“You call him a gangster—what’s his racket?”
Testafer stopped snorting, but he stayed bent over with his face in the make. “I wouldn’t know.”
“Who would?”
Testafer sat back up and neatened his shirt at the sleeves and waist with careful, pinching fingers. His face was still red but it looked more composed now. “Phoneblum, I guess.”
“I don’t know—my impression was your sheep would have told me in another minute. Since you don’t know, why don’t we go and ask her?”
He didn’t want to talk about the ewe. His fingers whitened on his knee, the way they had back in his office downtown the first time we tangled. “Dulcie doesn’t talk to strangers often,” he said with effort. “She’s very…impressionable.” He looked closely at my face and then stood up abruptly, as if someone were jerking his strings.
“You’re a young man,” he said.
“I’m older than I look.” The line was stolen, but I’d said it often enough to make it my own.
“You don’t remember before the Inquisition.”
“No,” I admitted.
He stepped over to the shelves and pulled down one of the old magazines. “These are television guides,” he said. “There used to be such a variety of programming that you needed a guide to decide what to watch.”
“It’s probably illegal to own those,” I said.
“I don’t care. I collect them. It’s one of my hobbies. Here, look” He handed me the magazine. It was wrapped in transparent plastic. The cover featured an ensemble of performers—maybe jugglers or magicians, I couldn’t tell—and the name of their show.
“Abstract television isn’t an improvement,” he said. “There’s something missing that used to be commonplace. An art form that’s completely vanished.”
I wasn’t impressed. “You’re only remembering, through those magazines, what a lot of people know, even though they aren’t supposed to. It has nothing to do with television. What’s missing that used to be commonplace is a sense of connectedness in people’s lives. In my line of work that’s old news. The shows you’re talking about were only a reflection of that.”
“You don’t understand. What I’m talking about is a lost art form—”
“I’ve never seen old television,” I said. “But I’m sure television was the same then as it is now. Art mirrors the culture. The abstract stuff they have now just shows how bad it’s gotten. You think you’re pining for some old program, but what you’re really missing is a kind of human contact, a kind that’s not possible anymore.” I was making it up off the top of my head.
He took the magazine away from me. “You’d feel differently if you could remember.”
“That’s possible. Listen, Doctor—not that I don’t find this stuff interesting, but I came here to talk about Phoneblum. I need to see him.”
He put the magazine carefully into its place on the shelf and then turned back to me. His smile was enigmatic. “I’ve no doubt that you’ll eventually accomplish that,” he said. “Though I can’t recommend it as an experience. But I’m powerless to put you in touch with him. Phoneblum comes and goes according to his own schedule.”
“You know so much more than you’re telling that it’s leaking out of the sides of your eyes, Doctor. What’s got you scared?”
His smile evaporated, “You really don’t understand. If you could see yourself the way I see you—as far as I’m concerned, you and Danny Phoneblum are like two peas in a pod. Remember that when you meet him. You’re both dangerous, temperamental men who like to barge in and demand things from people who’d rather not have anything to do with you. You impose your violent paradigms on others. The only difference is that Danny is more assured in his evil—he doesn’t cloak it in self-righteousness, as you do—and therefore he’s more dangerous than you. I’ll place my bets on his side of the table, thank you.”
“Yeah, sure.” I got up to leave. “You’re headed for higher ground. It’s obviously a habit with you. Only this time maybe you should build an ark. It’s going to be raining awhile.”
“An interesting concept.”
“Yeah, interesting.”
I went to the door. He just stood there. It occurred to me that I ought to make some kind of crack about him and the ewe, but I couldn’t think of anything. I opened the door and looked out into the sunny garden. It was noon.
I turned and looked back into the house. “See you later, Grover.”
“As you wish.”
I closed the door on his idiot smile. Before I walked down the driveway to my car, I went over and found Testafer’s little electric gun in the grass. I clipped the safety and put it in my inside jacket pocket.
Dulcie’s Utile door was closed, but I could see light shining through from underneath. Once he heard my engine start, Testafer would probably go in and see her, and I wondered what they would say to each other. Would they make love? Would he hit her? Did he hit her a lot?
Sometimes it’s better not to think in questions, but I can’t seem to get out of the habit.
CHAPTER 10
OFTEN MIDWAY THROUGH THE MORNING I START TO KID myself that I dried out during the night and that I don’t need it anymore and won’t ever need it again, and then it hits me, I really dry out, and I start rifling through my belongings to find another packet and a straw. Towards the tail end of my conversation with Testafer the last of the addictol must have leached out of my bloodstream, and by the time I got back into my car at the bottom of his driveway, I was badly in need of a line or two of my blend.
I searched my pockets, hoping to find a little something to tide me over until I made it home. No cigar. Then I thought I remembered seeing a couple of half-empty packets in the glove compartment. It was warming up into a nice day, and the clearing there at the end of the driveway was almost like a clearing somewhere deep in the forest. I couldn’t see Testafer’s house from the car, and the only sounds were natural ones—birds, and the wind rustling the trees overhead. I sat with the car door open and pulled the contents of the glove compartment out into a pile on my lap.
I somehow ended up with an old packet, from a couple of years back, before I’d discovered a reliable blend of make and was still experimenting with different combinations. It was clumped up in a ball at the bottom of the packet, and I broke it into pieces with my thumb and forefinger. I guess I wasn’t thinking too much about the possible effects as I crumbled the little chunks one after another into my uptilted nose, and when I looked at the packet in my hand, it was empty.
I tossed it out of the car and closed the door. Waiting for the make to take effect, I was suddenly aware of the pain in my right hand, which I’d used to hit the doctor. My sense of isolation at the end of the driveway faded, and I was turning the key in the ignition when the make hit my bloodstream.
I was eased into a state of altered consciousness by the difference between this make and my ordinary blend. I was no more capable of describing the effects of my personal blend than I would have been capable of describing consciousness itself, because the two for me had become inextricable. But this older blend was different; I detected an uncommonly heavy dose of Believol, and my customary measure of Regrettol was completely missing. I sat in the car with the motor running, the sun glinting through the windshield, and let the new sensation wash over me.
Believol is funny stuff. It would be nice to succumb, and really inhabit the comfortable, reassuring world it provides—I guess that’s why so many people do. But it’s not for me. My skeptical faculties overcompensate and, in effect, the ingredient backfires: I become paranoid and suspicious. More than usual, I mean. Still, out in the sun at the end of Testafer’s driveway, I found myself indulging the Believol, letting it sweep me away. It was a vision of a gently reconciled existence that wasn’t mine, couldn’t be mine, but which I could live momentarily through the old packet of make. I’d have given a lot to be able to reach back through time to warn the young guy who’d snorted make like this about what a lousy business he was in, and how a blonde with gray eyes was going to transform him into a tired, prematurely spent old fool.