I guess I could’ve called someone, theoretically, then and during the previous night’s grief bender. I had some friends, still, though the gap that Genesis left in my chest widened every day. The people I cared about were used to me ghosting on them for six months while I worked on a doc. My mom was in the ground, but if you’d asked me how long it’d been I’d have to stop and close my eyes against all the air leaving my lungs because five years still felt like twenty seconds. I’d lost her to uterine cancer before the cures rolled out, and me and my dad, who’d peaced out of half-drowned Boston to live in Florida, had mercifully agreed to stop talking. Once you realize that every phone call ends in a screaming match it’s better to stop pretending blood means anything.

“No, I’m good.”

Yusuf sat in the row ahead of me. I got the sense that if anyone was in charge here, it was him, though he wouldn’t cough up much when I tried to wheedle some info out of him. He didn’t mention a specific studio, but maybe it was a superhero thing? The CGI-fueled skull-rattling action movies were on their way out, making room for a return to more realistic filmmaking. I’d heard, anyway, which could be why they wanted me and my hand-held films that zoomed in on sweaty hairlines and the searching eyes of my doc subjects.

The other guys—security guards?—called me “sir” and “Mr. Figueiredo” and asked if the air conditioning was alright. I cracked some stupid joke like Mr. Figueiredo is my mother, but I can’t really remember because I get all blabbermouthed when I’m nervous.

Slowly, the giant hand cranking a bike chain around my gut eased up. Everything was a fast-forward blur. We drove a while, then hit the highway, then off again to a tiny airfield where the car rolled to a stop by a plane. A plane—what the actual fuck—a private plane with gorgeous flight attendants in red lipstick and little sleeper pod things in two neat rows. They were nice enough not to look embarrassed for me, in my paint-splotched clothes and frayed blue hoodie that was this close to disintegrating. Only people with statues of dead relatives in city parks could afford cross-country flights, what with the high-speed mag-trains connecting the coasts, and the first-born cost of fuel.