The big sleep

There I was, minding my own business, boycotting Esso, when the door to my office flung open and trouble entered my life. She was six feet high, with eyes like the Starbucks logo, hair as yellow as the Golden Arches, and a mouth as red as Ronald McDonald’s nose. She burst into the room with all the force of a malfunctioning Mattell firework. She was dressed to kill, and I wasn’t ready to die. Not right now. I was on my lunch break. The kind of employer I had wasn’t going to deny me that. Not unless he wanted a bullet in his morning latté anyway.

Hanging off her supremely well-surgeoned body were Nike sneakers, Levi’s twist-to-fit jean-pants, a Michael Jordan basketball vest, and a Yankees baseball cap that had aura, mystique and sweatshop written all over it. She was clearly a child of her time, and I was not complaining. Protruding from her hipster jeans was the line of her panties. They were Calvin Klein, and she didn’t care who knew it. The T-shirt under the vest said Gap Academy 001-486, which I made a mental note of. You could never be too safe in this business. After all, she had legs that could kill a man, particularly if she threw them at you. For good measure I pulled a slug from my drawer and placed it in my lap.

“What can I do you for sweetheart?” I said, lighting a hemp joint and knocking a pile of feminist texts off my desk and into the paper shredder.

“Aren’t you a shamus?” She said in a voice so mellow you could have rolled it up and smoked it.

“No,” I said. “Actually I’m quite a proud sort of man. Why, who are you looking for?”

She removed her cap with the same finesse I had seen on any number of felines and smiled a kitten smile. “I’m looking for Copernicus F. Forrester. You know him?”

I flushed with embarrassment but I wasn’t gonna let her see it. “That’s me. My parents were Noel Coward fans.”

“Really?” she said. “What a coincidence.”

“How’s that?”

She prowled towards the desk. “Mine weren’t.”

I stood up straight, the slug falling off my lap and shooting a hole through my foot. I grimaced with pain, but hell, it was the third shot I’d taken that day and I was in no mood for crying. “So, we have something in common. That’s nothing new. I got something in common with a lot of people in this town, and most of them have taken a pop at me.”

“Oh yeah? You got insurance?”

I slumped back into my chair. “Jeez, another salesman. What’s the angle, they thought a woman would up the chance of a sale? I’m buying nothing. Tell your boss that, and give him a kiss from me.”

“Get into the twenty-first century would you?” She said, and I dutifully changed the calendar on my desk, biting through the packaging with my teeth. “I’m not trying to sell you insurance Mr. Forrester. Although, you look like you could use it.”

“I could use a drink, that’s what,” I said, and she opened up my filing cabinet and looked under M for Malt.

“How’s this?”

I licked my lips. “Heavenly.”

She poured the drink and I threw two fingers down my throat, warming my cockles.

“You got a thing for brands?” I said, setting fire to a new Philip Morris.

“How ever did you guess?” She purred, eyeing the cigarette box with envy.

“I’m a detective, lady,” I reminded her, flicking the cigarette at a certificate on the wall. “It’s my job to notice things. Besides, I’m well versed in youth culture. You get that way when you work the streets.”

“Why, Mr. Forrester, I had no idea business was so bad. What is it, fear of global recession?”

I frowned. “No, you got me wrong. I meant I spend a lot of time on the streets, detecting.”

“Oh, I see. Can you ever excuse my ignorance?”

“I already have.”

She giggled like a schoolgirl. “I knew you were the right man. They say you’re brilliant.”

I loosened my collar for extra breathing space. “They might be right.” I leant back on my chair and fell into the waste paper basket.

She stared at me as I assumed a standing position, leaning casually against the wall. “Well, Mr. Forrester. At least you missed the paper shredder.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Now what can I do for you? I’m losing valuable drinking time for this. My stool at the bar is beginning to miss me.”

She tied her hair up behind her head, ignoring my toothy grin. Her eyes looked out of my office window where a pair of pigeons were taking turns spreading disease.

“Crowd hallucinations in delirium tremens,” she said, just as I had expected.

“Ah, Elias Canetti. I’ve been here before sister.”

But she had swooned, slumped in the chair, her fall broken by the air-cushioned soles.

I strutted over in her direction, sensing some kind of trick. But she was out alright, and I carried her onto the couch that the moths had been bingeing on overnight. Being the kind of man I was, I took the opportunity to rummage through her Manhattan Portage. I had come across these Canetti types before. I knew what to expect.

Sure enough, there was a copy of Kierkegaard’s Either/Or and a pack of sugarless gum. But there was also a stack of leaflets advertising a public meeting, nibbles provided. “Brands: the new refection?” I could smell where we were going on this one. And I didn’t like it.

She came to when I threw a litre of bourbon in her face.

“What happened?”

“You passed out when I mentioned Elias Canetti. Don’t think you’re the first.”

“You must excuse me Mr. Forrester. Only, I’ve been under the weather recently.”

“Haven’t we all?” I pretended to ask.

“It’s the brand thing,” she said, twisting her fits. “It’s unfulfilling. I thought, I thought…”

“We’ve all thought a lot of things,” I informed her harshly.

“I don’t know what’s the real thing anymore!” She sobbed.

Fortunately, I had some handy, and poured her a glass, adding a pinch of rye for good measure.

“Why d’you come to me?”

“I’d nowhere else to turn Mr. Forrester. It’s a movement without a leader.”

I began to get interested and paced over to the other side of the room. I was gearing up for sobriety and my stomach was throwing sliders. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that I want to get involved, I want to be an activist, only I’m lost Mr. Forrester. My personal space has been invaded by brands.”

“Well you sure have picked your moment,” I said.

“I know. Everyone’s in hiding. Just when I’m getting interested the movement seems to have disappeared. Did it ever really exist Mr. Forrester?”

I stood in the light of the window, watching those wretched pigeons. “It’s complicated sweetheart. No-one is really sure. It did and it didn’t. A lot of things happened once – before everything changed. But then, how do you define a movement anyway?”

She burst into tears again and I threw her a handkerchief.

“Mop yourself up, would ya? There’s no time for all that.”

“I’m sorry Mr. Forrester – only, evasive and abstract answers are all I seem to get.”

She was lying, and I knew it. I wasn’t telling her though. I couldn’t. My tongue had gotten lodged in the roof of my mouth.

“Will you help me?”

I refreshed my mouth with a pint of the good stuff. “Well, that depends,” I told her.

“On what?”

“Er, well, on what it is you want me to do.” I tried to look tough, but she was eyeing the Romantic Fiction Weekly on my desk.

“I want you to tell me what anti-globalisation means.”

The next thing I knew, a bucket of fire water hit me in the face. I sat up. She was standing over me.

“You fainted.”

“Jeez, did you have to throw the bucket as well?” I said, readjusting my chin.

“Was it something I said?”

I climbed to my feet, which were about five feet above me. “It’s nothing,” I said, “Just that I’ve cut my teeth on this before.” I showed her my dental work. “Cost me a fortune.”

“Great job though,” she said assessingly.

“You know what you’re asking lady? Those words: “globalisation” and “anti”. They’re a damn near oxymoron. This is a tough case. I don’t know I’m up to the job.”

“But you are the best aren’t you,” she said, batting her eyelids with all the force of a major league offensive unit.

I shuddered. “Oh yes, that. Sure. How do you fancy joining me at my partner’s office?”

“Who’s your partner?” She asked.

“Jack Daniels,” I said, and we headed out to Eddie’s Bar, me panting like a prize bloodhound.

At Eddie’s you only had to ask and all the answers you could want were staring you in the face, if that’s your idea of fun. It had the toughest collection of anti-corporate sorts this side of Genoa. Why, perched at the bar was no other than Elena Steinberg, author of the seminal text Whodoo Economics? Next to her Katherine Norwood, rival and the dame responsible for Fickle-down: the myths of consumerism and No-go: where not to shop. Propping them up, comparing numbers on smashed McDonald’s windows, were the infamous ring-leaders of the protest movement, “Lazy-eye” Cozier and “Muddy” Trenchcoat. For once, they were just the decoction I wanted to see.

I led my companion to the bar.

“You got a name, sweetheart?”

“Yes, thank you,” she said.

“Right. What is it?”

“Why are you so interested all of a sudden?”

Things were getting weird. “Well, it might help when I talk to these people that’s all. If you don’t want to tell me, that’s no wood off my coffin.”

“Harlot,” she said with an eye for detail. “Charlie Harlot. My parents were big TV watchers. You believe that?”

I never believed anything until I’d had it out with a .45, but she wasn’t to know that, the poor innocent kitten. She wasn’t to know anything. “Oh yeah,” I said, tipping my hat to meaninglessness. We parked ourselves next to the resistance corp. and ordered a couple of White Russians.

I waited for the right moment, thinking about making a move, but I was uncommitted as a cat to a fur coat salesman. The angle in was everything. One wrong word, “public” or “service”, and I would have gotten off on the wrong note. I finally opted for the safest approach I knew and coughed.

“Anti-globalisation!” I spluttered, my hand over my mouth.

Four heads turned towards me in a flash.

“What did you say?” At least one of them said.

“Me? Nothing. Why, what’s it to you?”

Steinberg was crawling on all fours. “Anti-globalisation! He said anti-globalisation!”

“What if I did?” I said, throwing her a scrap of organic meat.

“Do you even know what it is?” Asked Lazy-eye.

“Why don’t you enlighten me?” I suggested.

They were bouncing on their bar stools like toddlers in high-chairs. I had fed them what they wanted.

“An archaic term, made obsolete by recent events,” said Steinberg, gnawing on her meat. “It must be rejected.”

Muddy jumped in. “Rejected? We don’t reject. We resist.”

“Resist what?” I said, breaking an ice cube between my molars.

“Er, the globe, I guess.”

Charlie Harlot spoke. “You resist the globe? Why, how on earth do you go about that?”

Muddy sank into his trenchcoat. “We just do, alright? It’s easy really. There’s not much to it. We just resist anything big enough to be global.”

“Define your terms, schmuck,” I said, reaching for my slug. “There’s ladies present.”

“Come on man,” he said, drowning out the collective sigh. “Gimme a break. Do I look cut out for anything else?”

He had a point. Whoever cut that trenchcoat needed a stretch in Leavenworth.

Katherine Norwood, who had been remarkably quiet until now, leant over in my direction. “Mister, you got it all wrong. We’re in hiding at the moment. We don’t want no trouble.”

“Hiding?”

“Yeah. We’re not much in demand currently. Let’s just say we’re anti-corporate at a time when everyone’s gone all corporate, and anti-globalisation when everyone’s suddenly gone global. No-one’s interested in attacking CEOs anymore. There are bigger fish to fry, you know what I mean?” She pointed to the middle section of a map of the world that hung above the bar with a cross through it. We’re all globalisers now.” She hung her head. “The thing about Ronald McDonald is that he never fought back very hard. He was an easy target really. A bit lame in hindsight. You know, those oversized dungarees and giant shoes? It’s all a bit sad now.”

“No way!” Said Lazy-eye. “We must never quit. We are more important than ever. We’ll matter again, you’ll see! Soon all this will blow over and we can focus on the real enemy: shopping.”

“Oh come on Lazy-eye,” said Steinberg. “You really think we can still convince people that Gap is to blame for everything?”

“You bet we can,” said Lazy-eye, convincing no-one.

It was a sorry sight, not unlike some sickening schmaltzy movie I had seen once on daytime TV.

“The game’s up people,” I said. “No-one wants any of your crazy non-ideas anymore. There ain’t no market for manufactured enemies. We got real ones now, don’t you see? You may as well turn yourself in. You late twentieth century products of hedonism are finished. You’re dilettantes. Go back to your ivy league schools and think up something else. Your thesis that the most important geopolitical question of a generation is ‘What’s cool to wear, man?’ just don’t wash no more. You’re yesterday’s children of privilege. You think we all don’t want to live in a world where there is no greater enemy than ourselves and our own shopping habits? You think I haven’t lain awake at night, longing for a society in which our greatest enemies are still Coca-Cola and supermarkets? We all want those days back. Those naive and ignorant days. The days before the bad guys really showed their face. Oh yes, that would be heaven wouldn’t it? Heaven. But it’s over. Over I tell you.”

My fist came crashing down into a White Russian. By now my companions were all lying on the ground in floods of tears, calling for their mamas. Perhaps I had gone too far. The doc had warned me about this. I needed another case of that Bayer medicine he kept flogging me.

I turned around, and took Charlie Harlot by the arm. We left the bar, treading over the soggy resistance corp.. Perhaps it would have been more decent to step over them, but hey, I got enough problems of my own. We walked out into the street, the sunlight burning my eyes as it smacked off the paving stones. I didn’t feel so good. But not as bad as if I had been shot again. Three times a morning is enough for any man, and right now, I felt like any man.

“Well,” she said. “That was some display you put on in there. You enjoy your work Mr. Forrester?”

“It beats selling burgers at two dollars an hour,” I said.

Her face was stone cold. “Well, I guess you answered my question.”

“I did?”

“Yes you did Mr. Forrester. There’s no answer to my question. Anti-globalisation doesn’t really mean anything does it?”

“Not from where I’m standing,” I said, looking back at the bar.

“I mean, those people were about as globalised a crowd as I ever saw. Did you see ’em? With their laptops and their friends from all over the world. What can they be thinking?”

“You’re missing the point, sweetheart,” I said, developing an affection for her that I knew a couple of rounds of bullets would soon rid me of. “You see, they ain’t globalised at all.”

“They ain’t?”

I laughed as I flung another Philip Morris between my lips. “Naah. They’re about as isolationist a bunch of activists as you’ll ever find.”

“Isolationist?”

“That’s right sugar. They can shroud themselves in the cloak of globalism all they like, but I know an internalisation of debate when I see one. It stands out as clear as a spot on a zebra. While they were telling us to throw chairs through the windows of our high street stores, our real enemies were plotting our downfall. And I know about enemies. Believe me, I know about enemies. I got enough to fill a ’phone book, and I can smell one half a world away. You got to choose your enemies carefully. Friends come and go, and often steal the silverware. But enemies are a serious issue. You choose corporations and you got to make sure they stand up comparatively. Are they worse than the alternatives? Is it really worse to think of people as consumers than infidels? I tell you sugar, some people have just got an appetite for murder, not a reluctance to consume Coca-Cola.”

She gave me one of those looks. The kind you know spells trouble. “You don’t talk much like a private dick.”

“You’ve never seen me really drunk,” I said.

She laughed. “I suppose you want paying?” She said, more out of obligation than anything. She expected me to refuse. It would be the gentlemanly thing to do. After all, I got a lesson today too. We all got lessons. Why should I be the jack who benefits?

“Yes. That’ll be ninety thousand bucks please,” I said.

Her face froze like ice, and it matched my heart. “I beg your pardon…”

“After all, we all gotta make a profit, haven’t we my lovely?”