Ambient 06 - Going, Going, Gone

along with these weekend programmes they have weekly meetings. Burt let on that after you’re really into the group that’s when they let you in on the next level.«
    »Which is?«
    »They sit around all weekend expanding the mind.«
    That piqued my interest. »Literally or metaphorically?«
    »Along your lines,« she said, grinning. »Got tired of shrinking it, I guess. Burt tells me they need a new supplier. The guy who had the original arrangement made deliveries once a month, found out another client of his was setting him up so he skipped. Burt came to me hoping that you might possibly be of help. I told him you possibly might be.«
    »Possibly.«
    She extended her arms as if she’d just jumped off a high wire in the centre ring. »Tah-dah.«
    »What do they need?« I asked.
    »Mescaline,« she said. »Chocolate, strawberry, any tangy flavour of your preference. Nothing stronger, certainly none of the things you put away for breakfast. Sounds like they have an intensive session first and unwind after. And it sounds like they’ve got thousands of members. That’s a lot of action.«
    »What’s their guiding light?«
    Trish shrugged. »Sounds like the usual bushwah hey nonny no to me. He laid a brochure on me. It’s no page-turner.«
    I looked over the propaganda. Doctor Oscar – no last name – was the founder and Honcho Grande of the group Personality Dynamos Incorporated, whose members, having undergone Mental Plastic Surgery, perfected the techniques of Opportunity Seizure. One session cost fifty bucks but special corporate rates were available. Looking at the back of the brochure I saw that, supposedly, executives of General Motors, Singer, Metropolitan Life and, yes, Goldman Sachs, had all undergone the Shake-Out; as had doctors, lawyers, dentists, famous movie stars and people Just Like You. Seemed reasonable enough, as these things go, but then I glommed the pitch:
     
    TAKE YOUR MIND
    OFF ITS HINGES
     
    Few people can deal with hard reality – can you?
     
Do you run from it?
Fear it?
Deny it?
     
    Adults deal. Children fear.
     
    WE OFFER THE TOOLS YOU NEED TO DESTROY THE CHILD WITHIN YOU.
     
    MAX YOUR PO through
    PERSONALITY
    DYNAMISM
     
     
     
    »Po?«
    »Tential.«
    I nodded. »So I just deliver the goods and they make the payment? Right then and there?«
    »You got it,« she said. »Could anything be simpler?«
    »Will they be having a seance while I’m around? Do I have to go?«
    She shook her head. »You’ve already maxed your po, if you ask me,« she said, »but I’m sure they’re always on the prowl for victims. They’ve probably got some fast talkers, too.«
    »I’ll carry rocks in both hands.«
    »Good, Walter,« she said. »I’d so much rather you did this than whatever you do for the feds. It’s always better to be in business for yourself.«
     
    Wasn’t hard to lay paws on mesc; along with other useful material I kept enough of the stuff to turn on Hoboken in a safe-deposit box at my local Greenwich Savings. The next night, nuts in hand, I rode the West Side Local, going to meet the squirrels. When I got out at 79th I bounced upstairs and fell right into the middle of a gaggle of cops. Bad as St Patrick’s Day, except none of them was drunk enough to shoot themselves or each other. Considering that I was holding so many psychedillies I could take down a regiment, I started to get a little weak-kneed. No need to fret, though, I was home free; the boys of Killarney had their hands full rounding up a different set of suspects. A kibitzer gave me the lowdown, said an Albanian dry cleaner had been gunned down in his shop and the bluecoats were rounding up the block’s shiftier-looking Montenegrins. »Kids,« we agreed and I edged past the holding area on my way uptown.
    Two hundred feet further and I’d walked past a Hungarian restaurant, Serbian bookstore, Turkish candy shop, newsstand run by two Croatian women, Serbian shoe repair place, and at the corner of 80th and Broadway a grocery owned by a French Commie. I’d met him at a party Trish threw – she knew him of course. He’d been on the losing side of a party dispute involving ersatz Roquefort and had to skedaddle, but he hadn’t lost his principles in the free world; even named his place after the store he managed in Paris, Cheese Store Number Three, and made sure to be out of whatever cheese his customers wanted. New York tries on a new mask every ten years, but no neighbourhood in town had been put through