Shake Your Money Maker

December 21, 1999

High tide rolled in Monday morning like a scoop of plain vanilla, frothy but bland. The first light on the horizon appeared according to schedule, and spread out, undisturbed. Expectations were duly modest. Babies were born, cried, and spit up goo. Eggs cracked and oozed yellow. Work was hard, as usual, although business was only fair to good. The hottest song and dance of the day was low down and nasty, not the first nor the last, but merely the latest version of a classic: Shake Your Money Maker.

Dude.

What?

Open your eyes, dude.

Where?

That was the long of it and that was the short of it. Somewhere, the Sun was brilliant, but most of the major stars remained coolly distant and out of touch.

Then a cocky swell emerged unscathed from a storm in the Sea of Japan. The tide shifted just like that. By Tuesday, a real dynamo was charging across the Pacific. It possessed order, direction, and design, a typical Winter storm on the first day of Winter. The shallow sky turned the color of ashes and embers, bruised and frightened, but going nowhere. That may have been because there was nowhere to go, not really, not to get anywhere, not to escape.

Dude, look out.

Soon, some of the gnarliest waves detoured to extract payments customarily due on the north shore of Oahu. Others took the path of least resistance and continued to the east, seeking to break on through to the other side. Even the ordinary waves were routinely sharp and sneaky. They knew how to slice and dice and cut the land down deep, where it hurts without showing.

Then it turned into a Wednesday, a day that none of the local surfers would ever forget.

It was do or be done, all of this, none of that. Blood was bound to be spilled as a matter of necessity.

Hey, watch it.

You watch it, kook.

Are you talking to me?

I’m not talking, I’m warning you.

We’re all warning you.

Fucking trannie kooks need to hit the street where you belong. Go back to your computers.

You don’t own the ocean.

You sound like a chipmunk, Val. Chipmunks can’t swim.

Back to the valley, kook. Open your eyes.

Bite me.

Ooh the Val is spunky.

You’re lost, Val.

The Val is all puffed up like a Twinkie.

Choke on your dust, Val.

I got my rights.

Fuck your rights.

What you need, Val, is the balls.

A pair of balls.

Go diddle your computer, Val.

Okay, that’s it.

"Let’s go, dude.

You and me, dude.

Anytime, dude

I’ll see you there, dude.

Here it is.

Whatever.

Wherever.

That’s what I’m talking about.

One major assault force of waves entered Monterey Bay in plenty of time to unleash an either epic or prosaic fury before the local arrival of high tide, depending upon breath, depth, random events, tightly held points of view, aesthetic preferences, and circumstances beyond all control.

Any definition of local, though, was by its nature subject to misinterpretation. Humdrum locals always rule, everywhere. Late in the afternoon the waves were rolling in at Steamer Lane like fresh, foaming barrels of Seabright ale, some rogues as tall as fifteen feet high, no messing around. They were shaped like ripe, golden pears bursting with fermented juice. The fragile cliffs looming above the murk were bathed in the glow of Heaven on Earth before the fall.

The thirsty, hard charging locals on the Westside of Santa Cruz were out in big numbers all day long and seemed to be appreciative enough, although that was understandably difficult to verify. The line-up was riddled with wannabes tucked in deep over their heads, some who authentically needed help, as well as the usual posers, sycophants, and interlopers from the Eastside asking for trouble. Two bangers known to sell mediocre weed heavy with sticks and twigs at Garfield Park were hassling a dumb ass Eastsider, dumb enough to be wearing an alien blue striped wetsuit on the wrong side of town. There were some indirect, and some explicit, threats to his appendages, especially the one positioned between his legs, if he didn’t get the hell back where he was supposed to belong.

Hey, you.

What?

I said, hey you.

The charged voices sounded vaguely familiar to Casey Rider. They came from somewhere nearby, as did he, as local as can be, born at home, on a mattress on the floor, where he thrived.

The voices repeated like a high caliber revolver discharging in the gusts of wind. There was an echo that was hard to read.

Theoretically, and often in practice, Casey Rider favored fair play, equal access, clear boundaries, and plenty of freedom, justice, and responsibility for all. He was all Westside and all that, but not all wacked about it like some of the witless speed addled gnomes he knew. So- called balance was important to him, not solely the kind of prodigious balance he often displayed on the edge of his board with his freakishly long toes, which happened that morning to be the very first board he had ever bought with his own money, a sweet little Pearson Arrow he had owned and cared for since he was in the seventh grade.

But, he kept his mouth shut. He did not ask why. He had forgotten the words to the song that was playing in his head.

Casey had been seriously out of sorts since morning. The night before had been no better. His normal enthusiasm had vanished, vamoose. His tongue was yellow and sticky and his taste buds were shot. A film covered his blue eyes that became increasingly dense the harder he tried to rub it away.

Hey, dude, watch what you’re doing.

Whoa.

You know better than to turn your back like that.

Yeah.

Casey knew all about bad attitudes and this one was bad, perhaps dangerous. Danger would at least make some sense.

He told himself one more and he was done, one more that would serve some inscrutable end not his own, perhaps preserve a semblance of normalcy he didn’t feel, a last ride, any ride, to an end, any end.

He told himself one more and he was done despite knowing that one more was not even close to what he needed.

Holy shit, dude, look at this one coming. This mother is mine.

Casey remained bobbing on his board. His toes were becoming numb inside of his leaking booties. He felt as if he was carrying around some unidentified baggage that rendered him clumsy and inept. The churning water in the bay felt cold, too cold, no good reason why. After all, it was the same water in the same ocean that had crashed against the same rocks the day before. How fast do these things change, anyway?

Casey was ordinarily a smart guy, a smart ass some would say, and he ordinarily knew the correct answer to whatever the question. Not too fast, not very much, not where it matters. That’s what he would have answered, if asked, with at least some portion of his usual confidence, although in truth he was no longer nearly as confident as he used to be and never would be again. Sometimes, being a smart guy didn’t turn out too smartly.

.Hey Casey, is this great or what?

What?

He was beginning to learn how to merely make do. He counted backwards from dates yet to exist. He swung mightily at a sequence of bouncing balls that he missed, making little or no contact, a shame. There was this and that to consider and maintain. There was too much of too little. Maybe he needed a pair of sharp glasses to be able to see straight, or maybe he needed a slate wiped clean.

Visibility depended upon conditions, after all. Conditions invariably changed deep beneath the surface of the land as well as the sea. The depth of the ocean water under Monterey Bay reached more than a mile. There was a canyon down there deeper than the vaunted Grand Canyon and a volcano that only pretended to be sleeping.

On land, distances were measured in inches, feet, fractions. It was easy to touch bottom. It didn’t seem that far away.

Casey was a goofy footer. He’d always been a goofy footer, and he always would remain a goofy footer. Left or right, so what. His balance was good, strength good, flexibility better than good. What could go wrong?

He added the costs, all the costs, of the direction he appeared to be following without making a choice. All he used to want was a ride. A good ride could be short or long, frenzied or calm. A good ride could change for no reason.

Change was good, right? Balance was doubly good. Balance was necessary and sufficient.

Or at lease that was how change used to be.

There were so many people to consider in his increasingly complicated life, people who frequently got in his way, quantities of people along with qualities of people, usually the same people at varying lengths, to varying degrees.

Then there were things to consider, big things that mattered, little things that posed as obstacles, patterns to discern, meaningful events, meaningless events, disguises, anomalies, relationships, understandings, mistakes, whatever popped up in between.

He knew it wasn’t the money he was after. He had enough money. Sure, he could use more, but then what? And so what? What about here? What about now? He wasn’t eating right during the day. He wasn’t sleeping right at night. His dick bobbed and weaved without aim and dribbled spit recklessly like a reptile.

It simply wasn’t like him to be like this, not the real him, not the missing person he remembered knowing. The cold water condition in his ear was acting up, no doubt affecting basic equilibrium and sense and sensibility, and his sinuses were clogged and painful as the snot traveled upward from his nose into his skull, but he knew that wasn’t it either, not even close.

He allowed himself to be thrashed one more time by an uncoiling silver tipped devil that seemed to be dripping poison. It was about twice head high. He swallowed too much of it and then cried uncle.

Dude, where you going? This is starting to become epic.

I have to go.

You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.

You’re right.

If you don’t take an advantage of a day like this the surfing Gods will punish you.

I must deserve it.

You do.

So there we have it.

Dude, c’mon, what up? You need to cut this shit. You don’t look too good.

It’s really not my choice.

Bullshit, bra. Whose choice is it except yours?

Maybe you’re right but I have to go anyway.

You only think you do.

Sometimes I forget.

How can you forget? It’s so obvious.

Yeah.

He climbed the rickety steps up to West Cliff Drive favoring the bad left knee that would have to be drained again soon. Too much pus and gunk continued to stubbornly gravitate to the wrong hollowed out spot. The steps were no more slippery than usual but he took his time. How many injuries over how much time did that make anyway?

Absurdly, he felt old, mortal. He was yet to turn twenty two. The wind crackled like an old fashioned carbine at his back. The air temperature was colder than the water temperature and he felt worse, not better, on dry, barren land, which to his dismay he conceded was the way it was going to be, had to be, until he was ready to do something about it.

He had to hustle home, shower, change, emerge as someone new. Again.

None of his friends had to constantly maneuver as he did around an overbearing father constantly trying to interfere in his business. Most of them had only frazzled single mothers to contend with, mothers who had the good common sense, and decency, to look the other way.

What happened to the way it used to be, to the good old daze he could dial up, to the here and now?

Fortunately, home was only a block from the beach. The water there would be hot and stinging.

A mere ten land locked miles away, however, with no ocean or waves in sight, Casey’s fretful father was feeling much the same way as his son, asking many of the same pointless questions. He waited impatiently for Casey’s arrival, waited for him to hold up his end of their bargain, at least the bargain that he had defined on his own as a matter of mutual necessity, although he knew how unlikely that was to happen.

Danny Rider was not a patient man. He had never been a patient man. Patience never worked for him. Work came first.

Danny Rider had always been a hard working man, first this, then that, always something. He was just bright enough, just quick enough, just fast enough, to get the job done, whatever the job. Fortunately, he was blessed with good teeth, good hair, good skin, and a winning salesman’s smile.

In his own mind, no matter what, Danny Rider never worked for any boss other than himself

Danny Rider came to understand the ‘how’ part of work at a very young age, how to turn a screw, how to plug a leak, how to close a sale, how to push harder than some other guy. That part came easy.

But he had never been able to satisfactorily answer the question ‘why’. It was a frequently unwieldy question. It was the kind of snotty question that could get convoluted and threatening if not handled with a pacifier and kid gloves.

Before too long, though, he learned how to deal with it correctly. He learned to ignore it.

That helped him as much as anything to get where was going.

Danny Rider claimed to be at peace with his plight, though perhaps unconvincingly, given his disproportionate propensity for the well cultivated, if hidden, exhibition of anxiety, frustration, melodrama, and fruitless recriminations.

He believed, however, that he had learned to make the most of what gifts he possessed.

Sometimes, sadly, the possessions came to include his only son.

Danny Rider was waiting for his prescient son on the other side of the Santa Cruz Mountains at a nouveaux hot spot in Saratoga that used to be located in a lush valley of earthly delights. It was a new and very chic hot spot, had a voluminous, highly polished bar shaped like an amoeba, lots of youngish, skinny asses planted on revolving bar stools, lots of shiny woods, gleaming metals, brittle plastics and synthesized composites. There were racks of multi-colored bottles containing clear liquids leading to disoriented and questionable behaviors. The blinking video games lining the walls vied for world domination around the clock. It was always the right time somewhere. They were a major part of the show.

The sun was shining, as usual, on the other side of the clear picture windows at this hot spot but Danny Rider was trying to think ahead. He liked to believe he had his reasons, good reasons, on hand at all times.

Danny Rider grew up right there in that very same valley, not as anything special, not exactly of pure mind or healthy body, nor well known for any of his achievements, whatever they amounted to, nor his stellar attitude toward icons and symbols of respect and authority.

But Danny Rider never missed a solitary day of work in that valley, not the younger Danny Rider and certainly not the Danny Rider that grew to accept the bags and the wrinkles appearing in such close proximity to his blue eyes, not even when his movie star good looks began to transform from leading man into weathered sidekick. He drank the prodigious juices offered by the orchards there in the valley, plums, peaches, apricots, cherries, nectarines. The juices were close to being free when he was younger, maybe worth a nickel on a hot day. He smelled the intoxicating smells of ferment there.

It didn’t matter that his own nearby father was an asshole there. His father was hardly alone in that. Assholes seemed to be everywhere, always. He learned how to keep his distance.

But there was plenty of open space to roam in the valley, to get away, to thrive. There was space between the spaces. There were niches to find in the foothills and clear springs of fresh water that trickled out of the Santa Cruz mountains. There were points to be scored there. He knew he was free there, or could be.

It was frequently hard to believe how it once was, nor what it had become. Same spot precisely. All it took to change was time, not even that much of it.

The valley was where Danny Rider learned to jerk off with both hands, fuck in the back seat, get high. He rolled in the dirt and groveled with slugs and worms. He pulled, poked, chafed, and rubbed. He popped a couple of cherries. He drank some juices that turned out pretty sweet.

It was no joke in that valley, none of it, not to him. Right from the start, he knew he was bound to be getting somewhere. That was his point exactly. The blossoms of the stoned fruits carpeted the fields and perfumed the air. The valley of blossoms contained a simmering heat but it was a dry heat.

Now, all the air was pre-conditioned and ultra-massaged. It came at an unearthly price. It was unblemished and unctuous. Greasy palms slipped and slid and wrestled naked in mud. It had come to be called Silicon Valley. Only the hijacked names remained the same.

There was always another, new, newer, brighter, shinier, reason why.

Danny Rider was not the nervous type but he was nervous waiting for his son. He would have been nervous before this meeting even if it didn’t look as if all of his efforts were in danger of being flushed right down the crapper.

He should have known better. He should have been smarter, quicker. He should have taken more time and made a greater effort to dig deeper.

He ordered another drink from the waitress proudly leaning over to show off her new store bought tits, straight, no chaser. What the hell.

He was thinking, don’t do this to me, anything but this.

He wanted to speak with his son before he said anything else to anyone. Until then, he didn’t want to say too much. Was that too much to ask?

Apparently, it was. The first man to arrive for the meeting spoke Hebrew and came with his own translator, an obvious ploy. He was known to have grown up in a suburb of Philadelphia. Or one of those hostile, backward places far away with no respect for new, cutting edge ideas.

It’s a pleasure to meet you, Danny said.

Well, I certainly hope so, the man replied. He was a chubby man with pink cheeks and several useless chins. He proceeded to examine the ample double sided menu as if it contained the recipe for a secret sauce he was pursuing. It all came down to chemistry, right? Perhaps the relevant nomenclature was caught between layers of vinyl. He made a humming noise in his throat that he did not realize anyone else could hear.

The next three participants arrived virtually at once, a boy, a girl, and her pony. They all knew each other from way back when, relatively recent Stanford grads from concurrent classes who counted themselves as part of a proud minority of committed, guiltless heterosexuals. Each lived the good life right there in a home above the valley, with a hidden castle protected by an immaculate moat high on one woodsy hill or another.

The boy had bigger tits than the girl. He was wearing green flip flops and a dirty t-shirt with an obscure message that when he sat down exposed his bellybutton, which had evolved into a major innie. His toe nails were flush with a color coordinated fungus that worked well with the sparkling green highlights of the flip flops, likely an accident. Color matching did not seem to be within his purview. His name was Robbie but he answered when called Chipper.

What looks yummy, he asked with a burst of enthusiasm, I’ve been so busy calculating that I haven’t had anything to eat all day.

We had brunch together.

Was that today?

It wasn’t yesterday.

It seemed like ages ago.

Try the nachos to start, the pony suggested. You can’t go wrong with nachos.

Maybe so, but I’ve just so had it up to here with nachos, nachos, nachos.

Well then I don’t know what I can do to help you.

The girl was wearing a Peter Pan collar attached to a wrinkled pastel shirt and plaid slacks fresh from the dryer that puddled obliquely on the floor. They looked remarkably like pajamas. She was descended from second generation Chinese peasants by way of Liuzhou, San Mateo, and then Burlingame. Both parents bragged about her endlessly while hard at work at the family laundry and dry cleaning establishment in San Bruno. She kept her hands primly folded in her lap on top of her disposable napkin when not drinking lustily from a bottle of Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale.

I want something light and exciting, she said, something fresh and surprising.

Something that’s never been done.

Exactly.

You should call the chef out here. I’m sure he can do whatever you want.

Isn’t that what he’s there for?

And what we are here for.

First, I have to decide.

Absolutely.

The pony had a hook nose and a sharp, darting tongue that looked anything but pinkish. He gazed at the girl with moist hazel eyes and sipped daintily from a Pimm’s cup.

Collectively, they were reputed to represent several of the largest groups of venture capitalists in the world, although with conditions changing so rapidly, who could know anything for very long with that much certainty?

I think I’m going to have something deep fried and greasy. You only live once.

What about poppers?

Too spicy for me.

That’s what the drinks are for.

You’re such a card.

You’ll never know.

Back at you.

And a clever devil to boot.

I get it. To boot.

You’re so funny.

Funny as in ha, ha, I presume?

Real humor is science.

That’s no joke.

I’m so glad I could fit this meeting in on such short notice.

I feel so inspired.

Me too.

Aren’t we all just so well attuned?

Let’s stay this way forever.

There are diamonds and then there is the rough, after all.

That reminds me of something clever.

This bread is delicious.

I wonder what the red stuff is on the plate next to it.

It’s an aioli.

It’s something new.

Whatever it is, try some.

They tried a little of this and a little of that for twenty more minutes. The recycled atmosphere was contagious. They bit and chewed. They giggled and tittered like chipmunks collecting nuts. The exhilarating working day was never done for those who made their educated choices wisely.

Hard work paid off big time, they agreed. All of it was wonderful, unsurpassed, insurmountable. More was certainly due. What profitably came around once would certain come around again, as long as that good old vision thing was working correctly.

The only ingredient missing was the star of the show, the genius surfer son, to turn the key and unlock the secret door, the son reputed to be the authentic golden boy, the barely schooled natural, the irresistible asset they wanted to own with all their might.

Don’t worry, Danny said evenly, he’ll be here soon.

Who’s worried? I never worry. It’s unproductive to worry.

It damages vital nerve endings.

Sure, we see it all the time with genius. The sense of time becomes internally altered. He’s probably used to working late at night. That’s when all the best work gets done.

That is assuming he’s the real thing.

Oh, he’s real all right.

That we shall see.

To be honest, Danny lied, I don’t know where he finds his time. I don’t see him that much anymore. He’s always doing something. I don’t think he sleeps at all.

That’s a good thing.

Yeah, sleep is way overrated when you’re doing something cutting edge.

He was probably out surfing before the sun came up. That’s when the waves are best. I’d like to go surfing with him sometime. That would be way cool. Maybe when the water gets warmer.

Do you surf?

No, not yet. But I could.

Yeah, me too.

The last man to show up before Casey showed up, who was the last man to show up by about an hour, was the only man no one knew. He raised some serious eyebrows right away, ordering a hefty slab of red meat from a startled waitress he nabbed by her toned bicep.

Make sure it’s well done. By well done I mean no trace of redness whatsoever. And a straight up shot of Old Grand-Dad, make it a double.

I’m going to need it, he was thinking, to keep from laughing out loud into one of these silly faces so willing to swallow the trendy swill offered up as the special of the day. He was wearing a dark suit, a striped tie, highly polished shoes. He thought he looked pretty sharp, although it was admittedly difficult to make a concise fashion statement when shaped like a pear. His razor trimmed moustache seemed to have been pasted on his face at an odd angle. He circled the table before sitting down, examining nails, expressions, postures, indiscriminately. He had one of those handshakes that hurt, deliberately.

He said, It’s late.

That was said before he said anything. He said it as if he was making a point. Danny was thinking, oh no.

Danny said, You just got here.

The self-proclaimed Sam Huntington said, I like to get in and get out. Lean and mean. Mano a mano. Do it first, do it next, and then do it again. No thank you needed. Otherwise, you can get stale.

He apparently was making another point. Or several more points. Danny figured, correctly, that Sam Huntington was the kind of man who would not be done making points anytime soon. Sam started out telling a short story that became a long story. It did not matter that no one else was paying attention. It mattered least of all to him.

The plain facts were all that mattered. He owned a factory in Tijuana, and another in Laredo, that made tiny switches for Ma Bell. Damn little things fetched a pretty penny, too. On both sides of the border, all formal papers were in order. His ascent started in a little patch of oil outside of Bakersfield. It started out way back when. Oil had been king in Kern County since 1899 and some things never change. And those same things never will. Nothing mixes with just about anything near as well as dirt cheap oil. You can take that one to the bank, that’s for God damn sure. What else do you feed to a locomotive? Any dumb son of a bitch can tell you that much.

That, continued Sam unabated, led to a little of this and much more of that, scads of both, where rewards were ample. Then came the plenty of time he spent on his beauty of a yacht moored in Marina Del Rey that had to be considered. Most rewarding. He had plenty of cash looking for a return. He had plenty of options. He preferred it that way because that was the preferred way to be, good and plenty.

The embarrassed venture capitalists averted their eyes. OMG. WTF. LOL. Where was the understated and self-deprecating discretion accompanied by boyish charm? Such an overt display was so shockingly straight, so narrow.

Sam Huntington chomped on his nearly charred meat like some kind of savage from the jungle.

Danny knew Casey was not going to put up with this for very long.

Danny said, It’s up to you.

But I’m very interested in hearing what your boy has to say.

I don’t think he’s going to be adding much tonight that you don’t already know. It’s my fault if I gave you that impression. And, he won’t be likely to say anything if he hears you calling him my boy.

I don’t see why not. He is, isn’t he?

He’s his own boy.

I’m not sure I understand.

He is what he is.

Sometimes that’s too bad.

When is that?

When Casey was very small, Danny decided to speak to his son as if he was already an adult. That was long after Danny rescued Casey from an unstable woman who resided in an unstable home environment that featured dirty mattresses on the floor, scant milk in her breasts, and nothing but surplus peanut butter, grape jelly, and Boone’s Farm Apple Wine in the cupboards. The woman, whose real name he never actually learned after he learned that she liked to seasonally change her name according to astrological comings and goings, habitually responded to statements he had made to her the day before, and could not understand how there could be any misunderstanding over such small matters as facts.

Technically, she counted as Casey’s biological mother. She moved to Oregon to raise goats when he was three years old. She seemed to have a way with goats. Casey visited her every Summer until he was nine. He learned how to make goat cheese. Then, she moved to Alaska. That was pretty much that.

When Casey finally arrived at the table, he said, Sup.

He sat between the girl and her pony. He glanced around the table and quickly calculated how long this was going to take. The moon was shining in his eyes and he imperceptibly shifted his seat. The first tendrils of night fog began to slither down the mountain and spread out onto the valley floor. The pony moved over because that was what was expected of him.

Casey doubted he was going to last as long as an hour. Danny began to expect less.

He said to Casey, You must be tired.

Casey shrugged. He was drinking black coffee, a long drive ahead of him, with two extended stops to make, before morning. He was driving the overused Corvette with transmission problems he got suckered into buying one stupid afternoon in Los Gatos when all he really wanted was a reliable Toyota Celica that he could drive with the top down.

Maybe you should think of making an early night of it tonight.

Casey said, Can’t.

The girl, with great empathy, said, Tell me about it.

The pony patted her slim but toned arm, and said, You’re the best, although by now he had no hope of seducing her and therefore no longer gave a shit. Tomorrow would be a new day, other girls. No one could say he wasn’t persistent. He never knew where success could be found, never would. In that moment, he was only saying more of what he’d learned was expected of him. Expectations sometimes led to fulfillment, at least theoretically, although everyone at the table could see he’d rather be safe at home jerking off into a clean rag.

The boy said, Pretty gnarly waves today, I hear. I have my sources on the other side of the hill. I hear you’re a real hard charger. That’s so cool.

Casey said, You must be thinking of somebody else.

If it’s so cool, he thought, why don’t you do it yourself? All you have to do is stand on your own two feet while falling over backwards.

Oh, I don’t know about that. When it comes right down to it, the data shows we all want nothing more than to follow the leader? I hear your new line of board shorts is going viral.

Casey was starting to ask himself, what is it that feels so wrong here? The fawning from the over the hill techies he could understand, but he was concerned about the moose neck in the suit with the feral gaze. What was he staring at like that? He wasn’t even trying to disguise it.

Even his clueless father seemed to realize that this bumper car ride of his was veering wildly off its rails. He looked like he forgot what he came looking for.

Casey replied, Today doesn’t mean much when it becomes tomorrow. It’s a fickle business.

He sipped his coffee, and nibbled on a crust of warm sourdough bread. He was calculating time, distance, resistance, depth. He needed to allow himself sufficient time to pick up Lizzy in Goleta before grabbing two tacos de pollo asado at one of his favorite late night taquerias on Milpas St. in Santa Barbara and still be able to make it to Culver City by 7AM, when Junior would be arriving for work, and ready to go. He would have to let Lizzy choose which taqueria. He hoped that would appease her. If he averaged eighty seven miles an hour he could make it. Otherwise, he knew he’d succumb to an In-and-Out burger by the time he reached Atascadero, probably a double. Probably fries, too. Then he’d probably need to take a big shit and waste a lot more time.

Lizzy would be pissed.

Lizzy was hard to take when she was pissed, but he would rather face her than a disappointed Junior. Junior was not someone that Casey ever wanted to let down.

The girl said, That’s what I’m talking about.

When Sam Huntington finally addressed Casey, it was with a gurgling voice that started out embedded in his red nose and struggled to attain clarity before reaching his throat.

I’ve read some of what you’ve written on the Internet.

You can’t really believe anything you read on the Internet. That’s only the fulfillment of all the frustrated billions of fifteen seconds in the world.

Cynical, but interesting.

Some days interesting. Some days not so much. Right now, I’m in kind of a slump. There’s this kink in my neck that keeps coming back. Must be a problem with my circulatory system. But cynical? Not me. That requires too much of a commitment.

Your understanding of encryption in particular interests me.

I don’t know why it should. It doesn’t interest me.

Among other curiosities you claim Y2K is nothing but some kind of scam.

It is.

For what cause, simply money?

That’s the usual suspect.

That’s hard to believe."

And power. Plus, the illusion of.

You’re too smart for that.

Can’t overlook those illusions when you cross the street.

How so?

I’m not that smart.

I think you’re selling yourself short.

We’ll find out soon enough. Ten days until the supposed big crash. I’ve been wrong before. It doesn’t hurt that much.

But, there’s more than you at stake, of course.

Of course. That’s the idea. You, me, the man, the mice, the bugs. More the better. Better than the few.

You don’t seem to have a very high opinion of authority.

You mean figures of authority.

It amounts to the same thing.

Not if they’re fake figures. Not if the count is crooked. I try to have opinions that match up with what I see in front of my face. I’m not the one with all the secrets to hide.

Do you really expect companies to just give away their secrets?

I try not to have expectations. Desire is a great killer, maybe the greatest. But secrets are only secrets until they’re no longer secrets.

You don’t even seem to believe companies have rights to their own intellectual property.

Companies don’t have intellects. Animals have intellects. Maybe plants. I think probably so. I think the greatest intellects were probably the ones smart enough to stay in the ocean and avoid being burned to a crisp by the Sun. That’s who we should be learning to communicate with. Maybe some day we’ll know who knows what and how much it’s worth.

The Supreme Court decided that one a long time ago.

Right, the same Supreme Court that decided that corporations are people and people are property. The ones wearing black robes. Maybe they should switch to red satin robes like porn stars. Or white robes, with matching hoods. They could start a new trend in cults. That’s the Supreme Court that’s seated for life, right? Talk about job security. Or was that only three fifths of people?

I’m not sure you’re not putting me on.

When you find out, let me know. Until then, what’s left of my puny intellect is not for sale.

The brief pause that ensued did not appear to be exceptionally charged with any more than typical yuppie angst and ennui. Hasn’t everyone who is anyone seen it all before? He is young, naïve, a disheveled poser, Sam concluded. Probably helps him get laid if nothing else. He would have to learn. Ho and hum. Allowances have always been made for that as long as it did not go too far. He would change in due time when push came to shove. No harm, no foul, right?

Unless wrong. Or what else could it be?

As I said before, you have some interesting ideas.

Not really that interesting. It’s okay to think about it or write about it when I’m alone and have nothing better to do, but it bores the shit out of me to talk about it.

Casey thought, what am I saying here, what am I doing here? Why don’t you just make it easy on yourself and shut up?

That is so way cool.

Just anybody can talk.

Too true.

You don’t need to know anything.

But what about responsibility?

If there are no secrets, why bother?

But, there have to be secrets.

Not if you know where to look.

That’s it, right there in a nut shell.

My sentiments exactly.

Open the door and let the wind rush in, that’s what I say.

The girl said, that would really be something.

"Nowhere to run,