Saline Solution by Marco Vassi Read Free Book Online Page B

fantasy proliferated before my inner eye. I was, then, master of all thought forms. Architecture flowed freely. Entire universes of discourse were caught and understood and dispensed in microseconds of chronological time. The computer sang.
    I stepped into the land of the ideal, without for a moment losing the reality of the physical world of which I knew myself to be but a brief manifestation, me and all my fancy thoughts. The elusive face of ultimate reality smiled at me from behind the veils of the last few words still sawing wood in my brain. And then, at a stroke, I was cut loose. Past all conceptual boundaries, past all modes and moods, and into the embrace of pure being.
    Francis and Bertha walked in. 'Hey man, you look stoned,' he said.
    'You know, whenever I think I've got it, that's when I don't.'
    'It's a long way to Tipperary,' he said.
    I went down to the beach. It occurred to me that the thing which made Francis so valuable a friend was that he knew that any given state is that state, and only a fool wonders which label to apply to it. Enlightened or stoned? You can tell by the degree to which the person is trying to figure it out.
    As I stepped onto the sand, paranoia closed over me like a giant clam shell. The people on the shore were all alien. Something was wrong with them, unspeakably wrong. I could find no rationalisation. To my horror, someone smiled at me. I smiled back. And then I was giggling uncontrollably. The hilarity of it was overwhelming. 'They'll think I'm crazy,' I thought.
    I went back to the house. Some people had arrived, and as I walked in the door they began speaking to me, making noises with their mouths, hitting me with their words. With a great tearing of gears I shifted levels and entered the world of question and answer. I found myself holding my mind in a knot, wishing over and over again that Lucinda would return early.
    V
    She came in on the eight o'clock ferry. We embraced and held on to one another for a long while. Our needs this time were in absolute synchrony.
    The house was in pandemonium. All of the groupers had arrived for the weekend, and with guests, some thirteen people plus dogs were milling around the living room and kitchen. Everyone was smiling and polite, but the level of irritation was high. Donna was at the phone in the corner of the room, watching the crowd with calculating eyes.
    'That bastard is having a party tonight,' she shouted at me as Lucinda and I walked in.
    'Who?' I said, exaggerating the word with my lips so she could see what I was saying from across the noisy room.
    'That millionaire bastard on the corner. And the fucker hasn't invited me.' She spoke into the phone and hung up. 'I was over there this afternoon,' she said, walking towards us. Her voice dropped to a whisper. 'In that scummy swimming pool of his. And I was coming up the ladder when he swam past and grabbed my arse. I turned around. "I sure would like to eat you," he said. So I told him to open his mouth, I had to take a shit anyway.'
    4 Yeah, well, I wouldn't invite you to the party either.'
    'The summer's not over yet,' she said. Til fix him.'
    Donna was one of the few consciously realised paranoids I had ever met. Her entire approach towards other people was based on a meter which registered somewhere around her solar plexus. It had three indications on it: friend, neutral, and enemy. 'You have to trust your instinct,' she said at least five times a day. 'You know when you can't trust someone. You can tell it in the first flash. Always go by that. Get him before he gets you.'
    'Do you want to eat?' Lucinda asked.
    'Why don't you throw in with us?' This from Donna who had no trouble with any change of subject. 'It'll be in about an hour. We have shrimp.'
    'Then let's go fuck first,' I said to Lucinda.
    She smiled. Her eyes were clear and warm. The purple bruise on the spot where I had hit her had faded, and she looked like a cover for a Billie Holiday album.
    'You have a good time with