A Tear in the Veil Read online

  Robotech would probably confuse the shit out of Japanese Macross, Southern Cross, and Genesis Climber Mospeada fans. And yet, Robotech exists in reality as its own version. Alternate, you could say; hybrid maybe?

  “Special”? Something about that maybe even made Felix like Robotech more than its source material.

  In time, Felix came to feel that Macross had some of its own stirring tunes and Cowboy Bebop eventually eclipsed Robotech as his favorite anime, but he still holds the SDF-1, Zentraedi scout and battle pods, protoculture, Reflex Point, veritechs, Invid armored scouts, Rick, Annie, Lunk, Max, Rand, Minmei, Yellow Dancer, Lisa, Scott, and Ariel close to his heart.

  Right after high school, Felix was able to live in Japan for almost a year before starting art school, staying with a few host families here and there and hostel-crashing in-between. Then, after he finished undergrad, he went back for about nine months and took a few post bac classes at Tokyo University of the Arts. A couple in painting and his weird short films got him into one of their Film and New Media classes. It was awesome.

  He and Audrey were just casual “tension release” buddies off and on at that point and she was back in the states, so he had his share of fun with the young Japanese ladies. Felix never cheats but he is a bit of a slut when single. His current “stint” with Audrey has become a full-on monogamous fixation which is new to him but he’s very happy with it and not at all worried about how long it could last. That’s new too and it’s cool and scary at the same time. Usually feels like a jail cell after a while. Not so with Audrey. There’s something about her I’ve never come across with any other girl. No one, actually. Other than all the other romantic and sexual aspects, she makes me comfortable in a really deep way.

  So, this pretty constant need for female attention between relationships actually has a lot to do with how he met his best friends Hirofumi and Kaori(H & K).

  Felix was in a manga café flirting with a cute EGL(Elegant Gothic Lolita) girl on a Sunday in Harajuku. She was all in black with a Madeline hat and thick veil. Except for her face, she looked like the silhouette of an English girl waiting for a train in winter in the thirties.

  Her boyfriend showed up in a full EGA(Elegant Gothic Aristocrat) regalia with touches of steampunk. He and Felix argued a bit and Hirofumi got real loud and animated. Out of reflex, Felix raised his hands to defend himself and Hirofumi gave him this astonished, disgusted look like “That, good sir, is beneath me.” Then he laughed. Loud and boisterous, but still with a proper, snide affectation. He raised his hands and mocked Felix’s awkward stance and progressed into a monkey-like pantomime of him. Felix caught something in Japanese about his two different eyes and the word for cat, but couldn’t understand the whole insult. Kaori scolded Hirofumi until he stopped but Felix was already on his way out the door, embarrassed as hell.

  Two days later, his first painting class started and guess who was in it. It took Felix a bit to recognize him. When not aristo-steam gussied up, Hirofumi had a much more modest, old school UK punk thing going on. He didn’t do the snide thing either. He also turned up in the film and new media class. It was touchy at first but eventually they became good friends. Kaori too.

  Felix moved back to San Francisco and they followed, both transferring into his school as MFA students. Hirofumi spent his first two years of high school in New Jersey with his mother before going back to Japan to live with grandparents, so he speaks English really well and it wasn’t an issue. It was a little harder for Kaori but she learned pretty quickly after being totally immersed.

  As Felix and Audrey got more serious, the four of them became pretty much inseparable. They’ve been a little more scarce of late due to their game production absorbing large amounts of free time, but they all still hang out when possible.

  Hiro and Kaori’s beta party should be interesting. They’ve been working on that damn game in one way or another since I met them. Super secretive about it too. Felix asked if they wanted any help once and Hirofumi told him that his drawing style was a touch too dark for the project.

  Felix looks at the clock.

  Time to go.

  He unplugs the camera from its charger and stows it, the attachments, and instructions into their special carrying bag. He grabs his jacket on the way to the door.

  2

  Felix loves San Francisco. He locks the front door and walks down the steps to the sidewalk. Mostly cloudy with blue peeking through. Cool and crisp. High chance of rain and/or fog. Hilly.

  Some people hate the rainy, foggy muck of it after too long. It almost never bothers Felix. He went down to San Diego one summer with some friends to learn to surf and he hated it.

  Clear, blue, depressing. The sky was like an endless void of blue.

  He knows there’s a lot past the blue, but it’s still a bummer to look at. The only time he liked it was when they went to the desert to ride dirt bikes and the clear sky at night was huge and brighter than he’d ever seen it. He had that plastic zebra in a jeans pocket and he remembers holding it in his tucked hand.

  Something about that comforted him.

  Felix starts off down the sidewalk to catch the bus. He goes left on Powell, cuts down Filbert at the corner of Washington Square, and sees the Thirty Stockton bus tearing down Columbus toward its stop across from him.

  If he ran, he could catch it but Felix hates running too. He heard this joke when he was younger that you shouldn’t run unless you are being chased. He totally agrees.

  He does hurry into a face-meltingly brisk walk when needed though, and it looks like he just might make it, but the bus drives off while he’s rushing across Columbus.

  Well, shit. Time to beat feet, I guess.

  He takes the camera out of the bag and fiddles with it while he walks down Columbus. He gets a shot of all the old Chinese people doing Tai Chi in Washington Square.

  Felix veers around the corner onto Stockton and heads south through real Chinatown. He gets a great shot of a truck delivering perfectly halved pigs. The driver gets out and carries the pigs on a hook over his back, disappearing into a market with dead ducks hanging by their necks out front.

  The smell of this part of Chinatown in the morning is almost overwhelming. Fresh Asian vegetables, cigarette smoke, fish, butchered livestock and, if it warms up enough, garbage and its accompanying juices. Felix has never been able to figure out why it smells weird there.

  Litter maybe? Dumpsters in the alleys? Is it like that in Chinese cities? Nothing racial attached or loaded. Honestly just curious…

  Felix is always curious. He’s not the smartest guy by a long shot. Not stupid, but not a genius. Audrey makes him feel stupid a lot but not on purpose. But he is curious. He has amassed a pretty extensive collection of random trivia and diagrams, info graphics, and encyclopedia blurbs of varying levels of usefulness in his memory. He was on tvtropes.org for seven hours once because kept going deeper down linked pages of explanation for what he had just read then he finally read all the way back up with a better understanding each layer he climbed. He was just fascinated by all the interconnected nodes of knowledge in one place. He’s not all that scientific about his curiosity either but when life presents him with something new and half interesting, he needs to “get it” at least on that rudimentary level.

  Felix continues down Stockton and sees a forty-five bus heading south behind him. He jumps on at Sacramento, showing his Zipper transit card. The bus drives into the Stockton Tunnel, cruises under California, Pine, and Bush. It exits the tunnel and stops by that “massage” parlor. Two guys get on looking relaxed and kind of shy. One chuckles at something the other says. Felix chuckles at them.

  The bus continues south, passing Union Square. They stop at the light at Geary and Felix asks the driver to let him off. The driver grumbles but opens the door for him.

  Felix jumps down the steps and hurries down Stockton to O’Farrell, securing the camera back in the bag as he comes up on his place of employment. His reward for putting so mu
ch time and money into his education: Gamestop.

  Felix cruises through the store toward the back room. John is explaining to a customer that the game she is getting for her seven year old is very, very violent. Like, chainsaw through torso, realistic animated intestines spilling to the floor violent.

  “But is there any nudity in it? That would be awful,” she asks, completely oblivious to how backwards that sounds to Felix. Not just backwards but kind of horrifying too.

  Brutal, violent destruction is our bread and butter, but show a little digital ass and that’s obscene; you should be crucified.

  He isn’t some kind of hippy or overly liberal, but these inversions of what seem like natural logic trip him out.

  Felix plays violent games and enjoys them.

  Violence can be entertaining and has its practical uses. Sometimes it’s maybe even necessary.

  Felix doesn’t like to fight but he’s been in a few. Usually he goes for charm and diplomacy to get out of hairy situations but sometimes it comes up. He almost killed a kid in junior high. He couldn’t stop himself. The absurdity of the kid coming at him and actually wanting to hurt him over some stupid shit he honestly can’t remember just set him off. It didn’t help that Felix’s friend had been casually teaching him the fundamentals of Muay Thai kickboxing and a little Kung Fu for fun that he was learning in an underground school in Daly himself. They would sneak some whiskey and beer from Walter’s cabinet, split it, and just whale on each other in the upper deck backyard. Felix’s bruised bones healed and were probably stronger for it. Good times. Thanks, Chuck.

  But killing is another matter altogether and Felix gets that. Games are games. In Real Life it’s not play and shouldn’t be fun. Wars happen with the way we are at this point because we’re just smart enough to get into trouble but not enough to get above it. We could do amazing things if we worked together instead of fighting for resources and over differences in thought and belief. If we worked together we could be on the Moon, and Mars, and like Saturn’s moon, whatever it’s called, fucking them up like here but at least we’d have more space to do it in. More space for food production too. Ah, we’d probably just have more places to fight over after we decided we didn’t have to progress any further for a while.

  On the other hand, sex is a natural, awesome thing that should be celebrated. Europe seems cooler about it. I should check out Europe some time.

  Oh well, I played violent shit when I was pretty young and I turned out okay. It just didn’t look so real.

  It occurs to him that he might just be more bothered that seven year old is going to jump online when he’s on in the future and kick his ass at that game while calling him all sorts of epithets based on race and sexual preference.

  You learn to tune the brat-zis out but it’s still a pain. There was a Counter-Strike “knives only” and sometimes “surf” server that would flood with racist kids after elementary schools got out in different regions. Felix hasn’t ever heard the N-bomb dropped in such rapid succession and with such… passion.

  He and John make eye contact and nod hello. Felix opens the door to the back. Dudley, the manager, sits at his desk playing World of Warcraft. He looks at Felix, then back at his laptop.

  “Late again, man? You’re lucky I’m so chill,” Dudley says while spamming an attack that looks like blue, raining crystals.

  Felix wonders what that attack is called because it’s aesthetically pleasing to him but it’s not the time to ask.

  “What level are you now?”

  Dudley relaxes a moment and an odd look of pride mixed with boredom washes over his face.

  “I maxed my Undead Rogue again already after they raised the cap, so I’m back on my Night Elf Priest helping some nooblets raid for…” Dudley stops himself and looks sheepishly at Felix.

  “Yeah, yeah. I’m not the perfect employee either, but I still need you here when you are scheduled to be. It’s a shit job but we’re a team, y’know? We’re all shit-jobbers.”

  “Sorry, man. I missed the bus again.”

  Dudley shakes his head and says, “Why you don’t just get a car I’ll never understand. You ever get a license?”

  “Nope. I have a transit pass and an ID card. This city has some of the best public transit in the world, man. There’s no reason to have a car here.” Felix has gotten used to avoiding this line of questioning. Almost like he’s memorized a script. Driving is something he is definitely not curious about. He had that drained out of him when he saw how it could end up.

  “Aw, jeez. Now you sound like a tree hugger. Alright, at least get to your magical public transit on time or it’s pretty much useless, y’know, Unicorn?” Dudley shoots him his best-practiced stern look.

  Felix says, “I will. You keep up the hard work, sir. We look to you for guidance.”

  “Piss off, scrub. Go sell some games or something.”

  Felix helps some customers. Felix stocks some games. Felix cleans a bit. Felix plays a game on a demo station. After all that hard work, Felix leans on the side-counter and draws tween-age mutant shark clowns in his sketchbook.

  After work, Felix walks down Market to the Ferry Building. As he waits for the next ferry to Sausalito, he plays a game on his mobile phone. It amazes him how awesome the games are on phones now. They look super slick and–

  GAME OVER

  Felix backs out of the game and puts the phone back in his pocket. He looks out at the bay. There’s the ferry. He hums an Otis Redding song that seems appropriate.

  Something about the view makes him think about Audrey and how she’s not coming with him.

  Sometimes it seems like she would be happier if she could control people’s feelings like she does her hairstyle.

  3

  Felix steps off the ferry onto the Sausalito terminal dock and cruises through the town.

  Sausalito’s alright. Scenic but stuffy.

  Rich people and their kids always bothered him, even if he wasn’t exactly from a poorhouse himself. Drake wasn’t as bad as other schools would have been. Like that prep school that’s way closer? He’d have come out hooked on speedballs or something.

  After his dad did the dew, he lived with his mom’s parents for a couple years in Concord in the east bay. That sucked worse than San Jose. Fo-real.

  Then, Walter contacted Felix’s grandparents. All Felix ever heard of that story was that Walter was his uncle who had lived all over Europe and Asia for a long time and just moved back to the states. His dad hadn’t mentioned him but sometimes that kind of stuff happens in families. Walter and Isidora couldn’t have kids or something, so they wanted Felix. There wasn’t a fight. Felix’s grandparents were getting old and it seemed like a good idea.

  It really was. Walter and Isidora helped him pick up the pieces of his shattered youth, cheesy as that might sound. Losing both parents horribly in less than a year wasn’t easy on him.

  It wasn’t always wine and roses. He acted out a lot and rebelled here and there as he got older. His natural curiosity led him to drugs. That and nature led him to sex. Thought he got a girl pregnant for a bit. Near miss?

  Overall, though, it was probably the best situation he could have fallen into. Felix climbs the hill on a winding street bordered by lush little canyons. Nice houses dot the hills all the way up. He likes the ones on stilt supports. They’re like a relative of big tree houses. I wonder who made the first tree house. I’ll have to look it up later.

  Speaking of tree houses, he rounds the bend and sees it. Walter and Isidora’s house is one of the larger ones on this street. Its garage is street-level and it was built up the hill into a dip in the larger canyon, so it ascends at a slant. It’s deeper than most like it but also has what would probably count as four and a half or five levels, a big deck, smaller unofficial ones as a result of the layout, and several sections with at least some stilt support. It has a different look to it that can only really be achieved by building on a slope. A bit like a town Felix saw in a magazine that wa
s built into the side of a gorge above a big river in China.

  Well, it was there before they dammed it. It’s probably under water now. Felix walks up the main steps and rings the bell by the front door. He can’t hear it, but he knows that a soothing set of tones is playing throughout the house.

  After a short wait, Isidora opens the door and smiles. Tallish, blond, huge sapphire eyes, and still aging quite gracefully.

  Actually, it’s like she doesn’t age.

  Perpetually middle-aged, lovely, and gracious to a fault. She’s wearing her speckled, splotched oil painting coverall and thin latex gloves. Smells faintly of turpentine. She takes off one glove.

  “Felitchka! Why don’t you ever use your keys, kiska?”

  “I don’t live here anymore, tyotechka.”

  Felix blushes. Isidora takes off her other glove and caresses his face with the back of her hand then gently squeezes his shoulder.

  “But this is always home for you. Silly boy. Come in.”

  Felix follows her inside and shuts the door.

  The inside of Walter and Isidora’s house is relatively minimal. Tasteful furniture, antique and authentic vintage. Large kitchen and living room. Striking paintings and photographs on the walls. Some by them, some by others. What’s always been most interesting to Felix is their collection of strange things from traveling and living around the world. Mostly from before they took him in, but not all. What might seem like junk to some has special meaning to them, so they keep it on display for their benefit.

  Like the handle bars, headlight, mirrors, and levers from an old Chinese moped affixed to the wall with the cleanly severed half of a rear splash guard from the same scooter installed right below it. They still won’t tell him that whole story. Or the sign with an odd hole in it that reads “Free Beer Tomorrow”, which they will admit was once displayed in a pub in the Irish town of Tramore but won’t explain why they have it.