Bald New World

by Peter Tieryas Liu

  “What’s on this disk?” I asked. “Dr. Asahi said she was stumped.”

  “The answer to a puzzle,” Larry answered.

  “If you’re going to tell me this is somehow related to a girl you’re in love with—”

  “She hasn’t called me yet,” he said. “But no, this isn’t related. You reminded me though. Why hasn’t Shinjee called me back yet?”

  “We did disable her bodyguards and expose their attempt to knock us out.”

  “She’s just making a living,” Larry said, shrugging it off.

  “I’m not trying to question you, man, but should you have paid more attention at the meeting?”

  Larry laughed. “Do you know what the real point of the meeting was?”

  “It wasn’t to discuss business matters?”

  “The other managers wanted to embarrass Russ by pointing out all the problems and supersede his authority by talking directly to me. I had to act like I didn’t care so they’d understand Russ was still the man and talking to me was pointless.”

  “You guys planned this?”

  Larry nodded. “He’s really big on expanding into garbage disposal which has caused a political nightmare. The others think it’s a fool’s game and part of me agrees with them. But hell, diversity can’t be bad.” He cleared his throat. “Russ also thinks one of the managers is working for the Colonel. Had to be careful what we said in there. Anyways, thinking about all this business stuff stresses me out. I sometimes think about giving it all up and just wandering the planet.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  “I’d miss all my ladies.”

  I laughed. “You can meet new ones.”

  “The ones I’m chasing now are way too attractive for me to give up without at least trying.”

  “You mean Shinjee?”

  “Plus two new ones I met last night.”

  I sighed. “You’re in love?”

  “Not yet. But the Austrian-British lady I met last night reminded me of this Greek statue I once saw in San Francisco. She’s actually the niece to our regional manager in Mongolia. We talked about quantum mechanics as love made into mathematics.”

  “What about the other one?”

  He waved his finger at me. “I’m not kidding you, she looked like an elf. Perfect body proportions, cute like someone from those fantasy-book covers. All she needed was pointy ears. What about you? Did you at least find Rebecca attractive?”

  “She was—nice.”

  “I didn’t ask if she was nice.”

  “She told me she doesn’t like guys shorter than her—and I’m shorter than her.”

  He pointed out some flowers. “Roses have a funny way of equalizing uneven heights. So do coats. How do you think these look?”

  He had lifted up some red winter coats that appeared cheap, embroidered with flowery designs.

  “I don’t like it.”

  “I love it,” Larry said. “Duo shao qian?” he asked the owner.

  “150 SC,” was the response.

  “I’ll take ten.”

  The owner appeared shocked.

  “You sure you don’t want to haggle a little?” I asked.

  “You know I never haggle,” Larry replied.

  He scanned in his credit key and the owner examined it multiple times to make sure it wasn’t a fake.

  There was a jade store which sold some incredibly detailed jewelry. There was one of a jade fox that was particularly stunning. I examined it, impressed by the craftsmanship.

  “How much?” I asked.

  The response was ridiculously high and I tried to haggle, but he wouldn’t budge.

  “This is of the finest material and I personally crafted it,” he insisted.

  “You don’t want it?” Larry asked. “I think Rebecca will love it.”

  “Too expensive.”

  We went to ten more shops buying more clothing that he was either going to “donate or use as costumes in the next movie.” The look on the faces of the shopkeepers was a mixture of wariness, surprise, and bliss. I could tell they thought Larry was a wasteful buffoon for paying so high, though they didn’t mind one bit.

  The bags became too heavy and I told him, “I’ll take these downstairs.”

  “I’ll see you in a bit.”

  I put the bags in the car and thought about how much Linda used to love shopping. We couldn’t afford any of the good stuff, especially not at the expensive shopping malls in California, but she loved finding places like this where she could haggle for amazing deals. As much as I tried to enjoy shopping, I couldn’t, my body becoming tired, yawns escaping me, my attention shifting to the internet to read useless trivia. We used to fight because I’d want to go home and she wanted to spend a little more time shopping. To her, it was a game as she navigated her way through merchants who thought they were smarter. Beating them was the challenge and the only place where she could feel a sense of control as we had so little with our overwhelming debts. I knew that now. Why didn’t I back then?

  When I got back upstairs, Larry was running straight towards me. He had on a woman’s wig that was colored green and was dressed in a blue dress, bra wrapped around his neck. As he zoomed by, he yelled, “Help!”

  Behind him was a middle-aged Chinese man with a beaver hat and a bat swinging at everything in his way. “Stop him!” he was screaming. “STOP HIM!!!”

  Just as he was about to pass me, I stuck my foot out and tripped him. He crashed into a rack full of ear muffs. He tried to lift up his bat, but I stomped down on his wrists. He let out a yelp. “What are you doing?” he protested in Mandarin.

  “Larry!” I shouted. “Larry! What’s going on?”

  Larry sheepishly came back. From the direction that the two of them had been running, I saw a young woman in tears.

  “There’s been a huge misunderstanding,” Larry said. “I didn’t sleep with your wife. I didn’t even know she was married.”

  “Then why’s she pregnant?” he demanded. “I haven’t been to bed with her in almost a year!”

  I looked to Larry, then back at the woman and noticed the bulge in her belly.

  “Ask her, not me,” Larry said. “I just talked to her about buying some dresses.”

  The man started crying and looked silly with his hat shaped like a beaver with two buck teeth. “Why are the heavens so cruel to me?”

  Larry signaled for me to take my feet off the guy. He stooped down and said, “If you need a divorce lawyer, I can help you. Just give me a discount when I buy thirty dresses.”

  “I don’t want to divorce her. I’ve already forgiven her five times. But now she’s gotten pregnant. I love her so much, I’d rather die than part with her.”

  Larry peered over at the woman who still looked coquettish, biting her lips, demurely watching us. “You picked the wrong girl to love,” he said.

  III.

  Very little was sacred for Larry. Marriage was one of those exceptions. He hated people who cheated. One of his top producers, Limeng, was having an affair while his wife was in the hospital with breast cancer. No one minded much because he was such a likable guy (and as people pointed out, he hadn’t gotten laid in years). But after Larry found out, he fired him instantly and not only that, made sure he was blacklisted with any company he had contacts with. “A man who doesn’t respect marriage can’t be trusted,” Larry declared. “Especially when his wife is dying in the hospital.”

  In this case, he asked me to stay outside while he talked with the beaver man. I reminded Larry that just a few moments ago, beaver man had tried to bash his head in.

  “If you thought your wife was cheating on you, wouldn’t you do the same?”

  Of course, he had no respect for relationships outside of marriage, frequently stealing women from men they’d been dating. Likewise, even if he was dating a woman, he’d meet many others. But married women were strictly taboo, even if it was just a matter of semantics.

  IV.

  I received a number of ca
lls for a photo shoot I’d scheduled for the evening and coordinated with the individuals involved. Once Larry got back out, he handed me a case. “What is it?” I asked.

  “Open it.”

  It was the jade necklace with the ornate fox.

  “You think Rebecca will like it?” Larry wanted to know.

  “Man, this is too expensive.”

  “It’s nothing,” he shrugged it off. “Record a message for me and I’ll have it sent ASAP.”

  “I can’t take this, man.”

  “Take it. You saved my head from getting bashed in,” he said, then rubbed his head. “I like my head the way it is.”

  I thanked him and asked, “Do you think it’s a little too much to send when I barely know her?”

  “Extremity is the only way to get things done in this world,” Larry answered. “Guess what?”

  He seemed especially exuberant. “What?”

  “Shinjee called. She wants to meet for a private date. I get shivers just thinking about the possibility of holding her.”

  “Is that safe?”

  “I can handle her. Also, we need to start preparations.”

  “For what?”

  “We’re filming a documentary about my factories and I’m giving you full access to record everything.”

  “Is this your new film?”

  He winked and made a guttural sound that sounded kind of like a mean chuckle. “Maybe. Just know, this is going to be bigger than anything we’ve ever done before. Can you give me the disk?”

  I handed it to him. He took out his digital monocle, scanned the contents in, and perused them.

  “So?” I asked.

  Inside the package was a small lock of white hair. Like most of the other wig samples from Chao Toufa, it looked like authentic human hair.

  I saw a flash of anger flit across his face as his upper lip curled. He restrained himself with a sigh and sealed up the package, putting it inside his pocket.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “We’ll talk about this later. I need to prepare for my date. Besides, you look tired.”

  “I actually have a photo shoot tonight. Couple models coming over.”

  “Maybe I should change my plans and join you,” he jested.

  “Feel free. I think they’d love it.”

  Larry laughed. “Gotta stay true to my love. I’ll see you at the factory in the morning.”

  “You sure you don’t want me to come along? I can delay the shoot.”

  “And keep the models waiting? You’ll crush their egos and I can’t allow that. Plus, I think I can handle it this time. Just keep your phone on.”

  He ordered a car to take me home. I recorded a message to Rebecca thanking her for an interesting time. He zipped back to wherever it was that he was heading.

  My cab arrived five minutes later and I jumped into the backseat. I dozed off and dreamt about a big python controlled by an Indian trainer for a circus. I got too close and the snake struck, biting my testicles. The pain from its fangs woke me up and I realized I was finally home. I hoped the dream didn’t symbolize any unconscious woes I wasn’t aware of.

  V.

  I hated recreating and resculpting violence on the camera as that was all I did during the African Wars. So I strayed from violence to the societal anomalies that invisibly lurked with us for my photography. The shoots I did changed depending on the propensities I was having at any given time. Recently, I’d been recreating American urban legends. I wanted to cover a gamut of smaller urban legends like the woman who got bit by an iguana at a supermarket, a cactus exploding with an army of tarantulas, and an AIDS Mary who infected hapless men and sent them letters welcoming them to “the world of HIV.” Most nights, for every ten thousand photos I took, I discarded 9900 of them. As I got ready to click away, I wondered, like love (as Shinjee put it), if a person could discard 99% of their life and experience only the best 1%, would they think life a grand and beautiful thing?

  Those ten thousand clicks were a tricky affair. I had to imprint, then selectively discard the images that were no good, luridity and sensationalism ignored as passé, wiping the model down with body wax to produce a shimmer of sweat reeking of demystified lust. Ten models arrived of mixed gender and race. Jimi looked like she was 15 but she was 29. Darlene looked like she was 26 but she was 18. Neither suffered from anorexia. They simply didn’t like the taste of food. Once, it was poverty, war, and hunger that were the great evils of society. Now, it was white bread, carbs, and sweets.

  I overheard three guys talking about how certain creams and soaps were good for tone and fleshiness. They exchanged recipes, talked about ten magazine covers that were like the Ten Commandments to them; thou shalt look like me or suffer the damnable fires of mediocrity. It was self-induced abandonment as they lamented the fact that they were two pounds overweight.

  Zim Frog, as she called herself, encompassed a gallery of emotions; defiant, seductive, onerous, contemplative, indolent, rambunctious, and lethargic. She also smelled terrible as she refused showers. I had two assistants and three makeup artists to deal with her.

  None of the models had tattoos as that would mean career suicide. Designers and photographers wanted to paint their own temporary head tattoos to match the outfits. I had to work with the designer to pick out the costumes and make sure the lighting fit. The makeup artists went with the typical statuesque look that resembled most shows and magazine covers. I hated it and had to show samples from my portfolio to indicate I wanted something with both less and more panache, the way Linda so masterfully balanced her talents.

  I despised over-complicated cameras. Aperture, exposure, f-stops all meant nothing without the right model. Give the right woman jeans and a shirt, and she’d look a thousand times more striking than any woman in the most elaborate costume. Plus, post-production technology was so powerful, I could do anything after the fact except masquerade a lack of character. Swapping lenses helped, but a vacuous personality couldn’t seem interesting with the best lens in the world. I used to run shoots with Linda all the time, do freelancing work for a variety of venues. She used to regale me with the intense drama between models as they competed for photographers and face time. Sex was just the stepping point and insecurities abounded. Plastic surgery had changed the landscape of fashion. Anyone could be a model if they were willing to lend their faces and bodies to image facilitators. Magazines had to start posting disclaimers that said, “None of our models have been image facilitated,” when in fact many had, leading to a few scandals and editorial resignations.

  I switched my camera on, then off, running about trying to capture a frame of a doctored moment that was really an embellishment in a chorus of discordant harmony. The world was a square frame and I played my part as visual scrivener, my fingers set to autopilot. This was the way I experienced most of my life, unable to change things, trying to maintain control through the visual canvas. I adjusted the level of flash to overcompensate for the monochromic palette that consumed the fake house set. Wine was being passed out to encourage drunk emanations in dizzying bouts of dazzling delirium. Phones of different shapes were distributed, a collection of old cell phones made into a costume on top of Jazz, a model who never spoke during shoots.

  Handling the tarantulas was painful and the wrangler had to be particularly delicate as the two male models were terrified arachnaphobes. I used a Pinlighter 1887 for this scene, a camera that was slightly bigger than a pen that recorded images remarkably well. It was my camera of choice when recording Larry’s movies as it gave me complete flexibility. If I had one complaint, it was that it was too light, even with automatic motion-stabilizing, so that the footage had to be corrected in post. Conveniently, I could position it anywhere and have it feed directly into my eye scanner. Automated hover lights with shifting brightness moved into place and seven additional cameras recorded the scene in 3D, projecting it onto a digital environment which I could shift and mold as I pleased. Any tree I wanted to downlo
ad, any famous site I wanted to shoot against would be automatically recreated. If I wanted to get especially fancy, I could use a printer to create the physical environments, though that was time-consuming and wasteful. The tattoo artists could either map their designs in 3D and project it onto the model or do it live, though the latter gave less flexibility. My current design was in a desert with a whole lot of cacti.

  After that scene wrapped, I saw I had a few missed calls. Most were from friends who wanted to hang out (well, to be more accurate, they wanted to hang out so I could help them be a contact to Larry who they wanted to ask for money). I was surprised to see a series of sevens and twos that I recognized as Rebecca Lian’s number.

  “Hey,” I said as I called her back. “How are you?”

  “Busy?”

  “I have time to talk.”

  “Lovely necklace,” she said. “It was a kind gesture and totally not necessary.”

  “You liked it?”

  “My mom used to read me stories from Pu Songling about fox spirits who would seduce men and steal their souls.”

  I laughed. “There was no hidden meaning in my gift.”

  “I can’t accept it.”

  “They had a no-return policy,” I said, not actually knowing if they did. “And I wouldn’t know what to do with it. Like I said in my message, consider it a thank you gift for lunch. We are business associates after all.”

  She looked at me, then simpered. “I’ll be in Shanghai next week. Give me a call.” She hung up.

  “Nick! Nick!” The designer ran to me. “We have a problem.”

  In the dressing room, the mirror had been shattered. There was a male model that had been restrained by three others, his face a bloody goulash.