Summer of Love, a Time Travel Page 7

  “No! Don’t say that, Ruby. The Haight’s not dead.”

  “You don’t know how it used to be. You could walk down the street, and someone, anyone, would come right up and put his arms around you, and he wouldn’t be trying to hustle you. He’d just be there, loving you. He really would. People believed in freedom. Believed in love. There was joy.” She wants to cry or scream, it’s so damn sad.

  “Then it’s up to you and me, Ruby, to keep the Summer of Love alive,” Chi declares.

  “You can sleep on the couch.” She strides off to find him a pillow, some blankets.

  After she settles him in, she climbs upstairs to third floor, taking her glass of Chablis. She washes up, changes into a night gown, then collapses on her big double featherbed, but she’s not alone for long. Her cats nestle around her.

  Could it be true? That a guy his age still believes in the New Explanation? The vision she and her friends once believed in and built their lives around, before things got so crazy in 1967?

  Is Chi for real?

  *

  Ruby wakes, smiling for a change. There were times, after Stan left, when she didn’t want to face the day. Cold dawns when she lingered under the covers, curled up like a baby.

  But not this morning. She is up ‘n’ at ‘em, in spite of the chilly fog. And she realizes: It’s good to have someone in the house. For the first time in a long time, she isn’t all alone.

  Ruby wraps herself in an embroidered silk robe and drifts downstairs.

  Before she heads for the kitchen to brew coffee, she peeks in at him. His boots are neatly stashed beneath a chair hung with his posh leather jacket. Chi himself lies on the couch beneath the blankets, very still. He smiles. Since Ruby climbed out of bed, the cats have discovered him and taken him over, crouching on his chest, perching on his thighs, grooming each other between his ankles.

  “Morning, Chi. Hope you like cats.” Ruby laughs. “They certainly seem to like you.”

  “Oh, we like cats,” he says. “Schrodinger’s Cat is a fundamental of probability physics.”

  We. His distinction of himself and his people from her is unmistakable. Plus this probability stuff again. She doesn’t like it.

  She perches on the rocking chair. “Look here, sonny. Let’s get this straight. Files and records. Things you think you know about me or someone like me. I got hassled by the heat once, but I’ve never been arrested. I’m not somebody famous. So tell me true. What exactly do you mean you’ve got a record of me?”

  “Well,” he says slowly, “there are journalists and reporters observing the scene, right?”

  “I’ll say.”

  “Okay. So someone’s seen your shop and you, and mentioned you in an article that’s preserved in the Archives.”

  “Really?” She doesn’t want to feel flattered, but she can feel pleasure rush to her face.

  “Really,” he says, smiling. “That’s all.”

  “What article? Where, show it to me.”

  “I don’t have hardcopy with me. It’s stored electronically.”

  “You mean like microfiche in the library?”

  “Exactly! I saw the article in the Archives—that’s an electronic library. That’s how I know about the files. And about you.”

  He sounds too triumphant, like his lie is working out better than he hoped. He makes it sound so innocent and plausible, Ruby is instantly suspicious. But his explanation will have to do. For now.

  “Chiron,” she muses. “That’s the dude with the body of a horse and torso of a man.”

  “The centaur, very good. You know mythology?”

  “In my business, I know all sorts of things. And you?”

  “In my business, I know all sorts of things, too.” But his smile abruptly disappears. He frowns, sits bolt upright. The cats scatter.

  He flings back the blankets, pulls up the leg of his jeans. There, on his skin above the edge of expensive-looking socks, are four nasty red splotches.

  “Damn those fleas.” Ruby is embarrassed. “They’re impossible to get rid of, especially in summer.”

  “Fleas!”

  “I’ll get you some calamine lotion.” She dashes to the half-bath off the kitchen, hurries back with the lotion. “I comb the catties every day and bathe them, too, once a month. But that’s California for you. It never freezes, so the fleas never quite go away.”

  “Fleas.” He scratches his ankle. “Did you know that neuvo-typhosa is transmitted by fleas interchangeably parasitical on dogs and human beings? Ten million people died in Asia last year.”

  “Ten million people!” And she prides herself on keeping up with the news. “No, I didn’t know that. Imagine how the cats feel about it.”

  He fusses and fumes, scrambles for his jacket, takes out another of his astringent tissues and scrubs at the flea bites till his skin bleeds. With a motion so swift she has trouble following his hands, he whips off one of his necklaces, detaches a turquoise bead, and reattaches the remaining beads. He crushes the bead between his thumb and forefinger and sprinkles bright turquoise powder on the bites.

  She watches, eyebrows raised. “Take it easy, sonny. A couple of flea bites won’t kill you.”

  “I don’t know that!” he says with a look approaching panic.

  Ruby tries to help, hovering over him, thick pink lotion dripping from her fingertips. His skin is pure white, almost luminous, like he’s lived under a rock his whole life. The calf of his leg swells with masculine muscles, but his skin is as smooth and hairless as the cheek of a baby girl. She can see his veins, pulsing blue.

  He waves away her calamine lotion, extracts from another pocket a little clear square. More of his magic plastic wrap? He lays the square over the bites. It adheres, vanishing on his skin. He attends to himself with an air of expertise.

  “Sweet Isis,” Ruby mutters. His quick motions and the streetwise medical self-administration are unpleasantly suggestive. “Listen, Chi, tell me true. You’re not a junkie, are you?”

  “Of course not.” Offended, he pushes up the sleeve of his shirt and shows her his milk-white arm. No tracks. Nothing but that smooth white skin, completely hairless. Not even the fine down a baby girl’s cheek has.

  “A hemophiliac?” she ventures.

  “Do I seem unhealthy?”

  “I don’t know!” She caps the calamine, suddenly struck with concern. “You’re so… .pale.”

  “I sunburn easily. I stay away from the beach.”

  “Yeah, right, but excuse me, you don’t have any hair.”

  “Sure I do.” He tosses back his beautiful long red hair from his milk-white face. Clean-shaven? In the bright morning light, Ruby sees no hint of stubble on his jaw. Not even a whisker. He stays away from the beach? Uh-huh. His masculine face is a mask of alabaster.

  “Well, I mean on your body.”

  He shrugs, like he won’t answer even if he could. “I like your cats, Ruby, but I can’t risk flea bites. There must something you can do.”

  She thinks about it. “I don’t believe in commercial flea collars. They’ve got too many poisons for a little cat. The poisons wouldn’t do you much harm, though, I suppose. I’ve seen kids on the streets, the ones who sleep with their dogs? They strap flea collars around their ankles.”

  He frowns. “I’ll pass on flea collars.”

  “Myself, I rub my ankles with eucalyptus oil. That keeps the fleas away pretty well.”

  “Eucalyptus oil sounds fine. May I try some, please?”

  May he try some please. She ties her robe tight against the chill, runs downstairs to the shop, and fetches the oil.

  Never saw a man that pale and smooth. Ruby’s seen a lot of odd things in her thirty-five years, but she never saw anyone like Chiron Cat’s Eye in Draco.

  He’s like a… .stranger. A stranger in the very strange land of the Haight-Ashbury. The unexpected glimpse of his smooth manly leg is as startling as if he’d extruded antennae from his ears. What is he? Who is he?

  These
are strange and wondrous days.

  Ruby runs back upstairs, bearing the eucalyptus oil, wondering what on earth she should cook him for breakfast.

  July 1, 1967

  Festival

  of

  Growing Things

  4

  Foxy Lady

  Days vanish, and nights last forever. Reality unfolds, an origami of dreams. The tribe takes Susan in, with love. Magic manifests. The party never ends.

  She crouches behind the driver’s seat in the Double Barrel van, clutching a map of Marin County in her right hand, the side door handle with her left. The band is playing the Festival of Growing Things at the Mount Tamalpais Outdoor Theater. High atop the Tam, they’ll jam with Quicksilver Messenger Service, the Charlatans, Big Brother, the Fish, everyone who’s anyone except the Dead and the Airplane, who’ve got gigs out of town.

  Susan is terrified and thrilled. Over the meadow and through the woods, beam me up, up, up. She’s been tripping with the Double Barrel for what seems like an eternity but, in fact, has been only ten days.

  Things are not entirely a groove this Saturday morning. For starters, it’s freezing outside. How did anyone get the idea California is some tropical paradise? She shivers and wipes her nose on the back of her sleeve. Little needles of pain stab her sinuses in the middle of her forehead and behind her eyes. In those ten eternal days, she’s shed some baby fat on a diet of dexies and occasional bowls of brown rice. That’s cool. But her throat is sore, her cheek dappled with an itchy rash. She’s got to pee for the tenth time this morning.

  Professor Zoom mans the driver’s seat. Hunched over the steering wheel, he is constantly in motion, finger-combing his hair, fiddling with the radio, kicking at the gas pedal, the clutch, the brakes, slapping the stick shift, thrusting through gears the van may or may not possesses. The engine groans hunnh-hunnh-huh! He cackles in his deadpan way and mutters things like, “Seek new life, new civilizations,” and “Grok it, chief,” and, “Thou who did with pitfall and with gin, beset the road I wander in; thou will not with evil round enmesh, and then impute my fall to sin.”

  Wow. Professor Zoom, a wise man? Susan may be only fourteen, but she suspects he’s a raving lunatic.

  When they approach a freeway on-ramp or confront an intersection or sometimes merely mosey up a road with no turnoffs on either side, he calls out, “Hey, navigatrix. Which way, navigatrix?” Pretty soon he’s calling her Trixie, and that makes her mad.

  “Hey Trixie, hey Trixie.”

  “I’m Starbright, Professor Zoom.”

  “Which way, Trixie? Wake up, Trixie.”

  “Why don’t you slow down, Harold?”

  “Don’t call me names.”

  “Don’t call me Trixie.”

  “Which freakin’ way, Starbright?”

  She wins. Five points for Susan.

  Professor Zoom is banged on acid, which is no big deal since he drops some cap, barrel, or blotter almost every day. But he’s driving and that, to Susan, is a big deal. Though no one else in the van seems to think so.

  The van climbs Route 1, a winding seacliff road. One shoulder is no more than a foot of gravel, beyond which the mountain drops away to a foggy valley far below. The morning is nearly as murky as night, worse really, since they cannot see more than six feet ahead with the headlights on, when there is six feet of straight road. Yet the sun somewhere above suffuses the fog with a hellish glare, dim and bright at the same time, revealing nothing and giving Susan a blinding headache.

  Thank God they can’t muster more than thirty miles an hour uphill. She’s been appointed custodian of the map and navigatrix since no one else is fit or willing for the task. Stan the Man and the band pass around joints in the back, and she’s too young to drive the van herself. Too young? Driving was easy, actually, the time Daddy took her out on Christmas Day and let her spin the Cadillac around the May Company parking lot.

  But Daddy’s Cad is an automatic, and this funky old van painted with blue clouds has got a stick shift as intimidating as an algebra equation. Susan forms a plan. If Professor Zoom blows a curve and plunges them off the cliff, she’ll pop the side door open and jump out before she tumbles into oblivion.

  “Fare thee well, oh world of illusion,” Professor Zoom mutters. It’s not the first time he seems to read her mind when he’s tripping. Does he really possess telepathy when he’s tripping or does he only appear to because he claims to? It’s confusing.

  Professor Zoom trips relentlessly. He believes tripping furthers his quest to find the Final Expression to his Equation proving that God is a hit of blotter. On one rare day when he wasn’t tripping, he spoke seriously with Susan about his quest. He told her he saw the whole equation written in the sky one afternoon while he was tripping. But when he came down, he couldn’t remember what he saw. Tears brimmed in his eyes.

  So he must trip, trip, trip until he finds the Final Expression. All who trip are on the verge of a New Consciousness, he says. The New Consciousness will save the world from greed, military ambition, exploitation, and all the evil propelling the Earth to the brink of destruction.

  Turn on, Starbright, Professor Zoom tells her. Change your life.

  *

  They climb the last switchback to Tam Theater, and Susan sighs with relief. Wow, they made it. How high will Professor Zoom be when they drive back down the mountain? She shudders. Maybe she can persuade someone to show her how to use the stick shift.

  The road is jammed with vans adorned with eyes, flowers, hearts, and peace signs, VW bugs, flatbed trucks, a sleek Jaguar in racing green. The Double Barrel van swings around the traffic, smug as royalty. They’re waved through barricades to the stages.

  Susan’s life has changed. In the days after the Celebration of the Solstice, a transcendent awareness lingered, more from leaving home than from tripping. Sitting on the stoop of the house, she’s mulled things over.

  Her life in Shaker Heights, for starters: what a treadmill fraught with fear, frustration, guilt, and insecurity. Why? Her parents are lapsed Catholics. Daddy says religion is the opiate of the masses. He dispenses opiates in his dental practice when he extracts people’s wisdom teeth. What wisdom is he extracting? Why are her father and mother always so troubled?

  What’s the purpose of her parents’ lives? What do they believe in?

  They believe in:

  Grabbing as much money as possible, no matter what gross thing they have to do to get it.

  Paying the bills, but complaining loudly.

  Dial Soap with AT-7.

  Getting drunk Friday and Saturday nights.

  Arguing about everything.

  Hassling Susan about everything.

  The Vietnam War, because LBJ says we’ve got to stop the spread of Communism in Southeast Asia.

  What don’t they believe in?

  They don’t believe in:

  Love.

  Magic.

  Happiness.

  Truth.

  Beauty.

  Freedom.

  Star Trek, which they threaten to turn off whenever they want to punish Susan.

  Then there’s school. Susan burns with anger when she thinks about school. She recalls the time when she was eight, coming inside after recess. The sun was shining, the air fresh and sweet, and she was skipping down the hall. Her third grade teacher caught up with her and seized her arm in a grip like the band they wrap around when they’re taking your blood pressure. That teacher forced her not to skip.

  Why did the teacher do that?

  That teacher was trying to break her spirit.

  But why would the teacher try to break her spirit? So she would become someone like her parents and believe in the things they believed in. And not believe in the things they didn’t believe in.

  That’s why.

  Mulling over life has led Susan to mull over death. She remembers how tripping unleashed her grief, a raw outpouring of horror and sorrow over Granma’s death two years ago. Mom and Daddy took Susan t
o see her at the hospital. The visit was horrible, the worst thing that ever happened to her. Seeing her sweet, pretty Granma in that bright, garish room, hooked up to tubes. Her little body so frail. Her face sunken and contorted in pain, gazing at Susan, tears streaming, saying, “So beautiful, like an angel.”

  Then one afternoon after the hospital visit, Susan returned home from Bexley Park with her new butterfly collecting kit. The saddlebags on her Schwinn were filled with frantic butterflies she’d caught with her net. She was going to chloroform them and pin them on a corkboard, spreading out their wings beneath paper strips. She was parking her bike in the garage and taking out the killing jar when her mother flung open the door.

  “Granma died,” her mother said. Then she burst into wild sobs and slammed the door.

  Susan sat down on the garage floor. She must have sat there for an hour, but her mother did not reappear. Finally, she opened the saddlebags, intent on freeing the butterflies, but they were all crushed. She took the net and the paper strips, the corkboard and the killing jar, even the saddlebags, and threw everything in a garbage can. Later, Daddy yelled at her. The butterfly collecting kit had cost him twelve bucks.

  Susan realizes this now: she is going to die.

  Sometimes she cries, lying on Stan the Man’s mattress. She’s going to die; it’s terrifying and strange. One morning, she woke up with the birds. Stan snored beside her, but everything else in the house was quiet. She padded downstairs and went out to sit on the stoop, tears drenching her face. Professor Zoom materialized. He sat beside her without a word, puffing on his corncob pipe with smoke the scent of burnt chocolate. He handed her the pipe. She pretended to take a drag, passed the pipe back.

  “Professor Zoom,” she said at last. “I’m sad we have to die.”

  “The spirit is eternal.”

  “But our bodies, this body.” She pinched the skin on her arm. “It dies. I saw my granma dying. She was in terrible pain. What will I feel? And then, when the body dies, it’s cold. I mean, it rots, right?”