Dan Wakefield - Home Free

When the next entertainer comes on, bored, standard, clad in pink bikini Flash knocked back his little four-dollar highball and said, “Shitman, is this all there is?”

“Wha’d ya expect?” asked Gene. “Gorillas humping?”

“Shit. Let’s go to my place and rap.”

Gene offered the room at the Marmont to have smoke and drink but Flash insisted they go to his motel on Hollywood Boulevard, he wanted to check on his Group.

“You got a Group again?” Gene asked.

“Yeh, man. Managin again.”

“What’s the Group?”

“Rasputin and the Dreamers.”

“The Dreamers ?”

“Yeh, these new chicks didn’t go for being Schemers. They’re a little young to dig it.”

Gene could understand when he saw the girls. They both had on shorts and halters, and looked about fifteen. They were pouting because Flash didn’t leave em any bread for dinner and the TV was no good.

“What’s wrong with it?” Flash said. “I see the picture OK.”

“It’s only in black and white,” one complained.

“It’s more realistic,” said Flash.

He peeled off a five and told them to go out and get them some burgers and shakes, but don’t go far and come right back.

When they left, Flash pulled a fifth of tequila from his suitcase and poured a glass for him and Gene. There wasn’t any ice in the place. In fact, there wasn’t much of anything. Gene spotted a couple cockroaches, though.

“Where’d ya find the girls?” Gene asked.’

“Here and there.”

“Runaways?”

“Aren’t we all?”

“Yeh, but we’re overage.”

“Well, they will be, too, eventually.”

“Where’s your Rasputin?”

“We rendezvous with him up at Oxnard. Got a gig at a roadhouse there couple miles out of town.”

Gene offered to help him, maybe get Ray Behr to introduce him to some people.

“Nah, thanks, man, but I wanna see us make it on our own. Don’t want to owe nothin to nobody. Then when we’re ready to go to a record company we can make our own deal, we won’t have our hands tied.”

“Sure, man,” Gene said.

He drank to the success of Rasputin and the Dreamers, told Flash to keep in touch, and said he’d better split, he needed some sack time.

Flash said to look for his group in Rolling Stone .

Gene said he’d keep an eye out.

Where the hell was she?

One night he came in and found something stuck in his door. A napkin. It had “Hi” written on it. The i was dotted with a circle. It was her. Laura. She had been there and he had been gone. Shit.

In spite of some Mexican beers and a couple of joints, Gene couldn’t get to sleep that night. Or the next.

He went back to Dr. Feelgood and got a prescription for thirty 25-mg. Seconals, and a harsh lecture on drug abuse.

He took one of the Seconals when he went to bed that night and went right to sleep.

He woke up an hour later, so wide awake he knew he might as well get dressed. Shit. Maybe he really should go down to Joshua Tree and drop some acid with Ray Behr. Maybe he’d have one of those trips where you suddenly had some blinding flash of insight and knew what the fuck it was all about. Life and everything.

Sunday afternoon he was sitting in the room sipping a Carta Blanca and reading another John D. MacDonald. Violence and lust on the Florida Coast. Gin and mosquitoes. Bones crunching, beautiful broads. The sombitch was almost as good as dope. Kept your mind off itself.

He almost didn’t hear the little knock at the door.

It was faint, small, like it might have been a mistake. He got up anyway to look.

Laura.

A little navy blue silk dress, white cardigan over her shoulders, white short-heeled sandals, little white vinyl purse.

He kissed her, hard, and she met it, opened to it, and then pulled away, smiling.

“Come along now,” she said, in that little girl lilt, and he followed, as she danced so lightly down the stairs, out to a waiting VW bug, black, with beaten fenders. Laura slipped in the back and Gene sat next to the driver, whom Laura introduced as her friend Sue. Sue worked for Xanadu records. They were going to a Xanadu party at somebody’s swanky estate up in the Hills. Sue had a lot of tan makeup on her face, which was pitted here and there. Her black hair was short, with bangs, and she had on a black leather miniskirt and those thong sandals that tie around the legs all the way to the knee. When Gene got in beside her she looked him up and down, kind of an amused appraisal, and let out the clutch.

A pool shaped like a teardrop, and underwater lights coming on after sunset. The Group played out on the hilltop, the music brought back to the veranda and pool with big portable speakers for those who didn’t want to join the crowd on the hillside. White-jacketed waiters, shrimp rolls, champagne, the joints on silver trays.

Gene and Laura sat on the grass, away from the hill crowd, facing the veranda and the pool. Laura slipped off her sandals, curled her toes into the dewy grass.

“Yummmmmm,” she said.

He had planned to ask her where she’d been and why she didn’t come sooner and how could he find her when he wanted to but all that seemed sort of silly now, square even, like he was some kind of truant officer. All that factual shit might take the magic out of it.

They passed the neatly wrapped joint between them.

“Your hair is not yellow,” he said. “I had thought of it as yellow but it’s not. It is gold. It is definitely gold.”

“Nnnnnnnn,” she said, nestling her head against him.

A white jacket lowered a tray of champagne glasses in front of them and Gene plucked one off it. They shared.

Laura opened her little girl purse and took out a tissue. She unfolded it carefully on her knee. There was a tiny piece of purple, like a flake of something. She carefully broke it in half and gave one part to Gene. Each of them swallowed their part, and had a sip of champagne.

“What is it?” Gene asked.

It didn’t matter now, but he was curious. He liked to know the names of things.

“Acid,” she said.

“But I mean does it have its own name, like the other was Clear Light?”

“Blue Sea” she said.

“It was purple.”

“Sometimes it is.”

She kissed his neck.

“Let’s go somewhere,” he said.

“In a while, little while …”

Don’t press. Don’t lean. Lay back. Way back. Sway. Let it be. That’s the way.

Bodies fall, diving, water splashing, lights on the pool, veranda, not white but gold, not gold like Laura’s hair, not so pure, but gold en anyway, not harsh or spotlike. Bikinied bodies. A top taken off. Natural. Naturally. “Leeeeeee.… Loooooook.… Meeeee.” Party play, pretty people, playing. Boom! Final boom of band and crowd comes down from hill, and band, all in purple velvet, lean, tall, bless em all, over the long green lawn. Laughing. What about the Blue Sea? We’ll see. Let it happen, cap’n. Thongs. Sue standing over them, smiling, not seeming happy though, smoking regular cigarette, looking down on them, summons Laura just wants to borrow for a while well be sure you bring her back, Laura blows him a kiss, skips across lawn, onto into veranda, house, one of the many doors. Staying, swaying, Gene watches the water, how it pops open and spits with bodies falling in, and after a while he stands up, swaying, and seems to see it coming toward him. The water. Is this Blue Sea? Recede. It recedes. He is safe again for now but better find Laura find out how this sea thing works is the sea supposed to come out at you, she’ll know how to put it back, see, yes, she has control of the sea, goldchildgodchildgoldenhair find her, blind flash just for a second then back to light everything fine all right, laughter, shrieks, giggly tickly squeals, people come out a door, Gene tries another door, locked, but the next knob turns, opens, a guest room, double bed and table with lamp beside it, lamp on the overhead light, bright, a white vivid, door-framed photograph, lit in Gene’s mind like a blown-up color photograph in graphic detail: