Spook Addendum

(To be inserted, a la Dr. No, between the third and fourth paragraphs on page 283 of William Gibson's excellent Spook Country. For Rodney and Bill, with much respect and affection).

She must have mistranscribed the address, for the one she'd written down deposited her nowhere near Clark, but on Main Street, north of Broadway. A mixed-use neighborhood. A bookstore, bistro, mailbox rentals. Sewing machine repair. A sagging porn theatre. The grey concrete shell of a new residential tower rising on one corner.

She opened the PowerBook on the passenger seat and paged down a useless list of locked wireless networks, Vancouver evidently less trusting than L.A.

Out of the car. She strolled south up Main, past a vacant unit on the corner, an art supply store, mailbox rentals, comic books, the bistro's smoked glass windows. Then in, on a whim, at the bookstore. Grey industrial carpet and racks of new releases mixed with texts on Soviet architecture, photoconceptualism, the Strugatsky brothers, Stanislaw Lem. Old Bowie on the stereo. Two bald, prematurely middle-aged men loudly arguing at the till.

Now they stopped as she approached.

"Can I help you?"

"Do you have a phone book I could borrow?"

"Sure," said the skinnier of the two, and heaved it up onto the counter.

She took her phone out of her purse and began to thumb through the listings.

"You looking for a business?" asked the skinny man.

"No, an artist. Bobby Chombo."

"Bobby," said the man. She studied him more closely. Late thirties. Mostly bald. Bright blue eyes behind small clear lenses. A round, earnest face. "We showed him, once."

"'We'?"

"Want to see the gallery?" Without waiting for an answer he walked abruptly into a side room, returning seconds later with a key, and past her out into the street. Confused, she followed him out onto the sidewalk and down a few doors to a set of stairs leading up to the building's second floor.

"CSA showed one of Robert's earliest locative pieces," said the bald man, preceding her up the stairs.

Down a dark hall to a locked door. He fumbled with the key, finally opened it. Behind the door, a tiny exhibition space with a tiger-striped hardwood floor and white walls. Small black and white photographs hanging there.

"These aren't Bobby's," she said.

"I haven't seen Bobby in more than two years," he said. "Just installed his work and took off. Didn't even make the opening. I told Sarah--"

"Do you know where he is, now?"

"Sure," he said. "Still the same place. That rat trap off Clark."

"You wouldn't have the address, would you?"

"Sure," he said, and wrote it down with a pen.
- posted by cjb @ 6:24 PM