Up in the Air

There is so much they want from us here besides our money. Art disagrees. He thinks their greed is pure. I direct his attention to our dealer’s eyes, her flat black tiddlywink pupils, the scaly lids, then ask Art if he’s ever visited Disneyland, because if he has, then he knows we have before us an animatronic biomorphic puppet whose battery cells—they’re sewn into her scalp, and if we shaved her head we’d find round ridges—have been charging themselves off our body heat for an hour now, robbing us of the strength to leave a game in which we’re losing four of every five hands and try our luck at the flashing-dollar slots arranged in a horseshoe around that red Dodge Viper, which is actually an elaborate chocolate cake formed around earth’s most perfect natural emerald.

“Sorry, can’t keep up with you,” Art says. “Pills haven’t hit yet.”

“Just swing.”

“I need a six, Shawn.”

Art reads all their name tags, not realizing that they’re aliases, although the hometowns engraved on them are accurate. Whoever she is, this latex-sheathed destroyer, she was really built in Troy, New York, where they also make rototillers and small gas engines that I’m told are the best on the market. One hears this everywhere.

“You keep looking around,” Art says, “like you’re expecting someone.”

It must be Alex. I left her a note that was legible but cramped—there was so much information to squeeze in. My allergies, both proven and suspected. My turn-ons and turn-offs. My feelings about war. Oh, that first rush of Dexedrine on an empty stomach.

“Over there, Art. Check it out,” I say. “Hillary Clinton, trying for the Viper. It’s nothing but gods and legends in this place.”

“You know who actually is in town,” Art says. “Thatcher.”

“Former leader of the British Tories? She lives here, Art. This is her home now.”

“For a speech. I met a busboy smoking behind the Hard Rock who says he can get me in for fifty bucks. Might be worth it. I’m kicking it around.”

“You know what I want, Art? My family in one place. A place even farther away than they are now but where they won’t miss me, because they’ll have the ocean. Tomorrow night I’ll have a million miles, and though I’ve assumed I’d want most of them myself, they’re all, as of now, one-way tickets to coastal Ireland for anyone who can prove that they’re my kin.”

“You shouldn’t kid around about blood relatives.”

“For those twenty seconds, just those, I wasn’t kidding. I was daring myself to be a better man. Three hundred thousand, that’s all I’m going to keep.”

“You’re not a bad man. You’re just run ragged.”

“Alex!”

She turns. From the back she was Alex—from the front she’s what’s her face from TV. Who sleeps with senators. She says she wants loads of children, but it won’t happen. My ex talked that way too but didn’t get pregnant until she shut up and started screwing Mormons with no expectations whatsoever. None. Except that the men would worship her perfect toes.

“I’m feeling them now,” Art says. “You really sat with him?”

My Schwarzkopf fib; I knew he’d call me on it. “We discussed my future. Man’s an empath. Total empath. St. Francis with a side arm.”

“Ryan!”

It’s her. Not Alex—Linda. Morse’s operative. She has on an airline-issued orange turtleneck that she seems to believe can double as swank casino wear if it’s accessorized with a rhinestone pin.

Anyway, we kiss. So now that’s over with.

On to the next thing, whatever she suggests.

“Hi, I’m Art Krusk,” Art Krusk says. Know thyself. He offers Linda his broad right hand that’s as tanned on the palm as it is across the back.

“Nice to meet you,” Linda says.

“Same here.”

Boy, are these two on their game tonight.

“I’m so glad I found you, Ryan. This city’s a zoo. Guess who I’m pretty sure I saw at Bally’s stepping out of a roped-off elevator?”

One, two, three, four, five. A, B, C, D. She’ll crack eventually, and I can wait.

“Brando. He’s giving a speech, I guess.”

“They all are.”

“Could we maybe talk for a minute? Over there. Excuse us, Art.”

“Excuse us, Art,” I say. It’s a technique: Neurolinguistic Mirroring, they call it. Do as the greats do and you can be great, too. Copy their walk, their inflections, everything. Big in the seventies, came back in the nineties, faded some, but will surely rise again.

We move “over there,” which feels like the same place and wasn’t, to my mind, worth the whole upheaval, emotional and physical, of getting to. Linda seems happier, though, and I’m happy for her. I count the pills in my pocket between two fingers and am disappointed with the tally.

“I was right about those hackers, Ryan. We’re not supposed to tell customers, so don’t spread this, but someone in Spain got into our computers—just some young kid, the FBI is saying—and scooped up account information, credit card numbers—”

“Anonymous Spanish teenager. Strangely plausible.”

“He e-mailed the data to friends who e-mailed their friends and now it’s all over the world and it’s still going. We’re getting calls from China. I’m serious.”

“Our global globe.”