“I’ll see you again, Phil,” Vivian said.
“No, you won’t,” I said, opening her car door for her. “I have no wish to see you again. In bed or out of it.”
“You’ll see me again,” Vivian said, getting in and starting up the motor.
I said, “You have nothing on me; I don’t have to see you.”
“Ask me what I did while you were taking your shower.”
I looked down at her as she sat calmly behind the wheel of her car. “You did -”
“I hid it where you’ll never find it,” Vivian said; she began rapidly rolling up her window.
“Hid what?” I grabbed at the window, but it continued to roll up; I grabbed at the door handle, but she had locked it.
“Cocaine,” Vivian said. Her window closed, she shifted into gear, the car suddenly roared off into the street and made a sharp right turn, its tires squealing. I stood impotently watching her go.
Bull, I said to myself. Another crock, like her being underage. But – how could I be sure? I had been in the shower at least fifteen minutes. Vivian Kaplan had had fifteen unobstructed free minutes to hide anything she wanted around my house – to hide stuff, to pry, to read, to see where things were . . . anything she cared to do. Possibly, I thought, the whole going to bed with me had been only a ploy – designed to tie me up by distraction, so that I lost sight of the real issue. And what was the real issue? The fact that an admitted government agent, wearing an armband, openly identified as such, had obtained from me fifteen minutes of absolute privilege to come and go in my house, alone. She had been legally there. I had invited her over. And this, after my pal the friendly cop had warned me.
There is no use warning me, I said to myself with savage, helpless wrath. I am too fucking stupid. The warning is wasted; I just keep on truckin” anyhow. I invite them over; then I lock myself up in the shower for fifteen minutes, giving them the run of the house. She could have planted a gun and dope as well; there I go, down the tubes, forever. Victim of a police trick carried off to perfection, in that I did most of the work myself.
And suppose it’s another lie. Suppose she didn’t hide any coke. Quantities of coke are minute; I could look for days, weeks, and never find it, and if there isn’t any I could drive myself nuts, work myself into a paranoid psychotic frenzy and not find it – not find it and never know if it was an inch away or if it never existed. Meanwhile, every second of the night and day, waiting for the cops to come in on a tip and bust me – tear open a wall and find the coke right away: a ten-year sentence.
Suddenly chilled, I thought, Maybe her phone call was the tip. The tip the police were waiting for; not that the drugs are there, but that the drugs had been placed there successfully, that when they break in and examine the house they will find something.
Then my days – my hours – are numbered, I thought. There is no use searching. Better just to sit. Just walk back into the house and sit.
I did so. I closed the front door and seated myself on the couch; presently I got up to turn on the FM. Again I sat down. I listened to a performance of the Beethoven Emperor Concerto, sitting, listening, waiting, listening not to the familiar music but for the sounds of approaching cars. It was a hell of an experience. Time stretched out immeasurably. I had to go into the kitchen, finally, to look at the stove clock in order to obtain any idea of how late it was. One hour, two hours, passed. No one came: no cars, no pounding on the door, no pump shotguns and men in uniform. Just the radio playing and the house empty except for me.
I felt my forehead; it was hot and sweaty.”Going into the bathroom I got the thermometer, shook it down, and took my temperature. It was 102 degrees: a fever from fear and tension. My body made ill by the stress it was under, unfair and unjust stress, but very real. She was smart to shoot right out of here, I said to myself. After she told me that, whether it was true or not. Jammed down the gas pedal and laid rubber. If she shows up here again I’ll murder her. She knows it; she’ll stay away.
If I get out of this safe and alive, I said to myself, I will write a book about this. Somehow I will figure out a way to work it into a novel. So other people will know. Vivian Kaplan will go down in history for what she is, for what she does. That is my promise to myself, to keep myself going.
Never walk over a writer, I said to myself, unless you’re positive he can’t rise up behind you. If you’re going to burn him, make sure he’s dead. Because if he’s alive, he will talk: talk in written form, on the printed, permanent page.
But am I alive? I asked myself.
Only time could tell. I felt at this moment as if a mortal blow had been delivered to me, a blade thrust deep; the pain was unbearable. But I might survive. I had survived the attack on my house; I had survived many things. Probably I would survive this. If I did, FAP was in trouble, Vivian Kaplan in particular.
I told myself that, but I didn’t really believe it. What I believed was that FAP and its master Ferris Fremont had me. And I had sprung the trap myself – that was the worst part, the part that really hurt. My own cunning had betrayed me, had delivered me to the enemy. That was hard to bear.
The cops never came; whatever Vivian Kaplan had been up to fizzled out, and I was able to relax. In the following days my temperature went down to normal, probably my blood pressure as well. I began to think more reasonably. However, I asked my lawyer what to do about them hiding dope in my house.
“Write a letter to Orange County Drug Abuse,” he told me. Tell them the situation.”
“Will that – ?”
“They may still bust you, but when they find the letter in their files they may be lenient.”
Anyhow, nothing happened. I began to sleep at night again. Vivian evidently had been bluffing; I was beginning to notice a lot of bluffing going on. The police seemed fond of that tactic; it had to do with getting the suspect to perform the hard work himself, as I had demonstrated my willingness to.
They eat people like me for breakfast, I said to myself. My engineering a roll in the hay with Vivian had severely crippled my faith in my own tactics. I could not regain the conviction that in the end I, and people like me, would prevail. To prevail I would have to become a lot less stupid.
I of course told Nicholas the whole thing. He of course was incredulous.
“You did what?” he said. “You went to bed with an underage FAP girl who was carrying dope in her purse? My God; if they gave you a hacksaw in a cake you’d saw your way into jail. You want me to provide the cake? Rachel will be glad to bake it. Get your own saw.”
“Vivian was working so many numbers on me at once that I got confused,” I said.
“A seventeen-year-old girl puts an intelligent grown man in jail. Even when he’s being super-cautious.”
I said, truthfully, “It wouldn’t be the first time.”
“Stay away from her from now on,” Nicholas said. “Entirely away. Spend your time with knotholes, if necessary. Anything but her.”
“Okay!” I said irritably. But I knew I’d see Vivian Kaplan again. She would seek me out. There would be another round with the authorities – perhaps several. Until they had netted Nicholas and me to their satisfaction. Until we were harmless.
I wondered if the alleged protection which Valis supplied Nicholas extended to me. After all, we were in it together: two major stations in the network of pop culture, as the FAPers had put it. Kingpins, so to speak, in the vox populi.
Perhaps the only entity we could turn to for help in this tyrannical situation was Valis. Valis against F.F.F. The Prince of this World – Ferris Fremont – and his foe from another realm, a foe Fremont didn’t even know existed. A product of Nicholas Brady’s mind. The prognosis was not comforting. I would have preferred something or someone more tangible. Still, it was better than nothing; it provided a certain psychological comfort. Nicholas, in the privacy of our intimate rap sessions, could envision vast operations by Valis and his transcendent forces against the cruel bondage we were in. It certainly beat watching TV, which now consisted mostly of propaganda dramas extolling the police, authority in general, war, car crashes, and the Old West, where simple virtues had prevailed. John Wayne had become the official folk hero of America.