by Aidan Truhen
Then I get up and jump in the river instead of showering and I discover that the river is glacial meltwater and my penis is very unhappy with me.
Lucille swims for half an hour he is secretly made of walrus. When he emerges his walrus man parts are like sweet potato. Doc looks at him through infrared goggles and says his groin is actually two degrees warmer than the rest of his body. This is autonomous urogenital thermogenesis and very interesting scientifically speaking. Doc says I should really look. I tell Doc she is a genius and a woman of tomorrow and I do not look at Lucille’s appalling nethers through high-tech surveillance gear that is not my jam. I go and make art.
But on second thought I do make Doc take pictures because art is where you find it and the more mysterious and horrible the better and if there is anywhere in the universe more mysterious and horrible than Lucille’s sweet potato walrus lovesack I do not know where it could be and I do not want to.
* * *
—
“Boss it is impossible.”
“Nothing is impossible.”
“Actually boss—”
“Yes all right lots of things are impossible what impossible thing is this?”
“The thing.”
“What thing.”
“The thing that you said.”
“What—”
“The guy in the marina. Boss he is not there. There’s pictures of the back of his head and like that. But he does not want to be seen.”
“Is there a picture of his ear? I read where they can do ID now with just ears—”
“Boss. I am the nerd in this conversation. There is no good picture of his ear also the availability of ear comparison data is not great.”
“So we have just his back?”
“Yeah shoulders head and butt—”
“How are there pictures of his butt?”
“Like in his suit from behind? The bellhops in the marina hotel wear body cams—”
“Oh so not like his actual butt—”
“No not his actual butt that would be weird—”
“If we had his actual butt could we identify it?”
“If we had his actual butt we would have the rest of him or else I guess it would not be so much an issue anymore boss.”
“But if we just as a matter of curiosity if—”
“No.”
“Seriously?”
“Boss—”
“Yeah okay. It’s just he worries about his body mass index so—oh.”
“What oh?”
“Soup.”
“Soup?”
“I am going to kill him with soup Charlie.”
“Um okay?”
“Not with soup maybe but definitely because of soup.”
“Yes?”
“Soup and emeralds Charlie. These are the key things here. I must go now.”
“Where?”
“Bogotá.”
* * *
—
Some things you got to do in person. There’s no phoning it in there’s just showing up. Often they’re little things like this but you still got to go and it can only be you.
Can’t take the Demon plane they will be watching that. Gonna be some guy named Urs in the bag-handling line who has a friend who has a friend who works for Eiger. A woman called Charlotte who works passport control. Someone.
Happily I have close relationships in the international pilot community I can draw on so I will just go now and fly fly fly—
“Price.”
“Hi Doc I am just going to Bogotá—”
“Yes no doubt whatever but you also have a thing for me.”
“I do it is—”
“No Price not that thing.”
“Always that thing.”
“Eh-eh Price no now is not the time.”
“You brought up my thing and my thing is partial to you so—”
“Well yes I too am partial to that thing.”
“O ARE you o good let us repair to a bedroom and—”
“…This will not get you out of doing that other thing I was talking about.”
“There are no other things there is only—”
“Price.”
“No indeed quite understood.”
“Excellent bring the klister I have an idea—”
“…”
“Do not say anything about finding the klister.”
“No ma’am.”
Klister is a kind of ski wax for when you want to go real slowly and no of course that is not what we do with it you are an idiot. But if you put klister on your skin you can lean on a wall and not slip down it even when normally you would slip down it and with the right understanding of sexual physics and good core strength Doc is correct that you can have basically hot spider lady sex.
She puts my back against the wall walks up it holding my hands. She stalks me as if she is going to eat me. It is the most fucked-up appalling thing I have ever seen.
She puts one foot on my chest and flips through the loop of our arms and slides down. I can smell the wax and the sweat on her spine. She puts both her palms flat on the wall and I cradle her as if I’m a chair. She rolls her head back to bite my neck and I feel the agony of the stress position and then the first touch of—
Amnesia.
It’s quite a long blackout and when I remember myself again she’s still kissing me and I realize that this time she didn’t take any and she knows exactly what she did and I hear her chuckle in her chest and she—
Amnesia.
* * *
—
“Doc—”
“Yes yes—”
“Doc I really got to go—”
“I said yes I KNOW—”
“You are not helping you are—”
“Fine but you also have to do that thing.”
“Tell me.”
“The Kircheisen system runs on some ancient bullshit code it is security by obsolescence.”
“Charlie cannot break it?”
“She can but not until she understands it and it will take too long. She needs a manual. Or better I think it is customized so the fastest thing is if we just ask the coder.”
“Well we can totally do that why—”
“We do not know who that is it is part of the obfuscation—”
“I am not—”
“Price! I put it on the board.”
“Yes?”
“That is how it works I did the school you do this. Fix it.”
“I am not a computer person!”
“Speak to Friday.”
“But—”
“Board.”
“But—”
“I am right now buying a dozen military-grade plasma cutters for rescue work we will not be doing under an oil rig. Speak to Friday. In person he will like that you are flying anyway doing your whatever.”
“It is not nearly in the same direction Doc—”
“It is on the board Price. Look there is Jack written underneath it is a Jack thing.”
“I—”
“The board says so Price it must be true.”
“…Yes ma’am.”
“Good.”
“Can we do the amnesia thing and this time you—”
“No. But I will tell you what I will do.”
“O yes?”
“I will show you what I remember.”
“O will you?”
“Yes. First you see there was—hhhhhsssst. Yes. There was that.”
“And now this?”
“Well—w—welllll no no last time we first did—”
“Hnnnn yes I see—”
“Not yet but now—”
“O o o”
“In-o o indeed o hoo o O”
“O”
Amnesia.
* * *
—
“Hey Mozart!”
“Fuck off Jack it is Rossini.”
“Is that like a religious holiday in Assholia?”
“And when you get to Fuckoffistan just keep right on fucking until you come out the other side.”
“You want to earn some money real fast?”
“I won’t have sex with you Jack.”
“Eight million seven hundred and five thousand five hundred euros untraceable.”
“…”
“…Mozart are you there?”
“…”
“…”
“…Ten million.”
“Fine.”
“Fifteen.”
“What?”
“Fifteen million you said yes to ten real fast.”
“Twelve.”
“Done. Get in here and take off your clothes.”
“I do not want to have sex with you.”
“You’re a fickle bitch Jack I hope you’re still going to pay me.”
“I want you to fly me to Bogotá.”
“For twelve million dollars?”
“Yes.”
“Do we have to bomb it or something?”
“Would you do that for twelve million euros?”
“Sure why not.”
“Huh.”
“Now why the fuck do you look like I shat on your puppy?”
“I feel like you massively overestimate how awful it would be to have sex with me.”
“Yeah I’m sure you do get in the plane I’m supposed to drop orphans on emergency medical equipment in seventy-nine hours.”
“I think you have that the wrong way round.”
“Yeah I’m sure you do get in the fucking plane.”
* * *
—
Because this is the world now this is the thing: everywhere is just a few hours away. Mozart’s plane is not super-duper fast but it is fast enough. It has nasty military seating the way they make seating by averages and that way it never actually fits anyone in particular it is always averagely uncomfortable for everyone. She has bolted some sort of stereo system onto the back of the flight deck and there is an actual hammock and an espresso machine where the forward galley would be on a commercial flight and otherwise the whole thing is just a heavily armored cigar of metal without windows. It’s like a submarine for air. The instruments are all like science fiction advanced and no doubt Charlie would be super excited but I do not really care about that stuff and all I can see is the little cubbyhole with the hammock and the books and even there are pictures on the ceiling and this is about the loneliest little mobile house I have ever seen.
* * *
—
“This is the loneliest mobile house I have ever seen.”
“I’m an introvert I do not like people very much.”
“I hear that and I respect it do you want me to go sit in the back?”
“…No.”
“…”
“…”
“…So how did you get to be like this rebel pilot lady?”
“…”
“…”
“…Bad timing I guess.”
“What bad timing?”
“Are you always like this?”
“Like how?”
“Like chatty.”
“Well we have hours right?”
“We do I was thinking we would spend it in tranquil contemplation of the majesty of the earth from altitude.”
“…”
“…”
“…So now that we’ve done that—”
“O God I’ll tell you when we pass over Iceland.”
“Are we going to pass over Iceland?”
“Absolutely not.”
“So you will never tell me.”
“Nope.”
“And we’re not passing over Iceland at all that was like pilot humor?”
“Sure whatever.”
“O because I have friends there.”
“…”
“…Whom I will not wave at as we do not pass over Iceland.”
“…”
“…”
“…”
“…So how—”
“O my God—”
* * *
—
The thing is that lying is hard and truth is easy and there is this idea in the world that the best lie is the one that is close to the truth and that is beautiful bullshit and I will tell you why. That kind of lie is the most usable lie. It is easy to remember because most of it actually happened just like that and for most people in most situations that is all you need. But in any professional situation where a lie must be sustained in the long term where it must conceal a truth from a person determined and capable in the field of finding that truth then the lie must touch the real world exclusively at those places where the interface can be controlled. Deep lies are all about control and you cannot control a hybrid lie because any time you need to give further detail you risk giving detail which can be used to penetrate the lie.
“O hi Richie I saw you out with a blonde last night—”
“O hi Jack yeah my cousin Anna was in town from Potsdam—”
“O that is lovely have you been out there to visit?”
“Yes I have it was great Anna is like a tour-guide-type person and we stayed in this really terrific hotel—”
See what just happened there is that Richie fucked-up. Anna really is a tour guide from Potsdam and he is sticking as close to the truth as he can but oops his cousin is from Potsdam so why was she staying in a hotel with him there?
So if you are telling a lie that matters you do not want to be retrofitting it to the truth on the fly, which is what you will have to do if it touches the truth all along its length and now this feels dirty anyway ANYWAY you cannot do that you are not that smart and you think you are but you’re not. You will get busted because you will say something like:
“I recently had excellent ajiaco in its native setting.”
Did you now? Well that is interesting because ajiaco is a delicacy much favored in Bogotá like if you were to look at any tourist guide it would say try the soup and do you know what else is in Bogotá? No not cocaine that is a fucking stereotype. What is in Bogotá is the Emerald Trade Center, and if we think back we find ourselves saying: What was it that Mr. Client wanted us to steal but emeralds?
Now it is possible that that is all so much bullshit but I am willing to bet you that when Mr. Client said the word emerald his entire fucking soul was wearing the same dopey grin as poor dumb Richie staring up in his mind’s eye at whatever he and Anna-not-his-cousin did in the Alimony Auberge.
I will bet you enough money to pay Mozart for sex that Mr. Client was here in the last month talking to people in or near the big sandy building with the green glass frontage.
* * *
—
Bogotá is a kind of a triangle running along one side of a bunch of high bits and there are rivers and a road that runs north–south through town and it’s a city like any city you would know it’s got ten million people and skyscrapers rising out of neoclassical cement construction like World’s Fair stuff like LA. There’s some old old Bogotá too like colonial and the thing you need to get right now is this is a fucking. Capital. Of the world. It’s Paris it’s Madrid it’s Hong Kong it’s not some fucking stage set for your personal narrative and it is complex as shit. I have been here before when I was in coffee because have you met coffee of course I fucking came here. And the thing that you do not do when you are approaching a capital city with its own way of doing things is blow into town like a giant hornet and land on everyone’s fo
od and scare the shit out of the tourists because even a hornet eventually outstays its welcome and gets blatted under someone’s boot heel. That is why I am not here with Saul who has some employment history in the region or Rex and his explodophilia or even worse with Lucille who just likes to slice things up very small with his love. It is also why Doc and her I Will Kill All The Cows are presently chillaxing in the spa pool at a hotel in Zürich sourcing whatever thief shit she requires and Motor Oil Charlie is working on Eiger’s dongle—
Yes yes she is and she is not happy with my dongle humor—
—so that leaves me to hitch a ride with Mozart and be real calm and conciliatory and not get neck-deep in shit in a place where they do understand appropriate responses to freelancing plus also too not everyone here was a huge fan of the management structure around—i.e., me being the only shareholder in—the Pale Peruvian Stallion and that is not stereotyping that is commerce.
So softly we go.
* * *
—
“Hi I’m Jack Mahboubian hi.”
“Hi Mr. Mahboubian welcome to the Zebedee how may we assist you—”
The Zebedee is a luxury hotel and also a festival of Daliesque architectural batshit whose website features a digital composite image of that woman from the American Gothic picture holding a board meeting with men in episcopal purple one of whom has the head of a snail. For some reason I cannot place at all it is very clear they are all about to have sex and they will then all die of her appalling children hatching from their heads. The presence of this image is never explained and probably never should be but I just totally wanted to stay there. I even created Jack Mahboubian as a bespoke Zebedee-friendly cover identity because Persian New Zealand casino entrepreneurs are exactly the kind of person you can imagine staying at the Zebedee. Mozart is also staying at the Zebedee and in fact she is even more appropriate to the place than Jack Mahboubian, and several of the weird naked rock-climbing videos and collage art pieces viewable in the bar area look like she could be in them.
