Part 11 (1/2)

” '... that man indeed lives in a zone where no multiplicity can distress him and which is nevertheless the most active workshop of universal fulfilment.' ” Luckman shut the book.

With a high degree of apprehension, Charles Freck moved in between Barris and Luckman. ”Cool it, you guys.”

”Get out of the way, Freck,” Luckman said, bringing back his right arm, low, for a vast sweeping haymaker at Barris. ”Come on, Barris, I'm going to coldc.o.c.k you into tomorrow, for talking to your betters like that.”

With a bleat of wild, appealing terror, Barris dropped his felt pen and pad of paper and scuttled off erratically toward the open front door of the house, yelling back as he ran, ”I hear the phone about the rebuilt carb.”

They watched him go.

”I was just kidding him,” Luckman said, rubbing his lower lip.

”What if he gets his gun and silencer?” Freck said, his nervousness off the scale entirely. He moved by degrees in the direction of his own parked car, to drop swiftly behind it if Barris reappeared firing.

”Come on,” Arctor said to Luckman; they fell back together into their car work, while Freck loitered apprehensively by his own vehicle, wondering why he had decided to bop over here today. It had no mellow quality today, here, none at all, as it usually did. He had sensed the bad vibes under the kidding right from the start. What's the motherf.u.c.k wrong? he wondered, and got back somberly into his own car, to start it up.

Are things going to get heavy and bad here too, he wondered, like they did at Jerry Fabin's house during the last few weeks with him? It used to be mellow here, he thought, everybody kicking back and turning on, grooving to acid rock, especially the Stones. Donna sitting here in her leather jacket and boots, filling caps, Luckman rolling joints and telling about the seminar he planned to give at UCLA in dope-smoking and joint-rolling, and how someday he'd suddenly roll the perfect joint and it would be placed under gla.s.s and helium back at Const.i.tution Hall, as part of American history with those other items of similar importance. When I look back, he thought, even to when Jim Barris and I were sitting at the Fiddler's, the other day ... it was better even then. Jerry began it, he thought; that's what's coming down here, that there which carried off Jerry. How can days and happenings and moments so good become so quickly ugly, and for no reason, for no real reason? Just-change. With nothing causing it.

”I'm splitting,” he said to Luckman and Arctor, who were watching him rev up.

”No, stay, hey, man,” Luckman said with a warm smile. ”We need you. You're a brother.”

”Naw, I'm cutting out.”

From the house Barris appeared cautiously. He carried a hammer. ”It was a wrong number,” he shouted, advancing with great caution, halting and peering like a crab-thing in a drive-in movie.

”What's the hammer for?” Luckman said.

Arctor said, ”To fix the engine.”

”Thought I would bring it with me,” Barris explained as he returned gingerly to the Olds, ”since I was indoors and noticed it.”

”The most dangerous kind of person,” Arctor said, ”is one who is afraid of his own shadow.” That was the last Freck heard as he drove away; he pondered over what Arctor meant, if he meant him, Charles Freck. He felt shame. But s.h.i.+t, he thought, why stick around when it's such a super b.u.mmer? Where's the chicken in that? Don't never partic.i.p.ate in no bad scenes, he reminded himself; that was his motto in life. So he drove away now, without looking back. Let them snuff each other, he thought. Who needs them? But he felt bad, really bad, to leave them and to have witnessed the darkening change, and he wondered again why, and what it signified, but then it occurred to him that maybe things would go the other way again and get better, and that cheered him. In fact, it caused him to roll a short fantasy number in his head as he drove along avoiding invisible police cars: THERE THEY ALL SAT AS BEFORE.

Even people who were either dead or burned out, like Jerry Fabin. They all sat here and there in a sort of clear white light, which wasn't daylight but better light than that, a kind of sea which lay beneath them and above them as well.

Donna and a couple other chicks looked so foxy-they had on halters and hot pants, or tank tops with no bras. He could hear music although he could not quite distinguish what track it was from what LP. Maybe Hendrix! he thought. Yeah, an old Hendrix track, or now all at once it was J.J. All of them: Jim Croce, and J.J., but especially Hendrix. ”Before I die,” Hendrix was murmuring, ”let me live my life as I want to,” and then immediately the fantasy number blew up because he had forgotten both that Hendrix was dead and how Hendrix and also Joplin had died, not to mention Croce. Hendrix and J.J. OD'ing on smack, both of them, two neat cool fine people like that, two outrageous humans, and he remembered how he'd heard that Janis's manager had only allowed her a couple hundred bucks now and then; she couldn't have the rest, all that she earned, because of her junk habit. And then he heard in his head her song ”All Is Loneliness,” and he began to cry. And in that condition drove on toward home.

In his living room, sitting with his friends and attempting to determine whether he needed a new carb, a rebuilt carb, or a modification carb-and-manifold, Robert Arctor sensed the silent constant scrutiny, the electronic presence, of the holo-scanners. And felt good about it.

”You look mellow,” Luckman said. ”Putting out a hundred bucks wouldn't make me mellow.”

”I decided to cruise along the street until I come across an Olds like mine,” Arctor explained, ”and then unbolt their carb and pay nothing. Like everyone else we know.”

”Especially Donna,” Barris said in agreement. ”I wish she hadn't been in here the other day while we were gone. Donna steals everything she can carry, and if she can't carry it she phones up her rip-off gang buddies and they show up and carry it off for her.”

”I'll tell you a story I heard about Donna,” Luckman said. ”One time, see, Donna put a quarter into one of those automatic stamp machines that operate off a coil of stamps, and the machine was dingey and just kept cranking out stamps. Finally she had a marketbasket full. It still still kept cranking them out. Ultimately she had like-she and her rip-off friends counted them-over eighteen thousand U.S. fifteen-cent stamps. Well, that was cool, except what was Donna Hawthorne going to do with them? She never wrote a letter in her life, except to her lawyer to sue some guy who burned her in a dope deal.” kept cranking them out. Ultimately she had like-she and her rip-off friends counted them-over eighteen thousand U.S. fifteen-cent stamps. Well, that was cool, except what was Donna Hawthorne going to do with them? She never wrote a letter in her life, except to her lawyer to sue some guy who burned her in a dope deal.”

”Donna does that?” that?” Arctor said. ”She has an attorney to use in a default on an illegal transaction? How can she do that?” Arctor said. ”She has an attorney to use in a default on an illegal transaction? How can she do that?”

”She just probably says the dude owes her bread.”

”Imagine getting an angry pay-up-or-go-to-court letter from an attorney about a dope deal,” Arctor said, marveling at Donna, as he frequently did.

”Anyhow,” Luckman continued, ”there she was with a marketbasket full of at least eighteen thousand U.S. fifteen-cent stamps, and what the h.e.l.l to do with them? You can't sell them back to the Post Office. Anyhow, when the P.O. came to service the machine they'd know it went dingey, and anyone who showed up at a window with all those fifteen-cent stamps, especially a coil of them-s.h.i.+t, they'd flash on it; in fact, they'd be waiting for Donna, right? So she thought about it-after of course she'd loaded the coil of stamps into her MG and drove off-and then she phoned up more of those rip-off freaks she works with and had them drive over with a jackhammer of some kind, water-cooled and water-silenced, a real kinky special one which, Christ, they ripped off, too, and they dug the stamp machine loose from the concrete in the middle of the night and carried it to her place in the back of a Ford Ranchero. Which they also probably ripped off. For the stamps.”

”You mean she sold the stamps?” Arctor said, marveling. ”From a vending machine? One by one?”

”They remounted-this is what I heard, anyhow-they relocated the U.S. stamp machine at a busy intersection where a lot of people pa.s.s by, but back out of sight where no mail truck would spot it, and they put it back in operation.”

”They would have been wiser just to knock over the coin box,” Barris said.

”So they were selling stamps, then,” Luckman said, ”for like a few weeks until the machine ran out, like it naturally had to eventually. And what the f.u.c.k next? I can imagine Donna's brain working on that during those weeks, that peasant-thrift brain ... her family is peasant stock from some European country. Anyhow, by the time it ran out of its coil, Donna had decided to convert it over to soft drinks, which are from the P.O.-they're really guarded. And you go into the bucket forever for that.”

”Is this true?” Barris said.

”Is what true?” Luckman said.

Barris said, ”That girl is disturbed. She should be forcibly committed. Do you realize that all our taxes were raised by her stealing those stamps?” He sounded angry again.

”Write the government and tell them,” Luckman said, his face cold with distaste for Barris. ”Ask Donna for a stamp to mail it; she'll sell you one.”

”At full price,” Barris said, equally mad.

The holos, Arctor thought, will have miles and miles of this on their expensive tapes. Not miles and miles of dead tape but miles and miles of tripped out tape.

It was not what went on while Robert Arctor sat before a holo-scanner that mattered so much, he considered; it was what took place-at least for him ... for whom? ... for Fred-while Bob Arctor was elsewhere or asleep and others were within scanning range. So I should split, he thought, as I planned it out, leaving these guys, and sending other people I know over here. I should make my house super-accessible from now on.

And then a dreadful, ugly thought rose inside him. Suppose when I play the tapes back I see Donna when she's in here-opening a window with a spoon or knife blade-and slipping in and destroying my possessions and stealing. Another Another Donna: the chick as she really is, or anyhow as she is when I can't see her. The philosophical ”when a tree falls in the forest” number. What is Donna like when no one is around to watch her? Donna: the chick as she really is, or anyhow as she is when I can't see her. The philosophical ”when a tree falls in the forest” number. What is Donna like when no one is around to watch her?

Does, he wondered, the gentle lovely shrewd and very kind, superkind girl transform herself instantly into something sly? Will I see a change which will blow my mind? Donna or Luckman, anyone I care about. Like your pet cat or dog when you're out of the house ... the cat empties a pillowcase and starts stuffing your valuables in it: electric clock and bedside radio, shaver, all it can stuff in before you get back: another cat entirely while you're gone, ripping you off and p.a.w.ning it all, or lighting up your joints, or walking on the ceiling, or phoning people long distance ... G.o.d knows. A nightmare, a weird other world beyond the mirror, a terror city reverse thing, with unrecognizable ent.i.ties creeping about; Donna crawling on all fours, eating from the animals' dishes ... any kind of psychedelic wild trip, unfathomable and horrid.

h.e.l.l, he thought; for that matter, maybe Bob Arctor rises up in the night from deep sleep and does trips like that. Has s.e.xual relations with the wall. Or mysterious freaks show up who he's never seen before, a whole bunch of them, with special heads that swivel all the way around, like owls'. And the audio-scanners will pick up the far-out demented conspiracies hatched out by him and them to blow up the men's room at the Standard station by filling the toilet with plastic explosives for G.o.d knows what brain-charred purpose. Maybe this sort of stuff goes on every night while he just imagines he's asleep-and is gone by day.

Bob Arctor, he speculated, may learn more new information about himself than he is ready for, more than he will about Donna in her little leather jacket, and Luckman in his fancy duds, and even Barris-maybe when n.o.body's around Jim Barris merely goes to sleep. And sleeps until they reappear.

But he doubted it. More likely Barris whipped out a hidden transmitter from the mess and chaos of his room-which, like all the other rooms in the house, had now for the first time come under twenty-four-hour scanning-and sent a cryptic signal to the other bunch of cryptic motherf.u.c.kers with whom he currently conspired for whatever people like him or them conspired for. Another branch, Bob Arctor reflected, of the authorities.

On the other hand, Hank and those guys downtown would not be too happy if Bob Arctor left his house, now that the monitors had been expensively and elaborately installed, and was never seen again: never showed up on any of the tape. He could not therefore take off in order to fulfill his personal surveillance plans at the expense of theirs. After all, it was their money.

In the script being filmed, he would at all times have to be the star actor. Actor, Arctor, he thought. Bob the Actor who is being hunted; he who is the El Primo huntee.

They say you never recognize your own voice when you first hear it played back on tape. And when you see yourself on video tape, or like this, in a 3-D hologram, you don't recognize yourself visually either. You imagined you were a tall fat man with black hair, and instead you're a tiny thin woman with no hair at all ... is that it? I'm sure I'll recognize Bob Arctor, he thought, if by nothing else than by the clothes he wears or by a process of elimination. What isn't Barris or Luckman and lives here must be Bob Arctor. Unless it's one of the dogs or cats. I'll try to keep my professional eye trained on something which walks upright.

”Barris,” he said, ”I'm going out to see if I can score some beans.” Then he pretended to remember he had no car; he got that sort of expression. ”Luckman,” he said, ”is your Falcon running?”

”No,” Luckman said thoughtfully, after consideration, ”I don't think so.”

”Can I borrow your car, Jim?” Arctor asked Barris.

”I wonder ... if you can handle my car,” Barris said.