“Damn.” He pushed his wet hair back from his forehead. “She’s one complicated chick.”
As happy as his remark made me, my panic over what she had done escalated. “Suppose she took the brown acid? Or the green acid? I need to take her to the medical tent right now.” I may have been furious at her earlier, but now I was scared. I didn’t want Livy poisoned.
“Suzie.” Leon cupped my wet shoulders. “You don’t need to worry about Livy.” He pointed at Johnny. “Look at him. He’s tripping too.”
Johnny had a faraway look in his eyes, but he sure wasn’t crying. Or shouting. He was dancing.
“He’d never be dumb enough to take the bad shit going around here. They probably got it from Henry. Just ignore her. She’ll come down eventually.”
“Ronny! You are beautiful,” Livy shouted at the stage. “I’m so happy you’re here!”
What the hell?I turned around to Leon again. He simply raised his palms.
My patience was growing razor thin. With a scowl on my face, I stepped right in front of her. “Ron is not here. He is in Vietnam!”
She stepped aside—I had blocked her view—then waved and hollered at the good-looking guitar player onstage. “I’m right here, Ronny.”
With eyes pinned on the dude, I studied him head to toe. There was an uncanny resemblance between him and Ron. “What’s that guitar player’s name?” I asked Leon. “The one next to Jerry Garcia.”
“Bob Weir.”
I twisted back around. “Livy!”
She wouldn’t look at me.
“Livy.” With hands on both shoulders, I shook her. “That’s. Not. Ron. It’s. Bob. Weir!”
She flat ignored me, like she was unaware of my presence. “Play ‘For Your Love,’ Ronny!” she shouted. “Play it for me.”
Ron loved the Yardbirds. He even wore their signature sunglasses.
“Get agrip, Livy!” I shouted, inches from her face. “Ron is not on that stage.”
Leon wrapped his arm around my waist and spoke into my ear. “No point in trying to talk her down. The LSD has to wear off.”
Laughing like a lunatic, Livy reached out and placed her hand on my forehead. “Your head. Your head. It’s huuuuge!”
“No, it’s not,” I said, growing more incensed. “You’re the one with a big head.”
Leon shook his. “No point in arguing with her.”
“Why did you drop my ring, Ronny?” she shouted at Bob Weir.
Drop your ring? Okay, that’s it.Drenched to the bone, I turned away, scheming how to get as far away from her as I could. Meanwhile, the Grateful Dead continued with an instrumental number that had been going on for at least twenty minutes. I wanted to slit my wrists.
“It was my favorite ring,” Livy cried, with real tears in her eyes. Then she started to wail for the second time in minutes.
As much as I wanted to ignore her, I couldn’t. Unable to hold back, I shook her again.Hard.“What? Ring?”
Finally recognizing my presence, she held up her pinkie finger. “My signet ring. It’s gone.”
I remembered that ring. Signet rings were all the rage. Of course, Livy got one. It was a birthday gift from her parents, gold with cursiveinitials—OAF, for Olivia Adele Foster, named after her grandmother. We had always joked about her initials spellingoaf.
It was all coming back. I remembered her telling me that she had lost her ring over Easter break.
She placed her hands on either side of her mouth to yell at Bob Weir, “I said you could try it on. Not drop it behind Rosie’s bed.”
Rosie’s bed? Rosie was our housekeeper. She slept in the little bedroom off our kitchen whenever my parents were out of town—
