My Dorm mates at Berkeley, Ron Dasch in front, now sadly, deceased.
I said 'K' was business-like and unsocial with me but she was social one fateful night, the night before I was to leave on my trip to Mexico. She’d shown up with Lindsey that afternoon for another important transaction. I decided to have a little party that night in my nice apartment. I’ve always had the odd desire to bring unlikely characters together. That night it was in full bloom. I’d just driven home the night before from up north, another ‘mission accomplished’.
It was on this drive, in my Datsun ‘Z’ that I had my second miraculous escape from the law, which played upon my imagination for years, like a dark, surreal dream. It happened about three a.m. We’d just finished and cleaned up after midnight. I was high as a kite for the last twelve hours. The plan was that I would drive home with my share and sell it to ‘K’ the next day in Oakland, from where she could exchange it in S.F., within an hour. The car reeked of the fresh smell of so large an amount but it was so late and the highway so dark and empty I started to speed. At one straight stretch of road, just south of Healdsburg, I ripped along, going about 90 on the 60 mile an hour highway and passed a police car, pointed my way, sitting hidden in the dark and by a few trees on the shoulder. As I looked in my rear view mirror I could even see the officer sitting there, slightly slumped over.
I immediately hit the brakes and slowed to sixty but was sure my life was over. I kept going, in trembling fear and expecting at any moment to see the red lights flashing behind me. To be stopped then would be to get caught, with a very long, ugly jail sentence. My heart was pounding, yet as I drove on, minute after minute, no lights followed. After ten minutes or so I surmised the officer must have been asleep in his car, filling his shift and getting his pay the easy way at three a.m. I drove the rest of the way home well below the speed limit, my heart still pounding, along a deserted highway.
Dale (my old girlfriend) was there in the dark room when I arrived, waking up as I entered the front door, bag in hand. I ran to her and gave her the tightest hug, explaining nothing, ate two ludes and insisted she share a glass with me. Then I walked her back to bed, kissing her so frequently she must have thought I’d fallen in love again. The next morning the tale came out at the breakfast table. Once again, my utter stupidity amazed me, speeding for no reason when most at risk. Yet the full realization of this freak, lucky escape didn’t prevent further folly. After breakfast we celebrated with lines. Late afternoon Lindsey and ‘K’ showed up. We did our business. They left but I convinced them to return to make plans for the time I’d be away.
Louie and Robin were packing, telling me by phone to be ready at eight the next morning. Lindsey was looking askance at Dale (though sharing lines and Dale handing her a straw) and the unmade bed. I invite Jim over, everyone’s friend, and Margery from down the hall to break the ice and finally, for no sane reason, ‘C’, who also came over, in one of his rare ‘social’ moods. We were all sitting around the table doing lines. Everyone knew our business though ‘C’ was the stranger in the group. At one point around ten p.m. Lindsey said she didn’t feel comfortable working without me, in case any questions occurred. I said: ‘Well why don’t you just take ‘C’ with you. He knows a few things’.
She liked the idea and agreed. ‘K’ didn’t know him, except that he’d been my partner for many months and assumed he knew a lot, so she agreed. And he agreed too, for a third. He didn’t know squat and they didn’t know him but the deal was sealed. They exchanged phone numbers to meet the next morning. In retrospect, days later, thinking back on the matter soberly, I can only deduce that I was so high and out of my mind that I made this crazy suggestion as a joke, just as crazy as inviting him over. Yet it worked out to my advantage in the long run. This was the mad prelude to two unimaginably wild trips, which both started the next morning.
The party broke up by midnight. Dale helped me in packing a small bag and one other thing. I was worried about getting robbed or losing my wallet in Mexico. This was before A.T.M.’s. I was bringing a well-worn, almost ragged, gray, jeans jacket. It had top pockets with little, triangular button down flaps to them. In these we carefully cut the back stitches and sewed two hundred dollar bills in each. I thanked her for such help and then gave her the same amount for her being there. She had no job and needed the money. She’d just seen thirty thousand dollars change hands at our table that day. It would be an insult not to give her something, the least I could do for such a lovely woman, sitting on the edge of my bed, smiling at my fortune and sewing for me at two a.m. I’m sure we made love that night.
Louie was at my door the next morning. Robin was in his small, red Toyota waiting and we all squeezed in the front seat to the S.F. airport. I didn’t have a passport. They did. But you could leave the country without one, seamlessly and without a hitch, the pretty, ticket checker smiling and wishing you ‘bon voyage’. You just might not get back in again but they didn’t tell you that.
This trip, as I said before, was pure chance. I was the last minute replacement. There were probably five possibilities in Louie’s mind but because I had money, he figured I was his best choice. This was the first in a long chain of events any one of which, slightly altered, would have led to a vastly different future for me. It was the ‘butterfly effect’ at its finest, just as it was with Ron Dasch and Barbara nine years earlier.
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