“I think that pleasure is a very difficult behavior. It’s not as simple as that to enjoy one’s self. And I must say that’s my dream. I would like and hope I die of an overdose of pleasure of any kind.”
—Michel Foucault
A spy waited down the street from my house last month and followed me to the train station. Jumped out of his car, snuck onto the express. Rode it with me into New York, sitting a few rows back. In Penn Station I accidentally gave him the slip. But the next week, the agent followed me again, and I led him downtown to my weekly appointment in a crumbling office building near Union Square.
He’s bold, my secret agent, so he rode up with me in the elevator to the fourteenth floor. I didn’t know he was following me; I didn’t even notice him in the elevator. I was busy thinking about myself and my life problems.
He saw which office I went into, and he made a plan to set himself up with a telescope in an empty loft across the square. He would have a direct view of my activities. He would find a way to bug the office with an audio device. It was an extravagant plan, but my agent is an extravagant man.
Pretty soon he knew exactly what I was doing in that office.
It’s where I meet with my contact. We are in a secret organization.
We are searching together for a very destructive element.
We are on the cutting edge.
We could save the planet.
The spy doesn’t want us to save the planet. He wants to destroy it. Or at least, all the living creatures on it.
It will happen. But first, he would follow me.
Yesterday I sensed him there behind me at a fast-food place. So I decided to confuse him, throw him off. I made it look like I was going to have the chili. But then I ordered a hot dog.