Norman Spinrad - Bug Jack Barron

And then he was standing before her, wet curls framing eyes glistening with afterglow-fatigue of a hundred remembered battles in Berkeley, Los Angeles, now at last New York, the lines in his face like timelines from past dreams to present-planned reality, mosaic of love in four-dimensional space-time manflesh, she saw the boy still living behind the face of the man, saw in memory’s eye the man that had grown behind the soft-flesh shining armor of the boy she had tasted in action-swirling streets and bedrooms, loved the boy and his dream, and the man and his past, and the JACK BARRON (in flaming capital letters) of past-present-future mortal lovers-against-the-night combats—oh, this is a man.

She kissed him quick but deep with her tongue; bubbling over, she pulled away from his mouth, still in an arm-on-shoulders mutual embrace, said: “Jack, Jack I watched you on television, I mean really watched you, really saw for the very first time what you were doing. You were magnificent, you were everything I always knew you would be the first day I met you in Berkeley, but better—better than anything I could’ve imagined—because then I was a girl, and you were a boy, and today you were a man, and I… Well, maybe at the advanced age of thirty-five I’m leaving adolescence and I’m ready to try loving you the way a woman should love a man.”

“That’s… uh… groovy,” he said, and now she thrilled even at the way he was preoccupied, the old Berkeley distant-focus preoccupation, thinking through her, above her, warm exciting man-thoughts enveloping her in him were the moments she had always loved him most.

“Groovy, and I dig what you’re saying—I mean about us. But the show… look, Sara, there are things I’ve got to tell you. I mean, don’t think I’m back in the silly old Baby Bolshevik bag. I suppose it looked that way to a lot of people, and there were moments when I… but I don’t do things without a reason, and there are things going on that—”

“I know, Jack,” she said. “You don’t even have to tell me. It stands out all over you. You’re involved in something big, something important, the kind of thing you were always meant to do. Something real like you used to—”

“It’s not what you think, not what anyone thinks,” he muttered, brows furrowed at some hidden contrapuntal train of thought. “I don’t even know the whole story myself. But I feel something, can smell it… something so big, so… I’m afraid to even think about it until I—”

The vidphone chime interrupted. “Already… ?” Jack muttered, and he bolted down the stairs, across the carpet to the wall consoles, made the vidphone connection, and sprawled on the floor, as she followed a few steps behind.

“What’s shaking with you, Rastus?” he was saying as she sat down beside him, saw that the face on the vidphone screen was good old Luke Greene, and remembered good days screwing around with Luke before she met Jack.

“Never mind me, Huey,” Luke said. “What’s shaking with you, lot of people are asking?”

Jack picked up the vidphone, pointed the camera at Sara. Hello, Luke,” she said, “it’s been a long time.”

He smiled back at her, long-gone no-hang-ups ancient-history-love pure friendship smile. “Well hello, Sara,” he said “you and Jack…?”

“You know it, Kingfish,” Jack said, turning the vidphone camera back on himself. “We’re back together, and this time it’s for keeps.”

The thrill of being owned by her fated man went through Sara as he goosed her off-camera.

“Well, congratulations, mah chillun,” Luke said. “Sara, maybe you can keep this schmuck off the streets, give him some of dat ole time religion, good for old Jack Barron, and good for the SJC.”

Sara saw a flicker of annoyance cross Jack’s face, wondered why as Jack said, “I get the ugly feeling that that plug for Baby Bolsheviks, Inc is what the nitty-gritty of this call’s about, Luke. Or are you just using the tax money of the good people of Mississippi to make long-distance vidphone calls strictly for kicks? What’s going on in that twisted excuse for a mind of yours?”

“It’s your head that seems to be going through changes,” said Luke. “You’re back with Sara… and after tonight it looks mighty like you’re back with us. Welcome back to the human race, Jack.”

“Uh… what race you say that was?” Jack said archly. “Rat race, you say, Lothar? Race from nowhere straight to oblivion? Race, shit—you don’t even catch me near that track.”

“Cut the crap, you shade mother you,” Luke said, “you’re not bullshitting with Bennie Howards now. You got the bug, Claude, knew you would. Could taste it, couldn’t you, and when you got on the air with Bennie, you just couldn’t help it… Well, you made your point, Jack. You made it with me, and with a whole lot of others, including those fat-cat Republican dinosaurs.”

“What in hell are you babbling about?” Jack asked and Sara sensed he meant it, was as confused about what Luke was saying as she was about Jack, and wondered if he too felt the shadow of something big and important about to come on.

“I’m talking about the show you just did, what else?” Luke said. “I never saw any vip that cut up; Bennie must be leaving a trail of blood from here to his digs in Colorado. Shit, man, you know what I’m talking about, you said it all, and you said it perfect. Something for everyone. Morris flipped over the economic angle; it’s a tie-in to their whole damn Adam Smith Platform—fat cats who want a piece of the Freezer action for themselves are ready to shell out big. Oh, man, like I always said, a man that’s got the instinct for politics just can’t shake it! You let Bennie off a little too easy at the end maybe, but you know, I begin to think that was the right come-on too. Like Morris says, we gotta develop your position slow and easy before you come out into the open next year.”

“In words of one syllable for us ignorant shades, please,” Sara heard Jack say, still feigning confusion. But, you are faking it now, aren’t you, Jack? she thought. Putting on Luke… Wow, what’s going on? And she felt as she did when she was eleven, peeking in between wooden shack slits and watching naked boy-flesh shapes doing exciting dirty-little-boy things. Like the old Jack in bed beside her, talking big-world phone-talk over her quiet listening-flesh with Luke, and how good, oh how good to be Sara Barron again, watching my man doing his man-things…

“How’s yes for a word of one syllable?” Luke said. “I just got off the phone with Morris, and, baby, the word is yes. You pulled it off, you made up all the points with the Republican vips you lost by bad-mouthing Morris. After the way you stomped Howards tonight—and they loved the way you linked him with Hennering—they are like hot for your living-color bod. You know what a tight little cabal that bunch is, so when Greg Morris says he can personally guarantee you the nomination if I can deliver the SJC, you know that means that all their vips have spoken. And with that word in old Luke’s hip pocket, don’t you worry, we’re home free with the SJC Council.

“You know what this means, Clive? You dig? We’re gonna do it! We’re really gonna do it, not another Berkeley pipe dream, not a little piece of the action like I have here, but the whole schmear, Jack, all the way, an SJC National Administration, just like you told us in that dirty old attic. It took one hell of a long time for you to remember who you were, but, Claude, it was worth the wait ’cause when you returned to the fold, prodigal baby, you brought more than the bacon back, you brought the whole fucking hog.”