Читать книгу Panopticon - David Bajo - Страница 15

Klinsman told Oscar about the tag sending him to room 9, then about his first visit there. He told him he planned to go back today and ask around, try to find out who the woman was. Marta Ruiz. And then he asked, “Why do you sense trouble about me?”

“You look like you’re hiding something from me,” Oscar replied. “Right when I came in you looked that way. Hiding your lips behind a strawberry like that. People who really have something to say always do that in interviews. Rock their bodies a little like something’s trying to get out, guard their lips.” Oscar crossed his arms over his chest and gripped his shoulders. “Maybe it’s just me.”

They finally moved toward one another, among the desks, and stopped at number 7; Oscar straightened Klinsman’s screen so it was in formation with all the others. Klinsman leaned over his keyboard.

“Let me show you the room. I took a 360. It’s not very good. Rita will have a better one.”

“You took Rita?” Oscar backed away.

“The second time.”

“You went back?” Oscar stepped sideways, getting behind Klinsman’s shoulder.

“I had to go cover the Luchadors with Rita. So then I took her back to the motel with me to get better pics.” Klinsman opened his photos. The 360 of room 9, lit poorly with duskglow, grainy, moved across his screen. It paused on the blouse covering the TV, slowed over the bed. The tape pieces were difficult to discern. They looked like tiny blank squares in the screen, glitches in the display.

The light of the capture played across Oscar’s face like pool reflections, his sad eyes lifted.

“See the tape pieces?” Klinsman pointed to the screen, fingered the surface. “We figured they were markers. Like stage markers. Or marks for a shoot.”

“Or they could indicate blind spots,” said Oscar. He touched the screen along with Klinsman. “Where they are seems darker. See? If you were filming or photographing this, you’d want to know those. Rita would’ve figured that. She didn’t say that?”

Klinsman shook his head and watched the screen with Oscar. Their faces were now close, shoulders touching.

“How was she?” The breath of Oscar’s last word brushed Klinsman’s neck.

Klinsman felt a deep blush cascade through his entire body. Startled, he tried to think carefully about his next gesture, his next move, to quell any twitch for Oscar to read. He scratched his head.

“What do you mean?”

“How was she acting there? Was she acting funny? You know how she gets when she starts figuring things out ahead of you? I hate how she does that. I hate when she gets ahead of me. Gina says never let Rita get ahead of you. Then you’ll always know you’re at the front.”

“No,” said Klinsman, relieved. “She wasn’t funny. I was hoping she’d be in now so we could see her pictures of the bed.”

Oscar straightened and backed away a little. “You sure no one was there? No one real, I mean?”

“Yes. I was alone.” Klinsman gazed over his shoulder at Oscar. “We were alone.”

“Alone.” Oscar put a hand on Klinsman’s back and guided him into the chair, squared him in front of the screen. “Alone,” he said again. “Let me show you something. But you have to close your eyes until I’m ready. For the full effect. Yes?”

Klinsman closed his eyes. He heard Oscar click once at the keyboard and twice with the mouse. Then Oscar moved to each desk, one after the other, performing the same quick action, one click at the keyboard, two with the mouse. It sounded like a mechanical waltz, fading then nearing as Oscar glided from station to station.

When he was done, he stood behind Klinsman and guided him into a standing position, turned him a bit. Still from behind, his breath on Klinsman’s nape, he covered Klinsman’s eyes with his fingers. Aaron imagined the fingers as clay, the slate-colored stuff dug warm from the riverbed.

“Now look.” Oscar opened his fingers suddenly.

All the desk screens were on, clicked to their camera capture utility. Each one caught the empty room from a slightly different vantage point, but in ordered succession. It was like what you see when you hold a mirror to a mirror, an infinite telescoping of images. A few of the screens caught fragments and wholes of Oscar and Klinsman.

“Amazing,” said Klinsman, swaying himself to make his image fold across some of the screens. “But so?”

“So we all sit here, all the time. On camera. Most of us don’t even know we have cameras on our PCs. Little rectangular eyes.” Oscar pinched his finger and thumb around an imaginary marble. “Staring.”

“Only if we activate them,” said Klinsman. “Like you just did.”

Oscar shook his head. “I didn’t activate the cameras. I only activated the screens, switched view options. The cameras are always on, Klinsman. Always, because they are really just lenses. Lenses with tiny filaments, nerves, taking in, sending out.”

Oscar was obsessed with secret apertures, the detritus of abandoned lenses, cheap and random eyes left by amateurs and pros, voyeurs and snoops of all types, to catch what they could. He liked finding them while researching stories. He liked collecting the newest kinds at tech conventions he covered.

Klinsman scanned the desks. He noticed one screen still black, or maybe gone black.

“One isn’t,” he told Oscar.

Oscar’s gaze followed Klinsman’s to the blank screen.

“Number 11,” said Klinsman.

“Rita.”