That’s right, officer, Lochmyer Laboratories. Good company all around. I own stock in it myself. What tip, hell? Hey, you don’t have to thank me. Beg pardon? A tip for me? Well, now that you mention it, there probably are better neighborhoods for a man such as myself to be frequenting. You’ve got my promise that you won’t be seeing me around here anymore. I appreciate that, officer. I’ll remember. And you remember Loch Lab. Right, then. ‘Night to you.
Wait for his car to turn the corner, Rosie, before getting in mine. We’ll let the lawman maintain the illusion that his warning has set me straight with regard to the dangers of this seamy area and your seamy self. He looked at you like an old friend. Could have been trouble for both of us. You’re a smart girl to have sat at my table tonight. I think my briefcase impressed him, don’t you? Okay, we can get in the car now.
Yes, I did get us out of a touchy situation with that cop. But I hope when you just mentioned my BS apropos of that scene with the policeman, you had in mind the Bachelor of Science degree I received when I was twelve years old. This is your last warning about unclean idioms. Now roll down your window and let’s air your words out of this car as we drive. And as far as my deceiving that fine officer goes—I actually didn’t. No, I’m not really a stockbroker. I told you the truth about being in chemicals. And I told that mole-eyed patrolman the truth when I advised him to put his money in Lochmyer Lab, for we are about to market a new mind medicine that should make our investors as pleased as amphetamine addicts at an all-night coffee shop. How did I know he owned stock in the first place? That is strange, isn’t it? I guess I was just lucky. This is just my lucky night—and yours too.
You don’t much like the policía, do you, Rrrosa? Yes, of course I can blame you. Without them, where would all of us outlaws be? What would we have? Only a lawless paradise…and paradise is a bore. Violence without violation is only a noise heard by no one, the most horrendous sound in the universe. No, I realize you don’t have anything to do with violence. I didn’t mean to imply you did. Yes, I can drop you off back at the bar when we’ve finished at your apartment. Of course.
Right now let’s just enjoy the ride. What do you mean “so what’s to enjoy”? Can’t you see we’re nearing the brewery? Look, there’s its beer-golden sign, advertising the alchemical quest to transmute base ingredients into liquid gold. Alchemical, Rosetta. And I’m not referring to that cheapjack firm of Allied Chem. Just look around at these caved-in houses, these seedy stores, each one of them a sacred site of the city, a shrine, if you will. You won’t? You’ve seen it all a million times? A slum is a slum is a slum, eh? Always the same. Always?
Never.
What about when it’s raining and the brown bricks of these old places start to drip and darken? And the smoke-gray sky is the smoky mirror of your soul. You give a lightning blink at a row of condemned buildings, starkly outlining them. And do they blink back at you? Or does that happen only in another type of storm, when windows are slyly browed with city-soiled clumps of snow. Was it under such conditions that you first thought of all the cold and dark places in the universe, all the clammy basements and gloomy attics of creation? Bleak locales you’d rather not think about, but at the time couldn’t keep from your mind. Another time you could have. No two times are the same. No two lives are alike. We’re like aliens to one another. And when you’re traveling through these streets with some stranger, you have to contend with how they see things, the way you now must deal with my 20-20 visions and I with your blasé near-sightedness. Are these the same gutted houses you saw last night, or even a second ago? Or are they like the fluxing clouds that swirl above the chimneys and trees, and then pass on?
The alchemical transmutations are infinite and continuous, working all the time like slaves in the Great Laboratory. Tell me you can’t perceive their work, especially in this part of the city. Especially where the glamour and sanity of former days wears a new mask of rats and rot, where an old style is transformed by time into a parody of itself which no man could foresee, where greater and greater schisms are forever developing between past shapes and future shapelessness, and finally where the evolution toward ultimate diversity can be glimpsed as if in a magic mirror.
This is, of course, the real alchemy, as you’ve probably gathered, and not that other kind which theorized that everything was struggling toward an auric perfection. Lead into gold, lower matter into higher spirit. No, it’s not like that. Just the opposite, in point of fact. Please don’t put that hunk of gum in your mouth. Throw it out the window, now!
As I was saying, everything is just variation without a theme. Oh, perhaps there is some unchanging ideal, some sturdy absolute. Scientifically, I suppose, we should allow for that improbability. But to reach that ideal would mean a hopeless stroll along the path to hypothetically higher worlds. And on the way our ideas become feverish and confused. What begins as a solitary truth soon proliferates like malignant cells in the body of a dream, a body whose true outline remains unknown. Perhaps, then, we should be grateful to the whims of chemistry, the caprices of circumstance, and the enigmas of personal taste for giving us such an array of strictly local realities and desires.
No, I didn’t always think this freaky, as you put it. But I can tell you almost precisely when I began to see the truth of things. I was a callow freshman in college, even callower than most, given my precocious progress. One day something seemed to change in my chemistry, as I like to think of it. It was quite horrible for a while. Eventually, though, I realized that the alteration was from a false chemistry to a true one. Yes, that’s when I decided to pursue the subject as my career, my calling. But that’s a story in itself, and here we are now at your apartment tower.
Please don’t slam the car door the way you were about to. No need to draw attention to our presence. You’re right, there’s really no one around to be attentive anyway. The local street vermin seem to have withdrawn into their burrows. Oops, almost forgot my briefcase. Wouldn’t want to leave it unattended in this neighborhood, isn’t that right? You’re smiling about my briefcase, aren’t you, Maryrose? You think you know something again. Well, go ahead and think that if you like. Everybody likes to think he has inside information. That policeman, for example. You could see how pleased he was to instantly become a man of knowledge, even if it’s only by way of inside information about some stock on the market. Everybody wants to know what’s what, scientia arcana, the real dope.
Maybe I do have some dope in my case. Then again, maybe it’s just an empty prop, a leather vessel with a void inside. But you already know that I work for a dope company. You were thinking that, weren’t you? Well, let’s go up to your place and find out.
Cozy little lobby you have here. But I’m afraid the atmosphere is doing strange things to that pot of ferns over there. Of course I know they’re artificial. Which only means that Nature, one of the Great Chemists, made them at one remove, that’s all. Here, this elevator seems to be working, though a little noisily. After you, Lady R. The twenty-second floor if I remember right, and I always do. Uh, I believe there’s to be no smoking in this elevator, if you don’t mind. Thank you. And here we are. I’ll bet your place is down this way. See, I am always right. Isn’t that funny? Yes, I’m coming, I’m coming.
Well, your apartment has a very nice door. No, you’re wrong. There’s no such thing as “just like all the others.” Yours is quite different, can’t you see that? And tonight your door is visibly different from any other time you’ve seen it. I’m not just being egoistical about my unique presence at your threshold this evening. Do you see what I mean? Well, I’m sorry if you feel I’ve been lecturing you all night. I was a pedagogue once, which I suppose is obvious. It’s just that there are some important things I must impart to you, my little rosebud, before we’re through. Okay? Now, let’s go in and see what kind of view you have from up here.
Keep the ceiling light off please, so that I don’t have to look at a double of this sleazy room reflected in your window
. One of your dim lamps should give us all the light we need. There, that’s fine. You do have a good view of the city from this height. I think it’s perfect, not too far up. I live in a mere two-story house myself and being up here makes me dizzily realize what I’m missing. From this lofty keep I could nightly look out upon the city and its constant mutations. A different city every night. Yes, Rosie, I have to say you’re right—sarcastic tone and all—the city is indeed also a vessel. And it’s one that obediently takes the shape of very strange contents. The Great Chemists are working out unfathomable formulae down there. Look at those lights outlining the different venues and avenues below. Look at their lines and interconnections. They’re like a skeleton of something…the skeleton of a dream, the hidden framework ready at any moment to shift its structure to support a new shape. The Great Chemists are always dreaming new things and risking that they may wake up while doing so. Should that ever happen you can be assured there will be hell to pay.
My imagination? No, I don’t think it’s vivid at all. On the contrary, it’s not nearly potent enough. My poor imaginative faculties have always needed…extensions. That’s why I’m here with you. You’re smiling again, or rather you’re smirking. Funny word, smirk. Rather like an extraterrestrial surname. Simon Smirk. How do you think that sounds?
Yes, maybe we are wasting too much time. But of course we’ll have to endure just one more delay while I rummage around in my briefcase and remove what you’ve been waiting for. So you hope it’s good dope, eh? Well, you’ll have a chance to find out, since you seem so anxious to become a vessel yourself for my chemicals. No, stay seated just where you are please. There’s no reason for you to glimpse every elixir I’ve got in here. The only thing I have that might interest you is secured in one squat little container screwed tightly closed with a black cap…and here it is!
Yes, it does look like a bottle of powdered light. That’s very observant. What is it? I thought you would know by now. Here, hold out your hand and you can have a closer look. Just a little mound sprinkled in the middle of your sweaty palm, about one brainful to be precise. Doesn’t it look like pulverized diamonds? It glitters, yes it does. I don’t blame you for thinking it might be dangerous to snort, or whatever else you imagine you’re supposed to do with it. But if you watch my magic dust very closely you’ll see that you don’t have to do anything at all.
See, it dissolved right into you. Disappeared completely, except for a few stray grains. But don’t worry about them. Calm down, the burning will soon go away. There’s no point in trying to rub the drug off your hand. It’s in your system now. And it certainly won’t help to get excited, nor are threats of any use to you. Please remain seated in that chair.
Can you feel any effects yet? I mean besides the fact that you’re no longer able to move your arms or legs. That’s just the beginning of this nightly entertainment. The opalescent substance you’ve just absorbed has now made possible a very interesting relationship between us, my red red rose. The drug has rendered you fantastically sensitive to the shaping influence of a certain form of energy, namely that which is being generated by me, or rather through me. To put it romantically, I’m now dreaming you. That’s really the only way I can explain it that you might understand. Not dreaming about you, like some old love song. I’m dreaming you. Your arms and legs don’t respond to your brain’s commands because I’m dreaming of someone who is as still as a statue. I hope you can appreciate how remarkable this is.
Damn! I suppose that was your attempt to scream. You really are terrified, aren’t you? Just to be safe, perhaps I’d better dream of someone who hasn’t anything to scream with. There, that should do it. You do look strange, though, like that. But this is only just the beginning. These minor tricks are child’s play and I’m sure don’t impress you in any way whatever. Soon I’ll show you that I can really make an impression, once I put my mind to it.
Is there something in your eyes? Yes, I can see there is. A question. Right now you would like to ask, if only you still had the means to do so, what’s to become of old Rosie? It’s only fair that you should know.
We are presently coming into perfect tune with each other, my dreams and my dream girl. You are about to become the flesh and blood kaleidoscope of my imagination. In the latter stages of this procedure anything might happen. Your form will know no limits of diversity as the Great Chemists themselves take over. Soon I will put my dreaming in the hands of a prodigious insurrection of entity, and I’m sure there will be some surprises for both of us. That’s one thing which never changes.
Nevertheless, there is still a problem with this process. It’s not really perfect, certainly not marketable, as we say in the pill business. And wouldn’t that be boring if it were perfect? What I mean to say is that under the stress of such diverse metamorphoses, the original structure of the object somehow breaks down. The consequence of this is simple—you can never be as you once were. I’m very sorry. You’ll have to remain in whatever curious incarnation you take on at the dream’s end. Which should rattle the wits of whoever is unfortunate enough to find you. But don’t worry, you will not live long after I leave here. And by then you will have experienced god-like powers of proteation which I myself cannot hope to know, no matter how intimately I may try.
And now I think we can proceed with what has been your destiny all along. Are you ready? I am entirely ready and by degrees am giving myself over to those forces which go their own way and take us with them. Can you feel us both being swept into a tempest of transfigurations? Can you feel the fevers of this chemist? The power of my dreaming, my dreaming, my dreaming, my…
Now Rose of madness—BLOOM!
Drink to Me Only with Labyrinthine Eyes
Everyone at the party comments on them. They ask if I had them altered in some way, suggest that I’ve tucked some strange crystallized lenses under my eyelids. I tell them no, that I was born with these singular optic organs. They’re not from some optometrist’s bag of tricks, not the result of surgical mayhem. Of course they find this hard to believe, especially when I tell them I was also born with the full powers of a master hypnotist…and from there I rapidly evolved, advancing into a mesmeric wilderness untrod before or since by any others of my calling. No, I wouldn’t say business or profession, I would have to say calling. What else do you call it when you’re destined from birth, marked by fate’s stigmata? At this point they smile politely, saying that they really enjoyed the show and that I certainly am good at what I do. I tell them how grateful I am for the opportunity to perform for such fancy persons in such a fancy house. Unsure to what extent I’m just kidding them, they nervously twirl the stems of their champagne glasses, the beverage sparkling and the crystal twinkling under a chandelier’s kaleidoscopic blaze. Despite all the beauty, power, and prestige socializing in this rather baroque room tonight, I think they know how basically ordinary they all are. They are very impressed by me and my assistant, who have been asked to mingle with the guests and amuse them in whatever way we can. One gentleman with a flushed face looks across the room at my partner in animal magnetism, guzzling his drink as he does so. “Would you like to meet her,” I ask. “You bet,” he replies. They all do. They all want to know you, my angel.
Earlier in the evening we presented our show to these lovely people. I instructed the host of the party to serve no alcohol before our performance, and to arrange the furniture of this overwrought room in a way that would allow everyone a perfect view of us on our little platform. He complied obediently, of course. He also conceded to my request for payment in advance. Such an agreeable man, giving in to the will of another so readily.
At the start of the show I am alone before a silent audience. All illumination is cancelled except a single spotlight which I have set up on the floor exactly two point two meters from the stage. The spotlight focuses on a pair of metronomes, their batons sweeping back and forth in perfect unison like windshield wipers in the rain: smoothly back and smoothly forth, back and forth, b
ack and forth. And at the tip of each baton is a replica of each of my eyes swaying left and right in full view of everyone, while my voice speaks to them from a shadowy edge of the stage. First I give a brief lecture on hypnosis, its name and nature. After that I say: “Ladies and gentlemen: Please direct your attention to this glossy black cabinet. Within stands the most beautiful creature you have ever beheld. From heaven itself she has descended, a seraph of the highest order. And for your enjoyment she is already in the deepest trance. You will see her and be amazed.” There is a dramatic pause during which my eyes fix upon the congregation before me, keeping control of them. When I look back toward the cabinet the trick door opens, seemingly of its own will.
As if with one voice, the audience emits a quiet gasp, and for a second I panic. Then there is applause, reassuring me that everything is all right, that they like the figure exhibited before them. What they see is standing upright inside the cabinet, her slender arms held absolutely still at her sides. She is wearing a tiny sequined outfit, a vulgar costume whose rampant glitter somehow transcends the cliché, rejuvenating its shoddy soul. Her eyes are two bluish gems in an alabaster setting, and her gaze seems to be fixed on infinity. After the audience has had a good look, I say: “Now, my angel, you must fall.” At this signal she begins to totter within the box. Finally she teeters into a forward topple. At the last moment I reach down, collar her throat with one hand, and arrest her inflexible figure a few inches before it hits the stage. Not a lock of her golden hair is stirred out of place, and her bejeweled tiara holds tightly to her head. There is applause while I restore my long-limbed assistant to a vertical position.
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