Notes From the Internet Apocalypse by Wayne Gladstone Read Free Book Online Page B

for the door, but before turning, I asked, “Are you Anonymous?”
    He remained motionless for a moment, but then stood full and proud, his red velvet robe long and flowing.
    “Gladstone,” he said. “You may call me QuiffMonster42.”

 
    5.
    DAY 27. POLITICS IN THE APOCALYPSE
    Picking locks isn’t like the movies. It’s a two-hand job because locks only open under pressure. You can poke at the spring-loaded tumblers all day and they will snap and fire back to position as soon as you run your pick over them unless the other hand is keeping it tight. A tension wrench primed and ready to turn so the tumblers stay depressed. I didn’t expect to learn that in law school, but it was more interesting than the rule against perpetuities, and Martin, a student from Oregon, was eager to teach.
    He also instructed me in the basics of making burglar tools out of everyday objects. If you place pennies on your thumb and forefinger, you can bend a paper clip into a zig-zag pick. And if you snap the metal clip off one of those cool leaky pens I’m so partial to and then bend it into an L, it makes quite the serviceable tension wrench. It was important that these things be inconspicuous because, as we learned in Crim Law, the mere possession of burglar tools was a crime, and we were, y’know, studying to be lawyers and all.
    I’d sit on the radiator in my Fordham dorm room for hours, learning how to work the window locks. In their bolted state, they pulled back only a few inches into the room, allowing a mere sliver of air to enter at the very top. A safety/suicide precaution that succeeded only in providing an incentive to sharpen my skills, because if you popped the lock along the bottom, and turned the handle sideways, the entire window opened like a door. Romaya loved that. Not only because it was wrong, but because it brought the stories that much closer.
    That’s what she called the people living in the luxury apartments across the way. Each in their own boxed reality and on display for us. Grown-ups. Some pulled the blinds, but others probably believed in the anonymity of New York. The privacy of living in the sky, surrounded by concrete. They were unaware two kids in their early twenties were committing a minor crime solely for the joy of sitting up in a darkened bed, smoking, and watching them live for our amusement.
    There was a single man in his thirties who watched TV for four hours every night. An aging woman who did her face and hair endlessly, and another room that was impeccably furnished, lit, and exposed, but never occupied. No actor ever took the stage. But we watched anyway, content to witness the real world from the safety of youth. It couldn’t find us there. Not in the dark. But just to be sure, we’d snuff the glow of our cigarettes and lock the window before going to sleep.
    *   *   *
    To my credit or shame, Oz feels safe sharing the bed with me. It helps that we keep something between us—her sleeping under both the sheet and comforter and me sandwiched between the two with only a sheer layer of cotton separating my broken desire from her body. The last few mornings, I woke first and had a few moments to watch the covers rise and fall with her breathing. I stare at the flush two blankets bring to her cheek and try to divine her dreams. But the peace Oz finds in her sleep makes her inscrutable.
    We’ve been spending time downtown based on that crumb of Internet intelligence from Anonymous. It seems Occupy Wall Street’s numbers are growing again. Almost as strong as when they made the world sit up and take notice of their constitutional right to take a dump in Zuccotti Park.
    It was unseasonably cold this morning and we ducked into the white-tiled lobby of Deutsche Bank, looking for some coffee. Apparently, it had become OWS headquarters.
    “Fuck me. Did someone wash a goat in a bucket of patchouli?” Oz said, holding her nose.
    Tobey shook his head. “Smells like a pair of Birkenstocks took