The scene at the dockside the next morning was predictably strange, but not quite what the Daily News would have led one to imagine. Not that Sean or Andrea or anyone else in their party could focus on it terribly well. They had managed to spend the entire night going from apartment to apartment-John's, Andrea's, Joanna's- concocting or falling into orgies, mini or maxi, at each location, and furthermore rendering themselves ineffective by means of smoking approximately twenty joints and sixteen pipefuls of assorted varieties of marijuana: ineffective and moreover hungry; and also thirsty; and generally spacey. Now, having stopped their two-cab caravan at Nathan's in Times Square to pick up hot dogs, orange juice, beer and jelly doughnuts for breakfast, they arrived at Pier 52.
'That's it!' Virginia cried, pointing to an immaculate white cruise-ship with Walt Disney balloons and bunches of bananas festooning the rigging. It was seven-thirty and embarkation was well underway.
'No kidding,' Sean sighed, a little bit weary with Virginia's enthusiastic obviousness. 'Is that why it has the words 'True Enlightenment' painted in day-glo psychedelic letters on the bow?'
'Gee, it's pretty big,' Andrea observed. 'How long would you say it was?'
'Lots bigger than a row boat and lots smaller than the Queen Elizabeth. How the hell should I know? Three- fifty? Four hundred? Four-fifty? Inches? Feet? Pounds? Decibels? Fuck, I can't even see any more, let alone think. Look at this goddamned pandemonium.' Their cab eased to a halt at a crowded curb. Sean continued to mumble. 'Pandemonium! Assengers pariving, bonis hlairing, sheople pouting, dorters propping luggage all over the place. We'll be fucky if we let get alone.'
Andrea swung the cab door open.
'Excuse me, Miss!' A camera flash exploded in her face.
'Fameras clashing, wots of lierdoes…' Sean got out the other side and went to the trunk for their luggage.
A half dozen reporters descended on Andrea like vultures after a hot piece of carrion, pencils wiggling eagerly above efficient little pads, jaws greased up. 'Is it true that the Guru led a procession down to a Village club where you were singing last night and offered you a fabulous sum of money to replace Lawrence Welk as his entertainer?'
Andrea blinked at them. 'You call three grand fabulous? You do and you got the story right.'
'Three thousand dollars? Was that the figure? Total?'
'No. There wasn't any figure. The figure was an illusion. That was the money. Three thousand. Yes.' Andrea didn't know whether Sean had been talking like the Guru and she was talking like him talking like the Guru, or whether she was just talking like the Guru directly, or whether Sean was talking like her talking like the Guru only he'd started it, or…
She saw the reporters scribbling '$3,000' down on their pads in big block letters. The older ones underlined it twice and the younger ones three or four times.
'And you are Andrea Bentham, correct?'
'A-n-d-r-e-a B-e-n-t-h-a-m. Correct, last I looked. You will notice the subtleties of its pronunciation. If your could pronounce it correctly you would gain true enlightenment.'
'I'll try to avoid it,' one of the young ones promised, casting a doubtful eye on the ship. Suddenly Andrea was deluged with questions.
'How old are you, Miss Bentham?'
'Where are you from?'
'How long have you been performing?'
'Have you cut any records?'
'Is it true that all the Guru's followers you saw last night were indecently exposed young ladies?'
'Have you ever done strip-tease?'
'Do you believe in free love?'
Andrea frowned reprovingly at them. 'Now how can I possibly answer when you all just keep talking?'
Joe Lee came up beside her. 'They don't need answers. They just write up each others' questions. Don't you know anything about reporters?'
The jabbering ceased. Andrea took a deep breath. 'I'm twenty-six, I'm from Madison, Wisconsin, I've been performing for two years, I haven't cut any records yet, not as I would define indecent, no, and I've never paid for love in my life. Any more questions?'
'Does your mother know you're going?'
'For all I know my mother's going.'
Andrea bit her lip. That had been a stupid thing to say.
Sean had got their luggage into the hands of a porter and was standing at the bottom of the loading ramp waving to her to come. But the reporters didn't give her a chance.
'Do you mean your mother would go on a cruise like this?'
'Who is your mother?'
'Where does she live?'
'Does she believe in free love?'
'What was your childhood like?'
Andrea could see it now. Juicy headlines like '26 Year Old Singer Goes on Sex Cruise With Mother' were running through the reporters' heads and sure as hell they'd go through the Benthams in the Madison phone directory and get hold of her mother to check it out. She thought for a second. 'I'll take these in reverse order. As a child I was miserably over-protected by excessively permissive parents, my mother never paid for love in her life either, she lives in a soap opera in Canarsie, she's the heroin, and she'd go on a cruise like this because she's going. She's over there.' She pointed to a fat lady of fifty or so getting out of a cab ass-first who presented the world with a beautiful picture of what happens when you get your garters crossed. 'Any more questions?'
'No!'
The throng raced off to besiege the poor lady. Andrea grabbed Joe and they got lost in the crowd pushing its way up the ramp onto the ship. Sean fought toward them from a few feet away.
They didn't know what to do or where to go so they wandered around for a while picking up a feel for the passengers and overhearing scattered bits of conversation. Two dapper young executive types in searsucker suits:
'I should have sold that damned Allied Chemical. I know it's going to drop twenty points while we're away.'
'Yeah. Soil your blood pressure. Forget it, will you? Check out some of the ass around here.'
'Not bad. I guess you were right. Better than trying to pick up chicks in the Museum of Modern Art.'
'Some of them belong in the Museum of Modern Art. Look at that one with the body paint… '
Two masculine-looking middle-aged ladies, one in a leather vest, the other in a denim Jacket:
'You think that sounds right?'
'What the hell's it matter? Well just tell them, that's all. 'We're two middle-aged lesbians from Hoboken, and if you don't like it well bust your banana.''
'And the first one who asks us if we live close to the ferry… '
A college-age boy, clean-shaven, freckled, with red hair down to his waist, in a blue smoking jacket-to himself:
'The hustle and bustle of the docks in the early morning; the countless people swarming on their aimless ways… I'd better get that down.' He took out a leather-bound notebook. 'Not bad. Sounds like Walt Whitman.'
A portly businessman in a three-piece suit with watch fob and his sagging-faced bleach-blonde varicose- veined wife:
'See here, Grace… '
'If I can't see here I can't see anywhere.'
'Oh for Godsake-I should have let you go on this idiotic odyssey by yourself.'
'See here, Harold-you're catching on.'
After a while Sean caught sight of the oriental chaperone-type who'd been with the Guru at Folk City the night before. She was down in front of the bridge at the edge of a swimming pool looking up and waving.
They hurried over. As they joined her they copped a gander at what she was waving at. It was the Guru himself, framed in the window of the wheel house, his hands resting on the spokes of the wooden wheel. He had a
