Ecstasy (5 page)

Trish noticed me first. “Hey,” she said, “it’s you.”

The other three turned around, heads all ajingle.

“Hey,” Lauren said, “how ya doin’?”

“Okay,” I said.

“Really?” Dorrie offered. “You don’t look so good.”

“I’m just tired. I only got five hours of sleep last night.”

Dorrie pulled off the (extremely hideous) cap, which would’ve been an improvement if she hadn’t had the coiffure of a West
Point plebe. “You got five hours?” she said. “That’s, like, twice as much as we got.”

“Melting Rock’s not about sleep,” Lauren said. She snagged another look in the mirror before handing it back to Cindy, whose
violet hair clashed mightily with her magenta hat. “Never was, never will be.”

“No kidding,” I said. “Between all the drumming and the drunks screaming all night—”

“Hey,” Dorrie said, “didn’t you say you were supposed to write about the real Melting Rock? Well, you got it, huh?”

“Great.”

The four of them were in the midst of debating precisely how little sleep they’d gotten when they were favored with a lengthy
wolf whistle.

“Yo, ladies,” said the whistler, a long-legged guy of maybe twenty with a giant scab on his left knee. “Lookin’
good.
”

He was standing there with his arms crossed, clearly attempting to look as cool as is humanly possible; hovering next to him
was a com-padre of about the same age, a stockier fellow with a shaved head and four—no, five—earrings shinning up the curve
of his left ear.

“Hey, Axel,” Dorrie said with a wave, and the others followed suit. “How’s it goin’?”

“Mighty fine,” he said, wandering down the aisle toward a table selling a variety of pipes that would never know tobacco.
“Mighty damn fine.”

His friend followed, looking the girls up and down like he was trying to decide whether to have them roasted or grilled. When
he was done, he winked at them, so exaggeratedly it almost looked like there was something wrong with his eye; none of them
seemed to notice. The lack of response seemed to piss him off, and he turned his attention to the wares at the House o’ Highs.

“Is it my imagination,” Axel said as he wandered off, “or do you ladies get more sexalicious every year?”

The girls swapped a set of gooney, wide-eyed looks and, being a member of the female persuasion, my crush radar went off for
the second time in two days. It took me another half second to figure out which one had a thing for Mister Giant Knee Scab,
because Lauren turned to Dorrie and mouthed
Go talk to him.
Dorrie shook her head and mouthed
No way,
but Lauren gave her a shove in his direction; Dorrie resisted, but barely. Then she giggled—the sound was a weird contrast
with the crew cut—and jogged after him. “Hey, Axel,” she yelled, “wait up….”

Lauren turned back to the mirror and doffed the jester’s cap, trading it for a cloche made of a half-dozen different fabrics
that made me think the seamstress needed residential treatment. “You know,” she said, “that story you did on us was pretty
cool.”

“Glad you liked it.”

“It was
way
cool,” Cindy said. “My mom wants to buy, like, ten extra copies. You think she can do that?”

“Yeah, she can just call the circulation department.”

Lauren stopped futzing with the hat and turned to her. “When’d you talk to your mom?”

Cindy became the dictionary definition of
mortified.
“Uh…a while ago.”

Lauren rolled her big brown eyes. “She still making you call in? I thought you were gonna tell her to get over herself.”

“I tried, but it was totally no go. I mean, you know, she’s always gonna think of me like the baby in the family. It was,
like, ‘Take the cell phone and call before noon every day or you’re not going, period.’ ”

Lauren’s eyes bugged out even farther.
“Cell phone?”

“Er…She didn’t want me saying the lines at the pay phones were too long.”

“
Whoa
.”

“Hey,” Trish said, “at least you’ve only gotta call
once
a day, okay?”

The other three offered up suitably pitying looks. It fell to Lauren to translate.

“Trish’s dad is, like, really strict,” she said.

“Well,” I said, “he let you come here, didn’t he?” I’m not sure why I suddenly found myself sympathizing with the parental
side of things; maybe it’s because I’d let a kid of mine go to Melting Rock over my dead body.

“Wouldn’t look too good if he didn’t,” Cindy said.

“Yeah,” Lauren said, “that’d be like saying it wasn’t safe, right?” After they nodded amongst themselves for a while, she
noticed I had no idea what they were talking about. “Trish’s dad is a cop.”

“In Gabriel?” I cast about for which of Cody’s colleagues might qualify and came up empty.

Trish shook her head. Then she took off her jester’s cap, like all the jingling was suddenly giving her a headache. “I wish.
He’s the Jaspersburg chief of police.”

“Oh.”

“ ‘
Oh
,’ ” Trish mimicked back at me. “That’s what everybody says. ‘Oh, your dad’s a cop.
Oh
.’ ”

“What’s so bad about that?”

Trish looked at me like I was a bona fide fool. “It totally changes the way people think about you, that’s what. ‘Don’t do
anything bad around Trish, she might tell her dad… .’ ”

Cindy put an arm around her. “Hey,” she said, “your dad’s not so awful.”

Trish hung the hat on a wooden peg. “As Nazi storm troopers go.”

“Well,” I said, “for what it’s worth, from what I saw yesterday, nobody felt too inhibited around you.”

“They’re my
friends.
”

“I see,” I said, though I didn’t. “Does your dad hang out around here during the festival?”

“You gotta be kidding.”

“Don’t the local cops have some kind of presence, you know, just for safety’s sake?”

Lauren plucked a paisley skullcap from a peg and plopped it on my head. “You’ve never been here before, have you?”

“Once, a long time ago. Just for a couple of hours.”

“Figures. Listen, like we said yesterday, Melting Rock is its own thing. As long as nobody gets hurt, everybody kind of looks
the other way.”

“And why is that?”

Lauren shrugged. “I dunno. Tradition, I guess.”

After twenty-four hours of quasiflackery, my journalistic instincts finally kicked in. “Do you think it’s maybe about the
bottom line? I mean, how many people are gonna show if there’re cops all over the place?”

Trish looked at me like maybe I wasn’t such a moron, after all. “Not a whole lot,” she said. “I sure as hell wouldn’t.”

I
LEFT THE
three of them closing their deals with the mad hatter and went in search of lunch. I was closing a deal of my own (with the
makers of a black-bean burrito with extra guacamole) when I ran into the last person I expected to see at Melting Rock—a guy
who did me the favor of making me the
second
most miserable person there.

“What the hell are you doing here?” I said, as it was the first thing that came to mind. “And why in God’s name are you wearing
a tie?”

“I’m working,” he said.

“Well, I didn’t think you were here for the food.”

“That’s for damn sure.”

“Want a bite of my burrito?”

“Yeah.”

The unhappy bastard in question was one Gordon Band, the up-state correspondent for the
New York Times
and my former colleague at the
Monitor.
Gordon is officially the most ambitious person I’ve ever met, and though he works for the journalistic equivalent of the
Yankees, he’s not what you’d call happy on a day-to-day basis. Or, come to think of it, ever.

“So what
are
you doing here?” I asked, once he’d demolished half my lunch. “Wait, let me guess. Your editor made you do it.”

“I
hate
my editor.”

“You say that a lot.”

“And I mean it every time.”

“You here for the whole weekend?”

He reclaimed the burrito, took another bite, and talked with his mouth full. “Are you out of your mind?”

“I ask myself that every day.”

He made a deeply unattractive snorting sound. “Anyway, I’d fucking
kill
him if he tried to make me spend another day at this freak show. I’d rather have my guts dug out with a—”

“I’m here the whole weekend.” He stared at me for a minute, then launched into a laughing fit. It continued for some time.
“Jesus, Gordon, would you be nice?”

“Do you have to sleep here and everything?” I didn’t answer. “Tell me you don’t have to sleep here….”

I cleared my throat. “On the advice of counsel, I choose not to answer.”

More insane chuckling. “Are you living in a
tent?
Oh, my God, that is priceless.…”

“Hey, at least I’m not sleeping in my car.”

He gave me a sour look. “It’s a van.”

“Whatever.”

“A
tent.
Alex Bernier in a goddamn tent. Christ, I wish I had a camera with me.…”

“You know, some people think camping out is fun.”

“What are you now, the goddamn queen of the forest?”

He finally caught his breath and reached for a napkin to wipe his little round glasses—but since it had previously contained
my burrito, he only managed to smear grease all over the lenses. He swore under his breath, yanked the hem of his undershirt
out of his pants, and tried to clean up the mess.

“Serves you right,” I said.

“I’m still hungry.”

I waited while he scored a hot dog, and the two of us took refuge under a scraggly tree. He handed me a diet Coke, then ruined
the gesture by saying he’d bought it out of pity.

“So,” I said, “how’ve you been, anyway?”

His face immediately twisted into the scowl that constituted one of his four major expressions.

“Have I mentioned I hate my editor?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I do.”

“Are you any closer to getting yourself back to the Big Apple?” No response. “Come on, Gordon. It’s not so bad up here. Some
of us even consider it home.”

“Ugh.”

“So what’ve you been covering out here?” I gestured toward the grooving masses. “You just doing a general-feature thing?”

He nodded. “Running in Metro with some big stupid picture. Monday, I think. How’d you get shafted with this shitbag assignment,
anyhow?”

I told him. He laughed, again in a not-very-nice way.

“Madison’s a smart son of a bitch.”

“I’ll be sure to tell him you said so.”

We parted ways fifteen minutes later, with Gordon still making nasty remarks about my sleeping accommodations. Having no choice
in the matter, I made a visit to the third circle of hell, aka “the Porta-Johns.” Then I spent the next hour trying (and failing)
to track down the guy with all the Melting Rock tattoos.

The festival was definitely in full swing then, with revelers filling every square inch of trampled grass. As I passed the
main stage, I noticed that what appeared to be a genuine mosh pit had formed in front of it. Live human beings were getting
passed over people’s heads like sacks of flour, and they actually seemed not to mind. People were dancing so close they might
as well have been wearing each other’s undershorts. From the fact that the crowd was screaming “STUMPY! STUUUUMPEEEE!” I deduced
that the band was Stumpy the Salamander.

There were five of them—lead singer, drummer, two guitarists, and a keyboard player. And although the singer was front and
center, it was fairly obvious that the drummer was running the show. The other band members seemed to be taking their cues
from him, checking back over their shoulders every once in a while. The guy was wearing a cutoff shirt, whacking on the drum
set in a blur of spidery white arms. The lower half of his face was covered in a scraggly black beard; poofed atop his bullet-shaped
noggin was a multicolored Rastafarian cap.

He looked, in a word, ridiculous.

The song they were playing seemed to have something to do with a dog who liked to chew up shoes, cast as some sort of romantic
allegory. I managed to catch a snippet of the lyrics:

She’s got my heart inside her jaws.

She holds the world between her paws.

I tell her no, but she just won’t quit.

O doggie, don’t you love me just a bit?

It must’ve been a favorite, because the crowd was going wild, stomping and hooting and whirling each other around. There was
no denying that there was a lot of energy pulsating through the fairgrounds, the beat binding the people and the band together
in some funky symbiosis. For a second I thought I could understand what people loved about Melting Rock—the sheer, mindless
camaraderie of it. Then somebody stepped on my foot, hard, and I decided they could all go to hell.

Reverting to my former state of journalistic desperation, I wandered around for a while looking for something to write about.
Just when I was ready to conduct another interview with the funnel-cake salesman, I happened upon the Melting Rock equivalent
of a blood sport: a cadre of young men engaged in a Hacky Sack tournament. Hallelujah.

I filed the story two hours later, along with a little profile of the winner. As it turned out, this beanbag he-man was Axel
Robinette—the older, scab-kneed fellow whom Dorrie Benson had been mooning over a few hours before. And there she was: stapled
to his flank and basking in his reflected glow.

I hit the sack early, determined to make up for the previous night’s sleep deprivation. No go; if anything, the Thursday-evening
festivities were even more bacchanalian. I tried plugging my ears with cotton balls, a vain stratagem if ever there was one.
The drumbeat was deafening, as were the screeches and howls of several hundred drunks. I lay sweltering in my tent, cursing
everyone who’d been remotely involved in dragging me there. I read my
New Yorker
until my flashlight died; then I spent some quality time wallowing in a swamp of similes, comparing Melting Rock to everything
from a Stasi torture chamber to a special-ed class reunion.