Дэймон Найт - Orbit 7

“I said split,” said Cranston. “Cut. Make it.”

“We haven’t met,” said Harley, trying to twist his neck in order to see Cranston.

“Your wife is right. You are a square,” said Lamont, moving slowly around into their booth. “But I feel sorry for you both and so I am going to lay the word on you in the following manner: Frisco.”

“Frisco?” said Harley and Amaryllis together.

“San Francisco to you, my man,” said Lamont. “It is the only place where you are going to lose those bourgeois hangups which so obviously are contributing toward putting you down. I must go now.”

“Wait,” said Amaryllis, sensing Cranston had something for them. “How will that change anything?”

“You will have split this scene of crassness for a life of grooving, growing your own, and like that,” said Cranston with an edge of impatience.

“But why are you here?” asked Amaryllis, smelling a contradiction.

“My mission is a secret. You might say I am a kind of wigging travel agent. Or you might say I am something else. Who knows what evil lurks, man. Dig?”

“But we heard you humming ‘Bernie’s Tune.’ I mean how square is that?” said Amaryllis.

“Which is only toward indicating that my disguise is a success, my dear. Besides which you are not ready to hear the real music I could lay on you humming or otherwise, making this acid string shit sound like Strauss waltzes. I have told you what you must do and I must cut.” And Lamont left, humming “Work Song” and making weird faces at the turbaned cameraman.

“Well, what do you make of that?” asked Harley.

“We’re packing tonight,” said Amaryllis, with a dreamy look as though she too heard a different kind of music now.

Harley knew he couldn’t fight it. He resigned his position in the Median Strip Division of the Highway Maintenance Department and turned in his keys to the lawnmower barn. Amaryllis told Igor at Rub-a-Rama to stick the massage business. They called a realtor at nine a.m. and sold their split level with pool at ten for five grand more than they paid for it. They decided, for Amaryllis’ sake, to take the bike to Frisco, then get a car more suitable to their new way of life. Amaryllis called and canceled at the Swap Agency, and by noon they were on the road.

The long trip was uneventful for Harley (except for losing the way to San Jose), ecstatic for Amaryllis. Harley began to hope that the ten or more orgasms she had on the way up would take the edge off her San Francisco obsession. But she was just as firm when they arrived as when they left.

Things moved quickly as they settled into the Hashbury groove. They rented the former prep room of the now defunct Dimlawn Funeral Home, Amaryllis taking great pride in adapting the various prep tables and gurnies to their more homely uses. Other couples and groups occupied other rooms in the same building and there was a great camaraderie among the Dimlawn Group, as they called themselves. To celebrate the Modes’ arrival, a hashish punch was made in a left-behind embalming pump, and the party later delighted a busload of conventioning Seventh Day Adventists by weaving down the street wearing decayed wreaths and crying “We are ready.”

There was no longer any need for the Swap Club, although it took the Modes some time to adjust to the different hygienic habits of the Dimlawners. Amaryllis, in fact, came down with a good case, and gave it to Harley so he could go for penicillin, an act which some of the Dimlawners considered a cop-out.

They bought a more appropriate wardrobe, Harley finally finding a use for some of the junk he’d bought on a family vacation to Cherokee, and a new car. It was a beauty, an authentic 1948 Citroën Saloon Car, used by the Vichy High Command and still showing bullet holes inflicted by the Free French. Or so the topless Indian maiden salesgirl at Honest Fuzzy Lipschits’ Old West Auto Mart and Art Gallery told them. Fuzzy, it seemed, had seen the handwriting on the wall for tacos and had bought this agency. Then he had moved on, selling his name to a smaller entrepreneur named Albert Schweitzer (no relation), who now owned the business. Anyway, it was a beautiful car and life among the Dimlawners was, for a while, sweet.

Then, slowly, something began to grow between them again. Somehow, despite all their efforts, they could not quite fit into the Dimlawn world. For one thing, everyone knew the Modes had money. The profit on the house, plus a sizeable pension refund from the Highway Maintenance Department, made quite a bundle. And since there was little to spend it on that would not appear middle class to the Dimlawners, it sat in the Hashbury National Bank drawing five percent. Then, at the worst possible time, Amaryllis discovered, hidden in the coffin crate that was Harley’s armoire, his stash of Max Rafferty campaign literature.

He knew he should have destroyed it, but somehow he couldn’t bring himself to do it. A woman had given it to him on the street, and he had carelessly stuffed it into his serape. Once, while Amaryllis was attending her night course in the Kama Sutra, he had taken it out and read it with the same guilty thrill he used to get from the nude primitives in National Geographic . But then he had put it back and forgotten about it until the terrible discovery.

They both recognized it as a crisis. But it wouldn’t do to have it out where the Dimlawners would hear. So they went to Fuzzy’s Nitty Gritty City, Soul Food Restaurant and Rare Chinchilla Ranch , the town’s latest rage. From a waitress, nude except for body paint and graffiti, they ordered Chitterlings Amandine, Grits with Garlic Butter, and Ripple Wine. Amaryllis seemed willing to set the crisis aside until they had eaten. Finally, moving a watermelon seed pensively on her plate, she spoke:

“Harley, what are we going to do? It’s all wrong.”

“I won’t do it again, baby, I promise I won’t.”

“But you know you will, Harley. We both know you will. And you know why you will, Harley, my love, you know why? Because you’re still square as a fucking brick.”

Harley sat shattered as the accusation rang in his ears.

“Still square,” echoed a voice nearby, not Amaryllis’, and slowly Lamont Cranston materialized. He was shaking his head like a patient mother. “I can see,” he said in an injured tone, “that getting you people with it is going to be in the nature of a fantastic hassle. But I am willing to do so by laying this on you: that your hangup is that you are married to each other and liberation depends on your like getting a divorce.”

“A divorce,” said Harley, half rising. “Now just a minute you goddamn creep. If you—”

“Harley,” said Amaryllis softly, with that mystical look again, “he’s right.”

“Oh, God,” said Harley, and took a belt of Ripple.

“You see, baby,” she went on, “it’s been our problem all along really. Do you remember how our neighbors were shocked when we introduced ourselves as Mr. and Mrs.? How do you think I’ve felt all these times, at all those parties with people eyeballing us like some freaks?”

“But I’ve let you do anything—”

“It’s not what you do, it’s how you feel when you do it. Don’t you see we can’t be really free until we’ve shaken this? Can’t you see that Cranston here is right?”

But Cranston was not there. He had disappeared, along with Harley’s last hope. The next morning they were on the road for Las Vegas.

The place to go, Amaryllis learned, was Lipschits’ Hitch and Ditch, Mud Wedding and Divorce Parlor and Jai Alai Fronton. Rumor was that Warhol himself had married or divorced there only last week, using Fuzzy’s specialty, Marriage a la Mud. The Modes, of course, would have the special too.