“I wasn’t really worried,” he explained. “I knew you could take care of yourself, and I supposed that if nobody knew where you were, it was mainly because you didn’t want them to. I mean, Every man has a Need to get away from People Who Know Him once in a while. It’s perfectly natural. You see, I understand these things, and that’s what I thought you were doing. Right? Now, if Michael had only bothered to explain…”
And Sean, taking my place at The Mess on MacDougal Street, was discovering, to his lasting surprise, just how well he played and how much fun an audience could be.
“He was Great!” Chaz reported. “Fabulous! I mean, he really grabbed them. Understand? They wouldn’t let him off the stage. Really. Encores for hours, honest to God, and a standing ovation and all that. I’ve never seen anything like it before. Never. I mean to tell you, son,” slower and more serious, “I was sorely tempted to hire him on the spot, get it?”
And, “Yeah, the kid’s pretty good,” Al Mamlet seconded. Al’s a very funny man whose taste I trust implicitly.
“Shucks. All I done was play a few old songs I learned in Fort Worth,” was all Sean had to say about it, but he was hooked, all right. Utterly hooked and instantly addicted, and it showed. He was sporadically insufferable for weeks afterward.
Gary the Frog and Harriet combed the Village streets and parks, saying alternately, “Hey! Have you seen Chester?” and, “Hey, mister, got an extra dime you can spare?” more or less depending on whether they were bracing friends or strangers.
They made $1.37 in coins plus a Boston subway token in this manner, and gradually evolved their line on me through, “Hey, have you heard about Chester? He’s been Kidnapped!” to, finally, “Hey, what happened to Chester? I mean, somebody told me he was Dead or something” — all the market would bear — which took a lot of explaining to clear up afterward.
Sativa and the boys, with impeccable logic, hunted for me in every high-class teapad in the Village and still don’t know whether they found me or not; and Karen, for a wonder, spent the whole night in the front pew of Our Lady of Pompeii Catholic Church praying for my safety.
All told, it was quite a night, and I’m still kind of sorry I missed it.
Ktch came back at twelve or so, read the dials, looked very grave, made further adjustments, and said, “You are very brave, Spy. Very brave.”
No comment but a tight-lipped grin of indomitable courage.
“Please,” haltingly, “believe me when I tell you how sorry I am about having to do this to you. I assure you, sir, I have no personal motive in doing this to you, none whatsoever. It is the Rules, you understand. The Rules say I must put you to the torture if you will not talk. The Rules Must Be Obeyed. But if I had my way…” He made a percussive noise roughly equal to a sob. I was touched.
“You are very brave,” he repeated after a solemn brief pause. “But now I must leave you alone here for some time. It is my shift to sleep — The Rules. I have programmed you for eight hours of increasing intensity, as prescribed, but I trust, Sir, that your courage will not fail you. Spy, adieu!” He extended his upper three left limbs and feeler in a crustacean salute, then stiffly marched away.
And that’s when all the fun began.
14
I HAD to think! Ktch and his cohorts were snugly tucked away in their slumber tanks or whatever — it was difficult to imagine them using anything I’d recognize as a bed — and Laszlo was safely gone about his usual business of soiling the Village. This was my big chance — maybe my last chance — to dream up some way to foil the lobsters and save the world, or at least to escape from that loft and find Mike and let him save the world. I had to think!
However, I was still being tortured. All around me I could see tiny noises intertwining like spaghetti in the air. My body was covered with acute perceptions of color in flux — solemn reds, introspective blues, pulsating greens and browns — all intimate and not to be ignored. My ears were full of the flavor of hot buttered corn with salt and lemon juice. (And oh, yes, I was still hungry, which felt a bit like being underwater.) I could taste smoothness and abrasiveness and sharpness alternating in intricate patterns of what was not quite motion, and the temperature of the air — night-cool, growing cooler — smelled… I don’t have a word for how it smelled. Like calculus, perhaps?
This was not at all unpleasant. In fact, I’d spent lots of money in my day for exotic Pharmaceuticals I’d hoped would produce some such effects. No, it wasn’t unpleasant (though the taste is probably an acquired one), but it interfered with thinking something fierce.
“I’ve got to ignore all this,” I told myself in a moment of fleeting clarity. But the only sensation I’d ever practiced ignoring was pain, the one sensation I wasn’t currently experiencing.
It was impossible to keep anything in mind. I’d start a train of thought going, and before it got past the verb it would dissolve in a welter of meaningless sensations. And the most frustrating thing about it was that I couldn’t hold my mind still long enough to be frustrated.
I have no idea how long this went on.
Mike, meanwhile, was tailing Laszlo, an inherently thankless task.
“It wasn’t as easy as it should’ve been. The freak seemed to be nervous about something. He kept looking back over his shoulder as though he were being followed or something, which kept me busy ducking in and out of doorways, hiding behind lampposts, crouching behind tourists, making an ass of myself in general.
“You know, it’s kind of embarrassing when you’re hiding behind some tourist and he turns around and asks you what you’re doing and you say you’re following somebody and he wants to know why. What do you say in a case like that?
“So he was hard to follow, and I didn’t think that was at all fair. I mean, hadn’t expected it to be much fun, but work… ?”
Nursing this comfortable sense of instant injustice, Michael followed Laszlo from The Garden of Eden half a block east to the corner drugstore, first stop. Laszlo slithered up to the prescription counter, and Mike ducked into a phone booth.
“What do You want?” said Dr. Lee, the pharmacist, who was a Villager and knew Laszlo.
“Can you, like, take somethin’ an’, you know, find out what it is? Huh, Doc? Can you?”
Laszlo was doing his best to be polite, which made Dr. Lee be wary. “Generally,” he said, “I know what it is before I take it. Yes, Ma’am, can I help you?”
Laszlo tapped his feet and snapped his fingers anxiously for ten minutes while Dr. Lee listened with near-infinite patience to the overwhelming troubles of a fat Italian lady and sold her a box of aspirin for them. Then, “Are you still here?”
“Look, Doc…”
“What’re you looking for, Georgie? I’m busy.”
“Oh wow! Listen, Doc, s’pose I was to give you this Pill, see? Can you, like, ah, find out what’s In it? Can you, Doc? Huh? Can you?”
“Yes ,sir, can I help you?” Another customer.
Laszlo by now was almost dancing in frustration, which pleased Michael no end, but the customer only wanted a pack of cigarettes.
“Let me get this straight,” said Dr. Lee resignedly. “You want me to analyze some pill for you. Is that it?”
“Yeah, yeah! Analyze. That’s it, yeah’ Can you, Doc?” He pulled a transparent plastic bag full of little blue pills out of his right coat pocket. Bits of lint and dirt and God knows what clung to the outside of the bag.