Anything but a threat.
“Indeed,,” he replied. “The ‘Occluded Frame’ is simply the name we give to our more fundamental world. “
There it was. The shift in intonations. The narrowing of his gaze.
“So what you’re saying is that you’re just another religious nut. “
“Yes! “ Baars cackled. But the laughter was forced. I was certain of it. “Exactly!”
“So then what makes you special?”
“Because I’ve been there, Mr. Manning. I’ve crossed the Lacuna. I have literally walked the Frame. “
“Like I said… “
So I worried him. It could mean he was involved in Jennifer’s disappearance, but it could also mean that I had tweaked him with my snide remarks-I have this way of snapping people’s elastics. In the Compound, he was both king and pope, and here I come waltzing in, challenging, questioning, dismissing…
And most importantly, reminding. That the borders of his fiefdom were small-small-small. That he was just another me-me-me dope like the rest of us.
I leaned back in my seat, blinked while soaking in the stone. At the same time I strolled with Baars down a hardwood hall, Agatha and her humming apparatus behind me.
“Imagine,” Baars was saying. “Imagine a society that has evolved beyond things like meaning and purpose, where nothing matters because anything can be done. Imagine a society that treats the modalities ofhuman experience, everything from the exremes of rape and murder to the tedious mainstays of snoozing and shitting, the same way a gourmand regards items on a restaurant menu… As things to be consumed. “
Of all his monologues, only this one really tingled… but for reasons that had precious little to do with the case. I replayed it in my imagination again and again, mooned over it like a kid with a nudie picture.
A number of questions to ask during the follow-up interview occurred to me. I was especially interested in the details of this Crossing the Lacuna thing. Just what did they use to induce their hallucinations? Did it involve drugs of some kind? Baars had some kind of Timothy Leary thing going-like, totally.
A cloud passed over the sun, and in the momentary gloom I suddenly glimpsed the room-an office of some kind-beyond the plate glass window opposite my car. I saw Stevie sitting behind a grand and paperless desk, leaning back in ergonomic repose, watching me with the intensity of a starving owl.
The evil henchman.
Matching his gaze, I sucked my roach to the nub then flicked it out the window. I started the Golf, then, grinning, shot the guy a quick finger.
Prick. Track Six
ONE POTATO CHIP AT A TIME
She stepped into the restaurant and I saw the whole porno.
Her name was Molly, Molly Modano, and she did not belong. California girl-immediately and obviously, even in an age when geographical identity claims have been pretty much scrambled into white noise. I would have bet my Volkswagen on it.
It was early evening, and I had risked the roaring four-lane traffic to try out the small diner across from my motel. Hard to look cool scrambling across a busy road-almost as hard as looking tough queued up for airport security. The diner sported the name Odd-Jobs in lightless neon tubing across the front, but it was the Day-Glo quip on the port- a-sign that caught my attention: Eat or be eaten. I was just sitting at a booth, pretending to study the menu, swirling my coffee with a clinking spoon, and then there she was, tits on a stick.
Just so you know, there’s always a girl with me. You could say I’m like Hollywood that way. Always hunting for a fresher face.
I didn’t waste time-I never do. I was standing up just as she was sitting down. The key, I’ve found, is to beat the waitress to the punch… Or maybe that’s just a superstition of mine.
“Mind if I join you?”
She looked up as if startled and simply said, “Eew. “
“Eew?” I exclaimed. “I haven’t even unbuttoned my trenchcoat yet!”
All hotties have routines specifically designed for contingencies like me. Some just tell you to go fuck yourself, literally. Others, the ones who are genuinely evil or who just desperately want to be nice, find more creative ways to tell you to go fuck yourself. I actually had one chick offer me change like I was a bum or something!
Molly desperately wanted to be nice. “Sorry, but… I don’t even know you.”
“Apparently you know me well enough to be grossed out.”
“I just got this thing about first impressions.”
I certainly wasn’t complaining from my end: narrow hips and a flat abdomen. High breasts beneath a largely ceremonial bra. A boyish athleticism rounded into feminine allure, like a red-headed Mia Farrow or Gwyneth Paltrow-which simply made it seem all the more appropriate, given that I was a combination of Brad Pitt and the Devil.
“Here I thought first impressions were the only thing I was good at.”
Believe me when I tell you that I have a winning grin, the kind that can shrug away even the most determined ill-willing. She looked at me as though assessing my planetary credentials, then laughed a girlish in-spite-of-her-better-judgment laugh…
“A martyr, huh?”
“Depends on the cause,” I said, sliding into the seat opposite. Just so you know, I’ve been called a sexist pig exactly sixty-nine times. Coincidence? I think not.
The fact is, I am a sexist, in the sense that someone who plays cello all the time is called a cellist. I. Love. Sex. All things being equal, I will choose getting laid pretty much every time. And just so you know, when I say “love,” I don’t mean the snuggle-with-your-wife-on-the-couch variety but the real deal-you know, the kind only crackheads and junkies can know.
The love that keeps you coming back.
An old girlfriend of mine laid it all out for me once. She was a systems analyst named Joyce Pennington, but everyone used to call her Jimmy for some reason. No fewer than 7 of those 69 accusations belong to her-a whopping 11 percent. (She’s also responsible for 9 out of the 19 times I’ve been called a narcissist, but that’s another story.) The first four times she called me a sexist I just shrugged it off-prick a guy with the same insult long enough and he becomes numb. But the fifth time I blew my stack for some reason. So in the calm voice I use to package all my outrage, I gave her the little spiel I gave you above. It was fucking biology, for chrissakes. Was hunger a sin? How about shitting? Was voiding my bowel yet another fascistic exercise?
“And murder isn’t biological?” she replied. I swear her laugh lopped two inches off my dick. You know, that cruel feminine chuckle you hear so often on Sex and the City, the one that says (with pious charity) that, sure, men are all half retarded, but we love them anyway, don’t we? The kind of laugh that men reserve for Labrador retrievers. Bad boy. Bad.
“Oh, Diss,” she continued. “How can you treat women equally if you see them as accessories to your dick?”
I stared at her wordlessly.
“Well?”
So I told her my dick was the only thing I was proud of… that for as long as I could remember I used my sexual prowess as a crutch, a way to limp around the fact that I was too much of a loser for anyone to love. Nobody lubs me. Boo-hoo.
Whatever it takes to get laid.
She figured it out eventually, of course. 2002. On the fourth of July, no less. Jimmy was one smart chick.
Patriotic too.
See, the thing is, I score large. Since I was fourteen, I have slept with at least 558 different women, probably more if you count the nights I’ve blacked out from drinking. I think this is pretty impressive, given that I’m not a rock star. So this is my dilemma: how can I stop seeing women as accessories to my dick when so many of them so obviously want to be?
Seriously.
Look, I know it’s a problem, a vice even. I know it shuts down the possibility of a mature relationship with a certain percentage of the world’s population: the hottie demographic. I know the older I get, the more debauched and pathetic I become. If I were completely honest, I would admit that when the Bonjours handed me that photo of Dead Jennifer, my first thoughts were almost entirely carnal-that when I trolled her Facebook page on the Web afterward, I secretly hoped to find photos of some drunken lingerie party.