Dealing or The Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues

25

AT THE AIRPORT THE CROWDS of screaming fans were lined up to greet the sensational new rock sensation Lucifer Harkness and his greasy back-up group, The New Administration. Harkness stepped off the plane, resplendent in velvet bellbottoms and a black leather T-shirt; from behind thick purple shades he could see the crowd going wild. They broke through the cordons and fought off the cops and ran screaming for him.

He felt a thousand hands touching him, clutching at his clothes, tearing them off his back, covering him with kisses, biting his neck affectionately, pulling at his balls, and it was delirious and wonderful for several minutes before the cops came down on the kids and broke it up, and Reggie Thorpe, the manager, got the group together and into the waiting Rolls.

As the Rolls pulled away there were hundreds of screaming teenies all lined up on the road out of the airport. Some of them threw themselves in front of the car, stopping it, while others scratched at the glass and kissed it, screaming, “We want to ball Lucifer, we want to ball Lucifer.” And Lucifer was thinking to himself about what an unbelievably tedious chore it would be to crack all of those hundreds of green young cherrystones, when the guy sitting next to him jabbed him in the side.

“Hey, lookit dat, buddy. Nice pussy.”

I politely looked over a ham-sized forearm to see a thin, wasted-looking chick with a shaved twat lying guilelessly across the centerfold page of Suburban Jaybird.

“Nice,” I said. Nice, my ass. The chick was about as ugly as they come, especially without her hair. Hair was mystery, it was sex, it was funky and greasy and it got tangled when you made love.

“How’dja like to fuck her?” he said, holding up another picture.

I shrugged. The woman behind us on the MTA car was doing her best to let us know that she was faint with indignation. She was making small coughing sounds. Out the window, gray and rainy, was the Boston skyline.

“I like ’em with hair,” I said. Behind me I heard the sharp intake of breath from the woman.

My companion turned around and shot her a cold look, then turned back to his magazine. “Holy Jeez,” he said in a reverential tone. “Lookit, there’s one you’d like.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Now there’s a nice bush.”

“Christ, you’re not shittin’,” he said.

He got off at Park Street, leaving me alone with Mrs. Snorts behind me. She got off at Charles Street, the Beacon Hill exit. I took the subway all the way to the end of the line.

26

SHOOTING OUT INTO HARVARD SQUARE from the bowels of the MTA was about as much fun as having a tooth pulled without Novocain. I always felt that way when I got back from the Coast, but somehow I was never prepared for it. Because, as much of a drag as I knew it would be to return, I always figured that it would be nothing more than that—a return. And so the ensuing culture shock, the numbing of mind and body which was only later understood to be Boston’s charming way of saying Welcome Back, always caught me by surprise.

And what a surprise. A surprise wrapped in thick, heavy air, dimly opaque light, trimmed with an ineffable, oppressive sense of guilt. The air in the square reeked of guilt. Nobody was ever going to be naive enough to mention it, but it was there just the same, and readily assented to by all on the street.

The street. White pasty bodies and zitty faces shuffled past me, eyes on the ground, clutching cigarettes like drowning men, moving only when the sign commanded them to WALK. Old ladies sneered at passersby and cabbies looked hot and sullen. Three-pieced professors sneaked across the street, clutching their top-heavy wives like illicit Government secrets, and paranoid pristine fags marched poodles past shattered winos bumming dimes. Truck drivers whistled at towny cunts and sad, stooped teaching fellows picked their noses and read the Daily Flash in twenty-three languages.

I went across the street to Nini’s to get some cigarettes, and cut my way through the prepubescent mob outside. The guys slouched against the walls, sucking on toothpicks or nicotine sticks, scratching their crotches stealthily and yelling at the chicks. The chicks were all over the place, big flowsy broads topped by bleached, ironed hair, chewing the life out of huge wads of gum and swinging their pocketbooks at the more adventurous guys. All the time shrieking like cats in heat, shrieking and laughing and again swinging their pocketbooks. It was too much.

Inside Nini’s the adults-only version of the same movie was going on, featuring fat, powdered women, engrossed in multicolored tabloids (“I had a change-of-life baby by another man!”), and the usual mob of skinny, haunted men in the back of the store, tirelessly leafing through the skin mags. Jesus, what all these poor bastards needed was a good lay. And a good lay they’d never get—not in Boston, anyway.

I went down Dunster Street, past Holyoke Center, and over toward the Houses. It was quieter there, and there wasn’t any traffic, and the trees had tiny flecks of green at the tips. Spring was getting its foot in the door and it suddenly didn’t seem so bad.

Once in the House I stopped to talk to Jerry, who wanted to know all about my vacation. Jerry is the superintendent, a cheerful, sly Irishman who will talk your ear off, given half a chance, and is a stickler for rules, especially those concerning women in the rooms. But Jerry understands those who understand him, and so for a few hours of conversation a term, and a couple of bottles of rye on the Savior’s birthday, Jerry is the most amenable and considerate super in the college. Hello, Jerry.

Then up to E entry, and John’s room on the first floor. John has a sign on the door which reads:

John finds this amusing, since his chicks think he means The Truth, while he means the chicks. The door opened to reveal Sandra’s lovely form. “How’d it go?” she asked.

I was tempted to ask her the same thing, seeing as how she was decked out in one of John’s bathrobes. But all I said was “Fine,” and went in and sat down.

John called from the bedroom, “That you, Pete?”

“Yeah.”

“Just a minute.”

Sandra was looking very chic and wealthily whorish as she put a record on the turntable and sat down across from me. She crossed her legs in the extraordinary way she has of crossing her legs, languidly, with a lazy shot of the bush in the process. Nothing offered, of course, but if she knew you and liked you, she didn’t mind letting you know her snatch was all still there.

“How’d it go?” she said again.

“Fine,” I said again.

“You look bushed.”

“I am,” I said.

Then John came out, wearing his other bathrobe. He has two Brooks foulard-print bathrobes. One is several sizes too small for him, and he tells the girls it was a present to him from his grandmother. But it’s handy for the girls. John is well-organized about that sort of thing.

“Thanks for meeting me at the airport,” I said.

“Hey,” he said, “what’s this I heard about—”

“A bust?”

John lit a cigarette. “Yeah.”

I shrugged. “It happened. I got busted.”

“And?”

“They dropped charges,” I said. “They couldn’t make it stick. It was this other guy’s dope in the car and they couldn’t make anything stick to me.”

John nodded. He didn’t seem terribly interested. He pointed to the suitcase. “You get it all?”

“Ten bricks,” I said.

“Far out,” he said. “Let’s have a look.” And as I opened the suitcase he said, in a very casual voice, “Was it Murphy who busted you?”

Typical John. The casual fuck with your head. I looked up. “Why?”

“It was Murphy who busted Ernie, you know.”

Thanks for the good news. “Yeah,” I said. “It was Murphy who busted me and I got off by agreeing to set you up. All you have to do is go down to Central Square tomorrow at ten, carrying these bricks—”

John managed a pretty realistic, hearty laugh. “You getting paranoid?”

“Me?” I said. “Paranoid? Why should I be? My deal’s firm.” John laughed again, even more convincingly. Then he cut open the brick and I could sit back and relax while he toked up.

The trouble with John is that he had an acid trip last fall and he dropped about two thousand mics with some people he didn’t know. The whole thing bent his head around the telephone pole. He never talked about the trip, but from the little he said you could tell he’d gotten very stoned and then very afraid, and decided that the only way he could handle it would be to control it. So he became a controller. Power trips with everyone, crappy little freak games and manipulations and adrenalin spurts passed out at the door, gratis. I had thought he didn’t play those games with me, but he did, of course. He played them with everyone.

Which is why John Thayer Hartnup III, of Eliot House and Cohasset, Mass., was into dealing at all. It was the only way it made sense. The son of the Right Reverend Mr. Walker Wingate Hartnup and the former Miss Ellie Winston (of South Carolina) hardly needed the bread. Even if the tobacco money went up in smoke and the Reverend’s investments died, Grandmother Wingate could be counted on to call down the First National bankers to her Plymouth home and transfer a few goodies. It was all very far from a question of bread.

Power was something else. A natural talent, it might be called, an inborn skill. He had been an attentive student at Dreyer Country Day, but he was later dismissed from Kent for what the headmaster, without being specific, had implied was a question of drug abuse. It might have had something to do with John’s consumption of the Mexican narcotic Cannabis sativa during Saturday football games. John had then spoken to the Headmaster in private, and a week later it was announced that John was not being dismissed, but rather had taken a leave of absence because of overwork and stress. No one ever found out what was discussed in the meeting, but John was fond of noting that even such people as Headmasters of distinguished prep schools had soft underbellies.

As a Fine Arts undergraduate at Harvard, a field he had chosen for its casual academic demands and its pretty girls, he had further opportunity to refine his techniques. There was, for example, his nervous breakdown at the end of his sophomore year—a six-week stay at Mass. Mental Health, which brought his parents around to a much more sympathetic stance toward him.

Not perhaps the nicest person, John, but successful in his way.

John lit up and inhaled. “Far out,” he said. “Count on Musty.” And he passed the joint to Sandra, and she passed it to me, and I waved it away.

“What’s happening?” he said.

“I’ve got to work. Hour exam tomorrow.”

“Come on,” John said. “Get serious.”

“Really.”

“You’re not going to do anything tonight,” John said, and he held the joint out to me. I knew it was true, took a hit, and sat back. Stoned again.

Only this time it was jangly and not very pleasant, because I was just back from the Coast, and as soon as I was stoned I felt distinctly rootless, lost somewhere between, and I began to flash on all the times I had felt that way before.

Usually it came from getting stoned with people you didn’t know and couldn’t get to know, for one reason or another—it was a sudden sensation of being completely alone, but not completely the master of your own ship; the sudden sensation of an immutable gap that separated you from the people you were stoned with. A sense that you were here and they were there; that you were different from them and always would be; that you were locked in yourself and the key was not merely thrown away, but dissolved in organic acid.

A very bothersome feeling.

It was especially bad when it happened with people that you knew, people that you knew too well, in fact. That was horrifying. And I flashed on the time I went home to see my parents.

Well, actually I was ordered down to see them. They threatened a lot of stuff if I didn’t come immediately. Because of these rumors they had heard. So about three in the afternoon I got off the train at the Woodfield Station and walked down Elm Street to the drugstore.

I called home after the druggist, a flatulent Rotarian named Mr. Willis, refused to sell me some Vitamin B12. He wouldn’t sell it to me because, he said, I needed a prescription, which was a lot of horseshit. I could remember the days when he’d told me I needed a prescription to buy prophylactics. Mr. Willis was the type of solid burgher who felt that the responsibilities vested in him by the community went beyond the purely medicinal. Anyway it was a pain in the ass not to be able to drop a few B12s, because if you’re really stoned on heavy dope B12 smooths things out a lot. And I was going to need all the smoothing out I could get.

The telephone conversation was short. My mother picked up the phone and said “Hello?” in the sugar-frosted voice that she reserves for those who aren’t in the family.

“Hello, mother, this is Peter.”

“Oh.” Danger, live wires. “Peter, where are you?”

“In Willis’s drugstore.”

“Where is that?”

“In town, mother.”

She got angry then. “In what town, young man?”

“In Woodfield, mother.”

“Oh.” She paused to consider that one. “Well, you’d better come on out here.”

“How?” I said.

“Take a taxi.”

“I haven’t got any money.”

“Oh, you don’t?” Very sarcastic. “I thought you’d just be rolling in money, from all your drug deals.”

So there it was, out in the open: they had found out I was dealing. What a bummer.

“Yeah, well, mother, I don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Have any money.”

“Then hitch a ride out,” she said. “Your father and I will be waiting.”

Click!

Very nice. A very nice and warm person, my mother. I went back outside onto Elm Street and lit up a joint. After three or four hits I felt better, and then I started laughing. Because it occurred to me how ridiculous it was for me to worry about seeing them. They were the ones who were shitting in their pants, just dying to lay into me, nervous as actors before they go on stage. It was their trip, not mine. I already knew by heart what they’d say to me, and once that was over with it didn’t much matter what I answered. It didn’t matter because my parents didn’t have the slightest interest in what I was really up to—in fact, they preferred to remain in the dark. No, the whole point of this scene was to give my parents the opportunity to feel that they were doing their job, fulfilling their obligations to me and to society. In a way they did care what I did; but they cared a hell of a lot more that I knew how they felt about what I did. Groovy. Off to the wars.

I wandered down to the train station and got a taxi, and told the guy my parents would pay him when we got there. Staring out at the Connecticut landscape on the way to the house, I decided I ought to relax a bit. I really wasn’t being fair to the parents. I mean, there was no sense in going out there to have a big fight, anybody could do that. I figured that I’d surprise them and be really nice and sympathetic to their trip, and then after things got rolling, and everything was cool, then maybe I could really start talking to them. What the hell, it was worth a try. And I had to be the guy to try, because they sure weren’t going to. I laughed when I realized that I was thinking the way a magazine article in Redbook would read. Christ, I could see it now. Noted Young Freak Says: Generation Gap the Kids’ Fault! Rock star Lucifer Harkness bemoans his lack of sympathy and understanding for his parents in his adolescence, and takes all the blame for his rupture with them himself! Amen.

“Which way now, bud?” said the driver.

“Right here, the last house on the left. You can’t miss it.”

“Pay the what?” my father said.

“Taxi,” I said.

“What the hell for?”

“He’s waiting outside,” I said.

“Pay him yourself.”

“I don’t have any money.”

“You never have any money,” my father said. “Rich son of poor parents.” That’s one of his favorite lines. I don’t know where he learned it.

“Well, Dad, someone has to pay him.”

“You go out and pay him.”

“I don’t have any money.”

We often have conversations like this. Merry-go-round conversations. You go around the circle once, and it doesn’t work, so you go around again.

“Well then,” he said, “go out and tell him you can’t pay him.”

“Shit, Dad.”

“I might have thought college would teach you more original expression—”

“Shit, Dad. Just pay the guy, will you?”

My father sucked on his pipe and snorted. “Wait here,” he said, and went out to pay the taxi driver. When he came back, his face was tight and creased at the corners of his mouth. He was chewing furiously on his pipe. “Your mother,” he said, “is very upset. You’ve made her very upset. So try and be civil when you talk to her, and remember that she loves you very much.”

Mother was in the living room, wedged between the two grand pianos. Nobody ever played them, but there they sat, giving the house class. Mother was looking frail and tearful, and it was obvious she had been looking forward to this scene for a while.

“Oh, Peter,” she sighed when she saw me.

“Hello, mother.”

“Oh, Peter,” she sighed again, shaking her head.

“What’s the matter, mother?”

“Oh, Peter,” she sighed. “Oh, Peter.”

My father came in behind. He fixed me with his piercing legal stare, as if I were a walking misbalanced ledger.

“Well now,” he said.

“Oh, Peter,” she said.

“Do you want your pill, dear?” my father said.

“No, dear,” she said, “I already took it.”

“What pill?” I said.

“Well now,” my father said, turning to me. “Sit down, Peter.” I sat down. They sat down. We were all very composed. “You have some explaining to do,” he said.

My mother chose that moment to begin crying. “Where did we go wrong, Peter?” she said. My mother cries quietly, no wracking sobs, just tears running down as she stares at you, and she won’t wipe them away. It can be very effective.

“Go wrong?” I said.

“Look here, Peter,” my father said, relighting his pipe and billowing up smoke screens, “your mother and I have heard some rumors.”

“They’re not rumors,” she said, sniffling, not brushing away the tears.

“All right then,” my father said, “let’s say we’ve been told—”

“By who?” I said, jumping right in. I might as well get the story straight.

“Whom,” my father said. “That’s not important. We’ve been told—”

“I want to know who,” I said. “Mmmmm.”

“That’s not important. We’ve been told you are selling marijuana at school. Is that true?”

“Just look at him,” my mother said, interrupting. “Look at the way he looks. Don’t you have any decent pants, Peter? Those blue jeans with the holes. And your shoes—do you need new shoes?” She looked at her watch. “The barbershops are open until six. We can get—”

“Is it true?” my father asked, fixing me with his legal eye again.

“Yes,” I said.

“Oh, Peter,” my mother sighed.

“You’ve upset your mother very much,” my father said. He turned to her. “Can I get you a Kleenex, dear?”

“No, dear, I’ll be fine. I’m fine.” Crying silently.

“You’re crying, mother,” I pointed out.

“Oh, Peter, Peter…”

“I’ll get you a Kleenex,” my father said, and bolted for the bathroom. He came back with a handful and sat down again. “So it is true,” he said, looking back at me.

“Yes,” I said.

“Well… don’t you know it’s against the law?”

“Yes.”

“Well, doesn’t that matter to you?”

“No,” I said.

“But it has to matter,” my father said. “It’s the law.”

Now what could I say to that? I’m sorry, it doesn’t matter, it just doesn’t.

“I don’t understand how you can grow up thinking this way, acting this way,” my father said.

“It’s the school,” my mother said. “We should never have sent you away to that school. I knew something like this would happen if we let you go there.”

“Now, mother—”

“Well, just look at you, sitting there like something the cat dragged in,” she said, letting teardrops spatter on her Villager dress.

“Look,” I said, “will everybody stop acting like it’s such a big deal?”

“It is a big deal,” my father said.

“Dad, look, everybody blows grass at school. Everybody.”

“Perhaps everybody that you know, Peter. But I hardly think that—”

“Between ten and twenty million people in this country blow grass.”

“I should think,” my father said, “that those figures would be very difficult to substantiate.”

At this point I sat back. There was no sense in an argument. I used to argue all the time with my parents but it never did any good. One time I’d had an argument with my mother over Vietnam, and she’d questioned some figures I’d used on war spending. “I don’t believe those,” she said. “Where’d you dig those figures up?” “Bernard Fall, mother.” At that, she’d looked irritated. “Well, who in God’s name is Bernard Fall?” she’d said. Oh well. I could tell from my father’s voice that it was Perry Mason time again, and I was in the witness box.

“I said,” my father said, “that those figures should be damn near impossible to substantiate.”

“Look,” I said, “do you know anyone who doesn’t drink?”

“That’s not the issue.”

“I’m just asking.”

“Yes. I know some people who don’t drink.”

“But not many,” I said.

“We also know some alcoholics,” my mother said, “for that matter we know several people—”

“Peter,” my father said, interrupting firmly, “there’s a difference. Alcohol is legal. Marijuana is not. You can go to jail, Peter. Now, you’ve lived a sheltered life, all your life. We’ve tried to see that you were protected against such things. But let me tell you now, Peter. Jail is not pleasant. You wouldn’t like it one bit, not one bit.”

I sighed. What could I say?

“Now look, Peter. There’s nothing we can do about you. There’s no way we can stop you or alter your course of action. Looking back, I don’t think that there’s ever been anything that we could do, as parents. You were always different from the others in the family, always… different. But as your parents, we have to tell you when we think you’re making a mistake. Can you understand that?”

“Yes,” I said.

“We only want what’s best for you,” my mother said. When she dies, I’m going to have that one engraved on her headstone. The Final Solution to the upper-middle-class children problem.

“Your mother is exactly right,” my father said. “That’s what I’ve been trying to say.”

I looked down at the coffee table. There was an old issue of Life, about the Grandeur That Was Egypt. There was an issue of the Ladies’ Home Terror on top of it, about Drugs in Our High Schools: A Growing Menace.

“Let’s be practical,” my father said, shifting around in his chair. “Now I know a little something about marijuana, and I’ve heard enough to convince me that it isn’t the dangerous and addicting drug that everybody says it is. So let’s accept that, and go on from there. The fact is, it’s still illegal. And it’s not a little illegal, it’s very illegal. Anyone who sells it runs a grave risk—a risk more serious than any potential benefits that might be gained from the drug itself. Do you follow me?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Yes, what?”

That really ripped me. If I hadn’t been stoned, I probably would have slugged him in the mouth.

“Yes, sir.”

Up until then, up until that fucking sir, I had been planning to have a talk with him. I had planned to try, at least to try, to reason with them.

But that sir was the end, because it just made me remember what I had known all along in the back of my mind, that all this bullshit about parents and kids reasoning together and overcoming the generation gap is just that—bullshit. My parents wanted to make sure that I understood that their trip was the one that mattered. And at that point I just quit.

All I said was “Yeah, well, look, I don’t know who told you all that, but I quit dealing six months ago. I haven’t had anything to do with it for six months.” This was true.

“Is that true?” my father said. He seemed newly worried about something.

“Yes,” I said.

My mother said, “Are you hungry? Did you have lunch yet?” And she wiped victorious eyes.

27

SANDRA, SITTING NEXT TO JOHN on the couch, was wiping the smoke out of her eyes when she noticed her watch. “Oh,” she said, jumping up. “It’s time. We’re gonna miss it.” She went over to the television set and turned it on. I was so stoned that I sat there passively and watched her and then the screen, as it glowed to life with the visage of Sally Scott, Eyewitness News, with the Eyewitness News Team investigating a paramount concern to the parents of Boston: teen-age drug abuse.

“Lieutenant Murphy,” Sally Scott asked, as she walked along a table laid out, like a feast, with exhibits. “What is this here?”

“This here is a kilogram of marijuana, which is two point two pounds of the drug. It is dried and pressed into a block for purposes of transportation, as you can see.”

“I see,” Sally Scott said.

“If you bring the camera closer, you might get a better shot,” Lieutenant Murphy said helpfully. The camera came closer. “As you can see, this block of the drug is commonly referred to by traffickers and illicit users as a key or a brick.”

“And this?” Sally Scott asked, moving on.

“Now, this is what the kids buy from the dope peddlers. This is how the drug is sold, in a one-ounce Baggie. An ounce may cost as much as fifty dollars.”

“Fifty dollars!” John said. “Jesus, maybe in Wellesley or someplace.”

“I see,” Sally Scott said. “And how much of this, uh, drug is necessary to make a person, uh…”

“High?” Lieutenant Murphy asked. “Not very much. The drug is smoked in cigarettes, called reefers or joints. Just one of these small cigarettes is enough to make a person suffer all the effects of the marijuana plant.”

“Suffer?” Sandra asked, genuinely puzzled.

John grinned.

Sally Scott said, “And what exactly are these effects?”

“Mostly unpleasant,” Lieutenant Murphy said. “The mouth feels dry and the voice may be painful. The eyes hurt and one may suffer hallucinations. All inhibitions are released and the person under the drug may act in peculiar and bizarre ways.”

“In what ways?” Sally Scott had unusually large eyes.

“Someone on this drug, under its effects, stoned, as the psychologically addicted users say, such a person is capable of almost anything.”

“I certainly am,” Sandra said, and got up and switched the television off.

“Hey,” John said, turning it back on. “Roll a joint, Sandy.” The sound returned just in time to hear Sally Scott ask “… the magnitude of the drug problem in Boston?”

“Very serious,” Murphy said seriously. “There’s no question of that. All reports indicate that the center of drug abuse in the country is shifting from San Francisco to New York and Boston. Boston is now the center.”

“Why is that?” Sally Scott asked.

“The climate,” said John.

“Primarily because of the influx of college students to the Greater Boston area. We have two hundred thousand college students, most of them from out of state. Unfortunately, some of these students deal in drugs.” Murphy paused to get his breath, then went on. “You see, the atmosphere on the college campuses today tends to encourage bizarre behavior, and often the responsible adult on the scene, the administrator, and so forth, will pooh-pooh even illicit activities if they happen to be fashionable. The campuses also provide a gathering place for all types of weirdos, outcasts, and hangers-on who wouldn’t be able to exist in a normal American environment. These types are often among the offenders. Simply by their presence, they assist the growing drug traffic.”

“Oh, Christ,” John said, “are you listening to this bullshit?”

Murphy was gone, and Sally Scott was saying: “… University’s psychopharmacology unit for answers to these and other questions. Doctor, what is the medical evidence on marijuana?”

The doctor was pale and thin and thoughtful-looking. He wore glasses and blinked his eyes a lot, and spoke in little shotgun-bursts. “Well the first thing to say—is that there is very little in the way of—hard medical data on the drug. On the contrary we know remarkably little—about the effects—or the hazards—of this particular compound; however—we can say—that earlier ideas were wrong—and the drug is not addicting—by this we mean—there is no tolerance—phenomenon—and no psychological dependence or physical—uh, dependence—craving—no craving—and we can say the drug does not lead—to heroin or other narcotics.”

“You say heroin or other narcotics. Isn’t marijuana a narcotic?”

“Well, that depends—on your definition—but strictly speaking, a narcotic means—something that produces sleep—from narcos in Greek, ‘to sleep’—but in the usual sense it means pain-killing and sensory-dulling medications—sleeping pills—and these drugs, as you know, are nearly all addicting—the term narcotic—to most people—means addicting drug—though not, of course—to doctors.” Blink, blink.

Sally Scott looked him right in the eye. “How dangerous is marijuana?”

“Well, that depends again—on your definition—an automobile—is pretty dangerous—and so is aspirin, liquor, and cigarettes—the same thing—all medications—all drugs, broadly speaking—are dangerous and you are better off without them. In terms—of purely pleasure-producing drugs—like cigarettes and coffee—and alcohol—we can say that marijuana—so far as we know—may be a better drug to take—for pleasure—that is, safer and less addicting—but then—we know little about it.”

“When you say a better drug…”

“In terms of side effects—long-term damage—something like alcohol, as you know—is a terrible drug—physically addicting—psychologically disrupting—literally a poison to brain cells, a neurotoxin—and yet it is perfectly acceptable—to society.”

“Alcohol is a poison to brain cells?” Sally Scott asked, astonished. “But alcohol is used in all civilizations around the world.”

“Yes,” the doctor said. “That is true.”

After half an hour of this, I got up off the couch and said to John: “Got a lid?”

John raised an eyebrow. “Studying?”

“The exam’s tomorrow,” I said, “and I don’t know a fucking thing about the course.”

John shrugged.

“Well, it’s not Spots and Dots, you know,” I said. Spots and Dots was the toughest course offered by the Fine Arts Department. Modern Western Art 1880–1960. Blind men had been known to pass.

“Top drawer of my dresser,” John said. “But only take one.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I said. I opened the drawer and took a Baggie, one of the fuller-looking ones. Herbie was particular about his payoffs. When I came back, John said, “By the way, check your desk?”

I shook my head, and went into the other room to check my desk. There was a stack of mail on it; on top, in a cream-colored envelope, some sort of invitation. The handwriting on the front was Annie’s. I tore it open. It was an invitation to attend the Piggy Club Garden Party the next Saturday. I looked at the postmark on the envelope; it had been mailed a week before. Too late to give a negative reply. I went out and threw it in John’s lap. “Did you rig this?”

John looked shocked. “You mean, arrange it?”

“No, dammit, I mean call her up and tell her I was out of town.”

John said, “I knew you’d be back in time.” He smiled. “To accept,” he added.

“Get bent,” I said.

“It’s a peace offering, you know,” John went on. “It means she still likes you.”

“Get bent,” I said again. John was a member of the Piggy Club, and he was having a moment of fun at my expense. We both knew that Annie was now making it with a club member, and we both knew that club members were not permitted themselves to invite women to the parties.

“You don’t want to go?” John said, now acting surprised.

“Me? Not want to go to the Piggy Club Picnic? You’ve got to be kidding. I can hardly wait.”

“Garden Party,” John amended. He sighed. “Little late to call her up and refuse, isn’t it?”

That was unnecessary, and as I left the room I slammed the door behind me. Typical John interaction. I was furious and, in a sense, grateful for the pressures of the coming exam. No chance to brood on it. It feels so good when I stop.

Down the hall was Herbie’s room. Herbie was a weird little cat, sort of a cross between Mr. Natural and Dr. Zharkov. He was a senior, and seventeen years old. He’d come from somewhere in West Virginia, where his father worked in the mines and his mother worked in the mine offices; one of those trips. Mother had noticed very early that Herbie was not like the other children and had taken him to a testing center that the government ran for mentally retarded children. The testing people had found that Herbie’s I.Q. could not be accurately measured—and not because he was retarded. They’d sent him to a special high school in New York, and then they’d gotten Harvard interested in him. Herbie hadn’t taken a math course that was listed in the catalog since his first year at Harvard, nor, for that matter, an economics course or a physics course. He was now working up at the Observatory, taking a side degree in astrophysics.

I came in and found him sitting in his bentwood rocker, rocking back and forth. He wore dungarees and a garish print shirt, and he was smoking a joint the size of an expensive cigar.

“Peter,” he said, when he saw me.

“Herbie,” I said, and sat down across from him.

Herbie scratched his head. “Let’s see, now.” He looked across the room at a wall calendar. “Economics, is it?”

I nodded.

“All right,” he said. “We can take an hour.” He held out his hand. I dropped the Baggie into it. He squeezed it, feeling the texture, then held it up to the light; finally tossed it onto his desk. “Sold,” he said. “There’s paper and pencil on the desk. Let’s get started. It’s all very simple,” he said. “The internal dynamics of the European nation-state in the early part of the seventeenth century eventually necessitated the manipulation of the economy to serve the political interests of the state. That concept in turn led—am I going too fast?”

“Just fine,” I said, scribbling as fast as I could. “Just fine.”

28

I HATE THE MORNINGS BEFORE exams. I always go to breakfast, because I’ve been up all night, and I feel really ragged, and I have coffee and that makes me feel even more ragged. And I read the paper and shoot the shit and try to forget that I have an exam at 9:07 and that I haven’t studied for it.

If you can get with some good breakfast discussion, then you can forget the exam coming. A discussion like whether women with small boobs have better orgasms than women with big boobs.

But there wasn’t any such discussion the morning after I got back from San Francisco. I just sat there with my coffee and notes, and I felt ragged. It was so absurd, the school riff: all that time spent in school, which in the end amounts to the morning of an exam and the hour or two of the exam itself.

Across the dining hall, a few industrious wimps were still studying: jamming down those last few pages of notes, knowing full well that it might make the difference between an A-minus and a B-plus. I thought of the Romans stuffing themselves with food, then sticking their fingers down their throats, vomiting it up and starting to eat again. Of course, if you eat that way, you must be much more interested in the process of eating than you are in the nutritional value of the food you take in. You must also have the stomach for it.

Pretty soon the wimps were dumping their trays, and hustling feverishly out the door, talking to themselves. The time had come. I got up and left with them.

The exam was held in Memorial Hall, a cavernous medieval sort of building, with desks in long rows. The proctors wandered from desk to desk with their hands clasped behind their backs. The best proctors—the most professional ones—remained entirely and haughtily aloof. But the graduate students and section men who were there to answer questions about the exam questions, as well as to be proctors, were pretty bad. A lot of them liked to walk from student to student and check out what was being written.

About halfway through the hour one of them stopped to look over my shoulder. He looked, and he stayed. I kept writing, getting suddenly nervous. He had a nose cold, this proctor, and he sounded like a horse with pneumonia on a cold winter morning. Finally I turned back to look at him.

He was shaking his head as he read the page.

I shrugged.

He shrugged back, but at least he walked on. The bastard had shaken me up; I began having trouble concentrating on the question. Particularly since I hadn’t done any of the reading that was necessary to answer it. I was just sort of going along, putting down words. The answer didn’t mean anything, but then neither did the question.

I began to think of Sukie, and how she had looked when I left her at the airport. I wondered if she made it back all right. It was a drag for a single chick to hitch out to Berkeley at night. And then I wondered if she was meeting somebody afterward. I wondered if she had just wanted a ride to S.F., and that was why she had come in.

Then I started to think about how she had been in bed. It was obvious that she wasn’t learning anything from me, which was completely to be expected, but just then it seemed outrageous, absurd, that she should have been with anyone but me. Or that she ever would be with anyone but me in the future. I could feel irritation building, and I realized that I was jealous. Not even jealous, more…

“Five minutes,” the king proctor said, stepping to the microphone.

I looked back down at my bluebook. I still had another essay to go. I stared at the question, praying for inspiration, and I got it at the last minute.

29

I HAVE NEVER BEEN JEALOUS. At least, not about women. I have been jealous of objects, of things, and sometimes of traits; I remember especially a friend of mine when I was a kid. He held my unbroken admiration for years, because of his imagination. He effortlessly devised such wonders as the Burning-Bag-of-Shit Trick, conveniently placed on a neighbor’s doorstep—when the neighbor tried to stamp it out, well, that was his problem.

Also the Good Humor Man Stunt, in which one kid would sprawl out on the road, deathly ill, and enlist the Good Humor Man’s help, while another kid went to the back of the truck and climbed into the refrigerated compartment. There he would stay, eating himself sick, for a full block, at which time a similar catastrophic mid-road illness would again cause the truck to stop, and allow the half-frozen and satiated ice-cream fiend to escape giggling and shivering into the sunlight.

And I remember I was jealous of a guy who lived down the street from me one summer who had a cycle before I even had a driver’s license.

But as far as chicks went, I had never really felt anything. Certainly not jealousy. Chicks had been a necessary evil, giggling half-wits who played games until your balls were purple and then forgot their purses in the theater, or had to be in by midnight, or Weren’t That Kind of Girl, or some other crap.

And yet there I was, finished with the exam and by all reasonable expectations hot on the trail home, to blow some dope and collapse into bed, after being up almost forty-eight hours. But that wasn’t happening. Instead I went right back to my room and called her.

The phone rang a long time. Finally a dull voice said, “Hello?”

“Hello, is Sukie there?”

“Who?” A very dull voice, and then I remembered the time change.

“Sukie Blake, Susan, is she there?”

“What number are you calling?” the guy said. He was being very, very careful about waking up and I couldn’t stand it.

“Sukie, man, Sukie, the blond chick who lives upstairs, the one with the weird eye?”

“Oh.” He mulled that one over. “Yeah. Hold on.”

Then there was a silence. I stared around my room and lit a cigarette and blinked in the smoke.

“Hello?” Dazed voice.

“Hello, Sukie?”

“Who is this?” Really dazed.

“Sukie, what’s going on out there?”

“What?” She was beginning to wake up. “Who is this?”

I thought I heard some sound in the background. Some sound in the room. “Are you alone?”

“Goddamn it,” she said. “Who is this?”

“Peter,” I said.

She laughed. Three thousand miles away, I heard that laugh, and it made me smile. “Oh, Peter,” she said. “It’s seven-thirty in the morning.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I wanted to talk to you.”

There was a yawn at the other end, then, “How was your exam?”

That made me happy. She’d remembered I was going back to take an exam.

“Terrible. I thought about you the whole time.”

“What kind of an exam was it?”

“Economics.”

“Peter, that’s not good, you thought about me during an economics exam?” And after another yawn: “What did you think?”

Hmm, what did I think? That was a drag over the telephone. “Oh, you know.”

There was a pause. A short pause while she woke up still more. “You wanted to know if I was alone,” she said, her voice low and amused.

“No,” I said, “you weren’t awake. I asked how you were.”

“I’m not alone, Peter,” she said. “When you called I was in bed with eight puppies.”

“I didn’t ask you whether you were alone,” I said.

She gave a low laugh. “Peter, you’re sweet, do you know that?”

Well, that was it. Like walking out on a limb, and finally the limb snaps. I looked around the room, the goddamned dreary room, and I said, “Listen, I want to see you.”

She laughed again. “I want to see you, too.”

And then in a sudden rush I said, “Then why don’t you come out here?”

“To Cambridge?”

“Sure.”

“How, Peter?”

“I don’t know. There must be some way.”

She asked me then if I had any money. I didn’t. I asked her. She didn’t. Swell.

“Swell,” I said.

It was quiet on the line. A kind of depressing quiet.

“Maybe,” I said, “I can figure out some way to come out there.” But I knew it wasn’t true. In a few weeks I would have to start studying for finals. She must have known it wasn’t true, too, because she sounded sleepy again when she said, “All right, Pete.”

“No, really. I’ll figure something out.”

“I know. I believe you.”

And I guess in a way she did. Finally she said she was costing me money, and I said the hell with the money, but I couldn’t really afford to say that, so I hung up and realized that I was very tired and that I wanted to sleep for a long time.

30

I DIDN’T WAKE UP UNTIL lunchtime the next day. I am a man of few vices, one of them most unquestionably being the time I spend with my eyes closed. But as soon as I was up I was remembering Sukie, and the phone call, and all she’d said.

I caught up with John in the dining hall, and joined him over a plate of sawdust and beans.

John looked up and smiled. “Peter,” he said. “How’s the head today?”

“Fine. How’re the eats?”

“Awful,” said John. “I didn’t expect to see you for quite a while. Heard you had a little trouble with that economics exam yesterday.”

“Trouble?” I tried to look surprised.

“Heard you barely finished.”

I sighed. I thought he’d been talking about the Senior Tutor. I get messages from the Senior Tutor three times a year: after fall-term hour exams, after mid-terms, and after spring-term hour exams. I was expecting one any day now, but at least it hadn’t arrived yet.

“No, that was no trouble,” I said. “Just had better things to think about.”

John laughed, and then frowned at his potatoes.

“Jesus,” he said, “what the hell is that?” He held a clump aloft for all to admire.

Somebody said, “A hairpin.”

“A hairpin, Jesus,” John said. “I could get lockjaw or something from eating this crap. Look at it, it’s rusty.”

I’d had enough to eat right then. “Heard from Musty?” I asked.

John looked up sharply. “Any reason why I should’ve?”

I had to play this one right. I didn’t want to keep anything from John but then again I didn’t want him to fuck me up, which he undoubtedly would if he had time to do so. All I said was, “No. Nothing special.”

John dropped his potatoes and lit up a smoke. “Okay,” he said, “what’s the big secret?”

“No secret.”

“Well, then, what’s all this garbage about Musty? C’mon, Peter, I’ve known you too long to just think you’re wondering out loud when you drop something like that.”

“Like what? Christ, you’re as paranoid as all these other creeps.” I spread an arm out to encompass the dining hall, which was filled with guys studying over their meals. “You’ve just got a different angle on the paranoia, that’s all.”

“Uh-huh.” John nodded grimly. He blew some smoke in my direction. “Then who were you calling after the exam yesterday? Not Musty, by any chance?”

I had to laugh. John managed to have a finger on anything that went down.

“No, not Musty. I was talking to a chick.”

John put his smoke out and laughed heavily. “A chick, eh? Not a California honey, by any chance? Yes?” He sat back and sipped at his coffee. “Far out,” he said, “far fucking out.”

“What’s far out?”

“Nothing. It just makes sense, why you’ve been blowing your mind ever since you got back here two days ago. And me thinking it was the climate.” He laughed again. “Far fucking out.” He looked suddenly serious and leaned over to me, across the table. “What’d she tell you about Musty?”

“I told you already. Nothing.”

“Then what’s this riff all about?”

“I was just wondering if you had any more trips lined up, in the near future.”

“California trips?”

“No, mescaline trips.”

“What’s wrong with you, you got blue balls after a couple of days around this lady?”

“You might say that. You might just say I want to see her. What difference does that make? You got any trips lined up, or don’t you?”

John searched his coat for another butt. “Not in the near future. Not till after exams, I’d say.” He cocked his head and said, “But even if I had a run lined up, you wouldn’t be able to do it…” letting the statement wander off into a question. I knew what he was asking.

“Aw, hell,” I said, “I could probably work something out.”

John took a long drag on his smoke and nodded. “That’s good,” he said. “That’s good to hear you say that, Pete, ’cause I wouldn’t want you going around with some kind of wild misconception in your head about me letting a chick run the dope in.”

I searched around for another smoke and thought that one over. I’d known he would say that—John never let chicks in on his deals. It was a completely bullshit prejudice, because chicks were cooler for a run, if anything, than a long-haired dude could ever be. Most big dealers on the Coast, in fact, used only chicks—but I wasn’t on the Coast and I wasn’t talking to a Coast dealer. I was talking to John.

“Supposing,” I began, “supposing you couldn’t get anyone around here to do the run? Would you consider letting her do it then?”

John looked pained. “Peter,” he said, “you don’t seem to understand. You know how I feel but you don’t seem to understand. Well, I’ll tell it to you all over again.” He paused and then said, very deliberately and carefully, “Chicks… fuck… up.” He looked at me.

“I was just wondering.”

“Well, you can stop wondering.”

“Even if you couldn’t get anyone around here, and you had a run set up and a courier was all you needed, you wouldn’t let her do it?”

John was quiet when he said, “Never. Never, never, never. I’d change the run, I’d can the run—Christ, I’d even do it myself. But I’d never count on a chick to get anything through. Chicks fuck up.”

I shrugged, and stood up. There wasn’t anything else to say. I knew that if Musty called in a few days and told John that he only had a day or two to get somebody out to San Francisco to make a quick run before he split for Oregon, John would bust his ass to get somebody. What I’d been hoping was that John would at least admit the possibility of letting Sukie be that somebody. But he wouldn’t, so I had to get to her. There was no other way.

31

I NEEDED A HUNDRED AND sixty bucks to get to the Coast on a plane. I wouldn’t have needed anything to hitch, but I didn’t have the time for that. So it was all or nothing, and after a few minutes in front of the Student Union Jobs board I began to think it was going to be nothing. I could get two-fifty an hour translating Sanskrit into German for Professor Popcock, which wasn’t exactly my field, or I could get two-eighty bartending on weekends. But I’d already turned down a few of the bartending boys’ jobs in order to make the run, and they took an exceedingly dim view of those who didn’t exercise the right to work when it was waved in their faces. I could go in there bleeding right now, on my knees, begging for a gig, and they’d tell me to beat it. That left a kitchen job as the only real alternative, at one-eighty an hour, which would be two fifty-hour weeks, and I was just about to run down and sign up when I noticed a little note saying that students couldn’t work more than twenty hours a week. Far out, that was about all I had to say.

I went out into the courtyard to take a walk and think.

Once outside, I met Herbie, who was going to the library. I walked along with him, and asked him how I could make a lot of money in a short time. He said, “Eye Tee Gee.”

“What?”

“Get yourself twenty shares of ITG. In six weeks, you’ll be rich.”

“What?”

“ITG,” he said patiently. He had learned, in his seventeen years, to be patient. “Over the counter. It’s really taking off.”

“How much is twenty shares?”

“Two hundred dollars,” Herbie said.

I said I didn’t have it.

And Herbie, to my dismay, said he didn’t know any other way.

“Are you sure?”

Herbie sighed. “Peter,” he said, “you’re talking about legal bread, right?”

“Yeah. Legal bread.”

“Well, that’s a problem, making money fast and legally,” Herbie said, as if it was something I really should have learned a long time ago.

32

I WANDERED AROUND THE NEXT two days, looking for jobs and asking people what they knew, but nothing turned up. I was just starting to think that hitchhiking wasn’t such a bad idea when I got the note from the Senior Tutor. That was the end. I knew what he’d want. He’d want to tell me that I’d screwed the economics exam—probably royally—and that if I continued to screw things he wasn’t going to be able to help me very much, except to plead my case before the Ad Board and try to keep them from booting me out. Which was cool, his concern and all, but that wasn’t really what went down at a meeting with the Senior Tutor. Those meetings consisted mainly of him telling you how much he worried about you and your work and your habits, which was a drag, and they always ended with him asking you a lot of nosy questions he didn’t really want the answers to, but somehow felt compelled to ask. His field was the minor poets of the eighteenth century, that was the kind of dude he was. Well, the hell with it. I had to go and see him.

He met me at the door of his study, and escorted me to a padded chair with an arm under my elbow.

“Well, Harkness.”

“Sir.”

“Well, sit down.”

“Thank you, sir.” I sat down. As I did he turned away from me, to look out the window. All I could see of him were his hands, which twisted and turned as he built up steam for our little chat. Finally he turned again to face me.

“Harkness, you probably know why I’ve called you in today.”

“Sir.”

“I said, you probably know why I’ve called you in.”

“Yes, sir. I have a fairly good idea.”

“A fairly good idea. Ah-ha.” He went over to his desk and began to fill his pipe. The Senior Tutor had a way of repeating things that you’d said as if they were meant to be funny. It was not very amusing.

“And what would that fairly good idea be, may I ask?”

“I suppose that I screwed that economics exam yesterday.”

“You suppose that you—ah-ha, yes. You mean to say that you suppose that you did poorly on the exam.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You did poorly, Harkness, you did very poorly.” Pausing to light his pipe. “You flunked it, as a matter of fact.”

“Sir.”

“I said you flunked it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well,” he said, looking up from behind billows of smoke. “Is that all you have to say?”

“What else is there to say?” I said. “What’s done is done.”

He smiled benevolently at that. It was one of his favorite sayings. “Well, yes,” he said. “Now I assume that you know what your failure means?”

“I think so,” I said.

“It means that your period of academic probation will not end this spring, but will continue next fall. Until the end of the fall term,” he explained.

“Yes, sir,” I said.

Having finished with that, the Tutor seemed suddenly relieved. He sat down in front of me on the edge of his desk, as if to show me how he was letting his hair down. Business was done, and now it was time for an intimate chat.

“Now, Harkness,” he said. “I’ve been looking through your folder. While I’ve been waiting for you, you see, just glancing through. But I must say that I don’t understand your case at all. Not at all.”

“Sir?”

“I’ve been looking at your high school records, both scholastic and athletic. And your recommendations. And the comments of your freshman proctor and advisers, that sort of thing.”

“Sir.”

“And I don’t understand it at all. You’re not performing up to expectations, Harkness. You know that, of course.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yes. Well, I was wondering if you could give me any clues as to why. From all the indications of your record, you should have been a sort of Harvard Frank Merriwell.”

“Thank you, sir.” Bloated ass-hole.

“I’ve been wondering if there are any problems you might be having. Personal problems, family problems, financial problems? That I might assist you in straightening out?” He looked at me, but I tried to look blank. “After all,” he said expansively, “that’s what I’m here for.”

“No, sir,” I said. “I don’t think there are. But thank you anyway.” Nosy bastard.

“Well, Harkness,” he went on, “I was wondering, because I’ve noticed a certain trend in your behavioral development, if I may say so. For example, you came here all All-American in football, and yet you quit after the first half of the season.”

“Well, sir,” I said, “if you knew the coach, I think—”

“Now, now,” he said, holding up his pipe, “just let me finish. You quit playing football, and shortly after that your grades dropped. The next year, last year that is, you were involved in one of the radical student political organizations that we tolerate here on campus. And you achieved some prominence in that endeavor. But you quit that too. Now, during this year, you haven’t pursued any organized activities that I know of, so you haven’t quit anything. But it doesn’t seem to me that you’ve been doing anything, either, Harkness, if you will permit me to say so.”

“Sir,” I said. Nothing more. The imbecile.

“Well,” he said, “do you have anything to say?”

“In my defense, sir?” I cocked my head.

“Oh, come now, Harkness,” he said, getting off his desk, “that’s distorting my meaning quite deliberately, don’t you think? I’m not trying to accuse you of anything, I’m trying to help you.”

“Thank you, sir. But I don’t think I need anyone’s help right now but my own.”

“As you wish,” he said.

“Thank you, sir,” again.

“Well,” he said, “hope you do better next round. And if anything comes up, don’t hesitate to come and see me. My secretary will make an appointment for you.” Edging me to the door.

“Thank you, sir,” again.

“It’s normally a week or so from the appointment to the meeting, but if you feel that you have something important to discuss, we could make it a day or two, you know.”

“Thank you, sir,” again.

He opened the door, looked out at his secretary and the crowded sitting room, and then closed it.

“There is just one more thing I should like to say to you, Harkness. As regards your record.”

“Sir.” Here we go again. The old fart could never find a last word that really suited him, so he just dribbled on endlessly.

“Sit down, Harkness, sit down.” He filled his pipe and snuggled into his chair. “It’s not exactly my field,” he began, “but I’ve made a quite extensive study of the man and his work. And I think that, in some ways, my conclusions about him can be applied to you, as well.”

“Sir?” I said. What was this routine?

“De Quincey,” he said, “Thomas De Quincey. Are you familiar with his work?” Puffing on his pipe fatuously.

“Only vaguely,” I said, thinking, Of course I am, moron.

“Yes,” he went on, as though he would’ve been disappointed if I’d said anything else. “A very interesting fellow, De Quincey was.” He paused and looked at me. “Is, I should say, in light of your case.”

“Sir?”

“Are you, ah, at home with his little volume on the aspects and vagaries of the opium-eater’s existence?”

“No, sir.” God, not this.

“Well, De Quincey was an addict himself, you know, an opium addict. And he wrote a fascinating little study of his addiction, entitled Confessions of an English Opium Eater. Fascinating.” He glanced over at me to make sure that I was with him, and I nodded. “And in the course of his account, he makes some extraordinary observations.” Looking at me again. “For instance, at one point, he remarks that ‘opium eaters never finish anything.’ That’s a wonderfully, oh, to-the-point remark, don’t you think, Harkness?”

“Telling it like it is,” I murmured.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Yes, sir, it is.”

“Yes,” he said, “I quite agree. Well, do you see the connection, then, do you see what I’m driving at?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “I think I do.”

“Uh-huh,” fumbling with his pipe, which had as usual gone out. “And do you have any, ah, comment on the matter? Does it strike a responsive chord, I should say.”

“I don’t believe so,” I said.

“None at all?” he queried. Man, he was begging for it.

“Only an intellectual one,” I said finally.

“Ah-ha,” he nodded. “And what is that?”

“Artaud,” I said. “You’re familiar with Artaud, I take it?”

The Senior Tutor blinked. “Well, he’s not in my field, you understand, but yes, I think that I’m familiar with the rudiments of the man’s work.” That got his goat, the old turd. I was playing it his way, and it hurt.

“Artaud was also an addict, an opium addict, that is, and his comment on the matter was that…” I paused, trying to get it out right “… his comment was that as long as we haven’t been able to abolish a single cause of human desperation, we do not have the right to try to suppress the means by which man tries to clean himself of desperation.” I paused and looked at the Tutor. “Those were his words on the subject. Of course, Artaud was himself a desperate man when he wrote them, desperate in a sense probably unknown to De Quincey. Because when he wrote his little essay on opium they were getting ready to cart him off to the madhouse. And not for being an addict,” I added.

“I see,” said the Tutor, who looked as if he didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. “Yes, I see. Artaud. I’ll have to look into him. He was one of those Cruelty fellows, wasn’t he?”

I nodded.

“Yes. Well.” He stood up again and held out his hand. “It’s been good talking to you, Harkness, and remember, if you should think of anything that you want to discuss, or perhaps if you should just feel like a chat, don’t hesitate to let Miss Burns know.”

“I will,” I said, “and thank you, sir.”

“Yes, yes,” he said, showing me to the door.

33

TWO DAYS OF EARNESTLY ANEMIC study went by and then John marched into my room and plunked down on the bed.

“How’s it going?” he said, which I did not bother to respond to because John didn’t give a goddamn how it was going and never had. All he meant was that he had something on his mind. He pulled out a joint. “Want to blow some?”

I shook my head. I was feeling virtuously studious, and I knew that the dope would kill that. I also knew that I couldn’t sit around and watch him smoke too long, so I said, “What’s happening?”

“Well,” John said, “I’m thinking about this Lotus, it’s in beautiful shape and the cat who’s selling it is the original owner. I’m going over to look at it tomorrow.” He took a deep drag. “Want to come?”

“Sure,” I said, “but you didn’t come in here to lay that down.”

He laughed, and took another hit. “I can see the studying has brought your mind to a keen edge, Peter,” he said. “Well, what I wanted to know—” another hit “—fine dope, you sure you don’t want any?”

“You wanted to know.”

He laughed again. “Quite right,” he said. “All business. I wanted to know if this chick is still up for doing it.”

Then I remembered. “I meant to tell you,” I said. “She called last night and said she’d love to go to New York with you, but she’s used up all her overnights.”

“No, no,” John said, “I meant—is that right? The little bitch. She called last night? I didn’t know that. Why didn’t you get hold of me?”

“You were in the rack with Sandra.”

“Oh yeah,” John said, remembering. “Oh yeah.” He thought about it some more. “She can’t go overnight? Jesus, that screws the whole weekend.”

“Tell her that,” I said.

He laughed, and then was silent, and finally said, as if remembering suddenly, “No, listen, I was talking about something else—that California chick, what’s-her-name, does she still want to make a trip?”

That was surprising, even shocking. John’s head was bent, but on one thing he was firm: he never changed his mind. Never, under any circumstances. I didn’t know whether it was from obstinacy, or pride, or his Old Boston upbringing, but whatever the reason, it was true.

“Yeah, she’ll do it.” I didn’t hesitate. I knew I could talk her into it—I’d almost done as much when the run wasn’t even a sure thing. It was a way to come out and she wouldn’t worry about it, if I said it was cool.

But I was interested in John’s change of mind, in his sudden acceptance of Sukie. Hell, last time I’d talked to him he hadn’t even considered the possibility.

“What happened?” I said. “Couldn’t you find anyone else?”

John shrugged. “Well, let’s see. You can’t go because you fucked your exam. And everyone else’s wonking their ’nads off for exams.” He laughed. “Not doing a fucking thing, really, just sitting around chewing their nails. But if they’re going to worry, they’re going to do it here.” He shook his head pityingly, then looked up at me. “The other thing is that Musty called and said he was leaving town for a while. He said if I wanted anything more before July, I had to do it now. So here we are.” He smiled and took out another joint, lit it, passed it to me.

I took a long hit. “Musty’s leaving town fast, huh?”

“That’s the riff,” said John.

“Far out,” I said, and then laughed. Things had worked out better than I had hoped. I’d known that John would be pressed for a runner, but I didn’t think he’d offer to let Sukie do it. I thought I’d have to cudgel him into it—and then here he was asking me if I thought she could make it. I laughed again. “Yeah, she’ll do it.”

“Good enough,” said John. “Everything’s set up, you’ll send the money to Sukie and Musty’s got the bricks ready. So all you’ve got to do is call the chick and let her in on it.”

“Pretty sure of yourself, weren’t you, John.” It wasn’t a question, it was a statement of fact. But John didn’t take it that way. He waved the joint in my direction and said, “You were pretty sure of yourself, Peter.” I guessed that he’d been figuring things out with Musty, and laughed.

“Yeah, I guess I was. But what the hell. She’s coming. When will she fly in, anyway?”

“Saturday, around two.”

I thought that one over and then realized what he had said.

“Saturday, good God. Not Saturday. I’m supposed to go to the Piggy Picnic on Saturday.”

“Please. Garden Party.”

“Well, the hell with that. Annie Butler can blow her mind at me all she wants, I’m just not going to be able to make it. I’d better let her know as soon as I talk to Sukie—”

“Peter,” said John. Nothing more.

“Yeah?”

“You’re not going to tell Annie anything. I may have to let this chick make the run, but I don’t have to let you two lovebirds fuck things up by prancing around Logan together, for every one of Murphy’s pigs to see and admire.”

“What the hell—”

“Murphy busted you in Berkeley, with the chick in the same room, right? And I expect that your mugs are fairly well known by the vice-squad pigs by now.”

“Oh for Chrissake, get off it. Maybe my mug—maybe, if you really stretch it—but Sukie’s, never. I’m going to go down and pick her up, and Annie Butler can go to hell.”

John puffed slowly on what was by this time a dark roach. Finally he said, “This is my run and we’re going to do it my way or not at all. You can tell the chick on the phone why you’re not going to be there to meet her—but that’s all. I’m not going to have this thing fucked up just to please your absurd sense of decorum, and that’s all it is, Peter, so don’t go making those bullshit faces at me. When the chick lands in Boston you’re going to be having the time of your life at the Piggy Club Garden Party. Period. I will be down at Logan waiting for her, and she’ll be in the room about the time that you and Annie fondly bid each other farewell.” He paused and looked at me. “Understand?”

There was nothing to say. I left the room to find a pay phone.

A surprised voice answered, sounding very far-away. It was a lousy connection. “Peter?”

“Yeah. How you doing, baby.”

“Fine, just fine. Peter, God, it’s good to hear from you.”

I didn’t say anything for a minute, just got stoned out of my mind on her voice, on the sound, knowing that in a few days the sound would be next to me and not coming through a piece of plastic that demanded more money every three minutes. Then I said, “Listen, honey. I’ve just been talking to John.”

“John?”

“Yeah, you remember, my friend John back here, the guy I scored the bricks for when I was in Berkeley?”

“Oh.” It wasn’t noncommittal. It was just that she was beginning to understand. I had to keep it moving.

“Well, you remember that conversation we had, after my exam?”

“Yeah, I remember. Is this where John—”

“Just listen, honey, just let me finish. Things haven’t been going too well for me around here. I mean, I’ve been trying to get some bread together so I could come out and see you again, or so you could come out here—you know, like the summer’s getting here, and if we could get together we could do up the summer—”

“I’ll do it, Peter.” That was all she said.

“You don’t mind? I mean, you know what I’m talking about—”

“I’ll do it. I mind, but I’ll do it. I want to see you.”

I took a deep breath and it felt good. The chick was very, very together. “Okay, beautiful, honey, that’s beautiful. That’s so beautiful, I can’t even tell you. Listen, soon as you get here I’ll take care of things, you know, a place to stay and eat and that whole riff, you don’t worry about it, I’ll work it all out. And then if you dig it around here we can do up the summer, you know, and—”

“Don’t, Peter. You’re blowing my mind. Just don’t talk like that till I’m with you, okay?”

I knew what she was saying. “Okay, yeah, okay, you’re right. Well, listen, I’ll be sending the bread out to Musty tomorrow, and Musty’ll know the details so he’ll lay that end of it on you. The only other thing is that I won’t be able to meet you at the airport.” I had expected her to wonder about that, but all she said was, “That’s cool.”

“Out of sight. John’ll meet you, he doesn’t want me around ’cause of the bust but John’ll meet you, and as soon as you get back to Cambridge I’ll see you.”

“That’s cool.”

Suddenly I didn’t have anything more to say. I just wanted to see her, and talking business like this was only making it worse.

“Well—” I started to lay down something mindless, but she cut me off and said, “Peter. Take care of yourself.”

I laughed at that. “I will baby. You do the same.”

“Don’t worry about me,” she said. “You just be good.” And then the operator was demanding more bread and she was saying goodbye and it was over.

As soon as I got back to the room I asked John where he’d put the dope.

“Gonna can the studying for a bit, Peter-old-boy?”

“Not can it, just enjoy myself before I get back on it.”

John laughed. “Enjoy yourself, huh? You already look like you’re enjoying yourself. You look like you just balled a nun, for Chrissake.”

34

I WAS BEING SHAKEN, QUITE hard, not a friendly shake at all. I opened my eyes and there was Annie Butler, all dressed up and looking very pretty except for her face, which was turned down.

“You’re late,” she said, as I opened my eyes.

“What?” I rubbed them.

“Late, you’re late.”

“What time is it?”

“One o’clock.”

“Christ.” I fell back in bed and groaned. I’d been up all night doing a paper and hadn’t gotten to bed until dawn. I was wrecked.

“What are you doing?” she said.

“Going back to sleep.”

“But the party,” she said.

The party, Jesus. It all came back to me. I’d been so intent on finishing the paper, so I wouldn’t have to mess with it while Sukie was around, that I’d almost managed to forget about the party, the Piggy Club, the whole mess. I sighed.

“I’ll wait in the living room while you dress,” Annie said, and walked out. I sat up again and coughed. That’s Annie. Three months later, she’ll wait outside while you dress.

“Are you getting up?” she called from the living room.

“Yeah,” I said.

“You going to shave?”

“Yeah, I’m going to shave.”

“Good. You need it.”

Charming as ever, dear Annie Butler. I went into the bathroom and turned on the shower.

“There isn’t time for a shower, we’re late already.”

“I always shave in the shower,” I said.

“Then hurry,” Annie said. And finally, trailing afterward, like a dropping from a lame duck: “Please.”

The garden party was held on a huge, rolling lawn, fenced in from the street and sheltered from its noise and plebeian curiosities by thick bushes. It was a gay scene, full of good cheer, and well stocked with food and drink. The lawn was dotted with colorful tables of food and booze; there was also a small army of polite, discreet, red-jacketed caterers.

The whole scene made me want to blow lunch. Since everyone in the Club knew that Annie Butler was Percy Pratfall’s honey—or whatever the hell his name was—we’d had to make a great show of trotting around, greeting everyone, just to make sure they all understood on what grounds she’d managed to get in. She held my arm just tightly enough to show that I was her escort, and just loosely enough to show that I was her escort only for the afternoon. The pressure on my arm never changed, except when I would come out with something particularly obnoxious, when she’d give me a little squeeze of reproof. But I didn’t really give a damn after the first half hour, since by then I had lost Annie and was doing my single-handed best to break the Piggy Club’s liquor account wide open. And from the acid looks that the older members gave me, I knew that my efforts were not going unnoticed. After I’d discreetly managed to knock over five open hooch bottles and watched them gurgle and seep into the grass, one of the older members came over to demand that I produce my invitation card. This happened a number of times in the course of the afternoon—more often than would have been considered polite, in fact—and each time I produced my card, said something about boorish manners, and walked off. I got very drunk and a number of the members got very red in the face, and that was how it went. But I didn’t mind the embarrassment of feeling that I didn’t belong there; in fact, I rather enjoyed it. For the occasion I was wearing a pair of greasy blue jeans, a rumpled, plasticly-freaky shirt I’d gotten in the Village a few years before, a tired old blazer, and sneakers. Annie didn’t care much for that, of course, but then, she could always have chosen not to go. She’d made her decision, and I’d made mine.

But as the afternoon wore on, the fun of hassling the old dudes wore off, and I was forced to hunt the really big game, which were the chicks. The chicks were all there, colorful dots on the rolling green lawn, just like the tables—and set up with the same cunning social design: to look so good that you’d want to take a bite, without knowing what you’d really bitten into. It was their only hope of survival, these chicks; they were like the kinds of insects you read about who have no natural defense except their bodily camouflage.

So I’d wander over to one of these chicks, and she’d go through her whole I’m-so-polite-and-interested-in-you routine, pausing to Ohh and Ahh whenever I said something that she figured was supposed to rate an Ohh or Ahh, and asking me if she could get anything for me at the buffet? This went on for as long as I could tolerate it. Then I would break down and start in on the old routine. It’d start when one of them stared at my clothes—politely, you understand, painfully politely, as though I’d been selected top boy in my Head Start class and been awarded an invitation to the Piggy Club Garden Party—and it would go on from there.

“My,” she’d say, trying to giggle. “That certainly is a, well, a unique outfit you’ve got on there.”

“Oh, you dig it? Hey, that’s groovy to hear. You seem to be one of the few perceptive people here. Most of these creeps just stare at me like I’m some kind of bum.”

Nobody had ever told her in her life that she was even remotely capable of being perceptive. “Oh,” she’d say, “why, well ah…”

“You dig this scene?”

“Ah, well, you know…”

“That’s what I thought. You’re no dope. You’re hip to what these creeps are putting down, I can see that.”

“Well, I don’t know, I don’t know what to say, I mean…”

“What’s your hustle around here anyway, honey? You dig? Who’s throwing in the chips? You don’t have to jive with me, baby. Just put it on me.”

“Well, I, ah… I don’t think I understand your question.”

“Oh, a sly one, huh? Coming on slow, just to make me show my hand, huh? Come on, you’re hip. What do you do around here?”

“You mean,” she’d say, pointing her finger to the ground, “here?”

“Right, right, you’re digging it.”

“Ah, yes, I guess so, well, here, I mean right here, well, I’m a guest, I guess.”

“A guest!” I’d guffaw loudly, and she’d look tremendously pleased that she’d said something funny. “A guest, wow. You got it, honey. That’s far out. That’s too much.”

After a while she’d venture to say, “What’re you doing here?”

“Me? Well, I don’t know what I’m doing here right now, you dig? I mean, I could tell you why I thought I came here, but I don’t know no more if that’s what’s happening or not, see?”

“Tell me,” she’d say, “tell me, you can tell me.”

“Well, like I came down here ’cause one of these creeps give my manager a ring, said he wanted a band to play this afternoon, down here. Dig it? So I came down. First thing I find out when I get here, they don’t want no band. At least I don’t think so, I mean nobody’s said nothing to me about it so far—”

“You,” she gulped her drink and pointed an astounded finger, “you play? In a band? A rock and roll band?”

“Shit, honey, I don’t play in no shortwave band.”

It’d be her turn to guffaw. “A shortwave band.” Ha, ha!

“No, I mean, of course I play in a band. You might have heard our latest album on the radio, maybe. You ever listen to WBCN?” She’d shake her head yes, yes, all the time, of course she did. Of course, my ass. “Yeah, they got our latest album, you know, Lucifer Harkness and The New Administration. You remember that one? With the lead cut, remember that one, the lead song called ‘The Cabinet Member,’ and the guitar riff that goes dee-dee-dee, de dah, dee-dee-dee-dee deda dah, dwah, dwah, da duhn. Right? Can you dig it?”

“Gol-lee,” she’d say, “that’s you? That’s your band? Gol-lee! I mean I never thought I’d ever actually meet you, and here, I mean, with all these… creeps.”

That always got me. I’d guffaw.

“I thought you looked familiar. That must’ve been what it was—on your album cover, that big picture?”

“Right on,” I’d say, “right on. Outasight. I knew you had it, honey, first time I seen you. Like you’re the first chick here today’s recognized me. Outasight.”

“Gol-lee,” she’d say.

I had to keep moving, though. The word got around amazingly fast, about the unknown celebrity in the greasy jeans who everyone’d been shitting on without knowing that he was really…

Who?

Finally it was four o’clock, and to my relief and the members’ indescribable joy, I politely excused myself, regretting, to the ladies, that it looked after all as though I weren’t going to be given a chance to play for them. They said it was a shame, I agreed it was a shame, and I made my escape.

On the way out, I looked around for Annie to say goodbye, but I didn’t see her. I didn’t look very hard.

35

I GOT BACK TO THE room just after four. I was a little bit smashed, but I didn’t mind and I didn’t figure that Sukie would. I kicked the door open, put my hands in my pockets, and walked in.

“Well, hi there,” I said.

“Well, hi there,” John said. “Bought the Lotus this morning. Magnificent machine. Got a pretty good trade-in on the Ferrari, too, better than I thought.”

“Swell,” I said, looking around.

No Sukie.

“I also got a place for the chick to stay,” John said. “Sharon’s old place. She’s moved out, you know, and the rent’s paid for another two weeks, and the furniture’s still there, so…”

“Fine,” I said, still looking.

“Don’t thank me or anything, Peter-old-boy,” John said. I looked over at him and realized that he was hugely pleased with himself for having lined up the place.

“Yeah, thanks, man, thanks. But where is she?”

“Here,” John said, sprawling back on the couch and suddenly intensely interested in the new Rolling Stone.

“In Cambridge?”

“No, in Boston. She just called from the airport. Christ, that reminds me. What’d you give her our number for? You know I don’t like—”

“Why did she call?”

John shrugged. “Some hang-up. They lost her bag.”

“What bag,” I said, but it wasn’t a question. I just wanted to know what I was already afraid I knew.

“The bag with the grass.” John sighed. He seemed to be taking it well. I couldn’t believe he was just sitting there, telling me she’d lost the dope and sighing.

“The bag with the grass,” I said. “Sweet Jesus, how could she lose that? It was under the goddamn seat—”

“No,” said John. “She checked it.”

“She what?”

“Checked it. It was a forty-brick run. You know as well as I do that if you’re carrying forty bricks, you’re gonna have to check one of the bags.”

“You didn’t tell me it was going to be that big a—”

“You didn’t ask,” John said, slipping back into his magazine. He was again suddenly fascinated by the magazine, the bastard. From behind it he said, “Anyway, she’ll be okay. She said they just lost it somewhere in transit.”

“In transit, my ass,” I said. “What did you tell her to do?”

“I told her to go back and get it.”

36

I HAD TO SIT DOWN for a minute to think that one out, it was so unbelievable. And then I found that I couldn’t think, that I was so pissed that I couldn’t do anything but shout at John and tell him what I thought about sending the chick back. He just sat and stared at me and said nothing and finally I realized that I was wasting precious time. Bag or no bag, if I could get to Sukie before they did… “Where’re the keys to the Lotus?”

“Give me back the Rolling Stone,” John said. I’d ripped it out of his hands without knowing what I was doing, and as I handed it back he gave me the keys. “Don’t run it over forty-five-hundred revs,” he yelled after me, as I hustled out the door, “it’s just had a valve job.”

All the way out to the airport I ground the gears and ran it over forty-five-hundred revs. Fucking John, he’d really screwed me this time, screwed me so bad that I couldn’t believe it was happening—that he’d just let it happen. The dude had a loose bolt somewhere, especially when it came to chicks. Or other people. Or other people’s chicks. I mean, what the hell was the cat thinking of, sending Sukie back for the bag. Because he knew about running dope, and he knew about “lost” bags at the airport. This wasn’t the first time we’d ever “lost” a bag. The first time had cost John a pretty penny, to buy Jeffrey off, and we’d all learned from the experience. Ever since then, we’d had strict rules for runs, especially runs which involved bags in the hold. First, no matching sets of luggage. Second, no name tags. Third, no real names used on tickets, so that nothing could be traced from the baggage check on a busted bag. Fourth, the specially designed, double-locked, lined bags, which made it impossible for the heat to open the bags without irreparably breaking them and so disqualifying any potential evidence on the grounds of illegal search and seizure.

Those were the first four rules, and the fifth was never to go back for a lost bag. Because it just meant trouble and time in court and a hell of a lot of money. We never went back for a “lost” bag, because these days the narcs didn’t always have to open a bag to find the stuff. The narcs were into all kinds of things now: dogs trained to growl at the smell of dope, even dope soaked in Coca-Cola and wrapped in aluminum; and odor-analyzers, weird little machines with a sort of gun attachment that sniffed the air and lit up when they smelled dope.

And so anything that we put in the hold was a strictly calculated risk, and not something to be toyed with. Because the heat had their own little, hustle: when they’d catch a bag full of weed, they’d hold it, announce that it was lost, and then bust whoever showed up to claim it. Not a very original hustle—and anybody who’s carrying always knows that if they say your bag is lost, split. Split fast and never go back. But Sukie’d never run any dope before, and so she’d called John and asked him what to do. And John—

Fucking John.

I hot-assed it through Sumner tunnel, paid my toll, and blasted up the ramp toward the airport—only to come to a dead halt twenty yards up the road. Airport traffic. Newsboys sauntered in and out among the rows of cars with maddening assurance that nobody was going anywhere. Hawking the Boston papers, the most provincial newspapers in America (“Saugus Man Dies in New York Nuclear Holocaust”) and the crookedest (look at page ten for the small item “Ten Officials Indicted in 44 Million Swindle”) as befits the town. I sat in the car and swore and lit a cigarette and got paranoid. My head was completely spaced. I couldn’t even remember if Sukie had come in on United or TWA. Most of all, I couldn’t figure out what John had been trying to do when he’d sent her back. Because if anyone knew how much it’d cost to buy her off of a forty-brick rap, he did. American justice is extraordinarily expensive; the bribe must always measure up to the crime. Forty bricks was going to set John back quite a ways, if anything happened to Sukie.

If anything happened to Sukie…

I had visions of arriving just as they were slapping the cuffs on her, of a fleeting glance of her face looking over her shoulder, looking at me sadly the way she had that night they had dragged me away. She was showing no reproach and somehow that made it worse. And then suddenly she was at the end of a long hallway, it was somewhere in Berkeley but I knew that the hallway would look the same no matter where it was, fluorescent lights leering, and she had on a gray sack dress and two matrons were taking her, still cuffed, down a flight of stairs. I watched helplessly and saw again the sad, un-reproachful face over the shoulder.

Then the line started moving and I began thinking about lawyers and bail bondsmen and where in the world I was going to scrape up the bread. I drifted out of my lane and some swine in a Cadillac honked and skinned my front fender in a burping burst of exhaust. Fuck you, fella. I was down the ramp and at the airport and parked in a cab zone before I knew it. A cop shouted at me that I’d have to move, but I just ran inside, past the people and the porters and the heat that seemed to be everywhere, wondering why I’d never noticed how many heat hung around the place.

I knew where the lost-bag rooms were, and I decided to try United first. I sprinted down a long corridor, turned a corner, and found the office. There was nobody there. TWA’s depot was just a little farther on down, so I decided to check it out, then return to United if nothing was happening there. But the seemingly endless construction that was always going on at Logan had transformed TWA’s lost-bag office into a coffee shop, so I stopped a porter and asked him where it had gone.

“I just flew in on TWA and they’ve lost one of my bags,” I said. “Where do I find it?”

“TWA’s baggage over there,” he shrugged, pointing around a corner. I ran over, and stopped in front of a door which said MISCELLANEOUS, AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. The door was open but partially blocked by a low table, and inside there were racks and racks of bags, bags of all kinds, bags everywhere.

And standing knee-deep in this ocean of bags was Sukie. On each side of her was a man in a raincoat. One of them was putting on the cuffs and before I could turn away and get out of there I saw the tight, familiar, ugly neck, heard the rough, humorless voice. And knew that Murphy had busted another freak.