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Chapter 19
Its blades
vertical now, the quibble sank to an asphalt spot in the center of the
great lawn of the house. Jason barely noticed the house: three story,
Spanish style with black iron railings on the balconies, red-tile roof,
adobe or stucco walls; he could not tell. A large house, with beautiful
oak trees surrounding it; the house had been built into the landscape
without destroying it. The house blended and seemed a part of the trees
and grass, an extension into the realm of the manmade.
Alys shut
off the quibble, kicked open a balky door. "Leave the records in the car
and come along," she said to him as she slid from the quibble and upright,
onto the lawn.
Reluctantly,
he placed the record albums back on the seat and followed her, hurrying to
catch up with her; the girl's long black-sheathed legs carried her rapidly
toward the huge front gate of the house.
"We even
have pieces of broken glass bottles embedded in the top of the walls. To
repel bandits ... in this day and age. The house once belonged to the
great Ernie Till, the Western actor." She pressed a button mounted on the
front gate before the house and there appeared a brown-uniformed private
pol, who scrutinized her, nodded, released the power surge that slid the
gate aside.
To Alys,
Jason said, "What do you know? You know I'm -"
"You're
fabulous," Alys said matter-of-factly. "I've known it for years."
"But you've
been where I was. Where I always am. Not here."
Taking his
arm, Alys guided him down an adobe-and-slate corridor and then down a
flight of five brick steps, into a sunken living room, an ancient place in
this day, but beautiful.
He did not,
however, give a damn; he wanted to talk to her, to find out what and how
she knew. And what it signified.
"Do you
remember this place?" Alys said.
"No," he
said.
"You should.
You've been here before."
"I haven't,"
he said, guardedly; she had thoroughly trapped his credulity by producing
the two records. I've got to have them, he said to himself. To show
to - yes, he thought; to whom? To General Buckman? And if I do show him,
what will it get me?
"A cap of
mescaline?" Alys said, going to a drug case, a large hand-oiled walnut
cabinet at the end of the leather and brass bar on the far side of the
living room.
"A little,"
he said. But then his response surprised him; he blinked. "I want to keep
my head clear," he amended.
She brought
him a tiny enameled drug tray on which rested a crystal tumbler of water
and a white capsule. "Very good stuff. Harvey's Yellow Number One,
imported from Switzerland in bulk, capsuled on Bond Street." She added,
"And not strong at all. Color stuff."
"Thanks. "
He accepted the glass and the white capsule; he drank the mescaline down,
placed the glass back on the tray. "Aren't you having any?" he asked her,
feeling-beatedly- wary.
"I'm already
spaced," Alys said genially, smiling her gold baroque tooth smile. "Can't
you tell? I guess not; you've never seen me any other way."
"Did you
know I'd be brought to the L.A. Police Academy?" he asked. You must have,
he thought, because you had the two records of mine with you. Had
you not known , the chances of your having them alone are zero out of a
billion, virtually.
"I monitored
some of their transmissions," Alys said; turning, she roamed restlessly
off, tapping on the small enameled tray with one long fingernail. "I
happened to pick up the official traffic between Vegas and Felix. I like
to listen to him now and then during the time he's on duty. Not always,
but" - she pointed toward a room beyond an open corridor at the near side
- I want to look at something; I'll show it to you, if it's as good as
Felix said."
He followed,
the buzz of questions in his mind dinning at him as he walked. If she can
get across, he thought, go back and forth, as she seems to have done -
"He said the
center drawer of his maple desk," Alys said reflectively as she stood in
the center of the house's library; leather-bound books rose up in cases
mounted to the high ceiling of the chamber. Several desks, a glass case of
tiny cups, various early chess sets, two ancient Tarot card decks ... Alys
wandered over to a New England desk, opened a drawer, peered within. "Ah,"
she said, and brought out a glassine envelope.
"Alys -"
Jason began, but she cut him off with a brusque snap of her fingers.
"Be quiet
while I look at this." From the surface of the desk she took a large
magnifying glass; she scrutinized the envelope. "A stamp," she explained,
then, glancing up. "I'll take it out so you can look at it." Finding a
pair of philatelic tongs she carefully drew the stamp from its envelope
and set it down on the felt pad at the front edge of the desk.
Obediently,
Jason peeped through the magnifying lens at the stamp. It seemed to him a
stamp like any other stamp, except that unlike modern stamps it had been
printed in only one color.
"Look at the
engraving on the animals," Alys said. "The herd of steer. It's absolutely
perfect; every line is exact. This stamp has never been -" She stopped his
hand as he started to touch the stamp. "Oh no," she said. "Don't ever
touch a stamp with your fingers; always use tongs."
"Is it
valuable?" he asked.
"Not really.
But they're almost never sold. I'll explain it to you someday. This is a
present to me from Felix, because he loves me. Because, he says, I'm good
in bed."
"It's a nice
stamp," Jason said, disconcerted. He handed the magnifying glass back to
her.
"Felix told
me the truth; it's a good copy. Perfectly centered, light cancellation
that doesn't mar the center picture, and -" Deftly, with the tongs, she
flipped the stamp over on its back, allowed it to lie on the felt pad face
down. All at once her expression changed; her face glowed hotly and she
said, "That motherfucker."
"What's the
matter?" he said.
"A thin
spot." She touched a corner of the stamp's back side with the tongs.
"Well, you can't tell from the front. But that's Felix. Hell, it's
probably counterfeit anyhow. Except that Felix always somehow
manages not to buy counterfeits. Okay, Felix; that's one for you."
Thoughtfully, she said, "I wonder if he's got another one in his own
collection. I could switch them. " Going to a wall safe, she twiddled for
a time with the dials, opened the safe at last, and brought out a huge and
heavy album, which she lugged to the desk. "Felix," she said, "does not
know I know the combination to that safe. So don't tell him." She
cautiously turned heavy-gauge pages, came to one on which four stamps
rested. "No one-dollar black," she said. "But he may have hidden it
elsewhere. He may even have it down at the academy." Closing the album,
she restored it to the wall safe.
"The
mescaline," Jason said, "is beginning to affect me." His legs ached: for
him that was always a sign that mescaline was beginning to act in his
system. "I'll sit down," he said, and managed to locate a leather-covered
easy chair before his legs gave way. Or seemed to give way; actually they
never did: it was a drug-instigated illusion. But all the same it felt
real.
"Would you
like to see a collection of chaste and ornate snuffboxes?" Alys inquired.
"Felix has a terribly fine collection. All antiques, in gold, silver,
alloys, with cameo engravings, hunting scenes - no?" She seated herself
opposite him, crossed her long, black-sheathed legs; her high-heeled shoe
dangled as she swung it back and forth. "One time Felix bought an old
snuffbox at an auction, paid a lot for it, brought it home. He cleaned the
old snuff out of it and found a spring-operated level mounted at the
bottom of the box, or what seemed to be the bottom. The lever operated
when you screwed down a tiny screw. It took him all day to find a tool
small enough to rotate the screw. But at least he got it." She laughed.
"What
happened?" Jason said.
"The bottom
of the box - a false bottom with a tin plate concealed in it. He got the
plate out." She laughed again, her gold tooth ornamentation sparkling. "It
turned out to be a two- hundred-year-old dirty picture. Of a chick
copulating with a Shetland pony. Tinted, too, in eight colors. Worth, oh,
say, five thousand dollars - not much, but it genuinely delighted us. The
dealer, of course, didn't know it was there."
"I see,"
Jason said.
"You don't
have any interest in snuffboxes," Alys said, still smiling.
"I'd like-to
see it," he said. And then he said. " Alys, you know about me; you know
who I am. Why doesn't any body else know?"
"Because
they've never been there. "
"Where?"
Alys
massaged her temples, twisted her tongue, stared blankly ahead, as if lost
in thought. As if barely hearing him. "You know," she said, sounding bored
and a little irritable, "Christ, man, you lived there forty-two years.
What can I tell you about that place that you don't already know?" She
glanced up, then, her heavy lips curling mischievously; she grinned at
him.
"How did I
get here?" he said.
"You -" She
hesitated. "I'm not sure I should tell you."
Loudly, he
said, "Why not?"
"Let it come
in time." She made a damping motion with her hand. "In time, in time.
Look, man; you've already been hit by a lot; you almost got shipped to a
labor camp, and you know what kind, today. Thanks to that asshole McNulty
and my dear brother. My brother the police general." Her face had become
ugly with revulsion, but then she smiled her provocative smile once again.
Her lazy, gold-toothed, inviting smile.
Jason said,
"I want to know where I am."
"You're in
my study in my house. You're perfectly safe; we got all the insects off
you. And no one's going to break in here. Do you know what?" She sprang
from her chair, bounding to her feet like a superlithe animal;
involuntarily he drew back. "Have you ever made it by phone?" she
demanded, bright-eyed and eager.
"Made what?"
"The grid,"
Alys said. "Don't you know about the phone grid?"
"No," he
admitted. But he had heard of it.
"Your-everybody's-sexual aspects are linked electronically, and amplified,
to as much as you can endure. It's addictive, because it's electronically
enhanced. People, some of them, get so deep into it they can't pullout;
their whole lives revolve around the weekly - or, hell. even daily! -
set-ting up of the network of phone lines. It's regular picture-phones,
which you activate by credit card. so it's free at the time you do it; the
sponsors bill you once a month and if you don't pay they cut your phone
out of the grid."
"How many
people," he asked, "are involved in this?"
"Thousands."
"At one
time?"
Alys nodded.
"Most of them have been doing it two, three years. And they've
deteriorated physically - and mentally - from it. Because the part of the
brain where the orgasm is experienced is gradually burned out. But don't
put down the people; some of the finest and most sensitive minds on earth
are involved. For them it's a sacred, holy communion. Except you can spot
a gridder when you see one; they look debauched, old, fat, listless - the
latter always between the phone-line orgies, of course."
"And you do
this?" She did not look debauched, old, fat, or listless to him.
"Now and
then. But I never get hooked; I cut myself out of the grid just in time.
Do you want to try it?"
"No," he
said.
"Okay," Alys
said reasonably, undaunted. "What would you like to do? We have a good
collection of Rilke and Brecht in interlinear translation discs. The other
day Felix came home with a quad-and-light set of all seven Sibelius
symphonies; it's very good. For dinner Emma is preparing frog's legs ...
Felix loves both frog's legs and escargot. He eats out in good French and
Basque restaurants most of the time but tonight -"
"I want to
know," Jason interrupted, "where I am."
"Can't you
simply be happy?"
He rose to
his feet - with difficulty - and confronted her. Silently.
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