“They don’t have anything on you Ray!” Lana said as she waved her hand in front of me.

I could tell she had a new pair of those damn contact lenses. The kind that fed you all the useless information that everyone already had on their phone 15 years ago. Apparently, looking down at your phone became arduous labor some time ago. So now you had 3D cameras, your contact lists, your e-mail, and this little shitty facial recognition application that looked your face up on The Grid. I missed when we just called it “The Internet.” But… if you tried to one up me, I was always two steps ahead. I had contact lenses too. I couldn’t really explain how they worked but the wiry underground salesman who hocked them to me said that something about them threw off the facial recognition technology that the others had. He was disheveled enough and had this Forty-year-old virgin vibe that made me put my full trust in him, along with ten grand out of my checking account. I always trusted a guy who put his expertise before a woman. I dropped a fortune and I still hadn’t been able to see anyone of notice when I look over my shoulder, so under my best assumptions, a third of my savings was put to good use. I’m the type of guy who fancies being a ghost among the numbered.

“Do you ever stop working?” Lana asked. She had this look in her eyes like she’d been in this walking coma, living on Xanax and anger.

“Look, I’m not your friend.” I said. “No need to fake it. I’m in, and I’m out before you’re buzzed off your first shot.

It was clear she didn’t want to hear about anything I’d spent the past few days drummin’ up, but hell, I needed the money, and I needed to get on with my life. But something in the way she looked at me, told me right then and there, that she didn’t want to know the truth.

“I’m not gonna bullshit you Ray. I think it’s sick. Not that you’re sick, mind you. Everyone’s got their thing, but the whole rigamarole is something out of those gossip columns, I swear. I was suspicious, I was angry, I cried a Friday night here and a make-up session there, but it’s all eyes on me tonight, Ray. My agent cares a whole helluva lot less about the role I slink in on the screen and a whole helluva lot more about the role I play every day out here in this little wild west we got set up. I thought I wanted to know. But now I don’t really give a shit anymore. I’ll still give you the money. We can pretend like this little fiasco never happened. Look at it like an exercise of sorts you know? What’s it matter as long as you get the money? As a matter of fact… you should be thanking me! I’m willing to pay you what your worth because of who you are! There isn’t one other person in this town willing to cut you a check for anything more than that, honey! Am I right?”

Her tongue ran off like an AK-47. Then she just looked at me, waiting for a response.The bartender brought me my drink. I looked it over, swirled it in my hand. Like hell she didn’t wanna know. Everyone wants to know the truth. Rather, everyone wants the stomach to be able to handle it. Sometimes they’re just not so blessed with a cold heart and an iron chest. It’s like she was in a fairy tale without a prince charming. And somehow I was supposed to be the white knight in this screwed up fairy tale. Instead I was just here to give her another reason to have another drink. We just sat and sipped, while some lonely soul sat next to us, scrolling through news broadcasts on his tablet. Seemed like he was short a pair of headphones because all of a sudden I was too damned interested about what came blaring out of that thing.

The newscaster rattled on and on about the new technology making it’s way around the Silicon Valley. Everybody and their grandmother ran it at least twice through the rumor mill. I looked at Lana hoping that the look on her face would let me know that maybe she understood it and could explain it better than I could.

“Ha ha ha!” Laughed the loneliest man in the bar.

He looked around him. Judging by his body language he was expecting others to be over his shoulder. The tablet looked brand new, able to do only two things better than everyone else’s products at this point in the fiscal year. He was easily the type of man who threw money at himself and expected people to gather around him like pigeons on feed. He then looked in the direction of Lana and I. I just stared at him, the same way I did at the young eunuch who was hitting on the starlet, who at this point was sitting on his ass on the floor with breath so rank he might as well have been sucking on a cotton ball doused in isopropyl.

“You ever forget somethin’? But know it was on the tip of your tongue?” He asked, still halfway laughing.

“Every hour.” I said, looking over at Lana, who was sufficiently amused by this sad man.

“Well they’re saying that, now…. You can hotwire your freakin’ brain. And download all that shit!”

I raised my eyebrows. “All of it?” I asked.

“As long as you got the drives to stick it in.” He said.

“So you’re tellin’ me that my brain is basically nothin’ but a damn Hard Drive now?” I asked.

“Damn right!”

“Uncle Sam’s gonna have a field day with that ain’t he now? Ain’t like he hasn’t messed with enough shit these days, right?” I said. Lonely man went quiet. Face suddenly looked sick like I kicked him in the balls.

“You have a slight drawl in your tone. Like a tiny, itty bitty taste of racist. Where’s home for you?”

Smug son-of-a-bitch.

“Just some place you’ve never been.” I said.

I flashed a smile that said “fuck off” as much as it said “have a good night.” He looked right back at his tablet. Arbitrarily swiping away.

Looking back at Lana I saw her eyes still trained on the tablet screen. I noticed she had this lump in her throat that she couldn’t swallow away. I could tell the liquor was causing it to tighten. She put her hand on my shoulder. I checked to see if anyone was watching.

“Why the hell do you care who sees? No one even knows who you are.” She said.

“I can’t be doing what your husband does.” I said.

“You know what I wish? If I could wish for one thing, and one thing only, you know what it’d be? I had to hear her answer.

“What?” I asked.

“That I could just erase ‘it.” She said. “The memory. The suspicion. Just that. That way he wouldn’t have to lie. I’m a gullible girl when I want to be, you know? And I could believe it. It’s just one nagging suspicion. And you’re the only one keeping me from that. And as long as I don’t know, and as long as I can’t see. It never happened right?”

“I think that’s the tonic talking, sweetie.”

“I’ll pay you… don’t worry about it. Just don’t come back, Ray… don’t come back. This town, just isn’t healthy for you. Go back to ‘Crown Town’ where they still live in 2002.”

She was my only client who was hell-bent on calling me by my first name. She was so desperate to feel like she really knew someone that she just faked it. It made sense. Her whole livelihood was based on faking it. But it was in those forced moments that she was trying to get to something real. She just wasn’t going to get it from me.

I don’t know what possessed me to do it, but I raised my hand to her face and proceeded to caress it. She let me. Her lower lip quivered. Everyone in that dark club noticed. Maybe it was just me, but for a split second you could hear the snap of a camera phone. I looked down, down in to her cleavage. And I wanted her so bad. That dress looked so beautiful on her. I wasn’t looking at her breasts because I wanted them for myself… I was looking because of the botched air brushing job on her skin and a couple of red marks that the HD television cameras and red carpet interviewers couldn’t see.

Then I looked at her wrists and noticed the slight puffiness of her skin, concealed by flashy bracelets. My gaze settled on her pooling eyes. Everything connected. I stayed silent for an uncomfortable period of time, and then, I told her…

“His safe word is ‘dolce.”

I got up, walked away, and refused to look back.

Putting my head down and maneuvering through every mask in that circus, I couldn’t walk out of the bar fast enough. There was no way I was going to wait for her reaction. Therapy wasn’t my strong suit, but I did think of her little secret. There was no way in hell that she was going to dump the bastard.

I got in my car and sped down the 101 into the Barrio.

***