Radio Free Albemuth

  “What are you doing?” Vivian called sharply, from outside the locked door; she began to knock. “What did you do?”

  I flushed the toilet once more, to be absolutely sure, and then leisurely unlocked the door.

  “Did you flush it?” she demanded incredulously.

  “Yes I did,” I said.

  “Why? Well, never mind; what’s done is done. I have a little high-grade hash we can smoke. Fortunately I brought my hash pipe with me.” She returned to the living room; I followed after her. It would be harder getting the hash away from her, I realized. No one voluntarily surrendered hash, especially after what I had just done.

  Vivian sat on the couch, her shoes off, legs drawn up, lighting the tiny cube of hash in her hash pipe. “Here.” As smoke came from it she handed it to me. “This is the best hash I’ve had in months. It’ll really get you off.”

  “I don’t want drugs in my house,” I said.

  “No one can see in.”

  “I’m being set up,” I said.

  “Everyone thinks they’re being set up. I’ve been turning on for two years and I’ve never been busted.”

  “Yes, but you’re a FAPer.”

  “That makes it more dangerous for me,” Vivian said. “Most FAPers are straight; it’s very risky to be with FAP and to turn on at the same time. I have to wait until I’m around people like you before I can do it. That’s one reason I was glad when they assigned me to cover you. That’s why I came over here tonight when you called, so we could turn on together.”

  “I don’t turn on,” I said.

  “Of course you do. Everyone knows you do. You’re one of the biggest dopers in America. It’s in your bio material published with your books—look what Harlan Ellison wrote in Dangerous Visions. We have that in triplicate. And all your friends say you turn on.”

  “That was made up,” I said, “to sell books.”

  “You turn on,” Vivian said. “Here, give me my hash pipe back. It’s my turn for a hit.”

  I could scarcely flush her hash pipe down the toilet, so I returned it to her. Vivian inhaled deeply, her face flushed.

  As she passed it back to me she said, coughing. “Hash makes me horny.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Well.”

  “Does it make you horny?” She-took another hit from her pipe, her eyes beginning to glaze over now, becoming unfocused; her whole body seemed limp, and at grateful ease.

  “Let’s go in the bedroom,” I said.

  “In a minute. When we’re through with the hash.” She continued to smoke, ritualistically now, in a lazy, blithe way. Her cares, her agitation about my political report, my dumping the lid of grass, had vanished.

  The time had now come to turn the tables on the tyranny oppressing me. Once I had made little Vivian Kaplan my mistress, I could stop worrying about my political report. Taking her by the hand, I set her hash pipe down and lifted her to her feet. “Are you on the pill?” I asked her as I guided her down the hall toward my bedroom. I had to hold on to her to keep her from weaving into the wall.

  “Of course I am,” Vivian said. She was reflexively starting to unbutton her blouse as we approached the open bedroom door; humming and smiling from the hash, she entered the bedroom, and I kicked the door shut after us.

  “Just a minute,” I said as she sat on the edge of the bed removing her skirt. “I’ll be right back.” I returned to the living room where she had left her hash pipe. Placing it carefully back in her purse I closed the purse around it, thinking, this way if they break in and find the dope it’ll obviously be hers. Despite her efforts, they won’t be able to pin it on me.

  “Hurry up,” Vivian called from the bedroom. “I’m starting to crash.” I hurried back down the hall to the bedroom and found her lying nude on the bed, her clothes in a pile on my typing chair. “Hash makes me sleepy sometimes,” she said. “I have to get it on right away or I’m too out of it.”

  We made love. Toward the end Vivian did fall into a deep, untroubled sleep. Well, I said to myself as I padded down the hall to the bathroom to take a shower, I am now master—rather than victim—of the situation. This girl is not going to spy on me any longer. I have turned an enemy into something even better than a friend: a co-conspirator in sexuality.

  After I had taken my shower I reentered the bedroom to find her asleep with the top sheet pulled over her. “Vivian,” I said, touching her on the shoulder, “is there anything I can get you? Something to drink?”

  “I’m hungry,” Vivian murmured sleepily. “After I make out I’m always terribly hungry. When I first was making out I used to eat up everything in the refrigerator afterward. Half a chicken, a pizza, two hamburgers, and a quart of milk…whatever I could find.”

  “I can fix you a frozen beef pie,” I said.

  “Got any soft drinks, like a Pepsi?”

  I had a can of Coors beer, which I brought her. Vivian sat in her underwear on the bed, drinking the beer.

  “What do you do,” I asked her, “when you’re not working for FAP? I mean, you can’t run errands for FAP all the time.”

  “I go to school,” Vivian said.

  “Where? Cal State Fullerton? Santa Ana College?”

  “Valentia High,” Vivian said. “I’m a senior. I graduate this June.”

  “High School!” I said, stricken. “Vivian—” I could hardly speak; I was shaking with fear. “How old are you, for chrissakes?”

  “Seventeen,” Vivian said, sipping the beer. “I’ll be eighteen this September.”

  Oh, my God, I realized. She’s underage. It’s statutory rape! A felony! As bad as the dope—in fact, worse. All she has to do is mention it to the police; arrest is automatic.

  “Vivian,” I grated, “it’s illegal for you to go to bed with me. Don’t you know that?” I began getting her clothes together. “You have to get right out of here!”

  “Nobody knows I’m here,” Vivian said calmly; she continued drinking the Coors beer. “Except Bill.”

  “Who the hell is ‘Bill’?”

  “The boy I was with earlier today, when we came as a team. I told him I’d call him when I got home, so he’d know I’m all right. We’re engaged.”

  It was too much for me; I sank down on the chair facing her and just stared at her.

  “He won’t mind,” Vivian said. “Just so long as you file your political response in time. That’s all he cares about, racking up points at headquarters. We’re on a quota system, but Bill, he always exceeds his quota and scores extra points. He’s the most gung-ho FAPer among us. That’s why I like him; he sort of offsets my own, you know, my indifferent attitude, as they call it. I don’t really care about the quota or the points; I just enjoy meeting the people they assign us to.”

  And I had done it to myself. It had been my idea, my scheme, to lure the girl back to my house at night on a phony pretext, in order to go to bed with her. I had put my ass in the bed and my neck in the noose, all in the same move. Wonderful. Now what was I supposed to do? They really had me. I cooperated or I went to the Orange County Jail. And people died—were clubbed to death—at the Orange County Jail; it happened all the time. Especially political prisoners.

  I’ll be writing confessions the rest of my life, I said to myself. And articles on my friends. If they asked me to do a whole book on Nicholas I’d have to comply. Vivian Kaplan has me. I think I was set up, I thought suddenly. She got me to do this; that’s why they send attractive young girls around, underage girls that don’t look underage. Girls with dope and long legs and a welcoming innocent smile, who are glad to drive over to your house late at night, alone. Girls whose phone numbers are typed on the front of the goddamn informer kit, big as life. A veritable come-on.

  “Now, about the God business,” Vivian said, in a practical tone of voice. The hash had worn off, she was no longer mellow. “You can’t use it, Phil; we’re not interested in Nicholas Brady talking to God. What we’d like to know about are the Communist Party ties he still has left over
from his old activist days at Berkeley. My superior feels that Brady got his job at Progressive Records so that he could very carefully slip aspiring new left-wing artists into the public eye. It’s a common technique they use; meanwhile, of course, Brady remains personally inactive. But he must have links with the people who instruct him, even if it’s just by mail. You’re in a position to read his mail, aren’t you? That’s how the Party maintains control: by mail from New York, where the KGB operates. That connects the operator here with Moscow and the international planning network. We want to know which artists he’s signed are crypto-Communists and who he gets his orders from; those are the twin prongs of—”

  “Nicholas is just trying to make a buck,” I said wearily. “So his kid can go to the dentist.”

  “He doesn’t meet with anyone from New York? What about phone calls?”

  “Tap his phone,” I said, “for all I care.”

  “If you could get possession of his phone statement,” Vivian continued, “and see if he’s called New York; that would—”

  “Vivian,” I said. “I’m not going to do it.”

  “Not going to do what?”

  “Spy on Nicholas. Or anyone else. You can fuck yourself. Take your kit back. I’ve had it.”

  After a pause Vivian said. “We have quite a bit on you, Phil. A lot of people know a lot about you.”

  “So what,” I said, resigned and bitter at it all, ready to throw in the sponge, come what might. There was just so much they could do to me, just so much and no more.

  Vivian said. “I’ve read the file on you.”

  “So?”

  “So a case could be made against you that would stand up in court.”

  “You’re wrong about that,” I said, but it was I who was bluffing, not her. And we both knew it; I could see the sense of certitude on her face.

  “Do you want us to go after you instead of Nicholas?” she asked.

  I shrugged.

  “It could be arranged. Really, we could get both of you together; your lives are intertwined. If one of you falls, the other falls automatically.”

  “Is that what your superior at FAP GHQ told you?” I said.

  “We discussed it. A number of us.”

  “Then do your damnedest,” I said. “I already know about the dope you’ve been hiding around here; I found it and destroyed it. I was tipped off.”

  “You couldn’t have found it all,” Vivian said.

  “Is there an infinite amount?”

  “No, but the person hiding it—” She broke off.

  “If he can hide it,” I said wearily. “I can find it. And if I can find it, that’s the end of it. Like the lid of grass you brought. A FAPer smoking grass—it doesn’t compute. You and your goddamn hash pipe—Christ, as soon as you brought out the grass I knew you were setting me up.”

  Vivian said. “Phil, you were set up a long time ago. What I did tonight is very little. Going to bed with me—”

  “Let me take a look at your California driver’s license.” Suddenly something occurred to me. Maybe she wasn’t underage after all. I hurried past her, out of the bedroom and down the hall in the direction of the living room; Vivian scuttled right behind me, trying to overtake me. It was no use; I wedged myself in the hallway and beat her to the living room and her purse.

  “Get out of my purse!” she shrieked.

  I grabbed up her purse, sprinted with it into the bathroom, locked the bathroom door after me. In an instant I had shaken the contents out onto the bathroom rug.

  The driver’s license gave her age as nineteen. She was not underage. That too had been a police trap, and an empty one. So much for that. But it showed me how close I was to the edge, how little separated me from a fall to oblivion.

  I unlocked the bathroom door. Vivian was nowhere to be seen. Listening, straining, I heard her voice far off; she was on the phone in the bedroom.

  When I entered the bedroom she hung up and stood facing me defiantly. “May I have my things back?” she said.

  “Sure,” I said. “They’re on the bathroom rug. You can pick them up yourself.” I accompanied her to the bathroom, where she knelt down and began to gather up her papers, cosmetics, wallet, and assorted possessions. “What did you do,” I asked, “call FAP to tell them the plan didn’t work?”

  Vivian stuffed her possessions back into her purse, straightened up, returned to the bedroom silently to put on her shoes, walked down the hall to the living room, where she slid into her coat, and then, all her things gathered together, including her hash pipe, she opened the front door of the house and walked up the driveway to her parked car.

  I went with her. The night was warm and pleasant. I felt good indeed; I had parried another police trap.

  “I’ll see you again, Phil,” Vivian said.

  “No, you won’t,” I said, opening her car door for her. “I have no wish to see you again. In bed or out of it.”

  “You’ll see me again,” Vivian said, getting in and starting up the motor.

  I said. “You have nothing on me; I don’t have to see you.”

  “Ask me what I did while you were taking your shower.”

  I looked down at her as she sat calmly behind the wheel of her car. “You did—”

  “I hid it where you’ll never find it,” Vivian said; she began rapidly rolling up her window.

  “Hid what?” I grabbed at the window, but it continued to roll up; I grabbed at the door handle, but she had locked it.

  “Cocaine,” Vivian said. Her window closed, she shifted into gear, the car suddenly roared off into the street and made a sharp right turn, its tires squealing. I stood impotently watching her go.

  Bull, I said to myself. Another crock, like her being underage. But—how could I be sure? I had been in the shower at least fifteen minutes. Vivian Kaplan had had fifteen unobstructed free minutes to hide anything she wanted around my house—to hide stuff, to pry, to read, to see where things were…anything she cared to do. Possibly, I thought, the whole going to bed with me had been only a ploy—designed to tie me up by distraction, so that I lost sight of the real issue. And what was the real issue? The fact that an admitted government agent, wearing an armband, openly identified as such, had obtained from me fifteen minutes of absolute privilege to come and go in my house, alone. She had been legally there. I had invited her over. And this, after my pal the friendly cop had warned me.

  There is no use warning me, I said to myself with savage, helpless wrath. I am too fucking stupid. The warning is wasted; I just keep on truckin’ anyhow. I invite them over; then I lock myself up in the shower for fifteen minutes, giving them the run of the house. She could have planted a gun and dope as well; there I go, down the tubes, forever. Victim of a police trick carried off to perfection, in that I did most of the work myself.

  And suppose it’s another lie. Suppose she didn’t hide any coke. Quantities of coke are minute; I could look for days, weeks, and never find it, and if there isn’t any I could drive myself nuts, work myself into a paranoid psychotic frenzy and not find it—not find it and never know if it was an inch away or if it never existed. Meanwhile, every second of the night and day, waiting for the cops to come in on a tip and bust me—tear open a wall and find the coke right away: a ten-year sentence.

  Suddenly chilled, I thought, Maybe her phone call was the tip. The tip the police were waiting for; not that the drugs are there, but that the drugs had been placed there successfully, that when they break in and examine the house they will find something.

  Then my days—my hours—are numbered, I thought. There is no use searching. Better just to sit. Just walk back into the house and sit.

  I did so. I closed the front door and seated myself on the couch; presently I got up to turn on the FM. Again I sat down. I listened to a performance of the Beethoven Emperor Concerto, sitting, listening, waiting, listening not to the familiar music but for the sounds of approaching cars. It was a hell of an experience. Time stretched out immeasurabl
y. I had to go into the kitchen, finally, to look at the stove clock in order to obtain any idea of how late it was. One hour, two hours, passed. No one came: no cars, no pounding on the door, no pump shotguns and men in uniform. Just the radio playing and the house empty except for me.

  I felt my forehead; it was hot and sweaty. Going into the bathroom I got the thermometer, shook it down, and took my temperature. It was 102 degrees: a fever from fear and tension. My body made ill by the stress it was under, unfair and unjust stress, but very real. She was smart to shoot right out of here, I said to myself. After she told me that, whether it was true or not. Jammed down the gas pedal and laid rubber. If she shows up here again I’ll murder her. She knows it; she’ll stay away.

  If I get out of this safe and alive, I said to myself, I will write a book about this. Somehow I will figure out a way to work it into a novel. So other people will know. Vivian Kaplan will go down in history for what she is, for what she does. That is my promise to myself, to keep myself going.

  Never walk over a writer, I said to myself, unless you’re positive he can’t rise up behind you. If you’re going to burn him, make sure he’s dead. Because if he’s alive, he will talk: talk in written form, on the printed, permanent page.

  But am I alive? I asked myself.

  Only time could tell. I felt at this moment as if a mortal blow had been delivered to me, a blade thrust deep; the pain was unbearable. But I might survive. I had survived the attack on my house; I had survived many things. Probably I would survive this. If I did, FAP was in trouble, Vivian Kaplan in particular.

  I told myself that, but I didn’t really believe it. What I believed was that FAP and its master Ferris Fremont had me. And I had sprung the trap myself—that was the worst part, the part that really hurt. My own cunning had betrayed me, had delivered me to the enemy. That was hard to bear.

  13THE cops never came; whatever Vivian Kaplan had been up to fizzled out, and I was able to relax. In the following days my temperature went down to normal, probably my blood pressure as well. I began to think more reasonably. However, I asked my lawyer what to do about them hiding dope in my house.