Jim’s depressed. He’s a part-time word processor for a title and real estate company, a part-time night school teacher at Trabuco Junior College. His father thinks he’s a failure; his friends think he’s a fool. This last has been his angle, of course, he’s cultivated it because laughs are at a premium among his friends, and they’re all comedians; the fool routine keeps Jim from being nothing more than part of the laughtrack. But it can get old, old, old. How much nicer it would be to be… well, something else.
Sandy shows up, three hours late to his own party. SOP. “Hellooo!” he shouts, and Angela Mendez his ally comes over to give him a kiss. He moves on, his pale freckled skin flushed with excitement. “Hey, hello! Why are you just sitting there?” He goes to the music wall, cranks the volume up to say a hundred thirty decibels, Laura’s Big Tits singing “Want Becomes Need” over thick percussion that sounds like twenty spastics in a room full of snare drums. “Yeah!” Sandy pulls some girls off the long beige couch in the video room, starts them dancing around the screens hanging from the ceiling, he won’t be satisfied until everyone is dancing for at least one number, this is understood and everyone gets up and starts to bounce, happy at the action. Sandy flies from dancer to dancer, shoves his face right in theirs, psycho grin pulsating, pale blue eyes popping like they might fall out and bob at the end of springs any second now: “You look too normal! Try this!” And they’re holding eyedroppers full of Sandy’s latest, Social Affability, Apprehension of Beauty, Get Wired, who knows what the little label will say this time, but it’s sure to be fun. Sandy’s the best drug designer in OC—famous, really. And he doesn’t disdain the old-fashioned highs either. Angela is mixing pitchers of margaritas in the kitchen, Sandy is stopping at certain broad-leafed houseplants and pulling giant spliffs from hiding places, lighting them with a magnum blowtorch, throwing them at people, shouting, “Smoke this!” Jim, looking in from the balcony, can only laugh. There is a Sandy who is subtle, thoughtful, quick-witted, a culturevulture in Jim’s own league; but that isn’t him in there, putting the jumper cables to his own party. Time for a different act: Wired Host. Is there an eyedropper with that on the label?
Jim goes to work on an eyedropper called Pattern Perception (so his name has been chosen!), with a couple whose names he can almost remember. Blink, blink. Are those stars or streetlights? “I’m fourth-generation OC,” he tells them apropos of nothing. “I have it in my genes, this place, I have a race memory of what it used to be like when the orange groves were here.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Nowadays we’d have a hard time living that slowly though, don’t you think?”
“Uh-huh.”
There’s something lacking in this conversation. Jim is about to ask his companions if they have brains at home they can plug in but forgot to bring, or if they have to pretend like this all the time, when Tashi interrupts. “Hey McPherson,” he says from the French doors to the game room. “Come take up the paddle.”
Of course this is Jim the Fool they’re requesting. His ping-pong style is a bit unorthodox, call it clumsy in fact; but that’s okay. Any request is better than none.
Arthur Bastanchury is just finishing off Humphrey Riggs, and Humphrey, Jim’s boss at the real estate office, hands over the sweaty paddle to Jim with a muttered curse. Jim’s up against the Ping-Pong King.
Arthur Bastanchury, the Ping-Pong King, is about six feet two, eyes of blue, dark-haired and wide-shouldered. Women like him. He’s also a dedicated antiwar activist and underground newspaper publisher, which Jim admires, as Jim has socialist ideas himself. And an all-round Good Guy. Yes, Arthur, in Jim’s opinion, is someone to reckon with.
They take a long warm-up, and Jim discovers he has blinked the wrong amount of Pattern Perception. He can see the cat’s cradle in time that he and Arthur are creating, but only well after the fact, and the contrail-like after-images of the white ball are distracting. It looks like trouble for McPherson.
They start and it turns out to be even worse than he expected. Jim’s got quick hands, but he is awkward, there’s no denying it. And his fine-tuning is badly out of order. Giving up, more or less, he decides to go recklessly on the attack, thinking Let’s get this fucking pinko, which is funny since he actually agrees completely with what he knows of Arthur’s political views. But now it’s useful to go into a redkiller mindset.
Also useful not to care about appearances; Arthur is a power player with a monster slam, and Jim has to make some, well, funny moves—twists and contortions, dives into the walls and such.… In fact, Angela hears he’s playing and comes in to move her plants out of danger. Fine, more room to maneuver.
Still, Jim is losing badly when he tries a vicious topspin and smacks himself right in the forehead with the edge of his paddle. General laughter accompanies this move; but actually, after the pain recedes and the black lights leave his vision, the blow seems to have stimulated something inside Jim’s brain. Synapses are knocked into new arrangements, new axons sprout immediately, the whole game suddenly becomes very clear. He can see two or three hits ahead of time where the ball is destined to go.
Jim rises to a new level, a pure overcompetency, his backhand slam begins to work, any opportunity on that side and a snap of the wrist sends over a crosscourt shot angled so sharply that people sitting right at netside take it in the face. Alternate those with down-the-line backhands, tailing away. These slaps plus the bold, not to say idiotic, dives into the wall to retrieve slams when on defense, reverse the game’s momentum. He takes his last serves and wins going away, 21–17.
“Two out of three,” Arthur says, not amused.
But it’s a mistake to go for a rematch when Jim is on like this. So much of ping-pong is just the confidence to hit the thing as hard as possible, after all. Second game Jim feels the power flow through him, and there’s nothing Arthur can do about it.
Jim can even take the luxury of noticing that the video room next door is filling up with spectators. Sandy has turned on the game room cameras, and the watchers are treated to eight shots of live action, all played out on the big screenwall and the various free screens hanging from silver springs that extend down from the ceiling: Jim and Arthur, flying around from every angle. The game room clears out, in fact, as people go into the video room to observe the spectacle, and the two players have room to really go at it.
But Arthur’s out of luck tonight, Jim’s getting a sort of… uncanny ability here, premonitions so strong that he has to hold back on his swing to allow Arthur time to hit it to the preordained spots. What a joy, this silly table game.
Second game, 21–13. Arthur tosses his paddle on the table. “Whew!” He grins, gracious in defeat: “You’re hot tonight, Jim Dandy. Time for those margaritas.”
Jim starts to wind down. He looks around; Tashi and Abe weren’t even in the game room or the video room. Too bad they missed it, Jim likes his friends to see him being more than just The Fool. Oh well. The act is its own reward, right?
Sometimes Jim has a hard time convincing himself of this.
“Nice game,” says a voice behind him. He turns; it’s Virginia Novello.
Adrenaline makes a little comeback. Virginia, Arthur Bastanchury’s ally until just a couple months ago, is Jim’s idea of female perfection. Standing right there in front of him.
Long straight thick blond hair,
Bleached by sun but still full of red and yellow.
Yes, they sell that hair color, and call it California Gold.