I dropped to the floor, laughing, and rolled about a bit, now and then gasping, “No! Mother of God! Oh wow!” but mostly, “No!” Mike was doing much the same thing, and Sean looked unusually tentative.

“It’s absurd,” I yelped. “Also corny. It’s impossible to take seriously. It’s worse than third-class pulp science fiction. It’s just unthinkable. Therefore,” one of my favorite words, “once you’ve eliminated the unthinkable…”

Michael, still semihelpless on the floor, agreed. “It’s a Communist Plot,” he chuckled. “Elementary.”

This bit of unreason was only a little easier to take, but eventually we calmed down and took it. I had a few reservations, but Mike — who was hooked on spies and such to begin with — was wholly smitten by the notion. His eyes hinted at incredible schemes.

“Well,” he said at length, “what’re we going to do about it?”

“Do?” I hadn’t considered that angle.

“Yeah, do. We’re not gonna let ’em get away with this, are we?”

“Of course not, I suppose.”

“Right. Whatever this plot is, we’ve got to thwart it.”

“We do?”

“It’s our duty, baby. They’re trying to overthrow society, Chet. And where would we be without society?”

It was an interesting question, but I didn’t like any of the answers.

“Okay,” I resigned. “What’re we gonna do?”

We discussed it for almost an hour, confusing Sean beyond repair and swearing him to absolute secrecy. He was already a little afraid to open his mouth anyway, and when Mike casually mentioned plastique, you could almost see Sean shrivel up. But his eyes were just as excited as Mike’s.

“We’ve got one solid handle,” said Michael the Theodore Bear.

“Which is?”

“Laszlo Scott,” he replied. “Sean and that chick got their pills from Laszlo. But where did he get them?”

Another interesting question. Laszlo Scott was an exceptionally slimy creature, capable, to my mind, of any enormity, but he was also imposingly stupid, and I couldn’t imagine any really competent Communist Plotter making use of him.

“Where indeed?” I counterqueried.

“Right!” Mike snapped. “That’s what you’ve got to find out.”

“I?”

“Who else? You’re the local Laszlo Scott expert. It wouldn’t do much good if I tried to follow him, would it? Sean can help you.”

“You want Me to follow Laszlo?”

“Only for a few days, until he gets more pills. That’s when the fun begins.”

“Following Laszlo?”

“C’mon, it won’t hurt you. It’ll be Fun, Chester. Really. You can take notes.”

Groovy. So I resigned myself to tailing Loathsome Laszlo, but I was already sick of the whole routine. I had a whole anthology of arguments against this project, beginning with, “If this is really a Communist Plot, we ought to notify the FBI,” and ending with, “I’m a musician, dammit, not a spy,” but it was already evening, and we had to go west.

I didn’t really want to follow Laszlo.

IT TURNED out to be an exceptionally quiet Sunday, especially by Village standards. Aside from the horde of teenyboppers, none of whom represented enough money to matter, plus half a spate of bewildered-looking tourists who were most likely hunting for Chinatown, the streets were deserted.

“It’s a turndown day, baby,” Chaz said when I reached The Mess, something like eight-thirty. He was right. There were more performers in the house than audience.

“Yesterday must’ve worn ’em out,” I probably explained.

Anyhow, Charley closed The Mess a half hour later, and all of us — we Tripouts, Al Mamlet, and a banjoist from Chicago I’d never seen before who somehow knew what he thought was all about me — split for The Garden of Eden.

M. T. Bear and Sean were already there, of course, along with Gary the Frog, a few Davids, and the customary strangers. They were clustered around our family table, overflowing slightly into the aisle, interfering with the waitress, chattering like a tribe of typists, and generally carrying on as was their noisy wont.

Gary, his face even more of an acne farm than usual, was loudly endeavoring to master a twelve-string guitar he’d neglected to tune, while one of the Davids kept saying excitedly, “Hey, baby, let me try it? Huh? Huh, Gary? Kin I try it?” All very natural.

Mike was doing his standard best to catch everyone’s ear, saying, “But it’s a Plot, don’t you understand?” but everyone’s ear remained blithely uncaught. Mike’d hollered Plot too often. Everyone believed him, but nobody cared. Constant excitement is a drag.

The Garden of Eden, immune to Sunday doldrums, skirled about the table like a neurotic river, babbling, jostling, everyone sort of accidentally groping (sort of) everybody else, all of which made it hard for me to get through to Mike. “Pardon me,” I said politely once or twice, pro forma, with no visible effect. Then “This is a Raid!” I yelled in a thick bass voice. “Don’t nobody move!”

The noise was something awful — high-pitched shrieks, low thuds, lots of Oh Wow’s, and other hip chaos — but when the dust cleared, I only had to shove and push a little bit to get through to the table.

“Why didn’t you just yell Fire?” asked Mike.

“Howdy, baby,” added Sean.

And, “Where’s my Geetar?” croaked Gary the Frog, thank God.

I sat down gratefully. Some David surrendered his seat to Sativa, who whispered what I chose to think was thanks. Patrick, Stu, and Kevin pulled up chairs obtained from somewhere. A version of quiet descended on The Garden of Eden. Even the Kallikak box took five.

“What’s happenin!?” I smiled, pretending nothing was.

“They don’t believe me,” Michael grieved.

“Why,” I shrugged, “should they?”

A slow voice, like a tawny port, breathed, “Who is That?” into my left ear. “He’s Pretty!” Sativa always talked like that.

“Sean,” I explained.

“Huh?” He hadn’t heard the question.

Okay. “Sean,” I said with flawed formality, “this is Sativa. Sativa love, meet Sean.”

“Oh yeah!” Vast enthusiasm. “You sure sing Good.”

“Pretty.” She had a few-track mind, like most of us in those days, but more openly. She slithered from her chair to a position directly behind young Sean and started to stroke his hair ever so gently. At the first stroke he twitched slightly, being unaccustomed to such things, then leaned back and enjoyed it.

“Ai-yah,” I told myself. “Well, I won’t have to worry about those two for a while,” not that I’d intended to.

“Hi!” That was Harriet, Gary the Frog’s fan club et cetera, surging through the crowd like an amiable elephant. “Guess who I just saw outside?”

I knew better than to bother.

“Laszlo!” she lisped.

“Oh God,” said the rest of us.

“Laszlo Scott,” she went on. “He says he’ll have more you-know-what tomorrow.”

“Groovy.” That, of course, was Gary.

“Laszlo.” My evening was shattered. I’d forgotten about that. Laszlo Scott indeed, whom my best friend Mike said I had to dammit follow tomorrow. I thought about that for a while, missing out on the activity around me. When I got back, Sativa was on Sean’s lap, and I couldn’t quite tell whose arms were whose, which was splendid; Gary the Frog was sitting on Harriet’s lap, which made more sense than chivalry; Michael and Patrick were trying to understand each other, a hopeless hobby they were fond of; the Kallikak box was playing one of Our songs, by God; and Laszlo Scott, alas, was flowing up the aisle toward me, and I didn’t have a tourist’s chance to get away.

Laszlo was easier to understand than to believe. He throve on ridicule, an amazingly complex perversion. Not just any old ridicule, mind you: Laszlo was a connoisseur. He was perfectly willing to endure the esteem of young female tourists, on which he made his living, as long as Mike and I and other such Village aristocrats, all of whom he hated in proportion to his need for them, put him beautifully down. (Once, in an excess of something I’d rather not think about, Laszlo got a coffeehouse gig that involved his being beaten up by the manager after closing every night. He held that job for six months, until the manager got busted in New Jersey for aggravated assault and the coffeehouse closed down.)