Trance

by Christopher Sorrentino

  Teko has stopped bathing, Tania notices. This seems to be his way of rebuking Yolanda.

  They pack up. Papers, guns, and clothing go into cardboard boxes Tania scrounges from the Lucky supermarket. Flat old pillows and threadbare blankets that regular people would put out on the sidewalk for the garbageman. While the others box these sorry possessions, Teko lectures on the Vietcong; how a guerrilla would head into the jungle for months at a time carrying only ammunition, a sack of rice, and minimal personal belongings in his pack. A quart bottle of Colt .45, Teko’s latest affectation, sits empty on the kitchen counter.

  One night there is an argument in the bedroom, fierce and whispered. Tania and Roger lie in the darkness, frozen with embarrassment.

  Teko throws things, picks them up over his head and hurls them, into the boxes. He yells. But Yolanda will not be drawn in. The mailbox outside has a label that reads “Mr. and Mrs. Carroll Simmons,” the name Susan selected when she found and leased the dump. It’s an alias never referred to, as if Teko’s shame at having to accept the gift of this neutered name had rendered it taboo. Now Tania sees that the “& Mrs.” has been crossed out. She is unsure who is rebuking whom.

  Yolanda feeds the strays in the backyard. She stands amid the debris back there, holding an open can of cat food in one hand and a soup spoon in the other, calling to the animals in an unnatural high-pitched voice.

  Roger tells it again, to Susan, to Jeff, to Tania, who was right there beside him: He woke up, and there was Teko, cradling the submachine gun.

  Before dawn one morning, just before the move, the three are awakened by flashing lights shining through the windows and the sounds of the police, surrounding them. They immediately take up their positions in the house, prepared to shoot it out. Squatting by the window, Tania crams shells into the loading port of a shotgun. But the police activity ebbs. Two of three patrol cars drive off, leaving a pair of cops to offer vague and blase answers to the queries of sleepy residents dressed in robes and pajamas. One citizen carries an alarm clock in his hand, as if to prove that the hour is inappropriate for such goings-on. An ambulance rolls up, slowly, without lights or siren, and the cops stand by as the attendants remove equipment and a gurney from it. By first light the street is quiet again. Then around midmorning a young policeman appears at their door to question them about what they may have seen or heard. He wears a department-issue windbreaker that is stiff with newness and a hat that is too small. Turns out a man was robbed and beaten to death next door, in the overgrown lot separating the duplex from the neighboring bungalow. Yolanda clucks her tongue and gasps at the policeman’s narrative, standing at the partly open door and blocking the cop’s view into the apartment. He touches two fingers to the brim of his little hat as he turns to leave.

  The smell of something dead pervades the Capitol Avenue apartment. It begins with a faint smell in the kitchen, the slightest whiff of something putrid, and Yolanda and Susan pace across the linoleum, sniffing, talking lightly of it, their voices echoing throughout the empty rooms. But soon the stench has taken over the apartment. Tania walks in one afternoon to find Yolanda seated on two cardboard cartons, holding a paper napkin to her nose. A little exploration reveals that a mouse has died within the wall just behind an electrical outlet, and after removing the fuse and unscrewing the faceplate, Tania squats, a bandanna covering her nose and mouth, working at the stupid rodent with a tweezers, trying to remove it from the tangle of cable and wire where it managed to lodge itself before it died. Breathing through her gritted teeth behind the bandanna, Tania grabs hold of the mouse by the ear, birthing it slowly out of the hole in the wall, the stink really blossoming now, and the mouse keeps coming, it is the longest mouse in recorded history, until finally she has the enormous reeking corpse.

  JOAN ISN’T HAPPY THAT she’s walking out on her life again carrying a toothbrush in her purse and that’s it. When the pigs find her, they find her, but what she truly hates is the idea of all those guys going through her underpants.

  This is not a way of life she would recommend to everyone. Though things have been going OK up into now. She left the East Coast separate from the others. She met up with a restless friend in New Jersey, Meg Speice, and they drove to San Francisco together. No way was she going to Sacramento. She’d had it with these hick towns, she never wanted to lay eyes on Teko or Yolanda again, and she considered her so-called debt to Guy Mock paid in full. She and Meg moved into a flat on Clayton. She kept tabs on Tania through Susan Rorvik, who also got Meg a job at the hotel restaurant where she worked.

  So for the past few months she has been indistinguishable from a hundred thousand other girls: young, single, maybe with a problem relationship or two under their belt, living in a roommate situation at the edge of a total shit neighborhood, trying to apply all the fucked-up shit they’d learned to the world around them.

  Then one morning she walks out the door and guess who’s on page one of the Chronicle. People live for this? She ducks back inside and makes Meg go buy her the papers.

  “What happened?” Meg asks, dropping the Chron on the table. The two of them stand over it, hands on their hips.

  “I don’t know how they could have found the farm if Guy didn’t tell them, but I can’t believe he would. My guess is he opened his big mouth up in the neighborhood of the wrong ears.”

  Meg puts her index finger on one of the columns of type, taps it, and then moves it in a circle around a group of words. “They found your fingerprint.”

  “What the fuck? We went over that place with a fine tooth combed.”

  The dummy rented the place in his own name. Guy has an ego he can’t help but see his own name printed on all the blank spaces of the world.

  Roger picks her up before noon, and they drive north.

  “We have a lot of space now,” he says.

  Joan doesn’t respond.

  “It’s kind of nice up there,” he offers.

  “You’re the one getting laid.”

  His right ear, the one facing her, colors. The back of his neck. She folds her arms and stares straight ahead through the windshield.

  MAN SOUGHT IN SLA CASE SURFACES, DENIES RUMORS

  by N. Palmer Hockley

  SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES

  SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, April 9. A man sought by Federal authorities for questioning in connection with the militant Symbionese Liberation Army emerged from the shadowy world of the radical underground less than twenty-four hours af–ter televised news reports that he and his wife had left the country. Accompanied by their attorney, Guy Mock, 32, and his wife, Randy, held a press conference this morning here to “offer living proof” that they had not fled to North Africa and to issue a statement concerning their activities over the past year.

  The F.B.I. has sought the Mocks since February in connection with their suspected activities on behalf of the S.L.A., whose surviving elements went into hiding following a deadly confrontation with police and federal agents in Los Angeles last May that left six members of the radical left-wing group dead. According to a source close to the investigation, the Mocks are suspected of having aided fugitive members of the group, possibly including Alice Galton, by maintaining a “safe house” in rural Pennsylvania for their use last summer. The Mocks dropped out of sight after a federal grand jury subpoena was issued in February.

  The Mocks resurfaced after several Bay Area newscasts carried reports Tuesday night that the couple was en route to Algeria. At a hastily called press conference the next day, the pair’s attorney, Francis Cahalan of San Francisco, stated that he wished to give his clients “the opportunity to counter potentially detrimental rumors and to begin to take control of their portrayal in the press.” He also suggested that the F.B.I. was “harassing” the Mocks in order to “deflect attention from their own lackluster and ineffectual investigation.”

  Thomas Polhaus, who heads the F.B.I.’s investigation of the S.L.A. case, later responded, denying the harassment charge and adding,
“To the extent that Mr. and Mrs. Mock can provide us with information concerning the whereabouts and activities of the S.L.A. and Miss Galton, we are very interested in discussing these matters with them. At the present time the Mocks do not face criminal charges.” He added that the grand jury would have to complete its investigation before deciding whether to bring indictments.

  At the press conference, Mock, a sportswriter long associated with left-wing causes, did not deny outright that he had helped the group, but took exception to the couple’s depiction by the “news media,” claiming, “Our actions over the past year are completely defensible.” Mock presented a rather disjointed list of grievances against the federal government which he claimed “have stripped it of moral legitimacy.” Mock added, “We want to make clear that we find the tragic and senseless killing of Marcus Foster to be morally and politically intolerable.”

  The Symbionese Liberation Army first gained attention with the murder of Foster, the Negro superintendent of Oakland schools, in November 1973. Some three months later they burst into the national consciousness when they forced their way into the Berkeley apartment of 20-year-old Alice Galton and her fi–ancé, Eric Stump. The heavily armed group beat Stump to the ground and carried a screaming, half–naked Miss Galton from the apartment.

  The Mocks refused to divulge where they had spent the last few weeks and vigorously disputed that they had been in hiding. “We were visiting friends,” Mock claimed.

  GALTON PRAISES SLA ALLY, URGES GOV’T RESTRAINT

  by Dorsey Nebarez EXAMINER STAFF WRITER

  (April 11) Examiner Publisher Henry Galton today lent his personal support to a man the F.B.I. says may have aided the radical left-wing Symbionese Liberation Army in its efforts to remain in hiding. The same radical left-wing group on February 4 last year burst into the quiet apartment of Galton’s 20-year-old daughter, Alice, carrying away the struggling co-ed.

  Speaking today of Guy Mock and his wife, Randi, who have been sought by the F.B.I. in connection with their activities on behalf of the revolutionary sect, Galton said, “While I do not necessarily agree with Mr. and Mrs. Mock’s political philosophy, I have no reason to believe them to be other than non-violent sincere people. I believe that if they have offered their assistance to members of the S.L.A., it has been for humanitarian reasons.” Referring to a deadly confrontation with law enforcement officials last May 17 in which six of the group’s members were killed in a Southern California ghetto following a botched holdup attempt, Galton added, “After what happened in Los Angeles last year, I think the Mocks were following through on an impulse that many people felt, ourselves included; that it was necessary to safeguard these young people from overzealous police action.” Mock, who holds a Ph.D. from UC-Berkeley, is suspected with his wife of subsequently having aided the surviving members of the S.L.A. by obtaining a “safe house” for the group’s use last year. Sources close to the investigation say that the group may have spent most of the summer at this hideout, located in rural Pennsylvania.

  The Mocks, who are not alleged to have participated in any of the S.L.A.’s criminal activities, went into seclusion in February following the issuance of a subpoena seeking their testimony before a federal grand jury, re-emerging on Wednesday to refute news reports that they had fled the country and to justify their involvement with the S.L.A., which Mock described as “completely defensible.” The Mocks and their lawyer, well-known San Francisco attorney Frank Cahalan, have not denied aiding the group but have publicly distanced themselves from the S.L.A.’s violent activities.

  Galton also said today that he had urged the government to take under consideration what he called the “special circumstances” of the Mocks when deciding whether to bring charges against the couple. “As one deeply affected by this case, I have contacted both Thomas Polhaus and Taggart Wilde and made a personal appeal to each of them to approach the Mocks with sensitivity to their unique position.” He did not elaborate. Polhaus, the F.B.I. agent in charge of the investigation, has said that the Mocks presently face no criminal charges. Wilde, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California, declined to comment.

  “YOU DID WHAT?” SAID Lydia.

  Hank sat with his feet in a plastic tub filled with fizzy blue liquid that he’d created by dissolving powder from a packet into hot water. He was sitting in the easy chair in his study, with newspapers spread on the floor under and around the tub to protect the carpet.

  “I said that I got in touch with Guy Mock through Frank Cahalan.”

  “Is that the reason for that ridiculous endorsement you gave him on the front page? I couldn’t believe my eyes.”

  “The man can tell us something about our daughter.”

  “The man is looking for a soft touch, and he’s found one. Just like your good friend. Popeye.”

  This actually startled Hank. De mortuis nil nisi bonum. He remained silent for a moment, watching his wife. She stood angled forward on her pelvis, her shoulders hunched and her arms folded and pressed into her abdomen as if she were fighting off stomach cramps. Which perhaps she was. “Popeye died for having helped us out,” he said, finally.

  “He died the way those people always have. Ever since I was a child. The papers never even bothered with printing stories about shootings on the colored side of town, there were so many.”

  “We won’t argue.”

  “Oh, the great friend of the Negro people.”

  “Please, you had something you wanted to say about Guy Mock?” Hank lifted his left foot from the tub and examined it. It was glistening with a light blue film, an anklet of blue froth encircling it. The foot itself was wrinkled from its immersion in the hot water. He dropped it back into the tub.

  “So convenient that you could just plant something like that on the front page, masquerading as news. And those references to Alice’s being carried off into the night! That’s not how the Chronicle talks about it. The Chronicle calls a spade a spade. They refer to her as what she is: a criminal. I want to know, did you actually utter that execrable nonsense or did you write it down and give it to the reporter?”

  “As a matter of fact, Guy Mock wrote it.” Hank lifted his right foot. The water in the tub was begining to grow cold.

  “Oh, did he?”

  “Yes, he did. He typed out a statement and had it delivered to me and said that if I were sincere about wanting to deal with him then I’d print it on the front page as my own. And I did.”

  “Now we let them tell us what to put on the front page.”

  “I’ll tell you. I would let Drew and Diane Shepard edit the whole damned paper if it meant I could talk to her myself, see her, make sure she’s all right.”

  “I’m sure that’s what they’re counting on. They see you coming. They all see you coming a mile away. Who better to tell them all about what a pushover you are than Daddy’s little girl?”

  Hank took the towel he’d draped over one arm of the easy chair and lifted his feet one at a time from the tub and dried them.

  “And why are you soaking your feet, you old woman? It makes me sick. You’ve become like an invalid. You’re ridiculous, driving around in a station wagon and soaking your feet like a bartender or a policeman. What happened to the man I married? He lets himself be taken in by little nobodies, and then he comes home and soaks his feet. What’s next, Hank? Dry toast for dinner? You used to be a steak man. I married a steak man, god damn it.”

  “I had Chinese food for supper,” said Hank, extending his hands, palms up.

  “Well, that, that is not food, Hank. That is exactly what I’m talking about.”

  “I really don’t know what you’re talking about.” He stood, put on his slippers, and then bent to lift the plastic tub to carry it out to the kitchen.

  “This is what I’m talking about,” said Lydia, suddenly animated, her limbs unspooling from the taut center of her body. “This. What are you doing carrying this? Who do you think we are?” Her arm shot out, and she slapped the tub ou
t of Hank’s hands. A cataract of blue liquid arced from the falling vessel, splashing the carpet, the easy chair, and a coffee table covered with books and magazines.

  “Bull’s-eye,” he said mildly.

  Lydia sank to the floor and began to sob.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m really sorry. I don’t know why I said those things.”

  Hank had been reaching for the empty tub but he stopped and reached for the crying woman instead. He got down on his aching knees (though his feet felt terrific) and put his hands on her shoulders and when she didn’t snap and growl he put his arms around her.

  “It’s all right,” he said.

  “I really don’t know. I really don’t know why I said those things. I’m so upset all the time. I just want these people out of our lives and I feel like you’re always bringing more of them in.”

  “I probably am.”

  “I don’t mean it. I never mean it.”

  “It’s all right. I understand. I know this isn’t you talking.”

  “You shouldn’t have to understand.”

  “It’s all right,” he said.

  “It’s not.” She pulled back from him. “For God’s sake, Hank. Do you have to be such a weakling?”

  TANIA GOES TO THE movies, leaving Yolanda like any coupon-clipping suburban parent, sitting at the kitchen table on Capitol Avenue and searching through Standard & Poor’s Register and the Bee’s financial pages, researching potential terror targets.