GOING PRIVATE

by

Eliot Fintushel

 

o, no, Nano, not yet!"  Huffing to keep up, Oma jingled alongside Nano up River Street, bells for studs on all her leather.  Streamers trailed from her spooly coif.  She wouldn't be shook, and he couldn't quite ignore her.  He set his jaw.  "When you want me, bitch, call," he hissed between locked teeth, lips like goldfishes' through the glass.  "Don't you go private on me, Mirror Boy," she said.  "No, no, Nano, not yet!  You owe me a face‑to‑face on this shit."  Over the muddy pulsing estuary, redolent of spawning fish, halfway across the Middle Street Bridge, she touched his cheek.  She touched him just behind the earphone caliper.  He whipped his head away.  What is touch anyway, he thought?  A probability wave, is all, quantum on quantum, not the belly‑belly slam she'd duped him down to, tongue on tongue, all bumfuzzling smell and hair in the face.  That was the first time Nano hadn't spelled his name backwards, that sweat‑slick hump, and Lord God, he knew it would be his last.  Oh, the atavistic scum of it!  And then there was this "I love you" shit.  It's all electricity, Nano knew, but he had to blink and cower as she pressed her advantage, stepping closer, belly to his flank.  He backed to the bridge rail, nudged his TV specs down to the tip of his nose, and peeped over.  She stopped cold.  No erotic splattered mist to the bitch now‑-just dead funk and pretty please.  With a tilt of the head he released the microphone arm from the caliper; the mike ratcheted out and locked an inch before his mouth, like the coin on a dead man's tongue.  Nano had half a minute now, while Oma caught her breath, to gauge what defcon she was up to; he knew that she carried pore‑embedded microblasters against your occasional subway creep, and he just prayed she wasn't strung out enough to have put them on hormonal trigger.  He thrummed his fingers to dial her up.  He locked his cool blues on her blinking, unsteady brown weepers‑-no trusting that ragged breath, those fidgeting hands.  A lone man passed by them zipped up in his psychic spacesuit, gone private, way gone, gone gone, gone beyond.  He was conferencing and jazzing out on rib‑deep bass lines and watching the flashing bluelight stock reports that leaked out like the time leaking out of an atavistic wristwatch if you faced it top of the wrist instead of privately, on the pulse side, the blood side, the private side, for you alone.  The man passed by like a jellyfish seen out a bathyscaph window, undulating, silent, mysterious, and for all that you watched it, alone.  Nano waited for the bitch to pick up.  "I'm not carrying a phone, Nano."  Bullshit.  Pick up, bitch.  She clawed an antique unit from her pocket and flipped it open.  Habit took over, and she barked, "Hello?" then, flustered, held the thing to her ear, up under the spools and slack streamers of emerald, azure, and pink.  Nano pushed his glasses back up.  Mickey Mouse Club reruns from his great granddad's time were in again, on again.  Why?  Because we like you!  "You wanted to talk about something, Oma?"  He lowered his head, caught between his lips the straw poking out of a vest pocket, pulled at it‑-it telescoped with a squeak‑-and sucked sweet liquor.  There was a catch in Oma's breath: soap opera stuff, Nano thought, and, sure enough, she rasped, "Ever hear of love, Mirror Boy?"  "Can you hold?" he said, "I got another call coming through here."  She hurled down her phone.  The plastic casing exploded against the pavement.  He turned his shoulder to her as it hit, and he started walking on across the bridge‑-but she threw herself in Nano's way.  Herself: leather‑clad hulk stinking of waterproofer, BO, and grief, tear‑streaked, from what Nano cared to see above Annette and Roy.  Gee, Roy was big.  Gee, Annette was sweet.  Atavistic bitch threw her gross self impenetrably before what she took to be him, but really was just his atavistic soon‑to‑be‑ex corpus.  Said: "Don't you go private on me, Mirror Boy.  I did what you wanted, didn't I?  Don't close down, I'm begging you."  Forget you.  It's none of my business.  That's the whole idea of going private: controlled access.  Got my tunes densed a week in advance, my channels picked, my answering service on heavy screen, my I/O ports booked and dedicated, automatic credit transfers from Cybermama, Inc., as long as I log in and debug on schedule . . . "Right, right, you don't have to sell me, bro!" . . . He'd thought he was thinking, not speaking, but here was Chummy on No. 2, while the bitch languished on call‑wait.  Let her atavistic hardware (the palm of her hand) clip him across the face‑-so what?  "I just called to ask you, Nano," Chummy was saying, "are you private yet, because we've got a truly fatal party scheduled on 555.com."  Today's the day, hell, yes, any hour now, soon's I shake this dog, Chummy my man.  You and me, bro, we'll be thick as smoke and air.  "You'll love it, blind and deaf and numbed.  The atavists can fucking have their fleshly senses," Chummy said or Nano was thinking, one or the other.  "It only hurts for a day or two, bro, and then inside and outside are history.  It's all inside.  Your ear is the phone and the CD, bro, your eyes are the television, your flesh is electricity, and your mind is pure ether: private.  Absolutely private.  You will love it."  The obscenity of actual atavistic sound waves intruded: "Mirror boy!  Mirror boy!"  It made his ears hurt.  He tasted actual blood, the leader of the club that's made for you and me.  She must have swatted him a good one.  His glasses were getting staticky too; could barely tell Donald from Mickey.  "Okay, MB, dammit, you just try to go private, damn you.  I'll tell you the truth.  Can you hear me in there?  This is Oma, Mirror Boy; this isn't yourself in the fucking mirror.  I never went to the clinic.  It's still inside me: I can already feel it kick, I swear it.  And I'll tell the city, you hear?  They won't let you go private then.  Listen to me, Mirror Boy.  I don't know what I'll do."  Liar.  He pushed past her with his own atavistic days‑are‑numbered dog of a corpus.  He swiped her out of his way and heard the actual sound of her tumbling, or maybe it was the sound of the low brass on the closing credits, M‑O‑U‑S‑E, or Chummy leaning on the space bar, a real space bar: all space.  Liar.  She'd sooner jump off a bridge than inform: bitch loved him, yes?  He tasted blood, but soon everything would be cauterized.  Across the river, people bustled, gone private, oblivious of one another, perfectly connected each to all, thought Nano, or to all that count.  They weaved through one another like particles bumpered by static electricity.  Not a one of them had a reason to be there rather than anyplace else.  Place was an atavism, just like body.  He felt a tug inside, like the pull on a fishing line.  Had someone screamed?  He turned his atavistic head back around toward the bridge, pushed down his specs, and scanned the length of it bare‑eyed.  Oma wasn't anywhere.  Who's anywhere anyway, really?  Forget you.  He pushed the cheaters back up his nose and melted into the crowd.