Whatever Lola Wants by George Szanto

thoughts.
    Again she remained silent. I could almost feel notions crossing her mind. “Maybe it’s because Carney’s your son.” She thought for a moment. “Can you see others in the past?”
    â€œI—” I shook my head. “I don’t know.” Obviously I could see some, but others not. “Like who?”
    She considered my question. “Like, maybe you can see what happened to the poet lady in 1959 ’cause you’re sort of related to her. Can you,” she searched, “can you see what happened to anybody else in 1959?”
    I closed my eyes. Bobbie I saw clearly, back in Median with Carney. Somewhere else back there I had a sense of amorphous forms, a lot of dark movement— Far over to the right, some color, something taking shape, someone there. I focused in. A woman. I recognized her; from where, I don’t know. “Beth Cochan,” I said, eyes open, staring at Lola.
    â€œWho?”
    â€œJohn Cochan’s mother.” I’d never tried this before, consciously trying to check out past moments in the lives of people.
    â€œBut, Ted, how’s that possible?”
    I shook my head and closed my eyes again. Still there. Beth Cochan.
    â€œIs she doing something? Saying something?”
    â€¢
    2. (1959)
    Beth Cochan believed her great success—seven major papers by the time she was thirty-one, three of them on tropical coleoptera, a worldwide reputation in pharmaceutical entomology—grew from what she called her induced insight. Which is to say, she reflected on the objects of her research while under the influence of marijuana or hashish. Toying in her lab, eyes closed, her mind watched the apparently chaotic flow of distinct particles, contemplated their movements, saw invisible conjunctions turn into sudden obvious connections, and transformed these links into necessary patterns. She would then direct her experimentation toward her discovered loci. Time after time her “guess” proved correct. So correct, she had felt at the start of her thirty-first year, it was a duty to turn her research onto the source of her inspiration, cannabis itself. To reward the generous weed by crowning it with popular legitimacy, a recognition of its powers to inspire, salve, and possibly cure.
    She could find cures for whatever conditions she chose to study, she knew this clearly. Sam Ulrich, Vice-President and Director of Research for Cochan Pharmaceuticals, CochPharm, also recognized her brilliance. But too often he was bent on blocking her, keeping her from pushing her experiments to their conclusions.
    Beth knew the potential for the good that cannabis could bring to the world. But the US government forbade all trials; it made use of cannabis illegal. Because cannabis turned people into potheads, insane reefer loony maniacs, dangerous to America because the commies would turn them into enemy agents, undermine the moral fabric of the United States.
    Such a stupid argument.
    But Beth Shapiro Cochan needed to experiment. Hers was life-saving work, every day more probable that the cure for rheumatoid arthritis lay hidden in the hormonal transformations she induced in her allomyrina. “Without cannabis the transformations aren’t powerful enough!” she shouted at Sam. “I need experimental quality cannabis! We’re working in godforsaken Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada, for pissake! How can the US feds control us here?”
    â€œBecause,” Sam repeated, for the fourth time, the tenth, ever calmly, “the corporate center of CochPharm is Cambridge, Mass.”
    â€œIt makes no sense, Sam, no scientific sense.”
    â€œLegal sense is what’s at issue,” Sam reiterated.
    Beth found her cannabis, Beth always found what she wanted. For thirty months she experimented. Clear progress. Her allomyrina, fed on cannabis in a formula never to be revealed, took sleek and furious flight. Onward to mammals. The syrup called