“We ain’t dying today,” Mary said. “You’re on drugs, boy.”
She held him to her, cradled him. Wasn’t him she was holding, and she was straight except for the weed she’d smoked. Was Yulie she was holding. Yulie had flashbacks to Viet Nam. He sweated and screamed in his sleep specially when he’d shot up and had a bad trip. Then, all she could do was hold him and cradle him and hope, coming out of it, she could help him with soft love.
Bill reached into the mushroom cloud. All about them was desolation. He reached and felt something soft…he couldn’t understand what it was. He squeezed, softly at first, then harder, and when it got harder, he heard Mary say, “Let go my tit.”
Annabelle watched him with curiosity as he swept up the dead mouse. Then, when they were in bed, out of nowhere, she bust out laughing.
“You were talking to the mouse,” she said.
“The mouse was talking to me.”
“I didn’t hear anything.”
“You weren’t listening.”
“Was too.”
“Was not. You were busy with the tuna fish and we didn’t even eat.”
“We could eat now, I got something for you to eat.”
“I should pop some speed,” Bill said to Mary.
“You should rest a minute. But this damn floor is cold. Let’s get up.”
They went back to sitting on the stacks of cases there.
“What were you seeing?” Mary asked.
“Armageddon,” Bill said.
Mary looked at him. “Explain to me why you do these drugs.”
“What drugs?”
“Drugs. All the drugs you do.”
Bill laughed. There were fish swimming around them in the quarry. Or so he thought.
When they got out, they lay on towels in the sun, a line of naked bodies. They smoked weed and drank wine from the bottles they had brought.
Two of the people there were fellows at the University. One of them was a fourth-year nursing student. Annabelle was an actress, would-be at this point. Bill was just an English major.
Was Annabelle’s idea to switch partners and mess around. That was because she and Bill were not a couple. They were with each other, hanging out and fooling around, but neither of them were serious about the other.
No one else went for the idea so without any sense of abandon she stood up, took Bill’s hand and pulled him up. They grabbed a bottle of wine and some weed and disappeared to a place behind some rocks and at the front of some woods.
“Was the mushroom cloud.”
“The drugs, why do you do all the drugs?”
Bill had no answer. Mary knew he had no answer and didn’t really expect one.
“You with me now? Or you someplace else?”
“I’m in multiple places.”
“You gonna be okay?”
“Why you care?”
“That’s not fair.”
“Life isn’t fair.”
“They killed Yulie. I loved him. They’re gonna kill you. I love you too. Wanna talk about not fair? You can’t even love me back.”
“But I do. I do love you and that’s not the drugs talking.”
“Damn you,” Mary said.
Bill kissed her. But he wasn’t kissing her. He was back in the mushroom cloud only he landed on Fred’s farm in one of the fields where he and several of his friends were sitting in the sun after taking mescaline. They were all couples and all the women had gone among themselves off to a different field. They had taken weed, speed, Quaaludes and wine with them.
The guys had taken about the same with them only in larger quantities. They were passing around the joints and the wine. One of them was telling a story, narrating a piece of fiction he was writing in his head as he went along.
Bill remembered. Richard spoke in cryptic fiction but never seemed to write any of it down. He had a bottle of whiskey he and Bill shared.
By Peter Weiss
and
Coming in a few weeks
