A Fold in the Tent of the Sky (14 page)

That Maurice Chevalier song where he's digging up all these fond memories and the woman beside him in the carriage keeps contradicting him . . .

There was something odd about the place all of a sudden, and Peter put it down to the shifting dynamics of the group itself—Ron Koch disappearing like that wasn't enough to explain it. The mood of the place was different, less informal; people seemed to be preoccupied with their posted schedules, their homework: the large powder-blue envelopes that came with every assignment now—background information, precautions, coordinates, landmarks, fail-safe procedures.

He had a track record of three successful missions since Ron's disappearance: a mountain climber lost in the Andes;
another plane crash (this session had been much less distressing); a mafia hit man who had turned State's evidence and promptly disappeared—and he was proud of that but the fun was leaking out of it for Peter: the sense of discovery. All the cases he was assigned to suited his particular talent, of course—he needed a psychometric link to get where he wanted to go: something connected to the target—so most of the time he was like a bloodhound on the trail of disaster and chaos. Not much fun at all.

None of his remote viewing targets were as risky as the situation Koch had put himself in, but there was a new caveat in big bold letters across the top of the first page of every assignment now, something that had been in the handout Jane had prepared for them but not really emphasized in any follow-up meetings. It concerned the family tree, how a family tree grows larger as you go back in time just the way it does as you go forward—like a tree root: two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, sixteen great-great-grandparents—like that. Never mind all the siblings and such connected to each branch. You could see how tricky it would be if you happened to bump into your grandmother's second cousin twice removed, say. How the ripple effect could potentially shut down your own life line. He had Jane explain it to him: her honey-and-yogurt voice filling him in on how the dangers associated with interfering with your own life line increase the further back in time you aim for—“Just stay clear of the old Heisenberg problem—the observer altering what's being observed—and you won't have any trouble whatsoever.”

“But you're talking about a full-blown manifestation. Isn't that hard to do? I mean Ron Koch was a fluke, right?”

Back in his apartment Peter took out the information sheet
and had a good look at it again, using a pencil to highlight the stuff about family trees. He was earning his keep now for sure—new stuff to commit to memory every day. He was used to that—actors were good with memory work; forgetting a line landed you in an embarrassing situation: a stumble through a scene, a reprimand from the director, say—but never death.

He wondered whether all this talk about corporeal
manifestation
—how dangerous it was—was like handing out condoms to high school kids and then telling them not to have sex.

Anita took him aside one day and asked him outright what he actually remembered about Ron Koch. He told her as best he could, piecing together their first meeting that day he showed up in the lounge; the few times he'd spoken to him after that; their night out with the boys to the casino—and the last time, a chance meeting on the way to his apartment. She interrupted him: “I was there too, remember? You met us coming down the steps of my building? You said something about the wind or the heat or something like that, in a funny English accent.”

Peter had to admit the details were a little fuzzy but he conceded enough to ease her mind. It was as if he did remember and he didn't; not one or the other, but both. Two versions of the event: one with Ron and one without. It was an odd sensation, as if the first version were a sort of theatrical presentation of the second—with one extra character. Maybe that was it; his old life as an actor had something to do with it. Back when he did rep theater he could memorize a whole script in a couple of days.

They sat down at a table in the shade as far away from the others as they could get. Larry was sitting with his pant legs
rolled up, dangling his feet in the shallow end of the pool; Blenheim was in his tennis whites today, chatting and testing his backhand on the smoke from Larry's cigarette.

“It figures you remember so much more about him than anyone else—I mean, you need a P-link like me, right? It's a tactile thing.” Anita was nodding. “From what you've told me you two were pretty close—and that's the impression I get from the bits and pieces I remember.”

“It's all fading,” Anita said after the waiter had brought them their drinks.

“What do you mean, ‘fading'?”

“The image of him, what we—our relationship. Everything, it's just fading, his face, everything. Like I'm having some kind of Alzheimer's attack!”

“You could be just blocking it—you know, to protect yourself—”

“But there's other stuff filling the hole; that's what's even more crazy, things that I couldn't have experienced—an afternoon with Jane in Marigot, a special day it turns out, a day off for some reason; at the same time I have this memory of me and Ron going to the beach—all day on a weekday. I remember because we went over to Mullet Bay and there were hardly any people there at all.” She stopped to light a cigarette, shaking it out of the pack so forcefully that it bounced off the table. “I've never even
been
to Marigot—at least not as far as I can remember. It's like these new memories are superimposing themselves on top of the old ones.”

“Have you spoken to Jane? Does she remember it? The day in Marigot?”

“No, I haven't. I'm afraid to. She already thinks I'm crazy.”

“No, she doesn't. We backed you up, remember. Gordon,
Larry—Pam wasn't here till near the end, so she doesn't count really—”

“Larry's changed his mind already.” The look on Peter's face made her go on. “Yeah. He says he never met Ron. He thought he knew him but now he says he's not so sure;
now
all he remembers is the rest of us talking about him.”

“Jesus.”

“Will you talk to Jane for me? Today?” Peter could see something in her face, or maybe it was the tactile link doing it—she had reached over to touch his arm—a desperation coupled with something else: distrust. With a garnish of panic.

“I'll make sure she tapes it this time.”

“I feel like one of those mental patients you hear about who've been brain damaged, lost their long-term memory. Spend all their time reading the same fucking copy of
Reader's Digest
over and over again.”

Peter couldn't recall ever hearing Anita curse before. Either she was changing or she'd always talked like that and he was just remembering the wrong version of things.
Déjà vu
was never like this.

.
.
.
leaving something witchy

Simon had settled on a target for his little experiment. The Manson thing: the “Tate-LaBianca” thing. It had always bothered him that Charlie Manson had dragged the Beatles into it, co-opted them into the pantheon of his delusion. He had turned the White Album into his mantra, his national anthem—the soundtrack of his horror movie.

His favorite Beatles album had always been a raped bride, in Simon's mind. He wanted to do something to change all that, if he could—tweak history a little bit; fine-tune things.
Turn that song, “Helter Skelter,” back into just another straight-ahead rock and roll joyride.

He wondered what he should wear for the occasion, what was appropriate for this sort of thing. Dark clothes, sure, but what clothes?

Nineteen sixty-nine. He remembered seeing the film
Woodstock
on the box, everyone looking like shit—a million street people wallowing in mud and garbage. A fashion sinkhole in his estimation, the sixties—the last part of it anyway. A
fishing
-through-the-dirty-laundry-basket-for-something-to-wear decade. The Beatles weren't part of
Woodstock
so, as far as he was concerned, the music at Woodstock wasn't any good either. As unkempt and as primitive as the audience. Except for Hendrix and his star-spangled wake-up call.

To Simon the whole hippie phenomenon, the fashion aspect of it at least, had to do with TV. Kids playing Cowboys and Indians, imprinted by the programs they were weaned on—
The Lone Ranger, Rin Tin Tin, Gunsmoke.
Charlie Manson and the gang—the so called “Family”—hanging out at the Spahn Ranch, this mock-up of a frontier town main street, a backlot facade of a facade.

He remembered the same thing happening to the people he grew up with in the eighties—turning themselves into schlocky
Star Trek
aliens with spiky green hair and Mylar jumpsuits. David Bowie and that band Devo looking like they were auditioning for
Lost in Space.

He liked the part of the sixties before the Flower Power Summer of Love shit happened. The Mod Era. Early sixties Carnaby Street fashions, tight Italian suits, boots with Cuban heels the Beatles and all the other English groups wore back then. Those Mary Quant minidresses with patterned
pantyhose
—he especially liked that scene in the movie
Blowup
where the photographer's wrestling with these two teenyboppers with long blond hair, playing at pulling off their clothes, tearing up this huge paper backdrop in the process—that part of the sixties. The chicks looking innocent, lollipop innocent. Virginal but desperate to lose it.

He could try that later maybe—go back and check out swinging London in 1964, see if he could bump into that chick from
The Avengers,
Diana Rigg.

He remembered seeing
Valley of the Dolls
for the first time when he was about twelve. Sharon Tate, gorgeous, blond; wearing Barbie doll clothes. Night after night he held on to an image of her walking into his bedroom, her hair falling on him as he pulled away the sheet; for a long time this was his favorite bedtime story.

About a year later Simon decided to rent the video—he'd borrowed a friend's VCR and he was going to make a copy for himself. The video-store clerk, a huge bearded guy with part of one ear missing—Simon couldn't keep his eyes off it, the jagged edge like a torn piece of lettuce—started venting his opinion of the movie, as if his thumbs-up/thumbs-down was actually worth something to Simon. Telling him all about the shitty plot and how one of the chicks in it had been part of the “Manson thing”—Polanski's wife, Sharon Tate, murdered with her unborn son still in her. Saying as Simon went out the door, “He never should have made that film,
Rosemary's Baby.
”

For a while after that whenever he tried something new in his diving, something scary his coach insisted he was ready for, he would see Sharon Tate's face rushing toward him with the water. The knife sticking her—her and her unborn baby.
Just as his own fingers broke the skin of the water. Meniscus, it was called. The surface tension. “Meniscus.” He said it sometimes just to hear the sound of it, walking along the street, repeating it in time to his steps: sharp edges flashing through his brain, infinitely sharp points puncturing.

August 8, 1969. This was going to be his dry run, his practice dive. Coming to the rescue of his first love. It was worth a shot. Back to the sixties.

Poor old Ron gave it a shot; so can I.

August 8, 1969: the window of opportunity. Before I was born, conceived of
(he remembered Jane's words about staying clear of your own life line; the chance of getting caught up in the branching tree of ancestors)—
but not too much earlier than that.

Oh yes. What to wear.

Black for sure; you couldn't go wrong wearing something black. Black went with everything. The noncolor. In the eye department, it gave the rods and cones a rest: “Take this nanosecond off, boys. All we're getting is black.”

August 8, 1969. Around nine o'clock. The Spahn Movie Ranch near Chatsworth, a suburb of LA. He'd done his homework; he knew exactly when and where he was aiming for. Manson and his gaggle of clap-infested brainwashed chicks. The night they murdered Sharon Tate, among
others
—
Abigail
Folger of the coffee Folgers.

He just had to make sure he didn't stand out in the crowd—he wasn't attending this function to be seen; it had nothing to do with networking, with making a good first impression.

He settled on an old pair of black jeans and a dark blue sweater of Betty's that had somehow found its way into his suitcase. His Rockport shoes ruined by the fucking Vancou
ver weather like two pieces of stale bread, and a wool hat he had owned since high school: black with white piping, which he folded out of sight.

He was going to try for corporeal manifestation in the past.
Just like that guy Ron Koch—but not like Ron Koch.
He was going to do it on purpose. He wasn't going to touch down anywhere near his own life line; he was aiming for a point in time before he was born, before he was conceived.

Simon locked his door and pulled the drapes, shutting out his view of the scrubby hillside. He turned off all the lights and checked the door again. He unplugged the phone and lay down on the bed, all the while telling himself it was possible; repeating it to himself—
it
is
possible, believe it
—getting up to check the door one more time, then lying back down on the bed. He felt a jab of pain behind his left eye—and saw it connected to the crescent scar on the top of his head; the filaments of connection were arrayed in the shape of a trowel.

He touched his medal for good luck.
Treat it like a dive, remember. You're going to dive into the past. Not air-to-water; but present-to-past—not that different, really. An out-of-body excursion through the surface tension of Time.

He closed his eyes and forced his breathing into low gear. He played through his head the words of “Blackbird”—the one from the White Album. The way he used to back when he was a diver competing on the springboard or the ten-meter platform—pacing his every move.

Go through it in your head,
he told himself. The push-off and the slap of the springboard bouncing once, twice before the final leap, the somersault. He found a spot in his mind—the time/space coordinates of his target—just like his coach had taught him to do so long ago, orienting himself so that
even in a spin he knew exactly where he was—the spot like a knifepoint but stretching away from him through the ether. A point that burned hot white and cold all at once—his reference point for acrobatics he'd never tried before: a reverse three-and-a-half with God only knows how many twists and turns and inside-outs—all of it new to him, scary as hell.

He dove through blackness and driving airless wind—into what he did not know.
Always find your vertical,
his coach would say.
No matter what, always find your vertical.
The words of the song rippled through his flesh and bones and played through to the part of himself that could go inside and out at the same time. He was falling in a convoluted tumble, not through air this time but more than air, or less than it. What Jane and Eli called the ether. Through the ether beyond the boundary between “then” and “now.”

Down, down . . .

August 8, 1969, around nine o'clock. Just after sundown.

The air had a suspicious sweetness about it—like the smell of air released from a car tire. The sound of flies hung in the neoprenecaged air behind the panicked whine of a pup tied up somewhere beyond the ragged roofline of Main Street.

The ranch had enclaves of odor—near where the girls kept their stuff, patchouli oil and head-shop Ravi Shankar incense; dung out back with the horses. Behind George Spahn's shack, a whiff of chicken: raw, rotting. The sweat of maggots expediting the demise of discarded apples, coffee grounds.

The voice of a man now, in the swell of oration, holding forth over the thin sizzle of small speakers burdened with the rich cargo of “I Am the Walrus.” The Beatles here and now,
the way they were then, different to Simon's ears in this context: more innocent; no irony at all.

What Manson was saying, a countervailing wind, sweet with anti-freeze. Redolent of battery acid:
We got to help Blackie get his hands dirty—make it look like the Spades from Watts, the Panthers, are cutting down establishment piggies; lawyers; movie people. Armageddon is coming down fast! (other voices, squeaky little girl voices: “Amen!”) We will let the black man pull all the karma down on him just like the Jews .
.
.
the four angels: John, Paul, George, and Ringo are telling us just how to make it happen—the pigs will fucking shit themselves, man
—The smell of cooked food: brown rice and garlic. Hippie home cooking. Wet dishrag commune hepatitis stew.
And when it's all over we will ride out of the desert and Blackie will come runnin' to meet us: “Save our asses, brother. We are tired of the killin'. Just tell us what to do, man. Give us something to do!” (“Amen!”)

Simon fell into the locus of this moment and hung suspended for a while—on the edge of heft and mass. An exhausted observer just floating.

Linda Kasabian was dazed from the food and Charlie's words. It always felt like he was looking right at her, and her alone, even though he was talking to all of them, the Family—love potion number nine.

But nagging at her head was this heavy trip he was laying on her about her daughter—how all the kids at the ranch should be kept away from their parents—something about “ego cleansing,” which sounded full of cosmic wisdom when Charlie said it; but looking back on it now, it didn't make
much sense at all. It didn't fit his picture of love, the “All You Need Is Love” kind of love. Tanya needed love too—a mother's love.

The bowl of leftovers she had snuck out under her shirt: she knew it was better for her than the shit she was getting out back in the trailer with the other kids—stuff not much different than what they fed the dogs, sometimes. Charlie, her man, his face in front of hers even when she closed her eyes making her fearful of even thinking such things; his voice like God sitting on her shoulder telling her all she needed to know. An acid rush like nothing else.
All you need is Me, da d-da, d-daa.
A natural high.

The sex was okay, not great like with Tex, who really tried to make her come; but Charlie, just having him inside her . . . He was like a little ferret sometimes, so quick like he was blowing his nose or something. But just being in the same room with him seemed enough—God I love him. Man's Son. The Second Coming. Helter Skelter.

When she came back from the trailer a bunch of them were out milling around on the boardwalk in front of the saloon. Katie and Ouisch, and Brenda. Tex fooling with Sadie, coming up on her from behind and goosing her through this hole in the ass of her jeans where the patches were coming
undone
—like a welcome mat, Linda thought. Like that song, “Fixing a Hole.”

Charlie was coming out then, pushing the saloon doors apart like a sheriff in a cowboy movie, and everyone stood still and stopped talking. He came over and looked at her, breathing at her with his tongue touching his bottom lip for a second, hunched over the way he did sometimes, making a point of staring right at you, centering you out. He turned
away and slapped Tex on the back, which made Tex sort of flinch. Charlie did a little jive in his shuffling moccasins, his mouth making after-dinner sounds. Sucking at his teeth.

In the faint glow of the yard light she could see his little pigeon chest, his T-shirt tight across his sternum, a curl of chest hair poking through where the buttons used to be. He was looking out into the yard as if he were trying to drive away the dark heat hanging with the flies. He turned back to her again and she knew he had caught her, but his eyes were saying,
one more chance.
His love infinite. Infinity plus one, she thought, to forgive like that. As his eyes lingered she regretted going behind his back; she wanted to rip the food out of her
daughter's
mouth then. Her stomach.

“Get your license, Linda. You're driving tonight—and a change of clothes.” Her second chance. A garbage run, or a creepy-crawly maybe, through some Beverly Hills
mansion
—a piggy panty raid. He still loves me. He still loves me. “Just do what Tex tells you to do.”

Someone was handing her a long knife with black electrical tape around the handle. Cold in her hand, heavy but right somehow. Charlie was talking to the others, about Helter Skelter coming down. This being the night to make it happen.

She went over to Swartz's trailer. To his car, an old Ford from the fifties—they always took his car on garbage runs. It was the only set of wheels at the ranch that actually worked. She still had to get a change of clothes but she felt compelled to stay near the car. It was like Charlie was standing there and not with the others on the boardwalk—wanting to lay some heavy shit on her.