Billy offered a comment or two, but he mostly listened, familiar with these conversational rhythms, and curiously warmed by them.
The coffee was rich. The pie tasted wonderfully lemony and was topped with toasted meringue.
He was surprised by how calm he felt. Just sitting at the counter, just listening.
“You want to talk about a total waste of money,” said Gold Tooth, “look at this damn fool monstrosity they’re building out by the highway.”
“What—you mean across from the tavern, the thing they’re gonna burn when they no sooner finish it?” Arvin asked.
“Oh, but it’s art,” Jasmine archly reminded them.
“I don’t see how it’s art,” You said. “Doesn’t what’s art have to last?”
“The guy’s going to make millions selling his drawings of it,” Curly told them. “He’s got a hundred merchandising angles.”
“Can anyone just call himself an artist?” Gold Tooth asked. “Don’t they have to pass a test or something?”
268
“He calls himself a special kind of artist,” Curly said.
“Special my ass,” said Arvin.
“Honey,” Jasmine told him, “no offense, but your dumpy backside doesn’t look so special to me.”
“What he calls himself,” Curly said, “is a performance artist.”
“What’s that mean?”
“What I take it to mean,” Curly said, “is art that doesn’t last. It’s made to do something, and when it does something, it’s over.”
“What are museums gonna be filled with in a hundred years?” You wondered. “Empty space?”
“There won’t be museums anymore,” Jasmine said. “Museums are for people. There won’t be any people. Just humanized pigs.”
Billy had grown very still. He sat with the coffee cup to his lips, his mouth open, but unable to take a drink.
“Honey, something wrong with the brew?” Jasmine asked.
“No. No, it’s fine. In fact, I’d like another cup. Do you serve it in mugs?”
“We have a triple cup in a plastic container. We call it the Big Shot.”
“Give me one of those,” Billy said.
269
An alcove off the diner served as an internet cafe. Six work stations offered links to the World Wide Web.
A trucker sat at one computer, working the keyboard and the mouse, fixated on the screen. Maybe he was checking out his company’s shipping schedules or playing an Internet game, or browsing a porn site. The computer was bolted to a table that provided room for food. A cut-out in the table held Billy’s Big Shot.
He didn’t know the name of Valis’s site, so he started with sites about performance art in general and linked his way to www.valisvalisvalis.com.
The artist maintained an elaborate and inviting site. Billy streamed colorful video of the Australian bridge to which Valis had fixed twenty thousand red balloons. He watched them pop all at once.
He sampled artist statements about individual projects. They were overblown and semicoherent, slathered with the unmusical jargon of modern art.
In a windy interview, Valis said that every great artist was “a fisher of men,” because they wanted to “touch the souls, even capture the souls” of those who saw their work.
Valis helped aficionados better understand the intention of each of his projects by providing three lines of “spiritual guidance.” Each line contained three words. Billy pored over several of them.
From his wallet, he extracted the paper on which were printed the six lines that had been contained in three documents on the red diskette that he’d found in Ralph Cottle’s clasped hands. He unfolded it and smoothed it flat on the table.
The first line—Because I, too, am a fisher of men.
The fifth line—My last killing: midnight Thursday.
The sixth line—Your suicide: soon thereafter.
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The second, third, and fourth lines were chillingly similar to the “spiritual guidance” that Valis provided to assist his admirers in reaching a fuller appreciation of his works.
The first line of these guides always referred to the style of the project, of the performance. In this case, the style was Cruelty, violence, death. The second line summarized the techniques by which the artist intended to execute the work of art. With Billy, the technique was Movement, velocity, impact.
The third line described the medium or media in which Valis proposed to create. In this current performance,
