“Get her to introduce us, all four of them.”
“She doesn’t think he’s here.”
“I don’t think I’m here either.”
Our server approached.
She was wearing a stetson and roper boots, denim overalls underall which I’m not sure.
“Your preferenced meals will be out momentarily,” she said. “For now, does anyone need anything?”
Finn said, “Nada.”
“Just as an update,” she smiled, “for dessert you’ll be having the birthday cake, which is glutenfree, the candles are sustainable beeswax.”
“Muchas gracias.” Finn reached out to tug straight her bandana.
“Also keep in mind,” she was saying as she swatted his hand, “with continued climate change, drought will affect over half of the world in this century alone. That’s half of the whole world, not just the developing. So, we’re doing all we can to moderate our water waste. By not changing your plates, you’re changing lives. Snap the QR on your napkin rings to get involved.”
I excused myself behind her: pretense was the toilet, purpose was the bar.
I trailed, and turned past the wagonwheel tables of every industry’s pioneers, destined for the dimming. Passing fame, passing actual fame. Not the observed in the park, but the celebrated globally. People—what’s more than people? more like businesses, companies, corporations, states unto themselves?—whose reps, even, whose lowliest brand ambassadors, would never return my calls.
It was a reality show—an actuality show—a making of a behind the scenes collision. Two Nobel laureates (Physics, Peace), two models whose models, unlike the laureates’, I understood (thanks, Rach), the actor who got top billing in something Adam was in (won’t drop a name, but rhymes with “Mom Thanks”), another who won an Oscar for directing a host of somethings Adam was never in (rhymes with “Even Spielberg”), an andrologist with an infomercial system, a copyright attorney who commented on extremist cable, and Oprah? Fat Oprah and her skinnier double? Everyone lounging, chatty, bingey purgey—entouraging one another, giving interview, posing, thronging the serapedraped vitamix stations, mingling the dancezones, Tethelding selfies in pic and vid while decrying the paparazzi.
If they were invited, they were a celebrity. Even if this was just a job for them, they were a celeb. They had to be, the fame was contaminating. The wraithy freckled red bandanafied servergirl, all the servers, they were moonlighting microphenoms not only by moonlight but in their true industries too, with even the busboys, the prides of Sonora, maintaining their own stalky followings.
I joined, danced through—no one else had my moves—toward a holographic bonfire lighting up the forest. Finally, a pit of the party’s only stiffer provision, a makeshift cantina camp pitched twinkly out in the night like the last settlement before everything went savage—calling a younger crowd, guzzling heirloom beers and heritage cocktails of one part freerange to two parts forage, muddled into mason jars out of the back bays of circled Conestogas.
A girl bordelloized to impress asked, “When’s Lady Gaga showing?” A ranchhanded guy said, “It’s Dylan & Jagger,” and the girl asked, “Who’s that?”
I waited for my hooch behind a pornstached chillionaire and his two brogrammer friends, by which I mean his coworkers at #Summerize, according to their shirts and shorts and hats.
One said, “You can’t change the scale without scaling the change.”
Another said, “Evoke transcendence.”
The chillionaire said, “Will you stop reading that neurolinguistic reinforcement pickup artist shit? This party’s got mad fucking latency to it.”
His coworkers nodded up from their Tethelds and the transcendence guy said, “All paradigms can be realigned, modulo a pussy deficit. Because if we don’t count the nontech women, who don’t count us, we’re dealing with 6s, the same as always, mid 6s.”
“Get positivized,” the scalar change guy said. “Or just get beyond the systems integration analysts—the ad rep girls are 8s for def.”
The chillionaire said, “For me, this birthday’s all about trying to get an audience with the boss. I mean, he bought us without even meeting us, who does that?”
His coworkers clenched smiles at me. The chillionaire noticed and answered himself, “A fucking genius is who. What are you guys feeling—the no carbs rum horchata punch? Or the Red Bull Añejo Paloma?”
But his coworkers’ faces shone expressionlessly rapt again in the glows of their Tethelds until the chillionaire said, “Before your batteries are cashed, are you guys checking in with your Tetsets?”
They keyed, and the scalar change guy said, “This says there’s a quidditch game for new acqhires happening over by the stables.”
The transcendence guy said, “This says if anyone finds a yellow/black GoreTex GoreBike windstopper cycling shell, please reply, reward negotiable.”
“There’s a capture the flag tourney for vest & resters that’s voting now on team captains.”
“This says P Diddy’s taking all the ad rep pussy to the sweat lodge.”
“Hey, sorry, disruption incoming,” and the chillionaire was talking to me now. “Can you just take a square of us?”
He handed me his Tetheld, the only one I’ve ever held, and it was anodized cool. I tried to get them all onscreen. But I wasn’t sure what to press, or if there was anything to press. Or even whether the recording was still or in motion, with sound. An Asian, an Arab, and an Indian, all speaking together in questionmarks like white girls. Such were my unspoken thoughts, which only I can record, I think.
The Asian thanked me and posted the groupsquare crossplatform from his Tetset and the Arab and Indian reposted to their own Tetsets, and read the replies as they blipped in: “giddyup you cutie cowboys,” “fuck u and fuck the startup u rode in on.”
It was their turn to order from the Conestoga. They ordered waters with electrolytes.
I had the fringey coonskincapped hipster pour me an artisanal vodka with artisanal rocks.
As I went for a cig he said, “No smoking.”
“Where?”
“Nowhere on property.”
They didn’t need a sign. They needed a sign for everything else.
“La Bano?” I pointed, “the toilets?” and while the frontierster was pointing them out, I swiped a bottle, biomash rye.
I headed away, swerved for the trees. Forgive me. Fine me for tossing my lighter. It was empty but I still had matches.
I staggered, rolled like a stone. It was all a ball of feints, disguises. Power masquerading as responsibility, stewardship. Excess but slim, trim. Spiritual emaciation in good citizen costume. Wastefulness spun as ethical consumption. A party in honor of health, which improved health. Nothing could fool me, or could fool me enough.
Still, I couldn’t get no satisfaction—the leaves rasping hey hey hey. Cause I tried, and I tried, and I tried, and I tried—to distinguish between the rustic and the epic style art: a Calder stabile like a girdered ferruginous rhododendron, and what was either a Richard Serra or a Donald Judd or a boulder.
I couldn’t shake a certain bumpkinish feeling, that sense of being a hick, a rube, an unacceptable regression. I spurred myself sloppy, smoked and drank with the roots.
Just ahead was a stand of trees, just tremendous trees, mossy antennas, redwood but pulsing black—their monitors were black, and their bark was livid brown, quakefissured. They too had to acclimate after being transplanted. Weldmesh fence prevented my touch. The path went around them and pebbled away and was panned into sand by the grass.
It was a spit of beach along a salina bayscape. A dimidiate moon, and stars falling darkly pacific.
From out of the nebula and down the beach, a desperado was approaching. I didn’t have a weapon, I was freelance. I dug in, sparked the pack’s penultimate cig, contemplated another message for the bottle besides breaking it. On his skull, on mine.