Norman Spinrad - Bug Jack Barron

“No shit?” he said. “I thought you went out to cop some pot six years ago. Get stuck in traffic, Sara?”

“Do you have to, Jack?” she pleaded helplessly with her eyes. “Do we have to chop each other to pieces?”

“We don’t have to do anything,” he said, felt bitterness rising. “You called me, I didn’t call you. I’d never call you. What in hell can I possibly say to you? What can you say to me? You stoned? You freaking out? Whose head are you playing with now, yours or mine?”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry for everything. Hang up if you want to. Who could blame you? I… I want to see you, Jack, I want to talk to you. I…”

“You got a TV, turn it on Wednesday night, and you can see me. Pick up a vidphone and call the monkey block, make it good, and Vince’ll put you on the air. What’s this all about? It’s been six years, Sara, six fucking years, and now you say ‘Hello, Jack,’ and expect me to come running? Where did you leave your head, Sara?”

“Please…” she said, with the iron defenses of softwoman defenselessness. “You think this is easy for me? I—” (A blankness, a panic seemed to move like a cloud across the sky of her eyes; she hesitated, then began to talk faster and faster.) “I saw your last show, by accident, I admit, but I saw something there I thought was dead. Saw flashes, just flashes in all that bullshit, but they were flashes of you. I mean the real you, like flickering, but it was there, and it was you, and every time it flashed through it went through me like a knife. And, God help me, I couldn’t help loving you, all alone there inside that TV set, all alone inside, flashing between the real Jack and the cop-out Jack, not knowing which was real, and I didn’t know which was real—the Jack I loved, or the Jack I hated and I loved you, and I hated you, and I knew I still had a piece of you inside me, couldn’t get rid of it, and… and…”

“You were stoned, weren’t you?” Barron said with intentional cynical cruelty. “Acid, wasn’t it?”

Again that hesitation, like a slot-machine mechanism behind her eyes, before she spoke. “I… yes, it was a trip. Maybe… maybe that was it, seeing your show with new eyes, old eyes, like old-new eyes, I mean part of me was back in Berkeley, and part of me was with you that last time, and part of me was inside that TV set with you, and… I’ve got to see you, got to know whether it was the acid or…”

“So now I’m a goddamned zonk!” Barron snapped. “Like a kaleidoscope or one of your old Dylan records, something to freak out to. Did you bring yourself off? See colored lights? I don’t want to be any part of your bum trips—not even by proxy. You’re turning my stomach, calling me up like this, stoned out of your mind. Forget it, baby. Go ride the Staten Island Ferry and pick up a horny sailor and fuck with his head, because I’m not about to let you play acid games with mine, not any more. Not ever again.”

“I’m not stoned now, Jack,” she said quietly. “I’m straight, maybe straighter than I’ve ever been in my life. We all go through changes. I watched you go through yours, and I couldn’t take it. Now I think I’ve gone through one of my own, a big one. It happens like that sometimes, six years of things just happening to you but not really getting through to your head, and then something, acid plus something, maybe something silly and meaningless triggers the big flash, and suddenly all those six years come through all the way at once and you feel them, feel the years before too, and all the possible futures, all in a moment, and nothing’s happened in that moment that anyone else can see, but you’re just not the same you anymore. There’s a gap, a discontinuity, and you know you can’t go back to being what you’ve been but you don’t yet know what you are.

“And only you can tell me, Jack. I’ve got no present now, and you’re my past, and maybe—if I’m not just finally flipping out—if you still want me, my future too. I see another side of you now. I see that you can see things I don’t, and now I’m not so certain that they’re all bad. Help me, Jack. If you ever loved me, please help me now.”

“Sara—” Sara, you crazy bitch, don’t do this to me, put me on, stretch me out like piano wire, play arpeggios on my skull, Ping-Pong with my balls, Barron thought, trying desperately to hug his cynicism-shield to him against the tide washing over him tide of Berkeley cool love-stained sheets tongue in his ear hour-glass comfort-shape unseen by his side to lean on warm breezes cool bougainvillea-fragrant California nights in Los Angeles, Berkeley, Acapulco breathing potsmoke-musk mouth to mouth in rumpled snuggle-beds close to the blood years innocent tomorrow the world years lost years, six years lost and gone and buried in the bodies of Wednesday-night image-balling blondes, and the song of those years that she sang with her off-key beautiful girl-voices sad, wistful, in happy laughing times, prescient sadness of Christmas future song:

And when will you ever learn, Jack Barron? In your guts, you know she’s nuts; but in your heart… In your heart is an empty Sara-sized hole, not Carrie, not Wednesday night déjà vu, not anyone but Sara can ever fill if you live million years geological ages promise of Benedict Howards… You’re a Sara-junkie, nothing you can do about it, baby, she’s the only dealer in town.

“Jack… say something, Jack…”

“Do I have to?” he said—soft surrender to the ghost of hope that would not die. I can do it. I can do it, he told himself. I’m kick-’em-in-the-ass Jack Barron can handle Senators, vips, Howards, Morris, Luke, big-league curve-ball artists; Jack Barron afraid to play the big game, love game (game is all!) for only woman I ever love? I’ll help you, baby, give you the boost to nitty-gritty reality. You and me in Bug Jack Barron twenty-third-story penthouse catbird-seat home, fill the rooms with your taste-smell-feel song of home. All for you, Sara, where you should’ve been all these years. And if it was really acid that opened your eyes, then three big ones for Crazy Tim Leary.

“When can I see you?” he asked.

“As soon as you can get here.”

“I’ll be down in forty-five minutes,” Jack Barron said. “God, oh God, how I’ve missed you!”

“I’ve missed you too,” she said, and he thought he could see her eyes misting.

“Forty-five minutes,” he said, then broke the connection, rose, turning for bedroom clothes and shoes and car keys.

And stood there nose to nose with naked, white-faced Carrie Donaldson, her breasts limp and drooping like wilted hospital flowers.

“Don’t say it,” she said in her office-secretary voice. “Don’t say anything, Mr Barron. It’s all been said, hasn’t it? All explained nice and neat. And I thought it was just because you were too… too big and important and filled with your work to have room to care about… I thought if I made you comfortable, made it easy, no hang-ups, no bullshit, call me when you want me, warm your bed whenever it got cold, then someday maybe you’d wake up nice and easy, slowlike and see that… that… But I was wrong, I misjudged you… I wonder what it’s like to be loved the way you love her. Way the world is, I wonder if I’ll ever get to know…”

“Carrie, I didn’t… I couldn’t… I thought the network…”

“The network! I may be a lot of nasty things, Jack Barron, but as I just heard someone else say, I’m nobody’s whore!” she shouted. “Sure I was supposed to keep an eye on you, but you don’t think that…” She began to tremble, tears formed in her eyes and she tilted her head back to hide them, making her look proud, gutsy.