The Road Narrows As You Go (38 page)

Rachael concentrated on the cartoon and on her noise music and suffered from bouts of insomnia once a week. Mark became more absorbed by the effects of magic mushrooms and alcohol, and as a result, accomplished little.

Wendy remained determined, if shaken, to continue. What else. She managed to sketch ideas for fresh comic strips. These were about the perils of dating. She didn't see the connection to her recent adventures—she cited the parrots who flew past the Sutro Tower on the top of Bernal Hill.
They
made her think of the difference between mingling and monogamy. These birds who reputedly mated for life were nothing like her. Parrots were more suburban on that front, but the bright green plumage was right for San Francisco. So what about a single parrot? A bachelor parrot? She remembered seeing among the flock a single parrot with a blue head, without a mate like all the red-headed parrots, and Wendy got an image of a stubbornly individualistic parrot. A parrot with a purple head, a Prince parrot. She imagined this parrot might think all the other parrots were nuts for being so monogamous and paired up every living hour of the day. This one purpleheaded parrot might even love to be single. This parrot wanted to love the world. Nicki, a proudly single San Franciscan parrot
playing the sky like a musical instrument
. She considered Nicki a kindred spirit to Biz or maybe Twyla, and then used a lot of her own life stories as fodder for the character. In the Prince spirit, Wendy kept Nicki's gender ambiguous.

That Motorola number on the kitchen wall nagged at her. She remembered the first time she ever called Frank, the day after Hick's death, and tried to count the times since then that he had called her on that phone about something to do with
Strays
.

I never call you, she said when he answered on the second ring.

On a good Saturday night I might sleep four or five hours, he said. These days I don't sleep at all.

Sometimes I feel like Jonjay and Sue were imaginary, like something you talk about but never do, she said. Biz thinks they
must
be alive. She's sure they took off somewhere. A torrid love affair. How likely is that?

I'm at the office ten, twelve hours a day, so, she could have a life I'm not aware of. I guess I might easily be the last to know. Did you ever suspect?

Never of this. Always of something. My gosh, sometimes
I
had to wake Jonjay up. He never did anything except when it was to get into trouble or draw a beautiful picture now and then. Problem with Jonjay, he can meditate all day in a lotus position and you're still suspicious of him. He can astral project.

When I'm alone at home, that's when it's the worst. There's no one there. But I am not used to being alone. All day long people scream in my ear. My home is empty. Silent. The halls. The kitchen. The living room. The bedroom. The rooms all echo. I keep the blinds shut. Because they wait at the corners day and night. Next to the stop signs.

Who does? Wendy asked.

With cameras. Stupid hacks. Ever since Bob Woodward and Deep Throat, the media are nothing but bloodsucking vampires sniffing around for toilet babies.

Gross.

Journalists
are
gross, Frank said. No cure for them, the slime. This phone is probably tapped.

How do you know it's reporters?

My life is public enough without having to see every private shit I take written about in the papers and covered on TV.

Did you talk to the police again? They asked me some questions.

A few more times. Detectives came here and asked to see my Rolodex of all things. And they visited my home. They treated me with less suspicion than the SEC agents. That reminds me, I saw your old friend Manila Convençion on television today. Did you see her?

You did? No way. On what?

The news. She was in town this morning, I guess. Hounded by hundreds or thousands of men as she walked down Market Street. All sorts of media. I know how she feels. Ever since we got back, I'm hounded by police, I'm hounded by press, I've got a phone in each ear, I'm yelling at arbs and runners and buyers, I'm tangled in a noose of pigtail rubber cord,
listening to yammering voices all day in my ear go on about numbers. Numbers. When I try to sleep I hear the market tick. I lie down and close my eyes and the voices get louder than when I was on the phone. And when the voices finally fade, all I hear is this horrible auditory hallucination of a constant ticking like a metronome, tick-tock, that makes it impossible to fall asleep. I can hear it in my sleep. I dream in tick-tocks. Tick-tock! wakes me. I'm sweating from madness. The tick, the tock, the tick, the tock. Do you have that, Wendy?

Yes, but I know what the sound is—my teeth. I know why, because I had a childhood I've repressed. You need a
real
vacation, one where nobody goes missing.

That's what my brother says. Let's go for lunch and talk about it. Shouldn't we commiserate, isn't that the sensible thing to do? I care for you. Damnit, Wendy, you're the only one who understands me. I'm losing my mind here all alone like this.

She started to shake, she said it was too soon, and said goodbye and hung up and walked down the hill to the corner store on Precita Avenue, if only to be under that bright light in the sky.

Breaking news in the missing-persons case involving the wife of junk bond financier Frank Fleecen and another man. After what was supposed to be an afternoon trip in the company jet to Death Valley with a group of Frank Fleecen's friends and colleagues, the mysterious disappearance of Mrs. Fleecen has brought reports from all over. Our own Irwin Gerund went down to Visitacion Valley to speak with the owner of the All-Nature Pharmacy, Prente Abscondio.

The newscast cut to footage from an interview with Abscondio, whose name and occupation, pharmacist, were set below him on the screen. Could be her, Abscondio said. Sure look like it was her. I remember her face. She showed up in a same nice sports car wearing same nice sunglasses she did last week.

Last week you say? said Gerund.

That's right. She came in, asked for cough syrup. I did not say,
I see you before. I know who you are, Miss Fleecen.
I
did
put two and two together but she a customer. She pay me and I give her her change. Only later, then I decide I call you.

We asked Wendy if she just saw that and she was staring so hard at the Magnavox she didn't even hear us.

Cough syrup? What the fuck did they go there for? Wendy said. I'm going to go down and talk to this pharmacist. He sees Sue
twice
in the space of a week, that's crazy. Oh my golly. This
and
Manila's in town. Jonjay's not dead. He's hiding somewhere nearby. I'll bet Manila's a part of this. She always is.

That makes some sense, Biz said.

I'm going down to this All-Nature store.

Hold your horses, we said.

Well, by a strange turn of events we ended up downtown that afternoon when all of a sudden we saw Frank Fleecen coming towards us being chased down the street by four hundred or more young men, shoulder to shoulder running fast, hollering. We happened to be at the front of the crowd and quickly ducked into the nearest store for cover, beside Frank, to watch what he would do as male social groups collided on the sidewalks and street as a spontaneous mob. All the guys had the same notion in their head as we did: to get as close to one prime destination, one delicate location—a little white shop on Market.

She was about to make an appearance on this hairy bananas busy commercial strip cutting a long diagonal through downtown San Francisco, near the shopping malls, near the shady nightclub district, surrounded by budget pizza stops, Mexican takeout, independently owned convenience stores, gutted cinemas in the throes of renovation, old hotels with modernizing facelifts, new sneaker emporiums and
casualwear outlets, Montblanc retailers, low-cost jewellers, and so on and so forth. At this one little white shop, that's where rumours said Manila was going to show up.

And so a swarm of guys descended upon this white shop on Market Street, driven by insatiable instinct to form this horrible, hormonal ochlocracy, dozens of saurian and simian buddies running headlong, friends protecting friends in tight circular clusters within the mob, departmental colleagues moving in single file in order of rank, the same brotherly blood coursing through all their veins and over all their eyeballs, everyone stuck together in their own groups while they congregated with everyone else into one big mob scene, every breed of guy represented, from the ones who beat you to the ones you so steadily beat, they were all here, a thousand men give or take, scrambling to gain a better view of the little white shop, hustling to overcome one another to get a better position in front of the store, howling, jostling, practically moshing, elbows up, and hungry-eyed, there was the stifling stink of locker rooms, basement suites, boardrooms, anabolics, and oil changes, enough guys were here en masse for SFPD cars to tail the crowd with sirens popping off amid hundreds of guys budging and shoving to get a better view, absolutely screaming at the top of their lungs, crying out loud for this woman, this
one young woman
who was not even anywhere to be seen yet, still coming, who was still supposedly coming, on her way, almost here, about to come, rumour had it, and all these guys waited for her around this intersection at Market and Valencia.

The SFPD officers used patrol wagons to clear a path to the curb and her white VW van was escorted through to a free parking spot in front of the little white shop and the crowd went berserk as she opened the driver's door and swung a long, thin leg out and put a stiletto heel on the asphalt. Flashbulbs exploded as her legs parted. Once fully out of the automobile and standing, she waved a bangled hand in the air and men flipped. She smiled and waved to us all, unafraid, not even surprised or delighted by the scene around her, but so used to it she seemed almost oblivious. Us men,
we wanted her, we wanted to devour her. A huge male bodyguard escorted her through the crowd to the front doors of the shop, and as the proprietor allowed in various arms of the media after her, we were already inside the space with Frank Fleecen, pretending to browse, just before the store's gate was locked, leaving hundreds of other less lucky men on the other side of the window to just gawk and stare and try to catch a word of what she said. Meanwhile, we stood about all of four feet from her and heard every word.

By eighty-four Manila was a well-known hinny. She carried the flag of freedom in the George Orwell—inspired Apple advertisement that aired during the SuperBowl. Posters of her sold in the toy section of Sears and Zellers.
Replicant Fitness
, her morning aerobics show, launched in the spring on Shepherd Media, was a runaway hit. It combined fog machines and MTV lighting with an aerobics routine inspired by Jane Fonda, androids and the music of Kraftwerk and Jean-Michel Jarre, performed on the sets from
Blade Runner
(bought on the cheap). Perhaps because Manila seemed to walk around made of no earthly substance and survived somehow without having to work for a living except stretching, making the scene in Manhattan, she made for easy prey for weakling journalists who had nothing to lose besmirching her fair image. We knew better. She was once our roommate and not so long ago. Manila Convençion could paint and draw, with a natural eye for colour, and a hero's confidence against the blank canvas or page. She read wildly and spoke a plethora of languages with the fluency of a local. Her body was unable to gain weight. Whatever she ate made her lighter. When she left the manor it was in a huff, but as soon as she arrived in NYC, she was beset by every kind of image-maker, from Steve Ditko to Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, who introduced Manila to Tony Scherman, who took her out for Chinese food with Julian Schnabel, who painted his first portrait of a nude young woman who was simultaneously painting his portrait in the nude. Andy Warhol shot a stack of Polaroids of her and did a screen test of her on film, then made a silkscreen print etcetera and so on.

Since starring in her role as Apple's Macintosh, the athletic emancipator, she was more of a target than ever before. She had managers and accountants and owners and groomers wanting her attention, a team of obsessive-compulsive bulimic men in blue contact lenses who fastidiously combed and scratched her from top to bottom before she went anywhere. Her long, harrowingly thin, fishnetted legs were entirely exposed from the buttcheek down, and balanced at great expense on a pair of hand-cobbled Italian leather high heels designed by Kaisik Wong. She clopped along the white floor tiles, petting her fingers through aisles of 100% cotton, and all the men followed without hesitation or shame looking down her blueberry silk-sequin toga with a scooped neckline that plunged as low down as her navel without ever exposing the main attractions of her small, pert breasts. Her midriff and navel caught the male gaze like a diamond. Falling over her neck and tickling her shoulder blades, her great coiling, tousled mane of hair was the colour of white banana. She was tropically tanned from the top of her nut-shaped skull right down to the berries of her little painted toes. Her moisturized skin was as shiny caramel as latex house paint. On her skinny neck she wore a pearl-dotted choker. The toga also sloped straight down her back to the first dimpled cleft in her round haunches, so basically nearly nude.

The event was Manila shopping. That's all it was. We were close enough to her that our eyes watered. Provide us with shampoo samples, we could tell you which exact brand she used on that platinum blond mane she undid from a ponytail and shook out splendorously. In the course of her slouching, slinky, drugged movements picking through the racks of clothes, we saw the girl we used to know.

She didn't recognize us.

Frank didn't either. He came up to us in the melee and instead of asking us if we knew Manila he said, You, are you Irwin Gerund?

Frank moved on from us. He nudged this very pale, introverted man about half his age, prematurely greying hair, in a perpetual sweat, who
craned his neck around and said, That's me for the time being, what's going on?