BLACK HELICOPTERS EPISODE 36 SATURDAY the EIGHTH - 10:08 PM Santo's Lounge... Anne was pleased to discover... had a killer jukebox - all shiny wood and chrome, even a holograph of spinning vinyl that covered the compact disc machinery. Heavy on classic Motown... "Baby Love" fading into "What Becomes of the Broken Hearted", then "What's Goin' On". There was also a fairly interesting collection of 60's photographs and posters on the wall. But, as Anne and Andy watched the not-so-young professionals on the dance floor from their vantage point in a corner booth, flailing away like bit players in some geriatric Dick Clark special, self-recognition crept into and diluted their amusement as inexorably as the ice in their half-finished cocktails melted.

"Never thought that it would turn out like this," Andy reflected. "You know? Used to make fun of my parents with their Lawrence Welk and Guy Lombardo... now look at us! Everything on the fuckin' jukebox sold to sell something, the Beatles, the fuckin' Clash!... and nobody cares. Fuckin' Saudis signed up those New Doors for their propaganda, light my fire with OPEC. Advertising... it killed the fuckin' Revolution! That - and the Jesus freaks, Scientology..."

"All the smart people are dead, too," he added. "I mean... could you imagine the real John Lennon or Hendrix in a place like this? I still don't believe they let me in. I went by three or four times back when it opened, two years ago when the Sanctuary was paying me a salary, and it was always like, sorry man..."

"You're dressed for the occasion," Anne pointed out. "Shabby, but making an attempt to look respectable... you're like some associate professor from the U. English, maybe or history. Working his way up through the politics, writing monographs on Grover Cleveland for little journals nobody reads, taking sides in academic arguments like for the symbolists or deconstructionists or multiculturalists. Poor, but still aspiring to tenure. Speaking of which..." she opened her purse, "Glenn disappeared with all my plastic and personal checks but I've found my Coalition expense account checkbook... how much was that dinner? And don't object, you already told me that money wasn't yours... it was supposed to go to people at the demo... and Glenn and I can well afford it. He was just playing with our heads. Do you know how much the CNC pays us, not to mention this expense account?"

"No! And I don't want to hear about it... I've seen those vans of yours picking up kids, dropping them off in the burbs with their coffee cans and Catfish books, signing up Conks or selling lipstick..."

"It works," she silenced him, signing a hundred dollar check. "The payee's blank... make it out to anybody you owe money to, or yourself. It's almost Sunday but it'll clear Monday, promise! How do you get by, anyway?"

Some depressing mid-70's anthem hit the turntable and Andy winced, took the check, folded it, put it in his well-worn wallet and put that back in the pocket of his jacket, still bulging with the paper bag of what remained of Pinhead's cash settlement. "You're asking me? When we were getting funded by the block grants, I'd be making, like, two bills a week… that’s hundreds. Not thousands… and I had money saved up. Feds cut us off, so I sold the car... that money lasted awhile, then Pinhead cuts us off, too. Don't have many expenses, just my own hotel rent, cigarettes, beer... figure I'll move into the shelter for keeps after this blows over, then I don't know... plasma factory maybe. You know, they need a lot of plasma for those new high definition TVs..."

"Not your kind, Andy. If you believe in the Sanctuary, why haven't you been staying there all along?"

"Because I'm not a bum!" he bristled, "not yet. Poverty doesn't make the spirit noble, just tired and confused. There's no one damn thing heroic about lying on a floor with fifty other stinking derelicts, babbling and watching time go by. Only men ever went from the outhouse to the statehouse were Nixon, Clinton and Hitler... and look how they turned out! Fact is… I'm already living like a nigger. Word! And if nothing's going to come of it, I'm tired of living like a nigger!"

Anne recoiled.

"That's an awful thing to say. You're no... well, Jack says 'nwords', and you’re no Hitler, just a hypocrite, like all the rest of us. The next step is to step up from being a low-life hypocrite to being a high-roller hypocrite. Look... you do more time for sticking up a Burger-Jack than you would for floating half a billion in junk bonds. Lay off a few mil on the politicians and you'll even get a Presidential pardon! So finish your drink and let's get out of here. This music sucks!"

"Hey... I warned you," Andy said as she gathered up her belongings. They pushed their way to the door, where the bouncer was turning away some students with their mouths and IDs hanging open.

"Yeah, I know the law says you can drink at 21, but our insurance company says nobody under 25 gets in. Go talk to your law professor, if you want, but beat it!"

The slummers slipped out into an urban fantasist's wonderland of cobbled streets and fake gas lamps shining on the little shops carved into the old, rehabbed stone of a long-dead mill.

"God, this Oldie City crap is awful!" Anne admitted. "What happened to the Hays Room?"

"Torn down."

"Graceland?"

"Gay."

"Brook's?"

"Fire, eight years ago. Finally got rehabbed along with the whole block, the beer and porno strip. Now it's a Burger-Jack."

"Sick!"

"That's survival. Or progress," Andy said, "take your pick. World ain't ending with a bang, even a whimper... just fizzling out with the sizzle of a patty of diseased rainforest cow, served up by overqualified psychotherapy majors... piss-tested middle-aged, trainee sub-minimum waged surplus Americans... to dolts on rent stamps..."

A voice quivered up from something huddled in blankets in the doorway of a Shoppe with nothing but stone cats smiling inscrutably behind their steel-gated, security-stickered window...

"Spare change?"

"Fuck off!" Andy slid his arm through Anne's elbow protectively. "Most of these downtown people won't even come to the Sanctuary for the free food, even those who can't stand Malik's sermons. We don't have money for much more than spoiled vegetables and the bread that gets tossed from the day-old store... this University egghead testifies against us at Pinhead's last budget hearings, says begging for change to eat at a McDonald's is supposed to be their way of maintaining a last link with the American dream..."

"Well don't you believe in the American dream?"

"These guys just want to fuck things up for everybody, make the whole world into reflections of themselves. It's not the money, it's contamination. And recruitment... they touch you and your soul catches the disease, brings you closer down to their level. Making a spectacle of yourself to disgust the world... the last permissible form of protest. Remember George?"

"Jack Parnell's brother? Oh... right, George from the astronomy department... Crazy George," Anne remembered. "I thought he died!"

"Yeah, finally... about two years ago. Took long enough! At least he got his revenge on the U. for rejecting his masters thesis fifteen years back... crawled up the ventilation system in that shabby old Planetarium over spring break, cut his wrists and, by the time they found him, they had to close it down for months until the smell went away. Wanted to be a scientist but couldn't, so he found a way to use his own organic biology to get back at people, make them uncomfortable for a little while. Everything’s down to random acts of meanness..."

"Washington's full of that!" Anne sneered. "You can't even go outside for lunch in the spring without some mentally disturbed ragbag staggering in, touching and spitting at all the plates, saying they're looking for scraps. Fanio's closed... they got tired of throwing these people out, having them come back and the police doing nothing because they all were black. So all the black people working at Fanio's lose their jobs and have to go out on the streets too... that's why Jack's involuntary commitment laws will put a stop to all that!"

"You really believe that Catfish shit?" Andy guided Anne around a particularly ripe aggregation of garbage at the curb... some of the plastic bags were ripped and bleeding filth, cats or surplus Americans having gotten to them. "All he brings is a new rug to sweep the problems under. Remember the Half Moon? It's a Houlihan's now."

"What a great place! Those people from the Maiter Band played there before they got famous, a lot of people did..."

"Yeah, and by the time we came here they were playing on their way down after becoming unfamous again."

"Well it's still a bar," Anne squinted, looking across the street to where the green and deep purple neon flickered among the Shoppes crowded between a BlockHouse CD and video palace on one corner, still open, a Gap on the other end, closed behind its fence. "Is it a chain? Houlihan's... sounds like one."

"Probably. Upbeat though... only one allowed per town, that sort of thing. This sleazebag Morrow bought up that whole block across the street where the used textbook stores were, turned it yup..."

"Watson Morrow?" Anne stopped so quickly that Andy's arm was jerked out of hers. "He's Mayor Potter's patron in the Coalition... they have this business together, Cato Consulting..."

"Morrow's a Conk?" Andy shook his head. "You are up to the knees in it. Let's go in... I'll show you the future after Parnell's revolution. I thirst, Coalition pays."

They crossed the street and a familiar creed straggled from out of the shadows of boxes and dumpsters in the alley next to Houlihan's. "Spare change? Spare anything, man... a quarter, nickel, a penny..." Andy shut his ears, entered, finding the place a cheery replica, an ersatz Irish pub, ordered two pints and two whiskies and put his finger over Anne's lips when they came.

"Now that we're in the heart of Conkland, no more politics! Talk baseball. No? How about the two of you... ever plan on making things permanent?"

"Uh... not up to me," Anne replied. "There's always work. Work to be done. What about you?"

"Oh... you ought to know by now. How did that go... mutts, sluts and nuts, that's Andy?"

"Didn't I have a right to be mad?" she retaliated. "With a chaser of cynicism..."

"Hard living makes for hard times," he said, wiping a mustache of porter away with his wrist. "And in case you haven't missed the fact, we're neck deep into these just-say-no years we thought would go away decades ago when you made your decision to go with Glenn and the respectable life. Instead, things just got sleazy. And drugs and AIDS are just the tip of the Titanic... appetizers, if you will. No smoking, no more alien religions... except if you have a lawyer suing the town to rip down all their Christmas decorations. No spraypaint, no felt-tip pens... no this, no that. Touch me and I'll sue! Drink quick, before your Catfish makes beer against the law. Talk anybody up, sooner than later you'll get a bill of prohibitions; there isn't any logic to it, everybody's different except that they're united in the implacability of their convictions..."

"And where does that leave Andy boy?"

"Remember how we all used to worship crazy people... chicks who pulled their teeth out and put feathers in their hair, silver rings through their nipples? Guys who shaved their heads and quoted German poets?"

Anne put her glass down, leaving a foam moustache. "God, I can't believe how stupid I used to be..."

"But it was fun, wasn't it?"

"I don't know, I guess... at the time. I can't... won't answer! Because if it was, then my thinking it wasn't means I've made a catastrophic mistake in life, and I can't afford mistakes. Good people don't make mistakes."

"So if they do, they're not good people anymore? Mark... he certainly wasn't good people, whatever we might have thought at the time. OK... but his old lady that he chopped up encouraged him, all the way to the bitter end ... was she good? When she died the papers... even the Urinal!... were full of how good and successful they used to be together..."

"You went to the funeral, I remember..."

"Yeah... must have been hundreds there, a thousand maybe. Couldn't fit in Saint Phillip's... had to stand out in the street with loudspeakers. Closed off, no permit problems there, you may be sure. Hundreds of people like us. Nobody else like Cobb... except maybe inside. So is the free spirit, one who acts on impulse, a hero? A tragic hero? What about the coward whose cowardice prevents him from ever becoming a monster... does that make him a good man? Or woman? Beats me! I mean... I was as self-righteous as anybody out in that street, but isn't someone bragging about how amoral they are just another pose..."

"So if we get back to the subject, is it safe to say you're not alone... poor, unhappy, confused, maybe, but..."

"I guess," Andy shrugged. "And you're unhappy too?"

Anne rolled the Irish whiskey round her tongue, then raised her pint. "I'm satisfied... not necessarily happy, nor un-. If I were either, I wouldn't be doing the job. Got to be doing the job. The job is what makes a container that holds the person and keeps everything from spilling out, all over the sidewalk..."

And Andy lifted his glass in agreement. "Arbeit macht frei!" he toasted.

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