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Barron winced as it came to him that the name of the song Sara was playing was “Tombstone Blues.” And that’s where it’s at, exactly where it’s at.

Howards may be crazy as a bedbug, but he sure knows where one thing is at, and who knows, maybe he’s right, maybe only one thing does matter—life, is all, just staying alive. Comes nitty-gritty time, no man’s got the choice’ll do the kamikaze schtick. Sara… yeah, Sara in there, stoned silly on adrenalin since we got back from Colorado, thinking now we got it all made, immortal and together forever, and tomorrow night is Judgment Day for Bennie Howards, with Baby Bolshevik back-to-the-people Jack Barron ready to bring the Apocalypse and we march arm and arm into the sunrise, Battle Hymn of the Hail to the Chief Republic coming on in the background as we fade in on Forever.

Sara… Sure, con yourself into believing it’s all for Sara; wasn’t for Sara, you’d kamikaze right into Howards, right into accessory to murder and banzai for the Emperor, live a thousand years.

Sure you would. A thousand years… a million years, throw it all away. Sure you would. Wasn’t for Sara, you’d kill yourself dead to take Howards with you. Sure you would. The fuck you would!

Dead… dead… Barren rolled the word around his mind, squeezed it like a lemon for the acid juice of gut-reality. Dead… death… No one ever came back to give you the straight scam on how it felt. Maybe someday they’ll thaw someone out of the Freezers and then you’ll know what it’s like to be dead before you die. But no slot for murderers in the Freezers, no flash-freeze straight from the electric chair sizzle—“If you black, when you go you don’t come back.” The Black Shade… Yeah, there’s another side to Luke’s Madison Avenue mickey mouse slogan, like dead, like death, like a million years of everything shot to shit or a million years of nothing. Sure you would. It’s all for Sara, old Jack Barren’s not afraid to die. The fuck he isn’t!

Tombstone Blues…

Yeah, you got class, Barren, you make the hero scene, you do it up brown; throw away more than thirty, forty years, throw away a million years forever, and who knows, maybe a hundred years from now, there’ll be losers huddling in some fucking attic thinking what a noble cat old Jack Barren was (remember him?) and a lot of good it’ll do you when you’re dead. The fucking Black Shade…

“But if you black, when you go you don’t come back.”

That what they see when they see a shade? Pale white papier-mache mask over black reality color of death black color of Forest black color of emptiness black color of loser black color of the jungle inside black babies black pit of black blood feeding a pale white forever-vampire?

That’s the nitty-gritty choice—white or black, winner or loser, alive or dead, and no ground between. Stand alive forever, on a pile of dead bodies—or be one of the bodies, that’s where it’s all at.

Wasn’t for Sara, you’d be on the side of the losers, side of corpses dead forever and you with them forever—you’re the fucking Black Shade, aren’t you? Sure you are! Sure you would!

And like a sewer leaking gray blood-muck it began to rain again, a dirty gray New York uptight rain straight from special effects.

Before him, the city was a dirty wash of colorless gray on gray, and in the living room behind him Sara had turned on the color organ and it was scintillating the room with colors… music… the homey orange glow of the firepit over the rich red carpeting and wood-paneled walls… Sara, bouncing about, alive and innocent and immortal… the living-color science-fiction California of the mind he had created twenty-three stories above the gray New York murk, and he had to let the rain hit him, fat and wet and dirty, for long gray minutes before it bugged him enough to give him the balls to go inside.

The living room was rank with the taste of Forever. He could taste it in the thickness of the carpeting the ersatz phoenix-flame of the firepit the jang of steel guitar over harmonica-wheeze over the squeaking-door voice of Dylan (dead Dylan), the drum-roll of the rain on the skylight facets flashing with random color organ patters the sweet funk of potsmoke in the air the wall of electronic gizmos in living-color satellite-network reality-contact with the whole wide universe, listen to the smell of Forever flashing! Life!

Life… Life was orange wood smell flames searing steak juices trickling down potsmoke music color blue color red color emerald clinking off the glass skylight facets, was harmonica riffs honking the night, was every tension-feel of every muscle moving as he walked across the carpet giving under his weight, was air going in-out-in bringing the smell of rain of flame of pot of the woman-musk of Sara, was the taste of his tongue in his mouth, was everything happening every moment in the electric universe inside him, was the surge of his own blood in his arteries—and life was Sara.

White skin he could feel with his eyes taste with his nose, rounded nakedness framed in an open black velvet robe lying with legs unselfconsciously bare and open on the orange-furred couch, moving her loose blonde hair in delayed afterbeat to the rhythm of the music, waving a half-smoked Acapulco Gold (getting ashes on the rug again, dammit!), the piebald flashes from the color organ ricocheting off the skylight facets and caressing her flesh with a thousand scintillating fingers of lovely-obscene stroking light, and on her face an open smile of feral child-happiness child-innocence of babies torn apart slug-green glands drip-dripping behind big brown nipples of pleasure screams of dying black faces behind—cool it, man, cool it!

Like the best image-Sara ever fucking twenty-six-year-old image-Jack Barron stage center on the monitor of his mind, she was there and perfect, breasts still tight-skinned massive softnesses smooth skin of Berkeley Acapulco LA nights hair freely flowing, there in his pad, in his California-wet-dream controlled reality, would always be there, young soft gonad-vision forever, alive forever, his forever, Sara forever… And beneath the soft smooth nakednesses, slug-green trails of black baby-blood drip-dripping drip-dripping drip-dripping…

“Jack! You’re sopping.”

She bounced to her feet, breasts moving nice and easy hide-and-peek like puppy-noses with the sensual black velvet robe as she walked barefoot across the carpet in long overstrides toward him and he moved real cool-like toward her, kicking off damp slippers (the fuck with the rug!), tossing aside the sportjac, and then letting her playful fingers take off the damp shirt as he functionally dropped his pants, kicked them away, and they stood lightly touching each other in robe and jockey shorts.

Eye to eye, pool-deep eyes of Berkeley-past New York-present not merged into a forever-future, eyes that had won, had won him on her back-in-the-old-Berkeley-bag terms, had won immortality like a free lollipop to lick forever, forever hers, forever free, no piper to pay, woman’s eyes shining, that had won every wet-dream of the girl, all in those hungry eat-me eyes—and it was all a lie.

All a shuck, and tomorrow night she’ll know, know for sure where her big hero is at when I start doing riffs on Bennie’s Freezing competition instead of giving him the knife she’s expecting. No way of keeping that from her, but at least she doesn’t ever have to know about slimy slug-green baby glands drip-dripping inside her.

He dropped his gaze from her innocent accusing eyes, rested his attention on the tactile shape of her neutral crotch-reality body, breasts hanging free and easy in the open robe over the kettledrum of her belly with its off-center mole a second navel leading his eyes to the haircurled triangle-parting of her smooth-skin curving full woman thighs, all so tactually hyperreal, like the massive sculptured reality of a Michelangelo realer-than-real living-marble statue and, if he played Bennie’s game, just as eternal.