THE POLITICS OF PLEASURE

by Mark Russell

  Days passed. He had to pick up the pieces of his life or else throw in the towel and subsist as a ghostlike entity in the concrete bowels of the city. Early one morning, he packed his meagre belongings and grabbed the cash he'd left in a locker at Union Station shortly after his arrival in LA. He caught a bus to San Francisco and contacted Richard Farber, using the telephone number and password reference Thirteen had given him.

  Farber took Goldman to his heavily locked 'office' near Fisherman's Wharf, a windowless loft in a warehouse used by a co-op of artists and sculptors. Using a DEC Vax computer and a DARPA-designed modem, Farber accessed the Social Security Administration computer. He then explained how he accessed most government computers on the Tymnet line. Tymnet was a cutting-edge communications company that interconnected US computers, allowing its subscribers to connect to its ever-growing network by a local telephone call.

  'Many government computers,' Farber said, 'use the Unix operating system and a powerful editing program called Gnu-Emacs. A flaw in Gnu-Emacs allows Unix users to forward mail files into the protected systems space, a space normally reserved for the system manager alone. Luckily for persons like myself, very few users know this.'

  Two years earlier, Farber had sent a 'privilege-grabbing' program disguised as a mail file into a number of federal government computers' protected system space. The disguised program rewrote each computer's powerful atrun program, which in turn granted Farber 'super user' status in each targeted computer.

  'At present, it's a dream run for hackers of my calibre.' He chuckled wryly. 'But in a few years most government computers will be a closed shop. You're a lucky boy.' He inserted Goldman's false name and particulars into several Social Security Administration files, then created a valid taxation account in the federal database of the Internal Revenue Service. Registered as a new immigrant, Goldman now had a verifiable social security number with which he could legally work and pay tax.

  The pony-tailed cyberpunk took a head-shot photograph of Goldman in front of a cream screen. He then accessed the California Department of Motor Vehicles computer in Sacramento and inserted Goldman's false particulars. Farber explained the counterfeit drivers license would be ready for use in a week's time, and would check out legit should any roadside cop radio it in. Farber had a paid contact in the DMV who would insert Goldman's picture into Goldman's new DMV file. Goldman's drivers license renewal notice would be posted in due course to the address Goldman provided.

  A week later Goldman was handed a genuine-looking drivers license and an equally impressive social security card – both IDs linked to his new alias: Scott Anderson. Farber then accessed the relevant government computers to demonstrate Goldman's new particulars were legitimately stored in them. Confident he wasn't the target of a high-tech sting, Goldman paid the agreed price (which was a good part of what he'd received for his gold coins in Washington DC). Disappointingly, Farber hadn't known anyone who handled counterfeit passports.

  Now, Goldman fidgeted with the Walkman's earphones. Watching pigeons squabble with a pesky gull, he was impervious to much about him. The gusting pockets of wind, the horn-honking of early evening traffic, the growing number of commuters at the bus stop. He nearly jumped out of his skin when a car screeched to a halt behind a mail delivery van. The chemist cursed under his breath and his heart thumped in his chest like a heavily weighted metronome.

  Since killing the gunmen in Los Angeles, Goldman had been on edge. Nervous and tense, ready to strike at a moment's notice. He was accosted in a side street a few nights ago. A knife-wielding teenager in torn jeans and a Greenpeace sweatshirt had demanded money. Goldman had beaten the mugger beyond the dictates of necessity, an unneeded brutality in his fists. Standing over the broken, unconscious youth, he'd felt an irretrievable loss of character. He'd felt fated and damned, and genuinely fearful of drawing others into his darkening gravity.

  Particularly women.

  He thought of his late wife Rachel and how she'd died in the company of his mother; of Belize and her sister and how they'd suffered at the hands of the gunmen in his Baltimore apartment; and of the heart-wrenching horror when Michelle was gunned down in Thirteen's house. All in all, it was a terrible tally that weighed on him like a debilitating yoke. He was damaged goods. It would take time before he could offer himself intimately to another woman.

  He picked up a wayward page of the day's Examiner that the street's tunnelling wind had dropped beside him on the seat. He sped-read an article about NASA's first space shuttle launch scheduled for April the following year. The author extolled that Colombia's successful return to earth would herald an exciting new era in American commerce.

  Wind churned the chemist’s hair as he looked skyward at gliding gulls, and higher still at airborne pages of newsprint colliding against the glass sides of office towers. He remembered social commentators on a late-night show predicting the coming decade would be a time of unprecedented capital. Fast money will be the order of the day, one forecaster had proclaimed. Turn On, Tune In, Take Over, the likely maxim for a sharp new generation. Carrying a slimline briefcase, a young woman in executive attire appraised Goldman as she marched past. He broke eye contact with her, a low profile his only ambition.

  With new credentials and limited capital, he'd decided to take up Brad Ryan's offer of work at his expanding health food business in Hawaii. A new start in the fiftieth state across the waters wasn't without appeal; indeed seemed a fitting move for the hunted chemist to make.

  'Everything loose in the east rolls west” was an adage he'd heard often enough from Rachel's Bostonian mother. He wouldn't tell Brad Ryan he'd been at the Westwood house the night of Rick Sorenson's murder, nor that he was the reason why Sorenson and the others were killed. He didn't like harbouring secrets from friends but felt he had no choice in the matter. No, his heart would remain a graveyard of secrets.

  An electric trolley bus pulled up and people climbed aboard. Goldman slipped a new cassette into his Walkman. He got up from the seat, pressed in the earphones, and fell in step with the rush hour crowd. Unknown faces streamed past him as he made his way back to his hotel room. Strangers, to the last man and woman. He couldn't have been more alone, more out of place. Nostalgia transported him to a vast, green-rimmed continent far removed from these choking sidewalks. Old friends still lived there. It was where he came from and, he realized with a sagging heart, where he belonged.

  EPILOGUE

  Honolulu, Hawaii.

  Tuesday, 7th August 1984.

  Goldman watched the taxi pull away from him on Kalakaua Avenue. His face lit up with a grin as he turned toward the International Marketplace behind him. Another hot summery day, the sun beating on his brow like the wrath of a flaming demigod. Several stallholders at the front of the sprawling market fanned themselves or made use of electric fans as they attended their displayed wares. The heat-addled sidewalk was thronged with locals and, as on any day, thronged with holidaymakers from all points of the globe. Goldman had just seen off his patent attorney who was booked on a flight to the mainland. A deal had been struck, papers signed, and Goldman looked set to make money.

  Serious money.

  Twenty months ago, utilizing a homology modelling computer program at the University of Hawaii, Goldman had created a powerful, synthetic sleep inducer. The drug was an effect-enhanced copy of L-Tryptophan, the essential amino acid which calms the nervous system and stimulates the production of melatonin and vasotocin. Two brain chemicals that play a crucial role in the induction of REM sleep. After borrowing a worrisome amount of money from his bank, Goldman had contracted Arcadia Laboratories to do test trials of the drug at their FDA-accredited research facility in Los Angeles.

  The drug's commercial potential as a non-addictive sleeping tablet became apparent and Goldman approached several companies with his new product. He eventually struck gold with pharmaceutical giant, ChemTech Industries. They offered him an exorbitant sum for the drug's patent and exclusive manufacturing righ
ts. Goldman believed, however, that the multinational company would shelve the drug to stop it from interfering with existing markets, and would only bring the drug onto the market when ChemTech saw fit. If at all. Still, whatever the outcome, Goldman was prepared to take the windfall sum being offered and not feel guilty about the fate of his serotonergic system stimulator.

  The chemist perused a sidewalk stall featuring lauhala hats, shell and ivory earrings, woven place mats, straw dolls and bags from Tonga and other Pacific islands. He took off his sunglasses and wiped his brow. He appraised a kid in wet board shorts and a Ghostbusters T-shirt fingering a necklace of polished kuku nuts from a stall specializing in hula skirts and Hawaiian music cassettes. The kid had the air of a thief about him, and the owner of the stall, a large Polynesian woman, was watching him.

  Goldman decided to have a drink or two to celebrate, if only by himself, the forthcoming sale of the drug he'd christened Elysium. A cocktail bar at the Waikiki Gateway Hotel came to mind. He set off on foot.

  He eventually came across a middle-aged Hawaiian-Japanese busker. The gray-haired street performer wore cut-off jeans and a black T-shirt emblazoned with the legend: THE OLDER I GET THE BETTER I WAS. He sat with legs apart on a low-set stool and played a four-string ukulele, its enamelled body fashioned from a halved coconut shell. An upturned hat in front of the busker invited all comers to generously reward his efforts.

  Appreciating the busker's soothing rendition of a Hawaiian mele, Goldman fished coins from his pocket to drop into the upturned hat. Farther along the sidewalk a lone girl sat out front of Fast Eddie's, a bistro-cum-bar Goldman visited once with Brad Ryan and his family. The chemist’s heart skipped a beat as he tossed quarters into the hat. With simmering anticipation, he moved towards the girl.

  The likeness was uncanny and he was momentarily shaken. Could it possibly be? That part of his life seemed so long ago, like tragic black and white footage discarded in a dark corner of a closet. Still he couldn't shake the feeling that this willowy blond wearing sunglasses was ...

  'Michelle?'

  She exhaled cigarette smoke and looked up cautiously from her table, a cappuccino and a copy of Vanity Fair in front of her.

  'Michelle?'

  'Er ... Is it really you?'

  He chuckled and removed his sunglasses. 'Yeah.'

  'My God. What a surprise.' She tensed and looked either side of her, as if someone might be watching. 'Um, please, Scott ... sit down.'

  He did. He experienced a budding familiarity as he briefly clasped her hand in acknowledgment of their chance meeting. His head swam, his pulse quickened, and he had difficulty striking up conversation. And Michelle's aloofness as she sipped her coffee did little to appease his faltering confidence.

  Of course unshared years were between them. A gulf of parallel life not easily breached by a surprise encounter in the street. Their abrupt parting years before had been extreme, to say the least, and Goldman didn't want to broach the subject in any shape or form. Mercifully for him Michelle didn't want to broach it, either, at least not for the time being. Intuition told him she was preoccupied with recent difficulty. She seemed moody and unsettled. Most likely another man, he thought. The bane of the attractive woman forever pursued.

  Minutes passed and forced chitchat, punctuated by awkward silences, reigned at the table. Thankfully this didn’t last and the former lovers grew more comfortable in each other's company. The pleasant beach side setting only added to their growing camaraderie. Michelle was no longer a gilded memory beyond Goldman's reach. She was physically in front of him and growing more attainable by the minute, or so his growing confidence painted her. He found himself slipping back in time to that golden era when they'd walked arm in arm. Their intimacy young and fresh, unsullied by what the world would bring to bear. He didn't know the how or why of it and only hoped this magic had worked itself on Michelle. Though her eyes were hidden behind sunglasses, he sensed from her warming countenance that she wasn't indifferent to his presence.

  'You know, Scott,' she said with an easy smile, 'it's, um, good to see you again.' The unexpected compliment, along with her familiar smile, made his scalp tingle, made him think there might be a chance, however slim, of them reconciling, and on a more daring note, of them being lovers again; but in the back of his mind he half-expected memories of that fateful night in Westwood to suddenly disrupt her warming manner, but to his relief this wasn't the case.

  Goldman's leg sometimes touched hers, exciting him more than he cared, and their hands sometimes brushed when Michelle reached for coffee or cigarettes. He was delighted that Fast Eddie's sold Mai Tais. With Michelle's encouragement, he ordered a round of the rum-based drinks. Michelle finished hers and Goldman, with drink to spare, ordered another round. The sun moved idly across the sky as the former lovers drank and laughed and spoke of their time apart. All but cocooned from the boisterous holidaymakers about them.

  'I see you haven't lost your Australian accent ...'

  '... and I now have a new identity with a history of tax payments ... and, yes, I'll be signing the Elysium contract at the end of next week.'

  '... Robert and I had a big fight after a Prince concert in Tokyo.' Michelle lit a cigarette and became pensive. 'Hmm, it was bad ... but we got through it.' She gulped down her Mai Tai and rested her cigarette on the table's ashtray, before fanning her face with a laminated menu. 'Any way, it seemed so right for a while and then he ...' She faltered, her birdlike voice marred with emotion, and she plopped the menu back down on the table. '... the strain of work and travelling ... he took some bad Ecstasy at the Hilton Hawaiian Village then started hitting me, cutting himself on broken bottles from the mini-bar ... god, there was blood everywhere ... on my lei, on my Dior dress ... even on my Salvador Dali print of Diamond Head ...' She sucked ardently on her cigarette and glanced at the ukulele-playing busker.

  Goldman could see she was unsure whether to continue. Seconds plodded by like a train of weary pack mules, but she carried on about her recent bust up as if Goldman had been the closest of friends these past years. He guessed it was an emotional weight she had to get off her chest.

  'Robert's such a talented designer,' she said, with a smidgen of pride. 'He's been credited with the power dressing look of the Dynasty series. Hell, he even claims responsibility for the new military chic fashion, and is heavily invested in Camp Beverley Hills boutique. Anyhow, he's got a lot going for him, and yet ...' She sniffled and lifted her Serengeti sunglasses, before dabbing her eyes. Goldman saw a pale bruise about her eye and was reminded of the time back east when she climbed into his car. Noting his attention, she slipped the sunglasses back on and looked away from the table. He read the hurt on her face, felt it coming off her in waves, and didn't know what to say or do. He wanted to reach out and stroke her hair, face and arms. He wanted to hug her fiercely as if there were no tomorrow, as if they were the last living couple.

  '... and before storming out he called me a dumb little camera slut in front of everyone at the table. I don't know why he's so mean sometimes. He's just an ... asshole, I guess.' She pulled on her cigarette and tossed back her hair, her full lips tremulous with emotion. 'Tssk, I can't believe I'm here talking to you about this ...' She sighed and butted her cigarette in the ashtray, really mashing it up.

  In a bold move, Goldman reached across the table and clasped her hand, which was pale and clammy and ringed with semiprecious stones. 'Listen, my heart's still hammering over us finding each other ...' He looked at a nearby couple. They were young and tanned and full of smiles for one another. Goldman was at a loss for words. His heart sounded dully in his ears as he turned back to his long-lost mate. ' ... I still have strong feelings for you, and I just want to say that ... I'd never hurt you under any circumstances.'

  She stiffened and looked at him sharply from over the top of her sunglasses. 'Are you kidding?' She wrenched her hand from his. 'I copped three bullets from being with you, buster! Three bullets in the goddamn chest!'


  Goldman winced and looked away. What could he say?

  'That was a long time ago.'

  'No, it wasn't.'

  'It was years ago.'

  'Maybe to you – but you didn't get mowed down by a goddam machine gun!'

  He sensed her anger, her unhealed pain, and was flooded with guilt and shame. He didn't want to go down this path. God, no; not now. It led to poisonous quicksand, nothing but. He had to backtrack to more promising ground. 'Look, this is Hawaii, another place altogether. We're smack in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. I left my troubles behind on the mainland years ago ... well, to me it was years ago. I've got a new identity and I'll soon have enough money to be set for life.' He looked into her lowering eyes and moved his hand closer to hers. It didn't seem long ago they were together, hugging and laughing, cheeky and confident of a shared future. His mouth dried from a concoction of alcohol and nerves. Strong feelings once held for her rose inside him, struggling like a birthing child for release.

  'Michelle, I've got a new life here that ... that I'd like to share with you. We'd be good together. I know it'll work between us this time.' A part of him wanted to beg profusely.

  She pulled back. 'Oh, don't be silly.' She pushed her sunglasses up along her nose and scanned the busy footpath. An ocean breeze ruffled her long blond hair and filled her lungs with unpolluted air that had blown unimpeded across the largest ocean on earth. She sighed aloud and her wavering voice spoke of a long-weeping wound. 'I don't know, men have always treated me badly, I always come out second-best ... it just doesn't seem worth it anymore.' She stared off into the distance with moistened eyes, like a prisoner gazing from a world that had promised much but given little.

  Goldman was empathetic to her moment of honesty. The world's cauldron of collective suffering seemed bottomless as he sat at the table. God knew there wasn't an instant-working prescription for a damaged heart. Time seemed the only salve. Still he wanted desperately to set Michelle's world aright. He glanced at a Special Jubilee issue of Aloha magazine abandoned on a nearby table, searched inside himself for appropriate words, even as Michael Jackson's Thriller blared annoyingly from someone's boom box.