Juarez Square and Other Stories (17 page)

Nathan looked at me, his eyes bright with enthusiasm. “So now we sign this Cotner to an exclusive contract—which he just told me on the phone he’d be happy to do—and we’re all set.” He rubbed his hands together. “Something like this will finally make this dump legit, won’t it?”

It was my second surprise of the day. Nearly four years working here and I’d always assumed Nathan was blissfully unaware of his gallery’s lowly status.

And his assessment was right on the mark. That paint-stained bot was a once in a lifetime find, the kind that instantly gives an unknown gallery big-time recognition and credibility. And it’s cred that matters more than anything in this business. If you have it, the big names come to you, and everyone wants to show at your gallery. If you don’t have it, you’re out in the cold, just another nobody in a sea of nobodies.

“Not a bad day’s work,” Nathan said. “Like I told you, you never know when a good play will present itself.” He lit his cigar and appeared quite satisfied with himself. “And I suppose this means you’ll be back in the middle of things again, won’t you, Alex?”

Again, I couldn’t disagree. For Nathan, discovering Cotner’s bot was going to be a huge ego stroke, granting him the I’m-more-than-a-greedy-suit social standing that Wall Street types always look for but rarely find. But for me, Mr. Black Mark, this was nothing less than a ticket out of the gutter, a second chance. No more lame sales pitches to tightfisted tourists. No more swearing some student’s horrendous watercolor is inspired genius. Maybe there was light at the end of the tunnel after all.

“It’s a hell of a find, Nathan,” I said. “So, how did you cross paths with this Cotner?”

Nathan blew smoke. “Charity dinner of all places, something for autism if memory serves. Those events are
crawling
with high-end tail, you have no idea.” He chuckled and said, “I remember being pissed when the old codger sat down next to me. A room full of movie stars and models, and I get the place next to grandfather time. Then he goes and bends my ear for like an hour. Total sob story about being a retired single dad with a grown disabled son, and how he used to be this famous, under-appreciated scientist and—“

“Wait,” I interrupted. “A son? What son?”

“Cotner has a grown son with severe autism who lives with him. Didn’t you see him?”

Shit
.

* * *

My car rolled to a stop in Cotner’s driveway. I cursed myself again for not being thorough enough, for believing this sham for even a second.
Dumb
.

The phone beeped, but I didn’t answer. It was Nathan calling again, no doubt wanting to know why I’d bolted out of the gallery without a word to him.

I got out of the car, walked up to the door, and rang the bell. No answer. I tried the door and found it unlocked, so I let myself in. The house was quiet (no alarm system, thankfully), and in the front room the robot sat in the corner, powered down. I went down the hall and opened the door to a small bedroom.

The room had a long twin bed with one side shoved against the wall. On the other side there was a safety rail, the kind used for children or disabled adults, which ran the length of the bed. Canvasses covered the walls and most of the floor, all of them oil paintings with the same style and color palette as the one sitting on my desk at the gallery. As if I needed any more proof of the fraud, there was a pair of remote-control gloves (complete with damning paint stains) on the floor next to a small monitor. I didn’t need to turn on the monitor to know it was connected to the robot’s camera eye.

Jesus, what a scam
.

Cotner’s son was the artist. He was the robot’s puppeteer, the Oz behind the curtain.

The light at the end of the tunnel suddenly blinked out.

* * *

“
His
son
? Alex, are you sure?” Nathan asked again over the phone, stage two anger in full effect. I’d called him as soon as I’d confirmed the fraud, hoping to catch him before he could boast of his discovery to anyone or, God forbid, send out a press release. I reassured him it was all a hoax as my car pulled away from Cotner’s house.

“How the fuck do you miss something like that?” he shouted.

“I’m sorry, Nathan.”

“But the son’s autistic, right? Surely we can work that angle. They make movies about that shit all the time.”

I sighed and said, “For a robot, those paintings would be phenomenal, a total game changer, so to speak. But for a human being, they’re just good, and not the kind of good that would get us any attention.”

Nathan said nothing and disconnected the line. I then decided it was a good idea to take the rest of the day off.

* * *

The next morning I arrived at work later than usual, hoping to avoid an early visit from Nathan, who was probably still fuming. As I walked the last couple blocks to the gallery, I tortured myself thinking about how close I was—or at least how close I
thought
I was—to a second chance. Christ, I could see it right in front of me, almost touch it. Back in the game, back in the middle of the vortex, that insane, ridiculous, unimaginably exciting vortex at the high-end of the art world. Private jets shuttling you to Dubai for an appraisal, hundred thousand dollar commissions for doing nothing more than making an introduction, the unbelievable food, the women, the lifestyle. I’d been out of the big time for years now, and I’d hated every mundane, penny-pinching minute of it.

All I could do now was to keep looking for that needle in a haystack, for that winning lottery ticket of a painter that could get me out of purgatory. The odds were against it, of course, but it’s not like I had other options.

I entered the gallery. There were canvasses scattered everywhere and a fortyish man sitting on the floor busily painting. He didn’t look up or acknowledge my presence in any way. I knew in an instant it was Cotner’s son, the resemblance to his father and the paintings on the floor leaving no doubt. Through the glass door I saw Cotner and Nathan in my office. Both men smiled, and they seemed to be having a pleasant conversation.
What?

“Alex!” Nathan shouted, opening the door and motioning me in. “About time you got here. I’ve got great news.” Nathan beamed, but Cotner’s smile disappeared when he recognized me. He shifted his gaze to the floor, avoiding my eyes like a child who’d been caught cheating on a test.

“Dr. Cotner just signed with us. We’re looking forward to a long, successful relationship.”

It didn’t make sense. “But Nathan, I told you yesterday his son is the one—”

“The advances in artificial cognition,” Nathan interrupted, “that Dr. Cotner has pioneered are truly astounding.
Artificial cognition
is the term, isn’t it, Dr. Cotner?”

“Yes, that’s correct,” Cotner said, still looking downward.

“Nathan,” I said, shaking my head in disbelief. “Are you
actually considering
passing off these works as—”

“Listen to me, Alex.” Nathan inhaled deeply and fixed his eyes on me.
Shut up and listen very carefully
, he seemed to say without uttering a word.

Nathan said, “I want you to think about what these paintings, the
robot’s
paintings, could mean for the people in this room. Consider what they could do for the long-overdue recognition of Dr. Cotner’s work, for your professional standing in the art world, and for the future of this gallery.” He smiled faintly. “Not to mention the financial windfall.”

“But we’re risking—”

“Well, now, there’s risk in just about everything, isn’t there? The way I see it, if the people in this room work together and stay on the same page, I’m confident we can manage that risk. And then great things can happen, Alex.
Great
things.”

Nathan slid a paper across the desk and held out a pen. I recognized the document, a nondisclosure agreement. I didn’t have to read it to know that if I signed, I’d be agreeing to play along. To keep the secret, to perpetuate the robot-painter lie.

I remembered Nathan’s words: you never know when a good play will present itself.

I’d been out of the action for far too long, and risks, even big ones, were sometimes worth taking. I took the pen and signed.

I was back in the game.

Dogville

I came out of a cluster of trees into a clearing and stopped. About fifty meters ahead stood the crumbling facade of the abandoned Wal-Mart. Chest-high clumps of wild grass shot up from long, jagged cracks in the concrete parking lot. The stink of what I hoped was only a dead animal hit me and I threw my hand over my nose.

With my other hand I double-tapped the side of my specs and the overlay map popped up, superimposing itself over the ground, the store, and the surrounding forest. The overlay brought digital orderliness to the chaotic scene, showing my location and the distance to my destination. It even painted the outlines of old roads long since lost to the thick undergrowth.

The Wal-Mart was a landmark, a kind of line of demarcation for my questionable errand. The old store sat squarely on Dogville’s outer boundary. Ahead of me was the wild unknown, behind me was my car, parked where the highway ended a couple hundred meters back. There was a chill in the air, and I thought about the comfort of heated leather seats and the safety of locked doors, only a three-minute walk away.

Then last week’s conversation with my producer popped into my head.

“Are you firing me?” I’d asked Gonzalez.

My producer fidgeted in his chair. Ever the passive-aggressive weasel, direct questions always made him uncomfortable.

“No, Katie, I’m not firing you.” He cleared his throat and spoke with as much gravitas as a weasel could muster. “But this is a young person’s game, we both know that, and you’ve had a longer run than most. You need to start thinking about the next chapter in your life.”

The next chapter in my life
. Over the past few weeks Gonzalez and the execs had changed tactics from not-so-subtle hints to outright suggestions. That morning someone had left a hard copy of the latest viewer feedback survey on my desk (my lowest rating ever circled in red, thank you very much).

Christ, didn’t experience count for anything anymore? And no matter what those damned numbers said, I still looked good on camera. Maybe not as good as those wannabes with the flirty eyes who couldn’t write decent copy if their lives depended on it, but I could still hold my own. Hell, if I’d been born with a dick they’d have let me go gray and said my potbelly made me looked distinguished. But Gonzalez didn’t want to hear any of that, of course.

Fuck ‘em.

I clenched my teeth, strode past the broken shell of a store, and entered Dogville.

The last rays of a blood-orange sun peeked over the treetops. I checked the distance to the convention center in the overlay. A bit over ten kilometers. I sighed. If the terrain had been anything close to drivable, I could have been there in ten minutes. On foot, the overlay estimated a two-hour hike.

As I walked on, outlines of empty buildings and forgotten strip malls began to appear in the overlay. Ghosts from another time. A tangle of undergrowth covered everything, growing to the second and third floors of the taller buildings. All the low-lying structures had been completely consumed, and had the overlay not displayed it for me, I would’ve never guessed the rugged ground beneath my feet had once been a four-lane avenue.

It took less than five minutes for a pack of wild dogs to find me.

They came out of nowhere. One moment I was alone, and then suddenly I was surrounded. I froze and my heart began to thump wildly. There were maybe twenty of them, heads down and growling. Drooling beasts from a nightmare with bared teeth and matted fur.

Years ago I interviewed a soldier in a Venezuelan field hospital, who told me how time slowed down, almost coming to a stop, during his gunfights in the jungle. Everything went into movie slow motion, he said, and random memories flashed across his mind: a soccer match in his boyhood village, the death of his uncle, the green-eyed girl who took his virginity.

It was a similar kind of thing, I supposed, my sudden flashback to Angela’s warning back at the
Vivid Life
studios in Austin. “I hear they don’t use any tech in Dogville,” she’d said, teasing her hair in the makeup room’s mirror. She looked at my chest and said, “They say the dogs there can smell cosmetic mods a mile away.” She smirked. “Better watch your step.”

Angela had no mods, of course. At twenty-four nothing’s started to drop yet, and at twenty-four you’re still enough of a brat kid to be smug about it.

The dogs crept forward, tightening the circle around me. My legs shook uncontrollably, my throat too constricted to scream. They closed in further, then the largest dog tensed up, ready to spring forward. I shut my eyes.

I stood there, blood thrumming in my ears. Moments passed and nothing happened. Then I realized the dogs had gone quiet.

“What are you doing in my turf, lady?”

I opened my eyes. The dogs were lying on their bellies. No growls, no snarling teeth, no aggression.