What We Do Is Secret

by Thorn Kief Hillsbery

  We’re the last two.

  Animal Cracker says, “You just bought it, huh? Everybody I know’s worn theirs out—what I mean is, you start thinking the songs are meant to be all fuzzy, so it’s cool to hear them good and sharp. That’s all I mean.”

  “I didn’t buy it,” Tim says. “Siouxsie—”

  “Borrowed it,” I say. “From Poseur.”

  “And gave it to Rockets,” Tim says. “I haven’t actually heard them yet. But I love their look.”

  “Well, Exene, I don’t know—”

  Animal Cracker breaks off laughing, and after Tim passes me the record I run my fingers over the jacket remembering Siouxsie saying, She’s so cool, she looks like Death.

  And maybe that was when, walking on Santa Monica.

  When she asked about the beatdown we got from the cops, Rory and me.

  Maybe that was exactly.

  When she asked if I liked it.

  Or is it just this night, this now?

  “She’s older and not really local either, from Florida originally, she maybe needs better shades to block the star thing, it’s a little too bright for her,” Animal Cracker says. “But her and John Doe, they’re good people, they’ve helped Rory out a lot.”

  Outside the sidewalk’s filling, the music’s over, just like that song earlier, I wonder if it was the Doors, really.

  And I wonder too, is it, really?

  Your only friend.

  “And that reminds me, Rory’s supposed to show, he might be here now, if he got a ride, driving around, I should bail, get visible. I like it in here, though. It’s cozy. You got any smaller bags?”

  David finds one and fills it while Animal Cracker climbs out latering all round. When he reaches back in for the popcorn he balances with his other hand on my shoulder and says, “Dude, you end up in OC—well, that means my brother’s down there. Right, bro?”

  “Fully.”

  “So I’m halfway there myself, is what I mean.”

  All he needs is a local connect, and a ’hood with low-risk TVs to jack.

  Then we’re one little ranking family again.

  Once he’s gone Tim says, “That boy didn’t need a ride to anywhere but the emergency room. Right this minute. My God, it’s hideous, there’s blood poisoning, those abscesses—”

  “Would get him into Sylmar,” Siouxsie says. “That’s detention.”

  “But wouldn’t that be better than—”

  “No,” I say. “It wouldn’t.”

  “They could also get you into Sybil Brand, Ms. Siouxsie Sioux,” Squid says. “There’s contributing to murder, there must be contributing to manslaughter, that friend of Lorna Doom’s got jail time just for furnishing a rig to that kid who OD’d in the alley back of Disgraceland.”

  “He won’t say anything,” Siouxsie says.

  I say he’ll be all right anyways, he just needs to eat better, but nobody says anything backing me up.

  Or anything period.

  “And stuff,” I say.

  “But on the subject of wouldn’t that be better,” Squid says, “and also on the subject of tracks, I think AC’s on the right one as far as you’re concerned, Rockets.”

  Maybe OC’s the place to go.

  Not—anywhere else.

  Maybe who I really need is somebody more like that boy upstairs. I know what she means.

  And I do. So I say it for her.

  “Sweet, young, and innocent.”

  “Darlin’, you took the words.”

  “That’s the fuckin last—”

  I don’t know what happens, my blood pressure maybe, or I take too deep of a breath or something, but count ten backwards and my head’s on Siouxsie’s lap and I’m telling Squid maybe that kid’s not as innocent as she thinks while Tim and David rummage through makeup bags for some painkillers they know they stashed somewhere. Or actually Tim rummages while David admires all the colors on the packages that he never noticed before. Though he stops now and then to ask if I’m sure I don’t want to try aspirin and Coke.

  While Squid and Siouxsie get into this discussion about pulling out the staples, where and when and how. This rager discussion. This graphic discussion. This discussion that gives me the energy I need to sit up slumped in the open sliding door, still clutching my long-player antisocial insecurity blanket, gulping in the night air like it’s medicine.

  I mean there must be purple medicine, right?

  I feel the way I felt at the end of “Forming,” except without Slade to stand me on my feet.

  Not yet anyways.

  But soon.

  Because just a few feet away the amps and cases and plastic crates are sorted on the sidewalk now, because another sliding van door just ahead squeals open, because the VC posse boys are all, Here bro, there bro, sideways bro, back bro.

  Very soon.

  Because boots in the service stairwell echo loud, louder, loudest, two boots only, hardest, hollowest, two boots, his.

  Now.

  Because his voice, because my name.

  “Rockets.”

  Facts, not feelings.

  But crossing the street beside him there’s only one fact I’m sure I know: a wall of chained-together tires stacked in front of a shut-down market, a Piggly Wiggly.

  I know what it smells like, standing behind that wall.

  Like things that rust, rusting.

  Like cooled heated rubber.

  Like asphalt pooled with human piss.

  I know what it sounds like, standing behind that wall.

  Like cracked plastic spinners on the guyline overhead.

  Like air brakes at the stop at the Main Street exit from the Golden State Freeway, far and away down the long slight hill.

  What I don’t know, standing behind that wall, standing with Slade.

  Anything but feelings.

  What did Hellin once call Slade?

  Hungry like a wolf.

  Maybe Darby really said.

  You only know them when you feed them.

  40

  “Bail with me. We’ll go kick it.”

  “Where?”

  “There’s an afterparty in the Cathay basement. Then wherever. My place. Your place.”

  “I got no place.”

  “Then I got one for you.”

  “Why me?”

  “You’re not deaf. You heard what I said in there.”

  “You said a lot in there.”

  “Some of it was true.”

  “Most of it wasn’t?”

  “I don’t keep track. Of the percentage.”

  “Do you really torture people?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Does that scare you?”

  “It’s not that.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “What do you want me to do, anyways?”

  “Everything.”

  “Dude—”

  “Nothing.”

  “Are you even—”

  “Everything you want to. Nothing you don’t.”

  “Word?”

  “Word.”

  “You mean you’d let me—”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  “Hasn’t anybody ever told you how fuckin—”

  “No.”

  “How do you know what—”

  “Nobody’s ever said anything that would explain why—”

  “I’d let you? Not make you, like Darby?”

  “He didn’t.”

  “He did.”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “All the difference.”

  “You sound just like him.”

  “I’m not like him. But I know what he liked.”

  “It wasn’t torture.”

  “Not at first.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know. Like Stickboy knows. And Tony knows. And Rory. And that rough trade junkie AC-DC. And Blitzer.”

  “And you.”

  �
��Just because he told me. I was too old. He thought kids were pure. That’s why he wanted you.”

  “Darby said that?”

  “Word.”

  “Not to me.”

  “That’s not all he didn’t say. Forget Darby. Listen to me.”

  “I can’t forget Darby.”

  “Then who fucked who, really?”

  “What?”

  “You guys fucked his body, but he fucked with your minds. By the time you were old enough to give him what he wanted, you weren’t so pure anymore. And it wrecked it for him, but he took it out on you.”

  “You were down in OC. You just came up for shows. How do you know?”

  “I knew Rory before anybody. He was the best South Bay surfer there was. He could have turned pro. But Darby got him on drugs like he tried with all of you. He faked doing more than he really did so you’d overdo it too, get sick or psycho or just dependent. He wasn’t hooked himself till the last three months before he died. It’s been like two years for Rory. And now you catch some gnarly disease just looking at him.”

  “Rory’s all right.”

  “Same ways Darby was all right?”

  “He was more than all right.”

  “ ’Cause he still wanted you?”

  “Dude—”

  “ ’Cause that was where you kept your little bit of control?”

  “Not—”

  “No matter how low you sank?”

  “Bull—”

  “ ’Cause when it was just you two with the lights out, you were in charge?”

  “Shit.”

  “ ’Cause then you did whatever you fuckin wanted?”

  “Why are you going off on me like this?”

  “So you know you can trust me.”

  “To what?”

  “Be different.”

  “I need to go.”

  “Do you think I’m just a goon?”

  “You said you were. In there.”

  “I said a lot in there, according to you. Now I’ll shut up. Just let me—just let me—Rockets—let me—okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Let me tell you.”

  “Okay.”

  “Let me, let me say it in your ear.”

  “Okay.”

  “You’re the most beautiful—like this angel—you have a light.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Now let me, if you’ll—”

  “Okay.”

  “Just let me.”

  “Okay.”

  “Kiss you.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh—”

  “—Yeah.”

  “Oh yeah oh—”

  “—Yeah oh yeah.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Is this like a onetime offer?”

  “What?”

  “Taking off with you. Tonight.”

  “You mean is it like a one-night stand?”

  “I mean tonight’s a bad night. A really bad night.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m with my friends.”

  “You’re with me.”

  “You do sound like Darby.”

  “Maybe sounding different’s harder than being different.”

  “Nothing’s harder than being different.”

  “Word?”

  “Word.”

  “What about being—does this hurt? My fingers? Here?”

  “Close to the staples, yeah.”

  “What about being—and here? Hurts?”

  “Inside the circle, yeah.”

  “What about being—you did this for me, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What about being yourself?”

  the burning of los angeles

  41

  Faster.

  Someone’s saying it and we’re doing it too, it’s doing it, the van? At once or almost? Time, delay? Echo, dark? How long have I, where am I, any whys? Passed (or failed bailed veiled impaled, my hands rigid clutching, nailed, jailed) out? In the popcorn?

  “We’re definitely being followed?” David says.

  Tim says, “Oooh, this is so ex—”

  X.

  That’s what I’m two-hand holding. Their record.

  “Shut up!” Blitzer says.

  “Turn right!”

  It’s Siouxsie, shotgun, yelling.

  Tim and David grab my arms, A-side, flipside, hold me.

  Down?

  Not really more.

  Fast.

  Into the sweet Fanny Addams family butler.

  Lurch.

  The time a crime and every crime a reason.

  Turn! Turn! Turn!

  “Left!”

  To wheel or not two-wheeled, that is the.

  Sunday. Evening. Emily. Post. Toasties. Hypnotic. Congestion.

  “There’s too many cars,” Blitzer says. “It’s just coincidence, they can’t be—”

  “They are,” Siouxsie says. “They weren’t taking that turn, now they are.”

  “Fuckin Slade!”

  “It isn’t Slade,” Siouxsie says.

  “His posse boys, then.”

  “With bandannas down to their eyebrows? Blue bandannas?”

  “It’s a trick or something, it has to be Slade.”

  I (though me, myself, eye, what do you see, all of them so it must be me?) say, “Why Slade?”

  “What did you tell him, Rockets?” Blitzer says.

  Squid, crouched in front between them, turns and says, “Are you all right?”

  Blitzer says, “He’s not fuckin all right, look at him, he’s under that dude’s spell, how else—”

  I say, “Tell him?”

  “About what’s up. The plan. Where we’re going.”

  “Idaho?”

  Squid knee-walks back and palms my forehead.

  “He must be delirious,” she says. “He’s hot.”

  “Jesus, it’s the Desoxyn, your girlfriend here practically forced it down his—”

  “I put it in his hand!”

  “It? It? Like one, Siouxsie? How fuckin many?”

  I say, “I didn’t.”

  Take any, take them all, take how many, tonight of the night of the night of the who, can say?

  “Didn’t what?” Blitzer says.

  “Say anything.”

  “Just one of those physical conversations, huh?”

  “Leave him alone,” Siouxsie says.

  “All I said was, I’m staying with my friends. I said I had to go. I didn’t say where.”

  “He told you to come with him?”

  “More asked.”

  “I knew it.”

  “Goddamn it, if Slade’s after us why would he have someone following?” Siouxsie says. “He’d just go to Oki Dog. Where everyone else is going. Where we’re going.”

  “I don’t know where we’re going. We have to get back to Lincoln! Before we dead-end or—”

  “Turn right! Then right again.”

  My fuckin stomach. I might have to—

  How though? What though? It’s all been puked, long time passing, where have all the powers gone, the powers that A) make you speak, if you’re shy, the powers that B).

  “This fuckin street stops! It’s a broken—”

  “Stop turning, then! Swerve back! We’ll get trapped!”

  My fuckin stomach.

  Now I remember.

  “You said right then right!”

  “I don’t know every street out here! Just generally. To get back to Lincoln. The next one’s a stop. It’ll go through.”

  Let you dance, if you’re clumsy.

  David whispers, “Are you in pain?”

  Insane? In Spain?

  “You’re gritting your teeth.”

  Those teeth, the canines.

  “I’m all right.”

  Now.

  Ha ha ha.

  I am an anti—

  “Christ, Siouxsie, there’s like, the backseat’s fil
led with guys, there must be five of—”

  “Should we go back up Lincoln to the Vex, since so many— shit, if only Slade was still around, I mean, Rockets is like— they’d all jump in, you know?”

  “We’re not going that way, we have to get out of here, out of their territory.”

  “This isn’t even close to V-13’s territory.”

  “It isn’t fuckin V-13!”

  “Then who is it?”

  “I don’t know. Fuck, maybe it’s nothing to do with me! They could be after Tim! It’s possible.”

  “Really?” Tim says.

  “Maybe they saw your BJ sign! You want dropped off, just in case?”

  “Floor it, take it fast! Now! The shotgun dude’s got his hand out the—”

  Wheels left careening, four, pop-popping firecrackers, two, horns, more than two, twice two, more, loud fade fading, behind behind far far behind, ragged breaths, Blitzer’s.

  Siouxsie says, “He missed.”

  The tires. It wasn’t firecrackers.

  “Or we’d know by now.”

  “They haven’t even turned yet,” Blitzer says. “They’re blocked.”

  “Maybe we can lose them,” Siouxsie says.

  “How? We have to stay on Lincoln.”

  “Not forever we don’t.”

  “We do. It turns to Main right down there. Past the freeway.”

  “They’ll see us take the on-ramp just like we see that car right there.”

  “I’m not taking the fuckin freeway!”

  “Why not?” Squid says.

  “Fuck! Don’t even. Just—”

  Siouxsie says, “He’s right, they’d catch up to us, they’re faster. There’s no exit till, what, South Pasadena? They’d shoot our tires, force us—”

  “Why not south, then?” Squid says. “You can’t see that ramp. Even the turn lane’s lost in that under-freeway dark down there.”

  “Then that’s what they’ll—no!” Blitzer says. “You want a fuckin freeway chase, you take the fuckin wheel!”

  “Even if they don’t guess we took the freeway, they’ll know we did right off, just past the Pabst there, you can see down Main all the way to the LA River bridge,” Siouxsie says. “So they’ll whip right back around. But listen! I know! Do this!”

  There’s no time for follow me don’t follow me, he just does it, floors it again to power through the yellow underneath the Golden State, so as soon as we’re through we’re blocked from behind, by an exiting southbound semi turning wide wide right onto Main Street. Then turns hard as coffin nails right the next split P-for-perfect second, still blocked and blocked completely, two-wheeled cornering at speed, onto this asphalt donut with an all-night taco stand the hole. And pogos the brake pedal till we finally slam fishtailed stopped, between the back of the stand and the exit ramp retaining wall.