“She is Janis Joplin,” Arizona said, as matter of fact as if she’d been discussing next week’s menu. “I told you. We’ve moved through time. You’re connected to her somehow. That’s why we came here, to this time. This place.”
“I’m not connected to her. She died thirty years ago! Today.” I picked up the paper from the floor and shook it at Arizona. “She died on this day. When I was just a kid.”
Arizona nodded, but she wasn’t paying me any attention. She was watching the woman on the bed.
She had rolled over on her back and pulled a large cloth purse up off the floor. Propping the bag on her stomach, she dug into it, scratching around as if whatever she was looking for was eluding her. Things began to fall out of the bag, an ink pen, a wad of papers, keys.
The next thing she found was a cigarette pack. She ran her finger down in it, then shook it, as if there had to be just one more cigarette in it. When it stayed empty, she gave a sound of disgust and threw it into the overflowing ashtray on the nightstand. Then she sat up and pulled open the nightstand drawer and stuck her hand in. She found another empty cigarette pack. She cursed, eloquently and musically.
That’s when I knew, really knew, that this really was Janis Joplin. Because a lookalike might fake her pockmarked face, or her eyes, or the frizzy hair. But no one, no one, could sound like Janis. No one could sound like that, rough and sweet, gravel on satin.
Then she pulled something else out of the nightstand. A paper bag, brown and so new it sounded crisp. She slowly opened the bag and upended it. What toppled out made my breath freeze in my throat.
Janis stared at what had spilled out of the bag… a syringe, a small folded packet that looked like wax paper, a spoon, a short piece of rubber hose. Even a stolid and plodding guy like me recognized a drug kit when he saw one.
Janis picked up each item one by one and turned them over in her hands. She picked up the wax paper packet last, opened it slowly. It had fine white powder in it. I knew what it was. So did she.
She looked like she might cry. Or laugh. Or scream.
I looked back at Arizona. She was watching us, her gaze flitting back and forth between my back and the packet in Janis’ hands.
“Has it ‘come clear’ yet?” she asked. “Why we came here?”
In a flash, I remembered why I’d never taken my duffel bag with its carefully folded clean socks and my guitar and hopped a train for Haight-Ashbury. It was because of Janis Joplin.
Janis Joplin was a Texas girl whose hometown was just like mine, uptight and boring and predictable. But unlike me, she’d escaped. She’d lived her dream. I’d dreamed of hopping a freighter for California and standing right in front of the stage for one of her concerts. I’d dreamed of being carefree and unpredictable, of living for the moment.
Then Janis Joplin had died.
First Hendrix, then Janis just a couple of weeks later, of a heroin overdose.
And suddenly, I’d seen the dark underside of the carefree, hippie lifestyle. Several months later, Jim Morrison also died. But Janis’ death had been the end of my dreams of Haight-Ashbury and life as a barefoot, dancing flower child.
I wheeled to Arizona. “I just remembered. This is why I didn’t run away from home. Janis died, and all the light seemed to leak out of my dreams.” I wasn’t sure the light had ever come back.
Arizona nodded and smiled.
“Does that mean…?” I stopped and squeezed my temples between my palms. It was all so weird, so very far out, that I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around it. But I’d read science fiction, like every other kid with dreams of something different, something better. Some of the stories about time travel had stayed with me. “Does that mean that if I save her… my life will change? Does that mean that I’ll be the person I always wanted to be?”
Arizona sort of shrugged and smiled and nodded, all at the same time.
I started to question that weird, ambiguous response, but I was too taken with the idea that I might not have to be stolid and plodding. That the woman behind me on the bed didn’t have to die. But how would that work if I couldn’t even touch her?
As I thought it, Janis jumped backward, sending the drug paraphernalia scattering across the bed. “God damn, man! Where’d you come from? How the hell did you get in here?”
She could see me! She was talking to me! For a minute, I just stood there, a big, dumb rock. Janis Joplin could see me. Janis Joplin was talking to me!
“I asked you what you’re doing in here?” She was regaining her equilibrium, coming up on her knees on the bed, reaching for her purse.
My voice came back in a rush. My muscles decided they wanted to work. “I’m sorry, Miss Joplin, for scaring you. I just came for… I just came for this.” I leaned over the bed and gathered up the drug stuff, dropping the syringe, dropping the hose, but making sure I tucked the little wax packet of white powder into my pocket. Then I gathered up the rest of it a second time and stuffed it back into the sack.
At any moment, I expected Janis to whack me over the head with her bag, or reach into it and pull out a gun, or start screaming her head off. But she just gaped at me, opening and closing her mouth like a guppie. When I got back to normal, if I got back to normal, maybe I would have a good laugh over making Janis Joplin tongue-tied.
“What-? How-? Who the hell are you, man? How the fuck did you get in here?”
“It’s kinda hard to explain.” I grinned with what I hoped was a reassuring expression. “I’m just a fan. A fan from Texas. I’ve been listening to your music… Well, all of my life, and I just-well, it’s really great.” I knew I was starting to babble, but, hell, who wouldn’t babble, standing near enough a childhood hero to smell her toothpaste?
Arizona touched my elbow. Actually, she sort of pinched my elbow. Her fingers dug into the soft flesh right above it. I could see the sparkles starting around her head. She was losing her solid edge. Did that mean that we’d done what we were supposed to do?
But there was still one more thing I needed to say, even if it didn’t help in the long run. “You’ve been clean for months now. You need to stay clean, to make more music for all your Texas fans.”
Janis nodded, staring at my face. She was slowly losing her solidity, just as I suspected I was losing mine. The sparkles grew larger, stronger, and the burning arcs clouded my vision. The room around me faded, the flowered comforter and the wadded pillows at the head of the bed, and the petite, rumpled woman in front of them, losing their sharp edges. Janis had become even more transparent than Arizona had ever been.
Weirdly, as the room faded, it seemed to double. As though I were seeing two cloudy, see-through Janises, two fuzzy hotel rooms, slowly splitting apart, slowly, slowly becoming separate, y-ing out in two different directions. But there was only one Arizona, only one me, in only one of the rooms. The last thing I knew of the time and space we’d been in was Janis Joplin’s husky, trademark voice, saying softly, “Godd-d-d damn!”
Going back, or traveling through time, or coming down from the trip, whatever it was, wasn’t as easy as going out had been. Going had been like expanding, like turning into a sparkling cloud. Coming back was like being stuffed into a container that was much too small. Like being split in two, then twisted back together. The sparkly, transparent Charles was twisted and shoved and collapsed back down into solid Charles, and it hurt.
I hit the ground hard. Like falling out of the sky without a parachute. The scent of crushed and bruised grass slammed into my lungs. My eyes filled with tears. The weight and pressure of now was almost more than I could stand. The brown paper bag fell out of my numb fingers.
It was a rude way to ride back into San Francisco. I lay on the ground, gasping for breath, and watched Arizona rematerialize above me. Obviously, she had a better handle on time travel tripping than I did. It looked almost as if she floated into being, slowly becoming solid enough that I couldn’t see the clouds above me.