July 08, 2008
almost noon
The wheel was greasy in Spider's hands. Dice sat beside him, whistling through his teeth. Spider was conscious of the smudges on the windshield, the crack in the vinyl dash. A commercial for a debt consolidator came on the radio and his right hand flicked from the wheel to the radio button and back, replacing the urgent drone with a mindless country warble.
"Why don't you get an iPod?" Dice scratched his cheek, watching the straps on the tractor trailer ahead of them flap in the wind.
Spider considered. He checked the rear view mirror and signaled to pass, easing left and accelerating. There was a fresh pack of cigarettes in the pocket of the door, right next to his left knee. "Dunno. Pretty demanding keeping track of all that bullshit."
"Shit man, just load it up and put it on random. Anything is better than this crap." Dice's finger was circling his nostril, sneaking up on it.
Spider pulled even with the truck. Covenant Transport. They thundered along the bending concrete interstate, shimmering in the California heat, an eight lane river.
It was Sunday. Morning. Dice checked his watch. "He's expecting us at noon. Christ, would you turn that fucking thing off? I knew we should have taken my car." Spider wanted to smoke. but not in front of Dice. He pressed the pedal, his right leg hard. The needle edged eighty. The shape his tires were in anything over seventy was asking for it. The sinews in the backs of his hands stood out, a blue vein throbbed below the middle knuckle of his right hand. He pressed another button on the radio, spanish music. "Jesus Fuck," Dice said. Spider coughed.
A blue REST AREA sign swung up from around the bend. "I gotta get some gas, Dice." He had forty-seven dollars in his pocket, and a couple quarters. Not counting his emergency twenty, but he never counted that.
He drifted left up the ramp, letting the hill slow the car, and aimed it under the canopy next to the pumps. They got out of the car together. Dice walked to the mens room, tried the door, then turned and went in the door to get the key. Spider went to the booth, gave the attendant a twenty, and pumped his gas. The truck parking area was nearly full, gray boxes ranked diagonally across the parking lot. A yellow and red sign promised more than it could deliver with glossy blue letters. A flatbed truck with giant fiberglass teddy bears painted purple, yellow and pink idled next to the curb, a tattooed forearm as big as a ham hanging from the window. Another rig had a ferris wheel folded like a dead spider, the elliptical cars stacked like oranges behind it. A carnival caravan.
Spider leaned against the quarter panel. The pump clicked next to him. A green Toyota with a hole in the muffler pulled up next to him, away from the pumps. The back seat had two car seats in it, each one with a grimy kid in it. The girl was younger, maybe two, Spider figured, and she was asleep, red creases in her fat little legs, a pink t-shirt with a picture of a cat in white glitter, a long drip of melted chocolate made a cigar for the cat. Her hair was wet with sweat. The boy was blonde, probably four, leaning forward in his seat and looking at Spider, his skinny arms sticking out of a green GI Joe shirt. The woman who was driving was leaning across the empty passenger's seat, cranking down the window. "Please mister."
The gas pump beside him clicked, $20.00 showing. "Please mister," she said again, "I'm sorry to bother you."
Spider looked over his shoulder. Between the advertisements taped to the window he could see Dice talking to the girl behind the register. She stood straight, he arms folded in front of her. Dice was laughing and fiddling with the peanuts, flashing his watch.
"I've never done this before, mister. My boyfriend kicked us out and I'm almost out of gas. I need to get to my mother's house in Pomona. I've been driving around here for almost an hour, mister." From behind her in the back seat, the boys blue eyes looked out at him through black and wet lashes. She was still leaning across the console and looking up at him. One of her teeth was chipped. Her fingernails showed pink crescents between the polish and the cuticle. "What are their names?" Spider asked her. She stared at him, blinked, just looking at him. "Your kids, what are their names?"
"Jason and Crystal."
"What is he, four?"
"What?"
"How old is he?"
"Oh. He just turned three last month."
"He's a big boy. You're a big boy, Jason." Jason looked at him round-eyed.
Spider reached in his pocket, took out the money that was folded there, peeled two dollars off and put them back in his pocket. He leaned over and handed her the other bills. "Get some gas and get them something to drink," he said. "Thank you. Thank you so much, mister." Spider heard Dice's steps on the concrete behind him. "And some fruit. They need something decent to eat." Her eyes went to the mirror as she pushed the money into her pocket. "I will, I will. Thank you so much." She twisted the shift on the steering column and pulled ahead into a parking space at the air pumps. Spider flipped the handle down and replace the nozzle in the pump, ignoring Dice's stare. He climbed back into the drivers seat and started the engine. Dice got in and slammed the door.
"What the hell was that?"
Spider shifted into reverse and angled the car to the ramp that led back to the highway. He pressed the button on the radio again. When the car got up to highway speed Dice said it again, "What the hell was that about?"
Spider told him.
"Jesus, you are an idiot. That was a total scam man, you know that? You just got scammed by a tweaker, do you know that?"
"It was my money, Dice."
"Not any more it isn't."
They drove in silence for a few miles. Spider had a coughing jag. He wished he'd had that cigarette.
"Jesus. A freak. A fucking tweak."
"What difference does that make, Dice?"
"Spider, I'm not so sure I should do this with you. I thought you were more reliable than this. More predictable. That's important."
"I'll do my part."
He kept driving. Up ahead in the lane to the left, a car-carrier jounced on the road, piled with shrink-wrapped luxury cars swaying in time with the dangling chains. Spider checked his mirror and signaled to pass as they went under a bridge. He pressed the accelerator and moved up next to the truck.
Spider reached down into the pocket in the door, fingering the box. The cough came up from his asshole, straight up his spine, twisting and crushing everything in his chest, pushing the air in his lungs out out out. He gripped the wheel. He could feel the blood squeezing out of his head, there was nothing to cough, nothing to spit, but the cough would not stop. His throat was turning inside out. He could feel the wheel between his hands, there were some shooting blue dots in front of the windshield and then nothing.
Whenever Spider had tried to imagine what it was like to be blind he had always thought of it in terms of blackness, in terms of the absence of color, the absence of form or movement, the way it was when he used to hide in the back of the closet under the stairs in the basement. Blindness meant total darkness to him. Darkness like black velvet wrapped a hundred times around your head in a cave two hundred feet below the surface of the earth, like being in a crack in the back of that cave and buried in tar.
This wasn't that kind of darkness. This was just his eyes turned off. He could hear the engine of the truck next to them, he could hear every bearing grinding. He could feel the ridges in the pedal under his foot. The wheel in his hands was shimmying ever so slightly, he was used to that, but conscious of it in an entirely new way. The car was drifting. Turn on the eyes, goddamn it. He was sucking air and hacking, something thick was in his throat, in a place it didn't belong. His ears hurt. He could feel the seat under him, behind him, pushing him forward, he knew he was drifting in his lane but he didn't know how much and he tried to correct for it, but not too much. Spider listened to the engine next to him to try to assess whether he was correcting for the drift. He had read that right handed people overcompensated to the left when blindfolded. Then as quickly as it had come, the cough finished itself. Spider blinked and saw that he was still next to the truck, in the far left of his lane. He blinked his eyes to clear the water from them. How long was that? A couple seconds. Dice was looking at him with a strange expression. "Are you ok, man?"
"Yeah, I'm fine, Dice. No problem." He coughed again and his throat burned. Spider was breathing very carefully.
They were Lexus' on the truck. He watched for the exit.
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Posted by matthew at 02:12 AM | Comments (0)
June 03, 2007
tattoo
Echo forced his eyes open, then squeezed them closed, his forehead knotting. He inhaled the astringent air through clenched teeth, then let out his breath slowly past his dry lips, counting to eight. His head seemed full of boiling oil, burning, heavy, throbbing in synch with the beeping machines in the room. He opened his eyes again and forced his mind to make sense of what he saw. The ceiling. An aluminum track curved across his field of view. A yellowed honeycomb was swayback to the grid. Not a honeycomb, the plastic lens of a fluorescent light. With the inky dot of a dead fly on it. He closed his eyes. The pain in his head was exploring, finding new places in his consciousness to inhabit, like magma forcing new vents through sluggish bedrock. He swung his feet over the side of the bed and felt for the cool floor, then gathered his stomach muscles to sit up.
The tip of the spear of pain shot straight down his spine and deep into his legs, then turned around and settled in the bones of his neck. He collapsed back on the bed.
Echo forced his eyes open again, then wedged his right elbow under himself, feeling for the floor with his feet. There was an IV tube in his left arm, tangled in the thin sheet. Another wave of pain swept through his head. Echo recognized it and waited, letting it pass. The tape on his arm stretched the skin, pinching it where the needle went in. He sat up and put his weight on his feet. The goddam machine beeped again. Echo could hear his pulse, feel it in his throat. Fuck it.
He stood up.
There was a single clear tube taped to his arm, running up to a plastic bag of clear fluid hung from the arm of a weighted IV stand. He pushed back the curtain and reached for the pole to steady himself. He went to the foot of his bed and took the clipboard from the hook and studied it. He read it twice, flipping back and forth between the pages, then tossed it on the foot of the bed.
His clothes were folded in a pile on the counter next to the air conditioning vent under the window. The mid-afternoon sun slanted dimly through the dusty window, the metal frames making parallelograms on the polish-worn floor tiles. The curtains were drawn around the other bed in the room. The beeps continued, but he could push back against the pain now. Echo was thirsty.
Echo wheeled the IV stand to the door and opened it slowly. A hallway went left and right, opening to a nurse's station on the left, high counters enclosed with plexiglass, hung with monitors and wires. A woman sat behind the glass, typing intermittently on her computer and rubbing the corner of her mouth with the capped end of a ballpoint pen. Echo closed the door, holding the latch quiet.
He turned and almost lost his balance. Gripping the pole, he made his way to the curtain and peered in. It was Memo. In street clothes. Sound asleep, curled on top of the sheets, the fingers of her hand curled around the straps of her purse. The calves of her legs made a v, and Echo studied the lines of the polish on her toes, bronze on pink. Her hair spilled across her face, obscuring her eyes. Echo let go of the pole and used his ring finger to lift it back and over her ear. Two curving strands of hair remained, their tips tucked into the fold of her eyelid. He ran the back of his knuckles down the side of her face and her eyes opened, blinking. Her pupils shrank and the line between her eyebrows deepened. "We gotta go." He put his finger to his lips. Looking in his eyes, Memo smiled wryly. He straightened and let the curtain fall between the two of them.
Echo went to the counter and took a handful of kleenex from the cardboard box on the counter near the sink. He stripped two lengths of surgical tape from a dispenser mounted on the wall, attaching them to the middle fingers of his left hand. He sat on the edge of his bed and picked at the corner of the tape that held the IV in his left arm. He peeled the tape back slowly, working it.
Memo sat up and rubbed her eyes with the tips of her fingers, then ran them back through her hair. She stood up and ducked out from under the curtain. She smoothed her skirt. Echo was sitting on his bed, picking at the bandage on his arm, concentrating. There were tissues on the sheets next to him and she folded them into a small rectangle. She made to give it to him, but he straightened his arm and said, "No, you. Just put pressure on it." Laying it across the ridge where the needle went into his arm she pressed with her thumb. Their eyes met for a moment, then he eased the needle out. He moved his thumb over hers and held the fingers with the tape out for her. She drew her thumb back from under his, took the tape one at a time, stretching and smoothing it across his arm. The heat in her hands lingered in his skin.
"What time is it?" he asked her. She straightened and went back to the other bed, reaching in her bag for her phone. She shook her head and showed him the blank screen, her battery dead. "We have the uplink at two today." She shook her head again. Not today, we don't.
"Do you have your car here?" She shook her head no. Echo stood up slowly. "We have to get out of here." He went over to the window and shrugged off the gown. Memo sat on the edge of his bed with her back to him and watched in the mirror.
Low on the inside of his left shoulder blade Echo had a tattoo of crimson heart split by a forking bolt of lightning, expertly done. As he stooped and moved the muscles of his back brought it to life, a twisting writhing thing. She studied it until it disappeared behind the tail of his shirt. He tucked it in and cinched his belt. She collected her purse while he laced his shoes. They scanned the room and then he bent over the sink, drinking water from his cupped hands. She scooped the bottles of pills from the shelf into her purse, while he took the his charts from the clipboard, folding them twice and pocketing them.
He went to the door, but her hand on his arm stopped him and she took the knob and stepped out into the hall, turned to the right without looking back, her footsteps regular and deliberate. He followed her staying close to the wall for support. His head was killing him.
The corridor turned twice and they came to the elevators. Memo pushed the button. They stood facing each other, waiting, Echo leaning on the wall. His eyes were red and his face was lined. The elevator blinged and Echo winced. Memo wondered if he would tell her the story of his heart; if she would tell him hers.
Posted by matthew at 11:56 AM | Comments (0)
May 26, 2007
the press
"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Southern California." Dice turned his head left and right, showing his face to the audience. A vague breeze rustled the loose edges of the tent. The redhead from engineering was sitting in the third row, wearing a white sweater. Alice. She straightened in her seat when he caught her eye. Dice smiled and breathed in through his teeth and caught himself thinking "if there is a California."
Dice had once heard someone tell a joke where the punchline ended with "when God, if there is a God, made California. If there is a California." but he could never quite wrap his mind entirely around the idea. The phrase would come to his mind at odd times -- when the light reflected from a woman's eyes in a certain way; or when he'd get a glimpse through a smudged haze of the windshield of the verdure sprawling across the ironrust foothills in the late afternoon with the shadows flooding down the hillsides and pooling dark in the hollows; or sometimes when his flight landed at LAX, easing down through the smog and the dust into the golden electric night.. "if there is a California.." It would run through his mind, forwards and backwards, jigsaw pieces that just wouldn't fit. It was hard to be agnostic about California -- you either believe it exists or you don't -- but, like most of his friends, Dice could see both points of view.
The crowd was still settling into the chairs, hushed, milling in the fringes. In the rear, framed by the portal facing the parking lot, a pale man was talking on his phone and gesturing with his open palm as he talked. The edges of the tent rustled again, rippling. Dice fingered the prompter built in to the podium.
"We're glad you're here this morning. Please make yourself comfortable." The crowd began to settle, and Alice's eyes were still on him.
"Today, we are standing at the gateway to the next generation in transportation. Zeppelin Development International, together with our strategic partners, announces a revolution in the foundations of the global economy." She had her hand curled in her purse now.
"As a demonstration of the realization of our vision, we at ZDI are proud to announce the maiden voyage of the CAT-11. At 8:00 AM on May 19, the she will depart from Los Angeles carrying 128 fully loaded shipping containers, a crew of five, and eight special guests. Fifteen hours later she will stop in Chicago, exchange her cargo, then proceed to Lakehurst, New Jersey, arriving at 8:00 AM May 20. Fossil fuel consumption for this trip will be the equivalent of 175 gallons of regular gasoline."
On the screen that filled the wall behind him, an image of the airship appeared, her asymmetrical hulls silver against a map of North America with the flight path marked in red, turning to green. The guy in black in the back was standing with his arms crossed, holding his open phone against his elbow.
"There has never been a safer, more fuel-efficient transportation solution than the CAT-11."
Dice turned and gestured toward the screen as the video continued. Dice went to his place at the podium and sat down next to Spider. Spider was motionless, his eyes on the two orange adn white boxes standing on the loading dock. Spider had played his part. Alice was digging into her phone now, texting someone. Dice waited, then checked his phone. No. Information.
The video started with shots of the Grand Canyon. The tandem pods of the CAT-11 floated effortlessly in the sky, the sun glinting from the solar array that skinned the tops of her hulls. Charts showing the flight path from Taipei to LA, to Chicago, to Bowling Green and Short Hills, to a thousand destinations in North America. Shots of the containers being hoisted into place on the booms between the silver surfaces, the asian workmen cinching the container holddowns in the gantry.A shot within the fuselage, at night, a deep cavernous space encircled with a lacy trellis of trusses, filled with the flying mixer robots, glowing faintly as they drifted in the space, their propellers and paddles whirling. An image of the plasma drive/generators, each with a crackling ball of purple lightning suspended magnetically within the plasma chamber, burning like an angry piece of the sun. A shot in the cabin showing the smiling captain joking with her guests, the flat mesas in the distance yellow in the Arizona sun.
A chart showing Chinese exports and trade projections for the next twenty years. A quick long shot of ships queued up for entrance to the Panama Canal. The CAT-11 floating over the parking lot of a suburban mall, lowering a container precisely into the loading dock. Charts of payload capacity, airspeed, and cost-of-transport-to-market for conventional transportation systems, showing that the next generation CAT vehicles could do in eight days what takes 63 currently. A shot of the parking lot at Sears on a snowy winter night. Cut to the CAT floating above the clouds, her propellers synchronized, swinging slowly in the glancing light of the rising sun. The circle and bars of the ZDI logo.
Dice stood up and leaned into the microphone. She was watching him closely now. He took his time. "Ladies and Gentlemen, transportation has seen many revolutions. The ship. The wheel. The canal. The railroad. The airplane, the automobile. Today the promise of the airship is realized at last. Ladies and Gentlemen--" and Dice introduced the B, who rose slowly from his seat.
The B took the microphone and said, "I want to thank each of you for the honor of your presence here today. I expect you to enjoy yourself completely, and if you have any complaints whatsoever, please bring them to me personally. You are all invited for a flight in our prototype," here he waved to his right, "later this afternoon. And this evening I expect each of you to join us for the banquet in the hanger. But now it's my privilege to introduce my good friend Tony Lucio, founder of Daemon's Department stores, and one of ZDIs most valued strategic partners." Dice looked at his agenda, but there was nothing on it about this.
The B stood aside, making way for a slight, pale man, very well dressed, who approached the microphone and said, "Thank you so much. Today, I am pleased to be announcing that Daemon's has reached agreement with ZDI to be our sole transportation solution in the western hemisphere. Over the next four years, ZDI will transport over $750 billion worth of goods for our customers." He turned to the B, "We're pleased to have the privilege of being the first to commit a billion dollars to facilitate the successful implementation of your vision."
Dice knew they had a $500 million commitment from Wal-Mart and $200 million from Sears. He took his phone from his pocket and sent a message, "Who the f is daemon's?"
The B stood next to Lucio for a moment while cameras flashed, then turned to look up at the screen.
There was an uplink with Target, then one with Apple. A politician whose career was built around environmental causes spoke for ninety seconds about the benefits of carbon-neutral consumption offered by the venture and the political challenges the world would face as a result of it. Dice looked at his boss, and she stared back at him, her folder neat on the table in front of her.
The B took center stage again. "My lawyers have instructed me to say the following," and he recited the fundamentals of the initial public offering, the incantations of liability and magical phrases of disclaimer that must accompany public interaction. ZDI would be raising a hundred billion dollars for a one-fifth ownership interest.
A UPS truck turned at the chain-link gate in the distance and began moving down the service road. Spider fidgeted in the seat next to him. Dice's eyes followed the truck all the way down the lane. The cameras kept rolling as the B continued, and finally concluded, saying, "In two weeks, ZDI will announce the crew and passengers for the CAT-11's first voyage. We'll be inviting some special guests to accompany us on the trip... perhaps you? I'm sure you're eager to learn more, are there any questions?"
The pale man stood in the middle of the center aisle, near the third row of chairs. "Gunter Stutt, Der Spiegel," his voice had a taunting edge, which was sharpened by his accent, "You are aware of the experience of the europeans with CargoLifter?"
"With all due respect," The B laughed. "CargoLifter's is encumbered by european regulations and crippled by low expectations. We're well aware of the reasons for their failure. The new financing they have recently gotten from Dubai will only prolong their agony. We are ten years ahead of them in technology deployment - in propulsion, solar energy generation, and aeronautics, and, after today," the B smiled, "we're confident our resources will be adequate."
"You must have a very robust security system."
Spider twitched in his seat, then wiped the sweat from his hands on the rough linen of the table cloth in his lap. The UPS truck was stopped in the loading zone now, and the dock was empty.
"My lawyers tell me not to comment publicly on security matters." The B's neck stiffened, "Against their advice, I assure you that we understand the risks."
In the loading zone the driver shifted gears and the box truck pulled away, swinging around to head back the way it had come in, brown and gold. Spider studied the emptiness of the loading dock, his hands restless in his pockets.
The girl from engineering wasn't in her seat anymore, and Dice scanned the perimeter of the tent for the white splash of her sweater, his eyes thinning. His phone vibrated.
Posted by matthew at 01:18 PM | Comments (0)
March 25, 2007
cell
Rayne stood on the stoop, the white ovals of the toes of her sneakers overhanging the chipped edge of the concrete. Just breathe. She breathed. Her blood was a red fury within her, boiling in her neck, spiraling through her chest, incandescent ice. She breathed again. The branches of the trees made shadows on the wall beside her, made diamonds of light on the stucco.
The sky was clear, beautiful flying weather. Above her two tiny jets crossed contrails, racing ahead of their white wakes. She could hear a chainsaw grinding unevenly in the distance. Jack was out for his run. She turned and went back inside, letting the screen door slam behind her.
She picked up the keys and put them in her pocket. She smoothed her hair and turned, looking around the kitchen. She walked to the window and stood with her nose a finger's thickness from the glass. The moisture in her breath condensed on the glass and then evaporated, a throbbing fog. That Son of a BITCH. The blood was hissing in her ears.
She sat at the table, her hands dangling beside her. With her left hand she picked the panties from the table. She drew her hand to her face and inhaled through her nostrils, scenting. She lowered her hands to her lap and folded them around the fabric there. Jack would be back soon. She waited.
Rayne heard the scrape of his sneaker on the sidewalk, then the click and swing of the door. Jack came into the kitchen and threw a newspaper in a plastic bag on the counter. He went over to the desk and checked his phone. "Hey," he said, "good run." He wiped his forehead with the inside of his elbow and ran his fingers through his hair.
"I'm glad." Rayne said, motionless. He went to the refrigerator and took out a bottle of juice, opened the cupboard and reached for a glass, his damp undershirt taut ascross his shoulders, a few stray hairs on his back spiking up past the neckband. His square face was sweaty and red, his eyes vague.
"Did you ever hear from the Donnoley's?" he asked her, snapping the cap and pouring. She watched the amber liquid rise in the glass.
"What did you do on this trip, Jack?" She said it quietly.
"What?"
"What did you do on this trip?"
"You know what I did. I went to the Chicago office, we had a meeting and a tour of the plant, the next day another meeting and back home this morning. Why?" He gestured with his juice, his black eyebrows close.
"What did you do last night, Jack?"
"Honey, what do you mean? I had dinner with Don. What is this, the inquisition?" He turned toward her.
"Whose panties are these, Jack? Why were they in your things?" Rayne drew up her hands and opened them, holding the faded blue fabric between her index fingers and thumbs.
Jack stopped all motion, except his eyes, which held hers for a moment and then scanned to the window, then back to her face again.
She flipped the panties aside on the table and stood up. "Who is she, Jack? Who is the fat whore, you goddamn bastard."
"Honey--"
"Don't honey me. Never again, Jack. I'm not your honey anymore, I'm your worst fucking nightmare now." Rayne drew a long knife from the wooden block on the counter, the blade hissing against the wood and the tip making a tiny ting as it left it's slot. Jack turned, facing her as she moved.
"Does she know my name, Jack? She does, doesn't she?"
"Put the knife down."
"FUCK YOU. Does she know my name?"
"Just put the goddamn knife down, Rayne."
"What did you tell her about me, Jackie boy? What did you tell your little fuck friend about me? I bet she was so sympathetic. Doing me a favor, even." She picked up his cell phone from the desk, held it for a moment, then flipped it open.
"Give me that phone, goddammit Rayne. We need to talk."
"So talk." Rayne pressed the button for recent calls and scrolled through the list. Last night there were three calls to "xSuzi." Rayne selected one of them and pressed the button to get the detail view. "I was such a FOOL. Too many second chances, Jack, you blew too many."
"It's not what you think. Dammit Rayne, I'm a human being, treat me like one."
"I'm your wife, asshole. Were you planning to treat me like one?"
He took a deep breath. "Rayne, the panties are your sister Sue's. We got together to plan a vacation for all of us, her and Tom, us, your parents. In July, after the flight. Down to the islands. We wanted to surprise you. She had a layover and we had dinner and we looked at the options, that's all. Her bag fell over and I guess she didn't get everything back in it. I swear, honey. Give me the phone. Please."
Rayne stood with the phone in one hand and the knife in the other. He stood with his hand out. "Give me the phone."
"You want the phone?" Rayne held the knife pointed toward his belly, "not this?"
He made to snatch the phone but she was ready for him, already backing away. She pressed the send button and the display showed the number while it tried to connect. It was her sister's number. Rayne leaned on the frame of the door. The phone was ringing now. A swirling coldness swept through her.
The phone clicked and her sister's voice answered, low and dripping, "hellooo Tiger..."
Posted by matthew at 01:34 PM
September 29, 2006
Rayne
Rayne lowered her flight suit into the tub of the washing machine over the towels, curling it around the twisted agitator. She closed the lid and set the dials to Large Load settings, warm wash, cold rinse. As she snapped the last dial for a 15 minute wash the water the washer started it's slow hissing gush.
She bent to her right and opened the dryer door, reached in and gathered the warm dry things and put them on the counter. As she did, she rolled a crease of the fabric of a pillowcase between her fingers, and the cotton threads sent tiny vibrations across the ridges of her fingertips. Taking it up, she flipped it around, put her index fingers in the corners of the opening and snapped it tight. She folded it in thirds the long way and then in half the short way; she put it on the countertop, squared it to the corner, then smoothed it with the heel of her right hand. She pulled the other pillowcase out of the pile, folded it in the same way, and aligned it on its mate, again smoothing it with the heel of her hand.
She took the mesh bag of her brassieres from the pile, emptied it and took them up one at a time, folding them, winding the straps. She made two careful piles with them next to the pillow cases. Jack's white sweat socks were next: match the pair, snap, fold, curl. He had brought back a lot of laundry from his trip. In the kitchen her phone rang. Snap, fold, curl; one by one she tucked the pairs of socks together and tossed them into the basket on the floor next to her. The ringing from the kitchen stopped. Next to her the washer started the churn cycle. The clothes from the dryer weren't quite so warm now. A beep came from her phone in the kitchen. Jack was out for his Saturday morning run and she would not be interrupted.
She had left their underwear for last. He wore silk boxers and she wore white cotton thongs; that or nothing.
In the kitchen her phone rang again. She picked up a maroon pair of his boxers and snapped them, thumbed in the elastic and folded them in thirds; then she laid them on the top of the dryer, smoothing them with the heel of her hand. She pulled one of her thongs from the pile, untwisted them with a shake, then folded it and laid them next to his shorts, touching. Cotton and silk. Mine and yours. We touch.
She repeated the process twice more; olive boxer, white thong; black boxer, white thong. Snap, fold, stack, smooth.
The washer cycled into a more vigorous sound. She took a crimson pair of his pants and folded them. Then one of her own, she folded the thin white strips. She reached for his indigo boxers, the ones she liked. They felt heavy in her hand. When she snapped them they didn't fall smooth like the others had and she shook them again. A scrap of fabric the color of the sky fell in a small heap on the white top of the washing machine. She set his boxers aside and picked up the fabric that had fallen out of the leg.
Panties. A woman's panties. Pale blue. She dropped them on the top of the vibrating machine. The waistband was slightly frayed, the leg openings edged with fine lace frill. The woman who wore them was two sizes larger than she. Her phone beeped again in the kitchen.
There was a frigid rushing in her chest, and she felt the tile floor pressing up against her feet. She studied the pale panties stretched out on her washing machine, memorizing them, their wide straight waistband and the twin crescents of their leg holes.
She took them into the kitchen and put them on the round wooden table, stood looking at them. Her phone rang again and she picked it up and flipped it open, not checking the display. "This is Rayne." She turned towards the door, he elbows tight to her waist. "Oh, hi Sue... no, I'm at home." She reached out and moved the salt and pepper shakers on the counter together, set them square to the back of the counter. She closed her eyes. "Excuse me?" She went back to the table and sat down. "No, I'm sorry Sue, go ahead."
She lifted her bag and fished out her key ring. She twisted her two house keys from it and put them on the panties, the sharp teeth of the keys making the open mouth of an alligator.
Her phone beeped again. Taking it from the counter, she went out through the back door.
Posted by matthew at 11:22 PM | Comments (0)
September 23, 2006
trinity
Maria
Maria sat in her chair at the center of the set. She checked her hair in the monitor. She studied the lapels of her jacket, the tuft of her blouse. She knew there were people who had done that, whose job it was to do that, but she always ran through a final check herself. The stylist, the makeup girl, the producer -- they didn't know her secret, they never would.
It turned her on to be on camera. It juiced her in a way nothing else did. It wasn't the attention in the studio, it wasn't the lights, it wasn't the cameras, the director, the producers; it wasn't the set either. She knew it wasn't the contrast between the set and the places in the studio that the camera never saw -- the shady, dusty, cable-strewn and shabby side stage with the space-age sleekness of the newsroom set. She had thought about it many times since it first happened, when she had gone back to her dressing room after a newscast and discovered the surprising wet that had soaked through her pants, and an urgency that needed quenching she had never known before.
It was her theory that there was something about being watched by hundreds of thousands of people who she would never meet -- their undivided anonymous attention -- that blew her cork in a way that nothing else ever could. When the little red light on the camera came on, Maria was ready. And this gave her a sharpness that no one else could touch, it put a little special twist on her smile, a lilt in her voice, a curve in her posture, something that communicated. She was a broadcaster, and a broadcaster has an audience, an audience with antennas. And at the root of her theory was that there were some people -- very few perhaps -- who got it. People who knew. Joey Ramone had definitely been one of them, he knew, she smiled. The network people who worked around her weren't a part of her audience and they could never see it. She checked the clock: 94 seconds, counting down. She chocked her prop papers square and checked the prompter, then the men in the control booth, smiling at their ignorance.
She almost always wore a jacket when she was on camera; when she didn't she made sure to wear something thick from Victoria's Secret underneath. Nobody takes you seriously if you report the news with your headlights lit. Her foot tapped the floor with a pulsing rhythm. Just another Tuesday night, she thought, another Tuesday night and I'm Ready.
12 seconds. The cameras were dollied into position, each one a cyclops with it's eye trained on her. She squared her shoulders.
On camera 1 the little red light came on. She was Live.
"Good evening. This afternoon in a surprising move, the Fed raised the prime rate by a full quarter point..."
With her eyes on the camera she squirmed in her seat ever so slightly.
one day
For forty minutes Dietz stood in the long grass next to the river, screaming. He yelled. He shrieked. He howled. He screamed himself senseless, into a boiling delirium. He bathed in the madness of it, let it engulf him, drown him, then he was through it and free. Gravity itself no longer held him, there was no reality but his noise. He stood in the river and screamed, he lay on the stones on the shore and screamed, he leaned on the tree and screamed.
And then he stopped. He was ready. His raw throat was burning, the muscles of his neck were knotted ropes, his eyes were swollen to slits, and his head felt like a blast furnace. His voice was ready for the take, qualified. He was ready. The song was ready. It was time. He swallowed and it was pure fire.
He walked up through the meadow to the house with slow purpose. On the porch, Car, Jo, and Celia were drinking ice tea and playing cards with Slider. "Well now, if it isn't the wolfman," Slider said when Dietz got close enough to hear him. Car was wearing jeans and a black sleeveless t-shirt with a smiling dolphin in a top hat printed cerulean on the front of it. She folded her cards and put them down on the table in a neat rectangle; Jo and Celia threw theirs in and leaned forward in their chairs. The women stood. The Twisted Pears were ready, always ready for Dietz. They had flown down while he took the train. He hated to fly.
Slider sighed. This wasn't going to be easy. Dietz didn't like to lay down tracks, he liked to lay down the whole goddamn song. One take, no fuckups. Death or Glory. One-take recording might be an accomplishment for the artist, but it was a motherfucker for the engineer. If the artists got it right and the engineer didn't... well, there was no place to look for forgiveness. Slider threw down his cards and cracked his knuckles, inhaling through his nose. Dietz climbed the stairs and pointed to the screen door. They went through it one at a time, past the living room to the stairs to the basement where the recording studio was set up. No one spoke.
Car knew they couldn't afford to waste this week helping Dietz finish his cd. They needed to be on the road, keeping their name out front, keeping their picture on the city walls. She wanted to be in Austin. But she was here because she couldn't help it. Dietz's disregard for the rules maddened her and thrilled her. She knew he could be big, very big, if he would just make an effort, the slightest effort, to make his stuff more accessible, more... more for airplay. But he wouldn't. He just did his thing his way. He was a comet, swinging in close, so close, to the sun and then burrowing deep into the dark, dark night. She knew he could be a star, if he only wanted it. If only he wanted it, she corrected herself as she stepped off the bottom step of the stair.
They split into three groups. Slider went into the booth, Dietz into studio B, and Car, Jo and Celia into the studio A. Dietz picked up his guitar and plugged it in. Duct tape completely wrapped his microphone cable. He slung the strap over his shoulder and checked the tuning. He used 444 tuning, it pissed off the piano players, but it suited his voice. He tapped the microphone and looked through the window at Slider. Slider nodded. Dietz looked through the other window to the women. Each was wearing headphones, watching him intently from behind their microphones, perforated orbs suspended from coiled springs.
Dietz leaned forward to his mic and croaked, "Slider -- you ready?" Dietz's voice was rusty washers on sandpaper, it came from a part of him that Slider had never heard before. The edge in it frightened him. Slider held up his left thumb.
"Car -- you ready?" She nodded, her mouth open, keeping her eyes on his, holding her headphones tight to her ears with both hands. Dietz savored the form of her underarms. The memory of their tang and bristle on his tongue made the saliva come fresh in his mouth and he knew he was ready to sing.
"Jo -- ready?" the rasp in his voice was thicker now, stronger. "Yeah, I'm ready." She licked her lips.
"Celia?" She stood straighter, "Let's do it now."
Dietz spread his feet, balancing. He closed his eyes.
Slider started the recording, the backup tapes, his fingers trembling across the board. Dietz slid his hand up the neck of his guitar, familiar to him as a part of his body. Car Cox stretched the muscles of her back.
The song was softer than his other stuff and he caressed the strings of his silver guitar into the opening notes. He was doing it different than they had practiced, and Car felt the blood singing in her arms. She looked at Celia and Jo. We can do this. Dietz brought the lead intro down the frets of the neck into the low chords, Celia swaying and tapping her left foot. Jo was breathing slow and deep. Dietz leaned into the microphone and his broken and dusty voice rose up from the depths his cut, from his most private crucible. If what he did was singing, he sang, his voice a cement mixer full of gravel.
In the morning
one daywith white
and beige
and black
and black and white
and black
she sheathes herself.And from the mirror
her eyes a moment linger
along the fabric's dark and curving edge
against her pale convexity,
then move on
assured.
In the sunshine
one dayshe dances on the sand
and with her feet
she sweeps and traces
obscures—almost—
the marks left there
the night before
by death.
In the evening
one dayshe sits
with her companion laughing,
and at their parting warm embraces radiate;
but as she steps across the curb
her face assumes its street-set, stiffened
the laughter all evaporated.
At night
one nightunsheathed now, sleeping
she rustles sheets.And in the darkness of a room adjoining,
I listen to her quiet breathing
through the curtain,
heartpierced
by the jagged stab of all I chose to jettison.
The last chord drifted to silence and the Twisted Pears let go of the last notes of the harmony.
None of them could move. They breathed together, their hearts beat together, the pores of their skin sweat the same sweat. Celia was the first to break the spell, stripping the headphones from her head and turning her face to the wall. Spider reached up and killed the switch. Car stared at Dietz through the glass. Jo wiped her eyes and sat back on her stool. Dietz just stood there.
Slider was relieved. He knew they had nailed it. The song and the sound.
Car knew the music had been full of the waxing and waning of the moon, the tides, the beauty of the seasons was woven through it all.
Jo knew the woman he was singing about wasn't Car, and that there was no one she would ever tell this to.
Celia knew what it meant to leave love behind.
And all of them knew the deep private magic of collaborating with Dietz on a thing of beauty. And all of them were certain that it was a whole new sound, and it never had a chance to chart.
And they all were wrong.
#1
With a bullet.
the quarterback
Shayla's fingers curved gracefully around her steering wheel. She flicked them in time with the music, enjoying the feel of the french cut nails scratching her palms. An hour at the salon never seemed like a real hour, it lasted forever and was over before it started, both at the same time. She checked her eyes in the rear view mirror. A tiny smile pinched her bee-sting lips. A sparkle of glitter on her cheek glistened in the light of a passing streetlight. The engine of her Celica purred down in front of her. She pressed the accelerator, her heel rocking on the dart of her stiletto. She moved her legs inside her black satin pants and they slid against her knees. She did it again. She wore a tuxedo shirt and a little black bow tie. Her short black jacket was folded on the seat next to her. She was twenty two years old and tonight she would be bartending at the quarterback's house.
The humped suburban road stretched out beneath the cover of fat black trees, streetlights marking the corners, the deep cobblestone gutters flanked with granite curbs. A yellow traffic light blinked in the distance. The street was wide, with long, tall hedges, pushed up against the sidewalks on each side. They were sparsely punctuated by iron gates set between brick pillars. She checked the directions again. She wanted sixteen-eighteen, but she was in the fourteen hundred block. She braked, watching the numbers on the left side of the street. A white chevy drifted through a stop sign two blocks ahead, nodding across the lump of the avenue, headlights rocking on the macadam. On the sidewalk to her right, a woman wearing pink sweatpants with a matching visor, walked a white scotty dog on a retractable lead, her eyes on the horizon. Shayla's fingers twisted on the silver vinyl steering wheel, squeezing it.
She saw the entrance to the driveway ahead on the left, gates wide, the stone piers topped with dished lights glowing white in the slow evening. She slowed and turned in. The driveway curved through an immaculate emerald lawn around and down to the main house.
The house was three stories of tan stucco. White blocks ran like zippers up the outside corners. Light radiated from every window, french casements with dangling railings that made splayed shadows on the walls beneath them. An oblong lantern hung in the three-story portico, yellow light and copper tracery shining down on the smooth white pavement. The yard was crowded with cars parked haphazardly on the grass -- Mercedes, Ferraris, Bentleys -- there was an Escalade tricked-out with chrome-on-chrome parked with two wheels up on the front steps. Next to it a motorcycle was kickstanded. A group of drivers were leaning on a limo near the fountain, smoking, not caring, on the clock.
She drove around to the back of the house and parked beside a white truck. She was ten minutes early. She pulled down her sun visor and checked her makeup in the mirror one more time, rubbed a place on her cheek with her little finger. She flipped up the visor, grabbed her jacket and got out of the car. Walking across the flagstone she pulled on the tight jacket, pushing her chest forward to thread her left arm through the sleeve. She went to the door, up a step and into the bright kitchen. The noise of the party threw her off balance. Through her thin shoes on the tile she could feel the throb of the music, the static of the televisions. The kitchen was crowded with the black and white of stiff-faced waiters and waitresses coming with trays of empty glasses, leaving with trays full of champagne, trays of the delicate salty and sour and sweet contrivances. The scent of California herb twisted in her nostrils.
"Shayla. You're here, Vinny's done. All done. Get your ass down that hall to the right, second door on the left, you'll see him. Get going girl."
She smoothed her shirt as she went down the hall, straightened her jacket, her posture perfect. She opened the door into the party and paused, absorbing the full force of the noise of four walk-in televisions, the music, and the desperate laughter. To her left Vinny was swaying behind the bar. Vinny was a twitch going hard down a one-way street. The smile he made reached his mouth but not his ball-bearing eyes, "Hey Shayla, what're you doing later? heh."
"Hey, Vinny, you're done here." She didn't like Vinny.
"Yeah, thanks. See you tomorrow night, right? heh heh." She didn't even like to be in the same room with him.
She waited at the door until he came out from behind the bar. She walked wide around him to the bar. Vinny's head snapped back as they passed, his eyes running down her back and stopping. She ignored him, getting the feel of the room. She went to the bar and began to straighten the bottles, organize the limes and lemons, the ice, the trash, straightening the napkins, the glasses, sizing up the stock. As usual, Vinny had left a mess. She organized the bar for her left-handedness.
She moved the jar of straws across to the other side of the bar. As she was wiping the top, a gigantic black man, a rippling mountain, walked towards her, favoring his right leg, his face relaxed and friendly. He had a cream girl giggling on each arm, each of them half his height and maybe a third of his weight soaking wet. Shayla smiled at him and waited. "Plain soda water for me," he said, showing her a distant smile, "Nora wants a cosmo and Tori wants a gin and tonic." "Make it stronngg," the one that figured to be Tori said, "Strong like Charles," she blinked, pressing her top-heavy body against the knotted ropes of muscle on Charles' arm.
"Hey girl," Charles said, "Be careful with those, don't go popping them tonight. They cost me five grand."
"You treat them rough enough in the limo," Tori pouted, arching her back. Nora laughed, covering her mouth with the back of her hand. Shayla filled the largest glass she had with ice, twisting the top with a crackle from a blue bottle, emptying the whole half-liter into the glass. The music and the noise from the televisions made concentration difficult. She looked up at him, "Lemon or lime?"
"What part of 'plain' don't you understand?" Charles said. The girl's eyes went wide, but Charles smiled and flickered one eye at her as he said it. Shayla held the glass up to him and he took it, the gold rings on his fingers glittering. He moved with the grace of a panther. His biceps were bigger around than her thighs.
"What's your name?" Charles asked her.
Soft she said, "Shayla."
His eyebrows rose. Smiling, he said, "My sister's name is Shayla." He paused, "Charles." He disentangled his right arm and reached his hand to her. She took it, her small hand disappearing into his. She was surprised at the softness in the strength of his palms. His nails were as carefully manicured as hers. "Take care of my women, Shayla." His women giggled and rolled their shoulders.
Charles looked around the room while Shayla poured and mixed. She put their glasses on the top of the bar for them, wrong-sided so they had to reach across each others arms to get them. They leaned forward, their bracelets falling down to their wrists as they took their drinks, first Nora then Tori. Together they lifted their glasses, opened their mouths and drank in tandem. Football players aren't the only ones who practice.
"Word." A man knuckled fists with Charles. The quarterback. The Quarterback.
The quarterback was a tall man -- much taller than she expected from TV -- but his head barely reached to Charles' jaw. His blonde hair was cut short on the top and sides, but longer in the back -- almost to the collar of the gold silk shirt he wore. Shayla stood straight and waited, conscious of the scent he wore; conscious of the way his eyes glittered as they scanned the room, right to left, left to right; conscious of the fit of her tuxedo shirt.
The quarterback looked at the girls, then back to Charles, "Good time tonight?"
"Every night is a good time with Tori and Nora, you know that, redshirt. You look like you're feeling good yourself. Where's Kim?"
Nora and Tori sipped their drinks.
"Kim." The quarterback fiddled with the large gold ring on the middle finger of his left hand. "Kim had to go pick up Tommy from the babysitter's. You know how she is. The babysitter called and said the kid was crying so hard he started puking. Two years old and he has her wrapped around his little goddamned finger." Nora and Tori laughed. Charles didn't react, he stood game-faced. Shayla waited. The quarterback turned the ring around on his finger, jewel-side in.
"What you doing there, redshirt? Not used to your little ring yet?" Charles held out his hand, rippling his fingers, a Super Bowl ring on each one. He laughed again, "Later man. The girls need to get some air." The girls put their empty glasses on the bar as he turned, and the three of them walked away, the girl's high heels toe-out, Charles' white-woven Armani loafers gliding in an uneven cadence on the wall-to-wall.
The quarterback watched them go, his mouth closed, licking his teeth. He turned to Shayla. She stood very still. "Would you like a drink, sir?"
"What do you got?"
"What do you like?"
The quarterback's eyes scanned her her face, flicked across the rest of her. "I'll see for myself what you have."
He came around the bar and studied the arrangement of the bottles. He stood close to her, "What do you recommend?"
"I have some good scotch," she said, reaching for the faceted bottle, turning it so he could see.
Moving closer to her, the quarterback turned to face the room, his eyes scanning the crowd. "Sure. Would you like to pour it for me?" As he spoke, his left hand cradled the curve of her ass, making smooth circles on the black satin. She twisted the top off the bottle, reached for a glass and put three ice cubes in it. The circles got larger, lower. As she poured, the quarterback said, "Don't be stingy now."
She pushed back against the pointed studs of the big ring.
Posted by matthew at 11:05 PM | Comments (0)
September 10, 2006
caduceus
8:00 am. Emilio pressed the switch to open the gate. The white van that had been waiting at the head of the line since 6:30 pulled up to the window. The freckle-faced driver handed the white press pass to Emilio, who nodded and made a neat checkmark on the clipboard. The booth still reeked of tequila and Emilio wished again that Hector would keep his night bottle outside. A blue satellite box truck pulled up to the gatehouse and the line behind it began to caterpillar forward. Emilio made careful checkmarks with a blue pen next to the permit numbers of each invitee as they passed him their tickets. The LA Times. WTF satellite Radio. A long white limousine. CBS.
One at a time they pulled past the gate. Check. Check. There were 108 names and numbers on the list on his clipboard, three columns of privilege. A black limo pulled through, then a red Dodge van stopped at the window. As the big car pulled away, the blonde driver of the van leaned out gestured toward it with an open hand and said, "We have come with them, for their assistance." He made a second checkmark next to the one he had just made and looked up expectantly to the next vehicle, a white van with NPR on the side; red, black, and blue boxed letters painted with careful precision. "Beautiful day for flying, eh?" the driver said, handing him his card. Emilio smiled at him, "Perfect."
In the quiet of her office she reviewed her speech a final time, making one or two notes in the margin with her green gel pen. She had arrived at six this morning, still trying to reach Memo, frustrated at the time difference on the east coast. The hospital had no news for her on Echo's condition, on his prospects, on anything. She had only been able to leave a message on the neurologist's answering machine, asking him to please call her as early as possible, leaving her cell number, repeating it twice. Drexler was AWOL as well, and she read the messages Carla had taken from him; there was no logic to them, no sense. Of all days for this to happen, she thought, of all the days.
She opened her folder to the agenda for the day and drew a line through the teleconference with the lab, she had intended for Echo and Memo's report to set the table for the announcement. Instead the audience would see the 8 minute video that had been prepared for the dog-and-pony show for the VCs, for the investors, for potential clients. There was no time to edit the narration, no time to delete the financial projections. Fortunately the charts and graphs were at the end, they would simply show the first six minutes -- the technical capacities, the design, a computer rendered fly-by of the full-scale version of the Cat high above the Pacific, loaded with cargo containers, and then the shots of the prototype -- the scale version of the Cat that hovered over her moorings a few hundred yards away -- soaring in the California sunset. And fortunately they could replace the narration with a music track for today's audience.
The video was adequate; it competently illustrated the capabilities and potential of the system they had designed, but she hated it. Anything gets old when you've seen it a thousand times. She smiled at the thought that the showing this morning would be the last she would have to watch.
She left her office. On her way to the main tent she gave Carla the agenda to revise and distribute.
Spider watched the little blue lights. They stopped their twinkling and settled down to steady glows. The copy was complete, the ZDI backup drives were mirrored to both the Blades, that part of his job was done. He went behind the rack and disconnected the cables, the power line, unjacking them from both ends. His moist hands trembling in the darkness, but the weight of the money still felt good in his pocket.
He nestled both the Blades into their styrofoam cradles and slid them into their boxes. Spider didn't particularly like Dell's, he thought they were unreliable. Clearly Dice's people didn't either, otherwise they wouldn't need two of them. He taped the boxes closed and peeled the brown paper from the back of the UPS labels and stuck them down, covering the inbound labels. He noticed that the boxes were going to different addresses, neither of them Dice's. The shipper receipt copies of the labels had been removed from their packets.
Spider set them carefully into the cart and pushed it across the floor, the little wheels clicking on the joints in the tile. There was a railing and a little ramp that led down to the door from his lab and he went slowly, his knuckles white gripping the handle. He navigated the ramp and squeezed past the cart to open the door. He looked both ways before turning his back to the door and reaching in for the cart. It ticked the door frame as he spun it out into the hall and he felt his heart squeeze at the noise. He checked behind him and there was no-one there. Spider pushed the cart down the vinyl floor of the corridor. He tried not to hurry.
It was early, the shipping room was empty. Spider pushed the cart through the double doors to the loading dock. Off to his right the tents were set up; white pyramids on the tarmac, white pennants flying with the blue ZDI logo on them. There were two speaker towers at the rear of the main tent, guys with orange flags were parking the trucks and cars. The satellite trucks were extending the masts of their antennas, the cable wrapped around them, Spider noticed, the modern version of the caduceus, a snake coiled on a stick -- Moses held one up in the desert for healing; today CNN provides our salvation but the symbol remains the same. Spider's lips were bent as he lifted the boxes from the cart and laid them flat next to each other on the edge of the loading dock, label side up.
Drexler slowly came awake. His head hurt like a sonofabitch. He studied the edge of a carpet and the wood floor beneath it. His right shoulder throbbed in knotted pain, bringing him to full awareness. He rolled over onto his back. He did not recognize the ceiling, could not remember ever seeing a light fixture like the one that looked down at him. He sniffed and recognized the faint smell of powder. He squeezed his eyes closed, gathering his mind, and blinked them open, full awake, ears keen. Memo's place. There was no sound but the sound of his breathing, he held his breath...dead quiet.
He stood up, his left hand on the wall, his knees felt thin and reedy. Softly he made his way back to the living room; the mess was there but the man in black leather was gone. Thin morning light reflected from the building across the street, a blonde wedge. Still leaning on the wall he rubbed his eyes with the ball of his hand, his fingers in his hair, and squeezed at the tightness in his shoulder. He reached for his cell phone; it wasn't in the pouch on his hip, not in his pocket; he backtracked his steps, looked in the kitchen, on the floor in the hall, pushed the broken lamp aside with his foot...nowhere. He felt for his wallet and his fingers came up empty. Fuck.
Drexler went down the hall to Memo's bathroom, raised the seat and fumbled with his zipper. He stood slowly swaying, letting it go. When he was done he flushed the toilet, zipped up and turned to leave the room. He paused, then turned back and lowered the seat.
Dice took his place at the podium and looked at the crowd. He counted nine microphones on the lectern in front of him. He looked to the hanger to his right, pausing for effect, arching his eyebrows. This was going to be fun.
Posted by matthew at 06:25 PM | Comments (1)
June 24, 2006
bridge
The train ran smoothly through the night, clicking steel swaying and rocking through the Kentucky darkness. The fat man across the aisle was asleep, snoring. Dietz stretched his legs, shifting in the seat. His knees pressed against the back of the seat in front of him. He rested his forehead against the window and watched the night world flow.
The parking lot of a utility company, full of bucket trucks, orange in the lights shining from crooked poles, bounded by chain link and barbed wire. Woods. Open fields running away into black foothills, necklaced with thin strands of streetlights, punctuated here and there with red taillights of a pickup truck, or the angry headlights of a big-bore Duster. A river jumped up next to the track, black against the lesser blacks of the trees and the gray of the gravel railbed. A river, swaying like a cobra to the serenade of the train, ducking and dancing, courted the rails for a while before tailing off under a bridge and away through the fields when the train, still singing, took a lazy turn to the left.
A farmhouse, a green door in the triangle of white under the back porch light, a wire slung across the backyard to a painted shed parked next to a school bus. A town went by, the reflection of the grade crossing lights swinging through the car, the bells dopplering in his ears. He saw down the main street; a flash of brick; blue neon; a man, a silhouette, a shadow standing.
Here the train went through a cut in the hills, the broken face of the rock on the other side of the window within inches of his face, the stories of millennia -- lithic, petrified -- archived safer than any librarian could hope, the stone rippling in the dim light cast out into the darkness through the windows of the train car. Watching them, Dietz understood what it was to be a phonograph needle, to ride the bumps and jagged edges of the universe and turn them into sound, into song, into something you could take with you when you crossed over. He studied the blur of the face of the rock until it gave way a bridge that ran low across a wide river. With each change of space the sounds that reached his ears changed. You leave something behind every time you cross a bridge, Dietz remembered her telling him that, remembered their surprise at the statement, at the truth of it. She was right again, if there is a right, Dietz thought. And there is, he remembered.
The train tunneled into woods again, and the fat man snorted and woke up, embarrassed by his snoring. Dietz pretended to ignore him. The fat man pretended he thought no one noticed. Dietz watched the trunks of the trees flash by, irregular but not irregular, their rhythm hypnotic.
"I see men, walking as trees." Why would a man say that? Trees don't walk, trees stay where they're born. Trees know their neighbors. Trees know about the rest of the world only by what they learn from their neighbors. Tree gossip. Dietz's lips twisted as he tried to imagine what it was the trees told each other. Every tree has a secret; she had told him that too. They had been standing in a basin of land, near a stream, at the base of a cliff where a tall and ancient sycamore stretched toward the sky, curving white in the sunlight like the bones of the earth. He had put his hand on the smooth trunk of the tree and watched the smile play across her face -- her lips did not know how to fight a smile -- his palm exactly fitting the curved surface of the trunk of the tree, fingerprint to flaking bark, and she told him about the trees and their secrets. What secrets? he asked her. Trees never tell, she said, pressing her ear to the trunk, smiling her slanty smile and watching his eyes, her eyebrows full of invitation, her hair teasing the wind. The water in the river was cold that day and they had carried their shoes across the gravel back to the car.
The night trees flowed past the window and Dietz thought about the two trees he had planted once, moved from a nursery near his grandfather's house to the sunlight in the back yard near the trellis, near the well. Dietz had been worried that the trees would not be turned facing the right way to the sun, the way they had grown, and would be condemned to a life with their back to the sun, or a life spent twisting to face the right way. When he told his grandmother about his concern, she had laughed, and she told the story every Thanksgiving after that, can you believe the things that boy comes up with? she would say shaking her head, looking at his parents, at his aunts and uncles. What she never learned was that his grandfather had shown him how to make sure they face the way they should, and together they had made sure the job was done right, facing the trees to the sun, to the view that would nourish them. And they had agreed, his grandfather and he, that it would be their secret. It was a secret that had burned inside his chest and ignited his tongue when they were sitting at the family table and his grandmother was telling the story, rolling her eyes and patting her breast. But the flicker of the wink from his grandfather's wrinkled face kept him silent again and again, and kept the secret secret. Tonight on the train, Dietz wondered how many trees there were. Alive right now. And he thought that all the trees in all the ages could never be enough to keep all the secrets that needed keeping.
Across the aisle, the fat man was nodding off, drawing long rasping breaths. Dietz was thirsty. Memphis was two days away and Nashville one more. He looked across the aisle, above the fat man, checking his guitar in the overhead bin. The case was still there, still where he put it, right where it was the last time he had checked, the jagged silver duct tape striping the black leatherette like a camouflaged destroyer. John was in Memphis and Steve and Nick were in Nashville, and Dietz knew in his bones that the tracks they were going to lay down next week were significant. Significant, he thought. With a capital S. And as he thought it he knew the CD would be called Capital S.
A chubby blonde walked up the aisle, resting her hands on alternate seatbacks, steadying herself as she walked. The dialogue between her jeans and her ass was straight out of Shakespeare, and Dietz was a connoisseur. She wore earphones. She slid the silver metal door to the bathroom open and went in, closing it behind her. Something inside Dietz wanted to be reassured that she turned the music off, or took the earphones off, or at least paused the input while she was in that little room; but something stronger inside him smirked at his musician's vanity, and he turned his eyes to the window again, filling his own ears with the music of the rails; on his left hand his thumb was rubbing the smooth familiar calluses on his fingers. He wanted something cool and wet to drink. A cold glass of milk. Lemonade.
The landscape outside the window opened up, glowing orange in the night. Heat lightning flickered in the clouds beyond the rise of the mountains and revealed a brown reef of chimneys standing up against the lavender of the night sky. Giant storage tanks squatted against the gouges chiseled in the hills and three malevolent cylinders of cooling towers stood out against the encrusted cubes of the power plant, light-barnacled and seething. It's nuclear, not nookular; the thought was automatic, Dietz knew it well. Everywhere I look, the chorus, he thought. Those fucking Greeks, everywhere I go they've already been, he thought for the thousandth time. Three tractor-trailer trucks sistered on the concrete highway, keeping each other awake, making time to Memphis.
The silver door slid open and the blonde came out of the bathroom, the earphones still on her ears, her eyes set on the distance. All the Shakespeare was inside her shirt now. She drifted past and away, as accessible to Dietz as Andromeda.
And the train ran smoothly through the night, clicking steel swaying and rocking through the Kentucky darkness. Kentucky and then Indiana. Maybe touching Ohio. Dietz breathed deep through his nose and leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes, and the song came back to him, easy in the rushing night. Testify.
she'll look at you and know you
she don't need to see you twice
she'll look at you and know you
she don't need to see you twice
her eyes will pierce the darkness
and her heart will melt the coldest ice
she's a river in the mountains
an island in the sea
she's a river in the mountains
an island in the sea
I asked her for a blanket
she told me -- you've got me
she can make soup out of a boulder
she can spin gold from straw
she can make soup out of a boulder
she can spin gold from straw
and when she lets her hair down
she makes magic beyond the law
her tears they shine like diamonds
her sorrows hide the stars
her tears they shine like diamonds
her sorrows hide the stars
but when you hear her laughter
you forget you knew the dark
when the sun comes up she rises
and all day long she sings
when the sun comes up she rises
and all day long she sings
at night she wraps her arms around you
and in the moonlight, she spreads her wings
she dances like an angel
kisses like the devil's mistress
she dances like an angel
kisses like the devil's mistress
and when she wants to make you happy
she shows you what bliss is
her poetry will cut you
her words will break your heart
her poetry will cut you
her words will break your heart
one thousand and one stories
to her is just a start
if I live to be a hundred
if the sky stays blue
if I live to be a hundred
if the sky stays blue
I'll testify this woman
is the best I ever knew
The train ran smoothly through the night. Memphis. And then Nashville. The fat man was snoring again. Dietz was thirsty.
The train went over a bridge.
Posted by matthew at 01:29 AM | Comments (0)
May 13, 2006
IPO
Initial Public Offering (IPO) - Zeppelin Development International (ZDI)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 1, 20--
Zeppelin Development International Plans to Offer Shares to the Public
(LOS ANGELES) Zeppelin Development International (ZDI) today announced that its Board of Directors has decided to conduct an initial public offering of common stock. The number of shares to be offered and the price range of the proposed offering have not yet been determined. ZDI expects the initial public offering to commence in early third quarter.
All or substantially all of the net proceeds from the initial public offering will be used to capitalize a fleet of twenty-five trans-pacific heavy-cargo direct-to-market airships, designed by their in-house engineering team and constructed by Lockheed-Martin (NYSE - LMT).
The principal purpose of the initial public offering is to better enable ZDI to use its cash and cash flows from operations to fund organic growth, finalize acquisition of resources, and procure fourth-generation technology assets. It will also provide ZDI with publicly-traded stock to be used for future acquisitions and provide liquidity to its stockholders through its internal stock market.
ZDI has filed a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) related to the initial public offering, and will be traded on the Nasdaq Exchange (ZDIX).
Morgan Stanley & Co. Incorporated is serving as book-running managers for the initial public offering. The initial public offering will be made by means of prospectus only.
About ZDI
ZDI is the global leader in lighter-than-air cargo transportation systems, providing integrated transportation systems, support, research and development. With headquarters in Vega, California and primary research facilities in East Rutherford, New Jersey and Taipei, China; ZDI has 740 employees, and representation in an additional 42 cities worldwide. ZDI has inked long-term delivery agreements with three of the top five U.S. retailers with a combined market penetration in excess of 70%. ZDI holds the exclusive contract for supply-chain distribution services with London-based Daemons Ltd., which today announces a €4 billion ($5.2 billion) expansion into the North American market.
Founded by aeronautical visionary Baldasarre Hibrido in 1994, ZDI holds more than 1,000 patents in aeronautics, robotics, molecular engineering processes, and distributed navigation control systems. Construction and testing of a 5/8 size proof-of-concept version of their CAT-7 trans-pacific lifting body was completed 45 days ago; the CAT-7a has been granted FAA authorization for her maiden voyage: LA-NY in thirty hours, leaving Bob Hope International Airprot one month from today.
CAT-7 Technical Specifications:
Length: lifting body: 1,250'. control body: 557'.
Beam: lifting body: 216' diameter. control body: 73.5' diameter
Height: 282' (includes crane)
Weight: 179,000 lbs
Lifting gas: ionized hydrogen/helium mix
Payload: 1750 metric tons
Cruising speed: 100 knots
Powered by: 6 Rolls Royce Trent 1100-Z series, triple-spool turbofan engines, delivering a combined total 720,000 lbs of thrust.
Cruising altitude: 12,000 feet.
Crew: 18
With this announcement, ZDI welcomes the eighth revolution in transportation.
Forward-looking Statements
This press release may contain forward-looking statements that are based on our management's belief and assumptions and on information currently available to our management. Any such forward-looking statements relate to future events or our future financial performance, and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause our actual results, levels of activity, performance, achievements or benefits to be materially different from any future results, levels of activity, performance, achievements or benefits expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. As a result of these risks, uncertainties and other factors, readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements included in this press release. Neither Zeppelin Development International or members of it's Board of Directors assumes any obligation to update any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances arising after the date as of which they are made or to conform such statements to actual results.
Press/Public Relations Contact:
Stephen Iota
858/816-6400
stephen.iota@zdi_x.com
« the Game | bridge »
Posted by matthew at 10:33 PM | Comments (3)
April 28, 2006
the Game
The Cat floated in her moorings, looming in the soft California moonlight, in the thick night air. Twelve taut steel cables held her. She strained against their steel windings, against their buckles, against the concrete anchors. The Cat wanted freedom, but the cables did their job.
Her main lifting body stretched away in the night haze, a tapered ovoid full of the future and of promise, full of engineering and capitalism, buoyant with hope and helium and hydrogen. The booms of her outriggers reached over and sheltered the pontoon of her control body. They floated in the darkness like a great white whale and her nursing calf.
The lights in the cabin glowed through the windows and reflected up against the outrigger, amber on the smooth pale skin of the zeppelin. A tiny red light blinked from the side of the hull, a steady stoplight triple tempo. The wheel wells were open, landing gear down, and a dim glow lit the hydraulic piping that encrusted the interior, exposing the fallacy of the simple smooth exterior of her form. Regularly spaced safety lights ranged on the booms that connected her two pods, a curving constellation on the gleaming silver metal and the filigreed trusswork.
The Cat was waiting for the moment when she could jettison the earth, moonlight on her flanks. And she loomed, pregnant in the night sky, tethered like Gulliver, earthbound for now.
The gridded concrete tarmac stretched out beneath her; worn, sunbaked, cracked and dusty. Arranged here and there in the distance were clusters of trucks, a scaffold elevator surrounded by trailers, a set of three quoncet huts in a group. Two Cessnas sniffed the air, parked and shrouded, the tired rubber of their wheels keeping secrets, paint flecking from their propellers, the aggressive slant of their registration numbers out of place in the night quiet.
Hector stood next to his booth, looking up at her in the darkness, smelling the familiar oil and fuel and ozone. Even the dust is tired tonight, he thought, even the dust. He could hear the rattle of a generator clattering in the distance, powering some traffic signal or construction warning sign for no one to see. There was half a bottle left in the cabinet under his counter, and the thought of it eased his thinking, made the urgencies of the night less probing, quieted the turbulence and loosened the bonds of the stays that held him to the ground.
He fumbled with his zipper and dug it out and pissed hard and long on the concrete, standing with his feet apart. He pissed, making the runway his own, savoring the sound and the sweet burn as he watched the Cat twist slowly in her moorings in the night. The water ran dark on the concrete, away and toward her, a warm weaving finger staining the pavement. He shook himself dry and straightened, sucking in his belly as he pulled the zipper up, then he turned and went back to his booth. Then he went in and slid the thin door closed behind him.
Hector sat on his stool and began the Game. Waiting. The bottle called to him and he heard her, told her no, but as he did his lips were smiling. She'd call again and he'd say no, not yet. The light from the booth cast yellow trapezoids on the concrete around the booth. A moth powdered the plexiglas. The pink press passes with their tall black letters were stacked square on the plywood counter, ready for the coming morning bustle. The guest list was neatly stapled and clipped in the clasp of the chipped masonite clipboard.
Hector opened the cabinet door and reached for the bottle. His hand fit the neck comfortably. He pinched the cap, his fingers whitening, and he heard the snap of the release and then the smooth discus unscrewing sound. He measured some and a little extra into his thermos cup, tightened the cap firmly, and then replaced the bottle in the cabinet, checking the door with the heel of his hand so it would close softly. Hector studied the reflections of fluorescent light twisting on the surface of the liquid in his mug. He held it in two hands and lifted it to his face and inhaled. Then he put it back down on the counter without tasting it, scoring extra points in the Game. Extra points meant extra portions in this game, and Hector's strength was in the finish.
Posted by matthew at 10:50 PM | Comments (1)
March 07, 2006
curtain
Spider rubbed the tape down smooth on the box and carefully set the roll of tape on the bench. He lifted the box and put it next to its twin on the cart. He picked up the pre-printed shipping form (return to sender) and flicked at the paper backing stuck to the adhesive on the back of the plastic envelope. The nails of his fingers were bitten down to the quick and he had to fold the envelope to crack the diagonal slit in the brown paper. A mouth cracked open in the smooth surface revealing the slick white underside of the paper. He could feel the weight of the fat envelope in his pocket against his leg. The most cash he had ever had in his pocket before was one thousand and forty dollars, his paycheck for three summer months of stoop labor for his uncle when he was nineteen, the hardest money he had ever earned. Twenty two thousand five hundred dollars was thick, a heavy brick on his thigh.
He reached in to the gap in the paper with the round ends of his fingers and noticed that they were trembling. His breathed through his open mouth, coughed. He pulled the two parts of the backing free of the adhesive and smoothed the waybill against the top of the box, covering the Dell logo. He had duplicated the entire backups of the company's records for the past six years. His smile was twisted as he studied the address on the ticket. For the past six years except the last three months. Too bad for them, he thought, too bad that I haven't gotten around to moving the data from the last three months over to the backups yet... and too bad for us, that the return address doesn't match the address that shipped us the servers. He patted his pocket again, for the seventeenth time.
He decided that he would get money orders with the cash. None more than four thousand dollars. He decided to pay his bills off slowly, to husband the money so he could make more than the minimum payments for the next six months. He decided to buy a massaging chair for his mother, she'd like that. And he decided that he would take a thousand dollars and have a nice weekend in the city, he knew a cooperative girl who would make the spending enjoyable. Maybe a thousand and forty, he thought, what's the difference?
Spider wheeled the cart with the two computers down to shipping. They'd be on the truck in the morning.
Echo was in a far place. His teeth were ivory elephants, his hands a thousand miles away, giant hams connected to his shoulders by thin wires that swam through space. Wires encrusted with circuits, held suspended in space by flying grasshoppers and spinning flowers, a thousand of them, a million. The bird was finished it's meal and floated in the sky above him, circling higher and higher, the tip feathers of it's wings twitching in the gentle thermal that rose from his face. He clenched his teeth and volcanos erupted red magma, magma.. or was it wine? Echo reached with his hands to touch the sun and it was cold. Cold and thin in his hand, and bursting with a white light that hurt his eyes. "He's coming around." The sun was cold in his hand and his arm shot with cold needles as he squeezed it. His eyes were swimming with bugs, white in a purple river, he could see their little tails, their nucleuses, at the luminous twisted bindings that kept their protoplasm intact. "one sixty over ninety five," a dubious voice said. Echo squeezed the sun harder, the juice was running down his fingers and collecting in his lap, fire.
Echo fell back into the full darkness of space. The voice said "We'll talk to him in the morning."
Dietz studied Car Cox's face in the moonlight. Her eyes were moving as she slept, the bulges in her lids moved from left to right, from left to right. He closed his eyes and listened to her breathing, a whisp of sound in the darkness. Keeping his eyes closed he rolled back the blankets and sat up. The moon was barely more than a sliver and the light through the window was needle-shot white. He leaned close to her body, smelling it, studying the puckers in her nipples, the relentless continuity of their asymmetry, his nostrils wide. He ran his fingers across her underarm hair, prickling, and brought them to his nose, inhaling her. She stirred, her breathing uneven, and moved her legs against him. The heat of her thighs against his belly comforted him. He licked the fingers of his left hand and reached down between her legs, slowly pulling the covers over them. He'd be leaving for Tennessee in the morning.
She couldn't sleep. Her husband was snoring next to her, deep gone. She folded the covers back sliding her feet out onto the floor and she sat up waiting, still and alert. The house clicked around her, settling in the night. The curtains in her room -- their room -- hung unmoving, a thin line of moonlight betraying the junction between the two rippled panels and stretching a thin line across the floor. The heater in the furnace clicked on and she sat waiting, waiting for the fan to kick on, waiting and counting down from fourteen. When she reached three the gentle woosh of the air in the register rewarded her attentiveness and she leaned forward and stood up, the cords of the carpet thick reassuring, familiar, and constant between her toes.
She went to the chair and gathered her robe from the mess there, casting her mind back across the evening. The party had been a success, but she hadn't been able to relax. Funny how everyone can have a good time when the hostess is stretched as thin as a banjo string.
She went to the bathroom and sat, not turning on the light, the sound of her water familiar, the same middle of the night sound she had heard since she was sixteen, gentle, a rainbow. She dried herself and stood up, gathering her robe around her. She looked at him, unconscious on his pillow, and went out of their bedroom and down the stairs to the kitchen. She got a glass from the cabinet and filled it at the faucet. She went to her study and woke her laptop, squinting at the white-blue light. Nothing. Nothing from Drexler, nothing from Carla, no word from Memo. There was a note from Dice:
The Cat is ready for primetime, I checked her out personally. I took care of the elevator inspector. The fuel tanks are empty per instructions. Whatever the other divisions are reporting, Logistics are ready.
She winced. She'd have to talk to Dice first thing in the morning.
Memo started suddenly awake. What time is it? she wondered in the hospital twilight. Her dream of dancing in the darkness, swinging through the night with her lover, with his poetry through a shared darkness, alone together in the night on a swaying wooden gymnasium floor, in a room without a ceiling snapped away from her, what time is it? what time? The beeping of a monitor somewhere far away brought her back to... to reality? to another dream? who could know, she wondered. Who could know?
She heard a voice in the dim, the voice said, "We'll talk to him in the morning."
We'll talk to him in the morning.
She studied the shadows of the curtains on the ceiling, the patterns of the fabric pulsed light and dark there, painted a picture of thick and thin, of curving on the smooth white paint. Two bodies moved out of the room and the shadows trembled.
Memo closed her eyes and the shadows didn't go away.
Posted by matthew at 11:43 PM | Comments (2)
February 07, 2006
yellow
The door slid aside and Drexler stepped into the dim hall. On the wall across from him was a sign: A-D with an arrow pointing to the left underneath and E-H with an arrow pointing to the right. The carpet under his feet was a low cut pile and he could feel grit in it through the soles of his shoes. There was a musty humid smell in the air, and something else as well, something a little bit smokey, a little bit sweet.
He turned to his right. The door to apartment E was on his left, H on his right, metal doors painted with a shiny green enamel with an applied moulding that framed the tiny brass escutcheon of the door viewers, each with the apartment letter set in a graceless font beneath them.
The air had a sharper edge to it now, slightly acrid in his nostrils. The doors ahead of him at the end of the hall faced each other, and the door to apartment F was identical to the others. The other door stood open, and a thin line of reflected light angled yellow on the moss-colored carpet.
Drexler moved to his left, slowing his pace, straightening, his blood chilling in his arms, his chest tightening. The hallway was silent except for a faint transformer-buzz coming from the EXIT sign. His nostrils flared, it was a powder smell -- a powder smell mixed with lilac. It made no sense. The door had been jimmied, the frame was crushed and dented at the latch; the metal of the door showed silver where it was torn from the force of the tool. Just outside the threshold on the carpet was the letter G.
Memo's place.
He reached for his phone, then heard a sound from within the apartment, a faint purring sound almost, a whispering purr, full of air. He took his hand from his phone and gently shouldered the door open.
A long black crowbar stood against the wall next to a low entrance table. The floor was parquet wood, square tiles laid in a checkerboard pattern. A framed print of a line drawing hung askew on the wall, startled nymph-faeries leaping from lilly pads on a swirling pond. He could hear the sound more clearly now, thrumming distantly, a steady undertone; it was a totally unfamiliar sound and he couldn't locate its source.
He looked past the opening to the living room into the cubbyhole of a kitchen. White metal cabinets. Microwave. Sink-in-dishwasher. Everything orderly, everything tidy. He pushed the door almost-closed with his elbow and stepped toward the arched opening to the living room, placing his feet carefully, his senses keen.
The room was wrecked. The bent chrome stem of a floor lamp lay in the shards of what had been a glass-topped coffee table. In the corner a small desk, overturned in a snarl of wires and the shattered frame of a flat-panel computer display angled drunkenly against the wall, two of its legs broken away. Water from the broken bowl of a ceramic tabletop-fountain soaked the carpet, and polished pebbles were strewn across the floor. A phone with a severed and twisted cord lay smashed next to the table. There were candles too, many of them, everywhere.
And diagonally across the sofa was the black-suited body of the motorcyclist's twin. He lay face down, his hips on the edge of the cushions, one leg crooked on the floor the other jutting straight across the arm of the sofa, his left arm bent under his torso, blond hair splayed across his collar.
Drexler heard the whispering sound again, he turned his head but couldn't locate it. He moved across the room, carefully placing his feet here and there, choosing a clean path through the debris. He leaned over the unmoving body and saw the light change on the highlights of the wrinkles of the leather bodysuit where it stretched across his back. The man was breathing; faintly, but he was breathing. Drexler looked for signs of violence but could see none. The man was young, Drexler thought, athletic. The lashes of his eyes were blonde, fine, slightly wet. There was a sepia mole on the right side of his neck, the size of a child's fingernail, but with an irregular outline. The fluttering sound came to his ears more clearly from here, it seemed to be coming from the hall.
Drexler straightened and listened, standing motionless in the debris that had been made of Memo's possessions. An extension cord, or a wire -- he scanned the room. The noise was a constant undertone now, and the hair on Drexler's neck quickened. He stepped towards the hallway, something fragile crunched under his foot and the noise of it caught him off guard. He looked at the sofa and it's motionless occupant, then back at the archway. Nothing moved, no shadow twitched out at him. He looked back at the hallway, scanning the walls, the floor. A dark something in a parallelogram of sunlight slanting against the wall caught his eye and he bent to examine it, then knelt down.
It was a machine of some kind, about the size of an egg. It had been a delicate and fine object once, but now it was crushed and bent, a strange twisted wing hung from its side. He picked it up and flinched. It was covered in blood, and a clear fluid oozed on his fingers. He turned it the light, puzzled. The underside of the machinery was a mass of semi-circular razors, some bent and flattened, some still standing proud and threatening. The blades were clotted with a dark gel of thickening blood, and there were pieces of flesh pinched between the glistening blades, torn chunks of bright red on the silver blades.
He heard the whirring sound again behind him but he didn't feel the sting of the needle in the back of his neck as it drove home it's fluid payload, yellow in the golden afternoon sunlight. Sunlight that faded to darkness.
Posted by matthew at 12:14 AM | Comments (4)
February 06, 2006
elevator
Drexler flipped his phone open and called California, running his eyes along the greyhound's taut body and down it's slender hind legs. The phone rang in his ear. The dog was beautiful, with skin dappled grey and brown and black, tigerlike. The energy coiled in it's leg muscles screamed for release. In his ear the phone rang again, a dull buzz. The dog pranced, immune to gravity, reaching down with each tiny foot to tap the ground, and float away again, handling the earth as a juggler might. Buzz. It wore a glittering powder-blue collar, matched by the eyes in the drawn face of the woman holding the leash. She wore a fuzzy powder blue scarf tucked into her jacket, and as they passed him he caught the bouquet of her scent.
"ZDI. Carla here."
He turned and watched the girl and the dog as they walked to the corner and turned, waiting to cross the street.
"Carla, Drexler. How you doing?"
The dog was motionless, patient, inured to the urban life, but as it waited it seemed to his eyes to quiver, trembling with potential energy, vibrating with the resonance of life, eager to blister the streets with it's speed, with the glory of it's birthright. The woman stood vacantly still, watching the traffic light.
"Fine, it's crazy here today. Do you have any news for us?"
He squinted his eyes, watching the dog for some sign of rebellion, looking for evidence of an unquenched yearning; seeing none he realized that the quivering was his own, the vibrations were ones his eyes had projected upon the dog. The greyhound stood still. The woman shifted her feet.
"Nothing yet. I left Echo's room about forty-five minutes ago. I'm on eighty-seventh street, outside Memo's building. I can't find her, she won't answer her phone. I'm going to try to get in and see what I can learn. They haven't seen her since Wednesday at the University. Would you try pulling her bank records? What can you do there? Can you call me in fifteen minutes?"
The light changed and the woman stepped off the curb, the dog followed, it's trembling feet playing a private Rachmaninov on the blacktop. His eyes drifted across the street to the white brick building squatting in the afternoon sunlight.
"What should I be looking for?"
A red delivery van with yellow letters arched across the side of it pulled away as the light changed. Parked at the curb behind it were two motorcycles -- black crouchbikes -- tucked together and facing away from the curb.
"I don't know. ATM records? Restaurants? Any transactions that will help me track her down. I want to know when the last activity was, see if we can trace her.."
The motorcycles were devoid of chrome, flat black, and they merged in his sight into a single malevolent creature. Their headlights glowered at the street and the angles of their front wheels and machinery hissed at him, Tarantula. Identical four-cylinder slabside BMW's, hunchbacked twins, each with the obsidian ball of a helmet resting on the seat. Eightballs.
"Drexler, do you have any idea how much you are asking? I'm not sure that's even legal."
Drexler began walking to the corner, anticipating the light.
"Carla, if you have a better idea, let me know. Would you just tell them what I asked for, if it isn't legal they won't do it. It's important to me that we do this right, but it's really important to me that we actually get it done. We have to find Memo."
The light turned yellow.
"Right. Ok, I'll call you when I hear something."
It turned red.
"Thanks. Talk to you later."
As Drexler clicked his phone closed the glass door at the base of Memo's building flashed silver, momentarily reflecting the sky. A blond-haired man came through the door briskly, hardly checking his stride as he came from the lobby to the street. He was wearing black riding leathers and he was wiping the left side of his face with a red bandana, as though he was drying a weepy eye. He straddled the first of the two bikes and started the engine. He kicked back the stand and gunned the bike into traffic, the whole time keeping his left hand to his face, rubbing his eye.
As Drexler crossed the street, he watched the rear tire wobble slightly as the driver leaned to turn the corner and gun the bike out of sight. The sun made reflections at him from helmet and the headlight of the remaining bike, shining from the axle pivots and hubs of the black machine, the brightly beaded eyes of a spider. And from the gutter the sun glinted on the smoothness of the other helmet that was gently rocking in the grit, alone.
Drexler stepped up on the curb and walked slowly, scanning through the glass in the lobby, trying to time his arrival at the door. Against the faded beige of the back of the lobby he saw the elevator indicator brighten and he quickened his pace, reaching his right hand into his pocket as though fishing for keys. As the elevator doors opened an elderly woman stepped out, straightening her shoulders and gathering her coat to herself, an umbrella clutched in her strong, thin fingers. Nearing the entrance, Drexler slowed his pace and pretended to fumble in his pocket. She looked through the glass at him through narrowed eyes; he ignored her gaze and reached his hand deeper into his pocket, then looked up at her and moved aside as though to make way for her. She snapped her purse closed and pushed the door open, stepping through and walking away without looking back. He snatched the handle before the door swung closed and went in.
Five steps across the cracked yellow tile floor and he was standing at the elevator wall, reaching his finger to press the brushed-nickel call button. The plastic triangle etched into it's surface glowed amber and Drexler stood back to wait. The fabric wallcovering was beige, the color of some vague maple, and veined with loose threads woven through it, picked at in places near to hand. The paint on the frames of the elevator doors was mocha, or had been once, and it was chipped here and there, the tattletale flaked places showing other flavors of fashion: cream and chocolate and even a deep cherokee red showed through at the edges of the chipped areas.
An elevator to his left dinged and he stood aside as the door opened and the elevator emptied. He went in and found the 38 among the tightly packed buttons, pressed it and stood back while the doors closed. He studied the laminate as the cab rattled upwards. AMOS was scratched at eye level next to the control panel. He read the Inspection Certificate. He watched the light move behind the numbers above the door, clicking through the floors. Thirty-six. Thirty-seven. The elevator slowed and shuddered to a stop and he waited for the door to open.
Posted by matthew at 12:35 AM | Comments (6)
January 09, 2006
kitchen
Drexler walked out from under the canopy in front of the hospital and he squinted in the afternoon sun as he put on his sunglasses. A shower had passed through while he was inside, the pavement was wet in places and still steaming. His eyes shifted left and right across the parking lot and his shoes made a scratching sound on the sidewalk as he turned right, then left, on the balls of his feet. He paused, then set off to his left, the motion of his shadow triggering open the sliding doors as he passed the vestibule to the emergency room. He walked with his right hand in his pocket, palming his car-remote key ring and stroking the ignition key while his other fingers thrummed through his change jingling.
He circled the parking lot glancing left and right, walking between cars. He stopped and turned full around before taking the car remote out of his pocket and pushing the alarm. Distantly behind him a car horn began blaring insistently. As he turned around he squeezed the alarm button again -- to no effect. Walking toward the throbbing noise he squeezed the remote repeatedly, succeeding only in cycling the alarm through it's full repertoire of blare; a staccato monotone; alternating high and low notes; long slow trumpet blasts; a triad of notes with a slight calypso feel, all cycling in sequence.
He passed a pregnant woman pushing a blue plastic stroller with a child in it, crying clenchfisted. She looked at him levelly, her brow creased, her lips a pale horizontal line. He smiled wanly at her and shrugged, dangling the remote. He squeezed it again, one final time, and the noise abruptly stopped. He hurried past her, his eyes on the toes of his shoes.
He climbed into the silver rental car, closed the door, and buckled the seat belt. He sat staring out the windshield for a moment, breathing deeply and slowly, his hands on the wheel. He scratched his neck. He took his cell phone out of the holster on his belt and laid it on the console between the seats. He picked it up again, snapped it open and studied the display; then slowly closed it and replaced it in it's place. Reaching over to the passenger seat he flicked open the clasps on the briefcase lying there.
He opened the computer inside the briefcase and tapped on the keyboard to bring the screen to life, then he clicked on the icon of his address book and brought up the card with Memo's contact information. The phone in the console rang with a loud chirp, startling him.
Behind a screen on a high wooden shelf in Memo's kitchen, eight tiny robots are nestled in their charging dock.
Three of them are Prompter series triangulators. Each is a silver cylinder as large as a roll of quarters capped at each end with a tapered nose cone. Three propellers, thin and gently twisted, protrude from the hairline joint. Light sensors of various sizes are arrayed around the cylinder, like spiders eyes only more numerous. Two hair-thin antenna wires angle from the upper prop cone in a horizontally oriented V. They are modified from the production models; smaller and faster, and although their power storage capacity is reduced, they have more accurate navigation circuitry and more robust communication capabilities.
In front of these is a row of five of Echo's more esoteric prototypes, spin-wing Enforcers. These have a chassis the size and shape of a beetle beneath a twisted-surface lifting screw -- a single mylar wing wrapped around a tiny vertical axle. Hinged from the sides of the chassis are three arms, each terminating in a grasping barb. Within the curving framework of the chassis is the motor/battery module, the communication/control circuitry, and the payload. Each of the five carries a different miniature device: one is equipped with a laser, two have explosive charges, one has a glass vial containing a thin yellow liquid and a hypodermic needle, and one is perched on a nest of razor-disks.
A thin red laser shines from a hole in the side of the dock, sweeping the apartment door tirelessly. Periodically, red status lights cycle on the dock, first in front of the Prompters, one, two, three; then in front of the Enforcers, four, five, six, seven, eight. An acknowledging amber light winks on each of the robots in turn. At the end of each test cycle there is a lightning-quick flicker of amber lights as each of the charging robots contact each of the others in turn, and then acknowledge. Status: ok.
Twice an hour, each little flying machine powers up, lifts silently from its charging station, hovers in the air for ten seconds, then settles down again, nestling back into its powerport. And as the terminals click home, they send a signal to the lab across the river: all is well in Memo's kitchen. And as each of these messages arrives, the security computer in the lab cancels the alert that it was scheduled to send to the pager Echo wore hidden by the cuff of his pants on an elastic inside his left ankle.
Drexler picked up the phone and studied the display. California. They want to know more. The phone chirped again. His jaw muscles worked, his fingers itched to flip the phone open. Chirp. Chirp. Chirp. It called him like a bird, resonating within him with an elemental, primal beckoning that he yearned to answer. Chirp. Chirp. The noise stopped and the silence brought a wave of relief and then a heightened anxiety.
damn. damn damn and damn. Echo is down. they won't tell me when I can talk to him or how serious it is, they say they just don't know. Memo is fucking AWOL. damn. damn. Echo is down. they won't tell me anything. Echo is down.
The phone beeped at him, voicemail waiting.
i told them everything i know. damn them.
He looked at his phone, squeezed it open, and thumbed the callback button.
"yeah?" Dice's voice answered.
"Dice? Dice? You called me?" Drexler, "what the hell do you want, Dice?"
"Hey, Drexler! How's it going?"
"Listen, Dice, I'm busy. I thought someone else had called me. I'm in the middle of something. I gotta go."
"Whoa, Drexler, take it easy. I'm calling --"
"Call me tomorrow, Dice."
"Listen, Drexler, let me talk for a second, will you? The agenda for the press conference is all fucked up and we're trying to get some goddamn answers before midnight, ok? Where are you now?"
"I'm in Newark, Dice. Newark, New Jersey. At a hospital, Dice. At a hospital that Echo is in, Dice, with his fucking head caved in, and Memo is nowhere to be fucking found, Dice, and I am going to find her and when I do I will call Carla and tell her what the hell is going on. If that is OK with you, Dice."
"Drexler, Drexler, I'm just doing my job, man, don't be that way. We have to put--"
"Listen Dice, I don't answer to you. I don't need this distraction right now. I'll call Carla when I find out more. If you want to know something, talk to her." Drexler flicked the phone closed and ran his fingers through his hair.
On the shelf in Memo's kitchen, the tiny motor in Prompter 3 begins to spin, turning the main propeller to a whirling blur. At it's base, the dock releases the magnetic catch, freeing it to rise into the air. It hovers silently above the dock, rotates full around, cycles through its function check and settles back in place with a soft click. The motor slows and stops, cooling, and the message goes out over the network, all is well in Memo's kitchen.
Dice locked the door to his office, then walked to his desk. He removed a small zippered case from a drawer on the right of his desk, unzipped it and withdrew a slender black PDA from within it. He carefully keyed a message, extended a silver antenna, placed the device on the sill of his window where it glinted in the bright California sun. He studied his message and then tapped the stylus on the little screen. When the progress bar was complete he collapsed the antenna, clicked off the PDA and replaced it in its case, and put the case away deep in the drawer. He stood up from his desk and picked up one of the folders there, walked to the door, unlocked it with a deft flick of his fingers, and glided out into the hallway.
On the shelf in Memo's kitchen, the wing atop Enforcer 6 spins with a whisper and the tiny machine rises into the air, pauses and settles back down into its docking berth.
In the bed a curtain away from where Echo lay, Memo stirred in her sleep and her hand closed over her key ring, her fingers habitually rolling the sensor Echo had given her when he installed the security bots in her apartment. Reassured by the soft clicking it made, she drifted back to sleep.
Down below in the parking lot, Drexler started the car and keyed Memo's address into the nav system on his dashboard, checked his mirrors and pulled out into the still-wet pavement of the parking lot. The light at the street was red. He came to a stop behind a dusty green minivan, a Plymouth Voyager. The license plate on the back of the car had bright red letters on a brilliant yellow background, the numbers separated from the letters by a symbol that matched the logo on his business card, a circle with four sets of four radiating lines. The kids in the back of the minivan were bopping to music, rocking the car on it's tired shock absorbers. There was a torn bumper sticker just below the license plate: I AM VGER it said.
His forehead creased at their obliviousness as they bounced in the car, laughing and waving their arms. The smaller boy was making funny faces with his fingers and lips, making his older brother laugh, and Drexler saw that their mom was watching them in the rearview mirror and singing along and laughing. His fingers squeezed the wheel, clenched and released in time with the muscle on the corner of his jaw.
The light changed and the voyagers went straight ahead, Drexler turned left as instructed by the screen on the nav, following the directions of the white line on the screen through a tattered warehouse district, along a concrete service road, his tires kathump-thumping on the cracked pavement next to a thin island that stretched parallel to the road, overgrown with thin and straggling ragged grasses and some kind of prehistoric shrubs, sumac. He came to an intersection and followed the navline down a twisted concrete apron that skirted a dusty Mobil station advertising KOOL cigarettes by the carton. A dented white Cadillac sat in a vacant lot next to a rusty beer truck, cooling in the shade of a Baileys billboard, warped and leaning away from the street, the tapered phone poles that supported it brown and bleached.
Drexler's phone beeped again, reminding him he had un-checked messages. The screen on his dashboard showed a good mile of straight-ahead driving, and he looked ahead and saw a grid of tired two-story row houses punctuated by vacant lots and liquor stores and auto body repair yards full of wrecked toyotas and surrounded by rusty chain link fences topped with barb wire. Here and there a figure moved, dark against the muted colors of the sunbaked vinyl siding. The sun through the windshield felt warm on his hands and the road kathunked under his wheels with a reassuring regular tempo. He liked this car. He could see the city, his destination, on the fracture of the horizon ahead.
Maybe those kids had the right idea, he thought, a lopsided smile stretching across his face. He flipped his phone open and turned it off, then reached up and turned on the radio. He ran his fingers through his hair again and rolled down his window, the moist air in his nostrils clearing his head, blowing the useless cobwebs of doubt and fruitless tail-chasing thoughts that hung there far away.
On the shelf in Memo's kitchen, the red and amber lights cycle.
Drexler rode the highway to the city hard, keeping time to the music with his accelerator foot, tapping his fingers on the wheel, on the door, on the dashboard. He turned the music up loud, country music, and sat back in his seat, handling the car with purpose and assurance, mindful of the moment more than his destination, shifting lanes smoothly, anticipating the patterns of the traffic, gliding through the toll lanes, swinging around the bending curves in the road, maintaining a following distance that protected his progress, sweeping past delivery vans and station wagons, between concrete construction barriers scarred with the black rubber traces of countless strange road mishaps, beneath rusted and flaking steel railroad overpasses, parallel to steaming marshes laced with pipelines and telephone wires, along beside gray and dusty anonymous tractor trailers with chains dangling from their axles, up over plain concrete bridges that spanned twisted coffee-colored rivers, bridges that hummed with the load of ten thousand tires an hour and carried the names of forgotten soldiers... which burden was the greater, he wondered, passing over.
Drexler drove the silver car down into the tiled tunnel with the sides that curved in all three dimensions, down and through, under the big river, under and up into the golden afternoon light that filled the boulevards of the city, and followed the instructions on his dashboard north, then west and south again for a block.
He parked the car and turned off the radio, got out and locked the car. He stretched his legs and stood for a moment looking up at the building across the street, a pile of white bricks utterly devoid of architectural interest silhouetted against the afternoon sky. Memo lived on the thirty-eighth floor, in 38G. Drexler stood on the sidewalk, smelling the air and watching a young woman slowly walk toward him, a thin grayhound prancing on the leash she held in her left hand...
Posted by matthew at 01:59 AM | Comments (1)
September 15, 2005
no doubt
Drexler closed the door on Echo's room and walked down the hospital corridor. His phone beeped at him and he pulled it out and flipped it open, pressing buttons to read the message. It was from California. "wassup?" was all it said. Drexler smiled in spite of himself, even in a crisis she kept her head, kept her sense of humor, and never wasted words. He began composing his reply.
ICU. 2 wks in hosp min. Rx: he'll be ok. Echo still under sedation & a def NO GO on presentation tmrw. Memo still MIA.
Drexler clicked send and snapped his little blue phone closed with the satisfying click that he liked so much. He walked to the nurses station and took out his wallet. While he waited for the nurse to finish whatever it was she was doing on her computer, he took out a hundred dollar bill and folded it in four parts, then took out a business card and put it on top of the folded bill, neatly aligning them. He placed them on the countertop, square to the edge. The computer she was using was an old one with a green and black screen and a text-driven interface, and her progress seemed tediously slow. Drexler thought she looked too young to be qualified as a duty nurse, but he didn't mind the triangle between the white lapels of her jacket and the cleavage that he cold see there. Finally she finished her typing and looked up at him, meeting his eyes. She made no move to adjust her lab coat.
Drexler said, "I'm Rich Drexler. The guy in 314 is a close friend of mine, we work together. We're trying to track down his family. I'm staying at the Marriott over at Liberty. When he comes around would you please give me a call?" He pushed the card towards her, but she made no move to take it.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Drexler, but Dr. Calimari's instructions are very clear that he is not to be disturbed. His injuries are very serious, and he needs rest and medicine. Visitors are prohibited in this ward. You can call the status line for updates on his condition, I'm sure you understand." She smiled at him, showing her round white teeth and a little bit of her gums.
"I'm not sure you understand, Miss..."
"O'Day, Kathy O'Day."
"Pleased to meet you Kathy." Drexler could not keep his eyes on her face. The bra she was wearing was magenta, and the thin line of it that he could see drew his eyes irresistibly. He turned the card over, showing the green on the back and pushed the money and the card closer to her side of the counter. She reached up and took them, turning them over to study the card, then she looked back at his face, her eyebrows arched ever so slightly, a thin smile playing on her lips.
He said, "Maybe there's a way for you to consider me the next of kin until we can reach his family... " he looked hopefully into her eyes, forcing his attention on her face. Her eyes were brown, almost black, and the lashes were thin and very evenly spaced.
She put the card and money in the breast pocket of her jacket, fiddling with them a little to settle them in place perhaps.