Chapter 9
She swam up from depths, green, cold, forbidding. She was cold. Across the room one of the curtains became a flow of motion, moving into and through the ceiling. Then it stopped and she was cold again. She was naked, lying on the bed without cover. Stanley was sleeping in the next bed. She felt a vague puzzlement. She could have sworn that Stanley was in bed with her. She reached for the spread. It was mussed and damp. She pulled it over her naked body, shivering. The floor of the room, with its worn rug, rose up to sway before her eyes. She shook her head and moaned, half awake.
Stanley had been so nice, she thought, fixing her a drink. She looked around. She couldn't find the drink and she knew that she hadn't had time to finish it. But it was daylight. No longer half asleep, she rose from the bed. Her watch said ten o' clock. The early morning chill she'd imagined was just imagination, wasn't it? She was no longer cold. She was warm, hot. She couldn't no longer breath. She rushed to the door, slid it open a few inches, put her face out into the mid-morning air. It was pleasantly warm. The sun was bright. The swimming pool was inviting. The water sparkled and called to her. She slid the door open, stepped out onto the little patio over the pool and it took several seconds for the series of whistles to burn through her comfortable, sun warmed feeling. She looked down. Three young men were grinning up at her and she realized, suddenly, that she was nude. She leaped back inside, closing the door behind her. The far wall came toward her, writhing in a flow of color. She felt a scream form in her throat.
Stanley fixed a drink and a whole night disappeared!
Stanley? She walked to the bed and looked down. Stanley was sleeping a sleep of sexual exhaustion.
It didn't make sense. The floor heaved under her and she could hear music. She thought at first that it was a radio in another room, but it seemed to come from inside her head. It came and went and it frightened her.
That drink. Now what the hell had happened to the night?
Angel knew that she was not much of a drinker. She had a low tolerance toward alcohol. It took only a couple of drinks to make her high as a kite and she hadn't questioned the fact that she'd had too much to drink on that first night, the night when she conducted herself in a way which was obviously wanton enough to disgust Stanley. But she distinctly remembered having one drink, one drink only the night before and on that one drink the entire night had gone away from her.
The music in her head went away, for a moment. She frowned, her brow wrinkled in thought. She tried to remember one thing about the night. She could get as far as the drink. She had made a decision to go but with Joe, and Stanley had been opposed to it for some reason. Then she took the drink Stanley had mixed for her while she was in the shower and she distinctly remembered taking a long, cooling drink. The glass had been packed full of finely crushed ice and the drink was fairly strong.
But not strong enough to knock her out so that she didn't remember anything past taking that first long drink of it!
The music roared up in her head, all diminished chords, eerie, threatening. She stood, frozen into immobility, in the center of the room. The curtains writhed their way up into the ceiling and she was screaming.
Stanley came off the bed, nude, in one flow of graceful feminine motion. Angel was bending, her hands at the cleavage of her breasts, clenched into fists so tightly that her knuckles were white. "Knock it off," Stanley said, seizing Angel by the shoulders and shaking. "Shut up."
She let the scream trail off into a faint, sobbing sound. She looked into Stanley's face and saw, for an eerie moment, the skeletal structure of it, the empty eye sockets, black and horrible, the bright gleam of gumless teeth in a grinning mouth. Then it was gone and Stanley was Stanley.
"You've done something to me," she said, her voice calm. A moment of supreme rationality was upon her. "You used something in my drink. Why, Stanley?"
"You're tired," Stanley said, unable to think of anything more witty on the spur of the moment, "Let's both lie down."
"No," she said, very, very calmly, pulling away from Stanley with dignity. "I'm not going it wobbles and burns and . . . " Oh, God! It waaaaaaailed.
"Lie down, baby."
"Lie down," Angel said. "Sometime something in drink and I'm Angel Tomsk. My father is Igor Tomsk and he'll hate me because I've screwed all of them-blue and white. See? Angel? See?"
Stanley pushed her down. The kid was really out of it again, sifter seemingly having recovered from the trip. She watched. Angel went motionless and her eyes closed. She was quiet as Stanley tiptoed to the telephone. She had to let the telephone ring ten times before a sleepy male voice answered.
"Alan? This kid is still out of it. She's having a pretty bad trip, too. Screaming and all."
"Still out of it?" She could hear him wayning. "Look, we'll come over."
Stanley dressed in a mini-shift. She looked the all American girl, pretty knees, good, full thighs below the dinky skirt, a pair of well rounded hips and a good set of breasts. Her short, blonde hair was set to order with a quick attack by a brush and then they were there. Carl had left the tape recorder. He went to it immediately.
"She can't still be under it," Alan said. "It wears off quicker than that."
"Five minutes ago she was screaming like crazy," Stanley said, "but before that she seemed to be out of it. In fact, she said something about me putting something in her drink."
"If she's that rational, she must be coming out of it," Carl said. "Let's give her a whirl. We have to leave here tomorrow, you know."
"See if you can rouse her, ice maiden," Alan said.
"Look, bastard," Stanley told him, "the mere fact that you, as a male specimen, don't turn me on doesn't give you the right to follow the ape-man's lead in calling me names."
"Sorry," Alan said, grinning. "Just a slip."
Stanley couldn't let it drop. "I've kissed little children who have a better technique than yours," she said, remembering with disgust the way she had to let Alan kiss her and fondle her there on the beach that night when they were setting the stage for passion, making it possible for Carl to get Angel into the motel room and slip the acid into her.
"I've never had complaints before," Alan said. "Maybe you aren't turned on by a man, honey."
"Screw you, Jack," Stanley said. She flipped to the bed, shook Angel hard, taking out her anger on the limp girl. "Wake up, sleeping beauty."
"Am awake," Angel said, pulling herself up. She looked up and saw Carl and Alan. "Hey," she yelped. "I'm exposed." She reached for the spread while Carl laughed nastily.
"If I see anything I haven't seen before," Carl said, "I'll plant a flag on it and claim it for God and Country."
Angel tucked the spread over her bosom and looked at them questioningly. "Is this a convention?"
"We want to have you finish that little thing you were doing for us, baby," Alan said. He held out the paper.
For a moment, it seemed that the paper was going to turn into a bat and fly away, but with squinted eyes she managed to keep it in place. Carl thrust the microphone in front of her.
"Just read it, baby," Alan said coaxingly. 'That's all. Then you can go back to sleep."
"I don't want to sleep," Angel said. "I'm wide awake. And why are you talking to me as If I were a child, or drunk, or something?"
"It's worn off," Carl said.
"Shut up," Stanley told him sharply.
"What's worn off?" Angel asked. "Hey, that's something I want to take up with you people. You've been doing something to me and I want to know what. You using some kind of dope or something and slipping it into my drinks?"
"Why, honey," Alan soothed, "you know better than that. We just had a party, that's all. You had a little too much."
"One drink," Angel said and the wall across the room turned into a parched, burning desert and all wild and terrible with things there, dark, unseen but felt coming toward her. She could not hold back the scream.
"Jesus," Carl said, his voice soft.
"I don't know," Alan said, after a minute of watching, awe stricken, as Angel went from complete normality to a state verging on catatonia. "I think the stuff is working on her too much."
"I never had a trip that wild," Carl said.
"Angel, Angel," Alan was repeating. "Hey, come out of it" She seemed to respond. "I can make it go away, baby. Want me to make it all go away?"
"Oh, please," she begged. "Please, please, please."
"Listen, then," he said, motioning to Carl, who was holding the microphone. "This is important. This is the way to make it go away. Just read. Hear me? Just read this"
She began. The words seemed familiar and yet strange. She looked at the paper with eye squinting concentration and read the words, for there in the back of her mind were the horrors waiting. But there were some she understood.
"It is a just war," she seemed to hear as she read the words on the paper which said exactly the opposite.
"Damn it, Angel," Alan said, when she paused, "if you want me to help you, you have to read this."
"Let me think," she said desperately.
As she looked at the paper which condemned the war and all those who believed in it, a statement which called the government murderers and matimen, which urged all young men to defy the draft, she could hear her father's voice.
"We are there because we made a promise to some people," Igor Tomsk was saying, as if he had always been a part of the American nation, not just an adopted son. "We told them we would protect them against aggression and force. We promised this solemnly. The existence of a sovereign state is threatened by outside force. If, in this country, for example, Castro armed the more fanatic advocates of the so-called "Black Power" and they began to terrorize the nation, killing the duly elected or appointed officials and anyone who opposed them, levying their own taxes on those who did not have the power to resist, if Castro then sent in his own troops to help the deluded traitors, do you think for one minute that we would call it a civil war? No. We would call it Communist aggression and we would fight it with all the power at our disposal. The people of South Viet Nam choose, long ago, not to be Communist. Now that Communism is being forced down their throats by armed force from within and without, but mostly, now, from without. If the North Vietnamese were to witlidraw from the South, the South could police its own political problem. The government of the South is freely elected and we are pledge on our solemn honor to support it. That alone should convince all that the war is just. Then, too, we can cite the selfish reasons for our being in Southeast Asia, then 'it's better to fight them there than in Australia or the Philippines' idea."
She had heard it all so many times. Igor Tomsk had personal experience with Communism. He'd barely escaped with his life from the original seat of Communism, Russia. He had reason to know it, to hate it, to fear it. Now they, these funny people, were trying to make her, the daughter of Igor Tomsk, say things which were directly contrary to her father's beliefs.
And to her own belief.
She'd never given much consideration to the war. It didn't touch her. She'd always felt that it was something to be handled by the statesman. Boys she knew worried about the draft, but they were still safe from it as long as they kept their grades up. The war didn't touch her. But now, seeing the words, having read enough of them to know that they were silly, the thoughtless mouthing of the Vietniks, she knew that being Igor Tomsk's daughter had done something for her. She knew, now, that she, too, believed that the war was just and necessary.
"I can't," she said.
"Sure you can. You were doing so well."
"No. What are you, crazy? A bunch of nuts? That's weirdo stuff there. I don't believe it. My father would kill me."
"I'll make it start again, Angel," Alan said, leaning toward her. "Do you want that?" He was counting on the lingering effects of the acid. He was banking on fear. It was obvious that the chick had a really bad trip.
"No," she said, knowing that she was safe. Her determination would keep it away. Now that she knew, now that she was certain that they had put something, probably one of the hallucinogens, into her drink she was safe.
"You people are really weird," she said, throwing back the spread, unconcerned about her nudity. "You're a rare bunch of freak-outs, you are."
She moved with graceful decision to pick up her scattered clothing. She pulled on her panties and her slacks before any of them spoke.
"What do you think you're doing?" Stanley asked.
"I'm bugging out, baby," Angel said. "Look, I owe you. All I owe, though, is a bit of loot and a ride to this freak out and I'm going to pay you for that. I won't pay you in kind, my dear friend Stanley-baby, but I'll pay you back the loot for my share of the gas and my share of the room and all."
"Alan?" Stanley asked, looking toward the big, young man for leadership.
He shrugged. "Hey, baby, no harm done, huh?" He watched Angel struggle into a blouse and start tossing things into her bag.
She paused and looked at him. "No harm? You son-of-a-bitch, don't you know that stuff is dangerous? No harm? I won't know until after my first child is born." Suddenly she was scared. "If you've done anything to him . . . " It was funny, in a way. She was only nineteen. She had no plans for marriage in the near future, but suddenly she knew that she wanted marriage. She'd read of the effects of LSD, not enough to be sure of her facts, but enough to know that there was something about damaging the hereditary genes, causing bad things to happens in unborn children. She remembered it and was as sure as she was standing there that someday she would have children and would want them passionately. "And," she went on, "if you've done anything to my child, I'm going to look for you and kill you. All of you."
"That's all for the birds, chick," Carl said. "Look, cool it, huh? You just had a bad trip, that's all. Let's let bygones be and be friends, huh?"
"I'm leaving," Angel said, having tossed her few things helter-skelter into the bag.
"No," Alan said sadly, blocking her way. "I'm sorry, we can't let you do that. Not just yet."
"You can't stop me," Angel said, but there was a new fear in her. They were so big. And they were between her and the door.
"There's something you have to do first," Alan said. "Just help us out by reading the statement."
"You're crazy," she said angrily.
"O. K., Carl, get the projector . . . "
She tried to walk past as Carl went out the door. Alan stopped her forcibly. He took the bag from her hand, roughly, and forced her back into a chair. "I don't want to have to hurt you, baby," he said.
"You can't keep me here," Angel said. "Cool it," Alan said. "We just want to show you something."
She waited nervously for a few minutes, then Carl was back with a movie projector and a screen, which he set up at opposite sides of the room.
"Now, baby," Alan said, "we want you to take a good look. We had a little epic movie production right here in this room night before last and we went to a lot of trouble to get the film processed so that you could see it. I think you'll recognize the star."
Seeing herself on the screen was a shock. She tensed, sat up stiffly straight in the chair for, in the pictures which flashed onto the screen, she was nude. Moreover, with the camera close-up on her face, she could see a look which she recognized. She'd never seen it before, that look, at least not on her face, but she recognized it as the almost pained, somewhat hammy expression of passion. The camera work was not professional, but it was adequate. Quickly, without preliminary, the camera followed her as she moved, as she went down on a huge male organ with careless abandon. The camera moved in closer, with a jerk, to show her take the prick into her mouth with a visible gasp.