"Sorry," I said.
"Come in."
I slid through the door, leaned up on the sink.
"Dropping some friends off at the lake," said the Rad Balm girl.
"So, you wanted company?"
"I didn't know it was you, fuckstick."
"Right."
The exit was a bit trickier, requiring a sort of high hurdle kick to clear. I leaned on Need. Need was not occupado. I locked myself in, sat down. The pilot's voice crackled over the intercom.
"Steve, you're all flustered. Over."
"My name's not Steve," I said.
"It's so tiring, your denial. Over."
"Your voice is really crackling," I said. "Over."
We touched down a few hours later. I looked out the window as we made our approach, saw blasted earth and cracked desert roads looping into emptiness. I didn't see any airport. Dietz had nodded off next to me, spliff stub poking cold from his knuckles. Some of the leather men were playing hacky sack in the aisle, shouting in strange English. Something about a wingeing sod off his tits in Auckland, a bunch of silly cunts. The pilot announced that he'd lowered the landing gear, requested that we please refrain from dread. I shook Dietz awake.
"Where the fuck are we?"
"We're in the land of dreams. Sunny California. Hollywood, to be exact."
"This is the desert," I said.
"Mulholland Drive," said Dietz. "Sunset and Vine. Betty Grable. Fatty Arbuckle. Bad fatty. Hollywood Walk of Fame. A star for Steve. A star for Dietz. We'll marry Brazilian models. We'll battle addiction."
"This is the desert," I said. "This isn't even the desert where people go and say, Oh, I went to the desert, I lost eighty bucks on the slots but I found this skull. This is actually the fucking desert."
"Okay," said Dietz, "I lied to you. It's the desert."
We had to wait for the emergency chutes to inflate. Dietz said the deplaning platform was on the fritz. The New Zealanders were having chicken fights in the rear of the cabin. A great cheer went up as one man split his head on the luggage bin.
Layover fever, Dietz said.
We slid down to the desert floor, walked out across the waste. We walked for a while. The Rad Balm girl and some of her friends were with us, a few of the New Zealanders, too. There were some kids in skate pads who said they were from St. Louis. The going was slow. Every few feet there was a blindside tackle, a tussle in the sand. The man who'd injured himself on the luggage bin was beaten severely again. His mates laughed and called him a poof. The skate kids spit on his head. It appeared he'd been sacrificed by the Kiwis to the greater glory of international goodwill.
"Violence will be met with decisive violence," said Dietz, but nobody paid him any heed.
We passed the remnants of an encampment. Empty water bottles, tattered tents. Sun-browned business cards lay strewn with charred bones in a fire pit. There was a jar of glitter on a rock, a cell phone wedged in the crook of a cactus. Signs and pseudo-signs. Sense and sensimilla. Goofball shit.
"Thought they were the new Dionysians," said Dietz. "They're all dead now."
"They're not dead," I said. "They got downsized."
"You tell your story, I'll tell mine."
Just past the next rise we caught sight of a huge metal-skinned hangar. It could have been the hull of some alien ship, sunk belly up in ancient sea boil. More likely it was something the feds had pawned off in the last budget crisis, or forgotten about entirely, abandoned to the war nerds who sneaked inside to jot maps, jack soda machines.
The glare off the hangar was strong. Dietz handed me a pair of aviator glasses. As I put them on I heard the plane start to taxi behind us.
"Don't look back," he said. "You'll turn into All-Spice."
"Right," I said.
"There are a lot of little shits where we're going," said Dietz. "Don't let it get to you. Remember who you are. You're the Subject Steve."
"Right," I said.
We swung down a high ridge to the hangar. Dietz called to some men lounging near the enormous door. It took them a while to slide it back. There were shapes there in the darkness, lit hives receding into the vast cool of the room. Varnished deskpieces in workstation clusters spiraled out of a raised hub. Kids, dozens of kids in bughead earphones tapped away at consoles in low golden light. There was a kind of liquid quiet in the room, a strange drone joy. People tapped each other, whispered, giggled softly over the tidal click of keypads.
Most of the workstations included a shelving unit for extra drives, office swag. Exhibits in kiddie kitsch abounded. TV tie-in lunchbox collections, Matchbox cars, bandoleer'd action figures. They seemed to be the same order of artifact my peers had hoarded, though I had only the vaguest sense of these versions. They'd probably reigned the schoolyards about the time I was blowing dormroom snowcaps with William. Dietz led me past a set of plastic poodles hanging on a wire. The dogs lit up and yapped.
"I me ma," they said. "I ma me."
We cut through a row of cube dividers to the hub area. Bobby Trubate sat with his feet up in a white leather easy chair. He wore rope sandals, a mesh robe with platinum trim, the outfit of a man who goes to court to have his name changed to a prime number. Bits of the mesh were dark with sweat. He flipped his ring binder shut.
"Steve-o. Get up here, buddy!"
He hoisted me up to his dais, bent me in a tender headlock.
"Nice place," I said, ducked loose from his robe folds.
"Should of seen this dump before I leased it. Brought in the best industrial decorator around. My investors went nuts, but fuck them. They invested in a visionary so they should expect vision. Dietz, you old fuck, hold the fort."
I followed Trubate through a side door into a wide wood-beamed room. It was skylit, full of lush rustic comforts, animal skins, teak. A bank of monitors was mounted in the wall. Some screens showed Realms locations, the soil room, the hospital bed. Others scrolled pages from the Realms website, or surveilled the workers in the hangar. A few pulled in random programming, soccer games from South America, Polish soaps. The thatch hut logo blinked from every corner.
"Can I get you something?" said Trubate. "Vodka frappe? A frosty rail?"
"Is that the road to redemption?"
"Things have changed a bit."
"They seemed to have changed a lot for Heinrich," I said. "Unless it's your makeup team that's made him look like death."
"No," he said, "that's death."
Trubate squinnied his eyes. There was something scooped-out about him, I saw now, sick. A thin vein in his temple was thumping hard. I wondered what dregs of goodies it was bearing from his brain.
"I don't know," he said softly. "It's so fucked. I almost feel like it's my fault. He wasn't strong enough for the relocation. The tumors moved fast."
"So did you."
"The hut did some shit to me," he said. "Maybe not what Heinrich had in mind. The branks. The breast ripper. I saw it all so plain after that. I'd been such a child. They say actors are children."
"So you wanted to direct."
"Don't be snide. Snidery is the last refuge of dickwads. The Center was no longer viable. It was time to take things to the next level. I couldn't run away from my talent. I am Hollywood, after all. I am more than Hollywood."
"Old Gold, too?"
"Hey, everyone was welcome. Heinrich was sick. The bills were piling up. The marshals were coming. I made some phone calls. Saved the fucking day. We have a new home for you, Steve. But you've got to earn your keep."
Trubate batted something out of my hair.
"Ladybug," he said.
"Let's see it."
"Maybe not a ladybug," said Trubate, pinched something in his fingers to a smear. "I've got to scram. Goddamn investor teleconference. They don't like the figures. Fuck the figures. They want their money. Fuck them. Do I look like I have the money? If I'd spent it on speedballs and pussy they'd understand. That they can get their heads around. But a glimpse of the truth? No fucking way."