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

dust for the lady who sends us all to the moon,” he said, holding the spoon under Susan’s nostrils, staring straight into her eyes. Horvath couldn’t see his face from this angle, but something there made Susan’s lower lip tremble, painted that familiar nervous smile across her face. She took up half the spoon in one huge convulsive snort and coughed.
    Rory held the spoon under her face, waiting for her to take the rest. “Enough for now,” she said, again with that little pained smile that the Rorys of the world always took in the worst possible way, as emphatic communion with their own throbbing bummers.
    Rory carefully poured coke from the bottle into the spoon until it was only a shade less full than before. “For the man who makes the words that fly and the sounds that sing,” he said, holding the spoon under Horvath’s nose.
    The pain in his eyes, the worshipful sincerity in the set of his mouth, that sickly glow of a man in the presence of his fantasy saviors jelloed Horvath’s guts. Even the Pope must get sick of having people slobber on his ring, Horvath thought. Even he must get tired of feeling their pain. And if Rory’s pain is doing this to me , what must it feel like to Susan? He snorted up the coke in two tremendous drags, feeling it blast into his head, leaving a foul bitter taste in the back of his throat as the glow came on.
    Rory poured a smaller spoon for himself, snorted it with his left nostril, then did another level spoon with his right. Jesus Christ!
    “Man, I needed that! I needed that!” Rory stared straight at Susan, making it a terrifying and disgusting open plea for help. The dude had no balls at all! “I needed to see you here tonight, Star, I’ve got every Velvet Cloud album there is, and I’ve been at every live appearance of the Velvet Cloud since 1968: and I’ve dreamed about this moment for years.”
    He reached out for a piece of chicken, contriving to ooze closer to Susan in the process. “Actually meeting you. Being close enough to touch you, shit, you’re my last hope, Star.”
    Marlene and Duke squirmed in embarrassment, but the way he said “Star” triggered that terrible and inevitable thing in Susan, and out came that smile, the big one, the Star smile that it had taken Horvath and Jango six months to teach her. The mouth wide, the nostrils flaring, the green eyes glowing, the slight frown lines in the eyebrows and almost imperceptible tilt of the head that implied acceptance of and triumph over the pain of the world.
    “You really hurt, don’t you?” she said. Horvath could feel Rory’s pain reflected and amplified in Susan’s voice speaking in the inflections of Star, that boundless loving sincerity they had drilled into her till it became part of her soul.
    “You know, I think it’s really true, what they say about you,” Rory said, leaning forward just enough so that his knees now brushed Susan’s. Star’s.
    “What’s that?” Susan said.
    “ You know,” Rory said, swiveling his head around to speak to Horvath. “You’ve written songs about it. ‘I will warm you, I will love you, I will flash you through the fire of my flame....’” There was such total helpless puppy-dog pain in those bloodshot eyes as he said it, such an overwhelming gush of despair, such an utter commitment of his last resource of hope, that even disgust was driven out of Horvath by it, leaving only pity and a memory he no longer trusted.
    Back there on stage in Jango’s first place in San Francisco, in the Haight, in the Summer of Love, 1967, the night they first did “Take This Body.” The place was filled with speed freaks, bad acid, bummer vibes. Star was wearing sheets of veil that whirled and swirled, strobing through the complexity of the spectrum as she sang and moved in front of a rotating color wheel, her voice filling the place, washing over the bad vibes with what had really seemed like love....
     
    Take this body, ease your pain
    Let me take you on a