Idoru. Part 25

SORRY. ANYWAY, THEN SHE AND THE OTHERS CHECKED.

OUT FAST, LEFT THE TECHS TO PACK UP. A TECH.

TOLD GHENGIS IN THE GARAGE THAT SOME OF THEM.

WERE ON THEIR WAY TO j.a.pAN AND HE WAS GLAD HE.

WASN'T, WATCH OUT, OKAY? RYDELL.

0.

2.

127.

19.Arleigh "Okay," Laney said, and remembered how he'd walked to the Lucky Dragon one night, against Rydell's advice, because he couldn't sleep. There were scary-looking bionic hookers posted every block or so, but otherwise it hadn't felt too dangerous. Someone had painted a memorial mural toJ. D. Shapely on one side of the Lucky Dragon, and the management had had the good sense to leave it there, culturally integrating their score into the actual twenty-four-hour life of the Strip. You could buy a burrito there, a lottery ticket, batteries, tests for various diseases. You could do voice-mail, e-mail, send faxes. It had occurred to Laney that this was probably the only store for miles that sold anything that anyone ever really needed; the others all sold things that he couldn't even imagine wanting.

He re-read the fax, walking down the corridor, and used the cardkey to open his door.

There was a shallow wicker basket on the bed, spread with white tissue and unfamiliar objects. On closer inspection, these proved to be his socks and underwear, freshly laundered and arranged in little paper holders embossed with the Elf Hat. He opened the narrow, mirrored closet door, activating a built-in light, and discovered his s.h.i.+rts arranged on hangers, including the blue b.u.t.ton-downs Kathy Torrance had made fun of. They looked brand new. He touched one of the lightly starched cuffs. "St.i.tch count," he said. He looked down at Rydell's folded fax. He imagined Kathy Torrance headed straight for him, on an SST from Los Angeles. He discovered that he couldn't imagine her sleeping. He'd never seen her asleep and somehow it didn't seem like something she'd willingly do. In the weird vibrationless quiet of supersonic flight, she'd be staring at the gray blank of the window, or at the screen of her computer.

Thinking of him.

The screen behind him came on with a soft chime and he jumped, four inches, straight up. He turned and saw the BBC logo. Yarnazaki's second video.

. . a 128 %Niflia.n Gibson He was a third of the way through it when the door chimed. Ret was strolling along a narrow trail in the jungle somewhere, wearing sun-bleached khakis and rope-soled sandals. He was singing something as he went, a wordless little melody, over and over, trying different tones and stresses. His bare chest shone with sweat, and when the open s.h.i.+rt swung aside you'd catch a corner of his I Ching tattoo. He had a length of bamboo, and swung it as he walked, swatting at dangling vines. Laney had a sneaking suspicion that the wordless melody had subsequently turned into some global billion-seller, but he couldn't place it yet. The door chimed again.

He got up, crossed to the door, thumbed the speaker b.u.t.ton. "Yes?"

"h.e.l.lo?" A woman's voice.

He touched the card-sized screen set into the doorframe and saw a dark-haired woman. Bangs. The tech from the appliance warehouse. He unlocked the door and opened it.

"Yamazaki thinks we should talk," she said.

Laney saw that she was wearing a black suit with a narrow skin, dark stockings.

"Aren't you supposed to be shopping for a van?" He stepped back to let her in.

"Got one," closing the door behind her. "When the Lo/Rez machine decides to throw money at a problem, money will be thrown. Usually in the wrong direction." She looked at the screen, where Rez was still swinging along, swatting flies from his neck and chest, lost in composition. "Homework?"

'Yamazaki."

"Arleigh McCrae,' she said, taking a card from a small black purse and handing it to him. Her name there, then four telephone numbers and two addresses, neither of them physical. "Do you have a card, Mr. Laney?"

"Cohn. No. I don't."

"They can make them up for you at the desk. Everyone has a card 3 here,"

129.

He put the card in his s.h.i.+rt pocket. "Blackwell didn't give me one. Neither did Yamazaki."

"Outside the Lo/Rez organization, I mean. It's like not having socks."

"I have socks," Laney said, indicating the basket on the bed. "Do you feel like watching a BBC doc.u.mentary on Lo/Rez?"

"No."

"I don't think I can turn it off. He'll know."

"Try lowering the volume. Manually." She demonstrated.

"A technician," Laney said.

"With a van. And umpti-million yen worth of equipment that didn't seem to do much for you." She sat down in one of the room's two small armchairs, crossing her legs.

Laney took the other chair. "Not your fault. You got me in there just fine. But it's not the kind of data I can work with."

"Yamazaki told me what you're supposed to be able to do," she said. "I didn't believe him."

Laney looked at her. '1 can't help you there." There were three smiling suns, like black woodblock prints, down the inside of her left calf.

"They're woven into the stockings. Catalan."

Laney looked up. "I hope you're not going to ask me to explain what it is people think they pay me to do," he said, "because I can't. I don't know."

"Don't worry," she said. "I just work here. But what I'm being paid to do, right now, is determine what it is we could give you that would allow you to do whatever it is that you're alleged to be able to do."

Laney looked at the screen. Concert footage now, and Rez was dancing, a microphone in his hand. "You've seen this video, right? Is he serious about that 'Sino-Celtic' thing he was talking about in that interview?"

"You haven't met him yet, have you?"

"No."

130 I-.

"Its not the easiest thing, deciding what Re2 is serious about."

"But how can there be 'Sino-Celtic mysticism' when the Chinese and the Celts don't have any shared history?"

"Because Rez himself is half Chinese and half Irish. And if there's one thing he's serious about

"Yes?"

"It's Rez."

Laney stared glumly at the screen as the singer was replaced by a close-up of Lo's playing, his hands on the black-bodied guitar. Earlier, a venerable British guitarist in wonderful tweeds had opined as how they hadn't really expected the next Hendrix to emerge from Taiwanese Canto-pop, but then again they hadn't actually been expecting the first one, had they?

"Yamazaki told me the story. What happened to you," Arleigh McCrae said. "Up to a certain point."