But in actuality the Thrifty usually had a display of nothing: combs, bottles of mineral oil, spray cans of deodorant, always crap like that. But I bet the pharmacy in the back has slow death under lock and key in an unstepped-on, pure, unadulterated, uncut form, he thought as he drove from the parking lot onto Harbor Boulevard, into the afternoon traffic. About a fifty-pound bag.
He wondered when and how they unloaded the fifty-pound bag of Substance D at the Thrifty Pharmacy every morning, from wherever it came from–God knew, maybe from Switzerland or maybe from another planet where some wise race lived. They’d deliver probably real early, and with armed guards–the Man standing there with Laser rifles looking mean, the way the Man always did. Anybody rip off my slow death, he thought through the Man’s head, I’ll snuff them.
Probably Substance D is an ingredient in every legal medication that’s worth anything, he thought. A little pinch here and there according to the secret exclusive formula at the issuing house in Germany or Switzerland that invented it. But in actuality he knew better; the authorities snuffed or sent up everybody selling or transporting or using, so in that case the Thrifty Drugstore–all the millions of Thrifty Drugstores–would get shot or bombed out of business or anyhow fined. More likely just fined. The Thrifty had pull. Anyhow, how do you shoot a chain of big drugstores? Or put them away?
They just got ordinary stuff, he thought as he cruised along. He felt lousy because he had only three hundred tabs of slow death left in his stash. Buried in his back yard under his camellia, the hybrid one with the cool big blossoms that didn’t burn brown in the spring. I only got a week’s supply, he thought. What then when I’m out? Shit.
Suppose everybody in California and parts of Oregon runs out the same day, he thought. Wow.
This was the all-time-winning horror-fantasy that he ran in his head, that every doper ran. The whole western part of the United States simultaneously running out and everybody crashing on the same day, probably about 6A.M. Sunday morning, while the straights were getting dressed up to go fucking pray.
Scene: The First Episcopal Church of Pasadena, at 8:30 A.M. on Crash Sunday.
“Holy parishioners, let us call on God now at this time to request His intervention in the agonies of those who are thrashing about on their beds withdrawing.”
“Yeah, yeah.” The congregation agreeing with the priest.
“But before He intervenes with a fresh supply of–”
A black-and-white evidently had noticed something in Charles Freck’s driving he hadn’t noticed; it had taken off from its parking spot and was moving along behind him in traffic, so far without lights or siren, but . . .
Maybe I’m weaving or something, he thought. Fucking goddamn fuzzmobile saw me fucking up. I wonder what.
COP: “All right, what’s your name?”
“My _name?_” (CAN’T THINK OF NAME.)
“You don’t know your own name?” Cop signals to other cop in prowl car. “This guy is really spaced.”
“Don’t shoot me here.” Charles Freck in his horror-fantasy number induced by the sight of the black-and-white pacing him. “At least take me to the station house and shoot me there, out of sight.”
To survive in this fascist police state, he thought, you gotta always be able to come up with a name, your name. At all times. That’s the first sign they look for that you’re wired, not being able to figure out who the hell you are.
What I’ll do, he decided, is I’ll pull off soon as I see a parking slot, pull off voluntarily before he flashes his light, or does anything, and then when he glides up beside me I’ll say I got a loose wheel or something mechanical.
They always think that’s great, he thought. When you give up like that and can’t go on. Like throwing yourself on the ground the way an animal does, exposing your soft unprotected defenseless underbelly. I’ll do that, he thought.
He did so, peeling off to the right and bumping the front wheels of his car against the curb. The cop car went on by.
Pulled off for nothing, he thought. Now it’ll be hard to back out again, traffic’s so heavy. He shut off his engine. Maybe I’ll just sit here parked for a while, he decided, and alpha meditate or go into various different altered states of consciousness. Possibly by watching the chicks going along on foot. I wonder if they manufacture a bioscope for horny. Rather than alpha. Horny waves, first very short, then longer, larger, larger, finally right off the scale.
This is getting me nowhere, he realized. I should be out trying to locate someone holding. I’ve got to get my supply or pretty soon I’ll be freaking, and then I won’t be able to do anything. Even sit at the curb like I am. I not only won’t know who I am, I won’t even know where I am, or what’s happening.
What is happening? he asked himself. What day is this? If I knew what day I’d know everything else; it’d seep back bit by bit.
Wednesday, in downtown L.A., the Westwood section. Ahead, one of those giant shopping malls surrounded by a wall that you bounced off like a rubber ball–unless you had a credit card on you and passed in through the electronic hoop. Owning no credit card for any of the malls, he could depend only on verbal report as to what the shops were like inside. A whole bunch, evidently, selling good products to the straights, especially to the straight wives. He watched the uniformed armed guards at the mall gate checking out each person. Seeing that the man or woman matched his or her credit card and that it hadn’t been ripped off, sold, bought, used fraudulently. Lots of people moved on in through the gate, but he figured many were no doubt windowshopping. Not all that many people can have the bread or the urge to buy this time of day, he reflected. It’s early, just past two. At night; that was when. The shops all lit up. He could–all the brothers and sisters could–see the lights from without, like showers of sparks, like a fun park for grownup kids.
Stores this side of the mall, requiring no credit card, with no armed guards, didn’t amount to much. Utility stores: a shoe and a TV shop, a bakery, small-appliance repair, a laundromat. He watched a girl who wore a short plastic jacket and stretch pants wander along from store to store; she had nice hair, but he couldn’t see her face, see if she was foxy. Not a bad figure, he thought. The girl stopped for a time at a window where leather goods were displayed. She was checking out a purse with tassels; he could see her peering, worrying, scheming on the purse. Bet she goes on in and requests to see it, he thought.
The girl bopped on into the store, as he had figured.
Another girl, amid the sidewalk traffic, came along, this one in a frilly blouse, high heels, with silver hair and too much makeup. Trying to look older than she is, he thought. Probably not out of high school. After her came nothing worth mentioning, so he removed the string that held the glove compartment shut and got out a pack of cigarettes. He lit up and turned on the car radio, to a rock station. Once he had owned a tape-cartridge stereo, but finally, while loaded one day, he had neglected to bring it indoors with him when he locked up the car; naturally, when he returned the whole stereo tape system had been stolen. That’s what carelessness gets you, he had thought, and so now he had only the crummy radio. Someday they’d take that too. But he knew where he could get another for almost nothing, used. Anyhow, the car stood to be wrecked any day; its oil rings were shot and compression had dropped way down. Evidently, he had burned a valve on the freeway coming home one night with a whole bunch of good stuff; sometimes when he had really scored heavy he got paranoid–not about the cops so much as about some other heads ripping him off. Some head desperate from withdrawing and dingey as a motherfucker.
A girl walked along now that made him take notice. Black hair, pretty, cruising slow; she wore an open midriff blouse and denim white pants washed a lot. Hey, I know her, he thought. That’s Bob Arctor’s girl. That’s Donna.
He pushed open the car door and stepped out. The girl eyed him and continued on. He followed.
Thinks I’m fixing to grab-ass, he thought as he snaked among the people. How easily she gained speed; he could barely see her now as she glanced back. A firm, calm face . . . He saw large eyes that appraised him. Calculated his speed and would he catch up. Not at this rate, he thought. She can really move.