by Joshua Cohen
She put me down for seconds of testiness, “This is only because you didn’t respond online.”
“You asked this on an invite?”
“It’s just protocol.”
I was Table πie—which was difficult to remember atechnically. But if the seating arrangements were what I suspected, that would be the one to avoid.
The festivities were centered on a capacious bullfighting ring patio flanked by Moorishish fountains reviving ponds. Hubs of eager earnest convo, politics too optimistic for opinion. Mass delusion. Mass hydration.
The patio: La Korto—every notable architectural element was labeled, was to be referred to, in a slurred Spanish that was just Esperanto. La Trovita Lando, the compound—the main house above us (La Domo), the guest huts beyond (La Domoj), enshrouded in fog.
The xeriscaped rear descended into the vast gape of a wildlife refuge: a semiofficial preserve and so another tax dodge to Principal, a religious life—mission farmland and clergy R&R—to the Spanish, but originally a religion itself—animism, totemism, dendrolatry—to the indigenous Indians, whom the Spanish called the Costeños, or “coastal people,” but who called themselves Ohlone: Ohlo = “western,” ne = “people.”
All information offered by my employer, sin costo.
The info both explained, and became, my surroundings: The darkness was cypress, juniper, madrone. The trailside eruptions were of manzanita and sage. The interfaces scattered around the property obtruded with names, in English, in Spanish, their Native American names and Genus, species. I trackballed one: “Tell me more about chaparral.”
The interfaces served dual functions: to educate, sure, but for the more curious—to mark the perimeter of the wild. No Trespassing. Be content with what vantage you have. Go beyond, get a foot stuck in a conquistador helmet, a tomahawk wedged in the head.
I had the sense, though, that those woods were where the real party was—the real debauchery, I mean. Those woods were made for culty fucking, if not for fucking then for fireside circlejerking, critter sacrifice—who had the coke? what’s a Cali dally without pot (without unrefined hemp utensils, dishes, and stemware)?
I was about to make a break for them when the apéritif/hors d’oeuvres sampling was called by the perky MC, Conan O’Brien (Late Night with Conan O’Brien)—the only chair vacant was mine. I had to either leave or confront—a round table, Finnity counterclockwise from me, lagging always a moment behind.
“Yo,” he said.
“Eloquent,” I said. “Yo back.”
He took it, he grimaced but took it. Perspiration down my crevice, already.
“So,” he said, “a surprise?”
“I think our host knows it’s his birthday.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Sure, my life’s been nothing but surprises—for what’s it been for us? A decade?”
“10 years Aar’s filled us both in on.”
“What’s left to say then?”
“That ever stopped you before?”
“It wasn’t you I was avoiding in line, it was definitely Gwyneth.”
I didn’t mean to be so rude, just I felt—cornered, even at a circular table. Babysat, boosted.
“You want to know why I’m here?”
“I want to know why you think you’re here, Finn.”
“I thought it would be nice to talk.”
“I was going to say frequentfliers, I was going to say points.”
“I trust you’re keeping your receipts.”
“You came to intimidate me into getting to work—but you’re staying for the favors, the swag?”
Conan (The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien), loosened tie, hair swept up like someone had jizzed it, told a joke about some Silicon Valley Social Media PR summit happening now “at the Best Western in Menlo Park,” but empty, unattended—not because everyone was here, but because it hadn’t been publicized.
“One dork, one geek, one nerd, all male, just hanging around polishing the icecubes.”
He told a Gwyneth joke funnier than mine—when Finn leaned in: “You might’ve made time for me in NY.”
We got sommeliered by a guy with a cowbelling tastevin. Finn went white, I went red, both of new autochthonous vintage.
His cheers: “To your book,” mine: “To your book.”
To ours, to theirs, earthy, hints of bile.
“Josh—this is us doing the mending, OK? Healing up? It’s enough. No more grudges. No more blame.”
“Sure, why not? How to argue that? Edit away—you’re the editor.”
“Keep lying to yourself—you’re the writer.”
“Finn, you can return to your prixfixe friends at Café Loup in peace. Your ambush was successful.”
“Enough, Josh? What did you expect me to do back then—take out a fullpage color ad in The New Yorker saying ignore the tragedy and read this book?”
“I get it.”
“Fuck it, I tried for you—OK? I had the Times chasing you for a feature, didn’t I?”
“The angle was like author victimized.”
“OK?”
“Wasn’t exactly dignified.”
“Nothing was dignified then except to shut the fuck up. Still I leaned on them to let you write it.”
“Promote myself—not exactly tactful either.”
“That was the choice—whore or be whored. But you went lofty.”
“But there could’ve been a rerelease. There could’ve been a goddamned paperback.”
“That was shit luck—it’s not like I landed so smoothly either. The quarterlies came around and we all had to explain our no sales and why we hadn’t been signing up Islam books all through the summer like we had warning. The publishers were acting like they’d all known about the attacks forever—why didn’t we know? Why weren’t we prepared with books on how to cope with jihad or the infrastructure of hawala or a comprehensive history of the House of Saud, or, fuck it, a Guantánamo tellall by the fucking 20th hijacker, OK?”
“Got it.”
Finn iced himself down and sipped, whispered, “You haven’t met our Principal, have you?”
“I was expecting you to introduce me.”
“He doesn’t know I’m here—I begged an invitation off an exgirlfriend from Gopal,” and he nodded a radius through the table at four brunette romcoms.
“Get her to introduce us, all four of them.”
“She doesn’t think he’s here.”
“I don’t think I’m here either.”
Our server approached.
She was wearing a stetson and roper boots, denim overalls underall which I’m not sure.
“Your preferenced meals will be out momentarily,” she said. “For now, does anyone need anything?”
Finn said, “Nada.”
“Just as an update,” she smiled, “for dessert you’ll be having the birthday cake, which is glutenfree, the candles are sustainable beeswax.”
“Muchas gracias.” Finn reached out to tug straight her bandana.
“Also keep in mind,” she was saying as she swatted his hand, “with continued climate change, drought will affect over half of the world in this century alone. That’s half of the whole world, not just the developing. So, we’re doing all we can to moderate our water waste. By not changing your plates, you’re changing lives. Snap the QR on your napkin rings to get involved.”
I excused myself behind her: pretense was the toilet, purpose was the bar.
I trailed, and turned past the wagonwheel tables of every industry’s pioneers, destined for the dimming. Passing fame, passing actual fame. Not the observed in the park, but the celebrated globally. People—what’s more than people? more like businesses, companies, corporations, states unto themselves?—whose reps, even, whose lowliest brand ambassadors, would never return my calls.
It was a reality show—an actuality show—a making of a behind the scenes collision. Two Nobel laureates (Physics, Peace), two models whose models, unlike the laureates’, I und
erstood (thanks, Rach), the actor who got top billing in something Adam was in (won’t drop a name, but rhymes with “Mom Thanks”), another who won an Oscar for directing a host of somethings Adam was never in (rhymes with “Even Spielberg”), an andrologist with an infomercial system, a copyright attorney who commented on extremist cable, and Oprah? Fat Oprah and her skinnier double? Everyone lounging, chatty, bingey purgey—entouraging one another, giving interview, posing, thronging the serapedraped vitamix stations, mingling the dancezones, Tethelding selfies in pic and vid while decrying the paparazzi.
If they were invited, they were a celebrity. Even if this was just a job for them, they were a celeb. They had to be, the fame was contaminating. The wraithy freckled red bandanafied servergirl, all the servers, they were moonlighting microphenoms not only by moonlight but in their true industries too, with even the busboys, the prides of Sonora, maintaining their own stalky followings.
I joined, danced through—no one else had my moves—toward a holographic bonfire lighting up the forest. Finally, a pit of the party’s only stiffer provision, a makeshift cantina camp pitched twinkly out in the night like the last settlement before everything went savage—calling a younger crowd, guzzling heirloom beers and heritage cocktails of one part freerange to two parts forage, muddled into mason jars out of the back bays of circled Conestogas.
A girl bordelloized to impress asked, “When’s Lady Gaga showing?” A ranchhanded guy said, “It’s Dylan & Jagger,” and the girl asked, “Who’s that?”
I waited for my hooch behind a pornstached chillionaire and his two brogrammer friends, by which I mean his coworkers at #Summerize, according to their shirts and shorts and hats.
One said, “You can’t change the scale without scaling the change.”
Another said, “Evoke transcendence.”
The chillionaire said, “Will you stop reading that neurolinguistic reinforcement pickup artist shit? This party’s got mad fucking latency to it.”
His coworkers nodded up from their Tethelds and the transcendence guy said, “All paradigms can be realigned, modulo a pussy deficit. Because if we don’t count the nontech women, who don’t count us, we’re dealing with 6s, the same as always, mid 6s.”
“Get positivized,” the scalar change guy said. “Or just get beyond the systems integration analysts—the ad rep girls are 8s for def.”
The chillionaire said, “For me, this birthday’s all about trying to get an audience with the boss. I mean, he bought us without even meeting us, who does that?”
His coworkers clenched smiles at me. The chillionaire noticed and answered himself, “A fucking genius is who. What are you guys feeling—the no carbs rum horchata punch? Or the Red Bull Añejo Paloma?”
But his coworkers’ faces shone expressionlessly rapt again in the glows of their Tethelds until the chillionaire said, “Before your batteries are cashed, are you guys checking in with your Tetsets?”
They keyed, and the scalar change guy said, “This says there’s a quidditch game for new acqhires happening over by the stables.”
The transcendence guy said, “This says if anyone finds a yellow/black GoreTex GoreBike windstopper cycling shell, please reply, reward negotiable.”
“There’s a capture the flag tourney for vest & resters that’s voting now on team captains.”
“This says P Diddy’s taking all the ad rep pussy to the sweat lodge.”
“Hey, sorry, disruption incoming,” and the chillionaire was talking to me now. “Can you just take a square of us?”
He handed me his Tetheld, the only one I’ve ever held, and it was anodized cool. I tried to get them all onscreen. But I wasn’t sure what to press, or if there was anything to press. Or even whether the recording was still or in motion, with sound. An Asian, an Arab, and an Indian, all speaking together in questionmarks like white girls. Such were my unspoken thoughts, which only I can record, I think.
The Asian thanked me and posted the groupsquare crossplatform from his Tetset and the Arab and Indian reposted to their own Tetsets, and read the replies as they blipped in: “giddyup you cutie cowboys,” “fuck u and fuck the startup u rode in on.”
It was their turn to order from the Conestoga. They ordered waters with electrolytes.
I had the fringey coonskincapped hipster pour me an artisanal vodka with artisanal rocks.
As I went for a cig he said, “No smoking.”
“Where?”
“Nowhere on property.”
They didn’t need a sign. They needed a sign for everything else.
“La Bano?” I pointed, “the toilets?” and while the frontierster was pointing them out, I swiped a bottle, biomash rye.
I headed away, swerved for the trees. Forgive me. Fine me for tossing my lighter. It was empty but I still had matches.
I staggered, rolled like a stone. It was all a ball of feints, disguises. Power masquerading as responsibility, stewardship. Excess but slim, trim. Spiritual emaciation in good citizen costume. Wastefulness spun as ethical consumption. A party in honor of health, which improved health. Nothing could fool me, or could fool me enough.
Still, I couldn’t get no satisfaction—the leaves rasping hey hey hey. Cause I tried, and I tried, and I tried, and I tried—to distinguish between the rustic and the epic style art: a Calder stabile like a girdered ferruginous rhododendron, and what was either a Richard Serra or a Donald Judd or a boulder.
I couldn’t shake a certain bumpkinish feeling, that sense of being a hick, a rube, an unacceptable regression. I spurred myself sloppy, smoked and drank with the roots.
Just ahead was a stand of trees, just tremendous trees, mossy antennas, redwood but pulsing black—their monitors were black, and their bark was livid brown, quakefissured. They too had to acclimate after being transplanted. Weldmesh fence prevented my touch. The path went around them and pebbled away and was panned into sand by the grass.
It was a spit of beach along a salina bayscape. A dimidiate moon, and stars falling darkly pacific.
From out of the nebula and down the beach, a desperado was approaching. I didn’t have a weapon, I was freelance. I dug in, sparked the pack’s penultimate cig, contemplated another message for the bottle besides breaking it. On his skull, on mine.
He swayed, wary, rolledup pants, rolled shirtsleeves, suitjacket looped around neck, a sockstuffed shoe in each hand, whiteness, Finn.
“Can I get a taste?”
“Taste the empty?” I tipped the bottle to grains.
“Then a smoke?”
I passed the butt, “Why not share?”
He dragged, “You’ve been making the rounds?”
“I’ve had people to meet—putting faces to names and names to faces. The next round I’m putting bodies to bodies.”
Finn ashed, returned what was left, for me to snuff.
He said, “I’m not keeping tabs.”
“I am?”
“But Aaron just happened to mention—something about the wife? She got you down?”
“Mine or yours?”
Finn clapped his heels, “You want some advice, Josh?”
“About what—always be a friend to your friends? Never go swimming on a full stomach?”
Finn grinned, “The book: it can’t be a book—it has to be an option. Write it for the screen. The game version. Whatever.”
“That’s it?”
“I need a property,” he mooned. “I need an adaptation.”
I felt it the next morning. Noon, after. Nothing but hangover fog, a lukewarm front of quit throat. Giving way by evening to arrogance.
Nobody came.
I checked my new account: one email, my first. [email protected]. An invitation to yesterday, a link to a dietary survey. Made another resolution: quit drinking and smoking, check email more or less often.
Drag. Dump Trash. An empty inbox, an empty outbox. A pure, an impeccable, soul.
I went out to get something to eat, and some head analgesia.
Just when I had my hand on the handle, a voice said, “Hungry?”
I turned.
The voice said, “Aspirin or ibuprofen?”
“What?”
Voice circumambient, modulated with viperish reverb, then a panel withdrew, the monition of a monitor face. Just opposite my cot. Principal’s face. But frozen, cryogenized.
I assumed a malfunction, a fritz.
“It is just a still,” the voice said. “Official as like for a book.”
“As like what?”
“Or perhaps this one is better?” and the monitor regressed: a Founder’s shot, him next to a—I’m just going to call it a server. “Or this one?” a yearbook shot—highschool? college?—teeth agleam amid pleiades of acne. “Or maybe this?” a newborn frame, squashed and jaundiced, clawmarks at the cheeks. “Or?”
“Whichever the fuck,” and again, the first familiar image was restored.
“Come back toward the cot—hang out.”
“You can see me?”
“Confirmative.”
“You can hear me?”
“Confirmative, though on the cot is better—hang loose.”
“You’re fucking snooping on me?”
“We are doing no such thing. We are offering naproxen? Acetaminophen? Depends how your stomach is—you should not need an anti-inflammatory.”
“I’m just trying to avoid taking the hard shit.”
“The hard shit?”
I gestured around at all my stuff stowed, “You should know—you think I moved in myself?”
“Pfizer is in the dumps, trading down below 20, indicating low consumer confidence in ibuprofen. Johnson & Johnson is holding steady in the 60s, aspirin is on the up.”
“Were you even around for your own 4-0?”
“Around, yes, in attendance, no.”
“Did I jerk off?”
“Unclear.”
I wanted to wish him happy returns on his birthday, but also I wanted to keep that sentiment pounding in my head, to determine whether it registered.
“We cannot read thoughts.”
“Try.”
“Think of something.”
“Any something?”
“Any.”
“Am doing it—you got it?”
At the door was a knock and a black but white goth buff transgender person entered—an XX or an XY or a chromosomally spliced Ze bearing a metal tray. I had not been thinking about its contents. But I did not have that thought until I’d consumed its contents. The tray was divided into quadrants, and all were of composted mush.