Zeitgeist

by Bruce Sterling

  Leggy collared the British One for a private conferral. “Okay, British One, what the hell’s going down with the Yankee One?”

  The British One’s face fell. “Don’t take it out on her, Leggy. She has a good heart and she always means well.”

  “Look, just tell me where the American went.”

  “The American One is perfectly fine! Look at the Japanese One,” the British One insinuated. “She’s the one losing her grip.”

  Leggy shot a quick suspicious glance at the Japanese One, who was listlessly mugging for a camera in her autumn-leaf minikimono. The Japanese One had been suffering a prolonged attack of glum introspection. However, unlike the American One, the Japanese One always delivered the goods on time and within specs. “Okay, so the Japanese One is a little down lately. There’s nothing wrong with her that Wonder bread and a candy bar wouldn’t fix.”

  “She’s clinically depressed, if you ask me.”

  “No one’s asking you. We’re depending on you to talk sense into the American One. You’re the pro at doing that, you know. So what has the Yankee done to herself, huh? Is it the dope again?”

  The British One pursed her glossy lips judiciously. “I suppose that’s part of it.”

  “What do you mean, ‘part of it’? The Yankee One snorts more coke than the rest of you girls combined.”

  The Japanese and Italian Ones eagerly horned in on the conference. They could smell that something was up.

  “She’s just ambitious,” said the British One, her narrow shoulders hunching in apology. “She’s always inventing some big project for the gang of us. Then, when we won’t do what she says, she just borrows a lot of money from us and does it all by herself.”

  “American One is not a team player,” scowled the Japanese One, scuffing at the carpet with her platform geta clog.

  “She’s a very very big prima donna,” said the Italian One, with a dismissive flick of her fingers.

  “Where’d she go?” Leggy insisted.

  The British One sighed in defeat. “Oh, she ran off to snort more coke and cry.”

  “Where?”

  “Wherever there aren’t any cameras. The private pool, I presume.”

  A Turkish radio MC took the stage to announce the imminent debut of Miss Utz. He struggled visibly to feign enthusiasm, over an unruly shriek of microphone feedback. Leggy left the party.

  He discovered the American One lying in a white plastic lounge chair by the drained and empty swimming pool. She was still wearing her star-spangled miniskirt, and snuffling into an imported Kleenex.

  “What’s the problem, American One?”

  The American One looked up. “Stop calling me that! I have a name, you know.”

  Starlitz sat on the popping edge of a plastic lounge chair and knotted his beefy hands. “What’s got you down tonight, Melanie?”

  She looked at him through red-rimmed eyes. “This just isn’t working out the way you said it would.”

  “Money’s good,” Starlitz offered.

  The American One blew her nose.

  “Nice hotel, right? Balanced diet. Plenty of aerobic exercise.”

  “When you told me, when you first hired me, that G-7 was all just a big fake, and totally just for the money …” The American One drew a tremulous breath. “Well, I just didn’t realize what that meant.”

  “Look, isn’t it obvious? That’s gotta be very obvious, right?”

  “Well, I didn’t know you were totally serious!”

  Starlitz shrugged. “We’re cashing in on a pop scam here! Why should that bug you? You’re the American One, for heaven’s sake.”

  “But it’s not even fun! I thought it would be fun, but being a total fake is like a big boring drag! It’s like we’re selling hot dogs. I hustle off the plane, and I hustle off the bus, and I hustle off the limo. I shake my ass onstage, and I sing all those stupid, stupid lyrics!”

  “Look, G-7’s lyrics are a genius creation, babe. Verseverse-chorus from every international pop hit in the twentieth century, filtered through a four-hundred-word basic-English translation engine. That is totally high tech and wicked.”

  “I memorized all the damn lyrics, okay? I can do all the dance moves too. But what about me, huh? What about me?”

  Starlitz shrugged. “What about you?”

  “What about me, me the artist, Melanie Rae Eisenberg?”

  “Look, Melanie, the G-7 enterprise was never about you. The whole business shuts down sharp on the very first day of 2000. Then you fly back to Bakersfield with a big cashier’s check. That was our deal, remember?”

  “Well, that stupid deal doesn’t ever let me be me! I’m like a kid’s cartoon! I’m like a blow-up doll or something.”

  “So what? You’re a pop star! You get limos and a masseuse.”

  “Well, I could be me, and I could be a big star too.”

  “Nope! Sorry.” Starlitz shook his head emphatically. “Forget about that. That is totally impossible, by definition.”

  Melanie stuck out her lower lip. “Well, that’s what you say. That’s what you think. I’ve been in the music business now, and I know better than that.”

  Starlitz scratched his head. “Melanie, you’re cake-walking toward a swift career guillotine here, so let me clue you in. You don’t want to become a solo singer-songwriter. You’re just not up for that life. You’re very normal and average.”

  “Sure, once I was normal and average. That was before you got hold of me. Now I’ve toured Poland, and Thailand, and Slovenia.… My life is totally freaky and weird.”

  Starlitz drew a long breath. “Look: I want to help you out here. I tell you what: I’ll run a futurist scenario for you. That’ll make your options perfectly clear.”

  Starlitz sat up straight and cracked his knuckles. “So, just as a premise for extrapolation, let’s pretend that you have big talent, okay? Let’s take it as a given that you’re a female singer-songwriter with tremendous musical gifts. You’re smart, you’re dedicated, you’re blond, you’re Californian, you got cheekbones to die for. You win some Grammies. The critics adore you. You move a lot of plasticware.”

  “Yeah?” said Melanie, sitting up with interest. “That sounds great! That would be perfect.”

  “But time moves on, that’s the downside. You gig and you gig, and you give and you give, until your looks go, and your voice goes. By then you’re forty. Being a woman, you got forty-five long years left to live. And those years don’t look good, babe. You’re stuck in your mansion in Malibu, smoking Thai-stick and doing bad abstract paintings to keep your head together. You’re ghosting around in there like Howard Hughes, listening to old Billie Holiday albums and pondering cosmetic surgery.”

  Melanie shrugged. “But I’m forty by then, right? So what? That’s old.”

  “No, it isn’t. You’re not really old. You’re just really over. Magazines don’t want you on the cover anymore. Your idea of a hot night is firing your maid. Because you’re past the pop life, and nobody’s listening, nobody’s buying it. There is no demographic for heartfelt folk-rock songs by embittered, aging female millionaires. So you’re suing your label, you’re dissing your critics, you’re firing your agent and publicist. You’ve got more grudges than Serbia. It’s just you, and the mean old clock, and the big yellow clipping book. And that would mean success, okay? Because you were a genuine pop artist! You kept your integrity, you were always true to yourself.”

  “You’re just trying to make it sound bad. I wouldn’t end up that bad.”

  Starlitz stared at her, then shrugged. “Well, you’re right, Melanie. That would never happen to you. Because you have no talent. What’s more, you’re poorly educated and you have a substance problem. But that’s all okay! You’re young, and you have sixty long years of another century waiting ahead of you. G-7 screwed your head up, but it hasn’t done you any permanent harm. You can work your way around this little episode.”

  Dark suspicion struck her. “What are you talking about?�
��

  “I’m telling you how your future could work out for you. How you could set it up with no regrets. How you could actually benefit. Finish the G-7 job with us. Get to Y2K day. Take the big money. And just go home. Marry a medical student.”

  She gaped. “What?”

  “Marry a doctor. That’s a great option, babe. It’s a great exploitation of your pop career. For the rest of your life you’d be the glamorous star who gave up show biz, just for him. You’d have enough ready cash to put him through med school too. So it’s like a double ego gratification for this guy. That’s a terrific package deal. You could pick out most any med-school grind you want. He would totally go for that, I almost guarantee it. You’d be in clover, babe.”

  “I’m supposed to turn into some housewife? I’m a star!”

  “Put all that crap way behind you, Melanie. Go have kids. You’re very, very low on reality right now, but kids will give you all the reality you can stand. When you’re a woman with kids, you always know who you are and what’s required of you. That works out really well for average people. Two or three kids, in a nice house, with a guy who’s really grateful and thinks the world of you. You’d have roots, you’d be human, you would matter to people you care about. It’s happiness.”

  “You’re scaring me,” Melanie said.

  “That’s your best-case scenario. That’s the straight pitch. Don’t even get me started on your worst-case scenario.”

  She sat up on the poolside chair and confronted him. “I know what you’re up to. The others don’t know it, but I know it, I know it in my heart. You’re stealing something from me. I don’t know what it is you’re stealing, but I can feel it. You’ve gathered us all up, and you jammed us together, and you promoted us and you sold us, but we’re never, ever real. We just don’t matter. You never let us be anything important.”

  “You’ve got a problem with that?”

  “Yeah, I do, because it’s all phony! It isn’t real! It doesn’t matter! I don’t care how much money there is. Fuck the money, I just can’t stand it any longer!”

  “Okay.” Starlitz drew a weary breath. “Let me tell you what I’m hearing from you, Melanie. What you’re telling me is that you require some personal integrity.”

  “Yeah.” She brightened. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  “You want to be true to yourself, and put aside all this empty, meaningless, venal hustle.”

  “Yeah!”

  “Well, you’re never gonna do that in my outfit. I made that clear from the very beginning. So, you’re fired.”

  “You can’t fire me! I quit!”

  “Great. That’s even better.” Starlitz dug in his back pocket. “I can’t give you one thin dime from the G-7 account, because Nick the Accountant just wouldn’t hear of that. But I’m a good sport, so I’ll do you a personal favor. Here’s a hundred bucks. That’ll get you to Istanbul. They got planes to all over from there, so call your parents and get a ticket to wherever.”

  She looked at the crisp hundred-dollar bill in disbelief. “Hey! Wait a minute! You can’t just kick me out of the act and leave me in a strange country!”

  “Of course I can. Do it all the time.”

  “Hey. I’m not like the Japanese One, okay? I’m the American One! I’ll sue you.”

  “You wouldn’t be the first to try, but I wouldn’t waste Mom and Dad’s money in the Panamanian court system. Go be true to thine own self now, babe. You’ve screwed up my operation, and created a lot of extra work and hassle for me, but I’m cool about that. No hard feelings. So long.”

  Starlitz left her fuming. He sought out Turgut Altimbasak and had all the keys changed in the rooms of the American One and her layabout personal entourage.

  The casino owner was totally obliging and agreeable. “I understand the difficulty, Mr. Starlitz. We’ll do just as you say.”

  “Mrs. Dinsmore and her assistants will be throwing quite a bit of luggage into the street tonight. Tell the bellhops to pay no mind.”

  Altimbasak pawed at the leather thong of his worry beads. “Is Mr. Ozbey happy tonight?”

  “Why ask me?”

  “If you could speak with Mr. Ozbey about me … You are his business partner, I know that he listens to you.…”

  Starlitz frowned at him. “You got Ozbey the best penthouse suite in the joint, right? Adjoining rooms for his boys? Private boudoir for the girlfriend? Limos standing by, fax machines running, a big booze tab?”

  “Yes, yes, of course we did all that. Of course!”

  “Well, if the red-carpet treatment doesn’t mellow him out, nothing will.”

  “Mr. Ozbey’s friends are very powerful.” Altimbasak lowered his voice to a reedy whisper. “He has many friends in the MHP … and the ANAP.… I don’t want him to think that I might be in DHKC! Or, my God, that I have anything at all to do with the PKK!”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Starlitz nodded helpfully. “Well, those sound like legitimate concerns. I’ll have a word with Mehmet tonight, and see if I can’t get that straightened out.”

  “Thank you so much.” Vague hope was dawning in Altimbasak’s glassy eyes. “That would be so wonderful.…”

  Starlitz briskly returned to the evening’s festivities. Gonca Utz was doing her closing number. She had a backing track, a bread-loaf microphone, and a white satin gown. Gonca required nothing else. Finally given the spotlight she deserved, she had publicly flung open the depths of her being.

  Gonca slid into the song’s secret depths like fingertips filling a kidskin glove. Glittering eyes half-lidded, she emitted a soulful ululation that set men’s hair on end all over the building.

  Starlitz fought his way into the room and across the grain of Gonca’s voice. He managed to reach Ozbey, where the Turk stood, arms folded, in judgment, amid a pack of his armed retainers.

  “The song is old-fashioned,” Ozbey remarked.

  “Damn,” Starlitz gritted.

  Ozbey smiled triumphantly. “It’s a shame she has so much talent,” he said. “It seemed like such a good idea, to find a Turkish girl with the true talent. But now that I find such a girl, what am I to do with her? You see, she is a voice of the people.”

  Starlitz forced a nod. “Yeah.”

  “They are a very great people, the Turks. You see that now, don’t you? A people’s soul, that is what I found in her.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Starlitz said, coughing. “I grasp the situation, man. It’s way hard to miss.”

  “I’m glad that you agree with me. Of course you do. You are a man of perception. Gonca Utz, she is a true Turkish star. She’s like another Safiye Ayla. Or a second Hamiyet Yuceses.”

  “Yeah, you’ve got a very serious problem on your hands here.”

  Ozbey’s face grew clouded. “I shouldn’t have made her my mistress. That was a mistake. Now I am very involved.”

  “You’re in deep water, brother.”

  “Yes,” said Ozbey, his liquid eyes frank and confiding. “The omens are very bad. Great art, great destiny … great tragedy. The Turks are a tragic people. A great singer knows much unhappiness. But money, business … these are not important things in life. There is honor. There is pride. Who am I, to steal the destiny from the people’s artist? Listen to her sing!”

  Gonca wound it up in a final anguished quaver. Her audience was reduced to mulch. They were beyond mere enthusiasm. Their lives had been fundamentally altered. The rave kids stared at the stage, arms hanging limp in utter disbelief; they were unable even to register the experience. The Finnish UN guys had all turned their backs to the bar: they were too astounded even to drink. Middle-aged Turkish politicians were weeping openly.

  Gonca swanned off the stage with a radiant smile. She was leaving them hungry for more. Gonca could have sung all night with ease. She could have sung for years on end. She could sing off dusty vinyl, and years after her death people would sit up straight in astonishment and grip the arms of their chairs. But, now, thankfully, Gonca had departed to a dres
sing room.

  “Mehmetcik,” Starlitz said, “I’m pretty sure somebody’s doomed to pull the carbon rods out of the pile there. But it doesn’t have to be you.”

  “Yes, of course I know that,” said Ozbey nobly. “I know I have a choice. If I’m doomed by my love and devotion to the cause of my people, then I must choose that doom.”

  Starlitz said nothing.

  “A great man,” Ozbey mused, “the man of destiny, the master of events … He must be a lion. He can’t afford to be a pig. Don’t you agree? That’s the truth, isn’t it? It’s the deeper reality.”

  Ozbey turned aside for a moment as his pet bouncer, Ali, delivered a message at his ear. Ozbey nodded, delivered a few judicious words. Ali left, freighted with an errand. Then Ozbey straightened again and bored in.

  “Speak up now, Starlitz. Give me some counsel. Tell me what truly matters in this life, tell me what is real. There must be something in your life beyond cash. Something that you would give your life for, that you would die for. Yes?”

  “I dunno, man. I guess I take your point, but I don’t die easy.” Starlitz shrugged. “And dying for some pop musician? Come on. That’s for kids.”

  “What about your homeland? Does your fatherland mean anything to you?”

  “People are people all over the world, man.”

  “We can’t all be devoted patriots,” said Ozbey tolerantly. He signaled a waiter and accepted a martini glass with a lemon twist. Ozbey sipped, stared into the middle distance for a moment, sighed with satisfaction, took a deep breath, and began to radiate charisma.

  “At first,” Ozbey confided, “I thought you must be CIA. Who else would haul a troupe through so many worthless countries? But then I saw your old Russian bandit, sneaking around this casino. The old, sick man with no hair.… My boys don’t like the Russians, Leggy. Communists annoy us.”

  “G-7 is a stone multinational. We got personnel from all over the world. That’s the new way to do biz, you know? You gotta stop being picky. You’re part of the steamroller, or you’re part of the road.”