cinthia: My foot hurts.
Me: What happened?
Cinthia: I got caught in a bear trap