Lance Olsen - 10:01

STUART NAVIDSON is right. Someone really is tailing him: the athletic man in the Armani suit and designer stubble sitting two rows behind him whose name is Giuseppe Rosi. Giuseppe Rosi has made a mistake. His job is convincing people whom he doesn’t know that they don’t want what they think they want. Once or twice a month he receives a phone call, drives to the address given him, and starts improvising. Unluckily, when the last one arrived, he was in the middle of a great bench press at the Los Campeones Fitness Center. Giuseppe set the bar back in its cradle, picked up his cellular, listened, and repeated the information the man on the other end told him without actually writing it down. Then he got back to his set. In the time it took him to complete seven more presses, his memory had transposed two digits in the mark’s address. Giuseppe therefore should not be convincing Stuart Navidson, whom he can hear counting backwards anxiously two rows in front of him, that he doesn’t want what he thinks he wants, but another man of similar build and attributes who happens to live one block north of Stuart in a much nicer neighborhood. Giuseppe reaches into the inner pocket of his Armani jacket and fishes for his own Palm device in order to send Stuart a message asking him to please shut the fuck up. People are trying to watch a fucking movie here.

AT THE PRESBYLERIAN church bake sale, tall white-haired women in pastel suits surrounded Juanita Chamorro like chickens waiting for feed. All Juanita wanted to do was eat the slice of apple pie topped with a huge dollop of whipped cream they had offered her. The bus she was riding toward her new life stopped late the first night on a winding road high in the mountains. The full moon was very bright. Juanita calculated a long time, carefully constructed a gringo sentence of thanks, and stumblingly articulated it. The tall white-haired women in pastel suits unleashed a verbal hurricane in response. There had been an accident. When it became clear to them Juanita had no idea what they were saying, they spoke louder, not slower. There was no railing and the bus in front of hers had gone over the side of the cliff. Juanita was wearing her best cotton dress, white decorated with yellow, blue, and red flowers. Her mother had made it for her. Every night Juanita washed it, sorry it smelled less and less like the memory of her village. From what Juanita could see from her seat, it appeared as if someone had stepped on a large milk carton far below among the rocks. They made her stand on a stage while she worked at her apple pie, saying things about her she didn’t understand. Around the large crushed milk carton were scattered what looked like fingertips dressed in skirts and slacks and scarves. They began to applaud her at the second she slipped the last piece of apple pie into her mouth. Someone put a microphone into her hand and Juanita dropped it. It made a squeal when it hit the floor. One of the fingertips, Juanita could see, was still moving. It was trying to crawl away from the bus. The old man beside her was still sleeping. The driver of her bus was standing outside with several other people, pointing and watching. Juanita couldn’t think of anything to say. Everyone waited politely. “America,” Juanita began, and then her mind went blank. “America,” she began again, then paused. She remembered how the fingertip appeared to be trying to use its arms to swim among the boulders. “America,” she said into the microphone, “is a land of excellent pies.” Then she handed the microphone back. Soon the fingertip stopped trying to use its arms to swim. The tall white-haired women in pastel suits erupted into charmed applause. They loved Juanita” no matter what she said or did. The fingertip lay its head down on the ground very gently and then there was no more movement. The one who had handed Juanita the microphone locked her in a powerful hug, kissing the air next to her right ear, then kissing the air next to her left. Juanita waited for what would happen next, but nothing did.

1. A minor tingling in her fingertips. Cynthia Morgenstern looks down. They are gone. She looks down. They are not gone. Cynthia is almost positive she is gradually becoming transparent.

2. When she was a teenager she took a trip to L.A. to see a taping of her favorite women’s talk show, My Feelings . A bloated man stood behind the camera waving a white towel over his head to indicate when the audience was supposed to clap. During a break he yelled at her because she kept looking at the monitors to see how she was doing. “You’re not watching television, lady,” the bloated man said testily. “You’re making it.”

3. If Cary Grant ran a hand through his beautiful hair, she is convinced, beautiful dreams would pour out.

4. When the theater within the theater is gone, you get to return home. Sometimes this takes a minute. Sometimes this takes a lifetime.

5. Fade in.

6. Fadeout.

JUST HERSELF ON your fingertip, just like that, just the way it slid in, the astonishing slick heat of inside her, just these things, just her tiny palm around you, the way it felt a little like pain too, just you breathing, just the seriousness of it, just the way your fingertip slid into her and then everything splintered, just the way she suddenly shoved you back down inside your pants, just like some stupid rolled-up sock she found in a drawer, just the way she turned away from you, just you sitting there asking with your eyes what the hell she did that for, just her wanting to see what it felt like to tease you, just so she could tell all her friends about it tomorrow, just so they could all laugh at you behind your back, just her thinking she could do it one minute and not the next like it was some kind of joke, just being mean just to see if she could, just her letting it happen but then letting it not happen, just the leaky sting of it like you have to pee real bad but can’t, just you sitting here feeling so dumb, just her sitting beside you being so like whatever, just you breathing, just her being that harsh, just like you are nothing, just like that.

LISTENING TO THE teenage couple going at it behind her changes Trudi Chan’s mind. She finds herself restless and doesn’t feel like seeing a movie anymore. Gathering her coat, she rises to leave. Her analysis of malls has revealed a subculture almost no one knows about: a singles scene with its own meeting places, secret handshakes, and coded phrases. Trudi hasn’t had sex since Carlos left. This afternoon will be different, fresh, open to chance. She will order a pink drink at Gators and wipe the hard drive called Trudi Chan. For the next two hours her name will be Mary Sapphire. As Mary steps past Vito Paluso into the aisle, the fetus suspended in her uterus experiences an intense sensation of the color red.

SOMETIMES EXPLORING, fingering small tubes of alphahydroxy cream or a floss dispenser on a bathroom shelf, Anderson feels compelled to evacuate his bowels. The muscular excitement augments inside him, distant at first, then nearer, a part of him, and then he has to go. He unbuckles his belt, unzips his fly, lowers his beige LL Beans down around his ankles, and lowers himself onto his neighbor’s toilet. If there is a magazine rack nearby, he enjoys thumbing through articles in People and Newsweek. Every so often, though, sitting there, a picture comes to him of himself sitting there, minding his own business, when, a genetic unfortunate, one of his carotids blows at the liberating rush. Then the family whose house he is investigating returns home from their daughter’s piano lesson or trip to the supermarket to find their neighbor lying on their bathroom floor in a pool of his own shit and blood. Like the fallen King. Like Elvis himself, with those pills and fried-peanut-butter- and-banana sandwiches strewn around him. Anderson cannot conceive of a sight more completely hideous. Wiping, he shakes clear his head. Standing, he hoists his pants, zips his fly, buckles his belt. He washes his hands at the sink shaped like a caricature of a shell. He uses the lilac-scented soap shaped like the caricature of a flower, twice, then strolls down the hallway, through the kitchen, and out the back door, leaving the toilet unflushed, a commanding trace of himself in his wake.