Michael Crichton - Dealing or The Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues

SHE WAS TAPPING MY SHOULDER. “Hey,” she said, “you planning to finish that all by yourself?”

I looked down at the roach in my hand and laughed. I was about to suggest another, but she already had it out and was lighting it. Then she said, “What do you do in Cambridge?”

“I’m on the dole,” I said. It was supposed to be funny, but as I watched her face I could see that she didn’t understand. And then, it wasn’t all that funny even if you did understand. In fact, it wasn’t funny at all. It was a way of life.

“How’s that?” she said, head to one side.

“Government,” I said. “I study government, political science, whatever they call it around here.”

“Oh,” sort of drawing her breath in, trying to figure out if I was leading up to some kind of punch line. I wished there were some kind of punch line for school. “Is that interesting?”

I laughed. “I don’t know. Ever read the papers?”

“Only the comics,” she said, and I laughed again. That was good.

“Well, there aren’t any comics in the government department at Harvard. At least, they don’t think of themselves that way. Nothing but serious, devoted scholars.”

She said, “Why don’t you split? I mean, it doesn’t sound like you dig it much.”

I shook my head. “Not for a while.” Chances were pretty good that if you split, especially if you were splitting to get out of the machine, you’d just wind up a different kind of machine.

“Draft?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Can’t you get out?” she said.

“Of the all-new, action Army?” I said. “I don’t know. What the hell, though, what a drag this is, talking about it like this. This is exactly what they want you to do—get good and freaked-out about something as half-assed as the Army so you can’t really concentrate on what’s going down. Divide and conquer,” I said, raising a mock finger, and she smiled. I finished the joint and put it in the bag with the other roaches. “What’re you up to in Berkeley, right now?”

“Working in a studio,” she said.

“Is that right?” I said. “Far out. What, modeling?”

She laughed. “No, no. A recording studio.” She tossed her head in the direction of the stereo. “Like, we produced this album, for one, and we do a lot of re-mixing. But pretty soon we’re going to be doing the whole works, from beginning to end. They’ve almost finished the new studio.” She pulled out another joint. “Seventy-two tracks, man. Dig that.”

“Far out,” I said again.

She got up to change the record, and I didn’t see but rather felt her presence this time, as she moved about the room in the flickering light.

“Sukie,” I said, half to myself, as she sat down again beside me. Rolling it over against the roof of my mouth and seeing it come out with the smoke of the joint, “Sukie.” I turned to her and asked, “Why do they call you Sukie?”

She looked up at me and I was filled with her strange eyes, rich and thick, and I couldn’t hold the gaze. Suddenly I wanted to kiss her and I folded my hands and thought about Mt. Auburn Street. There, that was better. I could talk again.

“You still haven’t told me,” looking at her again.

She turned away. “Because I’m, ah, tawdry.” She seemed to savor the word as she said it, bitterly, and it dripped from her mouth.

“Tawdry,” I said. “Good word. Fine word. Sukie Tawdry. Tawdry Sukie−−”

“Don’t,” she said, and I could hear an edge in her voice, something hurting, and so I didn’t. I just sat. And wondered, What now? And wondered again about the Seconal. After a while she put her hand out to me and said, “You’re nice.”

I was angry. “What?”

“I said, you’re nice.”

“What does that mean?”—thinking, Christ, Jesus Christ, not this bit, not just now when I was starting to dig you.

“It means,” she said, “oh, just that you don’t fuck with what you don’t understand.”

“I’m not nice,” I said, withdrawing my hand. “As a matter of fact, I’m impotent. And I don’t like people who make jokes about it. So let’s have another smoke and forget about it.”

She nodded, and as she did she leaned forward to light the joint in the flame of the candle, her skin glowing smoothly, hair pulled back as far as it would go, as if to keep it out of the flame and as I watched her fiercely puffing on the joint, I understood. There was something a little odd about her left eye, which had been covered until now by hair, it seemed a little out of focus. It made me happy and angry at the same time, this ridiculous, dangerous, vicious game we were playing, now that I began to understand the rules, and I could not laugh as I wanted to. Finally I said, “Give me the joint, would you?”

She handed the smoke over and got up to change the record. “What do you want to hear?” she asked, from behind me.

“You just put that on, just a minute ago.”

“I don’t like it,” she said.

“Big deal,” I said.

I could hear her flipping through the albums. They made a slapping sound and she said, “It doesn’t bother you?”

I was suddenly angry with her for drawing it out. She had trusted me, she had shown me—and now what was all this crap? I said, “Is it supposed to?”

She came back over. “That was not nice,” she said.

“It wasn’t meant to be.”

Very softly, “Are you pissed?”

“No, why should I be?” I was blowing my mind.

She was quiet for a long time before she spoke again. Her voice was full and throaty when she did. “Do you have someone?”

“Are you asking, or do you want to know?” It wasn’t exactly what I wanted to talk about, just then.

I flashed on Annie and she said, “Yeah, that happened to me, too.”

I looked at her, disbelieving.

“This guy and I had a real good thing going,” she went on, “but he thought he could treat me like shit.”

I looked at her, feeling something like affection. I thought I was going to laugh when she said, “You remind me a little of him,” and I breathed out in a rush.

“Thanks, I’m overwhelmed.”

She laughed. “No, no,” she said, “just the way he looked. And you don’t even look that much like him. He was a prick.”

“Oh,” I said, not knowing what else to say but suddenly laughing at the whole scene, at the fear and anger which was so important and then not even important enough to be remembered. I looked up at her and she was laughing too.

“The only thing is”—still laughing—“I can’t stand those duds you got on. Do you go around like that when you’re in Cambridge?” I nodded. “All the time?” I nodded again. “I couldn’t stand it,” she said. “It must be like walking around inside a tank.”

“Yeah, well—”

“Why don’t you get out of them?”

“I’m wrecked,” I explained, and she just nodded and came around the table and leaned over to undo my shirt. I pulled her down to me on the floor and kissed her hard.

Then she was tickling my ear with her tongue, saying, “Your jacket’s going to get dirty.”

“It comes clean.”

“Come on,” she said, “let’s get in bed.”

“You were taking my shirt off,” I said, kissing her. She started unbuttoning and I picked her up and carried her to the bed.

“Is everyone at Harvard such a gentleman?” she whispered, and I dropped her. Laughs.

Somebody was knocking on the door.

“He’s not in,” I said, and sat down to take my socks off. Another, heavier, knock, and a thick voice asking for me. “Nobody’s home,” I said. Christ, take a hint.

And then the door was open and three cats were in the room, all wearing gray pin-stripe suits and looking like walk-ons for Robert Stack. Dangling their wallet badges before I could get my glasses on.