Eye Candy

by Ryan Schneider

  While Danny sat staring at the Laugh Factory, two teenagers strolled the sidewalk across the street from the service station. They were heading south, towards Sunset Boulevard. A couple of white kids wearing brand new expensive shoes. One of them carried a brown paper sack in his hand.

  The teens stopped in front of The Laugh Factory. They looked around, up and down the street. The teen holding the paper sack drew his arm back and whipped the sack into the air. The sack hit the electronic marquee and brown sludge splattered Poo in the face.

  The teens laughed, high fived, and hurried up the sidewalk.

  Apparently they weren’t fans.

  Danny toyed with the notion of popping into the Laugh Factory. He decided against it. He wanted to cruise the streets of L.A. with the top down, feel the wind in his hair, dream about Candy, and be completely fucking depressed. Perhaps he would park somewhere up in the hills, high above the city. He would sit and smoke and listen to the radio and worry about Candy.

  “You okay, mister?”

  The station attendant stood beside Danny’s convertible. A black baseball cap worn backwards covered his head. Long brown hair hung from beneath the cap. He wore a black tee shirt with a digital image of a rock band moving on it. It looked like a music video of a man in a hospital bed, with a mask strapped to his face, while his armless, legless body squirmed about. Danny stared at it, transfixed.

  Finally, Danny looked up at the attendant’s face.

  “Dude, you alright? You need a tow or somethin’?”

  “No.”

  “You been sittin’ here for forty-five minutes.”

  Danny smiled. He found this very funny. “Really?”

  “Yeah, dude, really.”

  “Time flies when you’re having fun.”

  “So, like, what’re you doing?”

  Danny sighed. “I’m looking for someone. A girl.”

  The attendant walked quickly to the sidewalk, to a row of small vending machines. He tapped a button on a red machine and an e-paper popped up. He removed it from the slot and returned to Danny’s car. “Here you go.”

  Danny took the thin sheet. It gave off blue light, yet was also transparent. Electronic words and three-dimensional holographic images moved across the front of it, advertising for liquor stores and other local businesses.

  Danny tapped the page numbers on the right-hand side, scanning through the bars, clubs, strip joints, massage parlors, and classified ads featuring beautiful women dressed in lingerie and high heels. The women feigned undressing, blew kisses, and curled their finger in come-hither motions.

  Danny tapped on page five.

  A jolt went through Danny’s body and soul.

  Featured in the largest, most prominent ad, was Candy. Her holographic likeness rose up out of the electronic paper. She wore a lacy black brassiere, sheer, ruffled panties adorned with black bows, and black garters hooked to matching stockings. Purple nail polish adorned her fingertips. Pink lipstick covered her lips. Wild blond hair cascaded down her back.

  Danny had never seen her this way. But it was most definitely her.

  “What is this?”

  “Call girls, man. Hookers. Escorts. You want a handjob in your car behind Pollo Loco, you call someone like her.” The attendant pointed to an overweight woman with mascara stains around her eyes. “You want to get wildly fucked, you call her.” He pointed to a woman with two hands clenched around the anatomically-accurate head of a large strap-on device. “And if you want a G-F-E in a suite at the Ritz, you call her.” He pointed to Candy.

  “What’s a G-F-E?” Danny asked.

  “Girlfriend experience. They hold your hand and braid flowers in your chest hair. Some real D.H. Lawrence shit. They pretend they like you. Like they’re your girlfriend.” He leaned closer and studied the ad in more detail. “Oh, no, wait. Never mind. It’s just an ad for a company that makes porn. She’s their newest fuck queen. See, her name is right there: Priscilla.”

  In the corner of the ad, a company logo flashed, Vulva in blue letters, alternating with Priscilla in red letters, then a phone number. Danny pulled out his phone and dialed the number. A woman answered on the third ring.

  “Vulva Video, go fuck yourself.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Vulva Video. Go fuck yourself.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Habla Ingles?”

  “Yes, I speak English. Why did you tell me to go fuck myself?”

  “It’s our new company slogan. We’re trying it out. You don’t like it?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll make a note of it. How can I help you?”

  “I’m looking for a girl.”

  “Who isn’t?”

  “No, I’m looking at one of your ads. I need to find the girl in the ad. It says her name is Priscilla.”

  Danny heard the sound of fingers typing on a keyboard.

  “Blond or redhead?”

  “Blond.”

  “I’ve got two blond Priscillas. Is it the one where she’s being strangled or the one where she’s wearing a bra and ruffled panties, with big hair?”

  “Bra and panties and big hair,” said Danny.

  “Yeah, she’s gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “It says she was fired. A couple months ago. She didn’t show up to work one day. So after a week they canned her.”

  “Do you have any contact information? A phone number or address?”

  “I couldn’t give you that information if I had it, but no, I don’t. I don’t even have her real name.”

  “Is there anyone there I could talk to, someone who might know where she is?”

  “We shoot more than a hundred girls a day. Almost five thousand a month. If you’re looking for talent, I can email you our latest catalogue.”

  “No, I need to find this particular girl.”

  “Please tell me you’re not her dad.”

  “No, why?”

  “We’ve had irate fathers show up here with shotguns. Is she your daughter?”

  “No, but she’s . . . someone very special.”

  “I would help you if I could, but I honestly have no information. Sorry.”

  “Thanks, anyway.” Danny hung up.

  “Dead end, huh?”

  Danny nodded.

  “You could always try the Palace.”

  “The what?”

  “Robot Palace. Up in the valley. They’ve got all kinds of fucked up shit in there. A lot of porn stars wind up there.”

  “What do they do there?”

  “Have sex with robots, mostly. But some cocktail.”

  Danny studied the ad with Candy. It was the most recent image of her, taken sometime after her disappearance. “She’s not a porn star.”

  The attendant chuckled. “Sorry, brother. But all evidence points to the contrary. You know her?”

  “I used to.”

  “She’s hot.”

  Danny smiled. His lips and face curved upward to form the smile, but he felt sad inside. “Yes, she is.” He offered his pipe to the attendant. “You want a hit?”

  “Shit yeah.”

  “Hop in.”

  The attendant opened the passenger door and got in.

  “I forgot my Vape-a-toke at home,” said Danny “so we have to do it the old fashioned way.”

  The attendant took the pipe and lighter from Danny. “There’s not supposed to be any open flame in the station.” He struck the lighter and angled the cone of blue flame toward the bowl. He took a big hit.

  “Why?” Danny asked. “There’s no gasoline here.”

  “I know,” said the attendant. He spoke in a hoarse voice as he held his smoke. “Old habits die hard.” After several long seconds, he exhaled two white plumes out of his nostrils. “That is some good shit. I’m Owen.” He extended his hand.

  “Danny.”

  They shook.

  Owen held up the pipe. “May I?”

  “Be my guest, Owen.”

 
“Thanks, man. And here I thought it was gonna be just another shitty Monday night at work while my friends were off watching the game.” Owen fired the bowl, inhaled, and held it. “You know, you look familiar.” Owen’s eyes widened and he coughed. He began patting his body, slapping his chest and arms and legs, while coughing out smoke.

  “Are you on fire?”

  “Wait.” Still coughing, Owen thrust his hand into a pants pocket on the side of his leg. He withdrew his phone. He tapped the screen a few times and then thrust it toward Danny. “Is this you?”

  On the phone’s screen, Danny saw an image of himself. It was his author photo for The Rock of God.

  “Handsome devil, ain’t I?”

  “It is you! Holy shit, man. Dude, your book is like my own personal Holy Bible. I discovered Atheism because of you. I owe my life to you. Let me get a pic.”

  “It’s not really about that. I mean–”

  Owen put one arm around Danny’s shoulders and leaned close as he held up the phone.

  Danny tried to smile his professional “author” smile, sexy but intellectual.

  “Got it.” Owen admired the photo. “Before I discovered your book, I used to be such a worrywart. I used to spend all my time wondering if I was a good person, if I was wasting my life, if I was just another pathetic cog in the great money machine making us believe promiscuity and morality are not mutually exclusive. You said it right here in chapter three. . . .”

  Owen tapped and swiped at the screen several times.

  “Chapter three, and I quote, ‘There are those who would have us believe that the risque imagery upon which the very foundation of the multibillion-dollar advertising industry is built is antithetically divine in origin, that in fact such imagery is a clever ruse designed to distract us from our higher purpose, to wreak havoc in our lives by sewing seeds of doubt and dissatisfaction in our minds, causing us to question all that we are given until we flee from that which is right and good and seek instead that which provides no satisfaction, yields no answers, and therefore blinds us to the truth.

  “ ‘But the truth is that there is no truth. There is only thought, word, deed, action, and reaction. And, one day, death.’ ”

  Owen ended his recitation and turned to Danny. “Dude, that is fucking genius.”

  “I actually wrote that?”

  “The book has your name and picture on it.”

  “That’s fuckin’ depressing.”

  “It’s fuckin’ genius, dude. I’ve never been so happy as I was the day I read that paragraph and realized I had to stop torturing myself, that I should just live my life, and be myself, and do what I want to do. You know?”

  “Sure. But . . . what if I was wrong?”

  “Huh?”

  “What if everything I said was wrong? That book is supposed to be about robots. To help us program them, and to help us understand them and the way they think and speak and behave.”

  “Robots are just machines, man.” Owen sparked the bowl and took another hit. “Like can openers and shit.”

  Danny considered Owen’s statement.

  On the other side of the service station lot, a robot was putting air into the tire of a vehicle. An elderly woman sat patiently in the passenger seat.

  Across the street were a young woman and a robot, both dressed in exercise attire and running shoes. They were on the corner, jogging in place while they waited for the light to change. The robot wore a headband, despite its inability to sweat. The robot slapped the big yellow crosswalk button several times.

  Owen rambled on. His eyes were red and puffy. “Like, sometimes, me and my friends will drive out to Antelope Valley, to one of the big robot wrecking yards, to find some old shitty bots to buy for a few dollars. And we’ll throw ’em in the trunk and then go find a secluded place where we can hook ’em up to an old car battery to make ’em talk. And then we’ll get really high and point guns at ’em and threaten ’em with deactivation and shit. And they always beg us not to do it. And then we blow ’em away. Fuckin’ positrons everywhere, dude. I like the way they sparkle in the headlights.” Owen took another hit from Danny’s pipe. “It’s awesome.”

  “You kill robots?”

  Owen laughed and accidentally coughed out his smoke. “You can’t kill something that isn’t alive, man. You of all people should know that.”

  “You make them beg for their lives, and then you shoot them?”

  “For real, man. Right in the head.” Owen pointed his index and middle fingers as if they were a gun. He mimed firing it, simulating the slow-motion kickback. “Dude, you should come with us. We were talking about going tomorrow. You should totally come.”

  “Get out.”

  “Huh?”

  “Give me my pipe,” Danny snatched the pipe and lighter from Owen’s hand, “and get the fuck out of my car.”

  Owen’s phone lit up and vibrated in his hand. He answered it as he slowly exited Danny’s convertible. “Hello? . . . Hey, man. . . . Dude, I’m at work, getting high with Daniel Olivaw . . . Yes, way. . . . Dude, he’s a fuckin’ dick. I invited him to come waste some bots with us tomorrow and he got all pissed and kicked me out of his car.”

  Danny pressed the ignition button on his dash and put the car in gear. He whipped the car out of the lot, with the sound of the tires grabbing asphalt.

  Danny checked his rearview mirror. Owen stood with his arm raised, his middle finger in the air. He was still on the phone.

  ~

  The car wended its way up Mulholland Drive, the reverse of the route he’d taken with Harley after their date on Catalina Island.

  Danny had no idea where he was going. He wasn’t even driving. He’d put the car on autodrive after leaving the 76 station. The e-paper with Candy’s digital rendering lay on the passenger seat, fluttering in the breeze swirling around the interior of the car. Danny hated to look at it, hated to see her like that. Yet he could scarcely look away. He wanted to toss it out of the car. He also wanted to hang on to it. Perhaps even masturbate to it.

  He glanced at the time projected in his car’s heads-up display. He’d smoked a lot after leaving the 76 station, was very high, and his eyes felt like cotton. He blinked several times until a bit of moisture refreshed his eyes.

  The red digits gleamed in the heads-up-display. 10:47.

  Danny glanced at the e-paper with Candy’s picture on it. It was almost as if she were standing on the seat.

  He took another hit from his little black pipe and filled his lungs with hot Silver Afghani smoke.

  Danny’s car drove itself further up Mulholland, winding up and up the dark, twisting lane. There were no other cars on the road. Danny turned off his headlights and drove in the dark the way Harley had done. The car didn’t need lights, it utilized satellite navigation. The full moon was climbing into the sky, and the trees and the road were bathed in pale moonlight. Despite its undeniable beauty, Danny would not have wanted to attempt to drive by only the light of the moon. He would let his car do the work. One more example of a machine besting a human. Perhaps it was a fitting balance, for somewhere, out there, in places like Antelope Valley, there were dipshit service station attendants torturing scrapped robots.

  Ahead on the right, a scenic lookout came into view.

  “Pull over here.”

  The white convertible glided slowly off the road and into the lot. Danny sat behind the wheel, staring at the valley and its endless sea of lights. Universal City. Toluca Lake. North Hollywood. Slicing down the middle of the valley was Lankershim Boulevard.

  And there, between Lankershim and the Hollywood freeway, lit up brighter than an airport, Danny saw it.

  Robot Palace.

  Impossible to miss, even from this distance.

  Rory’s description of it replayed in Danny’s mind:

  “Robots destroying humans . . . Fucked-up, old-world gladiator shit, but with a new futuristic twist. Sex . . . Orgies. Acted out on a stage covered with dirt to soak up all the blood. Just li
ke the Romans did it thousands of years ago.”

  Statements echoed by Owen the Robot Murderer.

  Danny considered it.

  Did he want to see that kind of stuff?

  Could it be as bad as Rory had claimed?

  Danny fired the little bowl on his pipe. The cherry burned and the weed crackled. He exhaled a long plume of smoke, blowing it at Robot Palace. The smoke whirled against the windshield and curled back on itself. The lights of Robot Palace gleamed through the smoke.

  Danny coughed a few times and smiled.

  Yes. He absolutely wanted to see that kind of stuff.

  He tapped the screen of his nav system. In a matter of seconds, he was on his way.

  Chapter 32

  Robot Palace

  Even before Danny reached the parking lot, he was awed by the size of Robot Palace.

  People lined both sides of the road. They shouted and shook their fists and waved signs in the air.

  GOD HATES ROBOTS!

  ROBOTS STEAL JOBS!

  HUMANS FIRST!

  A contingent of cops stood between the protestors and the road. Some were human, some were robocops like Barney, big and scary. All of them were heavily armed.

  Many of the protesters were more obsessed with the robocops than with Danny as he drove past them.

  At last he arrived at the Palace. The exterior was all silver and gold, with long, sweeping lines. Parapets topped the metallic walls. It looked more like a castle than a palace. A castle fused with a space ship. Klieg lights shot their intense beams onto the building’s skin. The beams shifted colors, all of them transitioning together, lazily from purple to red to blue to green to white and back again.

  Danny sat behind the wheel until his car brought him to a gentle halt under a high portico.

  A highly-polished silver robot valet opened Danny’s door.

  Danny carefully rolled the e-paper into a tube and tucked it neatly into an inner pocket of his leather jacket.

  He got out of his car and the silver robot handed a ticket to him. The robot seated itself in Danny’s car and drove away, into the underground parking facility.

  Danny watched it go. He turned and followed the red carpet up the stairs toward massive double doors that had to be fifty feet high.