McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales - Michael Chabon [194]
Cassandra turned to me. “They want to know if you’re a good writer.”
“Uh, sure,” I said, answering to the room. “Sure. I guess. Uh, you wanting me to write something? What do you have in mind exactly?”
More huddling. No amount of time was too lengthy, in terms of negotiation, and this was probably because time was no longer all that important to Cortez and the empire. Time present was now swallowed in the riptide of the past. Since it was now possible that Eddie could disappear, at any moment, like Addict Number One had, when someone else figured out his technique for dealing with the past, he had apparently moved to ensure an eternal boring instant, where everybody looked the same, and where nothing particularly happened. Events, any kind of events, were dangerous. Eddie’s fabled five mansions featured a languid, fixed now. He took his time. He changed his appearance frequently, as well as the appearance of all those around him. That way he could control memories. So his days were apparently taken up with dye jobs, false beards, colored contact lenses, all the shopping for items relating to disguise and imposture and disfigurement.
“Funny you should, uh, suggest it,” I said. “Because I have been assigned to write a history of Albertine, and that’s why I got in contact with Cassandra, in the first place. . . .”
Everyone looked at her. Faint traces of confusion.
Have I described her well enough? In the half-light, she too was a goddess, even though I figure addicts always shine in low lighting. In the emergency lighting of Eddie’s lair, Cassandra was the doomed forecaster, like her name implied. She was the whisperer of syllables in a tricky meter. She was the possibility of possibilities. I knew that desire for me must have been a thing that was slumbering for a really long time, it was just desire for desire, but now it was ungainly. I felt some stirring of possible futures with Cassandra, didn’t want to let her out of my sight. I was guilty of treating women like ideas in my search for Albertine. In fact, I knew so little about her, that it was only just then that I thought about the fact that she was Asian too. From China, or maybe her parents or grandparents were from Hong Kong, or Taiwan. Because now she swept back her black and maroon hair, and I could see her face. Her expression was kind of sad.
They all laughed. The bike messengers. I was the object of hilarity.
“Cassandra,” they said. “That’s a good one. What’s that, like some Chinese name?”
“You did good, girl. You’re a first-class bitch, Albertine, and so it’s time for a treat, if you want.”
A broadcaster’s voice. Like Eddie had managed to hire network talent to make his announcements.
“Wait,” I said, “her name is . . .”
And then I got it. They named it after her.
“You named the drug after her?”
“Not necessarily,” the broadcasting voice said. “Might have named her after the drug. We can’t really remember the sequence. And the thing is there are memories going either way.”
“She doesn’t look like an Albertine to me.”
“The fuck you know, canary,” the broadcaster said, and suddenly I heard Eddie in there, heard his attitude. Canary. A reporter’s nickname.
Cassandra was encircled by bike messengers, and hefted up to a platform in the midst of the Rube Goldberg devices. Her rags were removed from her body by certain automated machines, prosthetic digits, and she was laid out like a sacrificial victim, which I guess is what she was, one knee bent, like in classical sculpture, one arm was laid out above her head. No woman is more poignant than the woman about to be sacrificed, but even this remark makes me more like Eddie, less like a lover.
“Your pleasure?” a bike messenger called out.
“Slave Owner, please,” said Cassandra.
“Good choice. Four horsepower, fifteen volts, 350 rpms.”
I covered my ears with my hands, and except for the glimpse of the steel bar that was meant to raise