Christopher Sorrentino - Trance

“You mentioned nothing. Nothing specific.”

Guy scratches his nose thoughtfully. “I can’t believe I didn’t say something before we left up in Portland about it. Well, my oversight. The thing is, I may have spoken out of turn. I may have mentioned something I shouldn’t.”

“To Ernest. ”

“Well, yuh, um.”

Amazing, Guy is at a loss for words. They stare at each other for a moment before he recovers. “He hasn’t said anything, not a word, for all these months.”

“Months? Ernest’s known about this for months?”

“Look, we have another flight to catch.”

“And then you can tell the stewardess. Keep up the good work.”

“Sarcasm isn’t useful right now, particularly.”

She thought she was moving in with a sportswriter. That was the thing. She knew about sportswriting: you got good seats to everything. Even her father had thought it was a great idea. Things had just gotten weirder and weirder and weirder.

According to a lighted sign blinking over the carousel, the luggage from Randi’s flight has been mixed together with that of several other small commuter flights, but evidently the baggage handlers are sending up each flight’s luggage separately. As the large group of people standing around the carousel watches quietly, a single flowered suitcase moves in a slow circle, alone on the conveyor belt.

“Looks like something they’d give a prestigious award to and then put on permanent exhibition at the Whitney,” says Guy.

She thought sarcasm wasn’t useful right now.

“Call it ‘Jet Lag.’ ‘Position Closed.’ ‘Carry On.’ ‘No Show.’ ‘Round-Trip.’ Hmm?”

She just glares at him. Other bags begin to appear. Eventually the American Touristers nose out of the opening in the center of the carousel and tumble down onto the belt.

“Jesus, Randi,” says Guy, “why’d you bring all that?”

AGENTS LANGMO AND NIETFELDT are seated in the front seat of a light blue sedan outside the bungalow on Fifty-eighth Street. People go in. People come out. They check out the people’s faces. They’re G-men.

“I’m still thinking of that person starting with M,” says Nietfeldt, who sits behind the wheel.

“That male person,” says Langmo.

“Affirmative.”

“Are you the author of that local bestseller The Ethics of Revolution?”

The two agents snicker.

“No, I am not Herbert Marcuse.”

“Fuck. That one was a total giveaway. Are you a Canadian writer who believes that the media through which communication takes place are more influential over people than the information contained in the communication?”

“No, I am not Marshall McLuhan.”

“Are you the nobleman of humble origins who commanded the English and Dutch forces during the War of the Spanish Succession?”

“Uh, negative.”

“Are you a real person?”

“Affirmative.”

“Are you a German film director who depicted subjective states of mind using a moving camera?”

“Using a movie camera?”

“A moving camera.”

“Name one of his pictures.”

“What the fuck? German, director, moving camera. Begins with M.”

“Come on, name a picture.”

“ The Last Laugh.”

“No, I am not F. W Murnau.”

“Bastard. Are you the French author of comic plays that expose human folly by embodying it in caricatured universal types?”

“No, I am not Molière.”

Across the street, a Chevy with a Trans Rent-a-Car sticker on the rear bumper pulls to the curb and parks. Nietfeldt and Langmo watch with mild interest. The driver opens the door and places one foot on the road. Langmo lights a cigarette.

“Gimme one,” says Nietfeldt.

“Rental car,” says Langmo, shaking one out of the pack.

“That’s a new wrinkle.”

The driver wears jeans, a western-style shirt, a denim jacket, and a floppy cap. He steps completely from the car and heads for the bungalow. A figure remains in the passenger seat.

“Hmmm,” says Langmo.

“Let me take another look at this bug-eyed motherfuck,” says Nietfeldt. He puts the cigarette between his lips and, tilting his head back to keep the smoke out of his eyes, removes from his jacket pocket a strip of oak tag to which three pictures of Guy Mock are stapled: his driver’s license photo, a news photograph, and the photo from the back cover of The Athletic Revolution. “I think we got him,” he says.

Langmo leans over, examines the pictures, then watches the figure retreat up the driveway and into the building.

“I believe you’re right.” He shakes his head. “Coming back here. Imagine that.”

“Numb nuts.”

Whatever Mock carries with him out of the building a few moments later, it is small enough to fit in his pockets. This makes Nietfeldt and Langmo slightly nervous, but Guy Mock is not known to be a gun-toting man. Most likely he has picked up something more practical, like passports. He gets back into the rental car and starts it up, drives off immediately.

They follow at a distance, a nondescript blue shape in anyone’s rearview.

“He wouldn’t go anywhere near them,” says Nietfeldt.

“You never know. He came back to the apartment.”

“If he even knows where they are anymore.”

Up ahead, the Chevy runs a stop sign, accelerating sharply.

“That’s peculiar,” says Langmo.

Nietfeldt touches the brake and stops at the intersection.

“Now,” he says. “Nice, slow, legal.” They begin again. They pick up the Chevy at San Pablo, where it sits, waiting to turn right. Nietfeldt brings the sedan to a stop behind a VW bus, pilgrims with Kansas plates. Following their bliss right into Emeryville, it looks like. Bummer. The Chevy makes its turn. Nietfeldt waits for a moment and then moves out from behind the VW, noses up to the intersection, and turns quickly.

“Watch it,” says Langmo. The Chevy comes to a stop at a red light at Alcatraz. Nietfeldt pulls to the side of the road, blocking the driveway of an auto body shop. A worker carrying a tire iron approaches to tell them to move it. Langmo flips open his bi-fold and displays his shield, averting his gaze in a practiced way. Nietfeldt doesn’t take his eyes off the Chevy. The light changes. An AC Transit bus pulls away from a stop, cutting them off. To the left they are blocked by a truck.

“Shit,” says Nietfeldt. “I can’t see shit.” He steers the sedan into opposing traffic, which brakes, swerves, sounds horns. Wheee. Nietfeldt shoots through a gap in the traffic back into the northbound lane. Now there’s nothing between them and the Chevy. The Chevy accelerates again, heading toward a dense pocket of traffic nearing Ashby, veering into the left-turn lane at the intersection. Nietfeldt brings the sedan up behind a pickup that separates them from the Chevy, but on a yellow light the Chevy darts straight through the intersection, crossing Ashby and leaving the two agents stuck in the left-turn lane and behind the traffic massing at the red light.

Yolanda goes out one morning and returns that afternoon wearing a nurse’s uniform, from the cap down to the white support hose. She’s rented an apartment over a grocery on Capitol Avenue, just another RN looking for a place to rest her tired toes.

“Great,” Teko says. He opens the newspaper, shakes it to get the pages to lie the way he wants.

They pack up W Street. The entire thing has the feeling of a divorce to it. In fact, the running theme seems to be “Does Tania want to stay and live with Daddy or does she want to go and live with Mommy?”