Part 19 (2/2)

But the two blank records. What about them?

As he sat pondering, an adolescent boy in a T-s.h.i.+rt and jeans bent over him and mumbled, ”Hey, you're Jason Taverner, aren't you?” He extended a ballpoint pen and piece of paper. ”Could I have your autograph, sir?”

Behind him a pretty little red-haired teenybopper, bra-less, in white shorts, smiled excitedly and said, ”We always catch you on Tuesday night. You're fantastic. And you look in real life, you look just like on the screen, except that in real life you're more, you know, tanned.” Her friendly nipples jiggled.

Numbly, by habit, he signed his name. ”Thanks, guys,” he said to them; there were four of them in all now.

Chattering to themselves, the four kids departed. Now people in nearby booths were watching Jason and muttering interestedly to one another. As always, he said to himself. This is how it's been up to the other day. _My reality is leaking back_. He felt uncontrollably, wildly elated. This was what he knew; this was his life-style. He had lost it for a short time but now--finally, he thought, I'm starting to get it back!

Heather Hart. He thought, I can call her now. And get through to her. She won't think I'm a twerp fan.

Maybe I only exist so long as I take the drug. That drug, whatever it is, that Alys gave me.

Then my career, he thought, the whole twenty years, is nothing but a retroactive hallucination created by the drug.

What happened, Jason Taverner thought, _is that the drug wore off_. She--somebody--stopped giving it to me and I woke up to reality, there in that shabby, broken-down hotel room with the cracked mirror and the bug-infested mattress. And I stayed that way until now, until Alys gave me another dose.

He thought, No wonder she knew about me, about my Tuesday-night TV show. Through her drug she created it. And those two record alb.u.ms--props which she kept to reinforce the hallucination.

Jesus Christ, he thought, is that it?

But, he thought, the money I woke up with in the hotel room, this whole wad of it. Reflexively he tapped his chest, felt its thick existence, still there. If in real life I doled out my days in fleabag hotels in the Watts area, where did I get that money?

And I would have been listed in the police files, and in all the other data banks throughout the world. I wouldn't be listed as a famous entertainer, but I'd be there as a shabby b.u.m who never amounted to anything, whose only highs came from a pill bottle. For G.o.d knows how long. I may have been taking the drug for years.

Alys, he remembered, said I had been to the house before. And apparently, he decided, it's true. I had. To get my doses of the drug.

Maybe I am only one of a great number of people leading synthetic lives of popularity, money, power, by means of a capsule. While living actually, meanwhile, in bug-infested, ratty old hotel rooms. On skid row. Derelicts, n.o.bodies. Amounting to zero. But, meanwhile, dreaming.

”You certainly are deep in a brown study,” Mary Anne said. She had finished her cheesecake; she looked satiated, now. And happy.

”Listen,” he said hoa.r.s.ely. ”Is my record really in that jukebox?”

Her eyes widened as she tried to understand. ”How do you mean? We listened to it. And the little thingy, where it tells the selections, that's there. Jukeboxes never made mistakes.”

He fished out a coin. ”Go play it again. Set it up for three plays.”

Obediently, she surged from her seat, into the aisle, and bustled over to the jukebox, her lovely long hair bouncing against her ample shoulders. Presently he heard it, heard his big hit song. And the people in the booths and at the counter were nodding and smiling at him in recognition; they knew it was he who was singing. His audience.

When the song ended there was a smattering of applause from the patrons of the coffee shop. Grinning reflexively, professionally in return he acknowledged their recognition and approval.

”It's there,” he said, as the song replayed. Savagely, he clenched his fist, struck the plastic table separating him from Mary Anne Dominic. ”G.o.d d.a.m.n it, it's there.”

With some odd twist of deep, intuitive, female desire to help him Mary Anne said, ”And I'm here, too.”

”I'm not in a run-down hotel room, lying on a cot dreaming,” he said huskily.

”No, you're not.” Her tone was tender, anxious. She clearly felt concern for him. For his alarm.

”Again I'm real,” he said. ”But if it could happen once, for two days--” To come and go like this, to fade in and out-- ”Maybe we should leave,” Mary Anne said apprehensively. That cleared his mind. ”Sorry,” he said, wanting to rea.s.sure her.

”I just mean that people are listening.”

”It won't hurt them,” he said. ”Let them listen; let them see how you carry your worries and troubles with you even when you're a world-famous star.” He rose to his feet, however. ”Where do you want to go?” he asked her. ”To your apartment?” It meant doubling back, but he felt optimistic enough to take the risk.

”My apartment?” she faltered.

”Do you think I'd hurt you?” he said.

Fof an interval she sat nervously pondering. ”N-no,” she said at last.

”Do you have a phonograph?” he asked. ”At your apartment?”

”Yes, but not a very good one; it's just stereo. But it works.”

”Okay,” he said, herding her up the aisle toward the cash register. ”Let's go.”

23

Mary Anne Dominic had decorated the walls and ceiling of her apartment herself. Beautiful, strong, rich colors; he gazed about, impressed. And the few art objects in the living room had a powerful beauty about them. Ceramic pieces. He picked up one lovely blue-glaze vase, studied it.

”I made that,” Mary Anne said.

”This vase,” he said, ”will be featured on my show.”

Mary Anne gazed at him in wonder.

”I'm going to have this vase with me very soon. In fact”-- he could visualize it--”a big production number in which I emerge from the vase singing, like the magic spirit of the vase.” He held the blue vase up high, in one hand, revolving it.” 'Nowhere Nuthin' f.u.c.k-up,' ”he said. ”And your career is launched.”

”Maybe you should hold it with both hands,” Mary Anne said uneasily.

”'Nowhere Nuthin' f.u.c.k-up,' the song that brought us more recognition--” The vase slid from between his fingers and dropped to the floor. Mary Anne leaped forward, but too late. The vase broke into three pieces and lay there beside Jason's shoe, rough unglazed edges pale and irregular and without artistic merit.

A long silence pa.s.sed.

”I think I can fix it,” Mary Anne said.

He could think of nothing to say.

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