"Your job is to put the stuff in hollowed-out chocolate bunnies and take a plane to Miami."
"I've advanced," she said. "I'm bargaining agent for Happy Valley. I have bargaining powers. I wheel and deal. I don't just hang around the principal parties trying to win Brownie points. There'll be a courier all right but it won't be me. What happens is we'll take the stuff to wherever Dr. Pepper is located these days. Latest word is Dr. Pepper doesn't travel anymore. There's an obvious risk in going to a registered lab so we go to Pepper. Then I haggle for his services. He tells me what the product's chemical capacities are, whether he can manufacture it in sufficient quantities, how much street value it has. So on, so on, so on. Eventually Happy Valley wants to set up a network of wholesalers, retailers and distributors. But for right now what they need is a technical consultant."
"I've been hearing about Dr. Pepper for years," I said. "But never set eyes on the man."
"Some men are legends in their own time. Dr. Pepper is merely a rumor. He's without a doubt the scientific genius of the underground. But very elusive and very crazy and even wears disguises of various kinds. Happy Valley is almost sure they know where he is. Once the location is verified they'll assign a man to me and he'll come walking up the stairs in order to knock on this very door. I will hand him the product and off we'll go to grandmother's house. When the job's all done I will prepare and submit an expense voucher. This is known as finalizing the details of remuneration. Just so you don't think it's all so smooth, I might mention there are two distinct factions at Happy Valley. Certain amount of dissension. That's one of the reasons the product ended up here. The one thing they agree on is your integrity. The true blue example of your life and work, ha ha. They refuse to come in direct contact with you. They consider it an infringement of the worst sort. They're believe it or not very apologetic about involving you in this thing and only did it as a gesture of homage. They have a quaint sense of theater, like all barbarians."
"Time being you just sit and wait, is that it?"
"I don't speak till I'm spoken to," she said. "I just sprawl out in bed and wait for events to take shape."
"In other words you don't initiate."
"I maintain."
"You maintain while others initiate."
"The operative is the one who initiates." "And eventually there'll be a transaction." "It depends on the operative. The operative is also the intermediary. Both of them get their instructions from the comptroller. I just sit here until somebody turns up at the door. A tall laconic man with a scar. No, a hip black business-type, that's what I want. One of those purple Cadillac freaks. Stoned behind the wheel of a bulletproof limousine with silver and gold brocade upholstery. A slow-motion sprinter, that's what I want, neatly spaced on your better-grade euphoriants. I want to carry a Mark Cross briefcase and travel in a purple Caddy."
"Would Happy Valley have blacks working for them?"
"The boundaries are getting indistinct. You never know. Where you've got profit motive the possibilities are endless. But in other ways the lines are getting thicker and straighter. So you never know."
"This business about privacy. What do you know about that?"
Opel took a long breath, obviously bored by the prospect of delivering an interpretation.
"Happy Valley thinks privacy is the essential freedom this nation, country or republic offered in the beginning. They think you exemplify some old idea of men alone with the land. You stepped out of your legend to pursue personal freedom. There is no freedom, according to them, without privacy. The return of the private man, according to them, is the only way to destroy the notion of mass man. Mass man ruined our freedoms for us. Turning inward will get them back. Revolutionary solitude. Turn inward one and all. Isolate yourself mentally, spiritually and physically, on and on, world without end. Sustain your privacy with aggressive self-defense."
"Killer," I said. "Killer ideas. Heavier than cotton candy. Puts me in the mood to read something. About time I read something. What do you have in the house that I can read?"
"What do you want to read about? People, places or things?"
"Things," I said.
"Why not people, creepo?"
"I'm not very interested in human relationships."
"Get behind some coke, Bucky. Shit, if you're interested in reading about things, you might as well take a little sniffy now and again. In the long run that's where thingness lies. I met a track star in Dakar. Australian. There to compete in the games. I don't know what games he meant. He kept saying the games. Here for the games. Compete in the games. He gave me some nothing dope. Whatever athletes use. Zero effect. Stepped on about forty times. This is funny. Let me tell you this. I'm sitting in his room waiting and waiting. The games. Here for the games. Compete in the games. Outside the streets are full of lepers. I'm waiting and waiting and waiting."
She went on with the story. It seemed to take hours. I sat in my chair and Fenig paced his floor. This was a perfectly acceptable sonic environment. It was as though tapes of remixed sounds had been run through a computer to extend their frequency range. There was a consoling remoteness to sound now. It lapped across the room in wave-shaped bands, touching nothing. What was said existed on a plane behind the words themselves. Opel was a lump in the bed. I drifted around the room, returning eventually to the circular chair, happy to dwell in the syntonic dome of well-engineered voices.
"I don't guess you care to hear about the galvanized tank under the choir loft. Back home's what I'm talking about as a matter of fact."
"Tell me about West Africa," I said. "How would you rate it in terms of its being timeless? Using, say, Yemen as the norm. Give Yemen a mean rating of ten even. Okay, where does that put West Africa?"
"It's too dull to talk about. I only mentioned it in the first place to get my point across. Thingness. If you're interested in things, either take dope or travel to an ancient country. When's the last time you consumed something?"
"The last something I consumed was an animal tran-quilizer. That was maybe eleven weeks ago, give or take five or six weeks."
"What was it like?" she said.
"I really don't remember. It was Dodge and me. We were on a hotel roof. We were looking down on the rooftops of the city. Whatever city it was. And I was trying to work out a theory about how you can determine the psychic state of a given society by looking down on its rooftops. Dodge meantime was cackling over this little plastic box he had in his hand."
"It's quiet, isn't it?"
"Yes," I said.
"What's going to happen to all of us?"
"All of who?"
"I thought it was best to go someplace completely different. Everything was over. Nobody even knew what to wear anymore. The music didn't mean the same thing. I used to absolutely disappear in that sound. But then it ended. What do you do when something ends? I thought it best to go away."
"Sure."
"What are you laughing at?" she said.
"I don't know. I really don't."