The cab’s an AutoCab tricked out for tourists—driverless, its silky voice crackles through the speakers.
“Destination?”
“Fort Point,” I tell it, checking the shooting schedule I have for Zhou.
“Destination?”
“Fort. Point.”
“Calculating,” it says, synching with my profile before sliding into traffic. “Welcome to San Francisco—”
The topography of this place is sun-blanched ruinporn, an economic gutting—city block after city block of housing projects, slapdash QuickCrete construction jobs, acres of storage container housing sites stacked in corrugated sheet metal towers. Apartment building units with window slits. Beige patches of dead grass. A car’s been pushed to the center of a playground and set on fire, the smoke and gushing flames like the oil fires they streamed from Iran and Iraq following the Israeli War. iLux catches my position, pushes notifications through the streams—warns me travel delays are likely.
“What’s causing the delay?”
The cab searches, broadcasts relevant headlines:… this morning, an explosion on a Muni bus… Several dozen feared dead… Thirty-six reported dead, twenty-one wounded, the death toll expected to climb…
“Jesus Christ—”
“Travel delays are likely,” says the taxi.
I pin the news report to a city map, overlay with the cab’s route to Fort Point—it looks like we’ll be passing the scene. Stuck in traffic, the air gritty, or maybe just soured by the chemical stink of the car fire we passed. Headlines swim in my eyes: a pipe-bomb explosion on the Double Rock route, the wreckage gumming up traffic for miles. Gang-related, crowdsourced news feeds, Cartel dispute, I go ahead and set up a user account with AutoCab while we’re inching along, buying a week-block fare instead of paying by the meter. We reach the first police barricade and I can see the bombed-out bus ahead on our right. Cops direct us through their pylons—the scene’s grisly despite the extinguished fires, the skeletal remains of a double-long bus, blown-out windows, bodies lined up on the sidewalk wrapped in sheets, some of the bodies’ social profiles still lit, rapidly updating profile statuses despite being dead. Ambulances and fire trucks are on scene, but the paramedics stand around with a couple of SWAT officers—everyone’s laughing now that there’s no one left to try to save.
The taxi threads into a single lane. Three white cops with shaved heads and Ray-Bans hold a black teenager to the ground, his wrists zip-tied, an arsenal of automatic weapons spread along the sidewalk, baggies of cocaine and bricks of brown sugar on the hood of a Camry. Labels hover over each gun: AK-47, FN SCAR Mk 17, M72 LAW. The Adware’s augged the cops: Espozito, Stewart, Klein, badge numbers and service history, real-time charges as they’re levied against the kid. Already the comment fields are blowing up, CitizenWatch, SFAnti, 4thState, SFLibertarian, complaining of racially motivated violence, tagging each cop with civil disobedience accusations and filing citizen review complaints—the cops’ records display in the Adware, every complaint, every charge processed, every official review. Crowds have gathered, watching disinterestedly.
“Every measure will be taken to provide for your security,” the taxi says. “I’ve calculated a safe route—”
A few blocks past, the traffic picks up speed—emptied storefronts, boarded-over windows, abandoned cars tagged with phrases: Slinks all the fcuk and 187 $-T and God si Love. We pass through an intersection and the city improves, like I’ve entered into a different city entirely, SmartTags on the businesses, coupons offering free samples of eggnog lattes at Fourbarrel Coffee, Einstein Bros. bagels, BOGO deals at Burberry and the Gap. The street narrows like we’re driving through a canyon of gold, Bulgari and Louis Vuitton and Gucci, women wearing little more than string bikinis with max socials broadcasting their availability. I squint up into brilliant blue sky where a gorgeous face smiles, a model for Bovary’s saying, “Everything you’ve always wanted.” The Golden Gate Bridge looms ahead just like the innumerable pictures I’ve seen of it, the red spires and swooping cables vivid in the sun, almost unreal how crisp it seems. The cab pulls through Fort Point security checkpoints into a turnaround.
“Enjoy your afternoon,” says the taxi. “Find your happy ending in San Fran Cisco!”
A sloping hillside, a copse of pines. The ocean spray scent of the bay. Cars are double-parked in the lots, joggers and dog walkers crowd the sunlit paths that lead downhill to the fort at the base of the bridge. The fort comes into view, a sort of squat-box brick building tucked beneath one of the bridge’s behemoth arches, and NPS.Gov/Fort Point pop-ups bubble up toward points of interest in the masonry and link to articles about the Fort: Castillo de San Joaquin, 1865, the CSS Shenandoah, blinking for donations to fund preservation efforts and future expansion of the museum. Wandering the interior of the fort’s like wandering catacombs—stone corridors and arches, the roar of the ocean and the cries of gulls reverberating across the repeating architecture, blending into a deafening echo that robs the place of any beauty. Signs guide me downstairs, to underground halls that have been roped off for the fashion shoot. A production assistant waits on a folding chair. Once she sees me, she explains that I’ve entered a restricted area.
“I’m here to see Cao-Xing,” I tell her. “I think she knows I’m coming,” but the production assistant’s face doesn’t brighten until I say, “Kelly Lee—”
“Sure,” she says, scanning my profile against her list. “Dominic? John Dominic? Go ahead and follow along the hallway here. They’re in the middle of the shoot, so hang back until they break. Kelly’s down there already—”
The air of these corridors is stale and the bricks are cold. The outer sounds of ocean and gulls and tourists have been suffocated, the only echo in the corridors is the sound of my footfalls and what I imagine to be the beating of my heart reverberating off the bricks. I’m nervous—to see her, like meeting someone I’ve known intimately from a distance. Will I even recognize her? I walk until I hear the whispering shutter whir of cameras and hushed voices. The corridor curves and I come to the shoot—they’ve set up in a cell, studio lights aimed at the curved ceiling push unnerving shadows across the walls. Massive chains hang from bolts in the stone and lay coiled. Only a half a dozen or so work the shoot—adjusting lights, stationed at a makeup table they’ve set up inside a pop-up tent, working a computer rig almost identical to Gavril’s back home. The photographer’s on his knees, a young kid, searching for angles. Zhou’s here—Kelly—modeling with two women, the three of them painted gold, nude except for a lace of gold chains, their bodies detailed with finely drawn gold-leaf lines. Their eyes are brushed black with smoke-colored paint. They lie in the dust and in the chains, intertwined with each other, watching the photographer scurry before them like they’re demons interrupted from ancient sleep. The women open their mouths as if to swallow him, the interior of their mouths and their teeth dyed crimson.