IVIV page 150

[Michael Bailey]

"What Mickey said was, 'I wish I could undo what I did, I know I can't, but
I bet I can make the money start to flow a different direction.'"

this page lays out not only that Mickey was planning to give away his money,
but also that Shasta was in love with Mickey. (and that Boris claims
he was bodyguarding,
part of the woodwork and just happened to overhear)

Now, here's the kicker, she wasn't the impetus, "love of a good woman"
type thing.
She loved him and didn't want him to do it.

See, my ideal hippie girlfriend would be all for it, it would be her
idea, in fact,
and she would come equipped to find a way to make it work...

But, okay, what planet does that happen on?  Especially if you are in
a detective story
which is realistically - well, ok, not "realistically", or
level-headedly either, but yeah,
both those things sort of, if you really think about it - looking at
this world 40 years ago,
a point at which current events sort of blur into history...

like that Steely Dan song (I think it's them)(oh yeah, Dirty Work),
she "foresees terrible trouble"

also of interest, is that Boris mentions some sort of (gnostic?) knowledge that
you get from being in jail (even for a night, so I've got it, courtesy
of Daytona Beach
PD spring break 197x!)
and this knowledge allows him to know that what Shasta feels for Mickey is
the genuine article.

Doc apparently has never been in jail (?), so he doesn't know how
Shasta felt about him.
Actually that's probably not why, it's that he is an immature stoner,
maybe, or he knows
that she doesn't really feel that way about him but won't admit it
even to himself,
or, as Elmina states, she's got a dream of her own...
or maybe, hearkening back to the optimistic viewpoint of V. before
Vietnam crushed America's grapes,
the gods like to see young people get together and also like to see
them change partners a time or two
before they settle down...
(this may be a heretical reading, cover your eyes...)




-- 
"Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the
revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world
declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism." -
Martin Luther King