You would not take him to a hospital?
No Fontaine said, we dont do that unless they ask us to, or unless theyre gonna die otherwise. Lot of us have good reason not to go to places like that, get checked out on computers and all.
Ah Yamazaki said, with what he hoped was tact.
Ah so Fontaine said. Some kids probably found him first, took his wallet if he had one. But hes a big healthy brother and somebodyll recognize him eventually. Hard not to, with that bolt through his johnson.
Yes Yamazaki said, failing to understand this last, and I still have your pistol.
Fontaine looked around. Well, if you feel like you dont need it, just chuck it for me. But Ill need that phone back, sometime. How long you gonna be staying out here, anyway?
I I do not know. And it was true.
You be down here this afternoon, see the parade?
Parade?
November fifteenth. Its Shapelys birthday. Something to see. Sort of Mardi Gras feel to it. Lot of the younger people take their clothes off, but I dont know about this weather. Well, see you around. Say hi to Skinner.
Hi, yes Yamazaki said, smiling, as Fontaine went on his way, the rainbow of his crocheted cap bobbing above the heads of the crowd.
Yamazaki walked toward the coffee-vendor, remembering the funeral procession, the dancing scarlet figure with its red-painted rifle. The symbol of Shapelys going.
Shapelys murder, some said sacrifice, had taken place in Salt Lake City. His seven killers, heavily armed fundamentalists, members of a white racist sect driven underground in the months following the assault on the airport, were still imprisoned in Utah, though two of them had subsequently died of AIDS, possibly contracted in prison, steadfastly refusing the viral strain patented in Shapelys name.
They had remained silent during the trial, their leader stating only that the disease was Gods vengeance on sinners and the unclean. Lean men with shaven heads and blank, implacable eyes, they were Gods gunmen, and would stare, as such, from all the tapes of history, forever.
But Shapely had been very wealthy when he had died, Yamazaki thought, joining the line for coffee. Perhaps he had even been happy. He had seen the product of his blood reverse the course of darkness. There were other plagues abroad now, but the live vaccine bred from Shapelys variant had saved uncounted millions.
Yamazaki promised himself that he would observe Shapelys birthday parade. He would remember to bring his notebook.
He stood in the smell of fresh-ground coffee, awaiting his turn.
Acknowledgments
This book owes a very special debt to Paolo Polledri, founding Curator of Architecture and Design, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Mr. Polledri commissioned, for the 1990 exhibition Visionary San Francisco, a work of fiction which became the short story Skinners Room, and also arranged for me to collaborate with the architects Ming Fung and Craig Hodgetts, whose redrawn map of the city (though I redrew it once again) provided me with Skywalker Park, the Trap, and the Sunflower towers. (From another work commissioned for this exhibition, Richard Rodriguezs powerful Sodom: Reflections on a Stereotype I appropriated Yamazakis borrowed Victorian and the sense of its melancholy.)
The term Virtual Light was coined by scientist Stephen Beck to describe a form of instrumentation that produces optical sensations directly in the eye without the use of photons (Mondo 2000).
Rydells Los Angeles owes much to my reading of Mike Daviss City of Quartz, perhaps most particularly in his observations regarding the privatization of public space.
I am indebted to Markus, aka Fur, one of the editors of Mercury Rising, published by and for the San Francisco Bike Messenger Association, who kindly provided a complete file of back issues and then didnt hear from me for a year or so (sorry). Mercury Rising exists to inform, amuse, piss off, and otherwise reinforce the messenger community. It provided me with Chevette Washingtons workplace and a good deal of her character. Proj on!
Thanks, too, to the following, all of whom provided crucial assistance, the right fragment at the right time, or artistic support: Laurie Anderson, Cotty Chubb, Samuel Delany, Richard Dorsett, Brian Eno, Deborah Harry, Richard Kadrey, Mark Laidlaw, Tom Maddox, Pat Murphy, Richard Piellisch, John Shirley, Chris Stein, Bruce Sterling, Roger Trilling, Bruce Wagner, Jack Womack.
Special thanks to Martha Millard, my literary agent, ever understanding of the long haul.
And to Deb, Graeme, and Claire, with love, for putting up with the time I spent in the basement.
Vancouver, B.C.
January 1993