Passing Through the Flame (74 page)

Ivan was already standing on the little makeshift stage. Ory and McAllister were sitting on cushions near the center of the forum with O’Brian and Linda just behind them. Some impulse made Stein take Ruby’s hand and lead her to a spot near the tent, on the periphery of the sparse crowd, where they could sit and watch everything as outside observers.

“Welcome, people, to the People’s Forum,” Ivan began with an expansive opening of his arms, a gesture which, under the circumstances, seemed painfully false. Stein got a sinking sensation in his stomach. “This is
your
festival, but a lot of people around here are trying to turn it into their own private pigpen.” Dead silence. Vacant stares.

“This is awful,” Ruby whispered in Stein’s ear. But it seemed to him that she was taking a certain satisfaction in watching Ivan go over like a lead balloon. We’re not even together ourselves, he thought. Ruby enjoys watching Ivan fail; Sargent thinks the rest of us are nerds. And don’t I feel better with Ruby mad at Sargent?

“How do you like playing freaks in Jango Beck’s exploitation movie?” Ivan said.

“Who’s playing?” someone yelled. There was tepid laughter.

“You’re
playing, man. You’re playing freak, you’re playing schmuck, you’re playing sucker! How did you like the way that helicopter screwed up Mountain High’s performance? How do you like having a camera shoved in your face?”

“Man,
I
don’t want to be a freak in Beck’s movie!” someone shouted. But it was Wendy Chan, one of the people from the Venice Street Theater, a shill. The only rise it got out of the crowd was a few mutters. The level of consciousness here was subterranean.

“This is
terrible
,” Ruby muttered. But the corners of her lips were turned up in the ghost of a smile.

“
I
wanna be a movie star,” a kid in a sheepskin vest called out. He took off the vest and threw it into the air, his eyes red and wild, obviously tripping. “I’ll even take my pants off!” He started unzipping the fly of his jeans. “I’m the next Alice Cooper!” Two guys grabbed him by the arms and yanked him down; Stein recognized them as people from the Sunshine Conspiracy.

“This is
gross
,” Ruby said.

Wendy Chan stood up, her little body shaking with rage. “You people are assholes!” she screamed. “You know what we’re going to look like in this stupid movie? Clowns, freaks, dirty, smelly hippies! You know who’s going to see this movie? Fat-assed Middle Americans drinking beer and jacking off in drive-ins! They’re going to be laughing at us! We can’t let this happen.”

“Right on!” one lone voice yelled.

“We’ve got to seize the movie for the people!” Ivan shouted. “We’ve got to make Jango Beck give us the cameras! We’ve got to liberate Sunset City!”

“Power to the people!” Wendy shouted.

It was horrible, it was ludicrous, it was like some grotesque R. Crumb cartoon of the Movement, a series of pathetic gestures from what suddenly seemed like the past. This is going to get us nowhere, Stein realized.

Standing on the podium, Ivan Blue looked like a caricature of himself. It seemed to Stein as if everyone could see the utter falseness of the righteous indignation he was forcing to appear on his face.

“Chris was right,” Ruby said. “This is a stupid waste of time.”

And there was nothing Stein could say to that. Nothing at all.

At the back of the People’s Forum, five people got up, shaking their heads, and melted off onto the People’s World’s Fair promenade, where people were laughing, and goofing, and enjoying themselves. A moment later three more people left.

We’re out of touch, Stein realized. We’re trying to arouse anger in happy people. It’s ail wrong; people won’t get pissed off when they’re having a good time. Beck’s got us co-opted. We’re out here all alone.

What a lame bunch of assholes! Chris Sargent thought as Barry Stein and Ivan Blue led the hangdog group of so-called revolutionaries back into the tent. What kind of help can I expect from
them?
Stein slumped into a chair, O’Brian and his blond chick huddled together on a cot, McAllister and Battenburg stood around with their tongues hanging out, and when Ivan Blue tried to put his arm around the waist of his little groupie, she wasn’t so turned on anymore. Hopeless nerds! The only one with any balls at all was Ruby, and she was a chick.

Ruby Berger stood by herself near the entrance to the tent, stealing sidelong glances at Sargent. She’s still pissed off at me, he thought, but she knows who the only real man here is.

Sargent stood up, walked slowly to the blackboard, taking the closest thing available to a position of command. He stared across the tent at Ruby. Let’s get this bullshit over with and get down to balling, he thought, hoping she was reading what he was sending. Their eyes met for a moment; then she looked pointedly away.

“Now that you’re through jerking yourselves off,” Sargent said, “maybe we can talk about what matters.”

Nobody said anything. You could cut the gloom with a knife.

“I thought this was supposed to be a strategy session,” Sargent said.

“Our strategy seems to have just fallen apart,” Ruby replied.

“That bullshit?” Sargent said. “I told you it was a waste of time. You’re all discouraged because you couldn’t get people having a holiday pissed off because someone’s making a movie about them? What the hell did you expect, Bastille Day?”

Ruby took a few steps across the tent, coming closer to him. She looked him full in the face now, and it seemed as if she had forgotten that she was supposed to be mad at him for reminding her what she had invited him there for. “You still think it can be done, Chris?” she said.

Sargent smiled at her. “Fucking-A,” he said. “My men are going to do all the work anyway. We’ll capture the stage, and we’ll take care of the primary diversions. All I ask from you people is some secondary stuff.”

He drew a circle on the blackboard, then a bigger one around it, and a still bigger one around that. Below the outermost circle, he drew an arc.

“Stage, stage perimeter, audience area, People’s World’s Fair,” he said. “To take the stage, I’ve got to get my primary strike force inside the fenced perimeter. I’ll issue wire cutters to secondary task forces, they’ll breach the fence, and the people will pour in. I’ll take my boys in with the crowd, reach the stage, and take it. No sweat. Whoever of you wants to come up on the stage will come in with us.”

Ruby walked across the tent and stood beside him, pondering the blackboard. “What will the rentacops be doing while all this is going on?” she said.

“Chasing their asses all over creation,” Sargent said. “There’ll be primary diversions in the crowd itself to draw the guards out of the stage perimeter before we move in. I’ll take care of that. Once the fence is down and the stage area is full of people, they won’t be able to bring in reinforcements by helicopter because they won’t have a clear drop zone.”

Ruby continued to study the blackboard. “Why would they come out of the stage perimeter?” she asked. “Why wouldn’t they just come in from here?” she said, pointing to the arc representing the People’s World’s Fair.

Sargent put his hand on hers. She didn’t draw away. “Because
here
is where
your
people are going to tie them down. You’re going to suck all the reserves they have into the People’s World’s Fair area and keep them there until we take the stage.”

“How are we supposed to do that?”

“How many people can you muster?” Sargent asked. “I mean your own people, people you can count on to follow orders.”

“A couple of hundred, maybe,” O’Brian said.

“You’re talking about tying down, what, three or four hundred armed guards, with
that?”
Stein whined.

“You can do it,” Sargent said. “Divide up into small squads. There are plenty of fancy exhibits, domes, and all kinds of wooden structures all along here. Most of it will burn like thatch hootches. I’ll detail Pulaski to instruct your people in incendiary techniques. The important thing is not to fire everything at once. You want the cops running all up and down this area trying to anticipate where you’ll strike next.”

“Jesus Christ!”

“There’ll be
people
in that area!”

“That’s right,” Sargent said. “With any luck, the fires will freak ‘em out, and there’ll be looting. About five minutes after it starts, we’ll move on the stage.”

Stein bolted to his feet. “You’re talking about a war!” he said. “People could get hurt. Someone might even get killed.”

“I thought you’re supposed to be revolutionaries,” Sargent said contemptuously. “You think you can rip off Jango Beck without getting your hands dirty? Without maybe getting them a little bloody, too?”

Sargent glared at them as reality finally sunk in. What a fantasy they had concocted for themselves! Make a few speeches, step aside while the boys and I do their fighting for them, then make some more speeches and pin hero medals on their own chests. Now that they had to face the fact that you had to fight to seize territory, their delicate little tummies were acting up.

He turned to face Ruby, his hand still on hers. “What about you?” he said. “Are you another one of these gutless wonders?”

Ruby met his eyes levelly. “Is this really the best way, Chris?”

“The only way.”

“Well, you’re the expert,” she said, turning to face the rest of them. “The way I see it, we either do it Chris’ way or forget the whole thing. Unless one of you has a better idea.”

“I just never thought it would come to this,” Stein said uncertainly. “Deliberate arson... risking people’s lives... maybe we’re in over our heads....”

“Maybe
you’re
in over
your
head, Barry,” Ruby said, moving closer to Sargent. Stein flushed.

The pretty little dark chick had inched away from Ivan Blue, and now she was giving him the old fish-eyed stare. And Blue was aware of it. “I agree with Ruby,” Blue said. “I mean, what the hell, all we’re talking about is trashing the property of a bunch of pig capitalists, right? We’re not going to hun
people.
”

“Yeah, right,” O’Brian said.

“Nobody has to get hurt. We can be careful.”

Only Stein still looked dubious, and in a curious way, Sargent found that he had more respect for Stein now than for the others. They had managed to convince themselves that they could pull off the diversionary action without hurting anyone as easily as they had convinced themselves that they could take over Sunset City with a lot of dumb talk. Only Stein was facing what they were really getting into.

“Well, what about it, Barry?” Ruby said. “Are you still afraid?”

“I’ll go along with the majority,” Stein said woodenly. “That’s only democratic. But I can’t honestly say I like it, Ruby, no matter what that makes you think of me.”

“Then it’s settled,” Ruby said harshly. “Come on, Chris, let’s take a walk.”

Sargent found his satisfaction unexpectedly marred by a strange sense of sympathy for poor old Stein. It took more balls to go along but tell her what he really thought than to thump his chest and do a phony Tarzan act. I
admire
the guy for having the guts to admit he’s chickenshit; now ain’t that a bitch? Maybe I’m getting as weird as they are.

“Well, here we are,” Ruby said, sitting down on the edge of Sargent’s cot and untying the laces of her plain hiking boots.

“Yeah,” Sargent said, standing in front of her and still trying to figure out where she was at. I don’t really
like
the game she’s playing with Stein. I mean she could just as well turn around and play it on me, if I let her.

Ruby took off her shoes and her white socks, unbuttoned her denim shirt, and took it off. She was naked underneath, and the nipples of her small breasts were hard and tight like little marbles. “Aren’t you going to take your clothes off?” she said, unbuckling her jeans.

Sargent shook his head and began undressing. Maybe she
is
running the same kind of number on me, he thought, a real nut-cutter. Maybe I ought to call her on it.

When they were both undressed, Ruby beckoned him down onto the cot. But something made him stand there in his nakedness with ice in his loins.

“What’s the matter, Chris? Don’t you feel like balling?”

“I don’t like this,” he said. “I don’t like this way of going about it.”

Ruby sat up on the edge of the cot. “You came to the meeting for a piece of ass, didn’t you?” she said. “You said so yourself.” She spread her legs, put her hands under her thighs, and lifted her thick black bush toward him. “Well, here it is.”

“Jesus Christ!”

“Sit down, Chris,” she said more softly. “Come on, sit down.” She ran a hand tenderly along the inside of his thigh, then took his hand. He sat down beside her feeling very strange.

“You don’t like this, do you?” she said. “I’m grossing you out. Do you know what’s grossing you out?”

“Yeah,” Sargent said. “You’re acting like some whore. Here’s my pussy, kid, stick it in, you got five minutes to come, leave ten on the bed on your way out.”

“And you don’t like that? You think it’s demeaning?”

“Yeah.”

Suddenly, she leaned over, threw her arms around him, and kissed him—long, deep, and tenderly. Sargent returned the kiss, not understanding what the hell was coming off. Their lips parted, but Ruby kept her face inches from his, so that he could feel the breeze of her breath as she spoke. “You know, Chris, I think maybe I could learn to love you. You’re a hard, cynical bastard, but you’ve got a good heart.”

“You’re not exactly Miss Peaches and Cream yourself, lady,” Sargent said. “You’re a ballbuster. And I think maybe you’re a little nuts.”

“I don’t think I could bust your balls,” she said, fondling him between the legs. “They’re as hard as little cannonballs. That’s one of the things I dig about you.”

Sargent couldn’t help laughing. He ran a finger along the curve of her labia. “And you’ve got a bear trap in there, lady,” he said. She sighed, and moved into his hand, and he grabbed her thick black pubic hair, tousling it affectionately. He was starting to feel real good; he was starting to feel just fine.