“Great set, man,” he says. “Where’d you get some of those songs?”
“Stole them,” I say, hardly glancing at him.
He laughs. “No, seriously, man. They were great. I really like that ‘Southern Man’ number. I mean, like I’ve been makin’ the marches and that says it all, man. You write them?”
I nod. “Most of them. Not the Dylan numbers.”
He laughs again. From the glitter in his eyes and his extraordinarily receptive sense of humor, I gather that he’s been smoking a little weed at that rear table.
“Right! And speaking of Dylan, Bobby wants to talk to you.”
I decide to act a little paranoid.
“He’s not pissed, is he? I mean, I know they’re his songs and all, but I thought I’d try to do them a little different, you know. I don’t want him takin’ me to court or—”
“Hey, it’s cool,” he says. “Bobby digs the way you’re doing his stuff. He just wants to buy you a drink and talk to you about it, that’s all.”
I resist the urge to pump my fist in the air.
“Okay,” I say. “I can handle that.”
“Sure, man. And he wants to talk to you about some rare records he hears you’ve got.”
Suddenly I’m ice cold.
“Records?”
“Yeah, says he heard about some foreign platters you’ve got with some of his songs on ’em.”
I force a laugh and say, “Oh, he must’ve been talking to Sally! You know how Sally gets. The Speed Queen was really flying when she was going through my records. That wasn’t music she saw, that was a record from Ireland of Dylan Thomas reading his stuff. I think ol’ Sally’s brains are getting scrambled.”
He nods. “Yeah, it was Sally, all right. She says you treat them things like gold, man. They must be some kinda valuable. But the thing that got to Dylan was, she mentioned a song with ‘tambourine’ in the title, and he says he’s been doodling with something like that.”
“No kidding?” My voice sounds like a croak.
“Yeah. So he really wants to talk to you.”
I’m sure he does. But what am I going to say?
And then I remember that I left Sally back at my apartment. She was going to hang out there for a while, then come over for the late sets.
I’m ready to panic. Even though I know I locked the music room before I left, I’ve got this urge to run back to my place.
“Hey, I really want to talk to him, too. But I got some business to attend to here. My manager’s stopping by in a minute and it’s the only chance we’ll have to talk before he heads for the West Coast, so tell Mr. Dylan I’ll be over right after the next set. Tell him to make the next set—it’ll be worth the wait.”
The guy shrugs. “Okay. I’ll tell him, but I don’t know how happy he’s gonna be.”
“Sorry, man. I’ve got no choice.”
As soon as he’s gone, I dash out the back door and run for Perry Street. I’ve got to get Sally out of the apartment and never let her back in. Maybe I can even make it back to the Eighth Wonder in time to have that drink with Dylan. I can easily convince him that the so-called Dylan song on my foreign record is a product of amphetamine craziness—everybody in the Village knows how out of control Sally is with the stuff.
As I ram the key into my apartment door, I hear something I don’t want to hear, something I can’t be hearing. But when open up . . .
“Mr. Tambourine Man” is playing on the hi-fi.
I charge into the second bedroom, the music room. The door is open and Sally is dancing around the floor. She’s startled to see me and goes into her little girl speedster act.
“Hiya, Troy, I found the key and I couldn’t resist because I like really wanted to hear these weird records of yours and I love ’em, I really do, but I’ve never heard of these Byrds cats although one of them’s named Crosby and he looks kinda like a singer I caught at a club last year only his hair was shorter then, and I never heard this ‘Tambourine’ song before, but it’s definitely Dylan, although he’s never sung it that I know of so I’ll have to ask him about it. And I noticed something even weirder, I mean really weird, because I spotted some of these copyright dates on the records—you know, that little circle with the littler letter c inside them?—and like, man, some of them are in the future, man, isn’t that wild? I mean, like there’s circle-C 1965 on this one and a circle-C 1970 on that one over there, and it’s like someone had a time machine and went into the future and brought ’em back or something. I mean, is this wild or what?”
Fury like I’ve never known blasts through me. It steals my voice. I want to throttle her. If she were in reach I’d do it, but lucky for her she’s bouncing around the room. I stay put. I clench my fists at my sides and let my mind race over my options.
How do I get out of this? Sally had one look at a couple of my albums last night and then spent all day blabbing to the whole goddamn Village about them and how rare and unique they are. And after tonight I know exactly what she’ll be talking about tomorrow: Dylan songs that haven’t been written yet, groups that don’t exist yet, and, worst of all, albums with copyright dates in the future!
Ripples . . . I was worried about ripples in the time stream giving me away. Sally’s mouth is going to cause waves. Tsunamis!
The whole scenario plays out inside my head: Talk spreads, Dylan gets more curious, Columbia Records gets worried about possible bootlegs, lawyers get involved, an article appears in the Voice, and then the inevitable—a reclamation squad knocks on my door in the middle of the night, I’m tranqued, brought back to my own time, and then it’s bye-bye musical career. Bye-bye Troy Jonson.
Sally’s got to go.
The cold-bloodedness of the thought shocks me. But it’s Sally or me. That’s what it comes down to. Sally or me. What else can I do?
I choose me.
“Are you mad?” she says.
I shake my head. “A little annoyed, maybe, but I guess it’s okay.” I smile. “It’s hard to say no to you.”
She jumps into my arms and gives me a hug. My hands slide up to her throat, encircle it, then slip away. Can’t do it.
“Hey, like what are you doing back, man? Aren’t you playing?”
“I got . . . distracted.”
“Well, Troy, honey, if you’re flat, you’ve come to the right place. I know how to fix that.”
In that instant, I know how I’ll do it. No blood, no pain, no mess.
“Maybe you’re right. Maybe I could use a little boost.”
Her eyes light. “Groovy! I had my gear all set up in the bathroom but I couldn’t find a vein. Let’s go.”
“But I want you to have some, too. It’s no fun being up alone.”
“Hey, I’m flyin’ already. I popped a bunch of black beauties before you came.”
“Yeah, but you’re coming down. I can tell.”
“You think so?” Her brow wrinkles with concern, then she smiles. “Okay. A little more’ll be cool—especially if it’s a direct hit.”
“Never too much of a good thing, right?”
“Right. You’ll shoot me up like last night?”
Just the words I want to hear.
“You bet.”
While Sally’s adjusting her tourniquet and humming along with “Mr. Tambourine Man,” I take her biggest syringe and fill it all the way with the methedrine solution. I find the vein first try. She’s too whacked-out to notice the size of the syringe until I’ve got most of it into her.
She tries to pull her arm away. “Hey, that’s ten fucking cc’s!”
I’m cool. I’m more than cool. I’m stone-cold dead inside.
“Yeah, but it wasn’t full. I only put one cc in it.” I pull her off the toilet seat. “Come on. Let’s go.”
“How about you, Troy? I thought you wanted—”
“Later. I’ll do it at the club. I’ve got to get back.”
As I pack up her paraphernalia, carefully wiping my prints off the syringe and bottles
, she sags against the bathroom door.
“I don’t feel so good, Troy. How much did you give me?”
“Not much. Come on, let’s go.”
Something’s going to happen—twenty thousand milligrams of methamphetamine in a single dose has to have a catastrophic effect—and whatever it is, I don’t want it happening in my apartment.
I hurry her out to the street. I’m glad my place is on the first floor; I’d hate to see her try a few flights of steps right now. We go half a block and she clutches her chest.
“Shit, that hurts! Troy, I think I’m having a heart attack!”
As she starts retching and shuddering, I pull her into an alley. A cat bolts from the shadows; the alley reeks of garbage. Sally shudders and sinks to her knees.
“Get me to a hospital, Troy,” she says in a weak, raspy voice. “I think I overdid it this time.”
I sink down beside her and fight the urge to carry her the few blocks to St. Vincent’s emergency room. Instead, I hold her in my arms. She’s trembling.
“I can’t breathe!”
The shudders become more violent. She convulses, almost throwing me off her; then she lies still, barely breathing. Another convulsion, more violent than the last, choking sounds tearing from her throat. She’s still again, but this time she’s not breathing. A final shudder, and Sally the Speed Queen comes to a final, screeching halt.
As I crouch there beside her, still holding her, I begin to sob. This isn’t the way I planned it, not at all the way it was supposed to be. It was all going to be peace and love and harmony, all Woodstock and no Altamont. Music, laughs, money. This isn’t in the plan.
I lurch to my feet and vomit into the garbage can. I start walking. I don’t look back at her. I can’t. I stumble into the street and head for the Eighth Wonder, crying all the way.
The owner, the guys in the band, they all hassle me for delaying the next set. I look out into the audience and see Dylan’s gone, but I don’t care. Just as well. The next three sets are a mess, the worst of my life. The rest of the night is a blur. As soon as I’m done, I’m out of there, running.
I find Perry Street full of cops and flashing red lights. I don’t have to ask why. The self-loathing wells up in me until I want to be sick again. I promise myself to get those records into a safety-deposit box first thing tomorrow so that something like this can never happen again.
I don’t look at anybody as I pass the alley, afraid they’ll see the guilt screaming in my eyes, but I’m surprised to find my landlord, Charlie, standing on the front steps to the apartment house.
“Hey, Jonson!” he says. “Where da hell ya been? Da cops is lookin’ all ova for ya!”
I freeze on the bottom step.
“I’ve been working—all night.”
“Sheesh, whatta night. First dat broad overdoses an’ dies right downa street, and now dis! Anyway, da cops is in your place. Better go talk to ’em.”
As much as I want to run, I don’t. I can get out of this. Somebody probably saw us together, that’s all. I can get out of this.
“I don’t know anything about an overdose,” I say. It’s a form of practice. I figure I’m going to have to say it a lot of times before the cops leave.
“Not dat!” Charlie says. “About your apartment. You was broken into a few hours ago. I t’ought I heard glass break so’s I come downstairs to check. Dey got in t’rough your back window, but I scared ’em off afore dey got much.” He grins and slaps me on the shoulder. “You owe me one, kid. How many landlords is security guards, too?”
I’m starting to relax. I force a smile as I walk up the steps past him.
“You’re the best, Charlie.”
“Don’t I know it. Dey did manage to make off wit your hi-fl an’ your records but, hey, you can replace dose wit’out too much trouble.”
I turn toward Charlie. I feel the whole world, all the weight of time itself crashing down on me. I can’t help it. It comes unbidden, without warning. Charlie’s eyes nearly bulge out of his head as I scream a laugh in his face.
F. Paul Wilson (www.repairmanjack.com) is the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of forty-plus books and many short stories spanning horror, adventure, medical thrillers, science fiction, and virtually everything between. More than nine million copies of his books are in print in the U.S. and his work has been translated into twenty-four foreign languages. He also has written for the stage, screen, and interactive media. His latest thrillers, Nightworld and Cold City, feature his urban mercenary, Repairman Jack. The author resides at the REAL Jersey Shore. Wilson’s referenced rock in other stories such as “Nyro Fiddles,” “The Last Oldies Revival,” and “The Years the Music Died.” He even touches on disco in “When He Was Fab.”
Stone
Edward Bryant
1
Up above the burning city, a woman wails the blues. How she cries out, how she moans. Flames fed by tears rake fingers across the sky.
It is an old, old song:
Fill me like the mountains
Fill me like the sea
Writhing in the heat, she stands where there is no support.
The fire licks her body.
All of me
So finely drawn, and with the glitter of ice, the manipulating wires radiate outward. Taut bonds between her body and the flickering darkness, all wires lead to the intangible overshadowing figure behind her. Without expression, Atropos gazes down at the woman.
Face contorting, she looks into the hearts of a million fires and cries out.
All of me
As Atropos raises the terrible, cold-shining blades of the Nornshears and with only the barest hesitation cuts the wires. Limbs spread-eagled to the compass points, the woman plunges into the flames. She is instantly and utterly consumed.
The face of Atropos remains shrouded in shadows.
2
ALPERTRON PRESENTS
IN CONCERT
JAIN SNOW
with
MOOG INDIGO
Sixty-track stim by RobCal
June 23, 24
One show nightly at 2100
Tickets $30, $26, $22.
Available from all Alpertron
outlets or at the door.
ROCKY MOUNTAIN
CENTRAL ARENA
DENVER
3
My name is Robert Dennis Clary and I was born twenty-three years ago in Oil City, Pennsylvania, which is also where I was raised. I’ve got a degree in electrical engineering from MIT and some grad credit at Cal Tech in electronics. “Not suitable, Mr. Clary,” said the dean. “You lack the proper team spirit. Frankly speaking, you are selfish. And a cheat.”
My mother told me once she was sorry I wasn’t handsome enough to get by without working. Listen, Ma, I’m all right. There’s nothing wrong with working the concert circuit. I’m working damned hard now. I was never genius enough that I could have got a really good job with, say, Bell Futures or one of the big space firms. But I’ve got one marketable talent—what the interviewer called a peculiarly coordinative affinity for multiplex circuitry. He looked a little stunned after I finished with the stim console. “Christ, kid, you really get into it, don’t you?”
That’s what got me the job with Alpertron, Ltd., the big promotion and booking agency. I’m on the concert tour and work their stim board, me and my console over there on the side of the stage. It isn’t that much different in principle from playing one of the instruments in the backup band, though it’s a hell of a lot more complex than even Nagami’s synthesizer. It all sounds simple enough: my console is the critical link between performer and audience. Just one glorified feedback transceiver: pick up the empathic load from Jain, pipe it into the audience, they react and add their own load, and I feed it all back to the star. And then around again as I use the sixty stim tracks, each with separate controls to balance and augment and intensify. It can get pretty hairy, which is why not just anyone can do the job. It helps that I seem to have
a natural resistance to the side-band slopover radiation from the empathic transmissions. “Ever think of teaching?” said the school voc counselor. “No,” I said. “I want the action.”
And that’s why I’m on the concert circuit with Jain Snow; as far as I’m concerned, the only real blues singer and stim star.
Jain Snow, my intermittent unrequited love. Her voice is shagreen-rough; you hear it smooth until it tears you to shreds.
She’s older than I am, four, maybe five years; but she looks like she’s in her middle teens. Jain’s tall, with a tumbleweed bush of red hair; her face isn’t so much pretty as it is intense. I’ve never known anyone who didn’t want to make love to her. “When you’re a star,” she said once, half drunk, “you’re not hung up about taking the last cookie on the plate.”
That includes me, and sometimes she’s let me come into her bed. But not often. “You like it?” she said. I answered sleepily, “You’re really good.” “Not me,” she said. “I mean being in a star’s bed.” I told her she was a bitch and she laughed. Not often enough.
I know I don’t dare force the issue; even if I did, there would still be Stella.
Stella Vanilla—I’ve never learned exactly what her real last name is—is Jain’s bodyguard. Other stim stars have whole platoons of karate-trained killers for protection. Jain needs only Stella. “Stella, pick me up a fifth? Yeah, Irish. Scotch if they don’t.”
She’s shorter than I am, tiny and dark with curly chestnut hair. She’s also proficient in any martial art I can think of. And if all else fails, in her handbag she carries a .357 Colt Python with a four-inch barrel. When I first saw that bastard, I didn’t believe she could even lift it.
But she can. I watched Stella outside Bradley Arena in L.A. when some overanxious bikers wanted to get a little too close to Jain. “Back off, creeps.” “So who’s tellin’ us?” She had to hold the Python with both hands, but the muzzle didn’t waver. Stella fired once; the slug tore the guts out of a parked Harley-Wankel. The bikers backed off very quickly.
Rock On Page 5
