The voice seemed so young I turned toward it and saw a child, virtually a child.
Or at most a fifteen-year-old, a boy with shoulder-length hair combed to a billowing sheen — and I checked the ceiling along which I realized I’d sensed transverse waves eight or ten inches deep flowing the length of the loft. God knows why they built those cement-and-plaster waves fifty years ago, but it was as strong and right as all the powder-smooth New York walls laid on by a generation of Italian immigrant plasterers.
I asked where my pages were. I asked again and sounded just anxious enough. Above a workbench was a poster showing formulaic sequences. Someone had written in the lower right the word NAND, which in computer logic means NOT AND — or, input signal zero, output one (which sounds like you get something for nothing).
The man in the glasses said my diary was…
I asked what kind of films he made and the boy said Original, original.
I said, Joined the filmmaking revolution, have you?
To you it’s a revolution maybe, he said.
I said my diary wouldn’t interest them if they were pros. The man said I seemed very into it, like the description of those two dudes and the chick in Ajaccio. I said there wasn’t any description of them in the two pages I’d left at Claire’s, there was merely reference to my having described in intimate detail to Dagger, right? The boy cut in that it was good to keep a diary, he wished he’d started when he was young, he’d lost so much. I asked if either of them knew someone named Cosmo, and they said no.
The man in glasses mentioned a cup of tea. I said thanks. I looked at the far end of the loft and said, What’s with the screen?
The man said it was going to be a slit scan when they got it finished, but it wasn’t really what he was into.
The boy asked what we thought we were trying to do making that film. Get something together, I said. Christ, said the man from over by a table where he’d switched on a hot plate, how much diary had I written about it? I said maybe thirty thousand words. The boy said, Those two pages make the diary sound better than the film — I thought he was high — and the man said how much did I bring to New York, and I said thirty pages about, I thought, and he said did that mean twenty-eight back where I was staying — but tried to interrupt himself with a semblance of enthusiasm saying were they about Corsica too. I said I wasn’t sure if it was twenty-eight or more, I sometimes got confused after they were typed up. The man dropped tea bags into two mugs and said why did I bring the pages to New York. I said I wanted to tell Phil Aut what had been in our film, so I wanted to be able to check my facts. The boy hummed.
The man said over his shoulder as he was pouring water that he’d show me the slit scan, he didn’t have the camera yet, he needed a sixty-five mill for a job but he had some good interesting panels behind the screen slit. I wasn’t in a hurry? This kind of film wasn’t really what he was into, he said.
The big metal door closed behind me. I took out my wallet and I murmured, Let’s see, how do I get to Graf’s from here. I returned my wallet to my inside pocket which wasn’t bulging as it bulged when I visited Claire. The big door scraped again and closed. There was the sweet smell of pot. I said what about the two pages I came for. The boy now surprisingly close behind me said, The great Phil Aut doesn’t know shit about film, he’ll quote you a price and tell you you’re not commercial, that’s Phil.
The man lifting two cups turned and said, Shut up, Jerry, and sloshed tea onto the floor. He grinned. I said, Jerry you’ve got principles.
Jerry said to our host, I’ve seen you put in your pretty contacts and go off to work as happy as…
I asked Jerry if he could get me an appointment with Aut.
I never go near him. I don’t even know where his office is.
The door wasn’t bolted.
If someone was busting into Sub’s looking for more diary pages, at least they wouldn’t find Sub or Ruby or Tris.
I got the door open. The boy took a drag on his joint. A bit close, I said. The boy said what did I mean I got confused when they were typed up, and the man said Hey your tea.
I said my daughter in London made a carbon usually, if she was doing the typing, so I sometimes thought of all those pages doubled.
The man with the metal-rimmed glasses had stopped but now moved my way again. He said, Your pages. Just take your cup, I’ll get them.
I said no thanks, I knew them.
What did I come down here for, then? the man was saying as he bent over to put the cups on the floor.
I was going to be detained. I couldn’t tell how clear the boy was.
I said, I don’t know much yet that’s going on here but I know we haven’t been disagreeing about Freestyle, or perforation, or magnetic stripe, or price, and I know that — to quote myself again — I have no wish to engage the boss’s wife in conversation about Dagger and me, but you tell your boss Mr. Phil Aut that whether or not he foots our gas from London to Ajaccio and back, it will be of interest to deal directly with me.
I was taking the stairs two at a time and steps came after but then stopped, then started, but far off.
I called up, I want you to explain your camera track to me.
He’d said it was not really what he was into. There had been something genuine up there, but nothing to do with my diary pages, which were also genuine. That music from Hair that Lorna used to play and play had stopped.
I was back on the street. Warehouse space, light industry, and in the area more and more artists, filling space, displacing industry.
Did the man in glasses know the name Monty Graf? If so he probably didn’t know that I had six hours till that appointment.
A girl in jeans with a knapsack came along looking up at the buildings as if for something in one of those loft windows. She was smiling, like a blind person or as if she knew something good. My neck itched but I wouldn’t find a chemist’s this far south of the Village and north of Canal. Lorna’s packing had been flawless, of course, but the Wilkinson dispenser was empty of new blades and the one in my razor was ready to be retired. When I visited the Wilkinson lab in Newcastle I asked a young engineer in a long white coat if the profit motive might not lead Wilkinson to relent and make a blade that didn’t last so incredibly long. He said this was not a prime concern.
Wilkinson want their American people resident.
My only mistake had been to mention Cosmo just now. That was giving too much away. I didn’t know if the Indian had mentioned my visit to the Knightsbridge gallery.
And the mistake seemed then doubled by my having sent that Empire State 3-D yesterday to Cosmo, who knew we weren’t friends.
Well where had I seen the Indian before?
And why should Claire care if I’d put in writing what the man looked like who came running out of the grove in Wales?
What I wanted was not a trip to Wall Street but a cheeseburger and a malted and the early afternoon edition of the Post.
SLOT INSERT
Witness a different cartridge: not a thing solidly instated in a slot, rather a slot inserted in a thing.
What happens? Shift a something to make room for an emptiness.
This slot, then — has it identity unfilled? Maybe only so. I.e., if as appears to be true this slot is, say, the place where (not to be too specific) motives for making the DiGorro-Cartwright film can be found, isn’t it true that when these appear in the slot thus filling it or causing it to cease to be empty, it thus ceases to be itself?
What appear to be such motives? Each one, as it fills the inserted slot, is also transparent. Through the motive may be seen the lack it is aimed to fill, as if the motive were a picture thrown not upon a screen but upon a volume, the motive thus even in its nagging transparency quite whole and plastic. A slot if like this one insertable is not only a place for a cartridge, and where inserted this slot is a cartridge of the future, of unknowns, or the unknown.