Body Surfing

followed the veins and arteries all the way down to his fingers and toes. Saw the muscles they nourished, the bones, the tendons that connected the muscles to the bones and the ligaments that connected the bones to each other. He saw all his internal organs from the smallest gland to the big purple-brown sack of his liver, pumping, processing, manufacturing this or that chemical or hormone or whatever they were called. He didn’t know all the names, but somehow he sensed their functions. What they did. How they could be made to do their tasks most efficiently. He felt himself winding up. Felt a sudden reservoir of energy flood his limbs with speed, strength, precision. He had no idea how long all this took, but the next thing he heard was the soft thud of Lana’s knife falling to the carpeted floor. He looked down, saw that he held her hand in his, the wrist bent back at a ninety-degree angle. A grunt came from Lana’s mouth, between lips parted in a small, grim smile.
    “I would ask you not to break my wrist.” And then, in an amused voice: “Q .”
    Q. wasn’t sure what had just happened, but he released Lana’s hand carefully. She bent it back and forth a couple of times, then looked over at Dr. Thomas, whose own shaking hands were splattering more tea onto the silver tray than into the three cups.
    “Perhaps you were right about this one.” She waved away the cup the doctor proffered her, rattling in its saucer. “You can hold the tea. But I will take some of that Scotch.”

23
    T he Aristocrats was a long narrow shoebox of a bar. The booths were cracked and stained from years of fat asses sliding into and out of them, the tabletops covered with drunken hieroglyphics, equal parts penises in various stages of erection and breasts ranging in size from very large to so-massive-light-couldn’t-escape-their-gravitational-pull. There were names conjoined by hearts, hearts crossed out and replaced with “hates.” The classic: For a good time call Mary Angie Yur Mom . And then of course the old standby:
    God is dead. —Nietzsche
    Nietzsche is dead. —God
    The bartender had spiky black hair, an eyebrow ring, a tattoo of a dagger on her forearm, yet somehow this seemed to accentuate the fineness of her features. The softly rolled bottom of her cut-off T-shirt exposed a taut belly with a silver ring at the center, all too reminiscent of Danny’s. Jasper’s mind filled with a sudden vision of the bartender stretched out on the bar’s surface, her back arched slightly, her navel ring beckoning him.
    “Yo, champ,” the bartender fixed a smirk at Jarhead. “My face is up here .”
    “Don’t worry, buddy,” Leo said to Jasper. “First round’s on Larry.” He limped up to the bar. “Two of whatever you got on tap, baby doll.”
    Jasper noticed that Leo didn’t pay for the beers as he left, just winked at the bartender and patted her on the arm with his wonky hand. The bartender’s eyes followed him back to the booth, her mouth slightly open, her rag making lazy circles on the bar.
    Leo nodded at Jasper’s furrowed brow, slid a beer across the table. “It’s all in the eyes. Microadjustments of the pupils and the capillaries cause them to lighten and darken in a manner imperceptible to the conscious mind.”
    Jasper frowned. “You mean…hypnosis?”
    “Nothing so crude. Just a bit of extra leverage.” He nodded at the bartender, who seemed to have snapped out of her reverie and was rinsing glasses in a tub. “If you can hold her stare, her visual processing center will get so caught up in trying to process the data that it will render her, shall we say, highly suggestible. Ain’t that right, sugar?”
    “Hush,” the bartender said. But softly, her eyes fluttering down. Jasper’s eyes followed. Saw the navel ring, the low-slung waist of her jeans.
    “Eyes front, Jasper. There’ll be time for that in a moment.” Leo glanced at his watch. “Gwen should be here in about a half hour.”
    Jasper was going to ask who Gwen was, but he was distracted by the gold band on Leo’s host’s wrist.
    Leo saw where he was looking.
    “Something wrong?”
    “That—” Jasper found it difficult to talk. “That’s my friend’s watch.”
    Leo’s eyes rolled upwards, as if he were looking at a filecard in his head. “Qusay, Mohammed Jr.?”
    His voice was still light, but there was an edge to it as well. A dare. His eyes were cold and dark, but within their depths something glimmered and danced