“Just a taste. It’s a good year.”
“Maybe a taste.”
I poured us both wine. In the background I had music playing, and low lights. Vivian, however, did not seem to notice; she was waiting intently for what I had to say. She did not touch her wine.
“Nicholas,” I said, “talks to God.”
She stared at me, mouth agape.
“He started it in Berkeley. As a child he was a Quaker, you know. I’m sure you have that in your records. The Quakers believe that the Holy Spirit can come to you and talk to you. All his life Nicholas waited for God – which is the same as the Holy Spirit, especially if you are a trinitarian, which Nicholas and I are – to come to talk to him. A couple of years before we left Berkeley, in the early sixties it was, God first spoke to him.”
Vivian, listening, had written nothing.
“Since then,” I said, “Nicholas has maintained an intimate relationship with God. He speaks to him as you and I are speaking to each other now.”
“Christ,” Vivian said impatiently, “that isn’t any good; I can’t report that.”
“Do you know anybody else who communes regularly with God?” I said. “Nicholas’s whole life is built around it; speaking with God and hearing God speak back is everything to him. As well it might be. I envy his experience.”
Vivian put her pen away. “Are you sure he isn’t crazy? It sounds crazy to me.”
“You should be writing this down,” I said. “I’m going to reveal to you some of the things God has told him.”
“I don’t care about that!” Vivian said, with agitation. “It has no political bearing! What can we do with information like that?”
“God said,” I told her, “that he is going to cause plagues to fall on this entire order of things and wash it away; Wet plagues, I’d guess, from the sound of it; something about water.”
“Oh, balls,” Vivian said.
“I believe he also said he would place a rainbow in the sky,” I said. “Afterward, as a sign of peace between God and man.”
Sharply, Vivian said, “Is this the best you can do?”
“I told you I was having trouble getting things down. This is why I wanted you to come over.” I seated myself on the couch beside her and took her ballpoint pen from her. Til put down the opening sentence. „Nicholas Brady-„“
“You got me over here for a religious thing? There’s nothing we can do with a religious thing; there’s nothing unpatriotic about God. God is not on our list. Can’t you come up with anything else?”
“In Berkeley,” I said, “talking to God is a disgrace. Nick was ruined there, when he confided it to people. They drove him off like an animal.”
That’s Berkeley,” Vivian said. “Where there’s nothing but atheists and Commies. I’m not surprised. But this is Orange County. This is the real world.”
“You mean down here it’s okay?”
“Of course it’s okay.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. “Then Nicholas is safe at last.”
“Phil,” Vivian said, “there must be other things you know about Nicholas which would – you know what I mean – would offset this about God.”
“It is not possible,” I said, “to offset God. He is all-powerful and all-knowing.”
“I mean in terms of the political file we’re drawing up.”
“Have some of the wine,” I said, holding her glass toward her.
“No, I don’t drink wine,” Vivian said in agitation. “But I brought some good grass with me.” She opened up her purse and rummaged inside.
I really wasn’t surprised. It figured.
“I need a small box,” she said, “to manicure it in. And a card such as a credit card. Here, this will do.” She found a white business card in her wallet.
“Let me see that,” I said, extending my hand. Vivian placed the lid of grass in it; I then carried the grass from the living room into the bathroom, where at once I locked the door behind me. In an instant I had dumped the marijuana into the toilet and had flushed it down; the contraband would not be found in my house, not this lid of it.
“What are you doing?” Vivian called sharply, from outside the locked door; she began to knock. “What did you do?”
I flushed the toilet once more, to be absolutely sure, and then leisurely unlocked the door.
“Did you flush it?” she demanded incredulously.
“Yes I did,” I said.
“Why? Well, never mind; what’s done is done. I have a little high-grade hash we can smoke. Fortunately I brought my hash pipe with me.” She returned to the living room; I followed after her. It would be harder getting the hash away from her, I realized. No one voluntarily surrendered hash, especially after what I had just done.
Vivian sat on the couch, her shoes off, legs drawn up, lighting the tiny cube of hash in her hash pipe. “Here.” As smoke came from it she handed it to me. “This is the best hash I’ve had in months. It’ll really get you off.”
“I don’t want drugs in my house,” I said.
“No one can see in.”
“I’m being set up,” I said.
“Everyone thinks they’re being set up. I’ve been turning on for two years and I’ve never been busted.”
“Yes, but you’re a FAPer.”
“That makes it more dangerous for me,” Vivian said. “Most FAPers are straight; it’s very risky to be with FAP and to turn on at the same time. I have to wait until I’m around people like you before I can do it. That’s one reason I was glad when they assigned me to cover you.
That’s why I came over here tonight when you called, so we could turn on together.”
“I don’t turn on,” I said.
“Of course you do. Everyone knows you do. You’re one of the biggest dopers in America. It’s in your bio material published with your books – look what Harlan Ellison wrote in Dangerous Visions. We have that in triplicate. And all your friends say you turn on.”
„That was made up,” I said, “to sell books.”
“You turn on,” Vivian said. “Here, give me my hash pipe back. It’s my turn for a hit.”
I could scarcely flush her hash pipe down the toilet, so I returned it to her. Vivian inhaled deeply, her face flushed.
As she passed it back to me she said, coughing, “Hash makes me horny.”
“Oh,” I said, “Well.”
“Does it make you horny?” She-took another hit from her pipe, her eyes beginning to glaze over now, becoming unfocused; her whole body seemed limp, and at grateful ease.
“Let’s go in the bedroom,” I said.
“In a minute. When we’re through with the hash.” She continued to smoke, ritualistically now, in a lazy, blithe way. Her cares, her agitation about my political report, my dumping the lid of grass, had vanished.
The time had now come to turn the tables on the tyranny oppressing me. Once I had made little Vivian Kaplan my mistress, I could stop worrying about my political report. Taking her by the hand, I set her hash pipe down and lifted her to her feet. “Are you on the pill?” I asked her as I guided her down the hall toward my bedroom. I had to hold on to her to keep her from weaving into the wall.
“Of course I am,” Vivian said. She was reflexively starting to unbutton her blouse as we approached the open bedroom door; humming and smiling from the hash, she entered the bedroom, and I kicked the door shut after us.
“Just a minute,” I said as she sat on the edge of the bed removing her skirt. Til be right back.” I returned to the living room where she had left her hash pipe. Placing it carefully back in her purse I closed the purse around it, thinking, this way if they break in and find the dope it’ll obviously be hers. Despite her efforts, they won’t be able to pin it on me.
“Hurry up,” Vivian called from the bedroom. Tm starting to crash.” I hurried back down the hall to the bedroom and found her lying nude on the bed, her clothes in a pile on my typing chair. “Hash makes me sleepy sometimes,” she said. “I have to get it on right away or I’m too out of it.”
We made love. Toward the end Vivian did fall into a deep, untroubled sleep. Well, I said to myself as I padded down the hall to the bathroom to take a shower, I am now master – rather than victim – of the situation. This girl is not going to spy on me any longer. I have turned an enemy into something even better than a friend: a co-conspirator in sexuality.
After I had taken my shower I reentered the bedroom to find her asleep with the top sheet pulled over her. “Vivian,” I said, touching her on the shoulder, “is there anything I can get you? Something to drink?”