The Road Narrows As You Go (39 page)

Could I ask you about a story you wrote yesterday?

Yesterday? Are you
blind
or crazy? Gerund said, not mopping the beads of sweat from the end of his nose and upper lip, but gesturing instead towards the young gorgeous woman, Manila, in front of us picking out lady things. Gerund shouldered his way to the front of the store near the cash register and with Frank beside us we followed close behind towards the main attraction.

As she lay down her purchases on the counter, two pairs of fishnet tights, an undershirt, some bathing bottoms.

I badly needed to find a place to buy tights, she said, shifting her weight to her other hip, profile to the cameras, nothing but her credit card for the staff … Then I saw all these adorable men following me, she lisped. So sweet. Hi guys. She waved to the guys behind the iron trestle gate and a fresh surge of applause churned and crashed through all the men, the flesh-hungry men.

You'll sure draw a crowd if you dress like that, said the salmon-skinned constable of the SFPD unit, with his arms raised to hold at bay a pack of rowdy fans who had been able, like us, to squeeze their way in to get a closer look at her.

I dress like this wherever I go around the world. Well … I don't dress like
this
, she said, pressing the palm of her hand to the big rip in her fishnets. The rip came right up the curve of her ass. She looked pretty easy with the insinuation a man could make over her circumstance. That's why I went racing out looking for a little white shop where I could buy some tights, she said. Right now I only ever wear this brand. They should name these after me I wear them so much. That's what's up.

To watch her hand slip over the coppery glow of her thigh brought the men outside to a mindstate approaching pure reptile, hissing and slapping their chins with their tongues. The jaggedy tear in the stocking's netting,
which revealed nothing more of her body than was already on display, was nevertheless about as much as this crowd could handle. Guys howled. Men with ingenuity began to stack up dozens of chairs they stole from nearby coffee shops and restaurant terraces and climbed higher above the melee for a better view, in cunning preparation for when she returned to her vehicle. The police stationed outside kept having to whap people back with their batons, and a light skunky smell of pepper spray wafted in from afar, where looters down the block took advantage of the distraction to finger some stereo equipment. There were already a number of visible casualties closer by. Two men hung upside down from the awning of the little white shop and one man pressed against the gate was bleeding from the mouth.

What's the occasion? Gerund asked her with his notepad at the ready. I'm nineteen today, she said proudly. I'm married. For the past year I've been into android aerobics. I get all my ideas because I can just
go
in a kind of trance. Like I'm in contact with the dead. Hendrix. Joplin. Holly. The lyrical ones. People like that. And I'm
so
excited to travel. I love to drive. I always want to include people in my reality from every angle.

What was it like in Seattle?

She looked Irwin Gerund in the eye as if he was a real unplayful prick for bringing up Seattle. His question was only meant to burst the bubble on her stunt here today, because it implied she was touring as part of a stunt and not somehow casually in the neighbourhood dropping by spontaneously and unannounced, unsponsored, unsaturated, underground, at midday on a Friday, to a little white store that features the same tights she wears on
Replicant Fitness
.

When I was in Seattle, I was with my
husband
, she gave as a curt, inadmissible reply.

Will you see friends while in town? Gerund asked her.

I hope so. She pouted. As she spoke, she wasn't forgetting to smile and blow kisses for the cameras everywhere in sight.

It was the exact same when she was in Seattle, Gerund turned and said to Frank so that he wasn't the only one who could hear.

The clerk behind the counter bagged her tights and passed them over to her.

Hola! she said, and swung the purchase in her hand and posed for a few more men.

Gerund and the rest of us were quickly swept up in a wave of men who chased after her to the curb where her van was still safely parked, untouched thanks to armed SFPD officers who had it surrounded.

No way her legs are worth all this attention, said Frank.

Next year it will be another girl, said Gerund.

Her proportions define our time, said a TV cameraman with sweat pooled around his eyes.

Manila waved her bangled hand in every direction before bending over one more time as she climbed into the VW van, shimmying across to the driver's side, starting the engine, and pulling out into the lane, tightly surrounded by protection. In an instant she was completely out of sight.

A tree trembled dizzily as a traffic helicopter rose straight up and skirted off to the south. The crowd dispersed. We were all alone again on the street under the sun. So we tailed Irwin Gerund and Frank Fleecen down the side street and listened to them talk.

You followed them? Wendy asked us.

We followed them, we said. Like spies, like Chris Quiltain, we followed Frank and the reporter. They seemed to know each other quite well already. But maybe only over the phone since Frank didn't know what Gerund looked like.

What did they say? Tell me.

Gerund said, What a showgirl. Want her? Gerund held up five fingers. Fifty thousand, he said.

That's something to say.

I'm serious, Gerund said. Everyone knows that's her game. It's a sham wedding to a homosexual. This big spectacle gets her some TV play, some column inches. She's up here to make a name for herself any way she can. Some chicks have no limits. Personally? I'm willing to give up two years' salary to taste that. What about you, you look like you could afford her. And I'll write about the whole sordid affair. Make us both famous.

I saw your piece about what happened out in Death Valley, said Frank. Tell me, what was your best lead?

Owner of the All-Nature Pharmacy said he saw a woman who fit her description, and a man waiting in a car outside while she walked in.

You didn't mention this in your article.

No. He's right down there in Visitacion Valley by the old hotels. I spoke with him, the owner. Said she was looking very tired and asked for a bottle of painkiller.

Where's this place?

Like I say, right down there in Visitacion Valley among the soup kitchens etcetera.

Is that why you didn't mention it? The neighbourhood?

No, because I don't know how much I could trust the source. The owner is probably out for the free advertising.

Frank said, Listen, can you do me a favour and run this story on the news again tonight?

Tonight? Ah, I don't know. This Manila Convençion appearance is all I got planned … Why would I do that? There's nothing to the lead.

You must. Please. Tell the public one more time she was seen down at that pharmacy.

It's not as easy as that. To broadcast a rumour on the evening news. My producer won't run with speculation. Besides, I'm sorry to say, missing people get old fast. That was a week ago. The story hasn't got those kind of legs.

Give
the story legs—this is important. Your stories reach a lot of people. This mystery, I'm sure it's something that'll get you ratings.

Gerund smiled, twitching his nose, but the bead of sweat, which was now a dry white bleb, stayed put. No offence, Frank, he said happily, but I don't see why I should go to the trouble.

Think of it as professional development. I doubt your producer supports your ambition, so perhaps in the meantime a viewer could help round up your salary.

Now Irwin Gerund saw Frank's play and broke out in hopeless laughter, clapped him on the shoulder and said, Tell me more about your career ideas.

That was the end of our story. We happened on Frank and Manila downtown this afternoon and that's what we heard. When Frank's exchange ended, the bribed TV journalist hailed a taxi, and Frank in turn took a taxi in the same direction. We came straight home to the manor.

Why would he do that?

Man's bat-shit crazy, said Biz, tapping out a cigarette and lighting a joint we'd just rolled. And Manila is here in town, on the evening news, but she won't place a call, that's bullshit. Listen up. You can dye your hair but you can't hide your roots. Don't come running to Mizz Biz Aziz when the party's over, she said to the absent friend.

Beside them on the coffee table was a partially inked Sunday
Strays
that Wendy admitted she was having a hard time finding the motivation to finish.

Because it's a lame picture, said Biz flatly.

Wendy looked at her work again after Biz's prognosis and nodded and nodded and nodded.

This Frank business doesn't make any sense. This whole situation is giving me teeth-chipping migraines. I can't believe he manipulated a news anchor.

25

The next day, Wendy drove her lime-green Gremlin down to Daly City to meet this pharmacist for herself.

There was a message on the answering machine for Wendy from Chris Quiltain in his clipped and formal tone, who left a phone number with a New York area code where he could be reached. We wrote his name and the number near Frank's on the kitchen wall and took the cassette out of the machine and replaced it with a different one, labelled it
Chris Quiltain's call
, and put the cassette in with the rest of Wendy's dubbed cassettes. You never know, we said to each other.

Our plan was to finish some more animation on the Macintosh. Ever since we saw the commercial with Manila in it, we wanted to try this new artist-friendly computer. Wendy bought us one. It cost five thousand dollars, it was worth more than her car. We fooled around for hours and learned how to draw with the mouse. The ability to
undo
instead of erase was a profound adjustment that allowed us to prevaricate over every line, right down to the pixel, and get even less accomplished. We had the idea to do a sequence of a few minutes of the animated Christmas special using
MacPaint illustrations we printed out onto celluloid and then photographed. This would work for the cyborg dream Francis the rabbit has in the story, chased by
Centipede
video game—inspired versions of Sam the snake.

Around one in the morning or it might have been even later the phone rang and it was Wendy saying she wasn't coming home.

When she got to Daly City, she saw a filling station out front of the All-Nature Pharmacy, to the side of a parking lot. Before Wendy had a chance to decide what to do, a plump, dark-skinned young woman leaned her head in her passenger window and asked if she needed gas and Wendy thought she might as well let the girl fill the tank.

I saw your store on the news, Wendy said. Last week you saw those missing people?

The plump girl pushed the nozzle into Wendy's car, started fuelling, and said, My husband's got lot of ideas. A lot.

I guess he's famous now.

She rolled her eyes. Please don't ask for his autograph. I'm the one has to deal with him later.

Did he really see those missing people?

He sure hopes so. She was done filling Wendy's tank and told her that it would be six dollars.

Phew, prices go up.

What it is is Arabs price-fixing us, said the young wife, pretending to gouge a knife into her own stomach.

Pretty complicated stuff.

Not really.

All the same, I'll go inside and see what you got for sale, Wendy said after she paid the girl.

Never said you couldn't, the girl said.

Wendy parked and walked into the All-Nature Pharmacy, followed
closely by the busty young wife. As she walked in the bell rang, and she saw Frank.

He was up at the cash register talking to the man she recognized right away as the pharmacist Prente Abscondio. When the pharmacist saw her come in, the conversation stopped and Frank looked at her. His eyebrows went halfway up his forehead and his mouth peeled open with a look of delight that was alien to his financier's face.

He straightened the knot of his tie. I wondered if anyone else might come down. I was asking the pharmacist some questions.

Oh, this I got to hear. The young wife veered up and lifted the countertop in order to get behind it and push her husband around. Compared to the pharmacist's pale complexion, his wife was a Tahitian or Hawaiian she was so dark from working the filling station side of the business.

I remember a pale brunette with an expensive gold watch asking for cough syrup, that's all I know, said the pharmacist. She looked the spitting image of the picture of the missing woman. Hairstyle and all.

No, what did
he
look like? Frank asked.

Handsome. Like a perfect specimen of California, Prente Abscondio said with his elbows up to block his wife's constant slaps. Leave me alone, woman! Stop beating on me!

Cheater! Malingerer! His wife threw an empty prescription dosette at him. It bounced off his face and hit the counter in a loud spin end over end.

My god, let's get out of here, Frank said and took Wendy by the arm and led her outside into the mild sun.

Hey listen, do you have your car? he asked. I took a cab.

Where's your Gulfstream?

The cursed thing.

What's going on, Frank? How long have you been here? This sham, why did you do this?

What sham?

My roommates, my assistants, they saw you today set this up, the whole kit and caboodle. You paid off a television journalist. Did you pay off the pharmacist and his wife, too? Who else? Jonjay and Sue? I want to know, Frank, is any of this real?

Fucking hell, let's get out of here, said Frank as he took her by the elbow, there's Quiltain.

The only other person in the vicinity was, sure enough, a man in corduroy reading a newspaper as he waited conspicuously at a bus stop.

You're lying to me, Wendy said. She drove over the speed limit down random side streets with Frank Fleecen beside her. His eyes checked the mirrors. Start acting normal, Frank.