Ambient 06 - Going, Going, Gone

March, I realized that somebody up there was trying to starve me into submission. Served me right: I’d ignored the key rule for junkies and freelancers alike, don’t keep your eggs in the foxes’ basket. Martin and I may have had a big something in common, but that didn’t mean he’d always do everything I wanted him to do. At least he still took my calls.
    »Walter,« he said, when he finally picked up the phone, »if I had a job for you, you’d know it. I swear, believe me.«
    »Wish I could.«
    » Walter –«
    »You know in the paper this morning I counted references to twenty-seven ongoing student actions, all Vietnam-related,« I said. »Pretty amazing that none of ’em call for my kind of expertise.«
    »Not exactly. Not until –«
    »I agree to start singing ›Danny Boy‹.«
    Almost felt his breath coming out the phone when he sighed. »Walter, what are you trying to prove?«
    »Trying to prove nothing,« I said. »It’s just something I don’t want to get into. Not with those Kennedys. They’re crazy as loons, you know that.«
    »I can assure you, there’ll be no danger. It’s not even a possibility. You’re just cutting off your nose to spite your face. Would you listen to reason –«
    »Could say the same about you when it comes to not using me.«
    »It’s out of my hands, Walter.«
    That was a new one on me. »Whose hands is it in?«
    »They won’t change their mind unless you change yours,« he said. »Do us both a favour. Please.«
    »I’ll think about it.«
    We both hung up on cue. This pissed me royally. Martin never was one for giving me public support but he’d always paved over the rocks in the passway in the past. Supposed it’d gone beyond that now. Didn’t matter, I tried to tell myself. No matter how hard they pulled on this slave’s neck chain they weren’t going to drop me off in the briny deep. Worse came to worse, I could always get a real job.
    For real? Of course not. Once you’ve gotten away living the boho life as many years as I had it’s not easy to sneak back into straight society even if that’s where you want to go. Like all blessed with a knack for the grift I had a salesman’s skills but lacked the temperament; and no experience with doing the hard sell, considering how long I’d been working in a field where convincing the buyer he needed the product was never a consideration. Plus, I had the same problem Agency alumni face when they get thrown back into civilian life: the biggest part of your curriculum vitae is sealed under wraps, for the foreseeable future.
    I’d paid March’s rent already; that was good. Had two hundred dollars left in my account but no way to pay April’s unless opportunity knocked; that was bad. Then my old gal Trish came through, once again.
     
    We slid our treats out of their slots at the Times Square Automat and snared a table upstairs underneath the stained glass. »Way you were talking I thought you’d reached the hot water and catsup stage,« she said, giving the onceover to my high-stacked tray. I didn’t care; it was the first time I’d eaten out in weeks. When food cash ran short my strategy was to live on peanut butter sandwiches, gumming away at their sticky goodness while looking at the pictures in cookbooks and reading about twelve-course banquets. Imagination triumphant over nature once again.
    »Better to exaggerate now than tell the truth later,« I said. »So what’s the deal? You say your friend Boff is involved?«
    »Burt,« she said. »All right, here’s what he told me. You remember the time you met him he was going on and on about that group he was hanging out with?«
    »Vaguely.«
    »Well, here’s their deal straight from the uncorrupted,« she said. »These nutty squirrels are on the Upper West Side mostly, at least here in New York. Started out ten years ago as psychoanalysts and their patients. Adlerians, I think, maybe Maslovians. One of them got a big head, started telling the others what to do. Rather than saying go screw yourself royally they listened to him. Then his patients told their friends and the group grew, after a while things hit critical mass. They all went completely woowoo.«
    »Krishna Krishna woo woo or Ronettes woo woo?«
    »Closer to the latter, I suspect,« Trish said. »Anyway, once the light hit them they confabulated an entirely new purpose in life. Everybody wants some of that of course so now they’re all over the place, but mostly here and LA and London. Now