Standing up suddenly, Jerry deliberately separates himself from the others. Will it last? this racing feeling of power and release?
Abandoned in their violated circle, the others look sad to him, sitting close to each other but not touching. Sad and isolated. Like unwanted children. Yet the drug has created a superficial closeness. But paradoxically a wall, too.
Shell looks up at Jerry. ‘How do you feel ?’
He sits down again. He doesn't answer. But, yes, this time he's reacting to the drug, he knows with relief. He merely nods at Shell. His body seems to be rushing frantically—speeding without motion. Then he hears his own words: ‘Poor Stuart, man.’
‘What is this, man?’ Cob says.
‘Jerry's our conscience,’ Shell says softly. ‘Or maybe we're really his.’
‘Yeah, ole Stuart,’ Manny says. ‘Hell, he wasn't such fucking bad people.’
‘He just wanted to bugger your ass,’ Cob says.
‘No, he didn't,’ Manny says with conviction. ‘He was just like lonesome.’
Lonesome.
Silence.
And within that crush of lonesome silence, Jerry sees: Strange children in the dark house. He laughs uncontrollably.
‘It's far out, isn't it, man?’ Manny asks.
‘Yeah,’ Jerry agrees.
‘What is?’ Cob asks, smiling.
‘Suddenly I just saw it,’ Jerry says. ‘Like we're really children.’
‘We are,’ Manny mutters. ‘We're the little people.’
‘I was a child,’ Shell sighs. Her sudden laughter smashes the words she just spoke.
Cob echoes her sigh, then her abrupt laughter.
Then silence rocked softly by the radio's mellow sounds.
Silence. And the drugged music. And time—this moment of time—conquered.
Manny shakes his head dazedly. ‘Can you diggit, man? Those two dudes, screwing!’ His mind opens on the earlier scene, springs to another: ‘Ole Stuart…’
More silence.
Time.
The rushing stoned magic wanes.
Jerry feels a heavy disappointment that it lasted so briefly, the sensation of speed, eroding pain.
Cob tries to cling to it: ‘Let's do the acid now,’ he says.
‘No, man,’ Shell says. ‘Tomorrow. There's got to be something for tomorrow.’
Abruptly she gets up. By tacit agreement they know they're ending the night. But Cob remains sitting, as if he dare not yet commit himself to the knowledge of its end. Soon there will be tomorrow to fill, the thought hovers over him.
To Jerry, Cob looks totally isolated sitting there by himself as if determined to stretch the moments of superficial intimacy.
When the others begin to move out of the room, Cob looks about him in bewilderment. His world, shadows. Quickly, like a child afraid of the dark, he follows them out of the house.
Cob in front with her, Shell drives swiftly in deep silence.
They're at Manny's. Before the shabby house, Manny gets out. ‘Later—tomorrow,’ he says eagerly, as if that prospect makes the entrance into his own house bearable.
Before they drive away, they hear a woman's badgering voice.
Shell, Cob, Jerry. All in front.
Then Cob realizes with resentment that Shell is going to drive him home first. Already they're in his neighborhood, a middle-class cluster of houses. Already Shell is stopped before his house.
Jerry is relieved he'll be alone with her.
Cob's house is lighted inside.
Cob blurts bitterly: They're still up, my mother … and her. They stay real late …’ His hand grips the door as if to postpone something inevitable and terrible. Then he says incongruously: ‘Some day I'd like to do so much dope I'd fucking get so fucked up—so ripped and messed that I'd just wander all over the fucking world and get lost and not even know who I fucking am!’
‘There isn't enough dope in the world to do that,’ Shell says soberly. Quickly: ‘I'll pick you up tomorrow morning,’ she tells him, as if to break his abrupt intensity.
And she did. Defiantly Cob opens the door of the car, gets out. He adjusts the purple glasses like a protective shield before his face.
Advancing toward what? Jerry stares after Cob. And so the drug left them exactly where they were before. His disappointment grows.
Shell drives away quickly.
Jerry, Shell. Alone. The moment when he brushed her arm, barely touched her hand in the dark house—he remembers that out of the night's experience now. He tries to forget the other incidents and the coldness of her flesh.
‘Cob can't stand his sister,’ Shell tells him. ‘And he's so bummed out over it that it hangs him up.’ Then she blurts bluntly: ‘Like you about your mother.’
The awareness of being alone with Shell shatters into the stunning awareness of loss and death—love smeared by death. ‘Suddenly she's not here,’ he says in wonder, the recurring amazement of each moment's awareness. Absence has physical dimensions.
‘You can't let it bring you down,’ Shell says, her voice so controlled it comes as a whisper.
Again, he has the feeling that she understands, that she wants to bring him out of the black void. But what can she know of such loss? No loss in the world equaled it.
‘Once you say “No,” it's okay!’ Shell says.
‘How the hell can you say no to death?’ Jerry asks angrily.
‘By being strong—then nothing can bring you down,’ Shell says.
‘By torturing others?’ Jerry hears himself say.
‘We didn't torture anybody,’ Shell says firmly.
Jerry looks at her in surprise. Stuart's terrified face haunts him.
Shell's voice is commanding: ‘We didn't fucking torture anyone,’ she repeats.
‘I thought that's what you wanted,’ Jerry says in genuine surprise.
‘No!’ she says forcefully.
“Then what was it all about with Stuart, Shell?’ Jerry asks.
‘Getting strong,’ she answers immediately. ‘Us and him! He'll be stronger, next time he won't …’ She stops abruptly. She looks at him intently. They've reached his sister's house. ‘You need us,’ she tells him unexpectedly.
He stares back at her. Does she need us? he wonders. The smile on her face stirs echoes of the night's cruelty. Does she really believe she helped Stuart? Or, the thought shatters Jerry, is this her way of getting to him, into his head? Is he part of her search for frantic experience? I won't be, he tells himself. He answers her finally. ‘Maybe, maybe not.’
She laughs. Released by her laughter, he laughs too, mirthlessly. Their laughter is forced, forlorn.
‘Okay, so we put each other on,’ she says, as if to obliterate all seriousness.
‘Yeah.’ Jerry accepts the release.
‘Tomorrow?’ she says.
He wants to break through her shield, to pay her back for her flashing cruelty—and to touch her. ‘Okay,’ he agrees.
‘And don't eat breakfast!’ she calls after him. ‘You've got to be pure for the acid.’
Jerry hears the roar of her departing car. Tomorrow.
He goes into the dark house. His sister is asleep.
Tomorrow.
He falls asleep listening to the soft sounds of the radio, and Creedence Clearwater Revival singing:
‘Someone told me long ago
There's a calm before the storm
I know
I've been waiting for too long
I wanna know
Have you ever seen the rain?’
He woke to the news on the radio, he turns it off quickly. Immediately—the black awareness of death. He dresses hurriedly. His sister is gone—there's a note. He rushes out of the house, anxious. Yes! he needs them!
It's a clear, pure, azure day.
He sees Shell's car approaching. Instantly he feels let down. Manny is already with her and he had looked forward to being with her alone again even for the moments before they picked the others up. Greeting the two, he doesn't let them know he's disappointed; but he sits alone in back.
Before Cob's house a feline young woman of twenty stares at them.
‘That's Janet, Cob's sister,’ Manny explains. ‘He really hates her.’
Shell blares the horn.
The youngwoman looks directly at her, smiling; there's a trace of challenge in the smile.
Shell doesn't glance at her.
Now Cob rushes out of the house. He doesn't acknowledge the youngwoman, who only smiles harder at Shell.
In the car Cob is very quiet behind the shield of sunglasses. Then his anger erupts. ‘Fuck it if I go to work so Janet can go back to school! … My old lady, man, she laid down that she fucking expects me to get a job the rest of the summer. But Janet can sit on her ass all day. Fuck them!’
They drive silently, accepting Cob's outrage; driving on Mesa toward the desert, which gleams white in the gold heat and azure sky.
Soon the mood among them relaxes, and they're laughing.
‘We're going to trip at Shell's place,’ Manny is explaining to Jerry. ‘Her old lady's at the beauty farm, and her old man's in Europe, so we like can have the place to ourselves cause Shell told the maids to split! And wait till you see her pad, man—outasite!’
Off Mesa now. Up. Along new elaborate houses invading the pristine desert. Houses a studied distance from each other in nervous luxury.
Now they're in the driveway of a sprawling white house. A brilliant glassed breezeway like a huge square diamond connects two sections of it. A rock and cactus garden courts the desert's natural beauty. In one garage there's a Cadillac like a haughty black animal; a Mercedes, sullen, aloof, is in another.
They enter the sprawling house.
Shell looks at it with contempt.