

### The False Man

By David M. Antonelli

SMASHWORDS EDITION

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PUBLISHED BY:

David Antonelli on Smashwords

The False Man

Copyright © 2011 by David M. Antonelli

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

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There are a few people I'd like to acknowledge:

Paul Antonelli is thanked for designing the cover page. Marylu Walters is thanked for editing an early version of this manuscript. Joanne Kellock, is thanked for guidance while writing the early drafts of this book.

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### The False Man

By David M. Antonelli

Consequently I showed her no more of myself than an image, which, constant and faithful to the past as it was, grew falser day by day.

From _The Imoralist_

by André Gide

### 1. New Year's

### I

The phone rang. It was Nicola. I hadn't seen her since she left for Chicago two weeks ago. I could tell by her voice she was eager to go out. I wasn't.

"It's me," she said.

"Oh," I said whitely.

"I mean, _ME_." Her voice hit a false note. After an uncomfortable silence, I continued. "How was it? Chicago, I mean."

"Cold. So cold I bought a pair of earmuffs for you. I know it never gets cold down here, but they'll look really good on you."

"You're an angel," I replied, realizing in mid-speech that I might have come off sounding more sarcastic than I had intended.

"Thanks. Can we get together tonight?" she asked, her warm southern accent buttering all over me. I guess I hadn't sounded so insincere after all.

"I don't know. I might have to go out with Mark to talk things over. He and Vera were arguing again at work." Mark was our editor and Vera was his girlfriend and assistant. We all worked for a guy named Wilkinson on a low-budget rock/fashion magazine called _Shrapnel_.

"Were they throwing things?"

"Yes. All over the place. But after a few minutes they cooled off. By the time they went home they already seemed in better spirits. I think the sponsorship problems were getting to them."

"It's scary when they argue like that."

"Yeah, I know," she said. "Listen..." I yawned.

"Do you want me to call later?"

"Sure. I have a busy day ahead of me and I'm already wiped. Maybe after lunch."

"You're not drinking this early, are you?"

"No." I poured myself a scotch. "I'll call you."

"Sure."

"Oh," I said. "I almost forgot. Happy New Year!"

"You too."

We hung up at the same time and I extended my fingers into a bowling ball that was balanced on top of a water dispenser beside my desk. It wasn't that I was angry with her. Not at all. It was much deeper than that. I've been thinking for a while and I've come to some major realizations. In short, there's something wrong with this place. Something wrong with _it_ , and something wrong with _me_. Maybe it's these freeways. Maybe it's these hills. Or maybe it's those wretched palm trees that sway back and forth like giant metronomes, as though marking the pace of my every step. Who knows? But don't go thinking this excuses the placid blinking of television sets in sparsely furnished rooms, or the endless rain which shouldn't even be falling (isn't this supposed to be California?) but falls anyway as though to spite us. Don't even start to think it does. Yes, there's something about the whole works and it's starting to bother me.

It never used to affect me back in the early years - just after I moved here to take up a job as a photographer - but now it eats into me so much it takes hours just to fall asleep at night. I lie awake in the darkness, tucked loosely between my sweaty sheets, staring endlessly into the cool white blackness that hovers in the center of my room.

Even worse, when I finally do fall asleep, the rain cuts perfect incisions into my dreams and pokes its latex-covered fingers into my thoughts as though searching for a tumor. Perhaps there _is_ a tumor somewhere deep inside that clouded mess I call my brain. If so, I refuse to acknowledge it. That simple. I can't let it change me. Don't the strongest governments refuse to pay heed to the rioting minorities? If political leaders listened to the every whim of the rabble they wouldn't be in charge, now would they? So I ignore it, proclaiming a sort of spiritual despotism, a martial law of the soul. But in the process of ignoring it, doesn't it gain a kind of tacit importance? Enough. This is getting ridiculous. There is no tumor and that's final. No means _no_.

But does this negate my other memories? The ones that slide under my door in the middle of the night and squirm across the linoleum floor: the barking dogs and the Mexican kids drinking and fucking outside the prison walls; the mossy sewage pipe peering through the ground like a giant telescope focussed at the center of the Earth; and that dead German – not _him_ again - lying on the ground in a pool of dark blood.

I have to get on with it. I made my choice and I have to stick with it. I've come to accept that the truth is whatever you say it is and nothing more. Or at least until I met Nicola. Now it's a daily fight to maintain my standards. If she ever found out about me, everything would be in ruins. I can almost feel the glowing green saucers of her eyes probing for a past I've long since forgotten. I even think I might be in love with her. I can't resist the way she swaggers across the room, her platform breasts strutting around like some kind of upscale Motown act. And those searing red-velvet pants she wears when we go out clubbing. But she's so approachable for such a beautiful woman. Maybe that's how they raise them down south. Her father owns a small tobacco business in Mobile and flies planes in his spare time. He apparently has a big old house in the suburbs. She says she grew up chasing swans around a backyard pond. I guess that's why she's so sweet and honest. She's no dummy either. Not like the usual slags that go trumpeting through my life. Her mind is like an atomic clock. Precision to more decimal places than you'd care to count. I bet she even knows the radius of Jupiter. She's level headed, too. Starry-eyed, but still level headed.

I saw her for lunch in the afternoon and she started asking those questions again. We met at a café on Beverly Boulevard. I was still waiting for a table when she showed up in her beat-up Corolla. She sauntered up to me, tossing her keys back and forth between her hands. I joked that she should get a new car. It wasn't becoming to drive such a wreck in this glorious sea of white convertibles. It'll hurt her career, I said. She brushed off my advice like a sprinkling of dandruff on her shoulder.

"You're too fashion conscious," she said, sweeping her hair back like a Russian spy in a Bond film.

"But, fashion's everything," I replied.

"Oh?" She raised her eyebrow in an expression of mock enlightenment and then turned her figure in the direction of the door. A waitress stood smiling at us beside a set of outdoor tables.

"For two?" she asked brightly. I nodded. We followed her to a table by the back wall beside a blossoming orange tree. We sat down and I chipped a cigarette in Nicola's direction. She just pushed it away.

"Yesterday I met up with the chief representative of _Wind Tunnel_ fashion," she said, her coffee-colored eyelids fluttering as she spoke.

" _Wind Tunnel_?" I raised a doubtful eyebrow and stiffened my arms. I noticed my shirt was uncomfortably tight, locking my shoulders in a pretty good half Nelson.

"Funny name, I know. They're run by this tiny little Polish woman who claims to have studied fashion in Paris under Coco Chanel."

"Sounds like baloney to me," I said.

"I called them the other day to see if they'd like to run an ad. They seemed interested and sent this young buyer over to have lunch with me. About three quarters of the way through he started giggling about how stoned he was and how he couldn't cut a deal because he forgot the documents. I was so mad. He seemed so impressed with himself for showing up high. A real rebel...give me a break." She shook her head disapprovingly. She always expressed her intelligence with such grace. It must have been all those swans back in Mobile. Most women these days will post it on your door like a death threat. But not her. She floats on it; she flies on it. It's her little magic carpet and I like that. "He even tried to get me to take some," she said in disgust.

"So, did you _take_ any?" I'd been trying to get her interested myself, but to no avail. She was pretty prudish on the drug issue. Just look at her use of words. People didn't _take_ drugs anymore – that was nineteen fifties narc talk - they smoked them, dropped them, shot them, snorted them...they did everything but _take_ them...you get the picture.

"No, of course not. I have pride in the sanctity of my mind and body. Stoned people are so boring. They all seem to think that their stonedness is some greatly unique individual expression when it's really just the same as anybody else's."

"I don't know about that..."

"Come one. On any given drug - alcohol included - people always act the same. Drunks stumble around slurring as they waver back and forth between violence and sympathy, opium addicts just smile and evaporate into the carpet, e-heads, ravers, or whatever they're called all come up and hug you like you're their long lost brother. It's like the drug dictates a set code of behavior, but everyone is convinced that their experience is somehow unique. That's why drugs always seemed like a bit of a lie to me."

"All the more power to them. You need them to mask the grim realities of life. And besides, just because people feel similar on the same drug, doesn't mean they're having exactly the same experiences. I like to think of it like this: a drug is like a picture frame and you're the artist. The frame gives you some size and shape restrictions, but you're free to fill it in however you want after that. If you take speed you'll be racing around at warp factor nine, but _where_ you race and _how_ you race is up to you."

"I don't know. Regardless of what drug that clown from _Wind Tunnel_ was on and how unique his experience may or may not have been, I still wasn't too impressed that they sent a guy like him to do business with us. I don't know what they were thinking. I thought they were seriously interested, but if they keep sending marshmallows like him over we'll never get anywhere."

After about half an hour talking about work and some new developments on the business side of things she started asking about my life before I came here. In the past, I could always swerve away from the issue and no one seemed to pry, but she's more tenacious and demanding than anyone I've ever met. What makes matters worse is that I can feel her hot pussy winking behind her smile and I don't know how long I can last. As it was, I told her what I tell everyone: that is, I was an MFA photographer from a New York art school. I didn't elaborate any further and quickly turned her attention to a couple at the back who were locked in a fit of uncontrollable laughter. Our conversation lightened and a few minutes later we paid and drove back to the office.

### II

Santa Monica Boulevard stretched out before me like a row of peep shows in a seedy amusement park. I'd never seen so much smut in one place. This part of Hollywood was normally pretty bad, but today it seemed worse than ever. I checked my watch as I eased to a complete stop at Normandie. It was getting late. Almost too late to catch last call. Although I'd already had three Martinis at home, I needed a few more to guarantee a good sleep. I twisted my car into gear and accelerated down La Brea, the open air rushing headlong into my windshield and neatly over the cockpit of my Triumph convertible. I turned on the radio and that _Public Enemy_ song came hammering over the waves. I was hyper-energized.

Zero, Zero. She watch, she watch, Zero. Zero. She watch Channel Zero.

These guys were deep, I thought. They really had their ears down to the proverbial rail. Yes, there was certainly a lot of Channel Zero buzzing around out there. See that soda-pop chick over there with the hippy love beads? I bet she really grooves to it. See that fat balding guy in the two-block stretch limo? I'm sure he watches it too. Even as we speak, he's probably plugging his face into some miniature screen in the back of his car salivating over the latest _CZ_ broadcast. _Zero. Zero._ _Zero. Zero_. Yes, chances are even that blue-haired snow boarder over there garbed in the day-glow Mad-Hatter Tee-shirt is tuning in. By Christ, he's probably the producer. My train of thought ground to a halt when it occurred to me that I was probably being a little too harsh. After all, we all watch a little Channel Zero sometimes. Even me. Especially since Nicola came pouring into my life. Yes, if she finds out the truth about me I'll probably be watching a lot more _Zero_ than anybody.

I straddled the lane markers just to see if it would annoy the carload of Latinos behind me and then slowed to a halt when I spotted Ricki. She was a hooker I sometimes stopped to bullshit with on my way home from West Holywood.

"Hey, Paul. Fuck you," she shouted from the corner, a fat smile bulging from her wide, almost tribal, face. Her hair was hyper-crimped and fell down her forehead like some kind of primitive armor to protect her eyes. In the darkness I couldn't tell what color her halter-top was, but her mini-skirt was a cool electric blue and was as short as a toothpick was wide.

"You too. Suck my dick," I shouted back. That's the way we talked. Friendly banter.

"Since when are you in the green? I only fuck rich guys."

"Yeah, but they don't only fuck you!"

"What are you trying to say?"

"Freedom of the press, that's what's most important," I said, trying to think of something as unrelated as possible.

"Yeah, the world's goin' to the dogs. My brother's out on the streets. Too many creeps in this town slurping up all the best pussy." She extended her long pink fingernails into the glistening valley between her breasts and spit out a wad of gum.

"Sure, baby. What else is new?" I replied.

"Certainly not you. Any time you want to fly, just open the door."

"I'll take a rain check," I yelled as the lights blinked to green and I drove off. She was great. One day I might actually take her up on it, but for the time being I had enough on my plate as far as _that_ was concerned.

I navigated my way to the nearest bar and downed two quick martinis to the sound of Frank Sinatra on the jukebox. Then I drove home and went to bed without further event. I had to get in earlier than usual the next day for a meeting. We had to run over some budget figures for the new fiscal year, or maybe that was next week's meeting - I really wasn't sure. I never could get meeting agendas straight in my head, but it wasn't such a problem anymore. Everyone at work had long since given up on me in the memory department.

The next day I walked in twenty minutes late to find Mark and Vera sorting through a pile of assorted rock magazines. Mark was British and rakishly slim. He had a nasally northern English accent and short hair - flattened to the temple with long side burns jutting down his cheeks like Florida into the Gulf of Mexico. Vera was his girlfriend, a splintered violin from an upper class Scottish family. I don't know the whole story, but somehow she managed to fall from grace with her parents and end up with Mark, someone whose social standing and occupation they never would have approved of. She had been in California so long, I could hardly detect an accent when she spoke. She had a thing about dolls and would sometimes go on for hours about the ones she used to have when she was a girl. And one other thing: her tits. I had heard the British were big on tits, but I never really believed it until I met her. Small on central heating, but big on tits. Maybe that was their substitute for heating. All those cold windy days in Northumbria with nothing to do but bury your head in a nice pair of warm tits. Man. I'd give up all the heat in California if I could have a go with her. But she's Mark's woman and I'm in love with Nicola. Besides, I'm not the sort to chase after my best friend's girl. Just a small fantasy, a forgivable and ultimately inconsequential dream. And wasn't it the great Deborah Harry that sang _dreaming is free_?

I walked over to the desk and picked up a copy of _Urb_ , a rival magazine that focused on the feel-good counter revolution. You know: raves, ambient music, crystal balls, that whole ultramarine pillow-world of bell-bottoms, ethereal sounds, good-vibes, and post-AIDS sex that's been splashing all over the streets of LA lately. Needless to say, Mark hates it. _Urb_ has a bigger readership and soaks up a lot of the advertising revenue we might otherwise get our hands on. We represent the darker side of the whole underground scene. Winters of discontent, coal in your stocking, dead seagulls and oil spills: that's our headset. Page seven of this month's _Urb_ had an article about the so-called "baggy" fashion and its roots in the zoot suit. Page 12 had a feature on why we should be spaced out to attack the system, and page 20 - a spread from some modelling agency - showed three vacuum-tube chics, Nina, Takio, and Zamara, all decked out in these silly little Vampirella fuck-suits wearing King-Louis-XVI shoes.

I balanced a copy on my head and tossed it in the trash. Then I looked over at Vera.

" _Spin_?" Vera arched her perfectly waxed eyebrow and hissed like a cat. She had a pile of magazines cradled in her arm and was tossing them into the garbage one by one. Her red hair brushed over her shoulder as she turned to face Mark. He was sitting at the layout desk with a mess of photos and text in front of him. I stood on the other side of the room, cigarette balanced between my fingers, staring out the window onto Melrose Avenue, pretending I wasn't listening.

"Bad."

" _A.P._?"

"Bad. I hate the way they offset the text from the margins. All lay out and no substance. Fucking pretentious," Mark gagged. I could see from the bags under his eyes that he was hung over. I think we all were. His party had worn on into the afternoon hours on New Year's Day.

" _NME_?"

"Very bad. Excessively bad. Almost incomprehensibly bad. I should know. I used to bloody well work for them."

Just then Wilkinson burst into the office and pointed an accusing finger at Mark. "Is that all you do?" Wilkinson yelled. "Just sit there and put down our rivals? I bet that they make in a week ten times what we make in a year."

"First of all, your holiness, they aren't our bloody rivals. We're on a completely different level. There's no comparison. None at all. What sort of owner doesn't even know what his magazine represents? And another thing, I put so much more time into this than you could ever dream of. Magazine work isn't the sort of thing you can just squeeze between lunch and tennis."

"Who the hell do you think you are? I'm the fucking owner of this operation and what I say goes. I gave you a break in hiring you and this is all you can do for me. There's a million editors out there and I really can't see what makes you so special."

I could tell he was mad.

Mark tossed a wadded up piece of paper at Wilkinson's feet and turned away from him as if to dismiss him from the office.

"Alright," said Wilkinson. "I've had enough. Start packing and be out by morning."

"Oh, no. You can't," pleaded Vera. "He needs the work. He's already depressed enough as it is."

"You stay out of this," Wilkinson said with a condescending sense of grace that belied his obvious anger.

But before he finished speaking Mark had already turned around and leapt on him like a jackal. I'd never seen him so livid. All that British reserve blowing up like a geyser in Wilkinson's face.

I stepped back as Vera flung herself on top of Mark and tried to pull him off.

After delivering a few quick punches, Mark jumped up and stormed out of the room, Vera close on his heels. After the sound of footsteps had dissipated, all I could hear was Vera shouting and crying. Wilkinson looked at me and shook his head in disgust. Without saying anything further he walked across the hall to the bathroom. As soon as I heard the sound of running water, I ran out of the building as fast as I could and hopped into my car.

That night I ate Sushi at a restaurant in Glendale, staring vapidly into my rice until the cute little toy-land waitress brought me the bill. I could have made a move, but I just paid and drove home instead. There was nothing on TV, so I ended up going to bed early. But it was so hot in my apartment that I didn't fall asleep until four. It was just that kind of day.

### III

Fortunately, it only took a week for things to settle down at the office. Vera begged and pleaded with Wilkinson until he finally broke down and gave Mark his job back. The two men made up - if only superficially - and things went quickly back to normal, i.e. healthy, chaotic friction. At home, on the other hand, things started to get rather strange. I can't even remember the last time I could hear the woman upstairs crying so much. She can really get on a roll sometimes, and when she does it gets so loud I can almost feel her tears seeping through the cracks in my bedroom ceiling. At times I've even been convinced they're penetrating my skull cap and trickling down the tangled web of neural pipes that make up the micro-expressway I call my brain. One night I could swear my entire bathtub was filled with her tears. The water had this soft saline quality to it and there was an irritating moaning sound like a cat in heat as I drained it...

Anyway, I think she's seeing some Latino guy. On the basis of what I've heard up there, I'd venture to guess that he's an asshole. A prime cut. I've never seen him, so I can't say for sure. Come to think of it, I've never seen her either. But one day their fights are going to get so intense I'll have no other choice but to go up there and find out what's _really_ going on.

Ten days after the incident with Wilkinson I went out with Mark to catch a forgettable B-movie in Santa Monica. Vera stayed home with the flu, spending the evening reading in bed with a teapot purring beside her bed. Although his anger was still simmering from the incident with Wilkinson, Mark knew it was in his best interests to hide his feelings for the time being and wait until things had _really_ smoothed over.

We left Santa Monica at ten and took the long way back through Westwood. As we edged into Beverly Hills going west on Sunset, Mark pressed hard on the accelerator of his British racing green Aston Martin and grinned.

"What was she like?" he asked, referring to Tanya, a frizzled blonde I'd taken home the night before from a party in Venice.

"Serious."

"In bed, you mean?"

"In _all_ her aspects. _Even_ bed. She wanted to be a journalist and kept on bragging about all her contacts in London."

"British?"

"No. But she spent a few years in Cambridge and likes to flaunt her pedigree. In fact, I'd say she was pedigreed out of existence. _The Cambridge way_."

"Ick." He puckered his face. "Imagine that. _Pedigreed out of existence_. Like a line of dogs bred so much for their hair that they're eventually born as disembodied puffs of fur."

"Emphasis on _fur_ ," I said with a grin. "I think you met her."

"Only once," he replied, wiping a bead of perspiration off his forehead. "Wasn't it at some dinner over at your place?"

"I don't remember."

"What about Nicola?" he asked in a more probing tone. "I like her. Maybe she's too nice for you, though." He was suddenly more candid, his warm boyish eyes melting through that cool British veneer. Although he lived behind a wall of mordant wit, I always sensed that deep down inside he thought the world was a watery blue ball soaring through space at some vast cosmic theme park in the sky. "Still," he went on, "you'd be doing yourself a favor to lay off these other girls and concentrate on her."

"Funny hearing that from you."

"What are you implying?"

"Far be it from me..." I said.

"What?"

"When Mark starts a' drinking, the slime wheels start a' rollin'."

"If that ain't the bloody pot calling the kettle. You've been chasing ass like it was going out of style."

"Ass will never go out of style," I proclaimed as though stating a maxim.

He broke out laughing. Then he continued. "Look, mate, I think neither of us are saints. So let's just drop it."

We gazed in silent awe for the next twenty minutes as we drove through the narrow corridor of streetlights and neon signs that stretches down Sunset Boulevard from Beverly Hills all the way to Vine. We stopped at a gas station in the five thousand block and Mark stepped out for a breath of fresh air. I stayed in the front seat, quietly studying the intricate dials on the electronic dashboard. It was strangely pacifying with its circles and dials of deep green light. I suddenly felt sleepy and started thinking about Tanya: her huge Eurasian eyes and soft, fluidic lips ravaging my body like a candy-coated crocodile of love. And my pillowcase reeking of her perfume - _Opium_ I think it was - for hours afterwards. As I sat there in the car I could almost see her hot pears-and-chocolate buttocks bouncing in rhythm on my hips as we fucked deep into the night. It was just as I'd imagined sex as a teenager: her left shoulder docked between my chin and chest, her back dipping provocatively out of view, her smooth _derriere_ rising boldly from the horizon defined by the sheets and the far edge of the bed.

I'd only met her once before, but I allow myself such pleasures. Even though Nicola is starting to rotate at the center of my turntable, I still allow them. No explanations necessary.

Mark opened the door and jammed a tape into his new car stereo.

"Latest thing out of London."

"You always say that."

"Just listen for once. _Lush_. Harpies from heaven."

I listened closely to a couple of songs. I felt like an angel was ramming a forty thousand volt screwdriver through my head. I wasn't sure if I liked it. There was something too dry and calculated about their whole approach. But it was certainly better than the last stuff he tried to push on me. _The Birthday Party_ , Nick Cave's "legendary" early project. Vocals like a man choking on a cup of powdered lye and a bass line that crawls up your ass like a cockroach on Jim Beam. Torture-chamber blues I once heard it called. If the Marquis De Sade had a band, it would have been _The Birthday Party_.

"The two lead girls are a dish," he added as if it somehow raised the quality of their music a few notches. The third song ended and he pressed the eject button, his face suddenly frozen.

"I have to talk to you about something," he said with unsettling sobriety.

"Vera?"

"What else? She's driving me crazy. She lives in this world where everything is a drag if it doesn't measure up to her fanciful vision of life."

"Fanciful visions are dangerous."

"She wants to save the world from poverty, she wants to travel, she wants to experience life, but she can't even get out of bed on time. She couldn't organize a piss up in a brewery. It's as though she expects everything to be dreamy and wonderful without the slightest bit of effort on her part. If I tell her we can fly to some place like Turkey for a quick romantic getaway if we save and work overtime for a few months, she'll complain about how dull her job is and how she can't bear to work overtime. And the way she dwells on her childhood you'd think she wished she never grew up."

I didn't know what to tell him, as they were exactly the same complaints she had about him. After a few minutes he stopped talking and we continued in silence to the Hollywood freeway exit, turned, and launched onto the racing expressway. The lights were so bright I thought I was trapped in a hospital corridor. Everything was shiny, and everything was quiet. It made me think of everything all over again. How quiet it's all been the last few days. Indeed, it _has_ been quiet. The fight between Mark and Wilkinson had blown off just enough steam to calm us all down. I even fell asleep last night without a single drink. No visions of the dead German staring at me from the ceiling with his colorless eyes and sullen bony face, and none of those jaw-faced dogs menacing the alleyways of my dreams. For a moment it seemed I had finally escaped the spectre of anxiety that's been clouding my life since I started seeing Nicola. I hope it doesn't come back to plague me. But, one can never know...

I walked into work the next day and watched the sun's first rays part the thin layer of gray clouds suspended in the sky. I read a few pages of _Spin_ over a quick latté and later met with Wilkinson. He handed me a list of enlargements for the print deadline and we did Dim Sum in a funky new place downtown. I had one of everything the waiters offered us and Wilkinson paid the bill – how can you beat that? Yes, one could say that things were sailing along quite smoothly. I even feel more secure. More secure about Nicola, too. Just a few days ago I thought I could never hold out and she'd eventually discover my secret, but today I flex new muscles. My only fear is running into someone who might recognize me from before. But how remote can remote be?

### 2. On the Threshold

### I

Today is Valentine's Day. Everything is pink, everything is horribly pink. Nicola's gone back to Mobile for two weeks and I've yet to get as much as a peck on the cheek from her. Not to be completely denied, I've entertained the odd lover over the past few months to keep me in practice. With one girl, an elvish little Japanese model that came flouncing through one of Mark's parties a few weeks ago, I ended up naked on a 20x20 sheet of clear neoprene in her hotel room, two hits of ecstasy playing racket sports in my head. She was a part-time artist and said she liked doing things _in plastic_. By the end of the evening I was convinced that plastic was the new wave and it wouldn't be long before I'd be doing a whole show in the stuff. I guess there's nothing like a little plastic to wake up the artist in everyone.

Yesterday I went down to Venice to look at an antique shop. They had an old oil lamp from the Spanish American War that I'd been hankering for since last Christmas and I wanted to see if they'd lowered the price. They hadn't. So I went for a quick coffee. The streets were crowded with droves of smiling tourists, but as the afternoon passed I became overwhelmed with loneliness. It was as though I was the only real person in LA and everyone else was an oil slick mirage or wisp of sea mist. I sat down on a bench beside a small kiosk and it all came back again – yes, you guessed it - all the painful details of my past. I lit a cigarette and stared out into the vast and windless ocean. A few solitary boats were sailing on the horizon. For a moment they looked like tiny snails inching their way across a giant cement ledge. I watched them until a woman crossed the line of my sight. She smiled and immediately I thought of my old wife – or maybe she still _is_ my wife, I'm really not sure. I could almost see her standing there in front of me in her night gown, her face lit up by her thin smiling lips. But I couldn't quite remember the shape of her eyes. Were they like almonds or pearls?

Yes, just like miles of open sea, the past distorts things. Or is it really the future that does the distorting? I can't even tell the difference any more. The past, the future: just different stages of the same thing. The past is just the future grown old. Nonetheless, I feel it grabbing onto me, begging for some kind of acknowledgement. When I walk down Hollywood Boulevard, gazing at the melange of leather boutiques and taco stands as I pass, I feel like I'm living someone else's life. Worse still, when I reflect on the past I feel like I'm an intruder in someone else's history. How odd, to be little more than an unwanted voyeur in one's biography. But it's not just the past that bothers me, it's everything. I feel as if nothing in my life is really my own. Not my body, because I'll eventually end up dead, not my memories, and certainly not the present. And do you know what? It scares me to death.

I strolled along a rectangular strip of sand, which formed a kind of barrier between the reddish tides and the beachfront trinket shops, and took out a pair of binoculars I bought from an old man in Santa Monica a few days earlier. I focused my sights on a tiny barge on the horizon and it all came back. Hazy, distorted, but still _there_.

I used to be someone else. A guy named Robert Smith. I was born in Philadelphia in 1958 and I spent most of my life in New York. I worked as a waiter at a number of different restaurants, trying to support myself as an actor. My wife Jenny was a quirky brunette from a small town in Pennsylvania. She was an art student turned department store clerk who liked to decorate our garage with pictures of her family and cover the refrigerator with as many ornamental magnets she could get her hands on. She used to spend Sundays scouring garage sales for them and told everyone who dropped by she had the largest collection north of Charleston. I met her while visiting some old college friends in Philadelphia. She was training to be a sculptor but gave up and ended up working as a cashier in the lawn furniture department of Macy's. We married six months after we met and lived in relative happiness for the next couple of years.

Not long after we moved into a new house it started to dawn on us that our life had become shapeless and routine. Suffocated by our own private dreams and financial savings plans for the future, we had no room left for anything else. Every drop of adventure had been leached from our existence. I'd go on living with Jenny, I'd eventually make it as an actor, and that would be it. I had nothing but the future's bland promise of prosperity to look forward to, and therefore nothing at all. Nothing but death. My relationship with Jenny quickly began to crumble as the arguments got worse and worse. What had started as a great journey into the mythic realms of love had turned into just one too many visits to Costco. There's only so many times you can watch your wife thawing out a freezer before you realise that your marriage just isn't the same any more.

As our love grew ever more stale, I sank into depression. It wasn't long before my deflated spirits started to affect my professional life. I gradually became disillusioned with acting. My career was going nowhere and I was reduced to minor roles in second-rate productions in venues so far from central Manhattan they may just as well have been staged on icebergs in the Antarctic. Statten Island, Long Island, Yonkers, New Jersey. And all I really wanted was a shot at being in the movies. I had originally taken up theater under the belief that actors were like shaman or magicians that could bring the unconscious desires of the audience to the surface with a mere thrust of a sword or pledge of undying love, but I soon discovered that most people were numb to my performances, no matter how moving I thought they were. I guess I should have known better. It doesn't take Shakespeare to figure out that most audiences are composed of corporate executives entertaining clients or society types who think that "one simply must go to the theater" without any idea what it really was or why they should go there in the first place.

One day when things looked like they couldn't get much worse (I'd just lost my job at a greasy spoon and was reduced to selling tires at a Puerto Rican auto shop) Jenny confessed she had been seeing someone else behind my back for the last six months. She had already emptied her things from the closet and was moving out the very next weekend. When I first heard the news I was so devastated I considered taking my own life. Even though our love had become a dry routine, I didn't know what I would do without her. I did everything in my power to convince her to stay, but she refused. She had already set things in motion with her new lover and was determined to see where things went with him.

With nothing else going for me, I drove to Mexico. It seemed like a drastic measure, but I had to get away for at least a few weeks to clear out my head. They said it was cheap down there and a man could live for next to nothing without a care in his life. When Jenny found out I was leaving she did a sudden flip-flop and begged me to stay. She was confused, she said, and kept insisting there might still hope for us if things didn't work out with the new guy. She just needed time to sort herself out. But there was no way I could just stay there and wait for her. I just couldn't go on. And that's when everything started to get strange.

I went out boozing one night with a bunch of U.S. Marines in Tijuana and ended up getting so drunk I passed out in my hotel bathtub. When I woke everything was dark. All I could hear was a dull scream coming as if from under a mound of earth. I looked out the window and couldn't see a thing. A few minutes later the police came banging in. A woman had been brutally murdered in the hallway outside my door and I was the only suspect. She'd been strangled and there were no witnesses. The police found me in the bathtub when they came, no doubt trying to clean off the last traces of the crime, they said. The victim was so rich and beautiful they had no trouble inventing some crazy money-sex motive. In no time I was charged. I tried calling Jenny, but I forgot to get her new phone number before I left New York. I tried calling her parents, but I just kept getting their answering machine. Since my parents passed away when I was in high school, it looked like I was alone, completely without allies. So I left a message on Jenny's parents' machine and hoped for the best.

The trial was held almost immediately; the court's decision was unanimous and they gave me the death penalty without hesitation. Before I knew it, I was locked up in a cement prison somewhere in the middle of the desert desperately praying for a reprieve.

My cell was empty except for a few basic necessities. The walls were a combination of chipped plaster and crumbling brick and the floor was concrete. In a few places the concrete had either worn through or cracked so you could see the red soil underneath. Each inmate was given a tiny pillow and a urine-stained mattress on a squeaky gray cot. There was a small barred window opposite my bed and a light on the ceiling encased inside a cage of densely woven wire. The on/off switch was located outside so only the guards could control it. It looked as though somebody had tried to dig through the wall in a few places using a screwdriver or knife but didn't get very far. In every way it was exactly what you'd expect a Mexican prison to be: Spartan, dirty, and miserable. I spent the first few days tucked inside the east corner of my cell, head tilted downwards in sleepless despair. I knew it was the east corner because of the way the shaft of sunlight from the tiny window on the wall moved across the floor. It didn't take much to figure that out. With an unfair trial and virtually no chance to put together a sound defence, I felt like the victim of some great cosmic joke. Never before had I felt such bitterness in my life. I did told every aspect of the truth, yet I still ended up in prison with a death sentence hanging over my head.

At first I was kept in solitary confinement and food was shoved under the door. A week later I was given a uniform and allowed to eat with the other inmates. Little was said in the dining hall. Any attempt to strike up a conversation with the other prisoners was immediately squelched by the guards or taken as a sign of weakness by the other inmates. The few men that always tried to whisper under their breaths were ostracized by the silent majority and left to eat alone on the far end of the table. I quickly learned to say nothing and eat with slow deliberation to help whittle away the time.

In the afternoon we were allowed to walk or jog around a small cement courtyard that had a tetherball pole in the center. To my disappointment, most of the inmates preferred to sit around like patients in a hospital waiting room, expressions of grave acceptance pinned to their faces. At the end of this recreation period we were always herded back inside and forced to take cold showers before being locked up in our cells until dinner. It was an empty and repetitive existence completely devoid of hope or pleasure.

## II

Several months passed and my hopes began to fade. With nothing left to live for I slowly withdrew into myself. Silence became my normal state. I stopped eating. I rarely showered. I lost weight. The only way I had of entertaining myself was to watch the fleas dancing on my pubic hair while imagining that it was all a part of some strange religious opera in which the tiny black insects were singing in Latin about how my solitude was some source of penance that would ultimately save my soul and bring me closer to God.

I felt a sudden burst of hope one day when a letter was slipped under my door. Recognizing Jenny's handwriting on the envelope, I opened it immediately. She started by apologizing profusely for abandoning me – although she completely avoided the topic of her present personal life - and then went on to swear that she would do everything in her power to save me. She heard the phone message I left on her parent's answering machine and had since been talking to several lawyers while relentlessly chasing down the Mexican authorities. I felt vindicated for her infidelity and forgave her. I even had fanciful visions of us getting back together once I was released and everything had blown over. But to my disappointment, I only got two more letters from her over the next three months. Each explained with regret how expensive the lawyers were and how little progress she was making with the Mexican authorities. She put it down to problems with money and the blatant unfairness in the justice system, which always seems to favor the wealthy over the innocent.

One day the warden marched in. His hair was thin and black and his uniform stretched across his chest like Saran Wrap across the rim of a vegetable bowl.

"Come with me," he said densely.

I followed him without a word as I dug my fingernails nervously into my palms. We passed a few empty cells and then entered a large comfortable room with a desk standing in the center. I guessed it was his office.

"You have been found guilty of murder, despite your wife's efforts to prove otherwise."

"I'm innocent."

"Innocence is not a question of guilt. Are you that much of a simpleton? There are other avenues." A gilded smile slowly spread from one cheek to the other.

"My wife has money."

"Don't be foolish. You Americans are filled with such stereotypes. Do you actually think that I'd accept a bribe? Please, don't insult me. I'm a well off family man much like you _once_ were." He emphasized the past tense as if to assert his command over my destiny.

"What do you mean?"

"You see, we have a need for people in our police service who have no identity. Well..." he gazed off into space to search for the right words and then gave up. "My English does not permit me to express this as elegantly as I would like, so I'll be more blunt. You have two choices. The first is execution under the jurisprudence of the Mexican State for committing the murder of a young woman."

"I'm _no murderer_ ," I said with stern dignity. I fell out of my chair and broke into tears. All I remember was starring into the aluminum legs of his desk hoping he'd show some clemency. I looked up for an instant into his watery black eyes. I could see there was a different and much softer person somewhere beneath the hard shell of the uniform. If only I could reach this other man.

"Your second choice," he continued, completely ignoring my desperate plea, "also involves a death of sorts."

I stood up and wiped the tears from my eyes. He continued gazing soberly in my direction for an instant and then his face brightened.

"I must apologize for my lack of sympathy. Please don't beg any longer. It won't help. I'm just following orders. A milkman must deliver his milk or he'll get fired. The same stands for me, however the consequences are far more severe."

"But this is..."

"As I said," he interrupted, his face suddenly more rigid, "you have one other choice. We can simply pretend you were executed and then you could join our service. A sort of _false man_ is just the type of person we need to infiltrate certain nests of filth and depravity, so to speak. There are a few others like you. Many others, in fact. Americans."

I stopped and thought for a moment, staring at a dishevelled stack of papers on his desk. The whole thing smacked of conspiracy, yet it was possibly my only chance to get out. "Would I ever see my wife again?" I asked.

"Don't be ridiculous. Once you've joined, you will be given a new identity and any attempt to see your family will be grounds for severe punishment. Most of the others forget their families after a while. The lifestyle is exciting. Easy to lose yourself."

I narrowed my eyes and sat down in my chair. His proposal was a farce. There was no way I'd let the government use me as a pawn. No doubt they'd use me to commit some cheap murder and then wipe me out afterwards to destroy the evidence. At least in the prison I had the remote chance of escape.

"No," I said to him.

"If so you choose. I thought I could help you. I consider myself a benefactor of a kind. The way I see it you don't have much choice but to accept my goodwill. But if you prefer death, I must honor your decision. I am a Catholic man of traditional values."

I spat on his desk and pursed my lips. There was no way I was going to give up my freedom to work for the Mexican authorities. With all the stories of the drug cartels I would probably end up decapitated in a Mexican slum before I got my first pay cheque. I'd prefer to die unjustly at the hands of an executioner. The warden calmly wiped the spit off his desk and called a guard to take me away.

### III

Three weeks later the first warden was replaced by a stout matronly woman with the charisma of an oil drum and I was promptly given notice of my execution. I had but six months to live. Over the next few weeks the prison walls almost seemed to glisten with my blood. I started hearing sounds from outside that I'd never noticed before: dogs barking and gangs of Mexicans shouting and smashing glass. Sometimes I thought I heard women's voices and I imagined scenes of sexual revelry springing forth like magic fountains outside the prison walls. Hot-wet skin, mud-colored hair, and the feverish tangling of silky brown legs. I had to escape.

A month after the new warden's arrival I was assigned my first cellmate. His name was Enrico. He came from Panama and had been charged with repeated thefts. My first inkling was that the authorities felt a strange pity for me and he was put in the cell to make my last months more tolerable. But since there was nothing in the guards' behavior towards me that suggested they had anything but contempt for me, I decided they must have done it out of mere necessity because they had run out of space. As for the first warden, who knows? Perhaps he resigned out of choice, but there was also the slim chance he was being punished for failing to recruit me. I never found out.

Enrico had a grizzly, but soft voice and knew a small amount of English. He was sullen and moody at first, but soon I discovered another side to his character: a rustic warmth and strong sense of composure. Initially we said almost nothing to each other, but after a few weeks we began to talk more. I learned he was an ex-soldier whose wife had died at the hands of an American policeman out on a drinking binge. Enrico wore a small amulet around his neck, which she'd given him after their wedding. He said he didn't think about her much any more, although for the first year after her death he turned to looting and carousing to help block her from his mind.

As the weeks passed our cell began to fill with wicked humor, hushed and pessimistic talk of escape, and countless drinking stories, often deep into the night. When we got too talkative, the guard would move me into an empty cell across the hall, but within a few days I'd always end up back in the old cell with Enrico. That much seemed to be a given. Enrico was from an entirely different world than I: he had a criminal record and no education. I would have completely avoided such a person in New York, but I was beginning to realize how sheltered my life there really was. Returning to that existence seemed like such a distant a possibility, as if it were an abstract theory with no experimental means of verifying its conclusions. As time passed I even began to wonder how my experiences in prison might affect my chances of reintegrating into a normal life, if I ever actually got out.

One morning Enrico leaned over and showed me a map on his palm. At first I couldn't decipher the scribbled lines and smears of ink. He pointed to my cot and gestured for me to climb underneath it. I followed his instructions quietly so the guard outside wouldn't suspect anything. There was a small duct in the wall. I'd never noticed it before because the cot was pushed so close to the wall and I'd never cared to look under it. The duct was about six inches across and covered in a thick layer of dust. He pointed to a spot on his palm where two of the jittery lines on the makeshift map met.

"Here," he whispered.

"What?" I didn't quite understand.

"Escape."

"How?"

"Here." He pointed to his hand again and then to the duct. It was then that I realized he'd drawn a map of the entire duct system of the prison. He made a sort of swimming motion with his hands as if to suggest we could make it through the drainage system.

"How did you find out?" I asked in a hush.

"My friend," he said under his breath. "He was here. Not this cell. He escape last year. He send me map yesterday on inside of cigarette package." Large parcels were strictly forbidden, but occasionally a small package might make it through the mail system.

Enrico climbed under the cot and brushed away the dust on the duct. He reached in until his forearm was no longer visible and bent it upwards so he could pat on the wall about a foot-and-a-half above the opening, suggesting it was large enough for a man to crawl through.

I stood back and looked around the cell. I shook my head in disappointment with myself for never wondering why there were so many partially dug holes in the wall. I pointed to one of the smaller ones as he pulled his arm out of the duct and stood up. He seemed to understand the implied question hiding behind my expression and leaned over to whisper in my ear.

"It's new. My friend said put here two years ago."

The insistent clapping of the guard's footsteps suddenly filled the cell. The echoes in the hall amplified the sound to such a degree, it seemed like an entire troop was marching by. We both tensed up and I pushed the bed into the wall with my foot.

That night I dreamed there was a vast web of tunnels filling the ground beneath us. They were bent, crooked, and dizzying like cracks in a shattered windshield. I was trapped in a kind of _cul de sac_ at a far end of this network and all I could hear was the sound of rushing water. It was so loud it felt like my ear was pressed against the rim of a jet engine. A rat scurried by my foot and for some reason a window suddenly appeared on the left wall of the pipe. Through the clouded glass I could see my wife talking to Enrico. He was smiling and had calm, but feral eyes. I wondered what they were talking about and banged my fist on the window to catch their attention. When Jenny saw me she kissed the window and then pulled a curtain over it. I woke up to the high-pitched screech of what could have been an entire air show flying over the prison. I shook Enrico until he woke up and swore to him we would escape as soon as possible.

We made plans immediately. Neither of us trusted the accuracy of the map his friend had sent him, so we decided to investigate the duct system ourselves in order to build up a map of our own. We were totally silent during the day and spoke only in nervous whispers after dark. The hole in the wall was too small to climb through, so we had to widen it. The scaffolding around it was made of crumbled brick. We took turns late at night scraping away the mortar, effectively widening the hole by removing one brick at a time. We moved as quickly as we could because time was becoming a factor. There had been no further word from Jenny and my execution was getting closer every day. After hours of scraping we always made sure we could put the bricks back into place. We used wadded napkins stolen from the dining hall to fill the gaps left by removing the mortar, so the guards wouldn't suspect anything if they moved the bed aside. Fortunately, this was only a distant possibility because they rarely stepped inside our cell.

After four weeks the hole was wide enough and we started exploring the passageways behind the wall. They were far cleaner than I'd expected and in no time we had constructed a rough map of the network. Since there was no light we could only estimate lengths according to our height. For the most part the map agreed with the one Enrico's friend had sent him, but there were a few important differences. The largest of these was the manhole cover and exit, which seemed to emerge somewhere in the central courtyard behind the prison walls. The original map had it _outside_ the walls. After some deliberation we decided that they must have closed off the passage leading outside the walls after Enrico's friend had escaped. This complicated things because we had no idea how that area was patrolled at night. Worse, it was off limits to prisoners, so we didn't know what to expect. We decided the best thing to do was to crawl all the way to the manhole cover at night and try lifting it up for long enough to get a picture of what was going on. We had no other choice, since we could never gain access to that area during the day from ground level.

I was the first to touch the cold iron of the manhole cover. I remember hearing footsteps on the ground above as I slid three fingers through its small holes. I didn't dare lift it for fear that a guard would be standing directly over me. Judging from the time it took for the sound of the steps to fade into the Mexican night and then return to maximum intensity, I guessed that the guard was pacing in a line running about forty feet to one side of the cover and sixty to the other. This was assuming that his steps were roughly two feet long. If this was true, any attempt to lift the lid would surely be noticed. I had to wait for him to leave. After what seemed like hours of listening to the rhythmic crunching of gravel overhead, I eventually gave up and ducked back into the security of the tunnels below. I had no idea what time it was when I finally got back into the cell and slid into my cot.

The next night Enrico tried. He left at 2:00 a.m., as judged by the changing of the guards in the hallway outside our cell, which always occurred at 1:45 a.m. We hoped if he left later than I did the night before he would be able to catch the guard on a short break from duty.

When I saw Enrico the next morning he whispered across the room with his hands loosely funnelled around his mouth.

"Twenty feet."

"What?"

"The wall."

"Twenty feet to the wall?"

"Five minute break. We will have five minutes."

"What if it was just a random break?"

"Quiet."

A guard walked by and pounded on our door. It was our breakfast call. We had two minutes to get dressed before he came back to open the cell and escort us to the dining hall.

"Ten feet tall," Enrico said solidly.

"The wall?"

"Si."

We quickly dressed and waited for the guard to return. As he approached the threshold of our cell, I remember wondering if he would be able to detect a hint of optimism hiding behind our fake expressions of disgruntled surrender.

That evening we planned our escape. We'd need a rope to help climb over the wall. Enrico was trained as a soldier and could help me over the wall on his shoulders. Then I could pull him over with the rope once I was over the edge. It was clear that there had to be two of us or it wouldn't work. Enrico didn't get a close look at the wall, but he thought it was brick because he used to drive by the facility with some regularity a few years earlier. We went back to the manhole cover every night for a week and the guard to a five-minute break at roughly the same time every night. We had no way of knowing exactly what this time was, but Enrico was sure it couldn't have been more than forty minutes after he got to the manhole cover. Judging from the time Enrico left the cell and the twenty minutes it would take him to get through the ducts, the guard probably took his break at about 3 a.m. Since there was no guarantee that we would be out of his earshot during this break, we would have to operate quietly and quickly.

We spent the next two weeks gathering together all the fragments of rope and cloth we could find. Enrico managed to find an old tetherball rope in the yard during a recreation break. He stuffed it in his underwear in the shape of a massive erection and snuck by the guard without arousing even the slightest suspicion. Later in our cell we carefully tore my pillowcase into a long, thin strand and tied this to the end of the rope. When the guard asked where the rope was, Enrico lied and said he'd ripped it up and thrown it in the incinerator as a joke. He was deprived of exercise privileges for a week.

All told we had about thirty-three feet of makeshift rope. This was enough to allow Enrico to tie one end around his waist and throw the other over the wall. Everything was set. We planned to escape in three weeks, on the night of Good Friday, when the austere silence of this Christian holiday would help us move in stealth once we were over the wall. I had a rough idea where we were relative to the Texas border. We agreed to stay together until we reached the first major city. There we could go our own ways and slip away into anonymity.

### IV

Three days after we finalized our plan I was summoned to the warden's office. The tall male guard left me outside her door and a few minutes later she opened it. She smiled coldly and invited me in to sit down.

"Let's see, to begin with you are scheduled for execution," she said as if confirming my vacation itinerary.

I didn't reply.

"How does it feel to be so close to death?" she asked unsympathetically.

Again I didn't answer.

"It says here that you are a cold-blooded murderer," she announced, holding up a white report sheet. "A young woman in a motel room. We've executed many like you."

"What are you getting at?" I snapped.

"So you aren't mute after all. Some people are born without the ability to speak," she continued as if enlightening me on a great truth of life, "But others are more fortunate. Luckier, perhaps."

I remained silent.

"You are also lucky. Although your guilt is beyond a doubt, it seems the authorities are granting you a reprieve."

"Certainly..." I said, not yet realizing the full import of what she'd just said.

"It appears that your wife has raised the appropriate funds to free you. Don't ask me how she did this without arranging a retrial. Ironic how easily innocence can be bought. Especially in this day and age of due legal process." She tilted forward and smiled dryly. Only then did I realise what she'd said. I was so euphoric that I didn't even bother defending myself against her insults.

"Yes. It's disgusting," she went on scornfully. "But if there's any justice in God's world you'll eventually get what you deserve."

"Freedom, you mean?" I replied sardonically.

She continued as if I hadn't even spoken. "You have three weeks before the necessary paper work is done. While in prison you are still under normal prison rules. Any conspiratory conduct is punishable and may lead to a delay of your release."

She dismissed me and the guards escorted me back to the cell.

When the door slammed behind me and I was left alone with Enrico, everything around me and inside me seemed to change. Jenny's face appeared before me and quickly vanished into nothingness. There are points in life when you suddenly realize that what you're holding onto is little more paper than a paper maché replica of what you once thought you had. I imagined Jenny and her now not-so-new lover sitting in one of those empty rooms you sometimes encounter in dreams. Even though I wanted to touch her I couldn't. She was probably only saving me to assuage her guilt. To accept a reprieve on her behalf would amount to tacit approval of her infidelity. There was a great wire fence between us and I could never climb over it again.

"What did they want?" Enrico asked.

"They just questioned me about the talking that's been going on at night."

"Did you tell them anything?"

"No," I said.

### V

I don't know what had changed inside me to make me hide the truth from Enrico that night in the cell. Perhaps it had something to do with the seductive malaise of my life in prison. It laid me down on my little cot, gently undressed me, and ushered me into its dark intoxicating world. Initially I resisted its languid charms, but eventually I gave in. I was too weak to fight. To simply say it changed me would be an understatement bordering on fallacy. The crumbling plaster walls, the dead silence at meal time, the shameless corruption of the wardens - in short, the whole iniquity of everything I encountered since coming to Mexico - leaked into my being and slowly took hold. Like a drunk before a prostitute, I was powerless.

The change was abrupt. My old life was like a dying species that could no longer survive in a changing ecosystem. New and hideous creatures had sprung into being and in order to protect myself I had to evolve into a higher form. I remember thinking of the story of _Little Black Sambo_ as I lied to Enrico that night. Did the tigers turn to butter instantly or over a series of imperceptible increments? It was hard to imagine a creature half-tiger and half-butter. An abrupt change was more realistic: from tiger to butter in the few moments that passed between leaving the warden's office and stepping into my cell.

Yes, there's only so long a man can filter out the sounds of hollering guards, the dripping of water down a tiny window in the top corner of a urine-covered wall, and the patronizing glances of fellow inmates. Progress, maturation, decay – was there really a difference? Whatever it was that came over me, it told me something I couldn't ignore. And it was exactly that something that kept me from telling Enrico what really happened behind the warden's door.

I thought about my old life, but only slightly, as the word "No" formed on my lips, floated across the room, and funnelled into Enrico's ear. Jenny: red haired, smiling, firm. The apartment in New York with all its simple charm. I loved my wife for all she did. The struggle, her perseverance in fighting for a reprieve when it was clear she now loved someone else. I bore her no resentment for leaving me and I hoped that one day I could come back to her and that everything that happened since she told me of her affair was only an aberration or a nightmare. I hoped for an instant and the plastered walls of my cell reflected my hope back as doubt. Like an evil mirror, the cell walls stood before me. For a moment I felt something like guilt constricting around me, but like the last vestiges of a cocoon I brushed it off and stared Enrico squarely in the eyes.

" _They just questioned me about the talking that's been going on at night."_

" _Did you tell them anything?"_

" _No."_

Without hesitation I resolved to ignore the reprieve and go on with our escape plan. Not out of any allegiance to Enrico, but out of a realization that there was no real way I could ever get back together with Jenny and go back to my old life. I couldn't ignore it. The _up and down of it_ stood there before me. The escape was planned for the night of Good Friday and there was no question of turning back.

### VI

We spoke little during the weeks leading up to the escape. Enrico tested the makeshift rope a few times and we blocked the entrance to the duct system so the guards wouldn't find out. Although we'd so far managed to elude them there was always the outside chance they might get wind of something and start poking around behind our beds. The day arrived slowly and with little event. Everything was just as it was before. The sun rose as it always did and slipped its golden fingers through the wisps of morning clouds. I stared patiently out the window in the corner of our cell as I watched the bleached colors of the day wash away the vibrant pinks and purples of the dawn. I turned away and lowered myself onto my unmade cot. The mattress springs squeaked as I sunk backwards against the wall. The breakfast call came as usual. The cafeteria was strangely quiet. The prisoners' faces sagged wanly into their bowls as I watched Enrico consume his oatmeal. Our eyes met but once, and even then it was with brevity and intentional disinterest.

During the afternoon exercise session we did our best to avoid each other. At one point Enrico jogged by just as a guard was looking directly at me. I made sure not to look at Enrico and smiled at the guard so as not to arouse any suspicion. I spent the rest of the day as I normally did, but at one point started to feel a kind of nostalgia for the place (a man would miss getting slugged in the face if it was the only attention he'd received for the last ten years), but the feeling quickly vanished when I realized that I had no reason to assume that my escape would be successful. Even though I had been granted a reprieve, if I was caught I would be seen as aiding in Enrico's escape and that would certainly lead to further sentencing.

After the guards locked our cell door after dinner we made our last preparations. All we needed was the makeshift rope and our own knowledge of the duct network. Since it took almost exactly twenty minutes to crawl to the manhole cover, we decided to leave at about 2:00 a.m. in order to make it in time for the outside guard's 3:00 a.m. break. This gave us about forty minutes leeway in case anything went wrong.

The evening passed slowly. I remember watching Enrico as he stared out the window into the light of dusk. I became seized with dread when I thought of all the ways our plan could go wrong. I almost jumped when I heard the voice of the guard hollering "Lights out." His voice was so loud and harsh I thought he had somehow cracked our escape plan. He pounded on the door and Enrico answered with a cough.

"Lights out, I said," the guard repeated.

He flicked off the switch. Then he kicked the door and walked down the hall. The last thing I heard was the sound of the keys jangling to the rhythm of his footsteps. We fumbled into our beds and waited patiently for the changing of the guards, our sign that it was time to enter the ducts.

We sat in complete silence for an eternity of yet tinier eternities, each trapped within the next like a series of Chinese boxes. My thoughts changed with the predictable regularity of television commercials: thirty seconds, a minute, then a new idea would flicker into existence only to be supplanted thirty-seconds-to-a-minute later by an even newer one.

I dozed off into a state of semi-sleep punctuated by the sound of the guard's heels clicking on the cement hallway. A feeling of security came over me when it occurred to me that I was still in touch with the audible realm and therefore wouldn't sleep through the changing of the guards and miss my chance to escape. I was thinking about the grey and limitless ocean and how my former life was so tiny in comparison when I suddenly became aware that I could no longer hear the guard. Enrico shook me into full consciousness and handed me the rope.

Enrico bent down and peeled away the layers of brick and tissue that stood between us and the entrance to the duct system. I thought I could hear the steps of the new guard as I climbed inside the tunnel. It was narrower than I remembered and there was a wet, syrupy substance smeared all over the aluminum interior. We squirmed through as I imagined moles would, Enrico maintaining a three-foot cushion between us. His heavy breathing seemed amplified in the narrow confines of the tunnel. I tensed up, thinking that a guard might be able to hear it from somewhere outside.

My clothes were wet and smelled of sewage when we reached the ladder that led up to the manhole cover. Enrico ascended quickly to the top. There was only enough room for one at a time, so I remained in a position directly below him, waiting for the moment when we'd have to leap out of the hole, dash across the courtyard, and scale the wall. Since I had never seen the wall myself I knew I would be disoriented for a moment, but I kept visualizing myself running up behind Enrico and climbing onto his shoulders as soon as he stopped. Then he'd vault me over the wall and I'd land safely on the other side. After that I could toss him the rope and once he had climbed over we'd be free.

My tension passed and I dozed off. I awoke to the sound of the metallic scraping of the manhole cover being lifted and the sound of Enrico's heavy panting. He was already outside ushering me forward with his hand before I started climbing the ladder. My heart jumped into my mouth as I hoisted myself out onto the moonlit courtyard. I watched as Enrico plodded over to the wall and set his hands against the brick, his arms outstretched. I shuffled towards him, looking over my shoulder for any sign of any danger. There was none. I mounted his shoulders and scaled the wall.

When my feet touched ground on the other side I tossed the rope over the wall and waited for a tug, indicating that Enrico had grabbed it and tied it around his waist. It tightened for an instant and suddenly I heard a scream. I pulled as hard as I could. The sound of a gunshot clattered through the air. The rope loosened and I pulled back from the wall. It was then that I knew what had happened. I cringed. Even if he wasn't dead there was no hope of his escape. The fuckers had got him. I had to run. I tossed the rope towards the wall and ran as fast as I could into the blackness of the night. I ran blindly into a forest, never once looking back at my pursuers. I moved like a wraith through the dense, custard-like air - escaping at last from _everything_. Not just the prison, the guards, and their ravenous dogs, but also the paralyzing life and failed marriage I once stood for and believed in.

From my one trip to the prison I knew it was mostly desert for miles around, so I reasoned the small forest must have been planted there. This suggested I was probably near some sort of village or town. Wrong. I ended up running for what seemed like an hour before my legs gave in to exhaustion and I knelt down to get my bearings. I could no longer hear the sounds of the dogs, so I rested for a few minutes and gathered my breath.

My thoughts turned to Enrico. I felt something like sadness for him as I looked upwards at the points of starlight falling like snowflakes through the canopy of trees above. Without his help I would have ended up back with my wife, mired in the lie of my former self. The dinners and the vacuous struggle to maintain a love that had long since died. The time I spent in prison had revealed the flaws in my existence. I toyed with the fantastical idea that Enrico was a divine agent sent to keep me from returning to a woman that never loved me, and like such a messenger, he'd returned to a higher realm when his mission was complete.

Tapping my knuckles on a nearby tree, I stood up and brushed the dirt from my pants. I emptied my pockets and brushed back my hair, continuing into the pale night like a ghostly marauder. Nameless, faceless - I lacked all features since there was no light to bring them into being - and without money, task or food I raced onwards until I saw the first blush of morning spread out on the horizon. A church spire rose elegantly in the distance, rivalling even the most delicate clouds in terms of grace, and I could see the shape of what appeared to be a small girl carrying jars of milk across a field of yellowed grass. I thought I could hear her singing as I walked in her direction. I was technically a criminal, if only in a secondary way - because I had yet to commit even the most harmless crime - so I had to be careful.

As I stared behind me into the trees it dawned on me for the first time that I had no identity at all; in other words, I was nothing. I felt both desolate and renewed as I accelerated into a light trot and approached the girl.

Her face was tanned, but not enough to hide the subtle rose of her cheeks and the pale clarity of her forehead. "Emptiness," was the first word that entered my mind as I studied her gentle, but somehow still earthy features - framed so naturally by her dress, the color of flax flowers. She had white chocolate arms and dark chocolate hair. She turned away from me at first and walked briskly towards a white, stuccoed house made more beautiful by a marble veranda and what looked like a bell tower stretching upwards from the clay-tile roof. She slowed her pace as she neared the stone steps. I stopped and stood about fifty feet away. Only then did the full meaning of my condition dawn on me. She was a person. She had a name and a purpose. Everything about her spoke to me of an abstract thing called "personness". It gave her a rounded sense of completeness that I currently lacked. Yes, everything about me was in opposition to this concept of personness. I was little more than an empty vessel.

After staring at me curiously for a few seconds, she turned again and ran into the house. I thought of following her, but it seemed pointless. She'd already served her purpose in my life. My goal was now clear. She had clarified it. I was to fill this emptiness, furnish the rooms of my being with new objects and artefacts culled from the world around me. I was like a strip of unexposed film, waiting for the world to impress itself on the blankness of my being.

But before I did anything else I wanted to luxuriate in this rare state of emptiness. I was in the enviable position of being _nobody_ and wanted to take full advantage of it, although being _nobody_ really reduces to being _anybody_ since one needs some sort of attributes and a true nobody would have no attributes at all. My escape was successful. But to escape means to escape _from_ something and in escaping from something, one must escape _into_ something else.

I was still standing on the threshold, reluctant to move forward.

### VII

I crossed the vast plain ahead of me until I saw what looked like a system of canals receding in a zigzag pattern towards a hazy mountain range that rose from the horizon. I looked down at my body and noticed for the first time since my escape that I was still dressed like a prisoner. I needed to get new clothes, but it would be best to wait until nightfall before venturing into a populated area. The chances of being caught in the daylight were too high. I walked in the direction of the canals, hoping to stumble across a small town where I could refresh myself and plan my journey into Texas or California - whichever was the closest.

The canals turned out to be a mirage. I walked in the same direction for what seemed like hours, only occasionally spotting what I thought were man-made structures, made slippery and distorted by the solar glare and waves of heat wafting upwards from the sizzling ground, only to see them vanish when I got any closer. In the desert heat my mind seemed to wander aimlessly. Sometimes I reflected on my fate as a luckless fugitive, escaping a dry and meaningless past, while at other times I pondered the dark womb of the future and what hidden perils it might hold for me. For the most part, though, I felt strangely numb and emotionless. It was as if I'd been lifted out of any corporeal existence and all of the feelings inside me, once so strongly attached to my external life, had now vanished. My memories of Enrico, the prison, and even my former life had already faded. All that concerned me now were the things immediately surrounding me: the tiny crevices in the cracked ground, the dry grass and hoards of tiny insects springing blindly from the sand into the deadly heat of the sun. I filled myself with these new impressions, soaking them up as the earth might soak up small pools of water.

So strange was the desert world. An existence meted out only by the passage of the sun through the shapeless azure sky. The sun dominated life so completely in the desert, it was no wonder that the Aztecs had built an entire religion around it. My day was cleanly divided into segments according to the sun's position with respect to my face, head, and back. There were the early hours when it burned into my eyes like an interrogation lamp as it rose up from the thin layer of smoke on the horizon. In the afternoon it climbed to a point in the sky that felt like it was only a few inches above my temple, the rays were so intense. And in the evening it would start to recede, sinking gently into the horizon as it assumed a reddish hue and finally disappeared.

Eventually I saw a sign in the fading light of dusk. Its sloppily painted letters for that moment defined me. "Cergazzo." I guessed it was the name of a town. The letters said everything about me with their thin and childish scrawl. In a world composed solely of letters, these would certainly hold the lowest position. Likewise, I was at the bottom of the world of men. I'd chosen - but how can I say such a thing, since to choose implies a chooser behind the choice, and I was now little more than an empty space - the path of a new existence and the first stages were defined by nothing more than bare simplicity.

I walked further until I saw a city in the distance. The soft needles of light rising from its vast firmament were just coming into view against a background of growing darkness. As I spotted the first signs of human life - a young man holding a basket of fruit in his arms and a nun riding a bicycle, carrying what could have been a bible under one arm as she smoothly guided herself along the edge of the road – I was suddenly seized by fear. This was my first contact with normal people since I was imprisoned and I'd almost forgotten how to socialize with them.

I continued down a road until it became a major street, careful not to allow anyone close enough to me that they might notice my prisoner's garb. My first order of business was to find new clothes. I'd have to steal some from a drunk on the street or maybe from an outdoor clothesline.

I turned into a side street and walked for about five minutes. Then I came across a row of cheap-looking tenements. They were all built with sheet-metal roofs, aluminum exteriors and had either small gardens or vacant lots filling out the space around them. After looking behind a few of them in hope of finding an unattended clothesline, I came upon a small church. With any luck I'd be able to get the garments I needed inside. It didn't look like a typical Latin American mission. The walls were made of chipped stucco and a garish neon cross hung above the arched door. I tried the handle, but the door was locked.

I quickly ripped off my shirt and tossed it aside. It would conceal my fugitive status and give me a plausible reason for needing to get new clothes. I knocked on the door and waited. I was just starting to turn away when a man opened the door. He was older and his face was wrinkled. He wore a priest's collar around his neck and held a book in his hand. Smiling, he beckoned me to approach. I stepped towards him.

"Are you hungry?" He spoke English. I was relieved.

"No." Strangely, I wasn't.

"You should be careful...you might get sun-burned."

"I'm hitch-hiking from Texas and I lost it last night at a costume party," I said. "I picked the pants up in a garbage dumpster on the way here."

"You could certainly use a shirt and some new pants."

He ushered me in and led me into the back room. We passed through a long narrow room permeated with a musty smell like that of an old couch. The walls were lined with small beds, each occupied by a sleeping body.

"Do you need a place to sleep as well?" he asked in a subdued voice. "It seems we're quite full. The Easter season always makes men crazy. They all go out and drink and go wild. Leave home, wander. You know. Binge drinkers. Some even set bonfires. They always end up at places like this. Fortunately, they only stay for a few days before they go back to their wives and families."

"No. I only need clothes," I repeated. "Like I said, they were stolen last night at a party."

He escorted me into a back room and opened a closet. After a few minutes of sorting through a tall bin of clothes, he handed me an old pair of Levis and a plaid shirt. He urged me to take them. I changed in a tiny bathroom beside the closet. The pants were slightly too small, but they would suffice. I felt a slight pain in my crotch as I walked out into the room to thank him. He offered me a drink of water, but I refused. I was eager to venture off into the dreamy Mexican night.

I crossed the gravel street in front of the church. Jumping across a gully on the other side of the road I became aware of a dark fecundity hanging in the air. A child's conception of Hell, I thought: grotesque, fantastical, yet strangely sexual. There was a row of sparkling lights in the distance and I heard the sounds of shouting and laughter. Soon I heard music. I followed the sounds and they led me closer to the lights. This would be my first test, I told myself. It would be the first real human contact since my escape. The priest was merely a prelude, a trailer at the beginning of the film I was about to step into. I felt the emptiness inside me dissipate, but only slightly, as the lights grew more clear before me.

As I walked into the alien surroundings of this new city, everything about me seemed to lurch into motion. The pieces of my new life began to rearrange like the colored tiles in a game of Tetris and the act of stepping into this city was the first move in this electronic game. The tiles would gradually assume a pattern, and all I had to do was wait to see what it would be, because this pattern would be the template for my new life. I felt a sense of powerlessness when I realized that the outcome of this Tetris game was beyond my control. A strange hand was manipulating those angled moving forms, which never quite matched the edges of the shapes that fell beside them. Fate? Not really, I thought. It always seemed to me that what you choose in life was merely a function of your own predilections, which, in turn, were not of your own choosing. You go through life with various likes and dislikes which, at the bottom of it all, control all your decisions. But can you decide what you will like and not like? I don't think so. In this same way I felt the shuffling of my imaginary Tetris blocks was completely out of my control. I waited calmly, wondering where they'd fall.

Eventually I found myself in front of a small dreary building. A green neon panther above the door suggested it was a bar. The roof was constructed from two sheets of corrugated iron and the walls were finished in a kind of salmon-colored plaster that seemed ubiquitous in the southern reaches of the continent. The same lights I had spotted from a distance illuminated a pair of rectangular windows through which I could see the faint outlines of several human figures moving inside. Although the lights appeared as a monochrome blur from a distance, now that I was closer they had resolved into distinct shades of red, green, blue and white. A smell of something like animal slaughter arrested my nasal passages as I tried the door. It creaked as I opened it.

Inside, a few soldiers stood in a group in a corner, leering at one another with their long, hung-over faces. To their left, a party of women - all Mexican - chattered over a pool table. I guessed they were prostitutes because of the way they dressed. One, the prettiest, wore a tight-fitting red skirt and a black halter-top. I approached the bar and sat down.

The bartender couldn't speak a word of English, so I pointed to a bottle of beer before realizing I was flat broke. I let my hand drop and shook my head. The woman in the red skirt turned and approached me. She had a disarmingly natural smile and walked in long, casual strides. Her hair was dark and her lips - smeared in deep-red lipstick - seemed almost broader than her face when she smiled. Her teeth were small but evenly spaced across the ridge of her mouth.

"You're an American?" she asked in clear English, her tongue swimming in the wetness of her mouth.

"I'm on holidays," I replied.

"Those aren't holiday clothes. Why did you come _here?_ "

She pulled up a chair and sat beside me. My heart jumped.

"I wanted to get away from the resorts and do something new."

"Are you married?"

"No," I lied, looking down on my finger and noticing my wedding ring was still on. Her eyes followed mine. She relaxed her head and looked up at me.

"There's no need to lie."

"I may never see her again," I said.

"I'm sorry. Is there anything I can do?" she asked tenderly. My eyes focused on her breasts. They drew me towards them. They drew me inside of them. I imagined the warm pulse of milk and blood running through the thin blue veins spreading like tiny deltas beneath her skin.

"I'd buy you a drink, but I'm broke," I said hesitantly. I didn't really know how to respond. For a moment I felt almost autistic, suffocating in a cocoon spun from the threads of my own solitude.

"Let me," she said. She pulled out her purse and called over the bartender.

The evening set off on its inevitable course, tumbling away into some vague conversational oblivion until we eventually landed in the throes of drunken flirtation. She bought me more drinks than I could keep count of. In my starved and dehydrated state, they drove straight to my head. Later she bought me food: a plate of burritos and some corn chips. Then more beer. My lips loosened and our eyes were drawn together. I watched her indigo lashes flutter to the rhythm of the Latin jazz playing in the background. Her face journeyed through a panoply of sultry night-time expressions as we slowly sank into each other's comfort. The bartender made last call and her hand touched my thigh. I took it as an invitation to leave with her. She waved to the other women, who were still chattering around the pool table, as we left. The two men I took for soldiers cast a spiteful glance in my direction and trailed behind us a few seconds later. At first I thought they were following us, but they turned left a block down the road.

It was only when we were finally alone that I found out her name.

"What do they call you?" I asked.

"You mean what's my name?"

"It's all the same."

"No, a name is more special. You can call me anything you want, but it won't be my name. A name's like a charm necklace."

"Whatever you say. I still think that names are only labels."

"If I decided to change my name it would be only because I wanted to be a different person and drop out of the life I've made for myself. Then the name would make me even more different."

"So..." I beckoned her.

"My name is Angie. But, if I became an Esmeralda, say, I would go around acting like an Esmeralda and not an Angie. The name would make me into a different person. I'd be silly and sneaky like all Esmeraldas should be. Angie is more of a pure and honest name."

"You can pick a name, but then it picks you eventually," I said, trying to extract some sort of credo from what she had just said.

"Now you're talking. Names are magic. Don't you think so?"

"If you say so." I had no name as far as the authorities were concerned, so who was I to judge?

She led me to her motel a few blocks away from the bar. It was called _The Green Gecko Lodge_. She grabbed my hand as we stepped lightly up the stairs past a triangle of palm trees to her door.

Her room was blandly furnished. There was a bed in the corner that had a worn out brown blanket flattened on top of it. A plastic air conditioner rattled away beneath the wall-lamp directly to the left of the door and a dull curtain hung geriatrically over the window. Angie played with its heavy furls as she kicked off her black pumps. I felt unusually at ease with her. I just sat back and let her warm currents pull me along like a leaf in a river. She stepped towards me and tugged at my shirt.

"Where did you buy this? Plaid just doesn't seem right for you," she remarked in a playfully deep voice.

I reclined on her bed and stared momentarily at the light hanging from the ceiling. Although the bulb was enclosed in a brownish beehive of glass I could still see the branched finger-like shadow projected by the filament across the far wall of the room. I held up my hand and compared it to this shadow. The shadow was bigger, but much fainter.

I was still staring at the lamp as her face slid across my view like the moon eclipsing the sun. Then I felt her hand sliding with the same passive grace across my stomach and into my Levis. I flinched, expecting her fingertips to be cold and her nails sharp. I was surprised when I felt only a warm wave of assurance tighten around my penis. She fell on top of me. Initially I was unresponsive, but then the wild Mexican night took hold of me and I pressed my face against hers. Her lips spread even further across her face than before, almost breaking away from her cheeks to wrap around my mouth and fill it with their salty redness.

Her nipples were also red. Swooping over her like a bat, I slid my hand over her intangibly large breasts and tucked my fingertips between her skin and bra. It was little work to pull off the remainder of her clothes. Standing before her naked body I suddenly became aware of my erection growing inside my pants. It seemed inanimate, even mineral in nature, but at the same time itching with a rare sensitivity. She pulled off my pants and buried her head in my pubic hair. I wondered if she noticed I had no underwear and hadn't bathed in days.

We sank deeply into the deathly arms of sex. My soul seemed to vanish and in its place a second identity poured into the emptiness left behind. A sort of joint being took hold of us. My body became a flesh machine whose sole purpose was to thrust and grind away into the feral warmth of her body. I felt something like love - a vacuous and surrogate love - take hold of me and pin me to every aspect of her being. As she wrapped around me in every conceivable way a trail of images blazed through my head. I thought of Jenny: her papery form bleached and thinning by the minute. I imagined her holding hands with a man in a bathing suit as she fretfully tried to balance her chequebook. She had a sorry look of abandonment on her face. This was guilt, I thought. Jenny's room then became a cell and she transformed into Enrico. His rounded face burst into a smile and he lit the butt of a cigarette. I noticed it was covered in blood and suddenly I was alone in the ducts. My hands were parched and all I could think of was the cold iron of the manhole cover and how it felt against my fingers.

The images accelerated: the poison bliss of the desert heat, the silvery tops of cactus buds, the sun's gleaming white canines, the chocolate-haired girl and her last bashful glance, the barking dogs and the feeling of the rope slackening in my hand. The sign at the city's entrance and the game of Tetris: a ballet of form and emptiness, still to reach its climax. And then the swollen gap between her legs. I thrust into her, clutching desperately away at the security of her physical presence, which extended like a wooden pier into the thrashing oceans of my thought.

Her silky wetness gripped tightly around me as I threw myself into the throng of knees and skin beneath me. It seemed for moments we were an entire orgy in one bed. Her tongue, breasts and pussy seemed to push from all directions in a heated ambush of my being. When all seemed hopeless and I was completely surrounded by her armies of limbs and skin, I came. Then all was silence. For an instant my entire being was huddled up inside her. I was an inhabitant of her viscera, maybe even her soul. _I was inside her_.

Then the room lit up and its bland furnishings congealed around me. Her face took on a look of _difference_. All that drew me towards her before we made love, now assumed a new appearance. She was no longer attractive to me and her eyes betrayed a repulsive smugness, which somehow matched the air of cheap practicality oozing from the walls around us. I sat up beside her. Her clothes sat in a chintzy pile on the floor and her breasts looked noticeably deflated. I turned towards her and kissed her. Our lips touched, but only mechanically.

"Do you think we'll see each other again?" her voice feathered into my ear.

"What?"

"After tonight, I mean."

A bell tinkled inside me and I knew that this was the cue I'd been looking for. A grey featureless hand guided yet another Tetris block into its place. A pattern emerged and that pattern was _falsity_. It ripped through the room like a fissure through a glacier. It was everywhere. From my unfair trial to the makeup on her face, the world rang with falsity as if it were a bell from heaven. I felt something like religious awe. My new life had been chosen.

"Yes," I replied coolly. "I feel tonight was special." I didn't want to hurt her feelings.

"This room is kind of cozy. What do you think?" she said. I tightened my lips and ran my fingers over her stomach as I drifted away in thought.

Staring at the ceiling, I felt a tingle in my toe. I needed a new identity. A new name, a new profession: in short, a new self. I had to escape the past, to forget it completely. That much was clear. Not only to evade the police, but to keep my past from leaking in from the corners of my existence where it could only serve to harm me.

She smiled and rubbed my belly. I looked her in the eye and saw a completely different person than the one I'd gone home with. Weaker, more resigned. We remained in a speechless huddle until morning.

### VIII

The next day I opened the heavy curtains and looked out into courtyard. The room filled up with an oceanic blue light reflected from the pool outside. Angie had already left. I didn't even see her wake up. The clock read 11:00 a.m. On my way to the bathroom I spotted a note on the table.

"See you tonight. Same place," it read. I tore it up and dressed.

As I put my clothes on I reviewed the previous night's epiphany. I thought of Angie's breasts pressed between us like flowers between the pages of a book. Her soft, laconic eyes, her lips, fingers, and even her toenails still lived on inside me. Yet our encounter was a lie. The woman before we made love and the woman after were completely different people – made so by time itself. In the same way I was no longer the person I was before I met her. I felt less sincere, more sarcastic – almost, even, haughty. The segments of my former life had taken on a new appearance in the light of day. If I hadn't been wrongly imprisoned none of this would have happened. But the changes were irreversible and I had no choice but to go on. The Tetris game insisted on it. Crossing my heart with my fingers I vowed to forget everything that happened before I met her and swagger forward into a completely new existence.

I put on my shoes and fixed my hair. I left the hotel and strolled through the narrow roads of the town for until midday. I had to find out how far it was to the border and then ask around to see if anyone had heard about the escape – perhaps through the news. I also needed money. Work, theft? There was no easy solution, so I decided to play it by ear. Perhaps Angie might lend me enough cash to get me to Texas. What I would do once I made it back to the States was still undecided. The solution would have to wait. It seemed a few of those colored Tetris tiles were still floating on the periphery of the screen, their ultimate position yet to be determined.

Eventually I came across a busy shopping area I assumed was the downtown. I passed a bakery, a drugstore, and a candy store that had a baby carriage filled with chocolate displayed in the window. The street was full of light-skinned Mexicans, their eyes at once passive and hostile. At first I felt vulnerable - a sure target for harassment. My fear quickly abated as the townspeople didn't seem to notice anything different about me. This was a comfort. I stepped inside a magazine store and leafed through a few tabloids to see if I could find anything interesting. My Spanish was weak, but even if I didn't understand much the name of the prison would still appear in any newspaper story about the escape. I saw nothing. A tall elderly man leaned against the counter and whispered something in the clerk's ear as he pointed to a firearms magazine on the shelf directly behind the cash register. They looked over at me and stared for an instant before looking away again and resuming their conversation. I interrupted and asked the clerk how much farther it was to the border, trying my best to pretend I was driving and just got lost.

"Tourist, no?"

"Yes." I smiled and nodded my head innocently.

"Why did you come here? Nicer girls in Acapulco."

"I'm married."

"I see." He pulled out a map and slapped it resolutely on the counter in front of me. Then he opened it up and pointed to a dot about three inches south of Texas. "About fifty miles on this road."

I emptied my pockets to show him I was broke. He smiled and gestured for me to take the map anyway. I returned his smile and thanked him profusely.

"Go to Acapulco," he yelled as I stepped out onto the street.

Later that afternoon I rested alone in a park area beside the bar from last night with the green neon panther hanging over the door. A few Mexican youths standing across the street were tossing a baseball around. Their almost frenetic level of action stood in stark contrast to the lazy stillness of the houses behind them. The youths moved in a triangular formation, always maintaining the same distance from one another but never breaking their stride or straying from the strictly defined vertices of their pattern. I wondered if it was some kind of baseball drill.

At sundown, I started to get hungry again. It was a sign from my body. My stomach was telling me that I was a living entity, that I was more than just _nothing_. That's what a stomach was there for. I hadn't eaten since the night before and started hoping Angie would show up sometime soon. I waited outside, afraid to go in with no money in my pocket, until eventually the clock inside read 11:00 p.m. Impatient and almost desperate, I ran back to the hotel to find her. A shrunken man with a bulldog nestled in his lap sat behind the counter listening to brass music on a beat-up radio. I passed by quickly, hoping he wouldn't notice, and then sprang tightly upstairs. I knocked on the door. There was no answer.

I knocked harder and called out, "It's me."

The door opened and I was suddenly facing a broad-shouldered Mexican woman. She looked at me quizzically and cocked her brow. She had an ornate black and red rosary strung around her neck and I could smell fresh nail polish in the envelope of air surrounding her.

"Who do you want?" she slurred. She was so drunk I could barely discern her words.

"The lady who was here."

"She left this afternoon. I'm here for the week."

"Where did she go?"

"How would I know? I've never even seen her." She had an irritable tone in her voice.

"Oh."

"God damn you. What do you want anyway?"

"Sorry to bother you."

I hung my head in desperation, thanked her and left. My only hope was to wait it out in the bar until I found another who'd take me in.

I went back to the bar and looked around cautiously. The bar was decked with a long string of Mexicans. A few women played pool in the center of the room. In the far corner by a cigarette machine stood a man with a long blue frock coat. His blond hair was parted loosely on the left side and his face betrayed a sense of sullen languor. I approached him.

"Got a cigarette?" I asked.

"Sure," he replied under his breath. He had a German accent.

"Thanks," I said as he held out a lit match as a silent offering of friendship.

"You are an American?"

"Yes. A tourist. And you?"

"Manheim. On leave from the service." He spoke with clumsy deliberation, struggling with the English language like a man wrestling with a boa constrictor.

I didn't probe further, assuming he was here on some sort of secret military business. Everything about him seemed eminently likeable, from his unusually honest face to his reserved geniality. We talked for a while about my upcoming journey to Texas and then I asked him if he'd seen the woman I was looking for. I described Angie as best I could, but he just shook his head sympathetically. When I told him that she was my girl friend and we'd just had a fight, he graciously offered to put me up in his hotel room until we made up. I accepted without hesitation.

We left and walked to his hotel, which he said was just a few blocks south of the bar. In the darkness his light, almost angelic face took on a more sinister appearance and his broken English suspiciously improved. We walked past a rusted cistern. The wide mouth of a corrugated iron sewer pipe belched noxious fumes into our path.

"Do you like strange things?" he asked. I didn't respond. He raised his eyebrow and rubbed his thigh sensuously. We continued walking in uncomfortable silence. I wanted to leave and go back to the bar, but I thought it was probably closed already. The wrinkles in his long blue coat assumed the twisted shapes of wild beasts with long Negroid faces in the cold light of the desert moon.

A few minutes later we reached his hotel. He opened the door and led me upstairs.

"I have some photographs in my room you might be interested in," he said. "I took them while I was away in South America. They mean a lot to me. South America...ah." He rolled his head back and looked to the ceiling as if savoring past memories. Then he sharpened his stance and pulled a key out from his pocket and opened the door. His room was empty except for a cot, a dimly lit desk lamp and a television set. A few Polish theater posters hung artily over the cot beside a pair of plastic Spanish lanterns that protruded rudely from the wall. He slipped out of his coat as though from a suit of armor.

"South America is a place where everything is permitted. One can do anything, be anybody. I met Buddhists who were murderers, Christians who were rapists, and other men who believed in stranger, more ruthless gods. Fishermen, gamblers, pimps, police inspectors - everyone lives happily together in a state of blissful torment and unrest. I was in the army stationed in Lima for a few years." He looked at me, his eyes widening strangely. "Have you ever been to Lima?"

"No," I said dully.

"You haven't been to Lima. _He_ hasn't been to Lima." He turned to the wall as if he were facing a crowd. Then he turned back and continued. "Perhaps you should go. Something in the air sneaks inside you and takes hold. Grabs you. Kisses you. Tortures you. I became somebody I never knew I could have become while I was there."

"You like the theater?" I asked, trying to change the topic. He was starting to scare me. In my current state of uncertainty I was more impressionable than normal.

"It used to amuse me. Before I went to Lima. Now I prefer photography and pictures. I bring these posters with me wherever I go. I collect images. Photos, posters, ads. An unusual hobby for a soldier, I guess. One must do something in-between wars." He knelt down and pulled out a folder from under his bed.

"I like film," I replied. "That was my hobby, once."

"Film is a lie," he declared. "Actors and actresses are the only true thieves of the world. They just want sex, money, power, and fame. All in exchange for their petty emotionalism and outright lies. I refuse to watch them. Photography is different. More spontaneous."

He stood up and unfurled his arms. Then he opened the folder and set it on the bed.

"Not enough light," he observed. He went into the bathroom and returned a few minutes later with a light bulb in his hand. He screwed it into an empty socket directly above the bed and flicked a switch on the wall behind him. The room lit up. I could see a scar on his neck that had been invisible before. He looked suddenly much older. His eyes tightened.

"These are my favorite photos. I showed them to the Mexican porter last night and he crossed himself and left in hushed silence."

I leaned nervously over the foot of the bed so I could see them more clearly. They were each the size of regular writing paper and shot in muted black and white. He sat on the bed and began to leaf through the stack, handing them to me one at a time. They depicted horrible, even disgusting scenes, but were shot with a compelling sense of angle and contrast.

The first showed a naked figure on a sheet with a swastika cut into its chest. I couldn't tell if it was a man or woman, but closer inspection revealed a severed stump between the legs. This image was superimposed on that of a busy street corner in what looked to be New York, giving the mutilated body a sort of ethereal weightlessness. I set it down and looked away as he handed me the next one.

"I took them all myself," he said proudly.

I wanted to leave, but I noticed a gun underneath the television set. Any false move might set him off. I had to pacify him somehow and leave when he least expected it. I studied his repulsive creations for the next ten minutes, trying to keep a calm interested look on my face: a mule with holes cut into its side just large enough to stick in a few grenades, a woman in a bathtub, naked, with a tarantula on each of her breasts, a man with a dead snake hanging out of his mouth. I looked into his deep blue eyes and he stopped suddenly as though he detected a subliminal note of disapproval in my glance.

"Are you offended?" he asked, slinking over towards the television set.

"I have to go," I said. I couldn't wait any longer. It was his look - singular, violent. A twisted grin spread across his face. The door suddenly seemed miles away as I leapt up.

He threw himself towards the television and grabbed the gun on the floor. When I turned he was aiming it directly at my face. I was only a foot from the door...but I couldn't take the risk.

"Take off your clothes," he ordered, his voice tightening its grip around me.

I began to undress. I remembered the way he stroked his leg outside the hotel. My only hope was to play along with his game. If I could arouse him enough to catch him off guard, I might have a chance.

"All of them," he said lasciviously. "I want to see what a tourist looks like after he's cheated on his boring wife. You forgot to hide your wedding ring, you liar. What was her name, Angie? A hooker, no doubt. A lot of married men come down here to pick up whores. Why not, I say? I've always wondered what the whole marriage institution was all about anyway."

He strode towards me with a demonic whisper in his eye, his gun now pointed at my chest. He grabbed my penis and squeezed it in his fat blubbery hands. His ugliness oozed all over it. I pretended to groan sensually and let my mouth drop: sultry, surprised. He looked up, clearly enjoying my ecstatic response. I had heard of women faking orgasm before and now I was on the other side. Now I knew what it was like to be at the mercy of some humping white mass of ravenous flesh.

"So, you like my hands. Everyone does. They were the talk of the town in Lima." He set the gun on the floor and I pulled his blond head towards my pelvis. He held my penis between his coarse, white lips. I wanted to vomit, but I let him continue, feigning pleasure, but always keeping one eye riveted on the gun. It was about an inch from his left hand and twice as far from my toe.

I moaned and pulled his head desperately into my pubic hair. He couldn't tell the difference anyway, his mouth was so wet with spit. I could feel his wet teeth biting into me as I pulled back in a paroxysm and kicked the gun to a position ten feet behind him. I kneed him in the face and dove towards the gun. In one motion I stood up and shot blindly. Three times. Four times. I could almost see the blood spraying from his face in the theatrical darkness of the room. The gun wasn't as loud as I'd thought it would be, but I still had to run before the hotel staff came to investigate.

I grabbed his photos, and plundered his pockets for his wallet and any other valuables he might have been carrying. I didn't even count the money as I stuffed it in my pants. I opened the door and raced like a lizard out into the cold desert night.

### IX

I can't remember how long I ran before I slowed to a light gallop. This time there were no dogs and nothing but my guilt to pursue me. But even _it_ had a hard time catching up to me. My insides convulsed at the thought of the German's body lying there in a lukewarm pool of blood. But why should I feel anything at all? Since he was the aggressor and deserved to die, I wasn't really killer. It just happened. I was defending myself from a Nazi queer. He even tried to rape me. That was the truth, and that was my story. Maybe you think I am making this all up, but I swear it's the truth - _really_. He was dangerous and had to be shot. I was doing society a favor. Perhaps in a strange metaphysical way his death made up for that of Enrico. Although he was a criminal, he was a good-hearted one. There's no way Enrico deserved to die. Not in my world, anyway.

I stopped beside a tall tree and looked behind me. The city of Cergazzo had faded into a cradle of blurred light rocking almost imperceptibly in the gentle arms of the night. If my directions were right, I was north of the city, already on the road to Texas. It was too far to make it overnight, especially since hitch hiking was out of the question, so I decided to rest in a sandy ditch and wait until morning. I covered myself with the folder of photos and fell asleep.

In the morning I woke to the shrill blast of a Vespa engine whining on the road beside me. I was lying in the ditch face down, my arms outstretched into the branches of a nearby shrub. I stood up and brushed the sand off my pants. Then I noticed that the photos had blown into the mouth of a damp sewage pipe about forty feet in front of me. I collected as many of them as I could find and brushed the dirt off their glossy surfaces with my shirt. I took the German's wallet out from my back pocket and knelt down to empty it on the ground.

There were about 180 dollars in American bills and some loose Mexican change. There were also a few pieces of ID, including an American Social Security card and a California driver's license, both in the name of Paul Robertson. The German's picture was on the license. His face looked pale, almost goat-like. I seriously doubted that Paul Robertson was his real name, but all the better I thought, because there was nothing preventing _me_ from using his Social Security card once I got to the States. The real Paul Robertson was now dead. In fact, it was likely he had never really existed to begin with. Obviously the German just used this name as an alias to conceal his real identity. If _he_ could use it, then why couldn't I? It certainly didn't offend my pride to assume a _second hand_ alias, in fact it was twice the fun. The only foreseeable problem was the potential risk was that he was wanted by the American police. Yet I had no other way of crossing into the US. I had to take the chance. And if I was lucky enough to cross the border without incident, I could find out more about him before I further jeopardized my position.

As for Robert Smith, I guess he was either dead or cleverly evading the authorities in some cheap Mexican village. Everything had fallen into place perfectly. The Tetris blocks - yes, back to _them_ \- had seen me well. Why shouldn't they? Of course, I had a murder on my hands, but if I kept my fingers crossed I could get out of the country as Paul Robertson and purge myself once and for all of the past. The only remaining question was what Paul Robertson did for a living. What if I was stopped by police and questioned? What would I say? I needed a story. I leafed through the photos and a tingle moved up my spine. In an understated and glossy black-and-white kind of way they had already provided me with an answer.

I was a photographer and this was my Mexican photo essay. It was a perfect explanation. They were a bit odd, but wasn't that the fashion these days? I'd always been fascinated with the way the images rippled across the silver screen in my favorite Hollywood classics. Perhaps that meant I possessed hidden talent as a photographer. Yes, I bet I did. All those years with Jenny I was suppressing my secret talent. A new life blossomed before me. I saw myself in brightly painted rooms wearing the newest fashions with a Nikon camera in my hands, whole regiments of the sexiest models at my disposal.

I tucked the photos neatly under my arm and stuffed the wallet back into my pocket. I figured it would take about three days of walking to get to the border, especially if I avoided the major roads where I risked being picked up by the police on some sort of vagrancy charges. I had enough money to get me to Texas and maybe even buy a bus ticket to LA, where I could probably find easy work until I could start thinking about my future as a photographer. Everything was set. For the first time since I Jenny left me I had some sort of direction. The escape - from both prison and my former life - was a success. The brief period of emptiness which follows any new birth had ended and my temporary sense of formlessness had withered in the desert heat like a discarded skin. I only had the future to look forward to. There was no way anyone would find out. Not my wife, not the Mexican authorities, not anybody. I was no longer a Robert, I was now a Paul. A false Paul. _A false man_. In retrospect, the warden's crooked offer to free me from jail and turn me into such a false man was a self-fulfilling prophecy. I shook my fist in the air to acknowledge my victory. It isn't everyday that you get a chance to start over - completely. I picked up a fistful of sand and threw it at a nearby cactus as I continued my journey northward.

Two days later I still hadn't reached the border. A trip through Hell is no cake-walk for the best of us. The desert is a place where everything has a chip on its shoulder and just can't wait for a chance to take it out on whatever happens by, animal, vegetable, or mineral. Every flower packs a secret poison and every branch is a razor blade in disguise. Several times I had to stop for water at whatever small village or gas station I could find. On a few occasions I was so thirsty I was forced to take crooked side roads off the main highway in search of clean water. But, I was never alone during my brutal journey. The sun was always there to keep me company, like a divine punisher sent to monitor my every step. From plaster-walled, flat-roofed shacks to crumbling churches and abandoned stables, I passed through the wild desolation of northern Mexico, the sun always there to scorn me. Often the heat was so intense that I feared I was slowly dehydrating and would end up as a crust of dried flesh on the burning ground beneath me. My shoes - the very same ones that I wore in prison - were no match for such conditions. The souls had become so soft they had absorbed enough sand on the surface to give them the consistency of sandpaper.

I looked about me in wonder, revelling in the brilliant godlessness of the desert. The world around me resounded with falsity. There were so many examples of two-facedness in nature. Insects that look like twigs, snakes that look like vines, and deadly poison fish that look like simple nubs of coral. In each of these cases, the deceptive creature seemed to gain some sort of power over its unsuspecting victims through the forces of mendacity and guile. When you pick up a twig only to find it is actually some kind of camouflaged insect, nature has already cast a certain spell over you in the mere act of tricking you, even if only for an instant. Similarly, I reasoned I could gain a kind of hypnotic power over people by pretending to be someone I wasn't, all the time peering down at them from the lofty heights of falsity. I looked around and imagined the desert was a vast and beautiful forest, only fooling me into believing it was a desolate sand pit. What power would the forest wield over me if this were indeed the case! I pelted a cactus with a stone, thinking I might actually be tossing a baseball into the hands of a smiling child, and leapt over an empty gutter, which could just as well have been \- for all I knew – a sparkling river. Yes, truth could be so bland and the world was loaded with such wonderful lies. In fact, it was bursting at the belt with them!

At that point I vowed to be a liar and never give my heart to anyone. Truth leads only to pain, and love to decay. Several times I almost choked with excitement as I continued marching towards the border, anxiously awaiting the beginning of my new existence. If things went my way I would be working as a photographer in only a few months. All I had to do was tell them I was Paul Robertson and that the photos - neatly arranged in my portfolio - were taken while venturing through the seedy underbelly of Mexico. I was sure they'd fall for it.

### 3. Circles on Circles

### I

I curled my toes into the sand of Venice Beach like a vulture digging its talons into the flesh of a dead rabbit. I reached into my pocket for a stick of gum that I hoped was still there. No luck. Just a ball of lint and a few wads of old paper. I threw a small branch into the ocean and watched as the waves licked and sucked on its gnarled surface before spitting it back at me. For the first time in months I felt lucky. No more smiling wedding photos, no more prison-wall recriminations, and no more empty desert wanderings. Since my arrival in LA the Tetris game was over and all the tiles were locked firmly in their proper place. Mexico was just a transformation, a phase, a portal between lives. In the same way that it would be improper to call the threshold of a door an actual thing (as opposed to a mere interface between two rooms), my life in Mexico was really just a period of dormancy at the beginning of some new enterprise rather than that enterprise itself. My life in LA, on the other hand, was different: it _was_ that enterprise.

They gave me little trouble at the Texas border, a place called Nueva Laredo. A short, fat American customs officer paced ambiguously in front of me when I showed him my Social Security card. When he asked for my passport, I told him I left it behind in LA. At first he was suspicious, but when I explained that I had just come down for the day he glanced down at his watch and decided to let me through. "I believe you," he said. "I just have to do my job. There's so many wetbacks flooding through these days I can't be bothered wasting my time with guys like you." I nodded my head in appreciation and smiled as naturally as possible. Luck was on my side yet again.

I found the nearest bus stop and bought a ticket to LA. This left me eighty-two dollars to spare. I bought myself a Mars bar and waited for the bus. It arrived twenty minutes late filled with sunburned Canadian tourists.

The trip to LA was long and hot. To make matters worse, I was stuck beside a teenage punk who just sat there sneering and listening to his ghetto blaster for most of the way. For a while I almost wished I was back in the desert again. The trip was longer than expected because of the countless stops we made in small towns and gas station cafes. San Antonio, Sutton, Crocket, off through New Mexico, Arizona and then Southern California. Every town we passed through seemed exactly the same as the last, starting from the gas stations, palm trees, and all-you-can-eat burrito barns on the outskirts, running straight through to the clay-tiled houses, miniature office towers, strip malls, and Starbucks cafés that filled the city centers. By the time we reached San Diego it was dinnertime, a full two days later.

We penetrated the outer circles of LA well after midnight. Spindly wires of glass and concrete spanned outwards from the city center like lines of burning light streaming from the glowing white navel of a Thai Goddess. Moving like a sticky index finger up Her golden-brown legs, I waited in hushed anticipation for the moment we could fondle the plum of her lush, fat belly.

Little Saigon. Long Beach. A crime-wrought Asian ghetto a mere belt loop away from the air-conditioned boredom of the Queen Mary. I was reminded of a weekend I once spent in Atlantic City. Jenny had kicked me out of the Motel for lying about an ex-girlfriend and I ended up drinking myself senseless in some touristy marine bar studded wall-to-wall with fatuous nautical motifs. They were everywhere: anchor logos on the waiters' shirts, chipper sea bearing names scribbled on a blackboard as the daily specials, and fish nets - stuffed with crabs and mussels - draped like webs across the port-holed walls.

Manchester Boulevard. Normandie Avenue. Ruinous pillars of burnt wood and barbed wire. The empty shell of a once-thriving tire empire stretched out before me. Sepulveda Boulevard. LAX. On to downtown, where even the starkest glass towers took on an almost oriental level of exoticism. I stared at a sign on top of one of the tallest structures. Through the layers of smog I thought it read _Sanwa Bank_. The air was thick and pungent, sticking to my face like an overcooked satay.

I got off at the central depot and walked around in a daze until I worked up the initiative to catch a cab to the nearest YMCA. Since it was a Monday the place was only half full. They gave me a small room and I stayed up in a state of anxious exhaustion thinking about the future and what possibilities it held for me. I gazed blankly at the bare chequered tiles on the floor, waxed so many times they looked like they were coated with a dull yellow skin. There was a lesson somewhere inside them, but I didn't know what. Everything has a lesson. Even those tiles, I thought. Even though it seemed pretentious to make such a vacuous philosophical claim, I did so nonetheless. I wasn't afraid to be pretentious. Perhaps I never was. Maybe that was my strength. To be pretentious is to pretend, and wasn't I now the world's greatest pretender?

Later that night I closed my eyes and filled out a job application form in my head. It was printed neatly in blue ink on white paper, ready for any potential employer. I imagined myself handing it over to a fat bearded professional plucking his suspenders with his thumb as he sat arrogantly behind a cheap aluminum office desk. It read:

Name: Paul Robertson/Robert Smith.

Place of Residence: LA/NY.

Profession: Photographer/Actor.

Married: No/Yes.

Income: More Than You Can Imagine/NA.

Criminal Record: Are You Serious?/Yes.

Relevant Experience: Whatever You Require/None.

A vaguely festive feeling stirred through me. I thought I could smell something like pine. I watched the soft sparkle of the city's lights as I drifted off to sleep, the light April air clinging to my face like fresh morning dew.

### II

I woke up the next morning to the irritating _ploink ploink ploink_ of what must have been a leaky faucet above my room. I imagined a fat woman upstairs washing her hands, her face cast in a mudpack as water dripped from the hems of a dress that fit her like a shower curtain. I threw a sock at the ceiling and made a crashing sound into my half-closed palm when it hit. This was confidence. I was in LA and there was no stopping me now.

The room seemed to inflate like a balloon when I opened the curtains to let in the fresh morning light. The walls lit up, becoming almost translucent, and I was overcome by a feeling of something like religious transcendence. I sensed I could see into the heart of everything, even the paint chips that had gathered at the foot of the baseboards. But after my trip through the desert I knew enough to be suspicious of anything that smacked of religion. Religion meant Truth, and as far as LA was concerned, Truth may just as well go mope in the corner, its sallow face drooping into its day old bottle of Corona. It had no place here. Besides, it was clearly outnumbered. For every truth there was at least a million lies - and not just cheesy ones - waiting to spring up from the manholes in all their dizzying variety. OK, perhaps that makes truth special because of its rarity, but _really_ , isn't that just cockeyed elitism?

I put on my clothes and checked my wallet for cash. I was running low and needed a job fast. I still had the photos to back me up, but even if I was lucky it would take me several weeks to land a job at a magazine or photo studio. I needed something to tide me over in the meantime. Busboy? Cab Driver? Porter? A thousand possibilities sprang to mind - I didn't really care what I did as long as it paid the rent. I opened the heavy wooden door and stepped across the threshold. I could already feel the heat of day as I walked from under the shadow of the veranda and out into the street.

My first mission was one of simple exploration. This modern Mecca of fibs and money spread out before me like an image of Sodom, and I had to have at least a cursory look to gain my bearings before I started looking for a job. I picked up a map at a nearby newsstand. Hollywood, Pasadena, Century City: somebody else's aspirations, toils, and lies. I walked for half an hour down Sunset Boulevard and all I could feel was discouragement. I was surrounded by motels and taco stands wherever I turned. Where was the Southern California beauty I'd heard so much about? The graceful palms and swimming pools, so elegantly framed by plastered arches - almost Moroccan in their splendor - and the salt-white pillars of Beverly Hills, all shown in photos I had once seen of LA, were nowhere to be found. Once studding the sets of films like _Sunset Boulevard_ , they had evaporated like the scent of myrrh from this cemetery of concrete and metal.

I took a bus down to Santa Monica and Vine and then walked aimlessly westward until evening. I passed through the decayed remains of old Hollywood, which stood in stark contrast to the endless array of fast-food establishments now littering the streets. The Art Deco constructions from the early days of the entertainment industry - like Pantages and The Palace - which had supplanted the Spanish missions at the turn of the century, were now overrun with new age churches and smoked-glass convention centers. The streets were lined in equal proportions with fancy European shoe stores, burger stands, porno theatres, and tanning salons. It was while standing between a small Viennese cafe and some motel with a neon cactus hanging in its window that my discouragement suddenly vanished and a new sense of optimism burst forth inside me. It was something about the unlikely mixture of scenery that must have triggered it off. The City of Angels was no longer a vulgar combination of the old and decadent with the new and tacky. I had finally divined its unique brand of allure: LA possessed a _beauty of contrast_.

The streets here had their own music: a counterpoint of high-tech fitness centers, gas stations (each one with an apparently superior smog check package), porno houses, and art galleries. I had always heard complaints about the murderous freeways in LA, but what about this? The Zen of crashed illusions. Sun blasted, sand blasted streets. Sunset Boulevard. Stretch limos oozing with such fake opulence that I wouldn't have been surprised to find they were made of balsa wood. Rich Latinos wearing shirts so intricately patterned that even Velasquez would have shrugged away in envy. Melrose Avenue with its nose-ringed nobodies treating themselves to yet another plate of sushi before heading off to a show. Brightly painted VWs scuttling around like scarabs in the kingdom of the dead. The swivel-hipped, purple-mouthed rock groupies leering down Sunset Strip at 3:00 a.m. in the top ten shades of black. Gas station attendants rooster-strutting like Mick Jagger as they refuelled lines of pink Cadillacs under the generous gaze of the Hollywood Hills. Santa Monica with its armies of nail polished beach blondes driving around like candy-coated angels in their shiny white convertibles. And the toffee-skinned surf dudes with a bigger selection of condoms in their pockets than Groucho Marx had jokes. Venice. Random cliques of chic European artists, almost a genus of their own, living in beachside lofts so exclusive they were wallpapered with hammered sheets of gold. Then the ghettos. Manchester Boulevard: lines of men standing like dead shrubs in the blow-drier wind. Burnt-out parking lot after burnt-out parking lot, strung together like beads on a rosary of death.

Yes, this was a palace where beauty, sex, and money each had a cheek on the throne. Sometimes they held court without so much as a friendly disagreement, but more often they clawed away at each other, extending their ostrich necks as high as they could to gain just an inch of supremacy. Here, you were either solid gold or solid shit, lies and false illusions squirting into your face like a jet of come from the cracks in the pavement. In short, LA was _excellent!_ There wasn't a doubt in my heart that I had come to the right place.

That night I ate at a Thai restaurant near Silver Lake and went back, quiet and hopeful, to my room at the YMCA. I resumed my game of throwing socks at the ceiling to celebrate the bubbly gush of my new life that was foaming over in front of me like a bottle of the finest champagne.

The first woman I had a conversation with in LA was a black prostitute. She was sitting across from me at The Hollywood Diner on Sunset at about 2:00 a.m. licking a green-jello-colored condom packaged like a lollipop. She looked like fallen royalty in her long maxi-coat and jewelled platform shoes - almost baroque in their lavish excess. With a catty wink she tossed a sugar cube into my half-filled glass of water. It deflected off the rim and made a light splash.

"You alone white boy?"

"What does it look like?" I replied. I didn't want to be bothered.

"Hey, honey, no need to get all mad. I was just asking. You were frowning into your glass."

"Fine."

"It's not like I'm trying to get you to fuck me. I mean, look at you. What do you do, work in a burger bar? Vietnam vet...no, on second thought, you're too young. Gulf War vet? It must have been awful having all those turban twisters crawling up your ass."

"I'm a photographer."

"That's cool. I bet you don't get laid though. It's in your face. Hey, don't look at me like that, Sonny. I only fuck rich guys. I don't need your type sucking on my skin all night. Hey, waiter, get this guy a Coke on me. He can't afford anything himself." The waiter nodded and slid behind the soda tap.

"Busy night?" I asked.

"I'm always busy. Ricki's always busy. I got a line of dates seven days a week longer than any grocery list."

"Who's next?"

"Mind your own business, white boy. Why should I tell you? You with all your millions."

"So, what's it like getting knobbed by all these rich guys?" I asked. I thought I'd throw some of her banter back in her face.

"So you want to come and take pictures while I'm getting off with millionaires? Is that your idea of fun? Tell you what. You're sick, brother. I only fuck alone." The waiter brought me the Coke and she paid.

"You'd probably like that. You want to be a porn star. I can tell. Well, you're not getting a break from me," I said, grinning. She bit open the lollipop packaging and tossed the condom over the ridge separating our booths. It landed on my lap and she stuck out her tongue. Then she stood up and slinked towards the door.

"Enjoy your Coke, Whitey. I've got places to go."

"I bet you do." I watched her, admiring her long, stockinged legs and crimped hair, as she strutted past the window and walked down Sunset Boulevard. I gulped down my Coke and left a few minutes later.

I spent the next few days looking at various employment agencies and following up the few job leads I had managed to find. By the end of my first week I landed an interview for a temporary position at a Catholic nun's hospital working as a porter in shipping and receiving. The shifts were only four days a week, so it would give me a chance to explore the city more thoroughly and look for a job as a photographer. I lied at the interview and claimed I was born a Catholic, although I wasn't sure it mattered because the man in charge had a stack of Penthouse magazines behind his desk. He sat there picking his teeth while he asked me a few basic questions like whether I'd ever been to jail. Of course I hadn't. And it wasn't even a lie, since it was actually _Robert Smith_ who had been to jail and not Paul Robertson. I showed him my social security card and he accepted it without a flinch. He then went on to describe my duties. My job would be simple. It involved carting around a food wagon to various wards during meal hours and then cleaning up afterwards. For ten dollars an hour I considered myself a lucky man.

I started work six days after the interview and within a month I was able to move out of the YMCA and into a room on upper Vermont. By this time I had already learned to hate the nuns. They ran the show, acting as though they had a direct line to God, but as far as I could see had no better an idea of the nature of divinity than a cat at the rim of a bathtub had an idea of the chemical structure of water. At first they monitored my every move from their "prayer room", located just outside of the central kitchen area. Sometimes they even dragged me into their private chapels for what they called "personal counselling sessions". But this was just a veiled plot to convert me. Eventually, I was left with no other option but to take up the solemn art of nun avoidance. This consisted of disappearing into bathrooms whenever they passed, answering them as curtly as possible whenever I was forced to speak with them, and even faking laryngitis – whatever it took to keep them away. After a few weeks of this strategy, they eventually got the message and left me alone to my duties.

When I first moved in to my new place on Vermont I didn't have any furniture except for a green foam mattress I bought from the building manager for five dollars. It had little chunks missing from the corners and smelled like rotten vegetables until I washed it in my bathtub. The room was unheated and located on the third floor of a brick apartment building in which the ground level had been converted into a Karate Studio. I had the luxury of two bay windows, each with a beautiful view of the street below. Although I didn't have a separate bathroom, I had my own kitchen: a clean stove, a double sink and a generous array of counters and cupboards. My only complaint was the way the pink floor tiles were peeling away from the tar-coated floorboards. This meant one thing. Cockroaches. In the evenings I'd amuse myself by watching them march out of their miserable little caverns, making bets with myself as to whether they'd make it past the tiny mountains of roach powder I'd planted in strategic locations throughout the room.

Three weeks after moving in I managed to get job leads with two local magazines. The first was a stereotypical leftist tabloid that needed a photographer to document what they called the "glorious decay of the capitalist system" by taking snapshots of the poor in the worst neighbourhoods of LA. The thought of running through Watts with a pricey camera dangling around my neck like a diamond necklace wasn't too appealing, but it was better than hauling around crates of baby food for a bunch of uptight nuns.

The second job was for some new rock/style magazine called _Shrapnel_. They were advertising for a photographer to cover concerts and interviews with various alternative rock bands. It would be perfect for me, but I doubted whether I had enough experience. Although I could claim to have taken the photos from Mexico, my knowledge of the underground rock scene was sparse at best. But that was where falsity came in. If I poured over the leading music tabloids for every day until the interview I could pretend I'd been into the scene for years. All I'd have to do was drop the names of a few obscure bands and I'd get the job. I was sure of it. I imagined myself driving around town with the likes of David Bowie, the burgundy-wet lips of some red hot art-chic smeared over my bronzed and naked body like some new brand of sunscreen. You know the kind of girls I'm talking about. You can almost calculate the orbital period of their hips as they gyrate in huge arcs around the room. I picked up the newspaper and reread the ad several times over. It had my name pasted all over it.

The next day I phoned _Shrapnel_ and arranged an interview for the following Saturday. The guy in charge said I needed my own equipment, so I had to check out a few camera stores to see what was the going state of the art. I had just a week to trim up my portfolio and master the alternative rock scene in its entirety. I hadn't even looked at the photos since I moved to LA and I guessed they might want me to provide at least a little background. By the end of the phone call the guy from _Shrapnel_ seemed so enthusiastic about my New York training and ground-breaking Mexican photo essay that after I hung up I sprang into the shower down the hall and sang a few verses from The Who's _Substitute_ , a favorite song of mine during my high school days, in an operatic monotone until the hot water ran out.

Substitute my lies for facts

I can see right through your plastic Mac,

All the simple things you see are complicated,

I look pretty new but I'm just backdated,

Substitute me for him,

Substitute my coke for gin,

Substitute you for my mom,

At least I'll get my washing done...

I spent the rest of the day walking down Melrose Avenue shopping for clothes I thought might suit a flashy rock photographer. A silk shirt with an upside down American flag patterned across the front, blood-red corduroy bellbottoms, a smart pair of Dr. Martens eight-eyelet boots and some midnight blue John Lennon glasses. That's what I opted for. The woman at the store gift-wrapped her approval in a coy little wink as she slipped me her business card and adjusted her black fish net top with the other hand. To top things off, I bought a fake Gucci watch from a Chinese guy on the street and put the finishing touches on my new image with an electrifying bowl haircut. Later that afternoon I changed into my new outfit. I took a few steps backwards from the bay window in my living room, using the assembly of freshly cleaned panes as a multi-panelled mirror. I was dashing. Chelsea 1969 with a sprinkling of eighties paramilitary art student. The way I saw it, I was in training for my new life. I had that look that made girls shiver and all I needed was a little _education_ to top things off. A few visits to the newsstands for some rock mags and a trip to The Whiskey a Go Go and I'd be set.

### III

I spent the next few days working at the hospital and sorting through the German's photos whenever I had a spare moment, giving them each a number and concocting a believable story for each one. I had to make them seem as genuinely _mine_ as possible. After reflecting on a few of them I started to get the knack of it. Must have been all those years of going to movies. There were twenty-three in all, but I eventually whittled it down to a series of ten for the interview, removing the most overtly offensive pieces for obvious reasons. The guy from _Shrapnel_ had asked me to bring along a small (emphasis on _small_ if the tone of his voice meant anything) portfolio of no more than 15 pictures and I wanted to err on the side of caution. He said it didn't matter if they were portraits of rock stars, as long as they showed some sort of originality and vision. He said _vision_ was what the mag was all about. Trying my best to sound like an art critic, I wrote up a cue card for each photo complete with a short description and commentary:

1. A motorcycle smashed up against a brick wall with the accident victim impaled on the handlebars. Sex unknown. Shot in muddy black and white with full lighting. Not a shadow anywhere. Uncomfortably naturalistic with no attempt to veil the horror of the event with photographic tricks. The bare reality of death exposed with cold scientific objectivity. Death not as a tragedy but a physical phenomenon. Example: the collision of two marbles.

2. A close up of a man's face. His hair is trimmed intellectually to his head and his mouth is hanging open as though he is screaming. The pupils in his eyes are virtually indiscernible, either because they're so completely dilated or because the photographic grain is so large it looks like the surface of the paper was splattered with acid. The borders of the photo touch the man's ears giving the impression of a vice grip crushing his face. Why is he screaming? Perhaps this is an irrelevant question. The real impact is in the viewer's voyeuristic penetration into the depths of the man's emotion. I feel like I've crashed through the windows of his eyes into the dark chambers beneath them. Chilling.

3. A dinner table set with four places and a white tablecloth. A nude woman holding a metal chalice between her breasts as she lies supine on the table. A tall ornate sword appears shafted through her stomach, but from the angle of the shot it's unclear whether it's actually going through her body or just an area of the table behind her. The color is like stained glass it's so rich. Her breasts are unimaginably large, almost sickening in their lavish sense of excess, and a trickle of blood runs down the side of her cheek. The whole arrangement is like a Tarot card in its mystical symmetry. I am reminded of ritualistic witchcraft and sacrifice.

4. This picture has no human subject and just shows a washing machine on fire in the middle of a beautiful park. Behind it stands a statue of some historical figure or other (history is so anonymous isn't it?) and a few palm trees. The sky is clear except for a weather balloon in the top left corner. I'm having trouble coming up with an explanation for this one, but it's so visually striking that I had to include it. I'll just tell them it represents the annihilation of western values against the background of nature. Not too original, but that's the best I can do.

5. Violence. Two male midgets tearing away at each other like harpies in an alleyway mud puddle. Mudwrestling for the poor. Both are fully dressed and have a look of crazed hatred in their eyes. Although their clothing is simple and rustic, their faces exhibit an exaggerated sense of aggression and their fingers, bleeding from the pavement, are like feline claws.

6. Two men wearing bowler hats and suits, identical in every aspect, facing each other in the middle of a street, each shielding himself with a waist-high mirror. Their stance is such that the mirrors are angled at about 75 degrees from each other and touch on their far edges giving the hall-of-mirrors illusion that reality has fragmented into a million replicas of the original scene. The real irony here is that in spite of the obvious visual gag with the mirrors, the two sides of the picture are completely identical. No tricks, no mirrors. The duplicity of everything presented with an icing of false duplicity \- what an idea! Perhaps even greater than true deception is false deception. To tell the truth in such a way that it's taken for an outright lie. True perfection!

7. A naked man standing in the middle of a busy street, cars rushing around him. He is sucking on the nozzle of a machine gun as if it were a pacifier. His face is placid, almost comatose, and his hair is cropped. On his chest are carefully inscribed tattoos of characters (Sanskrit?) and what look to be maps of ancient river deltas. A man in a passing car shakes his fist angrily as if to scold the tattooed man for blocking his passage. I don't quite know what to say about this one, except that it's stunning in its juxtaposition of the ancient with the modern against a background of suicidal tendencies.

8. A woman in a fifties-style party dress and poodle-embroidered cardigan twisted on a hardwood floor screaming and tearing her hair out. Face bruised from her own blows and her cheeks bleeding under the barrage of her fingernails, she is greater than human, an archetype of self-mutilation. Overt madness flows from her body like water from a faucet. The floor in the background is strewn with dead cats and Raggedy Anne dolls, knitting needles jammed crudely through every one of them. In copper-tinted black and white, the floor has a distinct antique quality.

9. The nude belly of a woman shot in cloudy black and white with a pair of slender barber's scissors lying peacefully on top. The scissors are open and covered in a dark fluid, presumably blood. There are no wounds visible. The contours of her belly define the plane of the picture as they stretch out to the borders like acres of desert sand to the shore of the ocean. A cloud of primeval sensuality wells to the surface of my consciousness and unfolds like the tenets of a universal law. Lascivious, wet, repressed, misogynist.

10. The last of the cycle. A nun on a bicycle riding down a quaint gravel road to the sanctuary of a Latin American convent. In the foreground are a few willows and a row of bushes. Behind the road a vast field of flowers stretches as far back as a range of mountains scraping the clouded horizon deep in the background. There is nothing dark about this photo, but in the context of the others it assumes the metaphysical position of a drop of milk in a sea of urine. Its bucolic charms are so thoroughly eclipsed by the other photos that it only reinforces their diabolical strength. A priest in Hell is little more than a fool amongst wise men.

I had to admit they were a bit weird, but they were going to have to do. As I set them down on the table the thought crossed my mind that the German may have been some sort of snuff photographer or psycho porn director. I hadn't heard of any serial killings in Central America recently, but then again, wasn't I in prison and therefore unable to keep up with the news? After a few minutes of indecision I decided that there was nothing in the subject matter that was any worse than anything I'd ever seen at a local news agency, so there wasn't really any way they could possibly incriminate me. I double-checked the stack to make sure I'd arranged them in the appropriate order and re-examined my comments. After half an hour I was confident that I could remember everything I wrote down about the photos in the event I had to ad lib during the interview. So I slipped the written commentary along with the photos into a manila folder I'd bought earlier that day and resolved to do my best to put them out of my mind until the night before my interview.

My next worry was getting my hands on a camera. I walked to Sammy's Photoworld off La Brea that afternoon and got the scoop. A tier-one photographer needed at least a Nikon F-3 and complete command over most darkroom techniques in order to be taken seriously. There was also the world of Macintosh, Adobe Photoshop and digital scanners for the exacting computer-based dark room specialist. The equipment costs were way out of my league, so I grabbed as many brochures as I could find and ransacked my brain for a solution. Maybe I could tell them my equipment was stolen and I was waiting for an insurance claim. Then I could scrape together the few hundred I'd saved and splurge on a used camera. There was also the possibility I could fake it through the first month or two and borrow or rent the equipment until I had enough to buy some real stuff.

I studied the brochures and settled on a story for the upcoming interview: I sold my outdated darkroom equipment to help raise the money I needed to move to LA and once I was settled down I'd buy some new gear. As for my camera, it was stolen in Mexico and I hadn't yet saved the funds to buy a new one, having lost the insurance papers in transit. This was the best story I could come up with for the time being. It had a chance of working, but I wasn't sure how much.

For the remainder of the week I had trouble sleeping and often I stared nervously off into space while on duty at the hospital. The thought that I could be found out and charged with murder and fraud had occurred to me more than once, but I eventually managed to soothe my conscience by persuading myself that the photos were good enough to convince anyone of my authenticity. I persuaded myself seven times to be exact.

### IV

The Whiskey A-Go-Go was located in an electric-purple triangular building on Sunset Boulevard, not far from the border between Hollywood and Beverly Hills. I went to see a band called _Come_ two days before my interview, because they were from Boston and I liked the name. A rock tabloid I'd read a week earlier recommended them unconditionally: "Dangerous and unashamed of their dark humanity," a reviewer said. And if this sterling recommendation wasn't enough to convince me to go, it was also a perfect opportunity to see the Whiskey - the supposed queen of concert halls - to complete my education process.

It was raining when I got there. I brought along a slim disposable camera so I could take a few quick polaroids that might bolster my chances of landing the _Shrapnel_ job. I waited in line for ten minutes, standing behind a pair of green-jacketed twins (sex unknown) with gloriously bleached hair and mischievous pixie-like eyes. By the time the doors opened, the line was already bending around the corner of Sunset Boulevard. There was a twelve-dollar cover charge and I paid without complaint. The scene inside was no surprise: women dressed in shades of black banned in even the deepest circles of Hell, slim Latinos perched like vultures around the periphery of the dance floor, black (yet again) walls pressing in on the crowd like clouds of tear gas at a Sunday riot, and more pairs of platform shoes than you'd find in an Elton John museum - all shuffling anxiously on the sticky concrete floor.

The warm-up act was uneventful and loud, but had enough of the right trappings to please the largely under-twenty crowd, which had gradually built up during the set. Chain-mail nylon tops and garish eye makeup seemed to constitute the male dress code, while most of the women wore lusciously tight pants and black leather jackets. Androgynism: that's what it was all about. Dissolve the sexes into one seething mass of lipstick, leather and heels.

_Come_ emerged from backstage twenty minutes late, the audience already showing signs of flagging patience. The lead singer was dressed down, way down - almost to the floor - and her denim pants were painted black, sub black. A cigarette hung disparagingly out of her mouth. I thought I saw a drop of sweat trickling down her pale cheek. Her dark racoon eyes were circled by clouds of purple skin and her bony arms moved like a cricket's legs in stiff and rigid arcs. After taking a crude swig from a whiskey bottle she pressed the microphone bluntly to her lips. Everything about her spoke of drug addiction: a sagging disconsolate face, the bored look of a person only slightly engaged in her own drab reality, and the colorless monotone of her skin, which only reinforced the casual neglect of earthly things conveyed by her demeanor. The bassist was primmer in his appearance. He had sculptured blonde hair and his mustard shirt was tucked into a pair of pressed black dinner pants and buttoned uncomfortably to the neck. He looked unusually formal standing beside the lead guitarist, whose long locks of frizzed hair tumbled to the shoulders of his lumberjack shirt. The drummer struck the cymbals and the lead singer stepped to the front of the stage and stood with her legs split apart like those of an Amazonian conqueror.

"We're _Come_. Can somebody turn down the fucking heat? It never gets like this in Boston," she said. Her voice was as smooth as cheap Tequila. I took a quick snapshot.

The guitar ripped into the smoky air like a chain saw, its angry blades providing a rigid background for the humorless scour of her gunmetal vocals.

Now we sink so softly, Now we sink so deeply.

A death mantra swirled into the room like a helix of narcotic smoke, drowning the half-indifferent audience in waves of suffocating anguish. If there was a world of robots that worshipped a mechanical Shiva for a Goddess, this would be her death dance. _Mecha-Shiva's Death Dance._ At times the bitterness in the singer's voice was so extreme it burned like a miniature sun through the room, exposing the lame frivolity of our lives in a sermon of self-hatred and contempt. I'd never seen anything like it before. Several times I had to turn my head away from the stage to gaze at the teenagers beside me, the despair in her voice was so palpable, so real.

The finale of the opening song rolled like the ghost of a black iron locomotive into a crumbling station: bluesy, ethereal, haunting, and intrepid. The song seemed to be painting some kind of narrative picture. The singer sits in a car, driving another woman home along a lonely country road. The darkness sucks like a giant leech on the window, withdrawing every trace of light from the inside. A world is painted in which friends are really enemies, and enemies are all the rest. People ripping and tearing at each other's souls like jackals. The only respite is love. But even love becomes impossible in the face of such crushing loneliness. A sexual proposition is made and the guitar builds like a massive scaffolding of black steel girders across the room. Tall, linear, hard, inexorable. Her voice climbs the scaffolding, "I love you, I want to set you free." So cliché and simple, yet so profound.

The gesture is made. The escape path is routed out on her body like a map. In a single moment, the touching of a hand on the knee of another becomes the most profound action imaginable, opening a portal between passenger and driver like a conduit between dimensions. She sits in the car seat as if frozen into the panels of a mosaic. In this dark world, the sexual act rises up to become one with ultimate absolution.

Then the refusal. The hope on the driver's face retreats behind any icy shell of silence. The scaffolding crumbles and the car's engine hums pitifully in the depths of night. The potential of human contact shrivels so suddenly in the cold night air. Everything returns to normal. The car stops and the door opens. The passenger steps out and vanishes into the darkness. Now there is but _one_. But isn't it always this way?

Don't be afraid...

Her last words sunk into my mind like poison from a snakebite. Don't be afraid of what? Lesbians? Aids? Rejection? I just couldn't handle it. I listened to a few more songs, but I had heard enough. I had to leave. The music was digging into me, exposing something inside me I didn't want to face. There was something about the singer that was just too _true_. It reminded me of that weird German guy and his taut lips around my cock. I imagined his limp corpse wrapped in his longish frock coat. And Jenny. Maybe she thought I was dead, but more likely she'd hired some posse to trace my whereabouts. I chucked my beer on the floor and ran outside, plunging out into the fleshy circuitry of Sunset Boulevard. I hailed the first cab and had the driver drop me off at a pool hall directly across from my apartment. I needed to relax. That music did something to me and I had to undo it. I needed a dose of good old-fashioned bar pool to settle my nerves.

The pool hall was packed with the usual assortment of surfing dudes and leather-clad bikers, all hunched around their respective tables as if they were witnessing some kind of miraculous birth. I sat anonymously in the corner sipping a watery beer until a gaunt Mexican guy with a ponytail approached me. He was dressed in a leather jacket and tight black jeans and had a thin brass loop hanging from his eyebrow.

"Hey, man. What's a guy like you doing here all alone? You should be out with the chicks," he said, grabbing my hand brusquely.

"I'm new in town," I said, trying not to encourage him.

"You gotta go to the Rainbow. That's where the real action is. A friend of mine went there once and he go home with two chicks. Not one, _two_. Understand?"

"Isn't it on Sunset Boulevard?"

"You and me man, we could net four chicks if we went there. _Four!_ "

Just then a woman wearing a red and white chequered shirt and white cowboy boots strutted by. My new companion's eyes burned a hole through her bra strap. Then he turned back to me and shook his head disapprovingly.

"Bitches, man. That's the problem. When I go back to Mexico, I get so much ass it's gross, but up here, the chicks don't want to have anything to do with you. Not even the Mexican chicks. They all want some white dude in a BMW. It makes you puke."

"So, what do you do for a living?" I asked, trying to be polite, although by the looks of it he didn't have a glamorous career as a CEO, if you get my drift.

"Do? Me? I bet you think I'm some kind of bum. Have you ever heard of Francis Bacon?"

"No."

"He's an artist." He lit a cigarette and took a puff. "So am I," he said. "An artist, I mean."

"Really?" I was genuinely surprised. Nothing was what it seemed around here.

"You don't believe me. You think I'm some sort of derelict."

"Yes I do." He turned away and eyed another passing woman, obviously not listening to my reply. Then he turned back enthusiastically.

"Hey, listen, guy. I've got some booze at home. We could go and drink all night. There's nothing like a good party."

"Thanks, but..."

"Hey, man, I'm no thief. I bet you think I'm bullshitting. Well fuck you, then."

"Wait a minute. I do so believe you."

"Well, lets go, then."

"I can't. I've got to work tomorrow," I lied. I didn't really want to go back to his place, even if he was an artist. _Especially_ if he was an artist. After what had happened with the German anything was possible.

"Yeah, yeah. You Anglo-Saxon white bastards always have to work. Have a little fun for once. Go to the Rainbow. I'm telling you, _two_ chicks." He leered and brandished his beer in my face. "See you later, bud." He shook my hand sarcastically and walked away into the smoky din of the back room.

I finished my beer and put my name up for a pool game, hoping to meet a few more people and possibly win some money. I hadn't played since I was with Jenny, but I felt loose and confident, having drunk enough to feel more at ease in the raucous setting. When my name was called I stood up with artificial calm and stepped towards the cue rack on the wall beside the table. I selected a pool cue and a sneering Mexican guy with a body shaped like a giant pineapple nudged up to me.

"How could you do this to me?" He whispered threateningly in my ear.

"What?" I didn't know what he was talking about.

"It says Paul R. up on the board."

"So."

"See that guy?" He pointed to a second Mexican who had a Rastafarian haircut.

"Yes. What about him?"

"That's my friend. He put his name up there. He's Paul R."

"What are you talking about?" He was starting to piss me off.

"You're a liar. You're not Paul, _he_ is. We're next." He pointed angrily to his friend, who voiced his alliance with a stout nod.

"Listen. I put my fucking name up there and here's proof." I pulled out my Social Security card and stuffed it in his face. I was fed up. What sort of place was this where you could just walk in and claim you were someone else until the real person proved otherwise?

"How do I know you just didn't steal this?" he asked.

"Look, let's see your friend's card."

"He left it at home. And why should he have to show it anyway? _He_ put his name up there five minutes ago. You're just trying to butt ahead."

"Hey, look, you assholes. It's your shot," a guy with an army haircut shouted. The opposition had already broke and were waiting impatiently for the game to continue. I held up the cue and stepped away from the Mexican guy. He shook his head in disbelief and retreated inimically to a dark corner of the bar.

As it was, I lost horribly and went home drunk with less than a dollar in my pocket. I never saw my two _friends_ again, thank God, but you have to give them at least a little credit for their mischief: two chicks, false identities...in short, duplicity bandied about with uncompromising flare and bravado. Especially the second guy. He demonstrated a firm willingness to lie at all costs, and that's always commendable in my books. He really had me worried for a while.

### V

It was Saturday, interview time. I put on all the right clothes: the Doc Martens, the flares, and the new shirt with the American flag motif printed on the front. I wrapped it around my chest like an eiderdown around a playboy bunny and looked in the mirror. The stars and stripes were so large that _Übermotif_ might have been a better word for the design. I primed my hair in like a groom before his wedding. I gathered my photos and read a few music mags on the bus to hone my knowledge of the current pop scene. _Come_ (a definite plus that I'd seen them), _Pavement_ , _Suede_ : these were the bands hot on everyone's lips. I'd have to mention them and not in just a passing way. Yes, the best jobs always went to those who _seemed_ good, and not necessarily to those who _were_ good. Everybody knew that. Pedigree, charisma, and overall appearance were the cornerstones of any good career. Only a delusional fool would think that skill, experience, and overall ability to do the job had anything to do with it. Carrying this knowledge in my front pocket like a derringer I pranced like a gazelle down the stairs and out into the street.

I marched onto the bus with the confidence of a five-and-dime Antichrist, glaring boldly into the eyes of the bus driver as I slipped a few coins into the slot too quickly for him to count, almost daring him to accuse me of short-changing the bus company. Our eyes met for a moment, but he backed down from my challenge and raised his eyes sheepishly to the traffic lights. I turned to walk down the aisle. There was one person on each seat (and no more) so I was faced with the difficult decision of whose space I should encroach on. If I just walked past someone, he would most likely be relieved that I chose not to sit beside him, yet there was also the slim chance he'd be insulted that I passed him by and started to imagine that his body odor was so vulgar it would send a police dog yelping away for fresh air. I established eye contact with an elderly man as if I were about to sit down beside him, only to casually walk past him and look for another seat. I did the same thing to a second guy. I had the bluff down perfectly. Eventually, I found myself at the end of the bus without a seat and had no choice but to sit next to an obese Chinese man with three bags of groceries in his lap, or face the embarrassment of walking up the aisle to start my search all over again. Not wanting to make waves, I took a deep breath and sat down beside him.

The _Shrapnel_ office was located on the second floor of a spiffy little art deco building off Fairfax on Beverly Boulevard. The stairwell was plastered with rock posters: _The Misfits, The Dils, No Means No, The Weirdos, The Avengers_. I trembled, but only slightly, when I opened the blue wooden door at the top of the stairs and entered the tiny front office. A blonde secretary who was humming to herself at her desk raised her glasses provocatively and smiled.

"Can I help you?"

"Yes. I'm Paul Robertson," I replied. She arched her eyebrows quizzically. "I'm here for an interview."

"Oh, of course. You're the guy from New York. I've got you right here on my schedule."

"That's right. I'm sorry, I'm a bit late."

"I used to live there," she said, ignoring my apology.

"It's a great place," I replied, hoping to gain a few points on taste.

"I don't know. I'm a bit of a sun-bunny. I don't miss it."

"I guess I really don't either. That's why I moved here." In an interview it was always best to be uncontroversial, almost frictionless. She pressed a buzzer.

"Mr. Wilkinson is out, but Mr. Berrington will help you."

A door opened and she motioned me to enter. I stepped stiffly across the threshold and nodded to her politely. A slavishly hip-looking guy popped up from behind a layout table covered with scraps of text and photos.

"Cheers, mate," he said in a British accent. "I'm Mark Berrington." His hair was deep brown and his black tee shirt had so many fashion holes that it looked like it had been fed to a family of moths. The walls behind him were splashed freely with graffiti and more rock posters - endless rock posters. "Have a seat," he continued, shaking my hand and gesturing for me to take a seat on a worn-out leather sofa to my left. I sat down and smiled ingratiatingly.

"So, you're Paul Robertson." He looked down at a note-pad on his desk.

"Yes."

"Coffee?"

"Please. Only if there's some already made."

"Oh, looks like old Vera's finished it up. You'll have to settle for tea." I didn't feel like tea, but accepted a cup just to be polite. After a few minutes of idle chitchat about the usual X's, Y's and Z's of it all, we got on to more serious matters.

"Well, I guess the first thing I should ask you is why you want to work here?"

"A lot of things. First, I'm a photographer and have always wanted to work in a magazine setting. I like the flash and glamour of it all."

"There's certainly that. You always feel like you're at the center of things here. I love my job. It's the best form of journalism. To be able to write about something you love and influence the public eye at the same time. What about music?"

I looked at the rock posters and they reflected an answer back to me. "I've always been attracted to the alternative music scene. I used to spend a lot of time clubbing in New York. It's just great out there. All the shows."

"Good. You'd fit in well." He looked down at a notebook on his desk and studied it for a second. "It says here that you've done extensive work in Mexico. Something about a photo essay."

"Oh, yes. I almost forgot..."

"You brought it?" he interrupted. "Good. Let's have a peek then mate."

"I put together a cycle of ten the other night." I leaned over and opened my briefcase. They were still as I'd left them: 1-10 wrapped tightly by a rubber band. I pulled it off and handed the pile to him.

"Hmmm." He peeled them away one-by-one with a sense of what could only be called fractured disdain. Occasionally his guard would break and traces of hidden satisfaction would surface on his face. "A bit weird, these. But I like the way they're arranged. Oi, this one's pretty smart." He tossed me the picture of the Anita Palinberg look-alike supine on a table with the vertical sword poking into her gut. "My girl friend is into this sort of stuff. The three Ws: the whole Wicca - witchcraft - warlock scene. If you get the job, you'll meet her. She's the art director. In charge of layout."

"I'm glad you like it. I took it in Acapulco at talocal witch's coven. I could give you a complete commentary if you want."

"That's OK. We just want to see that you've got an eye for photos. Obviously you do." He handed the pile back to me and continued, "Have you done any work with models or bands? I mean, that's the point of it all. We get all sorts of tossers coming in here with some photography degree or other who have absolutely no feel for what we're all about. You see, we're trying something new here. We're trying to be the sort of _Alternative Tentacles_ of the music mag scene. The last thing we need in this world is another bloody glitz and glam commercial rag with about as much substance as a Miss America speech. We're totally independent from the major labels and refuse to run their pissy little ads. I used to work for NME in London until I realized that it was all just kiddies' stuff. I wanted to move onwards into something more mature, but I was angry at all of the other major magazines like _Spin_ and _Select_ because they were only puppets, if you will, of the entertainment industry. They'd give an album a good review just to keep the sponsors coughing up the cash. Whether or not it was a good album wasn't an issue at all. That's why I came here. We want the fucking truth, period."

"Yes, the truth is so undervalued these days." I shook my head dolefully and gazed down at my Docs.

"I hope you're not some sort of moralist."

"Oh, no. I just meant it as a sort of general comment.

"Good. I can't stand religious types. Hard to work with. They give me the creeps like they're always secretly judging me."

"Agreed."

"So, how do you see yourself fitting in?"

"Well..." I waffled for an instant and then took out the _Come_ photo and set it on the table. It turned out quite nicely, I thought, with a blotch of glare hanging over the singer's head like a tarnished halo. "I took this the other day. It was such a relevant gig, I couldn't miss it. If you ask me, they're up there with _Pavement_ and _Suede_." Although I had never heard either band I sensed this was the time to toss a few names in since I was having trouble thinking of a good answer to his question. He examined the photo briefly and then looked back at me. For a moment he seemed vaguely impressed. Then his face soured.

" _Suede_ is shit," he said as if stating an axiom.

"Oh?" I was suddenly worried. Perhaps he'd think I had bad taste. "Well, perhaps there first album, but what about their second?" I tensed inside, hoping that they actually _did_ have a second album.

"But _Pavement_ and _Come_...I'll agree with you there." He pointed to the picture. "I was actually at this gig." He pointed to the photo. "Marvellous. Simply marvellous," he enthused. "Maybe we were even standing next to each other." I relaxed. It seemed we'd struck a vein of common ground.

"Truly stunning," I added with just enough smarm to please him without arousing his contempt. My interview was turning into an epic performance.

"Good photo, this." He handed it back to me and lit a cigarette. "We really need someone like you, who's obviously keyed into it all and has a firm artistic sense as well. We've only been in business for about six months and the last photographer was pretty good, but she was a bit loose and tended to get in a tad closer than the job required, if you know what I mean. We had to fire her when she took off to Rio for three weeks with this bass player she was supposed to be interviewing. Just too irresponsible."

Over the next fifteen minutes he outlined the job responsibilities in great detail. I'd have to go to several concerts a week, come along to interviews after the show and attend luncheons with various rock stars and their entourage. The hours were also stellar: basically from noon to midnight and onwards. It was this "onwards" that intrigued me. It sounded like the best part of the job. Later, he took me into another room to show me some of the equipment. There was a darkroom set-up with an oldish enlarger and a plethora of developing baths complete with sickly smelling solvents. It looked like junk to me, but who was I to judge? Me, who'd never set foot in a darkroom my entire life. Next to the largest bath was a ratty wooden box filled with all kinds of filters and special effects lenses. Like a boy before a toy box I was ecstatic. I'd always wondered how it was done.

"We don't use these so much anymore. Just the rudiments."

"Yes, I haven't used this sort of stuff for a while either."

"Oh, what do you use?"

"Ummm." I struggled for a moment. Then I remembered. "Photoshop."

"Everyone else is totally digital these days, but I always thought digital cameras – no matter how convenient they are - take all the warmth out of everything. Your set with film, a scanner and Photoshop...it just makes life that much easier. You just take the photo with low-speed film, develop it in a flat out sort of way and then scan it in. As long as the printer and your monitor are in synch colorwise, then you're home free. I'm a bit of photographer myself. I do a little for the magazine, but I prefer the writing end of things. That's why we need to hire someone. I rather have someone else do all that. Do you have your own darkroom equipment?"

"I just sold it to get enough money to move here. It was old anyway."

"Well, that's no problem. I did the same when I came over from England. We have most of the stuff here. I've gone through so many damn cameras myself. Like cars, you always have to be buying or selling. It's part of the fun of it all. I remember I had this grand old Zeise camera for a few years. Loved it like my bellybutton and all, but I eventually traded it for an ounce of Oaxacan Red. I kind of regretted it, though, after the dope was gone." I knew I was getting my foot in the door. He wouldn't talk to just anyone about pot. I felt a tingle like the onset of success quiver through my body.

"What kind of camera do you use?"

"Nikon F-3. But it was stolen in Mexico after I finished the photo essay." I crooked my brow angrily to give my story some authenticity.

"Sorry to hear that mate. You just can't trust that place. I hope it was insured."

"Oh yes. I wouldn't be that foolish." Actually I would. Jenny and I never had insurance on anything. "I'm just waiting for the paper work to come through."

"What else is new?" He tossed up his hands in a gesture of defeat and smiled.

"Well," he looked at his watch. "I have to go for lunch five minutes ago. I'll just take you over to the secretary and she'll have you fill out a formal application. As of yet we only have two more people to talk to, and one of them isn't so sure he likes the late hours."

"I see." He hadn't offered it to me outright, but I sensed I was a shoe-in. He escorted me to the front office and left me with a dry handshake to fill out the application form in a chair beside the secretary's desk.

"We'll call you in a week or two."

Wasn't this always the outcome? Not even a tangible ray of hope, just an ambiguous promise that one might soon shine my way. Two minutes earlier I was sure I had the job, but now I wasn't so certain. I was still working at the hospital and needed a break. After all, I was a photographer now and needed work in my line of profession. As it was, I quietly filled in the form, copying the Social Security number from my card and claiming I had a fine arts degree from New York University. I struggled to think of something more artsy, but couldn't come up with anything better. Oh well, I thought, NYU would do. Berrington was British and probably knew very little about the top ten art schools in the US. Furthermore, the chances he'd check on the fabricated references were slim. Prof. J.P. Watson, NYU. Prof. N.P Norton, NYU. Manhattan was a long way for such a small magazine to call and the British are _so_ thrifty. They'd never use long distance, not even to call a dying spouse.

Two weeks later, Berrington called back and offered me the job. It was really by default, because they'd offered it to the other applicant and he'd hemmed and hawed until finally turning it down. I could start immediately. From the figures he quoted I estimated the take home salary would be about three thousand a month, depending on what sort of health insurance plan I bought into. I went down to give the place a second look before I started work. I'd have a bench space in a room shared by Berrington's girl friend Vera and would be expected to take on as many assignments as they handed out from the top. I wasn't supposed to be too independent at this early stage and was simply to follow orders. If the magazine wanted to do a feature on a certain rock group, then it was my responsibility to hunt the group down and do a photo session. If an interview was also involved, Mark would make the arrangements and I'd just follow along with camera in hand. He was the brains behind everything, but Wilkinson was still the top guy and made all the fiscal decisions.

On my second day I met Wilkinson. He was a sullen and intense man in his late forties whose work on several local newspapers had earned him some notoriety. His financial independence had given him the opportunity to jump from job to job in the newspaper business without worrying about damaging his career. He eventually tired of working as a journalist and on a whim he decided to play manager and start up a music magazine, although judging from his appearance you wouldn't imagine that he had any interest in anything outside of the finance pages of the business section. Berrington was brought over from NME exclusively to get the whole circus rolling and was managing almost single-handedly to spew out an issue a month with only Vera to help him.

Vera, who I met the same day I met Wilkinson, was a frail looking redhead with watery blue eyes and a rice-paper complexion. Her long red hair and slender figure were reminiscent of a nude from a seventies head shop poster. I could almost imagine her fey eyes twinkling under a full moon as she leapt around naked at Stonehenge with a throng of wood nymphs dancing fairy rings around her. She seemed very shy, only smiling faintly with a delicate "Hello," from behind the great expanse of her layout desk. Needless to say, I was immediately captivated.

I started in early spring and moved out of my dumpy room and into a zinging little first floor loft in a three story West Hollywood building. It consisted of a pentagonal room about fifty feet across with a sunroof on one side and a bathtub in the middle of the floor. My heart bounced on a trampoline of excitement and a light tremolo quavered through me the first morning I unfurled the drapes and looked out onto Fairfax Avenue. The passing cars sputtered with life and even their shadows sparkled with an unearthly light. This was the beginning. This was _now_.

### VI

My initial assignments were fraught with difficulties. I had no idea what an f-stop was and I was seriously behind in the music world. But like a patch of dry land I drank up everything around me and in a few months I was perfectly competent. I read all the music and photography magazines I could get my hands on and practised every night in the safe confines of my apartment. I even took a crash course in advanced photographic lighting to get myself up to steam. Mark was a bit suspicious of my abilities the first few weeks, but I quickly learned to hide my lack of knowledge by pretending I was shy. Fortunately, he was such a naturally talkative personality that if he asked me a question that I couldn't answer I would only have to smile and pause for a few seconds before he'd lose patience and answer for me, apparently without detecting my ignorance. In no time I had this technique down to a mathematical equation. I knew all the angles, sins and cosines of deception: I was the world's expert in mendacity. If you gave me a protractor, a compass and a calculator I would have found my way around any bit of truth, no matter how formidable.

Once I settled into my new life, everything was just as I expected: the dazzling parties, the raucous gigs, and the numbing snow drifts of cocaine. My bed was quickly transformed from a desert of masturbation to an ocean of flesh and lipstick. Pussy flowed from every corner. I woke up each morning with a triumphant hangover and strolled leisurely into work wearing a different shirt every day of the month. I read European newspapers in translation and crashed Columbia studio sessions two hours late. That way I could finish off the beer without having to suffer through the boredom of the demo itself. Mark and I quickly became good friends and when he wasn't at home floating around in Vera-world, we'd patrol the runways of Hollywood like star-spangled airport marshals (in other words, we ran the show). He was a bit opinionated when it came to music, but in general we got on well. We saw eye-to-eye on most of the important stuff (no elaboration necessary) and sometimes Vera even joined in on our late-night prowlings. She was a bit quirky, but in such an interesting and loveable way that it was easily to forgive her eccentricities. Needless to say, I never spouted a word about my past to either of them. It was somebody else's life as far as I was concerned. My life slowly stabilised and magazine sales began to climb. Before I knew it we were getting regular invitations to New York and London to attend groundbreaking CD release parties at the expense of the recording companies.

The office expanded. I bought my own equipment from a second-hand shop and set up a small studio in my loft. Occasionally I'd invite rock stars over for more intimate sessions but for the most part I did my work either at the studio in the office or backstage after a show. At first I was impressed with my subjects, but I soon realised they were mostly narcissistic and boring. On the positive side, they always paid for takeouts, while also supplying more cocaine and hash than any man could dream of. So I always returned their generosity with the deepest reverence and respect. They probably went home thinking, "God, am I ever great, my music is so important, I'm so damn special because that _Shrapnel_ photographer treated me like a bona fide sultan," while I just shut the door and thought "man, did that guy have good dope."

I gradually realized that the magazines ran the music business and controlled which bands would be successful. Sadly, few of the recording artists I met along the way had figured this out yet. But this wasn't such a big surprise, because most of them were so blinded by their super nova of hipness they couldn't even manage their own financial affairs. Although I stumbled upon the occasional intelligent and truly devoted musician (who I would always treat accordingly), the bulk of them were childish, boring, and farcically self-centered.

In my first year, Mark sub-contracted freelancers to review the shows he didn't want to see. I took all the local photos and the others were bought from various media companies operating out of New York, Chicago, and London. In this way we were able to survive with just a few of us as core personnel. In the middle of the second year, sales started to dip and Wilkinson decided to shake things up by expanding the staff in spite of our worsening economic situation. We hired another photographer, two layout monkeys, and a full-time secretary while Wilkinson quietly lost a few more yachts. The sales continued to drop for the next six months and in response Wilkinson decided we needed an advertising manager to drum up some financial support from the local concert venues and recording companies.

That's when Nicola showed up. Eyes as vast and green as the hills of Ireland, jets of waxed brown hair, and a distinctly southern sway in her tight little Mulatto walk. Rhythmic, primal, and sophisticated, and all at the same time. If there was ever a box to be opened on Christmas morning, there it was. Yes, that's certainly when Nicola showed up...

She answered our ad in the LA weekly and after a short conversation on the phone, Mark invited her in for an interview.

"Hello," she said with a Dixie twang in her voice as she stepped into the room. "I'm Nicola."

"Berrington," said Mark. His jaw almost dropped, she was so beautiful. I gave him a furtive wink of approval.

He gave her a quick tour of the studio before taking her into his office for the official interview. By the end of the day we'd made up our mind that we simply had to have her at _Shrapnel_. She was exuberant, warm, and colorful and spoke with fountains of intelligence on every subject you could think of. She was just the type, we thought, to garner funds from local record companies while projecting the image that _Shrapnel_ was a hot and vibrant mag that demanded to be read like a sermon. On the downside, she was obviously prudish and had a dangerous patch of moralism sewn across her breast, but her beauty more than made up for it. I could tell she was attracted to me by the way she tossed a curious glance over her shoulder as I was leaving the office. I pretended not to notice, because I sensed that she was the bossy type that would try to dig her claws into me and change me once we got on closer terms. Make me regret everything I did before I met her and have me come crawling back to her every time I strayed from her holy path. Yuck. Fat chance of that, I thought.

Nicola was given her own small room near the front of the expanded office and Vera, Mark and I stayed in the main layout area. Eventually I was given an extra bit of space in a renovated kitchen upstairs to conduct photo sessions and work on the occasional touch-up. For the first few weeks we didn't socialize much with Nicola, although a few times we all went out for a group lunch.

With the new staff still in training and the seemingly endless expansions and renovations, the friendly atmosphere of the office died down and a cold-war dynamic emerged that divided Nicola and Wilkinson from the rest of us. They were the managerial/business types and we were the romantics, the true guts of the LA music scene, towering above the petty world of money, distribution, and paperwork. Needless to say, we eschewed their company as much as possible. Wilkinson was becoming pushier by the minute and Nicola was starting to tell us how to do our jobs. But we'd have none of it. Sometimes, after we'd doctored a written interview to make it sound flashier, she'd get try to change it back to the original draft before it went to press. If any of us exaggerated the tiniest thing a rock star had told us in an interview she'd blow her sweet little police whistle and tell Wilkinson. _Sic_ , I thought, totally _sic_. Her constant luncheon invitations and questions about our behind-the-scenes work gradually wore down our resistance and we learned to take her Joan of Arc complex with a grain of salt. We eventually gave in and accepted her. The fire trial ended after her third month when we invited her out for a Friday night dinner at a Japanese restaurant in Silver Lake and _finally_ got her to take a huge snort of cocaine off her sushi plate.

"My God," she exclaimed, still wiping her nose. "It's better than sex."

"You've never had me," I said. She frowned and turned her head away in disgust.

Then she looked back at me and laughed. My hair stood on end. I could tell she was playing along with me, but for the first time it really broke the ice between us. It was now abundantly clear she had a bit of a naughty streak she'd been hiding from us all along. From that night on we knew she would fit in and that she was really on our side.

### VII

I've always hated November. I'll just say it now so there'll be no confusion. Don't get me wrong, though. Nothing truly bad has ever happened to me in November. It's not that. It's something completely different. It's all the grayness, the cold sky staring you in the face like a blackboard in math class and the bare, almost skeletal trees withering away like victims of Auschwitz. It makes you think about things you never want to face. It makes you look inward. When nothing's going on _outside_ you have to go _inside_. That's what's so unbearable about it. That's why the thought of falling in love with Nicola never crossed my mind until one dark November night. Why should it have? There were packs of lupine women prowling the streets of Hollywood every night just waiting to jump the first stud that came their way. Why would I want to complicate matters by getting involved with a serious woman like her? We'd never get along and it would only be a matter of time before she started prying into my past. It just wouldn't work. So what if I entertained myself at work by picturing her in bedroom scenarios so racy even Hugh Hefner would have turned away in shame. That was all for fun. Only in the imagination. Whoever said it was wrong to _think_ an evil thought without actually _doing_ it was just plain wrong. The greatest beauty in life is to act and think completely out of joint. That way you could guarantee all your life's pleasures would be multiplied by two. But when I started to fall for Nicola all my greatest maxims threatened to undergo a paradigm shift. To think and act in complete harmony was to give in, to quit, and even worse, to betray the inner actor.

I was working late at the office one night and Nicola was the only other person there. She was folded away into the shadows of the other room, presumably arranging some notes for an important meeting the next day. She'd asked me out to dinner earlier and I'd refused, claiming I had too much work to do. This was true, but it wasn't the real reason. I'd decided to stand clear of her and not get involved. Group outings, yes. Private dinners, no. Thank God for work, it gives us so many easy excuses.

Just as I was closing up my Photoshop file I heard her yelp. It wasn't quite a scream, it just wasn't desperate enough. I leapt up and ran in to see what was wrong. I saw her crouched on the floor nursing her leg.

"It's my ankle." She looked embarrassed, as if she had been somehow exposed or caught out of character.

"What?"

"I think it's twisted." Her cheeks looked like they were playing tug rope with her lips, her expression was so pained. I knelt down beside her and put my hand on her knee. For the first time since we met I noticed she was wearing perfume. It reminded me of sitting on the shore of a lake in upstate New York as a child. This was a bad sign. She laughed as a tear trickled down her cheek.

"I'm so pathetic. Sitting here on the floor like a baby."

"No, not at all." She stretched out her leg and I helped her up. With her arm around my shoulder she limped alongside me to her chair. Her green eyes opened me up. For a moment I felt close to her. I felt a warm blanket of sympathy spread through my heart. But then I thought of Mexico and pulled back sharply, closing all my inner doors.

"I think it'll be OK," she said. "At least it's not swollen."

"I guess I should give you a ride home," I said. She accepted graciously and I took her straight back to her place in Century City. I walked her to her door, and left it at that. A chill of ice swept over me as I stepped into my car and zoomed off into the evening. I ignored her for a full week after that, but it didn't take long before I found myself thinking about her every night. It scared me.

So that's my story. That's how I got here. That's how I became a photographer for _Shrapnel_. You're not obligated to believe me, but its true anyway. So you'd better believe me. _It's real_. Almost too real. I stood up and brushed the sand off my pants. It was February. It was now. Valentine's day in Venice. The sun had already set into the silvery western horizon and Santa Monica was lit up like a Roman candle. It must have been some sort of parade, I thought. Not even slightly curious, I got into my car and sped off to the 405. The rushing blur of chrome and paint made me think of that _Little Black Sambo_ story again. I felt it grab me and push me deep into my seat, as if to warn me of impending disaster. Yes, falling head-over-heels in love with Nicola meant the rejection of everything that Mexico stood for. The betrayal of my Tetris game: apostasy. Maybe it even meant opening up and giving in to her. Perhaps it even meant confessing to her. Hell, no. I'd never do that...or would I?

As I turned off onto the 101 I vowed never to tell her the truth, no matter what happened. I also vowed to pump up the volume and seriously pursue her. She'd given out all the signals and I was already starting to tire of all the endless groupies blowing through my room like a Jet Stream of love. I'd been yoyo-ing around with her for too long and I had to draw in the string to clutch her in my palm. Our love would be a new experiment: truth against falsity. In lying to her about my past wasn't I secretly adhering to my deepest values? Falsity wrapped around the thighs of truth all night long is _still_ falsity no matter whose underpants were left lying on the floor in the morning. Duplicity will always reign supreme. I became more and more convinced of this as I boarded the Hollywood exit ramp and headed for The Burgundy Room for a quick finger of whiskey.

### 4. Green Eyes and Green Underwear

### I

Spring. Finally. The air is filled with the scent of gasoline and lilacs and my neighbourhood is bristling with optimism and excitement. I've even seen some children playing in the alley behind my apartment. The sun's been strutting down Beverly Boulevard like Gene Autry in search of his guitar and there hasn't been a drop of rain for weeks. The winter's rain clouds have all dried up and blown away, but unfortunately so has our funding. Wilkinson's had to dip even further into his private finances to keep things together and Mark's threatening to quit if Wilkinson doesn't give him complete control of the editing. In a last-minute move, 4-AD records pulled out its support of the magazine and Nicola hasn't been able to convince anyone - apart from a few local record stores - to buy advertising space in our next issue. Yesterday Wilkinson proposed a meeting at the office to go over some possibilities for the future. He's thinking of keeping the staff (including himself) intact and shifting the musical focus of the magazine to something more lucrative. Diving into the mainstream, so to speak. Mark and Vera haven't yet heard about it (they were too hung over that day and didn't come in to work), but yesterday they told me in private they had the feeling something bad was about to happen. So they planned a meeting next week behind Wilkinson's back to develop possible defence strategies. Mark insists that Wilkinson's commercial leanings are what's really dragging us down. I'm just trying to stay out of it.

In spite of all this nonsense, I've been sleeping quite soundly lately, curled around my snug comforter like an ornate pattern festooning up the hilt of some ancient sword. I'm rejuvenated. Winter's languor has given way to the spirit of pursuit. I've got Nicola on my mind and I'm sure she's going to give in any day now. The chase has been a real challenge, like climbing Everest or searching for Eldorado. I know when it finally happens it's going to be sweet. She's not the type to yield to a man's advances without a little drama. My love has only grown as a result of her resistance and I dream almost every night of crashing through her pearly gates. A few months ago her sweet moralism was a deterrent, but now I take it as a challenge. Entering her heart will be like sneaking over a stone wall into the armoury of some great fortress. That's what makes things exciting. The sense of danger. Most relationships fall apart in less than a year because they become too soft and cuddly, too boring, too easy. That's where we'll be different. There'll be no Wall-Mart bills in this relationship. No dinette sets. No coasters. That much I can guarantee. I'll be the thief of her sleep, the spy in her house of love. All those clichés will pile up on our bedclothes as we dangle our toes in the gentle airs of romantic ecstasy.

Yes, she'll certainly take some effort. I've even had to sharpen up my image to improve my chances with her. Yesterday I cut my hair and dyed it black. I stood in front of the mirror with a pair of scissors and went at it. No Barbasol, no electric razor. Only my trusty hands to guide me. I had a few tense moments when the woman upstairs flipped just as I was about to execute the finishing touches. That sickly whine slicing its melodramatic fingernails through every crack in my being. Her screaming broke my concentration for just an instant and as a result I messed up the styling behind my left ear. Now it has the logic of a Victorian garden after a bush fire. But after a few hours of trying to cover up my mistakes with my arsenal of styling gels it dawned on me that messy was _in_. That's what sells. That's what I want and that's what Nicola will want too. I'll bank on it.

Last night I drove out to Ventura to interview the lead singer from a band called _The Trance_. His name was Carlos something-or-other and his band had made a splash on campus radio stations across the country with their last album. Last week Mark played a few tracks for me. With mutually sour smiles we decided that it wasn't as great as the college crowd was saying, but not totally undeserving of attention. Perhaps a few photos and a small feature would be appropriate.

I took the 101 to Melrose and stopped off at a small pancake house just off the exit. I ordered a coffee and a side of bacon (I wasn't hungry since I'd already eaten a Super Burrito at my favorite takeout a few hours earlier). Then I sat back and leafed through the newspaper. It's so rare that I get a chance to browse through the pages of the world and see what's happening. Bombings in Belfast, murder in Culver City, EEC collapse, even a feature on the organ trade in South America: the list was endless. I'd spent so much time the last year or two wrapped up in the music scene that I'd lost touch with what was going on around me. As I sipped my coffee, I became so absorbed in the news I forgot what time it was. When I finally came to, I realized that I was due in Ventura in only twenty minutes. Without even waiting for the bill, I rushed up to pay. I searched my pockets for money, convinced for some reason that I'd ordered two plates of bacon. Since I only had enough money for one I told the woman behind the counter I'd ordered only one. She bought my story without a flinch and I walked out thinking I'd pulled one over on them. But as I looked through the window back at my table I noticed that there was only one plate where I had been sitting. Since this place always took its time to clear the tables it suddenly clicked that I had ordered only one plate of bacon after all. I hadn't pulled one over on anybody.

This may all sound trivial, but it got me thinking about some disturbing questions. Mainly, how long does it take before falsity becomes the truth? It wasn't such an abstract question in my case. At first I was only posturing as a photographer and now I _am_ a photographer. I know photography. I'm no longer a fake. Some crazy Samoan once told me that truth is an old coin whose face wears out over the years and slowly loses its value. Things that are true and useful in one century become outmoded, incorrect, and maybe even harmful a few hundred years later. Now that I think of it, the same can be said of falsity. It loses its value too, and eventually wears down into the truth. That's what's so disturbing. I could take a lie into my photolab and with a few simple manipulations produce a beautiful glossy of the truth. The same Samoan also said that there was an antimatter universe where everything is the opposite of what it is in our native universe. Would lies take the place of truths in such a universe? Would people be executed for telling the truth? What happened when confirmed liars admitted they were lying - who would be able tell if this were just another lie and what the real truth was - if such a thing even existed? What a concept. Verisimilitude? _Menda_ similitude? Lies as the shadow of truth, its trace, its silhouette. And where does my life fit into this crackpot jigsaw puzzle? Would it even matter anyway?

I arrived for the interview ten minutes late. Carlos lived in a quaint little fifties-style house in Ventura, almost outrageous in its conformity, a few blocks off the Hollywood freeway exit. Stepping out of my car onto the gravel driveway I remembered that I had to meet Mark later at The Burgundy Room. We hadn't been there in a while and he had some _matters_ (as he put it) to discuss with me. I wrote a small note on my hand in blue ink to remind me. My eyes followed the red fish-scale tiles on the roof as I walked up the interlinked brick sidewalk to the oak panelled front door. I knocked four times before I got an answer. A skeletal, swarthy man with harrowed eyes and a ripped tee shirt quietly opened the door and smiled. His face was the stark white of icing sugar and he was holding a slim paperback copy of a James Bond novel in his left hand.

"Come in." He closed the door with the cool detachment of a somnambulist. I noticed a long red scar on the inner side of his arm.

"Thanks," I said.

"Are you the music journalist?"

"Photographer. I haven't written an article in months. And you're?" I held out my hand and he reached out weakly to shake it.

"Vic. A friend."

"Pleased to meet you."

"Carlos is in the basement crashing out. There's been a few like you by in the last week. He's starting to get a little sick of interviews. He's a bit of a strange one. Reclusive. Introverted. Pushing life to its bitter edge all the time. Even in his day-to-day life. I should know. He's my best friend. We've known each other since high school. He appointed me as his manager last winter. I'll go get him."

I stood impatiently in the hallway. I'd heard this type of introduction before. Most rock stars have acolytes left over from their school days that seem to hang on hoping for a slice of the success to come their way. Unctuous. Fulsome. Off-base. I heard a knock downstairs and some muffled voices. Five minutes later Vic stepped narcotically into the front hall and invited me into the foyer.

"Carlos says you can come down to see him any time now. He just had to get dressed. He's picky about clothes. He won't wear just anything, you know. Yesterday he was wearing this wonderful velour top sprinkled with gold dust. He's got the wildest taste."

"So I hear." Actually, I hadn't heard a thing. But, it was part of my job to please the people I interviewed to make them feel important.

He beckoned me to follow him to the stairs. We passed through an almost bare living room and a kitchen before we reached the back hall staircase where he left me to make my own way.

"Downstairs. To the left. Third door. Offer him a smoke. That'll put him in a good mood and make a good impression."

I smiled as though I was applying for a job. Musicians and their entourages always believed that members of the press secretly aspired to be rock stars and worshipped the ground they walked on. But most of us just liked to observe the scabrous élan of their world without actually being part of it. We were like children gazing with wonder into the spectacular intricacies of an ant farm. Being a part of that ant farm would just be too much work. Touring, managers, record deals. The public's 44-caliber scrutiny. To think that we'd actually want to put up with it. We had the best of both worlds: a low-pressure existence with unlimited access to all the best dope, women, and parties in the nation. Free concerts and free trips. We had the better life when you tallied the final score. Rock stars were always going bankrupt, running out of ideas, or drinking themselves from Bethlehem to Nod in forty days and forty nights. At the end of the day, anybody could be a rock star. Give Mike Tyson a guitar and dress him like Ziggy Stardust and he'd be a _hit_ too.

But every job has its downside. In the case of music journalism it's the people surrounding the whole "alternative scene" like bees around a comb of magic honey. They're so screwed up - sometimes even lusciously so, as in the females - and the music sucks too. More often than not it's like some kind of angst-ridden sonic tar oozing out of your speakers. It's a bit much for a guy like me with a background in photography. Maybe it was made for problem youths who have self-mutilation fantasies - yes, that must be it. As for me, I'd much rather tune into my local mellow-light radio station and drift away to the feel-good sounds of _Starship_ or the _Bee Gees_. I'd never admit it to Mark or he'd have a fit. But I'm sure Wilkinson would understand. Yesterday I was supposed to review the newest _Stereolab_ CD and I couldn't get through the first song without a second bourbon. I took it off in the middle of the third song and chucked it. Needless to say I gave it five stars.

I smiled and thanked Vic for showing me in. Then I took a step downwards. I could hear some unidentified rock music mushroom-clouding through the hallways as I reached the first landing. This was going to be a riot, I thought, as I followed Vic's directions down to the third door to the left. I stopped and knocked.

"Come in." The voice was muffled and deep. The door opened only partially. I slid inside and stepped over a large black guitar amp. A tall thin guy with missionary black hair, tightly wound in thin braids spun vertiginously around his head, turned down the music and approached me. He was wearing tight leather pants and a fishnet top. Purple eye shadow was smeared all over his face, presumably from some drunken make-up frenzy the night before.

"Hey, man. Carlos." He stuck out his bony hand and offered me a cigarette.

"I'm Paul. From _Shrapnel_."

"Vic told me."

"What were you playing?" I pointed to the stereo.

"Sorry if it was loud, man. It's best that way. Our new single. The producer thinks we ought to step-up the drum track. Give it more punch."

"Sounded fine the way it was."

"Whiskey?"

"Needn't ask."

"Great. What's an interview without a two-six?"

"Actually, I also want some photos. So if you could get the band together it would be great. If not, that's fine too."

"They're all busy."

"Oh well. The public's usually only interested in the lead singer anyway."

"No way, man. I think the band is a metaphor for the family. All those screwed up kids off on some hippie trip or whatever want to see us together like _The Brady Bunch_. They want to be part of us 'cause their families are all so fucked."

"That's very socially conscious of you," I said. I was really testing his intelligence. If he thought it was a compliment, then I'd know what he was really all about.

"You journalists are so fucking snitty. Loosen up and enjoy. Have a swig and lets get on with it." So he wasn't a _total_ idiot after all. We sat down on a bloated black leather sofa pimpled with cigarette burns and he slotted a tape into his cassette deck. Beethoven. Oh, no. I hated classical music.

"I always listen to Beethoven during interviews," he proclaimed.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" I replied. "I see all these kids out there at gigs and they never listen to classical. It's sad."

"It sure is." I forced a shadow of regret across my brow.

"So, let's get rolling, man."

"Let's start with the music."

"Ace. That's all that really matters. Image is only secondary. I'm a bit of a dresser, if you know what I mean, but it would never work if the music wasn't there in the first place. The clothes just sort of _buttress_ the whole thing. You know...the Zen of it all."

"Sure."

"We started three years ago. We had this, like, _vision_. We'd just got out of high school and couldn't stand the world that faced us. _Concrete Manicure_ , our first single, said it all. We were united by our mutual contempt of the nineties. Jobs, careers, unemployment. That's all people cared about. People were all moaning over trivial shit while their _real_ lives passed them by. Life is what you feel, man, who you love. There's more to human existence than a fucking job, fella."

"I know what you're saying."

"But there was some weird beauty somewhere out there in all that post-Reagan gray and we wanted to find it. All these people hung up on the wrong things. We wanted to sprout like poppies through the cement cracks of their minds. Beauty out of ugliness. Decay as a virtue. Turn all the _pure and solid fuck_ of Wall Street into a ravishing kaleidoscope of sonic love. There was no other way to fight it. We had to start somewhere."

"Do you think you succeeded?"

"Well, I don't know. I'm no fucking benchmark. That's for you to decide."

"OK, but you must have some idea. I mean, are you being received the way you want to be? Or do you think you're misunderstood?"

"I think, in general, yes. I mean like we're growing and people seem to dig us for the right reasons. I like the sorts of kids that come to our shows. They're non-violent. They seem to care. They seem alive. That's important."

"What about your sound? It's sort of mantric, on the one hand, but it's harshly unsettling on the other."

"I always liked bands like _The Cramps_ and _The Gun Club_. They had this sort of beautiful sense of ritual underneath all that hardcore rockabilly shit. We wanted to be like that. Of course, we sound nothing like them, but the principle's the same. We've got a totally different feel. We're kind of hypnotic and oriental. Those oblique guitars, those cloudy melodies, and that sewing-machine baseline driving it all from behind."

He opened up a pouch of coke from his pocket and sprinkled a little mound on a piece of broken mirror. I raised my eyebrows in quiet appreciation. After doing a few lines we enjoyed a minute or two of monkish silence, smiling as the numb tingle began to crawl through our veins. When we got back to the interview I realized that I'd forgotten my tape machine, so I had to jot down a few notes. After about twenty minutes of casual questioning, I reached into my shoulder bag and pulled out my camera.

"Pictures? I'll have to change," he beamed.

"Whatever. They don't have to be that showy. Maybe even better if you're dressed down a bit. Gives it more of a candid feel."

"That's cool. I prefer to ham it up. It's my job. My girl friend bugs me about it, but I don't mind. I'm not too worried what she thinks."

He stepped into a small room and came back twenty minutes later wearing shiny leatherette pants and a slim-fitting dinner jacket sparkling all over with rainbow flakes like a Christmas cookie. I was sitting on the couch grinning from the coke and laughing at a cardboard box that suddenly looked kind of silly standing beside a fake oriental lantern in the corner. His hair was oiled back and the braids were loosened.

"There," he said. "Now I'm more in character."

"Sorry. Just one thing. Is there a better room? I forgot my flash and I don't want to do it outside. I've got some high-speed film so all we really need is a little more light." He stood up and flicked a switch. The room exploded in a show of brightness.

"Thanks, man."

"Hey, where's that mirror. I think I need a little more before we start. Oh, here it is. Mmm. Lovely stuff. As long as the albums keep selling I'll be in the _white_. I love it."

The photo-session see-sawed precariously between the routine and the normal. We ran through the usual gamut of poses: on a couch with a cigarette and a beer, legs spread apart; mirrored sun glasses and a guitar, head hanging down in meaningful concentration; lying on the floor hugging his guitar like a lover. Nothing too exciting about any of them, but a few psychedelic touch-ups on the computer would fix them up fine and dandy. After two rolls of film we did a few more lines of coke. Then I gathered my stuff together and he walked me upstairs. Vic was nowhere to be seen so I quickly put my shoes on.

"Thanks. We'll get back to you before we release anything and see what you think about it. We try not to publish anything against the musician's wishes." I wasn't sure this was true or not, but I did my best to make him think it was. If we let the musicians decide what we wrote about them, no one would buy our magazines and no one would buy their music. Musicians always think their fans like them for different reasons than they really do. I guess very few people have any idea what their true virtues are.

"Hey. That's pretty cool. No scandals."

"Yeah. We always avoid trouble."

"Sound's good. If there's one thing I hate it's media vampires."

"No, we're not like that. Nothing to worry about."

"Oh, I wasn't implying you were."

"Good. We try to be as honest as possible. Honesty's the best policy. It may be a cliché, but it works."

"Oh, here. This is a CD of our latest single. Maybe you might want to mention something about it in your article."

"Great."

"It's sort of a new direction. A bit psychobilly, a bit thrash. Less mood, more action, you know."

I shook his hand and walked out into the night. It was already past ten and I didn't want to be late meeting Mark. After locking my equipment in the trunk I eased myself into the driver's seat, started up the engine and set off towards North Hollywood. There's nothing more exciting than an LA freeway at night. Ten-lane circus maximus for the modern centurian. What the Romans would've thought of this place! Sure, there were no gladiators, but there was a hockey team and loose gun laws to make up for it. Besides, wasn't it the Romans who invented freeways? I pressed hard on the accelerator and cut directly in front of an airport shuttle. Wham. I'd be there in no time. A friend once told me the great thing about these freeways is that you can make it anywhere in LA in less than half an hour. Long Beach, Whittier, Venice, Pasadena, downtown, Hollywood. It was all spread out before you in arm's reach like a tray of brilliant hors d'oeuvres.

I blasted down the 101 and got off early, so I could drive down Sunset on my way to the Burgundy Room. Manoeuvring onto the 405 then exiting onto Santa Monica Boulevard, I soon found myself in the glittering arms of Beverly Hills. It wasn't long before I was driving by that Mormon temple that looks like something out of _Chariots of the Gods_ , its Aztec grandeur strangely belying the glum prosaic faith practised behind its walls.

I turned up the hill to Sunset Boulevard and made my way to La Cahuenga and the Burgundy Room, enjoying the sultry décor of West Hollywood as usual. The Pussy Cat Theater. Always something special here. Every week a new gay classic. _Pubic Storm_ is this week's special. I'd always been curious about this place since I heard it featured something called Anal Max Vision. Several times I tried to imagine what this could possibly be, but I always ended up shaking my head in scornful disbelief. How could they get a movie camera up someone's rectum, if that's what they were really doing? I accelerated across Fairfax, almost hitting a flashy Italian sports coupe in the process. There was a loud honk and I looked over just in time to catch a rude gesture from a dirty old hippie with enough hair on his face to insulate the Kremlin in January - what was _he_ doing in that car? A few blocks later I smoothed my way into a parking space and looked at a clock on the side of a building. It was 11:00 p.m. and I was running at least twenty minutes late.

The Burgundy Room was wedged in between two featureless buildings on an even more featureless street a few blocks up from Amoeba Records. The first time I came looking for it – not to mention the second and third - I couldn't find it at all, the front door was so understated. All there was to set it apart from the other doors on the block, which could be entrances into all-night kosher slaughter houses for all I knew, was an almost invisible Br above the top of the frame. I finally found it one night when I was drinking with a guy from Pasadena Art Center who seemed to know all of the hip night spots and I wasn't at all disappointed. The interior was dimly lit by half a dozen heavily wrought-iron candelabras looming just above head level on the black-cherry ( _not_ burgundy) walls. The wooden bar and mirror behind it had been dragged out of an old mining saloon by some millionaire in the twenties and later sold at an auction to Bob Hope. This was what the weedy Welsh owner told me one night, and I had no reason to doubt him. The jukebox was the cornerstone of the place, sporting only seventies soul, punk, and soft-rock classics. So gloriously out of fashion that it defined fashion, The Burgundy Room soon became my favorite drinking spot. That was even before I noticed the hordes of exotically beautiful woman who often decorated the gothic walls with their punky jewellery, candy-striped stockings and explosively modern hairstyles. One night I was there with Mark and no matter where we looked, our eyes would lock into the sultry glance of some gorgeous flesh queen. There really was _No Exit_ , so I'm sure Jean Paul Sartre would have approved.

When I walked in it was virtually empty. I easily spotted Mark and Vera at the far end snuggling so close together they almost looked like Siamese twins. I crossed my fingers and hoped their loving ways would last at least until the end of the evening. The last thing I wanted was to get caught in the crossfire of one of their arguments.

"Fucking Americans. Can't ever show up on time," Mark said.

"We were wondering about you," Vera said. My eyes dropped to her breasts. Round and tight, they were nothing short of electrifying.

"Sorry I was late," I said. "Got caught up with that guy from _The Trance_. I guess I have to do something for a living."

"How was he?" asked Mark.

"The usual. Not bad. A bit pretentious, but still OK. He gave me their unreleased single."

"Hey," Vera exclaimed. She touched my wrist. "We got so bored sitting here waiting that we started to concoct theories of sock disappearance." She smiled, her ginseng hair cascading over her eyes.

"Right," said Mark. "She guessed it was gnomes leaping into your laundry every night exchanging socks, and I thought... well, let me explain. We both have made the very astute observation that socks vanish over time, or are replaced by other socks never before seen by the owner. Vera bought me six pairs of equally gray socks last summer. Same company, same labels, same color. Now I have twelve socks, each slightly different except two - a red one and a green one - that I've never seen before. The others range from black to light gray to navy. I mentioned this to Vera..."

"Yes, he did. I'll vouch for that," she said emphatically.

"This obviously buggers me up. I figure it has to be quantum mechanical. These two guys from Caltech that come here all the time to get steamed told me about this phenomenon called quantum tunnelling where some little atomic particle spontaneously jumps from A to B without ever going between. That's what it has to be. My sock spontaneously changes places with some other guy's sock on the other side of the world. In a blink. That's it."

"Gnomes," Vera contested, her eyes perking up. "In any event, I feel sorry for anyone ending up with _your_ old socks." She feathered his arm with her half-closed fist.

"Wait a minute." They were obviously drunk so I decided to play along. "What about Darwin? I say it's some sort of spontaneous mutation or speciation from one type of sock into another."

"Bah," scoffed Mark. "He was just some old sod. And where does natural selection come into play inside a dryer? I like my explanation better. We'll have to ask those Caltech guys. See what they think. They'll agree with me."

Vera stiffened up her face comically and swivelled around. "Gnomes," she whispered provocatively as she slid off her chair and tiptoed to the bathroom.

"Tell you what. I knew a guy who was so paranoid about his foot odor that he never wore the same socks twice. He said he spent more on socks than on beer, if you can imagine that! Crazy."

I laughed dryly and ordered a beer. I sensed there was something else on his mind. He wasn't showing it, but I could tell by the way he was nudging up to Vera. They must have been bonding over something pretty big to get that cuddly.

"Hey, mates," Mark said. "I've got a great idea. Lets take the piss out of Wilkinson." I was right. Mark was boiling over about the magazine and must have shared a moment or two of sympathy with Vera to console his spirits. I didn't want to get too involved. If I sided with Wilkinson, Mark would hate me forever. If I sided with Mark I'd lose my job.

"He's such a weak-kneed fake," Mark continued. "He doesn't know a toss about music. And he wants to sell us out. No way I'm going to work for him. We have to do it now, mate. We have to stick together. Start our own magazine."

Maybe Mark was right, but at least Wilkinson had some managerial skills that were holding things together. Mark was too volatile to run the whole show. His relationship with Vera was proof. A few days ago she was sleeping in the office and now they're high-school lovers all over again. If he ran the entire magazine, it would most certainly be a disaster.

"What do you think?" Mark asked sharply.

"Wilkinson's a fake," I said. "I think he's a definite liability to our careers."

"What about Nicola?"

"I don't know. I haven't asked her."

"Are you guys going out or what? It's starting to look like the Wonder Years. You know...the show where that naff kid can't seem to get anything out of that bird Winnie." He slobbered before noticing that Vera was perched quietly behind him listening.

"What kind of thing is that to say to your friend?" she chided him.

"He doesn't mind," Mark said defensively. In fact, I really didn't. It was clear it was only a matter of time before _it_ happened with Nicola. Besides, Mark was just drunk and I understood what it meant to have a few too many drinks.

"Where is she anyway?" asked Vera.

"I don't know. I'm going out with her tomorrow night."

"Make sure she comes to the meeting at my place," Mark added, staring into his empty beer glass. "You're closer to her. I'm not sure whose side she's on anyway." "I've worked for so long on this and I don't want to see it all go down the drain. It's my vision. It's my fucking life. I can't let it happen. When I was a wee lad in London I used to hang out at a record store near Malcolm Mclaren's Sex Shop in Chelsea. These tosser mods used to spit on me all the time and I used to get back at them by stealing their record bags in the pub when they went to the bog. I got them all back. The little wankers. Anyway, I knew back then that I loved music. I knew then and I still know now. Way back then. Tried a band with some mates, but we were pretty crap. In a way _Shrapnel_ is all that's left of those days. Bah. Failure. Who cares anyway?"

Vera leaned into Mark and wrapped her arm gently around him, a look of empathy spreading across her face.

"He's getting cuddly," she whispered to me. "I wish he was always like this. He's so cute."

The evening ended in a sweet throng. Vera collapsed into his lap and I gave them both a big hug. When I stood up I realized they had passed out. I shook Mark's arm, but I couldn't wake him. The bartender gave both of them a shove as I gathered their coats. After helping them into my car, I hit the freeways and dropped them off at their walk-up fifteen minutes later. I went home and stayed up till dawn working on the negatives from the _Carlos_ session. Stereo on, the evening reaching softly through the window and into my room, I was propelled through the night by a warm current of energy surging through me. When I was finished I stuffed the photos into an envelope and set it on the kitchen counter so I wouldn't forget to bring them into work the next day.

All I could think of was Nicola's milky face as I changed out of my smoke-scented clothes and climbed into bed. As I stared at the ceiling I had an impossibly light feeling like I was floating on air. Glowing inside like I hadn't since I first met Jenny, I quickly drifted off into a world of fantasy. I imagined for a moment that I was flying down a snowy slope defined by the lines of Nicola's stomach. Her breasts expanded to fill the dimensions of the room as I tumbled blindly into a state of unconsciousness.

### II

The next day I arranged to meet Nicola after dinner at the New Beverly Cinema on Beverly Boulevard. I'd never caught a film there before, but I'd several times passed the place with some curiosity. It wasn't quite a repertory theatre, but more than a second-run film house. She wanted to see a new British film, the name of which now escaped me. I had no problems with her choice. What really mattered was that she agreed to go out with me. After running the last of the _Trance_ photos through the scanner and adding a few layers of Gaussian noise, I had a quick lunch with Vera. Mark was too hung-over from the previous night's session at The Burgundy Room to join us. Vera was lucky in this regard. She rarely got hangovers. Then again, she rarely had a lot of energy either. I guess you only get so much zip in your life and have a choice of spacing it out evenly through the day or saving it for a few short spectacular spurts in the evening. I was the latter type. Short spurts were my speciality. Feeling a little hazy myself, I let her carry the conversation.

"Go home early," was her advice. "You're in no shape to work. Take a nap and make sure you're fresh for the film." Needless to say, I did exactly what she said. There was no way I was going to stick around the office any longer than I had to, not against the sound advice of a trusted co-worker.

After a short nap at home I fixed some coffee and took a long shower. Extra hot, just to make sure I sweat out all the remnants of the day. Then I rummaged through my closet to find the perfect shirt. Patterned silks with designs as outlandish as an artist's depiction of the Martian Canals: no - it just wasn't that sort of night. That sector of my wardrobe was reserved for all-night clubbing with teenaged groupies. A starched white shirt with a stiff black tie: no - too formal. This wasn't a presidential banquet. Tee shirts: no. Vests: no. Velveteens: no. I couldn't decide on anything. I rumaged through piles of tops for what seemed like days. Lost on a raft in an ocean of fabric I finally washed ashore wearing a cobalt blue rayon shirt with an enormous wing-like collar and a few blotches of orange on the chest. Black denim pants and my trusty Docs and I was ready for anything.

We agreed to meet a half hour before the show at a book store/café a block down the street from the cinema. Nicola always insisted on driving herself and refused to accept rides unless her car was at the garage. When I arrived, a few minutes late of course, she was nowhere to be seen. I waited for fifteen minutes, flipping through the XXX section trying to divert my fears that she might not show. She'd never stood me up before, but there was always a first time for everything. I was absorbed in a series of erotic photos from an Italian soft porn magazine, dreaming about the night's possibilities, when her slim fingers appeared from nowhere and peeled the pages away from my face. I turned to find her smiling in a pair of jeans and a plain black tee shirt. She looked even better than the model in the magazine.

"Knew I'd find you in this section," she said playfully, accusingly.

"What are you implying? Besides..." I rolled up my sleeve as if checking the time on my watch.

"Sorry. The traffic was bad. Then I couldn't get a parking space. Anyway, I guess we don't have time for a coffee."

"Yeah, we'd better go."

I took her hand and she let me hold it for a second before letting it drop to her waist.

"By the way, you look great in that tee-shirt," I said, chancing a lavish compliment.

"Thanks. I just threw it on," she replied.

"How was your day?" I hadn't seen her and imagined she might have been out garnering support from some record company or other.

"Not great. I didn't do a thing. Don't tell Wilkinson. He'd be furious. Or Mark for that matter. I'm not allowed much in terms of holidays in my position and I needed a break. Besides, I lunched with some industry hot shots on Sunday."

"My lips are sealed. You don't think I'd tell Wilkinson, anyway, do you? I mean, it's not like I'm his informer."

"No. But you know. It's always nice to get some approval from your colleagues for these slight breaches."

"Sure."

"And you?"

"Lazy. Sauntering. Slow. But I did finish that _Trance_ assignment."

"At least that's something. More than me."

We left the bookstore and took a casual stroll to the theatre around the corner. When we got inside I bought a huge bag of Nibs and a large Coke to share between us. We found a pair of seats in the middle of the theatre and made ourselves comfortable just in time to watch the curtains slowly open. I checked to see if she was looking at me, but her eyes were already riveted on the screen. It was only the trailers and she was already captivated. Not sure if this boded well for the rest of the evening I slouched in my chair and tried my best to pay attention to the film. It was filled with endless sequences of society banquets punctuated by the occasional pillowy visual or wry confrontation to liven it up. The whole English country trip: tea trays, rolling hills, and cars that looked like _Chitty Chitty Bang Bang_. It was clearly the sort of movie a girl like Nicola would love, so I made sure I made mental notes of the best scenes so I could impress her afterwards. I whispered into her ears a few times, but apart from a few sniffles here and there she was silent until the credits rolled. The lights snapped on and she exhaled serenely.

"Mmmm. Makes me nostalgic," she said.

"I didn't know you used to live in England," I replied. We shuffled through the seats and followed her down to the exit.

"No. Only in a figurative way, I mean. You can be nostalgic for things you've never done."

"Like..."

"Well, I don't know. It's more a matter of missing the things you always wanted to do and seeing the possibility of you ever doing them slip away rather than actually missing something you once did. I've always wanted to live a life like Emma Thompson, but I know I never will."

"Emma Thompson?" My eyebrow cracked.

"The actress in the movie we just saw, silly."

"Right, of course." Fifteen-Love, Nicola. For a second I'd completely forgotten about the movie, I was so dazzled by the enormity of her presence.

"You know. The big house, the linens, the dinners. Reminded me of _Upstairs Downstairs_. I used to watch it as a girl. That's what I'm nostalgic about. Anyway, now do you see what I mean?"

"I guess so. Still, that's not the strict definition of the word _nostalgia_."

"True. But, let's forget about that sort of stuff for now. You know. Rules and regulations. I want to have a good time tonight. Work's been getting me down. Too many tedious luncheons." This was certainly a shock coming out of her. But, I wasn't about to lodge a formal complaint. I opened the door for her and we walked out into the street. Then we walked through the dusk light in total silence until we reached my car.

"Did you like it?" she surprised me as I leaned down to open the door. I wondered where she was parked and if it was a good sign that she had followed me to my car.

"I took a cab," she said, as though reading my mind. "Just in case you were wondering. My car was out of gas and I didn't want to be late because of one of those gas station traffic jams."

We got into my car and I started driving west down Beverly Boulevard. It seemed as good a direction as any. After all, wasn't the West always associated with death and death with sex?

"What?" I asked, trying to concentrate on the road.

"What else? The film, of course."

"Yes, it was wonderful. Remarkable visuals. It really made me think about how much we take social roles for granted."

"Really. I'd always taken you for someone who didn't think about those things. Not in a negative sense, of course. It's funny how you can meet somebody and all along harbor various ideas about them that are really only made up in your head."

"Hmmm," I mused.

"Anyway, I liked it too." She gave me a coy dreamy look as we rounded the corner onto Fairfax.

"Where to?" I asked.

"Well." She looked wistfully at her watch and seemed to loosen all control over her body. "I was thinking that it might be nice to just have a quiet time somewhere. Excuse me if I'm being a bore. I'm just in that sort of mood. Not that I'm sleepy."

"Not at all."

"My place is a mess."

This was a surprise. Since she was so immaculate in her physical person, I always imagined her place would be an unrivalled model of cleanliness: shimmering waxed floors that made your heels click like Chinese checkers whenever you walked across the room, and freshly cut flowers blooming in every room.

"Hmmm. My place? A bar? A café?" I asked. I'd been in this situation countless times before. It was the pivotal point of any date.

On my recommendation, we agreed on the first choice. Spilling like a ball of mercury out of the mouth of a broken thermometer we raced back to my loft. I quaked for a moment when I thought the place might smell of dirty laundry or undone dishes. I crossed my fingers as I opened the door. Safe. I'd left the window open and the air was clean. We scooted through the doorway and slipped off our shoes.

"You're a real mystery."

"What?"

"I don't know. You never talk about your days in New York. It's as if that part of your life is locked away in a mausoleum somewhere. What was it like? New York I mean." This was why I was worried. I knew she'd start asking questions like this.

"Have you ever been there?" I asked.

"Sure. Several times. Everyone has. Once as a girl, once as a teen, and once as a young woman."

"Well, it was like that. The way you saw it," I replied curtly.

"No need to get touchy."

"I'm not." I said reassuringly. "It's just that it was so long ago and everyone asks me that."

"Oh. Sorry for asking," she said coldly.

"I don't mean to be nasty," I said. "I'm just a little hyper from the driving." That was the great thing about living in LA. You could always use driving as an excuse. It worked for everything. Late? The traffic. Tired? The freeways. Unavailable? Car's in the shop. I touched her on the shoulder in an attempt to warm things up between us. A few minutes ago I was dreaming of hot sex on my couch, but now it seemed we were suddenly treading on a minefield. "Come in, come in," I urged her. "I've got all sorts of goodies in the fridge. Wine, beer, you name it."

She stepped gingerly into my kitchen and I handed her a wine glass. She let it rest between her fingers as I filled it with Chardonnay.

"How do you know I wanted white?"

"Oh, sorry. How presumptuous of me," I replied.

"Just kidding. I always drink white. You must know that by now. Sure we've only known each other for half a year, but this is the nineties." Just the type of comment I wanted to hear. People who were into the nineties liked all the right things. And I needn't even mention what these were.

She swirled the wine in her glass. "What do you think of all this Wilkinson/Mark business?" she inquired in a more serious tone.

"I don't know. As long as I've still got a job I'm happy."

"How could you say that? Mark's your friend and Wilkinson's thinking of running him into a boring position he'd never be happy with. Besides..."

"I guess you're right," I conceded. "Wilkinson's in the wrong. But it is _his_ money after all."

"I know it's partially my fault. I can't get enough advertising together."

"One can't force the future. If it fails, it fails."

"What sort of attitude is that?" Her expression was hovering between surprise and discomfort.

"Zen Buddhist. But let's not worry about it. We can talk about that tomorrow. Now tell me," I said, trying to find the lost glimmer in her eyes, "what do you feel like doing tonight?"

"Tell me, and we'll both know," she said suggestively. I couldn't believe it. There she was, finally. Warm, willing, ready. We were clearly out of the minefield.

"Tell me something nice about yourself," she said.

"What?"

"Well, I only know you as a colleague at work and don't really know much about you otherwise. There must be someone else somewhere inside those sweet gray eyes."

"Well..." I stumbled.

"Have you ever been in love?"

"Of course."

"What was it like?"

"What sort of question's that?" I snapped uncontrollably.

"I don't know."

"I've got it!" I said to change the topic. "Lets watch a video."

"I hope I'm not being too pushy. Some people think I'm too self-righteous and assertive. I'm just curious."

"I just don't want to talk about it now."

"Sorry." She looked at me tenderly and rubbed her palm on her left leg. "You're the sensitive type. I can tell. You just hide all your feelings by throwing yourself into your wild lifestyle. All you lone wolf types are just a bunch of tender little babies inside." I wasn't about to argue. I was genuinely touched that she saw the real heart pulsing inside me.

"What about that video?" I asked.

"I'm making you uncomfortable with all my questions aren't I?"

"No, not at all."

"Promise?"

"Cross my heart." I genuflected and knelt down to a cupboard with some videos stashed away in it. _One-Hundred days of Sodom_ , _Beneath the Planet of the Apes,_ _Faster Pussy Cat Kill Kill_ , _Fritz the Cat_...all too racy for her.

"Hey, I know," she said.

"What?"

"I've got a better idea."

"What?"

"We just watched a movie. Let's go for a drive instead. I've never driven up the coast at night. We could go and watch the boats go by."

"They close the beaches. You have to go way up north. Almost to Santa Barbara. It'd take hours."

"Come on."

"I'm too drunk," I said. "I'd like to, but I'm not sure it is a good idea."

"Drunk? Come on. Get serious. You've only had one measly glass of wine."

"I'm just not sure..."

"It would be..." She looked at me with wide, engulfing eyes. I imagined myself floating on a lazy raft over the sea-green waters of her cornea.

"What?" I whispered, almost anticipating her answer.

"Romantic," she whispered back solemnly.

"What?" I wasn't sure I heard her right. She picked up a pillow from the couch and lightly punched me with it.

"You heard me, Paul," she repeated, wrapping my heart around her finger like a string of red yarn. I looked at her as if she were someone else. I'd never seen her so forward, so blunt. Her eyes sparkled. "Ro-man-tic, roman-tic, ro-mantic." I gasped as her tight mulatto hips quivered with anticipation only inches away from my own.

In an instant we were tangled in a moronic heap, her baby-soft cheeks sweeping across my face and her lips pressed so firmly into mine I could swear they'd been sewn together. All definition was suddenly lost. Hair, cream, fur, skin, water, eyes, cloth, clouds, bra, grass, lip, tongue, cell, sweat. I could no longer tell whose hair was whose. I was convinced I could feel through her hands and hear through her ears. Like mediums from another century we melted into each other's bodies and souls.

In no time I'd already slipped my hand with reckless abandon down the back of her pants. She groaned with pleasure as my fingers plumbed the rolling contours of her rear, wandering at times to the furthest reaches of her panties, so far from her belt they were left like stranded sailors between the sensuous islands of her zipper and mossy wet hair.

I pushed my finger crudely inside her. She squealed with a mix of pain and pleasure. Then she stiffened and grabbed my arm.

"Wait," she said tensely. "This isn't right." She looked at me sharply. We'd reached an impasse. I rolled towards her slowly and clutched her hand. She relaxed.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm just not ready yet." I leaned back and remained silent. "I don't know what I'm doing," she muttered with moist trembling lips.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"There's a problem," she continued. "I hate to bring it up again. It's not you, really. It's just that - well, how can I say this - I don't quite know how to gauge you. Sometimes you seem like utterly different people. Even at work. I don't quite understand it."

"Different people?" I tensed up inside.

"I don't know. Maybe it's just me." She exhaled in exhaustion. "Sometimes you seem sort of cold and distant. Almost calculating. As if you're some kind of impostor from another planet methodically trying to record his findings. I know it's ridiculous, but it's just a feeling. But other times, you're warm and loveable..." She paused for a minute.

"Go on," I urged her.

"I shouldn't. Look, I'm tired. We can talk about it tomorrow. I really should go," she said as she bowed into me and kissed my cheek.

"Why are you here with me now, if you don't trust me?" I asked.

"Trust you? I didn't say that. Of course I trust you. Don't get upset."

"I'm not." I really wasn't. It was obvious she was in the palm of my hand and just felt a bit funny getting involved with a colleague. If anything, I was the one who should have felt strange. I had so much more to lose if she ever found out the truth.

"Do you know any cab numbers off hand?"

"No, you'll have to look in the phone book," I replied. Then I realized how rude I was being. "Don't worry, I'll do it for you."

I called her a cab and went to join her on the couch.

I let my fingers slip through the streaks of hair dangling over her pleading vulnerable eyes. Then we embraced. It felt different than with all the other girls. Softer. Nicer. I thought of Mexico, but only for an instant. It vaporized in my memory like a puddle of gasoline on blistering asphalt. We hugged in a silent mound for what seemed like days before the doorbell rang and she stood up and fixed her hair. I didn't even move as she gathered her things and walked out the door to catch her cab.

### III

I spent the rest of the weekend in near-monastic solitude meditating on the eight-fold splendors of Nicola: 1) her marble green eyes; 2) the honeyed magic of her lips; 3) her zero-gravity breasts that almost seem to float like angelic heralds in front of her, trumpeting her arrival as she walks into the room; 4) the smooth enamel of her stomach and that cute bulge of baby fat that blossoms forth just above her belt, 5) the sable hair brush stroke between her thighs (which I've felt but not yet seen); 6) her dark silky legs, the color of roasted hazelnuts; 7) the way she dresses: color, so much color. Other women are mere shadows cast on tombstones beside her. A flare of red, a splash of orange, a fountain of yellow, a blast of green, a nub of brown, a jet of pink, a fit of blue. It's all there, every hue in the rainbow jostling with it's rivals in a ballet of style and grace; and finally, 8) the way she undoes her 501s. First, her fingers tap lightly on the top of her fly and then, in a sudden flinch, her thumb darts into the space between the top two buttons and she pulls down as hard as she can. It's hard to describe, but it reminds me of a primitive can opener forcing its way through a sheet of tin. Then her belly button comes into full view. Bigger, tighter, rounder. I bet you could even stash a refer in there. Perfection...

In the stoic silence of my apartment I've plumbed the deepest mysteries of her body and placed them like triangles of colored glass into the vast mosaic of the universe. Why, I've even linked them to the cycles of nature and the phases of the moon. Now, that's getting serious, especially when you consider that I'm not even remotely interested in astrology. She makes me feel like an astronaut taking that giant first step for mankind into her secret world of moonlit bliss. Yes, you could say I'm almost weightless with her love. Man, I'm nearly levitating with it.

Mark called Saturday morning to tell me that the meeting was going to be postponed till after he'd moved. He was running low on money and he and Vera had agreed to sublet a mansion in Hollywood that belonged to a wealthy costume designer. The owner was going away for a year to Europe and they managed to get it for under a thousand a month. They were both pretty excited about it. From all accounts it sounded like a terrific find. Swimming pool, satellite television, an enormous art collection, a small sculpture garden, and the best of all: a two-hundred grand stereo. I was almost as excited as they were. They were moving in two weeks and had already sent out invitations for the housewarming party. I could hardly wait.

On Monday morning I emerged into wakefulness with the slow deliberation of a tortoise groping its way from a warm sandy beach into the cold sanctuary of the ocean. For breakfast I ate Corn Flakes and two eggs (a lot more than my usual scrape-togethering of Rye Crisps and orange juice), smiling over the weekend's triumph with Nicola as I read the morning news. I rolled into work later than usual, spending most of the morning in my apartment trying to gather together all of my photos in an effort to catalogue them. I'd built up such a large collection of negatives it was impossible to find anything anywhere. My apartment was impossibly cluttered and hadn't been cleaned for over two months. I couldn't find the Mexican photos anywhere. I was convinced I'd left them in my closet, beneath an old pair of oxfords that I kept for formal dinners with record executives, but they were nowhere to be found. Perhaps I had tossed them out with some old newspapers without realizing it. No worry, I thought, they weren't that important and, if anything, I was safer without them. Apart from my Social Security card, they were the only things that tied me to the past and could possibly incriminate me. Needless to say, I didn't want Nicola to see them. They were a little too strange for a woman like her and from a part of my life I was better off forgetting about altogether. Besides, I was more of a Paul Robertson now than I'd ever been a Robert Smith. Sure, she still had a few doubts and complained a few times that I sometimes seemed like a different person, but these were just the expected fears of a virtuous woman falling in love with her knight in shining armor. She had no facts to back up her concerns and would surely forget about her reservations soon. This meant I was truly in the pink. Pink skin, pink lips, pink sheets, pink grapefruits in the morning, pink sunsets at night. I was on a glorious crash-course with pink! That's where I was headed.

I hopped in my car and drove into work. I felt something fresh and wonderful blooming inside of me as I screeched on the brakes in front of the office. In one motion I opened the door and leapt out onto the sidewalk. Just like the movies, I thought. The way things were going I could give any stuntman a run for his money.

Yes, love is such a sweet persuader! It could turn a hardened dog-whipper into a Greenpeace pet lover overnight - sea lion wallpaper plastered all over his living room with ceramic Lassie figurines stashed away behind his newfound _National Geographic_ collection. It could transform a Marxist squatter into a millionaire industrialist with a mere wave of the hand. It could make an NFL running back out of a carrot juice queen without so much as a strip of sirloin. It could even - get this - send George Bush packing on a Swedish National Ballet tour with a pink satin cape draped around his shoulders. Yes, it can do all of this, but look what it's doing to me! It's only been two days since our first date and I'm already staying home to watch the late night news just so I can talk about it with Nicola the next day. Yesterday I called my doctor to schedule a check-up and, after talking to his assistant on the phone, made plans to take up racquetball, sit-ups, and low-fat lunches. I'm even thinking of going to the opera every now and then. My blood is pulsing through my veins at speeds only Einstein could dream of...and I haven't even slept with her yet!

I flipped through a few loose documents on my desk and lit a cigarette. Vera and Mark were nowhere to be seen. After rummaging around for a few minutes I found a note from Nicola asking if I wanted to have dinner with her the following evening. She was gone for the day and wouldn't be in till Tuesday. As I'd hoped, her sudden cold feet the other night was looking more and more like a mere blip. If all went well, I'd be shopping for condoms by the end of the week. I picked up the phone and called her landline to let her know I got her note. Her answering service clicked on and her voice explained how she was away for the day but would be checking her messages anyway. What a sweet woman, I thought. There wasn't even the slightest attempt to make the message hip or cool, as seemed to be the tedious fashion these days. At the sound of the beep I left a message for her to call me back as soon as she could so we could make dinner plans for the next day.

Later that afternoon Wilkinson stepped into my office. His expression was dreary and he looked as though his head was suspended in a cloud of cigar smoke.

"Trouble, Robertson," was all he said. He walked out without even stopping to look at me. A few minutes later he came back.

"I have to talk to you. Do you have a minute?"

"Sure," I complied. I followed him to his office in short, choppy steps wondering what kind of trouble he had floundering around in his sleeve.

"We have, as you know, some serious financial problems. I don't mean to point fingers or blame anybody, because I see it as a joint venture. We're all sailing in the same boat. It may be my boat, but we're all in it nonetheless. If it sinks, we all sink. You may not be aware of the full picture, so I'll spell it out for you in plain English. In short, we've lost about two hundred thousand dollars since we started. It's all come out of my pockets. I'm a wealthy man and a bit of a dabbler, you might say, but I don't like to lose money any more than you do. You see, the problem is the market. If we want big dollars, we have to go to the big companies. We can't _fanny around,_ as Berrington might say, with nickel-and-dime recording companies. We need more. But to get more, we have to promote the right music. It's all fun and daring to be out there on the forefront of the underground, but it's all coming out of my bank account.

"There are only two solutions, as I see it, if we want to survive. Perhaps you'd like to hazard a guess?" he asked in a dry managerial tone. Talking Wilkinson was usually a taxing and mechanical process, kind of what you might imagine speaking with a typewriter would be like.

"I'll let you do the honors."

"OK. If you insist. The first possibility, and the most likely, is that we completely change our approach and cater to a different audience. I was thinking of the younger heavy-metal crowd. Heavy metal is back. You can see it on the billboards, you can hear it on the radios. Bands like _Boston_ and _Kiss_ are capturing the imagination of a second generation. All this arty noise we've been flogging to the public is out. No market, no interest. Of course, this may not sit well with some of you, but that's not my concern. If this happens, you'll all be offered to keep your positions. If you have some ideological or personal reason for not complying with the new format, you'll be free to go and I'll support you in finding a suitable position elsewhere. You see, there's a viable market out there for a new rock magazine. You just have to hit the right audience and find the right advertisers. I'm getting Nicola to canvas some record companies like Capitol and Warner to see if they'd fund us. I've been preparing a proposal for her to show them and if we can garner enough support we'll change as soon as possible."

"Don't you think there's enough metal mags floating around out there?" I asked.

"Well, we'll sink them all. Ours will be the best."

"Have you told Mark yet?"

"No. And I'll have to ask you not to until it's definite. I've alluded to it several times in his presence, but I've never actually told him like I'm telling you. He'd probably over-react. It would cause too much trouble if I told him before it was for real and then backed out later. Might as well keep it a secret until I'm absolutely certain."

"My lips are sealed."

"Good. I know I can trust you," he said soberly.

"The other alternative - apart from a complete disbandment - is to put it up for sale and let someone else suffer the losses. But there's no guarantee that the new owner won't also want to change the format once he moves in. So it might ultimately amount to the same thing."

"Any potential buyers?"

"Not as yet, but there's always a young entrepreneur out there who'll take a risk. I'm through with risks. Let someone else do it. I don't want to squander my fortunes on a pet idea I had a few years ago."

"Pet idea?"

"The magazine."

"Oh."

"Berrington would like to claim responsibility for it, but he always forgets that it was me who solicited NME for enough interested parties to start up the magazine. His ego is so damn big he ought to consider carting it around behind him on a dolly."

"He is a bit intense at times," I conceded. "Drinks a bit too much, doesn't see the reality of everything around him. Not that we should hold it against him, though. He's a good _chap_."

"So, you see things my way, then?"

"Yes," I said flatly. I had no partialities to alternative music and would rather just be free of all of the money hassles so Nicola and I (if we did indeed end up together) could have as few worries as possible.

"It should be pretty clear which way things are going by the end of the month and we can have a general meeting then. Till that time I don't want this to get out past you and Nicola."

He slouched in his swivel chair and turned towards the window. After a few seconds of silence I realised he had already given me my cue to leave.

"Thank you," I said. Then I left the room.

Five minutes later Mark came slumping into my office.

"Fucking car won't work and I had to take the bus," he crowed. "Never take the bus in this town. A week in Wales would probably be more exciting."

"Oh, there you are. I was wondering what happened to you."

"Never drink Creme de Menthe either. That's my second lesson for the day. Vera had an old bottle and we stayed up all night drinking beer and the odd shot of the wretched green shit until we both passed out. Didn't wake up till two. I feel like a slab of pavement from Piccadilly Circus during rush hour."

"I don't know how you can drink that stuff," I said, shaking my head in disbelief.

"I manage. Hey, on another topic, I ran into those two guys from Caltech down at the Burgundy room the other day."

"So, what was the final verdict on the socks?"

"I'll let you guess," he said almost boasting, a shit-eating smile hanging like a clothesline across his face.

"Salamanders? Water nymphs, maybe?"

"No. Bloody hell, no. They both agreed it was quantum tunnelling. The issue's settled. Vera wasn't too happy when I told her."

"So, when's it appearing in _Scientific American_?" I quipped, but he just turned and walked away.

He bobbled around the office for half an hour looking for something to do before deciding to catch a ride home with me. On the way out he burped as he chipped a dollar at the baby-faced busker that was hanging around outside our office.

"Can't wait to move into my new place," he enthused. "By the way. Wilkinson. Did he say anything?"

"No," I said. It was best that he didn't know. He was having enough trouble as it was with the move hanging over his head.

"Good."

He pulled out his favorite _Pixies_ tape, _Surfa Rosa_ , smiled, and wedged it bluntly into the tape slot of my car stereo.

"This oughta get us through rush-hour. Hispanic surf-punk."

I revved up the engine and cut ahead of a convertible full of Latino teenagers. The driver, hair Elvissed back in huge waves of greased black, rolled up his sleeve and gave us both the finger.

"Sod off," Mark retaliated. They tailed us for a few blocks and then turned off at Vine. Black Francis' frenetic yelping filled our ears as we raced down Beverly Boulevard towards the prickly glass towers of downtown.

_Your mother speak no English_...

After I dropped him off I spent the rest of the evening cleaning up my apartment in anticipation of the following evening's dinner with Nicola. I could almost feel her delicate fingertips smoothing back my hair as we swooned in the luxury of my steaming bathtub.

### IV

Things are really taking off now. My life is so exhilarating; I'm tingling all over. I feel like a surfer riding the Caribbean waves of love every morning I open up the glittering beachfront of my window. I just stand there and watch as the sunlight splashes across my floor and foams up onto my walls. Nicola's done a fifty-thousand-dollar makeover on my house of love. Parquet floors, gold light fixtures, a wicker love seat, walls as bright as lemons, and fantastic little curios from the steaming jungle nations of the world. I feel a new tenderness wafting through its halls and I'm even thinking of installing a fireplace. Yes, my heart's quite a different place now. It's so nice, plush in fact, you could even consider entertaining royalty there.

Last night it finally happened. Fresh and cheerful, I soared like a bird over to her place to pick her up. She was dressed in an electrifying blue suede mini-skirt that only went half way down her thighs. She toyed with her gold necklace for a moment before tucking it behind the folds of her red velour sweater. Every clue, from her blue-stockinged feet to the tips of her coco brown hair, pointed to the inevitable conclusion. It was going to be the night.

We decided on a quick snack and a film in lieu of a long romantic dinner at some dimly lit Italian place. Neither of us was hungry and we didn't feel like taking out a second mortgage to have some black-suited waiter slouch over our table with overpriced Chianti all night. Besides, if we got hungry later we could just pick up a bite from an all-night taco stand on La Brea. That's what real lovers do don't they? All the satin clad couples you see in those candlelit prime rib mausoleums aren't really in love, now, are they? The obligatory red wine, the sappy violin music dribbling like kitten snot all over the clay tiled floors, the routine roses, and the Bambi-esque simpering of their pouting baby faces: no, this wasn't love. Nicola and I went for true love: the dangerous nights, stumbling in drunken bliss through the derelict streets of Hollywood, kissing in the rain behind coils of razored barbed wire in abandoned east-side parking lots and burnt-out warehouses.

We decided to see the latest _Terminator_ movie. Hardly a lover's flick, but we were hardly everyday lovers. In fact, we weren't yet lovers at all. After some initial chilliness we both loosened up. Before the first fighting scene I already had my arm neatly wrapped around her waist. During a few of the slower scenes I leaned over to kiss her and she yielded without so much as a sniffle. She let me hold her hand and the rest of the movie flew by like dream. The final credits rolled and we stood up. I grabbed her from behind like a Sasquatch, squeezing her as I breathed heavily into her ear. She responded by stretching her arm backwards and pawing playfully at my thigh.

After a light drink at The Burgundy Room we decided on her place. She lived in a tight, almost cramped little walk-up apartment filed between two larger high-rises in Century City. The hallways were adorned with wrought-iron lanterns and toreador paintings. It was clear from both the decor and the location (a block away from a Kosher meat packing plant) that Wilkinson wasn't paying her well. I'd put a little pressure on him to get her a raise, but I didn't want to push too hard and jeopardize my own position. If I ever got fired Nicola would never go out with me, that much was a given.

The inside of her apartment was far more alluring. Curious knick knacks all over the world: water jugs from Burma, clay penises from Thailand (I guess they need them over there), obsidian narwhals from Sweden, stone monkeys from Zaire, bamboo flutes from China, and Bangladeshi tea pots woven from vanilla root. Arty posters were hanging everywhere. One advertised the Berlin Zoo. It was from the Nazi era, judging by the oversized swastika hanging over the horn of a rhino - while another showed a little native boy carrying a brightly painted shield made from animal skin. I immediately thought of all the teenage punkers that hung out on Sunset Boulevard after midnight. She tugged me by the hand and led me into the living room. It was fairly small, but a jungle's worth of creeping plants gave the illusion of size. Underneath some sort of giant shrub with bib-shaped leaves the size of small windshields we found a cozy little love seat. She pulled it away from the wall and invited me to join her.

"I made the upholstery from an old quilt."

"It's almost like skin, it's so soft."

"You've got a one-track mind," she joked. "Strange, though, for someone who seems to have a much deeper side to him."

I didn't reply. I swore before I went out I was going to avoid her tender little psychological spelunking games.

"Oh, well," she continued. "Not that it really matters. I guess what's important is that you enjoy each other's company. It wouldn't be interesting anyway if you were all up-front."

"That's the mystery of it," I said, humoring her. She yawned in a sensual, feline way and stretched her arms outwards, dropping her weight backwards into the love seat. She scooted over until she was almost touching me.

"I'm sorry about the other night. I've thought about it and decided that I was just being uptight. Most office romances are so cheap. Useless, disastrous affairs. I think we've known each other long enough that if it doesn't work out we can still be friends." I nodded in agreement. It wasn't my place to argue with her, the _lady of the house_.

I bent over and dipped my tongue into her mouth, tasting the remnants of her spearmint chewing gum. Her eyes narrowed almost devilishly and her hand went straight for my zipper. It was clear she was intent on making up for last week's shrinking violet episode. In a matter of minutes we were both totally naked except for our socks and underwear. With the supple fingers of a pastry chef I eased off her panties and left them caught up around her left ankle. She unfurled her silky legs and I dove into the blissful light.

I can barely begin to describe the blizzards of passion that tore through the room across our panting intertwined bodies for the next few hours. All I can remember is the expression of torturous ecstasy on her face as she climaxed and grabbed my bangs as if they were the corner of her baby blanket. Afterwards we lay on the floor, cooing like pigeons in a soft jellied huddle. I stared at the ceiling for almost twenty minutes before speaking, examining each of her soft hairs individually like a jeweller appraising a collection of diamonds. A thick wind blew through my body, like opium or sleep, and I crumbled into her soft, almost mythological embrace.

"Mmmm, like wind in the grass," she finally whispered.

"What?" I replied.

"Nothing. Just a phrase my mother would say."

"Strange. Never heard it before. How do you feel?"

"It felt so strange, but so good. When I looked into your eyes I saw another man emerging. Not the one I met at work."

Not this again, I thought. "Did you like him?"

"Yes," she said warmly and emphatically, her voice pouring like a bowl of honey into my mouth as she pressed up against me for a sweet and greedy kiss.

"Like a girl in front of a candy bowl," I said, relieved at her response.

I fell asleep, holding on to her warm body all night. It had never been like this before. The next morning she made me some oatmeal and eggs and we sat in total silence as we ate. This was only the beginning, I thought. All my inner barriers sizzled into nothingness like drops of water on a red-hot frying pan.

I left at noon and rolled into work with a smug grin plastered across my face. Mark was sitting at his desk smoking and tapping his pen neurotically on the edge of his chair.

"That _Trance_ article. It was terrible. I had to fix it all up. I couldn't believe it was you writing it. Were you drunk?"

"What? What are you talking about?"

"Look. Here's the original." He handed me a piece of paper with war zones of red ink scribbled all over it. Beneath the trenches of corrections I could barely make out the bloody remains of my original. If he wasn't the rude limy friend that he was I would have nailed him one right there.

"Hmmph," I muttered in defeat and handed it back. Most of his corrections were completely justified.

"No worry. You must've been pissed as a cunt when you wrote it."

Pissed or in love, I thought.

"The pictures are all right, though, aren't they?" I asked squeamishly.

"Not bad," he said. "Not your best, but they'll do. There aren't any swords pronging out of some nude woman's belly or anything. You're lucky I'm such a good editor. We're going to push _Shrapnel_ over the top with this one. This next issue will be the turning point and after that Wilkinson can go fuck himself every time he tries to question my _vision_."

I felt a little guilty for my botch up and stayed late with Mark and Vera to make sure that the final layout was in perfect shape for the printers later that week. It was the first time I'd worked overtime in the entire two years I'd been there. When we were finished I left them alone in the office and went home to catch up on some much-needed sleep.

### V

Yes, indeed. Everything is changing. The sky is changing, the trees are changing, the pavement is changing, and the air is changing. The floorboards in my house, the lamp beside my bed, the plum colored bar of soap in my shower stall, the half-eaten box of Rice Krispies that's been collecting cobwebs in my cupboard for the last six months...even these things - however trivial and insignificant they might seem - are changing. And it's not just inanimate objects that are being affected: everyone around me is changing too. Changing in big, almost oversized ways. Even that humdrum guy who sells stale peanuts in front of our office building is changing. He never used to smile, but now whenever I pass him on the street I can detect a peevish little grin squirming out from under his lips. This morning I even waved at him and bought a bag to show my newfound gratitude.

But if everything is changing, isn't it more likely, more _energy efficient_ if you will, that nothing's really changing at all? Nothing except for me. When you consider the possibility of the whole damn world changing so dramatically in such a short span of time, it's pretty amazing. Almost too amazing to be believable. That's why I think it might be _me_ that's really doing the changing. But, who can tell the difference anyway? If every last parcel of matter or energy in the entire universe changes with the exception of a single photon, isn't this the same as that one photon changing while everything else remains the same? Perhaps it's just a matter of reference points, but the bottom line is change. Inside and out. Outside or in. It doesn't make a difference which.

But who cares about philosophy anyway? I feel so bright and smiley. I'm the Northern lights rippling through the arctic skies of love. All I can think about is Nicola. Nicola, Nicola, Nicola. She's in my hair, my face, my bed, and my dreams. And God damn it, she's even in my subconscious. I'm not even fully aware of it and have no hard evidence, but I can tell she's there. I can feel her soft revelations ebbing through every quarter of my existence. I love the shoes she wears, the polish on her nails, the pins in her hair, the buttons on her shirt, the food she orders, the bills she pays, the plants she waters, the letters she mails, the pavement she walks over on the way to her car in the morning. I love everything about the woman. I can't deny it any longer. I wish I were a wad of lint buried inside her bellybutton.

Do you remember what that crazy Samoan said about falsity slowly losing its value over time until it eventually becomes the truth? Well, that's what must be happening to me. I find myself no longer caring about my _revelation_ in Mexico. It's not that I no longer believe in it - any fool can see that the world is a fake, from its rouged cheeks down to its airbrushed nipples - it's more that I'm losing interest in falsity since I met Nicola. I just can't be bothered to revel in the world's duplicitous clamor any longer. I acknowledge it, I believe it, I agree with it; but that's as far as I'll go. Just because a man supports a political party, it doesn't mean he has to live and breathe its policies every moment of his life. Like a young religious zealot who leaves the monastery to find his fortune in the world, I've chosen to relinquish my _faith_ and see where real life takes me. I'm even starting to wish I was never Robert Smith at all. It just causes so many unnecessary complications. I've had to make up stories - not that I didn't enjoy it at the time - about my past and live them as if they were the truth. But now I can't be bothered making things up anymore.

How long does it take before falsity fades away and becomes the truth? About as long as it took me to rip off her clothes that precious first night at her place. With a single kiss she burned through my soul like a blowtorch. I quaked at first as I touched the tip of her flame, but once it melted through me I was lost. I tried to resist her, but to what end? A night with her was worth a thousand lies. Big, Judas-sized lies at that.

I used to worry that falling for her meant losing what I learned in Mexico, betraying my inner Tetris game. Then I came to realize that I could win her over without betraying a thing. In a horn-locking clash between falsity and the truth, who comes out on top? Falsity by a touch down - at least. But, now I don't even care anymore. Such star-studded match-ups no longer intrigue me. I'm like a guy who's outgrown sports in favor of something deeper and more cerebral. And the few days in Cergazzo? Just a phase I was going through. A revelation, a dream, a vision. Mexico is a place for visions. We all have our cathartic experiences in Mexico. There's something so tragically romantic about it all. The sun scraping across the mindless azure sky, the white-tiled verandas and the queer beauty of the desert flowers. Almost ravishing, almost infernal. If you're going to have a revelation you might as well have it there. Of course, I can't tell Nicola anything about it. Can't even toss her a twig of my story. She'll have to go on believing my lie or we'll be finished. A girl like her in love with someone like me? It wouldn't go over at all. She'd dump me and that would be it. Even if I told her how much of a drooling maniac the German was, I somehow get the feeling his death might come between us. Even though it really wasn't my fault, I'll have to pray she never finds out. The way I see it, I'm a generous person with everyone's good will at heart. If I told her the real truth it would traumatize her and damage our blossoming relationship. So, I have to do the noble thing and go on hiding the secrets of my past.

But in spite of all these new revelations, I can still feel falsity wriggling under my skin when I lay awake in bed watching late-night TV. Trying to give up lying while going on living a lie is no simple task. When I woke up yesterday at five a.m., half-drunk, half hung over, I realized the person I was only a few weeks ago was fading away into a sad mockery of who he once was. And _fading_ is the key word here. All that Mexico stuff, it's fading too. Fading like an old monument. Falsity, all the power to you, but leave me alone for now. I'm in love and my life is more fulfilling than it ever was. I can't deny the last few years were fun with all those wild nights in Hollywood, now just a memory collage of leather boots, satin underwear, and tattooed flesh. The endless free concerts, the ear-piercing screech of electric guitars, and the exciting scent of fresh perfume wafting through the backstage darkness. No, I can't say I regret a single minute. But these last few weeks Nicola finally made me realize that something was missing all along. And thank God I'm strong enough to admit it.

### VI

Mark flipped a coin in his hand and loosened his watchstrap. It was 3:00 a.m. and every one but him was beat. Nicola had just fallen asleep on the couch and Vera was in the kitchen rummaging through the refrigerator for the last dregs of wine. They had to be out by the next day by 10:00 a.m., and they hadn't moved a thing. _The Fall's_ version of Blake's _Jerusalem_ was booming through the room.

"Fuck, is this song excellent," Mark exclaimed. "I don't know what they were trying to do, but I like it. It has panache. I like the way it mixes anti-government gibe with Blake's original words and that kind of scabrous funk beat in the background."

"If you say so," I said.

" _The Fall_ is incomparable. Uncompromising quality. Just think of all the other crap that's come out of Manchester since. All slosh. Mark E. Smith is up there with the greats as far as I'm concerned. What does it is his fucking sense of humour. Who else would work Blake into a post-punk apocalypse song?"

"I'm not the one to ask," I said.

"I actually saw them on this tour," Mark continued. "It was a rock-opera. They had these giant letters on stage behind the dancers." He swept his hands outwards and around his head to give a sense of the shear volume of the performance.

Although I was afraid to admit it in Mark's company, I hated _The Fall_. In fact, detested them. Especially their lead singer, Mark E. Smith, with his weedy half whelp/half scream of a voice which scours like a Brillo pad over the primate drums in the background, occasionally lunging out to remind you just how nasty an organ your ears could be for actually letting such garbage into your brain.

"There's no more wine," Vera called from the kitchen. "I think we'll have to call it quits." She yawned.

"The amazing thing about them is their singularity. There are bands - _The Jesus and Mary Chain_ is a good example - who merely fill an opening in the progression of musical history. Sure, they're called revolutionary, but the revolution is a predictable one and if they didn't come along and release _Psychocandy_ , someone else would have released something so similar the world wouldn't have needed them to begin with."

"There's no wine," Vera repeated.

Mark ignored her and continued. "These are revolutions waiting to happen like a bicycle crashing into a pot hole in the middle of a road. Then there's the other type. The anomalous ones. The ones that wouldn't have happened hadn't a certain person been born. _The Fall_ is such a band. There was no call for them in 1977; the world would have gone on without them. If Mark E. Smith hadn't come along and the bizarre and original musical style they created would never have existed at all. But here they are, without precedent or antecedent, imitating nobody and too singular to imitate."

"I said, there's no wine!" Vera shouted.

"Damn," moaned Mark. "I'm not even sleepy yet and, as Vera has so politely informed us, we're fuck out of wine. "What about you?"

"I'm OK," I replied.

"Hey, I've got an idea," said Mark. He leaned over to me and his voice dropped to a whisper. "Nicola and Vera can sleep in our bed and we can stay up and pack." His eyes were wide and crazed like a conquistador's. _You and what army_ , I thought, but I was already too drunk to argue. At this point physical labor seemed like an easier alternative to any form of mental opposition. I was feeling so fragile that if a five year old came in and insulted me I'd probably start bawling.

"Sounds good to me," Vera said. She poked at Nicola until her eyes were visible behind their half-closed lids. Then she tugged at her arm and guided her away into the bedroom.

Mark leaned forward and picked up the rough layout of the latest _Shrapnel_ issue. On the first page was the annual readers' poll, which established that the average reader 1) listened to _Sonic Youth_ 's "Sister" more than any other album, 2) were not registered to vote, 3) lived in California, 4) went to two gigs a month, 5) was more deeply influenced by Iggy Pop's "Raw Power" than any other album, and 6) wanted to see more photos and less writing in _Shrapnel_. The main feature was my interview with _The Trance_ and there were also a few local concert reviews written by Mark. He'd adopted several pseudonyms to give the readers the impression that there was a small army of rock journalists working for us. The cover page had a candied silver background with a tilted rectangular photo of a spidery oriental model pasted across it like a band-aid just below the jittery black letters of the word _Shrapnel_. Her albino hair stood straight up and she was holding a sawed-off machine gun carelessly in her left hand. She looked strangely familiar. After a few minutes of racking my brains I finally remembered: she was the one I did on top of the clear cellophane sheets six months ago. Her dress - made from planks of metallic-gray plastic which left the hip area brazenly bare - gave it away. It was the plastic. Nobody else I'd ever met was into plastic like that girl. I bet she even ate it, sprinkling it on her sushi after she snorted a line of coke just minutes before. I hadn't seen her since our little cellophane rendezvous after which we ended up dining on slices of old cheese and stale crackers on our makeshift bed of crinkly blue plastic - hardly a John and Yoko love-in, but I'm sure you get the point. Even her underwear was plastic: thin and semi-translucent like filo pastry. I was flabbergasted at the time and wondered which galaxy she might have flown in from. But I was just as flabbergasted to see her on the cover. I thought I'd filed those photos away for good a long time ago.

"Could be the last one," he said sadly as he held it up in front of me.

"Where did you get this? I stuffed that photo away in my filing cabinet two years ago," I asked him.

"I don't know. I found it on my desk two weeks ago."

"How did it get there?"

"I haven't the faintest."

"Hmm. I must have taken it out and forgot to put it back. Doesn't matter. I'm just surprised to see it again."

"By the way, before I forget, did Nicola ever find your driver's license?"

"What are you talking about? I never lost it."

"Nicola was rummaging through your drawers at work. She said you thought you were missing your driver's license and she was giving your desk a quick search. I walked in on her the other night. Had to do some last minute changes on this rag." He slapped the layout down on the coffee table.

"That's weird. I never lost anything. And I can't remember telling her, even if I did."

"I bet she was jealous. That explains the cover photo. She checked out your old files for evidence of past affairs that you didn't tell her about - and knowing you, you probably didn't utter a word about your life in LA before she came along - and must've forgot to put the photo back. Then she probably searched through your desk to see if you had any old phone numbers. You know what I mean."

"I sure do. I'll have to ask her tomorrow. It's probably nothing. But, then, if it is true, it would explain why I'm missing my Mexican photos." Nicola was just too sweet. Even if she was rummaging through my desk, I couldn't imagine her having anything but the best intentions.

"Fuck. I forgot about those. They were just so _out of it_. I remember wondering what kind of lunatic would take pictures like that. That's why we put you second on the totem pole behind the guy who turned the job down. We thought you might be weird."

"She might have run off with them to see if she could find pictures of any old lovers she could torment me about. Doesn't matter anyway."

"Man, they were warped, though."

"It was just an artistic phase I was going through. Anyway, aren't you glad you hired me?" I asked, a shit-eating grin on my face.

"Yeah, I guess," he replied with sarcastic reservation.

Mark and I finished packing his rag-tag belongings into boxes by 9:00 a.m. The girls had been asleep for hours when I woke up Nicola and had her drive me home.

"Remember the party at our new place – that is, if wankshaft Wilkie doesn't fire me first," Mark said as he shut the door. Nicola and I walked down the hallway and down the stairs to her car outside. The rest of the move was up to Mark. If he couldn't vacate on time he had only himself to blame.

The next day Nicola and I went for a quick coffee in Hollywood before going in to work. Then we walked down Melrose Avenue, occasionally peeking into antique shops as we made our way towards Fairfax. She was wearing a gauzy orange tee shirt and black cotton shorts and had a boxy black purse slung over her shoulder. Although she was smiling brightly, I could sense something was the matter. We stepped into a Hollywood memorabilia store and she picked up an old lamp that, according to the sign, used to belong to Charlie Chaplin. She grimaced and turned her head sharply.

"I hate this place," she said, a tiny shadow warbling across her face.

"Here, you mean?"

"Where else?"

"Well..."

"It's all this stuff. Why do we spend so much time dreaming about other people's lives? Why is this lamp so expensive? Who cares if Chaplin owned it?"

"It's history, that's why. Everyone wants a piece of it."

"I want to get out of here. I've got an idea." Her eyes went suddenly all narrow and mischievous. "Let's..." She hesitated and pulled me towards her before she continued in a purring whisper, "Let's go back to my apartment."

"Now? What about work?"

"Listen, Paul. I'm serious. I want to make love to you right now. In the car if we have to." Her eyes drilled into me and I could almost feel her fingers seeping through my pants and into my underwear. I thrust my hand into my pocket to grab my car keys. I could already imagine her body, naked and desperate, pressed against mine.

We made love in her apartment and stayed in bed till later that evening. For hours I was suspended in that vapory region between wakefulness and sleep fantasizing/dreaming about my last few weeks with her. They'd certainly been wonderful ones. At 3:00 I finally got up and slapped on some clothes. Less than an hour later I was at work staring Wilkinson in the face.

"We're finished," was all he said. After a long silence, he finally spilled his guts. "I'm selling the magazine in two weeks and I'm reviewing all your positions. All I need is a signature and _Shrapnel_ is history."

My jaw almost dropped to the floor. Mark and Vera had taken the day off to finish moving and hadn't even found out yet.

"Are you with me or not?" asked Wilkinson. I straightened my neck and brushed back my hair. Looking good was the first step to keeping a job in these days of mass downsizing. I stared squarely into his eyes and nodded. He was my boss after all and what right did I to question him?

### 5. A Room of Mirrors

### I

This gray room is more than just a cell. It's a room of mirrors. Here I slide into my mental card house of reflections and come back whenever I please. There's nobody to tell me what to do, and nobody to impress. In fact, there's not even anybody to lie to. I'm beyond the world of men and therefore exempt from all conduct, moral or immoral. There's nobody but myself to judge what's true or false, and to be honest, I no longer care. I'm comfortable here. Awaiting my execution with neither anger nor trepidation. I feel almost nothing when I imagine the tip of a needle - sharp and glistening, like fingernails or electricity - dripping in the executioner's hand as he guides it slowly into my skin. Death, I'm satisfied to say, is just another phase. I imagine it is something warm and peaceful like a hidden pool in a dense forest. I'm ready for it. I was the young actor, the falsely tried convict, the fake photographer, but now I'm the true convict, pacing back and forth in my cell awaiting my ascension to another world.

It can be lonely here with just a bunk bed and a tiny window to keep me company. Sometimes a shadow, crouched and monkey-like, scurries across the floor in taut uncertain motions to greet me in the morning. I rarely get visitors of any kind. Not Nicola, not Mark, not Jenny. But who cares anyway? They were just stock characters in the life of a person that no longer exists and never really existed anyway.

In this room of mirrors all deception is permitted. I can be anybody I wish and nobody calls my bluff. This morning, for example, I was Macbeth. When I was an actor I never played Macbeth. Not that I wanted to either. His weakness was a tragic flaw: his guilty conscience. It doesn't take a genius to see that he would have gotten away with everything had his remorse not forced him into error. His mistake wasn't his corruption, but rather his inconsistency. If you're going to be corrupt, it's best to go all the way. In the same way that a moment of moral turpitude can spoil a life of chastity, even the tiniest grain of integrity can destroy a life of corruption. My problem was somewhere in-between. I was neither good nor bad. Perhaps I lacked a few of the noblest qualities, but it doesn't really matter anymore. I'm too exhausted to think and my memory is already beginning to fade.

So here I sit, crouched and bleeding at the base of this rocky hill, awaiting my slow ascent to its icy peak. What time is it? How should I know? But what does it matter anyway? I say this again. Say this with pain. So please, let me be. We'll continue this tomorrow. I _really_ am tired and I can't fend off sleep's tender onslaught any longer.

### II

Snowdrifts, cyclones. These are just a few of the beads on the necklace of destruction. A tiny mountain of cocaine on a cracked mirror in front of me and a tornado ripping through a trailer park on television, the blue-black pulse of the screen radiating across the room into the irises of Nicola's derelict green eyes. It was 7:00 p.m. only a few hours before Mark's party. We weren't sure how the evening was going to go because that very morning he received his two-week notice from _Shrapnel_. Wilkinson was about to close a deal with a Japanese record company that saw the magazine as the perfect advertising vehicle to promote their own line of teenybopper heavy metal. We were all given the option of remaining on staff under the new management with the exception of Mark.

"That arrogant limy had better clear out soon," Wilkinson shouted at me in the office that morning. "I should've fired him ages ago. Like after the fight, for example. If that wasn't a good reason, then I don't know what is."

Needless to say, Mark wasn't going to take this sitting down and had already organized a last minute meeting to take place just before his party. Nicola, Vera, and I were the only people invited. Mark wanted us to break off on our own and already had a plan about moving to the basement of his house for long enough to start garnering support from local music venues and record stores.

I toyed with the button on my shirt-cuff and swirled the last drops of Chardonnay around in my glass. Nicola stood up and shook her head in a gesture of defeat as she eased her slender figure into the elegant wrappings of her new leather overcoat. We were in my apartment.

"Is it still raining?" she asked, her smile slowly deflating to a frown.

"Don't know. Probably," I replied unenthusiastically.

"It's always raining these days. It stopped for a while around the end of January, but since spring it's come back with a vengeance."

"You know what they say about April showers."

"I'm worried for Mark," she said. "I don't know what's going to happen. Wilkinson's such a creep. How he could offer to keep Vera on but fire Mark is beyond me." Her face had the still beauty of Limoges porcelain.

"They're always arguing, though. It's not good for business. Who knows how much longer it can last like that. Besides, Mark will make it. He's a survivor. He can always go back to England."

"I can't believe you just said that. Don't you care?"

"Sure I do. He's unhappy here with the new format, so he's better off elsewhere. Why go on trying to bend what can't be bent?"

"I guess you're right, but still. I think it's our duty to support him."

"Whatever you say," I conceded.

She turned and gazed sharply at me. It almost stung to look at her. That shining visage which only a few minutes ago radiated tenderness and compassion was now peering down on me like a teacher scolding a naughty pupil. I turned my head away sheepishly and put on my shoes. After seven blissful weeks our honeymoon period was finally over. Yesterday she cornered me in my office and dished out some tripe about how I was cold and uncaring. I insisted that I was just more practical than she was and reassured her that she was probably just having a bad week. Then I asked her what happened to my missing photos and she shrugged it off and said she didn't know what I was talking about. We'd reached a crux. There was something missing. Only the week before I felt I should open up and tell her the whole truth about my past. Get it over with, get it out of the way. It was starting to plague me and coming clean seemed like the next logical step. Then I wouldn't have to worry about someone else telling her. I almost spilled the beans last week as we finished a large plate of mussels at a restaurant in Venice. She stepped away into the bathroom for a minute and I felt a strange urge to confess all my crimes to her. The feeling came up from within and rose to consciousness like a satiny goldfish emerging from the depths of a murky pool. It was only a matter of time before she found out anyway, I thought as I sipped from my glass. But when she returned to our table a sudden wave of fear enveloped me and I backed down. The truth would destroy us. But then if I didn't tell her it would destroy us as well, only more slowly, more painfully. It was a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. There was no way we could go on living in such close quarters without her sensing something was wrong. All I wanted was to get through this lull and get back to enjoying each other again. The maybe we could move on to new ground, happy, lush ground. That's what love was for. Why else would anybody fall for it?

As we left my apartment Nicola turned to me and said, "I have something to tell you, you may not be too happy about." I nodded my head in wan acknowledgement and navigated the car towards the Hollywood Freeway. We spent the rest of the journey in a state of chilling silence.

Mark and Vera's new rental home was located at the end of a remote gravel road in the upper reaches of the Hollywood hills. I looked into her sunken eyes and remained silent as we edged into Mark's driveway. I couldn't help but think it had something to do with our relationship. Maybe I was just being paranoid, but I couldn't think of any other reason she would be acting this way. She hadn't done anything to make me believe she was having an affair. So she'd either found something out or she wanted to know more about something that had been secretly bothering her for a long time. My stomach rumbled uncomfortably as I knocked on the door.

Vera answered almost immediately and invited us into the coatroom. Her fish net stocking top was so tight it might just as well have been a tattoo. I watched the light reflecting off her black leather shoes as we walked into the living room. The ceiling was vast and dome-like; the walls were stacked with rows of books and records. I felt like I was in the middle of a giant mouth and was about to be swallowed by some vast invisible presence. Mark was laying down in the corner, his body cocked like a jack knife with his back on the floor and his legs flat against the wall. His head freshly shaven like that of a monk, he was staring with disconsolate dignity at the chandelier hanging from the center of the ceiling.

"Well, now that we're all here," he announced in cold angular syllables as he adjusted the collar of his turtleneck. "No, wait. That doesn't sound quite right. _Now that we're all here_. That sounds like the opening line to some sort of top-secret military summit. It won't do. How about _help yourself to a drink_ or _make yourself at home_? That's better. More cordial. But don't get the idea that it isn't serious, because it is. Wilkinson, that stupid cunt. He's finished."

I'd never seen Mark like this before. He just sat there starring into the great white expanse of the ceiling. If I didn't know any better I would have thought he was mad. The background music was a kind of post-industrial holocaust dirge. It made me think of far-fetched images of apocalypse: atomized cities and dagger-shaped concrete structures lunging from fields of ash and metal into hissing clouds of glowing dust. A few faint voices muttered behind a layer of drumbeats that sounded like a bunch of apes aimlessly pounding on thin flaps of sheet metal. Although the words in the music were indecipherable, I was sure I could still feel them. _Holy fuck, how could all this happen? What are these walls, these sounds, these silences. Who woke me this morning? It certainly wasn't me._ The mangled indecipherable poetry found its way inside me and told me what it wanted to say. I shivered as Mark bent his knees and rolled away from the wall.

"So. What's the wait?" he asked.

Vera served us all a shot of whiskey and Mark went to change upstairs. When we put our glasses down she took us on a quick tour of the house. They had everything: the wide and sunny verandas, the plastered arches, the checkerboard tiles spanning the miles of floor that almost seemed to stretch to the very perimeters of LA. They even had a swimming pool, complete with classical statues and a padded bar. This was living, I thought. Vera escorted us back into the kitchen and handed me a tiny football-shaped capsule.

"What's this?" I asked, feigning childlike innocence. She handed a second capsule to Nicola and tapped her black soles on the marble floor of the kitchen. Nicola popped it with only slight hesitation.

"I didn't know you did chemicals," I said to Nicola.

"E-c-s-t-a-c-y," she spelled out to me, whispering the letters sensuously into my ear. Whatever problem she had earlier must not have been so important. I felt her soft lips touch the edges of my cheekbone as the last letters patted the side of my head like winter raindrops. She pulled away from me when Mark walked imperiously into the room and cleared his throat.

"Give us one of those, dearie," he said to Vera, pointing eagerly at the capsules. "We've got a full night ahead of us. I've invited about fifty people, but most of them won't be showing up until after twelve. Chambers, the self-proclaimed "Structuralist-in-exile" from Paris, Drason and his lot from _SST_ , McGowan and Hrudy from _Slash_ , Nixon and his gang from Art Center, Druce and all those queers from Santa Monica. I can't wait. Hopefully our meeting will be over by then and we can all drink to the demise of old Wilkie-babie."

"Fuck Wilkinson," Vera toasted. She lifted up a can of beer and proceeded to drink the entire volume without so much as a breath.

"Fuck him once, fuck him twice, fuck him once again," Mark added in a singsong voice as he clapped his hands to a Celtic beat.

Nicola looked in my direction as if to seek my approval before joining in.

"Fuck him to Hell," I ventured. Nicola looked at me in a confused way and then skewed her eyes ambiguously towards the floor.

"So we're all in agreement. Great. Now we can get going. But first we have to switch rooms. The owner of this place is an American oddity: a book freak. He's got an enormous sunlit room upstairs he calls his _smoking room._ It has a giant table in the center where we can hold our meeting."

"Great," said Nicola, finally throwing in her two cents. We walked like European dignitaries up the sweeping marble staircase and stepped with tasteful deliberation through the heavy wooden doors of the _smoking room_. The walls were covered with acres of classically framed oil painings and the bookshelves were cluttered with old books and African carvings. We gathered around the central table and took our seats, Mark and I sitting across from each other with Vera and Nicola to my right and left, respectively. Mark heaved a sigh of exhaustion and pulled a notebook out from his pocket. I could see a few scribblings from across the table.

"Finally. I've waited so long for this meeting. I'm glad you could all come." He assumed a more managerial tone and stood up, holding the pad in front of him at chest level. I felt ridiculous listening to him lecture to us so formally. After all, we were his friends. I thought I could feel the first effects of the amphetamine as he cleared his throat and squinted through his sharp, exacting eyes. We all sat back and listened, although I could tell from a devious sparkle in Vera's eyes that she was really only waiting for the party to start. So was I.

"As you all know, I've been fired," he said bluntly. "Not exactly. Let me correct myself. I've been left behind in the metamorphosis of _Shrapnel_ to a lower literary form like an evolutionary atavism, so to speak. As you also might know, I've always wanted us to break away from Wilkinson and start our own magazine. We have all the expertise and tools at our disposal. All we need to do is raise enough money to buy him out before this Jap deal goes through. It's obvious to me that he's the true reason that sales have dropped. By allowing the concessions he's suggested in the past we've only made ourselves into just another mainstream music magazine competing with all the bigger publications like _Spin_ , _A.P._ and _Ray Gun_. We have to take a more radical stance. We can't sit on the fence any longer."

"Hey, does anybody have a match?" asked Vera, a joint pressed between her lips. We all shook our heads. She shrugged her shoulders and stuffed it back in her pocket.

"Oh, well...later," she said.

"As I was saying," Mark continued, "alternative music, the true alternative music, that is, is the life and breath of modern art and culture. Visual art, drama, classical music: all these art forms have ceased to convey any true meaning to modern youth. Even film has become nothing more than a propaganda tool of mega-corporations, dictating, rather than catering to us, as it should do. All that Hollywood schlock is just a form of Pabulum to keep the masses in order. Mainstream music is sadly no different. Are you all with me on this?"

We all nodded in agreement. I remained unconvinced. The bottom line was that nobody cared enough to fight the mainstream for long. If an alternative band gets one hit record the royalties and endorsements put them to sleep for the rest of their musical careers.

Vera sprang up and pattered off to the bathroom.

"Sorry, I'll be back in a wink," she said in a girlish voice.

"When I came here years ago to start, I had a vision. I saw my name up in lights carrying the torch, so to speak, of underground music. It gets no support from the major companies, yet if you look at who's out there doing anything original and meaningful in music, it's always in the underground. _Velvet Underground_ , _Sex Pistols_ , _Buzzcocks_. The list is endless. But I've seen my position gradually go up in smoke and I won't stand for it any longer."

"Up in smoke? Just like Cheech and Chong," I quipped.

Mark frowned, and then continued. "We have to stick together and start a new magazine: a Wilkinson-free publication, if you like."

"Money, though," I said. "How do you think it'll be any different than before? I don't mean to be cynical about all of this, but we have to be practical."

"We could work harder at drumming it up. I think there's a lot out there. We just haven't been able to solicit the right sources yet," said Nicola, her Sunday-school smile beaming into me. The expression of unconditional optimism on her face was almost enough to convinced me to take Mark more seriously. Almost. The way I saw it, we'd never survive alone. There was too much trouble with circulation, organization, administration, and money. And that's with a capital M. Too many music mags faded away into obscurity, especially in this town. LA is a city of fads and if you can't keep up with them you die. When the rave thing got big, the punk craze keeled over and died. A new and younger generation took over. All the punkers stopped buying hardcore paraphernalia when they grew up, forcing the magazines to keep step with the times or fold. It's so easy to lose touch. Just think of Johnny Rotten screwing his supermodel wife against the Italian stucco wall of their Beverly Hills mansion, holding a cup of tea in one hand and her left breast in the other, her fake nails digging ruthlessly into his back and you'll see what I mean. I could just see Mark's magazine: hip for a while, the absolute Bible of style. The fucking Koran of it! But only for a year or two. Then the people would get bored, a new rag would take over, and he'd get bitter and end up losing the shirt off his back. Some new flower would blossom in fashion's garden and he'd be left trying to resurrect the shrivelled petals of his vision to keep the magazine on its feet.

"She's right," Mark exclaimed. "I've planned it all out. We can get money from all sorts of places. There's more small record labels here than anywhere else. I don't even know half of them myself. LA is the capital of the entertainment industry and what better a place than the center to attack the established order? In the past our main problem was Wilkinson. He's so wishy-washy about it all that we can't get support from anybody. The underground labels don't like us because we've gone too fucking mainstream and the mainstream labels won't fund us unless we squeeze out every iota of counterculture from our pages."

"So who's going to help us, then, Santa Claus?" I asked.

"Watch your tongue, Paul. I'm serious." Mark's anger sliced through the room like a scimitar. My face tightened for a second and then relaxed when Vera came tiptoeing through the door to take her seat. Thank God.

"Sorry. The loo is all backed up. I hope I didn't miss anything."

"Money. We were just talking about support," Mark said. "We can't do this without the right connections."

"And?" I prodded him gently.

"Well, KCRW in Santa Monica could back us up to start. Give us some free airtime. If we could get just one percent of Los Angeles youth reading us, we'd stay afloat on sales alone. We could advertise for raves and get money from the drug dealers. We could advertise for all of the weird sex therapists, all of the S-and-M boutiques. I mean, come on, mates. Take a look at _Urb_. Look how they get by. We could make our name synonymous with the words _sex_ and _revolt_. People would line up at news stands waiting for the latest issue to roll off the press."

"What about equipment and facilities?" Nicola interjected. "Everything in the office belongs to Wilkinson or whoever ends up buying it from him."

"Don't be silly, _we_ are going to buy it," Mark pounded his fist on the table. "I could never live it down if some silly dork ended up cutting and pasting pictures of Bono or Madonna on my old desk. All we need is a little money up front and we're through dreaming."

"This is so exciting," said Nicola. "Perhaps my dad could send over some cash and we could buy him out. Or maybe next week I could try soliciting some of the record companies. If we could get a proposal out we might be able to garner a small commitment from them."

"I just thought of something," said Mark. He burped loudly. "We don't have any bleedin' whiskey. And those E's you were handing out earlier. Give us a few more, love." Vera searched her pockets and produced a small mound of white capsules. She tossed a few of them over and stood up.

"Whiskey. That's an idea," Vera squeaked and marched out of the room. Mark popped one of the capsules. He rolled it around inside his mouth before swallowing it.

"This is great. I think it's going to happen. All we need now is a name. I've got a good one."

" _Blitzkrieg_ ," I blurted.

"Too much like _Shrapnel_ ," said Nicola.

"I was thinking of something like _The Wire Door_. See, I've already designed the masthead." He took out a crumpled piece of pink paper and flattened it on the table. The first and last letters of each word were in subscript and superscript respectively to give it a kind of disjointed look. I hated it. I can't say why, I just did.

The Wire Door

"What do you think?" Mark challenged us. "Naturally, I love it. It's got a certain vertical energy. It implies a kind of portal into another world and so it's sort of psychedelic and the wire aspect gives it a post-industrial self-mutilation bent." Mark stood up and stuffed his hand in his right pocket.

" _The Wire Door,_ " I repeated.

"You don't seem too keen. Perhaps you're just not saying it right. _The Wire Door_ ," he repeated. "Give it some pith. Give it some wood. Give it some life. You're saying it like the name of some bacterial culture."

" _The Wire Door_ ," Nicola boomed triumphantly. "I love it. It's got verve, originality, and allure. Everything you need for a title. You want to give the impression of color, life, speed, intrigue, and nowness, if that's a word. I think it's perfect."

"Excellent," Mark bellowed proudly.

Vera walked in, thrust her hips into my back, and pounced on us with four shot glasses filled with whiskey. She handed me one and I gulped it down in a single motion. I would have felt the warm afterglow of the alcohol, but the amphetamine had already leached into my brain.

"Hey, just an aside," Mark said, "Have you ever seen this magazine before? I found one today at that news stand on Melrose." He opened a drawer in the wall unit and pulled out a copy of _Answer Me_. I'd never come across it before. "Absolute filth," he continued. "Completely off the wall violence. There's articles glorifying suicide and pederasty. Amazing. The writing is flawless, but the topics are shamelessly tawdry. The amazing thing about it is that it survives. If trash like this can make it, then so can we."

He tossed it over to Nicola and me and we leafed through it. I watched her face contort through a roller coaster ride of expressions ranging from complete disgust to almost paralytic shock and finally to what I guessed was veiled embarrassment over allowing such a deplorable rag to hold court in her lap.

On the back cover was a drawing of Hitler on a crucifix complete with a crown of thorns and two Storm Trooper angels praying beside him. The main feature was a spoof on the world's most brilliant suicides. They'd taken great care to rank them from 1-100 in order of most spectacular first and given each a humorous epigram. Number 1 was a Polish woman whom they'd dubbed "The Anonymous Polish Broad" with the deadpan nickname "The Human Toolbox". Apparently, she pined away so much for her lost love she took to slow self torture by eating pins, nails, and even small crucifixes until they eventually tore up her insides. Hemingway pulled in at disappointing #34. "For whom the Shotgun Blows," read the title of his blurb. A group of Buddhist monks in Vietnam who lit themselves on fire were given the epigram "Eight Fold Path to Lighter Fluid" and fell in at #16. I leafed through for a few minutes and eventually stopped at an entry for Ian Curtis from the British rock band _Joy Division_.

"Hey, Mark, did you catch this?" I asked mischievously.

"Oh, yeah, you can make fun of suicide and violence all you want, but when you bring Curtis into it, that's where I draw the line," he said. I set the open pages on Nicola's lap and read it with her.

#20

Ian Curtis

Face The Music

The British Group Joy Division, named after Nazi concentration camp bordellos, were as colorful as a cement wall and half as rousing as a chest cold. Their sound was massively depressing: guitars slashed like razors over Novocaine bass lines, and drums smacked like a hundred Thorazines hitting a cold linoleum floor.

Over this dismal dirge-o-rama rose the sad little voice of Ian Curtis, who always sounded as if he was gargling from a phlegm-filled Dixie cup. His dispirited intonation made him sound twice his age of twenty-two, his lyrics a Bianca blast of numbed emotions: "I don't care anymore/I've lost the will to want more...It's creeping up slowly/ That last fatal hour." While the other band members boozed it up and dug into their fish 'n' chips, Ian would sit all alone crying. Although he made it comically obvious how depressed he was, he never really let us in on what ultimate bum-out had destroyed him. Was it tummy trouble? Lithium deprivation? A flaccid pee-pee? Perhaps he might have been more sanguine had he been getting a little nookie on the side.

_Rumored to be the odd man out in a love triangle, the whiny pipsqueek hanged himself in his British home on May 18, 1980, only hours before Joy Divison was scheduled to embark on their first US tour. Throughout the eighties, J.D.'s two albums inspired countless over-moussed neo-Goths to form their own bands. Certain misguided_ (Mark perhaps) _souls have come to view Curtis as a god, an elegiac martyr. Regrettably, most of them have failed to pursue their emulation to its logical extreme and hang themselves._

"Pretty extreme," I said, looking up at Mark. I actually thought it was kind of funny, though. I just didn't want to upset him.

He shook his head in contempt.

"I'm disgusted," said Nicola, an icy grimace cracking across her face.

"I read it this morning. I'm not surprised. This is the sort of crud that I've come to expect out of Americans," Vera added.

"Yeah, what kind of arsehole would say those sorts of things about my idol? Everyone knows he killed himself because two women were fighting over him and he knew he could never satisfy both of them!" Mark exclaimed. "Sometimes I wonder why I even came here in the first place."

"More whiskey," said Vera anxiously. "That's what we need. We need some to help us forget all the morons in the world." Then she grabbed all of our glasses, racked them on her fingers and strutted out of the room.

"So, back to the main reason for this meeting," said Mark.

"What?" I asked. My legs were starting to tingle and I was starting to take an unhealthy interest in the cracks on the far wall.

"So, Paul, starting to feel it already?" Mark asked pointedly. "We have to be serious here for a few more minutes."

"I still like _The Wire Door_ ," Nicola said. I think it has zing. But before we get ahead of ourselves, don't you think we should talk about funding?"

"Don't you feel anything yet, Nicki?" I rubbed her arm and looked at her. With a fuzzy halo hovering around her face, she looked more like a portrait on the label of some fabric softener than a real person.

"You've never called me that before. You're getting so cuddly."

"It's the drug," Mark assured her. Then he batted his fist on the table. "Man, I'm starting to feel it too. Floating. Mmmm. I was hoping to continue the meeting, but the funny thing is that I don't really care anymore. There's just so much _before us_ tonight. I mean, it's spreading out like a field of poppies." He leapt up and pumped his fist in the air. "Hell's teeth! E is the king of drugs. The amazing thing, though, is that it doesn't even want to be. It's not into power. It's the kind of drug that would just as soon tie its shoes than win a million bucks."

Mark was really starting to fly. I'd never seen him so cheerful. From Ebinezer Scrooge to Tiny Tim in less than half an hour. I had the feeling I was going that way too.

Just then Vera exploded into the room with a peachy smile and a bottle of whiskey. "Here's to Wilkinson. Nobody screws over my man without a fight." She opened the bottle and took a generous swig. Then she nudged Mark in the stomach, a thin line of whiskey trickling down her chin. "Now it's your turn."

"Don't I get any?" I butted in like a greedy kid at a birthday party.

"Wait your turn like everyone else, Paul," said Nicola.

"I was just kidding."

"So was I," she replied tenderly.

"Hey, you know what?" asked Vera out of the blue. "I witnessed a guy downtown today calling a woman a "witch". It was in a drugstore and she was working behind the till. All she did was accidentally short-change him a nickel. I wasn't going to let him get away with it, so I blasted him."

"What does that have to do with alternative music?" asked Mark with a confused look on his face.

"I thought we weren't talking about that till tomorrow," Nicola said.

"Oh," Mark said. He slumped down in his chair.

"What's the matter with that?" I asked.

"What do you mean? Do you know how many women were burnt at the stake for no crime but public (i.e. male) suspicion that they were practicing witchcraft? What kind of justice is that? It's OK for priests to roger little boys, but if any woman back in those days (especially if she was a widow who owned property the church wanted) fell even slightly out of the stereotype, she got labelled a witch and had to suffer for it."

"Unbelievable," said Nicola. "The south was bad enough for me as a little girl. Always got sleazy men wanting to marry me when I was 10."

"How could you stand it?" asked Vera.

"I became a tomboy. It scared away most of them. Men go crazy at the mere thought that a particular woman may not be sexually interested in them. Just like St. Julia. You know, the one with a beard. Apparently she was burnt at the stake because she prayed to God to let her grow a beard so she would be considered "damaged goods" and not have to marry some fat Portuguese nobleman."

"What happened?" Vera asked.

"Her prayers were answered and when her father saw the beard he was so pissed off that he had her executed."

"So I guess he never married the nobleman," I added. "Unless he was a necrophiliac"

"Ha ha," said Nicola sarcastically. "You're so funny."

"So then, Nicola, does that mean you were a real tom boy?" Mark barged into the conversation about three sentences too late. "All respect and all, but you don't seem the type."

"Oh, I hope that's a compliment," Nicola replied, her pupils now dilated to the size of a goose platter.

"Why even ask? This is a world of compliments. They're floating in the air like clouds, they're sprouting from your fingertips, they're springing up from the floor like jack-in-the-boxes." He waved his hand through the air like a wand and jumped on top of his chair. "How about some whiskey, Vera, m' dear?"

"Bollocks to Wilkinson," shouted Vera. "No compliments for him. Anyway, that's weird. So she became a saint? I bet the Pope would have a heart attack if Mother Theresa grew a beard." She handed Mark the whiskey bottle and drew his face into her rounded chest.

"Oh no!" Nicola suddenly exclaimed. "I think I screwed up, guys. I told Wilkinson about the party. Or rather, he heard me talking about it over the phone and ended up inviting himself. I meant to tell you sooner, but..."

"I'm sure everything will be fine," I reassured her. I slid my arm Pooh-Bearishly around her soft little body. I imagined her vagina opening up like a great land of milk and honey flowing with good will and fecundity. Vaginas were always an adventure. Some were like great fortresses, paragons of love concealing secret treasures deep within their folds, while others were like warm summer pools, slow and lazy in their tranquil wetness, the perfect compliment to a hot summer afternoon, and still others were like pineapples in that you needed to machete your way through the rough exterior to reach the soft pulp inside. Hers was open and forgiving. Not quite a free-for-all, but certainly no real effort to get inside. I looked softly into her eyes. Her plump lips thinned into a skip-rope smile. I sensed she knew what I had just been thinking.

"Vera says they've got costumes here," was all she said. "All sorts. Funny ones too."

"Hey," I whispered into her ear, admiring its Swiss watch geometries. "I'm feeling wonderful. If those raver kids have one good idea it's this ecstasy stuff. I've never felt friendlier in my life."

It was true. Everything in the room had taken on a distinctly agreeable appearance. Even the blandest objects were exploding into a gallery of wonder. I had the distinct sensation that I had turned into a puddle of starlight spreading across the furthest boundaries of the evening sky. In a matter of minutes the four of us were smeared across the table like marmalade, hugging each other as we smiled in a pathetic heap.

When I looked up there was a loud crash and the first guest barged into the room. He had a cigar hanging from his mouth and was wearing a tweed jacket.

"I hope I'm not disturbing anyone. I'm Leroy Jennings," he said with the smug assurance of a barber. "Jed Connors invited me. I teach Marxist Criticism at USC." He grabbed Mark's hand and shook it boldly.

Mark looked over at me and split into a thousand pieces of laughter.

### III

Time condensed into a greasy globule and melted all over the floor. The party had swayed into motion. Champagne sparkled with arcane fury and dark wits rippled through each and every corner of the mansion. In no time the house was filled with more color and variety than a world's fair. They were all there: rock stars, intellectuals, film directors, artists, lawyers, assholes, saints, martyrs, huntsmen, Vikings, Martians, quasars, pulsars. The whole fucking universe seemed to have gathered together for a little shaker. Yeah, they were all there and we were all flying. I never dreamed you could fit so many weirdoes in one place.

In no time we were wired. T-t-t-totally wired. The ecstasy lit me up in Catherine wheels of pleasure. I felt like a giant sheet of skin, erogenous zones growing like mould all over me. Quality! Pure fucking excellence. Everything was A-grade. The ceiling, the floor, the air, the dust, the carpeting, even the pencil in my pocket. The world blushed with fervent sexuality. I weaved through the crowds until I found Nicola. A melon-sized grin was ripening on her face and a margarita dangled from her fingers, all ten of which were somehow managing to keep rhythm with the music crashing in from the main foyer.

"Hey, sweetie," I said. She smiled back. My mind flipped back to our tiny argument before the party. I wondered what had gotten into us. From the lofty heights of E all arguments seem superfluous.

In the next room I found Mark dribbled inanely across an inflatable blue armchair. He was laughing uncontrollably as he balanced a high-school basketball trophy on his head. What a thought. And Vera: she'd cornered those guys from Caltech with a pack of tarot cards and seemed to have them both under her spell. Perhaps this _Wire Door_ idea wasn't so bad after all. If they kept up the parties, I just might be tempted to leave Wilkinson behind.

" _Shrapnel_? Never heard of it," scoffed a balding southern man leaning irreverently against the refrigerator.

"Whatever happened to _The Slits_?" said a tarty looking blonde with a swizzle stick poking out from her mouth. Her index finger was hooked around her bra-strap. "Or what about _The Eyes_. They were great. Don't you, I mean, DON'T YOU, remember the song about blowing up Disneyland? OK, well we all know the importance of house music to modern fashion, but have you ever been there, I mean out - fucked out - on the streets with all those blacks. That's real. Not all this. Crack, poverty, begging." She gestured contemptuously towards a plate of crackers on the kitchen counter. I winked at her and slipped my business card into her underwear as I passed. She smiled with lascivious abandon and pulled her finger out from under her bra strap to tickle me.

"I'll give you a call, honey," she said as I slipped away to find another drink.

As soon as I entered the next room I bumped shoulders with a skinhead. He had a slender, creased face and was wearing Vienna-style wire-rimmed glasses. He was arguing with some sort of puffy shirt transvestite. I turned my back to them and plunged a celery stick into a bowl of peanut butter.

"The Avante Garde," he enlightened us, "is not alternative at all but merely falls into a sub-sector of a more global economic framework. You see, the established order is more archetypal than one thinks. Rebellion? The concept is popular in most leftist circles, but it's really all just a part of a bigger control pattern. It used to be a problem in society. Maybe in the fifties. But now it's a burgeoning part of our economy. I'd be willing to bet that _The Sex Pistols_ were only a job creation program instigated by the government to create a boom in the sagging record industry. It's quite scary when you think of it."

"What about murder, man?" lisped the transvestite. "I mean, and date rape, and rioting? What do you say about that?"

"Again, all a mere sub-sector of the economy. Murder as industry. It creates jobs for the police and keeps the public humble. I wouldn't be surprised if murderers were hired on a semi-permanent basis by the police to make sure they didn't get laid off. The only countries without high murder rates are ones like Japan that have such low unemployment that they don't have to worry about losing their jobs."

"Man, are you fucked. I don't know who told you that. You must be from Europe or something. They think they know it all over there. Well, they don't know fuck. That's what I hear."

"And where do you see yourself in the grander scale of things? I, if you let me finish, can best be described as the last great follower of Foucault with a little Baudriard and Bataille sprinkled in for flavor."

"The only thing I follow is a cab when I want to catch it," said the transvestite. "I'm a waiter and I like it. I love people and I love staying up late. So, you must be some sort of university professor or something."

"No. I'm a Structuralist-in-Exile. The resident structuralist-in-exile here, if you like. It's a niche that must be filled in every urban habitat. Every town should have one. I left Paris to bring my word to this cultural vacuum. And if you're any indication, I seem to have failed thus far."

The man turned away in a huff. The transvestite shrugged his shoulders and blew an enormous ring of smoke into the back of the man's head. What a bunch of bozos, I thought as I helped myself to a handful of pulverized pretzels.

Things were getting crazier by the minute. Blue was red and green was yellow, flat was round. The world opened up like a travel brochure to a foreign galaxy. Even the most mundane notions were a feast of outrageous possibilities. Perhaps tomorrow I'll stay home and fix the sink. What an excellent idea, I thought. And what about those doorknobs I haven't polished. I bet that would be fun. And all the booze and women flooding from every corner like blood from a haemophiliac's jugular. I didn't know where Mark and Vera got all the money to throw a party like this, but all I could say was that I approved. Big time. I cut through a crowd of degenerate hippies in the basement, turning my ear in their direction as I passed. They were looking pretty deep with their long hair and stacked metal bracelets, so I didn't dare interrupt. As I listened, all I could hear were disembodied voices that seemed to spring from the corners of the room.

"Have you heard the new _Crime and the City Solution_ E.P.?"

"Wonderful."

"Essential."

"Roland Howard on guitar."

"No?"

"And what about _My Bloody Valentine_ and the new ambient sound? Sweet, man sweet. They say that Kevin Shields just smokes dope and fucks all the time. That's why all their songs are about smoking dope and fucking."

"Hey, that reminds me. I saw a porno magazine the other day with a full spread of Karen Finley and Lydia Lunch in the raw. That's two dykes if there ever were any. You wouldn't think they'd pose for trash like that."

"Makes Madonna look pretty commercial in comparison. I just read her sex book last week. I saw more female skin before I was 14."

"We lived in a high rise and the teenage girl next door made my brother and me strip naked. Yeah. It was fun."

"More beer?"

"You know that book _Love in the Time of Cholera_? Well, I've got a better idea: _Love in the Time of Thorazine_. What do you think? Silly, you say. No, wait. You see, I met a guy once who had this party where he charged twenty bucks admission. The theme was comatose orgy. But this orgy was different. It was a thorazine orgy. You know, that drug they give to schizophrenics to knock them out. He put all the gate money in a pot and decided to offer it as a prize to whoever could get it on without collapsing."

"Stupid."

"Man, I can see you've never taken downers. He gave them all so much they all just fell asleep naked on his floor. A hundred people showed, and the next day he took off with the money to Bangkok. I want to write the book. I think it could be big. Really big. A hundred spaced out nudes at Joshua Tree trying hopelessly to fuck their way to a two-thousand-dollar prize. That's my metaphor for the human condition."

I walked down the hall and swerved into the bathroom. There was a couple behind the shower curtain wriggling around in forty-fifth gear. They were whispering something to each other. The female voice was too hushed to make out the words so the male voice took the reins: "Ah, yes. Hey, did I ever hear something crazy. They know how to breed babies now in incubation tanks from sperm and egg cells to total consciousness. Like, talk about sterility. No, they don't need umbilical cords anymore, that's the point. You know what they say about that. Well, a man hates woman on some level because he's caught in a vicious circle where he's craving and resenting the psychological umbilical cord attaching him to his mother. While a woman finds a true _other_ in a male mate, a man has to settle for an image of his mother and hence an image of dominance. Well, no. Of course the babies are healthy. They're the healthiest. Just like hydroponically grown dope is the best because they can control and idealize all of the conditions. These incubation tank babies are smarter, stronger, faster, and they say they'll all live to over a hundred. Who needs pregnancy? Parents can specify qualities they want in their children by getting the doctors to optimize certain growth and brain tissue hormones. Athletes, doctors, engineers. Anything you want. They've got a thousand chemicals and each one targets a different attribute. Hydroponic babies. And the men won't be fucked up anymore because there won't be any umbilical cord and there won't be any breast feeding. The role of motherhood will be weeded out of society. What a concept. What? What do you mean, _I'm_ fucked up. I'm the guy with the hundred grand a year job. That's not fucked up in my book. Hey, did you just spill beer on my dick?"

I straddled the doorway on my way out and a drunken body crashed through the shower curtain. I turned away disdainfully and inched through yet another clump of people. They were packing them in like needles in a sewing box. I curtsied politely before an elderly Asian man wearing a diving suit (??) and went upstairs to find Nicola and Mark. I was sure I could hear his voice cracking over the amphetamine scour of _The Damned_. This was one of Mark's groups I could handle. I rubbed my hands together in boyish excitement and leapt into the living room, a windblast of pleasure turbining through my head.

Yeaeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah I'll be your man, I'll be your mystery man, I'll be your doll, I'll be your baby doll.

And then:

Ain't no crime if there ain't no law!

Smiling and stumbling, I found Nicola and Vera cuddling each other on the parquet floor like two koalas. There was a knee-high coffee table standing beside them, a lit candle and a bowl of candies neatly placed on top. I helped myself to a chocolate. Vera turned around and tossed a deck of tarot cards at me. Maybe it was the ecstasy, but boy did she look hot. I nudged Nicola with my foot and she turned her head askance, a warm sugarcane grin on her face.

"Can't you see we're talking?"

"The girls want to be with the girls," added Vera.

"Look, I'll leave you two to your frolicking," I whispered, so as not to break their spell. "But tell me where Mark is first."

"We were only kidding, love. Come here." Vera tugged my arm and pulled me so close to her I could smell the baby oil on her skin. She took a handful of hard candies from the bowl and stuffed them all into my mouth in a single motion. "Nicola - Nickie is her name for tonight - says you talk too much."

"What? I didn't say anything of the sort," Nicola objected. "Don't listen to her. She was babbling about attic rooms and toy boxes. You know what that means."

"Toys? Where?" Vera asked, her eyes sparkling even more so with the reflection of a nearby candle to light them up.

"What about toys?" I asked soberly, fastening my hand around Nicola's wrist and pulling her limp figure towards me.

"Mark always gets mad when I talk about toys. I wish he wouldn't. They're so much fun. I dream of settling down on the Irish seacoast in an old lighthouse with an attic filled with mysterious antique toys."

"I met a toy collector once in Baton Rouge," said Nicola. "He had all sorts of dolls and drummer boys that used to belong to famous people. Does that qualify?"

"No. Absolutely not. Those people are toy-o-philes. They collect with no real interest, driven by some mad desire to build their collection. It could just as well be baseball cards or butterflies."

"I read about a bibliomaniac in _Harpers_ who stole thousands of valuable books from the world's libraries and couldn't even write a coherent sentence," I ventured, spitting out the last of the candies - a clove flavored miniature candy-cane no doubt left over from Christmas - onto the floor. "Obviously he never read any of them. But, in spite of this, he still chose his targets well."

"Was he an archer too?" asked Vera with an Alice-in-Wonderland look in her eyes. "I don't care about books anyway. I like toys. Where's Mark? He's my big teddy bear. Sometimes we fight, but not so much the past few weeks. Since he lost his job we've become closer."

"Hey, where did my drink go?" Nicola asked. "We never fight, do we, Paul?" I could have sworn something sarcastic crept into her expression, but whatever it was vanished before I could be sure.

"Where's Mark?" I asked.

"Wait a minute. Don't go yet. I want to ask you about upstairs rooms. Attics, you know. I used to like this _Aerosmith_ song called _Toys in The Attic_ when I was a teenager. It seemed to depict the attic as a land of magical fantasies ultimately related to sexual enlightenment. There's also this old story called _Tom's Midnight Garden_ that my mother used to read to me. There's a kid that dreams about going into the garden and he builds a relationship with a mysterious little girl who wanders the garden at night. It later turns out that she's actually a ghost of a girl who used to live there. The story used to give me an almost sexual rush. I used to imagine I was the girl and I was in love with the boy. This book was my bridge between childhood and adulthood. Toys play the same roll for children as sex does for adults. That's my theory. The attic room is a unifying metaphor for sex, fantasy, and toys."

"What about people who bury their toys in the backyard? What kind of sex lives do they end up with?" asked Nicola.

"Ha. You think you're clever," said Vera.

"Hey, I've got a better question. If sex is just a substitute for toys what would you and Mark do if I gave you a trunk filled with dolls?" I asked tauntingly.

"Yes, we still sleep together if that's what you're getting on about," Vera snapped. She was suddenly angry, her mouth a trigger waiting for me to pull.

"Look Paul, It's none of your business," Nicola said sternly. Then she relaxed.

"I'm sorry. It was supposed to be funny."

"Forgiven?" asked Nicola, a question mark leaning theatrically over her face.

"Forgiven," said Vera.

"Hey, what about the costumes, Vera?" asked Nicola. "If you're so wild about toys, I'm into costumes. I want to dress up tonight. I always wanted to be somebody else." Her words chilled right through me. She looked over at me and her face seemed to flatten and dry up. The room was floating in a love-quenched sea of light and she was the drain through which it was all being sucked away. I shuddered for an instant, and then let go again, wandering upstairs as quickly as I could to find Mark. The girls followed behind. But everything seemed OK again. That's what E's are like. Every problem flowers into a new solution.

I reached the top of the platform and turned into the bathroom. Man, what a dynamite bathroom, I thought. The walls were a cool cerebral blue and the toilet seat had a pink quilted cover. I stared at myself in the mirror for a while and marvelled at how foolish mankind was for under-estimating the role of the bathroom as a meaningful social space.

"Hey, Nicola. Come here." She came in and I squeezed her hand.

"What is it?" she asked, a touch of saliva trickling down her chin.

"This bathroom. It's so great. I mean, isn't it? The floors are so smooth, the walls are so blue. It makes you want to stay all night."

"You're stoned. But," she hastened to add, "I could almost agree with you. Look at the shower curtains. They tumble down from the aluminum rod like a waterfall."

"Yes, yes. I know. Isn't it great? I should have said something about them, but I was so taken by the walls."

We gazed in silent bliss for what seemed like an eternity before Mark came crashing through the door.

"Wild! What are you doing in here, having a love in?"

"It's wonderful in here, Mark. Don't you think?" I asked.

Mark giggled and pointed to the door. "I have to take a piss," he said, blushing. Nicola exploded with laughter and grabbed my hand, guiding me outside into the hallway.

"We'll leave you in peace," Nicola said to Mark. "But check out the shower curtains. They're the main bill tonight."

A few minutes later he stepped out, a streamer of toilet paper spiralled around his half-bent forearm.

"Look, I'm the mummy," he said, groping towards us with what looked like a mound of shaving cream covering his chin. "Take me to my lost princess. Hey, I've gotta get out of here." He looked me in the eye as though he was about to say something dark and serious. "Paul, when was the last time you bought a Ruben from a Seven-Eleven at this hour?"

"Last week," I said with relief. Believe it or not, I did. Nickie and I bought a few after a late show last Tuesday.

"All right, all right. You don't _have_ to buy a Ruben. Maybe a Twinkie."

"Sold."

"Hey," Vera shouted as we pounced down the stairs to the door. "Bring us some smokes."

"Sure, lovey," said Mark. I'd never seen him this friendly, this loose.

"Costumes. That's what we need," Nicola said like a child begging for candy.

"They're all in the attic," said Mark. "When we get back, OK?"

"You'd better not be lying," said Nicola, "or you're in big trouble."

We threw on our jackets and jumped into my car. He looked at me and I looked at him. We were going for a drive through Hollywood. We agreed without uttering a single word. And off we took, a mere blood cell meandering its way through the vast arteries of the evening.

"Christ on a bike," he exclaimed. "I'm already starting to come down."

"Did _He_ really have a bike?"

"Irrelevant. If _He_ ever did, then the saying wouldn't have the power it does."

"Fair enough." The broken yellow divider lines of the freeway lunged into us like a rain of giant spears. It was like being in a video game. The palm trees, the pavement, the bungalow-ranch-style houses on the edges of the freeway, the cars and their secret inhabitants attacked us in a single giant vortex. We were stationary observers separated by a magic screen from a vertiginous anti-reality.

"Junk sculpture turns back into junk," Mark mumbled.

"What?" I asked.

"From a Birthday Party song. I always took it to mean that the world was essentially a junk heap, but if you have enough imagination you can mould the junk into a sculpture and convince yourself that it's really beautiful after all."

"That's warped."

"That's why he says it _turns back into junk_. Anyone with any sense eventually realises that the junk sculpture's still junk no matter what it looks like."

"And always will be," I added as I waved my index finger at him.

"You said it. The world is going to the dogs. I can feel it in my bones. I've lost my job and nobody cares about the music I love," he said sadly and exhaled into his clenched fist. "What a drag."

"Could be worse," I replied.

"How?"

"I don't know. It still could though."

"Maybe you're right. At least Vera's toned down. I can't believe it. She's more into her own little fantasy world now than her usual travel bug. And that works fine for me."

"Yeah. All due respect and all, but must be tough having a girl friend who could go off in a gust of wind at any moment and fuck up your life. But, if things are going well, you might as well ride the tide."

"I'll knock on wood," Mark said. Then he fell silent for what seemed like a century.

"I think I'm set with Nicola," I said to fill the lag in conversation. "She was a bit upset earlier tonight, but I think the Es sorted her out." I shifted into fifth and accelerated onto the 134. Mark bent his head down without responding. I had the feeling he knew something I probably didn't want to hear. If this was the case, he was right, I certainly didn't want to hear it. Bad news would only ruin my evening, and in the morning it would probably turn out to be nothing more than some drug-induced fantasy of his.

"That Structuralist character was sure annoying," he finally said. "What a spotter. He'll be out there tomorrow with his train schedule and a pen waiting for the first run. He seemed to think everything was undermining everything else and all forms of social interaction could ultimately be reduced to class/money issues."

"I didn't talk to him, listening was bad enough."

"He was sure down on the music scene. He just needs a few gigs to brighten up his life."

"Whatever," I said.

After about ten minutes of further silence we marvelled at the wonderful symmetry of a Seven Eleven parking lot on Wilshire Boulevard we'd just pulled into as though by some kind of miracle. When you are stoned you sometimes forget how you got somewhere; everything just seems to just _happen_ as though guided by an invisible force.

The parking lot was made for us, and us alone, our eyes silently confirmed it. We took our place amongst the other cars and got out. We walked over to the curb to assess the situation. The traffic was strangely thin. Instead of the testosterone-belching Hispanics and brain-dead surfers the few cars that passed were filled with what looked like ageing society types. Tea biscuits, Pontiacs, church socials: you know what I mean. We giggled our way through the door to the Seven Eleven and wandered joyously through the fast food aisle, admiring the care taken by the potato chip industry to package such revolting products with such eye-catching flare. Eventually we came across the front counter. An enormous teenaged girl was manning the till. Her face was sunken - I mean way down there with the Bismarck, digging its rusted anchors into the mud and shale of the ocean floor, the wings of blue-black eye shadow hanging grimly over her eyes only enhancing the impression of overall misery. No, the world wasn't going to the dogs, I thought. Not at all. That was just an old cliché. The whole lot was going to the fat chicks. And that was only the beginning. It was getting worse by the minute. It wouldn't be long before a fat chick was securely nested in every high position in society and there wasn't a thing any of us could do about it. What a scary thought.

"How's that for a post apocalyptic vision?" I whispered into Mark's ear. He laughed uncomfortably as he wandered over to the cold drink section.

I stood in front of the till smirking until my eyes came across a hockey magazine. I couldn't resist the temptation. I picked it up and read the cover story. Have you heard about Pavel Bure? He's the latest laser guided weapon smoking through the arenas of the NHL. The first in a line of genetically engineered hockey stars. That guy in the shower was right about designer babies. His parents were both athletes: his dad was an Olympic swimmer and his mother was a gymnast. Just take one look at him flashing through the opposing team in a single stride and you know there's something weird about it all. He's not quite human. Half man, half light. His mother must've gone crazy one night and spread her legs to the sunrise. One lance of light and _pow_ , she was pregnant. Somewhere in his genetic code you'll find the gene for a photon, I'm sure of it. And I have to admit I admire the way he's schooled in the complete humiliation of the opponent. No punches pulled. When he scores he makes damn sure everyone else look like shit. I respect that in him, and deeply so. He's just the beginning, though. Soon they'll be splicing all sorts of genes into the _hockey pool_. Laser genes, radiation genes, atom-bomb genes, even universe genes. Half man/half universe: get that. Then there'll be no turning back. Roll over Gretzky and your silly LA Kings, we don't need your farmhouse logic anymore. The future is now.

I put the magazine back on the shelf and we each bought a Ruben. I paid the fat chick and made eye contact begrudgingly. She smiled at me as I turned to leave, but I could only fake a smile back. I'm still good at that. That's one thing Nicola hasn't touched. I can still put on a fake smile with the best of them.

We drove back quickly - or at least it seemed that way. Amphetamines have a way of lubricating the world so it slides by you like a film of moisture on your car window: colorless, barely visible, almost unreal. Even time seems to quiver by you unnoticed. When we got back I opened the door and climbed out onto the pavement. Mark stayed inside the car, a pensive expression hanging over his face.

"Let's go in," I said.

"I'll wait. I just want to enjoy this silence for a minute before braving the crowds in there."

"It looks like they've died down." Through the bright screen of the front window the living room appeared empty except for a few small groups of people.

"Go ahead," he said morbidly.

"Are you OK?" I asked with as much interest as I could muster up given the situation.

"Sure."

"Really?" I asked.

"Take care," he said doubtfully and held out his hand.

"I'm not going to war you know," I said.

"I know," he replied. Then he smiled with the unnerving piety of a priest.

"You're the one without the job. It's you that should take care."

"No worries. I'll manage," he said.

I walked up the sidewalk and knocked on the door. Vera answered. She just stood there shivering underneath the clover-field of blue velvet draped around her twitching body. I could tell she was nude beneath it all. She wrapped a few yards around me and reeled me in across the threshold. I wanted to grab her and do her right then and there.

"Hi sexy," she said in a smooth liquid voice. I didn't answer. I just stepped in and went straight to the kitchen for a beer. Mark followed a few minutes later and we all gathered upstairs with Nicola and another guy - a random skinhead by the looks of it. It was time for the attic. The ecstasy was starting to wear off and we needed new amusements to help complete our mission and deliver the evening's brain cell payload to its designated target.

### IV

The attic was stuffy and damp when we entered. Nicola turned on the lights and opened the window. The room was filled with shelves upon shelves of old costumes; a single enormous closet spanned the entire length of the far wall and several standalone wardrobes were lined up beside the door. The ceiling paint was noticeably cracked.

"Costumes! At last," Nicola shouted as she opened the wall-sized closet at the back. She dove into a pile of Eskimo parkas on the floor, disappearing like a child into a bed of fallen leaves.

The costumes were nothing short of amazing. There were helmets, sun hats, sombreros, crowns, tiaras, and even a pair of moose antlers. Spacesuits, business suits, king suits and clown suits with shoes for every taste and occasion. They had it all. Yes, indeed. This was going to be fun.

"Heavy," said the skinhead. "I've never seen so many outfits in all my life."

"All my childhood fantasies come true!" exclaimed Vera. "I want to be a sultan." She grabbed a turban that had a plastic jewel in the front and put it on.

"I want to be an actor," I followed. I stepped toward the closet.

"Enough of that bollocks," said Mark, pushing me aside. "I want to be Paul Weller!"

"I want to be a German photographer," said Nicola as she appeared like a genie from out of the pile of Eskimo parkas. I cracked inside.

"Why do you want that?" I quickly asked. "You could be anything." I had to see how much she knew. She flinched and pulled me towards her.

"Oh, I just saw this movie the other day about a German photographer. Nothing more." I relaxed.

"I want to be a cloud of perfume vapors," said the skinhead. "I bet they don't have _that_ costume here!"

"You never know!" said Mark. "By the way...I'm not sure we've met. What's your name?"

"Since when do names mean anything?" He shrugged his shoulders and scoffed before continuing. "Roger. Is that OK with you? Who are _you_?"

"I'm the host," said Mark flatly.

"Ouch! Open mouth, insert foot. I'm glad someone's in charge. Let's check some of these out. I want to try on a few. Where did you get them anyway?"

"We're just house sitting. The owner's some sort of Hollywood costume designer," Vera answered.

"Hey dear, how 'bout getting out of that sultan outfit and getting us some more whiskey?" Mark turned to Vera and tugged at the edges of her blue velvet robe.

"You're so pretty when you're a sexist pig," she said with a sarcastic wink. She whirled around and strutted out the door.

"Hey, I've got some poppers," said Roger.

"Bah, they're for queers," I scoffed. "Besides, I'm in the mood for whiskey."

Vera came back a few minutes later with more whiskey. After a little brain lubrication we started in on the costumes. They were like endless floats of hand-woven joy. I felt like a kid in the middle of a fairy tail. "Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your golden hair," I cried as I tried on a blonde wig.

I shuffled through a stack of Victorian woman's dresses until I found one that looked like it might fit. Stepping into it was like squeezing through a chimney, but I finally got it on. I turned around and looked at the others. They were happily rummaging through the clothes racks, either half naked or half dressed in some outlandish get up. Mark was flapping around, a snorkel covering his face, and Nicola had just jumped out of the closet dressed as a turkey, complete with a rubber throat attachment and wire-supported paper mache wings.

"I'm the Queen of Siam," Roger proclaimed as he unfurled a mock scroll in his hands. "It has been decided that the remainder of the night shall be devoted to the excessive indulgences of poppers, liquor and sundry sins of the flesh."

"What would the Queen of Siam know about sins?" I quipped. "I hear they have no morals over there, and if you have no morals, how can you sin?"

"Take him away and boil him in oil," Mark commanded as he threw a luxurious Moorish robe around his shoulders. Then he looked me squarely in the eye. His face was suddenly a two-way mirror with me on the wrong side. He knew something and he wasn't about to let me in. I could feel it. He disappeared back into the closet and I poured myself more whiskey. A few minutes later he came out dressed in a bland brown suit. He was wearing a plastic receding-hair-line wig on his head.

"Guess what?" he asked. "I'm Wilkinson!" Vera burst out laughing. "Hey, I've got an idea! Let's sell out our magazine to a bunch of ass-lick Japs and fire the only people who know anything. That's my formula for success. Aren't I special!"

"You look more like Bill Clinton," Roger interjected. "No, let me correct myself: George Bush."

"That's a bloody insult, that is!" Mark hollered. "An insult with either one of them. But that's no surprise, because there's no difference between the two anyway. The only thing separating the American conservative from the American liberal is that the first has a gun rack in his car and the second has the new _REM_ album. Otherwise, they're exactly the same." He fixed the narrow lapels on his suit and clicked his heels together. "Come on boys. To work. Where's that _Bananarama_ article? What about Madonna's latest appearance on TV? Did you get that advertising contract with McDonald's settled?"

"Come on. He doesn't talk like that," said Nicola in Wilkinson's defence. "He's not _that_ pushy."

"Oh? And how long have _you_ worked for him?" Mark snapped back at her.

The next hour was a kaleidoscope of wonder. Like models in a fashion show we stepped into the closet, changed, and strutted out into the room to parade our new look. Roger - who was fitting in quite well by this time - dressed as Michael Jordan, The Sheriff of Nottingham, and Winston Churchill. Nicola chose more rustic get-ups: Joan of Arc, Lizzy Borden, a farmer's daughter, and St. Theresa of Avala. Vera was Princess Dianne, Charlie Chaplin, Charlie Manson, and Muddy Waters, while I zipped up as Superman, Bud Abbot, Don Quixote and Roy Rogers. Mark, on the other hand, seemed content to keep his Wilkinson costume on for the remainder of the evening and judge the quality of our get-ups.

Just as the novelty of the costumes was starting to wear off Vera suddenly got a crashing idea.

"Hey, look, I'm Mark!" she shouted with glee. She stepped into the light wearing Mark's black shirt and pants. She marched around the room shaking her fist in the air the way Mark sometimes did in the office.

Then Nicola followed: "I'm Vera!" Somehow she had managed to change into Vera's clothes without any of us noticing.

"That was quick," I said.

"Does that mean I get a kiss, love?" Mark said, pushing his pelvis into Nicola's hips.

"Only if you're good," she said with a sultry pout on her face.

"All right, enough of that," Vera warned her.

Roger was on the other side of the room dressed in drag. He put on an Afro wig and leapt up on top of a table standing beside the door. He made a sharp whipping motion with his right hand and started singing like a dub poet. His voice plumbed its lowest reaches as he thrust his hips towards us in a crude sexual motion:

" _Me is am the King of Babylon, Me is on an ego trip, what you on?_ "

"More, more," shouted Vera, playing like a woman at a male stripper club. Then she pulled off her panties - which were actually Nicola's green ones - from under her skirt and threw them at Roger. He caught them and in one motion jumped down from the table and tossed them into a laundry chute on the wall.

"Hey, those were mine, how dare you!" cried Nicola, playing up the part of the distressed female.

"Where's my kiss, love?" urged Mark. For some reason I didn't really mind. If he got to kiss her, then maybe I could get one out of Vera. Mark was always jealous of her every move, but now he had no right to complain. _Tit_ for tat, right? I've thought more than just once how great it would be to get a good grab at those bleached British breasts of hers.

"Only if I get to kiss Vera," I said. Vera grinned invitingly. Just as I leaned towards her with my lips outstretched, I noticed a muffled rumbling from inside the closet. At first I thought it was some kind of trapped animal pawing against a crawlspace wall. There was a loud thump and we all perked up our faces and looked at each other. Mark, his eyebrow curiously bent, stepped inside to check.

"My God!" he cried. "It's Robert Smith!" I cringed. They'd found me out! I backed up against the wall. The whole evening had been a set up. The place was probably surrounded by police officers just waiting for a moment to move in for the kill.

"Robert Smith?" asked Nicola doubtfully. "It couldn't be. What would _he_ be doing here?"

"Get ready to be blown away," said Mark from inside the closet.

"Cool!" said Roger, his face drenched in awe. "I love _The Cure_."

"This is wonderful," Vera shrieked. "I've always wanted to meet him. I hope I look OK." You'd almost think we were at the Hollywood bowl waiting for the Beatles her expression was so electric. The closet door opened and Mark walked out followed by a second man dressed up in Gothic drag. Whoever it was had the geisha/lipstick/zombie look down pat. His black hair was gelled into a solid mass, radiating outwards from his head like a fan of palm leaves. I let go of my scepticism. It really was Robert Smith from _The Cure_ , I couldn't fucking believe it. What on Earth was _he_ doing here?

I heaved a sigh of relief. I had no idea why such a celebrity would crash Mark's party, but given my sudden reprieve I wasn't about to argue.

"Wait, it's not Robert Smith! It's Wilkinson!" said Nicola, pointing at the man with the dour conviction of a grade-school teacher who's just caught someone cheating on a spelling test.

"Jesus H. Christ, you're right!" Mark hollered as he pulled away from Wilkinson.

"I had to come. I feel so bad. It's all over. I'm packing it in," Wilkinson said narcoleptically, wiping some of the white make-up from his powdery face. The scene was truly unsettling. He looked like some sort of nineteen-eighties death fag.

"What are you saying? What about my job?" I demanded an explanation.

"It's up to Mark now," was all he said.

"Why?" asked Vera in a tender way that surprised me. She put her arm around him.

"I'm a fake. I just fired the only guy who really cares about music in my so-called music magazine. I'm just not cut out for it. I've cancelled the sale and I'm offering the entire business to you guys. I got too caught up in worrying about my losses and forgot what it was all about. That's why I'm going into something else. I want to put my dollars into something less artsy and more concrete. Maybe real estate."

"That's concrete for sure," said Roger with a grin. "But where did you get those duds. You almost had us fooled."

"I got drunk and bought these clothes in an S and M shop on Melrose. Then I got a make-up girl to do this." He gestured to his face. "It was always my secret fantasy to be a rock star. I had to try once. Now I'm fully satisfied the music scene just isn't right for me."

"You must be stoned," said Nicola. Her mouth was gaping like a lunar trench and I thought how unattractive she suddenly looked. "But still...this is all so strange. I still can't believe it. And all along we were so nasty to you behind your back. We thought you were just a sell-out."

"No, maybe you were all right. Now you can all have..."

"Wait. What's all this about?" Roger butted in. "So, this dude here in the Goth get-up is actually your boss and he's abandoning ship?" Nobody responded, we were all so shocked. Mark was dumb with glee and Wilkinson - obviously drunk \- just sat there like a puddle of slip waiting for a plaster mould. He was pathetic. Tears cut tiny rivers through his mascara and lipstick was smeared all over the embroidered pagodas on his oriental shirt. He looked like he'd just been dragged out of a Chinese whorehouse.

"It's over. It's all fucking over! Leave me alone. I'll sell it to you at a loss. Let me go. I can't even remember how I got here. I don't know who I am anymore." He grabbed a hold of Vera's leg and pulled himself up. Then he kissed us each on the cheek and left the room.

We never found out how he got there or where he went later that evening. All that mattered was that the magazine was now ours and Wilkinson was gone for good. Incognito.

"My fucking lord," was all Mark said.

After ten minutes of silence we walked downstairs and somehow managed to pry our coats out of the maelstrom of debris in the cloakroom. Mark stayed to clean up while Vera picked up her coat to drive Nicola and me home. We were both too blasted to drive. Roger called a cab and promised to _drop by for lunch_ sometime, and we all knew what that meant in this town. In short, we'd never see him again.

### V

We squirted down the freeways like a deviant speck of rain travelling through a mess of rusted drainpipes. Vera was at the wheel and she hit harder on the accelerator with every passing exit. She was going crazy, busting loose, or whatever women did when they'd had enough of playing out the country sweetheart role everyone forced them to play. It was a turn on. I was sitting next to her in the front while Nicola was in the back staring blankly out the window. That was the last great challenge of the evening. To conquer the emptiness of the night. The blackness descended on us like a curse; in the rear view mirror I could see the reflection of Nicola's face hanging like a full moon over the background of downtown skyscrapers. No matter how long I looked at her mind kept returning to the same thought: man, that Vera was one hip chick. It was a shame I never got a chance to kiss her at the party. Oh, well, another time, I thought. There was a right time and place for everything.

"Where to?" asked Vera, turning to me with bright boyish eyes. I noticed once again how pretty she was.

"I want to go home," Nicola moaned. Then she tapped me on the shoulder and whispered, "I'm too tired to go back to your place and I have a lot to do tomorrow."

"That's OK," I whispered back. I was the understanding type. "Besides, I'm a little beat too. That ecstasy's really worn me down."

"To Nicola's then? So it is," Vera proclaimed. She swerved into gears I never new existed and cut across the freeway to snag the exit just in time. That's what it was all about in this town. Exits, opportunities. You had to catch them when they came or you might never get another shot. Dart onto the exit ramp even if you have to cut off a few dead-end surfers on the way.

The freeways looped all over the place like some kind of crazed Hot Wheels set. We almost got lost in its soaring geometries when suddenly I realized we were parked directly in front of Nicola's place. I opened my door and then, like a true gentleman, opened hers from the outside. I held out my hand to help her out and escorted her to the door. Ah, a breath of true romance. We kissed and I promised to perform far naughtier acts on her the next time we got together. She smiled glumly and turned her eyes away. Then I remembered: she'd wanted to talk before the party. That was probably it.

"You wanted to say something earlier," I said gently. "Maybe we can have coffee tomorrow." Her eyes softened up and she touched the inside of my palm. Just like stuffing a soother in a baby's mouth.

"Tomorrow," she said and a tear rolled from her eye. I must have really touched her deep down inside. I really knew what to do to please a woman. I blushed like a choirboy as I skipped out to the car. I adjusted my seatbelt while Vera sat beside me in silence.

"Ready?" Vera asked.

"Let's go," I replied. I was finally alone with her. Maybe I'd get that kiss after all. Off we zipped.

"I was just reading," she began as we stabbed through the darkness, "that there's some factual basis for the image of a witch riding a broom."

"Oh?" It wasn't the romantic talk I was hoping for, but it was a start.

"Yeah. It's kind of cool. Apparently real witches would go into the forest and rub Mandrake all over a stick and leap around thrusting it between their bare legs."

"Mandrake?"

"Like Belladonna, Henbane and all that. Contains this drug atropine that causes wild hallucinations and the sensation of flight. It's absorbed through the skin quite readily. This explains the medieval stories of women prancing around under the moonlight with sticks under their legs as though they were flying. Pretty sharp, eh?"

"I've never heard that one before."

"You can apparently get atropine from Contact-C capsules as well. I knew a guy in school who separated them into all the different colors to find out which ones were atropine so he could get stoned for cheap. Anyway, it's sort of ironic because the Belladonna family is technically part of the potato family. That's what we learned in A-level botany at any rate. So, witches and Irish potato farmers are closer than you think."

"What a thought. I knew the Irish were crazy, but..."

"I've actually got some. Just put some in my eye."

"What, Belladonna?"

"A black fellow at the party gave me some. He said he used it at gay clubs to give his eyes a glassy femininity. I had to give it a go but I forgot about it until you dropped Nicola off."

I looked at Vera's face in the rear view mirror. In the darkness I could see her eyes burning like beads of hot glass. I got the distinct impression she was trying to seduce me. It was the way she twitched her pale eyelids. At first I thought it was just my imagination, but her subtle flirtations continued far too long for that. When girls are interested they have certain signals, their own secret semaphore. All you have to do is know how to read it. Maybe she was sick of Mark and all of his alternative music bullshit. Maybe she couldn't stand being with an unemployed music journalist and wanted a real man. Of course, I couldn't be that man for her. Perhaps for a night, but no more than that. Mark was my friend and I loved Nicola.

"So, what do you make of Wilkinson?" she asked. Her words dropped like a shovel into the pregnant silence between us. "I mean, where did he get that costume? I could have sworn it was the real Robert Smith. And even when we found out I still couldn't believe it. To see him break down like that and open up. I thought he was just a hard old bastard all along. Now we can buy the whole operation and Mark can have what he always wanted. I'm so happy for him."

"Amazing," I said. "My whole impression of Wilkinson has suddenly changed. He's not so bad after all and it's good to see Mark get what he wants. He's struggled so hard."

She turned to me and handed me a cigarette, "So, what do you think of all this magazine business?"

"Business?"

"You know. _The Wire Door_ thing."

"It's a great idea, I guess." And that was a big guess. I liked the idea, but the underground music scene was starting to get to me. It was all so phoney. Colorful, but transparent like a pair of 3-D specs. I was almost looking forward to a leap into the mainstream.

"To be honest," Vera said, "I'm a bit weary of it all. I hope you don't get all upset with me telling you this. It's been driving me crazy and I have to tell someone. It might as well be you. But don't tell anyone yet. I just have to get it off my chest. It started to happen a few months ago. I need a change. I'm just not ready yet to tell Mark. I know we've been fighting a lot, but the last few weeks he's made such an effort to make it better between us."

She slowed the car down and tucked it neatly into the shoulder of the road. Then she lit my cigarette and turned her head shamefully to the ground. I could hear the sound of what I thought was the odd Eldorado or New Yorker whizzing past us over the torpor of our engine's hum. She turned to me and started to say something. I couldn't make out a word, but I could feel a hot rush blow through my body. I knew at once what this was all about. And even more, I knew she didn't have any panties on because she was still dressed as Nicola. I held my breath and waited for her next words. They didn't come.

"Yes," I said, taking charge with the soul-shaking warmth of a Russian prince. I put my hand on her leg. I could almost feel her trembling, like the trumpet of a daffodil in the wind.

"Back at the house, did you feel anything?" she asked solemnly.

"When?"

"When we were exchanging clothes."

"Feel anything?"

"Don't play naïve."

It was the signal I had been waiting for. I took a deep breath and opened up. "I wanted to kiss you like Mark kissed Nicola." I gazed into her eyes and thought I could smell perfume, although I knew she never wore any. I imagined her as a Celtic fairy queen dancing naked under some enchanted ruin: I was under her spell. I pressed up against her and breathed heavily, slowly.

"Wait," she pulled back suddenly. "This isn't right."

"Follow your heart," I said in the reassuring voice of a psychiatrist from a self-help tape.

"I'm not sure," she said. I could tell she was confused. "I felt it before. In the office and then at the party. I really wanted you to just take me in that closet and do me right there. Oh, Paul I don't know what to do!" Her head dropped like a bail of hay in my lap. Then she cried. "And the magazine. It'd be finished if we did this. What about Nicola? She'd hate us if she found out."

"I'm not sure," I said, trying to be as honest as I could. "I think I love her. But I'm also attracted to you. Perhaps affairs are good for relationships. Sometimes you have to test the boundaries to make your love deeper."

"But, she's my friend."

"She doesn't have to find out." It sounded a bit cold and calculated, but let's face it, Nicola _was_ a little bitchy before the party. She also kissed Mark directly in front of me, and went home early when she could have come home with me. And that sounds like three strikes to me.

"I'm not so sure," Vera said, sobbing.

Talking more would do no good. Enough had already been said. But I had to do something. This was my chance to finally get close to her. I caressed her leg with one hand and pet her head affectionately with the other. Her hair was soft and silky like damp moss on a rock. I felt a tear trickle on my pinkie as I bent down and whispered into her ear. "Oh, Vera, it's taken so long to come true. Don't be afraid." I kissed her ear and the image of that weird New York chick from the band _Come_ popped into my head. She was singing the last lines in that song about the car, virtually identical to my last words to Vera. Maybe this was what the song getting at and it had just been some secret premonition. As for Mark, he'd have to accept whatever explanation Vera gave him. I felt a little sorry for him until I wondered if he wasn't over at Nicola's at that moment doing the same.

We raced back to my apartment in an expectant hush. Sometimes you lose it late at night and a strange force takes over. It pushes into you and takes hold of you, whispering with gentle cruelty into your ears that aimless sex is the only truth worth living for. Whirlwind, heat and flash. That's what the evening said to me. Like marionettes in the hands of a drunken puppeteer we barged into my bedroom and collapsed in a pathetic heap on my bed. I ran my fingers over the subtle indents in her clothes made by her nipples and vagina. In a ravenous daze I started licking her stomach and pulled off whatever was left of her clothes. With my head still in her lap I looked up towards her face. Her breasts were two nautical warning lights flashing from some distant rocky island. I followed them to safety, docking my head smack between them as I pulled up to her mighty shore.

"Wait," she said and edged away. "I'm not on the pill. We need some condoms."

"Hmm. To the store it is then!"

"Paul," she whispered wetly into my ear. "I've got a surprise when you come back. Don't turn on the light, or it'll ruin it. And one other thing. I've always wanted to make love in total silence. I'm not sure why, but...can we try?"

"OK," I said, baffled. I loved silence. I loved surprises. Maybe she had a locket of hair she wanted to give to me. How sweet, I thought. She was such a great girl, that Vera.

I ran like a maniac out to my car and raced off to the nearest gas station convenience store. I flipped through a few magazines near the door. One porno rag had a centrefold pullout with a picture of a bald woman lying in a bed full of mannequins. I studied her magnetic contours for a long precious moment before snapping out of it and putting the magazine back on the rack. Doing was always better than looking, I reminded myself. The true purpose of my sojourn was to buy a box of condoms. Fortunately, they were about as hard to find as sand in the desert, neatly arranged at the front just to the left of the lighter fluid section (yes, a whole section). They really had their priorities settled in this joint, I thought: teenage sex and lighter fluid. In short, Heaven. They were onto things in this joint the Pentagon wouldn't key into for decades. Yes, years from now the opening of this store will be seen as a watershed event in the history of western thought.

I paid for the slim plastic packet as a raver song blasted out from the radio behind the counter. It was the one that goes on and on about how people are still having sex in spite of the fact that they've been told not to and how the _AIDS thing_ isn't working. Yes, even as I speak, people are having sex. So too will I. I was riding the tip of some great tsunami on a crash course with Vera's de-pantied body. I couldn't wait.

On my way back I was forced to take a slight detour. As luck would have it, I ended up passing Ricki on the corner of Santa Monica and Mulholand. Her hair looked wet, although it wasn't raining. Maybe Champagne, I thought. I leaned out the window and shouted out to her.

"Get a life, honey."

"Get a lay, honey," she shouted back. The light turned green and I vanished in a puff of tire smoke.

When I got back to my pad I made sure to honor my promise and keep the lights out. I stripped off my clothes in the kitchen and tiptoed into the enchanting darkness of my bedroom.

"No lights, no talking," she reminded me in a whisper. I could feel the cold plastic of the condom package in my fingers as I slipped between the sheets. I revelled in the satin warmth of her naked body, but it was so dark I couldn't see a thing, not even the outlines of her face only a few inches in front of mine.

As though drawn together by an invisible magnet, our lips eventually found each other. For the next ten minutes I was engulfed in an oyster bed of carnal pleasure. I sucked on her toes, her ears, her lips, her fingers, even her hairs - individually booking every shaft for private sessions with my tongue. She was warm and silent, spread around me like a giant pillow. A pool of love, a quivering rose-petal dripping with the tears of Eros. Occasionally I heard a gentle cooing emerge from her lips like the sound of a dove from the chimney of a palace. It would ripple through the room like a wavelet across the stillness of a November pond, and then vanish into the darkness.

At one point - before I had actually entered her - the couple upstairs started going at it again. Their presence blew over our love making like a breeze from a slaughterhouse. I thought it was over up there, but I guess I was wrong. Lying on Vera's stomach, my fingers smoothing over the crease between her legs, I listened to the muted screams and groans as they seeped into the room like vapors of a deadly nerve gas.

"I feel like a dark forest. I'm so lost in my own expanses," said the female voice.

"What do you expect me to do?" came the imperious reply.

"I feel like a pane of glass, I want to be shattered. Shatter me."

"You're crazy, go home."

"This is home."

"Go home, I said. Are you deaf?"

"Shatter me. I want to be fragments. It's too much work to keep it all together."

"You've never been together. You're crazy. All you want is sex and money."

"I never wanted sex or money. I've only wanted you to listen. Where's my father? He's always going away. Oh, it's hopeless. Shatter me, crack me. I only want to be shattered."

"Go home. You're already cracked."

"This _is_ my home. I want to stay. I like the shape of the ceiling. Why can't we go away?"

"You're crazy."

"I need a bath. Look at me. I'm all so dirty. Why didn't you say something? What will they think. Wash me."

"All you want is favors."

"You've never done me any favors."

After a short silence I heard something so grotesque I couldn't even begin to describe it. The female voice dropped into a low-pitched scream that lasted for over two minutes. Through the noise filter of the ceiling it sounded like a cross between a foghorn and an electric sander. She'd really lost it. This time something big was going to happen. I'd never heard her this fucked-up before. So I jumped out of bed and ran into the bathroom. A minute later brought back four wads of cotton. After much fumbling around, and without breaking our darkness/silence pact, Vera and I somehow managed to stuff our ears with them. We then started the whole love thing over from square one. We could now fuck in peace.

I skimmed across her belly, I skated across her lips, I swam through her thighs. At one point, when I was on the crest of my second climax, it dawned on me how similar she felt to other women I'd slept with. It wasn't like I imagined it would be with Vera. All the incense, the Tarot cards, the Gaelic fairy tales and the mystic breath of the moon blowing so gently over our hot and tremulous contours. Her plump little breasts had mushroomed into massive balloons, almost as big as Nicola's, and her hair felt a lot kinkier than I'd remembered. Maybe there was some truth to all those unpopular sayings about women all being alike. She had the same wet lips as Nicola, sucking on my face like some kind of erotic eel. She made the same tiny groans and swivelled her hips in the same subtle way. Yes, perhaps it was true. _Turn them over and they're all sisters_. In a way it was a disappointment. What's the point of screwing your friend's girl friend if it's no different than screwing your own? It was one of those rights-of-passage things that everyone said had to be tried before a man could truly be considered a man. I mean, we've all lusted after our buddy's girl friend at one point or another in our lives, but very few men have anywhere near enough guts to do anything about it.

After I'd leaned away from her for the fourth time, I remembered - in beleaguered exhaustion - that she'd promised me a surprise.

"What is it, this surprise," I whispered. She didn't answer. I repeated the question and still only silence.

"Vera?" I implored, whacking her lovely head with a pillow. Silence.

"OK, I'm turning on the lights," I threatened. Still no answer.

I flicked the switch of the night lamp and turned around. I almost puked I was so horrified. Nicola lay spread out naked on the bed beside me like a sculpture of death, her eyes burning through me like a pair of red-hot fire pokers. Vera was sitting contentedly in the corner knitting. She was fully dressed.

"Nicola?" I said, completely astonished.

"No, Vera," said Nicola with a mordant snap of the tongue. "Nicola's over there." She pointed over at Vera. Then her lips stiffened.

The sound of her breathing filled the room like waves of molten lead, smothering every sound within a ten-mile radius. I thought I could hear the rhythmic clicking of Vera's knitting needles, but I quickly realized it was just my mind racing out of control.

I tried to smile but my head kept sliding downwards into the pile of sheets in front of me. Nicola's body was an icy slope and there was no way I could drag myself up its cliffs of skin and flesh to meet her face to face.

Vera gathered her hair into a ponytail and stood up. She didn't even turn to look at me as she left the room. Then I heard the sound of the front door shutting. I was alone with Nicola. I turned around and looked at her, but she'd already got out of bed to put her clothes on. I wasn't about to try and stop her as she stormed out of the room.

"I'm coming back tomorrow, you jerk," she shouted. "You'd better have a good story cooked up by then!" Then I heard the front door slam.

### VI

What the fuck was going on? I mean, _what the fuck was this all about?_

### VII

After hours of endless nail biting, rolling around in bed, and the odd visit to the bathroom I somehow managed to convince myself that with the right words, a bottle of wine and some flowers everything would be settled. This was obviously some kind of trick, as was the sudden turn-around by Wilkinson. It was just too out of character for him to be dressed up in Gothic drag collapsed in a lump in the closet at some party - especially Mark's party. It just wasn't him. Likewise, I am not sure why Nicola would bother posing as Vera just to have sex with me. Yes, the whole night could be chalked up to too much wine and an assortment of weird drugs.

The next day I woke up to Nicola's dull angry face hanging over my bed like a death warrant. She'd obviously let herself in with the key I had given her a few weeks ago. She sat down beside me and cleared her throat. I'd never seen her look so grim and spiritless. The bountiful warmth I was so accustomed to had vanished. I felt like I was sitting next to a week-old slab of burned toast. We sat in Kodachrome silence for almost half an hour. The finest spectrograph on earth would hardly have given a twitch. Finally there was a slight tremor of movement. She lifted her hand to scratch her chin.

"So," she said.

I was so confused I wasn't sure what to say. So I almost cheated on her. But I didn't really, now did I? It was her all along. If anything, she'd cheated on _me_ by pulling such a cruel trick. And Vera: what a witch! I guess all that occult business of hers was more than just a joke after all.

Eventually the first rays of the sun bored their way into the room. I asked Nicola if I should close the curtains and she responded by making a sound like a sick hamster. I pulled gently on one of her Demerara-brown curls and blew on her skin to comfort her, but she cringed away from me as if I were an ex-convict.

I stood up to go to the bathroom, but she stopped me just as I was turning out of bed.

"I've seen your photos, Paul," was all she said, her hand clutching my legs like a cluster of stray roots knotted around a telephone pole. Her eyes were harsh, accusing. I shivered. How much did she know?

"So that's where they went," was all I said. It was possible she knew everything. If she did, begging for mercy might be my only chance. But first, I had to try faking innocence.

"You murdered him. You fucking fake!" She leapt on me and pounded her fists on my chest in a hyena-sized fit of blind rage.

"You're crazy." I smiled obliviously. "Murdered who?"

"You know who. Don't play games with me. I know it's your only talent. The German travel photographer, who else? And you killed him for a bunch of lousy pictures. I mean, look at them. They're filthy, perverted." She pulled them out from under the bed and scattered them across the room. I tried my best to maintain my composure. "And all so you could pose as a photographer on your way across the border and then live out some perverted sex fantasy in this shallow dump of a town."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Cergazzo. At night. You and this guy leave a bar. Need I say more?" It was clear she knew something. There was no point in trying to deny it.

"OK," I begrudgingly admitted. "We got in a skirmish...he was a queer and tried to kill me. I had to in self-defence. I can prove it."

"Rubbish. There's witnesses that say they saw you kill him outside of some bar after a drunken fight. Apparently you tried to rob him..."

"Lies. All lies." She knew more than I thought. She was right. I got carried away and killed him. But it was only after he tried to hit me over the head with a bottle. He should never have tried to defend himself when I held him up for the photos. I leaned over to calm her down and she turned around sharply.

"Are you stupid? They were published last month in a magazine. He sent back the negatives before you got to him. He changed his name four years ago to Robert Smith from Helmut Erker. Sound familiar? I couldn't believe it at first. I just couldn't believe it."

"I think you need a little rest," I said. "And besides, what are you doing breaking into my apartment? I thought we were lovers. You've broken the trust by entering without my consent."

Her face froze suddenly. For a second it looked as if it were suspended inside a plastic bubble, impossible to touch, but somehow still in perfect view. Maybe I'd gone overboard. I was silent for a minute, but then I continued. "You're not yourself Nicola. Can I make you some coffee?"

"No! Get away." Her body revulsed.

"Are you sure? Toast, perhaps?" I settled my pinkie delicately on her soft cheek.

"No! No! No!"

"What are you doing here anyway? What about Vera and Mark? I suppose you have them convinced all this nonsense is true. That's slander, you know." This was getting scary. Maybe she knew everything. Even things I never told you about. With a murder on my hands and two years of bona fide fraud on my resume the apartment could be surrounded by cops at any minute.

"Yes. They know. It's no use lying. Besides, you've already broken the trust between us. The sex...it was all a set-up with Mark and Vera...I'm sorry it had to be this way. I didn't want it to be true."

"I can't believe you're turning on me like this. You hypocrite."

"Hypocrite? Who's the hypocrite?" She glowered at me.

"I can explain," I begged. She ignored me and started gathering her clothes. In the time it took her to hunt them all down I managed to calm down.

"OK. So where did you get all this information anyway?"

"I found out about Erker through the photos," she started, "and then I got your Social Security number from Wilkinson. In a matter of a few weeks I'd managed to dig up more than I wanted to hear. He was murdered in a town called Cergazzo - just a day's walk from your prison. The Mexican police had a warrant out on your arrest and had traced you to Cergazzo. The description of you given by the few witnesses in the bar immediately preceding the murder matched yours. The ID and photos clearly belonged to him. I was shocked. None of us believed it at first. It was too far-fetched to be true."

"And Wilkinson? I suppose that Robert Smith business at the party was just a set-up to freak me out. Drive the wolf out of the fold, so to speak."

"No. That was genuine. Well, I hope. I mean we didn't have a thing to do with it."

"So why the set-up with Vera? Did you have to humiliate me like that? You could have just asked."

"I'm sorry," she said. "It wasn't my idea. Last week Vera and Mark had the idea of testing your faith. I didn't go for it at first. I'm not like that. I thought it was slimy. But they insisted on going through with it. Mark said he had some reason to doubt your loyalty. And I had some reason to doubt your devotion to me. We tested you and you failed on two counts. You cheated on me and you cheated on Mark. You don't care about his feelings and you don't love me."

"I suppose you've told the police already."

"No. But I'm sure Vera's doing it as we speak."

"I don't have to own up to anything. Charge me with whatever you want. It's a matter for the courts to decide."

"Don't expect me to help you. Not after last night. Maybe if you'd shown some devotion or love. But you don't care about me or your friends. So why should we care about you?"

"You've no feeling. You're a stone," I said accusingly.

"And you're a fucking bastard. Worse, I was stupid enough to fall for you. I can't believe it. And your wife..." She paused and shook her head in disgust. "I even talked to her on the phone."

Jenny. This was too much. How could she have been involved? I thought I'd heard the last of her. "She ran off with another man. That's how loyal she was."

"Only after she _threw you out for boozing and womanizing,"_ she continued _._ "But she had pity on you when she heard you ended up in prison. She didn't believe you'd killed that woman. But eventually she gave up when she found your secret stash of snuff films."

"That's crap. I only bought soft porn. Besides, she didn't _throw me out_. I left because she was cheating on me."

"No, she dumped you and you took off to Mexico because you had nothing else going for you and you'd been soliciting prostitutes for years." Her eyes sliced through me, cubing me into croutons of shame. She knew. She was right. Jenny dumped me because I was a smut addict. I ran off to Mexico to get away. I could never let myself believe it.

Then Nicola continued in a deep, litigious tone. "Another thing. I'm not sure why I didn't mention this first, but I bet you even killed that woman. You're a sicko and a fraud."

"That's a lie!" I shouted. That much was wrong. I didn't kill her. I had no reason to.

"And I thought I loved you. What a mistake that was."

I tried to hug her, but she pulled away. I had to make her listen. Love. Perhaps that was the key. She must still love me on some level. Perhaps if I played the right strings...

"I was falsely tried," I said. "That's why I didn't get a reprieve. I should have, though. Why would I kill some strange woman?"

"Should have and did are two different things," she said. If I did end up in prison, at least I'd have a good story to tell. I tried to cheat on my girlfriend, even thought I was cheating on her, but never really did. Now, that's star crossed.

"Look. I'm all nerved out," I said. "All I can say is that I didn't do anything wrong. I'm innocent."

"Don't deny it. I know it all. What does qualify as wrong in your balsa-wood brain?"

"What did I do?"

"I'll tell you. Your wife left you for someone else and in some warped fit of misogynism you most likely killed that prostitute. Then you were tried for murder. You claimed innocence and escaped before your execution."

"That's a lie. I never killed her." In my mind it all started to come back. I could see her on my hotel bed, my hands wrapped around her throat. She just wouldn't stop screaming. I paid her the money and in the middle of the act she just started screaming. What else could I do? You know what they say about Mexican prisons.

"OK. Maybe you didn't. That's for the courts to prove. But you killed the German and that's enough."

"Nicola, I love you," I pleaded. "Let's escape from all this. We don't need this music magazine stuff anymore. Wilkinson's cracked and Mark could never run an operation by himself. I can see us together in upstate New York living on a beautiful farm..."

"I don't understand you," she interrupted. "On some level you're clearly an intelligent and introspective person or you wouldn't have picked up photography as quickly as you did, but there's something really scary about you. You have no standards, no principles. When Mark lost his job you didn't care. You had no qualms about fucking Vera. And God knows how many others you've screwed. Snuff films...you make me sick."

"Now wait," I interrupted.

"Your wife was sympathetic when I told her. She said she dumped you countless times – she used the word _untold_. But she always let you come back. More times than her pride would allow her to repeat. Then she finally got fed up and that was the end. She said you just have no principles."

"Nobody does anymore. They went out with Marconi and the tube radio. Can't you see all those people out there making money, screwing, snorting coke? The world is a mad house, but you have to fit in to make it. If I told everyone the truth nobody would listen to me. You have to lie to make people believe in you. You never would have gone out with me if I told you what happened with the German."

"Give me a break."

"I'm sick of it all. I want something strong and true. You showed me what love is, Nickie."

"Don't call me that!"

"Let's get away from it all." I dipped my hand into the hairy cleft between her thighs. She elbowed me in the stomach so hard I almost puked.

She pulled up her socks in a blood-chilling blizzard of antipathy and blew out of the room, then the apartment.

"Don't go," I cried helplessly. I was left alone to wallow in a pool of self-pity and anxiety. This was more than I'd reckoned for. This was too much. I was doomed. What could I do?

As I watched her small figure scurry across the street from my window the clouds suddenly began to part and a grand and resonant idea trumpeted down from on high. It descended upon me from the wispy diaphanous heights in the form of a word, a name to be more exact. Mark. Yes, Mark. How did I know he bought all of this? For that matter, how did I know for sure that he knew about any of this at all? What if Nicola was lying? What if it was a cover up for something else? A trillion what-ifs buzzed through my head like a swarm of hopeful honeybees.

All of the sudden I thought of an alternate, but equally plausible scenario: Nicola came calling for me while I was out and found Vera waiting for me in my bed. There was a fight, but like two decent women they decided to make up and cover up the evidence by making up the story about Mark testing my faith. How silly. He was my best friend. He'd never believe something like that. And he started it all up by kissing Nicola. Just because we lust after each other's girl friends, doesn't make us enemies. It's all between friends. Mark and I are high-spun gentlemen sewn from the finest cloth! Of course, this explanation didn't account for how Nicola knew about my past, but it was a start. With a little fine-tuning, I'm sure it would explain everything.

After some deliberation, I decided it was best to tell Mark as soon as possible that Vera had tried to seduce me. Then he'd understand and forgive both of us. Wilkinson would sell the magazine to him and I'd keep my job. I kept my fingers crossed and took a quick shower. I was tired and needed some sleep. My hangover hung over me like a thundercloud. I guess that's why they called it a hang over. Not so funny, I thought. I was dangling on a DNA strand of hope and even the tiniest replicatory act would send me plummeting into the jaws of some kind of sub-cellular monster.

For the rest of the afternoon I stayed in my room and gulped down everything in sight. Aspirins, Tylenols, vitamins, kelp tablets, and even a birth control pill for good measure. My head was chained to a railroad track of anxiety and I needed something to set me free. Perhaps it was best to go see Mark and Wilkinson to feel out the situation before I committed to a story. I'd play it by ear, pretending everything was OK and see how they responded. If they confronted me I'd tell them about Vera and hedge around the ID problem by saying it was a mistake. I found the German dead and took his photos and ID out of curiosity. I didn't report it because I thought the police would have obviously known. That would work until I had time to get a lawyer. Sure I already told the entire truth to Nicola, but she was no FBI agent, and nobody could prove I said anything to her.

I finally fell asleep at around three in the afternoon. It wasn't the greatest sleep, but it was good enough. In my state any sleep would have been good enough. I even had a few nightmares. The best had Vera cutting off my dick with garden shears and planting it next to a cactus. So Freudian, you say. Too obvious. Well, do you know what happened next? This will shatter your hasty allegations of cliché. My penis sprouted into an LA sized expressway filled with renegade ice cream trucks! What do you make of that?

I woke up with a sharp pain in my chest. Imagine waking up into the body of Christ as the first lance was jammed in and you might get an inkling of how I felt. We're all pretty lucky when you think of it. We all get born into plump and bouncy little bodies. It could be worse. You could be born into a family of voles. You could be born into a soldier's body the instant before he stepped on a mine and got atomized all over some field. You could be born into the nosecone of a V-2 rocket ten-seconds before impact. Do you get my point? It could be worse, but not by much. Just put it this way: I wasn't too happy when I woke up.

I admired the sculpted contours of my face as I looked in the mirror and peered deeply into my large oval eyes. I still had it. I was hot. I had a future. I was a winner. I grabbed my best shirt from the fresh laundry beside the bathtub and put it on. Shower steam is the bachelor's secret iron. This shirt, however, was usually fine without ironing. Mustard rayon with little Western vignettes patterned all over it like ivy around a column. Stage coaches, gunslingers, horn-swagglers - the optimism and excitement of the old west. I bought it at a place on Melrose called _Breasts of Eros_. Unisex, of course. I wasn't about to let this small incident get me down. I'd bounce back. Immediately. I was going in to work and once there I'd drag Mark out to the Burgundy Room. That is, of course, if Wilkinson was keeping his word and handing everything over to Mark. This day would be like any other. My hair would be flashy, cropped, waxy-perfect. My ear-splitting sense of style would stop traffic dead on its heels. My looks would send all the chicks on a one-way ticket to Dreamland. This was the beginning of my new life. Fuck Nicola if that was her attitude. And if that didn't work, plan B was to get down on my hands and knees and beg to her. I had every angle covered.

I strutted confidently into the office, a cigarette dangling from the furthest tips of my fingers and a smart Beret pulled squarely down to my eyebrows. Mark and Vera were sitting in their usual places, busily working on what looked like a layout job. The room went into rigor mortis when they saw me. I wouldn't have been surprised if it had just gotten back from the taxidermist. I felt like an exotic specimen floating in a formaldehyde solution when they both turned to me and glared.

"Hi guys. I thought I'd step in to see if Wilkinson was good to his word," I said as if nothing had happened. Vera bowed her head downwards and walked out. Mark remained silent for a minute and then broke into a cold sardonic laugh.

"Bloody hell, Paul or whatever your name is. You've got a lot of balls to come back after last night. You really do."

"What do you mean?" I sent out a few feelers to see exactly what he knew.

"Don't be stupid. You tried to shag my bird and then you complained to her that I'm some sort of wild-eyed maniac who shouldn't be running a magazine in the first place. You even had the nerve to ask her to run away and listen to _The Bee Gees_ in some quiet little love den with you. And that's not the most of it, not even slightly." I assumed at this point that he at least knew something.

"I think there's been a misunderstanding," I said.

"This should be fun," he replied. "Shoot."

"It's not funny," I said sheepishly. "Vera pledged her undying love to me and swore she needed to get away from you." I sensed Mark could fly off at any minute and belt me in the mouth.

"Wait a minute, _slick_. Yes, there has been a misunderstanding. _You_ don't understand. Perhaps I should explain in black and white."

"Can I at least sit down?"

"Be my guest," he said coldly. I could see our friendship was on the way out.

"So?"

"We had good reason to suspect your sincerity and devotion to the magazine. I mean, just look at your record collection. Nothing. Not a single record worth the wax it was pressed on. And your articles all just seemed to ape other critics responses, only well after the fact. There was no heart, no soul, behind any of it. Admittedly, you're a decent photographer. But only by fluke, as Nicola explained to me." Then he digressed. "What a shock. No formal training, escaped from prison. In a way I'm proud to be part of such an unusual story. Anyhow, Vera loves me, our rough spot is over now. We wanted to give you a chance and test you before we split off from Wilkinson and set up _The Wire Door_. We wanted to do it right. No screw-ups, no fainthearted phonies. As it is, with Wilkinson dripping away in a puddle of lipstick and teenage angst, it looks like _The Wire Door_ is all systems go."

"And there's no way..."

"Don't even think of it. I'm surprised the police haven't caught up to you by now."

"The cops? You called them already?" Fuck it. I was hoping they hadn't and I could ease my way back into good favor. There was no other choice: I had to pull out all the stops and beg until my knees were a pile of powdered bone on the floor.

"Vera called them. Besides, she'd never work with you again. Too creeped out. Amazing, though." His voice assumed a tone of casual curiosity. "So you killed this German bloke just for the pictures and the ID?"

"It was a bar fight. He pulled a knife on me and I ended up stabbing him."

"That's not what the authorities say. Ha! A reckless murderer under our noses all along and we didn't even know. Perhaps we're at the forefront of music here, but you - my _ex_ -friend - were white-capping on the vanguard of crime. Fascinating."

"I can't believe you're turning me in, Mark," I pleaded. "What about all those times we had together? The Burgundy Room. Pantages. The Troubadour. The Palace. The Whiskey. The Palladium. Remember when we all fell into a heap and hugged each other after that conversation about socks? Can't you give me a chance? When I killed him, it was an accident. Honest. He tried to break a bottle over my head. I've changed."

"You've changed? Oh, how truly touching. Murderer/confidence man reforms. I'm sure it would make headlines in all the finest tabloids. And I suppose you've turned to God too. How wonderful. Simply marvellous."

I couldn't stand him sitting there mocking me like that. It was too much. I leapt up at him and lunged at his throat. "You bastard, how dare you betray me, how dare you call the cops. If I go back to jail you're fucked, I swear, you're finished." A bead of sweat dripped downwards from his left nostril. For a moment all I could hear was the sound of air scraping through his crumpled throat. I could kill him right there, I thought. He deserved it for setting me up. I always had a soft spot for Vera, and he used it to trick me.

I cocked my fist back to punch him as I continued to press my other thumb into his throat. But he looked so weak-kneed and vulnerable there with his punked-up hairdo and _Einzurstende Neubauten_ ear ring. I could even smell a hint of hair gel wafting through the air. He looked like all those two-hundred-dollar-shoe cult rockers that hung out on Sunset Boulevard.

"Let me go, mate," was all he said. His voice was strangely distant and muffled like one might imagine a caterpillar's scream sounded like from the insides of its cocoon. I relaxed my grip and pulled back. Beating up my old friends wasn't really me. I was a gentle person at heart. Suave, urbane. I really did regret killing those people, you know. If only the woman didn't start screaming. I blocked it all out and tried my best to forget about it. If I told you I killed her you never would have liked me enough to listen anyway. Everyone needs to be loved - even me. And as for the German, I made up that story in my head that he was queer and tried to kill me. How else could I deal with the guilt? It wasn't easy dealing with the aftermath. All the blood on my hands, the nightmares especially. And that's the _true_ truth, not this false falsity stuff I've been feeding you all along. But when you think about it, aren't they really the same thing? I was just too desperate to care.

"Just get out. And don't come around anymore. It's between you and the authorities. We wish you the best, we really do." He held out his hand in exactly the same way he did the night before and a tear trickled from his eye. I grabbed his hand and squeezed. It was warm, almost too warm. Almost like a female's touch. For a second I felt close to him, but then I recoiled. There was something too cozy about touching another man's hand.

"Good luck," I said solemnly, slowly. I think I may have meant it too. Then I dropped his hand and ran. My last chance was Nicola. Only she could save me. Jenny almost saved me from prison last time, so why not Nicola? She could lend me some money and the two of us could escape to Canada. They say Vancouver is a hopping place these days. Loaded with Orientals, fag-bars, and totem poles: Seattle without the guns.

I jumped into my car and headed straight to her place.

### VIII

High-tech penis enlargement agencies, drive-in poodle manicurists, all-night marimba warehouses: I passed them all on the way to see Nicola. Quality establishments to be sure, but I was in too much of a hurry to bother. The thought had occurred to me more than just once that this could really be the end. That meant I'd have to beg and squirm, I'd have to do whatever I could to convince her of the purity of my intentions. I was innocent, I loved her, and we could get married tomorrow. She still wasn't sure I killed the woman, so maybe I had a chance. And Vera was just a temptress who tried to take advantage of me to suit her own ends. Nicola would buy it. She'd have to if I cried hard enough.

The wheels of my convertible scraped against the curb as I pulled up to her apartment. Ah. I could feel a breath of hope rush into me like helium into a fairground balloon as I calmly squeezed the car door handle and stepped out onto the pavement.

I rang the buzzer five times before she answered. Her voice came across the intercom, metallic and distorted like a transmission from another planet. "Come in", she said neutrally. The door buzzed and I entered.

The door was already open when I reached her apartment. I walked in and poked my head into the living room. She was sitting on the couch flipping nervously through a magazine. An uneasy smile gusted across her face.

"Come in, Paul...or, sorry, _Robert_."

"Let's not get into that again," I said disconsolately.

"What else is there to say?"

"What do you mean?" I stepped over her coffee table and sat beside her on the couch.

"You betrayed me and you betrayed your friends."

"That's not true. I can explain."

"It doesn't matter."

"I can make it matter."

"It's gone too far."

"Forgive me, darling." I started sobbing and crumbled into a heap on her lap. She pulled away at first, but after a few genuine tears she softened up and let me bury my head between her legs.

"You're so pathetic. It's not that I think you're a bad person. I've said it so many times before. You're bright, handsome, introspective on a certain level, but somehow you just don't all fit together," she said stroking my head. _Fit together_ , I repeated to myself. Like the tiles in the Tetris game. Had one somehow come loose?

"I've changed. We can be together. Vancouver, Montreal. We can be safe up there."

"No," she said. Her voice had the detached finality of an intercom announcement in a high school lunchroom.

"Give me a chance. I'm not a violent person. It was a mistake. It was. Do you know what its like to be on the run in Mexico without a hope? What would you have done? I love you. Us, Nicola. Us. God, I can't face going back to jail."

"Your wife says you were an actor."

"I was. I failed."

"And you failed again. You slipped out of character when you fell for me. An actor should never do that."

"I'm no actor. I love you. I need you."

"No. I think you're an actor on an even deeper level. Beneath this act, your life is but another act." I had to admit she was getting a little preachy. I felt like some kind of soulless alien creature being lectured by Captain Kirk on proper intergalactic conduct at the end of some Star Trek episode.

"Give me a chance," I begged in a show of tears. She stood up and walked to her room.

She came back a few minutes later and sat beside me.

"I need you," I pleaded. "Let me buy you a cinnamon bun at Canters. We can go away."

She hesitated only slightly before turning her head into mine. Our lips touched.

"OK. Give me the afternoon. We can meet back at your place. I'll think about it."

"Oh, Nicola!" I exclaimed, piddling all over her with my lips and hands.

"I still feel for you," she said placidly. For a moment her face seemed chiselled into the surroundings like a carving on a stone tablet heralding in some great new utopia. I felt a ray of hope well up inside me. We could escape. Escape like me and Enrico to yet another life. I touched a finger to her soft mocha cheeks and a tear rolled from her eye. A tear of love and forgiveness.

I hugged her one last time and stood up.

"At my place later?" I asked with coy optimism.

"Later," she said sweetly.

"We can build gingerbread houses together," I said.

I blew a kiss to her and rushed off downstairs. I needed a quick shower and shave to get ready for the sexual gymnastics that would inevitably shake down when she came by later. I revved up my engine and slipped in a tape as I rolled into motion. It was a compilation from Mark's personal collection. At least he'd left me something. Oh, well. I didn't need him anymore anyway. He was never a true friend anyway.

Yes, I thought, Yes. It looked like the old Smith charm had come up trumps again. The tape started as I accelerated past a minivan onto the entrance ramp of the freeway. Great timing. Definitely a good sign. It was one Mark used to play all the time at work. _The Buzcocks_.

Hollow inside, I was hollow inside, but I couldn't find out the reason why.

I always wondered what this song was getting at. I mean it seemed a bit odd that somebody would go through such an effort just to sing about being hollow. Must've just been some sort of coke-induced nonsense. The next song was even stupider.

Wait here. Go there.

Come in. Stay out.

Be yourself. Be someone else.

Obey the law. Break the law.

Be ambitious. Be honest.

Plan ahead. Be spontaneous.

At this point I turned off the tape. This song was too much. Especially the cheesy Cylon voices that spoke in counterpoint to the singer - who sounded like he'd just been castrated and then injected with enough speed to send Art Linkletter to the nuthouse. I took it out and jammed in my _Steely Dan_ tape. _Ricki Don't Lose That Number_. Ah, Ricki. Whatever happened to her? She was sweet. I guess I'd never see her again if I'd be escaping to Canada with Nicola. Sort of a shame, since I always wondered what she was like in bed. But I guess I'd never find out. I loved Nicola and that was final.

I negotiated the exit and navigated to my apartment. There were a few police cars in front. At first I thought they'd come for me, but then I calmed down and convinced myself I was just being paranoid. This was my lucky day. I'd just won Nicola back and the future was sprouting before my very eyes like a bed of new shoots in a bamboo patch. I pulled up against the curb and got out of my car. An officer walked up to me. His face was wrinkled and covered with sweat.

"We're looking for Robert Smith," he said flashing his badge. I didn't even have a chance to run before he pushed me up against the wall and cuffed me. My first thought was that it was a joke, but then a second officer pulled out a gun and aimed it at my head.

"He could be dangerous. He's wanted for murder," I heard a voice shouting through a distant megaphone.

Nicola had turned me in. She'd betrayed me. And to think she once claimed to love me. Goes to show. The words of that wretched _Buzzcocks_ song spun through my head like a fan belt in a broken motor as the cops threw me into the back of a police car and carted me off to the station.

Hollow inside, they were hollow inside, but I couldn't find out the reason why.

Yes, the cops, Nicola, and all my friends were all so damn hollow inside. No song could have been more appropriate. They screwed me over. They turned against me. Threw away all the time we spent together on the basis of some silly episode in from my past they'd somehow uncovered. If they were true friends they wouldn't have been investigating me in the first place. Decent people always give you a second chance. I would never say that I was the best of men, but I certainly wasn't the worst. I was no sicko. Those murders were passion crimes. At least I had a heart. At least I cared. But not these guys. They had no morals. Nothing.

### 7. Walls of Glass and Flowers

### I

The walls here are gray - a thousand shades of gray. I never knew gray could have such variety, such endless flexibility. I heard Eskimos have a hundred words for snow, but how about a thousand shades of gray? I've tried a dozen times to name them all, but more keep cropping up. Toe-jam gray, the gray of the silverfish scurrying across the floor, the gray of the warden's eyes. There's little else here to do. So much silence. But silence isn't as bad as they say. It's really quite interesting once you give it a chance. It has its own language, its own tongue. I'm learning it. It's coming slowly, but it's coming. That's the important thing. The declensions of silence.

I never should have trusted Nicola to begin with. If I'd gone on playing my Tetris game and posing as a photographer I'd probably still be prancing through the streets of Hollywood, camera slung around my shoulder as I stacked chicks on my dick like marshmallows on a stick. It's so easy to be lulled into complacency, so easy to raft away from your principles. There's no doubt about it: it was my love for Nicola that banished me once more from the world of men. How strange that something so seemingly innocent as Nicola's love could be so utterly devastating. In some ways I think this is just some form of metaphysical punishment for betraying my inner self. Nicola was sent by the Gods of Mendacity to test my faith and I failed miserably.

The first few months in prison were awful. Almost worse than those first days back in Mexico. Worse in their finality. But I feel like I've almost paid for my sins already. The evidence against me was shaky at best so they say I might get out on good behaviour in just a few years. So, things aren't really all that bad when you think about it. Believe it or not, Nicola even came by to visit me the other day. Women just love their outlaws, don't they? This is the second time she's tried in the six months I've been here and the second time I've refused to see her. She left a note with the warden and I mustered up the courage to open it. I imagined her reading it in her bedroom before sealing it with her tongue and sending it away, that feel-good seventies look of hers flying at half-mast across her toffee colored face.

Dear Robert,

I felt I should write to you to tell you what's been happening but also because I feel bad for what I did. I still feel it was right to turn you in, but I can't deny that on some level I have feelings for you – pity perhaps? You probably don't care, but I still think about you sometimes. I know life goes on and I have already started to see another man, but I just wanted you to know that I am trying to make sense of all this and do my best to see you in a light of understanding rather than condemnation.

_Mark and Vera got married and The Wire Door has ended its first half-year. It's too early to say how well_ _it will do, but Mark is much happier now that he is the boss. Vera is the art director and I've left to get a job with Rhino records in the PR department. I still see them once a month or so._

They tell me you maybe out in a few years. I hope you keep well until then. But I don't think I should keep in touch anymore. I just had a few things to say. I hope you don't hate me. I only did what I thought was right. Nicola

She didn't sign it "Love", but what can a man expect? Love, or whatever happens between men and women, just seems so vague and tenuous to me these days. Although I sometimes miss her, she turned me in and I can never forgive that. There's fond memories, for sure. I really did love her, you know and I understand she was only trying to protect herself. After all, I was lying to her all along – or was I? I'm not really sure I know anymore. She thinks I was lying and that's all that counts, isn't it? In spite of all this, I still come out the winner because she came to see me and I don't care anymore. There's a little bit of _me_ pumping through her veins and I'm satisfied with that. I had a genuinely good time with her. It was worth it. When I think of Hollywood, I think of those days and nights I spent surfing across the surging oceans of flesh, wiping lipstick off my chest as I tossed aside yet another pair of frothing wet panties to brace myself for the next triumphant wave. The cocaine, the rock shows, the parties. Most people lead pretty dull lives, you know, but no one could ever say that of me.

Yesterday I stayed up late in my cell thinking. The warden had just told me the prison was escape proof. All night long I paced back and forth, struggling with a cold tightening sensation my crotch. First I thought of those silly fools at Caltech with their vanishing socks and then I thought of other things too. I imagined the cell was a vast orb hurtling through space. I imagined the walls were painted with the faces of a cheering crowd and while I was standing on center stage. But by morning I had already stopped thinking about what the warden said. Who needs to escape when you have your imagination? I can change my mind seventeen thousand times per second and nobody cares. You don't have to be anybody here. It's a comforting feeling. No commitments, no responsibilities. Only me and my imagination.

I'm actually starting to like it here. There's a lot of time for memories. This morning my thoughts wound back to that party where Vera was getting all hot and bothered about toys. I never contributed much to that conversation because I was more into books when I was a kid. My favorite book was one about Richard The Lion Hearted. His name always confused me because I couldn't figure out why anybody would associate lions with courage. They seemed like a bunch of lazy bastards to me, just sitting there licking their fat paws waiting for the wife to bring home some food to gorge their fat chops on. And they only had sex once every few years - a bunch of boring losers when you think about it. I did have a few good toys though. I remember a marionette my father gave me when I was seven. Gorgeous. Henry VIII. Gold brocade robes, the whole works. I got curious and undressed it to see what it looked like naked. Well, after tearing off layer upon layer of clothes there was nothing inside but a poorly sewn wheat-colored dummy. I was so disappointed I cried for half an hour and tore the faceless mannequin to shreds.

But why should I worry about the past anyway? It's just another layer of illusion. The present is all that really counts. Everything I need is right here in front of me. Four walls are a lot more than you think. This is because you have to include the ceiling and the floor, bringing the total tally up to six. But then there's so much else. Too much else. The walls are a forest buzzing with adventure. They're burning, they're exploding, they're folding, they're collapsing. A swaying soup of crumbling geometries is lapping all around me. I'm not bitter. No. How could I be? There's so much more to look forward to. This is only the start. The world has so many beginnings, you know. And there's so much time, so much time.

### The End

