A Scanner Darkly (2 page)

COP: “All right, what’s your name?”

“My
name?”
(
CAN’T THINK OF NAME
.)

“You don’t know your own name?” Cop signals to other cop in prowl car. “This guy is really spaced.”

“Don’t shoot me here.” Charles Freck in his horror-fantasy number induced by the sight of the black-and-white pacing him. “At least take me to the station house and shoot me there, out of sight.”

To survive in this fascist police state, he thought, you gotta always be able to come up with a name, your name. At all times. That’s the first sign they look for that you’re wired, not being able to figure out who the hell you are.

What I’ll do, he decided, is I’ll pull off soon as I see a parking slot, pull off voluntarily before he flashes his light,
or does anything, and then when he glides up beside me I’ll say I got a loose wheel or something mechanical.

They always think that’s great, he thought. When you give up like that and can’t go on. Like throwing yourself on the ground the way an animal does, exposing your soft unprotected defenseless underbelly. I’ll do that, he thought.

He did so, peeling off to the right and bumping the front wheels of his car against the curb. The cop car went on by.

Pulled off for nothing, he thought. Now it’ll be hard to back out again, traffic’s so heavy. He shut off his engine. Maybe I’ll just sit here parked for a while, he decided, and alpha meditate or go into various different altered states of consciousness. Possibly by watching the chicks going along on foot. I wonder if they manufacture a bioscope for horny. Rather than alpha. Horny waves, first very short, then longer, larger, larger, finally right off the scale.

This is getting me nowhere, he realized. I should be out trying to locate someone holding. I’ve got to get my supply or pretty soon I’ll be freaking, and then I won’t be able to do anything. Even sit at the curb like I am. I not only won’t know who I am, I won’t even know where I am, or what’s happening.

What is happening? he asked himself. What day is this? If I knew what day I’d know everything else; it’d seep back bit by bit.

Wednesday, in downtown L.A., the Westwood section. Ahead, one of those giant shopping malls surrounded by a wall that you bounced off like a rubber ball—unless you had a credit card on you and passed in through the electronic hoop. Owning no credit card for any of the malls, he could depend only on verbal report as to what the shops were like inside. A whole bunch, evidently, selling good products to the straights, especially to the straight wives. He watched the uniformed armed guards at the mall gate checking out each person. Seeing that the man or woman matched his or her credit card and that it hadn’t been ripped off, sold,
bought, used fraudulently. Lots of people moved on in through the gate, but he figured many were no doubt window-shopping. Not all that many people can have the bread or the urge to buy this time of day, he reflected. It’s early, just past two. At night; that was when. The shops all lit up. He could—all the brothers and sisters could—see the lights from without, like showers of sparks, like a fun park for grownup kids.

Stores this side of the mall, requiring no credit card, with no armed guards, didn’t amount to much. Utility stores: a shoe and a TV shop, a bakery, small-appliance repair, a laundromat. He watched a girl who wore a short plastic jacket and stretch pants wander along from store to store; she had nice hair, but he couldn’t see her face, see if she was foxy. Not a bad figure, he thought. The girl stopped for a time at a window where leather goods were displayed. She was checking out a purse with tassels; he could see her peering, worrying, scheming on the purse. Bet she goes on in and requests to see it, he thought.

The girl bopped on into the store, as he had figured.

Another girl, amid the sidewalk traffic, came along, this one in a frilly blouse, high heels, with silver hair and too much makeup. Trying to look older than she is, he thought. Probably not out of high school. After her came nothing worth mentioning, so he removed the string that held the glove compartment shut and got out a pack of cigarettes. He lit up and turned on the car radio, to a rock station. Once he had owned a tape-cartridge stereo, but finally, while loaded one day, he had neglected to bring it indoors with him when he locked up the car; naturally, when he returned the whole stereo tape system had been stolen. That’s what carelessness gets you, he had thought, and so now he had only the crummy radio. Someday they’d take that too. But he knew where he could get another for almost nothing, used. Anyhow, the car stood to be wrecked any day; its oil rings were shot and compression had dropped way down. Evidently,
he had burned a valve on the freeway coming home one night with a whole bunch of good stuff; sometimes when he had really scored heavy he got paranoid—not about the cops so much as about some other heads ripping him off. Some head desperate from withdrawing and dingey as a motherfucker.

A girl walked along now that made him take notice. Black hair, pretty, cruising slow; she wore an open midriff blouse and denim white pants washed a lot. Hey, I know her, he thought. That’s Bob Arctor’s girl. That’s Donna.

He pushed open the car door and stepped out. The girl eyed him and continued on. He followed.

Thinks I’m fixing to grab-ass, he thought as he snaked among the people. How easily she gained speed; he could barely see her now as she glanced back. A firm, calm face … He saw large eyes that appraised him. Calculated his speed and would he catch up. Not at this rate, he thought. She can really move.

At the corner people had halted for the sign to say
WALK
instead of
DON’T WALK;
cars were making wild left turns. But the girl continued on, fast but with dignity, threading her path among the nut-o cars. The drivers glared at her with indignation. She didn’t appear to notice.

“Donna!” When the sign flashed
WALK
he hurried across after her and caught up with her. She declined to run but merely walked rapidly. “Aren’t you Bob’s old lady?” he said. He managed to get in front of her to examine her face.

“No,” she said. “No.” She came toward him, directly at him; he retreated backward, because she held a short knife pointed at his stomach. “Get lost,” she said, continuing to move forward without slowing or hesitating.

“Sure you are,” he said. “I met you at his place.” He could hardly see the knife, only a tiny section of blade metal, but he knew it was there. She would stab him and walk on. He continued to retreat backward, protesting. The girl held the knife so well concealed that probably no one else, the others
walking along, could notice. But he did; it was going right at him as she approached without hesitation. He stepped aside, then, and the girl traveled on, in silence.

“Jeez!”
he said to the back of her. I know it’s Donna, he thought. She just doesn’t flash on who I am, that she knows me. Scared, I guess; scared I’m going to hustle her. You got to be careful, he thought, when you come to a strange chick on the street; they’re all prepared now. Too much has happened to them.

Funky little knife, he thought. Chicks shouldn’t carry those; any guy could turn her wrist and the blade back on her any time he wanted. I could have. If I really wanted to get her. He stood there, feeling angry. I know that was Donna, he thought.

As he started to go back toward his parked car, he realized that the girl had halted, out of the movement of passers-by, and now stood silently gazing at him.

He walked cautiously toward her. “One night,” he said, “me and Bob and another chick had some old Simon and Garfunkel tapes, and you were sitting there—” She had been filling capsules with high-grade death, one by one, painstakingly. For over an hour. El Primo. Numero Uno: Death. After she had finished she had laid a cap on each of them and they had dropped them, all of them together. Except her. I just sell them, she had said. If I start dropping them I eat up all my profits.

The girl said, “I thought you were going to knock me down and bang me.”

“No,” he said. “I just wondered if you …”He hesitated. “Like, wanted a ride. On the sidewalk?” he said, startled. “In broad daylight?”

“Maybe in a doorway. Or pull me into a car.”

“I
know
you,” he protested. “And Arctor would snuff me if I did that.”

“Well, I didn’t recognize you.” She came toward him three steps. “I’m sorta nearsighted.”

“You ought to wear contacts.” She had, he thought, lovely large dark warm eyes. Which meant she wasn’t on junk.

“I did have. But one fell out into a punch bowl. Acid punch, at a party. It sank to the bottom, and I guess someone dipped it up and drank it. I hope it tasted good; it cost me thirty-five dollars, originally.”

“You want a ride where you’re going?”

“You’ll bang me in the car.”

“No,” he said, “I can’t get it on right now, these last couple of weeks. It must be something they’re adulterating all the stuff with. Some chemical.”

“That’s a neat-o line, but I’ve heard it before. Everybody bangs me.” She amended that. “Tries to, anyhow. That’s what it’s like to be a chick. I’m suing one guy in court right now, for molestation and assault. We’re asking punitive damages in excess of forty thousand.”

“How far’d he get?”

Donna said, “Got his hand around my boob.”

“That isn’t worth forty thousand.”

Together, they walked back toward his car.

“You got anything to sell?” he asked. “I’m really hurting. I’m virtually out, in fact, hell, I am out, come to think of it. Even a few, if you could spare a few.”

“I can get you some.”

“Tabs,” he said. “I don’t shoot up.”

“Yes.” She nodded intently, head down. “But, see, they’re real scarce right now—the supply’s temporarily dried up. You probably discovered that already. I can’t get you very many, but—”

“When?” he broke in. They had reached his car; he halted, opened the door, got in. On the far side Donna got in. They sat side by side.

“Day after tomorrow,” Donna said. “If I can git ahold of this guy. I think I can.”

Shit, he thought. Day after tomorrow. “No sooner? Not like, say, tonight?”

“Tomorrow at the earliest.”

“How much?”

“Sixty dollars a hundred.”

“Oh, Jeez,” he said. “That’s a burn.”

“They’re super good. I’ve got them from him before; they’re really not what you usually buy into. Take my word for it—they’re worth it. Actually, I prefer to get them from him rather than from anybody else—when I can. He doesn’t always have them. See, he just took a trip down south, I guess. He just got back. He picked them up himself, so I know they’re good for sure. And you don’t have to pay me in advance. When I get them. Okay? I trust you.”

“I never front,” he said.

“Sometimes you have to.”

“Okay,” he said. “Then can you get me at least a hundred?” He tried to figure, rapidly, how many he could get; in two days he probably could raise one hundred twenty dollars and get two hundred tabs from her. And if he ran across a better deal in the meantime, from other people who were holding, he could forget her deal and buy from them. That was the advantage of never fronting, that plus never being burned.

“It’s lucky for you that you ran into me,” Donna said as he started up his car and backed out into traffic. “I’m supposed to see this one dude in about an hour, and he’d probably take all I could get … you’d have been out of luck. This was your day.” She smiled, and he did too.

“I wish you could get them sooner,” he said.

“If I do …” Opening her purse, she got out a little note pad and a pen that had
SPARKS BATTERY TUNE-UP
stamped on it. “How do I get hold of you, and I forget your name.”

“Charles B. Freck,” he said. He told her his phone number—not his, really, but the one he made use of at a straight friend’s house, for messages like this—and laboriously she wrote it down. What difficulty she had writing, he thought. Peering and slowly scrawling … They don’t teach the chicks
jack shit in school any more, he thought. Flat-out illiterate. But foxy. So she can’t hardly read or write; so what? What matters with a fox is nice tits.

“I think I remember you,” Donna said. “Sort of. It’s all hazy, that night; I was really out of it. All I definitely remember was getting the powder into those little caps—Librium caps—we dumped the original contents. I must have dropped half. I mean, on the floor.” She gazed at him meditatively as he drove. “You seem like a mellow dude,” she said. “And you’ll be in the market later on? After a while you’ll want more?”

“Sure,” he said, wondering to himself if he could beat her price by the time he saw her again; he felt he could, most likely. Either way he won. That is, either way he scored.

Happiness, he thought, is knowing you got some pills.

The day outside the car, and all the busy people, the sunlight and activity, streamed past unnoticed; he was happy.

Look what he had found by chance—because, in fact, a black-and-white had accidentally paced him. An unexpected new supply of Substance D. What more could he ask out of life? He could probably now count on two weeks lying ahead of him, nearly
half a month,
before he croaked or nearly croaked—withdrawing from Substance D made the two the same. Two weeks! His heart soared, and he smelled, for a moment, coming in from the open windows of the car, the brief excitement of spring.

“Want to go with me to see Jerry Fabin?” he asked the girl. “I’m taking a load of his things over to him at the Number Three Federal Clinic, where they took him last night. I’m just carting over a little at a time, because there’s a chance he might get back out and I don’t want to have to drag it all back.”

“I’d better not see him,” Donna said.

“You know him? Jerry Fabin?”

“Jerry Fabin thinks I contaminated him originally with those bugs.”

“Aphids.”

“Well,
then
he didn’t know what they were. I better stay away. Last time I saw him he got really hostile. It’s his receptor sites, in his brain, at least I think so. It seems like it, from what the government pamphlets say now.”

“That can’t be restored, can it?” he said.