I get this crazy feeling. Every once in a while I get it. I get the feeling that this is the last time in history when the offbeats like me will have a chance to live free in the nooks and crannies of the huge and rigid structure of an increasingly codified society. Fifty years from now I would be hunted down in the street. They would drill little holes in my skull and make me sensible and reliable and adjusted.
I am, to put it as bitterly as possible, a romantic. I know a windmill when I see one, by God, and I sneer at my white horse. It was appropriate that Lysa Dean should be the damsel in distress. She is such a sweet kid.
“Anyway,” I said aloud, “she projects the image of a sweet kid.”
Dana was inert for about two seconds, nodding her head, and then she gave a little jump and stared at me. “Don’t do that!”
“Do what?”
“Get inside my head like that! How did you know what I was thinking?”
“I didn’t.”
She looked dubious. I glanced at her a few times when I could take my eyes off that languorous and lethargic California traffic. And somehow all of a sudden we were closer. Maybe it is like the learning curve, shaped like a profile of a stairway. We both knew something had happened and didn’t know what it was. Her face colored and she turned away. I couldn’t really see her any more. That was another clue. I could remember meeting a dark-haired, strong-featured, composed woman. A stranger. This was not she. This was Dana. Somebody else. Dana’s eyes, Dana’s mouth, Dana’s hair and ears and body. Individual and unique and not related in any way to anyone previously known. Dana of the dear crooked tooth.
Santa Rosita was a stunted version of the Santa Barbara code of existence. Three industries, electronics, plastics and tourists, and squeeze the bejaysus out of all three. It was sharing the big boom-boom. The incomparably dull tract houses, glitteringly new, were marching out across the hills, cluttered with identical station wagons, identical children, identical barbecues, identical tastes in flowers and television. You see, Virginia, there really is a Santa Rosita, full of plastic people, in plastic houses, in areas noduled by the vast basketry of their shopping centers. But do not blame them for being so tiresome and so utterly satisfied with themselves. Because, you see, there is no one left to tell them what they are and what they really should be doing.
The dullest wire services the world has ever seen fill their little monopoly newspapers with self-congratulatory pap. Their radio is unspeakable. Their television is geared to a minimal approval by thirty million of them. And anything thirty million people like, aside from their more private functions, is bound to be bad.
Their schools are group-adjustment centers, fashioned to shame the rebellious. Their churches are weekly votes of confidence in God. Their politicians are enormously likable, never saying a cross word. The goods they buy grow increasingly more shoddy each year, though brighter in color. For those who still read, they make do, for the most part, with the portentous gruntings of Uris, Wouk, Rand and others of that same witless ilk. Their magazine fare is fashioned by nervous committees.
You see, dear, there is no one left to ask them a single troublesome question. Such as: Where have you been and where are you going and is it worth it.
They are the Undisturbed. The Sleep-Lovers. And they fill out an enormous number of forms every year, humbly and sincerely. Each one is given a number to use all his life.
Are they going to be awakened with a kiss? They feel vaguely uneasy about their young. My God, why can’t these kids appreciate this best of all possible worlds? What’s wrong with these restless punks? These… these goddam dropouts!
Virginia, dear, through the strange alchemy of the gods, there are a disproportionate number of kids coming along these days with IQ’s that are soaring toward a level too high to measure. These kids have very cold eyes. They are the ones who, one day, will stop playing with transistors, diodes and microcircuitry and look at Barrentown and start asking the rude questions. Or build a machine that will ask.
In the meanwhile, Virginia, Santa Rosita still exists, and it is as if some cynical genius had designed a huge complex penal colony in the sunshine, eliminating the need for guard towers and barbed wire by merely beaming a gigantic electronic message at the inmates, day and night, saying, You are in heaven! Be happy! If you can’t be happy there, you can’t be happy anywhere! Vote! Consume! Donate! And don’t forget to use your number.
We drove in from the north at four in the afternoon of that first Tuesday in March, and I checked us into two singles in a chain motel architecture: Lubratorium Moderne. She wanted to call Miss Dean, and I wanted to try the number for Mendez. After a small and cautious hesitation, I decided not to put it through the motel switchboard. Caution can be a way of life. Never leave anything which can be traced, when you do have a choice.
A clear-voiced girl said, “Gallagher, Rosen and Mendez. Good afternoon.”
“Uh… may I speak with Mr. Mendez, please.”
“One moment, sir.”
“Good afternoon. This is Mr. Mendez‘ secretary. May I help you?”
“I would like to speak with Mr. Mendez, please.”
“He’s on another line. May I call you back, or would you like to hold?”
I held. I riffled the phone book with my free hand. They were attorneys.
“Yes? Hello?” Mendez said in an impatient and harried voice.
“Sorry to bother you. We need an address for the next of kin for D. C. Ives.”
“Who is we?”
“Keller Photo, sir. We had a lens for repair. It was under the guarantee, but it took a long time. It had to go back to the factory in Germany, no charge of course, and now we…”
“Miss Trotter? Give this fellow Jocelyn Ives’ address.”
I heard him hang up. “Hello?” Miss Trotter said. “Just a moment, please.” She was back on the line quickly. “Have you a pencil? Miss Jocelyn Ives, 2829 Appleton Way. Phone 765-3192. Have you got that?”
“Thanks. When did Ives die anyway?”
“Oh, just a few days before Christmas. He held on longer than they thought he could, you know. Days and days, with all that terrible brain damage. It’s such a shame. He was so talented.”
“Well, that’s the way it goes.”
“I hope they find them some day.”
“Don’t we all. Thanks, Miss Trotter.”
I started out of the phone booth, and then went back in and tried the number she gave me. It rang three times. A woman answered. “Is Georgie around?” I asked.
“You’ve the wrong number, I expect,” she said. I thanked her and hung up. I walked thoughtfully back to the room. I knew that accent. It sounds cockney but isn’t. It is Australian.
Dana had just finished talking to Lysa Dean. Miss Dean reported success with the promotion and a good audience response to Winds of Chance on premiere night. She was off soon, with group, to New York for additional promo work, panel shows and so on, four days there and then to Chicago.
I reported what I had learned, and added what I could guess. Dana looked more intrigued than shocked. “Killed, eh?”
“So it would seem.”
“He was in a dangerous line of work.”
“The quickest way is to give that sister a try.”
“Can I come with you?”
“I might strike out. I’ll try it alone. Then you can try from another angle.”
Appleton Way was dead end. Truck terminals were edging closer to it. Nearby blocks were being levelled for some unimaginable improvement. But the street still had an illusion of peace. It contained multiple housing, old garden courts of pseudo-Moorish styling, faded citrus-tone paint on old stucco. 2829 was one of the larger complexes, and her door was off an arched open corridor along the side. A dark door opening into the gloom of a small apartment with too few windows. She looked at me through the six-inch gap the safety chain allowed, and I saw that she was perhaps daughter rather than sister.