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The record of “Nowhere Nuthin’ Fuck-up.” Suppose the drug had made him hear it. And see the listing on the jukebox. But Mary A
But the two blank records. What about them?
As he sat pondering, an adolescent boy in a T-shirt and jeans bent over him and mumbled, “Hey, you’re Jason Taverner, aren’t you?” He extended a ballpoint pen and piece of paper. “Could I have your autograph, sir?”
Behind him a pretty little red-haired teenybopper, bra-less, in white shorts, smiled excitedly and said, “We always catch you on Tuesday night. You’re fantastic. And you look in real life, you look just like on the screen, except that in real life you’re more, you know, ta
Numbly, by habit, he signed his name. “Thanks, guys,” he said to them; there were four of them in all now.
Chattering to themselves, the four kids departed. Now people in nearby booths were watching Jason and muttering interestedly to one another. As always, he said to himself. This is how it’s been up to the other day. My reality is leaking back. He felt uncontrollably, wildly elated. This was what he knew; this was his life-style. He had lost it for a short time but now—finally, he thought, I’m starting to get it back!
Heather Hart. He thought, I can call her now. And get through to her. She won’t think I’m a twerp fan.
Maybe I only exist so long as I take the drug. That drug, whatever it is, that Alys gave me.
Then my career, he thought, the whole twenty years, is nothing but a retroactive hallucination created by the drug.
What happened, Jason Taverner thought, is that the drug wore off. She—somebody—stopped giving it to me and I woke up to reality, there in that shabby, broken-down hotel room with the cracked mirror and the bug-infested mattress. And I stayed that way until now, until Alys gave me another dose.
He thought, No wonder she knew about me, about my Tuesday-night TV show. Through her drug she created it. And those two record albums—props which she kept to reinforce the hallucination.
Jesus Christ, he thought, is that it?
But, he thought, the money I woke up with in the hotel room, this whole wad of it. Reflexively he tapped his chest, felt its thick existence, still there. If in real life I doled out my days in fleabag hotels in the Watts area, where did I get that money?
And I would have been listed in the police files, and in all the other data banks throughout the world. I wouldn’t be listed as a famous entertainer, but I’d be there as a shabby bum who never amounted to anything, whose only highs came from a pill bottle. For God knows how long. I may have been taking the drug for years.
Alys, he remembered, said I had been to the house before. And apparently, he decided, it’s true. I had. To get my doses of the drug.
Maybe I am only one of a great number of people leading synthetic lives of popularity, money, power, by means of a capsule. While living actually, meanwhile, in bug-infested, ratty old hotel rooms. On skid row. Derelicts, nobodies. Amounting to zero. But, meanwhile, dreaming.
“You certainly are deep in a brown study,” Mary A
“Listen,” he said hoarsely. “Is my record really in that jukebox?”
Her eyes widened as she tried to understand. “How do you mean? We listened to it. And the little thingy, where it tells the selections, that’s there. Jukeboxes never made mistakes.”
He fished out a coin. “Go play it again. Set it up for three plays.”
Obediently, she surged from her seat, into the aisle, and bustled over to the jukebox, her lovely long hair bouncing against her ample shoulders. Presently he heard it, heard his big hit song. And the people in the booths and at the counter were nodding and smiling at him in recognition; they knew it was he who was singing. His audience.
When the song ended there was a smattering of applause from the patrons of the coffee shop. Gri
“It’s there,” he said, as the song replayed. Savagely, he clenched his fist, struck the plastic table separating him from Mary A
With some odd twist of deep, intuitive, female desire to help him Mary A
“I’m not in a run-down hotel room, lying on a cot dreaming,” he said huskily.
“No, you’re not.” Her tone was tender, anxious. She clearly felt concern for him. For his alarm.
“Again I’m real,” he said. “But if it could happen once, for two days—” To come and go like this, to fade in and out—“Maybe we should leave,” Mary A
“I just mean that people are listening.”
“It won’t hurt them,” he said. “Let them listen; let them see how you carry your worries and troubles with you even when you’re a world-famous star.” He rose to his feet, however. “Where do you want to go?” he asked her. “To your apartment?” It meant doubling back, but he felt optimistic enough to take the risk.
“My apartment?” she faltered.
“Do you think I’d hurt you?” he said.
Fof an interval she sat nervously pondering. “N-no,” she said at last.
“Do you have a phonograph?” he asked. “At your apartment?”
“Yes, but not a very good one; it’s just stereo. But it works.”
“Okay,” he said, herding her up the aisle toward the cash register. “Let’s go.”
23
Mary A
“I made that,” Mary A
“This vase,” he said, “will be featured on my show.”
Mary A
“I’m going to have this vase with me very soon. In fact”—he could visualize it—“a big production number in which I emerge from the vase singing, like the magic spirit of the vase.” He held the blue vase up high, in one hand, revolving it.” ‘Nowhere Nuthin’ Fuck-up,’ “he said. “And your career is launched.”
“Maybe you should hold it with both hands,” Mary A
“‘Nowhere Nuthin’ Fuck-up,’ the song that brought us more recognition—” The vase slid from between his fingers and dropped to the floor. Mary A
A long silence passed.
“I think I can fix it,” Mary A
He could think of nothing to say.
“The most embarrassing thing that ever happened to me,” Mary A