“Alys–” Jason began, but she cut him off with a brusque snap of her fingers.
“Be quiet while I look at this.” From the surface of the desk she took a large magnifying glass; she scrutinized the envelope. “A stamp,” she explained, then, glancing up. “I’ll take it out so you can look at it.” Finding a pair of philatelic tongs she carefully drew the stamp from its envelope and set it down on the felt pad at the front edge of the desk.
Obediently, Jason peeped through the magnifying lens at the stamp. It seemed to him a stamp like any other stamp, except that unlike modern stamps it had been printed in only one color.
“Look at the engraving on the animals,” Alys said. “The herd of steer. It’s absolutely perfect; every line is exact. This stamp has never been–” She stopped his hand as he started to touch the stamp. “Oh no,” she said. “Don’t ever touch a stamp with your fingers; always use tongs.”
“Is it valuable?” he asked.
“Not really. But they’re almost never sold. I’ll explain it to you someday. This is a present to me from Felix, because he loves me. Because, he says, I’m good in bed.”
“It’s a nice stamp,” Jason said, disconcerted. He handed the magnifying glass back to her.
“Felix told me the truth; it’s a good copy. Perfectly centered, light cancellation that doesn’t mar the center picture, and–” Deftly, with the tongs, she flipped the stamp over on its back, allowed it to lie on the felt pad face down. All at once her expression changed; her face glowed hotly and she said, “That motherfucker.”
“What’s the matter?” he said.
“A thin spot.” She touched a corner of the stamp’s back side with the tongs. “Well, you can’t tell from the front. But that’s Felix. Hell, it’s probably counterfeit anyhow. Except that Felix always somehow manages not to buy counterfeits. Okay, Felix; that’s one for you.” Thoughtfully, she said, “I wonder if he’s got another one in his own collection. I could switch them.” Going to a wall safe, she twiddled for a time with the dials, opened the safe at last, and brought out a huge and heavy album, which she lugged to the desk. “Felix,” she said, “does not know I know the combination to that safe. So don’t tell him.” She cautiously turned heavy-gauge pages, came to one on which four stamps rested. “No onedollar black,” she said. “But he may have hidden it elsewhere. He may even have it down at the academy.” Closing the album, she restored it to the wall safe.
“The mescaline,” Jason said, “is beginning to affect me.” His legs ached: for him that was always a sign that mescaline was beginning to act in his system. “I’ll sit down,” he said, and managed to locate a leather-covered easy chair before his legs gave way. Or _seemed_ to give way; actually they never did: it was a drug-instigated illusion. But all the same it felt real.
“Would you like to see a collection of chaste and ornate snuff boxes?” Alys inquired. “Felix has a terribly fine collection. All antiques, in gold, silver, alloys, with cameo engravings, hunting scenes–no?” She seated herself opposite him, crossed her long, black-sheathed legs; her high-heeled shoe dangled as she swung it back and forth. “One time Felix bought an old snuff box at an auction, paid a lot for it, brought it home. He cleaned the old snuff out of it and found a springoperated level mounted at the bottom of the box, or what seemed to be the bottom. The lever operated when you screwed down a tiny screw. It took him all day to find a tool small enough to rotate the screw. But at least he got it.” She laughed.
“What happened?” Jason said.
“The bottom of the box–a false bottom with a tin plate concealed in it. He got the plate out.” She laughed again, her gold tooth ornamentation sparkling. “It turned out to be a two-hundred-year-old dirty picture. Of a chick copulating with a Shetland pony. Tinted, too, in eight colors. Worth, oh, say, five thousand dollars–not much, but it genuinely delighted us. The dealer, of course, didn’t know it was there.”
“I see,” Jason said.
“You don’t have any interest in snuff boxes,” Alys said, still smiling.
“I’d like–to see it,” he said. And then he said. “Alys, you know about me; you know who I am. _Why doesn’t anybody else know?_”
“Because they’ve never been there.”
“_Where?_”
Alys massaged her temples, twisted her tongue, stared blankly ahead, as if lost in thought. As if barely hearing him. “You know,” she said, sounding bored and a little irritable. “Christ, man, you lived there forty-two years. What can I tell you about that place that you don’t already know?” She glanced up, then, her heavy lips curling mischievously; she grinned at him.
“How did I get here?” he said.
“You–” She hesitated. “I’m not sure I should tell you.”
Loudly, he said, “_Why not?_”
“Let it come in time.” She made a damping motion with her hand. “In time, in time. Look, man; you’ve already been hit by a lot; you almost got shipped to a labor camp, and you know what kind, today. Thanks to that asshole McNulty and my dear brother. My brother the police general.” Her face had become ugly with revulsion, but then she smiled her provocative smile once again. Her lazy, gold-toothed, inviting smile.
Jason said, “I want to know where I am.”
“You’re in my study in my house. You’re perfectly safe; we got all the insects off you. And no one’s going to break in here. Do you know what?” She sprang from her chair, bounding to her feet like a superlithe animal; involuntarily he drew back. “Have you ever made it by phone?” she demanded, bright-eyed and eager.
“Made what?”
“The grid,” Alys said. “Don’t you know about the phone grid?”
“No,” he admitted. But he had heard of it.
“Your–everybody’s–sexual aspects are linked electronically, and amplified, to as much as you can endure. It’s addictive, because it’s electronically enhanced. People, some of them, get so deep into it they can’t pull out; their whole lives revolve around the weekly–or, hell, even daily!–setting up of the network of phone lines. It’s regular picturephones, which you activate by credit card, so it’s free at the time you do it; the sponsors bill you once a month and if you don’t pay they cut your phone out of the grid.”
“How many people,” he asked, “are involved in this?”
“Thousands.”
“At one time?”
Alys nodded. “Most of them have been doing it two, three years. And they’ve deteriorated physically–and mentally– from it. Because the part of the brain where the orgasm is experienced is gradually burned out. But don’t put down the people; some of the finest and most sensitive minds on earth are involved. For them it’s a sacred, holy communion. Except you can spot a gridder when you see one; they look debauched, old, fat, listless– the latter always between the phone-line orgies, of course.”
“And you do this?” She did not look debauched, old, fat, or listless to him.
“Now and then. But I never get hooked; I cut myself out of the grid just in time. Do you want to try it?”
“No,” he said.
“Okay,” Alys said reasonably, undaunted. “What would you like to do? We have a good collection of Rilke and Brecht in interlinear translation discs. The other day Felix came home with a quad-and-light set of all seven Sibelius symphonies; it’s very good. For dinner Emma is preparing frog’s legs . . . Felix loves both frog’s legs and escargot. He eats out in good French and Basque restaurants most of the time but tonight–”
“I want to know,” Jason interrupted, “where I am.”
“Can’t you simply be happy?”
He rose to his feet–with difficulty–and confronted her. Silently.
20
The mescaline had furiously begun to affect him; the room grew lit up with colors, and the perspective factor altered so that the ceiling seemed a million miles high. And, gazing at Alys, he saw her hair come alive . . . like Medusa’s, he thought, and felt fear.
Ignoring him, Alys continued, “Felix especially likes Basque cuisine, but they cook with so much butter that it gives him pyloric spasms. He also has a good collection of _Weird Tales_, and he loves baseball. And–let’s see.” She wandered off, a finger tapping against her lips as she reflected. “He’s interested in the occult. Do you–”
“I feel something,” Jason said.
“What do you feel?”
Jason said, “I can’t get away.”
“It’s the mes. Take it easy.”
“I–” He pondered; a giant weight lay on his brain, but all throughout the weight streaks of light, of satori-like insight, shot here and there.
“What I collect,” Alys said, “is in the next room, what we call the library. This is the study. In the library Felix has all his law books . . . did you know he’s a lawyer, as well as a police general? And he has done some good things; I have to admit it. Do you now what he did once?”