by Jarett Kobek
“Maybe we’ll make one another’s acquaintance later,” said Adeline. “I will be tres enchantée, darling.”
AROUND 12:30AM on January 1st, 2014, Adeline left Mike Kitchell’s apartment. She walked over to South Van Ness and headed north.
At the corner of 25th Street, she stood beside a bar called the Phone Booth. The Phone Booth was a relic from an earlier era, named for the giant Telco building across 25th Street at Capp.
The Phone Booth had been a gay bar for the phone company’s gay employees. A lot of the gay people were gone but the bar still felt queer.
Until New Year’s Day, 2013, the Phone Booth had allowed its patrons to smoke on its premises.
This had been illegal since 1998. No one really cared.
But San Francisco was changing. The patrons of the Phone Booth could no longer smoke indoors.
Anyway, Adeline was outside of the Phone Booth. Someone from inside called her name.
Adeline looked inside and saw Minerva sitting at a round table by the door.
MINERVA WAS DRINKING with a man named Salaam, which was one of the Arabic words that meant peace. Salaam wasn’t an Arab like Dennis. He didn’t speak Arabic.
He was called Salaam because his parents were hippies from Berkeley. Salaam’s hippie parents had a startling lack of eumelanin in the strata basale of their epidermises.
Minerva and Salaam were sleeping together. He was one of Minerva’s extra-marital sexual partners. Minerva had extra-marital sexual partners because she was a fuckmaster.
Adeline sat down. Though she knew of the arrangement, she had never met any of the extra-marital sexual partners of either Jeremy or Minerva.
Adeline avoided Marin County, which was the seat of Jeremy and Minerva’s copious fucking.
Adeline didn’t avoid Marin County because it was the seat of Jeremy and Minerva’s copious fucking. She avoided Marin County because it was full of rich assholes like George Lucas. She avoided Marin County because it was the kind of place where words like polyamorous were invented following sessions of goat torture.
It felt odd to see Minerva with another man. It’d been decades of her and Winterbloss.
Adeline couldn’t see the appeal. Salaam seemed a bit of a bore. He kept talking about Arcade Fire.
ARCADE FIRE was a Canadian band which experienced minor popularity in the early 2000s before transforming into a market commodity that aging parents used as a theoretical common reference point with their Internet addicted children.
Adeline could never imagine liking Arcade Fire, let alone talking to Emil about Arcade Fire.
Poor Emil. He was emailing with increased regularity. Most of the messages asked Adeline to quit Twitter.
SALAAM OFFERED to buy Adeline a drink. Adeline asked for a vodka soda. Salaam stood and went to the bar.
“What is new, pussycat?” asked Minerva.
“Image Comics has agreed to publish The Blind Washerwoman of Moorfields as an on-going.”
“Wonderful. Did you tell Winterbloss?”
“I only received the news but a few hours past,” said Adeline. “I owe it all to Jeremy. We’ve come a long way from the days of Marvel rodgering Jack Kirby. But, darling, should we speak of Jeremy before your little friend?”
“Life is strange,” said Minerva. “Salaam is decent. Excellent bedman.”
“If it makes you happy, dear,” said Adeline, “then who can say anything?”
Salaam came back and pushed a drink at Adeline.
She took a sip. It was astoundingly powerful.
“I suspect this evening will end poorly.”
ADELINE WATCHED PEOPLE on the makeshift dance floor. The pool table had been turned sideways and was being used as a DJ booth. The empty space was filled with writhing bodies.
Someone had left a pair of novelty glasses on the table beside Adeline.
The novelty of the glasses was that the glasses celebrated the New Year by arranging the numerals 2-0-1-4 around the human face.
A person wearing the glasses would be demonstrating her affinity for the year 2014 through its constituent numerals being arranged on her visage.
Adeline picked up the glasses and put them on her face. She wore the year over her eyes.
“THIS PLACE is really full of hipsters,” said Salaam.
Hipster was a popular word on the Internet. Back in the previous century, hipster had an actual meaning. Now it was just a way for a speaker to indicate his or her dislike of someone whose disinterest in the speaker left the speaker feeling intimidated.
One of the hipsters came up to Adeline.
“Don’t I recognize you from somewhere?” asked the hipster, who wasn’t a day over twenty-two.
“Darling,” said Adeline. “I’m the artist. Marina Abramović. The artist is present! Perhaps you do not recognize me because I wear the year on my face.”
“No, you’re lying to me,” said the hipster. “You’re not Marina Abramović.”
“Darling,” said Adeline, “I am.”
“You are not Marina,” said the hipster. “My parents are friends with Marina. I’ve spent time with Marina. I’ve totally been to Marina’s loft.”
“So, what you’re saying, dearie,” said Adeline, “is that you come from serious money.”
ADELINE BID A FOND ADIEU to Minerva and Salaam.
She was back on South Van Ness. She texted Erik Willems.
He texted her back. It turned out that he was on 24th Street, eating a vegetarian burrito at Taqueria Vallarta.
He told Adeline to meet him at the corner of South Van Ness and 24th.
SHE MET ERIK WILLEMS at the corner of South Van Ness and 24th Street. They embraced. Adeline stuck her tongue in Erik Willems’s mouth. She suggested that they go to her apartment.
“We can do that, but let’s walk down a few blocks. There’s a party that I should pop into and say hello.”
“Darling,” said Adeline, “Must we?”
“It won’t take long,” said Erik Willems. “It’s for work. Someone texted me. Ron Conway is there, and he’s wearing a lampshide on his head.”
“Fine,” said Adeline.
THEY WALKED for a few blocks. Adeline was drunk.
“What I find so fascinating,” she said, “is that you consider yourself an Objectivist, don’t you? Isn’t it true that you adhere to the pseudophilosophical tenants of Ayn Rand?”
“We’ve talked about this before,” said Erik Willems. “I’m not a strict Randian, but yes, I think there’s something to be said for Objectivism.”
“Which means that you believe that A = A. You believe that there are objective facts the observer can know through rational thinking?
“Yes,” said Erik. “I’ve told you before. Yes.”
“Darling,” said Adeline, “Please, tell me again, how can an Objectivist like you also believe in the floating value of the cupcake and the pastry? How can the ass be both the cupcake and the pastry if A = A and A ≠ B? I think I may have rather identified a logical inconsistency in your system of thought.”
“I’m so tired of hearing you talk about the cupcake and the pastry.”
“Oh, dear,” said Adeline. “Is that not a problem for thee, sirrah? Surely for thine own self to tire of the cupcake of the pastry is a betrayal of your sweet whole life, is it not? Isn’t every little thing that you speaky, in the end, all the opinions of you Internet lost boys, all the precious thoughts that you cast into the wind, all the vertical integration and decisioning and disruption and incubation and innovation and cross-function collaboration, all of these little kisses that you scatter across Never Never Land, isn’t it all just someone in a Star Wars t-shirt talking about the cupcake and the pastry?”
ERIK WILLEMS left Adeline standing at the corner of South Van Ness and 17th Street.
She wondered if he’d come back or if he was gone. She wondered if he’d left temporarily or if this was for forever.
In the past, Adeline had walked away from men on the street. In
the past, other men had walked away from Adeline.
She was a MILF. She was kind of famous. She was rich. She was using the Internet.
She didn’t care. She decided to walk home.
ADELINE HADN’T GOTTEN FARTHER than a block before she heard the sounds of a crowd. She looked across the street.
It was a large number of Latino youth. They were drunk and they were stoned and they were screaming. They were celebrating 2014.
She heard a bus pulling up opposite her.
It was a Google bus.
THE DOOR of the Google bus opened. A team of twenty engineers emerged.
They all sported Google Glass, a wearable computer built into eyeglasses. The principle virtue of Google Glass was that it allowed its wearers to record videos and thus act out their social inadequacies by alienating everyone around them.
Adeline made a clucking noise about the team of engineers wearing Google Glass. She thought that they looked simply absurd.
Then Adeline remembered she was still wearing 2014 on her face.
The engineers all wore matching t-shirts which read: GOOGLE GOES GAGA.
They were lead by a diminutive little man who wore black vinyl pants from the 1990s.
The little man pointed at the Latino youths.
The little man screamed.
This is what the little man screamed: “There stands a shaika of cheap stinking chip oils, O my droogies, let us meet them on battle field with chain and nozh and britva. Come up and tolchok these globby moodges and let spill their krovvy keeshkas!”
THE LEAD ENGINEER was speaking Nadsat. Nadsat was an imaginary dialect invented by Anthony Burgess for his dystopian Science Fiction novel A Clockwork Orange. This novel had been turned into one of the greatest films ever made.
In A Clockwork Orange, both the film and the book, teenagers speak Nadsat, a kind of criminal slang polyglot influenced by the penetration of subliminal Russian propaganda into popular culture.
Youth gangs in A Clockwork Orange speak Nadsat whilst they are rampaging in the streets.
The youth gangs go on the prowl in a search of the old ultraviolence.
THE LEAD ENGINEER screamed.
This is what he screamed: “Come on, you filthy rotting groodies. Come and get one in the yarbles, if you have any yarbles, you eunuch jelly thous!”
The Latino youths rushed towards the employees of Google.
The employees of Google rushed towards the Latino youths.
ABOVE THE DIN AND CLAMOR, just before the violence, Adeline’s cellphone vibrated.
Comes now a message someone sent her on Twitter.
This is what it said: “Drp slut... hope u get gang rape.... bi bunch, uv siphilis elegial aliens............”
Comes now another message someone sent Adeline on Twitter.
This is what it said: “Bitch... im cumin 2 kill u... in San Francisco...”
Table of Contents
title page
blurbs
colophon
trigger warning
chapter one
chapter two
chapter three
chapter four
chapter five
chapter six
chapter seven
chapter eight
chapter nine
chapter ten
chapter eleven
chapter twelve
chapter thirteen
chapter fourteen
chapter fifteen
chapter sixteen
chapter seventeen
chapter eighteen
chapter nineteen
chapter twenty
chapter twenty-one
chapter twenty-two
chapter twenty-three
chapter twenty-four
chapter twenty-five
chapter twenty-six
chapter twenty-seven
chapter twenty-eight
chapter twenty-nine
chapter thirty
chapter thirty-one
chapter thirty-two
chapter thirty-three