“What about Sar — Sally?”
“Nah. She was so spaced out by the time we hit the west coast anyone could just toss her on a mattress and fuck her like she was an inflatable doll or something, and she wouldn’t know the difference. She would give you about as much response, too. It’s funny, I watch her these days, you know, on television, and she looks like she’s got class. I find it hard to believe it’s the same person. She must have got her shit together, man. You’ve got to give her a lot of credit for that.”
Nice of you, you arrogant, self-serving little prick, thought Arvo.
“Yeah,” Buxton went on, “it’s kind of hard to pull yourself up by the bootstraps when you’re that far down. I know, man. I’ve been there.” He pointed his thumb at his chest.
Arvo wasn’t in the least bit interested in sifting through the dregs of Buxton’s experience. “So things degenerated as the tour progressed?” he said.
“You could say that.”
“Any idea why?”
Buxton lit another Camel and let the first lungful of smoke trickle out before speaking. “Gary was a weird motherfucker to start with,” he announced finally. “The drugs just made him weirder, more distant, more reckless. Have you ever seen that movie, The Doors?”
“Uh-huh.”
“It was like that. You know, walking on ledges of high buildings waving his dick at the night and spouting poetry. Dylan Thomas. Walt Whitman. Allen Ginsberg.” He shook his head and took another drag on the cigarette. “I don’t know what his personal demons were, man, but they sure had him by the short-and-curlies by the time we got out to the coast.”
“How did Sally react to all this?”
“I’ve already told you, man. She was a fucking zombie by then. The tour mattress.”
“She didn’t care that he had other women?”
Buxton waved his cigarette in the air. “Women, men, it didn’t matter to Gary then. Maybe even children and small, furry animals, too, who knows? By the time we got to LA, we’d picked up so many hangers-on it was like London Zoo.”
“What kind of people were they?”
“What kind of people were they? I’ll tell you what kind of people they were. They were psychos, schizos, zombies, freaks, paranoids, pseuds, drunks, junkies, crazies of all descriptions. By the time we hit Fresno, we had two Napoleons and at least three Jesus Christs hanging around the fringes. Maybe I exaggerate a little, man, but you get my point? Gary attracted them. Shit, he even went out and picked them up off the streets and brought them back to the hotel and the concerts. Winos, street people. He was on a Jack Kerouac kick about the holiness of bums.”
“Why?”
“Who knows why? Because he was crazy himself and he felt right at home in their company. I don’t know.”
Arvo was beginning to feel overwhelmed. He had suspected that things had been chaotic on the tour, but not this bad. “Look, I’m kind of interested in the cast of characters,” he said. “Could you describe some of them a bit for me? Maybe even give me a couple of names to follow up. Was there anyone in particular, anyone who really stands out in your memory, maybe as being a little creepy. Or someone who might even appear normal enough but still gave you an odd feeling?”
Buxton frowned for a moment, opened his mouth, closed it again, frowned, then leaned over and stubbed out his cigarette. “Well,” he said, “now that you mention it, you know, there was one guy in particular.” Arvo sipped his iced tea and watched a little Oregon junco with its hangman’s hood and dapper gray breast flitting between the branches of a jacaranda tree.
“This guy was really strange,” Buxton went on. “He gave me the willies, man. I know I told you there was a lot of craziness around the tour, but most of it wasn’t serious craziness. I mean, a guy who thinks he’s Jesus is crazy, sure, but he’s also pretty harmless. But the bloke I’m talking about was different.” Buxton shook his head slowly. “Scary.”
A breeze ruffled the rose bushes. A starling hopped over the lawn looking for crumbs. The music had stopped, and it was quiet in the garden apart from the birds and the hiss of a distant sprinkler. Occasionally Arvo heard a car passing or a siren in the distance.
“Where did you meet this guy?” he asked.
“Frisco. We had three concerts there in four days. The second night, a group of us went out on the town. I’d had a couple of drinks in the hotel bar, the others had done a few lines of coke, and we were in a mood for some fun. It was one of those nights when everything seemed fine. One of the good nights. Do you know what I mean?”
Arvo nodded. “Go on.”
“We went to North Beach because Gary had this thing about the Beats. Like I said, he used to quote poetry when he was really flying. So he had this idea he had to go to City Lights Bookstore and meet Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Apparently this is the geezer who owns the place. He’s a poet and he’s been around for years.
“As it turned out, this Ferlinghetti wasn’t there — which is probably just as well, because we were getting a few funny looks by then — so we cruised some of the strip bars and topless joints around Columbus and Broadway. We had a few more drinks, then we ended up back in this bar called Vesuvio’s, where the Beats used to hang out, so Gary told us, right next to the bookshop. Needless to say, Gary really liked it and managed to calm down enough not to get us all thrown out. And then we met him.
“He was with a group of about three or four others. I can’t remember all the details clearly because by this time I’d had a few beers myself. He’s medium height, about five-eight, pretty muscular but nothing special — I mean, not like Schwarzenegger or anything — tattoos on his arms, likes to dress in black, and he has a dyed blond brush-cut and these really piercing light blue eyes.”
“Do you remember anything about the tattoos?”
“I don’t know much about tattooing. It’s just one of those things I never got into. But they looked quite intricate, you know, really professional. I think there was an eagle, or some kind of bird of prey, on one arm, and the other was a red flower, maybe a rose.”
“Any names on them?”
“No. Not that I recall.”
“What was his name?”
“Mitch.”
“His second name?”
“Dunno. It never came up.”
“Know where he lived?”
“No, but someone said he used to work in one of the North Beach strip-joints as a bouncer and he’d just got fired. I don’t know which joint.”
“Okay. Go on with your story.”
“Anyway, he recognizes Gary and comes over, says he’s a poet and a singer-songwriter and asks if he and his friends can join us. Gary says he can if he recites one of his poems. Like, that’s the price of admission to our little clique. Typical fucking Gary. So he does. I don’t know if it was any good or not, but Gary said he liked it and invited him and his group to join us. Mitch was with his brother, this other guy called Ivan, and a couple of girls. One thing led to another and we went back to the hotel. Gary fucked one of the girls and somehow they just didn’t go away, they became part of the entourage.”
At this point, Bella appeared in the French windows looking bored silly. Her body seemed to be vibrating rhythmically, as if it had a motor inside. She was holding a long strand of hair, pulling it forward from the ponytail and sucking on it with one corner of her mouth. “You guys need anything else?” she asked in a baby-doll voice.
Buxton glanced at Arvo and raised his eyebrows in question.
“Sure,” said Arvo. “I’ll have another iced tea, please.”
“And another beer for me, sweetheart,” Buxton said.