Tomorrow and Tomorrow (21 page)

SAN FRANCISCO

Five hours in flight, nine hundred passengers staring into cells or screens embedded in the seats in front of them, in-flight streams prohibited: an entire season of
Whipped and Creamed
,
a showing of
Jules and Peasley Blarf in Cairo
. Rank circulated air—mucosal breath, dirty diapers and thawed airplane meals, stale socks and the pungency of feet from people who’d kicked off their shoes. Garbage in the aisles, the crew too short-staffed to care—pushing drink carts through, serving splashes of liquor in cups of ice. Dawn, my face pressed to the window as the San Francisco sprawl cuts beige and concrete black against the blue ocean. The fractal coast becomes mundane the lower we descend. The sprawl comes into focus—strip malls, traffic-glutted highways, housing developments. The runway appears beneath us. The wing flaps adjust and rattle the cabin.
Seat belts on, electronic devices off.
Screaming kids, a cloud of body funk. The plane thumps as wheels hit concrete. A smattering of applause when the Adware blinks on and most of us reboot, autoconnecting with SF.net. We taxi, nearly everyone standing, anxious to leave, heads bent awkwardly beneath the overhead bins. People pulling jackets and luggage from beneath their seats, elbows forcing position in the aisle, a chemical waft from the bathrooms—urinal cake and diarrhea and disinfectant. It’s been a while since I’ve flown. The stewardesses tell me to enjoy my stay.

Hannah.

Twiggy.

Albion.

Shuttle buses to the terminal, Delta security performing a first ID scan on the way in, sponsored hotels showering us with cheap rates.
BayCrawler
recommends an economy room in the Bayview–Hunters Point Holiday Inn, a Daily Deal. I go ahead and book, the terms and conditions scrolling in half-light.
Accept, Accept—Accept all.
Hours in lines twisting through cordons, everyone sitting on their suitcases, eyes glazed watching streams. Adware kicks in a flickering jangle, competing currency exchange rates for foreign travelers, taxicabs, yellow cabs, that old woman Paris in gold leggings begging me to switch my booking to Hilton, Days Inn with cheaper rooms and HBO blinking in the overlays, Holiday Inn blasting reminders that my reservation is
nonrefundable
,
women in towels offer spa services and city tours.
You’ll find a happy ending in San Francisco!

Gavril’s contact is an agent at Nirvana Modeling named C.Q. I ping him but he doesn’t respond. I ping again with a friend request and Gavril’s attachments, but still no response. I text:
Dominic, a friend of Gavril’s. Looking for a model you might work with. Did Gavril get in touch with you?

Armored National Guardsmen with submachine guns slung over their shoulders stalk the security line. German shepherds tethered on leashes sniff each of us, sniff our bags—I leave my backpack on the floor and the dogs surround it, running their noses along the seams. Praying they don’t sniff out residue, but sober enough to have left my brown sugar back in DC. Another ID checkpoint—soldiers with handheld bar code readers scan my passport and retinas. Robotic voices chime: “Never leave your bag unattended. Remain with your luggage at all times. Never leave your bag unattended. Remain with your luggage at all times—”

A young woman ahead in line answers questions. She struggles with English, but a TSA supervisor, white-haired, pockmarked, finally stamps her passport and waves her through to the scanner. Strict policies arriving or departing for flights—we’ve been through this before, all of us, when we boarded the plane, but TSA makes us go through these security points again and again. I watch her hike up her shirt a few inches and slide her belt from her blue jeans. She unbuckles and removes each boot and places everything in a plastic bin. She speaks French, I can hear her now, but she doesn’t understand anything the customs agents are telling her—translation apps struggling to keep up in the anemic Wi-Fi. The screener, a slight man in blue vest and gray slacks, holds his arms out to his side, each hand capped by a blue latex glove. The French woman understands now and imitates him—holds her arms outstretched. The man frisks her, running his hands along the back of her thighs and up over her like a bored lover, patting the interior of her thighs, cupping her genitals. The woman’s embarrassed, but complies—she stands still while the man fondles the undersides of her breasts and runs his fingers along the underwire of her bra, what else can she do?—and when the customs agents instruct her to step through the body scan, I look with the other men to the crowdsourcing security screens placed where we all can see. We’re curious—and there she is, like an etching in green, layers of her, her skin and underwear, demure, the fabric of her clothes. The buttons of her jeans and the underwire of her bra display pale green, almost white, her Adware displays like a lace doily sitting on her brain. The screeners have poker faces, playing their part of professionalism, but as I watch the screening, Adware girls overlay my sight, offering to bounce me to pay sites full of leaked airport scans—porn stars, celebrities, amateurs, perfect tens all scanned for national security, all leaked to the streams.

Passport stamped, I’m frisked and asked through into the scanner. My body is projected in green on the black glass—the travelers can see, but I wonder if anyone bothers to look.

Acid jazz over electronica—an unrecognized ringtone.
Check profile: Colvin Quinn, Nirvana Modeling, editor. Add to address book?
Yes—and Colvin’s profile fills my vision as I sit on a bench to put my shoes back on. He’s texted:
Gavril’s friend? You’re the one looking for a model?

Cao-Xing Lee. Gavril said you know her?

Yeah, Gavril’s question—that’s Kelly,
he writes.
Real name’s Cao-Xing, but she goes by Kelly. She’s one of mine, yeah. Are you booking her, or what? You can book her through the agency.

I need to talk to her.

What do you have in mind? She’s an actor, does some print work. Terrible at celebrity impersonations, but she’ll work private functions if you’re paying her.

I just need to talk to her.

If you book her, it goes through the agency. No freelance bullshit. But I can set up a meeting, as a favor to Gavril. She has a shoot on the first. You can visit her on set. Sound good?

Perfect—

I’ll send you details—

Leaving the airport, I’m warned I’m leaving a secure green zone and have to “accept” before the warnings will blink out. Yellow cabs line the curb—
BayCrawler
displays user reviews of the drivers, the drivers standing curbside shouting at us, trying to convince us the one-star reviews are false, were posted by bitter, jet-lagged people, that they’d cut rates for a fare. Criminal record pop-ups halo most of them. The driverless AutoCabs are parked together, but
BayCrawler
flashes a scare piece about drug cartels tracking tourists in driverless cabs, forcing them off the road and murdering them for their luggage and cash. Too many warnings of pricing scams. I queue for the commuter train, downloading SF.net’s top free travel apps and augs while I’m waiting. The commuter train’s a maglev bullet cutting through suburban slums, empty station to empty station—storefronts blur, abandoned strip malls, cars stalled out and feathered in tickets, whole sections of outer communities burned, the wood char left to rot in the paradisiacal sun. I lose Wi-Fi until we’re closer to the city center, office towers and skyscrapers coming into crystalline view. An autoconnection to City.SF.gov—a ping from a Nirvana Modeling intern waiting in my in-box, the subject line: Kelly. I download a press packet and scan through publicity shots along with tomorrow’s shooting schedule. Unmistakably Zhou. Video clips from
Our Town
,
Long Day’s Journey into Night
,
Gem of the Ocean
.
She’s not a bad actress, but most of her credits are from liquor commercials—a nude Kelly dripping with red syrup for Absolut Strawberry, in a minikilt for Dewar’s. A fashion shoot tomorrow—the Nirvana Modeling
intern gives the address and mentions that Kelly’s been told to expect me.

We skirt the city center and enter Hunters Point. Retinal scans for fares, the station scrawled with Meech-HAM
graffiti and swastikas—a graphic Meecham death’s-head with hair like a corona of blonde fire. The neighborhood’s shit, but the Holiday Inn looks passable and I check in through the kiosk, gathering the key cards that pop from the slots. I reset the dead bolts once I’m in my room—the economy-size little more than a closet with a sofa and toilet. Jet lag’s catching up with me—but I wander out to find a grocer on the next block for a few apples and Greek yogurt, a two-liter of Pepsi and a box of Ho Hos. Men loiter on the corners here, in oversize T-shirts and baggy jeans. Someone shouts out to me, asking for money. “A quick loan,” he says. I keep my head down. I lock myself into my room. Ho Ho after Ho Ho, watching the flat screen bolted to the wall—I’ve tried the streams, but the Holiday Inn router is spotty, blinking in and out. I try to visit the City, to visit the empty spaces, but the connection’s lost.

Paying for a few minutes of sat-connect, I call Simka.

“Dominic, where are you? Are you okay?”

I open my room curtains and look out over the third-floor view of Hunters Point so that he can see what I’m seeing, an empty apartment tenement slashed with graffiti and lewd tags meant to implant viruses in unprotected Adware. There are fires somewhere distant—three columns of dark smoke mar the horizon.

“Where are you?” he asks.

“Paradise,” I tell him. “I’m all right—”

“Your call says San Francisco. Dominic, are you really in San Francisco?”

“I landed a little while ago,” I tell him. “I’m feeling ill, Simka. I’m feeling so bad right now. I don’t know what to do—”

“You’ll be fine, Dominic. Remember to breathe. In and out, in and out—”

“I’ve gotten mixed up in something,” I tell him, not sure how much to say.

“I’m worried about you,” he tells me. “What’s going on? I haven’t heard from you since we talked about Timothy. I can call the police if you’re in trouble, Dominic. Tell me—”

Hearing his voice is like a balm on wounds I didn’t quite realize I have—lonely, I realize. “I’m realizing how fucked up I’ve been,” I tell him. “After Pittsburgh, once winter came, they used to run these PSAs about radioactive snow, do you remember? Those commercials used to stick in my mind—I’d dream about them—that person walking through snowfall. Everything serene, snow piling on trees, over lawns, on houses, before we realize that all the snow is poisoned with radiation. They’d list these symptoms. Tell us about Caesium-137. That’s what my depression’s like, Simka—I can’t really quite explain it, I guess. When the depression settles over me, it’s like I’m walking through that radioactive snow, that no matter how fast I run or try to cover myself, the snow will keep falling until I’m buried under—”

“I remember those commercials,” he says.

“I’ll forward my hotel information, in case something comes up, some emergency—”

“Of course,” says Simka. “Dominic? You’re not alone, do you understand that? Whatever you’re going through, I’m here for you, I’m with you. If you’re in trouble, come here. You have a home with me—”

My sat-connect runs out and I decline approval for another session. Cramped, here, in this cheap hotel—claustrophobic. I crack open the window, I want to take a walk, clear my head—just like Simka always suggested, that exercise might lift my spirits—but I can hear the braying of dogs outside and people shouting nearby. I read a paperback I brought with me, Ed Steck’s
The Necro-luminosity of Pink Mist
,
drinking Pepsi with hotel ice until my eyes droop closed and I sleep, dreaming of greenish drifts of ice, poisoned snow. I sleep through until morning.

Adverts scroll the bathroom mirror, shimmering through shower steam:
Popeyes Fried Chicken
,
Grand China Buffet
,
accept the ten-dollar surcharge to book a cab through the mirror, using the touch screen as I brush my teeth—these things never work and I have to push twice, wondering if I’ve paid twice.
Wharf Central, Bay Company, Anchorage
coupons grid the ceiling and walls, skewing into pixelated distortion whenever the Wi-Fi hiccups. Local streams: cop killer guts four, VoyeurTube
catches spy vids in J.Crew changing rooms. Gavril’s lent me a Caraceni suit for my meetings—he told me I wouldn’t be taken seriously if I showed up anywhere dressed like I usually dress and told me to know the brand in case anyone asks.
Caraceni
. I feel fake, wearing this thing—but the fit’s nice, it feels nice. He told me to leave the top buttons of my shirt unbuttoned, but I can’t pull off that look, exposing the upper triangle of my pasty chest, the scrawls of hair, so I button up to my neck. The coupon grids shift:
Redwood National Park bike tours, lodging
,
collagen ass implants turn your sag bag into a beautiful bubble. Coffee at the House of Bagels vending kiosk in the hotel lobby. I wait for my cab outside—the weather’s gorgeous.

The cab’s an AutoCab tricked out for tourists—driverless, its silky voice crackles through the speakers.

“Destination?”

“Fort Point,” I tell it, checking the shooting schedule I have for Zhou.

“Destination?”

“Fort. Point.”

“Calculating,” it says, synching with my profile before sliding into traffic. “Welcome to San Francisco—”

The topography of this place is sun-blanched ruinporn, an economic gutting—city block after city block of housing projects, slapdash QuickCrete construction jobs, acres of storage container housing sites stacked in corrugated sheet metal towers. Apartment building units with window slits. Beige patches of dead grass. A car’s been pushed to the center of a playground and set on fire, the smoke and gushing flames like the oil fires they streamed from Iran and Iraq following the Israeli War. iLux catches my position, pushes notifications through the streams—warns me travel delays are likely.

“What’s causing the delay?”