Lurkers Read online

  ‘You can’t put them back when you’ve poisoned the oceans.’

  ‘You haven’t established that the oceans are being poisoned.’

  ‘You don’t think oil leaking into the ocean will poison it?’

  ‘I don’t think it’s done it yet. For millions of years oil’s been leaking out of the seabeds into the open water. I don’t see how adding a drill to the equation changes anything.’

  ‘It changes a lot. It makes money.’

  ‘So, your problem isn’t with natural selection and extinction,’ I said, ‘but with money.’

  ‘It’s always about the money,’ he said.

  ‘Got any?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Money,’ I said, ‘Got any?’

  ‘Um, yeah?’

  ‘A lot?’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Just checking.’

  ‘Why’s it matter if I’ve got money.’

  ‘Keep backing into your corner, and you’ll see.’

  ‘Whatever,’ he said.

  ‘Oh: you’re done? Good.’ I went back to staring at the blinking cursor.

  ‘So, you like paying three bucks a gallon?’

  The question coming out of nowhere, I bothered to think about it for a second. ‘Apparently.’

  ‘Oh, so you’re stupid.’

  ‘I don’t do things I don’t like to do. If I didn’t like spending three bucks a gallon, I wouldn’t do it.’

  ‘Yeah. Then how would you get around.’

  ‘Skateboard. Feet. Whatever.’

  ‘That’s stupid.’

  ‘Is it? Damn. If only there were some alternative. Think anyone would go for some sort of motorised carriage to convey people and cargo from place to place?’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about.’

  ‘Cars,’ I said, ‘You’ve just identified a need and a market for cars. Fill it and make millions.’

  ‘Oh sure: anything to get rich.’

  ‘Define “rich”,’ I said.

  ‘Six figures a year?’

  ‘You’re an idiot.’

  ‘I’m an idiot because I don’t wanna make millions making cars?’

  ‘In part,’ I said.

  ‘So, you’d make millions making cars.’

  ‘I’d make millions writing books.’

  ‘You’re not going to.’

  ‘We’ll let that be your little secret.’

  ‘Like money proves anything.’

  ‘It proves you can make money.’

  ‘It proves you can get it,’ he said, ‘and keep it from everyone else.’

  ‘No one else wants it,’ I said, ‘If they did, they’d go get some.’

  ‘You think it’s as easy to go make money as it is to just inherit it.’

  ‘I don’t think a significant fraction of a percentage of the rich inherited anything,’ I said, ‘I think ninety-nine point X percent of the rich started out with what you have or less, and built up whatever they have now.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  I went back to the laptop again.

  ‘Nothing else to say?’ he asked.

  ‘I was devastated by your clever use of “whatever”,’ I said, ‘Also: I didn’t want to talk to you in the first place.’

  ‘Too good for me because you make millions writing books?’

  ‘It’s a factor.’

  ‘You’re the reason we need a redistribution of wealth,’ He said.

  ‘And you’re the reason we won’t be having one.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean.’

  ‘That the world is run by grownups. And we grownups are in no hurry to seek the economic advise of mendicants who, if they understood Thing One about economics, wouldn’t be poor.’

  ‘Who says I’m poor,’ he challenged.

  ‘You do. You have money, but not a lot; six figures is rich. Remember?’

  ‘That doesn’t mean I don’t understand economics.’

  ‘It’s a strong indication.’

  ‘Maybe I just don’t have a need for the money.’

  ‘Then go make it and give it away; redistribute it.’

  ‘Whatever,’ he said.

  ‘I’m done talking to you,’ I said, ‘I’ve got a book to write, release, sell, make millions, and buy an oilrig as a taxshelter.’

  TWELVE

  Half past midnight. Smokebreak.

  I was just putting my lighter back in my pocket when Leslie appeared.

  ‘Chuck’s watching the laptop,’ she said.

  I nodded. ‘Of course, that doesn’t prevent that idiot Hutch from sitting there by the time we get back.’

  ‘He’s busy talking to Captain Planet from his own table.’

  ‘Captain Planet,’ I echoed, ‘What a stupid idea. The name alone is stupid. What the hell would Captain Planet do, anyway: command Private Industry? Meanwhile, he’s subordinate to Major Destruction; even if he tries to go over Major Destruction’s head, he runs into General Malaise. He’s doomed.’

  ‘You really do think too much.’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Y’know: your argument was a bit flawed,’ she said, ‘Poor people could understand economics; there could be other reasons why they’re poor.’

  ‘There’s exactly one reason why people are poor, at least in this country,’ I said, ‘They spend more than they make.’

  ‘Or they get robbed.’

  ‘Same result. Make X: spend X or more: go broke; make X: spend less than X: have money.’

  ‘What about people who don’t make enough in the first place to live on.’

  ‘No such animal,’ I said, ‘Not in the US, anyway. To the extent that people need bread and water to survive, and to the extent that a welfare state exists, you can’t possibly go broke in this country while buying necessities. That said: you show me a perfectly destitute borderline homeless moron, and I’ll show you his digital cable bill.’

  ‘Well, yeah; but cable’s...useful. Watch the right channels, learn stuff, apply it to making money.’

  ‘So it’s an investment,’ I said, ‘I’ll buy that. I won’t buy that an investment is necessary to survival. That cable isn’t a writeoff is its own weirdness; but that one’s not my fault.’

  ‘It’s not a writeoff because it’s mostly the talkshows your aliens consider representative of the planet.’

  ‘It’s incidental,’ I said, ‘Cable notwithstanding, people order pizzas and buy videogames and—to be honest—buy books. If I write a book, and you buy it, you’re either doing better than average for the planet, or you’re an idiot wasting the money you should be saving for bread and water.’

  ‘People don’t wanna live on bread and water.’

  ‘I don’t agree that suicide should be a crime. Kill yourself and pray for reincarnation; maybe you’ll come back as an heir to an empire.’

  ‘Unrealistic,’ she said.

  ‘No more unrealistic than thinking it’s my fault that you don’t make enough for bread, water, and a Lexus leased for five years at loanshark rates.’

  ‘Someone leasing a Lexus has good credit.’

  ‘Yeah; that’s its own mess.’

  ‘What about someone just trying to maintain, like, a dying Datsun to get back and forth from work.’

  ‘I don’t know if you’ve heard about this yet, but driving is a privilege. If it were a right, it would be covered by welfare. Instead, we subsidise busses to get people lacking cars to and from the office. Though, granted, that doesn’t work very well in practise.’

  ‘So driving should be a right,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t disagree. Owning and operating a horse was a right, functionally, since it was the common mode of transportation of its day, enforcing the right to travel; owning and riding a horse may be a right to this day—no one’s really trying it. So, owning and operating a car, inasmuch as it’s the new horse, probably should be a right; if it’s not, then at minimum busses should run twenty-four hours and stop at every known intersection. Or—
and I’ve seen this in places at times—if the bus isn’t at a given place at a given time, you could call a cab, have it take you at least to the next functional bustop, and have the cabbie bill the city; I might go for that.’

  ‘You should go into politics.’

  ‘Yeah: waive my anonymity to help others; that sounds like me.’ I tossed my cigarette into the carpark and went inside.

  Chuck was sitting on the edge of his bench; he or Leslie had moved my backpack to the outside, probably assuming that Hutch wouldn’t push it inward to sit down. So I pushed it inward to sit down.

  ‘Saved you a seat,’ he said.

  ‘You didn’t look at the book?’

  ‘Why would I: it’s not done, is it?’

  ‘It’s just weird. I’m used to people waiting for any opportunity to read what I’ve got so far.’

  ‘I don’t do that. I might read it when it’s all there. If you don’t give up on it.’

  ‘I’m still working on that,’ I said.

  Leslie returned; Chuck moved inward for her.

  ‘I was telling him he should run for office,’ she told Chuck. He smirked, knowing I’d never do that.

  HippyGuy not knowing I’d never do that: ‘That’s all we need: another neocon fucking the people over.’

  ‘Boring,’ I said.

  ‘Welcome to the new America,’ HippyGuy said, ‘One guy works hard and pays all the taxes while another guy naps on a yacht and gets all the taxcuts.’

  I looked at him for a second, loosely hoping he was joking. He didn’t seem to be. ‘Le’me see if I’ve got this,’ I said, ‘One guy makes fifty thousand a year, paying ten thousand—twenty percent—in taxes while the other makes five hundred thousand a year, paying forty percent—two hundred thousand—twenty times the taxes of the first guy, and you’re whimpering that he might find a cheat dropping him down to only nineteen times the taxes?’

  ‘He still ends up with more.’

  ‘So, you want a system in which everyone makes forty thousand after taxes,’ I said.

  ‘It would be fair.’

  ‘And, before taxes, everyone makes fifty?’

  ‘Before taxes, some make less; taxes give them enough to end up with forty.’

  ‘So, if you’re making forty-one thousand, it’s in your interests to cut it out and make only forty. If everyone else catches on, no one makes more than forty in the first place. Where’s the money come from to punch up the guy making twenty a year to forty.’

  ‘Like people are gonna be happy with stopping at forty.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ I said, ‘That’s the point. If anything I make beyond forty is taken away...let’s drop this into terms you can understand. If you run up a hill and back, you get a dollar. If you do it forty thousand times in a year, you get forty thousand dollars. If you do it forty-one thousand times, you get forty thousand, because that last thousand goes to someone who only ran up the hill thirty-nine thousand times. Are you still gonna do it that extra thousand times?’

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘If everyone only ran up the hill forty thousand times or less,’ Chuck said, ‘They’d change it to thirty thousand to make up for the people only running twenty thousand times.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said, ‘The fact is that the government being something of a holding corporation make enough before taxation today to cover the total budget for nineteen ninety-eight. Taxation is gratuitous, fuelling the practise of spending what they get and getting what they spend. You want a scenario I’ve considered for a book? One year, everyone refuses to pay taxes, forcing the government to decide whether to live without the taxes, proving it can do that, or to arrest everyone for evasion, proving they can do that. Either way, they’d be doomed: that they’re able to operate with or without taxes would prove that taxation is supplemental at best.’

  ‘Is that true?’ Chuck asked, ‘That they make enough before taxes for nineteen ninety-eight.’

  ‘Apparently. I’ve seen the numbers on it. I’m not sure precisely where they get the money—postage stamps and whatever other products they sell, I suppose. But, evidently, the IRS exist pretty much entirely to pay for shit the congress have thought of buying in the last dozen years.’

  ‘So, you’re not a neocon,’ HippyGuy said, ‘You’re a libertarian.’

  ‘Well, yeah: I don’t makebelieve deities,’ I said, ‘Actually, no: I’m not a libertarian; I don’t care that much. I’m more of an anarchist: if and when the system fails, it’ll be zerosum; mankind can die out and some other species can have the planet.’

  ‘If we don’t kill them all first,’ HippyGuy whined.

  ‘You haven’t killed HIV yet,’ I said, ‘Or cancer. Or mosquitoes. Or any other organism no one’s lobbying to preserve.’

  ‘HIV was invented to kill black people,’ he lied, ‘And mosquitoes aren’t in any danger.’

  ‘Your second statement supporting my very point pales against the batshit lunacy of your first.’

  ‘Enjoy your sleep,’ HippyGuy said.

  ‘Boring,’ I said, ‘Tell someone not stringing together a hundred thousand words in an operational order so he can nap on a yacht making royalties to the unfairness of a hardworking buttonpushing chimp wageslaving at McDonald’s: I’m busy flaunting my evil education and superiority.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  Jessica stopped by my table, rattling my coffeepot to test its emptiness. ‘More?’

  ‘Sure’, I said, ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You still okay with coffee?’

  ‘Oh. Actually...le’me think for a minute.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll get this first.’ She walked off with the coffeepot.

  I’d stashed the menus we’d got in the beginning behind the salt and sugar and dessert card, against the wall beneath the window. I reclaimed one and looked it over quickly before handing it to Leslie. ‘Since I’m not financially restricted to bread and water,’ I told Chuck.

  ‘You’re not on a yacht, either,’ he said.

  ‘There are lots of reasons for that,’ I said, ‘the most important being disinterest.’

  ‘Another reason,’ HippyGuy intruded, ‘is that I’m not buying a copy of your book. You won’t have enough for a yacht.’

  ‘You shouldn’t buy a copy of the book,’ I told him, ‘That’s what I’ve been telling you. If you haven’t got enough money, don’t waste what you’ve got on luxuries like novels. If you have enough to buy a novel for forty bucks, don’t whimper about the redistribution of wealth, because you won’t like the outcome if you ever get it.’

  ‘That does seem like a lot,’ Chuck said.

  ‘Oh, it is,’ I acknowledged, ‘But, again, it’s not really up to me: you buy a book for forty bucks, I make a dollar or two. And, really, it’s just what things cost. A hardcover is six hours at minimum wage; a videogame is, what, fifty bucks? Sixty? Nine hours at minimum wage. If you can blow an entire shift at minimum wage on a videogame, still eating and making rent and all, you’re fairly wealthy in global terms. You’re not making three cents per twenty hour shift assembling Nikes in a jungle somewhere, that three cents being more than most of your neighbours make per day.’

  ‘They make more than three cents, ‘Chuck said, ‘Three dollars maybe.’

  ‘I know,’ I said, ‘I was being sarcastical. But, whatever they make, given the cost of living in those countries, they’ve got the purchasing power of someone making five figures here in the US.’

  Jessica returned with my coffee. ‘All set?’

  ‘I can has cheeseburger?’ I asked, ‘Actually: double cheeseburger, please; fries; and don’t cook it so much as threaten it with a hairdryer.’

  She grinned. ‘Anything for you two?’

  Chuck shrugged. ‘I’m okay.’

  ‘Have you got taco salads this late?’ Leslie asked.

  ‘Nope,’ Jessica said, ‘But we can do it. Chicken or beef.’

  ‘Beef. Please.’

  ‘Beef,’ Jessica said, ‘And double cheese, hairdried,
with fries. Got it.’ She took the menu from Leslie and went back to the kitchen again.

  THIRTEEN

  For reference:

  A quick and somewhat loose approximation of the layout.

  The large rectangles, each numbered, are the tabletops, whether they’re booths or standalone tables. The smaller rectangles are the benches in the booths. The circles are the chairs at each standalone table. All of which may seem really meaningless if you’re listening to an AudioBook. If so, refer to the diagram included somewhere in the packaging. If you lack a diagram, stop stealing my stuff on MP3.

  Not included in the diagram are the kitchen and register and everything else in the excluded half of the building allowing it to look more square than rectangular from orbit. By dumb luck, Table 71 being north of Table 61, the map is orientated correctly; so the kitchen, its preparatory walkway with the coffee and soda and salad dressing and all spanning roughly from Table 61 to Table 21 and the grille and whatever else behind that, were west of the actual dining area—left, on the map, and yet not hiding back on Page 98. South of the kitchen and west of Table 11 was the register; somewhere west of that, I think, was the manager’s office, wherein he played Minesweeper all night until or unless he discovered an excuse to come out and suck at everyone.

  This may be relevant to understanding the effort the twit had to have put into leaving his office, entering the kitchen, sucking, and being the one to deliver our food, including my cheeseburger charred into mummification.

  ‘There you go,’ he announced, sliding this unfortunate burnvictim up against my laptop with a profound cloink, then asking obtusely: ‘Catsup?’

  I squinted at all that remained of the tragic firebombing of the lesserknown nazi village of Cheeseburg. ‘What did you do to it,’ I asked.

  ‘Federal law requires us to cook meat and poultry minimum well,’ he lied.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, getting my phone ready and aiming it at him, ‘One more time. Why does my cheeseburger look curiously like Icarus?’

  He cleared his throat. ‘Because Sir federal law requires us to cook all meat and poultry medium well.’

  ‘Which one.’

  ‘All of them: burgers, chicken strips—’

  ‘Which law.’