The Kings Of Cool

84

Stan accepts the rolled-up dollar bill from Diane’s hand — oh, Eve — leans over the counter at the Bread and Marigolds Bookstore, and snorts the line of cocaine.

Doc grins at him. “And?”

“Wow.”

Diane is already grinning because Doc, chivalrous gentleman that he is, offered her the first line. Her brain buzzes and the little bees quickly work their way down to her pussy, industrious (“busy as”) and lascivious (flower-to-flower) creatures that they are.

Doc has a sense of reciprocity-Stan and Diane turned him on to acid; now he’s returning the favor with coke. He and John have come over to the store with a sample.

Fair being fair.

Friendship being friendship.

And business being business.

(Not to mention alliteration being alliteration.)

It’s good business to turn the owners of the Bread and Marigolds Bookstore on to a free sample of your new product, because while the bookstore ain’t what it used to be, it’s still a nerve center of the counterculture (read “drug”) community, such as it is anymore.

(The community, not the drug.)

It’s timely.

Stan’s looking for something new, anyway.

He’s tired of selling the hippie stuff, worried he’s trapped in a fading culture, and, truth be told, he’s a little bored with Diane, too.

And she with him.

And the political scene?

The revolution?

That they thought they won when Nixon

— the Uber Villain

— the Evil Stepmother

— be honest, the Scapegoat

— (They are both conversant enough with their ancestral religion to know that the goat was loaded with all of society’s evils and driven from the town) fell from power and The War ended

It’s come to Jimmy Carter.

Jimmy Carter.

Jimmuh Cahtuh.

With his lust in his heart.

Diane doesn’t want lust in her heart, she wants lust in her puss, in her yoni, if you must, and it’s been a while since she’s felt it with Stan. It’s all right… it’s pleasant… but… pleasant?

Funny thing is, even in the free love days-when people were twisted around each other like worms in a coffee can in the bookstore’s back room-she didn’t participate. Neither did Stan. She out of reticence and he, she suspected, more from a fear of disease.

Now they both wonder if they missed out on something.

The other thing they wonder about is money.

It used to be something you weren’t supposed to care about bourgeois but now people seem to want it and people seem to have it.

Like Doc, for instance

Taco Jesus has more than taco money, now, and he isn’t throwing it around or away. He’s buying things-clothes, cars, homes-and it looks good on him, and Diane can’t help but wonder are they missing out on something, or worse have they missed out on something like they’re standing on the banks of a river watching the future flow away from them, and now

Stan is looking at her as if he’s thinking the same thing, but she ponders if he is standing on the bank with her or floating away, and she also wonders if she cares.

She turns and watches John “do a line”-in this new vernacular. All traces of his adolescent cuteness are gone. He’s lean, muscular, and powerful, and suddenly she realizes that she is ten years-a decade — older than she was. This boy, this child who used to sell joints from the bottom of his skateboard, is now a young man. And rich, if you believe the gossip.

Gossip, hell, she thinks-certainly John owns the house two doors down from the one they still rent. And the parade of sleek young women going in and out screams of money, and one morning she saw Stan, his fucking teacup in hand, looking out the window watching one of John’s girls getting into her car, admiring-lusting after? — her long legs, her high breasts, her Charlie’s Angels blonde hair. (Who is the actress-the one with the fake, silly name?) And then he pretended he wasn’t staring, and she wished he had the honesty-okay, the balls-to come out and say, yes, he thought the girl was sexy, because she could see him chubbed up against his faded jeans, the ridiculous bell-bottoms, and if he’d been that honest she might have given him some relief, gone down on her knees and sucked his dick and let him shoot shiksa fantasy into her willing mouth, but instead he said some mealy-mouthed thing about the “superficiality” of it all so she decided to leave him hanging, as it were.

Now John hands her the rolled-up bill-it’s her turn again. Feeling a little silly, Diane pushes a finger against one nostril and inhales with the other and feels the coke blast her brain and then the acrid drip down her throat.

They each do another line, then, far too restless to stay in the store, decide to go for a ride.

Stan insists on driving and they all pile into their clunky old Westfalia van and she finds herself in the back with John as they cruise south on the PCH with her head and puss buzz-buzzing and she hears Doc talking to Stan about a “distributorship” like it’s Amway or something.

“Even if you just buy for yourself,” Doc is saying, “we’ll give it to you wholesale, so you’re already ahead. Then if you decide you want to make a business of it…”

Buzz buzz.

“… serious money…”

Buzz buzz.

“… can’t be a lot of profit in leather bracelets…”

Suddenly she watches herself turn to John and hears herself say,

“Kiss me.”

John looks startled. “What?”

She repeats herself with some urgency, with some heat, with her husband two feet away, she offers her mouth, her full lips, and John takes them and she sucks his tongue into her mouth and sucks on it like a dick and she feels moist, wonderfully wet, and then Stan pulls off the road into the Harbor Grill because apparently the men are hungry and as he turns off the engine he turns and looks at her and she knows that he saw.