Asimov's SF, December 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Everybody who could get out, wanted out.

  “This is fucking stupid,” Vlad said. “We don't know it's Amanita. And even if it's as bad as the plague we just got to make sure we wash our hands.”

  “Amanita killed three hundred people in Istanbul on nine June,” Shayla said. “And it takes a cough or the close contact with another to spread it.”

  “I'd wanted to go to that Starbucks,” Rick said. “Maybe it was meant for me.”

  “Quiet!” Ali ordered. Past the bus he had driven up onto the sidewalk alongside the Great Mosque. He honked as frightened pedestrians jumped out of his way, then after fifty yards of this, forced himself back into the street, scraping the bumper of a car that had been reluctant to let him in.

  We had gained four car lengths.

  Twenty minutes later we were in sight of the gate. Several cars were ahead of us. I counted four U.N. soldiers at the gate, guns at the ready, plus two more inspecting a yellow Fiat like the one we had rented. Ali honked.

  “Have you lost your mind, Ali-Baba?” Shayla said.

  Ali swore at her so violently that she lowered herself in her seat.

  They let the Fiat through. Then they closed the gate. After some time of conferring in the bunk house, one of the soldiers walked toward us.

  “We're dead,” Rick said.

  “It's Blake,” Ali said. He lowered the window. “My friend,” he said.

  Blake was the mustached sunglassed Brit. “Sorry, mate. Bit of a problem. The Green Line's closed, at least until tomorrow. Quarantine and all that.”

  “But my guests are staying in Strovlos.”

  “Quite. You have friends—Omar comes to mind—surely you can find a few rooms to rent.”

  “Dude,” Vlad said, “Dennis's aunt was head honcho in the American Embassy.”

  “And Mrs. Thatcher was my mum,” the soldier said. “But not even Mr. Ataturk's request could open the gate today.”

  “Thank you,” Ali said. He was starting to roll up his window, but Blake motioned him to stop.

  “Don't play at the Narghile,” he said, addressing the three of us in the back seat. “Stay away from crowds till this thing blows over.”

  “We hear you loud and clear,” I said, before Vlad could spout something provocative, or Rick something inane.

  * * * *

  We picnicked atop a hill overlooking Nicosia.

  It had once been a park, carefully manicured, but the grass and a grove of olive trees were dead, and the only living thing was a great leafy cypress under which we took shelter from the sun. The air was still and the day was hot.

  “There is an old man who waters this tree in the cool of the evenings,” explained Ali, fingering the bark.

  “Isn't this where you cut our initials?” Shayla said. There were hearts, names, dates, carved into the trunk. “Or has it grown over?”

  “That tree is dead,” Ali said. Then he reached into his wicker picnic basket and brought out a bottle of red wine. He offered it to us all, but I declined on Rick's behalf, and when Ali poured a glass which he gave to Shayla, she spat into it, then tossed it over her shoulder.

  “It is the good Turkish wine,” Ali said. He and I and Vlad sipped and for myself at least it relieved the smallest part of tension.

  “Is it the Armenian church wine?” Shayla said. Sarcasm, but weariness. It's hard to keep up any pose, punk or fundie, when it's a hundred degrees in the shade. Even Ali had taken off his sharkskin jacket, to reveal a tank top and a well-muscled physique: he had a crucifix tattooed into one shoulder, and a Muslim crescent into the other. I wondered if it were gang graffiti or if he thought he could symbolically unite the two halves of Cyprus.

  “Where'd you get the tattoos?” Rick asked, fingering his ponytail like a rosary.

  “From a fool. Ask Shayla where she got her tattoo?”

  She made a sound more a hiss than a sigh. “A bearded gentleman sliced my cheek with a razor blade at a concert in Istanbul. Because I had not covered my head. A beard! There was a time when no man in Turkey wore a beard. There was a time when the veil was outlawed too.”

  “The heat dulls your memory,” Ali said.

  Rick slid across the cypress needles to me. “Just one drink, Dennis?”

  “You know you can't do that,” I said.

  “Give him half a bar,” Vlad said.

  “He can take the drug, but not the drink,” Ali said.

  “The mixture's deadly,” I said.

  I gave Rick a milligram of Xanax and a fresh bottle of Gatorade. He drank from it, then handed it to Shayla. She pushed back her cowl, then drank deeply from the bottle. Ali pretended not to notice. “Look at the smoke.”

  Near one of the old Venetian towers a column of black smoke rose. By coincidence it was nearly the same width and height as the tower, like something sent from hell trying to incorporate in solid form. “Cool,” I said.

  “They blew up a building,” Rick said.

  “No,” said Ali. “It is the Submission Faction. They burn tires and trash and effigies of the mayor whenever the gate is shut down.”

  Shayla said something harsh which I took for a curse. “It is the normal Cypriots. They are frustrated. They are not the terrorists.”

  “I submit to your greater wisdom,” Ali said.

  I wondered what perversity had made Ali want to come to this park anyway.

  We ate kabobs and gyros and we drank wine. It was like communion wine, sweet as grape juice. It was stronger than Omar's bathtub gin, and after a second glass, I felt a sense of warmth and safety. There were no gunshots and the smoke dwindled and I could appreciate old Nicosia, the Turkish side especially, with its ancient buildings and narrow streets and minarets as old as redwood trees.

  Ali was talking on his cell, Shayla flashing him looks. He ended the call, then said, “I can get us across the Green Line tonight.”

  “What, we drive two hundred kilometers across the desert?” Shayla asked.

  “No. We walk through the crypt of the church of St. Nicolas.”

  Shayla rolled her eyes. “We will dress as monks?”

  “Hey,” Vlad said. “I thought you had friends, so we can stay here after the show.”

  “There will be no show. I shall call Omar.”

  “What the fuck?” Vlad said. “We signed the contract!”

  I spoke. “This is the most important time for us to play. We got to heal wounds, man.”

  Ali poured himself the last of the wine. “Call Auntie Martha, and ask her the wisdom of this plan.”

  Rick looked appealingly at me, but I ignored him. I smelled the cypress, felt the warm blanket of needles beneath me, tasted the sweet flaky baklava Ali had served us; and I knew the Cypriots just the other side of the Green Line could be sensing these same things. The two groups needed a bridge, not a wall, stitches, not an amputation. They needed to know the oneness of the universe, the universality of music. I remembered seeing “Kurdt Cobain, je t'aime” spray-painted on a wall in Lyon. I remembered how Japanese girls by the thousands had given Kurt Hello Kitty toys when Nirvana played Tokyo.

  I knew what Kurt would do in this case.

  I closed my eyes like a man who had found his Higher Power, and said, “We will play the concert tonight.”

  * * * *

  Downtown Dharma has played to some strange mixtures of crowds before, but the Narghile has to set some record. There were skinheads in Mac boots and swastikas; elderly tourists still wearing their day packs; fundies in beards and fezes; college-age American girls in low-cut gangsta pants and Muslim scarves; and Turkish families, portly fathers wearing fedoras and Saddam mustaches, moms in headscarves but flare jeans and purple mascara loud as sunsets. There was even a Japanese businessman still wearing his mirrorback, sipping from something in a paper bag, and sitting with a Turkish chick busty as the ones carved into the ceiling. For all the diversity, there was a quiet, a shared nervousness, the same bond you may remember feeling after 9/11 or 7/7 or Jacksonville.<
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  Or after Como, for that matter.

  Everybody was drinking coffee or smoking and the smell of cigarettes and cloves took me back to the 90s.

  “I'm surprised anybody showed,” Vlad said.

  “Life must go on,” Shayla said. “It is your American cowardice that gives the terrorists their greatest inspiration.”

  “People look scared,” Rick said. He seemed too calm. I was worried he'd found the stash. But he was holding Shayla's hand.

  “These people are the fools,” Ali said. “At least you will be paid for this appearance. They pay for the risk of death.”

  “ ‘Livin’ on the edge,'” Rick sang.

  “What safer place would you have them go?” asked Shayla. “Omar's men inspected everyone who entered.”

  “Did he search your body cavities for Amanita?”

  Shayla breathed between her teeth. “Please go give your greetings to your business friends before I scream at you.”

  Ali glowered. He finished his Coke—Omar's rock star mix, I could tell by the whiff of alcohol—then left our table. He went glad-handing others in the audience, not just the Turks and Omar, but the Japanese businessman, and a man in close-cropped blond hair whose Western suit made mesmerizing optic fiber spirals. Ali gave the man a Cuban cigar.

  “Russian mafia,” Shayla said.

  “So that's how Ali makes his money?” asked Vlad.

  “He is a venture capitalist,” Shayla said.

  “Smooth operator,” sang Rick. Shayla smiled, then stroked Rick's forearm.

  Ali approached the Western girls but was rebuffed.

  Ali returned to our table about the same time that our opening act took the stage. It was a couple of Italians, a dark-haired serious one playing a Roland synthesizer, and a middle-aged singer with 1970s Peter Frampton locks and his shirt unbuttoned to his navel to show off his hairy blonde chest. He sang soft-rock standards from the 70s and the 80s, garnering applause from the oldest tourists and feeble boos from the skinheads.

  Omar introduced us as the “Dharma Bumsteads,” which got him a few laughs from the Americans in the audience and a dirty look from Vlad. As I stepped up to the mike, I apologized that Blondie wasn't here to play keyboards for us, and only Rick giggled at that joke. But when I said that Shayla was sitting in, there were cheers from the crowd, especially—I think—from the Turks. Then I took a breath and started my spiel. “You guys deserve the props for showing up tonight. We're getting money for being brave; you're getting just the satisfaction that no terrorist is going to cow you into hiding in a bunker somewhere.”

  There were some hisses, some claps; I saw Ali pretend to slice his throat with a knife, and I decided to cut my speech short. I would let my music do my preaching.

  We started with a straight rocker, “Bleached Whale,” a tight song inspired by the time I'd come across the carcass of a humpback whale in an inlet of the Puget Sound, stench to make you dizzy, but two months later there was nothing but bones, faded-white vertebrae big as serving platters. A song about the fragility of life, anybody's, but I thought they could see the message: anybody, America, Russia, Greece, Turkey, could start off powerful but end up bones. The crowd dug it. I finished with a whisper, “Look upon my works, and despair,” which seemed to leave them baffled.

  Then we did “Monochrome,” which is all about how gray Seattle can be, especially riding the monorail, which goes really from nowhere to nowhere. I thought it had a clear political metaphor, but maybe that didn't translate; I could see we were losing the crowd. I decided the time for metaphor was over. We did some covers: Lennon's “Give Peace a Chance,” which got everybody clapping, and had a good edge to it, with Vlad fuzzing up his bass to an ironic angry growl. Then, “A Child is Black, A Child is White,” which was either too USA-specific or too sweet (we played it straight) to have an effect.

  “Okay, man, we're here to rock you, not sing you lullabyes.” The punks razzed me for that. I turned back to my comrades, and I told them, “You guys follow me. We're going to do ‘Gutter Preacher, ‘Kali's Blues,’ ‘Pike Market Pope,’ only I'm going to change the lyrics. Make ‘em topical. The chord changes, melodies, are going to be the same. You got that?”

  Everybody nodded. Even Shayla, but she was an improviser of such talent I think she would have fit in had I started “Iron Man” or “White Christmas.”

  I faced the crowd. The stage lights had turned the cigarette smoke the blue of a TV tuned to a dead cable channel. The lights weren't bright enough to blind me; I could make out faces. Drooping mustaches, medieval fezes, cigarettes, studiously bored punks, the three American chicks who'd dressed like they were here to shoot a Girlz Gone Wilde! video yet were now (because of Ali?) scared shitless. Turks in Harry Truman double-breasted suits sharing “rocker's Coke” with the Japanese businessman. And bearded Taliban-looking dudes you could imagine with plastic explosives or scimitars scotch-taped to the backs of their baggy vests.

  This sounds mean, I know, judgmental and non-Zen. Well, maybe it was. I needed a little anger. I'm no Gandhi yet; I'm not even Kurt. I needed some anger so I could rock properly. I needed anger to make peace. “We're gonna rock now. We're Americans"—hiss at that—"but what that means tonight is we're going to give you what Americans call ‘tough love.’ Means we love you, and we're going to express that love, but what we say may end up sounding angry. But that's okay. There's a lot of anger in this world, and a lot of it's used for awful purposes. But what anger you may hear from us, is really about frustration. Frustration that we don't understand each other. Frustration that there's hatred when there should be love. Frustration that we all have the same God but end up hurting each other in God's name.”

  “Fook off !” shouted one of the punks.

  “Yeah. Like I said, frustration. Anyway, this song's ‘Gutter Preacher,’ about a wise man I met in a place called Skid Row in Seattle.”

  Vlad started with a funky bass line, more Chili Peppers than grunge, but that's how he'd been doing the song the whole tour. I added my guitar, heavier and grunge-like, then Rick came in with his beat. His rhythm was off, too slow, like he wanted us to change funk into dirge. Both Vlad and I looked back at him: he was pale, sweating, looking like he'd looked that afternoon. But the club wasn't that hot, Omar's AC worked well, and Rick had a bottle of Gatorade he'd been sipping from frequently. We repeated the intro bars, hoping he'd get the hint. He didn't. I started moving back toward him, stomping the beat with my Converses.

  Then suddenly things were right. He was spot-on, and it took me a second to figure out what had happened. Shayla had started playing the drum part on her keyboard, the kick-drum, the snare, the high-hat, stress and syncopation perfect as if she'd made a study of the song.

  And Rick was following her.

  I was so wondering over this miracle that Vlad prompted me with the first line: “When you're so low,

  You don't drink your gin slow—”

  “You swallow fast to leave your past,” I started in.

  “But where you get's a place called skid row.”

  That's how the lyrics always start. But this time I would change them.

  “And when you want to be dead drunk, a dead drunk starts to preach.”

  “Yeah.”

  I did a harsh arpeggio on my guitar. A drunk's corroded vocal chords. Vlad's bass line got more complicated, more minor-key sinister, but softer: meant to suggest the abuse, the creativity, the obsession, the untamed salvation or self-destruction that drove the Preacher's thoughts—but all the while quieter, because my lyrics had to shine.

  I had to surf-ride the emotions of the crowd.

  “Sonny, you a fool.

  “Using liquor like a tool.

  “Perfume tonight be stink tomorrow

  “A moment's bliss a day-long sorrow.”

  A softer arpeggio on my guitar, me speaking in my drunken-kid character:

  “Preacher man don't preach to me.”

  “Wine's my only friend, you see.�
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  Harsh arpeggio, preacher:

  “You got no friend, not even God.”

  “While you sitting like a slob.

  “Your dealer's a devil, your liquor store's a pack

  “Of liquid demons in a refrigerated rack.”

  Me: “Preacher man, don't preach to me.”

  “Without even God, where will I be?”

  Preacher: “You! Want God? Which one is that?

  “Money? Fame? Women? The Phat?

  “Or church? A mosque? A templed choir?

  “Where you can buy God by the hour?”

  (Some boos at that one).

  Me: “Preacher man, don't preach to me.

  “Give me a god who'll set me free.”

  “Freedom's what you want? What you mean, free?

  “Free from care, memory, taxes, duty?

  “Or free to drink wine and chase booty?”

  Me: “Preacher man, if you got to preach to me,

  “Give me the God who likes due-ty.

  “I'll sweep some floors, I'll kick some ass.

  “I'll carry the cross up Khyber Pass.

  “I'll bust caps at any dicks

  “Who denies there's God

  “Or who give rights to chicks.”

  “Fook you!” shouted one of the punks; but I think the rest of the crowd was with me. I'd lost Vlad for a measure; I'd expanded the drunk kid's usual two lines to seven. But Vlad's a pro. He caught up with me.

  “Sonny boy, you a dummy.

  “If you think God's a gangsta and you his homie.

  “Better to be a drunk and give in to fate.

  “Than add to the world's misery with that kind of hate.”

  Me: “Preacher man, if you got to preach.”

  “Stop dissing me, and start to teach!”

  Preacher: “Scuse me for pointing out

  “Common sense if it makes you pout.

  “But I'll be sweet, if that's what it takes.

  “Don't want your body fished from water with rakes.

  “So here's the simple unvarnished truth.

  “God's about love, not the hurting.