"No." Kirsten shook her head. "I have yet to find a dress I can wear. I came to the City to shop. Clothes are very important to me. They have to be; I'm seen in public a lot and I expect to be seen much more, now that I'm with Tim." Rage still showed on her face.
I said, "I'll go back by BART." I walked away.
"She's a very attractive woman," Jeff said that night when I told him. "Considering her age."
"Kirsten is on reds," I said.
"You don't know that."
"I suspect it. Her mood-changes. I've seen her take them.
Yellow jackets. You know. Barbiturates. Sleeping pills."
"Everybody takes something. You smoke grass."
I said, "But I'm sane."
"You may not be when you get to be her age. It's too bad about her son."
"It's too bad about your father."
"Tim can manage her."
"He may have to have her killed."
Eying me, Jeff said, "What a strange thing to say."
"She's out of control. And what happens when Bounding Bill the Dingaling finds out?"
"I thought you said-
"He'll be out. It costs thousands of dollars to be in Hoover Pavilion. You stay about four days. I've known people who passed in their front door and out the back. Even with all the financial resources of the Episcopal Diocese of California, Kirsten can't keep him in there. He'll bound out on kangaroo-spring shoes one of these days, his eyes rolling around in their sockets-that's all Tim needs. First she has me introduce her to Tim; then she tells me about her son the madman. Tim'll be preaching a sermon some Sunday morning at Grace Cathedral, and all of a sudden this lunatic will stand up and God will grant him the gift of tongues and that'll be the end of the most famous bishop in America."
"Life is a risk."
I said, "That's probably what Dr. King said that last morning of his life. They're all dead but Tim anyhow; Dr. King is dead; Bobby Kennedy and Jack Kennedy are dead-I've set up your father." I knew it that evening as I sat with my husband in our little living room. "He stops bathing; he stops taking out the garbage; he writes letters; what more do you need to know? He's probably writing a letter to the pope right now. Martians probably walked through the wall of his room and told him about his mother and your father. Christ. And I did it." I reached around under the couch for my beer can of grass.
"Don't get loaded. Please."
You worry about me, I thought, when madness rules our friends. "One joint," I said. "Half a joint. I'll toke up. A puff. I'll look at the joint. I'll pretend to look at the joint." I fished the empty beer can out. I guess I moved my stash, I said to myself. To a safer place. I remember; in the middle of the night, I decided that monsters were going to rip me off. Mad Margaret from Ruddigore enters, the picture of theatrical madness, or however Gilbert put it. "Maybe I smoked it all up," I said. And I don't remember, I thought, because that's what mary jane does to you: fucks up your short-term memory. Probably I smoked it up five minutes ago and already I've forgotten.
"You're borrowing trouble," Jeff said. "I like Kirsten. I think it'll work out. Tim misses my mother."
Tim misses getting his rocks off, I said to myself. "That is a truly kinky lady," I said. "I had to come home by snail train. It took two hours. I'm going to talk to your father."
"No you're not."
"I will. I'm responsible. My stash is behind the stereo tuner. I'm going to get totally wasted and phone Tim and tell him that-" I hesitated, and then futility crushed me; I felt like crying. Seating myself, I got out a Kleenex. "Goddamn it," I said. "Fry the bacon is not a game bishops are supposed to play. If I had known he felt that way-"
"'Fry the bacon'?" Jeff said wonderingly.
"Pathology frightens me. I sense pathology. I sense highly professional, responsible people wrecking their lives in exchange for a warm body, a temporarily warm body. I don't even sense the bodies staying warm, for that matter. I sense everything getting cold. You're only supposed to get into such limited time-binding if you're on junk and think in hours; these people are supposed to think in terms of decades. Lifetimes. They meet in a restaurant run by Fred the Hatchetman, which is ill-omen incarnate, the ghost of Berkeley coming back to get us all, and when they leave they have each other's phone number and it's all accomplished. What I wanted to do was help a women's lib group, but then everyone queeged out on me, you included. You were there; you watched it happen. I watched it happen. I was as crazy as the rest of you; I suggested that Fred the Soviet narc get photographed with the Bishop of the Diocese of California-they should have been in drag, according to my logic. The trouble with seeing ruin coming is that-" I wiped at my eyes. "Please, God, let me locate my mary jane. Jeff, look behind the tuner. It's in a Carl's junior bag, a white bag. Okay?"
"Okay." Obligingly, Jeff rummaged behind the tuner. "I found it. Calm down."
"You can see ruin but you can't see what direction it's coming from. It just sort of hangs there, like a cloud. Who was that character in Li'l Abner who had the cloud following him around? You know, this was the stuff the FBI was trying to hang on Martin Luther King. Nixon loves this shit. Maybe Kirsten is a government agent. Maybe I am. Maybe we're programmed. Pardon me for playing Cassandra in our collective movie, but I see death. I thought Tim Archer, your father, was a spiritual person. Does he dive into-" I broke off. "My metaphor is offensive. Forget it. Does he go after women like this normally? I mean, is this just merely the fact that I know about it and arranged it? Remind me not to go to Mass, not that I ever do. There's no telling where the hands that hold out the chalice-"
"That's enough."
"No, I get to be crazy along with Bong-Bong-Bill and Creepy Kirsten and Tim the No- Longer-Torpid. And Jeff the Jerk, you jerk. Is there a joint already rolled, or do I have to chew up grass like a cow? I can't roll a joint right now; look." I held out my hands; they shook. "This is called a grand mat seizure. Get somebody in here. Get up to the Avenue and score me some tranks. I will tell you what is coming: somebody's life is going to get destroyed because of all this, not 'this' that I'm doing right now but 'this' that I did at the Bad Luck, appropriately named. When I die, I will have a choice: head up in shit or head down in shit. Shit is the word for it, what I did." I had begun to gasp. Crying and gasping, I reached for the joint my husband held. "Light it for me," I said, "you fool. I really can't chew it up; it's a waste. You have to chew up half a lid to get off, or at least I do. God knows about the rest of the world; maybe they can get off anyhow, any time. Head down in shit and never able to get loaded again-exactly what I deserve. And if I could call it all back, if I knew any way to call it back, I would. I am cursed with total insight. I see and-
"You want to go to Kaiser?"
"The hospital?" I stared at him.
"I mean, you're out of control."
"That's what total insight does for you. Thanks." I took the joint, which he had lit, and inhaled. At least now I could no longer talk. And pretty soon I would no longer know or think. Or even remember. Put on Sticky Fingers, I said to myself. The Stones. "Sister Morphine." Hearing about all those bloody sheets calms me. I wish there was a comforting hand placed on my head, I thought. I'm not the one who's going to be dead tomorrow, although I should be. Let us by all means name the most innocent person possible. That will be the one. "The bitch made me walk home. From San Francisco."
"You took-"
"That's walking."
Jeff said, "I like her. I think she's a good friend. I think she will be-and probably is already- good for Dad. Has it occurred to you that you're jealous?"
"What?" I said.
"That's right. I said jealous. You're jealous of the relationship. You wish you were part of it. I see your reaction as an insult to me. I should be-our relationship should be-enough for you."