by T. Warwick
The blonde left him in the dark. He was shivering in a ball on the wet concrete floor when the dim yellow lights brightened. A different guard with dark red hair and brown freckles squatted in front of him between the bars of the cell.
“You know what, Charlie?” She spoke in clear American English, but it was clear she wasn’t American. She smiled at him like she was telling him the punch line to a joke he would never get.
“What?” Charlie held himself in the fetal position on the floor and looked up at her polished black shoes and dry uniform.
“I believe you. I believe you were a useful idiot.”
And that was the end of his conversations with them. The blonde came in with a towel and returned him to his cell. After that, the guards seemed to regard him with sympathy as they passed his cell. Occasionally, they even inquired about his thoughts on his food, which was always lukewarm rice and some cabbage-flavored nutritional paste squirted on one side like toothpaste.
Since his incarceration, he had been completely cut off from the outside world. His custom AR glasses had been seized, and he had not been permitted to use any other communication devices. He wondered what day it was as he stared at the line where the wall met the floor. Lauren, the police had informed him in an unusual departure from their policy of keeping him in the dark about everything, had been released after only a few days of interrogation because she was only an assistant. Days passed, but it might have been weeks. He wasn’t going to bother wondering what was going on with Lauren or what was going to happen to him. He was going to breathe. Now. And everything around him would fade. He crouched on the unfinished concrete floor with his eyes closed. He felt granules of sand on his fingertips. He imagined an AR display of Lauren in a clear plastic version of her business suit walking through a pristine city of crystal and gold along a river of fire. It was there, but it wasn’t. He squinted in a vain attempt to hold onto it, but it was gone. He wanted to know what time it was when two women in completely different gray uniforms walked into his cell.
“We are going to let you go, Mr. Charlie,” one of them blurted out.
“Why?” he said.
“We believe you are telling us the truth about the level of your involvement with Chi Capital Markets. You will have to appear in court. And then you will be deported.”
“Deported? Why do I have to leave Vietnam?”
The officer who hadn’t spoken and seemed to hold seniority pulled out a battered gray device from her left front jacket pocket and set it on the matte amber plastic coffee table bolted to the floor. It quickly flickered on and projected the camera’s perspective on the wall. She adjusted it until Charlie was centered in the frame.
“Read this,” the other officer said as she projected a statement for Charlie to read to the left. His name and prison ID number appeared at the bottom of his image.
“‘I understand that my employment visa will continue to be valid, but I am not permitted to leave Vietnam. I am permitted to search for any other employment during this time.’”
“What will you do now? Your assistant has left Vietnam. Will you try to contact her?” She seemed to be following a scripted response.
“Where did she go?”
“We don’t know.”
“What do you mean? If you know she’s left, then there’s a record of her ticket.”
“Unfortunately, we do not have access to that information. We are not police. We are a private company specializing in financial problems. I am sorry, Mr. Charlie. Good luck.”
“Who the fuck are you guys?”
The officer who seemed to be in charge put out her hand and smiled. As Charlie prepared to shake her hand, she responded by laughing and slapping him on the back.
“We are a legitimate organization. I assure you that everything you have told us will be archived and disseminated by the proper local bureaucrats…I mean…if that is your concern?”
“No, that isn’t my concern. I don’t care who you are. I just want to leave. I’ve got thirty days. When do they begin?”
“Now.”
“Good.”
The patience he had been practicing was replaced with a need for experience, any experience that didn’t involve fire hoses. An officer he had never seen before entered the room with a plastic shopping bag containing his clothes, wallet, AR glasses, passport, and phone.
“You can change in the men’s room across the hall.”
“The men’s room, eh? How come you’re not Vietnamese?” Charlie said as he looked up at her braided blonde hair tied up in a bun with black netting, still somewhat stunned not to be the tallest one in the room.
The woman looked down at the two other officers with an unbelieving grin. “Because I’m Dutch.”
“Oh yeah? Good for you. I’ll go change.”
The three officers were waiting for him in the hallway, which was more brightly lit than anywhere he had been in the prison. There was a long hallway with white walls and brass fixtures and a gray carpet the same shade of gray as the walls of his cell. It seemed like it might have been a law office at one time. Maybe it still was.
The four of them walked to the elevator up to the lobby level and through the large marble-floored lobby with a grand tile mosaic of Ho Chi Minh on the left wall and seven similar likenesses projected to look like Warhol lithographs on the opposing wall. He was taken to a small room where his clothes and personal belongings were handed to him unceremoniously in a black plastic bag. He dressed quickly and turned over his uniform to the front office guard and signed in the space indicated on the clunky gray pad. The officer nodded and indicated with her right arm like a doorwoman at a five-star hotel that Charlie was free to leave.
The heavily tinted sliding glass doors opened gently, and he was hit with the afternoon light. It was an overcast day, like it was just about to rain, but it still felt painfully bright to him after being underground for three months. He walked down the stone steps, and no one seemed to notice.
The air felt crisp. He crossed the street to walk through the park. When he got to the opposite curb, he put on his AR glasses and tapped the left frame three times to turn them on. The world came alive. Everything was vividly accessible and understandable. The girls who were dancing in the park had their likes and dislikes and fuzzy bears and photos of friends swirling around them. Most of it was in Vietnamese, but it didn’t matter because it was pulsing with life. Even the trees, which had just a moment ago been brownish trunks with limp greenish leaves tinged with soot, were spewing out their scientific names and photos comparing them with other trees; distended fragments of thought were hanging suspended around them as virtual graffiti awaiting virtual dissolution from the park manager. There was a 3-D holographic rendition of a row of 1950s-esque robots circling one of the trees and marching in place. Throughout the park, people were scattered in large and small clusters moving at different speeds. Some had web profiles and professional association memberships embossed on rippling clear scrolls of glass the length of their bodies floating around them; it was very expensive programming meant to impress. Three older men were taking turns with bows and arrows in a traditional AR archery match, while some young boys were chasing each other around and weaving through the clusters of people with AR crossbows. The world was finally beginning to feel user-friendly again.
As he walked through the city, the ads that targeted his profile seemed more and more inappropriate to his current status. A new season of upgraded chips came flurrying down like snow, and the latest Burberry nanofiber neck scarves that purported to be “softer than silk” sliced into his path and flew around like runaway kites. A herd of zebras looking up in the sky drew his attention to his daily scheduled reminder, which appeared in blue metallic script against the gray sky:
Poverty is a state of mind
After following a green AR mist down several nameless alleys, he checked into Motel Green, an indistinguishable section of unpainted concrete with its name hovering in a green sphere abo
ve the entrance. The solar cells on the roof were large and bulky and protruded over the alley, keeping it in the shade. An old Vietnamese man with a white cane and a green three-piece suit sat in a lounge chair in the lobby, playing fetch with a blue AR poodle while a solitary cleaning bot meticulously swept the worn but already clean floor tiles.
Charlie plunged into one of the large black lounge chairs embedded with gel ampoules. The green light above carried the iconic Motel Green soundtrack that began with the welcome menu. He flicked through the menu and purchased three nights and twelve hours of AC with his only available account. The solar cells had probably finished paying for themselves long ago, but the hotel still charged for AC like it was an expense. He looked at the man playing with the dog and recalled how in the past he might have created a larger dog to attack it. Instead, he observed the man with his creation, happily oblivious to him and the rest of the world. He grabbed his bag and started walking up the stairs to his room. A message icon popped up as he reached the third floor. It was Tonya. She was still using the Chi intro page with the horses being chased by tigers.
Reservations at X Voyage @7
What could she want? Had she been arrested too? The isolation from people and the destruction of Chi was disorienting. He couldn’t afford X Voyage. Tonya could pay. It was the least she could do.
3
It wasn’t the first weekend Harold had spent in Paris, but it was the first time he had come expressly for the anonymous clinic. After walking out of the white lobby, he stood just outside the entrance in the rain for more than an hour. Nothing had changed. It had merely been a confirmation of what he had already known in his heart. Going anywhere seemed pointless. The experience of rain on a weekend trip outside of Saudi Arabia would have normally been cause for excitement, but he was hardly even aware of it until he was soaked and it had tapered off to a drizzle. It was as if he had been rendered incapable of feeling or expressing emotion. The second HIV test had confirmed the results.
After the rain stopped, he began walking. He felt like he couldn’t stop. It was twilight when he noticed his body was shivering and his clothes were wet. He blew up the lab test results to the size of a car shaped like a balloon and watched them drift along as he walked past the opera house before slashing through them in a violent deletion gesture that made passersby turn and look up at a nonexistent danger. It was done. It didn’t exist. He had less than six months on his work visa in Saudi Arabia, but nothing would change in that time. He would be blacklisted from any police jobs back in China, so going back was out of the question—unless he had the money to do something else.
He passed cafés with tables full of people laughing. He got in a taxi to Pigalle and got off at the first burlesque place he saw. The doorman demanded a tip, and he reached in his pocket and handed him some paper currency without looking at it or saying a word. Inside, all five available tables were full, and the warm air circulated around a pasty-white, pregnant blonde on stage. He watched her dance lethargically. The silver tassels dangling from her nipples lay limply on her protruding belly. A group of French boys who looked to be about thirteen sat at a table in the back, blowing AR smoke from AR shisha pipes.
He walked out and kept walking until a horse bearing the logo of his favorite brand of bai jiu appeared before him with flames coming out of its nostrils and jumped into the entrance to the bar up the stairs on his left. He opened the door and walked in, surrounded by dark-wood paneling and the dreary voice of a female lounge singer from another era. Seeing all of the booths were full, he sat at the bar, which looked to be made of real wood. He noticed his clothes had finally dried. He searched behind the bar for his favorite brand of bai jiu but couldn’t find it. A pale woman with red hair who had been sitting in one of the booths emerged and stood next to him at the bar.
“A vodka Collins and a pint of Guinness for the gentleman.” The bartender, a man of more than fifty with a bushy gray mustache that twirled upward, raised an eyebrow at her and didn’t move. With her otherworldly red hair and white skin, she appeared to Harold as a nymph prepared to summon magical powers.
“Here,” she said as she looked at her phone and flicked the bartender some AR seashells symbolizing her payment and walked back to her booth.
“Here you are, sir,” the bartender said to him in an almost-exaggerated French accent as he placed the beer in front of him.
Harold grabbed the beer and walked over to the woman’s booth and sat down across from her.
“Are you lonely?” she said without looking at him.
“No,” he said.
“Good,” she said as she looked at her phone and smiled. “Which hotel are you staying at?”
“Hyatt.”
Her eyes widened with delight without looking up from her phone. She used her pinky to write her price in pink AR lipstick.
He nodded and led her outside to one of the waiting taxis. She looked at the Moroccan driver and then at Harold as she wrapped her legs around his left thigh and let her red velvet dress ride up to reveal her white skin above her black stocking.
As soon as she was in his hotel room and the door was closed, her demeanor became more sullen. After undressing, she seemed angry as she flexed her vaginal muscles and attempted to subdue his attempts to withhold his orgasm. When she finally succeeded in overcoming him, she turned over in the bed and lay motionless. He leaned over to make sure she was still breathing. He lay back and flicked through some gambling sites before settling on a blackjack table without any other players. The clock flashed midnight as the last hand of blackjack was dealt by a Chinese woman in a black gown who stood at the foot of the bed. The redheaded nymph had been overwhelmed by the luxury of a five-star hotel and had fallen asleep in his arms. She had been eager to talk about her love of Paris and the cosmetics she used back at the bar. She had grown up in Dhahran because her father had been an engineer with an old oil company that existed before the Sino Saudi Oil Company (SSOC) was formed. The coincidence of it was disturbing, but he kept silent about that and everything else because she never asked him anything about himself. She awoke briefly with a gasp as he lost the last of the credit limit he had set for himself that evening. Blackjack was a rare indulgence he allowed himself when he was outside of Saudi Arabia and away from the religious police’s meticulous blocking of sites perceived to be morally reprehensible. But now it didn’t feel like an indulgence; it was just a meditation to calm his mind.
Still drunk with sexual satiation, he brushed the French girl’s hair with his fingers and smelled the perfume in it. Her skin was the color of milk, and from a certain perspective, she could almost be mistaken for Chinese. But the Western facial features and red hair made her irresistibly exotic. The paisley silk sheets prevented him from scratching his toe because they were too soft, so he got out of bed to scratch it on the carpet. From the window, he watched her exhale with a hint of exasperation directed at something in her dream. He hadn’t invited her to stay the night, and he realized she would probably want more money. He would bargain with her over breakfast. White women were sought after because of their scarcity, but their price in Paris where they were so plentiful was only a fraction of what it was in Bahrain. He watched her sleep, blissfully unaware of her value. Looking beyond her through the sound-proofed window, the streets of red-and-white car lights ran parallel to the pedestrians with phone projectors. The sidewalk was covered in a moving mosaic of animations and news reports and the latest football matches. The projectors also served as flashlights, since most of the streetlights had been smashed out during various protests. He turned over and listened to the vent move the cool, filtered air back and forth. His panic had given way to a resolve to do what was necessary to continue living. It occurred to him that the progression of his life had broken free from any connection to the past and all the people in it. And anything that had happened in the past was no longer relevant. It was dead, but he wasn’t.
He awoke with the sunlight of dawn burning into his ey
es. It was useless to try and sleep any later. He lay watching the ceiling fan sift through the projected image of a French news announcer named Claude. After slipping on his AR glasses, he adjusted the translation setting to French-Mandarin and handed them to the French girl as he woke her with a gentle push. “Let’s get out of here,” he whispered. He paused for a moment and waited for her to put on the glasses to see the words scroll up like a chat session. Then he grabbed his old standard-issue SSOC pair, which handled translation apps better than most standard consumer models. Not using AR eyewear was fashionable among the French, but he was tired of the cumbersome exchange of translated words across the small screen of her phone. She kept them on without protest. Outside, the air was moist and crisp; it felt more like early spring than summer. They slouched into opposing couches at a café in the middle of the wide sidewalk. The table umbrellas were not covered in solar cells blasting frigid outdoor AC down on the table in steamy swirls because it simply wasn’t necessary. Natural comfort. Pure luxury. Drinking the espresso, he savored the distinction between its heat and the naturally chilled ambient air brimming with ionic activity. Everything was dead in the desert, but there every molecule was allowed to flourish. He took in every person’s passing: what they were wearing, how they smelled, the colors and cuts and hairstyles so differentiated from a world of flowing white and black gowns that obscured everything. He wondered to himself where they were going; there were places to go that inspired all of the senses. But the smells, more than anything, brought back memories of a life that didn’t involve the protection of oil-processing plants in the desert. He could pick up traces of the damp, electrically infused stench that emanated from the subway and contrasted with the heavy, sweet aroma from the bakery. And there were the lingering smells of foods like pâté and ham being served freely and legally.