… been getting it on worth jack shit lately, plastic shit or otherwise, any kind of shit. If you boys are psychologist types and you’ve been listening to my endless debriefings with Hank, what the hell is Donna’s handle? How do I get next to her? I mean, how is it done? With that kind of sweet, unique, stubborn little chick?”
“Each girl is different,” the seated deputy said.
“I mean approach her ethically,” Fred said. “Not cram her with reds and booze and then stick it into her while she’s lying on the living-room floor.”
“Buy her flowers,” the standing deputy said.
“What?” Fred said, his suit-filtered eyes opening wide.
“This time of year you can get little spring flowers. At the nursery departments of, say, Penney’s on K Mart. Or an azalea.”
“Flowers,” Fred murmured. “You mean plastic flowers or real flowers? Real ones, I guess.”
“The plastic ones are no good,” the seated deputy said. “They look like they’re … well, fake. Somehow fake.”
“Can I leave now?” Fred asked.
After an exchange of glances, both deputies nodded. “We’ll evaluate you some other time, Fred,” the standing one said. “It’s not that urgent. Hank will notify you of a later appointment time.”
For some obscure reason Fred felt like shaking hands with them before he left, but he did not; he just left, saying nothing, a little down and a little bewildered, because, probably, of the way it had shot out of left field at him, so suddenly. They’ve been going over and over my material, he thought, trying to find signs of my being burned out, and they did find some. Enough, anyhow, to want to nun these tests.
Spring flowers, he thought as he reached the elevator. Little ones; they probably grow close to the ground and a lot of people step on them. Do they grow wild? Or in special commercial vats on in huge enclosed farms? I wonder what the country is like. The fields and like that, the strange smells. And, he wondered, where do you find that? Where do you go and how do you get there and stay there? What kind of trip is that, and what kind of ticket does it take? And who do you buy the ticket from?
And, he thought, I would like to take someone with me when I go there, maybe Donna. But how do you ask that, ask a chick that, when you don’t even know how to get next to her? When you’ve been scheming on her and achieving nothing—not even step one. We should hurry, he thought, because later on all the spring flowers like they told me about will be dead.
On his way over to Bob Arctor’s house, where a bunch of heads could usually be found for a mellow turned-on time, Charles Freck worked out a gag to put ol’ Barris on, to pay him back for the spleen jive at the Fiddler’s Three restaurant that day. In his head, as he skillfully avoided the radar traps that the police kept everywhere (the police radar vans checking out drivers usually took the disguise of old raunchy VW vans, painted dull brown, driven by bearded freaks; when he saw such vans he slowed), he ran a preview fantasy number of his put-on:
FRECK: (Casually) I bought a methedrine plant today.
BARRIS: (With a snotty expression on his face) Methedrine is a benny, like speed; it’s crank, it’s crystal, it’s amphetamine, it’s made synthetically in a lab. So it isn’t organic, like pot. There’s no such thing as a methedrine plant like there is a pot plant.
FRECK: (Springing the punch line on him) I mean I inherited forty thousand from an uncle and purchased a plant hidden in this dude’s garage where he makes methedrine. I mean, he’s got a factory there where he manufactures meth. Plant in the sense of—
He couldn’t get it phrased exactly right as he drove, because part of his mind stayed on the vehicles around him and the lights; but he knew when he got to Bob’s house he’d lay it on Barris super good. And, especially if a bunch of people were there, Barris would rise to the bait and be visible to everyone flat-out as a clear and evident asshole. And that would super pay him back, because Barris worse than anybody else couldn’t stand to be made fun of.
When he pulled up he found Barris outdoors working on Bob Arctor’s car. The hood was up, and both Barris and Arctor stood together with a pile of car tools.
“Hey, man,” Freck said, slamming his door and sauntering casually over. “Barris,” he said right off in a cool way, putting his hand on Barris’s shoulder to attract his attention.
“Later,” Barris growled. He had his repair clothes on; grease and like that covered the already dirty fabric.
Freck said, “I bought a methedrine plant today.”
With an impatient scowl, Barris said, “How big?”
“What do you mean?”
“How big a plant?”
“Well,” Freck said, wondering how to go on.
“How much’d you pay for it?” Arctor said, also greasy from the car repair. They had the carb off, Freck saw, air filter, hoses, and all.
Freck said, “About ten bucks.”
“Jim could have gotten it for you cheaper,” Arctor said, resuming his labors. “Couldn’t you, Jim?”
“They’re practically giving meth plants away,” Barris said.
“This is a whole fucking garage!” Freck protested. “A factory! It turns out a million tabs a day—the pill-rolling machinery and everything. Everything!”
“All that cost ten dollars?” Barris said, grinning widely.
“Where’s it located?” Arctor said.
“Not around here,” Freck said uneasily. “Hey, fuck it, you guys.”
Pausing in his work—Barris did a lot of pausing in his work, whether anyone was talking to him or not—Barris said, “You know, Freck, if you drop or shoot too much meth you start talking like Donald Duck.”
“So?” Freck said.
“Then nobody can understand you,” Barris said.
Arctor said, “What’d you say, Barris? I couldn’t understand you.”
His face dancing with merriment, Barris made his voice sound like Donald Duck’s. Freck and Arctor grinned and enjoyed it. Barris went on and on, gesturing finally at the carburetor.
“What about the carburetor?” Arctor said, not smiling now.
Barris, in his regular voice, but still grinning widely, said, “You’ve got a bent choke shaft. The whole carb should be rebuilt. Otherwise the choke’s going to shut on you while you’re driving along the freeway and then you’ll find your motor is flooded and dead and some asshole will rear-end you. And possibly in addition that raw gas washing down the cylinder walls—if it goes on long enough—will wash the lubrication away, so your cylinders will be scored and permanently damaged. And then you’ll need them rebored.”
“Why is the choke rod bent?” Arctor asked.
Shrugging, Barris resumed taking apart the carb, he did not answer. He left that up to Arctor and to Charles Freck, who knew nothing about engines, especially complex repairs like this.
Coming out of the house, Luckman, wearing a snazzy shirt and tight high-style Levi jeans, carrying a book and wearing shades, said, “I phoned and they’re checking to see what a rebuilt carb will set you back for this car. They’ll phone in a while, so I left the front door open.”
Barris said, “You could put a four-barrel on instead of this two, while you’re at it. But you’d have to put on a new manifold. We could pick up a used one for not very much.”
“It would idle too high,” Luckman said, “with like a Rochester four-barrel—is that what you mean? And it wouldn’t shift properly. It wouldn’t upshift.”
“The idling jets could be replaced with smaller jets,” Barris said, “that would compensate. And with a tach he could watch his rpms, so it didn’t over-rev. He’d know by the tach when it wasn’t upshifting. Usually just backing off on the gas pedal causes it to upshift if the automatic linkage to the transmission doesn’t do it. I know where we can get a tach, too. In fact, I have one.”
“Yeah,” Luckman said, “well, if he tromped down heavy on the step-down passing gear to get a lot of torque suddenly in an emergency on the freeway, it’d downshift and rev up so high it’d blow the head gasket or worse, a lot worse. Blow up the whole engine.”
Barris, patiently, said, “He’d see the tach needle jump and he’d back right off.”