Playground Zero

by Sarah Relyea

“Last name?”

  “Yes. You know her from school.”

  “Dupres,” Valerie mouthed. “Do-pray.”

  “Dupres, Mom.”

  “I see. Then, ask Valerie, does she know Dan Dupres? Maybe an uncle?”

  Alice covered the mouthpiece and looked at Valerie. “She wants to know, do you know Dan Dupres?”

  “Dan’s my father. Why?” Valerie’s eyebrows moved in half moons of amusement and surprise.

  “Yes, Mom, he’s her father.”

  “I see.” Her mother’s tone was slow and gloomy, as if she’d been coerced. “I know him from the Peace and Freedom Party. He seems responsible.” She paused. “Well, if they’re going to the concert and coming right home, then you can go to the Fillmore. Just this once, you understand.” Her voice hardened for a moment, before apathy overcame her. “When they bring you home, please have them see you safely through the door.”

  “Yes. Thanks, Mom.” She looked over at Valerie, who was holding a reefer and smiling shyly, as though they were about to become friends.

  “I hope you enjoy the concert.” Her mother rang off.

  Alice turned to the group. “I can go.”

  “Gimme five!” Jim gave her a high five.

  “She let you go,” Valerie crowed, “because our father is Dan Dupres! That’s far-out!”

  “Your mom’s really cool,” laughed Jim, who was already doling out the LSD. He held up a palm, swimming with orange dots. “You can thank my dad for the sunshine.” They crowded around, cheering the win.

  THE CAR SPED along Ashby Avenue, swerving around a Volkswagen van as they passed San Pablo Avenue on the bay end of Berkeley. The older girl with her sandal on the pedal was Arlene, and as she charged on, chasing the dying rays of day, “Papa Was a Rolling Stone” poured in stealthy rhythm from the radio. Grooving to the sounds, Arlene was bobbing and snapping her fingers, barely touching the wheel as her orange and black fingernails, done in ladybug designs, danced in Alice’s face. The boys slumped in back, limply enjoying a lull before the upcoming take-off. The speed grabbed Alice; pressed by Arlene and Valerie, her gaze bounding with the car, she fled along the unraveling lane, caught in the groove of a new world.

  Arlene’s sunglasses had blue star-spangled frames. Sun-bleached hair covered her shoulders; brass teardrops dangled from her ears. Rings made jewels of her fingers, and colored loops jingled on her arms as she swung the wheel. She rode the long-hooded Ford as though she and her young passengers were clinging to a horse’s saddle, galloping up the sky through lanes of falling cars. Soon they were passing along the bay, where driftwood scarecrows surged from the mud. Arlene was hurrying. The concert would begin very soon.

  “Off we go—into the wild blue!” she said, grinning and gunning the car up the ramp for the Bay Bridge.

  “Go, Arlene!” Jim cheered from the back.

  Alice glanced around; the other boys drooped vague and dreamy, blissful in the surging Now. Jim was the only one who seemed aware of where they were going, as if he’d been there before.

  Arlene leaned over, slapping Valerie’s knee as the bridge rumbled under them. “I’m ready for my road test now.”

  “You sure are!” Valerie laughed.

  “I wanna be legal for a change.”

  As an alarm sounded in Alice’s head, she found herself giggling. She’d come in the car willingly and would share the blame, if her mother ever found out—but how would she? The group had found a world where a mother’s rules no longer had any meaning. Wandering freely, they had no fear of a reckoning, it seemed. And for now she’d be playing by the group’s rules.

  Arlene glanced over, nudging her. “Been on the Avenue long?”

  “She just got here!” Valerie squealed.

  “Yeah, I can see she’s new.”

  “We found her!”

  Alice made no response. Being the object of the girls’ comments made her uncomfortable, but there was nowhere to go as Arlene’s arm dug in, pinning her to the seat. For a moment, she wondered why she’d come along—how easy and safe to go home, saying her mother had refused. Then a spray of colors blossomed, and she laughed.

  “You were such a fresh face, Val,” Arlene said, smiling. “I remember seeing you by Dan’s shop and saying to Bobby, ‘Oh my, she’s such a cherub.’ So long ago, even before People’s Park.” Arlene’s words were subsumed by the roar of traffic as they crossed a lane and headed for an exit ramp.

  As they roared up Fillmore Street, green lights hung like a row of emerald suns and Arlene barreled under them one by one, and then they were bracing as the car pulled up in a sea of cars. They jumped out fast, leaving Arlene alone. A crowd was swarming, already carrying the boys away. Arlene would be parking and joining them soon, Alice thought—but no, the crowd was jamming the doors hung with Fillmore West posters and Arlene was flashing a peace sign and calling, “Bye!” Caught in the flow, the car rounded a corner, passing from the world.

  Valerie was nudging Alice. “Come on,” she urged, “hurry up.”

  “Where’s Arlene?”

  Valerie giggled. “She’s gone. You saw her waving.”

  “But where’d she go?”

  “I dunno,” Valerie shrugged. “Maybe a commune, see some guy.”

  “She’s coming back, right?”

  Valerie gave a sly glance. “Who says so?”

  “But I thought—”

  “We’re seeing the Dead! Are you coming or not?”

  “Only if we have a ride back.”

  Valerie began moving away, fed up. “We can always bum a ride. C’mon, they’re going in.”

  Valerie ran ahead, following the boys. Wondering how she would get home once the others were gone, Alice rushed after her.

  The group jammed through the glass doors of the Fillmore West. In the lobby, a huge bear of a man was guarding the door, one hand grabbing left and right. “The Dead!” he brayed over a round, bulging belly, “The Grateful Dead!” Immersed in a throng, Alice and her group pushed past the jolly bear of a guard and found themselves in a passageway, borne up and up by the surge of human bodies. As the passageway leveled off, she was shrouded in heavy drapes of leopard design and then, as she struggled free, engulfed by an anonymous space reaching far ahead. Once in the performance room, she emerged in a smoky underground, as though a city of whirling souls had gathered. A feeling of abandonment flowed through her: the group was nowhere to be seen.

  Alice was preparing for an end, a beginning—who could say? Unwillingly swallowed in the throng, she sought her bearings while others jammed around, hemming her in. She was submerged in an unmoving crowd—as though having reached a shore, they refused to go back even as more and more came massing on, lured by the hope of a crossing. Far away, black-box speakers rose, belching sound; above them, a huge wheel of flame surveyed the crowd. The flame surged in a dancing pulse.

  Gathered in the human crush, Alice pressed her way here and there through the gaps, searching for her group, feeling the anonymous merging of so many swarming pilgrims. Then the jam loosened, carrying her along under a shadowless glare. As she came through the glare, a hand caught her sleeve and Joe appeared, pulling her through a gap. She was enormously glad to see him.

  Alice followed Joe and the others. The flaming eye had ceased pulsing and was daring her to gaze deeply on the globular pools, the bleeding colors and seeping debris of its psychedelic iris. The eye beckoned, and she was becoming absorbed—but just as she was falling in, a hand grasped her arm.

  “C’mon,” Joe called, “we’re over there!”

  The belching sounds had moved far off. All around them, the crowd was settling in under the sleepy eye. Groups had formed small encampments, bands of drowsy emperors, some reposing on colored pillows, others on the bare floor. Onstage, shaggy men darted among cymbals and drums, sound equipment and guitars.

  Feedback jolted the room like unseen lightning. The flaming eye was a black hole. In the darkness, the rustling of people could be heard. Then som
ewhere near the stage, two luminous moons flared on, brightening in colorful, undulating glows. The group pushed ahead, stumbling over limbs toward a clearing, a blob of ground where they could camp. Jammed together, they took their places under the glowing, jelly-like moons. Joe’s denim jacket was by her shoulder; Valerie’s arm lay nearby, among knees and jeans and someone else’s sandaled feet.

  A sudden crash of thunder exploded through the space, booming, roiling the depths. As the formless thunder gathered in rhythm, a few random souls washed by, swept past those splayed on the floor—nodding, nodding the cosmic pulse.

  Crouched on the floor, Alice nodded along. Valerie’s head was bobbing nearby. She’d removed her shoes and rolled her pants to the knee, as though she planned on wading. Joe was kneeling, peering over the sea of bobbing heads at the blossoming moons above the band. Though Alice and her group were far from the stage, the pulsing jelly moons soon overwhelmed her.

  During a lull in the pounding, Valerie leaned over.

  “. . . warm-up band!”

  Ah, where were the Dead?

  Alice gave herself up to the light show, feeling her body merging and expanding in bass sounds and whinnying melody as alarms blared through the room—the ever-whirling banners of some army of the freaks. She was moving now in the flaming pulse; engulfing her in a quivering cosmos, the flaring jellies pumped and gasped above the band, sending its impulses through the crowd. One of them—fast-breathing and yellow, pumping green and purple pulses—was inhaling her in its pulpy glow when she freed herself. The oneness she’d been feeling was gone in a bursting bubble of sad-funny, lonely-absurd, as a pressure on her shoulder made her look away from the glow.

  The floor was hard and cold. The room was gloomy, the low space hung with bulbs shedding a cheap, sulfurous glare. The Fillmore was a cavern, she thought, hearing the churning echo of some underground waterfall, as sounds rumbled through the dull aluminum air. A burst of orange jelly faded from the room.

  Her body hung heavy in the lull. She was rearranging her cumbersome limbs when a new pulsing mass appeared. Her body jolted, as though connected by electrical impulses to the fast-breathing glow. A knee—hers or someone else’s?—was ignoring commands. Beat on, oh joyous pendulum, counting, counting in vast eternity!

  Valerie lay nearby on the floor. Alice’s hand could feel the smooth jeans on the knee belonging to the other girl, as she slumbered on the floor. Valerie had gone away, only the body lay there. Even so, Alice found refuge; sound and pulse receded. They’d been in eucalyptus groves, far from home. They’d seen the sun drop through the Golden Gate, and now they’d gone below.

  A HAND WAS tugging on her arm. Joe was kneeling, gesturing beyond the huge banks of speakers.

  “Over there!” Joe was yelling. “Black lights!”

  Alice commanded her limbs, but they were seemingly in thrall. She wobbled up. The group stumbled among the dead, passing a boundary. The area was for dancing; illumined by black light, figures flickered nearby, whirling in the delayed images of some ghostly scene. Valerie was suffused in a pale-lavender glow that flared here and there—a source of unearthly light. She waved a sleeve in triumph, showing off the remnants of evening glow. Joe’s jersey, too, shone in faded lavender bands. The group moved together among the dancers while fragments of moon-glow on and around them pulsed under strobe lights, as though they were being caught and let go, caught and let go in the ever-changing searchlight of a film projector. Whirling images rose through the cave, writhing bodies unable to escape or cease. Alice merged in the surrounding throbbing glow.

  WHEN SHE SOUGHT her group again, they had already moved on. An image of Arlene surged up, suggesting a way back—but no. The car was gone for good. Above the stage, one of the jelly moons was pulsing to the ring of a telephone, while the other pumped a backbeat busy tone. Fleeing the fury and confusion, she passed back through the leopard drapes and found Valerie in a drab passageway leading to the lobby.

  As the sounds faded, Alice sought to clear her head. Maybe the hour was less unreasonable than she feared. Maybe the evening could be fixed, maybe someone would come for them—Jim and Valerie’s dad, Dan Dupres from Peace and Freedom, a responsible man. Jim would be in the lobby, already making the call. Of course Dan would come for them.

  Once they were in the lobby, Valerie made no move. The glass doors were open, the boys grouped around. Dan was on the way, it seemed.

  Suddenly Valerie’s eyebrows rounded over huge pupils. “If your mom’s so cool, maybe she can come for you,” she suggested. Then came the challenge: “We got you here—you can get us home.”

  Alice was sweating. “My mom’s sleeping.”

  “And your dad?”

  “How about yours?”

  “You mean Dan?”

  “Can he come?”

  “No way, he’s busy. So, you should call your dad.” Valerie surveyed her. “Hey, what’s wrong? They have a phone, right?”

  Valerie moved away as if she’d had enough. Alice was reeling from the drug. If only she could get home somehow—clearly there’d never been any plan. Her pulse was racing as she struggled to regain control of her body, hoping for release from a plague of sensory symptoms. She could call home, but what then?

  They were going through mud—her dad and the group in the Chevy. Her dad was eyeing them. The group was jeering. Mud clogged her mind.

  Unimaginable.

  Three women were crossing the lobby. As they neared the doors, where cool evening gusts dropped an ocean smell, Jim ran up. The women eyed him and rushed through the door. They were from Telegraph Avenue, Alice supposed; Jim already knew them. If so, they were in an awful hurry to go. Then, as a man appeared and Jim swaggered up, thumb waving, she felt a tingling on her scalp: the group would be going with anyone who agreed. The boy was worldly and wild: he thought nothing of conning a ride.

  Alice wandered by the open doors, feeling a wave of strangeness and dread. The group would go one way through mud—and she would go another. A cool, damp feeling spread over her face, calming her. Lamps shed an orange glow over a few passing cars. Peering around, she saw a telephone hanging in a corner of the lobby. Her mother would be sleeping—and her mother could rage when roused from sleep. Her father would show up, calmly contemptuous, and scoop her from the curb, a freak among freaks; they would say nothing the whole way home. Why would they say nothing? she wondered, and then remembered: because she was already dead.

  Confirming the thought, her legs refused any command.

  Valerie ran up, as though eagerly sharing some blessing or rumored rescue. The boys were jamming through the door, joined by two men.

  “We found a van!” Valerie was urgently pulling Alice by the arm, and wading through mud they passed through the Fillmore doors into the slumbering gold-rush town, land of rough men and runaways.

  Soon the men were leading them through a dead-end lane. The group hung together, except for Jim, who was hustling after the men, as though he feared they’d get away.

  Joe was sweaty, jacket awry. He paused in the lane, murmuring, “What if—”

  “What if you shut up,” Valerie hissed.

  “I was only saying—”

  “Shhh!”

  Joe gave a low warning call but Jim, engaged with the men, made no response. The others hung back, wary of the men and the dead-end lane. Joe was fingering the jacket, searching for something he’d misplaced. Soon he gave up. Alice’s jaw was feeling numb, her tongue was a dead thing. Then they saw Jim waving them on and braying, “C’mon! They’re cool!” Ignoring a queasy feeling, Alice began moving.

  Valerie had found her swagger. “Chris,” she was saying, “you think you’re so great because your father’s a professor!”

  “And your dad?” Chris shrugged.

  “He sells jeans. He’s one of the people!” she declaimed loudly. “Your father’s just a book man, but my father founded People’s Park!”

  Jim dropped back. “No messing around. I wanna get home.”<
br />
  The evening had a new aura. They would be safe: Dan Dupres was a responsible man, a founder of parks for the people—a founding father. They’d be home in Berkeley soon; she would go to her room, no one would see her, and by morning she would be herself. That was how things had gone before.

  The men paused by a sky-blue Volkswagen van. One of them—small and red-haired, a fox—swung open the back door. The other had burly shoulders and a shaggy beard. The group clambered in the back of the van, Jim leaning on the front seats.

  One arm on the wheel, the fox was looking them over. “Young rascals!” he purred, vaguely in awe. “So, where ya goin’?”

  “Virginia and McGee,” Jim commanded. He was easy with the men, as though he’d always known them.

  “The whole gang?”

  “Yeah. We’re family.”

  “Virginia and McGee, barely out of our way,” yawned the burly bear in the passenger seat, fingering his beard.

  The fox glanced back. “How’d you like the Dead?”

  “So cool, but I’ve seen them before,” Jim bragged.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “We had to leave early,” Valerie complained, “and scrounge a ride. Such a bummer.”

  “Yeah, bummer,” Jim groaned.

  Alice was contemplating the plan. She’d been hoping the men could drop her off on the way—but where was Virginia and McGee? The names were unfamiliar, the neighborhood far from her own.

  “Are you going home?” she murmured to Joe. Maybe she could get out with him. Joe’s house was in South Campus, she could get home from there.

  “No, Jim and Valerie’s. Virginia and McGee.”

  The evening hovered in the balance. If they were heading for Dan Dupres’ house, she could go there and manage the phone call home. Dan’s house would be a less scandalous place to call from than the lobby of the Fillmore. Or maybe the men could drop her off—maybe her family would be sleeping, and no one would ever know. Crouching on a low bench, she chose the faster way home—in the van.

  The bridge rumbled under them. Jim, already a showman, was easy and boasting. “When you guys were dancing,” he was saying, “I was up by the stage. The Dead were coming on, and Jerry Garcia came over—”