“Anybody here?”
With no answer, I entered, quickly bending down to check if there were any feet in the stalls. They were all empty. I entered the nearest one, hurriedly unzipping my jeans. As I finally began relieving myself, I heard a thump at the far end of the room. Still pissing, I watched as a wooden ceiling utility panel was removed by someone above it, then as two legs swung down through the opening. A man with a beard and baseball cap hung at arm’s length, getting his bearings. A variety of clanking and clunking sounds emanated from the far stall as he lowered himself onto a toilet and slid the panel back in place.
It’s impossible to hurry up a heavy piss, let alone while you’re crouching in panic. Finally finishing, I made a quick decision to leave and not be sociable. I opened the stall door, slipped out, and stood face to face with the other intruder. Startled at first, his eyes then took on a hard angry glare, and from that look, I recognized him.
“Agent Orville.” A bit dazed by the second encounter that day with him, and not focusing on who I was dealing with, I reached out to gently tug at his beard.
He stepped back, swatting at my hand. The tips of my fingers caught briefly in the fuzzy curls, loosening the fake paste-on from one cheek.
“Parker, you’re interfering in a federal investigation. I’m taking you in this time.”
He was dressed in blue coveralls and a flannel shirt. A camera hung from a strap around his neck.
“All I’m doing is taking a piss. You’re the pervert in the women’s bathroom with a camera.”
He lunged at me. I jumped to one side, my feet slipping on the wet floor, my arms twirling to stay upright. Orville’s momentum threw his upper body off balance. One of my elbows inadvertently caught him on the jaw, and he went down, slamming into the metal frame of the stall. In a brief slippery skirmish, he tripped up both my ankles, causing me to fall to the tiled floor next to him.
He pushed himself up and sat spread-eagled, leaning back against the stall door. His forehead had a blossom of dripping crimson.
“Orville, man. Are you all right? You’re bleeding.”
“Jesus Christ.” He wiped at his head, his hand coming away bloody.
There was a knock at the door as a woman called out, “Yoo hoo, can I use the bathroom? It’s an emergency.”
Then, the day already being surreal, Maureen peered around the edge of the door and squeaked in disbelief.
“Deets?”
“Careful, the floor’s wet.”
She stepped in, balancing her walk delicately.
“This guy’s hurt. Nasty cut on his forehead.” I nodded towards the FBI agent as I stood up.
Orville snapped at me, “Where’re you going, Parker?
Not bothering to answer, I went to the sink, grabbed a wad of paper towels and handed them to the federal agent.
“Damn,” Orville grumbled, holding the mesh of paper to his face.
“Maybe you should clean it first. Hold on, let me wet some.” Maureen ran water on more towels, wrung them out and approached Orville. She leaned in closer to look at his wound, to dab at it, then gasped, “Mister Worley.”
Orville scowled. Gathering himself into a kneeling position, he found a grip on the stall’s metal edging and hauled himself up.
I said, “Worley? Who’s Worley?”
“Mister Worley, from administration. Sir, I’ll go get help.”
Orville snapped, “No.”
Looking at himself in the mirror, he pushed the loose end of his fake beard back against his cheek, splashed some water on his face, and dried himself off.
He held some fresh paper towels to his wound and, with a menacing scowl—reflected in the mirror—announced, “Parker, you and I don’t get along very well.” His mirrored gaze took in Maureen. “Miss, if you want to stay out of further trouble, you’ll keep this little incident to yourself.”
He ran his hands over his coveralls, muttered about the wet spots on the back of his legs and rear, gave me another look meant to freeze my heart, and left.
Maureen turned on me, furious. “Deets, what is going on here? What did you do to him? And why are you in the ladies’ room?”
“What did he mean when he said to you, further trouble?”
“I’ve got to pee.” She walked into a stall. “Are you going to leave or stand out there and listen?”
“Man, oh man, Maureen, we’ve got bigger troubles than that.”
“Me? Why me?”
While she urinated, I wondered about that myself. “Who’s Mister Worley? How do you know him?”
The paper roll dispenser spun and the toilet flushed. She came out and washed her hands, then studied herself momentarily in the mirror. She was wearing a light coat, madras skirt, and white go-go boots.
I said, “You look great. Now let’s get out of here.”
“Wait outside.” She was angrily pushing items around in her purse, seemingly without purpose.
“What? Maureen, that guy is a nutcase. Let’s go. You look beautiful, c’mon.”
“He’s one of the school administrators. What kind of mess did you get me in?”
“Maureen, he’s no school administrator.”
Her appraisal of me was cool and suspicious. I could see she was weighing the events of the last few minutes along with my behavior in bed, readying to dismiss me as insane.
With multiple frustrations building in me, I yelled, “Maureen, why the hell was your Mister Worley wearing a false beard in the women’s bathroom with a goddamn camera around his neck?”
She backed away, frightened at the ferocity in my voice and the implications of my question.
“Deets, what’s going on?”
“That’s what we have to figure out. Let’s go where we can talk.”
She hesitated. A visible tremble passed through her.
I took her hand in mine, caressing her fingers gently. “Maureen, I’m sorry. Let’s straighten this mess out. Talk to me.”
She responded by squeezing my hand half-heartedly. “Okay, but I can’t miss my next class. Walk with me.”
As we maneuvered our way through buildings and across streets, she told me the alleged Mister Worley had approached her a few days after the time I had manned the anti-war table. He had shown her a picture of me in the lobby, asking if she knew who I was.
“I told him you were a friend of mine helping hand out literature. He responded by saying you were an outside agitator and wouldn’t be tolerated.”
“Did he ask my name?”
“Yes. I’m sure I mentioned it.” She looked at me sharply. “I was already in trouble. Somebody had thrown out all these Students for a Conservative Society flyers about William F. Buckley. They claimed it happened when I was on duty at our peace table. It was you, wasn’t it? Why did you do that? I was so mad at you when I went to your apartment.”
“You never said anything.”
“When I saw you, I thought it didn’t seem to matter anymore. Then you had to go and ruin everything. What’s the matter with you? What kind of drug were you on? My god, I thought I was in bed with some alien that didn’t know how humans had sex.”
“Okay, okay, don’t rub it in. Yeah, I was on LSD, but let’s get back to Worley. He’s FBI.”
I told her about the rally, Bruce and the lighter, and the visit from Orville and Harlan.
“How did you end up on the floor with an FBI agent in the women’s bathroom?”
What had happened suddenly leaped into my mind.
“He’s taking pictures of peace activists obviously, not you girls in the bathroom half-naked. The men’s room was locked, so my guess is he went into the women’s room, then crawled to wherever he has his peephole to take pictures.”
Maureen said, “We had a peace committee meeting today.”
I snapped my fingers. “T
hat’s it. Then the creep climbed down, and—surprise—an agitator was pissing where he shouldn’t have been. When I yanked at that fake beard—”
“You pulled on his beard?”
“Fake, remember? Must’ve bugged him because he grabbed at me, and we ended up slipping on that wet floor. Then you came in. Aha, a witness that thinks the sneak works for the school, and he knows his operation is blown. I bet you he’s poking around the university without the administration knowing it. That’s why he didn’t haul me away.”
“Oh, Deets—FBI, LSD? This is just too much trouble. I can get to my class from here by myself.” She marched ahead of me, her head down. With noticeable effort, she managed to say a determined “Goodbye.” Her voice clipped away a piece of my heart as she hurried away.
I wanted to beg her to turn around, to promise her there wouldn’t be problems with drugs and the law anymore. Absorbing every motion of her rhythmic swaying as she went further and further away from me, I felt broken.
Chapter 13
I dragged my feet in the direction of the HooDoo Gallery.
So the Feds saw me with Abbie and Stokely and probably followed me home on my very first day as an anti-war protestor. Ha, they photographed me with two national organizers and wondered who I was. Maureen told them, and then the Zippo incident heightened their interest. So they checked me out. What a joke—a month ago I had barely heard of the Vietnam war.
Depressed, I sat on a low stone wall in front of a brownstone and lit a cigarette thinking about the events of the day.
I was crushing out my sixth butt with my foot when I saw Santa about a block away. With a spasm of fear, I realized he was standing in front of the mysterious alley, facing inward and gesturing to someone. Passersby paid him no attention. He flew a hand protectively in front of his face while stepping back quickly. Jumping up in concern for him, I ran in his direction, dodging people, keeping my eye on the opening.
About fifty feet away from the white-haired man, I stopped in astonishment. Near him, just inside the entranceway, stood the creep I had seen flinging strange hand gestures at me the morning after my first acid trip. His cold steel eyes met mine, clearly indicating he had expected me to appear. A moment later, the alley became solid lightning. Bolts seared the area, ricocheted down the passageway, and blasted concussive holes of flame in the air surrounding the two men.
Steel Eyes hissed. A reptilian tongue shot forth from his mouth. Santa staggered. A blue aura materialized around him as his arms waved protectively.
I pushed by nearby pedestrians, yelling, “Santa, watch out. Watch out.”
Two women, dressed in black, sidestepped around me, sending startled glances in my direction. A man with a bright bow tie and suspenders back-pedaled out of my path. The sidewalk traffic disappeared from my vision as I watched Santa and Steel Eyes move deeper into the recess. A chaos of nightmarish screeching, battle roars, and searing rays of electrical energy engulfed the alley.
I cut across the street, smacking the hood of a car as I zigzagged past it trying to reach Santa. When I arrived at the entrance to the alley, a low rumbling echoed briefly from deep within its now-darkened passage. The air smelled, oddly, like burning rubber and sea salt.
The two men had disappeared.
I don’t know how I got the nerve, but I scrupulously investigated the length of the alley and back again a number of times looking for any clues to explain what I had just witnessed. No sign of a ground zero lightning strike existed, such as a fire. I saw no possible exit for Santa and Steel Eyes.
What had happened? What was this place?
Upon closer scrutiny of the enigmatic scratchings on the one wall, I noticed many of the markings were of animal-like figures conjoined to numbers or symbols. Incredibly, those images appeared unmarred by the tremendous energies that had ripped through the passage. The scorch mark where the pigeon had been burned seemed to be a permanent blackening of the cement, but the remains were gone.
There was one curiosity I didn’t notice until my second walkthrough. Blocked from view by a dumpster, a ceramic window box lay underneath some cardboard leaning tent-like against one wall. Pushing aside the cardboard, I could see the pottery’s glaze was crackled so extensively the decorative pattern that had once graced it was barely discernible. My best guess was the design was of green hills, white mountains, and a sky filled with winged fish. Though fogged with moisture and chipped, I could make out monkey-like creatures that rode upon some of the fish. The box was filled with dirt and smelled of pine resin. Crisply imprinted in the dirt, about an inch deep, was a single large hoof print.
It was a cryptic, frightening place that had pulled me into its mysteries.
“Monster Alley,” I whispered.
Chapter 14
When I entered the HooDoo Gallery, Daisy’s bright smile distracted me from my enigma-ravaged mind. She pointed to the Times photo, framed and on prominent display, saying it would be wonderful for publicity. She suggested I do a series of anti-war drawings in the next few weeks, then laid out her plans of how she wanted to promote me.
Pushing a cup of tea into my hands, she explained there was an opening for a one person show in eight months and urged me to come up with twenty to thirty drawings. I reminded her I still needed cash to live on, and we agreed to a deal that I could exhibit any pieces sold in the intervening time.
Daisy insisted I dine with her and treated me to onion soup and a juicy filet mignon. After the waiter poured us champagne, we clinked glasses in a toast.
“To your future.” She beamed and waited expectantly for me to make an additional declaration.
With a weak, polite smile, I obliged. “To friends and the mysteries of our souls.”
We drank and she talked, while my mind kept wandering back to the disruption I had witnessed and the shocking disappearances of the two men.
Men? That guy had a forked tongue about ten feet long.
After we had polished off the bottle, I walked Daisy home. She gave me a little kiss on my cheek, then smiled. “You seem pre-occupied. Whatever it is, stop worrying. Believe me, you’re in perfect tune in an imperfect world.”
The music ripped through me as I opened the door to the Blue Cat Cafe. Rolly and his band were blowing the sockets out of the place. His rapid-fire finger work and punctuating rhythm steered stunned minds through guitar sounds never heard or even imagined before. Rolly jabbed at the strings, stretched a note into a fuzzy, electric blur, vibrated and scratched another into a shrieking crescendo. The drummer smacked the rim of the snare with a loud clack, the bass became an undulating roll, and Rolly leaned close to the microphone. As he sang, his guitar continued to wail out complex melodies conceived in a stratosphere only he had access to.
Phuong and I spotted each other across the room. She signaled with her beer for me to join her. We yelled a greeting into each other’s ear, laughing because of the effort it took to barely hear each other. The music thumped against my chest.
The crowd was red-eyed and young. Guys with sideburns and hair starting to creep over their ears mingled with girls in low cut blouses, miniskirts, and sleek boots. The constant bumping of bodies, hands nudging or reaching out for balance, smiled apologies of camaraderie, sweet smells of perfume, heavy smoke haze—all were woven into the net of Rolly’s mesmerizing performance. We blended, swayed, gaped in awe and unison as he knocked us apart, then reassembled us back together again. I remembered the realization I had when I first heard Rolly play back in his apartment—This changes everything.
As if in affirmation of my thoughts, Phuong put her lips to my ear. “Do you smoke marijuana?”
I pointed at her, mouthing, “Do you?”
She shook her head, shouted, “I’d like to try it.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
When Rolly took a break, I caught up with him. He invited me to join him in a room upsta
irs with the rhythm guitarist, drummer, and bass player. As we passed a joint around, he told me he had gigs lined up for the next two months.
“Cool. I got a show in eight months at the HooDoo.”
“Very groovy. Haven’t seen your work yet.”
“You come up with the B-Flat?” Scott, the rhythm player, asked.
I shrugged and laughed. “Didn’t know what I was doing. Hey, man, all right if I keep the roach? There’s a chick, never done any, who I want to turn on.”
“Ain’t much left. It’s already scorching my fingers, man.” The drummer quickly dabbed his index finger and thumb with the tip of his tongue, then pinched the remaining embers of the joint out.
Scott said, “Here man, for the cause.” He took a fat joint from his pack of cigarettes and handed it to me.
I laughed. “Outta sight. Thanks man. It’s like a zeppelin.”
“C’mon, let’s go melt some brains.” Rolly drummed his fingers rapidly in the air.
In that moment I understood Rolly was his guitar—the strings singing, bending, vibrating in him, the pickups sending forth his lifeblood. Sound spun in the air about him as he walked. He had to get back on stage to let it live, to set it free.
Phuong threw up wet spittle on her first toke.
We had trekked back to my apartment after Rolly had wrapped up his last set, Phuong peppering me with questions about what it was like to get high. What does it feel like? Is it like getting drunk? Would she be addicted? Could she carry on a normal conversation? Can other people tell if you’re stoned? Would she go crazy?
Mayhem (The Remarkable Adventures of Deets Parker Book 1) Page 7