Robert Stone - Dog Soldiers

He gave them a key and Hicks gave him fifty dollars. They registered in the name of Powers with an address in Ojai and they carried their own bags. Marge opened the bungalow while Hicks parked the jeep in the appropriate space. When he went inside he found her huddled on the bed with the cotton spread wrapped around her.

The ocean view was available through a wall-wide greasy window that admitted the ocean wind as well. It was very beautiful outside. There was a surf running and the breakers were creased with white wind drifts that sparkled in the sun.

“It’s cold,” Marge said.

He found a heater switch beside the bathroom door and forced it up to high. It was difficult for him to keep from staring at the waves.

“My God,” she said, “that goddamn wind.”

He sat down on the bed near her and rubbed her shoulders but her body stayed tense. There was no way for him to know how sick she really was. He had once smoked a great deal of opium but stopping had not been much of a problem to him. He knew nothing about dilaudid.

“Listen to it,” she said. “It’s just cruelty.”

When he took his hands away she settled back on the sheets, still clutching the spread. The pain in her eyes gave him pleasure. If he could make the pain leave her, he thought, and bring her edge and her life back, that would give him pleasure too. The notion came to him that he had been waiting years and years for her to come under his power. He shivered.

“You got too much imagination for a dope fiend.”

She turned her face away.

From the backpack he took a bottle of Wild Turkey he had bought with Converse’s money and a bottle of sopors. He took two quick slugs of the bourbon and fed another sopor to Marge.

“Want some whiskey with it?”

“No.”

“It helped me. I probably wasn’t as strung out as you.”

She was facing the wall and he thought she was crying.

“I can handle the rest of it,” she said. “But what’s in my head is really gruesome.”

“It’s just nerves. It’ll stop.”

“If there’s one word I’ve always hated,” Marge said, “it’s the word nerves. Do you know the picture I get from it?”

“I think so.”

“Do you?”

“Yeah, I know the picture.”

Eventually, he thought, they would have to open the bag for her. He waited until the sopor dropped her into shallow sleep, then opened the door as quietly as possible and went outside.

As soon as he felt the sun, the urge rose in his throat.

Go.

His jeep was ten feet away. He had the keys in his Windbreaker. Go. He walked to the jeep and circled it, inspecting the treads. The treads were just fine.

Hit the road, Jack. And don’t you come back no more.

Dreams.

In the end there were not many things worth wanting — for the serious man, the samurai. But there were some. In the end, if the serious man is still bound to illusion, he selects the worthiest illusion and takes a stand. The illusion might be of waiting for one woman to come under his hands. Of being with her and shivering in the same moment.

If I walk away from this, he thought, I’ll be an old man — all ghosts and hangovers and mellow recollections. Fuck it, he thought, follow the blood. This is the one. This is the one to ride till it crashes.

He watched the afternoon traffic, southbound.

Go anyway!

Thinking it made him smile. Good Zen. Zen was for old men.

There was a rust-colored slat fence connecting the walls of the bungalows, separating the patio from the beach. A stilted walkway led through a gate to the sand. Hicks walked toward the surf with his head down, to keep the blown grains from his eyes. For a while he stood on the soft sand, watching the waves break and the sandpipers scatter under them. He got cold very quickly.

To warm himself, he turned toward the ocean and began the motions of t’ai chi. His thrusts at the ocean wind felt feeble and uncertain. His body was slack, and as he grew colder and more tired, he felt the force of his will diminish.

Not a chance. There was not a chance.

She was some junkie’s nod, a snare, a fool catcher.

It was folly. It was losing.

He planted a foot in the wind’s teeth and shouted.

On our left, he thought, fucking L.A. On our right, the wind. The exercise is called riding it till it crashes.

As he passed over the walkway leading to the court, he saw some gliders being towed above Point Mugu, and he stopped to watch them for a while. He was sweating; the t’ai chi had made him feel better after all.

The choice was made, and there was nothing to be had from chickenshit speculation. The roshis were right: the mind is a monkey .

Marge woke up as soon as he closed the door. She had lodged herself in the space between the edge of the mattress and the wall.

“O.K.,” Hicks said. “Let’s get high.”

She sat up with her hand shading her eyes.

“Is that a joke?”

He had taken the plastic-wrapped package from the airline bag and set it on a chair. “No, it ain’t a joke.”

He set a sheet of white writing paper across the telephone book and lifted a white dab from the package with a picture postcard of Marine World. She watched him raise the post card and shake the powder onto the sheet, flicking it with his finger to dislodge the first flakes. White on white.

“We’ll need some works for you if you’re gonna be a righteous junkie. Maybe Eddie Peace bring us some.”

He made a funnel from the back of a matchbook, took Marge by her damp and tremorous hand and led her to the desk.

He pared away a tiny mound of the stuff with the card board funnel and eased it onto the postcard’s glossy blue sky.

“I don’t know much about dilaudid so I don’t know what your tolerance is. Scoff it like coke and see if you get off.”

He moved the bag from the chair; Marge sat down and looked at the postcard.

“It’s scary,” she said.

“Don’t talk about it.”

She crouched over the stuff like a child and drew it into her nostril. Afterward she straightened up so quickly he was afraid she would pass out. She shook her head and sniffed.

He made a second little mound for her.

“Go ahead. Hit the other one.”

She hit the other one, and then sat stock-still; tears ran from her closed eyes. Slowly, she bent forward and rested her forehead against the desk. Hicks moved the phone book out of her way.

In a few minutes, she sat up again and turned to him.

She was smiling. She put her arms around his waist; her tears and runny nose wet his shirt. He bent down to her; she rested her head on his shoulder. The tension drained from her in small sobs.

“Better than a week in the country, right?”

Holding to him, she stood up and he helped her to the bed. She lay across it, arching her back, stretching her arms and legs toward its four corners.

“It’s a lot better than a week in the country,” she said.

She began to laugh. “It’s better than dilaudid. It’s good.”

She rolled over and hugged herself.

“Right in the head!” She made her hand into a pistol and fired into her temple. “Right in the head.”

He sat down on the bed with her. The glow had come back to her skin, the grace and suppleness of her body flowed again. The light came back, her eyes’ fire. Hicks marveled. It made him happy.

“It does funny little things inside you. It floats inside you. It’s incredible.”

“People use it instead of sex.”

“But it’s just gross how nice it is,” Marge said happily.

Hicks touched her breast.

“Walking with the King. Big H. If God made anything better he never let on. I know all those songs, my sweet.”

Marge sat up in the bed, looking in wonder at the sky outside the window, as blue and regular as the sky over Marine World.