“‘S’matter, you see something scary?” He finally looked over his shoulder directly at me. “Or just not what you expected you were gonna see?”
“That can be scary,” I said, trying to sound light. “The unexpected.”
“That’s for sure.” He swiveled around on his stool and studied me. I was still so startled that I couldn’t imagine what he was seeing. I looked over at the stage where the Loopy Louies and the Latinettes had been, but they were gone. Now Larry followed my gaze. “What you lookin’ for?”
“I — well, I just saw the Loopy Louies and the Latinettes — they were — ”
“You saw them?” Larry said, and laughed incredulously. “You fuckin’ saw them?”
I floundered for a few moments. “Was it wrong to look?” I asked him finally.
“Where did you fuckin’ look that you fuckin’ saw Loopy Louies and Latinettes?”
I gestured at the stage area, which was a lot emptier than I thought it had been a few minutes ago. Now even the last of the microphone stands were gone.
Larry shook his head and laughed some more. “Tell me you heard that, Jerry,” he said, smoothing the back of his hair. Very greasy hair, not terribly clean.
“I heard it,” the bartender said obediently. “Now tell me you paid this joker to come in and say that in fronna me and the girls.”
Larry shook his head. “Man, oh, man. Have I ever seen you before, joker?” He stared at me expectantly.
I looked over my shoulder at the bartender and the blonde waitress. The dark-haired one joined them behind the bar; she looked extremely nervous. “Me? No, no, I guess not.”
“OK. NOW, you wanna explain how you happened to see something that’s only in my head?” Larry took a last drag on the cigarette and smashed it out in the ashtray.
“You’re Little Latin Larry,” I said, not getting it. “Little Latin Larry and His Loopy Louies — ”
“Stop it,” said the dark-haired waitress, sounding angry.
“ — His Luscious Latinaires,” I said, turning toward her briefly, “and His — ”
“Stop it!” she shouted.
“ — Lascivious Latinettes?”
“You oughta be strung up.” The dark-haired waitress glowered at me and then stalked off to clean some other tables.
I looked at Larry questioningly. He just kept smiling a funny little amazed smile. “Little Latin Larry,” he said, and it sounded as if he were savoring each syllable. “Jesus H. I’m just glad you had the courtesy to come in here and say it where someone else could hear you.”
“Why?” I looked at the bartender and the blonde waitress. The bartender had this sort of bored expression. Sort of bored and sort of skeptical, as if he thought I was lying about something. The waitress just looked mildly unhappy.
“Because maybe, just maybe,” he said slowly, “it means that there’s some world somewhere, even some time, where it’s all true.”
I stared at him for a moment and then looked at the bartender again for some kind of sign or explanation. He looked past me to Larry. “You ask me, I think this’s a setup from your ex-wife. She wants to see if you’re still taking your medicine. You are still taking your pills, aincha?”
“Sure,” Larry said, and laughed some more. “Hell, I ain’t the one seein’ Loopy Louies and Latinettes and all that.” He jerked his thumb at me. “Right here, this is the prize-winner tonight.” He leaned back and looked at me out of the corners of his eyes. “Some people think insanity’s contagious. You think maybe you drank outta the same glass I did but old Jerry here didn’t wash it too good in between? Or maybe it was a toilet seat….”
I admit it: at that point, I panicked and drained the whole experience.
OK, it hit my secret fear — that I could possibly catch someone’s delusion or psychosis. Don’t say it’s not possible, because it’s happened. It’s on record, it’s documented. I don’t knowingly go near anyone with a psychosis, I don’t care how good the hallucinations are. If I want to hallucinate, I take drugs, the way Nature intended.
Anyway, I would have poured the whole batch down the drain except I couldn’t, legally, since it wasn’t my property. And since Ola and her sidekick knew the batch existed, I didn’t want to force them into the position of having to choose between testifying that I had disposed of the Larry people’s property or committing perjury and saying that it hadn’t come together. So I gritted my teeth and requested a private meeting with Carola.
She came down to my editing room and things got ugly right away. How dare I accuse her of being crazy and I told her that I wasn’t, just that her ancestor was prone to delusions and the memory had come through extra strong.
Well, that couldn’t possibly be true, she insisted, raising her voice some more, because all the rest of the band was there, including a member of the audience, and how did I explain that?
Tainted samples, I said, forcing myself not to cringe (I really was afraid she was going to start throwing things at me). Her memory factors infected theirs, much like a virus —
Those were the last words she wanted to hear from me. I’m not sure what she said because it’s hard to understand anyone at that volume. There were lots of threats, accusations of jealousy and theft and incompetence on my part, not to mention my blood being tainted by my ancestors’ mating with mutant something-or-others during the period following the Collapse.
I know better than to argue, or even to try to reason with someone in that state. I stepped back and told her she was welcome to her property, I didn’t want it. She gathered it all up in what I think they used to call “high dudgeon.” I’m not quite sure of the term, but I am sure of this: she knew. She knew and she had known probably all along. The anger was to cover the fear of the news getting out, that there was no such band, no such people, no such memory, no such night, ever. Not even theoretically; not even hidden from us by the scarcity of hard information about the world as it was before the Collapse. People get massively harsh about fraudulent pasts and faked memories; the court might let you off with merely a ruinously gargantuan fine and a slap on the wrist, but you’re finished professionally. You can try to go into fiction, but you’ll just get turned away — no one will trust you any more than they would if you had committed plagiarism.
I suppose at that point, I should have felt like I was facing a capital ethical dilemma. After talking it over with Ola and the sidekick, we all decided we didn’t have to face anything at all. We’d all just keep our mouths shut. I wasn’t a doctor, I couldn’t diagnose a medical condition. All I’d done was make a judgment call and canceled the contract with them. They were free to go and I hadn’t even gotten paid for what work I had done. I figured after that, she’d either find an editor who didn’t mind massaging her data, or someone else would tell her she had a naked emperor, so to speak, in her blood.
But, of course, everyone else she approached must have told her the truth about Little Latin Larry — or rather, that they knew the truth. I don’t know how many other people she approached. Maybe only one. Or maybe none; maybe she really became afraid of someone finding out after I did.
I don’t know who did the actual final cut. I suspect it was Carola herself. With so much experience in remakes, she must have picked up enough skills to get by, especially when the work was actually already done for her. Because I know, from what I’ve seen and heard, that The Return of Little Latin Larry is my own rough edit, with some resolution cleaned up. I’ve heard the soundtrack, and I know that’s my re-mastering. I recognize the way Larry sometimes pops his Ps into the microphone.