Asimov's SF, December 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  “Hush, sweetie,” Shayla said, pulling his hand down.

  “For once, the madman speaks the sense,” Ali said, but he did not take his mask off.

  * * * *

  The street was eerily deserted, the lights out (Ali told us) from a power outage. Ali walked point ahead of us, the Mafia-dude followed in the rear, both with guns drawn. We walked in the shadows next to the buildings. We smelled smoke, the sweet Amanita smell, also something sweet-yet-nauseating which I did not recognize until I tripped over a glowing gray bundle.

  “They spray the corpses to retard the decay,” Shayla explained.

  The lights were bright in the Great Mosque. “Generator,” Ali said.

  Before the doors to the huge building men and women were crying as they stood around a dozen glowing corpses. The dead had been sprayed gray in a haphazard fashion, so their flower-stalks glowed brightly.

  “The Garden of Earthly Delights,” Rick said. Then: “Shayla, can I have a bar?”

  Shayla had a leopard skin purse from which she pulled out a 2mg bar.

  I stepped between them. “How much has he had?”

  “This is his sixth of these today.”

  “Too much,” I said.

  “Are you his nurse-maid?” Shayla asked.

  “Give him half. I don't want him falling asleep during the show.”

  “Do what mommy says,” Rick said.

  I took no offense. Lame insults are even more pathetic when you've got crones in Mylar wailing over dead bodies. I observed Shayla carefully, though, making sure she broke the bar in half, then gave one half to him.

  “I take the other half,” Ali said, grabbing it from Shayla's hand, then washing it down with whiskey.

  “What happened to Mr. Clean?” Vlad said.

  “Mohammed, blessed be his name, does not forbid Xanax, does he, my dearest?”

  “No, but he does forbid suicide,” Shayla said.

  * * * *

  When we reached the Narghile, Omar shined a flashlight into our faces. “Mr. Rick, you take the tranquilizer?”

  “Wherever it wants to go!”

  “Yeah, he's had some,” I said. “He remembers the contract. And Shayla's keeping him in control.”

  Omar and Ali spoke in Turkish for a moment. I don't know where their conversation started, but I saw where it ended: Ali swallowed from his whiskey bottle, then threw it in the gutter. I wanted to jump out of my skin, Vlad stepped back, but Shayla affected boredom. It's over now, I thought, broken glass barely visible. We're done.

  But then Omar shook Ali's hand and we were granted entrance to the club.

  The Narghile had no generator. It was sticky and warm inside. Candles glowed on every table. All the tables were occupied, and there were even a few people standing. But the club was empty compared to the night before.

  “How can we play without power?” I asked.

  “I have a battery for the keyboard!” Omar said. “And you can play acoustic, like Kurt Cobain unplugged!”

  “That was Nirvana unplugged,” Vlad said. I could hear the irritation in his voice. He knew that bringing up the Nirvana Unplugged concert would be the only thing that could make me want to play the show no matter what.

  “And I have let in no man that has the Amanita pox on his face!”

  That was just gravy.

  “You got any special Coke?” I asked.

  * * * *

  The crowd cheered us as we climbed on stage. I was warm with drink and after I set down my guitar cases, I put my arms out as if to embrace the audience. “We're Downtown Dharma,” I said. They cheered again. Some of them waved their cell phones at me.

  I couldn't see the Girlz Gone Wilde!, but I blamed the darkness of the club.

  I brought out my acoustic guitar, and I tuned it to Shayla's synth. Dressed Islamic she looked like a nun again, but cute, like the kind you could have a crush on if you went to a Catholic high school. But there was a furrow to her brow, and as she played a chord I saw her fingers trembling. “You okay?” I asked.

  She stared at me. “Bally.”

  “Whatever,” I said.

  “Never mind!” Rick said, giggling.

  At least he would have fun tonight, I thought.

  “So what are we playing, boss?” Vlad said, strumming at his bass, its unamplified sound tiny.

  “Let's start with ‘Flies,'” I said.

  “Flies in the Vaseline,” by STP, is good for opening a set, though grunge purists sneer at the band. But people of a certain age recognize the song, and the thought of a bunch of flies, trapped in a goo that doesn't even have the benefits of something sweet like honey, seemed a perfect metaphor for the mindless inertia of terrorism, both for its perpetrators and its victims. The audience clapped politely. They didn't get the message. So I talked, explained the metaphor, saying how fundies of any creed were no wiser than flies, how the audience in its willingness to rock on nights like this showed the kind of open-mindedness and tolerance that no fly or fundie could ever know. I noticed Ali wasn't doing his throat-cut gesture of the night before, and I would probably have kept yakking, but Vlad came up to me and said, “You're losing them with this fucking sermon. Make music.”

  He was picking his bass strings harshly, but without amplification it was not a scary sound.

  “Okay,” I said. We did Kurt's “Lithium,” because a song about schizophrenia is obviously applicable to a place like Cyprus; and then we did “Bleached Whale” again, and that song, where I get to scream like The Kurt himself, translated a little better. I wish love, not anger, was the universal language. I saw a Taliban-dude pounding his placemat with his fist so hard I was afraid his candle-jar would boogie right off the table. I mellowed things a little with a cover of Pearl Jam's “Jeremy,” because how can you be more PC and save-the-world than Eddie Vedder? But then Shayla came over to me. “What are you doing, these covers?”

  My balls tingled because of her proximity; she'd pushed back her headdress, and a loose black hair was stuck to the corner of her lips. But her angry eyes pissed me off. “It's my band. I don't like to shoot my wad first song. Why don't you just make sure Rick keeps drinking Gatorade?”

  Without smiling she went back to her synth.

  I felt dirty having spoken to her so crudely.

  I noticed Vlad was still picking at his bass. Angrily. Fine. We'd go with his anger. “We're going to do a song called ‘Puget Sounding,'” I said, and the crowd whooped and waved their cell phones, though they would not have known the song unless they'd downloaded it. It's got a wicked bass line, even morbid you could say, because the shape of the bass, its attack and decay and now-quiet, now-frenetic energy represented the sonar machine searching for the sunken bodies in the Sound. The suicides, the drunks, the prostitutes, the battered wives, the gangstas gone capped. But there were more bodies than ever, judging by the intricacy and urgency of Vlad's picking; and I heard Shayla trying to follow him, playing minor chords that complemented the mood without overwhelming it. And for me it was easy to twist the lyrics: not AIDS but Amanita victims, not gangstas but terrorists, not suicides but martyrs. I sang of the seabed thick with sponges and anemone waving in the dark though it was not dark and the waving things were the luminescent stalks feeding off their victims and shifting in the cold currents. It was dark, it was real, it was angry. It seemed to satisfy Vlad.

  The crowd was left uncomfortable. They clapped but looked dour and I saw even the Taliban swallowed Special Coke. I knew why. The song was hopeless, despairing. It would not unite, except in the sense that the dead to a man have no tribal loyalties nor constituents save Amanita and the bacteria of decay.

  At a table I saw a Turk turned blue; at another I saw the Japanese businessman from last night was striped red. And I saw the harlots in the ceiling: the pantalooned busty coquettes had wooden bulbs, grotesque disfigurements, carved like supernumerary breasts into their cheeks.

  The crowd shouted and clapped suddenly. I knew why. Shayla clasped my sh
oulder. She'd taken off her scarf and her robe and wore just the G & R T-shirt and blue jeans. “Be less morbid. Give them something to believe in.”

  “They got you,” I said.

  “And you got Kurt. Where is he tonight?”

  Some dude who'd pounded the table shouted, “Puta!” and Shayla did the devil's horn gesture at him as she returned to her keyboard.

  I was energized. The touch of a woman can do that as well as any drug. I saw that the growths on the ceiling carvings were shadows, the blues and reds on concert-goers’ faces just candlelight filtered by colored glass. I decided to do a reprise of “Gutter Preacher.”

  Vlad was still angry, fingering his strings so hard he drew blood, and Shayla followed his emotional lead, though with a subtle, almost gentle, touch; I think she knew that forcefully elaborating upon his anger might lead to violence. I made my Preacher gruffer, cruder, but my Alcoholic Kid less anti-Muslim than the night before. No “should I carry the cross up Khyber Pass?” but, “should I kick some faggots in the ass?” The crowd cheered at my homophobia. I was ashamed to think how Kurt would have reacted. I strove to find a balance. Not offensive, but harsh enough so I could tell my story. We finished with the crowd attentive, none of last night's razzes, but likewise, no one moved enough to sing the final choruses with me.

  I finished with a whisper and the applause was polite, like the sound of rain.

  Vlad was angry. He was talking to Rick. “You're pounding like we're playing fucking ‘Teen Spirit.’ Were you too stoned to hear where Dennis was taking the song?”

  “He doesn't feel well,” Shayla said.

  It was true. Rick was pale. It was hot in the Narghile, and his giggles had subsided. “Drink more Gatorade, dude,” I said.

  As I turned away, I saw Shayla slip him another bar of Xanax. The bitch, I thought. Courtney would never have bought heroin for Kurt.

  I still could not see the Girlz Gone Wilde! I saw fish-eyed Omar standing beside Ali who was drinking shamelessly from a beer bottle, foam in his mustache like white whiskers in the candlelight. I saw the Taliban dude and the Japanese businessmen and a girl in a headscarf and a kid who looked like the twentieth 9-11 bomber except he seemed scared shitless; and I realized they were are all counting on me. They were silent and fearful and the Narghile was their temple and I was their priest. I could not afford to be petty. I remembered to breathe. I thought of my koi pond. “We're going to do a song by a dude named John Lennon,” I said, and I sang, “Give Peace a Chance.” It was too easy, maybe, but the crowd lost its deer-in-the-headlights look and some sang along. Some even flashed their cell phones.

  Vlad played less angrily and Shayla was subtle and even Rick followed the mood of the song.

  My optimism returned. “Let's try ‘Kali's Blues.'”

  With a roar of feedback so startling the Taliban-dude knocked his candle to the floor, the speakers came to life and the ensconced lights in the corners of club shone: power had returned.

  I turned on my microphone. “God provides. Let's rock.”

  Vlad grinned. “Kali's Blues” has a heavy descending bass line that could drive even cheerleaders to suicide, but the guitar line is brighter, and Shayla chose to emphasize it. Rick remained pounding on his drums, oblivious to the shifting moods of the song, but at least his tempos were accurate. My vocals follow the bass line for much of the song, but midpoint I switch to the brighter guitar voice. That's the usual.

  Tonight I stayed dark for only a few bars. “Tornados, tsunamis, earthquakes and the plague; frowns in bars and knives in superstars. Bombs in markets, guns in streets. You think it's Allah? You think it's sweet? You think eye for an eye, a tooth for a truth? You think it's God's will to kill your neighbor or swallow a pill?”

  I was glad that Rick's beat was loud. It had those too drunk to follow the words nodding to the beat. But most stared at me as if demoralized. Or betrayed. I switched my tone, lightened it up. “I tell you, friend. God's the judge. You got no right to hold a grudge.”

  The crowd kept staring. Was it the amplification? Was it the holier-than-thou lyrics? I pushed forward. The show must go on.

  “Cruise missiles, B-52s, that's the stuff of Allah's blues. Agent Orange, shock and awe, shooting freedom down your craw. Smart bombs and robot drones, blockbusters that flatten nursing homes. You think it's God? You think it's Christ? You think America gets holy props for its murder rites?”

  The crowd was alert now, banging on the tables, while the westerners—a chick in gangsta pants, a couple in faded tattoos and leather jackets weathered enough to have seen our first show back in ‘92—looked scared, pale. I pushed on with the chorus. “I tell you, friends. God's but a judge. The West has no right to keep a grudge.”

  The Taliban-dude was glaring at me. Fish-eyed Omar was himself drinking a bottle of beer. “Fook you!” shouted one of the punks from last night. A doughy Turk pulled her daisy-patterned scarf tight around her ears. The atmosphere was unpleasant, edgy: I looked at Vlad, and he nodded, turned down his amp. I looked at Rick. He banged away unconcerned and would not meet my eyes.

  I did the third verse: the synthesis. “Amanita, AIDS, bubonic plague and mumps. Global warming and forest land turned into dumps. Poverty, famine, hatred and war—if this is God's plan, what is it for?”

  “Death to unbelievers!” somebody shouted.

  I sang sweet as I could, as gentle as the Kurt in his quiet verses. “I tell you friends, God may be a judge. But he's one of mercy, not of grudge. The acid rains he lets fly, are tears of sadness, a corrosive cry. So let's put down our guns, forget our terror, remember that God wants us to have love and pleasure—”

  “Pleasure! All you Americans want is the pleasures!” It was Ali. “And see how you have corrupted the daughter of Islam!”

  I turned to see Shayla pointing her middle finger at Ali as she thrust her breasts out as provocatively as she could given her clothes were still on.

  “You have made her a houris!” Ali said drunkenly.

  “Houris means angel,” Vlad said into my mic.

  Shayla laughed. I saw Ali stumble away from the bar.

  Then the power went out.

  The crowd gasped. Ali stumbled toward the stage. He tripped over someone's foot, caught his balance, then Omar tackled him from behind. Omar said something in Turkish that made the crowd laugh, but Ali, grim-faced, picked himself up and straightened his tie, then walked with the exaggerated stiffness of a drunk back toward the bar. Omar came up to us and said, “Maybe you should end? They do not hear your words. Not as you want them to.”

  “It's our manager who is the fucking loon,” Vlad said.

  “Shayla should not dress like this, not tonight,” Omar said.

  “Because Ali is piss-faced, it is my fault?” Shayla asked.

  “You should not play this game,” Omar said.

  They exchanged a couple of harsh-sounding phrases in Turkish. I breathed. I saw the carvings as monstrosities. I saw the concert-goers as corpses sitting stiff with rigor mortis, the colors of their eyes the seeds of the flowers about to sprout. I closed my eyes and thought of my Buddha and my koi pond. I decided. “We'll play one more song.”

  “Ali's protection can lead you to safely.”

  “We'll be okay.” I'd had worse crowds than this. I'd been pelted with tomatoes and squirted with beer. “You guys here are more polite than any audience in Yakima.”

  Omar shrugged. “Any damage to the club you will pay for.”

  “I'm a healer,” I said. “Not a divider.”

  “You are the saint. But the saint must be the martyr first.”

  I thought of Kurt as I watched Omar stroll back towards his place at the bar. Ali was behind it now, presumably looking for a beer or whiskey. Here, I thought, was a man who cannot mix his drugs. Then I stopped that thinking. I tried to think of lovingkindness.

  I strummed my acoustic guitar. Then I said, “We're going to finish with the saddest song ever written.”

  Vlad r
olled his eyes. He probably wanted to do “Black Dog” or “Rape Me.”

  I played the pretty guitar intro, then sang:

  “How come you guys came? Just to see my shame?

  “What else should I play, just to make you stay?

  “We don't have all night, I want to make things right.

  “I'm sorry I made you blue, I deserve your boos.

  “But what else can I say, but sorry?”

  The crowd became subdued. Kurt could be Jesus-like in his delivery, but while I make no claim to sainthood, I am a seasoned showman, and I could be pathetic yet strong enough to alter the mood of any but the most obnoxious audience. And this audience was more terrified than challenging.

  Now the harder part: Shayla, still amplified, was playing her synth like a heavy fuzzed-out guitar, drowning Vlad's ampless bass, but not my voice.

  “Without love

  “Without sun

  “There's nothing we call fun

  “If we're sick

  “If we're shit

  “Then show me who has won.

  “Decayed.

  “Betrayed.”

  Okay. I was challenging them. And I was screwing with The Kurt's most sacred lyrics. But I was responsible for them. I was all the hope they had in the world. Christ and Allah had abandoned them to Amanita. I could maybe not unite West and East, but I could help them see there would be a tomorrow.

  “I wish I could believe like you.

  “Have faith in what is true.

  “But too much death and wars.

  “Are like Seattle Seahawks scores.

  “Those bodybags and IEDs.

  “Amanita blown by the breeze—

  “Leaves us choking on the flowers that are beautiful.”

  They were glass-eyed as ever, too many watching Shayla flaunt herself, too many Rick pounding harder not softer, too many Vlad who was angry and pouting again.

  I started the chorus again nonetheless.

  “Without a lover

  “Without a cover

  “We get global warming burns.

  “If we're sick.

  “If we're shit.

  “It's Amanita

  “Not clover.