All Tomorrow's Parties

62. LOS PROJECTOS

SILENCIO is remembering the rusting cans of fire, in the yards of los projectos, how the men stand and spit and warm their hands. Playboy and Raton he had met around such a fire, and now there is the smell of the cans in this room, and he is frightened, and even this kind one, who makes her own light and speaks to him in the language of his mother (but kind) will not keep the fear away, and he wishes only to return to the watches, to their faces and conditions and values, this universe that has discovered him, this mode of being, without which there is only the fear.

Crouching here on the black man's bed, the kind one glowing beside him, he feels the fear come very big, and the black man in the closet, throwing things out, and Silencio wants only the watches.

At the edge of his mind wait men with dog's teeth and wings, their faces blacker than the face of the black man with the watches. Their faces are the black of the drug men rub into their gums.

'Bring the projector closer, she tells the man, this one who stilled Playboy and Raton, and Silencio sees that for the time she speaks she is another, her hair smooth gold, the bones of her face another's bones. 'Bring the notebook. Be very careful of the cable. And the man shifts the silver thing Silencio fears (now Silencio fears everything) closer, and brings the watch finder to the bed, still on its wire.

'Connect the eyephones. Quickly! The man puts the wire from the hat into the watch finder and hands Silencio the hat. Inside, Silencio sees, are the pictures that fit against the eyes, and they are pictures of the watch on the screen of the finder, and Silencio feels relief, the fear moving away, back to the edge of things where the dog-toothed men are. He puts the hat over his eyes.

And is in another place, nothing up or down, but something spreading forever, wider than the yards of los projectos or any other space he has ever seen.

But the one who shines is there, and beside her another, less clear.

'This is Mister Laney, she says, in the language of Silencio's mother. 'You must help him. He needs to find a watch. This watch. And she holds in her palm the watch Silencio had seen on the screen. It is a LeCoultre 'Futurematic, a back-winder, black dial, with wind reserve. Silencio knows its serial number, its bid history, its number in today's auction. 'Someone is taking it away, and you must follow it.

Silencio looks from the beautiful face of the Futurematic to the face of the woman.

'You must find it for him-

And the watch is gone, and she is gone, and the other with her, leaving Silencio in that place that is only wide, and without color or shape, and Silencio thinks he might cry now.

But very far away, he feels it, the watch. He knows it, and it is there still, but only this distance, these gray fields of light. Gone again.

No. There is the system: the system of all the watches. Similarities. Differences. The words. A coding. Nothing is lost within the system, and the Futurematic rises inside as though it were lifting through clear water. It is within his grasp.

And gone again. Blankness.

No. He wants it. He enters the system again.

He crosses the gray fields, seeing only the Futurematic. Where it has gone…