“Ariel? Hi, there.”
The voice caught her as she was returning to her seat at the table and her bandmates were in their own conversations with other reporters. A hand touched her elbow. She looked to her left, at a smiling, heavy-set young man wearing a white ball cap with DJ on the front in gold glitter.
“How ya doin’? Okay if I set up and get a couple’a questions in? Your manager passed me through, I’m clean.” His smile never quit. His wide shoulders strained against a white nylon jacket that was really a couple of sizes too small; he stood about five feet seven and had big front teeth. The cap was pushed down low and tight on his head, with a huge curved bill. His hair was a sandy color on the sides and his deepset eyes were light brown. He had a bulbous nose that could round a corner before his Pumas did. “Just be a minute,” he told her. He was already setting up a tripod for a video camera next to the table. A black camera bag lay at his sneakered feet. “Go ahead, siddown.” Somebody else behind him told him to hurry up, and he shot a dark glance at the guy and said, “We’re all pros here, right? You shoulda got here
early
.” Then he switched his smile back on for Ariel, and he reached in to help her with her chair.
“DJ Talk It Up,” he said when Ariel was sitting. “A.K.A. Dominic Jankowski, but don’t let that get out. Pleased to meet ’cha.” He offered his hand and she shook it; he was wearing a ring on every finger. “Lemme get this thing ready, we’ll be off and runnin’.” He was attaching the camera to the tripod, which had seen heavy use and suffered some mishaps. One of the banged-up legs looked to be secured by a thick winding of duct tape. “I didn’t mean to cause nobody no worry when I made that call,” he explained as he worked. “I just believe in goin’ for what you want.
Got
to, all this competition out here. You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I guess,” she said.
“You are a
talented
person,” he said, throwing another smile at her. “I saw your videos. Got a fan-fuckin’-
tastic
one of you on YouTube doin’ the snake song. You wrote that?”
“I did.”
“I like what that says. Very beautiful. Okay, we’re ready.” The camera was positioned on her face. “Just…lemme…get this little
fuck
turned on.” The switch was fighting his finger.
Ariel shifted in her seat. The next two people behind him were trying to get her attention, waving cameras at her. “Can I ask what this is for?”
“My website, Rock Da Net Dot Com. Didn’t you check it out?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “It’s where DJ Talk It Up
lives
, my lady. Where he fries the night wires, talkin’ it up. There ya go.” The red light came on. “In business.”
“Talking up exactly what?”
“Ariel!” DJ Talk It Up spoke to her as if they were dear friends who hadn’t seen each other in years. “Talkin’ about
you
. And your band. And every other band I think is shootin’ straight for the stars. We’re recordin’ now, this’ll be for my Sunday night show.” He came around to peer into the lens over her shoulder, his cheek next to hers. She thought he was wearing a cologne that smelled like Band-Aids. “DJ Talk It Up on da Sunday
night
, yo yo yo!” He slung the fozzie finger. “We’re down here in San Diego at da Casbah, talkin’ to Ariel Collier, she be da
dream
girl of Da Five, check ’em out on this clip right here.” He straightened up and adjusted his cap. “I’ll edit the clip in, you’ll like it. You from up Boston way?”
“Manchester.”
“Philly,” he said, with a heart thump that went into a peace sign.
“Detroit,” said Nomad, who suddenly came up beside the DJ. “Can whip Philly’s ass.”
“Hey, my
man
!” DJ Talk It Up gave a crooked grin and balled up his fist to bump knuckles, but he only punched air. “Mr. Nomad, lookin’ mean!” He dropped his ghetto-by-way-of-bad-acting-lessons accent. “We’re recording here, see the light?”
“Rock Da Net Dot Com,” Ariel said, lifting her eyebrows.
“Excuse me, I’m with the Globe magazine.” A bearded man in a dark blue coat and open-necked shirt leaned in, a camera ready. His voice was a little testy. “Do I have to make an appointment to ask a few simple questions, or should—”
“Don’t push me!” DJ Talk It Up spun on him with a ferocity that even made Nomad step back. “I’m standin’ here, don’t push me!”
“I’m a
professional
, don’t you raise your—”
“Get your motherfuckin’ ass to the back of the line, dickweed! I’ve been waitin’ here for hours!”
“What the
hell
is this about?” True shouldered the Globe reporter, or freelancer or whatever he was, to one side. “Anybody causes any trouble in here, they’re going out. Are you causing trouble?” He directed this question to the Globe man.
“Sir, I am waiting my turn. That is all. This individual is wasting the hour that we professionals have been given to—”
“Bite my dick,” said DJ Talk It Up.
The upshot of all this was that the Globe spun toward the door, True walked away rubbing his temples because he had a ferocious headache, and after the crimson heat receded from DJ Talk It Up’s face he said this video would go over great on the website, his fans would go crazier than shithouse rats.
The interview went on for about seven more minutes, during which Nomad learned that DJ Talk It Up recorded the podcast in his aunt’s basement in L.A., where he was staying until his new crib in Westwood was redecorated. DJ Talk It Up said he’d just put the finishing touch on track number finito for his new CD, his own style of music he called grindhop, and both Dizzy D at Walkaround Records and Jasper Jack at Mutha’s Angry Boy were interested, and he’d used lots of samples from bands like Insane Clown Posse to make his statement. Maybe Ariel and Nomad would like copies? He could bring them to the Cobra Club tomorrow night.
“I don’t really have a lot of time to—” Nomad began, but Ariel said, “Sure, I’ll listen to your music.”
DJ Talk It Up smiled. “Okay,” he replied. “Yeah. Great. I’ll get it, like, cleaned up.” He stood silently for a few seconds, staring at her. Nomad thought the dude was zoning out. Or maybe he was
in love
. Then the DJ’s smile widened and he said, “I guess that does it.” He turned off the camera. “Hey,” he said before either of them could turn to the next person waiting. “Ariel, can I ask a big favor? I might have some more questions for you. Could you—and you might say no, and I’d understand—work me a backstage pass? Since I’m coming anyway. I could shoot some more video.” His grin showed the big front teeth. “Swear to God I won’t bring my fucking Uzi.”
“No can do,” Nomad said. “And you know, that’s not very funny.”
DJ Talk It Up smiled broadly at Nomad, but his eyes were vacant. “Sorry, man,” he amended. “Us Philly guys, we don’t got no class.”
“I can get you a pre-show pass,” Ariel told him, as Nomad looked on in astonishment. “You can come back before our set. Will that do?”
“Like honey on money,” he answered, which Nomad thought must’ve been something this guy had heard in a ’70s black exploitation flick, something like
Super Fly Goes To Hell Up In
Harlem
.
When DJ Talk It Up had packed his camera and taken his tripod and gone, Nomad asked Ariel if she had lost her mind today, if she didn’t smell the whiff of bozo like he did, and if they wanted a loser like that anywhere
near
the Cobra Club, much less backstage.
“Pre-show won’t hurt,” she said, and her voice was firm. “Everybody deserves a chance.”
Nomad didn’t reply, but he knew the City of Angels. It made people want things before they’d earned them. And anyway,
deserve
was not a word in his dictionary.
TWENTY-FOUR.
The hour passed and the sound check went on. They returned to Chappie’s, rested as True went into the den and hit his cellphone making sure all the last-minute security details were in place, they ate the dinner Chappie made for them, whoever wanted to change clothes and shower did so, and then they headed back to the Casbah. The place was overflowing. First up were the Mindfockers, six guys from the San Francisco area who delivered heavy-guitar distorto-and-vibrato-drenched head-banging rock, and after the Mindfockers’ double encores the Mad Lads got up there in front of the black leather seat cushions and the big clunky air-conditioner that looked like it was about to fall out of the wall and those four dudes laid down some serious vibe with funky guitars and a bright red Elka X-705 combo organ that made Terry salivate. The Mad Lads’ lead singer opened a music case, brought out an accordion and knocked the house down with a rollicking Cajun-peppered version of ‘In The Midnight Hour’.
It was half past the midnight hour before The Five took the stage. They started the gig with ‘Bedlam A-Go-Go’, slowed to its original tempo. By the middle of the show, when Berke did her drum solo and Terry came in on the gutsy growling Hammond to trade back and forth with her, they were a smooth and powerful engine of sonic flight, up in the orbit of the spinning spheres, way up where the music looked to the mind of the player like geometric shapes constantly changing themselves against the pure black of space, collapsing inward and reforming like a multitude of kaleidoscopes or, the best that Nomad could describe this sensation of being one with the music, as existing for a short time within a Kenner Spirograph drawing set, where you put the tip of your colored pen in a series of interlocked wheels placed on a piece of paper, and when your talent and discipline took you where you were supposed to be—with guitar, or vocals, or drums, or keyboard—again and again and again, an intricate design began to appear that was a perfect and stunning combination of both mathematics and art. After going that far into the dream, the applause and appreciation of the audience was like a call to let go and return to earth, because no one could stay at that height very long, and wanting to get up there once more was part of the drug called creativity.
They were back at Chappie’s house around three-thirty, drained of energy but satisfied—like good sex—after two encores and a version of ‘Blackout of Gretely’ that had nearly lifted the roof off the Casbah. Chappie had some cold cans of beers on hand, and passed them around as everyone sprawled, half-dead, in the living room. Terry was sitting on the sofa between Ariel and Berke, with Chappie in a wicker chair and Nomad lying on his back on the gold-colored carpet. True sat in a green chair and gratefully accepted a beer; the night had passed with no incidents, and all the agents who’d put their lives on the line for him and The Five were by now at home with their families. Except, of course, the ones in the Yukons on sentry duty out front.
He drank his beer and listened to them talk. They were tired, sure, but they were still ‘up’, as they would call it. Terry was fretting about an intro he thought he’d flubbed, and Nomad told him to forget about it. Then Nomad sat up, turned his lasers on Berke and said he thought some of the songs were still running fast, and she said he was wrong, the beat was right in the pocket. He faced her down for a few seconds, and then they both shrugged and returned to their beers and that was the end of it but the point was delivered for Berke to rethink her timing. The small talk came back up, they laughed at the recollection of the Mad Lads’ lead singer going buck wild with his accordion, and suddenly Chappie got to her feet and asked, “Anybody want a nightcap? Something a little stronger than beer?”
“Mom,” Berke said, “don’t get started on that so late.”
“What’s
late
? Jesus, I hardly ever see you and you’re here two nights and leaving again at…what?…ten in the morning?”
“We can stay until eleven,” True said.
“Okay, eleven then! You! Mr. Secret Agent Man. You want a Jack and Coke?”
“Um…well…”
“Coca-
Cola
,” she told him, in case he was that much of a stranger to the human race.
“I’ll take one,” Terry said.
“What the hell,” Berke said. She shrugged and leaned back, throwing her sneakered feet up on the coffee table and in the process kicking some magazines off to the floor. “Sign me up.”
“That’s my girl. Anybody else?”
True looked at the others in the room. They were so young. He had the sudden feeling that he was very far from home, and after this was over all of him might not
want
to go home. It had been, to him, an amazing night. Maybe most of it had been senseless noise and barely-controlled chaos, but still…all that youth, and passion, and life under one roof…it was eye-opening, is what it was. In his day, it would have been ‘consciousness-expanding’. If you believed in that.
“I’ll take a little drink in a shotglass, if you have one,” True decided.
“Do
I
have a shotglass?” Chappie grinned at him. “What color, and from which bar?”
“
Mom
,” Berke said. “Stop fucking around.”
“You ought to help your mother,” True told her when Chappie had gone to the kitchen. “With the drinks, I mean.” He glanced at her well-worn sneakers. “And you probably ought to take your feet off the table.”
“Oh my God!” Berke spoke with breathless mock surprise. Her eyes had widened with pretend shock. “Guys, our road manager has become our barracks sergeant! Yeah, I knew that was coming. It doesn’t bother my mom, why should it bother you?” She did recall, however, that it had bothered Floyd.
“It’s not ladylike,” True said.
Countdown to blastoff, Nomad thought. Five…four…three…two…
“Go help your mother,” True said, and this time his voice carried the hard stamp of official business. “She needs you.”
One
, the loneliest number, never fell.
Berke’s face seemed frozen, her mouth partly open and her black eyes as shiny as new glass. She slowly blinked, she said, “Okay,” with a quiet that nearly blew her bandmates’ minds, and then she got up and left the room.
“‘Danger’ is your middle name, huh?” Nomad asked True.
“My middle name is Elmer,” he said, as he retrieved the magazines from the floor and put them in a neat stack back where they were, and Nomad, Ariel and Terry thought that name sounded just fine.
True finished his beer. The drinks were served from a wooden tray painted watermelon green. True’s shotglass was full to the brim and had a logo that said it was from the Funky Pirate on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. He took half of it down and did not fail to note that Chappie had opened a fresh bottle of Jack Daniels and it was on the coffee table where her daughter’s feet used to be. Berke returned to her place on the sofa with her drink, and nary a hiss was hissed nor a curse unfurled like a battleflag.
But those fucking drums would sure take a beating tomorrow night, Nomad thought as he settled in with his potion. Or…maybe not.
True came to the bottom of his glass. He was still thinking about the Casbah, and how the audience—a decent audience, an appreciative audience, not like that mob at Stone Church—had responded to The Five’s music. This was a different world. He couldn’t imagine how courageous a person would have to be, to get up for the first time on stage in front of strangers who could cut your dream to pieces. Chappie was offering him another pour, and he accepted it. They were talking about the gig tomorrow night, how they needed to tighten up here or stretch it out a little bit there—‘let it breathe’, Nomad said, as if the song were a living thing—and the talk was easy and relaxed, the conversation of people who respected each other and, it was clear, really did share a strong bond of family, of professionalism, of…
honor,
really.
He understood that kind of bond.
He’d almost gone through his second shotglass when he said, “I used to be in a band.” It had come out of him so abruptly he hadn’t heard it coming, even in his own head.
The easy and relaxed talk silenced.
“Look at all those eyes,” True said, and when he smiled he thought his mouth felt heavy. “It’s true. I mean,
I’m
True. But it
is
true. Really.”
“What’d you play?” Nomad asked, with a semi-smirk. “Bone fiddle for the Cavemen?”
“No, honest to God.” He was aware of Chappie refilling his shotglass, and that was okay, they weren’t leaving until eleven. He would sleep until eight, he never needed much sleep anyway, this was a nice night and it was okay. “I played acoustic guitar in a band called the Honest Johns. Three guys. And me. I mean, three guys in all. When I was a junior in high school.” He took another drink, and boy was he going to sleep well tonight. This morning. Whenever. Time got weird when you were in a band. “Well, we never actually played anywhere. We just rehearsed in my friend’s rumpus room.”
“Say
what
?” Nomad asked.
“Downstairs room,” True explained. Jeez, these kids acted like adults but they knew as little about the world as children did. “My friend had an eight-track reel-to-reel. Tape recorder.”
“Cool,” said Terry.
“We played…let’s see…Buffalo Springfield’s ‘For What It’s Worth’. We did ‘One Toke Over The Line’, by Brewer and Shipley—”
“My
man
,” said Terry with admiration.
“We did ‘Blackbird’, by the Beatles. And I guess the nearest we came to perfection was ‘Suite: Judy Blue Eyes’ by—”
“Crosby, Stills and Nash!” Ariel was nursing a glass of orange juice. Her smile was sunny. “Oh, wow! I used to play that song all the time!”
“Really? I remember it had a strange tuning.”
“Oh yeah, the E modal tuning.”
Nomad just had to ask the next question: “Who sang the lyrics?”
“We all did,” True said, not realizing what kind of trap he was stepping into. “We did the three-part harmony.” He took another drink, and thought of himself as a young man in a rumpus room, two friends on either side, singing into a microphone while the reels of a huge tape recorder caught the moment, to be forever lost except for the imprint in his mind.
“Sing the first few lines for us,” Nomad said.
“Huh? Oh, no. I haven’t sung that song for years.”
“Don’t you remember the words? You’re not
that
old.”
“John!” Ariel caught his gaze and shook her head.
“You’ve got to remember the
tune
,” Nomad went on. And why he was pushing like this, why he was showing a little streak of mean he didn’t know, except for the fact that the gig tonight had been a big success, the media thought they were a big success, the
People
magazine article would say they were going to be a big success, the future for this dead band said Big Success in huge flashing neon with dollar signs twenty feet tall, and he felt like a creepy-crawly piece of shit because it wasn’t about the music, it wasn’t about their talent and dedication to their craft, it was about death and sniper’s bullets, and how could a person with any ounce of self-respect call that a big success? He thought that the others, for all their smiles tonight and their afterglow of accomplishment, had to be feeling the same, or they just weren’t letting themselves think about it.
“If you remember the tune,” Nomad said, unyielding, “the words may come back.”
True nodded. “I do remember the tune.” His shotglass was empty once again, and Chappie moved to refill it because it was fun having a new drinking buddy, even if it was an FBI agent, but she stopped when she looked into her daughter’s face and those steady black eyes said
No more
.
“I’d like to hear some singing.” Nomad drew his knees up to his chin. “Man, you might be like…a lost talent or something.”
“Come on, John,” Terry said, and Nomad looked at him fiercely and asked, “Where are we going?”
Without warning, without an intake of breath or an explanation that his voice was rusty or that he couldn’t do this in public and he was sorry he’d even brought any of this to light, True began to sing.
His pitch was perfect. His voice was softer and higher than they would’ve expected. It had an element of a junior high schooler in it, singing for his friends in a downstairs room.
“
It’s getting to the point,
Where I’m no fun anymore.
I am sorry.
Sometimes it hurts so badly
I must cry out loud.
I am lonely.
I am yours, you are mine, you are what you
—”
True’s voice faltered. He stopped and looked at his audience, who were all staring at him. He started to take a drink and realized the shotglass in his hand had nothing in it. Now I’ve gone and made a damn fool out of myself, he thought. Damn old man, he thought.
Damn old man.
Maybe someone should have clapped, to break the silence. Ariel thought about it, and came close to doing it, but she did not.
It was Berke who stepped into the breech. “I bet John hopes he can sing like that when he gets your age,” she said to True.
“Well,” True said, and shrugged, and looked at his polished black wingtips.
“Not bad,” Nomad had to admit, after a few more seconds had drifted past. “You want to sign up for vocal lessons sometime, I’ll only charge you a hundred dollars an hour.”
True turned the shotglass between his palms. He had forgotten himself, he realized. He had forgotten why he was here, and what he was about. It was time, maybe, to let them know so he wouldn’t be allowed to forget again.
“In the van,” he said. “On the way to Stone Church.” He was still staring at his shoes, but he was speaking to John Charles. “You asked if you were supposed to feel sorry for Jeremy Pett.”
“Yeah, I remember.”
True nodded. He felt a pulse beating at his temple. “Have you ever fought in a war?”