Bleeding Edge

by Thomas Pynchon

  “I’m sorry, is that information not correct? Do you mean the arrangements are with Mister Ice?”

  “Darlin, you are either so out of the loop or else you’re one of these fuckin bloggers runnin a gossip page, either way be advised we have a trace on this instrument, we know who you are and where you are and our people will not hesitate to come after you. You have a good day now, you hear?” He hangs up and when she redials, there’s no answer.

  Good luck to him with the cop-show talk, but more important, what’s up with Tallis, how innocent a party can she be in any of this? If she’s in on something, how far in? And is that innocent pure or innocent stupid?

  Given the likely level of corruption around here, Gabriel Ice may know all about that li’l lovebirds’ nidito up in East Harlem, maybe even be springing for the rent. What else? Has he also been using Tallis as a mule to move money secretly to Darklinear Solutions? Why so secretly, for goodness’ sakes? Too many questions, no theories. Maxine catches sight of herself in a mirror. Her mouth is not at the moment hanging open, but it might as well be. As Henny Youngman might diagnose it, ESP bypass.

  • • •

  VYRVA MEANWHILE IS BACK from Las Vegas and Defcon, not as poolside tan as expected, in fact striking Maxine as, what’s the word, reserved? distraught? weird? As if something happened in Vegas that didn’t all stay there, some ominous overflow, like alien DNA hitching a ride unnoticed back here to planet Earth, to perform its mischief in its own good time.

  Fiona’s still away at camp, working on a Quake-movie adaptation of The Sound of Music (1965). Fiona and her team are doing the Nazis.

  “You must miss her.”

  “Of course I miss her,” a little too quick.

  Maxine puts her eyebrows into an I-said-something? asymmetry.

  “Just as well she’s not here, ’cause right now, it’s starting to get crazy, everybody’s after DeepArcher, the guys got seriously hit on in Vegas, one after another, the NSA, the Mossad, terrorist go-betweens, Microsoft, Apple, start-ups that’ll be gone in a year, old money, new money, you name it.”

  Since it’s been on her mind, Maxine names it. “Hashslingrz too, I suppose.”

  “Natch. There we are, Justin and me, an innocent tourist couple strolling through Caesars, suddenly here’s Gabriel Ice lurking by a buffet table with an attaché case full of lobbying material.”

  “Ice was at Defcon?”

  “At a Black Hat Briefing, some kind of security conference they hold every year the week before Defcon, a casino hotel full of guys who’d hack a lightbulb, corporate cops, crypto geniuses, sniffers and spoofers, designers, reverse engineers, TV network suits, everybody with something to sell.”

  They’re down in Tribeca, a chance encounter at a street corner. “Come on, we’ll grab an ice coffee.”

  Vyrva starts to look at her watch, suppresses the gesture. “For sure.”

  They find a place and duck into the blessed A/C. Something astrological going on, Jupiter, the money planet, in Pisces, the sign of all things fishy. “See—” Vyrva sighs. “There’s a chance of some money.”

  Aww. “There wasn’t before?”

  “Honestly, should it matter who gets to own the damned old source code? Not as if it has a conscience, DeepArcher, it’s just there, users can be anybody, no moral questionnaire ‘r netheen? it’s rilly only about the money. Who ends up with how much?”

  “Except that in my business,” Maxine gently, “what I see a lot of is innocent people making these deals with the satanic forces, for money way out of scale to anything they’re used to, and there’s a point where it all rolls in on them and they go under, and sometimes they don’t come back up.”

  But Vyrva is far away now, the summer street outside, the cumulus piling up over Jersey, the rush hour bearing down, it’s all country miles from wherever she is, rambling some DeepArcher of the unshared interior, her click history vanishing behind her like footprints in the air, like free advice unheard, so Maxine supposes it’ll have to keep, whatever it is, whatever’s finally on the term sheet.

  20

  With the gracious assistance as always of Detective Nozzoli, Maxine has obtained a license ID photo of Eric Jeffrey Outfield, and this, along with a brief list from Reg of places Eric is most likely to be found, sends her through a steamy August evening out to Queens to a strip club called Joie de Beavre. The place is located along a stretch of frontage road next to the LIE, its neon sign depicting a lewdly humanized beaver wearing a beret and winking its eyes alternately at a wiggling stripper.

  “Hi, I was told to see Stu Gotz?”

  “In back.”

  She was expecting a dressing room out of some movie musical? What she finds is a sort of casually upgraded ladies’ toilet, stall partitions and so forth—some, to be sure, with glittery stars taped on the doors—a litter of pint liquor bottles, roaches both smokable and crawling, used Kleenex, not recognizably a Vincente Minnelli set.

  Stu Gotz is sitting in his office, with a cigarette in one hand and a paper cup of something ambiguous in the other. Soon the cigarette will be in the cup. He runs a lengthy O-O. “You want to audition, MILF night is Tuesdays, come back then.”

  “Tuesday’s my Tupperware party.”

  Drawing a thoughtful leer. “Then again, if you want to give it a shot right now…”

  “This is more like an investigation I’m on? I need to locate one of your regular customers.”

  “Wait, you’re a cop?”

  “Not exactly, more like an accountant?”

  “Well, don’t let this family-type atmosphere fool you into thinking I know every one of them out there by name. Which I do, but it’s like all the same name? Loser?”

  “Wow. Some way to talk about your client base.”

  “Laid-off geeks who are more comfortable, hope I don’t offend, jerking off in front of a screen than anything more real-life? Sorry if I don’t get too sympathetic. Please, go on ahead, see for yourself, find a outfit, you’re a what? a 2, maybe? Don’ worry, some’n’ll fit yiz.”

  Now, Maxine hasn’t been a size 2 since back when a 2 was really a 2, instead of the current definition, which, for purposes of commerce, can run up to what used to be known as a 16. And beyond. To her credit, she does not blurt thanks for the pleasantry but shrugging begins to look through the contents of a beat-up armoire against the wall, full of somebody’s notion of glamorous lingerie, outfits of subcultural interest—nun, schoolgirl, warrior princess—and spike heels, each pair more, you would have to say, alluring, than the last, not designer footwear exactly, maybe more in the Payless range, the sort of shoes that get podiatrists to daydreaming of Ferraris and personal golf lessons from Tiger Woods.

  She settles on platform heels in neon aqua, plus matching sequined thong leotard and thigh-high stockings. Just the ticket, except… “Oh, Mr. Gotz?”

  “Dry-cleaned and disinfected, my darling, my personal guarantee.” Somehow not reassured, leaving her pantyhose on, she slides into the alluring getup, and after a few contemplative breaths, sashays out through a curtain of faux Swarovski crystals into the massively air-conditioned, high-decibel dimness of the Joie de Beavre. Two or three girls are spaced along the bar, massaging their pussies, staring semi-stoned into the distance. There appears to be a pole free, and Maxine heads for it, since oddly enough she does happen to know a couple of moves, thanks to a gym she works out at now and then, Body and Pole, far below 14th Street, down in cutting-edge country where pole dancing is already part of the exercise vernacular, though back on the Upper West Side it’s still considered by many—well, by Heidi—to be fatally disreputable.

  “Pitiful, thwarted Maxi, why not invest in a vibrator, I’m told there are several on the market that might do the trick even for you.”

  “Uptight, judgmental Heidi, why not come down some night yourself, give that pole a try, maybe rediscover your inner good-time girl.”

  Maxine’s plan is to improvise a MILF-night routine while scanning faces and h
oping for a match with Eric’s license photo. According to Reg, owing to various Eric-conspiracy issues—some geek thing—the young computer whiz has shaved off the mustache in his official mug shot, but so far kept the same hair color.

  She makes a point of taking from her purse a dispenser of Handi Wipes and with housewifely thoroughness disinfecting the pole, slowly fondling it up and down while casting demure glances along the bar. Their skins in the spill from this fluorescent indigo lighting register the same pallid hue, as if permanently stained from too much cathode radiation.

  Considerately, Stu Gotz, or somebody, has put on a MILF-night mix, which includes a lot of disco, plus tracks from U2, Guns N’ Roses, Journey. And pandering to this crowd, way too much Moby for Maxine’s taste, except possibly “That’s When I Reach for My Revolver.”

  Maxine’s never had what you’d call Big Tits, although the connoisseurs here don’t seem to mind as long as they’re Bare Tits. The one body part they won’t be staring at much is her eyes. This Male Gaze she’s been hearing about since high school is not about to intersect its female counterpart anytime soon.

  In the course of a dance routine somewhere between vanilla and cherry ripple, including leg hangs, helical descents, upside-down humping of the pole and so forth, Maxine notices this one party out on a remote curve of the bar, drinking you’d say relentlessly what will prove to be Jägermeister and 151, through a Day-Glo straw out of a twenty-ounce convenience-store cup he has brought in with him, and showing no signs of alcohol poisoning, which could mean either unnatural immunity or unreachable despair. She undulates over for a closer look, and sure enough it’s him, Eric Jeffrey Outfield, übergeek, looking, except for the bare upper lip and a newly acquired soul patch, just like his ID photo. He is wearing cargo pants in a camo print whose color scheme is intended for some combat zone very remote, if not off-planet, and a T-shirt announcing, in Helvetica,

REAL GEEKS USE COMMAND PROMPTS

, accessorized with a Batbelt clanking like a charm bracelet with remotes for TV, stereo, and air conditioner, plus laser pointer, pager, bottle opener, wire stripper, voltmeter, magnifier, all so tiny that one legitimately wonders how functional they can be.

  About then on comes Jamiroquai’s “Canned Heat,” whose bass line Maxine has never found a way to resist, and seized in some post-disco swoon she forgets temporarily what she’s come here for, ignores the pole, and succumbs to just dancing, and by the time the music has segued into “Cosmic Girl,” she’s squatting on the bar in front of Eric, who seems more fascinated by her glittery aqua shoes than anything, staying there till the tape ends and everybody takes a break, then slithering over the bar and down onto a barstool next to him.

  “I’m out of singles,” he begins.

  “Honey, it’s them NASDAQ blues, we all took a bath, it sucks, but maybe you can do me a favor, I’m new in here and you look at least like a semiregular, maybe you can tell me where the Champagne Lounge is in this joint?”

  “I’m out of twenties too.”

  “No obligation.”

  “Next you’re gonna say, ‘But wait!’” He looks quizzically into his lethal drink for a while, as if for the answer to some personal problem to come floating into view printed on one face of a dodecahedron, then in a slow lurch gets carefully to his feet. “I’m headed for the toilet, c’mon, it’s on the way.”

  He leads her toward the back and down a flight of stairs. The lighting drifts more and more into the red end of the spectrum. From below ooze romantic string arrangements Maxine thought had been retired in the seventies, no more inviting tonight than they were then.

  “I’ll be in here, in case you want to talk. No fees. Promise.”

  The Champagne Lounge is cozy in scale, more like a Mad Dog Utility Room. Video screens, some showing only noise, others flickering porno tapes of a low-res Kodachrome vintage, are mounted here and there on wall brackets. Girls sit alone at tables taking smoke breaks. Others straddle clients in the stained velour shadows of “privacy booths” in back. There’s a miniature bar with a couple shelves of bottles whose labels are not immediately familiar to Maxine. “You’re new,” observes the fashion-doll-faced bartender, in a perky voice at some odds with the sullen set of enhanced lips it emerges from. “Welcome to geek heaven. You get one mojito on the house, then you’re on your own.”

  “Full disclosure,” sez Maxine, “I’m a civilian, thought tonight was MILF night, guess I got it wrong.”

  “You bring a customer?”

  “Just my neighbor’s nephew, she asked me to keep an eye on him. Sweet kid, basically, too much time on the Internet maybe.”

  At which point Eric puts his head through the bead curtains.

  “Oh no not this guy, uh-uh, he’s been 86’d, hey creepazoid, you want me to call Porfirio down here again, show you where the sidewalk is?”

  “It’s cool,” Maxine smiling, shrugging, sliding out the doorway. “All good.”

  “Assholes,” Eric mutters, “can I help it if I like feet?”

  “Where do you live? I’ll take you back.”

  “Manhattan, downtown.”

  “Come on, I’ll spring for a cab. Just let me run in and change.”

  “I’ll wait outside.”

  “What’s with Footboy,” Stu Gotz wants to know when she’s street legal again. “Nice company you keep.”

  “Oh, it’s business.”

  “Which reminds me—at this time we are delighted to offer you a one-month contract, provided only that you attend our Introductory Profiling Seminar, which will acquaint you with the many varieties of technoscum and psychosocial misfit all too sadly apt to be overrepresented among our clientele.”

  She takes his card, which may come in handy someday though in ways neither can see right at the moment.

  • • •

  ERIC LIVES IN A FIFTH-FLOOR walk-up studio in Loisaida, a doorless bathroom wedged in one corner and in another a microwave, coffeemaker, and miniature sink. Liquor-store cartons full of personal effects are stacked around haphazardly, and most of the limited floor space is littered with unwashed laundry, Chinese take-out containers and pizza boxes, empty Smirnoff Ice bottles, old copies of Heavy Metal, Maxim, and Anal Teen Nymphos Quarterly, women’s shoe catalogs, SDK discs, game controllers and cartridges for Wolfenstein, DOOM, and others. Paint peels from selected ceiling areas, and window treatments are basically street grime. Eric finds a cigarette butt a little longer than the others in a running shoe he’s been using for an ashtray and lights up, lurches over to the electric coffee mess, pours out some cold day-old sludge into a mug with a rectangular outline on it and the words CSS IS AWESOME running outside the frame. “Oh. Want some?”

  They light up a joint, Eric comfortable on the floor. “Now,” in a voice she hopes is firm enough, “about this foot situation.”

  “Here, let’s just get your shoes off, don’t worry. You don’t have to deal with the floor, you can rest them on me.”

  “My thought also.”

  It has been a while, like forever, since her feet have received attention like this. She has a moment of panic, wondering, am I weird, allowing this? Eric, with an extrasensory grin, looks up and nods. “Yeah, you are.”

  Her feet seem to have been resting in his lap for a while, and she can’t help noticing he has this, well, hardon. Out of his trousers and between her feet, actually, and sort of moving back and forth… Not that this happens to her a lot, which may account for why she begins tentatively now to explore, whatever the foot equivalent of handle is, maybe “footle” the aroused organ, her toes always having been prehensile enough to pick up socks, keys, and loose change, her soles, could it be the cannabis? unaccountably sensitized, particularly the insides of her heels, which reflexologists have told her connect directly with the uterus… she slides the polished toes of one foot under his balls and with the pads of the others begins caressing his penis, after a while switching feet, just to see what will happen, all out of experimental curiosity of course…

  “Eric
, what’s this, did you just… come, on my feet?”

  “Um, yeah? well not ‘on’ exactly, coz I’m wearing a condom?”

  “You’re worried about what, funguses?”

  “No offense, I just like condoms, sometimes I’ll wear one just to have it on, you know?”

  “OK…” Maxine glances quickly at his dick, and her contacts flip inside out and go sailing across the room. “Eric, excuse me, is that some loathsome skin disease?”

  “This? oh it’s a designer condom, from the Trojan Abstract Expressionist Collection I believe, here—” He takes it off and waves it at her.

  “No need, no need.”

  “Was that OK for you?”

  Why, the sweetheart. Well? Was it? She angles her head and smiles, she hopes not too sitcomically.

  “You don’t do this a lot.”

  “Not that often, as Daddy Warbucks always sez…” Now he has that attentive kid-on-a-date look. So Maxine don’t be a schmuck all your life, “Listen. Eric. Total honesty here, all right?” She tells him about her arrangements with Reg.

  “What? You came out to that strip joint deliberately, to look for me? Hey Reg, thanks buddy. What’s he doing, he’s checking up on me?”

  “Rest easy, just think of me as the straightworld version of you, see what I’m saying. You’re the one gets to be the outlaw, adventures down in the Deep Web, which of us do you think’s having more fun?”

  “Sure.” He flicks a quick look at her—she’s been watching him, otherwise she wouldn’t have seen it. “You think it’s fun, maybe sometime I should bring you down there. Show you around.”

  “OK. It’s a date.”

  “Really?”

  “It could be romantic.”

  “Most of the time it ain’t, just pretty straightforward, directories you have to access and search by yourself, because no crawler knows how to, no links into it exist. Now and then it can get weird, stuff somebody like hashslingrz wants to keep hidden. Or sites lost to linkrot, to bankruptcy, to who-gives-a-shit-anymore…”