“So don't follow that warpath that you've been flirting.
“But do some love for your fellow man.
“And I don't mean sex, unless it's safe.
“I mean feed the hungry, house the waif.
“Be of service to your fellow drunks.
“Pass on this message, even to punks.”
—
“Preacher man, that's a lot to ask
“But I'll spread the word, after I finish this bottle.”
—
“No you fool, the time to start is now!”
“And then he was gone, and my bottle empty.”
I stared into the crowd. I met their feral eyes.
“Preacher man is gone still.”
“Or am I the preacher, and you my flock?
“Preacher man, that's what I'll be.
“I'll preach this once, then you pass it on.
“Take this message from my song.
“Eat right, brush your teeth, exercise.
“And try to love those you despise.”
I repeated the last couplet a few times. It seems dull now—it was improvised, after all—but at the show it was incandescent. It fit the mood, it fit the song, and the crowd had so taken the story to heart that I got some of them to sing the fadeout, as I waved the microphone toward them like I was a monster rock diva. It was fine. It was flash. And I think it helped that most of the audience were not native English speakers. They heard the earnestness of my voice, the sincerity of my message, and missed the silliness of the lyrics.
We did “Kali's Blues,” me substituting “Allah” for “Kali” though Ali again made the throat-slashing gesture. But I had the audience, as if by the throat: I saw the Girlz Gone Wilde! singing along, the Japanese businessman staring transfixed and open-mouthed, and even the Taliban dudes nodding to the beat. Same for “Pike Market Pope,” though in making a song that disses Christianity into one that proclaims the unity of the West and East I had to twist the lyrics into turds too embarrassing to now relate. But then I realized it wasn't just me, anyway, making the music succeed. It was Vlad, his bass line unfathomably complex and thus mysterious as God; it was Shayla and Rick complementing each other now, one soft when the other was loud, one arythmic when the other was a metronome, the two exchanging roles seamlessly as lovers or old friends in conversation; and it was the crowd itself, afraid of the world and its dangers, but hearing my message, knowing its potential and that as the club was a safe place for that moment so too could the world be made safe.
That which we think upon will manifest.
We closed with “All Apologies,” me worrying because my acoustic guitar sounded out of tune, as if Rick had removed its contents; but then forgetting that, for the crowd helped carry me along, some waving their cell phones or lighters, some singing the lyrics (which I would tamper with no more than I would bowdlerize the first lines of Genesis), and some (like me) in tears, for there is no sadder song.
“Damn you, Kurt, for dying,” I mumbled into the mic afterwards, a sentiment I should probably have left unspoken: I saw the Girlz Gone Wilde! looking perplexed and hurt; but I think most of the crowd did not understand. I thanked them, and wished them peace, and they replied with a call for an encore.
We complied with “Teen Spirit,” a rocking version more upbeat than the original, Rick's drumming tight as Dave Grohl's, Shayla doing a wicked guitar with the synthesizer.
We left the crowd in a good mood. We left them wanting more.
* * * *
After the show, after we'd dismantled our set, after all three Girlz Gone Wilde! gave Vlad their cell numbers (but the one named Karen gave me hers too!!), Omar served us each a cup of “rocker's Coke.” “My favorite,” Shayla said, smiling sweetly, pretending to sip, then pushing it away: even fundie punks can be gracious sometimes.
Before Rick could drink his I pulled it away and downed it myself. “Straight Coke for Rick,” I requested from Omar.
I expected Rick to whine. But he said, “That's cool. I'm thinking about converting.”
He and Shayla smiled at each other. I studied him, stared at his pupils and the color of his face, and felt some relief.
It was sex and rock and roll, not drugs, making him happy tonight.
I drank my own glass of special Coke.
“We go home now,” Ali said. He had finished his special Coke, but neither it nor the success of our show had softened his demeanor. “We invite you, Omar, to come with us.”
“I thought we were sleeping here,” Vlad said.
Omar shrugged. “It might be safer here. I will admit no one else to club. And you can sleep in the attic room.”
“I saw Valinsky here tonight,” Ali said.
“The Russian? He is gone now. Did you show him your switchblade?”
Ali shrugged. “We exchanged words. But there is the fact the Russian was here.”
“He might have smeared all these cups with Amanita,” Shayla said.
Ali said something angry to her in Turkish.
I had a buzz going. I didn't want their ex-lover shit to spoil my good mood. “Fine. We'll go back. The band is cool with that.”
I didn't even look at Vlad or Rick for affirmation.
* * * *
We walked through the streets of Nicosia, all of us (save Ali, who kept telling us to whisper) feeling like those kids in Baghdad or Bosnia who had happy childhoods despite the horrors they grew up around. We joked, we made lewd proposals about how the Girlz Gone Wilde! could pleasure us in our next video, Vlad and Rick and Shayla gave me obnoxious suggestions on how I might improve the lyrics to my sermonizing songs. Meanwhile there were gunshots in the distance, and the nauseating smell of burning rubber, and gutted-out cars still smoldering. (Ali had squeezed his Lexus into Omar's garage for the night.) When a jeep carrying gunmen came our way, Ali forced us off the street and against a storefront and said to me, “Quit holding your guitar case like a rifle. The men have been shot for less.”
These men noticed us but waved, and Ali waved back. I got the feeling he had understandings with everyone in Cyprus.
We came to the Church of Saint Nicolas. We didn't have to wear sackcloth. Ali did have to pay thirty euros to be let in by an old Orthodox priest with a ZZ Top beard. It was musty, dim-lit, ancient in there: I imagined the crumbling bones of medieval patriarchs buried under the stone slabs beneath our feet. We saw Mylar-wearing crones praying in the pews, Jesus on the cross looking down stoically at the votive candles burning in their ranks beneath him, icons smudged into Rorschach tests by centuries of smoke, even folks I took to be Muslim by the fact they knelt on prayermats.
And far off in a side-chapel, we saw a man on his back glowing by the light of the colorful candles he'd affixed to his face and arms.
“That a statue?” Vlad asked.
“Move on,” said the priest.
“There are Christians as backwards as any Believers,” Ali said. “They think the church will cure them from the Amanita, as it did from the Black Plague.”
His cynicism pissed me off only in retrospect.
We climbed down into a crypt. We passed the stone cenotaphs of crusaders. Even in their repose, their rusted-through blades seemed at the ready. Flickering torchlights. Smell of mildew that reminded me of Redmond. The priest led us through a door so short it seemed intended for dwarves, then we went down a long dirt-walled tunnel that had Rick saying, “Who's the dungeon master?”
Shayla laughed and put her arm around Rick. Seeing this, Ali tried to stiffen to his full height, but hit his head on the ceiling, bringing down chunks of dirt. “Fook,” he said. He swiped fallen dirt angrily off his shoulders.
Shayla and Rick smiled at each other but were careful not to touch from that point.
The priest left us with a blessing. Then we came to a metal ladder. Ali climbed it, then knocked six times on a door. The door opened, a hunchbacked man in a green apron barked something in Greek to Ali, and Ali handed him an envelope.
<
br /> “Better not be our take,” Vlad mumbled.
We climbed up the ladder and into a walk-in freezer. Stacked slabs of beef, barrels of salad, boxes of cabbage and iceberg lettuce. The chill was welcome, though Ali and the hunchback had a laughing exchange in Greek that caused Shayla to sneer.
“Lock you in here, yes, funny joke on Americans,” she explained.
But there was another door. We went through it, up the stairs, through a kitchen, past a counter, and through a fast-food restaurant whose fluorescent lights still burned brightly though it was obviously closed.
“It's the Quizno's,” Rick said, giggling.
“Keezsno's,” said the Greek.
Outside there was a police car, a big SUV, waiting. “What the fuck?” several of us asked.
“Curfew because of Amanita,” said Ali.
The band looked at Shayla and she nodded. “Police are safe. Ali has many friends.”
But it wasn't the police in the car. It was Mr. Ataturk and his two skinhead bodyguards. “'sup up, dudes?” Rick asked.
“I am saving you from martyrdom,” Mr. Ataturk said.
“Papa, we are adults,” Shayla said.
“You are rockers. The rockers are children always.”
Shayla sighed. But we squeezed into the car, me and Vlad sitting by a skinhead who held an AK-47 in much the same way I held my guitar case, Shayla sitting between Rick and Ali in the center seat, Mr. Ataturk shotgun beside the skinhead who was driving.
“So how do you find Turkey?” asked Mr. Ataturk.
“They liked us,” Rick said.
“I warned them against the concert,” Ali said. “But they played well.”
Mr. Ataturk asked, “Perhaps they shall play the Bachus, now?”
“We're contracted for tomorrow night at the Narghile,” I said.
“I think you should fly to Athens tomorrow,” Ali said. “The Submission Faction has agents on this side of the Green Line as well.”
“And in Athens, too,” Shayla said. “Fly to Roma.”
“We're playing the Narghile,” I said.
“God-willing,” Ali said. It sounded like a curse, not a blessing.
“The rock gods smiled on us tonight,” Vlad said.
“Watch how you speak,” Shayla said, irritably.
“Ever the pious one,” Ali said.
They argued in Turkish. Turkish, not Greek, seemed the language best suited for their quarrels. I noticed that we seemed to be driving past the same spot-lit ruins again and again: Venetian forts, columned Roman temples turned to churches. There were few pedestrians but many UN Humvees, some with machine guns. I wondered what protection a gun would give against Amanita. I apparently kept seeing the same four-story office building, dark glass windows separated by bands of aluminum, like buildings you could see in any city of the world. The streetlights were Halloween orange. I wondered if we were really driving in circles, or if I was just tired. I wondered if at night all cities are the same.
“Where do you take us, Mr. Ataturk?” Ali asked. We were out of the center city, on a wider road.
“My villa. You need bodyguards tonight.”
“Thank you, but Strovlos is safe.”
“Downtown Dharma is a target now.”
“I will call protection friends if it will please you.”
“The Grey Wolves?”
“They will make us safe. They despise the Submission Faction.”
Shayla turned around in her seat and whispered to me, “Turkish mafia.”
Ali said something violent to her in Turkish.
I closed my eyes and thought of my koi pond.
“Okay, Strovlos,” Mr. Ataturk said. “But please comport yourself as a gentleman, Ali.”
“Yes, sir, forgive my impudence.”
A minute later, we'd started up the hills leading to the Strovlos neighborhood.
“Wild shit,” Vlad said.
I opened my eyes to see what he was talking about.
There were half a dozen buildings burning on the Turkish side of Nicosia. It looked like an oil refinery at night.
* * * *
At the house, we parked in the driveway. Shayla, to Mr. Ataturk's disapproval, got out of the SUV with us. “I walk poor Rickie to door,” she said, putting her arm around Rick. The patio was recessed, out of sight of the SUV, and once there Rick put his arm around Shayla, too.
“You will not take liberties even if she acts the whore,” Ali growled, as we stood on the patio.
“Fuck you,” Rick said.
Ali pushed Rick into a bush. Its dead branches snapped beneath his weight. Vlad looked amused. I was pissed, and when Ali grabbed Shayla, I thought they were fighting. It was only when I tried to separate them I saw that Ali was forcing a kiss upon Shayla. Trying to pull them apart, I ended up grabbing Shayla's scarf and getting a sharp elbow in my gut from Ali, leaving me gasping.
“Go inside, the three of you,” he told us. And to Shayla: “Go back with your Papa.”
She swore at him, then grabbed the scarf from my hands, and said to me: “Why do you worship a suicide? For what cause did Kurt Cobain die?”
I couldn't answer that question.
* * * *
“I call protection friends, as I promised Ataturk,” Ali said when we were in the living room. He pulled out the Gandhi book from the bookcase. Behind it was a pistol of some kind.
“Sweet Jesus,” Vlad said.
Ali handed the gun to him.
“I thought you were going to shoot us,” Vlad said.
“I am your manager. I might knock you out for your own safety. Not shoot. I would advise you, however, Mr. Rick, to stay away from a woman who believes she is Courtney Love. And you, Mr. Dennis, sing or preach about love, but do not presume to understand the circumstances of other lovers.”
“My bad,” I said.
Ali said to Vlad: “You have the gun, in case the fundies make it upstairs.”
Ali said to me: “Pull the plants out of Rick's back, and apply antiseptic.” And then: “I call the protection.”
* * * *
Sitting in the bathroom, drinking Coors Lite from a can to calm my nerves, I pulled nettles from Rick's pale back. He flinched a little. I think it was more unpleasant for me: there was blood, and blood scares me. I once freaked out when a girl in the mosh pit got pummeled over the head with a beer bottle at a show in Spokane. So much blood streamed down her face that I dropped my guitar and yelled at the audience: “Stop moshing! This chick's hurt! Call 911!”
Rick hardly even flinched when I washed the cuts, then put Neosporin on them, and Band-aids on the worst punctures. I had given him a milligram of Xanax, but he hardly seemed to need it. “She's so hot,” Rick said. “And she likes me!”
As I was washing my hands in the sink, my cell phone jingled.
I dried my hand on a fluffy white towel before picking up. “Hey, Aunt Martha.”
“I heard you played a concert today.”
“Yeah! We rocked!”
“I thought you were going to play at the Bachus.”
“What do you mean? We were at the Bachus.”
“Somebody's put your show on Roctube. I don't remember the Bachus having pornographic carvings on its walls.”
I got tense. I breathed mindfully. “Okay. We played the Narghile. We played for the Turks. And we did a damn good job. We had fundies and Americans and Turks in fezes, and we did something positive. We—”
“Dennis, you need to leave Cyprus at once. Fly out tomorrow if you can get a flight. It may take a couple of days before the State Department declares Cyprus hot, but it's not worth risking your life.”
“But Aunt Martha, you said Cyprus was safe.”
“I was wrong. Get out before the airport is shut down. And if you can't get out, stay where you are. In Andros's house.”
“How do you know I'm—”
“Your cell phone tells me your exact latitude and longitude.”
I felt a black mass well up
inside my chest. “But the concert. It was good. I was finally doing something real.”
“Come home. There are plenty of Muslims even in Seattle.”
“But they're secular.”
“Dennis, save yourself. The new strain of Amanita is worse. Faster-acting. The Submission Faction hit Ankara today too, and there are already hundreds of deaths reported.”
“How many exactly?”
“I talked to Andros. Even he has decided to extend his stay in Greece another month.”
“I want to do something brave.” I sounded as whiny as Rick.
“If you want to do something brave, call your mother.”
Rick was picking a few last nettles out of his shirt. He looked at me, face sad for the first time that night. “We're not going home, are we?”
I couldn't answer him.
* * * *
Next morning, Rick was gone. Vlad and I went from room to room, calling his name. We found Ali in the living room, thumbing through a spy novel, sipping whiskey. A Turkish mafia dude with a crescent-moon stud in his eyebrow sat in an easy chair. He was staring out the front window, holding a gun with the same unnerving ease Blake the Brit had held his.
“Where's Rick?” I asked.
The mafia dude chortled. Ali took another sip of whiskey, then coughed discreetly. “He has gone on a date with Shayla.”
Vlad and I looked at each other, and, like a guitarist and bass player who knew too aggressive a chord change might provoke a volatile crowd, we decided not to press Ali for details.
We went out front. “A date? What does that mean?”
Vlad shrugged. “Maybe just what he said. You think it's mafia-slang for offing somebody?”
“That's not funny,” I said.
“Chill, dude. What happened to Zen?”
“Rick's gone,” I growled. I led us around to the back of the house, but Rick was not there. Nor was my koi pond, any more than the first time we had seen the backyard.
But there was another Turkish mafia dude, gun in his lap and bud in his ear as he listened to his MP3 player.
“Gunyadin,” Vlad said.
The Turk flashed the peace sign without looking at us. Or more likely the V-is-for victory sign. “What did you say to him?”
“'Good morning,'” Vlad said. “Dude, call Aunt Martha or something. You're freaking.”
Asimov's SF, December 2008 Page 16