Welcome to Nowhere

1.

He was one of the blunt. 

One of those frank faces you see crossing the border nowadays.  No idea about what happened, no clue what to do now, no future to mourn.  No poetry in his soul.  Typical Nylander with his brushed smile and smart suit.  And that posture that was all business and no prophet.  A copy of Better and Better under his arm.  Typical. 

But he had a hat, an old time fedora like in the movies, and that made him different, made him stand out in this bald world.  It looked silly – like a statement with no point - and that was the reason I noticed him at all at the bordergate.  In fact, it was the reason I spoke to him, that dumb hat.

“Ixnay on de capadoccio, amigo.  Puedo getcha self nixed you don’t watchaback,” I said.  

But I knew from the dim return that he didn’t speak street grub so I changed my tune. 

“The hat,” I said pointing.  “Makes you stand out in this territory.  Es muy pelligroso.  Comprende?  Understand?”

“It was a gift,” he said, tapping the brim.

He was tall – over six feet – or maybe it was just that the way he stood there that made me feel every snippet of my mere 60 inches.  But I liked him right away.  He looked like that guy in the detective series.  Handsome, I suppose, but decent looking.  Someone you could trust.  No guile in his smile.

“You beam skelter, ami,” I said.  “Sabe la via roundtown…”

“I’m sorry, I…”

“I mean, do you need directions?”

“I’m looking for a friend.  Name of Sloane, Polono Sloane.  He lives in the Grand.”

I shook my head sidewards.

“I used to nest…live…there,” I said.  “Along with about a million other folks of course.  But no…never heard of him.”

“What’s the best way to get there?”

“To the Grand?  The mono, I guess.  If it’s working.  Which it usually isn’t.  Why don’t I drive you?”

“You have a working car?”

That was typical too.  The Nylanders only got the bad news from these parts.  It was their way of feeling superior I suppose, knowing that nothing worked back here in the States.  No electric, no cars.  In fact, it was not all that bad, though it was bad enough.

“Worky wicky,” I said and walked him towards the checkout but he stopped in his tracks.

“How much,” he asked and rubbed his fingers together in the multilingua sign for cash.

“Nah, something to do.  Fission down.”

“Fission?”

“Meaning…don’t worry about it.”

But a suspicious look crossed his face wincewise:  “You work for the Feds?”

“No!  I’m a reporter for the Herald.  I loit at the rim…”

“Huh?”

“I hang out at the gate sometimes just to see what’s crossing the border these days.”

“I didn’t know there were still newspapers here.”

“Yup…and reporters to report in them.  It’s just that there’s no news.”

“How could that be?”

            “The Feds run all the media, so they report what they’re told to.  I can’t complain.  I get a salary and lots of free time.  And you, amigo, get a free ride.”

At the checkpoint, I stuck my finger into the scanner and got a nod to move on.  But of course he was stopped and the guard started yammering at him in grub.

“What the hell does he want?” he asked me.

“Your middle finger,” I said.

“My finger?  What for?”

I held my own up for him to see and got a frown back.  But I wasn’t throwing him the old wazoo, just pointing to the base of it where series of black bars of varying width ran around like a tattooed ring.

 “ID.  Volks-tagen.  It’s a bar code that identifies everyone here.  They’re permanent for us but as a visitor you’ll need a temporary one for as long as you’re here.”

“I didn’t know about that.  What do you need it for?”

“Everything.  Shop for food, get a job, pass all the Scans…the checkpoints.”

“Checkpoints?  More than the ones here at the gate?

“Checkpoints all over.”

“What are they checking?  Everyone knows the USA is bankrupt, there’s nothing to buy, sell, or steal.  So what does it matter who goes where?”

“Beside the point, ami.  It matters because it gives the Feds something to do.”

“Which is?”

“Check up on people.”

With that illogic, he agreed to submit as the guard set up the gizmo to fry his finger.  They explained to him that his tattoo was special, only for visitors.  It would last four days.  After that it disintegrated.  If he didn’t leave before that happened, he would be stuck, would not be able to pass any Scan and therefore could not go back home to NYLA.  He seemed troubled about that little piece of news but it was too late once he was tagged.  As we walked to the parking lot, he started rubbing his finger as though it hurt his sense of himself.

“Fission down, ami.  Just make sure you leave on the sixth day – that’s next Saturday – and it will all gravy out.  The Feds got thousands of cheap bar code readers when Wal-Mart collapsed, so they figured this was an easy way to keep tabs on everyone.”

“Fascist idiots,” he said but he was really just upset about the finger thing.

“Talkypoint, ami?”

“Huh?”

“A word of advice?  Don’t mention the government.  Ever.  Good or bad.  Anything you say can be held against you.”

“You mentioned it.”

“Ah, but I’m a reporter.  Danger is my middle name.”

“And your first?” he asked and held out his duke for a shake.  And suddenly there it was again, that good nature, that tendency to trust.  It was irresistible.  And so even though we didn’t shake hands anymore here, I pumped his mitt.

“Oh sorry.  Francie Fayes,” I said.  “Pleased.”

“Nilly,” he said.  “William Nilly.”

            We drove in my two-seater across the desert.  It worked on a solar pump – we still had plenty of sun at least – so although it did not exactly swoop, it moved.   In about twenty minutes the familiar buildings of Vegas rose up from the sandy expanse like sandcastles.  I always felt better back in town but I had no idea what he felt.  Nyla was as far from the USA as the moon, even though it was right next door.  Besides, he was young, maybe fifteen years younger than me, so all of this was probably very natural to him. 

            But I was just old enough to remember when it all happened.  That day back in 2105 when New York and Los Angeles seceded from the USA to form the Republic of NYLA.  All those hotjobs and pepcats on the coasts who did not want anything to do with the collapse of the country.  The USA had become a z-rate paranoition on the perennial brink of bankruptcy.  But NY and LA were rich and could afford to bow out.  So the two cities made their own country, split in two parts and separated by a 2,500 mile wide shitheap of debt and despair that was once the great United States.  Nyla was not big but it was wealthy, more of a multinational corporation than a nation, united not by land or language so much as a deep distaste for failure.  Oh and they had a really pretty logo on their flag.

            “Vegas still the Western capital?” he asked eyeing the relics of the grand old days of the casinos as I veered the car onto the strip.

            “Yup.  One of the few cities that still works here.  We have water and solar, and even some electricity a few times a day.”

“Wow,” he said, meaning not wow.

“So who’s this ami of yourn?”

“What?”

“This friend you’re looking for.  Apollo?”

“Polono Sloane,” he said.  “I knew him back in school.  Haven’t actually seen him in a few years.  He got word to me that he was in trouble and needed some money.  So I came out here to help him out.”

One thing the Nylanders had, besides hope, was money.  For important things like pure luxuries and even for symbolic bibbles like hats.  And for a needy friend too…that was real money.

“Why not just transfer it?”

“Nyla banks won’t really deal with the USA anymore,” he said.  “Besides, I’ve never been out here before.  Curious.”

“Ah…a newbie.  A fingerling.  I knew that.”

“How?”

“You have the look of a girl who still believes in love,” I said.  “That’s why I diced you on the hat, ami.  But you should hide it.  It’ll mark you here as a Coastal with cashypoo.”

He dutifully took the hat off, crushed it into a ball, and shoved it into his case but then groused: “But I don’t carry cash with me.  No one does.  Everyone knows that.”

“I didn’t mean money,” I said.  “you might need some scrip for black market food and stuff but that’s small potatoes.  It’s not your wad they want.  It’s the finger.  That be worth mucho grief.”

“My finger?”

“Sure.  Ice you, snip it off, and use it to cross the border into Nyla.  Way exit this hellhole.  Middle fingers are a regular black market here.”

Nilly closed his fist as if to protect the digit, then put his hand in his pocket.

“Don’t worry.  It’s not that common.  But don’t hide it either, that’s a dead giveaway.”

            I guess I was enjoying the whole guide routine, so I was overplaying the drama a bit.  But it was true about the finger.  Corpses of newbies kept turning up all the time with middle fingers missing, the underground trade in exit visas.  I was surprised that he hadn’t heard about that.  But the more we talked the more I realized that he practiced a kind of slimjim knowledge of things.  Yes, William Nilly had worked out the details of his ethos to exquisite perfection.  He had no philosophy, no theory, no moral rash.  That was the way with Nylanders…commerce was going to save them from the horrors.  Like the rest of his countrymen, he was simply trying to get by with the thinnest impact possible for a man with a hat he could not wear.

            As we drove down the strip, passed all the rusty signs and the dead neon, I gave him the short drift of things.  It was only called Las Vegas back when there was energy.  Now it was just Vegas, another echotown like so many across the country.  Those elaborate facades of glitz and glam were all phony faces now, masks of the past.  The stone-age poor lived inside the vast empty palaces now.  There was still some juice flowing but only a trickle.  The random flow of water from a sorry tap, the rare TV running static and old reruns, the odd cold bulb.  Ten blocks of ancient razz and then the eternal scorching sand all around.  The Indians called this place Xandalapa, meaning nowhere, but it could just as well have been Cityville, USA.  What the country had become.  A relic of a lost time when someone gave a shit.

            I pulled into the lot behind The Grand and went in with him.  It was the least I could do because, to a newbie, the reality of the place was overwhelming.  After all, this was the former MGM Grand, a whole city unto itself with its half a million square feet.  Just like all the other old hotel/casinos, it was now owned by the government and run like a township with its own markets, cops, garbage.  All of the mistakes of shoving people together were on display there.  Rich folks on top with some elbow room, workers at the bottom nudging for square inches, and those huge casinos that were now tent cities filled with the lingering poor.  But if you know cities, you know that each one has its own rhythms, its own codes.  I wasn’t sure Nilly would figure those out before getting wilked so I helped him find the box his friend had rented.

            Polono Sloane lived at the West End of the place, in a tiny and none too savory crib so small you could stand and eat, sit and shit, lie down and sleep, but not all at once.  There was hardly anything in the room and what was there looked boned.  A bed with no sheets, a small refrigerator, some papers.  There was a television – we called them teeves – in the corner, one of those old flat screens retroed up to a foot-pumped hydro-generator to make a glowering box that mainly showed sprizzle.  I could not make out what was on through the ruzz, which struck you as the visual equivalent of strep throat.  But I guessed that it was another rerunning of the show the locals called Los Gilliganos.  The Feds ran all the teeve programming and they loved old television series.  Got the rights somehow and ran them endlessly.  Especially this one with the hero - Gilligan, a likeable bungler – seen as everyman struggling to survive in a world of chaotic forces.  He was a dreamer whose dreams came to naught, as they ought to.  The ship that never came to save him from his island was the future itself.  It was perfect, a real brainwash.  Accept your misery, America, because there’s nothing else to be.  The Zen of blah.

            Welcome to Nowhere.

            “This is no way to run a country,” Nilly humphed.

            “It’s working great though.”

            “It’s falling apart!”

            “That’s the genius of it.  Once all the old isms failed and destroyed the country, they came up with a new theory called bankruptism.  The ultimate acceptance of failure.  Nothing left to lose, nothing left to win.  The eternal slump.  It’s perfect.  No one expects anything, so nothing has to be done.”

            “Don’t you want better things for yourself?”

            “Mr. Nilly, the greatest danger to life on earth was never the bomb or the carbon dioxide.  It was hope.  Eternal, bibbling, blustering disneying hope.  The Feds found a cure for it in a crushing despair that borders on revelation.  We’re happy here, happy to be Americans, happy to be alive.  We don’t need anything more because there isn’t.”

            He gave me one of those sidewards glances that said he had no idea if I was being sarcastic or not.  Couldn’t help him there.  I had no idea any more myself.  Then I noticed a couple of photos pinned to the wall.  One was of a cat with an odd expression on its puss; like it was grinning at you.  Another photo showed Nilly with his arm around another man.  They were smiling and standing somewhere on the streets of New York.  I remembered New York, always vertical, always uptilting.  But I didn’t tell him that because I just didn’t want him to know more about me than he had to.

            “That your ami?” I asked.

            “That’s him.  I never understood why he left and came here.  Now that I see what the USA has become…I really don’t get it.”

            “Left?  You mean he came here voluntarily?  Nutballer maybe?”

            “He had a daughter.  She was stuck here during the Secession.  He finally came back to get her out about five years ago.  But he never came back.”

            “What happened to her?”

            “Dunno.  Him either.  Another reason I decided to come.”

            Then the phone toned.

2.

            Something about that call seemed to upset him enough to furrow his upbeat brow.  It turned out to be a woman who was trying to get to Sloane too, but all she would say was that her name was Erica and that the phone was not safe.  That was true if you had something to hide so I told Nilly to arrange to meet her at the Ballroom.  That was a nice nickname left over from the casino days but no balls were held there.  Instead it was a teeming indoor market for stolen goods and third-hand food.  It was hard to locate anyone in that sprawl but the moment she showed up, she drew his attention like a collision.

            I could see it in his face…he was instantly hooked, crooked, noosed by her.  I understood it myself even though I was a woman.  Erica was an exquisite beauty with penetrating eyes, deep lips, lavish black hair.  She was one of those women who seemed to know things about the secrets of bodies, like how to breathe a soft fullness into her shoulders, how to lick her lips and plump them up, how to speak with tingly breath.  How to look through the lashes of the upper lids.  Oh and that other thing…she was trim and graceful with a tiny waist but she had huge breasts.  Full and round and she carried them like a heavy desire she could barely restrain.  Someday, someone, somewhere will explain to me why men go toppy-turvy-tipsy over big boobs.  In the meantime, though, I watched him watch her and felt like a voyeur.

            “What did you mean that I was in danger?  You don’t know me,” he said without a trace of grace even though he probably intended it.

            “If you’re looking for Polono Sloane, you are,” she said.

            “Why?  Has he done something?”

            “Everyone’s done something,” she replied.

            Erica began to wander around the market in that summery dress of hers, cut low at the bust, a lacy rim tickling the knees.  We had nothing left here but we still had sex and she was full of it.  Nilly followed because he had to and I did too but only because I was curious.  There seemed to be a mystery in the works and for a reporter with nothing to report that was better than drugs to a druggie.

            “How do you know him?” Nilly asked her with a slight twinge of anxiety.

            “I don’t.  I know someone who does.  And that someone told me what happened.”    

            “So where is he?” Nilly asked.  “Can I see him?”

            “Not a good idea.  The rebels have him.”

            The word hit Nilly like a slap.  I guess he really was not ready to understand the situation back here in the old USA.  He was about to slap back with another question but Erica was distracted by a man selling Nitro.  She started negotiating with him in grub, lost on poor Nilly.  So he turned to me and said:

“What’s this all about?”

“Shake me,” I said. “I’m just here to kill a cat.”

“But you work for the media, a newspaper you said.”

“Yes, but we don’t investigate here.  We tell people what they want to hear.”

“And what’s that?”

“Everyone is screwed, so screw everyone.”

“Are there really rebels?”

“So they say.”

“But are there?”

“You have to understand the meaning of truth here, Mr. Nilly.”

“Here?”

“There is one way to lie but many kinds of truth.  The truth that is true only in the morning, the whole truth which is withheld by consensus, the truthful lie…”

“I don’t get you.”

“I know.  You Nylanders have a fine language for money.  Adding, dividing, percenting.  In a word….clarity.  But I’m afraid you can’t translate what we have here.”

“What’s that?”

“A profound ability to ignore.”

"Is that good or bad?" Nilly laughed.

"You see?  That's precisely what I mean.”

“What is?”

“What you take for vagary is art for us, Mr. Nilly.  The Indians have an expression: Axtal Shingshilla.  It means…speak your words clearly but mumble your thoughts.  If we had invented computers, they would be machines that could weep."

“You still haven’t told me the truth.”

“Things aren’t true because they happened, they’re true because they matter.”

“So does that mean there are rebels or not?”

“One can only imagine.”

            I could see the frustration in his expression.  I wanted to answer him, but knew that I could not.  He had the mind of a manager, like all Nylanders.  The accountant in the cortex; every problem a challenge, every challenge a solution waiting.  But we were poets here, we had to be.  We did what we did knowing that we could never succeed.  That was one thing the creators of our great failure missed….that oppression leads not to control but to dreams.

            Take heed you who would shackle the clouds.  Watch your step and mark my words.  For a Poet watches with a pen for tears.

            And all that.

            “The rebels have him?” Nilly asked her.  “What rebels?”

            He was following her around the lanes of the market like a pup. That was the way men were around her, I could see that.  She walked like a goddess in a low place and all the desires they ever had trailed her like a cloud.  Nilly even bumped into her twice when she paused because he was following her too close.

            “The Resistance,” Erica said.

            “Puh!” I puffed.

            “You don’t believe it,” she asked me.

            “Some grousers yes, but an organized resistance?  Never.”

            “They’re our only hope for a future,” she said.

            “Yes and there will be a white Christmas and all soldiers will become children again,” I suggested.

            “They took Sloane because he worked for the Feds.”

            “He did?” Nilly said.  “That doesn’t sound like him.  He wasn’t political back home.”

            “He did?” I repeated.

            That got my interest.  It was something I could lay a narrative on.  Common pukehead living the life of grime who spies on the locals and gets nabbed for it by rebels who didn’t exist.  I liked that. 

            “I could use that,” I said.

            “But you don’t believe any of this, you said,” Nilly cautioned me.

            “I don’t report what I believe, Mr. Nilly, only what’s believable.  Truthy.  That’s all people want…to believe what they think they want to believe.  Trust their own trust.”

            “And everybody just goes along with this bullshit?”

            “It’s the Rule of the Goon, ami.”

            “Namely?”

            “Put a goon in a room of normal people and pretty soon everyone starts acting like a goon.  Ever notice?”

            “That’s just an excuse to be cynical,” Erica offered.

            “According to the Indians, in the dim beginning of the earth, everyone had small feet.  Beautiful trim little feet, like petals.  One day a stranger arrives with big stupid feet and sure enough, here we are thousands of millennia later, stomping everything to dust.  I rest my case.”

            Erica wanted a drink, so naturally Nilly, with no will left, and I with my nose for no news, followed her down to the bar.  The barman eyed Nilly’s finger hungrily when he took the order.  Holding it up so the barman could see it better, Nilly of course inadvertently fugged him.

            “Digitus impudicus,” the barman spat.  “I heard it goes all the way back to Diogenes.”

            I showed Nilly how to hold his finger down for a scan rather than up for an insult then we sat at one of the tables in the back.  The old Keno screen blank as night as we had a few rounds.  Erica was accidentally heaving her bosom to get comfy and that seemed to mesmerize Nilly but he eventually got hold of himself.

            “Why did Polono work for the Feds?” Nilly asked, still struggling.

            “He got himself arrested and once they had them, they had them, if you know what I mean.”

            “Arrested for what?  He was looking for his daughter.”

            “They said they caught him spray painting a rebel slogan on the wall of the old Mirage.  Claimed it was a quote from Karl Marx…“workers of the world unite you have nothing to lose but your

chains.” 

            “I can’t believe Polono even read Marx.  Groucho maybe.”

            “Probably not.  I went to look at the scene of his crime.  It was just an old ad for a shoe store that said, “Walkers of the world unite you have nothing to lose but your chairs.”

            Nilly smirked thinking it was joke and I did too but because I knew it was not.  That was exactly the kind of thing they picked you up for.

            “Is there any way I can get to see him?” Nilly asked.

            “Maybe,” she said, getting up.  “But not here, not now.”

            “Then when and where?”

            “We’ll see,” she said.

            As she walked away, I watched Nilly watch the undulations of her buttocks under the silk of the dress.  He was hooked all right, right down to the base of his lust.  And I was too.  Not on her or even on him but just on the whole what-happens-nextness of it all.  It was the first time in a long time that I gave a shit.

            That’s when the two boots came in.  They were undercover but everyone saw through all that to the goon underneath.  They didn’t waste any time either and stormtrouped right over to our table, snarled at me and nabbed Nilly at the shoulder.

            “Y’ undressed, sotback,” one said.

            Nilly was about to prove his case with a deft tug on his tie but quickly understood that they were saying he was under arrest.

            “I’m just visiting.  A Nylander.  I leave tomorrow.”

            “Nay if’n they throttle your pansyass, ohmybro.”

            “But what are the charges?  I haven’t done anything.”

            “The marsh’ll sing that songy, ami.”

            Nilly looked at me but I think he understood the word “marshall” in there faster than I needed to explain things.

3.

            I don’t know what happened to him then.  I tried to get in to see him but of course could not.  All I found out is that they took him to see the Marshall over at city hall.  His name was Dylan and he was the head Fed in Vegas county.  I didn’t know much about him except what they reported in the news which I knew very well was all bogus anyway.  But I imagine him as a plain man in a tight suit with a kind of wrong haircut Karma about him.

            Still, as a reporter, I can well imagine the whole sordid deal.  Nilly, breathless and worried for maybe the first time in his life, plunked down in a chair in Dylan’s office.  Dylan, slowly like a man knowing what must happen next, taking a sip of Petrol from a fine crystal cup.  Nilly insisting and Dylan listening silently for the whole doddering confession.  And then, in a whisper for maximum drama:

 “Of course you didn’t kill him.”

“I can prove it,” Nilly said, thinking Dylan is being sarcastic and not knowing that irony was a talent only the weak could afford.

“No you can’t.”

“I can.  He’s not dead, just missing.  The rebels have him…”

“Mr. Nilly,” Dylan interjected slowly, as though speaking to a foreigner, “you can’t prove that you did not kill him because there is no Polono Sloane.”

“What??”

“There is no such person, so obviously you could not have killed him.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Polono Sloane.  A ghost in a sheet.  A diversion.  Nothing more than an anagram of Napoleon Solo from one of the old old shows.  That’s where we got the idea.”

“What idea?”

“To invent an agent.  Give him an ID, move his things around, leave hits and suggestions.”

“But that’s insane.  I knew him back in New York.  We went to…”

“You knew someone, I suppose.  Went somewhere.  Did this or that.  But the Sloane in question here is a mere figment.”

Nilly, about to insist, suddenly realized that he would be arguing against himself.  If Sloane did not exist, then there could be no murder and he would be free.   So, with perfect irrational logic, and despite the years he and Sloane had spent downing drinks at Arturo’s and that stupid fight over the stock deal, Nilly changed his tune.

“But why?  Why would you do that?”

“To keep the opposition on their toes.  Distract them.”

“So there is a resistance!”

“Well, not exactly.  We invented them too.  I mean there are some, but we pay them.”

“What??”

“Just another invention.  Every government has to have a resistance to make people think something might change.  Even though nothing ever does.  And in any case, it gives the folks in the media something to report on.”

“But I heard that you control the media.”

“Absolutely.  It’s the secret to our success.”

Dylan sat on the edge of his desk and thrust a small box in Nilly’s direction.  It was a cigar box with a logo of a grinny cat on it, but there were no cigars in it.  Dylan had simply seen the move in countless old movies and thought it was a nice gesture.

“I don’t smoke,” Nilly said.

“No matter,” Dylan replied, putting the box back.

“This is insane!” Nilly finally said.  He wanted to play along but as a Nylander used to the firmity of the deal, the clarity of the contract, he had his limits.  “You create a phony federal agent to dupe fake rebels so that a non-existent media will report on it through teevies that no one watches.”

“We do what we do for the people of this nation, Mr. Nilly.  To keep them safe.”

“Safe from what?”

“From thinking too much about their future.  All they need are some morsels to keep their minds occupied.  A tid here, a bit there.  People don’t want to think, Mr. Nilly, they’re dumb as dumbwaiters.  They just want to have something to do.”

“This place is an asylum,” Nilly replied, a tad too late to realize that he had just insulted his host, a man who held his fate in little twitchy hands.

4.

            The next time I saw Erica it was at that same market in the Ballroom.  I had gone there hoping to find her again.  I don’t know what I was thinking really, maybe just some remnant of real journalism rising up inside of me, despite the weight of my cynicism pushing down.  Or maybe I just wanted to move the little plot in my head along.  Either way, she did not seem very surprised to see me again.

            “Frac up, madama?  What bewitchen?” I said but quickly realized that she would not play street grub with me.  She was trying to change, to lift herself by an act of will somewhere above the bottom where we actually passed our time.

            “What happened to our friend Mr. Nilly?” she asked.

            “I haven’t seen him.”

            “Don’t you want to?  You’re a reporter.  Why don’t you ask questions?”

            “You know it doesn’t work that way here.  What about Polono Sloane?”

            “There’s a question right now.  See, it can work.”

            “Do you really know where he is?”

            “Yes.”

            “Can I get to see him?”

            “No.”

            “Where is he?”

            “You’re full of it, aren’t you?”

            “Full of what?”

            “Questions.  You’d better be careful.  They can lead to hope.”

            “Well…where is he?”

            “Nowhere.”

            “Just like the rest of us,” I said, thinking she was being coy.

            There was a long pause here as she seemed to wrestle with the next words she spoke.  She was so lovely that the pause seemed like a glamour shot from the old studios and I imagined that it would have sent someone like Nilly into a swoon.  But I wasn’t interested in all that, just in what happened next.

            “There is no Polono Sloane,” she finally said.

            “What does that mean?”

            “He doesn’t exist.  The rebels created him as a kind of decoy.  To draw attention away from their real agents.”

            “But Nilly knew him.  He recognized the photos.  Hell, he was in one of them.”

            “Somebody knew somebody somewhere.  But I’m telling you that Polono Sloane, who lives at The Grand, does not exist.”

            “And the revolutionaries made him up,” I said, crackling with disbelief.

            “They are rebels, not revolutionaries,” she said. 

            “Is there a difference?”

            “Rebels are romantics; revolutionaries are technocrats.  Only rebels could invent someone.  Technocrats are too busy tracking them.”

            “In the country and across shattering silences, the sigh of a shadow, and hearts still as stars.”

            She turned away from that as though from an inappropriate snip of a poem.

            “I am worried for Mr. Nilly,” she said.  “If the Feds have them, we may never see him again.”

            “Okay, maybe I will try to ask around.  But even if I find him, his four days are up soon.  They may be holding him long enough so that he can’t leave.  His tattoo go biggybye.” 

            “In that case, I have something for you.  It is from a friend of a friend.  For Mr. Nilly, if you see him again.”

            She handed me a small container, like a cigarette case.  I didn’t even need to open it up because I knew just what I would find inside.  I had seen these before.  It contained a severed middle finger with a bar code on it from some recent victim of the trade.  It would be a fresh one, meaning it still had a few days left, and could be Nilly’s ticket back home.  Assuming of course that I could find him.

            “Why are you doing this?” I asked her.  “You hardly know him.”

            “Let’s just say we had a mutual friend.”

            “Non friend actually” I corrected.

            “And in any case, it was cheap.  Just someone’s life after all.  Nothing cheaper than that here in Nowhere.”

5.

            Meanwhile, Dylan, with all the time in the world, was still having what he thought of as a conversation with the newcomer.  Nilly for his part knew it was an interrogation and that in the gap between them was filled with a universe of mistrust.

            “Mr. Sloane, a person is still…”

            “It’s Nilly.  William Nilly.  Sloane is your man.”

            “In NYLA, I believe, a person is still innocent until proven guilty, yes?’

            “Yes.”

            “But in France, one has to prove one’s innocence.”

            “I wouldn’t know.  I’ve never been there.”
            “But here the victims are tried and thrown in jail and the murdered are executed.  We have things under control.”

            “What do you want from me?”

            “We want Polono Sloane back.”

            “But you said he never…”

            “The cat, as they say, is out of the bag.  Once you began to look for him, word got around that he was missing.  People began to poke their noses.  He went from being a ghost to a question.  And that is not something that helps us.”

            “What does that all have to do with me?”

            “My offer is for you to take his place.  We could use a man like you.”

            “Take his place doing what?  You said he didn’t exist.”

            “Ah but now he can.  All our falsifying and faking can be realized…in you.”

            “Why me?”

            “Why not you?  No one here knows you.  You’ve been seen in his room and with his girlfriend.”

            “She’s not his girlfriend.  She never met him.”

            “A minor point that can be addressed.”

            “This is absurd.  What would I have to do?”

            “Nothing.  Just live your life, that is…his life.  We’ll take care of the rest.”
            Dylan said all this matter of factly, as though explaining the rules of Go Fish to an actual fish.  The matter of fact that Nilly as Sloane would be quickly killed by the rebels at the direction of the Feds was, to Dylan’s mind, not even worth mentioning.  It was all obvious political theater.  A kind of double reverse martyr for some cause or other.  No matter, Dylan thought.  It all made sense somehow.  But when he saw the sour look on Nilly’s face, he tried to come up with a sweetener.

            “Ever wonder, Mr. Sloane…”

            “It’s Nilly, I keep telling you.”

            “Ever wonder why women fall in love with their torturers?”
            “I didn’t know they did.”

            “Because no one ever paid such exquisite attention to them before.  Think about it that way.”

            There was a sound outside the closed of the office that sounded like a thud.  Someone dropping a thing, maybe, or maybe something far far worse.

            “What are you going to do?” Nilly asked nervously.

            “Standard procedure.  Just ask a few questions.  ‘Are you now or have you ever been…’, ‘where we you on the night of…’, ‘do you renounce your belief in…’  Like that.  The answers don’t matter very much so I wouldn’t worry.

            “The answers don’t matter?”

            “Everyone is guilty, my friend.”

            “And then?”

            “And then you are free to go.”

            “That’s all?”

            “Yes.  Just do not leave the country.”

            “And pretend to be my old friend Polono Sloane.”

            “Don’t worry about all that.  We’ll take care of everything.”

            “What if I don’t agree?”

            “When then you will be murdered for treason of course.”

            “Treason?  I haven’t done anything!”

            “Treason is simply a matter of timing.  That’s not me…that’s your Talleyrand.”

            “He’s not my Talleyrand and I am no traitor.”

            Dylan leaned in at that moment to add a touch of intimacy to their dialogue.

            “It’s not a matter of am but of are.  You can say you am or am not, but we decide if you are or are not.”

6.

            I did do some checking around and found out that Nilly was being released from the Marshall’s office.  It was one day beyond his visa, that is to say his finger tattoo.  I was not even sure if he knew that as I waited with the car outside the building.  As he stepped into the bright sun I could see that this was a very different man that the one I eyed at the border.  His frankness had turned to frailty and his brushed smile was gone.  He looked weary and his suit was creased.  I even handed him his old hat as a kind of joke but he neither got it nor put it on.

            “Are you all right?” I asked.

            “I have a headache.”

            “That would be the bullshit rotting.  What did Dylan say?”

            “He said that Polono Sloane never existed in the first place.”

            “I’ve heard that before.  This guy Sloane was a very popular nonperson.”

            “So therefore no one could have been murdered.  That’s why I’m free.”

            “Oh there was a murder all right.  A whole society was murdered.  It just didn’t tick the sixoclock.”

            “He wants me to stay here and pretend to be Sloane,” he said, then looked at his finger.  “I wonder if I still have time left.”

            “You don’t,” I said “but you’ve got to get out of here anyway.  The rebels want you, that is him, dead.”

            “There are no rebels.  You said that.”

            “Okay then, the Feds want you dead.  Someone sure does."
            "Then why did they release me?”

            “Don’t you understand,” I pleaded.  “Everyone wants to kill you to make a point.”

            “What point?”

            “How should I know?  I’m just a reporter.  But you have to get out of here tonight,” I said.

            “How do I do that?” he asked.

            “You know about Schrodinger’s cat?”

            “Everyone does.  The cat is neither dead nor alive until you open the box.”

            “Well same with you,” I said and shoved the case at him with no delicacy, like a gift from the devil. 

            “What is it?” he asked.

            “Your way out of here.  A plane ticket, a visa, and a sayonarattive all kaboodled.”

            “If it’s a way out, why didn’t you use it?”

            “Because I’m not leaving, you are.”

            “Why would you live like this if you didn’t have to?”

            “You know your Brecht?”

            “No.”

            “He said that in dark times they won’t say: the times were dark.  Rather: why were their poets silent?”

            He had no idea what I meant.  But how could he, how could any Nylander?  Their success was based entirely on normality…job-holders holding their jobs, family men manning their families, bureaucrats cratting their bureaus.  But not here.  Here where there was nothing to do all day but do nothing with great fervor.  Here where the homeless were called Freemen because they did not have the burden of a mortgage.  Here were only the poets told the truth and no one still listened.  Light here had a way of illuminating the already visible and shadowing that which could not be seen.

            “You Nylanders think you have freedom,” I said, “but you don’t.  You only have choices…the inalienable right to choose between scented and unscented, no-cal and lo-cal, pay now or pay later.”

            “I don’t get you.  Any of you.  All these games, all this nonsense.  Choices are at least better than living in a trap.”

            I liked him for that.  It was the first time he had expressed an idea about things, rather than just go along to get along.  Maybe this little adventure had taught him something.  Maybe the blunt in his mind had taken an edge.  That would make him different from the others.  All those people who didn’t have a clue, no poetry in their souls, who didn’t know their haddayacallits from their whatsits but spoke with great conviction.   Maybe Mr. Nilly would go back changed and in that way, change what he went back to.

            Maybe me too.

            I did not bother to see him off at the border.  Frankly, I had had my fill of wondering what was coming across.  Wondering or caring.  There was enough on this side to think about, if you chose to.

            But I can easily imagine him waiting for that finger to be scanned, with a look on his face as though the fly to his confusion were permanently open.  I can see him sitting there , much as I am sitting now at my desk.  I can hear his inner voice, not unlike my own, making something midway between a plea and a chant, trying to fill the void left by apprehension.  He looks out the window, not this one here but the window at the border, and says softly to himself, " Well, let's get going.  Let's get this show on the road."

        That voice is as clear as if it were my own.  And in unison, in compadreon as we say here, I whistle a nervous little ditty, tap my fingers on jittery knees, look and wait, and say:  "Yes, let’s go, go, go!”

            Soon the cat vanishes but the grim remains.