Kim Robinson: The Gold Coast

Except for his parents’ home. Helplessly Jim thinks of it. They moved into the little duplex when Jim was seven. He and his dad played catch in the driveway. One time Jim missed an easy throw and caught it in the eye. They threw balls onto the carport roof and Jim caught them as they rolled off. Dad set up a backboard. He painted an old bike he bought for Jim, painted it red and white. They all went for a trip together, to see the historical museum and the last acres of real orange grove (part of Fairview Cemetery, yes).

The junk of the past, the memory’s strange detritus. Why should he remember what he does? And does any of it matter? In a world where the majority of all the people born will starve or be killed in wars, after living degraded lives in cardboard shacks, like animals, like rats struggling hour to hour, meal to meal—do his middle-class suburban Orange County memories matter at all? Should they matter?

It’s ten P.M.; Jim has an appointment soon. He clicks the car on, puts it on the track to Arthur Bastanchury’s ap.

So Jim turns around and tracks back up the freeway. Somewhere over Costa Mesa he decides what to do. “Oh, man.” He picks up his car’s phone, calls Arthur. His heart stutters at the same frequency as the ringing phone: Br-r-r-r-r-r-r-ring! Br-r-r-r-r-r-r-ring!

“Hello?”

“Arthur. It’s Jim. I can’t make it to your house in time to leave for the rendezvous. I’ll meet you there at the parking lot where we get the boxes.”

Silence. Curtly Arthur says, “Okay. You know the time.”

“Yeah. I’ll be there then.”

Back onto Newport Freeway, north to Garden Grove Freeway (typing instructions into his carbrain), out west and off at Haster, under the City Mall’s upper level.

Dim world of old streets, gutters matted with trash.

Dead trees. Garbage Grove.

Old suburban houses, boarding a family per room.

The streetlights not broken are old halogen: orange gloom,

An orange glaze on it all.

A roofed world. The basement of California.

You’ve never lived here, have you.

Hyperventilating, Jim looks around him for once. Parking lots, laundromats, thrift shops: “You had to go to Cairo to see this!” he shouts, and for a moment his resolve is confused; he feels like invisible giants are aiming invisible giant firehoses at him, battering him this way and that in a game he knows nothing of; he can only hold to his plan, try not to think anymore. Stop thinking, stop thinking! It’s time to act! Still his stomach twists, his heart stutters as he is buffeted about by contrary ideas, contrary certainties about what is right.…

Lewis Street is the same as always, a kind of tunnel alley behind the west side of the City Mall, both sides floor to ceiling with warehouses, truck-sized metal doors shut and padlocked for the night.

He reaches Greentree, which dead-ends into Lewis like one sewer pouring into another. The concrete roof overhead holds a few halogen bulbs, a few mercury vapor bulbs. No plan to it. Jim tracks forward slowly, enters the small parking lot set between warehouses, twenty slots set around two massive concrete pylons that support the upper levels of the mall. There’s the same car as always, a blue station wagon, on a parking track at the back of the lot.

Jim turns into the lot, flicks his headlights on and off three times. He stops his car beside the station wagon, gets out.

Four men surround him, pinning him against his car. He’s seen all of the faces before, and they recognize him too. “Where’s Arthur?” the tallest black guy says.

“He’ll be here in a few minutes,” Jim says. “Meanwhile let’s get the equipment into my car. We can’t use Arthur’s tonight, and as soon as he shows up he wants us out of here.”

The man nods, and Jim swallows. No turning back.

He follows the four men to the back of the station wagon, and the hatchback is pulled up with an airy hiss. In the dark orange shadows Jim can just make out the six plastic boxes. He picks up one in his turn; it’s heavier than he remembered. Steps awkwardly to his car. “Backseat,” he says, and onto the shabby cracking vinyl they go, five in the backseat, one on the passenger seat.

Jim shuts the door of his car, checks his watch. It’s ten till eleven. Arthur will be here soon. He leans in the driver’s window and pushes the button that activates the program he typed in on the way up the freeway. The four men don’t notice. Jim returns to the station wagon.

“Big load tonight,” says the man who spoke before.

“Big job to do.”

“Yeah?”

“You’ll see it in the papers.”

“I’m sure.”

Jim paces around the two cars nervously. Twice he walks out to Lewis and looks up and down the long tunnel street. Several warehouses down, in a gap between buildings, there is an infrequently used entrance to the mall; Jim noticed it on one of their earlier runs. It looks almost like a service entrance, but it’s not.

The four men are standing around the station wagon, watching him with boredom, amusement, whatever. Jim is thankful it makes sense to act nervously, because he’s not sure he could stop it. In fact he feels like throwing up, his whole body is hammering with his pulse, he can’t even breathe without a great effort. Still time to—

Headlights, approaching. Jim looks at his watch. It’s time, it’s time, adrenaline spikes up through him: “Hey!” he calls to the men. “Police coming!”

And his car jerks forward on its own, out of the parking lot and down Lewis to the south, accelerating as fast as it can. Jim takes off running north, toward the little back entrance to the mall.

Up the entrance steps, almost tripping; he’s scared out of his mind! Into the mall maze, up to concourse level, then up a broad, gentle staircase to mezzanine; once there there are ten directions he can run in, and he takes off with only a single glance back.

Two of the men are chasing him.

Jim runs full speed through the crowd of shoppers, skipping and dodging desperately to avoid knots of people, open airshafts, planters, fountains, hall displays and food stands. Up a short escalator three steps at a time, around the big open space filled by the laser fountain. Looking down and across he can see his pursuers, already lost. Then one spots him and they’re off running again. They’re in a tough position, trying to chase someone in a mall; if Jim had more mall experience he’d lose them in a second. As it is he’s lost himself. Floors and half floors, escalators and staircases extending everywhere in the broken, refracted space… shops are going out of business every day because shoppers can’t ever find the same place twice; what chance for two men pursuing a panic-stricken, very mobile individual? It’s a three-D maze, and Jim has only to run a random pattern, trending westward, and he’s lost them.

Or so Jim thinks, fearfully, as he runs. But when he reaches the east side of the mall and flies through the entryway doors, damned if the two men aren’t coming up an escalator back there, at full speed!

Outside, however, on the street bordering the parking lot, he sees his car, which has made it there on its own. Good programming. He runs out to where it sits by the curb, noticing only at the last second the three policemen approaching to inspect it.

Panic on top of panic; Jim’s systems almost blow out at the sight, but his pursuers are in the parking lot now and there’s no time to lose. Without thinking he runs up to the car and shouts at the policemen, “It’s mine! They’re robbing me, they dragged me out of the car and now they’re chasing me!”

The three policemen regard him carefully, then look as he points at the two men, running across the parking lot. “That’s them!”