supplied more than their fair share of free food
and free clothes. But Gorgon is a wild card. He’s got his own agenda. She’s got
spies, and her spies say this rooster’s boosting goods all over town. Breaking
and entering, mostly. No one outside the tribes is supposed to know what Gorgon
looks like, who or what he really is. It’s part and parcel of the Digger legend
playing in his mind. Leo the Gorgon, the man of many heads. Not a real person,
stupid. He’s like Robin Hood or Batman or the Joker. A myth.
Right.
Ruby trusts the mythical man about as far as she could pick him up and throw
him, which wouldn’t be very far ‘cause the dude’s got a good five inches on her
and is built lean and mean. And now you know what she wants with him. Why she allows him to situate his fine ass behind her counter and shoot the
breeze as if they’re old pals. ‘Cause booster or not, he is one righteous cat,
and she hasn’t made it with a man worth a second how-do-you-do since she and
Stan called it quits.
Adios,
common sense.
The
red-haired dude gives her a sharp, questioning glance. They all look too young
to Ruby, but at least this one isn’t still sucking his thumb. Does she know
him? Uh-uh. He’s got to be brand-new. Tall, slim, pale. Groomed. Rich Kid
written all over him. A tourist? With a touching sense of wonder, he looks
around her shop as if he’s never seen anything like it.
Across
one whole wall are shelves of mason jars filled with leaves and powders and
bits of bark. She’s got the only place in town stocking acacia, angelica, black
cohosh, cascara sagrada, damiana, dragon’s blood, ginseng, kava kava root,
mandrake, periwinkle, quince, Saint-John’s-wort, and witch hazel. The heads
clean her out of catnip and parsley every time rumors of a legal high hit the
street.
She’s
had the savvy to score a Health Department certificate, which she hangs next to
her diploma from the Platonic Academy of Herbal Renaissance and her Bachelor of
Arts degree from Mills College. But the beat cops still rattle her cage now and
then. She’s got a running tab at HALO, the Haight-Ashbury Legal Organization.
That’s
one wall. Another wall holds crystal bottles filled with essence oils for
astrological signs, all the planets, and twenty saints. She stocks scented
candles, herbal bath salts, spice soaps, loofahs and real sponges, plus twelve
varieties of incense she imports for a nickel and sells for thirty-nine cents.
Seems people can’t get enough sweet smoke these days.
And
the Mystic Eye stocks books. Books you can’t find anywhere else: African spells,
alchemy, American Indian lore, the dark arts, dreams, hypnosis, the I Ching or Book of Changes, out-of-the-body experiences, past lives, voodoo. Ever since
Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters spread the word you can discover psychedelic
secrets in certain novels, she can barely keep in stock Heinlein’s Stranger
in a Strange Land , Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings , or Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End. She herself believes that psychedelic secrets are
hidden in the stories of Cordwainer Smith, but that’s her opinion.
These
are strange and wondrous days.
In her
glass cases are amulets and talismans, Chinese coins for casting the I Ching,
ankhs and pentagrams, beads and fetish necklaces, peace signs strung on silver
chains. Devotees of the neighborhood band, the Grateful Dead, keep buying out
her inventory of skull and skeleton charms.
The
red-haired dude takes it all in, starts to touch a porcelain Kuan Yin, then pulls
his hand away as if he’s not allowed. He plants himself by the incense burners,
a vantage point from which he can see the whole shop. Alarm nicks Ruby’s peace
of mind. He stands there, alert, like he’s waiting for something, and surveys
the shop with lucid blue eyes.
She
can’t figure him out. A big-time booster or a knickknacker looking for kicks?
The teenybopper is trouble, but this one? She doesn’t pick up the vibe. He’s a
strange
and free clothes. But Gorgon is a wild card. He’s got his own agenda. She’s got
spies, and her spies say this rooster’s boosting goods all over town. Breaking
and entering, mostly. No one outside the tribes is supposed to know what Gorgon
looks like, who or what he really is. It’s part and parcel of the Digger legend
playing in his mind. Leo the Gorgon, the man of many heads. Not a real person,
stupid. He’s like Robin Hood or Batman or the Joker. A myth.
Right.
Ruby trusts the mythical man about as far as she could pick him up and throw
him, which wouldn’t be very far ‘cause the dude’s got a good five inches on her
and is built lean and mean. And now you know what she wants with him. Why she allows him to situate his fine ass behind her counter and shoot the
breeze as if they’re old pals. ‘Cause booster or not, he is one righteous cat,
and she hasn’t made it with a man worth a second how-do-you-do since she and
Stan called it quits.
Adios,
common sense.
The
red-haired dude gives her a sharp, questioning glance. They all look too young
to Ruby, but at least this one isn’t still sucking his thumb. Does she know
him? Uh-uh. He’s got to be brand-new. Tall, slim, pale. Groomed. Rich Kid
written all over him. A tourist? With a touching sense of wonder, he looks
around her shop as if he’s never seen anything like it.
Across
one whole wall are shelves of mason jars filled with leaves and powders and
bits of bark. She’s got the only place in town stocking acacia, angelica, black
cohosh, cascara sagrada, damiana, dragon’s blood, ginseng, kava kava root,
mandrake, periwinkle, quince, Saint-John’s-wort, and witch hazel. The heads
clean her out of catnip and parsley every time rumors of a legal high hit the
street.
She’s
had the savvy to score a Health Department certificate, which she hangs next to
her diploma from the Platonic Academy of Herbal Renaissance and her Bachelor of
Arts degree from Mills College. But the beat cops still rattle her cage now and
then. She’s got a running tab at HALO, the Haight-Ashbury Legal Organization.
That’s
one wall. Another wall holds crystal bottles filled with essence oils for
astrological signs, all the planets, and twenty saints. She stocks scented
candles, herbal bath salts, spice soaps, loofahs and real sponges, plus twelve
varieties of incense she imports for a nickel and sells for thirty-nine cents.
Seems people can’t get enough sweet smoke these days.
And
the Mystic Eye stocks books. Books you can’t find anywhere else: African spells,
alchemy, American Indian lore, the dark arts, dreams, hypnosis, the I Ching or Book of Changes, out-of-the-body experiences, past lives, voodoo. Ever since
Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters spread the word you can discover psychedelic
secrets in certain novels, she can barely keep in stock Heinlein’s Stranger
in a Strange Land , Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings , or Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End. She herself believes that psychedelic secrets are
hidden in the stories of Cordwainer Smith, but that’s her opinion.
These
are strange and wondrous days.
In her
glass cases are amulets and talismans, Chinese coins for casting the I Ching,
ankhs and pentagrams, beads and fetish necklaces, peace signs strung on silver
chains. Devotees of the neighborhood band, the Grateful Dead, keep buying out
her inventory of skull and skeleton charms.
The
red-haired dude takes it all in, starts to touch a porcelain Kuan Yin, then pulls
his hand away as if he’s not allowed. He plants himself by the incense burners,
a vantage point from which he can see the whole shop. Alarm nicks Ruby’s peace
of mind. He stands there, alert, like he’s waiting for something, and surveys
the shop with lucid blue eyes.
She
can’t figure him out. A big-time booster or a knickknacker looking for kicks?
The teenybopper is trouble, but this one? She doesn’t pick up the vibe. He’s a
strange
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