I never learned his name but I called him Sergei.  I had gone into this tourist attraction on the edge of the mesas.  It was little more than a grouping of silver trailers, like a collection of discarded beercans at the base of the hill.   I had gone to see the man who was blasting a tribute to the American Indians into the side of the mountain--recreating the villages that had been carved into the side of the mesa.  He was going to great lengths to recreate these areas and then some--making them much longer, and more vast with his resources and explosives than what has originally existed.

I went inside his trailer, looked at a video of him at work, his long silver hair partially blocking the frame as he loomed godlike over the mesas, carving villages into the crumbling edifices.  He turned around, and smiled, casting his mighty hand over the tiny mountains.  "See?" He said in a heavy Cyrillic accent.  "That easy."

It turned out that it was just his scale replicas that he had done all his prep work on.  At that point, from out of the bathroom, the only separate room in that tiny place, came Sergei himself, bearded, long Rasputinish silver hair, and a beard that was still mainly black.  He lifted his arms up in greeting, and his skin blended well with the minor rumples of his tan khaki outfit.  "Welcome!"  He said.  "Welcome to Space Capsule Nine!"

Sergei, like more than a few immigrants to this country, seemed both incredibly genuine about who he was, and also cheerfully playing up the stereotype.  There were moments not where his accent disappeared, but rather where it softened considerably when he was caught up in what he was saying, and then would thicken tremendously when he would start paying more attention to his words.

"Come in!  It is good to see you!  You want to know all about space, eh?  We shall be cosmonauts!"  No matter what I tried to say him, he happily nodded and shunted me from one piece of space ephemera to another.  Mounted on a stand with impressive etched plaques next to it was a torn and blasted section of space capsule.   Sergei launched into an impressive account of when it had launched, when it had failed, how as a young man he had been part of the team that had had to search the Siberian wilderness for five days until they found it.

It was lie, of course, and as with most lies, the truth was far more interesting.  Later over many beers, Sergei confessed to creating the twisted panel himself, as well as doing all the plaques himself, carefully etching, aging and inscribing them himself.  "Cocksuckers took months to get right, and nobody ever pays attention to them. Idiots."  For him, because they had been something that he had never done before, they had been the accomplishment of which he was proudest.

I wanted to disagree, to whatever extent one could disagree with someone like Sergei, because the external panel of the space capsule looked incredibly vivid, bent at the edges and striated with black re-entry points.  The whole thing managed to impressively bespeak an icarian history of achievement and failure.

"All horseshit," Sergei said, "and not very impressive.  Wouldn't fool a professional at less than 500 feet."  Something Sergei knew well, because that had been one of his last jobs under the Soviet regime--he and his crew ("long dispersed," he said so sadly that I couldn't help but wonder if dispersal was a chilling euphemism) had been responsible for creating false debris--usually shipwrecks, but occasionally jeep crashes, tank debris, and, of course, failed rocket launches, for use in counter-intelligence missions.  "Very important that there be debris after a supposed explosion," Sergei told me, and Russia for the last of its desperate failing cold war years, had been too impoverished to actually test many of their weapons, and so had come up with a militaristic sleight of hand for the  anaerobic televisual carrion circling overhead.  "We would make it look like something had happened when the satellites were out of  range, even some embarrassing horseshit with flash pots, small explosions, and whatnot when appropriate. "  All embarrassing but still it served its purpose, as did the debris.  "When the satellites circled back overhead, alerted by the flashes and small charges placed near faultlines to stimulate a much larger explosion, there would be extensive debris spread everywhere.  And that would be where my crew and I came in."  They were to make equipment that would look perfect, and destroyed perfectly, to a range of 500 feet ("no matter what they tell you, nobody at that point could really get a spy photo that got any closer than that..  Now, maybe, who knows?  but back then, it was the '500' rule.")

I looked around.  "So this is all fake?"

"It is emotionally real," Sergei said, refilling his glass.  "It goes with everything else, it is all of a piece.  It is me doing what Americans do."

"And what is that?"

"Selling my life to yours.  Here, look at this." He tossed me a small leather-bound booklet.  I flipped through it.

"It looks  like a Russian-English dictionary."

Sergei nodded.  "That is what it is.  I wrote that."

I flipped through it.  "It's impressive."

He nodded.  "It was the Russian-English dictionary used by the KGB for many years.  It has an extensive collection of slang, codewords, and catchphrases."

I looked inside at the phrases, each isolated by a block of white space and translated on the other page; they seemed small, understated, unassuming sentences until they were read.  "I'll kill him for two million USD."  "He will be an addict in no time. "  If you get a cowboy, cut off his little finger.  After that, he won't give you any trouble."

"Impressive."

Sergei tilted his head.  "For that, I received nothing.  Only a decent apartment not far from Moscow.  No money.  No royalties.  In print for over fifteen years.  Now, it is back in print in Russia.  Very popular with Russian mob.  Very much in use.  For that, I receive nothing.  I don't even get decent apartment near Red Square."

"I'm sorry."

He shook his head.  "Now it is here, for sale.  Only three dollars.  I printed and bound three thousand copies myself.  They are almost all gone.  I sell them."

I looked at the cover: Authentic Guide to Cosmonaut Lexicon.  I looked up at Sergei, refilling again his bottle. He looked almost sheepish.

"It fits better with everything else that way."

"No wonder why it's popular."

"My point, though, is that it was part of my life.  It represents years of my life, it means something.  Three dollars."

I looked at him for a moment and then reached for my wallet.  "No, no.  For you, free.  My point is that to succeed here you must sell your life, your experiences,.  With item, without item, what people here don't want to admit is they are buying experiences, your life, your stories, and making it theirs."

He took a heavy sip of his vodka.  He was slowing down, now , trying to pace himself a bit.  "In Russia, where people used to stand in line four hours to get paper towels, buying is a new thing.  It is a novel experience."

"But here, buying not so new.  You can buy something at every corner.  Just as it is now in Russia, so it has been here for many, many years."

"Buying is no novel thing here.  You can buy anything.  What was once king’s is now yours.  So where now is novelty of buying?  How now do you separate the classes?"

"We don't separate the classes."

"Wrong.  You just don't think you separate the classes.  Old money?  New money?  This term, white trash?  Are the Armani suits in McDonald’s?  Do you see the yokel in overalls in the sushi bars?  No.  For a long time, you kept the classes different by what they owned, what they could afford.  But now, any idiot can go down and get an authentic Turkish rug.  A hundred years ago, not so."

"Now, people buy experiences, even more so than before.  Bungee jumping, jet skiing.  Piercing, tattoos, all the desperate attempts of a person to say, "I have a story.  I have experienced something.  something that makes me unique."  No longer do you have the items that make you feel unique.  You have the experiences, you must have the experiences.  Why do you think I sell 3,00  books?  People like cosmonauts?"

"It's unique."

"What's unique is that it is book supposedly about cosmonauts that has phrases like, 'Your daughter is mine now; you may buy her from me if you like.'  The 3000 people that have it have something very few have."

"Yes."

"And they have more.  They have story about crazy Russian man in the series of trailers.  They have time spent with him, as he told them about Russian cosmonauts and how he recovered these bits and pieces of crashed space module when they crashed on his farm, how he traded bits and pieces of old computer components to smugglers for passage out of Russia, and how he is now blasting holes in the mesa, making perfect replicas of Indian dwellings.  How much will people pay to tell story like that?"

I nodded.  " How did you get out of Russia?"

He pulled his upper lip taut, smoothed the curve of his mustache with two fingers.  "I defected.  For many years I was cryptographer in Russia.  Very good.   One of their five best."

"Did that get you a better apartment?"

"About the same.  But it got me a marriage in a church, which was very important to my wife at the time.  Anyway, after several years of this, during which I also wrote that guide and worked on our counter-intelligence rubble, I was writing letters, corresponding on chess problems with other players."

"Jesus," I said, feeling intimidated.  "You play chess too?"

Sergei nodded.  "I am very good chess player.  Used to be, back when nerves were strong.  I am too old now, a coward.  Chess is about offense.  Always."

"I'll take your word for it."

"So.  I was corresponding with chess players, sending in problems, playing games by mail.  KGB did not like it, but didn't want to deny me the chess games.  Russian pride, you know.  Chess is one of the five great Russian loves.  They thought I was sending  coded messages in my letters, plans for my defection, schedules, arrangements."

"Were you?"

"Of course."

"Did they crack the code?"

He nodded.  " As I said, I was one of five best codemen in Russia.  I am not the best.  I'm sure the other four read my letters extensively for some time."

"So how did you get out?"

"They were idiots, thought that I wouldn't learn any lessons making fake debris, and false explosions.  The code in the letters was meant to be found.  The real messages--inside the chess diagrams--were not.  They expected me to defect in December through Alaska.  I left Russia in May, on a flatbed car down towards Afghanistan."

"Wow."

He nodded and pointed to that book.  "Take it and come back tomorrow.  I wish to sleep."