She opened her eyes, vaguely conscious of the noise around her, but found she could focus only on the face in front of hers. His skin was so smooth, especially around his eyes. The raggedy beard growth and his wild dark hair appeared to be pasted across his forehead. A slow realization dawned, something was wrong, terribly wrong. There was a timbre to the voices, an urgency, and she didn’t like it. She sat up from the pallet on the floor that she and Seeker had shared the night before. Her attention was still riveted on him and she wondered why he didn’t hear it, too. Why wasn’t he beginning to stir as well? She reached out to his shoulder in an attempt to roust him but when she pushed, he only flopped onto his back. The strange way he moved further alarmed her. His face, still rimmed with those damp curls, was a flat gray, with no color whatsoever to his lips. Her anxiety continued to build and yet she could not concentrate. Her head felt so woozy, so unfocused.
“Come on, step back now!” The first distinctive voice she could discern was issuing orders. She stayed seated, her hand to her head. An upward glance took in the psychedelic peace sign still splayed across the window where the morning sun was pouring in. Last night her drawing had appeared so vivid in its colors, moving, as if it had a life of its own. But now it was only a faded, washed out version of what she remembered. Which was what?
Seeker’s smile was so sweet. “Here, just take a little. See? I crushed up your sugar cube for you so you could take half. I know you’ve never done this before so you don’t want too much at first.” She gave him a funny look because he also held three cubes for himself. “It’s okay,” he reassured her. “After a while, you can do more, too, but not at first. You’ll see. It’s really great stuff and….”
The angry man’s voice was still barking in the background. What was his problem? Didn’t he know this was a place of peace? That’s what Seeker had called it. “Come on,” he told her the day he found her, sitting on the curb, crying. “Come see for yourself. Nobody makes you do anything you don’t want to do. No one will demand anything of you. We have a large second floor apartment, some friends and I, and we all just crash there. It’s a place of peace. You’ll like it, I promise, and if you don’t, you can come right back to your spot here on this curb.” And she had followed him to his promised land of peace. Last night, Seeker had been laughing, making her feel so loved, snapping pictures with the little camera his brother gave him. Above all else, she had heard Seeker say, no one will demand anything of you and now there was this angry demanding man.
“Out of the way now, girl. Is this the one?” The uniformed police officer pointed at her comatose companion and another younger officer kneeled down beside her and Seeker. “Geez, it stinks in here,” the barking man continued. “What is that awful smell? It ain’t marijuana.” He waved his hand in front of his face in a futile effort to banish the offensive odor.
“It’s incense, Man,” one of the many gathered in the apartment crooned in a sing song manner. “Just incense. Nothing illegal about that.”
The younger officer was kneeling on their private sleeping pallet and doing a poor job of concealing his amused smile, listening to his partner’s frustration. He poked at Seeker. “Another dead one, I’m afraid.”
Dead? She heard the word but it made no sense to her. Dead? Who was dead? Seeker?!
The others in the apartment crowded in and the louder of the two officers ordered them back again. Who was he to be yelling at them? Her disconnected thoughts kaleidoscoped around her. They all slept here. Like her, for the moment, they all lived here, in this tiny oasis of peace on the chaotic streets of San Francisco in 1967.
Reality was slowly taking hold. How could Seeker be dead? She struggled to her feet.
“All right.” The Demanding Man was now speaking to all of them. “This man, who knew him? How long? What’s his real name? What do you all know about him?”
The multitude shuffled and muttered amongst themselves.
“Okay, who’s been here the longest?” The sergeant tried a different approach.
“Bear, get the Bear.” A murmur went through the group. A large young man, who appeared to be as wide as he was tall, ambled reluctantly to the front of the pack.
“Bear?” The officer raised an eyebrow in the new arrival’s direction as he put a pen to the notebook he held in his right hand. “That your street name? What’s it say on your birth certificate, boy? How long you been here?” He waved a hand in a vague arc to take in the apartment where they were standing. Two men arrived with a hospital gurney to take Seeker to his next destination and the sergeant sidestepped around them, still focusing on the Bear.
“Six months, I guess,” came the unsteady answer. “My name is Tim Grizzly. Me and Seeker—we rented this place together. He had some money, sent by his dad, I think.”
“Whose name is on the lease then?”
“His. I was with him, but I didn’t sign anything.”
“And what is his name? And don’t tell me any of this Seeker nonsense. I need his real name and address.”
“Uhh…” He hesitated and looked around as if he were being asked to reveal some deeply held secret in front of a crowd of witnesses.
“Come on, Bear.” For the first time since entering the premises, the man’s voice softened ever so slightly.