The

Peninsula

By Dicletian
© 2009 by Alyssus Publishing Group
Text © 2007 by Dicletian.
All rights reserved.

ISBN 061534268X
EAN-13 9780615342689

Printed in the United States of America.

I’m a skinny six five mother fucker
And if you didn’t know me you would think I’m a clucker
But I’m not a clucker, I’m a dodger and a ducker
Come a little closer and I’ll show you, I will punch you
And if I can’t beat you, I’ll get my gun and I will buck you,
Turn you over like a bitch, pull out my dick, and fuck you

She said my hair looked proper as it flowed in the wind!

But I can’t have her number ‘cause I fucked her best friend
It's a pity I'm a nigger that just don't care
Except for my dope my money and hair

– Andre Nickatina, The New Jim Jones

Children are memory’s voices, and preserve

The dead from wholly dying, as a net
Is ever by its buoyant corks upheld.

– Aeschylus, The Libation Bearers

TESTIMONY OF JACOB
BESSEMER

SAN FRANCISCO
SUPERIOR COURT

SWORN AFFIDAVIT
2007
 I. Atherton
II. Stanford by Night
III. San Francisco
IV. Pacific Ocean
V. Stanford by Day
VI. Wine Country
 1
All summer I hounded across Italy with the liquidity
to brandish Veuve and the libido to pour it. The French
I consorted with in Milan slept nightly in its red houses,
boasting full-cheeked of their conquests and slapping
each other’s derrières, and one night, very drunk on ret-
sina, we barged through the Navigli towards a straw-
lined palace: they all had wives, they said, and if I ever
wanted to call myself a man I must quench my youth in
the embrace of a whore.
It seemed like a good idea at the time. This milk-
haired Bianca took me in her arms and bathed me, re-
leasing me burning into the night, and I was changed
forever. Ruby eyes called me back under the next
moon, and back again, and I found I could not stop.
I became Lothario to Florentines like Francesca,
queen of the red light, who in scarlet silks murmured of
Borgia as she sucked ecstasy pills; and the grateful
PETA activist Mary, nineteen, of Chartres, a multiracial
milkmaid; and the clicking Nigerian weed-wench from
Leidseplein, Amsterdam, whom in new century zeit-

1
 THE PENINSULA

geist I trusted not to have AIDS.

The infidelity took me and I rejoiced. Every boy
takes prostitutes at some point in his life, and I was no
different. In whore-stained sheets I felt strangely ma-
ture: I was a changed man, a new man, ready to
graduate college. I did not stop, feeling no less love for
myself or for anyone involved. Arms unwound like
vines from the arches, beaded with saline water, flanks
and thighs wriggling, tongues hanging offered, the win-
dows shuttered and flesh taut, and I could not stop.
“What do American girls desire?” the whores asked
me.
“At my age, not romance, wining, or dining,” I
laughed. “They want to be charmed at parties, put face
down on beds, fucked, and raised above their friends.”
“They sound like men,” they said, rolling their eyes.
“I will think about that,” I replied. “Now you can
shut up and blow me.”
Nights later I apportioned us a great multitude of
harlots who flocked powderscented and deathridden
around our taxicab, and we found ourselves soon be-
hind doors encloistered with the many. A whore will
take a shower the first thing and the last, and having
drunk our bottles of Averna they commenced to wash
lurching in red soap, spurging fumes of cheap whore oil
and spraying upon themselves what liquids could mask
their smell. I found at their return no desire for them
and lay about impugning two girls of their histories
while the Frenchmen elsewhere bent the others.
The first had been ridden like a horse since age four,
sold from Cambodia to those parts; she spoke little

2
 ATHERTON

English and bore a tattoo of a skull upon her neck and

scars from belts upon her legs which had thrice been
broken by her masters. The second and elder re-
nounced God before me and broke out weeping in
terror after I choked her, but a Fifty Euro note soon
sealed her slobbering mouth. Then they held each other
trembling as I fed them peanuts, beer, and barbecued
pig to the moans of their sisters asuffering faroff the
ministrations of the French.
At dawn I led them shaking from our quarters into
the elevator and saw them no more. In Genoa we suf-
fered to pay many whores for their services and we
found them as legion as fleas upon a dog. A whore
bundled in soap once writhed across me while I smiled
at her and commenced the same interview as in Milan,
but she would not speak of her past. A Frenchman de-
livered to a fugacious whore so vengefully that she
leaked neon upon our bedsheets and had to be purged.
In the provincial cities I encountered two whores one
the victim of a stabbing who bore lump scars across her
abdomen and her sister a mother with the whip of the
caesarian drawn over her belly. Both these in the tradi-
tion of the Pacific islands grew hair from their nipples,
at which I grew amazed.
It was the end of my youth.
Finally the whores chloroformed me and took every-
thing I owned – backpack, billfold, even the monkstraps
off my feet. My summer’s war against the Euro, my
very Italian campaign, was ended, and just in time for
Stanford to resume. I called home to hear the news:
mother’s vision had worsened, she was back in hospital,

3
 THE PENINSULA

it was all going black, oh God–

“I have to see you again,” she whispered across the
sea. “I have to see you.”

She was marrying Michael Medine.

Her enthusiasm for her late husband's business part-
ner precipitated from a fiduciary collapse of her own
creation. In an unseemly and uncharacteristic burst of
feminism, she decided barely before father was buried
that she would have a go managing our money, and
would moreover pick stocks.
She was sure she would be good at it. For the first
time in her life she found herself at the helm of a large
pool of capital, and over the next two years the estate
shattered in half (airlines, Chinese solar), then in half
again (optical networking, the Peso). She had not heard
of diversification. Just as her eyes began to worsen,
another fifteen million manically shunted into Michael's
most recent Gina partnership – the living corpse of the
venture capital funds he had managed with my father –
and of the remainder mother claimed the mortgage
alone was gobbling a tenth every year, though how
could you trust her calculations?
Times were tough, for about a week. Then in a near-
ly medieval show of capitulation she gave up the house
like Clytemnestra into Michael’s gilded hands. Now he
was to be my father and she was going blind – but what
did I care?
To lose two parents looks careless, so the Medines’
jet came to get me – Michael’s sister had been bopping
around the Great Wen – and on the nineteenth of Sep-

4
 ATHERTON

tember, through the jet stream, the melting globe hurled

me west over Atlantic waters and obsolete eastern cit-
ies. We refueled in Chicago, while hurricanes
descended on the South and eliminated the sinners
there.
In the Gulfstream’s cabin Michael’s sister spoke to
me while I drank gin and the pilot flew and eaves-
dropped. I hadn’t met her because her branch of the
family lived in Hong Kong, but she’d heard of me. She
maintained the wide-eyed uncertainty I had seen on the
faces of whores, and with an enormous Lloyd’s bag
balanced on her breasts she stared at me, and her silver
eyes shimmered.
“Because it’s nice to have nice things,” she rea-
soned, “we should all have the best things.” All flight
she’d been going on like this, on and on about her fa-
vorite boutiques around the world, about her armory of
dresses, her calfskin kneeboots, why she couldn’t stop
even a day to see her family, why she had to drop me
off alone.
“Good,” I said. “That’s a good philosophy and one I
can understand.” From the tumbler I pulled a drooping
garnish and lay it on my palm. The soaked dandelion
rolled over and over, and I licked it up in a gulp, tasting
soap and skin.
“My daughter’s come over from Cambridge,” she
went on. “Lily is just the smartest girl, and she’s grad-
uated at last. She’s written a thesis on Dante that took
highest honors – and she’s thinking about moving to
California to work her uncle. I mean to work for her
uncle. She doesn’t know what she’s going to do. She

5
 THE PENINSULA

positively doesn’t know what she’s getting into!”

“She’s staying with Michael?”
“Since yesterday, her little sister Emma too, she’s
not as smart as Lily but nonetheless, my darling, she’s a
talented athlete, a star tennis player, and I’ve been
thinking, you know, and I’m thinking it might not be
the best idea for you and Lily to see too much of each
other?” Her voice suddenly bent up. She swigged from
the glass cradled in her pink hands, and swallowed spit
out of her jowls. “She’s trying to get her feet on the
ground.”
“Okay,” I said, sprawling back on the leather. “Let’s
not get into this.” The plane whined under some cloud.
“Do you understand what I mean? She will want to
meet you, ask questions, even spend time with you, but
you do not want to see her.”
“Believe me, I don’t want to get involved,” I sighed,
and put my hands over my eyes.
“Believe me, you don’t want to see her, let me con-
vince you of that,” continued Lily’s mother, leaning in,
chewing her nightshade lips. “She has certain vulnera-
bilities. And I have heard about you. A woman in my
social situation can’t afford to be entangled. There
won’t be anything between you and Lily, not now, not
until the wedding, and not after. I wouldn’t have sanc-
tioned this visit at all if my brother hadn’t insisted–”
It was so Athertoniain.
“I’m thirsty,” I complained. “Is there any more
whiskey, or did you drink it all?”
She curled a hand-hock around the decanter and
stared me down, shaking her head.

6
 ATHERTON

“Is there any more,” I cried, “or any gin? Because

I’m thirsty and I want to drink, and I want to listen to
you!”
“Then listen to me, Bessemer!” she hissed, eyes
ablaze. “I know about you. I know you have ruined
girls. Keep away from my daughter.”
I inhaled.
“Look–” I replied. “Men’s needs are full of greed.
And since we can’t be beautiful we crave to be sublime.
Who can say what’s going to happen? I’m only sure
your daughter is ravishing, or you wouldn’t be protect-
ing her – certainly, beauty runs in the family, Mrs.
Medine. And while you might not like me or approve
of my shit-eating attitude, you must admit I make some
pretty piquant demands.”
“What demands?”
“That if Lily is going to be my cousin we will need
to know each other. We will need to be intimate, psy-
chologically. We will need to explore every aspect of
each other’s minds. The cruel union of our fates de-
mands nothing less from two attractive young elites.”
She smirked.
“Have compassion,” I tried. “I’m asking you to ex-
onerate my destructive form of indifference. If you
can’t feel compassion for me you can’t feel it for your
daughter, because clearly we’re the same.”
“Compassion! You don’t know anything about her.”
“But if she wasn’t like me you wouldn’t be so con-
cerned – otherwise you would also be a victim of this
indifference. Of the same apathy! Don’t you see? You
can’t escape psychological logic. You can’t escape it!”

7
 THE PENINSULA

Now her silver eyes boiled, and she began to hem

and haw. Hem and haw she did, and I went on speak-
ing to her, teaching her about herself, as in the plane’s
vast windows stars burned among the clouds, as mois-
ture wafted from its million dollar fans, as exhaust from
its turbines burned across the crescent dawn, printing
with fiery steps the eastern sky over California.

Because I was born with the things I need, happiness

and sadness abandoned me, and apathy withered what
remained. Money buys time, and too much money
buys boredom, and boredom begets apathy. My father
gave his money to children – he was a venture capital-
ist, and his job was to take the smartest children out of
school and put them to work. He did this very well, and
the children made him rich. When I was a child, he
would repeat to me between swigs of purified water,
“Deals are like women and women are like deals.
There’s no difference.” And this became my mantra,
simple, bitter, and true.
He came from New York or some similar pit, but his
story is outdated, twentieth century – what’s important
is that my bloodline shimmers with a million shares of
Oracle, Intel, Sun, and Google, and that they open eve-
ry door in California. Those were the companies my
father’s children started, and they made him rich. But
he is dead three years, and his fortune is in the hands of
Michael Medine.
As I said, I learned early on that the effect of wealth
is apathy, especially towards women, towards sex – and
this particular form of apathy, which paralyzes the de-

8
 ATHERTON

fendant, also paralyzes me. I think we are like statues

or stones when it comes to loving other people. The
ladies of our court, who to all other princes seem beau-
tiful, have never found dresses shameful enough for this
pair of skeletons, and we regard them with the haggard
gaze of the dead. In this I am uniquely qualified to un-
derstand Medine, separated though we are by thirty
years; and I will show you that this is also a feature of
wealth – to age a man.
I am twenty-one and a senior at Stanford University,
where with all of my peers I worship technology and
depucelate as many virgins as passes the time. You
will hear a great deal about that, though by all appear-
ances I am a very nice boy. I have a perfect grade point
average and a shiny white iPod. I give generously to
third world charities, and I date indiscriminately, to my
mother’s dismay, blacks, Asians, Latinas, and other
tribes. I am delighted to offer you my endorsement of
raw foods, universal free wireless, Wikipedia, and the
Democratic Party.
The jury wishes to understand what happened last
autumn when I returned from Italy and met Lily. She
had just arrived from Hong Kong to stop her uncle from
marrying my mother. We converged in the unbelieva-
ble volcano of money that is Silicon Valley.

Now the Bay fired in dawnlight, and cream fog be-

neath the Golden Gate swirled on the headlands, and
our silver bird passed over Marin like a needle drawing
thread. From this height the water was ringed by
matchstick cities, and my modern ears picked up its

9
 THE PENINSULA

humming sphere of radio waves. The Peninsula’s paw,

smoggy and intricate with highways and microcircuit
blocks, unfurled pine hills and home beyond. Twenty
jumbos glinted over the water-lawn like toys, but with a
drone we banked beneath them, down the coast towards
the private airport at San Carlos.
“Evolutionary psychologists agree that women actu-
ally seek two mates, not one,” I was informing Lily’s
mother. “A provider, and a genetic resource. They will
marry providers and have red hot sex with alphas be-
hind the betas’ backs. The best deal is of course an
alpha who is also a provider, but these qualities nullify
each other because an alpha stops being an alpha when
he supplicates.”
“Perhaps,” I told her, “this principle of affection is
best expressed by the bards of our age. And so I’ve
memorized some inspirational lyrics for this occasion.”
I cleared my throat. As the cabin plunged, Lily’s moth-
er struggled under her seat belt and stopped in sedating
earbuds, screwing down her eyes. Blindly she swal-
lowed three pink pills and held their bottle with a
braceleted hock of hand. Over the roar I rhymed to her:
“I’ve never been played by a ho. If a trick is acting
stupid, she’s got to go. Some motherfuckers act sad,
but if she fucks with me I’m going to kick her little
monkey ass. It’s a law of nature, bitches knowing well
I’m a liar and a heartbreaker – I’ll have them crying for
months, while I fuck their best friends and put a whip-
ping on their cunts. Oh, they have their mothers to call,
but if you’ve fucked one mom you’ve fucked them all.
And I really don’t give a fuck – if your mom offers me

10
 ATHERTON

the pussy, she’s stuck.”

I smiled.
“I have to educate you, brothers: if a bitch won’t
fuck you, fuck her. Move along to the next trick, and
tell that stupid whore to commence sucking dick. What
if she’s not sucking? That’s a waste of time, conversa-
tion and not fucking. I just put my fucking pants on,
and tell that idiotic freak to take her tramp ass home.
Understand, I’ll put a bitch to the test – if she don’t
pass, she don’t get blessed. If the test consists of fuck-
ing my whole crew, well bitch god damn that’s what
you’ve got to do –”
“Bessemer!” she bellowed. “I can’t hear a thing!
What are you saying?” I ceased my rap and gave her
shut eyes the finger.
Past the bars of the bridge, the pilot banked towards
an inlet and roared over the shoreline golf course, bot-
toming a crab landing against the crosswind: the plane
divagated in the flow and spilled across the runway,
drawing up its wings, and I stepped into the morning.

11
 2
All of us in Atherton got wealth early on, so we were
struck blind from the beginning – we hungered of the
grain and chased it as we saw our fathers do, through
the temples of our homes out onto the shady streets and
into the schools. The wealth we chased like atheists,
and those who could not get wealth went after its dis-
play, and those who could not pretend became good
nice bookreading children and died to our rising. Our
family got new money but it wasn’t real money, mean-
ing we still remembered where it came from and still
wondered where it might go. My father got it before
the bubble, buying up land in Silicon Valley with Mi-
chael Medine, groom-to-be.
Soon they got more of it financing the companies
that leased the land – with electric eyes they stuffed
gold into the most lucrative balance sheets of a thou-
sand years: they earned 1000x returns: they donned
stonewashed jeans and black polo shirts: they jogged
marathons in the hills: they ate organic, grass-fed or-
anges and avoided veal: they had become venture

12
 ATHERTON

capitalists.
Our families were entangled from the beginning and
this was not to cease. The land around Stanford Uni-
versity sprouted offices like teeth and feasted on the
students’ ideas, while a long residential tract of Ather-
ton spat out a cold billion to house them. Miles south
in the Peninsula’s armpit, thousands of homes sold and
resold and appreciated: my father generated this wealth
and my family tested its velocity and then my father
died along with the market, killed ostensibly by his
heart but really, mentally, by what I would only later
discover. I entered Stanford all but an orphan, given
the incredulity of my mother and her sudden, conven-
ient disease.
They reared us south of San Francisco, on the Penin-
sula, in plush streets under banks of fog fallow in the
shade of oaks which mined the golden foothills, not in
suburbs but towns: the towns enriched our blood with
money and discharged the passports necessary to be-
come leaders, magnates, captains, valedictorians,
advanced placement entrants to Ivydom, heirs both to a
mandate to improve the planet and direct orders to
spend wealth upon it.
We are not San Franciscans and that city lies north,
urban, dirty, and degenerate: robbery, needles, mug-
gers, and fog felch in that subtopia good only for field
trips and the vicarious fantasies of our parents – an al-
ien culture hackneyed by poverty from which good new
families flee south, into Atherton, or north into Marin.
We are not New Yorkers and no one cares about
New York: that city lies repugnant east, as unnatural as

13
 THE PENINSULA

a machine, unleavened by sunlight and beset by gar-

goyles who zip its citizens into elevators and neckties –
not the kind of place you will find a West Coast surf-
board sun tan educated Stanfordist, or his mind for high
technology.
Here the grass is green and getting greener, and
knowing this we all feel fine. Money rains all up and
down the Peninsula, and smart and rich we all feel fine.

As we drove south towards Atherton, I asked the

housekeeper what the hell was going on.
She had arisen in the Mercedes, a specter of child-
hood – peppercorn hair pulled back, long fingers paring
the wheel. Where the summer had scarred her hands
with eczema, yellow dollops of oil smothered the desic-
cated skin, and she smelled of cheap spice. We spun
down the airport’s access road. Around us the lac-
quered bodies of Bombardiers and Cessnas shrieked
from the runways into the air.
“Tita is beside herself sir,” she reported, using the
Tagalog word for matriarch. I cannot believe that the
address of Filipina imports remains sir. Unfortunately
it pleases mother’s Victorian leanings more than the
Mexican omission of title, so she has maintained this
quirk in our housekeeper – the matriarch will be Tita,
the rest sir.
“Can she still see? How are her eyes?” I demanded.
“What, Sir Jacob?” The automatic gearstick tilted,
revealing a glowing blue panel, a yellow network of
roads that would safely guide us home. Sometimes,
trusting our expensive and intelligent car, we would

14
 ATHERTON

take our hands off the wheel and close our eyes.
“Can she still see?”
“I think so,” she whispered. Then she smiled. “Oh,
the little anxiety before the brunch, I understand! The
look on your face, sir! No, not to worry, she’s good as
always and blessed by the Holy Father. Tita is off to a
clinic in Ca-na-da in a couple of days. Her health is
better, yes. Do not worry any more. But there so much
to do for the brunch – we have to get back. It is im-
portant that you are there, is what she says. Sir Ryan he
is coming. Sir Michael he is coming.”
I slid across the leather and ran a hand over my eyes.
We spun hard over the onramp and south onto the
highway.
“I remember now,” said the housekeeper. “The little
scare. But we couldn’t reach you, sir. No! Not worry,
be happy.”
“At least her hypochondria is unchanged,” I sighed.
“Her health has gotten better, yes. She has stopped
coming to church. Sir Michael he takes her to the doc-
tor once a week.” These typical misunderstandings.
With both hands she navigated a labyrinth of ramps
sorting us onto a perpendicular highway, ears twitching
from the ashy bramble of her hair.
“You said Ryan is coming,” I said. “Well all right.
How did Mom organize a brunch on a Monday? It isn’t
even the weekend.”
“It is politics,” she said.
As I would soon discover, Michael had chosen this
moment to call upon Atherton to back his campaign for
House Representative of San Mateo County, a ridicu-

15
 THE PENINSULA

lous attempt to escape the scuttled Gina Ventures.

The black Mercedes breached the overpass and
burned over 101, exposing an expanse of industrial
shoreline and marsh tracking north towards the city.
Boxes stacked, salt-shakers, the guano of urbanity:
people cloistered in little morning cells there the next
day, stirring mugs of cement-colored coffee with red-
and-white straws. Workers! A bird flew up past the car
window, sucked into the sky.
Workers. My plans for the future did not exist in
terms of employment. To the world I appeared an un-
decided, dispassionate undergraduate, interested in
drinking and business and psychology, probably headed
drearily into slavery at Goldman or Bain. But this was
only a façade.
I had been held back a quarter at Stanford for forget-
ting to take Feminist Studies. My friends, all but Ryan
Bonn, had settled into their cubicles, into the prisons of
their industrious life-plans: banking, business school,
private equity, hedge funds, c-level management, mar-
riage, death – kids somewhere in there, a side project.
Where soon I would have slipped away on the rib-
bon of my family’s wealth, off up the coast or to Asia,
somewhere torn and wild, and, when I got tired of that,
somewhere watery and white and lavender-fringed.
When I turned twenty-three my trust fund would pro-
duce fifty thousand dollars a month, my mother once
claimed. To my mind, shortly I’d awaken in a clean,
modern apartment in some spired metropolis, owning
what my father had – a docile fiancé, suits, interesting
companions, knowledge, taste, the best set of clubs, a

16
 ATHERTON

silver sportscar, everything effortless and pristine.

This, the power of my estate: no mess in the palace,
green waters in driving distance, the occasional exotic
prostitute, a redhaired lover calling insistently enough
to give my wife pause, perpetual summer, and mother,
though dead, persisting in guiltless memory, and all the
bathrooms polished, and enough hidebound books to
feel educated, and alone, at all costs alone in my palace,
at twenty-five. And I would imitate Nero, standing be-
fore his golden house, when he cried, “At last, quarters
worthy of a human being!”
As we rushed south beneath the blue wall of hills,
the housekeeper came once more alive.
“Sir Jacob would you answer a question I have been
thinking.”
“I am the alpha and the omega.”
“Sir Jacob?”
“Ask and ye shall receive.”
“Who is the girl Lily? They have been talking about
her.”
The housekeeper’s impertinence had grown over the
years into an American addiction, voyeurism. I leaned
my head back on the seat and smiled. She tipped her
head and pushed out her lips, bobbing like a frog in the
leather seat.
“Medine’s niece. She grew up in Hong Kong.”
“She is very beautiful.”
“That’s fine.”
“She is, how do you say. Her eyes–”
“I never knew her. Is she there now?”
“No, she leave. She come back tonight for the par-

17
 THE PENINSULA

ty.”
She gave a little tenor mm and we fell into an algo-
rithmic conversation about Europe, the garden, the
speeches, about the Gentry Gala that night – halting,
strenuous sentences, each a struggle to comprehend.
The sudden society sucked the zing from my bones, and
we trailed off into silence. I dozed to the drizzling eu-
calypts tumbling past the highway towards home.

18
 3
On the drive, Mother’s gold sedan puckered by the
palisade, draped in a sediment of cherry blossoms: al-
ready some seven cars lounged across the stones, two
hybrids, Ryan’s jeep, a periwinkle seven series, and,
leading them all, the familiar, snarling, silver Maserati,
the Gina company car. Most bore the red shield of the
Circus Club tacked to their grills, access cards to para-
dise, and the rest belonged to Jews who could not
become members.
Slate shadows fell from the poplars as the morning
sun, passing behind a spit of cloud, grew ashy over the
coastal range. The housekeeper clicked off the engine
and with a slam darted across the pebbles, up the steps
towards front doors, flung open between casements
alive with bustle and hollered Spanish.
I passed through my gardens. All the lawngrass had
been aerated by Mexicans wielding forks, stumbling
hunchbacked each morning across the green – their
works were manifold, resplendent. As I passed, they

19
 THE PENINSULA

continued their labors. Savage voices emanated from

every nook and every shady leaf.

– Aquellos polvos traen estos lodos. Ausencias cau-

san olvido.
–¿Cualquier persona tiene agua? Mis miembros
están hirviendo! A beber y a tragar, que el mundo se
va a acabar.
– A cada puerco le llega su sabado.
– A pan de quince dias, hambre de tres semanas.

“Take a shower and I will tell your mam,” the

housekeeper belted over her shoulder. “And Pablo,
those flowers, take them inside!”
As I crossed the court, two Mexicans lumbered
across the stoop, eyes downcast, lugging indubitably
organic muffins towards a table on the side lawn,
which, planed by white cloth, supported pitchers of
free-trade orange juice, fruit, milk, and coffee. Batter
and organic bacon wafted from the kitchen as a trio of
caterers scampered down the side of the house towards
the pool and the back lawn. Red tea tables presented
sparkling boxes of bittersweet chocolate. Mother’s
capeline sped back there as she snapped orders to a
bronze-skinned functionary who blossomed in her
wrath.

–¡Los perros de la guerra se han lanzado!

–¡Rasgue abajo a opresores!
– Al vivo la hogaza y al muerto, la mortaja!

20
 ATHERTON

By the garden shed, blacks hauled down charcoal-

colored monoliths from the bed of a truck: the mono-
liths trailed black and red tentacles and crackled and
rocked, the audio equipment for the speech. The
speakers were heavy and the men’s dark arms bulged
with might. A master black stood over the crew, direct-
ing them, and his skin shone in the sun. Some of them
were in fact mulatto or just tan, but they looked black to
me.

–If you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.
–Health isn’t better than wealth.
–It’s no crime to steal from a thief.

A man in a chef’s tunic, some kind of Asian, stood

on the stone patio before a grill, barbequing shucked
oysters and a flank of black steak. His nacre eyes
stared as the fire smoked up particles of shell and flesh.
Silently the Asian speared the steak onto an oak slab,
hewed from it reddening medallions, and with a tang
appraised one dripping tile above the fire. The black
steak twisted like a rodent on the board. The oysters
cracked as they burned and provided.

– Piensa el ladron que todos son de condicion.

– Pesadumbres no pagan deudas.
– Quien poco tiene pronto lo gasta.

– A house divided against itself cannot stand.

– Half a loaf is better than no bread.
– Don’t let the bastards grind you down.

21
 THE PENINSULA

– Hoc tro an vung ca kho.

– Thay do bat duoc, oi a con chua.
– Thua thay co moi mo vung.
– Thay cham ti nua con bung ca noi.

Unseen, I spun upstairs to shower, my lovely hands

stuffed in my cotton pockets. In the blasting steam I
breathed a sigh of relief, leaning against the marble.
Suddenly I was alone again; I could hear nothing but
the water. My mind reeled with recognition, remem-
bering the spring:

Sun falls on Stanford University, and the man with

the plan tells the graduating class of the plan they’ve
got to have.
“Steve Jobs, Prodigy,” is this morning’s consensus.
The minds of the listeners have reached singularity on
the awesomeness of Steve. The students’ caps make a
black phalanx under the sun, and all comers feel eager
and informed. In the grass and on the bleachers sit a
lavender army of parents, likewise interested and also
very rich.
The man with the plan tells three stories. His stories
are poignant and topical, and they make the crowd
laugh and cry. They concern love, trust, and death.
The sun oversees Steve as he speaks, and in the val-
ley around him a billion dollars transact over grids of
optical fiber. The dollars hum on wireless waves and
glide through the ground and shimmy encrypted
through your phone and are relayed by satellites and are
gone, and are here again, and are gone.

22
 ATHERTON

Behind the dollars sit companies and behind those

companies sit boards and behind those boards sit inves-
tors and those investors were the parents. The parents
were very rich and the ones who lived near Stanford
lived in Atherton.
Here, ten miles and ten million dollars north of Sili-
con Valley, five minutes from Stanford, across storied
Sand Hill Road, the town of Atherton desires, insofar as
possible, to preserve its character as a scenic, rural,
thickly wooded, residential area, with abundant open
space, with streets designed primarily as scenic routes
rather than for speed of travel. The ordinary laws of
physics and wealth derailed here around 1985 when
money burst like oil from the software firms and chip
fabs in the valley and the first newly rich people bought
homes. This was the time Medine and my father
founded Gina Capital.
The houses all look thin, as if built up with flatboard
behind their facades, never intended to last. But with
their pebble driveways and tennis courts and rainproof
stereo systems and underground parking garages and
curvy swimming pools, they impress the average Amer-
ican housewife. They smell of money.
Our house is the typical Atherton house, big and
overvalued, ours at seventeen million. I check the price
once a month on the interwebs. Around us, the town
bleeds like a stick painting: Nordic chalets jut akimbo
from Japanese timber frames, plantation-style manors
rear up over of faux vineyards, and giant, gothic con-
traptions enclose underground gyms. The scenic routes
search urgently in this disorder, in the shadows of huge

23
 THE PENINSULA

oaks and snarled pines, in the dust of acorns and the

dark watery smells of garden bract.
Our house stands at Two Selby Lane, three stories
tall, eggshell white, hammered from European beech
and surrounded by poplars. It is tastefully conservative.
Inside the cast iron gate, the driveway revolves around
a blue oak to an awning of pitch and pebbles. The lawn
is a lawn and the flowers are flowers, blue and yellow
asphodels tended by Cortez and Jose and Frank, with a
horizon swimming pool delimiting the back yard.
A damn lot of rooms, furnished by a Mexican,
cleaned by other Mexicans, pilfered by Mexicans, and
forgotten by us: the hallways stretch bright and plush-
carpeted, pale accents embedded in the pine. We don’t
have dust mites or other allergens. We appreciate that
we are appreciating.
Between the rows of oaks and laurels, past the Mex-
icans' verdure and the beat up old garden trucks,
through the wild shadowy mansions of scions and se-
lectmen and over the lumbering hedges, past the
wisterias and elms, past the Circus Club at the center of
town, in my high school days a sorry man once roamed
free after bursting from a bedroom closet and raping a
diminutive eighth grader.
We now know that the Atherton rapist survived for
three weeks living in the town’s pool houses and un-
used guestrooms, taking advantage of the sprawling
excess. Ryan’s father claimed that while eating break-
fast one day he saw the rapist disappear over his back
wall into a patch of briars, towing a black briefcase and
a machete as he went. These reports repeated them-

24
 ATHERTON

selves, but the man seemed impossible to catch. The

raped girl’s family issued a million dollar reward, and
for a month patrols of us high school kids, the fes-
tooned home guard, issued from our homes at sunset in
lozenged sedans packed with squealing girls, protected
by stoic athletes, tennis players, long-boned swimmers,
hoping for glory or at least money but really bored and
listless and with too much of it already.
No one was sure what would happen if we encoun-
tered the rapist – scruffy, likely missing a finger,
reeking of whiskey and bile, penis lolling, covered in
sewage, in anything from a trench coat to fatigues to
last spring’s Polo line – a demon from another ele-
mental plane. We knew he remained at large because
the police swarmed from as far as San Francisco to pro-
tect us. Crime spiked in the bad cities, East Palo Alto
and Oakland, as elsewhere died blacks and Mexicans
while all the police snored in their SUVs on our Japa-
nese stones, bored and trigger-happy, watching through
heavy lids for gollywogs.
The town magazine, Gentry, put out a ten-page fea-
ture on sexual predators. Fear increased. Undercover
agents in green jackets sauntered beneath the oaks, and
horseback patrols pricked the Circus Club, farcing at
polo on breaks.
A tennis instructor spotted the rapist in the mists of
the club steam room, and a SWAT team charged from
the van parked across the street, barking the guttural
language of law and hurling at least one flashbang gre-
nade. But it was only Mike Addison, who’d snuck in
using Hunter Cloyte’s card, and the penalty had to be

25
 THE PENINSULA

called off at the behest of his outraged clan.

Afterwards, the boy confided that when the door
burst open and he stood up, shocked, his towel falling
to his ankles, hands raised in the burning steam, he un-
derstood in an instant how to live in the real world, and
now felt ready for Princeton.
The cops never caught the Atherton rapist. Two
months later, responding to a break-in call at a Lake
Tahoe chalet, they found a confession on the body of a
tall, good-looking man missing the top of his head.
He’d held an antique revolver to his temple and, ac-
cording to forensics, fired seventeen times before the
thing finally went off. Though this Nietzschean act of
will might have sufficed to explain him, the note re-
vealed he used to run track for Cornell and had simply
popped with the tech bubble. Atherton could commis-
erate.

The man with the plan concludes. He says, “Death

is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped
it. And that is as it should be, because death is very
likely the single best invention of life. It is life's change
agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.
Right now the new is you, but some day not too long
from now, you will gradually become the old and be
cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite
true.”
Steve didn’t have me figured out, though. Even
though I dressed the part, I wasn’t graduating because I
didn’t have enough units – I had forgotten to take Fem-
inist Studies and the dyke registrar told me to get

26
 ATHERTON

stuffed. Apart from the miscellaneous girls I was still

fucking, only two friends had stayed on with me – Ryan
Bonn, who was waiting for his job at Goldman Sachs to
start, and Cyan Zilker, who’d taken his sophomore year
off to help start Facebook and was now so wildly suc-
cessful that he wouldn’t dream of completing his
degree.
And as Steve Jobs delivered his final revelation I
was crouched snorting Ritalin with the two of them be-
neath the bleachers, in the space under our parents’
asses, while the rest of our class graduated and we
merely wore the robes.
That is why I was called back to Stanford, staying on
through fall quarter, when Lily came to California to
stop the wedding.

27
 4
Splashing freshly toweled from the bathroom, I
called to arrange a companion for the night. It had been
a while, and my roost felt unfeathered. As the phone
rang I pulled cedar shoeracks from my closet chest and
appraised my most precious possessions. Stretched
with brassnailed hobtrees, they glowed glossy brown
and velvet, a formation of calfskin and nubuck welt,
cordovan and studded ostrich. The racks roamed in
hue, chocolate monkstraps with gold flanges, wingtip
oxfords with crimson insoles, hammered walking shoes
from Chile, among them black clasps of manolo chuk-
kas and cap toes, all supple around the talus and
cuneiforms, ensuring my fubulo massaged, my heel ca-
ressed: all well oiled, all lathered with sandalwood shoe
cream, all chariots par excellence.
From the trees I pulled and debuckled a winged pair
of evanders, swinging them onto my bed pillow to rest
their slick soles on the starch.
“I’m home,” I said into the phone.
“Well oh my god. I’ve heard already from Megan

28
 ATHERTON

who heard from Adi, which is, I guess, all the warning I
should expect–”
Chewing gum slopped through the line.
“I want to see you. We can have champagne. And
then,” I told her, “we can have sex.”
“I’m on my period,” she complained, so I hung up.
But the next girl said all right, and I said all right I’ll
call you later then, but she started talking and wouldn’t
shut up, so I held the phone away from me like a snake.
Light came from all directions, from the windows
and the floor and the ceiling, periwinkle pink light, so-
ciety streaming in voices leavened by the sun and air. I
recalled the function that was about to begin.
Across the leather plane of my desk my computer
switched itself on and bwooped out its welcome.
“Later,” I whispered to it.
“Call me after your party,” chirped the girl from
arm’s length. “We have to go out tonight. It’s the first
night everyone’s back. We have to go out.”
“All right,” I was saying, “I don’t care.”
All of a sudden, someone began to hammer on the
door.
“Don’t come in!” I shouted, and hung up, stumbling
back naked onto the marble and grabbing up my
breeches.
“Oh herro! Stop jacking off,” bellowed Ryan Bonn,
pounding with both his fists.
“Faggotus maximus! All right, all right!” I called,
and stepped over to clack back the lock. All at once he
swung in charging and dove across my bed, hands
flexed to his temples, the springs creaking and snapping

29
 THE PENINSULA

beneath his might.

A big kid, Aenean, hefting his thick-boned structure
with the weight of a bull, he was neither chiseled nor
soft, with a brown mantlet of skin that got him finer
women than he deserved, and a spray of thorny hair
thatched like a badger’s pelt. He played water polo at
our high school, Menlo, then got recruited by Stanford
and went along with that cult, people I couldn’t stand
despite their unceasing attempts to befriend me. They
always seemed to be having a good time.
“I am so fucking tired from practice. Jesus God!
It’s the last day ever for me.” He kicked off his leather
rainbows and rose to his knees on the mattress. “Your
mom says you were robbed in Europe – explain. You
couldn’t have planned that one, Jakey, Jacob son of Job
the Gentile, gentle dead wandering Jew.”
“It’s not a joke. They were Asians. Whores.”
“Not gypsies but hirarious Mongols. How very
eighteenth century. Vella furry, massa Jacob. Me srob
on you rong knob rong time.” He would always roll his
l’s like that. It was a very popular and funny way to
make fun of Asian people.
Ryan stared from his knees out the window to the
neighboring yard, where a child was dragging an enor-
mous crimson toy across a lawn. He ran a palm across
his jaw and felt there bristles harder than metal. His
amber eyes roved, and he turned them slowly on me.
“Gentile, do you have any Adderall? I ran out this
morning. It – is – intolerable, this waking unsped con-
sciousness. That is what the philosophers call it.
Kierkegaard – once I read a page of him sober and

30
 ATHERTON

nearly had a seizure. Only ten milligrams could I take,

and it isn’t enough to feel awake. May I have some
prease Jacob prease? Render unto Caesar what is Cae-
sar’s.” My mother’s doctors said I lacked attentiveness,
but I just sold the pills.
“No, gayus fellatius, I have nothing. Get a prescrip-
tion – you’ve already consumed more in your life than
anyone who actually has ADD. I need a new wallet,
cell phone, stash, Jesus, everything. You will be driv-
ing me around.”
“I will drive no one nowhere. Work starts in a week
and I am dreading it. Goldman Sachs. A veritable
cloak of golden dread has drawn up around me.” Mus-
cles popped in nuggets along his arms. “You can’t
begin to understand my fear, you runcible schoolboy!”
He stood off the bed and went pacing around fast as the
cords of his neck spasmed.
“You must have taken more than ten milligrams,” I
said.
“It is possible. Verily, verily.”
In the bathroom I stepped into the chino khakis laid
out for me by the housekeeper. A pink polo went over
my head, powerpacket deodorant slathered my arm-
flaps, floss lubricated my fang-sockets, mango cream
soothed my eyelids, and my face sang with resplendent
childhood. I slipped my hands into my back pockets
and stood in a puddle of bathwater. The water rippled
beneath my toes, clean on the marble, clean enough to
drink.
“You will be all right,” I muttered, plashing my feet.
“I have so much faith in you, dearest. Anyway, I’m

31
 THE PENINSULA

almost in your shoes. Praise grade inflation, our lord

and savior!”
A few years prior, Stanford had stopped failing peo-
ple. To compete with Harvard in the job market, it
gave its students A’s when they got B’s. If you needed
to retake a class, the new grade replaced the old grade.
If you needed five units of A+ as a booster shot, you
took ethics. The only hard part was getting in. Without
having to study we had even more free time, and more
apathy.
“Why do you say that?” he asked. “Why say you
that? Have you found work yourself? Do you want to
light a cigar? Will you go far?” Spittle flew from his
lips, foaming curds, and his stimulated eyes glittered
and sped.
Doubtfully, Ryan selected a trophy cup off the
woodgrain shelves and put it back again. He drifted his
golden hand through his golden hair, blinking his lash-
es. Outside, clapping ascended on rings of air, and
knives tinkled the glasses, sounds afloat in the linden
breeze where the sun prowled like a golden calf.
“Not as such. My job will involve flying to a lot of
countries and spending a lot of money and generally
disappearing before being caught and forced into some
office hell alongside the rest of you. Also, there will be
women – white ones, and other colors too.”
“You’re lucky you have your trust,” he snarled.
“You and your indigent family, I mean indolent. You
tell Medine I want a job. You tell him to take his insid-
er trading profits, which God knows are basically
public knowledge in Atherton, and start a money facto-

32
 ATHERTON

ry with me in charge. Fucking venture capitalists get

paid twice as much for half the work–”
“Wealth is just a negotiation within a family,” I in-
terrupted, shrugging. “Everyone pities your inability to
manipulate your parents.”
“If only we weren’t workers. If only we were lazy
like you Bessemers. If only my parents understood la-
ziness, and could respect it. I pray for that every single
day of my life. And worse, dickless Jake, the Olympic
Club hasn’t sent their invitation.” He began to thunder,
his eyes ablaze. Lurching from the bed, he galloped
suddenly across the room in three strides. He began
boxing the air, swinging his heavy limbs in his oiled
skin.
“They don’t take Nazis or Jews, only ubermensch.
Ubermensches? Ubermunchen. The plural form, what-
ever it is. And you are not one,” I told Ryan.
“Whatever – will you ask Mike Medine for me, will
you ask him to help me escape from banking, to help
me get a membership and a job? Any form of help,
God save us. Christ, the Olympic Club. Chow got in
and he’s Chinese!” Head down, he bit his lip and
punched, his great fists swishing dumbly, his mind
clanking on. I snapped up the steel of my golf watch.
“Isn’t that very twenty-first century?” I asked. “His
dad did donate their second golf course.”
“So doubly hirarious, I might just buy a member-
ship. I might, yes. At the nice Orympic Crub.”
“Their facilities aren’t even acceptable by modern
standards.”
“Not for the facilities, for the prestige. For the bene-

33
 THE PENINSULA

fit of all women.”

“Real prestige is within, Sir Bonn, as we have
known all our lives. Come on, we’re missing the fire-
works.”

Early on my house grew unwelcome to me and never

regained any meaning beyond shelter to the day that I
left it. So as a child I went, ignored by my mother, into
the foothills above the town where trails run the grasses
into submission over the old earth. They run through
stretches of bleached scrub and the weeds of deserted
farms, into the ridge pines and the oaks. Like every-
where in Northern California, the towns terminate into
vast tracts of untrammeled forest and hill and these
spaces guard what peace remains in the land. I had the
Mexicans take me there and wait, as Mexicans do.
In the hills I saw how the wind bends flat the weak
trees and turns down the boughs of the others through
patient force. The wind roars over the pass and catches
the groves as they grow and is brought inside, shaking
the timber and the boughs, spattering sap and spurge.
Just how the pines weave, a vortex spins the gale in
revolutions over the rock, never ceasing in exertion,
never releasing its persistent flex of wind and stone.
Between the groves stretch mournful open spaces
streaked with sun, chaparral where I chased snakes and
the black stinking beetles that crawled the rocks. The
scrub overturns with the seasons, sere gold and grass-
hopper green, and in summertime this molten yellow
spans the entire state – bald horizons of amber hills
peppered with birthmark groves, running low and fea-

34
 ATHERTON

tureless around the works of man. In the winds and un-

der the sun, the limeleaved oaks blow noiselessly,
rustling their lichen hauberks and their staffs of cork.
Up here stands a bench against the void, half-
consumed by the pleated grass; here roots climb crowns
choked with rattlesnakes; here a wanderer has come up
above the fog to look down over the cities, over the
scale and distortion of the great valley and the Bay, the
landing jumbos, the trawling ships and the waters a ring
of slate beyond. Down, down through the shipping
lanes and freeways past the towns and the red tiles of
Stanford and the humming wires flits his eye over the
Peninsula, towards the far dim skyscraping city and its
muffled beat, and off into the white atmosphere: his eye
sweeps and wanders and blinks back to the pines flow-
ing in the dragon wind.
Here I escaped the wealth and took what lessons the
land would give me. And when I learned those lessons
I brought Ryan Bonn to learn them too.

I like girls first and foremost, and more than money,

and money more than Bonn, and Bonn more than my
other friends because Ryan had no business with my
wealth since his father had his own, a German who
strode about in underpants and a bald pate berating his
wife, who did not drink but worshiped the Jebus and
engaged in the manufacture of chips and then comput-
ers in the nineteen nineties. Kaiser Bonn even found
his way into the Bohemian Club; but because Ryan was
a patriot he learned to hate his family of krauts, and he
strode out from them to spend his childhood afternoons

35
 THE PENINSULA

with me at the Circus Club pool, and no questions ever

summoned him, and he was alone in life except when
he returned to demand wealth.
Lifelong friendships require economic parity, which
was the bond we shared. He was a kindred demon con-
jured from the nursery – the teachers decided in the first
three months of our education, when we barely spoke
any human tongue and had already taken to strangling
each other and eating pens, that we should become
friends. So we became fast friends to please them and
out of apathy.
If you’re like us you’ve tried everything.
Around us our generation drank deeply of accidie.
The companies our fathers financed grew with us – they
fed us with wealth and with technology and warped our
minds. Our world became a polished mass of diver-
sion, humming airwaves, screens clicking on us
everywhere we went. Information, no longer about a
man, became the man himself. Our country went to
war, a pleasant little war ignored on television and
played out in video games in vertex-shaded three di-
mensional tank combat and the chartered slaying of
dunecoon terrorist by blackwater machine gun and in-
cendiary satellite bomb. Then we went to war again.
We had extra lives and power ups.
Words on screens began to represent human beings –
screen names, email addresses, dialogues, icons, pro-
files, web pages. We lived online. Our America
harassed us without end, planting ringing clips in our
pockets which broke up our thoughts into tiny incre-
ments, blasting us with radio waves, phantom voices,

36
 ATHERTON

blinking names and messages, editions of humans, tai-

lored representations, pored over, rehearsed, unreal and
more real and important all the same.

Before Ryan and I were old enough to chase women

we killed the newts in curly creek, bashing and chuck-
ing them against rocks. We were cruel children, and
when the newts tried to squirm away into the mud, our
rocks rose and fell, bashed and bashed, and the guts
slipped between our fingers and onto our shirts.
Violence is important, because Lily discovered it
here, and then it sank its teeth into her. What did she
expect? One day I had walked further down the creek
and found, without really meaning to, in the dead leaves
a trio of the newts embracing, unaware of the carnage
downstream: a male and female at first, orange-backed,
but then a peeping juvenile between them, a little drag-
on altricial in the autumn stream – they had cloistered
around their child in protection. And, boom! They sat
defiantly while I bashed them to pieces. I suppose the
woman couldn’t move since the baby was squirming,
and the male – well, he had his pride to think of. We
got them other ways too, but rocks were the most satis-
fying. To show Ryan, I once took a newt and glued it
to a board, and we came back every day after school to
watch it die – after three days the sun had hardened it to
leather. If you put a newt in a jar of salt its feet dis-
solve. It makes a spitting sound as it expires.
You haven't come to hear my stories about newts,
though, and despite our mischief all is still well in the
hills of California. The carpet grass goes from green to

37
 THE PENINSULA

gold in summer and becomes a precious offering. In

the twilight, the doves increase into a winnowing multi-
tude, flying on crescents of air that bear them down
among the valley oaks and towards the towns. Beneath
them, the hill trails descend through trampled grass and
mud upon the packed earth, the hardscrabble, the grav-
el, the asphalt, the road, all the twists and turns of the
high road.

Now Bonn and I emerged into the garden, where

linden blossoms, cherry blossoms, and sword lilies
splayed in glass vessels, rosebuds spattered tabletops,
and two dragon plants towered in vases beside the po-
dium. There, mother stood comported in enormous
dark glasses, tittering before the microphone to a crowd
in fold-up plastic chairs arrayed on our back lawn. Be-
hind her, the white tail of the pool aquabot whipped a
sudden glittering spray, and she jumped and clattered
like a marionette.
And it's like, ceremonious, the way everyone be-
haved. We prowled behind the flocking tables, the
backs of the Circus Club turned from us, linen suits and
morning colors, the children in sweaters and tidy kha-
kis, swaying beside the knees of their providers. All
had fallen silent for mother, who looked up once more
before sinking her face in prompt.
“Well, we would like to welcome Michael back to
Atherton as he heads into the final stretch of his cam-
paign. Many of you are his close friends and business
advocates. Understanding the great excitement that
comes along with any political effort, please join me in

38
 ATHERTON

offering him our most heartfelt approval and support!”

Clapping and more of it.
“The Medine family, hailing from New York, her-
alds a long tradition of excellence in the financial
services sector! Michael founded his first partnership at
twenty-three, a credit brokerage, before joining JP
Morgan, where he worked in the mortgage group. As
you know, his second partnership, Gina Capital, helped
raise Silicon Valley to what it is today. The Gina deals
contributed directly to the appreciation of the real estate
in Atherton and the surrounding communities, by nur-
turing a new generation of technology companies. As
we stand upon the fruit of Michael's work today, let us
recall that his service to the community extends beyond
the financial! In the nineties Michael worked tirelessly
to secure the Windy Hill preserve against development.
He has also worked closely with underdeveloped com-
munities in East Palo Alto, for the gentrification that
area so badly needs.”
She paused, then broke into a gleaming smile: “You
all know this already, but I would also like to officially
announce our engagement. The wedding is next spring!
Yes, yes, I know, oh–” Outrageous flapping clapping
and horror, horror, horror. A melodious tittering of ap-
proval emerged from the crowd. Bellowing thoughts,
outrage! Reeling and reeling, she had brought me home
to see me reel: Bonn looked at me and in his white eyes
I could see he knew this and he was like them: stuffed
with treachery horrors backstabbing filth and pain.
Now Medine rose long and dusky in white linens,
and, striding up from the tables, enveloped mother in a

39
 THE PENINSULA

winglike hug-and-kiss, then surpassed her at the stand.

He splayed his palm in salute, and with a straight smile
turned hale and full shouldered into his address:
“Foremost I would like to thank my beautiful fiancé
for lending her home for this occasion, and to welcome
her only son Jake back from Europe, where he spent the
summer at the University of Florence. It's my under-
standing that Jake returns with a sterling grasp of Italian
history and the finest taste on the West Coast. He could
teach us all a thing or two about style. Show off, Jake,
and give everyone a wave!”
Nodding like a wayward field of daisies, the crowd
laughed and murmured their approval, silver clattering
from their tongues. I remained frozen in place. A
broad-shouldered father in nubucks lunged over to pat
me on the back, hoo-rah, way to go, and I rocked on my
heels. Horror horror infidelity horror.
The sloping seats swung, dowdy heads and big
plum-lipped smiles, huzzah, and I waved and began
dancing, hopping up and down on my oxfords, aping
my arms like an orangutan, letting my orange tongue
unfurl, ten feet long, foaming, slithering towards them –
no. I sipped my gin in defense, ice cubes clacking in
the cobalt glass, and gave them the eyes of one of their
sons.
“Basta,” I told the crowd.
Michael glared me down across the lawn, his eyes
spinning into copper coins. He had once worn glasses,
but his retinas had been refashioned under the scintillat-
ing bit of a laser scalpel. Now he said he could see
clearer than a child: he could read fine print from ten

40
 ATHERTON

feet and distinguish such murky shades of color that in

another life he might have been a painter or a sage. He
still kept in his pocket the marred doubloon he'd
brought from his childhood in Barbados: it brought the
luck of the Spanish, he claimed, conqueror's luck, and
as the clubpeople weighed my affinity I saw him palm
it out and stroke its girth.
The clerisy, technologists and financiers, did not
know better than to smile and turn and feel love for me.
Then they turned away.
“Your pledge is valued,” Medine went on. “You are
the heart of the new economy, you have witnessed
astounding change this last decade, and your technolo-
gy drives the world. We have the opportunity to be the
greater coast! It's here the dollars are flowing, have
been all thirty years I've worked here, and they flow
faster and faster. It's here the population's growing,
coming up from Mexico and from Asia and growing
itself up from the families who've lived here since the
twentieth century began…”
Another eruption of clapping. Women waved their
silk pashminas, blazes of stupid color. Men smiled and
threw their arms about each other’s shoulders to com-
bine their approval.
I drank a great whipping gulp of gin. During the
commotion we saw the Gina lawyer rise from his seat
and come, chawing his grizzled cheeks, down the aisle,
and when he saw us he webbed a hand over his brow
and squinted, his watch catching the sun.
“In about four seconds some West Side niggas is go-
ing to put they foots in the asshole of this dough boy

41
 THE PENINSULA

wack-ten,” Ryan murmured sideways. We both des-

pised this man.
I could not stop touching the fresh silk of my pock-
ets – chalk-white and smoother than a girl, they
distracted me from this goldbrick speech of Michael's
and from the approach of his slave. The Gina lawyer
sidled up between the tea tables and over to us, grasp-
ing his phone, a black plate of icons which his thumb
swirled. He peered into its depths.
“Jake – and Ryan,” he said out of his mouth. “The
booze must be nearby.”
He was Michael’s crony, a corsair hired out of Wil-
son Sonsini to protect the fund from prying litigation.
Even as the Gina accounts withered in the crash, Mi-
chael’s smile widened and his tan deepened and he
manufactured a fashionable close-cropped peppercorn
beard to accompany his ponytail and linen and in the
new Californian way took up all outdoor activities like
mountain biking and marathon running and swimming
in the ocean and ignoring his investments like my
mother ignored me. For these labors, he felt less like he
might die suddenly in the way of my father.
Because Michael had decided to run for office, and
running for office these days entailed money that Gi-
na’s abysmal performance had failed to produce, he had
decided to sell the limited partnership to Goldman
Sachs and disburse the payout largely into his own
pockets, for he was now the sole general partner and the
largest owner.
He reasoned that the brand meant something, and
that buying the partners out at face value would insult

42
 ATHERTON

the fund and my father's memory; he wanted a premi-

um, and he wanted the lawyer to justify that premium.
So the lawyer installed himself in the San Francisco
office of Goldman Sachs, wheedling and whining the
lich overlords of that firm to trust in Michael Medine.
Of course the lawyer was furious at this appointment,
for no one realistically expected Goldman to bite.
However, we did not know what Medine knew.
“We can't figure it out – is you from South Central
or Compton?” I asked the Gina lawyer, rocking back.
“You tell me, you rambunctious little shit, you sur-
vived being robbed,” he rumbled, still without looking
up, and dabbed his face with a napkin – the napkin cur-
dled and spread wet fragments across his forehead, then
down to his neck, where an excrescent mole swam in
the beard furze.
Slipping the phone into his pocket, he stepped up
and poured himself a tumbler of red whiskey from the
table, mixed in soda, and stood with us watching his
master and the blond fawn that was my mother.
The morning felt cool and light and the people sat in
white rows on the slashed green. Like me, the lawyer
rocked on his heels and I looked over and kept rocking
too. “It has caused a lot of real stress over here, what
happened to you,” he said. “Your mother nearly died of
fright. Robbery now that is a bitter crime because one
survives to bear the wounds. I guess in your case not
many lasting ones, no, never, you mercurial little shit.”
He enjoyed these little sobriquets.
“I liked my wallet,” I choked.
“So it goes. That's Kerouac.” But it was Vonnegut.

43
 THE PENINSULA

He took a big whisker-soaking gulp of scotch and trem-

bled out a frown. “Michael wants you to have lunch
with me at the club tomorrow, but I’ll be up in the city
– if you’re up there, otherwise we can wait. I need to
go over some things before you disappear to school.
And we can talk about your trust.”
“I'd rather not, I'd rather die, I will anyway. But I
need money, now.”
His gaze drawn to Medine, the lawyer slipped a
palm into his jacket and withdrew a slim cordovan bill-
fold.
“What, two hundred. Two hundred.” He counted
the bills by touch, and as he passed them to me I
slimmed them into my shirt. He was still looking at
Michael.
“Your donation is appreciated,” I told him. “AIDS
awareness has increased worldwide. Drug trade has
slowed in the Andes. Two Ethiopian rat herders no
longer need to consume their own dung to stay alive.”
“Pleasant, Jacob. Always trust the Bessemers for
simple pleasance,” he told Ryan. Then his eyes turned
on me for the first time. “And tell your friend Cyan
Zilker to stop fucking calling me. It’s killing me. He
wants us to invest in his shitty startup and – Christ, your
generation never knows when to quit,” he stepped by.
“This isn’t the tech bubble.”
“You’d know better than us,” I meekly replied, but
without answering he returned up the walk, ducking his
head to retake his seat, with a floppy smile to his con-
temporaries.
As a vee of doves passed overhead Michael Medine

44
 ATHERTON

rained invectives from the stand, while his club people

clapped and clattered: his philosophies of defense were
enactable, his histories of the Fallujah invasion suc-
cinct, he elaborated the unjust tax policies of the
Republican party and the duties of a Democratic mod-
erate to the California energy grid, to Mexican
immigration, to the morality of all liberals – all were
arrows aligned and simple.
At one point Jamie Howard the ruler of Laszlo Sem-
iconductors, whose daughter I once sodomized in the
Ebon Room of the Circus Club, in excitement pitched
his bloodred napkin into the air, a wad of confetti that
settled limply to the breadbasket and the speech went
on as his wife, whose stepdaughter had once blown my
sperm through her nose and hummed the cartoon songs
of our childhood years, smiled over from three tables
down and waved her fingers, dowdy sepals capped with
pearls.
“I just want to go listen to rap music in my room and
do lines of cocaine until I can't feel my face any more,”
I told Ryan. I ran my hand down my forehead and over
my eyes, feeling the exhaustion taut in the flesh.
“And get even lazier, skinnier, and whiter,” said
Ryan.
“And nap before the Gentry party because I'm drunk
and jetlagged.”
“And jerk off to gay Euro porn and not get laid ev-
er.”
“And YouTube that video of the horse raping the
guy to death while phonesexing your mother.” Mother!
I put my hands in my pockets. Overhead the birds

45
 THE PENINSULA

skirted the heavens, above the cherry trees and the ter-
raced home that was possibly partly mine.
“You win,” Ryan said. He took a long pull of scotch
just as the lawn under our feet began to shake, as a
great mountain of flesh snuck up behind us and burst
moley into our conversation: she had much to trade in
the gelatinous arms she wrapped about us both, joining
us to the sacks of her breasts.
“Oh you boys you absolutely must call me sometime
soon,” the woman babbled from above her teats, her
copper hair roiling upon us lambs. “It's shameful you
haven't called me Jake we need to fix you up before you
spoil.”
“I'm accounted for, happily married,” I mumbled.
“Didn't mother say I had three girlfriends. I collect
them and when I am done they go away.”
“Do you know what I do for a living now, who is
this your friend, I haven't met him I don't think, for
shame, oh you've grown up handsome you both, you've
turned out so finely.”
She released us from her great sacklike paps, jig-
gling beneath a lavender sweater. Her trotting legs
autoclaved in the sun and emitted great trails of sweat
down to her tied ankles. Staggering back, Ryan set
down his drink and wiped his hands over his khakis, his
eyes wide in alarm.
“Ryan Bonn, Lulu Fermott. Ryan is lustful and
alone. You have my permission to help him.”
“Especially pleased to meet you,” he told the wom-
an.
“Jake you must tell him I'm a life coach,” she en-

46
 ATHERTON

treated. “But I double as a matchmaker. I'm not mar-

ried myself of course, but I've studied hard.”
“She is the community madam, the village tricycle.”
“Oh I wish I could help this Bessemer but I'll help
you too, I know your father I do believe, a nice German
man.” Eyes glittering over Ryan, she aimed a hock at
me but I ducked back, splattering diamond gin all over
the lawn. “Daughters of bankers, lawyers, congress-
men. Gorgeous girls.” Stippled eyes peered from
beneath the brim of her straw hat.
“What’s your background, Lulu?” Ryan had his
drink again.
“String theory, quantum mechanics, neurolinguistic
programming, electrical engineering. And physics.”
“What field exactly?”
“Physics.”
“You're a crazy old woman, Lulu,” I said. “Were
you beautiful in your youth?”
“Athena herself,” she fluttered.
“You're actually in luck, because Ryan needs a date
tonight for Gentry.”
With her flippers she took him by the shoulders and
looked him up and down and he drank red scotch and
looked her in the eye and bowed his head.
“Do not worry about a thing,” she babbled. “Do not
worry I have just the girl just the most gorgeous little
thing, she's from around town don't worry about that.
You may know her and I'm almost afraid you went to
school together.”
“What's the name,” I said. “I’m sure I’ve heard it.”
“Lily Medine, Michael’s niece, oh Jake I know you

47
 THE PENINSULA

know her – they own the Veidt Center in New York,

her grandfather once ran for President oh yes a wonder-
ful family. Everyone knows them, of course of course,
but they don’t know Lily.”
“Apparently she’s going to be my cousin,” I said,
glaring off at the podium.
Ryan shrugged. “The girls and boys combine like
monkeys in the zoo.”
“She'll be there at the party, her father has retained
me to watch over her while she’s here you aren't Jewish
are you Ryan not that it matters.”
“Not last I checked.”
“Why does she need watching over? Why isn’t she
here if she’s so important?” I asked the woman.
“You’re the third person who’s mentioned her to me.
You’d better watch out or I might insert an extended
meaningful relationship into her.”
“Oh you're so coy Jacob, such the man about town,
I'm sure you're doing fine, have done fine for yourself
in Europe and with girls of your own, you wouldn't care
about such things,” the woman said, pawing her several
purses for tissues, a gypsy moth in a multilegged clean-
ing. “Now Jake you too here's my card. Ryan you call
me tonight. You give me a call and we'll talk to Lily.
We'll find you a real nice girl.”
She hobbled past and her great two-backed carapace
collapsed purple into a chair and began to shed and re-
form. Ryan looked at me and I narrowed my eyes. We
turned from the tables to slink across the lawn, com-
merce in all things and all people around us.

48
 5
In the sleeping hours that followed, mother and Me-
dine roared off with the crowd for lattes, shopping,
hiking, bird-watching, and chardonnay, leaving me to
do what I do every afternoon, online with the door
locked, with my effects in one hand and a glass of gin
in the other. I was making time for the women of the
Internet.

“You have a nice dress on,” said the obvious Mexi-

can. “A nice short dress.”
“I just like them short,” giggled the tan girl in the
slip, slapping her amber pigtails against her cheeks as
she leapt around the duvet. Pink lingerie drifted around
her on a plane of air that was warm and soft and mov-
ing.
“How old are you?”
“I turned eighteen in April,” whined the girl, her
chocolate eyes trembling.
“You’re a bad girl, aren’t you?”
“Oh yeah,” she grinned, spilling over the bedside
and kicking up heels behind her, wagging her rump in a

49
 THE PENINSULA

brownish pixilated blur. “I lead a crazy life. I know

what I deserve.”
“Well I have a surprise for you,” said the man as his
fingers launched past the camera’s aperture, a red ring
glinting on his lubricated thumbknuckle. “Have you
ever been–”
–Jake, oh my God, is it true you’re back? a
chat bubble interjected, flattening everything be-
neath an orange, meowing, flashing box oblivious
to the fact of its orange meowingness since my
operating system is configured privately, person-
ally, secretly, in my favorite childhood color and
themed with the cry of my first pet cat whose
head was chewed off with great weeping wailing
and gnashing of teeth by a coyote in the hills
above my home.
–Doing homework, I typed with my left hand.
“Oh yes,” the girl moaned behind the text.
“Make it talk for me,” said the Mexican.
“Taut?”
“Talk. Like the mouth,” the man said.
“How do I do that?” she laughed.
“Like, hello! Hello!”
“Oh god.”
–When can I see you omg, the bubble me-
owed.
–Go away.
–Can you come by tonight? pls pls
–No. Got to go. Busy.
–Pls? wtf
But the thunderous announce-

50
 ATHERTON

ment of an email arriving sent

my entire laptop shuddering, the
whole lower lip of the desktop
peeling up as a silver taskbar lit
up and two gongs proclaimed the
tidings of the gods:
–YOUR FACEBOOK WALL
ANNOUNCES:
“I like your boobs,” said the man.
“Thank you,” the girl said. “They’re my buddies.
You couldn’t do that if they were fake.”
“Yeah,” the man grunted.
–Someone at Stanford University
–I’m SO SAD, said the bubble.
–says you are in a relationship.
If this is true, please confirm
your significant other on your
account profile page. Thanks!
The Facebook Team.
“Get ready, little one,” growled someone.
“Oh! Who’s there?” cried the girl, behind the email.
“Julio, what's up! Welcome to the party,” panted the
Mexican.
“Unfff!” said the girl.
And as the text clicked closed, a shaved-headed man
with tattoos grabbed the gagged girl’s ponytails,
stabbed her face towards the pitching camera, stuck out
his studded pink tongue, and screamed out, mano a
mano across all time, “Yeah!”
– I don’t even know who you are, I replied.

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 THE PENINSULA

Behind all this persiflage my trust fund day traded

on an electronic brokerage, and clicking over to that
window oh bejeesus the dots sprinted up and down in
real time, a thousand dollars a tick, and my providence
was being raped and pillaged by the market, my well-
being hacked to pieces, though not really, not in any
significant sense beyond the contrition of a few red
characters flickering green and then red again with ten
or twenty thousand dollars lost. This trust money I
cannot withdraw, so instead I play with it, scratch it like
a dog gnawing at a flea.
Day trading one’s trust must be the most pleasurable
activity on the planet, and right now it’s hard for me to
concentrate.
The money goes up, the money goes down, the
stocks chatter incessantly: five hundred dollars I have
lost now, two thousand, now I have gained everything
back, now the pattern reverses and the candlesticks turn
from white to red and leak money through the cables
connecting me to those who are taking and profiting, no
doubt individuals less apathetic but of sufficient wealth
not to scream with joy at the acquisition of two piddling
thousand, only, like me, to feel the withering masturba-
tion of pillage.
I have lost fifteen thousand in a day and gained
twenty. I have lost nineteen thousand and lost ten thou-
sand more. I have lost thousands of hours burning in
self-pity and rolling the dice and laughing in glee. Wild
greed gulps and swallows and still gapes for more, and
my mind burns on and on.

52
 ATHERTON

And when the stars are hidden by black clouds they

can afford no light. In the evening, the enormous white
pavilion on Circus Club polo grounds ran over, blazing
orange shadows across the oaks and swimming pools.
Men in linen coats conducted venture financings on
their phones, extending their workdays beyond their
wives, and not a cigarette flickered, California's purple
hills asleep in copper cloud. At the head of the long
line of sedans, Pedro or somebody took our keys with a
taco smile. The Mercedes whirred towards the stables,
crunching hay into the gravel. I had been driving
mother because of her miserable eyes.
“Well, don’t say anything,” she laughed. “That will
carry you far in life.”
“Do what you like,” I replied, “let me do what I like.
Keep lying about your health.”
“I’m not lying.”
She was pathetic.
“Hm,” she miffed, and I took her advice and stopped
talking. I had to get out to open the door for her be-
cause the valet, lost in supplication, had passed idly by.
To be sure, the staff often disappoints. At the spring
gala before I left for Europe, a Brazilian waiter snapped
at a snub and whipped out his dick into Mrs. Dennison's
martini glass (“Olives? Caprese?”) before being tackled
by a wailing herd of organizers. Less was said of it; the
waiters had become white, but not the valets. We
walked through the ashy trees towards the tent.
Mother had me by the arm, she in a Cavalli sweater
and black throw purchased just this once. Besides
spending, she leaves everything else to Michael, her

53
 THE PENINSULA

strategy during these years of mourning to delegate.

Talk to Michael whenever there's a problem, whenever
you need money.
Her model’s countenance survives at fifty, high
cheekbones poised like shoulders above a straight, per-
fect nose and a swan’s neck – and the marquis eyes
father chose. Her life has become a struggle to hang
onto these treasures, even to see them. Since the diag-
nosis her voice had backed with quavering.
“Queenie, I hope I never have to go back to Europe,”
I muttered as we walked down the white path. Over-
head the oaks stirred and brushed in the air, and music
emanated from the tent. “But I can’t believe you
dragged me back like that. You’re insane.”
Mother clucked her tongue. “You have school to-
morrow. And now I know you love me. Besides, I’m
off to Canada on Monday, Cassis, do you remember? –
we can’t any real time together. Have we ever? It’s
supposed to be the best spa in North America.”
Her attitude towards California is the strangest part
of her: it took me twenty years to discover why we
didn’t hoof it to New York or London after father died.
But she is anchored here by a dumb faith in education
and love for me. Mother will go on about Stanford for
days, won’t leave me alone about what I’m studying,
which is nothing. Her proudest day would have been
my graduation, and this extra quarter tacked on she bore
as a vicious insult, her child kept back, ostensibly
wronged though really lazy. Now her ears curled like
silver flowers towards the trees, where the gala’s tin-
kling reflected skywards and presided over her. Her

54
 ATHERTON

collarbones glittered with gold. Her eyes fluttered to

see and to know and to greet.
“I just want you to know that Michael has the back-
ing he needs,” she cooed finally. “You know, all this
has taken it out of him, it’s drained his blood,” she
trailed off, gaze following a dinner dress, then spoke
again. “He's very ambitious, which is what I like in a
man. I think you will warm to him. We’ll all have din-
ner together tomorrow to catch up, maybe at Evvia –
have you been? It’s delicious. We went two weeks ago
and it was simply amazing. Just incredible. God
knows he will need it, the poor lamb, being worked to
death on the trail.” A spriteful laugh.
“He seems pretty goddamn chipper to me.”
“Don’t swear please. You should spend more time
with him when I’m gone. You should enjoy this oppor-
tunity, take it for what it is. Did you want to invite your
girlfriend to dinner?” She clasped my arm harder,
swaying her head to peer at me as we walked. Her
white eyes sang with death and marriage.
“Which one? I have three,” I mumbled.
“What? Dinner for four, then. Oh, Michael said his
niece will be here tonight.”
“I haven't met her,” I said.
“Lily? She’s become absolutely radiant.” Then she
paused.
We walked on in the warm air and she looked over
at me and I pulled away my arm and thrust my hands in
my pockets.
“Oh Monsieur Sangfroid,” she sang. “Control your-
self. Also, Jake, I wanted to stress to you how sensitive

55
 THE PENINSULA

the little situation has become,” she continued softly,

almost carelessly, “with the accounts. Until the wed-
ding is resolved we need to be just a little careful about
what we say in public. I know I mentioned this to you
before Europe but I just thought I would remind you–”
“Whatever.” Some money business.
“So this weekend you will need to go up to San
Francisco and talk with Bernie, because there is some-
thing to address about your trust. It needs
restructuring.”
“Restructuring? That’s a nice word.”
“As part of the – oh, I don't like to say the word -–
the marriage arrangements between me and Michael.
Your trust has some assets that are quite challenging to
value, patents and agreements mostly, which your fa-
ther was involved in – and Michael is going to liquidate
them for your benefit. But the lawyer will explain eve-
rything, Michael says.”
Into Circus Club’s glitzy valley we rolled. The
greeter and former mayor interfered with a deep hurrah
and curly eyes that undressed mother. The headmaster
of Menlo School appeared from outside with a thick
brown hand, but seeing him coming I spun swiftly into
the ballroom.
And off like a panther, leaving the fuddies and get-
ting past the swarming dinner tables to the dance floor
and what friends hadn’t yet split for New York or col-
lege, I dived into the younger sea, the legs kicking gold
and tan in merino slacks and evening dresses, laughing,
catching up, trying to copulate, God, who wouldn’t be
happy to be here, and from the way bodies swam S-

56
 ATHERTON

shaped and bronze to the music I wished I could sleep

with everybody.
Hunter Cloyte took Nicole Underwood’s hand and
swung her in a perfect sugar push, and she burst with
delight, and I sighed. Gin and tonic from the black bar-
tender flowed, he doesn’t card, drinks for everybody,
and after three harsh tequila shots the lights in my eyes
went gold, and I heard from the kids in the grades be-
low about the demise of the flip phone, and in an instant
one of them had whipped his new model out, he had to
show me, it’s brand new, five hundred well spent he
tells me, it gets noticed. Another drawled on about his
new startup, a website for playing pranks on people, but
more fed up with this than he realized, I tuned him out
and pounded a gimlet off the bar.
Silky looks, this crowd of eager daughters grinding
replicants of their fathers, wanting husbands or at least
cocks in them, intimations of marriages sketched in the
Neolithic thrust and throw. Flashing pink lights in the
dark tent, illuminated fog, and live music from the an-
techamber blending and blasting. A sudden buzzing in
my pocket announced a girl on my borrowed phone,
impossibly excited by my nearness, though to me a
world away. “I want to see you,” she buzzed.
“Who is this? I feel like I’ve died and come back to
life.”
“Why did you hang up on me earlier?”
“Wait, we’ve already spoken? I don’t rememb–”
She began to answer. But “Dance?” a familiar
daughter intervened, and I was off, getting a thumbs up
from a guy I recognized across the bar, interrupting the

57
 THE PENINSULA

girl on the phone, and suddenly this new nymph was

swinging me to the beat, the slight feathers of her per-
fect back warming my hand, the taut cleaving of her
muscles, the parting pipes above the sacrum, nymph the
year younger, chestnut-haired, tan, college cheerleader,
whose fanglike braces once fellated me beneath the
streetlight on Brittany Meadows, wasn’t raped, and,
now, inside of five minutes’ dancing, not even before
the second song, offered up glittering puppy eyes, and
as though compelled by a higher force I leaned in to
reacquaint: her lips maculated, slick and soft like slugs,
and she moaned halfway between pleasure and fear, a
split plum yielding its seed, a chestnut happy girl smell-
ing of cinnamon.
Another dancer bumped her ass into us, but the
daughter clung to me, taking my face in her hands to
hold on. I had my eyes open. Past her, mother gave me
a sharp stare from the bar, accompanied by Mrs. Clyde
the wife of Clyde Partners, and Griff the towering
friendly eBay heir, who offered a cheery heads up.
And the daughter, barely in existence now, yielded
her soul through my lips like a strand of straw. Her
spirit went into me and died in apathy: she meant noth-
ing, none of them did. What of my girlfriends?
Stanford girls did not exist in this world – over the
years they had settled in my mind as a set of distances
and hours, phone numbers, not commitments: four
hours on Friday night, call when back, across the Atlan-
tic, anywhere but here. I believed them all to be
hopelessly in love with me, so my greatest victory in
this stage of life became keeping the fantasy of Stan-

58
 ATHERTON

ford, where people imagined themselves equal, separate

from the reality of Atherton, where wealth counted and
we fucked on that basis. All Stanford girls were equal
to me, equally poor.
The daughter’s tongue slipped into my mouth a
sweet ribbon of freedom. She’d been chewing tropical
gum. Depredation, years and years. At the bar, mother
took her red scotch in one hand and turned me her fee-
ble eyes. No scandal from her, nor from Ryan,
unrighteous Ryan mummed because we’re pals, the
lone loyal bridge between my social worlds – now I
saw him standing at the bar, watching too, with a gold-
en-haired girl on his navy arm. “Damn it all,” I
informed the daughter from within her mouth, gargling,
“I’m getting a drink!” And I tore off with this, but while
struggling through the forest of legs and arms and thin
bulging dresses I was attacked by another daughter,
scion of Madrone Real Estate, a platinum blonde with
clear blue eyes, four years a water polo fluffer, a semi-
friend back from Colgate, now a temp at Google hope-
lessly lost, headed for a loveless prenup not with me.
“Jakey!” She flung her tendrils around my neck,
whiter than I remember, cashmere-soft.
“Berry, it’s a miracle you’re still alive.”
“I hear you’re recording an album.”
“Not me.”
“That’s what Ryan said. He said you’ve signed with
an agent and you’re going to have a CD.”
“Ryan’s a pretty funny guy. Did he tell you he
joined a circus? He’s training to be a contortionist.”
“Remember when we were in chorus together? Re-

59
 THE PENINSULA

member?” She purred and clasped, lips carmine shears.

The crowd beat.
“You’re on crack, but nothing has changed. Let me
get you a drink.” But, twined like a lilac around me, she
wouldn’t let go, so I started coughing, holding a fist to
my mouth. But she took my fist away and began to kiss
me softly with confectioned lips, and I twisted away,
straining for breath, stretching a desperate arm out of
the crowd up into its sparkling atmosphere.
“I have an idea,” she purred, preening her lips up
and down the side of my face, “Let’s go back to school
tonight.” She licked down to my neck and tried to draw
blood. “Let’s fuck each other. It would be bad,
wouldn’t it? I want to smoke on top of Douglass Hall
and remember what it was like. We’re getting so old.”
Still suckling, she swept away her blazing hair, her
eyes bleary stipples, her friendly breasts wrapped in
white fuzz, market peaches pressing into my hands.
The crowd rushed unseeing around us. Hands glowed
with lit phones and players that shielded their wearers
within the dance, in the cavities of the tent and in its
violent light.
“You blink a lot. And you just spat on me,” I told
her, gripping her shoulders. She crumpled with candy
giggles, and I spun her off. “Pull yourself together. I
need to hydrate.”
And, finally to the bar, I found Ryan entertaining
mother with his thoughts on some political scandal.
Dan Rather, somebody, fiction of another age, “It’s ri-
diculous,” he was saying, “he’s been lying to us all
since we were kids. Makes Clinton look like a priest.

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 ATHERTON

What if he’d gotten away with it–”

“But who cares if Bush was a bad soldier? Why are
we focusing on this, anyway, is what I think,” mother
inveighed. “We’re such a voyeuristic culture. It doesn’t
matter if he was a lazy boy if he can make up for it in
Iraq, but he hasn’t. Oh, he hasn’t–” From arm’s length
she reeked of scotch, both her wrists supporting a tum-
bler.
“Verily, verily,” Bonn intoned. “He always misled
us, which you might expect from politicians, from jour-
nalists especially. Media masters, they always mislead
us with their media, that is what they do. That is what
they are paid to do and so they do it. Yet don't you
think media is just an illusion, a lie agreed upon? Isn't
that what you believe, Mrs. Bessemer, isn't that fasci-
nating–”
“Fascinating, fascinating,” said mother. “You are
the most fascinating conversationalist, not like Jake, not
like you is or isn't he Jake, he has a golden tongue.”
“I guess,” I said.
“But anyway,” continued Bonn, "Anyway this par-
ticular admission doesn't shock me. It’s quite hard to
any more. And you might expect this too – the decline
of the old guard, the erosion of your generation's statu-
ary, dear Evelyn. Rather, Cronkite, dead Jennings, all
of them chained in ancient television sets and shows
only watched by old ratty women.”
Mother laughed uproariously. “Yes.”
"And I can't condone it, I really cannot condone it. I
cannot condone the elderly's control of the media.
Which is why I don't watch television, which is why if

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 THE PENINSULA

you're white in this country you can't watch television

any more. It just isn't worthwhile after you realize the
Internet is the second coming of Jesus Christ. The In-
ternet is controlled by the youth. But why are we
talking about all this when we could be–” Ryan turned
aside, waving his hands. Behind him waited a calm girl
in a pale blue dress.
Pallid braids barely yellower than ivory encircled her
head, letting down a web of blonde strands to her col-
larbones. Shoulder-height and proud, she was lean and
healthy without being thin, and stood straight like a
swan, projecting clear, strikingly blue eyes beneath her
fine brow. Her nose was petite, her lips pert, and she
had a narrow, derisive chin.
“My sympathies,” I told her, spinning past and hook-
ing a thumb at Ryan. “But we haven’t met. You’re
Lily, Ryan was telling me about you, I vaguely remem-
ber your face from another lifetime, I believe in spirits,
did you know I am the resurrected Caius Caligula–”
then my babbling mouth shut when I recalled what
she’d just witnessed in the crowd.
“Jake Bessemer?” Lily asked, closing her two blue,
clear eyes with a three-beat delay. “The endearingly
faithful one.” She spoke with a faint British accent.
“Yes, he’s dating the sorority sister of one of my best
friends – the envy of many a Stanford girl. I know a bit
about you, it’s quite impressive to have a reputation that
spans the Pacific.”
“That’s great, what a coincidence–” I told her. Her
silver lips turned up to me, and, past them, a chain of
diamonds sparkled around her neck. Still she avoided

62
 ATHERTON

my gaze. “I’m, uh, in a couple of open relationships,” I

said. “It’s a modern arrangement – American – you
wouldn’t know much about it. By the way, since you
live in Hong Kong, is it true real Chinese food isn’t an-
ything like American because I’ve always wondered
about the texture of dog and snake jerky and caterpil-
lar–”
“What a wild scene,” she interrupted, running a fin-
ger around the rim of her glass. “I imagine they don’t
hear much about at school. All this money, tucked so
neatly out of sight.”
“Well, you know, it’s mostly all us friends from
home,” I chattered, flushing. I slurped my drink. “A
few times a year. A few fists of cocaine and capital
what do you know, the children of the flower children
transform into blowjob-snorting lunatics. Like me and
Ryan! No, just kidding. We have a Facebook group
for it, and everything else, which makes each facet of
our lives super fun and awesome – it’s almost an Ovidi-
an metamorphosis.”
“That is not a word,” she said. “Lots of friends, lots
of moolah,” she went on, elongating this last, and
turned away, sipping her glass of water. “Very boring
and awfully Yank. It tires me out – I’m tired of talking.
I don’t have any time to spoil.” She laughed brilliantly.
I thought she must have seen me in the crowd.
“Look–” I told her. “What you saw, it’s just that we,
I’m not sure why that girl–”
“I didn’t see anything,” she replied, turning her head
and her cool eyes away. “You need to slow down. Re-
al libertines aren’t so easily embarrassed.” A smirk

63
 THE PENINSULA

played across her lips.

“I–”
“Relax, it’s like you’re going to explode.” Still
without meeting my gaze, she placed a soft hand on my
chest.
“Leave my date alone!” laughed Ryan, spinning
around from the bar. Mother’s claw rested there, the
only part of her I could still see, liver-spotted and old,
excluded from this dalliance.
“We were just catching up, since you were so busy,”
Lily told Ryan from half his height, setting down her
glass. Her wrist sparkled with silver bangles, and, pull-
ing off one of these whitish hoops, she began to play
with the band.
“See, Jake and I have stuck together since we were
kids,” Ryan rolled, knuckling my arm. “I don’t know
why.” His golden skin flushed with might and he could
see as I did that she was a very beautiful girl.
“I haven’t tried to kill him yet,” I limped, but Lily
smiled, trained to store her steel. I loaded another joke,
but everyone’s attention was soon removed.
“Let me get you another drink,” offered Ryan, step-
ping aside to reveal mother growling into her phone,
unearthed in the music and brass, jamming her eyes
shut, protecting her straining throat as her small fore-
head sank with knots over the bar, cupping a hand to
hear. Two servers look urgently over, ready for another
Brazilian.
“Uh,” I ventured. I think all three of us said this.
“Are you crazy?” mother spat. “Get Larry on the
phone. There’s no way. There is no possible way.

64
 ATHERTON

Those charges are on my card, the little shit can’t have

had access–” Ryan took up his scotch. “Wait, I can’t
hear, wait!” She smacked her hand on the bar, splayed
like a starfish, and rushed by, phone cemented to her
ear. She turned back as she passed, and hissed, nearly
spitting in my bewildered eyes.
“You profligate little fuck!” my mother yelled. Then
she slapped me full in the face and stormed into the
crowd. At the very moment, some hirarious girl started
buzzing again in my pocket, trying to be a part of it all.
But I was not listening, I was staring at Lily, who
had fallen back against the bar. She was frowning at
her feet, looking for the bracelet she had dropped,
which she could not find between her gold-tied heels.
Only when Ryan stooped down to snatch the hoop off
the floor, and she sluggishly raised two pallid eyes to
his chest, did I realize Lily was blind.

65
 6
Outside, beneath a giant umbrella spread like a ra-
ven’s wing, I called a Stanford girl to me. I had fled –
it was madness to remain with my mother in such a
niggardly mood. The storm swept in, hailing sheets
through the blue oaks, the pavilion a dim constellation
over the club. The dark street shook in rain that
whipped it in passing and returned to whip it again.
“I'm timing you,” I told the girl. She was half white
and half brown, so we called her the hybrid. She was
obsessed with sex because she knew how valuable it
made her.
Setting my controls for the heart of the sun, from my
breast pocket I took my bullet, a silver device I keep for
such waits. With a tap, a powdery bump of cocaine fell
from the supply into the chamber, and I huffed it up as
the spray tore me sideways, and, with three more pow-
erful snorts in the vortex of the rain, the cocaine ran like
electricity, igniting memories, moments, and time flew
speeding silver white and black.

66
 STANFORD BY NIGHT

Instantly a black BMW appeared down the street,

spraying sheets from puddles and roaring over the rock
fast so fast and even faster. And in the night the girl
glared out, blinking fast, eyes all smoke, dark hair
pulled back from jet earrings, lit halfway, a preening
cat, lips muzzle tongue and fangs. A surge of feeling,
and the feeling knocked me down.
“Jake, are you doing coke?” she demanded as I leapt
in.
“Jesus Christ. Turn on the fucking seat warmers.”
We took off splashing, the moon high out overhead,
grey and yellow among the splotchy clouds and spider
bellies. My mind – its pace –
“Where are the fucking seat warmers. Where are –
where the fuck did you get this car.”
“Are you high?” To her it was important to know.
Around her wrist, a copper watch shattered the storm-
light, and little black hands told me how late it was
becoming.
“Who cares, who – God, fuck, turn on the heat.”
“Your jaw is twitching.” She stared at me and the
night sped around the car.
“Nice to see you too,” I cried. “I missed you so so
so – it was intolerable. Europe was bad. Bad, bad
news. Ba-ba-ba-bad.” I leaned over and kissed her,
breathing her again light and nice – the olfactory stimuli
dominate the unconscious, Freud mentally moaned,
masturbating, as in my imagination he leaned over for a
fat powdery line of blow and gave me the thumbs up
with his free hand. Click click click my heart thumped
in my stomach, and my mind's intercourse with Freud

67
 THE PENINSULA

flecked off like a scab torn away, the world bloats, sug-
ar spends to fatten slaves, and I –
“I think I’m breaking up with you,” said the hybrid.
“Again? Is it even possible? I saw you broke up
with me on Facebook. Or someone did. Well all right,
fantabulous. Fan-fucking-tastic.” I was chewing my
tongue and my lips, rolling the flesh between my fangs.
“No, I am serious this time.”
“Hokay. Ho-kay. Ha.” My eyes rolled – not sarcas-
tically, spastically. “It doesn’t change anything.”
She fell silent. God, she had to admit it felt good to
bite your lip, to taste the blood in you.
“I’m sleeping with someone else,” she said.
“Me too. Well, more than one person. You have to,
to categorize them, don’t you. It’s the only way. I
know.”
The car drove on. Well.
“Uh,” she said. “Let’s start this conversation over.”
“Whatever you want,” I cackled. “If it’s not going
as you expected.”
In my mind bloomed animal shapes, white and pow-
dery, blustering as through snowdrifts: the animals
paused, spines and stalagmites sprouting from their
ridge-backs, and drifted on, pageant-like. Slowly they
came apart in wisps, emitting stuffing that shimmered
and disappeared in rings of smoke. My tongue chawed
and I made a happy gurgle.
“I can’t believe you lost all your stuff,” the hybrid
whined, her mind flapping on like every woman-mind,
unanchored and preening. “I thought you would disap-
pear.”

68
 STANFORD BY NIGHT

“I KNOW! Fortunately I have the solution: go to the

mall. Go to the mall and buy things.” Consciousness
shredding now, roaring with static.
“Did you lose my wallet?”
“Yes. I’ll get another one. I'll get five.” She twist-
ed her small jaw and her peridot eyes sparkled with
fury. The tiny engine roared its ignominies. Because
the hybrid's irritation was inexcusable she stored it.
Down the dark town we raced, beneath swimming wa-
ters descending from the trees like vines. In the dark
two Mexicans in baggy yellow raincoats squatted over a
spurting drain, feeling around with wrenches, thinking
urgently in Spanish. The one raised his hood to regard
us as we passed, a Seminole raccoon; he did not move
and suffered and kept suffering as we sped on in the
night.
“Did you hear what I said!” she cried. “I’m breaking
up with you! What are you going to say?” My heart
palpitated in fits. I needed more cocaine.
“I’m tired! I don’t have any of my things. I just
want to sleep. Take me back to your place where
there’s a bed and condoms and let’s stop talking. I saw
a girl tonight, she was blind, she couldn’t see. Do you
know what that would be like? Do you know that Indi-
an priests – the ancient Indians, not the new ones – they
blind themselves, it’s a form of purification they say,
scarification, I read that in Mackey’s class, gay Mr.
Mackey the blacky packy, uh, a great English teacher
though–”
“I haven’t seen you for months, and you can’t even
compose a sentence. You’re so fucking selfish. You’re

69
 THE PENINSULA

insane! Do you see why I’m breaking up with you? Do

you see?” Crying. Something woman-tired in her
voice and God I was sick of her already why had I
called, splattered my brain.
“We can’t break up!” I roared. “At least not until I
graduate. There are too many parties left, too many
photo ops. Think of our Facebook profiles, Jesus
Christ, think of our friends!”
“But I’m unhappy, and I want you to – I want you to
acknowledge my unhappiness with our relationship.”
More black tears rolled down her face.
“Is it one of those menstrual periods for you – uh,
I’m sorry, I’m so tired. I know, I know,” I capitulated.
“I missed you. We can have dinner tomorrow. We’ll
take a trip to the city. It will be sunny. We can go to
Angry Bat and stay at the W. We can spank each other.
I'm aware it's my, that it’s your birthday. Party time! It
will be great.” Obsidian coins clattered from my palms.
We’d turned out of the town and its shaggy man-
sions, driving five minutes down the avenue to
Stanford. I wanted to be in San Francisco in the quiet
plaster smell of my family’s apartment, with the gin in
the cabinet and separate from this place. I started up
again in the seat.
“It is my birthday,” she repeated, wrinkling her nose.
Her birthday extended three days past and future.
“I do care,” I tried. “I do. I really want you to know
that. God if you only knew how much I care about
you.” Finally I slumped on the black leather with my
arm wrapped around my head like a monkey’s, eyes
bulging, my jaw grinding along with my heart, pulling

70
 STANFORD BY NIGHT

and popping the tendons. “I’m just jetlagged! I’m just

concentrating! I try so hard to concentrate, it makes me
smarter, it’s making me divine. Right effort, right
mindfulness, right thinking, I’m ascending into heav-
en!”

The Stanford campus slept among its palms in the

blue darkness of the night, holding back the rain that
rushed beyond the groves. Calm eucalyptus trees
shielded the foothills and a realm hushed of the sur-
rounding mortal din. Far down the avenue of palms, a
cathedral glowed above the oval lawn in the center of
all campus, ringed with tile and electric orbs. The
structure was a dragon of russet arch. As we drove,
above us the palm colonnade flipped by, its husked pil-
lars rasping in the night.
“It’s fine I guess,” she sighed, relaxing her grip on
the wheel. Her eyes were bright, adorned in the street-
light. “Whatever. Tell me about Italy.”
“Do we at least still get to have sex?” I said.
“Jake–”
No problem. Through the rain and fog we slashed
forward, cars like nightmares shod in rubies rushing
with us, and I could not stop thinking, grinding my jaw,
could not separate awareness from thought, from ideas
suddenly unmasked by the cocaine, my tolerance so
low after these months, and I found myself banging my
head to the music and deriving the theories of
Heidegger from Heraclitus and–
“You’re coked out, Jake. You’re really coked out.”
“I'm aware. I’m having an amazing time. I love

71
 THE PENINSULA

you. I love this, and this quarter is going to be amaz-

ing. We’re going to get married. We’ll have a reality
TV show called Seersuckers and we can wear linen and
it’s going to be fantab–” Then I was banging my head.
The music!
“I don’t want to marry you!” she shrieked, her eyes
bright askance. Her brain clenched like a knot of tenta-
cles. “You aren’t in any condition to convince me.”
“You will, you will, I know how to make you.” For
she had been shifting her tan thighs in her seat and de-
spite her outrage I knew this sign. Her tan skin had
already flushed and her tan face purpled with lust. But
first I needed refreshment. Already the coke was wear-
ing off. Jesus Christ!
We’d driven full up the drive and into the vacant
oval. “Stop here,” I told her, and we pulled over onto
the side of the road under two towering eucalypts. I
told the hybrid to wait in the car, and there she waited.

Past Rodin’s pained statues, under the great tile mo-

saic of the Lord Jesus Christ and his apostles, beyond
the arch I went, walking, walking, where a cold wind
blew around the church and sent black oak leaves sting-
ing along the causeway; and as the sandstone wall
wound past I looked up into the stained glass and more
students spun by me on bikes. I saw two black kids I
knew walk by sullenly under backpacks and I sort of
said what’s up but ended up mumbling when they
didn’t meet my starlit eyes.
The great banded door swung open, releasing rich
and solid the maple breath of the vestry, and I walked

72
 STANFORD BY NIGHT

quietly through, sinking my hands into my jean pockets.

There were still people within.
Stanford’s drug trade is controlled by a loose federa-
tion of dealers who live in the surrounding
neighborhoods. They cannot peddle their wares on
campus because they stand out like tar on ivory – suspi-
cious eyes follow them, the police frequently arrive – so
they rely on student middlemen like the one I was meet-
ing.
An eight ball of cocaine is one hundred forty dollars,
an eighth of an ounce of marijuana is fifty five dollars,
an eighth of dried mushrooms is thirty five dollars, Vi-
codin and Valium persist in the market but are swapped
between friends, obtained from surgeries and bogus
doctors. Small veins of other pharmaceuticals exist,
even Viagra, but they are also underground. Ecstasy is
not the Stanford’s drug of choice, and heroin is unheard
of.
Cocaine is better: a network phenomenon, its power
resides in the community. From its invention it quickly
gained the school. Lines can be unequivocally snorted
off of anything from toilet seats to breasts: you bend
over and the nostril sucks and is blown white – the in-
side sheen of a lampshade, slashing particles up into
your mucus membrane and through your capillaries and
in five seconds all the way to your brain. And as you
rise, the plebes – girls, pledge brothers, the uninitiated –
look on in reverence, with a dumb grin that says they
wish they had the balls to do that too but have a test
coming up or guilt about dad’s bad heart or a control-
ling girlfriend, and sort of lean back sardonically as you

73
 THE PENINSULA

pass the rolled buck on to the left to a better man than

they and collect the strands of their approbation. No
matter, a year later they are doing it too. The line is the
most powerful tool in the university. I began to sali-
vate.
But my mark was not in the vestry. I found him in
the chancel sitting in a pew near the back of the church,
the massive Stanford church built from sandstone
knocked down by earthquakes, built up again, the heart
of campus. The assistant organist – he stared from
Chinese eyes and thought out music notes. Overhead, a
wheel of angels carved into the ceiling peered down in
mosaic, bearing anchors and lambs, peace, hope, chari-
ty, faith, and love.
I sat down with him and we watched a woman read-
ing a eulogy for her father. It was an emergency
treatment, dry-eyed and stiff this late. The daughter
concluded and swept down from the altar and hugged
her mother. A ratty girl waved flowers and there was
much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then
a sort of priest strode up and asked them: “Who better
to believe than Jesus Christ?”
The dealer closed his eyes for a moment and sighed.
I sat looking at them all in my khakis and leather shoes,
at the priest and the angels and saints and charities, all
asking for belief, all seeking some form of redemption,
pleading with me for existence.
The dealer turned to me. He said, “I have a ques-
tion. Would you rather eat out your mom or your dad?
Things to consider: eating out your dad means eating
out his asshole.” I looked at him and he burst out in

74
 STANFORD BY NIGHT

sweet laughter, and we turned back to look at the altar.

The air breathed warm and smelled of winter stone.
I stared at the minister’s pinned collar, then took out a
hymnal from its slot in the pew in front of me and
opened it, where I found a poem slutting itself across
the cover page in tall blue letters. Some hippie had
written it there. What a fucking waste of space.
The ghoul started and leaned over, “My God, so
Stanford. Poetry woo hoo, liberal fucking yuppies or
hippies or hipsters I don’t know which, now please,
please let’s get out of here, I can’t stand this apocryphal
bullshit.” I closed the hymnal. A woman sobbed.
The priest raised his hands and led the women up the
aisle, all baying under the bloody light of the stained
glass, and we got up and passed them through the door
on the right side of the altar, back into the vestry, rid of
them for all time.
“This is demonic stuff,” the dealer said when he had
locked us in, earnest now. The coke glowed white, too
granular to be pure, detergent wrapped in dusty sheets
of plastic. “Here,” he said. “It’s hella good. Bolivian.”
Most cocaine that reaches the Bay Area has been cut
four or five times on the way north, with baking soda,
baby powder, cream cheese, though it’s common cour-
tesy to assure your client he’s getting the right stuff
anyway. It was a big baggie of coke, and I felt the
weight in my palm before putting it in my pocket.
“Don’t you worry about getting caught?” I asked him.
“This is the safest room on campus. The man up-
stairs is mostly blind – he plays by touch, so I’ve got
the only key.” From his own twisted knot he scooped

75
 THE PENINSULA

out a powdery rim with his finger and rubbed it over his
gums, slurping and licking.
“Don’t the priests and – the others come back here?”
“It’s a church dude,” he told me, blinking as the
glow overcame his eyes.
I gave him the money that the Gina lawyer had given
me. He spread the bills out and folded them and
slipped them into his pocket. He wanted to do a line off
a crucifix.
“No,” I told him.
“I have a question,” he continued, glaring at the
cross. “Would you rather get teabagged by a man or a
woman? Things to consider: getting teabagged by a
woman means putting her bloody tampon in your
mouth.”
“I really don’t know,” I said. And I left through the
side door into the night. The wind hungering over the
coast had driven back the rain. I walked fast across the
quad towards the car, metallic residue beneath my
tongue, my heart subsiding a little now.
“Jesus Christ,” I said, and felt the ball in my pocket.

Completely unaware, we began as I got in, panting.

Without thought, as it always is, the hybrid leaned over
and kissed me and we were kissing and I breathed her
hot dark and ardent and swept down to her, and she lift-
ed one ankle on the dashboard of the car calling and her
black skirt rode up revealing a vee of blue lace soaked
transparent and divine and the car bloomed in mist and
we sprawled in the back seat she rising over me crying
laughing so that the car shook and her eyes turned

76
 STANFORD BY NIGHT

sideways and clenched shut as she cried, and then, pant-

ing, kissing, somehow in love, she fell back.
“Fuck I love to fuck,” she said. “I like it so much.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“I masturbate three times a day.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Do you watch porn.”
“Oh my God,” and she was on me again moaning
rutting, a blue shadow in the dark, the valedictorian of
her high school class.
“Do you understand that women are interchangea-
ble?”
“In – every – kind – of – position.”
“Even their brains?”
“Ohh–”
Now I had taken what I wanted so I could proceed. I
licked my lips. From the oval we took the side road
through the black athletic fields past the freshmen dor-
mitories to the sorority buildings, where after their first
years girls of the hybrid's physique were segregated to
battle and mate. Each gloomy agate building bore a
lone flatscreen in its lobby, herald of important goings-
on: each bore a twinkling red ribbon and the Stanford
tree, which danced and played among so many algo-
rithmically emplaced and ecologically friendly
advertisements.
Released, it seemed, as if someone were watching
over us, we left the car and rose up the hill without an-
other word or thought, and the night grew blacker while
out in the darkness we ascended the lakeside road to-
wards the fraternities, where our party thundered.
The hybrid's smile stood out, hot and upturned, blue

77
 THE PENINSULA

in the stream of my mind, and we left the car and

walked fast, holding hands. Wind sent leaves stinging
through the night in great cooling gusts, and the lights
of cars idling up the hill and the distant booming of
drums showed us the straight way.
As we came up onto the main road I saw others, fol-
lowed them, trails of people streaming from all over
campus towards the party, packs of drunks, hungry ants
coalescing on sugar, not there for anything but there
anyway, a place which they would leave feeling inade-
quate and lonely if they hadn’t dunked their
expectations in enough booze, which they knew and
accepted – they went because they had been going since
they could remember. The party defined this stage of
their lives, as crawling defines infancy.
The concentration of souls grew thick atop the row,
and there I saw the familiar stone steps and a great line
of people charging upwards, hurling themselves into the
impenetrable boundary of the guest list and charging
away again, and, beckoned by the kid atop the stairs we
walked up through the list and looked back to the mass.
I knew I looked different from them.
“Whats up, dudes,” drawled the black gatekeeper.
“It’s a brand new night.”
In the preceding year I had been where there were
lists and won friends. But because of what some called
cruelty and I called honesty, many despised me, and as
my disrepute grew I found the need to resurrect the fa-
çade mother had taught me when I was young: it was
not the private whispering – I enjoyed scandal and ru-
mor – but when people looked at me with hate when I

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passed, even in daytime, I grew concerned.

So towards the end of the year I tried to be friendly,
at least with the people I knew. In a short time I
learned to play the part of a friend, even your best
friend – hey, what’s going on with that problem set,
prof’s totally incomprehensible, huh, how’s your girl-
friend doing, yeah, I know what you did last night,
she’s cute, nice kill, that’s great you’ve got a new ma-
jor, let’s lift sometime, friend me on Facebook, what
are you doing after you graduate, yeah, you’ve gotta
give me your info, let’s play nine holes next week, no
problem – jazz, fluff, suck. Smiling broadly I will buy
you a drink and grip the palm or fingers of your hand
for the right number of seconds and at the right angle
depending on how old you think you are and how well I
know you, and with the right pressure hold your shoul-
der and look into your eyes and grin, and attest without
words that I’m really here for you, that if you stick with
me everything will be fine, that I know just the right
collection of people to get you by for the rest of your
life. You like to talk to me, even tell me the details of
your sex life, invite me skiing with your family, give
me cigars and drinks, and let me walk your girlfriend
home. But you don’t see.
People were willing to like me because I was rich
and they knew it. This is the very character of Stanford
and of most people everywhere. A particular fear
blinds the ambitious towards each other, the fear of
conflict, the idea that everyone else will eventually as-
cend. When we’re lean businessmen across the board
room table, we’ll share a nod and close the deal because

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we remember what great times we had doing coke in

college. In college! Patience will pay off, so don’t step
on anyone’s toes.
The network is the real value of our tuition, and eve-
ryone was so used to changing their image, raising
different cloaks, converting, concealing, that they had
no problem welcoming me like a brother. So I flew the
most common flag, the one easily overlooked, and
blended in, lying and smiling and greasing with every-
one else. And the forms of the dance mutated with the
passage of years: and under the Stanford sun we
seemed all friends and all brothers.
Inside the party I left the hybrid with her fatuous sis-
ters and saw the unknown and the familiar and waved.
The noise would deafen anybody, but I had been im-
mersed in it since birth and the muscles of my inner ear
were hardened to its force. I could almost hear better
within the whirlwind than in silence, and from the roar
voices answered me: hey nice to see you again – how’s
your sister – hey your name is Dan, right? – do you
have any cigarettes? Caroline? how absurd! – she’s
finally getting expelled? – hey you’re Asian, my last
girlfriend was Asian! Ni hao! hey! – and I smiled, a
stupid frog jumping in the wind.
I patted my brothers on the back, led them, forcing
through the knots of sweaty apes. “Let's take care of
business,” I proclaimed, and we went into the room and
snorted some cocaine, and they gave me beer and vodka
and we laughed about the girls at the party. "I need to
get head!" I announced uproariously, "Let's go watch
the door!" So we took two more fat horsetail lines and

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 STANFORD BY NIGHT

someone told a really funny joke about how a black

man was hanging in his family tree and everyone
laughed again. We came back out into the main room
and through the crowd I saw the hybrid wandering off
to the dance floor as more girls were signaled up from
the line.
Stanford girls – the few good-looking ones – walk
into parties with such airs of self-assurance that it is dif-
ficult to do anything but laugh. The glance of the crowd
seems to levitate them, and they float through the door
like angels presenting themselves to God, chins
propped up, ankles elegantly tied with whatever heels
their parents can afford, tan legs dangling, an hour of
style in their hair, their dress’s texture, color, and cut
selected from their closet's million permutations explic-
itly for this night's temperature, mood, and boy – their
eyes shine with vanity and slit with condescension for
everyone beneath them. Stanford is theirs, separate
from the proletariat curvier, stupider, better-looking
broads of USC, U of A, and UCSB, gorgons banished
momentarily from these four erototropic years. For a
while they can pretend to be beautiful.
Organisms do not survive on truth, they just survive,
these elegant girls, hypocrites, gargoyles, plastic wrap!
Still I give them my ministrations – some of them, after
all, are Rhodes Scholars. Cocaine makes me irritable:
all girls continue to exhibit a complete lack of charm,
and this pandemic condition I know cannot be helped. I
take each one in turn, watching her until she infuriates
me. Or is it the power of the drug? Eventually she be-
comes my mother.

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Now the goldenhaired girl stepped in alone wearing

flats that drew ferocious stares from the pack of harpies
crouched next to the door. I was ravenous for another
girl and her eyes were glowing. Three of us went for
her through the crowd, but some goldbrick bumped into
me and spilled his drink and by the time I’d recovered
she was taken, linking arms with the guy who had told
the black joke and speeding off towards the keg. So I
went back to the edge of the hall with the others watch-
ing the door.
But ten minutes later I went looking for her, and
found her against the back wall of the dance floor,
alone, arms folded, drunk and drunk.
“I can’t talk to you,” the goldenhaired girl breathed
into my face, dragging the words, looking up into my
eyes, her hair afire. A teardrop ruby dangled between
the incredible summits of her breasts, as the crowds,
dripping, massed around us. I saw the hybrid grind by
in lap of another, wasted by the night.
“You can; I won’t bite. I haven’t, have I?”
“You make me cry. You’re an awful person. Where
is the – where is Ryan. He said he was getting a drink,”
she said, staring past me; then after a moment she gazed
up again and gripped my arm in entitlement, apologiz-
ing with all her molten heart. “I’m sorry. I’m rude.
I’m, lets go. We do the same sort of thing, I think. We
do the same thing–” The goldenhaired girl smelled of
furtive flowers. She was wrapped in red cloth and vod-
ka.
“Ryan is here? Where?”
“He was here. I couldn’t understand where he went.

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Oh you are here.” Yes, yes. “He thinks I hate him, but
I don’t Where am I? Who am I?”
“You’re inside the party, and you’re drunk,” I told
her. “It’s a historic piece.”
She leaned against me, light and bruised, spilling out
of her dress. The music thumped, and all of her lay in
my hands.
“I’m not that drunk,” she snorted. “Do you want to
dance?”
“You can’t dance; you can’t even stand up. They’re
kicking everyone out.”
“No they’re not. It’s only eleven.”
“No, there was a fight and someone said the cops are
coming,” I lied. “We have to go – the brutal pigs and
their batons! They don’t respect our rights!”
“Unless we’re minorities they don’t,” she wailed. “I
have to find my friends. I love my friends.”
“You didn’t come with any friends. But it’s irrele-
vant – you can find them online when we get home.
Now let’s get out of here.”
“But you’re an awful person and I can’t trust you.”
“You can, I’m your boyfriend for the night,” I
smiled. “I’m your personal taxi service.” No it doesn’t
matter. So she slipped her smooth arm in mine and I
took her out past where the line was still churning and
charging and consuming itself (“Record time,” intoned
the gatekeeper), and we went deep into the night down
the dark central artery of campus, holding hands.
A helmet of cloud sat on the sky and the pillar-
lamps cast halos into the mist that had settled on the
campus from the hills. In that light she was soft and

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 THE PENINSULA

small and red, pressed near to me, and her vulpine eyes
swirled and darted. I had started to come down myself,
lucid in the cold air, so I struck up on the lamp glow,
asking why she thought she had any friends in the
world at all.
“Facebook keeps count,” she said. “There’s Mikey,
and Adam, Ted, and British Pat, and Jimmy, and Kurt.
Even though you don’t know them they’re all my
friends.” She reached into her purse and pulled out a
remarkable cell phone. The golden frontplate bore the
brand of a New York luxury house, and rubies sparkled
along its length.
“That’s a lie,” I said. “Those are just the guys you
slept with before you met me, and whom you will sleep
with again after I graduate.”
“Well, that’s not fair it’s just complicated–” We
stumbled on. “It’s just–”
“I know exactly what you’re talking about,” I told
her. “I know exactly.”
“The past doesn’t matter to me,” she said. “I rarely
think of it. I’m over it now. It’s all just a big game, a
part I play for fun because we’re in college, and we
have to, we’re in college.”
“With all these admirable human beings,” I said.
“They are Stanford students, like you!”
“Servants of the devouring sword. But I’m less ide-
alistic,” I went on. “Those people can’t be my friends.”
Trees mashed in the night, whirling fog among the
lamps and sleeping dormitories.
“Your only friends are your childhood friends.” Her
tan paw stroked my hand, growing firm and insistent,

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and on her middle finger’s golden band glittered a ker-

nel of ruby.
“Right,” I said. “People with attention span.”
She laughed goofily. “Yes, what’s that.” The gold-
enhaired girl was looking up at me and stumbling to
keep up. “It works the same way everywhere. Now
you’re going to take me home and we’ll–”
“Another year in the life,” I broke in. “Another tre-
mendous year. Let me ask you something else. You
know that feeling you have when you get home after a
hard day of work and all you can think about is strip-
ping off your clothes and sliding into a hot bath or
taking a shower? Which do you prefer? A bath or a
shower?” Prepare thyself; prepare thy thighs.
“A bath,” she sighed.
“You know how sometimes, before you even get in,
you imagine the heat just working its way through eve-
ry part of your body and then you actually slide in, and
that warmth just takes you and you surrender to it?”
“Mmf, yes,” she murmured. “You are right – you are
so right.” Her eyes drooped with weight and she ca-
ressed my hand.
“You are imagining that now, that red feeling
spreading through your body, slowly and softly. And
you are relaxed. Very relaxed.” She lolled forward in a
waterfall of hair, and I held her by the elbows.
“I, I crave blondeness,” she moaned.
“Now we’ve had enough of talking. We don’t need
to talk.” I began humming the tune to a rap song, spurt-
ing mist. I didn’t need to solve her social problems any
more – she could figure those out herself; or not, and

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end up desperate and bulimic like the rest of them. I

only wanted to sleep with her so that I could place her
in a category.

Sorority girls, while they are being sorority girls (be-

fore they find boyfriends and realize how much they
hate being Greek), are about the most obnoxious people
on the planet. Specters of the bitchiest high school ma-
triarchs, uglier since they go to Stanford, raised from
the dead and angry about something – sexism, racism,
poverty, AIDS, gay rights – in deference their profes-
sors and parents, their twofold mission in life is to
conquer their sisters with snobbery and drunken out-
bursts, and to find abusive males (me) with financially-
gifted sperm. We called them howler monkeys, for the
way they pounce, arms desperately shooting up in the
sky to give you a hug, screeching, “Hiiiiii!”
I let her get in front of her house, and when she
paused and looked at me dark and drunk everything be-
low my collarbone went numb, brushed by dictator-
grade cocaine. Sensations mild and familiar: she
hauled me through the slanting courtyard door into a
cloud of perfume: she buried her face in my neck and
pulled me against the stone: come home, come home,
home to her.
“I am glad you’re here,” she sighed, kissing, her
golden hair forming a nest about us. Storm water clat-
tered from the roof down the wall outside, and my eyes
were drawn up to where among the maple trees a ruddy
negress hooked her grey elbows over the balcony, and
pushed forth a face the hue of wet leaves.

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She watched us kissing, watched my eyes upon her,

and grew vexed that I would not break her gaze or close
my eyes for the kissing. Then her dark shoulders
pitched over the railing and for a moment I thought she
would leap like a panther to crush us.
“We’re trying to sleep,” the negress called down
hoarsely, and the goldenhaired girl’s wide eyes sped
back to her as she lifted her mouth from mine. Her
hands let go of my collar, her lips left off their adorn-
ment. “Can you stop banging around...”
“Come on,” laughed the goldenhaired girl, “It’s the
first night of school!”
The negress her eyes enlarged and she gripped the
railing and leaned on it, bellowing her pain: “Did you
know it’s three A.M.? Is it going to be like this all
year? Some of us actually need to try to graduate!”
“I’m trying to fuck the pain away!” I roared, grip-
ping feet of golden hair.
“Oh hi, I didn’t see you there,” the negress capitulat-
ed. “Sorry.” Standard submissive sorority girl, race or
no. Sex is greater than or equal to race – more woman
than black, more human than human. In confusion her
eyes fluttered wide, and she retreated pulling her hair
back over her flat girlhead with both hands.
“Now you just need to take it easy,” I called.
“You’re going to have an aneurysm. But we’ll stop
fucking around, we’ll take it upstairs.” Snickering, I
took the goldenhaired girl’s hand and led her towards
the stairs while the negress stared down upon us, petri-
fying like a gargoyle.
We swung inside and the goldenhaired girl began to

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mumble.
“Listen, you piece of shit pledge,” she mumbled,
“remove your tramp ass from my presence.” We stum-
bled the stairs to the inner hall. “Go watch some BET,
you fucking nigger,” she giggled. “Oops, I can’t say
that. Sorry.” She kept giggling.
In her loft, she caught her legs around me face-to-
face, done and done, her gold form indented with soft
light streaking from the Japanese lamps and her wide
eyes declensing as she pressed them shut into the pil-
lows. Our heat rose and our breath denuded us in the
night aromatic with rain that did not impede her calling
and her calls went out into the layered air and sang re-
played in the mist.
She had pert pink nipples and downy breasts kept in
red lace which peeled away to release them. They
bulged and cleaved and pressed between my hands.
She had gleaming blonde ropes that she whipped to and
fro. She had a roan spot that she liked to offer bent
over as she moaned into the pillow, that would make
you drunk if you cared to drink. In this position she
would slip a hand down herself and let her fingers play
backwards over her behind and down between her legs.
And when satisfied she would place the same pillow
under her hips to advance your angle of entry, and
when so levered and entered at last her eyes glittered
like red gems and she sometimes cried, and she would
call out sighing into the night like she did and like she
still must do.
Afterwards we lay together. Past an expanse of
crimson quilt, the window emitted shadows and trailed

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on cool air the perfume of the rain branches, drawing

diaphanous lining towards the posters of Mirot and Dali
on the walls, towards that angry sketch of the woman’s
head ablaze in flowers, and the kneeling artist’s jaw-
bone offerings. “Very modernist, how modernist,” I
smiled, waggling my fingers at the prints.
“Only the things I like the best, that’s the point of a
room isn’t it?”
“Then do I get to be here?”
“Infrequently and only if you are nice.” She reached
behind and pulled her hair into a blonde tail.
“Nice! The harder they come, the harder they fall.
Yes, another ponderous year in the life. Will it be a
good year do you think, or merely mediocre?”
“Successful at least, with some trying.” She pressed
her warm face to my neck.
“We must try. Hydration, that’s the first step. I will
take my post-coital drink.” Rolling off, I loped down
the ladder to suck from the tap in the closet, rinsing her
out. Automatically as I departed she sat up and opened
her computer to watch a video arriving wirelessly from
her sisters, the third or fourth that day: a redneck danc-
ing atop of a car, nearly killed as the vehicle swerved,
went then flying into an oak’s girth, and was killed.
She smiled and giggled as I clambered back, emitting a
brassy borrowed laugh. I resumed kissing her length,
her tan shoulders strewn with bronze.
“You aren’t drunk,” I told her as she tapped away.
“You don’t taste of it.” She took a pen from her lap and
began chewing it.
“Let me show you how drunk I am.”

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“All women are liars.”

“I just need ten minutes while you lie here.” We are
always working. We all have hoards and hers was on
Facebook. It made me hate her.
“No, I want to fuck again,” I said.
“Not right now,” she said. “I have to do this.”
“Do you know how many fucks I give? One fuck. I
won’t go to sleep until I have one fuck.”
She stirred and put the cap on her pen, cradled in my
arms. She looked up at me so I lay down on the quilt.
“You know something?” she asked.
“I will love you no matter how dissimilar our tax
brackets are. Can we have sex?”
“I think I’ve concluded I don’t want to stay in San
Francisco when I graduate,” she said, looking down at
Dali. “I am thinking of going somewhere else after I
graduate. It’s all the people like you.”
“Do whatever you like,” I sighed. “We aren’t in San
Francisco.” I picked up the magazine on her bed and
scanned it. A full page explanation of steak, a full page
explanation of what women want, an Italian male mod-
el straddling a boat and shoving his white-clad genitals
towards the camera. “Just don’t be rude.”
Girls talk, emotions die. Across the bed she began
to massage her palms in her lap, her fingers kneading
the pads. “I can be whatever I want to be. It’s my life.”
“How Bohemian of you, a Bohemian stage in your
troubled existence,” I mumbled, turning the magazine’s
glossy pages, which swam with legs and faces and
stank of fresh slick ink. “But no matter what you do,
everything will make you unhappy in the end. Society

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is set up that way.”

“Maybe. Maybe I think this routine we’ve gotten in-
to keeps me down.”
“So you don’t want to see me any more, that’s what
you’re saying. Well hallelujah because–”
“No! I just feel restless,” she snapped, her eyes flit-
ting inside her ever-glowing hair. “That’s what I’m
trying to say.” This brilliant golden peacock.
“Well, I don’t know what you have to complain
about. Try waking up at six to go to work like Ryan
will. You still have a year left of school.”
“Oh forget it,” she sighed. “I should have expected
this.”
“The same shit? Well, it is the same shit. You’re
always complaining. Sometimes I want to fuck and
you’re always complaining. When you’re not com-
plaining you’re looking at websites. The Internet is like
your ball gag, it’s suffocating you, it is your voice.
Well great, fantabulous, live your life online, fan-
fucking-tastic.”
In a sudden motion she pitched off me under the
blankets, bunching the scarlet pillows. “Stop crying,” I
groaned, reaching over. “Oh fucking Jesus Christ, what
are you crying about now? There’s no reason to. What
are you going to do, tell Facebook about it?” I brought
my hand over the covers and felt her form shuddering
beneath.
“I’m not crying,” she cried, shaking the pillows. “I
am not crying.” Her voice shook out and went rolling
away. Then, in a sudden girlish motion she slipped
from beneath the blankets and trembled down the lad-

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der and out the door without saying a word and without
grace, her tear-stained face turned away. So I tried to
sleep as she had asked, and the crickets chirped in the
misty summer night. I lay back but could not die – my
heart thundered on.

Fragrant air flowed off the foothills, and from out-

side drifted two pinched voices, Indians, girls of
another kind, walking down the path outside the houses.
“The security server I find quite challenging,” one
opined. “We will need to address the problem set
quickly, form a Google group to reach our team mem-
bers, and you will download the modules and I will go
back to the library and get immediately to work–” and
as their calibrations deafened me I sank into the wind.
After ten minutes of lying there I got up and left too,
knowing sleep would not come. I walked through the
courtyard past the goldenhaired girl – sobbing, sitting,
wailing to her negress who bent over her like a nurse –
down the misty road splitting the sororities, past the
construction site on Wilbur Field, but I somehow lost
consciousness again – the cocaine overtaking me, ques-
tions ringing in my mind –

When I came to I stood in front of a dorm. I had

found Ryan and he was with me. We were going to see
a girl. We passed a gathering in the outer hall, mostly
hippies, little clubheaded men, and, crazily drunk, I
looked in and saw nothing of myself and went down the
hall and when the door finally opened said into the
girl’s regnant face, “Is this your damn friend.” And

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Ryan spouted conventions, “Hey! It’s so good to see

you! Meet Jake! Meet Jake!” He embraced her, this
beautiful Chinese girl with short straight hair, stepping
in front of me. And, uncomfortable, over his womansti-
fling shoulder I said hello and nice to meet you, my
name is Jake and nice to meet you although you’re dis-
turbingly sober and I haven’t seen you at parties before
so you mustn’t be anyone worth knowing.
Tired and batty, ringeyed, dark hair ponytailed above
a thin, olive face, she stood holding the door, looking at
me. She sent a tart smile at Ryan, who was hugging her
like a father, and her leg reversed through the slit of her
green skirt, pulling her into the shade of her room,
swinging the door open to get me in there forever.
“Nice to – I was asleep,” she yawned in a dusky
voice, rubbing her eyes with the pads of her palms.
“You people are voracious.”
To the side she stood looking at me looking at the
fleshy flowers in the jar on her desk and at the laptop
slapping out woody beats and at poetry books that lay
about, a profusion of literature I could not account for,
uncomfortable female intelligence, halfconstructed fur-
niture buried in clothes, filmy shirts and leggings, and
in the musty scent of her makeup everything swirled
and poisoned itself at the edges, took on emerald auras,
and I stood with my mouth agape. “You live in this
pigsty?”
“Jake’s an asshole, did I mention it,” added Ryan.
Way to fit the bloody mold, my friend, you weeping
cunt, and the Chinese girl halfway smiled, walking over
to the bed and sitting down. She said, “Well, I didn’t

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pick it. We aren’t all from Atherton.”

Right then I was wearing a good enough pink shirt
and a crocodileskin belt no one understood here, and
staring again, obsessed, I told her, “I know what it is.
The bed, it’s too close to the desk. It looks like prison,”
and she just said, “At least try to be nice, we’ve only
just met.” And so the conversation tangled stiff.
It was so late at night that it hurt us. Frantic, we
took shots, or I did, I don’t remember – like every poor
Stanford girl she kept a fifth of something nice on her
bookshelf, but going down it was the vitriol of nine-
dollar butane she’d recycled to save a cent. With two
more big gulping shots I went and stood by the win-
dow, breathing deeply, holding down the vomit and the
fumes.
“Are you all right?” she asked from the mirror,
clasping her hands to her collarbone and leaning for-
ward, and I turned around, gulping for air, set to
explode.
“The Stoli,” I strained. “Where are you from–”
“Kansas. The suburbs. Swimming pools, lawns,
you know. The infinite America.”
“Is that a place?”
Ryan was talking to her. Something. “Oh, that’s
amazing you’re going into banking. I interned at
Goldman. You’re willing to work the hours? Tell me,
tell me, tell me.”
And he launched the same inane spiel he’d slobbered
on anyone who’d blinked his way the last three months.
I stood staring blindly at them and the girl winked at me
and I saw it. Her eyes opened and green darkness

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flowed from her into the room.

“Corporations excite me,” she purred, taking a green
shotglass off her desk and rolling it in her fingers, while
I took more shots and choked and smiled. The inanity
of it all, the fuming booze, swung the room into binary
shades of olive and, bored, I got out my digital camera
and began taking pictures of her in all sorts of poses
while she slumped against her mattress listening to
Ryan’s flailing. She modeled for me twice, thrice,
sticking her tongue out, and then became very uncom-
fortable under the camera, unreasonably uncomfortable,
so I took more pictures and she looked at me sideways,
nervous, playing with her boyish hair, fleeing, stutter-
ing, peeking, the little sneak. I was overjoyed,
salivating, but Ryan, as I had predicted, turned sharply
against me when the girl gave a little laugh and said, “Is
he all right? What’s he going to do with those?” and
became her friend, of course, a paladin with a steel pri-
apus, and I saw this and took note but kept taking
pictures, it feeling lovely to play.
Behold: Ryan said, “Maybe you should cut that out,
Jake.” He beamed with his eyes. The Chinese girl had
two strands of black hair locked in her fingers, looking
at me.
“He’s something,” said the girl, very serious, “How
much have you had to drink?”
“Some,” I snarled. “You could use a little of it, but
could you use a lot? Well, could you?” I wanted to
know. “How much have you had. What goals do you
have? For your career? Your life? That’s the question
on everyone’s mind.”

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She murmured and leaned over to pour herself more

vodka, a tan expanse of skin unjoining from her waist.
“I’m writing a thesis on Japanese poetry, then going
into legal consulting, and then maybe I’ll work for a
hedge fund.” Ryan stood staring at her, nodding and
smiling, his dick hardening, saying oh and ah. “What
about you, Mr. Asshole?” She sipped the shot slowly,
watching me with her black eyes.
“Friendhole, I prefer. Friend and an asshole. A
priest to my friends, comedian to my enemies, the ene-
mies of the empire. But an awful lot on my plate, I’m
afraid – business, the arts, sublimating my past. Oh, it’s
hard to work your way up, isn’t it – upper management
won’t be that bad, will it? The technology prophets say
that when you start your own company you can work
your own hours. That’s incredible. An incredible, orig-
inal plan, bound to bring you happiness. And kids too,
eight or ten, we are Catholics, we Bessemers.” Her fine
eyebrows wrinkled and she snickered, full of wine.
“Thirteen hours a day with kids,” I told her. “A
founder, maybe a CEO, and a playboy on the side. Me
for me and really I have no idea. But I think I will do
better than you. Better than a namby academic and a
thesis writer, obsessed with the future and blind to the
present. Present, past, and future – fantabulous.
WRITE A BOOK ABOUT IT! What a ridiculous no-
tion. Do you realize how many idiots are raised by
mothers like you? Mothers too deep in thought to potty
train their kids! Introverted lesbian wannabes and not
mothers. Your kids are going to be raised by television
or, if you’re lucky enough to find a husband who can

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 STANFORD BY NIGHT

supplement your paltry income less psychiatrist fees, a

Mexican. Like I was, yes, I admit it. Or mine was Fili-
pino – no matter. And you can call me bitter. Your
goals are ridiculous and you should be in law school. In
fact, I think you don’t really care enough about your
life so you swallow the conventional Stanford savethe-
world bullshit and it disgusts me, it really does, it’s like
a disease, so, go ahead, slide it down up your conceited,
ultraliberal, alphawoman throat, where nothing else has
trespassed I’m sure, and not for lack of trying.”
There was silence and I stood there, the alcohol
crackling through my veins, nothing mattering. Her
olive face grew waxy as she turned Ryan her eyes.
Then she sort of tossed herself backwards onto her
bed and her arms came up for a moment and settled at
her sides, a doll flung haphazardly away, ready to be
righted. She turned from us against the wall.
“I’m suddenly tired of him,” she said.
What I had said was really nothing but a version of
truth in questions, a reflection of her, nothing more than
an intuition that she wanted to see herself, and that she
knew and liked games and I knew she did and she was a
girl and what else do girls like.
So I stared and heard the bass pounding from down
the hall; the walls are so thin in the dorms – meant to
drive us mad, I think, and bass broke like waves
through the walls and my temples pounded and I
stepped forward and looked past trembling Ryan into
her eyes and saw the fight in her becoming feral, fear-
ful, sexual. I laughed out loud and I think that she did
too.

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 THE PENINSULA

“Ryan, stop being such a fucking Pharisee,” I told

my friend. “C’est recherché et arriviste, you fucking
lifeblood earner. Now, Dorothy, what are you read-
ing?” I picked up one of her books, The Gods of the
Phoenicians. The thick book coughed out from gold
edged pages, an old volume from a former century,
scarred and hidebound and reeking of mold. “Why does
this interest you?”
Everything irritated me – the bad manners, the as-
sumptions, the ugly self-righteousness, and so that the
Chinese girl would see things my way I pushed further,
and she sobbed in response. “Useless!” I told her, push-
ing Ryan aside – though bigger, he obeyed – “Is this
what women have become? See for yourself why girls
never get ahead, why they’re submissives, secondrate
citizens, cum dumpsters. They spend all their time fan-
tasizing about dead knowledge. Reading a book, what a
ridiculous notion! We’ll never have a woman presi-
dent!”
Everyone was enjoying what I was saying. I could
see it in her tears, in the way her pupils dilated in her
big dark eyes and in the way they gaped at me through
the gaps in her fingers. And then she briefly smiled
again, at the edges, a flashing smile and I saw it – the
smile of Sade, of the malebranche. I looked back at
Ryan, standing by the door. A conclusion is all I want-
ed, and he had to keep out of it.
But before I could finish, the girl’s plain roommate
burst into the room with her skinny little boyfriend.
“Hey, nice to meet you Dave, okay, nice to meet you
Kim. My name is Jake, you ugly pigfuckers. Please

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 STANFORD BY NIGHT

ignore the girl crying on the bed. Actually, Dave, may-

be now is a good time to trade up from the skag you’re
dating. OK, let’s go! Out! Onwards!”
And I laughed, off again, kicked out by their disbe-
lieving stares, out into the room down the hall where
the hippies still wallowed in some kind of carnival,
some occult ritual – pounding their bellies to their hor-
rible beat around cake and filth and loud speakers and
oh how I longed for sleep – it’s really a pleasure, my
name is Jacob – I was really trying now – and one Afri-
can girl said hi my name is Batalth’ithaitalitaitlat’liathi
and I laughed out loud that I should be expected to pro-
nounce that ridiculous, offensive name, which the
ironical Stanford admissions committee had imported
from a fifth world to my wild night, and I stumbled be-
cause I was laughing so hard I was almost sick – hey
mon nice to meet you too insane laugh my name is
Jake, Jake, a racist – and left the room flying that black
flag, forty eyes pushing me out, drooling to myself and
chewing my tongue and still in the throes of snickering
when the hippie party host came out and said look you
really insulted that girl I want you to apologize. I
trapped him against the door with an elbow (what else
would you do to someone like that?) and his friend
shrieked and tore me away and everyone was crying
and someone sobbed, “That’s enough, just leave! Get
out! Go!”
Their concern registered, but I was gone off into the
night, leaving Ryan there to pick up the pieces and
sleep with nobody.
I awoke later around five, sprawled on a bench in the

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sorority circle watching a man be put under arrest for

drunkenness, and applauding loudly while my cell
phone rang over and over – perhaps it had woken me –
it was the hybrid, it was goldenhair, it was the Chinese
girl, worried, trying desperately to find me, to reach me,
to get into some party or out of it, to make sure I wasn’t
fucking somebody else, to open up my wallet and drink
the succulent money – and I was still clapping when a
billowing phantom of Lily Medine roared into existence
beside me on the bench, screaming like a vulgate.
– Kyrie eleison Christe eleison Kyrie eleison!
Devilish girl, she had her phone out and it rang as
she billowed. I kept clapping and stared at her in
amazement, in rapt love, in ecstasy, epiphany, my heart
beating wildly, my limbs rocking and flapping, drool
flinging from my lips – glory!
For such a vision to find me, alone, on high doses of
illegal stimulants – I could not believe my luck. I
clapped and clapped like a happy young man. The cops
looked over at me, then saw my cell phone out and
nodded and put the other madman in the car and drove
away.
And, wildly, I shouted, laughing, “You can see
again, Lily! You’re dishonest! You’re a liar! Why did
you come back here? What did you expect? Lily!”
But the questions elicited from this vision’s brain a
rush of snakes, venomous, reactive, and she stared
down on me, growing to twice her height, shimmering
in a coat of scales, and hissed something guttural, and
in my confused mind slithered from the bench, gliding
straight and fast away.

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 STANFORD BY NIGHT

But to fix things I called, “Wait, let me take your

picture there, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter. It’s
not real. A joke, see?” I got out my camera and she
emitted some kind of caterwaul as the bulb went off,
and the light burned her skin and sent smoke rising in a
silhouette, but to me it was a good picture. She was
looking back at me with teeth out, with a forked tongue,
and I stared at that image (later revealed as a desolate,
black road filling with steam) and lost my sight again to
the drugs, and the blackness of the night took me and
rolled the earth into day. I am barely past twenty but
my mind is much older.

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 7
YOUR FACEBOOK WALL ANNOUNCES: Happy
birthday! I’m SO sad I can’t come to the party. I will
come next year. I already came. I’m here for you. I
am your best friend. I don’t think solo liquid lunching
is the proper way to spend your birthday, but I’m abso-
lutely sure you’ll fix that in about half an hour, so
happy birthday! I miss you so much and I so wish I was
there to celebrate with you, but don’t worry – I’ll be
visiting you soon. Have an awesome birthday and take
a few shots in my honor. Hehe.
Hootie hoo! New year, new crush. Grey Goose got
you feeling loose? Let’s play a game called “I miss you
and want you back in my life.” It’s official: I love you
so much you don’t even know. I bought you a Peruvian
present today – get pumped. It will go well with your
campus golf cart, Larroque style. Remember that one
time when we weren’t friends? Wow – but I’m officially

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 SAN FRANCISCO

ending our phrase “life is what happens” because it’s

overplayed, but as I told everyone else, I want all the
credit for coining that and spreading it among, well,
you, me, and everyone. It’s a neologism. P.S. – my line
about “being unbelievably posh” was the best one by
far. Booyakasha! I’ll be back at Stanford soon, and
hopefully this time we’ll actually hang out instead of
just texting, hehe. Poke. Super poke! Remember to
poke me back lol. I have a feeling you’ll have an amaz-
ing day/night. Hope you have fun and XO! I’ll always
remember that it’s your birthday. It’s also Britney’s!
So HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Yea they all blend together, and, savoring these mis-

sives, a girl, I can’t remember which, rose queenlike
from her silver laptop and stumbled past me over her
untied white shoelace and fell hard, pushed up on pastel
palms, ignoring the grey-edged gash worn loose on her
knee, and revolved towards my penthouse bedroom.
“Come on,” she urged.
Onto her face she drew the heavy girl-mask she had
worn socially since she first learned of her beauty at
sixteen. Not once since then had she unwound the pub-
lic smile from her lips or the soprano twang from her
voice, and by sprightly and sanguine mien she an-
nounced to all the joy abiding in her youth. Another
year she would celebrate among best friends forever.
After a few limps she walked without bothering to tie
her little pink shoe, and she reached back behind her
head to draw her chestnut mane into a sweeping pony-
tail of curls.

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I had come up that weekend to my family’s apart-

ment on Russian Hill, driven to consult the Gina lawyer
by my mother, who had cut off my accounts. Circum-
stantially it was also that girl’s birthday, something she
expected me to celebrate, so she had come too. San
Francisco’s Fleet Week arrived with us, and now jets
practiced for the airshow, scraping across the silver sky.
The bay swarmed with warships and the streets with
sailors, and the city murmured with expectant power.
Predictably the proximity of weekend wealth made
the girl desire perverted sex. The stolid white apart-
ment of my forefather smiled upon us as we feathered
down and ate ginger snaps and drank organic water and
fucked, and when we grew tired of fucking we brought
up another of her sorority sisters.
Saturday morning we received a noise complaint
from our downstairs neighbor. ‘Your lovemaking will
not be tolerated. Screaming is inappropriate in any situ-
ation. You should be aware that some of us have young
children. Consider this your last warning.’ Not having
any loved ones had really freed up my time.
Around the corner lay the second vulgarity, a black-
haired bitch draped across my bed reading The Atlantic,
munching peanuts and cradled by the blue bamboo
frame. The three of us had fucked all night and all
morning until I grew bored.
“My conquest of Carthage is over!” I announced.
“Piss in my mouth again,” said the bitch. “Also I’d
like a diet Coke.” Between her crossed ankles a trail of
purple and black underwear led towards the door,
creamy bras, balled tee-shirts, and cores of powdered

104
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makeup.
The windows smoldered quietly with city clouds,
passing sweeps of light along the walls. Our apartment
building crowned the hill on Hyde Street, a parapet
seated among plane trees and cablecar tracks with a
good view of the bay. South, the financial district rose
in misty relief around the Transamerica Pyramid.
“It’s a morgue in here,” condemned the girl as we
entered, “thine eyes shalt ruin.”
“Clearly I heard you fall,” said she still reading.
“Roman, thou art still in love with me.”
The girl augered backwards onto the mattress, send-
ing a comber of featherbed flapping the magazine’s
pages. “It’s all raw,” she complained, probing her fin-
gers around her kneecap, now sticky with lymph. Then
she let out a frustrated moan and rolled around onto her
breasts, kicking her calves like a flea to inch across the
bed. Then she turned me her eyes, green and pleading,
and asked, “Jake would you come rub my shoulders
please please pretty please?” A steel ring glistened in
her lip.
The bitch’s hooded eyes swung off the page to re-
gard her sister’s knee. “Would you not get your flesh
everywhere,” she said. She had been reading about
people who believed they could change their facial
structure by concentrating on photographs. By keeping
an ideal facial structure fixed in their minds, they be-
lieved they could slowly alter their countenance
towards the ideal. An intelligence test stuck out of the
pages, a folded card.
“Tell me your IQ,” I told her as I began the massage.

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 THE PENINSULA

The girl curled under the blanket, preening her legs like
a cricket. Smoothing my hands over her back, I ran the
cords of tension down and out, and she purred and
closed her eyes, wrinkling the linen with her paw.
“It’s high I got into Stanford what more do you want
to know,” the bitch said defensively, not looking up. A
butterfly tattooed on her ankle showed that she came
from some inferior Californian zone.
“What are your thoughts on NAFTA?” I inquired.
“Do you agree with the war or should we just nuke all
the rugheads and be done with it?”
“Stop speaking weird. Racist.”
“He thinks he’s a therapist,” sighed the other girl.
“He tries to provoke you. He needs therapy himself
don’t you baby.” Her back joints popped staccato un-
der my palms.
“Therapy is to the masses what drugs are to me,” I
informed them. “In this I’m almost Buddhist.”
Blindly the girl clawed across the bed and wrapped
her arms around the tan leg of her sister, laying down
her warm head in the proffered lap. I pushed off, leav-
ing her purring, and went to watch the jets as they spun
across the sky. The penthouse windows were set
obliquely, peering at the sun, and one had to approach
to view the city sprawl and the hill below.
I looked. Across the bay a brocade of cream clouds
prickled with thunder: the sea blew them in over the
cruisers and the sun leavened them – the clusters of
ships rocked in the dark morning water, and the jets
cleared off as the biplanes began their tricks. A red
one, maroon in the cloud cover, shot straight up over

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the bridge and cut its engines – for a few seconds it

hung insolently in space, then began slowly to plum-
met. Faster and faster it tumbled, before a white trail
ejected from its wings and it rose slowly towards the
skyline in a parabolic arc.
“An unfortunate consequence of thought, not being a
slave,” I commented, looking back. I was wearing a
navy blazer over my seersucker boxers and into its
smooth pockets went my innocent hands. I was wear-
ing a foppish admiral’s cap with a golden anchor and a
blue bill, and last night I had been wearing an eyepatch.
“Oh, smarts,” the girl said mockingly. “I remember
those.”
“But do you remember the capital of Kansas,” asked
the girl. “That is the question.”
“No.” She went on reading on one knee, writhing
her little white socks and plucking her mesh thong.
“No really,” squeaked the first. “It’s not Kansas
City. It’s not.”
“No, I don’t.” The girl looked up at the girl and
blushed and her eyes fluttered as she began to laugh,
trailing long lashes over her green stars. All of a sud-
den a vague roar shook the walls, and a jet tore past the
windows.
“I am so in love with you it’s so ridiculous,” the girl
said to nobody in particular. She had pulled in two
armfuls of pale green bed, rolling over again. Her
night-colored hair, straightened by long labor and long
heat, splayed fanlike from the top of the cone. She be-
gan to tickle the other, who squealed and kicked her
hips, and then they kissed long and began to lick down

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each other’s necks. “Who’s your hookup tonight? Oh!

Absent me from felicity a while.”
“Oh you know, you don’t know,” whispered the girl.
“Now you know.”
The girls and I looked at each other and they went
back to licking and I turned back to the white city at the
window. What they did was beyond my control. An-
other plane, a pen of metal, scratched a fingernail
across the sky, and sailboats were beginning to crowd
the bay.
“Oh! It’s decided I will get married this year, at
twenty. To Jake, by the way. The same year his moth-
er gets married again! It is my first bad birthday. We
are all aging without cause. Youth’s like diamonds in
the sun. Mmf.”
“Did you see the absolute mess Britney has be-
come,” moaned the other. “Unbelievable, it’s so sad,
on your birthday. I really think it affects me, her states.
I’m like linked to her.”
“Oh, I saw it last night, I saw it. Oh!”
“Puke-o-ramaa! Who is coming tonight, tell me eve-
rything. Hopefully black guys with big arms,” the girl
breathed.
“I like to massage knots out of the necks of black
guys.”
“I like their big arms and their big hands and they
are so fucking–”
“Bonn is coming,” I called back, looking out to sea.
“But he isn’t black,” one cried. “Is he coming!”
“Oh my God!” slurped the other.
“Everything will be wonderful with the formal and

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all,” I sighed, “such a crazy fun night for sure.” Now

they had finished and I turned around. The girl propped
herself on an elbow to look out with me, skin flushed
peachlike, wiping her chin with a paw. Past her, rays of
sun fell upon the vanilla blocks, and from hill to sea the
city lay in solar light.
“Bitches, bitches, bitches. A litany of bitches,” said
the other girl into the blanket. Then she popped for-
wards with a kick of her naked calves.
“Thy cups runneth over,” I told her. “It’s nearly
noon, I have to go to my lawyer. I have to buy more
coke.”
“Are you serious?” asked the girl, red eyes wide.
“You don’t do it. He’s joking isn’t he.”
“Jake are you joking,” said the girl. “He doesn’t do
drugs.”
“You said you wanted to try it for the first time,” I
said.
“Well – maybe – I mean, I don’t know.”
“You didn’t say that,” squeaked the girl. “Soo devil-
ish!”
“It’s fun to have a super awesome night,” I re-
marked. “You know it will be.”
They squealed and rolled around on the bed, wearing
only their white socks.
“I love Harlot, it’s seriously the best club,” one girl
told the other. “I love that we’re going there.”
“I’m so excited,” the girl cried, her body hot and
flushed. She kicked up an ankle and they went swim-
ming back under the covers.

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 THE PENINSULA

Also I had to see Lily. She had called me up while I

rotted in my feminism class.
“Jacob Edward,” she said. “This is Lily.”
“I’m in class,” I protested, under a storm of dyke-
glares. “Fine fine. I’ll step outside.”
“I hope I’m not disturbing you. I know this call is
out of the blue but I wanted to talk.”
“Jesus Christ, that would be extremely inappropri-
ate.”
“Don’t tell me you’re nervous about talking to a
girl.”
“I hope not. That’s not what I was saying and this
makes me extremely uncomfortable, I’m letting you
know that right now.” I stood beneath the red arches,
before the black classroom door. Neither of us said an-
ything.
“Are you still there,” I said.
“Yes, and I need to talk to you,” she told me. “It’s
actually important. I’m going to be at my family's
apartment in San Francisco tomorrow, and Ryan men-
tioned you'll be up here–”
So we agreed to meet that afternoon, and on the oc-
cluded sixth day of our Lord, in the year of the
Monkey, with war in Nazareth and bombs in Jerusalem,
opening the curlicued gate onto the city street (the mus-
ty breath of the hall, asbestos, paint, neighbors), and
beneath lavender horns of cirrus carved by my coun-
try’s warplanes, with a mighty breath I began through
the stone hills towards the Gina lawyer, up, up, into the
shifting sky. And as I walked I observed that you must
take any chance to play, because soon you will be

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working.
The birds squawked that morning, a mother jay fret-
ting in the knobby plane on the corner at Hyde, in full
career of ten young demanding feed. Around them
blew green saplings and leaves that died, fell, and died
some more. Her hatchlings spun their legs and spread
from their belly-fuzz their wings; they had grown larger
than their mother, urgently calling for what she could
provide. Her oblong head spat between them the white
slime of the tree's insects, and in repletion they twit-
tered, bashed each other, then collapsed.
I descended through Victorians onto pastel Colum-
bus, past the piazzas and cafés to where the glass
battlements of skyscrapers linked up overhead, the
beep-roar of morning traffic deflecting through their
canyons, and crowds of fast-moving weekend troops
descended with me – bankers, consultants, paralegals,
prides of analysts darkly clad, chattering on phones,
hurrying on, some younger than me, inexperienced re-
cruits from obsolete cities who had never beheld wealth
and who aged now in its proximity, for it is a function
of wealth to age. At the base of Columbus the financial
district raised its cape of silver glass and blocked out
the sun, delimiting the white sky into a grid. We ig-
nored the morning tourists, the strolling invalids, the
lunatics and beggars, their laziness a disease on this
earth.
Where Montgomery runs its steel through the tow-
ers, strafed by the taxis and streetcars and the ironwork
of the banks, the carved lions yawn from the arches
above all the crenellations of exchange, open accounts

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 THE PENINSULA

aglow in shells of cinder-brick and the windows and the

eyes of money managers. The district seems to await
an earthquake, a resurrection during which much wealth
will be spent. Medine’s lawyer and Goldman Sachs,
whipping and working beneath a bank of marble – it
was Saturday and they were still working: all of them
were still working and they said they enjoyed their
work.
Before the tower of Goldman Sachs sank a sculpture
called the Banker’s Heart, an immense polyhedron
made of stone the color of iron, like the circle of build-
ings enclosing it. It seemed to hum and shimmer in the
subterrene vibrations of passing cablecars, and I leaned
in for a brush as I passed, feeling the cold buzzing rock
against my fingers and simultaneously anticipating the
sudoku puzzle awaiting me on the back page of the
Chronicle upstairs. I crack a soduku every day to keep
my mind sharp, and for recreation. But before I could
complete the thought I’d slammed through the glass
doors, where, arching my eyebrows at the attendant,
clanging my magnetic card on the elevator sensor, and
checking the steel face of my watch for scratches while
the buzzer dinged off the floors up the spine of the
building (more time passed, surely), I suddenly found
myself in the bank’s lobby, crawling into a guest cubi-
cle for kicks, sweating, astride an Aeron mesh chair,
devoting a ten second reflection to the journey to alle-
viate stress before starting down my daily, priority-
optimized checklist. I had to imagine what Ryan Bonn
was about to become.
The investment bank is a hexagonal wheel embed-

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ded in the agate of the tower, a circuit replicated identi-

cally floor by floor. Beige-carpeted cubicles and
supply rooms honeycomb its interior, spoked by a hall
joining the elevators with reception and, halfway be-
tween its endpoints, passing the double doors of its
gold-marble executive suites. Dun acoustic tiles blan-
ket the murmuring of the multitude hunched over its
woodgrain work surfaces, black phones to their ears,
and speaking as quietly as possible besides. Over them
a mint, full-spectrum, ergonomic glow spreads from
fluorescent bars fixed in the cornices, keeping everyone
cagy. It is as if the light could see them. Floor thirty
three, the Gina lawyer, surrounded by the bank’s own
wind system, a helicopter pad a hundred meters up, an
arena of days – I sat eagerly here dabbing my temples
with a lotioned tissue, imitating the careers of my con-
temporaries, visualizing life as a paralegal or an analyst,
rolling a pencil eraser between my fingers and glaring
at the streets below. A disused part of my brain began
wandering free down there, and shut up quick.
Beyond the dim windows, a palisade of mirrors re-
ceded to the pier, the battle-sides of other skyscrapers
now viewed aloft amid a living mist. Over the waters a
military helicopter swooped and gaffled, and from the
far-off panel windows steel grids of faces stared out in
relief, other analysts, peers embedded in glass, unilater-
ally overseen by glowing Bloomberg stock screens, and
happy to present on a Saturday, eager to incur wealth.
Yes, through the infinite chains of Microsoft Excel they
weave their weekends for years without pause, for their
various kings, the threads of analysis, glorious analysis,

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the measure of their days, unleashing corporate debt

restructuring, income-linked hedging, and mezzanine-
bridge financing upon the blubbering laymen of the
world below. They were investment bankers and their
work could not be explained in words, only in pecuni-
ary terms: overblown emerging markets, acquisition
arbitrage, matured noninterest-bearing debt, AEX,
ROFR, consumer nondurable stocks, ASXD, obligor,
selling climax, pig, stick, dog, dry powder, pipeline,
plain vanilla.
On my workstation screen, primed and purring, a
dull security panel logged me through to a desktop
strewn with broad, pixilated file-teeth: the grey disc of
the client database, the Recycle Bin (which I emptied
immediately, compulsively), My Computer (loaded
grindingly), My Network Places, spiky cash flow mod-
els, the stock-monitoring template, a yellow stack of
email to sort and resort, the smooth blue whorl to the
Internet – chain-links and staples, attention restraints.
The Google word of the day was opprobrium. Associ-
ates with gray mugs trooped by, and the slow, persistent
swirl of the office began, the sixth day, separating my
mental chatter: the sharp scent of coffee, pastel carpets
freshly sucked, the sheen of the great beech conference
table down the hall, a paper menu for expensed chow-
mein, the muffling lack of sound, the purple robe of
money. Now I’d clicked through the news sites, occu-
pied by a story about a destroyed shop turned into a
museum of World Trade Center dust, and was wonder-
ing how, why – but my imagination faltered as the
secretary strode into my cubicle – and in a panic I shut

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all the windows I had open. This would be Bonn’s life.

This would be his fear!
No more time for the luxury of thought. The sweet-
smelling woman took my hand and whirled me on be-
tween the steel pillars: a sweet-smelling foyer: a hall of
cubicles: a corner office: I passed through this alien
land and breathed its lotioned air.
An analyst, a maggot, hung around next to the giant
stainless-steel fridge, waiting for a bagel to toast, while
gray light streamed in through the windows. “It's so
cold,” she mentioned with a wavering smile. “Winter is
coming." Drained by the effort to speak, she spun off
the counter to face us, holding a foil-wrapped packet of
cream cheese and a plastic knife, but faltered out of the
way of my guide. "Sure is getting colder," the secretary
rammed, her claws picking up crumbs off the counter.
"Days are getting shorter. Global warming. Well, en-
joy your bagel." And she pulled us into the stale air of
the copy room, swinging a shoulder in a broad turn that
tore loose the useless strands of that interaction and re-
turned the pantry to silence.
Panting, an intern shat his pants at the helm of mar-
keting's Xerox 8550DX, trying to make pitches for next
week’s annual meeting. The enraged copier, a black,
turquoise-lit behemoth, spat out a hundred pages per
second, shaking wildly and emitting blasts of toxic ton-
er gas, and I saw the huge stack of pages shoving from
the tray weren't pitch indexes, they were malformed
stacks of PDF-gibberish, Wingdings, sprayed out by
some error this little shit had committed in the print
queue. "What the hell, Eric? The trees are crying!" I

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leered, flying by, and the idiot stared up in terror and

began mashing buttons on the console, pressing cancel
over and over again, anything to halt the job arriving
over the network. He was praying for a plane to strike
the building, he was pontificating about the injustice of
it all, this indolent turd from Yale! But before I could
put him in his place we'd put yards behind us around
the corner, and I was storming, clawing my hands
through my hair hard enough to yank the roots. “Fuck-
ing amateurs,” I sobbed. “It really pisses me off!” And
the secretary, as wise as Virgil, nodded in compassion
and drew me along.
“Jesus God Damn,” thrummed a brassy voice, echo-
ing my sentiments exactly, and I saw we’d passed into
Corporate Counsel, a kingdom ruled by distant heir to
the house of Morgan, whose great suit-back blocked
our path and heaved up and down in fury. He was be-
rating someone I couldn’t see, and just as we arrived he
slammed out a huge silk-draped arm against the cube-
wall, which I ducked under and meowed, “Whoa
there!” And, behold, he was flagellating a totally use-
less paralegal from Texas who cowered in the middle of
the carpet, holding her face in her hands, but I had no
time for her swan song and we sprinted by without
slowing, getting a wave and a heads up from the heir
that I mentally filed away as intangible goodwill, and
he went back to flaying her, waving a finger in her face
and chewing his meaty lips as was his goddamn right.
Then the spokes of my evanders rammed onto a lip
of caramel marble, and I saw we had reached the cen-
tral hall. Double doors stood halfway down, flanked by

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red-fired pots of yucca cacti: outside, a Filipina janitor

stooped over the gold plants with a plastic pitcher, but I
barely noticed her, for my gaze leapt beyond the doors
to where a hairy form hunched up like a beast, feral in
an ash pinstripe suit, a curly demon pelt rolling from his
palms and scalp. He glared down at me with yellow
eyes, then rocketed up twice as fast as he should, ox-
bloods scorching the carpet, yelling, "Hey, good
morning there Jake! Get your ass in a chair!" We had
arrived at the offices of the Gina lawyer.

“God damn eBay stock,” the lawyer gargled, seated

at the window overlooking the rooftop lawns, where
somehow a polo game was in progress, the entire king-
dom imported skywise. “Down ten points in after
hours.” Spinning on the chair, he wrung my hand with
a cold grip. The pores of his face gaped like minnows
beneath his beard, and his blue Germanic eyes hounded
me with impure intensity. His soft muscles bulged out
dropsical, contained in a checkered yellow shirt.
“Now shake my hand again, you've got to learn how,
that's the first thing you should know in business.” I
gripped his hand with about thirty percent more tension
than I reserve for professors and fathers of friends, star-
ing him in the eye.
This was the same man I had seen at brunch, but
here he seemed magnified by the pyramid’s lower lay-
ers. An amber margarita liquefied slowly on the tray
table beside him: he grasped the stem and suckled,
sloshing liquid onto his hairy fingers, which he licked
grey and matted. From the adjacent seat a young man

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with slick brown hair rose nervously, holding a binder

to his chest.
“DAVE!” the lawyer bellowed. “Burn my fucking
music. Are you done burning it yet. Please tell me you
are done burning it. Also, Jesus Christ, your footwear
is disgraceful.”
“No, I’m sorry,” the boy wept.
“Then go fucking do it,” I snarled. “Go on.”
The boy turned, head bowed.
“Wait, leave the binder,” the lawyer said, and the
boy came back from the doorway, placed it between us
with both hands and waited. “Jake do you want any
music, I have this hard drive with twenty thousand
songs he's helping me copy.”
“I already have too much fucking music.”
“Then that's all!” The boy lowered his head and
walked out. The lawyer's gaze drifted after him.
“Good kid from Wharton,” he said. “You need people
who can walk through walls.”
“Why don't you hire Ryan out of the bank to work
on this?” I asked, sitting down and crossing my legs.
“He'd love to work in venture. He’s familiar with Gi-
na.”
“You presumptuous little shit!” guffawed the law-
yer. “You presumptuous little fuck! We don’t hire just
anybody!”
He bellowed out for my files and crossed his legs to
the groin, chattering to me while assistants kneeled to
sift the records. Those two girls took a quarter hour to
locate my trust documents, and when they arose the
carpet had latticed their shins red. Twice as they were

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working jetplanes buzzed the building, faded teeth of

metal rocketing over the bay.
“My assistants went to Stanford, just like you,” the
lawyer chuckled. He pointed at one of the girls, who
crawled away sobbing. With bandages on both thumbs
and blue ink splattering his hands, he grasped the file
and yanked out thick sheafs of paper, the Gina reports.
“Yeah, this is them,” he said. “Tighter than a gran-
ny’s diaper.”
Grinning like a wolf, he leaned towards me, pressing
two fingers and the margarita glass against my shoulder
in the wet, corrosive aloha of a Harvard man in Califor-
nia who’d decided that this was the thing to do. I
smelled tequila again and my stomach hopped.
“Why are my files here,” I asked, “and not on Sand
Hill?”
“Everything’s here, Jake,” he groaned. “The Serv-
ants of the Acquisition See All. Yes, that’s what it
entails to be acquired by Goldman Sachs: bring the last
ten years of your shit up to their offices so they can sort
through it and make sure you aren’t money laundering.
I’ve been sitting here for weeks just watching them sift
paper.”
“So you think the deal will go through?”
“Impossible to say, with these fucking jabronis.
Debt is cheap, thank God. Now how was your first
week back at school?”
“Irrelevant, irreverent, the same. I am twenty two
and it’s not my first day at Stanford. Fucked some
girls, I think.”
He howled and reclined back on the sofa, opening a

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palm in a warm gesture of commerce. Red-faced, he

waved to the secretary for food.
“Now let’s eat,” he said. “It’s not the Circus Club,
but we make do in this city.”
“Are you a member at the Circus Club?” I asked,
surprised. “I didn’t think they allowed Jews.”
“What, I’m not Jewish! And those policies are inde-
cent–” he barked, but his phone caught his attention and
he pulled it out and began to swirl it with his thumb.
He pushed wings of faded hair behind his tan ears,
pulled at his shirt-collar, and gave a little shiver at the
looseness in his neck. Then he pinched the stems of his
glasses and sharpened his blue eyes into pinpricks, as
he began to speak money.
“You're here because I'm doing your family’s
books,” he said, “so let's not beat around the bush. You
spent way, way, way too much this summer, and every-
one is pissed.”
“I guess. I think I should have more money.”
He leaned back and took hold of his drink, watching
me.
“We need to talk about your family's finances,” he
said. “We need to get big-picture now. We don't talk
about this much, but you know the basic setup. Are
you ready to get big-picture?”
“I guess.” I looked past him down over the city. On
the runcible polo field, children were dancing across the
emerald lawn and Mexicans were watching and moms
were sunning. How had they gotten the horses up?
What a load of shit, this place, it was almost unbelieva-
ble. The vision shimmered. Far off beyond the towers

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the bay gleamed, and the fanglike planes kept playing

in the sun, weaving their complex patterns of exhaust.
“Are you paying attention to me?” He'd crossed his
legs tight, flexing his thighs like a sardonic queen.
“Well you had better pay attention this time,” he went
on, leaning in and narrowing his eyes and making them
burn. “Take some of your pills, because Mommy has
asked me to cut off your credit cards. Do you under-
stand that much?”
“I don't know how that works,” I replied, for I
didn’t. “Is that even possible?”
Then the secretary brought in sandwich plates and
orange juice on two trays and smiled at us, and the law-
yer waved her off. He started eating his sandwich. A
gob of yellowish chicken salad fell from the bread and
plopped down on his slacks, and he looked at it for a
moment before smearing it away with his thumb and
putting it in his mouth.
“Wait, what the fuck are you talking about?” I asked
him. “I thought we were going to discuss my trust
fund.”
“Jakesh,” he swallowed. “You have a pretty liberal
attitude towards money. You spend, and God knows
Evelyn has been spending.”
“But that is the status quo! Why does it matter? It
doesn’t affect anything.”
“Do you know how much money your family actual-
ly has?”
“What about our investments?”
“You know what happened with that. I manage your
investments now, thank Kleiner. Soon Michael will.”

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“Right, and even accounting for my mother’s idiocy,

they are limitless. You don’t have to educate me about
my father’s success. And I don't want to talk about
whatever Ponzi schemes you've set up to rob us. I just
want my money.” I rocked back in my chair and in-
haled the air he exhaled.
“Not totally limitless, you fallacious little prick.
Around here, investments cover a family’s basic costs.
What are those? Let’s see–” He waved around his
knife and fork. His eyes flapped in their sandy lashes.
From his desk he picked up a copy of San Francisco
Magazine and began to read.

“Mortgage on Atherton home: $189,000

Property taxes and utilities: $72,150
Mortgage on a $1.5M Vacation home in Lake Ta-
hoe: $81,570
Property taxes and utilities: $30,000
Landscaping, demolition, room renovation:
$125,000
New furniture and housewares: $37,000
One full-time servant: $57,000
Housecleaner, twice a week: $7,500
Part-time personal assistant: $45,000
Home repairs and upkeep: $25,000
Stanford tuition: $50,000
Additional donations to schools: $60,000
Weekly tutoring: $6,750
Pool: $10,000
Activities/lessons: $14,000
Birthday parties: $3,000

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 SAN FRANCISCO

Clothing for her: $40,000

For him: $27,000
Jewelry: $15,000
Groceries: $12,000
Takeout: $4,500
Restaurants: $20,000
Wine: $16,500
Fitness (club memberships, plus private sessions):
$22,000
Country Club: $12,000
Haircut and color every six weeks (for her): $4,000
Monthly massage and facial (for her): $5,760
Medical expenses/uninsured specialists: $17,800
Four dinner parties for eight: $4,000
One birthday party: $10,000
Two international trips, plus six weekend trips:
$75,000
New car: $75,000
Upgrades for computers and other electronics:
$18,000
Warriors season tickets: $22,360
S.F. Opera season tickets: $5,700
Charitable contributions: $23,000
Gifts and tips: $10,000
Accounting and tax fees: $4,000
Car insurance (three cars): $7,500
Gas: $10,000
Car maintenance: $4,700
$2M life insurance policy: $8,430
Financial advisory services: $13,200
Attorney fees: $50,000”

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And how! He unclipped his glasses and folded the

spectacles on the mahogany. Down on the roof the po-
lo game roared to life, the knights pricking across the
field, shouting out plays. The small horses kicked and
bayed. No sound reached us.
“But they don’t cover some ridiculous summer in It-
aly and six hundred euros a night blown on ecstasy and
whores!”
The secretary stepped down the hall in high dudg-
eon, rushing the glass shut to seal us inside.
“I don’t do ecstasy. I was looking at art,” I retorted.
“And windmills. And how do they not? Did you know
that a billion dollars makes a hundred and fifty thou-
sand dollars a day in interest?”
“A billion dollars! As if your family ever had that
much. What matters is not the principal, it’s the policy.
Here’s the new one: you get three hundred a month to
spend. Now it's not all bad. Once you start work you'll
be earning for yourself.”
“Three hundred a month? Work? What the fuck?
Why can’t mom cut back on all the ridiculous shit she
doesn’t need?”
“How does it feel?”
“I don’t know yet whether you’re serious.”
“I mean right now.”
“Like I want to carve your eyes out with sticks.”
He guffawed. “Don’t start pretending you’re a Pat-
rick Bateman. God knows all your generation reads
American Psycho and idolizes him. It’s unhealthy. It’s
the only novel you people read. It’s become cliché.

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Now I think you'll get a kick out of this,” he said,

“come step over here.”
Still holding his sandwich with one hand, he popped
up his laptop with the other and pressed a blue button.
The sandwich plopped more cubes of chicken down
onto the plate and one rolled over the lip. I slid into the
seat next to him. Beyond his pink silk hocks the cursor
flicked open a series of graphs from a spreadsheet. A
red box flashed a rate of return, which he selected and
traced, a quiver of blue arrows flowing into it from a
list of company names, share counts, and prices. He
put the bread down and wiped the back of his yellowy
hand on the napkin.
“I want to show you how far they've come this year
at Gina, Jake. I don't think you've been by in a while to
appreciate it. Venture's rebounding, exits are up three
times since the crash.”
The portfolio glowed to life, displaying the compa-
nies alive in the Gina portfolio. A pie of slivers
diversified – semiconductor companies in pale blue,
chip fabs up and down the coast in million dollar inter-
ests, destined for acquisitions by Cisco or Sun or to be
washed overseas and outcompeted. Software in purple,
web in gold, sites I'd never employ, acquisition hopes
for Google or Yahoo. And green leery biomedicals to
IPO pre-revenue. All these shone from the lawyer’s
spreadsheet, caressed within the operating system of his
laptop computer.
“I don't give a shit about Michael’s doomed enter-
prise,” I told him. “The fund stinks since my father
died and everyone knows it. Give me some money. It

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is my money.”
“But the fund is your problem as well as mine,” he
said, turning in his chair so that our knees brushed, his
head a red and blunt knot without features or eyes.
“Not mine.”
“Oh yes, and that’s what’s so fun about this ar-
rangement. I'm embarrassed to say I partly agree with
you, that without a grand slam this fund's going under-
water. But not everyone knows that! And no one wants
that to happen.”
I slid back to the other side of the table and took the
sepals of a vase flower between my thumb and forefin-
ger, a swamp dock, cold and undernourished. I could
feel the fluids circulating in it. “I guess,” I said.
“In short, I presume you want your allowance. And
I presume that you know the majority of your trust’s
assets remain invested in the Gina funds, where they
were transferred at your father's behest.”
“Those assets have already paid out in cash. The old
partnership is winding down. I don't see how that af-
fects me today–”
“What affects you is the rate your mother and I de-
cide to give you money, and the rapidly dwindling
liquidity of the Bessemer estate. I know you don't want
to work, but given this situation you may have to.”
The lawyer pulled at the plate binder his analyst had
left and clacked open its metal fangs. He flipped out a
blue sheet printed with the date and a short triplicate of
columns, our family’s accounts.
“I have tried to speak with your mother about this,
but she, like you, made up her mind long ago to spend

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whatever she wanted for as long as she could. The col-

umns denote years. As you can see, the Bessemer trust
is – well, look.”
Depleted. I examined the page. “This isn’t much,
but it doesn’t include our interests in Gina.”
“Yes, those completely illiquid positions which no
one wants or can even value, like you say. That is why
our fates have become more and more aligned. That is
what we’re trying to sell here!”
“Why haven’t you talked to me about this before? I
don’t see how this could have happened so quickly.”
“It hasn’t happened quickly. It took years to spend it
all. I’m telling you now because you have been a de-
pendent, because your mother asked me not to. But
you’re graduating, and as part of preparing your trust
for transfer, we decided you should get the whole pic-
ture.” He leaned back and drank from the amber glass.
“Not that you really have any choice any more. You’re
cut off in the short term. As your family’s counsel it is
my fiduciary responsibility to protect the health of the
Bessemer accounts. You have what we give you. But
in the long term, your family's fortune, barring your
mother’s marriage, is largely dependent on the Gina
funds, and Mr. Medine’s diligent management of
them.”
I crossed my legs and gripped the leather arms.
“What is the Gina interest worth?”
“The third fund interest is almost spent, because they
are winding down. Fund four is half invested. We
have taken on some secondary assets. If we post mar-
ket returns your family could expect some pittance,

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maybe ten million dollars over the next four years. But
if we hit one out of the park–”
“Which is impossible these days in venture capital
because Kleiner and Sequoia are sucking up all the best
deals and it isn’t the bubble any more–”
“It’s possible.”
“That’s great to know. It’s great that you’re doing
your job. I don’t see why we don’t just sell our stock
on the private market. And I don't see how any of this
affects me.”
“It affects your mother more – her decision making
at least.” He ruffled up his snout. “I’d like to say
someone would take on a Gina interest up for auction,
but no one is going to buy the Bessemer stake as a sec-
ondary. It’s tail-end private equity. No one likes to
buy tail-end, not such a small position.”
“You said my mother knows about this?”
“Does mother know – mother doesn’t know the dif-
ference between a sheet of stock and a bond. Your
mother, however, knows the feeling of money.” Sweat
had appeared on the lawyer’s freckle-crowned pate,
where the hairs swam back like insect legs from his
crown. He was still smiling.
“The point is, without a big injection of cash into
your trust you will have to work in an investment bank
for thirty years if you want to continue any semblance
of your current lifestyle, because your mother isn’t go-
ing to let go of the cash. She has her own needs.
Hundred hour weeks–” He grinned, capitalist. Then he
leaned in earnestly. “Which is why it’s so fortunate
that Mr. Medine has offered to buy your trust’s Gina

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interests.”
“He has? For how much?”
“Three hundred thousand, today.”
My eyes bulged. “Show me the upside!”
“It’s cold cash here, in your hand, rather than paper
that may or may not be worth anything. Examine the
files yourself, you’ll see what’s in there – just a bunch
of patents and common stock in companies about to go
under. You said it yourself. You should take the mon-
ey; it’s a sizeable nest egg. Your mother wants you to
work too, after what you spent in Europe. It isn't the
nineties any more, Jake, and you've got to learn we all
worked for what we got, and you must too–”
The wings of his hair went floating around his ears
and his eyes revolved magnified in the glass lenses,
large rosaceous eyes which stared upon me a moment
and continued their roaming around the forms of the
tower. “You've got to get out there and invest yourself
in the world. I think you'll find it's boring without
something to do. Work holds everything together. It's
not such a bad thing, believe me, once you get used to
it.”
He continued: “You believe me, your father knew
the value of work. Hardest worker I’d ever seen, but he
didn't show it. Never condescended, taught even Mr.
Medine a thing or two. I respected him very much.”
And this disgusting Ragged Dick took to sliding his
thumb along the slicks on the glass, picking up a rim of
water that overflowed his palm to his wrist, which he
wiped at with a napkin.
“My idea is to move to Hawaii and never speak to

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any of you ever again,” I told him.

“And how do you feel about your mother's mar-
riage?" the lawyer replied, crossing his legs again.
“You can imagine how I feel.”
“I’ll be honest with you,” he said, leaning in, “I did-
n't intend for it to be this way, nor did Mr. Medine
really. The drifting apart of partners, the death of one,
and a changing of the guard, like that Russian novel,
what was it. Anna Kleiner?”
“I wouldn't know.” I tried to laugh at him, pulling up
the corners of my smile and chuckling in my throat, but
stopped.
“And in the end I do see myself in you,” he finished,
and I shifted away and put my hands in my pockets. It
was getting faggy.
Down on the field a black stallion kicked its rider off
in a sirocco of pointless dust. Rolling away, he rose to
his feet and patted the browned carapace of his knee
linens; he stomped earth from his body as the horse gal-
loped towards the edge and went charging round and
round. Somehow it would fall, go hurtling the fifty sto-
ries to the street below, and splatter like a bubble.
“And I always felt a duty to your dad to see that you
came out all right,” the lawyer went on, red-faced. “I
know you don't want to work, and I see you weren't
raised for it. I don't think you lack ambition, only that
you haven't decided what you want to do with your life.
But your spending doesn't lie – we won't support that
kind of lifestyle, your mother won't have it, and Mr.
Medine certainly won't have it. If you know what’s
good for you, take the money.”

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 SAN FRANCISCO

“If I want your opinion,” I replied, “I will sue you.”

I picked up my papers.

Outside, the sun scorched the city and the sky let
down its tresses in the streets. Beneath the banisters
and the marble orbs, the blocks filled with suited sol-
diers out for coffee and money on their Saturday
breaks. I walked back among them along the boulevard,
the package under my arm. It was time to see Lily.
“Now minster,” a bald shoeblack called from the
sidewalk, “those some fine but funked up shoes.”
And he sat me upon his throne, whirling the saddle
soap and flicking from between his teeth an excrescent
red tongue.
“You needs this soap,” he muttered. From the hills
around us plunged cablecars on sinuous wires, and the
district clanged out a hundred thousand conversations,
confined by its high towers into the fiber running be-
neath the streets. The shoeblack pulled gobs of parade
polish from the tin and spread them across my shoe-
caps with a rag. The evanders shined in the sun and a
passing banker turned his head in admiration.
“You got a dollar?” the black asked, eyes quivering.
But I was not listening. I had taken the pack of papers
from the folder and flipped through them, where, nes-
tled between the reams of gibberish, I found a small
typed letter:

Jake, this note is for you, and it’s hidden here where I
know you’ll look since you love money. There is some-
thing important you should know about our family and

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the partnership with Medine, but I can’t put it here in

writing. Michael has done some very bad things, even
committed some crimes – at any rate, we aren’t entirely
on the same side any more. Since you’re reading this
I’m dead, and he might have something to do with my
death. I don’t know, of course, since I’m dead. I want
you to go onto a computer and look at the logs I’ve up-
loaded to my file server. I have written something there
that will help you. The password is in my safe, Evelyn
has the key – but since I love Shakespeare and this
postmortem escapade fits the shoe, the username is
H@ML3T. Good luck, I love you, and don’t invest in
optical networking. – RUSSELL BESSEMER

Well, I smiled at that letter, and I hadn’t smiled for a

long time. Trembling, I climbed off the shoeblack’s
throne and up the silver streets.

132
 8
Sensations, sensations, San Francisco, its jelly of
sensations! I hiked all the way up Columbus to where
the parapets of Sts. Peter and Paul overlook Washing-
ton Square, a grand toy towering over the poplar
branches and their scales. One hundred Chinese made
ranks under those dancing trees, formed in silent exer-
cise around their leader, moving liquidly, and I walked
watching them down the path. Yes the square opened a
hole in the city and its supplicants crawled forth to
drink the light: they sat upon benches brown-faced and
reeked and never lived. Witnesseth! Across the lawn a
bum in black crawled before blast sprinklers that
knocked him to and fro, and he sprawled to wash his
buttocks, pulling the pants down with one hand and
wiping away as I walked through the sharpsmelling
grass.
But the breeze of the sea found these heights as well,
and blew off the cooksmells of the morning, the aroma
of motor oil on asphalt, bread baking, noodles frying in

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offal, and the modern scent of trash. A ringlike giblet

bobbed by on the shirt-neck of a man with no face, and
an old Persian dressed entirely in blue scuttled across
the street, feeler-hairs descending from the warts on his
face. They were people of another time. In the city I
saw the collection of souls multiply and conflate, face
gait and beard – gossip, gyration, cigarettes smoked up-
on the sidewalk, a weaving of decades – bald Jap,
chortling sailor, hippie in a woven sack, salt-haired les-
bian in glasses, toughbrowed Mexican hauler, stalking
negress, suitbacked secretary, coiffed analyst threepair
sidling, chucking hooded vagrant, a gaunt white hag-
gard tireless driving multitude, driving and driven
through time – and I walked through the park to meet
Lily, watching them as the morning became day.
In the café’s yellow sunlight dust swirled and re-
leased mote by mote the breath of bread and human
perspiration. Full of passion, I struggled for the feeling
and the feeling knocked me down. The dust rubbed
across the tables and went out into the day.
There were three chairs at the table and I sat in the
tallest, waiting for her. I always prepared for first en-
counters with mind tricks, images and symbols.
Yes, it was better to concentrate and prepare. In my
mind emerged a little knight onto a brown plain alone.
A spear and shield, chainmail beneath a black tabard –
the crest of my lineage, the leopard, agile, not a brute
canned in russet armor, but a flexing feline knight with
time to spare – retreating, parrying, patient. He looked
around and flipped his spear.
This is how it began for me that morning with Lily.

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This is how I see myself ideally.

The cabbie held the door open for her and a dog that
was trained led her: it was a blond dog with a black
harness and it led her well: and the people in the café
turned their gazes and some of them remarked that it
was a blind girl. On my mind’s plain she emerged,
conjuring symbols of her own. She was purple and
large, clumsy, an octopoid imagining, an overconfident
lurching mass of tentacle and beak, resentful, foolish,
and aggressive. Oh how it shocked me to see her!
Nervously I went over to her and said hello and by
her fragile hand led her to the table, and immediately
the dog curled at her feet. Her face molded in the cool
light, glowing like Egypt and tanned like amber, falling
sharp and long. She was beautiful, really physically
beautiful – and it was in the contradiction that I wanted
her. I wanted no one but her and I wanted never again
to see any of the Stanford girls. The knight trembled
and shook his head. He faced his opponent and waited
and took a sip of his tea. Purple large and venomous
she trailed her palps over the table, a hand running atop
mine, and I felt her hands, embracing, vambracing,
greeted her simple and plain, interesting, but not too
interested.
“Her name is Callie,” said Lily.
“What? The dog. Our meeting will go much faster
if no one speaks.”
“But she’s good to me, and I care for her.”
I sat back down on the highest chair, and she sat on
the low one, and my brain began to spin with feeling
but I stopped it, and there was only the picture of the

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knight upon the plain and the monster quivering as it

was stabbed over and over in gouts of froth and gore.
She traced across the shield another tentacle.
“You’re holding something,” she said, leaning in.
Her pale eyes remained still.
“Just some papers, some stuff for your uncle.”
“Not more schemes between our families!”
“Only between you and me. Only we can keep a
safe distance.”
“Can we. Then I’m happy you came,” she said.
“Why am I here?”
“You’re cantankerous, inappropriate, self-
destructive, and single. And right now I need a drink.”
“All right.”
So we drank two bottles of champagne and I pro-
ceeded with my usual tricks. She turned out to be a
world-class drinker. Just as I began to lean towards her
she would turn away, long neck flexing and reaching
for her flute. She could sense my attraction as well as I
could, and we brought our chairs side-by-side. She
would close her glassy blue eyes and laugh, and reach
out and hold my hand and whisper things in my ear.
Soon the wine softened us to lighter topics – movies,
dog preferences, the implications of global warming,
the impending war between vodka and gin, the disso-
nance of human desire, the Chinese trade deficit, the
glories shared by all elites. She could talk as well as
any man and she knew what to say to draw me along,
and I could not stop looking at her strange eyes and
smelling her silver scent and trying to touch her. Un-
like most foreigners she had only a sneer for technology

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and would talk nothing of Silicon Valley – she hadn’t

even brought a phone with her. She was more interest-
ed in irrelevant things, art and literature, the names of
the trees in the park.
“I’m obsessed with Dante,” she said. “It sounds
strange, but when I go places I can see the different
parts of hell.”
“Which ones do you see here?”
“Lust, and avarice.”
“You should blog about it.”
“I think blogs are the worst thing to happen to writ-
ing since the Inquisition. When there are as many
authors as readers, the two roles become indistinguish-
able. The same thing happened in Rome with public
readings – everyone took a turn being fashionable, and
mediocre thought became the norm. There went the
empire.”
“Well, I don’t have time for all that rubbish, writ-
ing,” I boasted. “It doesn’t have anything to do with
modern life. I can’t remember the last thing I read at
length. Try to hold my attention for a minute – go on,
try. I think it’s glorious to let the mind wander. It’s the
only true luxury. It’s the only thing you can do forever.
Lily, I try not to date people I’m sleeping with, but I
would be willing to drop some of my recreational drug
use for you.”
She sighed. “Nothing gets me hotter than a man de-
void of debilitating long-term debt.”
“It would be really convenient for us to have a
fling.”
“Where would we have one?”

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“Your apartment suggests itself.”

“My uncle’s? But it would almost be incestuous.
Talk about Rome!”
“It’s not incest if they aren’t married.”
She smiled. “Now you’ve hinted on something.”
“Is that what you wanted to talk about?”
“The cruel union of our fates, which my mother told
me is the term you use.”
“Your mother mentioned me? I’m happy, because
she told me to keep away from you.”
“You’re a very pretty guy, she tells me. Lots of
girls. And you like to talk about the past.”
“It's what I like to think about. Much easier to think
about the past than invent the future. The past is like
food. There the mind, like I said, can wander.”
She unbuttoned her purse with one hand and but-
toned it back, the brass clasp clacking into place. A
twist of the head, a fluttering glance, a stutter, her qua-
vers building.
“But it isn’t important,” she said. “Jake, I should tell
you why our families can’t get married.”
Now she blinked and her throat tightened as she
swallowed. I knew every feature of her face. She
would have brushed her hair back a few seconds later,
or her jaw would have twisted, or she would lean a little
further back. One always notices a girl’s eyes: a defen-
sive blink is held several milliseconds longer than a
normal blink. Did blindness matter? She blinked again
and ran out some words. The plate of her collarbones
inverted with her breath.
“We have had – some problems, like I said. My un-

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cle’s had some problems. It just can’t happen. It

wouldn’t be good.”
“Is it to do with the trading rumors?”
“Not exactly, it’s more difficult to explain.” She bit
her lip. “It’s more personal.”
Then one of the blue jets shrieked over Telegraph
Hill and the café shook. The shock was terrifying, in-
fernal, burning through our ears. All of the tables were
shaking, the glasses spilling, and then it was gone, leav-
ing in its wake a beeping tail of car alarms. Lily had
put her hand to her chest.
“God, the first time I heard that–” she laughed.
“How close was it?”
“Right overhead, blue with yellow stripes.”
“It’s the most American thing in the world. Think of
all the gas it sucks up!”
“We do not consider gas. You were talking about
your uncle. Saying it’s hard to talk about,” I told her.
“I understand, of all people.”
“I didn’t just come because of that. It’s rainy season
in Hong Kong, it’s getting too hot, and my sister is here
with me – she's going to a school we wanted to visit.
Bucknell? We're going back around Christmas.”
“So was it your family again? A family problem.”
“Obviously.”
“Oh I know them,” I said.
But she wasn’t listening. Her glassy eyes had
closed, then opened, and in the silence between us she
somehow raised them to stare at the slats of food ap-
pearing on the counter, wedges of yellow quiche,
bundled greens. At least it appeared to me that she had

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directed them, and the effect was haunting. Mexican

hands handling, chopping, suddenly a spray of vert
stalks among the knife ahammering – I thought she
must have been distracted.
I pursed my lips and she sensed it. Her eyes again
settled down upon my lips and this upset me so I licked
my lips and she stared into the beyond. Blood flowed
from a minute crack in them. Her eyes drifted up, flow-
ing past me, and her fingers grew white on the table’s
edge. The tentacle tore my knight’s shield away and
whipped him around as he struggled after it. He
clutched his spear in both hands.
She was almost leaking blood. Her neck, her lips,
swollen and puffy and engorged. I was going insane
with lust. I knew what to do. The clinch requires you
to be cruel, to produce something different.
“Do you want to know something, Lily?” I said.
“What?”
“I can tell you’re dead inside. You never had any
life in you.” I had my knife and fork raised, and I said
this motionless, not that it mattered to her. “I think
you're afraid of becoming like your mother and as she
gets crazier you get sadder, and here you are, with some
fucked up agenda that happens to coincide with mine.”
She stopped and her eyes closed, wrinkled in silver
folds. She straightened up and lifted her head, and I
had her softly by the neck.
“What?” she squeaked, blushing, and I saw she liked
abuse.

We walked up clear to her apartment, clasping

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hands, the street flowering and pollinated with breeze.

From time to time a candelabra of F-16s would blast
over us, up the hills, but the sound was almost soothing
now. Most of her was on me, her light girl-weight
floating on my arm, the dog trailing on ahead, the dog
that had made no sound at all since emerging with her
into my afternoon and which seemed totally oblivious
and indifferent to my assumption of her mistress.
The sun beat down the golden air. Yea, you children
of hags, lift up your shaggy heads and announce your-
selves, and go back to drinking, to your incest and your
games. Far up Lombard Street, up the many roads of
San Francisco into its Pacific Heights, under the after-
noon’s twisting violets, dusty moons, we walked
together. She could walk quickly, it surprised me – her
sense of space was uncanny, built, I supposed, over
decades of concentration. I was trying so hard to relax
that my mind gripped me like the bars of a vice.
Lily’s terrycloth dress clung to her; and as she
paused to unpeel it from her thighs her tile purse swung
from her shoulders. Horn clasps braced the pale locks
from her face. Her cheeks reddened. One of her knees
had turned towards the other, and it seemed she might
crumple like a schoolgirl.
Another trio of planes flew over, howling their song.
Around us people cheered from balconies and rooftops.
Lily had not spoken much, but she climbed up smiling
and held my hand and again we went up through the
heights. She took a step away from me as we moved,
and began to protest in a girlish way.
“I can’t do this Jake,” she sighed, a little drunk,

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holding me off tensely. The equivocating embrace of

womankind. “You have to go soon.” She made a little
face as though to apologize, squinting for some reason,
somehow acting, and giving a shrug, and oh, it’s all
right, let me imitate your probable father. I shrugged
back.
“I guess,” I said. A sweet breeze wandered with us
on the hill.
“It’s nice to be up here,” she continued heedlessly.
“It’s so cool and calm. It must be a hundred degrees
down the Peninsula. I love this city, the feel of the air.
When I’m surrounded by this many people I feel alive.
That’s why I love Asia.” Oh the endless perambulating
girl.
“Yeah,” I said, my eyes dull, and gripped her hand.
Between the gaps in the buildings, fingers of fog en-
laced the bay, and sailboats bobbed out in the slate.
She asked me, “When I go back will you come and visit
me?”
“No,” I told her. “I’m not from there.” We had
reached the steps and with one foot on them she turned
gazing past me and beneath her marquis eyes her collar
bloomed and expanded. We stood between two orange
trees on the step. I took her by the waist and kissed her
across the years.

And we were in the elevator, kissing as the floors

dinged off, then devouring each other, unbuckling and
inhaling, gorging on the smell of her hair, her sharp
clean scent, unable to concentrate on anything else,
laughing as she slipped her rainy fingers down my

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pants while the dog barked, and without a word I pulled

myself together and stepped out into the hall with her,
pushing her towards the notched door.
In the groomed foyer of the Medines I took off my
coat and she was on me immediately against the wall,
biting my chin, her skirt riding up. I held her hands and
slapped her hard. Dim memories of ancient fuckings
flapped like bats from preconscious twilight, delivering
orders, forming patterns that moved me against her
body as I had moved against them all. I imagined the
throw of her pale breasts, her back furrowed and flared
out into the petals of her waist, her gold legs tensed like
an athlete’s. I reached up to tear off her shirt, but sud-
denly her hands grabbed my wrists.
Lily dropped back, kissed me, and, stepping down,
let her own hands glide over the ledge of my ribs, fall-
ing so her fingers hooked on my belt. She breathed in,
pressing down her lips into a cherry pout. She turned
her head and her silver neck twined, and her eyes
closed slowly. She screwed up her face and blurted out
giggling.
“I can feel you!” she laughed. “All wound up.”
“What?”
She pulled away from me and brought a hand up to
cover the laughter spilling from her lips.
“I’m sorry that I have to keep you waiting. I know
you’re in pain.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry. I’m celibate.” Her hair shook in a cloud
of gold. She turned away and slipped deftly across the
room. How she moved! “It’s so hot! I need some wa-

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ter. Wait there.”

“This is unacceptable. You do realize I can have an-
ybody,” I said, prickling with heat. I turned away to the
door. “Is it because you’re blind that you’re uncom-
fortable.” I expected this to hurt her.
“Oh no,” she laughed. “Every sensation is en-
hanced. Don’t think I don’t want to.” Her voice was
sweetly aware. “There,” she went on. “I’m really celi-
bate. No, I’m just playing. I’m awful. Would you like
a drink?” The sound of water. How did she move so
quickly? She knew the place.
“I’m leaving,” I said, putting my hand on the knob.
I should have left then. But she walked slowly back
unaided and without a word slipped her hands around
my waist once more. She must have spent a great deal
of time there, to know where to step, and her dog lay in
apathy, curled on a cushion by the door. Lily slipped
her over my chest and down to my sides, soft around
the front and moving.
“Please don’t go.” She trembled slightly.
“Why stay?”
“You won’t know if you leave.”
“My dignity is on the line.”
“Your dignity? Your dignity?”
The room felt sickeningly disordered, almost re-
versed. There were too many paintings, too many
pieces of paper, Medine’s notes everywhere, clothes,
books, her unctuous Braille books, bowls of dried up
food on her dresser, a swarm of ants crawling. How
would she clean them? Somehow I was with her in this
adopted lair. Sadness, then – I turned her off and

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stalked to the balcony door. She sat down on her bed.

"You were so tense. A ball of tension,” she called.
Then she laughed mockingly. “Come back.”
She had a book on her lap, of all things. Was she re-
ally such a student? Yet on her crossed tan legs lay a
marbled tome from which she turned wide pages im-
printed with Braille. I walked over and around,
imprisoned.
“Sit down. This was one of the first books translated
into Braille and my family bought it for me. You
should see it. The university’s paying me to record it as
an audiobook.” I sat on the bed.
As she turned the pages her eyes seemed to flicker
with the impression of what she had read and without
response she took my hand in her free one, caressing it
at first, then drawing hieroglyphs upon my palm with
her finger. I didn't like it or understand it, what she
could get from so much reading, not even reading with
eyes, useless, and, though I tried to ignore the interces-
sion, it stretched into silence.
"Is that how you do it. What are you reading?" I
demanded.
"Dante, like I said I am always reading Dante."
Without moving her gaze she leaned back and drew
arms up around my neck, her ocean eyes lazing past the
page.
"I wonder what it is about me, that I have no interest
in literature," I said.
"A dearth of imagination, my bee." Upturned lips
kissed me on the nose.
"It seems so far from reality," I said. "What’s the

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point? I don't see how you connect anything."

"It would be hard to disconnect entirely from histo-
ry."
“Well, read me something pertinent.”
“All right, I’ll choose one for you.”
“You don’t have to.”
Shadow shapes seemed to depart her eyes, and I
looked from them down to her lips supple with pleading
womanly need, plush with blood, what did she want,
money, shoes, and gazed further down the white parting
of her collarbone running beneath the loose blouse, and
stirred faintly, and wondered which among these made
her woman.
“Here,” she said, and turned to an earmarked page.
She began to read in a lilting voice:

“I want to be as harsh in my speech as this

fair stone is in her behavior – she who
at every moment acquires greater hardness
and a crueler nature, and arms her body
with jasper such that, because of it, or because
she retreats, no arrow ever came from quiver
that could catch her unprotected. But she is
a killer, and it is no use putting on armor
or fleeing from her deadly blows, which find
their target as though they had wings
and shatter every weapon;
so that I've neither the skill nor
the strength to defend myself from her.”

Then her face twined again into sad laughter. “I’m

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sorry, I’m sorry!” She grabbed a pillow and buried her

silver face. But I had had enough. I got up, took my
papers under my arm, walked to the sliding door, and
went out onto the balcony. My cheeks were hot and I
was cursing everything.
Standing outside, I watched the sun setting over the
water and regretted my life, early into autumn on this
the birthday of that irrelevant girl I had left sniveling in
my apartment. The planes were gone. The heights rose
separating themselves from the base city. Beyond the
marina ridge the Presidio fell black and verdant in foun-
tain steam.
Air is liquid as much as gas, a seagull’s wings are
chainmail fans, the setting sun sends nightmares as it
dies, the sounds of twilight are taut vibrations of the
sky: on a defiant rock in the mists of the copper bay,
white-faced and clawed by cypress, the Alcatraz light-
house accosted a trash barge rounding the cape, and the
faint barking of slimy, chestnut-shouldered seals, far-
off up the tidy-dingy streets of the city, I ignored.
“I keep forgetting you haven’t been here,” Lily said,
stepping out onto the terrace. Inside, her throw twisted
across the carpet with the crumpled buttery bedclothes,
all over the floor. She wore only a translucent slip and
it fit her well. She carried a glass of ice water slippery
with her licking.
“It’s convenient and affordable,” I told her. “It’s the
city experience. It’s suitable for you. But I’m leaving.”
“I’ve tried not to be rude.” She faced off into the
distance.
“No, but I’ve got dinner with this girl in Russian

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Hill. I have to call her. So so hungry, the food will

make her revolting personality bearable, at least until
she vomits it back up.”
I was saying anything, trying not to look at her terri-
ble eyes. I turned my glare down onto the street.
“Don’t say that about her.”
“What do you care?”
“Because you should respect the people you spend
time with.” She crept up and pressed herself against
me, winding her arms about my waist like flowers’
tongues, all slender and hot. “But of course you are a
liar by nature.”
Across the bay the sun sank into the water, a ball of
golden wire. At its immersion the ships glowed, their
navy sides, cobalt and copper, booming the waves.
And rut it. Rut it. I had to teach her what I meant. I
turned and grabbed Lily’s wrist, snapping up her opal
singlet, and in one tearing lurch yanked her to the brink
of the rail, shoving her head over. She cried in surprise
and dropped the glass, which clanked down upright, the
water falling back in a jet. It was obvious to me that
she liked violence. I gripped the scruff of her neck and
forced her head down into the warm air, speaking close-
ly to her.
“Not a liar,” I snarled. “What do you have to say for
yourself, you homewrecking bitch?”
The inclination to tease her, to play as I would with
any other girl, came back freely, the old sword bared,
and, incensed now, I bit my lip nearly to blood.
“What are you doing?” she cried, panting. She slank
an arm around my leg and tried to pull back, mewling.

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Her knees bent and her back flexed – the slip went pull-
ing around her, half tearing off. Of course she liked to
be choked. Beyond her shoulders the houses descended
and the sea abandoned the coast, tilting and pitching as
we struggled. It flared into a bent coin around the hori-
zon and the view swung dizzily. On the hard street
below, a car door slammed and a man clopped around
the bend and still I gripped her. I bent her like that to
his eyes, if he could see. Her pale hair swung down,
my fist tearing at her neck.
Far below, the crest of the oak shuddered in the
wind, its circle of leaves darkening the pavement. Her
gasps quickened and I moved her slowly forwards to
die, tilting her shoulders, her waist nearly over, tipping,
tipping. Down the sweep of the heights and towards
the harbor she stared and began to cry out in fear.
“Casting your sin to die on the rocks,” I told her.
With a shove I gave her off. But as she rose back flow-
erlike she bent her wrist and hit me in the jaw. My
fangs snapped blood into my mouth. Tearing, I began
to laugh, and I let her kiss me. Her lips, soft and shak-
ing, stuck again like petals.
“Lily, you stink of lust and adultery.”
Turning away, she fixed her hair and clasped it in.
She was smiling and still panting, and the slip she wore
glimmered and showed.
“You should rinse to get the smell off,” I told her,
shaking my head. “If it will come off.”
“Oh but I like it. How else am I going to hint to
your girlfriends?”
“With a baseball bat.”

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“I don’t know why you don’t love them, her, any

one of them.”
“All girls bore me.”
“You don’t love her, and she’s beautiful.”
“Do you think it’s beauty?” I turned away and
looked down upon the smoking city. A gull cast down
the alleys on unseen currents, beneath then over a
clothesline, and deposited upon the street a ridiculous
white volley. “It’s not beauty.”

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 9
The whole night lived. With her I dined atop the
city and sank into nepenthe: night winds, cold noble
cherry trees, stone pillars, blades of air in the twilight,
the stars supine between ozone expanses, and not a soul
but us in those heights. The mansions glowed, the
planes glowed with the boats, all the night folding ebon.
The outlines of the houses huddled on the skyline
and the restaurant opened like a star among them. The
storm glinted in tatters over the bay, reflecting the Pen-
insula’s cities, and off to the west boomed the ardent
Pacific.
Sommat crooned the portly maitre d’, taking the
necks of our coats, and away into a maze of tables Lily
drifted beside me with the brazen, half-grateful gaze of
a new lover. Zagat-rated 26 here; Yelp four-and-a-half
stars here; excellent Cotes du Rhone here; excellent
Crevettes Bordelaise; excellent views; expedient ser-
vice; a yummy birthday dinnerplace. Yet filled with the
old sitting gray, emitting plumes of dust, and a few fag-

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gots who stared hungrily into each other’s eyes and

spoke of getting marriage.
San Francisco. From the windows, the clattering hill
descended towards downtown and bayshore, where I’d
climbed up this morning. The streets blew with a thin
layer of fog that dissipated on the Pacific wind. We
were still higher up. The entire bay lay revealed below
– packrat Oakland in griddled sprawl, and dark Berke-
ley dreaming liberal, and the white caps of Marin’s
boats dancing in the distant night, the candlelights of
Mount Diablo’s observatories far above the water.
“I can feel the light,” she said as we faced the view.
Her eyes, sleepy and hooded, slanted down a face
washed clean. By memory she had chosen the pearl
dress that draped in luxurious folds around her shoul-
ders, as she encoded all her outfits in her mind,
warehousing the world’s praise.
“The abalone dore,” I ordered of the waiter, a burly
homosexual with a ponytail. “Try the Crevettes,” I told
Lily.
“Delish,” she said.
“Don’t say that. It’s effeminate. And we’d like a
bottle of wine. And some Pellegrinos.”
“What is your vintage, sir?” The waiter’s left eye
twitched; he took our menus and smiled before disap-
pearing. Lily turned in her seat, framed by the lights.
Fallen cherub, to be weak is miserable: her gaze mean-
dering among the lights.
“There may be a case,” she said, “For us being the
most convoluted people in the world.”
“It doesn’t matter if we’re rich.”

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“The wealthiest, most messed up people.”

“Are we a couple?”
“We are at least partners in crime.”
“I wouldn’t consider you my partner.”
“I am offended.”
“I like to be offended, it motivates me.”
“Is that what attracts you?” she asked.
“I’m not attracted to anything except money. I’ve
forgotten what everything else feels like.”
“Who do you blame for that?”
“I don’t assign blame. One thing I’ve learned in my
life is not to assign blame.” A bead of sweat rolled
down my cheek, pricking tears to my eyes. “When I
was young I used to look for enemies, but now I realize
I have no enemies or friends. Except for you, you may
be different. Which is why you’re here. Sickening,
how we’re almost meant to be.”
Her pallid face turned and something sad, almost
black, spread across her features, and after a moment
she placed her hands in her lap. I regarded her coldly.
The waiter brought the wine and poured a tasting into
the glass. I sniffed it. It smelled like wine.
“Just perfect,” I lisped, and with a smile he poured.
I tightened my grip on the glass, feeling the glow. She
sipped.
“Let’s talk about something else,” I said. “I want to
forget this is happening.”
Salad appeared, a rectangular wooden bowl of brac-
ing shrimp in tartaric vinaigrette with citrus sprigs in
pesticide-free greens pounded into oblivion by the cab-
ernet sledgehammer, organic, fair-trade, Paleolithic, but

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I was too tired to really care, and maintained that the

wine went thpectacularly with everything: tannins, oak-
iness, and a strong finish smoothed the acidity of the
dressing, clearly. Blackberries in our throats.
We took another glass while the plates were cleared.
We talked and talked – she could talk about anything.
The dim lamps left exhausting tracks in my eyes, and
the ancient city couples murmured codas and slowly
left the room. Lily’s face had gone slack, and our con-
versation sank and finally decayed, hissing away on our
breath. Whatever the fuck, wha–
Then the abalone, a half-dollar lump of flesh in an
enormous pink shell, winked open at me on a bed of
morels, and I was started into wakefulness. The waiter
clapped his hands and announced the plates, and we
were off, gorging, gouging the white servers for loaves
of wild rice bread, and as the wine gulped into plum
paint on the sides of the bottles, the word ciacco rang in
my head in operatic tenor, and I ordered another course
of rock melon wrapped in prosciutto and then a quail
breast over spinach pasta, and I felt happy and complete
to be there providing for Lily.
“Jake,” Lily said as I ate. “We want you to come on
our boat tomorrow for Fleet Week.”
“Who’s we?”
“Me. I’ll be with my uncle.”
“That could get weird.”
“It won't be weird, he was wondering if he should
invite you. We’re going to a party out there – it's ap-
parently the biggest yacht in the world.”
“Tom Perkins's yacht? The Maltese Falcon?”

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“I think so. At least a nice place for you to watch

the airshow.”
“I'll think about it. It all depends on how much I
drink. So much depends.”
“Well, then we’d better hurry so you can get back to
your party.”
“You won’t come? I’ll bring you, what the hell.”
“No, you’d better drop me off, my uncle says I can’t
go out here.”
“What, he’s not here, is he?”
“No, but–” She frowned.
“So what do you care?”
“It’s better anyway, I need the sleep.” With one
hand she balled her napkin, twisting the strands. I
shrugged. I think that I should have paid more attention
to this, but that is the fashion of ignorance – one always
ignores the important details until they show them-
selves to be important, and then is too late.
Dessert sank to life, raspberry soufflé and cherries
jubilees topped off by vivifying espresso with sugary
crystals that came in mango, elderberry, and cinnamon.
Delightful! And the bill came and went, four hundred
and seventeen dollars and six cents. In a brief start, the
waiter rejected the credit on my platinum card, and I
dismissed him with a wave of the gold (the experience
was not insulting at all), got rejected, and gave him a
fan of cash. Fucking mother. Half asleep, we got up
from the table and drove down through the veins of the
city towards its crackling core, and I took Lily home
and put her into bed.

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At eleven, back at my apartment, the first shots of

vodka went down, and the ribbons went up, pink and
gold as the birthday girl’s cake thundered in. Cham-
pagne clacked in silver buckets, and the table brimmed
with cups for Pi Phi punch. Sisters arrived, two half-
Asians explained by green eye shadow and miniskirts
who immediately switched the music to electronica,
because of their race.
The celebrant remained before her mirror in exten-
sive preparation. And conversation rose around.
“But can’t we have eighties Jakey?” a girl called.
My other friend Cyan Zilker leaned against the wall.
“I have a new three-step life plan,” he told everyone.
“First step: personal finances; I’ve laid out all my fi-
nancial goals for the next three years. Second step:
relationships; I'm going to take a class on networking.
Third step: personal productivity; I'm going to learn
how to get things done.”
“Who is that girl?”
“Just friend her on Facebook.”
“But I have to know her name.”
“Oh hi hi. Are you in Pi Phi–”
“How do I get on YouTube here? My Blackberry’s
down.”
“So on Entourage–”
“So many hot girls oh my God–”
“So on Lost–”
“Do you think they’ll escape–”
“Banking huh?”
“Private equity! Hedge funds!”
“City of sevens.”

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“Computers and cell phones can cause a loss of I.Q.”

“I feel pretty smart. Excel modeling is hard.”
The conversations rose and unified, to airy thinness
beat.
“Would you rather see the future or change the
past?”
“Mondrian at the MOMA. A really great Monet ex-
hibit passing through in November, they say all the
water lily paintings will be there.”
“Cyan Zilker, what have you invented now?”
“You know they say her ex boyfriend is coming, I
hope there will be a scene. He always runs away from
her. Everyone thinks he’s still in love with her.”
“She’s so anorexic. So ano! It hurts me to look at
her, arms like sticks.”
“But Denny is dating Danielle and Darius has just
come out of the closet, won't it be embarrassing–”
“Whose apartment is this anyway?”
“O-M-G – you look stunning!”
“Thank you,” said the girl whose birthday it was,
staring hatefully into my eyes.

I took many shots of gin, and took Ryan into the

bathroom to see if he would get the bitch off my case.
We hunched over the slab of marble that surrounded the
golden waterspout. We drew five long lines of cocaine
and we rolled a hundred dollar bill and took those lines
until powder gusted out of Ryan’s nose.
The hot tub had been priming all night and instantly
my friend was naked. Now Bonn he dipped his golden
body in, and the water beaded on his wax skin and

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made good in rivulets and streams. Now he slipped ful-

ly into the water which purled clear and majestic in
waves from him, from his bronze hair, acidified by
chlorine, from his glistening arms which had been
trained in it, which had become statue-green, from his
pommel shoulders and from his ribs, the water went
rolling and bubbling and hissing out.
“MORE COCAINE!” roared the marid.
“You know what I want you to do,” I stammered.
“You know what I want you to do.”
“I know I know what you want me to do,” he rip-
pled. “I know what you want me to do.”
“Well you can’t possibly know, you can’t so what is
it then,” I said.
“I know I know what you I know what you want me
to do.” He was leaning against the tub wall, his eyes
folded in their metal skins. “I know what you want me
to do.”
“Snap out of it,” I said.
“We’re having one of the most amazing conversa-
tions I’ve ever had and I can’t,” he shivered. “I simply
can’t. I know what you want me to do.”
“Yes you do. Yes I am. Yes you will. You’ll do it
tonight and she’ll do it too because she wants to make
me jealous.”
“I think the only way you will get me to do it is if
you give me more coke, yes more coke please. I don’t
fuck Asians any more.”
“She’s only half. Fine.” And he took more huffs and
began to giggle.
“Give me the entire bag,” he cried.

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“Fine. Whatever. Who gives a fuck?” He dropped

half the powdery clumps into the water.
“Consider this done consider everything done,” he
bellowed, suddenly starting up, splashing out, lurching
for his clothes.
I do not even need girls any more. Over the years
my lust, limitlessly satisfied, has evolved a tumor of
dreams that satisfy me more than any woman – visual,
aural, olfactory, tactile – they describe the naked pert
bodies of the females fucked by all men, spread and
laid open, stripped, jizzed upon. I can do anything to
anyone in my mind. So when I see a girl like this one,
this automatic birthday girl, the scene replays automati-
cally – the breath emitted by her body as I peel off her
clothes, her mewling moans, the slickness on my fin-
gers, the incarnadine taste of sweat, the destruction of
her body and mind. My phallus is a wand of death at-
tached to my ego.
“Gosh,” said Bonn. “Gosh.”
“You think she's pretty, right.”
“She's pretty, yeah, tight pink little cunt. Pink and
brown. I bet she fucks like a minx, like a fucking
minx.”
“Then take her to–”
“To sit-on-my-face city. That's right. Where I'm the
fucking mayor!”
“That's right, bitches!”
“Aight.”
“Aight foo you ready.”
“I'm so fucking ready.”
“Lets do this then.”

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“Do this!”
“Do this!”
We slammed our chests and writhed against each
other, then bound from the door back into the party,
wiping the dust from our faces.

Thump and Eros: the club perched on the edge of an

enormous construction pit vertical with cranes, a bur-
row of ash and rock. The cranes hung black ropes that
swung with cargo down the sides, where rebar grids
braced back the bedrock and chalk. Beyond the fence
the pit descended three or four stories, extending across
to the patrolling lights of Market Street, and yawning
among the city’s towers. HARLOT perched high above
this depth and poured down its beat like sediment.
The sorority formal from Stanford had arrived, and
our party merged with theirs in the streetlit line, a train
of drunken duets stretching into the night: Pitt and Jolie,
Spears and Federline, Love and Cobain, Barbie and
Ken, episodes of our childhoods replayed in ostenta-
tious costume.
Ryan, delirious and now mauling the birthday girl,
bore up in pink sunglasses and a muscle shirt he’d
changed into. His thick wrist jammed a cor of cham-
pagne to his breast. He wrapped an elbow around my
neck and breathed out his adoration of the night.
“Happy birthday to princess!” he shouted into the
line, the other arm around her. Leaping like an imp, he
pulled at the birthday girl’s hair in the lamplight and
buried his face in her lithe neck. She had said nothing to
me and it would be easy this way. Everyone bloomed in

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laughter and whooping.

The black bouncers stood off in their leathers, look-
ing first at identification cards and then always up to the
sky in thought. Golden rings wormed around the black
flesh of their fingers, which diverted the crowd inside.
Their hands held court with a red parapet of velvet,
where, ahead, the girls cosseted the princess and left
Ryan with me and the other males. We broke out in
fraternal cheering. I took the heft of the champagne
and swung it, choking down gulps that foamed down
my chin.
“Happy birthday to you-u, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO
YOU!” the girls began to sing.
“Oh,” the birthday girl murmured, lifting her eyes to
the night. Their triple bubbled dresses shimmered with
scales. Their legs kicked and carried them forward in a
red fog.
“I wanna be a Pi Beta Phi, boom boom honey and
that ain't no lie, I wanna be a Pi Beta Phi don't you.”
The bouncers smiled and received the train, tipping
their hats like country squires.
“What is this?” Ryan laughed. “This could be on
television.”
“Yes,” I cried, “she’s a keeper.” And suddenly out
of the club’s main window a leonine face was gazing at
me. The girl wrinkled her freckles. A tongue stuck out,
and eyes full of topaz light gleamed with mirth, then the
face pulled back into the fog.
“I'm so happy to have made it. Here's some of that
candy wine,” a girl screeched. She took the neck of the
bottle to slick it down, licking her lips while Ryan nuz-

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zled her and she pushed him away. Then we passed

through the dark archway.
Whom the crowd thumped, whom whom the bass
breaking over the bar, you felt it in your chest throat
and buzzing the bones of your face, a breastplate of
sound in you wherever with whomever, a force of tech-
nology effacement and youth. The vinyl floor stuck
with liquid viscera, and, relieved of my coat and sixty
dollars, I held forth across the mire towards the dance-
floor, to find the birthday girl, drawing Ryan with me.
The crowd packed in, funneled here and summarily
deafened, all eyes wide, all throats straining to be heard.
Ryan passed me and went on through the crowd, look-
ing for his mark.
Down the bar, brushing the girls’ jean-, skirt-, and
dress-clad behinds. No attention for them beneath no-
tice, plebes, but I broke in on two of the better looking
bridge-and-tunnel crew, unfortunate conventional
Midwesterners in tense stances casting roving eyes,
chained in collegiate impedimenta – ruffle skirts, even,
in this fog, and was that a sorority tattoo? No, only a
grease drawing of three Greek letters, Delta Delta Del-
ta, and a little piggy with a halo – behind them the
smoke crawled with sisters, all blonde, all chanting, and
I opened them thus: “Sorry, I’m trying to settle a debate
over here, I need a female opinion – do you think men
lie more than women?” One, undeterred, leaped in with
the ferocity of a philosophy major or some lesser femi-
nist demon, taking me by the arm and pressing her face
close to mine to offer her verdict on this important mat-
ter. But, feeling she was vindictive, I addressed her

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quieter sister, who sipped a gin and tonic (really a

man’s drink, I felt) and regarded me with direct green
eyes while the feminist blah blah blahed.
“How short are you?” I asked each, patting them on
their heads, and each jerked, amused by the barb. Re-
active little robots, inferior babies. Already they bored
me. Of course they all disliked the feminist because
she was the more attractive and some kind of sorority
officer, pledge matron, but I’d never know or care. Be-
lieve me, I don’t care. I had to keep things brief, seem
unavailable and older-than-thou, so after that bitch
stopped talking and I could ignore her I asked the quiet
one soul-searching questions, what her idea was of
happiness, where she saw herself in ten years, her three
favorite adjectives, and she’s alive, she’s ready, she
wants to dance, to have my children, and I bade her a
false goodbye though I returned for her number before
long, just long enough to make her wonder, and began
towards the next set of girls.
In the shadows two figures emerged at the turn of
the bar, a city couple dressed in black, dancing fast.
They were Latins. The man stepped to the woman and
the beat took both of them fast, rising and rifling back
down, back and forth; hips and shoulders rippling with
the beat they twisted and entwined, and the man swung
sharply into an alley cat and took the woman in his
hands and sweat flowed from their bodies in sheets and
his hands went up and over her neck rhythmic around
her back, flaring over her hips, whom whom, and as her
mane tossed back she wolfed up a ravishing grin, she
held herself to him and raised one knee up to his waist

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as the bass beat, held it as the song moved them and the
smoke rose around whom.
Down stared the great oil paintings of harlots ham-
mered high on the walls. There was a lambent Japanese
geisha facing a samurai who awaited her kneeling; she
held in her hand the red ribbons of her hair. There was
a filthy Victorian courtesan splayed on a Louis sofa,
hair tied up in ribbons. There was a naked and virulent
redheaded whore hanging over the bar who stood legs
splayed, striding her wasteland forward. There was an
ardent black whore keeping the dance, a leopard who
rose flexing her buttocks and glancing back over one
mahogany shoulder as she pared the whip she held. All
these and others stared down upon the crowd, breathing
in smoke and the dissipation of wealth.
When I saw them, Ryan had the princess plopped on
his lap and she giggled into his ear. He had both of
their drinks and kept them from her, teasing, and her
limp wrist dangled after the glasses as she traded him
the moon of her smile. He pinched her waist and she
swatted him, straddled him, twisting over, her jaw re-
volving in pleasure. Around them peered a harem of
blondes whose hair blazed white, ultraviolet – they sat
straight and soft and silent at the table, their heads loll-
ing in revelations of sound, their firefly eyes neon.
Around them swirled the soft breath of the club, the
dark night that was inside and outside and which no one
could escape.
Without any control I imagined the birthday girl be-
ing seduced by him, not by even Ryan, but by any
taller, stronger man, who speaks confidently and makes

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her laugh and dresses well, a banker and my best friend.

The feeling came and I could not hold it down. She’s
initially aloof but begins to soften when he mentions
philosophy, religion, Africa, the Democratic Party,
world peace, AIDS. Not simply serious, he quips
warmly and she laughs, putting her hand on his arm, at
first momentarily, then allowing it to linger. They talk
more, and he asks her to dance, which she agrees to do.
Half for play she’s assertive, grabbing his hands and
putting them around her hips as they begin. She does
not fight the feeling and they close what gap remains.
They get drinks, take shots, she becomes convincingly
drunk and he starts putting his arms around her, leaning
in, leaning on him, holding him. She’s smiling and
takes his wrist. He asks her what she’s doing, she says
she doesn’t know, he wants to head to another bar, she
agrees, they go out past me, get a cab, and immediately
start kissing in the back seat. He reaches into her dress,
into the white lacy dress she has worn out, and feels her
small breast as they sink in the leather. He suggests
they go to his apartment, and she looks up in his eyes
with hers fuming brown. She redoes her curly black
hair while they drive, tying it back in a pony tail, and
remains silent while she considers what pangs of guilt
still flicker in her heart, and kisses them away. The
driver takes them to the necessary apartment, well fur-
nished, with hardwood floors, and his roommate thank
God is sleeping (the birthday girl will be excited to
meet him in the morning). The man's a venture capital-
ist or an investment banker, he’s well off, and no one is
concerned about the quality of his furniture, or his ex-

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pansive view. He leaves the cabbie a generous tip.

Once inside they start kissing furiously, and the birth-
day girl pulls his shirt out of his pants and lifts it over
his head; she’s kissing all over his neck and torso, lick-
ing him, sucking on his body, and she gets down
submissively and unbuckles his pants and commences
to fellate him, looking up at him, her cheeks inverted.
It's totally unbelievable head, and it keeps coming. It is
the Isis myth, the resurrection of man through cock-
sucking. He closes his eyes and looks up at the ceiling,
praising God, and places one hand on the back of her
curls, guiding her: he hasn’t had anything this good in
years. She takes him out with one hand and starts suck-
ing on his balls, still moaning. Then she gets up and
says, “I want to fuck.” He takes her into his bedroom
and throws her on the bed, and she looks up at him
wildly, and starts playing with herself. He rubs himself
a few times and pulls the sheath on, then enters her –
her legs wrap around his back to guide him into her.
He’s infinitely confident. He begins fucking her slowly
and she moans purrs screams cries out, digging her fin-
gernails into his back. Then he flips her over and fucks
her from behind with low long strokes. The feeling's
approaching and she bucks into him, rubbing herself
from underneath. He fucks her for several minutes after
she comes; her eyes glaze and she lolls forwards like a
doll, tumbling against the pillows, limp totally, a tossed
child, and she’s still moaning and crying the while. The
man he finishes with a grunt and thunders to rest, col-
lapsing on top of her. They fall asleep kissing and she's
crying. No she couldn't fight the feeling, no you

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shouldn't fight your feelings. It was enough for me to

believe.
Now Bonn held up the girl's wrists in his golden
hands while she writhed, and he slid his giant hands up
and held them around her knuckles, staring godlike into
her eyes. Between his lips flickered words and incanta-
tions, and all his muscles primed deliciously, propelling
his neck like a snake striking, so that he latched onto
her mouth in one motion as she flung her arms around
him and fell into an embrace.
Reclining in the fog the birthday girl's jaw snapped
left and right and her eyes peered over the floor and she
saw me. She separated herself and got to her knees and
feet and straightened her dress by running her hands
over the fabric. Bonn leaned back across the leather
with the glasses and drank from them. The birthday
girl ran her bracelets up her wrist, turned, and stepped
down the bar.
“Fuck you, Jake,” she said.
“Were you going to sleep with him?” I asked her. “I
thought we were an item. What happened?”
“What are you talking about?” Her face was
flushed.
“Well fine, you can have our friends. I don’t care
any more. Please advise me on a relationship exit strat-
egy.”
She stared at me.
“Fuck you for doing this to me on my birthday,” she
said.
I rolled my eyes. “Were we ever really dating?
Death to all sluts. Death to the slut queen. Hail the un-

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dead slut queen! Okay, just kidding. This is all a big

joke. Joke is on you, F.Y.I.” People were pressing by
and dancing in the darkness, people of color.
“What you crying about,” I asked.
“What is wrong with you, Jake?”
“You’se taking shit the wrong way,” I quoted, “and I
can tell right now it’s going to be a long day.” I set my
drink down and tried to hug her, but she pushed me
away. “Here, babe,” I said. “The good news is that I’m
an asshole anyway.”
“I can’t deal with this. You're crazy. Are you even
aware it’s my birthday? Do you even know what fuck-
ing country you’re in? Where were you for dinner?”
Turning, she broke out sobbing, lowing sheep's sobs,
holding her hands to her face. People pressed by us,
trying to get in and out of the club.
“Is that girl crying?” someone woofed.
“For Christ’s sake, your birthday’s in two days,” I
argued. “God, what the heck, sheesh, get it together,
okay? It’s not me, it’s you. No just kidding of course,
there I'm only kidding. I know it's today.”
“Jesus, goodbye.”
“Do you often sleep with other men?”
“Fuck you.” Her friends had gathered behind her,
hands clasped, staring at me venomously. I had fucked
almost all of them and they desired vindication; they
wanted to see her descend, and descend she would.
“Just, look, it's not bad. Just come here. I’m coming
down.” I could make a case, but I didn’t care any more.
I let my hands fall to my sides. Without caring it is dif-
ficult to be consistent or even logical: she could leave if

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she liked, she’d surely call tomorrow. I could leave if I

liked too. Alcohol surged through my blood, manufac-
turing cocaethylene, erasing the last memories this girl
would impart. “Did you know, did you know, Michael
Medine is going to win the election,” I announced.
“With mom.”
“This is your third night home. I haven't seen you
all summer. We’ve barely done anything together!
You obviously don’t give a shit what happens to me
and that’s it, I’m out of here.” She was strangely calm,
her eyes red and scored with hurt. Then she began to
shout. “You’re a fucking cokehead! I don’t know why
I’m wasting my time with you! I’m not! I’m done! I’d
rather be with my friends! Goodbye!”
“Friends? For someone half as smart, you’d be a
work of art. Does it ever bother you that every single
one of your friends is a carbon copy of all the others?”
I was pontificating so that the girls behind could hear
over the beat whom whom. “You're a hypocrite. You –
you’ve got to stop worrying about all this crap. You’re
going to be fine if you make a little money. You’ve got
to get your head in the moment and start changing
what’s in front of you, rather than what’s in your imag-
ination. Think positive! Also, we haven’t dated long
enough to have breakup sex, and that’s a huge bummer
right now.”
“What are you talking about?” she screamed, balling
her fists. “You’re crazy! You need a therapist, not a
girlfriend–” Her eyes diluting with tears, she took a
fast bulldog step back through the crowd, into the arms
of her sisters. I didn’t care, I started laughing. When

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arguing I sometimes started stuttering, couldn’t get a

sentence out, because it was so funny to me. I stag-
gered and fell back against the wall.
“Would you do me a favor and glue razorblades to
your fingers and pour itching powder – gosh,” I said.
“That was easy.”

Beyond the breathing cave and over the red rope, the
haphazard night wind dispersed sea cloud among the
city’s towers and the reek of vomit rose from the gut-
ters. Outside all the couples from the club were
fighting. Girls were slapping boys and boys stood
hands hanging and pacing and yelling. There were five
or six couples fighting and five or six girls crying.
With Bonn I pitched forwards into the black city.
Because we had become drunk enough to lumber home
we would not deign to hail a cab. We were immortals.
With cancer sticks aglow, insolently swaying, inveigh-
ing against all who had crossed us in our lives, we
began on our way.
Phantoms rose up from our cloven wallets, and our
slick arms, necks, and armpits steamed. We had before
us two miles up Telegraph Hill to the apartment, though
by our estimate it would take only ten minutes.
Beneath the towers Bonn lamented. “This is good-
bye from me to me.” He had been trembling about his
job.
“What are you wailing about?” I snapped. “If you
don’t like it why do it?”
“Will you make it that simple,” sputtered Bonn.
“It’s not like everything else.” Then he began to moan.

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Above us, a flock of twittering pigeons settled at a

casement, rifling their violet gizzards. Shadows. In our
path a bum in a taxi-patterned shirt slumped over him-
self, twisting to reveal an ashy furze of chest hair and
one drooping, grayish nipple. He had been eating
glazed candy from two large sacs and the fragments
surrounded him. They crunched beneath our shoes as
we passed.
“Fucking bitch fucking fucking bitch,” the bum
yielded suddenly into the night. “Fuck you you fucking
fucking shit bitch cunt. I’m sorry. Oh, I’m sorry.” He
put his hands on his clowny mouth.
“Cardenio!” I named him.
“There and there,” moaned Bonn. “Farewell.”
“Fucking shit piss eater lesbian mouth bitch kill shit.
I’m sorry, I can’t stop – fucking shit piss kill slut rape
kill bitch shit fucking bitch fuck.” We walked faster,
but we had already turned the corner onto Market,
sleeping in dim light, rock girding the iron tracks which
were iconic in daylight and now cold.
In the buildings across the boulevard fifty figures
milled in the pillars and they were blacks. The figures
murmured softly and the ones wearing white distended
like ghosts.
We swung sharply north on Market. Some of the
blacks sat on planter pots, beneath the sign of the build-
ing blazing RABOBANK. On its web page the bank
declared itself to be a full-range financial services pro-
vider founded on cooperative principles, a global leader
in sustainability-oriented banking. The blacks milled
and murmured. In the darkness I imagined them doing

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crack and killing one another with knives and bullets,

but there were no signs of this yet, thank God, and as
we retreated they gave no pursuit. In their long efface-
ment and in their warm hooded jackets and in their
silent perches, the disdain of the city and my disdain
shackled them.
We went up Market towards the Ferry Building and
the piers. Then we turned at Second and went into the
Financial District. When we reached Montgomery
Bonn began to cry. Around us lay bums wrapped in
sacks, mewling in their crack-addled slumber and Bonn
was crying.
“What the hell?” I bristled. “What’s wrong with
you?”
“Have a great time here while I’m on vacation. Just
let’s go,” he wailed. He had seen a cab and raised his
arm, wiping tears from his face. The cab drew up in a
yellow blaze and its light flickered off. “I have to go.”
“Where are you going? Sack up.”
“To my fucking job. I have to prepare. I have to
fucking pray. I cannot handle the streets. I cannot han-
dle these derelicts.”
“All right, fine,” I said. The wind from the sea came
up Market and rifled our coats, and down the street
some of the blacks began to roar. “Can you give me a
ride?”
“No,” said Bonn, “I’m leaving. You work your own
shit out.” And he stumbled into the cab with a slam.
“What an asshole,” I told the bums, making one hoot
or at least I thought it hooted. Then I walked on.
Beyond the financial district Chinatown twittered,

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dusty and red in the night that contained its lights, and
through those old blocks of concrete and stone I
marched in the freezing air, through the Stockton Tun-
nel which bellowed out its insides, up the hill to what I
called home. Splashing back through overflowing gut-
ters, tenderloin streams, ramps of mist, back to the
apartment where two thirds of the tenants were dying
lavishly, lucratively: silk-headed spindles perishing in
chambers tended by silent Mexicans, spirits departing
into the air of large rooms, beige hallways permanently
empty, full of ghosts, a community patrolled by death,
people too old to use the Internet to escape their pris-
ons. The outstanding age of this city! San Francisco
has more dogs than children.
I walked with my memories as alive as ghosts, faster
and faster through the streets. I seemed to accelerate
and lost myself again, and time ran silver and black on
its rails. In the cabinet in the big room of the apartment
sat the whiskey I needed. I needed it and I shambled
like a yeti across the carpet, licking the bottle and
chugging back half, turning, panting, my gaze on the
big Buddha smiling on the wall. The room swept in
dizzy spinning and another figure stirred far across
from me. It was myself, draped on the couch. I had
been watching me, and I had not noticed me there. I
took off my shoes and rose to my feet. I walked slowly
towards me, watching my eyes and my rocking gait.
And I took me by the arm and put me to bed.

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 10
Dream fell softly – an old rummy savannah of red
and yellow sawgrass, swirled and toothy to the satisfac-
tion of safari and trundling elephant alike. I was seated
at a clean little tea table with an old friend of mine.
Atop the tablecloth had appeared, with a strange twin-
kle, a carafe of red wine, and overhead stretched a great
sleepy tree, promising shade and peace in its blue
leaves, a Eucalyptus, improbable so far inland. And as
if in friendly answer, a berry popped down on the table
and bounced away into the grass, and the leaves waved
lazily away. My dear friend had poured me a glass of
red wine and looked at me, purring. I sipped the wine
and bubbled it between my teeth and my friend said,
“Well, Jacob, it will really be quite a year. You’ve ac-
complished so much already, and I’m very proud of
you. You’re nearly halfway. After all–”
And I nodded and took my wine and felt comforted,
and the chair felt taller, more supple, cushioning my
back. The sky domed and spanned, swimming over-
head with pearls of cloud, and I announced, “It has been

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good, after all. I am very comfortable here, very happy

to be here again. And everything is going well – they
tell me nice things, and I have so many friends. You
have met my friends, haven’t you?”
And my friend smiled and leaned in a little closer,
lips pulling tight over its muzzle, and said, “Yes, Jacob,
they are a very pretty people, and they are good at flat-
tering you. But you mustn’t trust them too much. You
shine at them like a diamond, and they can’t help their
envious little hearts. Now, now, shh. We shan’t dis-
cuss that now, because” – and I felt my hair being
combed. This was the feeling. I was drinking the wine
and could not say yes or no, but nodded with my eye-
brows and gave my friend an approving glance, and my
friend winked over the rim of his glass, a goblet of fine
crystal, and I noticed now that the tablecloth was
astounding French jacquard, not plain linen, and a cloud
passed by the crescent sun and some dust rose in the
East, and my friend turned its spotted face and looked
askance with a curious frown.
"Jacob,” it said, “We have come a long way, you and
I. Over the mountains and across the deserts and across
the” – another Eucalyptus berry slammed down and
bounced away – “Of course you know that I love you.
Goodness, I can’t think where I would be without you.”
My friend now turned its head back, its playful eyes
creasing. “But you can’t be with someone like her,
someone who will expose you, and this is very im-
portant–” it pawed vaguely off towards the East, and
though I looked I could see very little of the lands be-
yond the veldt, and all seemed cloaked in warm haze,

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and when I drank again my mind stopped, “– and this is

what you’ll have to do to – and this is the way we’ll
take, the way we’ll take to stay awake–” my friend was
murmuring, and the wine tasted very warm and com-
forting and I listened to the leaves shifting in the
breeze, “–and this would be the mistake! Jacob, Jacob,
are you listening? Yes, you are. What a good boy you
are!” – and he adoringly pinched my cheek – “It’s not
so far to go, is it? We’ll be all right.” And I nodded,
lolling, to my friend, who was now very close to my
face and breathing hotly, and I looked past it into desert
places, where two dust storms rose and spun, and I
thought I saw a bird whip from one like a thunderbolt,
and I drank again and flew alone into a morning free of
clouds.

Helium igniting the black depths of a blimp, blotting

the edge of my hippocampus, an inferno blasting so
hard my eyelids could only flutter in pain: I came
awake and tasted tequila, and death, and did not stir,
and lay dark as a corpse. Every year the hangover gets
worse, the alcohol smoldering in your bloodstream as
you slumber, swelling the cells and bursting their mem-
branes and nuclei and devouring the mitochondria,
emulsifying your liver a sultry shade of yellow sure to
give the coroner pause, and tightening the tendons in
your legs to iron wires. Meanwhile the cocaine burns
back up your nostrils into the membrane, where it fries
off cell linings and blood vessels, cackling, rupturing
them into delicious little nosebleeds that make you
snort and sneeze, dancing like a fly trapped in the sinus,

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burning your throat and leaving in its wake enough ar-

rhythmia to recall every last heart condition that has
hacked limbs from your family tree.
My friends claim that two glasses of cold water and
a multivitamin will have you feeling fine the next
morning, but this is a ruthless lie, along with the myth
of running a mile and sweating the death out, and the
story about charcoal pills and burned toast, and the fic-
tion about B-vitamin supplements restoring your
memory. Only time helps, and pain, and not drinking
as much, and not doing cocaine, which is impossible.
I lay in bed blackly, dreading the light, taking com-
fort in the cool pockets of my four-hundred-count
sheets until the jets began again at seven, throttling the
penthouse tower with their screams. A thick, stinging
layer of mucus carved away from my swollen throat
and sent me coughing upright, and I nearly wept with
pain. Sunday.
God, would the drugs kill me, and why did I ditch
Ryan, and I sincerely hope I didn’t offend anybody be-
yond apology and Christ, I’ll never drink again, and
where the hell is Lily, and why are there no girls here.
The white tieback curtains had been ripped loose, and
one of the bronze rings lay on the floor next to a bur-
nished stain, whiskey, or blood. Behind the screen, a
morning breeze blew into the room: the golden sun was
just breaching the bay, driving ferries before it. The
planes circled over the headlands in sharp formation,
crying off east towards Berkeley.
God, what time would it be in Italy – and the calcu-
lation struck me over and over again like a hammer in

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my temples until I gave it up and sunk speculating

about past and future, fleeing from the present. My ro-
bot vacuum slave, Emily, roared on and scooted out
from her dock underneath the dresser, but as she passed
I put my foot down and killed her.
Huffing, I staggered out over the strewn wingtips
and cedar shoe-trees I had been parsing through three
months prior. My pink shirt was crumpled in a corner
and I had hurled my jeans at the bathroom sink, knock-
ing off the bust-shaped bottle that lay in a pool of stinky
viridian cologne. My belt was entirely gone, sucked
into the sky. I staggered up, and in my mind the white
plaster walls of the apartment writhed like jellyfish. I
shambled around the perimeter towards the bedroom
door, one hand on the wall. The azure oil Buddha
seemed to wink at me, bringing on a hacking fit that
made my nose bleed. Into the bathroom for a sit on the
throne and a few miserable bloody flushes.
“How did I get here?” I asked the mirror. “What is
the meaning of this?”
In the clean breeze from the bedroom the white
lights of the windows swirled together, and the night
started to return – I went chuckling into another tiny
nosebleed that I wiped on my knuckles.
“Outrageous,” I said. I stood up and washed my
hands, then raised them over my head, flecking the
porcelain. “I remember,” I announced, squinting. My
forehead pounded out grievances in violent concus-
sions, and I closed my eyes, opened them, wrung my
hands, and finally shouted, “All right, I don’t care,
wake up wake up! It’s time to go!” I waved my arms

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around. “I’m late! I’m more single! This is going to

be the best day ever!”
One glass of organic, free-range orange juice with
extra omega-3 fatty acids had me raring: I tossed and
tossed my pink hands in twenty five ortho-kinetic jump-
ing jacks, stretched, and fled out the door into sunshine.
I told myself to forget the night and forget it I did.

Fleet Week: beyond the seawall, marina townhouses

overlooked a host of morning joggers, San Franciscans
who trotted to and fro from sidewalk to green, bearing
biodegradable water bottles and powerbars and lowfat
lattes blushing with foam art. Little cotton dogs scamp-
ered before them and white wires trailed from their
ears, and some of them wore khaki visors or under-
armor and all of them wore sunglasses, and as a group
they smiled, fit and lean and listening to audiobooks
that hit the weekly knowledge quotas of their blogigar-
chical lifeplans. They were happy to be near sailboats
and happy the sun shone while they accomplished so
much, and they bleated into their cell phones just how
great it was to be out and about.
Now a parachute plane trundled overhead, announc-
ing the start of the airshow – from its bowels shot red
and white smoke and yellow pellets that unfolded into
men and shells borne spiraling downwind. And all of
the joggers brimmed with cheer. They were happy and
dauntless and sagacious. From every direction came
the delighted cries of onlookers swelling the marina to
glimpse the planes and mixing with the trotting meri-
tocracy. There were many sights to miss and many

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people to miss them.

Chewing gum, I walked up the gravel path from the
crowds on the green, past the old yacht club towards the
harbor point. Long scales of seawater dandled the
yachts and keelboats along the docks, currents winnow-
ing through the bay from the ocean's mouth: these
waves spanned a network from Alcatraz to the bridge,
sinking offshore in deep coils invisible, unseen, and,
according to Google, nautically important. Above, the
sun oversaw the field of airplanes and the sails, and en-
thusiastic cities crowded the hills.
For my benefit the Medines had been waiting a half
hour in their boat, and when Michael saw me coming
up the quay he raised a hand and stepped from the tran-
som onto the deck, extending his arms to help me
aboard. Upon his biceps were puckered grey scars, and
under his gold watch his hands felt clawed: it was the
first and the last time that I touched him. Blind Lily lay
in the back in a blue bikini and giant dark glasses that
hid her eyes. She waved a lazy hand, a black pendant
twinkling between her breasts. Beside her in the push-
pit lay another girl, burnt gold and some years younger,
who sat up in a white swimsuit and stared at me, then
pointed her freckled nose up in the air.
“Way to be late,” she said. “We’re going to roast
like it’s 1943.”
“We still have plenty of time,” said Michael. “Jake,
this is Emma, my younger niece.” He fingered his
watch. A blast of cheers went up from the green as a
red biplane shot over the trees.
“She doesn’t have any manners,” sighed Lily. The

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sister turned, bouncing two glittering pigtails between

her shoulder blades, and without saying another word
drew up an alice throw. It touched her expensively.
The speedboat snarled cold and white from the wa-
ter; with gas five hundred, six hundred an afternoon,
and a slip twice that, it was a sink of money so deep as
to command its own name, Parsival. A cherrywood
runabout, it dangled two fenders from its sides that
kicked finlike as we trawled into the water.
“Good to see you again, Mr. Medine, Lily,” I said.
“Nice to meet you, Emma.” The propeller roared to life
and I put my hands in my pockets and sat down near the
girls. Feeling began to return to my nose.
“Jacob had a devilish party last night,” Lily said, bit-
ing her lip.
“You missed out,” I told her. “Sleep is the cousin of
death.”
The younger girl sat forward, peering at me with
clear eyes. “What kind of party?”
“Just a birthday party,” I said. “I think.”
“Do you not remember because you drank a lot?”
“He always drinks a lot,” Lily continued, barely au-
dible above the roar. “He does immense amounts of
drugs too! Emma’s only twelve so she hasn’t quite had
the chance.” Medine seemed not to hear, his stone
shoulders motionless at the helm.
“She looks older.”
“It’s cause of my boobs,” Emma informed me, push-
ing them together with her hands.
The motor snarled. The boat drifted from the dock,
spinning behind it a drift of sargasso weed, and I sat

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against the hard seat holding my head. A wake of foam

spumed past the hull vents, and the water deepened
from green to the nickel of the bay.
Alongside, on the grassy shore, a collie went bound-
ing after a ball, barking over a log into a veil of sand,
and in the crowd men set up beach chairs and threw
footballs and grilled hot dogs in a mentally healthy
way.
Bark, went the collie. The women stood around
their strollers and chattered and lay on towels and some
were brown and some were gay. Jiggling jogged the
joggers, still smiling. The boat made a long turn out
into the shipping lanes, dodging sailboats with Alcatraz
to our right, making towards the mouth of the ocean a
mile hence.
“San Francisco is a city of the air,” called Michael,
prophetic, ridiculous. He plied the wheel and his hair
blew straight behind him.
“The sky here makes the sea seem small to me.
Clouds and hills, wind, fog, gulls!” Oh wax poetic. I
clutched my forehead as the motor roared, and Emma
rolled her eyes. His voice came clearer, a tenor tone.
“You young people must understand the elemental na-
ture of cities, their affinity for air, fire, water, earth.
Think of the Greeks! Maybe you only feel it when you
live in a place for the first time. I remember Beijing
and its peach orchards, Los Angeles scintillating in the
sun, Seattle teeming with fish and water, snow on the
mountains above! New York a kind of mix of them all,
a piece of modern art. Washington certainly of the
stone, stone all around.”

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“I know what you mean,” Lily laughed. “Jake just

isn’t as philosophically inclined. What do you think,
Jake? Consider relating this to Heidegger’s theory of
truth and beauty.”
“I hadn't thought this would be necessary,” I
groaned. “I suppose Stanford reminds me of palm
trees.”
Michael grinned wide and white, teeth bracketing his
jaw. The sun fell on the boat in sheets of metal and a
fat blue plane droned overhead. Drone drone, said the
plane, let me ravage your gin-soaked brain. The marina
crowd had receded to a pink line in the grass, wavering
like a mirage, and the sky grew big and open and filled
with fire.
“I may have a strange way of thinking,” conceded
Michael, muted by the roar. “But you have to deal with
the consequences!”
“This country has to deal with them if you win,”
called Lily, and he barked out laughing again big and
strong. The boat fired in the surf, roaring as we
thumped over the breakers of the bay.
“We are ready for a moderate from this region.
Why, Eshoo's afraid, Boxer’s afraid, and Feinstein must
be – she has to defend the democratic agenda and a cap-
ital gains tax. It will never pass–” he went on.
Birdlike, Emma leaned over to me, propping herself
up on the transom so that I would stare into her face.
“They are so boring,” she peeped. She had the corn-
flower eyes of her sister, and the same metallic hair, but
the sun had burnt freckles all over her body. She
smelled of sunscreen, and a pink whorled ring studded

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her belly button – when she looked at me and played

with her hair she was no longer twelve. I looked sharp-
ly away.
“You know the investment community will never let
that through,” Michael yammered from the helm. “In
fact Atherton's the only city in California to vote forty
points Republican. Those are votes I can take. Both
parties are sick of Bush. You know I'm not intending to
say I like him or respect what he's done, of course not.
But there's an appreciation of business in this region
that I daresay will defend itself. The extreme left wants
to raise capital gains and that will be unthinkable!”
Emma was holding her hand up, yapping along, while
Lily lay behind and stared blankly over the bay. The
crosswind drew their hair in golden capes.
Our boat overtook two catamarans idling in a field
of seaweed, manned by Indians in wetsuits, or Arabs, I
could not tell, who clung to the blue straps as the wake
rocked their craft. One swam behind, a black glassy
head of hair, while his companions chortled their beer-
bellies and drank up the sight of the planes. Chuck
chock, they laughed. They waved hello. Programmers,
city-dwellers: otherworldly gearmonkeys drawn from
Silicon Valley for the show, arrivistes I thought and
think, bridge-and-tunnel, yes, probably even immi-
grants. Beyond them the inner sweep of the bay
sheltered a field of other sails, wheeling and bending in
the wind.
And ahead a massive SEACOR transport hauled
containers towards China in the blue haze beneath the
bridge. The city hills receded uniform, the Presidio the

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only remark among them – the dome of the old fair-

palace, the science museum, and far up the inlet the
gridded skyscrapers bared their teeth. The breeze
flowed faster as we escaped towards the ocean, the air
wet and cold and touched by mist.
“The noble work for others,” Medine roared. I could
give no comment. Skipping beneath the bridge was the
tail of a regatta, translucent sport-sails shooting and
weaving. “I once knew a pair of scientists who cut
themselves off from the world – all they could contrib-
ute was science and by Croesus that was enough.
Raised a hellion, your father, Jake! That’s why he cut
away. They invented a way for making steel, another
century and another time. We Medines, we just, well,
multiply."
I let him speak. What he said was true but it didn’t
matter to me. Lily lay silently in her giant glasses and
Emma had curled her head on a knee. Both girls had
donned blue woolen wind jackets. Flap flap went the
jackets, thissssflesh. The sea blew by and I leaned back
into the sun and whipping spray and let go.
All of a sudden the spars of the Golden Gate plunged
us in shadow, their concrete caverns sheltering gull-
flocks like lichen, the high immensity of the bridge
erasing in an instant the sun, the hills, and any impres-
sion but its overhanging girth. Down Baker Beach
people had come out to surf or jetski, riding neon slash-
es through the waves. In blaze and sparkle the ocean
leaped white-capped beyond, and we made for the
slanting cliffs, their coral beaches and their coves.
We coursed north an hour in view of the Marin

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headlands, past Stinson, seeing agate highways veining

the hills, and the shining expanse of September sea
tumbling at their knees. And always the hills collapsed
into long isthmuses balled with oaks, rising up again to
sun their brown backs, while far behind us the airshow
glinted, the planes spinning off somersaults and figure
eights, growing smaller now, wishbones, toys and
specks. The girls dozed. Everywhere sprinted silver
sheets and troughs of black pitching water, and at times
the sea permitted tongues of light to lick it, so that fangs
of rock emerged in the deep. Coralclaws beneath, old
steel ships, beds of hidden life, red moss and twisted
cable: the sea-crags rose near cliffs the color of hide,
spined with broken shells and squalling seabirds: the
beaches ran pink under the headlands: they ran pink and
gold and long.
Some miles north we swung close through the
breaks into an eddying lagoon, a cove sky-soaked and
veronica blue. On the enclosing ridge, groves of callery
pears sunned their oiled leaves in the chaparral, hugged
by slopes of buckthorn and oak. A high willow wept in
the water, hanging down green hair to wave above the
sea.
Now Medine cut the engines and turned back in his
seat as we drifted and slowed. His golden watch blazed
the brilliant heat everywhere, like the red eye of a
pschent. In the wind he stepped bowlegged and took
bottles of beer from the cooler in the stern, passing
them to me and sitting down in the sun with his tight
smile. The sea rocked out the only noise, the roads de-
flected leeward by the bluff. On the cliffs the verdure

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was nearly tropical and through it flowed the wind.

“Oh, you didn’t bring us here!” squealed Emma
suddenly, sitting up awake and blinking at the rocks.
“You didn’t I haven’t been here in so long oh oh!”
“This is good dive water,” Michael replied, kneeling
on the stern to trail a hand in the current. “Sharks out
from the coast, though, the biggest group in the Pacific
up by the Farallons, that’s where we’re going. You
don't want to go swimming, but in the cove there, Jake,
do you see that line? That’s a kelp wall, through which
sharks do not pass.” Across the mouth of the cove
stretched a ruby blur, undulating slowly.
“Really?” I said.
“Yup,” said Emma. “We came here when I was re-
ally little it’s so much fun!” She sat up and looked out
starboard, and the muscles of her back furrowed gold.
“Giant kelp is the strongest sea plant,” Lily said,
brushing a blade of hair from her lips. “The root has to
anchor strands thirty meters long, and survive currents
that overturn boats.”
“Woah,” I said. The hull forked over the blur and
long red leaves were waving in the water. The sea rose
around us, Ionian blue, and the brown cliffs stretched
far. Lily sat up and pulled a white shawl around her
shoulders, then took a book from her purse and began
to read the Braille.

Steeples of gold hair jerked around Emma’s face as

she retied the white knots of the bikini, supported in the
netting. She wriggled her tan legs into the wetsuit’s
tubing, drawing the zipper-cord up between her shoul-

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der blades. She lifted her hair and whipped it in a po-

nytail and wrung the knot. Medine watched from
behind his sunshades, leaning against the bow rail.
“Do you still remember how?” he asked her, sipping
the beer.
“If you have the hook,” she said, climbing across the
hatch, “it’s pretty self explanatory.” From the com-
partment she removed a slender steel claw with a
rubber grip and a plastic sack. “Arr,” she winked at me,
brandishing the tool and sticking out her tongue. Pull-
ing up the goggles from the obsidian swell of her chest,
she stepped to starboard and without another word
plunked like a stone into the sea.
“Good girl,” said Medine.
He turned to follow his niece’s mask as it gleamed
across the waves. Black and glassy where the boat
pitched, they concealed her utterly. Everything was
blue, blushing water. The sun threw down a ballistic
golden light. Ah, as her shimmering form entered the
cove I looked at him, and by the tight smile stretched on
his face and the way the muscles rifled from his jaw to
his neck he seemed hardened into stone. Lily read si-
lently, her fingers fluttering over the page. Then
Medine turned to me.
“It isn’t often I can get away like this, Jake, but you
are important, and I felt we needed to speak.”
“I’m happy to, Mr. Medine. It’s a beautiful day.
Thanks for having me out.” I squinted in the blaze.
“Let me be direct,” he said. “I do know that you can
hate.”
“What? I don’t hate you.” I stiffened. “What gives

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you that idea? You’ve been generous to my family.”

Frowning, I sat down and set the beer on my knee,
where it formed a pale crest.
Lily pulled up her shawl, closing her book. “Don’t
harass guests,” she told Michael, frowning.
“But you associate me with your father’s death,”
Medine went on, watching me. “The Gina partnership.
How it bears on my situation with Evelyn.”
I said nothing.
“Am I right?”
“That’s ridiculous,” I retorted. “For you to even
bring up the matter of my father–”
“The matter of him. It’s just something I have been
very concerned about these years, as Evelyn and I have
grown closer, the possibility you might have grown up
with some kind of enmity for me.”
“That’s very considerate, but I have grown up, ha-
ven’t I?” Up on the slopes wind cattailed among the
trees, sending their arms up in worship. They bowed
and rippled like the waves, the wind come down over
the sea to blow our hair in halos and manes. Lily had
fallen silent. Far off, Emma, a black paddle in the la-
goon, winked into a dive.
“You have,” Michael said. “You have done magnif-
icently. We’re all amazed at your life, your travels,
Jake. We wouldn’t want you to think otherwise. I
wanted to congratulate you.”
“Well thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” he told me. “And if there’s any-
thing I can do for you, let me know.”
For a moment I turned away, facing the bluffs.

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“Tell him what’s happened between you and his

mother,” Lily said suddenly. She had lifted herself on
two wrists, shoulders draped in the shawl. “You know
they don’t speak much. Tell him how it happened.”
Michael’s grey brow corded over his eyes, and he
regarded his niece with an odd, feverish expression.
“My dear, I know you’re going to be very mature.”
Across the sound, a tern burst from the cliffside
thatch and dived into the ocean, rising with a slim
whipping minnow it bore in its beak and swallowed as
it pitched into the groves. I sat back in my seat and
grew red faced and when this passed took my beer and
stood up. But there was nowhere to go, and I saw Me-
dine had planned it this way, to confine this here where
I could shout and curse him and be heard by no man. I
turned to Lily and made to speak, to ask her what she
meant.
Yet when Medine saw this, the cords of his neck
withdrew into the folds of his collar, the tendons recoil-
ing as he seemed to chew upon his thoughts.
“There’s no need for unpleasantness, Jake,” he inter-
vened. “Your mother has been provided for all her life.
The world makes an effort to provide for a woman like
her; it’s almost natural law.” Spine buckling, he leaned
in. His blue eyes – the pupils dilated in the sun: they
did not contract and his eyes seemed suddenly injected
with ink. Disconcerted, I turned my face to stare at the
rocks. “She is an aspect of exchange in the world. I
suppose all beautiful women are.” Then he took two
steps forward and was leaning closer still, uncomforta-
bly close. I could feel his breath. Lily sat stock still

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against the transom, holding the book in her lap. “Not

that her physical beauty is what it was, but neither are
we so old.” He was speaking cold at me, tongue flick-
ing between his gray teeth. “One woman will change
her physical beauty into grace, another will grasp at
youth. It’s only natural. Thank God your mother is the
first kind.” Beneath his pupils his high cheekbones
stood out like rims of steel and his long mane was shot
with stone – all this time it blew behind him in a fantas-
tic dark tail. Onto his lips he drew a sardonic smile,
straight and ashy, the same as Lily’s.
“But the implications for the campaign, Michael,” I
stuttered. “You and my father. You’ve already been
married twice. How can this help you?”
“Well!” he barked, turning off and striding back to
the other side of the boat, where he took a long pull of
his beer and watched the cove. “You must have sup-
port.” The hill breeze swung down hot, drawing a wave
of pollen from the overhanging boughs, yellow orbs
that striped crosswise in the wind.
Slicks of sweat coated my palms, and I realized he
had driven me back to my elbows on the railing. Burn-
ing with vexation, I picked up Emma’s towel and
clenched it.
“Love is a transaction, one I am not embarrassed to
complete,” continued Medine. “There is nothing
shameful in it – we have known each other for years.
There’s nothing to disbar it. It’s a partnership. As to
what she gets out of it – well, I can’t speak for Evelyn.”
He twisted down a screwlike frown. The wind blew my
shirt in ripples, wriggling snakes, the towel flying a

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brunette flag.
“What do you think she gets?” Lily asked, her voice
shrill.
“Lily you shut your dirty mouth,” snapped Medine.
His great left hand had snapped the can that he held,
and suddenly its copper shell sparkled with light that
mixed with the red light of his watch. I inhaled. Look-
ing down, Lily pulled the shawl close and twisted to
face the water.
Medine set the can down, crossed his legs, folded his
hands upon them, and sneered. His woolen pants
flapped, the pleats rippling and purling over the rocking
of the waves. He turned to me.
“Jacob, your house has been in disorder for some
time,” he said.
“I don’t see how it connects,” I protested. “It hasn’t.
It’s not appropriate to–”
“It connects,” he went on, “because your mother has
beheld wealth and it has become an aspect of her. And
she cannot continue without it.” He looked down into
the sea. “She has certain obligations. Money creates
obligations, you know that. Do not think I have any
idealistic beliefs about my person. I simply understand
hers.”
“I don’t believe you really understand her.”
“Let’s be clear. Your father’s estate is nearly gone,
due in no small part to your rearing, to certain habits of
yours and your mother’s. You might not believe it, but
it’s true.” Again he cast me his agate eyes, and drew
them to Lily. He paused. Then – a second short smile,
around his canines. “The fact is we should enjoy our-

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selves out here,” he finished, looking out to where

Emma was swimming. “You should dive. Obviously
Lily can’t.”
“Well–”
“Go on. Emma wants to show someone what it’s
like.”
Medine bent, and pulled a second suit and mask
from the compartment. His broad hand offered them to
me; then he threw them down.
“She didn’t say so.”
“Only because she thinks I will mind. But I don’t
mind. Lily can’t. Can you Lily.”
He was cruel and I looked back, but Lily said noth-
ing – she remained turned, wrapped in the shawl, her
face to the sea.

The surface hid black, and black, black, black, un-

fathomable engulfing, mother of sudden ice beneath the
wetsuit skin as I plunged, kicked, and met the white sky
and air, putting off from the boat with heavy strokes.
My hangover dispelled in the shocking cold. I have
always feared deep water, the prowling invisible killers,
and now I swam hard for the cove, looking out inside
my mask towards where the dim reef of chalk reached
from the abyss.
Emma’s legs, bleached by the filtered light, circled
as she treaded water ahead, bisected undersea. She
swam above a moonlit crevice choked with seaweed,
bobbing the hook’s spangle and the grey sack. As I
pulled towards her a wave rolled through the cove, in-
terposing a wall of twinkling bubbles. The wall rolled

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on and ascended into the surface, hauling up with a

roar.
Now Emma dove under the wave, kicking down
among the boulders. Her legs propelled her froglike
between the lips of the crevice, where she inverted and
flippered, clawing with her hook among the hairy
weeds. A round gem flipped into her bag, then another,
two more, and she darted up for air.
“Gurgle,” she panted as I paddled up, “a landshark.”
The ocean pitched and dunked and I struggled to stay
up.
“Prospero, in fact. Your uncle told me to come out–”
But under the water she had looped her arms around my
waist.
“What are you doing?” Cold fingers slipped around
my wrists and I began to kick. “Let’s take this down a
notch!”
“Do you think he can see us?” Giggling, she spun
and pushed away, holding the hook and bag in one
hand, and pulled up the mask to her bangs. Her cheru-
bic freckled face stared at me, washed clean. “You
looked scared!”
“Don’t do that again.” I spat out salt water. Rocks
crawled from the sea twenty feet beyond us, chunking
towards the beach and the windswept groves.
“He can’t know,” she went on, taking in armfuls of
water. “He does and can not know.” Another wave
overtook us and rumbled past, dunking Emma and
breaking on the rock wall. “Look at all these.” Her bag
brimmed with a heap of abalone, studs of flesh in
shimmering shells. The nubs writhed and contracted in

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the sun.
“The slaughter of innocents,” I coughed, paddling.
“We could release them?”
“Into flesh and ash and stone and ash and dust and
shellfish.”
Suddenly she smiled, lips dripping salty water, and
twisted the bag shut. Laughing the same metal laugh as
her sister, she began towards me. The black water
snarled and clapped, and, treading, I swept around to
face the open sea, and near swam for my life.
“Is there really a yacht out here?” I tried, spluttering
water. She was bobbing behind, near now.
“The biggest yacht in the world.”
“And I’m being fed to the sharks.”
“They don’t come past the kelp wall. Not any time
when I was little and not today. Oh I love it here! We
could go surfing on the beach if we brought boards.
The abalone is still fun. Do you want to try?” She
passed me the hook around my chest and passed her
slender palm down my thigh. There was a moment of
warm pressure. Looping her hands around my neck she
kissed me behind the ear, then, clawing my face, forced
her young tongue over my lips as I struggled off.
“Stop!” I coughed, grappling her wrists, nearly claw-
ing her with the hook.
“Yes!” Emma cried. “Do your part to harm the envi-
ronment. He will be so proud of us–” She kicked back
and off, eyes smoking, and I fled into a dive.
A careening, sudden flash startled me, and I nearly
dropped the hook – a sinuous fish barreling from the
rocks, heading for deep water. The ocean lifted me as I

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struggled down beneath the waves, where at least I was

safe. Keeping my distance, I hooked up abalone for a
quarter hour while Emma floated on her back and
hummed. The boat bobbed off in the distance, a wood-
en wedge. Then she told me to go back.
“Aren’t you coming? You must be freezing.”
“No, it’s his turn,” she said, swimming away. She
spoke shrilly, the same tone that Lily used when speak-
ing of Medine. “You have to wait on the boat so we
can–”
Waves came and I could not hear her for the crash-
ing, so I turned and struggled back through the water.
Near the boat I saw Michael’s black form dive from the
deck, and he went barreling towards his niece, sending
behind him a plume of bubbles. Aboard, I struggled out
of my wetsuit and stood watching them far off in the
cove.
At first I thought Lily asleep – the blowing shawl
covered her face where she lay in the shadow of the
pushpit, but she sat up slowly, and, turning, I saw her.
She had been crying – makeup streaked her face, and
the wind had deranged her hair.
“They can’t get married,” she said coldly.
“So we can pray.”
“And not for the reason you think.”
“All right.”
“And I don’t want you to ask me why.” Her eyes
gazed past where an arrogant seagull had alighted on
the stern, preening its snout. “It’s very–”
“Look, I don't care.”
“And I do want to see you. We have a lot to learn

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about each other.”

“I want to see you too,” I said it, and I did.
“And there are some things you don’t know about
my family.”
“I believe you.”
She turned and leaned fully against me on the siding,
wiping her eyes. She looked like an Egyptian cat, a
watcher of the Nile. Breeze blew from the shore
groves. Out to sea horns blazed in the distance, and
money-smoke rose on the horizon. All around the new
sea murmured, the rows of waves tiled in slate and blue.
Then I saw that a few drops of red blood had blown
from her upper lip across her cheek. Startled, I wiped
them away.
“Oh, it’s horrible,” she said, “you don’t know the
half.”
“We will stop them,” I told her.

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 11
Moored in the haze smoothed by heaven over the
sea, an armory drifted before the Farallon Islands. We
could no longer see land for the clinging haze: every-
thing had faded to white. Medine grasped the
speedboat’s wheel with thick pleated hands of tendon
and hair and his white smile went blowing behind him
as we sped towards the largest yacht in the world.
“Practically her maiden voyage!” he bellowed. His
swim had filled him with energy. “Tom’s little pro-
ject!”
Polygonal, then triangular in the haze, the grand
barge rose moored by ivory ropes to the seabed, like a
great white wurm weltering among the island spars.
On deck fifty healthy couples in bright cotton par-
took of the afternoon, terraced onto the floors of the
boat, among them racing crewmen who attended to all
functions and all desires, caviar champagne and cellu-
lite. In the surrounding surf fifteen other speedboats
dandled in spume, a concordance of hulls that pitched

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and tailed and sometimes clanked.

“Well here, here,” called up Medine. “Here!”
Crewmen threw down ropes and drew us in below the
siding as the exhaust snarled, and long faces emerged
above flutes of champagne, watching from the railings.
A platinum-haired woman pressed her maw to the ear
of her husband and trailed down over us her blessing
hand. Pitching behind the rim of the yacht, the sun
burned lemon in the sky where the jet trails fanned like
a shell’s lines, converging towards the city’s pedicle.
The speedboat’s roar had muffled the planes, but now
we heard their fierce souls again, far off and unseen.
Ladder rungs tapped down on board.
“Ladies up first,” Medine told Lily. She had on a
red summer dress and it drew up a corolla around her
legs as she climbed. The Mexicans helped her on board
and took her by the hand and led her. Emma went up in
a paisley chemise, winking at me as she passed. I
stared savagely at Medine but he was distracted, watch-
ing the yacht’s prow, where, of all people, my mother
Evelyn stood chaffering with three men in linen sport-
coats. Thus I climbed up into another level of wealth.

As a hillside is terraced and scalloped by a farmer

and made arable, so did the yacht’s decks sweep from
its bridge to the fang of its bow. Over these shelves,
twin balls of radar whirred and hummed amid a sphere
of seagulls that went crying out for sustenance around
the barge. Fifteen square sails drooped on three un-
stayed masts, vast blank stretches of white sheeting as
big as a galleon's, the central pane emblazoned with a

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black falcon. She was the finest boat in the world and
in this rich surf she spent well.
Off her bow a blond boy flew a Chinese kite, hold-
ing on as the sea winds took the serpent and blazed its
ribbons in recursions of color on the rocks. Mexicans
crawled the decks and crawled the ropes and cooked
and chattered and cleaned.
“It has taken three hundred laborers more than five
years to build,” the owner drawled, resting a fuzzy el-
bow on the bar. Medine had gone off with the sisters to
find my mother, and we were drinking champagne like
good tycoons. “It has taken history's largest single or-
der of carbon fiber for her masts; there's more of it in
the Maltese Falcon than in a stealth bomber.”
“You must be very proud,” I told him. “Congratula-
tions on this fantabulous maiden voyage.”
“For Jesus’s sake I am,” the old man growled. “So,
you’re Russ Bessemer’s son.”
“It was nice of him to make me.”
“Do you know that these sails are controlled elec-
tronically, by the push of a button? Doesn’t even
require a crew. Do you know who I am?”
“Appearances attest a deity of high finance. T.
Boone Pickens? Kleiner? Warner Chilcott? Henry
Kravis? No.”
“I am Tom Perkins. I did some work with your fa-
ther. We built the valley into what is is. My companies
built it!” He barked the same seal laughter they all
shared, rocking back on his heels. “I suppose you’ve
heard of Google. Do you see him there, that’s Sergey
Brin, one of the founders. Do you see what kind of

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man he is? Now let’s have some of these oysters–” A

black elven head bobbed among a circle of admirers.
“He’s a very powerful man, but he would be nothing
without me!”
“Sergey, really!”
“You’re young, you look college age. You probably
either go to Berkeley or Stanford or MIT. You have
your whole life ahead of you. What do you plan to do
with it?”
“Start my own company!” Of course I knew what he
wanted to hear.
“That’s the spirit – let’s put you in a startup incuba-
tor and make you into meat.” Square teeth bared, he
slapped me on the back. “Did you know that the sails
can open in six minutes? I rent this boat for three hun-
dred fifty thousand dollars a week. Three hundred fifty.
Did you get yourself a drink.”
“Mr. Perkins, you must be a billionaire.”
“We don’t talk about money out here. I heard Mike
is marrying your mother. That’s something isn’t it.”
“You’ve got it right.” I swigged my vin.
“That’s a good one. All in the family.”
“All in it, that’s right.”
“There goes Mike now. That’s his nieces isn’t it.
God damn, look at them.”
“Yep.”
“God knows I care about politics. Politics, money,
and technology, the golden triangle.”
“The golden vagina,” I quipped.
“What? Well, you've got to stay for the feeding.
We've got the researchers from the island to come up

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and show us a shark feeding. You know, nature fasci-

nates me more than anything. I’m running for
conservationist of the year. It's the biggest group of
great whites on the California coast right here, literally
right beneath our feet. You wouldn't want to fall in, no!
Lunch is starting, oh look, I've got to go, hi Marty, have
a drink won't you, Marty, be honest, did you know that
this is the most–”
Mexicans swarmed from the galleys, bearing great
silver platters of fish, and we sat down at tables bolted
to the decks. As it chanced the food had been catered
by a Palo Alto sushi farm I knew well from school –
Miyake, notable for the disco sake-bombing it hosts
after seven, when a grizzled Tongan bouncer stands
outside glaring stupidly; he doubles as the maitre d' and
has to rush in to find you a table. Sometimes he gets
angry and huffs around, yelling, “Move outta my line,
people! Mah line! Moof!” and beating his huge flippery
arms around in rage. Fog machines shoot aerosolized
cancer onto the fish and soup and sake, and you breathe
in deeply and the lights flare on and the music starts,
and everyone is up on their chairs raising a toast, "ICHI
NI SAN SAKE BOMB!", and the shot of sake goes
clink into the Sapporo and there is a brief stinging rush
as the entire thing is taken at once, the rice wine drifting
like a pale oil slick on the gold beer, and it goes down
hard and makes you, the third or fourth time, want to
puke, but you don't since you're with good friends, out
having a good time, at this super fun place Miyake.
But before seven it is an awful two-dollar fishhouse
with no crowd and no discernable purpose except to fill

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the lunch hour of venture capitalists arrived to suck

marrow from the startups on University Avenue. It
would be worth it, I thought, to take charge and demand
of Perkins Evvia’s mink cutlets or Tamarine’s leggy
half-Vietnamese waitresses, or equally fab Marin cui-
sine, but then it struck me that it would be expensive.
And then a more terrible realization hammered down: I
had just worried about the bill, which, by my own
standards, right then and there, put me half-way to
economy class and half-way to suburban hell.
So lunch on the sea emerged, immediate and execra-
ble – particulate, salty miso soup followed by slimy
bevels of ichthyolite in various shades of blood, and
tough squid legs tossed in batter, served under tiresome
flights of Veuve that did nothing to debride the fishy
viscosity.
Medine and my mother snuck up – he had her by the
arm and they proceeded flutes-bared, guzzling cham-
pagne and staring at me with the coins of their eyes.
“Well, this is – this is great,” mother said, letting her
hand fall to her side. “Super!” Proximity to the Mal-
tese Falcon made her less intelligent, I saw with rage.
Mother chewed through toro and mashed the vine-
gared rice underneath with her chopsticks. Michael, he
slaked his thirst with beer and rustled in his linens.
“It is your girlfriend’s birthday tomorrow isn't it,”
mother wondered. “I have it on my phone.” She
crossed her legs and the black corolla of her dress
pulled around her knees. The bolts of her high heels let
down, and she drew her ankles up to cross her legs and
face Medine. Beyond the prow a yellow helicopter

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 PACIFIC OCEAN

swooped around the island and swung over the yacht.

“Yesterday,” I told her. “It was some sorority party
up in the city. Fuck the bullshit, is what I say. She
isn’t really my girlfriend.”
“Jacob,” she snapped, sucking the chopsticks.
“Women everywhere tremble,” I said, winking at
Medine.
“I'm happy Jake's returned from Europe in one
piece,” he broke in, “with no tropical diseases.” He
laughed loudly.
"Yes," came mother. The boat rocked in a sudden
wave, and everyone grabbed their seats.
"With no desire ever to return," I said.
“It seems he's cured.” The lemony liquid inside Me-
dine’s flute whirlpooled and came to his lips, and he
drank looking at his nieces across the way. “I hope Lily
can meet your girlfriend,” he said.
“And look what Michael has gotten me,” mother
cried. Pushing away her sauce-drenched plate, she took
from her purse a red lizardskin case tied in silver. “To
go with the diamond bracelet he already got me, I’m
spoiled I suppose, but this is to say welcome back, for
my nerves. You know, we were really quite concerned
about you when we heard you’d been robbed.”
“Then how come I didn't get anything,” I said.
Mother slipped her fingernails under the glued edges
of the wrapping and snapped off the sticker seal – out
came a lustrous turquoise case. Inside lay a golden
pendant in soft down, a serpent the size of a coin, an
ouroburos flecked with a ruby eye, blazing in the sun.
“Oh it’s beautiful,” she shrieked. The necklace glit-

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tered in the sealight, swinging as she drew it beneath

her ears, and pulled back her faded hair. Now she slid
her hand over his, both resting on the spattered paper.
Medine's shock of grey lifted and the stone eyes looked
upon me and settled back down.
“I hope it’s sufficiently unique,” he said.
“It's perfect,” mother said, pulling her red lips into a
smile. She kissed him on the cheek. Her marble eyes
drifted to mine, held a moment, and I looked away, re-
pelled. I took my napkin and folded it under the ridge
of the plate. “At my age I can only wear gold. Not like
Lily! Such a beautiful time in her life,” she added, “she
must have so many nice things by now.”
"Not too many," said Medine.
"So many soon!” mother laughed and drank. The
filtering clouds cleared and the deck shone with light.
Mother cried out, squinting and rubbing her eyes. “Oh!
It hurts!” Working fast, she buckled on her dark glass-
es. Sweat began rolling down her face as Medine
patted her hand.
“Well,” said my futile mouth. “Stanford’s back.
Huzzah for me. Can you taste the excitement? Offi-
cially my last three months.”
“Tell me what it's like there,” yawned Michael, still
swirling his teacup, which he held up in the breeze.
“Are there many parties. Are the girls happy there, in
the sororities.”
I picked at a squid head. “All suck the cock of the
dark lord.”
“I think that’s repulsive.”
“Many things are repulsive,” I said. “But that

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doesn’t stop them from happening.”

By now Michael’s hand was on her knee. I put
down the squid head and looked at them, pushing my
plate away. Michael took a long gold sip of tea and
swallowed wolflike, watching me with the coins of his
eyes. Scowling, I stood up. I walked away and up the
pyramid decks, as high as I could go. After several
flights of stairs I came to the top of the boat.
Down the whole yacht lay, a blade in the sea, and
over the roar and my thinking I still heard the noble
jets. The symmetrical prow lay ahead, unfolding its
white decks like doves’ wings. Dry bubbles soured the
throat of my flute. The straw bubbles clung and died.
My stinging eyes gazed: for ten minutes I stood alone
on that deck by the rear mast, facing the islands, list-
less, staring at the rocks and staring at the water in the
rocks, at the booming jagged pores belching the same
sea, the same salt that enveloped everything.
There the cataract foam poured from eyeholes in the
crags, and, beyond, the slag plain of the islands spread
out on the ocean. The exhaustion of the days broadcast
from me and I was like all of them below, hunted by the
others, but unlike them I wanted only to escape, and to
help my friends escape.
On all decks the people milled in cotton and linen
and silk. Leaning their elbows over the embrasures,
they let silver leak from their shirtsleeves, spilling
down over the yacht’s lip hands which their educated
brains conducted in dances expressing the having and
the knowing of wealth: hands which mimicked with
long ivory fingers graceful gestures acquired at the tel-

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 THE PENINSULA

evision and movie screen, slow trailing touches and the

gathering up of other hands and the stroking of plati-
num and gold watches and rings, of expensive cellular
phones, and the warm clinking of bracelets which
beckoned their loved ones nigh and eager.
“Now is that a Bessemer? It is him, look!” Woman
voices broke out and I saw the matchmaker conducting
Lily and Emma out of Acheron, pursued two decks
down by my mother, and I spun and went fleeing, guz-
zling champagne, a blast of sun nearly knocking me off
my feet as the barque rolled in the surf.
I ran to the opposite edge of the deck and looked
down into the water. But the fat head of the matchmak-
er berthed the steps and the sisters came up behind her,
Lily climbing slowly. They had me trapped and what
could I do so I drank. They crossed through the wind.
Now the matchmaker began to speak, juggling her
breasts with her elbows as she prayed to me, “Bessemer
I must know how you got an invitation to this little sor-
tie,” – always the wrong word – “because of all
disreputable young men around town, I would not have
picked you for it, not to come this far north, not for nice
afternoons on boats, no your mother wouldn’t invite
you even, I suppose it must be one of the Medines who
singled you out in their kindness and where is that
young lady of your own.” Lily put a hand over her
mouth and giggled.
“She couldn't really come,” I sighed.
“Rough night last night,” repeated Lily.
“Yes, well, it requires a certain insanity to make it
out here,” I huffed, and they stared back at me blind in

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a uniform sundress that seemed stretched three-

patterned across them all. Above us a chime sounded
on deck, drawing couples trippant to the stern, dangling
shards of cocktail from their bracelets.
“What’s that?” said Emma.
“It must be for the sharks, Emma,” said Lily. “Do
you remember what that man was saying?” We drew to
the deck that faced the islands.
Over the roaring sea a scientist walked out on the
boat's side wing, carrying a steel bucket – a thin reedy
bespectacled man in tan khakis with a badge proclaim-
ing his powers of research and deduction. Below him
the waves roared as high as walls, whitecapped sheets
that rocked the boat in its chains, pulling the smaller
craft about, colliding them, unminded by the deckgaz-
ers who had silently towards the prow.
Forcemeat slopped from the scientist's bag and
soaked his rubbers with the slit guts of fish, vermeil in-
testine, and then emerged the head of a seal he had
harvested, a glossy auburn apple he palmed like a ball
and pitched over the side. The brown skull spun a mo-
ment in the waters, then sunk beneath the silvery cloud.
“Yuck,” said Emma. “Sharks aren’t cool.”
“All flesh is grass, and the goodliness thereof is as
the flower of the field,” I mumbled, and began to laugh
in pity.
“What did you say?” burped the matchmaker.
“What did you say just then?”
“O flesh, flesh, how art thou fishified!”
“Oh, that’s Shakespeare, we read him in school!”
Emma cried. “You are educated!”

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 THE PENINSULA

As the wind rose and chopped spindrift over the

decks the scientist hucked more meat over the side,
dipping in his elbow to scoop up what he could. Then
he took hold of the bucket and heaved with all his
strength the whole red gout into the sea. Within the tor-
rent went eyeballs and a soupy rope of gut.
“I can't look,” said Emma. She spun and tried to
bury her face in my shirt, but I stepped off and nearly
cudgeled the matchmaker in my haste to avoid her.
“It's science dear,” Lily said. “It’s only science.”
She lay her silver hands on the girl's shoulders, and I
looked over but of course she could not see me. Below
us the old man Perkins called to the scientist, who
turned around on the wing and showed his bloody
gloves and smiled beneath his spectacles.
Then we waited and felt the wind rise and go away
and rise again, and silence fell on deck. Medine stood
with my mother on the prow, and in the pause I saw
him look back to me. He raised his glass but I did not.
And all at once sea birds fell into the red slick like
missiles, plashing with their wings and drawing up their
beaks to devour the hunks of seal and what small fish
had come. We watched, all silent, as the birds shrieked
weltering in the black glass of the surf, and then sud-
denly rose up together, tearing over the boat into the
sky.
Then beneath the feast white shapes rose from the
depths, sinews flipping over and over and twisting into
screws of grey muscle that shone below, and as the
couples astern made utterances and lacquered fingers
covered painted lips, the great white sharks of the Pacif-

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 PACIFIC OCEAN

ic Ocean drew up to consume the offerings made: and

all the hungry mouths swam silently out, sifting their
jagged fangs, ramming and battering their seaflesh,
tearing and swallowing, and without making any sound
they drank salt and blood and perpetrated no death but
what had been offered to them, and absolutely no in-
formation passed between us.

211
 12
Beauty, that indifferent gargoyle, flees Stanford
campus until the first day of spring. Then the snap re-
leases the sun over the crimson hills and warm breezes
skirt the fountains brimming with winter rain, and sun
inflates the mood. Students lounge on lawns with red
beer cups, weekends add to themselves at least another
day, girls tan and exercise, and forgiveness becomes
possible. Stray trumpets in Braun announce evenings
on the peaceful lakeshore, laptop and lover in hand.
But this would come later, and the cruel winter faced
us.
October came, October passed, the penumbra of the
year. Lily and I grew close. We never spoke in public
or even mentioned one another, but the silent bond per-
sisted. We would meet sometimes in the streets or
parks, or she would slip away from the dinners Medine
held – we would talk for hours where no one could dis-
cover us. We maintained this masque for those weeks,
permitting ourselves only whispers and kisses stolen

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and few words spoken, and I did not even defile her,
more from protectiveness than anything, protecting her
ideal.
She was a form of purity, but I could not announce
her to anyone, I felt I could not, and soon I went free
against her will to deliver to those whores and
nonwhores I enumerated to you, and I went also with
Lily whenever I desired. I did not sleep with her; she
would not let me.
“Do you think they will ever know about us?” she
asked, twining her hair as she lay on my chest in the
back of my car.
“I don’t care. They don’t care. We don’t care.”
“Well, it makes me very tired,” she said, and fell
asleep.
We slipped out of Atherton to be alone, escaped
coastward to oyster shacks on Point Reyes and Mexican
eurekas hidden in the San Francisco Mission – we ate
the bounty of the golden land in the glorious new centu-
ry, explored the horse country in Bodega and the dusky,
autumn reaches of Napa Valley.
She told me that her uncle sometimes hit her, but she
would not fault him for it; the violence came from the
stress of his position. She would not say whether his
reach extended to her sister, and my questions went
nowhere – it was a topic she clearly wished to avoid.
Storms descended on that autumn and would not lift,
flying down like bats on the Alaskan winds, so we
spent long weekends in Tahoe and drove down High-
way One along the twists of the coast. I was happy to
see the expression on her face when she felt the iron

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and tackle of a mare against a rainy hillside in the Sier-

ra trails. Because the wealth protected us and our
parents did not care for us, no one questioned where we
went. And as the days passed her clear eyes grew dark
with retreat, and then blackened entirely.
In the third week of October Lily’s depression came
like a conflagration. She brought out bottles and bottles
of pills which she consumed coughing and crying and
cutting her wrists, losing ten pounds and going half mad
in distrait. All of a sudden she would not see me any
more, and I guessed that Michael had discovered us. It
was true. At his command she went away for a week to
New York, taking her sister with her – Medine said she
was to publish her thesis there, but everyone in Ather-
ton knew that he wanted to avoid a scene. To me, she
would say only that everything would be fine when she
returned.
Bonn, too, disappeared into the pristine bowels of
Goldman Sachs, surfacing not once in protest. His
youth had ended. Worse, Mother had dashed off
straight to Canada, and I learned nothing from her about
my father’s note – twice on the phone she crossly evad-
ed questioning, and then she refused to answer me. She
thought I wanted more money.
I searched everywhere for my father’s files, but
found nothing except a stash of ancient pornography
hidden behind a bathroom panel. Without much cash, I
moldered through a routine of turkey sandwiches, hot
tubs at the Circus Club, hazelnut lattes, evening jogs,
and bottomless worry. Mostly I sat home and medicat-
ed, day trading or clicking randomly through vivid porn

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banners and ad-games hawking caricatures of President

Bush. My thoughts diversified into specks. I spent
days plopped in the massage chair at the Stanford
Shopping Center, brooding until Mexican clerks ban-
ished me home. I ate smallish hens conjured by the
housekeeper and drank what fresh-squeezed orange
juice the withered teats of my state’s orchards could
provide. Once I drove to San Francisco, but the wind
and fog froze me home. I even wrote a little. This was
my imagined lavender future – I had become powerless.

Looking down from the key windows into the yard

of my childhood and watching all of blue Atherton sink
into shadow, I froze again into ice. There was some-
thing inimical about the sight of those magenta
mansions settling like pyramids into the dusk – the
dwellings of my pretty friends and their newmoney fa-
thers, our glorious neighbors, and all the other
progressives of this new century, technologists and
functionaries and debutantes, mayors, CEOs, provosts,
senators – gentry – that made me hate womankind, even
Lily, and realize how nicely they'd all been bought,
their feminism and women's lib swept straight out from
under them with a glittering rope.
They'd found men who'd barbecue a steak dinner
once a week to show their family spirit, who'd loft them
to company events and introduce them as their wives,
who’d eat humble pie and never beat them or yell, cer-
tainly, who’d direct medium interest towards their fat-
legged spawn, who’d call them Evelyn, my beautiful
wife, not dear or darling, and who’d pay for everything

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under the sun. These men were whipped enough to as-

sume whole religions in the service of marriage, to
pretend to care, even, about the environment or politics.
It was all the same.
I realized they were all damn weak and couldn't be
trusted, not even Lily, unless I controlled her, and con-
trolling her meant fucking her. So I never told her
about the note.
I waited, uninterested in anyone else. Sobriety over-
took me, my body swimming in an overdue sea of
healing, the nerve fibers and lymph nodes loosening
under the flush of renewed blood from my arteries, the
tendons stretching and lubricating, the flesh purging
alcohol deposits in sour sweat that soaked my sheets,
my brain sucking up oceans of pure water from my sys-
tem, replenishing memory and will and awakening
slowly a state of maddening, desirous thirst, a fire-
breathing desert thirst culled from a million miles of
dream. Dangerous fugues began in my mind, theories,
signs of life: I could barely control what regenerated.
I understood my generation’s disease. Withdrawn
from depth, we had shattered our consciousness and
burst our lives into tiny fragments, then soaked them in
booze. I saw how I walked through my days in a bifur-
cated haze – forward-striving, head down, my ideals
broken into milliseconds, unable to concentrate for
longer. The one thousand desires of youth had scat-
tered to a portfolio of endpoints, and the navigant stood
baffled in the center of their spinning compass: nothing
remained for the journey: there was no journey. But we
could not complain without seeming ungrateful, so no

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 STANFORD BY DAY

one understood us. Our pain was dismissed, laughed

away by our money.
Then Medine called me into his office on the morn-
ing before Halloween, prank day at Stanford, a bitter-
slate Friday beneath an incoming squall. I got up from
bed, stretched, and suckled about three gallons of water
from the brass sink in the bathroom, then took a hot
shower. The housekeeper had left lilac soap atop some
fresh towels, the white scent smoldering. Awake, I set
out for the offices of Gina Ventures.

During those years, a pregnant river swelled the ven-

ture funds with cash, and unsuspecting entrepreneurs all
over the Bay Area began to get rich again. As they got
rich they sang the song of the valley and this was its
song:
Got me a CS degree – honor roll, MIT, moved to Pa-
lo Alto and opportunity knocked. Thought I had the
perfect plan, took a job at WebVan, traded in my twen-
ties for a worthless pile of tech stock. Suffered through
the market crash, lost a giant wad of cash, pink slips,
burger flips, would you like some fries?
Happy days are here again: Larry Page, Sergey
Brin, time to write a business plan so I can be like those
guys! First you need a buzzword, then a second and a
third: pick at least two industries you'll revolutionize –
find yourself an engineer, feed him pizza, buy him beer,
give him just a fraction of a fraction of the pie.
Need a good domain name – must be cheap, can't be
lame, something cool like Flickr, Meebo, WikiYou, Ma-
halo, Bebo, "telephone" without the "t", "Digg" but with

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 THE PENINSULA

a triple "g": make your elevator pitch, code it up and

flip the switch! Blog, blog, blog it all: blog it if it’s big
or small: blog at the Cineplex: blog while you're having
sex: blog in the locker room: babies blogging in the
womb: blog even if you’re wrong: won’t you blog about
this song?
Launch party, nicely dressed – what’s the point? –
sausage fest: blue shirt, khaki pants, looking like a line
of ants. Need to get a Facebook page, all these guys
are half my age – twenty nine, past my prime, I feel so
behind the times. Here comes another bubble – in a
year we swear we'll all be billionaires.
Make yourself a million bucks, partly skill, mostly
luck – now you can afford a down payment on a small
house. If you want a bigger one, Hillsborough, Ather-
ton, better hope the same thing happened to your
spouse. IPO – lucky you, have your cake and eat it too.
Party yacht, party jet, why not buy a matching set?
Build yourself a rocket ship, blast off on an ego trip,
can this really be the end? Back to work you go again.
On Sand Hill Road, money transacts and it transacts
in the accounts of venture capitalists like Michael Me-
dine. Though situated on some of the most expensive
real estate in the country, their offices remain nonde-
script halls of brownstone, plank and agate, sentried by
poplars and by the thorns of old ridge oaks, cordoned
up the hill from Stanford University and arrayed behind
sprinklers, hedges, and fleets of luxury sedans. They do
not build skyscrapers because of how humble they are.
Sand Hill, the only straight road for miles, ascends
through them towards the freeway and the hills, while

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 STANFORD BY DAY

Hoover Tower’s red dong pokes from the eucalyptus-

wall a mile off, marking the campus vein where these
fanciful investors forge young ideas into wealth.
“Anyone who wears a suit is a slave,” Michael had
said. At work he wore only tailored jackets of rugged
yataghan and tweed and wool above eternally pleated
khakis and brown suede shoes. His total eradication of
the necktie announced his ascent to the upper tier of
Californian finance. Under his jackets he would wear
black tee shirts and turtlenecks, or muted collars of ol-
ive, mauve, and white, or sometimes, on Fridays, bright
fitted polos and stonewashed jeans to accentuate his
elan sportif. His unassuming clothes made him very
popular, and so did his rapidly compounding bank ac-
count.
A venture capitalist is judged by his track record,
and because the biggest hits return two or three hundred
times your money you only need one success to enter
the pantheon of the big swinging dicks of Sand Hill
Road. Except they weren’t big swinging dicks, this be-
ing an elitist New York term – they were humble
intellectual men interested in technology, and interested
in you.
Michael’s hit had been his early investment in Sun,
which, on the five hundred thousand the Gina fund in-
jected in 1990, returned eighty dollars for every ten
cents at the height of the bubble, which, incredibly, was
when he sold. So the five hundred thousand became
four hundred million, and this made his reputation for-
ever – his investors slapped him on the back and poured
him scotch and became less interested in his future. My

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 THE PENINSULA

father went on to make twice as much for the fund, but

that is another story.
The Dot Com Boom was the only time in history
that this was possible. Michael never hit big again, but
no one cared because he reminded them of the days be-
fore the bubble burst, and for a while he got to keep his
fund and his offices on Sand Hill Road. But now it had
been ten years since Sun Microsystems went public, my
father was dead, and Michael’s investors were losing
money. They were pissed about that. So he was selling
the fund and getting into politics, which was at least
predictable.

The Gina Ventures secretary pushed her bulging tits

from her yellow blouse by wriggling her brown shoul-
ders. In my imagination she took her hands and placed
them on the sides of her breasts and pushed them to-
gether, offering them like forest truffles. Her shoulders
flecked brown and she blushed at me and leaned over
the plate-glass desk that Michael had bought her. Now
she immediately set down her pencil and took off her
fashion glasses, coy and bookish, and I took her by the
hand and led her into the coat closet, where I delivered
her a swift and savage rodgering.
“Jacob Bessemer is here,” she telecommed in her
sweet voice, oxford shirt striped with perspiration, and I
went up the ornate oak staircase that somehow some-
time had cost my family a hundred thousand dollars.
Upstairs, associates – bright-eyed ex-entrepreneurs
sold into finance – scattered down the halls in tailored
blue shirts and tight slacks, wagging their bicycle-

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 STANFORD BY DAY

honed asses. A grizzled founder in sneakers straddled a

mesh throne in the smallest conference room, arguing
with a scythelike blond VC who spoke and then shout-
ed and then rose to his feet. Rolling his eyes, the
founder pulled a silver phone from his pocket, stared
into it, and pushed to leave. “You guys are such ass-
holes,” he sighed as he yanked open the door.
In his Congo-themed corner office, Medine flipped
around in his mesh chair and extended a paralyzing
handshake, unclipping his glasses with his free fingers
and folding them on his desk. Outside, the associates
scampered to and fro braying out the deals to be done,
and Medine stepped by to close the door. Then he sat
down and turned off his phone, surrounded by the cedar
plane of his desk.
Around him glowed four flat panels of light mounted
on black arms: they scrambled the shimmering icons of
blogs with the patina of legal print, showing him where
he had put others’ money and how much of it he had
won and lost. They showed him brilliant technologies
created by young people. They told him how to reach
them. Again he spun around in his chair, a gigantic
grey child. He raised his arms, then braided his hands
through his mane, and spun back to face me. The blue
foothills lifted in relief from the window behind him,
patched in mist.
“My nieces return tomorrow,” said Medine. “You’ll
join us at our Halloween party. And you will, in the
future, keep away from Lily.”
“Do you have any alcohol,” I inquired. “Because
being around you requires me to drink.”

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 THE PENINSULA

“As if it was possible to have a higher opinion of

you, Jake,” he went on. “Fortunately I’m thirsty too.”
He hammered on his phone and an associate crawled in
grinning and whistling and deposited two bottles of pu-
rified, five-dollar water.
“Would you like some fresh ginger?” the associate
chuckled.
“No,” I said.
Medine had already picked up a sheaf of reports on
his desk and was paging through them. “All these
companies, I don’t understand where they get their
names. Zoom. Zivity. ZiggidySplit. Scribd. Yypr.
What is that? What the hell is that name? Christ, let
Goldman sort it out.” Over us, two mammoth scrolls of
African provenance unfurled, jagging faces and animals
hooting and hollering.
He leaned back in his chair. He told me that he paid
his associates two hundred thousand dollars a year for
their chiseled masculine behinds and winning smiles.
He told me that running a fund was great business and
fortunately for me it was also a family business. He
said even if I was an ungrateful and malformed little
sperm he saw a place for me at the analyst level if I
would only make an effort to play ball. He even of-
fered me a job right there and I told him to offer it to
Bonn once Gina was acquired, because I didn’t intend
to work.
“More great ideas,” Michael said. “You’re a real in-
novator. Convert your stock into pennies!” As if
cheered, he drained his bottle in one chugging gulp and
kicked up his chestnut shoes onto the tribal-print desk.

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 STANFORD BY DAY

A stuffed macaque in a cage peered down at us in hor-

ror. “Fortunately,” he continued, “I have something for
you to do.”
“Why would I do anything for you?”
“Because I am offering you cash for the dogshit
stock in your trust fund, Jake. Evelyn just needs to sign
off and I will wash my hands of you forever, which I
am sure we both desire. Unfortunately your mother has
a religious quality, much like your late father, and she
wants to examine the patents herself. Well, that is all
right, if she can read them. But they are locked up in
your safe, and she has the only key, for which we must
wait.” He picked at one of his square front teeth. “This
other matter involves one of your friends. In fact, it is
important to me because your friend owns some stock
that is hard to get ahold of. You know who I am speak-
ing of? The Facebook kid, Zilker. A piece of that
would make the Goldman deal go much more smooth-
ly.
“Here is the idea: your success will determine how
much cash I pay you for your trust, whether I pay any-
thing at all. Which will determine whether you have to
spend your twenties in some cubicle hell like the rest of
your generation. I thought you wanted to help your
friends?”
“It depends which friends. And where is that safe
you mentioned?”
“You should ask your mother.”
“She won’t speak to me because of you.”
His gray lips chuckled and he glanced out the win-
dow.

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Well,” he said, “you need to get better at lying.”

That is how Cyan Zilker got rich at twenty-one.

“Entrepreneurship is my life,” he said at breakfast.
He came from Seattle. He had the habit of inviting
people to dinner who weren’t really his friends, and
talking long into the night about the minutia of the In-
ternet. He read books on ethics and social capitalism,
the way to get rich without breaking too many bones,
and when people screwed up he would preach to them
about honor and how he'd have done it – principled liv-
ing he called it, the principled way to conduct life
attuned to the universal laws of social effectiveness, the
straight path diligence and success, which wasn't hard if
you bled American blood. He read every technology
blog. He majored in computer science because he im-
agined that it was the only degree that would make any
money, and he was very liberal because he knew it
would get him into heaven. Once, when he began to
doubt the Democratic Party, he had his father buy him a
Prius.
By habituating himself to a stringent life-plan sug-
gested to him by the examples of Warren Buffett,
Donald Trump, and Mark Zuckerberg, good Americans
all, by exercising for ninety five minutes a day and
avoiding the consumption of impact carbohydrates after
midnight and certainly alcohol on weekday nights and
all drugs; by eradicating verbal miscues from his speech
and enunciating clearly and with all the force of his un-
derstated baritone delivering truthful and honest words
to the motley collegiate multitude; by dressing ingen-

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iously to reinforce his sprouting self image, by wearing

tailored clothes and keeping them first and foremost
clean and lightly starched, laundered with colorsoap
and fabric softener, and second conservatively chosen
in pastel hues, yet spiked with precise articles of flair (a
metal bracelet, embroidered cuffs) that betrayed his ad-
venturesome sartorial nature; by filling his electronic
contact tree and sending an email precisely once every
twenty-one days to all he considered on the right track
with him, and by making calls just to check in and for
no other reason, just to be considerate, and by never
saying anything negative at all, Cyan aimed to surpass
the demands of a country set to boomerang him back
into the disparaged middle class whence he had some-
how crawled. Everybody just hated him.
But he was reliable and loyal and made me feel pro-
tected, like a trained dog, and he would work harder
than anybody. He had been with me all of Stanford. I
found him in the campus bookstore, wired out of his
mind on caffeine, purple rings under his eyes, studying
like a Chinese schoolgirl. He looked up at me from his
bench, tanned, chestnut hair slicked and spiked like a
teenager’s. A broad silver panel lay in front of him,
resplendent with a glowing white apple.
This he closed immediately, slipping from the screen
a black sheet of plastic which polarized oblique light,
protecting his computer from any eyes but his own.
A white-capped chunk of metal lay next to this, trail-
ing white wires to stubs which he slipped from his ears,
rocking his head slightly as he swirled his thumb and
silenced them. He slipped the player into the black

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 THE PENINSULA

leather case clipped to his belt. He turned his head, pre-

tending to look over at the café.
A chip of blue metal sat in the spikes above his ear, a
wedge-shaped blue headset.
“Are you kidding me?” I said.
“What,” he said.
“You look like a robot.”
“Technology – it’s for the good of all of us,” he
beamed, “except the ones who are dead.” Everyone
around looked up in irritation, and he smirked and
gripped my hand as he rose. We stepped outside onto
the flagstones, where sun streamed down through rips
in the sky.
The wind had come over Stanford, shaking jewels of
water from cupleaved trees, sending them splashing off
the ivy on the walls down the causeway. I smelled it.
It was a familiar wind, the fast blade wind off the foot-
hills that picks up the scents of the oaks and pines on
the ridges and brings them down to the sea and city,
predicating a storm.
Around the whipping hedges, the red stone had
soaked a deep brown from the morning shower. Stu-
dents spun past, unheeding the spray, some sodden,
some carefully wrapped in plastic, others scuttling be-
neath umbrellas or wet books. The cover of a
paperback Juliet looked over at me, splayed on the head
of a fat kid. As we spoke, the wind blew the clouds
white, then translucent, and the sun pooled and caused
growth.
“What can you possibly be studying?” I asked Cyan.
“A book on time management my professor told me

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 STANFORD BY DAY

to read, and which you really should read too, the best
tips on organization I’ve seen. It all involves lists. It’s
prioritized, synergized. I’ve been microblogging all
morning. Have you tried? You’ve got to get on Twit-
ter.”
“I can’t be seen with you.”
“Be a fountain, not a drain,” he stammered. “How
was Europe?”
“Full of gypsies, and England was full of gays.”
“Sounds like San Francisco.”
“I was robbed.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No, but I’m still rich.”
“Well, of course,” his eyes flickered. His speed tri-
pled a normal human’s. “Maybe you can help – my
brother can’t decide what to major in at USC.”
“He likes English, right? He told me that once. The
world needs English majors.” English: larger and larg-
er words spun around worries kicked up by Joyce and
Nabokov and all the others centuries back, a massive
cocoon that gets more irrelevant each year.
“He'd go nuts. And anyone could do it – not chal-
lenging,” Zilker affirmed.
“Psych?” We psych majors regard your words with
a little smirk, as if we know what you are feeling. Even
if you’ve just bumped into us with an “Excuse me,” the
little smirk registers – there is something we know. We
inevitably produce demonic and overstimulated chil-
dren.
“Only evil people take psych,” he said, grinning
through white needle-teeth and clapping me on the

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 THE PENINSULA

back.
“Econ? Lots of jobs, not too hard.” Usually a pleas-
ant group, since few of them learn enough to talk about
economics.
“Hates charts.”
“He could study business.”
“That is what he is talking about. But I don't want
him to get stupid,” he said.
“He’s at USC, how can he get any stupider?”
In a flurry of clear sunshine we walked across the
court to the café. The line forced us out the door, and a
band of undead old white men had started playing jazz
on the patio, clearing the tables three deep on all sides.
They were dancing and stepping and fiddling the brass.
That is Silicon Valley and Stanford: blaring trumpets
at eleven on a drizzling Tuesday in premature winter,
and everyone too sleep-deprived, too ambitious to com-
plain. Vengeful geezers with saxophones hooked up to
speakers, getting in your face, getting a piece of you
with their bad Coltrane and floppy hats and tip jar, their
resurrected New Orleans. And a bunch of self-
obsessed, stressed out techies crouched over laptops
sipping fifty cents of coffee under three dollars of foam,
trying to look like they’ve got the next great underage
idea.
He knows Guy Kawasaki, someone in line says.
Really? I hear he throws great parties. He’s such a
guru. Someone else is on first name basis with Larry
and Sergey. Someone else has got a sweet company, a
great new site – they’re going to IPO for sure – I hear
just closed a serious up round, they gotten into

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 STANFORD BY DAY

TechCrunch – I hear Kleiner’s got the banks talking –

did you see that press release? The other VCs are rav-
enous, delirious, masturbating. They want a piece, for
sure. Is he wearing Bruno Maglis? Check out his blog.
He’s a great writer, a great guy. The blog’s great. It’ll
teach you all about semiconductors. It will. It Will
Teach You All About Semiconductors. He’s only
twenty-three, a total wizard with Rails. And have you
checked out Zazzle.com? It’s a great company, a hot
team, a really interesting market. They can customize a
tee shirt in twelve hours. Any tee shirt. They delivered
the first one in forty minutes. The guy was in his bath-
robe and flipped out – they delivered it right to his door
in forty minutes. Isn’t that a funny story? God, I could
study that site for days it’s so interesting. Really, it’s
great.
We tried to escape the jazz band but because of the
crowd ended up across the patio near the roaring foun-
tain. I shouted, “Tell me!”
“What!” he shouted.
“Christ.” He pulled his chair around the table. The
fountain bellowed, combining with the strident jazz.
“Tell me whether Zuck’s going to sell the compa-
ny!” Facebook was getting offers left and right.
Cyan’s face crumpled. “I thought he would actually
do it.” He stared at the table with red eyes. “The bank-
ers said we would get twelve times revenue, but, oh
God, he won't, in the end, he can’t bring himself to
sign.” He had leaned his pale face in his hands, and his
cheeks bunched up over his palms. “He’s too attached
to what it’s made him.”

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As he talked I ate my lox bagel and leaned against

the blasts of jazz. Though again a student, Cyan
dropped out a year to work for the Facebook under
Zuckerberg, when its invasion of Stanford had just be-
gun. Now he sat on a slug of private, illiquid stock
worth several million dollars.
Zuckerberg had called two years ago out of the blue
after seeing Cyan’s pulp article in the Stanford Daily on
cell phones and social networking. Facebook wasn’t a
new idea – it had been done before by Friendster, which
eventually scuttled itself under a krewe of outsourced
Ukranian engineers, but Facebook’s smart revision was
to build an exclusive community for college students,
giving status-hungry kids the equivalent of social rank-
ings through the number and quality of friends they
amassed online – the site baited our vanity. It was psy-
chology economized.
Now Zilker was back finishing his degree, and sit-
ting on nonqualified, nontransferrable stock options
about to expire into valueless ash. Since he had left, the
company would not renew them, and he couldn’t afford
the taxes necessary to convert them into stock. That is
what Medine had discovered.
“What's your stake again, two tenths of a percent?”
“Three, fully diluted, if I exercise in time! Every-
thing expires soon. Last month’s valuation is FIVE
BILLION. Oh my God.” Fizz squirted out of his ears.
“Three tenths of a percent of five billion. That's,
like, fifteen million dollars. Vested?”
“Fully vested, I would price at the sale with him.”
“And what would Zuckerberg sell if there was an

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IPO?”
“Fifty percent of the company,” he quavered, leaning
back on his chair legs. “It's almost unbelievable at
twenty three. It would change my life. And to think of
what he has! To think of how much he has!” He
sucked in breath and his tongue went playing over his
thin, grain-eating lips.
“He doesn’t have it yet.”
I placed a grape on my tongue and snapped it into a
cold jewel of nectar. I looked past Cyan into the gaze
of a girl sitting on the other side of the fountain. She
felt her napkin and stared past the little girl sitting with
her, at the people in the café. She had a swimmer’s
body and a golden face and straight blonde hair, and I
watched her and something triggered in memory did I
own her but Cyan's chattering distracted me. A big
grey dog, a mastiff, strode in across the patio stones,
dragging its master, and she turned with a wan smile
and gazed after it for a while, and the band stopped
their racket to change instruments and she looked down
and reached for her water glass, and sounds and sights
and thoughts went into her in rhythms and colors and
words, and joined synesthetically in her mind and her
environment dominated her because she could find
nothing inside to hold onto: her mind was blown down
and around by the sensations of the café and I saw it.
“Hold on,” Cyan said. He removed a buzzing panel
from his pocket and unfolded it. The sound it shrieked
was neither music nor noise, and dampened in the air.
Around us, people at the tables rooted in their pockets
to confirm whether their phones were ringing, but only

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Zilker's was, so they looked back down again and ate

and spoke.
“It’s him!” Cyan wailed. “God, Mark, hello!
You’re coming to the game? Oh, great! We’ll see you
then! Hasta!”
“Sorry,” he cried.
“Zuckerberg’s coming?” I was looking off at the
girl. “Are you going to give him head?”
“Don’t mock him. He’s on campus now – let’s go.”
The Zucking billionaire.
“What about the vision he’s always talking about
when he gives those interviews,” I asked him. “The
New Social Consciousness?” Where everyone’s mind
connects online and everyone knows what everyone
does and exactly why and there is no difference be-
tween you and me only a gradient of mutual friends
connecting us like flies in a web of grey undulating
slime–
“He wants to grow the company, sure, but he also
wants to stay in as CEO. He's still out to improve the
world. It’s his right to do what he wants, Jake.”
“It’s amazing,” I sniffed. “Doesn’t he ever take Ad-
derall? He misses the bigger idea of the company. The
idea is to quantify social power and let people believe
they have some control over it, so they won’t feel so
powerless.”
“The first users of a new technology are not the peo-
ple who’ve got it all together, Jake. They’re the people
who benefit.”
“Nerds. Well, the Internet is changing the way we
interact all right,” I churned, bored now. My mouth

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read the blogroll of my mind. “Last week’s Economist:

the rise of the online community. The brotherhood of
man.” The coffee I’d paid for was getting cold. “Two
Schweppes,” I told the waiter. “No, never mind.”
What else do you say.
Zilker opened up indignantly: “Yes, but more than
that, for the first time in history technology is making it
possible to tailor everything to people’s needs. It’s the
end of mass production – it’s the beginning of mass
specialization, of consumers using their time instead of
money to shape their lives the way they want to, their
social lives, of people no longer buying into standard-
ized products, but getting things designed for them, or
that they design. Look at the Internet itself – it’s just a
book that customizes itself to your needs. And we’re
going to do that, take it one step further, we’re going to
take that same idea and apply it to communities, to rela-
tionships!”
“Oh great,” I snapped, sipping the cold coffee. He
always liked these little speeches. Beckoning to the
toddler, the swimmer girl uncrossed her legs and got
up, leaving a sepia imprint of her left leg in the skin of
her right. Our soda water came. She straightened her
skirt and draped her sweater over her shoulders. Her
collarbones deepened, ribs of brown. She said some-
thing to her charge, lowering her dusty eyes, and her
miniature stared blankly back. The girl looked across
the stones, under the shadows. A young man with a
laptop looked back at her and their eyes met. He smiled
and she looked away and he sipped his coffee and shift-
ed his head.

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Cyan was looking at me, tightening his lips and

probably his rectum. “What did you want to talk
about?” he asked.
“I might have a way to help you.”
His eyes fell. “My technology is secret,” he said.
“And you aren’t under NDA.” Like everyone at Stan-
ford he had been working on a “stealth” company. He
was always going on like this, as though anyone cared.
“Not your shitty new startup, douche bag,” I
laughed. “I know a way for you to get cash for your
Facebook options.”
At this he paused, wobbling like a ridiculous cobra.
Then he leaned in, trembling. “Jake, forgive me.
Sometimes I say the wrong thing. What did you say?”
“I get that feeling too. Fortunately I don’t care either
way,” I said. The café murmured out its lights and
sounds – circles of people chattering, chins splayed
above iron tables and white cloths and the goblets of
clear water, sending up ringed impressions into the cold
air. Cyan, gripping the edge of the table, fixed me with
a liquid stare.
“Go on,” he said firmly, thumbing his fork and plac-
ing it on his plate.
“Selling would make you very happy,” I replied,
shivering in the wind. A paper napkin went spinning
across the patio. “But we’re late. Drive me to class.”

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 13
Since I had delayed him, and delay drove him mad,
Cyan drove as fast as possible, which due to his flap-
ping vagina was not fast at all. I told him to take me to
the oval even though it would make me late for lecture.
I wanted to stretch my legs with a stroll.
Stuck behind a moving truck on Campus Drive, I
saw his eyes tighten – his mind immediately consumed
itself finding ways around the problem, to regain the
two or three miles per hour disparity in the aggregate
speed of the journey, to ensure that the destination was
not reached ten or fifteen seconds late, to be prudently
aware of other obstacles and hazards, the damn pedes-
trians about to cross the crosswalk up by Wilbur Field,
the joggers edging impudently from the bike lane, the
van pulling out sluggishly fifty yards ahead, the gigan-
tic puddle concealing a pothole. In his frantic eyes
glowed terrific cowardice.

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The drive tunneled into a straining race for achieve-

ment, bound by the handcuffs of good manners and the
innumerable whatifs society had clapped on in prepar-
ing him for Stanford. The cops, professors, parents,
teachers, recruiters – all screamed and fought each oth-
er in his head and boiled out his ears. I could see them
through the case of his skull: he was stuffed with prob-
lems of the world’s design. So he did not pull out onto
the shoulder to pass the truck (the cops, everywhere, all
seeing, might get onto a record, affect jobs, schools,
everything); he just growled under his breath, “Come
on, come on, come on.” It was a very dorky thing to
say, almost lifeless.
But the sentiment I understood: it’s the same with all
of us: it’s the same when we walk, heads down, pushing
our pace until our legs strain for no other reason than to
arrive at class before anyone else, to sit chattering,
checking email: it’s the same when we bike as fast we
can peddle, roaring through puddles with our music at
full blast, skidding around corners, eyes tense, ignoring
the implications of our surroundings and even the peo-
ple in them, even the people we call our friends who we
sometimes think we know. Come on, come on, come
on. Up the ladder.
“God damnit Jake, just tell me,” he said.
“So,” I said, opening and closing his glove com-
partment.
“The bankers called again last night about the IPO,”
he continued out of the side of his mouth, unstoppable
and poisonous. “They don’t know he’s going to pull
the deal. They are inhuman.”

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 STANFORD BY DAY

“What do you mean?”

“I mean they work all night. I can’t believe Ryan is
working at Goldman. I don't see how he could do it. I
gave the analyst who called me all the accounts for last
year and he turned it around by eight this morning, he
can't have slept.”
“If you want to make money reliably–”
“If you're smarter,” he cut in, a white glow seeming
to spring from his voice. Then he fell silent, his tongue
rubbing the belly of his upper lip. I saw the massy vein
on his knuckle bulge as his grip tightened. “If you
think a little you don't have to be a slave.”
“Is that your theory of entrepreneurship? Is that why
people start companies?”
“Success can be a reality. Liquidity is possible.”
“Ryan says he might work on the Facebook deal if
the timing's right, if Zuck decides to sell the company
after all.”
“How does Ryan know about the deal?” He looked
at me quickly, then swung back to the road. “There is
no deal.”
“Didn't you say I could tell him there might be an
IPO?”
“No,” he said, staring ahead. “I didn’t. Jake.” One
of the bulldozers working on Wilbur Field pulled out
onto the road carrying an enormous metal pipe. Cars,
dull polygons reflecting the grey light of the sky, had
piled up ten deep behind it. Cyan’s fingers drummed
the steering wheel. “It's highly confidential. Any ru-
mor would be extremely dangerous.”
The stifling little hybrid trundled liberally. “Well

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 THE PENINSULA

shit,” I said. “But don’t worry, he won't tell anyone

else.”
His lips coagulated into a half-smile and he looked
over at me with eyes newly kind. “It’s all right,” he
said. “I know you can’t control yourself. It won't
threaten our friendship.” It was all very faggy, and I
leaned against the door and let my breath redesign the
passenger window, staring out at the buildings.
“About the options,” he said.
“That’s a pile of cash you’re sitting on, in venture
terms. How much do you need to exercise?”
“Our 409a is around five dollars a share, and I have
seven hundred thousand. So, uh, taxes on three and a
half million dollars.”
“Jesus.”
“And when do they expire?”
“At the end of the year.”
“Jesus, that’s in three months.” Of course I knew all
this already. Medine had told me.
“I know. I just don't know how we're going to mon-
etize and get the current valuation. He’s not going to
sell. If you’re giving me an option, if you’re for real, if
you’re talking about who I think you’re talking about,
I’m shitting my pants. Well I've decided now, and I
want to sell. Tell me what you’ve got.” I could hear
his ego bubbling in his ears, fizzing like coke.
“No. If I told you my buyer I wouldn’t be much of a
broker. And don’t you need to get Mark’s approval to
sell shares? He has the right of first refusal.”
“Yes, but–”
“So we should talk to him before wasting any of my

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 STANFORD BY DAY

investor’s time.”
“I think–”
“Think different. He’ll be here this afternoon and it
would be an honor to meet the Zuck. The wunderchild,
he will lead us all from the valley of steel.”
“I don't know what you mean,” he said, and stopped
the car.
“You need some drugs.”
“No thanks.”
“Really because I think it would be a mind-opening
experience for you–”
“No, I'll see you right after class. Come get me at
Blyth at eleven. And thanks.”

It is a savage truth that Ryan, Cyan, and I are three

heads of the same person. That is to say, if you added
all of us up we would make a complete human being,
but as life had it we split into three bodies, each pos-
sessing a third of a mind. We hang together through
some loose law of gravity, like a faint constellation, and
each third bellows in loneliness and distress, and each
goes mad in a different way. But we are not alone;
fragmentation is the story of the age.
Strained with sardonic laughter, I got out at the top
of the oval and, since I was enjoying the drizzle, took
the slow way to class through the engineering quad. I
passed two well-heeled Japanese men in matching suits
who looked me up and down and clucked a joke as I
swaggered by. And sensations fed on me like predatory
birds, a kid laughing, the sun blasting through the
clouds, a pack of tendons writhing around my spinal

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 THE PENINSULA

cord. But nothing stuck – attention diffusing, spraying,

dying in apathy – sensations whirling this way and that,
ten milliseconds, ten milliseconds, no time to grasp or
hold or understand.
Now that I was back on campus my phone roared in-
cessantly in my pocket. I’m tired of consorting with
these insipid Stanford socialites, I’m tired of leasing my
attentions to morons and bores. I’ll never do it again.
It’s gotten worse. No time to reflect, nothing. Calm
down. There, there, a point, a structure. There: the Bill
Gates building faces Packard’s, arm wrestling with
geeky bucks. That’s the end of Cyan’s rainbow, a
foundation named after him. The Cyan Zilker Founda-
tion for Drug Addicts and Gangbangers Named Jake.
Kids clutching red folders sprinted up the steps to
the quad, this year’s applicants, prospective freshmen
arriving electrically fit, new and a little scared, the ones
from Atherton here first, tumbling out of gleaming rov-
ers to be herded from herds into other herds. Pairs
clambered down from giant roaring wagons and glossy
sedans and fiery sportscars. Get them into fraternities
fast, safely away. All of them become me.
The Gates Hall leered in passing, its every seat
equipped with a screen to allow the blind to see the lec-
turer. The screens are for the very many blind people at
Stanford who are interested in computer science: for the
many students with vision impairments towards whom
we must be tolerant, open, prepared for anything, pre-
pared for two hundred new computer science admits
who happen to have glass eyes: this is the reason we’ve
spent two thousand dollars times two hundred seats

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 STANFORD BY DAY

times five lecture halls to outfit the entire building. I

didn’t think Lily would be offended.
Class, class, Studies in Postmodern Feminist Em-
powerment. I became a dark spot among Stanford’s
trees, crossing the quad for Memorial Church. Wind
was blowing, crashing through the oak leaves as the
palms roared overhead, and the morning grew cold.
Others moved with me, white spots jabbering to them-
selves, some on bikes or skateboards; a tribe of
distracted, self-absorbed kids beginning another too-
certain year, the tribe I’d outgrown which clutched me
still. Bermuda tans and khakis and polos, a repletion of
logos – horses, alligators, Burberry scarves, a people, a
human race paddling together down and out, there to
kill time and bum some answers from their elders, make
an image, stuff a resume, stand out.
The freshmen turned plastic smiles and spat gossip,
striding to class puffed in five hundred dollar coats and
leather jackets, deflated deep in hooded grey sweat-
shirts, hands in pockets, moving in groups giggling,
evading all problems and all potential inequalities.
They hopped like toads between hourly glances at their
Facebook profiles.
A pond of ducks: surface feathers gleaming, legs
pumping desperately beneath. There – an urgent Indian
boy in glasses striding with his girlie, clutching her
hand, as she called to a pair of seniors across the
causeway who grinned back in Greek letters, staring
past the Indian boy with copper eyes like mine. They,
too, secretly roiled beneath their Greek tunics, only half
extant in the moment, worried what they would make

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next year, their parents bearing down from the East. As

they walked away from the girl and her shaken male the
seniors lapsed into silence, eying each other. Who
would make more in the end? Then they comforted
themselves by staring down another skinny boy hunch-
ing with his head down, buried in his music, busy
smiling at a dimpled Chinese girl and maintaining a
dance of hellos and glances that began in class one day
last year and for politeness’s sake would persist until
graduation, though they would never have a real con-
versation or even know each other’s names.
The two seniors started to crack a joke about it, com-
fortably superior until a master’s student loped by
hungrily speaking to a professor, eating up every word,
a Marshall Scholar. The seniors tightened their jaws
and walked on silently, and continued competing all
their biotechnologically-prolonged lives.
I stopped before class for a different stimulant. The
line for coffee stretched out, students whispering and
huddling against the cold, unaware of those around
them, uncaring – I saw people I knew and said nothing.
The libraries towered overhead, plating in mirror glass
a thousand computing minds.
The wind came off the hills and tried to freeze us
and everyone rocked forth to collect warmth from the
counter. The stand glowed with lights and rock music.
At least the Mexicans smiled despite the cold. Mother
tells me they are a servile race, eager to work, that they
enjoy it. But they can be outdone: a Vietnamese deli
artist at Andronico's spends fifteen minutes on each
sandwich and earns twice as much as any Mexican.

242
 STANFORD BY DAY

Servile, they cannot compete. They are shackled here

by apathy. Hopefully all of them hate us, hopefully
they piss in our drinks.
As the Mexicans dispensed foam or no-foam, sprin-
kled cinnamon and chocolate powder on coffee-heads
frothy with soy, and chattered to each other in Spanish,
I prated anxiously and thumbed through the pictures on
my phone – sundry nonwhores, whores, decrepit
friends. Where was Lily? My mind roved on. The fat
woman with plum lips waved me up, and I got my cof-
fee from her and was off down the main causeway,
leaving the Mexicans to their bean-shaped lives.
At the clock tower I bumped into a girl I had been
screwing sophomore year, a senator’s daughter, and by
the blood vessels spiking her eyes I saw that she had
been crying, but she assured me she was fine and I gave
her sticklike arm a squeeze and told her she looked
great and that we’d hang out for sure, that we would be
best friends forever.
Halfway to class I saw two huge baseball players in
Cyan's fraternity, and we walked together under the
arches of the education building, and the speed and
seeming vigor of the whizzing bikes elicited the brief
hope that my thoughts would subside. One player said
something about his girlfriend getting in a fight with
another girl. We all offered cursory anecdotes.
“A famous fustigator,” one recalled, “she liked to
cause women to die in childbirth. She would come to
pay her respects, bringing along a powder whose odor
would cause spasms and convulsions ending in–” but a
star-eyed freshman we hadn’t seen walked past, and the

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conversation dove into silence. Rabbit-face, from a

crown of honeyed hair, regarded our stares with rightful
trepidation and quickened her pace, very young and
smelling gamy.

They were twelve students taught by a poofy female

professor in a bow tie with a lisp. Together they
learned. Seeing a seat open next to the portly Nicara-
guan whose family owned all of that country’s gypsum,
I pressed down the side of the room, across the floor in
front of the professor and the whiteboard, up the other
side and across the table, forcing three people to stand
to let me by. I looked at that Latin boy.
He sat by the corner of the table, leaning back in his
chair, his thick legs crossed in jeans stonewashed and
scarred by expensive rips, bobbing bright white sneak-
ers embroidered with emerald alligators, and he wore a
starched oxford monogrammed in purple, his mane
poofing behind him, jet-black. Towards the professor
he directed the bored gaze of degenerate youth – of all
ingenious, moneyed young men to which bars are but
instruments of liberty. Gruffish, stubborn, and ill-
willed, he sent the cold eyes of his ancient wealth into
the backside of the professor, which wriggled in ver-
legenheit, earning no interest. When the Latin saw me
his lip upturned in a gilt sneer, and he shifted to open
the adjacent seat, which blazed with sunrays. When I
sat down he began to whisper.
"O divine air, breezes on swift winds, ye river foun-
tains and ye ocean waves, what tidings bring ye,
Bessemer? Of great birds of prey, is this I hear? What

244
 STANFORD BY DAY

of the fortunes of the night? What of Lily, who doth

teach the torches to burn bright? Pray not, like us, con-
fined to fast in fires – hung here in chains, nailed 'neath
the open sky. For I sought the fount of fire, and it hath
conveyed me 'neath Earth, 'neath Hell that swalloweth
up the dead: in Tartarus, illimitably vast, where ada-
mantine fetters bound me fast–"
"What the fuck?" I whispered.
"Do you have something to say," the professor told
us, and went on.
Thus I opened my laptop and began checking my
email and reading the news, the only thing I do during
class. As the professor speaks the children soak their
minds in Internet flowing from the walls and ceilings,
and wirelessness conquers education.
“When you read a book like Pirsig’s,” the professor
was saying, “There is absolutely no question that rheto-
ric is contextualized. In a sense, rhetoric flows, ah,
flows forth from the culture surrounding the rhetorician.
The soil his words grow in, if you please – rules that
were once thought to be set, psychological truths about
logic and argument – now seem indistinct from culture
and, ah, in a sense, from language itself.”
There is no value in education. It does not prepare
you to make wealth, and everyone knows it. It does not
prepare you to sleep with anyone, or to be happy. Fault
the bad professors, the professionals more concerned
with their research, reputation, and whatever books they
might be spinning than teaching. Fault the business
class that feeds its best students under the guise of a
fellowship into the professor’s personal venture fund.

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 THE PENINSULA

Even the most revered emeritus is loved only because

of the prestige he bleeds on his nearest acolytes, or for
the Nobel Prize framed in his living room. Stanford’s
only contribution is revealing its students’ unwilling-
ness to be taught. This is the only progenitor of
independent thought. Thus the mantra of Jacob Besse-
mer: universities are obsolete, universities must die.
What’s the point? You can watch every class online
without missing a beat. You can watch the best profes-
sors, dead professors. Fire all the living ones. Nor do
grades matter when Stanford has imposed a system of
point inflation to compete with Harvard and Princeton
(who, kowtowing to the network effect, quickly fol-
lowed suit). Outsiders do not believe it, but Stanford
props up grades by at least a letter. The hardest part, as
everyone knows, is getting in.
Yes, since students have become too distracted to
work hard enough to achieve, the administration works
for them, curving classes that should not be curved,
bumping up scores across the board and begging them
to retake anything that poses the slightest difficulty.
Freshman year, Ryan tried to fail simply to see if they
would let him. He signed up for an Engineering Aero-
dynamics class, took none of the tests, turned in none of
the homework, and attended only the first day. The
class simply dropped off his record and out of his GPA,
as if it had been an error. So we succeed because they
make it impossible to fail. But I didn’t want to succeed
that way – I wanted my inheritance and I wanted my
annuity and I wanted my lavender vision.
“So the question addressed here is the quality of

246
 STANFORD BY DAY

your lives and relationships. Your lives. You. The

problem Pirsig poses is that he says we know nothing
about quality, that we are mistaken in the way we see it,
so we form insincere relationships. Can anyone define
quality for me?” There was silence, and in fact no one
had heard the question. The professor persevered, ac-
customed to her room of empty minds. She looked out.
A wiry kid with a shock of brown hair, once inter-
ested in literature, now takes refuge behind the silver
screen of his laptop, his face illuminated faintly by the
glow – he appears perfectly polite, but he drifts among
ten open windows, chatting with his friends, looking at
pictures of himself, composing flattering emails, skim-
ming through the reading for another class.
A girl who wants to go into medicine binges out of a
plastic container of olives and hummus while she reads
the tabloid online. Simultaneously she checks the
news, sends messages to her mother, and looks at her
transcript to make sure her GPA has not dropped below
the requisite 3.7.
And a Nobel laureate’s grandson, eager to become a
policymaker, tries to pay attention but can’t hear any-
thing because of the swarm of thoughts in his head –
will he be able to ask Sarah to formal, can he do it by
email since its less painful, will that be pathetic, per-
haps he can use instant messenger, or just look up her
number on Facebook and call her, and in any case will
he live up to his grandfather’s name and marry young
so he can focus on his career, but when can he get home
to check his messages, and there might be something
he’s missing on CNN, some new terrorist attack, but

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probably not since his cell phone is rigged to deliver

him important headlines, and in any case he should fo-
cus on the lecture right now and he’s a truant because
he can’t – and down at his fingertips sit a thousand keys
to forgetfulness and as many images as his mind can
name.
“Denny, what do you think about quality?”
The younger Tesla looked up from his laptop, star-
tled. “I think what the author says in the second part of
the novel, after he reveals the implication that he is
himself the shadow character Phaedrus. It directly
starts him down the path to understanding and therefore
catharsis.”
“But what do you think?”
“Well I think it’s something you have to decide
yourself. Everyone’s life is different, right? It’s all rel-
ative.” He looked down at the screen and ceased.
We are a generation of instants, risen to the call of
world that demands this of us. A modern world: a pol-
ished whorl of communication and consolidation, a
small world, smaller than before, where you can talk to
anyone and any thought can find you. Thought after
thought, action after action, no matter if incomplete, is
chased with such haste that everyone’s attention is di-
vided ten times over. We are just information,
instantaneous information, spurting around wires and
on radio waves, the Internet. We don’t live here, we
don’t inhabit this space. Our bodies are useless now,
and we change into mental, emotional things, like
ghosts, and ride straight through walls on currents of
electricity blasted over the sky.

248
 STANFORD BY DAY

“Does anyone have an opinion about quality? How

do you tell a low quality relationship from a high quali-
ty one?”
A fly crawled around and around the globe of glass
on the professor’s desk, distinct and regular around the
front, and terribly magnified upside-down, repeating
this lightspeed metamorphosis every revolution. Noth-
ing ever happened. The lecture went on. My screen
scrolled. Then, in the flood of crashing packs and rus-
tling papers and laptops clicking closed five minutes
prior to the hour, I was first to leap out the door.

As the bells bonged I brunched in the library court-

yard with the drug dealer and Bonn, who’d surfaced,
announced only by text message, to interview students
at the fall career fair. Like old times we consumed
sourdough rolls with turkey and cheese, and sparkling
water, and watched silver maple leaves sift across the
court. Under the pale sky the drug dealer tapped at his
long black laptop the while, a buckskin surcoat draping
his knees. His black whiskers ruffled lazily at the serv-
er, who balked above the pink curls of the shrimp plate
she carried. He looked like a Pharaoh and in some
ways he was.
“I can take anyone public,” Ryan was saying. “I can
do this deal, that deal, any deal. Do you know my cre-
dentials as a representative of Goldman Sachs. Do you
know how much money I make and how much my bo-
nus is. Let me jam my blood funnel into your money
supply. Because this, let me tell you, has been an ex-
cellent year for bonuses, and I cannot wait for

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December. Jake you know it. Jake you know I cannot

wait. It's going to be huge and I cannot wait.”
“Settle down, Beavis,” I said, “take your Adderall.”
“Do you fucking understand the power of Microsoft
Excel,” Bonn was saying. “Because I never understood
it myself. But lo, every shortcut is hard-wired into my
brain.”
“Jesus Christ, Ryan,” said the drug dealer. “Imagine
if you were in the military.”
“What?” sneered Ryan. He had already lost his tan,
and rusty scruff warred over his blue chin and neck,
lending him an air of horror. “It’s Goldman Sachs.”
Now he wore glasses, thin ones whose black carbon
fiber frames adorned his gold-lobed ears and gave the
whites of his eyes a godlike accentuation.
"Look at our security pass for the Bloomberg ma-
chines," Bonn said. He removed a brushed shingle
from his coat pocket and held it up in the silver light.
"When you want to get in, you log onto the website,
press a button, and a graphic on the site blinks out a
barcode. You hold the card up to the monitor and it
scans the lights right off the screen and gives you ac-
cess. That way you can't give it out to anyone.
Because it's so valuable."
"It is valuable," said the drug dealer. "It's valuable
and unique."
"With a Bloomberg machine I would be able to justi-
fy losing more of my parent’s money," I commented,
"because I would be better informed. Because I trust
information and where there is more information there
is more trust."

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 STANFORD BY DAY

Bonn pinched his pink tie, which bulged cocklike in

his jacket folds, and his puffed blue shirt waved its
fronds in the chill. Slipped between his tanned fingers,
the card passed from our gazes back into his breast
pocket, lying close to his heart. Now we could only see
his golden cufflinks, which were whorled like cats'
tails. Bonn winked at us.
"Can you tell me about internship opportunities
available at Goldman –"
"We don't hire interns."
"Can you tell me about full time positions –"
"What do you know about capital markets?"
"They're highly efficient, the markets know the best
way to price securities and –"
"Tell me about modeling."
"Do you mean arb modeling or DCF modeling or
merger models and what assumptions do you use –"
"What do you think about the price of oil."
"Oh there's so much to say. There's so much action
there, in the Middle East and with the war and with
suppliers investing so much in gulf equipment all over,
I know so much about this I really do, I will perform
well in the interview, I will tell you everything you
need to make an informed investment in me as a per-
son, a child, a new analyst in the new analyst program.
I will serve you well with hundreds of thousands of
hours and you may make my mind into whatever you
desire."
"What is sixty five divided by twelve."
"Oh oh oh–"
“And how!” I added. “The point is, of course we are

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going to be bankers. Or consultants, or in some other

arm of the machine. Stanford makes sure of that, we
just get to choose which kind. The thing is to keep our
brains sharp, to outlast the monotony, and to split off
after a few years so we can get really rich.”
Yes, yes, we’re well aware of the age-old complaints
about work, about moving away from home and grow-
ing estranged from everything you love. We’re well
aware, I assure you. Yes, we’ve heard you complain
about how you’ve spent at last count ten thousand fif-
teen-dollar hours in front of a computer screen in your
office, fearful to write a sentence of truth, to crack a
joke, to frown at your co-workers because you haven’t
quite figured out what’s so great about the whole ar-
rangement. We’ve heard how you could make the same
amount of money teaching tennis. Will you ever get
over that childish notion?
We’ve heard how your acceptable level of intimacy
changed in only a week from screwing sorority god-
desses to ten minutes with Rump Riders mpegs and a
roll of toilet paper in the corporate bathroom. It’s been
noted. And how decent the bliss of solitude has be-
come! Loneliness doesn’t seem very lonely to you any
more, but that will only help you succeed – less and less
time you’ll spend with fewer and fewer friends. And
all the other little things – how you’ve given up on mu-
sic and books and learning and summertime and your
parents, how wonderfully indifferent you’ve become.
How those little things pile up and blow away! But it’s
something everyone goes through, you know, and it
could be worse. Just think of the paralegals, poor souls,

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 STANFORD BY DAY

or your brethren in Iraq. It could be worse, it could be

worse, it could be worse. And it’s just part of life, just
something you’ve got to deal with for a couple years:
accept it, surrender, then you’ll be free: no pain in the
future, no: it’ll be better later when you’ve clawed your
way up and you’re making more for less in an office
with a better view, a higher thread-count carpet: then
you’ll get some air.
And remember, possessions await – the sports car
and the vacations to Greece, the bespoke suits, the flat
screen television, the hybrid electric vehicle, the wife
and the kids and the slow insulation from the world and
race you once considered yours. But don’t think too
hard about all that now, just keep going. You’ll see
how good it’s going to get. And you’re quite sleepy,
we see – you’ve been up since 3AM – great – who’d
have known in college that you were such a hard work-
er? Work brings out the best in you. And nothing will
stop you now from getting up and going, and nothing
will keep you down, and if sometimes you need a
friend, just ask your boss, your mentor.
“Are you thinking about something?” spat Bonn. He
pulled a black handset from his coat and made it chirp,
blazing with light. Hawklike, he scanned the horizon
for other bankers, but only bikes trundled across the
court.
“I have thought about doing something hippieish,
writing a video game or doing photography, saving ba-
bies, saving the whales," admitted the drug dealer. "But
I hate hippies, and, you know, I’ve learned from you
that companies can be challenging. Debt structures can

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 THE PENINSULA

be organic. Depth in the organization, politics, intrigue

– and I fail to see how valuation is easy. Really, banks
hire mathematicians.”
“You’re right,” affirmed Bonn, “what I do is fucking
hard.”
I shrugged. I believe shrugging to be the perfect
gesture, a yea or a nay, both, the ultimate exoneration.
Bonn, secretly an aesthete, once had announced he
wanted to leave Stanford to paint in Barbados, where
his family keeps a cliff bungalow. But his father beat
him for such thoughts, and he hadn’t the training. The
twelve hundred hours at the Lehman internship had
yawned in him like a grave, the glossy scroll of his of-
fer curled around his senses, the figure he’d shopped up
the banking pyramid towards Goldman Sachs. The et-
ymological turd: Isaac, hoarder of gold: Sachs – the
angel of the Lord held forth: thy seed shall possess the
gate of his enemies and turn all students into salt.
Girls emerged from the library and sat with us. One
looked familiar – she had started sleeping with Bonn
and everyone else and I didn’t care. She had a half
Asian face and dark curly hair. But I forgot her name
and she ignored me. She sat on his lap and drank ener-
gy tonic out of a distended can. Trying to conceal her
discomfort, she smoked three flavored cigarettes – “Oh,
I can only smoke Parlies, they taste good.” Cold had
come and the day stung to frost. Clutches of premeds
biked from the arches across the stones. She pressed
into Bonn and gave me a look of death. She kissed his
neck once, near where a bruise showed.
“Banking is male,” someone said – the drug dealer.

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 STANFORD BY DAY

I drifted from a coffee-flavored haze.

“There are woman in it,” I announced. “Hard wom-
en. The CEO of eBay was one; I played lacrosse with
her son.”
“At good old Menlo, our Menlo School, mother of
purity, mother of pearl,” sighed Bonn. Everyone
looked at him, and he felt compelled to continue. “It’s
a fine institution. We have the Google kids and the
Siebel kids and Jerry Rice’s daughter and the
Bronfmans and the Ranadives and the Byers and the
Rosendins and the Pades and the Chens.”
“It’s not Exeter,” obligated the girl.
“Not yet,” I obliged.
“Not yet,” agreed Bonn.
“I am applying to banks,” she announced, and Bonn
burst out laughing. “Stop it! I had a conversation with
my advisor about it, and professional experience makes
sense if I want to go to law school.”
“But you don’t know anything about finance.”
“Buh–” She recoiled against him and, because fem-
inism no longer existed on the Peninsula, capitulated,
looking down, clasping her hands, her abdomen clutch-
ing a hollow drum. What a loser. Bonn was laughing
his head off and everyone stared at her until she gave
up, and just as suddenly everyone departed.
I walked with Bonn across White Plaza which
teemed with the booths of divers employers – banks,
consultancies, law firms, startups, the FBI, the CIA, the
NSA – vendors of money and dreams after bodies and
years. Few could pay as much as Goldman Sachs.
Overhead the cold wind scattered leaves from the trees,

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 THE PENINSULA

and everyone huddled in their winter fleece.

"Now everyone has read American Psycho," Bonn
said. "And everyone knows how to wear Zegna suits,
how to choose business cards, and how to carve women
to pieces and freeze their remains." He looked away
and his gold locks blew in the wind. "Every era of ex-
cess idolizes the previous golden age, helped by the
media. Books and movies but books since you can re-
member books, while you can't remember movies. The
Internet makes us cease to remember. The death of Ar-
iel."
"You've changed quite a bit," I said.
"Evolved. And you also seem different, different."
"My emotional quotient is higher."
"Gay faggot. You have a girlfriend!" Now the bikes
went spinning by again and chanticleer words spun
from the fresh student mouths of the riders, blowing off
like leaves. Bonn's golden eyes followed them and we
stood up on the hammered brick of the court. Now the
wind was coming over the eucalypts and the trees blew
with the wind, their leaves twisting in blue crescents.
Now the wind gave off and they lay still.
"Something like it."
"I always knew you were a serial monogamist,"
Bonn said. "I always knew you would settle."
"I’ve had my hot streak, you’ve had yours.”
He laughed cruelly, and put his hands in his pockets.
"Do you think you are settling. In some strange uncon-
scious way are you settling for the ghost of your
childhood because you find no engagement with your
present life? Have you run out of money? Has your

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 STANFORD BY DAY

mind become so stunted that you can't communicate

with people our age–"
"She is our age."
"Well you know what I mean, people who have been
brought here to the great wheel, Stanford University,
from all across the American galaxy in order to please
you, Jake. You want nothing with any of them."
"They aren't that spectacular when you account for
grade inflation."
He said nothing and the wind came again and the
computer screens in the windows glowed solemnly,
students hunched over them. The air, diamond in the
early afternoon, burned cold.
“I’m sad to say I agree with you. My sex drive is
not that high any more.” And then Bonn sighed, watch-
ing the bikes whir by in pockets of sound. “But do you
think that matters, Jakobstraat? In real life the less you
want the girls the more they want you. Thus apathy is
an advantage. Treat a girl like dirt and she’ll cling like
mud. I mean, Jesus, being at Goldman, I have chicks
all over me, not that I have time for them.”
“It’s the power, my disciple. It’s all about the pow-
er.”
Bonn stared away. “But I also hate them for it.”
“This is what my father had inscribed on his desk,
Ryan, and I think it might be useful to you: ‘A sense of
duty is useful in work, but offensive in personal rela-
tions. People wish to be liked, not endured with patient
resignation.’ Cheer up. I’ll see you when you’re old.”
With an iron glare, Bonn punched me in the ribs and
trotted off towards his carnival of jobs and I walked

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 THE PENINSULA

past Tressider towards the business buildings and the

Blyth Fund, where I had to find Cyan.

On this clear morning a harsh wind began to blow

from the foothills, and engineers demonstrated a fleet of
Segway scooters below their foundry, drawing a crowd.
An old man, probably a professor, snapped a picture of
the brave pilots as others stepped up to watch. I walked
past a nerd who grinned and chewed his tongue, proud
of knowing how to drive. He smiled for the camera and
bobbled in his helmet.
Compact, online, green, efficient, dynamic, net-
worked, wireless: take pictures, screenshots, show them
to your friends and parents, post them online, make an
album: no worries: find bigger answers to smaller ques-
tions. Each of those scooters lost someone a million
dollars. The Segway was one of the worst investments
of all time.
The Blyth Fund was still meeting so I sat down in
the frozen garden outside to wait. Now the day had be-
come cold. The blade wind blew off the foothills,
whipping down from its font among carpets of fog and
the giant redwoods, down long over forest slopes and
valleys studded with dark houses, conversing with the
needles of the pines. Then it overcame the low-lying
oaks and went out onto the foothills. This cold wind
divides California, north from south.
A girl came and sat down, holding her purse and a
cup of blended juice. Her blonde hair she’d tied in a
ponytail – a black puffy windbreaker without designer
logo, beige khakis, toe rings, nails painted silver. Her

258
 STANFORD BY DAY

bare feet supported her on the bench as she gabbed into

her sparkly cell phone. Her foam sandals, brown and
white and soiled, rested on the bench. Her round
cheeks were pockmarked, and her face was small.
Around us the trees embarked upon autumn lectures,
and strands of spiderweb lazed in the wind. The spiders
survived the rain. Weather.com suggested the next
three days would be sunny, but lied. Another girl ped-
aled by on a bike, faceless, underweight. The poor girl
rubbed her eyes to shade herself from the sun, tired, de-
pressed. A cold breeze ran a curl of hair away from the
mass of her braid, over her ear. What was she doing?
Thinking, thinking, thinking it over.
The girl sucked her smoothie, an orange plastic over-
load, a mango-pineapple blend by all appearances, an
exotic choice and one that clearly gave her pleasure. A
Japanese tourist popped around the building and
snapped a photo of the water garden before popping
back, and an airplane scored the sky. Time flowed like
the slow fountain water and we grew slowly older. The
girl sat with her eyes closed, and all the other people sat
in the shade. Now she stood up to go into the hall, and
I followed her. As she walked she closed her eyes and
yawned, and her face sagged. Her cell phone replied to
a text message by using her hand.
Behind two blue steel doors, the Blyth Fund mur-
mured its adolescent prophecies. An amphitheater of
slender intellectuals. No one seemed to know each oth-
er from Adam, but all sat poised to catch the morsels of
wealth squeaked from the podium, where stood Cyan
Zilker.

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 THE PENINSULA

The girl sat down and I sat behind her. In an instant

she fixed her attention on him, following his every
move, turning her head, and nodding hard. Sometimes
she emitted a soft moan. How true everything seemed!
On her laptop screen, job applications glared and
scrolled. The speaker cracked a joke and everyone
laughed brightly, politely. "Mm-hmm!" the girl exhort-
ed.
Cyan delivered another anecdote and everyone
roared, and the girl raised her hand, but he called on
someone else so she put it down. Her hand rose again
and, as if suspended by a string, jerked up and down –
up it went, then it flopped down on the desk, and up
again. She did not want to be seen raising her hand
without being called on. She began to sweat in confu-
sion, then gave up completely.
“I want you to understand the most important thing,
and that is progress, the way we’re headed!” shouted
Cyan. “China, India, whatever, I’m talking about bio-
tech on a worldwide scale, on a universal scale. Stem
cells, cancer, nano, scrollaxing bigger and bigger, what
we see, that’s only the beginning. We are on the verge
of a revolution in human engineering! Virulent, vi-
ruseful! And as much as the conservatives try to stop it,
it’s going on; it’s not stopping for anyone. Kids in a lab
building E-coli that glows today, in twenty years they’ll
be making E-coli that turns flesh to aluminum. That’s
only a few trillion dollars away from hitting the world.
You can measure time in dollars! And when it does,
it’s the end of us, one way or the other, cyborgs or
dead, out. The Singularity is near! Terrorist bioweap-

260
 STANFORD BY DAY

ons, yeah, that’s one way. Consciousness, real con-

scious biomachines, that’s the next step.
Socialstainable emotrics blickrolling through inter-
communes, twittering on the Facehook: the Singularity
is near!”
And I was struck by the impression that these might
be the brightest minds of all. I got up and went to uri-
nate.

There is on campus a place called the Intersection of

Death, made of stone the color of iron, like the circle
that encloses it. There, under a pillar, I sat drinking
coffee, and enduring Cyan’s weekday custom. The in-
tersection swarms with careening bicyclists in the
morning, and everyone you know goes by, whining and
crashing in the carnage of chain and spoke and oil. Cy-
an said he valued this exposure as an efficient way of
making himself socially visible.
Under the Intersection’s pillar he sat, studying Chi-
nese, since reasonable people agreed China would at
least be second to America by 2020. Wo hen hao. Wo
mama, baba hen mang. Wo xuexi Hanyu, ni ne? He
learned the characters slowly, copying them by hand
with his Pilot Excelsior, three times each. Everybody
had a favorite brand for everything. Three times for
one character, on average about six strokes. He would
write one, then stare at it for a few slow seconds, then
write another.
“Jake I cannot stop thinking about this deal. You
don’t know what it means to me. I can’t wait to tell
Mark. I can’t wait to meet your uncle.”

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 THE PENINSULA

“He’s not my uncle,” I sneered.

“Well, practically, damn!”
The bikes whizzed all around us like flies, glancing,
swerving, in and out, extremely smooth. Without fan-
fare they would crash, apologize, and bike on. People
talked, babbled hurriedly, the crowd parting where the
eye formed around us. Cyan had learned to trust the
space around the pylon. He even stretched out his legs
into the bikes and crossed his ankles. He took another
sip of coffee. Wo didi, gege gaoxing. Tamen zai Stan-
ford daxue. Tamen shi Stanford daxue de xuesheng.
Buzz. Whizz buzz whirr whip. He saw a girl he liked
go by on her bike. He looked at her and she smiled and
disappeared. He looked at his Pilot, the only pen he
used. Rollers failed, and he lost more expensive tips
and fountains. Pilots offered a good middle-of-the-road
blend of style and technique: sharp tip, precise, black
liquid ink, superfine. Good at drawing characters.
They had been recommended to him, he mentioned.
Cyan carried an executive clipboard with white paper to
class. Lined paper he considered messy and childish,
he said. White paper he considered sufficient. He wore
a navy polo, distressed jeans, and rainbow sandals. He
walked everywhere. He thought about the bikes, and
concluded that by walking he would make more
friends.
Three giant athletes walked down through the Inter-
section towards us, passing among the bikes. Cyan
knew them, and he watched them for a time. They
talked and grinned. They talked about the night before
and how much they had drank, and about the girls they

262
 STANFORD BY DAY

had fucked. They dressed in expensive dark jeans,

white shoes, sweaters or jackets or polos. Their slow,
tired swagger wed disinterest with privilege. The three
walked past, and at the last second one of them
acknowledged Cyan with a brief motion of the head
that could have been a nod. Cyan blinked.
“They were in my fraternity,” he exclaimed. He was
not the most popular member of his fraternity.
“We had better go,” I said. “It’s going to rain.”
“It won’t rain. I looked it up online.”
“Look at those clouds coming over the hills and tell
me it’s not going to rain.”
“It won’t rain. But we have to go anyway, I’d for-
gotten that it’s prank day.”

Many still view frats in the crude way popularized

by Belucci and pantomimed across Hollywood for the
last thirty years, but here in Silicon Valley they have
evolved like everything else. Keeping the tyranny of
technology in check is their new function: forcing us
pale-skinned, mechanized nambies into human interac-
tion and manly warfare. I’d become a surrogate
member of two, meaning they liked me enough to invite
me to their events and offer me a share of their women,
but, disliking their initiation rituals and pube-coated
showers, I wouldn’t join.
The fraternity is the slave child of the university,
protected by the university, and run by the university
like any classroom: its citizens are cogently aware how
to misbehave within the rules, and do a brisk trade of
androgen, inheritances, and envy in exchange for Pi

263
 THE PENINSULA

Phis, kegs, and cocaine. I suppose from a girl’s per-

spective the system still treats them as chips to be
pushed around, but it’s preferable to dating unaffiliated
losers, as long as you didn’t end up with a Cyan.
We walked up the steps between the gold lions
flanking the entrance of the fraternity. Two pines caked
with the scoria of sap and inscribed with carvings
crossed like Baghdad swords overhead. Athletes and
the very rich populated this house, Cyan their bastard
hop-frog, a skittish scientist milking their kudos and
girls.
Every year the fraternities held prank days to teach
the new pledges how to offend, and we joined in. Just
the year before, we’d stripped to sheets, sprayed our-
selves with ketchup, rolled in the dirt, and hauled huge
nailed crosses from the base of campus up into the
golden foothills, wailing for others to follow us. The
Son of God and Apostle John had risen once more.
Bonn strode behind me in a cassock and a cat-o-nine-
tails, flaying us, though too often he broke down snick-
ering. Those days had passed but still we had work to
do.
The glass door stood open, splintered in radials by a
pellet shot through its center, and wedged by a scored
wooden triangle. I stepped through onto sticky plaster,
my sneakers unbearably white in the grime. Home is
where you want to be. The night replayed its echoes
across a dozen chairs smashed in the lobby, glued to-
gether with piss-colored beer and sprayed with cheetos.
I goose-stepped over them and turned left into a blue-
carpeted hall, the top rim, the senior hallway, towards

264
 STANFORD BY DAY

Cyan’s single far at the end. Doors stood open, filling

my ears with fifty different rappers and the Afghan
scent of hemp, the rooms rolling out in dilapidated ver-
tebrae. Within lounged people I knew well, real
Stanfordists in the class below, the opposites of the
Blyth Fund.
A powerful bronzed tennis player with simple tastes,
smarter than he seems – he looked up from pirating mu-
sic, broke into a toothy smile, and hailed me with a clap
on the back and a rundown on his good life.
A cut panther of a man stalked to and fro two rooms
down, a childhood jujitsu champion, wringing his rough
wrists with chalk as he prepared to leave for the gym –
very polite and incredibly quiet, he had to register his
hands as deadly weapons.
A coppery Jew from Los Angeles, wielding a harp-
ish voice, dexterous, drug-laced, cynical, chipper, well-
dressed and generous, popular as a charmer. He was
cleaning his room, nailing a poster into the wall, and
beeped over, “Hey buddy!”
A sharp boy from Washington, short, good-looking,
meticulously clean, rich, desperately intelligent, addict-
ed to work, stubborn, able to concentrate like no one
I’ve ever met. He was doing accounting homework, a
class he was taking for fun, and told me to take a num-
ber.
A clownish redhead from New York, juxtaposed by
his nearness to the wildly successful, wearing the cloak
of an old money banker: in love with money but quite
confused by how easily it came to him, the most intelli-
gent of the bunch and the least wise, half leader and

265
 THE PENINSULA

whipping boy. He lay passed out face-down on his

couch, his shins propped up by a pillow.
A lion man, an Italian, angry, apathetic, destructive,
endearingly loyal, ever trying, ever failing, smart as a
whip, burning with fire and rage, he was death and em-
barrassment to his enemies, pity to his friends. He had
his girlfriend in there with him, and they were either
about to slash each others throats or fuck – she slapped
him hard and he turned his face with a bemused expres-
sion – I could not tell, and closed the door for them.
A Nigerian prince surprised by his own beauty,
sleeping inadvertently with everyone's girlfriend, an
aristocratic black man, crisply polite, eloquent, vulgar,
good in bed, possessing a feral cold streak, stepped out
into the hall in a towel and plodded by with a reptilian
smile.
A giant Diamondbacks recruit guffawed from his
television perch – the rookies on the Stanford team
clustered around him, chanting “Heated! Heated! Heat-
ed!” as someone hit a home run. He looked over and
grinned, totally unimpressed.
A bearish, Nordic type, possessing all drugs and em-
bracing squalor, a husky staple, enjambed at the end of
the hall, censing marijuana and joy throughout the en-
tire place. His face plugged in a bong, he puffed out his
cheeks in laughter.
So many more, hundreds of them. Sooner or later
they all will be gone.
And timid Cyan at the end, unlocking his door, trip-
ping over a business book, Good to Great, with a great
hilarious pile of masturbatory tissues slumping on his

266
 STANFORD BY DAY

silk duvet. He looked back, startled and embarrassed,

and swept them into the bin – the room contained only
a bed, a chair, and a computer.
“Busy?” I asked.
“I only come here to sleep.”
“Evidently.” I went over and plopped down. Past
the sliding door birds played across the lawn, where
two pledges crouched behind sandbags with pellet guns,
taking potshots at squirrels. A plane mooned across the
sky, and the clouds started rolling off.
“We were thinking we would hit Johnson’s lecture
on social norms,” Cyan said.
“That would be fun. You can drag me along. Is
Zuckerfuck still coming?”
“Coitenly. We’ll meet him at the game afterwards,
assuming they don’t arrest us.”
Palm trees nodded outside the window, and the
street murmured, buses roaring, boys shouting, balls
bouncing, girls chattering: pale sunlight entered, con-
versed, and wind came in with the smell of sandstone
and trees. The sounds chuckled and swirled around, the
day dozing on the brink of November. Cyan went over
and sat on his chair and coughed long and deep, and
swallowed mucus before coughing again.
His phone rang. “Hello,” he said. There was a long
pause, and he commenced talking. I could not believe
the words that came out of his mouth. “Ummm, hello.
Umm, yep, yeah. Oh I’m having a great day, fabulous,
how about you? Yeah. Yeah are you having a great
day? Good. Umm, well. I think I am going out tonight
but I’m not sure I want to drink. Did you see my new

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 THE PENINSULA

Facebook profile? Hehe yeah I’ll see you at the game

okay. Yes I’d like that. Hold on. Yep, you still there?
Hold on.” He emitted a long, dry cough, wiped off the
phone, and continued, “Hello? Hello?”
I looked at him.
“She hung up,” he said.
“What the hell? You talk to girls like that? Do you
realize how you sound?”
“I have a new girlfriend.”
“You have a girlfriend?”
He blushed furiously. “I thought you would under-
stand.” I laughed.
He turned and went to his computer. A pair of spi-
ders pressed over the palm window, and the sun burned
off cloud behind the red rooftops of the row. Then the
street quieted, and bikers replaced the buses. Cyan
called back – he began talking again, and his computer
chattered to the network, and ten or twenty messages
piled up, blinking orange at the bottom of the screen.
Cyan took another call, switched over, coughed, then
switched. Someone opened and slammed the door. A
brief gust of requests: times, places, orders.
Plaintive, simple facet – the palm window darkened
with cloud and the street outside fell silent. Program
one in a hundred similar programs – the computer
strummed a harp, and two more messages poured on-
screen. Cyan clicked on and on. Someone was
wielding a buzzsaw down on the courtyard. Finally he
spun around in his chair and wiggled his eyebrows.
“Okay,” he announced. “Let’s tool this wasp ass
bitch.”

268
 14
Annenberg Auditorium, one of the largest halls on
campus, teemed with hopeful spectators. No classes
should be held on the day of pillory. Every fraternity
pledge had been planted there to watch and film us, and
they hollered with their girls. Students pushed into the
aisles – afraid of being trapped in a middle seat, they
preferred to squat on the floor – and in the window of
the swinging doors we could see the professor far off on
his stage, and it was a stage, bellowing his thoughts
about self-efficacy and social norms, and we were
ready to go in, dressed as Mexicans. Cyan hefted a
large cardboard sign crayoned with “WORK ORDER.”
I toted a hammer and wore blast glasses. Sorority girls
had coiffed us in black hairspray and masks of makeup:
we looked vaguely ethnic, that is all: we looked insane.
I wore giant plaid overalls and some fool artist’s spat-
tered jacket. As a pledge patted me on the back, I said,

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“Okay,” and we opened the hall doors and walked into

the aisle.
Five hundred eyes turned towards us in a wave,
laughter scattering throughout the back rows. Someone
said my name and burst out laughing. We just kept
walking. The professor did not see us and said, “It real-
ly is quite uncomfortable to violate social norms. Have
you ever tried it? Try doing something as simple as
wearing your shirt backwards, and see how it feels.
You’ll be surprised.” He looked at us.
He prejudged us to be Mexican and because he was
afraid of offending Mexicans he kept speaking, but his
lurching around the stage took on a wary spring. We
walked up to the flue grate on the right wall, halfway up
the hall, and I banged on it with the hammer as hard as I
could. Laughter exploded in the rows. The professor
looked at us and the two freshmen in the aisle stared up
in horror. Again I banged the grate, and Cyan held up
the sign, and announced we had a work order. Cackles
rose in force. I banged on the grate again, loudly, and
the professor stopped speaking.
“It looks okay Juan. What you think mang,” I said
over my shoulder. Cyan was shaking with fear. Some-
one began clapping, then stopped. In the net of gazes
we turned up the aisle towards the grate below the pro-
fessor’s stage. As we approached he stared down in
shock. We came within inches of his feet and I looked
at him. He was an older man with spectacles wearing a
sort of sad pink shirt – I could tell by the way he styled
his dying yellow hair that he had once been a dandy,
but in oversight or old age he had paired a chocolate

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 STANFORD BY DAY

belt with tan shoes.

“Wot de fock, mang,” I stated.
And I looked up into his eyes. He was uncertain.
Hefting the hammer, I banged on the gate. The room
erupted.
“Looks okay, Pablo,” I told Cyan. “What you think.”
“Looks okay, Lopez,” Cyan trembled. “Can we get
some tacos?”
“Maybe some taquitos,” I suggested. “Or a chalupa,
mang.”
The kids in the front row – the good students, the
quiet blondes in pink – remained totally silent. Their
knife eyes hated and feared us. They would kill us with
their death rays and PhDs. Still the professor lacked
words, still he stared down in disbelief. Frowning, I
banged on the gate looked at Cyan and said, “This one
need work.” The crowd laughed in fits, silenced, and
laughed again.
The professor opened his mouth and said, “Is there
not another time that you could do this?” I could not
believe that he would say this.
“They scheduled us for now!” I cried, looking up at
him, cracking my knuckles around the haft of the ham-
mer.
“Do you know that there is a class going on here?”
he whined. He scrutinized my face. He would see
through the makeup.
“Then you need to talk to maintenance to reschedule
us,” Cyan told him. “These flue grates might be leak-
ing into the room. The kids could die, mang.”
“I need to finish my lecture, this is absurd.” He was

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getting annoyed at last.

I shrugged. “Maybe you people talk in another
room?”
“Okay, I will just stop the lecture, then. Jesus
Christ.” The professor sat down on the stage, crossing
his faggy legs, staring down at us, and the room si-
lenced into nervous whispers. Cyan trembled and we
walked slowly past the professor and turned up the oth-
er aisle. As I passed people they looked up at me in
awe. I could feel the professor’s wrath on my back and
the approbation of the crowd and he began insolently
humming. A camera flashed and my heart beat – we
hadn’t considered that. I reached the last flue gate and
banged on it. Is that Jake someone said.
“Do you have any respect for education?” the pro-
fessor shouted from his stage. I looked back at him
from up the aisle, and I was bigger than him and be-
cause he thought I was Mexican he sat back down. But
it was not impressive enough. I had to show them. I
had to be remembered. So I turned slowly, and I started
walking back towards him, pawing the hammer.
“What do you fucking think?” I roared. The crowd
erupted into bedlam – a Mexican kid nearby actually
began cheering. “Mostly I am sick of your ugly white
ass up there talking down to the people who fix your
shit! What do you have to say about that?”
“Now just hold on here–” he began.
With great thumping workman’s steps I was thun-
dering towards him, and he faltered back in panic, arms
raised.
“Now, I was just–”

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 STANFORD BY DAY

“Fuck that shit mang!” I yelled, pumping my ham-

mer. “I’m going to kill your racist ass!”
He turned and fled across the stage to where the cur-
tains swung against the floor. “Don’t come up here!”
he cried. He trembled, breathless, a deflated frog. At
the foot of the stage, I looked down at the grate and
bludgeoned it with a two-handed swing, splitting the
wood frame, then turned, stormed back up the aisle, and
followed Cyan out. The room had gone silent.
In the lobby, contorted pledges worshipped me.
“Uh, I have to leave immediately,” I told everyone.
We began to run.

The sky grew dark, furrowed by grey trenches that

rolled over and over. I washed up at the fraternity,
changed, and got a ride to Cardinal Stadium. Cyan had
gone on ahead to meet Mark Zuckerberg. As I pulled
up, I saw them frozen among the field of cars.
Mark had dropped out of Harvard to work on the
company before moving to Palo Alto, where he spent
his days under attack by venture pirates and trying to fit
himself into a social scene that rabidly exploited his
compounding wealth and made fun of him behind
closed doors. He was actually fairly good-looking, and
a decent guy underneath, with more business acumen
than most of our fathers – but he had no idea how to
make conversation, women terrified him, and his flab-
bergasted expression and Frodo Baggins haircut did
nothing to help. In this day his publicity left him a sit-
ting duck for gold-diggers aged eighteen to seventy, a
condition which would not cease.

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 THE PENINSULA

Eventually he found a nice normal girl and settled

down, but when I met him he still had some of the col-
lege mojo in his veins. He was here to talk shop, but
also to meet girls. The Zuck stood about my height,
with pale Jewish skin, curly auburn hair, and a com-
plexion ruddied by the cold. Under a low baseball cap,
he assumed no one would know him from Adam.
“Hello, Mark,” I said as I locked my car, gripping
his cold hand. “It’s Jake Bessemer.”
“Hi. So you want to buy his stock?” He gave a
warm, nervous smile.
“Yeah. That would be sweet,” I said, looking at Cy-
an, who wore a Catholic expression, as though praise
from the Zuck could justify his existence on Earth. We
set off towards the copper mesa visible through the
trees, and tanbark and twigs scuffed under our feet,
kicking cold dust in our wake.
Shivering families, red and S-embroidered, grilled
hot dogs and murmured in the heat of barbeques and
turned-up car heaters, morbidly oblivious to our pass-
ing. Only some of the older ones gave sad glances to
the walking ghosts of their college years. Off among
the trees, frat guys began shouting at a couple of Cal
fans – their voices rose from the grove, and they started
shoving each other as I watched, but separated when a
cop car cruised through the field.
Mark stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jeans
and exhaled a silvery cloud. “Well,” he repeated, “You
want to buy some of Cyan’s stock.”
“My uncle does.” I had just called Michael that, and
it made me spit on the ground.

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 STANFORD BY DAY

“Why did you just spit?” he asked.

“Uh,” I said, “I have oral herpes. Just kidding.”
“He probably does,” Cyan said. He stubbed a beer
can as we wove between two enormous black jeeps.
“He probably does!”
“I collect STDs,” I tried, and laughed out loud to
make everyone more comfortable, but no one liked the
joke. Zuck hadn’t even been listening; he plodded
ahead lost in thought.
Two kids played across our path, throwing a foot-
ball. There were few people out – with Stanford
projected to lose and lose and lose, the regalia of 1971
seemed a distant memory. Off on the other side of the
stadium we heard the band start up a tiny, distant
clangor.
“I already sold some stock to Accel Ventures,” said
Mark. “But I could sell more depending on the price.”
He looked back, his blue eyes clean. “I’ve got to think
about this.”
“What about me?” peeped Cyan.
“I’m thinking…”
We’d reached the edge of the eucalyptus grove and
stepped over the chain that surrounded the stadium
grounds. Across the parking road, traffic cops in neon
jackets directed cars laterally towards the field. The
bored, overpaid, unnecessary SUPD searched bags and
blew hard. We walked towards where an oak tree
shaded a circle of door-splayed SUVs blaring rap.
There, twenty kids huddled over a silver keg and at-
tempted conversation. Other tailgates sprawled through
the distant trees, encircling the stadium, separated by

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duckbill speakers lofted on poles that blared out

pregame announcements.
Fortunately, some good-looking girls had turned out,
and my mood lifted.
“Great,” said the Zuck. “Let’s meet them.”
“This one will do,” I said, pointing at a girl and
beckoning. “Come here.”
This orange girl was a drooling Texan transfer from
USC who had landed in Pi Phi because of her fake tan,
blonde hair, and materialism. She had dated a baseball
senior headed for the Cubs until he tore his ACL and
became ineligible to play, which got him dumped good
and square. With his signing bonus he’d bought her the
ugly pair of fake tits that now bulged orange from her
parka, and which made her attractive in a menacing
kind of way, yanking attention from her cold eyes and
crablike legs. One time I’d run into her on the dark side
steps of Green Library and near screamed with fright.
On the days she wasn’t trying to sleep with me, she be-
came susceptible to attacks by my friends, which made
her perfect for the Zuck. Two mousy subordinates
flanked her, tackling Cyan as we approached, and he
launched into a horrific conversation about business
school and saving money.
“Hey, you look great,” I smiled, yanking the orange
girl by the arm. “This is my friend Mark Zuckerberg
from Harvard. I can tell it’s the beginning of a beauti-
ful relationship.” The force of my whisper rocked the
planet and the orange girl stumbled her green pump
heels into a stick and half-fell against me, nearly bounc-
ing her melon-like boobs out of her shirt and into

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Mark’s incredulous palms.

The Zuck’s eyes widened. “Wha–watch out, there!”
he exclaimed, and the girl giggled madly, licked her
chops, and said hi.
“All dilution will occur on a pro rata basis,” I pre-
dicted. “We do not discriminate in this group.”
“Bring some beer!” I yelled at one of her subordi-
nates.
That mouse-girl went back into the circle smiling
and cramming her ass into her pants.
“I am thirsty,” the orange said.
"Are you thirsty for RICHES?" I asked.
The Zuck bobbed up both hands over his face. His
curls ran down his forehead in a mop of bronze.
"Love is about liquidity," I continued. "Diversifica-
tion. And the best diversification is cash.”
As I knew they would, they sucked together in a
hungry vacuum of conversation, two gears of a social
machine conjoining to begin the preordained march to-
wards sex. Not even a wunderchild can resist. Behind
us, the duckbills burst into excited shouting and a tinny
boom of cheers rose from the stadium – we had just
kicked off and nearly given up a touchdown on the re-
turn. Cal always had more fans than us, mostly because
everyone at Stanford was too drunk or too busy to care
about football.
Shivering, I straddled the keg and poured some
beers. The girl gripped Mark’s forearm with an orange
claw and stared up into his eyes. “It’s cold in Boston,”
he intoned. “You ever heard of seasonal depression?”
The Harvard trick always works because most Stanford

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kids have a secret inferiority complex at being listed

third on the Princeton Review. Orange leaned up and
whispered something into his ear and smiled through
her fangy lips.
When the mice stopped sucking Cyan’s blood, I
slipped over to him and asked what he wanted to do.
“It looks like Mark’s having fun, I hope he’s having
fun,” he whispered. The mice glanced at each other and
fled towards the bathroom to discuss the loss of their
mistress.
“He’s armed with the H-bomb.”
“Yes,” he said doubtfully, breathing into his hands.
“But he’s a bit strange. Are you sure he’ll be okay? Do
you think I should ask him?”
“He’s doing better than you would.”
“If you think he’s all right then I suppose we should
leave them alone. I’m just so worried. Let’s go inside
– I can’t handle this – we’ll tell them where to meet
us.” Cyan stared back nervously. The tailgate burned
dimly against the freezing blue air, and conversations
swirled up like balloons into the leaves of the oaks, ris-
ing towards the confluence of noise above the stadium.
A biplane circled overhead, beating out SENATORS
SPARE OUR SONS in square red letters, and I took a
short, fiery breath.
“Can I borrow a twenty?” Cyan asked, leafing with
trembling fingers through his empty wallet. “I need to
buy a ticket.”
“What. I suppose,” I said, slipping one from my
billfold. “But pay me back.” He frowned as he turned
to look at me, slipping his wallet in the back pocket of

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his pants.
“Sure. I’ll buy you some beers inside.”
“I’m not drinking,” I said, then realized I was still
holding a red cup. “Any more than this. I’ve got to
drive.”
“That’s never stopped you. Fine. It’s not important
– I’ll pay you back.”
Down the side of the arena packs of people streamed
from the parking field towards the gates. The stadium
resembles a coliseum, a red steel plateau scalloped out
and pierced around the rim by a loop of beer stands and
bathrooms – the Stanford Indian played here before the
harmlessness movement tore that mascot down and in-
terposed the nebulous ‘Cardinal’. In reality, the
Stanford Indian had been played by a local Apache
chief who dressed up in a real headdress and buckskin
and galloped out on a brilliant stallion for every game –
many Native Americans viewed the mascot as a bond
between the university and the state’s heritage. But we
forget these ties. These days, everyone claims it was a
racist white kid dressed up with an axe and red body
paint, like they do in Cleveland. In Silicon Valley,
even tolerance is tinged with prejudice.
As we climbed the enormous flight of stairs that led
to the rim, packs of aging alumni pressed by us, kids in
tow, rushing up after the memories of their glory days.
Their sun had merely set over the horizon of the stadi-
um wall. “In nineteen seventy our fraternity–” one
belted out as he passed, his little girl panting up the
stairs behind him two at a time. In nineteen seventy our
fraternity drove a firetruck into the lake and got busted

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 THE PENINSULA

by the cops, and we kept a pet monkey in a closet under

the first floor stairs and one time Hunter Charley tried
this new stimulant PCP and cut off its balls with nail
scissors – and after it was dead we locked five pledges
in there and told them they couldn’t come out until
they’d finished a box of cigars – and on the balcony
we’d have screw sessions with Chinese from Canada
College and we wouldn’t wear rubbers ‘cause there was
no AIDS then and we’d slap those chinks on the rump
and go downstairs for beers, and everyone had the time
of their lives – those days everyone could get into Stan-
ford whose dad would pay and the world was filled
with peace and love and none of us rich kids had to go
to Vietnam, thank God, and Jesus, do you have any ma-
rijuana or know where I can buy some – it’s been some
time, it’s been decades – and look at this, look how fast
I can roll a joint, it’s muscle memory, you see – you’re
a great guy, a real class-A cat, and thanks for listening
to us, we can get you a job anywhere now that we’re
rich – me, I’m an emm dee at Citibank, a managing di-
rector, a certified M.D., and I’m rich and I’ve got a
trophy wife and two kids and a Porsche and a mistress
on the side, and I get away with it because I provide,
and you can, too.
And freshmen struggled up with us like breaching
salmon, red-painted, glistening warriors brandishing
contraband bottles of vodka and coke, yipping at each
other with hateful smiles. Winning the game mattered
to them – they’d keep count each year, and if Stanford
won all four years they’d consider themselves surefire
billionaires, and if Stanford lost all four years they’d

280
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forget, like me. Two drunk ones pressed by, forcing

Cyan to the side of the stairs, and one leaned over the
railing an emitted a mouthful of chalky yellow lunch
into the grass below, then wiped his lips with a ragged
paw. “Puke and rally!” yelled his companion, and, see-
ing four Cal fans descending the other way – a family,
with two little boys dressed in blue – spat on, “Fucking
plebes! Peasants! Die in Iraq, fuckers! In ten years
you’ll be pumping my gas!” The mother stared in hor-
ror, but in an instant she swirled into the crowd and we
struggled up over the top with them and looked down
upon the sport.
The stands dawned with noise, and a roaring sea of
red fought an ocean of blue, and down on the field the
fighting teams pricked and clacked heads and coaches
called and the Stanford Band erupted in song and
dance, and cheerleaders and dollies flopped over and
smiled, dressed as pirates, and the entire building shook
awash in the breath of this enormous human system,
and I became aware of my cell phone buzzing in my
pocket. It was Lily! But I didn’t pick up. It was not
her place. She called again two times as we trawled the
crowd, but I let the phone shake in my pocket as we
descended into the student stands.
Near the top of the bleachers the nerdier kids con-
gealed like sputum, outlining the greater mass of
students below – emaciated computer science majors
and their briny girlfriends, little peeping Asians and all
manner of other trolls who cared less about friendship
than Firefox, and less about being a normal, hygienic
human being than pissing everyone off with their foul

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smells and leaky clothes – no matter, I told myself –

and ogrish English majors with long snot-braided hair
and condescending sneers, who knew about poetry and
would tell you about it too, who if you pissed them off
would write short stories in their agony, and cocky poli-
sci goblins headed to great American law schools,
drenched in too-big Polo shirts, talking on their cell
phones to mom and dad and pastor, and TAs and dor-
mies, hippies and RAs, and God knows what else, all of
them little shits with no influence, and I ignored them
as they ignored me.
The middle band of students comprised the dull, or-
dinary partygoers: people who kept half a vodka bottle
in their room for special occasions but usually found
their Friday nights lonely, who enjoyed three-hour Fa-
cebook sessions and online chat – mostly econ majors, I
realized – a considerate but uninteresting proletariat
using Stanford for wealth and the parent-directed pre-
tense of learning, a group largely uninterested in other
human beings, perhaps with good reason, a class who
read Newsweek and the Economist but not the New
Yorker and certainly no fiction. People I’d learned to
exploit. I offered smiles to some of them, and moved
on.
And towards the bottom, near the band and the edge
of the field, golden smiles looked back at us and hands
waved – friends welcoming friends – the glorious
Greeks and those other fortunates with futures, raised
by families good enough to be interested in good things
– art, drugs, learning, life – people we saw at parties
who liked to golf with us, with whom we identified,

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people with names. A crowd called Jake and Cyan and

waved, and I felt happy waving back, and we surged
into an aisle between two gleefully rocking aluminum
benches and treelike columns of legs, and shoved open
a place to stand so that we could see down onto the
field. A girl teetered down the line towards Cyan, step-
ping through in a charcoal beanie and tan hide boots,
giving him a reaching hug and kiss on the cheek that
nearly set me flipping down the rows.
Cyan’s brow furrowed and he quietly drew himself
up, a gnome rising from a pinprick. The girl stood at
his knees, he drew her up and we rocked and buckled.
She looked like a parrot – his new girlfriend. The
crowd roared mightily and jostled us together. There
was nowhere to go.
“Well,” I half-shouted. “Where’s the Zuck!”
“I don’t know. I think we should check on him.”
“Don’t fucking check on him.”
“Don’t talk to Cyan like that,” the parrot gawked.
“He’s my friend.”
“Jake, I should check,” Cyan whimpered.
“If you go after him it’ll look like you want some-
thing. You’re acting like a little bitch.”
“I just want to see.”
“Don’t go.”
“Fuck you.”
“Don’t go if you want him to commit.”
“Don’t order Cyan around,” cried the parrot. She
looked back at me with glassy eyes and breathed fog
and moonshine. The crowd rocked us back and I could
have her I could have her I didn’t want her.

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 THE PENINSULA

“If I want your opinion, I will take my dick out of

your mouth,” I snarled. Slack-jawed, she looked down
at the game, crossing her arms. Stanford began kicking
off and the crowd lifted their keys in an orchestra of
tingling, jangling them back and forth as the kicker ap-
proached the ball, and they all called ‘Wo-ah!’ as the
pigskin sailed down the field.
In this sea of motion, the Zuck emerged at the stairs,
looking down over the kingdom his website had con-
quered. I waved, and the Zuck, being a wunderchild,
perceived me.
“See?” I told Cyan.
“Fine.” He stared down the row and set his jaw,
then flitted his eyebrows in greeting to someone he im-
agined he knew. Cal had driven down the field in three
plays and was pushing the goal line. We’d fallen twen-
ty points in the second quarter, and already the students
had begun sulking up the stairs, resigned to another
loss.
A Cal cheerleader grabbed the microphone and
yelled, “PENETRATE, PENETRATE! SCORE,
SCORE!” and the blue side of the stadium chanted and
roared. Then Cyan sputtered something, growing red-
faced, and started to step down off the bench. But at
that very moment the Zuck stepped up with his orange
bride, trying to squeeze in down the row, grinning and
holding hands, and they waved and rose up beside us.
So Cyan politely settled back on his heels, his ears red
and boiling.
“We lost you down there. Hell of a game,” said
Mark, and reached out a hand. Orange blasted a smile

284
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and received eyes like daggers from the parrot.

“I didn’t know she was your girlfriend!” exploded
orange. “That’s so cute. I love your hat!” she blasted.
Her grin threatened to snap the tendons of her cheeks.
“Thaaanks!” the parrot replied. “I love your shirt!”
“Thaaanks!”
“Thaaanks!” the parrot said again, and I squeezed
her arm. The orange girl gazed blithely off into the
crowd. Mark had stepped off the bench and maneu-
vered behind me and Cyan.
“Guys,” Mark breathed against the roaring cheers,
“This is great. I didn’t realize Stanford girls were so
much hotter.”
“Yeah,” I said. “They say all the Ivys are bad, but at
least the Stanford ones fake bake.”
“Not even that. She’s so much more interesting,” he
beamed, “than a Harvard girl.”
Cyan smiled faintly. The douche was blowing his
opportunity. “I’m glad it’s going well.” Douchetastic.
The biplane roared back over the stadium, and the
stands boomed as Navy pushed over the goal line, put-
ting us far down in the half. The girls’ conversation
had also failed to revive, and they stood next to me,
side by side, thirsting vainly for connection.
Then Zuck said, “Cyan, you can sell.” He raised two
fingers in blessing, and wealth was had.
I spun around, alive like a golem, thumping Cyan
nearly knocking him back into the knees of the row be-
hind us. “That’s great!” I said. “Michael will want you
to come down to Carmel with him this weekend to talk
about it.” Then Cyan shot a yellow, sideways look at

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 THE PENINSULA

me. I didn’t know what it meant. It was gone in an in-

stant, replaced by a staggering grin.
“It will be awesome,” he beamed.
The Zuck shook both of our hands and trundled back
to his orange, who convulsed with sunshine at his re-
turn, slopping a multicolored kiss on his cheek that
made the crowd revolt towards me in fear.

286
 15
Halloween toppled over the hills, the sun kicking
copper into the air and smoldering fog among the pines,
and Lily came home. That sun was an autumn hound
and we went into the hills to meet him. The hill forests
remembered my childhood treading deertrail and bram-
ble through their ancient pines, building troves of rocks
and feathers in the tree hollows and streambeds, and
under hanging mists raising forts of mud and shale,
great dams and high cities peopled with berries and
twigs and centipedes, in those silent high reaches. Lily
said she would not stay another night in her house and
wanted to be with me.
“Silence,” I told her at the trailhead I wanted her to
see. The blond dog kicked in its leash. I held her hand,
and we began across the skyline with all the valley and
all the sea arrayed on either side. Stanford sat far be-
low, a red gem surrounded by suburbs, and out west the
Pacific extended its plane.
Californian wind traversed the hills, brushing their

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coats in wild spirals and swirling down into the valley.

Every consideration of past and future blew from my
mind as we crossed those bleak spaces, down the trails
and through the grasses, through the dust, seeing only
seeing while we walked for miles. We could walk well
and even if we tried, if I led her. Redwood groves
gathered before us, bent in red bark robes, oaks at their
knees: their moss and lichen dripped, and they held all
but the wind silent. We kissed leaning against the trees,
then left their shelter, walking on among the fields.
Now the ridge twisted back above a broad forest val-
ley, choked with heath, and we came down the trail
through the dust and turned on. A silent hawk rose
from the scruff of a pine, talons sprung: he dipped
among the grasses and fetched a coiling snake, half its
head hacked off, slinging it behind him with a brownish
drool. As he passed, his claws went twisting and pop-
ping the flesh, and he went down in the forest where the
creek whispered its song.
Now we stood on the brink of that gulley, where a
column of living mist drove up from the oaks and the
stream, buoyed by the wind into sails that twisted and
ran before the sun. Like a tiered castle, the shape rose
and parted into transparency, carrying with it the val-
ley’s waters: the trail wound down into the gulch, thick
with the smell of wet leaves, and down the trail we
made our way seen and unseen by every living thing
around us.
On the valley floor we passed into a grove of sharp-
scented bay trees shielded from the sun. The trail crest-
ed like an altar, the dome of leaves almost turquoise,

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oblong and glowing around a ring of black stones.

There was life in this place. A coal-colored snake part-
ing the grass, a stinking black beetle wobbling through
the dirt around a coin-sized patch of sun: life cycling
endlessly. The sphere of leaves interspersed the shade
with twinkles, and the creek went among the bays.
“We can stop here,” I said, picking a rock off the
pile.
“Can we,” said Lily, and she let her dog off into the
brush.
“As good a place as any – since I’ve brought you
here to die.”
She yawned. “I would like to die, or at least lie
down.”
She lay, and prisms fell on her face, sunned through
the canopy, tossed along unwinding branches and the
black pews of the tree trunks. She had a good view of
herself, good as any, and she rolled up the legs of her
jeans and slipped one dusty foot from her sandal, sink-
ing it into the moss. She crooked her other leg beneath
her. She turned her chin askance, tilting her head and
letting her platinum hair fall freely. A brown birthmark
the size of a plum fanned on her knee. She patted the
moss beside her and slowly lay back on her elbows in
the shade: this silent metal girl resting like a deer in the
forest, and all around the sound of trees. I sank down
beside her, my one hand drawing crosswise across her
back. She darted her head and turned, ears slanting
from her straight hair.
“Well,” she said, biting her lip, “I do know you bet-
ter than other people, and I know you wouldn’t kill me,

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though you’d do all sorts of other things.” She turned

and leaned close. “But you don’t know me. That’s the
advantage I have.”
“I know you pretty well,” I said.
“Do you want to see something?” she whispered into
my ear. Her clumsy cheek brushed mine. A flurry of
hair.
“All right,” I said.
“You don’t get to see unless you’re good.”
“Show me,” I said. A black bird dashed around one
of the trunks into the branches, and Lily blew air into
my ear. All was green. Then she laughed, and, flaring
her shoulders, reached down and pulled off her top.
Without a word she turned and half pounced over me,
deft as a cat, sinking one arm into the moss by my side,
gold and fast and toned. Blue lace clung to her and in
her navel swirled a glittering ring. Leaning her face
close to mine, she inverted her arms, showing the pale
underside, where on her wrists lacerations swirled like
calligraphy. Around them drifted the brutal print of
blank and faded scars.
“I was busy in New York,” she grinned, her teeth
bared, “This is why I can’t have lovers.”
“What about me?” I was staring at the scars.
“You are nothing.”
“Those are new?”
“They are why he sent me away. There are many
more from other years, but scars fade fast on me. I
have skin like a snake.”
“Why–”
“It’s a form of valediction.”

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“I must have this effect on many women.”

She laughed harshly. “Oh, not you, it has nothing to
do with you. But now you can see physical evidence of
my insanity. Now you can stop being interested in me.”
“And you are happy with it?”
“I’m ravishing.” She leaned down so that her parted
lips opened inches from mine, then moved her knees up
and sank upon me. She smelled of jasper and she
smelled of bay, her eyes gold and gone. “So you will
have to believe. And behave, you will also have to be-
have.” I necked up to kiss her but she pulled back like
a serpent.
“Not now, Jake! Not in my tortured state!”
She let her hand trail down my side and again to my
belt buckle, where against my straining she left it, still
staring blankly past my eyes. And she pushed up and
off with a brassy laugh, stepping up, turning from me,
her back striding and striped with light.
“Let’s go down to the creek, now that you have seen
all of me. Take my hand. Too slow!” Then she leaned
down and unbuttoned her pants, and stripped them off.
She looked back and laughed the same, shrilly, like
metal.
“Then can’t we–”
“Not yet,” she said. “Quickly!”
All aching, from one elbow I heaved up. I staggered
after her in a daze, down the mossy rocks to where wa-
ter played through the tree roots. She placed her feet
carefully and stepped between the rocks, not once look-
ing back, but when I approached she held up a hand –
she would proceed on her own.

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Faltering only once, she made her way to the

stream’s edge, and padded up the shale to a pool spread
beneath the greatest bay tree, where she stood for a
moment before stepping in. I sloshed through the rocks
after her, ears buzzing. Leaves and water stung my
feet, and I stumbled to a knee. A jagged slash drew
across the cap, crimson, and looking down I saw crea-
tures writhing in the cracks between the rocks.
Yes ivy crawled on the rocks, on the trees and nested
at their roots, and among the ivy crawled beetles snakes
birds rats squirrels worms lizards spiders earth creatures
who saw naught but black, who roamed and jumped
and spent themselves in hiding, encased in their armor,
all clattering through the ivy earth and stone on legs
many clawed delivering unkindness to species same
and not, who bereft of language muttered their own de-
fense and died. Among the death lay stones worn
smooth by the water and on these stones I stepped, sil-
ver streaking between the stones down among the
leaves, silver into black water turned, and oak leaves,
gold- and grime-faced, swam among the gleam of the
water and spent. The stones clacked and swayed be-
tween silver water and towards the stream I came and at
the bank of pebbles the waters of the stream opened be-
neath the tree and gave life to the land. Wretchedly, I
came up behind her, soaked and torn. I was standing on
the bank and I could not enter the cold water as she had
done. The chill wind swept between us.
“Look at you, pathetic beast,” she said, not even
turning around. Now her silver calf came down in the
reflecting pool and she wore nothing but the lace of her

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mornings and the water came to her knees and scattered

shivers all over her flesh. She sank into the waters on
her knees, facing the river tree, in the darkening coil of
her hair.
“Doing my best,” I mumbled. I stepped into the
pool and ice came prickling all around as if to kill me
and I stepped through the water and reached out my
trembling hands.
“The beast is the best,” Lily said. “Well, it is Hal-
loween.” She floated, turned, and drew her cold arms
around my neck, pulling me to her mouth, in that cold
darkness where as a child I first felt home. I held her
through the lace and through the lace I stroked her.
One of her hands trailed around to grasp me by the
neck, but soon she broke off, kissing my face, my eyes
and brow.
“Narcissus of California,” she murmured, viewing
me only with her kisses. “A modern tragedy.”
Around us water swept, freezing, and I held her.
“But my uncle’s the reason for coming here,” she
sighed. “Not you. So your existential ruin can’t hold
court, even if it is at the hands of technology.”
“Well I am going to tell you,” I held her off and
looked at her, “that I’ve found our answer.”
“Have you?” she laughed. “I still won’t sleep with
you.”
I laughed. “That doesn’t matter to me.”
“But I could have sworn.” Her hand again trailed
down and held me, and her cat’s face wrinkled as she
began to kiss my neck.
“The flesh is willing,” I gasped. “But the will is

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fake.”
“Because if we do it–” she preened into my ear.
“You might go crazy.”
“Crazier than I am?”
She looked at me, and there we somehow balanced.
“Tell me then.” She took my cold hand.
The sun followed us into the meadow, but even then
I did not defile her. The bay groves waved and rustled
and the old oaks overhung, while I told her my secret.

“I know where those files must be,” she said. “Why

didn’t you say so earlier? Your mother gave all that
over to my uncle for safekeeping, it’s downstairs – he
mentioned it when I first arrived and he was taking me
around the house. He talks a lot about your family. But
your mother wouldn’t give him the key. You’ll have to
find it. Bring it to the party tonight.”
So as the sun set and clouds blew over the hills I
made my way home. Driving down Atherton Avenue
through the patrols of clean joggers and prowling
housewives, I felt as sharp as a blade. The moisture in
the sky had frozen into a cold rain spattering against the
windshield, and air tore from the open windows, gnaw-
ing my knuckles red and hardening my grip into a
frostbitten burn. Rainwater frothed oil from the roads,
sliding across the asphalt to curdle in gutters, bleeding
up leaves the color of candy stripes.
Now horses drummed past as shadows against my
eyes, and on Selby Lane a pair of Mexican gardeners
tending the neighbor's yard glanced up at me, brandish-
ing wood-handled shears and primitive iron adzes from

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another continent, another age. The fatter one waved at

me, and I stared him down until he went back to work,
pausing before swinging around into our driveway.
I clicked off the engine and stepped out, brushing
my hands on my coat and crunching towards the front
door. A pair of lights in the dining room – the house-
keeper’s window lay open upstairs, emitting a faint
smell of oolong, light and amber. The brass lion's head
turned, rusty, and through the smooth panels of the door
I walked as a ghost into my own home.
Voices rose, and I started. The plaster interior wall
faced me, at its base a cherry table set with an urn of
dead flowers. Around the dead flowers lolled little
monkey skulls my father had skinned in Papua. And
Russell Bessemer the Great, in vibrant Hong Kong
acrylic, himself grinned from a tropicalia canvas before
me on the wall.
I turned aside and went down the corridor towards
the lights, passing two glum Asian prints of a gibbous
pear and panda bear, remarking with a glare the shelves
of children's books my mother had bought from Eng-
land and stored away, perhaps the last thing she had
read.
Then a tart, angry odor burned on the air, Indian
food, which the housekeeper had no idea how to cook.
Stepping like a doomed Basque around the corner and
through the open double doors, I found Michael and an
anonymous, grey-haired woman seated at opposite ends
of the dining table under dimmed lights, divided by
three steaming mounds of aromatic saffron, tandoori
chicken, and an ugly eggplant curry.

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They looked over at me. Michael immediately broke

into a crimson smile and pushed out his chair from the
head of the table, knocking over the brass servant bell.
His red-veined lips were dusted yellow with sauce, and
his napkin, balled next to his plate, was stained like a
clotted bandage. Another smell, a persistent, faint
musk or perfume, hung behind the spices.
The grey-haired woman looked up but remained
seated, baggy eyes peering from her face of ash. One
of our crystal glasses rested between her index and
forefinger, filled with ruddy wine. She wore a dark
blue dress and no shoes.
“Jake,” said Michael.
“Great,” I said, staring at them. “I suppose mom
gave you the key?”
“We came because his house is being decorated,”
said the woman coldly, looking at Medine. She took
hold of her purse. “We needn’t stay.”
“Bonus points for preparation,” I said.
Michael gave a ruffling, pinching affirmation with
his snout, and put his hands into the pockets of his
slacks.
The woman glared at Michael, folding her napkin
under her plate. She looked back at me and opened her
mouth and closed it – her nose wrinkled slightly, a tan
layer of powder cracking across the bridge. A fly thun-
dered out of the rafters and alighted on Michael’s plate,
and he leaned forward, waving it away with a tremen-
dous motion of his hand.
The woman pursed her lips, about to speak.
“All right, all right,” Michael cut in, pushing back

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from the table and sucking his teeth with his tongue.
“It's fine, Jessica. Let’s get a breath of air.”
She turned her eyes towards him and raised her hand
off the table, a silvery tendril – and Medine, with a
frank smile, stepped by me into the hall, smelling of our
shampoo. She followed him, looking back at me.
Incredulous, I stared around the room. On the coun-
ter lay the various implements of our kitchen – the
huge, stained cedar cutting block and the gleaming
cleaver that the housekeeper always used to hack the
heads off of fish, oilcloth, yellow-slimed eggbeaters, a
bowl of breadcrumbs and batter, and a blackened oven
mitt standing vertically against a pinkish mound of
chicken skin. Michael’s glass gave a wet click as the
ice in it splintered.
Appalling – but, stupid as everything was, I wouldn't
be blinded by anger. I swung through the hall and
around the corner, gripping the oak banister and storm-
ing up the thick-shod stairs onto the cooler second
floor. I heard Michael call for the woman outside, and
he gave a priggish exultation I couldn't catch. By the
trot-and-halt of his footsteps he almost certainly em-
braced her and laid a curry-soaked, lapping smooch
somewhere on her withered face. At least everyone
would soon be wearing masks.
I'd kill them both, I thought. I'd leave and be gone
for good; I'd get someone to beat me with a rod until I
got some mean-looking scars, and sue for abuse.
Above the stairs opened an expansive, airy chamber
with a white carpet and gray-shuttered windows, open
to the evening – my playroom when I was a child.

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Hung with silver tapestries, the interior walls curved

softly, so that the room formed a semicircle broken by
hallways. Two enormous cisterns sat on either side of
the oxblood sofa up against the far wall, lofting bamboo
and heartwood.
Calm down. I walked over to the sofa and knelt on
it, resting my elbows on the windowsill and staring
down into the dimming yard. The sun had gone down
behind the hills, and ozone cast a perse halo through the
stratosphere. Two glasses sat dull on the patio table,
dark-ringed. Then the front door slammed shut in a
patter of receding footsteps, and Michael’s car started
with a distant click and a high-pitched roar, and around
the front of the house gravel crunched as they pulled
out onto the drive.
I turned around and crossed the carpet towards the
housekeeper’s room at the end of the hall. From a ste-
reo, low, dulcet Tagalog tunes crooned imitations of
'50s soft rock, and warmth grew in the air as I ap-
proached the orange glow, as though a heater were
belting into the hall.
The housekeeper was an illegal alien that mother had
bought from the San Francisco smuggling rings on a tip
from a man father knew in Asia. A girl of fifteen when
she entered our household, she was immediately rele-
gated to bathing me, changing my diapers, cooking,
cleaning – any chore to retain the small stipend she
faithfully remitted home to her sprawling Manila clan
each grim Christmas. She was without wealth. She
presented in almost all of my baby pictures, poking a
bottle at me or wiping up my various splatters – the

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Mexicans took the yard, but indoors was her domain.

On a trip to Tahoe when I was five, mother bumped
into the housekeeper unloading luggage and discovered
a taut belly concealed beneath her rags – she was nine
months pregnant. We had her sent home by helicopter
to San Francisco General, where the baby was delivered
a week later and whisked away by her same smuggler,
who appeared – the last time we'd ever seen him – like
a grinning, liver-spotted ghoul, clutching the screaming
child by one leg and assuring us that everything would
be fine, that the housekeeper’s nameless baby was
headed for a “lovely couple of American doctors, yes,
doctors, who will adopt this lovely little girl!” Mother
was surprised how well the housekeeper took it. At
some point I began to suspect she resented the house-
keeper’s love for me, but by then she had become a
necessity – there were some things beyond the abilities
of Evelyn Bessemer.
The servants’ quarters remained a small converted
living room, despite the two open bedrooms on the first
floor. I imagine they recalled her Manila adolescence.
A wooden cot opposed a small coffee table with a ste-
reo and a cable TV set that perpetually and silently
displayed the game show carnivals of Filipino TV 12.
A molded wooden crucifix stamped the wall overhead,
next to her shaded window, and the aromatic oil frothed
in a burner on the nightstand, adjoining a caped shrine
of Santo Nino that steamed the spice into the room.
This pious quality adjured mother’s cantilevered
bed-hall overhead, which overstretched the daisies be-
low the exterior wall by an excessive, jutting yard; and

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it adjured the silk sheets of Medine and his sixty inch

flat screen television and arabesqued bathing room; and
it adjured the indoor fountains of the Bonns and their
pillared underground gymnasium. It adjured Atherton.
As I stood, one hand on the doorknob, looking up at the
housekeeper’s little cross, a shiver of glee traversed my
spine.
She sat on her bed writing on trisected letter paper
with a thin blue pen. She looked up as I opened the
door, her pickled chin bulging into her brown cheeks.
She set the pen down on the pad with a smart thwack,
and stood. Fawning attentiveness clawed across her
features, and with a courteous "Sir Jacob," she lowered
her hazel eyes, stood up, and almost curtsied.
She wore a pink-and-white print dress she'd bought
at the discount store where she shopped on the sole
Sunday we gave her off each month. She only shopped
there after visiting a Mexican Orthodox church, and
before retreating, dutifully, in the evening, to the dingy
Barangay Butterfly, a Filipino social club in the faroff
slums, where we assumed she conducted ephemeral
friendships with others of her ilk and hopefully re-
frained from further unprotected sex.
We always predicted she'd run away before she fin-
ished her twenties, as most nannies did, marrying up
into the lower class via a man with an Asian fetish,
sucking cock for a green card or at least less boring
forms of illegal indenture – but the housekeeper had
stayed on, and, were I less self-absorbed and, presently,
infuriated, I might have loved her for it.
“Mother's gone,” I said. “This is important.”

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“Everything is fine,” she asserted, nodding. Her ob-

sidian hair was braided into a single flopping ponytail,
tied with blue rubber bands. I paused.
“I'd like you to help me find a key.”
Her eyes dilated. “Ha? Tita she has all the key.”
“Big problem,” I said emphatically, arching my eye-
brows and pushing out my jaw as I like to do when I
talk to servants. “Show me where they are.”
She pointed downstairs with her lips, then upstairs.
“I need,” I said, tightening my grip on the doorknob.
“Sir Michael he say Tita say he use your Mam bed-
room. Did you see him?"
It was just like her not to realize the implications – it
was selfish and rude, a jealous servant's comment, a
piece of gossip, and I bared my fangs. Her eyes flick-
ered around like moths, and she scratched her head in
fear.
"I don't give a fuck, Marta. Where is the key?
You're going to lose your job over this. You've got to
give me the key."
A low, smoldering pause ensued, which the stereo
filled hotly, beaming crude Pilipino rock into the small
room – guitar, steel drums, a tenor giggling Taglish lyr-
ics atop a moronic, prancing melody that repeated itself
over and over – and suddenly an announcer came on,
splitting the song midway, jabbering impossibly fast in
choppy, meaningless syllables – "Ricardo Tilos! Fe-
lipe-Felipe!” Sputtering advertisements, the song
turned up again, building slowly towards a sentimental
crescendo, the singer calling a lover's name again and
again, "Anita! May iba ka na bang mahal? Anita!

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Kailan tayo magpapakasal? Anita! Anita!"

Utterly alien, a slave race, a culture of chewing gum,
subjugated by ours, and as the gulf between us widened
my mind churned in exhaustion and finally, as the an-
nouncer exploded again – "Felipe-Felipe-Felipe!" – I
nearly charged the stereo and hammered it to pieces
with my fists. Still she hadn't said anything.
"Marta," I snarled, stepping inside, “there is a chance
you'll be sent back. Mother and Michael are moving
away to another city. Michael doesn't want to take you.
He doesn't like you – I'm here to tell you that – he's
never liked you."
The housekeeper’s mouth tightened into a straight,
worried line and she clasped her hands in front of her,
still looking down at the floor. Eye contact had always
been difficult. I stuffed my hands in the pockets of my
jeans, trying to force concern across my face. She
closed her mouth and I saw her jaw muscles clench be-
neath the brown layer of jowl. She trembled, too, then
stifled it. A cold breeze spirited in from the window,
blowing off a little of the smoke in my eyes. She
looked pitiful. I straightened my neck and cleared my
throat.
"But I want to help you," I said, closing half the dis-
tance between us in a single, stiff stride, my hands in
my pockets. "I will help you. Help me find the key."
She sat down on her bed and looked out the window.
Her eyes hadn’t spilled yet, I noticed, but they stared
out frantically, creased at the edges. Her feet, contained
in little lambskin booties and blue socks, scooted to
face each other. I took another giant step forwards and

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bounced down next to her, glancing up at the crucifix

on the wall.
“Michael has been trying to take our money,” I told
her, trying to sound concerned. She met my eyes. “I
need to stop him, and I want things to stay as they've
been. But mother won't believe me. I need to get the
key to look in my father's files. They called the agency
yesterday, and if we don’t stop them they’ll be coming
to get you.” I swallowed loudly. “I don't want you to
go,” I ventured. “I'd like to help you, Marta. It may be
even possible for you to work for me.”
She turned her head and I saw a brief, sideways look
of suspicion in her eyes, and then a gleam of under-
standing, but it fast receded behind tears that began
splashing down her arms, and she shuddered and cov-
ered her face, muttering, "Sirry, Sir Jacob," the lilt
dragging out the r’s.
"All is not lost," I told her. The unconquerable will,
the study of revenge, immortal hate, and courage never
to submit or yield.
"I can't go back. My family–"
"Then you've got to help me," I said, cutting her off.
She had folded her hands in her lap. I kept staring at
her. "I need to see my father's things," I said. "What
does the key to his safe look like? Do you know?"
She paused, but I knew she had begun to lose. I
tried to imagine the trash heap awaiting her in Manila.
She rocked slightly, and more tears came, and she
flipped her hands back and forth before finally facing
me again.
"That one is very small." She held up her thumb and

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forefinger, and I could hear bitterness in her voice.

"Silver."
"Come with me," I said, taking her arm. "We're go-
ing to find it."
We climbed the stairs to the third story, saying noth-
ing. Mother's chambers encompassed the entire floor: a
bar, a sitting room, an ornate bathroom, and her bed-
room – framed by an L-shaped hall that pared the front
from the west side of the house. Moisture hung in the
air and embossed the windows facing the front yard;
some bygone person had trailed their finger along, leav-
ing a long squiggle. Down the west hall a pair of white
double doors led into the bedroom, and I walked quick-
ly towards them, ignoring the hanging photographs of
father, my childhood, her dead parents and brother.
Her room was a mess. Three pairs of men's khakis
mashed at the foot of the rumpled queen bed, along
with a disgusting ball of grayish Polo boxer-briefs and a
dun Gucci belt, an officious bundle. A half-empty de-
canter of scotch resting on the teak dresser was turning
the underlying wood a waterlogged peach. The win-
dows had been spattered with oily drops, and, past the
marble sink, septic air flowed from the wet bathroom
floor. The slide closet, mercifully closed, rested off its
axis, as though something within had been shoving into
the room.
“What the fuck?” I stared back at Marta. “You
don't clean in here?” She said nothing, peering past me.
Then she stepped inside and picked up a pair of men’s
pants and began folding them with her withered hands.
I walked over to the dresser and pulled it open. The

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vague, perfumed scent I'd caught in the kitchen rose

from mother's underwear drawer, puffing from packed,
peach-colored bras and conservative cotton panties and
God knows what else – I wouldn't look – I slammed it
shut, a carton of intestines, snakes, and went down to
the next, which bulged with velvet bags of gold neck-
laces and freshwater pearls, and continued on, finding
nothing but damned sport tops and folded shirts and the
other informalities, absurdly mismatched and mixed,
androgynous, mocking me, and I grew impatient and
more and more furious – a velour tracksuit sprawled
around a pair of interlocked plaid cravats, a little plastic
box of brass cufflinks (welded M’s) sat halfway out of a
sundress pocket, a stack of folded men's jeans, a mound
of red and yellow Chinese silk, colognes mixed with
perfumes in lascivious bottles, their scents igniting un-
conscious fires, gold blended with silver, lead with
water. The cavernous bottom drawer was half full –
alligator purses, shoelaces, digital cameras, a tangled
pile of electronic chargers, a plastic bag of foreign bills,
a silk jewelry box full of a complete set of unworn plat-
inum Tiffany pendants, one of which I slipped into my
pocket for Lily. A tertiary layer of junk shifted away
from my hands and collapsed tinkling.
"For Christ's sake," I said over my shoulder, still
digging around, "don't say anything about this. I'll tell
you what I find out, and talk to mother about keeping
you."
She did not respond, but I could hear her flap the
sheets as she made the bed. She pulled the closet open
at one point, gave up on tidying whatever was inside,

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and slid it shut. Then she walked over and stood quiet-
ly behind me as I searched, waiting. For ten minutes I
sifted through the junk with my fingers – rings, coins,
toenail clippers, silky Bloomingdales receipts – and fi-
nally leaped up, exasperated, the blood pounding in my
temples, and turned around, my fists balled.
The housekeeper held out a tiny silver key in her
brown palm, and looked at me with clear eyes.
"In the pockets," she said.

306
 16
Halloween night, a pageant in hell. Blood sprayed
across my face and my starched white shirt, and I drew
a stainless steel meat cleaver from our kitchen block,
tucked it into my suit pocket, then roared into the night.
I chewed blood pills as I drove through the dark, drool-
ing sugary ichor.
The Medine house faces the Circus Club fields,
winding three stories around two spiral stairs, an adobe-
walled compound defended by two rangy dogs and a
flotilla of border-hopping Mexicans. The red Spanish
walls immure camphor trees straight from Van Gogh,
scraggly junipers in the front yard overgrowing the
swingsets.
The night glowed with festal light. In the drive
lolled SUVs with the old, yellow high-school water po-
lo stickers, obscene behemoths belching enough yearly
nitrous oxide to brown Lake Tahoe three shades; a
womanly Lexus hybrid, pink-tinted and gold, sprawl-
ing, oil-spattered garage; and up around the side of the
house where the drive continued, a small fleet of bat-

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tered white pickups, the land craft of the Mexicans who

so diligently worked, now, on the lights and streamers
for the party. Slamming the door and crunching past
the gardeners, I thought I heard one of them snicker.
In the sleeping garden, Lily held open the side
door’s glow, wearing a red skirt and stilettos.
“Do you value your spleen?” I asked her. Strings of
blood slurped out of my mouth.
“Do you have your change of clothes?” she replied,
tapping her heel, where the little dog kicked around on
a green leash. “You’re late.” In the main rooms the
party murmured, decked in orange and black. Goofy
pumpkins growled from every nook and cranny, awash
in amber light.
“No, I told you – I don’t want to go to Carmel.”
“Do you have the key?”
She took it. “The safe’s downstairs, but you should
go and talk to my uncle, keep him occupied. Send
Emma to help me, if you see her.”
“Deceiving your family is my specialty,” I said,
stepping past and turning through the hall. But Lily put
her arm out and caught me. She ran her fingers up over
my face, lifting strands of blood from my lips.
“You need a mask,” she said. “Everyone’s wearing
a mask.”
“You don’t have one.”
“Bring me the girl one on the table back there, and
take the other.”
Onto her face she pulled a flimsy disguise made of
thin black wood, shaped to depict the visage of a man-
tis, with golden antennae and bulbous eyes. Bright

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touches of orange and silver paint dappled its surface

and, glued or nailed down, a layer of soft black velvet
obscured the frame. A dainty feminine nose had been
carved out of the wood, and the two thin antennae
twisted from wire and feather protruded from the top,
while jagged mandibles poked beneath. The mask’s
eyes gleamed with iridescent layers of mesh, but there
were no holes for hers.
“He made that for you?”
“Had them ordered,” sighed Lily, palming the key.
“You can get anything in China.”
“It’s disturbing.”
The mask’s shimmering eyes regarded me blankly.
“Put yours on.”
Though fashioned from unliving wood and bone,
cruel mirth animated the features of the mask I held in
my hands. The wood had been sandpapered into a
coarse and brutal face, then colored thickly with scarlet
dye, charcoal hollowing its curves. Lascivious eyes,
deep-set and veiled by smoke-glass, peered above the
garish mouth, whose lips curled in mockery. The smile
was broad and thin, twisted high in sharp points of
laughter. Broken in the middle, the nose fell flat and
bulbous, hanging off-center.
“I’m not wearing this,” I stuttered. “It messes up my
costume.”
“You will wear it because everyone else is,” Lily
snapped. “Hurry up, there isn’t much time.”
“Whatever,” I said, pulling past her. “I’ll go talk to
him. I’ll distract him.”
But as I pushed open the foyer doors a tiny form

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flipped over on the dark marble and went tumbling into

a cartwheel, splaying blond rays like a sparkler. Enjoy-
ing our company was Ryan Bonn’s spoiled and
infernally rambunctious younger sister.
“Juh juh jah jeh juh Jake Jake Jake Jake Jah-Jake!”
she exploded, spattering Ritalin-soaked mucus all over
me from three feet below. “JAKE JA-JA JAH JAKE!
MOM IT’S JAKE!” A joke had been passed around
Menlo that her blood seeped with a stimulant more po-
tent than cocaine, which kept vampires away from the
house – once, she went ten months without seeing her
mother on account of an American Idol addiction that
confined her to the upstairs playroom and the care of
her black Georgian nanny.
Kicking prints up the parchment wallpaper, she did a
backflip, teetering on two pinkish arms, and came up
with a toothless smile. She wore a little plaid girl’s
dress and a white polo shirt, the uniform of Sacred
Heart, a school for stupid kids.
“Did you just come from school, Clarissa?” I asked
earnestly.
“Nope! I’m sick!” Offering no explanation for her
uniform, she spun around like a top and fled into the
legs of her mother, who had emerged from within, in
cream pants and a cashmere cardigan. In the low light
she resembled Martha Stewart. She always turned out
impeccably groomed, mechanically composed, her au-
burn hair falling in garlands around her face. She took
religious pride in the activities of her offspring, and
thrived, as well as she could, through their conventional
lives.

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“Jake!” beamed her ashy yellow choppers. “I ha-

ven’t seen you since graduation! Clarissa, what do you
say?”
“That it’s nice to see you,” the girl beeped, holding
her hands together and looking at the floor.
Plated in marble, the cavernous entry opened behind
them, an atrium nearly three stories high, traversed by a
lazy spiral stair that wound around the foundation wall.
The ground floor sunk towards its back and flanks, a
dining room, a luxury kitchen, a den, and a bathroom
encased on five sides by mirrored granite. Voices
swirled from within, and the tinkling of crystal.
I walked over to give her a stiff hug, causing the
youngest Bonn to scamper away, squealing among the
voices of the others.
“How is your mother doing?” Mrs. Bonn suggested,
emitting a dead, scary look from her eyes. Her faculty
for listening had vanished after she stopped working.
“She’s a decrepit whore,” I nearly said.
“Goo-od,” glazed Ryan’s mother. “Goo-od. It’s so
exciting that Ryan is working. It’s such a good oppor-
tunity. Yea-ah. Well, you never know. Yea-ah. Do
you want anything to drink? Soda? Goo-od. So have
you decided what you’re doing yet? No-o. Goo-od.
It’s hard to decide. Yea-ah, yea-ah, yea-ah, yea-ah,
yea-ye-y-y-y–” and oil cylinders burst through her eyes,
spraying me with coolant, and her entire face rocked
open on a hinge to reveal a concentric set of lubricated
steel cylinders pumping and straining around a glowing
uranium core.
“JOIN US, JAKE!” robot-Bonn bellowed, lunging

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crazily at me with steel pincers for hands, and I found

myself asking, “Is the host in there?”
“They’re all by the bar,” she crooned, rotating to
pursue her daughter. “It was nice seeing you. Tell your
Mom hi! Snacks will be ready in a sec. Super cute.”
Into the foyer, where guests attired in fatuous cos-
tumes prowled and preened, between the slipping
Mexican waiters, a crowd of sumptuous Athertonians
appeared – a fairy godmother, a witch, a porcupine, all
animals of the forest, celebrities of the golden age, and I
stepped out drenched in the blood leaking from my
mouth and my ears and my eyes, carrying my mask, the
front of my suit encased in gore. Over the music some-
body squeaked my name, and tempted eyes turned
immediately. Beckoning a drink, I staggered into the
atrium, drawing on the shelter of my mask and cursing
every politeness.
But I could not pass through the crowd. A labyrinth
of leather chairs blocked my way, tangled with woolen
legs and high heels. Before me on a chaise sprawled a
girl disguised in an oval of lightweight bone, holes cut
out for the eyes, mouth, and nose. When she saw me
she stood up in the middle of the chair and pointed.
Her mask has been painted a mottled gold and mauve.
Enormous floppy ears made from soft yellow hide
sprawled from the top, and long stiff whiskers stuck
from the cheeks. Two large buckteeth crammed
through the mouth-hole, and leather cords bound the
muzzle to her blonde mane.
"It's Emma!" the girl peeped. "Where are you go-
ing?"

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"I'm in a hurry to see your uncle," I replied, but she

had already looped both her velvet arms around my
waist, drawing me back towards the stairs, while I
twisted, struggling, and nobody paid any attention.
"Come with me! Come look at my fish!"
"I can’t, I can’t," I moaned, but both her fingers had
hooked into my belt loops and she was dragging now,
putting her weight into it, and around us polite conver-
sation tittered about how the kids were playing with
such adorable energy, how dark it was outside, how
winter was coming, how well the NASDAQ was doing,
and how nice it would be to be young again and just
starting out. But I had Emma by the wrist and I leaned
in to tell her that her sister needed her.
"But will you come?" she whined. "Are you going
to join us?"
"Your uncle wants to talk to me."
"No he doesn't. He doesn’t like you you know!
Come on."
But I let her go and instantly she was off, bounding
into the hall after Lily, flopping her ears as her tail
whisked the marble. And just as I turned I saw Bonn’s
sister go tearing after her down the hall.
The wealthy roared and rumored in their amber light.
“The entrepreneurs!” one yelled, a wealthy investor, “I
can hardly believe their arrogance.” Above a massive
polished coffee table, Medine stood talking to his law-
yer, a dubious wolf-man, and a giant turtle at the far
end of the foyer. The lawyer regarded me skeptically,
but I strode towards them, pushing aside a fairy and an
orc who clanked glasses and talked of semiconductors.

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“Friends, countrymen!” I belted.

Medine’s mask covered his entire face, and I recog-
nized him only by mane of gray hair surrounding the
straps. The front had been cut to resemble a hawk, and
painted a deep obsidian color. Crafted from bone, from
the skull of some large animal, it bore a small black
beak surrounded by carved feathers. Two wide, red
eyes bore bifurcated holes that let light pass in. Black
feathers shrouded the mask’s edge, and the chin had
been cut off, leaving his jaw free. The beak snapped to
face me.
“Jake,” welcomed Michael. “What a great way to
dress.”
“You amusing little turd,” added the lawyer.
“What are you guys, donkeys?” I asked, teetering.
“Where’s the booze?” I leaned towards the lawyer and
leered in his mask. “The fucking booze–”
At this, they all stared at me, their ears bobbling.
“Jake, do you need assistance?” asked the lawyer,
folding his arms.
“I do need a little help,” I gurgled, slurred. Blood
foamed from my hidden mouth, running down my neck.
“I’d like to kill both of you.”
They exchanged glances. “What do you say…”
"You're coming tomorrow to Carmel, I hear," said
Medine. “With your friend.”
"I don't think I can."
"Why not?"
“I have important actuarial business.”
"Your friend is coming to talk about his shares,” re-
peated Medine. “I thought you would join us."

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"I don't think so, he can handle himself."

“It's only right that you come–”
“Nein, Michael!” I bellowed, and turned away,
downing my flute in one sodden gulp. “NEIN!” I cried
again.
“The last of the Bessemers,” he sighed. “A pathetic
drunk.” He swirled his champagne glass, looking past
me. Across the cavernous room, someone snapped a
photo from the couches by the fireplace. The lawyer
tried to step past but I shot a bloody arm around his
shoulders and he recoiled, trapped. I swung the lawyer
to face Medine and began to teach them everything that
I knew. “Did you know that a whore will shower–”

In the night, in some night, back I came to the foot

of the grand stair. I tore off my mask; perhaps they
were looking, but I went on anyway. Emma led me by
the hand, and we came up, around and around while the
night swirled, into the playroom, a foyer draped in pais-
ley blue and peacock yellow. Instantly she had turned
around, and was unbuttoning my pants, nigh tearing
them down. She kneeled down on two pillows and was
licking her lips.
"We found it," she gasped, as I kicked her off, stag-
gering back.
"Found what?"
"Can't tell." She crawed around on her hands and
knees, giggling.
"Tell me–"
"The password."
"What's the password?"

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"What’s the password?” she giggled. “Lily has it.

You have to go in. But play with me first, please will
you–" And without another word I fled into the halls.
A black wooden door opened into a chamber awash
with red silk the color of blood. Lily wore a black top
embroidered with red, and her sister’s hands had
blanched her face with powder, bringing out her crim-
son lips and the blaze of her eyes. Now she closed the
door and brought me by the hand to her bed, and sat me
down and straddled me, the skirt riding up her knees.
She popped out her fangs and lay them on the dresser
by her mask.
“Did you find it?” I asked.
“You are covered in blood.” She swatted my chest
and then wiped her sticky fingers on my neck. “Yes I
did – it’s a reference to Hamlet.”
As I reached up to kiss her she pulled back. “Yes!
That must be it,” I told her. “My dad was obsessed
with Shakespeare. The login is, in fact, ‘Hamlet’.”
“Oh,” she said, “how funny.” She paused. “But I
don’t think it’s what we want.” Then she got up and
went to her dresser, fastening her hair back with tor-
toiseshell clasps.
“What? Did you find anything? The address for the
server, even? Come here,” I groaned, grasping after
her, rolling on my side. “You’re unattainable.” I had
resorted to whining. I should have checked myself.
“I found some things. I’ll show them to you in a
moment,” she, without turning, called across the room.
“But you, you want to have sex, I can tell. Well, it has
come time, I think. You’ve waited long enough.

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Though you might go crazy if we did anything. Then

no one would believe what you said.”
“Stop saying that.”
“But you might.” She turned. Her eyes gleamed
dark, almost seeing. Then she slipped a hand down her
flat stomach and under the hem of her skirt, biting her
lip. “Do you want to?”
“Do you?”
“Of course I want to,” she whispered. “I want to
now.” A tumbler glass appeared from the dresser, and
she took up a small flask of whiskey and poured me a
draught, feeling with her hands, splashing some on her
fingers. She slipped over to where I sat on the bed and
pushed me back. She made me lick the scotch from her
hand, like a dog. “Okay, you asked for it. You’ll never
be the same.”
The shot went down. A metallic, medicinal taste
rode the burn. Lily planted her knee softly, laying her-
self open to me, and her hand drifted down. The liquor
stung, numbing my throat – her scarlet skirt formed a
vee of lace and I rose upon her and everything disap-
peared.

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 17
When I awoke I knew that I was deathly sick. Only
alcohol, I thought, could so swiftly derange body from
mind – and for me hangovers were so common and so
withering that I did not suspect anything else. But Lily
had drugged me, I would learn. Consciousness drifted
back, tingling with pinpricks, in an unholy draught of
pain, and beneath the worst hangover of my life I felt a
virus suppurating in the harsh tissues of my chest. I
shook with fever. Coughing, I came awake, propped
upright in the back of a car. A limousine? Three blurry
figures comported around me, tinkling with conversa-
tion.
Morning, breeding season, ancient oaks thrummed
past, and as we rose into the coastal hills everyone be-
gan the social chant. In the back of the limousine,
Emma dandled out the first flutes of white wine, staring
into Cyan’s eyes so fixedly that the syrup dripped unno-
ticed to his knuckles, and Lily waved for the bottle to
slosh us two glasses of chard.

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I moaned, light raining into my eyes. “What hap-

pened? Where’s my jacket?” Someone had washed my
face and put a clean white shirt over my bloodstains.
Up the hollow body of the car, the runt dog, Callie,
burst into my lap, rolling over and biting me softly on
the wrist, but I flung that beast off and it went kicking
down to cower between its mistress’s boots.
“Have some wine,” said Lily, “you pathetic drunk.
Your clothes were ruined so we left them behind. Do
you even remember what you did last night?”
“We were worried about you!” cried Emma.
“I told them it was typical,” said Cyan. He had been
brought along at Medine’s behest. He wore a black suit
coat, lacerated jeans, and sneakers with embroidered
skulls. In his hair remained the impossible blue ear-
piece, which he seemed, at times, to address.
“I need to quit drinking,” I groaned, struggling up.
“What the hell happened? I don’t remember anything.
Where are we?” Up front, just as I asked the black
driver to turn down the radio, Lily heard a favorite, so
he turned it up instead, the noise mounting as we rose
into the Santa Cruz Mountains.
“Work,” Cyan mentioned, running a hand through
his hair. “The Zuck’s going to South America and I’m
going with him. I haven’t been before, because I'm
scared of the spiders. I hate spiders did you know–”
Without another thought I swigged white wine
through my teeth, Lily curling against me. Enough
about work, all week about work. I could not gather
my thoughts because of all the talking.
“Jake–”

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“Where are we going?” I lamented.

“The winery in Carmel,” said Lily.
“Wine country living!” Emma cried.
“It's so nice of your family to invite us,” claimed
Cyan. “I hope someone knows wine.”
“My uncle does,” Lily assured him.
“He didn’t tell me it was a winery!” Cyan shrieked.
“Jake, did you hear that! We’re going wine tasting!”
The limo jostled, coasting between a pair of trucks
on the pine-shaded pass. Far away, a candelabra of
sailboats pricked the harbor, the cats bobbing through
fog on the shore. Cyan and Emma wanted to take a pic-
ture of the surfing capital of America, though we could
see nothing from so far off. They wanted to anyway.
She headlocked him into a trim kiss on the temple, she
conied up white teeth, click, she goofily sucked her
cheeks, zoom. It was very fun what she was doing.
“You look adorable,” I encouraged them.
“Not us,” chirped Emma, giggling into his neck, and
actually biting him lightly. “Jake’s speaking funny!
He’s slurring his words!” Her tanned ankles, tied with
yellow linen bows, kicked out as she lunged. Like a
Catholic priest, Cyan feigned protest.
“Alert the vomit police,” sighed Lily.
“Leave us alone,” Emma mumbled, peeking out
from her girl’s mane for another giggling bite. Lily
leaned her head on my shoulder. Lifting the camera,
and snickering callously, she began shooting one-
handed shots of us four, and of the passing forest
through the window. That kind never turns out any-
way, I told her.

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Beyond Santa Cruz we blew through the tidy farm-

lands into Monterey, through the rolling fields of
artichoke and lettuce on the border of the Central Val-
ley, where there was not even any Internet. A spray of
fulmars rose out of a cloud group and cried off over the
boats, flying parallel to the highway – their wings hung
like fans, oblique to the flow of the wind, and now the
birds wavered over us, divagated, and dove silently into
a roadside cypress.
The car spun through dusty knolls and runt farms to
where salt lounged on the shore pans. Cyan spoke qui-
etly with the black driver, whose eyes traversed us in
the mirror. He was affiliating himself with another
race. Now his phone sang, and he endeared himself to
his listener, set up an appointment, then leaned shop
talk at Lily – a thesis on Dante oh, how exciting, how
can you really call it work, oh I know its important to
you, I wasn't implying that, do you like photography
too, that’s amazing, have you put together a book yet,
you can’t you say, that’s great, I feel like I know so
much about you–
But he did not know that Lily had been a cutter for
years. Her ankles and feet were so hardened by mutila-
tion that she didn’t even feel it any more. The night
before I had seen her fully naked, seen the extent of the
scars, and they inspired in me near-total bafflement.
Her body was riddled with tangles of all colors – ash,
silver, cherry, smoke, twined like wires in her flesh.
She seemed to cut herself every day, disguising every-
thing in a thick layer of makeup her sister applied as
diligently as a handmaiden. Under duress my coping

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had tumbled forth – that's terrible, how can this be, tell
me what's going on, is there any way I can, do you need
to go to, holy Jesus – but in the end I did not know how
to respond. I recalled it now. She had only smiled
blankly and kept kissing me. Last May she’d sliced
open her abdomen with a knife, she said, burned the
skin around it, then sewed it back up with a needle and
thread. She said her skin was far more sensitive than a
sighted person’s. I remembered telling her that if she
ever cut herself again it would be over between us, but
at this she smiled, laughed, then began to cry.
Oh Salinas, and three bottles already. Salinas, Mon-
terey, I tried to refuse drink but could not: they would
not let me refuse it and the pink white draughts flowed
into me and filled me with apathy. As the drive length-
ened I began to feel more and more sick – the fever
brought terrifying shivers, and I lay back with my eyes
closed, letting Lily’s silver fingertips play over my
temples while her other hand pinched a crystal flute.
She drank and laughed and drank, and we drank with
her.

I came awake. Popular sunshine hung over wind-

swept fields, warming grapes, and we nodded sleepily,
we descended, glided into the drive, where Cyan suf-
fered a courteous but premature tip to the chauffeur. “I
often try to be generous to people like that,” he admit-
ted.
The cliffs behind the house rose steeply among
golden amelanchier and the hanging gardens of blue
oaks whose leaves were withered as though the rains

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had not come, swinging and dying in the wind above.

Heath grew on the spars down to the beach, and, below,
the sea boomed against rocky pillars and slaked up
white strings of foam.
Beyond a stark lighthouse on the promontory, the
golf town of Carmel murmured two miles north, while
here on a hewn platform among the cliffs, surrounded
by a few acres of terraced grapes, half a mile beneath
the coast highway, stood the summer house of the Me-
dines.
Before that adobe mansion two bronze fountains
played in flurries of oak leaves driving from the vine-
yard. A triplicate of shimmering workers, shirtless,
hauled planks to a patio under construction on the west-
ern swell. And oh – my eyes hopped and slid under the
influence of the wine – I was dazzled by refractions, by
the standing sun. I sneezed water, wine, and fever.
Led by her dog, Lily flung downstairs into the base-
ment levels where she and her sister stayed, and Cyan
by himself took the ground floor – I was encloistered
nearest the master bedroom, closest to the clouds and in
the coldest region. Servants clattered everywhere,
Mexicans, watching us with white eyes.
The rooms of the house lay long and open, hewn
from a material that was not wood and not stone but
something more expensive – lustrous and brown, it
seemed at once like clay and bronze. All the bathrooms
gave way to the milk of marble and we slept not upon
linen but fine jacquard. Beyond the numerous sliding
doors, the sea sent towards a storm brewing black with
rain, and above the house a bank of cypress forest led

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up to cliffs and the other vineyards.

I had barely set my head down when Emma burst in-
to my room, flounced onto the bed, and took my hand,
looking into my eyes. “Up, you!” Grabbing me, she
pressed my hand to her stomach and turned, pulling me
up like an ox, so that I could not rest.
They said Michael Medine could not be found, so it
was decided we would drink more, that we would enjoy
as fast as possible the fruits of his estate. Out onto a
path, then inside green oak doors, led by Mexicans, we
came up a corridor around back to the warehouse,
where barrels rose in rows, and Lily was sitting cross-
legged in a brilliant scarlet dress.
The scene was elegant and Californian. The ware-
house walls had been made of earthquake sandstone
blocks arrayed geometrically without cement. They
were pieces of organic stone and no pesticides had been
used in their creation. Temperature gauges studded the
beams, humidity diffused from ceiling vents, and across
the floor traversed hoses with chemical dials. A great
aluminum cylinder for mixing stood in one corner, and
outside I had seen the hoppers for the grapes. In sum-
mer months, Lily told us, the wine was sensed and
maintained by a staff of twenty.
“Jake, look at this! Take a picture!” Cyan stood
like a proud goat up on a barrel, and nigh he drew forth
a red gout from its belly with a glass siphon, splashing
it into his mouth. He had never done anything like this
before, and he felt young. The young wine splattered
everywhere, over his soft pants and feet. And he
grinned as he leaped back to earth, tapping the hard

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oak, the grand cru, the favorite of the vintner.

Emma demanded wine, and she took great pouring
swallows from the tube. She staggered backwards from
the barrels. She never had been drunk before, she said,
but now she felt the need. My mind sputtered, and sud-
denly I began taking a hundred pictures, Lily preening,
Emma crossing her legs, Cyan flexing again atop the
barrels – an incredibly fun one – the wine, my crying,
enervated body, my bleary eyes: I could not stop.
“Remember to tag that,” Cyan reminded me. “Remem-
ber to post it on Facebook.” Out of the fever thoughts
came, memories of literature, sadisms: he has his valet
depucelate the maid, aged ten to twelve, before his
eyes–
In the anterior tasting chamber, reserves in plum
jackets were spat and swallowed along the bar. They
were served with water crackers. A hawk-nosed Mexi-
can twirled her turquoise pendant while she poured one-
handed, while Cyan questioned her about rosés.
“I don't want to be pretentious, but I have to ask
what wines are in this blend. Because I taste peaches,
and peaches mean Pinot.”
“Eminent sommelier Cyan Zilker has arrived,” I
lolled. “The viticultural possibilities astound the
mind.”
“Saignée wines were once blended in this region, but
the practice has fallen out of vogue,” Lily told us.
“This vintage is made as a byproduct of a red, a Grena-
che.” I looked over at her. In the ashen light she was
still strikingly beautiful, a marble willow set with blaz-
ing eyes. And her wild hair – it had her sister blanched.

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Emma, who stood naively upon her ribboned heels

and whose tan skin had been kissed by sun, her inno-
cent eyes peered unknowingly at Lily and she sipped a
pink goblet, absorbing her sister’s words.
“I'm going to pee,” she slurped, “taste this one, Cy.”
She shuddered away on her shoes, one hand on the
wall.
“Is she always this whiny?” Cyan joked. “Lily, try
it.” The rim slipped with both their licks.
“You are a complete faggot,” I told him.
“Jake, we are in public, in San Francisco basically,”
he slurred. He clenched his shoulders, his eyebrows.
He checked his very active phone and then his music
player.
Lily pouted sweetly at the wall, batting her eyelash-
es. “We’re in Carmel.”
“There are probably homosexuals here, too,” I said.
Lily smiled and, snapping her fingers, made us
pound another glass. After passing us a long gaze, the
Mexican pressed the turquoise stone between her lips
and slipped from the bar, past me. She slid open the
glass door and stepped onto the plank patio, releasing
the sound of hammering and sawing, a man calling in
Spanish, birdsong, before the door slid shut.
“Lily, I saw you taking pictures in the car. Come
here and tell us about photography.” Cyan had become
very drunk now. He grabbed Lily’s wrist, leaned her
against the bar, and stared into her eyes. “I’m sorry, I
forgot,” he said. With an embarrassing laugh he let her
go. First a finger-twister, he currently breaks all her
limbs, gouges out her eyes, and leaves her thus to live,

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diminishing her sustenance day by day–

“I once went birdwatching in Africa,” he said.
“Where the birds have AIDS,” I said.
“Where I saw a red and yellow barbet.”
“Where the birds have AIDS, where diamonds grow,
where the blacks overthrow,” I sang. “I too watched
birds, as a wee tyke.”
“Why? What’s the point?” asked Lily. She was
blindly coiffing her hair.
“It was breeding season,” I said. “Free porn with
every pair of binoculars.”
“Pornography! I think it’s because you are bored
with humans.”
“I’m not bored.”
“But you aren’t the type of person who, say, would
want children.”
“Look what can happen.” Reaching over, I gave her
a poke in the ribs, then turned around and poured my-
self another glass of blush. “You’re the mastermind.
Why we’re all so drunk.”
“Do you know how I know that Jake wouldn’t want
any,” she told Cyan.
“We’d have to get married first. Lily,” I said.
“But do you know how I know?”
“No, but let’s talk about it.”
“He’s ashamed in bed.”
There was a pause.
“There are a thousand occasions,” I informed them,
“when one does not want a woman.”
“Premature ejaculation. Impotence. Apathy.
They’re all the same thing. Do you know that Jake

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can’t get it up?”

Silence. Cyan looked at me and huffed a humiliated
smirk and my mind was reeling. You look for truth in
peoples' eyes and words, and the truth you find is that
you are small and weak and do not give them much be-
yond contempt.
“Disgusting,” Lily whined. “He doesn’t realize, Cy-
an, that the major problems with his social skills are
being far too self-focused and not paying attention to
others’ needs or reactions. Also, exerting a desperate
amount of energy, boorishly pushing the line too far,
drinking too much, and opening his mouth without rea-
son.” She caught her breath and finished her wine.
“Now take me outside, I want to have a cigarette.”
Cyan squinted darkly into his glass, then looked up
the hall to where Emma had disappeared. “I’m going to
wait here,” he mumbled.

A breeze of sawdust as we stepped from the cham-

ber. Beyond the patio, the workers lounged in the
shade of the olive grove up the hill, eating bag lunches.
The Mexican sat to the side smoking a cigarette, drink-
ing red from a glass she'd filled at the pyramid of
barrels against the wall. She sat cross-legged in a metal
deck chair, elbow on a dirty glass table.
Lily, her ears sharpened to points, smiled. Wrin-
kling her nose, applying her unnatural sense of smell,
she asked the Mexican for the pack and she took two
cigarettes. I took one, lit both, and plopped down into
the deck chair, breathing deeply air that was drenched
in wine.

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“I’m sorry,” she said. “That was cruel of me.”

“I didn’t know you smoked,” I said. I put the ciga-
rette between her fingers.
“Well, I’m not really from California,” she smiled.
I lit again off of hers, swallowing. “Thank you.” I
looked up into the grove, where a pack of wrens hurled
through the branches and over the deck. One halted in
the neck of the tree, strutting and preening, before car-
rying on. The wind rose over the house and the leaves
swayed and whistled, releasing the birds. Far up the
coast, blue storm clouds had started to gather.
“Everything’s all right? You’re acting funny,” she
said. “I’m worried about your health.”
“You’re delaying for some reason and it bothers me.
What about the files? Tell me what you found. You
said you would tell me.”
“We’re here to have fun! You’re always so serious.”
“No one is having fun.” Then I drew too hard, suf-
fering a blast of smoke that turned my eyes red.
“That’s not my fault.” She paused, eyes crystalline,
the glass midway to her lips.
“I mean, it’s almost as if–” I choked.
“Oh no.” She set the wine down, her lips tightening.
“Do you want to talk about it? Do you want to have a
talk? That would be fun.”
“No.” I fished a stick of ash onto the deck.
“Because–”
“No, forget it. You’re right. But I want you to show
me what you found. It’s important.”
“Of course I will,” she laughed. “I’m not an idiot.
The files are with my things. You look so pale!”

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The Mexican, watching us, pointed and laughed to

her fellows in the shade. The man with many tattoos
lifted a copper arm and waved to us, and his compan-
ions murmured in Spanish, looking on. I tried to smoke
again, blurting out more coughs. Lily had already fin-
ished her cigarette, and screwed up a puzzled catlike
glare.
I could not stop coughing. The circle of workers
burst out laughing, gesturing at me from the shade with
their sandwiches. And with them, all of a sudden, Lily
began to snicker. Her face assumed a mask I had not
seen before on a woman – some desert animal, a hyena
or a leopard, peered out of her for an instant. Then she
pressed her cheek to my hair.
“Let's get you a drink,” she soothed.
Fleet-footed and feeling with her hands, she padded
across the deck, drawing another glass with syrah; she
passed it over and settled back down, crossing her legs
and facing me. The workers, amidst another colossal
joke, burst out laughing again, and a colder breeze ran
through the trees. White-faced Cyan appeared at the
door, mouthing something, but I waved him off as I
wiped my eyes.
“I don't want any more,” I said, crossing my arms.
“You have to. It's the best vintage we have. There,”
she said, rubbing her wrist with the rim of one of the
glasses. “Have some more. It's hard with close friends,
everyone in each other's hair. It’s hard.”
“You walk so quickly. I mean, I’m embarrassed to
ask, but how do you get about like that?”
“You have to realize I know this place and that I’ve

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developed very good spatial memory over time. When

I was a girl we came here so often–”
“To get drunk with your uncle?”
“You know,” she interrupted, “no one appreciates
your jokes.”
“What jokes?” I tried to look at her, but I could not
see.
“But I'm sure it will be all right with them,” she told
me softly, stroking my hair. “You're a group.”
“I don’t even like them. I just want to be left alone.
I just wanted to be with you–”
“Will it make you happy, calm you down, to take a
picture of us? I would like a picture of us, a useful
keepsake.” A swift barking laugh like her uncle’s.
“I don’t want to.”
Clucking her tongue, she slipped my arm around her
and lifted the small camera from her purse, bumping
her face into mine. Yet as she crumpled, an abrupt ex-
halation of dust from the hillside reported two sharp
jerks of the land, a tremor, and the glasses fell, splinter-
ing into crescents. “Oh!” she cried.
The vineyards shuddered and rolled, grapevines rid-
ing the plate, and the lights within the house died. The
workers shouted and scrambled from beneath the trees
as the second burst came. And two of the stacked bar-
rels groaned, spurting blood from sudden cracks in their
ribs. The cerise veil flowed from the casks over the pa-
tio.
The door flung open from within, and white faces
stumbled out. “How exciting! How Californian!”
laughed Cyan.

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 18
In the little earthquake the power had gone out. “We
have to go up the cliffs,” Lily stated. “And feel the air.
We have to go. Jake, take me up there.” But I wanted
only to think, to be alone. They would not let me stop
drinking. What did any of it matter? It was pointless,
facetious. But it was how I lived.
“Let’s go on the cliffs,” she repeated. “I want to feel
the sea. You’ve showed me your childhood haunt, now
it’s my turn.” I wanted to sleep but no – so we took the
dog Callie, which a Mexican brought by her lime leash,
and went out by ourselves. As we walked I stuck my
hands in my pockets, but Lily’s twined around my arm.
The noon lingered in metallic shades, and the light fell
on the sandy rocks and went over the sea.
Up we went, where trails crawled through the heath:
up towards higher rocks that looked out over the green
surf booming the beams of sand. It was not a long
walk, but the sun burned behind us. A dire wind came
through the palms on the cliff and Lily held to me and

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we went ahead, faster now. Dead bits of frond flew on

the wind, and the sun lit them and filled me with sad-
ness. Lily’s brow knotted, and my fists closed in my
pockets.
“Callie,” she called the dog, and up the ridge curlews
rose in tumult from the cliff at her voice, hooplike in
trajectory, soon vanishing in the haze, and Callie a dark
shadow snuffling down the path, a sphere of ash: down
down the dog turned her withers, shouldering the leash,
and pulled Lily on. Remiss, I fell behind, and I
watched her move, bundled in her grey wool coat, tail-
ing her blond hair in the wind. A cloud or airplane’s
shadow passed swiftly upon us and was gone.
“Yes,” she said walking, following Callie. “I have
walked this so many times I don’t even need her.”
“Is something wrong?” I called.
“Wrong,” she said, and abreast I caught up with her
following in the dusty wind from the cliffs the anus of
the dog quivering through the golden grass. Lily stag-
gered over a boulder marbled in the dust. I reached for
her but she turned away.
“I feel like something is wrong,” I told her.
“No,” she sighed.
“Well, shall we get on a computer? I want to look at
those files.”
“There’s nothing like that here,” she said and now
stopped.
At the crown of the cliff a boundie leaned over us,
wormy with carvings, and in its lap a splash of heather
whipped blossoms down towards the sea. Lily sank
onto the knoll and pulled her knees up as Callie spun

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 THE PENINSULA

loose, her leash free in the sedge. The dog went rooting
and snuffling around. Off the coast bobbed a massive
tanker like a deck of rusted cards, and the faroff light-
house revolved blindly.
“Isn’t there?”
“Jake, I am going back to Hong Kong tomorrow,”
she said, pursing her lips and facing the sea. “Califor-
nia is nice, but it’s provincial.” She turned her head
and brushed through her platinum hair with one hand
and held it there like a comb as she went on. “It isn’t for
me. I thought it would restore me, but I’ve never felt so
exhausted by other people. All these people, striving so
hard to work and make money! It’s pointless, more
pointless than anything. But you do affect me a little.
Don’t think it’s that.” She took my hand.
“Okay,” I said.
“So you come too if you like, but I can’t stay here.”
“We can talk about this,” I told her. “But give me
the password, let me take care of it.”
The sea wind took her hair in a mane and white birds
passed up over the bluff. “I won’t.”
“What?” I balked.
She reached into her purse and removed a book.
“Remember this? It’s the poetry I was reading you.”
Gallehault was the book: she had closed it and the
spiders in the sedge advanced before the wave of dead
sun that was the afternoon. She put her palm on the
face of the Braille and paused, and somewhere a spi-
derweb spit through the air onto a joint of grass, and a
fat body dragged without sound through the golden air
into shadow. Dust covered us, and the spiders paused

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and looked.
Down the golden fingers of the cliffs clutched
through the brush, earthquake stone enlaced in grass
and the eyelets of poppies, like giant fossils. For some
reason, at that moment I could not stop thinking about
the land. Tall deer chopping down the stone shells to-
wards reams of fodder.
“I remember,” I said. “Your stupid Italian legend.
Well, you do what you like. I don’t want a fucking
book from you. Where’s the password?” Now I
grabbed her wrist, but the fire in my eyes had gone out,
and I let her go.
Gallehault was the book and that day we read no
more: she did not remove her hand from the scar on her
palm on the face of the book, and, at this point so bur-
dened, so encumbered by thought, I felt defeat. My
shoulders slumped. The spiders clicked in their nests
and wove and wove, and dripped their fluids, and what
their pasty eyes saw they moved towards over the open
earth.
“Jake I really do like you,” she said. “And I hate my
uncle. I want you to know that I hate him.”
“Where is it?”
“Can you acknowledge that?”
“Give it to me.”
“But I can’t do that to him. I can’t do that to our
family.”
I stared at her.
“I suppose you think he’d make a fine father,” I said.
“He wouldn’t, he won’t. You just have to let me
talk to him first, please–”

335
 THE PENINSULA

“You’re concerned about your reputation.”

“Oh, I’m so confused! Yours as well. It’s too much
for us to bear at this age. It’s too much of an encum-
brance, to worry about this, to go striving after it. It’s
only money. Isn’t it better if we just let it go?”
“Give me the password.”
“Because that is what you and I are good at, and eve-
ryone like us, letting things go. And that is what our
whole lives are about – just moving on, never paying
too much attention to the present. Well, it’s a nice way
to live! Plenty of people would kill to live like we do.”
I turned away and walked off down the trail, leaving
her.
“Come back,” she called after me. “Oh don’t be so
angry. You’re always so angry! What does it matter!”
But I saw how it was. Halfway down I tripped over
a badge of rock under the furze and my wallet fell out
of my pocket. I was up to my ankle in mud and rooting
around in the ditch with the wind up ferocious now, all
things caught in it. Cursing, I left it there and went on –
it was empty anyway. Below, in the red wet earth fin-
ger-roots knotted up, and I was drawn down through
clouds of hot leaves struck up on the wind. I heard the
roaring of the beach.

When I got down to the house the Mexicans told me

that Cyan had gone out to meet Medine at Pebble Beach
for a late game of golf, and I was to go too. The car
stood waiting for me and they said I had no choice but
to go, they said that I could not go upstairs or down-
stairs or anywhere but out, and two brawny Mexicans

336
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had the audacity to stand in my way when I tried to step

past. I wrung my hands, I paced, I told them what they
were. Overhead Emma peeped through the railings, her
face sniveling, and my cheeks burned. The Mexicans’
wrists were thick with work and they looked at me si-
lently, and I went outside and got into the limousine,
cursing them. The fever roared. Inside the car another
Mexican waited for me, crosslegged. He was wearing a
purple polo and his head had been shaved in some sav-
age pattern, and on his wrist gleamed an oyster watch.
The Mexican looked at me and the car went on.
For a time I felt certain I was about to be murdered,
but the Mexican said nothing and the car took the slow
public road to Carmel town, down the cobblestone ave-
nues and among the prim little shops, and I assured
myself Medine would not be so stupid or so obvious.
Nevertheless they locked the doors on me, and as we
rode the Mexican wore the blank expression of force.
And the surf at Pebble Beach boomed over the sea-
wall, the dunes sitting in limpid sun as the ice clacked
in wineglasses and Cyan drank beer while striding and
was drunk, permanently drunk.
“For the love of Christ let’s get out of here,” he
cried. “Jake let’s go,” he said, staring at the Mexican,
who trailed behind with his giant hands in his pockets.
“We just had a great game and wow it’s so beautiful out
here, but let’s get off the course because it’s going to
rain.”
“Not much I can do about it. I just got here,” I said.
“Look, something funny is going on. Did you talk to
him about the stock?”

337
 THE PENINSULA

“Do you know how rich we are, Jake? Don’t you

see the storm’s coming in?” he goggled. “Are you cra-
zy? Lightning hazard, big time. Why is that guy here?
It’s raining money!”
“We’ll be fine,” Medine called from the blanched
first tee, where a second set of silver clubs lay prepared
for me. He had been bent over practicing his swing, his
long arms wrapped in wool that flexed and rippled in
the wind. “Cyan, head back to the house. We’ll be out
here.”
The storm lurked bruised and contorted over the wa-
ters of Monterey, still far off. The pristine dunes would
suffer extreme unction here, death and rebirth in the
winter rain. Cyan, stunned by the command, tromped
smiling across the green, mild and terrible. A poison-
ous pink alligator was sewn on his breast and a new,
cackling giggle flexed the lungs of a young man aging
faster and faster. As he went he ranted themes of
parenthood and marriage, praising his money, while I
turned and fled from him, striding towards the course
with my forearms tensed and hands over my ears. The
fever roared, the burning fever!
Without looking back, Medine drove cleanly off the
tee and I hooked into the sand trap. We walked, the
Mexican lurking some distance behind, saying nothing,
down the crisp fairways as other golfers fled the course
before the storm.
“Bruise number one,” called Michael as, shivering, I
missed the ball. “By tonight you’re going to be all
brown.” His scalp gleamed through his shock of hair.
He took out the pencil and the scorecard and stood

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there. I stared down into my bag and glumly retrieved

the pitching wedge.
On the gravel path leading to the fifth hole, I made
my first attempt at him. “What is the purpose of this?”
I asked. “Why are we out here?”
“Golf should be walked,” Michael replied. “It’s
good for you and good for the course.”
The afternoon waiter at the tea pavilion next to the
sixth hole told us, sirs, that by every report available the
storm would be coming in minutes, but that it was noth-
ing to worry about if we, as healthy dues-paying
members of the Pebble Beach Golf Club, wished to
continue our game. Then the waiter cowered onto a
stool, looking off towards Carmel. The hills on which
the course lounged swept out a vast crescent, a dusty
cradle planted heavily with wealth. Monterey was far
off to the north, a tiny shimmer in the afternoon haze.
Miles out, a bruise-colored band eliminated the eastern
horizon, the breath of the squall moving in from the Pa-
cific.
The holes ahead, a chain of tidy green segments
routing away from the clubhouse, were dotted with car-
avans of people chipping and putting and pitching and
driving, and we could hear their voices coming down to
us as they began to turn back. “Besides, you can play
golf in rain,” Medine said, handing me a ball, “we
won’t let the weather ruin our day.”
“Tell me what you want.”
“Just to play!” He let out his seal laugh and clapped
me on the back and behind us the Mexican shuffled his
feet.

339
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By the seventh hole the storm had rolled onto the

beach, plastering everything with the wall of leaves it
heaved over the land. The leaves were not from the
trees on the grounds – they were dark, torn, wet leaves
stripped from faraway trees – leaves carried from strip
farms, American forests, unmanicured and sticky, lash-
ing in the winds.
On the eighth I failed to drive off the tee because the
wind took the ball, and after blaming my driver I ended
up using an iron to get down the fairway in four strokes.
“We have to get off,” I told Medine, “or we’re going to
get soaked.”
But we had come very far. Soon the rain began its
slow acceleration, quickening into a downpour, stop-
ping again, and Medine took us under the oak by the
side of the fairway. The Mexican stood on the green
staring at us, his hands still in his pockets. He would
not come near Medine.
Everything grew dim. The front came in over the lip
of the sea and raged onto the hills, a fast, umbery thing
flushed by the sun. Bullets of water whipped horizon-
tally and the tree peeled back like a hangnail. I could
barely open my eyes in the wind. As the Mexican
flexed in the gale I held the trunk and staggered to the
lee side. The bags slammed over and the clubs sped
away, and the big driver Medine went spinning into a
water trap. The Mexican ran after it, thick limbs heav-
ing.
And in that instant, like the nimbus of an approach-
ing star, electricity crackled through the clouds,
glowing arcs colliding and joining into a single fork

340
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that split the horizon far away. The flash illuminated

the land and Medine looked out from his golf course
and looked at me. Then he settled back on his haunches
and kicked me as hard as he could in the kidneys.
Everything shattered. His big leg hit me like a tree
trunk and sent me vomiting onto my hands and knees.
The wind intensified and the roaring branches deaf-
ened us to all sound. The course began to delimit in the
darkness, its boundaries blurring into the shadowy land-
scape, and when it could no longer be distinguished
from the hills and the groves, all became indistinct
against the sky, and what remained distinct was insig-
nificant, effaced by fever and apathy.
“Do you know the implications of wealth, Jacob?”
Medine asked me. I was sobbing on hands and knees,
and he kicked me again, twice, three times, stomping on
my back.
It is the thread and the needle it binds it unwinds in-
scriptions in a camel’s eye, a quarter note a hope.
“I don’t know,” I coughed blood. “I don’t know.”
“Do you know what it does?” His thin lips palpitat-
ed with rain and he gripped the iron, driving its blunt
head into the muck.
“You’ve heard,” I cried, cowering in the wind.
“Jacob I have a great deal of respect for you,” Mi-
chael continued, letting the club stand upright where he
had rooted it, and crossing his arms. “But do you know
the withering that accompanies wealth?” He took a
step towards me and kicked me again, square in the
shoulders, and I collapsed in the mud. “The outright
aging that goes along with it? How it causes everything

341
 THE PENINSULA

to make less sense? Money being a process of aging,

the getting of it and the spending of it.”
“One should have enough,” I bawled, shivering, on
all fours again. He planted a knee on the crook of the
tree, then an elbow on the knee, hefting the iron with a
loose grey wrist.
“Enough? Because wealth is a process, not a quanti-
ty. It matters how you get it. What nobody realizes is
that after you get it the process continues.”
“And how did you get yours?” I glared back up at
him.
“Do you know what that process is? It is a process
of isolation. A man with no money has everything in
common with the world, but give him a thousand dol-
lars, pull him one rung up the pyramid, and his
separation begins. Do you understand? Do you under-
stand what it is like to be at the very pinnacle of that
pyramid, separated, completely isolated, from everyone
else in the world? Growing old? It’s chaos!” Water
dripped off his chin in silver chains.
Twisting my neck, I stared out into the cloud, and
saw the Mexican’s lashing form.
“Do you even know the difference between old and
new money?” Medine said. “Do you know that one
blows away like irrelevant dust? Do you know what it
is to be bred into centuries of wealth? Do you know
what is left to prove after it has blown away? It is more
than money and more than blood, it is responsibility.
Your mother is complicit and she is ready for it.”
“I think she is ready to hear from me,” I laughed.
“From you? From her ungrateful runt son who has

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never spoken to her honestly one day in his life? From

the profligate wretch who steals money from her and
embarrasses her before anyone and everyone she meets,
who is a living joke in the community, who scorns his
studies and makes his life a pleasure-filled circus? You
barely pay attention to anything! From the fool who
thinks he can get by without working, who not once
mentions his dead father except to demand money, who
doesn’t seem to care that his father died–”
“That’s not true!” In the roaring his words seemed
to cast me down on the grass, wriggling in the muck.
Clearing his throat, Medine straightened. Pulling out
the club with a pop and laying it on the grass, he turned
away to stare into the storm.
“When in the thick of voluptuous delights, one takes
an even keener pleasure in torments! I’m sure that you
know this principle, which is called apathy, so perhaps
you can forgive my bouts of sadism. Don’t look at it as
deprivation Jacob, my coming into your family. Look
at it as a benevolent act, a partnership. Otherwise I
would not be able to do it, not in my heart. Believe
me,” he went on, “I have given this a great deal of
thought, and being a Bessemer, a steelmaker, you are
more important to me than you realize. Just, you have
proved yourself difficult. Very difficult, but also use-
ful!”
“Useful?” The storm roiled around us sheets of rain.
Over on the bluffs cypress trees pitched and whorled,
kicking in cloaks of ash.
“It is a good thing to trust one’s family, and a chal-
lenge to trust anyone else’s,” he said.

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Rolling onto my back, I snickered, then laughed,

looking at him. “So Lily has told you.”
“It certainly isn’t your problem any more. That is
what we are out here to discuss, while she takes care of
everything, like the good and faithful girl she is.”
I wrapped my hands around my sodden knees. “But
Lily hates you–”
“Do you think hate and submission are mutually ex-
clusive?” Michael sighed, dripping rain. “You of all
people should know that. If you had kept your hands
off her you might understand a little more. Do you
know, for example, that I read that stupid note you
found in your papers? Do you even know what is in
that safe?”
“What?”
“It’s the patents themselves, Jake, which, you, of all
maggots, currently own. Have you ever heard of the
Google PageRank algorithm? You own a very small
portion of the proceeds of that piece of code. It was
your father’s relationship, some harebrained angel in-
vestment he made – I wouldn’t have it so he did it
himself without the fund.”
“You’re–”
“That’s fine. No one will believe you, either, be-
cause that was the only physical evidence of the
agreement. There was an electronic one, though, hence
the password and why your friend is here – a very nice
boy who’s helping Lily to delete those files. Of course
he doesn’t know it.” He paused. “When I acquire your
trust I will have it. And then I will be able to sell the
partnership. For the good of all of us, except the ones

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who are dead.” His silver eyes reflected the storm.

“Is that why you are marrying my mother?”
“Love is complicated,” said Medine, squatting down
next to me. “I’m sure you know. I think she will make
a decent bride.”
Of course he had planned this too, my crawling
away. He knew my temper. Out I sloshed across the
puddles, through the frightful gale, and the Mexican
began to laugh at me as he stood in the torrent. Black
curls hung from his doghead, pitching back to let his
throat out. He laughed with an old, creaking brass
laugh that came like a desert song through the whipping
of the trees, and from him I fled more in terror than
rage. I looked like a madman – soaked, bloody, reeking
of wine – tripping crazily over the grasses, shin-deep in
mud, and the storm around me laughing. At the edge of
the forest I plunged between the trees, where a road led
up into the hills. And on the road waited the limousine
and strong hands.

They kept me in the car for a few hours, and then, at

five, utterly frozen, nearly dead of fever, let me into the
house. Michael had taken the girls out to dinner. Fresh
clothes lay out for me, and Mexicans scampered about
setting fires and coffee pots and electric blankets. The
fever and the chill combined in apathy, and I felt noth-
ing except the desire to sleep.
We’d been left a great batch of salmon to cook up,
and Cyan set about this with abandon. My discompo-
sure aroused little of his interest – he was still drunk,
and all he would talk of was the stock deal. He laughed

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when I told him the story, laughed at me like I was

making it up. He told me I did too many drugs, that I
had some strange ideas. I found a phone and called my
mother, but she simply laughed and laughed. And the
police – would you believe it? – they laughed too, when
I told them where I was. I couldn’t get the story
straight; it seemed twisted in my mind. Exhausted, I
fell face down on the bed in my room and closed my
eyes. I had to find Lily and convince her, but I was too
weak to get up. Two hours I slept, the rain sinking into
my bones, and I awoke with a fever so bright it filled
my mind with illusion.

Darkness fell and I arose and went into the night,

wrapped in a blanket like a monk. I reasoned that I had
to get out. The mansion overlooked two others in a row
down the coast, and, standing on the hall balcony, I saw
down into the pool of the one adjacent. A lithe girl in a
black and white tigerstriped bikini stretched her hips
and dived perfectly, emerging in a sheet of water. She
swept her black planar hair back with both hands and
flared her chest striding through the water, and caught
me watching her.
Leaning on the balcony, I called to her. “Help!” I
cried, piteously. “Help me!” But, afraid, or laughing,
she withdrew. The fever burned in my mind and I
trembled.
“Jake,” Cyan clacked from the kitchen as I slid the
door closed. “Are you all right? Gosh, you’re being so
dramatic. Will you help me chop these, will you help
me?” He leaned stiffly within a paisley blue apron,

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prim, a sight from a consumer magazine, and dusted

with blush, a light perfect layer of it. He smiled with
cerise lips, sparkled his eyes at me, a wilt of money.
And I took the sharp blade, fused entirely from a
single piece of steel, and looked into his eyes and with-
out smiling began to chop leeks, the stiff fibrous leeks
popping and splitting syncopated, gassing onion.
“Of course, let me know how you want them,” I
muttered. “Cyan, we’ve got to get out of here.”
“What? This house is so nice,” he said. “These
people are so nice.”
“Are you insane?”
“Michael’s going to buy the stock. We’re doing so
well,” he said. “We’re doing so well.”
And in my imagination I took his wrist and held him
while slowly slitting his spine open and by working my
thumbs pulling out his lungs flapping froglike and her-
petic behind him as he writhed. But instead I looked up
into his eyes directly. And he reached down and luridly
kissed my cheek, tasting of scotch, and pulled back fast
and shy and smiling from the dusty cracks of his
cheeks.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
I staggered in shock. My fever nearly knocked me to
the ground.
“You faggot,” I stuttered, my heart pounding meat,
my face burning.
“Oh great, dinner’s nearly out, very nearly!” As he
lisped and laughed his eyes were pink. We sat down to
eat and Cyan emerged and everything rushed and
rushed – in my horror I could not focus on anything and

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the sensations took me by the neck: thack cluck he said

not hungry and he said well it’s a big plate and I said
yeah its big. But he said no it’s not big and I looked
and I saw the wine in his eyes and the way the words
rolled off his forked tongue eat it. His sentences be-
longed to a snake and it was in that moment his mask
cracked and oh God spilling out serpentine in his envy
and hatred of masculine me. Syss the hooded eyes, the
propped tongue and gesture of the head click click like
some squinting old cobra, frantic but venomous in reti-
cence, and he struck because the wine was in his eyes.
And I looked and the snake across the table was
smiling head half-cocked lick lick but he was weak
since masks take a long time to build and he was still
too young. But don’t be insulting he said, he could hear
my thoughts, and the old cobra wriggled back into the
mask. Oh I was kidding, it’s because I was drunk he
later said. My mind swirled.
I nodded and dozed.
Over the table a plaque bearing an enormous sea-
horse gazed at me, frozen dry and brittle, an orange
whorl protracted in its death, glaring from black eyes
upon the table and somehow smiling its snout. The
lights of Carmel twinkled beyond and the overlook
turned revolving slowly as a Mexican parrot in pink
loped past.
So I said nothing at dinner, seething like a lunatic,
and feeling like one, and afterwards I drank hot milk
with two teaspoons vanilla extract, trying to slow the
pace of my mind against the fever. I whicked the milk
with a spoon and rushed it around in my teeth to feel

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the bubbles frothing, but my mind burned on. Mostly I

exist for the bubbles making it sweeter or at least more
full of gulp gulp the smell of flesh. I drank several cups
to stay awake, since sleep has always come quickly to
me syllogism somnambulism and thoughts congealed
and melted away from the books I had read.
I had to lock myself in my bedroom. I would sneak
past them at night and take Lily. But Cyan wanted to
go into the hot tub and he would not leave me alone so I
went with him yes I did what else can you do against
the night?
Plotinus became Plato became Neo-Plato became
Arsenic ring and hello Master stuck in Limbo between
the poles Polaris the north star: six and twenty thou-
sand years. Gasping, tottering I walked downstairs
through the halls.
Deep cobblestones carved out beneath Medine’s
floor, patterns unknown click, emblazoned on them-
selves, like Braque paintings all of them. Gone
between them now, cut through them and I looked and
could tell their corruption one from the other. Hello,
master. You want to be a dom but you don’t know what
it’s like to dominate. You just don’t know. You don’t
know I just do I always get it.
I could not stop my thoughts from coming, could not
sort them out.
Stillness when I went slow. So I did go slow, feel-
ing my way along the hall. I could hear the clap clap of
men in television sets plasma or LCD? Deep or wide
screen he glowed I like both and the fall of the leaf be-
hind me click whirr whine of the greaseless squeaky

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wheel gets the grease oh freedom. Waste of breath and

it probably click. Wind when you go fast but you miss
it in the cold and noise rushing. The fever rose. Blood
had turned to ice and my mind ran on and on.
Squirming, I could not escape: ugh the death of the
individual, the rise of the collective – it isn’t unity when
solitude is the day of the word. My thoughts reversed
again, spinning like blades. Click click whir separate
entities separate them yeah going all fast now together.
Separate the one together. Play with words, voices,
networks finding voices forging selves. Network theo-
ry. Assembly theory. Theory this theory that, theory of
the acrobat.
Hiss, water. Hot tub. The rich way to get warm. As
I soaked, Cyan came in repulsive in a pale blue Speedo,
and I said nothing to him. The girl across the way
popped up her head and called across the void hi and
how do you guys know each other wanna play.
Pornographers, I callously lied and in the awkward
silence she receded laughing to stop by later. The
storm had cleared blowing northeast over the land, but
off in the immense tassel of the night lightning sput-
tered up the coast. Over the hot water came rain.
Cyan leaned back and drank scotch and became
swiftly drunk again and drops glistened like varnish on
his thin silver limbs as he sunk below the waters.
I looked off down the beach where a curl of revelers
perched tiny and happy around a fire. My mind slowed.
My gaze followed the wagging bottom of the girl zig-
zagging zebralike down the faroff steps towards her
own mansion, and she did not look back.

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“Ah ha,” said Cyan, “I meant to have a word with

you about the stock sale. I called Mark, while you were
asleep, and I don’t think we’re going to go in after all.”
What-what-whatever you say.
“No, not joking I’m afraid.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked him dumbly.
“It’s just that Jake we think we can get liquidity
elsewhere, we’ve had a few offers, a few conversations,
and an IPO may not be too far off in the future for us to
wait. It was good of Michael to establish a price for us,
though. That will be big. Mark’s going to help me ex-
ercise the options for a little cut. It’s a better deal for
me.”
“We almost even signed the papers,” I wondered.
“Didn’t we?”
“I know Jake, it’s not a good situation, and you
know I want to help you out in any way I can. You
need to take it easy, though. We’ll figure out some-
thing good so that you get a cut. I want to help
Michael, so he doesn’t become a stalking horse – the
Medines are nice and all, well, a little weird, but nice. I
wanted to tell you first. Are you okay? You’re white
as a ghost, trembling. You should go to bed. It’s just
that all this legal business really could be a problem for
us and we can’t have a journalist writing an article
about politics in relation to Facebook, were anyone to
find out I mean.”
“No one could find out Cyan, the money’s not going
through Michael, it’s going through the Gina fund.” It
doesn’t matter.
A cherry glow had spread across his cheeks. “Still

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Jake we’ve decided not to proceed. And I’m sorry

about earlier. I just read you wrong. It’s probably best
if I leave now – I’ve already called a taxi.”
“Do you have a laptop here, Cyan?”
“Yes, why?”
“Did Lily or Emma ask you to help her with some-
thing earlier?”
He looked at me blankly. “Oh, your little security
problem, I forgot. Yeah, we figured it out, it was easy
to clean that up. Tech support to the rescue – why do
you ask?”
I sank underwater, staring at his lolling white feet as
they plopped up and off into the night.

Somehow Medine had ensnared my mind. It was a

sea of flame. All theories blabbered to noise in sleep
which was the evocation of dreams. Do not let it over-
come you. Clanking hours, sweat-soaked, passed. I
awoke in my room, delirious, the sheets drenched.
Flies had found some sort of spawning ground beneath.
They rushed up through small creases in the boards
and through the crack in the cellar door.
They clustered in furry black bunches all about the
screen door to the sea and I could not help but stare ter-
rified at those flies, those hairy invaders reeking of
death and death had made his presence known. I saw
him in the faces that turn to me as I passed queues in
the cobbled halls of Stanford, in San Francisco, in the
madness of all my experience on this Earth, but more in
everything that is a disguise, which is everything the
wealth touches. I shook my head and the flies disap-

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peared.
I could not sleep, snoring in a fuming cloak, shiver-
ing, thinking, above all, and the moon pressing upon the
windows. Viridian bottles slumbered on the dresser,
their injections muddying my veins; the drugs which
had delivered me all my life from madness rested there,
cold isolate and poisonous. I couldn’t take them. Even
when I shuttered the blinds the moon peered around the
corners, so that it seemed I slept within a shadow box
inturned from the day.
No in all this I could not sleep and I tore the blankets
and moaned, my mind ablaze. A shadow is the mole-
cules of the earth darkening, yearning for the sky.
Whether the shadow travels like a nether wave, as a
state or property of energy, the molecules themselves
only rolling, or whether the shadow is encumbered by
the burden of actually being a thing-in-itself, the dis-
tinction does not matter, implies the existence of a
human mind observing and defining the shadow and
obscuring its yearning to live! My idiot thoughts drove
me up, suffocating me! By all that I had ever suffered I
had to find out where Lily was, and show her. I sat up,
full of rage.

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No lights shined in the midnight mansion and the ut-
ter silence restricted any motion but thought. A person
is three cats in a bag called the bag, and two of my cats
called me to sleep but the third it said find her and
would that I had ignored it but I raged ahead.
Beneath the main staircase, the vestry flooded with
silken light, laying eggplant shades to crawl like spiders
along the floor. The night stilled in the storm's eye, and
space enclosed the mansion. By then it was two
o'clock, and I cannot stress the stillness of that hour. If
an insect moved in the house you would have heard it,
but I could hear nothing above my roaring mind. And
the Mexicans had gone, or were lurking outside, lurking
in shacks and around their campfires. I could leave!
Breathing deeply, I passed through Medine’s star
room and paused, staring into the telescope, watching a
space station pass over. A small blaze the intensity of

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Jupiter moved in a perfect circle around the horizon,

coming out of the northwest. I first mistook it for an
airplane, but as it swung low towards the hills and the
Earth's shadow, I went to the window watch it disap-
pear along its orbit. It faded slowly into storm.
Out the crystal-studded door and down the halls I
padded the dark carpet, down the stairs to the under-
ground level, down the rufous carpets and down more
steps and through the halls until I came to Lily’s door.
A crack of light showed underneath, and then I heard
the noises.
She lay perpendicular across the grey fur of his
chest, her legs stretched behind her in a silver vee open
to his ring finger, which wormed blindly inside her.
Her eyes were shut, purple shells, as she wrapped him
in her mouth, gagging and gasping. The ruby walls
oversaw this matter, eyeless, hidden from the world,
and the brass lamps seemed to emit a fission of pain.
Coils of silk entwined her claws as her head moved
from this position to kiss his thigh, dutiful and blind.
But when I saw the other sister bent double beneath the
bed my madness broke and I cried out in shame.
There was no intercession between my horror and
Lily’s – instantly she sprang up from her couch, fully
naked on the bed. She kept her eyes bunched shut. A
white silk slip hung from her shoulders, exposing her
flushed breasts.
She stood still for a moment, then opened her limpid
eyes. She stepped off the bed, and some awful purpose
seemed to ignite in her – God knows she could see –
but she kept her mouth shut like she had been taught.

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Her sister shook and turned her face to the floor, bound
by a leash. Only Michael did not move: only he who
lay sprawled like a statue on the sheets, whose lame
granite priapus lolled from his form, he did not lift his
head to regard me: he stayed fast in apathetic sleep.
Pale as a ghost, Lily swept off the bed, hands wet and
clawed. She stared beyond. Then, crying out, she
rushed and bounded into the darkness of the hall, arms
outstretched madly, and I caught her hot wrist but she
tore off, drawing me with her and calling her name.
And the darkness enveloped our passage and all was
fever in the night as, her feet hammering the cold
twined hair of the carpet, she fled before me, a white
shape internal external giving off comet-trails of light.
Twice she banged into the walls, shattering a vase in an
alcove, falling to a knee but tearing on.
Across the dark foyer the corridor to the star room
lay trespassed, its door ajar. I heard something slump
to the ground. I halted, then went ahead, creeping open
the door. In the purple shades a pale small form crum-
pled beneath the windowsill.
And in the awful night I seemed to see within her
mind.
Steak caked under my fingernails, I grip the carpet,
not thinking of him – I’m turned, hunched, thinking
about werewolves, and he says something, acting sur-
prised. How maudlin, dramatic, how human. I'm
wearing only my body. I'm totally naked. Can he un-
derstand how sensitive my body is? Can he see that,
the faggot. Inside me is Him and He is inside me. Still.
Always. I don’t hear him. Something is flitting, vibrat-

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ing on the edge of my hearing, a fly or something,

something rhythmic in the night, and I want to find it, to
tear it up, but the warm boy is desperately standing
there – I turn my chin up to where he must be, coldly,
testing my fingers on the bottom of my thighs. I can
understand why he is here.
He whispers, “What are you doing?” The whisper
is a torrent, a wail. I suppose he is upset because I ha-
ven’t called him to join – he is mewling even before he
speaks – he should have asked permission to come,
should have been politely ignored, and should have left
me, most importantly, undisturbed. My brain, filled
with a month’s worth of used, rotting condoms – nearly
forty – and wadded paper, began to stink like a skunk
last night, and I blamed the smell on the clutch of owls
outside my room. That was the effect of fucking him. I
am too impressed with the condoms to dislodge them.
He steps towards me, two steps I feel on the floor, then
one back, and he says something else but I’m not pay-
ing attention. Someone is singing behind us behind the
door, which has closed – closed us in. Emma. Emma is
singing, or crying. Emma the singing minstrel, necessi-
ty in this uncouth partnership. Just now I hear, on the
glass of the skylight, a branch has fallen and rests sus-
pended like a hand. Could eyes, telescopes, see
through that? My thighs have my grease smeared on
them and as his hands grip my shoulders, I jerk like a
doll another whiff of the skunk stench rising from my
mind. I hope he smells it and understands, because the
condoms must be spilling out of my ears and onto him,
and it would make a dynamite story. How ridiculous,

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this metaphor of filth, but my mind can craft up ridi-

cule. And I smile politely and say, quietly, in perfect
Californian, “What’s up, dude?”
This faggot never had anything on me. A chunk of
air – he always expects, always wants something, de-
mands attention – believes his dick, tongue, dollar
mean anything to me. His words are empty: his praises
hide selfishness and fear, and when he tries to hurt me I
make a game of laughing to myself and crying to him.
Hopping up on one foot, I bolt past him, swatting away
his hands, turning right. I hold my hand out to where
his heat is coming from. I tie my hair, I let it play be-
hind my shoulder blades – I’ve been told it’s important
hair – he says something again, his pale hands raised.
He is utterly terrified. He is American. He asks ques-
tions. He seeks some reference to him I’ve made, an
explanation, something to use, something to remember.
He wants to be mentioned. He’s a very typical boy but
there is only Him there is only Him there is only Him.
Now I go over and throw my arms around his neck
and kiss him, letting him smell my neck scent, how filthy
I am. Does he want me does he want me still? I feel my
grease-fingers stain his shirt, and my mouth is glinting
with his sex. No he doesn’t no. He tries to hold me and
I brush him down with my chin, and he sort of slobbers
up across my jaw, then recoils. I kiss him. I ask him if
he wants to fuck. Would he like to be inside my cunt
with All That Entails. He is fighting against his disgust.
I can’t stifle a laugh under my breath, and he starts,
desperately: “What? What?” Something in the broken
bone of his soul.

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I hold him by the cheeks and kiss him again, and feel
with my fingers his eyes shutting: he is believing, I
know, believing in my Potential For Salvation. His
masculinity demands it. His mind reels. I can never
close my eyes when I kiss, and He tells me how black
they look that close. Well good because black is all I
know. I give this faggot more, feel his tongue squirm
desperately, and then I am back playing with my hair,
my shoulders turned. He can have nothing and it is
probably better for him. He cannot understand me. All
my life the years wore on, and I trudged quieter and
quieter. My legs broke, I had outwalked them both. I
had not eaten, except for ashes, and I had drank noth-
ing but vomit. I fell exhausted amidst a savage grove,
alone except for the moon’s reflection in the slime of
that place, disconsolate, my youth beaten, my self-love
replaced with something sallow and crawling, some-
thing as much hate as love. And my brain somehow
saw itself, saw a body twisted by loathing, hunched ter-
ribly thin and set with luminous eyes, in love with itself,
the last thing it could see. And He came. He came and
took me in His terrible arms.
“Lily,” the fag moans, poor boy, and I slap him an-
grily and sink my teeth into his flank. We are done and
done and I could not be more bored. Have we ever
fucked? We have not. I don’t remember. I hate him
for ruining me. I hit him once more and try to recall
where I was going. Yes. Yes. Now I turn and run.
She spun from me and took the lamp off the desk,
and as I stepped forwards flung it through the window,
where she had been feeling with her fingers, and went

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barreling after it, leaping through the glass, landing on

all fours on the deck outside, where she went loping
away like a wolf. A trail of blood splattered after her.
“Lily!” I called.
The wind nearly took me as I pushed down the deck
stairs onto the loam, an ocean gale swinging in the
genitals of the storm. Branches and twigs sniped
through the darkness, ripping my skin.
I could not think or stop – my eyes found the moon
at the top of the hill. Another light seemed to wink
there; but Lily had disappeared into the trees, and the
gale annihilated everything. Blackly I charged after
her, hands shielding my face. Around the side of the
house, mud and leaves spattering, everything spraying
water, I heaved through a clawing oleander, the spear-
shaped leaves slashing blood from my hands and I kept
on.
The hill was steep, an ancient embankment of lime
and crushed sandstone covered with centuries of loam.
I saw a dark shape go struggling up over the top of the
bank, and I followed as best I could. The stuff came
apart as I pushed up the slope, my purchase hopeless,
leaning and scrambling with my hands. Far overhead
she crashed fleetly through the thorns, oblivious to pain.
I blindly grasped a slug and cast it away in disgust.
The embankment shifted and my right leg plunged
down the slope. As I slipped, I fell against the leaves
and saw again the back wall of the house and its shat-
tered window, still illuminated by the moon.
I began to make out something looking at me
through the orifice, some pairs of eyes, when a gust of

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ocean wind cast a huge branch down into the bushes.

Bark chips slashed my face, and I covered my eyes with
my hands, twisting around and kicking my legs,
squirming madly up the slope again.
Though I had come some hundred yards up now, it
seemed to me that the light had grown no brighter, and
though I saw now it glowed behind the highest barrier
oak that faced the ocean, I could not perceive its source.
The stars bore down from a suddenly clear sky,
wisps of the storm running west. Roaring: the crashing
of the boughs and the distant pounding, roaring, roar-
ing. I grasped a fallen trunk, heaved, kicking my leg up
over the moss, and clambering down the bank into that
cliff clearing.
Where amazed I saw Lily hunched like an ape, ob-
tect, swallowed by the roots of the great oak on the
precipice. Her white throw had disintegrated in the
storm; a filthy tatter clung around her naked body and
the wind took it like a flag. The lighthouse blazed a
circuit behind her, irradiating the cloud.
“Go away,” she wailed when she saw me, raising her
arms from the slough. Then she began to cry, great
sobbing peals of pain which rose from her white heart
and roiled into the night. I stood pale at the break in the
woods, the hall of trees behind me. Gale winds took to
whipping the branches, and the grove unhinged, a living
being.
“Jake help me,” she sobbed. “I can’t move.”
I leapt over the log and through the puddles to the
tree and the sea jerked and pitched beyond. Far up the
cliff the lighthouse revolved in a shrine of light: it pro-

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vided light upon us and dispelled the rays of the moon.

Lily's white ankle disappeared mud-bound into a cord
of roots, and she grasped the rocks and tugged herself.
“Lily–”
She trembled in a sobbing heap. She stopped and
started again. The black trunk, solid in the gale,
seemed to be drawing her backwards, as a great star
annexes a lesser one, and though she lay flat she
seemed inclined, and her lolling halfopen eyes, de-
ranged by black streaks, saw me and for all of my
madness I could feel again, and I took her arms and
tried to lift her up.
She clung to my neck, but as I turned to carry her
from that place she struggled, kicked her legs, and
broke free. She staggered back from me towards the
cliff, holding out a red hand.
“Don’t touch me!” she shrieked.
“Lily I didn’t know–”
“Don’t touch me, you stupid murderer. You filthy
bastard! You filthy fucking traitor you murdered your
father and fucked your mother, you arrogant pig! Love-
less when you were born, you slave, you apathetic
coward – love, love, loveless!”
Her words came rhythmic, as if spoken by another or
memorized. Her skeleton staggered back another step,
shining, dragging the twisted ankle, and tears streamed
down her face. Now the cliff behind her opened, and in
the void gleamed stars.
I stepped towards her and I knew love then, how to
love her – not with the sensuous fire that burns, scorch-
es and tortures, that inflicts more wounds than it cures –

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flaring up now, at the next moment extinguished, leav-

ing behind more coldness than was felt before–
“Don’t come near me,” she sobbed. She kept turn-
ing to and fro, flinging her eyes.
–rather through the element that lies like a soft but
firm hand on the maddened beings of the Earth, ever
unchanged in its sympathy, without wavering, uncon-
cerned with any response it meets. Love that is
comforting coolness to those who burn in the fire of
suffering and passion, that is life-giving warmth to
those abandoned in the cold desert of loneliness, to
those who are shivering in frost, to those whose hearts
have become as if empty and dry by repeated calls for
help. Love that is a sublime nobility of heart and intel-
lect which knows, understands and is ready to help.
Love that is strength and gives strength and is the high-
est.
“Lily!” I reached out my hand. In her pale, fright-
ened face her mad eyes calmed and grew black and
heavy. Wavering she took my hand and the white wind
whistled between us.
“I–” she said in the night. “I’m sorry about your
family, Jake–”
“Lily,” I said. “Come here.”
She paused, lacing her fingers into mine, but a blaze
of ice seemed to go through her. Her black eyes
swelled.
“I’m sorry, but there is no reaching me,” she ended.
Her eyes fell and sank swimming, obsidian black and
heavy with tears, pulling her down to the stone. Then
she drew her old sardonic smile and gazed past me.

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The gale passed between us but silenced within the

ocean’s roar. She bit her lip and with a muddy paw
rubbed her nose.
“Please!” I cried.
Then she stepped, spider-laced through my grasp,
stepped backwards, without sound and only smiling, off
the cliff-edge, down, and, illuminated once by the
lighthouse eye, she fell straight far down into the black
waters of the Pacific Ocean, where in a white stipple of
foam she inverted, disappearing without end.

END OF FILE

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