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

Now it was echoing, Doing to me, to me, to me, me.

“Yeah, well, actually…”

This time it was thin, high, squeaky, if your memory served you well. It startled me. “This is getting to be a drag,” I said. I wanted to play something, now was the perfect time to be able to do it, but I didn’t know how. It was finally hitting home, the foolishness of it, that I couldn’t even do simple chords on a guitar, I couldn’t do anything. Hopeless. I began to get depressed, and she must have sensed it, because she suddenly came around, opening the studio door, and led me out of there.

“It’s because the place is deserted,” she said. “Empty buildings are always depressing.” She smiled and squeezed my hand.

SHE CAME TO THE HEARING with me. I had a clean shirt and tie and I stood up straight for the judge. She sat in the back of the hearing room; I glanced back once to look at her.

The judge asked me if my legal rights had been properly attended to, since I didn’t have a public defendant by my side. I didn’t mention to the judge that I’d been through that whole riff before and it was a drag, because the P.D. doesn’t give a screw about what happens to you, he just wants to look good in front of the judge. So I told the judge that everything had been taken care of, but that in this instance I preferred to defend myself. The judge looked a little amused and a little pleased at that, and told me to proceed.

My defense was pretty weak, but logical. It included such helpful hints as the fact that I was scheduled to leave California the next day, providing I didn’t get hung up in jail and cost the good taxpayers additional expense. I also said that I had no relationship with the primary defendant in the case, i.e., the lid of dope, and that I considered it a freak accident that did not merit my bearing the weight of its consequences any more than I already had.

The judge replied that I had a sharp, clever, and discerning mind, but that I obviously knew nothing about the law. Which, he added, meant nothing, since all charges had been dropped by the D.A.’s office, and if I would speak to the clerk before leaving the courtroom, I was free to go.

I was pleasantly dazed. I thanked the judge, who told me not to thank him, and I left.

Sukie laughed as we walked out the door.

THE NEXT DAY WE WENT up to Tilden, very early, to watch the sun come up over the Bay. It was cold and dark when we arrived, and we huddled under a blanket drinking Red Mountain and feeling the dry warmth spread outwards. From the top of the ridge you could see everything, Oakland and Berkeley below, and Richmond and Mt. Tamalpais in the distance.

Around six-thirty some freaks showed up and did a dance to greet the morning, while the mists slowly disappeared below and the sun spilled across the Bay. And then suddenly it was time to leave, to return to the world of cars and sewage systems and plane schedules and Burger Kings. We went directly to her room and got in bed, blowing dope and drawing each moment out, as if we could forestall evening.

Late in the afternoon I went downstairs to find Musty, who was in the kitchen, where I’d first seen him. He was drinking jasmine tea, smoking a butt, and selling a couple of bricks to a fantastic-looking thirty-five-year-old chick. The chick split when I showed, taking the bricks with her in an alligator handbag.

“You see?” Musty said, as she left. “All types.” Then he grinned. “Look at the ass on her. Beautiful.” He sighed, got up, and brought out my ten bricks. “Listen man,” he said, “I’m sorry about Lou. He’s a little speedy, you know. Bad scene. Does up three bags a day.”

“What the hell,” I said, feeling magnanimous. “Past tense.”

Musty glanced at me as he set the scales on two pounds even and weighed the bricks, one by one. “You’re a good head, Harkness,” he said. “I can dig why Sukie balls you.” I didn’t really feel like talking about that. “Got a knife?” he said.

I gave him my Swiss Army job and he sliced the bricks open. They cut clean through, no rocks, no clay, practically no sticks. They were righteous keys, all right. “Dig the way the blade goes through?” he said. I nodded.

I’d already tasted the dope, so there was nothing left to do but soak the bricks in Coca-Cola for a minute, so they wouldn’t smell too bad, and wrap them up. Then into my aluminum-lined suitcase and do up both sets of locks. The ten bricks fit very nicely without shaking or banging when I picked up the suitcase.

Musty held out a hand. “Be cool,” he said, “and say hello to John for me.”

I went back down the hall, heading for the staircase to say goodbye to Sukie. I dreaded going up those stairs and then down again, but I found her standing in front of the door, raincoat over her shoulder.

“I’ve got to drop the car at the airport,” I said.

She nodded.

“How’re you going to—”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said.

I already had my ticket, so when we got to the airport we just stood around and made each other uncomfortable until they announced boarding for my flight. I kissed her quickly. We were standing underneath a billboard that said GET AWAY FROM IT ALL. I considered taking a later flight and calling John to say I’d gotten stuck in traffic, but the truth was that the East was seeping back into my brain again, the East and Boston and wet roads and hour exams. I knew I had to go.

She kissed me again. “Will I see you…” She stopped.

“Sure,” I said, squeezing her. “Sure, of course you will.” I was definitely getting back into my Eastern frame of mind, I realized, complete with an enormous paranoia about departure scenes and weeping chicks.

“When will I see you?” Very calmly. At least she was calm.

“I don’t know. Soon as possible. I don’t know.”

“I never write letters,” she said, not letting up. All I could think was, Why do they always have to do this?

“Neither do I,” I said. Which was not completely true. I write them and never mail them. “But I’ll call.”

“Will you?” Pleased.

“Yeah, soon as my exams are over.”

“Tell me what day?” Still pleased.

“I don’t know what day. Soon.”

“Okay,” she said, subdued, and then they were announcing the final boarding call for my flight, and I hustled for the plane.

She said she’d watch my plane from the observation deck, but by the time I was buckled in at the window the sun was almost gone and I couldn’t see her at all.

AT THE AIRPORT THE CROWDS of screaming fans were lined up to greet the sensational new rock sensation Lucifer Harkness and his greasy back-up group, The New Administration. Harkness stepped off the plane, resplendent in velvet bellbottoms and a black leather T-shirt; from behind thick purple shades he could see the crowd going wild. They broke through the cordons and fought off the cops and ran screaming for him.

He felt a thousand hands touching him, clutching at his clothes, tearing them off his back, covering him with kisses, biting his neck affectionately, pulling at his balls, and it was delirious and wonderful for several minutes before the cops came down on the kids and broke it up, and Reggie Thorpe, the manager, got the group together and into the waiting Rolls.

As the Rolls pulled away there were hundreds of screaming teenies all lined up on the road out of the airport. Some of them threw themselves in front of the car, stopping it, while others scratched at the glass and kissed it, screaming, “We want to ball Lucifer, we want to ball Lucifer.” And Lucifer was thinking to himself about what an unbelievably tedious chore it would be to crack all of those hundreds of green young cherrystones, when the guy sitting next to him jabbed him in the side.