Zero (2 page)

Someday, I remind myself as I rummage for a T-shirt, I’m going to St. Petersburg, Florida, to visit (or move into) the Salvador Dalí museum. See his work up close and personal, study the brushstrokes, and probably have a cataclysmic orgasm just standing there. But Florida’s a long ways away, and I can’t quite muster the guts to borrow/steal money from the account Dad set up to pay for school, which is “hands-off for anything except educational expenses!” A trip to the Dalí museum
would
be educational, in my humble opinion, but I don’t think SAIC would hand me credit for it, so no can do.

Then again, SAIC is no longer an option anyway. Goddammit, this is not fair. From May 1, when I got my acceptance letter, to May 28, life was so sweet I didn’t even hear Mom and Dad’s usual melee. Then last week—hours before graduation, for god’s sake—I got the
other
letter from Chicago, the one starting “Dear Ms. Walsh, With regret, your scholarship application has been …”

And that was just the start of the worst night/week/summer of my life.

Whatever. I grab a black shirt from my dresser: D.I., that sweet, old Orange County band that never quite made it mainstream. Nobody ever knows who D.I. is. You can tell the idiots from the cool people by who asks, “What’s a D-X-I-X?” The
X
s are
periods
, dumbass.

I glance at my hair in the glass pane of one poster. It’s still wet from the rain and starting to frizz out, so I yank on my old blue canvas cabbie cap to cover it.

“You pretty much suck,” I remind my reflection, and pull the brim of the cap down to shade my eyes. At least my hat looks cool. I shove my wallet into my hip pocket, grab my keys, and go out to begin a night of blessed punk oblivion.

My mother has other ideas.

She’s in the
kitchen washing dishes, which means Dad must be changing his clothes to hit the town. I try to turn invisible as I hustle behind her to the carport door.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

(
They don’t understand me/What we need is no moms!
—Casey Royer, lead singer of D.I. Thanks, Casey.)

“Out. See ya.”

“Amy, it’s storming out, and it’s not safe to drive.” Dishes clatter in the sink.

“Mom, it is not storming,” I say.

Thunder rumbles and shakes the windows. Figures.

“Much?” I add.

“Amy, no. It’s not safe.”

I turn to her. “What the hell isn’t
safe
?”

“
Please
do not swear at me….”

“Mom,” I say (patiently, of course), “I’m just going to hang out for a while, is all.”

“With Jenn?”

Um,
no
. But what I say is, “I kinda sorta rather doubt it, can I go now?”

“Amy, no.”

“
Miriam
, yes.” Maybe I should’ve just lied and said I
was
meeting Jenn.

Mom’s eyes flash. I try to make mine do the same. We lock gazes and try to stare each other down.

I win. Mom turns back to the sink. I take this as a victory and open the door.

“You step foot outside this house, you will regret it, young lady.” She tries—fails—to sound all authoritative.

And, just out of curiosity, when does one cease to be a Young Lady, and what term follows it? Youngish Lady? Young Woman? Gal? Twennysumfin’ Lady? I mean, god, I start college in September; “young lady” seems a little stupid.

“I won’t be out late,” I say, and walk into the carport, slamming the door shut behind me.

I rush to my car, a battered black Peugeot 404 (thanks, Dad), and scamper inside. I can see Mom in the kitchen window mouthing something unhappy as I pull away from the house, leaving our bland tan gravel yard for a more suitable venue to mope in.

Theoretically? I’ve just sold off a month of freedom for this little escape, but Dad’ll overrule any punitive damages my mother tries to hand down. He’s handy that way. Especially if I ask him after a few beers. He’ll let me off the hook just to piss Mom off. I don’t think I’ve
ever
been grounded.

I roll down my window to let rain splash my arm, and turn on the radio. Sweet;
Flashback
, a local show on every Friday, is just starting. First song turns out to be by Ghost of Banquo, this
way
old funky jazz band. A good sign; I’ve never been able to find their album—they only released one—so it’s cool to hear it. My night improves ever so slightly. It tanks again when the DJ reminds me that the Chili Peppers will be here in September with the Lollapalooza tour, and that I, tragically, will not be in attendance, because while Dad can often bail me out of Mom Prison, his allowance is sporadic at best, and someone named Me wasn’t able to get a ticket.

I pull into the parking lot of The Graveyard, which is nearly full. I have to park in the dirt—correction, mud—and run through the rain to get to the door.

The Graveyard is quaking. I expect flakes of monochrome paint to chip off and fall beneath a bass beat I can feel in my fillings. Maybe the sonic boom will rattle my brain enough for me to forget about life for a few hours. The Graveyard is an all-ages punk dive that probably should’ve been condemned like all the other punk dives that’ve gone under in the past decade. Not many places left in town for the underage crowd to gather for mayhem.

I pull the door open, go inside, pay the cover, and dive into the chaos. It isn’t Nightrage playing onstage, so presumably this is the suck-ass Gothic Rainbow.

Except as I look around the club for a place to hang out—dance floor or indoor patio?—I realize the band isn’t suck-ass at all.

More like
kicking
ass.

An enormous pit is going full throttle in front of the stage.
The crowd is awkwardly mixed; toothpick-legged punkers slam beside cloned university jocks in ball caps and flannels.
A recipe for disaster!
Sooner or later, someone with a full hawk is going to have a go at someone wearing a football team baseball hat. (Let the irony sink in.) Blood will flow, the combatants will be ejected, and the night will go on. I am unthrilled the scene is taking a turn in this direction; just last year, punk shows were attended by (gasp!) punks. The fact that these two elemental forces of nature are both enjoying the same band is, shall we say,
remarkable
.

And
damn
, they’re good! You know those songs you hear just the first few seconds of but right away you know you’re going to be repeating them over and over for the next couple weeks? That’s how it feels right now listening to them.

I pick my way through the crowd for a closer look at the band. I secure a spot near one corner of the stage where it looks like I’ll be safe from any straggling slam dancers who might get tossed my way.

The singer is a behemoth, two feet taller and two feet broader than me. He sports a mane of long, straight, honey-colored hair and pounds on a black guitar. Screeching baritone vocals punch my (thick, ample) gut. His hair isn’t punk—maybe he’s being ironic?—but his singing sure is. He salts the lyrics with an occasional
pickitup pickitup!
to keep his fans swarming.

The other guitarist looks more in place in this dive, with short, bleached, spiked hair and a yellow T-shirt that says “Old’s Cool.” When he spins around, I see “Pathos” scrawled across the back of his shirt. Nice. Pathos is a Chicago-based
punk band that has never come to Phoenix, and probably never will. Scene’s too small here, which is probably why Nightrage is headed out. Escaping the event horizon that is the boundary of Metro Phoenix: Black Hole for the Arts. Can’t say as I blame ’em.

The bassist stands still, a roll of belly hanging over his jeans, barely harnessed by a plain blue T-shirt. He chews his lip like he’s afraid he might lose his place.

I shift position to get a look at the drummer, who is relegated to anonymous darkness upstage and camouflaged behind cymbals. I catch a glimpse of hair swinging over his face as he pounds away with a rhythm that sounds more like jazz than punk, but played with the
requisite ferocity
of the genre.

The song ends with a crash, ripping cheers out of the audience. Fists plunge up through the sweaty air. Someone shouts, “
You rock! You rock!
”

“Thanksalot,” the singer says into the mic, as the bassist moves to check something on his amplifier and the drummer stands to adjust a cymbal.

If you had a couple of priceless sapphires and held them up to the rays of the setting sun in the moments after a Sonoran monsoon, they’d be
lifeless
next to this guy’s eyes.

So I’m a girl, sue me, but
oh my god
.

My fingers ache for my paints, something, anything I can use to capture those eyes forever. A blank canvas, the ceiling
in my room, one dirty wall of The Graveyard, I don’t care, I need my paint
now
. Or my charcoals. It isn’t just the
color
of his irises, it’s the
intensity
in them I need to preserve.

He’s starting to sit down when our gazes meet.

I. Freeze. Solid.

He isn’t drop-dead gorgeous, by my or anyone else’s standards. He has a narrow sort of face, and short hair except for shiny black skater bangs that reach his chin, old-school style. His body reminds me of a scarecrow, drumstick arms draped by an unpretentious white T-shirt.

But … have I mentioned his eyes?

So I stand there like an idiot, my mouth hanging open, thinking,
He looked at me—he looked at me—he looked at me
.

This is No Big.

He must’ve felt me staring at him and intuitively intercepted my gaze. I’m certain of this as he blinks and resumes his drumming posture without another glance in my direction. Probably I look like a psycho. A step up? Discuss. Wish I had the guts to talk to him after the show—

My rapture breaks as someone smashes into me, almost sending me to the floor.

“Shit, look out!” someone shouts at me.

I regain my footing. Some jackass jock who’s been tossed out of the pit stands in front of me, unibrow furrowed, white ball cap askew at a
jaunty
frat angle.

“S-sorry,” I say. For what, standing here? Dick.

He assesses me, up and down. “Are you a dude?”

Alas, my wit escapeth me! I have no droll response for yon gent. So I say—I really, truly say this:

“No.”

Ten minutes from now, I will come up with the perfect rejoinder, something demure, like
I have some ideas on what you can go do, kind sir, and only half involve your mother
.

The walking penis laughs and shoves past me to the bar.

Welcome to my life.

I push my way to the patio, where I find an unoccupied bar stool. I order a Coke and glance at my reflection in the mirror that runs the length of the wall behind the back bar.

God,
do
I look like a guy? Tonight’s nothing out of the ordinary, not a special ensemble I’ve put together for the evening’s festivities. Like tonight, my usual uniform consists of jeans or cargo shorts or maybe overalls, a T-shirt, and one of more hats than I know what to do with. I keep my hair short because I don’t care to mess with it.

Oh
yeah
, baby. I’m a peach. (Or Perhaps the Pit, I alliterate.
Snicker
.) But I mean, come on, there are plenty of women in here tonight who aren’t dressed any diff—

“Hey.”

On the patio, which is separated from the dance floor by thick windows, the noise is considerably lower, so there’s no mistaking her voice.

“Oh,” I say. “Hey, Jenn.”

Jenn’s dressed to
slay, her outfit glamorous, alluring, and casual all at once. Her curly copper hair is wound into a mass of tight, flouncy coils. (Fucking
goddess
.) Jenn’s a great cook, and I can smell faint hints of foreign spices as she sits beside me. Whatever she made for dinner, it must’ve been good.

Jenn tries on a nervous smile. “So … how’s it going?”

“Fine,” I say, lying. I never would’ve expected her to come here by herself. Usually she’s with some guy every weekend. Well,
almost
every weekend.

I haven’t made eye contact yet. I make a big show of squinting past her through the picture windows, pretending, sort of, to be preoccupied with trying to catch another look at the drummer. I have a pretty good view now. His toned arms flail mercilessly, his knees popping up and down off unseen pedals.

“These guys are pretty good,” Jenn says, filling a pause that looks to embarrass her as much as me.

“Uh-huh.”

Jenn leans closer, trying to match my gaze. I counter by leaning backward. I don’t think Jenn notices. “What’re you staring at?”

“Eh, nothing.”

“Got a crush?” Jenn asks with a weak chuckle.

I whirl away from the window. “No.”

Jenn keeps studying the band. “Not the singer,” she says, like to herself. “Definitely not the bass player. The guitarist?”

“No.”

“The
drummer
.”

I take a sip of Coke.

Jenn manages a tense laugh and pokes me in the ribs. “It’s him, isn’t it?”

For a second, just a
second
, it’s like nothing ever happened. I remember
Something Did
when Jenn looks down at her hand and quickly folds it into her lap.

“He’s pretty cute,” she says with heroic hopefulness. “Maybe you should talk to him.”

“Do you not find that comment even remotely ironic?”

Jenn winces. That makes me feel bad. Surprisingly.

“Sorry,” I say, coming within an iota of meaning it.

“Nah, it’s cool,” Jenn goes, all morose. “I get it.”

I take another sip and watch the drummer.

Jenn glances out the window again. “Well, if you think he’s hot, you should talk to him. I mean, if you think he’s cute—”

“I
do
,” I snap. “And I won’t.”