(1969) The Seven Minutes (11 page)

spontaneous, happened. In my considered judgment, our District Attorney is right about the whole matter. A weak campaign issue is like a weak stock. Don’t ride it. Get rid of it. Take a brief setback and find yourself a new stock.’

‘If you say so, Mr Yerkes,’ said Undertwood.

‘I say so,’ said Yerkes. ‘1 say let’s trust Elmo’s instinct. He’s a born politician, and every born politician has an instinct about what’s good for him or bad for him, and that instinct is more useful in understanding the electorate than any computer on earth. Elmo says drop this, find something that will make millions of people sit up, and I agree. What will make them sit up? Not a book, we know. Then what ? I’m reminded of something that some writer once said or wrote somewhere. Maybe that’s the answer. This writer said that murder mysteries are popular, and everyone is fascinated by them, because murder is the one irrevocable crime. Murder is final. You can get back the jewels, but never a human being’s life. In a way, that’s it for us too. Elmo here is a politician and our District Attorney. He needs a public issue that can be dramatized in a public prosecution. He needs a big, irrevocable crime, one that by its very nature affects and disturbs the man in the street and the woman in the kitchen. A crime akin to murder. In the light of that, censorship of a book is a small and iffy crime, like the theft of some jewels, affecting a few peope but not touching the masses at all. Our job tonight is to find the big issue. Do you go along with me?’

Duncan and Underswood nodded.

Irwin Blair said, ‘Let’s get to work again.’

‘All right,’ said Yerkes. He took up his brandy snifter and gently rolled the liquid around the bottom of the glass. Finally he resumed. ‘Harvey’s latest poll reminds us again that the high-priority concern is violence in the streets, the activities as well as the plight of the young, and the uneasiness this is creating among their elders. Very well. Here we have a huge city, and there are all kinds and types of people seething inside it, and, as Elmo will confirm, no minute passes without some kind of disturbance or conflict or crime of violence. What were the last FBI figures? One forcible rape every thirty minutes in these United States. That’s one crime. God knows how many others every minute, let alone every thirty minutes. They are going on, these crimes, and they are happening this very instant, and then over and over again. We have to zero in on the right happening and the right moment, and seize the incident, and hand it to Elmo and say, Make your case with this and we will make you known from one end of the state to the other. Now, Harvey, we want to hear every detail of the results of your latest poll. Then we’ve got to be imaginative and practical at one and the same time, and we’ve got to determine what single act going on out there in the far-flung city tonight, or any night, is worth grabbing hold of and converting into a case for our Los Angeles District Attorney and a showcase for the next United

States Senator from California. One violent act, in the category of murder, not jewel theft, that’s all we need— .’

Je-sus, he thought, if anyone ever learned the truth, if anyone ever found out, he’d kill himself.

He wanted to kill himself right now, this second.

It was three hours since it had happened, and George was wrong about his feeling better soon, because nothing had helped. The passage of time hadn’t helped. The pot hadn’t helped. The being with others, that hadn’t helped. Nothing. Except maybe now he was less trembling and shaking all over. Now he was numb all over, and sick and crying in his gut and balls, and he wanted blank oblivion, nothingness, goodbye and no memory.

His eyes went from the road ahead to his white hands welded like white hooks to the wheel of his Rover sedan.

He heard George Perkins speak from the seat beside him. ‘Hey, you sure you’re okay ?’

‘I guess so,’ said Jerry Griffith. ‘I guess I’m okay now.’

‘You don’t look it. You look like a zombie.’

‘I’m okay,’ Jerry Griffith insisted.

He turned the car into the east block of Kelton Avenue, just off the UCLA campus, where his friend George shared his apartment with two other guys.

‘There’s nothing to worry about,’ said George, scratching inside his beard. ‘Forget it. Make like it never happened. If it never happened, then it didn’t happen. Put your mind on another plane, like you were in yoga or something. Know what I mean?’

‘I’m okay,’ said Jerry Griffith.

‘Hey, cool it, feller, you’re driving right past my pad.’

Jerry slammed down on the brake with what felt like a stump, not a foot, and the suddenness of stopping made his chest hit the wheel, but it didn’t hurt. ‘Sorry,’ he said as George pushed himself back from the dashboard.

He waited for George to get out, but George was still there. He realized George was staring at him. George was smoothing his long sandy sideburns and his beard and still staring at him.

‘Jerry, feller, just one thing -‘ George was saying.

He waited to hear the one thing.

‘Like I been telling you all night, you’re in the clear, you’re free. Nobody knows you were there.’

‘She knows.’

‘She doesn’t know your name.’

‘I forgot.’

‘So you’re free,’ said George. ‘But one thing. If anything went wrong -‘

‘You said nothing could go wrong.’

‘It can’t, if you won’t let it,’ said George meaningfully. ‘Like I

sometimes tell you, you’re your own worst enemy. Like living at home.’

‘You know, George -‘

‘Sure, I know all about your old man and you. That’s the only thing that worries me. You go in looking unhinged, and he’ll pound the shit out of you until he finds out what’s eating you. And that gorgeous piece you call your cousin - that Maggie -‘

‘Cut it out, George.’

‘I got to say what’s on my mind. You’re bugged by this, but if you confide in her you’ll be digging a hole for yourself.’

‘I told you this is strictly between us.’

‘Just be sure it is,’ said George. ‘Because if it isn’t, and something goes wrong, you remember one thing - you were in this solo. I wasn’t there. Only you were there. Because if you ever said 1 was there, I’d consider that an act of betrayal, and I’d have to tell them it was you who hurt her. If you meant to or not, it was you. So that’s our agreement. I wasn’t there. So I could never say you were there. Do you understand ?’

‘Okay, George.’

George Perkins opened the door, then he hesitated, and his manner was friendly again. ‘But like I told you, there’s nothing to worry about. It didn’t happen.’

‘Okay.’

‘Just keep a good thought like I’m keeping. You got to admit, she was one helluva lay.’

‘Yes.’

‘You can thank me for opening her up. She was tight as a clam when I shoved it in there. But once I got in there,-it was like going down a greased slide, and all her squealing and biting and hitting, I almost popped right off. It was great.’

‘It was great,’ said Jerry, ‘if only -‘

‘Forget the rest of it,’ said George. ‘You know my philsophy. Keep the good thoughts and jettison the garbage. Remember that, feller.’

‘Okay.’

‘You going straight home?’

‘Straight home.’

‘See you tomorrow, then. See you when you get out of Knight’s Lit class.’

‘See you.’

George Perkins left the car, and went up the apartment-building steps two at a time, and disappeared inside.

Jerry Griffith dropped his numb foot off the brake and pressed on the gas pedal. He pointed the Rover toward Veteran Avenue to take Sunset Boulevard to his home in the Pacific Palisades.

It was the shortest way to get home, and he wanted to get home the shortest way, because he was alone and he couldn’t take being alone too long a time, not tonight, not the way he felt, which was

sicker than before and still suicidal.

But by the time he had reached Sunset Boulevard, and waited for the light to change, and spun the car left toward the Palisades, he knew something else.

He wasn’t alone.

The girl was with him, that squealing girl, that Sheri Moore who was eighteen.

Except she wasn’t squealing now, no, she was as still asacadaver, and not uttering a sound and not moving at all.

Jerry considered himself a visual person, because in his head whatever he thought of or remembered was mainly visual, in graphic pictures, not in a lot of wordy dialogue like other people said they had it. He wished he was alone now, but he wasn’t. He wished he wasn’t visual, but he was.

It was there, that one picture that kept projecting itself inside his skull.

The one picture that he took with his brain before he left, before George dragged him out of there.

The girl lying flat on her back, stark naked on the rug beside the bed. She was lying spread-eagled, loose, the fleshy creamy thighs loose and apart so that what you saw most was that mound with the crease in between visible through the pubic hairs and looking like the slash of a woman’s lips turned sideways. And one hand up against the night table and the other limp across her navel, and the little cream breasts flattened down, as if deflated, and the mouth hung open and the eyes shut and the red blood still trickling down from the scalp and tangled hair.

That was the picture.

He tried to turn it off, and did for a while, except that other pictures kept sliding into its place because he was visual.

He could see them, George and himself with their Cokes, inside The Underground Railroad, their dance hangout on Melrose Avenue, and George hearing the girl saying to someone else she wished she had a ride to her place, and George striking up a conversation and saying that his friend had a car and where did she live because if it wasn’t too far out of the way they’d be glad to drop her off. Her name was Sheri and she had an apartment with a roommate, Darlene, and it was just above Santa Monica Boulevard on Doheny Drive, so that wasn’t out of the way.

Another picture. They were parked in front, she was in the back seat with George, and George kidded around, and her thigh was partially showing where her cotton dress had climbed up, and Jerry kept wanting to rip her clothes off and make love all night, imagining it, all visual, when suddenly George was getting out and she was getting out and George was signaling him and saying they’d prove to her they were gentlemen and see her to her place upstairs. Another picture, upstairs, inside. She’d got up to go to the bathroom that was off the bedroom. George winking, patting his

crotch, saying no question she wanted it, whether she knew it or not, she was ripe for it, so maybe he’d better wait for her in the bedroom, and when he was done Jerry could have her.

Another picture, this of the bedroom door closing behind George. And of himself drinking from one of the cans of beer she’d brought out. Then in a short while the door opening partially, and George standing there without a stitch of clothes on, big and hairy with that big wang hanging down the middle, and George grinning and saying, ‘Jus; wanted you to know I’m still waiting to give her a little surprise.’ That moment her voice, and George ducking back into the room, and her voice protesting, and something about Darlene, the roommate, and what sounded like scuffling. And then he himself jumping up and shutting the bedroom door tightly so’s not to hear them.

Another picture, blurred. Except there was she naked on the bed now, and himself naked, and the moistness between her thighs and his hand clamping over her mouth.

And then the picture of his getting up, getting his shorts and trousers, and her going after him, and his dropping his clothes and trying to bat her, and her jumping back, the rug going out from under her, and her falling, smashing her head against the sharp corner of the night table, then crumpling, sliding down to the floor, trying to rise, and rolling on her back.

And then a montage of many pictures, this time with dialogue. George running in, his saying what in the hell did you do that for, and his own stuttering andstammering it was an accident. George’s saying for him to get dressed fast. George’s bending over her and saying what a mess and she’s out cold and thank God she’s alive and breathing. His dressing and wanting to telephone a doctor. George’s snatching the telephone from him, and saying is he crazy, taking a chance of getting themselves caught. His insisting on an anonymous call to a doctor, and George’s insisting no, making him finish dressing, telling him her roommate would be back any minute and would get the doctor and the girl’s allright and let’s get out of here while we can.

The first picture again. Looking down once more at the nude, spread-eagled body.

The rest of the pictures underexposed, no longer clear. Mostly with fragments of dialogue, with some bits and pieces of visual. In his car, George’s driving, and George’s saying you’re in no shape to go home yet, let’s go to The Garage, which was a real garage that George and some of the guys had rented and decorated as a kind of clubhouse for getting together and pot parties, and his saying whatever George wanted to do was okay with him. Walking to The Garage and George’s saying he had it figured out whatever happened it was going to be all right, because if Sheri was patched up and none the worse for it, she wouldn’t talk, because then she’d have to explain how she let herself be picked up, because after all

there was no evidence anyone busted into her place to rape her, and if she was in serious shape or worse then she wouldn’t be able to talk so that was that. Inside The Garage there were three of the guys, and two of the girls, regulars, and plenty of grass, and despite the incense you could smell it, but nobody cared, and he had himself a joint and inhaled it deeply and held the smoke and it settled him down a little, just a little, but not enough. After that he and George went for another long walk, until he could take the wheel himself and he took it to show he was better and then he drove George to his apartment.

One last picture, again, again, the first one. The girl lying flat on her back, stark naked on the rug beside the bed, with the damp vaginal mound and the blood-clotted hair on her head.

He had to pull himself together or he’d be asking for trouble. He looked at the dashboard clock. It was almost midnight. His mother and father would be asleep. Probably Maggie too. He was safe.