John laughed, and then frowned at his potatoes.
“Jesus,” he said, “what the hell is that?” He held a clump aloft for all to admire.
Somebody said, “A hairpin.”
“A hairpin, Jesus,” John said. “I could get lockjaw or something from eating this crap. Look at it, it’s rusty.”
I’d had enough to eat right then. “Heard from Musty?” I asked.
John looked up sharply. “Any reason why I should’ve?”
I had to play this one right. I didn’t want to keep anything from John but then again I didn’t want him to fuck me up, which he undoubtedly would if he had time to do so. All I said was, “No. Nothing special.”
John dropped his potatoes and lit up a smoke. “Okay,” he said, “what’s the big secret?”
“No secret.”
“Well, then, what’s all this garbage about Musty? C’mon, Peter, I’ve known you too long to just think you’re wondering out loud when you drop something like that.”
“Like what? Christ, you’re as paranoid as all these other creeps.” I spread an arm out to encompass the dining hall, which was filled with guys studying over their meals. “You’ve just got a different angle on the paranoia, that’s all.”
“Uh-huh.” John nodded grimly. He blew some smoke in my direction. “Then who were you calling after the exam yesterday? Not Musty, by any chance?”
I had to laugh. John managed to have a finger on anything that went down.
“No, not Musty. I was talking to a chick.”
John put his smoke out and laughed heavily. “A chick, eh? Not a California honey, by any chance? Yes?” He sat back and sipped at his coffee. “Far out,” he said, “far fucking out.”
“What’s far out?”
“Nothing. It just makes sense, why you’ve been blowing your mind ever since you got back here two days ago. And me thinking it was the climate.” He laughed again. “Far fucking out.” He looked suddenly serious and leaned over to me, across the table. “What’d she tell you about Musty?”
“I told you already. Nothing.”
“Then what’s this riff all about?”
“I was just wondering if you had any more trips lined up, in the near future.”
“California trips?”
“No, mescaline trips.”
“What’s wrong with you, you got blue balls after a couple of days around this lady?”
“You might say that. You might just say I want to see her. What difference does that make? You got any trips lined up, or don’t you?”
John searched his coat for another butt. “Not in the near future. Not till after exams, I’d say.” He cocked his head and said, “But even if I had a run lined up, you wouldn’t be able to do it…” letting the statement wander off into a question. I knew what he was asking.
“Aw, hell,” I said, “I could probably work something out.”
John took a long drag on his smoke and nodded. “That’s good,” he said. “That’s good to hear you say that, Pete, ’cause I wouldn’t want you going around with some kind of wild misconception in your head about me letting a chick run the dope in.”
I searched around for another smoke and thought that one over. I’d known he would say that—John never let chicks in on his deals. It was a completely bullshit prejudice, because chicks were cooler for a run, if anything, than a long-haired dude could ever be. Most big dealers on the Coast, in fact, used only chicks—but I wasn’t on the Coast and I wasn’t talking to a Coast dealer. I was talking to John.
“Supposing,” I began, “supposing you couldn’t get anyone around here to do the run? Would you consider letting her do it then?”
John looked pained. “Peter,” he said, “you don’t seem to understand. You know how I feel but you don’t seem to understand. Well, I’ll tell it to you all over again.” He paused and then said, very deliberately and carefully, “Chicks… fuck… up.” He looked at me.
“I was just wondering.”
“Well, you can stop wondering.”
“Even if you couldn’t get anyone around here, and you had a run set up and a courier was all you needed, you wouldn’t let her do it?”
John was quiet when he said, “Never. Never, never, never. I’d change the run, I’d can the run—Christ, I’d even do it myself. But I’d never count on a chick to get anything through. Chicks fuck up.”
I shrugged, and stood up. There wasn’t anything else to say. I knew that if Musty called in a few days and told John that he only had a day or two to get somebody out to San Francisco to make a quick run before he split for Oregon, John would bust his ass to get somebody. What I’d been hoping was that John would at least admit the possibility of letting Sukie be that somebody. But he wouldn’t, so I had to get to her. There was no other way.
31
I NEEDED A HUNDRED AND sixty bucks to get to the Coast on a plane. I wouldn’t have needed anything to hitch, but I didn’t have the time for that. So it was all or nothing, and after a few minutes in front of the Student Union Jobs board I began to think it was going to be nothing. I could get two-fifty an hour translating Sanskrit into German for Professor Popcock, which wasn’t exactly my field, or I could get two-eighty bartending on weekends. But I’d already turned down a few of the bartending boys’ jobs in order to make the run, and they took an exceedingly dim view of those who didn’t exercise the right to work when it was waved in their faces. I could go in there bleeding right now, on my knees, begging for a gig, and they’d tell me to beat it. That left a kitchen job as the only real alternative, at one-eighty an hour, which would be two fifty-hour weeks, and I was just about to run down and sign up when I noticed a little note saying that students couldn’t work more than twenty hours a week. Far out, that was about all I had to say.
I went out into the courtyard to take a walk and think.
Once outside, I met Herbie, who was going to the library. I walked along with him, and asked him how I could make a lot of money in a short time. He said, “Eye Tee Gee.”
“What?”
“Get yourself twenty shares of ITG. In six weeks, you’ll be rich.”
“What?”
“ITG,” he said patiently. He had learned, in his seventeen years, to be patient. “Over the counter. It’s really taking off.”
“How much is twenty shares?”
“Two hundred dollars,” Herbie said.
I said I didn’t have it.
And Herbie, to my dismay, said he didn’t know any other way.
“Are you sure?”
Herbie sighed. “Peter,” he said, “you’re talking about legal bread, right?”
“Yeah. Legal bread.”
“Well, that’s a problem, making money fast and legally,” Herbie said, as if it was something I really should have learned a long time ago.
32
I WANDERED AROUND THE NEXT two days, looking for jobs and asking people what they knew, but nothing turned up. I was just starting to think that hitchhiking wasn’t such a bad idea when I got the note from the Senior Tutor. That was the end. I knew what he’d want. He’d want to tell me that I’d screwed the economics exam—probably royally—and that if I continued to screw things he wasn’t going to be able to help me very much, except to plead my case before the Ad Board and try to keep them from booting me out. Which was cool, his concern and all, but that wasn’t really what went down at a meeting with the Senior Tutor. Those meetings consisted mainly of him telling you how much he worried about you and your work and your habits, which was a drag, and they always ended with him asking you a lot of nosy questions he didn’t really want the answers to, but somehow felt compelled to ask. His field was the minor poets of the eighteenth century, that was the kind of dude he was. Well, the hell with it. I had to go and see him.