“No, I mean, really, how am I gonna look the fuck after you?”
I told her she didn’t have to look after me, that I was okay.
She was staring at the ceiling.
“You’re such a, God I hate the word, but you’re such an innocent. I mean, how am I supposed to walk away from that?”
I wanted to tell her, I wanted to say what she wanted to hear, and I wanted to hear what she would say next, but she would have been mad if she knew what I did. So instead I told her her name, I told her who I was, I told her about the baby, and she looked at me and struggled with it all and told me she knew all that. “Sometimes,” she said, “it’s just easier not to try and keep it straight.” And she put her head on the floor. “God, I wish I could sleep.” I thought about the DR33M3R in the safe. And came out here to the car with my journal and laptop and Hydo’s travel drive. There’s more to learn in there. But I don’t have time to search.
Stay focused.
Francine is leaving. I need to help with the baby. Stay focused.
THE GALLERY WAS beyond the southeastern edge of Skid Row, in one of the abandoned warehouses of the Los Angeles wholesale produce market. It was not, fortunately, in one of the warehouses decommissioned while still full of fruits and vegetables that had been half-rotted by the time they were received, and thoroughly rotted by the time it was realized that the cost of moving whatever was salvageable to market would far outstrip any profits. Those warehouses were some distance away; still, the massive tonnage of what was, by now, high-quality compost permeated the air with a sweetness that was nearly overwhelming. I saw more than one black-swathed artiste with previous experience of the space sniffing at a sachet of potpourri. Most made do by dipping cocktail napkins into their plastic cups of wine, using them to cover their noses.
Making no effort to camouflage the smell, I found that it became increasingly difficult to concentrate on the present moment. As is often the case with intense and singular odors, this one evoked a powerful nostalgia. Our sense of smell registers in the reptile bits of the brain at the top of the spine. Who hasn’t been thrown back to some unpleasantness or delight by a sudden whiff of an old lover’s cologne or the unexpected combination of burned toast and mint dish soap? In the gallery, I was recalling deep loam and mulch, limitless greenery and rains, rot that ate your uniform from your back, undergrowth matted in sweet jungle muck soil.
In mind of my formative years.
In such a state it was essential that I concentrate. I was, after all, armed and in the presence of a large number of people. The smell and the tide of memory could have easily washed away my controls and defenses, leaving behind the exposed carcass of my true self.
I will confess that I allowed that self a moment’s freedom. It duly took stock of the strategic situation, selected targets, and calculated how many innocent dead might be manufactured before some of the more able personal security contractors attached to the gallery’s wealthier patrons took action and maneuvered me into an inevitable cross fire at the far corner of the warehouse near the bathrooms. But before I could mount the three steps that led to a lectern from which select pieces in the show would soon be auctioned, and which afforded superior firing lines, I focused my concentration on a square of tagboard and its hand-lettered description of the work of art above it.
It would not do to be run to ground in such a place, riddled with bullets by hired guns. That it was an art gallery was insufficient. The smell aside, the DJ was playing irritating French chamber pop. I would not die to that sound track.
My painstakingly assembled life had meaning. The litter of bodies that lined the path I had walked these many years were not incidental or random. There was a reason for so much death.
I would know the moment. Vague about so much else, I knew with utter certainty that I would see and recognize the moment of my death, the shape and purpose of my life revealed in my passing.
I could bear to wait some more.
So I looked at the art.
Mounted on an eighteen-by-eighteen-inch square of what appeared to be salvaged parquet flooring, framed in Deco chrome, long black enamel accents at the corners, the piece was a kind of collage. In the lower right corner was a list of enemies vanquished, quests completed, treasures found, mountains scaled, riddles answered. In the lower left, a clumsy but earnest pencil portrait on blue-lined graph paper of a one-eyed pirate, long hair held back by a bandanna, dangling chains and trinkets revealed by an open-neck shirt. Above both of these elements was a handheld gaming or Internet device. It was difficult to identify a make or model as the case of the gadget had been removed, leaving a green resin board etched in thin lines of gold and silver, miniature numbered and lettered keys, several chips, a disk of bright silicon, a cluster of colored wires, and a screen with a five-inch diagonal. Across this screen a high-resolution version of what I took to be the pirate pictured below swashed and buckled. On the high seas, at land, with cutlass, dagger, or bare wits, he gave proof that the list of derring-do below were not the bluffs of an armchair buccaneer. Dead center of the three items was a dull silver thumb drive. Nondescript, a Memorex 2G. Fragments of yellowed computer punch cards, the inner works of broken clocks, and cloudy paste stones, Salvation Army junk jewelry, decorated the spaces between the key elements.
The tagboard below the piece explained that I was looking at Kelvin Ripu, a level 87 Raider Prince, Last Commodore of the Orcan Fleet, Possessor of the Trident Perilous, Rider of Winds, Lord of Waves. It explained further that Kelvin was the creation of “gamer/artist” Kevin Puri, a twenty-seven-year-old call-center team manager in Mumbai. Kevin had been “crafting” Kelvin for five years. The piece was composed of Kevin Puri’s handwritten and signed account of Kelvin’s greatest accomplishments within Chasm Tide, his own drawing of the character, digitally preserved highlights of Kelvin in action, and the character itself, password, account number, the entire long string of 1s and 0s that it was knitted from, preserved in the thumb drive. All other traces of Kelvin Ripu, I was assured by the description, had been erased from the Chasm Tide mainframes and Kevin Puri’s own desktop and backup hard drive.
The art object itself had been conceived and assembled by Shadrach, best known for the street and performance art he executed within Chasm Tide.
Kelvin was being offered for sale at 25,000 U.S. dollars. A little red sticker on the wall let me know that someone had already met that price.
A young man projecting a passable counterfeit of the negligent aura of an obscure rock star or fiercely independent film director stood at the center of a small crowd, commenting on the market for the works on display.
“Are they collectible? Yes. But they’re more than that. They’re also fully playable. As is, they are static works of art. Lavished with attention by the gamer/artists. The accomplishments, the artifacts they carry, the look of the characters, are the fulfillment of dreams. Inspired by a setting in Chasm Tide, or a mounting surface, or a frame, or some found object that he wishes to incorporate, Shadrach seeks out the characters that can be ultimately completed by inclusion in one of his pieces. But once you own them, these works of art change in nature. The owner of a character’s account is the animating soul. The life. If you so choose, you can break the glass, pay to reactivate the account, and evolve the work. These pieces are finished as they hang on the wall, but you decide if they are alive.”
He touched the corner of a heavy Baroque frame, the gilding peeling off in long curls, a sorceress of some kind pinned behind the glass.
“They are collectible. Changeable. In-game, you can breed them if you like. They are unique.”
“They’re fake.”
This interjection came from another young man, one whose quite genuine aura of wealth, privilege, and fame easily outshone the lecturer and exposed highlights of envy and resentment.