by Rudy Rucker
Cars? My maroon Chevy Caprice whale wagon had been a damned fine car back in Killeville, Virginia, where Carol and I bought it used for $8,000. It was the only car we’d brought across the country with us, but in Los Perros, the whale hadn’t been any kind of a car to be proud of at all. We’d darted our heads around spotting BMWs, Mercedes, Porsches, even Ferraris and Lamborghinis, cars insanely out of our price range. For our second car we came up with $4K and bought a six-year-old Honda Accord, thinking at least now we’re fuel efficient! Then I’d gotten the GoMotion job and the Animata.
Yes, instead of remaining angry embittered losers, Carol and I had gotten job skills and turned that shit around. We’d gotten the bucks and become Californian and had no problems with drinking coffee at the Los Perros Coffee Roasting Company. It wasn’t snooty in there, it was civilized and practical—in the manner of a European cafe and in the manner of a McDonald’s—in the California manner, in short, and Carol and I were now at ease there. We were Californians: fit, in a hurry, making good bread, and with serious problems that we were beginning to try to learn to deal with.
The light was red, and I sat there in my Animata, with my windows and sunroof open, looking at all the beautiful women. I had a severe horn. It had been five weeks. Things change when you go so long without the cheering contact of another human’s fluids and skin. Crossing the street were a pair of twin young mothers pushing identical light blue strollers, each stroller holding a pair of twins. Six people! Were they models, come to profit in California? Mentally I selected a cube of space around one of the women, deleted her from the street, and inserted her into my head’s own seraglio, nude and chatty.
A joyfully chic Latina woman with a high-fashion straw hat crossed next. She gazed at me evenly, smiled—and kept walking, right into the Roasting and right out of my life. In California you often see people that you never see again.
Here came a girl in stiff, poured-on jeans, her fluffy mass of combed curly hair formed into a huge ponytail resting on her back. With a barrette at either end, her ponytail had the shape of a great, thick jouncing cigar, which contrasted nicely with the sharply cut lines of her hips in their covering of thick, furrowed denim.
A plucky nineteen-year-old with dark eyebrows and a clean-cut nose appeared with two friends. Her mouth was lively, seductive and ironic, with narrow dark lips, crisply edged.
Right outside my car window sat a woman on the wide wall of the planter before the Roasting’s storefront. She wore a tasteful sweater of large argyle diamonds, her bell of hair was streaked and set just so, her soft face was womanly, yet childishly pert—I guessed she was a dissipated California Girl who had divorced or never married. She looked like Carol, only more symmetrical, ten years younger and ten pounds lighter. Suddenly I realized she was staring back at me. The light changed. Behind me was a Mercedes driven by a blond-bobbed woman in white silk, diamonds, and gold.
Turning the corner onto Santa Ynez Avenue, who should I see before the office of Welsh & Tayke Realty but Susan Poker, animatedly talking to a stocky woman with a portable phone and a black leather purse yet larger than Susan Poker’s. The stocky woman had shiny skin, short hair, and an expensive suit cut from folk-art fabric. Susan Poker was holding a sheaf of papers and acting extremely friendly, punctuating her remarks with many smiles and nods. Zzzt, I thought, mentally zapping her out of existence. ZzzzzzZZTT!
I parked behind the bank and walked half a block to a croissant bakery to grab some lunch. The bakery was run by a Vietnamese family, and I was half in love with a girl who worked behind the counter. Her name was Nga Vo.
Nga was taut and young, dressed always in black, with long hair worn poufed way up on one side. She had quick sneaky eyes that could narrow down to up-curved slits. She had a full, pouty, red-lipsticked mouth made yet more perfect by a roughness in the line of her left upper lip. I wanted to kiss and kiss that lip. She had a soft clean jawline and a weak yet stubborn chin, a California Girl chin. Beneath her face’s pale skin was an intricately expressive play of muscles: now molding a fleeting chipmunk cheek, now forming a quick corrugation across her sweet brow. When Nga wrote out a sales check, she would rest her hand on a piece of paper she’d folded in four out of some ritual of Saigonese penmanship. Every time I talked to her, I did my best to stretch out our conversation.
“A medium roast beef croissant,” I said to Nga. “And a seltzer, please.”
“Yes,” said she. “Six forty-nine. How you doing today.”
“Fine.” I wanted to say so much more. How did you and your family escape from Vietnam? Do you like life in America? Do you have a boyfriend? Could you ever be attracted to a Western man? Will you move in with me?
“It’s such nice weather,” I managed, as she counted out my change. “I hope you don’t have to work all day?”
“I here till six o’clock closing time.” Nga gave a quick laugh, breathless as a sob.
“Would . . . would you like to have dinner with me?” Yes! I’d finally said it!
Nga looked at me blankly. “What do you mean?” Her mother and aunt were watching us now, and the pushy pig behind me in line cleared his throat preparatory to placing his order.
“A date for dinner. You and me.”
Nga slid her eyes to one side and spoke in rapid Vietnamese to her mother. Her mother gave a very brief answer. Nga cast her eyes down.
“I no think so.”
Wearing a numb, frozen smile, I took my soda and sandwich outside to sit down at one of the bakery’s sidewalk tables. From inside came the chatter of Vietnamese voices. I swallowed the food too rapidly and it made a big painful lump in my throat. I was fat and old and crazy and nobody would ever love me again. Were those tears in my eyes?
A Vietnamese boy came out to clear the tables. He giggled when his eyes met mine.
“Are you Nga’s brother?” I asked desperately.
“She my cousin.” He nodded his head towards the bakery. “My name Khanh Pham. Nga say you ask her go on dinner date.”
“Yes,” said I. “Just to talk.”
“In traditional Vietnamese date, boy must come visit girl family. Maybe you visit us, then Nga go on dinner date.”
“Uh ... where do you live?”
“On East side.”
God. What if some of the Vo family were Carol’s students? I glanced down at my left hand, noticing the dent where my wedding ring had lived so many years. Asking Nga Vo for a date had been a stupid idea.
“Here our address,” said the boy, handing me a neat square of paper inscribed with Nga’s fine script. “Bakery close every Tuesday. Maybe you come visit tomorrow.”
My breath rushed out of me. “Yes. Yes, I will come!”
When I finished eating I took my paper plate and my seltzer bottle back. Nga’s mother, aunt, and cousin were there, with her father in the hallway out back. Nga slipped me a couple of bold, sneaky glances. “See you tomorrow!” I sang out.
The trees along Santa Ynez Avenue were blooming: bottlebrushes with cylindrical flowers made up of red bristles, catalpas with pendulous racemes of two-toned lavender flowers, and mimosas thick with tiny, sweet-smelling yellow blooms. Most of the fabulous plants in California are imported exotics. I wondered if the woman who reminded me of Carol was still at the Coffee Roasting. Now that I’d worked up the nerve to approach Nga, I felt brave enough to talk to anyone.
I put my card into the bank’s outdoor teller machine and pushed the buttons to get $200 in cash out of our checking account. “UNABLE TO PERFORM THE REQUESTED TRANSACTION AT THIS TIME,” read the machine’s little screen. “PLEASE REMOVE CARD.” I removed it and started over, this time trying to take the money out of the savings. Still no go. Had Carol—I reinserted the card and checked the balances of our checking and savings accounts. The balances were, respectively, $0.00 and $26.18. When our checking account runs short, money is transferred automatically from the savings. Carol had cleaned us out by writing too many checks. I seemed to remember her having mentioned
something about having to pay the car insurance bill. I hadn’t realized it would come to so much.
I took the last whole $20 out of our savings and put it in my wallet, which gave me $34 dollars in all. Today was Monday, April 27, which meant GoMotion wouldn’t transfer my pay till like Friday. I was going to have to go all week on $34? And how was I going to get that pot from Queue? No way she’d take a check. Maybe I should pocket the weed and then pretend I’d forgotten my wallet? Being broke on top of being separated made me feel totally reckless. My mind flashed back to the bell-haired woman in the argyle sweater at the Roasting. I decided to hustle back there and try to talk to her before I did anything else.
I went down back streets the two blocks to the Roasting and yes, yes, the bell-haired woman was still there, sitting with the artsy-craftsy phone-toting woman I’d seen talking to Susan Poker before. But, despite her company, the bell-haired woman was definitely the type for me.
She had slightly stunned eyes and a plumpness in her neck beneath her chin. She was like someone’s sexy Mom, and I was old enough to be Daddy. I got a coffee with sugar and cream, sat down on a bench near her, and looked at her anew with each sip of my coffee. She noticed, she looked back at me, she looked again, our eyes met, and I smiled. Smoothly and deliberately, she stuck out her tongue and pressed it tight against her upper lip. Definitely a signal. In the past, women had occasionally given me such come-ons, but as a cautious married man I’d always passed them up. Today things would be different. I stood up and I walked over to her. I felt light-headed; my blood was pounding in my ears.
“Hi,” said I. “You’re really pretty.”
She laughed softly. “I was hoping you’d talk to me. Where are you from?”
“I live right here in Los Perros. My name’s Jerzy?” I stuck out my hand. She took it lightly. The touch of her hand was firm and warm.
“I’m Gretchen. And this is my friend Kay.” I nodded to stocky Kay and concentrated on Gretchen.
“What kind of work do you do?” asked Gretchen.
“I’m a computer programmer. I’m helping to design a personal robot. We’re going to call it the Veep. Like vice president?”
“Oh.” Gretchen turned and said something to her friend, then turned back to me. “Do you work in an office?”
“No, I work at home. I’m all alone there. My wife left me six weeks ago.”
Gretchen looked very interested. “Are you planning to sell the property?”
“Don’t tell me you’re a Realtor!”
“I do a variety of things,” she said, her calm California eyes drilling into mine. Again she did that thing with her tongue.
“Would you like to come up to my house and look around?”
“Sure,” said Gretchen. “Why not.”
She talked some more with Kay, tying up loose ends, and then she walked slowly with me to my car and got in. Close up, she had tired eyes.
“Do you want anything?” I asked Gretchen.
She looked languidly greedy. “How about some fine wine? And two packs of Kents.”
The two crazy liquor store clerks were behind the counter, the thin giggling bearded one and the bowling pin—shaped one with the mustache. One of the nice things about California was how many workaday jobs were held by freaks. I got a bottle of good chardonnay and the Kents. It came to thirteen dollars and change. And then I was back in the car with Gretchen. This beautiful new woman was sitting in the bucket seat of my Animata, looking at her makeup in the mirror on the visor, fixing her face with the calm seriousness of a grown woman, her actual soft butt on the real leather of my car.
“I’m stoked,” said I. “I’m ready to party.”
Gretchen smiled. “I’m eager to see your house.” Again I studied her eyes. They were blue and . . . blank?
“I can show you my computer.”
“Yippee,” said Gretchen softly, and lit a cigarette. “I failed math in high school.”
“Are you from around here?”
“No, I’m from the Southland. Buena Park?”
“That’s near LA?”
“Not far from Disneyland. That used to be my summer job.”
“You worked in Disneyland? Wow. Talk about a real Californian. What did you do?”
“My last summer there I got to be Alice in Wonderland. In the parades?”
“God, Gretchen, that’s heavy. Did the men ever hit on you?”
“The single Dads. You had to look out for them. If they got too insistent, I’d look at Baloo Bear a special way, and he’d talk to them.”
“I’m a single Dad, Gretchen.” I laid my hand on her leg above the knee. She regarded me calmly, not moving my hand away.
A few minutes later I was back in my driveway. It was quarter past one. Though my oldest daughter Sorrel was off at college, son Tom and daughter Ida were still students at Los Perros High. They usually stopped by around three-thirty to regroup before heading across town to Carol’s. That gave Gretchen and me two clear hours.
“Nice big place,” said Gretchen. “Do you own it?”
“I rent.” A wrong answer. I was tracking Gretchen’s interest level as closely as an over-leveraged speculator watching a stock price. I hurried to get the door open. Gretchen ambled in slowly.
“Where’s the powder room?”
“Right over there. I’ll open the wine.”
I went down to the kitchen and poured two glasses of wine. Glasses which Carol had bought in Mexico two years ago. I tore my thoughts away from that. Don’t stop to think, Jerzy, just do!
Gretchen was pacing around the living room, looking unexpectedly dynamic. “I love your things, Jerzy. All those seashells. Want to show me around the rest of the place?”
“Sure, Gretchen, I’d love to.” Graciously she took her wineglass, clinked it with mine, and gave a simpering, slightly naughty giggle. Who said middle-aged people couldn’t still have fun? I led her off on the house tour.
Our big old two-level house had a linoleum kitchen and dining area downstairs. At one end of the upstairs was a low-ceilinged living room with redwood paneling. A long hall ran along the front of the house from the living room to the other end of the house. The kids’ three bedrooms were off the long hall, and at the end of the hall was my (and formerly Carol’s) bedroom, a nice space that boasted a sun porch and a working fireplace, no less.
“What are those gloves and goggles,” Gretchen asked me when we reached the sun porch. “Were you and the wife into bondage?” She laughed softly and took a sip of her wine.
“I work in virtual reality,” I told her. “Cyberspace?”
Gretchen looked enthusiastic. Cyberspace was big again, getting more popular every day. “That’s great! Can I try?”
A wave of hominess engulfed me. I stepped forward and put my arms around her. “Sure you can try it,” said I. “Everything I own is yours, Gretchen in Wonderland.”
“How sweet.”
We put down our wineglasses and I took her in my arms. Gretchen cocked her head and kissed me full on. Her mouth tasted cool and good. We made our way to the bed and lay down. Her sweater and skirt came off easily. She wore silky skin-colored underwear, and that came off easily too. I kissed her breasts and then I put on a rubber and we fucked. She wrapped her legs around my waist and moaned really loud, which made me feel great. She even said my name: “Jerzy, Jerzy, oh Jerzy!” All right.
After we came, we wandered naked into the sun porch. My windows looked out on pure nature: the live oaks and eucalypti of the dry gully behind the house. There were squirrels and birds. Standing there naked with Gretchen it felt like we were Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Sometimes Carol and I had stood here like this.
“I still want to see cyberspace,” said Gretchen, brushing my arm with the tip of a tit.
“One thing,” I cautioned. “I got a kind of infection in my machine this morning, a thing like a computer virus. We call them ants. It’s possible they might make it . . . malfunction.”
“Are you going to show me cyberspace or not?” demanded Gretchen.
“Oh, sure, I guess it’s okay,” said I, unable to resist finding out if this were true.
I turned on the computer and Gretchen watched me type in my cyberspace access code. Then I helped her don the gloves and headset. She sat in my desk chair, turning her head this way and that, while my desk monitor showed what she was seeing. I was ready to pull the plug if anything was weird, but so far everything looked normal. Gretchen was in my virtual office with Roarworld in the background.
“Dinosaurs!” exclaimed Gretchen in the too-loud voice of a person wearing earphones. “This is wonderful, Jerzy. Can I move around?”
I took her hand in mine and pushed the fingers into a pointing position. With my other hand I nodded her head to make her start flying. The screen images zoomed among the dinosaurs. I closed her fingers into a fist to make the motion stop. Gretchen understood and began flying around at will. Roarworld is quite shallow: its depth axis wraps after forty feet, meaning that if you fly forty feet deep into Roarworld, you find yourself back where you started. After she’d figured this out, Gretchen focused back on my virtual office.
It was fun to stand back and watch this naked, goggled woman sitting in my desk chair and moving her hands and head so oddly as she explored the invisible office that is layered over my sun porch. I kept a close eye on the screen, watching for any return of the ants—but there was no sign of them. Maybe the ant explosion was confined to the room at the end of the hall at GoMotion. But why had the ants put me on the dark dream; and how had they done it so easily?
As well as a door to GoMotion, my virtual office had a door to the Bay Area Netport. The Netport door was round and was patterned with the light gray-and-green yin-yang that was the Bay Area Netport logo. Gretchen flew on in there as I watched along on my computer’s screen.
Some nostalgic, displaced hacker had designed the Bay Area Netport to look like the waiting room of Grand Central Station in New York City. This cavernous simmie was programmed to be gravity-free, and you would see people’s body images floating around all over the mock steam-age space. Collision detection was usually turned off in these public spaces, so that if you bumped into someone else’s tuxedo, you would pass right through it. Ranged all along the walls, floor, and ceiling were hyperjump nodes: the gates, or magic doors, that opened into the different cyberspace worlds accessible in one jump from the Bay Area Netport. The nodes were shaped like spheres, so that you could dive into a node from any direction.
