by Troy Conway
Everything about her, including the way she spoke and sang Spanish, gave her story the lie.
But why should she want to deceive me about the place she came from?
And if she had deceived me, why not claim to be from a more prestigious place? As she herself had noted, Puerto Ricans enjoyed less status in New York than any other group of Latin Americans.
I was still pondering the matter when she finished “Guantanamera” “Well,” she beamed, looking up like a schoolgirl expecting a teacher’s pat on the head, “how did you like it?”
“Just beautiful,” I lied.
“I’m so glad. it’s one of my favorite songs. My mother used to sing it to me when I was a little girl”
“Very interesting.”
“Now here’s another. it’s called ‘Dolor’.”
Dolor translates as “pain.” “grief” or “sorrow.” I couldn’t think of three words more pertinent to Chiquita’s keyboard talents. I sipped my Scotch and tried to think of a way to make a quick exit when her—and my—dolor came to an end.
Then suddenly I wasn’t so eager to leave anymore.
Without realizing it I had received what appeared to be a very important clue about The Big Freak-Out.
The clue lay in the first song Chiquita had played and in her reaction to it.
“Guantanamera” was an old Cuban folk tune. A “Guantanamera” was a woman who came from the Cuban province of Guantanamo. American sailors stationed at the naval base there often complained that “Gumtanamera” was the only song they ever heard the natives sing. After a while it got on their nerves because its simple, legato melody was one which burned into their brains; they head it and heard it and heard it, even when no one was singing it.
Now here was Chiquita singing it. And she had said that her mother used to sing it to her when she was a child. But why in the world would a Peurto Rican peasant sing Cuban songs to her child?
Maybe, just maybe, bemuse she wasn’t a Puerto Rican peasant after all. Maybe because she was a Cuban!
I remembered my night with her and Carla at my apartment.
They had entertained me with what they called a pasadoble—an ancient sexual stunt which I had first experienced at a brothel in Havana.
Havana, Cuba. . . .
Two plus two equals four.
Now what does a Cuban girl and a conspiracy to overthrow the United States government equal?
Ever since Walrus-moustache had received reports that the Reo Chinese were infiltrating the hippie movement, the big question had been: how?
The obvious answer had been: through the use of Caucasian operative—either American, Europeans or Latins.
But where could the Red Chinese, who never courted the favor of Western nations, recruit such operatives?
Again the obvious answer: in the one country which leaned close to the Red Chinese line-Castro’s Cuba
My mind was racing a mile a minute.
Chiquita had claimed to be a Puerto Rican.
She obviously was as Cuban as Fidel himself.
She had pretended to be merely the mistress of the nominal head of the conspiracy.
She obviously had him eating out of her palm.
Two plus two equals four.
And Chiquita plus the Chinese Reds equals the key to the biggest mystery in The Big Freak-Out.
Or did they?
Somehow I had the feeling that they didn’t.
True, everything fit into place.
The only problem was that too many thing fell into place too easily.
Chiquita had all but literally fallen into my lap.
She had waltzed into my apartment when I had no reason in the world to suspect her of being anything more than The Big Head’s comic relief at The Church of the Sacred Acid, and she promptly had given me reason upon reason to change my mind about her.
Then she and Carla had entertained me with a sexual trick which I—Sexologist Rod Damon, of all people—should easily identify as Cuban.
Without bothering to inquire if I spoke Spanish, she had spoken freely in front of me, giving me ample opportunity to detect her accent.
After her visit to my apartment, which served no obvious purpose in the presumed scheme of thing, she had invited me to her apartment to listen to her play the piano. In fact, she had all but twisted my arm to get me to listen to her play the piano.
Then, when she played it, she selected a song which anyone who knew anything about Cuba would recognize instantly.
Why?
What was she trying to accomplish?
She hadn’t been pumping me for information.
She hadn’t been setting me up for a garroting.
The only thing she received in exchange for the cornucopia of clues she had given me was sex.
A commodity not to be despised, for certain.
But did she need it badly enough to risk revealing her identity?
Risk, hell! She had banded it to me on a platter!
why?!!!
Possibility A: She was the stupidest secret agent on the face of the earth.
Possibility B: She thought I was the stupidest secret agent on the face of the earth.
Possibility C: She was baiting a trap. But what trap?
I thought about it.
And I thought about it some more.
And then I stopped thinking.
My mind had become incredibly light It didn’t want to think anymore. It just wanted to relax.
Yes, to relax.
To relax way up there in that little corner of the room when all the beautiful colors were.
Ah, what colors!
Greens and oranges and reds and purples.
Yes.
And blacks and blues and browns and grays.
Beautiful.
All so beautiful.
Just like the beautiful music coming from the piano.
The piano!!!
I clenched my fist around the Scotch glass and tried to bring myself back to reality.
I was losing my mind.
I had to be losing my mind if I thought Chiquita’s piano playing was beautiful.
But what had happened to me?
Why was the room suddenly beginning to spin?
Why was I beginning to feel weightless?
I touched the glass to my lips.
Then I stopped short.
The glass.
The Scotch glass.
Three times during the course of our little visit Chiquita had poured me a drink.
On the first two, I had made her taste it before I did.
On the third, I hadn’t.
The third—of which I took a stiff slug before I left the bedroom, another stiff slug when she began to play and an additional sip after “Guantanamera.”
What was in the glass?
Well, right now there was still better than half a drink in it.
But what was in the drink?
LSD?
LSP?
Something else? . .
My mind became light again.
It floated toward the ceiling.
I gripped the edge of the piano and tried to regain control of myself.
Chiquita had finished “Dolor” and was looking up at me.
Her pretty pink lips were parted in a d sexy smile.
Her flashing black eyes were twinkling mischievously.
Ah, yes.
Chiquita.
Chiquita the beautiful.
Chiquita the sexy.
Chiquita the drink-spiker.
My mind had come back down from the ceiling.
But how long would it stay down?
Long enough, I hoped, for me to give the pretty Cuban a dose of her own medicine.
I bit hard against the inside of my cheek.
I knew that as long as I could feel pain my mind would stay with me.
My free hand—the hand that was gripping the piano suddenly stopped gripping.
The arm shot out and the fingers clutc
hed Chiquita’s pretty throat.
They squeezed.
I thrust the Scotch glass in front of her.
“Drink!” I commanded.
She swung at the glass, trying to knock it out of my hand.
I pulled it away. Then I grabbed her tong black hair, twisted a fistful of it into a tight ball and pulled back.
“Open your mouth,” I said.
She swung at the glass again.
I twisted her hair harder.
Her eyes squeezed shut, and she screamed. It was a high, ear-piercing scream that tore through the room like a siren.
I twisted harder still.
And harder still!
Team flooded her checks. Her face was screwed up in a grimace of insufferable pain. She opened her mouth.
I urged her head back and poured an ounce of the spiked liquor between her pretty lips.
She tried to spit it out, but I twisted harder and she swallowed.
I poured mother ounce.
And another.
And another.
The glass was empty.
I let go of her hair.
She looked at me.
We said nothing.
There was no need to.
A minute passed.
My mind started back toward the ceiling again.
I fought hard to stop it.
It wouldn’t stop.
I bit my lip.
Hard.
Harder.
My mind came back.
Another minute passed.
Chiquita got up from the piano bench and started toward the bedroom.
I stopped her.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” she said
“So you can puke up the drink? Not a chance.”
“I have to go, Damon,”
I twisted her arm behind her back. “Where’s some rope?”
“There isn’t any here.”
“Rope, string, anything I want some. Or I’ll break your arm.” I twisted harder.
“In the kitchen. In the cabinet over the sink.”
I propelled her ahead of me. “Take it down.”
She opened the cabinet and handed me a ball of twine.
“Back to the living room.”
She went meekly.
I maneuvered her into place beneath the piano. Her hands were at one piano leg, her feet spread eagled toward the remaining two.
She didn’t resist.
I unwound a length of twine and reached for her wrists.
She still didn’t resist.
I positioned the wrists on each side of the piano leg and stooped to tie them.
That’s when she resisted.
In a flash, she squirmed out from underneath took aim at my groin and let loose with a kick. Had she been a split-second quicker, it would have worked, but I saw it coming and deflected it with my knee.
She scampered out from under the piano and started across the room. I dived at her and caught her ankle. She struggled to free herself. Then, when she couldn’t, she swiveled toward me and started flailing at my head with her fists.
I blocked one punch, then another. Then I let fly with one of my own. It was a roundhouse right that caught her on the jaw and laid her out cold.
Unconscious, she was no problem. I dragged her under the piano and repositioned her arms and legs. Then I bound them securely and stepped back to contemplate my work.
But I couldn’t contemplate anything. My mind was floating toward the ceiling again.
I bit my lip.
No pain.
I bit harder.
Still no pain.
My mouth had a sweet, sticky taste in it.
Blood.
I stopped biting.
My mind floated higher, and my body went limp. I blacked out.
CHAPTER 9
When I regained my senses, I was lying under the piano with Chiquita My head was cradled between her breasts. My fist was between her thighs. I was savoring the feel of her—feel of her body, the feel of her dress, the feel of her hot breath against the back of my neck.
“Make love to me,” I heard her say.
I turned and looked into her eyes. It occurred to me that they were the most beautiful eyes I ever had seen. I loved them, and I loved the person they belonged to. I vowed that I’d do anything to make her happy, anything she wanted. She had said she wanted me to make love to her. “Okay,” I replied.
She smiled. A beautiful smile A lovely smile “But you’ve got to untie me first.”
I contemplated her smile. I loved it so much! It was so beautiful! It was the most beautiful smile in the world! The lips were so full and pretty! Every little line on them was pretty! I wanted to love every line individually! And I wanted to love her teeth! Her beautiful teeth! The most beautiful teeth I had ever seen! I loved them!
“Untie me,” she repeated.
Her voice. What a beautiful voice! How I loved to listen to it! It was so beautiful that I wanted to listen to it forever and ever and ever! And I wanted to do whatever it told me to do! “Untie me,” it had said. I reached for the twine that bound her wrists.
Then I stopped.
Somewhere inside me the part of my mind that still belonged to me was fighting to gain control over the part that has been drugged. Harnessing all the will power I could muster, I forced myself to crawl out from under the piano.
Once I was on my feet I seemed to have more control of myself. Everything around methe piano, the chairs, the rug, even the particles of dust which I could see on the floorlooked beautiful. But the beauty didn’t hypnotize me as Chiquita’s beauty had. I could take care of myselfat least for the present.
I glanced at my watch. It was eight fifteen.
Time seemed to have lost all meaning for me; it moved slowly, ever so slowly.
And I could see so clearly.
I saw thing I had never seen before.
I saw pores in the walls, and fibers in the windows, and thickness in the rug.
I was seeing not in three dimensions bit in four.
I was outside the things I was looking at, but I was also inside them. . .
I forced myself not be become too involved in the visions.
My mind was working slowly, but it was working.
I knew that I had things to do and that it was important that I do them. I made myself do them.
The first thing I did was collect my tie and jacket.
The second was to put them on.
The third was to leave the apartment. . .
Out on the street, I hailed a cab for The Church of the sacred Acid. A it fide along, I found myself getting dizzy. My eyes fixed to the back of the cabbie’s head. I stared at the hairs there, loving them all individually.
While one part of my mind focused on what I was seeing, the other part was analyzing what happening to me. Obviously I was high. Very high. But I didn’t know on what.
Probably LSD—tasteless, odorless, colorless LSD, which Chiquita had slipped into my drink.
An LSD high, I knew, lasted for close to twenty-four hours. And threw was no way to come down once you were up.
I tired not to let misled get alarmed about being up. It was important, I reminded myself, to retain as much control of the situation as possible. If I got alarmed, I’d be losing control. I concentrated on the back of the cabbie’s head and let the other part of my mind resume its analysis.
I had told the cabbie to take me to The Church of the Sacred Acid, I realized, because I had had an appointment there at seven with The Big Head.
I had missed that appointment now. And of course The Big Head wasn’t expecting mw anyway, since Chiquita had told him that she would discourage me from going there. But I wanted to go the church anyway. I wanted to see why Chiquita had been se eager to keep me away.
The cab continued toward the church.
The ride was unbelievably long.
The distance , I knew, was no more than five or six blocks.
Yet, it seeme
d as if I had been riding for hours—and the Church still was nowhere I sight.
I focused on the back of the cabbie’s head again, and thought about the LSD which Chiquita had given me.
I wondered how much there and been in my drink.
I remembered Walrus-moustache’s having said that two hundred and fifty micrograms were enough to make a person hallucinate and that one milligram could send the most jaded acid-head on a trip to end all trips. The trip I was on seemed mild enough, especially in comparison to my LSP trip the night of the party. So it was safe to assume that Chiquita had given mw a relatively small dose. Also, I hadn’t consumed the full dose—she had taken more that half of it herself. That meant that, as trips go, I was flying pretty low.
Still, I was flying, and not under my own power. I didn’t dare chase down any more leads on The Big Freak-Out. The most I could hope to do was take a quick look at what was happening at The Church of the Sacred Acid, make a quick phone call to Aunt Matilda, and head back to my apartment to sleep away the highif highs could be slept away.
The cab pulled to a halt at the curb. I fumbled through my pockets, found a dollar bill, paid the fare and stepped outside. A glance at my watch told me it was eight twenty-five. If I guessed right, The Big Head should be just winding up his antimaterialism diatribe and moving into his demonstration of the power of love. It occurred to me that Chiquita wouldn’t be on hand to help him demonstrate. I wondered if he’d adhere to the old show-must-go-on tradition and use someone else in her place. Coughing up two and a half dollars for the longhaired creep at the door, I wandered inside.
The Church was packed, as usual. On stage, The Big Head was spouting off about why love was afraid. I realized that he still had the entire antilaterialism bit to go through before he got to the power-of-love demonstration and I assumed that the service had been delayed because of Chiquita’s absence. I found a seat in the back of the room and awaited further developments.
Then a curious thing happened. As The Big Head climbed out of the love bag and into the antimaterialsim bag, I found myself listening to him intently. His arguments seemed well-reasoned and hid thinking lucid.
I clenched my fists and dug my fingernails into my palms. Evidently the LSD was still working. I concentrated on the pain in my hands to keep from getting too carried away by the sermon.
Presently the topic shifted back from antimaterialism to love. “I’m to show you the POWER of love!” The Big Head was saying. “That’s right the POWER! And the GLORY! And you’re going to SEE it! Right HERE!”
