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CHAPTER III


CONSPIRING: The texts are not clear as to the true sequence of events at Dealey Plaza. As preparation for my enlistment it seemed sensible to engage in research, to become familiar with what had happened so that I could play my role on assassination day without bringing undue attention to myself, but although I spent hours rolling and unrolling the Zapruders, although I studied the still photographs and did not neglect the efforts of our very best his­torians to trace through the motives and culpability I emerged with very little. It is difficult to judge exactly what happened there. There are some who say that there was a conspiracy oper­ative while others feel that the sole assassin was Livy Osborn who was of course killed by Jack Diamonds before he could go to trial. There are some who say that the conspiracy went up to the highest levels of the government at that time and others who say that Osborn was a lonely madman with a good streak of luck. Some say this and some say that but most say nothing at all; it is hardly a topic of consuming interest to most. Scop is an exception; he became obsessed by the assassination long before I knew him but how many are there like this? I think that he fastened upon it, became familiar with the details precisely because it was arcane, an area of dull and private scholarship. He would have gotten no satisfaction from dealing with something where he would have been competing with many others in an area of wide interest.

He was always fascinated with the assassination, however; I cannot deny the sincerity of his interest which appeared to be quite real and which was not based upon self-aggrandizement. “That’s when everything went wrong,” he said to me once or then again he might have said it several times, all our conversations seem to muddle together in the bowl of happenstance, the cup of memory, “that is when the entire social fabric seemed to come askew, don’t you see? If a figure of this importance, the pater­nalistic leader of the nation, the psychic underlay of the common consciousness could be murdered inexplicably—”

“Others had been murdered.”

“Yes,” he said, “yes I know what you’re saying but not in the era of modern technology. The techniques of diffusion, the com­munications which had been developed by that time made the tragedy personal and accessible and besides that there was the enormous power which the President yielded before the dispersion—”

“Oh Scop,” I said and turned from him, “this is so boring, can’t we talk about something else? Is this the only thing that you can talk about?” I was rather dull and frivolous in those days; it must be admitted that our relationship, such as it was, was based upon a mutual sexual attraction and my own boredom, little else. It took the temporals to tell me that there were areas of far greater significance between us than I might have grasped. “I just can’t bear to hear any more of this,” I said, my back toward him, my little haunches drawn up, pointing toward him my resilient but capacious rectum in which occasionally he would bury himself with small moans and confessions beyond words, “so let’s talk about something else,” and felt his hands come around to encircle my breasts, “that’s better,” I said, “that’s better now,” I was a wanton little slut in those days, interested in immediate satisfac­tions, unaware as I was for a long time of how deep was his obsession, how serious his intent, “Oh, I like that so much better than all this dull talk about society,” and allowed myself to be swaddled in his embrace, taken to his center (or so I thought at the time, lecherous little bitch that I was) but eventually he released me and without turning away, his chin still clamped into my shoulder said, “There’s got to be something done about this.” I am impacting many discussions of course. He talked about it all the time during the course of our relationship but I am taking highlights, so to speak, from each of the discussions and stringing them together to give the impression of a coherent, rising point of action and view. This is under the advice of the temporals who were good enough to suggest that if I wanted to keep a diary as a tension-outlet I approach my memories in precisely this way. They have had more experience with this than I have. They have had more experience than I have but they do not know what is going on either. “I’m going to have to straighten it out,” he said.

“Straighten what out?”

“Everything went crazy then. We’re the stillborn product of assassination out of despair. We’re a monster, a grotesque; the child that is our age is blind and horribly misshapen.”

“Can’t you stop talking about this Scop and just have fun?”

“No one can have fun. The Temporals will not permit it. They control everything; they have locked off alternatives not as they say for our protection but merely for our perpetuation. It’s got to be changed.”

“And how are you going to change it?”

“Well,” he said and paused, a long, thick pause which might have lasted some moments or days; there may have been yet another fuck dropped into it (on a level of superficiality we had a passionate relationship, it took the Masters to show me how false it was and how divorced from true feeling) or merely the desire for one but he finally said, “Obviously I’ll have to get back to the point of origin.”

“How?”

“How?” he said, “by using the convertor of course.”

“Unauthorized time travel is illegal. You will be subject to severe penalty.”

“You really are a stupid little bitch you know,” he said, “if it weren’t for the fact that there was a raw, crude sexual attraction here I wouldn’t even have gotten involved with you.” He shifted on the bed, moved away from me. “Even so, I believe that I am going to get away from you. Right now.”

“Be sensible, Scop. You cannot change the past.”

“I don’t want to change the past. I want to change the present.”

“Even so. Even so—”

“I believe that I am going to get away from you,” he said, getting from the bed, turning away from me, striding toward his clothing which he began to put on in a rough, absentminded fash­ion, the glowing insignia of his rank intimidating me as I lay naked on the bed, filled with the desire to get into my own cloth­ing yet not willing to concede weakness. “I don’t have to put up with this nonsense. I really don’t have to put up with it any more.”

“All right,” I said. I must have realized then that our rela­tionship was over. He was truly obsessed and when Scop fastens upon an idea he will not let it go, not for anything. “Do what you will.”

“I intend exactly that. Get dressed,” he said. “Get out of here, get out of my room. You disgust me.”

“You did not say that before.”

“I did not say a lot of things before. Get out now,” he said and lunged to pull me roughly from the sheets but I was too clever for him and had already gained my footing, stood beside the bed then and with real anger went for my own clothing, contorting my emotions into a loathing which I felt would help me survive the humiliation he had imposed upon me. There was no reason for this. There was no reason for him to have done this I thought and while he stood over me raging I drew on my clothes one by one and stood before him for an instant before leaving, I did not know what that look in his eyes meant, was unable to place it for some time but later on it came to me: it was the look that Osborn must have had before he set off the safety and looked down the long distance to the white car in the motorcade.