Thomas Pynchon - Bleeding Edge

The reconfigured heavy pickup pauses near a building newly converted, according to a sign tastefully draped across its upper stories, to condos running a million or so per bedroom, and then takes about an hour to park.

“Time was,” mutters the cabbie, “leavin somethin like that on the street up here? You’d have to be insane, man, now everybody’s afraid to touch it ’cause it might belong to some badass who thinks with his Glock.”

“There they go. Could you wait here for me, I just want to try something.”

She gives Tallis and ’Gator Man a couple minutes to get in the elevator, then goes stomping up to the doorman. “Those people that just came in? those idiots with the big SUV they don’t know how to park? They just fucking knocked my bumper off.”

He’s a nice enough kid, doesn’t exactly cower but does sound apologetic. “I can’t really let you go up there.”

“It’s OK, you don’t have to let them come down here either, it’ll only mean a lot of screaming in your lobby, the mood I’m in possibly bloodshed also, who needs that, right? Here,” handing him the card of a tax lawyer and byword of nineties excess who far as she knows is still inside, up at Danbury, “this is my attorney, maybe you can pass this along next time you see Mr. and Ms. Road & Track, and oh better let me have their phone number too, e-mail, whatever, so the lawyers can get in touch.”

At which point some doormen will get all technical and pissy, but this one here, like the building, is new on the block and just as happy to be rid of some crazy bitch with a parking beef. Maxine manages a quick scan over the records at the front desk and returns to the cab with everything on the BF but his credit-card numbers.

“This is fun,” sez the cabbie. “Where next?”

She glances at her watch. Back to the shop, it looks like. “Upper Broadway, anyplace around Zabar’s’d be good?”

“Zabar’s, huh?” Some junior-sidekick note seems to have crept into his voice.

“Yeah, had some strange information about a lox, need to check that out.” She pretends to examine the safety on her Beretta.

“Maybe I should give you the special rate for PIs.”

“But I’m only a… never mind, I’ll take it.”

“MAXI. WHATCHYIZ DOIN TONIGHT.”

Masturbating to a movie on the Lifetime channel, Her Psychopathic Fiancé, I believe, why, what’s it to you? Actually what she sez is, “You’re asking me out, Rocky?”

“Hey. She called me Rocky. Listen, it’s all respectable, Cornelia’s gonna be there, my partner Spud Loiterman, maybe a couple other people.”

“You’re kidding. A soiree. Where are we going?”

“Korean karaoke, there’s a… they call it a noraebang, up in K-Town, the Lucky 18.”

“Streetlight People, Don’t Stop Believing, karaoke boilerplate, I should’ve figured.”

“We all used to be regulars over at Iggy’s on 2nd Avenue, but last year we got—not me so much—but—Spud got us…”

“Eighty-sixed.”

“Spud, he…” Rocky a little embarrassed, “he’s a genius, my partner, you ever have a problem with like Regulation D… but he gets near a mike and… well, Spud will change key a lot. Even with pitch compensation, the technology can’t keep up with him.”

“I should bring earplugs?”

“Nah, just brush up on those eighties power ballads and be there around nine.” Hearing her hesitation and being an intuitive sort, he adds, “Oh and wear somethin schlumpy, don’t want you upstaging Cornelia.”

Which heads her straight for the closet and an understated yet tabloidworthy Dolce & Gabbana number she found at Filene’s Basement for 70% off, being obliged in fact to separate it from the grasp of a Collegiate mother, East Side hairband and all, slumming her morning away after dropping the kids off, who was two sizes too big for it anyway, and which Maxine has since been waiting for an excuse to wear. Lincoln Center gala? Political fund-raiser? Forget it, a karaoke joint full of vulture capitalists, just the occasion.

Gathered that evening at the Lucky 18, in one of the larger rooms, Maxine finds Rocky’s tone-deaf associate Spud Loiterman, Spud’s girlfriend Letitia, assorted out-of-town clients in for the weekend, as well as a small party of actual Koreans wearing, possibly as ironic fashion statements, shiny yellowish outfits from the North made of Vinalon, a fiber derived, unless Maxine is hearing this wrong, from coal, who have wandered off a tour bus and are growing increasingly uneasy about finding their way back to it. And Cornelia, who shows up tonight comfortably bridge-attired and sporting pearls also. Taller than Rocky even without the heels she has on tonight, she radiates an unforced amiability you don’t see in that many WASPs, though they claim they invented it.

Maxine and Cornelia are just getting into the social chitchat when Rocky, ethnic as always in a Rubinacci suit and Borsalino, muscles in, waving a cigar around. “Hey, Maxi, c’mere a minute, meet somebody.” Cornelia silently flicks back a Do-you-mind-we’re-busy-here glance with perhaps even less compassion than shuriken or throwing stars are launched with in martial-arts movies… and yet, and yet, what is the almost erotic edge with these two? “After the commercial, I hope,” Cornelia with a shrug and the suggestion of a heavenward eyeroll, turning and sauntering elsewhere. Maxine has a glimpse of a Mikimoto clasp riding an attractive nape, yellow gold as usual, not everybody’s choice with pearls, though try to tell the folks at Mikimouse-o, who think everybody in the U.S. is blond. Which Cornelia happens to be—the question then arising, does this blondness extend all the way through her head?

To be determined. Meantime, “Maxi, say hi to Lester, formerly of hwgaahwgh.com.” Liquidation or whatever, seems like Rocky, being nothing if not a VC down to the bone, is apparently always in the market for bright ideas from any source.

Lester Traipse is square-rimmed and compact, uses some drugstore brand of hair gel, talks like Kermit the frog. The big surprise is his wingman tonight. Last seen stepping out of a Tim Horton’s on René Lévesque into what Montreal calls “feeble snow” and the rest of the world a raging blizzard, Felix Boïngueaux tonight is sporting a strange do, which is either a triple-digit power haircut, carefully designed to lull observers into false complacency with their own appearance till it’s too late, or else he cut it himself and fucked up.

Rocky and Lester have meantime silently moved on into the bar. “Nice seeing you again. Everything’s working out? Listen,” furtive glance after Rocky, “you won’t mention, um…”

“The cash-register—”

“Sh-shhh!”

“Oh. Course not, why should I?”

“It’s just that now we’re trying to go legit.”

“Like Michael Corleone, I understand, no problem.”

“Seriously. We have this li’l start-up now. Me and Lester. Antizapper software, you install it on your point-of-sale system and it automatically disables all phantomware in a mile radius, anybody tries to use a zapper, it melts their disc. Well, no, maybe not that violent. But damn close? You’re friends with Mr. Slagiatt? Hey, so put in a good word for us.”

“Sure thing.” Playing both ends against the middle, eh? Amoral youth, ain’t it awful.

No sooner is the karaoke machine powered up than the Koreans have formed a queue at the sign-up book and conversation phatic or profitable must compete for a while with “More Than a Feeling,” “Bohemian Rhapsody,” and “Dancing Queen.” On the screen, behind lyrics in Korean and English, appear enigmatic tape clips, masses of Asian people running around in faraway city streets and plazas, human kaleidoscopes filling the fields of gigantic sports arenas, low-res footage from Korean soap operas and nature documentaries and other strange peninsular visuals, often having little to do with the song on the machine or its lyrics, sometimes offering peculiar disconnects therebetween.