William Gibson: Virtual Light

“Berry” Pursley said, “you’re in trouble, son. A cop. And an honest one. In trouble. In deep, spectacular, and, please, I have to say this, clearly heroic shit.” He clapped Rydell on the shoulder. “Cops in Trouble is here for you, boy, and, let me assure you, we are all of us going to make out just fine on this.”

Chevette said jail sounded just fine to her, but please could she call somebody in San Francisco named Fontaine?

“You can call anybody you want, honey” Karen said, dabbing at Chevette’s eyes with a tissue. “They’ll record it all, but we’ll get a copy, too. What was the name of your friend, the black man, the one who was shot?”

“Sammy Sal” Chevette said.

Karen looked at Pursley. “We’d better get Jackson Gale” she said. Rydell wondered what for, because Jackson Gale was this new young black guy who acted in made-for-tv movies.

Then Chevette came over and hugged him, all of her pressing up against him, and just sort of looking up at him from under that crazy-ass haircut. And he liked that, even if her eyes were all red and her nose was running.

On Saturday, the fifteenth of November, the morning after his fourth night with Skinner, Yamazaki, wearing an enormous, cape-like plaid jacket, much mended and smelling of candle-grease, descended in the yellow lift to do business with the dealers in artifacts. He brought with him a cardboard carton containing several large fragments of petrified wood, the left antler of a buck deer, fifteen compact discs, a Victorian promotional novelty in the shape of a fluted china mug, embossed with the letters ‘OXO,’ and a damp-swollen copy of The Columbia Literary History of the United States.

The sellers were laying out their goods, the morning iron-gray and clammy, and he was grateful for the borrowed jacket, its pockets silted with ancient sawdust and tiny, nameless bits of hardware. He had been curious about the correct manner in which to approach them, but they took the initiative, clustering around him, Skinner’s name on their lips.

The petrified wood brought the best price, then the mug, then eight of the compact discs. It all went, finally, except for the literary history, which was badly mildewed. He placed this, its blue boards warping in the salt air, atop a mound of trash. With the money folded in his hand, he went looking for the old woman who sold eggs. Also, they needed coffee.

He was in sight of the place that roasted and ground coffee when he saw Fontaine coming through the morning bustle, the collar of his long tweed coat turned up against the fog.

“How’s the old man doing, Scooter?”

He asks more frequently after the girl…”

“She’s in jail down in L.A.” Fontaine said.

“Jail?”

“Out on bail this morning, or that’s what she said last night. I was on my way over to bring you this.” He took a phone from his pocket and handed it to Yamazaki. “She has that number. Just don’t go making too many calls home, you hear?”

“Home?”

“Japan.”

Yamazaki blinked. “No. I understand…”

“I don’t know what she’s been up to since that damned storm hit, but I’ve been too busy to bother thinking about it. We got the power back but I’ve still got an injury case nobody’s bothered to claim yet. Fished him out of what was left of somebody’s greenhouse, Wednesday morning. Sort of down under your place, there, actually. Don’t know if he hit his head or what, but he just keeps coming around a little, then fading off. Vital signs okay, no broken bones. Got a burn along his side could be from a bullet, some kind of hot-shoe load…”

“You would not take him to a hospital?”

“No” Fontaine said, “we don’t do that unless they ask us to, or unless they’re gonna die otherwise. Lot of us have good reason not to go to places like that, get checked out on computers and all.”

“Ah” Yamazaki said, with what he hoped was tact.

“Ah so” Fontaine said. “Some kids probably found him first, took his wallet if he had one. But he’s a big healthy brother and somebody’ll recognize him eventually. Hard not to, with that bolt through his johnson.”

“Yes” Yamazaki said, failing to understand this last, “and I still have your pistol.”

Fontaine looked around. “Well, if you feel like you don’t need it, just chuck it for me. But I’ll need that phone back, sometime. How long you gonna be staying out here, anyway?”

“I… I do not know.” And it was true.

“You be down here this afternoon, see the parade?”

“Parade?”

“November fifteenth. It’s Shapely’s birthday. Something to see. Sort of Mardi Gras feel to it. Lot of the younger people take their clothes off, but I don’t know about this weather. Well, see you around. Say hi to Skinner.”

“Hi, yes” Yamazaki said, smiling, as Fontaine went on his way, the rainbow of his crocheted cap bobbing above the heads of the crowd.

Yamazaki walked toward the coffee-vendor, remembering the funeral procession, the dancing scarlet figure with its red-painted rifle. The symbol of Shapely’s going.

Shapely’s murder, some said sacrifice, had taken place in Salt Lake City. His seven killers, heavily armed fundamentalists, members of a white racist sect driven underground in the months following the assault on the airport, were still imprisoned in Utah, though two of them had subsequently died of AIDS, possibly contracted in prison, steadfastly refusing the viral strain patented in Shapely’s name.

They had remained silent during the trial, their leader stating only that the disease was God’s vengeance on sinners and the unclean. Lean men with shaven heads and blank, implacable eyes, they were God’s gunmen, and would stare, as such, from all the tapes of history, forever.

But Shapely had been very wealthy when he had died, Yamazaki thought, joining the line for coffee. Perhaps he had even been happy. He had seen the product of his blood reverse the course of darkness. There were other plagues abroad now, but the live vaccine bred from Shapely’s variant had saved uncounted millions.

Yamazaki promised himself that he would observe Shapely’s birthday parade. He would remember to bring his notebook.

He stood in the smell of fresh-ground coffee, awaiting his turn.

–«»—«»—«»—

This book owes a very special debt to Paolo Polledri, founding Curator of Architecture and Design, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Mr. Polledri commissioned, for the 1990 exhibition Visionary San Francisco, a work of fiction which became the short story ‘ Skinner’s Room ,’ and also arranged for me to collaborate with the architects Ming Fung and Craig Hodgetts, whose redrawn map of the city (though I redrew it once again) provided me with Skywalker Park, the Trap, and the Sunflower towers. (From another work commissioned for this exhibition, Richard Rodriguez’s powerful “ Sodom: Reflections on a Stereotype ” I appropriated Yamazaki’s borrowed Victorian and the sense of its melancholy.)

The term Virtual Light was coined by scientist Stephen Beck to describe a form of instrumentation that produces ‘optical sensations directly in the eye without the use of photons’ ( Mondo 2000 ).

Rydell’s Los Angeles owes much to my reading of Mike Davis’s City of Quartz , perhaps most particularly in his observations regarding the privatization of public space.

I am indebted to Markus, aka Fur, one of the editors of Mercury Rising, published by and for the San Francisco Bike Messenger Association, who kindly provided a complete file of back issues and then didn’t hear from me for a year or so (sorry). Mercury Rising exists ‘to inform, amuse, piss off, and otherwise reinforce’ the messenger community. It provided me with Chevette Washington’s workplace and a good deal of her character. Proj on!