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Hank said, "I think you're a very good person."
"Thank you," Fred said.
"Take your gun with you."
"What?" he said.
"When you go off to the San Bernardino Mountains with the fifths of I.W. Harper. Take your gun."
"You mean for if I don't come out of it?"
Hank said, "Either way. Coming down off the amount they say you're on … Have it there with you."
"Okay."
"When you get back," Hank said, "call me. Let me know."
"Hell, I won't have my suit."
"Call me anyhow. With or without your suit."
Again he said, "Okay." Evidently it didn't matter. Evidently that was over.
"When you go pick up your next payment, there'll be a different amount. A considerable change this one time."
Fred said, "I get some sort of bonus for this, for what happened to me?"
"No. Read your penal code. An officer who willingly becomes an addict and does not promptly report it is subject to a misdemeanor change—a fine of three thousand dollars and/or six months. You'll probably just be fined."
"Willingly?" he said, marveling.
"Nobody held a gun to your head and shot you up. Nobody dropped something in your soup. You knowingly and willingly took an addictive drug, brain-destructive and disorienting."
"I had to!"
Hank said, "You could have pretended to. Most officers manage to cope with it. And from the quantity they say you were dropping, you have to have been—"
"You're treating me like a crook. I am not a crook."
Picking up a clipboard and pen, Hank began to figure. "How much are you at, paywise? I can calculate it now if—"
"Could I pay the fine later on? Maybe in a series of monthly installments over like two years?"
Hank said, "Come on, Fred."
"Okay," he said.
"How much per hour?"
He couldn't remember.
"Well, then, how many logged hours?"
That, neither.
Hank tossed his clipboard back down. "Want a cigarette?" He offered Fred his pack.
"I'm getting off that, too," Fred said. "Everything including peanuts and …" He couldn't think. They both sat there, the two of them, in their scramble suits, both silent.
"Like I tell my kids," Hank began.
"I've got two kids," Fred said. "Two girls."
"I don't believe you do; you're not supposed to."
"Maybe not." He had begun to try to figure out when withdrawal would begin, and then he began to try to figure how many tabs of Substance D he had hidden here and there. And how much money he would have, when he got paid, for scoring.
"Maybe you want me to continue figuring what your payoff amount will consist of," Hank said.
"Okay," he said, and nodded vigorously. "Do that." He sat waiting, tensely, drumming on the table, like Barris.
"How much per hour?" Hank repeated, and then presently reached for his phone. "I'll call payroll."
Fred said nothing. Staring down, he waited. He thought, Maybe Donna can help me. Donna, he thought, please help me now.
"I don't think you're going to make it to the mountains," Hank said. "Even if somebody drives you."
"No."
"Where do you want to go?"
"Let me sit and think."
"Federal clinic?"
"No."
They sat.
He wondered what not supposed to meant.
"What about over to Donna Hawthorne's?" Hank said. "From all the information you've brought in and everyone else has, I know you're close."
"Yes." He nodded. "We are." And then he looked up and said, "How do you know that?"
Hank said, "By a process of elimination. I know who you aren't, and there aren't an infinite number of suspects in this group—in fact, they're a very small group. We thought they'd lead us up higher, and maybe Barris will. You and I have spent a lot of time rapping together. I pieced it together a long time ago. That you're Arctor."
"I'm who?" he said, staring at Hank the scramble suit facing him. "I'm Bob Arctor?" He could not believe it. It made no sense to him. It did not fit anything he had done on thought, it was grotesque.
"Never mind," Hank said. "What's Donna's phone number?"
"She's probably at work." His voice trembled."The perfume stone. The number is—" He couldn't keep his voice steady, and he couldn't remember the number. The hell I am, he said to himself. I'm not Bob Arctor. But who am I? Maybe I'm—
"Get me Donna Hawthorne's number at work," Hank was saying rapidly into the phone. "Here," he said, holding the phone toward Fred. "I'll put you on the line. No, maybe I better not. I'll tell her to pick you up—where? We'll drive you there and drop you off; can't meet her here. What's a good place? Where do you usually meet her?"
"Take me to her place," he said. "I know how to get in."
"I'll tell her you're there and that you're withdrawing. I'll just say I know you and you asked me to call."
"Far out," Fred said, "I can dig it. Thanks, man."
Hank nodded and began to redial, an outside number. It seemed to Fred that he dialed each digit more and more slowly and it went on forever, and he shut his eyes, breathing to himself and thinking, Wow. I'm really out of it.
You really are, he agreed. Spaced, wired, burned out and strung-out and fucked. Completely fucked. He felt like laughing.
"We'll get you over there to her—" Hank began, and then shifted his attention to the phone, saying, "Hey, Donna, this is a buddy of Bob's, you know? Hey, man, he's in a bad way, I'm not jiving you. Hey, he—"
I can dig it, two voices thought inside his mind in unison as he heard his buddy laying it on Donna. And don't forget to tell her to bring me something; I'm really hunting. Can she score for me or something? Maybe supercharge me, like she does? He reached out to touch Hank but could not; his hand fell short.
"I'll do the same for you sometime," he promised Hank as Hank hung up.
"Just sit there until the car's outside. I'll put through the call now." Again Hank phoned, this time saying, "Motor pool? I want an unmarked car and officer out of uniform. What do you have available?"
They, inside the scramble suit, the nebulous blur, shut their eyes to wait.
"It might be I should get you taken to the hospital," Hank said. "You're very bad off; maybe Jim Barris poisoned you. We really are interested in Barris, not you; the scanning of the house was primarily to keep on Barris. We hoped to draw him in here … and we did." Hank was silent. "So that's why I knew pretty well that his tapes and the other items were faked. The lab will confirm. But Barris is into something heavy. Heavy and sick, and it has to do with guns."
"I'm a what, then?" he said suddenly, very loud.
"We had to get to Jim Barris and set him up."
"You fuckers," he said.
"The way we arranged it, Barris—if that's who he is—got progressively more and more suspicious that you were an undercover police agent, about to nail him or use him to get higher. So he—"
The phone rang.
"All right," Hank said later. "Just sit, Bob. Bob, Fred, whatever. Take comfort—we did get the bugger and he's a—well, what you just now called us. You know it's worth it. Isn't it? To entrap him? A thing like that, whatever it is he's doing?"
"Sure, worth it." He could hardly speak; he grated mechanically.
Together they sat.
"We'll sit for a few minutes," she told him, guiding him through the bushes and weeds, across the sandy soil, among the discarded beer cans and debris. "I—"
"Do you have your hash pipe?" he managed to say.
"Yes," she said. They had to be far enough from the road not to be noticed by the police. Or at least far enough so they could ditch the hash pipe if an officer came along. She would see the police car park, its lights off, covertly, a way off, and the officer approach on foot. There would be time.
She thought, Time enough for that. Time enough to be safe from the law. But no time any more for Bob Arctor. His time—at least if measured in human standards—had run out. It was another kind of time which he had entered now. Like, she thought, the time a rat has: to run back and forth, to be futile. To move without planning, back and forth, back and forth. But at least he can still see the lights below us. Although maybe for him it doesn't matter.
They found a sheltered place, and she got out the foilwrapped fragment of hash and lit the hash pipe. Bob Arctor, beside her, did not seem to notice. He had dirtied himself but she knew he could not help it. In fact, he probably didn't even know it. They all got this way during withdrawal.
"Here." She bent toward him, to supercharge him. But he did not notice her either. He just sat doubled up, enduring the stomach cramps, vomiting and soiling himself, shivering, and crazily moaning to himself, a kind of song.
She thought then of a guy she had known once, who had seen God. He had acted much like this, moaning and crying, although he had not soiled himself. He had seen God in a flashback after an acid trip; he had been experimenting with water-soluble vitamins, huge doses of them. The orthomoleculan formula that was supposed to improve neural firing in the brain, speed it up and synchronize it. With that guy, though, instead of merely becoming smarten, he had seen God. It had been a complete surprise to him.
"I guess," she said, "we never know what's in stone for us."
Beside her, Bob Arctor moaned and did not answer.
"Did you know a dude named Tony Amsterdam?"
There was no response.
Donna inhaled from the hash pipe and contemplated the lights spread out below them; she smelled the air and listened. "After he saw God he felt really good, for around a year. And then he felt really bad. Worse than he ever had before in his life. Because one day it came over him, he began to realize, that he was never going to see God again; he was going to live out his whole remaining life, decades, maybe fifty years, and see nothing but what he had always seen. What we see. He was worse off than if he hadn't seen God. He told me one day he got really mad; he just freaked out and started cursing and smashing things in his apartment. He even smashed his stereo. He realized he was going to have to live on and on like he was, seeing nothing. Without any purpose. Just a lump of flesh grinding along, eating, drinking, sleeping, working, crapping."
"Like the rest of us." It was the first thing Bob Arctor had managed to say; each word came with retching difficulty.
Donna said, "That's what I told him. I pointed that out. We were all in the same boat and it didn't freak the rest of us. And he said, ‘You don't know what I saw. You don't know.' "
A spasm passed through Bob Arctor, convulsing him, and then he choked out, "Did … he say what it was like?"
"Sparks. Showers of colored sparks, like when something goes wrong with your TV set. Sparks going up the wall, sparks in the air. And the whole world was a living creature, whenever he looked. And there were no accidents: everything fitted together and happened on purpose, to achieve something—some goal in the future. And then he saw a doorway. For about a week he saw it whenever he looked—inside his apartment, outdoors when he was walking to the store or driving. And it was always the same proportions, very narrow. He said it was very—pleasing. That's the word he used. He never tried to go through it; he just looked at it, because it was so pleasing. Outlined in vivid red and gold light, he said. As if the sparks had collected into lines, like in geometry. And then after that he never saw it again his whole life, and that's what finally made him so fucked up."
After a time Bob Arctor said, "What was on the other side?"
Donna said, "He said there was another world on the other side. He could see it."
"He … never went through it?"
"That's why he kicked the shit out of everything in his apartment; he never thought of going through it, he just admired the doorway and then later he couldn't see it at all and it was too late. It opened for him a few days and then it was closed and gone forever. Again and again he took a whole lot of LSD and those water-soluble vitamins, but he never saw it again; he never found the combination."
Bob Arctor said, "What was on the other side?"
"He said it was always nighttime."
"Nighttime!"
"There was moonlight and water, always the same. Nothing moved or changed. Black water, like ink, and a shordane, a beach of an island. He was sure it was Greece, ancient Greece. He figured out the doorway was a weak place in time, and he was seeing back into the past. And then later on, when he couldn't see it any more, he'd be on the freeway driving along, with all the trucks, and he'd get madder than hell. He said he couldn't stand all the motion and noise, everything going this way and that, all the clanking and banging. Anyhow, he never could figure out why they showed him what they showed him. He really believed it was God, and it was the doorway to the next world, but in the final analysis all it did was mess up his head. He couldn't hold on to it so he couldn't cope with it. Every time he met anybody, after a while he'd tell them he'd lost everything."
Bob Arctor said, "That's how I am."
"There was a woman on the island. Not exactly—more a statue. He said it was of the Cyrenaican Aphrodite. Standing there in moonlight, pale and cold and made out of marble."
"He should have gone through the doorway when he had the chance."
Donna said, "He didn't have the chance. It was a promise. Something to come. Something better a long time in the future. Maybe after he—" She paused. "When he died."
"He missed out," Bob Arctor said. "You get one chance and that's it." He shut his eyes against the pain and the sweat streaking his face. "Anyhow what's a burned-out acid head know? What do any of us know? I can't talk. Forget it." He turned away from her, into the darkness, convulsing and shuddering.
"They show us trailers now," Donna said. She put her arms around him and held on to him as tightly as she could, rocking him back and forth. "So we'll hold out."
"That's what you're trying to do. With me now."
"You're a good man. You've been dealt a bad deal. But life isn't over for you. I care for you a lot. I wish …" She continued to hold him, silently, in the dankness that was swallowing him up from inside. Taking over even as she held on to him. "You are a good and kind person," she said. "And this is unfair but it has to be this way. Try to wait for the end. Sometime, a long time from now, you'll see the way you saw before. It'll come back to you." Restored, she thought. On the day when everything taken away unjustly from people will be restored to them. It may take a thousand years, or longer than that, but that day will come, and all the balances will be set right. Maybe, like Tony Amsterdam, you have seen a vision of God that is gone only temporarily; withdrawn, she thought, rather than ended. Maybe inside the terribly burned and burning circuits of your head that char more and more, even as I hold you, a spark of color and light in some disguised form manifested itself, unrecognized, to lead you, by its memory, through the years to come, the dreadful years ahead. A word not fully understood, some small thing seen but not understood, some fragment of a star mixed with the trash of this world, to guide you by reflex until the day … but it was so remote. She could not herself truly imagine it. Mingled with the commonplace, something from another world perhaps had appeared to Bob Arctor before it was over. All she could do now was hold him and hope.
But when he found it once again, if they were lucky, pattern-recognition would take place. Correct comparison in the right hemisphere. Even at the subcortical level available to him. And the journey, so awful for him, so costly, so evidently without point, would be finished.
A light shone in her eyes. Standing in front of her, a cop with nightstick and flashlight. "Would you please stand up?" the officer said. "And show me your identification? You first, miss."
She let go of Bob Arctor, who slid sideways until he lay against the ground; he was unaware of the cop, who had approached them up the hill, stealthily, from a service road below. Getting her wallet out of her purse, Donna motioned the officer away, where Bob Arctor could not hear. For several minutes the officer studied her identification by the muted light of his flashlight, and then said,
"You're undercover for the federal people."
"Keep your voice down," Donna said.
"I'm sorry." The officer handed the wallet back to her.
"Just fucking take off," Donna said.
The officer shone his light in her face briefly, and then turned away; he departed as he had approached, noiselessly.
When she returned to Bob Arctor, it was obvious that he had never been aware of the cop. He was aware of almost nothing, now. Scarcely of her, let alone anyone or anything else.
Far off, echoing, Donna could hear the police can moving down the nutted, invisible service road. A few bugs, perhaps a lizard, made their way through the dry weeds around them. In the distance the 91 Freeway glowed in a pattern of lights, but no sound reached them; it was too remote.
"Bob," she said softly. "Can you hear me?"
No answer.
All the circuits are welded shut, she thought. Melted and fused. And no one is going to get them open, no matter how hard they try. And they are going to try.
"Come on," she said, tugging at him, attempting to get him to his feet. "We've got to get started."
Bob Arctor said, "I can't make love. My thing's disappeared."
"They're expecting us," Donna said firmly. "I have to sign you in."
"But what'll I do if my thing's disappeared? Will they still take me in?"
Donna said, "They'll take you."
It requires the greatest kind of wisdom, she thought, to know when to apply injustice. How can justice fall victim, even, to what is right? How can this happen? She thought, Because there is a curse on this world, and all this proves it; this is the proof right here. Somewhere, at the deepest level possible, the mechanism, the construction of things, fell apart, and up from what remained swam the need to do all the various sort of unclean wrongs the wisest choice has made us act out. It must have started thousands of years ago. By now it's infiltrated into the nature of everything. And, she thought, into every one of us. We can't turn around or open our mouth and speak, decide at all, without doing it. I don't even care how it got started, when or why. She thought, I just hope it'll end some time. Like with Tony Amsterdam; I just hope one day the shower of brightly colored sparks will return, and this time we'll all see it. The narrow doorway where there's peace on the far side. A statue, the sea, and what looks like moonlight. And nothing stirring, nothing to break the calm.
A long, long time ago, she thought. Before the curse, and everything and everyone became this way. The Golden Age, she thought, when wisdom and justice were the same. Before it all shattered into cutting fragments. Into broken bits that don't fit, that can't be put back together, hard as we try.
Below her, in the dankness and distribution of urban lights a police siren sounded. A police car in hot pursuit. It sounded like a deranged animal, greedy to kill. And knowing that it soon would. She shivered; the night air had become cold. It was time to go.
It isn't the Golden Age now, she thought, with noises like that in the darkness. Do I emit that kind of greedy noise? she asked herself. Am I that thing? Closing in, or having closed in?
Having caught?
Beside her, the man stirred and moaned as she helped him up. Helped him to his feet and back to her car, step by step, helped him, helped him continue on. Below them, the noise of the police car had abruptly ceased; it had stopped its quarry. Its job was done. Holding Bob Arctor against her, she thought, Mine is done, too.
"What is it?" one staff member said.
Donna said, "A person."
"Substance D?"
She nodded.
"It ate his head. Another loser."
She said to the two of them, "It's easy to win. Anybody can win." Bending down over Robert Arctor she said, silently,
Good-by.
They were putting an old army blanket over him as she left. She did not look back.
Getting into her car, she drove at once onto the closest freeway, into the thickest traffic possible. From the box of tapes on the floor of the car she took the Carole King Tapestry tape, her favorite of all she had, and pushed it into the tape deck; at the same time, she tugged loose the Ruger pistol magnetically mounted out of sight beneath the dashboard. In top gear she tailgated a truck carrying wooden cases of quart bottles of Coca-Cola, and as Carole King sang in stereo she emptied the clip of the Ruger at the Coke bottles a few feet ahead of her can.
While Carole King sang soothingly about people sitting down and turning into toads, Donna managed to get four bottles before the gun's clip was empty. Bits of glass and smears of Coke splattered the windshield of her can. She felt better.
Justice and honesty and loyalty are not properties of this world, she thought; and then, by God, she rammed her old enemy, her ancient foe, the Coca-Cola truck, which went right on going without noticing. The impact spun her small can around; her headlights dimmed out, horrible noises of fender against tire shrieked, and then she was off the freeway onto the emergency strip, facing the other direction, water pouring from her radiator, with motorists slowing down to gape.
Come back, you motherfucker, she said to herself, but the Coca-Cola truck was long gone, probably undented. Maybe a scratch. Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later, her wan, her taking on a symbol and a reality that outweighed her. Now my insurance rates will go up, she realized as she climbed from her car. In this world you pay for tilting with evil in cold, hand cash.
A late-model Mustang slowed and the driver, a man, called to her, "You want a ride, miss?"
She did not answer. She just kept on going. A small figure on foot facing an infinity of oncoming lights.
14
"Thank you," Fred said.
"Take your gun with you."
"What?" he said.
"When you go off to the San Bernardino Mountains with the fifths of I.W. Harper. Take your gun."
"You mean for if I don't come out of it?"
Hank said, "Either way. Coming down off the amount they say you're on … Have it there with you."
"Okay."
"When you get back," Hank said, "call me. Let me know."
"Hell, I won't have my suit."
"Call me anyhow. With or without your suit."
Again he said, "Okay." Evidently it didn't matter. Evidently that was over.
"When you go pick up your next payment, there'll be a different amount. A considerable change this one time."
Fred said, "I get some sort of bonus for this, for what happened to me?"
"No. Read your penal code. An officer who willingly becomes an addict and does not promptly report it is subject to a misdemeanor change—a fine of three thousand dollars and/or six months. You'll probably just be fined."
"Willingly?" he said, marveling.
"Nobody held a gun to your head and shot you up. Nobody dropped something in your soup. You knowingly and willingly took an addictive drug, brain-destructive and disorienting."
"I had to!"
Hank said, "You could have pretended to. Most officers manage to cope with it. And from the quantity they say you were dropping, you have to have been—"
"You're treating me like a crook. I am not a crook."
Picking up a clipboard and pen, Hank began to figure. "How much are you at, paywise? I can calculate it now if—"
"Could I pay the fine later on? Maybe in a series of monthly installments over like two years?"
Hank said, "Come on, Fred."
"Okay," he said.
"How much per hour?"
He couldn't remember.
"Well, then, how many logged hours?"
That, neither.
Hank tossed his clipboard back down. "Want a cigarette?" He offered Fred his pack.
"I'm getting off that, too," Fred said. "Everything including peanuts and …" He couldn't think. They both sat there, the two of them, in their scramble suits, both silent.
"Like I tell my kids," Hank began.
"I've got two kids," Fred said. "Two girls."
"I don't believe you do; you're not supposed to."
"Maybe not." He had begun to try to figure out when withdrawal would begin, and then he began to try to figure how many tabs of Substance D he had hidden here and there. And how much money he would have, when he got paid, for scoring.
"Maybe you want me to continue figuring what your payoff amount will consist of," Hank said.
"Okay," he said, and nodded vigorously. "Do that." He sat waiting, tensely, drumming on the table, like Barris.
"How much per hour?" Hank repeated, and then presently reached for his phone. "I'll call payroll."
Fred said nothing. Staring down, he waited. He thought, Maybe Donna can help me. Donna, he thought, please help me now.
"I don't think you're going to make it to the mountains," Hank said. "Even if somebody drives you."
"No."
"Where do you want to go?"
"Let me sit and think."
"Federal clinic?"
"No."
They sat.
He wondered what not supposed to meant.
"What about over to Donna Hawthorne's?" Hank said. "From all the information you've brought in and everyone else has, I know you're close."
"Yes." He nodded. "We are." And then he looked up and said, "How do you know that?"
Hank said, "By a process of elimination. I know who you aren't, and there aren't an infinite number of suspects in this group—in fact, they're a very small group. We thought they'd lead us up higher, and maybe Barris will. You and I have spent a lot of time rapping together. I pieced it together a long time ago. That you're Arctor."
"I'm who?" he said, staring at Hank the scramble suit facing him. "I'm Bob Arctor?" He could not believe it. It made no sense to him. It did not fit anything he had done on thought, it was grotesque.
"Never mind," Hank said. "What's Donna's phone number?"
"She's probably at work." His voice trembled."The perfume stone. The number is—" He couldn't keep his voice steady, and he couldn't remember the number. The hell I am, he said to himself. I'm not Bob Arctor. But who am I? Maybe I'm—
"Get me Donna Hawthorne's number at work," Hank was saying rapidly into the phone. "Here," he said, holding the phone toward Fred. "I'll put you on the line. No, maybe I better not. I'll tell her to pick you up—where? We'll drive you there and drop you off; can't meet her here. What's a good place? Where do you usually meet her?"
"Take me to her place," he said. "I know how to get in."
"I'll tell her you're there and that you're withdrawing. I'll just say I know you and you asked me to call."
"Far out," Fred said, "I can dig it. Thanks, man."
Hank nodded and began to redial, an outside number. It seemed to Fred that he dialed each digit more and more slowly and it went on forever, and he shut his eyes, breathing to himself and thinking, Wow. I'm really out of it.
You really are, he agreed. Spaced, wired, burned out and strung-out and fucked. Completely fucked. He felt like laughing.
"We'll get you over there to her—" Hank began, and then shifted his attention to the phone, saying, "Hey, Donna, this is a buddy of Bob's, you know? Hey, man, he's in a bad way, I'm not jiving you. Hey, he—"
I can dig it, two voices thought inside his mind in unison as he heard his buddy laying it on Donna. And don't forget to tell her to bring me something; I'm really hunting. Can she score for me or something? Maybe supercharge me, like she does? He reached out to touch Hank but could not; his hand fell short.
"I'll do the same for you sometime," he promised Hank as Hank hung up.
"Just sit there until the car's outside. I'll put through the call now." Again Hank phoned, this time saying, "Motor pool? I want an unmarked car and officer out of uniform. What do you have available?"
They, inside the scramble suit, the nebulous blur, shut their eyes to wait.
"It might be I should get you taken to the hospital," Hank said. "You're very bad off; maybe Jim Barris poisoned you. We really are interested in Barris, not you; the scanning of the house was primarily to keep on Barris. We hoped to draw him in here … and we did." Hank was silent. "So that's why I knew pretty well that his tapes and the other items were faked. The lab will confirm. But Barris is into something heavy. Heavy and sick, and it has to do with guns."
"I'm a what, then?" he said suddenly, very loud.
"We had to get to Jim Barris and set him up."
"You fuckers," he said.
"The way we arranged it, Barris—if that's who he is—got progressively more and more suspicious that you were an undercover police agent, about to nail him or use him to get higher. So he—"
The phone rang.
"All right," Hank said later. "Just sit, Bob. Bob, Fred, whatever. Take comfort—we did get the bugger and he's a—well, what you just now called us. You know it's worth it. Isn't it? To entrap him? A thing like that, whatever it is he's doing?"
"Sure, worth it." He could hardly speak; he grated mechanically.
Together they sat.
***
On the drive to New-Path, Donna pulled off the road where they could see the lights below, on all sides. But the pain had started for him now; she could see that, and there wasn't much time left. She had wanted to be with him one more time. Well, she had waited too long. Tears ran down his cheeks, and he had started to heave and vomit."We'll sit for a few minutes," she told him, guiding him through the bushes and weeds, across the sandy soil, among the discarded beer cans and debris. "I—"
"Do you have your hash pipe?" he managed to say.
"Yes," she said. They had to be far enough from the road not to be noticed by the police. Or at least far enough so they could ditch the hash pipe if an officer came along. She would see the police car park, its lights off, covertly, a way off, and the officer approach on foot. There would be time.
She thought, Time enough for that. Time enough to be safe from the law. But no time any more for Bob Arctor. His time—at least if measured in human standards—had run out. It was another kind of time which he had entered now. Like, she thought, the time a rat has: to run back and forth, to be futile. To move without planning, back and forth, back and forth. But at least he can still see the lights below us. Although maybe for him it doesn't matter.
They found a sheltered place, and she got out the foilwrapped fragment of hash and lit the hash pipe. Bob Arctor, beside her, did not seem to notice. He had dirtied himself but she knew he could not help it. In fact, he probably didn't even know it. They all got this way during withdrawal.
"Here." She bent toward him, to supercharge him. But he did not notice her either. He just sat doubled up, enduring the stomach cramps, vomiting and soiling himself, shivering, and crazily moaning to himself, a kind of song.
She thought then of a guy she had known once, who had seen God. He had acted much like this, moaning and crying, although he had not soiled himself. He had seen God in a flashback after an acid trip; he had been experimenting with water-soluble vitamins, huge doses of them. The orthomoleculan formula that was supposed to improve neural firing in the brain, speed it up and synchronize it. With that guy, though, instead of merely becoming smarten, he had seen God. It had been a complete surprise to him.
"I guess," she said, "we never know what's in stone for us."
Beside her, Bob Arctor moaned and did not answer.
"Did you know a dude named Tony Amsterdam?"
There was no response.
Donna inhaled from the hash pipe and contemplated the lights spread out below them; she smelled the air and listened. "After he saw God he felt really good, for around a year. And then he felt really bad. Worse than he ever had before in his life. Because one day it came over him, he began to realize, that he was never going to see God again; he was going to live out his whole remaining life, decades, maybe fifty years, and see nothing but what he had always seen. What we see. He was worse off than if he hadn't seen God. He told me one day he got really mad; he just freaked out and started cursing and smashing things in his apartment. He even smashed his stereo. He realized he was going to have to live on and on like he was, seeing nothing. Without any purpose. Just a lump of flesh grinding along, eating, drinking, sleeping, working, crapping."
"Like the rest of us." It was the first thing Bob Arctor had managed to say; each word came with retching difficulty.
Donna said, "That's what I told him. I pointed that out. We were all in the same boat and it didn't freak the rest of us. And he said, ‘You don't know what I saw. You don't know.' "
A spasm passed through Bob Arctor, convulsing him, and then he choked out, "Did … he say what it was like?"
"Sparks. Showers of colored sparks, like when something goes wrong with your TV set. Sparks going up the wall, sparks in the air. And the whole world was a living creature, whenever he looked. And there were no accidents: everything fitted together and happened on purpose, to achieve something—some goal in the future. And then he saw a doorway. For about a week he saw it whenever he looked—inside his apartment, outdoors when he was walking to the store or driving. And it was always the same proportions, very narrow. He said it was very—pleasing. That's the word he used. He never tried to go through it; he just looked at it, because it was so pleasing. Outlined in vivid red and gold light, he said. As if the sparks had collected into lines, like in geometry. And then after that he never saw it again his whole life, and that's what finally made him so fucked up."
After a time Bob Arctor said, "What was on the other side?"
Donna said, "He said there was another world on the other side. He could see it."
"He … never went through it?"
"That's why he kicked the shit out of everything in his apartment; he never thought of going through it, he just admired the doorway and then later he couldn't see it at all and it was too late. It opened for him a few days and then it was closed and gone forever. Again and again he took a whole lot of LSD and those water-soluble vitamins, but he never saw it again; he never found the combination."
Bob Arctor said, "What was on the other side?"
"He said it was always nighttime."
"Nighttime!"
"There was moonlight and water, always the same. Nothing moved or changed. Black water, like ink, and a shordane, a beach of an island. He was sure it was Greece, ancient Greece. He figured out the doorway was a weak place in time, and he was seeing back into the past. And then later on, when he couldn't see it any more, he'd be on the freeway driving along, with all the trucks, and he'd get madder than hell. He said he couldn't stand all the motion and noise, everything going this way and that, all the clanking and banging. Anyhow, he never could figure out why they showed him what they showed him. He really believed it was God, and it was the doorway to the next world, but in the final analysis all it did was mess up his head. He couldn't hold on to it so he couldn't cope with it. Every time he met anybody, after a while he'd tell them he'd lost everything."
Bob Arctor said, "That's how I am."
"There was a woman on the island. Not exactly—more a statue. He said it was of the Cyrenaican Aphrodite. Standing there in moonlight, pale and cold and made out of marble."
"He should have gone through the doorway when he had the chance."
Donna said, "He didn't have the chance. It was a promise. Something to come. Something better a long time in the future. Maybe after he—" She paused. "When he died."
"He missed out," Bob Arctor said. "You get one chance and that's it." He shut his eyes against the pain and the sweat streaking his face. "Anyhow what's a burned-out acid head know? What do any of us know? I can't talk. Forget it." He turned away from her, into the darkness, convulsing and shuddering.
"They show us trailers now," Donna said. She put her arms around him and held on to him as tightly as she could, rocking him back and forth. "So we'll hold out."
"That's what you're trying to do. With me now."
"You're a good man. You've been dealt a bad deal. But life isn't over for you. I care for you a lot. I wish …" She continued to hold him, silently, in the dankness that was swallowing him up from inside. Taking over even as she held on to him. "You are a good and kind person," she said. "And this is unfair but it has to be this way. Try to wait for the end. Sometime, a long time from now, you'll see the way you saw before. It'll come back to you." Restored, she thought. On the day when everything taken away unjustly from people will be restored to them. It may take a thousand years, or longer than that, but that day will come, and all the balances will be set right. Maybe, like Tony Amsterdam, you have seen a vision of God that is gone only temporarily; withdrawn, she thought, rather than ended. Maybe inside the terribly burned and burning circuits of your head that char more and more, even as I hold you, a spark of color and light in some disguised form manifested itself, unrecognized, to lead you, by its memory, through the years to come, the dreadful years ahead. A word not fully understood, some small thing seen but not understood, some fragment of a star mixed with the trash of this world, to guide you by reflex until the day … but it was so remote. She could not herself truly imagine it. Mingled with the commonplace, something from another world perhaps had appeared to Bob Arctor before it was over. All she could do now was hold him and hope.
But when he found it once again, if they were lucky, pattern-recognition would take place. Correct comparison in the right hemisphere. Even at the subcortical level available to him. And the journey, so awful for him, so costly, so evidently without point, would be finished.
A light shone in her eyes. Standing in front of her, a cop with nightstick and flashlight. "Would you please stand up?" the officer said. "And show me your identification? You first, miss."
She let go of Bob Arctor, who slid sideways until he lay against the ground; he was unaware of the cop, who had approached them up the hill, stealthily, from a service road below. Getting her wallet out of her purse, Donna motioned the officer away, where Bob Arctor could not hear. For several minutes the officer studied her identification by the muted light of his flashlight, and then said,
"You're undercover for the federal people."
"Keep your voice down," Donna said.
"I'm sorry." The officer handed the wallet back to her.
"Just fucking take off," Donna said.
The officer shone his light in her face briefly, and then turned away; he departed as he had approached, noiselessly.
When she returned to Bob Arctor, it was obvious that he had never been aware of the cop. He was aware of almost nothing, now. Scarcely of her, let alone anyone or anything else.
Far off, echoing, Donna could hear the police can moving down the nutted, invisible service road. A few bugs, perhaps a lizard, made their way through the dry weeds around them. In the distance the 91 Freeway glowed in a pattern of lights, but no sound reached them; it was too remote.
"Bob," she said softly. "Can you hear me?"
No answer.
All the circuits are welded shut, she thought. Melted and fused. And no one is going to get them open, no matter how hard they try. And they are going to try.
"Come on," she said, tugging at him, attempting to get him to his feet. "We've got to get started."
Bob Arctor said, "I can't make love. My thing's disappeared."
"They're expecting us," Donna said firmly. "I have to sign you in."
"But what'll I do if my thing's disappeared? Will they still take me in?"
Donna said, "They'll take you."
It requires the greatest kind of wisdom, she thought, to know when to apply injustice. How can justice fall victim, even, to what is right? How can this happen? She thought, Because there is a curse on this world, and all this proves it; this is the proof right here. Somewhere, at the deepest level possible, the mechanism, the construction of things, fell apart, and up from what remained swam the need to do all the various sort of unclean wrongs the wisest choice has made us act out. It must have started thousands of years ago. By now it's infiltrated into the nature of everything. And, she thought, into every one of us. We can't turn around or open our mouth and speak, decide at all, without doing it. I don't even care how it got started, when or why. She thought, I just hope it'll end some time. Like with Tony Amsterdam; I just hope one day the shower of brightly colored sparks will return, and this time we'll all see it. The narrow doorway where there's peace on the far side. A statue, the sea, and what looks like moonlight. And nothing stirring, nothing to break the calm.
A long, long time ago, she thought. Before the curse, and everything and everyone became this way. The Golden Age, she thought, when wisdom and justice were the same. Before it all shattered into cutting fragments. Into broken bits that don't fit, that can't be put back together, hard as we try.
Below her, in the dankness and distribution of urban lights a police siren sounded. A police car in hot pursuit. It sounded like a deranged animal, greedy to kill. And knowing that it soon would. She shivered; the night air had become cold. It was time to go.
It isn't the Golden Age now, she thought, with noises like that in the darkness. Do I emit that kind of greedy noise? she asked herself. Am I that thing? Closing in, or having closed in?
Having caught?
Beside her, the man stirred and moaned as she helped him up. Helped him to his feet and back to her car, step by step, helped him, helped him continue on. Below them, the noise of the police car had abruptly ceased; it had stopped its quarry. Its job was done. Holding Bob Arctor against her, she thought, Mine is done, too.
***
The two New-Path staff members stood surveying the thing on their floor that lay puking and shivering and fouling itself, its arms hugging itself, embracing its own body as if to stop itself, against the cold that made it tremble so violently."What is it?" one staff member said.
Donna said, "A person."
"Substance D?"
She nodded.
"It ate his head. Another loser."
She said to the two of them, "It's easy to win. Anybody can win." Bending down over Robert Arctor she said, silently,
Good-by.
They were putting an old army blanket over him as she left. She did not look back.
Getting into her car, she drove at once onto the closest freeway, into the thickest traffic possible. From the box of tapes on the floor of the car she took the Carole King Tapestry tape, her favorite of all she had, and pushed it into the tape deck; at the same time, she tugged loose the Ruger pistol magnetically mounted out of sight beneath the dashboard. In top gear she tailgated a truck carrying wooden cases of quart bottles of Coca-Cola, and as Carole King sang in stereo she emptied the clip of the Ruger at the Coke bottles a few feet ahead of her can.
While Carole King sang soothingly about people sitting down and turning into toads, Donna managed to get four bottles before the gun's clip was empty. Bits of glass and smears of Coke splattered the windshield of her can. She felt better.
Justice and honesty and loyalty are not properties of this world, she thought; and then, by God, she rammed her old enemy, her ancient foe, the Coca-Cola truck, which went right on going without noticing. The impact spun her small can around; her headlights dimmed out, horrible noises of fender against tire shrieked, and then she was off the freeway onto the emergency strip, facing the other direction, water pouring from her radiator, with motorists slowing down to gape.
Come back, you motherfucker, she said to herself, but the Coca-Cola truck was long gone, probably undented. Maybe a scratch. Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later, her wan, her taking on a symbol and a reality that outweighed her. Now my insurance rates will go up, she realized as she climbed from her car. In this world you pay for tilting with evil in cold, hand cash.
A late-model Mustang slowed and the driver, a man, called to her, "You want a ride, miss?"
She did not answer. She just kept on going. A small figure on foot facing an infinity of oncoming lights.
14
Magazine clipping thumbtacked to the wall of the lounge at Samarkand House, New-Path's residence building in Santa Ana, California:
When the senile patient awakens in the morning and asks for his mother, remind him that she is long since dead, that he is over eighty years old and living in a convalescent home, and that this is 1992 and not 1913 and that he must face reality and the fact that
A resident had torn down the rest of the item; it ended there. Evidently it had been clipped from a professional nursing magazine; it was on slick paper.
"What you'll be doing here first," George, the staff member, told him, leading him down the hall, "is the bathrooms. The floors, the basins, especially the toilets. There're three bathrooms in this structure, one on each floor."
"Okay," he said.
"Here's a mop. And a pail. You feel you know how to do this? Clean a bathroom? Start, and I'll watch you and give you pointers."
He carried the pail to the tub on the back porch and he poured soap into it and then ran the hot water. All he could see was the foam of water directly before him; foam and the roar.
But he could hear George's voice, out of sight. "Not too full, because you won't be able to lift it."
"Okay."
"You have a little trouble telling where you are," George said, after a time.
"I'm at New-Path." He set the pail down on the floor and it slopped; he stood staring down at it.
"New-Path where?"
"In Santa Ana."
George lifted the pail up for him, showing him how to grip the wire handle and swing it along as he walked. "Later on I think we'll transfer you to the island on one of the farms. First you have to go through the dishpan."
"I can do that," he said. "Dishpans."
"Do you like animals?"
"Sure."
"Or farming?"
"Animals."
"We'll see. We'll wait until we're acquainted with you better. Anyhow, that'll be a while; everyone is in the dishpan for a month. Everyone who comes in the door."
"I'd sort of like to live in the country," he said.
"We maintain several types of facilities. We'll determine what's best suited. You know, you can smoke here, but it isn't encouraged. This isn't Synanon; they don't let you smoke."
He said, "I don't have any more cigarettes."
"We give each resident one pack a day."
"Money?" He didn't have any.
"It's without cost. There's never any cost. You paid your cost." George took the mop, pushed it down into the pail, showed him how to mop.
"How come I don't have any money?"
"The same reason you don't have any wallet or any last name. It'll be given back to you, all given back. That's what we want to do: give you back what's been taken away from you."
He said, "These shoes don't fit."
"We depend on donations, but new ones only, from stores. Later on maybe we can measure you. Did you try all the shoes in the carton?"
"Yes," he said.
"All right, this is the bathroom here on the basement floor; do it first. Then when that's done, really done well, really perfect, then go upstairs—bring the mop and bucket—and I'll show you the bathroom up there, and then after that the bathroom on the third floor. But you got to get permission to go up there to the third floor, because that's where the chicks live, so ask one of the staff first; never go up there without permission." He slapped him on the back. "All right, Bruce? Understand?"
"Okay," Bruce said, mopping.
George said, "You'll be doing this kind of work, cleaning these bathrooms, until you get so you can do a good job. It doesn't matter what a person does; it's that he gets so he can do it right and be proud of it."
"Will I ever be like I was again?" Bruce asked.
"What you were brought you here. If you become what you were again then sooner or later it'd bring you here again. Next time you might not make it here, even. Isn't that right? You're lucky you got here; you almost didn't get here."
"Somebody else drove me here."
"You're fortunate. The next time they might not. They might dump you on the side of the freeway somewhere and say the hell with it."
He continued mopping.
"The best way is to do the bowls first, then the tub, then the toilets, and the floor last."
"Okay," he said, and put the mop away.
"There's a certain knack to it. You'll master it."
Concentrating, he saw before him cracks in the enamel of the basin; he dribbled cleaner down into the cracks and ran hot water. The steam rose, and he stood within it, unmoving, as the steam grew. He liked the smell.
"If you could see out from inside a dead person you could still see, but you couldn't operate the eye muscles, so you couldn't focus. You couldn't turn your head or your eyeballs. All you could do would be wait until some object passed by. You'd be frozen. Just wait and wait. It'd be a terrible scene."
He gazed down at the steam of his coffee, only that. The steam rose; he liked the smell.
"Hey."
A hand touched him. From a woman.
"Hey."
He looked sideways a little.
"How you doing?"
"Okay," he said.
"Feel any better?"
"I feel okay," he said.
He watched his coffee and the steam and did not look at her or any of them; he looked down and down at the coffee. He liked the warmth of the smell.
"You could see somebody when they passed by directly in front of you, and only then. Or whichever way you were looking, no other. If a leaf or something floated over your eye, that would be it, forever. Only the leaf. Nothing more; you couldn't turn."
"Okay," he said, holding the coffee, the cup with both his hands.
"Imagine being sentient but not alive. Seeing and even knowing, but not alive. Just looking out. Recognizing but not being alive. A person can die and still go on. Sometimes what looks out at you from a person's eyes maybe died back in childhood. What's dead in there still looks out. It's not just the body looking at you with nothing in it; there's still something in there but it died and just keeps on looking and looking; it can't stop looking."
Another person said, "That's what it means to die, to not be able to stop looking at whatever's in front of you. Some darn thing placed directly there, with nothing you can do about it such as selecting anything or changing anything. You can only accept what's put there as it is."
"How'd you like to gaze at a beer can throughout eternity? It might not be so bad. There'd be nothing to fear."
He sat with his hands folded in his lap, watching the floor and listening to the big coffee urn heating up; it went whoopwhoop, and the sound frightened him.
"Living and unliving things are exchanging properties."
Seated here and there on folding chairs, everyone discussed that. They seemed familiar with the Concept. Evidently these were parts of New-Path's way of thought, perhaps even memorized and then thought about again and again. Whoop-whoop.
"The drive of unliving things is stronger than the drive of living things."
They talked about that. Whoop-whoop. The noise of the coffee urn got louder and louder and scared him more, but he did not move or look; he sat where he was, listening. It was hard to hear what they were saying, because of the urn.
"We are incorporating too much unliving drive within us. And exchanging—Will somebody go look at that damn coffeepot to see why it's doing that?"
There was a break while someone examined the coffee urn. He sat staring down, waiting.
"I'll write this again. ‘We are exchanging too much passive life for the reality outside us.' "
They discussed that. The coffee urn became silent, and they trooped over to get coffee.
"Don't you want some coffee?" A voice behind him, touching him. "Ned? Bruce? What's his name—Bruce?"
"Okay." He got up and followed them to the coffee urn. He waited his turn. They watched as he put cream and sugar into his cup. They watched him return to his chair, the same one; he made certain he found it again, to reseat himself and go on listening. The warm coffee, its steam, made him feel good.
"Activity does not necessarily mean life. Quasars are active. And a monk meditating is not inanimate."
He sat looking at the empty cup; it was a china mug. Turning it over, he discovered printing on the bottom, and cracked glaze. The mug looked old, but it had been made in Detroit.
"Motion that is circular is the deadest form of the universe."
Another voice said, "Time."
He knew the answer to that. Time is round.
"Yes, we've got to break now, but does anyone have a fast final comment?"
"Well, following the line of least resistance, that's the rule of survival. Following, not leading."
Another voice, older, said, "Yes, the followers survive the leader. Like with Christ. Not vice versa."
"We better eat, because Rick stops serving exactly at five-on fifty now."
"Talk about that in the Game, not now."
Chairs screaked, creaked. He rose too, carried the old mug to the tray of others, and joined them in line out. He could smell cold clothes around him, good smells but cold.
It sounds like they're saying passive life is good, he thought. But there is no such thing as passive life. That's a contradiction.
He wondered what life was, what it meant; maybe he did not understand.
"Hey, Mike. You're a sharp dude."
In the middle of the lounge stood a short stocky man, with curly hair and pug face; he shifted his belt, frowning. "How do you work this here? I don't see how you get it to stay. Why doesn't it loosen?" He had a three-inch buckleless belt with metal rings and he did not know how to cinch the rings. Glancing around, eyes twinkling, he said, "I think they gave me one nobody else could work."
Bruce went over behind him, reached around him, and cinched the belt looped back through the rings.
"Thanks," Mike said. He sorted through several dress shirts, lips pursed. To Bruce he said, "When I get married I'm going to wear one of these."
"Nice," he said.
Mike strolled toward two women at the far end of the lounge; they smiled. Holding a burgundy floral shirt up against himself, Mike said, "I'm going out on the town."
"All right, go in and get dinner!" the house director yelled briskly, in his powerful voice. He winked at Bruce. "How you doing, fella?"
"Fine," Bruce said.
"Sound like you got a cold."
"Yes," he agreed, "it's from coming off. Could I have any Dristan or—"
"No chemicals," the house director said. "Nothing. Hurry on in and eat. How's your appetite?"
"Better," he said, following. They smiled at him, from tables.
He felt them seeing him, and maybe some spoke to him. He sat on the stairs, hunched over, his arms wrapped around him, seeing and seeing. The dark carpet before his eyes.
Presently no more voices.
"Bruce?"
He did not stir.
"Bruce?" A hand touched him.
He said nothing.
"Bruce, come on into the lounge. You're supposed to be in your room in bed, but, see, I want to talk to you." Mike led him by waving him to follow. He accompanied Mike down the stairs and into the lounge, which was empty. When they were in the lounge Mike shut the door.
Seating himself in a deep chair, Mike indicated for him to sit down facing him. Mike appeared tired; his small eyes were ringed, and he rubbed his forehead.
"I been up since five-thirty this morning," Mike said.
A knock; the door started to open.
Very loudly, Mike yelled, "I want nobody to come in here; we're talking. Hear?"
Mumbles. The door shut.
"Y'know, you better change your shirt a couple times a day," Mike said. "You're sweating something fierce."
He nodded.
"What part of the state are you from?"
He said nothing.
"You come to me from now or when you feel this bad. I went through the same thing, about a year and a half ago. They used to drive me around in cars. Different staff members. You met Eddie? The tall thin drink-a-water that puts down everybody? He drove me for eight days around and around. Never left me alone." Mike yelled suddenly, "Will you get out of here? We're in here talking. Go watch the TV." His voice sank, and he eyed Bruce. "Sometimes you got to do that. Never leave someone alone."
"I see," Bruce said.
"Bruce, be careful you don't take your own life."
"Yes, sir," Bruce said, staring down.
"Don't call me sir!"
He nodded.
"Were you in the Service, Bruce? Is that what it was? You got on the stuff in the Service?"
"No."
"You shoot it or drop it?"
He made no sound.
" ‘Sir,' " Mike said. "I've served, myself, ten years in prison. One time I saw eight guys in our row of cells cut their throats in one day. We slept with our feet in the toilet, our cells were that small. That's what prison is, you sleep with your feet in the toilet. You never been in prison, have you?"
"No," he said.
"But on the other hand, I saw prisoners eighty years old still happy to be alive and wanting to stay alive. I remember when I was on dope, and I shot it; I started shooting when I was in my teens. I never did anything else. I shot up and then I went in for ten years. I shot up so much—heroin and D together—that I never did anything else; I never saw anything else. Now I'm off it and I'm out of prison and I'm here. You know what I notice the most? You know what the big difference is I notice? Now I can walk down the street outside and see something. I can hear water when we visit the forest—you'll see our other facilities later on, farms and so forth. I can walk down the street, the ordinary street, and see the little dogs and cats. I never saw them before. All I saw was dope." He examined his wristwatch. "So," he added, "I understand how you feel."
"It's hard," Bruce said, "getting off."
"Everybody here got off. Of course, some go back on. If you left here you'd go back on. You know that."
He nodded.
"No person in this place has had an easy life. I'm not saying your life's been easy. Eddie would. He'd tell you that your troubles are mickey mouse. Nobody's troubles are mickey mouse. I see how bad you feel, but I felt that way once. Now I feel a lot better. Who's your roommate?"
"John."
"Oh yeah. John. Then you must be down in the basement."
"I like it," he said.
"Yeah, it's warm there. You probably get cold a lot. Most of us do, and I remember I did; I shook all the time, and crapped in my pants. Well, I tell you, you won't have to go through this again, if you stay here at New-Path."
"How long?" he said.
"The rest of your life."
Bruce raised his head.
"I can't leave," Mike said. "I'd get back on dope if I went out there. I've got too many buddies outside. I'd be back on the corner again, dealing and shooting, and then back in the prison for twenty years. You know—hey—I'm thirty-five years old and I'm getting married for the first time. Have you met Laura? My fiancée?"
He wasn't sure.
"Pretty girl, plump. Nice figure?"
He nodded.
"She's afraid to go out the door. Someone has to go with her. We're going to the zoo … we're taking the Executive Director's little boy to the San Diego Zoo next week, and Laura's scared to death. More scared than I am."
Silence.
"You heard me say that?" Mike said. "That I'm scared to go to the zoo?"
"Yes."
"I never have been to a zoo that I can recall," Mike said. "What do you do at a zoo? Maybe you know."
"Look into different cages and open confined areas."
"What kind of animals do they have?"
"All kinds."
"Wild ones, I guess. Normally wild. And exotical ones."
"At the San Diego Zoo they have almost every wild animal," Bruce said.
"They have one of those … what are they? Koala bears."
"Yes."
"I saw a commercial on TV," Mike said. "With a koala bear in it. They hop. They resemble a stuffed toy."
Bruce said, "The old Teddy bear, that kids have, that was created based on the koala bear, back in the twenties."
"Is that right. I guess you'd have to go to Australia to see a koala bear. Or are they extinct now?"
"There're plenty in Australia," Bruce said, "but export is banned. Live on the hides. They almost got extinct."
"I never been anywhere," Mike said, "except when I ran stuff from Mexico up to Vancouver, British Columbia. I always took the same route, so I never saw anything. I just drove very fast to get it over with. I drive one of the Foundation cars. If you feel like it, if you feel very bad, I'll drive you around. I'll drive and we can talk. I don't mind. Eddie and some others not here now did it for me. I don't mind."
"Thank you."
"Now we both ought to hit the sack. Have they got you on the kitchen stuff in the morning yet? Setting tables and serving?"
"No."
"Then you get to sleep to the same time I do. I'll see you at breakfast. You sit at the table with me and I'll introduce you to Laura."
"When are you getting married?"
"A month and a half. We'd be pleased if you were there. Of course, it'll be here at the building, so everyone will attend."
"Thank you," he said.
"Y'know what he is? A kissy-facy!" One shriller voice made him peer up. Among the awful screaming distortions one Chinese girl, howling. "You're a kissy-facy, that's what you are!"
"Can you fuck yourself? Can you fuck yourself?" the others chanted at him, curled up in a circle on the floor.
The Executive Director, in red bell-bottoms and pink slippers, smiled. Glittery little broken eyes, like a spook's. Rocking back and forth, his spindly legs tucked under him, without a pillow.
"Let's see you fuck yourself!"
The Executive Director seemed to enjoy it when his eyes saw something break; his eyes glinted and filled with mirth. Like a dramatic stage queer, from some old court, draped in flair, colorful, he peeped around and enjoyed. And then from time to time his voice warbled out, grating and monotonous, like a metal noise. A scraping mechanical hinge.
"The kissy-facy!" the Chinese girl howled at him; beside her another girl flapped her arms and bulged her cheeks, plop-plop. "Here!" the Chinese girl howled, swiveled around to jut her rump at him, pointing to it and howling at him, "Kiss my ass, then, kissy-facy! He wants to kiss people, kiss this, kissy-facy!"
"Let's see you fuck yourself!" the family chanted. "Jack yourself off, kissy-facy!"
He shut his eyes, but his ears still heard.
"You pimp," the Executive Director said slowly to him. Monotonously. "You fuck. You dong. You shit. You turd prick. You—" On and on.
His ears still brought in sounds, but they blended. He glanced up once when he made out Mike's voice, audibly during a lull. Mike sat gazing at him impassively, a little reddened, his neck swollen in the too-tight collar of his dress shirt.
"Bruce," Mike said, "what's the matter? What brought you here? What do you want to tell us? Can you tell us anything about yourself at all?"
"Pimp!" George screamed, bouncing up and down like a rubber ball. "What were you, pimp?"
The Chinese girl leaped up, shrieking, "Tell us, you cocksucking fairy whore pimp, you ass-kisser, you flick!"
He said, "I am an eye."
"You turd prick," the Executive Director said. "You weakling. You puke. You suck-off. You snatch."
He heard nothing now. And forgot the meaning of the words, and, finally, the words themselves.
Only, he sensed Mike watching him, watching and listening, hearing nothing; he did not know, he did not recall, he felt little, he felt bad, he wanted to leave.
The Vacuum in him grew. And he was actually a little glad.
"Look in here," a woman said, "where we keep the freaks."
He felt frightened as she opened the door. The door fell aside and noise spilled out of the room, the size surprising him; but he saw many little children playing.
That evening he watched two older men feed the children milk and little foods, sitting in a separate small alcove near the kitchen. Rick, the cook, gave the two older men the children's food first while everyone waited in the dining room.
Smiling at him, a Chinese girl, carrying plates to the dining room, said, "You like kids?"
When the senile patient awakens in the morning and asks for his mother, remind him that she is long since dead, that he is over eighty years old and living in a convalescent home, and that this is 1992 and not 1913 and that he must face reality and the fact that
A resident had torn down the rest of the item; it ended there. Evidently it had been clipped from a professional nursing magazine; it was on slick paper.
"What you'll be doing here first," George, the staff member, told him, leading him down the hall, "is the bathrooms. The floors, the basins, especially the toilets. There're three bathrooms in this structure, one on each floor."
"Okay," he said.
"Here's a mop. And a pail. You feel you know how to do this? Clean a bathroom? Start, and I'll watch you and give you pointers."
He carried the pail to the tub on the back porch and he poured soap into it and then ran the hot water. All he could see was the foam of water directly before him; foam and the roar.
But he could hear George's voice, out of sight. "Not too full, because you won't be able to lift it."
"Okay."
"You have a little trouble telling where you are," George said, after a time.
"I'm at New-Path." He set the pail down on the floor and it slopped; he stood staring down at it.
"New-Path where?"
"In Santa Ana."
George lifted the pail up for him, showing him how to grip the wire handle and swing it along as he walked. "Later on I think we'll transfer you to the island on one of the farms. First you have to go through the dishpan."
"I can do that," he said. "Dishpans."
"Do you like animals?"
"Sure."
"Or farming?"
"Animals."
"We'll see. We'll wait until we're acquainted with you better. Anyhow, that'll be a while; everyone is in the dishpan for a month. Everyone who comes in the door."
"I'd sort of like to live in the country," he said.
"We maintain several types of facilities. We'll determine what's best suited. You know, you can smoke here, but it isn't encouraged. This isn't Synanon; they don't let you smoke."
He said, "I don't have any more cigarettes."
"We give each resident one pack a day."
"Money?" He didn't have any.
"It's without cost. There's never any cost. You paid your cost." George took the mop, pushed it down into the pail, showed him how to mop.
"How come I don't have any money?"
"The same reason you don't have any wallet or any last name. It'll be given back to you, all given back. That's what we want to do: give you back what's been taken away from you."
He said, "These shoes don't fit."
"We depend on donations, but new ones only, from stores. Later on maybe we can measure you. Did you try all the shoes in the carton?"
"Yes," he said.
"All right, this is the bathroom here on the basement floor; do it first. Then when that's done, really done well, really perfect, then go upstairs—bring the mop and bucket—and I'll show you the bathroom up there, and then after that the bathroom on the third floor. But you got to get permission to go up there to the third floor, because that's where the chicks live, so ask one of the staff first; never go up there without permission." He slapped him on the back. "All right, Bruce? Understand?"
"Okay," Bruce said, mopping.
George said, "You'll be doing this kind of work, cleaning these bathrooms, until you get so you can do a good job. It doesn't matter what a person does; it's that he gets so he can do it right and be proud of it."
"Will I ever be like I was again?" Bruce asked.
"What you were brought you here. If you become what you were again then sooner or later it'd bring you here again. Next time you might not make it here, even. Isn't that right? You're lucky you got here; you almost didn't get here."
"Somebody else drove me here."
"You're fortunate. The next time they might not. They might dump you on the side of the freeway somewhere and say the hell with it."
He continued mopping.
"The best way is to do the bowls first, then the tub, then the toilets, and the floor last."
"Okay," he said, and put the mop away.
"There's a certain knack to it. You'll master it."
Concentrating, he saw before him cracks in the enamel of the basin; he dribbled cleaner down into the cracks and ran hot water. The steam rose, and he stood within it, unmoving, as the steam grew. He liked the smell.
***
After lunch he sat in the lounge drinking coffee. No one spoke to him, because they understood he was withdrawing. Sitting drinking from his cup, he could hear their conversation. They all knew one another."If you could see out from inside a dead person you could still see, but you couldn't operate the eye muscles, so you couldn't focus. You couldn't turn your head or your eyeballs. All you could do would be wait until some object passed by. You'd be frozen. Just wait and wait. It'd be a terrible scene."
He gazed down at the steam of his coffee, only that. The steam rose; he liked the smell.
"Hey."
A hand touched him. From a woman.
"Hey."
He looked sideways a little.
"How you doing?"
"Okay," he said.
"Feel any better?"
"I feel okay," he said.
He watched his coffee and the steam and did not look at her or any of them; he looked down and down at the coffee. He liked the warmth of the smell.
"You could see somebody when they passed by directly in front of you, and only then. Or whichever way you were looking, no other. If a leaf or something floated over your eye, that would be it, forever. Only the leaf. Nothing more; you couldn't turn."
"Okay," he said, holding the coffee, the cup with both his hands.
"Imagine being sentient but not alive. Seeing and even knowing, but not alive. Just looking out. Recognizing but not being alive. A person can die and still go on. Sometimes what looks out at you from a person's eyes maybe died back in childhood. What's dead in there still looks out. It's not just the body looking at you with nothing in it; there's still something in there but it died and just keeps on looking and looking; it can't stop looking."
Another person said, "That's what it means to die, to not be able to stop looking at whatever's in front of you. Some darn thing placed directly there, with nothing you can do about it such as selecting anything or changing anything. You can only accept what's put there as it is."
"How'd you like to gaze at a beer can throughout eternity? It might not be so bad. There'd be nothing to fear."
***
Before dinner, which was served to them in the dining room, they had Concept time. Several Concepts were put on the blackboard by different staff members and discussed.He sat with his hands folded in his lap, watching the floor and listening to the big coffee urn heating up; it went whoopwhoop, and the sound frightened him.
"Living and unliving things are exchanging properties."
Seated here and there on folding chairs, everyone discussed that. They seemed familiar with the Concept. Evidently these were parts of New-Path's way of thought, perhaps even memorized and then thought about again and again. Whoop-whoop.
"The drive of unliving things is stronger than the drive of living things."
They talked about that. Whoop-whoop. The noise of the coffee urn got louder and louder and scared him more, but he did not move or look; he sat where he was, listening. It was hard to hear what they were saying, because of the urn.
"We are incorporating too much unliving drive within us. And exchanging—Will somebody go look at that damn coffeepot to see why it's doing that?"
There was a break while someone examined the coffee urn. He sat staring down, waiting.
"I'll write this again. ‘We are exchanging too much passive life for the reality outside us.' "
They discussed that. The coffee urn became silent, and they trooped over to get coffee.
"Don't you want some coffee?" A voice behind him, touching him. "Ned? Bruce? What's his name—Bruce?"
"Okay." He got up and followed them to the coffee urn. He waited his turn. They watched as he put cream and sugar into his cup. They watched him return to his chair, the same one; he made certain he found it again, to reseat himself and go on listening. The warm coffee, its steam, made him feel good.
"Activity does not necessarily mean life. Quasars are active. And a monk meditating is not inanimate."
He sat looking at the empty cup; it was a china mug. Turning it over, he discovered printing on the bottom, and cracked glaze. The mug looked old, but it had been made in Detroit.
"Motion that is circular is the deadest form of the universe."
Another voice said, "Time."
He knew the answer to that. Time is round.
"Yes, we've got to break now, but does anyone have a fast final comment?"
"Well, following the line of least resistance, that's the rule of survival. Following, not leading."
Another voice, older, said, "Yes, the followers survive the leader. Like with Christ. Not vice versa."
"We better eat, because Rick stops serving exactly at five-on fifty now."
"Talk about that in the Game, not now."
Chairs screaked, creaked. He rose too, carried the old mug to the tray of others, and joined them in line out. He could smell cold clothes around him, good smells but cold.
It sounds like they're saying passive life is good, he thought. But there is no such thing as passive life. That's a contradiction.
He wondered what life was, what it meant; maybe he did not understand.
***
A huge bunch of donated flashy clothes had arrived. Several people stood with armfuls, and some had put shirts on, trying them out and getting approval."Hey, Mike. You're a sharp dude."
In the middle of the lounge stood a short stocky man, with curly hair and pug face; he shifted his belt, frowning. "How do you work this here? I don't see how you get it to stay. Why doesn't it loosen?" He had a three-inch buckleless belt with metal rings and he did not know how to cinch the rings. Glancing around, eyes twinkling, he said, "I think they gave me one nobody else could work."
Bruce went over behind him, reached around him, and cinched the belt looped back through the rings.
"Thanks," Mike said. He sorted through several dress shirts, lips pursed. To Bruce he said, "When I get married I'm going to wear one of these."
"Nice," he said.
Mike strolled toward two women at the far end of the lounge; they smiled. Holding a burgundy floral shirt up against himself, Mike said, "I'm going out on the town."
"All right, go in and get dinner!" the house director yelled briskly, in his powerful voice. He winked at Bruce. "How you doing, fella?"
"Fine," Bruce said.
"Sound like you got a cold."
"Yes," he agreed, "it's from coming off. Could I have any Dristan or—"
"No chemicals," the house director said. "Nothing. Hurry on in and eat. How's your appetite?"
"Better," he said, following. They smiled at him, from tables.
***
After dinner he sat halfway up the wide stairs to the second floor. No one spoke to him; a conference was taking place. He sat there until it finished. Everyone emerged, filling the hall.He felt them seeing him, and maybe some spoke to him. He sat on the stairs, hunched over, his arms wrapped around him, seeing and seeing. The dark carpet before his eyes.
Presently no more voices.
"Bruce?"
He did not stir.
"Bruce?" A hand touched him.
He said nothing.
"Bruce, come on into the lounge. You're supposed to be in your room in bed, but, see, I want to talk to you." Mike led him by waving him to follow. He accompanied Mike down the stairs and into the lounge, which was empty. When they were in the lounge Mike shut the door.
Seating himself in a deep chair, Mike indicated for him to sit down facing him. Mike appeared tired; his small eyes were ringed, and he rubbed his forehead.
"I been up since five-thirty this morning," Mike said.
A knock; the door started to open.
Very loudly, Mike yelled, "I want nobody to come in here; we're talking. Hear?"
Mumbles. The door shut.
"Y'know, you better change your shirt a couple times a day," Mike said. "You're sweating something fierce."
He nodded.
"What part of the state are you from?"
He said nothing.
"You come to me from now or when you feel this bad. I went through the same thing, about a year and a half ago. They used to drive me around in cars. Different staff members. You met Eddie? The tall thin drink-a-water that puts down everybody? He drove me for eight days around and around. Never left me alone." Mike yelled suddenly, "Will you get out of here? We're in here talking. Go watch the TV." His voice sank, and he eyed Bruce. "Sometimes you got to do that. Never leave someone alone."
"I see," Bruce said.
"Bruce, be careful you don't take your own life."
"Yes, sir," Bruce said, staring down.
"Don't call me sir!"
He nodded.
"Were you in the Service, Bruce? Is that what it was? You got on the stuff in the Service?"
"No."
"You shoot it or drop it?"
He made no sound.
" ‘Sir,' " Mike said. "I've served, myself, ten years in prison. One time I saw eight guys in our row of cells cut their throats in one day. We slept with our feet in the toilet, our cells were that small. That's what prison is, you sleep with your feet in the toilet. You never been in prison, have you?"
"No," he said.
"But on the other hand, I saw prisoners eighty years old still happy to be alive and wanting to stay alive. I remember when I was on dope, and I shot it; I started shooting when I was in my teens. I never did anything else. I shot up and then I went in for ten years. I shot up so much—heroin and D together—that I never did anything else; I never saw anything else. Now I'm off it and I'm out of prison and I'm here. You know what I notice the most? You know what the big difference is I notice? Now I can walk down the street outside and see something. I can hear water when we visit the forest—you'll see our other facilities later on, farms and so forth. I can walk down the street, the ordinary street, and see the little dogs and cats. I never saw them before. All I saw was dope." He examined his wristwatch. "So," he added, "I understand how you feel."
"It's hard," Bruce said, "getting off."
"Everybody here got off. Of course, some go back on. If you left here you'd go back on. You know that."
He nodded.
"No person in this place has had an easy life. I'm not saying your life's been easy. Eddie would. He'd tell you that your troubles are mickey mouse. Nobody's troubles are mickey mouse. I see how bad you feel, but I felt that way once. Now I feel a lot better. Who's your roommate?"
"John."
"Oh yeah. John. Then you must be down in the basement."
"I like it," he said.
"Yeah, it's warm there. You probably get cold a lot. Most of us do, and I remember I did; I shook all the time, and crapped in my pants. Well, I tell you, you won't have to go through this again, if you stay here at New-Path."
"How long?" he said.
"The rest of your life."
Bruce raised his head.
"I can't leave," Mike said. "I'd get back on dope if I went out there. I've got too many buddies outside. I'd be back on the corner again, dealing and shooting, and then back in the prison for twenty years. You know—hey—I'm thirty-five years old and I'm getting married for the first time. Have you met Laura? My fiancée?"
He wasn't sure.
"Pretty girl, plump. Nice figure?"
He nodded.
"She's afraid to go out the door. Someone has to go with her. We're going to the zoo … we're taking the Executive Director's little boy to the San Diego Zoo next week, and Laura's scared to death. More scared than I am."
Silence.
"You heard me say that?" Mike said. "That I'm scared to go to the zoo?"
"Yes."
"I never have been to a zoo that I can recall," Mike said. "What do you do at a zoo? Maybe you know."
"Look into different cages and open confined areas."
"What kind of animals do they have?"
"All kinds."
"Wild ones, I guess. Normally wild. And exotical ones."
"At the San Diego Zoo they have almost every wild animal," Bruce said.
"They have one of those … what are they? Koala bears."
"Yes."
"I saw a commercial on TV," Mike said. "With a koala bear in it. They hop. They resemble a stuffed toy."
Bruce said, "The old Teddy bear, that kids have, that was created based on the koala bear, back in the twenties."
"Is that right. I guess you'd have to go to Australia to see a koala bear. Or are they extinct now?"
"There're plenty in Australia," Bruce said, "but export is banned. Live on the hides. They almost got extinct."
"I never been anywhere," Mike said, "except when I ran stuff from Mexico up to Vancouver, British Columbia. I always took the same route, so I never saw anything. I just drove very fast to get it over with. I drive one of the Foundation cars. If you feel like it, if you feel very bad, I'll drive you around. I'll drive and we can talk. I don't mind. Eddie and some others not here now did it for me. I don't mind."
"Thank you."
"Now we both ought to hit the sack. Have they got you on the kitchen stuff in the morning yet? Setting tables and serving?"
"No."
"Then you get to sleep to the same time I do. I'll see you at breakfast. You sit at the table with me and I'll introduce you to Laura."
"When are you getting married?"
"A month and a half. We'd be pleased if you were there. Of course, it'll be here at the building, so everyone will attend."
"Thank you," he said.
***
He sat in the Game and they screamed at him. Faces, all over, screaming; he gazed down."Y'know what he is? A kissy-facy!" One shriller voice made him peer up. Among the awful screaming distortions one Chinese girl, howling. "You're a kissy-facy, that's what you are!"
"Can you fuck yourself? Can you fuck yourself?" the others chanted at him, curled up in a circle on the floor.
The Executive Director, in red bell-bottoms and pink slippers, smiled. Glittery little broken eyes, like a spook's. Rocking back and forth, his spindly legs tucked under him, without a pillow.
"Let's see you fuck yourself!"
The Executive Director seemed to enjoy it when his eyes saw something break; his eyes glinted and filled with mirth. Like a dramatic stage queer, from some old court, draped in flair, colorful, he peeped around and enjoyed. And then from time to time his voice warbled out, grating and monotonous, like a metal noise. A scraping mechanical hinge.
"The kissy-facy!" the Chinese girl howled at him; beside her another girl flapped her arms and bulged her cheeks, plop-plop. "Here!" the Chinese girl howled, swiveled around to jut her rump at him, pointing to it and howling at him, "Kiss my ass, then, kissy-facy! He wants to kiss people, kiss this, kissy-facy!"
"Let's see you fuck yourself!" the family chanted. "Jack yourself off, kissy-facy!"
He shut his eyes, but his ears still heard.
"You pimp," the Executive Director said slowly to him. Monotonously. "You fuck. You dong. You shit. You turd prick. You—" On and on.
His ears still brought in sounds, but they blended. He glanced up once when he made out Mike's voice, audibly during a lull. Mike sat gazing at him impassively, a little reddened, his neck swollen in the too-tight collar of his dress shirt.
"Bruce," Mike said, "what's the matter? What brought you here? What do you want to tell us? Can you tell us anything about yourself at all?"
"Pimp!" George screamed, bouncing up and down like a rubber ball. "What were you, pimp?"
The Chinese girl leaped up, shrieking, "Tell us, you cocksucking fairy whore pimp, you ass-kisser, you flick!"
He said, "I am an eye."
"You turd prick," the Executive Director said. "You weakling. You puke. You suck-off. You snatch."
He heard nothing now. And forgot the meaning of the words, and, finally, the words themselves.
Only, he sensed Mike watching him, watching and listening, hearing nothing; he did not know, he did not recall, he felt little, he felt bad, he wanted to leave.
The Vacuum in him grew. And he was actually a little glad.
***
It was late in the day."Look in here," a woman said, "where we keep the freaks."
He felt frightened as she opened the door. The door fell aside and noise spilled out of the room, the size surprising him; but he saw many little children playing.
That evening he watched two older men feed the children milk and little foods, sitting in a separate small alcove near the kitchen. Rick, the cook, gave the two older men the children's food first while everyone waited in the dining room.
Smiling at him, a Chinese girl, carrying plates to the dining room, said, "You like kids?"