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

“Going back to sleep.”

“But the party,” she said.

The party, Jesus. It all came back to me. I’d been so intent on finishing the paper, so I wouldn’t have to mess with it while Sukie was around, that I’d almost managed to forget about the party, the Piggy Club, the whole mess. I sighed.

“I’ll wait in the living room while you dress,” Annie said, and walked out. I sat up again and coughed. That’s Annie. Three months later, she’ll wait outside while you dress.

“Are you getting up?” she called from the living room.

“Yeah,” I said.

“You going to shave?”

“Yeah, I’m going to shave.”

“Good. You need it.”

Charming as ever, dear Annie Butler. I went into the bathroom and turned on the shower.

“There isn’t time for a shower, we’re late already.”

“I always shave in the shower,” I said.

“Then hurry,” Annie said. And finally, trailing afterward, like a dropping from a lame duck: “Please.”

The garden party was held on a huge, rolling lawn, fenced in from the street and sheltered from its noise and plebeian curiosities by thick bushes. It was a gay scene, full of good cheer, and well stocked with food and drink. The lawn was dotted with colorful tables of food and booze; there was also a small army of polite, discreet, red-jacketed caterers.

The whole scene made me want to blow lunch. Since everyone in the Club knew that Annie Butler was Percy Pratfall’s honey—or whatever the hell his name was—we’d had to make a great show of trotting around, greeting everyone, just to make sure they all understood on what grounds she’d managed to get in. She held my arm just tightly enough to show that I was her escort, and just loosely enough to show that I was her escort only for the afternoon. The pressure on my arm never changed, except when I would come out with something particularly obnoxious, when she’d give me a little squeeze of reproof. But I didn’t really give a damn after the first half hour, since by then I had lost Annie and was doing my single-handed best to break the Piggy Club’s liquor account wide open. And from the acid looks that the older members gave me, I knew that my efforts were not going unnoticed. After I’d discreetly managed to knock over five open hooch bottles and watched them gurgle and seep into the grass, one of the older members came over to demand that I produce my invitation card. This happened a number of times in the course of the afternoon—more often than would have been considered polite, in fact—and each time I produced my card, said something about boorish manners, and walked off. I got very drunk and a number of the members got very red in the face, and that was how it went. But I didn’t mind the embarrassment of feeling that I didn’t belong there; in fact, I rather enjoyed it. For the occasion I was wearing a pair of greasy blue jeans, a rumpled, plasticly-freaky shirt I’d gotten in the Village a few years before, a tired old blazer, and sneakers. Annie didn’t care much for that, of course, but then, she could always have chosen not to go. She’d made her decision, and I’d made mine.

But as the afternoon wore on, the fun of hassling the old dudes wore off, and I was forced to hunt the really big game, which were the chicks. The chicks were all there, colorful dots on the rolling green lawn, just like the tables—and set up with the same cunning social design: to look so good that you’d want to take a bite, without knowing what you’d really bitten into. It was their only hope of survival, these chicks; they were like the kinds of insects you read about who have no natural defense except their bodily camouflage.

So I’d wander over to one of these chicks, and she’d go through her whole I’m-so-polite-and-interested-in-you routine, pausing to Ohh and Ahh whenever I said something that she figured was supposed to rate an Ohh or Ahh, and asking me if she could get anything for me at the buffet? This went on for as long as I could tolerate it. Then I would break down and start in on the old routine. It’d start when one of them stared at my clothes—politely, you understand, painfully politely, as though I’d been selected top boy in my Head Start class and been awarded an invitation to the Piggy Club Garden Party—and it would go on from there.

“My,” she’d say, trying to giggle. “That certainly is a, well, a unique outfit you’ve got on there.”

“Oh, you dig it? Hey, that’s groovy to hear. You seem to be one of the few perceptive people here. Most of these creeps just stare at me like I’m some kind of bum.”

Nobody had ever told her in her life that she was even remotely capable of being perceptive. “Oh,” she’d say, “why, well ah…”

“You dig this scene?”

“Ah, well, you know…”

“That’s what I thought. You’re no dope. You’re hip to what these creeps are putting down, I can see that.”

“Well, I don’t know, I don’t know what to say, I mean…”

“What’s your hustle around here anyway, honey? You dig? Who’s throwing in the chips? You don’t have to jive with me, baby. Just put it on me.”

“Well, I, ah… I don’t think I understand your question.”

“Oh, a sly one, huh? Coming on slow, just to make me show my hand, huh? Come on, you’re hip. What do you do around here?”

“You mean,” she’d say, pointing her finger to the ground, “here?”

“Right, right, you’re digging it.”

“Ah, yes, I guess so, well, here, I mean right here, well, I’m a guest, I guess.”

“A guest!” I’d guffaw loudly, and she’d look tremendously pleased that she’d said something funny. “A guest, wow. You got it, honey. That’s far out. That’s too much.”

After a while she’d venture to say, “What’re you doing here?”

“Me? Well, I don’t know what I’m doing here right now, you dig? I mean, I could tell you why I thought I came here, but I don’t know no more if that’s what’s happening or not, see?”

“Tell me,” she’d say, “tell me, you can tell me.”

“Well, like I came down here ’cause one of these creeps give my manager a ring, said he wanted a band to play this afternoon, down here. Dig it? So I came down. First thing I find out when I get here, they don’t want no band. At least I don’t think so, I mean nobody’s said nothing to me about it so far—”

“You,” she gulped her drink and pointed an astounded finger, “you play? In a band? A rock and roll band?”

“Shit, honey, I don’t play in no shortwave band.”

It’d be her turn to guffaw. “A shortwave band.” Ha, ha!

“No, I mean, of course I play in a band. You might have heard our latest album on the radio, maybe. You ever listen to WBCN?” She’d shake her head yes, yes, all the time, of course she did. Of course, my ass. “Yeah, they got our latest album, you know, Lucifer Harkness and The New Administration. You remember that one? With the lead cut, remember that one, the lead song called ‘The Cabinet Member,’ and the guitar riff that goes dee-dee-dee, de dah, dee-dee-dee-dee deda dah, dwah, dwah, da duhn. Right? Can you dig it?”

“Gol-lee,” she’d say, “that’s you? That’s your band? Gol-lee! I mean I never thought I’d ever actually meet you, and here, I mean, with all these… creeps.”

That always got me. I’d guffaw.

“I thought you looked familiar. That must’ve been what it was—on your album cover, that big picture?”

“Right on,” I’d say, “right on. Outasight. I knew you had it, honey, first time I seen you. Like you’re the first chick here today’s recognized me. Outasight.”

“Gol-lee,” she’d say.

I had to keep moving, though. The word got around amazingly fast, about the unknown celebrity in the greasy jeans who everyone’d been shitting on without knowing that he was really…