Sleepless (3 page)

I pictured myself, menaced by foes, brandishing a tomato.

A phone rang in the house.

A business phone.

"Welcome to My Nightmare" as ring tone.

I allowed myself to finish my exercise in visualization, picturing a bowl filled with bullets floating in a vermilion sauce of unknown origin. It was unappetizing. No, things were as they should be with me. My values in place. Such as they were.

I went inside, letting the tinted green glass door sigh closed behind me, my ears registering the slightest change in pressure as it shut. The song continued to play, Alice Cooper telling me he thought I'd feel like I belong in his nightmare.

Right at home.

I stood at the Dadox cube table, my face reflected in the chrome surface, framed top and bottom by the eight phones laid out in neat rows of four. From this angle, looking down, the recessed ceiling lights highlighted perfectly the strip of thinning hair running back to front on top of my head.

I made a mental note to shift the table so to diminish this effect, knowing the change would set off a chain reaction of furniture moving as I tried to keep the room in balance.

The song continued to play.

I considered the flashing screen on the bright blue Sanyo Katana. I'd assigned the phone to this particular client not out of any attempt at broadly ironic racist humor but because the shade of blue on the casing matched so well the color I'd seen highlighting the lower scales of a dragon tattoo encircling the length of her left arm. Still, sometimes the shoe fits.

I answered the phone.

"You let me ring for a very long time."

I nudged the Dadox with my knee, just a few inches to the right, looking down to gauge the impact the change had on my revealed bald spot.

"Yes, I did."

"You had something pressing."

"That sounds like a statement."

"Excuse me?"

"It sounds to me as if you just made a statement of fact, declaring that I had something more pressing to do than answer the phone, as opposed to asking if I did."

The light still glared unacceptably off the shiny skin topping my dome.

Moved one inch farther from this spot, the relocation of the table would demand not only rearrangement of the room, but the jettisoning of several pieces and the acquisition of several new ones. In my mind I could see the shock waves this would create, radiating through every room in the house.

"And did you?"

I considered her question, looked at my reflection, thought briefly about my own vanity, and shook my head.

"No, I had nothing more pressing. I was simply procrastinating."

"Don't, in future, when I call, keep me waiting, please."

The "please" was an afterthought on her part, dedicated to the skill and efficiency with which I did my work. A bone of courtesy thrown my way, perhaps, but I knew it took some effort on her part. And I appreciated that.

"I will, in future, endeavor to be promptly responsive, thank you."

"Come and see me."

I looked out the glass at the smoking world.

"Someone blew up La Cienega last night. The Guards have checkpoints everywhere."

"Did you set off the bomb?"

"No. According to the news, whoever set off the bomb did so as a final editorial comment regarding the universe."

"Then you have nothing to fear from checkpoints."

"I don't fear the checkpoints, I simply don't care to be stuck in the resulting traffic."

A pause. Perhaps a slight exhalation over the line, betraying the thinnest reed of annoyance.

"You kept me waiting for you to answer. Do not keep me waiting any longer. Please."

The word, on this occasion, meant to imply that it was for my own sake she was pleading. And most certainly, it was.

"I'll be there as soon as I may."

The line went dead.

Was it me, or had there been coarseness in the quality of her tone, slight nicks and burrs along the usually sharp edge, betraying overuse or lack of care?

Even after all the carriers had merged under pressure from the government to pool their resources and keep the wireless taps open, it wasn't always possible to tell what was in a person's voice over a cell and what was simply static, interference, white noise. But, assuming I'd heard true, her tone implied nothing quite so much as someone very tired.

I held the phone in my hand, looked about the room, and set it on the pearlescent white top of the broad oval Thor coffee table.

It looked quite good there. And I could easily picture the other phones arranged around it. The change would require only the slightest echoing modifications of the room. The Dadox could simply remain in place, as I'd no longer be required to look into its reflective surface.

I pinched the bridge of my nose, picked up the Katana, and retuned it to the silver cube among the other phones. The point was that I should be required to look at myself when these phones rang. That I be taxed to contemplate myself honestly before answering, knowing that to answer the phone would likely obligate me to take the job. And looking at oneself honestly must, sadly, include the contemplation of one's thinning hair.

So I carefully moved the table back to where it had been before, and went down the hall to my office, somewhat at peace, wondering which guns I should take with me to best suit my current mood.

7/8/10

LUNCH. OR DINNER. Does it matter at this point? Second meal of the day, eaten well after sundown. Hot dogs from the cart in Culver. How do they get their grass-fed beef dogs down here from SF? I suspect they are using different beef, more likely something other than beef. I know not all the California herds were destroyed, but I still can't imagine the cost of raising them organic. Better not to think too much about it.

Looking in my phone after the first batch of deliveries, realized I've fallen behind logging them. Trying to get caught up, but it's hard to remember everything. Was the Chinese Shabu dragon delivered to the models throwing the suite party at the Chateaus? Or did it go to the airbrush artist at the custom bodywork shop on South La Brea? There might be something in my journal, but I don't have time to go through it.

Guess?

No. The fault is mine for not keeping more accurate records. Better to record only what I can definitely remember about the sales than to implicate someone in a crime they had no part in.

Was that course work? Justice in Practice and Theory? Professor Steinman. An A- from Steinman because "a young man should always be left room to improve."

That pissed off Rose.

"An A is a fucking A."

I tried to tell her it didn't matter to me. Not like the minus was going to drag down my GPA and hurt my prospects.

She said that wasn't the point.

"You earned it. It's not fair that you earned it and he ticked a fucking minus after it because he thought it would teach some cute fucking lesson. Fuck that. You should report that shit to the chair of your department."

Had I ever met a girl who cursed so much? It was college, so I must have, even at Stanford, but I'd never had a beer with one before. And something about the cursing of a Cal girl was particularly blunt. They weren't test curses, dropped to see how you'd react, or tried on for the first time after moving away from mother and father; they were the real thing, casual and heartfelt.

I don't even remember who won The Game now. I barely watched after I got a look at her in the stands. So unlikely that she would be at a football game in the first place or that she'd talk to someone who looked like I did. Lucky the guy who brought her was such an asshole. Derrick. Thanks for being an asshole, Derrick. Thanks for leaving her at the after-game party.

Parties.

The party on Vermont.

Where Beenie introduced me to Hydo.

All Hydo could talk about was girls. Girls and gaming. Speed jabber. That girl over there looked just like a girl he wanted to nail when he was playing World of Warcraft for the first time. When it was "like just for fun an' shit, not like a career." He talked about the character he had, his first character, a dwarf. Told me its name. Zolor? Zoler? Zolar? Zorlar? Zolrar? Zorlir?

Xorlar.

"Like with an X. Anytime you slap an X on something, you make it cooler."

Xorlar.

That's it.

Funny how those things float to the top.

Rose told me, "The point isn't to try and think about anything, don't try to solve anything, just write. What's important will float to the top." Me sitting with a thick leather-bound journal in my hand, flipping all those blank pages. The first gift she ever gave me. She wanted me to fill it with something. With me. I don't know. I tried. But I didn't have anything to write. It sat on our bookshelf for how long? 2001. We met at The Game. Spent Christmas together in her cold room in Berkeley. I remember because we talked about 9/11 so much. She was so pissed at us, America. I understood the point she was making, but it still made me angry. And she gave me the book.

Christmas 2001-Summer 2010. Eight years on the shelf. Until she handed me a gift-wrapped package and said, "Happy birthday." Months from my birthday. Opened it, saw the journal. Thought she was being sweet or trying to make a point of some kind. Took a few minutes before I realized she was serious, telling me where she had bought it, how she had almost forgoten my birthday.

Did I play along? I don't think so. She doesn't want me to play along when she gets confused. She wants me to tell her. But she'd never been so unhooked before, so much in another place. So damn out of it. I got confused myself. I didn't play along, I just didn't know what was happening.

By the time I read the inscription and realized it was the same old journal, her mind had moved on to something else. The baby. How she had smiled that morning, before she started crying.

Eight years.

And now all I want to do is write in the thing. Get it down. Whatever it is. Get us down. Before she disappears from me.

Don't think about it, just write.

Xorlar.

Chapter 3.

PARK HADN'T PLANNED ON MAKING A LIVING THIS WAY. Which was odd, for him to be doing something he hadn't planned to do. But that was the way of the world now. And he accepted it. Or that's what he would have said, but it wasn't true at all.

Park did not accept that this was the way of the world. He knew the true world was hibernating, waiting to come out from its long winter nap. People were waiting to be themselves again. It wasn't that human nature was base and obscene and brutal, it was only fear and confusion and despair that made them look and act that way.

He felt that deeply.

Felt it even as the plainclothes pushed his face a little harder against the raw heat of his car hood.

"What the fuck is this?"

Park didn't answer the question. He knew from experience that answering the question would just lead to more grief.

Grief, something he had in ample supply.

So when the plainclothes shoved the Ziploc of Ecstasy in his face, he kept his mouth shut.

"This your prescription, asshole?"

"What about this?"

The partner shook two large brown plastic bottles, one in each hand, like maracas.

"What we have? Ritalin? Xanax? Got ADD issues? Anxiety attacks? Can't really tell with these unmarked bottles. Pharmacy forget to print the labels, asshole?"

The first plainclothes, the one wearing a black Harley-Davidson T and chrome wraparounds, kicked Park's feet a little wider apart.

"He's got an anxiety attack now, motherfucker. Got anxiety about how far he's gonna have it up his ass once they see him inside."

The partner tipped his Angels cap.

"Too true, too true, he's a looker. Sistahs are gonna eat him up."

Park shifted, trying to peel his face up before it blistered.

The plainclothes grabbed him by the hair and gave his head a shake.

"Fuck do you think you're doing? Did I or did I not say not to fucking move?"

He nodded at his partner.

"This guy, he thinks he can get up and walk away when he wants. Thinks he's at liberty to split."

The partner pulled his head out of the car, flipping through the plastic zipper wallet that contained Park's registration, insurance card, AAA, and extra fuses. All of it, except the fuses, essentially useless at this point.

DMV had frozen up when the state went broke; it was unlikely there was an insurance company left with the holdings to cover a claim on a dented bumper; and the phones at AAA had been playing the same recorded apology for nearly a year now: "We regret that membership services have been suspended indefinitely."

Suspended indefinitely.

Thinking about those words, Park had a sudden mental image of the world, its activity and life frozen, paused, suspended indefinitely, waiting while this overlay of the world reeled about, aping the original.