DANIEL: All right. A hundred a week is good enough.
VOLTA: A month.
DANIEL: You’re kidding. I’d rather devote my attention to investigating my mother’s death than finding out what garbage cans in which alleys are the best to eat from.
VOLTA: Perhaps you’ll find attention sharpened by necessity.
DANIEL: I thought I was supposed to get twenty percent of the truck farm profits?
VOLTA: You are. A hundred dollars a month for fourteen months is fourteen hundred dollars.
DANIEL: Fourteen hundred! It should be more like fourteen thousand!
VOLTA: Daniel, you’ve confused gross with profit. Gross is total income. Profit is the gross minus operating expenses, which include everything from land payments and taxes – it is three thousand acres, remember – down to kerosene for the lamps. It also includes ceremonial expenses, like burning hundred-dollar bills, and instructional salaries – Wild Bill’s, for instance. Plus, of course, the five percent dues you’re supposed to pay as an AMO member. We assume your honor, so take it out at this end to save the tedious and entropic transactions of sending it to you only to have you return it. It makes life easier for our accountants.
DANIEL: Maybe if they had more work, they wouldn’t have time to fall in love with their secretaries.
VOLTA: If, out of some notion of formality, you insist on receiving the 5 percent we’ve withheld, I’ll send it tomorrow. I believe it’s around ninety-three dollars.
DANIEL: (after a pause) No, keep it. Buy your accountant and her boyfriend a wedding present.
VOLTA: That’s very thoughtful. You’re a credit to Wild Bill. And Daniel, do let me know if you turn up anything interesting.
The first interesting thing Daniel turned up was a spirited blond named Epiphany Chantrelle. He met her in City Lights Books his second day in town. She took him home to a communal house on Treat Street, a Victorian three-story. The number of residents on any given day varied between two and twenty, depending on who was in town, or jail, or had just been released, or had left for Nepal, or returned from Chile. Nobody asked too many questions, and an almost self-conscious spirit of cooperation prevailed. There was always something cooking in the kitchen and the dishes got done. A neatly lettered sign over the sink read: ‘We’re all guests here.’ Beneath it someone had added Wild Bill’s familiar phrase, ‘One hand washes the other.’
He slept with Epiphany that first night, after explaining as straightforwardly as possible that he probably couldn’t have sex with her again. And he couldn’t, though he tried several times before she eventually left for Detroit with a drummer from Rabid Lassie. He made love – once – with six other women, but when he found he couldn’t repeat, decided to try celibacy awhile. Perhaps the problem would solve itself.
To anyone who asked, Daniel said he’d been working as a ranch hand since he was twelve, saved a little money, and had come to San Francisco to find out how people could live so close together.
Gathering information on Gideon Nobel proved frustrating and tedious. He couldn’t find anyone who’d even admit they knew Gideon made bombs. He did manage to see the highway patrol report on Gideon’s fatal accident. Gideon’s Volkswagen had been hit head on by a Chevy driven by a drunk pipefitter named Harlan Maldowny, whose wife had left him a month earlier. Harlan was still in Vacaville on the second-degree homicide rap. Daniel thought about visiting Harlan but decided it would probably be a depressing waste of time. It clearly hadn’t been a hit.
He checked out the list of Gideon’s North Beach friends that Volta had given him, or at least those that still remained. They recalled his passionate infatuation with Annalee, and some of the scenes he’d caused when rejected, but nobody thought he was the sort of man who would carry a torch or a grudge for very long.
Daniel’s investigation took a diligent five months, two pairs of shoes, and too many bus rides. And it all checked out pretty much as Volta had presented it until he met Charlie Miller.
He turned up Charlie Miller through Quentin Lime, an art critic who refused to believe Daniel’s line that he was an intern reporter considering writing a piece on Gideon Nobel.
‘First of all, Gideon Nobel was, if not an outright charlatan, the worst sculptor west of New York. Secondly, you’re much too young to be a reporter, even for an abomination like Teen Arts.’
‘I skipped a few grades,’ Daniel explained.
‘Whatever. It doesn’t matter. I refuse to discuss Gideon’s alleged work.’
‘Actually, I’m not so much interested in his work as I am in his life and his particular Bohemian lifestyle – you see, the focus of the article is on different artistic lifestyles.’
‘Well, that shouldn’t be difficult to uncover: He suffered quite publicly and volubly. I’m sure hundreds of people in North Beach alone could still provide you with the squalid details.’
‘What about his series of sculptures with the Mickey Mouse theme?’
‘Drivel,’ Quentin Lime sniffed, ‘pure, witless, kitschy drivel.’
‘It received some good reviews.’
‘Most reviews are written by morons about morons. Sensibility is at a premium in American culture these days.’
‘Did you know him personally?’
‘Never,’ Quentin Lime said icily. ‘We tended to frequent different social circles. Gideon considered himself a beatnik. He and Charles Miller wrote a miserable piece of self-promotion called the Three M Manifesto – essentially the crucial culture concept of “Mickey Mouse Moment,” which they, with childish illogic and grand infelicities of expression, advanced as a beatific state.’
‘I thought the Three M Manifesto had been published anonymously?’
‘I assure you that my sources, while I’m not at liberty to disclose them, are impeccable.’
‘This Charles Miller – who’s he? I haven’t heard him mentioned before.’
‘You’ve probably heard him referred to as High Life. Do you get it? Miller High Life. Bohemians are so witty.’
‘High Life, right, I’ve heard about him – but he’s in Spain isn’t he?’
‘Unfortunately, he returned two days ago, which means that in about a half hour he will be slouching at a back table in Cafe Trieste, holding court to an empty house. I hear he’s now billing himself as the Last Beatnik. Let us fervently hope so.’
‘Sit down, man,’ High Life motioned before Daniel could even introduce himself. ‘You know what the real work of art is, man? Life. Not just human life, but all life.’ He leaned forward confidentially as Daniel took a chair. ‘I used to be a painter. Now I’m the paint. You digging that?’
Daniel said carefully, ‘I think I know what you mean.’
‘But do you dig the tragedy of it?’
‘I thought it sounded fine.’
‘No, man. And you know why? There’s no canvas. They’re all turning into fucking robots out there. Power-suckers. Women are buying electrical vibrators to fuck themselves with, man. Personal appliances – it’s a whole new market. You see, man, Marx got it right for his time, but hey, who could have imagined advertising? A whole industry devoted to the creation of desire! Like we didn’t have enough, right?’
‘I really don’t know,’ Daniel said. ‘I’ve spent most of my time in the mountains.’
‘Go back, man. It’s your best shot at sanity.’
‘I probably will, but right now I’m trying to gather some information on a sculptor named Gideon Nobel.’
High Life looked blankly at a spot just over Daniel’s head.
‘I’m not a cop,’ Daniel assured him.