A Soft Barren Aftershock

by F. Paul Wilson

  She pulled it out of the shopping bag and stared at it. Exquisite. Strange how a little extra time could alter your attitude. The revulsion that had overwhelmed her right after she’d bought it had faded. Perhaps because every day during the past week—a number of times each day, to be honest—she’d taken it out and looked at it, held it, caressed it. Inevitably, its true beauty had shown through and captured her. Her initial infatuation had returned to the fore.

  But the attraction went beyond mere beauty. This sort of accessory said something. Exactly what, she wasn’t sure. But she knew a bold fashion statement when she saw one. This however was a statement she didn’t have quite the nerve to make. At least not in Fairfield. So different here in the city. The cosmopolitan atmosphere allowed the elite to flash their foet—she liked the rhyme. She could be so very in here. But it would make her so very out with her crowd in Fairfield—out of her home too, most likely.

  Small minds. What did they know about fashion? In a few years they’d all be buying it. Right now, only the leaders wore it. And for a few moments she’d been a member of that special club. Now she was about to resign.

  As she turned to enter Blume’s, a Mercedes stretch limo pulled into the curb beside her. The driver hopped out and opened the door. A shapely brunette of about Denise’s age emerged. She was wearing a dark gray short wrap coat of llama and kid over a long-sleeved crepe-jersey catsuit. She held a black clutch purse with the unmistakable stitching of foet. Her eyes flicked down to Denise’s handbag, then back up to her face. She smiled. Not just a polite passing-stranger smile, but a warm, we-know-style smile.

  As Denise returned the smile, all doubt within her melted away as if it had never been. Suddenly she knew she was right. She knew what really mattered, what was important, where she had to be, fashion-wise.

  And Brian? Who said Brian had to know a thing about it? What did he know about fashion anyway?

  Denise turned and strode down Fifth with her new foet bag swinging from her arm for all the world to see.

  Screw them all. It made her feel good, like she was somebody. What else mattered?

  She really had to make a point of getting into the city more often.

  BOB DYLAN, TROY JOHNSON,

  AND THE SPEED QUEEN

  Dylan walks in and I almost choke.

  I’ve known all along it had to happen. I mean, it was inevitable. But still, finding yourself in the same room with a legend will tend to dry up your saliva no matter how well prepared you think you are.

  My band’s been doing weeknights at the Eighth Wonder for two months now, a Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday gig, and I’ve made sure there’s an electrified Dylan song in every set every night we play. Reactions have been mixed. At worst, hostile; at best, grudging acceptance. Electric music is a touchy thing here in Greenwich Village in 1964. All these folkies who think they’re so hip and radical and grass-roots wise, they’ll march in Selma, but they’ll boo and walk out on a song by a black man named Chuck Berry. Yet if you play the same chord progression and damn near the same melody and say it’s by Howlin’ Wolf or Muddy Waters or Sonny Boy Williamson, they’ll stay. So, although my band’s electric, I’ve been showing my bona fides by limiting the sets to blues and an occasional protest song.

  Slowly but surely, we’ve been building an audience of locals. That’s what I want, figuring that the more people hear us, the sooner word will get around to Dylan that somebody’s doing rocked-up versions of his songs. It has to. Greenwich Village is a tight, gossipy little community, and except maybe for the gays, the folkies are just about the tightest and most gossipy of the Village’s various subcultures. I figured when he heard about us, he’d have to come and listen for himself. I’ve been luring him. It’s all part of the plan.

  And tonight he’s taken the bait.

  So here I am in the middle of Them’s version of Joe Williams’s “Baby, Please Don’t Go” and my voice goes hoarse and I fumble the riff when I see him, but I manage to get through the song without making a fool out of myself.

  When I finish, I look up and panic for an instant because I can’t find him. I search the dimness. The Eighth Wonder is your typical West Village dive, little more than a long, rectangular room with the band platform at one end, the bar right rear, and cocktail tables spread across the open floor. Then I catch his profile silhouetted against the bar lights. He’s standing there talking to some gal with long, straight, dark hair who’s even skinnier than he is—which isn’t much of a description, because in 1964 it seems all the women in Greenwich Village are skinny with long, straight hair.

  The band’s ready to begin the next number on the set list, our Yardbirds-style “I’m a Man,” but I turn and tell them we’re doing “All I Really Want to Do.” They nod and shrug. As long as they get paid, they don’t give a damn what they play. They’re not in on the plan.

  I strap on the Rickenbacker twelve-string and start picking out Jim McGuinn’s opening. I’ve got this choice figured to be a pretty safe one since my wire tells me that the Byrds aren’t even a group yet.

  Dylan’s taken a table at the rear with the skinny brunette. He’s slouched down. He’s got no idea this is his song. Then we start to sing and I see him straighten up in his chair. When we hit the chorus with the three-part harmony, I see him put down his drink. It’s not a big move. He’s trying to be cool. But I’m watching for it and I catch it.

  Contact.

  Research told me that he liked the Byrds’ version when he first heard it, so I know he’s got to like our version because ours is a carbon copy of the Byrds’. And naturally, he hasn’t heard theirs yet because they haven’t recorded it. I’d love to play their version of “Mr. Tambourine Man,” but he hasn’t written it yet.

  There’s some decent applause from the crowd when we finish the number and I run right into a Byrds version of “The Times They Are A-changin’.” I remind myself not to use anything later than Another Side of Bob Dylan. We finish the set strong in full harmony on “Chimes of Freedom,” and I look straight at Dylan’s dim form and give him a smile and a nod. I don’t see him smile or nod back, but he does join in the applause.

  Got him.

  We play our break number and then I head for the back of the room. But by the time I get there, his table’s empty. I look around but Dylan’s gone.

  “Shit!” I say to myself. Missed him. I wanted a chance to talk to him.

  I step over to the bar for a beer, and the girl who was sitting with Dylan sidles over. She’s wearing jeans and three shirts. Hardly anybody in the Village wears a coat unless it’s the dead of winter. If it’s cool out, you put on another shirt over the one you’re already wearing. And if it’s even cooler, you throw an oversize work shirt over those.

  “He sorta kinda liked your stuff,” she says. “Who?”

  “Bob. He was impressed.”

  “Really?” I stay cool as the proverbial cucumber on the outside, but inside I want to grab her shoulders and shout, “Yeah? Yeah? What did he say?” Instead I ask, “What makes you think so?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe it’s because as he was listening to you guys, he turned to me and said, ‘I am impressed.’ ”

  I laugh to keep from cheering. “Yeah. I guess that’d be a pretty good indication.”

  I like her. And now that she’s close up, I recognize her. She’s Sally something. I’m not sure anybody knows her last name. People around the Village just call her the Speed Queen. And by that, they don’t mean she does laundry.

  Sally is thin and twitchy, and she’s got the sniffles. She’s got big, dark eyes, too, and they’re staring at me.

  “I was pretty impressed with your stuff, too,” she says, smiling at me. “I mean, I don’t dig rock and roll at all, man, what with all the bop-shoo-boppin’ and the shoo-be-dooin’. I mean, that stuff’s nowhere, man. But I kinda like the Beatles. I mean, a bunch of us sat around and watched them when they were on Ed Sullivan and, you know, they were kinda cool. I mean, they just stood ther
e and sang. No corny little dance steps or anything like that. If they’d done anything like that, we would’ve turned them right off. But no. Oh, they bounced a little to the beat, maybe, but mostly they just played and sang. Almost like folkies. Looked like they were having fun. We all kinda dug that.”

  I hold back from telling her that she and her folkie friends were watching the death of the folk music craze.

  “I dig ‘em, too,” I say, dropping into the folkster patois of the period. “And I predict they’re gonna be the biggest thing ever to hit the music business. Ten times bigger than Elvis and Sinatra and the Kingston Trio put together, man.”

  She laughs. “Sure! And I’m going to marry Bobby Dylan!”

  I could tell her he’s actually going to marry Sara Lowndes next year, but that would be stupid. And she wouldn’t believe me, anyway.

  “I like to think of what I play as ‘folk rock,’ ” I tell her.

  She nods and considers this. “Folk rock . . . that’s cool. But I don’t know if it’ll fly around here.”

  “It’ll fly,” I tell her. “It’ll fly high. I guarantee it.”

  She’s looking at me, smiling and nodding, almost giggling.

  “You’re okay,” she says. “Why don’t we get together after your last set?”

  “Meet you right here,” I say.

  It’s Wednesday morning, three a.m., when we wind up back at my apartment on Perry Street.

  “Nice pad,” Sally says. “Two bedrooms. Wow.”

  “The second bedroom’s my music room. That’s where I work out all the band’s material.”

  “Great! Can I use your bathroom?”

  I show her where it is and she takes her big shoulder bag in with her. I listen for a moment and hear the clink of glass on porcelain and have a pretty good idea of what she’s up to.

  “You shooting up in there?” I say.

  She pulls open the door. She’s sitting on the edge of the tub. There’s a syringe in her hand and some rubber tubing tied around her arm.

  “I’m tryin’ to.”

  “What is it?”

  “Meth.”

  Of course. They don’t call her the Speed Queen for nothing.

  “Want some?”

  I shake my head. “Nah. Not my brand.”

  She smiles. “You’re pretty cool, Troy. Some guys get grossed out by needles.”

  “Not me.”

  I don’t tell her that we don’t even have needles when I come from. Of course, I knew there’d be lots of shooting up in the business I was getting into, so before coming here I programmed all its myriad permutations into my wire.

  “Well, then maybe you can help me. I seem to be running out of veins here. And this is good stuff. Super-potent. Two grams per cc.”

  I hide my revulsion and take it from her. Such a primitive-looking thing. Even though AIDS hasn’t reared its ugly head yet, I find the needle point especially terrifying. I look at the barrel of the glass syringe.

  “You’ve got half a cc there. A gram? You’re popping a whole gram of speed?”

  “The more I use, the more I need. Check for a vein, will you?”

  I rub my fingertip over the inner surface of her arm until I feel a linear swelling below the skin. My wire tells me that’s the place.

  I say, “I think there’s one here but I can’t see it.”

  “Feeling’s better than seeing any day,” she says with a smile. “Do it.”

  I push the needle through the skin. She doesn’t even flinch.

  “Pull back on the plunger a little,” she says.

  I do, and see a tiny red plume swirl into the chamber.

  “Oh, you’re beautiful!” she says. “Hit it!”

  I push the plunger home. As soon as the chamber is empty, the Speed Queen yanks off her tourniquet and sighs.

  “Oh, man! Oh, baby!”

  She grabs me and pulls me to the floor.

  I lie in bed utterly exhausted while Sally runs around the apartment stark naked, picking up the clutter, chattering on at Mach two. She is painfully thin, Dachau thin. It almost hurts to look at her. I close my eyes.

  For the first time since my arrival, I feel relaxed. I feel at peace. I don’t have to worry about VD because I’ve had the routine immunizations against syphilis and the clap and even hepatitis B and C and AIDS. About the worst I can get is a case of crabs. I can just lie here and feel good.

  It wasn’t easy getting here, and it’s been even harder staying. I thought

  I’d prepared myself for everything, but I never figured I’d be lonely I didn’t count on the loneliness. That’s been the toughest to handle.

  The music got me into this. I’ve been a fan of the old music ever since I can remember—ever since my ears started to work, probably. And I’ve got a good ear. Perfect pitch. You sit me down in front of a new piece of music, and guaranteed I’ll be able to play it back to you note for note in less than half an hour—usually less than ten minutes for most things. I can sing, too, imitating most voices pretty closely.

  Trouble is, I don’t have a creative cell in my body. I can play anything that’s already been played, but I can’t make up anything of my own to play. That’s the tragedy of my life. I should be a major musical talent of my time, but I’m an also-ran, a nothing.

  To tell you the truth, I don’t care to be a major musical talent of my time. And that’s not sour grapes. I loathe what passes for music in my time. Push-button music—that’s what I call it. Nobody actually gets their hands on the instruments and wrings the notes from them. Nobody gets together and cooks. It’s all so cool, so dispassionate. Leaves me cold.

  So I came back here. I have a couple of relatives in the temporal sequencing lab. I gained their confidence, learned the ropes, and displaced myself to the 1960s.

  Not an easy decision, I can assure you. Not only have I left behind everyone and everything I know, but I’m risking death. That’s the penalty for altering the past. But I was so miserable that I figured it was worth the risk. Better to die trying to carve out a niche for myself here than to do a slow rot where I was.

  Of course, there was a good chance I’d do a slow rot in the 1960s as well. I’m no fool. I had no illusions that dropping back a hundred years or so would make me any more creative than I already wasn’t. I’d be an also-ran in the sixties, too.

  Unless I prepared myself.

  Which I did. I did my homework on the period. I studied the way they dressed, the way they spoke. I got myself wired with a wetchip encoding all the biographies and discographies of anyone who was anybody in music and the arts at this time. All I have to do is think of the name and suddenly I know all about him or her.

  Too bad they can’t do that with music. I had to bring the music with me. I wasn’t stupid, though. I didn’t bring a dot player with me. No technological anachronisms—that’s a sure way to cause ripples in the time stream and tip your hand to the observation teams. Do that and a reclamation squad’ll be knocking on your door. Not me. I spent a whole year hunting up these ancient vinyl discs—“LPs” they call them here. Paid antique prices for them, but it was worth it. Bought myself some antique money to spend here, too.

  So here I am.

  And I’m on my way. It’s been hard, it’s been slow, but I’ve got only one chance at this so I’ve got to do it right. I picked the other band members carefully and trained them to play what I want. They need work, so they go along with me, especially since they all think I’m a genius for writing such diverse songs as “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” “Summer in the City,” “Taxman,” “Bad Moon Rising,” “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” and so many others. People are starting to talk about me. And now Dylan has heard me. I’m hoping he’ll bring John Hammond with him sometime soon. That way I’ve got a shot at a Columbia contract. And then Dylan will send the demo of “Mr. Tambourine Man” to me instead of Jim McGuinn.

  After that, I won’t need anyone. I’ll be able to anticipate every trend in rock and I’ll be at the fo
refront of all the ones that matter.

  So far, everything’s going according to plan. I’ve even got a naked woman running around my apartment. I’m finally beginning to feel at home.

  “Where’d you get these?”

  It’s Sally’s voice. I open my eyes and see her standing over me. I smile, then freeze.

  She’s holding up copies of the first two Byrds albums.

  “Give me those!”

  “Hey, really. Where’d—”

  I leap out of bed. The expression on my face must be fierce because she jumps back. I snatch them from her.

  “Don’t ever touch my records!”

  “Hey, sorreeeee! I just thought I’d spin something, okay? I wasn’t going to steal your fucking records, man!”

  I force myself to cool down. Quickly. It’s my fault. I should have locked the music room. But I’ve been so wrapped up in getting the band going that I haven’t had any company, so I’ve been careless about keeping my not-yet-recorded “antiques” locked away.

  I laugh. “Sorry, Sally. It’s just that these are rarities. I get touchy about them.”

  Holding the records behind me, I pull her close and give her a kiss. She kisses me back, then pulls away and tries to get another look at the records.

  “I’ll say they are,” she says. “I never heard of these Byrds. I mean, like you’d think they were a jazz group, you know, like copping Charlie Parker or something, but the title on that blue album there is Turn, Turn, Turn, which I’ve like heard Pete Seeger sing. Are they new? I mean, they’ve gotta be new, but the album cover looks so old. And didn’t I see ‘Columbia’ on the spine?”

  “No,” I say when I can finally get a word in. “They’re imports.”

  “A new English group?”

  “No. They’re Swedish. And they’re pretty bad.”

  “But that other album looked like it had a couple of Bobby’s tunes on it.

  “No chance,” I say, feeling my gut coil inside me. “You need to come down.”

  I quickly put the albums back in the other room and lock the door.

  “You’re a real weird cat, Troy,” she says to me.