Meet Me in the Strange

by Leander Watts

  Music came from the PA system, something by Corelli I think, but amped-up and drum-driven. The sound wasn’t good, all that concrete above us making a boomy echo. I tried to say something to Anna Z. She just shrugged and shook her head. I pulled her closer, and yelled into her ear, “I’m happy!” Just a couple of words. She kissed me on the cheek and yelled back something that might’ve had the word “love” in it. But it got swept away in a hysterical shout from the crowd.

  The stage lights started flashing squid-scarlet and reptile-green. The big Django logo above the stage came to life, a comet burning through the night sky. A blast of synthetic horns buried the Corelli. Adrenaline seethed in my veins and in the crowd too. I could feel it coming in sizzling waves. The logo started to spin, slow at first. Crimson became fiery brightness. Green flared into a blue-hot metallic sheen. An announcer was yelling about Django. The crowd was yelling a thousand times louder, sweeping him away. I think I heard the words “last time ever.” A girl next to me was already crying, hyped to hysteria. I looked at Anna Z and got a shimmering glimpse of the light on her glasses. And then the band was on stage, blasting into “That Alien Feel.”

  EIGHTY-ONE

  It was just the band at first: Rudy on gamba, Simon on baryton, Mick on drums. They made the royal shining noise, the riff-riot fanfare. A flaming pink spotlight showed us where Django would appear. Twenty thousand eyes were aimed at that incandescent circle. One moment it was empty, and then Django was there before us. If the crowd was wild before, now it was berserk, shoving and grabbing, desperate to get nearer. I added my scream to the massive scream, and it was like I was yelling through ten thousand mouths. Anna Z screamed too, though I couldn’t separate her voice from the nerve-smashing din. We screamed as one, Django held his arms over his head like a priest giving his blessing, and the lyrics to “That Alien Feel” swept over us.

  Django had a different look than at the Maxima. It took me a song or two to calm down and notice the change. He was thinner, paler, and his costume showed off more skin. His hair was full of shiny spikes and greasy corkscrews. Even his expressions—what little I could see of his face—made me think that he’d given up something. The band was louder than at the Maxima, the bass-end throb punching my heart and the treble-shriek clawing at my skull. Django’s voice had all the power and laser-bright feeling of before. He moved on the stage like the Last King of the Universe. Still, what hit me was how exposed he was, open to our eyes and ears and grasping hands. This wasn’t weakness but a kind of strength, I think, as if he had nothing to lose and so nothing could hurt him.

  The band hit the last chord of “X-Ray Spex” and without dropping a beat went into “I Fear No Venom.” I sang along with Django, knowing the song by heart. And when we got to the chorus, it was as though my voice was booming out through the PA system.

  I fear no venom

  I fear no sting

  I fear no poison

  not anything.

  Rudy took a solo, heavy with distortion, while Django came up right to the edge of the stage. Kids were reaching for him, frantic. He was reaching down to them, cool and white as December moonlight. Anna Z pushed forward. I lost my hold on her, and it was like panic turned itself into sound: buzzing, throbbing, pounding inside my skull. I fought my way toward Anna Z, and that was when I saw Lukas.

  EIGHTY-TWO

  Just a flash, a ghost—the face of Anna Z’s brother far off in the swirling sea of kids. A wave of sick feeling broke over me, and now I knew how it would all end. Of course Lukas had read about Django’s last show. Of course he’d known that Anna Z would have to go there. And of course he’d come to find her and take her back, forever. I got a far away glimpse of him, dark as the Duke of Doomsville, and I could see the end of it all: Anna Z gone. Me alone.

  But the spectral Lukas disappeared as Django sang out, “You’re not alone!” The band had gone dead for just those few seconds, and Django’s voice filled the entire arena. I was sure those words were for Anna Z and me. Had I really seen Lukas? Maybe. Had Django pointed down to us and wailed, “You’re not alone!” Absolutely.

  I lunged between two kids and got hold of Anna Z. Somebody shoved me, hard, and I lost her again. Fingernails raked down the side of my face. Another kid went down, and it seemed like the others around him just trampled over him. I wasn’t the only one who thought the words were for me. At the edge of the stage, the crowd was so densely packed that it would’ve taken a hammer and a chisel to break through the bodies. They swayed together like a huge sea creature with countless arms. Hands waved and fingers clawed at the air. Ten thousand kids around me, and I was alone, unless I got to her again.

  I fear no venom

  I fear no sting

  I fear no poison

  not anything.

  Django wailed it and I sang along, hoarse and gasping. But of course, it wasn’t true. I was full of fear, almost choking on it. Panic-sweat, the cloud of fly-spell smoke, stinging perfumes, and maybe even my own blood: the smell was awful. Every breath was like sucking in the exhaust from an over-stoked furnace.

  The lights from above hit us, and I saw in Anna Z’s face the same look I’d seen at the Maxima. She was gone, gone, maximum gone. She’d given up everything, and that included me. Her name, where she’d come from, and where she was going, all she’d done with me in the last days: they vanished in that moment.

  In movies, I’d heard wild jungle cats screaming at night to find their mates or just because there’s all that tropical hunger vibe in them. And howler monkeys and weird birds too, all blue and purple with spikes of feathers like horns. Blasts of jungle primitivo noise in the flickering darkness. And that’s what I heard that night at the arena. I know it was just a band: drums, gamba, baryton, and Django Conn at the mic. I know it was just a mob of star-crazed kids. But there was something else happening too: jungle cat attack screams, bizarre insects buzzing, and shimmering tentacles wrapped around our brains.

  EIGHTY-THREE

  Maybe it didn’t matter that her brother was there, moving in toward her. Maybe every single minute she’d spent with me was just to get her here, totally gone. The first time I saw her this way, it was amazing. Now it was amazing and heartbreaking. Pure wild escape into the power, and sadness like a tidal wave. There was no way to separate them: To gain, she had to lose. To get filled up, she had to be emptied out first. Maybe it didn’t matter that Lukas had come there to claim her back. She’d gotten what she most wanted, and she’d known all along the price she’d have to pay.

  I stopped trying to reach her. As long as I didn’t lose sight, I had what I wanted. Just to see Anna Z was enough. Her face was empty as clear glass. And it was full too. It shone like a mirror reflecting the alien light. Above, beyond, and forever—the electrum skies shining inside and out. That’s what I’d seen at the Maxima. That was the real, true, perfect Anna Z.

  With four huge quaking chords, the band came to a halt. Django waited, taking a couple of deep breaths, then said he wanted us all to be quiet. Ten thousand kids yelled back, louder. He was serious though. He called out again for us to really listen. Back and forth it went, but each time the crowd got quieter.

  Finally, Django got what he asked for. He took a couple of deep breaths before announcing, “This isn’t just the last show of the tour. This is the last one I’ll ever do with the Reptiles. It’s been beautiful. I love the band. But this is the end.” The crowd screamed and surged at the stage. He waited until we were quiet again and said they were going to do a new song called “Meet Me in the Strange.” The whole arena was silent as Django wrapped a filmy robe around himself. It was almost see-through, and as he turned slowly, it billowed out to make a glimmering cloud around him.

  Rudy’s gamba sounded first, a riff made of gold and silver, tearing a hole in the darkness. Then the baryton and drums came in, coppery strings and iron hammers. And when Django sang the chorus of the song, his voice was pure mercury.

  Meet me in the strange

 
—secret places!

  Meet me in the strange

  —secret faces!

  Meet me in the strange

  —secret seeming!

  Meet me in the strange

  —secret gleaming!

  Meet me in the strange

  and you’ll never be alone.

  EIGHTY-FOUR

  Alone or not, Lukas found her. The crowd parted as he came toward the stage. Dressed in a somber black suit, he was obviously not one of Django’s devoted fans. He didn’t need to push very much. Kids drew back, feeling the menace in him as much as they saw how unlike them he was.

  I heard Lukas call out to Anna Z. He made her name into a wail of pure pain and loss. That his voice could be heard over the band seemed impossible. Still, his sister’s name cut through the din from on stage. I was yelling it too, a warning thrown like a tiny pebble into a storm-swollen sea.

  She was too far from me to reach, and too far into the music to save, even if I could’ve grabbed her and dragged her out of the arena. Even if I’d been the shining knight and had some heroic plan to get rid of her brother. Even if I’d been Frankenstein’s creature, strong as twenty men. No one could save Anna Z except herself.

  Now she was right at the edge of the stage. Django was singing about someone meeting him “in the strange,” holding the mic stand with both hands as though he’d fall over without its support. Lukas pushed by me, blind to everything but his sister. He punched a girl, and she went down screaming. He kicked a guy hard, like he was breaking down a door. His voice really did reach me now, calling to Anna Z with all the power of a cracking bullwhip.

  He came at Anna Z, grabbing for her. Hemmed in by the crowd, there was only one direction for her to go—straight ahead. As Django spun in his cloudy glimmer-robe, as he tottered, eyes closed and head tilted back for his final cry, Anna Z made it to the stage and climbed up. Security men emerged, like bats flying out of a cave to whisk her away. But Django straightened up, having gotten at last to the end of the song, and strength returned to his body. He waved the guards away and reached to take Anna Z’s hand.

  EIGHTY-FIVE

  It was rare, but sometimes fans made it onto the stage. Once in a while, a singer will let a girl stand beside him for a few seconds, let her kiss him or give him her offering of flowers, and then have his security men usher her away. On either side of the arena’s stage were caves of curtained darkness. That’s where the girls went, off to instant oblivion. Some bands had stage groupies, and they got special treatment, I suppose. Mostly though, they had their second or two in the spotlight and disappeared.

  This was different and everybody knew it. Ten thousand kids watched as Django took Anna Z’s hand and pulled her into the cloud that surrounded him: strobing spotlights, shimmering fabric, dry ice fog, concert-buzz. Her glasses gleamed and the look on her face was pure joy. Django spoke into the mic, saying that the show was over, the tour was over, the band was over. He raised his hands over his head, shouted a last goodbye to his fans, and vanished with Anna Z into the dark nothing.

  While this went on, her brother was still trying to get onto the stage. He had no chance. Though his grief made Lukas strong and wild as a killer shark, the security guys knew how to handle him. With shock batons and a lot of muscle, they kept Anna Z’s brother away from the band. Mick got up from the drum set and fled. As Rudy and Simon put down their instruments, the last wave of fan-madness crushed against the stage. At the head of this surge, Lukas threw himself against the wall of guards. The wall held.

  Later, the TV reporters said there’d been a riot at the arena. But I don’t think “riot” is the right word. It got insane, that much is true. People got hurt, though nobody died. The Polizei did come in with fire hoses at the end, to flush the last of the fans away. I saw some blood, and I heard a lot of screaming. But a riot seems to me a bad thing, a lot of pent-up rage and wanting to destroy. None of the kids I saw that night were angry. Nobody except Lukas wanted to hurt anyone else. It was just the last wave of excitement from the show, the buzz of seeing Django, and a lot of straight-up sadness that pushed the fans to go wild that night. He said it was the last show and we believed him. We’d been so close, we could see the sweat on his face, and now we might never see him in person again. That’s what made the kids so crazy.

  Pushed all the way to the front, I tried a couple of times to climb on the stage, to follow Anna Z. But the moment for that was long gone. She’d found the perfect time to break the invisible wall. She’d gone through and it closed up behind her. The arena’s overhead lights came on, cold and empty-bright. The security guys swung their batons, shoved and yelled for us to back off. The Polizei, with riot shields and helmets, appeared on either side of the stage. They came at us in two wedge-shaped squadrons, and we were pushed back, back, back.

  EIGHTY-SIX

  I was still on the street outside the arena two hours later. Steel gates had been pulled across all the entrances. The doors were closed and locked. No lights shone in the windows far overhead. Only the craziest and the truest of the true believers were left. Django had left the arena long before. Why were we here? The others, the sad, broken-looking kids, had no other place to be. This was the spot they’d been dreaming about for weeks, the most important place on the planet. Now it was just a huge, ugly concrete fortress. An empty shell. Still, inside they’d seen the real thing, the last of Django and the Albino Reptiles from Dimension X. It was like they’d been to a gigantic bonfire and were hanging around to catch the faint glow of the last embers.

  That’s not why I stayed. I kept thinking one of the big steel gates would open and out Anna Z would come. And if that happened, I had to be there. How else would we find each other again? We hadn’t talked about what to do if we got separated. It didn’t even seem possible the night before. We were together, we were going to Django, and that had been everything.

  The other kids drifted away one by one. A girl came clomping down the empty sidewalk. One of her platform heels had broken off, and she walked with a sideways, twisting limp. As she passed, I saw her makeup was streaked with dried tears. I was going to ask her something, anything, but she shook her head, as though to say she couldn’t help me. A boy with sky-blue hair followed her, a few paces behind. He didn’t even look at me.

  EIGHTY-SEVEN

  Anna Z had gone to Django. I’d lost her. And gone is really gone, I kept telling myself. Dead or just vanished. Never to be seen again. Off to the other side of the world or to the family mausoleum. What difference did it make? Gone is gone. On an airplane that will never come back or a spaceship to the moon. In a coffin or a rocket. If it was true that I’d never see her again, then traveling is the same thing as being dead. No letters would come from where Anna Z had gone. She wasn’t going to pick up the phone and tell me about her new life in the New World.

  That’s what I kept thinking as I wandered around outside the dead, empty arena. I’d be here, forever. And she was there, somewhere, in a place with no name.

  But at least she was safe now. That thought gave me some comfort. She was free from her brother. I couldn’t protect her from him. But surely with Django Conn, in the court of the Glister King, she’d be all right. I could picture her with all the others there: boys and girls in the wildest fashion finery, musicians from around the world, big names, beautiful celebrities. As long as she stayed there, Django’s people would keep her safe. He’d have guards at his court, like any king. There was no way they’d let Lukas come and take her away.

  My mind kept going there, imagining Anna Z and her new, freer, happier life. I wandered the block like a lost soul, lost in my own mind. I went to the news dealer—the only thing open at that hour—and looked at the big racks of magazines. Dozens of glamorous faces smiled back at me. Film and TV stars, singers and drummers and gamba-gods, Apollonauts in their gleaming suits, the now famous and the soon-to-be. I thought that someday I’d see Anna Z’s face on one of those magazine covers. She’d be there, Homo lux, a gorge
ous creature made of light and sound.

  EIGHTY-EIGHT

  Everything hurt. My feet from being stepped on, my legs from standing all night, my face from being scratched, my throat from shouting until I was hoarse. And of course the worst hurt wasn’t in my body. For a short time, a couple of days, I’d had everything I ever wanted. And now she was gone.

  I had to accept what was obviously true. Anna Z wasn’t coming out of the arena. She probably hadn’t been in there since the band took off. The entourage had slipped out the back while the riot was going on. That’s how it always worked: the band was gone before the fans had been cleared out. By this time, Anna Z could’ve been hundreds of miles away.

  In the train station, I looked at posters for mountaintop resorts, Alpine castles, ocean beaches, the greatest museums and concert halls on the continent. Now, I told myself, I could travel to any place I wanted. I could spend the rest of my life wandering. When my cash ran out, I was sure my father would send more by wire. He wouldn’t like it. He might send one of Hermann’s men to try to get me to come home. But there was no way he’d let me starve in a faraway city. I seriously thought about going. Anywhere. Everywhere. Why not? What did I have to lose?

  “You still here?” The voice broke me out of my daze, too loud for this empty street.

  I looked up. It was the kid with the comet painted on his face, the one from Luigi’s.

  EIGHTY-NINE

  “You know where the party is?”