The Cause (22 page)

“What’s I’m gonna do with a dolla?” the bootlegger said to the drunk holding up the ten. “Time I run across the street it ain’t worth nothin’ but fity cent.” He turned away to another man, but the drunk raised his fist, doubling the offer to twenty bucks. The bootlegger said, “You got watches? You got jewelry? You got guns or ammo, then we talk. You want this shit cheap, you gotta pay with somin’ real.”

I moved to another table where they were selling stolen laptops. I checked one of them out and made sure it worked. I haggled a bit, and after arguing about the use of cash, agreed to pay double the “gold value.” I put the laptop in a backpack and
walked up Hyde. A crowd of people wrapped around the block, waited to get in a shelter on the corner of Eddy. On Geary, a McDonald’s near Union Square Park came into view. I sat down on a bench, took out the laptop, and jammed in a DVD with a Red Hat installer. After the disk was reformatted and the new OS ready to use, I brought up a browser using the McDonald’s Wi-Fi. I logged onto the Gmail account of a Miss Theresa Ross, a divorced retired woman in her sixties living nearby whose life had been stolen by The Anthill.

No messages were left from the party I was expecting in the
Drafts
folder. A silence I failed to understand. I wrote an email to Betty Smith, a person in the contact list and one within the cluster of compromised accounts. I wrote:
Dear Betty, going to Walmart tomorrow in the afternoon. Weren’t you coming?
I saved it as a draft, not sending it. Then I deleted all of the cookies, erased the history, and left with the laptop. It would be the second to last time for two things: the number of uses for the laptop, and the number of times Theresa Ross’s account would be used.

I got to the hotel a half an hour later. At the bar, I sipped a Bombay Sapphire gin and tonic. Sweet whiffs of a lemon peel scented my nose. Tonic fizzed in the glass, the light clamor of bubbles bursting against the sides. Staring at the ice cubes, I still believed I had wandered into a dream. I twirled the glass, studied the legs, gazed at the silvery liquid dripping off the sides. The simple pleasure of swishing a drink in your hands, dropping a cashew nut on your tongue and rolling off the salty skin after it’s been shelled. I told myself I’d made it—I was in the here and now—alive and kicking in the Homeland. With The Abattoir behind me, I savored every breath of American air as if I were a newborn babe. My mind didn’t dwell on the Tenderloin. San Francisco had always been a dump in that neighborhood. Real changes, I wasn’t yet ready to admit.

Instead, I felt a little whimsical. I thought of my brother and whether he was still alive—Blue, wondering which new fighter
he was turning out, how many contenders he’d have in line. I had no idea how to get ahold of my brother, but a thought flew into my head to give Blue a call, the idea rebuffed a quick second later realizing the booze had done its tricks.

Conversations overturned around the bar, most about the forthcoming Datalion conference. The TV mounted behind the bar blared playback of a local newscast about renewed demonstrations out in Oakland. Several dissidents had been arrested the night before. Three men named as the leaders. A throng of cameramen swept around a set of cars as they approached a courthouse. Black-jacketed Homeland officers escorted them out of vehicles. The clip flashed to each of the defendants rising in front of a jury. Charged with looting, disturbing the peace, and assault on police officers. The caption at the bottom of the screen read each had been sentenced to the minimum-security McKay Creek National Wildlife Uplift Camp near Pendleton, Oregon. The reporter applauded the humane sentencing while condemning the heinous crime.

I sipped on my second gin and tonic. This time the ginfizz not as delectable as before. The pitter-patter of brush sticks on a snare sounded out gently from across the room. A muted trumpet followed, the trumpeter blowing something ragtime, a sibling tune to “Rhapsody in Blue” with flutter and growl. Finally, the sound of a stand-up bass entered like a tugboat, the low thump vibrating on the floor. I dropped a sigh into the air. The drummer’s rocky voice called for a round of applause for the singer, simply named Promise. The trumpeter pulled out the stem of a copper Harmon and softened the place down.

She waltzed into the dimly lit room like a bursting high note. Smile and flash, wearing a short black evening dress diamond-latticed in the back. Eyes in the place tripped up on her sleek lanky body. The spotlight caught her in a circle, head beaming, lips aglow in a candy-cane red. Her dark hair was oiled and slick, pinned back. A blood-red rose pinned in her hair seemed as if it
had bloomed there, the corsage like a lighthouse beacon under the spotlight. Her face seemed to be a watercolor, a kind of Monet blur as my eyes failed to fully capture her. Then she lit up a smile and came into focus. The doghouse bass thumped around the tables heavy as bricks as she floated a wave across the room. Suddenly, I was pushing myself farther back in the chair.

The salvo of applause tapered off to a murmuring whisper. Then her cotton voice drifted over the room, light as a feather, taking ears from wide-open plain to snow-capped mountain. The next half-hour she sang a range of silky scat to dolorous orotund long notes, each song tangling in the audience’s ears.

Finally, the band called for a break, and she sauntered up to the bar and ordered a lemon water. Facing the bar, I craned my neck toward her, held a stare too long. She caught my eyes and said, “Are you just going to stare at me cock-eyed like a bird without a beak, or are you going to say something.”

I laughed. “I think I’ll just keep pecking at my drink and admire you from afar.” I turned away from her, glancing into one of the large mirrors mounted behind the bar. She peeked into the mirror several times, stealing glances. We danced like this a minute until the trumpet player came up to her and planted a kiss on her cheek.

As she turned to go, she said, “You know what they say, don’t you?”

“What’s that?” I asked, eyes still in the mirror.

“The early bird gets the worm.” She draped an arm around the trumpeter. Pinning a wink on me, she flashed her mouth full of pearls and faded through the crowd.

I called out in a comedian’s voice. “That bird has to sing through a piece of metal to play a pretty song. Me, I’m just naturally pretty.”

She laughed at this, did a half-turn for a quick glance back. The trumpeter was eyeing me, taking her away as if she were a meadow flower he had just picked and was unwilling to share.

Six hours later I was in her room. After her set was through, we had bantered more at the bar. She had given me the nod and we moved up to the eighth floor. She was in town for the DL conference, then it would be back to Vegas.

Inside her room, the bathroom door cracked halfway open. Her silhouette spilled on the carpet from the light splintering out of the door. Her shadow gyrated in a ropy dance as she brushed her hair. A bit of hum still hung in her voice. Soft moans lingered in her throat, a sad melody hooking the heart like chords from a Stradivarius. She swung the door open, and a slit in her robe opened cutting her through the middle. My eyes jumped helplessly toward a breast bouncing within. The curtains were closed, yet the city lights slipped through their pores. Fractals of light danced over her as she moved toward me, her soft skin a medium absorbing them. Her robe swished from one shoulder to the next. She plopped down on the bed next to me and ran a fingernail over my cheek. “So,” she said, “what instrument do you really sing through?”

“One that enjoys wit more than song,” I said.

She nodded, then looked toward the door. “Didn’t I ask you to leave?”

“You did, but I had trouble finding my feet.”

“They’re right here,” she said, grabbing one, “and I’m quite positive you know how to use them.”

“I’ll leave, if that’s what you really want.”

She eased toward me. I felt her hip on my stomach, a glorious curve to it that swallowed me. She stroked my ear, running a finger behind it, trailing it over my lips, over my collarbone. She looked over to the door again, then moved her eyes back into mine. “After another minute, it would be a wise idea.”

“A minute then to feel human again.”

Her expression flipped. A frown appeared. “You don’t feel human? That sounds rather complicated.”

It was a stupid thing to say, and I became apprehensive, as if
I had startled the water in a fishpond. “Do you know I’ve been to Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangkok, Shanghai, and Beijing within the last four days? I’ve slept maybe ten hours between all of it.”

“So you want to sleep then?”

I laughed. “Hardly.”

I ran a thumb over her eyebrow, a slow arch tracing over it. Her eyelashes flickered, soft little beats, butterfly wings. I turned my elbow under the pillow my head was resting on to get a better view of her. My fingers glided to the knot of her robe. “Don’t you ever have a need to just bask in the moment a bit?”

“Let the moment be?” she said, taking my hand into hers. “Without posing any more questions?”

“Yes.”

“Considering the intimate position we’re putting ourselves in, isn’t it more appropriate to get know one another.”

“It is,” I said, “but we don’t need to take this that far?”

She laughed, dotted me on the nose. “Now you’re talking like every other man who wants to get in my pants after I tell them they’re not getting the sugar.”

I leaned forward and kissed her. Her hands pushed at my shoulders, but then eased, slipping toward my back. She took my tongue into her mouth, and moved on top of me. Her robe opened, and her breasts poured out onto my chest as she laid flat on top of me. As she kissed my ear, rocking herself over my hips, my mind deep in bliss, I wrapped my hands behind her back. As my fingers touched her skin, I felt the crosshatched tracks of flesh, welts running in straight lines, intersecting with one another, and my hands jumped off. She must have sensed the revulsion in the sudden jerk. My mind too slow to catch the significance—this part of the diversion. A sting picked me on the left side of my neck. I bucked, trying to fling her off, but she had my legs tied up with her own.

“What have you done?” I yelled, twisting one of my arms out of her grasp, grabbing her by the throat as she made a renewed
effort to push her weight on top of me. My limbs going numb, The Abattoir flashed fresh in my mind. She pushed my arm away from her throat, her nose almost touching mine, her breath a hot pant. Her glassy eyes turned sinister, but the soft, playful singer’s smile still bloomed on her face, erotic lips almost wet with a tune. “Really?” she said, kissing me on the nose. “We don’t have to take this that far? What a shit line. And you started off so well.”

I struggled for leverage, but my arms had turned to rubber and she had my wrists pinned with her hands.

She laughed, her head tilting to the ceiling. “Is this slow enough for you?”

“Who are you?” I mumbled. To this question, she simply smiled. She must have felt the drugs had enough time to do their work as she let go of my wrists, sat up on my stomach, and pulled her robe tight.

“You already know the answer to that,” she said. “Your brain is just slow getting there. The blood has been drained from one head to another.”

She now had me feeling a fool, a tone of Seee in her voice, chastising me.

“You’ve been through The Abattoir,” I said.

“Yes.”

“He beat you?”

“Seee, you mean. You can say the name. It’s safe.”

“Yes, Seee.”

“No, Des did it.”

I paused, trying to imagine it. Finally, I said, “He sent
you
to fuck with me.”

“He sent me over here to check up on you. He doesn’t think your head is in the game.”

I was silent for another moment, my lips now the only part of me that could move. “Beat me if you will.”

“Beat you? I’m your partner. Betty Smith at your service.” She
laughed again while reaching under the mattress. A hypodermic needle appeared in her hand.

“You?”
I asked incredulously.

She had the needle pointed to the ceiling, tapping it with a finger. A bit of liquid spurted out of the needle as she squeezed. “Ready to go to Walmart, Miss Theresa Ross?”

“Wait! Wait! Wait—”

“You’re a man easily manipulated, Isse Corvus.”

“I know,” I admitted.

She looked down at me for a long time, tapping the needle again—the finger buying a second’s worth of time so she could think things through. Perhaps something sexy stood out for her in my vulnerability. Perhaps she saw herself stuck numb under someone from somewhere in her past, lying helpless on her back, waiting for the inevitable. Her black eyes were absent of pity, but certainly underneath the tough glare shined a hint of understanding. She produced a shoestring and tied it around my upper arm, jerking it tight. No sensation, even as she knotted it twice.

I garbled the words but said, “What else can I say? I’m human. Now go ahead and do it!”

She gazed heavily into my eyes as she stuck the needle deep into a vein, pushing the liquid slowly into me. She sighed as she let her robe fall once more. She inched forward on my chest, moving over me so her breasts fell lightly over my face. “Sweet dreams, Shane Carrier,” she said, circling a nipple around one of my eyes. Moving it to my lips, she let the softness of it take me peacefully away as a hum slipped back into her voice.

Time vanished on the morning of February 3rd. Strange how one can disappear completely from oneself only to reappear, the spell of REM not really part of our daily thought process. Even as we live, we are all part ghost, chiming into the spatial fabric of another—perhaps darker—universe. Only a moment ago Promise sat on top of me singing a lullaby cloaked in her beautiful nakedness. Now, I grasped empty sheets thinking she had rolled over next to me. Traces of her scent hung in the air suffocating my sense of reason about what she had done. I propped myself onto my elbows. Arms alive again, I squeezed them one at a time, up and down, testing them as if my biceps were ripe fruit. Leaning forward, I grasped my head in my hands and felt the thin bristle on top of my scalp. I rubbed my eyes and contemplated what had happened. Perhaps she was right. I was a man without discipline who couldn’t keep his mind on the game. At that moment, I felt like quitting, disappearing with the wad of cash I had been given by The Minutemen.
Find another life
, I told myself.
Live for yourself—Fuck the nation—Fuck The Cause
.

I rose to my feet and gathered my clothes with the full intent of executing Plan B. On the door was a note. It read:

Today is a rest day, Shane. We think you need one. Stop feeling sorry for yourself and pull yourself together. Kisses, Promise
.

Who was this woman? She had an uncanny way of knowing what I thought. A certain intrigue about her itched more than it annoyed.

I lumbered back to my room and stretched out in yoga positions before I hopped in the shower, then down to the restaurant for breakfast wearing simple jeans, a plain black T-shirt,
an A’s hat, and a dark pair of sunglasses. Afterward, I roamed down Turk Street again. A sunny day lit up the blue sky, but the smoke once again clouded up the air. It dawned on me the torched-up neighborhood was spillover from the Oakland demonstrations.

I crossed the street. The same bootlegger shouted at his stand hawking liquor. This time he was taking EBT Product cards, refusing the cash ones. I walked back to Market Street. The DL throngs stampeded in a pilgrimage to the Moscone Center. Clusters of them, with badges roped around their necks, rushed in eager flight to catch the opening keynote, to listen to Blake Thompson’s annual diatribe on the future of computing. I continued up Market until I hit Embarcadero, and headed up the coast. Seagulls squawked from far in the distance. I strolled the promenade, surprised to see the once-pristine sidewalks gum-splatted and shit-stained, cracked and dilapidated. Long rows of tents clustered between shipping docks and piers. The sea air smelled of brine and urine.

Men in dusty suits hawked watches and jewelry, old family heirlooms, silverware, and trinkets passed down through the generations. Cutmen they called them, byproducts of another wave of corporate redundancies, the nexus between the dying middleclass and the sucking Morlocks dependent on the state. But here were thinking men—obeyed their own rule of law, set up their own court, laws plastered on streetlights. The lampposts advertised one had to show prior proof of employment, fill out a questionnaire to be accepted. Open protest here. A mini-society living in mucky tents leaking into the bloodstream of the city. It was a Christiania inside Copenhagen, a society within a society, a superposition of humanity beating to a different drum. Like Turk Street, it was another arrhythmia in the heartbeat of the city by the bay, a presence unable to be ignored.

Men preached on milk crates, yelling about government injustices. Small crowds gathered, but the orators were preaching to
the choir, the tent people having nothing better to do. The majority of tourists had long since fled to Pier 39, the last bastion of San Francisco tourism. At Pier 33, even Alcatraz was closed.

Out on the promenade, an older man had unbuttoned his shirt and was showing a crowd his chest port. I approached and listened to him preach.

“How do you change people’s minds? You obfuscate the issue. You redirect emotion. You delude them. What does a parent do when a child cries and becomes sick of the screaming?”

The crowd murmured waiting for a reply. “You give them a piece of candy. You appeal to their sense of instant gratification. That’s what Brainfinger is. It’s robbing us of our free minds and our intelligent thought. It’s creating cattle out of us, and it’s growing. Two more Uplift camps have started up. One in Napa, the other just outside Palm Springs. But they’re building clinics now in this city.”

He went on to speak about community members arrested at cybercafés for “terrorist propaganda.” He warned the Cutmen were listed as a community of interest, targets of the State, and some of them had been shipped off to Uplift camps and never seen again.

As he was midsentence, he pointed to a flock of MAV drones high up in the air incognito under the guise of crows’ bodies. They swooped down squawking from the sky in a strafing attack. The crowd dispersed, jogging away in different directions. I hid behind a streetlamp. The orator seemed ready for this eventuality, pulling out the metal top of a trashcan as a hail of rubber bullets rained down on him.

When the drones flew on, I slipped out of my hiding place and went over to him.

“These ones are less offensive than the ones they use for crowd control,” he said, picking a rubber nub up and rubbing it between his fingers. “This caliber will leave only bruises. They’re
called crowd-breakers.”

“I guess with their size, they can’t shoot anything lethal.”

“They will in time,” he said. “That I’ll wager on.”

He had a head of hair as irongray as a San Francisco fog, bushy and disheveled. A limp bothered him from his left leg which he tried to conceal. When he smiled, the skin on his craggy face straightened, showing a once-distinguished man who now fought to regain his dignity. I offered to help him carry some of his stuff—his aluminum garbage can shield, his orator’s pedestal (a plastic milk-carton), a big mountaineering backpack, and an army-surplus duffle bag full of clothes. He thanked me for my assistance, but said he didn’t need it. The Cutman asked for my name, and I told him it was Shane Carrier, L.A. tourist visiting a friend. I remarked the place had changed a lot over the years. He nodded. I asked him why they closed Alcatraz.

“Reopening it as a prison,” he said, “but most likely it will be an Uplift facility.”

“You know anyone who’s come out of one?”

“Are you kidding?” he said, guffawing. “Dead or alive, or both?” He followed up the question with another laugh. The laugh stuck with me—the “which world do you live in” laugh, hearty and full, a jawbone chuckle that said I lived in the land of the clueless.

“I’ve been through one,” he said. “Didn’t you see my chest?”

“I was late to your speech. What’s this Brainfinger you’re talking about?”

“That’s its street name. You’ve heard of Elevation haven’t you?”

“Yes, it’s the drug their using, but how is it you’re sober?”

“I still have to go in for shots or they’ll jail me. It’s part of my probation. That’s how they do it. They fabricate a charge—usually disturbing the peace or resisting arrest—then they give you jail time and offer an Uplift site as an alternative. If they really want to nail you to the cross, they’ll give you a felony and
you’ll be forced to go.”

He heaped the backpack on and slung the duffle bag over his shoulder. Even a Cutman had more things to hold onto. “How long have you been off it?”

“A few days,” he said.

“I heard it was supposed to last much longer than that.”

“It is, but I know a neurologist, and I’ve been able to secure the closest thing to an antidote. It takes a couple of days to work before your brain comes back from the scrambled-egg state though.”

He started walking. I didn’t care where we went. I just wanted to follow. “What’s it like being on it?”

“Like a hand massaging your thoughts, leading you away from negativity and worry into a false world of bliss. It’s a weeklong mushroom trip, but twice as strong. Colors are more vibrant, your cheeks balloon from all the smiling you do. I remember in the Santa Cruz Uplift they showed us shark attacks, violent shit of people being eaten, and we’d have to write up our thoughts. Reading the shit afterward, you’d think they had just showed us
Finding Nemo.”

I gazed at him bewildered. He read my look.

“It’s a cartoon. You’re too young. Anyway, it’s shiny, happy people shit. I doubt you’d remember that either. It’s another dopamine drug, genetically engineered. A lot of people don’t mind going in when the alternative is jail. Most go back even after they’ve been camping. Those released and charged again, who face the same choice—ninety-five percent of them choose to go back. You got folks clamoring to get into the Uplifts, people pretending to be anarchists for the free high. But they’ve been pretty successful weeding people out. They’re spinning it as a place people want to go. They’ll only take limited numbers. But that’s all a lie. We know who they’re sending there—the threats.”

I was silent as we walked on.

“Listen, Shane. This hits hard at our stomachs, but the blue
pill has been taken, man. We can’t just shrug our shoulders at it.”

I nodded and thanked him, shook his hand then wandered back to the hotel and found Promise reading a book on a couch in the lobby. When she saw me, she stood and walked outside. I went to the front desk and asked if I had received any messages. After the desk attendant told me I didn’t, I went outside and saw her lingering at a shop window across the street. I followed her to a secluded park with a fountain inside, the noise enough to smother any listening device.

I sat down next to her on the ledge of the fountain, rivulets of water spraying my arms as I waited for her to speak. She peered into my eyes, reading me. Perhaps for a sign of forgiveness. She didn’t seem the type.

“Thanks for the lullaby,” I said, putting her at ease. Her lips curled up cautiously, avoiding a full-blown smile, the emotional show enough for her to crawl back into her static mode of observation. Another thirty seconds went by. I dipped my hand in the pool, the water cold and biting. “Why did you join?”

“Why does anyone join?”

“To make their lives mean something. Isn’t that what it’s all about?” It was a borrowed line from my father. Staring through my Dobson telescope when I was a kid, he’d ask,
Do you ever wonder what’s it’s really all about?

“And why do you feel that’s necessary?” Her words almost drowned in the tumbling water behind her.

“I asked you first.”Her lips pressed together. “Not directly.”

“Indirectly then. But I asked you first.”

She smiled, looked down and shut her eyes, thinking. A second later, she flashed them open, eyes now white as teeth. “I can’t tell you that.”

“Why not?”

“It might reveal too much.”

“The stars reveal too much, Promise. They tell us we’re going
to die before their light can even get to us. Perhaps you don’t trust me?”

“Who does?”

It wounded me and I ingested a heavy breath, swallowing it like a hairball. A bit of facial drama was thrown into it, a childhood tactic my brother used to make a point.

“You’ve not proved anything yet,” she said. “Besides your ability to kill someone.”

“That hurts.”

“You seem to want praise before it’s merited.”

“How so?”

“Look at you last night. Swaggering around, trying to pick me up. Had you forgot your reasons for being here?”

I brushed a hand over my head. “I didn’t forget. You’re right. What can I say? I caved into desire. You know where I’ve been. You know what I’ve been through.”

“Yeah, I know what you’ve been through all right.”

“You proved yourself out in the jungle then.”

She stared at me hard, looking at me as if a bitter memory had sprung to life. “More than
you’ll
ever know.”

“Don’t you want to feel human every now and then? Do we have to give that up too?”

“You showed a lack of discipline.”

“I’m not denying it, Promise. How much longer do you want to beat me up about it?” I took another breath recognizing my short fuse, then lowered my voice. “Aren’t we supposed to be discussing something else now?”

“We’ll get to that,” she said. “I’m trying to figure out whom I’m working with. This is not a fucking game, so tell me something real—something that matters and I promise you I’ll reciprocate.”

“What if I don’t?”

She sharpened her eyes. “I’ll call it off.”

“You’d do that?”

“Damn straight I would.”

I saw an indefatigable will within her stuck there her entire life. This bond was our common ground. Even though we had given a hundred percent, our lives failed to turn out how we imagined.

“I killed my father accidently,” I said.

“You know I know that. Try again.”

I fixed my eyes on the ground. “My brother’s a drug lord. He almost killed me.”

“Okay, that’ll do. Go on.”

“After my father was killed, I was cleared by the police shrink and started coming off the meds. Then I was put back on the street. No one wanted to partner-up with me, so the sergeant assigned me a rook. About a week later, dispatch called in with a domestic in progress. It was in our beat, so we rushed to the scene and heard a man and woman shouting inside. We knocked, said our lines, and the door opened. They were giving us the sweet-ass routine, so we holstered our weapons and started asking questions. Then a smoke grenade rolled down the stairs from the upper floor. My partner darted out of the door and ran directly into the ambush. They tasered and cuffed him. I was knocked unconscious by someone inside and moved to a different location. I woke up in a garage somewhere. Then one of my brother’s boys told him it was rise and shine, and he appeared out of the shadows and beat me senseless. At the end of it, he put a gun to my head. What he didn’t count on was that I would grab it, put in my mouth, and try to pull the trigger.”

“What happened?”