This Location of Unknown Possibilities (4 page)

A few of SRLFI's underlings persisted, wondering in coy tones if she had a little something in the works—as though they could not actually conceptualize a word person who wouldn't trade body and soul for a screenplay catching Hollywood's favour, or at least be readying an option-able book that had in fact been written with the movie version already in mind. Disheartening, the narrowness was not essentially different than the purblind careerism of her own tribe, whose members wore the Knowledge Producing Intellectual badge with undisguised pride.

Marta had actually choked slightly when after another long hour passed SRLFI leaned close to her ear and asked if she wanted to “do some blow” back at his condo downtown. Declining, naturally, she claimed loyalty to a long-planned early morning hike that demanded complete focus:
“It's going to be epic.” The lie hung in the air, a ludicrous excuse, and clumsy as well, so patently was she not outdoorsy or someone who'd describe huffing up a rocky hill as “epic.”

Beneath the offer's sheer embarrassing banality—cocaine with a movie guy: where were the
$100
notes, the loud sniffing, and Studio
54
clone when you needed them?—Marta felt bothered by a less welcome sensation: she'd never tried the drug and a priggish dread warned that something lamentable might happen. Instantly, an image had flashed from a moralizing television episode deep in the past in which a foolish high school A-lister experimenting with LSD had leapt from a rooftop fully believing that he could fly.

But worse was the idea that she'd look like a rank amateur, unclear about the real-life etiquette and technique of cocaine usage. What if the reality didn't match the vision: rectangular pocket mirror, rolled bill, hasty parallel lines of credit card chopped powder, eye-watering tingling in the nasal passage, hyperactivity, altered vision? She could live without the spectacle of someone laughing as she fumbled or coughed while snorting. Other than too-animated conversation, the story of what happened after inhalation refused to coalesce. Maybe he'd expect them to
get it on
: that would fit the disco- and Reagan-era pattern.

There'd been another murmured statement, too, directly after: “And then I'll eat your pussy.”
Ah
, Marta had thought,
I am worthy of being prey after all
.

SRLFI's declaration had been accompanied by a trial wolfish leer that her eyes measured as being distinctly unsure, half-apologetic, and not cuspid-baring predatory in the least. The words might be those of a boy trying out an elder brother's surefire technique.

The silence that followed proved laughably absolute.

Thinking
My kingdom for a phrase!
, Marta didn't utter a syllable because she could not imagine a response with sufficient bite. What would Judy say? Playful witticism and blistering riposte eluded Marta equally. No one had ever offered cocaine. Cunnilingus matched to it floated well beyond the map of experiences, even fantasy ones; she'd spent more time pondering the existence of UFOs.

Marta had returned to the context later. In SRLFI's world, about which she could only speculate, how would a woman reply? “Sure, babe, bring it on”? “Uh huh, let me take off my heels”? “Drop dead, you worm”? “Are you fucking joking”?

In this case, though, shared awkwardness emerged as the single outcome.

Following instructions, SRLFI dropped Marta off a block before Undre Arms. Though making no effort to park the Audi, he said, “Nice place. We should do something sometime.”

“Yes, I agree.” Mutual insincere smiles had sealed the negative transaction.

Marta closed the car door without great force. Pretending to fish out keys as she trod toward the entrance to a building of strangers, she hoped the refusal to turn around and fondly wave would convey a simple message: “Get lost.” The coupe sped off. The security of Undre Arms beckoned from two minutes away.

Mood beginning to curdle with the recollection, Marta reminded herself that the biopic consultancy didn't represent a career move; nor was it a blind date. The work contract would be for desirable professional expertise—not heart, not body, not soul, the deal not Faustian. If the studio meeting hinted at unsatisfactory conditions she'd easily refuse them, a diva in her own right.

SARDINE TIN CITY

1
.

M
ilitary thundering from the
Mishima
soundtrack pushed Jake out of sleep. He reached across the bed and nudged Gleek. “Hey chubster, what's happened to my feline alarm clock?” The tabby responded by coiling tighter. As the piece reached a tympanic crescendo, Jake rolled over to address the device: “Lower volume.”

This early, the room's light-absorbing surfaces produced a restful muteness, an effect Jake thought might be akin to reclining within a Victorian crypt, or stretching out under a heavy canopy of autumnal trees: comfortable and sedating. Walnut-finish furnishings, mortar-toned drapes and bedding, and walls painted Sullen, Jake recalled, comprised the “complementary palette” the decorator had highlighted on her laptop's virtual model. Calling the stark black and white photograph of a spherical natural gas tank in Belgium an anchor piece for the living room, she'd replied with a sigh when Jake sputtered about the cost: “It'll appreciate in value, you know,” peering theatrically over the balcony off the kitchen to survey the street below, “unlike that shiny German car of yours.”

An enthralled audience of one, Jake had watched Marilyn, a bubbly and trucker-mouthed California blonde, sell a vision with a realtor's gusto, minus the false camaraderie: “Masculine, yes, but not Hemingway-running-bulls-in-Spain-macho, right, or Joe-Beer-Can-watching-the-fucking-Superbowl. Tasteful and refined. Solid.”

Strutting around the condo, right hand chop-chop-chopping into left palm, she'd told Jake about taking pride in profiling a client's exact needs. “This developer's off-white completely misses the mark, obviously,” she ran a hand of fingernails along the chalky wall, “unless you're cloning a Motel
6
next to the Arby's on Exit
234
.”

Jake had enjoyed the unexpected bluntness. After the rapid strings of description, he guessed what choice words she'd summon for the Joe Beer Can man-den pitch.

Down to the last detail the project had been Marilyn channeling Jake, and he was flattered by the implied compliments; he'd give kudos to anyone who intuited which buttons to press—knowing the right thing to say and not registering as kiss-ass, that art took skill to master. When she'd taken a misstep with a Tommy gun floor lamp—“ironic,” she'd called it—Jake figured that even Mother Teresa had run into off days.

Tracing a line along his sleep-warm torso, Jake grabbed the morning's erection and pumped slowly at the base for a few seconds.
Now that is solid
, he thought. To greet each and every day with a substantial pole pointing outward, what a proclamation of intent. Carpe diem. He wondered if all men did so. Of course they must; it's the male prerogative: go forth, thrust, and multiply, Johnny Appleseed, the rush surrounding orgasm the never-diminishing reward. As hardwired as breathing, and the build up and jet-speed release felt better. He scrolled the blankets down and scrutinized the black hair and muscular undulations of chest and belly. Not quite rippled, but not at all bad for early forties, he nodded, I wouldn't say no.

Time to move
, Jake thought. He'd store his juice till later.

Naked, Jake crouched and slid the laptop from the messenger bag. Veering toward the kitchen, he clicked on the television; blasts of noise kicked his senses awake.
As for bladder urgings, he'd wait for the erection to subside.

In the kitchen he stared at the weather channel—drizzle till noon, mixed rain and sun from then on—before switching to
Murder, She Wrote
. As much as he liked the widow detective's observant, puzzle-solving mind and spotting the has-been guest stars, Mrs. Fletcher's happy amnesia intrigued him. Anywhere the woman moved she walked into a murder or two, about
300
stabbings, shootings, hangings, and poisonings over the
264
episodes of the series—Jake had ordered the DVD boxed set on a whim—and yet remained unflappably optimistic, her demeanour calm. Never taken aback or weighted down in the least by the littering of victims, she took the world's seething murderousness in stride as though it were no different than ho-hum traffic on the day's commute, when she ought to be in session for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and chasing her
AM
and
PM
coffee with Zoloft. Jake couldn't deny he'd be a paranoid wreck if every social setting festered with deadly secrets, ulterior motives, and a minimum of one stiff.

The mounting bombast of Philip Glass from the bedroom competed with Mrs. Fletcher's revelations. The player had been a gift, but along with puppies or teenagers it demanded instructions three or four times before the information sank in. In the hallway Jake bellowed: “Volume down.” Hearing no change he strode closer to the mic: “Vol-ume DOWN.” He'd assumed kinks in voice recognition software were buried in the past. Gleek didn't stir.

Throwing jeans on the bed, he decided to go commando. He grabbed a black T-shirt. Justifying the V-neck's
$110
price tag, the clerk in Yaletown had stroked the fabric: “Your skin can tell the difference.” He'd read the tag—Made in Malaysia—and told her to get real. He bought it anyway.

2
.

A
s
8
-grain cereal bubbled, Jake checked email, just the personal accounts. He'd save the occupational addresses for the office. Jake strived to keep mornings at home work-free; border patrol was essential with Hollywood, a demanding boss with Old World beliefs about fealty. And his ass already dragged about the location shoot in the middle of nowhere—a part of the job description that always felt punitive, not least because the move threw him from a comfortable orbit—and wanted to stamp that reality out of his consciousness until the last minute. It's a whore's life, Jake supposed, and not every john is a trustworthy high-roller paying big bucks for pillow-talk and snuggles, not by a long shot.

A respondent to Jake's online hook-up profile began with a false-step subject heading, “Cease the day!”
The attached lure: a regulation towel-wrapped torso shot at a bathroom mirror. Jake leaned close to the screen inspecting the image. Not bad. A little pudgy and years out of date probably; the accompanying message scanned as moronic: “Hi: I thought u look Very Familiar to guy that work out from my gym . . . Do u by any change work out at Noth Vancouver . . . ? Go with the floor type guy here. Anyway I just want to say Hello . . . How is life threatening you?” Another dud in a world full of them, Jake lamented.

Before replying, Jake lifted the cereal off the burner and forwarded “Cease the day!”

He'd ordinarily pass one or two to Jeremy on any given week, those messages entrenched in his routine, like morning espresso. Receiving was another. Jake grinned opening “FW: check this out” emails from Jeremy since the message in the bottle—compelling or deranged: which kind to arrive was anyone's guess—often surpassed the snippets he sent. Jeremy prided himself on a curatorial sense of the exceptional, ugly though bizarre.

Incoming messages stoked Jake. The left-field and potent charge of the swapped mail reshaped the waking world, adding bracing fathoms of depth to the otherwise flat, death-in-life schedule of obligation and routine—“I really need to get that report finished before my
2
o'clock with Peter in Finance”—and rote sentence volleys about politics, movies, vacations, kids, weather, and real estate, solid performances but empty as toilet paper tubes. The incoming details exposed the customary assumptions about sex—clearly defined, biologically motivated physical exchanges involving insertion of Tab A into Slot B in bed once a week right after the news—as lacking, a popular belief posing as fact that actually came nowhere close.

This discovery echoed a sci-fi plot: with special glasses the hero can see past the deceit of surface appearances. Of course Jake didn't unearth the stealthy alien invasion of
They Live
. For now, extraterrestrials remained fiction; but realizing life contains more than the flock's clustered movements had the elegant simplicity of a truth.

Jake counted on stumbling into like eurekas even though no one's average with luck batted a thousand. He held firm that dropping out of the B. Comm program—the fast track to office tower hivedom—had been the wisest decision of his twenties. Concrete limits to shoehorning exist, Jake had seen. In a borrowed tie and so cleanly shaven his cheeks shone, Jake had shuddered with a cold sweat convulsion steps past Price Waterhouse's half-circle security desk on day one of a work-study placement. The glimpse of the office maze of muffling grey felt cubicles had swelled into a revelation: before him stood a hasty engagement that would never lead to marriage. The barely masked disappointment on the sensible faces of the parental units? A bargain compared to a future of ongoing regret.

Jake had viewed the ensuing fluke job offer from a buddy of a buddy to guard the crew lot for a Daryl Hannah TV movie shoot as icing on the cake. Naturally, years of climbing industry rungs revealed that despite expectations icing and a felt cubicle look dishearteningly similar. Calls, meetings—being the delegating boss in one room, toadying yes-man in the next—reports, long hours, desk slouch, chains of command, soul-snatching superiors: like death and taxes, corporate sand traps lay in wait, inescapable.

He'd quickly learned to make time to smell around for perks. Finding them? Instinct, a matter of catching the scent.

Last winter at a wrap party for a TV series cancelled halfway into its first season, Jake had spoken with a producer's date, an abrasive grad student in some
WTF subject called Critical Studies in Sexuality. “You have no idea,” she'd exclaimed, backing him into a corner with a full glass of merlot while spouting about German sex researchers she mistakenly thought as household names. “It's a psychological phantasmagoria.” As Jake imagined a ball-gag in the prof's mouth—the Gatling gun laughter from her throat unfortunately close to strangled goose honks—she explained scenes, ancient and modern, and described bizarre fetishes that might keep shrinks in business for centuries.

He'd mouthed appreciation. Based on his own experiences and ingrained, occasionally compulsive wanderings through the Internet, Jake couldn't help but agree. Jeremy's missives? Further assurance that reality and appearance rarely hung out at the same location.

3
.

J
ake read the first email from the kitchen laptop. Jeremy, in Hawaii now on a yoga retreat, had still managed to dig up material. After the subject line—“
Dept. of Public Transit,
” an idea Jeremy claimed to have lifted from
The New Yorker
—he'd pasted a story, one regrettably void of attached photos. Jake would bet a month's pay that male affinity for the visual resided deep within, a vestige from prehistory's hunt-to-survive era.

Now he'd have to fill in the blanks—

My girlfriend and I met a sissified husband at the bus stop begging for change. I'm a guy, but I think it's great for women to make men pay for their infidelity. This wife takes the prize for vengeance.

He was wearing a pinstripe short-sleeved cuffed blouse over a spaghetti strap cami, earrings, ponytail with pink elastics, I am guessing panty hose, women's slacks and pink lip gloss and the most gorgeous set of acrylic French nails. The tips were at least an inch long. His nails are so much nicer than my gf's. He said he got caught cheating again on his wife of 11 years. I told him if he told me what was going on I would give him bus fare, but I lied.

Anyways. This sissy's wife took him and got his ears pierced, waxed his entire body, got electrolysis on his face and eyebrows. Got a full set of acrylic nails. She took him clothes shopping and bought him this outfit and made him wear it from the store. She then dumped him miles from home penniless and told him to walk home. He/she showed me his blackberry with the emails from his wife. She actually called when I was talking to him. And he called a couple of friends to help bail him out. No takers today. I actually heard him say that if the wife didn't have all the money, he would be long gone.

Fishy. Jake, elbows on the black marble counter, wondered about the writer's fawning attention to clothing and unmanly nail envy. Definitely suspicious and a bit girly. He pictured the sissified vow-breaker on the phone: “Uh, listen Joe, I'm in a bit of a jam. Marge caught me cheating—again, I know, I know, me bad—and so this time for punishment made me wax and cross dress and then she dumped me at a bus stop begging for coin. It's way humiliating. Would you mind picking me up?” What friend—what
brother
—would say, “No, sorry man, I really have to side with Marge this time. You gotta be taught a lesson. Becoming a transvestite beggar for the afternoon is a punishment that fits the crime. Good luck, buddy, catch you later.”

True situation or fever dream, the pathetic scene made Jake relieved to be free of marital shackles.

Jeremy's second message came with generic paired photos, ass and erection to camera; Jeremy's subject-line summary looked apt—
FW: Subject: Very Very Makulit.

Well I look very snobbish at first but I do get along with people easily. I also am very talkative when I get warmed up. Hmm what else? I find it hard to describe myself, I think it would be better if you would just talk to me and get to know me . . . Since it is true that words are the biggest liars of all . . . I'm very very makulit! that was always my asset! I'm true to myself, and i like being the first version of myself, not a second version of someone else! I'm not looking for just a hookup so if your just looking for that move on. Love to swim, modern jazz music, watch porn (cmon guy, be real, hahaha!!!) if you wanna be my friend, mack me.