"Video," Valjean said breathily, not really in answer to her question. He rested the side of his face on the woman's head. "Gina, you been in there. In where the video is, right?" He tapped his head with the handle of the knife. "Chinese fucking boxes, one in another in another in another. We been to the next box in, but now we gotta get to the next box out. That's the context. And see, if you're in the video, you're not the video, you're just in it."
The woman winced as Valjean sat himself farther back on the rail. The shadows on the cape were pulsing more quickly and unevenly, the rhythm stumbling now and then. The shapes looked like stones moving as quickly as clouds in a storm.
"See, Gina," he said suddenly, "you got a bottle, say, and the bottle's got something in it. You're either the bottle, or you're something in it, but you're not both. Right?"
Gina nodded. "I'm with you that far. So?"
He made a frustrated face. "Well, don't you hate that?"
"Sure, hate it to fuck-all. Where does the stranger come in?"
"You can be a bigger thing," Valjean said. "You got a thought, and the thought wants to be more than it is, so it becomes a concept, and then pretty soon it's part of you. So like this, like now, I'm a thought. I wanna be a concept, and I wanna be the bigger thing that can think thoughts. Thoughts like me. Before the stranger on the stony shore turns and sees me and makes me stay just like I am."
Gina let out a breath. "All right. Now what's that got to do with hanging off a terrace twenty floors up holding a knife to somebody's throat?"
"When you cut through the air… when you fall a long, long way, you have to fall fast, before the stranger on the stony shore turns around and fixes you there, fixes you right there, and you'll never get away. And, oh, Gina"-he gave a shaky laugh-"I'm a bad, bad thought, and I gotta get into context."
"You're a bad thought, and you have to get into context," Gina said.
"Prima, girl. You know."
"Don't call me a girl," she growled at him.
"I'm a bad thought." Valjean looked down his nose at her.
"Just not in front of the asshole." She jerked her head at Clooney.
"Right. Sorry."
"Okay. Bad thought out of context. You're gonna cut through the air and take her with you, but you got no idea about what the context is."
"How can I, if I'm out of context?" He suddenly bent the woman backwards over the rail. Her feet dangled above the tacky grass green outdoor carpeting. Valjean held the knife above her, ready to stab down. Gina noted with a growing feeling of absurdity that it was a steak knife.
"Val, what if you get into context and you find out you're supposed to be a good thought?" she said quickly.
He looked up from the woman, exasperated. "Bad is bad."
"But if you don't know what the context is, how can you know if you're supposed to be bad?"
"What the fuck are you talking about?" Valjean yelled angrily. "You think you know something, you think you're the stranger here?"
"You don't know what you're supposed to be if you're not in context," she insisted. "You remember when I did your video, the fall, the bungi cords, all that?" She waited for him to nod. "Take that fall out of context, and what is it?"
"It's a fall," he said suspiciously.
"You think so? I coulda got the same effect going up in a jet and taking a power dive, or strapped a cam on a rocket and shot it up, then run the footage in reverse. Any of those methods would have given me the same kind of rush. All I had to do was make the image move the right way. It's supposed to be a fall in context. Out of context it's just pictures going real fast." She licked her lips, swallowing hard on a dry throat. "What did you ask for-fucking pictures going fast, or a stone-home fall?"
Valjean frowned hard. "You're making me confused now."
"It's not me," she said, forcing a blase tone into her voice. "It's being out of context. But you got to know your context, because you're only gonna get one shot at getting into it."
He paused, thinking it over. "How do you know that?"
"When I make a video, and something doesn't work, I take it out and throw it away. No use for it, doesn't fit the context. That's okay for footage, but what about thoughts? You're not gonna be any kind of thought sitting in the cosmic trash barrel, and if you don't know the context, that's where you could end up."
There was an eternal moment when nothing happened at all, and then Valjean let go of the woman. She teetered, recovered, and slid down onto the carpeting in a heap, looking dazed. Gina waved a finger at her and she crawled away, out of Valjean's reach.
Valjean stayed on the rail, the knife in both hands and his face all puckered up. The stone shapes were racing on the cape, more like meteors now. She had a brief thought about falling stars as she took another step toward him, and then another, until she was within reach of him. He seemed to be unaware of her, even as she leaned forward and put one hand on his shoulder. The patterns on the cape began to fade in and out in spots, flickering, wavering. She watched his face carefully as she took a firm grip on him and started to pull him forward. His left eye was bloodshot; more than bloodshot. It was starting to fill up with watery pinkish tears. Gina pulled at him a little harder, and for a moment he resisted. Then he slid forward off the rail, still holding the knife in both hands as if he were praying.
Gina took the knife from him slowly and carefully. Valjean gave her a searching look and started to say something, but the guards were suddenly all around them, pulling him away from her.
"I'll take that knife."
Gina turned to Clooney, holding the knife between two fingers. "Don't tempt me, asshole, you're on my shitlist."
"I'm the ranking employee here." He snapped his fingers and held his hand out.
Gina flicked her wrist and the knife suddenly blossomed in the tacky green carpeting between his feet. "Oops," she enunciated into his outraged face. One of the security guards clamped a hand on her arm.
"Remove this woman," Clooney said, rolling his eyes. "Obviously she's as disturbed as her rock'n'roll buddy here."
She twisted away from the guard easily. "I can remove myself. Fuck you very much, stooge."
Two of the guards removed her anyway. As they marched her past Ludovic and the Dinshaw woman, Valjean was singing "Coney Island Baby." He was flat.
26
Valjean finished singing and collapsed at the doctor's feet in a huddled pool of twitching patterns. It was the same tall doctor Gabe had just seen in Mark's pit arguing with Gina. Her face remained stubbornly impassive, even as she started to remove the cape and discovered the connections that Valjean had been so careful to camouflage running from the hardware in the collar to the sockets in his head. Gabe felt a wave of queasiness sweep through him as she bent down and instructed the semiconscious man to give the disconnect command.
Dinshaw nudged him, and he started guiltily; he had all but forgotten her. "Are you all right?" he asked her, but she waved the question away, pointing at the door. Manny was just coming out from the elevators, looking haggard and disheveled in a vague kind of way, as if he'd just been awakened from sleep.