Passing Through the Flame by Norman Spinrad Read Free Book Online Page A

hookahs, eating fried chicken, and passing around cold bottles of white wine. A good fire was going in the big black stone fireplace: Fog’s latest album was playing softly, and the sea whooshed and roared beyond the big glass doors that opened out onto the sun deck. Everything seemed peaceful and mellow.
    “Where you two been hiding yourself?” Marlene said, welcoming them with an easy smile as they sat down on the rug. Duke and Marlene were quietly into each other, and Horvath found himself envying their scene.
    He took a long drag off the nearest hookah, handed the hose to Susan, and said, “High on the hill.”
    Marlene passed him a platter of chicken. He grabbed a leg and bit into it. He took a sip of wine. Susan leaned against him and took a bite from his chicken leg. The Fog dudes and Tim’s backup men were trying to figure out how to divvy up four groupies. Joe and his old lady were lying back, zonked. Tim and Tanya looked as if they were back together again.
    And Bill and Susan were just sitting here smoking dope, drinking wine, rapping with friends, and sharing a chicken leg. Just an ordinary couple hanging out with their ordinary friends. Horvath felt groovy.
    “Don’t know why you guys stay up there in the hills so far from the sea,” Duke said. “Nothing like dropping a little acid and walking along the beach at night...”
    “And running out into the surf after you’ve stopped peaking,” Marlene added.
    “It’s not so bad dropping up there on our mountain at night,” Susan said, hollowness in her voice that only Horvath heard. Truth was, they hadn’t dared drop acid in over a year. “The night breeze rocking the trees, the owls hooting, coyotes freaking each other out, everything alive and clear and real....”
    The sadness in her voice, Horvath thought. All that we’re missing, because if we dropped, it’d be a memory lane trip again, nights I spent alone, nights she came home freaking.... Who am I? Who am I? Tearing off her clothes, singing in the night, screaming in the night, let’s go to Africa, let’s go to India, where nobody can find us and we can be just lovers again, just Bill and Susan balling in some little pad, who needs all this shit, the money, the fame, the pain. Ah, but they need me! You feed the need. I need to feed the need. I can’t live with all that unanswered pain. Too much pain to dare dropping acid again. Expand our awareness and expand the pain, because that’s what’s there, Duke, that’s all that’s there.
    “Sounds like a real Boris Karloff trip to me,” Duke said. “Ah, you’re just a beach bum at heart!”
    The door opened, and he came in out of the night.
    He was tall and thin, wore black pants, brown boots, and an embroidered denim shirt. His hair was long and stringy, and his face was sallow and drawn. His lips were tight lines, and his bloodshot eyes seemed a mile back in their darkened sockets. A strictly utilitarian copper coke spoon hung from a thong around his neck. Black vibes surrounding him.
    His eyes fell on Susan, and Horvath could feel her wincing from his pain, from the slobbering need he brought with him, from the flash of hope that played across his face. Horvath flashed on the coming bummer; he was there looking for salvation; he had come for Star.
    “This is Rory,” Duke said. “My man. Purveyor of righteous weed, ups, downs, sideways, and pretty fair coke.”
    Rory crossed the room and sat down beside them, hardly taking his eyes off Susan as he fished a medicine bottle filled with white powder out of a pocket. “How about some coke?” He slipped the coke spoon from around his neck, filled it, and handed it to Duke.
    Duke took it up in two snorts. “Sure beats Blue Chip Stamps,” he said.
    “The little lady....” He portioned out some coke for Marlene. When Marlene had snorted hers and handed the spoon back to him: Rory dipped it deep into the bottle and came up with a huge heaping spoonful.
    “And a double portion of happy