Ghost knew every corner of the Yew, every one of the fancy antique-gold ceiling tiles Kinsey had put in, every graffito in the restrooms. When you played at a club forty weeks out of a year, it got to be home.
As soon as Ghost came into the bar, Steve handed him a can of Budweiser. Kinsey Hummingbird was serving at the bar, smiling his awkwardly amiable smile, already setting up a second beer for Steve. Steve finished his first one and started on the next.
Ghost sipped his beer—he didn’t need it, not tonight; he would drink music—and watched the kids come in. Soon the club was full of them. College students from Raleigh, and dropouts like Steve and Ghost. High school students from Windy Hill, the hippie Quaker place, but hardly any from the county school; they were all metalheads over there. Younger kids too—junior high kids smoking Marlboros and Camels, kids trying to look jaded and managing only to look bored. Kids with wide-open innocent faces and easy smiles, kids with long dark hair and eyeliner, kids with razor scars on their wrists, kids already sick of life, kids happy to be alive and drunk and younger than they would ever feel again.
They were so very young, Ghost thought as he stood among them, feeling their pain and their exuberance, their stupidity and terror and beauty brush his mind. They were so young, and they wore their thrift-shop jewelry, their ragged jeans, their black clothes like badges of membership to some arcane club. Some club that required drunkenness—on cheap liquor, on rainy midnights, on poetry or sex. Some club that required love of obscure bands and learning to lie awake at 4:00 a.m., bursting with terrors and wide-awake dreams.
None of these kids was Nothing. Ghost looked for the long silk coat, the lank black hair, the three lurking figures that would surround the boy. But he was not here, though many of these kids looked like him—the same big, black-rimmed, blasted eyes, the same pale flickering hands. Ghost hoped Nothing wouldn’t come. Not with those three. But he knew they would be there.
Something in him ached for that boy. For the sadness in his face, for his eyes yearning to stay young. He wanted to grab Nothing away from his companions and tell him that sometimes everything could be all right, that pain did not have to come with magic, that childhood never had to end. And yet he wondered whether Nothing had not known all those things when he made his choice. Whatever that was.
The right choice was not always clear. Nevertheless, Nothing had had to make one. Ghost had felt him do it, right there in the bedroom as he woke up, and he had felt the boy grow a little older. He felt his mind straining at something it could not quite grasp, and the feeling was odd; there wasn’t much Ghost could not empathize with. He reminded himself that he had not really tried, had not wanted to try.
Then Steve grabbed Ghost’s arm and dragged him through the crowd toward the stage. It was time to play. Ghost felt the small shiver of something like stage fright and something like wild intoxication, when the room swims, when you can no longer stand up straight or trust your eyes.
Hands plucked at Ghost’s clothes, at the streamers on his hat. He was greeted by a multitude of young voices. He felt the brush of their fingers and their minds; he breathed their cigarette smoke. Then they were stumbling onstage, Steve and Ghost, Lost Souls? come back again.
Steve clawed at his guitar, letting loose the night’s first jangling scream. Ghost glanced at the set list taped to the floor, scrawled in Steve’s illegible handwriting, and the words of the first song rose to his lips. He stepped up to the microphone and, gripping it with both hands, whispered those words: “Don’t go on the beach…. Realize the lions have come in…”
The audience swayed at the touch of his voice. He looked into those upturned young faces bathed in dim stagelight, the fresh faces, the pale hollow-boned faces with their darkly lined eyes.
And there in the middle of the crowd was Nothing, not swaying but standing very still, his face tilted up with the rest, his eyes wide and shadowed. His three friends were there too, clustered around him. Zillah stared at the floor, his face in darkness. One of the two bigger ones poked Nothing and shouted something into his ear, but Nothing only shook his head and kept staring at Ghost.
Then, as the first song ended, Zillah looked up at the stage. Even from behind the lights, from fifteen feet away, Ghost could see that Zillah’s face was perfect as a mask again. His nose was straight, his lips full and lustrous. There were no bruises. There was no swelling.
Zillah caught him staring and smiled.
Smiled with a complete mouthful of sharpened, shining teeth.
Ghost faltered. He forgot the words of the next song. Steve was trying to give him the cue, but Ghost couldn’t look at him, couldn’t turn his head away from that perfect mouthful of teeth. What was he dealing with here? What the hell had decided to visit itself on Missing Mile?
The moment of silence stretched, became unbearable. Now Steve was at the back of the stage fucking with the equipment, trying to cover for him. They did a couple of songs that required a prerecorded bass and drum track, and Steve was turning knobs that didn’t need turning, adjusting levels that were already set. But how long could that stretch out? Where were his words?
Then Ghost tore his gaze away from Zillah’s shining smile and looked out over the sea of faces again, and the spell was broken. So Zillah had new teeth, new skin. So what? He and Steve had a show to do. The fragile faces could not be turned away; the burning hearts could not be quenched by disappointment. Ghost felt a righteous anger fill him. Hypnotized by a smile? Oldest trick in the book! It couldn’t trick him, though, not now. He had to sing.
Steve was staring at him, half pissed off, half scared. He tapped his foot three times and gave Steve the nod. And when Ghost started singing again, the words poured from him like a river of gold.
They played “Mandrake Sky,” an odd chiming melody, the first song Ghost had more or less composed on his own, then an assortment of their older songs, rocking numbers. Ghost began to be drunk on the music. When he felt himself swaying, he clung harder to the microphone.
The audience was a sea. The music pulled like the Mississippi; he could be swept away, he could drown. But drowning might be sweet. In his throat, his voice was thick wine. The pale hands snatched it and bore it up on a cloud of clove smoke. For those children Ghost sang harder, letting his voice soar, pushing it down deep and gravelly, stringing it out in a howl like a shimmering gold wire.
Between him and Steve the electricity crackled. Ghost clenched his hands in front of him, raised his face to the gilded tiles of the ceiling. Steve shook his head madly. His hair stood out like a scribbled black cloud. Sparkling drops of sweat landed sizzling on his guitar, on the audience, on Ghost’s upturned face. Ghost licked the sweat off his lips and tried to breathe. There was no breath left in him. The audience had taken it all. In him there was only song, endlessly swelling. If he did not let it out his heart would burst.
He had forgotten all about Zillah’s perfect new face.
At the end, Steve joined Ghost at the microphone to sing backup on the last song. It was “World,” the song they always closed with. Steve’s fingers stroked the strings, lingering on them, making them chime. “World out of balance,” Ghost sang. Steve gave the accompanying line, “World without end,” in his usual off-key tenor. But Steve’s singing was better tonight than ever before. It was still pretty bad, but there was an element of rawness to it, a hoarseness born of beer and sorrow. The audience rose on tiptoe. “WE ARE NOT AFRAID,” Ghost chanted, throwing his shoulders back, pushing his voice harder. “WE ARE NOT AFRAID.”
Behind him, Steve sang, “Let the night come, let the night come…” That wetness on his face was only sweat, or so he would claim. And Ghost wouldn’t say different, not for anything. “We are not afraid,” he whispered, and the audience whispered back, “Let the night come…”
Steve shoved his guitar into its case, snapped the catches shut, and headed for the bar. He was already half-drunk, and he registered that this was not Kinsey Hummingbird handing him his beer. This b
artender was even taller and paler, and a hell of a lot weirder-looking, but Steve didn’t remember seeing the guy before. A vague impression of a black hat and sunglasses flashed into his mind. It didn’t mean anything to him, and he forgot it.
Ghost had wandered off into the crowd. At the bar Steve saw a curly head wrapped in a tie-dyed bandanna: Terry Buckett, who owned the Whirling Disc record store where Steve worked, who played drums on their tape and sat in on their shows sometimes. Terry had been out of town recently. When he saw Steve, he signalled the bartender for two more beers. The bartender took two bottles of National Bohemian out of the cooler. Natty Bohos, Terry called them. Steve called them possum piss, himself, but Terry was buying.
“What’s up?” Steve asked after a long and companionable swig.
“Been tripping for two weeks, man. Hey, no shit—bike tripping. You know I rode down to New Orleans?” Steve knew, had in fact discussed it with Terry at work, but Terry talked to so many people that he often forgot who had heard what. “They got a bar in the French Quarter”—Terry was just about drooling at the memory—“serves twenty-five-cent draft every Thursday night. And they play these same two Tom Waits albums over and over all night. Blue Valentine and Heart Attack and Vine…”
Steve imagined the place. The floor would be sticky, the walls slicked with blue light from an old beer sign. The records would get scratchier every Thursday night, as if Tom had progressive cancer of the larynx. He wished he were there, sucking the foam off his fifth or sixth draft, forgetting all about Missing Mile and the Sacred Yew. (Those aren’t the things you really want to forget, said a small demon-voice in his head. It was quiet enough to be ignored, but a couple more beers would drown it for sure.) Terry’s bar sounded pretty good. Maybe he and Ghost could take the T-bird on a road trip one of these days.
“Man, you can get some heavy shit down there in the Quarter,” Terry said. The new bartender was turned away, filling plastic cups, but his back had an attitude of listening. “I got an ounce of this stuff called Popacatepetl Purple. Couple bong hits of that’ll give you some heavy mind groove—”
“Did somebody mention bong hits?” R.J. Miller boosted himself onto a bar stool on Terry’s other side. He had grown up from a skinny hyperspace-machine-building kid into a skinny young man who could play a bass line like the thunder of God, but right now he was having trouble holding onto his beer. He swayed against the bar, then managed to prop himself up on his elbows. His glasses were crooked. He pushed them up with his forefinger. “Hey, Steve. Awesome show, man.”
Terry considered him gravely. “How many beers have you had?”
“Three,” said R.J., and burst into sudden laughter. “Seriously, you guys, what about those bong hits? You wanna go outside or what?”
“You’re not old enough to smoke,” Terry told him. Under the bar, Terry nudged Steve’s knee. Steve looked down. Terry was holding a pack of Camels. From the pack protruded the end of a joint, fat and twisted. Steve palmed the joint and slipped it into the pocket of his jeans.
“Popacatepetl Purple,” Terry said softly. “You look like you could use some heavy mind groove.”
Absurdly, Steve felt tears start in his eyes. His friends loved him. Girls might fuck you over, but you could always count on your friends. “I gotta find Ghost,” he told Terry. “I want to smoke this with him.”
“Sure,” said Terry. “Enjoy it, huh?” He turned to R.J. and started talking about the strip clubs on Bourbon Street. R.J. had gone to sleep on the bar, his head cradled in his arms, his face smooth and blameless as a child’s. His fourth Natty Boho sat in front of him, untouched.
Steve pushed his way through the crowd, still carrying his half-finished beer, smelling clove smoke and the dusty musk of thrift-shop clothes, searching for the streamered beacon of Ghost’s hat. He saw black berets, bright dyed hair, pale scalp showing through buzz cuts. Ghost was nowhere to be found. “Fuck it,” Steve muttered finally, heading for the men’s room. He couldn’t carry the joint around all night. He guessed he would just have to smoke the whole thing himself. Life was rough.
He locked the door behind him and dug in his pocket for matches. FINISH HIGH SCHOOL FOR $50! the matchbook cover exhorted him. His first drag filled his lungs with bitter, delicious smoke.
By the time half the joint was gone, Steve had decided he was in dire need of a tattoo. It would be a grinning skull with black bat wings veined blood-red, and it would have a rose clenched in its teeth, and in the center of the petals the name ANN would be etched in flaming letters. He would show it to the bitch next time he ran into her. Then she would know how he really felt about her, and she would die of guilt.
Maybe there was time to drive to Fayetteville tonight. That was where the tattoo parlors were. Steve stashed the joint in his pocket and started out of the restroom. He raised his beer to his mouth and scanned the crowd, looking for Ghost, meaning to get their equipment loaded up and start for Fayetteville. Instead he saw a girl standing at the bar talking to Terry, a girl with long gold-red hair beneath her vintage 1940s mourning hat, with a tough, pretty face. A girl who shaped her words with her hands, whose hands were paint-stained and delicately ugly. Between the forefinger and middle finger of her right hand, a Camel cigarette burned.
On the third finger of that same hand Steve saw the dull gleam of a ring. He couldn’t make out the design, but he knew what it was. A pair of hearts, wrought in silver and turquoise, interlocked. He had given her that ring, and she still wore it.
Ann had come to see him play tonight.
Steve started to duck back into the men’s room in case she turned around. But then she lifted her arm in a gesture he remembered well, lifting her heavy hank of hair off the back of her neck for a moment. The lapel of her black suit jacket folded back. Beneath it she wore a lace tank top, also black. Steve saw the sideswell of her breast, and above that the dark auburn tuft of her armpit hair.
That had surprised him when he’d first started going out with her, back in their senior year of high school when she was still just Ann Bransby-Smith, the cute redhead in his psychology class. He had never before gotten laid with a girl who had armpit hair. It was sort of weird, but it seemed somehow to go with the black turtleneck sweaters she wore and the beret she pulled down over her ears sometimes.
“Artsy chicks who paint aren’t allowed to shave their pits,” she’d told him that night. Steve had only looked up at her—she was half-straddling him on the couch, her jeans still zipped up but her shirt off and her hair hanging in her face. He wasn’t sure whether she was kidding, and he didn’t especially care, since his hand had slipped inside the filmy cup of her bra and her nipple was as hard as a piece of candy beneath his fingers. A few minutes later he discovered that she perfumed the hair under her arms, and from that moment on, those tufts had not disturbed him in the slightest.
Until now. That fleeting sight filled him with such a miserable surge of desire and loneliness that he almost spit out his mouthful of beer. He thought about how fucked up the past month had seemed without her. Playing wasn’t fun anymore; she got into all the songs somehow. Even drinking wasn’t fun —often as not he got hung up in a jag of self-pity, cursing her name, crying in his beer, hurling things she had given him against the walls of his room. He was sick of working at the Whirling Disc, sick of reading, sick of his dreams. Only spending time with Ghost seemed to help, but even Ghost couldn’t be there all the time, though Ghost often came padding into Steve’s room and sat in the dark with him when Steve couldn’t sleep at two in the morning. Ghost did that, but he couldn’t do everything. He couldn’t be Ann, with her smell of paint and tea-rose perfume and Camel smoke, with her welcoming body.
Steve circled around the bar and approached Ann from behind (From behind, the demon in his mind said wickedly, yeah, I remember that one pretty good, but there were lots of other positions too, and he told it to shut up). She was saying something to Terry, who nodded sagely and glanced past her at Steve. Terry raised one q
uizzical eyebrow. Steve shrugged and reached out to touch Ann’s shoulder.
At the same moment, R.J. raised his head and regarded them all with bleary good humor. “Hey, Ann!” he exclaimed. “Hey, Steve! You guys getting back together or what?”
Ann’s back stiffened. Her head whipped around, and a red-gold strand lashed across Steve’s face. Her eyes met Steve’s and seemed to crack a little. Out of that fault line spilled all the nights, all their nights. The wild sweat-slicked ones when nothing short of devouring each other would satiate their hunger. The quiet beery nights on the front porch of the house, sitting with Ghost, who always knew when to stay up talking past midnight and when to go to bed early. The nights lying across Steve’s bed in the half-darkness of the moonlit window, before the Penthouse centerfold went up, watching life go by and not needing to chase it because they were together and that was enough.
Those nights, and the psychobloody ones when they said things that could not be taken back, when they didn’t care what they said. “I just can’t compete with alcohol, can I?” she had asked one bitter night, and he had responded, “Fuck, no—you’re not that good.”
But that was nothing.
That was nothing compared to the night, the one he couldn’t bear to remember, the one he couldn’t help remembering in every gory detail.
When he had thrown Ann on the bed and unzipped his pants, he had ceased to be Steve Finn. Maybe that was a cop-out, but that was how it had felt. His sense of selfness had deserted him. The feeling of Ann’s body beneath him, bucking and struggling against him, was remote as a figure on a movie screen. In fact, the whole thing was like a movie; watching a badly faked snuff film might have given him the same sense of mild, free-floating disgust.
Lost Souls Page 20