`Oh. I .. don't know. I sort of drifted here.'
She edged between my neighbor and me and placed her drink on the bar. Her eyes were heavily made up, her hair a
more deeply bleached blonde than I remembered it, her body no need to speculate about her measurements; her breasts swayed bralessly against a tight-fitting multicolored T-shirt. She looked very sexy in a debauched sort of way and she eyed me with curiosity.
`Drifted? The Great Psychiatrist drifted? I had the impression that you never even picked your nose without writing a
treatise proving its value.'
'That was the old days. I've changed, Linda.'
`Ever managed an orgasm?' I laughed and she smiled.
`How about yourself?'
I asked. 'What've you been doing?'
`Disintegrating,' she said and gracefully swallowed the last of her drink. `You ought to try it, it's fun.'
`I think I'd like to.'
A man appeared next to her, a small frail man with glasses who looked like a graduate student in organic chemistry,
and after glancing once at me, he said to Linda: `Come on, let's go.'
Linda slowly turned her eyes to the man and, with a look that made all previous looks I'd seen on her face seem like
idolatrous administration, announced: `I'm staying awhile.'
Organic chemistry blinked at her, looked at my impressive bulk nervously and took her by the elbow.
`Come on,' he said.
She lifted the dregs of her drink carefully off the bar past my face and poured it slowly down organic chemistry's back
inside his shirt, ice cubes and all.
`Go change your shirt first,' she said.
He never batted an eye. With a barely perceptible shrug of the shoulders he merged back into the surrounding mob.
`You think you'd like to disintegrate, huh?' she said to me and then signaled to a bartender for another drink.
`Yes, but it seems an awfully hard thing to do. I've been trying it for over a year now and it takes tremendous effort.'
`A year! You don't look it. You look like a middle-class insurance salesman who comes once every four months to the
Village for a fresh lay.'
`You're wrong. I've been trying to disintegrate myself. But tell me, how do you go about it?'
'Me? Same as always. I haven't changed since you last saw me. Get my kicks the same ways. I spent three months in
Venezuela even lived with a man for almost a month, twenty four days to be precise - but nothing's new.'
`Then you're failing,' I said.
`What d'you mean?'
'I mean if you're really trying to disintegrate you're not succeeding. You're not changing. You're staying the same.'
She wrinkled her clear, still youthful brow and took a big gulp from her fresh drink.
`It was just a word. Disintegration doesn't mean anything. I'm just living my life.'
`Would you like a new kick, one you've never had before and really disintegrate the old self?'
She laughed abruptly. `I've had enough of your brand of kicks.'
`I've developed new brands.'
`Sex bores me. I've made love with every possible number and configuration of men, women and children, had penises
and other appropriately shaped objects up every orifice in every possible combination and sex is a bore.'
`I'm not necessarily talking about sex.'
`Then maybe I'm interested.'
`It will mean a partnership with me for a while.'
`What kind of partnership?'
`It will mean giving up your freedom entirely into my hands for - well - a month, let's say.'
She looked at me intently, thinking.
`I become your slave for one month?' she asked.
`Yes.'
A middle-aged woman with dyed black hair, sharp dark eyes and no makeup knifed out of the moiling sea behind us,
glided up beside Linda and whispered in her ear. Linda, watching me, listened.
`No, Tony,' she said. `No. I've changed my plans. I may not be able to make it.'