Americana

'That's right, the way cars used to be. But cars are religious now and this is a religious trip.'

Something stirred.

'He's out there, you say, swishing his tail. I've always wanted to confront a cougar face to face without bars between us. Something might happen. We might feel some kind of flow between us. It's hard for a layman like yourself to understand that. But getting up face to face with a gorgeous steaming beast like that. It's a mystical thing, Jack. A mystical thing. The cougar. The mountain lion. The catamount. The puma. I first saw him in a zoo when I was no more than ten. Even then I felt a bond between us. I'd like to confront him face to face. No iron bars. Something might happen.'

'We'll go up into the Rockies,' I said.

'I'd like to confront him before I die.'

'We'll go up into the Rockies. That's where he is, crouched in the shadows, maybe waiting for an epiphany of his own. You get a battlefield commission. Sully said so. And you can map out our route.'

'I have to do peeps,' the girl said.

'The head's back there.'

We were silent until she returned; she punched him on the back when she sat down. Then Pike said to me:

'What runs faster, a greyhound or a cheetah?'

'I don't know. I have no idea.'

'Think about it. There's no hurry. Take your time. Greyhound or cheetah?'

'I'll have to guess,' I said.

'If that's the best you can do.'

'I say a greyhound runs faster.'

He hit the table and gazed off into the wings, a look of ineffable disgust on his face.

'Tell him, cootie.'

'A cheetah,' she said.

'How do you know?'

'Cheetah goes seventy miles per,' Pike said.

'How do you know how fast a greyhound goes?'

'No living thing, man or beast, can top seventy. Cheetah's the only one. Cheetah goes like the wind.'

'Have they ever been matched in a race?'

'Greyhound's never been clocked above thirty-six. Why, a gazelle could trounce a greyhound. I can name any number of animals prepared to demolish the famous greyhound. Gazelle. Pronghorn antelope. Jackrabbit. Any number. Damn but you're stupid.'

Pike was fascinated by animals. He liked to promote theoretical races, fights and tests of strength. His facts were often shaky but his convictions were deep and abiding. Nobody who tried to dispute the result of one of his epochal races or snarling culture-circled battles ever got very far. Pike would present a series of what he referred to as verifiable facts and documentations. His face would tense with rage and pain as he tried to demonstrate the obvious truth to his opponent. I don't know what theme he had found in the animal world that moved him to such emotion, maybe just innocence, the child's, the old man's enchantment with an undefiled life and the purest of deaths. Pike was a living schizogram, as were Sullivan, and Bobby Brand, whom I have yet to introduce, and my father and departed mother, and perhaps myself. He was almost gone now. His voice was thick and seemed to overlap itself, words sticking to his tongue. He lit one cigarette while another still burned in the ashtray. Soon I would learn what I could about his teen queen, the abstract cartoon he had rescued from footsteps and rain.

'Why is it you keep your hands under the table all the time?' I said. 'You bring them up only to give Pike one of those tender clouts. Then down they go again. What's under the table that's so interesting?'

'Dorothy Lamour and the squid people.'

Pike snorted and softly collapsed. I went to the bar and ordered another drink for myself. Zack put down his newspaper and removed the thick spectacles he wore. He poured the drink, then lifted the wet five, sponged down the bar, gave me change and went to sit in a folding chair beneath an overexposed photo of a bridegroom and best man outside the St. George Hotel in Brooklyn.

'What's that?' she said.

'Scotch.'

'It's real neat to watch. The ice shines and there's like things going off. Little explosions all over.'

'Why do you want to live in a greenhouse?'

'I want to live in a big wet greenhouse with hair growing in it. There'd be like doll's hair and doggy hair growing in all the pots. That would be neat. And anybody who wanted to be there could be there. John and Paul and Mick and the Doors and the Airplane and Bobby and Buffy. We'd all smoke and there'd be lots of audio-visual hardware. Then we would all eat hot fudge sundaes. That would be the neatest thing in the whole world.'

'How did you meet Pike?'

'I was at Elephantiasis with a boy from NYU. The vibrations were bad. I was stoned on hash and I weighed about a zillion pounds. It was like being in the back of the blue bus. Then dada came over and bought this boy about a dozen drinks and he went to the toilet and never came out. Then dada took me to his room and we ate a whole Sara Lee chocolate cake and drank a big thing of milk. It was wild.'

'My name isn't Jack, by the way. Not that I mind being called Jack. In a way I like it. It's like some wonderful Far Eastern theology where all the minor deities have the same name as the big guy. You make me feel guilty because I drink. Where do you live, by the way?'

'I stay with Lee, Jemmy and Kit.'

I reached over and unzipped the jacket. My hand touched her cool breast. I was aware of a small movement behind the bar and I knew that one of Zack's shotglass eyes had lifted from the newspaper. I edged in closer, wedging her knee between my legs. My hand went up from her breast to her neck and face and when I kissed her there was a message returned from that humid mechanical mouth which let me know that whatever we did, here or later, was a matter of the vastest indifference. I did not bother drawing the jacket together and she did not bother noticing.

'Let's get out of here,' I said. 'We'll go to my place.'

'We have to take him home.'

'He'll be all right. He gets like this all the time. I have almost a thousand dollars' worth of stereo equipment.'

'When I get real high I can feel the space between sounds.'

'Let's go,' I said. 'We'll get some dinner if you like and then go to my place.'

'Can he come?'

'He can take care of himself.'

'We painted a circle in the middle of our room. We all sit in there when we smoke. It's real great.'

'What else do you do?'

'Whatever we want,' she said.

'But what?'

'You can do whatever you want.'

'But can't you be more exact? I want to know exactly what you're talking about.'

'It's simple. It's so simple. You can come back with me if you want. We have some stuff. But first we have to take him home.'

I moved back away from her and finished my drink. Heaving slab of cougar-meat. Would I have to help undress him? Pluck off his weary socks with fastidious fingers and tuck him snoring into his army cot? Few things are more depressing than the sight of a drunken friend who happens to be twice your age; so many illusions are tested. He made a noise, then another, small dogs barking in his throat. His head rested on his left forearm. The hair at the back of his neck was light brown and gray. I put my arm over his shoulder.

'What color is the circle?' I said.

'It's red. It's a big red circle and we all sit inside it. You can come if you want. Anybody can come who wants to. You and me and him. We can all go.'

I leaned across and zipped up the jacket. I liked her. I had no desire to trample her. She was delicate and trusting, beautiful in her blank way, and my words could not reach the spaces she felt between sounds. But these