“Some, ah, recreational drug?”

“Phantomware countermeasures.”

“Wait, you’re supposed to be pro-phantomware, what’s with this ‘counter’?”

“We build it, we disable it. You’re frowning. We’re beyond good and evil here, the technology, it’s neutral, eh?”

Back to Felix’s basement pad in time for the evening movie on the Aboriginal Peoples’ Television Network, whose film library contained every Keanu Reeves movie ever made, including, that night, Felix’s personal favorite, Johnny Mnemonic (1995). They smoked weed, ordered in Montreal pizza topped with little-known forms of sausage, grew absorbed in the movie, and Nothing, as Heidi would put it, Happened, except that a couple days later Maxine flew back to New York with a file on Vip Epperdew chunkier by far than what she’d flown off with, and the tax office figured their money was well spent.

Then, for months, silence from them, till now suddenly here’s Axel again. “Just wannit to let you know, Vip’s ass is grass and the Finance lawn mower’s about to make its pass.”

“Thanks for the bulletin, I’ve been losing sleep.”

“The DA’s office is initiating the paperwork as we speak. All we still need to have is a couple of details. Like where is he. You wouldn’t happen to know.”

“Vip and I don’t exactly schmooze, Axel. Gee. A girl smiles even once at a material witness and everybody starts getting ideas.”

•   •   •

TONIGHT’S DESCENT INTO SLEEP is helical and slow. As insomniacs revisit certain melodies and lyrics of their youth, so Maxine keeps circling back to Reg Despard, back on board the Aristide Olt, that thin twinkling kid, so resolutely smiling through the miserable day-to-day of the underconnected indie moviemaker. To hope that this hashslingrz project of his will not turn too horrible on him is to wallow in a warm tub of denial. Something else is up, Reg knew exactly who to bring this ticket to, he read Maxine correctly, knew she could feel something like his own alarm at the perimeters of ordinary greed overstepped, the engines of night and contrived oblivion, out on the tracks, cranking up to speed . . .

At which point, just before the transition to REM, the phone rings and it’s Reg himself.

“It ain’t a movie anymore, Maxi.”

“How early tomorrow you planning to be up, Reg?” Or to put it another way, it’s the middle of the fucking night here.

“Not going to sleep tonight.”

Meaning Maxine’s not likely to either. So they meet for very early breakfast at a 24-hour Ukrainian joint in the East Village. Reg is over in a corner in back, picking away at his PowerBook. It’s summertime, not too humid or horrible yet, but he’s sweating.

“You look like shit, Reg, what happened?”

“Technically,” moving his hands away from the keyboard, “I’m supposed to have free run of hashslingrz, right? Except I always knew I didn’t. And, well, yesterday, finally, I walked through the wrong door.”

“You’re sure you didn’t find it locked and jimmy it?”

“Well, it shouldn’t’ve been locked, sign on the door said ‘Toilet.’”

“So you entered illegally . . .”

“Whatever. Here’s this room, no porcelain in sight, looks like a lab, test benches, equipment and shit, cables, plugs, parts and labor for some job order I quickly realize I don’t want to know nothin about. Plus then’s when I notice there’s all these jabberin A-rabs around, who the minute I come through the door they all dummy up.”

“How do you know it’s Arabs, they’re wearing outfits, there’s camels?”

“Sounded like that’s what they were talking, they weren’t Anglos, or Chinese, and when I waved at them like ‘Yo my sand niggas, what up—’”

“Reg.”

“Well, more like Ayn al-hammam, where’s the toilet, and one of them comes right over, cold, polite, ‘You are looking for toilet, sir?’ There is some muttering, but nobody shoots at me.”

“Did they see the camera?”

“Hard to say. Five minutes later I’m summoned to the office of the Big Ice Pick himself, first thing he wants to know is did I get any footage of the room or the guys in it. I tell him no. I’m lying of course.

“And he’s like, ’Cause if you did get footage, you would need to give that to me.’ It was that ‘need,’ I think, like when the cops tell you you ‘need’ to step away from the car. That’s when I started to get scared. Second thoughts about the whole fuckin project, frankly.”

“What were these guys doing? Assembling a bomb?”

“I hope not. Way too many circuit cards layin around. Any bomb with that much logic attached to it? Trouble down the line.”

“Can I look at the footage?”

“I’ll put it on a disc for you.”

“Has Eric seen it?”

“Not yet, he’s been out on patrol, as we speak someplace in the Brooklyn-Queens border country, pretending to be a doper looking for qat. But really looking for Ice’s hawaldar.”

“How’d he get so motivated all of a sudden?”

“Think it’s about scoring, but I try not to ask.”

•   •   •

SHE’S IN THE SHOWER trying to get lucid when somebody sticks their head around the curtain and begins making with the shrill ee-ee-ee shower-scene effects from Psycho (1960). Time was she would have screamed, had some kind of episode, but now, recognizing the idea of merriment here, she only mutters, “Evening, honeybunch,” for it is who but the of course nowhere-near-history Horst Loeffler, showing up, like Basil St. John in the life of Brenda Starr, unannounced, another year’s worth of lines deepening on his face, poised already for departure, while in the reverse shot the little polarized tear flashes, right on cue, appear along the edges of Brenda Starr’s eyelids.

“Hey! I’m a day early, you surprised?”

“No and also try to quit leering, Horst? I’ll be out of here in a minute.” Is that a hardon? She has retreated into the shower too quick to tell.

She arrives in the kitchen, steam-rosy and damp, hair twisted up in a towel, wearing a terry-cloth robe stolen from a spa in Colorado where they once passed a couple of weeks, back when the world was romantic, to find Horst humming, for some reason she will never ask about, the Mister Rogers theme, “It’s a beautiful day in this neighborhood,” while rooting around in the freezer. Commenting on different pieces of frost-covered history. Slim pickings on the airplane, no doubt.

“Here it is.” Horst, with a dowser’s gift specific to Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, brings out a semicrystallized quart of Chunky Monkey, sits down, takes an oversize spoon in each hand, and digs in. “So,” after a while, “where are the boys?”

The extra spoon, she has learned, is for mooshing it up. “Otis is having supper at Fiona’s, Ziggy’s over at school, rehearsing. They’re putting on Guys and Dolls Saturday night, so you’re just in time, Ziggy’s gonna be Nathan Detroit. Got some on your nose there.”

“Missed you guys.” Something peculiar in his tone suggests, not for the first time, that if Maxine chooses to, she might concede that, far from demanding a self-obsessed chase around the world after black-orchid serum, in fact and scarcely known to Horst himself, what his immune system is really not handling too well these days is the dreaded Ex-Husband Blues.

“We’re probably ordering in, soon as Ziggy gets back, if you’re interested.”

Which is about when Ziggy comes strolling in. “Mom, who’s the sleazebag, lemme guess, another blind date?”

“What,” Horst with the once-over, “you again.”

Embracing, it seems to Maxine out the corner of her eye, a little longer than you’d expect.

“How’s ’at Jewish asskicking?”

“Oh, comin along. Killed an instructor last week.”

“Awesome.”

Maxine pretending to look through a pile of take-out menus, “What do you guys want to eat? Besides something that’s still alive.”

“Long ’s it ain’t none that macro wacko hippie food.”