my tummy and unfinished in my glass. I wanted rest. I'd left Liclass="underline" a great triumph (I felt tired). Let me drift in peace. Trying to feel serenity I left the noisy bar and, after a half hour's organic wandering, entered another just like it. The beer tasted the same too. I thought of telephoning Jake and pretending to be Erich Fromm calling from Mexico City. I dismissed it as a symptom of loneliness. I thought of yelling, `Drinks on me!' but my organic frugality vetoed the impulse. I daydreamed about buying a yacht and circling the globe.
`Well, if it isn't old coitus-interruptus himself.'
The voice, sharp and feminine, was followed by the fact, soft and feminine, and the recognition, hard and masculine, of the half-smiling face of Linda Reichman. 'Er, hello, Linda,' I said, not to suavely. I found myself instinctively trying to remember what role I was supposed to be
playing.
`What brings you here?' she asked.
`Oh. I .. don't know. I sort of drifted here.'
She edged between my neighbor and me and placed her drink on the bar. Her eyes were heavily made up, her hair a
more deeply bleached blonde than I remembered it, her body no need to speculate about her measurements; her breasts swayed bralessly against a tight-fitting multicolored T-shirt. She looked very sexy in a debauched sort of way and she eyed me with curiosity.
`Drifted? The Great Psychiatrist drifted? I had the impression that you never even picked your nose without writing a
treatise proving its value.'
'That was the old days. I've changed, Linda.'
`Ever managed an orgasm?' I laughed and she smiled.
`How about yourself?'
I asked. 'What've you been doing?'
`Disintegrating,' she said and gracefully swallowed the last of her drink. `You ought to try it, it's fun.'
`I think I'd like to.'
A man appeared next to her, a small frail man with glasses who looked like a graduate student in organic chemistry,
and after glancing once at me, he said to Linda: `Come on, let's go.'
Linda slowly turned her eyes to the man and, with a look that made all previous looks I'd seen on her face seem like
idolatrous administration, announced: `I'm staying awhile.'
Organic chemistry blinked at her, looked at my impressive bulk nervously and took her by the elbow.
`Come on,' he said.
She lifted the dregs of her drink carefully off the bar past my face and poured it slowly down organic chemistry's back
inside his shirt, ice cubes and all.
`Go change your shirt first,' she said.
He never batted an eye. With a barely perceptible shrug of the shoulders he merged back into the surrounding mob.
`You think you'd like to disintegrate, huh?' she said to me and then signaled to a bartender for another drink.
`Yes, but it seems an awfully hard thing to do. I've been trying it for over a year now and it takes tremendous effort.'
`A year! You don't look it. You look like a middle-class insurance salesman who comes once every four months to the
Village for a fresh lay.'
`You're wrong. I've been trying to disintegrate myself. But tell me, how do you go about it?'
'Me? Same as always. I haven't changed since you last saw me. Get my kicks the same ways. I spent three months in
Venezuela even lived with a man for almost a month, twenty four days to be precise - but nothing's new.'
`Then you're failing,' I said.
`What d'you mean?'
'I mean if you're really trying to disintegrate you're not succeeding. You're not changing. You're staying the same.'
She wrinkled her clear, still youthful brow and took a big gulp from her fresh drink.
`It was just a word. Disintegration doesn't mean anything. I'm just living my life.'
`Would you like a new kick, one you've never had before and really disintegrate the old self?'
She laughed abruptly. `I've had enough of your brand of kicks.'
`I've developed new brands.'
`Sex bores me. I've made love with every possible number and configuration of men, women and children, had penises
and other appropriately shaped objects up every orifice in every possible combination and sex is a bore.'
`I'm not necessarily talking about sex.'
`Then maybe I'm interested.'
`It will mean a partnership with me for a while.'
`What kind of partnership?'
`It will mean giving up your freedom entirely into my hands for - well - a month, let's say.'
She looked at me intently, thinking.
`I become your slave for one month?' she asked.
`Yes.'
A middle-aged woman with dyed black hair, sharp dark eyes and no makeup knifed out of the moiling sea behind us,
glided up beside Linda and whispered in her ear. Linda, watching me, listened.
`No, Tony,' she said. `No. I've changed my plans. I may not be able to make it.'
Another whisper.
`No. Definitely no. Goodbye.'
The raven-haired shark fell back into the sea.
`I do whatever you want for one month?'
`Yes and no. You follow a special way of life which I've developed. It gives you a new kind of freedom, but if you're
going to get the kicks, you must follow the system unconditionally.'
She smiled a little bitterly: `I'm not sure I really need any more kicks.'
`You'll learn more about yourself and life in one month than you have in all your previous twenty-five years.'
`Twenty-eight,' she said indifferently. She placed her half-empty drink on the bar and started to move away restlessly
but returned. She stared at the ring of sweat her glass had made on the counter and .then looked up at me coldly.
`Where does old coitus-interruptus suddenly get all the time?' she asked. `The famous half-lay method not getting
good results?'
`I've retired,' I said.
`You've retired!'
`I've left my wife, my job and my friends and I am on vacation for life.'
She eyed me with new respect: as one citizen of hell to another.
`Jesus, you don't do things in fractions;' she said. But then a cold sneer returned: `But I become your slave for a
month? Huh. I know a lot of people who would pay plenty for that privilege. What do I get in return?'
`In return?'
I said, momentarily impressed with the logic of recompense. `I will do whatever you want for one month following
your service to me.'
`After I've been your slave, big deal. What guarantee do I have?'
`None. Except that when you experience your new life with me and my madness, you'll realize that my form of slavery
is desirable.'
`Why don't you be my slave first?'
`Because you wouldn't be an intelligent and imaginative master. I've been practicing this game on myself for years. I'll
teach you first and then submit' `Maybe,' Linda said to me. `But first I bat. For the next twenty-four hours you be my
slave. You obey all I say except what might physically harm you or unnecessarily destroy your professional image.
The same will be true when I obey you. How's that?'
'All right,' I said.
We looked at each other speculatively.
`How do we seal this agreement?' she asked.
`Total slavery is a new path and we both want to travel new paths - that's what disintegration is all about. I'm satisfied
you have the desire and will live up to the agreement.'
`Okay. Have we begun?'
I glanced at my watch. `We have begun. I obey you until tomorrow evening at nine forty-five. For the sake of
anonymity my name is Charlie, Herbie (Flames).'
`Your name is what I choose.'
`Yes, all right.'
`Follow me.'
Leaving the bar, we hailed a taxi and she took me to an apartment - hers I supposed - on the West Side in the twenties.
There, after she had had me fix her a drink, she pulled her knees up under her on the couch and stared up at me with a
look of cold analysis.
`Stand on your head.'
With an effort I awkwardly tried to balance myself on my head. Despite my recent efforts at yoga and yoga meditation
I collapsed, tried and collapsed. About the fifth time down she said: `All right, stand up.' She lit a cigarette, her hand