"Where?" "I want a haircut." "The president's in town." "We don't care." "We need a haircut." "We need to go across town." "We'll hit traffic that speaks in quarter inches." "Just so I know which president are we talking about?" "United States." "Barriers will be setup." "Entire streets deleted from the map." "Show me my car." "What have we learned then?" "Our system is secure." "We're impenetrable." "There's no rogue program." "It would seem, however..." " Eric!" " No, we ran every test." "No one's overloading the system or manipulating our sites." "When do we do all this?" "Yesterday." "At the complex, our rapid response team." "There is no vulnerable point of entry." "Our insurer did a threat analysis." "We are buffered from attack." "Everywhere." "Yes." "Including the car?" "Including, absolutely, yes." "My car, this car..." "Eric, yes!" "Please..." "We've been together, you and I, since the little-bitty startup." "I want you to tell me that you still have the stamina to do this job." "Single mindedness." "This car, your car..." "The relentless will." "'cause I keep hearing about our legend that we were young, smart and raised by wolves that the phenomena of reputation is a delicate thing." "Person rises on a word and falls on a syllable." "I know I'm asking the wrong man." "Oh, what?" "Where's the car last night after we ran our tests?" "I..." "I don't know." "Where do all these limos go at night?" "I know I'm changing the subject." "Haven't been sleeping much." "I look at books and drink brandy." "What happens to all these stretched limousines that prowl the throbbing city all day long?" "Where do they spend the night?" "Do you ever get the feeling, sometimes, that you don't know what's going on?" "Do I wanna ask you what you mean by that?" "All this optimism" "All this booming and soaring." "Things happen like..." "bang!" "This!" "And that!" "Simultaneous." "I put out my hand and what do I feel?" "I know there are a thousand things that you analyze every 10 minutes patterns, ratio, indexes, whole maps of information." "I love information." "Eric, this is our sweetness and light." "It is a fuckall wonder and we have meaning in this world people eat and sleep in the shadow of what we do." "But at the same time" "What?" "Any special reason we're in the car instead of the office?" "What makes you think we're in the car instead of the office?" "If I answer that question..." "Based on what premise?" "I know I'll say something that's half-way clever, but... also shallow and probably inaccurate on some level and then you will pity me for having been born." "We're in the car 'cause I need a haircut." "Get the barber come to the office, get a haircut there or have the barber come to your car, just... get your haircut and go to the office." "A haircut has what?" "Associations" "Calendar on the wall, mirrors everywhere." "There's no barber chair here." "Nothing swivels but chair your in, Shiner." "Where's your car?" "We can't seem to find it." "I'd offer you a ride." "I couldn't." "Absolutely." "I know you work enroute." "and I like taxis." "I was never good at geography and I learned things by asking the drivers where they come from." "They come from horror and despair." "Yes, exactly." "One learns about the country where unrest is occurring by riding the taxis here." "I haven't seen you in a while." "I looked for you this morning." "Your eyes are blue." "Have you eat breakfast yet?" "No." "Good." "I'm hungry for something thick and chewy." "You never told me you were blue eyed." "When are we going to talk about?" "I want a heliboard on the roof." "I've acquired the air rights, but we still need the zoning variants." "Don't you wanna eat?" "There's a shooting range next to the elevator bank." "Let's talk about us." "You and I?" "We're here so we might as well." "When are we going to have sex again?" "We will, I promise." "We haven't in a while now." "When I work, you see... the energy is precious." "When you write?" "Yes." "Where do you do this?" "I look for you, Elise." "I curl up somewhere." "I've always done this." "My mother used to send people to find me maids and gardeners, combing the house and rounds" "She thought I was dissolvable in water." "I like your mother." "You have your mother's breasts." "Breasts?" "Great stand-up tits." "Tell me this: where will you go now?" "To a meeting somewhere to your office?" "Where is your office?" "What do you do, exactly?" "You know things, I think this is what you do." "I think you're dedicated to knowing." "I think you acquire information and turn it into something stupendous and awful." "You're a dangerous person." "Do you agree?" "A visionary." "A report from the Complex." "It's a credible threat, not to be dismissed." "Which means riding cross town is..." "Had numerous threats, all credible." "I'm still standing here." "Not a threat to your safety, to his." "Who the fuck is "his"?" "The president's." "This means a ride cross town... does not happen unless we make a day of it, with cookies and milk." "Do people still shoot at presidents?" "I thought there were more stimulating targets." "In the next block, there are two haircutting saloons, there's one and two." "No need to go cross town" "Situation is unstable." "Here." "I know that smile, Michael." "I think the yuan..." "I mean there's reason to believe we may be leveraging too rashly." "It's gonna turn our way." "Yes, I know, it always has." "The rashness you think you see." "What is happening doesn't chart." "It charts." "You just have to search a little harder." "Don't trust standard models, think outside the limits." "The yuan is making a statement." "Read it and leap." "We are betting big time here." "I know that smile and I wanna respect it, but the yuan can't go any higher." "I wanna trust it." "We're borrowing enormous enormous sums." "Any assault on the borders of perception is gonna seem rash at first..." "Yeah, come on, we're speculating into the void!" "Your mother blamed the smile on your father he blamed her there's something deadly about it she thought she had to enroll you in special counseling." "I think we ought to adjust." "Where's Shiner?" "On his way to the airport." "Why are they called airports?" "I know I can't answer these questions without losing your respect." "Shiner told me our network is secure." "Then it is." "Safe from penetrations." "Why am I seeing things that haven't happened yet?" "How old are you?" "What?" "22!" "You look younger." "I was always younger than anyone around me." "One day I began to change." "I don't feel younger." "I feel located totally nowhere." "Think I'm ready to quit, basically the business." "Put a stick of gum in your mouth and try not to chew it." "For someone your age and your gifts, there's only one thing in the world worth pursuing both professionally and intellectually." "What is it, Michael?" "The interaction between technology and capital the inseparability." "Highschool was the last true challenge." "There's a poem I read in which a rat becomes the unit of currency." "Yes, that would be interesting." "Yeah, that would impact the world economy." "The name alone, better than the dong or the kwacha." "The name says everything." "Yes." "The rat." "Yes, the rat close lower today against the euro." "Yes, there's going concern that the Russian rat will be devalued." "White rats, think about that." "Yes, pregnant rats." "Major sell-offs of Russian pregnant rats." "Britain converts the rat." "Joins trend to universal currency." "Yes, US is establishing the rat standard." "Is every US dollar redeemable for rat?" "Dead rats!" "Yes, stockpiling of dead rats called global health menace." "How old are you, now that you're not younger than everyone else?" "Was I expecting you?" "Just passing by." "Thought you'd drop in, did you?" "That's nice." "I'm glad." "Been a while." "I read about it." "Of course." "Or did I see it on TV?" "What?" "What?" "The wedding!" "Strange you didn't tell me." "It's not so strange." "Not so strange?" "Two great fortunes!" "Like one of those great arranged marriages of old empire Europe." "Except I'm a world citizen with a New York pair of balls." "So how many billions together do you two represent?" "She's a poet." "Is that what she is?" "I thought she was a Shifrin." "Little of both." "So rich and crisp." "Does she let you touch her personal parts?" "You look gorgeous today." "For someone who's 41 and finally understands what her problem is." "What's that?" "Life is... too contemporary." "So how old is your consort?" "Nevermind, I don't wanna know." "You'd tell me to shut up." "Oh, one more question." "Is she good in bed?" "Is she good in the limo?" "I don't know yet." "Aww, that's the trouble will old money." "Now tell me to shut up." "I know something you wanna know." "What's that?" "There's a Rothko in private hands that I have the privileged knowledge of." "It's about to become available." "You've seen it?" "Three, four years ago, yes." "It is... luminous." "What about the chapel?" "What about it?" "I've been thinking about the chapel." "You can't buy the god-damn chapel." "How do you know?" "Contact the principals." "I thought you'd be thrilled about the painting." "One painting." "You don't have a important Rothko and you've always want one, we've talked about this!" "How many paintings in this chapel?" "I don't know." "14?" "15?" "If they're selling the chapel, I'll keep it intact." "Tell them!" "Keep it intact?" "Where?" "Tell them!" "In my apartment there's sufficient space." "I can make more space." "The people need to see it." "Let them buy it." "Let them outbid me." "Forgive the pissed way to say this, but the?" "chapel belongs to the world." "It's mine if I buy it." "How much do they want for it?" "They don't wanna sell the chapel and I don't wanna give you lessons in self-denial and social responsibility because I don't believe for a second you're as cruel as you sound." "How much?" "What does it mean to spend money?" "A dollar?" "A million?" "For a painting?" "For anything." "I have two private elevators now." "One is programmed to play Satie piano pieces." "And move at one-quarter the normal speed." "This is right the Satie and this is the elevator I take when I'm in a certain... let's say... unsettled mood." "It calms me, makes me whole." "Who's the other elevator?" "Brother Fez." "Who's that?" "The Sufi rap star." "You don't know this?" "I miss things." "I don't know what money is anymore." "I'm losing money by the ton today." "Many millions." "Betting against the yuan." "Isn't the yuan asleep?" "Currency markets never close." "Shanghai runs day and night, all the major exchanges, seven days a week." "I miss that." "I?" "How many millions?" "Hundreds of millions." "How old are you?" "28?" "28." "I want you to go to the chapel and make them an offer." "Whatever it takes." "I want everything that's there." "Walls and all." "I remember what you told me once." "What's that?" "Talent is more erotic when it's wasted." "What did I mean?" "A word?" "Yeah." "Complex recommends extra security." " You're not happy about this." " No." "First, a threat at the president." "You're confident you can handle whatever it comes up?" "Now an attack on the managing director of the International Monetary Fund." "Arthur Rapp?" "Arthur Rapp, yes." "Where?" "Nike, North Korea, while being interviewed on television." "It's on all the channels." "Director Rapp, will this change your policy on the yuan?" "The yuan is uncharacteristically inflated, which makes it unstable and eventually it will drop, and when it..." "The Complex... accept their recommendation." "Good." "All these limos, my God, that you can't tell one from another." "We could be kids on prom night." "Or some dumb wedding wherever." "What's the charm of identical?" "That I'm a powerful person that chooses not to demarcate his territory with singular driblets of piss, is what?" "Something I need to apologize for?" "I want to go home and tongue-kiss my Maxima." "You now what today is?" "Incidentally..." " I know." " It's my day off, dammit!" "I know this." "I need this extra day, desperately." "I know this." "But you don't know this." "You can't know what it's like, I am a single struggling mother." "We have a situation here." "I am a mother running in the park when my phone explodes in my navel" "I think it's the kid's nanny who never calls unless the kid's fever reaches 105." "But it's the situation, it... we have a situation alright, we have a yuan carry that can crush us in hours." "Take some water." "Sit on the banquette." "I like face to face." "And I don't need to look at all those screens, I know what's happening." "The yuan will fall." "That's right." "Consumer's spending down." "That's right." "Besides, the Bank of China left the interest rates unchanged." "This happened today?" "This happened tonight in Shanghai, I called the source at Shenzhen." "While running?" "While flinging my body down Maddison Avenue, to get here on time." "The yuan can't go any higher." "That's true, that's right." "Except it just did." "Hadn't sleep last night." "There's a time limit." "Doctor Ingram?" "Who the fuck are you?" "Doctor Ingram." "Where's Doctor Nevius?" "Called away suddenly." "A personal matter." "Speak slowly and clearly." "Called away suddenly, I don' know, a family crisis..." "I'm the associate, I..." "I... flushed out your ear holes once." "You do this why?" "What?" "Everyday." "No matter...?" "Wherever I am, that's right." "No matter." "So you do what?" "Same routine every day?" "Varies." "Depending." "So he comes to your house" "Nice!" "On weekends." "We die, Jane, on weekends." "People." "It happens." "You're right." "I didn't think of that." "We die because it's the weekend." "I thought we were moving, but we're not anymore." "The president's in town." "You're right." "I forgot." "I though I've seen him when I ran out of the park." "There's an entourage of limousines going down 5th with a motorcycle escort." "I thought all these limos are for the president, I can understand, but it was for somebody famous's funeral." "We die everyday." "What do we do about this?" "Let it express itself." "What?" "Do nothing?" "Let it express itself." "You can stand up now." "So, look, we have two rumors working on our favor." "First, there's the bankruptcies for six straight months." "More each month, more on the way." "Large Chinese corporations." "This is good." "The yuan will drop." "This is loss of faith." "It will force the yuan to drop." "Dollar will settle up." "The yuan will drop." "Where's Chin?" "Working on visual patterns." "This thing doesn't chart." "It charts." "It doesn't chart the way you chart technology stocks you can find real patterns there, locate predicting components, this is different." "We're teaching him to see." "You should do the seeing, you're the seer." "What is he?" "He's a kid." "He's got a streak in his hair, he's got the earing..." "He doesn't have the earing." "If he was any dreamy, we'd have to put him on life support." "What's the second rumor?" "There's a rumor, it seems, involving the Finance minister some kind of scandal about a misconstrued comment" "He made a comment about the economy that may have been misconstrued." "The whole country is now analyzing the grammar and syntax of this comment." "Or it wasn't even what he said, it was when he paused." "They're trying to construe the meaning of the pause." "It may be deeper even than grammar." "He may be breathing." "So the whole economy convulses because the man took a breath." "You gripped the water bottle." "Yes, it's that soft type plastic." "You grip it." "You choke it." "It's a matter of fact thing." "It's sexual tension." "It's every day nervousness in a life." "It's sexual tension." "Days like these..." "What?" "That whole sad business of Judeo-Christian jogging." "You were not born to run." "I look at you." "I know what you are." "Your sloppy body, smelly and wet a woman who was born to stay strapped in a chair, while a man tells her how much she excites him." "How come we've never spend this kind of time together?" "Your prostate is asymmetrical." "Those two, they're ours?" "I felt the need imperative, that we reroute." "The situation is what?" "This." "Water main break, we have flood conditions ahead." "State of chaos." "This." "The question of the president and his whereabouts." "He is fluid." "He is moving." "Wherever he goes, our satellite receiver reports a ripple effect in the traffic that causes mass paralysis." "This also." "There's a funeral proceeding slowly downtown and now deflecting westward." "Many vehicles, numerous mourners on foot." "And finally this." "We have a report of imminent activity in the area." "Activity?" "Imminent." "Nature is yet unknown." "Complex says "use caution"." "Recite to me." "Where's your necktie?" "I had my checkout." "Saw my heart on the screen." "I don't like saying this." "But?" "You smell of sex." "That's my doctor's appointment you smell." "I smell sex all over you." "It's what?" "It's hungry you smell." "I wanna eat lunch." "You wanna eat lunch." "We're people in the world." "We need to eat and talk." "I'm not sure how hungry I am." "Eat." "You'll find out." "Speaking of sex." "We've been married only weeks." "Barely weeks." "Everything is barely weeks." "We have minutes to live." "We don't want to start counting the times, do we?" "And having solemn discussions on the subject." "No, we wanna do it." "And we will." "We shall." "We wanna have it." "Sex." "Yes." "Because there isn'time not to have it." "Time is a thing that grows scarcer every day." "What, you don't know this?" "I like that bookshop." "Do you know why?" "Because it's semi-underground." "You feel hidden." "You like to hide." "From what?" "Sometimes only noise." "You're one of those silent wistful children, glued to the shadows." "And you?" "I don't know." "I don't think about it." "Think about one thing and tell me what it was." "Alright, one thing." "When I was four, I figured out how much I weight on each of the planets in the Solar System." "That's nice." "I like that." "Such science and ego combined." "When are we going to the lake?" "Fuck the lake." "I thought we like it there after all the planning, the construction." "To get away, to be alone together." "It's quiet at the lake." "It's quiet in town." "The way we live, yes, I suppose." "High enough, far enough." "What about your car?" "Not so quiet, surely." "You spend a lot of time there." "I had the car prousted." "Yes?" "The way they build a stretch is this:" "Take a vehicle base unit cut in half with a huge throbbing saw device." "And they add a segment to lengthen the chassis by ten, elven, twelve feet." "Whatever desired dimension." "Twenty-two feet, if you like." "While they did this to my car, I sent the word that they had to proust is." "Cork-line it against street noise." "It's lovely, actually." "I love that." "The vehicles are armored, of course." "This complicated the cork-lining." "But they managed in the end." "It's a gesture." "A thing a man does." "Did it work?" "How could it work, no!" "This city eats and sleeps noise." "Makes noise out of every century." "Makes the same noises that were made in the seventeen century, along with other noises that where developed since then." "No." "But I don't mind the noise." "The noise energizes me." "Important thing is that it's there." "Cork?" "That's right." "The cork." "This is what finally matters." "Is this what I wanted?" "Tell me what you wanted." "Duck consommé with an herb twist." "It's true, you know." "You do actually reek of sexual discharge." "It's not the sex you think I've had." "It's the sex I want, that's what you smell on me." "'Cause the more I look at you, the more I know about us both." "Tell me what that means." "Or don't." "No, don't." "And the more I wanna have sex with you." "Because that's a certain kind of sex that has an element of cleansing." "It's the antidote to disillusion." "The counter-poison." "You need to be inflamed, don't you?" "This is your element." "Where are you going after the bookstore?" "Because there's a hotel." "I was going to the bookstore." "Period." "I was in the bookstore, I was happy there." "Where were you going?" "To get a haircut." "Do you need a haircut?" "I need anything you can give me." "Be nice." "I need all the meanings of the inflamed." "There's a hotel just across the avenue." "We can start over." "Or finish with intense feeling, that's one of the meanings." "To arouse a passionate feeling." "We can finish what we barely started." "Two hotels, in fact." "We have a choice." "I don't think I want to pursue this." "No, you don't." "You wouldn't." "Be nice to me." "A specter is haunting the world!" "A specter is haunting the world!" "A specter is haunting the world!" "We want to think about the art of money-making." "The greeks have a word for it." "Chrimatistikos." "But we have to give the word a little leeway." "Adapt it to the current situation." "Because money has taken a turn." "All wealth has become wealth for its own sake." "There's no other kind of enormous wealth." "Money has lost its narrative quality, the way painting did once upon a time." "Money is talking to itself." "I want this car, which I love." "The glow of the screens." "I love the screens." "The glow of cyber-capital." "So radiant and seductive." "I understand none of this." "Does it ever stop?" "Does it slow down?" "Of course not." "Why should it?" "It's fantastic." "But you know how shameless I am in the presence of anything that calls itself an idea." "The idea is time." "Living in the future." "Look at those numbers running." "Money makes time." "It used to be the other way around." "Clock time accelerated the rise of the capitalism." "People stopped thinking about eternity and began to concentrate on hours." "Measurable hours, man hours, using labor more efficiently." "It's cyber-capital that created the future." "What is the measurement called a nanosecond?" "Ten to the minus nine power." " What?" " One billionth of a second." "I understand none of it." "But it tells me how rigorous we need to be in order to take adequate measure of the world around us." "There are zeptoseconds." "Good, I'm glad." "Yoctoseconds." "One septilionth of a second." "Because time is a corporate asset now." "It belongs to the free market system." "The present is harder to find." "It is being sucked out of the world to make way for the future of uncontrolled markets and huge investment potentials." "The future becomes insistent." "This is why something will happen soon." "Maybe today." "To correct the acceleration of time and bring nature back to normal, more or less." "You have to understand." "The more visionary the idea, the more people it leaves behind." "This is what the protest is all about." "Visions of technology and wealth, the force of the cyber-capital that will send people to the gutter to retch and die." "What is the flaw of human rationality?" "What?" "It pretends not to see the horror and death at the end of the scheme it builds." "This is a protest against the future." "They want to hold off the future." "They want to normalize it, keep it from overwhelming the present." "The future is always a wholeness, a sameness, we're all tall and happy there." "This is why the future fails." "It can never be the cruel happy place we want to make it." "What would happen if they'd knew the head of Packer Capital was in the car?" "We know what the anarchist have always said." "Yes." "Tell me." "The urge to destroy is a creative thing." "This is also a hallmark of capitalist thought." "Enforced destruction." "Old industries have to be harshly eliminated." "New markets have to be forcibly claimed and old markets have to be re-exploited." "Destroy the past." "Make the future." "This is the thing about genius." "Genius alters the terms of its habitat." "Technology is crucial the civilization, why?" "Because it helps us to make our fate." "We don't need God, or miracles or flight of the bumblebee but it is also crouched and undecidable It can go either way." "You've been talking about the future being impatient, pressing upon us." "That was theory." "I am your chief of theory, I deal in theory." "It's not original." "What's original?" "He did it, didn't he?" "It's an inappropriation." "He poured the gasoline and lit the match." "All those Vietnamese monks one after another in all their lotus positions." "Imagine the pain." "Sit there, feel it." "Immolating themselves endlessly." "To say something." "To make people think." "It's not original." "Just now." "What?" "A report from the Complex, concerns of your safety." "A little late, aren't they?" "This is specific and catergorical." "There's been a threat, then." "Assessment, credible red." "Highest order of urgency." "An incursion is already in progress." "Now we know." "Now we have to act now on what we know." "But we still want what we want." "We want a haircut." "It's interesting, isn't it?" "About men and immortality." "You live in a tower that soars to heaven and goes unpunished by God." "And you bought an airplane." "I've nearly forgotten this." "Soviet or ex-soviet." "A strategic bomber, capable of knocking out a small city." "Is this right?" "It's an old Tu-160." "NATO calls it Blackjack A." "It was deployed around 1988, carries nuclear bombs and cruise missiles." "This were not included in the deal." "And they wouldn't let you fly it." "Could you fly it?" "Could and did." "They wouldn't let me fly it armed." "Who didn't?" "State Department." "The Pentagon, The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms." "The Russians?" "What Russians?" "I've bought it black market and dirt cheap from a Belgian arms dealer in Kazakhstan." "That's where I took the controls, for half hour, over the desert." "US Dollars, 31 million." "Where is it now?" "Parked in a storage facility in Arizona, waiting for replacement parts that nobody can find." "Sitting in the wind." "I go out there now and then." "To do what?" "To look at it." "It's mine." "People will not die." "Isn't this the creed of a new culture?" "People will be absorbed in streams of information." "I know nothing about that." "Computers will die." "They're dying in their present form." "They're just about dead as distinct units." "A box, a screen, a keyboard... they're melting into texture of every day life." "Is this true or not?" "Even the word "computer"." "Even the word "computer" sounds backward and dumb." "You work out?" "Six percent body fat." "Used to be my number." "Then I got lazy." "What are you gonna do about it?" "Hit the machines in the morning and run in the park at night." "Where is he now?" "Who?" "You know." "He's in the lobby." "Torval." "He's watching them come and go." "Danko's in the hall outside." "Who's that?" "Danko, my partner." "He's new." "I'm new." "He's been watching your back for sometime now." "?" "after these wars in the Balkans." "He's a veteran." "What's he gonna say to you about this?" "Torval." "That's who you're talking about?" "Say his name." "What's he gonna say to you?" "Just so you're safe." "That's the job." "Men get possessive." "What, you don't know this?" "I heard the rumor." "Fact is, I technically speaking went off-duty an hour ago, so..." "Basically, my time we're dealing with here." "Do you find this interesting?" "What?" "Protecting someone in danger." "What makes you willing to do this?" "Take this risk." "Maybe you're worth it." "Maybe it's just the pay." "It's pretty good." "The risk?" "I don't think about the risk." "You're the man in the crosshairs, I figure the risk is yours." "But is it interesting?" "It's interesting to be near men somebody wants to kill." "You know what they say, don't you?" "The logical extension of business is murder." "Move little left." "Move little left." "Nice." "Perfect." "What kind of weapon did he give you?" "Tazer." "He doesn't trust me yet with deadly force." "How many volts at your disposal?" "Hundred thousand." "Jams your nervous system." "Drop you to your knees." "Like this." "Stun me." "I mean it." "I want you to do it, Kendra, show how it feels like." "I'm looking for more." "Show me something I don't know." "Stun me to my DNA." "Come on, do it!" "Click the switch!" "Aim and fire." "I want all the voltage the weapon holds." "Do it!" "Shoot it!" "Now." "I need to know where you're going." "Wait and learn." "You smoke since when?" "I took it up when I was fifteen." "It's one of those things a girl takes up." "It tells her she's more than a skinny body nobody looks at." "There's a certain drama in her life." "She notices herself." "Then other people notice her." "Then she marries one of them." "Then, they go to dinner." "You're wearing a cocktail dress." "Yes?" "It's navy blue." "Yes." "And that's your..." "silver jewelery." "Yes, it is." "I'm noticing." "How was the play?" "I left at intermission, didn't I?" "What was it about and who was in it?" "I'm making conversation." "I went on impulse." "The audience was sparse." "Five minutes after the curtains went up, I understood why." "Where is your jacket?" "Where's my jacket?" "You were wearing a suit jacket earlier." "Where is your jacket?" "Lost in the scuffle, I guess." "You saw the car." "We were under attack by anarchists." "Just two hours ago, there were major global protests." "Now, what, forgotten." "Something else I wish I could forget." "That's my peanuts you smell." "Didn't I see you come out the hotel up the street while I was standing outside the theater?" "Is that the hotel you wanted to take me to?" "We don't need a hotel." "We'll do it in the ladies room." "We'll go to the alley out back, rattle a garbage can." "Look..." "I'm trying to make contact in the most ordinary ways." "To see and hear." "To notice your mood." "Your clothes." "This is important." "Are your stocking on straight?" "I understand this at some level." "How people look... what people wear." "How they smell." "Do you mind my saying that?" "Am I being too wifely?" "I'll tell you what the problem is." "I don't know how to be indifferent." "I can't master this." "And it makes me usceptible to pain." "In other words, it hurts." "This is good." "We like people talking." "Isn't this how they talk?" "How would I know?" "My prostate is asymmetrical." "What does that mean?" "I don't know." "You have to see a doctor." "I just saw a doctor." "I see a doctor every day." "You just saw a doctor." "That's how I know." "Packer Capital portfolio is being reduced to near nothingness in the course of a day." "My personal fortune in the tens of billions is in ruinous convergence with this fact." "And there's been a credible threat at my life." "It's OK." "It's fine." "Makes me feel free in a way I've never known." "That's so awful." "Don't say things like that." "Free to do what?" "Go broke and die?" "Listen to me, I'll help you financially." "I'll truly do what I can to help." "You can reestablish yourself." "At your pace, in your way." "Tell me what you need and I promise I'll help." "But as a couple, as a marriage, I think we're done, aren't we?" "You speak of being free." "This is your lucky day." "This is very crazy." "Take over whole theater." "What do you think?" "I don't know" "I don't know either." "But I think it is crazy." "Looks like drug scene." "What do you think?" "Yes." "I think it is latest drug." "Called novo." "Makes pain go away." "Look how good they feel." "Kids." "They are kids, exactly." "What pain do they feel that they need to take pill?" "Music?" "Too loud." "So what?" "It is beautiful how they dance." "What pain do they feel too young to buy beer?" "There's pain enough for everybody now." "I don't believe I'm here." "You tell me when we leave." "I'll take you out." "Where is he?" "At the entrance." "Torval?" "He watches the entrance." "Do you kill people?" "What do you think?" "Like lunch." "What do we know?" "We know it's not a coup." "It's not an organized terror cell or international kidnappers with ransom demands." "It's an individual." "Do we care?" "We don't have a name." "But we have a phone call." "The Complex is analyzing the voice data." "It made certain assessments." "They're projecting a course of action on the part of the individual." "Why can't I work up any curiosity on the subject?" "Because it doesn't matter." "Whoever it is." "That's who it is." "Eric." "Why we're here?" "You ain't heard?" "What?" "Brother Fez." "What?" "Dead." "No!" "What?" "Can't be!" "Dead." "Died." "Earlier today." "I don't know this." "Funeral has been in progress all day..." "The family wanted the city to have a chance to pay respect." "Record label wanted an exploitation event." "Big and loud." "Street to street." "Right through the night." "I don't know this." "How can this be?" "I love his music." "I have his music in my elevator." "I know the man." "What, they've shot him?" "Fez've been having cardiac problems for years." "Since highschool." "Been seeing specialists, been seeing faith healers." "The heart just wore out." "This ain't a thug down some alley." "The man never been breathalyzed, barely, since he was seventeen." "Hope you're not disappointed." "Disappointed?" "That our man here wasn't shot!" "Hope he didn't let you down." "Natural causes, now that's a let-down." "What happened to your stretch?" "Let a fine machine degrade in public." "That's scandal, man." "Everything's a scandal." "Dying's a scandal, but we all do it." "I think I'm hearing voices in the night." "Because I can't believe you're saying this." "Ask me: do I love this shit?" "Me being big as I am and a retro-nigger." "I have to love what I'm seeing." "Because this is something I can never dream of doing in my thinnest day on Earth." "He liked having the clergy nearby." "He showed up in my office once with an imam and two white boys from Utah in suits." "He was always excusing himself so he could pray." "He lived in a minaret, for a while, in Los Angeles." "Yeah, I heard that." "I went to visit him once." "He built it next to his house." "He moved out of his house and into the minaret." "I'm after you long time." "Son of a bitch." "I glop you good." "Today you are cremed by the master Andre Petrescu." "The pastry assassin." "This is my mission worldwide to sabotage power and wealth." "For years, I'm waiting for this." "Freshly baked only, you know." "I passed up the president of the United States to make the strike." "I can creme him anytime, but you are major statement." "Very hard to zero in." "You lack of humor, Mr. Packer." "You live up your reputation, okay, but I've been kicked and beaten by the security so many times I'm walking dead." "You know they put me a radio collar when I was in England, to save the Queen." "They tracked me like a rare crane." "But please, believe one thing." "I cremed Fidel three times when he was in Bucharest years ago." "I am an action painter of cremed pies." "I..." "Dropped from a tree on Michael Jordan one time." "This was the famous Flying Pie." "Museum quality." "Video for the ages." "I quiched the fucking sultan of Brunei in his bath." "They put me in black hole until I was screaming for my eyes." "Okay, let's go." "Do you play?" "Not really my game." "Rugby..." "Now that was my game." "You play?" "Some." "I like the action and the pain." "Pump iron now." "Of course you understand." "There's still someone tracking you." "Still someone out there." "This was a petty incursion." "The whipped cream." "Technically irrelevant." "I understand." "Next time, no pies and cake." "Dessert... is over." "Yeah, he's out there." "And he's armed." "He's armed and you're armed." "This is true." "You'll have to draw your weapon." "This is true." "Let me see the thing." "Let you see the thing?" "Okay." "Why not, you paid for it, right?" "Manufactured in Austria." "Nice." "Smart tool." "Scary smart." "Voice recognition." "That's right." "You, what, you speak and it knows your voice?" "That's right." "The mechanism doesn't activate unless the voice print matches the stored data." "Only my voice matches." "You have to speak German before it fires?" "No, but the voice is only half the operation." "You're saying there's a code as well." "Preprogrammed spoken code." "What is it?" "Nancy Babich." "We are here." "But how come you're such a stranger lately?" "Hello, Anthony." "Long time." "Long time." "I need a haircut." "You look like what?" "Get in here so I can look at you" "Never seen such ratty hair on a human." "I woke up this morning and knew it was time." "You knew where to come." "Said to myself:" ""I want a haircut"." "Maybe you wanna eat something first." "I could eat something." "I have takeout in the fridge that I nibble at it when I get the urge." "So, you married that woman?" "That's right." "That her family has got like money unbeknownst." "Never thought you'd get married so young, but..." "what do I know?" "I have chickpeas all mashed up and eggplants with rice and nuts." " Give me the eggplants." " Yeah." "Good." "You father did not tell your mother until he had to." "He went fast once they found it." "He was diagnosed and then he went." "You were four years old." "Five." "Exactly." "And you?" "You're keeping well?" "You know me kid." "I could tell you I can't complain." "But I could definitely complain." "The thing is, I don't want to." "Let me thing what I have that we could drink." "Water from the tap, I drink water now." "I have a bottle of liqueur that's been there don't ask how long." "I could drink some of that." "Because if your father himself walked in here and I offered him tap water oh God forbid, he would rip out my last hair." "Maybe we could ask my driver to come in my driver is outside in the car." "Oh, we could give him the other eggplants." "I drove a checkered cab." "Big." "Bouncy." "I drove nights." "I was young." "What could they do to me?" "Night is not so good if you have a wife and child." "Besides, I can tell you, it was crazy enough in the daytime." "I loved my cab." "I drove twelve hours non-stop." "I stopped only to pee." "A man is hit one day by another taxi." "Comes flying into my taxi." "I mean, he was flying in the air, crashed against the windscreen." "Right there in my face." "Blood is everywhere." "I never left my garage without my Windex." "I am Acting Secretary of External Affairs in a previous life." "I said to him." "Get off from there." "I cannot drive with your body on my windscreen." "I ate at the wheel." "I kept my sandwiches in tinfoil." "I ate at the wheel also." "I could not afford to stop driving." "Where did you pee, Ibrahim?" "I peed under the Manhattan Bridge." "This is where I peed exactly." "I peed in parks and alleys." "I peed in the pet cemetery once." "Night is better in some ways, I am certain of it." "I was here, what?" "Probably four hours a day." "Helping my father cut hair." "Nights, I drove my cab." "I loved my cab." "I had a little fan that worked on battery, because air conditioning forget about it in that day and age." "And then, I had a drinking cup with a magnet that I stuck on the dashboard." "I had my steering wheel upholstered, very nice, in zebra." "And my daughter, with her photograph on the visor." "I give this guy his first haircut." "He didn't want to sit in the car seat." "His father tried to jam him in there." "He was going "no, no, no, no!"" "So I put him right where you're sitting now." "His father pinned him down." "I cut his father hair when he was a kid." "Yeah, I cut his hair." "Where is the chief of security in this situation?" "I realized he's not with us." "We are alone." "I gave him the rest of the night off." "You have protection, right, in the car?" "Protection?" "Protection." "You know what that means?" "I had a gun, but I threw it away." "But why?" "I didn't want to make plans." "I wasn't thinking ahead." "Didn't want to take precautions." "You know how that sounds?" "How does it sound?" "I thought you were some kind of big shot that destroyed people in a blink of an eye." "But you sound pretty iffy to me." "This is Mike Packer's kid that had a gun and threw it away?" "What is that?" "Yes, what is that?" "Yeah." "In this part of town and you had a gun" "There are steps you must to take to save-guard yourself." "In this part of town you cannot walk five meters after dark, you'd be careless." "They'd kill you straight away." "You'd be reasonable with them?" "They'll take a little longer, tear out your entrails first." "What happened to your eye that got all twisted that way?" "I can see." "I can drive." "I passed their tests." "You were beaten and tortured." "An army coup." "By the secret police." "Or they thought they executed you." "Fired a shot to your face." "Left you for dead." "I loved my cab." "I gulped my food." "I drove twelve hours straight night after night." "Vacations?" "Forget about." "But what did I do for protection?" "I need to leave." "How come?" "I don't know how come." "That's how come." "But let me do the left side, at least." "So both sides are equal." "I'll come back." "Take my work for it." "I'll sit and you'll finish." "Ibrahim." "Tell me this." "Yes." "These stretched limousines that fill the streets." "I've been wondering." "Yes?" "Where are they parked at night?" "They need large tracts of space." "Out near the airports or somewhere in the Meadowlands." "Long Island." "New Jersey." "I will go to New Jersey." "The limo stays here." "Next block there would be an underground garage." "Limos only." "I would drop off your car, pick up my car then drive home, through the stinking tunnel." "Early in the morning, you could see, right here teams of men in white coveralls they are washing limousines." "A marketplace of limos, rags flying." "Eric Michael Packer!" "Nancy Babich." "What are you doing here?" "That's not the question." "The question is yours to answer." "Why do you wanna kill me?" "Now, that's not the question." "That's too easy to be the question." "I want to kill you because I want to count for something in my whole life." "See how easy?" "You're not a reflective man." "I live consciously in my head." "Give me a cigarette." "Give me a drink." "Do you recognize me?" "I can't see you clearly." "Sit." "We'll talk." "Yes." "I'd like that." "Sit and talk." "I've had a long day." "Things." "People." "Time for a philosophical pause." "Some reflection." "Yes." "You're not familiar with that weapon." "I fired that weapon." "That's a serious weapon." "Whereas this..." "I'm thinking of installing a shooting range in my apartment." "Why not your office?" "Line them up and shoot them." "You know the office, is that right?" "You've been in the office." "Tell me who you think I am." "I don't know who are you." "Maybe if you'd tell me your name." "You wouldn't know my name." "I know names more than faces." "Tell me." "Benno Levin." "That's a phony name." "It's phony." "It's fake." "It's fake, it isn't real." "But I think I recognize you now, you were at the cash machine out side the bank some time around noon." "You saw me." "You looked familiar." "I didn't know why." "Maybe you used to work for me." "Hate me, wanna to kill me." "Fine." "Everything in our lives..." "yours and mine has brought us to this moment." "Fine." "I could use a tall beer about now." "How old are you?" "I'm interested." "Do you think people like me can't happen?" " How old?" " We happen." "Forty-one." "Prime number." "But... not an interesting one." "Or did I turn forty-two." "It's possible, because I don't keep track." "Because why should I?" "I've become an enigma to myself." "So said St. Augustine." "And herein lies my sickness." "Well, that's a start." "It's a crucial self-realization." "I'm not talking about myself." "I'm talking about you." "Your whole waking life is a self-contradiction." "That's why you're engineering your own downfall." "Why are you here?" "That's the first thing I said to you when I came out of the toilet." "I noticed the toilet." "It's the first thing I've noticed when I walked in the room." "What happens to your waste?" "There's a..." "There's a whole below the fixture." "I knocked a hole in the floor then I positioned the toilet so that one hole fits over the other." "Holes are interesting." "There're books about holes." "There're books about..." "shit." "But we wanna know why you would willingly enter a house where there's someone inside that's prepared to kill you." "Alright, tell me." "Why am I here?" "You have to tell me." "Some kind of unexpected failure." "Shocked your self-esteem." "The yuan." "I couldn't figure out the yuan." "The yuan?" "I couldn't chart the yuan." "The yuan eluded me." "And so you brought everything down." "This had never happened." "I've become half-hearted." "This is because you only have half heart." "Give me a cigarette." "I don't smoke cigarettes." "Huge ambition and contempt..." "I can... list the things, name the appetites, people." "Mistreat some, ignore some." "Persecute others." "The self-totality." "The lack of remorse." "These are your gifts." "What else?" "Intuition of early death." "What else?" "What else..." "Secret doubts." "Doubts that you could never acknowledge." "You know some things." "I know you smoke cigars." "I know everything that's ever said or written about you." "I know what I see in your face after years of study." "You worked for me, doing what?" "Currency analysis." "I worked on the baht." "The baht is interesting." "I loved the baht!" "But your system is so micro-timed that I couldn't keep up with it." "I couldn't find it." "It is so infinitesimal!" "Then I began to hate my work and you and all the numbers on my screen and every minute of my life." "One hundred satang to the baht." "What's your real name?" "You wouldn't know it." "Tell me your name." "Sheets." "Richard Sheets." "Means nothing to me." "Tell me: do you imagine that I stole ideas from you?" "Intellectual property." "What does anyone imagine?" "A hundreds things a minute." "Whether I imagine a thing or not, it's real to me." "I have syndromes." "Where they real?" "From Malaysia, for example." "The things that I believe become facts." "They have the time and space of facts." "You're forcing me to be reasonable." "I don't like that." "I have severe anxieties that my sex organ is receding into my body." "But it's not." "Shrinking into my abdomen." "But it's not." "Either it is or not, I know it." "Show me." "I don't have to look." "There are folk beliefs." "There are epidemics that happen, men in the thousands in real fear and pain." "Alright." "Alright." "People like you can't happen." "I understand this." "I believe it, but not the violence." "No the gun." "The gun is all wrong." "You're not a violent man." "Violence is meant to be real based on real motives, on forces in the world that, what, make us want to defend ourselves or take aggressive actions." "The crime you want to commit is cheap imitation." "It's a stale fantasy." "People do it because other people do it." "It's just another syndrome, it's a thing you caught from others." "It has no history." "It's all history, the whole thing is history." "You are foully and berserkly rich." "Don't tell me about your charities." "I have no charities." "You don't resent the rich, that's not your sensibility." "What's my sensibility?" "Confusion!" "This is why you're unemployable." "Why?" "Because you wanna kill people." "That's not why I'm unemployable." "Then why?" "Because I stink." "Smell me!" "Even when you self-destruct, you have to fail more, lose more, die more, stink more than others." "In... in the old tribes, the chief that destroyed more property than the other chiefs, was the most powerful." "What else?" "You have everything to live for, I have nothing and neither." "That's another reason to kill you." "Richard!" "I want to be known as Benno!" "You're unsettled 'cause you feel you have no role." "You have no place." "But you have to ask yourself whose fault you that is?" "'Cause, in fact, there's very little in the society that you have to hate." "Think!" "Think." "Violence..." "needs a cause." "A truth." "There's nothing in the world but other people." "I had this thought one day." "It was the thought of my life." "I'm surrounded by other people." "It's "buy and sell"." "It's "let's have lunch"." "I thought "look at them and look at me"." "Light shines through me on the street." "I'm, what's the word, pervious to visible light." "I thought, "all these other people", I thought..." "How do they get to be who they are?" "It's banks and car parks." "It's airline tickets and their computers." "It's... restaurants filled with people talking." "It's people signing the merchant copy." "It's people taking the merchant copy out of the leather folder and then signing it and separating merchant copy" "If I'm the customer copy and putting the credit card back in their pocket, this alone could do it." "It's people who have doctors that order tests for them." "This alone..." "I'm helpless in their system that makes no sense to me." "You want me to be a helpless robot soldier and all I could be was helpless." "o." "It's women shoes." "It's all the names they have for shoes." "It's all those people in the park, behind the library." "Talking in the sun." "Your crime has no conscience." "You haven't been driven to it by some oppressive social force." "I hate to be reasonable." "You're not against the rich." "Nobody is against the rich." "Everybody is ten seconds away from being rich, or so that everybody thought." "No." "Your crime is in your head." "Another fool shooting up a diner because Bullets flying through the walls." "So useless and stupid." "Even your weapon is a fantasy." "What is it called?" "What are the attachments mounted on the barrel?" "What are they called, what do they do?" "Alright." "I don't have the manhood to know these names." "Men know these names." "You have the experience of manhood." "I can't think that far ahead." "It's all I can do to be a person." "Violence needs a burden." "It needs a purpose." "What are you doing?" "I don't know." "Maybe nothing." "My prostate is asymmetrical." "So is mine." "What does it mean?" "Nothing, it means nothing." "It's harmless." "A harmless variation." "Nothing to worry about." "At your age, why worry?" "You should have listened to your prostate." "You tried to predict movements on the yuan by drawing on patterns from nature." "Yes, of course, the mathematical properties of tree rings." "Sunflower seeds." "The limbs of galactic spirals." "I've learned this with the baht." "I loved the cross-harmonies between nature and data." "You've taught me this." "You've made this form of analysis horribly and sadistically precise." "But you forgot something along the way?" "What?" "The importance of the lopsided." "The thing that's skewed a little." "You were looking for balance." "Beautiful balance, equal parts, equal sides, I know this." "I know you." "But you should have been tracking the yuan in its ticks and quirks." "A little quirk." "A misshape." "The misweave." "That's where the answer was." "In your body, in your prostate." "But I still have to shoot you." "Don't you ever walked through the park behind the library and see all those people setting in their little chairs and drinking at those tables on the terrace, after work, and hear their voices mingling in the air" "and want to kill them?" "No." "I'm having my Korean panic attack." "That's from holding in my anger all those years." "But not anymore." "You have to die, no matter what." "I can tell you my situation has changed in the course of a day." "I have my syndromes, you have your complex." "Icarus falling." "You did it to yourself!" "Meltdown in the sun." "You will plunge three and half feet to your death." "It's not very heroic." "Is it?" "Even if there's a fungus between my toes that speaks to me." "Even if the fungus told me to kill you." "Even then, your death is justified because of where you stand on Earth." "For your apartment and what you paid for it." "For you daily medical checkups." "This alone..." "Medical checkups, every day." "For the limousine that displaces the air that people need to breath in Bangladesh." "This alone." "Don't make me laugh." "Don't make you laugh?" "You just made that up." "You've never spend a minute of your life worrying about other people." "Alright." "But the air you breath, this alone, the thought you have..." "Is there a fungus that speaks to you?" "I'm serious." "People hear things." "They hear God." "Anyway, you're already dead." "You look like someone already dead." "Someone dead a hundred years." "Many centuries dead." "Kings dead." "Royals in their pajamas eating mutton." "Have I ever used the word "mutton" in my life?" "Came in my head, out of nowhere." "Mutton." "I wanted you to heal me." "Save me." "I wanted you to save me."