[MY GENERAL REACTION IS THAT THE AUTHOR IN HIS ATTEMPTED CLEVERNESS APPROACHES A STYLE REMINISCENT OF SOMEONE RUMMAGING THROUGH SOMEONE ELSE’S GARBAGE.]
Chapter 1: Winter, or Thirty-Six Years of Life
Christmas was three weeks off. It had been snowing most of the day. Miniature drifts were piling up against the dorm room window. Elizabeth Bromley’s brain refused to comprehend the dense textbook lying before her. Drowsily she repeated words to herself as they appeared on the page. In despair she closed her esthetics book and took out an old magazine. Sinking back into the bed, she lost herself in the happenings of 1952. “I like Ike,” thought Liz sleepily. [OBVIOUS, NOT FUNNY]
Elizabeth was startled out of the reflective past by the dramatic entrance of her roommate, Kathy. “Honestly!” shrieked Kathy in her Bostonese. “You go for coffee with one of the locals and they’re ready for The Big Deal.” The dorm was filled with sound: books being flung and other people shouting. It was sort of a chain reaction. “The Big Deal” wasn’t the prize of the well-known television game show. [YUK]
“Jesus,” Elizabeth said, turning to a picture of Fidel Castro, “you mean he offered it to you on the goddam Formica counter?” Kathy took off her sweater. “God,” thought Elizabeth, as she looked at another photo out of Life. It was Jayne Mansfield. “She could be the vanguard of any movement.” Liz would have to translate this anatomical use of Marxian analytics into layperson terms for Kathy. She was in the middle of her explanation of the revolution, when a knock sounded at the door.
Solemnly Kathy reflected: “Either that’s a pizza we didn’t order or it’s Marx and Engels.” The door burst open. A shower of snowballs greeted them. Elizabeth reflexed her magazine and covered her face. It was too late. A piece of snowball pelted her, glancing off the face of John Glenn, American Spaceman of the mid-nineteen sixties.
“What th’ fuck!?!” Kathy gasped. “We’ll fix those little bitches!” When the snow had settled, the “little bitches” turned out to be two guys, the Japanese twins from down the hall. They were giggling. From Kathy and Elizabeth’s standpoint the conflict was disastrous. Politely they asked that the Japs return to their room. “We may have lost the battle,” Kathy smiled, “but we won the war.” Elizabeth looked a little startled at that. [A BIT RACIST HERE?]
The twin’s father had put them into a private school in Santa Fe, because he wanted them along on a difficult business venture he had undertaken. Yarareta Yatsu, a fifty-year-old Nipponese, had rented the top of the La Fonda Hotel, which he used as the base of operations. His wife had passed away, leaving him responsibility for his two children. Hidio, the elder by five minutes, was an accomplished pianist. His favorite composer was Prokofiev. Akio was a follower of Isadora Duncan. Together they did improvisations.
Softening her pillow, Kathy made ready for bed. Elizabeth handed her a book by Alan Watts. “Here, read a little of this.” Kathy took it and started the third chapter.
“How sad,” Elizabeth said in a quiet voice, “People living in the same world, not knowing or caring about one another.”
“Like my mother and father for example,” Kathy added, making a joke. [WHAT JOKE?] Elizabeth grinned, put out her light and after a while found herself in dreamland.
She dreamt of college in Tokyo. All her instructors were gathered on the tennis courts watching a giant prehistoric animal knocking jet planes from the sky. The whole thing took on the characteristics of a very bad movie. Danger forced her to take cover in a bomb shelter. Descending the staircase, she noticed precious old paintings lining the walls. Everything seemed older the deeper she went. The walls passed from Medieval into early Roman. Finally she came upon a large table where many people were gathered. Off to the side of the stairwell, in what appeared to be a large dining hall, the people talked and laughed, unaware of Elizabeth. Her memory of what followed has perished. [THE DREAM IS BORING; IT TELLS US NOTHING]
Nikita Khrushchev [NAME DROPPER!] pounded his shoe at the U.N. The banging woke Elizabeth. Struggling, out of bed she shut off the radio alarm blaring its drum solo. Resting her forehead on the cool windowpane she gazed out over the campus. In the crystal morning light it bristled before the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. It looked like San Diego, but this was Santa Fe.
The college had been founded in 1964. Students are still subjected to the same course of study: mathematics, laboratory science, language and philosophy. Four years spent here trace the development of western thought through exposure to The Great Books. The curriculum is close to the nineteenth-century American ideal of Liberal Arts. Students attend class three or four hours a day and spend three evenings a week engaging in other aspects of The Program. The school proudly maintains its strict experimental principles. [A DEVASTATING LAMPOON]
Soon after she had arrived, Elizabeth Bromley wrote a letter to her friend:
Dear Carmen,
Everything here is real strange. It’s a whole new concept. You meet some nice people, but you meet some assholes too. Santa Fe is wonderful. It’s full of interesting folks. The first thing I wanted to do was go to a deli. So I went into this hotel and asked the clerk where I could find one. The hotel was terrific. It was quite old. It had a large double front door with brass handles and an area out front with white tables – all covered by a lavish olive awning. Seated at these tables was some collection of humanity! Men in cowboy hats smoking large cigars and women right off the cover of some fashion mag. But best of all the desk clerk was English – no, Welsh I think. A funny little man whose nose looked like it belonged to Bertrand Russell. [NOT CUTE] This guy “hadn’t the slightest” where I could find a deli. Anyway I found one across from a small but nice public library.
I’ve met this student Philip Graves the other night at a party. He’s the only person I’ve ever known that ends every sentence you’d say with “Why?” Believe it or not this guy’s already got a B.A. in physics and he’s 20! He’s also kinda good looking. So what’s he doing here? He’s getting another B.A. for some reason. Real spooky, huh? Think I’ll make an effort to get to know him.
Oh yeah, my roommate’s just “swell.” She’s from Boston, but her mother lives in Ireland. The other day she told me about a girl here who’s terrified of the cafeteria, because the idea of eating with 250 other people is too much. A lot of real strange (and nice) people.
Love,
E.
That same afternoon Kathy had written a letter to her mother:
Dear Mother,
I’m working very hard. Thanks for the check. I’ll try to spend it wisely. I’m applying myself every chance I get and budgeting my time.
You asked about the school. Here all the profs are called tutors. Dancing and vocal are the most interesting courses I’m taking. We are learning about new instruments and ancient songs. The tutor played a recording of a night outside with crickets etc. and we had an interesting discussion of what makes music. Lab is every afternoon and we made our own slide rules.
Well, I have to get back to work.
Love,
Kathy
That was in the fall. How far they’d both come since then! For one thing winter had settled in. Both girls were a little depressed. Liz had given Kathy all her back issues, and now she’d become a nostalgia buff. Meanwhile Liz had taken to reading things more in line with reality. For instance, one day a shipment of hash came from Cuba, wrapped in the diary of Che Guevara; now she spent her spare time reconciling Che with Abbie Hoffman. In short, both girls were immersed in the world of magazines and paperback books. True, people in real life didn’t talk that way, but it was exciting to think so.
Kathy took Western Thought at 8:00 in the morning. She sat in the front row. The instructor strode into the lecture hall in dark glasses. He lit a slender cigar and addressed the class: “Our course of study has brought us to the psychoanalytic movement at the turn of the century. Already in astronomy heliocentric theory had removed the earth from the center of creation. Darwin, as we have seen, added another insult by suggesting that humanity evolved from other forms of life. Now Freud tells us that man, that pinnacle of reason, is the prey of emotion. I.e., the crucial forces acting upon us are love, anger and fear.”
Not all the students were engrossed in the lecture. At least one person thought it inspired by a John Huston movie starring Montgomery Clift as Sigmund Freud. There was a resemblance: all three were thin and slightly erratic. There was also mesmerism in the professor’s behavior. He had a way of looking over his glasses to stress a point. Elizabeth, on her way back from Latin, stopped by the door to hear part of what he was saying. Clicking her ballpoint pen, she probed her memory for images of his wife. Then she remembered: she had seen them in a restaurant eating tamales. She imagined him standing around the house and thought how attractive he might be. His wife had another word for his presence at home: neurotic. Donald and Linda Bunge (Ph.D. and M.A. respectively) [SURE PUTS DON ON TOP.] had been married at the dawning of Aquarius. [ICK!] Their wedding picture looked like Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. [BULL!]
After an evening in Albuquerque, Linda arrived late. Donald watched as the Capri drove up and Linda stepped out. “Sorry,” she said, walking past him into the kitchen. He sat in the living room, his feet on a hassock, a pipe in the corner of his mouth. Prince Albert tobacco smoke had turned the room a funky blue.
“A client of mine,” said Linda, munching a pretzel, “got busted today for prostitution.” She went on about the bad weather. After a few mixed drinks, everything seemed much better. Linda once had a gift for gab, but gin had seemed to cure it. She fell into a silence that Donald sometimes referred to as “aphasia.” [ISN’T DONALD SMART?] Maybe she had nothing valuable to say. Donald for one was confident she didn’t. Linda reheated some lasagna. After a quiet dinner Donald remarked, “A playwright once said speech is an intrusion on silence.”
“Which playwright?” Linda asked.
“Beckett, I believe.” [I HOPE NOT.]
“I don’t much care for the theater of the absurd,” said Linda, sidestepping the issue. “Would you like to see ‘The Sound of Music’ tomorrow night?” [COME ON!]
“All right,” said Donald, rising to leave. Putting her arm behind his back she kissed him from her chair.
Lying in bed at 3:00 am Linda thought she saw someone in the hall outside their bedroom door. Sleeplessly tossing, she watched people turning into elephants. She closed her eyes and opened them. A man was standing over her. Linda became rigid with fear, unable to scream. Her hand slipped out of the covers and switched the lamp on. There was no one in the room but her husband, deep in sleep beside her. The light revealed nothing that hadn’t been there in the dark. Moonlight again lit the room from the windows beside the bed. A dog barked several blocks away. Linda listened awhile and tried to go back to sleep.
The following afternoon Donald drove to “Raoul’s” for lunch. Strolling around the Santa Fe Plaza he walked into the Palace of Governors. From 1680 to 1692, after an uprising, Indian leaders had occupied the building. Lew Wallace, one of New Mexico’s governors, conceived part of his book Ben Hur there. In earlier times Donald might have been arriving at the palace to visit a head of state. Instead, today, it was merely an anthropologist, a friend working in the Santa Fe Museum. Robert Sunkightner was an old Ivy League buddy. Meeting in the plaza, they shook hands and squinted at the sun.
“How’s Linda doing?” Robert ventured.
“Her social work keeps her pretty busy,” Donald replied. “It gives her something to talk about.”
“Say,” said Robert, “are you still interested in teaching an occult class in our Indian Superstition Program?”
“As a matter of fact, I was just thinking about it. I’d thought of using Jung’s Psychology of the Transference,”Donald said, smiling. [DO YOU THINK IT’S FUN TO TELL US NOTHING?]
Robert reached into his pocket for a small cigar. Together the two of them sat at the edge of a recent excavation.
Diary – Elizabeth Bromley, editor
December 17, 1974
I have decided to keep this notebook of my thoughts and feelings at the suggestion of Dr. Bunge.
My emotions are beginning to tangle. I’ve been confused, finding myself always analyzing my relationships. I want to know why people do what they do. That’s one of the reasons for starting to write. I’ll approach the problem systematically. First, I’ll write down observations and then my explanation.
December 21, 1974
The occult class is interesting – the Tarot is fascinating.
It’s hard for me to have an orgasm. [A SHOCKER]
December 23, 1974
Observation: Ms. Bunge is never without anything to say. I met her Friday night at the President’s reception.
She was pretty, not too pretty.
“Ready Linda?” Donald looked at himself in the bedroom mirror. Linda called from the bathroom: “Will I get to meet the adorable twins?”
“Yes, of course,” said Donald. “I’m sure they’ve been invited.” She recalled having seen their oriental faces peering into his office.
Linda pushed the FM selector on the dashboard until she found some quiet jazz. “John and Laura’ve been married for seven years,” she said, lighting a cigarette, “That explains it.”
“Explains what?” Donald prepared for a period of silence.
“Why they’re at each other’s throats!” It was Christmas Eve.
Donald entered a party with the same attractive force as if he were coming into the classroom. He offered his hand for introductions, his blue French cuffs sticking out of his jacket. Linda stood on his right in her new denim shirt and pullover (open cut). Her thick, black, shoulder-length hair made a strong contrast against the yellow sweater. She liked the softness of cashmere. Slowly making their way across the crowded room, she and Donald moved apart into separate conversation groups. The living-room hi-fi played a Mozart chamber piece.
John Jackson’s place was enormous. Inside people were all over the premises: faculty, local artists, students and street people. Outside VWs, MGs and Porsches covered the grass. Robert Sunkightner, wearing a beard of several months, had just shown up with a Ms. Priscilla Hoback on his arm. Ms. Hoback was a potter with a shop in the Canyon Road artists’ quarter. She and Mr. Sunkightner were strolling together when they noticed a large party going on. Now he was speaking of someone in knowledgeable tones. “He’s not out of the 1940’s yet,” he said. Someone asked a question; his eyebrows twitched. “Well, you see, when it’s all been put in historical perspective, the popular view is bound to change.” Ms. Hoback spoke independently to a nearby group. She wore Navajo rings and a band of beads on her forehead. Two pictures emerged from the two conversations; one that “he” was making physical and emotional progress; [SNORE] another that he remained on very shaky ground.
John Jackson stood in the hallway receiving guests. The gesture was a little superfluous, but he managed to carry it off with a certain dignity. A retired professor and a poet, he was a fixture on the Santa Fe scene. His house was typical of the rich, long-time, bohemian resident. One side was almost solid glass, the other dark and eerie (à la Poe). [BOO!] The floors were wooden and covered with Indian throw rugs; the walls were covered with paintings and books. At one time Jackson had been a crony of T.S. Eliot’s. Later he had established himself at the University of Chicago. Now he was mostly known for his productions with the local theatrical group. Though a man of seventy, he played the part of younger men. A deep sun tan covered the liver spots on his balking head. What there was of his hair was long, and he wore little Trotsky, gold-rimmed glasses out on the bridge of his nose. Like the furnishing of his house, his dress was elegant. He had on velvet flares, an off-white satin shirt and a necklace made of gold. He stood on platform shoes. [GOD, GIVE THE POOR SUCKER A BREAK!]
When Donald and Linda arrived, the hallway was crowded, but not everyone had penetrated the inner rooms. Liz and Kathy had. They sat in expensive, black easy chairs in the large lamp-lit library, nervously avoiding immediate contact with several eligible beaux. Two older literati perused Professor Jackson’s editions of Blake. [CHEAP SHOTS] In order to relieve a sense of absurdity, Kathy and Liz had taken to reading passages from books and magazines out loud. Liz had found a copy of Ramparts with the diary of Che Guevara; Kathy had copped Abbie Hoffman’s Steal This Book from John Jackson’s bedroom. Other books and mags lay open on the coffee table before them. One revealed a picture of Bruce Lee performing an act of Kung Fu. Several other “young people” [YUK] sprawled on the floor in advanced postures, half listening to the impromptu reading. A radio piped in strains of Elton John singing “Bennie and the Jets.”
Elizabeth turned the page. With a soft lisp she answered Kathy’s persiflage:
A new stage begins today. We arrived at the farm by night. The trip was quite good.
March 3. An uneventful day. We made an exploration following the course of the river. It runs through steep inclines and apparently the region is seldom frequented. With adequate discipline one could stay there for a long time.
She looked up from the magazine as though challenging Kathy.
SANDWICHBOARDS AND HAND-CARRIED SIGNS, Kathy began, ARE EFFECTIVE ADVERTISEMENTS. YOU CAN STAND ON A CORNER – SAY FIFTH AVENUE AND 84TH STREET – HOLDING A SIGN THAT SAYS, “APARTMENT NEEDED. FREE ANGELA. SMASH THE STATE.”
Flipping the pages, Liz countered with another passage:
In the morning, we began to move all our belongings and buried El Rubio in a small shallow grave. Inti was left with the rearguard to accompany the prisoners and set them free, and also to bring back any arms that may be scattered around.
She paused. Kathy, pitching her voice a little higher, began again:
WANTED: RICHARD MILHOUS NIXON (GENOCIDE, HOMICIDE, CONSPIRACY). IF YOU HAVE INFORMATION ABOUT THIS PERSON, PLEASE HELP BRING HIM TO JUSTICE. [BOO, YOU KNOW BETTER]
A young man with long blond hair and a Raymond Roussel moustache walked into the room. A bowl on the coffee table held potato chips. He took a handful and left. Two other people departed. Only Mary Moses and her friend remained, sitting on the couch, rather timidly holding hands. Mary, a New Yorker, was a friend of Kathy’s. Her dirty long blond hair and Orphan Annie eyes contrasted strongly with Bob Sun’s sleek black ponytail and pock-marked leathery face. Bob was a Native American who worked part-time in a tourist shop downtown. To a certain sector of the student population he was known for his connections. [SO WHAT?]
Donald briefly looked in as he passed on his way to the patio. Once in the fresh air he found a long-legged, red-headed woman to occupy his time. [WE GET THE PICTURE] She wore large gold loops in her ears. Donald thought her penetrating grin belied a possible love for Hart Crane. Snatching at the straw, he sang a few lines in his classroom monotone:
And so it was I entered the broken world
To trace the visionary company of love, its voice
An instant in the wind (I know not whither hurled)
But not for long to hold each desperate choice.
She took the bait. In somber tones they spoke of the poet who placed his coat on a rail and walked into the sea on Shakespeare’s birthday.
After watching the library empty Elizabeth and Kathy began to float freely around the house. Liz saw Donald cornered by the redhead and took the chance to get an introduction to his wife. Verbally Linda barraged her, but Liz didn’t mind since she took up (in turn) Gloria Steinem, [BOO] Tom Wolfe, [BOO] and Donald.
In a little while the gaiety had subsided. The air, dark with smoke, was almost unbreathable. Several marriages at stake depressed the situation further. “Why can’t we have fun?” said a woman who bore a likeness to Jackie Kennedy. [POOR DESCRIPTIVE DEVICE] She expatiated: “Roger and I have been together for nine, ah, nine and half years. It just isn’t fun anymore. Everything’s routine.” She paused a moment thinking, unaware of her inattentive listener. The man she was talking to kissed her on the neck, rubbing the palms of his hands on her chest. [ANOTHER SHOCKER]
Elizabeth had managed to work her way over to Donald. He was amusing her now with his bons mots. “The sense of drama is always associated with alcohol,” he said. Though it had grown quite cold, people had stepped out into the yard, leaving a lull inside. For a moment everyone was noticing everyone else. It was mostly the older, respectable folks who remained inside. A gay couple, George and Geoffrey, decided to leave so as not to embarrass their host. Elizabeth seemed to be making progress. [WHERE?] Beads of sweat were beginning to form on Donald’s forehead. Kathy, on the other hand, was getting ill – too many Margueritas. When Linda indicated she was ready to go, Liz finagled a ride back to the dorm for herself and Kathy.
“Do you find her attractive?” Linda said, watching the small adobe houses pass.
“Who’s that, Linda?” Donald said.
“The young woman we just let off.”
“Which one?” Donald returned.
“Elizabeth, of course.” It was really Kathy that Donald was thinking about, as they slowed for a blinking traffic light.
“Well, I hadn’t given it too much thought,” he confessed.
“She seems quite intelligent to me.” Linda pushed the button on the cigarette lighter. Snow flurries began.
Elizabeth had put her roommate to bed. Rolling over a few times, to the left, to the right, to the left again, she decided to turn on her desk lamp. She reached for a book of poems and came across an old one about sleeping with women. Automatically she thought about Donald. Someone shouted something down the hall. Liz paid no attention and switched off the lamp.
Kathy’s mother couldn’t afford to fly her to Ireland for Christmas, so Kathy had agreed to stay in Santa Fe. Elizabeth’s parents, on the other hand, were rich. On their way back from Europe sometime before New Year’s they planned to pick up Liz and take her to Aspen.
When the girls woke up, the ground was covered with snow. It was 10:00 o’clock. They talked about going out to lunch at a restaurant (the dormitory dining room had closed). This started Liz thinking about everything she’d seen that fall. She decided to write to Phil, whose letter she never answered. (She had figured he was getting laid by then anyway.) Phil had spent some time in Santa Fe several summers ago, and he wanted to know how things were now. Liz took out her ballpoint pen:
Dear Phil,
Long time no see. I’m getting accustomed to Santa Fe, I guess.
She chewed on the end of the pen, wondering what she might say next. It wasn’t as though Phil didn’t know about Santa Fe. She thought of the restaurant she and Kathy had decided on, the La Boheme. It was a little place with a patio out front. It must be all covered with snow, she thought. She remembered the tables inside, which were hinged to the wall, the other side hanging from the ceiling by chains. It reminded her a little of the drawbridge in her high school production of an opera, based on a play by Edmond Rostand. She forgot the hero’s name. The menus were decoupaged into the tables. Their best dish was noodles alfredo. In September, after she’d been in Santa Fe a week, she fell in love with Gary over noodles alfredo. [YUM, YUM] What could she say to Phil? Why was she writing to Phil anyway? Again she thought of Gary. It had only lasted for ten days. She’d fallen in love with him mainly because he kept marveling at “how tiny” she was. [YUK] (He was 6 foot 8 inches.) She clicked her ballpoint pen. She was starting to get depressed again. Kathy, sitting up in bed with pillows propped against the wall, pink bedspread, was twitching her feet. Liz had never especially liked Kathy’s pink bedspread, but now the sight of it made her positively sick. Kathy herself looked a little puffy from the night before. Her face was half hidden by the cover of a 1966 Saturday Evening Post.
Liz crumpled the letter and threw it in the basket. Exams would be coming pretty soon and she had several papers to write. It was 11:00 o’clock. They would leave for lunch at a quarter to 12:00. Still, that was forty-five minutes. (She had learned from Kathy to budget her time.) Maybe she ought to start on the short story her freshman comp tutor assigned over Christmas vacation. She scratched her nose and looked out into the quad. It was blank with the new snow. For nothing better to do she picked up the assignment sheet. “What I’m looking for,” it began, “is quality, not quantity.”
If you decide to write a story, try to avoid such clichéd topics as The Great Heroin Heist, My Senior Prom, My Next Door Neighbor Was Really a Creature from Somnambula, etc. If you can’t write a story and want to write, say, a poem instead, OK, but try to avoid such things as the love lament, or the complex-to-the-point-that-no-one-can-understand-what-you-mean lyric. Settle for something a bit more down to earth.
Elizabeth thought of throwing that in the basket too. She looked out the window again. It was still half an hour to lunch. The Saturday Evening Post had dropped onto Kathy’s chest. She’d fallen asleep.