by Larry Niven
Past the sisterhood place was a plate-glass window. Letters in Gothic script said SECURITY FIRST FEDERAL BAR Inside were stools, three small tables, four booths, a pinball machine and a jukebox. The walls were decorated with whatever the customers preferred, a supply of marking pens lay on the bar, and the walls were whitewashed at intervals. Paint peeled away in places to reveal comments made years before, a kind of pop-culture archeology.
Harvey moved into the dimness like a tired old man. As his eyes adjusted he spotted Mark Czescu on a stool. He pulled himself up next to Czescu and propped elbows on bar.
Czescu was thirty-odd, almost ageless, a perpetual young man about to launch himself on his career. Harvey knew Mark had been in the Navy for four years, and had tried several colleges, starting at UCLA and working down through community junior colleges. He sometimes called himself a student even yet, but no one believed he’d ever finish. He wore biker’s boots, old jeans, a T-shirt and a crumpled Aussie digger hat. He wore his black hair long and his black beard full. There was ground-in dirt under his nails and fresh streaks of grease on the jeans, but his hands and clothes had been freshly washed for all of that; he just didn’t have any pathological need to be scrubbed pink.
When Mark wasn’t smiling he had a dangerous look, despite the respectable beer belly. He smiled at lot; but he could take some things very seriously, and he sometimes moved with a tough crowd. They were part of his image: Mark Czescu could run with the real bikers if he wanted to, but he didn’t want to. Just now he looked concerned. “You don’t look good,” he said.
“I feel like killing somebody,” said Harvey.
“You feel that way, I could maybe find somebody,” Mark said. He let it trail off.
“No. They’re my bosses. They’re all of them my bosses, damn their innumerable souls.” Harvey ordered a pitcher and two glasses, and ignored Mark’s suggestion. He knew Mark couldn’t arrange a real murder. It was part of the Czescu image, to know more than you did about whatever subject came up. It usually amused Harvey, but just now he wasn’t in the mood for games.
“I want something from them,” Harvey said. “And they know they’re going to give it to me. How the hell can they not know? I’ve even got the sponsor wired! But the sons of bitches have to play games. If one of them fell off a balcony tomorrow, I’d be in for an extra month breaking in a new one, and I can’t afford the time.” It didn’t hurt to humor Czescu; the guy could be useful, and a lot of fun — and maybe he could arrange a murder. You never really knew.
“So what are they going to give you?” Mark asked.
“A comet. I’m going to make a whole series of documentaries about a new comet. The guy who discovered it chances to own seventy percent of the company that will sponsor the documentaries.”
Czescu chortled. Harvey nodded agreement. “It’s a beautiful setup. Chance to make the kind of films I really want to do. And to learn a lot. Not like that last shit, interviewing doomsters, everybody with his own private vision of the end of the world. I wanted to cut my throat and get it over with before that one was finished.”
“So what’s wrong?”
Harvey sighed, and drank more beer, and said, “Look. There are about four guys who could really tell me to go take a flying frig and make it stick. But that’d be a mistake, right? The New York people won’t put up with blowing a sponsored series. They’re going to buy the show. But how will anyone know they’ve got the power to say no if they don’t hesitate and demand I write up treatments and do budget estimates and all that crap? None of that shit gets used, but they’ve got to have a sound basis for decisions.’ Four fucking prima donnas who actually have the power.
“Okay, I could live with them. But then there are a couple of dozen who couldn’t stop a Time for Beany revival, but they want to show how important they are, too. So to show each other they could really stop the show if they wanted to, they raise as many objections as they can. Got the best interests of the sponsors in mind, right? Don’t want to get Kalva Soap mad, right? Bullshit. But I’ve got to put up with it.” Harvey was suddenly aware of what he sounded like, “Look, let’s change the subject.”
“Right. You’ve noticed the name of this place?”
“Security First Federal Bar. Cute. Stolen from George Carlin. About time, too.”
“Right! Now maybe some others will pick up the idea. Can you see Crazy Eddie’s Insurance?”
“Why not? They bought cars from Madman Muntz. How about Fat Jack’s Cancer Clinic?”
“Fat Jack’s Cancer Clinic and Mortuary,” Czescu said.
The tightness in Harvey’s neck and shoulders was going away. He drank more beer, then went to a booth where he could lean against something. Mark followed and took the opposite seat.
“Hey, Harv, when we making another run? Your bike still work?”
“Yeah.” A year ago — no, dammit, two years and more — he’d said the hell with it and let Mark Czescu lead him on a ride up the coast, drinking in little bars, talking to other drifters, camping where they felt like it. Czescu took care of the bikes, and Harvey paid the bills, not that they amounted to much. It had been a time of no worries. “The bike works, but I won’t get a chance to use it. When this series gets going it’ll take full time.”
“Anything I can get in on?” Mark asked.
Harvey shrugged. “Why not?” Mark often worked on Harvey’s shows. He carried cameras or clipboards and did maintenance or just plain acted as gofer. “If you’ll shut up once in awhile.”
“I’m hip.”
The bar was filling up. The jukebox ran out of sound, and Mark got up. “Something just for you,” he said. He retrieved his twelve-string guitar from behind the bar and took a chair at the end of the room. This, too, was part of his routine: Czescu sang for drinks and meals in bars. On their run up the coast Mark had got them free steaks in half the places between L.A. and Carmel. He was good enough to be professional, but he wouldn’t discipline himself; whenever he got a regular gig it didn’t last a week. To Mark, those who made steady money were magicians with a secret that he couldn’t quite learn.
Mark strummed an experimental chord, then began a prologue. The tune was the old cowboy number, “Cool Clear Water.”
All day I face the TV waste, without a trace of culture,
Pure culture.
With soapbox operas all day long, and giveaway shows that run too long,
And lead you on,
From culture.
Pure… sweet… culture.
Harvey laughed approval. A fat man at the bar sent over a pitcher of beer and Mark acknowledged with a toss of his head.
The sun goes down, and through the town you hear the cry for culture,
Sweet culture.
While lawyers grin, and cops will win, to stop the sin of culture.
Culture. Pure… culture.
There was a short break as Mark picked at the guitar. The chords jangled, obviously wrong, but obviously right too, as if Mark were searching for something he could never find.
Keep a tunin’, friend, it’ll set you in a trend, And your mind it’s goin’ to bend,
And hook you in the end, With culture. Culture. Pure culture.
Friend, can’t you see, for you and me, and a mind that’s free,
It’s pay TV for you and me,
And culture. Culture. Pure… sweet… culture.
The guitar stopped and Mark said in a plonking voice, “Almost as much as you get from an old Bogart movie.”
PURE, SWEET, CULTURE.
“Leonard Bernstein conducts the London Symphony Orchestra and the Rolling Stones in a dazzling display of
“CULTURE. Pure, sweet, culture.
“Folks, tonight we have a debate between the president of the United Farm Workers versus twenty-two hungermaddened housewives armed with butcher knives. It’s
CULTURE. P*U*R*E, S*W*E*E*T, C*U*L*T*U*R*E.”
Jesus, thought Harvey. Jesus, I’d like to play a recording of that in a god
damn executive council meeting at the network. Harvey leaned back to enjoy his moment. It wouldn’t be long before he had to go home to dinner, and Loretta, and Andy, and Kipling, and the home he loved but whose price was just so damned high.
The Santa Ana still blew, hot and dry across the Los Angeles basin. Harvey drove with open windows, his coat thrown onto the seat beside him, tie atop the pile. Headlights picked up green hillsides among bare trees, palm trees at intervals. He drove in the full summery darkness of a California February and he noticed nothing unusual about it.
He hummed Mark’s song as he drove. One day, he thought. One day I’ll slip a tape of that onto the Muzak system so three-quarters of the business people in Los Angeles and Beverly Hills will have to listen to it. Half concentrating, he daydreamed in fragments that shattered when some car ahead slowed and the flare of brake lights surged like a wave.
At the top of the hill he turned right onto Mulholland, right again onto Benedict Canyon, downhill slightly, then right onto Fox. Fox Lane was one of a cluster of short curved streets lined with fifteen-year-old houses. One of them belonged to Harvey, courtesy of Pasadena Savings and Loan. Further down Benedict Canyon was the turn onto Cielo Drive, where Charlie Manson had proved to the world that civilization was neither eternal nor safe. After that Sunday morning of horror in 1969 there was not a gun or a guard dog to be had in Beverly Hills. Back orders for shotguns stretched delivery time to weeks. And ever since, despite Harvey’s pistol and shotgun and dog, Loretta wanted to move. She was searching for safety.
Home. A big white house with green roof, trimmed front lawn, a big tree and small porch. It had a good resale value, because it was the least expensive house on the block; but least expensive is a relative thing, as Harvey well knew.
His house had a conventional driveway, not a big circular entry like the house across the street. He took the corner at a good clip, slowed in the drive, and zapped the garage door with the radio-beam widget. The door swung up before he could reach it; perfect timing, and Harvey scored a mental point with himself. The garage door closed behind him and he sat for a moment in darkness. Harvey didn’t like driving in rush hours, and he drove the rush hour twice nearly every day of his life. Time for a shower, he thought. He got out of the car and walked back down the drive toward the kitchen door.
“Hey, Harv?” a baritone voice bellowed.
“Yo,” Harvey answered. Gordie Vance, Randall’s neighbor on the left, was coming across his lawn with a rake trailing behind him. He leaned on the fence, and Harvey did the same, thinking as he did of cartoons of housewives chatting this way; only Loretta didn’t like Marie Vance, and would never be seen leaning on a back fence anyway. “So, Gordie. How are things at the bank?”
Gordie’s smile wavered. “They’ll keep. Anyway you’re not ready for a lecture on inflation. Listen, can you get away on the weekend? Thought we’d take the scouts up for a snow hike.”
“Boy, that sounds good.” Clean snow. It was hard to believe that no more than an hour away, in the Angeles Forest Mountains, was deep snow and wild, whistling wind in the evergreens, while they stood here in their shirt sleeves in the dark. “Probably not, Gordie. There’s a job coming up.” Christ, I hope there’s a job coming up. “You better not count on me.”
“What about Andy? Thought I’d use him as patrol leader this trip.”
“He’s a little young for that.”
“Not really. And he’s got experience. I’m taking some new kids on a first hike. Could use Andy.”
“Sure, he’s up on his schoolwork. Where are you going?”
“Cloudburst Summit.”
Harvey laughed. Tim Hamner’s observatory wasn’t far from there, although Harvey had never seen it. He must have hiked past it a dozen times.
They discussed details. With the Santa Ana blowing there’d be melt-off on all but the top elevations, but there would certainly be snow on the north slopes. A dozen scouts and Gordie. It sounded like fun. It was fun. Harvey shook his head ruefully. “You know, Gordo, when I was a kid it was a good week’s hike to Cloudburst. No road. Now we drive it in an hour. Progress.”
“Yeah. But it is progress, isn’t it? I mean, now we can get there and still keep a job.”
“Sure. Damn, I wish I could go.” By the time they’d driven up — an hour — and hiked in and got the gear out of their backpacks and set up camp, and got damp wood burning and their backpack stoves going, the freeze-dried mountain food always tasted like ambrosia. And coffee, at midnight, standing in a shelter out of the wind and listening to it whistle above… But it wasn’t worth a comet. “Sorry.”
“Right. Okay, I’ll check with Andy. Go over his gear for me, will you?”
“Sure.” What Gordie meant was, “Don’t let Loretta pack for your son. It’s hard enough hiking at that altitude without all the crap she’d make him carry. Hot-water bottles. Extra blankets. Once even an alarm clock.”
Harvey had to go back for his jacket and tie. When he came out of the garage he went another way, into the backyard. He’d thought of asking Gordie, “How do you feel about calling it ‘Gordo’s Bank and Kaffeeklatsch’?” From the look on Gordie’s face when the bank was mentioned, it wouldn’t go over. Some kind of trouble there. Private trouble.
Andy was in the backyard, across the pool, playing basketball solitaire. Randall stood quietly watching him. In zero time, in what must have been a year but felt like a week, Andy had changed from a boy into a… into a stick figure, all arms and legs and hands, long bones poised behind a basketball. He launched it with exquisite care, danced to catch the rebound, dribbled, and fired again for a perfect score. Andy didn’t smile; he nodded in somber satisfaction.
Kid’s not bad, Harvey thought.
His pants were new, but they didn’t reach his ankles. He’d be fifteen next September, ready for high school; and there was nothing for it but to send him to Harvard School for Boys, certainly the best in Los Angeles; only the school wanted a fortune just to hold a place, and the orthodontist wanted thousands now and more later. And there was the funny noise from the pool pump, and the electronics club Andy was involved in, it wouldn’t be long before the boy wanted a micro-computer for himself and who could blame him?… And… Randall went inside, quietly, glad that Andy hadn’t noticed him.
A teen-age boy used to be an asset. He could work in the fields — drive a team, or even a tractor. The pressure could be shared, shifted to younger shoulders. A man could ease off.
There was wrapping paper in the kitchen wastebasket. Loretta had been shopping again. Christmas had been on charge accounts, and those bills would be coming to roost on his desk. He’d already heard the stock-market report on the radio. The market was down.
Loretta was nowhere around. Harvey went into the big dressing room off the bathroom and stripped, got into the shower. Hot water beat down on his neck, draining away tension. His mind was turned off; he imagined himself as meat being massaged by hydraulic pressure. Only. If only his mind would really turn off.
Andy has a conscience. God knows I never tried to make him feel guilty. Discipline, sure. Punishment, standing in a corner, even a formal spanking, but when it’s over it’s over, no lingering guilt… but he knows guilt anyway. If Andy knew what he’s costing me in dollars and cents — and in the years of my life. If he ever knew what it does to the way l have to live, the shit I put up with to keep that goddamn job and win the bonuses that keep us afloat… What would Andy do if he knew? Run away? Get a job as a street sweeper in San Francisco to try to pay me back? He damned well is not going to know.
A voice in the roar of water. Huh? Randall came out of the internal world and found Loretta smiling through the glass shower door. She mouthed, “Hi. How’d it go?”
He waved. Loretta took it as an invitation. Randall watched her undress slowly, lasciviously, and slide through the glass door quick so the water wouldn’t splash out… and it wasn’t Wednesday. Harvey folded her in his arms. The water beat down on them, and th
ey kissed. And it wasn’t Wednesday.
She asked, “How’d it go?”
He had read her lips the first time, but she couldn’t guess that. Now he had to answer. “I think they’ll do it.”
“I don’t see why not. It doesn’t make sense. If they wait, CBS will take it.”
“Right.” The magic went out of the shower/orgy scene, poof.
“Isn’t there any way to tell them how silly they’re being?”
“No.” Harvey fiddled with the shower head. The water expanded to a fine spray.
“Why not?”
“Because they know. Because they’re not playing the same game we are.”
“It all depends on you. If you insist on doing it your way, just once…” Loretta’s hair darkened and dampened under the shower. She held him in her arms and looked up into his face, looked for the strengthening of purpose that would mean she’d convinced him: that he would stand by his principles and force his superiors to face the consequences of their mistakes.
“Yeah. It all depends on me. Which makes me the obvious target if anything goes wrong. Turn around and I’ll do your back.”
She turned her back. Harvey reached for the soap. His will loosed its hold on the muscles of his face. His soapy hands made patterns in the slippery contours of Loretta’s back… slowly, every move a caress… but he was thinking, Don’t you know what they’d do to me? They’d never fire me, but one day my office is an inside broom closet, the next day the rug is gone. Then my phone doesn’t work. By the time I quit, everyone in the industry has forgotten I exist. And we’re still spending every cent I make.
He had always loved Loretta’s back. He searched his mind for growing lust… but he felt nothing.
