by Jim Nelson
"No one's given a crap about this film for an eon now," I said. "Why do you think it'll become a sensation again?"
Again we strolled. Ahead of us was the six-lane garage entrance where our little walk started.
"If the film came to light again now, with the right, let's say, introduction to the world, it could stand to be very popular." She put out a hand to halt my walking. “I’m begging you to destroy it.”
It came out of nowhere. I'd certainly not expected her to ask it.
“It might well be destroyed already," I speculated. "You said it yourself. It's not on the Old Internet any longer. Maybe all copies were deleted.”
“I deeply suspect it’s been copied,” she said. “To be released freely later.”
"It doesn't work that way," I said. "All material on the Old Internet is marked origin-only when it's delivered across the Nexternet. It can't be copied so easily."
"But if they could delete it from the servers on the island, then certainly they could make copies."
"All it means is this wasn't your standard hacking job," I said.
A couple hand-in-hand approached us. They were glowing and staring into each other's eyes. We waited for them to pass.
She asked with a soft voice, "Do you have a family, Mr. Naroy?"
I ignored it. “What makes you think anyone today cares about your little art school project? Hell—” I made a wide sweeping motion toward the old garage entrance, a sweeping motion meant to indicate the world at large. “People barely watch films anymore these days. Today, it’s all hypernovels and livestreaming.” Why watch someone’s 35mm film when you can experience a virtualized dream within an perfect and glamorous constructed world?
“I don’t expect you to understand,” she said. “But I would prefer if people could never watch that film again. And with it missing from the Old Internet, I believe no other copies exist anywhere. So this is my chance to delete it entirely.”
“You don’t have your own copies? An old DVD in a shoebox or something?”
She shook her head. “I tossed it all out years ago. I assumed there would always be a backup of it somewhere on the Old Internet. And," she breathed out, "I don’t exactly miss it now that it’s gone.”
“How did you know it was stolen? What tipped you off?” After a moment: “Do you know who stole it?”
“Me?” She shook her head vigorously. “Why would I?” She leaned forward. “Do you know who stole it?”
“I half-suspect myself,” I said with a half-joking laugh.
“You mean, someone like you could have hacked it, right?”
“Sure,” I said, growing wearier by the second. “Someone like me.”
A street performer ascended the ramp from the level below. She wore leotards and a pleated rainbow-colored skirt and flowing chiffon. Three spheres, all projections only visible via memex, danced and skated about her. Her fluid dance incorporated the virtual glowing spheres, a trio of dance partners orbiting her in perfect sync. Classical music she broadcasted locally echoed in the periphery of my memex hearing. Chopin, my memex informed me.
"If you haven't already looked into the guy I hired, I would start there," she said.
"What guy?" I asked over the volume of the music, the music that only existed in our minds.
“The lead actor," she said. "Well, he wasn’t an actor. He was just some loser I cast. I found him in a bar. That's how I did my talent search. I began scouring bars in the city for my lead.”
“How’s that again?” I asked. I led Cline away from the street performer. "Did you call it a 'talent search?'"
My abrupt interest startled her. She emitted a laugh, a little nervous one. “See, I needed a homely guy for the role. Someone you’d never find in front of a camera. Hollywood doesn't place people that look like him in starring roles. Even if you watch one of those old films about an average-looking person, the actor is still quite photogenic. I was a punk filmmaker." Her voice emboldened as she laid out her manifesto. "I wanted an actor Hollywood would never consider for a lead role. I wanted to make the kind of film America had never seen before. A few of us at school, we had the same ideas about making art. We called ourselves The New Raw."
"Raw," I echoed.
"So for a few weeks, I went bar-hopping in the city to cast a male who looked like he’d spent a lifetime in bars. Sure enough, I found my man in the Mission District.”
Her memory was faulty—she’d found me at the Palace Hotel, near the Financial District.
“This guy was huge.” She was lightening up now, her memories a crackling hearth warming her soul. “Not cute or lovably overweight, but lumpy and obese. He wore glasses as thick as the bottom of Coke bottles. And his ears—he was like Howdy Doody. He was the jackpot. I’d found the perfect lead for my film. He was—what did he do?—he was some kind of computer nerd. I forget which startup he worked at. I remember when my cameraman saw him, his jaw dropped. Literally, his jaw fell. He told me when he read my script, he actually imagined the very guy I’d found at that bar in the Mission.”
My memex felt white-hot now. The cap bulged like it might burst.
"You think this loser is behind your film disappearing?" I managed to say.
"I have to wonder," she said. "I had to take him to court. He hacked my web site and the web site of the other lead actor in the film. Both of us were scared for our safety."
I touched the back of my neck, pretending to access the Nexternet. I did not need to look up the charges filed against me in 2011. I knew them well enough.
"The legal record shows he was only trying to delete the copies of film stored on your web sites," I said. "Nothing more."
She peered at me grimly. "We feared for our safety. And the court saw it our way. It banned him from using the Internet. You know about those laws, right? The Internet Exclusion Laws?"
"I know about them."
"Well, I've been told those bans are hard to enforce. So I have to wonder if he's back on the Nexternet and causing trouble."
"Causing trouble? For who?"
"For me and—"
"You…and the other actor?" I finished for her. "The woman in the film?"
"No," she managed to say. "Just me."
"You're not working with someone else?"
We neared the garage ramp. She said, "Look, I've told you everything—"
“You’ve told me almost nothing,” I said. “But I can infer a lot from the little you have said."
Rain came down in wet sheets off the top edge of the garage entrance. It slopped down to the drain grates below.
"You know the film was stolen when anyone else in the world would think it was offline due to a malfunctioning computer on Alcatraz," I said. "You tell me about this actor who hated your film so much he was banned for life from the Internet, but you think he might want to publicize it all over again thirty years later?”
She tried to interrupt. I spoke over her.
“You know I’m looking for the film but won’t tell me how you found out. You want me to destroy the film, which is the property of a commission overseen by the Federal government. On top of all that, you’re asking for me to violate a business contract. And the only reason you give me is that you don't want your kids to see it?”
She was red in the face. “At least tell me who you think stole the film.”
“Why don’t you just find this loser and ask him? Sounds to me he has plenty of motive for destroying every copy of your film. Which is exactly what you want, isn’t it?”
“He’s not on the Nexternet,” she said. “I checked. I searched for him.”
“If he was banned from using the Internet, he’s banned from the Nexternet too.”
“That’s right,” she said. “Which is the way it should be. But, you know—and I was surprised to discover this—but just because he’s banned from the Nexternet here doesn’t mean he’s banned in other countries.”
“Believe it or not, other countries are free to ignore the laws A
merica passes.”
“I think he moved to Japan after the trial. That’s a violation of his parole, right?”
Working to calm myself down, I nodded once. I'm certain I was as red-faced as she was, but for very different reasons.
“So the authorities would be looking for him, right?” she asked.
“Cops have more pressing issues than busting thirty-year-old parole violators.”
“Apparently, the Japanese let him use the Internet. The Japanese don’t care what he did here or the things he said about me.”
“Those are some pretty broad brush strokes. And if he’s behind the theft of your film, you should be thanking him.”
“Not a chance. Not. A. Chance. I wouldn't say one word to this man, even if he was standing before me."
No man should have to live two lives. One life is more than enough to endure. If Cline put the pieces together, she could destroy my life again just as she’d destroyed it three decades earlier. My very presence in San Francisco was illegal. Every time I inserted my memex in the base of my neck, I was committing a Federal crime.
“Ms. Mayall-Martin,” I said.
“Yes?”
“You have a loving husband.”
“That’s right.”
“Three children you’re proud of.”
“Yes.”
“Home? Health? Security?”
“I suppose so, yes.”
As much as I wanted to find Detachment and delete every copy, it tweaked me to know she wanted the exact same outcome. Securing my dignity meant securing hers. Green-eyed envy had me imagining how I could hurt her by returning the film to Clift. The green-eyed monster, envy, the most human of emotions, the one that diverts us from our best interests with a growl and a lunge.
“Go home and forget about all this," I told her. "And tell whoever put you up to this to meet me face-to-face if they have something to say.” Before she could deny it, I said, “Look, you can’t come here with your budget hairdo and White Day Sale dress and have me think you're here on your own initiative. Someone in the know told you your film was stolen and that I'm involved in the search for it. That's the person I should be talking to."
Cline backed away from me to the garage entrance. Water spilling down from the park above made a translucent curtain behind her. "I hope you'll consider what I've said," she called to me. She hurried into the rain without pulling on her slicker or hat, ducking her head in a futile attempt to remain dry.
15.
It had been nearly three decades since my last visit to the Medical/Dental Building, an Art Deco skyscraper reaching for the wet clouds. Since my return to San Francisco, I’d passed it on the street many times, but never with reason to enter.
The lobby was deserted. In the dim orange light, I set the satchel down, shook the rain off, and dried my face with a handkerchief. I studied the directory board listing doctor and dentist offices. Entire floors were vacant due to simple market realities. With San Francisco’s population diminished to one-fourth its peak size, the city required one-fourth the number of physicians and dentists.
Otherwise, the lobby remained almost exactly as I remembered it: A subway-sized tube of faux Mayan decorations rising from the floor to the arched ceiling. Two of the five elevators patiently open in anticipation of rising skyward.
Ellis Lotte waited for me on the eleventh-floor landing. He held the elbow of one arm to make it easier to chew at a fingernail on the other.
“Finally.” He blanched. “What happened to you?”
I failed to understand his question at first. I touched the purple bruises across my face and grimaced. “I’m still figuring that out.”
“You don’t know?”
Lotte had muted himself just as he’d muted himself in my office, meaning my memex could not record his presence in any manner.
“Just take me to this safe,” I said.
When I visited Dr. Lund twenty-seven years earlier for my court-mandated therapy, Dr. Lund’s name was affixed to the exterior of the office door at eye-height. Her name was no longer on the door to the office, but neither was Lotte’s. I ran my hand over the rough bare impression on the office door where a placard was once affixed. The screw holes in the door were rimmed with fresh shards of wood that crumbled away as my finger ran over them.
“The safe is in the back,” Lotte told me. We crossed through the empty lobby toward the rear of the office. The place was gloomy and apprehensive, like a tidy and well-lit haunted house.
“Tell me again how long you’ve been in this office,” I said.
“Three months.”
“Because the business record still lists Dr. Lund as its occupant.”
“The paperwork hasn’t gone through, I suppose.”
“Or the paperwork on your medical degree, I suppose. There’s no one with your name practicing psychiatry in California.”
He hesitated. “You didn’t expect me to give you my real name, did you?”
“No, but I expected to find Dr. Daryl Lund’s death notice.”
“It happened in India,” he said coolly. “She was on an extended trip there.”
“India’s connected to the Nexternet, you know.”
He halted. “Are you going to open the safe or not?”
“I’m curious how you wound up in this office. Of all the vacant doctor’s offices in San Francisco, you leased this one, of all places.”
“What do you mean, ‘of all places?’ Why is that so strange?”
He wasn’t telling me something. I had my own secrets too, though.
“Look,” he said. “It was leased to me turnkey. For a psychiatric practice, this office was ready to go. I didn’t have to move a single thing in. I just started seeing patients.” He coughed a scoffing chuckle. “You’re not superstitious, are you? It’s not like she died here.”
I didn’t believe him, of course, and his packet of money wasn’t as blinding as he thought it was. No, I believed the safe held something I wanted to see. Better me open it than someone else.
Peeved at my questions, and done with answering them, he continued deeper into the office. Lund's office was decorated much as she'd decorated it when I was one of her patients. Posters from the Geary Street performing theaters and old Playbills hung in frames on the walls. Lotte led me to the rearmost room of potted plants and end tables and couches where the so-called therapy occurred. This was the room I spent fifty minutes twice a week for over a year, all in the service of my court-approved plea bargain.
“The safe is in there.” He pointed at a closet door.
A sharp musk like expensive cheese hung in the air. These fusty old buildings were not constructed with our new jungle climate in mind. Lotte’s selective use of light switches and the storm beating rainwater against the windows created the sensation of being in a dank medieval castle.
“I have a stipulation to make,” I told him.
His eyebrows furrowed. It caused his pupils to go slightly cross-eyed. “Stipulation?”
“Let’s be blunt. What we’re doing here isn’t exactly legal.”
“It’s my name on the lease. I believe the contents of this safe are now legally in my possession.“
“Stop it,” I said. “If you want to tell yourself that so you can sleep at night, fine. But I don’t need to consult a lawyer to know what shaky ground we’re standing on. If this safe holds Dr. Lund’s old papers, you and I both know you have no claim to them.”
He sniffled. His eyebrows remained furrowed. His pupils remained crossed. “And?”
“So when I tell you my stipulation, I don’t want any backtalk,” I said. “Either you agree to what I say or you go find someone else to crack your safe.”
After a moment, he nodded.
“If I get that safe open, I get first look at its contents.” I cut off his protest. “I get to examine every file in that safe before you look at them. The same goes for taped recordings.”
Like a child he demanded, “Why?”
> “Because that’s my price, that’s why.”
“And what happens when you’re done looking at them?”
What I did not say to Lotte was that I would take any file I wanted from the safe. My interest was strictly limited to one item: my old patient file. Lotte could choke on the rest for all I cared. But I didn’t tell him any of this.
“They’re yours to do whatever you want,” I said. “You ready to crack this safe?”
His face softened. He nodded. “I am.”
“There’s the matter of payment,” I said.
He produced the burgundy envelope from his jacket’s interior pocket. The envelope was still thick with money and heavy with the desperation I spoke of earlier.
“You told me the lock required Shakespeare’s sonnets,” I said.
Lotte strode to a bookshelf on the far side of the examination room. With two hands, he took down a wide clothbound tome. He carried it to me as though transporting the last illuminated Bible in existence. Granite-blue sticky notes bookmarked the pages. They ran down the side of the book like fine plumage. Standing beside me, he opened to a marked page. Gray pencil underlined the fifth and sixth lines of the seventieth sonnet:
So thou be good, slander doth but approve
Thy worth the greater, being wooed of time
“Dr. Lund underlined the verses before she died, but she didn’t number them,” Lotte said. “I don’t know their order. I tried unlocking the safe in the order they’re printed in the book, but that failed and the safe went to sleep.”
I opened the closet door and felt around for the light switch. The narrow door suggested a broom closet. When the light came on, I realized it was roomy enough for storage and several cabinets. It also held boxes of cleaning supplies, old touch-up paint cans stacked on cardboard flats, and a vacuum cleaner. A rack of coat hangers for jackets and raincoats ran down the left side. A woman’s overcoat and floppy-brimmed hat hung there. The antiseptic smell of the cleaning supplies was faintly nauseating. It cancelled out the musty smell permeating the rest of the office.
Mounted in the rear wall was the safe, a small one designed for holding legal documents, petty cash, maybe a bit of jewelry. Rather than an old-fashioned numbered dial or keypad on its face, a square touchscreen listed the safe’s current state. Tapping through the menus revealed it had been asleep for eight hours before awakening yesterday afternoon at 1:12pm. The safe had gone into hibernation after Lotte—or someone—had failed to unlock it.