The record of “Nowhere Nuthin’ Fuck-up.” Suppose the drug had made him hear it. And see the listing on the jukebox. But Mary Anne Dominic had heard it, too; in fact she had discovered it.

But the two blank records. What about them?

As he sat pondering, an adolescent boy in a T-shirt and jeans bent over him and mumbled, “Hey, you’re Jason Taverner, aren’t you?” He extended a ballpoint pen and piece of paper. “Could I have your autograph, sir?”

Behind him a pretty little red-haired teenybopper, bra-less, in white shorts, smiled excitedly and said, “We always catch you on Tuesday night. You’re fantastic. And you look in real life, you look just like on the screen, except that in real life you’re more, you know, tanned.” Her friendly nipples jiggled.

Numbly, by habit, he signed his name. “Thanks, guys,” he said to them; there were four of them in all now.

Chattering to themselves, the four kids departed. Now people in nearby booths were watching Jason and muttering interestedly to one another. As always, he said to himself. This is how it’s been up to the other day. My reality is leaking back. He felt uncontrollably, wildly elated. This was what he knew; this was his life-style. He had lost it for a short time but now—finally, he thought, I’m starting to get it back!

Heather Hart. He thought, I can call her now. And get through to her. She won’t think I’m a twerp fan.

Maybe I only exist so long as I take the drug. That drug, whatever it is, that Alys gave me.

Then my career, he thought, the whole twenty years, is nothing but a retroactive hallucination created by the drug.

What happened, Jason Taverner thought, is that the drug wore off. She—somebody—stopped giving it to me and I woke up to reality, there in that shabby, broken-down hotel room with the cracked mirror and the bug-infested mattress. And I stayed that way until now, until Alys gave me another dose.

He thought, No wonder she knew about me, about my Tuesday-night TV show. Through her drug she created it. And those two record albums—props which she kept to reinforce the hallucination.

Jesus Christ, he thought, is that it?

But, he thought, the money I woke up with in the hotel room, this whole wad of it. Reflexively he tapped his chest, felt its thick existence, still there. If in real life I doled out my days in fleabag hotels in the Watts area, where did I get that money?

And I would have been listed in the police files, and in all the other data banks throughout the world. I wouldn’t be listed as a famous entertainer, but I’d be there as a shabby bum who never amounted to anything, whose only highs came from a pill bottle. For God knows how long. I may have been taking the drug for years.

Alys, he remembered, said I had been to the house before. And apparently, he decided, it’s true. I had. To get my doses of the drug.

Maybe I am only one of a great number of people leading synthetic lives of popularity, money, power, by means of a capsule. While living actually, meanwhile, in bug-infested, ratty old hotel rooms. On skid row. Derelicts, nobodies. Amounting to zero. But, meanwhile, dreaming.

“You certainly are deep in a brown study,” Mary Anne said. She had finished her cheesecake; she looked satiated, now. And happy.

“Listen,” he said hoarsely. “Is my record really in that jukebox?”

Her eyes widened as she tried to understand. “How do you mean? We listened to it. And the little thingy, where it tells the selections, that’s there. Jukeboxes never made mistakes.”

He fished out a coin. “Go play it again. Set it up for three plays.”

Obediently, she surged from her seat, into the aisle, and bustled over to the jukebox, her lovely long hair bouncing against her ample shoulders. Presently he heard it, heard his big hit song. And the people in the booths and at the counter were nodding and smiling at him in recognition; they knew it was he who was singing. His audience.

When the song ended there was a smattering of applause from the patrons of the coffee shop. Grinning reflexively, professionally in return he acknowledged their recognition and approval.

“It’s there,” he said, as the song replayed. Savagely, he clenched his fist, struck the plastic table separating him from Mary Anne Dominic. “God damn it, it’s there.”

With some odd twist of deep, intuitive, female desire to help him Mary Anne said, “And I’m here, too.”

“I’m not in a run-down hotel room, lying on a cot dreaming,” he said huskily.

“No, you’re not.” Her tone was tender, anxious. She clearly felt concern for him. For his alarm.

“Again I’m real,” he said. “But if it could happen once, for two days—” To come and go like this, to fade in and out—“Maybe we should leave,” Mary Anne said apprehensively. That cleared his mind. “Sorry,” he said, wanting to reassure her.

“I just mean that people are listening.”

“It won’t hurt them,” he said. “Let them listen; let them see how you carry your worries and troubles with you even when you’re a world-famous star.” He rose to his feet, however. “Where do you want to go?” he asked her. “To your apartment?” It meant doubling back, but he felt optimistic enough to take the risk.

“My apartment?” she faltered.

“Do you think I’d hurt you?” he said.

Fof an interval she sat nervously pondering. “N-no,” she said at last.

“Do you have a phonograph?” he asked. “At your apartment?”

“Yes, but not a very good one; it’s just stereo. But it works.”

“Okay,” he said, herding her up the aisle toward the cash register. “Let’s go.”

23

Mary Anne Dominic had decorated the walls and ceiling of her apartment herself. Beautiful, strong, rich colors; he gazed about, impressed. And the few art objects in the living room had a powerful beauty about them. Ceramic pieces. He picked up one lovely blue-glaze vase, studied it.

“I made that,” Mary Anne said.

“This vase,” he said, “will be featured on my show.”

Mary Anne gazed at him in wonder.

“I’m going to have this vase with me very soon. In fact”—he could visualize it—“a big production number in which I emerge from the vase singing, like the magic spirit of the vase.” He held the blue vase up high, in one hand, revolving it.” ‘Nowhere Nuthin’ Fuck-up,’ “he said. “And your career is launched.”

“Maybe you should hold it with both hands,” Mary Anne said uneasily.

“‘Nowhere Nuthin’ Fuck-up,’ the song that brought us more recognition—” The vase slid from between his fingers and dropped to the floor. Mary Anne leaped forward, but too late. The vase broke into three pieces and lay there beside Jason’s shoe, rough unglazed edges pale and irregular and without artistic merit.

A long silence passed.

“I think I can fix it,” Mary Anne said.

He could think of nothing to say.

“The most embarrassing thing that ever happened to me,” Mary Anne said, “was one time with my mother. You see, my mother had a progressive kidney ailment called Bright’s disease; she was always going to the hospital for it when I was a kid growing up and she was forever working it into the conversation that she was going to die from it and wouldn’t I be sorry then—as if it was my fault—and I really believed her, that she would die one day. But then I grew up and moved away from home and she still didn’t die. And I sort of forgot about her; I had my own life and things to do. So naturally I forgot about her damn kidney condition. And then one day she came to visit, not here but at the apartment I had before this, and she really bugged me, sitting around narrating all her aches and complaints on and on … I finally said, ‘I’ve got to go shopping for dinner,’ and I split for the store. My mother limped along with me and on the way she laid the news on me that now both her kidneys were so far gone that they would have to be removed and she would be going in for that and so forth and they’d try to install an artificial kidney but it probably wouldn’t work. So she was telling me this, how it really had come now; she really was going to die finally, like she’d always said … and all of a sudden I looked up and realized I was in the supermarket, at the meat counter, and this real nice clerk that I liked was coming over to say hello, and he said, ‘What would you like today, miss?’ and I said, ‘I’d like a kidney pie for dinner.’ It was embarrassing. ‘A great big kidney pie,’ I said, ‘all flaky and tender and steaming and full of nice juices.’ ‘To serve how many?’ he asked. My mother sort of kept staring at me with this creepy look. I really didn’t know how to get out of it once I was in it. Finally I did buy a kidney pie, but I had to go to the delicatessen section; it was in a sealed can, from England. I paid I think four dollars for it. It tasted very good.”