Bleeding Edge

by Thomas Pynchon

  “You’re fishing for compliments, Reg, what about that unscheduled redecoration on your apartment? Somebody must have thought highly of something you shot.”

  “Ice,” he shrugs. “Tryin to repo what he thinks is his.”

  No, Maxine thinks with a sudden flulike ache in her fingers, Ice would be best-case. And if it’s anybody else, Seattle might not be far enough. “Listen, if you need me to hold on to anything for you—”

  “Don’t worry, you’re on my list.”

  “And you’ll let me know when you leave town?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Please. Oh, and Reg.”

  “Yeah, I know, I used to watch the old Bionic Woman myself. Sooner or later Oscar Goldman says, ‘Jaime—be careful.’”

  “He was a strong Jewish-mother role model for me. Just remember even Jaime Sommers needs to step cautious once in a while.”

  “Don’t worry. I used to think that as long as I could see it through the viewfinder, it couldn’t hurt me. So it took a while, but now I know different. You happy?” Disillusioned child written all over him.

  “I guess I could take that as the good news.”

  14

  Among the mystery vendors discovered by the resourceful Eric Outfield down in the encrypted files of hashslingrz is a fiber brokerage called Darklinear Solutions.

  Who in their right mind, you wonder, would go into fiber these days, given the huge decline in new installation since last year? Well, back during the tech bubble, it seems so much cabling was put in that now miles of existing fiber are just sitting there what they call “dark,” and the result is that outfits like Darklinear have come swooping down on the carcass of the business, scouting out overinstalled, unused fiber in otherwise “lit” buildings, mapping it, helping clients put together customized private networks.

  What’s puzzling Maxine is why hashslingrz’s payments to Darklinear are being kept hidden when they don’t have to be. Fiber’s a legitimate company expense, bandwidth needs at hashslingrz more than justify it, even the IRS seems to be happy. And yet, just as with hwgaahwgh.com, the dollar amounts are way too big, and somebody’s putting up password protection out of all proportion.

  Sometimes, better than letting things fester, it is perverse fun to give in to annoyance. Maxine calls up Tallis Ice and gets lucky. Or doesn’t get the machine, put it that way. “I had a call from your charming husband. Somehow he knew about our visit the other day.”

  “Not me—I swear, it’s the building, they keep logs, there’s video surveillance, well, maybe I did mention something about, you came by?”

  “I’m sure he’s a wonderful person regardless,” replies Maxine. “While I’ve got you on the phone, can I pick your brain?”

  “Sure?” Like, let’s see, where’d I put it…

  “You were talking about infrastructure the other day. I’m working for a client over in New Jersey with a capitalizing issue, and they’re curious about a fiber broker in Manhattan called Darklinear Solutions. This is all out of my area—did you ever do business with them, or know anybody who has?”

  “No.” But there it is again, some peculiar hiccup in continuity that Maxine has learned means Look Closer. “Sorry?”

  “Just trying to get educated on the cheap, thanks, Tallis.”

  • • •

  DARKLINEAR SOLUTIONS IS a hip-looking chrome-and-neon establishment in the Flatiron District. In the E-rated video game of this, it sells echinacea smoothies and seaweed panini, instead of doped silica to feed depraved fatpipe fantasies that still may linger from the era recently ended.

  Maxine is just about to alight from her cab when she sees a woman coming out the door in a tight leopard-print jumpsuit and Chanel Havana shades over her eyes instead of up on her head acting as a hairband, who, despite this effort, possibly conscious, at disguise, is obviously, well, well, Mrs. Tallis Kelleher Ice.

  Maxine considers waving and hollering hi, but Tallis is acting too nervous here, she makes the average urban paranoid look like James Bond at the baccarat table. What’s this? Fiber is suddenly so hush-hush? No, actually it’s the getup, which screams accommodation to somebody else’s idea of provocative, and Maxine naturally finds herself wondering whose.

  “You getting out, lady?”

  “Maybe you should put the meter on again, while I just take a minute here.”

  Tallis makes her way up the block, glancing around anxiously. At the corner she pretends to stand gazing in the window of a toilet showroom, her feet in third ballet position, some Barnard girl in an art gallery here. A minute later the door of Darklinear Solutions swings open once again and out comes this compact party in a sales-floor blazer and slacks, carrying a shoulder-strap attaché and casing the street apprehensively also. He turns the other direction from Tallis but only goes as far as a Lincoln Navigator parked a few spaces away, gets in, heads back toward Tallis at a slow cruise. When he reaches the corner, the passenger door swings open and Tallis slides in.

  “Quick,” sez Maxine, “before the light changes.”

  “Your husband?”

  “Somebody’s, maybe. Let’s see where they go.”

  “You a cop?”

  “I’m Lennie on Law & Order, you didn’t recognize me?” They follow the ponderous gas gobbler all the way over to the FDR and proceed uptown, exiting at 96th, continuing north on First Avenue into a fringe neighborhood no longer Upper East Side and not quite East Harlem, where you might once have gone to visit your drug dealer or arrange a compensated evening rendezvous, but which is now showing symptoms of gentrification.

  The reconfigured heavy pickup pauses near a building newly converted, according to a sign tastefully draped across its upper stories, to condos running a million or so per bedroom, and then takes about an hour to park.

  “Time was,” mutters the cabbie, “leavin somethin like that on the street up here? You’d have to be insane, man, now everybody’s afraid to touch it ’cause it might belong to some badass who thinks with his Glock.”

  “There they go. Could you wait here for me, I just want to try something.”

  She gives Tallis and ’Gator Man a couple minutes to get in the elevator, then goes stomping up to the doorman. “Those people that just came in? those idiots with the big SUV they don’t know how to park? They just fucking knocked my bumper off.”

  He’s a nice enough kid, doesn’t exactly cower but does sound apologetic. “I can’t really let you go up there.”

  “It’s OK, you don’t have to let them come down here either, it’ll only mean a lot of screaming in your lobby, the mood I’m in possibly bloodshed also, who needs that, right? Here,” handing him the card of a tax lawyer and byword of nineties excess who far as she knows is still inside, up at Danbury, “this is my attorney, maybe you can pass this along next time you see Mr. and Ms. Road & Track, and oh better let me have their phone number too, e-mail, whatever, so the lawyers can get in touch.”

  At which point some doormen will get all technical and pissy, but this one here, like the building, is new on the block and just as happy to be rid of some crazy bitch with a parking beef. Maxine manages a quick scan over the records at the front desk and returns to the cab with everything on the BF but his credit-card numbers.

  “This is fun,” sez the cabbie. “Where next?”

  She glances at her watch. Back to the shop, it looks like. “Upper Broadway, anyplace around Zabar’s’d be good?”

  “Zabar’s, huh?” Some junior-sidekick note seems to have crept into his voice.

  “Yeah, had some strange information about a lox, need to check that out.” She pretends to examine the safety on her Beretta.

  “Maybe I should give you the special rate for PIs.”

  “But I’m only a… never mind, I’ll take it.”

  • • •

  “MAXI. WHATCHYIZ DOIN TONIGHT.”

  Masturbating to a movie on the Lifetime channel, Her Psychopathic Fiancé, I believe, why, what’s it to you? Actually what
she sez is, “You’re asking me out, Rocky?”

  “Hey. She called me Rocky. Listen, it’s all respectable, Cornelia’s gonna be there, my partner Spud Loiterman, maybe a couple other people.”

  “You’re kidding. A soiree. Where are we going?”

  “Korean karaoke, there’s a… they call it a noraebang, up in K-Town, the Lucky 18.”

  “Streetlight People, Don’t Stop Believing, karaoke boilerplate, I should’ve figured.”

  “We all used to be regulars over at Iggy’s on 2nd Avenue, but last year we got—not me so much—but—Spud got us…”

  “Eighty-sixed.”

  “Spud, he…” Rocky a little embarrassed, “he’s a genius, my partner, you ever have a problem with like Regulation D… but he gets near a mike and… well, Spud will change key a lot. Even with pitch compensation, the technology can’t keep up with him.”

  “I should bring earplugs?”

  “Nah, just brush up on those eighties power ballads and be there around nine.” Hearing her hesitation and being an intuitive sort, he adds, “Oh and wear somethin schlumpy, don’t want you upstaging Cornelia.”

  Which heads her straight for the closet and an understated yet tabloidworthy Dolce & Gabbana number she found at Filene’s Basement for 70% off, being obliged in fact to separate it from the grasp of a Collegiate mother, East Side hairband and all, slumming her morning away after dropping the kids off, who was two sizes too big for it anyway, and which Maxine has since been waiting for an excuse to wear. Lincoln Center gala? Political fund-raiser? Forget it, a karaoke joint full of vulture capitalists, just the occasion.

  Gathered that evening at the Lucky 18, in one of the larger rooms, Maxine finds Rocky’s tone-deaf associate Spud Loiterman, Spud’s girlfriend Letitia, assorted out-of-town clients in for the weekend, as well as a small party of actual Koreans wearing, possibly as ironic fashion statements, shiny yellowish outfits from the North made of Vinalon, a fiber derived, unless Maxine is hearing this wrong, from coal, who have wandered off a tour bus and are growing increasingly uneasy about finding their way back to it. And Cornelia, who shows up tonight comfortably bridge-attired and sporting pearls also. Taller than Rocky even without the heels she has on tonight, she radiates an unforced amiability you don’t see in that many WASPs, though they claim they invented it.

  Maxine and Cornelia are just getting into the social chitchat when Rocky, ethnic as always in a Rubinacci suit and Borsalino, muscles in, waving a cigar around. “Hey, Maxi, c’mere a minute, meet somebody.” Cornelia silently flicks back a Do-you-mind-we’re-busy-here glance with perhaps even less compassion than shuriken or throwing stars are launched with in martial-arts movies… and yet, and yet, what is the almost erotic edge with these two? “After the commercial, I hope,” Cornelia with a shrug and the suggestion of a heavenward eyeroll, turning and sauntering elsewhere. Maxine has a glimpse of a Mikimoto clasp riding an attractive nape, yellow gold as usual, not everybody’s choice with pearls, though try to tell the folks at Mikimouse-o, who think everybody in the U.S. is blond. Which Cornelia happens to be—the question then arising, does this blondness extend all the way through her head?

  To be determined. Meantime, “Maxi, say hi to Lester, formerly of hwgaahwgh.com.” Liquidation or whatever, seems like Rocky, being nothing if not a VC down to the bone, is apparently always in the market for bright ideas from any source.

  Lester Traipse is square-rimmed and compact, uses some drugstore brand of hair gel, talks like Kermit the frog. The big surprise is his wingman tonight. Last seen stepping out of a Tim Horton’s on René Lévesque into what Montreal calls “feeble snow” and the rest of the world a raging blizzard, Felix Boïngueaux tonight is sporting a strange do, which is either a triple-digit power haircut, carefully designed to lull observers into false complacency with their own appearance till it’s too late, or else he cut it himself and fucked up.

  Rocky and Lester have meantime silently moved on into the bar. “Nice seeing you again. Everything’s working out? Listen,” furtive glance after Rocky, “you won’t mention, um…”

  “The cash-register—”

  “Sh-shhh!”

  “Oh. Course not, why should I?”

  “It’s just that now we’re trying to go legit.”

  “Like Michael Corleone, I understand, no problem.”

  “Seriously. We have this li’l start-up now. Me and Lester. Antizapper software, you install it on your point-of-sale system and it automatically disables all phantomware in a mile radius, anybody tries to use a zapper, it melts their disc. Well, no, maybe not that violent. But damn close? You’re friends with Mr. Slagiatt? Hey, so put in a good word for us.”

  “Sure thing.” Playing both ends against the middle, eh? Amoral youth, ain’t it awful.

  No sooner is the karaoke machine powered up than the Koreans have formed a queue at the sign-up book and conversation phatic or profitable must compete for a while with “More Than a Feeling,” “Bohemian Rhapsody,” and “Dancing Queen.” On the screen, behind lyrics in Korean and English, appear enigmatic tape clips, masses of Asian people running around in faraway city streets and plazas, human kaleidoscopes filling the fields of gigantic sports arenas, low-res footage from Korean soap operas and nature documentaries and other strange peninsular visuals, often having little to do with the song on the machine or its lyrics, sometimes offering peculiar disconnects therebetween.

  When it’s Cornelia’s turn she calls “Massapequa,” the second-soprano showstopper from Amy & Joey, an Off-Broadway musical about Amy Fisher that’s been running since 1994 to packed houses. Giving it a sort of neo-country-music feel, Cornelia now, swaying, drenched in a salmon spot, in front of a screen showing koalas, wombats, and Tasmanian devils, proceeds to belt out—

  Mass—a-pe-qua!

  in my

  Dreams, I seek ya,

  It’s a long way back,

  To that old Sunrise High-

  Way—

  (Yeah,)

  Thought… I’d leave you, but I

  Still… receive you, like a

  Station late at night,

  From long ago…

  Where’s-a-pizza-when-you

  need… one…?

  Where’s-a-bar-a-girl-can… dance?

  Where’s ’ose kids we used to be?

  Where’s ’at extra second chance?

  (Must’ve left em back in)

  Mass—

  sape-qua, never

  Dreamed I’d keep ya,

  Thought that growing up meant

  Throwing you away…

  But though I

  Tried to toss ya, guess I

  Never lost ya,

  ’Cause you’re still right here, tucked

  Safely, in my heart,

  (Massapequa-ah!),

  Still right here, tucked

  Safely in my heart…

  Well, the worst part about most “Massapequa” covers is when white voices attempt blues runs and end up sounding at best insincere. Cornelia has somehow avoided this difficulty. “Thank you,” Maxine presently in the powder room or ladies’ toilet finds herself kvelling, “I love it when that happens, soubrette material, leading-lady presence, like Gloria Grahame in Oklahoma!”

  “That’s kinder than you know,” Cornelia demurely. “People usually say early Irene Dunne. Minus the vibrato of course. And Rocky speaks highly of you, which I always take as a good sign.” Maxine raises an eyebrow. “Next to the ones he doesn’t speak of at all, I mean.” Activities at the matrimonial periphery not being Maxine’s favorite topic, she smiles politely enough that Cornelia gets it. “Perhaps we could meet sometime, for lunch, do some shopping?”

  “You’re on. Gotta warn you, though, I’m not much into shopping for recreation.”

  Cornelia puzzled, “But you… you are Jewish?”

  “Oh, sure.”

  “Practicing?”

  “Nah, I know how to do it pretty good by now.”

  “I suppose I meant a c
ertain… gift for finding… bargains?”

  “Should be written into my DNA, I know. But somehow I still forget to fondle material or study the tags, and sometimes,” lowering her voice and pretending to look around for disapproval, “I have even… paid retail?”

  Cornelia pretending to gasp, faux paranoid, “Please don’t tell anyone, but I have actually now and then… discussed the price of an item in a shop. Yes, sometimes—incredibly—they’ve even brought it down. Ten percent. Nearly thirty once, but that was only the one time, at Bloomingdale’s back in the eighties. Though the memory is still vivid.”

  “So… as long as we don’t rat each other out to the ethnic police…”

  They emerge from the ladies’ to find the company grown noticeably rowdier, Soju Wallbangers in glasses and pitchers everywhere, Koreans horizontal on couches or, when vertical, singing with their ankles crossed, teenage obsessives with laptops playing Darkeden over in the corner, Cohiba smoke hanging in strata, waitresses laughing louder and cutting more slack for borderline lechery, Rocky at some point deeply invested in “Volare,” having located the old kinescope of Domenico Modugno on Ed Sullivan back in ’58, when the song was charting number one in the States week after week, and from this blurry video learning all Domenico’s inflections and moves.

  And who, really, is so fancy-schmancy they can’t appreciate “Volare,” arguably among the greatest pop tunes ever written? Young man dreams he’s flying in the sky, above it all, defying gravity and time, like having midlife early, in the second verse he wakes up, back on earth, first thing he sees is the big blue eyes of the woman he loves. And that will turn out to be sky enough for him. All men should grow up so gracefully.

  Sooner than expected, that phase of the evening arrives when Toto finds its way overwhelmingly onto the song queue.

  “Spud, I don’t think it’s ‘I left my brains down in Africa.’”

  “Huh? But that’s what it says on the screen.” Where if you were expecting herds on the Serengeti, instead here’s silent clips from the second season of the Korean TV hit Gag Concert. Mugging, studio-audience laughter. Enough smoke in the room now that images on the screen are pleasantly smeared.