“No idea,” Chevette said. “It’s right in the middle of what used to be the street.”
“Never mind,” Tessa said, moving on, into the pedestrian traffic flowing to and from the bridge. “We’re just in time. We’re going to document the life before it’s theme-parked.”
Chevette followed, not knowing what it was exactly that she felt.
THEY ate lunch in a Mexican place called Dirty Is God. Chevette didn’t remember it from before, but places changed V names on the bridge. They changed size and shape too. You’d get these strange mergers, a hair place and an oyster bar deciding to become a bigger place that cut hair and sold oysters. Sometimes it worked: one of the longest-running places on the San Francisco end was an old-style,
manual tattoo parlor that served breakfast. You could sit there over a
plate of eggs and bacon and watch somebody get needled with some
kind of hand-drawn flash. But Dirty Is God was just Mexican food and Japanese music, a
pretty straightforward proposition. Tessa got the huevos rancheros and
– – Chevette got a chicken quesadilla. They both had a Corona, and Tessa parked the camera platform up near the tented plastic ceiling. Nobody
noticed it up there apparently, so Tessa could do documentary while she ate.
Tessa ate a lot. She said it was her metabolism: one of those people who never gains any weight regardless of how much she ate, but she needed to do it to keep her energy up. Tessa put away her huevos before Chevette was halfway through her quesadilla. She drained her glass 67 bottle of Corona and started fiddling with the wedge of lime, squeezing it, working it into the neck.
“Carson,” Tessa said. “You worried about him?”
“What about him?”
“He’s an abusive ex, is what about him. That was his car back in Malibu, wasn’t it?”
“I think so,” Chevette said.
“You think so? You aren’t sure?”
“Look,” Chevette said, “it was early in the morning. It was all pretty strange. It wasn’t my idea to come up here, you know? It was your idea. You want to make your movie.”
The lime popped down into the empty Corona bottle, and Tessa looked at it as though she’d just lost a private wager. “You know what I like about you? I mean one of the things I like about you?”
“What?” Chevette asked.
“You aren’t middle class. You just aren’t. You move in with this guy, he starts hitting you, what do you do?”
“Move out.”
“That’s right. You move out. You don’t take a meeting with your lawyers.”
“I don’t have any lawyers,” Chevette said.
“I know. That’s what I mean.”
“I don’t like lawyers,” Chevette said.
“Of course you don’t. And you don’t have any reflex to litigation.”
“Litigation?”
“He beat you up. He’s got eight hundred square feet of strata-title loft. He’s got a job. He beats you up, you don’t automatically order a surgical strike; you’re not middle class.”
“I just don’t want anything to do with him.”
“That’s what I mean. You’re from Oregon, right?”
“More or less,” Chevette said.
“You ever think of acting?” Tessa inverted the bottle. The squashed lime wedge fell down into the neck. A few drops of beer fell on the scratched black plastic of the table. Tessa inserted the little finger of her right hand and tried to snag the lime wedge. 68 “No.”
“Camera loves you. You’ve got a body makes boys chew carpet.” ‘Get off Chevette said
Why do you think they were putting those party shots of you up on the website back in Malibu?”
‘Because they were drunk Chevette said Because they don t have anything better to do Because they re media students
Tessa hooked the lime wedge what was left of it out of the bottle “Right on all three she said but the main reasons your looks
Behind Tessa on one of Dirty Is Gods recycled wall screens a very beautiful Japanese girl had appeared Look at her Chevette said “That s looks, right~
Tessa looked over her shoulder That s Rei Toei she said ‘So she s beautiful She is
“Chevette,” Tessa said, “she doesn’t exist. There’s no live girl there at all. She’s code. Software.”