All Tomorrow's Parties bt-3 Read online

  He has become the words, what they mean.

  Breguette hands. Tapestry dial. Bombay lugs. Original stem. Signed.

  The rain slows, stops. The fat man, who wears plastic sandals, brings Silencio a thick dry cloth.

  The fat man peers at him. 'Watches, you say he likes? the fat man asks the black man. 'Yes, the black man says, 'he seems to like watches.

  The bearded man drapes the towel around Silencio's shoulders. 'Does he know how to tell time?

  'I don't know, says the black man.

  'Well, says the fat man, stepping back, 'he doesn't know how to use a towel.

  Silencio feels confused, ashamed. He looks down.

  'Leave him alone, Andy, the black man says. 'Get me those clothes I brought.

  * * *

  THE black man's name: Fontaine. Like a word in the language of los projectos, a meaning about water. The warm rain in the wooden room.

  Now Fontaine leads him through the upper level, where some people call out, selling fruit, past others selling old things spread on blankets, to where a thin dark man stands waiting beside a plastic crate. The crate is upturned, its bottom padded with foam and ragged silver tape, and this man wears a striped cloth thing with pockets down his front, and in the pockets are scissors, and things like the thing Raton liked to run endlessly through his hair, when he had balanced the black perfectly with the white.

  Silencio is wearing the clothes Fontaine has given him: they are large, loose, not his own, but they smell good. Fontaine has given him shoes made of white cloth. Too white. They hurt his eyes.

  The soap and the warm rain have made Silencio's hair strange as well, and now Fontaine tells Silencio to sit upon the crate, this man will cut his hair.

  Silencio sits, trembling, as the thin dark man flicks at his hair with one of the Raton-things from his pockets, making small noises behind his teeth.

  Silencio looks at Fontaine.

  'It's okay, Fontaine says, unwrapping a small sharp stick of wood and inserting it into the corner of his mouth, 'you won't feel a thing.

  Silencio wonders if the stick is like the black or the white, but Fontaine does not change. He stands there with the stick in his mouth, watching the thin dark man snip away Silencio's hair with the scissors. Silencio watches Fontaine, listens to the sound of the scissors, and to the new language in his head.

  Zodiac Sea Wolf. Case very clean. Screw-down crown. Original bezel.

  'Zodiac Sea Wolf, Silencio says.

  'Man, says the thin dark man, 'you deep.

  18. SELWYN TONG

  RYDELL had a theory about virtual real estate. The smaller and cheaper the physical site of a given operation, the bigger and cheesier the web site. According to this theory Selwyn F.X. Tong, notary public, of Kowloon, was probably operating out of a rolled-up newspaper.

  Rydell couldn't figure out a way to skip the approach segment, which was monolithic, vaguely Egyptian, and reminded him of what his buddy Sublet, a film buff, had called 'corridor metaphysics. This was one long-ass corridor, and if it had been physical, you could've driven a very large truck down it. There were baroque sconce lights, virtual scarlet wall-to-wall, and weird tacky texture mapping that tended to gold-flecked marble.

  Where had Laney found this guy?

  Eventually Rydell did manage to kill the music, something vaguely classical and swelling, but it still seemed to take him three minutes to get to Selwyn F.X. Tong's doors. Which were tall, very tall, and mapped to resemble some generic idea of tropical hardwood.

  'Teak, my ass! Said Rydell.

  'Welcome, said a breathless, hyper-feminine voice, 'to the offices of Selwyn FX Tong notary public.

  The doors swung open Rydell figured that if he hadn't killed the music, it would be peaking about now.

  Virtually, the notary's office was about the size of an Olympic pool but scarce on detail. Rydell used the rocker-pad on his glasses to scoot his POV right up to the desk, which was about the size of a pool table, and mapped in that same ramped-down wood look. There were a couple of nondescript, metallic-looking objects on it and a few pieces of virtual paper.

  'What's the 'F.X. stand for? Rydell asked.

  'Francis Xavier, said Tong who presented as a sort of deadpan cartoon of a small Chinese man in a white shirt black tie black suit His black hair and the black suit were mapped in the same texture, a weird effect and one Rydell took to be unintentional.

  'I thought you might be in video' Rydell said, 'like it's a nickname: FX, 'effects, right?

  'I am Catholic, Tong said, his tone neutral.

  'No offense, Rydell said.

  'None taken, said Tong, his plastic-looking face as shiny as his plastic-looking eyes.

  You always forgot, Rydell reflected, just how bad this stuff could look if it hadn't been handled right.

  'What can I do for you, Mr. Rydell?

  'Laney didn't tell you?

  'Laney?

  'Cohn, Rydell said. 'Space. Laney.

  'And…?

  'Six, Rydell said. 'Zero. Four. Two.

  Tong's plastic-looking eyes narrowed.

  'Berry.

  Tong pursed his lips. Behind him, through a broad window, at a different rate of resolution, Rydell could see the skyline of Hong Kong.

  'Berry' Rydell repeated.

  'Thank you, Mr. Rydell, the notary said. 'My client has authorized me to give you this seven-digit identification number. A gold fountain pen appeared in Tong's right hand like a continuity error in a student film. It was a very large pen, elaborately mapped with swirling dragons, their scales in higher resolution than anything else in the site. Probably a gift, Rydell decided. Tong wrote the seven digits on one of the sheets of virtual paper, then reversed it on the desktop so that Rydell could read it. The pen had vanished, as unnaturally as it had appeared. 'Please, don't repeat this number aloud, Tong said.

  'Why not?

  'Issues of encryption, Tong said obscurely. 'You have as long as you like to memorize the number.

  Rydell looked at the seven digits and began to work out a mnemonic. He finally arrived at one based on his birthday, the number of states when he was born, his father's age when he'd died, and a mental image of two cans of 7-Up. When he was certain that he'd be able to recall the number, he looked up at Tong. 'Where do I go to get the credit chip?

  'Any automated teller. You have photo identification?

  'Yes, Rydell said.

  'Then we are finished.

  'One thing, Rydell said.

  'What is that?

  'Tell me how I get out of here without having to go back down that corridor of yours. I just want a straight exit, right?

  Tong regarded him blandly. 'Click on my face.

  Rydell did, using the rocker-pad to summon a cursor shaped like a neon green cartoon hand, pointing. 'Thanks, he said, as Tong's office folded.

  He was in the corridor, facing back the way he had come. 'Damn, Rydell said.

  The music began. He worked the rocker-pad, trying to remember how he'd killed it before. He wanted to get a GPS fix on the nearest ATM, though, so he didn't unplug the glasses.

  He clicked for the end of the corridor.

  The click seemed to trigger a metastatic surge of bit rot, every bland texture map rewritten in some weirder hand: the red carpet went gray-green, its knap grown strange and unevenly furry, like something at the bottom of a month-old cup of coffee, while the walls went from whore house marble to a moist fish belly pallor the sconce lights glowing dim as drowned corpse candles. Tong's fake-classical theme cracked and hollowed, weird bass notes rumbling in just above the threshold of the subsonic.

  It all took about a second to happen, and it took Rydell maybe another second to get the idea that someone wanted his undivided attention.

  'Rydell. It was one of those voices that they fake up from found audio: speech cobbled from wind down skyscraper canyons, the creaking of Great Lakes ice tree frogs clanging in the Southern night. Rydell had heard them before. They grate
d on the nerves, as they were meant to, and conveniently disguised the voice of the speaker. Assuming the speaker had a voice in the first place.

  'Hey, Rydell said, 'I was just trying to click out.

  A virtual screen appeared in front of him, a round-cornered rectangle whose dimensions were meant to invoke the cultural paradigm of twentieth-century video screens. On it, an oddly angled, monochromatic view of some vast shadowy space, dimly lit from above. Nothing there. Impression of decay, great age.

  'I have important information for you. The vowel in you suggested a siren dopplering past, then gone.

  'Well, said Rydell, 'if your middle name is 'F. X. , you're sure going to some trouble.

  There was a pause, Rydell staring at the dead, blank space depicted or recorded on the screen. He was waiting for something to move there; probably that was the point of it, that nothing did.

  'You'd better take this information very seriously, Mr. Rydell.

  'I'm serious as cancer, Rydell said. 'Shoot.

  'Use the ATM at the Lucky Dragon, near the entrance to the bridge. Then present your identification at the GlobEx franchise at the rear of the store.

  'Why?

  'They're holding something for you.

  'Tong, Rydell said, 'is that you?

  But there was no answer. The screen vanished, and the corridor was as it had been.

  Rydell reached up and disconnected the rented cable from the Brazilian glasses.

  Blinked.

  A coffee place near Union Square, the kind that had potted plants and hotdesks. An early office crowd was starting to line up for sandwiches.

  He got up, folded the glasses, tucked them into the inside pocket of his jacket, and picked up his bag.

  19. INTERSTITIAL

  CHEVETTE moves past the colorless flame of a chestnut vendor's charcoal fire, powdery gray burning itself down in the inverted, V-nosed hood of some ancient car.

  She sees another fire, in memory: coke glow of a smith's forge, driven by the exhaust of a vacuum cleaner. Beside her the old man held the drive chain of some extinct motorcycle, folded neatly into a compact mass and fastened with a twist of rusty wire. To be taken in the smith's tongs and placed within the forge. To be beaten, finally, incandescent, into a billet of their strangely grained Damascus, ghosts of those links emerging as the blade is forged, quenched, shaped, and polished on the wheel.

  Where did that knife go? she wonders.

  She'd watched the maker craft and braise a hilt of brass, rivet slabs of laminated circuit board and shape them on a belt grinder. The rigid, brittle-looking board, layers of fabric trapped in green phenolic resin, was everywhere on the bridge, a common currency of landfills. Each sheet mapped with dull metallic patterns suggesting cities, streets. When they came from the scavengers they were studded with components, easily stripped with a torch, melting the gray solder. The components fell away, leaving the singed green boards with their inlaid foil maps of imaginary cities, residue of the second age of electronics. And Skinner would tell her that these boards were immortal, inert as stone, proof against moisture and ultraviolet and every form of decay; that they were destined to litter the planet, hence it was good to reuse them, work them when possible into the fabric of things, a resource when something needed to be durable.

  She knows she needs to be alone now, so she's left Tessa on the lower level, collecting visual texture with God's Little Toy. Chevette can't hear any more about how Tessa's film has to be more personal, about her, Chevette, and Tessa hasn't been able to shut up about that, or take no for an answer. Chevette remembers Bunny Malatesta, her dispatcher when she rode here, how he'd say 'and what part of 'no' is it that you don't understand? But Bunny could deliver lines like that as though he were a force of nature, and Chevette knows she can't, that she lacks Bunny's gravity, the sheer crunch required to get it across.

  So she's taken an escalator, one she doesn't remember, to the upper level, and is making her way, without really thinking about it, to the foot of their tower, the wet light having turned to a thin and gusting rain, blowing through the bridge's tattered secondhand superstructure. People are hauling their laundry in, where they've hung it, draped on lines, and there's a general pre-storm bustle that she knows will fade if the weather changes.

  And so far, she thinks, she's not seen a single face she knows from before, and no one has greeted her, and she finds herself imagining the bridge's entire population replaced in her absence. No, there went the bookstall woman, the one with the ivory chopsticks thrust into her dyed black bun, and she recognizes the Korean boy with the bad leg, rumbling his father's soup wagon along as though it should have brakes.

  The tower she'd ascended each day to Skinner's plywood shack is bundled in subsidiary construction, its iron buried at the core of an organic complex of spaces appropriated for specific activities. Behind taut, wind-shivered sheets of milky plastic, the unearthly light of a hydroponics operation casts outsize leaf shadows. She hears the snarl of an electric saw from the tiny workshop of a furniture-maker, whose assistant sits patiently, rubbing wax into a small bench collaged from paint-flecked oak scavenged from the shells of older houses. Someone else is making jam, the big copper kettle heated by a propane ring.

  Perfect for Tessa, she thinks: the bridge people maintaining their interstices. Doing their little things. But Chevette has seen them drunk. Has seen the drugged and the mad dive to their deaths in the gray and unforgiving chop. Has seen men fight to the death with knives. Has seen a mother, dumbstruck, walking with a strangled child in her arms, at dawn. The bridge is no tourist's fantasy. The bridge is real, and to live here exacts its own price.

  It is a world within the world, and, if there be such places between the things of the world, places built in the gaps, then surely there are things there, and places between them, and things in those places too.

  And Tessa doesn't know this, and it is not Chevette's place to tell her.

  She ducks past a loose flap of plastic, into moist warmth and the spectrum of grow lamps. A reek of chemicals. Black water pumped amid pale roots. These are medicinal plants, she supposes, but probably not drugs in the street sense. Those are grown nearer Oakland, in a sector somehow allotted for that, and on warm days there the fug of resin hangs narcotic in the air, bringing an almost perceptible buzz, faint alteration of perception and the will.

  'Hey. Anybody here?

  Gurgle of liquid through transparent tubing. A silt-slimed pair of battered yellow waders dangle nearby, but no sign of who hung them there. She moves quickly, her feet remembering, to where corroded aluminum rungs protrude from fist-sized blobs of super-epoxy.

  The ball-chain zip pulls on Skinner's old jacket jingle as she climbs. These rungs are a back way, an emergency exit if needed.

  Climbing past the sickly greenish sun of a grow lamp, housed in a corroded industrial fixture, she pulls herself up the last aluminum rung and through a narrow triangular opening.

  It is dark here, shaded by walls of rain-swollen composite. Shadowed where she remembers light, and she sees that the bulb, above, in this enclosed space, is missing. This is the lower end of Skinner's 'funicular, the little junkyard elevator trolley, built for him by a black man named Fontaine, and it was here that she'd lock her bike in her messengering days, after shouldering it up another, less covert ladder.

  She studies the cog-toothed track of the funicular, where the grease shows dull with accumulated dust. The gondola, a yellow municipal recycling bin, deep enough to stand in and grasp the rim, waits where it should. But if it is here, it likely means that the current resident of the cable tower is not. Unless the car has been sent in expectation of a visitor, which Chevette doubts. It is better to be up there with the car up. She knows that feeling.

  Now she climbs wooden rungs, a cruder ladder of two-by-fours, until her head clears the ply and she winces in wind and silvery light. Sees a gull hang almost stationary in the air, not twenty feet away, the towers of the city as backdrop.


  The wind tugs at her hair, longer now than when she lived here, and a feeling that she can't name comes while something she has always known, and she has no interest in climbing farther, because she knows now that the home she remembers is no longer there. Only its shell, humming in the wind, where once she lay wrapped in blankets, smelling machinist's grease and coffee and fresh-cat wood.

  Where, it comes to her, she was sometimes happy, in the sense of being somehow complete, and ready for what another day might bring.

  And knows she is no longer that, but that while she was, she scarcely knew it.

  She hunches her shoulders, drawing her neck down into the carapace of Skinner's jacket, and imagines herself crying, though she knows she won't, and climbs back down.

  20. BOOMZILLA

  BOOMZILLA sitting on the curb, beside the truck these two bitches say they pay him to watch. They don't come back, he'll get some help and strip it. Wants that robot balloon the blonde bitch had. That's fine. Fly that shit around.

  Other bitch kind of biker-looking, big old coat looked like she got it off a dumpster. That one kick your ass, looked like.

  Where they gone? Hungry now, wind blowing grit in his face, splashes of rain.

  'Have you seen this girl? Movie-looking white man, face painted dark like they do down the coast. How they dress when they had time to think about coming here, everything worn out just right. Leather jacket like he's left his old airplane around the corner. Blue jeans. Black T.

  Boomzilla, he'd puke, anybody try to put him in that shit. Boomzilla know how he going to dress, time he get his shit together.

  Boomzilla looking at the printout the man holds out. Sees the biker-looking bitch, but dressed better.

  Boomzilla looks up at the tinted face. See how pale the blue eyes look against it. Something say: cold. Something say: don't fuck with me.

  Boomzilla thinks: he don't know it's they truck.