A Visit from the Goon Squad

by Jennifer Egan

Kitty Jackson, who ten years ago had debuted as a scrappy, gymnastic crime stopper in Oh, Baby, Oh. Kitty’s real fame had come a year later, when Jules Jones, the older brother of one of Dolly’s protégés, had attacked her during an interview for Details magazine.

No one would hire Kitty anymore, but the public would remember her—that was what mattered to Dolly. And she was still only twenty-eight.

“Miss Peale. We meet at last,” he said with a smile. “And Miss Jackson”—he turned to Kitty—“it is a great honor as well as a pleasure.” He kissed Kitty’s hand with a slightly teasing look, Dolly thought. “I have seen your movies. The general and I watched them together.”

Drew says he’s going straight to law school.

his arm around Sasha.

Drew

Bix, who’s at his computer,

He hands the pipe to Sasha, who passes it to Lizzie without smoking any.

promise, Rob,” Drew croaks at you, holding in smoke, “if anyone asks, I’ll tell them the hash I smoked with Robert Freeman Jr. was excellent.”

you started helping him—mostly

Coach Freeman, aka your pop,

Rob

the fact that you hacked open your wrists

Rob

that Bix, who’s black,

they’re at a hotel! But if Lizzie is sleeping with a black man in the same city where her parents are, they will just know.

She’d started shoplifting at thirteen with her girlfriends,

But she liked it too much.

you and James drove to a secluded place and spent maybe an hour alone in the car.

Pilar, a girl you quasi-dated last fall to distract yourself after Sasha paired off with Drew.

Last year, after Bix and Lizzie got together, you started spending nights in Sasha’s room, sleeping in Lizzie’s empty bed, three feet away from Sasha’s.

the Conduits’ nutcase of a lead guitarist, Bosco,

Under the lion in Africa

She got introduced to the Conduits’ producer, Bennie Salazar, and he’s invited her to a party.

“She was a hooker,” you say. “A hooker and a thief—that’s how she survived in Naples.”

Rob tells Drew the secret he has with Sasha

When Ted Hollander first agreed to travel to Naples in search of his missing niece,

phoned his sister, Beth, Sasha’s mother, to report that another day’s efforts had been unsuccessful.

He qdoen'look.He visirs tourist sites.

Hammer, Beth’s second husband,

“Oh, hi hon!” Susan

Ted's wife

His desire was so small in the end that Ted could slip it inside his desk or a pocket and forget about

until it came to him that Susan had forgotten how things were between them before Ted began to fold up his desire;

Sasha had disappeared two years ago, at seventeen. Disappeared like her father, Andy Grady,

Orpheus and Eurydice in love and newly married; Eurydice dying of a snakebite while fleeing the advances of a shepherd; Orpheus descending to the underworld, filling its dank corridors with music from his lyre as he sang of his longing for his wife; Pluto granting Eurydice’s release from death on the sole condition that Orpheus not look back at her during their ascent. And then the hapless instant when, out of fear for his bride as she stumbled in the passage, Orpheus forgot himself and turned.

was the moment before Eurydice must descend to the underworld a second time, when she and Orpheus are saying good-bye.

Ted recognized the cigarette buyer as his niece.

Sasha pivoted around to face him.

“You have three sons,” she said. “Miles, Ames, and Alfred.”

“I’m amazed you remember,” Ted said. “I remember everything,” Sasha said.

not only had he located her daughter, but Sasha had seemed clean, reasonably healthy, mentally coherent, and in possession of friends;

she must have been five—and wonder what would become of her, growing up amid so much violence.

Domestic abuse

“I’m here to look at art,” he said. “To look at art and think about art.”

Ted ordered a San Pellegrino at the bar. And only then, as he reached for his wallet and found it gone, did he realize that she’d robbed him.

The long awaited brunch with Bennie Salazar was winding down, and Alex’s hyper-rehearsed pitch to be hired as a mixer had already flopped.

The only impressions Alex retained of their date involved winter, darkness, and something about a wallet, of all things, but had it been lost? Found? Stolen?

Sasha

protested Ava, Bennie’s daughter,

from his own daughter, Cara-Ann,

Alex

Alex’s wife, Rebecca, called

Lupa came with her: the dark-eyed mother Alex had avoided in playgroup at first because she was beautiful, until he’d learned she was married to Bennie Salazar.

a baleful male vocalist accompanied by torqued, boinging slide guitar. “We released this a couple of months ago,” Bennie said. “You’ve heard of him, Scotty Hausmann? He’s doing well with the pointers.”

Bands had no choice but to reinvent themselves for the preverbal;

Alex had promised Bennie fifty parrots to create “authentic” word of mouth for Scotty Hausmann’s first live concert, to be held in Lower Manhattan next month.

Or was it the odd symmetry of having first heard Bennie Salazar’s name from that lost girl he’d dated once, at the very beginning, and now meeting Bennie at last, a decade and a half later, through playgroup?

Bennie’s assistant, Lulu, appeared

“How did you find your way to Bennie?” he asked. “His ex-wife used to work for my mom,”

Stephanid for Dolly, The doll

“if I believe, I believe. Who are you to judge my reasons?” “Because if your reasons are cash, that’s not belief. It’s bullshit.”