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.Y.Hope U dug it.Got some good notices.Saw some famous faces.Full page profile in the Times coming soon I here.Nice.Glad 2B not dead yet :).lUnch SOmetime/? Or … I have some work for sale on the gallery site—link below.Or lunch? Discuss some work together? Pay a call.Peace out.AS.Sent from my BlackBerry(r) wireless handheld.”Far more personal was the letter from news@caitodwyer.com.A finger twitch, a new window, and she spoke to him (and some thousand others on her email list).We’re back in the studio working with legendary producer Vince Shulman, but in the meantime, here’s a new tune we’re working up on the side.So, if you’re a fan, yawning or otherwise, click here to download something new.Don’t cheat, please.We can tell if you’re not a fan.We have terribly fancy computers here in our top-secret band headquarters, and if a non-fan tries to listen, it will melt your hard-drives and mount your ram.We’ll give you this one for free, and you can spot us a drink next time.Julian clicked thekeysunderthemat.mp3, and like a nymph or a memory Cait streamed from a blinking server in an air-conditioned room in a humanless building on the Hudson through blue and silver cables to his apartment, and she swam into his iPod, docked and waiting, tethered, blinking its persistent warning: Wait.Wait.Do not disconnect.Do not disconnect.8JULIAN DRANK A COFFEE in the Bangladeshi deli and listened to his new download, “Key’s Under the Mat,” a voice and guitar rough mix, a little hurried, a little undercooked.That day in early June, he was one of the few people on earth who had heard it.He guessed it would be a hit; the song had that certain confidence about it, though it was far from his favorite of her work.Musically he judged it a little unoriginal, but lyrically it reached its intended audience of one:A sword in a stone, a tablet on a mountainA lonely piazza mermaid swooning in a fountainCartoon Boy, the key’s under the matSo what do you think about that?Her website’s guest book already sheltered a few eager comments: “Cait, I’ve had my fair share of ‘cartoon boys,’ so I totally get that song.Thank you!”She left her building, noticeably without Lars, but his iPod insisted: “Show a little nerve, show a little insight / And don’t worry, baby, he don’t bite.” She hadn’t returned in a few minutes, so he paid for his coffee, but it took more than an hour before the building’s front door opened again, and he was able to cross the street while a spherical blond man in round wire-frame glasses and a T-shirt that read FINNISH GUYS LAST NICE held it ajar and read the sky for signs of rain, debated, debated (Julian crossing, trying to set his pace against the likely speed of the white door’s closure), debated, Julian now across the street (would it look more natural for a legitimate visitor to use the buzzer anyhow, or to jog the last few steps and grab the closing door?), Finnish endurance champ letting it go, turning up the street without even noticing Julian, whose hand leapt around the white door’s edge and cut itself against the tarnished brass lock fitting inside.If she wanted proof of his interest, there it was, written in his blood on her lock.So vain, he really didn’t doubt the song said what he thought it said, even as she was making him imitate a crazed fan, even as, of course, he did hungrily want to see her home, her surroundings, her things, her frame, to find some hint there that would help him either have her or forget her.He rubbed his skinless knuckles, passed the tea shop’s inside office door, and took the stairs as silently as he could, but his body—Sasquatch footsteps, asthmatic breath, artillery heart—rattled the building (as no real stalker’s body would, he told himself).The stairwell’s wallpaper was green and raised, a crushed velvet, stained with the ghosts of framed pictures and the bygone splatter of some murder or dessert.One apartment per floor, each landing was more brightly lit as he rose.He passed M&R, INC, a sign taped to a door in front of which a stroller and shoes of all sizes implied a less-than-corporate interior.On the third floor, a shadow moved behind the peephole.He heard the door open as he turned to the final flight.“Hello, Mrs.Harris,” he guessed aloud as he climbed to the fourth floor and savored an old lady’s hmph behind him.And then he was there, in her vestry, on the landing under the brightness filtered by the dirty roof-access panel, her door marked only with a black metal 4 in a vaguely Celtic script.This annex was hers, a de facto private space, and though he would go no farther today, he had penetrated this far, she had drawn him this small step closer, and she had arranged her props to present new clues for him to weigh, catalog, and preserve: a unicycle leaning against the wall under a set of pegs off of which dangled gear required for either Great Dane care or a busy schedule in domination: a leather collar spiked on both sides and branded black with the words LARS MY LOVE, a braided leather leash as thick as a Russian coachman’s knout, and an institutional-sized dispenser box of latex gloves.Enough for now, time to leave.What sort of girl was this, what clues to her real heart were there in this song, practically begging him to become her freakish felon?The shadow of a snout moved at the gap between floor and door, side to side, frenetic clicking claws and snuffling, a Great Danish border inspection, still undecided between hostility and welcome.A bold “Good boy, Lars!” produced an inquisitive sound and several moist exclamation points darkening the wood floor directly in front of the door’s gap.They pointed to the item of the moment: a doormat, which, when Cait was someday domesticated and fattened into someone’s red housewife, might bear a homey WELCOME or GOD BLESS THIS HOME or WIPE YER DAMN FEET but for now only boasted in sole-abrasive fake grass the practical MAT.“Cartoon Boy, the key’s under the mat / So what do you think about that?” The references to King Arthur and Moses were quite to the point: if, in fact, there was a key under that mat, it was only meant for one male hand to lift, and Julian envisioned his skin melting against iron if he was not the chosen.He decided to leave [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]