“The father of our country,” said Plumtree brightly.
Kootie was peering down into the water, staring at the foamy scum on the waves. “He’s gone,” he said.
Cochran frowned at Plumtree to stop her from asking if he meant George Washington.
Mavranos was squinting up at the northern cliff face and then out across the huge tumbled stones. “He’s not corporeal,” he said, speaking loudly to be heard over the waves crashing on the rocks farther out. “That’s good, right? He’s not one of the solidified ghosts, like those ‘beastie’ things your dad had in his van.”
“He wasn’t corporeal just now” Kootie said. “And I think it generally takes a fresh ghost a while to firmly gather up enough…spit and bubble gum and bug blood and plaster dust … to form a reliably solid body. Still, he…” Kootie yawned widely. “Excuse me. Did Crane drink a lot?”
“Drink, like alcohol?” Mavranos scowled at the boy. “Well, he used to. He cut back hard after Easter in ’90—since then it’s been a glass or two of wine, with the bread fish he has for breakfast, lunch, and dinner Why?”
In a fruity, affected voice, Plumtree said, “I enjoy a glass of wine with my meals.”
Ignoring her, Kootie said, “I think ghosts of drunks solidify faster. And then they keep drinking, buying cheap wine with money they get panhandling—but they can’t digest the alcohol, and it comes bubbling out of their skin like sweat. It’s like the habit is what animates them.” He turned a cold gaze on Plumtree. “Do you drink a lot?”
“Well,” she said, “one’s not enough and a thousand is too many, as they say. Why do you ask?”
“If he was your taxi driver,” the boy, said, “he must have had some substance for that. Turning the steering wheel, pushing the pedals. You met him then, and you were the first to see him today. Sometimes a ghost clings to the person responsible for his death, especially if the person has a lot of guilt about the death. Al—Thomas Edison—he had a couple of ’em hanging on him, at one time and another.”
“You’re saying what, exactly?” said Plumtree quickly.
“I’m saying your dad may have had help screwing up our TV set. I’m pretty sure you’ve got the ghost of Scott Crane riding in your head like … like a bad case of lice. And you’re only making the ghost develop faster by drinking all the time.”
Cochran couldn’t tell if Plumtree relaxed or tensed up at this statement; then her mouth opened and she droned, “Sometimes she calls the king, and whispers to her pillow, as to him, the secrets of her overcharged souclass="underline" and I am sent to tell his majesty that even now she cries aloud for him.”
“Valorie,” Cochran said.
“She that loves her selves,” Plumtree said woodenly, “hath not essentially, but by circumstance, the name of Valorie.”
Cochran shivered in the chilly ocean breeze, and he was glad Mavranos and Kootie would be accompanying him and Valorie back through the tunnel to the ruins and the mud-flats and the long zigzagging path back up to the normal-world San Francisco highway; for this was the same thing Valorie had said half an hour ago, when he had mentioned her name, and it had just now occurred to him that the Valorie personality was to some extent a kind of reflex-arc machine … dead.
Mavranos had been nodding rapidly while Plumtree spoke, and now he said, “Groovy. Scott sure picked a well-ventilated head to occupy.” He turned a pained look on Kootie. “But in fact he doesn’t know anything about it, does he?”
“Right,” said Kootie. “Crane himself is … some where else. Wherever the actual dead people go. Somewhere I guess only Dionysus has the key to. This …’beastie,’ this naked thing we saw today, it’s like a ROM disk. Not useless, if we could talk to it, but hardly more a real person than the Britannica on CD-ROM would be. No, Crane himself wouldn’t know about this thing we followed down here, any more than the real Edison knew about the ghost I had in my head two years ago.”
“No doubt.” Mavranos stared at Cochran. “So are you and Miss … Miss Tears-On-My-Pillow coming with us?”
Cochran touched the butt of his revolver. “No.” His heart was beating fast. “No, we’re gonna get a motel room somewhere. You and Angelica can cook up the restoration procedure, and we’ll join you for that. You go get a place to stay, and meet me tomorrow at…Li Po, it’s a bar on Grant Street. At noon. If you forget the name, just remember where we are right now—the street entrance to the bar is stuccoed up to look like a natural cavern. You can give me, then, the phone number of whatever place you’re staying at; and we can set up a time and place where Janis and I can meet you all.”
Mavranos smiled. “You don’t trust us.”
“Somehow I just don’t,” Cochran agreed, struggling to keep his voice level. “I think it must have something to do with,” he added with a jerky shrug, “you all discussing shooting Janis, last night.”
“That’s noble,” Mavranos said. “But she just did one of her personality changes right now, didn’t she?” He smiled at Plumtree. “You’re Dr. Jeckyll, or Sybil, or the Incredible Hulk now, right?” To Cochran he went on, “Any time you leave her alone—hell, any time at all—she could change into her father, who murdered Scott Crane. Do you think he wouldn’t kill you?”
Cochran quailed inwardly when he remembered the man who had spoken out of Plumtree’s body last night at Strubie the Clown’s house; but aloud he said, “I’ll take my chances.”
“You’ll be taking all of our chances,” said Kootie.
Cochran jumped when Plumtree spoke again, but the flat voice was still that of the Valorie personality: “How chances mock, and changes fill the cup of alteration with diverse liquors!”
And Cochran remembered the bottle of wine that the Mondard figure had generously offered him in the hallucinated mirror last night. Biting Dog, or something, the label had seemed to read, in the reflection. And he thought too about Manhattans, and Budweisers and vodka, and Southern Comfort; and about flinty French Graves wine thoughtlessly disparaged at a New Year’s Eve party.
Mavranos had already shrugged and started slogging back down the tunnel; Kootie followed him, after shaking his head and saying, “Liquor, again.”
Cochran took Plumtree’s elbow and led her after them. And all he was thinking about now was the—admittedly warm—twelve-pack of Coors he had transferred from the stolen Torino to his Granada, parked now just up the hill.
BOOK TWO: DIVERSE LIQUORS
O God! that one might read the book of fate,
And see the revolution of the times
Make mountains level, and the continent,—
Weary of solid firmness,—melt itself
Into the sea! and, other times, to see
The beachy girdle of the ocean
Too wide for Neptune’s hips; how chances mock,
And changes fill the cup of alteration
With divers liquors! O! if this were seen,
The happiest youth, viewing his progress through,