Christopher Sorrentino - Trance

Funny, but this is the first subject Hank Galton wants to broach when they finally get around to talking turkey.

Well but first they had cocktails, and then claret with dinner, and port with dessert, and now they settle in the parlor with the vodka again, whereupon Frank Cahalan discreetly withdraws and Guy realizes that he’s drunk. He’s pretty certain Hank is shitfaced too; he keeps adding little half — ounce tipples to his own glass, topping it with soda from a chrome siphon. When the glass gets down to a certain level, Hank fills it up again. They talk sports. Can the A’s do it again? Guy thinks not. Catfish Hunter has become the Three Million Dollar Man and is pitching in a Yankees uniform. No doubt the rest of the team will soon follow him into the lucrative new territory of free agency. Hank notes that Guy sounds almost as if he disapproved. Surely a man like Guy would favor free agency. Guy favors it for the sake of the players but is unsure whether he wants to pay five bucks to sit in the bleachers. They clink glasses. There’s a certain self-congratulatory air to Galton’s bonhomie that his agreement with Guy on this throwaway point underscores. Probably Hank sat in the bleachers once. Probably thought it was the best time he ever had. Probably can’t even remember who was playing.

Tentatively, the subject is raised at last. Guy is careful to limit what he says to avoid self-incrimination.

There’s a certain individual. An individual I believe we have in common.

We’re talking about the same person I think I think I can find ways to get in touch if if

With this person. If the person you’re talking about is the person I’m talking about well I’m very interested Guy, in making contact.

Well through an intermediary, mind you Hank I’m I think this can be arranged and but with other parties who’d have to approve.

Of course I would accept any restrictions these parties decided to impose, Guy. I always have.

Yeah but basically I’m just saying this individual probably would not it would not be possible to make personal contact, Hank.

Well I mainly want to know

Hank?

I want to know about her health.

You mean is the person in good health?

The person I’m talking about is perfectly healthy, Hank.

And the last time that you saw the person, Guy, was …?

Some yuh a few months ago.

I wonder what you might know about the current state of the person’s health?

The person’s in good health as far as I know. I mean I I would have heard any news to the contrary.

I guess I don’t mean health per se.

I’m I’m not getting you.

“Was she pregnant? Was she pregnant by Cinque?”

“Oh,” says Guy, surprised, and then he understands. “Ah, no. She had a pregnant belly they made. She wore it as a disguise sometimes.”

“Oh, thank God,” says Hank. “It would have been. I just can’t imagine how much harder it all would be if she’d had a child. Especially his child.”

“They’re actually pretty careful about that stuff.” Guy’s guessing, but he figures he’s got to be right. The Manson Family screwed their brains out too, but those women were dropping kids left and right.

They’re silent for a minute, Hank perhaps taking solace of a kind in the thought that his daughter has been diligently practicing family planning.

He asks, “Is she all right?”

“She’s fine.”

“Is she happy?”

“Well, you know. I don’t know what it was like before L.A. From what I’ve heard it sounds like it was weirder, more violent, more squalid, more doctrinaire, and more, I don’t know, incestuous if you get my drift. But since then they’ve found some different ways of looking at things, met up with some new people.”

“Like yourself, for example.”

“I suppose. We weren’t really day to day with them, Randi and me. Just kind of checking in. But the point is I don’t think we would even have been allowed to help them back in the Age of Cinque. That guy really had them marooned on that psycho island of his. The world was exactly what he said it was. I think Drew Shepard still has a little of that in him. But it’s a matter of time. Let me just say that I doubt they believe they’re going to overthrow the system anymore. Maybe Drew and Diane do. Probably definitely Drew Shepard. He’s sort of a hopeless case.”

“A romantic,” says Hank dryly.

“What I think is she’s surrounded now by a bunch of more or less ordinary people who have the sort of ideas about things that even a man like yourself, no offense, is bound to have encountered over the past few years without once giving them a second thought. Believe me, these people don’t want to shoot the president. They want to do yoga. Basically they’re back to where they started out from, more or less, you know? They’re people you might actually like. Is she happy? Who can say. It’s OK. I think she has a pretty regular life. It’s acceptable to her. You’ll think this is nuts, but.”

“What?”

“A mutual friend put me in touch with them after L.A. And you want to know the truth, I had serious reservations about helping them out at all. It wasn’t just the Marc Foster murder, though that whole thing was so stupid it made me want to cry. It wasn’t the total dumbness factor, the idiot hyperbole, all that fascist insect crap, which everybody on the Left just loved to point to, but I was always like, hey — glass houses, OK? It was the kidnapping. I just hated it. It was like something out of some shit-ass midnight movie that gives you the willies. Maybe if it was you they’d kidnapped I’d say all right. But even then. But this is the crazy part. This is the part where you’ll think I’m crazy.”

“Yes?”

“You know, it wasn’t the worst thing for her. She’s a strong person, you know that? I don’t know if anybody ever would’ve found that out. She had to come through a lot of shit. She was a basket case when I met her. Out of the closet, what? Five, six weeks? Her boyfriend had just gotten barbecued by the pigs.”

“They were together?”

“You heard that tape. Can’t fake that shit, Hank.”

“What about the mind control, the brainwashing?”

“Well, she wasn’t brainwashed in the Laurence Harvey sense. But she wasn’t thinking for herself either. She said what they said. She did what they told her to do. But”—Guy laughs—“no more.”

“Really?” Hank smiles. Not a bad smile, Guy thinks. Happy for his kid, like she’s coming out of her shell at school.

“But these people,” Hank says, “you’re telling me they’re all through with violence?”

“Um,” says Guy, “notionally, yes.”

“Notionally?”

“Maybe some armed propaganda here and there.”

“You’d said more or less ordinary people?”

“Well. ‘More or less’ meaning ‘relatively,’ in this context.”

“Damn it, relative to what?”

“Don’t kill the messenger, Hank.”

“But?”

“Relative to, say, Cinque. Relative even to Drew Shepard, for Christ’s sake.”

That seems to make an impression. Dump it all on Teko. The two-faced little bastard deserves it.

“Does she ever talk about us?”

“She liked you,” says Guy.

A carriage clock tucked into a bookcase in the gap between symmetrically shelved volumes softly bongs the hour. Only one chime, and surprised, Guy looks at his watch to confirm the time. Hank is stretching, suppressing a yawn, and Guy can see that their meeting is about to come to an end. He’s done a good job of fooling himself into believing that he came here tonight out of the goodness of his heart. But while he will be delighted to facilitate communications, if not an actual meeting, between parent and child, he needs to secure some sort of quid pro quo.