Far away, on the island of Manhattan, tracks are being obscured. Contracts are being cross-shredded and records are being misplaced. Case files are being sewn tight, like a perineum after a difficult birth to a child of old grudges and new malice. Workers with gloves are re-arranging furniture and checking behind mirrors. A small, obscure corner of the city is being turned around and no one will ever notice.

Here in my room, my breathing gets thinner by the hour. I've left a last letter for whoever finds me, mostly as my roundabout way of apologizing for the inconvenience. In the meantime, I've taken to lying on my back and listening. The tide's come in, and I can hear the shushing of the waves from outside my window. It's a soothing sound, one that hints of letting go, and being enveloped, and being washed away.

I had held out hope that the illness was a temporary coincidence, but of course it isn't. Even with my periods of lucidity, the fever is getting worse. I've stayed in my room at the inn for much of the past week. Jemima asked me if I want her to call a doctor but I just smile and say I'll be okay; there's nothing a doctor could do for me now.

It's only a matter of time before the envelope is delivered. In some ways it's such a small thing, but my employers will consider it a betrayal anyway. Although it's foolish of me, I've stopped caring; loyalty has been an alien idea for some time now.

When it's bad, when the fever fills me and my breathing becomes shallow, I lay in bed with my head craned back and I imagine things. Cameras behind mirrors, microphones in desk drawers. People standing over me in dark robes in the night. I can't know what I'm actually seeing. I'm an unreliable source now, to myself as well as to anybody else.

But when the fever subsides, I sit up in bed sipping tea, and I watch the waves roll in over the shore outside my window. It's strange. Every hour, the infection spreads deeper into my bloodstream. But there are times when I feel more serene than I ever thought possible.

Yesterday I had my MSNBC debut, don't know if you saw it, but I was interviewed for just about two minutes on mobile, and video convergence, and of course how that translates into which companies have sensible multiples. Even in two minutes they managed to bring up the iPod video. Everybody brings it up, but my position has been for some time that Apple is not a serious player in the long-term. You can email me if you feel like getting into a healthy disagreement. But no, I can't get you on cable, that pundit spot is mine! Mine I tell you.

Has anybody else noticed how the weather recently is just wreaking (sp?) havok with party planning? It's hot, it's cold, it's dry, it's wet ... I've been to more than one event in the past week where you can tell somebody had to scramble last minute to get the food inside, or take away the tent, or God knows what. And don't even get me started on the clothing situation. Sometimes I think I wouldn't mind living in the Arabian desert, as long as I knew it was going to be the same temperature all day long.

I've seen T. twice since landing back here, but for some reason I was unable to broach the subject. Something's changing, and maybe at this point I have only myself to blame but honestly I can't remember. I've lost track of all the ways in which we do things. My legs feel heavy like rags. My eyes darken like the shadow of a cave.

After the first two times, she slipped away. I wandered outside, unsure of what I was looking for. I was trying not to think of home, of discoveries and plans being made in my absence. I sat down, back against a tree looking out across a broad lake, trying not to vomit, trying to remember if this is what it tastes like to be afraid. It had been some time.

I was trying to think of all the ways things could end up right. Not of Andrew Phi slipping a colorless, odorless powder into A.'s fruit punch. Or Alice Phillips squeezing until she feels the snap of bones in T.'s throat. Alan Peck puncturing the tubes in B.'s apparatus. Alex Parque sharpening her knives on the stone teeth of a handmade doll.

When I woke up, J. was walking down a stone path. I don't know if he recognized me or not, my face was starting to slip a bit by then. I asked him if he knew where T. was, and he said no, and seemed to be telling the truth. He asked if this was the lake, and I said "There's nothing here." My delirium was making me impatient.

I pushed the envelope into his hands and told him to give it to T. He stared at for a while, trying to figure out why it was so bulky, but I just reminded him that it was for T. Then I made my way back to the room. Rest is the only thing I can do for now.

Biker Joe disappeared from the hospital yesterday. As far as I know it had nothing to do with us. The redhead from my college days is gone too, from what I've heard from the grapevine, M. tells me we weren't involved in that. But of course there's no reason for M. to ever tell me more than I need to know. And besides it was years since he and I had even spoken, so what do I care?

Morgan was impressed the other day with T., and I've been trying to get him to ease up but he never eases up on anything. He gets what he wants, and I should be lucky to be working alongside him. T. has a natural curiosity and is the sort of personality who's naturally beyond suspicion so of course Morgan is intrigued, but the whole thing leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth. I've been thinking about anxious pigs stuck in small pens, jumping with fright every time the barn door slams.

There's a plane that leaves tonight, it'll take me to Picar. I'm honestly not sure if I can get away with going, but I think I have to anyway.

Biker Joe's turned up, unexpectedly. He was admitted to emergency at Cabrini Medical Center sometime in the week, and is now there, apparently lapsing in and out of consciousness. I only find out about this today since he was admitted as a John Doe and it took a while for us to make an ID. It's hard to say if he's there because somebody wants him there, but he did always live pretty fast. The crash report looks plausible to me.

I'm not certain how to get to him--he's most likely being monitored, and it's not safe for me to get so involved this close to home. P. and I have to do some brainstorming, I think.

Yesterday morning, M. dropped a case on my desk, and as I was reading through the particulars I was surprised to find that I knew one of the secondary subjects. An ex-boyfriend, somebody I'd dated in college. He had pale, freckled skin and red hair, and back then he was really slender. We spent the first few weeks basically just rolling around in bed and wrestling and laughing a lot. He had a really short attention span, and this devilish smile that he'd give me in almost any situation. He knew how cute he was.

I spent a few minutes perusing the preliminaries. There was a photo of him, he'd filled out a bit but still looked the same. It's funny, that wasn't even that long ago but now it feels like a different life. I asked M. to give me a different case. The ex isn't a primary subject, so he'll probably be fine.

Apparently Toni's visiting New York for a little while and has insisted on meeting with me ... it's completely against protocol for her to dictate this but what the hell. I have a feeling she wants to get to the bottom of it all, or something, I may have to tell her that there's no bottom at all. I've learned so much over the past few years but I don't really feel like I know anything. Maybe Morgan can be more convincing on this point than I am, who's to say.

And on rereading the email I sent back to Toni I realized I mentioned a cookout -- what was I thinking? It's a bit like a tic at this point. After last Saturday, it might be a while before I feel like doing that again.

Looks like the weather's going to turn out great tomorrow for our cookout. I sent out an evite earlier but the same disclaimer applies: If you didn't get one just let me know, I probably forgot to put your email into the invite list.

My roommate Graham's been talking about how he's going to caramelize some onions, which I gotta say I'm pretty psyched about. And a certain somebody says she might even bring by some kalbee, which would make it all multiethnic-style. If you seen the Flickr photos you know how big the last one got. So bring friends, and friends-of-friends, and friends-of-friends-of-acquaintances-of-neighbors-of-friends, etc. See y'all tomorrow!

P. and I had some rough words first thing Monday morning, but I have to admit she's right; I have been letting it all get to me too much. Not showing enough professionalism. I had a good mope over the weekend, but this week I've shrugged it off and I've been really cranking. Mostly just research, no trips planned yet but of course you never know. These days I am the master of the getting the last-minute reservation.

Called Toni back and worked out some details like payment info and whatnot. For now I've just got her on reporting duty. Tell me everything you see, I told her. Of course I didn't explain much further. Her ignorance will simplify matters. She was suspicious of my cover story regarding travel research, and I suppose I could've worked harder at that. That's okay. Most of her doubts will probably disappear once those money orders start arriving.

It's funny how your mood can change: A few days ago I was on my way home and happy with how everything went at the conference, but the last few days I've been feeling really blah. I suppose part of it's been the weather. Grey skies really get me down.

The work itself has been light. No operations, really, just paperwork and open research. I even snuck away for a matinee of M:i:III which I thought was pretty great in a mindless sort of way.

But I can't help but feel that the organization is rudderless, and I'm being pulled adrift with it. Not financially, there's plenty of work, but I can't remember what we're supposed to be doing anymore. It's part of what I picked up at the conference. I'm not certain if it's the politics, or the fact that there are so many more global players now, or maybe just the fact that we have too much money and don't know how to spend it all. But you can see the signs: Too many anonymous clients. Operators with unclear motives. Less people at the conference who were happy to be introduced to strangers.

On the plane I read an article about how pork is farmed -- apparently the meat spoils quickly if the pigs are stressed, which they are from being locked into small cubes for their whole lives. In the 1990s, a scientist discovered what he thought was the gene that made pigs stressed, and they bred it out of them but it didn't do anything. Pigs still died of shock when tractors drove too close to the barn. The meat still went rancid.

Yesterday on the way home from work, I stopped in Union Square Park and found a spot on a bench. The sky was grey and there was a wind picking up. I sipped a Coke and watched couples walk by with children in expensive scooters, and I tried to figure out exactly the point when I stepped off the rails of a normal life. Was it when I was leaving college and let myself be recruited? Any of a dozen times where a mission took me deeper than I'd thought I would go before? Or maybe the idea that I had a choice was an illusion in of itself, an easy mantra we tell ourselves at night so that we can get up in the morning. Maybe I would always end up here. Maybe I was made for this.

At some point Toni, from that guest house, called me, but I just let it go to voice mail. I haven't been in the mood to talk to anybody, and I already know how to get in touch with her regardless.

Everything is murkier now. The decks need to be cleared but I have no idea what that requires, and just thinking about it makes me anxious. weather.com says it's going to rain tonight.

It's been a productive few days. Saw a lot of interesting talks, caught up with colleagues (the ones I like), made connections. Did a little work, too: I had taken an assignment before I had gone to the island, and I took care of it on Monday night. Not for my main job, but a freelance gig, just to keep my options open.

When I took T.S. down to the ocean I couldn't help but reflect on what happens to our bodies afterwards. His limbs flopped around like a doll's. He had been surprised, of course, but obviously this sort of thing is a standard occupational risk, and at any rate he brought it on himself. Years ago we'd worked together briefly and I could tell then that he was becoming undisciplined and unstable. A liability. Sometimes my job is that simple: I limit liabilities.

Just before leaving on Tuesday afternoon I ended up having another chat with Toni. We compared notes on our favorite spots in London but it was fairly apparent that we ran in different crowds. Jez wasn't around. He had gone to the shops because they were planning a picnic on Toni's day off. Eventually I just said "you know, it's not that hard to get out of debt if you're open to the right kinds of opportunities." She looked surprised, I suppose because I hadn't gotten her to mention her debts at all. I handed her my card, and right then my car arrived.

On the plane back home, I was thinking about how nice it can be sometimes to just do the same work in a more pleasant climate. I definitely have to figure out how to get more of those sorts of gigs. I also remembered that I was in a rush to pack--even with the fresh sea air, my sleeping habits were just as bad as before--and may have left some of my things in my room. I suppose it doesn't matter. I don't expect anybody else to make any sense out of them.

It's nice out here by the sea. I've been taking a lot of short walks by myself during the conference--which goes 'til Sunday but I'll be staying a few more days for extra business--and enjoying the salty air, and even just the sound. If you close your eyes you can still hear that you're in a large open space. Just from the way noises bounce around you can tell that you're not on Avenue A.

The conference has been okay so far. The talks themselves are fine, and I've been enjoying them: cell phone video, plausible deniability, convergence & mergers between old and new media, extractions, headless organizations, next-gen video formats. One session was all about how to use pliers. It's been educational.

But there's a tension in the crowd, between sessions and at the end of the day. Everybody's got their names on, everybody should know everyone else but there's a new distrust that's been settling in. The herd stopped thundering all in one direction and now they're anxiously eyeing one another, wondering where their next meal is coming from. People keep bringing up September 11th, but I think that's a copout. The dysfunction runs much deeper than that. In fact you could say September 11th was an opportunity and we blew it. Be careful what you wish for, right?

Since my attendance was so last-minute, I couldn't get a reservation at any of the big hotels. So I'm staying at this little guest house, it's okay in a small Hamptons B&B sort of way. Not my thing, but acceptable.

Wierd thing happened on Thursday morning, though: I was getting ready to head to the conference hotel for the talks, and all of a sudden I could smell the same smoke from earlier in the week. Like the husk of that Greenpoint warehouse had somehow followed me, still sour in the same way. Like a squatter's burnt body being discovered under wet ashes.

I walked cautiously into the kitchen and it turned out there was just a malfunctioning toaster to blame. I ended up chatting with Toni, this British woman who's ostensibly a housekeeper here but you never know. We made some meaningless chit-chat about breakfasts or something for a while until the woman who runs the guest house came through and I was able to slip out and get back to the conference. But not before getting a piece of that burnt toast to eat as I walked to the conference hotel. Didn't taste half bad, actually.

The radio says that this morning there was a five-alarm warehouse fire in Greenpoint, with literally hundreds of firefighters working to put it out. When I woke up this morning I could see it out of my window, a thick plume of smoke in the distance, across the river. The radio says there aren't any injuries reported yet but since it was abandoned they have to look into it later to see if any squatters were in there.

I think I can smell the smoke from here, it's acrid but also sour in this way that makes me wonder -- but of course I could just be imagining the whole thing.

If you didn't make it on Sunday, I have to say our cookout was generally a success. Lots of people coming by and a music situation that was more-or-less orderly. Some faux pas' (what's the plural of that?) with Bill but everybody who knows him knows it's no big deal. He's under a lot of stress from work recently and he's bound to say or even see things he doesn't quite mean. Get a few Stellas into him and he's okay ;)

Getting on a plane -- again! -- tonight. Going to a week-long conference, which can be boring but at least it's in a nice seaside town so I'll get some fresh air. (As opposed to this burning-warehouse air I've got going on right now.) Some of the talks look okay, but of course everybody knows that the reason you go to these things isn't the talks, it's the networking.

Yesterday, P. and I were taking a break on the roof, listening to sirens off in the distance and having a smoke. Ravens kept landing on the ledge and hopping around, looking for a gum wrapper or maybe a stray RFID chip; their feathers glistened oddly and they seemed to move as if sleepwalking. I would've inspected further, but I was too tired, and anyway P. was trying to tell me something useful. She's been running the unit since November.

"We're tired of waiting, basically. We've played defense too long, and at this point we think it's better to just take control of the situation."

I nodded, as if I understood. Actually I couldn't remember what she was referring to. Actually I wanted to say that after so many reorganizations and personnel changes and strategic plans I can barely remember who I work for anymore.

Later, P. put me on the phones. I called one man whose daughter is involved. He told me that he understands but the connection was bad--too much routing--and I couldn't tell from his voice whether he was faking it or not. I told him that malevolence doesn't always have a source, that sometimes it just wells up in unfortunate places in the world. I asked, "When a man starves, who is to blame?" I've said this before to somebody, I'm sure.

My work day is long, my nights at the hotel room are short and high-pitched. I park on the bed, clicking through 1000 channels but not finding anything that seems at all related to my life, which I suppose is a selfish demand but I can't help it. I'm sick of all the songs on my iPod, too.

I'm flying back tonight and get to go back to my life. I miss New York when I'm away.

So my Friday morning flight didn't start out well. I had put off packing until the last minute so my bags were a mass, and of course when I got to the airport it turned out I had put my tools in my carry-on. This meant a full-on search, and lots of questions, meanwhile I was in a crap mood: I hadn't been getting enough sleep and the headache had returned. I couldn't find my Advil and was nervous I had left it on the kitchen counter. "They're for my job", I told the security staff. "I'm a media analyst."

I couldn't tell if the looks in their faces were of boredom or suspicion or complicity. Eventually explanations were delivered and I got on the plane with my tools. And with an apology, not that that's the sort of thing I take pleasure in anymore.

But the food on the plane was top-notch, I have to say, and the hotel I'm staying in is pretty nice. The room itself is good but what really stands out is the bathroom. I think at a certain point, the hotel room comes down to the bathroom ... I've had a lot of long soaks in the tub, this opulent multi-step marble thing with a view out straight to the windows. The windows have these really curious shades on them, they seem to refract the light so that the fires outside look tranquil and distant, like stars twinkling in the sky.

Been working pretty much non-stop since I got here, and that'll continue until next week. Other than that I suppose it's a bit boring since I don't know anybody in town. There's a cocktail waitress in the bar downstairs who's flirting with me, but I suppose she's just being nice.

Anyways, if you see me on IM just hit me up, if I'm online at all it means I'm taking a break. In the meantime, I'll be back next week, just in time to start shopping for that cookout.

Okay, so, since I just got about the 20th email asking me about this, let me just say this once and for all here: The thing about the name is, I didn't have any particular reason for not using my real name, it just seemed like a good idea at the time. The initials are the same, which is basically just a hint for people, though pretty subtle, I guess. There are actually a lot of Anthony Park's in the world, I'm just not one of them. If you Google my real name you basically come up with nothing, which I suppose is how I like it. And no, I'm not joining MySpace, Christine, so give up now

So yesterday I took a break from work and went for a walk. I figured, hell, it's pretty much summer so I should try to enjoy the weather a bit. Ran into Scott, this guy I knew about a year ago. He dated a friend of mine for a while.

It was funny running into him in Hell's Kitchen, he didn't know I was up there for the day and I thought he worked at an ad agency by Times Square. We chatted for a while about little things, bands, the weather. I offered him a cigarette but he said he only smoked Parliaments these days. Then as I lit up, he said "hey, what's that on your hands?" I told him I had been helping some IT guy at the office move a desk and there must have been something on it. Luckily I still had that rag on me so I wiped my hands clean pretty quick.

Scott was in a hurry and had to go, but it was nice to see him anyway. It's funny how small the city can be. I finished my cigarette, trying to think of all the different ways to walk from the office to the West Side Highway. Then I went back inside and got back to work.

Do you ever get in a situation where you're good at something you'd rather not be good at? Or at least that you wish other people weren't aware of it? It's happening to me now. Of course you want to be good at things, but not everything. It can get you drawn into situations you would've rather avoided.

Traveling more, getting on a plane on Friday and I'll be away 'til next week. Not to Las Vegas this time, as if the location even matters at this point. Well, one bright spot is that Bill and I have picked the date for our first spring cookout: Sunday, April 30. Sent out the Evites this morning. If you didn't get one it's 'cause I've decided you're lame. No j/k I just probably forgot to add your email address. Send me an email and I'll add you to the evite.

Bill and I went over to our friend Janine's place for Easter dinner. It was pretty nice, though I suppose these days I'm not going to take it very seriously, religiously speaking. (Don't tell my mom.) There was a ham and lots of wine, it was all pretty nice, except for me having to head out on the balcony all the time because of work-related phone calls. Bound to happen, I suppose ...

One of the guests was a woman who was a friend-of-a-friend of Janice, who works for that gorilla dating show. We were chatting about it, and maybe she could tell I was a little skeptical about whether it was funny. I mean, I guess in general I'm not even really into reality shows in general. I got really into The Apprentice for the first season but that's about it.

She was telling me about the last show they did, where the guy was this grown-up Dungeons-and-Dragons nerd, and in the interviews for casting kept on talking about this fantasy book he had written, so they figured he was a lock. They set him up with this old-fashioned Southern girl, one of those dates that you know is going to be a disaster right from the start. After all these excruciating mis-steps, they bust out the gorilla during dinner. So the woman I'm talking to starts making these really funny facial expressions, imitating the guy, and telling me they actually got footage of him dabbing food out of his ponytail. Okay, I said, that is pretty funny.

Someone forwarded me an interesting story in the Guardian (UK): A woman who was swindled because she thought she had been corresponding with a long-lost boyfriend from high school. Instead, it was an elaborate con:

they were able to get information on Graham's email address, chat account, and bank account, but there was nothing useful there. They had all been created with forged identities, and of course, the bank account was empty.

A pretty interesting story, but nothing that seems far-fetched really ...

So, yeah, Las Vegas wasn't as much fun as I'd hoped. Some of you know the reasons for that already ... but oh, well, they can't all be fun trips. Anyway, I'm back in town, and quite glad for that.

Had a pretty interesting experience last night, not something I want to do all the time but interesting nontheless. I got back on Thursday night, and last night hung out with Joon, an old friend of mine visiting from Seattle. We knew each other from church, when we were in high school, but it's safe to say we went very different directions after that, I went to school and studied communications and business, and she travelled for a while and then studied art. She still lives in Seattle and is an artist, she says mostly she does scupture.

Over the phone, she said to me, "I'm going to this show tonight, you should come if you're up for something new." And I figure, what the hell, the way this week started out it couldn't possibly get any weirder. She met me at my apartment and actually made me change out of what I was going to wear, into something more casual. I said "okay, but if this is an issue I have a feeling I'm going to stand out no matter what I put on."

And boy did I ever. We walked to the LES, and basically this show wasn't even in a bar, but this old decrepit building with holes in some of the walls and graffiti and trash everywhere. A lot of the people there were I guess punks, with messed up hair and tattoos and lots of piercings. Definitely not my usual scene! But people more or less were okay to us, some of them gave us funny looks but mostly they let us be.

We stayed for a couple of bands, and drank really shitty beer out of cans, which I guess was like being back in college. The bands weren't really my taste, though Joon was saying that one of them was pretty big in the scene. She called it "ska-punk". No accounting for taste, I guess. I was waiting in line to use the bathroom (I won't describe what it looked like inside there) and the guitarist from the band passed by me and gave me this funny look ... who knows what that was about.

Anyway, thanks to Joon for a pretty interesting night. I definitely got to see a slice of life I'd never really seen before. Also at some point realized that this is what "squatting" looks like: At some point in some class I remember we talked about this. I still don't think it's okay but it's interesting to put some faces to the issue. Also interesting to think that I live just a few blocks away from it, and for years I had no idea it was there.