Summer of Love, a Time Travel (18 page)

Ruby
should have known he could not possibly have stayed true. Or legit. Instead of
the occasional pot score, Stan turned into a cottage industry. Late-night calls
came weekly, daily. He spent more and more time on the street. He traveled to
Mexico three times. One night Ruby was confronted outside her shop by a stringy
woman who demanded to see Stan. Her paranoia shot through the roof. She owned a
legitimate
business.
She was working on a pretty cool
life.

Stan
moved out when he landed the gig as manager of the Double Barrel Boogie Band. Never
was cut out to be the settle-down type, Ruby consoled herself. Four years
together? Those four years were gone.

Now he’s
got everything he wants: a bountiful supply of connections and easy girls. In
the time since they broke up, Stan got himself a suntan and a singular
reputation. He’s become a joke, a caricature of himself. And Ruby? She got
herself
a silver ’66 Mercedes Benz and a fifty-grand-a-year business.
She’s
become a respected hip merchant.

Is
that justice? Oh, yeah.

But
Stan still has the power to make her crazy.

Why
does she keep falling for bad dudes like Stan the Man and Leo Gorgon? Sometimes
she thinks that Roi, her beautiful lost doomed Roi, for all his failure, had
more nobility and purpose. Right on, Starbright.

Ruby
grits her teeth as she turns the corner at Clayton. The kid turns the corner,
too, looks down the block and looks up at Ruby. And Ruby sees in the kid’s eyes
her self-doubt and pain and fear. It’s like falling down a well, falling into
the past. Her past. Was she really that vulnerable once? How can young women
bear it?

Shifting
the calculating machine in her arms, Ruby comes to a decision. She will not
turn Starbright over to Huckleberry House or All Saints’. She’s heard of
rip-offs at the crash pads, folks turning in runaways to the fuzz for sixteen
bucks a head. Bounty hunters lurk everywhere during the Summer of Love.

The
kid can stay in the sitting room off her bedroom on the third floor. Chi can
continue crashing on the living room couch. Ruby doesn’t understand Chi, but
one thing she knows for sure. He’s an aloof and sober young man who observes
her house rules and mostly ignores girls. He won’t bother Starbright.

What
vice cop could pin an infraction on her?

She
intends to advise the kid to contact her parents, of course, and go home.
That’s the right thing to do. Presumably. But only if the kid wants to go. If
she hasn’t burned her bridges. If she’s not getting beat up at home or worse.
So many ifs. Ruby can imagine them all.

But
to shelter another kid, a real live runaway this time, and pregnant? Sweet
Isis, she tells herself, don’t turn this into a trend. She feels good about it,
but not that good. She is not the custodian of the disaffected youth of America
flocking to the Summer of Love.

And
with a small shock, Ruby remembers:
I don’t take in runaways.

But
you will,
Chi said.
You will shelter people. Runaways, and
people.

Oh,
yeah? Just where did he see a description of her? What article, where? He
didn’t show it to her, now did he? Electronically stored. Right. If the article
is on microfiche in the library, she should be able to look it up herself. What
journalist could have possibly written about her sheltering runaways if she
hasn’t done it yet?

Who
is
Chiron Cat’s Eye in Draco? And who is watching Ruby A. Maverick?

*  
*   *

It’s
a Scene.

Ruby
spies a mob sitting in a circle on the sidewalk in front of the Mystic Eye. On
the shop’s door is the sign she left before her trek to the Double Barrel
house.

The
mob consists of half a dozen young dudes, plus a girl. The girl’s face is
shaped like a frog: a narrow wrinkled forehead, round eyes, a thick wide jaw, a
thin-lipped mouth. She’s painted flower petals around her eyes. It doesn’t
help, poor thing.

The
frog girl is thrilled to be sitting with so many young dudes. It’s not clear
who she’s with, if anyone. But the frog girl is cool. She doesn’t have to be
with anyone.

One
dude balances a skull on his knee. Not a pendant or a button, but the real
thing, bony eye sockets and grinning molars, minus the lower jawbone. Another
dude’s got two large eyes with long curly lashes painted in kohl on his cheeks.
His real eyes are rimmed in kohl, too. Then there’s the usual dude in a
headband, a dude in a military cap, and an older dude with a graying beard and
hair halfway down his back.

A
jug of dago red is making the rounds, plus a huge bong billowing like a
smokestack.

Ruby
swoops down on them, breathing fire. She deposits the calculating machine on her
stoop.

“Okay,
boppers. Break it up and move it on ‘cause you’re not gonna trip at
my
door.”

She
may as well be speaking in tongues, because no one bats an eye. They are so far
into their game, they neither see nor hear her but continue to laugh and jive
and pass around jug and bong.

Ruby
stands at the edge of their circle, tapping her toe. “Listen up! I want to open
my shop.”

What
the dudes
do
notice is Starbright sidling up. She’s got to lose a week’s
worth of grime, the white lipstick, which doesn’t suit her at all, and her
attitude of abject depression. Still, she’s got a lovely face and a pretty
young body and wavy fair hair, however unkempt. Her overnight bag is a red
flag:
Runaway.
Which means she won’t sass, won’t ask much, and won’t put
up a fight. In other words—to these hard young dudes roaming around the
Haight-Ashbury—an easy lay. Beautiful.

They
do what young dudes do in the presence of young female flesh. Their shoulders square
up. Their voices louden. Their gestures broaden and swoop. They start hassling
each other, pushing and punching. The headband sitting next to the dude with
the skull gets an ash flicked in his face. “Hey, man!” Sweat pops out of
unwashed armpits, the stink of male competition.

Ruby
sees a flash of red hair, and suddenly Chi is there. To her surprise, he
notices Starbright. He practically cranes his neck. Ruby knows Chi well enough
to know he’d walk away from a scene like this, disgust on his alabaster face.
But no, he sits. He doesn’t even whip out a square of his weird plastic wrap to
sit on. Talk about distracted.

Ruby
glances at Starbright. The kid’s so miserable, she doesn’t even notice the stir
she’s causing.

Here
we go, Ruby thinks, watching the young dudes rev up. The usual Haight-Ashbury shuck
and jive.

“Where
there’s dope,” says the dude with the skull, passing the bong to the headband,
“there’s hope.”

“Dope
gets you through times of no money,” opines the headband, passing to the guy
with the eyes, “better ‘n’ money gets you through times of no dope.”

“Reality
is a crutch for people who haven’t got the courage to drop acid,” says the guy with
the eyes, passing to Chi.

“LSD
is a psychotomimetic,” says Chi.

“Say
what?” says the guy with the eyes.

“A
mimicker of madness.” Chi doesn’t take a hit and passes the bong to the
military cap.

Starbright’s
eyes widen.

“No
foolin’,” Ruby mutters.

“Oh.
Yeah,” says the guy with eyes. “I knew that.”

“I
usually trip once a week,” brags the military cap. “If I went two weeks without
acid, I’d grow so much ego, I’d blow to pieces.”

The
military cap passes the bong to the frog girl. She tokes and says nothing.
Girls like her in these circles seldom do. The frog girl passes the bong to the
elderbeard.

“I
trip,” says the elderbeard, not to be outdone, “every two or three days. Then I
wait a day to do body work.”

“What
sort of body work?” asks Chi.

“You
know. Sleep. Eat.” The elderbeard passes to the dude with the skull.

“Acid,”
says the dude with the skull, “raises your powers of integration so that
everything is important.”

“LSD,”
says Chi, “lowers your powers of discrimination so that everything
seems
important.”

“Huh?”
says the guy with the eyes.

“Hey,
man, how come you’re not smokin’?” says the military cap.

Everyone
turns toward Chi. Suddenly tension is thicker than the smoke.

Chi
hesitates, then says, “I went to the Clinic this afternoon. Dr. Smith tells me
there’s an epidemic of measles in the neighborhood.”

“Oh,
wow,” says the guy with the eyes. “Measles, man.”

Everyone
in the circle coughs, and Ruby is struck with concern. Chi is some kind of neat
freak. He’s obsessed with germs like no one she’s ever known. He’s got measles?

“The
health of the body is merely a matter of the mind,” says the elderbeard,
handing a tiny foil packet to Chi. “Take this. Owsley white lightning. It’ll do
wonders for your measles, brother.”

“That’s
okay,” says Chi.

“Take
it,” says the elderbeard.

“Yeah,
take it,” says the military cap.

“We
want to see you take it, man,” says the headband.

The
frog girl turns and stares. Her greasepaint flower petals shine.

Chi
unfolds the foil packet. He sticks out his tongue for all to see and places the
tab of acid on the tip of it.

The
dudes relax. The circle is restored.

Chi
coughs gently. Ruby watches him palm the tab. He does a fair job of it, too,
and slips the tab in his jacket pocket.

Ruby
finds herself breathing a sigh of relief.

Now
the young dudes are at it again.

”When
I’m tripping, I see through solid rock,” says the headband, taking the bong. “I
read minds.”

“I
practice magic,” says the elderbeard, on a roll. “It’s easy ‘cause I was a
magician apprenticed to Merlin in 1467. I made it with Morgan le Fay.”

“Wow,
you’re an incarnation?” says the guy with the eyes.

“No,
brother, I’m five hundred years old,” says the elderbeard. “I’m living backward
in time.”

“Me,
I’m reincarnated,” declares the headband. “I was a Navajo chief.”

“Shoot,
everybody’s been a Navajo chief,” says the elderbeard.

“I’m
from Egypt,” claims the military cap. “I built the freakin’ pyramids. In my
past life, I was, like, Ramses the King. And she”--he stares at Starbright—“was
my queen. Come on over, Nefer-titty. Sit beside me.”

Starbright
turns scarlet. She hovers behind Ruby, but the pressure of their bloodshot eyes
is too much. She shuffles over, sets down her overnight bag, and sits on the
sidewalk between the military cap and Chi.

Chi
smiles at her. She totally ignores him. He jerks back, rebuffed. His shoulders
square up. His voice loudens. His gestures broaden and swoop.

Uh-oh,
Ruby thinks.

“Hell
with Egypt,” says the guy with the eyes. “I’m from Mars.” He produces a sheaf
of spidery drawings and proudly displays them. “These are our machines. I’ve
come to Earth to give Martian technology to you Earthlings. How do you like our
machines?” he says to Chi.

“There’s
no advanced life native to Mars,” Chi replies. “No life at all, except for some
insignificant bacteria we discovered centuries ago.”

“You
callin’ me a liar?” says the guy with the eyes.

“There
wasn’t any life on Mars,” Chi says with haughty authority, “until we
terraformed the planet and made the place habitable for humanity.”

“Terrify
the planet?” says the elderbeard. “That’s what we’re trying to do in the
Haight-Ashbury, brother. Terrify the planet.”

The
circle laughs warily. Not everyone gets the joke.

“And
we couldn’t terraform Mars,” Chi continues, “until we could finance such a
massive public project with a positive cash flow. It took a hundred years of
savings and investment just to fund the first year of the project. Financing Mars
terraformation was a long-term commitment, requiring long-term discipline. The
government lacked the willpower, the people lacked the means. It was up to us
cosmicists to get the job done.
We
brought life to Mars.”