Chapter 10

Elaine awoke in the early light of dawn and sat up painfully in the bed of tangled, sleeping bodies. She was cold sober.

And she had never felt so wretched in her life, never experienced such pangs of self-loathing. She looked about the dingy room, which was a wreck from the two nights of carousing, and she fought to keep from gagging.

How could she have permitted this to happen?

What was wrong with her?

Something was driving her in this search for wild sensation, this perverse lust for thrills. She was becoming nothing more than a wanton-making love to every man who took her fancy.

And yet each time she had wanted it.

And she had loved it when it was happening to her, been swept along by the pure excitement.

There must really be something wrong with her. She was behaving like a nympho. A love-crazed tramp. The lust kept building in her, and the regret and shame were dying, slowly but certainly.

Yet she knew the end of this kind of life was just as certain and just as fatal as the end of the road Brenda was taking with the needle.

Brenda!

She had forgotten her, lulled by the tequila and the two days of mad abandon in this room.

She had to get on to San Miguel and save Brenda. Time was running out each day as she became more terribly hooked with each fix Warren Lasswell shot into her arm.

Perhaps it was already too late. It would certainly be too late unless she could find a way to get Brenda away from the man who was destroying her.

Elaine had to get to her. She had to leave this room, which seemed to be closing in on her, or go completely out of her mind.

She dressed quickly and reached for Lola among the tangle of arms and legs. Lola stirred, blinked her eyes, and then shrugged away from Elaine's hand.

"Go away," she grumbled. "I want to sleep."

Elaine stared down at Lola's puffy face with the stringy yellow hair bunched around it. As she lay there with her mouth slack, breathing lazily, she had the look of a degenerate. The thing Elaine was becoming as well.

There was a mirror on the wall, but Elaine didn't have the courage to look into it for fear of what she might see. A face as haggard as Lola's.

Elaine shuddered. She was impatient to go. She couldn't stand it another minute in this foul room where she had allowed herself to be so degraded.

She shook Lola again.

"Come on," she said determinedly. "I want to go. We've got to find Brenda."

"Hell, I'm not leaving," Lola mumbled sleepily. "This is fun. I've never had it so good...."

Elaine took a deep breath.

"I'm going-if I have to go alone."

"Help yourself...."

"I'll see you," Elaine said.

"Adios."

Lola closed her eyes and snuggled her head up against the bare back of one of the boys who was lying diagonally across the bed.

They were all asleep. Elaine stopped at the table where there was a piled tangle of clothing. She needed money for a bus ticket.

There was money in the boys' trousers. The way they had used her, they owed her something. She found a wallet and took out two hundred peso notes and some smaller bills.

Then she took her suitcase and went out the door, not bothering to look back.

She caught a cab at the first corner and, despite the fact that she didn't know the language, managed to communicate to the driver that she wanted to ride to the bus station.

It was a big dusty, grimy place. She bought a ticket for San Miguel and waited only a few minutes until the bus began to load.

Soon they were rolling through narrow city streets until they reached open country. The bus labored up a winding mountain road, crossed a pass, and dropped down into a wide valley that ran between two mountain ranges.

It was a long, monotonous ride over vast, dry stretches of desert cluttered with patches of cactus, now and then a dusty little village of a few adobe huts.

The sun moved around to the west, finally sank from sight behind the high range of mountains that seemed to stretch interminably in the distance.

And then it was night, and the bus continued to roll across the dry, dusty land. Then at last they were winding up from the flat valley, into the foothills and the mountains to the west.

It was almost ten o'clock at night when they arrived in San Miguel and the bus let her out on the edge of the plaza which was surrounded by cobblestone streets.

She walked up the sidewalk under a roof supported by curving arches. Now that she had finally arrived, she didn't know what her next step should be. She realized that she should have given it more thought as she rode on the bus, rather than spend so much time sleeping.

Obviously, the thing to do was to find someone who could speak English and see if they had ever heard of Warren Lasswell or knew where he lived.

But she had the suitcase to dispose of. It was getting heavier by the minute. There hadn't been a bus station. The bus had just loaded up at the sidewalk and driven off. So there was no place to check her suitcase.

At the end of the plaza she wandered through an open door, into a bar called La Cucaracha and made her way back through the scattered tables of the front room to a little cubbyhole in back where there were four or five seats around a very small bar.

"Elaine-baby!"

A man's voice had shouted her name. She looked around and saw a man approaching her, his arms outspread. He had a thin beard that fringed the edge of his chin and a tangled mop of yellow hair.

She recognized him as someone she had known in Sausalito, but for a moment she couldn't remember his name.

"Remember me, baby-doll?"

And then she did. Art Langley, a crazy painter she had seen at a few parties in the Garlic Belt. She had even gone to bed with him once, though he had been completely tanked on Chianti and unable to raise even an eyebrow.

"Hello, Art," she said, dropping the heavy suitcase at her feet.

"What are you doing here, baby?"

"I've come to find my sister."

"That sweet, swinging chick. What's her name?"

"Brenda."

"That's it-Brenda. A real cool dish, though I never personally had the pleasure...."

"Have you seen her?"

"Not since the last time, doll."

"Where was that?"

"Back in Frisco."

"Do you know Warren Lasswell?"

"The most. He's a long-gone, crazy cat."

"She came here with him."

"He's making the scene. I dug him the other night, over at Los Dragones."

"Do you know where he lives?"

Art pointed with his chin.

"Thataway."

"Will you take me?"

"I'm your slave, doll."

"Can I leave my suitcase here?"

"Sure." Art picked it up and slid it into the corner behind a table. "But let me gas up before we leave."

She followed him through the door and up to the bar. He pounded a fist on the polished wood and the bartender poured a double shot of tequila without a word.

"What's yours?"

"Nothing," Elaine said.

Art shrugged and poured down the drink. He threw three silver pesos on the bar. And then he threw down three more and pounded his fist again.

The bartender filled the shot glass once more and Art poured it down. He gasped and turned to Elaine.

"All right, doll. Let's dust out."

She followed him out the door and down the street. He hurried ahead of her, and she found it difficult to keep up even by running now and then.

Art bounced dizzily off the walls as they wound in and out of narrow streets. They passed an open doorway where there was a loud blast of noise and the whine of a phonograph playing progressive jazz.

Art stopped suddenly and waited for her to catch up. He poked his head inside.

"Let's make it here, doll. This looks like a blast."

Reluctantly she followed him through the door. There was nothing else to do. He could lead her to Brenda, so she had to stick with him if it took all night.

It was a weird scene. If it weren't for two or three dusky faces and the bright colored serapes on the floor, she could be back in Sausalito at a typical blast. There was one other difference. The guests seemed to be drinking tequila and rum instead of wine.

There were a few way-out arty paintings on the walls. The usual black toreadors and baggy sweaters. A couple of perverts dancing together. A bearded prophet holding forth on some long-winded discussion with two Lesbians who were paying more attention to each other than to him.

Once she had thought this kind of thing was the greatest, but now the scene was starting to bug her. She didn't belong here any more. Once she had dug this kind of thing, when she had been starry-eyed and fresh from the steppes of North Dakota. But now it seemed phony to her.

Art Langley had gone among the milling crowd and disappeared through a door. She watched for him to come out, and when he didn't, she went through it. There was nothing except a pair of somnambulistic lovers on a mattress against the wall. And the distinctive smell of burning marijuana.

Art Langley wasn't in sight.

She went back to the room where most of the action was going on. She searched for him through the blue haze of smoke, but he wasn't there.

So he had gotten away from her. There was nothing to do but wait in hopes he would return.

"You seem to be alone."

She turned around and stared into the gently smiling face of a man in his early twenties who seemed to be out of place in such a scene. First of all, he didn't have a beard. And he was dressed in ordinary clothes, nothing way-out or exaggerated for effect.

She liked the way his pale gray eyes appraised her, the nice smile on his handsome face. He was tall, perhaps a little thin, but there was something honest and wholesome about the way he looked at her. And right now that meant a whole lot to her. Right now she needed someone to talk with who wasn't sick or freakish like most of the people in the room.

"I'm Kenny Ricketts-if that means anything."

She found herself smiling as she told him her name. He looked into her eyes for a moment, and then he took her arm and led her toward the door.

"What do you say we cut out? I don't think either one of us belongs here. To tell you the truth, these types bore me to death."

"I was thinking the same thing," Elaine said, following him out to the street.

"I haven't seen you around."

She laughed easily.

"I haven't been around very long. I just came in on the bus about an hour ago."

"Staying a while?"

"That depends-"

"On what?"

"On my sister, I guess."

"Something's bothering you," he said in a gentle voice. "I can always sense it. Want to tell me?"

That was exactly what she had been wanting to do for a long time. But there hadn't been anybody willing to listen. Lola was completely oblivious of her worries over Brenda. Now this man had sensed that she was in trouble, needing help.

All at once she found herself telling it all to him as though they had known each other for years, and not just met at a beatnik party.

"I know Lasswell," Kenny said when she was finished. "He made quite an entrance the day he arrived in town with your sister. Killed a burro with his Jaguar and injured the kid who was leading it. But he's got the money to buy his way out of trouble...."

"Do you know where he lives?"

"I think so."

"Would you mind taking me there?" Elaine said eagerly.

"Sure. If you want to go."

"I've got to get her away from that-monster," she said. "Before he destroys her completely."

"Let's go," Kenny said.

Taking her by the hand, he led her in the same direction Art Langley had been leading her before he discovered the party. They walked down narrow winding streets lit only by an occasional lantern or the gleam of a lamp from some window.

There seemed to be nothing but walls made of stone or adobe, and now and then a doorway or a barred window. Then they came to the end of the street where it opened into a large area.

There was a high stone wall behind which Elaine could see the tile roof of a large house.

"This is it," Kenny said.

There was a heavy brass knocker on the door that opened on two sides wide enough to permit a car to pass through. Kenny gave it a loud rap.

In the silence, Elaine heard the faint sound of music which seemed to be coming from the house. And then, as a door opened, it grew louder. There was also the dull rumble of voices, the noise of a party inside.

Metal grated as a small trapdoor slid open and a dark face peered out. The door slid shut again. Steps faded away on the pavement beyond the wall.

They waited five minutes and nothing happened. Then the small door slid open again and Warren Lass-well's face appeared. He glanced first at Kenny, and then his eyes glared at Elaine. For a full thirty seconds he stared at her, cold and unblinking. Then his mouth curled disdainfully.

"Go away," he muttered.

The door slid shut. The sound of his footsteps faded away in the night. The last thing they heard was the opening and closing of the door to the house.

"Well," Kenny said with a forced laugh. "At least you know where he lives."

"We're not going to get in," Elaine said numbly. "I've got to see Brenda...."

"It looks hopeless tonight," Kenny said sympathetically. "We can try again tomorrow."

"I suppose so," Elaine said.

"Do you have a place to stay tonight?"

"No," she sighed.

"Have any money?"

She shook her head.

"It's not much, but you can stay at my pad," he said softly.

She looked at him quickly, a frown of suspicion crossing her face. It sounded like the same come-on she'd heard from every man she'd ever met. And she was getting tired of it.

"I know how it sounds," he said apologetically. "Like a proposition. But I didn't mean it that way. I've got a couch. I'll sleep on it, if you want. You can have the bed."

She thought a minute and then she said, "Let's go."

"Do you have any luggage?"

"Up town at a bar."

"Let's go," he said, taking her hand and leading her up the dark street in the direction from which they had come.