Twice Marge routed them into wrong turns; they had to stop and reverse in an empty shopping center, in a weed-grown cul-de-sac between two illuminated lengths of wire fencing. Hicks said: “I want to get out of this city.” They drove east toward San Bernardino.
“Now what I do that for?” he asked after a while.
“Revenge?” she suggested. “Honor?”
He said nothing.
“Manhood? Justice? Christianity? Hue?”
“I knocked the fucker loose of his hold.”
Marge turned up the knitted collar of her sweater.
“He didn’t like his hold,” she said. “He felt guilty about it… It’s a political thing. Maybe you don’t know about that.”
Hicks laughed silently.
“What I do know… we’re fucked now.”
“Well,” Marge said, “you know me. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“O.K.,” he said.
“Maybe we should split up?”
“No,” he told her, “we ain’t gonna split up.”
She did not look at him when he said it and she did not answer. It seemed to her that if she thought about pulling out even for a minute, she would be done for.
Please, can I go home now? Craven, chickenshit, and bourgeoisie.
Better stay. If you can’t hack it straight up — be a shadow.
Somewhere on 15, in the desert, she had him pull up.
He held her for a while; he was exhausted.
“Want me to drive?”
He took a canteen from the back seat and poured water over his hand and slapped it on his face.
“You don’t want to drive, you want to do up. Anyway I know where we’re going now. I know where we can stop.”
It was grossly uncool doing up. Warm canteen water in the canteen cap, the bag open on the floor, a propane lighter too hot to hold. Marge was being a shadow.
“What we need,” she said, popping in her thigh, “is some commitment.”
When she was stoned it was all terrific. The sun came up over the desert — there was tumbleweed and silence.
“You are what you eat,” she said.
_
CONVERSE FOUND THE BUS TRIP BACK TO BERKELEY wearing. On the way to his house he paused on Telegraph Avenue to look over the machines in a used-car lot. What ever became of him, he reasoned, it was after all California and everything from suicide to civil insurrection required a car to be done properly. Inspecting the price cards, he recalled that he had only what remained of Elmer’s two hundred dollars. In order to cadge more he would be morally bound to write some Nightbeat stories — in order to produce the stories he would have to spend several hours sit ting around smoking dope. He decided it was out of the question.
When he arrived at his house and started up the front steps, Mr. Roche came out on the sidewalk and called to him.
“The lock’s been changed,” he said roguishly. “You won’t get in with your key.”
Confronted with Mr. Roche’s happy smile, Converse considered how stimulating it must have been to smash his head against the pavement. In happier times, he might have found a Nightbeat headline in the reflection.
“I paid your rent, for Christ’s sake. What do you want from me?”
“I’ll tell you what,” Mr. Roche said. “I’ll let you in myself.”
He sprang up the steps ahead of Converse and led him toward the front door.
“What about a new key?”
“It’s being taken care of,” Mr. Roche crooned.
They went up to the second floor. Mr. Roche opened the apartment and stood at the door with such deference that Converse might have been the Cardinal Archbishop of Los Angeles. There was someone waiting inside.
“Here he is, captain,” Mr. Roche said. Laughing gaily, he closed the door behind Converse.
It was a tall broad-shouldered man, slightly balding.
“What the fuck!” Converse exclaimed. Quite involuntarily.
“Actually,” the man said, “I’m not a captain at all.” He pulled Converse toward him. Spun partly around, Converse saw that there were two other men in the room. When he had his balance he saw that they were the men with whom he had watched television on the previous evening. The discovery alarmed him so thoroughly that he tried to force his way back to the door. The tall man pinned him neatly and led him to the center of the room.
“Don’t try that again, creep.”
They sat together at the end of his redwood picnic table. They appeared somehow embarrassed and did not look at him.
The tall man released Converse and produced a badge. Converse, in spite of his alarm, took the trouble to examine it closely.
“Come on,” the agent said.
Converse followed him into Janey’s bedroom. Antheil closed the door and sat in an armchair under the devil drawing. He wore a tweed jacket over a dark blue turtle-necked jersey and he had a robust mod mustache. He looked rather like a sympathetic young dean at an eastern liberal arts college. He looked like a friend of Charmian’s.
“What’s the matter with you? What are you so scared of?”
“What have you got?” Converse said.
At that moment, it was not fear he was experiencing. The sight of Antheil brought Charmian back to him with particular clarity. Something of her honeyed aura clung to the man’s tweed.
Converse was not ready for anger. What he felt was awe.
The agent smiled at him.
“You know what I was just reading? I was just reading your play.”
They were agreeable to look at, Converse thought. Antheil and Charmian. Big and elegant and expensive. “I thought it was out of print.”
“Sure, but we have it. I liked a lot of it I didn’t like the main character though. I didn’t think he was much of a marine.”
“No,” Converse agreed.
“I mean it doesn’t have to be the halls of Montezuma. But the guy was a real jellyfish, wasn’t he?”
He seemed to be waiting for an answer.
“I mean I couldn’t sympathize with a character like that.”
“Not everyone did.”
“I guess you were supposed to like him because he was against the Marine Corps. But if he was against the Marine Corps why didn’t he do something about it? Like refuse an order. Or go over the hill. You’d respect him more if he did something like that.”
“That would be a different play,” Converse said. Antheil shook his head thoughtfully. He looked, not unkindly, into Converse’s eyes. “That character — is that what you’re like? Is that you in the play?”
“No,” Converse said.
“Maybe a little?”
Converse shrugged.
“My questions are crude, huh? I don’t read as much drama as I should.”
He touched Converse lightly on the arm.
“Hey, little June’s a cookie, right?”
“What?”
“I said,” he enunciated slowly, “little June is a cookie.”
“She’s all right.”
“What did she have to say?”
Converse thought about it.
“To me — nothing. I thought she was sort of crazy.”
“She’s got some very bad friends in this town. Did you know that?”
“On some level.”
Antheil chuckled.
“You’re one wise cocksucker, aren’t you?”
Converse tried to brace. There was nothing to brace on.
“You know what I think on some level? I think you smuggled a shitload of heroin into this country.” He did not try to answer. “I think you’re the kind of smart cocksucker who writes a tear-jerk play against the Marine Corps and then turns around and smuggles heroin.”
“I deny that,” Converse said. “No more literary conversation until I call my lawyer.”