by Jeff Jackson
Everyone at the diner had become swept up in the epidemic, arguing about the latest tragedy, stunned and tearful as the body count mounted. I was surprised that I never cried or watched the memorials or read about the victims. I was scared, but I had to admit it—part of me wanted the epidemic to continue.
The boy with long hair keeps knocking until somebody inside the house stirs. A woman cracks the front door just enough so that he can make out her green eyes and pinprick pupils. She squints at him as if looking through a rapidly rotating kaleidoscope. Nobody’s here, she says.
—I’ve come for the package, says the boy with long hair.
—Johnny’s already gone.
—I know I’m late, the boy says, but he said he got the delivery. I’m sure he left it. He knows I need it for tonight.
—He didn’t say anything.
—Let me in and I’ll look for it myself.
—Nobody’s here.
—Look at me, says the boy. Do I seem like a guy who’s going to cause trouble?
He pulls back his long hair to showcase his good looks, cherubic cheeks, long lashes. He adds a wink and a wolfish smile. The door slowly swings wide, and he comes face-to-face with an emaciated young woman with stringy brown hair. She’s wrapped inside an enormous jacket with cascading leather fringe. Her sole reaction is a quavering fish-eyed stare.
—There isn’t any left, she says.
—I’m not here for drugs, says the boy.
—You can’t tell Johnny that I took them all.
—He’ll never know.
The boy with long hair dashes past her and into the nearest bedroom. The stale air reeks of pot smoke. Algae scum floats across the top of a half-filled fish tank. He rifles through the piles of paper, stencil drawings, cutout images on the desk. Yanks open the dresser drawers. Crawls through the closet, frantically patting his palms along the floor. Flips over the mattress. On the coiled metal springs, he discovers a square cardboard box …
DAY 81
The city meeting didn’t generate any solutions. Council members read carefully worded inconclusive statements, police officers offered commonsense safety tips, frightened parents shouted demands over one another. Nobody could figure out how to ensure the violence wouldn’t spread to Arcadia. It was proposed that all concerts within municipal limits be temporarily suspended, but the plan was voted down. Motions for stricter security measures were passed, but it wasn’t clear who was going to pay for them.
I stayed home that night. Shaun was at practice at the Bunker, hanging out and drinking with other musicians, and I wanted to be by myself. I looked through my records, running my fingers along the spines of the albums that had survived my recent purges, the remaining collection of genuine rarities and profound favorites that I’d accumulated over the years. I read their titles as if they fashioned an autobiography.
I hadn’t been listening to much recently, but tonight I needed something. I pulled out a record whose enigmatic cover featured two women in black housecoats and red scarves standing against a brick wall. They leer at the camera, almost leaping out of the photograph, their teeth smeared with red lipstick. I bought the album as a kid from someone selling a pile of them at the flea market and its tumbling rhythms, whiplash riffs, and shouted lyrics never failed to shock me out of my malaise. I put it on the turntable and slipped on my headphones. I steadily cranked the volume until the sound swelled inside my head. Until the song felt bigger than I did.
I reached the moment when I usually shut my eyes and started to sing. The music was always too loud to hear myself, but I would feel my voice vibrating in my throat and continue until I’d scraped my vocal cords raw. It was my ritual against the world.
But this time, I didn’t feel inspired to even move my lips. The power of music had been steadily disintegrating, and now I realized the remaining scraps had started to curdle. As I stood alone in my bedroom, my headphones boring into my temples, there was a feeling of something rotting in my chest. Maybe whatever infected the killers had also infected me.
The boy with long hair hesitates before reaching for the cardboard box. He looks up at the hunting trophy mounted on the wall. The stuffed deer head meets his gaze, the glass eyes embedded in the animal’s sleek brown fur staring with a fixed expression. It might as well be determination. The boy lifts the box and turns it in his hands. It’s properly heavy, and the contents shift when he gives it an exploratory shake. He cracks open the top and peers inside.
—Found it, he shouts.
—I don’t know, the woman says.
—It’s okay, the boy with long hair says. I already paid for it.
—I don’t know.
—Don’t worry, he says. Nobody’s here.
The boy hurtles down the walkway with the package tucked under his arm. The front door remains wide open, and a hazy light spills onto the empty porch. It forms a fuzzy rectangle that resembles a stain. The woman is nowhere to be seen.
He springs open the trunk of the car and places the package inside. Before he shuts it, he rummages through an assortment of shabby towels and folding chairs. He heaves them onto the ground, then stares into the emptiness. Something is missing.
As the boy drives away, he steers with one hand and dials his phone with the other. Nobody answers. He hangs up again without leaving a message.
He checks the time and curses. Shaping his hand like a gun, two fingers for the barrel and thumb as the hammer, he points it against his temple. His foot applies more pressure to the accelerator, maintaining his speed through several red lights. Eventually he’s forced to stop behind a stalled semitrailer truck. He slams his palms against the steering wheel.
—I’m coming, I’m coming, he says …
DAY 100
There was a shooting at a concert across the state border. It was less than an hour from Arcadia. Emergency bulletins cut into regularly scheduled radio broadcasts. Staticky details about stampeding crowds. Reports of the drummer slumped over his kit, the singer’s hemorrhaging body draped across a screeching amp. Speculations that there were several killers working in tandem, stashing weapons in the bathroom before the show. Interviews from the scene were ghosted by a muffled soundtrack of screams, sirens, sobs.
We heard the news as we were driving to see a show in another town, going to support one of Shaun’s musician friends. I begged him to stop the car and turn around. I was terrified that I might lose him, the one person I loved, my deepest connection to this rotten planet.
I got out of the car and stood on the shoulder of the highway, staring into the blinding lights of oncoming sedans, feeling the ground rumble as container trucks careened past.
—You’ve got to cancel your show, I said. Postpone it. Whatever. You can blame me. Tell the guys I’ve gone mental. Tell them I’m a crazy fucking bitch. Tell them I don’t have any family and you’re the only person I’ve got left. Just don’t do it.
I felt myself winding tighter until I could barely breathe.
—Promise me, I said. Promise you won’t play any shows until this is finally over.
He held out his hand and stroked my face. His touch was always so gentle.
—You’re so scared, he said. I didn’t realize how much this had gotten to you. Is that why you won’t help us out? Sing backup on a few songs?
I turned away and walked along the thin margin of grass next to the edge of the road. Somehow he didn’t understand any of this. He even refused to accept that I didn’t want to sing. No matter how many times I told him, he couldn’t get it through his head.
—Come on, Xenie, he called after me. You know our first single comes out in a few weeks. It’s important to me. I need to get out there and promote it.
—You’re acting like you had a lobotomy, I shouted, but my words were carried away in the gusts of passing traffic.
Shaun came up behind me and wrapped me in his arms. It felt good to be held so tightly against his body, to be enfolded in his familiar smell. Despite myself, I fel
t safe.
When we got back in the car, he adjusted the radio until he tuned in to a station playing music. I used to think songs sounded best through trebly car speakers, the windows rolled down, the air rushing through the vents. Now the music didn’t sound like anything. The melody was indistinguishable from the drone of the motor, the whine of the tires, the hiss of the wind. The suffocating noises of the world.
The boy with long hair speeds past a weathered mural. Its peeling letters announce he’s entering Arcadia. The scenery shifts to a shimmering strip of clubs and restaurants. Rows of parked cars choke the narrow streets. People feed parking meters and couples bicker in crosswalks. Klatches of smokers loiter outside bars, their feet surrounded by halos of extinguished butts. On the edge of the neighborhood sits a theater whose half-lit marquee makes it difficult to decipher tonight’s main attraction. Nobody is out front. The show must be under way.
The boy stops across the street at a red light. He watches as a woman throws open the doors of the theater and tumbles headfirst onto the pavement. She lies there rasping, her skirt ripped up the calf seam, her face a mask of glistening mascara. The woman pulls herself up and starts to run. She barely avoids the base of a nearby lamppost as she sprints along the sidewalk. She vanishes in the shadows, but appears under the next light, running just as fast. She reappears in the pooled light of each lamppost, materializing and evaporating, a frantic apparition.
The traffic signal turns green, but the boy keeps watching to see if someone will pursue the woman or others will flee the venue. Nothing happens. He drives through the intersection, turns down the alley next to the theater, and pulls into a handicapped space by the loading bay.
After grabbing the cardboard box from the trunk, the boy ascends the groaning metal staircase to the theater’s back entrance. He pounds on the rusted door.
—Surprise delivery for the band, he shouts.
There’s no reply. He stares at the pattern of rust that’s corroded the center of the door. The raised red flakes form a teasing shape, something exotic and sinister, that he can’t quite place. He kicks the door so furiously that the metal rattles in its frame. Then he calmly steps back.
—Need a signature, he shouts.
The door creaks open. A young man with a blue Mohawk leans out. His face snaps into a grin. So you finally decided to grace us with your presence, he says.
—I’m always worth the wait, the boy with long hair replies.
They walk through a shadowy backstage storage area filled with stacked risers and monolithic speaker towers. The familiar bass line of a song by the 40 Thieves, one of the founders of the local scene, echoes from the auditorium. They bob their heads in time to its jagged syncopation as they spring up the concrete steps to a modest suite of dressing rooms. The band lounges on a sagging yellow sectional, fitfully draining beers from a nearby cooler. They make a point of barely glancing at the new arrival.
—I don’t see your guitar, a guy with a curly black beard says.
—I swear I had it in the car, the boy with long hair says. Someone must have borrowed it.
—Fabulous, the bearded guy replies.
—I’ll use one of yours tonight, the boy says. I’ve got something more important right here.
He produces the cardboard package and tears off the top. It’s a box full of records. The label at the center of the disc displays the image of a disemboweled panda lying in a pile of bamboo leaves. Blood trickles between its bared teeth.
—Our first single, the boy with long hair says. Hot off the press.
The band gathers round the parcel. They reverentially remove copies of the record, tracing the lines of artwork with their fingernails, inspecting the vinyl discs between their palms, unconsciously nodding their heads in time to the riffs still locked inside the pristine grooves.
They’re interrupted by a middle-aged man whose yellow staff shirt barely contains his bulging belly. Everyone’s waiting, he says. Get onstage already. He swivels and glares at the boy with long hair. How’d he get in here? I told you everybody comes through the main entrance and gets frisked. His hands pantomime a choke hold aimed at each of the band members in turn, then he exits the room.
While everyone else stows their personal effects and gathers their instruments, the boy with long hair ducks into the tunnel to make another phone call. Nobody answers, but this time he leaves a lengthy message. He presses the phone against his lips. Although there’s an urgency to his tone, his voice doesn’t rise above a whisper.
The bearded musician shoves a battered Gretsch hollow-body guitar into the boy with long hair’s arms. This’ll have to do, he grunts. As the others file in beside them, the band promenades together down the tunnel, the noise of the crowd intensifying as they approach the stage …
TODAY
Somehow the epidemic didn’t scare anyone in Arcadia away from the concert. Maybe fear was even spurring ticket sales. For the first time in ages, the best local bands were being showcased on a big stage. For Shaun, it was the spotlight he’d been craving. There were stories on the radio and in the local paper. One even featured a photograph of him, his face playfully obscured by his beautiful long hair.
Shaun knew I was upset, but he refused to drop out of the show. He tried to make it up to me with gifts. He bought me a single by a beloved soul singer, which I’d been trying to locate for years. I shattered it with the sole of my combat boot. He bought me an enormous bouquet of roses. I ground them up, one by one, shoving them bloom-first down the garbage disposal. I worried that I was on the verge of cracking up, and my freak-outs were upsetting Shaun. But I had to get through to him.
We stood together in the kitchen, the walls frescoed with shredded rose petals. I rolled up his shirtsleeve and ran my index finger along the scar on his wrist. The residue of a painful period before we met.
—We promised each other we wouldn’t ever try it again, I said.
He traced the raised pink line of flesh that ran the length of my wrist as well.
—It’s not the same thing, he said. If I thought this was dangerous, I wouldn’t do it.
He kissed my neck.
—I can’t stop performing because of a bunch of psychopaths, he said. I’ve been waiting months for this gig. It’s sold out. All those people are coming to hear me.
—Don’t worry, Xenie, he added softly. There’ll be extra security. It’ll be fine.
I tried my hardest to believe him, but the morning of the show, I was tormented by images of the killer’s preparations. Descending the staircase to a basement filled with mementos of dead parents. Kneeling on a mildewed carpet to clean the weapon. Lining up an assortment of toothbrushes, rods, oils, and solvents. Inhaling the stinging smell of ammonia. Disassembling the guts of the handgun while softly chanting the names of the mechanical parts. The frame, the slide, the barrel, the chamber. Listening to the series of clicks as the pieces fall into place.
The houselights dim as the band climbs onto the rear of the stage. As they walk through the red curtains, the boy with long hair catches a fugitive glimpse of the audience massed shoulder to shoulder, their charged faces hovering above the edge of the platform, fervent eyes leveled in his direction.
It might be nerves, or nausea, or simply excitement that causes a tremor to ripple through his body. His shaky hands plug in the guitar, switch on the hand-painted green amp, and fine-tune its dials. He measures his steps until he’s positioned precisely two paces behind the microphone. His feet register the energy pulsing across the stage and chart the placement of each support beam. He senses the resounding hollowness of where he’s standing. If he stamped hard enough, he’s certain he would fall straight through the floor.
As the band arranges themselves, the bearded musician shouts into his microphone. Hello Arcadia, he says. Great to be playing for a hometown crowd. He’s interrupted by a scathing torrent of feedback, brought on by the bass player adjusting his levels.
In the ensuing silence, the Mohawked drumm
er taps his sticks together. Hey Shaun, he says. You ready?
Shaun nods. He clears his throat and bashfully mumbles in the microphone:
—This one is for Xenie.
The drummer counts off. The music swells as bass and lead guitar fall in behind the beat. The stage lights flash on. They’re blindingly bright, but Shaun leans directly into them. He juts out his chin until he can feel their warmth. His vision is a swarm of bleached spots. The stage shrinks around him. The audience seems to have vanished, but then there’s a surge of applause.
Shaun flings his arms open and starts to sing. Theatrical flashes of anger animate his face as he unfurls the verses. A keening rattles his throat and rushes out his mouth. His serenely ragged voice fills the cavernous room. He must be consumed by the moment because he doesn’t notice the scene playing out a few steps offstage.
Behind the hem of the curtain kneels a boy with a pink zigzag scar on his cheek that looks self-inflicted. He wears a yellow staff shirt and a child’s pointed birthday hat. Plunging a hand into a long cardboard box, he pulls out a rifle and hoists it against his shoulder.
The band is heading for the bridge when the first shot is fired. Shaun collapses, his body crashing to the floor, though the impact is little more than a flutter through his bones. Everything onstage shifts sideways, and his head feels like it’s filling with bubbling water. When he tries to speak, the words taste like copper. There are more shots, but the noise fades as the bubbles in his head multiply and rush to the surface. This surging evanescence crowds out other sensations until the sound starts to disperse and it’s impossible to tell if what he’s hearing are the volleys of gunfire, or the residue of music, or merely the ringing of his own ears.
The first dead body I ever saw was in a parking lot. We stood over it and sang.
We arrived at the supermarket at dusk and headed toward the crowd at the far end of the lot. People were huddled in a circle, holding candles. Aunt Mary had been talking about the body and its tragic death the entire time we’d been walking. I dug in my heels and refused to go farther. I was maybe five years old.