Freeze Frames

by Katharine Kerr

  o~O~o

  Since he has his work to consider, John leaves Maggie’s place about noon, but not before she promises to see him again that night. When he returns to the house, he finds Nick waiting for him, pacing back and forth in the ground floor room that they use as an office.

  “Where the hell you been?” Nick snaps.

  “Over at Maggie’s. I spent the night with her.”

  “You did what?”

  “I’m not the kind of guy who brags.” John pauses for a grin. “But let’s just say she liked the offer I made her.”

  Nick stares, his mouth slack enough so that John can notice his most definitely pointed tongue.

  “You mean she just went to bed with you?” Nick says at last.

  “Well, yeah. What’s your problem?”

  Nick frowns at the floor, then shakes his head.

  “This is weird, that’s what. I’ve been scheming my ass off, trying to find a go-between. That Rosie’s a real bitch, man, wouldn’t give me the time of day. Work work work, that’s all I do, and here you just go and ask Maggie, and she does it with you.”

  “Go-between? Kind of old-fashioned, aren’t you?”

  “Well, yeah, so what? I mean, shit, some seduction! Pretty low-class, man.”

  “Ah come off it! It worked. That’s all I care about.” John grins, suddenly expansive. “We’re going dancing tonight. Down at the Fillmore.”

  When Nick looks profoundly sour, John laughs; then a sudden thought hits him.

  “Hey, man, you weren’t interested in her yourself, were you?”

  “What? Hell, no! I hate that kind of girl, all clean living and new ideas.”

  “It’s not her ideas I’m interested in.”

  “Yeah, I know. Good.”

  Nick turns on his heel and stalks out, leaving John puzzled behind him. With a shrug he puts the matter out of his mind, collects his batch notebook, and heads downstairs to the lab. On the way down he meets Nameless Girl, coming up.

  “Morning,” he says. “Swell day, huh?”

  She stops walking and considers him for a long moment before she speaks.

  “Is it? I haven’t been out yet.”

  “Ah. Well, it’s a swell day.”

  “Cool. Maybe I’ll go to the park.”

  “Good idea. Say, I’ve been meaning to ask you. Don’t you have a name?”

  “Not when I can help it.”

  Unsmiling she steps round him and goes up past.

  o~O~o

  “Are you still interested in sharing a place?” Rosie asks.

  “Well, gee, yeah, I guess,” Maggie says. “Uh, why?”

  “I just wondered if you were going to move in with Lucky.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “The way you guys have been going at it. What is it, a couple weeks now? If you’re not sleeping over at the house then he’s at your place.”

  Maggie grins and leans back onto one elbow. They are lounging in the sun on the grassy slope in Golden Gate Park, not far from the children’s playground, that the local press has dubbed Hippie Hill. Close by, three young black men, African print shirts open to the waist, play African-style drums in American rhythms. The sound blends oddly well with the carillon music from the nearby merry-go-round. Scattered across the hillside lie women sunning themselves, guarded by large dogs, and young men sitting in groups, including one small circle passing an obvious joint.

  “Well, look,” Maggie says at last. “I promised you we’d get a place together. I know you can’t afford one on your own, and I’ve started teaching the beginners down at the dojo, so I’m getting paid now. I don’t want to back out.”

  “Well, it wouldn’t bring me down or anything. There’s a couple of people at school that are looking for places, too.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. I just need to get out of that house, that’s all. It’s too damn noisy to get any work done.”

  “Well, yeah, it is that.” Maggie watches a pair of blackbirds strutting through daisies. “I don’t know if I should move in with him or not.”

  “He’s asked you, huh? I thought so.”

  “Yeah. I’d move in with him in a minute if it weren’t for that Nick dude. Why do all the cool guys have jerky friends?”

  “I dunno. It’s one of life’s great mysteries.”

  When they return to the house, Nick is sitting on the porch with a couple of dogs lounging at his feet. Every time Maggie comes over, it seems that there are more dogs, and that they all gather round Nick. At least he likes animals—she supposes that this is a point in his favor. She only wishes that he’d pick up after them. Lately it seems that the yard is full of flies. As much as she dislikes her current roommates, she decides that she should just keep her own place, or maybe find a flat with Rosie after all.

  Yet that evening, lying naked and entwined in John’s arms, she says yes without a moment’s thought when, for a second time, he asks her to move in.

  Walpurgisnacht

  “Happy, are we?” Nick says. “You’ve got a beautiful lady, you’re rich, you’re someone in this scene, man. You got it all, don’t you?”

  “No,” John says. “I’m bored.”

  “You’re what?”

  “Bored. You know, like, nothing’s interesting or fun anymore.”

  “You gotta be kidding. You and Maggie have only been together, what? about three months now?”

  “Doesn’t matter. She bores me, too.”

  “But she’s one cool chick. I’ve seen all the other dudes looking at her, envying you. Don’t tell me she’s frigid or something? There are potions for that kind of thing, you know. I could fetch you one.”

  “No, no, no. It’s nothing like that.”

  “Okay. Then what?”

  John considers. They are sitting in the room he shares with Maggie, once the ambassador’s grand reception hall and big enough for a full bedroom at one end and a leather sofa and chairs round a coffee table at the other. On the plain white walls hang two natural-dyed Navajo rugs in greys and greens; on the floor lies a beige and grey rug of beaten felt from Central Asia. Maggie’s taste does not run to the bright profusion of the current style.

  “Well, you know,” John says at last. “She’s such a kid. She’s only twenty.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “So I’m not a kid.” He runs his right hand over his smoothly muscled left arm. “You made my body young, sure, but in here I’m still Professor Wagner and—and well, a grown-up.” He pauses for a twisted smile. “I never realized what that meant, before. All she wants to do is go dancing. She doesn’t even read much. Dancing and karate and long walks in the park or on the beach. Jeez, I asked her if maybe she didn’t want to improve her mind or something and what does she do? She takes up tarot cards.”

  “Well, hey,” Nick says, grinning. “I can give you a young mind, too. It’ll involve losing your memory, but—”

  “Ah, shut up! That’s not what I mean.”

  “Okay. How about some distraction? There’s plenty of other women in the scene, man.”

  “Yeah, but next to Maggie, none of them are much to look at.”

  “Bet I could find you one that put her in the shade.”

  “Yeah?” John snorts in scorn. “Bet you can’t.”

  “You just wait,” Nick says. “I heard Maggie say she’s going to visit her mother this weekend, right? Let’s you and me go on a little trip.”

  “Where?”

  “Just up Haight Street, or at least, that’s where we’ll start.”

  “And where are we gonna end up?”

  “Back on Haight Street. Don’t worry. It’s not time for me to call in our bargain.”

  o~O~o

  Maggie’s mother lives in a split-level ranch style house in Daly City, a suburb just south of San Francisco. Her picture window looks across a small lawn, a wide street, and another small lawn, into the picture window of the house opposite, so the blinds are always drawn in the front
room. Shirley dislikes letting the sun in, anyway, because it bleaches her forest green sofa and the matching recliner chair. The sofa is Shirley’s preserve, while, in those brief intervals when he’s home from his salesman’s job, Maggie’s dad generally occupies the chair, with his feet up and newspapers scattered round him.

  At the moment Maggie sits there and watches her mother, sitting on the sofa and knitting a fuzzy pink sweater. Maggie fervently hopes that the sweater’s for her sister and not for her. The TV flickers with the sound off; the circular needle clicks; Shirley hums tunelessly under her breath. When she finishes a row, she looks up.

  “Your Aunt Linda’s coming for dinner tonight. I thought we’d go to that smorgasbord place she likes.”

  “Sounds good to me, Mom.”

  “You want to drive?”

  “Sure, if you don’t mind.”

  “I thought you might like to try out the new car.”

  Maggie smiles. Shirley smiles and begins to count out another row of the pattern. Maggie picks up a copy of the National Geographic and leafs through brightly colored pictures of Mexico and Turkey, Aztec temples and the site of fallen Ilium.

  “Margie?” Shirley says. “When we go out to eat, put your hair back, will you?”

  “Back where, Mom? Where it came from?”

  “You know what I mean. Braid it or put it up or something. It’s just not sanitary, all that hair flying around when people are trying to eat.”

  Maggie considers starting a fight about her name in order to deflect the one coming about her hair, but she is, at root, too tired to trudge down angry roads. Been tired a lot lately, she thinks. I’ve got to take more vitamins. Shirley waits, her lips pursed for battle.

  “Sure, Mom,” Maggie says. “If I braid it will you help me wind the braids round my head? I can’t reach the back to get the pins in.”

  Shirley stares, then finds her voice.

  “Why sure, honey, that’ll be fun.”

  o~O~o

  Back when every neighborhood in America had a movie theater, the Haight had one, too; no fantastic picture palace, this white stucco cube, but serviceable enough. Since its death by television some years back, it has stood empty, rented out now and again for lectures and political meetings. Tonight a somewhat different group has taken it over. On the marquee black plastic letters spell out on one side EQUINOX OF THE GODS, and on the other, ALEISTER CROWLEY.

  “I thought Crowley was dead,” John says.

  “He is, yeah.” Nick folds his hands piously. “His work lives on. Not that I ever really had much to do with it, you understand.”

  “I thought he was a Satanist.”

  “Oh shit no! He was not the kind of guy I want in my camp. A real weird dude. You never knew what he was going to do next.”

  Under the marquee stands a glass kiosk, where a young woman with roses ringing around her black hair sells them tickets. Since no one’s at the door to take them, they walk into a red velvet lobby, where flowered incense strives to cover the stink of mildew. Nick stops to admire himself in the rank of mirrors behind the now-defunct candy counter. For the occasion he’s sporting a pair of black bell-bottomed trousers and a red silk shirt with enormously full sleeves; into his hair, now long enough to reach his collar, he’s braided a pair of rooster feathers.

  “Real cool, man,” John says, grinning. “Real hip.”

  “Ah shut up! I have my public to think of.”

  At that precise moment someone starts a tape of the Stones, blaring out “Sympathy for the Devil.” With a smile Nick bows to his own image, then opens the doors into the theatre. Waves of scent, charcoal-broiled frankincense and sandalwood, roll out.

  “Shall we go in?” Nick says.

  John hesitates, glancing round. When he looks back the street doors are closed; night seems to have fallen outside, much too suddenly for the time of day.

  “Ah come on,” Nick says. “You only live once.”

  With a shrug John follows him through the swinging doors. The auditorium looks normal enough: a steep sloped floor, narrow aisles, rank after rank of tattered maroon plush chairs, all leading down to a dimly-lit stage. An audience crowds the front rows. Some whisper to each other; some sway back and forth in time to the tape; some pass joints. A few watch the stage.

  On the movie screen, oily blobs of blue and purple ooze behind and over an ever-changing flow of images, mostly of naked women. In front of the light show an androgyne is dancing, or so he seems from their distance. A slender fellow dressed in silver lamé and crowned with a mop of dark hair, he writhes and gyrates to the pound of the Stones’ song looping endlessly. In each hand he holds lengths of silk, striped purple and silver. With little cries he waves the silks like banners, floating up and around and curling down round him.

  “What the hell?” John says.

  “Ah, he’s just warming up the crowd. They’re gonna hold a ritual here tonight.” But Nick sounds suddenly doubtful. “I hope they do it right.”

  “Who is that guy?”

  “You don’t recognize him? He travels with one of the big groups.” Nick frowns, considering the stage. “He’s a jerk, actually. He’s got a shrine to Flash Gordon in his bedroom, and you know what? It’s bigger than the one he built for me.”

  “You gotta be kidding. Flash Gordon?”

  “I told you he was a jerk. Too many drugs. You know, I’m beginning to wonder if that was the right move.”

  “What?”

  “Getting into dealing, bringing you here, all that shit. Well, hell, I had to do something, didn’t I? All this peace and love crap! Shit, what if it caught on?”

  John takes a sudden step back.

  “What’s wrong?” Nick says.

  “Run that by me again, man. You brought me here to make drugs to do what?”

  “Blow the whole scene. You just figure that out?”

  John turns on his heel and strides up the aisle. He hears Nick calling him, keeps walking, staggering forward over flowered carpet, turned endless underfoot. No more than ten feet ahead of him he sees door and the red flash of a WAY OUT sign, but it never comes closer. He feels himself turn hot, feels sweat rim down his back, and all at once he’s panting for breath, rushing hard on the acid he dropped earlier, leaning back gasping in a wave of something very much like lust. When Nick grabs his arm from behind, nails dig into his flesh. The pain swings him round and briefly steadies his head.

  “You can’t get out until the show’s over,” Nick says, grinning. “That’s the way it works, pal. Come on. Let’s go backstage.”

  “Nick, I want to go home.”

  “Ah come off it!”

  “Won’t. You’re supposed to be my servant, man. Take me home.”

  “Ah come on, come on.” Nick turns unctuous, all smiles. “You don’t wanna leave yet. You haven’t even seen the chick.”

  “What chick?”

  “The one I told you about. The one that’s gonna put Maggie in the shade. You should see her, man. Tits out to here.”

  John hesitates, feeling the rush swelling in his crotch. Nick grins.

  “Just come meet her. If you want to go home after you meet her, I’ll take you there. You’re right. You’re the boss. But if you miss meeting Helen of Troy, you’ll be kicking yourself the rest of your life.”

  “What is she? Some kind of groupie?”

  Nick stares for a long moment.

  “You never heard of her?”

  “No. Why? Was she written up in that Rolling Stone article?”

  Nick sighs and shakes his head.

  “The two cultures,” Nick says at last. “C.P. Snow was right. I keep forgetting you were a chem major.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Never mind. Just come on.”

  John allows himself to be led down the aisle. Up on the stage the androgyne has given way to three women, struggling to set up and light charcoal braziers. With a stench of lighter fluid blue flames spurt, sending waves of silver
across his troubled sight. The women, dressed in gauzy white robes that are probably meant to look Greek, jump back fast. The audience laughs and claps. The taped music changes to flutes, bongos, and the whine of an electric guitar.

  “Is that safe?” John says. “Having fires in here?”

  “Probably not. But there’s a sprinkler system.” Nick waves a vague hand at the ceiling. “I think, anyway.”

  They duck through an emergency exit to find themselves in a dusty concrete hallway. Up three steps stands the stage door, but sitting on the steps are a pair of Hell’s Angels, a squat dude, his face half acne, and a tall skinny guy fiddling with a switchblade. The squat dude picks up a clipboard from the floor.

  “You on the guest list?” When he speaks, a spider dances, tattooed upon on his chin.

  “Nick Harrison,” Nick says. “And Dr. Lucky.”

  “Oh yeah.” The guard is frowning at a list of names. “Cool, man. Go on through.”

  Through the door a long corridor leads straight back into darkness. The walls tremble and dance in radiating pulses of colored light.

  “Wait a minute,” Nick snaps. “Something’s weird. The theater’s not that big, man. We should be out the back by now.”

  “Yeah?” John quite frankly has lost track of things like distance and relative space. “Well, whatever.”

  “Damn that little bastard!” Nick hesitates, chewing on his lower lip. “He’s probably too stoned to remember the right words.”

  Nick turns and leads the way back through the stage door. The Hell’s Angels move aside to let them walk back down the steps.

  “Something wrong?” says the skinny guy.

  “Not exactly. Come on, Lucky.”

  When Nick turns and walks back up the steps again, John follows, mostly because he can’t figure out what else to do. This time they step through the door into a comprehensible chaos. A very short corridor leads back to what seem to be dressing rooms; a big door opens on to the actual backstage. Girls dressed in more pseudo-Greek gauze rush round fine-tuning each other’s makeup or stand and stretch out muscles as if they are preparing for a dance. Actors in animal costumes, or in half an animal in the case of the horses, huddle together near a pile of cardboard swords. Through the curtain comes the sound of someone chanting. Gongs ring, drums thud. Nick grabs a man in a leopard suit by the arm.