The Hacker and the Ants (6 page)

More often than not, Queue and Keith let their scratchy answering machine take messages they never listened to, but today, for a wonder, Queue was right there.

“Media Molecules.” That's what she called her tape business.

“Hi, Queue, this is Jerzy. I wonder if I could score a tape off you today.” One of
anything
was our code word for a quarter ounce.

“Mm-hmm. The usual. How come you never call unless you want something, Jerzy? And what about you and Carol?”

“She hasn't come back.”

“Didn't you say you and Carol were going to try counseling?”

“It didn't work. It made things worse. The counselor was a woman, and Carol thought she was taking my side. The concept is that the counselor is a neutral referee, right, and you can both say anything you want, but then when she asks follow-up questions you can tell whose story she's buying into. The counselor bought into my story even though I'm wrong.”

“Why are you always so
down
on yourself, Jerzy?”

“I had an unhappy childhood. My wife hates me. And I've sold my soul to the machines.” I always felt like I could say just about anything to Queue. Her ready laughter was a stifled chirp phasing into a tinkling giggle.

“How's your big job at GoMotion? Is that still happening?”

“We're designing a line of personal robots in cyberspace. It'll be called the Veep. We made a prototype of the first one, and it cleans my house. But now my computer's messed up. Something really strange happened today. You don't know about
the dark dream
, do you, Queue? It's when you think you've left cyberspace and
you're still in it. That happened to me today.”

“On the computer? Was it fun? I've had things like that happen to me with . . . in certain situations. Levels of reality?” She was talking about psychedelics, but she never ever mentioned drugs on the phone.

“No, no, it was horrible. I was walking across the room away from my machine and then something tugged at the side of my head and it was the cable to my goggles. I thought I'd taken them off and I was still wearing them. It was pure disorientation. The ants did it to me. I think there's a virtual server that lets them get into my machine.”

“You have a computer virus?”

“I have
ants,
Queue. They're a new thing you've never heard of. They're much smarter than a virus.”

“You're so cutting edge, Jerzy. That's what I like about you.”

“So okay, Queue, I'm coming right up for that tape. Is Keith around? What with Carol gone I'm highly available.”

She lowered her voice. “I can't. Keith is very jealous, and he's the one I've taken
on
. ” Queen Queue owned her house and kept Keith as her Prince Consort. “I would never fool around unless it was for real.”

“This isn't for real, Queue. I'm only after some human warmth.”

“We'll only be here for another two hours.” Queue and Keith are always taking trips in their camper van. “We have to record Brian Jones drumming congas at the Hindu Center.”

“Brian
Jones
? Is he like an Elvis imitator?”

Temple-bell laughter. “It's his real name. And, Jerzy, when you come up, bring some show-and-tell. You said you have a working robot? A Veep?”

“Uh ... yeah. His name is Studly. But—”

“Studly!” More chirp-giggle laughter. “You are such a crazed sick computer jock, Jerzy. Bring Studly and don't be a tight-ass! Can he vacuum my floor?”

I thought of Queue's house with its narrow staircases and lumpily layered rugs. “Well, maybe. We'll see.”

“All right!
Bah
.” Queue had her own hip, dynamic way of saying
bye
: a plosive, husky sound.

I went out to the living room.

“Follow me out to the car, Studly.”

“Yes, master.”

He trundled after me to the car, and once I had the trunk open, Studly went and stood sideways to it. I pushed my rack of backup CDs to one side so they'd be out of Studly's way.

“Okay, Studly, get in.”

Studly pushed both legs out to their full extension, and then quickly retracted the leg on the side toward the trunk. As he began falling toward the trunk, he snapped up his other leg, and fell sideways into the trunk, breaking his fall with his humanoid hand. He shifted himself into a comfortable position.

“You wait in there, Studly, and I'll drive you to visit a friend. Her name is Queue.”

“Right on, Jerzy.”

I closed the trunk and got in my car with a fine sense of purpose. I'd grab a snack, go to the bank, get gas, hit the freeway, and be at Queue's in an hour. It would be fun to see her and Keith. If it weren't for having to buy pot every now and then, I'd never go anywhere except GoMotion and the supermarket. In today's America, the many positive aspects of recreational drug use are too often ignored. The need to score gets the user out of his or her house and into the sunshine—out into the community and meeting people! Drugs are about networking!

My car is an Animata Benchmark. It's the only really
expensive thing I've ever owned. Driving it makes me feel good. I got it after my first year out here. Tooling slowly through the streets of my yuppie village of Los Perros, I marveled as always at the massive number of good-looking women to be seen in California. It was a brilliantly sunny April day with the air clear and cool as water—the kind of day you'd remember as “the best weather of the year” back East, a day when you could slowly windmill your arms in the sweet air and feel yourself to be swimming. Days like this come thick as pearls on the California year's necklace.

A crowd of people in Spandex stood in front of the Los Perros Coffee Roasting Company, taking the air and enjoying each other's company, some of them planning or returning from a jog along the Dammit Trail that leads up along Route 17 to the all but dry Hidalgo Reservoir.

When Carol and I moved to California, I was an unemployed mathematics professor, and I'd felt a disenfranchised academic mouse's contempt for the Los Perros yuppies with their good cars, fit bodies, and standoffish demeanor.

Cars? My maroon Chevy Caprice whale wagon had been a damned fine car back in Killeville, Virginia, where Carol and I bought it used for $8,000. It was the only car we'd brought across the country with us, but in Los Perros, the whale hadn't been any kind of a car to be proud of at all. We'd darted our heads around spotting BMWs, Mercedes, Porsches, even Ferraris and Lamborghinis, cars insanely out of our price range. For our second car we came up with $4K and bought a six-year-old Honda Accord, thinking
at least now we're fuel efficient!
Then I'd gotten the GoMotion job and the Animata.

Yes, instead of remaining angry embittered losers, Carol and I had gotten job skills and turned that shit
around. We'd gotten the bucks and become Californian and had no problems with drinking coffee at the Los Perros Coffee Roasting Company. It wasn't snooty in there, it was civilized and practical—in the manner of a European cafe and in the manner of a McDonald's—in the California manner, in short, and Carol and I were now at ease there. We were Californians: fit, in a hurry, making good bread, and with serious problems that we were beginning to try to learn to deal with.

The light was red, and I sat there in my Animata, with my windows and sunroof open, looking at all the beautiful women. I had a severe horn. It had been five weeks. Things change when you go so long without the cheering contact of another human's fluids and skin. Crossing the street were a pair of twin young mothers pushing identical light blue strollers, each stroller holding a pair of twins. Six people! Were they models, come to profit in California? Mentally I selected a cube of space around one of the women, deleted her from the street, and inserted her into my head's own seraglio, nude and chatty.

A joyfully chic Latina woman with a high-fashion straw hat crossed next. She gazed at me evenly, smiled—and kept walking, right into the Roasting and right out of my life. In California you often see people that you never see again.

Here came a girl in stiff, poured-on jeans, her fluffy mass of combed curly hair formed into a huge ponytail resting on her back. With a barrette at either end, her ponytail had the shape of a great, thick jouncing cigar, which contrasted nicely with the sharply cut lines of her hips in their covering of thick, furrowed denim.

A plucky nineteen-year-old with dark eyebrows and a clean-cut nose appeared with two friends. Her mouth was lively, seductive and ironic, with narrow dark lips, crisply edged.

Right outside my car window sat a woman on the wide wall of the planter before the Roasting's storefront. She wore a tasteful sweater of large argyle diamonds, her bell of hair was streaked and set just so, her soft face was womanly, yet childishly pert—I guessed she was a dissipated California Girl who had divorced or never married. She looked like Carol, only more symmetrical, ten years younger and ten pounds lighter. Suddenly I realized she was staring back at me. The light changed. Behind me was a Mercedes driven by a blond-bobbed woman in white silk, diamonds, and gold.

Turning the corner onto Santa Ynez Avenue, who should I see before the office of Welsh & Tayke Realty but Susan Poker, animatedly talking to a stocky woman with a portable phone and a black leather purse yet larger than Susan Poker's. The stocky woman had shiny skin, short hair, and an expensive suit cut from folk-art fabric. Susan Poker was holding a sheaf of papers and acting extremely friendly, punctuating her remarks with many smiles and nods.
Zzzt,
I thought, mentally zapping her out of existence.
ZzzzzzZZTT!

I parked behind the bank and walked half a block to a croissant bakery to grab some lunch. The bakery was run by a Vietnamese family, and I was half in love with a girl who worked behind the counter. Her name was Nga Vo.

Nga was taut and young, dressed always in black, with long hair worn poufed way up on one side. She had quick sneaky eyes that could narrow down to up-curved slits. She had a full, pouty, red-lipsticked mouth made yet more perfect by a roughness in the line of her left upper lip. I wanted to kiss and kiss that lip. She had a soft clean jawline and a weak yet stubborn chin, a California Girl chin. Beneath her face's pale skin was an intricately expressive play of muscles: now molding a fleeting chipmunk cheek, now forming a quick corrugation across her sweet brow.
When Nga wrote out a sales check, she would rest her hand on a piece of paper she'd folded in four out of some ritual of Saigonese penmanship. Every time I talked to her, I did my best to stretch out our conversation.

“A medium roast beef croissant,” I said to Nga. “And a seltzer, please.”

“Yes,” said she. “Six forty-nine. How you doing today.”

“Fine.” I wanted to say so much more. How did you and your family escape from Vietnam? Do you like life in America? Do you have a boyfriend? Could you ever be attracted to a Western man? Will you move in with me?

“It's such nice weather,” I managed, as she counted out my change. “I hope you don't have to work all day?”

“I here till six o'clock closing time.” Nga gave a quick laugh, breathless as a sob.

“Would . . . would you like to have dinner with me?” Yes! I'd finally said it!

Nga looked at me blankly. “What do you mean?” Her mother and aunt were watching us now, and the pushy pig behind me in line cleared his throat preparatory to placing his order.

“A date for dinner. You and me.”

Nga slid her eyes to one side and spoke in rapid Vietnamese to her mother. Her mother gave a very brief answer. Nga cast her eyes down.

“I no think so.”

Wearing a numb, frozen smile, I took my soda and sandwich outside to sit down at one of the bakery's sidewalk tables. From inside came the chatter of Vietnamese voices. I swallowed the food too rapidly and it made a big painful lump in my throat. I was fat and old and crazy and nobody would ever love me again. Were those tears in my eyes?

A Vietnamese boy came out to clear the tables. He giggled when his eyes met mine.

“Are you Nga's brother?” I asked desperately.

“She my cousin.” He nodded his head towards the bakery. “My name Khanh Pham. Nga say you ask her go on dinner date.”

“Yes,” said I. “Just to talk.”

“In traditional Vietnamese date, boy must come visit girl family. Maybe you visit us, then Nga go on dinner date.”

“Uh ... where do you live?”

“On East side.”

God. What if some of the Vo family were Carol's students? I glanced down at my left hand, noticing the dent where my wedding ring had lived so many years. Asking Nga Vo for a date had been a stupid idea.

“Here our address,” said the boy, handing me a neat square of paper inscribed with Nga's fine script. “Bakery close every Tuesday. Maybe you come visit tomorrow.”

My breath rushed out of me. “Yes. Yes, I will come!”

When I finished eating I took my paper plate and my seltzer bottle back. Nga's mother, aunt, and cousin were there, with her father in the hallway out back. Nga slipped me a couple of bold, sneaky glances. “See you tomorrow!” I sang out.

The trees along Santa Ynez Avenue were blooming: bottlebrushes with cylindrical flowers made up of red bristles, catalpas with pendulous racemes of two-toned lavender flowers, and mimosas thick with tiny, sweet-smelling yellow blooms. Most of the fabulous plants in California are imported exotics. I wondered if the woman who reminded me of Carol was still at the Coffee Roasting. Now that I'd worked up the nerve to approach Nga, I felt brave enough to talk to anyone.