Mao II Read Online Free PDF Page A

would take an effort not to stare.
    “You have to be Brita Nilsson.”
    “Why?”
    “It’s the look. I don’t know, professional, accomplished, world traveler, slightly apart. Not to mention the camera case. I’m Scott Martineau.”
    “My guide to the frontier.”
    “In fact I got lost several times on my approach to the city and then got rattled by traffic even though it’s only weekend traffic and I finally got straightened out and even found a place to park but there were unsettling moments yet to come, psychic intruders, sort of living shadows, and they speak. I haven’t been to New York in years and wouldn’t mind sitting and chatting a while before we hit the streets. Are you staying here?”
    “Don’t be crazy. I have a place way downtown but I thought it would be simpler to meet somewhere central. It’s very nice to have this opportunity. But you talked about conditions without really specifying. I mean how much time do I get to spend with him? And how long can I expect to be gone because I have a schedule that’s really quite firm and I haven’t, you know, brought days and days of underwear.”
    “Wait. Are we moving?”
    “It’s a revolving bar,” she said.
    “Jesus. Where am I?”
    “Isn’t it strange? New York has fallen.”
    He watched Broadway float into the curved window and felt as if blocks of time and space had come loose and drifted. The misplaced heartland hotel. The signs for Mita, Midori, Kirin, Magno, Suntory—words that were part of some synthetic mass language, the esperanto of jet lag. And the tower under construction across the street, webbed and draped against the weather, figures moving fleetly past gaps in the orange sheeting. He saw them clearly now, three or four kids playing on the girders, making the building seem a ruin, an abandonment.
    “I also have to tell you I don’t understand the drill. I would prefer to get there on my own.”
    “Get where? You wouldn’t know where you were going.”
    “You could tell me, couldn’t you?” she said.
    “Bill insists we do it this way.”
    “A little melodramatic maybe?”
    “Bill insists. Besides, we’re very hard to find.”
    “All right. But for the man’s own peace of mind, why not choose a neutral site? That way there’s no problem over disclosure. His whereabouts remain secret.”
    “I don’t think you’ll have very much to disclose. And Bill knows you won’t talk anyway.”
    “How does he know?”
    “We saw the piece about you in Aperture. That’s how we decided you were the one. And he couldn’t meet you somewhere else because he doesn’t go anywhere else, except to hide from the book he’s doing.”
    “I do love his books. They really mattered to me. And he hasn’t been photographed in what? We must be speaking in the multi decades. So why don’t I just relax?”
    “Why don’t you just relax?” Scott said.
    Above the bar area there was a clock rotating in an openwork tower. From the table he could see through the bare trellis and clock framework to the elevators. He thought he could easily sit all afternoon watching the elevators rise and drop, clear pods ringed with pinpoint lighting. They moved soundlessly, clinging to the surface of a vast central cylinder. Everything was moving, everything was slowly turning, there was music coming from somewhere. He watched the people inside the elevators, deftly falling. High up, on the walkways, an occasional figure looking down, head and upper body. He wondered if the thing the woman tried to give him in the street might be a newborn child. The same musical phrase over and over, coming from somewhere.
    “You photograph only writers now.”
    “Only writers. I frankly have a disease called writers. It took me a long time to find out what I wanted to photograph. I came to this country it’s fifteen years. To this city actually. And I roamed the streets first day, taking pictures of city faces, eyes of city people, slashed men, prostitutes, emergency