“Oh, a lot of places. Guy has lots of friends.”
“Friends,” said Oakes, raising his chin.
“Oh, sure. What do you want with Guy?”
“We’d just like to talk with him about a few things.”
“What sorts of things?”
“The subpoena will tell you everything you need to know.”
Mr. Mock slapped one open palm with the subpoena held in the other hand.“I guess I have to read that subpoena”
“May we come in and ask you some questions?”
“I’m afraid I’m awful busy right now.”
“Busy,” said Oakes.
“All right. Is Mrs. Mock at home now?”
“Oh, she’s not feeling well.”
“Would Mrs. Mock be able to tell us where we might find Guy?”
In the living room, Guy could bear it no longer and dropped out of his headstand, silent upon the thick carpet. He crunched into a little ball and rolled toward the nearest corner. “And what about Naomi?” the TV said.
“Someone learning to read?” asked Vanaken, craning his neck. “My little girl watches that show.”
“Oh, well. I like to keep it on. You know. Makes it feel like someone’s here.”
“Isn’t Mrs. Mock at home?”
“I couldn’t possibly disturb her.”
“Her son could be in a lot of trouble.”
Mr. Mock shrugged. “He’s big.”
“We’ll be back, Mr. Mock.”
“Goodbye, then.” He shut the door.
Guy said, “Thanks, Dad.”
“Oh, shut the hell up,” said Mr. Mock.
Now Guy’s stuffing dollar bills into the G-string of a young lady with dyed red hair cut short. He’s called PSA to find out about flights to Los Angeles. At the last possible minute he’ll call Randi and ask her to meet him at LAX. He can just imagine: Sick unto death. Had it up to here. Et cetera. He would love to be able to assert to her that he can explain all of this. The explanation thing is at least mildly entertaining for him. But they’ve moved beyond his rationalizations and into the realm of necessity. Until now, today, this moment, it’s never seemed as if actual trouble for him and Randi were anywhere in the vicinity. They are still justifiable sort of people, only peripherally involved with all this craziness; he is first and foremost an academic, an activist, an advocate, an apostate, an author, not necessarily in that order but still, a person to be taken seriously and accorded respect, not one of the insane citizens with whom life is constantly bringing him into alignment. Savor it, he’s being hunted by the FBI because of something Ernest has told them. OK, maybe what Ernest spilled concerned things he, Guy, could be said to have done, but you have to consider the source, don’t you? This is what he’ll tell the FBI if it turns out he has to tell them anything at all: Consider the source.
And where do we go from here?
Which is the way that’s clear?
The redhead grips the pole. It’s an interesting gesture because Guy sees all the fingers working, each seeking purchase on the sweaty shaft of metal, gripping and regripping like the fingers of someone operating a sewing machine, or throwing a pot, this is really work, Guy thinks, his fourth beer half empty before him, she grips and bends low and in one of the lulls in David Essex’s spare piece of pop poetry he hears her grunt, an earthy sound, allied with exertion and weariness and digestion and excretion and other functions that would seem to have absolutely nothing to do with this tits ‘n’ ass phantasm set down in the middle of this derelict land, and as she sways to the left her hand gently sweeps across the top of his head, knocking his cap off, and as she sways to the right her fingers softly caress his scalp and the high border of his dwindling hair, and his own hand rises with a five-dollar bill in it. Why not? This is work. Nothing else could possibly look like work next to this. She takes the bill, folds it in half lengthwise, and strokes her labia with it, then tucks it in the teeny-weeny waistband of her G-string. Then she strides off; her work here is done. It’s enough to make him want to cry. He wants to be up there. He wants to feel it all for himself. He actually does begin to tear up. In the end that’s the only thing they could really accuse him of, the only thing they could ever really find him guilty of. He just wants to know for himself what it all feels like.
Randi has two large red American Tourister suitcases that she would never have dreamed of bringing to San Diego if she’d had the slightest notion that she would be staying for only three days. Her whole life these days seems to consist of dealing with the consequences of errors in judgment. So, having finally checked these millstones, she’s trying to live it up a little, drinking a martini out of a plastic cup in the departure lounge and flirting with the tall graying business type who “lent” her a cigarette. They sit and smoke, gazing at the huge machines rolling down the taxiways, aware of having little to say to each other and equally aware that each is trying to keep up the conversation. Sexy, in an awkward way. She has no idea why she is attracted to this very straight-looking fellow. He’s not exactly Republican straight, more like former Young Democrat straight, which, to her mind, is better. Room for hope. Though Guy would certainly, and loudly, disagree (her lip curls into a slight sneer at the thought of Guy). Would it be a terrible thing if she and this gentleman were to find a quiet corner of the terminal in which to fuck? It’s the fantasy lingering here and in every such place on earth. The regional planners put their sagacious heads together, they obtain the zoning, they condemn the land, they build the airport, they install the Gay Nineties saloons, the gift shops and newsstands, they bring in the fleets of shiny jets—in short, they alter the landscape, the cadence of an entire region, life itself, and all around are these boxes in which you can deposit, for a dollar and a half, a completed, preapproved application for life insurance. Everything made clean and shipshape and trimmed with smiles and bright lights, fixed, and still, they have these depositories to remind you of the statistical presence of death. The payoff, if your flight explodes in midair or corkscrews into some subdivision, is scads of dough. Not for you, though. And what if she were to write across the face of the insurance policy, “Inform my husband that three hours before my fiery death I gave a hand job to a very nice man in a Hathaway shirt and a rep tie in return for a Vantage. See if he doesn’t take the money. Tell him that I whacked off a hundred men, all of whom had questionable class sympathies, in a dozen airports; tell him that I never cared, never shared his obsessions, so my death isn’t a loss, it’s nothing he’ll suffer—and just see if he doesn’t take the god damn money and never thinks twice about me again.”
The Young Democrat has never, ever, ever forgotten his wife’s birthday.
Never cut her vacation short.
Never made her spend a single moment, much less weeks at a time, in a VW Bug.
Never sat across from her and discussed his digestion, his bowel movements, his reflux, his prostate, his hematospermia, his unjustly weak orgasms, his desire to wear women’s undergarments, his bunions, his ingrown toenails, or his personal sense of what Hegel would have had to say about the day’s headlines.
Never gotten drunk around the kitchen table with stupid undergrads or even more stupid ex-football players and erected tall towers of empty beer cans.
Never had an affair with a hypochondriacal little twat like Erica Dyson.
A flight is announced over the PA, and the Young Democrat picks up his briefcase and raincoat and rises. He tells Randi to enjoy her flight and then he’s gone, heading toward the cluster of people forming near one of the gates. Randi opens her pocketbook and checks her wallet to make sure (again) that she has enough money to buy a ticket aboard the flight. Sixty-four dollars and she is only now vaguely realizing that she could have driven. She could have rented some nice roomy American car that doesn’t sound like a heart attack heading down the road and just driven up to L.A. without hassling with taxis and skycaps and Hare Krishnas and Young Democrats before climbing aboard some skinny tube that’s likely enough to plummet
to the earth that they think it’s levelheaded to install special boxes where you can lay a bet in favor of your own death. As long as we’re throwing away money anyway. As long as sixty-four dollars here, there, and everywhere doesn’t mean diddly-squat compared with the thrill of being a fugitive from the law.
Her plane is a tiny prop with two rows, each ten seats deep, extending to the rear of the plane. A curtain separates the cockpit from the passenger cabin. A uniformed man wearing a change apron comes aboard just before the pilot seals the hatch to collect fares from passengers buying tickets. Randi gives her name as Eileen Rimer. A cousin. The plane takes off and an hour later it’s Welcome to Los Angeles County International Airport. Two seconds in the terminal and she’s already seen three women, hair out to here, wearing these Suzy Creamcheese outfits that are designed not so much to make the women wearing them look terrific as to make women like herself feel dowdy. Works like a charm. And here’s Guy, walking through the place looking like the sixth Marx Brother. Oglo. Staro. Gawpo. He spots her and heads over.
“For God’s sake,” he says, “it took you long enough.”
She just sat in the damn thing and they pulled the throttle back, or something, and it went. What does he want from her?
“Don’t be so sensitive. This is no time for you to be sensitive. They’re looking for us right now.”
“Who?”
“Who do you think? The federales. Bearing grand jury subpoenas. They already served Dad.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means they can compel testimony.”
“In connection with what?”
“A certain house in Pennsylvania, for one thing.”
“We never tried to hide the fact that we rented it.”
“It’s who was there.”
“We went over the place. What could they have?”
“Who the hell knows what they have?”
“They shouldn’t have anything.”
“Well, apparently they do.”
“Who would have told them?”
“Ernest, apparently.”
“Ernest? How could Ernest possibly know anything?”
“I didn’t mention this in Portland?”
Randi stops dead as they are approaching the baggage claim area.
“You mentioned nothing. Nothing specific.”
Guy scratches his nose thoughtfully. “I can’t believe I didn’t say something before we left up in Portland about it. Well, my oversight. The thing is, I may have spoken out of turn. I may have mentioned something I shouldn’t.”
“To Ernest.”
“Well, yuh, um.”
Amazing, Guy is at a loss for words. They stare at each other for a moment before he recovers. “He hasn’t said anything, not a word, for all these months.”
“Months? Ernest’s known about this for months?”
“Look, we have another flight to catch.”
“And then you can tell the stewardess. Keep up the good work.”
“Sarcasm isn’t useful right now, particularly.”
She thought she was moving in with a sportswriter. That was the thing. She knew about sportswriting: you got good seats to everything. Even her father had thought it was a great idea. Things had just gotten weirder and weirder and weirder.
According to a lighted sign blinking over the carousel, the luggage from Randi’s flight has been mixed together with that of several other small commuter flights, but evidently the baggage handlers are sending up each flight’s luggage separately. As the large group of people standing around the carousel watches quietly, a single flowered suitcase moves in a slow circle, alone on the conveyor belt.
“Looks like something they’d give a prestigious award to and then put on permanent exhibition at the Whitney,” says Guy.
She thought sarcasm wasn’t useful right now.
“Call it ‘Jet Lag.’ ‘Position Closed.’ ‘Carry On.’ ‘No Show.’ ‘Round-Trip.’ Hmm?”
She just glares at him. Other bags begin to appear. Eventually the American Touristers nose out of the opening in the center of the carousel and tumble down onto the belt.
“Jesus, Randi,” says Guy, “why’d you bring all that?”
AGENTS LANGMO AND NIETFELDT are seated in the front seat of a light blue sedan outside the bungalow on Fifty-eighth Street. People go in. People come out. They check out the people’s faces. They’re G-men.
“I’m still thinking of that person starting with M,” says Nietfeldt, who sits behind the wheel.
“That male person,” says Langmo.
“Affirmative.”
“Are you the author of that local bestseller The Ethics of Revolution?”
The two agents snicker.
“No, I am not Herbert Marcuse.”
“Fuck. That one was a total giveaway. Are you a Canadian writer who believes that the media through which communication takes place are more influential over people than the information contained in the communication?”
“No, I am not Marshall McLuhan.”
“Are you the nobleman of humble origins who commanded the English and Dutch forces during the War of the Spanish Succession?”
“Uh, negative.”
“Are you a real person?”
“Affirmative.”
“Are you a German film director who depicted subjective states of mind using a moving camera?”
“Using a movie camera?”
“A moving camera.”
“Name one of his pictures.”
“What the fuck? German, director, moving camera. Begins with M.”
“Come on, name a picture.”
“The Last Laugh.”
“No, I am not F. W Murnau.”
“Bastard. Are you the French author of comic plays that expose human folly by embodying it in caricatured universal types?”
“No, I am not Molière.”
Across the street, a Chevy with a Trans Rent-a-Car sticker on the rear bumper pulls to the curb and parks. Nietfeldt and Langmo watch with mild interest. The driver opens the door and places one foot on the road. Langmo lights a cigarette.
“Gimme one,” says Nietfeldt.
“Rental car,” says Langmo, shaking one out of the pack.
“That’s a new wrinkle.”
The driver wears jeans, a western-style shirt, a denim jacket, and a floppy cap. He steps completely from the car and heads for the bungalow. A figure remains in the passenger seat.
“Hmmm,” says Langmo.
“Let me take another look at this bug-eyed motherfuck,” says Nietfeldt. He puts the cigarette between his lips and, tilting his head back to keep the smoke out of his eyes, removes from his jacket pocket a strip of oak tag to which three pictures of Guy Mock are stapled: his driver’s license photo, a news photograph, and the photo from the back cover of The Athletic Revolution. “I think we got him,” he says.
Langmo leans over, examines the pictures, then watches the figure retreat up the driveway and into the building.
“I believe you’re right.” He shakes his head. “Coming back here. Imagine that.”
“Numb nuts.”
Whatever Mock carries with him out of the building a few moments later, it is small enough to fit in his pockets. This makes Nietfeldt and Langmo slightly nervous, but Guy Mock is not known to be a gun-toting man. Most likely he has picked up something more practical, like passports. He gets back into the rental car and starts it up, drives off immediately.
They follow at a distance, a nondescript blue shape in anyone’s rearview.
“He wouldn’t go anywhere near them,” says Nietfeldt.
“You never know. He came back to the apartment.”
“If he even knows where they are anymore.”
Up ahead, the Chevy runs a stop sign, accelerating sharply.
“That’s peculiar,” says Langmo.
Nietfeldt touches the brake and stops at the intersection.
“Now,” he says. “Nice, slow, legal.” Th
ey begin again. They pick up the Chevy at San Pablo, where it sits, waiting to turn right. Nietfeldt brings the sedan to a stop behind a VW bus, pilgrims with Kansas plates. Following their bliss right into Emeryville, it looks like. Bummer. The Chevy makes its turn. Nietfeldt waits for a moment and then moves out from behind the VW, noses up to the intersection, and turns quickly.
“Watch it,” says Langmo. The Chevy comes to a stop at a red light at Alcatraz. Nietfeldt pulls to the side of the road, blocking the driveway of an auto body shop. A worker carrying a tire iron approaches to tell them to move it. Langmo flips open his bi-fold and displays his shield, averting his gaze in a practiced way. Nietfeldt doesn’t take his eyes off the Chevy. The light changes. An AC Transit bus pulls away from a stop, cutting them off. To the left they are blocked by a truck.
“Shit,” says Nietfeldt. “I can’t see shit.” He steers the sedan into opposing traffic, which brakes, swerves, sounds horns. Wheee. Nietfeldt shoots through a gap in the traffic back into the northbound lane. Now there’s nothing between them and the Chevy. The Chevy accelerates again, heading toward a dense pocket of traffic nearing Ashby, veering into the left-turn lane at the intersection. Nietfeldt brings the sedan up behind a pickup that separates them from the Chevy, but on a yellow light the Chevy darts straight through the intersection, crossing Ashby and leaving the two agents stuck in the left-turn lane and behind the traffic massing at the red light.
Spring Chronicle
Yolanda goes out one morning and returns that afternoon wearing a nurse’s uniform, from the cap down to the white support hose. She’s rented an apartment over a grocery on Capitol Avenue, just another RN looking for a place to rest her tired toes.
“Great,” Teko says. He opens the newspaper, shakes it to get the pages to lie the way he wants.
They pack up W Street. The entire thing has the feeling of a divorce to it. In fact, the running theme seems to be “Does Tania want to stay and live with Daddy or does she want to go and live with Mommy?”
Of course she will be joining the women’s collective, won’t she? Yolanda, in an attempt to establish “sisterhood” with Tania, daily conducts her beloved criticism/self—criticism sessions—just the two of them, one on one. Do we feel as if our commitment to the doctrine of direct revolutionary action has come at the expense of our work toward a new feminism? Check.
Trance Page 44
