Thomas M. Disch - Ringtime

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RINGTIME

By Thomas M. Disch

One day (my story begins) I found myself on the shady side of Memory Lane,

which is a place, like Wall Street, that can be anywhere the sellers and the

sold chance to collide. In this case, in the IRT Antique Arcade, between

Twenty-third and Twenty-eighth, where I had come with four hundred in

over-the-counter unregistered cash and a need to spend it all immediately. I

knew where. At the downtown end of the Arcade was a dealer ostensibly dealing

in old paperbacks, most of them just powder sealed in cellophane, but who was

in fact a fence for hot rings.

Morton Shure had the pale skin and opossum eyes common to the denizens of the

IRT Arcade and a straggly beard that looked like acne that had undergone a sea

change. With browsers who stopped to inspect his baggies of powdered prose he

affected the Cranked-down speech of a zombie in custodial care. With real

customers he revved up to a laconic mumble. Not a candidate for Salesman of

the Month, but Morton's merchandise sold itself. I told

him what I was after, and we stepped to the back of the booth. Morton drew the

curtain and brought out his black velvet tray of lost silver souls. Most of

the rings on the tray were familiar to me from earlier shopping expeditions.

One or two I'd tried on for size and resold to Morton. The selection was as

varied, and as tempting, as the index of a sex manual. It is my opinion that

anyone who buys a ring as an alternative to getting laid in the

phenomenological flesh has his ass screwed on backwards. Orgasm is like the

sunrise; another will be along soon. Most collectors of any affluence agree,

and so raw sex is a buyer's market on Memory Lane. Four hundred dollars would

have bought up half the rings on Morton's tray and left me change for a

doughnut and coffee. On the other hand, I knew that four hundred dollars

wasn't going to buy me the bluebird of happiness. A felony was as much as I

could hope for.

"How about a life of crime?" I hinted.

Morton blinked his opossum eyes. "You, uh, wouldn't want me to break any

laws?"

"Laws? Morton, we're grown-ups. Grown-ups can distinguish between

entertainment and real life. If I can put on a ring, I can take it off. Right?

At my age, with my blood pressure, do you think I can be corrupted by The

Adventures of Robin Hood?" I continued babbling in this vein until Morton had

been soothed sufficiently for his greed to get the better of his distrust.

"There's one item. I personally know nothing about it."

"Right, right. Show me."

He unlocked a metal file and took out a cassette. He plugged the cassette into

a pair of video specs and handed them to me. "Personally . . ." he began

again.

"You know nothing about it."

I turned on the spectacles. They bubbled with blue

blips, and then a man in a facemold of the aged Woody Allen told me what to

expect from the ring he was pawning. I will not anticipate the ring's spinning

of its own tale except to say that the masker (who was not the ring's maker,

only its third owner) admitted candidly (and a little nervously) that it

recorded the commission of a felony. To be found in possession of such a ring

brings a mandatory sentence of a year's imprisonment-longer, if the nature of

the crime is particularly nasty. It's odd, but when you know a ring is hot, it

starts to look different. Evil has its own glitter.

On the whole, I am a law-abiding citizen. I understand the reasoning behind

outlawing the merchandising of murder, rape, or any other actionable offense.

Surely it will not do for honest citizens to subsidize the corrupt elements in

crimes they have committed in order to market their transcription. Surely to

traffic in such wares is irresponsible and deserves reprobation and

punishment. Even so, consider how common it was, in the days before

micro-memory transfer, for the public to be offered as "entertainment" lurid

fantasies of criminal behavior. True, in the movies and novels of the pre-now

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Thomas M. Disch - Ringtime

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