© Шитова А. В., адаптация, сокращение, словарь, 2023

© ООО «Издательство «Антология»,2023

* * *

PART ONE

1

We were somewhere near Barstow^[1], in the desert, when the drugs began to take hold^[2]. I remember saying something like “I feel a bit dizzy; maybe you should drive…” And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us, and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, flying around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas^[3]. And a voice was screaming: “Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn^[4] animals?”

Then all was quiet again. My attorney had taken his shirt off and was pouring beer on his chest to speed up the tanning process.

“What the hell are you talking about?” he asked, staring up at the sun with his eyes closed and covered with sunglasses.

“Never mind^[5],” I said. “It's your turn to drive.”

I hit the brakes and pulled the Great Red Shark^[6] over to the side of the highway. No point mentioning^[7] those bats, I thought. Soon the poor bastard will see them himself.

It was almost noon, and we still had more than a hundred miles to go. Difficult miles. Very soon, I knew, we would both be completely twisted^[8]. But there was no going back, and no time to rest. We would ride it out^[9]. Press-registration for the fabulous Mint 400^[10] had already started, and we had to be there by four to get our sound-proof suite. A fashionable sporting magazine in New York had paid for the reservations and this huge red Chevy^[11] convertible we rented… and I was, after all, a professional journalist, so I had to cover the story, for good or ill^[12].

The sporting-editors had also given me $300 in cash, most of which was already spent on extremely dangerous drugs. The trunk of our car looked like a mobile police narcotics lab. We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a galaxy of uppers and downers, and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser^[13], a pint of ether, and two dozen amyls.^[14] All this had been collected the night before. Driving all over Los Angeles^[15], we picked up everything we could get our hands on. It's not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get into a serious drug collection, you go as far as you can.

The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible than a man on ether. And I knew we’d get into that stuff pretty soon. Probably at the next gas station. We had tried almost everything else, and now – yes, it was time for ether. And then do the next hundred miles in a horrible stupor. The only way to stay focused on ether is to do a lot of amyls – not all at once, but regularly, just enough to drive at ninety miles an hour through Barstow.

“Man, this is the way to travel,” said my attorney. He turned the volume up on the radio, humming along.

I could hardly hear the radio because I turned our tape recorder all the way up on “Sympathy for the Devil”^[16]. That was the only tape we had, so we played it over and over again^[17], along with the radio and also to keep our rhythm on the road. A constant speed, for some reason, seemed important at the time. Indeed, on a trip like this, one must be careful to avoid acceleration that draws blood to the back of the brain.

* * *

My attorney saw the hitchhiker long before I did.

“Let’s give this boy a lift,” he said, and before I could argue, he stopped, and this poor kid was running up to the car with a big grin on his face, saying, “Damn!^[18] I never rode in a convertible before!”

“Is that so?” I said. “Well, I guess you’re ready then, eh?”

The kid nodded as we roared off.

“We’re your friends,” said my attorney. “We’re not like the others.”

Oh Christ, I thought, he’s already high^[19].

“No more of that talk,” I said sharply. “Or I’ll put the leeches on you.”

He grinned, seeming to understand. Luckily, the noise in the car was so awful – with the wind and the radio and the tape recorder – that the kid in the back seat couldn’t hear a word we were saying. Or could he?

How long can we maintain?^[20] I wondered. How long before one of us starts jumping at this boy? What will he think then when my attorney starts screaming about bats and huge rays coming down on the car? Well, we’ll just have to cut his head off and bury him somewhere. Because we can’t let him go. He’ll report us at once to some Nazi, and they’ll track us down^[21].

Jesus! Did I say that? Or just think it? Was I talking? Did they hear me? I glanced at my attorney, but he was watching the road, driving our Great Red Shark at a hundred and ten or so. There was no sound from the back seat. Maybe I’d better have a chat with this boy, I thought. Maybe if I explain things, he’ll relax. Of course. I turned around in the seat and gave him a fine big smile.

“By the way,” I said. “There’s one thing you should probably understand.”

He stared at me, not blinking.

“Can you hear me?” I yelled.

He nodded.

“That’s good,” I said. “Because I want you to know that we’re on our way to Las Vegas to find the American Dream^[22].” I smiled. “That’s why we rented this car. It was the only way to do it. Understand that?”

He nodded again, but his eyes were nervous.

“I want you to understand it,” I said. “Because this is a very serious assignment… extreme personal danger… Hell, I forgot about this beer; you want one?”

He shook his head.

“How about some ether?” I said.

“What?”

“Never mind. Let’s see. About twenty-four hours ago we were sitting in the patio of the Beverly Hills Hotel^[23] under a palm tree when this uniformed dwarf came up to me with a pink telephone and said, ‘This must be the call you’ve been waiting for all this time, sir.’” I laughed and opened a beer can that spilled all over the back seat. “And you know what? He was right! I’d been waiting for that call, but I didn’t know who it would come from. Do you understand me?” The boy’s face was a mask of pure bewilderment.

I went on: “I want you to understand that this man at the wheel is my attorney! Jesus Christ, look at him! He doesn’t look like you or me, right? That’s because he’s a foreigner. I think he’s probably Samoan^[24]. But it doesn’t matter, does it?”

“Oh, hell no!” the boy cried.

“Exactly,” I said. “Because this man is extremely valuable to me.” I looked at my attorney, but his mind was somewhere else. I hit the back of the driver’s seat with my fist. “This is important, goddamn it^[25]! This is a true story!”

The car swerved.

“Keep your hands off my goddamn neck!” my attorney screamed.

The kid in the back looked like he was ready to jump right out of the car. Our vibrations were getting nasty – but why? Was there no communication in this car?

I was puzzled, frustrated because my story was true. I was certain of that. And it was extremely important, I felt, for the meaning of our journey to be absolutely clear.

* * *

We had actually been sitting there in the Beverly Hills Hotel – for many hours – drinking gin cocktails with beer and mescaline. And when the call came, I was ready.

The dwarf came up to our table, as I remember, and when he handed me the pink telephone I said nothing, just listened. And then I hung up, turning to my attorney.

“That was headquarters,” I said. “They want me to go to Las Vegas now, and make contact with a Portuguese^[26] photographer named Lacerda. He’ll have the details. All I have to do is check into my suite and he’ll find me.”

My attorney said nothing for a moment, then he suddenly came alive in his chair.

“God hell!” he exclaimed. “ This one sounds like real trouble!” He called for more drink. “You’re going to need legal advice^[27] before this thing is over,” he said. “And my first advice is that you should rent a very fast car with no top and get the hell out of L.A. for at least forty-eight hours.” He shook his head sadly. “This ruins my weekend, because naturally I’ll have to go with you.”

“Why not?” I said. “If a thing like this is worth doing at all, it should be done right. We’ll need some equipment and lots of cash – for drugs and a tape recorder.”

“What kind of a story is this?” my attorney asked.

“The Mint 400,” I said. “It’s the richest off-the-road race for motorcycles and dune-buggies^[28] in the history of organized sport – a fantastic show in honor of some man named Del Webb, who owns the luxurious Mint Hotel in the heart of downtown Las Vegas… at least that’s what the press release says; my man in New York just read it to me.”

“Well,” he said, “as your attorney I advise you to buy a motorcycle. How else can you cover a thing like this?^[29][30]”

“No way,” I said. “Where can we get a Vincent Black Shadow^[31]?”

“What’s that?”

“A fantastic bike,” I said. “The new model.”

“That sounds right for this thing,” he said.

“It is,” I told him. “The bike’s pure hell on the road.” “Can we handle that?^[32]” he asked.

“Absolutely,” I said. “I’ll call New York for some cash.”

2

The New York office did not know anything about the Vincent Black Shadow: they sent me to the Los Angeles office – which was actually just a few blocks from the hotel – but when I got there, the money-woman refused to give me more than $300 in cash.

She had no idea who I was, she said, and by that time I was sweating. I have never been able to properly explain myself in this California climate – not with the sweat… or wild red eyes and shaking hands.

So I took the $300 and left. My attorney was waiting in a bar around the corner.

“This won’t do^[33],” he said, “we have to have unlimited credit.”

I told him we would.

“You Samoans are all the same,” I told him. “You have no faith in the white man’s culture. Jesus, just one hour ago we were sitting in that hotel, broke and paralyzed for the weekend, when a call comes from some total stranger in New York, telling me to go to Las Vegas – and then he sends me to some office in Beverly Hills^[34] where another total stranger gives me $300 in cash for no reason at all… I tell you, man, this is the American Dream in action!”

“Indeed,” he said.

“Right,” I said. “But first we need the car. And after that, the cocaine. And then the tape recorder, for special music, and some Acapulco shirts^[35].” The only way to prepare for a trip like this was to dress up like peacocks, get crazy and cover the story.

But what was the story? Nobody had told us. So we would have to do it all on our own. Free enterprise. The American Dream. Do it now: pure Gonzo journalism^[36].

* * *

Getting the drugs had been no problem, but the car and the tape recorder were difficult to find at 6:30 on a Friday afternoon in Hollywood^[37]. I already had one car, but it was too small and slow for the desert. We went to a Polynesian