So Yesterday

Chapter 23

IT'S A SMALL WORLD. SCIENTISTS HAVE PROVEN THIS.

In 1967 a researcher named Stanley Milgram asked a few hundred people in Kansas to try to get packages to a small number of "targets," random strangers in Boston. The Kansans could send the package to anyone they knew personally, who could then pass it on to anyone they knew personally, until a chain of friends between Kansas and Boston was uncovered.

The packages arrived on target much quicker than anyone expected. The average number of links between searcher and target was 5.6, immortalized as "six degrees of separation." (Or six degrees of my mom's favorite actor.) In our small world (small country, really) you're only about six handshakes away from the perfect lover you haven't met, the celebrity you most despise, and the person who innovated the phrase "Talk to the hand."

Now, if the world is that small, then the world of cool hunting is minuscule. Assuming that Jen's and my paka-paka realizations were correct and the anti-client was a group of cool hunters, then I doubted there were more than a couple of handshakes between us and the missing black woman.

The trick was finding the right hands to shake.

But first we had to go to the dry cleaner's.

We dropped off the shirt, pants, and bow tie so that they would all sparkle for their return trip to the store and my wounded refund. I watched as the man snipped off the plastic tags.

"You wear these clothes?"

"Yes."

Snip. "With tags in them?"

"Yes."

Snip, snip. "You supposed to take off tags."

"Yes."

Snip, snip, snip, pause. "Your hands are purple?"

"Yes."

"Can you fix this jacket?" Jen interrupted our scintillating conversation, which led to a longer pause, full of head-shaking and sad expressions. I took the opportunity to sweep up the tags with my purple hands and tuck them into my pocket for safekeeping.

"No. Cannot fix."

She shoved it back into her bag, folding it carefully for reasons that were purely symbolic: respect for the dead.

"Don't worry Hunter I'll see what I can do."

The man looked at Jen and shook his head again.

Central Park, like the rest of New York, is part of a grid system.

Parks in other cities come in various shapes—organic blobs, triangles, winding shapes that follow rivers. But Central Park is a precise rectangle, stuck onto the irregular isle of Manhattan like a label on a shrink-wrapped piece of meat.

Near the bottom of the label, in the fine print, a very cool tribe meets every Saturday afternoon. They skate to music, rolling in circles around a | DJ playing ancient disco without irony.

Technically they're not even part of the cool pyramid, because they're Laggards, trapped in a time bubble, like those guys in Kiss T-shirts. But much cooler. They date to the early years of the Americans with Disabilities Act, when the government mandated wheelchair ramps for every curb and building in the country, unexpectedly creating the modern culture of boards, skates, and scooters.

That was a long time ago. They are so ancient, so yesterday, that they're totally cutting edge.

And every Saturday, Hiro Wakata, Lord of All Things with wheels, shows up here, practicing his double reverses and cool hunting up a storm.

Normally I kept a respectful distance from this ritual, not wanting to poach on a fellow hunter's territory, so it had been months since I'd last come by (to watch—attaching wheels to my feet makes me less cool, not more). But Hiro was the obvious first handshake in search of the anti-client. In his late twenties, he's pretty old for a cool hunter, knows everyone, and has been rolling since he learned to walk.

He was easy to spot among the fifty or so skaters in orbit around the DJ, wearing a sleeveless hooded white sweatshirt, sweeping fast and close to the ragged edge of spectators. He'd become famous for half-pipe styling as a kid, so roller skating was a second language, but he spoke it beautifully. (He was also fluent in motorcycles, electric micro-scooters, and mountain boards.)

I waved as he zoomed by, and on his next pass Hiro broke out of the circle, the rumble of his wheels sputtering and spitting gravel as he crossed the unswept outer ring of asphalt. He slid to an ice-hockey stop in front of us.

"Yo, Hunter, new hair?"

"Yeah. I'm in disguise these days."

"Cool. Like the hands, too." He spun around the other way to face Jen rather than turn his head a few degrees; a life on wheels had addicted him to frequent rotation. "Jen, right? I liked what you said at the meeting the other day. Very cool."

I saw her suppress an eye roll. For a group of trendsetters, our response to her was annoyingly predictable, I guess. "Thanks."

"Mandy was so pissed. Ha! You roll?"

"Not well enough to join you guys," Jen said. The couple passing in front of us—her skating backward, him forward—did a 360 under-and-over together, never losing their grip on each other's hands. Jen and I whistled together.

"Don't sweat it, come anytime." Hiro pulled a 350 and was facing me again. "So, what's up?"

"I was wondering if you could help me find someone, Hiro. She's a skater."

He took a slow spin, a happy king surveying his domain. "Well, you came to the right place."

Jen pulled out the printed photo. "This is her."

He looked at it for a second and nodded, suddenly somber.

"Wow, she hasn't changed much. I haven't seen her for a long time. Not since the split."

"The split?"

"Yeah, like ten years ago. I was just a kid then, back when the cops hassled us all the time." He gestured at the DJ, ensconced within four stacks of speakers, two turntables, and a sputtering generator. "Used to be Wick's boom box on a milk crate right there, ready to roll when we got busted. She was an original, started this club when she was thirteen."

I took the deep, pleasing breath of being right—she was an Innovator.

"Her name's Wick?" Jen asked. "That short for 'Wicked, by any chance?"

Hiro rolled from side to side in amusement. "Not at all. Short for Mwadi Wickersham."

The name wasn't familiar. "So she doesn't hang out here anymore?"

"Like I said, she left when the core group signed up with…" He named a certain skate company associated with the in-line revolution.

"Because she didn't want any corporate ties," Jen said.

Hiro shrugged. "She never said anything about selling out. Hell, I was all logoed up in my half-pipe days, but that never bothered her. The split wasn't about sponsorship; it was about going in-line." He lifted one foot, revealing the four colinear wheels of his blade. "Mwadi was all about classic skates, which is what the originals wore. We kept it up until the early nineties, after everyone else had switched. Two-by-two or death, you know?"

Jen's eyes widened. "You mean, this is all about what kind of roller skates to wear?" she cried.

Hiro rolled backward, spreading his hands. "What's about what kind of skates to wear?"

"We're not sure," I said in my calming voice. "Maybe nothing. So, you haven't seen her lately. Do you know how to find her?"

He shook his head. "No, it was a sad thing. Beautiful skater, but she couldn't stand to go in-line. And it's not like it was some kind of mega-deal. They just wanted to give us free blades and better sound equipment. Maybe do a photo shoot or two."

"You said it was a split," Jen said. "So more people than just Wick left?"

"Yeah, a few. But most wound up rolling back. The whole deal was just for one summer. Not Mwadi, though. She like… vanished."

"Any of these guys?" She produced the other pictures.

"No, none of them were splitters. But I know him…." He pointed at NASCAR Man. "That's Futura. Futura Garamond."

"He hangs out here?"

"Never. But I know him from working at City Blades. He's a designer." "He designs skates?"

Hiro shook his head. "No, man. Magazines."