Outside Looking In

by T. C. Boyle

  Time drifted. Fitz felt himself sinking into a state he didn’t like at all, a nightmare of childhood, the Roman church, his mother, her veil, the priests like twitching beetles with their crosses and their censers and stoles and chasubles and tall peaked beetles’ hats, and he wouldn’t believe, he wouldn’t, he couldn’t, the trip turning sour on him now until suddenly the agitated student in the blue tie, who’d gone round trying all the doors, finally found one the janitor had neglected to lock, and in a blinding flash of light vanished into the world outside. It was a shock. Had he seen what he’d seen? A quick count of heads—no Blue-Tie. Suddenly Fitz was on his feet and moving, though the colors came at him like an assault and he couldn’t even begin to shut them down, and where was Ken, why wasn’t he tracking this guy, this pilgrim, who was clearly having a severe reaction to the drug and was outside now, out on the street where he could climb a tree or walk into traffic or get himself arrested? In the next moment he was out the door himself, groping for his sunglasses and scanning the pavement, which gave onto Commonwealth Avenue and a mad flashing hurtle of traffic.

  Everything Tim had worked for, everything he’d worked for himself, was at risk—this was a crisis and make no mistake about it. If the student came to harm—got hurt, got killed—the newspapers would have a field day, HARVARD DRUG FATALITY; HARVARD EXPERIMENT GONE WRONG; DRUGGED STUDENT RUN DOWN BY BUS. He looked but didn’t see. Big block letters clung to the lenses of his sunglasses. He smelled newsprint. And blood, blood too. His mind jerked itself away and snapped back again.

  But where was the guy? There, walking briskly up the sidewalk to some destination only he could fathom. In the next moment Fitz broke into a trot—he had to catch him, had to stop him—and at the same time he spotted Eva Pahnke, where she was sitting with her daughter still, reading to her from a children’s book with a cover that caught the light and flashed it back at him as if it were a signal from some unknown realm, something deep, some deep message he had no time for now, and he shouted out to her to go get Walter and pointed frantically at the wavering form of the pilgrim in the blue tie, who’d halted now to look around him as if to get his bearings. And where was he going, this pilgrim? Right out into traffic, right there, gliding between two parked vehicles and . . . suddenly Fitz had him by the arm and the student swung round on him with a look of outrage. “Hands off!” he shrieked, jerking away and flinging himself back up the sidewalk. “There’s a man!” he shouted. “A man on the cross!”

  Fitz was in no condition. Yes, as he was discovering, it was possible to fight down the drug in an extreme case, an emergency like this one, but set and setting had gone radically wrong, and this guy, Blue-Tie, the pilgrim with the mad staring eyes and the limbs made of wire, was plunging him down into the depths of a very bad trip, the worst. He was in a panic. He could see the very air he was breathing and it wasn’t air at all but the blue fire of a blowtorch. “Wait up!” he shouted.

  The pilgrim, not running, but walking stiff-legged, moving along like a competitor in the Olympic event, suddenly swung right—away from the traffic, thank the Lord—and up the steps and through the door of B.U.’s School of Theology, as if that was what he’d been looking for all along. Fitz caught up to him on the second floor and for lack of a better plan snatched him by the arm again, and again the man swung round on him, crying out as if he’d been stabbed. The problem—the further problem—was that the building was populated. That was what buildings were for—to be populated. And now, accordingly, there were people up and down the hall peering out their doors. Someone—a man with a face like a raised axe—barked, “What’s going on here?”

  It was then, everything scrambled and no sense at all to anything whatsoever, that Walter arrived, hustling down the hallway, his black bag in hand. “It’s all right,” he said to the faces gaping from the doorways, “I’m a medical doctor,” and in the next moment he had hold of the pilgrim’s other arm and he was cooing to him in the most soothing and reasonable tones. “Julius,” he cooed, drawing out the syllables, “it’s me, Walter. Everything’s all right, everything’s fine. Shhhh!”

  Julius tried to pull away, but the two of them held fast. “There’s a man,” he said, his eyes black and staring. “A, a man—”

  “It’s all right,” Walter whispered. “I know.”

  “But, but”—looking now to Fitz—“what about him?”

  “He knows too.”

  That seemed to satisfy him and things might have settled down right there with no need for further intervention, but for the fact that the mailman happened to come down the hall at that moment, a registered letter for delivery to the main office clutched in one hand. As he passed by, Julius suddenly jerked his arm out of Fitz’s grasp and snatched the letter away, which the postman, with a look of incredulity, tried to snatch back, tug-of-war. Julius, still staring, still tense as wire, began making a keening noise in the back of his throat and then he was swinging wildly in place, the letter clutched in one hand, even as the postman—middle-aged, graying sideburns, startled eyes—held fast to his end. What ensued was a wrestling match, three against one, but even so the outcome was in doubt because Julius was in a panic, and the panic flooded his veins with adrenaline, giving him all but superhuman strength. He grunted and spun and held fiercely to the letter, shouting “A man on the cross!” even as the three of them finally managed to wrestle him to the floor and Walter, no choice in the matter now, plied his syringe.

  After the service, which stretched out over the course of three and a half hours, they all climbed back into their cars and drove to Tim’s house, feeling exhilarated. The experiment had been a success—they’d pulled it off—despite Julius’s breakdown and the fact that it was immediately apparent to everyone just who had gotten the drug and who the placebo. No matter. The first public experiment with psilocybin had gone off with barely a hitch and the students who’d received the drug were radiant with God, gushing enthusiasm, their eyes on fire, eager—burning—to get their experiences down on paper. All except for Julius, who never uttered a word, sitting as before in the middle of the backseat, his tie still rigidly aligned but his eyes unfocused and his shoulders slumped, no doubt an effect of the Thorazine. Fitz, his own trip waning, made a mental note to ask Walter about that, not only how Thorazine worked physiologically but also neurologically. Would it erase God or the Devil or whatever Julius had seen? Or would it consolidate it, would it make the vision concrete, a block of perception that could be kept intact or shattered and removed like a bad tooth?

  Eva Pahnke and her daughter, a child of three or four in pigtails and a pink dress, were waiting for them, along with Alice, Peggy, Suzie and Flora Lu and her monkey, the grill on the back patio already sending up a powerful gland-clenching aroma of hamburgers and hot dogs. Tim handed out beers, stirred up a pitcher of martinis. Dick was aglow. And Walter—Walter was the star of the moment, his thesis all but written and the degree all but bestowed, and so what if he looked like Maynard Ferguson, who was off somewhere with his band, Fitz forgave him that. He felt aglow himself, the crisis averted, his bad trip blooming into something ecstatic in the moment, not God, not a drug high, just grace and light and the deepest penetrating love for everybody present, everybody in the world, even Kellard and Mortenson, the fools, the poor deluded fools . . .

  He drank a beer, then another. In his hand, a hot dog bun, split down the middle like a woman’s private parts, and here was Suzie, her eyes tearing from the smoke, taking up the tongs and laying the phallic frankfurter right in the slot created for it, then heaping up the chopped onions and piccalilli relish to smother it and chase the image away. Elated, he compared notes with Charlie, with Tim and Dick and the students themselves, moving easily from one group to another, the sun a sacred glowing disk in the sky and the air as sweet and fresh as if it had been created on the spot. The only casualty was Julius, sitting slumped in a lawn chair at the edge of the patio, his eyes vacant and hair mussed, an untouched soda clutched in one hand and h
is shoes untied, as if he’d tried to get them off and given up. But what was one compared to all the rest? Counting the guides, fifteen had gotten the dose, and only one had broken down (though admittedly the one who’d flung his retainer at the statue might have gone through a rough patch or two). Par for the course? Worth the risk? Yes. Sure. Of course. They’d all gone through it, they’d all suffered, but they’d gloried too—and so would Julius, if given another chance.

  He was standing there with Charlie, jabbering on about anything that came into his head while Charlie jabbered right back, feeling unconquerable, feeling like Superman, when an unseen hand took hold of his earlobe and gave it a twist and he swung round on Flora Lu and the monkey perched on her shoulder. The monkey was grinning—or showing its teeth, in any case—and Flora Lu, in a tight red dress and a shade of lipstick to match, pursed her lips as if she were going to blow him a kiss and said, “Don’t mind Thelonious—he just likes to make human contact, that’s all. Or monkey contact, I mean. Or monkey-human.” She turned her face to the monkey, their noses inches apart, and crooned in falsetto, “Doesn’t he, naughty monkey? Huh? Huh?”

  Charlie—was he leering at her?—said, “Hey, it’s only natural. Who doesn’t want a little contact?”

  They both looked to him now and he said, “You won’t get any argument from me.” He was watching her, the huge liquid eyes and high cheekbones that were like Audrey Hepburn’s, and saw that her eyes were dilated and wondered if she were off on a private trip—and if so, how she could possibly tolerate the brightness of the sun.

  As if reading his thoughts, she lifted her sunglasses—which she’d been holding casually in the hand braced against one hip—and fitted them to her face, where they gave back his own reflection for all of five seconds before the monkey snatched them away, bit down on them inquisitively and flung them into the bushes. “Craziest thing, he likes to see my eyes, can you imagine?” She blinked rapidly. “I must go through five pairs a week.”

  He was about to say he didn’t blame the monkey or some such, to compliment her, flirt with her, when out of nowhere she asked, “Where’s Joanie?”

  “Home,” he said. “With Corey—our son?”

  “No,” she said, “I mean now.”

  He was puzzled. He looked to Charlie, then back to her again. The monkey was no longer grinning, but it was still perched on her shoulder, toying with a strand of her hair, its legs dangling and its testicles on display. “Home,” he repeated.

  Flora Lu let out a laugh. “Then she must have sprouted wings, because I was just talking with her and Fanchon not five minutes ago—in the house?”

  “Really?” he said, trying to cover his surprise. “I thought, well, I didn’t realize—would you excuse me a minute?”

  He crossed the patio to the back door and eased in past a scrum of divinity students with sodas in their hands—and Dick, with a beer, who was chatting them up—and went on into the deserted living room, which now featured mandalas on all four walls and even one on the ceiling. There were the familiar chairs and sofas, a scatter of pillows and blankets in the corners. Dirty glasses, dirty dishes, ashtrays crammed with butts, apple cores and walnut shells. If Joanie was here, where was she? And who was watching Corey? He had an impulse to call out her name, but resisted it, feeling foolish.

  Just then the front door flung open and Jackie came hurtling in, a perpetual motion machine, and he saw with a jolt that Corey was with him, right on his heels, both of them already charging up the stairs, Jackie ignoring him and Corey throwing a quick greeting over one shoulder—“Hi, Dad!”—before vanishing round the corner on the second floor. He felt something then he couldn’t have described, the faintest drawing-down of the exhilaration that had guided him back from the service, back from what Tim was already dubbing “the Miracle at Marsh Chapel,” and he didn’t know why exactly. It was just the surprise, that was all. Joanie was here. And Corey.

  Well, all right. It was a cookout, wasn’t it? And it was high time Corey got to know Jackie and Suzie—and Tim too, for that matter. But how had she gotten here—the bus? He was picturing it—she and Corey studying the route map, mounting the steel steps, sliding into the worn vinyl seat and pulling the cord at the intersection of Homer and whatever the cross street was—when he looked up and there she was at the top of the stairs. Fanchon was right behind her, just closing the door of her room, and as they started down the stairs together he could see that they were both high, giggling and making an elaborate game of holding on to each other as if they were afraid of falling, which would have been the most hilarious thing they could imagine, falling like that, teasing out the principles of gravity, cause and effect, body mass and flexibility. Fanchon was in a dress and heels, Joanie in pedal pushers and a yellow blouse he didn’t recognize, her lipstick dulled and her hair in need of brushing.

  He wanted to say something witty and breezy to show how unsurprised he was, how happy that she was here, but when they reached the bottom of the stairs, both of them grinning like clowns, all he could say was, “Hi.”

  Joanie’s eyes focused on him, then went wide. “We, Corey and I . . .” she began and trailed off.

  “You took the bus?”

  This was hilarious, both of them breaking down in giggles, laughing so hard they had to hold on to each other all over again, and that was somehow sexy and disturbing at the same time because Joanie was his wife and Fanchon wasn’t and now his wife was tripping—obviously tripping—without him. And worse: he was coming down, had come down, and she was just taking off. A thought he’d entertained more times than he could count flew in and out of his head: he wanted to see Fanchon naked. Or no, he wanted to fuck Fanchon.

  “No, no, no,” Fanchon said through a new storm of giggles, “I have picked her up. So she can, you know, join the party. After all”—and here she gave him an unreadable look, all mobile mouth and overblown eyes—“it is only fair, no? While the husband’s away, the wife will play. Or does play—isn’t that it? Does play?”

  “What about Corey?”

  Joanie put her lips together, then drew them apart. She was looking right through him. “He’s fine,” she said vaguely and held a hand up in front of her face as if she could see the image of their son playing across it. There was a burst of laughter from the patio, the barking of a dog. This was a party, a celebration, and he had to remind himself of that. Joanie was tripping and he wasn’t, or not anymore, and he would take care of her if anything happened, that went without saying, but he couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to trip again on the dregs of the chapel trip, to soar right back up there, soar even higher on the LSD Joanie was on as if he were lighting one cigarette off another.

  But no, he told himself. He had work to do, a degree to flag. And Corey was here, seeing whatever there was to see. No, he had to straighten out, take charge. Somebody had to do it.

  On the way home in the car, the windows black and the headlights as rigid as if they were fastened like boards on a catwalk running all the way to the apartment, Corey, in the backseat, kept up a nonstop disquisition on every subject that came into his head—Those were the best hamburgers I ever had; Can you believe Jackie doesn’t like baseball, doesn’t even root for a team?; They’ve got more comic books than any kids I’ve ever seen, and not just Superman and Donald Duck but Classics Illustrated and Mad Magazine and everything else because there’s this used comics store on, I think, Brattle Street, and everything’s a nickel—but Joanie was unresponsive. She was having a bad time. Not as bad as Julius, maybe, or not as violent, but bad just the same, her teeth gritted and her eyes wild, and she kept uttering little cries and whimpers. Corey talked around her—she never said Uh-huh or That’s nice but just stared out the window—and Fitz tried to assuage him with elaborate (and heartily false) responses until finally he just put the radio on and tuned it to the baseball game.

  Later, after Joanie had gone in to lie down, he asked Corey if he was hungry, but Corey said he wasn’t.


  “Do you want a story, then?” They were on to The Invisible Man now and Corey couldn’t seem to get enough of it, pestering him each night for just one more chapter. Corey liked to envision himself having his way with the world, and who could blame him? Wasn’t that the story’s appeal? You want to watch women undress? Go right ahead. You want to slap your enemies with impunity? Get rich? Steal? Eat anything you want?

  Corey was sunk into the couch. It was nine-thirty at night on Good Friday, the long weekend and Easter break only just begun. He glanced up from the pile of comics he’d brought back with him from Tim’s. “Nah,” he said, “I don’t think so.”

  Fitz found himself feeling jittery suddenly and he couldn’t have said why, whether it was an aftereffect of the drug or the result of too much of everything, so he went to the cabinet and poured himself an Irish whiskey, no ice, just for the taste of it, a luxury he rarely allowed himself. After a minute he came back into the room, settled into the easy chair with his drink and picked up the newspaper. There was a listing of Good Friday services, now all over with, at the top of the back page, and as he scanned the column, whatever he’d been feeling—this post-trip malaise, Corey, Joanie, Tim, the shock of Julius breaking madly for the street, Fanchon—began to dissipate and everything became usual again. He was home. Joanie was in bed. The paper felt heavy in his hands. It was past Corey’s bedtime.