Modem Times 2.0 (6 page)

“We were young and stupid. We almost lost it. Went too far. That costs, if you’re lucky enough to survive. AIDS and the abolition of controlled rents. A high price to pay.”

Jerry regarded his shaking hands. “If this is the price of a misspent youth, I’ll take a dozen.”

Mo wasn’t listening. He had found still another reflection. “I think Mo needs a new stylist.”

“H
I, HI, AMERICAN
pie chart.” Jerry sniffed. A miasma was creeping across the world. He’d read about it, heard about it, been warned about it. A cloud born of the dreadful dust of conflict, greed, and power addiction, according to old Major Nye. It rose from Auschwitz, London, Hiroshima, Seoul, Jerusalem, Rwanda, New York, and Baghdad. But Jerry wasn’t sure. He remarked on it.

Max Pardon buttoned his elegant grey overcoat, nodding emphatically:
“D’accord.”
He resorted to his own language. “We inhale the dust of the dead with every breath. The deeper the breath, the greater the number of others’ memories we take to ourselves. Those wind-borne lives bring horror into our hearts, and every dream we have, every anxiety we feel, is a result of all those fires, all those explosions, all those devastations. Out of that miasma shapes are formed. Those shapes achieve substance resembling bone, blood, flesh, and skin, creating monsters, some of them in human form.

“That was how monsters procreated in the heat and destruction of Dachau, the Blitz and the Gaza strip; from massive bombs dropped on the innocent; from massacre and the thick, oily smoke of burning flesh. The miasma accumulated mass as more bombs were dropped and bodies burned. The monsters created from this mass, born of shed blood and human fright, bestrode the ruins of our sanctuaries and savoured our fear like connoisseurs: Here is the Belsen ‘44; taste the subtle flavours of a Kent State ‘68 or the nutty sweetness of an Abu Ghraib ‘05, the amusing lightness of a Madrid ‘04, a London ‘06. What good years they were! Perfect conditions. These New York ‘01s are so much more full-bodied than the Belfast ‘98s. The monsters sit at table, relishing their feast. They stink of satiation. Theirfarts expel the sucked-dry husks of human souls: Judge Dredd, Lord Horror, Stuporman. Praise the great miasma wherever it creeps. Into TV sets, computer games, the language of sport, of advertising. The language of politics, infected by the lexicon of war. The language of war wrapped up in the vocabularies of candy-salesmen, toilet sanitizers, room sprays. That filth on our feet isn’t dog shit. That city film on our skins is the physical manifestation of human greed. You feel it as soon as you smell New Orleans, Montgomery, or Biloxi.

“That whimpering you heard was the sound of cowards finding it harder and harder to discover sanctuary.

“Where can you hide? The Bahamas? Grand Cayman? The BVAs? The Isle of Man or Monaco? Not now that you’ve stopped burying treasure, melted the icebergs, called up the tsunamis and made the oceans rise. All that’s left is Switzerland with her melting glaciers and strengthened boundaries. The monsters respond by playing dead. This is their moment of weakness when they can be slain, but it takes a special hero to cut off their heads and dispose of their bodies so that they can’t rise again. Some Charlemagne, perhaps? Some doomed champion? There can be no sequels. Only remakes. Only remakes. But, because we have exhausted a few of the monsters, that doesn’t mean they no longer move amongst us, sampling our souls, watching us scamper in fear at the first signs of their return. We are thoroughly poisoned. We have inhaled the despairing dust of Burundi and Baghdad.”

“Well, that was a mouthful.” The three of them had crossed the Seine from the Isle St. Louis. It began to get chilly. Jerry pulled on his old car coat and checked his heat. His resurrected needle-gun, primed and charged, was ready to start stitching up the enemy. “Shall we go?”

“You know what my French is like.” Mo stared with some curiosity at Max Pardon. A small, neatly wrapped figure wearing an English tweed cap, Pardon had exhausted himself and stood with his back to a gilded statue. “What’s he saying?”

“That his taxes are too high,” said Jerry.

“N
OW LOOK HERE
, Mr. Cornelius, you can’t come in here with your insults and your threats. What will happen to the poor beggars who depend on their corps for their healthcare and their massive mortgages? Would you care to have negative equity and be unemployed?” Rupert Fox spread his gnarled antipodean hands, then mournfully fingered the folds of his features, leaning into the mirror-cam. This facelift had not taken as well as he had hoped. He looked like a poorly rehydrated peach. “Platitudes
are
news, old boy.” He exposed his expensive teeth to the window overlooking Green Park. In the distance, the six flags of Texas waved all the way up the Mall to Buckingham Palace. “We give them reality in other ways. The reality the public wants. Swelp me. I should know. I’ve got God. What do you have? A bunch of idols.”

“I thought idolatry was your stock in trade.”

“Trade makes the world go round.”

“The great idolater, eh? All those beads swapped with the natives. All those presents.”

“I don’t have to listen to this crap.” Rupert Fox made a show of good humour. “You enjoy yourself with your fantasies, while I get on with my realities, sport. You can’t live in the past forever. Our Empire has to grow and change.” He motioned towards his office’s outer door. “William will show you to the elevator.”

B
ANNING NEVER REALLY
changed. Jerry parked the Corniche in the disabled parking space and got out. A block to the east, I-10 roared and shook like a disturbed beast. A block to the west, and the town spread to merge with the scrub of semi-desert, its single-storey houses decaying before his eyes. But here, outside Grandma’s Kitchen, he knew he was home and dry. He was going to get the best country cooking between Santa Monica and Palm Springs. The restaurant was alone amongst the concessions and chains of Main Street. It might change owners now and again, but never its cooks or waitresses. Never its well-advertised politics, patriotism, and faith. Grandma’s was the only place worth eating in a thousand miles. He took off his wide-brimmed Panama and wiped his neck and forehead. It had to be a hundred and ten. The rain, roaring down from Canada and up from the Gulf of Mexico, had not yet reached California. When it did, it would not stop. Somewhere out there, in the heavily irrigated fields, wetbacks were desperately working to bring in the crops before they were swamped. From now on, they would grow rice, like the rest of the country.

Jerry pushed open the door and walked past the display of flags, crosses, fish, and Support Our Troops signs. There was a Christmas theme, too. Every sign and icon had fake snow sprayed over it. Santa and his sleigh and reindeers swung from all available parts of the roof. A big artificial tree in the middle of the main dining room dropped tinsel around its base so that it seemed to be emerging from a sparkling pool. Christmas songs played over the speakers. A few rednecks looked up at him, nodding a greeting. A woman in a red felt elf hat, who might have been the original Grandma, led him through the wealth of red and white chequered table-cloths and wagon-wheel-backed chairs to an empty place in the corner. “How about a nice big glass of ice tea, son?”

“Unsweetened. Thanks, ma’am. I’m waiting for a friend.”

“I can recommend the Turkey Special,” she said.

Twenty minutes went by before Max Pardon came in, removing his own hat and looking around him in delight. “Jerry! This is perfect. A cultural miracle.” The natty Frenchman had shaved his moustache. He had been stationed out here for a couple of months. Banning had once owed a certain prosperity, or at least her existence, to oil. Now she was a dormitory extension for the casinos. You could have bought the whole place for the price of a mid-sized Pasadena apartment. M. Pardon had actually been thinking of doing just that. He ordered his food and gave the waitress one of his sad, charming smiles. She responded by calling him “Darling.”

When their meals arrived, he picked up his knife and fork and shrugged. “Don’t feel too sorry for me, Jerry. It’s healthy enough, once you get back and lose those old interstate habits. You know LA.” He spoke idiomatic American. He leaned forward over his turkey dinner to murmur. “I think I’ve found the guns.”

Gladly, Jerry grinned.

As if in response to M. Pardon’s information, from somewhere out in the scrubland came the sound of rapid shooting. “That’s not the Indians,” he said. “The locals do that about this time every day.”

“You’ll manage to get the guns to the Diné on schedule?”

“Sure.” Tasting the fowl, Max raised his eyebrows. “You bet.”

Grandma brought them condiments. She turned up her hearing aid, cocking her head. “This’ll put Banning on the map.” She spoke with cheerful satisfaction. “Just in time to celebrate the season.”

Jerry sipped his tea.

Max Pardon always knew how to make the most of Christmas. By the time the Diné arrived, Banning would be a serious bargain.

“W
ELCOME TO THE
Hotel California,” Jerry sang into his Bluetooth. In his long, dark hair the beautiful violet light winked in time as the ruins sped past on either side of I-10: wounded houses, shops, shacks, filling stations, churches, all covered in dayglo blue PVC, stacks of fallen trunks, piles of reclaimed planks, leaning firehouses, collapsed trees lying where the hurricane had thrown them, overturned cars and trucks, collapsed barns, flattened billboards, flooded strip malls, mountains of torn foliage, state and federal direction signs twisted into tattered scrap, smashed motels and roadside restaurants, mile upon mile of detritus growing more plentiful the closer they got to the coast.

In the identical midnight blue Corniche beside him, connected by her own Bluetooth, Cathy joined in the chorus. The twin cars headed over cypress swamps, bayous and swollen rivers on the way to where the Mississippi met the city.

Standing in the still, swollen ponds on either side of the long bridges, egrets and storks regarded them with cool, incurious eyes. Families of crows hopped along the roadside, pecking at miscellaneous corpses; buzzards cruised overhead. It looked like rain again.

Here and there, massive cracks and gaps in the concrete had been filled in with tar like black holes in a flat grey vacuum. Hand-made signs offered the services of motel chains or burger concessions, and every few miles they were told how much closer they were to Prejean’s or Michaux’s where the music was still good and the gumbo even tastier. The fish had been enjoying amore varied diet. Zydeco and cajun, crawfish and boudin. Oo-oo. Oo-oo. Still having fon on the bayou … Everything still for sale. The Louisiana heritage.

“Them Houston gals done got ma soul!” crooned Cathy. “Nearly home.”

“C
HRISTMAS WON’T BE CHRISTMAS
without presents,” grumbled Mo, lying on the rug. He got up to sit down again at his keyboard. “Sorry, but that’s my experience.” He was writing about the authenticity of rules in the game of
Risk
. “I mean you have to give it a chance, don’t you? Or you’ll never know who you are.” He cast an absent-minded glance about the lab. He was in a world of his own.

Miss Brunner came in wearing a white coat. “The kids called. They won’t be here until Boxing Day.”

“Bugger,” said Mo. “Don’t they want to finish this bloody game?” He was suspicious. Had her snobbery motivated her to dissuade them, perhaps subtly, from coming? He already had her down as a social climber. Still, a climber was a climber. “Why didn’t you let them talk to me?”

“You were out of it,” she said. “Or cycling or something. They thought you might be dead.”

He shook his head. “There’s days I wonder about you.”

Catherine Cornelius decided to step in. He was clearly at the end of his rope. “Can I ask a question, Mo?”

Mo took a breath and began to comb his hair. “Be my guest.”

“What’s this word?” She had been looking at Jerry’s notes. “Is this holes, hoes or holds?”

“I think it’s ladies,” said Mo.

“Oh, of course.” She brightened. “Little women. Concord, yes? The dangers of the unexamined life?”