I stopped. He took up the full width of the walkway. “Just getting some air,” I answered. “I got a little hot inside.”
“I don’t like people back here.” He stepped forward. Even in the dark I could tell he was very high. I could almost feel the quivering energy bursting off him. He pushed past me and glanced around the corner. “Go back to the party buddy. Nothing worth seeing around here.”
“Okay,” I replied.
Molly turned the corner and disappeared from sight, moving fast. I took a deep breath, norepinephrine levels stabilizing, and walked back toward the front. The music had grown more robotic, mixing metallic clanks and pings with weird phased bass and drum beats.
“Hey, I was looking for you.” It was Anna again.
“You found me.”
“Can I ask you a question? Is your friend gay? My friend thinks he’s coming on to her but he gives off major gay vibes to me.”
“Roberto? Yes, very gay. Sorry. He likes to dance with girls but he doesn’t like to do anything else with them. This has happened before believe it or not.”
“Oh well. Are you headed back in?”
“Yeah, I was just getting some air.”
Chapter 7
Variations in Seattle
June 28-29: Seattle
Passing through clouds at thirty-three thousand feet again—I couldn’t seem to stay away from airplanes. Being on the move felt right though. Working, whether welding together scraps of metal to form a sculpture or my new career chasing down things that had gone missing, feeling the pieces begin to fall into place, dealing with unexpected problems and finding solutions—all of those things made me feel purposeful. Without purpose, I had a tendency to drift and wash up on random shores. I imagined it was similar to how a bloodhound feels when on a promising trail—an instinctive feeling of rightness and momentum toward a desired goal. The stewardess passed by and I dropped my empty coffee cup in the garbage bag she proffered. I could see Mt. Rainier in the hazy distance. We would be landing soon.
Sea-Tac airport offers a very different experience from the barely controlled chaos of LAX or the slick, all-business atmosphere of SFO. It’s like landing in a small, previously undiscovered but fully operational Scandinavian nation. Lines are orderly, people speak at a hushed volume, even the café tables seem strictly arranged according to some well-communicated logic, like set pieces on a stage carefully aligned with their tape marks.
Outside, I strolled in the warm summer sun, looking for the light rail station. It wasn’t hard to find and the train, unsurprisingly, was on time. On our way downtown, we rolled through the industrial area south of the city which I remembered was called the Georgetown neighborhood. I had been to Seattle only once before for an exhibit at the Center on Contemporary Art that included one of my pieces. On that trip, I had crashed with a friend who lived in a warehouse space in Georgetown. I remembered the area being dark, deserted at night after the workers went home, and quiet except for the whistling of the frigid, damp wind that funneled down the streets between big old warehouses and factories. It looked like the area was coming up now. There were cafés, galleries, people out enjoying the good weather, and lots of new development. Like San Francisco, Seattle was a technology boomtown. The new development in Georgetown looked just like the new development in my own city—boxy, Bauhaus inspired stacks of expensive apartments or condominiums with street level retail. It had become so ubiquitous that the architects and builders had a name for it: five-over-one. The name referred to the five stories of living space over one story of retail. To me, the buildings looked like factories for producing ennui—an urban translation of suburban dissociation—but people seemed to like them. I had mixed feelings. On one hand, I supported the movement of people back into the urban core. Suburbs were a blight, made possible by unsustainable policies. On the other, the new housing being built in cities seemed to be mostly made for wealthy people. I understood that developers were conservative, preferring to continue with proven formulas rather than try something new. There had to a balance though—some way to keep cities diverse and affordable for everyone.
I got off the train at Pioneer Square station, having booked a room in a hotel nearby. It was the oldest part of the city. Most of the buildings dated from the eighteen-nineties and were built after the great fire of eighteen eighty-nine leveled the city. Stone and brick Romanesque revivals squatted along the tree lined streets and overlooked the park known as Occidental Square. A soft breeze carrying an aroma of garlic and sea food blew a discarded plastic bag past my feet. My stomach grumbled. I was hungry but I wanted to check in to my hotel first and see if I had any news. I had contacted Valerie and asked her to help me get an invitation to the reception following the performance. Johann Benderick would be there and I hoped to corner him and convince him to give me a meeting. Half a block up the street I spotted the hotel logo and quickened my steps.
Check-in was easy and I was soon in my room with my laptop on the desk and connected to the Wi-Fi. I had messages from both Ashna and Valerie in my ProtonMail inbox. I decided to read Ashna’s first.
Making some progress. I’ll be able to give you details on the other two soon. Let me know how things go in Seattle. Been checking out Benderick, tracing CC transactions, travel, email exchanges, etc. His life is an open book to a wicked girl like me. I’m thinking he’s not the one but still worth talking to him.
Short and sweet and interesting. I agreed with Ashna. Even if he wasn’t the one who stole Wolhardt’s work he was worth talking to. He might have some insights we could use. I
