A Scanner Darkly

“There was a woman on the island. Not exactly—more a statue. He said it was of the Cyrenaican Aphrodite. Standing there in moonlight, pale and cold and made out of marble.”

“He should have gone through the doorway when he had the chance.”

Donna said, “He didn’t have the chance. It was a promise. Something to come. Something better a long time in the future. Maybe after he—” She paused. “When he died.”

“He missed out,” Bob Arctor said. “You get one chance and that’s it.” He shut his eyes against the pain and the sweat streaking his face. “Anyhow what’s a burned-out acid head know? What do any of us know? I can’t talk. Forget it.” He turned away from her, into the darkness, convulsing and shuddering.

“They show us trailers now,” Donna said. She put her arms around him and held on to him as tightly as she could, rocking him back and forth. “So we’ll hold out.”

“That’s what you’re trying to do. With me now.”

“You’re a good man. You’ve been dealt a bad deal. But life isn’t over for you. I care for you a lot. I wish …” She continued to hold him, silently, in the dankness that was swallowing him up from inside. Taking over even as she held on to him. “You are a good and kind person,” she said. “And this is unfair but it has to be this way. Try to wait for the end. Sometime, a long time from now, you’ll see the way you saw before. It’ll come back to you.” Restored, she thought. On the day when everything taken away unjustly from people will be restored to them. It may take a thousand years, or longer than that, but that day will come, and all the balances will be set right. Maybe, like Tony Amsterdam, you have seen a vision of God that is gone only temporarily; withdrawn, she thought, rather than ended. Maybe inside the terribly burned and burning circuits of your head that char more and more, even as I hold you, a spark of color and light in some disguised form manifested itself, unrecognized, to lead you, by its memory, through the years to come, the dreadful years ahead. A word not fully understood, some small thing seen but not understood, some fragment of a star mixed with the trash of this world, to guide you by reflex until the day … but it was so remote. She could not herself truly imagine it. Mingled with the commonplace, something from another world perhaps had appeared to Bob Arctor before it was over. All she could do now was hold him and hope.

But when he found it once again, if they were lucky, pattern-recognition would take place. Correct comparison in the right hemisphere. Even at the subcortical level available to him. And the journey, so awful for him, so costly, so evidently without point, would be finished.

A light shone in her eyes. Standing in front of her, a cop with nightstick and flashlight. “Would you please stand up?” the officer said. “And show me your identification? You first, miss.”

She let go of Bob Arctor, who slid sideways until he lay against the ground; he was unaware of the cop, who had approached them up the hill, stealthily, from a service road below. Getting her wallet out of her purse, Donna motioned the officer away, where Bob Arctor could not hear. For several minutes the officer studied her identification by the muted light of his flashlight, and then said,

“You’re undercover for the federal people.”

“Keep your voice down,” Donna said.

“I’m sorry.” The officer handed the wallet back to her.

“Just fucking take off,” Donna said.

The officer shone his light in her face briefly, and then turned away; he departed as he had approached, noiselessly.

When she returned to Bob Arctor, it was obvious that he had never been aware of the cop. He was aware of almost nothing, now. Scarcely of her, let alone anyone or anything else.

Far off, echoing, Donna could hear the police can moving down the nutted, invisible service road. A few bugs, perhaps a lizard, made their way through the dry weeds around them. In the distance the 91 Freeway glowed in a pattern of lights, but no sound reached them; it was too remote.

“Bob,” she said softly. “Can you hear me?”

No answer.

All the circuits are welded shut, she thought. Melted and fused. And no one is going to get them open, no matter how hard they try. And they are going to try.

“Come on,” she said, tugging at him, attempting to get him to his feet. “We’ve got to get started.”

Bob Arctor said, “I can’t make love. My thing’s disappeared.”

“They’re expecting us,” Donna said firmly. “I have to sign you in.”

“But what’ll I do if my thing’s disappeared? Will they still take me in?”

Donna said, “They’ll take you.”