“He doesn’t. He started with paint, but he didn’t get famous until the geocached installations—”
“Explain those to me—”
“Short films that will only download and play when someone’s Adware hits the exact coordinates he’s established. About a year ago, he set up an installation in front of City Hall—when you reach the last step leading to the building, the exact correct spot along the stairs, a stream downloads to your Adware, whether you consent or not—it’s a pornographic stream of then mayor Costa fooling around with two underage girls, snorting cocaine off their asses. It hijacks your vision until the film ends. The installations can’t be removed because they’re broadcast from satellites he’s hacked. Understand?”
“And he has these installations all around the city?”
“All around the country. There are fans of his who try to track them down, catalog them—but Mook says only about twenty-five percent of his installations have been discovered so far.”
“Are they all antigovernment?”
“Not all of them,” she says. “Most are love letters to Meecham. He’s obsessed with President Meecham. You should hear him—he sounds like an American flag–bleeding capitalist patriot in one breath, but in the next he’ll curse the mere notion of government and calls capitalists the scum of the earth. He once showed me this painting he made called The Worker’s Paradise but it was only this weird portrait of Meecham painted all in gold. He hates government but loves Meecham. He says truth lies in contradictions, so he expresses his belief system through images because images contain contradictions without becoming contradictions—”
“He once implied there are others he’s working with. He said he was Legion. Does that mean anything to you?”
“There are others, but I wouldn’t know what he’s referring to. Sometimes he’s grandiose—”
“How about a woman named Albion Waverly? Have you ever met her?”
“I know the name Albion,” she says. “I thought Albion was just the name he called me—”
“What’s the job?”
“Strange things,” she says. “I don’t quite understand the specifics. He has a suite over at the Brocklebank he uses for a studio. He’s fitted out the place like a soundstage. VR cams, sculpting engines. He has a Hasselblad with 3-D and tactile capture, a shoulder mount. I’ve worked on plenty of shoots and VR work, but I’ve never seen anything like his studio—all top-of-the-line gear. He’s heavy into the equipment he uses. When I show up for our meetings, he has clothes already picked out for me, gorgeous clothes, and has instructions for me to follow—”
“Like the clothes you’re wearing now. They must be from one of your sessions with Mook,” I tell her. “I recognize it—”
“House of Fetherston,” she says. “I couldn’t afford this otherwise. He tells me what to wear, what to do. He shows me vids of women and has me re-create them frame by frame, sometimes it’s like a dance. He’s making a series of short films. Usually I’m re-creating vids of a woman he calls his collaborator. He pings her, sometimes, during our sessions—”
“Albion,” I tell her.
“He’s careful not to say her name—”
“What does he ask you to do?”
“Lie fully dressed on the bed. Bend my legs a certain way. Sit in a certain position while reading. Fix my lipstick while looking in the mirror, adjust my hair. Prepare a salad—no, cut the lettuce like this. Greet people as if I’m in a boutique or a gallery. Smile, shake hands—”
“Ride in an elevator, flirting with another woman—”
“The blonde,” she says. “You know all this work? If I perform an action slightly off, I have to do another take until he’s satisfied—”
Our food arrives, elegantly plated—minimalist. Kelly picks up a quivering piece of sushi and bites into the pink flesh, closing her eyes to savor the taste. I fork off a bite of my mahimahi and realize my dinner’s already a quarter gone.
“How did you get involved with him?” I ask her.
Her real love is acting, she tells me—it always has been. She tells me about her business partner, another actress. “We’ve already performed Mamet’s Boston Marriage,” she tells me, “and Genet’s The Maids. Our most recent work was a staging of Bergman’s Persona set during World War II, but spare. I played an actress, Hui Zhong, a survivor of the Rape of Nanking, who’s interred at a mental hospital in Lijiang. My partner Tía played the nurse, Miao Tian.
“Mook approached me one night after a performance. He complimented my acting—gushed, really. He asked if I had regular work and asked if I would work for him—some acting, some VR sculpting. He didn’t introduce himself or tell me what I’d be doing, but he flashed the kind of money he was willing to pay—”
“Can you introduce me to him? I need to talk with him—”
“I figured you’d want to meet him,” she says. “Listen, I don’t know who you think he is—Mook’s just a weird guy. He’s very talented, maybe a genius, but he’s just a lonely pervert who trumps himself up in the streams. People who’ve heard of him want to take him seriously as an artist, but he avoids that scene. I’ll sell him out in exchange for Gavril, but I don’t want him to get in real trouble over this—”
“Mook took my wife from me—”
Expedient not to tell her about the body of Hannah Massey, but I mention Timothy and Waverly and tell her what Mook’s been doing to them. I tell her a little about Albion. I tell her about Zhou—Kelly seems shocked to hear this, like she truly didn’t know what her work with Mook amounted to. I tell her why she’s important, that Zhou’s the only thing I have left of my wife.
“Fuck it,” she says. “I didn’t know what Mook was doing. I don’t know why he ruined the image of your wife. I’m so sorry—”
I pay our bill and accompany her home—she lives close, so we walk. Kelly’s profile’s a mood display, astrology charts synched with a real-time map of the night sky. She’s haloed in diamond stars and animated illustrations of constellations. We weave through cliques of club kids and drag queens, side streets like carnivals, but I’m the odd one in my Caraceni suit, clutching and struggling with the weight of my paper sack of books. We walk through a pop-up market, a row of booths—Kelly stops at a street vendor selling homemade perfumes. She spritzes her wrists, sandalwood vanilla on one wrist, lilac on the other. She holds her wrists to me and tells me to breathe.
“Lilac,” I tell her.
“Do you want to experience one of Mook’s installations?” she asks. “You’re near one, actually. There’s one near here he calls The Apotheosis of American Innocence, or something like that—”
Kelly leads down a cross street, mostly residential—until we reach a parklet, nothing more than a few trees and a single bench, some places to chain bicycles. She points out a dogwood tree.
“You should use this tree as your marker,” she says.
“How does this work?”
“Put your back against the tree, then walk forward in a straight line toward the street—”
I do what she says. One step away from the edge of the parklet, my Adware’s commandeered by sat-connect—my anti-malware blinks but is useless and soon my vision’s hijacked by a vision of Eleanor Meecham, long before she was president, back when she was a model for American Eagle Outfitters, just fourteen or fifteen. She’s not wearing anything, but drapes herself with an American flag like a robe. She walks through honey fields of wheat. I can almost taste the fresh air. Her hair matches the fields, the sunshine glows golden on her skin. The mountains ringing the horizon seem lavender. The installation is a perfect moment of serenity, but only lasts thirty seconds before I’m plunged back into the San Francisco night.