It is Kirkpatrick’s will.
Neethan stands up so fast his knees strike the underside of the table, upending glasses of sake. “This is fucked. I gotta get out of here,” he says, though no one hears him over the laughter and music. He heads instinctively for the men’s room. On the way he bumps into a baked-looking busboy.
“Which way to the red carpet?” Neethan asks.
The busboy nods his head toward the kitchen. In a few long strides Neethan is through the double doors, the red carpet of the restaurant contiguous with the strip of carpet wending through this steamy zone of screams and clangs, a couple dishwashers engaged in an honest-to-God fist fight, a sushi chef cursing in Japanese about his assistant’s lack of a work ethic, clouds of rice steam, airborne plates, and impolite language in three languages flying across various planes of vision. Neethan barrels onward, somewhat unnoticed, past the walk-in freezer to the back door and a clump of waitresses taking a smoke break, to the alley, where the red carpet slithers around a corner and intersects with Hollywood Boulevard. Neethan stumbles onto the famous thoroughfare and sees that the carpet stretches ahead as far as his eyes will focus, block after block, westward toward La Brea. The glittering slutty trinket shops of a reconstituted Hollywood frame his gaze. How is it that after the world seemingly ended, this obnoxious place rebuilt itself from scorched rubble to resume the manufacture of dreams? Why had this, of all places, been a priority? It feels as improbable as his own destiny and origin, beckoning to him from beyond the lights.
WOO-JIN AND ABBY
“Who are you?” Abby gasped and rose to her feet.
“I’m Woo-jin Kan.”
“The championship dishwasher?”
“No, the writer.”
“Did you do this to me?”
“Did what?”
“Kill me?”
“No, no, I wanted to help you when you were dead but the cops wouldn’t let me.”
“I need to find Rocco.” Abby propelled herself one-shoed in a direction. The editing felt off. She’d blinked in the theater beside Kylee Asparagus, surrounded by Federicos, as her life played out in gross caricature onstage. So where was this? This field? The roaring of jet engines? Some smelly guy with fucked-up hair?
“I need a phone,” Abby said. “I need a shoe.”
The only place Woo-jin knew to find a phone and shoe was at the Ambassador’s house, so he pointed Abby along the narrow brick streets of Georgetown on a trajectory toward the Embassy.
“What happened to me?” Abby choked.
“You died three times,” Woo-jin said. “Or two and a half times. Dr. Farmer has your other bodies at the morgue.”
“I was watching a play. I’m confused.”
“That is correct.”
“I saw a ghost. There was a clone funeral. An orgy.”
Hoping to sound helpful, Woo-jin communicated elements of his last few days. “My sister got hauled away by a helicopter. The Ambassador gave me a shower. I got diamond-coated steel wool. I saw an old man in the desert with piles of books. Dr. Farmer asked me to suck his wiener.”
The two characters paused in the street and looked at one another. Their different brains arrived at precisely the same conclusion, which only Abby could articulate.
“Nothing makes sense,” she said. “A permutation of me is stuck in some sort of fucking zone.”
“The Embassy is close,” Woo-jin said.
Abby stumbled, clutching Woo-jin’s arm, which she continued to clutch even after she wasn’t stumbling. She was perplexed to find herself trusting this guy. They turned a corner in a part of the neighborhood undergoing a perverted, reverse urban puberty, where infant industrial buildings grew up into homes, and came to the Embassy. The most intense light they’d ever seen radiated from the windows and the seams around the door. The house appeared to bulge, barely able to contain whatever produced the light within. Shielding their eyes they proceeded up the front walk. Woo-jin rapped on the door. A moment later Pierre the imitation chauffeur answered, hat off, hair berserk, looking glazed and happy.
“Is the Ambassador in?” Woo-jin asked.
“Oh, he’s in all right,” Pierre said. “Is he ever! Whoa!”
“We’re looking for a shoe.”
“He’s really busy right now. I mean really busy,” Pierre said.
“I’m an official delegate,” Woo-jin said.
Pierre impatiently nodded for them to enter. The humble materials of the house—wood, varnish, latex paint, porcelain fixtures, metal hardware, sealants, and caulking still constituted the structure of a house but exuded an otherworldly wisdom, as though the elements from which they’d been formed contained memories of a purpose far more holy. Light emanated from every surface, causing the air to slightly ripple. A door knob could barely stand the awesome fact that it was (Oh my God, I’m a door knob!) and individual beams of wood in the floor trembled at the majesty of being. Woo-jin walked down the hall, pivoted when he came to a door, and waved for Abby to follow.
“The Ambassador is in here,” Woo-jin said.
Abby followed as she would in a dream, her senses propelling her to the doorway, through which she observed the elegantly appointed living room. On one upholstered chair sat a man with dreadlocks, colorful garments, and a scepter crafted from a toilet brush and plunger handle, beaming in the presence of three glowing orbs the size of your typical Spalding basketball. These orbs bobbed softly above three chairs and pulsed hues of purple and orange.
“Excuse me, Ambassador? We were wondering if you had any spare women’s shoes,” Woo-jin said. “And a phone we could use?”
The Ambassador nodded, in deep communication with his guests. He pointed in the direction of the kitchen. Abby’s brain seemed to have been marinated in Novocaine. While the scene before her made no sense, the bewilderment was paradoxically a source of comfort, as though her neocortex had thrown its hands up and neglected to even try to process this otherworldly communion or whatever you wanted to call whatever it was that was going down. She followed Woo-jin, barely able to take her eyes off the beautiful spherical energy forms illuminating the residence with positive vibes. They crossed the kitchen to the room where previously Woo-jin had donned the tracksuit. In a closet they found a selection of fashionable shoes and other garments, many in Abby’s size. Woo-jin excused himself and went to the kitchen while Abby cleaned up and dressed. When she emerged she wore new pants and a jacket in addition to chunky leather shoes. Around them drifted gentle music written by computers in praise of the gorgeousness of nature. Woo-jin handed her a cordless phone. Leaning against the granite counter, Abby called her apartment, Rocco’s cell, the phone numbers of her friends in Vancouver, Rocco’s work, and her apartment manager but nobody answered and no voice mail picked up. It occurred to her that she expected the world to operate a certain way, expected phone calls to be answered and some semblance of causality to provide lines between dots. She expected her intentions to find outlet in actions, consequences, reasons, purposes. But she was being thwarted, teased it seemed, prevented from making decisions that would lead her back to a system of gratification and contentment. There were other forces working, pushing her into an abstract version of the world she assumed she belonged to. She could fight it, jabbing digits into a telephone hoping one of them would pull up a recognizable voice while this weird blinky guy rooted through the fridge—which, by the looks of it, contained some pretty delicious food—or she could take her sense of rationality, stretch its figurative chicken neck across a cutting board, and lop off its head.