THE NATURAL STRANGER :: BOOK 2, "MAD DOG in a SILVER FOG" :: CHAPTER 1, EPISODE 3

Beatlemania was in flower... a film crew had moved in, shooting the film "Petulia" and rumors of one or another Liverpudlian on Haight Street had drawn an unusual concentration of Gray Line vehicles with tourists poking cameras through the windows. Or maybe they hoped to snap one of those plague rats whom the whimsical health director, Ellis D. Sox, alleged to be spreading bubonic pestilence. Nothing convinced me that the Gotham Bus embargo had been lifted, so I made a four block detour uphill to the Medical Center, to and from which buses still ran, and arrived downtown with time to spare. I filled out application forms and answered questions from an interviewer apparently perplexed by my long, dark sober skirt, which did not complement my street address. "Our customers don't want hippies handling their money," he confided with evident discontinuity of mind... trapped in the ALMOST shadings between the WILL and WON'T gates to the question: will the applicant barter sex for the promise of consideration. "They fear contracting disease," he finally said... balance of sodium and potassium settling on WON'T.

He promised to call, job or no... never doing so, of course... and I was let out, nearly broke and too tired for shopping, sightseeing or looking for another job. Around quarter to noon, I boarded a return bus in the downtown finance district, driven by what polite people in those days called a colored man, wide around as a defensive tackle and positively glowing... "How are you handling yourself," he asked and then answered for me: "just fine, having a wonderful day."

"Drunk!" hissed a reptilian matron from the seat behind me.

The inside of the bus was full of advertisements... Old Gold and Luckies, the Dodge Rebellion. Insurance company leaflets instructing how to fight Communism. A nude man had sat down in some street around here just a week before, not because of the war or anything... just stoned, nothing better to do. Now and then someone would get on and be greeted with the driver's "Having a wonderful day!"

I guess I should have begun to worry when the bus turned left off Market Street. San Francisco's Manichean... half the streets flow into Market's byte-stream of commerce, the rest into Mission, which traverses streets of flophouses and auto body graveyards before entering the barrio skirting the grounds of the old Spanish Mision de Dolores. Several uptight people departed, lost and angry, one elderly man and woman boarded, muy formal in her shawl and the gleaming white cowboy hat he tipped towards me. If they held any apprehensions about the wrong bus manifesting on their street, these viejos were too ignorant, or too polite, to show them.

Francisco Pom, Arcilla's Security Director (whose dark, wooden days of exile Brendan bottled into Resonator chords), told me that the Third World's that which is too stupid to experience despair. "Of course, since most die young... by my hand or another's, or God's mercy... you might say immaturity is a vaccination against the hopelessness of old men and Americans." So many gone, so early... 27, the magical age at which Alejandro joined Jeem/Janis/Jeemie. Mozart survived a few more years, Brendan a few more than that... long enough for questing masses to dismiss him as "that old fart" until New Years (after which you couldn't evoke a word... good or ill... about Brendan with a crowbar). Bad vibes. Bad overcomings.

It would be a month and spare change until two thirds of Aeon's partnership could face the fire's aftermath. With Eileen still secluded, Melanie Kahn took her place, joining Geneva and I at an oyster bar slash Japanese restaurant, letting raw, salty, slippery sea-things slide through our lips to fortify and prepare ourselves for nights of revelry and espionage. Oeufs was the first stop... a used-to-be-nobody's joint, slightly gay, off in the wastelands by Gramercy Park. Manny thinks it was a Mob job, destined for a few months of quiet money washing, then quieter oblivion. But, after the fire, our hostess Tigra jumped, bringing maybe a third of Aeon's regulars over to Oeufs. Another third split up among several other watering holes, the remnant... industry people I'd nurtured and cultivated for months... seemed to have vaporized. Flown to Confusion Mountain.

Tigra used to play basketball in the Southeast Conference when she was a Tyrone. Instead of a professional career she'd opted for Swedish surgery, leaving Boston... who'd drafted her in the third round... desolate. Since Aeon burned, she'd added long, metal nails that, she says, some Hollywood producers want to buy for this movie they're planning. "Rodio in?" I ask... Rodolfo da Something manages Oeufs for his absentee investors, Eurotrash mostly, as I've heard, a blend of French and Italian connections.

"Still sleeping," Tigra yawned. "Used to be the man never got in before nine, lately it's nearer ten. Long black car brings him home just before dawn... he says sixteen hours of sleep extends life."

The crowd's still thin this early... the only Aeon defector being a daughter of an Asian dictator-in-exile ("into weird shit," Manny smirks), models with six and seven AM work starts, offspring of sundry billionaires. We hang only long enough to greet a bleary Rodolfo when he arrives in Dracula cape and bright red eyes, to see and to be seen. Rodio pecks my cheek... there's absolutely not a drop of moisture on his lip. "How are those insurance bahstards treating you? Weasling out of their obligations, dollink?"

"Trying to," and I show Rodio a special smile... no problemo with red, weasel eyes or weasel numbers. I rarely have to set Ralph or Alice on difficult people these days or even threaten it except... well, word gets round. "I don't think we could implant a Sicilian accent in Max," Michael says at one point, "but I do think we could set the root parameters that would enable him to acquire one." I think he places unhealthy emphasis upon peripherals... let Palin take the eyes and throats. Rodio I shall have, if I wish... he's volunteered to be a subject in Lentex experiments with ion gates in snake venom (specifically Taiwanese Bungars, hence the family of bungarotoxins) that bind with acetylcholine receptors, making the brain more computer portable. To become a machine is to solicit immortality, Rod believes; in reality, our so-called allied engines are a brown, natural dump for rusted gears. But wannabe-clocks tick in almost every New York bloodsucker... that disco throb at three point eight beats per second mechanizes hearts.

I'm looking at a long night. Tigra smarms... nothing to raise her in my estimation over Ynca as Daimon hostess, though Ynca shows little inclination to leave Antibes... that line in a French movie "Bete Humaine" comparing women to cats because "they don't like wet feet" comes to mind. My feet beat time in Oeufs but the head's drifted back to that old radioactive bus in San Francisco, its hypnotism posters with post-office boxes....

"Can you use some bread?" a generous passenger solicits the happy driver, down by the southeastern docks where we've migrated on this thoroughly imaginative route. He shows toothlessness and a dirty half loaf of Wonder but, by the accent and white cap, I see he's not an ordinary bum. "I am sixty four, born in Liverpool and retired after forty years in the merchant marine..."

"Then step avast Ringo, step up!" the driver says. "We're having a wonderful time, aren't we mates? A be-yonderful time!"

"We'll be back," I warn Rodio who blanches, as if a tall, somnambulant vampire could turn a whiter shade of pale.

"I tremble," he says gravely, allowing Melanie to touch his wrist to confirm this pronunciation. "Please don't leave," he pleads, poking at a grain of sand in the corner of his eye. There's commonality between our fallen angels - when Bert golfed with Arcilla, he prevailed upon the General to introduce me to Pom and his black couch.

If Ynca can't be persuaded to return and I have to take Tigra from Rodio, I must find a ring for him, a peace offering which the few customers remaining (after Daimon opens) can kiss, like a finger of the Pope.