"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."

Chapter 24

WE HEADED BACK TO MY HOUSE TO DO RESEARCH. I COULD FEEL

us getting closer to the anti-client, the degrees of separation dropping like Becky Hammon's free throws.

We waited for the 6 train on an almost-empty platform, the few Saturday Midtown shoppers around us carrying enough bags to look vaguely deranged. One thing about lunatics in New York—they've given carrying lots of stuff a bad name. Whenever I've got more than a backpack, I feel certifiable.

"So, this guy does magazines," Jen said. "You think there's any connection with Hoi Aristoi?"

"Maybe. I've still got my free issue at home. We can check. But I can't imagine that the whole magazine was a sham."

"Yeah, that is getting paranoid," she said. "Of course, that's what they want."

"What is?"

"For us to start questioning everything. Is this party real? This product? This social group? Is cool even real?"

I nodded. "My mother asks that a lot."

"Doesn't everyone?"

A train came and we got on, finding ourselves in a single-advertiser car. The whole train was plastered with ads for a certain brand of wrist-watch, the name of which rhymes with watch. Jen shuddered.

"What's wrong?"

"I always remember the first morning I got on this train," she said. "I looked at my watch and then all the watches in the ads. And they all said the same time mine did."

I looked around. The watches in the ads all were set to ten after ten. "Yeah. The photo-shoot guys set them that way so they look like a smiling face."

"I know, but it's like time froze in here after that morning."

I laughed. "I guess even watch ads are right twice a day."

"I've never recovered."

I looked into her face, which scanned the smiling watch faces above us, a small mammal watching for predatory birds.

"You are very easily rewired, Jen."

"Thanks. But just hold me."

I started to say we could change cars, but holding her was better.

We found my parents' apartment empty, my father at a daylong conference on hantavirus and my mother at her karate class. I thanked the fates that I had no older sisters and led Jen into my room, seeing her eyes light up at my shelves of cool-hunting booty: vintage client suedes and high-tops, MP3 players the size of swizzle sticks, and fad history lessons in the form of clackers, Slinkies, scrunchies, pet rocks, and black rubber wristbands. But then I realized something awful

I had forgotten to hide my bottle jerseys.

"What the hell are those?" Jen asked.

A confession: I was an Innovator once, but only once.

You probably don't know about bottle jerseys. They're made from plastic foam, close cousins to those sleeves that keep beer cans cold. Bottle jerseys fit over the tops of water bottles. They have an athlete's name and number printed on them and little armholes, like a miniature team uniform. They're a giveaway at basketball games, handed out to the first five thousand ticket holders, sponsored by the Bronx Zoo or some candy bar or whatever.

My innovation was this: Instead of putting my bottle jersey on a water bottle, I stuck it on my hand. The pinky and thumb go out the armholes, and the middle three fingers come out the top. It looks like a cross between a wrist cast and a basketball-player hand puppet. I did it a couple of years ago at a Knicks game, and it shot through Madison Square Garden faster than Legionnaire's disease through a cruise liner. It was on the street the next day and cool for about three weeks among kids with a maximum age of thirteen.

I haven't seen it anywhere since.

It's not much, but it's mine.

Jen stood very still, regarding the rows of empty water bottles wearing their jerseys with the pathetic pride of small dogs in sweaters, organized by team and player position, lacking only tiny basketballs to form their own tiny league.

"Uh, those are bottle jerseys. It's kind of a… collection."

"Where did they come from? Some sort of psycho marketing scheme?"

"Actually, I bought most of them on eBay. You can't get them at team stores—for any specific player you have to track down someone who went to the right game. Not an easy task, I assure you," I chortled.

"Do you ever play ball, Hunter?"

"Well, not since I got cut from my junior high team. The move from Minnesota revealed certain holes in my game. Like an inability to score or defend. All that's left of my hoop dreams are the bottle jerseys." I laughed self-deprecatingly again, as if my deprecation wasn't already in the bag.

"Oh," Jen said, taking a doubtful closer look at a water bottle dressed as Latrell Sprewell (Knicks vs. Lakers, 2001-02 season, sponsored by a certain pink-packeted brand of sugar substitute and currently fetching about thirty-six dollars at auction. Maybe more).