God Drug

by Stephen L. Antczak

  Hanna watched one girl, sporting a tall, bleached out mohawk, who squirted something from a fur-covered wineskin into the mouth of a skinny black guy who wore a leather jacket covered with stainless-steel spikes. A group of bald guys were listening to loud punk rock that blasted from a boom box in the back of a pick-up truck and slamming into each other.

  “Want a taste?”

  Hanna turned to see the mohawked girl holding her wineskin up. The girl’s nose was pierced with a silver hoop ring, and she had a dozen or so earrings in her left ear.

  “What is it?” Hanna asked.

  “I can’t tell you,” the girl answered coyly, smiling. “That would spoil the fun. Come on, let me give you a squirt.”

  “Okay.” Hanna opened her mouth. The girl tilted the wineskin and squeezed it. Hanna felt the liquid squirt into her mouth. An intense smell of black licorice erupted in her nostrils. She closed her mouth and swallowed. A warmth blossomed inside her and she immediately felt more at ease.

  “More?” the girl asked.

  Hanna nodded, opened her mouth, got another squirt. She stopped worrying about the General. He was asleep. She wanted to find the blonde girl.

  She wandered around the parking lot until she met a long-chinned, sharp-nosed, gritty-looking man with piercing blue eyes.

  “Need a jump?” he asked.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Did your car break down near here? I’m a mechanic,” he said. He held out his hand. “What’s your name?”

  “I’m Hanna,” she said, and shook his hand with hers. He held on a little longer than she expected. “I didn’t… I don’t have a car.”

  “Ah. So you’re here for the party, then?”

  Hanna nodded.

  “Well,” the man said, “this is my place. I’m Dave-O. Nice to meet you.”

  “So these two bands are playing here tonight?” She pulled the flyer from her pocket and showed him.

  “Sure are.”

  “Good.”

  “You know,” Dave-O said, “you don’t really look like you belong here.”

  “I don’t?” Hanna felt strange. She wanted to belong, needed to belong wherever the blonde was. “Where do I belong?”

  “Look like you should be living out in the suburbs or something,” Dave-O told her.

  “I used to,” Hanna told him. “Not anymore. Now I’m here.”

  Dave-O nodded. “That you are.” He took a breath. “Listen, you want to slip away and smoke a joint, get mellow… and see what happens?”

  Hanna suddenly realized why he was talking to her. Of course, he wanted her. She didn’t have time for that, though. She pointed to the picture of the blonde girl on the flyer.

  “Do you know her?” she asked Dave-O. “I have to find her.”

  “That’s Sparrow,” he said. “She’ll be here.” He turned to walk away, stopped. “If you change your mind about getting together, let me know. I’ll be around. Oh, and beer’s inside if you want some.”

  He headed off toward a group of people who were standing in a clump at the edge of the parking lot.

  Hanna went inside. Dave-O’s shop was cavernous, with a skylight at the top, and an array of scrap-metal sculptures off to one side. There was a boat in the early stages of construction behind where the band was setting up, and a work area beyond that littered with tools, an arc welder, and then a modest living space with a futon, sofa, TV, refrigerator, stove, table and chairs. The floor was stained with grease and caked with sawdust and metal shavings and loose nuts, bolts, screws, and nails. The whole place smelled of machine oil, cigarette smoke, and beer. The beer keg was located off to one side, away from the door, with several packages of plastic cups available.

  “Where the hell is Sparrow?” she overheard someone behind her say. She turned to look, and saw a black girl sitting behind the drum kit where the band was setting up. She had long, thin braids down past her shoulders. “She should have been here by now.” She had a peculiar accent, a mix of British and Caribbean.

  Hanna moved away from the crowd at the keg and stood back to watch.

  “If she’s not here when we’re supposed to start,” the drummer said, “I’m singing.”

  Sparrow was the singer for this band? Hanna felt her chest tighten.

  “Sparrow,” she whispered. She liked the sound of it, liked the way if felt when she said it. Sparrow, Sparrow, Sparrow. But Hanna looked around and Sparrow was nowhere in sight.

  “Where are you?” Hanna asked.

  Chapter Five

  “Um, Lena… ?”

  “Yeah?”

  “That light was red.”

  “It was?”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “Oh. Oops.”

  Lena’s little grey four-door Honda Civic sped down University Avenue. Sparrow sat in the front passenger seat, and Tom was in the back. The speakers in the back had been blasting Lean’s favorite tripping, and driving, music, a compilation of Swans songs from different albums. Jarboe’s angelic voice had just finished off side one… “I Remember Who You Are” from The Burning World CD.

  The Civic approached another intersection. The light was green, but Lena stopped anyway.

  “Lena, what are you doing?” Tom asked, leaning forward between the girls. “The light’s green. Go.”

  “I’m making up for that red light I just ran,” Lena replied.

  “Oh.” Tom sat back in his seat. Yeah, that made sense. Sure it did. Sort of.

  “Anyone notice any trippy effects, yet?” Sparrow asked. She moved her hands in front of her face, looking for phantom trails.

  “Not yet,” Tom said. “Give it time, it’ll happen.”

  “I don’t feel anything,” Lena said. The light turned red and the Civic moved through the intersection.

  “Lena, you just ran a red light again,” Tom said.

  “No, I didn’t,” Lena replied. “I stopped at the green, so I had to go when it turned red, didn’t I?”

  “I think she’s tripping,” Sparrow told Tom.

  “Christ,” Tom said. “I hope we don’t get pulled over. I can’t deal with the cops when I’m tripping.”

  “Stop on red,” Sparrow told Lena, “and go on green. Got it?”

  Lena nodded. “Got it. What about yellow? What am I supposed to do on yellow, go sideways?”

  Sparrow shook her head. “Don’t worry about yellow, okay?”

  The next light they came to turned yellow. Tom laughed as Lena slowed down, and then as it turned red she sped up and went through the intersection. Luckily there was no traffic.

  “You’re gonna get us killed,” Sparrow said.

  “I’m not,” Lena said defiantly. “I know what red and green mean, Sparrow. I’m just having fun. I saw that there were no other cars around.”

  “Okay, whatever.”

  Tom was still laughing.

  “You okay back there?” Sparrow asked.

  He laughed even harder.

  “I think he’s definitely tripping now,” Lena said.

  Sparrow looked out the passenger side window.

  “Damn it, I don’t feel anything,” she said. Looking outside, she saw everything with total clarity. They passed a red brick building, as if in slow motion. She saw the pores on the bricks, the granules of dirt, a line of tiny black ants march across the wall.

  “Okay,” she said with a smile.

  “Okay what?” Lena asked.

  “Now I’m tripping,” Sparrow said.

  “Cool.”

  Sparrow didn’t pay anymore attention to what the color the traffic lights were. She looked out her window the whole time, watching the world go by in slow motion, until they were there.

  Tom’s laughter was under control now as they slowly climbed out of Lena’s Honda. Sparrow kept one hand on the car as she stood. She was feeling slightly unbalanced.

  “Lock ’em,” Lena said. They did, and just stood there around the car.

  “Why are we here again?” Tom asked.
/>   Sparrow shrugged.

  “You mean, why are we here on this planet, in this universe?” Lena asked. “Or why are here, standing in this parking lot?”

  “Yeah,” Tom said. “Both.”

  Sparrow pointed toward Dave-O’s warehouse. “Hey, look, a party.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Tom said, “that’s why we’re here.”

  They walked toward the warehouse.

  “Sparrow!” The three other members of Sparrow’s band, the Chix, were walking toward her, coming from the warehouse.

  “Hey, what’s up?” she called back.

  The three Chix met Sparrow halfway to the warehouse.

  “Where have you been?” Nicola, the Chix drummer, asked in an accent that sounded like a cross between London English and Caribbean rasta. She seemed annoyed as she brushed a red braid out of her face.

  “Gettin’ ready for the show,” Sparrow said, smiling sweetly.

  The other two Chix, Dev and Sin, stood back smoking cigarettes. Dev was taller than the other Chix, with green eyes and long, straight brown hair. She was the guitar player. The bassist, Sin, was shorter and more athletically built than the other Chix. Her head had been shaved but her blonde hair was just starting to grow back. She had very light blue eyes. They were standing near the Chixmobile, an old station wagon with faux wood paneling on the sides, and the Chix logo spray-painted across it.

  Nicola had a body type similar to Sin’s. She was a dark-skinned black girl with her hair dyed red and in long braids that were starting to frizz out and look more like dreadlocks. She narrowed her eyes as she looked at Sparrow.

  “Are you tripping?” Nicola asked.

  Sparrow grinned, then nodded.

  “So it’s gonna be one of those shows,” Nicola said.

  Sparrow nodded again.

  “Cool,” Dev said from behind her.

  “Okay, let’s finish getting set up and get the show on the road,” Nicola said. She led the Chix back to the warehouse. Sparrow waved bye to Lena and Tom.

  “What do you want to do?” Lena asked Tom. “I’ve seen them do their soundcheck a million times. I don’t need to see it again.”

  “Me too,” Tom agreed. “Let’s get a beer and see who’s here.”

  On the way toward the entrance to Dave-O’s shop Tom saw two of their friends, Holly and Jodiee, hanging out in the back of Jodiee’s pick-up. He pointed them out to Lena.

  “Come on, they always have beer,” Lena said.

  They did, and shared with Tom and Lena.

  “Sore yaddoon,” Jodiee said, smiling.

  Tom blinked. “What?”

  “So how are you doing?” Jodiee repeated, slowly this time, as if she were speaking to a rock.

  “We’re fine,” Lena answered. “Thanks for the beer.”

  “Yeah, thanks for the beer,” Tom echoed. He wasn’t sure if he actually said it, though, or just thought it, so he said it again, “Thanks for the beer.” He sipped it carefully, because he suddenly couldn’t feel anything with his hands. He had to look at the beer to know it was there and avoid dropping it.

  Lena dropped hers, though. She watched, mesmerized, as the beer glugged out of the can and onto the tarmac in a foaming stream.

  “I think I dropped my beer,” she said.

  “Boy, you are gone,” Jodiee said, handing Lena a fresh beer. She managed to hold onto to this one.

  “Tom!” a voice called out. Tom turned to see Pinhead walking toward them. Pinhead and the rest of his band, the Psychotics, had just arrived. They were to go on after the Chix.

  Jodiee handed Pinhead a beer.

  “So, Tom, when are you doing that interview with us?” Pinhead asked.

  “Oh, I forgot all about it! How about tomorrow afternoon. Is that okay?”

  “Why not tonight?”

  “He’s in no shape to interview anybody now,” Holly told Pinhead.

  “Why not?”

  “We dropped,” Tom said. “Me and Lena and Sparrow.”

  “Oh, that’s cool,” Pinhead said. “Sparrow ought to be fun tonight. Cool.”

  “So I hear this might the last show for the Psychotics,” Holly said.

  Pinhead nodded. “I’m moving away.”

  “Where to?” Jodiee asked.

  “New York,” he answered.

  “Yesterday you said San Francisco,” Tom said.

  “Eventually I think I’ll wind up there, but I think I’ll try New York first.”

  “So when is this going to happen?” Holly asked.

  “End of the month. My lease is up. I figure that’s as good a time as any to get out of Gainesville. Finally.”

  As Tom watched, Pinhead’s features changed. His face became cartoonish: his ears were huge, his eyes were just black ink dots, his lips looked like rubber stick-ons, and everything moved independently of everything else.

  “What’s wrong?” Pinhead asked him. His eyebrows crawled down his forehead like caterpillars.

  “Nothing,” Tom said. He looked away to avoid laughing, and saw that Lena had also been staring at Pinhead. Her mouth hung open as she squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them to look at Pinhead again. Tom grabbed her by the arm and pulled away, toward the warehouse where the Chix suddenly warmed the air with guitar fuzz.

  “Did you see his face?” Lena asked him.

  Three beats on the kick drum.

  “Yeah,” Tom said.

  “It was so cool,” she said. “Why did you pull me away?”

  A power chord on guitar.

  “I don’t know,” Tom told her. “It was just… It was just a little too much for me right now.”

  A thump and pop on the bass.

  Lena and Tom went inside.

  The sticks came together… one, two, three, four.

  “Soundcheck, can you hear me?

  Soundcheck, do you care?

  Soundcheck, do you love me?

  Soundcheck, are you there?”

  Sparrow’s screaming voice pierced the shrill high notes of a constant solo from Dev’s Les Paul guitar, while the drums battered the warehouse with speed-metal clatter and the bass wound around the entire punk-rock structure like a python constricting prey.

  “Soundcheck, what’s the matter?

  Soundcheck, don’t you like me?

  Soundcheck, well if you don’t,

  Soundcheck, then fuck off!”

  Sudden stop, dead-end, split second of utter silence.

  Then:

  “Yow!!”

  “Chix rule!!”

  “Punk fuckin’ rock!!”

  Some of the crowd had come in during the song. They were definitely jazzed for the show.

  Sparrow dropped the live mike. It shrieked with feedback until Dev grabbed it and turned it off. Sparrow leapt from the stage and went to the doorway where Lena and Tom had just entered the warehouse.

  “I feel weird,” she told them. She shook off a sudden chill.

  “Us too,” Lena said.

  “I mean I never took anything that made me feel like this before.”

  “Like what?” Tom asked.

  “Like…” Sparrow grappled for the right words. “Like I digested a little piece of God.”

  “Yeah,” Tom said, nodding. “Me too.”

  “So is this good or bad?” Lena asked.

  “Isn’t it up to us?” Tom asked.

  “I vote good,” Sparrow said. “Otherwise, how are we supposed to have any fun?”

  “Yeah,” Lena said. “It’s up to us.”

  “So let’s make it really good,” Sparrow said.

  They all nodded in agreement.

  “Okay,” Sparrow said. “I need a beer.” She went to the keg, which was near the side entrance to the warehouse. She didn’t notice the tall, leggy, brown-haired woman standing off to the side, watching her with intense interest. She wore a red vest over a white blouse, black stockings, and a black skirt. Tom and Lena noticed her.

  “Looks like Sparrow’s got an admirer,” Lena said.<
br />
  “Damn,” Tom said. “How come I never get admirers like that?”

  Lena swatted his arm. Sparrow returned momentarily with a plastic cup full of foamy beer.

  “You have a fan,” Tom told her.

  “I do?” Sparrow looked around, and right away saw the tall girl. “Oh, her.”

  “You saw her already?”

  “Yeah, during the sound check. She’s hot. Too bad I’m not a lesbian.”

  “Let’s go talk to her.” Tom said. He was obviously interested.

  Sparrow shrugged. “Why not?”

  “Why?” Lena asked, but followed them anyway to where the tall girl was leaning against the wall.

  “Hi,” Sparrow said with a grin, brushing back sweat-matted hair from her forehead.

  “Hi,” the tall girl said. She smiled sheepishly. She seemed scared.

  “I’m Tom.” Tom extended his hand. The tall girl didn’t seem to hear him. Her gaze was focused solely on Sparrow. Her brown eyes were wide and deep, as if her soul were trying to break free of its physical bonds and experience Sparrow’s essence unfiltered. Like a true-believing worshiper finally meeting her God face to face, seeing that everything she dreamed, everything she didn’t dare want but desired anyway… everything was true.

  “You’re her,” the tall girl said. “You’re Sparrow.”

  “The one and only,” Sparrow replied. Her eyes flickered to the side. The tall girl’s unwavering attention unnerved Sparrow. It reminded her of the way Io looked at her. But Io was a child and Sparrow had always figured it was merely a redirected umbilical love connection with her, sort of a mother-daughter thing.

  “What’s your name?” Lena asked the tall girl.

  She blinked and regarded Lena and Tom as if just now seeing them for the first time.