KEEP ON TRUCKIN”
Several people were laughing uproariously, and Walter was howling. Whatever the joke was, it seemed to go back a long time.
“… and the guy walks over to the piano player and says, ‘Do you know your monkey just pissed in my beer?’ And the piano player says, ‘No, but hum a few bars and I’ll fake it.’” Calculated burst of laughter. The man in the bell-bottomed baggies sipped his whiskey and then cooled it with a gulp of beer.
He took his drink and strolled into the darkened living room, slipping behind the turned back of Tina Howard Wallace before she could see him and snag him into a long game of Where Are They Now. She looked, he thought, like the kind of person who could cite you chapter and verse from the lives of classmates who had turners out badly-divorce, nervous disorders, and criminal violations would be her stock in trade-and would have made unpersons out of those who had had success.
Someone had put on the inevitable album of 50’s rock and roll, and maybe fifteen couples were jitterbugging hilariously and badly. He saw Mary dancing with a tall, slim man that he knew but could not place. Jack? John? Jason? He shook his head. It wouldn’t come. Mary was wearing a party dress he had never seen before. It buttoned up one side, and she had left enough buttons undone to provide a sexy slit to a little above one nyloned knee. He waited for some strong feeling-jealousy or loss, even habitual craving-but none came. He sipped his drink.
She turned her head and saw him. He raised a noncommittal finger in salute: Go on and finish your dance-but she broke off and came over, bringing her partner with her.
“I’m so glad you could come, Bart,” she said, raising her voice to be heard over the laughter and conversation and stereo. “Do you remember Dick Jackson?”
Bart stuck out his hand and the slim man shook it. “You and your wife lived on our street five… no, seven years ago. Is that right?”
Jackson nodded. “We’re out in Willowood now.”
Housing development, he thought. He had become very sensitive to the city’s geography and housing strata.
“Good enough. Are you still working for Piels?”
“No, I’ve got my own business now. Two trucks. Tri-State Haulers. Say, if that laundry of yours ever needs day-hauling… chemicals or any of that stuff…”
“I don’t work for the laundry anymore,” he said, and saw Mary wince slightly, as if someone had knuckled an old bruise.
“No? What are you doing now?”
“Self-employed,” he said and grinned. “Were you in on that independent trucker’s strike?”
Jackson’s face, already dark with alcohol, darkened more. “You’re goddam right. And I personally untracked a guy that couldn’t see falling into line. Do you know what those miserable Ohio bastards are charging for diesel? 31.9! That takes my profit margin from twelve percent and cuts it right down to nine. And all my truck maintenance has got to come out of that nine. Not to mention the frigging double-nickle speed-limit-”
As he went on about the perils of independent trucking in a country that had suddenly developed a severe case of the energy bends, Bart listened and nodded in the right places and sipped his drink. Mary excused herself and went into the kitchen to get a glass of punch. The man in the automobile duster was doing an exaggerated Charleston to an old Everly Brothers number, and people were laughing and applauding.
Jackson’s wife, a busty, muscular-looking girl with carroty red hair, came over and was introduced. She was quite near the stagger point. Her eyes looked like the Tilt signs on a pinball machine. She shook hands with him, smiled glassily, and then said to Dick Jackson: “Hon, I think I’m going to whoopsie. Where’s the bathroom?”
Jackson led her away. He skirted the dance floor and sat down in one of the chairs along the side. He finished his drink. Mary was slow coming back. Someone had collared her into a conversation, he supposed.
He reached into an inside pocket and brought out a pack of cigarettes and lit one. He only smoked at parties now. That was quite a victory over a few years ago, when he had been part of the three-packs a-day cancer brigade.
He was halfway through the cigarette and still watching the kitchen door for Mary when he happened to glance down at his fingers and saw how interesting they were. It was interesting how the first and second fingers of his right hand knew just how to hold the cigarette, as if they had been smoking all their lives.
The thought was so funny he had to smile.
It seemed that he had been examining his fingers for quite a while when he noticed his mouth tasted different. Not bad, just different. The spit in it seemed to have thickened. And his legs… his legs felt a little jittery, as if they would like to tap along with the music, as if tapping along with the music would relieve them, make them feel cool and just like legs again-
He felt a little frightened at the way that thought, which had begun so ordinarily, had gone corkscrewing off in a wholly new direction like a man lost in a big house and climbing a tall crrrrystal staircase-
There it was again, and it was probably the pill he had taken, Olivia’s pill, yes. And wasn’t that an interesting way to say crystal? Crrrrrystal, gave it a crusty, bangled sound, like a stripper’s costume.
He smiled craftily and looked at his cigarette, which seemed amazingly white, amazingly round, amazingly symbolic of all America’s padding and wealth. Only in America were cigarettes so good-tasting. He had a puff. Wonderful. He thought of all the cigarettes in America pouring off the production lines in Winston-Salem, a plethora of cigarettes, an endless clean white cornucopia of them. It was the mescaline, all right. He was starting to trip. And if people knew what he had been thinking about the word crystal (a/k/a crrrystal), they would nod and tap their heads: Yes, he’s crazy, all right. Nutty as a fruitcake. Fruitcake, there was another good word. He suddenly wished Sal Magliore was here. Together, he and Sally One-Eye would discuss all the facets of the Organization’s business. They would discuss old whores and shootings. In his mind’s eye he saw Sally One-Eye and himself eating linguini in a small Italian ristorante with dark-toned walls and scarred wooden tables while the strains of The Godfather played on the soundtrack. All in luxurious Technicolor that you could fall into, bathe in like a bubble bath.
“Crrrrrrystal,” he said under his breath, and grinned. It seemed that he had been sitting here and going over one thing and another for a very long time, but no ash had grown on his cigarette at all. He was astounded. He had another puff.
“Bart?”
He looked up. It was Mary, and she had a canape for him. He smiled at her. “Sit down. Is that for me?”
“Yes.” She gave it to him. It was a small triangular sandwich with pink stuff in the middle. It suddenly occurred to him that Mary would be frightened, horrified, if she knew he was on a trip. She might call an emergency squad, the police, God knew who else. He had to act normally. But the thought of acting normal made him feel stranger than ever.
“I’ll eat it later,” he said, and put the sandwich in his shirt pocket.
“Bart, are you drunk?”
“Just a little,” he said. He could see the pores on her face. He could not recall ever having seen them so clearly before. All those little holes, as if God was a cook and she was a pie crust. He giggled and her deepening frown made him say: “Listen, don’t tell.”
“Tell?” She offered a puzzled frown.
“About the Product four.”
“Bart, what in the name of God are you-”
“I’ve got to go to the bathroom,” he said. “I’ll be back.” He left without looking at her, but he could feel her frown radiating out from her face in waves like heat from a microwave oven. Yet if he didn’t look back at her, it was possible she would not guess. In this, the best of all possible worlds, anything was possible, even crnystal staircases. He smiled fondly. The word had become an old friend.