Summer of Love, a Time Travel (36 page)

But
she still has to wait out this dreadful night. What to do?

“You
know what?” she says. “I’m hungry. Ravenous, in fact.” Best thing she can think
of to settle that sharp, empty feeling of another lover leaving her is chilled
wine and hot food. She uncorks a crisp chenin blanc at once. “You kids eat
today?”

“You
know I can’t eat, Ruby,” Chi reminds her. One day, when she remarked how much
shorter it looked, he showed her his nutritional necklace and confessed he
actually
eats
the
beads
—nutribeads, he calls them—which she
thought was hilarious. He sternly lectured her about contamination in the food of
this Now that a t-porter like himself cannot expose himself to. Right. He’s so
gaunt, she can practically see what he’ll look like dead. He doesn’t sound very
convinced now himself.

“I
can’t eat, either, Ruby,” Starbright says, poking at her ribs through her
blouse. Since the abortion, the kid has become nearly as thin as the magazine
models she studies so intently. Ruby well remembers that age, filled with
raging ambition and self-doubt.

She
shrugs. “Suit yourself. I’m cooking. You two watch the street. Tell me if
anything is happening out there.”

Ruby
has been so busy getting ready for the riot, she hasn’t had time to go to the
market. And all those dire warnings about stocking up on food for a state of
siege. She’s got nothing in her cupboard but bits and scraps.

She
slices six heels of bread--whole wheat, rye, five-grain—lengthwise and slathers
the bread-fingers with safflower butter. She sprinkles on garlic powder and
sets them under a low broiler.

What
else has she got? A dozen eggs, thank Isis. She cracks them all into a bowl,
beats until they’re frothy with parsley, black pepper, sea salt, and oregano.
She stirs in the dollop of salsa she’s got left over, thick and hot with
cayenne and an exotic herb called cilantro. She takes out her two cast-iron
skillets. Ma always said cook in iron ‘cause it’s good for the blood.

She
coats the first skillet with olive oil, turns the burner on low. She dices baby
carrots from Chi’s garden, a red onion, two wilted scallions, a tomato, a tiny
zucchini, garlic-packed mushrooms from a jar. Half a red bell pepper that’s
seen better days, but it’s good. She peels the last lonely garlic clove. An
Aries moon is good for cutting, but watch your fingers.

She
tosses the vegetables in the first skillet, turns up the heat. Juice pops. The
scents of frying onions and garlic toast fill the kitchen.

She
plunks a chunk of safflower butter in the second skillet and drizzles that with
chili-sesame oil.
Yum.
When the butter foams, she scoops in the egg-salsa
mixture. Meanwhile the vegetables are reducing. She adds more garlic, more
garlic, more garlic. When the eggs are nearly cooked, she folds in the
vegetables.

What
other leftovers has she got? She sprinkles the last of the grated Parmesan,
which soaks up vegetable juices like a sponge. A cube of cheddar, another of
Gruyere, a finger of Swiss. She dices pieces of cheeses. Salvador Dali said
Jesus is cheese. In you go, Jesus. She covers the skillet, turns the burner
off.

She
removes the pan of toast-fingers and turns the broiler on high. She takes off
the lid and places the skillet under the broiler for exactly fifty-three
seconds, no more and no less.

Cheese
bubbles and the herbs release their scents.

And,
lo! Chi and the kid are hovering around the kitchen. The cats hover, too,
trilling and purring. Cats always know good food.

“Here
we go,” Ruby says, taking out the skillet. “A little bit of everything. I
hereby christen this dish my Summer of Love Spicy Eggs. I’m glad no one wants
to eat. More for me.”

Eleven
o’clock. Everything quiet. Clayton deserted.

Morgana
phones. “The S Squad is sweeping the streets tonight.” The S Squad is the
city’s special police force, operating for the express purpose of closing
hippie gathering spots in the Haight-Ashbury. “A big bust at 615 Cole.” A
friend of Morgana’s placed her one permitted phone call to the House of Magick.
“”It’s all just suspicion. The Man’s got nothing but a flushing toilet.”

Hippie
gathering spots? Suspicion? Ruby pours herself another glass of chenin blanc and
works out their story. Chi is the son of a friend of Ruby’s deceased mother who
lives in Paris, and Starbright is Chi’s cousin from New York. They turn the
music and the lights down low and devour Ruby’s Summer of Love Spicy Eggs and
garlic toast.

It’s
the first time Ruby has seen Chi eat food. He packs it away, like a skinny
six-foot-four twenty-one-year-old ought to. Nutribeads, right. That’s better,
she thinks, pleased at his ecstatic expression over her leftovers. The kid
wolfs hers down, too. “Wow,” she keeps saying. “It’s not Swanson’s frozen
Salisbury steak.”

She
leaves Chi and the kid to their feast and goes to the living room window,
anxiously peering out. Papa Al, Teddy Bear, and the cluster of patients still
stand guard at the clinic door. But now they lounge on the stairs, toking,
passing a bottle around. A patrol car glides down Haight. The Hells Angels
haven’t shown up, for which Ruby breathes a relieved sigh. She likes the
barbarian with the fur hat, Chocolate George. He’s got a righteous reputation
and actually drinks chocolate milk, instead of beer. But as for the rest? She
dreads the sight of hogs and colors. The Angels are notorious for hating
blacks, Jews, women, anyone else not white, the police, other bikers, and each
other. They are not the kind of folks you want partying at your doorstep.

Ruby
wanders back into the living room, where the kid curls up on the couch and Chi
sprawls on a chair.

“I
can’t believe I ate that.” Chi rubs his washboard stomach and sips the wine
Ruby insisted he try. “I think I’m getting heartburn.”

“Heartburn?
You
get heartburn?” Starbright says. There it is, again, the kid’s
belligerence. Why? Chi has never excited more than a tolerant smile from her or
an eye-roll at his crazy stories. What is this anger?

“Yes,
Starbright, I’ve got a stomach just like you.”

“Oh,
but I thought you were so superior. Different than us.”

Ruby
sits in her rocking chair, settling Alana the Angora and Luna the bluepoint on
her lap. Sita the sealpoint balances on her knee. Her boy cats, Ara and Rama,
crouch at her feet. The cats didn’t care for spicy eggs but they eagerly devoured
bits of cheese. Ruby feels good, considering, except for this tension between
Chi and the kid. “Different how?”

Chi
shakes his head at Starbright, a warning in his eyes. But the kid won’t stop.

“Oh,
he’s different, Ruby. He showed me this afternoon. Didn’t you, Chiron Cat’s Eye
in Draco?”

He
gives her a pleading look.

“Oh,
yeah. He’s got this thing like an electric plug, only it’s really, really tiny
and it’s right in the back of his head. Gross! And he’s got a girlfriend.” To
Chi, “Why didn’t you tell me you had a girlfriend before you started following
me around?” To Ruby, “He’s got this girlfriend who walks around naked all the
time, and
she’s
got a plug in her head, too. He says they plug their
brains into telelink—isn’t that what you call it, Chi? They
link
into a
place that a computer creates called telespace.”

“Plug
your brain into a computer?” Ruby says. “I love science fiction, but what kind of
nightmare is that?”

“The
hardware enters at the base of the skull, yes,” Chi says. “The wetware interfaces
with the arachnoidal membrane over the brain, then connects inside at various
lobes.”

“That
sounds awful!”

“It’s
not awful,” Chi says, flushing. “Telespace is a miracle. It was a quantum leap.
You could compare telelink to when people first mastered electricity,
manufactured light bulbs, and lit the night. Or first understood bacteria, how
microscopic organisms can kill, and how to fight them. Or developed the
internal combustion engine, invented automobiles and airplanes and rockets. Or
discovered the silicon chip. Ruby, in a decade, your calculating machine will
be a laughable antique.”

“Not
so fast, sonny,” Ruby says, sitting up. “I have
fought
for my
calculating machine.”

“Telespace,
and our ability to telelink, has made possible the mastery of data so vast and
so fast, you can’t conceive of it. Telespace enabled access to ten thousand
years of Archives. Enabled us to develop tachyportation and terraformation.” He
sits back with his glass of wine, haughty and arrogant. “You cannot possibly
realize.”

“When
I first got to the Haight-Ashbury,” Starbright says, matching his tone, “I
realized all kinds of things about life. My life, the way it was before the
Summer of Love. My parents. Sex and death. School. And friendship. And love. You
know what I flashed on when I tripped that one time, Ruby?”

“What’s
that, kid?”

“I
flashed on a photograph in my biology textbook of a monkey used in a sleep
experiment. They put handcuffs on it so it couldn’t fight back or move and they
stuck electrodes into its poor little skull and connected wires to a computer
that monitored its brain waves. Some kids in my class thought it was funny, but
I didn’t think it was funny at all. That’s what I thought of when I touched
your neck, Chi,” she says to him. “When you told me you and your girlfriend
plug your neckjacks into a computer. You’re no better than that poor little
helpless monkey.”

He
sputters. “That’s ridiculous! That’s reactionary! Telespace frees us!”

Starbright
goes and sits at Ruby’s feet, rearranging Ara and Rama around her knees. She
hooks her elbow over Ruby’s knee. “The monkey died.”

Chi
shakes his head, pours another glass of wine. “Everything dies.”

Ruby
reaches down and tangles her fingers in Starbright’s hair. The kid is on to
something.

“You
keep talking about the cosmicists, Chi,” Ruby says. “How are far out they are.
Do cosmicists link into this telespace thing, too?”

“Of
course. I’m a cosmicist.”

“Uh-huh.
And what does it mean to be a cosmicist?”

“We
believe in the Cosmic Mind. In the cocreatorship of reality by humanity and the
Universal Intelligence. We believe in assuming responsibility for each
individual’s actions because each action affects all of spacetime. To give is
best. Live responsibly or die.”

“You
also keep hinting about how rich you are.”

“My
family and I have been living responsibly.”

“Why,
that’s a principle of the hip community, too. Free yourself from media propaganda
and the consumer culture.”

That
stops him for a minute. “Well. The cosmicists have been able to launch major
projects, like the Mars terraformation, by conserving funds and investing them
over decades. Over
centuries,
” he says. “President Alexander outlawed
deficit spending in the United States in 2093 and worked for decades after that
to establish an economy based on True Value.”

“But
you’re privileged,” Ruby persists. She recalls the killing looks he and Leo
Gorgon have exchanged. “Fish ponds in the Sausalito hills? Domed estates? Hmm?”

“Not
all cosmicists are rich,” he says, but his tone is defensive. “But all
cosmicists have restructured their values from what you know. They’ve learned
the honest and genuine desire to serve the world. They’ve put aside self-interest,
greed, and corruption. They believe in opportunities and hard work. And they’ve
taught their children these new values, too.”

“I
see. But I don’t hear you saying you and your family gave up your fortune for
your honest and genuine desire to serve the world.”

He’s
silent.

“Well,
did you?”

Chi
sighs. “No, and why should we? Life by definition is greedy, hungry, self-indulgent.
Life isn’t self-sacrificing. Death is the only true sacrifice.” He sighs again.
“No, we have no intention of giving away our family fortune. Yes, we expect a
return on our investments.” He stands and paces. “Cut me some slack, Ruby. You
own the Mystic Eye. You—of all people I’ve met during the Summer of
Love—believe in success. I’ve heard you argue many times with Leo Gorgon about
incentive and free enterprise. And the future will prove you right, Ruby. The
choice to succeed is right.”