Watchlist (53 page)

“I'm sorry, Renton. It's not just the Deciders. It's—it's the unreality of it.”

“Was it the video of the girl? The strawberries?”

“No, that's not it.”

“I meant it as a joke. There's no need to break up over a thing like that.”

“You know what I spent this morning doing? Watching a woman eat a goat alive. She had filed her teeth into points, Renton. Like a vampire. Even had the makeup on. Her girlfriend—I think that's who it was—was screaming at her to eat more. Shrieking at her to eat more. The poor beast was pinned down by stakes and the girl was tearing into its belly. The stench! Of piss and shit, the goat was in so much pain it was expelling what little bit of life it had left in it. Trying to die.”

I had never seen Aubrey cry before, and I feared what it might mean.

“Who would do such a thing, Renton? To a harmless animal? I vomited into my Trunk it was so disgusting.”

I could see that she wanted me to feel what she had felt, smell what she had smelled, but I couldn't let her get to me. Every Olfanaut who burned out tried to drag everyone else down with them. The psychologists had taught us it was called transference. I began searching desperately for my Quantiband, which she must have torn off during sex.

“Why don't you go see the psychologists, Aubs? That's what they're there for.”

“They wouldn't understand.”

“Of course they would! Mimi helped me with the nun thing. I'm sure she can help you with whatever is bothering you.”

I found my Quantiband beneath my sock at the foot of the bed. I didn't remember taking the sock off, because I was still wearing the other one.

“Mimi can't help me, Renton. She can't help a thing like that. Tell me, when was the last time you left the campus?”

“I go to the Rain Drop all the time.”

“That's still on the campus!”

“So what? It's a bar. I like the people there. We have a lot in common.”

“I mean, when was the last time you went downtown? Or anywhere people don't have to whyff a conversation?”

“My family doesn't live downtown. They're out in Kibera.”

“That's not my point. What we see all day—it's not right. We made love over a Nazi book burning last week. A bloody book burning.”

“We took that video down, Aubrey. We prevented the rest of the world from smelling that filth. That's something to be proud of. Sure, we had sex in there but we did our job in the end. That's what matters. We have one job here, and we do it right. I'm sure that's all the Deciders care about too. That's why I fired Rocky.”

“What are you talking about?”

I hadn't meant to tell her, because I knew she'd try to make me feel bad, but now it was too late. “He put me on a dangerous route. That's how I hurt my nose.”

“So you fired him?”

“Of course! Rocky had it coming to him, Aubs. I'd told him a thousand times that we had to follow the program. It's not my fault he can't listen to directions.”

“That's what I mean by unreality. So what if you hurt your nose—he has a family! How will he survive without this job?”

“What about
my
family?” I grabbed a glass from the kitchen, and filled it in the sink. “Do you realize this is the only neighborhood within twenty kilometers where you can do this? Drink water straight from the tap? My parents drive here for their drinking water. I'm putting my sister through school. I pay for every funeral in my family. That's as real as it gets.” I pointed to my Quantiband. “This says right here that I was climbing the wrong route when I fell. Rocky hurt my nose, the tool of my trade. I'm in line for a promotion now and I can't take the risk. I need someone reliable. Trustworthy. I don't need his bloody war stories. I need someone safe. Who can commit to the program.”

Aubrey stared at me blankly for a few moments. “You don't see what this does to us, do you? Today was my big test to determine if I could join the Deciders. And I failed it, Renton. I failed it horribly. Because I told them that if I had my way I'd exterminate those girls from the face of the earth. I wasn't thinking about justice. I was thinking about revenge. Revenge on behalf of a mangy fucking goat.”

I drank my glass slowly, trying to taste the filtered water. They ran it through reverse osmosis and then a layer of sand, which normally gave it a delightful mineral quality. But I couldn't taste a thing.

“You're not going to get a promotion, Renton. Look at yourself in the mirror and then take a look at management. I recommended you twice but they said you don't have the pedigree. When was the last time a local was promoted?”

Now I knew Aubrey was planning to move away all along. And she wanted to hurt me while doing it, whatever for I had no idea. That was what happened in the videos. That was what those people did to each other. Even after all we'd been through, I refused to let her do this to me. It was the slippery hold on the wall. The tumble from the granite, the brains in the sand.

“I'm going to be the first one, then.”

You can't let it all weigh on your shoulders. That's what Mimi had told me about the nun. You've got to let things go.

I snapped my finger. “I know what's changed—it's you, Aubrey.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you need a new Passion.”

“You weren't listening.”

“You made that short film last year, right? That was too close to home. We whyff videos all day, hey. You've got to choose something else. Something that really gets you chuffed! Like writing a book. Or dancing. You've got to focus on the positive, Aubs! Think of all the value we're creating for our users. Think about how we protected them from that Nazi video. We saved a little bit of joy for two billion users around the world. We have to celebrate that! You can't dwell on these things. We're watching so no one else has to!”

As I went on like this, Aubrey's face brightened, and before long she seemed to be coming around to the idea. So I was surprised, when I pulled her in for a kiss, and she said: “If evil is humanity turned against itself, Renton, then who are we?”

“We're the Olfanauts,” I said proudly.

Aubrey left Olfanautics two weeks later, and she was kind enough to say good-bye to me. She also transferred me all of her OlfaBucks, which would allow me to order something from the gift shop, and I think she knew, in her heart, that I would spend it on a Hyperlite Bivouac that I had told her about a few months ago, which I planned to use when I free-climbed the Orabeskopf Wall in Namibia. I won't lie—I started dreaming about the nun again as soon as Aubrey left, and I had to work extra hard at my Passion to get that old woman to leave me alone in my sleep. It's funny how sometimes you only understand what people mean well after they say it. Because I realized that Rocky had been right all along, that I had to be like Prometheus giving the fire to humanity, and that I couldn't worry about some bird pecking at my fingers as I made my grand ascent.

Welcome to this last stage of the exhibit. You've been a very attentive group and I've enjoyed our time together. If you wish to use the restroom, it's down this hall on the left; if you're using the ladies' room, they've asked us to remind you to knock before you open the stall door as some of the locks in there are faulty. Are we all back now?

Good. This is the final piece we will discuss today. Take a long look. It does indeed resemble things we all have drawn as children; we are not claiming this to be the strongest piece in the collection. We hung it up because of its extraordinary way of coming into being. Yes, I do realize your grandson could do just as well, indeed we have children who take classes here who are much more astute already. I should show you the deer-in-the-meadow painting done by our prodigy, Isabelle, who is ten now; it is really a thrill, the way the spots on the deer relate to the sunspots on the meadow. She has an excellent sense of composition. But this one came to us by uncommon means, which is why we hang it last.

I will tell you, of course. Please stop whispering back there.

It was the third or so week since the museum had re-opened, for as you may know, we had to close down for several months last fall due to a problem with people touching the work. We had an influx of visitors who liked to feel the texture of the paint or the slopes of the sculptures and we were not equipped to deal with them. I myself was shocked it was a problem at all but believe it or not, one man actually
licked
the Degas bronze replica of the ballerina with her arms behind her back. Left a tongue mark right on her left breast. Embarrassing for everybody, if you ask me, but suddenly it seemed dire that we implement some sort of security system to protect ourselves, which took months to install. The museum head—who I will tell more about in a minute—she was at the front lines of museum security, and she thought we could affix automatic cans of Mace inside the walls next to the paintings. That seemed legally problematic but we modified her idea for safety and now, if you move up into the ten-inch range, the art will sound a small alarm. The ringing? Yes. In each room. I've grown to like it, it sounds to me like tossing rocks in a pond. You folks have been quite well behaved and putting your hands in your pockets is a fine way to temper any urges. As I often say, art is for looking! Your ears get music, your nose gets perfume, your mouth gets food, and if you really want to touch things, for goodness sake, you may purchase some six-dollar clay in the gift shop.

We'd been back open going on three weeks when the museum head got a notice for a large package arriving in her upstairs office. The museum head is a very busy woman and she couldn't be bothered while the men from the delivery company lugged it in to her. It was wrapped in brown paper and they said it was from a wealthy benefactor, all the way from Georgia, who'd heard “what was happening” and wanted to offer up a gift. Now, the museum owner had many phone calls to return, and she was puzzled by the delivery because who was this benefactor from Georgia anyway? And really it is sensible in this day and age to consider the possibility of bombs. So she signed the package away and listened for ticking and then made her phone calls. She is not a very curious woman by nature, and she was at that time going through a divorce, so she clearly had other things on her mind as she did not open the large package all day long. It was hard to overlook, I tell you, being over three feet tall and four feet wide, but she did not even peek until nearly the end of the day.

The museum was clearing out by then, and she told me she could hear, even from her office, the little ringing pings coming from the near-touching of the paintings downstairs, alerting security, and this made her feel that her expensive renovation had been worth it. Do you folks know what fingertip oil does to a painting? Erodes like mercury! Destroys those brushstrokes! It's some kind of miracle that we don't rot each other merely by shaking hands.

The museum was slowly clearing out. It was getting dark early, a night of a new moon, and she decided she would now open up the packaging of the mysterious gift. And so she, being a meticulous person, as you have to be if you are going to run a museum, took her pearl-handled letter opener and gently sliced open the brown wrap. And underneath it was a very large canvas, and on the canvas was . . . what? Can you guess?

No.

Not what you see here, no.

It was a simple painting, though, a simple black-and-white line work, appealing for a small measure of time, but like we've said, something you've often seen done better I'm sure by your gifted grandchild.

She read the attached note.

I hope this will address the problem, it said, in typed writing, signed by an unreadable scribble.

Now. There are certainly many kind benefactors of this museum, perhaps some of you are some of them, but we get our share of pranksters as well. Once, one of our leading donors sent a penny in an envelope with a letter that said it was art, and that it cost a thousand dollars. He laughed like a maniac on the phone when she called him to ask. So when the museum head read this typed note, she wasn't sure what to do with it. Was it real? What problem? she thought, vaguely insulted. Then she remembered the people touching the paintings and thought perhaps it was a mock painting, meant to be touched. But she didn't believe in those either. There are children's museums, she sniffed to herself, and there are adult museums. If she had her way completely, perhaps the gallery would be like a planetarium and you'd look at the ceiling through a telescope to observe the paintings hung up as if they were stars.

She lugged the painting into the hallway, called custodial services to come pick it up, and left the office for a while. She tended to work late those days—it's difficult to go home when your home is newly emptied. Or so I imagine. She was gone for about an hour, perhaps to go cry in the restroom. This is a recent divorce. I met him once before at the holiday museum party, and he seemed perfectly pleasant. Conservative. Ordinary. He had one of those jowly faces that seem difficult to shave, like skin-water under the rudder of the razor blade. They weren't rude to each other but very rarely did they act like a couple, if you want to know my opinion. You could always see the space between them. Anyway, he was the one who asked for divorce, which came, apparently, completely out of the blue. She confided in me that she's dismayed at how many people have accidentally burst in on her in the restroom stall, and found her squatted on the toilet seat, crying.

So off she went, and came back, perhaps with a tissue in hand, an hour or so later, and she was irritated to see that the painting was still in the hall. She went in to call janitorial again, but as she angled toward her office, she passed the painting and thought to herself that she didn't recall there being a circle in the top left-hand corner before. Just an hour or so ago, she had remembered it as a square. Certainly she wouldn't confuse a square with a circle, she thought—it's the difference between the window and the moon—but now, sure as anything, there was a circle of black paint smack in the left-hand corner. She admonished herself because for a museum director, as with a geometer or carpenter, to confuse the two is to degrade your job. Plus, she is not an unobservant person. She can recite the accessories that other women wear to parties years after the fact. Marie Snaper? Red coral earrings, which was environmentally wrong. Elaine Fitzgerald? Fake sapphire on the wedding finger implying, she said, a fake marriage. I must add that she has told me some of this in confidence, so I would not suggest asking her about it. But mainly, the circle she saw now had really seemed to be a square before, and she wondered if this was the psychological effect of weeping—it softened the corners of the world.