The Children of Hamelin (33 page)

“Ah, an academic mystic!”

“My specialty,” he said around a lungful of smoke. “Twentieth century mystical novelists.”

He started to hand the joint back to me, but Robin leaned across my body and grabbed it out from under my nose; she seemed kind or uptight at all this stuff over her head and irrelevant to the matter at hand.

She took a short drag (grabbing the joint had been a matter of principle more than anything else, apparently), said: “How many caps you want?”

“Huh...?” Fred was feeling no pain. “Oh... ten—”

Robin counted out ten caps from her mystic baggie, handed them to Fred, who dropped them casually in a jacket pocket, took out his wallet and pulled off five tens and handed them to Robin, who gauchely counted the bread before stuffing it in her Levis pocket. She took a longer drag and roached the joint.

She looked at me, looked at Fred, looked at me; kind of a signal for Fred to split. Fred caught it, started to get up, saying: “Well... ah... I guess—”

“Stick around man,” I told him. I started rolling a fresh joint. “Have some more grass. Relax.”

Robin gave me a dirty look that said this cat is a customer, what the hell are you doing? I gave her a dirty look back that said this is
my
pad, baby, not a dope supermarket, cut the crap.

“Any former Dirk Robinson fee-reader is welcome in my pad,” I said. I lit the joint, took a little puff, then handed it to Fred, who smiled, toked, and sat back on the couch.

“Talk to you a minute, Tom...” Robin said uptightly. Knowing what was coming, I shrugged at Fred, let her pull me off the couch and over toward the bedroom.

“I’ve got another customer coming!” Robin hissed in my ear.

“So?”

“They’ve never met. It’d be a very strange scene. Get him out of here.”

“I dig strange scenes,” I told her. “He stays.”

“But—”

“The decision of the judges is final.”

“It’s your pad,” she said somewhat sulkily.

“I’m glad you noticed.”

“My God,” said Fred, “you mean the Mad Dentist is still around?”

“His latest is a sex novel about—”

“The Communist fluoridation plot to bankrupt the dental industry.”

We both laughed. But Robin, sitting next to me, seemed to be getting more and more uptight listening to us rap about Dirk Robinson, Inc.

“Y’know, Dirk Robinson isn’t Dirk’s real name,” Fred said.

A knock at the door propelled Robin off the couch like a nervous ICBM. A moment later she reappeared gingerly leading a tall, thin, spade-bearded Negro in a khaki coat. An awfully familiar face beneath his modified natural: bony, smirk-mouthed, vaguely sinister.

The spade looked at me. I looked at him. He began snapping his fingers soundlessly. “Don’t tell me, man,” he said in a deep, clear voice. “You used to go around with the jivy Anne Jones chick... Tom... Tom—”

“Hollander,” I told him. I recognized him now, a street-junkie from the bad old days who used to hustle the white Washington Square weekend high school chicks. Some kind of crazy name for a spade, I vaguely remembered....

“You’re... The Colonel, right?”

He grinned a mouthful of small dainty teeth. “Jefferson Davis Lee,” he said, “before I returned to the People. Now I go by Jefferson Davis X. Ain’t that a bitch?”

We both laughed. I got up, shook his right hand with both of mine; we grinned at each other, then sat down on the couch; me between Fred and Jeff and Robin out in deep right field on the other wing of the sectional facing the three of us. Uptight as she had been when I asked Fred to stay, she now smiled in relief and maybe a little pride in the fact that I knew The Colonel, who probably had her a little intimidated (his white-chick scene in the old days).

“Have some grass,” I said, handing Jeff a joint.

“Don’t mind if I do.”

A moment of silence as he dragged and held it. Then both of us said simultaneously: “You still on smack?”

We both laughed as Fred fidgeted.

“That’s Evil White Man’s Medicine,” Jeff said. “I got busted and did a year. When I got out, after they scraped me off the walls, that is, I found I had lost the taste. And you?”

“I gave it up for Lent.”

“Sh ee-yit!”

Suddenly we both kind of noticed Fred, who was sucking nervously on his own joint. Jeff gave him a Big Bad Spade Leer. “Are you the fuzz, white man?” he said ominously.

Fred gave him a fish-eyed stare. “As a matter of fact,” he drawled, “I am Inspector Lee of the Nova Police. Yer all under arrest.”

Jeff laughed. “What you doing with that joint there, Inspector?” he said.

“I am confiscating the evidence,” Fred informed him. “Standard police procedure.”

“This cat is like
stoned,”
Jeff said admiringly. “You White Boys have lured a po’ honest Afro-American into an opium-den! I had best dispose of the merchandise.” And he took a really enormous toke—almost half the joint.

I grinned across at Robin: she was grinning and eating it all up now, grooving behind the show. Ah, it was beautiful! Warmed the cockles of me heart to see us all grooving together: hippy-dippy chick, college professor, ethnic spade, literary lion. Ain’t that What Made America Great?

“You dealing the acid, man?” Jeff asked.

“I’ve gone straight,” I told him (old fee-reader Fred sneered at the concept). “The little lady is our entrepreneur.”

Jeff shrugged. “I want twenty caps,” he told Robin.

Robin pulled out the baggie, counted out twenty caps. “One hundred even,” she said.

Jeff scowled at her. “A hundred bucks! What the—”

Robin cringed a bit. “Five a cap,” she whined. “That’s the standard price—”

“Shit!” snarled Jeff. “That’s
street prices.
I’m copping twenty caps. I should get volume rates. Don’t jive me, white girl!”

Robin seemed to wilt—the old Colonel doing one of his sinister spade numbers.

“Cool it, Colonel,” I told him. “Don’t go mindfucking my chick.”

Jeff broke up. “Okay man, okay. Just thought it was worth a try.” He took off his coat and pulled a roll of bills out of his shirt pocket. Robin heaved a sigh of relief and gave me a thank-you look as he handed her five twenties. And smiled this time as Jeff scowled and said: “Where are my fucking green stamps, woman?”

I laughed, shoved the joint I was holding into his mouth and said: “Shut up and smoke your pot!”

Cozy, cozy, cozy.

“I heard this theory,” Fred said, “that everyone in the world knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows anyone.”

“Huh?” said Jeff.

“Mathematical acquaintance of mine worked it out on acid once,” Fred said. “Four steps between any two people in the known universe, no more, Jeff. Like you to me. I know Tom who knows you. Or me and... oh, Mao Tse-tung. I know a cat who knows a member of the Russian Politburo who knows the Russian Ambassador to China who knows Mao.”

“Oh yeah, I dig,” Jeff said. “I know a cat who split to Cuba and met Castro who must know someone who knows Mao!”

“Small world...” I murmured. “Smaller world of dope—”

“Naw, yer wrong,” said Fred. “‘Nother equation. Everybody in the world knows somebody who’s a head. Einstein worked it out in 1937. Special special theory of relativity.”

“How come I never heard of it?” I said.

“Because he got busted before he could publish.”

“Albert Einstein got busted?”

“Naw, was his cousin Orville Einstein. Got busted for dealing. See what I mean?”

“Man, are you stoned!”

We were all pretty well whacked out—except Robin, who was mostly sitting and watching and worrying about selling the rest of her acid. Dealing is such a drag! On the other hand, Robin was our connection according to the special theory: if she wasn’t dealing, I wouldn’t have met good old Fred or ever seen Jeff again. So amend that to: dealing is a drag for the dealer. That’s what dealers mean by “paying dues” I guess. Dealing is a drag, but
someone’s
gotta do it to preserve the noble traditions of the Free Enterprise System.

Still, I felt for Robin, sitting there watching us groove, and obviously upright about something.

“What’s the matter, baby?” I finally said.

“Couple of people I couldn’t get on the phone,” she said. “And I gotta deal the rest of the acid by Sunday night.” She frowned, hesitated, said: “Look, Tom, would it be all right if I went out for an hour or two and unloaded the stuff?”

I shrugged. “If that’s your thing, baby.”

“Think I’d better,” she said. “Won’t take more than a couple of hours.”

As Robin closed the door behind her, Jeff said: “Quite a chick you got there.”

“Where do you know her from?” I said, a shade uptight.

“Oh, just from dealing. You know.”

“Uh-huh,” I said unconvincingly.

Jeff chuckled evilly. “Relax, baby,” he said. “I got no eyes for that chick. Too strange, man, too strange! Man, you do go for strange chicks. That Anne—whew! And this Robin... groovy-looking, and you can tell she fucks like a fiend, but the young pussy running around the Village these days, man, you can have
no
idea of what’s going on inside their heads.”

“I do believe you’re talking like an old square,” I said.

“No, he’s right,” Fred said. “The younger generation—”

“Younger generation! Look, you may be a decrepit dirty old man of at least thirty, but I’m still eligible for the draft.”

“And all that teen-age tail?” said Fred.

I laughed. “Fuckin’-A!” I said. “Young enough to fight, young enough to ball teenyboppers all night!”

“Look, man,” said Jeff, “you
know
I’m an old expert on teen-age pussy. Love that juicy young white meat! But I’m telling you, like the song says, they don’t look different, but man they’ve changed! All that young cunt is totally crazed these days. Man, like your Robin can’t be twenty and you
know
she’s dropped more acid than all of us put together. Don’t fool yourself you can see inside her head.”

“Ah, come on, you’re putting him on a bummer,” Fred said.

“He’s right, I’m on the wrong side of the generation gap, you better believe it,” Jeff said. “It’s a different scene and dope’s the only reason old heads like us can even get a taste. I mean, I know young Brothers who would cut me dead just for smoking grass with you dirty honkies. But the young chicks are even worse... they’re mind-fuckers, it’s a fucking’... what’s the word...?”

“Matriarchy?” suggested Fred.

“Yeah,” said Jeff. “They carry those young cats’ balls around in their purses. Why do you think a young chick like that is interested in a cat like you?”

“Tell me, Great Swami.”

“Because she can’t get inside your dirty old head. You can play with her mind and the young cats can’t. The little chicks love that, a cat who can mess with their minds. Just don’t think you can get inside her head any more than she can get inside yours.”

“But it’s fun trying.”

“Just watch out, man,” Jeff said. “Don’t let
her
mindfuck
you.”

He stretched, got up, said: “Well, I should’ve left already. I got some people uptown who are probably uptight waiting for their acid, and that could get unhealthy.”

“I ought to be going too,” Fred said. “Must be near seven.”

I walked both of them to the door, feeling groovy and a little sad all at once. Were they right? Was Robin something I couldn’t handle? Ah bullshit, both of them were just getting old, is all. Yeah, that’s why I was sad—two groovy guys talking like old wrecks.

“Give my regards to Dirk,” Fred said.

“I’ll say hello to the Mad Dentist for you too. Don’t either of you guys take any oregano nickels.”

“And don’t let that little chick blow your mind,” Jeff said. “See you around, honkie.” Then they were gone.

Robin was sure taking her own sweet time getting back. I was starting to come down, and once I had reached the stage of knowing how high I had been half an hour ago and knowing that I wasn’t that high now, I didn’t feel like any more grass because while what Jeff had said didn’t bother me as long as I was thinking straight, I was a cool enough head to know that pacing around waiting for her, getting higher and higher and uptighter and uptighter would—

The phone started ringing. Robin? Arlene?

I loped out of the living room, where as a matter of fact I
had
been pacing around getting uptighter and uptighter, if not higher and higher, made it to the bedroom, picked up the phone and grunted: “Hello?”

“Robin?” said an asthmatic male wheeze on the other end of the line.

“Do I sound like Robin?” I snarled.

“Hey, man, no need to get uptight. I’m not after your chick, it’s strictly business, dig? Will you tell her Duke called and I just got back and I still want ten caps and she should hold them for me and—”

“How do you know I’m not a cop, Charlie?” I said.

“Hey! Hey! Stop it, man, I’m up on speed—don’t go putting me on a paranoid trip!”

“Yeah, but what if I am a cop? What if this line is tapped?”