Rock On (61 page)

“What’s happenin’?” he said at last.

Darcy, who hadn’t yet seen him, dug her nails into my arm. I stood, feeling innocent and foolish. “Nothin’,” I said.

“You got that right,” said Roy John Harlow. He jetted smoke from his nostrils and held up his manacled hand. “Don’t s’pose you got a key?”

The handcuffs were rusty, frail-looking, and it would have been no trouble to pick the lock with my Swiss Army knife. But I was leery about doing it. Though he had—except for the eyes—the presence of a man, I couldn’t escape the notion that he was property. And, too, even if I let him loose, the gypsies would hunt him down. They were a persevering bunch when it came to holding onto something they considered theirs, and nobody with Roy John Harlow’s eyes would be able to hide from them. Then they’d be after me for having helped him. “No,” I said.

Darcy stood, and he gave her the once over. “How’d you get in?” he asked. I told him about the swim, the window, and he said, “You better swim on back. They might change their minds ’bout lettin’ me sit.”

“Can’t do nothin’ ’til the tide turns.” I explained about the undertow. “It’ll drag you clear ’cross to Africa,” I said.

“Africa,” he said. “That’s a helluva name for it.”

I didn’t understand what he meant.

“Why they keep you in that box?” asked Darcy.

He shifted his eyes toward her; the light struck full into them, and I saw that those heart-shaped pupils had narrow red borders around them, giving them the look of demonic valentines. “There’s needles in the side that inject me with shit,” he said. “Knock me out. They wake me up when they need me.” He let out a dispirited laugh. “Parceled out like that, you could live ten thousand years in this fuckin’ wasteland.”

“World might be different in ten thousand years,” said Darcy.

Again he laughed—it seemed that downhearted laughter was his reaction to most everything. “It’d just be worse,” he said. “You shoulda seen where I come from. Machine sex, separate governments for different age groups, joykillers. That’s why I let ’em do this to me. I was an old man, and I wanted to outlive that craziness. So when these guys come to me and say, ‘Roy John, we wanna record you and preserve your vast experience,’ it appealed to me, y’know? It was as close as I was gonna get to seein’ the glorious future, and I was enough of a pervert to think these goddamn eyes were cool. Well, I got my wish, man, in a kinda shadowy way. I seen the glorious future. The world I grew up in wasn’t much, but it sure as hell beat the world I was old in. And this world . . . shit!” He was silent for a bit, and I could hear the wind sighing, the tide sucking at the pilings below. “Tell me ’bout the Winnowing,” he said finally. “No one seems to know nothin’ ’bout it.”

“Nobody does,” I said.

“My pa told me that the earth passed through a comet’s tail,” said Darcy. “And most everybody just keeled over.”

“Some folk’ll tell you it was a kinda poison gas,” I said. “And some’ll tell you it was Jesus weedin’ out the sinners. Government up in Atlanta’s s’posed to know for sure.”

“Why don’t you ask ’em?” He glanced back and forth between us. “Don’t you wanna know? Ain’t you curious ’bout why six billion people died?”

“Government’s just a buncha’ crazies with a computer,” said Darcy. “We don’t like to have much to do with ’em.”

He stared at us as if we were something pitiful, and that made me defensive. “Besides,” I said, “the Winnowing was terrible, it’s true. But now we got clean air and water, and plenty of room. Most people think it’s an improvement.”

“Yeah?” he said. “Then how come I just had five hundred of those people lookin’ at me like dogs at a steak?”

I shrugged, having no answer, and after a moment Darcy asked, “How’d you get all those guitars and drums goin’ at once?”

“Computer programs.” He stubbed out his cigar and laid it on the metal box.

“It was really great music,” said Darcy. I thought he was going to say something, but he merely shook his head, amused, and leaned back against the wall. Darcy wasn’t to be put off, however. “It was so strong,” she said. “I never heard nothin’ that strong.”

“You woulda loved it, wouldn’t you?” he said nastily. “Little cooze like you, shakin’ her butt, dyin’ to go down on some asshole like me, who could make it thunder when he plucked a string.”

If anybody else had talked to her in that tone, Darcy would have responded in kind; but all she did was flush and shift closer to me.

“Rock ’n’ roll wasn’t shit,” said Roy John Harlow. “The music was okay, but music was ’bout two percent of it. Most of it was copin’ with the stooges in your band, makin’ sure they’d show up on time and be straight enough to play. Dealin’ with brain-dead roadies and crooked promoters and crowds so stoned they couldn’t unzip their flies.” He laughed. “I remember one night I got to the bottom of all that.”

The lights flickered and went out. For a moment the storeroom was pitch-dark, but then a red glow began to shine from Roy John Harlow’s eyes. The heart-shaped borders around his pupils were blazing neon-bright, illuminating his cheekbones. It was an uncanny thing to see, and I took Darcy’s hand.

“We were playin’ a party in a VFW hall,” said Roy John Harlow. “ ’Bout a thousand people, wasted on beer and smoke and pills. Kids splashin’ in puddles of spilled beer, barfin’ in the shadows. One girl was dancin’ in front of me, her eyes rolled back in her head, makin’ these clawin’ gestures at me. Weird! We were opening for a band called Mr. Right. They thought they were hot shit, but we could kick their butt and we were doin’ it that night. Halfway through our set, this bearded guy with his arm in a cast crawls up onto the stage and while I’m singin’ he starts unpluggin’ my mike. I push him off with my foot and keep singin’, but he tries to unplug me again. I push him off again, and that’s how we finish the song, with this crazy dude goin’ for the plug and me kickin’ at him. After it’s over I jump down and grab him and say, ‘What the hell you think you doin?’ And he says, ‘Mr. Right wants to come on now,’ and tries for the mike plug. I haul him back and say, ‘Fuck Mr. Right!’ I got the picture, you see. The dude’s one of Mr. Right’s roadies and they’ve told him to cut us off ’cause we’re makin’ ’em look bad. The rest of the band crowds around, and we tell the dude he better be cool or he’s gonna wind up with somethin’ else in a cast. But he won’t listen. Later I found out they’d threatened to fire him if he didn’t get rid of us. The next thing here’s this fat son of a bitch waddlin’ through the crowd. Mr. Right’s manager. And he starts spoutin’ off ’bout us bein’ reasonable, compromisin’. One of my roadies leans in. His pupils are the size of train tunnels, and he’s grinnin’ like a maniac. ‘Lemme handle him, Roy,’ he says. ’Fore I can say anything, he hooks the manager in the gut and sets him down. Then all hell breaks loose. Here comes Mr. Right. Five guys wearin’ glitter and swingin’ mike stands and shit. A regular fuckin’ Battle of the Bands. Somebody clips me on the forehead, and I go down for the count. When I wake up, it’s all over and I guess we musta won ’cause my band’s on stage, fillin’ in with instrumentals.”

Roy John Harlow closed his eyes, and the room went dark for several seconds. “After my head stops hurtin’ enough so’s I can stand, I head to the bathroom. There was blood on my face, and I wanted to wash it off. Inside the bathroom, it’s even more of a hellhole than the hall. ’Bout an inch of piss and beer on the floor, garbage floatin’ in it, and buzzin’ fluorescent lights that are blindin’ me. Sittin’ in one of the stalls with her dress hiked up ’round her hips is this teenage girl, who’s passed out. She’s kinda pretty, but her mascara’s run and her lipstick’s smeared. Makes her look warped. I check out my head in the mirror. Nothin’ serious, but blood is coverin’ half my face and I’m thinkin’, ‘Here I’ve been beatin’ my brains out in the business for seven goddamn years, and this is what it’s come to—standin’ in a bathroom, bleedin’, wasted, and my audience passed out on the toilet.’

“I don’t wanna go back out. I just lean against the sink and read the graffiti, which tells me what fun it is to be a lesbian and that Jesus sucks and how some cooze wants to lay everybody in my band. Reading it, I decide I’ve had it. Time for a new profession. ’Bout then, in walks two teenage boys. ‘Hey!’ says one. ‘Terrific fight, man!’ Then he notices the girl. He leans over to look at her, makes his hand into a pistol and shoots her ’tween the legs. ‘Bang,’ he says. The other kid starts gigglin’. ‘Hey!’ says the first kid. ‘You wanna ball her, man?’ And I tell him, ‘No thanks.’ He staggers over and says, ‘C’mon, man! She won’t mind. Big rock ’n’ roll star like you. She won’t even look at us, but she’d be fuckin’ grateful to you.’ I tell him to leave me the fuck alone, and he goes back over to his buddy. They hang out for a while, crackin’ jokes ’bout the girl. It was weird, watchin’ ’em in the mirror. Reminded me of those cartoons where Daffy Duck or somebody’s got good and evil in a cloud over their head, tryin’ to convince ’em what path to follow. Finally they’re ready to go, and the first kid says, ‘Hey, man! You guys got a really great sound.’ He sticks his fist up in the air. ‘Rock ’n’ roll!’ he says. ‘Rock ’n’ roll!’ ”

Roy John Harlow scratched a match on the metal box and relit his cigar; the coal wasn’t as bright as his eyes. “The kid was right,” he said. “That goddamn bathroom . . . that was rock ’n’ roll.”

“Why didn’t you quit?” I asked.

“Two weeks later I landed a record contract. I thought maybe bein’ on top would be different. But it was the same shit, only dressed up in money.” He chuckled. “Maybe you’re right ’bout this world bein’ better off than mine. Maybe I just can’t accept it.” He waved his cigar at the window. “Open that up. Let’s see what it’s doin’ outside.”

I did what he wanted. A chute of moonlight spilled into the room; the surf of low tide was a seething hiss. Roy John Harlow lifted his head, as if he’d scented something new and strange. “Pretty night,” he said, and then, with a touch of desperation in his voice, he added, “Jesus God! I wish I was out in it!”

Darcy nudged me; she knew about my Swiss Army knife.

“You couldn’t get nowhere,” I said. “Those gypsies, they can track an ant through jungle.”

“He could head south,” said Darcy, fixing me with a disapproving stare. “The Indians might take him in.”

“He’d never make it,” I wanted to let him go, but I was still afraid of what the gypsies would do.

“Where I’d go,” said Roy John Harlow, “couldn’t nobody track me.”

“Where’s that?” I asked.

“Africa.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

He studied me, and I had trouble meeting his eyes. “You know how to get me outta here, don’t you?” he said; he yanked at the handcuff. “Damn it! Help me!”

I couldn’t say anything.

“You know what it’s like for me?” he said. “I feel wrong. Outta place. I’m not even sure what the fuck I am, but I’m sure I’m not Roy John Harlow. His ghost, maybe, or his shadow. That makes me crazy, sick at heart. I spend most of my time in this box”—he rapped it—and once in a while those bastards wake me, stand me up in front of a buncha raggedy fuckers so I can play ’em a blast from the past. That makes me even sicker, seein’ how puny and screwed-up everything’s gotten. It’s been like that for three years. Livin’ on stage, and dyin’ after each show.” His voice dropped to an urgent whisper. “I don’t want it anymore, man! You gotta way to turn me loose, do it!”

“Let him go,” said Darcy.

I looked at her, alarmed. “Darcy!” I said. “I think he’s gonna kill himself.”

Her face grave, she was watching Roy John Harlow, who was half-illuminated by the moonlight, appearing part shadow, part real. “Let him go,” she repeated. “It’s his right.”

“Maybe so,” I said angrily. “But his right don’t include my havin’ to help him.” That, I realized, was bothering me as much as my fear of the gypsies. The thought of helping someone die, even someone not quite alive or alive in a peculiar way, didn’t sit well with me.

“You think this ain’t death?” Roy John Harlow kicked the box. “And this?” He gave the handcuff a savage jerk. “And these”—he pointed to his eyes—“you think that’s life? C’mon, man! Lemme loose.”

How he said that last part reminded me of him asking the gypsy to let him sit instead of returning to the box. I was doing the same as the gypsy, acting like the landlord of his soul . . . if he had one. And at the moment I couldn’t believe that he didn’t. “All right,” I said, and kneeled beside him. I held his wrist to keep it steady while I worked on the lock. His flesh was warm, his pulse strong . . . so warm and strong that I was repelled again by the idea of his killing himself, and I stopped.

“Please,” said Darcy, touching my shoulder. “It’s like with Tony. Remember?”

Tony had been her pet cat, and after some kids had tortured it, leaving it half-crushed and spitting blood, I’d put it out of its misery. I wasn’t sure that Roy John Harlow was a sick critter who needed death, but Darcy had a sensitivity to people that I didn’t and I bowed to her judgment. I went back to work, and before long the cuff sprang open.

The glowing valentines of Roy John Harlow’s eyes seemed brighter, as if registering an intensified emotion. He rubbed his wrist where the cuff had bitten into it. Then he got to his feet, boosted himself onto the window ledge and sat with one leg in, one out. Then he eased the other leg out and walked away. We climbed through the window after him. He was leaning on the railing, gazing toward Africa. Clouds were fraying across the moon, and the sea had a dull shine all over, like a plain of polished jet.

“I thought it’d be easier,” he said.

“Maybe Darcy’s right ’bout the Indians,” I said. “We could . . . ”

He cut me off. “Make it easy for me,” he said to Darcy. “C’mere a minute.”

She looked beautiful, walking toward him, with her long hair tangling in the breeze, the fine bones of her face sharp under the moonlight, and I felt a pang of jealousy. But though I knew scarcely anything in those days, I understood that whatever was to happen between them was a compassionate formality, that it existed in a separate context from what was between her and me, and I held myself in check. They stood close together. He ran a finger along the curve of her cheek, lifted a strand of her hair. “Jesus,” he said. “Back when I was in style, they didn’t make ’em like you anymore.” He nuzzled her cheek, kissed it, then kissed her mouth. She started to put her arms around him, but he pushed her, gently away. “Not too much,” he said. “Too much and I’ll wanna do more than remember.” He sat down on the edge of the pier, grasping the lowest rung of the railing, dangling his legs off the side. Darcy moved away from him and took a stand beside me. He remained motionless for a long time, so long that I thought he must have changed his mind. I could feel my heart slugging in my chest, tension crawling along my nerves, and I wanted to run over and haul him back. At last he turned to us, his face pale and set, and I wondered what he was seeing: was it life, the good things that even the most meager of lives can hold, or was it just two ragged kids with the dark ruin of the Boardwalk and a darker world behind? Then, so quickly that it was hard to believe he’d ever been there, he slipped beneath the railing and was gone.