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The Summer of Love – and the end of the world. Haight-Asbury, San Francisco, August 5, 1967. Five hippies form a band they call Rock ‘n’ Roll Universe. All they want to do is get high, make love, make music – and get on the cover of the Rolling Stone. But when they encounter a Very Strange Fellow in the Golden Gate Park, very strange things happen, and mind-boggling forces propel the group into a cosmic battle for the very fate of the universe. Rock ‘n’ roll made them. And only rock ‘n’ roll can save them.

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Rock `n' Roll Universe

by

Ken Rand

1

As soon as he saw him among the heads and chicks lining up for Digger's lunch in the Panhandle that sunny Saturday morning - August 5, 1967, the waning days of the Summer of Love - Twitchie thought of the guy as A Very Strange Fellow. Twitchie had pocket-picking in mind when he saw him, tall, stoop-shouldered and toothpick thin, an Army surplus backpack in one hand, the straps dragging in the grass by his dirty bare feet. The backpack looked bulky, the top flap half open. As he sidled into line behind the guy to size him up, Twitchie glimpsed the fellow's eyes as the fellow looked around. Something about those eyes. Twitchie re-treated from the pick-pocketing idea as an inner voice whispered caution.

The guy wasn't a narc. Too skinny. Narcs could be skinny, but not like this guy. Skeletal. He needed a meal. In his brief glimpse, Twitchie saw in the guy's bleary, sad eyes a look he'd seen more than once; patient desperation, a bum waiting for a handout, for food. Several men in the line had that look of stoic patience edged with genuine hunger, with sadness. Bums got that look, and Twitchie thought there might have been a time or two when he'd had it himself in the six months since he left Huntsville for San Fran-cisco and the Haight-Ashbury scene.

Leaves and grass tangled in the odd fellow's beard and shoul-der-length dirt-brown hair as if he'd slept in the park. And his eyes. Bloodshot and red-rimmed. Bum eyes.

Or he was stoned, the way he swayed, a droopy-lidded rub-ber-boned effort to keep the world from slipping away from under his knobby bare toes, and no narc ever got that glassy-eyed, at least while on duty.

The VSF wore dirty jeans, beltless, and a wrinkled red flannel shirt. No buttons, no feathers, no bells, no patches. No commer-cial-hippie folderol some narc might have thought he needed to add to his ensemble to blend in. Just a tired bum.

Just a tall, dirty, tired, stoned guy among thousands - hell, maybe tens of thousands - gathered in the Golden Gate Park Panhan-dle for Digger lunch and along the streets up and down the Haight-Ashbury district, getting high, grooving, enjoying the cloud-less sunny weekend.

Tourists cruised Oak and Fell Street, gawking, taking pictures, safe in their Buicks. Or on the Gray Lines Bus Tour.

The VSF was no tourist either. Twitchie checked his fingernails when the guy went to lift the backpack onto his bony shoulder and shuffle forward in the food line. Dirty, ragged. No, this guy didn't come from the burbs to gawk or slum. Like narcs, tourist had clean fingernails.

Twitchie chuckled, remembering one narc who wore black socks with sandals. He'd been laughed off the street.

"So, why hesitate?" he muttered aloud.

He added, "Shit" under his breath, to chide himself. Bad habit, thinking aloud, even when the air buzzed with enough noise to drown him out; the cacophonous but musical din of a hundred conver-sations, a dozen tinny transistor radios, a rock band gigging loud farther west and an impromptu drum circle heavy at it a hundred feet away. Especially when he had petty larceny in mind and some indefinable unease nagged him.

The band sounded like Moby Grape but they were too bassy, and Twitchie thought he heard chicks sing an off-key duet. Nah, not the Grape. He'd heard street talk; they'd play today, a freebie. He'd also heard Jimi and Janis would gig today in the park, together. Who knew?

On the tiny, tinny radios, Donovan, Country Joe, and Jefferson Airplane vied for bobbing heads and boogying feet with "Mellow Yellow," "Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine," and "Somebody to Love." Once that morning, he'd heard "Yellow Submarine" on two different radio stations at the same time.

Twitchie sighed and decided to cool his jets in view of that nag-ging feeling, maybe bypass this mark. Twitchie had gotten busted once, two months ago. That was enough. The Berkeley jail was no place to be even on a cold night, let alone on your eighteenth birthday.

He looked around through the milling crowd, disordered except for those in the food line and the group gathered around the drum circle, swaying and bouncing in rhythm. Mimi sat by a eucalyptus, toking up with four teenyboppers - two guys, two girls, all braces and acne and awkward, gawky giggles.

She gave Twitchie a clandestine glance. He did not return a sign: "I have a mark. Let's move." Still chewing on that sour taste of something amiss here. So she shrugged her smooth, sun-dappled shoul-ders, ample boobs jiggling under her halter-top, toked up, re-laxed, kept an eye on Twitchie, and waited. Mimi was a quick-thinker, and she'd be on the job when she needed to be.

A mild breeze fluttered the upper branches of the row of tall eucalyptus lining the park. The cooling breeze reached down to grunt level where it wafted intermittent scents welcome and not so; baked bread, cooked vegetables and meat, the sweet musk of pot and incense and the less frequent and less welcome rotten breath and body in need of a bath.

Twitchie had bathed that morning, with Mimi, as they did every Saturday morning, plenty of bubbles as usual - neither wanted to let body odor to intercede in their hobby this day. Bathing with Mimi. What fun.

Twitchie and Mimi enjoyed the occasional pocket-picking expedi-tion. A harmless hobby if done in moderation and carefully, and sometimes profitable. Twitchie learned not only was Mimi a quick-thinker, but she shared his uncanny sense of knowing when a bust loomed. When they'd first met, two days after Twitchie got to town in April, they'd discovered they had a mutual hobby, not count-ing screwing. They'd met at a concert in the park, had sized each other up as potential marks, realized what the other was doing, laughed, got high, and fell in love. So they teamed up. They were good together.

Picking pockets beat working. For income, they peddled The Berkeley Barb once a week, Friday mornings, and afternoons if necessary, on the steps of the Alameda County Courthouse across the Bay. It helped meet their rent for the pad on the corner of Page and Lyon they shared with the twins and Harold. Peddling the Barb didn't count as work either.

Twitchie's mouth watered again at the stew meat scent drifted his way on a steam cloud from a huge iron caldron behind the Dig-gers' serving table and he inched forward in the line behind the VSF. They'd skipped breakfast in favor of a longer soak in the tub and lacking much in the cupboard anyway. Dinner - Mimi called it lunch, her Beverly Hills childhood showing, and she called "sup-per" dinner - was **three minutes away; the line moved past the tables where Diggers volunteers served up free bowls of stew, bread, and apples. After you got your plate and bowl, you passed a paper cup under the spigot of a big pot of apple cider, hot, sharp, and spicy. Ahhh.

Twitchie's stomach growled and he tasted papery dryness on his tongue and again regretted not having at least something for break-fast, but one economized if one wanted to be free. Or if one wanted to soak an extra hour in the tub with Mimi.

Mimi was probably hungry too but she didn't show it as Twitchie did, and she didn't need to stand in line. She could butt in any time. Just bob those tits under her thin halter-top, rub those mar-ble-sized nipples up against some dude, and flutter those eyelashes and say, "pretty please" and she could crash any line she wanted to. She could see he was casing the VSF. She'd be there when and if.

He had seconds now, as the food line moved forward another few inches, to decide if he wanted to make a grab for the Very Strange Fellow's backpack, or some of its contents; grabbing the whole thing was out of the question. It was too big and too heavy; besides, Twitchie and Mimi were pickpockets, not purse-snatchers.

So, whatever unease Twitchie felt had to be faced down, fast or the opportunity would pass, and he and Mimi might spend the rest of the day looking for a suitable victim. It could be a long day, or he could cash in Right Now, right here, if he could get past his annoy-ing unease.

The VSF shuffled forward another notch, dragging the backpack along, loose-armed. He stumbled, or stubbed a toe, rather, in the stiff, trampled grass by the long table behind which Digger volun-teers labored selflessly feeding the poor as the Diggers of old did.

The VSF muttered something unintelligible as he looked down at the obstacle. Not a dog turd, but a well-chewed apple core; a few apple cores lay here and there in the park because today's Dig-ger-scrounged fixings included apples. Not all of the apple remains made it into the overflowing and battered green-and-rust-colored fifty-gallon trash barrels scattered all over the park, too few and far between.

The VSF kicked the soggy offender away with his bare toe, back still to Twitchie. A gull, alert to snatch scraps and dodge dancing feet, dived in, beaked the prize, and rose before he got trampled. Many dogs roamed the park, all kinds, which meant dog shit so you had to watch your step. The VSF hadn't been watching, but it was just an apple.

As the VSF kicked the apple core away, something, a small something jiggled from his backpack. A toothpick-thin joint. It fell to the ground; Twitchie gave a signal to Mimi, and went to work.

The joint cut through Twitchie's foggy unease like a chili fart. Where there's fire, he decided, there must be smoke.

"Excuse me," Twitchie repeated to the VSF a bit louder, and tapped his shoulder for emphasis. The guy hadn't heard with all the music, and people chattering. He turned at the shoulder tap and gave Twitchie a bleary, unfocused look.

Weird eyes, Twitchie noted, and bad breath. He'd checked them before, those eyes. Weird, yes, Twitchie concluded, but how weird - or rather, weird how, eluded him. He didn't have time to ask some-thing like, "What's wrong with your eyes?" The take was about to go down and Mimi was in motion.

"Eh," the Very Strange Fellow might have said, but his lips didn't move under the unkempt mustache and Twitchie didn't hear it well anyway.

Well, the lips did move, but they looked as if they were being pried apart with toothpicks from the inside. Another Weirdity. But no time to figure.

Twitchie could have just taken the joint and walked away; the VSF hadn't noticed he'd lost it, but that wasn't sporting - and he had to have more, didn't he? So Twitchie tapped him on the shoul-der, drew him into the game. To just walk away, not play the game, would have been unfair to Mimi who was on her way to join in.

"You dropped this." Twitchie smiled, held out the joint between forefinger and thumb, still wondering about the dead fish eyes, as Mimi stepped in for her part - she'd been thirty feet away when Twitchie gave her the "Let's go to work!" signal. She was lithe and quick when the need arose. The VSF looked at the joint and blinked grimy lids at it and at Twitchie.

"Oh." His eyebrows rose, a comical look, like in a "Laugh-In" sketch, and he reached out to take it.

This is when Mimi did her part.

"Oops." Mimi feigned a stumble, bumping her bosom into the guy's shoulder, hesitating there, giggling and fluttering her eye-lashes, and touching him, just a little, just a hint, casual, and another giggle, this time more throaty, for emphasis. The VSF twisted to get a better gander down Mimi's halter-top, bumping into Twitchie as he did so. His eyebrows raised another notch and his eyes bugged. No doubt his blood pressure rose, and likely his dick, as intended, so he didn't perceive the take go down.

"Gotta go." Twitchie turned and walked away.

When Twitchie spoke, the VSF turned glazed fish eyes from Mimi to him for a second. Mimi did her deft, snatchy bit, then said, "Gotta go," smiled pretty, and left. It all happened in the blink of an eye, normal or fishy.

As Twitchie turned to leave, the VSF gave him a bony-armed pat on the back, buddy-buddy. Odd, that.

Mimi brushed past the VSF, leaving boob skid marks on his side, and the VSF followed Mimi's ass as she swayed away, blend-ing into the crowd headed toward Oak. Mimi overtook and joined Twitchie a few steps later. When the VSF got around to noticing his dope was gone, the culprits would be long gone.

"Got it?" Twitchie asked, as they crossed Oak and headed east. The street was crowded.

"It's safe." She squeezed Twitchie's arm and leaned into him so he could look down her halter-top and see a fat lid lodged between her melons. He reached over to give her a squeeze, she slapped his hand away and pinched him on the butt, and they both squealed.

It was a nice day.

They went home to get high.

They got to the apartment door before Twitchie realized his wallet was gone. Somebody had picked his pocket.

2

Twitchie patted his pockets, fore and aft. "Damn." He dug his hands into each one, starting from the front left where he usually kept his wallet and working clockwise around his skinny hips.

"What?" Mimi said, alarmed.

Twitchie took off his glasses, buffed them on his shirttail, put them back on, and repeated the search counter-clockwise. He looked on the floor in front of the apartment door, then he walked back toward the narrow stairway to the street below, scanning.

"Damn," he muttered, eyes probing the stairs.

"Ringo," Mimi called after him, demand in her voice, and con-cern. She followed. He ignored her.

"Talk to me - Henry." Mimi called him Henry when she got peeved.

Henry Starkey took a lot of ribbing in high school because he shared a common last name with Richard Starkey, the Beatles' drum-mer. They called him Ringo when he was with his high school band, the Ladybugs.

"Damn."

"Henry Starkey, will you -"

The Ladybugs fell apart after school because the other members weren't as dedicated as Ringo to being rock `n' roll stars. Henry Starkey intended to appear on the cover of Rolling Stone.

"Damn," he said. They stood on the corner of Page and Lyon, not as much traffic here as closer to the Haight, and no wallet.

"Henry -"

"I lost my wallet," Twitchie confessed, a moan.

His parents pressured him to get a "real job" after he graduated, so he did to keep their nagging to a minimum. Several times. He futzed around in dead-end gigs washing dishes at A&W, frying potatoes at McDonald's, dropping in and out of Calhoun Commu-nity College, doing solo gigs as he could get them, trying and failing to raise another band, and protesting against the war in his spare time. Finally, bored, he said to hell with it and hitchhiked to San Francisco in the spring of 1967.

"Lost your wallet?"

His older sister Missy lived in Concord, not far from San Fran, where she sold cars for Sunset Ford, the company's only female car seller. They weren't close, Twitchie and Missy, but going out to visit sis did mollify his parents' concern about the venture.

All those hippies out there. You be careful. Wear a sweater, because they have fog. Keep your wallet in your front pocket, and don't talk to strangers. Keep a dime in your shoe in case you ever get stranded and need to call Missy. Or us. We love you, son. Write.

"Yeah, lost my -"

The real reason: If he was going to be a rock n' roll star and get his picture on the cover of Rolling Stone, he needed to be where the action was.

"Damn," Mimi said.

Immediately, he met and fell into the sack with - and in love with - Mimi Hollingsworth, tambourine and kickass vocals.

She called him Twitchie because he was ticklish. It stuck. Ringo was out and Twitchie was in.

Mimi had a sultry voice, not as gutty as Janis' or Tina's but not as flighty or fruity as Joan's or Judy's either. Something akin to Cher's but with more bottom, more range -

"Will you help me look for it? Please." He squeaked like a rup-tured accordion.

"You got a sexy voice," Twitchie said when he first heard her sing. They'd met at a park concert and discovered they had the same hobby; they'd caught each other trying to pick each other's pocket at the same time. They'd ended up in a pad on Castro Mimi shared with a gaggle of girls from La-La Land, the bunch in the early stage of creating an all-girl band to rival the Ace of Cups, those cuties from Mill Valley. The other girls were out for the night so Twitchie was in.

Bangity-bang, so to speak, a partnership was made on a stack of mattresses in the back bedroom, and sealed with a few hits from the ladies' communal bong. They went out before dawn and found some slumming frats still whooping it up in the park. They did well as a team. They hit the frats for a few wallets amid tangled, drunken bodies, and under the iffy park lights. A good take.

"So what if -" Mimi started.

"He could find us." Twitchie walked back up the stairs. Mimi followed.

Mimi picked up her things the next day, and left a note saying "bye." They moved into the Page and Lyon pad that afternoon, where they now stood, walletless.

"Find us?" Mimi retrieved the spare key from under the door-mat. "Reality Is For People Who Can't Handle Drugs," the mat read. "How could he - or anybody -"

"Our business cards." Twitchie followed her in and closed the door behind. "In my wallet."

Mimi's face went white. Business cards, with their address on them.

Not long after they got the pad, they began searching for the stuff to propel them on to the stage, front and center, at the Avalon and Fillmore, twin billing with the Doors, Grateful Dead, Buffalo Springfield, and Quicksilver Messenger Service, and onto the cover of the Rolling Stone. Robbie and Bobbie, he and she identical twins from Wyoming, rhythm and lead guitars and Righteous Broth-ers-like vocals, joined the band. Harold, huge and hairy, the drum-mer - and damn good - came the next day. They had their band.

Now, they needed a few rehearsals and a little luck.

They rehearsed in the pad, the corner apartment on the Victorian building's third floor. The landlady was cool, and mostly absent, and so were the neighbors. Once a week, on Wednesdays, they re-hearsed in a Congregational Church basement in Oakland in ex-change for playing at their monthly teen socials.

Twitchie and Mimi stood amid guitars and all their gear stacked around the drums in the cavernous living room with the high ceiling. They stood, stunned, contemplating the implications of losing their business cards - with their address on them - to somebody who they'd just ripped off. Amps, cords, guitars, sticks, tambourines, cases, and a jumble of drums and stands in one corner.

The band got gigs - armory, frat parties over in Contra Costa County, some with help from sister Missy, a few high school hops and battles of the bands. It got them money now and then, not a lot but enough to keep belly button and backbone apart. It helped keep them from having to take on real jobs - peddling the Barb and Twitchie's and Mimi's hobby also helped - so they had time to re-hearse, which was a good thing, because, while they weren't getting good-paying gigs, they were getting better.

They called themselves Rock `n' Roll Universe.

The band had a unique sound, not like Moby Grape or the Dead or other psychedelic bands. People tried to compare them to those other bands but it didn't work. Maybe that's why, Twitchie often mused, they got few reviews in the underground press, and why, when they did, the reviews were bad.

They were different. Twitchie and his chums felt being different was the key to fame and fortune and the cover of the Rolling Stone.

They'd gotten, within the past week or two, to the point where they could start to think about auditioning for the Fillmore. They'd done a club gig - the Tethered Goat, a beatnik beer and sandwich joint on 9th at Howard - where they'd heard a rumor that a record exec had scouted them from the back of the room.

Mimi's stepdad was an exec with Chronos Records. They were on the outs - Mimi had just turned eighteen, and she had run away to the City of Love days before she met Twitchie - so the band wasn't ready to send dad a tape. Yet.

But they were close.

This is why they'd splurged for business cards. They each car-ried a handful when they went out peddling the Barb, shopping or shop-lifting, soaking up rays in the park, trying to score some dope, going to concerts, checking out the band competition, or whatever. They gave everybody a card. Club owners, bartenders, fans or poten-tial fans, disc jockeys, record and music store owners and clerks - everybody and anybody associated with Bill Graham or the Fillmore or the Avalon or anything else musical - they gave everybody a card.

"Rock `n' Roll Universe," the card read in psychedelic Day-Glo print. The cards had cost, but it was an investment, not an expense. "Dig the Universe's Hottest New Rock `n' Roll!" the cards read.

And the address.

No phone. That would be unhip. Just the address. For Serious Inquiries Only.

"Maybe you left your wallet -"

"No." Twitchie shook his head, loose bangs sweeping bottle-cap glasses like the wipers on a `49 Ford. "I brought it with me." Sweat dripped from his nose. "I figured, y'know?" He shrugged.

"Yeah, I know." Mimi carried cards too when she went out be-cause you never knew. Had a little compartment sewn inside her pants, in front, so she could reach down and grab one, hey-presto. She'd seen Jerry Garcia a few days ago in front of the Dead House but couldn't get across the street to give him one - a card, that is - but it had been close. You never knew.

They searched the stairway again, the foyer, and the steps out-side from the sidewalk to the foyer. They looked in the gutter at the corner. Nothing.

"He didn't get your wallet, Twitchie."

"If he picked my pocket -"

"We picked his pocket."

"I didn't drop it, Mimi. And if I didn't drop it -"

"Okay, okay." If Twitchie hadn't dropped it, somebody had picked his pocket. If the VSF had done it, he had Twitchie's busi-ness cards and their address. And he was weird.

"I wonder if he has friends as weird as him," Twitchie muttered. He clenched his teeth, as if about to get hit, and his jaw hurt. He shook his head to loosen tight muscles, and Mimi gave him a shoul-der rub. It helped, a little.

They stood on the corner, looking back toward the park where the traffic noise didn't blunt the cacophony of music. The party never ended.

"Maybe I'm just paranoid." Twitchie said.

"Yeah, sure." They both scanned the street for a head bob-bing above the crowd, the VSF.

They scanned for cops. "We should go back inside," Mimi said and she tugged on Twitchie's arm. A bath would be nice.

"Yeah, let's," came a voice from behind them. They jumped. It was Harold.

"Sorry," Harold said. "Didn't mean to scare you."

"Whatever."

Harold's face went serious under his massive black beard and he looked around for eavesdroppers, then he whispered, "Did you guys score?"

3

"When in doubt, get high."

The twins usually split the phrase, one starting it, the other finish-ing. Now, when one twin started it and other band members were there, they all finished it. Then they got high.

This is what they prepared to do now, Twitchie, Mimi, and Harold. Sometimes, getting high was a place they went just to relax after a hard day loafing. Sometimes, things got so weird in the real world that getting high was the only way to cope. Sometimes constricted and stifled synapses got loosened and cosmic insight oc-curred spontaneously. Later, when sober, those brilliant insights often proved to be bullshit.

Mimi lit sandalwood-scented candles around the room - one on the box seat by the window overlooking Page Street, another on the narrow ledge above the fake fireplace, and two on the small brick-and-board bookcase by the kitchen. Harold cleaned out the communal water pipe, fulfilling his self-imposed role as group house-keeper, as he listened to Twitchie tell his story about the Very Strange Fellow. Mimi helped in the narrative.

Harold didn't look at the baggie Mimi tossed onto the battered Salvation Army brand coffee table until they'd all settled. Besides a couple of old pillows, they had no other furniture. A large, multi-colored oval rag rug, also Salvation Army, covered the floor.

Curtains and windows were closed; the apartment was warm and comfortable. But the pervasive hum, rumble, and roar of city life, punctuated with a siren here, a horn honk there, and the con-stant tinny radios drifting in and out, seeped through the cracks. James Brown competed with Paul Butterfield.

"Wow," Harold said as they finished the story.

He nodded as he ran a pipe cleaner up one mouthpiece of the four-tube water pipe. Each three-foot-long rubber tube extended from the central bowl that could hold an ounce of pot. Under the bowl was a water reservoir. You made bubbles when you toked up. Blubblubblub. Supposed to get you higher. It gave Mimi the giggles. It sat on an ornate Persian wooden pedestal. Three feet high. Mimi had bought it at a yard sale in Walnut Creek.

Harold passed the pipe cleaner to Mimi who cleaned her mouth-piece with it.

"We can see weird stuff in the park any day." Mimi passed the cleaner to Twitchie.

"Like today," Twitchie added.

"If he comes," Harold said, "we exit the back way." They had discussed this "fire drill" many times. "Rendezvous at the church." The one in Oakland where they rehearsed.

"Sure." Mimi and Twitchie nodded. They gave a nervous glance at the locked door.

Harold's calmness helped alleviate Twitchie's twitchiness. Harold stood six-five, seven inches taller than Twitchie, had wrest-ler-huge arms, ox shoulders, and he dressed like a biker in motor-cycle boots, black leather jacket, and chains. Wiry black beard and shoulder-length black hair made him look bestial and demonic. When he wore sunglasses, and he always did except when he slept or bathed, you could see only the tip of his potato nose. You knew he was smiling if the hair on the lower half of his face tended up-ward at the cheeks.

Harold was a pussycat, introverted, generous, clean, and soft-spoken. He panhandled now and then, just an occasional hobby, and he often gave the change he got to bums who hung out at the library and along Market.

When the subject of the war came up, he became morose and silent. After a time, he'd go to Nob Hill, alone, at night, and slash tires. He carried a wicked-looking knife in a hip holster that he used for slicing oranges and apples and opening packages.

Harold vented an infrequent long-winded philosophical rant when he got high. Twitchie and the others liked to hear Harold; he had a deep mellow voice and a musical lilt to his narrative, however esoteric. Too bad that he couldn't sing worth shit.

"This Very Strange Fellow," Harold said as he opened the bag-gie and sniffed, "could be a government agent." He passed the bag-gie to Mimi, who sniffed the contents, like a wine connoisseur, grinned and passed the baggie to Twitchie. "A new breed, because we've gotten used to the regular narcs."

Twitchie inhaled the pungent fragrance of fresh pot.

"Ah." He passed the baggie back to Harold. "The government? You think they feds are getting smart? Sending a guy who looked like that?"

Harold started to take out a generous pinch of weed between his thick forefingers and thumb.

"Wait a sec," Twitchie said.

Harold did.

Twitchie smiled, did a magician flourish, and produced a joint in the air.

Mimi laughed like a kid at a balloon birthday party. "You snatched the joint?"

"I got nimble fingers too," Twitchie said.

"Ah," Harold said. "You got the baggie," he said to Mimi, "and you got this itty-bitty toothpick joint," he said to Twitchie.

Twitchie frowned at the put-down, tossed the joint onto the cof-fee table next to the baggie, and changed the subject. "Govern-ment agents don't roll this good."

"They're recruiting foreigners. Pakistani, Eastern European." Harold picked up the toothpick joint. Mimi put the baggie back be-tween her boobs. "People we don't recognize."

"Ah." Mimi nodded. "We see them as foreigners, not as narcs."

"Exactly." Harold put the joint between his lips. Mimi handed him a Bic from the little drawer in the table. "We get -" Harold had raised the Bic to his lips when they heard noises in the hallway and froze, listening. Not paranoid. Just cautious.

On the door, shave and a haircut tapped.

Twitchie sat closest to the door and he rose to check it out. He peeked through the peephole, and then undid the locks.

The twins came in, carrying large, full, grocery bags.

"We've been shopping, man," Robbie started.

"We got some -" Bobbie continued.

Then, just inside the door, they saw the water pipe on the coffee table.

"Cool," they said together.

They chattered non-stop as they often did, on their own natural high, thin and reedy folk, all knees and elbows. They never needed sleep, making up for Harold's laid-backness with their speedy, hy-per demeanor. They told their day's adventures as they put away the groceries in the cupboards in the tiny kitchen - spaghetti, oregano, stewed tomatoes, French bread, and a bottle of Thunderbird. Harold had promised to cook that night, and everybody liked his spag-hetti.

"So, you guys, like, scored - " Robbie.

"- in the park, huh?" Bobbie.

They sat together, cross-legged, knee-to-knee, as usual.

"Tell us about it, dudes," Robbie said.

Bobbie was Roberta and Robbie was Robert, the Underhills. He was four minutes older, both born on a wintry night in October 1948 at Sweetwater Memorial Hospital in Rock Springs, Wyoming. Odd ducks from the start, rock `n' roll and the advent of the Summer of Love saved them from dreary exile in a too-tiny town.

"Yeah, do tell," Bobbie echoed.

Bobbie was gay. Soon after they met Mimi and Twitchie, she made moves on Mimi. Robbie, bisexual, made moves on Twitchie. Both rejected the advances but not with rancor. They all had a good laugh when they got it sorted out, as if in a sitcom with Marlo Tho-mas, and ended up fast friends.

Music bonded the group like duct tape. The twins had the voices of angels, and when they sang, Twitchie and Mimi took support roles, awed as they listened to the pair. Their incredible talent might have been a blow to a lesser ego, but Twitchie and Mimi un-ders-tood. They complemented each other well, everybody in the band.

When Mimi stepped up to do a ballsy Janis-ish tune, everybody stepped back and let her shine.

Behind them, Harold's inexhaustible machinegun drumbeat kept it all grounded. A team. Rock `n' Roll Universe.

"Wow," they'd say after a good rehearsal or gig. As excitable as the twins got and as prone to gabbing for entertainment sake alone, "Wow" was often all they needed to say.

"We got this." Mimi pulled out the lid from between her boobs and passed it to the twins, who sniffed appreciatively.

"Wow," Robbie said.

"And that." Twitchie nodded at the toothpick joint stuck in Harold's beard.

"Wow," Bobbie said.

"I got my wallet lifted," Twitchie admitted.

"Wow," the twins said together.

"Tell the story again," Harold said.

As Mimi and Twitchie told their story, Harold touched a Bic to the toothpick and inhaled. He held his breath, and passed the lighter and joint to the twins.

They toked up and passed Bic and joint to Mimi. They had a ritual. Even where each sat around the table was part of it, a familiar, family thing. No shoes. Knees touching. Cleaning the pipe with a pipe cleaner. Passing the Bic, whether for a joint, water pipe, or bong. They all agreed ritual helped the high.

"These new foreign narcs," Mimi said, "supposed to fool us?" She toked up and Harold nodded and exhaled blue smoke. She handed the lighter and joint, now a third gone, to Twitchie.

"Even more trouble, then." Twitchie toked up and handed joint and Bic to Harold.

"Unless I'm full of shit." Harold grinned; you could tell he grinned by the way his whiskers shifted up on his cheeks.

Twitchie lost it at Harold's sudden shift, expelled a violent gust of smoke, coughed, throat raw, and laughed.

"The man," Bobbie said, taking the Bic and joint from Harold, and Robbie finished "cannot hold his smoke." The twins giggled.

Harold started laugh-coughing too.

Mimi grabbed the Bic and joint, now burned down to half its original length, from Bobbie. She started laughing too.

"Hey," Harold said. "This is righteous weed."

That's when Twitchie saw something at the window. A shadow played against the half-drawn, plain, taffy-brown shade.

"What's that?" he said, still giggling.

Mimi turned to look, as did Harold and the twins, at a vague round shadow, a small, milky cloud.

It was a clear day.

The shadow moved, became more distinct as if pressed against the window outside, three stories above Page Street.

It made a rubbery creaky sound, like a balloon rubbing against glass.

In the window, a face looked in under the blinds. The face had beady, sad, red-rimmed, ball bearing eyes.

The Very Strange Fellow.

4

Twitchie rose and strode to the window. Halfway there he thought he should head toward the back stairs and the panic rendezvous point across the Bay, the Congregational Church in Oakl-and, or anywhere else. He should run away, not toward. The alarm system that warned him when he'd cased the Very Strange Fellow failed him now as his feet moved forward, and his legs pro-pelled his body this way instead of that.

A step away from the window, he wondered if the unease he'd felt an instant before he decided to pick the guy's backpack related to his missing wallet -

No, wait. He felt that feeling the minute he discovered the wallet was gone. So what was he feeling now?

Nothing. Zip. Doodly squat.

His internal danger alarm had shut down, and he pictured a little green-skinned gremlin sneaking into his head, cackling with manic glee, and sticking a wad of Double-Bubble Gum between the alarm bell and the clapper so the clapper couldn't hit the bell. The little clapper whacked at the bell, like in a Roadrunner cartoon, but noth-ing happened.

He knew he should be scared - as he reached to grab the shade and lift it up so he could see better - but he didn't feel scared.

He'd think about it - later.

"Yeah. Later."

But now -

He grabbed the cord to raise the shade, at knee level now so he couldn't see the shadow-thing a few inches away and below him. The shade slipped from his sweaty fingers and the coiled ratchet thing jerked up, flappityflappityflap. There hovered the Very Strange Fellow's head, inches away from Twitchie, looking at him. The head blinked sad little red-rimmed, ball bearing eyes, a bewil-dered look on the long, scraggly-bearded face.

Twitchie yelled and stumbled back from the face looking in the window - bobbing there, a balloon with no body attached.

No body.

The alarm bell tried to sound, but it didn't engage.

Twitchie stumbled back from the face and fell when the back of his wobbly knees hit the coffee table. He fell over backwards across the low table and windmilled one arm to steady himself, the other hand clutching his glasses. He knocked over the water pipe. It clat-tered to the floor, and Twitchie fell off the table onto his butt.

For a second, Twitchie thought he might have fallen on some-body, or smacked them with his flailing arm, might have hurt some-body, but no. Nobody was in the apartment.

Everybody had been scared and they'd all fled out the back way as soon as they saw the bodiless head in the window. They were now, no doubt, half way to the church in Oakland.

Twitchie didn't remember hearing his roomies scream, run, or slam the back door to the alley stairs. The front door, he saw, was still locked from the inside.

He had heard a scream. His.

Heart racing, Twitchie looked back at the window. Nothing there. He went to the window again and looked out. A yellow bal-loon on a string caught on a telephone wire across the street fluttered in a mild breeze.

The gum wad between the clapper and the alarm bell gave way, popped out his ear and clattered across the floor like a marble. He heard sirens, loud. A police car passed, its rooftop bubblegum lights flashed Kool-Aid green, green, green, heading west on Page.

Twitchie straightened up and shook his head, the alarm bell making him dizzy. It took him a second, which time lag he blamed on the righteous weed he'd just toked - just one toke, imagine - to decide the police cruiser lights should have been - what?

"Red? Yes, red. Definitely not green."

He looked out the window again at the cop car; four horses at full gallop pulled it. It still had minty green lights on top, and its siren wailed...

The cop car siren wailed not the warbly "here-come-da-pigs" announcement, but rather like a Moog synthesizer with a backbeat under it - a version of "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag."

The yellow balloon on the telephone wire across the street bobbed in time with the siren tune, and it smiled.

Twitchie stood away from the window again, sighed, inhaling window-wash ammonia, pot, and sandalwood-scented candles.

The pot caused these hallucinations - only one toke. That, quoth the lizard, and nothing more. Twitchie had done dope, all kinds, but he'd never freaked out.

The band had a rule. You get disoriented, freaked out, or scared, you head for the church. Hunker down, and wait for rescue.

Twitchie hallucinated, as he never had before, no doubt from the weird pot he and his buddies had just toked. The thing to do was to head for the church across the Bay and wait till he came down.

Besides, everybody else had gone so he'd go too.

Outside, the James Brown siren faded under a distant bassy rhythm, catchy but indistinct, from a band in the Panhandle. Sounded familiar. Moby Grape?

Which thought comforted Twitchie; while part of his mind halluci-nated like a VW bus full of day-trippers, another part was still rational enough to remember things he'd heard this morning.

Twitchie went to the back door, just past the kitchen at the end of a short, narrow hallway, to lock it. He suspected his roomies had not locked it when they'd fled the terror peeking at them through their third-story apartment window, had not even closed it.

The door was locked.

From the inside.

He turned and walked - if gravity had decided to make a sudden U-turn, he was ready - into the living room where he paused, righted the water pipe, and put it on the coffee table. It was okay. Where was the baggie?

He found the baggie under the coffee table where he'd knocked it after he fell, or where Mimi had dropped it before she ran out the back door.

Locked. From the inside.

Twitchie put the baggie in the coffee table drawer, added the inch-long toothpick stub he found on the table too, and went to the front door.

Locked, from the inside.

Why not? He'd locked it.

From outside, the bassy rock `n' roll beat from the park reached in, still indistinct but familiar.

Twitchie wiped sweat off his forehead under his bangs, undid the locks, stepped into the hallway, turned, and walked, as if through a minefield, down the hallway to the stairs. The light was as before - well, before - and nothing else Alice in Wonderlandish occurred as he walked, one hand on the stair rail, to the street.

Twitchie focused on his footing as he descended, concerned he might slip and fall, but more concerned he might see something that didn't make sense. Like Very Strange Fellow heads in the air, or four-horse police cars with green lights and soul-boogie sirens, or grinning balloons.

When he got to the sidewalk, he found it was still a nice day - mid-afternoon. A cool ocean breeze had risen from the west.

The breeze also blew the soap bubble family around.

"Mashwa de freen." The father soap bubble smiled and doffed his hat to Twitchie as he ushered his charges - wife bubble on his soapy arm, two toddler bubbles, and a baby bubble in a soap bubble baby buggy papa pushed.

"Sorry," Twitchie said to the papa bubble.

"Billish fwops."

Heads and freaks, narcs and teenyboppers, dealers and dopers, tourists and townies, checking out the Haight-Ashbury scene, taking in the sights, having a good time on a nice late-summer weekend. Besides several soap bubble families, a dwarf blue buffalo herd chatted in French on the opposite street corner, all wearing orange galoshes, and a gaggle of well-dressed green geese, win-dow-shopping at Uncle Donald's Used Ducks and Swans store half a block down Page, and kangaroos in business suits taking each other's pictures. The Gray Lines bus eased by, its many crustacean legs churned carefully to avoid the rattlesnakes shaking tails in boo-gie rhythm, dancing a conga across the street.

Of course.

Twitchie sighed. "I guess I'm not in Kansas anymore."

Or maybe he was, given the cornstalks atop a Volkswagen bus waiting for the light at the corner to change to pink. The Volkswa-gen ate from a giant box of Screaming Yellow Zonkers, sharing from the box with a sunflower stalk in a miniskirt also waiting for the light to change.

Twitchie wondered if he'd be able to make it to Oakland.

He wondered if, in this hallucination, there was an Oakland.

He started out, determined, focused on one rational thought - go there. It was something to hold on to as the world shifted under him - the sidewalk had grown peach fuzz, it smelled peachy and felt furry under his bare feet, and a lavender lamb grazed on fuzz in the gutter where it grew inches thick.

Who knew what the Bay Bridge would be like?

Twitchie headed north. He'd hitchhike at Oak across from the park, and walk east as he did so.

At Lyon and Oak, across from the Panhandle, the crowd thick-ened, jammed elbow to appendage. A concert was going on, Twitchie saw over bobbing heads, horns, antlers, hats, antenna, hel-mets, and other cranial accouterments. Not Grape, Janis, Jimi, or the Dead.

Different.

But familiar.

The din of blue buffalos bantering, soap bubbles bobbing by, licorice lions, tinsel tigers, and boogying bears faded under the rising tones from the band wailing eighty yards west and across the park closer to Fell Street.

The surging crowd of people, animals, objects, and animated - things - pressed Twitchie across the foot-deep, orange Jell-O-filled moat when the light changed - from tangerine to itchy-scratchy - to the park proper - if you could call anything "proper" anymore - where he listened. Fascinated.

He glimpsed the band over bobbing heads and things, four mem-bers, on an ordinary raised stage, with ordinary amps. They faced west; he couldn't see them well but he could hear well enough.

"Wow."

The sound - rock `n' roll, but not quite. More like - what?

"What's that sound?" Twitchie asked a trash can-sized French's mustard jar next to him, shouting over the band and crowd noise.

"What?" the jar responded before it changed into a collie.

"Never mind," Twitchie said, but not loud enough for the winged goldfish to hear. It didn't matter.

The sound was - different, distinctive, incredible, fantastic, unprece-dented, fantabulous, wonderful, different -

"Hell, I'm repeating myself."

But somehow familiar.

Twitchie had to have that sound, had to take it back to the band when he came down. He had to remember it so he could reproduce it again.

This was it, he decided.

"This is it," he muttered.

It.

"It?" a butterfly as big as a sombrero lid fluttered by his left shoulder said, buzzing, smelling rootbeery.

"Yeah," Twitchie told the butterfly, who wore a flashing neon Hubert Humphrey button. "It, with a capital I."

"Wow," George Washington said, eating the butterfly.

"Yeah," a lobster agreed, nodding its two heads. "Like, groovy, man."

Across the park, Twitchie thought he saw Harold. But it was only a flying purple people-eater.

5

Stoned and without a watch, Twitchie had no idea how much time had passed since he started listening, really listening, trying to remember what he heard, to break it down so he could relate it to his pards when he came down. It might have only been minutes but the sound was so - entrancing - it might have been hours.

Twitchie moved here and there in the crowd, as congestion and traffic flow and whim allowed or dictated, listening to the band from several angles. He got close to the stage and found the group looked and acted like any other rock `n' roll band, which may have helped explain his nagging sense of something familiar.

One guy, who looked like Robbie, all knobby elbows and knees, played lead guitar, and a frantic, hoe-down fiddle on one tune, and sang. Not English, not any language Twitchie recognized, but every-body and everything in the audience dug it.

A drummer kept the beat, almost as good as Harold, Twitchie thought, and gave a sweaty, hair-and-arm flailing solo that got the crowd cavorting and cheering.

Two others. A guy on bass and a girl who sang pretty fair, and did tambourines and mouth harp and harmonica. Cute, but not as cute as Mimi. Human. Maybe.

Once or twice, Twitchie thought he saw Harold in the crowd. He even thought he saw Robbie, but it was the Puff the Magic Dragon eating an ice cream cone.

The sun, in this hallucination, didn't seem inclined to set soon.

In time, Twitchie felt sure he'd got it. The sound. He could share it with his pards back in reality.

If he ever got back to reality.

He made his way to the edge of the park where it was a bit less congested. He crossed Oak at Masonic and walked eastward down the far side of Oak, walked a block past Lyon, thinking, toying with resuming his journey to Oakland, but decided against, at least with-out checking at the apartment.

So he circled back and approached the pad from the east.

Walking west on Page, half a block from the pad, things started getting back to normal. People stopped changing into zoo animals. The buffalo changed into hippies. Soap bubbles stopped talking and turned into ordinary soap bubbles. The yellow balloon still tied to the wire across the street from the pad was a yellow balloon, not a smiling head; and it didn't bob to the police sirens, now only sirens, and streetlights were green and red, not sugary and fuzzy.

It was late afternoon, the sun behind wispy clouds to the west.

He stopped in front of his pad, and looked up and down Page. Ordinary traffic, cars, and people. Ordinary sound too. A band in the park, playing indistinct rock `n' roll, but not the Grape or the Dead or anybody he recognized. Different, but -

Twitchie shook his head. He took off his glasses, wiped them on his shirttail, wiped sweat off his brow, shook his bangs aside, and walked up the stairs.

The key was under the mat, where it was supposed to be. He hadn't taken it with him when he went out.

Hadn't taken his wallet either. The Very Strange Fellow had stolen it - he'd had his pocket picked, goddam it.

The VSF: Twitchie hadn't seen him or sensed him in the park after he went out to hallucinate. The music had so entranced Twitchie that he'd forgotten about the VSF.

Twitchie pressed his ear to the door and heard familiar voices. His buddies. No need to hitchhike to Oakland. Besides, he had come down, back to reality.

He tried the doorknob - locked - then tapped out shave and a haircut - and waited.

Chains and locks rattled, the door opened, and Mimi was there. She gave a squeal, jumped into his arms, pressing firm boobs into his bony chest and kissing him full and wet on the lips. He squeezed Mimi's butt and tried to disengage himself from her clutch but he didn't try too hard. She felt warm and fleshy. Real.

"Where have you been, man?" Mimi's voice rose to an uncharacte-ristic squeak as she pulled him inside.

"Yeah, did you see -" Bobbie joined in as Harold locked the door.

"- the cool band in the park?" Robbie continued.

The twins danced as if they had to pee.

"- all those strange things and -"

"- there was this bubble family -"

"- and blue buffalo showed me a cool dance -"

"- a toaster peddling the Watchtower -"

"- the band and the sound, man -"

"- what a groovy sound -"

"- like us but different, you dig?"

Twitchie broke in, "Like us?"

The babbling stopped and the band looked excited, waiting for Twitchie to get it.

That was what felt so familiar about the band. "Like us?"

"Yeah," Harold said. "It took a while before I got it, but -"

"You were in the park?" Twitchie said, head reeling.

"Yeah. And Mimi, and the twins."

"I thought I saw you," Twitchie said, "but you turned into a poodle with mud flaps."

"Yeah, dig it, and I thought -" Robbie started.

"- I saw you," Bobbie continued, "but you turned into -"

"- Donald Duck."

"Wait a minute," Twitchie demanded. "Just. Wait. A. Goddam. Minute."

They waited.

"Let's sit." Twitchie's try for calm cut into the electric excite-ment in the room, but only a little.

"Like us," Twitchie said. "Sounded like us -"

"The `us' we're trying to be." Harold nodded. "Close but still `out there.' That's why it took me so long to get it."

"It was that joint," Mimi said.

Twitchie saw it now, the lid they'd stolen from the Very Strange Fellow on the coffee table, like some trinket displayed for parlor visitors to admire, like in the old days when people called on one another for social visits.

Oh, my, so you have a lid of super-hallucinatory cannabis? How lovely. Did you have any, um, super-hallucinatory experiences with it? Please do tell me all about it.

The roach was in the coffee table drawer.

"So," Twitchie said, "you guys had the same trip. And that," he nodded baggieward, "is what done it." He sighed and went to the bathroom to take a leak.

When he got back, his pards were in an animated discussion.

"- government stuff they mixed in a secret lab to break up the revolution -"

"- heard Timothy Leary cooked up some new shit that makes acid look like banana peels -"

"- we could smuggle this into the water coolers at city hall -"

"Wait a minute," Twitchie said, trying to calm everybody down - to calm himself down. "Let's mellow out, okay? We've all had a hard day -"

"Right on to that," the twins said.

"- and we need to think about -"

"Yeah, we -" Mimi said.

"- to think," Twitchie raised his voice, just a little, to get their attention. It worked. They listened.

"So, we meet this Very Strange Fellow in the park, snatch a lid and a joint. It's pot, but not your ordinary cannabis sativa. It's - different, right?"

Nods.

"In one toke - of this -" again, he nodded at the dope, "- we're all not just hallucinating, but having the same hallucination. Any-body heard of that?"

Silence.

Harold grunted. "The government says `mass hallucinations' explains UFOs, but that's bullshit."

"And the music," Mimi said. "Did we all dig the same sound?"

"Yeah, and we all -" Bobbie.

"- all got high on it -" Robbie.

"- so we could come back here and -"

"- share it with you all."

"Let's try it." Twitchie picked up his bass. In a second, he nod-ded his head to an internal beat, as he got it, and picked out the tune.

Harold and the others gathered their gear and joined in. Soon, they all played the same tune, a tune they'd heard the hallucinated band play in the hallucinated park. The audience had demanded an encore, so they'd heard it twice.

Mimi tapped her tambourine rapa-tapa-tapa on her thigh, bob-bing her head and shaking her assets as Bobbie hit a screaming riff. She hit the end note, stretched it out and under, Harold gave a snare riff, and Mimi came in on cue, did a sexy, gutsy solo harmonica ditty and gave it back to Twitchie who came in with a fluttery bass riff that would have made Jack Bruce green with envy.

They played the intricate instrumental through and ended with a complex drum sequence and dramatic cymbal crash exclamation, all as if they'd rehearsed it for days.

They stood, silent, sweaty, not daring to breathe. Awed by what they'd done.

Outside, a siren wailed somewhere in the city, a normal siren. A horn honked. A normal horn.

"Wow," Bobbie and Robbie whispered together.

"Did we get it right?" Mimi said.

"We got it," Harold said. "But what have we got?"

"That was us, man," Twitchie said. "Rock `n' Roll Universe. What we been after."

6

They talked into the night, none of them sleepy or horny. They talked about the Very Strange Fellow and the VSF weed and the trip band and that sound and what to do about it.

"This is what we've been trying to get to," Twitchie said. "That's why it sounded familiar."

"Yeah, man," Bobbie and Robbie said.

"They're already there."

Dim yellow light from sandalwood-scented candles flickered and soft shadows danced on the high walls. Beyond the drawn shades, the world turned as usual in its late night rhythm.

Twitchie sat up. "We need more."

"We should go back?" Mimi sat up.

"Get more sound?" Bobbie and Robbie said.

The group punctuated their thoughts with grunts, head nods, and "hmms."

"We're all fagged," Harold said. "We can't do it tonight."

"In the morning." Twitchie said. "Robbie and Bobbie, you go back with your tape recorder and tape the band -"

"Cool, man."

The twins had a cheap, portable, battery-operated, reel-to-reel tape recorder to tape rehearsals. It was bulky, made in Japan, the speakers tiny and the sound tinny, but it would do. They'd get it all.

"- and me and Mimi, we'll stay on this side of reality and see if you can find out where that Very Strange Fellow got off to."

"I don't know if -" Mimi started, tone apprehensive.

"It makes sense," Harold interrupted. "You two know what this guy looks like. We don't."

"Except what we saw in the window," Robbie said.

"And that was just the head -"

"- and just a glimpse."

"Be careful," Harold said, "if he's a narc. From the way you described how he acted, he might be an `it,' a robot or android."

"We'll be careful," Twitchie said.

"What will you do?" Mimi asked Harold.

"I'm going undercover."

"Huh?" Bobbie and Robbie asked.

Harold looked left and right, as if there might be creepy ani-mated balloon heads, android hippies, giant mustard jars, or intelli-gent soap bubbles spying on them, before he leaned forward.

"When we leave the apartment," he whispered, "we'll make noise, let anybody spying on us know we're out. You go about your business. Me, I'll go incognito, sneak back, and case the pad from across the street, see if anybody tries to break in, or see if we've been staked out. I'll be inconspicuous." He scratched his beard.

Mimi looked awed, her jaw dropped. "Shave?"

"A sacrifice, but I think it's worth it." He shrugged again. "If this guy is bad news. Haircut too. Maybe."

Harold's friends gasped.

Harold didn't discuss his past. He said he came from Port Chicago, a little town up the bay, outside Concord. He didn't seem to have relatives. They suspected he'd been in Vietnam, but he wouldn't say. He got angry about the war, silent angry, shoulders hunched and fists bunched. He'd brood, silent; then he'd go off alone to slash tires on Nob Hill. Then he'd be all right for a while.

"We'll rendezvous at the church in Oakland," Twitchie said, "at, say, six o'clock tomorrow."

"What about that?" Mimi nodded at the VSF dope.

Twitchie put the baggie in the coffee table drawer. "Harold will be outside."

Harold nodded.

Twitchie and Mimi described the VSF for Harold and the twins in case they saw him. They ironed out details, checked the batte-ries and tape in the recorder. Robbie and Bobbie stashed extra tape and extra size-D Ray-o-Vacs in the recorder case. They were ready.

They planned to sleep, get up, and eat a good meal - they had a busy day ahead. Robbie and Bobbie would toke up at nine and they'd all leave together.

"What about long-range effects of that stuff?" Mimi asked.

"We're prepared -" Bobbie said.

"- to take that risk," Robbie said.

Like Twitchie, and many heads, the twins had popped a pill or two offered by strangers on the street or at a concert or in the park, rationalizing they'd more likely get mugged than get a bad dose.

They decided to leave fast, even as the twins still held their breaths with smoke, not sure if the twins might disappear before their eyes. They had no idea how anybody might react to it, or how it might affect their missions, or how it might affect the VSF, if the VSF watched, wired into the weed's effect through some ESP link or - or whatever.

"Hell," Twitchie said, "none of us knows what's going on."

7

Twitchie and Mimi dropped onto their mattress bed and tried to sleep, both still wound up, hyper but not horny. When Mimi nudged Twitchie awake, he felt as if he'd hardly slept at all.

"You slept five hours," she assured him. "It's past nine. The twins are showering."

Bobbie and Robbie had showered together for seventeen years, a leftover from growing up in a big family and living in a singlewide trailer, dirt poor. Maybe somewhere on earth, somebody thought it weird that teen-aged twin brother and sister would shower together, but not here and not the twins and not Harold or Twitchie or Mimi. The twins' hygienic rituals didn't merit comment or notice.

"Where's Harold?" Twitchie rubbed sleep-caked eyes, yawned, and scratched his balls. He didn't wear underwear. Didn't own under-wear.

"Making pancakes."

Twitchie's stomach growled. He pulled on jeans - he owned two pair - and a shirt, the short-sleeved Hawaiian, not too wrinkled. Laundry day was Sunday afternoon, and this was - what? Sunday morning? Laundry later today, then.

Maybe.

"Gonna be a long day," he muttered as Mimi gave him a bear hug.

"Nookie tonight," she promised as she kissed him, tonguey but brief. "Even if we have to do it in the road."

They followed coffee, fresh pancakes and Karo Syrup odors into the living room. Harold added the last four palm-sized cakes to a pile on a plate on the coffee table next to a pan of steaming syrup and a plate with a margarine stick on it. Plates and forks already in place.

Twitchie poured himself a cup of coffee in the kitchen, sugared it, grunted hello to Harold and took the mug into the living room.

As he sat and started to eat, Mimi at his side, the twins appeared from the bathroom and joined in. They wore white towels around their hips and towels over their wet hair like turbans. Harold contin-ued to putter in the kitchen for a minute before he sat and ate.

Presently, Harold rose to take away dirty dishes. Twitchie and Mimi went off to brush their teeth and Bobbie and Robbie got dressed. They all swapped places, bathroom to kitchen to living room to bedrooms - the twins had one bedroom, Twitchie and Mimi had the other, and Harold slept in the big used-to-be-pantry off the kitchen, his feet sticking into the hallway - as they did their morning ritual cleaning and puttering.

Harold finished first and sat cross-legged at the table. He tapped out an air drum solo on his knees.

The group came to order, morning ritual done. Mimi opened the coffee table drawer to get out the lid.

"Let's finish the joint," Twitchie said. "We're almost out of papers."

Mimi shrugged, put the baggie back in the coffee table drawer. She took out the inch-long toothpick roach and a Bic.

"Papers," Harold said. "It's on my shop-lifting list."

Mimi handed the roach to Bobbie who put it between her lips, looked cross-eyed at it, and nodded to Mimi, who flicked the Bic and held the flame to the roach tip.

Bobbie inhaled, held her breath, cheeks and eyes bulgy, and passed the roach to Robbie.

Robbie took a hit, nodded, breath held, snuffed out the roach's coal between spit-dampened thumb and forefinger, dropped the roach into the drawer, and closed it. They headed for the door.

The twins had already put the recorder by the front door. Bobbie grabbed it as they left and Harold locked up.

In the hallway, Twitchie led the troops down the stairs, Mimi and the twins followed - the twins exhaled smoke at the same time, with a whoosh - and motorcycle-boot thumping Harold brought up the rear.

When Twitchie stepped on to the sidewalk, blinking into the bright morning sun reflecting off the apartment across the street, he turned to Mimi. "I think we should split up. I'll go -"

"Where are the twins?" Harold said.

The twins were gone.

So was the street.

Not pavement. Jell-O. About a foot deep, in which swam tat-tooed goldfish. Wearing propeller beanies.

8

"I didn't see them go." Mimi's voice rose and quaked. "Where would they go?"

"To the park." Twitchie's voice squeaked too. He moved aside to let a soap bubble family pass.

Twitchie, Mimi, and Harold clutched each other as if for protec-tion from the animated, circusy Dali landscape. Before they'd opened the door, the street had been your basic, ordinary Page and Lyon in the Haight of Summer of Love, 1967 San Francisco, U-S-A, but not anymore.

Soap bubbles, blue buffalo, aardvarks, animated garbage cans dancing congas, a Winnebago chatting at a Crackerjack stoplight with a pink Ford Econoline van with a German accent and a cigar clutched between radiator and bumper. The goldfish playing hockey and the hairy balloons and -

"Does anybody recognize this?" Harold said, loud, nervous.

"The blue buffalo," Twitchie said.

"Soap bubbles," Mimi added.

No entity in the circus noticed the three.

"I saw that jar of mustard." Twitchie pointed to the roller-skating jar. "French's."

"Yeah," Harold said, "Me too, talked with him. Her. It."

"At least the sky is blue," Mimi said, "and the air is breathable."

"Weird smells though." Twitchie sniffed. "Candy cane. Broom-stick. Harmonica."

"This looks like yesterday," Mimi said. "Same hallucination."

"We're back," Twitchie said. "The twins just got a head start. I'll bet they're in the park." He tipped his chin northward.

"I don't hear any music," Harold said. Bubbles bubbling, Volkswa-gens kissing, two-headed cows grazing on rubber parking meters, and carp in a bathtub Rambler singing a Christmas carol, yes, but not rock `n' roll music from the park two blocks away.

"Maybe they're on a break," Mimi said.

"Maybe so," Harold said. "It looks more crowded over there." Harold had seven inches over Twitchie; he looked northward toward the park.

"Do you see the Very Strange Fellow?" Twitchie asked. Harold's beard smelled soapy, good old familiar soap. Harold and Mimi refused to change shape, or sound different. Solid to the touch. Twitchie clutched both so hard it must hurt them, and Mimi clutched him and Harold just as hard, as if afraid that the sidewalk would open and gobble them down any second. He released his clutch on Harold's big arm. Harold didn't notice, or if he did, he understood and made no comment.

Mimi released her clutch on Twitchie, leaving marks.

"Uhn-uhn," Harold said. "I don't see the twins either."

"Let's go as planned," Twitchie said. "The twins may not know we're here. They'll get tape and head for Oakland. If we don't show up there, they'll be freaked."

"If there's a there to show up at," Harold said.

"We'll split up." Twitchie gave a decisive nod. "Me and Mimi'll go look for the VSF guy; you change into your disguise and hang out here. Try for the church tonight. If Oakland is still there. If not - well, come back to the apartment."

"If we see Robbie and Bobbie?" Mimi asked.

"Leave the twins to their work," Twitchie said. "They'll concen-trate on taping and they won't notice us."

Harold turned and walked away. "Have fun," he said over his shoulder. "But be careful."

Twitchie and Mimi wormed through the crowd toward the park. Music, something more coherent than the radio and street corner or doorway jam and drum session, started to float through the carnival air. Somebody tuning their bass, a few riffs on a kettle and snare drum, and a ragged electric guitar riff topped it off, but distant, indis-tinct, and muffled.

Twitchie stepped around a candy-striped fire hydrant in a top hat selling the San Francisco Oracle.

The foot and hoof traffic thickened on the sidewalk and spilled into the "street" as they reached Oak and Lyon, across from the Panhandle. There, Twitchie and Mimi decided to split up. Mimi would cross to Fell and walk west on the sidewalk opposite the park, while Twitchie would walk west on Oak. They'd rendezvous at Stanyon Street, the east entrance to the main park grounds.

Back home in Twitchie's reality, a pleasant collegiate-looking fellow would appear at a cozy little shrub-lined grassy arena a few dozen steps west of the park entrance. He appeared most every week-end, stood on a plastic milk carton, and talked through a bull-horn, the kind they used at protest rallies. The guy just chatted. No routine, not agenda, no hype, no rant. Just chat, for hours. Whatever he wanted to talk about, and people would lie on blankets or on the grass and listen.

Sometimes dialogue occurred. People would ask him questions and he'd answer, and a general discussion might follow. Sometimes somebody among his listeners - never more than a dozen at any one time - would take his bullhorn and rap for a few minutes, but he did mostly monologue.

Twitchie and Mimi had often sat listening to the guy - Ashleigh Bril-liant, that was his name.

"We'll rendezvous there," Twitchie said, and Mimi agreed. Since at least the general structure of San Francisco - the streets, their names, and so on - seemed the same in this hallucination, so far - at least they could fix on the site, and get started.

They set out on their search for the Very Strange Fellow.

It took Twitchie almost an hour to reach the glen in the park; the street was crowded, and an interesting hallucination distracted him - an octopus sat on the stoop blowing a two-headed saxophone. Pass-ers-by tossed coins - ordinary, American money - into a hat. Helmet. World War One, German, the kind with the spike on top.

Double-headed sax. Gutsy, bluesy, African.

For the seven blocks between Lyon and Stanyon, the band's gutty bass and lead guitar high notes, way east now in the Panhan-dle, bounced off the walls flanking the streets. Twitchie couldn't hear the sound well, except to note that it was indeed the one he'd heard in the previous hallucination and the one his band sought.

He hoped the twins got it down.

He scanned street and Panhandle as he moved along but didn't see the VSF.

When he got to Stanyon, the crowds had dissipated. Many people - and many things - drifted into the park, leaving the Haight-Ashbury Mardi Gras atmosphere behind for the deeper park tranquility. Even here, in this hallucinated Wild Kingdom, Twitchie sensed a semi-arbitrary DMZ - the line between the vast Golden Gate Park interior proper and the Haight. Tourists turned back east at Stanyon to resume touring Haight, but locals wandered, unim-pressed with the Haight, thank you, into the park, on your basic weekend family outing.

Twitchie sensed the difference between locals and tourists in this hallucination, just as he could in the real world. As he sauntered through the lessened crowd toward the glen just inside the park, he tried to spot narcs, a habit.

The talking straight, straight-talking guy wasn't there, nor was his milk carton, which, if it was there, meant he was off on a pee break and would be back in a minute. Still, people lounged around the small, bowl-like grassy arena.

People. Things.

If there was a hallucinatory talking guy here, Twitchie didn't see him. And, he congratulated himself, he hadn't panicked. Yet.

Mimi hadn't arrived yet, but Twitchie hadn't expected to see her because she had a longer route down Fell.

A soap bubble family played on a blanket. The family - a papa bubble, a mama, and twins five years old and a baby - all sat on or bobbed above a blanket. Baby brother giggled along with his sibl-ings as they tossed and caught him.

Twitchie wondered how he knew the twin bubble's ages, and how he knew it was baby brother the bubble family tossed like a featherweight beach ball. He wondered, but not much. In the past hour, he'd encountered things that might have freaked out anybody and he'd been okay. Don't push it, he told himself.

But he toyed with the idea of pushing his mental panic button anyway because it might feel good to scream. As he did so, the an-tenna that kept him from getting busted when we went pick pocket-ing told him the papa bubble was a narc. Along with that knowledge came the feeling that he had no need to fear. He eased off his mental panic button. Curiosity won.

The bubbles were as translucent as your basic, ordinary soap bubbles, but they talked like any picnicker family. They changed sizes now and then, from goose-egg-sized to volleyball-sized as they floated and fluttered over and on their spread-out blanket. The family occasionally dipped into a punchbowl of brackish, frothy water, giggling. The bowl was the family lunch; the bubbles dipped in it to refresh their thin skins.

Just your basic, normal, ordinary bubble family.

Whose papa was a narc.

Papa bubble toted no gun in his sock or behind his back. He didn't have clean fingernails, or black socks, or clean underwear or phony-hip accouterments or a badge in his wallet. Hell, the bubble family had no arms to toss their kids with or mouths to giggle with - yet they tossed and giggled. Just your average soap bubble family, three kids, picnicking in the park on a groovy weekend.

An ocean breeze had crept in to cool things down, and Twitchie was pleased to know an ocean was there.

"Are soap bubble narcs different than real narcs?" he wondered aloud.

This time, he didn't bother to curse himself for talking aloud. Instead, he drifted over toward the soap bubble family, a casual smile, relaxed.

As he got closer, the mama bubble noticed.

"Flibbly dippity doop," she said, smiling.

"I'm sorry," Twitchie said. "I don't speak Soap Bubbleish."

The soap bubble papa reinforced mama's words, adding "Dipplop-pity flob," and the twins looked up and smiled, giggling. They gestured for him to sit. Twitchie sat on the grass - ordinary grass - next to their blanket, and joined in.

9

Twitchie sat cross-legged, juggling the twins and the baby in the air, when Mimi showed up.

"Twitchie," she said, from behind him, "what are you doing?"

Twitchie stopped juggling - he didn't drop the kids, but he knew, since he'd played with them a while, even if he did, they wouldn't burst, as a reality soap bubbles might. He laid them on the blanket, where they floated over to the soapy-water bowl, and re-dipped themselves and floated over to mama for soapy hugs.

Mimi stood between Twitchie and the near-noon sun. Not until then had he thought to wonder how much time had passed since he'd sat down to play with the narc soap bubble and his family.

He patted the grass next to him. "Join us."

Mimi sat, and made greeting gestures to the Bubbles, Ma and Pa. They nodded and smiled back, chattering in what sounded like Vietnamese to Twitchie.

"Getting along, are we?" Mimi asked Twitchie.

"Yeah. This is -" he pointed to papa Bubble, and hesitated. "I don't know their names, because they speak Bubblish. They're friendly. Even if papa Bubble is a narc."

"A narc?"

"Yeah, he's -"

"How can you tell?"

Twitchie shrugged, blinked, took off his glasses - the twins had earlier become fascinated with his glasses and they started chittering now, begging him to let them wear the glasses again.

"I can tell. Like I can tell that, even if he's a narc, we don't have to worry."

He surrendered his glasses to the twins. "See?" The twins tum-bled about on the blanket, giggling as they tussled over the glasses. Mama and Papa tossed baby between them like a puffy beach ball, watching. They smiled and chittered in Bubblish, gesturing and pointing at Mimi and Twitchie.

"I see," Mimi said, "and I hear, but they don't have mouths or voice boxes or -"

"You want logic in a hallucination?" Twitchie asked.

"So, did you see anything?" Mimi asked.

"Saw hide nor hair, so to speak. You?"

"No, but I did see the twins - our twins, I mean." The Bubble twins floated in mid-air, bouncing off each other like slow motion bumper cars. "They're getting tape."

"Okay." Twitchie picked up the discarded glasses and put them on. "We should go."

"We'll go back down Haight. You take the north side, I'll walk the south."

"Meet at the apartment."

Twitchie looked at the Bubble family. "Well, folks. It's been fun." He started to stand, but Papa Bubble frowned - Twitchie had gotten used to detecting facial expressions on soap bubbles who had no faces - and babbled something that sounded like concern. "Gob-ble de freole?" which was maybe, "Do you have to go? We were having fun," in Mandarin.

Mimi rose to her knees and offered an apologetic smile to Mama Bubble, who also chattered in Bubblish, "Flippoppity bloop," which probably meant: "Oh, please stay and play some more."

"Sorry, guys," Twitchie said, on his knees, "but we have this mission. It could be dangerous." He frowned, serious-faced, to rein-force his point. "Maybe a government conspiracy or drug lords. CIA, FBI, Republicans, who knows."

The faceless Bubble's facial expressions grew more concerned.

Mimi stood, smiled to the Bubbles, holding Twitchie's hand, while Twitchie remained on his knees, trying to disengage from his hosts. He felt awkward, as if he'd done something that, in Bubblish culture, might be impolite. The Bubbles had been nice to him; he felt compelled to be nice back.

"Frumpish fry-tie diddlyshit," Papa Bubble said, and mama nod-ded and added, "Diddlyshit," frowning.

"We have people depending on us," Twitchie said. "Harold and the twins. Civilization itself."

Blank expressions on faceless faces.

"Look, you're a narc, even if you aren't a bad narc, which is weird, but what isn't weird today?" He gestured at the people and things - blue buffalo, flying pigs, hot dogs selling singing popcorn, four-legged mustard jars, furry fishsticks, and monkeys on bicycles built for two.

"Well, never mind. You're a narc, so you dig. Duty."

Twitchie sighed and stood; his attempts to mollify the sad family would not succeed past the language barrier. "We have to go."

The Bubbles rose to the feet they didn't have and bowed heads they didn't have.

Mimi looked across the glen eastward toward the park entrance. "Now," she said, "if I was a Very Strange Fellow, where would -"

Behind them, rapid-fire babbling Bubblish erupted, and they turned.

Papa Bubble, as big as a goose egg, expanded to softball-sized, bobbed over and hovered a foot from Mimi's nose and said, in Eng-lish but with a Bubblish accent: "Very Strange Fellow?"

"Whoa," Twitchie said, "you understood -"

Papa Bubble gestured and babbled at Mimi and Twitchie in high-pitched, rapid-fire Bubblish, interspersed with "Very Strange Fellow," and concern in his voice.

"Look, Papa," Twitchie began, "I don't know what - bloop."

Bloop.

The narc soap bubble shot into Twitchie's mouth at the "ah" of "what" and lodged there, with a soapy bloop sound, embedded be-tween Twitchie's upper and lower jaw.

"Mmph?" Twitchie said. Papa Bubble was inside his mind. It felt -

"What the hell -" Mimi said, more startled than frightened.

"I said," Twitchie spoke, not in his own voice at all, "please tell me what you know about the Very Strange Fellow." Twitchie's jaw worked around the words, and Papa Bubbles contracted and ex-panded as Twitchie's chin rose and fell as he spoke. It felt like chew-ing on a balloon. Papa Bubbles tasted lemony.

- having a soap bubble inside your mind. It felt -

Twitchie's jaw worked, vocal cords vibrated, but Papa Bubbles spoke through Twitchie's windpipe, manipulating his tongue, jaw, lips, teeth, and palate to say what Papa Bubbles wanted said.

Twitchie tried to respond, but could not. Papa Bubbles had his throat. He pantomimed as much to Mimi, who, startled, eyes a-pop, jaw-agape, took a few seconds to figure it out.

- it felt like -

- like falling into a bottomless pit, but before panic set in, the soap bubble inside his mind did - something - and he relaxed.

"We - we -" she started, but her mind and tongue weren't in the same groove. She stopped and took a deep breath and restarted. "Very Strange Fellow, yes. We're - we're looking for him, yes. What -"

"He's a wanted criminal," the soap bubble narc said through Twitchie's mouth, "and I was going to bust him right here."

In his mind, Twitchie sighed, resigned, and let the soap bubble take over.

"You may have blown my cover."

Suddenly, the bottom fell out of his mental bathtub and Twitchie's eyes went wide behind Coke bottle lenses. He blinked, eyebrows abob, and he waved his hands like somebody drown-ing.

-it felt -

"Twitchie, what's wrong?" Mimi clutched his flailing arm.

"Oh, no," Bubble said through Twitchie. "I think your Twitchie is going to -"

"Twitchie?" Mimi cried, clutching him, near hysteria herself.

It felt like falling.

Twitchie's arms flailed, he started to hyperventilate, he tried to speak. Then -

- then he vanished.

10

Startled, dizzy, Twitchie took a step back. He bumped into the coffee table behind him, his knees buckled and he toppled back-wards -

- onto Mimi.

"Hey, watch it, bub." She'd been sitting on the coffee table edge and he'd knocked her off when he fell over the table, along with the water pipe. They sprawled on the floor, tangled legs and arms, and the table tipped on its side.

"Wuuuffft -" Twitchie started to say as Mimi pushed him away.

Nobody hurt.

Papa Bubble still lodged in Twitchie's mouth like a bubblegum bubble ready to burst.

Twitchie sat up, wide-eyed, and said, "Where are we? Are we in your reality?"

As if outside himself, watched over his own shoulder, Twitchie observed the soap bubble in his mind do its soothing control thing again, his vertigo eased, and Twitchie surrendered to the seductive mental bubble bath.

"Twitchie?" On her knees, Mimi extended a finger toward the bubble in his mouth.

Twitchie batted her hand away. "Please don't touch. I don't expect I might burst, after Twitchie played with Molly and Bally, and little Bob, but I'm a bit freaked out."

"Yeah, yeah." Mimi took deep breaths to take the edge off what looked to Twitchie like her own panic attack starting. Twitchie felt semi-relaxed but he had the feeling that Papa Bubble teetered on the verge of panic too. Papa Bubbles used Twitchie's lungs to breathe.

"My name is Sam Bubbles." Twitchie shrugged as he listened to himself talk to himself.

"I understand your unease, Twitchie," Sam said. "Please under-stand this is how we may communicate. We need to talk. We have problems. Big problems."

Twitchie righted the coffee table and Mimi put the water pipe back on it. He sat, cross-legged on the floor. Mimi joined him, fac-ing him, holding his hands in her lap.

"As you guessed, Twitchie, I'm a narc. I'm Sam Bubbles, Inspec-tor First Class, Federal Dimensional Border Patrol. As you also guessed, I am no threat to you."

"Call me `Sam.' "

"Sam," Mimi said, "Uh, what brings you -"

"Ah." Twitchie held up a finger. "The Very Strange Fellow. You see, he is the most dangerous criminal of all time. When I heard you say the name -"

"How did you understand the words?"

"Because, my dear Mimi," Twitchie said, voice lowered, "in this or any reality, Very Strange Fellow translates with the same nega-tive psychic and spiritual connotations."

Mimi frowned for a second, deep in thought. "So this Very Strange Fellow we call him VSF - is a bad guy."

"The worst. I was waiting to catch him. I think you blew my cover. But now -"

Twitchie looked around the room as if seeing it for the first time. "So, this is your reality?"

"We keep it clean," Mimi said, indignant. "Harold, our room-mate, he cleans. We help."

"You do have running water?"

"Sure, we - what are you doing?"

Twitchie walked to the kitchen and turned on the tap. He touched the water with a finger to check the temperature.

Then he grabbed a soap bottle and read, "Hm. `Lux Liquid Dis-hwashing Detergent. New & Improved. Lemony fresh.' Le-mony?"

"It's like -"

"Never mind. I got it from Twitchie's memory."

Twitchie unscrewed the cap from the bottle, tipped his head back and poured a dollop of detergent onto Sam's rounded surface, poking from Twitchie's open mouth. Twitchie felt Papa Soap Bub-ble shut down his gag reflex as it formed. He lowered the bottle, lowered his head, put the bottle back on the sink edge, tipped his head back up again, and gargled.

When he finished, he bent over the sink and spat residue around Sam.

"Ah, much better," Sam said, and Twitchie smiled around the pink bubble. "I feel like a new bubble." He wiped his chin.

"Right. About this VSF -"

"Ah, yes." He grabbed Mimi's hand and they returned to the living room and sat. "He is wanted in my reality - which is your hallucination - for escape from protective confinement. Our protec-tion, not his. He's a danger to everyone around him and can-not be allowed -"

"A danger to -?"

"Ah, too late." Sam's voice edged with pain, regret.

"What's too late?"

"He's here." Sam looked around the room through Twitchie's eyes. "So am I. Both bad." He padded to the window, parted the closed blinds, and looked out.

"Stop talking in riddles." Mimi pulled his arm and he turned to face her. "It's scary. I'm not stoned anymore -"

"Not good either."

"- so quit - bubbling - and speak English. What's going on?"

"I'll explain, but I don't think it'll -"

Bloop-bloop. Bubble-popping sound, times two, as from largish soap bubbles. Twitchie/Sam flinched.

And then, thumpity-thump. The twins appeared in the air from three feet above the kitchen floor and fell. They held the tape re-corder above them, as if crossing a river, to keep it from damage in their fall.

"Wow," they said in tandem.

11

The twins stood, dazed and shaken. They staggered into the living room, the tape recorder between them as if was the Crown Jewels, or the master of the Stones' "Got Live If You Want It" al-bum. They grinned.

The were so hyped over what they'd taped and they wanted to talk about it right now, but Twitchie and Mimi's dazed expressions and the bizarre bubble in Twitchie's mouth dampened their enthu-siasm and they lost their grins.

"It's the VSF cat -" Bobbie said. He laid the tape recorder down and sat.

"-isn't it?" Robbie continued. "You found him?"

"No," Mimi said, "but we did meet a nice soap bubble -"

"Pleased to meet you," Sam said.

"- who is a narc, but not our problem -"

"He's a -"

"- and he's after our VSF, who is -"

"- also your VSF, and a danger to us all," Sam finished. "It may be too late already."

"What do you mean?" Mimi asked. "Too late for what?"

"You shouldn't have gone to my reality." Sam said.

"This groovy music -" Bobbie and Robbie started, but Sam shushed them with Twitchie's raised finger.

"I shouldn't be in yours. The fabric of interdimensional integrity has been compromised."

"Okay," Bobbie said, "it sounds bad -"

"- but what are you talking about?" Robbie finished.

"Yeah," Mimi said. "Explain."

"When you said `Very Strange Fellow' in the park in my reality, I had to know what you knew, because we've been expecting him - the VSF - to appear so we could recapture him. We got a tip, the FDBP - that's the Federal Dimensional Border Patrol. My partners waited nearby to jump him -"

"What about your family?" Mimi asked. "Would your bust endan-ger them?"

"Nah." Sam waved Twitchie's hand. "They're trained in Joe Gin Gumbo, bubblish judo. They can handle themselves. Anyway, when you said `Very Strange Fellow,' I thought our cover might have been blown so I had to investigate."

"By diving into Twitchie's mouth?" Mimi asked.

"Nobody else is supposed to know about the Very Strange Fel-low. When I got in you - that's how we communicate interspe-cies, but I guess you do things differently in this dimension -"

"Back at you," the twins echoed.

"- but the point is I needed to find out what you knew about the VSF - a threat to us and to my family - to everything."

Twitchie sighed. "But." Then he paused, picking at a frazzled cuff on his jeans. "Twitchie blooped here. Surprised me. Why would I suspect you came from a different reality? It's not supposed to happen. As soon as I felt you were about to go interdimensional, with me in your mouth - it was too late. So here I am -"

"I think you missed -" Robbie began.

"- missed a few steps," Bobbie finished.

"What's the big deal?" Mimi said. "We went interdimensional. You did too." She shrugged. "So?"

"It's not supposed to happen. Didn't I say that? Yeah, I said that."

"Explain," Mimi said.

Sigh. "Dimensions are separate. You groove in your reality, I groove in mine, and no entity grooves between. Get it?"

"No." All.

"The barrier between dimensions has been breached. Your intru-sion into my reality proved it, as I observed in the park just before you blooped back here, with me along for the ride. Blooping back here, me with you, it complicates things. Not only did you guys go over to mine, but you've been into my reality twice. You all, not just Mimi and Twitchie. So - counting my passage back here - you coming back here, I mean, and my coming here once -"

"Skip the math," Mimi said, "and get to the point. You're start-ing to scare me."

"Starting?" the twins said.

"Don't you see?" Sam's voice cracked, and Twitchie pulled at his hair.

"No."

"Breach of inter-dimensional barriers! Destruction of all reality! The end of everything! Finis! Kaput!"

Twitchie's four friends sat still for a long moment before Sam spoke again.

"I must go back," he said.

"Go back?" the twins said.

"A breach has occurred. Your reality doesn't even know about the problem, let alone how to fix it. I'm not sure it can be fixed. I must go back."

"You'd go back," Mimi said, "how?"

"Toke the interdimensional substance, just as you did when you breached the barrier to come to my reality. I don't want to do it be-cause every unauthorized interdimensional transit widens the breach a little more - like a blanket frays with each wash - and if the breach gets too wide, the wall too thin to hold -"

"Well, what?" Mimi asked.

Sam shouted and Twitchie threw up his arms. "Didn't you hear me? Reality - the entire universe - gone. Ka-fucking-put. Got it?"

Mimi and the twins shook their heads, silent, awed by the out-burst.

Sam made Twitchie sigh. "I have to share this with the authori-ties in my reality. They must be warned. Maybe -"

"The Man?" Mimi.

"Well, do you know what to do?"

Blank looks.

"Thought not."

"B-but," Mimi stammered, "what about -"

"Oh, hell." Twitchie leaned over and kissed her on the mouth.

Sam popped from Twitchie's mouth - flop - and into Mimi's.

Mimi blinked, backed away from Twitchie, slapped his hand, crossed her eyes to look at the pink blob in her mouth. Twitchie sat back and blinked, shaking his head as if coming out of a trance. He sputtered at the lemony aftertaste.

"There," Sam said. Mimi's cheeks expanded and contracted around the pink bubble as Sam used her to talk. "Do you get it now, what's at stake here?"

"What the -" the twins began.

"Sam trades memories," Twitchie explained in his own voice. He massaged his jaw. It ached, as did his tongue and lips. "Mimi knows now what I do and almost as much as Sam does, about what's going down."

"Serious stuff, huh?" Bobbie said.

"It's the music, man," Twitchie said as much to himself as to Bobbie. "Who'd have thunk it? Rock `n' roll holds it all together. Not bluegrass or polka or country and western. Rock `n' roll, the music of the spheres, the heartbeat of the cosmos. Holds the walls between universes up, keeps them from spilling into each other. Play the wrong note and the walls come tumbling down. Man."

"Then maybe we should -" Robbie began, but Sam cut him off. Mimi leaned across the table and kissed Robbie. Sam flooped from Mimi, who sat back, blinking, gasping, startled - "What a rush," she said - and Robbie's eyes popped open and his jaw worked, bub-ble-full.

Robbie kissed his sister, Sam moved to Bobbie - flop - and everybody - got it.

They all remembered now what Sam remembered, what every entity in his dimension knew: Long, long ago, the Very Strange Fellow had created the universe and all its dimensions.

And the barriers between them: rock `n' roll. Not polka. Not bluegrass. No country and western. Rock `n' roll.

No two dimensions had the same rock `n' roll. The difference kept them separated.

There came a time that the VSF grew restless, as creators often do, and bored with his creation. So he decided to tear it all down and start over again -

"Wow," Robbie said.

- but the people of Sam Bubbles' dimension got wind of his scheme and schemed on their own. Through an intricate and clever subterfuge that would have been the envy of any god or goddess, they captured him and confined him -

"But the fucker broke out -" Twitchie said.

"- and he's here -" Sam said.

"- which means his plot to tear down the walls -" Mimi said.

"- is underway," Sam said.

"Can he be stopped?" Twitchie asked. "I mean, if he's, like, the creator -"

"He's not god," Sam said, "like you mean in your reality. After all, we did capture him and -"

"- but he escaped -" Twitchie said.

"Too late, too late," Sam said through Bobbie's mouth.

"And if he's here?" Twitchie felt odd using his own voice to express his own thoughts. "If the VSF plays his dimension's rock `n' roll on this side of reality -"

"And if that destroys reality as we know it -" Mimi continued the thought.

"- we'll never make it to the cover of the Rolling Stone, man," Robbie finished.

Mimi reached for the transdimensional lid in the coffee table drawer.

It wasn't there.

"No baggie." Mimi's voice quaked. "Twitchie, is this yours?" She held his wallet out.

Just then, from the bathroom - bloop. And crash. Harold had come back.

12

Twitchie, Mimi and the twins dashed into the narrow bathroom when they heard Harold bloop and crash. Harold swore and stood, dazed. Everyone crowded in, helping him stand. They all talked at once, except Bobbie who had a bubble in her mouth.

"- are you all right -"

"- where have you been -"

Harold looked around, eyes frantic, but he didn't look at the group around him, human and soap bubble. His eyes passed over them, inches above the tallest head, Twitchie's, and tried for the itty-bitty frosted window, and then the door to the living room. He grunted, pushed past his partners, and stomped out, bee-lined to the window, parted the blinds, and looked out.

The gang followed him, but kept their distance.

"What's up?" Twitchie asked.

Harold gasped, took a deep breath, let the blinds fall back into place, and sat back against the wall. "I think I got away from -" He pointed over his shoulder with a thumb. "From them."

"Them?" Robbie.

Harold nodded. He frowned. He took off his sunglasses and leaned forward. "Bobbie, why are you blowing bubbles?"

"Oh, this," Sam said, and Bobbie crossed her eyes to look at the soap bubble. "I'm Sam." Bobbie pointed at Sam. "This is Sam."

At Harold's baffled look, Bobbie sighed and kissed the big man somewhere in his beard. Twitchie wondered why Harold hadn't shaved after all. What happened to his plan?

Harold was startled at first, but in a second, he reached out, grabbed Bobbie by the back of her neck, and returned the kiss with soggy passion, pulling her off onto his lap. Then he let go, his eyes popped open, he said, "flloobh?" and Sam was in his mouth.

Bobbie scrambled to her knees, panting, after Harold dropped her as the narc soap bubble literally captured Harold's interest. The group bent over Harold/Sam. On his face indignation changed to perplexity, to horror, then to understanding, and back to horror and chagrin, back and forth like a streetlight on speed.

"Now do you get it?" Sam said.

Harold nodded. "Buffle doosh chee zhumng -"

"Shit," Sam said, and Harold kissed Twitchie, who squirmed, too late, beard-to-beard, and Sam transferred to his original host.

"Harold has news," Twitchie/Sam said. "It'll work better if I'm not between his tongue and lips."

The group sat, grim-faced, and Harold told his news.

"When I left you two," he began, nodding at Twitchie and Mimi, "after the twins disappeared, I headed to the gas station at Divisidero and Hayes. I planned to cut my hair with my jackknife and maybe do some damage to my beard, to disguise myself. Change clothes - off with the leather jacket and boots, hide them behind a dumpster. T-shirt, jeans, and barefoot, like any hippie."

Harold shrugged. "Then I planned to come back and watch the apartment and see if the VSF would show up. When I got a block away, I decided I didn't need to cut my hair after all. I'd passed a three-headed dog, more blue buffalo - the whole circus. I fit in.

"So I turned back. Then I saw a yellow balloon in front of the apartment. The balloon, it had longish, matted hair -"

"Sounds like our guy," Twitchie said.

"- casing the apartment. I snuck up on it, real close. Then I saw the VSF across the street. I almost bumped into him. Headless. Bare feet, backpack, scruffy shirt and old jeans, like you said?"

" Yep," Mimi said. "Our guy."

"The VSF crossed the street and the yellow balloon head moved away from the front window. It bobbed around the corner, up to-ward Haight."

"Head and body split up?" Twitchie asked.

"Yeah. I followed the head around to the alley and it started toward the back door. It deflated itself, slipped under the door, and re-inflated itself inside - I could see through the crack - and bobbed into the living room. The VSF banged on the front door waiting for its head to let it in.

"I broke the door down, so I could go in and - well, deal with it. Just as the door gave way, I saw them - it, he, whatever - go out the front. I ran after them, but I stopped as I saw the coffee table drawer was open."

Twitchie gasped, and so did his companions.

"Yeah." Harold nodded. "He took the baggie but he left the roach. Didn't see it, I guess. He left your wallet."

Twitchie held up the wallet.

"He didn't take anything else. I looked out the window and I saw him, head reattached, headed toward Haight. I went out the back, figured I'd nail him, but the street was crowded. Slowed me up, so I tailed him. He didn't see me. He crossed Buena Vista Park, crossed Market, and went into a bar. Moses Eisley's Canteen and Tattoo Emporium. Harleys parked out front. Roy Orbison on the jukebox. `Pretty Woman.' "

Everybody shuddered in sympathy with Harold.

Sam asked, through Twitchie, "Then what did you do?"

"I didn't want to, but I started to go in. I'd just crossed the street when - when -"

Harold turned and parted the blinds and peeked through the two-inch gap.

"Then what?" Mimi prompted.

"They came."

"They?"

Harold lowered the blinds. "Yeah. Guys came out of the bar."

"Guys?"

"Yeah. Guys. Nazi teddy bears armed with long Viking axes. They chased me. I ran into Buena Vista, then -" He shrugged. "I blooped and thumped. Here I am."

13

"The Very Strange Fellow is still at this place?" Sam asked.

Harold nodded. "With the Nazi teddy bears."

"In my reality, or yours?"

Shrug, and nervous glance at the blinds.

"There's a Moses Eisley's Canteen and Tattoo Emporium in our reality," Sam said. "Bad place."

"There's a San Francisco in both realities," Mimi said, "and a Haight-Ashbury -"

"So, are you saying -" Bobbie began.

"- that this VSF cat -" Robbie continued.

"- is here, in our reality?" they finished together.

Twitchie/Sam stood and paced. "The wall between dimensions is falling down."

"Those teddy bears could come here?" Harold's deep voice cracked.

**For a second, Twitchie dismissed Harold's concern. The second passed and Twitchie sensed some deep-rooted fear haunted Harold.

"We're screwed," Sam said, slumping. Then he straigh-tened. "No, wait. Twitchie has something to say." Twitchie kissed Mimi, passing Sam to her.

"Maybe we're not screwed," Twitchie said. "Somebody can go to this bar in both realities. Check it out. You, Sam, you go to your reality and check your bar. You guys," he nodded to the twins and Harold, "you go to our bar and -"

"Us?" the twins said.

"If you don't mind," Harold said, looking sheepish, "I'll stay home for a while, take a bath, read a little..." His voice trailed off and he glanced at the blinds but restrained himself from parting them. He shuddered.

"What's the use?" Sam moaned through Mimi.

"Don't give up," Twitchie said. "The VSF didn't get the roach." He knelt at the coffee table drawer. "So we have -" He held up the roach between forefinger and thumb.

"Damn," Sam/Mimi said.

The roach was a sliver, half an inch long. A single toke.

"Huh?" all echoed.

"That's not enough," Sam said, dejected. "That'll get me back to my reality." Mimi put the sliver-roach back into the little drawer and closed it. "But -"

Twitchie nodded. "Somebody will have to toke up and go with you because -"

"Because I don't have any fingers to hold the roach with," Sam/Mimi said. "Or light it with, or lips to hold it. Here, I'm just a bubble, unless I'm in somebody's mouth. Somebody would have to come with me back to my reality. Even if I find the VSF -"

"Could a person get stuck over there?" Twitchie finished. "Whoever's mouth you're in?"

Sam nodded Mimi's head and Twitchie remembered: Sam had a family.

Silence ensued and hung in the air like smoke from a bong on a lazy day.

"Here's what we should do." Twitchie said. "We check out this reality first since we're here now. If we find the VSF, we'll deal with it - somehow. Maybe no need to cross dimensions."

"Too late, too late," Sam said.

"We don't know that for sure," Twitchie said.

"Well, I can't help you," Sam shook Mimi's head. "If the VSF sees me in somebody's mouth -"

"Don't give up, man," Twitchie said.

"Can somebody run me a bath?" Sam said. "I'll just soak up and wait here."

"I'll do it," Harold said. "And I'll stay here and keep guard."

"You have to go with your people." Sam said. "Take them to the bar."

"Why?" Harold whined.

"Because somebody might have to go in," Mimi/Sam said, "and these others would attract too much attention."

Twitchie felt frustrated at Sam's defeatist attitude. The soap bubble narc was wrong. He knew it. There had to be something they could do to save the universe so they could get on the cover of the Rolling Stone. Had to be. He'd find it. Going to the bar, finding the VSF - it was a start.

But he saw Sam's point. The twins looked emaciated, like teeny-bopper pop star wannabes. They looked too much alike; they'd at-tract attention in a druggy bar-tattoo parlor. They'd get the shit kicked out of them.

Harold looked at Twitchie and snorted.

"What?" Twitchie's irritation refocused from Sam to Harold.

"You'd get creamed on general principles," Harold said. "And Mimi, well -"

"Tits?" Bobbie said.

"Pretty conspicuous," Robbie said.

"If you're going to do this," Sam said, "you'd better get going. I'll wait in the bathtub. You do have bubble bath?"

Harold ran a tub for Sam, loading it with half a bottle of Johnson & Johnson Baby Bath. Twitchie kneeled over the tub, splashing water to churn up more suds. Harold leaned on the bathroom door-jamb, shifted from foot to foot, wiping bubbles off his beard. Watch-ing Twitchie.

"What do we do if we find this VSF?" he asked. He sneezed.

"If you find him," Sam said, "I doubt you can do anything. But don't let him light up anyway."

The bathroom filled with steam and bubbles, and in a moment, Twitchie turned off the water.

"What if we, like -" Robbie began.

"- have trouble getting back?" Bobbie finished.

Sam shrugged Mimi's shoulders. "We'll fadoodle that barshook when we get to it."

"What about the tape?" the twins said.

"Right," Sam said. "We'll deal with that when you get back. Right now, it's better here than -" Mimi pointed over her shoulder at the street outside, "- out there."

Sam said, "Good luck." Then he blooped from Mimi's mouth, floated to the bubble pile spilling over the tub and onto the tiled floor, and settled in, one big bubble among many.

They left through the back door. Twitchie closed the door but the lock didn't engage because Harold had broken it. Even closed, the door looked as if a huge hippie had kicked it open.

The group clomped down the stairs to the alley and headed south on Lyon. They walked in a tight cluster, silent and grim.

Outside, it was a nice day, mid-afternoon, not too hot, a nice breeze. Sunny, normal.

Sirens wailed, a normal sound. Horns honked. Normal horns.

On the sidewalk, they passed hippies, cops, tourists - every color and kind. Except for a few dogs and one cockatoo on a guy's shoulder, all human. All normal.

14

"I want to get it straight," Twitchie said as the group stood in a tight huddle on the north side of Market at Castro, not on the side-walk but farther back in the park, under the shade of an old syca-more. Under another tree a few feet away, a white Richie Havens look-alike sat on the grass abusing an old six-string, bellowing out "Eleanor Rigby." Passers-by tossed coins into a battered, open gui-tar case.

"Go for it." Mimi said.

"Each reality has its own rock `n' roll," Twitchie said. "If their rock `n' roll ever happens in our reality, or ours in theirs, the wall comes down between the two and the realities mix up, until - until everything becomes nothing."

"We'll burn the tape -" Bobbie said.

"- when we get back to the pad, man." Robbie said.

"And the dope?" Twitchie continued. "Concentrated rock `n' roll? How do you concentrate rock `n' roll to smoke? I don't see that Sam knows how it gets done - look around in his memory - but who is doing it, I see that. Do you?"

They all nodded grim-faced. Twitchie smelled bubble bath and sweat among his friends. They searched their memories - Sam's memory, now theirs' too - and saw the truth.

"Goddam," Harold muttered. "Goddam."

"Tear it down," Twitchie muttered. "Start all over again. Talk about anarchy."

"Maybe Sam's right," Harold said. "Maybe it's too late to stop - whatever's going down."

"We can't just give up," Twitchie said. "That would be - irresponsi-ble."

They stood huddled together, across Market Street from Moses Eisley's Canteen and Tattoo Emporium, where a jukebox playing tinny Buck Owens' "Act Naturally" jostled with the white Richie Haven's gutty guitar. Twitchie had the feeling he and his crusaders were -

"Hesitating," he said.

"What?" Mimi said.

"Thinking aloud, again. We know what's at stake, but here we all stand -"

"It's my fault," Harold said. "It's those - teddy bears. I know I have to go in there and - well, do what has to be done."

"Nah," Twitchie said. "Anybody would hesitate. This is big."

"I have to go in." Harold bunched his fists and his shoulders hunched. "Me." He faced across the street. "My reality. Right or wrong, but my reality." Then he started out.

East-west traffic on Market was bumper-to-bumper as cars turned onto and off Castro. Harold had to wait for the light. His dread held him back and a feeling of responsibility - "my reality," he muttered - propelling him forward and he hopped from foot to foot as he waited. When the light changed, he charged across, a bear, fists bunched, hair bobbing as he jogged, toward the noisy bar where he'd seen the VSF - and ax-wielding Nazi teddy bears.

The band watched Harold dodge between chrome-flashy and leather-adorned Harleys parked at the curb and on the sidewalk. At the bar door, he looked over his shoulder at his friends, nodded, and pushed in. The door shut behind him.

Seconds passed. "Eleanor Rigby" changed to "Boots of Spanish Leather" and "Act Naturally" changed to "The Battle of New Or-leans."

Soon, Twitchie heard a sustained howl, a challenge or a charge, from a dozen voices inside the joint across the street. The group around him tensed.

The sound rose, and people on the sidewalk near the bar door glanced at it and hurried by. Twitchie imagined Percy Faith's Cho-rus and Orchestra on acid, melodic but insane.

And furry.

"Furry?" he said.

"Yeah," Mimi said, "Furry. Sounds like -"

The bar door burst open and slammed against the wall with a woody thunk, and Harold dashed out, running full speed. He leaped over a motorcycle without breaking stride, and ran straight into the street, not looking left or right, running all out.

"Furry -" the twins began, and finished: "Oh, shit," as, across the street, right on Harold's heels -

Wearing itty-bitty Nazi storm trooper uniforms with spiked World War One helmets, armed with long-handled, wicked Viking axes, and screaming like rebel soldiers, a teddy bear squadron chased a terrified Harold.

15

Harold got lucky. The light had changed and east-west traffic had started across the street, so he made a clean getaway. Traffic and irate drivers impeded the teddy bears' attempt to follow.

Harold hesitated a moment when he got near Twitchie and the others. "He's still in there," he shouted, "and he's got the back-pack." Then he ran north.

Pandemonium erupted again at the street corner as the teddy bears formed a flying wedge and dashed into traffic - horns blared, people cursed, and teddy bears howled in martial triumph as they jumped over car hoods and trunks, shaking their long-handled axes, heading after Harold -

- and, Twitchie realized with alarm, them too.

"They're after us, too," Bobbie and Robbie said, turning to run right behind Harold.

Twitchie and Mimi turned to run, murderous teddy bears on their heels.

The teddy bears had trouble negotiating the crowds, thicker on the north side of Buena Vista. The crowds on Haight caught on to the disturbance, cutting through their lazy-day revelry like a fart in church. Dense crowds parted to let the freaks run through but condensed in solid masses behind them to slow the teddy bears.

"Narcs!" somebody yelled.

Twitchie took it up; the cry had galvanized the crowds, mostly hippies. "Narcs!" he yelled.

The hippie crowds took it up and teddy bears started to stumble and fall, axes flying from their furry little grips and spiked helmets popping off their furry little heads. Guttural Germanic teddy bear and hippie curses rose and merged in a cacophonous tumult.

Twitchie and his mates ran through the crowd, across Haight. As they headed downhill on Lyon, Twitchie slowed to look back.

"Wait," he called out. They halted and re-gathered on the side-walk. Across Haight, hippies assaulted teddy bears who re-gathered in a tight circle, weapons aimed outwards at their taunters, who had circled them but kept a cautious distance.

"They see them too," Twitchie said. "Everybody does."

"Which means -" Bobbie.

"- the wall is coming down, man." Robbie.

"We've got to get back to Sam," Harold said, anxious, voice cracky. "Hide. Or something."

"Where's Mimi?" Twitchie looked around.

"Gone ahead?" Harold said.

The teddy bear phalanx began to blunder its way forward across Haight in a tight mass. Traffic snarled, horns blared, shouts and curses flew, and from somewhere, sirens wailed.

The group dashed down the hill and rounded the corner into the alley behind the apartment before the teddy bear squad broke free yards behind, and built up pursuit speed again.

"Hide here." Harold ducked behind several battered and fragrant garbage cans just inside the alley. Harold and the twins scooted into the narrow space behind the cans. Twitchie, a tad slower, had to jump in one as the teddy bears passed the alley mouth in a howling dash. He pulled a tinny lid over his head just in time and watched through an eyehole-sized chink in the can.

Twitchie held his breath as the teddy bears passed the alley en-trance and down the street, headed toward Page. The can smelled of banana peels, coffee grounds, soggy newspaper, and something dead-fishy.

He felt a sneeze building. He wiped his nose, got something moldy and putrid on it, and his urge to sneeze intensified.

One teddy bear had stopped to check out the alley as the others ran on. Through the eyehole chink, knees folded up to his chin, amid unidentifiable detritus, Twitchie saw teddy bear shadow creep up the alley, saw the long, sharp-bladed ax stab at some cardboard boxes ten feet away.

The urge to sneeze grew but Twitchie didn't move.

The teddy bear muttered and shook his ax at the boxes. He jabbed at the boxes and a cat yowled and darted out, leaving cat-skid marks as it dashed away, startling the teddy bear who jumped two feet in the air and dropped his spiked helmet clattery to the ground. He swore in teddy bearish and waddled to retrieve the helmet.

It had rolled up against Twitchie's garbage can.

The urge to sneeze grew. Twitchie tasted moldiness as he pinched his nose between thumb and finger to stifle the sneeze and he started to see spots.

He held his breath.

"Ahhh -"

Couldn't hold it.

From a block west, from the park, an explosion sounded like thunder.

"- chooo!" But the explosion had covered the sneeze.

The teddy bear turned at the sound, helmet in paw. It popped his helmet back on his head, grunted, and dashed after the sound.

Relative silence followed the pitty-pat of furry feet, headed to the alley mouth, the source of the explosion in the park, and the weird world beyond.

"Bless you." Harold reached into the can to help Twitchie un-fold and get out.

"What was that?" Twitchie waved a hand toward the park.

"Fireworks," Bobbie said.

"Concert starting, man," Robbie said. He'd trotted over to the alley mouth to look around the corner. He trotted back as Twitchie brushed - stuff - off his pants and shirt. Harold dusted his back, then wiped his hand off on his boot.

"The teddy bear dudes are splitting up, searching for us," Robbie said.

"Let's get inside and clean you up," Harold said. "You stink."

"The VSF is still back there?" Twitchie asked Harold as they jogged up the stairs.

"He's still got that backpack. I tried to snatch it, but he had eyes in the back of his head. Those - teddy bears - they saw me."

"We've got to go back," the twins said as they got to the top.

"Maybe it'll be easier now the teddy bears are distracted," Twitchie said.

"Sam might know what to do." Harold jiggled the back door handle.

The door squeaked open and ragged raw wood flakes fluttered to the floor along the broken jamb where Harold had broken it.

"Mimi?" Twitchie called as he padded into the kitchen.

No answer.

The twins went into the living room. "Not here, man," they said.

"Mimi?" Twitchie shouted.

From the bathroom, Harold called, "Hey, Sam is - floop."

Twitchie and the twins went into the living room. "Where's Mimi?" Twitchie asked nobody in particular, voice near panic.

Suddenly, Harold, with Sam in his mouth, ran in from the bath-room, tackled Twitchie to the floor, and clamped a hand over his open mouth.

"Wuuth thuu fuuth?" Twitchie mumbled between Harold's fin-gers, glasses askew.

The twins stood back, jaws agape, stunned, as Harold held Twitchie down, probed his front pocket, and hauled out his wallet. Indignant and in pain, Twitchie started to giggle anyway - he couldn't help it - as Harold tapped a ticklish spot.

His protest, with an unconscious giggle under it, when Harold let loose and stood, wallet in hand, froze in his throat. Twitchie raised himself on his elbows on the floor, looking at Harold who had removed his sunglasses. He caught in Harold's eyes a glazed, manic look - a crazed killer look. The look was undiminished by the fact that Harold made a shushing gesture, finger to his lips, with a soap bubble in his mouth.

Twitchie understood. Serious stuff, even if he didn't know what stuff. But serious.

Shush? Twitchie nodded. Yeah, I can do that.

Harold opened Twitchie's wallet and removed an ear from it.

"What the -" Twitchie began, as did the twins.

"Well," Harold yelled, as if into a hidden microphone, "every-body's here, including Mimi. Twins, Twitchie - good to see you. Mimi, doll face, come give Harold a big old titty-hug."

Then Harold made loud lusty grunts as he tiptoed to the bath-room, holding the severed ear like a dead mouse. Twitchie rose, wobbly-kneed, and he and the twins followed, baffled.

In the bathroom, Harold tossed the ear in the toilet and flushed it. He handed the wallet back to Twitchie and heaved a long, re-lieved sigh, as if he'd just defused a bomb.

"What the hell -" Bobbie.

"- was that all about, man?" Robbie.

"They were here," Sam said. Harold lowered the toilet seat and sat, knees gone to jelly, droopy-shouldered. The twins sat on the tub rim and Twitchie leaned against the door.

"They?" Twitchie said.

"The teddy bears. They came here. After you left, I heard people-trying-to-get-in noises from the back door, not motorcycle boots and not human feet. I heard me teddy bear pitty-pa