The Albania Party

    Eating cold pizza when Jacob calls to say, You have to come to my going away party, it’s an Albanian theme. You going to have food? I ask.
    Yeah yeah, he says. Well, Greek food, their food is basically Greek as I understand it.
    How do you get all these fucking contracts? I ask. You're an expert about Albania?
     It’s the only officially atheist country.
    What about China?
    Just bring some beer, dude, he says.
    I should say that I went to graduate school with Jacob, an Israeli-Californian who stayed around the Harvard world, doing some kind of consulting. Whenever I go to his place I meet more consultants, who generally eat and drink really well and are fun to listen to; they always seem to know a lot about new music and new economic paradigms, or whatever. Damned if I know what any of them does for money.
    He says three women from the team will be at the party, the team sent by a think tank to save Albania. I’m always surprised how young consultants are, early 30s maybe, smart and confident, speaking quickly and decisively with crisp gestures, enforcing each concept with a clear example. A blonde American whose handshake stings, whispers with Jacob; the English statistician, pale, sits alone with her hands in her lap. The other, a cheerful Pakistani who waves her hands gracefully in the air. I'm sluggish, eyeing by the cocktails and concepts and bric-a-brac from around the world.
    Right now the major source of revenue is foreign remittances, and beyond that ninety percent of the economy is gray, the Pakistani woman is saying. The mayor of Tirana painted and repaired just the buildings downtown, he thought that would attract foreign direct investment. Well that didn’t work, of course. She’s startlingly beautiful, a sparkly thing on the side of her nose catching the overhead light and I'm mostly looking at her. 
    It’s corrupt she says, very corrupt. Bribery is just the normal way of doing business. You know, the police at every traffic stop. The Aegean beaches though, as you might imagine, are amazing, a totally underutilized resource. I lean forward nodding seriously, looking concerned, I hope, sympathetic yet intelligent, trying to look down her shirt without being too obvious. 
    How’s the food? I’m desperate at this point to keep her talking to me.
    It’s basically Greek.
    Do you speak any, Albanian is it?
    Doesn’t matter, she says, one of our team, Eddy works for the mayor of Tirana, who holds the key relationship, and a certain gentleman—
    He’s anonymous, the blonde American snaps, swinging her light blue eyes into our conversation like a baseball bat. Look. Their economy’s a basket case, no FDI, no tax revenues, all the macroeconomic structures are distorted. No planning or forecasting, no clue, end of story.
    The beautiful consultant’s eyes go completely blank. In a second she's telling stories about Ivy League dining halls with a theology graduate student from Yale. Everyone drinks a lot more. I learn from Jacob that the certain gentleman is a kindly currency speculator, who wants to bring Albania its new economic plan. The country has three and a half million people. The occasion for the party is that, for all its fucked up macroeconomics, the government finally scraped up the matching funds. A lot, probably; Harvard people are always talking about flying off to one of these missions which sound heavily resourced. At one of Jacob's parties a guy waiting in line for the bathroom bought an airplane on his cell phone.

    The American consultant spreads glasses, limes and an ice bag on the kitchen counter and is cracking ice cubs with a kitchen spoon, sending water and lime halves scooting across our shoes. A mojito's the easiest drink in the world to make she's shouting, that's the beauty of it! When a glass shatters on the floor Jacob edges her aside, talking in a low voice.
    The house like I imagine a movie set, jammed with props, chandeliers, oil paintings, little glass figures, photos of men in suits clapping hands on each other's backs in front of ivy and bricks. An old guy in a tweed jacket is sitting with a water glass of what smells like brandy and somehow we start talking about the next football season. Fundamentals, he stresses, jabbing his finger on to the gleaming wood tabletop, the modern player lacks fundamentals. Jacob grabs my arm as I'm wandering off: What was he telling you? Don't you know who that guy is?

    Everyone's crowded in the kitchen and someone is frying hamburgers. The theologian smokes a cigar. The American consultant turns sloppy and childlike. But what should we do? she says. Eventually I give her a ride home, and she quizzes me about Jacob: He’s so cute. I can’t believe I thought he was gay but you can't really tell, I knew this guy… He calls everybody brother, I said, that's about all I really know.
    And they are there now, I imagine, in an office drinking imported beer, the fates in the tree, the navy-suited blond leader, the beauty, Eddy, the pale number cruncher and my friend Jacob.

    They are sort of like us, you know, the ones who make the plans I mean, who call the tune.