by Robert Stone
They had no difficulty getting inside. Wandering across the lobby, they came on a large tiled space surrounded by tiers of benches. In one of the tiers a glum crowd of sixty or so well-dressed people sat listening to a man with a megaphone.
“We want you to cheer, gang,” the man with the megaphone was saying. “Please don’t groan or scream. If you want to scream, do it outside in the street.”
A boxing ring and its draped platform had been hauled to the wall opposite the occuped tier. People in bright casual clothes sauntered about and lounged on the empty benches. In the center of the space where the boxing ring should have been, there were two camera cranes with technicians standing beside them. At the far end of the place was a table with stacks of what appeared to be box lunches and, beside that, a partitioned area where there were lighted mirrors and barber chairs. Four or five trailers were lined up beside the doors to the lobby.
“Stand by, gang,” the man with the megaphone called.
Marge and Hicks walked closer to the crowd.
The man with the megaphone was watching a small sour-looking man who sat in a canvas chair behind him reading the Daily Variety. After a moment or so the small man looked up from his magazine, flung a hand toward the seated crowd, and returned his attention to the page.
“O.K., gang,” the man with the megaphone cried. “Let’s hear it!”
The crowd began to cheer for all they were worth. A camera boom descended on the third row and Hicks saw that Eddie Peace was sitting there. He was in an aisle seat beside two tough-looking men with vaguely familiar faces; Eddie and the two men beside him were the only people in the crowd who were not cheering. On the contrary, they glowered and sneered as though they found the spectacle of the camera, heartening as it was to everyone else, a loathsome provocation.
Amid the delirious cheering there sounded several distinct demented cries.
The man in the canvas chair threw his Daily Variety to the floor. He did not look at the crowd.
“All right,” the man with the megaphone called through his megaphone. He waved the cheering down.
“You bastards who are screaming, please stop! There will be no more screaming!” A little flurry of giggles ran through the crowd.
“Is he there?” Marge asked.
“Yeah,” Hicks said, “he’s there.”
When the cheering rose again, Eddie Peace and his companions once more registered their anger and disappointment. One of them turned to Eddie and whispered something in his ear. Eddie nodded in a purposeful and sinister fashion, stood up and made his way up the aisle, past the transported multitude. The camera boom tracked him. He had not gone very far when the screaming began again.
“Shit sake,” the man with the megaphone cried. He turned his back on the crowd and conferred with the second man.
“All right,” he announced. “Is there a union representative present?”
The crowd stopped cheering. Eddie Peace turned around and shook his head in good-humored frustration.
“We will take disciplinary action against you screamers. We’ll take this up with the union.”
After some further conversation, he raised his megaphone to announce a break. Hicks walked over to where Eddie Peace was sitting and waved. Eddie’s bland eyes turned on him.
“Whadda ya say?” He was wearing a blue blazer and a white polo shirt. He stood up smiling faintly, glanced quickly at the rows of seated extras above him and advanced warily His hand slid under Hicks’ arm.
“Whaddaya need?” he asked.
Eddie all the way. Marge came up to look at him.
“We thought we’d give you a buzz,” Hicks said. “We fell into something.”
Eddie laughed as though Hicks had told him a joke. “Oh, yeah?”
“This is Marge,” Hicks said. “I was telling her about Malibu. About all those wild times out there. We thought we might do something like that again.”
Eddie looked around again and fixed them with a smile of such singular radiance that he seemed to have obliterated any sensations which might distract him from their welcome presence. Hicks realized that Eddie did not recognize him.
“Lois said you’d be down here. I thought we could arrange a meet.”
Eddie did not appear to have heard.
“How you been?” He kept right on smiling. “What you been doing?”
“We been traveling, Eddie. We wanted to say hello.”
“Hello,” Eddie said to Marge. “You stoned, maybe?”
Marge stepped back in surprise. He was looking at them in turn with his bright smile. Each examination was a fraction shorter than the last.
“Ray,” he said suddenly, “you fucker. How come I didn’t know you?”
“It’s been a while. And I guess you’re busy.”
“I go to Quasi’s now. You know Quasi’s? I’ll see you there.”
“That’s great, Eddie.”
When they turned toward the door Eddie pursued them. He put a hand around Marge’s shoulder and eased between them.
“Excuse the vulgarity,” he said, “you want a blow job?”
Hicks smiled. “I don’t want to take any favors.”
Eddie looked insulted. He inclined his head toward the trailers. “There’s a little Heinie for you. Vos ist los?” He rounded his lips. “Cute.”
Hicks shook his head goodhumoredly.
“Better not.”
“You dirty rat,” Eddie said—and scurried back toward the stands.
Marge and Hicks watched him go.
“He’s a regular lonely hearts club,” Hicks said. “He loves connecting.”
They stayed to watch the extras cheer for a while. There was more screaming and more recriminating from the man with the megaphone. Presently a man in a tennis sweater came and stood beside them; he was carrying a pair of scissors in each hand.
“What kind of a fight crowd is that?” he asked them.
As they walked back to the car, Marge asked Hicks what Quasi’s was.
“Quasi’s is where we hang now. I guess it’s a bar.”
On the drive back to Hollywood, Marge remarked that Eddie Peace was an extraordinary fellow.
“You have something in common,” Hicks told her. “You want to guess what it is?”
“I don’t know. We’re both friendly. And we can’t do enough for you.”
“You both do dilaudid. He does more than you.”
“I better lay off, then. I wouldn’t want to get like Eddie.”
“Give it a shot.”
“What is Eddie’s scene? Is he an actor?”
“Not exactly. He’s just around. All the warped shit that goes down—he’s around it. He does favors. He’s not stupid. But he’s funny.”
“Are people scared of him?”
“Some people are very scared of him.”
“Are we scared of him?”
“We don’t know the meaning of scared,” Hicks said.
They ate lunch in Schwab’s, and Hicks bought a pair of sunglasses for fifteen dollars. It was Converse’s money.
The Strip was not as pleasant an experience as it had been in the early morning; the dew had dried on the potted shrubs, and everyone was settling into the day. Marge and Hicks wandered along. Whenever they encountered someone who looked as though he might know what Quasi’s was, they inquired after it. As it turned out, quite a number of people knew and it was not difficult to obtain directions.
In Quasi’s there were lighted alcoves with distorting mirrors and water sculpture with phosphorescent water. It was very dark and it seemed to be crowded—though they could make out little more than phantom shapes against the tinted lights. Each shape was encircled with a gray aura that was an after image of the sunlight outside. Uncle John’s Band was on the box and there was a lot of laughing.
They groped their way to a plastic table and sat facing the swaying shadows at the bar. It seemed to Marge that their laughter was oddly cadenced, slow in the throat. Quaalude laughter.
Marge was tired and drunk—even with the Percodan she felt as though she might be catching cold. When Eddie Peace emerged from the darkness a few minutes later, she was genuinely glad to see him.
He came in like Escamillo, saluted by a chorus. People raised their glasses. There was a blond woman with him who wore heavy eye makeup and a dress made of leather. Eddie was introducing her around.
Hicks waited for a few minutes, then walked over and seized Eddie by the forearm. Eddie waved him off. Hicks shrugged and came back to the table to finish off the going beer.
“Let him do his number.”
When the introductions and the double takes were done, Eddie whispered in the blond woman’s ear and sauntered over to their table.
“What’s happening?”
Hicks pulled a chair from the next table for Eddie to sit on.
“I got something for you if you want.”
Eddie seated himself and called to the waitress for tomato juice and beer.
“How’d you know I was in Gardena?”
“Well,” Hicks said, “we saw Lois.”
“You saw Lois. What was that like?”
“She was kinda uptight. She told us to get lost.”
Eddie looked pained.
“A dumb cunt. What you want to tell me?”
“I want to move some skezag. I can sell you a key for twenty. I’ll give you a rate for three.”
Eddie looked about the room as though he were looking for someone. He thrust two fingers under the turtle neck of his polo shirt in the manner of one suffering from the heat. “You know what I mean?”
“I don’t foresee any trouble,” Hicks said.
Eddie seemed reluctant to look at him.
“I gotta tell you this comes as a surprise to me, fella. It’s not what I would expect from you personally.”
“There’s a different attitude about scag today,” Hicks said. “With the situation over there, anyone who travels can run it.”
“That’s the fuckin’ war for you,” Eddie said. “It’s stupid.”
“I couldn’t agree with you more. But there it is.”
Eddie was shaking his head in stern disapproval.
“I’m not an expert,” he said to Hicks. “Is that a good price?”
“My dear fucking man,” Hicks said, “you better believe it.”
Eddie drank thoughtfully for a while.
“Terry and the Pirates,” he said. He was looking at Marge. “I bet you lead an interesting life.” She shrugged and tried to smile.
“The big dealer and the woman of mystery,” he said, looking her in the eye. “I love it.”
Hicks leaned forward to engage Eddie’s attention.
“I think we’ve both had enough of consorting with hoodlums, right? That’s why I’m talking to you. Ideally, I’d like to approach a select circle of responsible people.”
Eddie turned to him smiling.
“You’d like to sell scag to the film industry? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Man,” Hicks said, “I don’t even go to the movies. But I’m thinking, like, if there was a dude who had a personal clientele—then this would be perfect for him. Cheap—no risk—no hoodlums. It moves like coke—among friends.”
“Attractive in theory,” Eddie said.
“This is not a theory, Eddie.”
Eddie was watching Marge in a way which made her particularly uncomfortable.
“She’s stoned,” he said to Hicks, “your Marge.”
“This is not a theory, Eddie. It’s pure shit, man, it can be cut to infinity.”
Eddie seemed to glow with some inward laughter.
“What’s life without a dream, hah Raymond?”
Hicks did not smile back.
“Raymond is a dreamer, isn’t he, Marge?”
“That’s a side of him I’ve never seen,” Marge said.
Eddie was delighted.
“Jesus Christ,” he said. He leaned over to inspect her more thoroughly. “You’re a schoolteacher, aren’t you? You give head?”
Marge stared at him blankly. She had never heard the expression “give head” before.
“Schoolteachers give head,” Eddie declared. “That’s what they say.”
Hicks had moved his body back from the table. He sat upright with his hands folded.
“Isn’t that changing the subject a little?”
“I’m thinking,” Eddie said. “Lemme think.” His happy eyes wandered about the room and settled on the blonde who had come in with him. She was in conversation with a gray-haired man in a paisley suit. Eddie nudged Hicks.
“What do you think of that, Raymond? Cute?”
Hicks shook his head impatiently.
“Does she give head?” Marge asked. She thought it an interesting turn of phrase.
“Not for you, she don’t,” Eddie said. He nudged Hicks again. “Her husband is a spastic. I’m not shitting you, he really is. He talks like duh duh duh. But you can’t laugh, right?”
Hicks finished a beer and looked into his glass. Eddie watched the spastic’s wife.
“So you got all this skezag under your mattress. Doesn’t it make your heart go pitter-pat?”
“Not in the least,” Hicks said.
“So. You’re experienced now?”
“I’m just doing what everybody else is doing.”
“Yeah but, Jesus, Ray,” Eddie said in an earnest voice. “Here in the big town with all that shit. I’d be scared, man.”
Watching Eddie, Marge began to think that she had seen him before. She thought it might have been at the Ulrich Studios in New York when she had studied there. He would have been fifteen years younger then—a young John Garfield. It seemed to her that she could remember him doing Streetcar for Ulrich.
She decided not to ask him about it.
“I can’t waste time worrying, can I?” Hicks said.
“What I wonder, Raymond, is where you got it.”
“I got it overseas. It’s practically legal over there.”
Eddie nodded and looked away again.
“I could tell you stories about that bitch,” he said. He gestured toward the spastic’s wife. “Things are getting so fucked up I don’t believe it. Wild?” He raised his eyes. “You wouldn’t believe half the shit that goes down in this town. It’s a new world, man. I wish I was ten years younger.”
“Tell me something, Eddie,” Hicks said. “Am I making a mistake talking to you? Am I doing the wrong thing?”
Eddie shrugged.
“Am I God, Ray? How would I know?”
They sat in silence. “2001” came on the jukebox.
“These fuckin’ people make me sick,” Eddie said. “The Spock generation. Everything’s a tit. I wannit, I wannit.” He smiled at Marge and turned toward the people in the bar. “I sit still for every creep in town. Everybody’s daddy—do me this, Eddie—do me that, Eddie. I could puke sometimes.” He suddenly thrust a finger in Hicks’ chest. Hicks looked down at it. “Even you, man. I’m sitting on all this shit, Eddie—please lay it off for me.”
“If you want a piece, indicate by saying yes. If not, say no.”
Eddie paid no attention.
“The people out here, man—they’re so rotten they got this shit growing on them.” It seemed to Marge that it was she whom he spoke to. “Fungus. You go into a room full of these peo
ple and you look around and some of them have it all over them. Every inch of skin, covered with this green fungus. Other people—maybe half their face has it. Other people—maybe one hand. Or they have spots of it growing on them.”
He put his hand on her arm. She drew it away quickly.
“Grows on everybody in this place.”
“How about you?” Marge asked.
Eddie’s eyes were bright. Marge felt something in them which she recognized.
“Present company excepted.”
Hicks looked at his watch.
“O.K., O.K.” Eddie scratched his eyelids. “I can probably help you.”
“Is that right?”
“I been associated with a guy. He’s English, he used to be a masseur. He’s got a bunch of goofs he works—swingers, whip freaks, far-out shit like that. He’s got a lot of bread and he knows what everybody likes. He might be the guy to move it.”
“Whatever you say, Eddie.”
“The only trouble is,” Eddie said, smiling, “I can’t stand the guy.”
Hicks shook his head.
“I don’t need no trouble.”
“What do you mean, you don’t need no trouble?”
“I mean I don’t want to play double-cross or fuck around. I don’t want any part of burns or rip-offs or revenge. If you can connect me with a discreet civilized person, fine. No intrigues.”
“Paranoia,” Eddie told Marge.
“Why not?” Marge said.
“I don’t have an enemy in the world,” Eddie Peace said. “If you want, I’ll put you in touch.”
“How about tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow? You must be desperate.”
“I don’t see why we should procrastinate. Why not tomorrow?”
Eddie Peace stood up.
“Call my answering service—tell them you’re Gerson Walter, that’ll impress them. I’ll have word for you.”
He enjoined them to keep the faith and went back to the bar. When they were out in the parking lot, Hicks disappeared into the shadows to piss while Marge waited by the car. It was a street of small secretive houses with tiled roofs. No sound at all came from Quasi’s; the music and the uneasy laughter were contained inside.
Hicks came back walking wearily and they got in.