Freedom [205]
Meanwhile the country was at war, but it was an odd sort of war in which, within a rounding error, the only casualties were on the other side. Joey was glad to see that the taking of Iraq was every bit the cakewalk he’d expected it to be, and Kenny Bartles was sending him elated e-mails about the need to get his bread company up and running ASAP. (Joey kept having to explain that he was still a college student and couldn’t start work until after finals.) Jonathan, however, was sourer than ever. He was fixated, for example, on the Iraqi antiquities that had been stolen by looters from the National Museum.
“That was one little mistake,” Joey said. “Shit happens, right? You just don’t want to admit that things are going well.”
“I’ll admit it when they find the plutonium and the missiles tipped with smallpox,” Jonathan said. “Which they won’t, because it was all bullshit, all trumped-up bullshit, because the people who started this thing are incompetent clowns.”
“Dude, everybody says there’s WMDs. Even The New Yorker says there are. My mom said my dad wants to cancel their subscription, he’s so mad about it. My dad, the great expert on foreign affairs.”
“How much you want to bet your dad’s right?”
“I don’t know. A hundred dollars?”
“Done!” Jonathan said, extending his hand. “A hundred bucks says they find no weapons by the end of the year.”
Joey shook his hand and then proceeded to worry that Jonathan was right about the WMDs. Not that he cared about a hundred dollars; he was going to be making 8K a month with Kenny Bartles. But Jonathan, a political news junkie, seemed so very sure of himself that Joey wondered if he’d somehow missed the joke in his dealings with his think-tank bosses and Kenny Bartles: had failed to notice them winking or ironically inflecting their voices when they spoke of reasons beyond their own personal or corporate enrichment for invading Iraq. In Joey’s view, the think tank did indeed have a hush-hush motive for supporting the invasion: the protection of Israel, which, unlike the United States, was within striking distance of even the crappy sort of missile that Saddam’s scientists were capable of building. But he’d believed that the neocons at least were serious in fearing for Israel’s safety. Now, already, as March turned to April, they were waving their hands and acting as if it didn’t even matter if any WMDs came to light; as if the freedom of the Iraqi people were the main issue. And Joey, whose own interest in the war was primarily financial, but who’d taken moral refuge in the thought that wiser minds than his had better motives, began to feel that he’d been suckered. It didn’t make him any less eager to cash in, but it did make him feel dirtier about it.
In his soiled mood, he found it easier to talk to Jenna about his summer plans. Jonathan, among other things, was jealous of Kenny Bartles (he got pissy whenever he heard Joey talking on the phone to Kenny), whereas Jenna had dollar signs in her eyes and was all for making killings. “Maybe I’ll see you in Washington this summer,” she said. “I’ll come down from New York and you can take me out to dinner to celebrate my engagement.”
“Sure,” he said. “Sounds like a fun evening.”
“I have to warn you I have very expensive taste in restaurants.”
“How’s Nick going to feel about me taking you to dinner?”
“Just one less bite out of his wallet. It would never occur to him to be afraid of you. But how’s your girlfriend going to feel?”
“She’s not the jealous type.”
“Right, jealousy’s so unattractive, ha ha.”
“What she doesn’t know can’t hurt her.”
“Yes, and there’s quite a bit she doesn’t know, isn’t there? How many little slips have you had now?”
“Five.”
“That is four more than Nick would get away with before I surgically removed his testicles.