Vineland (40 page)

“Said that we're gonna be—” the rest swallowed in a fugue of B-52's.

“F-4 Phantom, I think!” screaming through megaphone hands.

“Well thanks, got to be going,” Zoyd mouthed without wasting his voice, smiled, waved, tipped his hat and was off hitchhiking with the baby and their effects inside the quarter hour. Prairie, glad to be moving anywhere, fell asleep as soon as they got a ride. They proceeded toward San Francisco, coming to rest at the posh Telegraph Hill town house of Wendell (“Mucho”) Maas, a music-business biggie whom Zoyd knew by way of Indolent Records, entering black iron gates to a long Spanish courtyard of flowered tiles, plants with giant leaves, and working fountains, whose splash woke Prairie with that puzzled look on her face. Exotic trees bloomed in the dark and smelled like someplace far away. They both looked around, Prairie bright-eyed. “OK Slick, he must still be payin' the rent.” The courtyard led to an entry full of houseplants under a skylight, where up to them came skipping this pure specimen of young Californian womanhood of the period, ironed hair down to the small of her back, perfectly bikini-tanned, forever eighteen, sweetly stoned and surrounded by a patchouli haze with which she'd announced herself by a minute or two. “Hi, I'm Trillium,” she whispered, head to one side, “Mucho's friend. Oh, what a cute baby, a little Taurus, yes, isn't she?”

“Um,” Zoyd too astonished to recall the date, “how'd you know that?”

“Mucho's Rolodex, I'm supposed to check out everybody.” She had taken Prairie, who already had two delighted fistfuls of that long hair. “Mucho's on retreat for the weekend up in Marin? But the place is oll yerz tonight, 'cz I'll be at the Paranoids concert at the Fillmore.” She was leading him into one of those high-sixties record-business interiors, to which Prairie reacted with a prolonged, approving sort of “Gaaahhh. . . .” Next week, next year it could all be gone, open to wind, salt fogs, and walk-in visitors, phones unringing on the bare floors, echoes of absquatulation in the air, careers being that volatile in those days, as revolution went blending into commerce. But here was period rock and roll, over audio equipment that likewise expressed, that long-ago year, the highest state of the analog arts all too soon to be eclipsed by digital technology, Trillium dancing to it, and in her arms the baby jumping and jiving. Zoyd put on dark glasses, shook back his hair, snapped his fingers, did a few amiable time steps, looking around the place. Things blinked, swirled, transformed, came and went everywhere. Distraction. Pinball machines, television sets of many makes and sizes that never got turned off, showing all channels then known, stereo piped to every room and space, incense burning, black-light effects throwing deep purple spills, in the main room a giant tent, peaking twenty feet overhead in a pavilion of fabrics in zany colors including invisible except when they stirred or glittered. Views from here out over the City and Bay, especially at night, were psychedelic even if you happened to be on the natch, as Trillium reminded them, heading out the door presently with a busload of costumed young folks who'd all met and enjoyed the baby. “Groovy baby!” “Rilly!”

Prairie slumped singing in her father's arms, a sort of voiced dribbling, contented, soon to nod. They found the kitchen, he put her up on a table, raided the oversize fridge, fed her some boysenberry yogurt, a lot of it ending up on his shirt, filled bottles with juice and milk, and retired to a guest room across the patio from the kitchen, searched all over the place for any evidence of a guest stash, had to roll and light one of his own before putting Prairie down to sleep with an original and infallible lullaby called

 

Lawrence of Arabia

 

Oh—Lawrence,

Of Arabia, with his

Wig, wag, woggledy doo!

In-surance,

In Arabia,

Don't co-ver what, he do. . . .

No! He's out there with his camel,

In the day or night,

Cruisin' in the desert, just

Lookin' for a fight—he don't care 'cause he's

Lawrence,

Of Arabia, with that

Wig, wag, woggledy doo!

 

With the volume all the way down, Zoyd settled in in front of the Tube, Woody Allen in
Young Kissinger
, and slowly relaxed, though the absence of marijuana in the place was mystifying. Psychedelicized far ahead of his time, Mucho Maas, originally a disk jockey, had decided around 1967, after a divorce remarkable even in that more innocent time for its geniality, to go into record producing. The business was growing unpredictable, and his takeoff was abrupt—soon, styling himself Count Drugula, Mucho was showing up at Indolent, down in the back-street Hollywood flats south of Sunset and east of Vine, in a chauffeured Bentley, wearing joke-store fangs and a black velvet cape from Z & Z, scattering hits of high-quality acid among the fans young and old who gathered daily for his arrival. “Count, Count! Lay some dope on us!” they'd cry. Indolent Records had rapidly become known for its unusual choices of artists and repertoires. Mucho was one of the very first to audition, but not, he was later to add hastily, to call back, fledgling musician Charles Manson. He almost signed Wild Man Fischer, and Tiny Tim too, but others got to them first.

By the standards of those high-riding days of eternal youth, Count Drugula, or Mucho the Munificent, as he also came to be known, figured as a responsible, even sober-sided user of psychedelics, but cocaine was another story. It hit him out of nowhere, an unforeseen passion he would in his later unhappiness compare to a clandestine affair with a woman—furtive meetings between his nose and the illicit crystals, sudden ecstatic peaks, surprising negative cash flow, amazing sexual occurrences. Just as he arrived at that crisis point between wild infatuation and long-term commitment, his nose went out on him—blood, snot, something unarguably green—a nasal breakdown. He did not go into rehab, the resources in those days not yet having achieved the ubiquity they did in later years of national drug hysteria, but instead sought the help of Dr. Hugo Splanchnick, a dedicated and moralistic rhinologist working out of a suite of dust-free upper rooms in Sherman Oaks. “You'll do me a small favor? I have to take some blood—”

“Huh?”

“—only enough for you to dip this pen into here, and sign your name to this short letter of agreement—”

“Says no coke for as long as I live? What if I—”

“That'll be back with the penalty clauses, basically the traditional range of sanctions—fines, imprisonment, death.”

“Death? What? For snorting coke?”

“You're trying to kill yourself anyway, what would it matter?”

A throb of pain went through Mucho's nose. “Can I at least get some Novocaine?” pronouncing it “Dovocaide.”

“Soon as you sign.”

“Doc! This is worse than a producer's loan-out agreement.”

An annoyed sigh. “Regretfully, then,” flinging open another door leading deeper into the suite, “we must proceed to the next phase, the ‘Room of the Bottled Specimens.'” Lurid pink light, from the cheaply acquired meat displays of a failed supermarket, poured forth.

This didn't look promising. “Um, say, maybe I'll sign after all, add thed you'll gimb be the Dovocaide, right?”

“Ah, much much too late, I'm afraid, as I think you've already glimpsed here in Jar Number One, the— “pretending to read the label,” ‘Cross Section Through Jazz Musician's Skull'? eh? revealing the structure of this very interesting abscess, come, have a look, I promise,” chuckling, “you won't have to eat it.”

To the drug-ruffled nap of Mucho's brain it did not seem at all unlikely that some form of life, somewhere, would find the Bottled Specimens not only edible but appetizing as well, and so he refrained from sharing the snoot croaker's merriment.

“Fine, fine—now for the Necrotic Sinus.” On it went, Mucho stumbling, eyes oscillating and nose throbbing, through the Wax Museum, the Emergency Room Footage, the Examples in the Freezer, till at length pain, exhaustion, and the beginning of a new head cold drove him to ink, or rather blood, this nose medic's dubious pact. At last he could beam at the paper over a nose hypodermically iced out. What interesting reading material. Ha, ha, ha! What idiot did they think would ever sign this?

But as he would describe it later, often to people who didn't even know him, and at some length, it proved to be a turning point in his life. Reeling out onto Ventura Boulevard, he was nearly run down by a stop-me-search-me VW bus, brightly repainted and full of long-haired young desperados out cruising, who recognized him and began clamoring for acid. But Mucho, with a spaced and born-again look to him, only announced in a robotized oracular voice, “Why brothers, the new trip, the only true trip, is The Natch, and being on it.”

“Aw,” said the dopers, the speech balloon emerging from their tailpipe as they rolled away.

Though Mucho had relocated since then to the Acid Rock Capital, his dedication to The Natch had only deepened, and he'd begun to be known in some parts of town as a source of rectal discomfort on the subject, not even sparing his old rock and roll buddy Zoyd his thoughts on the evils of drug abuse. Eat at the mission, sit still for the sermon. But Zoyd was ready with a lecture of his own.

“Mucho, what happened, you were the Head of Heads, and not that long ago. This can't be you talking, it must be the fuckin' government, which this is all their trip anyway, 'cause they need to put people in the joint, if they can't do that, what are they? ain't shit, might as well be another show on the Tube. They didn't even start goin' after dope till Prohibition was repealed, suddenly here's all these federal cops lookin' at unemployment, they got to come up with somethin' quick, so Harry J. Anslinger invents the Marijuana Menace, single-handed. Don't believe me ask ol' Hector, remember him? He'll tell you some shit.”

Mucho shivered. “Uh-uh, that dude. Thought he'd be off your case by now.” Back down south at the Indolent studios, Hector had made a strong impression. Just when it had seemed the Corvairs' luck was turning, and they were actually beginning to cut one or two masters, with Mucho himself producing, suddenly heavily hanging out, faithful as a groupie, was the drug agent, silent and glittering at first but all too soon putting in, as if unable not to, not only negotiating lyrics, which was certainly bad enough, but also arguing about notes, which was crazy—“Hey, those are soul licks! surfers ain' spoze to be playín like that, spoze to play Anglo, like do-re-mi, man, Julie Andrews? up in those Alps? with all those white kids?” so forth, causing Scott Oof to start glowering. “Here he is again, your buddy the rock reviewer, pickier 'n ever. How does he like the beat? Is the string track OK?”

“Strings,” Hector narrowing his eyes, ominously on defense, “I didt'n hear no strings.”

“Now come on cats, let's all be cool,” Mucho in his Count Drugula gear trying to emcee, “I'm happy you enjoyin' your backstage look at the world of rock and roll, mah man in the reverse-chic shoes, but the latest in from the beach is, not even the Surfaris are playing white anymore.”

“First the shoes,” Hector swiveling to inform him, “are my old Stacey Adamses,
me entiendes como te digo?
”

“Oops. . . .” Mucho was aware of the mystique, all right, and quick to beg forgiveness.

“Aw, it's OK,” Hector putting on his face a goofy and dangerous look, as of some old-time pachuco flying high on reefer, a preferred intimidation technique that extended to his suit, which he'd had semi-retailored to suggest a zoot of the 1940s, “but let me tell you, 'causs sometimes I hear records on your label when I'm out, you know, cruisín, so I really want to tell
you
, man, about my car radio?” He moved closer to Mucho, who'd already read and filed Hector's story by now, and would presently begin to edge away. “Which is kin' of unique 'causs it only gits this one station? KQAS! Kick-Ass 460 on th' AM dial! I got their decal on my car window, you can look at it later if you want. I got their T-shirt too, but I'm not wearín it today. 'S too bad, 's got a good picture on it. 'S what it is, it's this close-up, of a foot, an' a ass? you know? like a freeze-frame, right where the foot is . . . ju-u-u-ust makín that firs' contact with th' ass, right?”

“We're running late,” Mucho said. “Zoyd, fellas, you're in competent hands, and nice meeting you, whatever your badge number was.”

“Tell the ol' neckbiter here how much I'm enjoyín myself,” darkly advised the sensitive federale.

“Yes, check the drape of his suit,” Zoyd had counseled then, “and exercise caution.”

“These federal guys,” Mucho, back in real time, was telling Zoyd, “if they're anything like nasal therapists, they're in your life forever. I didn't think you were dealing anymore.”

“Me neither. So last week, what happens? He finally tries to set me up.” He told Mucho of his brief but educational time in federal custody.

Mucho blinked sympathetically, a little sadly. “I guess it's over. We're on into a new world now, it's the Nixon Years, then it'll be the Reagan Years—”

“Ol' Raygun? No way he'll ever make president.”

“Just please go careful, Zoyd. 'Cause soon they're gonna be coming after everything, not just drugs, but beer, cigarettes, sugar, salt, fat, you name it, anything that could remotely please any of your senses, because they need to control all that. And they will.”

“Fat Police?”

“Perfume Police. Tube Police. Music Police. Good Healthy Shit Police. Best to renounce everything now, get a head start.”

“Well I still wish it was back then, when you were the Count. Remember how the acid was? Remember that windowpane, down in Laguna that time? God, I knew then, I knew. . . .”

They had a look. “Uh-huh, me too. That you were never going to die. Ha! No wonder the State panicked. How are they supposed to control a population that knows it'll never die? When that was always their last big chip, when they thought they had the power of life and death. But acid gave us the X-ray vision to see through that one, so of course they had to take it away from us.”