He looked at the pill, very small in his palm. “I don’t need it.”
“Need it? Of course you don’t need it. But it will make you feel better, all the same. Listen, you ever take ascorbic acid? Really heavy, like twenty-four hundred millis a day? You know how that makes you feel, sort of vibrant all over? Well, this is better.”
He protested for a while, but she was insistent, and finally he took it, popping it into his mouth, washing it down with the martini. She had made a very strong martini; it burned all the way down to his stomach, where it made everything very warm and glowing, very hot-pink and burning, a stomach that glowed like a beacon-light, shining through his skin and his undershirt and his shirt… She was staring at him. “Are you all right?” she asked.
It was hitting him very hard, that martini, going right from his stomach to his head, where his brain was turning a charming pink. Very, very charming. “Do you like my nipples?” she asked. He was staring at her and she was turning out the lights, the room was going dark, very slowly and peacefully dark, and he was feeling tired in a gentle, peaceful sort of way. “Isn’t that lovely?” she asked.
And he said that he was, at least he thought he said so, and then there was an elephant, a large gray elephant tromping through the high grass, where the cheetah waited, sly and muscular, the cheetah in the high grass, waiting, patiently, but the muscles tensed beneath a smooth fur coat, the muscles flexing in an absent, animal way as the elephant came closer, and closer still, moving up heavily to where the cheetah lay slinking in the high green grass.
“Well?” she said.
He heard her, from a great distance.
“What is this?” he said.
She laughed.
Her laugh echoed through the room, and through his ears, huge ears cupping the sound….
“What did you give me?” he said.
She laughed again, her voice cracking like ice on the rooftops, melting in the sun, dripping from the shingles onto the snowy ground.
“Isn’t it wonderful?” she said.
“What is?”
“It?” She laughed. “Peruvian Green, they call it. It’s manufactured in Peru. It affects your mind.”
“No kidding,” he said. His voice was thick and heavy, as if he were talking submerged in a huge vat of maple syrup. A huge, thick brown vat.
This has happened to me before, he thought.
“It is ineffective,” she said, “except with alcohol. You have to drink when you take it. That starts the reaction.”
“Reaction?”
“Bubble, bubble,” she laughed. “Toil and trouble…”
Fires burning around a huge vat, the liquid boiling, the steam rising around shadowy figures. Dancing around the boiling liquid.
“Peruvian Green,” she said. “They call it supergrass.”
“Do they.”
“Yes. They do.”
“And what do they call that?” he said, looking at her.
“They call that,” she said, “what nasty little girls do to nasty little boys.”
He felt that was rather interesting, really quite worthy of further and deeper consideration, and he was about to think about it, think quite carefully and coolly about it, when he found he wasn’t thinking any more.
The world began to race for him, to pick up speed and momentum, until it was rushing like a train out of control, an airplane crashing to earth, whining and whistling in the wind, with the ground rushing up.
And then his head exploded, and he saw white pure light for several blinding instants.
And then nothing.
PART II: Eden
“If an urn lacks the characteristics of an urn, how can we call it an urn?”
10. A FEELING OF POWER
HE OPENED HIS EYES. It was dark. Through the open window, he could see the moon, hazy through the smog. He coughed and looked around him. He was lying on a couch, alone in the room. He sat up slowly. Someone had put a blanket over him; it fell away and he felt the cool night air.
He stood, expecting to feel shaky. But he was calm; in fact, he felt good. He had a sensation of being fully awake, alert and calm.
A very peculiar feeling: there was a kind of intensity to it that was almost disturbing. He looked around the room once more. It was unfamiliar in the night, a strange and bizarre room.
He caught himself.
He was back in his own apartment.
“That’s funny,” he said.
His own apartment. He went from the living room to the bedroom, still not quite believing. The bedroom was empty, the bed neatly made. Which could only mean…
He looked down at the coffee table in the living room. The newspaper was there: Tuesday, October 10.
But he had taken Janice to dinner on the eighth. The night of the eighth. And that meant—
He rubbed his eyes. Two days? Was it possible? Had he really been here two days?
He wandered around the apartment, unable to understand. In the kitchen, there was an empty coffee cup, with a cigarette stubbed out in the saucer. There were traces of lipstick on the cigarette.
Beside the saucer was a photograph, torn out from the newspaper. It showed Sharon Wilder sitting on a suitcase, miniskirt high to show long smooth legs. She was smiling, sitting very straight, breasts thrown forward to the photographers. The caption read: “Sharon Wilder To Resort.” Resort to what? he wondered, squinting to read the fine print in the darkness. It said that Sharon Wilder, Hollywood starlet, was leaving for the new resort of San Cristobal.
By the front door he found the rest of his mail, unopened. Included in the stack was a telegram, which he tore open. It was from the Aero Travel Agency:
WHERE ARE YOU? AIRLINES AND HOTEL CANCELLED RESERVATIONS BECAUSE OF FAILURE TO PAY DEPOSIT. CALL IMMEDIATELY.
RON
“Hell,” he said, staring at the telegram. That was annoying. What was he going to do now?
Drive. Perhaps he would drive south. It would be good, to make the trip by car…
The telephone rang. He looked at his watch, wondering at the time, but his watch was stopped.
“Hell.”
He picked up the phone.
“Dr. Clark.”
“Roger?” A female voice. “This is Sharon.”
“Sharon? I thought you were gone.”
“No, silly. I was about to leave, but the flight was canceled. Mechanical difficulties. I won’t leave until tomorrow morning.”
“Oh. What time is it?”
“One fifteen. Did I wake you?”
“No.”
“Good. Are you all right, Roger?”
“Yes.”
“You sound a little groggy.”
“I’m fine,” he said. He didn’t feel groggy. He didn’t feel the least bit groggy. He felt clear-headed and fine, very fine.
“Roger?”
“Yes.”
“There was something I wanted to ask you.”
“Yes?”
“About the trip.”
She paused. He waited. “I’m alone,” she said. “As it turns out”
“Oh.”
“And I have two tickets. They were given to me.”
“Oh.”
“And it seems a shame to waste one.
“Yes, it does.”
There was a moment of silence. “Roger, are you all right?”
“What time?” he said.
“Nine-fifteen.”
“All right,” he said.
“Check in an hour before flight.”
“An hour before.”
“And pack light clothes.”
“Fine,” he said.
“You’re a love,” she said. “Good night.” He heard a smacking sound as she kissed the phone, and he hung up, feeling a strange sense of power.