Summer of Love, a Time Travel Page 12

  Stan moved out when he landed the gig as manager of the Double Barrel Boogie Band. Never was cut out to be the settle-down type, Ruby consoled herself. Four years together? Those four years were gone.

  Now he’s got everything he wants: a bountiful supply of connections and easy girls. In the time since they broke up, Stan got himself a suntan and a singular reputation. He’s become a joke, a caricature of himself. And Ruby? She got herself a silver ’66 Mercedes Benz and a fifty-grand-a-year business. She’s become a respected hip merchant.

  Is that justice? Oh, yeah.

  But Stan still has the power to make her crazy.

  Why does she keep falling for bad dudes like Stan the Man and Leo Gorgon? Sometimes she thinks that Roi, her beautiful lost doomed Roi, for all his failure, had more nobility and purpose. Right on, Starbright.

  Ruby grits her teeth as she turns the corner at Clayton. The kid turns the corner, too, looks down the block and looks up at Ruby. And Ruby sees in the kid’s eyes her self-doubt and pain and fear. It’s like falling down a well, falling into the past. Her past. Was she really that vulnerable once? How can young women bear it?

  Shifting the calculating machine in her arms, Ruby comes to a decision. She will not turn Starbright over to Huckleberry House or All Saints’. She’s heard of rip-offs at the crash pads, folks turning in runaways to the fuzz for sixteen bucks a head. Bounty hunters lurk everywhere during the Summer of Love.

  The kid can stay in the sitting room off her bedroom on the third floor. Chi can continue crashing on the living room couch. Ruby doesn’t understand Chi, but one thing she knows for sure. He’s an aloof and sober young man who observes her house rules and mostly ignores girls. He won’t bother Starbright.

  What vice cop could pin an infraction on her?

  She intends to advise the kid to contact her parents, of course, and go home. That’s the right thing to do. Presumably. But only if the kid wants to go. If she hasn’t burned her bridges. If she’s not getting beat up at home or worse. So many ifs. Ruby can imagine them all.

  But to shelter another kid, a real live runaway this time, and pregnant? Sweet Isis, she tells herself, don’t turn this into a trend. She feels good about it, but not that good. She is not the custodian of the disaffected youth of America flocking to the Summer of Love.

  And with a small shock, Ruby remembers: I don’t take in runaways.

  But you will, Chi said. You will shelter people. Runaways, and people.

  Oh, yeah? Just where did he see a description of her? What article, where? He didn’t show it to her, now did he? Electronically stored. Right. If the article is on microfiche in the library, she should be able to look it up herself. What journalist could have possibly written about her sheltering runaways if she hasn’t done it yet?

  Who is Chiron Cat’s Eye in Draco? And who is watching Ruby A. Maverick?

  *

  It’s a Scene.

  Ruby spies a mob sitting in a circle on the sidewalk in front of the Mystic Eye. On the shop’s door is the sign she left before her trek to the Double Barrel house.

  The mob consists of half a dozen young dudes, plus a girl. The girl’s face is shaped like a frog: a narrow wrinkled forehead, round eyes, a thick wide jaw, a thin-lipped mouth. She’s painted flower petals around her eyes. It doesn’t help, poor thing.

  The frog girl is thrilled to be sitting with so many young dudes. It’s not clear who she’s with, if anyone. But the frog girl is cool. She doesn’t have to be with anyone.

  One dude balances a skull on his knee. Not a pendant or a button, but the real thing, bony eye sockets and grinning molars, minus the lower jawbone. Another dude’s got two large eyes with long curly lashes painted in kohl on his cheeks. His real eyes are rimmed in kohl, too. Then there’s the usual dude in a headband, a dude in a military cap, and an older dude with a graying beard and hair halfway down his back.

  A jug of dago red is making the rounds, plus a huge bong billowing like a smokestack.

  Ruby swoops down on them, breathing fire. She deposits the calculating machine on her stoop.

  “Okay, boppers. Break it up and move it on ‘cause you’re not gonna trip at my door.”

  She may as well be speaking in tongues, because no one bats an eye. They are so far into their game, they neither see nor hear her but continue to laugh and jive and pass around jug and bong.

  Ruby stands at the edge of their circle, tapping her toe. “Listen up! I want to open my shop.”

  What the dudes do notice is Starbright sidling up. She’s got to lose a week’s worth of grime, the white lipstick, which doesn’t suit her at all, and her attitude of abject depression. Still, she’s got a lovely face and a pretty young body and wavy fair hair, however unkempt. Her overnight bag is a red flag: Runaway. Which means she won’t sass, won’t ask much, and won’t put up a fight. In other words—to these hard young dudes roaming around the Haight-Ashbury—an easy lay. Beautiful.

  They do what young dudes do in the presence of young female flesh. Their shoulders square up. Their voices louden. Their gestures broaden and swoop. They start hassling each other, pushing and punching. The headband sitting next to the dude with the skull gets an ash flicked in his face. “Hey, man!” Sweat pops out of unwashed armpits, the stink of male competition.

  Ruby sees a flash of red hair, and suddenly Chi is there. To her surprise, he notices Starbright. He practically cranes his neck. Ruby knows Chi well enough to know he’d walk away from a scene like this, disgust on his alabaster face. But no, he sits. He doesn’t even whip out a square of his weird plastic wrap to sit on. Talk about distracted.

  Ruby glances at Starbright. The kid’s so miserable, she doesn’t even notice the stir she’s causing.

  Here we go, Ruby thinks, watching the young dudes rev up. The usual Haight-Ashbury shuck and jive.

  “Where there’s dope,” says the dude with the skull, passing the bong to the headband, “there’s hope.”

  “Dope gets you through times of no money,” opines the headband, passing to the guy with the eyes, “better ‘n’ money gets you through times of no dope.”

  “Reality is a crutch for people who haven’t got the courage to drop acid,” says the guy with the eyes, passing to Chi.

  “LSD is a psychotomimetic,” says Chi.

  “Say what?” says the guy with the eyes.

  “A mimicker of madness.” Chi doesn’t take a hit and passes the bong to the military cap.

  Starbright’s eyes widen.

  “No foolin’,” Ruby mutters.

  “Oh. Yeah,” says the guy with eyes. “I knew that.”

  “I usually trip once a week,” brags the military cap. “If I went two weeks without acid, I’d grow so much ego, I’d blow to pieces.”

  The military cap passes the bong to the frog girl. She tokes and says nothing. Girls like her in these circles seldom do. The frog girl passes the bong to the elderbeard.

  “I trip,” says the elderbeard, not to be outdone, “every two or three days. Then I wait a day to do body work.”

  “What sort of body work?” asks Chi.

  “You know. Sleep. Eat.” The elderbeard passes to the dude with the skull.

  “Acid,” says the dude with the skull, “raises your powers of integration so that everything is important.”

  “LSD,” says Chi, “lowers your powers of discrimination so that everything seems important.”

  “Huh?” says the guy with the eyes.

  “Hey, man, how come you’re not smokin’?” says the military cap.

  Everyone turns toward Chi. Suddenly tension is thicker than the smoke.

  Chi hesitates, then says, “I went to the Clinic this afternoon. Dr. Smith tells me there’s an epidemic of measles in the neighborhood.”

  “Oh, wow,” says the guy with the eyes. “Measles, man.”

  Everyone in the circle coughs, and Ruby is struck with concern. Chi is some kind of neat freak. He’s obsessed with germs like no one she’s ever known. He�
�s got measles?

  “The health of the body is merely a matter of the mind,” says the elderbeard, handing a tiny foil packet to Chi. “Take this. Owsley white lightning. It’ll do wonders for your measles, brother.”

  “That’s okay,” says Chi.

  “Take it,” says the elderbeard.

  “Yeah, take it,” says the military cap.

  “We want to see you take it, man,” says the headband.

  The frog girl turns and stares. Her greasepaint flower petals shine.

  Chi unfolds the foil packet. He sticks out his tongue for all to see and places the tab of acid on the tip of it.

  The dudes relax. The circle is restored.

  Chi coughs gently. Ruby watches him palm the tab. He does a fair job of it, too, and slips the tab in his jacket pocket.

  Ruby finds herself breathing a sigh of relief.

  Now the young dudes are at it again.

  ”When I’m tripping, I see through solid rock,” says the headband, taking the bong. “I read minds.”

  “I practice magic,” says the elderbeard, on a roll. “It’s easy ‘cause I was a magician apprenticed to Merlin in 1467. I made it with Morgan le Fay.”

  “Wow, you’re an incarnation?” says the guy with the eyes.

  “No, brother, I’m five hundred years old,” says the elderbeard. “I’m living backward in time.”

  “Me, I’m reincarnated,” declares the headband. “I was a Navajo chief.”

  “Shoot, everybody’s been a Navajo chief,” says the elderbeard.

  “I’m from Egypt,” claims the military cap. “I built the freakin’ pyramids. In my past life, I was, like, Ramses the King. And she”—he stares at Starbright—“was my queen. Come on over, Nefer-titty. Sit beside me.”

  Starbright turns scarlet. She hovers behind Ruby, but the pressure of their bloodshot eyes is too much. She shuffles over, sets down her overnight bag, and sits on the sidewalk between the military cap and Chi.

  Chi smiles at her. She totally ignores him. He jerks back, rebuffed. His shoulders square up. His voice loudens. His gestures broaden and swoop.

  Uh-oh, Ruby thinks.

  “Hell with Egypt,” says the guy with the eyes. “I’m from Mars.” He produces a sheaf of spidery drawings and proudly displays them. “These are our machines. I’ve come to Earth to give Martian technology to you Earthlings. How do you like our machines?” he says to Chi.

  “There’s no advanced life native to Mars,” Chi replies. “No life at all, except for some insignificant bacteria we discovered centuries ago.”

  “You callin’ me a liar?” says the guy with the eyes.

  “There wasn’t any life on Mars,” Chi says with haughty authority, “until we terraformed the planet and made the place habitable for humanity.”

  “Terrify the planet?” says the elderbeard. “That’s what we’re trying to do in the Haight-Ashbury, brother. Terrify the planet.”

  The circle laughs warily. Not everyone gets the joke.

  “And we couldn’t terraform Mars,” Chi continues, “until we could finance such a massive public project with a positive cash flow. It took a hundred years of savings and investment just to fund the first year of the project. Financing Mars terraformation was a long-term commitment, requiring long-term discipline. The government lacked the willpower, the people lacked the means. It was up to us cosmicists to get the job done. We brought life to Mars.”

  Chi glances at Ruby, and she stares back, befuddled. What the devil is he talking about?

  “Dig this,” says the guy with the eyes. “He sounds like a freakin’ accountant. I’m a man from Mars.”

  “I’m not an accountant. I’m a tachyporter.”

  “A tacky-poor-what?”

  “My personal Now exists in your future.”

  “I think you’re a narc, man,” says the headband.

  “And I think you’re dirty.”

  Chi slips something from his jacket pocket, flicks it. An orange beam shoots from the tip of a metal tube the size of a Bic pen. Chi aims the beam at the sidewalk in the middle of the circle and twists his hand, tracing a shape. A puff of pulverized concrete rises from the beam’s path. He flicks the penthing again, then tucks it in his pocket. Dust lingers and there, carved in the concrete, maybe half an inch deep, is a shape:

  Ruby cannot believe her eyes. She knows a thing or two about stage magic. She barges through the circle and crouches, touching the sidewalk. She doesn’t even think twice about the wisdom of this till her forefinger informs her the concrete is still hot.

  “What the hell?” she says to Chi.

  He shrugs, triumphant and apprehensive at the same time.

  The frog girl and the circle stare at the carved heart, openmouthed.

  The elderbeard starts to cackle, “Man oh man oh man.”

  Then Ruby sees something else she cannot believe. Chi—the aloof Beelzebub in his high tower—whips out something else from his jacket pocket, reaches over, and—while everyone’s eyes are riveted on his trick in the concrete—presses that something against Starbright’s chest between her breasts.

  “Hey!” She recoils, startled. Her eyes widen again. “Ouch!”

  She slaps his shoulder, pushes him away. He’s holding a small dark oblong stone.

  The circle looks up from the carved heart, slowly taking interest in Starbright’s little struggle. Chi pockets the stone. His face is solemn, intense, faintly ashamed.

  “What is your name, man?” says the guy with the eyes.

  “Where are you from?” says the headband.

  Chi’s got them all so rattled that when a patrol car turns the corner and prowls down the block, the young dudes stagger to their feet. Two cops hop out, hips thick with holstered revolvers.

  “Party’s over,” Ruby commands. “All of you, scram.”

  At Ruby’s nod, Chi hustles Starbright around to the alley.

  Ruby hoists the calculating machine, unlocks her door, and heaves the machine inside. She tosses her CLOSED sign inside, too, steps in, and locks the door but good.

  She stands in semidarkness, peering out the peephole, heart thumping. The cops disperse the dopers. Far out. Ruby waits one beat, two. Are they coming after her? Charge her with instigating a public nuisance? Or is this the night to raid her herb collection and plant a joint on her premises?

  But the cops hang around a minute or two, exchanging a few laughs, climb in their car, and take off.

  Damn! It’s a Saturday night and the street is still packed with paying customers. But paranoia drains her dry. She doesn’t know how much more she can take. She shuts the shop, triple-locks the front door, and dashes upstairs to her apartment.

  Chi and the kid stand on the deck outside the kitchen door. Starbright is nearly as pale as he is. She furtively checks him out. He stares at her from just about every angle.

  “But what’s your real name?” he’s saying in a wheedling voice.

  “That is my real name,” the kid snaps, eyes flashing.

  Uh-huh. Now, Ruby has seen Chi glance at the ladies now and then. And she has no idea what the young dude does with his time outside of the Mystic Eye. But this is the first time she’s seen him stir his royal self over a female person. A pretty child, yes, but what’s going on? There’s something odd about the gleam in his eye.

  Ruby steps out on the deck and lets him have it. “What do you mean by pulling a stunt like that in front of my shop?”

  “I’m sorry,” he says and looks it.

  “You bet your ass you’re sorry, sonny. What if the city charges me to replace the sidewalk you ruined?”

  “I didn’t ruin the damn sidewalk, Ruby.”

  “None of your smart-mouth.” She shakes her finger at him, tosses Starbright’s overnight bag in the kitchen, and slams the door. “You’re gonna help me,” she says to him and climbs down the stairs. “You too, kid.”

  Ruby leads them to the garage, heaves open the double doors, pulls the chain to the lightbulb hangi
ng from the ceiling. Her Mercedes Benz is parked there, plus boxes of inventory and an eight-armed brass statue of Kali she’s not sure what to do with. She picks her way through the boxes to the storeroom. She surveys a lawn-mower with rusty blades. A ten-inch black-and-white TV. A Hula Hoop. She keeps forgetting to dump the box of peyote buttons from Morris Orchards in Laredo, Texas that Stan bought through mail order in ’63. Ah, there’s that old mattress.

  Ruby slides her hand through the loop on the left side. Chi takes the right. Starbright navigates from behind. Ruby has never seen such a worried look on a flower child’s face but, then, ten days is a long stretch for any girl to do time at the Double Barrel house. They struggle with the unwieldy mattress.

  “You help us carry this upstairs,” Ruby tells Chi, “then you collect your things and get out.”

  They stand beneath the bare bulb swinging on its chain.

  Chi looks up, startled. “Ah, come on, Ruby.”

  “Come on, nothing.”

  “What did I do? I thought you liked me.”

  “You got it, sonny. Liked. Past tense.” Her hand slips, tearing three fingernails below the quick.

  “But why? What’s wrong?” Chi steadies his side. “I’m here to help you. Haven’t I helped you?”

  His face looks so pained, she almost relents. Almost. She is Ruby A. Maverick and she tolerates no nonsense.

  “Measles? You got measles? You know how bad measles are? I’ve got a young woman here who is… .” Who is pregnant, she starts to say, but shuts up when she sees Starbright’s horrified face. “A young woman who doesn’t need to get sick, and neither do I. Do you have any idea how contagious measles is?”

  “I don’t have measles, Ruby,” Chi says patiently like she’s being dense, which makes her even madder. “I would probably die from measles.”

  “Then you lied?”

  “I didn’t lie, I implied.” He tugs at the mattress. “They were trying to force me to ingest illegal drugs.”

  Ruby softens. “Yeah. Well. You’d better go to the clinic tomorrow and get treated. Don’t you go spreading measles around here.”