(no subject)

[tibetanmethod]

"Jake?"

Big Jake looks up; he's in front of the bar in the Bookhouse, sitting on a stool and reading Rimbaud, accompanied by a pint of Alaskan Amber. The biker raises his eyebrows.

"Did the sixties ever happen to Twin Peaks?"

Big Jake closes his book. "What do you mean?"

Cooper is sitting on the low, ugly plaid sofa against one wood-paneled wall, mug of coffee in his hands and his dark head tilted back against the wall. He doesn't have a comb with him, and he doesn't much care today. He'll walk home, hands in pockets, listening to the wind through the trees. "I mean -- conceptually. Think about the Beatles. About Jefferson Airplane. Does anybody here listen to that stuff any more? Did they ever?"

A laugh. "Cooper, you don't know very much about small towns. The only doctrine of free love we've got going on here is Ben Horne, and the only reason he gets away with it is he's rich."

"Not that." Cooper lifts his head. "Not exactly. It's..." He lifts a hand, lets it drop. "There's a... I suppose you could call it a popular mythology. Either the sixties themselves are a mythology that hasn't entered the vernacular here, or they shattered a mythology that's still operating here when it isn't in most of the rest of the country."

"Mm." The level in Big Jake's glass goes down. "So you just answered your own question."

Cooper doesn't quite laugh. "I guess I did."

"What brought that on?" Jake edges off the stool and goes to put the book of poetry back behind the bar, in its usual place.

He shakes his head. "It's just something I was thinking about. Why this place is so far removed from everywhere else." A very small smile. "And I caught a FM station in Spokane playing 'White Rabbit' when I was down there a few days ago. The last time I heard it was in the airport coming out here for the first time."

Big Jake doesn't say anything for a moment; he's busy getting out a broom to sweep the area by the front door -- men keep tracking in leaves and needles. Then: "You always live inside your head this much?"

Cooper takes a long, slow sip of coffee.

"I suppose I do," he says finally.

Jake stops sweeping, and gives Cooper a critical look. "You should try a motorcycle."

"Excuse me?"

"You merge with your surroundings, you maintain control, and you get out of your head. You should try a motorcycle."

Cooper opens his mouth. Closes it. "I think I'll pass."

Jake grins, and keeps sweeping. A comfortable silence falls. And then: "You don't go through that door any more." He nods to the door Cooper takes to Milliways.

Cooper's eyes narrow a little, before he can stop himself. "I haven't lately, no."

"How come that is?"

Jake is giving him that critical look again, and Cooper looks down at his coffee, because there are lots of answers possible to that question: I keep falling into sand traps, it's dangerous for no purpose, I've done a better job remembering to get milk before the store closes. He doesn't answer until he finishes off his cup. "I'm ready to be mundane for a while."

"Amen to that," Jake says, as vehemently as a Bookhouse Boy under the command of Harry Truman the last couple of months can, and keeps sweeping.

Cooper gets up, and gets a refill.