Of an Elephant
He watched me. His face seemed to fluctuate and become vague, to move far off and come back. I felt a tightness in my chest. My mind had slowed to a turtle's gallop.
"What's going on here?" I heard myself mumble.
I put my hands on the arms of the chair and pushed myself up. "Been dumb, haven't I?" I said with the cigarette still in my mouth and me still smoking it. Dumb was hardly the word. Have to coin a new word.
I was out of the chair and my feet were stuck in two barrels of cement. When I spoke my voice seemed to come through cottonwool.
I let go of the arms of the chair and reached for the cigarette. I missed it clean a couple of times, then got my hand around it. It didn't feel like a cigarette. It felt like the hind leg of an elephant. With sharp toenails. They stuck into my hand. I shook my hand and the elephant took his leg away.
A vague but enormously tall figure swung around in front of me and a mule kicked me in the chest. I sat down on the floor.
"A little potassium hydrocyanide," a voice said, over a transatlantic telephone. "Not fatal, not even dangerous. Merely relaxing...."
I started to get up off the floor. You ought to try it sometime. But have someone nail the floor down first. This one looped the loop. After a while it steadied a little. I settled for an angle of 45 degrees. I took hold of myself and started to go somewhere. There was a thing that might have been Napoleon's tomb on the horizon. That was a good enough objective. I started that way. My heart beat fast and thick and I was having trouble opening my lungs. Like being winded after football. You think your breath will never come back. Never, never, never.
Then it wasn't Napoleon's tomb any more. It was a raft on a swell. There was a man on it. I'd seen him somewhere. Nice fellow. We'd got on fine. I started towards him and hit a wall with my shoulder. That spun me around. I started clawing for something to hold on to. There was nothing but the carpet. How did I get down there? No use asking. It's a secret. every time you ask a question they just push the floor in your face. Okay, I started to crawl along the carpet. I was on what formerly had been my hands and knees. No sensation proved it. I crawled towards a dark wooden wall. Or it could have been black marble. Napoleon's tomb again. What did I ever do to Napolean? What for should he keep shoving his tomb at me?
"Need a drink of water," I said.
I listened for the echo. Nobody said anything. Maybe I didn't say it. Maybe it was just an idea I thought better of. Potassium cyanide. That's a couple of long words to be worrying about when you're crawling through tunnels. Nothing fatal, he said. Okay, this is just fun. What you might call semi-fatal. Phillip Marlowe, 38, a private license operator of shady reputation, was apprehended by police last night while crawling through the Ballona storm drain with a grand piano on his back. Questioned at the University Heights police station Marlowe declared he was taking the piano to the Maharajah of Coot-Berar. Asked why he was wearing spurs Marlowe declared that a client's confidence was sacred. Marlowe is being held for investigation. Chief Hornside said police were not yet ready to say more. Asked if the piano was in tune Chief Hornside declared that he had played the Minute Waltz in thirty-five seconds and so far as he could tell there were no strings in the piano. He intimated that something else was. A complete statement to the press will be made within twelve hours, Chief Hornside said abruptly. Speculation is rife that Marlowe was attempting to dispose of a body.
A face swam towards me out of the darkness . I changed direction and started for the face. But it was too late in the afternoon. The sun was setting. It was getting dark rapidly. There was no face. There was no wall, no desk. Then there was no floor. There was nothing at all.
I wasn't even there.
I was going to tell silly little stories about taking three weeks to walk down the hall from the living room to the back bedroom after eating grass brownies, or forgetting how to use the stove after smoking opium, or becoming paralyzed after smoking hash oil or, under the influence of something, plunging to my death out a first story window that was two feet off the ground. Forget it. He did it all, and before us.