A Scanner Darkly

Luckman opened the book he was carrying. He puffed up, then, to much larger than usual; his great chest swelled, and so did his biceps. “Barris, I’m going to read to you.” He began to read from the book, in a particularly fluent way. “ ‘He to whom it is given to see Christ more real than any other reality …’ ”

“What?” Barris said.

Luckman continued reading. “ ‘… than any other reality in the World, Christ everywhere present and everywhere growing more great, Christ the final determination and plasmatic Principle of the Universe—’ ”

“What is that?” Arctor said.

“Chardin. Teilhand de Chardin.”

“Jeez, Luckman,” Arctor said.

“ ‘… that man indeed lives in a zone where no multiplicity can distress him and which is nevertheless the most active workshop of universal fulfilment.’ ” Luckman shut the book.

With a high degree of apprehension, Charles Freck moved in between Barris and Luckman. “Cool it, you guys.”

“Get out of the way, Freck,” Luckman said, bringing back his right arm, low, for a vast sweeping haymaken at Barris. “Come on, Barris, I’m going to coldcock you into tomorrow, for talking to your betters like that.”

With a bleat of wild, appealing terror, Barris dropped his felt pen and pad of paper and scuttled off erratically toward the open front door of the house, yelling back as he ran, “I hear the phone about the rebuilt carb.”

They watched him go.

“I was just kidding him,” Luckman said, rubbing his lower lip.

“What if he gets his gun and silencer?” Freck said, his nervousness off the scale entirely. He moved by degrees in the direction of his own parked car, to drop swiftly behind it if Barris reappeared firing.

“Come on,” Arctor said to Luckman; they fell back together into their car work, while Freck loitered apprehensively by his own vehicle, wondering why he had decided to bop over here today. It had no mellow quality today, here, none at all, as it usually did. He had sensed the bad vibes under the kidding right from the start. What’s the motherfuck wrong? he wondered, and got back somberly into his own car, to start it up.

Are things going to get heavy and bad here too, he wondered, like they did at Jerry Fabin’s house during the last few weeks with him? It used to be mellow here, he thought, everybody kicking back and turning on, grooving to acid rock, especially the Stones. Donna sitting here in her leather jacket and boots, filling caps, Luckman rolling joints and telling about the seminar he planned to give at UCLA in dope-smoking and joint-rolling, and how someday he’d suddenly roll the perfect joint and it would be placed under glass and helium back at Constitution Hall, as part of American history with those other items of similar importance. When I look back, he thought, even to when Jim Barris and I were sitting at the Fiddler’s, the other day … it was better even then. Jenny began it, he thought; that’s what’s coming down here, that there which carried off Jerry. How can days and happenings and moments so good become so quickly ugly, and for no reason, for no real reason? Just—change. With nothing causing it.

“I’m splitting,” he said to Luckman and Arctor, who were watching him rev up.

“No, stay, hey, man,” Luckman said with a warm smile. “We need you. You’re a brother.”

“Naw, I’m cutting out.”

From the house Barris appeared cautiously. He carried a hammer. “It was a wrong number,” he shouted, advancing with great caution, halting and peering like a crab-thing in a drive-in movie.

“What’s the hammer for?” Luckman said.

Arctor said, “To fix the engine.”

“Thought I would bring it with me,” Barris explained as he returned gingerly to the Olds, “since I was indoors and noticed it.”

“The most dangerous kind of person,” Arctor said, “is one who is afraid of his own shadow.” That was the last Freck heard as he drove away; he pondered over what Arctor meant, if he meant him, Charles Freck. He felt shame. But shit, he thought, why stick around when it’s such a super bummer? Where’s the chicken in that? Don’t never participate in no bad scenes, he reminded himself; that was his motto in life. So he drove away now, without looking back. Let them snuff each other, he thought. Who needs them? But he felt bad, really bad, to leave them and to have witnessed the darkening change, and he wondered again why, and what it signified, but then it occurred to him that maybe things would go the other way again and get better, and that cheered him. In fact, it caused him to roll a short fantasy number in his head as he drove along avoiding invisible police cars:

THERE THEY ALL SAT AS BEFORE.

Even people who were either dead or burned out, like Jerry Fabin. They all sat here and there in a sort of clear white light, which wasn’t daylight but better light than that, a kind of sea which lay beneath them and above them as well.