Horse Latitudes | Page 2

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 said.
The waitress with the nose brought our drinks and Virilio said, "Can you catch this round?" As I counted out the bills, Virilio slid his arm around the waitress's hips. Either she knew him