Tropic of Orange Read online

  CHAPTER 28:

  Lane ChangeAvoiding the Harbor

  A curious moment of stasis was achieved. Not simply a rest or even a coda, but stasis. Manzanar could liken it to a crossover—the pianist’s hand flowing to its destination on the opposite end of the keyboard in one breathless extending and endless motion like changing lanes, straddling the dividing line for a sweet, wistful pause before some rude awakening. Driving in darkness heightened the quality of the effect: the searching distance of headlights spilling across the highway, dimmed to hazy star-points by adjustable rearview mirrors, following the glowing cinder of taillights, phosphorescent dashboards, and the tiny immutable interior beacon within one’s mind focused on a distant point, a question mark, a destination.

  Upon these matters Manzanar pondered through the warm night, gazing over the strange encampment below his perch—a trailer park akin only to a giant Arizona swap meet. TV and LAPD choppers hovered—dark angels sweeping their giant flashlights across the unpredictable terrain. Lights flickered within the cars like campfires, flickering out as batteries died. Some had managed to jumpstart the cars, revving engines, now puffing warm exhaust into the night air.

  The ability to move forward or backwards was minimal. During the day, attempts were made to achieve a different parking angle; an off-roadie had pulled itself up into the ice plants. A closer proximity allowed for jump-starting with the singular advantage of operating the electrical system, of tuning radios and running interior lights and, for that matter, headlights, taillights, and turn signals for whatever good reason. There was, too, the possibility of playing CDs and tapes ransacked from glove compartments. For the second night in a row, Manzanar could see the terror reflected in the faces of people huddled in a dark van attentively listening to all twenty-four ninety-minute cassettes of a Stephen King novel narrated for Books-on-Tape.

  Speculations arose as to how much fuel was required to keep an idling engine idling. How much rev to keep a battery alive. For the most part, however, energy was a minor concern, especially to those who were usually without such a luxury. Only the NewsNow van caught in the middle of this Sig disaster anxiously pondered, at the end of the day, the demise of its minicam batteries and the gas indicator closing on E. Maybe someone would syphon the gas in their station wagon in return for fifteen seconds live on the air. To lose even a minute of this event would be tantamount to a transmission failure during crucial testimony in the O.J. or Menendez trials. The NewsNow reporters hunkered down like correspondents in a dugout in Bosnia-Herzegovina, occasionally wandering out to interview someone trading a shopping cart for a Volvo, carefully exchanging the contents of one for the other, eating the earthquake supplies, tossing out curious items like 3½" diskettes, mug warmers, and copies of Buzz.

  “Why are you throwing that out?”

  “You want it?”

  “What do you think it is?” the reporter asks.

  “Beats me.”

  This long moment of stasis allowed Manzanar to drop his arms, to peel himself away from his performance, his music. It was like an out-of-body experience, better understood perhaps on an overpass in Santa Monica rather than against this rational downtown backdrop of business, bureaucracy, banking, insurance, and security exchange. However, he stood beside himself under a summer moon and saw the man he had become over the years: a strange disheveled grizzled white-haired beast of a man wielding a silver baton. The past flooded around him in great murky swirls. For a moment, he saw his childhood in the desert between Lone Pine and Independence, the stubble of manzanita and the snow-covered Sierras against azure skies. He remembered his youth, the woman he loved, the family he once had, a nine-year-old grandchild he was particularly fond of. He remembered his practice, his patients, his friends. Curiously. He remembered. The past spread out like a great starry fan and then folded in upon itself.

  Encroaching on this vision was a larger one: the great Pacific stretching along its great rim, brimming over long coastal shores from one hemisphere to the other. And there were the names of places he had never seen, from the southernmost tip of Chile to the Galapagos, skirting the tiny waist of land at Panama, up Baja to Big Sur to Vancouver, around the Aleutians to the Bering Strait. From the North, that peaceful ocean swept from Vladivostok around the Japan Isles and the Korean Peninsula, to Shanghai, Taipei, Ho Chi Minh City, through a thousand islands of the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Micronesia, sweeping about that giant named Australia and her sister, New Zealand. Manzanar looked out on this strange end and beginning: the very last point West, and after that it was all East. The inky waves with their moonlit spume stuttering against the shore seemed to speak this very truth—garbage jettisoned back prohibiting further progress.

  And there was the great land mass to the south, the southern continent and the central Americas. Everything was for a brief moment fixed. Fixed as they had supposedly always been. Of course, with continental drift, the changing crust of Earth’s surface had over billions of years come to this, cracked into continents, spread apart by large bodies of water. Now human civilization covered everything in layers, generations of building upon building upon building the residue, burial sites, and garbage that defined people after people for centuries. Manzanar saw it, but darkly, before it would shift irrevocably, crush itself into every pocket and crevice, filling a northern vacuum with its cultural conflicts, political disruption, romantic language, with its one hundred years of solitude and its tropical sadness.

  But for the moment, a strange peace settled over the city. During the day, the AQMD gave updated reports on air quality; citizens wondered how they were supposed to get through the day without breathing. Caltrans trucks with their giant blinking indicator arrows trundled along the shoulders, oblivious as always to any confusion they might cause. Little men in fluorescent orange suits poked along the ivy and oleander for trash. Convicted taggers did social service, sluggishly painting over graffiti. Mild excitement was created over the discovery of an old Chaka tag hidden all these years by climbing ivy. Some kids ran over to palpate the peeling Krylon as if it were an Egyptian hieroglyph. The MTD rerouted itself across the landscape, avoiding the Harbor, tooling down parallel corridors, down Fig or Vermont. Some folks even used the Blue Line. SigAlerts continued: the usual big-rig wrecks on right shoulders, over center dividers, two-car collisions, stalled vehicles, spilled contents, slowing traffic southbound, north-bound, eastbound, westbound.

  At sundown, Manzanar had recognized the motorcyclist in a pink suit and pink helmet—a regular on this freeway—wending her way between lanes, waving and throwing kisses to the new occupants of hundreds of stalled vehicles. She was followed by Hell’s Angels and Heaven’s Devils and a rubbie or two in leather on Harleys, scouting the scene first hand, come to share a beer at the Bud truck. Two lovers had wandered down on foot; they cuddled together in a convertible Mustang tucked behind a Greyhound bus. Oblivious to the world, only their passion engulfed them.

  Manzanar’s hand had lifted the great billows of smoke in sharps and flats, luminous clouds tinged with the fading sunset, casting beautiful shadows against the tall glass structures. Darkness followed with artless dissonance. Propellers chopped the night, their thunder following searchlights striking without discrimination. And now the great fires burned clean blue flames at either end of this dark stretch of freeway.

  FRIDAY:

  Artificial Intelligence

  CHAPTER 29:

  PromosWorld Wide Web

  “It’s a fascination with water, pools, and pastels. You wouldn’t understand,” Emi shrugged. “It’s a Westside thang.”

  “Baby sister, don’t patronize me,” Buzzworm pointed. “I’ve seen the David Hockney retrospective. He don’t come to my part of town.”

  “What? No light and space? No stucco and tile roofs? No shrubs, brick paths, bougainvillea? No poison oleander?”

  “No,” Buzzworm growled. “And no jacaranda, climbing roses, topiary, sidewalk bistros, tanning parlors, pillow
ed weenie-dogs, golf courses, or decaf espressos either!”

  “Tsk. Tsk.”

  “Not to mention major supermarkets, department stores, pharmacies, medical and dental clinics, hospitals, banks, factories, and industry. In this city, you have to risk your life; go farther, and pay more to be poor.”

  Emi typed everything into her laptop and nodded. “I think I’ve got some good stuff here. What else makes you mad?”

  “Don’t you think it’s about time to go up there and meet that man?” Buzzworm pointed to the man flailing a baton on a distant overpass.

  “I’m thinking about it.”

  Buzzworm looked at his watches. “I wouldn’t think you’re the type to lose your nerve, but I could be wrong. Whenever you get good and ready, but I can’t wait all day. Meantime, I got some business to take care of.” He sauntered away, making necessary adjustments to his Walkman.

  Emi looked toward the overpass and her assignment rhythmically swiping at the smoky sky. He looked like a priest blessing a multitude, interminably. She bit her lip. “Damn!” Of course, Emi thought, he was crazy, but she understood how denial might be a favorable attitude. Wasn’t everything from Alzheimer’s to schizophrenia genetic? Damn. Damn Gabe. Damn this character Buzzworm. Damn that old deadbeat on the overpass. Damn.

  The funky shrill tones on the fax interrupted Emi’s thoughtful ruminations. Usually fax tones were random tweets, but these had a certain melody, a melody she could not place but knew. Electronic tones representing numerical information, i.e., music. In the distance, an insane and homeless conductor thrashed in silence to the same rhythm. What in the hell was that? Fax paper spit itself out in slippery coils. Your job (since you’re down there anyway) is on-site producer. Put on the show, so to speak. Good luck. As soon as you get this fax, get on-line for chat to chat.

  Emi signed on and typed in a question, What about program coordination?

  The message typed back, Any prerecorded material gets edited on sight. Slash and burn to max five-minute segments. You’re good at that. Live material—keep it short: three minutes with cut-tos. Keep it moving!

  But why? This is continuous live on-air public service. Who cares how long the features are? Or are we going to special updates only?

  No way. This is day four. The public has been served. Sponsors are banging at the door. You see CNN stopping their commercials? Watch your monitor! Here it comes right now!

  Emi stared at the on-air monitor. Sure enough, Tide was selling cleaner whiter brighter, and Minute Maid had wasted no time in moving on to Passion. She looked down from the van’s window at the tattered and soiled man curled in the back seat of a Buick. It seemed to make sense. But a second commercial cut to a Buick sailing down coastal roads. The poor man next to her rolled over on his other side. Emi shrugged. Whatever. She typed in for the hell of it, Who’s watching this?

  Everyone!

  Cut to station identification and . . . Buzzworm? Emi looked on. He cut an imposing figure. He had a certain charm. “Kerry?” she turned to the tech, “What do you make of this?”

  “Well, Kay Torres was doing the interview. Guy’s smooth. Conversation got going and somehow, suddenly, he’s doing the interview. Now he’s got the mike.”

  They watched as Buzzworm commanded the cameraman, “Luey, let’s move on over here. That’s it.” Luis panned an apparent audience of homeless people, sitting on car tops and hoods, a few lounge chairs, and some furniture removed from moving vans. Smack dab in the middle was Kay Torres in her camouflage jump suit settled in like it was all fine with her. They were all facing the back of a pickup with three more homeless characters sitting on a beat-up sofa. Buzzworm stepped back into view and announced, “Our three guests today all have something in common . . .”

  Oh my god. I’M PRODUCING THIS? Emi typed in caps.

  YOU’RE ASKING US? Real-time yelled back. HAVE YOU LOST YOUR C-DRIVE?

  Buzzworm continued, “Let’s welcome: Smokey, Pick-n-Save, and Pollyanna!” Luis panned the applause.

  “Kerry, talk to Luey,” Emi ordered.

  Kerry adjusted his headphone. “Luey, what’s the deal?”

  Luis answered, “So what am I supposed to do? Turn the camera off?”

  Emi moaned. “Production value sucks.”

  Kerry quipped, “It’s free.”

  They both watched someone with a wooden crate on his shoulders. It got plopped in front of the three guests with tin mugs of coffee and a paper cup with California poppies. Emi groaned, “With my luck, the stage crew will unionize.”

  “Hey, look at that,” Kerry pointed. “They’ve got cue cards!” Sure enough, someone raised the APPLAUSE! card to an obliging audience.

  Real-time screamed, CUTTING TO COMMERCIAL NOW!

  Emi scrambled out of the van, weaved through the cars, following the path of the umbilical cable to Luey’s camera. She jammed her body between Buzzworm and his motley audience. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Would you mind?” Buzzworm purred. “This is where we get comments from the audience.”

  “Hey,” someone yelled. “Wait your turn!”

  “Yeah, sit down!”

  “Yeah, let B.J. finish!”

  Emi eyed the oppressive crowd but feigned her always imperturbable presence. “We just cut to commercial,” she spoke through her teeth to Buzzworm. “You’re off the air.”

  “How much you wanna bet we’ll be back?” Buzzworm smiled. “Listen, baby sister. I’ve got some other ideas. How about a cookin’ show? Mama on the northbound’s doing a show with her mobile hot dog stand.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “And there’s Sammy over here.” Buzz pointed. “Recognize him? Used to be an actor. Maybe you’re too young to remember. And Mona—” Mona sidled in and forcibly shook Emi’s hand. “Yeah, Mona was a writer. Hell, we got a lot of has-beens.”

  Mona handed Emi two pages from a notebook. “Sorry for the poor presentation, but here’s a proposal.”

  Emi read the heading. It was for a sitcom. “Ah, I’m being paged.” She extricated herself and talked into the intercom, “Kerry? What now?”

  “You better get back. Net’s talkin’.”

  She pulled the phones off her head and jammed them on Buzzworm. “Try this instead of that Walkman. When I get back to the truck, talk to me. Do you hear?”

  Emi scampered breathlessly back into the van and read the messages: You got the go-ahead! Momentum is building. Phones won’t stop. Who is this Buzzworm? Man’s synonymous with telegenic. We might be 75 percent and climbing! Sally Jesse Raphael, bye-bye!

  Emi rolled her eyes, donned a new pair of phones, and tugged at the baseball cap. “All right, Buzzworm? Can you hear me?”

  “Loud and clear, baby sister.”

  “Can we work together?”

  “Depends.”

  “Kerry’s gonna prompt you to the breaks.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Station breaks. FCC requires them.”

  “You mean commercials.”

  “That too.”

  “So we got a budget?”

  “Can we talk about this later?”

  “Poor people can’t perform for nothing.”

  “You gotta prove this thing to me first.”

  “Try me for an hour, but then we’re talkin’ nitty-gritty.”

  “Oh-kay.”

  Cellphone rang. “Gabe? Where are you? México City? I hope you’re in something four star, at least a Hilton. Something that gets CNN. Are you watching this?”

  “Is that Buzz?” Gabriel queried over the cellular. “It looks like Buzz.”

  “Of course it’s him.”

  “But what’s he talking about? Artificial intelligence? Is that a homeless topic?”

  “Oh god, Gabe, you’ve lost a chip.”

  “What?”

  Emi put one ear to the audio. It was true. One of the guests stood up and announced, “For all you know, I could be a goddamn bladerunning replicant,” to w
hich the audience cheered, and he bowed several times.

  The guest to the left leaned over and said, “Now if I said we ought to think seriously about wiring this entire place into the World Wide Web, that a so-called Local Area Network is traditionally designed to provide maximum capabilities, flexibility, and growth in the future, and the priority should be to achieve total saturation, i.e., e-mail functions, software delivery, database access, if I said that, you would think to yourselves, he’s intelligent? Or his intelligence is artificial?”

  The guest to the right piped, “Easy. Artificial. Artificial. Definitely robotic.”

  The guest in the middle asked, “Are you schizophrenic?”

  “Hey,” the guest to the left protested and waved some papers, “I’m just reading this shit I found in a Saturn.”

  Buzzworm cut in through the laughter. “We’ll continue right after this commercial break. But remember, Second Baptist is collecting your donations: blankets, canned goods, and powdered milk for the kids. And look for our next special: Homeless Vets: From the Jungles to the Streets.”

  Emi sighed. “Gabe, can you believe this? I think the world as we know it is coming to the end. Nostradamus predicted this.” She was silent for a moment, “Gabe, I got a confession to make.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I had sex last night.”

  Pause. Breath, then, “I guess it wasn’t with me.”

  Beat. “It was over the net.”

  “Net?”

  “Yeah. Does that count?”

  Silence.

  “And there’s something else. You know that homeless conductor on the overpass?”

  “Manzanar?”

  “He’s my grandfather.”

  Gabriel stared at the TV screen in México City. Emi stared at it in the van. They saw the same simultaneous image, give or take for satellite lag and time code correction. Did their eyes therefore touch? Did this count?

  Buzzworm’s face had already been captured digitally, cut and pasted onto a cartoon body complete with Walkman and watches and palm trees batiked onto his dashiki. His new configuration sauntered over the freeway landscape, Chyroned lettering promoed his new show: What’s The Buzz?