by Brian Keene
Images of the British queen of eyeliner and rehab are splattered across the television today. Poor thing never had a chance. She was talented too young. Hungry too young. And signed, sealed and delivered before she was legal.
She was found yesterday.
Tonight is open mic night.
BEAT ON THE PAST
Matt Serafini
“Hey,” Moira said as they hurried across the street.
Pete didn’t hear her. He was already caught up in the familiar glow of their past. A stale blot of white bulbs grew from the night to punctuate a city block of otherwise unbroken shadows. He rushed toward it, Moira’s hand closed in his. She trailed behind, arm lifting like a clothesline.
“Did you sign the—”
“Talk about it later?” Pete said as he stepped to consecrated ground, looking up at the Shantyman’s marquee. No mention of tonight’s show. A strange omission, given the circumstances.
Moira stared straight ahead with a clenched jaw.
“Like seeing an old friend,” Pete said.
“I wanted to talk about it over dinner but you—”
“We can talk about that any time,” he said. “Come on.”
Moira jerked her hand away and started in, leaving him to trail a few steps. “Place hasn’t changed.” A sigh stretched through her voice.
Pete sucked air in through his nostrils and closed his eyes, savoring the memories of a hundred nights spent walking this corridor.
“Are we early?” Moira said.
A few solitary bodies stood scattered throughout the stage room beyond, looking like transients happy to be out of the rain.
Pete took the flyer from his windbreaker and unfolded it to confirm the date. Doors opened at 7. They were late, if anything. A little past eight now and it was tumbleweeds.
He traded the register jockey a fifty-dollar bill for two blue smiley face stamps on the backs of their hands. They passed inside.
“Same drill?” Moira said.
“Doesn’t look like we’ve got much to worry about.”
“I don’t want to stand all night. I’ve got work tomorrow.”
“So do I, you know.”
She spat her breath and shrugged, heading for one of the skinny pub tables scattered around the outskirts.
Pete watched her sling her bag down and then drape her coat over the low-backed stool. The dim house lights rendered her face a dark blank beneath a clean bob of hair.
He went for drinks where the line was as sparse as the attendance. A girl with safety pins in her ears spilled Jack and Coke after swallowing two healthy sips and argued the bartender for another.
Pete’s Pumas felt glued to the slab. The floor in here went sticky with the spill of a hundred tilted beverages in almost no time. And the air swirled heavy with an atmosphere of cheap draught. Tonight was the same as it ever was, only Pete wanted to know who in the hell was here to make the mess.
The girl wandered off with her refill and Pete put his elbow on the quartz slab, his forearm soaking in spilt Jack. He ordered two draughts. The bartender’s hair was the color of cobwebs and she barely bothered to acknowledge him as she brought two plastic cups to tap. She handed them over. The top thirds were all foam.
She grinned dead, eyes anything but happy. Pete slapped a ten down and took the cups with a sigh. At least he wouldn’t have to worry about spilling them.
“This isn’t going to happen,” Moira said as he neared. “Is it?”
“Sure it will.” He slid a cup over and Moira took it.
“If it doesn’t—”
“Hey,” he said. “They’re promoting it.” His smile felt forced and hopeless.
“Who?”
“They printed flyers, right?” Pete said. “So, someone.”
“Kids in high school.”
“You’re right,” he said. “Should’ve gone on Maury Povich to get the word out.”
Moira lifted an arm across her chest. Her index finger pointed to the stage at her back. “Flyers aren’t doing a very good job.”
The stage was empty and the crowd standing before it had the enthusiasm of a receiving line at a wake. They were a clump of the curious in frayed jeans, pushed tight against the stage so not to be usurped. Twenty bodies, maybe, all slouched shoulders and vacant conversations.
“Remember when Nick dove off there and the crowd backed away like he was boiled oil?” I asked.
“Had to drive him to the ER,” she said. “Twelve stitches.” A gentle laugh warmed her features and then was gone like a ghost.
He opened his mouth and drew a breath of stale beer. “I can almost taste them.”
“Stitches?”
“Memories,” Pete said. “Nobody tells you how fast it ends.”
“Nobody tells you because the next thing is supposed to be better.”
Pete took the crumpled flier from his pocket once more and placed it flat on the table. The palms of his hands smoothed the wrinkles as he eyed it for the umpteenth time. “And yet, when I said to you, ‘Brainpan, one night only.’”
“Changes nothing.” Moira’s eyes underwent a steely makeover.
“You’ve made that clear a thousand times.” Pete scrutinized the paper. Its details suddenly seemed different.
“Just don’t want you thinking—”
“Got it,” he said. “Really. Got it.”
“Doesn’t seem it.” Moira lifted the foamy cup to her lips, her glare hardening like cement.
He flipped the sheet of paper around so she could read it. “How’s this look to you?”
Moira threw casual eyes on it and scrunched her face to remind him that minutia had never been her strong suit.
The picture was different. It had been the same since the first night he got it, standing in scrubs, holding the paper between exhausted fingers and shaking the fugue cloud from his skull after eighteen hours on his feet. His brain a blender because what was promised on the page couldn’t be right. Not after all this time.
Brainpan. One night only.
The photograph that occupied much of the Xeroxed flyer’s real estate was a gritty, black-and-white shot of the Shantyman’s stage. Brainpan, frozen mid-set in October, 1985. Ten years ago.
The last show they’d ever played. Because as soon as the lights had gone down on their encore that night, Brainpan vanished without a trace.
Eyewitnesses cited widespread confusion right off. The money guy waited backstage to split the door, but management was nowhere to be found. The band’s tour van was off the premises, and even their instruments were gone. The female groupies hand-chosen for a back room meet and greet left that night with healthy knees and empty stomachs.
Pete knew exactly what the flyer had shown. He’d spent much of the last decade wondering what that final show must’ve been like. A band that traded burgeoning commercial success for the sustainability of urban legend.
He and Moira would’ve been there if not for their October wedding and ensuing honeymoon. Deep down, he resented the priority that touristy Parisian daytrips got over the band that had brought them together. And deep down, she must’ve known he resented her for it, and she resented that.
“You’ve seen this flyer before,” Pete said, unable to keep the annoyance out.
“So?”
“It’s different now.”
“Pete—”
“Can you look at it for more than two seconds?”
She gave exactly that, then looked up with a sneer.
“What the fuck, Mo?”
“No,” she said. “I mean, I don’t know.”
Pete slid the paper around and smacked it with the back of his hand. “This isn’t it,” he said. “It’s not the same picture. How is that possible?”
“Look at you, answering your own question.”
He let the passive-aggressive swipe pass him by. A small piece of the corner was torn from where he’d pulled it off his windshield wiper, meaning the actual paper was the same, and only the image had somehow shifted.
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Pete could see how Moira might not immediately be convinced. The image still showed Brainpan, though the band was pushed further into the background, revealing a Shantyman crowd at maximum occupancy, sardined into the space where they now sat.
His eyelids snapped open like morning blinds as he spotted two familiar bodies hovering near the front of the frame. A young couple arm-in-arm, ignoring the excitement on stage for the exchange of mutual smiles.
He didn’t show Moira. The photo was too grainy, she’d say. We weren’t there, you idiot, she’d say. Both of these things were true, but every detail that belonged to these young people had also been theirs. Only Mo had a side bag dangling off her hip that was decorated entirely in Minor Threat. And Pete missed his jean vest with the Circle Jerks patch that adorned the back. The longer he stared, the less he was able to reconcile it as coincidence.
“What time is it?” He asked.
Moira pretended not to hear the question. He knew she had, however, because disdain bristled through her features like ripples on a pond. Pete knew the look. Tonight it was when are you going to get a watch? But it was interchangeable with any one of her lingering grievances.
There was an unmanned merch table sitting against the far wall. It housed two black crates of LPs and a pile of tees. It caught Moira’s eye, and she cleared her throat. “Didn’t I borrow the Spit in Sanctimony album from Kate that one night so we could listen to it on your parent’s system?”
“Borrowed,” Pete said with air quotes.
“Did you ever give it back?”
“Wasn’t it a gift?”
Moira started to laugh, caught herself. She might’ve been chewing the inside of her mouth.
“And you did more than steal it,” Pete said. “Had to smuggle it out inside an old pizza box you were pretending to throw out, because she was super particular of her records.”
“She hoarded them,” Moira said. “Had a thousand. Maybe I should just buy her another—”
“She’s on the East Coast now. Married with kids.”
“Right.”
“Doubt we’ll ever hear from her again.”
Moira stared off.
“Probably listens to grunge now anyway. That’s all anyone wants to listen to. Shit’s weak.”
Pete glanced back toward the bar and caught the wispy haired woman watching him. Her lying smile was wider, even less convincing. The blue lights that backlit the drink shelves behind her projected a crooked, inhuman shadow all the way across the concert floor.
The drink line was nonexistent. No chance Brainpan’s fanbase had gone straight edge in a vacuum.
“It’s past nine,” she said, waving her watch wrist like it was on fire. “This is all a stupid joke on the suckers like us who are dumb enough to show up.”
“You used to live this stuff,” Pete said.
“What’s the expression? Youth is wasted on the young?”
“You’re here.”
“Oh, I know that.”
“These guys don’t give a shit about punctuality.”
Moira yawned through the corner of her mouth. “Punk rock forever, right?”
More people began to fill in. A rapid flow came pouring through the doors and broke around their table as they moved toward the stage. Footsteps everywhere. They set up station at the unclaimed pub tables. They pushed against the early arrivals up front to get as close as space would allow. They lined the walls all around the perimeter.
They moved like blurs from a faded memory. Nondescript bodies in a crowd attached to faces that resembled eraser rubs, smudges hastily scrubbed away, leaving only the basic remnants of human features.
Everybody looked like nothing. Everybody except Moira. She paid no mind. Didn’t seem to notice. Her fingers hammered the table in monosyllabic boredom, staring off into the future.
Pete craned all the way left and scanned slow toward his right, blinking a few times, rubbing his eyes with the ball of his fist.
Only one other face remained in focus. The bartender’s. Still watching from afar with a smile somehow wider than the edges of her face.
“What’s wrong with them?” he said.
“This place seems smaller,” Moira said, no indication she’d even heard Pete’s question. “I was so scared the first time.”
“Your dad was sure we were going to get stabbed.”
“He still thinks that.”
“What about their faces?”
Moira threw her head around the room and shrugged. “How much did you drink at dinner?”
“Nothing like that.”
“Maybe they’re spiking our drinks,” she giggled.
“Do you see them or not?”
“I see an empty stage. At twenty past.”
“Punk isn’t customer service. It pays to keep your fanbase unhappy, so nobody gets to accuse you of selling out.”
Moira thought that over and decided she didn’t care. “Was no problem when I could sleep till noon. Am I supposed to be late for my 9 am tomorrow because the band I paid good money to see felt like keeping me standing around all night?”
“They’ll be on soon.”
Moira’s chin sat in the cup of her hand. Her eyes swiveled to the tabletop.
Pete glanced at the flyer and watched the crinkled paper. The lights in the room dimmed. A few ecstatic cheers erupted from the otherwise silent pockets of joyless spectators. His head launched toward the page to try and compensate for the flooding darkness, because in that moment he was certain the photo had shifted again.
It was anything but subtle this time. Pete and Moira on stage, faces hardened by the passage of an unknown stretch of time. They still wore patches and chains to prove to the world they lived outside its “system.” They presided over a floor of close friends. Each familiar face standing just below, a union of beer bottles raised high in a celebratory toast.
A photograph of something that had never happened, yet a memory he somehow held. Pete and Moira’s hands joined in the ritual of matrimony. The Shantyman had meant more to them than any church, so why not? It’s how it should’ve been.
He crumpled the paper as his beating heart leapt up into his throat. This place knew. He hadn’t told anyone about this wish and yet it knew. Knew him better than anyone.
They sat in the dark for too long. Somehow Moira’s sighs were louder than everything else. Her movements became spastic. Patience frayed and ready to tear.
Silhouettes floated out across the stage. Their appearance kicked up a few rumbles of excitement as the guitar threatened a familiar three-cord shuffle. Bass hummed out in search of a linking rhythm, finding harmony with the drums that began to thump through the darkness. A figural outline posed center stage, raising its arms up and out over the crowd like a holy man about to give blessing.
“To anyone who thinks the world is getting better, here’s four simple words for you . . . you’re Shit. Out. Of. Luck!” Then it started. Driving cords, simple bass. His voice, a throat full of razor blades. The song sounded as chaotic as ever.
Brainpan thrashed through the darkness. People punched and flailed with excitement at first, stopping to consider the swindle as the set continued and the lights refused to lift. Errant cheers and then skeptical insults rose up in the seconds of silence between songs. All of it giving way to full-fledged skepticism as the show roared exclusively from inside the deepest shadows.
Pete was already contemplating the ways in which he was going to apologize to Moira. Ten years ago, they’d have thrashed around a bit, kicking and pushing bodies away. His hand would’ve slipped beneath the waist of her jeans to give her ass a squeeze in the dark. And she would’ve purred in his ear to wait for the ride home. It would’ve been whiskey shots in the bathroom. A joint once the show got underway.
Tonight they hadn’t even come here in the same car.
Just before encore, light flooded the venue to reveal Brainpan standing before them like time unchanged. Like the decade unchanged. The crowd roar
ed. They mashed against the stage and threw middle fingers like couples blew kisses. Moira perked for a second before remembering that time had, in fact, moved on and she needed to remain unimpressed.
Pete reached for her hand. She pulled away, bobbing her head and pretending hard at being immersed. Keeping that façade running through to the very last note, when the lights once more plunged the Shantyman into total darkness. The residual echoes of their final notes haunted the house speakers like phantoms.
Even then, Moira wouldn’t look. When there were only lingering cheers mixed with static interference, she wouldn’t look. And once the silhouettes glided stage left, leaving the place as vacant as they’d found it, she refused to look.
It stayed dark. They sat nearly motionless, somehow bound in place and listening to the constant shuffling of tired feet scraping past.
They were alone when the house lights finally lifted. Or nearly alone.
The bartender was still looking. Still smiling.
“It’s over,” Moira said. She got off the stool and started for the exit.
Pete trotted after. The floor no longer stuck to his soles. It was smooth and clean, and the place had been exorcised of the perspired body smell that lingered just seconds ago.
“Get a record on the way out,” Moira said, and then hurried into the night.
Pete watched the door slam. He lifted the flyer again, desperate for what might’ve been. All the times he’d dreamt about that day, surrounded by people who had mattered the most at that point in their lives. People you always expected to be part of you. All of them now just memories and ghosts.
The photo was different again.
Brainpan stood clustered together, a decade of age lines etched into their faces. A comeback shot fit for Spin or Rolling Stone. Same skull make-up, green hair, and priest frocks. Only seeing them older felt wrong. Like they were never supposed to age, because all of their music was about the evils of capitalism, the corruption of banana republics, and the subversion of society. But now they looked like middle management getting a little wild at the office Halloween party. Too old to be rebelling against The Man™ without looking like a bunch of assholes.
Pete took another look around the vacant floor space and then pushed out into the cold.