The freaks didn’t know where they were but he could see that Daphne knew the value of the letter. Still, even she hadn’t guessed. She wanted to know what else was out there. Gold fillings?
Eddie very nearly didn’t tell them. He had decided on the way back from the house that he wasn’t going to sell the old lady. He felt strong and together. He was going to call a doctor or the cops or whoever you call about an old lady, and that would be it. And if it hadn’t been for this problem with people sitting on his couch, it would have been it.
Now, however, he found himself saying, “That little old lady you left behind is worth ten grand, just the body alone.”
Pete shifted in his seat and looked at Eddie with his head on one side: “Who’d buy an old lady?”
“Lots of people would buy an old lady. Daphne knows at least four people who’d buy an old lady. I know maybe a dozen.”
Pete shook his head. “Shit, you’re weird, man, you’re really weird.”
Eddie smiled his stoned, cool, people-loving smile and went to sit on a tall stool. He felt better and worse all at once. In spite of his triumph a great sadness had begun to fall around him. He began to feel that the victory hadn’t been worth it. However, he continued: “I’m going to sell that little old lady. I’m going to buy the whole fucking house, man. THE DEAD LANDLADY IN HER HOUSE. Price on application.”
“Man, you’re on a weird trip.”
“Sure. Now if you guys help me upstairs with the pig, I’ll go out there tonight and bring her back.”
“You going to bring her here?”
“Sure. She can sit at the table there. Now you guys give me a hand with the pig and if it starts to yell you give it some stuff. I’ll pay for it, but you give it a fix if it needs it. I don’t want those pricks next door calling the cops because they hear a pig screaming.”
“OK, Eddie,” said the freaks.
11.
He drove the old lady back to Caroline Street with the hood down. She didn’t seem to mind. In fact, Eddie felt that the wind had put a smile on her face. Even now he was unsure of whether he would really sell her or not. With every mile he changed his mind and changed it back again.
In a confused state of mind he stopped off at High Street and the old lady waited patiently in the car while he went into the back room. The back room didn’t help. It all looked a little foolish to him, but maybe it was just because of the old lady waiting so meekly in the car outside.
12.
Exhausted by the events of the day, Eddie slept well that night. The freaks had given the pig a hit and it also slept soundly in the bath. The old lady sat at the table, the pen once more in her hand, gazing thoughtfully at Janis Joplin on the cover of Rolling Stone.
When Eddie woke in the morning Daphne was already up. He went out to inspect the old lady and found she wasn’t there. No one else was there, either.
Instead, he found a note from Daphne which said that they’d taken the old lady to Sydney to sell and they were going on up to Queensland to stay with relatives. The note said there was some stuff in the bathroom cupboard, enough for a couple of hits, and she’d marked the pig with lipstick to show where to put the needle in. There were other instructions, all quite helpful and explicit.
She also left the name of a man who could sell Eddie more smack and said where to contact him and how much to pay. “In my opinion,” she wrote, “the best thing might be just to give it an O.D., love, Daphne.”
Report on the Shadow Industry
1.
My friend S. went to live in America ten years ago and I still have the letter he wrote me when he first arrived, wherein he describes the shadow factories that were springing up on the west coast and the effects they were having on that society. “You see people in dark glasses wandering around the supermarkets at 2 a.m. There are great boxes all along the aisles, some as expensive as fifty dollars but most of them only five. There’s always Muzak. It gives me the shits more than the shadows. The people don’t look at one another. They come to browse through the boxes of shadows although the packets give no indication of what’s inside. It really depresses me to think of people going out at two in the morning because they need to try their luck with a shadow. Last week I was in a supermarket near Topanga and I saw an old negro tear the end off a shadow box. He was arrested almost immediately.”
A strange letter ten years ago but it accurately describes scenes that have since become common in this country. Yesterday I drove in from the airport past shadow factory after shadow factory, large faceless buildings gleaming in the sun, their secrets guarded by ex-policemen with Alsatian dogs.
The shadow factories have huge chimneys that reach far into the sky, chimneys which billow forth smoke of different, brilliant colours. It is said by some of my more cynical friends that the smoke has nothing to do with any manufacturing process and is merely a trick, fake evidence that technological miracles are being performed within the factories. The popular belief is that the smoke sometimes contains the most powerful shadows of all, those that are too large and powerful to be packaged. It is a common sight to see old women standing for hours outside the factories, staring into the smoke.
There are a few who say the smoke is dangerous because of carcinogenic chemicals used in the manufacture of shadows. Others argue that the shadow is a natural product and by its very nature chemically pure. They point to the advantages of the smoke: the beautifully coloured patterns in the clouds which serve as a reminder of the happiness to be obtained from a fully realized shadow. There may be some merit in this last argument, for on cloudy days the skies above our city are a wondrous sight, full of blues and vermilions and brilliant greens which pick out strange patterns and shapes in the clouds.
Others say that the clouds now contain the dreadful beauty of the apocalypse.
2.
The shadows are packaged in large, lavish boxes which are printed with abstract designs in many colours. The Bureau of Statistics reveals that the average householder spends 25 per cent of his income on these expensive goods and that this percentage increases as the income decreases.
There are those who say that the shadows are bad for people, promising an impossible happiness that can never be realized and thus detracting from the very real beauties of nature and life. But there are others who argue that the shadows have always been with us in one form or another and that the packaged shadow is necessary for mental health in an advanced technological society. There is, however, research to indicate that the high suicide rate in advanced countries is connected with the popularity of shadows and that there is a direct statistical correlation between shadow sales and suicide rates. This has been explained by those who hold that the shadows are merely mirrors to the soul and that the man who stares into a shadow box sees only himself, and what beauty he finds there is his own beauty and what despair he experiences is born of the poverty of his spirit.
3.
I visited my mother at Christmas. She lives alone with her dogs in a poor part of town. Knowing her weakness for shadows I brought her several of the more expensive varieties which she retired to examine in the privacy of the shadow room.
She stayed in the room for such a long time that I became worried and knocked on the door. She came out almost immediately. When I saw her face I knew the shadows had not been good ones.
“I’m sorry,” I said, but she kissed me quickly and began to tell me about a neighbour who had won the lottery.