Nick Danger appeared, scurried across an open area with his scabby suitcase tucked securely under one arm, and then disappeared.
A cute little blond teenybopper, wearing a white turban and a flowing robe, approached Joe and handed him a rectangular, blue, bookmark-sized card with “The Great Invocation” inscribed on it. The fourth and fifth verses said:
From the center which we call the race of men
Let the Plan of Love and Light work out.
And may it seal the door where evil dwells.
Let Light and Love and Power restore the Plan on Earth.
Joe asked her: “What is The Plan?”
“I beg your pardon?”
He called her attention to the card: “What does it mean here when it talks about The Plan? What is The Plan? Communism? Capitalism? A screen pass to Franco Harris on two?”
She smiled sympathetically and drifted prettily away.
Had the moon been up, Joe would have howled at it.
* * *
RALPH KAPANSKY’S MINIATURE office never failed to amaze Joe. The man had once earned millions, yet here he was, camped in a stark cubicle with not a picture on the wall, seated day after day at a Salvation Army grade-school desk hacked half apart by the crudely gouged names of a thousand Guillermos, Josés, and Marias, surrounded by three cardboard boxes filled to overflowing with crumpled wads of rejected pages and a zillion cigarette butts. A bookcase held a couple dozen male, girly, and fuck magazines, a few cheap pornographic novels, a handful of Al Goldstein’s Screw newspapers, and copies of A Farewell to Arms, Mrs. Bridge, Ulysses, a repair manual for Pratt and Whitney bubblecopters, and The Bhagavad Gita. Hanging from a pink ribbon around her neck, a semideflated life-sized sex doll graced the wall like some lascivious polyester poontang from a demented avant-gardian’s screwball imagination. On the desk sat a battered old Remington, an ashtray, a ream of cheap sixteen-pound duplicator paper, a telephone, and an electric alarm clock. A single sheet in the typewriter held the following:
and Bill’s prick was in her ass, Joe’s cock was in her cunt, and Larry’s fat succulent shlong was in her mouth. In a cage on the nearby table the myna bird
“How can your imagination flower in such a depressingly banal atmosphere?” Joe had once asked.
“Who’s asking the imagination to flower? I just want to get my foot in the door and earn a few bucks—later I’ll worry about art.”
Diana said, “You don’t mind if I crash, do you?”
“Be my guest.”
“Thanks.” Her back against the wall, she slid straight down to the floor. Giving him a weary, playful wink, she tipped slowly sideways, laying her head on her hands, tucked up her legs until the knees almost touched her chin, and instantly fell asleep.
Joe regarded her for a minute, affected by her vulnerable posture. The large sleeves of her jacket almost covered her hands. Her toenails were painted dark burgundy. Joe shook his head, dropped the cocaine onto the desk, picked up the phone, and dialed Heidi: Heather answered.
“Hi, sweetie, how are you?”
Her voice sounded like that of a fifty-year-old former Parisian call girl who had recently gone straight (after a thirteen-year stretch in the Bastille) by starting a small aerospace information industry: “What do you want?”
“What do you mean ‘What do I want’? Heather, this is your father speaking.”
“I know who it is, for Christ’s sake.”
“Don’t swear at me, kid. You’re only eight years old.”
“I’ll be nine in September.”
“Big deal. Listen, lemme speak to your mother.”
“If you come back here and try to live with us, Michael and me are gonna run away,” she said tightly.
“Look, Heather, I’m sorry, I know this is a big mess. But skip the recriminations, huh? Save all the venom for your autobiography, and right now lemme speak to Heidi.”
“She’s in the bedroom.”
“Well, how far is the bedroom from the telephone—four steps? What happened—you caught muscular dystrophy suddenly?”
“She doesn’t feel so good. Last night she killed a whole bottle of Black Jack and we watched ‘Star Trek’ together. Captain Kirk got trapped in this weird interphase and they almost couldn’t beam him back on board. Spock had to take over the Enterprise while these creepy things called the Aoleans were weaving a time-warp fabric around the spaceship. It put weird vibes in the air and into all of them. McCoy and Mr. Sulu tried to kill each other. They wound up in straitjackets down in the sick bay. Except for Spock, of course, because Vulcans don’t have the kind of feelings that could be affected.”
We should all be so lucky. “Heather, that’s nice, I’m glad you had fun, now—”
“We didn’t have fun, stupid. Nobody could go to sleep, and Mommy was getting drunk. Guess what Michael did today?”
Joe heard Michael in the background shouting, “I did not! You shut up you little stoolie or I’ll bash your teeth in!”
“He shot a chickadee with his BB gun.” She sounded so prissy and self-righteous Joe wanted to slug her.
“It couldn’t of been a chickadee, Heather. They all went into the mountains. Now listen—”
“We fed it to Barby Lou. She loved it.”
“Heather, if you’re trying to get my goat, it won’t work. I’m too tired. Now do me a favor, go fetch your mother.…”
“I think maybe she’s asleep. She was awful sick last night. She said if you drove her to an early grave she would come back as a ghost and haunt you until she drove you crazy and foaming at the mouth.”
“That’s great. Now cut the crap and go tell her I’m on the phone and we need to talk—it’s important. Hey, how come you guys aren’t in school this morning?”
“We’re staying home to make sure that if she upchucks anymore she won’t gag to death on her own puke.”
“Heather—!”
“I’m going. Don’t get a hernia.…”
The phone clattered, banged, clunked. A high, static-filled crackle entered the airwaves. Joe felt sick and apprehensive—then he heard breathing on the other end. “Hello?”
Michael replied shyly, “Hi, Daddy.”
“Oh, hey, Michael. How you doing?”
“I’m okay.”
“What’s happening over there?”
“Oh … nothing.”
“Wait a minute, what do you mean ‘Oh nothing’? Heather just told me Mommy drank a bottle of Jack Daniel’s last night and got sick as hell. That isn’t ‘nothing,’ is it?”
“I guess not. Are you coming home?”
A plaintive note in his son’s voice suggested Michael was close to crying. Immediately, Joe felt weepy himself. He said, “I dunno yet. Sure. Probably. That’s why I gotta talk to your mother. What’s Heather doing in there, reading her her constitutional rights?”
“Mommy’s awake, but she just ran into the bathroom.”
Oh Lord! The universe, a relatively stable conglomeration of potentially volatile atoms for eleventy (as Heather would say) billion years, had chosen the last three days in which to finally collapse.
Michael asked, “Where are you, Daddy? Are you over at her house?”
“‘Her’? I’m in Ralph’s office on the plaza, where do you think I am?”
An embarrassed, choking silence bristled on the other end.
Joe said, “What’s this about shooting a chickadee?”
“It wasn’t a chickadee. Heather don’t know shit.”
“She ‘doesn’t’ know shit.”
“I know. It was actually—”
“‘Doesn’t,’” Joe interrupted. “Don’t say ‘don’t’ know shit, the proper word is ‘doesn’t’ know shit.”
“Oh, all right.”
“Well, say it.”
“Say what?” He was totally confused.
“Say ‘doesn’t.’”
“Doesn’t.”
For some insane reason over which he had no control, Michael’s thickness made Joe furious
; he could barely contain his temper. “The goddam sentence, Michael, should have been, ‘She doesn’t know shit!’”
Sounding like something from a gloom-riddled nether region beyond the Styx, Heidi’s voice came over the line. “Who doesn’t know shit? Me? What did you call up for, Joey, to rub salt in our wounds?”
“I was talking to Michael. He acts like good grammar is illegal. How come they aren’t in school? You figured it was more educational to stay home and kill chickadees and watch Mommy vomit?”
“It wasn’t a chickadee, it was a stupid English sparrow.”
“Well, who gave him a license to terrorize nature with his BB gun? As soon as I leave the premises for ten minutes, suddenly there’s a total breakdown in discipline, and it’s open season on every little animal in the valley?”
“He’s upset, Joey. When he shot the bird I asked him how come, and he said he just felt like killing things. Frankly, I don’t blame him. I feel like killing things myself, right now.”
“I don’t feel so hot either.”
“Oh, the poor widdle icky-tums. Did you stop a bullet or something in that bus-station shootout last night?”
“No, but I could have.”
“Don’t you mean ‘should’ have?”
“You don’t have to be totally nasty. Aren’t things tough enough without the Cleopatra act?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“What’s what supposed to mean?”
“‘The Cleopatra act’? It’s just another one of your meaningless references to some kind of historical or glamorous thing or person or metaphor that’s supposed to gloss over the fact you have nothing relevant to say. Not only that, but how in God’s name can you pimp around accusing Michael of immorality, when you’re creeping through gunfights trying to steal a hundred thousand dollars worth of illegal cocaine. Some gall!”
Joe waited a beat before asking, “You through?”
“I don’t know. Give me a minute.…”
“It doesn’t interest you, I don’t suppose, that last night I actually wound up with the stuff Peter sent, does it?”
“Isn’t that a double negative? ‘It doesn’t,’ and ‘I don’t suppose,’ and ‘does it,’ all in the same sentence?”
“Ha ha.”
“Well, I can’t believe your cruelty, Joey! Why don’t you dance on over here and pour boiling oil on the heads of your two little babies? Because when you left yesterday you hadn’t quite finished the job!”
“Heidi, if we tear each other apart like this we won’t get anywhere.”
“Where are we going?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I called. I mean, it’s stupid to stay apart like this. The whole thing started as a simple accident.…”
“Oh no you don’t! As long as you’re sleeping with that mongoose, I sure as hell don’t want you near my house, my bed, or hanging out around my children.”
“In case you forgot, they’re my children also.”
“Oh, excuse me. Of course. Why don’t you come over and pick them up, then, and lead them over to Miss Spiritual America’s place, and let them watch the two of you doing your celestial carnal act?”
“Heidi, what is the matter with you?”
“I’m pissed. Didn’t you ever hear that expression, ‘Hell’s got no fury like a woman scorned’?”
Incredibly, he heard himself saying, “‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.’”
“What did you say?”
“Hell ‘hath.’ Listen—”
“No, wait a minute. What were you doing, correcting me?”
“It’s not important. Really. Now listen—”
“No, stop. I want to get this straight. You were correcting me, weren’t you? ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’—is that it? I hope so, Joey. I really don’t want to have any imperfections that might cause you to look askance at me or—”
“Stop!” he hollered. “Didn’t you hear me? I got the coke! What am I supposed to do next?”
“Shove it up your ass, Frankenstein!”
In a rage, gasping for air yet once again, Joe slammed down the instrument, waking Diana.
“Hey,” she muttered groggily. “Take it easy.” Closing her eyes, then, she smiled and resumed snoring.
The phone jangled: Joe jumped a mile. “Hello?”
The Marlene Dietrich of the Perry Kahn Subdivision # 4 unleashed her tantalizingly breathy salutation: “Hi…”
“Who’s this?”
“What do you mean, ‘Who’s this’? It’s me.”
“Who’s—oh. You. What are you … how did you…”
“I called the Prince of Whales. Darlene gave me this number. How are you?”
“Fine, wonderful. Hey Nancy—”
“I miss you. I’m still glowing all over.…”
“Look, I’m sorry, I’m waiting for an important call, I’ll talk to you later.”
“Anything wrong?”
“No, everything’s fine. Hunky-dory squared. It’s just things are also a little, you know, complicated. I mean, in my life right now there’s a certain amount of sturm and drang going down. Like for starters, yesterday Michael shot a chickadee.”
“Do you have pills? Are you breathing okay?”
Joe realized that inside of perhaps a week her equanimity would drive him either insane or to murder.
“I’m sorry, Nancy, I got to hang up. Good-bye.…”
Diana opened one eye, croaking, “Who was that?”
“Jimmy Carter.”
“Oh.” Adjusting her diving weights, she floated under again. Her face was pink from sleep. Flushed, warm, and innocent, she seemed an angelic little bum. Enormous and tragic feelings of love moved Joe for a second. They could hijack a plane to Cuba together. Or else scurry away from Chamisaville under cover of darkest night, buy a cozy farm up around Bozeman, Montana, and spend the rest of their days trout fishing on the Bitterroot River.
Joe found his dilemma hard to believe. Played by Ray Milland, he could see himself slumped over a shiny mahogany bar in his own Lost Weekend, a burnt-out case before forty. Incredible to reflect that only forty-eight hours ago he had been halfway certain that they could convert the drug deal, buy the land, and gloat (as a family) over a future thus assured.
Instead, with the unsparing brutality of a shtetl pogrom, everything seemed to be collapsing. It only remained for him to bumble into a life sentence while trying to unload the coke, and the tragic farce would be complete!
Joe sighed loudly. The paragraph on the typing paper in the machine before him focused. After contemplating it for a moment, he decided to complete the sentence which began “In a cage on the nearby table the myna bird…” Three minutes later he wrote: “… was caught in a paroxysm of heinous and deleterious anticommunism that threatened to cauterize the only friendship it had ever had.”
“Are you okay?” Solicitously, Diana sat up, circling arms around her knees. She rested her chin on her arms. “You don’t look so hot.”
“Oh, I feel like a million dollars.”
“Bullshit.”
It was impossible to face Diana. Joe harbored a mixture of hostility and sexual attraction for her. And fear, also. What did she want? Kicked out of her own digs, had she attached herself to him like a waifling puppy?
Joe said, “Now that you have no place to stay, what will you do?”
“I’m not worried. I never expected anything better. I have friends. I’ll get along just fine.”
“How come you came to Chamisaville in the first place?”
“I just drifted here with a guy. He made jewelry and wore a turquoise turban. Then he split and I stayed. I lived with a couple of girls for a while—Josie and Patty. But they were crazy. Patty was only sixteen and pregnant: she’d been up at Alexander’s Ragtime Crash Pad. Josie was eighteen—she came here from Santa Cruz with a People’s Templer who ditched. She was into booze, and any kind of dope, and boys. The house was like the men’s restroom at a footbal
l game, only instead of lining up for the urinals, they were lining up for Josie. She hated it, but said it was punishment because in a former life she had been an Egyptian gypsy who had stolen an emerald goblet from King Tut’s tomb. One night she cut her wrists and ran up to the plaza covered with blood and singing ‘money can’t buy you love’—the Beatles’ song. About that time I got it on with Angel. It was a little better than the house with Josie and Patty, but not much. Angel gets off on being mean. In his previous incarnation, by the way, he claims to have been a mild-mannered Negro clerk in Bloomington, Indiana, who’d been unjustly imprisoned for embezzlement by a jealous Caucasian lover who happened to be the local DA, and he was stabbed to death in jail by a Communist faggot. So this time around he’s determined not to let anybody make any moves on him, not ever. And I must say he’s certainly a surly son of a bitch.”
“But I mean, why did you come here? What did you want?”
“‘Want’?” She shrugged. “An alternate life-style? Pie in the sky? I don’t know. Adventure?” She smiled wistfully. “I had some friends back in Indiana who said Chamisaville was far-out.”
“But what do you want to be when you grow up?”
She uncorked her captivating lustrous smile. “It doesn’t matter. Whatever happens, I’ll adjust. You only make yourself miserable messing around with a lot of phony goals.”
“What about marriage? Kids?”
“Someday I might have a kid. But I’ll never get married. For sure, I won’t worry myself sick wondering how my life is gonna turn out.”
“You’re depressing me.”
Standing, she walked behind him, put her arms around his neck, and touched her lips to his earlobe, imparting a delicate kiss. “I’m okay, Joe—honest. I’m a pretty tough cookie and I like my life. Don’t shed any tears for this lady. Save them for yourself.”
Reaching up, Joe took her hand. “Why do you say that?”
“Well, you seem like a semifragile soul. You’re old-fashioned, also hip, and you don’t believe in either one.”
“Screw you. Let’s get out of here.”
“Where are we going?”
“I don’t know about you, but I’m heading out to Tribby’s castle. I have to talk with Heidi and see my kids. Then—I dunno. I need a place to stay. I have to move this coke.…”