Up In The Air Part 18

Anyway, we kiss. So now that's over with.

On to the next thing, whatever she suggests.

"Hi, I'm Art Krusk," Art Krusk says. Know thyself. He offers Linda his broad right hand that's as tanned on the palm as it is across the back.

"Nice to meet you," Linda says.

"Same here."

Boy, are these two on their game tonight.

"I'm so glad I found you, Ryan. This city's a zoo. Guess who I'm pretty sure I saw at Bally's stepping out of a roped-off elevator?"

One, two, three, four, five. A, B, C, D. She'll crack eventually, and I can wait.

"Brando. He's giving a speech, I guess."

"They all are."

"Could we maybe talk for a minute? Over there. Excuse us, Art."

"Excuse us, Art," I say. It's a technique: Neurolinguistic Mirroring, they call it. Do as the greats do and you can be great, too. Copy their walk, their inflections, everything. Big in the seventies, came back in the nineties, faded some, but will surely rise again.

We move "over there," which feels like the same place and wasn't, to my mind, worth the whole upheaval, emotional and physical, of getting to. Linda seems happier, though, and I'm happy for her. I count the pills in my pocket between two fingers and am disappointed with the tally.

"I was right about those hackers, Ryan. We're not supposed to tell customers, so don't spread this, but someone in Spain got into our computers-just some young kid, the FBI is saying-and scooped up account information, credit card numbers-"

"Anonymous Spanish teenager. Strangely plausible."

"He e-mailed the data to friends who e-mailed their friends and now it's all over the world and it's still going. We're getting calls from China. I'm serious."

"Our global globe."

"I'm not kidding. Cancel everything everything."

"I've been working up to it all week."

"Ryan?"

"Yes, ma'am?"

"You're loaded. It hurts to look at you. Can I get something off your forehead that's been bugging me?"

She goes right ahead. I'll never know what it was.

"I was going to say we should eat. You probably need to. This isn't you, though. This is not my friend. I'm going to my room to study my materials for tomorrow's seminar."

"Don't do it. Be kind, it's that easy. Burn all workbooks. Erase all ca.s.sette tapes and dub them over with song."

She kisses my cheek and it burns like the hot match heads my mother would use to make ticks release her children. "Goodbye, Ryan. I don't think we'll have more dates. This seminar has me thinking I'll try nursing school, so I might not be at the club much longer, either. I think I always meant to be a nurse but veered a few degrees. Like you've said you did."

"What did I tell you I set out to be?"

"A folk guitarist."

I'm baffled. It's so specific. "When was this, anyway?"

"June. Three months ago."

"Wait here a minute, Linda. I'm coming down. Some ice water to dilute this and I'll be me again. I want to reconstruct this folk guitar talk. Were we at your condo? Come back. Don't wave. You know how we think we don't have feelings for someone, but maybe it's because they're just too powerful? I love you. I have always loved you, Linda."

Oh well, she had her chance. We're all free agents now. Remember, it's a lattice, a continuum, so it's not like anything's final. Nothing's final. To the contrary. It's win-win. It's synergistic. Read Pinter on Quantum Granular Non-Hierarchies. Or h.e.l.l, read between the lines of Winnie-the-Pooh, Winnie-the-Pooh, that cuddly avatar of Taoism. Milne knew it, he just couldn't say it plainly then-the shadow of Victorianism or something. This is twenty-first-century Nevada, though. Scream it, feel free. Nothing's final. It's all a loop. We've been re-engineered. Like PepsiCo. that cuddly avatar of Taoism. Milne knew it, he just couldn't say it plainly then-the shadow of Victorianism or something. This is twenty-first-century Nevada, though. Scream it, feel free. Nothing's final. It's all a loop. We've been re-engineered. Like PepsiCo.

Back to Art and the tables. He's behaving like I was, razzing a new dealer from Lima, Ohio, about the healed-over piercings in his eyebrows, discerning the face of the Virgin in his cards. He either lost everything while I was gone and bought back in with a mad five thousand bucks or he's in the statistical slipstream, he's supersonic. If you come in at the end of someone's streak, the two conditions appear identical. If anything, it's the big winners who look depressed, because grins are jinxes and it just can't last, and the losers who smile, because they can go home soon.

I wander off into the crowd. GoalQuesters dominate. I get a fat wink from d.i.c.k Geertz at Andersen, who hit his United miles mark a year ago, but only because he commutes to Tokyo, so really there's no comparison between us. I notice a drink in several colleagues' hands of layered purples and violets and toothpicked melon chunks, so I flag down a waitress and order one by pointing. I ask what its name is and she says no one knows, that everybody else just pointed, too. When I tell her that someone someone had to start this thing, she flat doesn't buy it. She's a creationist. She's also, I sense, much happier than I am. had to start this thing, she flat doesn't buy it. She's a creationist. She's also, I sense, much happier than I am.

"Hey, Bingham, I need you to meet someone. Get over here."

It's Craig Gregory calling. I hustle toward my punishment. The waitress will hunt me down. She'll use her network.

"Bingham, this is Lisa Jeffries Kimmel. Lisa, Ryan."

"Hi."

"I've heard your name."

"I've heard yours." What satanic liars we are.

"Lisa is coming to ISM next month after an interesting stint in Omaha. I know you think they're pursuing you, that bunch, so I'm guessing you'll want to pick her pretty brain."

Lisa looks down. She's small and dark and beautiful and bizarrely shapely in the way of a bonsai tree compared to a full-size tree.

"Not that Omaha's called him," Craig Gregory tells her, "or written or faxed or anything like that. It's just something he thinks. It gets him through the night."

Someone squealed on me. My a.s.sistant, no doubt. Some agency sends them, you think they're harmless drifters, be gone by winter, but really they're your minders, briefed at a central location and later debriefed. It's a business model, even if it's not true.

"I'll leave you two here. Full evening ahead of me at the convention center, followed by Streisand's annual farewell gig at the MGM."

I snag his elbow and step back from Lisa. "Someone sent me that bear you gave me, Craig. Mutilated. I'm pinning it on you. You're who I gave him back to when he retired."

Craig Gregory rubs his chin and opens a shaving cut that smears blood on his thumb tip, which he kisses dry. Tough little Lisa torches a cigarillo and hungers over the c.r.a.ps action all around us.

"That toy had two consecutive huge Christmases. I doubt you're in possession of the original. By the way, your corporate AmEx? Confiscated. No more charging Hong Kong custom suits."

"Computer crime. It wasn't me," I say. "If it goes in my file, I'll sue."

"Did you overhear that one, Lisa? Any thoughts?"

"Blameless. It's happened twice this year to me."

Craig Gregory folds his hands. He bows, comes back to me. "I'll be there for your breakfast sermon tomorrow. The t.i.tle has people concerned. I'm not one of them. I know how you p.u.s.s.y out. I'll sit up front. Lisa, this is a man on his last legs, so give him much succor. We hear you give great succor."

"Die in h.e.l.l, you gonorrheal p.r.i.c.k."

"Hear that, Bingham? What this b.i.t.c.h just said? That's how healthy people respond to me. Take note. You're not too old to get it right."

The purple drink is still out there looking for me when I sit at the bar with Lisa and order another by pointing at one just like it two spots down. The bartender, leaves in his hair, a loose white robe, asks Lisa if she'd like one, too-a mere formality-and she says no. It's a startling negation, and it's infectious. I cancel my order as though I never meant it. The craze will be extinct within ten minutes.

I want this Lisa. I excuse myself, swivel on my stool, sneak two more pills, and phone my room on the mobile. I have a plan. If she's there, I'll hang up. If she's not, I'll dare to hope that she's joined Art's girl out there in the cyclone. No answer. Will it be safe to go back up, though? What I should do is book another room and abandon my personal effects, which, by design, are not that personal but standard items available anywhere. I'll miss my sleep machine, whose "prairie wind" track is unique as far as I can tell, but nothing else. The tapes of The Garage The Garage are best mislaid. That way there's at least a possibility that in ten years or twenty, at a rummage sale, an intern at are best mislaid. That way there's at least a possibility that in ten years or twenty, at a rummage sale, an intern at Business Week Business Week will pay a nickel for them, listen to them on a whim, and call his boss. The authors.h.i.+p of the scrolls will be disputed-Tarkenton? Salinger? Billy Graham the Younger?-and a stream of pretenders will come forward waving bogus polygraph results. Me, I'll hang back in my Idaho retreat, content with my dogs, my Mormon faith, my wives. will pay a nickel for them, listen to them on a whim, and call his boss. The authors.h.i.+p of the scrolls will be disputed-Tarkenton? Salinger? Billy Graham the Younger?-and a stream of pretenders will come forward waving bogus polygraph results. Me, I'll hang back in my Idaho retreat, content with my dogs, my Mormon faith, my wives.

Or, if this works with Lisa, my one true love.

"What's MythTech like?" There's no other way to start. "I thought no one quit there. I heard that if you're fired they buy you out for life, or pretty close."

She pinches the filter off a Marlboro. She's out of little cigars and needs particulates.

"Of course people leave. They just don't blab about it."

"Scared?"

"I'd say cautious. Maybe still perplexed. It's not like a regular consultancy. Take what I did: Market Ecology. The study of non-obvious interactions among diverse commercial ent.i.ties."

"Beautiful. And no CTC department, am I right?"

"No departments at all. The model's plasma. Nuclear plasma fields. Pretentious."

"Gorgeous. At play in the fields of the Lord. Just think, just float. And no travel, I hear, and just a bare-bones headquarters. You can work from home. From anywhere. It's all electronic, humanistic, fractal."

"What are you on? I want some. I'm fading here."

Somehow I produce three pills for each of us. It's like the loaves and fishes, my right front pocket. Or did I lie to myself about how many I stole?

"Anyway, Lisa. Me. The market ecologist. A project comes down one day from s.p.a.ck and Sarrazin. It isn't true that they're lovers, by the way. Sarrazin is crazy for his wife and s.p.a.ck is a neuter. Born that way. He'll tell you."

"Haven't heard one breath of any of this. A friend of mine who said he had a wife died this week and I hear now he was gay, so basically I've written off these topics. The people themselves don't understand their leanings-that's my conclusion. I'm growing wise by leaps."

"The problem was tripart.i.te," Lisa says. "Fiber optics, red meat, and propane gas."

I clutch her gesturing hand in mid-air. "My dad sold propane."

"I started with the easy ones. Gas plus red meat equals grills and patios and heart problems and the insurance that covers them and all those ramifications. But fiber optics? Maybe a gas grill that's somehow data-linked to a repair center whose low-wage workers only lunch at Wendy's or McDonald's not just because it's a grunt job and they're broke but because they're on call to diagnose malfunctions and can't leave their screens for more than fifteen minutes?"

"You're asking a question?"

"Or maybe it's like automated cattle ranches fed with real-time commodities reports that lead to higher profits per animal and thus increased contributions to co-op ad campaigns promoting beef versus chicken? I couldn't think!"

"Who was the client? A supermarket chain?"

"I'm not even sure there was a client, Ray."

"Ryan. That's okay. It's dark in here."

"That's a non sequitur," Lisa says. "I know what you mean, though. I'm high myself, from earlier. What's 'blue bottle'? That's what the kid kept calling it."

"I'm not down on the street a lot. Don't know."

"It felt like pure R&D to me," she says. "No timelines, no meetings, just live with this strange problem and send us your thoughts as you think them until they've stopped or you feel satisfied. Casual directives, and yet you feel this incredibly formidable potential wrath just waiting to sweep down and smash your life the moment you slack off or add some numbers wrong or make some other mistake you're bound to miss because no one's told you how to measure progress, they've only said something like 'Give it your best shot' or 'We know you have this in you, Lisa. Just try it.' "

"Compensation?"

"You honestly stop caring. It seems terrific at first, but then the costs of just maintaining yourself so you can work-the therapy, the stationary bike, the weekend antiquing so you can clear your head, the soundproofing for your home office so no one hears you throwing your stapler or yodeling for the h.e.l.l of it-"

"Mounts. I needed to say that so I could breathe. I still have one question: What's the product? The service?"

"I was heading there. You've heard of that genome project? The human gene map? That's what they're after at MythTech, except with commerce. All the angles. All the combinations. And they know it won't be a 'eureka.' It won't just pop someday. It's going to take piecework and steady crunching away on every front. It won't take forever, but it won't be quick. That's why they don't worry about profits. Let someone else chase money in the short term; long term it's all MythTech's, anyway. Because the second MythTech gets this map, the second they lock those files in the vault, everyone else is a plowboy on their farm. Fact is, the money we think we're making now, the money we think IBM makes, Ford, Purina, KFC, Ben & Jerry's, the LA Times, LA Times, it's actually just a loan from MythTech's future paid backwards to us in the present so we can eat until they've got things nailed down and they eat us. We're all Thanksgiving turkeys in their barnyard and tomorrow is November first." it's actually just a loan from MythTech's future paid backwards to us in the present so we can eat until they've got things nailed down and they eat us. We're all Thanksgiving turkeys in their barnyard and tomorrow is November first."

"They still need operating funds. Who'd invest in this?"

"Who wouldn't, Ryan? Any investor who feels this thing might work knows he'll have nothing unless he's on its good side."

"I don't see how you could leave a place like that."

"Look at me, listen to me. Feel my hands. Do I seem like I've left? Sure, you can go to work for someone else-h.e.l.l, they want you to; they need need you to-but who are you really working for? Get with it." you to-but who are you really working for? Get with it."

"And if you leak their secrets they don't pursue it?"

"You still don't get what their product is, I'm seeing."

"The code. This perfect comprehensive map."

Lisa snaps off another filter and lights up. She leans back on her stool, cross-legged. Regards me. Sighs. "I'm selling it to you right now. You buying, boy? No, you already bought. It's in your eyes."

"I was thinking we should get a room. We're pretty far gone and it's only six o'clock."

"It's fear fear of the code. The fear there of the code. The fear there is is a code and that someone else is going to crack it, so you'd better just cough up your energy right now, either to us or one of our subsidiaries. Or, if you're rich, send a check. It's all a racket. It's extortion, Ryan. Sheer extortion. The code is a bluff. It's all Beware of Dog. It's Daddy's deep, loud voice." a code and that someone else is going to crack it, so you'd better just cough up your energy right now, either to us or one of our subsidiaries. Or, if you're rich, send a check. It's all a racket. It's extortion, Ryan. Sheer extortion. The code is a bluff. It's all Beware of Dog. It's Daddy's deep, loud voice."

"Can I trust you with something?"

"No. But go ahead."

"I'm flying there tomorrow."

"Why fly? You're there."

"Craig was right. It's a hunch. There's no offer on the table. It's hints. It's signs. It's smoke signals. I know that. I have to see, though. What's my downside? None."

"After all I've just said you still want them to want you. You still want to s.h.i.+ne in some interview," she says. "Not s.e.xy, Ryan. Very not s.e.xy, Ryan."