We exited and I shut the door behind me.
Larry removed his fedora. “I can never get used to all that light,” he said, rubbing his eyes. Even with the protective contact lenses on, I knew it hurt without the glasses. He patted me on the shoulder. “Man, the evening could not have gone more perfect. Did you see her expression, man? She’ll be thinking about that kiss the whole night.”
We grabbed a cab and he was humming the Final Fantasy song.
“Three days and she’ll call me, apologize, ask to meet me privately.”
“If she doesn’t?” I asked.
“Then it wasn’t meant to be. At least I gave it my best shot.” He looked at me. “You’re still going to L.A. tomorrow?”
I nodded. “I do it every year. You gonna be okay?”
“Lots of research to do. I’ll be busy.” He looked at my coat. “You got a lot more gadgets in there?”
“I’d love to go on a date where I don’t have to use any of them.”
“Oh c’mon, man. I know you had a little thing for Hyori. Don’t say a part of you didn’t want to.” He shook his finger at me. “Oh, Hyori, I haven’t been with a girl proper since my ex-wife. Can you remind me of what it means to make passionate love with a woman again? Aw yeah!”
“I worry for the day you actually get married again.”
“Just don’t let any light grenades go off.”
“What do you think they wanted from you?” I asked.
“Probably control of the factories. They don’t know how little control I actually have,” he said and laughed. “I’m not tired. Should we grab another drink?”
I shrugged. “Only if you promise no more crazy girls.”
“You know I can’t make that promise. Besides, who’s crazier, the one who leads, or the one who follows?”
“One of these days, I’m going to meet a girl crazier than any girl you’ve met and you’ll find out what it feels like.”
“Bring it on.”
VII.
By the time I got back to my apartment, it was 4:34 in the morning. I was about to sleep but heard my neighbors, a young couple, screaming at each other. There was pounding, cursing, yelling again. My heart raced, my mind zipping back to a time when I was the one screaming at Linda and she was screaming back. Little tatters of regret crept into my mind, splitting open sieves. I tossed, tightened the ear plug in my ear, turned on the radio to drown out sound. I could hear the rage and their love bitterly intertwined into repulsion. They wanted to stop. They just didn’t know how.
Eventually, the screaming died down. Did they make up, or did they sleep in separate rooms? I usually ended up sleeping on the sofa.
I struggled through sleep, angry I couldn’t rest, wondering about meaningless words that still stung. Pain had an expiration date, didn’t it? Before I knew it, it was seven a.m. and I’d slept in a hazy nausea that felt more like being adrift than at rest. America, here I come.
2. Do You Believe?
I.
I came to Los Angeles once a year for my sister’s birthday. She’d passed away, but her husband was still alive and it was her dying wish I’d visit him every year.
I smelled Los Angeles right after we landed. The pollutants had gotten worse and the ocean smelled like a dumping ground. There were huge billboards of Jesus in military fatigues and a laser gun, a logo above him asking, “Do you believe?” The biggest billboard in the world was a sky board owned by the Church of Peace that played a 24-hour broadcast of Jesus the General. Jesus the General was the most highly rated show in the United States and a nine-time winner of the GEAs (Global Entertainment Awards). Oddly, the second most popular was the Real Life of Rhonda, an ex-porn star who still engaged in crazy sexual escapades and had won eighteen GEAs. She was nearly sixty, but American plastic surgeons were the best in the world and she looked like she was nineteen. Her catch phrase was, “Where have you been?” and she ventured the world finding sex in all its different forms. Jesus versus Rhonda was the biggest ratings war the planet had ever seen.
The plastic surgeons played a bigger role in this battle than anyone cared to admit. They’d gotten so skilled, they could make anyone look exactly like anyone else. People started asking to look like old celebrities. Marilyn Monroe was popular. So were JFK, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. Scandals arose when random citizens got surgery to look like celebrities and the journalists got them mixed up. Eventually, the government had to pass a law on “Image Facilitation” as plastic surgery officially came to be known. No recreating public figures without a hundred-million-dollar fee (USD).
We were the only country still using the American dollar. Everyone else had adapted Standard Currency (SC) after the dollar’s inflation made it worthless decades ago. An orange juice that cost me 2 SC cost me almost 10,000 USD. In fact orange juice in L.A. was more expensive than Image Facilitation depending on the sale that was going on at the time.
LAX was one of the safest air fortresses in the world. Part of that was because of the huge military presence, soldiers with huge guns watching me at every corner. Outside, Los Angeles had reverted to its western origins. It was literally the Wild West out there. Rather than impose gun control, Americans had gone the way of equipping everyone with arms. You had to wear vests and a helmet in case of stray bullets that might break bones. Hospital bills were super expensive too since they had to work for a profit.
I’d packed my armor suit which was in all grays to let strangers know I was a neutral, not bound up in one of the turf wars that raged throughout the city as indicated by different-colored armor. The glass plating on the helmet surrounded my head and I fastened the armor to cover all major arteries. I’d gotten accustomed to the violence, especially since most public places had gunbots or aerial drones to take down hostiles.
I still hated coming. I always felt like I was being sold something, even on the taxis that were filled with 3D panoramas of advertisements and holobuddies hooked into my credit information to determine what kind of products I’d be interested in. If I opted out of ads, my cab rates would be ten times the normal rate. Endure ads and the ride was partially subsidized. The cab driver was a grumpy old man who asked, “Where to?”
I gave him the address for the hospital.
He didn’t turn around and I was glad he wasn’t the chattering type asking me a hundred questions about where I was from. I felt exhausted, especially with the flip in time zone and the fact that I’d barely slept the night before.
I thought about my brother-in-law, Ian. He was a snob whose only obsession was being famous when he had his sanity. He tried real hard to be famous, forced my sister to do a lot of stupid things for him. I remembered the first time I met him, I was just ending gun training class. A young girl named Tina couldn’t stop crying after the teacher shot her because she’d cowered at the last second causing the bullet to impact her at an angle that made her bang her head. The teacher forced us to type in our standards (copy/paste disabled) while she chewed out Tina for not following instructions.
We will immediately report any suspicious behavior to the teacher.
Anyone threatening any other student, even as a joke, should be reported.
On and on.
Kelly came in as she was picking me up and said, “You better not tell Mom about Ian.”
“Who’s Ian?”
I found out a few minutes later. Ian smelled funny and had messy curly hair. The first thing he asked was, “Damn, your brother’s really ugly. You think I can rap about that?”