Addy sniffed. “It’s a baseball metaphor?”

  “What’s America’s pastime?”

  “Oh, yeah. Sorry, continue.”

  “Our goal is to preserve the online remains of every dead citizen of the red, white, and blue. And provide the slickest transport to their info since Walt built his monorail.”

  Addy’s lips twisted. “Before your time.”

  “Yeah, that’s Maglio’s. Do you want to hear the rest of this?”

  Addy drew a finger across her lips.

  “Norval Portals will preserve it all. Data is good. More data is better. What isn’t data will be. If it won’t be, it’s data now. Our profit? Hundreds of millions of visitors will pay to visit their friends and loved ones, providing solid demographics for advertisers. We will package our data assets into numerous financial instruments: derivatives, options, futures, forwards. And the beauty is this: as the deceased pile up, our audience can only grow.”

  Addy nodded. “I see a flaw.”

  Raphael caught his breath. “Yes?”

  “But those remains, doesn’t the next of kin—”

  Raphael switched again to his Maglio impersonation. “‘Have rights? Contracts. Which is why speed is so important. The moment we verify a lead is offline, unquestionably dead, we speak with the rights holder—next of kin, what have you. We offer to take responsibility for their loved one’s online remains and to provide them an easy access portal to all that information, all those memories, all those secrets—and to the rights holder at no charge. Most jump at the offer. It’s like getting a free burial plot with no-cost maintenance.’

  “So to sum it up, Addy, we’re making money off ghosts.”

  “Dead Souls. I mean the book by Gogol, the Russian guy. In his book, the main character goes around acquiring dead people, dead serfs. At first, the landowners are happy to give the dead serfs away—kind of a tax write-off. Then they find out the main character, whatchamacallit—Chichikov, that’s his name, Chichikov acquires all these dead people to take out a bank loan on them. Collateral, you know? Not mentioning to the banks the serfs are dead.”

  “Wow. I never heard.”

  “You don’t read enough.”

  “I should get your, uh, Dead Souls.”

  “Are you strictly a non-vegetable reader?”

  “Oh, no, I go both ways. Digital. Paper.”

  “Great. If I find my old print copy, I’ll let you borrow it.”

  As they approached Wilshire, a skyboard descended to float east on the boulevard. Its message crawled across an image of smiling seniors: Old Friends Are Golden, But an Old You Is Not. The seniors’ wrinkles, sagging jowls, and age spots disappeared. The technology erased thirty years in an instant. Tight, smooth faces glowed. A new message flashed: Stay Young with Vanitum!

  Raphael sighed. Even if one day he should escape his four streets, another boundary awaited him, awaited everyone. He glanced at Addy, who was young and bursting with life and energy, but who too was bound by time, fated to grow old and decay until finally that hooded figure with the scythe dropped by. Turning the corner at the Norval building, he wanted to scream in defiance. He didn’t even whisper.

  Addy halted and pointed toward Norval’s doors. “That could be her.”

  He followed Addy up the steps to the entrance. A tiny pink-clad body so flat as to be almost invisible lay at the base of the door.

  Addy knelt beside her. “Pink, it’s Addy. Are you all right?”

  The woman’s eyes opened. “Do not track. Track. Do not track. Track.”

  “I’ll get you to your bed, okay? Help me, Raphael.”

  Clamping the board to his side with grocery bag in hand, Raphael took Pink’s left arm and Addy her right. As they lifted, Pink’s laptop slid out from under her jacket.

  “No!” shouted Pink.

  He released her hand and grabbed the laptop. “It’s all right. I’ve got it.” By the time the trio rounded the corner, Pink was awake. She demanded her laptop, and when Raphael put it in her hands, she held it like an infant to her breast.

  In ten minutes, they reached the corner of Third Street. As the light changed, Addy strode into the crosswalk. “Come on, Pink.”

  Pink sniffed. “Where’s my food? My piles?”

  Addy cupped her mouth and whispered to Raphael, “She pronounces pills as piles. Some kind of Ozark thing.” Addy drew her hand away. “You’ll get your pills at the center, Pink.”

  Pink sniffed.

  “And I’ve got your food right here.” Raphael handed her the bag. Pink tucked her laptop under her arm and opened the bag.

  “Why don’t you eat your burrito at the center,” suggested Addy. “Are you coming with us?” She pointed. “It’s two blocks down there, a short distance from where I live.”

  He turned his head. “Oh, east of Fairfax.”

  “Yes, but I’m moving soon. It’s further from the center, but roomier.”

  “Further, ah …” He took a deep breath and inched toward the curb’s edge.

  Fairfax moaned, cracked, and revealed the Earth splitting in two. The far side retreated as if it were a wave going in the wrong direction, out to sea, headed for a distant shore. The abyss opened before him, a dizzying depth in which no one would hear his screams, and his screams would be heard no more.

  Head spinning, knees buckling, he stepped back. “I can’t.”

  Addy took another step away, further into the open chasm in front of him. “It’s okay.” She gestured for Pink to follow. “Maybe another time.”

  A hand yanked on Raphael’s shoulder. He turned around to see Pink staring at him. “Raphael Lennon?”

  “Right.”

  Her face tightened. “Do you want the preliminary data?”

  “Come on, Pink, we’ve got to go,” Addy called.

  “That’s okay, Pink. I can get it some other time.”

  “You’re out of time.”

  “Right,” said Raphael, a chill running up his spine despite his incredulity. You could be out of time for a hundred things; why should it mean something sinister? The least likely was death around the corner.

  “Thirteen days.”

  “It’s late, Pink,” said Addy.

  Pink lifted her hand to Raphael’s cheek and whispered, “You should run.”

  Run, right. The hairs on his neck stood up. “What happens at the end of thirteen days?”

  Shaking her head, Pink shuffled past him. “Can we go home so I can eat my food?”

  “Pink, what happens in thirteen days?” repeated Raphael.

  Ignoring him, Pink stepped toward Addy’s outstretched hand. Looking both ways, she shuffled onto the empty street.

  “Addy?” said Raphael

  “Yes?”

  Courage. “Is there any way I can contact you?”

  Her blue braces shone under the streetlight. “I’m a bit old fashioned. No Chinchat or Pillowgram. Addyaddyhomefree at scales dot com.”

  “Got it.”

  Pink glanced at Raphael then flapped her hands. “They let it fall. Water too. And you.”

  “Who let what fall?” asked Raphael. “The plane?” Pink only shook her head and sniffed at her burrito. They let it fall. Thirteen days. Digital moonbeams.

  “Come on, Pink.” Addy put her arm around Pink’s waist and guided her across the intersection. When they reached the far side, Addy turned and shouted, “Thanks for finding Pink!”

  “Anytime.”

  “Goodnight.”

  “Goodnight.”

  He stepped onto the skateboard, his feet seeming to hover above the wood, with his heart above his head. Man, she was lovely—and sweet too. Did she like him? Maybe she was just being nice, grateful. He’d have to tell her the truth, assuming he ever saw her again. No, Addy, we can’t go to Venice on our honeymoon. As his spirits returned to Earth, he felt a tap on his shoulder and turned to see two guys in baseball caps and hooded sweatshirts. The smaller of the two, tapped the flat of a knife blade against his palm.

  “Hey, man, can you help us out?”

  CHAPTER

  FIVE

  Jesus, would he ever get home?

  The one who had spoken, the smaller of the two, let his hands hang in the air as if he were a begging dog. His fingers were plump with purple nails. A tattooed letter marked the back of each finger.

  F-U-C-K D-A-T-A

  Raphael’s chest tightened. Hard Blanks. No gait-shifting or candle-lit protests for these Ludds. Smashed phones, wire cutters, and beatings were more their speed. Raphael had to stay cool or the mugging could escalate.

  “No, can’t help you.” Raphael dropped a foot to the ground and set to push off. The heavyset one yanked him off the board.

  “Give us your wallet.”

  Raphael twisted away from his assailant. His heart raced as he closed his right hand.

  “I don’t want to fight.”

  “Wallet,” barked the little Blank.

  “I’ll give you fifty, all right? I’ll just walk away.”

  “Wallet means wallet.”

  The big Blank clasped the neck of Raphael’s T-shirt and tugged.

  Ten years had passed since a high school bully grabbed him the same way. Raphael was scared, yeah, but angry too.

  The big Blank drew closer, his rank breath in Raphael’s face. “If I hit you, I will hurt you,” declared Raphael.

  “Oh, we’re shaking,” said plump fingers. “Get out the fucking wallet.”

  Sorry, Mom. With a sharp breath and heart racing, he swung.

  His knuckles sank into the large one’s cheek, right down to the teeth. The Blank blew out air as he staggered back, head leaning to the left. In high school, the bully fell to his knees and cried, while Raphael sucked on his bloodied knuckles. But the big guy didn’t fall. His head straightened, and his eyes darkened. He rolled his shoulders and stepped toward Raphael. As Raphael drew back his fist again, a hand snatched his wrist, and a forearm clamped his throat. The big Blank got bigger.

  The Blank was up against him now, slamming Raphael in the gut. Raphael punched lamely. Short, ineffective swings that glanced off the guy’s torso.

  “I’ll hold skin-and-bones here,” cried the big one, his breath hot and foul. “Get his wallet.”

  A hand dug into Raphael’s left pocket. “Stop fucking moving or you’ll feel an inch of my knife.” A cold point probed Raphael’s spine. “Here’s a sample.” With a faint pop, the cold point seared. Paper rustled. “Not bad,” said the smaller mugger. Raphael arched his back to escape the heat. They had him.

  “Should we convert him?” asked his assailant.

  As Raphael twisted from the probing blade, a phone buzzed, and it wasn’t his. Fat Fingers pivoted away from Raphael, slipped out a pulsing phone from his waistband and conversed on the device. He swung around. “Let him go.”

  “What the fuck?” yipped the one holding Raphael.

  “You heard me, man.”

  The big guy’s arm uncurled from Raphael’s neck. “Yeah, sure.” He shoved Raphael forward. Stuffing the cash in his pocket, the short one tossed the wallet to the sidewalk.

  “Let’s party!” shouted the smaller one.

  The two tore off down Fairfax.

  “Assholes,” cried Raphael as he picked up his wallet, thinner now, though the plastic was all there. A Blank with a phone? Hard Blanks or posers? He recalled the two Blanks he had seen from Norval’s window. Their sizes corresponded. Well, what if they were? He touched the warm, pulsing wound on the small of his back. They could have really messed him up.

  He adjusted his beanie, looked longingly down the street where Addy had gone, and then found the lit windows of the Tar Tower. Lifting his trembling hands, he folded them into fists, the big knuckle of his right hand dark with blood. The dean had suspended him for a week. No, Mom, never again. But sometimes …

  He licked his knuckle, then pounded his fists together until the shaking stopped. He pushed off.

  Raphael, shedding the numbing anger left by the incident, entered his apartment, turned on the lights, and double-locked the door. Report them to the police? Waste of time. Muggings were a dime a dozen in the city. The key holder dropped from his fingers to the floor. Calm down, man. If you got loose, you could have taken those guys by yourself … maybe. He steadied his hand, picked up the ring and drew it closer, gazing at the keys. Four were his mother’s museum keys, which he couldn’t bring himself to discard. He ran his thumb over each, then fingered the tiny gold heart pendant given to him by the neighbor girl when she moved away. He shoved the ring into his pocket.

  He opened the door-sized living room windows to release the smell of oil paints and allow in some reasonably fresh air. The view from the eleventh floor nearly justified the rent. Through the eight-foot-tall window, he took in the northern nightscape: the dense lights and streaming traffic of the Fairfax district, the dazzling holographic billboards of Sunset and in the hills above, the blue glaze of swimming pools. He turned from the view to his studio. Built during the 1940s, the Tar Tower units were classic old Hollywood: hardwood floors, artisan tile work, and beamed ceilings. Best of all, the living rooms were the size of racquetball courts, with ceilings high enough to shoot hoops.

  He needed the space.

  In the room, he had assembled a makeshift scaffolding of steel tubes. At the top of the frame, eight feet from the floor, lay sheets of plywood, which served as the platform from which he painted a large canvas the size of the ceiling. Twenty-foot lengths of pine bolted to the beams, supplemented by diagonal boards, framed and stretched taut the canvas, which lay three feet above the plywood, so he could paint while lying supine. Working in that position for hours made his arm tingle and ache. He didn’t mind the pain.

  “Art must be born from the deepest emotions,” his mother had said, “sometimes even suffering.” She herself was a painter. Mostly small abstracts, which she hung only on the walls of their apartment, thinking her art uninspired and made with little talent. She taught him the fundamentals of painting: color, composition, value, form, perspective, and brushwork. Then the mediums: acrylics, oils, or watercolors. After that, she explained color theory: how colors harmonize and complement one another. Finally, she guided him through mixing and application.

  From the very first, he liked the oils, the old masters’ choice. He practiced and painted beside his mother, sometimes in the apartment, sometimes on the grassy slopes of the museum. He painted what he saw, but eventually he painted what he felt. His brushwork became bold, and he liked to put wild stuff beside neat little figurative packages. Bright splashes of color violated by graffiti. When she took him to a neo-expressionist show at the museum, he knew exactly how he wanted to paint.

  Raphael began the Painting during the last year of his mother’s life. At first, he drew small rough sketches, though she advised it would have to be bigger, much bigger. “Many of the neo-expressionists painted big,” his mother noted. He wanted the painting to reflect his life, or at least the way he saw that life. He started and abandoned canvases because they couldn’t contain all he wanted to put in, which was all that had happened to him within his square mile.

  As his mother’s death approached, the prospect of the painting, the strategy of such a project, filled him to bursting. He explained the plan to her: he would paint it as if on a chapel ceiling. Every significant object and experience in his life would occupy the canvas. Even as she struggled with unrelenting pain, his efforts delighted her and made her laugh, if only inwardly.

  Yet, it was not long after he pushed away the furniture and began assembling the scaffold that the problems the project presented struck him. The painting had to accommodate all that had happened or would happen in his life: a paradox. When would he stop painting?

  His mom’s silence about one vital image added a further difficulty. To put all of his life on the canvas, he would need to include a father. He didn’t know his father, and if he broached the subject with his mother, she would avert her eyes and not say a word.

  When he went to work for Norval, he considered finding the answer among all the data Norval compiled, which included the data on his mother. In there, among all the emails, postings, and auto blogs might be clues to his father’s identity. But that was her private world, and she had not given him permission to enter. He might open a stranger’s gate but not his mom’s.

  Maybe he’d find his father, maybe not. Maybe his father didn’t have to be on the canvas at all.

  In his heart, he believed that despite the paradox and the missing image, he’d finish. According to his mom, on that day, he’d be free; his phobia defeated, barriers smashed.

  Most nights when he came home from work, he’d play a few records on his mom’s old turntable and leaf through one of his art magazines. He kept his laptop closed, his phone powered down. Working at Norval had soured him to social media, and he’d kicked that habit. He was no Blank, but he got nothing from the steamy gossip, false outrage, and bad information that many found so compelling, He’d drink a cup of tea or a bottle of beer, feel joyous and sad, and fall asleep at nine. He’d wake at midnight and paint for one or two hours. He preferred night, when the city was quieter and most of its residents dreaming. It was easier to pretend he was alone in the world with the canvas.

  Tonight, he would only work for a brief time, for the encounter with Pink and Addy, and then the hard Blanks had sapped his energy.

  He rolled his shoulders, clapped his hands, and climbed the frame. Turning on the lights illuminating the painting, he lay on the plywood, and remained still for a moment, not uncomfortable in the confined space between the bed of wood and the canvas. Sometimes he would lose himself in the images. A fearsome dog that had licked his cheek when he was three, represented by a gleaming elongated pink tongue. The fragmented face of the lovely neighbor girl who had moved away. A garbage truck rendered as a green insatiable maw. The round and round rhythm of the dryer in the Tar Tower’s laundry room. An achingly beautiful queen palm. The wall of stars at the Farmers Market. A horrid dream about a lizard and a praying mantis. Have you lived today? Lazing on a hill at the museum. His mother sleeping. The man at Pan Pacific Park who taught him skateboard tricks from a distance. A scarlet whirlpool of lost innocence. An overturned car, an arm hanging out the window. A saber-toothed tiger sinking into the tar. The pummeling fist of the bad virus. His world and experiences realized in two dimensions.