"You okay?" Niki had hold of a handful of my hair at the nape of my neck, pulled gently.

I shook my head, infinitesimally, I couldn't even be sure whether I had done it or just thought I had. I was afraid to do more.

"Don't worry," she said. "You're just coming on."

She was turning into a jack-in-the-box, a Raggedy Ann. I had to hold on to the fact that I knew her, it was only a trick of my mind. This was Niki, I kept telling myself. I knew her. Abandoned at six by her mother at a Thrifty drugstore in Alhambra, Niki always counted the house, assessed the odds, worked out percentages. I liked to watch her when she was getting ready for work, with her starched Bavarian waitress costume on, looking like Heidi in a Warhol film. Even if I did not recognize her, I knew her. I had to hang on to that.

I was sweating, cracking up like the decades-old paving job in the smeared linoleum sun.

"Can we get out of here?" I whispered, trembling, nauseated. "I hate this. I mean, really."

"Just tell me where," she said. Her eyes looked strange, black and buttony, like a doll's.

IN THE COOL HUSH of the Impressionist rooms at the County Art Museum, the world was restored to me, in all its color and light and form. How had I forgotten? Nothing could happen to me here. This was the port, the outpost of the true world, where there could still be art, and beauty, and memory. How many times had I walked here with Claire, with my mother. Niki had never been here before. The two of us walked past fishing boats rocking at anchor, luminescent lemony gold white skies shading to rose, foreground reflections in the watery street.

We stopped before a painting where a woman was reading a book in a garden in the shade at the edge of a park. Her dress of white linen edged in blue rustled when she turned the pages. Such a delicious blue-green, the picture smelled like mint, the grass deep as ferns. I saw us in the picture, Niki in trailing white, myself in dotted swiss. We walked out to the woman slowly, she was ready to pour our tea. I was here in the gallery, but I was also walking through the damp grass, my hem stained with green, the breeze through the thin cloth of my dress.

The acid came on in waves, we rocked as we stood before the paintings from the force of the drug. But I wasn't frightened anymore. I knew where I was. I was with Niki in the true world.

"This is out-fucking-rageous," she whispered, holding my hand.

Some of the paintings opened up, like windows, like doors, while others remained just painted canvas. I could reach in to Cezanne's peaches and cherries on a rich white crumpled tablecloth, pick up a peach and put it back on the plate. I understood Cezanne. "Look how you see the cherries from above, but the peaches from the side," I said.

"They look like cherry bombs," Niki said, gathering her fingers together and then flicking them out wide. The lively stems of the cherries flicked out like firecrackers.

"Your eyes want to make it normal but it won't go," I said.

I imagined painting the picture, I could see exactly what order he did what.

The owlman sidled over and hunched his shoulders. "No touch."

"Yodo," Niki said under her breath, and we moved away to the next painting.

I felt I could have painted all the paintings myself. The acid kept coming on and coming on, I didn't know how much higher I could get. It wasn't at all like the Percodans — stoned, stupid, escape. This was higher than high. Two-hundredth floor, five-hundredth floor. Van Gogh's night sky.

We stopped to get something to drink at the museum cafe. I knew exactly where I was, in the same building as the auditorium, my old classroom just downstairs. My own personal playground. I got into the drink dispenser, I played the opening of the "Sleeping Beauty Waltz" with the different soft drinks. "What am I playing?" I asked her.

"Be cool," Niki said.

I tried to be cool, but it was too funny. When it was time to pay, I couldn't remember about the money, how it worked. The cashier looked like a tapioca pudding. She wouldn't look at us. She said some numbers and I pulled out my money, but I didn't know what to do with it. I held it open on my hand and let her pick the right combination from the palm. "Danke, chorisho, guten tag, Arigato," I said. "Dar es Salaam." Hoping she'd think we were just foreigners.

"Dar es Salaam" Niki said as we took seats on the plaza.

This was exactly how I should have been as a child, joyful, light as a toy balloon. Niki and I sat in the shade and drank our drinks, watched the people go by, noticing how much they looked like certain animals. There was a gnu, and a lion, and a secretary bird. Tapir and a curly-haired yak. When had I ever laughed like this before?

After we were done, Niki said we should go use the bathroom.

"I don't have to," I said.

"You won't know until it's too late," Niki said. "Come on." We walked back into the building, found the doors with the ridiculous stick figures in pants or skirt. The ridiculous way we thought male, female, as pants or skirt. Suddenly, the whole sexual universe and its conventions seemed fantastic, contrived. "Don't look in the mirror," Niki said. "Look at your shoes." It was dark gray tile, bad light, dirty floor. I felt the fear return. A metallic taste in my mouth. An old lady in a tan pantsuit, tan face, tan hair, tan shoes, a yellow belt, came out of one of the stalls, stared at us. "She looks like a grilled cheese sandwich," I said.

"My friend's sick," Niki said, trying not to laugh out loud. She pushed me into the handicapped toilet, closed the door behind us. She had to unzip my pants and put me on the pot like I was two years old. I couldn't go, it was too funny.

"Shut up and go," Niki said.

I swung my legs. It really felt like I was two. "Make tinkle for Annie," I said. And I let go. I really had to, after all. The sound made me laugh. "I love you, Niki," I said.

"I love you too," she said.

But on the way out I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I looked very red-faced, my eyes black as a magpie's, hair tangled. I looked feral. It scared me. Niki hurried me out.

We were in the Contemporary wing. I never went there. When I came with my mother, she would stand me in front of a Rothko, a blue-and-red square, and explain it to me for an hour. I never did get it. Now Niki and I stood in front of it, in the same space I stood when I was young, and watched the three zones of color throb, pulse, and other tones emerge, a tomato, a garnet, purple. The red advanced, the blue retreated, just like Kandinsky said. It was a door and we walked in.

Loss. That's what was in there. Grief, sorrow, wordless and unfathomable. Not what I felt this morning, septic, panicked. This was distilled. Niki put her arm around my waist, I put mine around hers. We stood and mourned. I could imagine how Jesus felt, his pity for all of humanity, how impossible it was, how admirable. The painting was Casals, a requiem. My mother and me, Niki and Yvonne, Paul and Davey and Claire, everybody. How vast was a human being's capacity for suffering. The only thing you could do was stand in awe of it. It wasn't a question of survival at all. It was the fullness of it, how much could you hold, how much could you care.