Summer of Love, a Time Travel (45 page)

“Say
hey, foxy lady. Foxy in black today.” Oh Stan, the mountain man.

But now
Susan knows he’s older than Ruby. He’s just a hip Don Juan whose sleight of
hand isn’t very good once you’ve seen through his tricks. What’s wrong with
him, anyway? Is he addicted to teenage girls?

“Where’s
Penny Lane?”

“Don’t
I get a hello?”

Big
Brother turns microphones on. With a throaty wail, Janis Joplin launches into
“Didn’t He Ramble.”

“I
need to see her.” She peeks through the open doors into the back of the Double
Barrel van.

Stan
blocks her view. “Well, well. The flower child is a child no more.”

No
one is inside the van. “Do you know where she is?”

“A
child no more, and with child no more.” He seizes her by the waist and, in an
astonishing imitation of that other dirty old man, Mr. G in his art supply
store, presses his palm on her belly, down low. “That’s what you were doing
when Dirty David saw you at the shyster’s office, isn’t it.”

“I
don’t know what you mean.”

“I
had to make sure you weren’t turning state’s evidence on me. So I turned Larry
on. Clerking in a law office is such a drag. You had an abortion, didn’t you.”

She
twists away. “It’s not your business.”

He
seizes her wrist. “Yeah, it is my business. You were carrying my child, weren’t
you, Starbright?” She refuses to answer, but she can’t hide her face. “Why
didn’t you tell me?”

“Why
should I? It was my decision.”

“But
I would have wanted to share in that decision.”

“Oh?
You want children?”

“I
never did before, but I might have changed my mind.”

“You
would have married me and supported me and the baby while I finished high
school?” Susan takes a deep breath. “You would have
loved
me?”

“I
don’t know about any of those things. But I feel this sense of. . . .” His eyes
turn misty. “This sense of sadness. Like here was a life we created together.
With joy. In celebration. And that life, that human being, never had a chance
to happen.”

“I
don’t want to hear this! You rip me off for a hundred dollars. You deceive me.”

“You’ve
deceived me.”

“You
break my heart, and then you cry—
cry
—over something you wouldn’t have
given a damn about!”

A
tear lingers at the corner of his eye. “That baby was a part of me, too.”

She
turns and runs, crashing headlong into Chi hurrying toward her.

Chi
catches her hands. “Starbright! What happened? Are you all right?”

Stan
strides up behind her. “She’ll be all right,” he says to Chi. He shoves crumpled
twenty-dollar bills in her hands. “Here’s your bread, Starbright, plus some
extra.”

“Forget
it. I don’t want your money.”

“Take
it.” Stan’s voice is harsh. “Your girlfriend, Penny Lane, or whatever she’s calling
herself these days, is at the house with Professor Zoom. I don’t think she
wants to see you.” He wipes the tear from his eye and touches her cheek with
his wet fingertip. “Say hey, flower child. Be cool.”

Stan
stalks away.

“Bye
bye, Chocolate, bye bye,” Janis wails up on the Big Brother stage. “Bye bye,
Chocolate, bye bye.”

*  
*   *

The
sense of magic and destiny flees. The last concert of the Summer of Love is
forever marred. Susan blots Stan’s tear from her cheek and tells Chi she wants
to go, which pleases him enormously. They hike through the park to Haight
Street. Twilight casts a chill and an ominous feeling.

“Chi,
I’ve got to find Penny Lane,” Susan says and turns up the block before he can
protest. She’s avoided this street for two months. It’s strange to see the
Double Barrel house again. A gray drizzle slants down. The block is deserted.
Their footsteps echo up the front stairs.

The
house is trashed worse than before. Instead of a noisy throng of laughing,
cavorting people, the living room is deserted, eerily silent but for the
erratic tick-tock of a junkyard clock. The scent of stale incense and pot smoke
can’t conceal a stench like rotten meat.

Susan
gags.

Chi
covers his mouth and nose. “Something’s dead in here.”

Suddenly
Dirty David bursts out of a back room, waving a sawed-off shotgun. He is
shaking so badly, the barrel swings around. “Who’s there?” he calls out in
hoarse voice.

“Dirty
David,” Susan cries. “It’s just me and my guy.”

Dirty
David earned his nickname due to his taste for pornography, not his personal
hygiene, but now his meticulous mod clothes are ragged and stained with grime
and what looks like dried blood. He was always a fine-featured, delicate man.
Now he looks emaciated, his eyes underscored with dark circles. He narrows
those eyes. “Who the hell are you?”

“It’s
me, Starbright, Dirty David. Don’t you remember me? And this is Chi. Don’t
worry, he’s cool.”

Dirty
David stares, a glimmer of recognition flickering. “What are you doing here?
What do you want?”

“Dirty
David, I’ve got to see Penny Lane.”

“There’s
no Penny Lane here.” A spasm courses through him.

“Let’s
go,” Chi whispers.

“No!
I’ve got to find her!” She turns back to the twitching man. “You know, my
friend from back East. Short dark hair, dark eyes, skinny. Actually, her hair
was white the last time I saw her. Stan the Man told me she’s here with
Professor Zoom.”

“Oh,
you mean Crinky. They’re upstairs. They’re all upstairs.” He squints at them.
“Got any reds or yellow jackets? I’m dyin’ here.”

Chi
pops a blue bead off one of his necklaces, holds it up between his thumb and
forefinger. “Break it in half like this, see? And sniff.” He tosses the bead on
the coffee table.

Dirty
David scrambles for it. He seizes the bead with trembling hands, breaks and
sniffs it. “Ooh,” he groans and collapses on the floor, spilling the shotgun,
which fires with a soul-splitting
bang.
Plaster flies off the wall.

Susan
ducks. God!

Chi
takes out a prophylak, retrieves the gun, and stashes it behind the swaybacked
sofa. “It’s just a knockerblocker,” he says to her questioning glance. “It
won’t harm him.”

“Oh,
wow. Isn’t that against one of your Tenets?”

“Yeah,
but he’ll calm down and get some rest. He won’t remember a thing, except that
it was good shit and where can he get some more.”

“Right.
We always want to know where we can get some more.”

He
shoots her a grin. “Human nature strikes again.” He edges his boot toe against
the husk of the bead on the floor. “Vegetable plastic. It’ll decompose in five
years. In this pigsty, no one will notice.”

“Gosh,
you’re becoming a revolutionary, Chi.”

“Thanks
to you, my first star of the evening.”

They
hurry up the stairs. Deep silence on the second floor. Clothes and sleeping
bags are strewn all over. That ominous feeling deepens. They climb cautiously to
the third floor.

“Hey,”
Susan calls out. “P-Penny Lane? Are you here? Where are you?”

A
door bursts open, and a skull with a pink boa clipped to its hair peers out.

Susan
jumps. “God! L-Lady May?”

Lady
May stares with burning, uncomprehending eyes.

“It’s
St-Starbright. This is my guy, Chi. You met him on the Panhandle, remember?
We’re cool, okay? We’re cool. Lady May, where’s my friend? Where’s Penny Lane?”

Like
a phantom receding into ghostly realms, Lady May slips back in the room.

A
pounding rises in Susan’s head. She’s finding it hard to swallow. She touches
her forefinger to the door and pushes.

The
door swings open.

They’re
sprawled on a mattress on the littered floor. Lady May wearily lowers herself
next to Nance. They wear nothing but bikini briefs, including Professor Zoom.
The flickering light comes from all the candles. Candles everywhere, on the floor,
on the windowsill, all over the top of a battered chest of drawers.

In
the smoky candlelight, they look like corpses. Refugees from life. The room is
stifling, the air thick with the stench of molten wax, struck matches, Kool
Menthols, rancid sweat. And a strange decay.

“Well,
if it isn’t Trixie,” Professor Zoom drawls. “Hey Trixie, hey Trixie. Which way,
Trixie?”

Chi
whips out a handful of prophylaks and carefully arranges a seat for Susan on
the floor, then another for himself. He doesn’t bother concealing his movements
or the plastic wraps floating down.

Nance
watches with cavernous eyes. Then she bursts into a cackle. “What the hell?”

“Protection,”
Chi says grimly, staring back at her. He takes Susan’s hand, helping her to sit,
then seats himself.

Nance
laughs again, but a throb steals into her cold mirth.

Susan
is struck dumb. She doesn’t know where to begin. She sees the glint of glass,
the gleam of steel. Hypodermic syringes lie everywhere, scattered everywhere.
At last she says to Professor Zoom, “Which way, Harold? You’re going nowhere. You
and Penny Lane and Lady May, you’ve got to get out of here.”

“There’s
no way out, Trixie.” He picks up a kit lying on the floor next to the mattress.
“No exit, and I don’t mean Sartre.”

White
powder everywhere. Bags of it. Piles of it.

Susan
says to Nance, “Penny Lane, what are you doing to yourself?”

“Drop
that Penny Lane crap, Starbright.” She sings to the Beatles’ tune, “Crystal
meth is up my nose and up my ass.” She cackles again, an awful sound. “My name
is Crinky, sweetheart.”

“I
don’t like Crinky. It’s stupid.”

“Oh,
and Starbright knows what’s stupid,” Nance says to Lady May. “That Starbright,
she’s the smart one.”

“What
does ‘Crinky’ mean?” Susan asks angrily.

“Splash,
grease, meth, crystal, speed, crank,” Professor Zoom intones. “Splash, speed,
crank, crink. Crink, Trixie.” He dangles a hypodermic needle in his fingers.
“Crank is crink. Crinky loves crank. You dig?”

Susan’s
heart thunders so hard in her chest, she wonders if she’s having a cardiac
arrest.

With
slow deliberation, Nance takes the needle, leans into the candlelight. She
extends her rail-thin arm. Needle punctures tatter her skin. An abscess the
size of a walnut bulges from the inner aspect of her elbow. No, the arm’s no good.
She stretches out her bony leg. A blood vessel is visible from her knee to her
crotch, tattooed dark in her skin. She plunges the works behind her ankle. A
little shriek pops from her lips. Then she grins at Susan, gleaming and
demonic.

“You’ve
got septicemia, Penny Lane,” Chi says matter-of-factly. “Blood poisoning. If
you don’t go to a hospital right away, you’re going to die.”

“Oh,
no,” Nance says like a child disappointed by a birthday gift.

“Baby,
we’re all gonna die,” Lady May says reasonably.

Nance
smiles slyly. “Look at how Starbright is freaked out.”

“No.”
Susan shakes her head. “I’m not freaked out.”

“Then
come on over, sweetheart.” Nance offers the works. “I’d love to turn you on.”

Professor
Zoom blurts out, “Alackaday and anon, Trixie! I have found the Final Expression
to my Equation. Not in the clouds. Not in the stars. I have found the Final
Expression here, right here in this room. Do you want to know what the Final
Expression is?”

“Tell
me,” Susan says and reaches for Chi’s hand.

“LSD
is a hoax, that’s the Final Expression. There is no Illumination. No New Consciousness.
There is no God! Only the Great Rotor Motor, grinding, grinding, grinding your
soul away. The Great Rotor Motor.” He bursts into tears. “No one will be saved.”

Lady
May pries the kit from Nance’s fingers, rigs it up, and tenderly fixes
Professor Zoom in the back of his thigh.

“Shut
up, Zoom,” Nance says him. To Susan, “Man, he’s really lost it. Sweetheart, we
saw you on TV. Last week, wasn’t it?” She tussles playfully with Lady May for
the needle.

Susan
trades looks with Chi. “You did?”

“Well,
yeah. The CBS News Special. Man, that Harry Reasoner is so square. He doesn’t
know the first thing about the Haight.” Nance aims one of her mock surprise
looks. “Don’t tell me you didn’t see it.”

“I
don’t watch TV so much anymore.”

Nance
sniggers. “Listen to this. Starbright doesn’t shoot shit, doesn’t smoke doo, doesn’t
watch TV. I bet she doesn’t ball anymore, either.”

“Neither
do we, little love of my valley,” says Professor Zoom. “We just jack off the
spike.”

Nance
ignores him. “We figured it was the CBS News Special that brought that pig
rooting around in here. Looking for you, Starbright.”