“Don’t you see, Jack?” Sara asked, staring hungrily at him with those old Berkeley eyes. “Power… Remember how we talked in the old days about power, what we’d do when we got it? Sure you remember all that bullshit. But don’t you see, it doesn’t have to be bullshit anymore. We’ve got you, and you’ve got the power. You weren’t afraid to lay yourself on the line in the old days, when it accomplished nothing, and now you can do it again, but this time it’ll matter.”
“Power!” Barron snapped. “None of you know shit from shinola about power ! Look around you, take a good look, and you’ll see Howards and Teddy and Morris—that’s power. They’re people, dig, people, is all, but, baby, they’re junkies. All of ’em power-junkies. That’s what power does to you, a fucking monkey on your back—just like junk. First shot’s free, kiddies, but after that you’ve gotta go out and cop more and more and more to feed the monkey. I’m a beautiful cat, eh? I’ll take you outside and show you fifty former beautiful cats you wouldn’t piss on because, baby, they’re junkies. And a junkie don’t give a shit about anything but junk. Power and smack—it’s all the same junk.”
“Luke Greene’s a junkie?” Sara said quietly.
“Bet your sweet ass he is! There he is, stuck in the Mississippi boonies, the poor lonely fucker, surrounded by sycophants and plain ordinary schmucks, hating every minute of it, hating himself, hating manipulating people… All that race-put-down come-on—only it’s real. He hates himself for being a nigger, thinks of himself as a nigger surrounded by niggers. Luke Greene—there was a beautiful cat, my best friend, and now look at him, hating himself, hating everything, nothing but a big throbbing vein to feed the power-monkey on his back. You wanna see me like that, Sara?”
The silence was so thick you could cut it with a knife. What brought that on? Barron wondered. Jeez, what’s in this grass, maybe it is loaded with opium junk… Junk… Yeah, maybe that’s it man, once you really were a power-junkie, in the old days, just a bag now and then to keep the monkey quiet. Wasn’t that why you got yourself the show in the first place, biggest jolt of power-junk you ever had? Worked funny, didn’t it, OD’d you, got you off it? And now you got everyone shaking the stuff under your nose, feel that hunger so hot you can taste it, and everyone telling you go ahead shoot up, you can’t get hooked again sonny, you’re a beautiful cat!
And that’s where all this is at, he knew. Whole Village is a power-junk supermarket for old Jack Barron, and that’s why you dug this party idea, baby, you smelled the shit like an old junkie, couldn’t keep away. One fix, and you’re hooked.
Not this time, Sara. Too much to lose, Bug Jack Barron, maybe a free shot at forever. Throw that away for a surge of Presidential bullshit Samson-smash junk? Would you? Would anyone? Gonna be a junkie, be an immortality-junkie—at least that monkey gives as good as it gets.
Screw this whole scene! Barron thought bitterly. Truth, justice, you beautiful cat bullshit—no different from the rest, all want my bod for your own bags.
I’m tired of it all, Machiavellian motherfuckers, Howards, Luke, Morris, all losers; maybe you too, Sara, who knows? Goddamn paranoid nightmare! Show you all Jack Barron’s his own man, nobody’s flunky. I’ll get what I want, one way or another, and on my own fucking terms!
Wonder who did this stuff? Sara Westerfeld thought behind her shield of purposeful cynicism against Jack-reality as the elevator door opened, revealing the entrance foyer to his little-boy treehouse-penthouse and the crude, not-quite-making-it kinesthop mural on the wall (should be whole kinesthop wall around the hallway entrance, really suck in all those chicks he’s supposed to be balling, she thought professionally).
Jack smiled a little-boy smile, hair all curls like fresh from pillow years flaking away dig my pad baby smile of first meeting first love first lay in dingy Berkeley attic. She reached out and pinched his ass—still firm cute ass-flesh felt the about-to-be-fucked-for-the-first-time thrill of the unfolding unknown.
He put his arm around her waist, led her past doors down a dark hallway toward a vast space she could kinesthetically sense beyond, paused suddenly, yanked her off her feet into arms around shoulder hand firm under her ass caressing divide, and she went with it, arms around him, face muzzled into wild curls roughness around his neck as he laughed, said: “I never got to carry you over any threshold, baby, so better late than never.”
She giggled with semi-sincere, go-with-it-it’s-his-bag pleasure, said: “Darling, there are times when you’re so beautifully square.”
He carried her forward (she could feel muscles deliciously tight straining against her), paused at the brink of something (she could see stars, night-tree-shapes across bulking distance), fiddled with some panel on the wall and…
Flames leapt up billowing orange from huge firepit in the center of a vast scarlet-carpeted room, dancing ruby shadows across chairs, pillow-piles, furniture, huge gizmo electronic wall consoles to a California patio beyond, rubber-trees against the naked sky scintillating firelight glow from the faceted-dome skylight-ceiling reflecting sparks into the dead New York sky, and she saw they were on a deck-balcony above the huge living room as rock-montage music began to play from somewhere and color-organ spectral flashes swirling with the music spun acid-reality magic in the air, and she felt him quiver against her, waiting for a reaction to his externalized head like a cornucopia before her—or just as like some silly-ass Hollywood set.
She hugged him silently, unsure of the truth of her reactions: so like Jack, magic, cop-out, phony, extravagant, bullshit and yet… and yet…
Yet it’s real, real fantasy playpen, no interior-decorated-calculated baloney, straight from Jack’s head to reality, with nothing in between. It’s him, it’s his dream—Berkeley, Los Angeles, California candy-store window, unafraid naked garish conscious-subconscious Jack Barron day-dream, sugar-plum reality that money had made real.
Sara felt herself teetering on the brink of a dangerous truth: Who was really the cop-out, Jack who went and got what he needed to make his dream real, molding a Jack Barron reality to the shape of his dreams, or me, shaping dreams to the size of mundane reality (takes balls to be garish ’cause garishness is your bag)? A hero’s a man with the courage to live in his dreams.
“How’s that grab you, baby?” he said, carrying her down to the lush-carpeted surface, setting her on her feet, staring into her eyes, giving the question pregnant ego-involvement intensity.
I don’t know how it grabs me she thought vertiginously. Your bag, not mine, little-boy stuff, like tin soldiers, silly Hollywood crap. But you dig it, I dig you, and, Jack darling, it’s real. “It’s you, Jack,” she said quite truthfully.
“You think it’s a lot of silly bullshit,” he said. “I can see it in your eyes.”
“No!” she said loudly, impulsively, aware that she meant it only after she said it. “It’s just… I’ve never seen anything like it before. It’s like… like seeing your head, I mean, the inside of your head, out there. It’s so… naked, I mean it’s the nakedest room I’ve ever seen. Like you had a magic wand and just waved it and everything that you wanted in your head suddenly was. I won’t con you, Jack, you know it’s not my bag out there, it’s yours, and if I was waving the wand, it’d be all different. But the idea of waving the wand in the first place—that’s such a pure groove! I dig this place because it’s you, exactly what you wanted to make it. It’s a whole new bag, a whole new idea to me—wanting something like this, a dream, and having the power to make it reality. I… I… I’m not sure what I feel.”