“Alchemy!”
She could have picked the lock, but she decided to let Tomi do his thing and went back upstairs. A bit later he brought up a breakfast of coffee and toast but then returned to the kitchen.
Lee spent her time upstairs poking through the Caldwells’ bedroom, rifling through drawers and closets, opening boxes and searching for secret hideaways, but the Caldwells were dull folk whose bookshelves were full of Christian cowboy romance novels and a series of Left Behind books as long as her arm. The closest she could find to interesting was their wedding album. A big black book with old color photos behind plastic showed Mr. and Mrs. Caldwell when they were young, in a series of shots that were all staged but that struck Lee as so sweet and earnest it made her a little sad.
Later that afternoon, after she’d abandoned the Caldwells’ album for a bloated novel that promised to “uncover the erotic secrets of ancient Rome,” Tomi called up to her, “Come on down!”
The smell of food filled the house, reminding her how hungry she was. At the bottom of the stairs Tomi stood waiting, wearing a suit of Mr. Caldwell’s, pale blue with a little plastic flower stuck into the wide lapel. He untied a white apron from around his waist and hung it on a chair. Behind him, the dining room table was under a white tablecloth, and on top of that was a wilted brown turkey on a platter, the skin puckered and burnt. He’d fashioned little frills from two of Mr. Caldwell’s tiny novelty golf club cozies to put over the legs and surrounded the bird with roast carrots, apples, celery, and onions. There was a squat cylinder of cranberry sauce still holding the mold of the can and a bowl of stuffing made from chunks of sliced white bread. He’d put out glasses and a bottle of wine.
“Happy Thanksgiving!” he said, arms spread wide.
Lee felt more shame than delight. It was a gesture that she never in a million years would have thought of. She stared down at herself: dirty socks, the same threadbare jeans she always wore, one of Mr. Caldwell’s oversized white shirts. “Let me go change,” she said.
He pulled her chair out. “Don’t be ridiculous. You look beautiful.”
As quickly as it came, the guilt vanished. Tomi didn’t expect any big gestures from her. He was just happy when she accepted his own.
She waited as he carved out a few jagged, meaty chunks for her plate and cut off a jiggling tower of cranberry sauce. She waited as he served himself and poured them both wine, and she held her glass up across the table as he leaned in and clinked it. “To domesticated chance,” he said.
She took a small sip and put the glass back, then turned to the food.
• • •
Lee found herself less and less in need of alone time. She came to enjoy listening to his fantasies of another life for them somewhere. One night she asked him to come sleep with her, and he moved from the guest room and into her bed. She still wasn’t ready to have sex with him again, not with his child growing inside her, but she liked falling asleep with his arms around her, the feverish warmth of his body, his erection pushing against her rear, and sometimes she would take his hand and put it on her belly, always on the verge of telling him.
But she couldn’t. Since the night in the museum he had clung to a promise of a future for them, but Lee couldn’t shake the threads that seemed to tie him to these people—his knowledge of Duchamp, his being at the Silo the night she’d been lured there, the fact that the S.A. kept finding them—and every time she thought about it she felt like she was drowning.
Ultimately, though, all these threads were coincidental. Deep down she trusted him. And being with Tomi was easy. But she couldn’t let go of the fact those people knew everything about her. For a long time, long before she’d even arrived at the Crystal Castle, they’d been studying her like a mouse in a maze. How had she ended up at the Silo that night? More to the point, how had Tomi? Then she recalled who he said had given him the ticket.
TWELVE
HE answered the door wearing only a pair of tight black underwear. He ran a hand through his hair and looked sleepily at Lee’s chest. “If you came to pick up your shit, I threw it all out. And if you came to return any of mine,” he said, shutting the door on her shoulder, “keep it.”
Lee pushed past him into the apartment. “Is anyone else here?”
“What the fuck. It’s”—looking at the clock—“three fifteen in the morning. Last time you did this you stayed a month. You can stay the night if you sleep with me; otherwise get lost.” He went into the kitchen and came back with a beer, slumping to the couch and picking up a magazine, pretending to ignore her. Finally he looked up. “You still here?”
She took a chair and sat across from him. Derrick was a bully, but like all bullies he was also a coward, and Lee knew that the best approach didn’t involve a lot of finesse. She took the old S.A. flier from her pocket, unfolded it, and dropped it on his lap. Derrick barely glanced at it.
“Where did you get this?” she said.
He looked up from his magazine long enough to give her a dead stare. “From you. You just dropped it on my lap.”
“Where did you get it, Derrick?”
“Fuck you. You think you can just come into my home and make demands? Accuse me of . . .” He picked up the flier, looked at it as though he’d never seen it before. “I don’t even know what you’re accusing me of.”
“You gave it to Tomi, invited him to that party. All I want to know is who was behind it. Where’d you get it? Who’s the Société Anonyme?”
“Bunch of French faggots? I don’t know. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Lee calmly took the gun from her bag. She held it at Derrick’s chest, or his stomach. Her hand was shaking so much she couldn’t tell where she was aiming. She started feeling nausea in waves and couldn’t tell if this was morning sickness or the feeling of pointing a loaded gun at someone and not knowing if you will fire it.
Derrick just started laughing. Great coughing laughs that might or might not have been forced, it didn’t matter; it angered Lee so much she nearly shot him. Except that her finger wasn’t even on the trigger.
“You’re gonna shoot me?” Derrick said. He kept laughing. “You’re not gonna shoot me. But I admire your ladyballs. That’s so gangster of you. Just point that thing somewhere else; it might go off.”
Lee let the gun drop to her side. Derrick finished his beer. He looked like he was enjoying this. He held the bottle out. “Get me another, will you?”
“I won’t shoot you, you’re right. But I have some folders I copied from your hard drive. A cache of photographs, a few videos, a ton of e-mails, and some very revealing search histories that I may very well let loose into the wild.”
“Bullshit. My door is always locked.”
Lee casually walked to his bedroom door, took her kit from her pocket, and picked the two locks in less than thirty seconds. She opened the door. She had never actually peeked inside before. Derrick’s room was so neat and ordinary it could have been part of a showroom display. The bed was made, his desk was clean, and all his clothes hung tidily in his closet, organized by color. The walls were covered in posters and fliers. Lee returned to the chair.
Derrick’s eyes got narrow and mean. He stood and towered over her. “You little bitch.” But Lee could tell that his resolve was gone.
“Why not just answer the question?” she said.
“Drop it. The less you know the better, believe me.” He collapsed back on the couch. “Look, some girl just hired me to hand those things out to the kids. She called it a recruitment drive.”
“What girl?”
He seemed shriveled now, his skinny pale body in his little black underwear, and Lee felt a sudden disgust rising up. “What’s her name?” she said.
Derrick mumbled something but wouldn’t meet her eyes.
“What?”
“I don’t know. Tall. Long blond hair. Lotta e
ye makeup.”
Ester’s gap-toothed smile came into Lee’s head, and she felt her world spinning away from her. “Were you at the Crystal Castle?”
For the first time Derrick looked genuinely rattled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You know what goes on there?”
He picked up the bottle and began tearing away at the label. “It’s just rumors.”
“They’re not rumors. I’ve seen it. And I’ll bet you have, too. Big eyes like fucking blow-up dolls? About as conscious? Maybe you’ve even made use of a few yourself?” Lee watched Derrick tense up, followed his eyes to the gun, which she hadn’t realized was pointed at his chest again. “What happened to them?”
Derrick shook his head.
Lee pulled a seat up close. “A few clicks and the contents of that folder are uploaded onto 4chan. Do I have to remind you what’s on there?”
Derrick looked like he was in genuine pain. “I’m not telling you anything that anyone in the scene hasn’t already heard.”
“Tell me.”
“It’s just rumors. I don’t even believe half of it myself.”
“What’s the connection with the Société Anonyme?”
“Don’t be stupid. It’s all Société Anonyme. The Crystal Castle is just an arm of it.”
“How deep are you in with them?” she said.
“I’m not anybody,” he said. “I recruit for their parties sometimes. It gets me in, gets me free drugs and stuff.”
“Don’t lie to me, Derrick. You’re closer to them than that. You know more than some outsider would.”
“It’s like any corporation. There’s a hierarchy. I’m not just starting out in the mailroom, but I’m not on the board, either.”
“So what are you? Middle management?” She almost felt sorry for him. “Tell me. Everything you know.”
“The S.A. are drug manufacturers.”
“What kind of drugs?”
“It started out with club drugs: crystal meth, Ecstasy, GBH, LSD. Kids could buy them at the Silo and party all night. They even had a room for them to sleep it off. But then . . .”
He told her that about two years ago the Société Anonyme had a steady manufacturing operation going and had been trying to synthesize DMT when something went wrong. “A few molecules got rearranged,” and they ended up with a new drug, a synthetic psychotropic that made LSD or mescaline or anything else on the market look like strong coffee. Named Thrumm because of the humming subterranean vibration the user felt at the drug’s onset, it was a body-centric catalyzing agent that made one feel as though all the world was vibration and all vibration was from a single source. Any division between body and mind became erased, and those who ingested the drug reported hours-long states of pure, humming energy.
But one of the early batches went bad. There were reports of kids found drifting through the city, their eyes engorged and jellied, their wills eviscerated. They were placid and docile, wandering, aimless, and helpless to survive on their own. They floated through the streets with their huge, unblinking eyes and near-constant smiles, giggling as though at some private joke. They strayed into restaurants and shops, annoying customers, but were otherwise harmless. Because they were open to suggestion and willingly followed simple commands, these kids became quick prey for local pimps, who herded them around like cattle and advertised them as living fuck dolls who were game for anything.
The S.A. isolated the two strains of the drug—one of which a user would come down from, while the other would leave a jelly-eyed zombie in its wake. And so the Crystal Castle was born. Pretty young runaways were recruited into the fold and given the latter version of the drug. The girls were dressed in tiny skirts and baby-doll shirts, the boys in skinny jeans and buckled jackets; with their oversized eyes and dreamy otherness they were like living anime.
When Derrick was finished, Lee stayed silent for a while. She’d dropped the gun in her lap. “What do you know about a man called the Priest?”
“The Priest started the S.A. He was running it all until there was some sort of schism.”
“When?”
“About three months ago.”
Right around the time she went to the Silo. “Why? What happened?”
“I don’t know exactly. Something between him and the Undertaker. I don’t think the Priest was down with what he and the Station Master were doing to those kids. Everyone involved was forced to take sides.”
“The Undertaker—he’s the tall one in the black suit? What’s his role?”
“He runs the whole show at the Silo. And he’s not someone you want to fuck with. I told you, leave this alone. Just leave it be.”
“What else?”
“That’s all, I swear.”
Lee got up to leave, and Derrick blocked her at the door. She raised the gun, and he put his hands up and backed away. “Give me the disk.”
“What?”
“I told you what you wanted to know. The stuff from my hard drive, you must have it on a disk. Give it to me.”
Lee laughed. “There’s no disk.”
“Bullshit.”
“Derrick, like you said, there was never a moment your door wasn’t locked. You’ve got secrets in there. I never went into your room, but chances were good—”
Derrick looked pissed. “What if I’d called your bluff?”
She smiled. “Then I guess I’d just have had to shoot you.”
• • •
When Lee came out of the building, Tomi was leaning against a lamppost, waiting for her. She ignored him, too angry to speak, unlocking her bicycle and pedaling off without looking back. She could feel him, following just behind. “Lee, hold up,” he said. “At least slow down.”
As she pedaled, she went through everything that had happened since she’d left the detention center, trying to piece it together. How did they keep finding her? She’d been sloppy somewhere, though she couldn’t figure out where.
Lee was dizzy with fatigue by the time they got back to the Caldwells’, and she tore off her sweatshirt, ran to the bathroom, and vomited. Tomi came in and touched her back, but she shrugged him off.
“You went to see Derrick. Why?”
She washed her mouth out at the sink and turned on him. “You do not follow me.”
“Lee, I was—”
“They are following me. You can’t. My life is my own. I can take care of myself.”
Tomi put up his hands in surrender. “Okay. Okay.” With a towel he tried to wipe her mouth off, but she took it from him and did it herself.
She walked past him into the bedroom, then sat on the bed with her hands around her face.
“But why did you need to see Derrick?”
“He’s involved with them. He told me things. Just as I suspected, there was a split within the group. Just a few months ago. If that’s true, it means one hand doesn’t know what the other is doing. But they both want With Hidden Noise. That’s how we get to them. We figure out a way to play them off against each other. Get them to destroy themselves from the inside.”
“Why? Lee, let’s just leave. There’s no reason to stick around anymore. We could make a life together.”
“You don’t know what happens to those kids. You haven’t seen it.”
Tomi approached again, and this time she let him put his hand on her back.
“If you did, you’d understand. You wouldn’t be able to just walk away, either.” Lee paused, suddenly suspicious. “Tomi, you need to tell me now. Is there anything you’re not telling me?”
“You still think I’m part of this, don’t you?”
“I don’t know. Not all of it, maybe, but—”
“I don’t know what to tell you so that you’ll trust me. But if I was with them, what would we even be doing here? Wouldn’t I just hand you over
? I’m sorry I followed you. I just want to make sure you’re okay. I lost you before; I don’t want to lose you again.”
She took his hand and led him to the bedroom. She fell onto the bed with her clothes on and fell asleep with his arms around her, his hand wiping a pasty strand of hair from her face.
• • •
When Lee woke up, it was barely light out. Tomi was at the computer, his face washed in the glow of his laptop. His hand hovered above the trackpad as though afraid to touch it.
“What is it?” she said.
When he didn’t answer, she looked over his shoulder. He’d gotten an e-mail:
From: [email protected].
Subject: why not sneeze?
“What is it?”
“It’s from them.”
“How do you know?”
“Rrose Sélavy was Duchamp’s alter ego. It has to be from them.”
“Are you going to open it?”
She had to grab Tomi’s arm to break him out of his trance. He clicked open the e-mail.
There was no text, only an attachment.
“Open it.”
Tomi logged off from the Subnet and turned the wireless off on the laptop. He ran a program. “It seems clean.”
“Open it.”
Still Tomi hesitated, so Lee pushed his hand away and clicked on the attachment.
A single photo opened up. Lee doubled over beside the desk, her breath coming in quick, shallow bursts, no air reaching her lungs.
In the photo Derrick was in the bathtub, fully clothed, a large chunk of his head taken away above the right eye, blood and brains spattered on the tile behind him.
Tomi bent down to help her to the bed. “Breathe into this,” he told her, fishing a plastic bag from the wastebasket and putting it to her face.
She crumpled it in her hands, unable to take her eyes from the photo.
“It’s a fake,” Tomi said. “Derrick’s just trying to get back at us.”
Lee wiped her mouth and leaned in closer.
“Look at that.” Tomi pointed at the picture. “All that blood, like from a zombie movie. It’s so bogus.”
The Readymade Thief Page 21