The Four Fingers of Death (58 page)

Vienna Roberts had obtained the Pulverizer in the course of her first big modeling job. She’d failed to consult her parents about the job, as she failed to consult them about many other things, though this was perhaps less from a feeling that they would not have consented than it was from a feeling that her parents were not to be disturbed because they were
changing the world
. Changing the world was more difficult even than assembling, for example, one of those inexpensive home media cabinets with the dowels and special little screwdriver thingies. The specifics of her modeling assignment, which she failed to disclose, were also a tiny bit embarrassing. Well, the sponsor of the photo shoot was the Navajo Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Indigenous Ventures, LLC, and in the photo shoot she was to flirt up another girl while rolling some dice on a felted table. They wore whiteface, they were wanton, young, especially pale, and given to reckless wagers, the better to suggest that going to indigenously owned gambling casinos led to casual sex with underage girls who had been vaccinated for human papillomavirus and other venereal contagions.

Vienna, as in all modeling narratives, had been discovered at a mostly deserted leather goods store down by the bus station. Across the street from the guitar store. Her parents did know this: she was working at the leather goods store, part-time after school. She didn’t know how many guys had come into the store saying, “Would you consider letting me take your picture?” It seemed to Vienna that in some dialect, the dialect of vulgarians, these words must have meant: “Pleased to make your acquaintance.” Most of these countless guys had flecks of saliva at the corners of their mouths, or they smelled like the interior of a pizzeria. In times of worldwide sexual slavery, you could make big money exploiting yourself with these types of men. You could also wind up hacked to pieces live on the web.

“Jeez,” she said to one alleged photographer, whose card, with a little icon of an old large-format camera like you might see in a museum, offered the name Mark Schott, “haven’t heard
that
one.”

Schott said, “I’m prepared to offer foolproof testamentary material to prove that I am who I say I am. I’m an industry professional with more clients than I can handle. You will know me by the clouds of acclaim that billow about me. I am also—because I need to be in my line of work—a patient man.”

Vienna Roberts, however, was
not
particularly patient. She went directly home that night, and instead of doing calculus, she checked up on the Mark Schott web gallery, which numbered in the hundreds upon hundreds of images, and which included some major accounts in the Rio Blanco area, Iguana Juana’s, e.g., which employed her flaky boyfriend, Jean-Paul Koo; the Sonoran International Light Rail Corporation; the Air Force of the United States of America. Vienna, after perusing these photographs, which were often salacious, obvious, even shameless, but not quite sexually explicit, was inclined to favor Mark Schott’s attentions. For the money. She told him as much when he again came looking for her down near the bus station.

In fact, that day, her parents were leading a protest out on the square by the bus station. The municipal fountains had not operated there for almost ten years. The number of OxyPlus inhalers changing hands, at the bus station, in dollar value, exceeded the gross national product of several Central Asian fiefdoms. She could hear, out beyond the store, the earnest cries demanding wholesale prices for staple items such as milk and cereal and cheese. The lack of health care in the Southwest! The absence of air-conditioning in the shelter system, which was no shelter system at all, as she had often heard her mother remark, with tears in her eyes. There were sirens too, which meant that the riot police were taking very seriously the idea of the Union of Homeless Citizens. The number of homeless persons in Rio Blanco was enough that a union thereof could challenge the
housed
residents of the city. Or so her mother said, chewing on the end of a gray braid.

The door to the leather goods store opened, and in walked the somewhat flamboyant Mark Schott. He was in search of new and unusual garbs in which to array the bruised and tattered nymphets of his oeuvre. And yet his mission had a double purpose, true, because here he was again, working his persuasions on Vienna Roberts, as though charm were like instrumental excellence on the sitar, something that you had to practice.

“Well, there you are,” he said.

“Here I am,” she said.

“Have you considered the work? Have you had a look at it?”

“I have considered. But I don’t understand why me, and—”

“I have no motive, really, except that I like to see new faces in my photographs, and when I see a face that I find interesting, I proceed with energy to include that face.”

“How is that any different from—”

“It’s enough for me to work in the garden that I work in; in picking the flowers there, you never get to see them again.”

“That’s a nice way of—”

“And what if I have a job in the planning stages for which you might be perfect?”

“I’m considering, Mr. Schott, just like I have maybe considered various other options in my life, except that I’m considering this one a little more seriously. It’s getting daily consideration.”

“You haven’t even asked what the assignment is.”

Vienna Roberts absently hooked and unhooked a bustier on a mannequin beside the counter. Men of dubious occupation emerged from the aisles in various hooded garments, pining for someone for whom they could buy these hides. Their sense of purpose depended on their failure. In places of low light, meager expectations.

“Again,” Schott continued, “you can rely on the ethics of the person who is offering you this opportunity. This is the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, because you have seen my work, and I can put you in touch with people of discernment.” All of this would turn out to be true, but what made the difference for Vienna Roberts was the thatch of ear hair that Mark Schott sported, far in excess of what should have been possible for a man in his early forties. He was kind of fat too, especially around the hips. She could outrun him. Additionally, it was really unclear if he was straight or queer, and queerness was exalted in her pantheon of human pursuits. He reminded her of her instructor in language arts, Mr. McKinley.

“What’s the project, then?” she asked in a way that she hoped would be perceived as casual.

In this way was her commitment secured. What a mistake.

Oh, the words with which to describe her boredom at the Indigenous Ventures photo shoot. Such a momentous day, and yet such boredom. Any model will tell you, Vienna Roberts told friends later, that a photo shoot is a place of almost incalculable boredom. Any model will tell you that the models are dog meat, and a very small portion of dog meat, most of the time. Well, except in the case of the vogue for models who were
overfed
, especially in countries where hunger was a problem, which is to say most countries (excepting China and India). Models were meant to
stand there
, and, in the case of the Indigenous Ventures shoot, lick the face of another girl, nibble on her earlobe, and between camera setups these professional models bantered between themselves, Vienna and the other girl, they would say, “How bad is your flow? Like on day one, for example?” “Oh, man, you wouldn’t believe it; it’s like Old Faithful or something.” “And do you have violent mood swings, and do you remind the people around you that these are really due to their behavior?” “I don’t notice that I hate men any more on the first day than I do any other time. And by the way, I don’t think it’s right to talk about violent mood swings because these are concepts designed by patriarchy.”

And so: the shoot was not terribly interesting to Vienna Roberts, was a disappointment. But it kept her out of school, which she mostly ignored except for Mr. McKinley’s language arts class, where she compiled a list of interesting terms, such as
sockdolager
, and
anaclitic
, which she knew was going to be a good word, and what about
fegaries
, and
nixies?
It was what happened after the shoot that was of interest to her. During the shoot, Mark Schott, with his excessive ear hair and pear-shaped physique, was everywhere but behind the camera. He was standing in front of the girls, exhorting them with hands that were like birds, swooping and feinting, and he was upbraiding the costumers, and he was hopping up and down crying out for new veneers of pale foundation. He was Vienna’s one ally. But at the end of the shoot, when it was time to settle up, he was suddenly
unavailable
. Vienna had been assured she was going to be paid, or perhaps, in retrospect when she thought about it, maybe she had
not
been assured that she was going to be paid. Maybe she had just forgotten to negotiate this point, and this was a reflection of how being related to a pair of political agitators, and living in a tumbledown shack across from the heavily fortified high school, did not result in good instincts where money was concerned. Mark Schott, at the end of the shoot, attempted neglect in the matter of paying up, it seemed, and when she understood what this meant, how she had been shanghaied by Schott and his sunglasses, she found the other girl, who was standing and absently throwing dice across the felt, and she said, “Did you think you were going to get paid?”

Without looking up. “By Mark? Are you kidding? He’s usually pretty bad about that. He gives you a good reference when you go on to do other things. Mark pays in experience; that’s what he’ll tell you.”

Vienna Roberts had, when she was in the midst of a good self-esteem day and was able to assess herself accurately, exactly one undeniable ability, often commented upon in her mediocre report cards and letters home from school: she
spoke the truth to power
. She was raised up to do just this. Vienna Roberts, when driven into the emotional tones that might best be described as
defiant
, could summon in herself such a reservoir of put-downs as to lay low any antagonist. And it was in this mood that she tailed a couple of the makeup under-assistants in no better position than herself, demanding of them where Schott might be pinned down, only to be told that Schott was well on his way to another shoot. When the assistants were asked where this next location was, they admitted that the next location was an airplane hangar outside of town. And when asked about the particulars of the next project, the under-assistants looked warily at each other and one of them whispered to Vienna Roberts that the product that was being photographed next was
the Pulverizer
.

“What’s a Pulverizer?”

“A Pulverizer,” said the under-assistant of eyeliner and rouge and self-paling creams, “has to be seen to be understood.”

She hitched a ride out with them. It was not that the under-assistants, who were driving an algae-powered van that was so far beyond its 200,000 mile checkup that it could have quit at any moment, and which was not possessed of air-conditioning,
wanted
to bring along a churlish young leather goods store employee with delusions of adulthood, but perhaps the under-assistants, like all good people, favored stories in which the downtrodden have their moment of speaking the truth to power. The van had no reliable shock absorption, and so the conversation pixilated as though being run through an old eight-millimeter film projector.

“You know Mark is a really generous man, right?” said the one under-assistant, whose assumed name was Orion. “He’s really involved with all the border charities, and with border groups that are about trying to increase awareness of the unique culture of the border area. He helps a lot of border jumpers across. And he pays off a lot of people to make things right when there’s a danger of slavery. So he’s a good man. And it’s not like he really mistreats us, because he is doing so much good. And if he uses an economic model that’s about barter or payment in services, that doesn’t mean he’s trying to steal. And I don’t know if he told you this, but if you’re sick or something, he can lay his hands on you.”