Hummingbird Salamander(22)
The blessing now is Silvina shining out from my eyes, obliterating the past.
[29]
Someone made a joke at the reception, early that evening, that disaster was the greatest security. “Savior of privacy.” The places that Wi-Fi couldn’t cover. If you were underwater, nothing could find you, went his joke. You couldn’t interpret that without replacing his smile with a grinning skull. Consumed by the fire, you might rise as a phoenix. Or you might just be a pile of crumbling ashes.
The organizers had decided to make it a masquerade party. We were all to wear masks, supplied by companies that made designer versions. Various filtration systems. Others mimicked quarantine masks, but were specific to the subindustry devoted to subverting facial recognition software. Peacock iridescent. Some even with feathers. Others black and soulless as VR tech. A few had miniature waterfalls running down the cheekbones. Soon companies would be able to produce masks that were living creatures, had a hologram of what looked like a localized dystopia for your face. I chose a plain, neutral, unassuming mask.
We were a legion of fools in masks. A rhapsody of masks. A rhapsody of fools. Just added another layer. What got through and what did not. Next year, there would be no conference. A few years later, businesses hawking wares would have changed. The old ones washed away by the shock of realization: the physical laws of the universe didn’t give a fuck about them. Wouldn’t protect them just because they existed and sold things.
Somehow, I managed to find the person I was looking for in that morass, after she texted me her mask type. Let’s call her “Jill.” I had contacted her well before getting on the plane, to give her enough time.
“Jill” approached me, wearing a pink-red parrot mask with three eyes for three types of filters. I couldn’t even see her neck, so it was more like a parrot head. I was talking to someone wearing a parrot head.
The reception was work for her, so we didn’t talk long, promised to catch up after. But the wonderful thing is, we knew we never would. We just had this understanding in the moment. Might do lunch next time, or might not. We didn’t need more.
Our companies didn’t collaborate on bids, but I’d met her at the conference four years ago and we had liked each other. She also went to the gym a lot.
“Here they are,” she murmured, coming close to reach up on tiptoe to hug me and placing the objects in Shovel Pig.
“Thanks,” I said. “It’s a huge relief.”
Jill smiled. “Happy to do it. I might need something someday.” But she wouldn’t, and I’d never see her again. I watched her pivot with envy, the seamless transition into the next conversation, across the room. Not my strength.
Now I had White SIM cards for a powerful crypto phone. More like a stripped-down version of my laptop that couldn’t be traced.
Meanwhile, my “real” phone kept reminding me of home.
>>Dad wants to know if the hotel is fab.
Fab?
>>Dad should just take my phone and buy me a new one.
>>Dad is thinking about a fence for the yard.
My daughter missed me, I think. This was the real message. But there was another message, about my husband, I didn’t quite want to see.
I wound up calling my new phone “Bunker Hog,” to go with Shovel Pig. “Bog” for short. Lost in the Bog. No one ever got out of the Bog.
It made sense at the time.
* * *
I put on my stoic face. Made the approaches I needed to, spoke to the people I needed to. The ones Alex talked to on a regular basis. To establish a presence, an identity, a sense for Alex of how I had moved through the conference. How I had represented the company in real time.
Alex, as if reading my mind:
>>How’s it going? Did you get to the gym? Knock ’em dead!
Ignored that. So little thought put into his text, why bother?
I just wanted it over. I can do small talk, but it wears on me. I become clipped, sullen, resentful. Confused technocrats reeling in my wake, the ones who didn’t know me staring, blank-eyed, at the bulky woman in the business suit.
Drowning in a sea of middle-aged and old men. Looking across the rows of faces for someone like me … and finding no one.
Imagine how little this helps me forget Silvina. Imagine how I maneuver Shovel Pig so I am even larger crossing to the station where lies in wait the white wine and the red wine.
Imagine that I am thinking about Silvina’s trial and whether she was really a murderer … while wondering how many people in that room have committed some sort of crime.
Imagine, too, that I’m trying to figure out how the sala mander relates to the hummingbird, across a sea of connect-the-dots.
The thought of Silvina staring at me in the coffee shop. Observing me in the day-to-day. Recruitment, except she’d died too soon?
Imagined Langer there, too, in spirit, no matter what the barista said. A ghost after scraps. His presence kept pressing in like a face through a dirty window.
[30]
A quiet corner in which to lurk, even if I’m not good at lurking. That’s all I wanted. A cave in which to hang my hat. What Silvina would have liked. Silence. Stillness. A light was out in a mold-smelling corner of the lobby, next to drab drapes. I watched the video of Silvina on my secret, “impenetrable” phone. Rewatched it. While I wondered why Allie hadn’t found it. Or, maybe more accurate, why she hadn’t given me the link. Yes, you had to dig for it. But not too far. Self-preservation, maybe.