“Over the hills and far away, Roy. I’m going to see Happy Farraday. Any message?”
Roy looked troubled. “Sir,” he said, “you got to tell her about Duncan. The new guy at the condo. He has an alcohol thing. Happy Farraday doesn’t know about it yet. Duncan, he sets fire to stuff, with his problem there.”
“His problem, Roy? That’s harsh, Roy.”
“Well, okay. I don’t want to do any kind of value thing here. Maybe it was, like when he was a kid or something. But Duncan has an alcohol situation there. That’s the truth of it, Mr. Goldfader. And Happy Farraday doesn’t know about it yet. You got to warn her. You got to warn her, sir —right now, before it’s too late.”
I gazed into Roy’s handsome, imploring, deeply stupid face. The hot eyes, the tremulous cheeks, the mustache. Jesus Christ, what difference do these guys think a mustache is going to make to anything? For the hundredth time I said to him, “Roy, it’s all made up. It’s just TV, Roy. She writes that stuff herself. It isn’t real.”
“Now I don’t know about none of that,” he said, his hand splayed in quiet propitiation. “But I’d feel better in my mind if you’d warn her about Duncan’s factor there.”
Roy paused. With some difficulty he bent to dab at an oil stain on his superwashable blue pants. He straightened up with a long wheeze. Being young, Roy was, of course, incredibly fat—for reasons of time. We both stood there and gazed at the sky, at the spillages, the running colors, at the great chemical betrayals. …
“It’s bad today,” said Roy. “Sir? Mr. Goldfader? Is it true what they say, that Happy Farraday’s coming down with time?”
Traffic was light and I was over at Happy’s before I knew it. Traffic is a problem, as everybody keeps on saying. It’s okay, though, if you use the more expensive lanes. We have a five-lane system here in our county: free, nickel, dime, quarter, and dollar (that’s nothing, five, ten, twenty-five, or a hundred dollars a mile)—but of course the free lane is non-operational right now, a gridlock, a caravan, a linear breakers’ yard of slumped and frazzled heaps, dead rolling stock that never rolls. They’re going to have a situation there with the nickel lane too, pretty soon. The thing about driving anywhere is, it’s so unbelievably boring. Here’s another plus: since the ban on rearview mirrors, there’s not much scope for any time-anxiety. They had to take the mirrors away, yes sir. They got my support on that. The concentration-loss was a real feature, you know, driving along and checking out your crow’s feet and hair-line, all at the same time. There used to be a party atmosphere out on the throughway, in the cheap lanes where mobility is low or minimal. People would get out of their cars and horse around. Maybe it still goes on, for all I know. The dividing barriers are higher now, with the new Boredom Drive, and you can’t really tell what gives. I did see something interesting though. I couldn’t help it. During the long wait at the security intersect, where even the dollar lane gets loused up by all the towtrucks and ambulances—and by the great fleets of copbikes and squadcars—I saw three runners, three time punks, loping steadily across the disused freightlane, up on the East Viaduct. There they were, as plain as day: shorts, sweatshirts, running-shoes. The stacked cars all sounded their horns, a low furious bellow from the old beasts in their stalls. A few dozen cops appeared with bullhorns and tried to talk them down—but they just gestured and ran defiantly on. They’re sick in the head, these punks, though I guess there’s a kind of logic in it somewhere. They do vitamins, you know. Yeah. They work out and screw around; they have their nihilistic marathons. I saw one up close down at the studios last week. A security guard found her running along the old outer track. They asked her some questions and then let her go. She was about thirty, I guess. She looked in terrible shape.
And so I drove on, without incident. But even through the treated glass of the windshield I could see and sense the atrocious lancings and poppings in the ruined sky. It gets to you. Stare at the blazing noon of a high-watt bulb for ten or fifteen minutes then shut your eyes, real tight and sudden. That’s what the sky looks like. You know, we pity it, or at least I do. I look at the sky and I just think . . . ow. Whew. Oh, the sky, the poor sky.