“Wow,” she said, “there are sure some creeps around.”
“A hippie,” Holy-o said grimly.
“C’mon,” Marge said. “Wasn’t it just a guy with long hair?”
“It was a hippie,” Holy-o said. “I was there, I oughta know. She died in my arms.”
Holy-o’s arms were short but powerful, encased in shiny blue Dacron. Marge looked at them and wondered what it would be like to die there.
“A hippie thrill killer,” Holy-o said, running the brandy over his anger. “It wasn’t even a ripoff. It was for laughs.
“Peace and love,” he said. “The cocksuckers.”
Rowena pouted. “It was just one person, Holy-o.”
“One person shit,” Holy-o said. “What about that bug up in Yellowstone Park? He had his pockets full of human finger bones. He ate his victims, the cocksucker.”
“Like in Samoa,” Marge said.
Holy-o flashed his wet hooded eyes. “That’s bullshit,” he said. “Boy, just let one hippie show up in Samoa. Just let one show up. They’d fix his ass.”
“You know, Holy-o,” Rowena said, “just because the papers say something and J. Edgar Hoover says something doesn’t make it true. Like this whole Charlie Manson number…”
As she spoke, Holy-o appeared to tremble. It was impolitic to provoke him further.
“We agreed,” Marge said, “not to talk about him.”
Rowena got up to go to the bathroom again. Holy-o looked after her with distaste. “She goes to the toilet a lot,” he said. “You think she’s stuffin’?”
Marge shook her head.
“She don’t know much,” Holy-o said. “In the old days was the original bohemians. A lot of times the bohemian was really educated and a patron of art. Then you got the beatnik, maybe a lower class of person. Now you got fuckin’ hippies everywhere.”
“Holy-o,” Marge said, “you know a writing doctor, don’t you?”
Holy-o shook his head as though he were telling her no.
“So what?” he asked.
“If you can get dilaudid, I’d like some.”
“What for? You got a pain?”
“Just wanted to try it.”
“Try it?” He seemed to think trying it was a very strange notion. “You have a habit, Marge?”
“I just thought I’d like to get off,” Marge said.
“Forget it,” Holy-o said. “You ought to go out more.
You don’t need to tell your old man everything.”
“I sort of like the idea of dilaudid,” Marge said. “I can get some dolophine but I thought I’d dig dilaudid more.”
“Dolophine is very bad,” Holy-o said. “It’s methadone. It’ll kill you. You do better with scag.”
“I don’t want to know those people. Not on my own.”
Holy-o smiled. “They’re just fellas,” he said.
When Rowena came back from the bathroom they watched her for popping signals.
“Hey,” she said to Marge, “how was New York? I want to hear about it.”
“I forget,” Marge said. “I forgot I was there.”
Someone was out in the lobby rapping on the tin doors; Holy-o went over and opened them slowly, holding the truncheon. It was Rowena’s boyfriend; he and Rowena shared an apartment on Noe Street and went to State. His name was Frodo.
“Jesus, it smells weird in here,” Frodo told Holy-o.
Rowena went out to meet him.
“It really does,” she said. “I notice it the first thing I come in.” Frodo giggled. “It smells like the zoo. Like the monkey house.”
The folds of brown flesh slid slowly across the surface of Holy-o’s eyes.
“Next time,” he told Rowena, “meet your boyfriend in the street.”
“No reflection on you,” Frodo said.
When Rowena and Frodo were gone, Marge started down the center aisle toward the back door and the parking lot. Holy-o called her back.
“I could give you a few hits,” he said. He looked at her as though she were a child. “How do you want to do it?”
“I don’t know. Just swallow it.”
“O.K., Marge,” he said kindly.
He had it in his pocket. He shook four tabs out of a plastic pillbox and into Marge’s palm. “Twenty bills. You pay me Friday.” He had overpriced it to put her in his debt. “Dowd liked this,” he said. “She liked it a lot.” His voice thickened as he spoke, his eyes shone. Marge smiled her gratitude and watched him. It was a seduction. The shit would seal some chaste clammy intimacy; there would belong loving talks while their noses ran and their light bulbs popped out silently in the skull’s darkness.
“She liked girls too, didn’t she, Holy-o?”
Holy-o smiled.
“Yeah, she liked girls but what she really liked was dilaudid.”
Loneliness. He wanted it to be like Dowd again.
She thanked him and he told her not to take them all at once and not to take the first one yet since she had to drive. Then he walked her through the back door as he always did and stood by until she was in her car. Every night he per formed the same gestures of vigilance — looking to the left and right, at the fire escape above the door and around the corner of the building.
When she was behind the wheel he scouted the alley for her and waved her on toward the street. As she came abreast of him he leaned down to the car window.
“You’re gonna find this is good shit,” he assured her. “People really like it and they’re not just crazy. You see guys that are lazy bums and they turn into hustlers. They’re out on the street first thing in the morning ‘cause they wan’ it.”
“I guess that’s the chance you take.”
“Yeah,” Holy-o said. “Absolutely.”
“With me,” Marge said, “it’s a matter of principle.”
Holy-o hastened to agree that it was. He nodded as she drove away and it was as if there were no Indians in all of San Francisco. She had never seen him so happy.
She took Mission to the bridge approaches. Her car was a yellow 1964 Ford and Marge was very fond of it because of the way she thought it suited her. Marge on wheels knew herself to be a thoroughly respectable sight — she and the-car together projected an autumnal academic dash that might even evoke nostalgia if one had enjoyed 1964. Cops almost never stopped her.
Her house was directly uphill from the first Berkeley exit, on the first block of rising ground. Not very far away was the corner where the Oakland Police had stopped the Vietnam Day March and Marge had been there although she had not lived in Berkeley then. It had been eight years since Vietnam Day.
She let herself into the building and climbed up two flights of fine redwood paneled stairway to the apartment. Before putting her key in the lock she rapped twice on the door.
“Margie?”
It was Mrs. Diaz, the baby-sitter.
“Hi,” Marge said as she went in. “Everything O.K.?”
She walked past Mrs. Diaz and straight into the room where Janey was sleeping.
“Sure,” Mrs. Diaz said. “Your father called.” Janey was huddled in her yellow blanket. Her mouth was open and her breathing thick and bronchial.
“Damn,” Marge said. She found another blanket in the closet and placed it over the child.
“Did he want anything special?”
“He asked you to call him tomorrow.”
In the kitchen, she put a pot of water on for instant coffee.
“So,” Mrs. Diaz asked, “how’s life on Third Street?”
“Oh, you know,” Marge said. “Sordid.”
The dilaudid tabs were in the pocket of her cardigan. She took one out and swallowed it. “You take your life in your hands down there.”
“It doesn’t bother me,” Marge said. “After working three years for UC I’d just as soon take my life in my hands.”
She stood listening to the water beginning to boil and waiting for Mrs. Diaz to leave.
“Would you stay and have a cup of coffee?”