Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me Page 13

  “And that’s another thing, that escapism syndrome. You watch and see, you’ll be mainlining, man, in a year and a half you’re gonna have trackmarks right down into your fingertips. Lying around on old newspapers in a Detroit hotel, with a neon sign blinking in the window on your collapsed veins, with a poppy pipe in your mouth.”

  “Stimulates the soul.”

  “Don’t talk to me about soul, Paps. You go out and roll it around so it gets all dirty on U.S. Forty and then flee back to Athené to get purified. That poor monsignor didn’t know what he was getting into.”

  “My senses, man, he cleaned out my senses, not my soul. Greek senses need reawakening every so often. And anyway, he was accomplishing his function.”

  “So what?”

  “So he at least knows what his function is, and that puts him one up on you and me.”

  “Jargon.”

  “Vision, baby, that’s all I’m after. Having a night light on all the time so’s I can see.”

  “Be satisfied with the sun.”

  “I want to be the sun, schmuck. Particles, wave, and source.”

  “Yeah, and where do you fit it all in, Pythagoras?”

  “You bet your ass where. Tight in the old womb-bag, if I could get one big enough to creep into.” Gnossos reaching into his rucksack and pulling out a piece of strongly smelling goat cheese from Greece, old rabbit hairs and pieces of lint stuck to the mold. “Right here, baby, look at what comes out, examine the texture. You smell it? Not very idyllic, true? A piece of old cheese with Saltine crumbs, that’s about the best I can do.”

  “So split for Athens, Mykonos, someplace groovy.”

  “With what? About as much heart as you’d have getting on the British steamer for Nairobi? No thanks. Exemption, baby. Walk among the diseased with Immunity. A little knowledge-in-the-abstract is all. With any luck, a vision every seventh day or so. Keep your senses hanging out, dig a little.”

  Heff nodding, but without much assurance.

  “Of course there’s a rule of thumb that goes along with that.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Skip the Small Shit.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You know what I mean?”

  “I heard you.”

  “You ever dig Washington crossing the Delaware?”

  “All’s I want to do is get to Havana, man, I don’t want to know anything about George Washington. I mean really, who is that, George Washington?”

  Gnossos popping the goat cheese into his mouth, shrugging. “Enough said. Let’s go to this party.”

  They lifted themselves, wet and shining from the drizzle, stomping their boots, just as a truck lumbered by and fixed their forms in the conical glare of its lights. They watched their shadows roll along the falling mist behind them. Then Heffalump, after a moment’s hesitation, gave Gnossos a perfectly dry, solidly packed paregoric Pall Mall from his wallet. “Pax,” he said. “Before I have to punch you in the mouth.”

  “Thanks, man, you’re so sweet.”

  They shared the joint while walking, speaking not another word.

  Oobop shebam.

  7

  The rain fell in sudden, torrential sheets, barreling out of the low-flying clouds. Gnossos and Heffalump breaking into a run to escape it, sprinting the last few yards from the road to the protection of the barn, glancing around through the lashing wind to make certain the place was right.

  They stood shivering in an arched doorway, stamping their feet, wiping their faces free of the wet. The windows of the loft glowed above them, a soft orange color through the burlap squares strung across the panes. Lamps burning on the floor, no doubt, pointed at the walls, indirect hipster decor, always the same. The barn was next to the Dairy Queen, as Mojo had said, wispy thread of irony there, proximity to frozen-custard machines. A squat, angular building with a mammoth vanilla cone balanced on its sloping roof, entrances all boarded up, looking inert and functionless. A deformed glass egg abandoned the instant after laying, dropped unceremoniously to the earth by some huge, clattering aluminum bird.

  “Ground zero,” said Heff, shaking out his soaking jacket.

  Gnossos nodded, looking for something to dry his hair with. He indicated the large number of cars parked by the road: no care for their placement, look of a party to them. The microbus had been moved to a patch of dry ground under a dense grove of sycamores, secure position, half hidden from sight, snow shoveled away, ready to flee. Exercise caution, old sport, the furies are never asleep. Who to be? Green Arrow, Billy Batson? Plastic Man still best, do the metamorphosis, be a Mingus side, feel the crystal vibration in my grooves, spindle poking through the brain, reincarnation of a lovebird, three-four time, funk in a rocking chair.

  They climbed the worn, surprisingly well scrubbed wooden stairs to the loft and paused before a heavy oak door. Everything too clean-looking for a barn, smell of disinfectant, no farmy odor, no snatches of old hay. Murmurs from the party within, sudden surges of laughter, glasses tinkling through the hubbub. A faint, then increasingly stronger, scent of smoldering pot. Heff made a sniffing sound. “Hey, man.”

  “Yeah,” said Gnossos, “I just got the breeze myself.” A comforting nutlike aroma, smoky, autumn leaves.

  “Lot of cars down there, where’d he get all the people?”

  “Who knows, Celebrity Service maybe.”

  The oak door was built to slide sideways on heavy-duty casters and it took both of them to roll it back. On the other side was a small vestibule, built for protection against winter, and another door, more conventional, opening into the party. Gnossos put his ear against it, waited for another surge of laughter, shrugged, and went in.

  For a moment he could barely see through the smoky, polarized haze. Heff stepped in behind him, colliding, blinking, fanning his hand in front of his face. “Wow,” he said.

  The place was full of zombis.

  One wall of the loft had been cleared of plaster, wire-brushed, and taken down to the ancient brick. Gnossos paid brief attention to what might have been a piece of frontal sculpture, a lumpy frieze, then shifted his cautious gaze. Above him was a skylight, its glass panels surfaced with different-colored sheets of translucent plastic to make it appear stained. Beams across the ceiling, antique, but too antique, blowtorch no doubt, knots and burls chiseled in, clever atmosphere. A hairy little man squatted on a silk pillow in the middle of the floor, wearing a V-necked teeshirt, holding a guitar limply in his hands. A bubbling narghile rested on a brass platform at his side, one of its many mouthpieces pursed in the man’s lips.

  Pallets on the floor, covered with Indian prints and burnt-sienna burlap, zombis on the pallets. Japanese bamboo mats, here and there a foam rubber cushion stained with spilled liquids, crushed fruit, spent love. Zombis on the cushions, each of them from the back of the Mojo microbus; leaning on the brick wall; lounging against a masonite collage; hovering by the narghile. Twin vampires with Egyptian eye makeup knelt by an icebox-size polyphonic speaker, digging sounds too muted to distinguish. Couples dancing on the bare floor, but not exactly dancing, more like shifting their weight around the common focus of their welded navels, rubbing.

  “Very domestic little scene, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Lovely,” said Heff.

  But something out of key, in abeyance. Jaded energy only potential in the smoke-filled air. Too many students, straight as arrows, smoking legit cigarettes. Surely they know? That one with the boobs, dancing with what’s his name, the editor. Lumpers, Judy Lumpers. And that South American ring-ding with his sequined rodeo shirt, they couldn’t be heads. The orgy?

  “Where’s it all at?” asked Heff, picking up the thought.

  “I don’t know, wrong party maybe.” But then he knew. Mojo, dressed in the same clothes he’d worn the previous morning, still carrying the bullwhip-fastened briefcase handcuffed to his wrist, was leading a girl through the haze, into a doorway at the far end of the loft. The girl had already stepped over the threshold when he noticed
them, too late for Gnossos to recognize her. At that precise moment the record changed and the zombis paused with a collective hush, their voices falling silent in the absence of diversionary sound. Mojo failed to realize the quiet in time, retained the volume of his inflection, and offered a delicate joint from his tweed jacket to the girl on the other side of the small metal door. Her phthisic hand reached back across the threshold, and his faltering, anxious voice became clearly audible in the hush: “Like a kiss is how, dear girl; wanton lips against the flesh, then suck.”

  There were snickers and a quick, interrupted laugh. Mojo grinned nervously, showed his missing tooth, and stepped inside with a quick, weasel-like shifting off of weight. The door closed as the next record began, and conversation resumed its earlier level. Nonetheless Gnossos was able to distinguish a particular sound, unmistakable in intent: the clacking of a bolt jumping securely into place.

  He turned to speak to Heff but Heff was staring at the brick wall in horror. Gnossos looked as well, and a scalding chill swam through the viscous fluids of his bowels like an evil fish. The frieze on the wall was not a frieze.

  It was a spider monkey.

  “Proust,” said Heap, who had materialized at their side.

  They both jumped at the name. “What?”

  “That’s his name, guys. The monkey.”

  “Proust?” asked Heff.

  “He’s asthmatic, digs being alone. Has a weak bladder. Don’t get too close.”

  Not a chance, sweetheart, came the thought, Gnossos clutching his groin to hex away the dangers of the underworld.

  “We turn him on,” whispered Heap, snapping his fingers leisurely, picking up the rhythm he’d abandoned the day before. “But only by stages, slow degrees. He’s beautiful, baby, you really can’t touch his head with the mixture any more. Digs lysergic shit, you ever make that? Mix it with a little banana purée, never know the difference. Eats horse for breakfast, sprinkles it over his Kix, so to speak. Can’t sniff it though, bad for the bronchial tubes. Next week we shoot him up.” Leaning closer, lowering his whisper, “He’s gonna get a flash, let me tell you.” The glass eye looking directly through Gnossos’ head.

  “He likes it all right?” asked Heff seriously, staring at Heap, whom he’d never seen before that moment.

  “Little shit never hurt nobody,” said the teenager, his good eye drooping, snapping his fingers extra loudly for emphasis. “Specially Proust, man.”

  Gnossos pulled up on his scrotum one last time for cosmic insurance. He edged away from the wall, trying to widen the distance between himself and the monkey, then smiled idiotically at one of the vampires who looked back at his groin-clutching hand. He put it quickly into his pocket, checking all the walls and shadows for possible mandrills. One never seems to know, does one?

  In a dark corner Jack was prone on a couple of pallets. Gnossos checked to see whether Heff had found her, but Heff was still staring at Heap, trying to figure out what he was. Jack, on the other hand, was somewhat out of her mind, eyes glazed over, a matchstick-thin joint burning down in her fingers. She wore brine-shrunk Levis, a man’s yellow Oxford shirt, and loafers. Her Joan of Arc hair was messed and her hand lay casually on another’s girl’s thigh.

  It was the girl in the green knee-socks.

  “Proust,” said Jack, picking the word up from Heap, who had just whispered the name again. She started to giggle. So stoned, man, old euphoria factory. Selective ears, the sounds of certain words shifting senses, becoming delicious, rolling, tumbling through the Eustacian tube, tapping at the pharynx, pronunciation palatable.

  But the girl in the green knee-socks.

  Beware the monkey-demon, came the entirely undesired thought.

  “Pppprrroust,” said Jack again, blubbering the P’s, holding the giggle deep within her chest, pulling for the resonance. Swing, sweetie-pie, you’re the only one who knows.

  “P-p-p-proooooooooooooss . . . t.”

  The spider monkey was dangling upside down by the tail, hanging from an iron rod sunk into the brick wall, playing with itself, rolling its eyes, lifting its thick upper lip high above the gum line.

  As it turned out, the girl in the green knee-socks had also seen. She had been clasping her throat gently, shielding it, seemingly, from razors or teeth. But when the monkey again turned its back and curled into a harmless ball, she let the hand fall delicately between her legs, in a position of repose. It was a dancer’s gesture.

  She looked directly at Gnossos and said, “It does the same to you, I can tell. It’s evil, you know.”

  He nodded, staring. I wouldn’t exactly call it a cherub, either.

  Jack took a last puff from the roach and laid it carefully on top of an unopened Red Cap at her side, letting the fingers of her free hand trail over the girl’s thigh. Detached look, no sex in it, feeling for the texture alone, making touch a separate thing. A raga was playing through the huge speaker, people were trying to dance to it, keep the rubbing going, but Jack listened only to the tabla:

  dum . . . budoom . . . duuooum . . . bum-douym-dooom . . . scscscsciiiinnnng.

  “Mmmmm,” she said, forsaking the thigh, transferring the beat to her pallet.

  Satisfied that she was no longer the object of this other attention, the girl in the green knee-socks stood up, looked once at Jack’s drumming fingers, and wandered over, just like that.

  “Hey, what’s up with Jack?” asked Heff, suddenly between them, hands in his pockets.

  “Stoned, it looks like.”

  “Oh shit, Paps, what the hell for?”

  “How would I know, man? You tell me.”

  “She didn’t mean to,” said the girl, a glass of white wine going to her lips. “She got impatient waiting for you.”

  “Oh wow, you see? What the hell did I say? We should’ve hitched a ride.”

  Looking at me over the rim. Could it be?

  “Hey, Jack,” said Heff, stroking her brow. “Jackie baby?”

  “Ooooo,” came the answer.

  “She’s beautiful,” from Heap, materializing with one of the Egyptian-eye-makeup vampires, “leave her be.”

  The vampire played with the zipper on Gnossos’ wet parka and asked, “Who’re you?”

  “Ravi Shankar,” he said.

  “Hey,” from Heap. He had a stained forefinger on the shoulder of the girl in the green socks. “You feel like dancing, maybe fool around a little?”

  She looked at Gnossos while she spoke an unmodified “No.”

  “I dig foreigners,” said the vampire. “What kind of name is that? Ravi. So exotic.”

  “Armenian,” answered the girl.

  “I was talking to Ravi,” said the vampire.

  “Oooooooooo,” said Jack, coming around, looking into Heff’s concerned face. She giggled, threw back her head, and pulled him over so he crashed on top of her.

  “She’s a real groove, baby,” said Heap, abandoning the girl momentarily, tapping Heff on the back, referring to Jack. “You wanna make it somewhere else, go someplace quiet?”

  “Let’s dance,” said the vampire to Gnossos, toying with his collar. “Maybe fool around a little.”

  “Look—” he started.

  “There’s another room,” she said.

  “Hey, Jack,” yelled Heff, squirming, imprisoned, “for Jesus Christ’s sake!”

  “I like it in here,” said Gnossos, looking at the girl, openly this time, from top to bottom, letting her know, covering every inch of it, brown hair bound by a brass clasp, blue denim shirt rolled to the elbows, black skirt, green knee-socks, no shoes for the moment. When he came back up, there was a tolerant smile waiting, head tipped to one side. Too good, much too good.

  “Oh,” said Judy Lumpers, skipping over in tennis sneakers. “You finally came. Juan said you were coming and I couldn’t wait to tell you how really great that night at Guido’s was, I mean God, all those radio programs, I’d practically forgotten all about them.”

  “Evening,” said Drew Yo
ungblood soberly, his white shirt open at the throat.

  “Soon,” said Juan Carlos Rosenbloom, “there will come a revolutiong.”

  “There’s another room, baby,” Heap was whispering to the embarrassed Heffalump. “Awful lot happening there.” He was snapping the fingers of his left hand and holding out a joint in his right. Gnossos took it and struck a match without ceremony. Whole thing’s falling to pieces, cool it, liable to be conflicts. Do the Gandhi.

  “Listen,” said Judy Lumpers, eyes agog, nudging him, tone confidential, “that’s not what I think it is, is it, that, well, cigarette you’re holding?”

  “I don’t know, baby, just a little mixture my tobacconist throws together, ha ha.”

  “Ha ha.”

  “No nicotine,” explained the girl in the green knee-socks, sipping from her wine.

  “Ha ha,” continued Judy Lumpers, not going for it at all, lowering her tone, winking, “what does it make you do? Does it make you do anything?”

  “Beautiful things, baby,” said Heap, abandoning Heffalump, smiling at her, showing his missing tooth. With his good eye drooping, he held out the fattest tapered joint Gnossos had ever seen.

  “Oh, I couldn’t” she said, holding up her hand, looking at Gnossos for the word. Why not?

  “Make it,” he told her, winking back. “It’s a gas.” He took a drag from his own, no carburetion, and held it down.

  “We’d kind of like to unm, talk with you,” interrupted Youngblood, “before you get too, well—”

  “This Panghurts,” said Juan Carlos Rosenbloom. “We smash her, you watching.”

  “Should I really try it?” asked Lumpers, Heap leading her away to one of the empty foam rubber cushions as she asked, the battle already won, “I mean, can’t it make you do something you don’t want to?”

  Jack was wrapping her still-clad legs around Heff’s back, pinning him above her. “I wanna get laid,” she said, grinning madly into his bulging eyes. “Lay me.”