Los Angeles (21 page)

Fuck it, I told myself. Fuck Frank. And fuck my father. I’m thirty-two years old, I thought. I can do whatever the fuck I
want.

Fuck all of them. Fuck everything.

As my father’s limo driver had reminded me, sometimes you have to say, what the fuck?

I showered and threw on a fresh set of clothes, stuffed as much of the money I had found into my wallet as I could, as well
as the note, and then, just as I was about to lock the door behind me, it dawned on me that this would be an extremely long
flight, that I’d want something to read. I grabbed the nearest book off my desk, not even bothering to see what it was, and
slipped into the hall.

In the Cadillac, I noticed that the day was overcast, the sky asphalt-white. The atmosphere was close, overheated, and the
palm trees drooped like beaten dogs. It was an airport day, there’s no other way to describe it.

I drove the fastest way possible, on the freeway, discovering that the traffic had yet to jam up.

At LAX, I waited no longer than five minutes before the flight started boarding, and I was placed in the first first-class
seat.

I reached into my pocket to see what book I had grabbed.

Crap.

I was stuck with a copy of
In Search of Schrödinger’s Cat: Quantum Physics and Reality.

I flipped it open, reading an epigraph from the great physicist himself on the first page: “I don’t like it, and I’m sorry
I ever had anything to do with it.” He was speaking about the uncertainty principle, which is the idea that, at its most elemental
level, light is both particle and wave, and that whichever one it happens to be at any given moment depends entirely on the
observer. I had been reading through this book in the weeks before Angela had disappeared, reacquainting myself with some
of the ideas I had been obsessed with in college. Erwin Schrödinger had set out to disprove the uncertainty principle through
the application of common sense with a thought experiment about a cat.

He imagined a cat inside a box. He also imagined that inside the box was a sealed phial of poison, and suspended over the
phial of poison was a hammer. Hooked up to the hammer was a photosensitive device that registers whether a single photon of
light exhibits wave properties or particle properties. If the photon is a wave, let’s say, the hammer does nothing, remaining
suspended over the phial, and the cat lives. If the photon is a particle, on the other hand, the hammer smashes the phial,
and the cat dies instantly. (For this experiment to work, you also have to imagine that the box is soundproof, which is a
weak spot in the whole scenario, I know, but there it is.) Anyway, the only way to find out what happened, whether the result
is particle or wave, is to open the box.

In the meantime, what’s going on with that stupid cat?

The answer, and Schrödinger himself thought this was ridiculous, is that the cat is neither alive nor dead. She is alive
and
dead. It’s what physicists call a superposition of states.

Ironically, and much to Erwin Schrödinger’s great disappointment, his thought experiment was actually used to
prove
the idea of the uncertainty principle, not to discredit it. Moreover, an additional theory suggests that the world itself
splits in two, one world in which the photon is wave — and the cat is alive — the other world in which it is particle — and
the cat is dead.

Two worlds. Two cats. Both existing simultaneously.

Only by looking inside the box does one of those worlds collapse.

That’s what I had been trying to explain to Angela that night, that there are multiple worlds, alternate realities constantly
splitting off for every instant of subatomic indecision. If you look closely at the light, I told her, you will find uncertainty
there, doubt, the ultimate vacillation at reality’s core. Which direction it goes depends, the uncertainty principle informs
us, on the observer.

Light, it turns out, is only what you make of it.

I recalled another day/night/morning/evening. This time it was a whole handful of dry, cube-shaped pills.

“There are two kinds of artists,” Angela was saying, “the kind who manifest their darkness from the present and the kind who
bring it up from the past. Which are you?”

“I’m not an artist,” I answered. “I’m a scientist.”

“I thought you were a writer.”

“When did I tell you about my writing?”

“You’re writing a screenplay,” she answered, pointing toward a stack of blue paper. “It’s called
Los Angeles.”

On the television was the scene in which Rick Deckard sips from a clear drink, and a thread of blood issues into the viscous
liquid. He sits at a piano and thumbs through photographs, reliving old memories. “Well, I’m not a writer anymore.” I had
started talking crazy because of all the meds I’d been taking. “I’m an electromagnetic scientist.” I could feel the effects
of too many anti-depressants in my legs. My veins had filled with helium, and I knew that if I tried to get up, I would float
away. “Help me,” I begged. I was made entirely of rubber bands.

“An electromagician?” Angela placed her glass on the floor beside her and reached for my hands, standing, pulling me up to
her level. “Are you a dark electromagician, Angel, or a light one?”

I was leaning on her shoulder, and she was leading me into the bedroom. “I told you I don’t like that kind of symbolism.”

“You’re all about that kind of symbolism.”

“I am the embodiment of that kind of symbolism,” I said. “I know this. I am aware of this. Of this I am all too painfully
aware.” I dropped onto the bed face first. “But that doesn’t mean I support it.”

Angela slid beside me, her cool slender legs touching mine.

“Electromagnetism, the full spectrum, light to dark.” I tried to explain to her the history of light, some of the important
things I had learned in college — Newton’s theories, Fresnel’s findings, the chain of events that led to Maxwell’s discovery
of electromagnetism, Einstein’s ultimate insight into the essentially dual nature of the universe. Because from there —

“Can I kiss you?” she asked.

— from there came Schrödinger, and Heisenberg and his uncertainty principle, the Multiple Worlds Theory, and all the rest.

“Go ahead and kiss me,” I said, giving in.

Our conversation went on like this. Still in my mind were shreds of language, scraps of dialogue that appeared and reappeared
with Angela’s image, her face, her body, her limbs wrapped around me, her lips against my neck, my chest, against my lips.

And always, always, that cat.

Crying, screaming, wailing.

We were in the living room, on the flokati, in the kitchen pouring drinks or microwaving dinner entrées. We were in the bedroom,
in bed, limbs tied together, the cat mewling desperately outside.

“What do you like, Angel?” she kept asking. “What do you want me to do?”

The cat was screaming.

“Just this,” I said. “Just you.”

“What do you want, specifically?
Specifically.
Something concrete, something particular.”

Wailing, mewling, caterwauling.

“I don’t have specific,” I told her. “I’m all generalities. I’m all abstractions.”

She lit a cigarette, and when she closed her eyes halfway, I could see the crescent of eye shadow there, that smile of mascara.

On television was the scene where the actor named Morgan Paull interviews Leon. This is early in the film, the first moment
of violence. “Maybe you’re fed up,” Morgan says. “Maybe you want to be by yourself. Who knows? You look down and you see a
tortoise, Leon, it’s crawling toward you.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“What is what?” Angela said.

“What is it that you’re after? What do you want from me?”

Angela shook her head, eyes still closed.

“Answer the question.”

She made a gesture. “I am… enigmatic.”

“I’m not exactly a prize,” I said. “I mean, look at me.”

“Yes,” she said, smiling. “Look at you.”

“I’m a freak.”

A squeal of agony emitted from the parking lot.

“You’re my little prince.”

“I have psychological problems.”

“Like what?”

“I have agoraphobia. I have social —”

“What is the one where you’re afraid of the truth?” Angela traced her finger along the length of my nose. “Because
that
is the illness you suffer from.”

On the plane, taxiing out onto the LAX runway, I thought of the way I had buried that goddamned cat in the old man’s yard.
In this world, she was dead, that was certain. Perhaps she was still alive in some other world. Just then the airplane’s wings
lifted us into the air, and the flight attendant, a platinum blonde who had once been Barbie-doll sexy, was asking if I would
like something to drink.

“You remind me of my mother,” I told her.

“That’s a compliment, I guess.” She had a Southern accent and wore so much makeup that her base powder cracked like old concrete
around her features.

“She was a famous model,” I informed her. “She was a French movie actress.”

The flight attendant smiled impatiently. “Would you like something to drink or not, sweetheart?”

“Do you have bourbon?”

“Uh-oh,” she said, smiling, “a whiskey drinker.” She turned around and came back with a miniature bottle of Jack Daniel’s
and a small glass.

My seat was next to the window, and I watched the asphalt of L.A. fall away beneath the plane, and then the steel water of
the Pacific, gray and blue with flecks of white twinkling across it like flashbulbs at the Olympics. We turned, banking sharply
to the south, the whole plane veering sickeningly to one side. Flying has never bothered me, but there was something about
this, the spontaneity of it, I guess, and the fact that I couldn’t take it back, that made me uneasy. I felt my stomach turn
one way, the plane veering in the opposite direction. It wasn’t the flight, I guess; it was the decision.

I sipped the Jack Daniel’s and it tasted like bananas.

I took a quick inventory of the items in the pockets. They contained the Schrödinger book, my passport, and my wallet. The
inventory of my wallet included thousands of dollars in one hundred dollar bills, that crazy note I had found on Angela’s
doorstep, my credit cards, and my California driver’s license. The inventory of my apartment included a table, a chair, a
fuzzy black rug, stacks of books and CDs, two computers, a large-screen television set — which was still on, incidentally,
still playing
Blade Runner
over and over — a stereo, an electronic wave-generating device, a closet full of clothes that were essentially identical to the
ones I was wearing now, a bed with black sheets and red blankets, red towels in the bathroom, a toothbrush, and a closet-size
stackable washer and dryer. The inventory of my life included a famous father, his young wife and adopted baby, a mother who’s
face had been rebuilt in plastic, a psychiatrist, a sociopathic lawyer, a missing girlfriend, and a rock star whom, somehow,
no matter what, I had to find in Rio de Janeiro, even if it killed me.

“Do you happen to know,” I asked the man sitting beside me, “where musicians stay when they go to Rio?”

“Musicians?” He had dark hair with gray temples. He wore a rumpled suit and a red silk tie. His face was pocked with ancient
scars.

“You know,” I said, “like rock stars.”

“Like Madonna?”

“Sure.” I shrugged. “Like Madonna.”

“They might stay at the Copacabana Palace. It is very expensive.” He thought for a moment. “Are you a rock star?”

“Me? No.” I laughed. “No, no. I’m looking for one.”

This piqued his curiosity. “Which particular rock star are you looking for?”

“It’s a group. ImmanuelKantLern,” I said. “I’m going to see them tonight.”

“Ah,” he said.

“And I was hoping to stay in the same hotel. Have you heard of them?”

He furrowed his brow. “There is much about modern music I do not know.” He gave me a polite smile that made me realize he
believed I was insane and that he really didn’t want to talk to me anymore. “I prefer jazz.”

I looked down into my glass and saw that my banana-flavored Jack Daniel’s had somehow disappeared.

I tried to look out the window, to appreciate the fading light of the sky from this altitude. But there was nothing to see,
only fluffy clouds like a commercial set in heaven, a blue sky, and a yellow-gold sun. I half-expected to see a fake angel
suspended on wires.

After an hour, the sky became excruciatingly bright. A white sun shone like an everlasting camera flash. I closed the shade
and rubbed roughly at my sockets. I found my asshole glasses pushed up onto my forehead and slipped them down. I kept repeating
in my mind the image of Angela coming into the apartment with her arms full of hyacinths. I kept hearing the grating, antisocial
music of ImmanuelKantLern. Reading about the Multiple Worlds Theory —
“both cats are real. There is a live cat, and there is a dead cat; but they are located in different worlds”
— I fell into a somnambulant haze, then woke up when I felt the hand of a flight attendant gently shaking my shoulder. Instantly
I realized that I had an erection and had been dreaming about Angela dancing onstage at the Mask.

Jesus Christ.

I flinched, embarrassed. I wondered if I’d had that hard-on the whole time and berated myself for not keeping the tiny airplane
blanket over my lap.

I realized, too, that I had forgotten to bring any medication.

I lifted the shade and looked out the window again. We were descending through a Technicolor sunset, the falling light filtering
through clouds of orange and pink and a thousand hues of gray. It seemed fake, a painted backdrop brought in by the effects
department. It also occurred to me that this whole airplane could be fake, one of those props my father used to make disaster
movies. Some kind of motor was causing it to shake slightly, providing the illusion that we were flying.

I had the absurd idea that Angela would be waiting for me at the gate, that she would greet me, arms wide, when I stepped
off, saying, “Angel…Angel…” just as my mother used to say when I would come home from the Vancouver School. Angela would be
wearing blue contacts, and her skin would sparkle the way it had on the first day we met…