“What’s it like?” he asked.
“Do you mean, did I have any ‘bad trips’?”
“No, I didn’t mean that at all,” he said defensively.
“There were some bad trips, but they all had good parts. And a lot of the good trips had bad parts. Once I decided I had leukemia. That was scary. But mostly they were just strange. I never saw God. I never wanted to commit suicide. I never tried to kill anyone.”
She thought that over for a minute. “Everybody has hyped the shit out of those chemicals. The straights, people like Art Linkletter, say they’ll kill you. The freaks say they’ll open all the doors you need to open. Like you can find a tunnel into the middle of yourself, as if your soul was like the treasure in an H. Rider Haggard novel. Have you ever read him?”
“I read She when I was a kid. Didn’t he write that?”
“Yes. Do you think your soul is like an emerald in the middle of an idol’s forehead?”
“I never thought about it. ”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “I’ll tell you the best and the worst that ever happened to me on chemicals. The best was topping out in the apartment one time and watching the wallpaper. There were all these little round dots on the wallpaper and they turned into snow for me. I sat in the living room and watched a snowstorm on the wall for better than an hour. And after a while, I saw this little girl trudging through the snow. She had a kerchief on her head, a very rough material like burlap, and she was holding it like this-”
She made a fist under her chin. “I decided she was going home, and bang! I saw a whole street in there, all covered with snow. She went up the street and then up a walk and into a house. That was the best. Sitting in the apartment and watching wallovision. Except Jeff called it headovision. ”
“Was Jeff the guy you were living with?”
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“Yes. The worst trip was one time I decided to plunge out the sink. I don’t know why.
You get funny ideas sometimes when you’re tripping, except they seem perfectly normal.
It seemed like I had to plunge the sink. So I got the plunger and did it . . . and all this shit came out of the drain. I still don’t know how much of it was real shit and how much was head shit. Coffee grounds. An old piece of shell. Great big hunks of congealed grease.
Red stuff that looked like blood. And then the hand. Some guy’s hand.”
“A what?”
“A hand. I called to Jeff and said, Hey, somebody put somebody down the drain. But he had taken off someplace and I was alone. I plunged like hell and finally got the forearm out. The hand was lying on the porcelain, all spotted with coffee grounds, and there was the forearm, going right down the drain. I went into the living room for a minute to see if Jeff had come back, and when I went into the kitchen again, the arm and the hand was gone. It sort of worried me. Sometimes I dream about it.”
“That’s crazy,” he said, slowing down as they crossed a bridge that was under construction.
“Chemicals make you crazy,” she said. “Sometimes that’s a good thing. Mostly it isn’t.
Anyway, we were into this heavy drug thing. Have you ever seen one of those drawings of what an atom looks like, with the protons and neutrons and electrons going around?”
“Yes. ”
“Well, it was like our apartment was the nucleus and all the people who drifted in and out were the protons and electrons. People coming and going, drifting in and out, all disconnected, like in Manhattan Transfer. ”
“I haven’t read that one.”
“You ought to. Jeff always said Dos Passos was the original gonzo journalist. Freaky book. Anyway, some nights we’d be sitting around watching TV with the sound shut off and a record on the stereo, everyone stoned, people balling in the bedroom, maybe, and you wouldn’t even know who the fuck everyone was. You know what I mean?”
Thinking of some of the parties he had wandered drunkenly through, as bemused as Alice in Wonderland, he said that he did.
“So one night there was a Bob Hope special on. And everybody was sitting around all smoked up, laughing like hell at all those old one-liners, all those same stock expressions, all that good-natured kidding of the power-crazies in Washington. Just sitting around the tube like all the mommies and daddies back home and I thought well, that’s what we went through Viet Nam for, so Bob Hope could close the generation gap. It’s just a question of how you’re getting high. ”
“But you were too pure for all that. ”
“Pure? No, that wasn’t it. But I started to think of the last fifteen years or so like some kind of grotesque Monopoly game. Francis Gary Powers gets shot down in his U-2. Lose one turn. Niggers dispersed by fire hoses in Selma. Go directly to jail. Freedom riders shotgunned in Mississippi, marches, rallies, Lester Maddox with his ax handle, Kennedy getting blown up in Dallas, Viet Nam, more marches, Kent State, student strikes, 209
women’s liberation, and all for what? So a bunch of heads can sit around stoned in a crummy apartment watching Bob Hope? Fuck that. So I decided to split.”
“What about Jeff?”
She shrugged. “He has a scholarship. He’s doing good. He says he’s going to come out next summer, but I won’t look for him until I see him. ” There was a peculiar disillusioned expression on her face that probably felt like hardy forebearance on the inside.
“Do you miss him?”
“Every night.”
“Why Vegas? Do you know someone out there?”
“No.”
“It seems like a funny place for an idealist.”
“Is that what you think I am?” She laughed and lit a cigarette. “Maybe. But I don’t think an ideal needs any particular setting. I want to see that city. It’s so different from the rest of the country that it must be good. But I’m not going to gamble. I’m just going to get a job.”
“Then what?”
She blew out smoke and shrugged. They were passing a sign that said: LANDY 5 MILES
“Try to get something together,” she said. “I’m not going to put any dope in my head for a long time and I’m going to quit these.” She gestured her cigarette in the air, and it made an accidental circle, as if it knew a different truth. “I’m going to stop pretending my life hasn’t started yet. It has. It’s twenty percent over. I’ve drunk the cream.”
“Look. There’s the turnpike entrance.”
He pulled over to the side.
“What about you, man? What are you going to do?”
Carefully, he said: “See what develops. Keep my options open.”
She said: “You’re not in such hot shape, if you don’t mind me saying so. ”
“No, I don’t mind. ”
“Here. Take this.” She was holding out a small aluminum packet between the first and second fingers of her right hand.
He took it and looked at it. The foil caught the bright morning sun and heliographed darts of light at his eyes. “What is it?”
“Product four synthetic mescaline. The heaviest, cleanest chemical ever made.” She hesitated. “Maybe you should just flush it down the john when you get home. It might fuck you up worse than you are. But it might help. I’ve heard of it.”
“Have you ever seen it?”
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She smiled bitterly. “No.”
“Will you do something for me? If you can?”
“If I can.”
“Call me on Christmas day.”
“Why?”
“You’re like a book I haven’t finished. I want to know how a little more of it comes out. Make it a collect call. Here, I’ll write down the number.”
He was fumbling a pen out of his pocket when she said, “No.”
He looked at her, puzzled and hurt. “No?”
“I can get the number from directory assistance if I need it. But maybe it would be best not to.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I like you, but it’s like someone put a hurtin’ on you. I can’t explain. It’s like you were going to do something really bonkers.”
“You think I’m a fruitcake,” he heard himself say. “Well, fuck you.”
She got out of the car stiffly. He leaned over. “Olivia-”
“Maybe that’s not my name.”
“Maybe it is. Please call.”
“Be careful with that stuff,” she said, pointing at the little aluminum packet. “You’re space walking, too.”
“Good-bye. Be careful.”
“Careful, what’s that?” The bitter smile again. “Good-bye, Mr. Dawes. Thanks. You’re good in bed, do you mind me saying that? You are. Good-bye.”
She slammed the door closed, crossed Route 7, and stood at the base of the turnpike entrance ramp. He watched her show a thumb to a couple of cars. Neither of them stopped. Then the road was clear and he U-turned, honking once. In the rearview mirror he saw a small facsimile of her wave.