A Scanner Darkly

“No,” Luckman said, eyeing him. To Barris he said, “Were there any psychedelics in that dope?”

Barris, smiling, shook his head.

As he bent over the hot engine, smelling dog shit, Arctor knew to himself that it was an illusion; there was no dogshit smell. But still he smelled it. And now he saw, smeared across the motorblock, especially down low by the plugs, dark-brown stains, an ugly substance. Oil, he thought. Spilled oil, thrown oil: I may have a leaky head gasket. But he needed to reach down and touch to be sure, to fortify his rational conviction. His fingers met the sticky brown smears, and his fingers leaped back. He had run his fingers into dog shit. There was a coating of dog shit all over the block, on the wires. Then he realized it was on the fire wall as well. Looking up, he saw it on the soundproofing underneath the hood. The stink overpowered him, and he shut his eyes, shuddering.

“Hey, man,” Luckman said acutely, taking hold of Arctor by the shoulder. “You’re getting a flashback, aren’t you?”

“Free theater tickets,” Barris agreed, and chuckled.

“You better sit down,” Luckman said; he guided Arctor back to the driver’s seat and got him seated there. “Man, you’re really freaked. Just sit there. Take it easy. Nobody got killed, and now we’re warned.” He shut the car door beside Arctor. “We’re okay now, dig?”

Barris appeared at the window and said, “Want a lump of dog shit, Bob? To chew on?”

Opening his eyes, chilled, Arctor stared at him. Barris’s green-glass eyes gave nothing back, no clue. Did he really say that? Arctor wondered. Or did my head make that up? “What, Jim?” he said.

Barris began to laugh. And laugh and laugh.

“Leave him alone, man,” Luckman said, punching Barris on the back. “Fuck off, Barris!”

Arctor said to Luckman, “What did he say just now? What the hell exactly did he say to me?”

“I don’t know,” Luckman said. “I can’t figure out half the things Barris lays on people.”

Barris still smiled, but had become silent.

“You goddamn Barris,” Arctor said to him. “I know you did it, screwed over the cephscope and now the car. You fucking did it, you kinky freak mother bastard.” His voice was hardly audible to him, but as he yelled that out at smiling Barris, the dreadful stench of dog shit grew. He gave up trying to speak and sat there at the useless wheel of his car trying not to throw up. Thank God Luckman came along, he thought. Or it’d be all over for me this day. It’d all fucking be over, at the hands of this burned-out fucking creep, this mother living right in the same house with me.

“Take it easy, Bob,” Luckman’s voice filtered to him through the waves of nausea.

“I know it’s him,” Arctor said.

“Hell, why?” Luckman seemed to be saying, or trying to say. “He’d of snuffed himself too this way. Why, man? Why?”

The smell of Barris still smiling overpowered Bob Arctor, and he heaved onto the dashboard of his own car. A thousand little voices tinkled up, shining at him, and the smell receded finally. A thousand little voices crying out their strangeness; he did not understand them, but at least he could see, and the smell was going away. He trembled, and reached for his handkerchief from his pocket.

“What was in those tabs you gave us?” Luckman demanded at smiling Barris.

“Hell, I dropped some too,” Barris said, “and so did you. And it didn’t give us a bad trip. So it wasn’t the dope. And it was too soon. How could it have been the dope? The stomach can’t absorb—”

“You poisoned me,” Arctor said savagely, his vision almost clear, his mind clearing, except for the fear. Now fear had begun, a rational response instead of insanity. Fear about what had almost happened, what it signified, fear fear terrible fear of smiling Barris and his fucking snuffbox and his explanations and his creepy sayings and ways and habits and customs and comings and goings. And his anonymous phoned-in tip to the police about Robert Arctor, his mickeymouse grid to conceal his real voice that had pretty well worked. Except that it had to have been Barris.

Bob Arctor thought, The fucker is on to me.

“I never saw anybody space out as fast,” Barris was saying, “but then—”

“You okay now, Bob?” Luckman said. “We’ll clean up the barf, no trouble. Better get in the back seat.” Both he and Barris opened the car door; Arctor slid dizzily out. To Barris, Luckman said, “You sure you didn’t slip him anything?”

Barris waved his hands up high, protesting.

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