However, Nicholas did not view it that way. “It’s not a question of which theory is more economical; it’s a question of what’s true. I’m not in communication with myself. I have no way of knowing that my destiny lies down in Placentia. Only a greater mind, above human level, would know that.”
“Maybe your destiny lies directly at the center of Disneyland. You could sleep under the Matterhorn ride and live on Coke and hot dogs, like they sell there. There’re bathrooms. You’d have all you need.”
Rachel, who was listening to all this, shot me a look of pure malice.
“Well, I’m just doing what you do,” I said to her. “Making fun of him. You don’t want to live in the LA area, do you, Rachel? Outside of Berkeley?”
“I’d never live in Orange County,” Rachel said vehemently.
“There you are,” I said to Nicholas.
Nicholas said, “We’re thinking of splitting up. So she can continue on at the university and I can pursue my destiny down there.”
That made it real. Divorce based on a dream. What strange grounds. Cause of divorce? I left my wife because I dreamed about a foreign land . . . which proved to be ten miles from Disneyland, near a lot of orange trees. Down in plastic-town U.S.A. It was unreal, and yet Nicholas meant it. And they had been married for years.
The resolution to this came three years later when Rachel discovered that she was pregnant. Those were the days of the diaphragm, which wasn’t all that good. This ended her university career; after she had little Johnny she didn’t care where they lived. She got fat and sloppy; her hair became a mess; she forgot all she had learned at school and instead watched daytime TV.
In the mid-sixties they moved to Orange County. In a few years, Ferris F. Fremont would become president of the United States.
6
How are you to treat a friend whose life is directed from beyond the stars? What attitude do you take? I saw Nicholas rarely after he and Rachel moved down to Orange County, but when I did see him, when they drove up for a prolonged stay in the Bay Area or I flew down to visit them and take in Disneyland, Nicholas always filled me in on what Valis was up to. After he moved to Orange County, Valis communicated with him a lot. So from his standpoint the move was worth it.
Also, the job at Progressive Records turned out to be a vast improvement over working as a record clerk. Retail record selling was a dead end and Nicholas had always known it, whereas the recording field itself was wide open. Rock had become big, now, although that did not affect Progressive Records, which signed only folk artists. Even so, Progressive Records was getting them up there on the sales charts; they had some of the best folk artists under contract, many from the old San Francisco scene: from the Hungry i and the Purple Onion. They almost signed Peter, Paul and Mary, and, according to them, they had turned down the Kingston Trio. I heard about this through Nicholas; being in Artists and Repertoire, he himself auditioned new vocal artists, instrumentalists, and groups, made tapes of them on location . . . although he did not have the authority to sign them. He did have the authority to reject them, however, and he enjoyed exercising this. It beat changing the toilet paper roll behind listening booth three, back up in Berkeley.
At last Nicholas’s natural ear for a good voice was paying off. His talent plus what he had learned from listening to rare vocal records at University Music late at night were now underwriting him financially. Carl Dondero hadn’t erred; in doing Nicholas a favor he had done Progressive Records a favor as well.
“So you have a groovy job,” I said, as he and I and Rachel sat around their apartment in Placentia.
“I’m driving to Huntington Beach to take in Uncle Dave Huggins and His Up-Front Electric Jugs,” Nicholas said. “I think we should sign with them. Sign them up. It’s folk rock, really. A little like the Grateful Dead does on some of their tracks.” We were listening to an LP of the Jefferson Airplane at that moment, quite a jump from the classical music Nicholas had loved back in Berkeley. Grace Slick was singing “White Rabbit.”
“What a groovy broad,” Nicholas said.
“One of the best,” I said. I had just become interested in rock. The Airplane was my favorite group; one time I had driven over to Marin County to the town of Bolinas to gaze at the house reputed to be Grace Slick’s. It was up over the beach but back away from the people and noise. “Too bad you can’t sign her,” I said to Nicholas.
“Oh, I see plenty of groovy broads,” Nicholas said. “A lot of folksingers, aspiring folksingers, are broads. Most of them are what we in the industry call strictly no-talent. They’ve maybe listened repeatedly to tracks by Baez and Collins and Mitchell and imitated them—nothing original.”
“So now,” I said, “you have power over people.”
Nicholas was silent, fooling with his glass of Charles Krug wine.
“How does it feel?” I asked.
“Well, I—” Nicholas hesitated. “I hate to see the expression on their faces when I say no. It’s—” He gestured. “They have such high hopes. They come to Hollywood from all over the country with such high hopes. Like in the song by the Mamas & Papas, ‘Young Girls Are Coming to the Canyon.’ There was one girl today . . . she hitchhiked from Kansas City, Kansas, with a fifteen-dollar Sears practice guitar
