Horse Latitudes | Page 2

rainforest.
Six weeks later, I left my apartment in the Sunset District and headed
for a south of Market Street bar called Cafe Juju. A jumble of mossy
surface roots, like cords from God's own patchbay, had tangled
themselves in the undercarriages of abandoned cars on the broad
avenue that ran along Golden Gate Park. Here and there hundred foot
palms and kapoks jutted up from the main body of the parkland,
spreading their branches, stealing light and moisture from the smaller
native trees. The Parks Department had a given up trying to weed out
the invading plant species, and concentrated instead on keeping the
museums open and the playgrounds clear for the tourists who never
came any more.
Downtown, the corners buzzed with street musicians beating out jittery
sambas on stolen guitars, improvised sidewalk markets catering to the
diverse tastes of refugees from Rio, Mexico City, and Los Angeles.
Trappers from Oakland hawked marmosets and brightly plumed jungle
birds that screamed like scalded children. In the side streets, where the
lights were mostly dead, golden-eyed jaguars hunted stray dogs.

Overhead, you could look up and watch the turning of the new
constellation: Fer-De-Lance, made up of a cluster of geosynchronous
satellites. Most belonged to NASA and the U.N., but the Army and the
DEA were up there too, watching the progress of the jungle and
refugees northward.
I was walking to a club called Cafe Juju.
Inside, a few heads turned in my direction. There was some tentative
whispering around the bar, but not enough to be alarming. I was thinner
than when I'd left the band. I'd let my beard grow, and since I had
stopped bleaching my hair, it had darkened to its natural and
unremarkable brown. As I threaded my way through the crowd, a
crew-cut blonde pretended to bump into me. I ignored her when she
said my name, and settled at a table in the back, far away from the band.
"Mister Ryder," said the man sitting across from me. "Glad you could
make it."
I shook the gloved hand he offered. "Since you called me that name so
gleefully, I assume you got it?" I said.
He smiled. "How about a drink?"
"I like to drink at home. Preferably alone."
"Got to have a drink," he said. "It's a bar. You don't drink, you attract
attention."
"All right, I'll have a Screwdriver."
"A health nut, right? Getting into that California lifestyle? Got to have
your Vitamin C." He hailed a waitress and ordered us drinks. The
waitress was thin, with close-cropped black hair and an elegantly
hooked nose sporting a single gold ring. She barely noticed me.
"So, did you get it?" I asked.
Virilio rummaged through the inner recesses of his battered Army

trenchcoat. He wore it with the sleeves rolled up; his forearms, where I
could see them, were a solid mass of snakeskin tattoos. I couldn't be
sure where the tattoos ended because his hands were covered in
skin-tight black kid gloves. He looked younger than he probably was,
had the eager and restless countenance of a bird of prey. He pulled a
creased white envelope from an inside pocket and handed it to me.
Inside was a birth certificate and a passport.
"They look real," I said.
"They are real," Virilio said. "If you don't believe me, take those down
to any DMV and apply for a drivers license. I guarantee they'll check
out as legit."
"It makes me nervous. It seems too easy."
"Don't be a schmuck. The moment you told me your bank accounts
were set up with names from the Times obituaries, I knew we were in
business. I checked outall the names you gave me. In terms of age and
looks, this guy is the closest match to you."
"And you just sent to New York for this?"
"Yeah," Virilio said, delighted by his own cleverness. "There's no
agency that checks birth certificates against death records. Then, I took
your photo and this perfectly legal birth certificate to the passport office,
pulled a few strings, and got it pushed through fast." =46rom the stage,
the guitar cut loose with a wailing Stratocaster solo, like alley cats and
razor blades at a million decibels over a dense batucada backbeat. I
closed my eyes as turquoise fireballs went off in my head. "You never
told me why you needed this," said Virilio.
"I had a scrape with the law a few years ago," I told him. "Bringing in
rare birds and snakes from south of the border. Department of Fish and
Game seized my passport."
Virilio's smile split the lower part of his face into a big toothy crescent
moon. "That's funny. That's fucking hysterical. I guess these weird

walking forests put your ass out of business."
"Guess so," I