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  ‘I wouldn’t have to do that,’ I said, ‘I remember what you said.’

  ‘Even better. Look: just, keep it in mind; I didn’t bring any paperwork or anything. But the job’s yours.’

  ‘I’ll keep it in mind.’

  ‘Cool. So what’s up. You never call; you never EMail me.’

  ‘I did call: your number had been disconnected—’

  ‘I lose more phones in hotel rooms....’

  ‘And...I think I EMailed you. Maybe I didn’t. Have you still got that thing at HotmailDotCom?’

  ‘Yeah. I’ll check it and look for you. Or just EMail me—how bout I EMail you and we pick it up from there. I threw my phone in the Themes, so I haven’t got a number right now; I’ll let you know when I get a new one.’

  ‘Okay. Or, just—here: tattoo this.’ I brought up my number on my phone and showed it to him; he found a Sharpie in his pocket and wrote it on his arm between images.

  ‘Cool,’ he said, ‘So—but you’re deleting the alienbook?’

  ‘It just annoys me.’

  ‘Before it’s done? Weird. I’d get it if you had to sing it every night for six nights in a week.’

  ‘You’ve trashed songs halfway through writing them. I know: I’ve got old notebooks with my stuff on two hundred and ninety pages, and your stuff in your handwriting in the back.’

  ‘Really? Wait: which songs.’

  ‘I dunno; I’d have to look at them; it’s been a few years.’

  ‘Figures. You’ve probably got all the good stuff I’ve been trying to remember since last century. EBay it and see what they’ll give you; I’ll double it, get them back, record them, and make fifty million bucks.’

  ‘Probably. A couple of those Spirals are books I never released; I should probably do the same thing.’

  ‘You should, if they’re the ones I’m thinking of. You had that one with the...the dragons, or something. You’ve never released that, have you?’

  ‘The...oh. Nope. That one did suck.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he reiterated, ‘But I like stupid.’

  ‘So, what are you doing here. You just walked in, and—’

  ‘Actually, I’ve been taking cabs from place to place I thought you might be. Then I saw your car here. You’re still driving the “Millennium Falcon”?’

  ‘Show me an eight cylindre made this century which doesn’t look too stupid to drive.’

  ‘The new Corvettes are okay. Almost bought one last month.’

  ‘Maybe. But I like flipup headlights.’

  ‘Well, yeah.’

  ‘Is the taxi still out there?’

  ‘Um...yup. I should probably go pay the guy.’ He jumped up and passed Leslie on her way back in.

  ‘Was that...?’ she began to ask when I started nodding.

  ‘It’s a long story. One I might be writing, apparently.’

  ‘You said you knew each other.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Why the hell would you know—oh wait: you knew each other as kids, didn’t you.’

  ‘Yeah. Back in the eighties. Dumb luck we each went off and did the same job with a different audience.’

  ‘Actually, that’s totally cool,’ she said, looking at Duma Key, ‘Like in “It”: everyone from the scene going out and becoming massively successful. Was Pennywise involved?’

  ‘After a fashion. The town sucked enough that Pennywise woulda been better; everyone living there was angry enough to go out and do something just to complain about it. Apparently, that turned out to be a trend.’

  Rockstar bounced back to the table, stopping as he saw Leslie in his seat. ‘Oh. Hello.’

  ‘Leslie: Tiny Tim.’

  ‘Leslie,’ he said, and then, ‘Dean Koontz.’

  ‘Nice,’ I said.

  ‘No worse than Tiny Fucking Tim.’

  ‘We could debate that,’ I said.

  ‘John Saul?’

  ‘Stop trying.’

  ‘So, am I okay to sit here, or—’

  ‘Oh!’ Leslie moved over, making room, ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘Cool. You know: your guy’s deleting his alienbook.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘We were just talking about that.’ She looked directly at me. ‘About how stupid it would be to delete it, because it’s so good.’

  ‘Is it? I just saw Page Ninety-seven. It looked...bookish.’

  ‘Did he tell you what it’s about?’

  ‘Uh...aliens attacking Jerry Springer? Maybe not really.’

  ‘Aliens manage to see television as broadcast via satellite,’ she explained, ‘beginning with—did you keep the thing about the VietNam War? I remember you were wondering whether the satellites were in place in time for that. Anyway: more importantly, they see everything from Geraldo Rivera getting hit by a chair to the onslaught of bullshit available on a thousand channels today, judge the planet by that alone, and attack before we can get out into the universe to spread this virus.’

  Rockstar looked at me in something like horror. ‘You’re deleting that. Are you fucking retarded? No, fuck that: you write it, or I will.’

  ‘There are other problems with it,’ I said.

  ‘Fuck it. That alone is a story. If something else doesn’t work, delete that, not the book itself.’

  ‘That’s what I’ve been saying,’ Leslie added.

  ‘It’s not deleted yet,’ I said, ‘I’m still thinking about it.’

  ‘You just do this, don’t you,’ he said, ‘You did this in the beginning. That first book when you were seventeen. How many times did I talk you out of deleting that halfway through.’

  ‘Oh really,’ Leslie said, overinterested.

  ‘Uh...that was a different book. Kids trying to make sense of rich parents destroyed by a nineteen-eighty-seven marketcrash and aliens attacking in twenty twelve are a little...different.’

  ‘Yeah, but your process was the same. I do remember some stuff. Like the day “Less than Zero” came out and you were convinced you’d just got all scooped.’

  ‘It was similar.’

  ‘And there was that whole thing about the one guy’s car?’

  ‘The Banshee. Toldya that was a mistake.’

  ‘It wasn’t a mistake because they never built it; it was a mistake because your story was set in eighty-seven, when they hadn’t even shelved it yet.’

  ‘There was a Banshee?’ Leslie asked.

  I took a breath. ‘When I wrote the book—and, yeah: I was seventeen—I was thinking that, if they made a film, they’d have to get a Banshee if I put it in the story. And then, you know, maybe I could have it afterward. Like I knew how films were made back then. I barely get it now.’

  ‘Okay: there you go,’ Rockstar said, ‘You finish this book, and I’ll personally go to Pontiac and make them make you a Banshee. Deal?’

  ‘You haven’t got enough. And I don’t want one anymore. Much.’

  ‘I’ll buy you a car. Name it. Sky’s the limit. Bugatti. One of those Lamborghini raptor things they only made, like, a dozen of.’

  ‘You’d spend six or seven figures on a car, and give it to me, just to get me to finish a book you’ve read one page of.’

  ‘I’d spend six or seven figures on a car and give it to you if you were holding the last doughnut captive: I’m stupid.’

  ‘I’ll think about it.’

  ‘You should. Meanwhile: keep writing.’

  ‘You want me to sit here writing a book at you after you flew here from Rome.’

  ‘Why not. Besides: I should probably get outta here before wikipedia reports me dead. Call in and surrender so I can go play rockstar tomor—tonight in...whatever; Amsterdam, I think. Which would have its perks, of course.’ He cackled, standing up and pointing at me. ‘Write the book, Novelist: I know where you live.’ He tapped my phone number on his arm and wandered toward the payphones in the lobby.

  ‘So, he’s insane,’ Leslie said.

  ‘You have no idea.’

  ‘Was that really Tiny Tim?�
� Hutch asked.

  I ignored him and stared at the flashing cursor again for a while.

  ELEVEN

  ‘At the risk of being topically ironic,’ Chuck said, appearing to Leslie’s left, ‘is it cool if I join you guys?’

  It was 12.15 and I’d spent about five minutes typing relative nothingness into the laptop, knowing I’d likely delete it after reading it over: Angie’s insertion into the city following the strike, something like Snake Plissken’s invasion of Manhattan in Escape from New York, minus any real sense of danger. ‘Just you?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s kinda the point,’ Chuck said, sliding into the booth as Leslie moved in to give him room, ‘I’m starting to miss the emo kids.’

  I looked over to 73: Hutch was turned round in his seat to face us like a deplorable dog discarded to the rear window of a stationwagon in its final trip to the vet to be put down for some latestage congenital besetment; I slid slightly to my right, more fully blocking access to the theoretical fourth seat of the booth, maintaining eye contact; after a few seconds, pouting, he dropped back into position facing George across the emptiness of Table 74.

  On the XM, someone thought it would be a good idea to play Kajagoogoo’s Too Shy, getting me to smirk at the ceiling. ‘I blame these guys,’ I said.

  ‘The band?’ Leslie asked.

  ‘The turning point,’ I explained, ‘Kajagoogoo trying to set Bromleypunk to actual music, beginning a trend leading to The Cure and every emotastic whimperfest since. It helped that Chris Hamill looked like Faramir from “The Lord of the Rings” put on permanent press.’

  Leslie blinked. ‘Have I mentioned that, when you go all arcane in a book, where people can stop reading and look things up, it’s bad enough; but when you do it live you sound like a sarcastic encyclopaedia?’

  ‘If not, you have now,’ I said, ‘So it’s covered.’

  ‘Sad,’ Chuck said, ‘is that, at this point, emo’s about the only music left. Since we’re not counting rap. And then emo’s just covering Phil Collins and Kate Bush, at least in the radio scene. I’m not sure I’ve heard anything in here tonight recorded this millennium.’

  I shrugged, pointing a thumb doorward. ‘Rockstar’s still at it; you just wouldn’t hear his stuff in a restaurant. Unless he’s sitting there singing it to disturb people.’

  ‘True,’ Chuck said.

  ‘I remember in nineteen ninety-four when I heard Alice Cooper’s “It’s Me” at a Perkins; I actually checked to make sure I wasn’t listening to a Discman. On the other hand, someone did play Korn a few minutes ago; so, you never know.’

  ‘XM doesn’t count,’ Chuck said, ‘It’s not the preprogrammed loop approved by Corporate. Restaurants are just starting to use it because it’s cheaper than the CDI setup, and tends not to advertise their competitors between songs and traffic reports.’

  ‘Science marches on,’ I said, staring at the screen. Then, thinking again about Plissken: ‘Huh.’

  ‘Huh?’ Chuck asked.

  ‘Nothing. I just realised something funny. About a year ago, I was looking at IMDBDotCom and wound up at “Escape from New York”, back in those idiotic messageboards I should never look at—brainless, CapsLocked, illiterate morons all positing what they misidentify as theories, having never gone to school. One thread, in the days leading up to the election, was asking whether the president, English though he was, was a democrat or a republican. It just occurred to me: he couldn’t have been either.’

  ‘Because he was English?’

  ‘Because the whole plotline involved him returning from a summit about fusion. No republican would regard fusion as anything but only a theory; also, he was all about expecting others to save him, then disregarded those who did. On the other hand, he was apparently in favour of fusion, where democrats would think of fusion as nuclear power designed to globalwarm the universe faster than they thought the LHC would cook it. And he can’t have been a libertarian, or Manhattan wouldn’t have been a prison at all.’

  ‘Huh.’

  ‘Or it was just a fairly stupid film which shoulda ended halfway through, once Plissken had secured the president, neutralising the danger of sending in helicopters to extract him.’

  ‘Hey,’ Chuck said, squinting, ‘yeah.’

  ‘Never show a film to a writer,’ I warned.

  ‘They’re remaking it, you know.’

  ‘No they’re not,’ I said, ‘They might be making “Escape from New York”; but I can just about promise that it’ll be nothing but a quick, boring Rambo film sent directly to disc. Technically, they remade “Day of the Dead”, somehow taking arguably the most intelligent of Romero’s five films and turning it into “Aliens” with a touch of “V”. That’s “Visitors”, not “Vendetta”. That went straight to disc too.’

  Sadly, HippyGuy caught that last bit. ‘Yeah: “V for Visitors” was stupid, except for Willie; “V for Vendetta” was good though: Guy Fawkes.’

  ‘Why do people idolise Guy Fawkes,’ I asked, ‘What’s admirable about a largely failed attempt to replace one theocracy with another. “Vendetta” was more meaningless still, serving only to give boring people a new mask following Michael Myers in the seventies, Jason Voorhees in the eighties, and Ghostface in the nineties. Whee: Anonymous—none of us are as illiterate as all of us.’

  ‘Huh?’ HippyGuy asked.

  ‘None is,’ I said, ‘None being a singular quantity, the verb tense is “none is”, not “none are”.’

  ‘Anonymous?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m shocked and amazed that you don’t know,’ I said.

  Hutch slunk over, dragging a chair from one of the tables and positioning it at the edge of 71. Before he could sit down and annoy us, Jessica grabbed the chair and replaced it to its table.

  ‘Firehazard,’ she said, grabbing my coffeepot to go refill in the back, ‘Go back to your table.’

  Somewhat dazed, Hutch did.

  I looked at Leslie. ‘Is it cool if I totally do her?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘You’re no fun,’ I said, staring at the cursor. And at the pagecount in the lower right. I was a hundred pages into a book I’d stopped caring about; worse: a hundred pages into a novella—maybe 35,000 words—maybe less. Microsoft Word was set to autosave every few minutes, and I’d probably saved Untitled2009.doc manually since last altering anything; but I hit ControlS again, just to feel like I was actively doing something with the laptop.

  Seeing me actively do something with the laptop, Chuck asked: ‘Are you working on the alien thing, or the new thing.’

  ‘Both,’ I said, ‘And neither.’

  ‘So you’re sitting here not smoking.’

  ‘Pretty much.’

  ‘Like anyone’s gonna buy a book about an alien invasion,’ HippyGuy blathered. Misidentifying him as a peacenik, I ignored him, figuring he’d shut up without a stimulus. Optimistic me. ‘Nobody would believe that the visitors are warmongers like people are.’

  ‘HG Wells,’ I said, ‘September the twenty-first eighteen sixty-six to August the thirteenth nineteen forty-six, wrote “The War of the Worlds” in eighteen ninety-eight. Apparently forgotten by Halloween nineteen thirty-eight when Orson Welles fooled approximately everyone with a radio into believing that Herbert George’s fictional invasion was in fact occurring. Since nineteen thirty-eight, invasion literature, already common without aliens before the first world war, has remained popular.’ Having stashed a copy of The War of the Worlds on the laptop for reference, I opened it quickly and searched for dodo to bring up a paragraph. ‘Wells justified the Martian invasion with “before we judge them too harshly, we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished Bison and the Dodo, but upon its own inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred
in the same spirit”. So. To reiterate: aliens, to whatever extent they might exist and know about Earth, being animals, are as likely as any other species to invade new lands.’

  ‘Just because people invade doesn’t mean animals invade,’ he said.

  ‘No. Animals invade because animals invade. That’s the ecosystemic basis of natural selection: those animals better suited for a given environment will ultimately invade and replace its indigenous inhabitants. It’s not personal; it’s just how life works.’

  ‘You’re confusing animals with people,’ he said, ‘People invade over money and resources and religions and stuff; animals don’t invade, but get pushed to new environments as people destroy them.’

  ‘Uh, not really. People are animals; and animals have been invading new environments since about the time Earth cooled from magma.’

  ‘Tell that to the passenger pigeon.’

  ‘Find me one, and I will.’

  ‘I can’t. That’s my point.’

  ‘Good concession, then.’

  ‘What. Humans drove them to extinction. They didn’t drive humans to extinction.’

  ‘They weren’t superior. Maybe aliens would be.’

  ‘Aliens wouldn’t drive anything to extinction.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, uninterested.

  ‘They don’t care about money. They don’t trash environments to make a buck.’

  ‘Are we on a new topic now?’

  ‘Nope. It’s the same topic. Humans destroy things for money. As long as there’s more money, they’ll keep destroying things. Now we’re destroying the oceans with offshore drilling to keep cars running for two or three more years.’

  ‘We’re destroying oceans on which we ship cars to other countries to keep them running for three years? You actually think people are that stupid? How do you destroy an ocean, anyway: are we talking about changing the physics allowing hydrogen to bond with oxygen?’

  ‘I’m talking about killing fish.’

  ‘Bears kill fish.’

  ‘Not all of them.’

  ‘Humans don’t kill all of them either. And, unlike bears, humans put them back.’