“What’s happened to me,” Jason said briefly, “has made me moody.”
“It says here that you have a TV program.”
“Right.” He nodded. “At nine on Tuesday night. On NBC.”
“Then you’re really famous. I’m sitting here talking to a famous person that I ought to know about. How does it make you feel–I mean, my not recognizing who you are when you told me your name?”
He shrugged. And felt ironically amused.
“Would the jukebox have any songs by you?” She pointed to the multicolored Babylonian Gothic structure in the far corner.
“Maybe,” he said. It was a good question.
“I’ll go look.” Miss Dominic fished a half quinque from her pocket, slid from the booth, and crossed the coffee shop to stare down at the titles and artists of the jukebox’s listing.
When she gets back she is going to be less impressed by me, Jason mused. He knew the effect of one ellipsis: unless he manifested himself everywhere, from every radio and phonograph, jukebox and sheet-music shop, TV screen, in the universe, the magic spell collapsed.
She returned smiling.” ‘Nowhere Nuthin’ Fuck-up,’ “she said, reseating herself. He saw then that the half quinque was gone. “It should play next.”
Instantly he was on his feet and across the coffee shop to the jukebox.
She was right. Selection B4. His most recent hit, “Nowhere Nuthin’ Fuck-up,” a sentimental number. And already the mechanism of the jukebox had begun to process the disc.
A moment later his voice, mellowed by quad sound points and echo chambers, filled the coffee shop.
Dazed, he returned to the booth.
“You sound superwonderful,” Mary Anne said, politely, perhaps, given her taste, when the disc had ended.
“Thanks.” It had been him, all right. The grooves on that record hadn’t been blank.
“You’re really far out,” Mary Anne said enthusiastically, all smiles and twinkly glasses.
Jason said simply, “I’ve been at it a long time.” She had sounded as if she meant it.
“Do you feel bad that I hadn’t heard of you?”
“No.” He shook his head, still dazed. Certainly she was not alone in that, as the events of the past two days–two days? had it only been that?–had shown.
“Can–I order something more?” Mary Anne asked. She hesitated. “I spent all my money on stamps; I–”
“I’m picking up the tab,” Jason said.
“How do you think the strawberry cheesecake would be?”
“Outstanding,” he said, momentarily amused by her. The woman’s earnestness, her anxieties . . . does she have any boy friends of any kind? he wondered. Probably not . . . she lived in a world of pots, clay, brown wrapping paper, troubles with her little old Ford Greyhound, and, in the background, the stereo-only voices of the old-time greats: Judy Collins and Joan Baez.
“Ever listened to Heather Hart?” he asked. Gently.
Her forehead wrinkled. “I–don’t recall for sure. Is she a folk singer or–” Her voice trailed off; she looked sad. As if she sensed that she was failing to be what she ought to be, failing to know what every reasonable person knew. He felt sympathy for her.
“Ballads,” Jason said. “Like what I do.”
“Could we hear your record again?”
He obligingly returned to the jukebox, scheduled it for replay.
This time Mary Anne did not seem to enjoy it.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“Oh,” she said, “I always tell myself I’m creative; I make pots and like that. But I don’t know if they’re actually any good. I don’t know how to tell. People say to me–”
“People tell you everything. From that you’re worthless to priceless. The worst and the best. You’re always reaching somebody here”–he tapped the salt shaker–“and not reaching somebody there.” He tapped her fruit-salad bowl.
“But there has to be some way–”
“There are experts. You can listen to them, to their theories. They always have theories. They write long articles and discuss your stuff back to the first record you cut nineteen years ago. They compare recordings you don’t even remember having cut. And the TV critics–”
“But to be noticed.” Again, briefly, her eyes shone.
“I’m sorry,” he said, rising to his feet once more. He could wait no longer. “I have to make a phone call. Hopefully I’ll be right back. If I’m not”–he put his hand on her shoulder, on her knitted white sweater, which she had probably made herself–“it’s been nice meeting you.”
Puzzled, she watched him in her wan, obedient way as he elbowed a path to the back of the crowded coffee shop, to the phone booth.
Shut up inside the phone booth, he read off the number of the Los Angeles Police Academy from the emergency listings and, after dropping in his coin, dialed.
“I’d like to speak to Police General Felix Buckman,” he said, and, without surprise, heard his voice shake. Psychologically I’ve had it, he realized. Everything that’s happened . . . up to the record on the jukebox–it’s too goddamn much for me. I am just plain scared. And disoriented. So maybe, he thought, the mescaline has not worn completely off after all. But I did drive the little flipflap okay; that indicates something. Fucking dope, he thought. You can always tell when it hits you but never when it unhits, if it ever does. It impairs you forever or you think so; you can’t be sure. Maybe it never leaves. And they say, Hey, man, your brain’s burned out, and you say, Maybe so. You can’t be sure and you can’t not be sure. And all because you dropped a cap or one cap too many that somebody said, Hey this’ll get you off.
“This is Miss Beason,” a female voice sounded in his ear. “Mr. Buckman’s assistant. May I help you?”
“Peggy Beason,” he said. He took a deep, unsteady breath and said, “This is Jason Taverner.”
“Oh yes, Mr. Taverner. What did you want? Did you leave anything behind?”
Jason said, “I want to talk to General Buckman.”
“I’m afraid Mr. Buckman–”
“It has to do with Alys,” Jason said.
Silence. And then: “Just a moment please, Mr. Taverner,” Peggy Beason said. “I’ll ring Mr. Buckman and see if he can free himself a moment.”
Clicks. Pause. More silence. Then a line opened.
“Mr. Taverner?” It was not General Buckman. “This is Herbert Maime, Mr. Buckman’s chief of staff. I understand you told Miss Beason that it has to do with Mr. Buckman’s sister, Miss Alys Buckman. Frankly I’d like to ask just what are the circumstances under which you happen to know Miss–”
Jason hung up the phone. And walked sightlessly back to the booth, where Mary Anne Dominic sat eating her strawberry cheesecake.
“You did come back after all,” she said cheerfully.
“How,” he said, “is the cheesecake?”
“A little too rich.” She added, “But good.”
He grimly reseated himself. Well, he had done his best to get through to Felix Buckman. To tell him about Alys. But–what would he have been able to say, after all? The futility of everything, the perpetual impotence of his efforts and intentions . . . weakened even more, he thought, by what she gave me, that cap of mescaline.
_If it had been mescaline_.
That presented a new possibility. He had no proof, no evidence, that Alys had actually given him mescaline. It could have been anything. What, for example, was mescaline doing coming from Switzerland? That made no sense; that sounded synthetic, not organic: a product of a lab. Maybe a new multiingredient cultish drug. Or something stolen from police labs.
The record of “Nowhere Nuthin’ Fuck-up.” Suppose the drug had made him hear it. And see the listing on the jukebox. But Mary Anne Dominic had heard it, too; in fact she had discovered it.
But the two blank records. What about them?
As he sat pondering, an adolescent boy in a T-shirt and jeans bent over him and mumbled, “Hey, you’re Jason Taverner, aren’t you?” He extended a ballpoint pen and piece of paper. “Could I have your autograph, sir?”
Behind him a pretty little red-haired teenybopper, bra-less, in white shorts, smiled excitedly and said, “We always catch you on Tuesday night. You’re fantastic. And you look in real life, you look just like on the screen, except that in real life you’re more, you know, tanned.” Her friendly nipples jiggled.
Numbly, by habit, he signed his name. “Thanks, guys,” he said to them; there were four of them in all now.
Chattering to themselves, the four kids departed. Now people in nearby booths were watching Jason and muttering interestedly to one another. As always, he said to himself. This is how it’s been up to the other day. _My reality is leaking back_. He felt uncontrollably, wildly elated. This was what he knew; this was his life-style. He had lost it for a short time but now–finally, he thought, I’m starting to get it back!
Heather Hart. He thought, I can call her now. And get through to her. She won’t think I’m a twerp fan.