What is that? Arctor said.
Chardin. Teilhand de Chardin.
Jeez, Luckman, Arctor said.
that man indeed lives in a zone where no multiplicity can distress him and which is nevertheless the most active workshop of universal fulfilment. Luckman shut the book.
With a high degree of apprehension, Charles Freck moved in between Barris and Luckman. Cool it, you guys.
Get out of the way, Freck, Luckman said, bringing back his right arm, low, for a vast sweeping haymaken at Barris. Come on, Barris, Im going to coldcock you into tomorrow, for talking to your betters like that.
With a bleat of wild, appealing terror, Barris dropped his felt pen and pad of paper and scuttled off erratically toward the open front door of the house, yelling back as he ran, I hear the phone about the rebuilt carb.
They watched him go.
I was just kidding him, Luckman said, rubbing his lower lip.
What if he gets his gun and silencer? Freck said, his nervousness off the scale entirely. He moved by degrees in the direction of his own parked car, to drop swiftly behind it if Barris reappeared firing.
Come on, Arctor said to Luckman; they fell back together into their car work, while Freck loitered apprehensively by his own vehicle, wondering why he had decided to bop over here today. It had no mellow quality today, here, none at all, as it usually did. He had sensed the bad vibes under the kidding right from the start. Whats the motherfuck wrong? he wondered, and got back somberly into his own car, to start it up.
Are things going to get heavy and bad here too, he wondered, like they did at Jerry Fabins house during the last few weeks with him? It used to be mellow here, he thought, everybody kicking back and turning on, grooving to acid rock, especially the Stones. Donna sitting here in her leather jacket and boots, filling caps, Luckman rolling joints and telling about the seminar he planned to give at UCLA in dope-smoking and joint-rolling, and how someday hed suddenly roll the perfect joint and it would be placed under glass and helium back at Constitution Hall, as part of American history with those other items of similar importance. When I look back, he thought, even to when Jim Barris and I were sitting at the Fiddlers, the other day it was better even then. Jenny began it, he thought; thats whats coming down here, that there which carried off Jerry. How can days and happenings and moments so good become so quickly ugly, and for no reason, for no real reason? Justchange. With nothing causing it.
Im splitting, he said to Luckman and Arctor, who were watching him rev up.
No, stay, hey, man, Luckman said with a warm smile. We need you. Youre a brother.
Naw, Im cutting out.
From the house Barris appeared cautiously. He carried a hammer. It was a wrong number, he shouted, advancing with great caution, halting and peering like a crab-thing in a drive-in movie.
Whats the hammer for? Luckman said.
Arctor said, To fix the engine.
Thought I would bring it with me, Barris explained as he returned gingerly to the Olds, since I was indoors and noticed it.
The most dangerous kind of person, Arctor said, is one who is afraid of his own shadow. That was the last Freck heard as he drove away; he pondered over what Arctor meant, if he meant him, Charles Freck. He felt shame. But shit, he thought, why stick around when its such a super bummer? Wheres the chicken in that? Dont never participate in no bad scenes, he reminded himself; that was his motto in life. So he drove away now, without looking back. Let them snuff each other, he thought. Who needs them? But he felt bad, really bad, to leave them and to have witnessed the darkening change, and he wondered again why, and what it signified, but then it occurred to him that maybe things would go the other way again and get better, and that cheered him. In fact, it caused him to roll a short fantasy number in his head as he drove along avoiding invisible police cars:
THERE THEY ALL SAT AS BEFORE.
Even people who were either dead or burned out, like Jerry Fabin. They all sat here and there in a sort of clear white light, which wasnt daylight but better light than that, a kind of sea which lay beneath them and above them as well.
Donna and a couple other chicks looked so foxythey had on halters and hot pants, or tank tops with no bras. He could hear music although he could not quite distinguish what track it was from what LP. Maybe Hendrix! he thought. Yeah, an old Hendrix track, or now all at once it was J.J. All of them: Jim Croce, and J.J., but especially Hendrix. Before I die, Hendrix was murmuring, let me live my life as I want to, and then immediately the fantasy number blew up because he had forgotten both that Hendrix was dead and how Hendrix and also Joplin had died, not to mention Croce. Hendrix and J.mJ. ODing on smack, both of them, two neat cool fine people like that, two outrageous humans, and he remembered how hed heard that Janiss manager had only allowed her a couple hundred bucks now and then; she couldnt have the rest, all that she earned, because of her junk habit. And then he heard in his head her song All Is Loneliness, and he began to cry. And in that condition drove on toward home.
In his living room, sitting with his friends and attempting to determine whether he needed a new carb, a rebuilt carb, or a modification carb-and-manifold, Robert Arctor sensed the silent constant scrutiny, the electronic presence, of the holoscanners. And felt good about it.
You look mellow, Luckman said. Putting out a hundred bucks wouldnt make me mellow.
I decided to cruise along the street until I come across an Olds like mine, Arctor explained, and then unbolt their carb and pay nothing. Like everyone else we know.
Especially Donna, Barris said in agreement. I wish she hadnt been in here the other day while we were gone. Donna steals everything she can carry, and if she cant carry it she phones up her rip-off gang buddies and they show up and carry it off for her.
Ill tell you a stony I heard about Donna, Luckman said. One time, see, Donna put a quarter into one of those automatic stamp machines that operate off a coil of stamps, and the machine was dingey and just kept cranking out stamps. Finally she had a marketbasket full. It still kept cranking them out. Ultimately she had likeshe and her ripoff friends counted themover eighteen thousand U.S. fifteen-cent stamps. Well, that was cool, except what was Donna Hawthorne going to do with them? She never wrote a letter in her life, except to her lawyer to sue some guy who burned her in a dope deal.
Donna does that? Arctor said. She has an attorney to use in a default on an illegal transaction? How can she do that?
She just probably says the dude owes her bread.
Imagine getting an angry pay-up-or-go-to-court letter from an attorney about a dope deal, Arctor said, marveling at Donna, as he frequently did.
Anyhow, Luckman continued, there she was with a marketbasket full of at least eighteen thousand U.S. fifteen-cent stamps, and what the hell to do with them? You cant sell them back to the Post Office. Anyhow, when the P.O. came to service the machine theyd know it went dingey, and anyone who showed up at a window with all those fifteen-cent stamps, especially a coil of themshit, theyd flash on it; in fact, theyd be waiting for Donna, right? So she thought about itafter of course shed loaded the coil of stamps into her MG and drove offand then she phoned up more of those rip-off freaks she works with and had them drive over with a jackhammer of some kind, water-cooled and water-silenced, a real kinky special one which, Christ, they ripped off, too, and they dug the stamp machine loose from the concrete in the middle of the night and carried it to her place in the back of a Ford Ranchero. Which they also probably ripped off. For the stamps.