Summer of Love, a Time Travel (44 page)

Susan
claps her hands and cheers. Chi folds his arms over his chest and scowls. She
loves it when he gets hassled by funky old 1967. She threads her hand through
the crook of his arm and finds his hand. He wears no prophylak, ha!

“We’ve
got
to go to Chocolate George’s wake,” she whispers as they stand at the
back of the Daphne Funeral Home behind a hundred Hells Angels in full colors
and their old ladies in ratted hairdos. “We’re talking about political
solidarity.”

After
the private funeral service for Charles George Hendricks, Jr., also known as
Chocolate George, there will be a wake at Lindley Meadow. The Grateful Dead,
Big Brother and the Holding Company, and the Double Barrel Boogie Band are
playing. It will be a scene. The last big scene of the Summer of Love.

Susan
got an invite to Chocolate’s funeral on account of her chalk drawing at the
corner of Haight and Shrader. She’d been practicing hands after Chi bought her
Gray’s
Anatomy
and was finally getting them right, thumb and all, when she heard
the news. She went down to the spot where Chocolate died and drew a portrait as
best as she could recall him--his dark eyes, his fur hat. She drew him astride
a horse with wings, one hand holding the reins, the other extended in a peace
sign. As an afterthought, she drew motorcycle wheels where horse’s hooves would
be, which wound up looking kind of weird. Hairy Harry, one of Chocolate’s best
brothers, saw her squatting on the sidewalk, putting the finishing touches on
her masterpiece.

The
day after, Sonny Barger, president of the California chapter, rumbled by on his
hog as she and Chi strolled in the park. He threw an invite at her and sped
away.

“Political
solidarity, my ass,” Chi whispers back. He’s so tall, the Angels don’t try to
bully him and, anyway, they all know he’s Susan’s old man. But his hand is
ice-cold in hers. “That’s revolutionary-for-the-weekend shuck, Starbright, and
you know it. Don’t get radical with me.”

He
glares at the barbarian horde. Isn’t that just like Chi, uptight about the
least little thing, though a shiver needles down her spine, too. The air seems
thicker around a hundred Hells Angels. They bend the light, like demons of
this
Now. They are ripe with funk, boasting great unkempt beards and an inimitable attitude.

At
the front of the funeral parlor, Chocolate George lies in state, white as wax,
as noble in his final repose as a Cossack prince. His fur hat covers his
shattered skull where he hit the pavement after colliding with a tourist’s Ford
sedan at one in the morning. Quarts of his namesake and favorite beverage—chocolate
milk—line the coffin. His wife sits in the front pew, her bowed head covered by
a black lace mantilla. His seven children—Chocolate had seven kids!—sit behind
a screen that shields them from the rest of the rowdy congregation.

“Revolutionary
shuck,” she scolds Chi. “You sound just like Ruby.”

“It’s
not political solidarity. It’s a party. A Hells Angels party. We don’t have to
go. I don’t think we should. You want to run into Stovepipe and the Lizard?
That’s just the sort of scene they’d make.”

“But
Chi, Parks and Recreation is trying to ban free music in the park. We should go
show our support. The ban is an attack on the Haight-Ashbury. On our right to
be free.” It’s strange and exciting to feel like an outlaw for wanting to dance
in the park.

“Your
right to be free,” he says sarcastically. “What about the interests of the
people who live by the park? What about the noise? Trespassers trampling and
littering their lawns? See, every time you talk about your freedom, you have to
consider the next person’s freedom.” His voice is growing so loud, an Angel
lady standing next to them in her leather bra, jeans, and cowboy boots shoots
him a poisonous look. He lowers his voice. “There’s got to be a balance. The
cosmicists—”

“Chi,
it’s the last free concert of the Summer of Love. I want to hear the Dead. I want
to hear Big Brother. I even want to hear the Double Barrel Boogie Band. I
haven’t heard them play in ages. Besides, Penny Lane might be there. I really
need to see her.”

Since
their meeting at the Blue Unicorn Café, Nance has avoided her. Her promise to get
the rest of Susan’s money from Stan, forgotten. Susan doesn’t care whether
Nance gets her money. She cares about the way things have turned out. Nance
was
the reason she ran away to the Haight-Ashbury. Nance was the spark. The
inspiration. And she’s seen her friend only twice during the Summer of Love.

Just
one more time. If she could see Nance just one more time, maybe she could make
something right out of the bad feeling between them.

Chi
refuses to meet her pleading eyes.

“Be
that way,” she says, pouting. She kicks at the hem of the long, black velvet
dress she bought at Mnasidika with her last twenty bucks. The twenty bucks, she
realizes with a twinge of guilt, that Nance gave her at the Blue Unicorn. “I’ll
go by myself. I’m not afraid.”

But
she knows her threat is empty. She goes nowhere without Chi by her side. He
won’t let her, not until the Hot Dim Spot closes and no more Prime
Probabilities can collapse. He says the Dim Spot will close any day now. But
until it does, she’s in constant danger. The nearer they approach the closing,
the more dangerous things become.

Susan
finally feels the truth of it. Chi’s paranoia is contagious. He even stands
outside the bathroom while she bathes. “You okay?” he says through the door
from time to time. “Why don’t you come in and see for yourself?” she calls from
the shower. Naughty. But he’s so respectful, she can’t help but tease him. He
even curls up on blankets outside her room while she sleeps. Ruby raises her
eyebrows, but says nothing.

Susan
is convinced: reality could shake loose at any moment. A hole in spacetime,
caused by a t-port gone wrong in the future, could let in the Other Now. And
that demon? It’s coming for
her.

But
what about the night Stovepipe and the Lizard broke into Ruby’s kitchen and held
a switchblade to her throat? Why didn’t the demon manifest then?

“Ruby
had a gun,” Chi said, not meeting her eyes. Meaning he’s trying to sound as if he
knows the answer, but he’s really not sure. “We know from the Archives a lot of
local people were buying guns because of the murders of Shob and Superspade,
rising burglaries, general apprehension. So Ruby was part of a macro trend. Probability
physics supports the notion that Prime Probabilities are reduced in the
presence of a macro.”

“He
held a knife to my throat! I felt the blade!”

“Yes,
but because of the macro, the event didn’t generate enough uncertainty to
attract your demon. Even though the Lizard seemed threatening.”

“
Seemed
threatening! I was terrified!”

He
took her hand and kissed it. “Let me tell you a story. One day I went to a
track to see a podbot race. A field of twelve bots, really beautiful craftwork.
There was a titanium sphere with two dozen hoofs sticking out in every
direction. A one-legged hopper with a foot like a giant duck. A couple of
quadpods, one styled like a unicorn, the other a chimera. The sun shone through
the dome. And they were off! The sphere and the unicorn raced neck and neck.
Something like neck and neck. But just before the finish line, a flagpole on
the railing cast a shadow across the track. The sphere leapt over that shadow!
Its perceptuals thought the shadow was real. It leapt and it stumbled and it
lost by a nose. Something like a nose. I’ll never forget that. It leapt over a
shadow, and it lost the race.” He shook his head. “Lost me a bundle, too.”

Susan
got angry. “A switchblade at my jugular vein is not a shadow, Chiron Cat’s Eye
in Draco!”

“But
in this timeline, it was, Starbright. It was just like that shadow.”

What
is just a shadow, Susan wonders now, and what will really slit your throat?

Sonny
Barger strides to the front of the funeral parlor and stands beside the coffin.
He gestures for silence. “See, I’m gonna rap about the future. The outlaw of a
fat society, man, is the dude of the future.”

“Tell
it, Sonny!”

“What
they call the rugged individualist is the cat who is our next hero. Dig Caesar.
Dig Napoleon. Dig Alexander the Great.”

“Great
balls o’ fire!”

“Those
cats were outlaws,” Barger says. “They, like, took over and ruled the world,
man.”

“Right,”
Chi whispers. “A scheming politician, a voracious general, and a brutal
conqueror.”

“Ssh!”
Susan and the Angel lady hiss at him in unison.

“So
wherever you are now, brother George,” Barger says, “ramble on, man. Ramble
on.”

“Chocolate
was cool,” Susan whispers to Chi. “He never hurt anyone. I heard he volunteered
at the Recreation Center for the Handicapped.”

“Volunteered
twelve years,” the Angel lady snaps. “He loved them little kids. He’d trash
anyone who laid a hand on ‘em.”

Sonny
Barger bends over the coffin and kisses Chocolate George’s cheek. Then, with
scattered grumbling and nervous giggling, grim mouths and hard eyes, the Angels
and their ladies file past the coffin. Some touch or kiss the corpse and lay
more things inside the coffin. When Susan files past to pay her last respects,
she sees joints and tabs and pints of Wild Turkey, flowers, a switchblade and a
pair of brass knuckles. How she remembers the barbarian in the fur hat that
first day of the Summer of Love who sang to her, “First there is a Starbright.”
She tucks her tribute in the coffin: a Hershey’s milk-chocolate kiss.

*  
*   *

The
mile-long phalanx of Harley-Davidson motorcycles follows the hearse out to
Cypress Lawn Memorial Park. There they bury Chocolate George with a priest and
everything, then parade back to San Francisco. With a growling racket, the hogs
wind up and down Dolores Street past ancient palm trees and frightened senoras
peeking through their curtains of Spanish lace.

Susan
sits on Chi’s lap in the front seat of the Diggers’ green truck. Gorgon’s pal
Cowboy is driving. The flatbed is filled with shaved ice and what looks like a
million cans of beer. By the time they arrive at Golden Gate Park, a thousand
people are milling around the gentle hills of Lindley Meadow.

One
hill has been staked out by Hells Angels, Gypsy Jokers, Vagabonds, Nomads,
Cossacks, Satan’s Slaves, and Misfits. On another hill linger hip folk in their
own version of colors, toking, tripping, tooting flutes, ringing cow bells. The
Diggers and other tribal chiefs hold court there: Charlie, the Hun, A.J., Slim
Jim, and Luther.

Chi
helps her down from the truck and takes her hand.

Badger
and the Bear seize fists of ice from the flatbed and pelt each other with
snowballs. Gypsy Jokers join the fracas. Beer is shaken and spewed from cans,
punches thrown. Two cops stop and step out of their patrol car, but keep their
distance, surveying the scene through their sunglasses. The tension is as thick
as the herbal smoke wafting down from Hippie Hill.

The
Grateful Dead ride in like royalty atop an Avis rental truck. Big Brother rolls
up. And there, the blue clouds of the Double Barrel van. An electric guitar
shrieks, drums roll, a cymbal crashes, trailing off in a sound like waves on a
beach. The snowball fight abruptly ends. People start to dance.

Excitement
prickles Susan’s spine. She’s filled with that sense of magic and destiny she’s
felt only in the Haight-Ashbury. The last free concert of the Summer of Love.
Despite the death and ugliness of the past month, the Scene manifests this
afternoon in all its gorgeous lunatic glory. A fitting tribute for Chocolate
George, who they say manned the corral for lost children at the first Human
Be-In. That was Chocolate’s myth. A kick-ass rebel who drank chocolate milk.
The outlaw who cared about kids.

“Chocolate’s
death is like the soul of the Haight-Ashbury dying,” she tells Chi.

He
nods absently and warily looks around, his hand tucked in his pocket where he
keeps the maser. She sighs. There’s no point in telling him to take it easy and
dig it. She breaks away from his grasp and wanders over to the bands. She’s
standing steps away from where she stood two months ago. Two months ago? It
feels like five hundred years ago.