Outside the Gates of Eden

by Lewis Shiner

  “Listen, I have to take Holly home. Her parents are really strict and she’s all the way on the other side of R. L. Thornton.”

  He nodded.

  “Call me tomorrow, okay?”

  “Okay,” he said.

  She hesitated, clearly trying to think of something else to say, then turned and hurried away.

  Thoughts slowly began to penetrate the fog in his head. Most of them were of the “what now?” variety, and the answer to that was easy. What was the point of going on? Of him continuing to play guitar, even? He could sell the guitar and the amp, and his father, at least, would be happy.

  He knew that the rest of the guys were waiting on him. He finally got up and went to where their equipment was piled. Alex was pushing the Bassman cabinet toward the front door and Gary was loaded up with black fiberboard drum cases. “Mike’s bringing the car around front,” Gary said, and walked away. Cole grabbed his guitar case and wheeled his amp with his left hand, following Gary, but not too closely. They made one more trip for Mike’s gear and the rest of the drums and stacked it all beside the station wagon as the rain continued to fall in fat, slow, cold drops.

  “There’s a lesson here,” Gary said, setting his bass drum case on the tailgate where Mike, leaning over the back seat, could pull it all the way in. “We need a more authentic sound. More real. Night Train had the right idea—”

  “Night Train lost too, you dumb shit,” Cole said. “Why don’t you just shut the fuck up for once?”

  Gary grabbed him by the front of his jacket and threw him into the side of the car. Cole didn’t see it coming, and the impact knocked the breath out of him. Before he could recover, Alex had Gary in a full nelson and Mike was out of the car and had a hand on Cole’s chest.

  From the darkness, Johnny Hornet’s voice said, “Hey, fellas, it’s supposed to be battle of the bands, not battle of the band members.”

  Hornet stepped into the light that spilled out the front doors of the gym. “If you guys can keep from killing each other, we need to talk.”

  *

  The whole idea of the dj was still new, and they were all of them making it up as they went along, not the least of them Mama Hardesty’s favorite and only son Jack, who had stopped caring years ago where his allegedly real personality stopped and that of Johnny Hornet began.

  Some of the older jocks bitched about the personal appearances and not getting to be with their families on weekends and the sheer inanity of the shit they talked and the products they plugged and the records they played. Not Jack. From the time he was getting beaten up by Cro-Magnons in grade school in Gladewater, capital of the Independent Duchy of East Texas, Jack had wanted to be a big shot, and he loved the free food and promo records, goofing around backstage with The Beatles and the Stones, getting recognized in the Piggly Wiggly. He loved breaking a new record that he knew was going to hit, and he loved sleeping late and staying up late and looking sharp. And the women. My God, the women.

  A battle of the bands was not at the top of his list, though he was not ashamed to take pleasure in whipping up the crowd, urging them to “get a buzz on,” and if the kids had no idea what the old blues guys had meant by that, neither did they mind filling the gym with his signature Hornet sound, music to his heart.

  Then, while the Reverberations droned on, as he took a quick ciggie break under the front overhang, rain thundering down, who should appear but one of last year’s chaperones, what was her name? The girls’ basketball coach, he remembered that much, that and her long, lean, athletic body, although tonight her body language was not French or English or in fact any of the Romance languages, but strictly Greek to him.

  “Well,” she said frostily, “if it isn’t Johnny Horndog.”

  “Hey, darlin’, I was hoping I’d see you again this year.”

  “You might have seen me a lot sooner if you’d ever called me.”

  “I tore my place apart and couldn’t find your number.”

  “Right. You could have called the school and asked for me. But to do that you would have to have remembered my name.”

  Like salvation from above it came to him—Phys ed, physical hygiene, hygiene, hi, Jean. “Jean,” he said. He wondered why, in fact, he hadn’t called her back. She was choice, and if memory served, highly responsive. He lowered his voice. “I didn’t forget.”

  That luffed her sails for a second, then she heeled back on course. “Impressive trick. I bet you get lots of chances to use it.”

  “C’mon, Jean, give me a break here. At least let me take you out for a bite after the show. As an apology. No monkey business, I promise.”

  “No, thanks. I’ve almost got my self-respect back. I’d hate to lose it for good.” She spun around and walked inside, heels ticking like a time bomb.

  “Jean?” She didn’t turn around.

  Well, damn, he thought. It was no doubt his own fault that even his best friends couldn’t tell when he was serious. He’d meant it about the no monkey business. He hated the image of him in her head, and he would have done anything, including not make a pass at her, to wipe it away.

  Fine, then, he would call the school on Monday. She would talk to him eventually. And the Hornet charm would fix what it had broken.

  Jean was still on his mind when the judges sat down for their vote, and maybe he didn’t fight for The Chevelles as hard as he should have. His self-confidence was punctured and losing air. Still, when the vote went against him, he decided to take things into his own hands.

  He found the band in a scuffle in the parking lot, having quaffed the lethal cocktail of testosterone and disappointment. Jack had seen the lead guitarist’s girlfriend, ample cause for hormones to be running high, and a reminder of why Jack had made it an iron-clad rule to keep it 21 and over, even when it left him feeling iron-clad at the end of a long night like tonight.

  They shaped up at the sight of him, looking properly cowed and respectful. “The Other Side packed the joint,” he told them. “Most judges aren’t sharp enough to tell when the crowd’s been won over fair and square, like you guys did, and not bought and paid for. Next time you need to bring more friends.”

  The lead player, the broody one, said something under his breath, which Jack chose to ignore.

  “You guys are really talented, and I can only imagine what you sound like with three healthy singers. And you, my man—” He pointed to the drummer. “—you’ve been listening to Earl Palmer, Benny Benjamin…”

  The kid lit up like a pinball machine. “Bernard Purdie,” the kid said.

  “Al Jackson?”

  “Oh yeah,” the kid said. “Oh, definitely.”

  Jack knew exactly what it felt like to be a white boy bewitched with black music, black radio, black coolness. And this kid was able to suck it in through his ears and spit it out through his hands and feet, and Jack envied him that.

  “You should think about working out your own arrangements of some of these tunes. It’s cool that you can sound like The Hollies or the Stones, but you need to sound like you.”

  The lead player, who’d been squirming, finally spoke up. “We really appreciate your advice and all. But I’m not sure I understand why you’re taking the trouble. We lost tonight. I don’t know how much future we’ve got.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Jack said. “How serious were you about wanting that song of yours to be a single?”

  It was what he needed to take away the sting of Jean’s putdown, seeing them look at each other in disbelief, then look at him like he was Santa with the magic Clause.

  “Here’s the deal,” he said. “I can’t manage you guys, or put any of my own money into the recording session, because McLendon is a real tightass about conflict of interest at the station, you know, all that payola shit. What I can do is fix you up with a guy I know who’ll bankroll a single, and once we get that on the radio, another guy I know can start booking you into the Studio Club and LouAnn’s and probably on Sump’n Else too.”

  The
others looked ready to jump up and down. The lead player was still searching for the dark lining. “What’s this going to cost us?”

  “The agent gets ten percent,” Jack said. “Other than that, nothing.” He handed out four of his bright yellow business cards and said, “Call me Monday. I’m off the air at seven. I’ll try and set up a business meeting at the station for Tuesday night.”

  “What…” The bass player, the one with no voice, was trying to rasp out a question. “What do we call you? Mr. Hornet?”

  “My friends call me Jack.” He shook each of their hands, got their names, and by the time he got to the Hornetmobile he felt almost like himself again.

  *

  Cole called Janet on Sunday morning. She was tentative at first. “I don’t know how to deal with you when you’re in those black moods like last night,” she said. “It scares me.”

  “I know, baby, but I’m in anything but a black mood now.” He gave her the rundown on meeting Johnny Hornet. She let out a muffled scream of excitement. “When can I see you?” he said.

  She was quiet long enough to make Cole uneasy. Then she whispered, “My mother’s going to Waco to see my grandmother. She’s leaving now and she won’t be back till late tonight.”

  “Hang on,” he said.

  Throat tight, hands shaking, he went into the front room and asked his father for the car. Without looking up from Face the Nation, his father said, “Is this more band business?”

  “No,” Cole said. “It’s Janet.”

  His father looked up then. Cole’s face must have shown what was happening, and he saw understanding in his father’s eyes, maybe a trace of envy. His father reached into his pocket for the keys and his voice softened. “When will you be back?”

  “After dinner?”

  “Well,” his father said, “at least we’re saving money on food.” He handed over the keys and looked at the tv. “I’ll let your mother know.”

  Cole told Janet he was on his way. He brushed his teeth and put his sport coat on over his T-shirt and jeans. Outside it was overcast and cold, single drops of rain spattering the windshield here and there. Northwest Highway was full of church traffic. No music on the radio, just fcc-mandated public affairs programs. Silence made the drive interminable.

  At Janet’s apartment, he parked on the street and ran up the stairs. She let him in and locked the door, her own nervousness obvious in her tight smile. She kissed him hurriedly and then led him into the den by one hand. “Tell me again about Johnny Hornet,” she said.

  Her nerves, he understood, meant that her thoughts had gone to the same place as his. All he had to do, then, was take his time and not do anything stupid. He told her again what Hornet had said, exaggerated a little in saying that Hornet had broken up a fight between him and Gary, showed her the yellow card. “I’m so excited for you!” she said, and put her arms around him.

  He kissed her then, and her eyes went serious. From there he was so filled with his own desire and the smell of her skin and the warmth of her mouth that time went sideways. Slowly, piece by piece, their clothes came off, and this time she didn’t take his hands away or ask him to wait or pull away from him. When he took her jeans off, she was wearing only her panties and Cole was down to his jeans and underwear. “Let’s go to your room,” he said.

  “It’s messy in there.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “It’s really messy.”

  Cole stood up, lifted her to her feet, then picked her up in his arms and carried her down the hall. Clothes were scattered all over her bedroom carpet, school books and stuffed animals lay on her unmade single bed. Cole laid her down, took off the last of his clothes, and got in beside her. “I love you,” he said.

  “Oh, honey, I love you too.”

  He just wanted it to go okay. He was practically a virgin and she was experienced and he didn’t want to disappoint her. She was as beautiful as a movie star or one of those women in Playboy, and she knew it, and she knew a million ways to drive him crazy. And this seemed real, she seemed to really want him, to want this.

  And why not? he thought. He was about to record a song he’d written himself, he was on first name terms with Johnny Hornet, he was on his way. Why shouldn’t she want him?

  Once he was inside her, nothing else mattered. He moved in slow motion for a while, trying to make it last. Then Janet began to make small sounds in his ear, and her fingers were pulling at his hair, and as he moved faster it was like being caught in an avalanche, roaring downhill with no way to stop, and then suddenly Janet cried out and he felt a series of contractions go through her, squeezing him inside her, and that put him over the edge and he was spasming too, and he held onto her with all his strength as they rocked slowly to a stop.

  He lay on top of her for a minute or so, trying to get his breath, as she gently stroked his neck and shoulders. Finally he started to feel claustrophobic and he reluctantly rolled onto his back, feeling the sweat on his chest and the juices on his groin turn cool.

  “Don’t go anywhere,” she said, and slipped away to the bathroom. He heard something practiced in the way she said it, and he couldn’t help but wonder if she’d said it in the same way to Woody.

  Don’t start, he told himself.

  “I’m starving,” she said when she crawled back into the crook of his arm. “I haven’t eaten all day. Take me out?”

  “We’d have to put our clothes on.”

  “If you’re a good boy, I’ll let you take them off me again when we get back.”

  She directed him to a pizza place in a shopping center near her apartment. Cole had never had pizza before he came to Dallas and now it was his favorite food. Sex had loosened Janet’s tongue as well as giving her a ferocious appetite. She talked non-stop as she ate, even with her mouth full, about the miserable weather, about having resigned herself to going to ut Dallas, about whether she should try to get into vet school so that she could be around baby animals all day, about her ailing vw Beetle, which Woody used to keep running for her and Cole had little time to work on. Cole was content to sit and look across the table at her and think about what they’d just done, though he wished she had something to say about the band or about the two of them.

  When he got an opportunity, he said, “Did Holly have a good time last night?”

  “Oh, she liked you. She thinks you’re wonderful. Alex didn’t make a very good impression.”

  “But I am wonderful. Aren’t I?”

  She came around to his side of the booth, shoved him down to make room, sat next to him, and gave him a deep kiss. She smelled of perfume and sex and tomato sauce and Cole felt his eyes roll back in his head. “Silly boy,” she said, and reached for the last slice of pizza.

  *

  Cole left at 7:30 after having drifted off on Janet’s couch, his head in her lap, the tv droning on, too many nights of not enough sleep finally catching up to him. His lips were raw as he kissed her one last time, his step light on the concrete stairs. “Walk Away Renee” came on the radio as he started the car. The rain had moved through and left the air damp and cool. He rolled the window down to wave to Janet, who watched him from the doorway, and left it down as he drove. He sang along as the radio played “Poor Side of Town” and “Bus Stop” and “You Can’t Hurry Love.” He could smell her on his hands. The streets were still wet, but nobody else was on the roads. Cole let the Buick unwind as he passed White Rock Lake, just to feel the world turn under him.

  *

  Alex parked in an open lot in downtown Dallas and the four of them got out of the car. It was 6:50 pm, cold and dark. The klif studios were a block away, in a wedge-shaped building above a former gas station that now housed the klif News Cruiser vans when they weren’t prowling the streets.

  Alex’s throat was still raw from Saturday’s ordeal, and though the rest of the flu symptoms had passed and he was back at school, he felt like a cardboard cutout of himself.

  Cole, for his part, had showed up at lunch
on Monday fixing to burst. As they walked to class, he’d told Alex about scoring with Janet. Now, a day later, he was strutting to the meeting in his cowboy boots, which he normally only wore to gigs. Alex didn’t know whether to be annoyed or jealous.

  They entered through a glass door on Commerce Street and climbed the stairs to a reception area. Cole flashed Johnny Hornet’s card and said they had an appointment. The girl at the desk couldn’t have been more than 20 and had a hairdo shaped like the Greek letter omega. She got Hornet on the phone and then sent them up another flight of stairs.

  Alex was the first to the studio door, where he hesitated in front of the small square of reinforced glass. Hornet faced him from the inside of a U-shaped table that held a mixing console, turntables on either side, racks of tape cartridges and players, a bulletin board, and a loose-leaf notebook. A boom mike hung overhead, and Hornet was on his feet, headphones on, spinning one of the turntables backward. He wore a short-sleeved white shirt and narrow black tie as if he worked in a bank. He glanced up and saw Alex at the window and waved him in.

  Alex opened the door and saw another man lurking toward the back of the room, dark haired, with big bushy eyebrows.

  “Come on in, fellas, I’ll be off in a minute,” Hornet said. “Watch out for that red light when the mike goes live. In the meantime, you can say hi to my uncle Mike Scott.”

  “Hi, there,” Scott said.

  Cole stepped up and shook his hand. “I enjoy your show.”

  “Thanks,” Scott said, then pointed to the red light, which, as if by magic, blinked on.

  Hornet said, “Coming up at the top of the hour, it’s the Royal Order of the Night People, with Mike Scott. But to get there, we’re going to have to wade in some water with Ramsey Lewis.” He hit a button on the console and the turntable on the right spun to inaudible life. “See you all back here in the Hornet’s Nest tomorrow afternoon at three, and till then, remember to keep your buzzzzz on!” The red light went out and he pulled off the headphones. “Got something cued up for you,” he told Scott as he wrote in the notebook.