Zeitgeist: A Novel of Metamorphosis

Summer in Istanbul. Roses in a hammered silver urn. Fresh-ground coffee in a shiny brass hand-mill. The rich tang of fertilizer and fuel oil hung over the damaged cafe. Starlitz could smell the hot caramel aftertaste of the car bomb, right through the baked metal, smashed cement, and burnt upholstery. "Where are the girls?" said the Turk. "The girls are in Cyprus. They're partying." "With Greeks?" "Oh, heavens no," Starlitz assured him. "The girls are in the fun part of Cyprus. Turkish Cyprus." The Turk smiled. He picked open the lid of the coffeepot and deposited a heaping spoon of brown sugar. Starlitz leaned back in his wrought-iron chair and folded his plump hands over his lilac waistcoat. He and the Turk sat in companionable silence, with hooded eyes behind their designer shades, and watched the pot reach a boil. The Turk, who called himself Mehmet Ozbey, was young, and rich, with a film star's good looks. In his Italian leather jeans and camel-hair jacket, Ozbey was the picture of masculine chic. Starlitz felt at peace. Local events were going very much his way. There had been a time in his checkered career when he would have shown up in Istanbul two days before a car bomb. He would have hit town with the plan, and the contacts, and the agenda, and he would have found the old city strained and jittery with fatalistic Ottoman tension. Here at the tag end of the twentieth century, however, Starlitz was pampered by circumstance. He had arrived in Istanbul two days after a car bomb. The catastrophe was behind them now. They had entered the professional realm of consequence management. Bored Turkish cops measured their new monster pothole with yellow metal pull-tapes. Indifferent janitors swept up the scattered tonnage of broken glass. Istanbul downtown girls, in their chunky gold chains and Chanel suits, were trying to window-shop through the street's battered length of plywood sheeting. Mere domestic terrorism could not cause Mehmet Ozbey to break a business appointment. The shrapnel-damaged cafe was almost deserted, but the young pop promoter had arrived bang on time, clean, shaved, sober, and toting a white calfskin valise. The cafe Ozbey had chosen was lovely, though its windows had all been shattered by the car bomb's concussion. The cafe staff doted on Ozbey, touched by his loyalty during their trying circumstances. They kept tiptoeing up to offer lacquered trays of sliced melon and baklava. A young woman passed the damaged cafe and caught sight of Ozbey. Instantly entranced, she stumbled headlong into a striped police sawhorse. "My little girlfriend Gonca," Ozbey remarked solemnly, "would very much like to meet your G-7 girls." "I'm sure that can be arranged." "She's especially fond of the French One." "Everyone has a favorite G-7 girl," Starlitz allowed. "The French One has the most talent," said Ozbey judiciously. "She can almost sing." Starlitz nodded. "Yeah, that's her Left Bank cafe chanteuse riff." Starlitz and Ozbey watched the pot foam up, once, twice, and the full and traditional third time. Starlitz was pleased to have stolen this moment from the onrushing millennium. It was important to pry these little breathing spaces from the final hum of the dying century. It was good for him, like oxygen. Ozbey removed the curved pot from its flickering burner, and with exaggerated hostly care he began to pour. "Why is there no Russian G-7 girl?" Ozbey said, setting the pot aside. "Because it's the Group of Eight now,Sterling, Bruce is the author of 'Zeitgeist: A Novel of Metamorphosis' with ISBN 9780553104936 and ISBN 0553104934.