The Butterfly Kid

7

IT TURNED out to be an exceptionally quiet Sunday, especially by Village standards. Aside from the horde of teenyboppers, none of whom represented enough money to matter, plus half a spate of bewildered-looking tourists who were most likely hunting for Chinatown, the streets were deserted.

“It’s a turndown day, baby,” Chaz said when I reached The Mess, something like eight-thirty. He was right. There were more performers in the house than audience.

“Yesterday must’ve worn ’em out,” I probably explained.

Anyhow, Charley closed The Mess a half hour later, and all of us — we Tripouts, Al Mamlet, and a banjoist from Chicago I’d never seen before who somehow knew what he thought was all about me — split for The Garden of Eden.

M. T. Bear and Sean were already there, of course, along with Gary the Frog, a few Davids, and the customary strangers. They were clustered around our family table, overflowing slightly into the aisle, interfering with the waitress, chattering like a tribe of typists, and generally carrying on as was their noisy wont.

Gary, his face even more of an acne farm than usual, was loudly endeavoring to master a twelve-string guitar he’d neglected to tune, while one of the Davids kept saying excitedly, “Hey, baby, let me try it? Huh? Huh, Gary? Kin I try it?” All very natural.

Mike was doing his standard best to catch everyone’s ear, saying, “But it’s a Plot, don’t you understand?” but everyone’s ear remained blithely uncaught. Mike’d hollered Plot too often. Everyone believed him, but nobody cared. Constant excitement is a drag.

The Garden of Eden, immune to Sunday doldrums, skirled about the table like a neurotic river, babbling, jostling, everyone sort of accidentally groping (sort of) everybody else, all of which made it hard for me to get through to Mike. “Pardon me,” I said politely once or twice, pro forma, with no visible effect. Then “This is a Raid!” I yelled in a thick bass voice. “Don’t nobody move!”

The noise was something awful — high-pitched shrieks, low thuds, lots of Oh Wow’s, and other hip chaos — but when the dust cleared, I only had to shove and push a little bit to get through to the table.

“Why didn’t you just yell Fire?” asked Mike.

“Howdy, baby,” added Sean.

And, “Where’s my Geetar?” croaked Gary the Frog, thank God.

I sat down gratefully. Some David surrendered his seat to Sativa, who whispered what I chose to think was thanks. Patrick, Stu, and Kevin pulled up chairs obtained from somewhere. A version of quiet descended on The Garden of Eden. Even the Kallikak box took five.

“What’s happenin!?” I smiled, pretending nothing was.

“They don’t believe me,” Michael grieved.

“Why,” I shrugged, “should they?”

A slow voice, like a tawny port, breathed, “Who is That?” into my left ear. “He’s Pretty!” Sativa always talked like that.

“Sean,” I explained.

“Huh?” He hadn’t heard the question.

Okay. “Sean,” I said with flawed formality, “this is Sativa. Sativa love, meet Sean.”

“Oh yeah!” Vast enthusiasm. “You sure sing Good.”

“Pretty.” She had a few-track mind, like most of us in those days, but more openly. She slithered from her chair to a position directly behind young Sean and started to stroke his hair ever so gently. At the first stroke he twitched slightly, being unaccustomed to such things, then leaned back and enjoyed it.

“Ai-yah,” I told myself. “Well, I won’t have to worry about those two for a while,” not that I’d intended to.

“Hi!” That was Harriet, Gary the Frog’s fan club et cetera, surging through the crowd like an amiable elephant. “Guess who I just saw outside?”

I knew better than to bother.

“Laszlo!” she lisped.

“Oh God,” said the rest of us.

“Laszlo Scott,” she went on. “He says he’ll have more you-know-what tomorrow.”

“Groovy.” That, of course, was Gary.

“Laszlo.” My evening was shattered. I’d forgotten about that. Laszlo Scott indeed, whom my best friend Mike said I had to dammit follow tomorrow. I thought about that for a while, missing out on the activity around me. When I got back, Sativa was on Sean’s lap, and I couldn’t quite tell whose arms were whose, which was splendid; Gary the Frog was sitting on Harriet’s lap, which made more sense than chivalry; Michael and Patrick were trying to understand each other, a hopeless hobby they were fond of; the Kallikak box was playing one of Our songs, by God; and Laszlo Scott, alas, was flowing up the aisle toward me, and I didn’t have a tourist’s chance to get away.

Laszlo was easier to understand than to believe. He throve on ridicule, an amazingly complex perversion. Not just any old ridicule, mind you: Laszlo was a connoisseur. He was perfectly willing to endure the esteem of young female tourists, on which he made his living, as long as Mike and I and other such Village aristocrats, all of whom he hated in proportion to his need for them, put him beautifully down. (Once, in an excess of something I’d rather not think about, Laszlo got a coffeehouse gig that involved his being beaten up by the manager after closing every night. He held that job for six months, until the manager got busted in New Jersey for aggravated assault and the coffeehouse closed down.)

Laszlo stood some five plump nine in his fragrant stocking feet. His hair was so blond it was almost invisible, wherefore he sported a translucent pussycat beard that gave his (let us call it pasty) face a patently absurd ambiguity, an almost aggressive absence of form. In the middle of this face, which might be ugly if anybody cared, sat two little eyes, wet blue, beady, red-rimmed, and porcine, surrounded by no visible lashes or brows.

“Laszlo,” I once said in a fit of divine inspiration, “is a blue-eyed maggot in drag.” No one ever disagreed.

(Laszlo was coming closer. His progress up the aisle was slow, because he stopped to manifest himself at every table on the way, but he was now only three and a half tables away and my stomach was beginning to turn.)

Laszlo was a poet, so to speak; a coffeehouse poet, of course, given to clambering up on stages and reciting his works at helpless audiences, hopefully for money. This was his claim to membership in coffeehouse society, and even though his poetry was generally incredibly bad or stolen or both, we honored his claim, without necessarily honoring Laszlo himself — a superhuman task not worth the effort.

(Now he was two tables off and clearly audible, alas. Mike’d noticed him and was trying to communicate with me by vague and frantic hand signals that I carefully ignored, preferring to sink into happy catatonia.)

The trouble with Laszlo, however, was none of this. The trouble was that Laszlo was a skunk, a nerd, a slimy loathsome thing whose major joy was to bring trouble and discomfort to everyone he encountered. For kicks he sold oregano to high-school kids from Queens. He stole from people poorer than himself as a matter of habit. He invented foul stories about innocent people and circulated them for a hobby. He once caught a social disease and spread it broadcast, especially among the naive and virginal, for upward of six weeks, until it got too uncomfortable even for him.

Laszlo was an incurable backstabber. In the Village society, where trust took the place of law, he could not be trusted. He was a wolf in black sheep’s clothing, a one-man plague. Even worse, he was a notorious drag.

The thing is, if Laszlo had been at all intelligent, or even kind of clever, or if he’d just had something like a sense of humor, we’d’ve pretty much ignored his faults and weaknesses. I myself was moderately fond of one or two worse characters who had the saving grace of being interesting. With such people, you take their flaws into account, more or less automatically doing whatever you must to protect yourself, and then enjoy these people as you’d enjoy anyone else. After all, no one’s perfect. But Laszlo, alas, was stupid, which simply could not be forgiven.

And now he was finishing off the table across the aisle (“Is it true your old lady’s hustling?” he was asking a hyperjealous drummer), and we, especially I, were next. Oi. Laszlo had a special fondness, so to speak, for me, mainly because I was pretty successful in a number of arts he pretended to practice. I’d published two small books of pretty good verse, and a few novels, and I used to write for the East Village Other until it sold out to the Establishment and went slick, and I was a mildly famous rock-n-rolly, and so on. In other words, I was popular in a world he wanted to rule. I was a number of things he’d’ve liked to’ve been, on his terms, which made me a natural target for him, and here he came.

“Good evening, Mister Anderson. How’s your commercial little world tonight? Have you heard the news?” He was dressed, as he’d been for the past six weeks, in tattered cavalier poet garb — rusty purple patched tights, formerly black shabby high-heeled, knee-high boots a size or so too large, a lace-front shirt nearly as dark as his boots after six weeks’ uninterrupted wear, a swallowtail coat that might’ve once been black but was mainly green by now, a battered three-cornered hat with a limp and dirty plastic feather sagging down from it, and an opera cape of indeterminate color badly patched in some other indeterminate color. Furthermore, he smelled.

“Ah yes,” I less than sneered, “it’s little George.” When he arrived in the Village, two years ago, he changed his name from George Harper to Laszlo Scott, and I never let him forget it. “I suspected you were around. Something in the air, if you know what I mean.” I never talked like this to anyone else.

“And there’s little Mike,” ignoring me. “Saw Maidy yesterday, baby, hangin’ out at Times Square. Dig?” Maidy Clark was Mike’s immediate ex-mistress, about whom he was going to be sensitive until the next one came along.

Mike stood up, clenched a fist, said, “Laszlo…!” and then remembered that we had designs on Master Scott and, shaking his head like a bear among bees, sat down again.

“What news, Georgie?” I was hoping to get it over with as quickly as could be.

“Well, baby, I just signed a contract. With Columbia, you dig? They want me to tape my own songs, baby, with a band.” He purred unwholesomely.

“Sure, man, sure. Just like Dylan, right? What happened to that contract you signed with Victor? Gonna do both? And how about that book you were doing for Viking?” Laszlo’s greatest personal weakness was that he could never remember to whom he’d told which lie. “So what else is new?” I hated to hear myself talking like that. I wanted to go away and take a bath.

Laszlo promptly changed the subject. “I s’pose you’ve heard about my Pills,” he sneered.

Mike’s ears came to a visible point.

“Well, I heard about some pills,” I confessed.

“Mine,” he exulted. “Reality Pills, you dig? An’ I’m the only connection, baby. Me. You want some?”

“What do you mean, you’re the only connection? Bullshit. Where’d you get ’em?”

“That’s my secret, baby.”

“Not for long, Georgie, not for long.”

“Long enough, baby. Want some?”

Mike was obviously memorizing all of this and ready to spend the rest of the night analyzing it. He took being a spy and/or detective seriously, the only way really to enjoy it. The rest of our group, for various reasons of their own, were listening almost as intently. Only Sean and Sativa were ignoring our discussion. They had other things to think about.

“You want some Reality Pills?” Laszlo repeated.

“I dunno,” grudgingly. “Maybe.”

“Sure, Captain Cool. Yeah, maybe. Tell you what I’ll do: I’ll have some more tomorrow, dig? If I see you, baby, I’ll give you a special deal, just for you, Andy, ’cause you’re sort of a poet, too.”

“I thought you were givin’ ’em away,” croaked Gary the Frog.

“Just creating a demand, Froggy. You know.” One very smug Laszlo.

“Yeah,” I said, cynicism dripping from my words so strong I was half afraid my teeth’d rot. “The first one’s always free, right? We know how it is, Georgie. But how do we know the next batch’ll work? You’ve got a great name for oregano, baby.”

It was next to impossible to predict what would offend Laszlo, but this seemed to. He drew his cloak around himself in a dramatic gesture that knocked two cups of coffee and a Coke off the table behind him, elevated his nose some fifteen degrees, and sniffed, “That’s your problem, baby. See you then.”

He huffed off aromatically to bug some other table. I took a deep breath. Sativa giggled. Gary the Frog started to say something, forgot what it was, and snapped his slack mouth shut with a liquid click. Mike was bursting to say something, but not till Laszlo was out of range.

“Michael,” I whispered loudly, “can you really believe that biped fungus is a Communist Plotter? And besides,” I’d been thinking about this for a while, “how could that damn thing be a Communist Plot if it couldn’t be tested secretly?”

Mike looked around cautiously. “Siberia,” he hushed.

“Siberia?”

“Right. They used monkeys or something. Obvious. Who’d notice a monkey’s hallucinations anyway?”

“Well, I would,” said Harriet from under Gary the Frog.

“Me, too,” I agreed. “And what about Laszlo?”

“He’s a tool.” My density seemed to annoy Mike. Pity. “That doesn’t change the plan, though.”

“Oh.” I’d been afraid of that.

“Tomorrow,” Mike went ruthlessly on, “he’s getting more, right? That’s our chance. It’s all so simple.” Mike had a habit, at such times, of spreading out his hands as though he were trying on a crucifix for size. This meant he was practicing superhuman patience with such clods as myself, who were unable to understand such obvious schemes.

“Are you people, you know, like Talkin’ ’bout Somethin’, man,” Patrick stumbled, “or is it one of your rants?” We’d put him on by accident once with the plot of a spy story we never got around to writing, and he’d wondered about us ever since.

“Just a rant,” said the security-conscious M. T. Bear.

“Groovy.”

Whereupon the table talk turned to fairly general subjects, mainly yesterday’s adventures, the Reality Pill, who was sleeping with or without whom, what bands were rumored to be breaking up and why, the Reality Pill, who might be selling what for how much, the apocryphal history of Andrew Blake and everybody else we knew who wasn’t there, modern techniques of counterespionage, wiretapping, housebreaking et al, and other quaint topics dear to our twisted hearts, but especially Reality Pills.

“I don’t care,” Stu insisted. “I want ’em.” Mike had been expounding his Communist Plot theory.

“Sure,” I said loyally, “it’s probably a great high for people like us, but can you imagine the Whole World on that stuff?”

“Why not?”

“Sturgeon’s Law,” Mike explained, Sturgeon’s Law being: 90 percent of everything is crap, mildly speaking.

“That’s cool,” Stu capitulated.

“What’s it like?” Kevin asked. None of us had thought to ask that question, but Kevin was scientifically trained.

“Yeah, Sean,” I agreed. “How does it feel?”

“Uhmm!” Sean was still involved with Sativa. They seemed to be developing a really intricate relationship.

“How does What feel?” That double reed voice again.

“Andy!” Several voices.

“Hello there.” And not just Andrew, best Edwardian threads and all, but Karen Greenbaum as well, and hand in hand, too. Somebody’s plot was thickening nicely, thanks.

Mike and Stu scurried about collecting chairs for them, but Andy said, “No, no. Don’t bother, we can’t stay. We’re off to see Fox and Hare,” the in-est flick that summer. “We just dropped in to see what you were up to. Do you know Karen?”

All of us but Sean and Sativa (who were busy) rose to be introduced and shake hands or, in Mike’s case, kiss hands, that being one of his favorite riffs. Karen blushed, giggled, tried to say hip, sophisticated things, and generally embarrassed everyone but Sean and Sativa (who were busy) and Andrew Blake, who was temporarily blind.

“What happened,” Patrick said uncoolly, “to your Halo?”

“Halo?” Andy gestured casually. “Oh, that was just a misunderstanding.”

I gasped, Mike choked slightly, and even Sean looked up from whatever tactile intricacy he was involved in at the time.

“Misunderstanding?” I amazed.

“You know.”

I didn’t, but what the hell. I was still rabidly curious, though, so I unkindly said, “And, ah, Karen?”

Give him credit, he hemmed and hawed a little first. Then he embarked on a rant involving such classic phrases as, “really quite intelligent,” and, “very sensitive for her age, you know,” and, “really Understands my work,” et standard cetera, during which Mike and I, having heard it all before and before, shrugged eyebrows at each other.

Then, with a fanfare of literate billing and cooing, the new lovers split to Fox and Hare to dig the latest Technicolor version of the life the rest of us were living.

It was almost ten o’clock, technically early but I was beginning to feel a trifle eroded, as though this Sunday had been crawling on for days. A combination of Laszlo and Andy within the same hour, perhaps. Anyhow, as soon as I could catch Mike’s eye, I yawned significantly, whereupon he ordered me another cup of coffee. Life with Mike has certain disadvantages.

From then on the evening disintegrated. At one point, doubtless much later than he ordinarily would have, Sean tenderly dislodged Sativa and staggered to the John.

“Oh,” she whispered in my ear in a tone that’d certainly be sinful for any other two people, “he’s Pretty!”

“Right,” I said. Why not?

“Ah, what’s his, ah, name?” ,

Oh my dear Sativa. “Sean,” I sighed.

“Oh. Sean. Pretty!”

I couldn’t tell whether I was weary or amused. Two cases of young love in one evening were a bit much. Still, I was sort of glad for Sean, who was about to recover from Mary-Bob, so I guess I was basically amused, or at least entertained. Mike, meanwhile, was trying to convince Kevin, of all people, of the basic truth of his Communist Plot hypothesis.

“I think,” Sativa said in an amazingly unmystical tone, “I’d best go to the John and fix my diaphragm.”

I goggled. She split. I suspected I knew where she meant to use that device. Sativa had four cats, a dog, three roommates, and two rooms — a standard Village hangup.

Sean came back, registering absolute dismay at the absence of Sativa.

“She’ll be back,” I comforted him.

He sat down. “You know,” he said, “I think she kinda Likes me.” He was announcing miracles.

“You may be right.” Then Sativa returned and I lost track of them.

Somewhere later I hunted around for my current notebook and found it in front of Mike, being filled with left-handed illegibilities concerning the Reality Pill project.

“What the hell are you doing?” I foolishly inquired. I’d meant to do some scribbling in that notebook myself.

“It’s really very simple,” he beamed, waving a page at me that I couldn’t’ve read with the aid of a computer.

“Oh yeah?” I’d heard him say those words before, and so far they’d never been quite accurate. One of Mike’s famous simple plans’d involved installing ten illegal phones and three bookies in our living room, resulting in a noisy police raid that coincided with my finally taking to bed a chick I’d lusted after for more than a year. I never saw her again. “Simple, huh?”

“Right. Look, all you have to do…”

“Later.” I didn’t want to know all I had to do, but Mike happily misunderstood.

“You’re right,” staring quickly everywhere. “Somebody might hear us.”

“Groovy.”

Later Sean borrowed my keys and he and Sativa vanished. Later yet, with no intervening events I could remember, Mike and I were walking east on Eighth Street, heading home, I became aware of this in the middle of a sentence: “…but the thing to remember is that the power behind Laszlo very strongly does not want to be discovered, and might even try to kill us if they notice us. Might even succeed, in fact.” It was one of my sentences.

“Right, but as soon as we find Laszlo’s connection, we call in the FBI. We’re not doing anything really dangerous.”

“No?”

“Nuh-uh. All we’re gonna do is follow Laszlo. See?”

“Oh yeah? Who you callin’ we, white man?”

“You know what I mean.”

“I’m afraid I do.”

The rest of the way home I worried about tomorrow. Following Laszlo was bad enough, following him into possible danger was just ridiculous; but tired as I was, I couldn’t think up a dignified way to chicken out. Maybe it wouldn’t be dangerous. And maybe the sun would rise in the south. Sure.

The guest-room door was closed when we got home, but the noises from behind it were sufficiently explicit. Sean was learning fast. He had a few Texas practices — yelling “Yippee,” for instance — I hoped he’d get over in a hurry, but by and large he seemed to have a lot of (call it) talent going for him. Sativa sounded pretty happy, too, which pleased me, for it meant she’d sing a lot better than usual for a while.

“Well, good night, Mike,” I whispered, privily hoping my closed door would muffle the Sean and Sativa sinfonia.

“Set your clock for seven-thirty, right?”

“Seven-thirty!?”

“The early bird routine.”

“Worms?”

“Good night.”

Sean’s noise ignored my door completely. I might as well’ve been in the same room. I halfway wished I were, but I set my alarm as instructed and went to bed like a good boy.

Noise and all, I fell instantly asleep, still half dressed, and dreamed all night of a million Laszlos trailing me on rancid butterflies.