"Okay," I said. "I'll tell you."
So I went into the crazy old dream--the feeling that there's something
better someplace, something you can take or leave alone, that doesn't
leave you with that wrung-out, hopeless horror of junk sickness when
you can't get the stuff.
I told him about the other addicts--how they feel this kinship that's
not like any other relationship anywhere--how you have that exalted
feeling of mingled hope and despair when another junkie is coming with
a fix for you--and how by just drifting around in a strange city you
find yourself drawn to the right district to score the stuff. How it's
almost telepathic.
I told him what they said about _yage_, that some South American
croaker had isolated from it a fix he called telepathine. How it was
supposed to be some kind of miracle dope that you could take when you
wanted it without actually _needing_ it, and it would open up the world
for you so you'd be close, really close, to others like you. So your
mind would be their mind. A union more terrific than any other kind--as
far beyond even the ideal sexual climax, for instance, as sex is beyond
a bow or a handshake. So there'd be a togetherness you couldn't achieve
any other way. So you wouldn't be so ... alone.
I felt embarrassed after talking like that, even though Jones listened
as sympathetically as anybody could, so I got up to get another cup of
coffee at the counter.
"Okay," I said defensively as I spooned in the sugar. "I've told you
about me. Now what about that stuff of yours--what do you call it
again?"
"_Uru_," he said. "It is what _yage_ is said to be, but is not. You
would like it. But you tell me you are 'off the stuff'."
"Off the old stuff. It's no good and I've licked it. Off with the old,"
I said, beginning to feel a little high already, "and on with the new.
_Uru_, eh?"
This might be it. The most. The big fix. I had to have it.
"You shall try it," Jones said. "You shall judge for yourself. Then if
you want more I will provide it for you. There will be no charge."
Right away I got suspicious. Nobody gives anything away. It could be a
come-on. Jones might figure I'd like it so much I'd have to have more
and then I'd pay and pay. But on the other hand maybe he figured wrong.
Nothing is habit-forming once. I didn't know anything about this _uru_,
but I knew all there was to know about everything else.
"Okay," I said. "When?"
"I will call you," Jones said.