Blueprints of the Afterlife

tonight but, thanks to Bickle’s sudden appearance, that isn’t going to happen. No refuting the wishes of Mr. K. Neethan knows as soon as he is powered up on sushi and receives the figurative blow jobs from the executive class, he will be locating the exit and striding along the red carpet to wherever it might lead. Behind him he will leave a lousy release party under way in a decent Japanese restaurant with waitresses rigorously trained to pretend they don’t recognize him. Already, mentally, he is out the door but physically he is rooted here with his agent who is laying down project after project that begs to be rescued by his involvement. He can play an autistic savant, a tennis pro, a gay hustler, a frustrated novelist, a blind violin maker, a psychoanalyst on the make, a ship captain harboring a deadly secret, a mutant capable of spitting poison from his eyes, a mortgage company representative, the Pope. None of it sounds Native American enough. Now that Bickle has laid down all the cards with regard to his ethnic identity, it would be nice to parlay that knowledge into a role in which he gets to play that identity and maybe in the process learn about what that identity is like. Because now when he thinks Native American he thinks casinos and smallpox blankets and that’s about it. And if he gets bored being Native American he’ll move on and be something else for a while, like an unfrozen Viking with a lightning bolt sidekick.

A mixed-sex group of studio people cross the room to the table, midlevel departmental directors and such, people responsible for budgets, shouting compliments on his performance over the restaurant’s derivative music. Flock-like, they glom on to the table and chortle borrowed insights, eyes spreading wide in expressions that have as much to do with plastic surgery as with emotion. They are all drugged, Neethan figures, strapped to a biochemical thrill ride that approximates optimism. Or they simply conceive the world this way, an endless series of release parties and occasions to get close enough to smell the rancid breath of the talent. They appear pleased with themselves. They throw their heads back when laughing as if to make sure no one doubts the magnitude of the hilarity they are enjoying. Across the restaurant he catches sight of Myra’s open mouth similarly engaged in laughter and pictures her lips curling around the tip of—hey now, here is the Klan again, igniting a cross in some poor Southerner’s front yard. Neethan looks down in time to see a twitching fin of something on his plate. Rory chortles with the ring of midlevels that fortifies the periphery of their table. Now there is nudity happening at a table nearby; things have progressed to that level pretty quickly. The open bar gushes libations into marketing department bloodstreams. A man in a bow tie visibly vibrates at a table across from the disrobing table, jacked up on some kind of Bionet-delivered kick. Pretty soon someone will discharge a handgun, Neethan suspects. It feels like that kind of night.

It is Kirkpatrick’s will.

Neethan stands up so fast his knees strike the underside of the table, upending glasses of sake. “This is fucked. I gotta get out of here,” he says, though no one hears him over the laughter and music. He heads instinctively for the men’s room. On the way he bumps into a baked-looking busboy.

“Which way to the red carpet?” Neethan asks.

The busboy nods his head toward the kitchen. In a few long strides Neethan is through the double doors, the red carpet of the restaurant contiguous with the strip of carpet wending through this steamy zone of screams and clangs, a couple dishwashers engaged in an honest-to-God fist fight, a sushi chef cursing in Japanese about his assistant’s lack of a work ethic, clouds of rice steam, airborne plates, and impolite language in three languages flying across various planes of vision. Neethan barrels onward, somewhat unnoticed, past the walk-in freezer to the back door and a clump of waitresses taking a smoke break, to the alley, where the red carpet slithers around a corner and intersects with Hollywood Boulevard. Neethan stumbles onto the famous thoroughfare and sees that the carpet stretches ahead as far as his eyes will focus, block after block, westward toward La Brea. The glittering slutty trinket shops of a reconstituted Hollywood frame his gaze. How is it that after the world seemingly ended, this obnoxious place rebuilt itself from scorched rubble to resume the manufacture of dreams? Why had this, of all places, been a priority? It feels as improbable as his own destiny and origin, beckoning to him from beyond the lights.

WOO-JIN AND ABBY

“Who are you?” Abby gasped and rose to her feet.

“I’m Woo-jin Kan.”

“The championship dishwasher?”

“No, the writer.”

“Did you do this to me?”

“Did what?”

“Kill me?”

“No, no, I wanted to help you when you were dead but the cops wouldn’t let me.”

“I need to find Rocco.” Abby propelled herself one-shoed in a direction. The editing felt off. She’d blinked in the theater beside Kylee Asparagus, surrounded by Federicos, as her life played out in gross caricature onstage. So where was this? This field? The roaring of jet engines? Some smelly guy with fucked-up hair?

“I need a phone,” Abby said. “I need a shoe.”

The only place Woo-jin knew to find a phone and shoe was at the Ambassador’s house, so he pointed Abby along the narrow brick streets of Georgetown on a trajectory toward the Embassy.

“What happened to me?” Abby choked.

“You died three times,” Woo-jin said. “Or two and a half times. Dr. Farmer has your other bodies at the morgue.”

“I was watching a play. I’m confused.”

“That is correct.”

“I saw a ghost. There was a clone funeral. An orgy.”

Hoping to sound helpful, Woo-jin communicated elements of his last few days. “My sister got hauled away by a helicopter. The Ambassador gave me a shower. I got diamond-coated steel wool. I saw an old man in the desert with piles of books. Dr. Farmer asked me to suck his wiener.”

The two characters paused in the street and looked at one another. Their different brains arrived at precisely the same conclusion, which only Abby could articulate.

“Nothing makes sense,” she said. “A permutation of me is stuck in some sort of fucking zone.”

“The Embassy is close,” Woo-jin said.

Abby stumbled, clutching Woo-jin’s arm, which she continued to clutch even after she wasn’t stumbling. She was perplexed to find herself trusting this guy. They turned a corner in a part of the neighborhood undergoing a perverted, reverse urban puberty, where infant industrial buildings grew up into homes, and came to the Embassy. The most intense light they’d ever seen radiated from the windows and the seams around the door. The house appeared to bulge, barely able to contain whatever produced the light within. Shielding their eyes they proceeded up the front walk. Woo-jin rapped on the door. A moment later Pierre the imitation chauffeur answered, hat off, hair berserk, looking glazed and happy.

“Is the Ambassador in?” Woo-jin asked.

“Oh, he’s in all right,” Pierre said. “Is he ever! Whoa!”

“We’re looking for a shoe.”

“He’s really busy right now. I mean really busy,” Pierre said.

“I’m an official delegate,” Woo-jin said.

Pierre impatiently nodded for them to enter. The humble materials of the house—wood, varnish, latex paint, porcelain fixtures, metal hardware, sealants, and caulking still constituted the structure of a house but exuded an otherworldly wisdom, as though the elements from which they’d been formed contained memories of a purpose far more holy. Light emanated from every surface, causing the air to slightly ripple. A door knob could barely stand the awesome fact that it was (Oh my God, I’m a door knob!) and individual beams of wood in the floor trembled at the majesty of being. Woo-jin walked down the hall, pivoted when he came to a door, and waved for Abby to follow.

“The Ambassador is in here,” Woo-jin said.