This Body (23 page)

A voice floated from the loudspeakers. Katharine tried to see the miniature human on the stage.“I'm Dr. Timothy Leary,” the
voice said. “Am I having a flashback to Woodstock?” The crowd yelled. He introduced the next group, an all-girl band, and
ended with the admonition “Learn how to program your brain.” The crowd nodded collectively at such sage advice.

Katharine sneered.
The sixties are gone, and here's another generation trying to rip them off
. She wanted to spell out another item across the computerized message board:

GET A LIFE — GET A FUCKING GENERATION OF YOUR OWN

Oh, knock it off. You're just feeling sorry for yourself. What did you have in common with the Woodstock generation? You weren't
a hippie or anything. Hell, you just watched. The movie. The news. Where it was safe and easy. Just because you were such
a Goody Two-shoes doesn't mean everyone else has to be. It doesn't make them degenerate or future drug lords
.

But it takes just one time. One damned time. I know. I lost Eve that way
.

That was an accident. This is an Event. They're busting out. Give 'em a break. Tomorrow they'll be back at their jobs or back
to school
…

Tightly compressed images battered at her neurons like blipverts, overloading her system, and she feared that she would spontaneously
combust.

She got a hand-drawn henna tattoo above her heart. She thought it would distract her.

“That one.” Katharine pointed to the zodiac sign for Gemini, two identically beautiful, fair-haired women joined back to back,
their hair twined around each other's throats. She didn't like the crabby sound in her voice, but she
felt
crabby. “But different. I don't want them to be twins.”

The artist fiddled with his tools. “Opposites, then? One dark, one light? One Jekyll, the other Hyde?”

“No,” she said, immediately horrified, and was startled at her own strong reaction, though it somehow softened her mood. “Just
different. Not opposites. Just different.”
Just different. Because if we're opposites, who has to be Mr. Hyde? Am I so sure that it's Thisby
?

When it was done, no matter how she craned or ducked her head, she couldn't see the tattoo properly. She fought her way forward
in one of the restrooms to see her image in the mirror. Thisby's elfin features stared back at her, her pale brown hair beginning
to flatten. Katharine ran a hand through it to spike it back up. She realized that Thisby had been essentially right; darker
hair would probably be a better color for her, more dramatic with her pale skin and light eyes.

She changed into Thisby's halter top and bell-bottom jeans — they were some of the things she had on impulse stuffed into
the backpack — and the curve of the halter top delicately framed the tattoo of the two-faced woman. Both faces were young
and attractive, but one seemed stronger, the other smarter. She could see the tattoo only in the mirror, and therefore only
in reverse.

“Great threads,” said a girl who looked like Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, with her black hair, black makeup, and white skin.

“Yeah, they are.” Katharine took a last look at her reflection; it was almost with affection.
Okay, Thiz, let's try this again
.

“Shit,” Quince commented approvingly when she saw her sister at their next meeting. “Where'd you get that outfit? Is that
a tattoo?”

“I had the clothes. The tattoo is temporary. You guys having fun?”

The girls were sweating as if they had been in a race, but they wiggled with yet unexpended energy. Quince was bare of face
— no earrings, no nose ring, no chains — and she looked somehow strangely exposed, almost naked.

“The pit's bad. There're some crazy guys out there. Gert lost her balance and almost got trampled. I need something to drink.
Can you get us a beer?” Quince pointed to the red bracelet around Thisby's wrist.

Katharine had felt strangely obligated, after she donned the new clothes, to approach one of the many ID stations where, after
a rather cursory perusal of Thisby's driver's license, she had been equipped with a hospital-style plastic bracelet that identified
her as a legal drinker. She had waited for the whispering to begin, but she heard nothing.

“Why not?”

She waited in line. Perhaps she would get a beer for herself too. Maybe the silence was a sign. Maybe it meant she could drink
again.

Hey, this is an Event. I'm busting out. Tomorrow I'll be back to safe, old, boring Katharine
.

She was next up to the counter. She suddenly didn't feel so good. She had that sense of being stretched again, as if something
were pulling at her, tugging at her, driving at her. Spores of anxiety popped like sweat in her brain, and the rhythm of her
heart became irregular. She started to tremble.

“Thisby, are you all right?” Quince pulled her from the line and sat her down in the shade. “You're shaking like crazy. Are
you cold?” Quince took a sweatshirt from Thisby's pack and wrapped it around Katharine's shoulders. Quince and Gert waited
silently until she stopped quivering.

The sun had set, and although it was still light, the blue sky was darkening to shades of gray. The relentless energy of the
crowd had mellowed. The frenetic edge had softened, and people moved more deliberately.

Katharine came upon a pentagon-shaped structure called the Rhythm Beast made with a life-size Erector set. At the five corners
hung speakers draped with animal pelts, and from the crossbeams remnants of a civilization dangled down: hubcaps, washtubs,
inverted pails, a car radiator, a bed frame, and various lengths and widths of sheet metal and tubing. It was a vision of
the Apocalypse — now the salvaged technology is good only as junk, and it is crowned by the real trophies of life: skinned
and scalped prey.

Katharine stood there and watched. She had stopped looking for Ben and Marion in every step, dress, face that passed by. It
was as if she had had double vision all day long — always stepping awkwardly, afraid she would lose her balance. She now felt
strangely light. She weighed less. Gravity eased. Her vision cleared.

Five men approached the Rhythm Beast, ringing its perimeter. They picked up the drumsticks that hung from wires and hammered
out a rhythmic pattern on the metal in front of them. Katharine could feel the syncopated pulsebeat like tremors burrowing
up from the ground and grabbing her bones. Her heart, her blood pressure, pumped with the tempo, the cadence. She wanted it
to go on forever, but a young man with lank hair barked, “one-two-three-four,” and the drummers jumped to the next panel and
began a different rhythm. Her body shifted easily enough and conformed to the new pulse. It felt right again, but then the
leader yelled once more. Another shift, another rhythm, another beat. Each time Thisby's body seemed to adjust and achieve
synchronization immediately. Katharine could have stood there all night, but the group abruptly stopped, leaving the last
tremors to slowly ripple through the soil — tangibly — and her body to continue to throb like a sustained note.

She sat down heavily on the nearest chair, and the tie-dyed LSD flight simulator pilot handed her a viewfinder, a tube jutting
out from the bottom. The top of the mask went up to the hairline, the sides to the ears, the tube in between the lips. Recessed
in the cut-out eyeholes were whirling, multicolored disks. She blew gently into the tube. The circles passed the open eyeholes
like softly flickering strobe lights. They made her high and dizzy, and her stomach started to cringe. “Blow harder,” she
heard the man say, and she increased the shutter speed. Her eyes stopped trying to catch the circles, and her stomach settled
back down, the sustained throbbing from the Rhythm Beast still humming through her ears. Instead of the air escaping out the
tube, it felt like it circulated back into her body, expanding it. She didn't feel connected with the chair or the ground
under her feet; the slightest puff of wind would send her off like an escaped helium balloon. The sounds, the smells dissolved
around her, and she swelled until she thought she was going to explode. At the instant of explosion, she collapsed in on herself,
the extraneous parts of her hurled away and the essential parts coalesced.

What was left was a new pulse, a new rhythm, but this time it was her very own.

Nothing is as it seems. And that's okay. Thisby did not kill me, and I don't have to hate her
.

There was a tap on her shoulder, and a voice said, “I'm sorry, but you really do have to give it up this time. You can buy
one. Only twenty-five dollars.”

Katharine pulled it from her face with a sweaty sucking sound. She stumbled up — he steadied her — and handed the viewfinder
to him wordlessly.

“Are you all right?” he called after her.

The headline group was playing when she returned to the grass, their images projected on the giant screens. The rhythm was
still with her, a descant to the meter playing from the stage. She was feeling drunk, stoned, out-of-bodied, but not isolated.
She was suspended among a larger entity.
Maybe I am stoned. I … I feel so big
. Her arms stretched out across the whole amphitheater.
Oh, the things I can sense
.

She could almost see anticipation taking shape in the audience. The pit continued to circle in the dark like molasses while
the rest of the crowd stood, singing and dancing, but they were waiting for something. When the music seemed to be over, and
the band had walked off the stage, the audience yelled and clapped and demanded attention. The promise was unfulfilled, the
anticipation not satisfied.

The group returned to the stage for the encore, and when the opening guitar riff was played, the entire assemblage screamed.
This is what they had been waiting for. The crowd began to sing along, and Katharine found herself listening to the lyrics:

Today I'm gonna live the life I never had.

Play the adult I'll never grow to be,

Pray like the child I'm never gonna have.

I think I deserve to take that trip,

So that I can connect the two and create me.

The last chords died out. The curtains closed, and the lights came on. The multitude was satisfied. They would leave now.

Katharine stood still as the crowd collected its possessions and drained down the walkways. She watched the people leave,
and she felt satisfied too. It was almost love. She smiled at the Winter People with their seared red skin and their silly
outfits. She wanted to pat the Hardbodies on their goosepimpled brown arms. She felt a part of all of them, part of the pattern.
They had shared something. An Event. Community. Peace. Love.
And understanding
.

Maybe their generation isn't so bad
.

It was after midnight when they drove out of the parking lot, the taillights of the cars in front of her strung out like a
centipede crawling toward the freeway. They had already transferred Gert and her luggage to her cousins' car, and Quince was
curled up in the backseat, her eyes closed.

Katharine was glad Quince was quiet, because she was occupied elsewhere — having a conversation elsewhere.

Katharine had died. Thisby had died. But Katharine still had a life. Her own family were like shape-shifters; she couldn't
seem to hold them long enough in her mind to know what she wanted from them. Maybe she had a life with the Bennets; she and
Quince were forging something good. But maybe not.

Maybe it was just a life for herself.

“I think I deserve to take that trip,

So that I can connect the two and create me.”

Act 3, Scene 2

All the world's a stage

And all men and women merely players:

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages.

— J
ACQUES
,
As You Like It
, 2.7.139

She had felt the immortality of a teenager as she drove north from the concert with Quince, sleeping a couple of hours at
the Dunnigan Pit Stop, which was just off what Katharine remembered from childhood as Temp 505, which connected Highway 80
and Highway 5. She had no idea when the 505 had gone from a two-lane country road to this four-lane highway with its sides
blasted clean of anything human, no billboards or signs for gas, food, lodging. She missed the reptile zoo in the rundown
barn, the nut-and-dried-fruit stalls and the Burma-Shave signs.

      D
ON'T LOSE

      
YOUR HEAD

            
TO GAIN A MINUTE
.

      Y
OU NEED YOUR HEAD

Y
OUR BRAINS ARE IN IT
.

B
URMA
-S
HAVE
.

She had felt invincible, the darkness rolling around her, Quince laid out and softly snoring in the backseat. Maybe it was
the strength that the concert had left her with — or the release it had given her. Maybe it was the speed and power she felt
through the steering wheel of Anne's car.