Burn Down The Night (18 page)

Jungle law.
Predators uniting against the outsiders, against the intruders. No cop gets anything given to him
here. Cops are the enemy and the wall closes against them.

The rock and
rollers don't have to know me or care for me to do a number for me. They aren't doing it
for
me, they are doing it
against
the cops. Whatever rea­son, I duck down behind
them, trying to get the dress on right and hoping the wig is on straight. I'm glad as hell to
have these cats fronting for me. I lucked out.

There is a silence
as deep as a beer can and about as profound. One of the cops finally steps forward, snarl­ing,
"Did any of you see—"

He shuts up. There
are no answers on any of the faces here, just outright hostility, and he recoils from it as if
physically struck. He's got no friends here and knows it. If looks could kill, the cops'
shriveled corpses would be all over the floor. The cops know that too. They hesitate, but not too
long, and beat a hasty retreat.

The manager, on
his feet now, and looking like death made a house call, stumbles out after them, cursing them
under his breath. Maybe he's gonna get lucky twice and get laid out again. He ain't shackled by
the fetters of intelligence. Dumb bastard!

The dress is tight
around my back and the places where the buckshot kissed me hurt like hell. Somehow I get the mess
all hooked up, one-handed. The dress—minus the falsies, which I won't even touch, let alone
wear—doesn't fit me too well. The dress on me looks like bowling shirt somebody left out in the
rain too long. I don't have the breasts for it and I'm not about to either.

The shoes don't
fit, about seven sizes too small, and I don't even bother with them. Good thing I'm from an
Indian family tree. No beard to contend with. I probably will pass as a girl if nobody looks too
close, or makes a grab at a curve I'm supposed to have and don't.

"Now what do I
do?" I ask, feeling as awkward as a pregnant linebacker. This is my first time in a dress and it
better be my last. I hate it.

Russ shrugs. "Just
be cool, babycakes. The cops couldn't catch cold on their best day. You're covered. You just come
out front with me and sit down, catch the rest of the show. The dudes got one more set and then
we tear down and we're off."

Chris touches the
sleeve of my dress. "Is he gonna wear a dress all the time? Frankly, I don't think he has the
knees for it."

"Fuck off!" I tell
him.

"Sensitive, ain't
he?" says Spence. "Especially for somebody who just wasted somebody!"

Russ looks at his
watch. "Christ! You guys are ten minutes late for the last set! They'll tear the place apart if
you don't get out there! Hustle your asses out there!"

"Slave driver!"
says Spence, squeezing a girl where she sits down.

"Capitalistic
pig!" says Chris, touching his emaciated sides. "I should have got me a cheeseburger. Look at me,
I can't go out there! I'm starving to death!"

"Get out there,
you assholes!" says Russ, jerking his thumb toward the stage door.
"Now!"

"His mother didn't
love him enough," says Spence, chewing on a guitar pick. "She sent him out Little Lord Fauntleroy
and he came back Adolf Hitler."

The guys in the
band begin dragging themselves reluctantly toward the stage door. None of them seem overly
enthusiastic. Mostly they just seem stoned. Randall, the group's bass player, is already there
ahead of them, never having left the stage. He's like that. Treats his bass guitar like a second
skin, never lets it out of his sight.

"What do you think
of them?" asks Russ, watching them leak out of the room. "A bunch of animals, aren't
they?"

"They are kind of
laid back, aren't they? I mean not much shakes them up, does it?" I say, moving around
experimentally in my frigging dress. I think about the band for a minute, then I say, "Doesn't it
bother them I wasted somebody? I mean it was an accident but they don't even seem to—"

Russ held up his
hand, warding it off. "Hey! Save it. I ain't asking, okay?"

It bothers me a
little. "But don't they even care? Je­sus I... I can explain how it happened... see it isn't like
I—"

"Screw it, man!
Ask them, not me. I ain't interested, you want to know the truth. You're going to be our driver
and that's all I care about. Let's go up front."

I shrug, out of my
depth, surrounded by strange fish from a new cave. This is their world and I seem to be welcome
to it. Why question it?

Russ and I go
through the side door and down the steps and on out into the rock and roll crowd.

There is a moment
where I almost jump out of my skin as we walk past a cop. He's giving all the people up front
near the stage the eye, searching for me. But the cop doesn't even so much as glance at me as
Russ and I walk by. We sit down in the third row between a couple of drugged-out space cases. The
big speakers are right in front of us. You can always tell the heavy druggies. They sit right in
front of the speakers where the bass rumble can hit them full blast and scramble up what little
brains they have left. It's a great rush if you like brain damage.

The band leaks out
onto the stage, moving apathetically. They seem clumsy, awkward. I get the feeling these guys
have never seen a musical instrument before in their lives. They are taking their own sweet time
getting ready. The crowd's real restless, upset by the presence of the cops and the long delay
between sets. Everybody is stamping their feet and shouting, demanding some action.

Somebody sticks a
joint in my mouth and I take a toke. Russ's hand tightens on my arrn and I look in his direction.
A cop is standing there, frowning at me.

I choke. The joint
shoots out of my mouth and lands in the long frizzy hair of a girl sitting in front of me. The
smell of burning hair comes back to me.

The cop points his
finger at me and waves it at me in a "naughty, naughty" gesture. His hand goes down and touches
his gun and then comes up and he drags one finger under his chin in a throat-cutting
motion.

I am so freaked
out I faint into consciousness. I am so zapped with fear I feel the hair leaving my head. If my
pump hadn't been dry, I'd have wet myself.

The cop licks his
lips, gives me a fierce glare and then stalks off. I figure he is going for reinforcements, that
he has spotted me and I am a gone goose. I jump to my feet, start to run, but Russ grabs me by
the rear end and drags me down into the seat so hard my wig goes forward over my face.

I'm all bent over,
ramming the wig back in place and giving some thought to crawling under the seats or something
stupid like that. I am out of control and know it.

"Be cool, asshole!
The cop was only commenting on the dope stick! He's got bigger fish to fry than busting a
breastless chickie for joint sucking! Will you fucking-A relax!" Russ is as close to pissed off
as he ever gets.

"See, you frigging
maniac! The cop's walking down another aisle, still looking for you. You're safe. Just relax and
don't do no more dope until it's safe, okay?"

"Well, how was I
to know that he—"

Russ sighs,
cutting me off. "You keep this up, you're gonna be more trouble than you're worth!"

I sit back in my
seat, tight lipped, angry. Russ is about as sympathetic as a rattlesnake.

The band is
playing the song every rock and roll band in the world knows. It's called "Tuning Up" and it's
never played the same way twice and it's never anything but boring.

My mind isn't
really on the band. My mind isn't really on anything. Things have been happening so fast, I'm not
sure my brain even functions anymore. I know I ought to be sorting this nightmare out for myself
but I don't have any control over any of it. I am a kamikaze pilot without a plane.

Suddenly the band
cuts loose and the world around me catches on fire. The music rises up and it's another world, a
rock and roll movie, an unholy flat-face opera.

Primal energy,
body-shaking, world-breaking waves of sound rolling down on all of us, so good you hear it only
when you hear it, 'cause it's right now and right now only, and when it lets up on you, you can't
take it with you. This is a one-time and one-time-only feeling, a continuous heartbeat that the
whole crowd shares, an electronic mass sacrifice, and I let myself get swept up in it.

Sitting there in
my new and false skin, sitting there halfway between my old nightmare and a new one, maybe
sensing I'm going to be a part of all this, I get free of my troubles. I get free and get into
the music. I forget the cops and the woman who'll never have a face anymore. I forget the blood
and the years of pain and faces that all say I am a stranger. The houses that are not my home,
the things that are not mine, I forget them.

Here's a new
world, a high-energy cave. No rules. No questions. Just a dance with the high amplified gods of
rhythm. I'm sold. I've heard it all before but never as a place to go. Somehow it all seems
terribly important now like it never did before.

Russ taps me on
the shoulder. "If these assholes could learn to stay in tune, they might amount to something
someday. You know that?"

"Huh?" If what I
heard wasn't in tune, I'll be the last to know it. I know about music from nothing. Going to have
to learn.

"Set's ending and
the cops are leaving," says Russ, looking toward the back of the club over one shoulder. "I told
you I'd get you through this mess. Fucking cops! I hate cops, man! I really hate their
guts!"

Russ doesn't sound
emotional about it. Sounds un­concerned. If it's hate, it's a cool kind, the uninvolved kind,
like he would shoot a cop, but it's like, wow, you know; too much effort.

The band finishes
the set with a rift like a hand grenade and the whole place comes apart, everyone drained,
deadened from the neck up. The stonies stagger to their feet, brains blanked with music, eyes
dull, faces flashing neon smiles and drug secrets.

Russ and I stand
up and head for the backstage area. "Now that the piggies are gone, you can get out of that dress
and into something, you know, more your own speed, if you know what I mean."

I tugged at the
dress where it bulged around my breastlessness. "I know what you mean."

The guys from the
band are sprawled around in the equipment room, halfway between coma and conver­sation. Spence is
wrapped around a little groupie with pool-cue eyes and breasts like molehills that unkind genes
have made mountains out of. There are little ladies all over the place. The guy who stripped for
me is sitting quietly in the corner, playing with himself. No­body pays him any
attention.

Chris is sitting
on the couch, nibbling in a bored fashion on a fat girl with heavy earrings that probably weigh
more than Chris does. He looks like a guppie hitching a ride on a shark.

The air is thick
with dope smoke. One of the chicks is doing up some cocaine from a paper plate, plastic straw up
one nostril. She is making vacuum cleaner sounds, nosebleed greedy.

Spence looks up at
me as I come in. He looks me up and down, as if inspecting me for termites or some-thing. "What a
drag!" he says.

"Does he ever run
out of material?" I ask Russ, pissed off.

"Only when he's
asleep," says Russ. "Ignore him. He thinks he's a musician and we have to humor him."

"I think I'm going
to like working for you guys," I say. "I want to thank you all for saving me from
the—"

"Don't go all
gushy!" says Spence, pushing the girl off of him. She falls off the end of the bench and slams
her stoned head against the floor. Spence pays no attention to her, stands up, almost stepping on
her face. "We're taking you on 'cause we got a gig to get to, and if you work out, it's cool.
We're only taking you 'cause we don't have much choice, you dig?"

One of the
underfoot chicks comes up to me and shoves some clothes at me, castoffs from the band members. A
little embarrassed, I start peeling out of my dress. Privacy is a luxury rock and roll can't
afford.

"Still," I say,
dropping the dress to the floor, "I'm glad that—"

The look on
Spence's face stops me. Gratitude is the wrong song, I can see it in his face. "Forego the
num­ber, man," he says and turns and starts for the back door. "Follow me, man. We'll go outside,
away from the hammerheads, and I'll put you in the picture, man. Straighten this out."

I turn and look at
Russ, uncomfortable in clothes that don't quite fit me, nervous because I don't know all the
rules yet. Russ motions me toward the door, gives me a wink. "Yeah. It's okay. It's cool, man.
Stick with it."

Uneasy, afraid
they are going to change their minds and not let me ride out of town with them, I follow along
behind the giant body that is Spence. It's a little like walking behind a tree. This is one big
dude, no mistake about it. I remind myself not to get into a punch-out with him.

The back door
opens and we stumble out into the dark. The air outside is cool and soft with a clinging mist,
the rain softened into almost fog. The band truck looms in front of us like a beached
whale.