Chewing out a rhythm on my bubblegum
The sun is high and I want some
It's not hard, not far to reach
We can hitch a ride to Rockaway Beach
-"Rockaway Beach" by The Ramones
We've got all the friends that money can buy
So we'd never have to be alone
And we keep getting richer but we can't get our picture
On the cover of the Rolling Stone
-"Cover of the Rolling Stone" by Dr. Hook
We're All Too Young
Twin Cities, 1990
Midday Thursday, the sun hanging suspending from the sky like a gigantic barroom light fixture, the ceiling pale blue and unmarred by clouds, and Charlie was bored out of her skull. She lay on the top of the old apartment building, legs splayed and her back leaning against the balustrade, tossing rocks at pigeons while Tom Waits' whiskey-dried voice crooned to her about hopes that were out of reach. She raised the volume just a little, brushing her magma-red bangs out of her eyes. Her black notebook lay open beside her, supposed to be filled with lyrics expressing the times, her generation, and her dreams, instead hazily inscribed with doodles of pentagrams and rockets, angry scenes and broken-bottle aspirations with a couple phrases circled around them. She worried at a scar on the tip of her index finger, letting out a tired-angry sigh to combat the Minnesota air. A slow southern breeze brought in the mingled scents of manufactory exhaust fumes and car diesel, June humidity riding high.
She glanced at her watch, swearing when she saw how late it was. Only getting later; the tape clicked sourly at its end and began rewinding automatically. She stopped its surge backward and took the tape out, tossing it into a cardboard box. She grabbed a different one and stuck it in the deck, slamming it shut and stared hard at the pigeons that encroached on her domain. They were reflected in her black plastic sunglasses like dim spectres, lost and unsure.
She was so sick of this. Living purely on love and hedonistic fun was great for the first couple of weeks, but the novelty wore off pretty quick. Her black sleeveless top was two sizes too big and fluttered when the breeze caught it like a pirate's flag, clearance sale jacket cinched tight over her razor-ripped blue jeans, and everything stained from sojourns in the dumpsters outside of public buildings, vermin-scrounging for a smoke or something to make her life just a little bit better, if only for a moment.
The Ramones burst out of the secondhand stereo like a mob attack, "I Just Wanna Have Something to Do," expressing her thoughts perfectly. She wished she could write like that, could work her Stratocaster that way, knew it was all a lost cause. She was sick of the boo's, and of the booze, and sick of having no money. Parents prideful of their Swedish heritage had instilled in her a sense of Self and of disdain for having to beg, though she did it anyway, hanging on the corners with big sad eyes and dirt-smeared cheeks, managing a few bucks for a meal or two at the diners, or a coffee if they really needed it.
Her headache was getting worse, a red hot poker delving deep behind her right eye. She felt she probably should have shut off the music, but without it how would Selkie know where to go?
She checked her watch again, swore again, and flicked a rock at a pigeon that got too close.
Somewhere a door opened and shut, and she looked off to the side, hair getting in her way again. A Kohl-eyed, crow-haired prettyboy looked around for a moment before spotting her, wandering over to her, his hair fluttering in the breeze. Selkie was wearing a big olive green army jacket, like the army would ever take him in, David Bowie in full Ziggy Stardust t-shirt peeking through and both looking huge over his sick-skinny frame. Tight black jeans covered legs like long slivers of congealed darkness, obsidian tent pegs that must surely be choking off blood circulation below his hips. Combat boots he borrowed from her yesterday, and she saw that he kept them nice and shiny. Selkie set his big violet bass guitar against the balustrade and sat down beside her, rummaging through the pockets of his jacket, coming up with an empty cigarette box which he tossed at the pigeons. She knew he was still dancing drag wherever he was given the time, whenever the other queens allowed him the time of day, pulling in tips and stealing vocals from Madonna, Jefferson Airplane, or Brian Ferry like he'd been singing them all his life. He crossed his legs, crossed his arms, and sat there pouting.
Charlie held the half of her head that she was certain would split apart at any moment, wincing at the sound of her own voice. "Please tell me you got us a gig tonight, Silky. I can't stand this crap anymore."
Selkie pursed his lips, fully pretty lips, and sniffed. "I did, but I think we lost it."
A sickening feeling of suspension and descent filled her stomach. "What?"
"I talked to Johnny at the Green Man and he said he could push someone out for us, but when he heard about Danny he backed out. Said he didn't trust a group that didn't know how to stand up."
Charlie stared at him, wanting to hit something. "What the hell happened to Danny?"
"You don't know? I thought he would have told you…He split on us. Took his drumsticks and just walked off, said he had bigger things going on in his life and he couldn't be around us anymore. He and his girlfriend have got a kid now, did you know that? He didn't say a friggin' thing to us."
Charlie couldn't believe what she was hearing. This had to be a joke, a petty attempt at humor that Selkie and Danny had conjured to make her snap or maybe catalyze a few good songs. She sneered, lips curling back in the manner of a wolf, Lon Chaney would be proud, and before she knew what she was doing she pulled back a fist and punched Selkie just below the shoulder. He hissed, flinched away from her, fixed her hard with a scolded dog look. She leapt up and kicked out at the balustrade, scattering rocks and chipped masonry. "Damn it!" she screamed, screamed again, and her migraine replied in kind. She held her head in her hands, tears forced out of her eye, wishing she was somewhere else, someone else, doing something better than this. She didn't notice that all the pigeons had taken to the sky, scared out of their tiny minds.
She kicked at the balustrade one more time and sat back down, the waters calmed after the alligator's struck. She wiped her hair out of her sunglasses, slammed her fist down on the ground and banging her head on the brickwork as she stared up into the sky. No answers there, never were, and a firestorm of molten metal was lodged in her head.
Selkie glanced at her, abashed green-eyed boy, said "What're we gonna do, Charlie?"
"I don't know, man. I don't know."
She breathed in the hot wet city air, hoping to filter out some kind of hope before she let it out, knowing there was none of that in this filthy air. The heat was making her eyes gummy and her skin feel like soaked leather. They couldn't rely forever on the cash Selkie was pulling in singing and dancing in hazy neon-lit bars and nightclubs, and she sure as hell knew her part-time stint as coffee jockey wouldn't have been getting them anything even if they hadn't fired her. They were hardly practicing at all, let alone pulling in gigs. It had been two weeks since they played at Bunny Tam's, and they'd already burned through the two hundred dollars they'd been given within four days.
Charlie wished she had a bottle of glue, but it probably would have made her head hurt even worse. The Ramones tape finished and Charlie fished it out, putting in a mix tape, seventies rock and Brit punk. They sat there as Iron Butterfly filled the air about them, "You Can't Win," The sun slowly sinking and slinking down into its grave while the two of them grew hungrier. Charlie woke up, angry with herself that she had fallen asleep, her mouth gin-dry and cottony like someone stuffed a grubby rag between her teeth. Selkie was gone, like one of the pigeons he had flown off somewhere. Good riddance, she didn't want him to see her as she was. Sometime in the hours she had slept, he had taken off his jacket and put it around her shoulders. No music but the blustery soundscape of the city.
We deserve better than this, she thought, scowled at the purple shadows around her.
She stood up, her joints popping like the Fourth of July, adjusting the jacket over her shoulders. It wasn't a cold night, but it smelled infinitely better. At the very least, her headache was gone. She rubbed at her eyes, rubbed out the yellow-green crust working its way into the corners and flicking them away.
The sobs cut through the night to her ears, an exhaust fan wetly sputtering nearby. She stopped, head cocked until she found the direction. "Selkie?" she called out, suddenly nervous, suddenly scared, suddenly feeling more tired than before she fell asleep. Her hand went into her right pocket where she kept her switchblade, running her fingertips over its smooth black marble handle, thumb putting barely enough pressure on the switch. She passed the air shaft and saw Selkie sitting on the balustrade, goosebump-laden arms wrapped around himself, head hanging down so she couldn't see the tears in his eyes but could better hear him weeping. The bruise on his arm was like plum-flesh, ripe and gently yellowed.
"Selkie," Charlie muttered. The sound of her voice seemed to spur the tears to go on, to march forward. Charlie's eyes darkened, brow knitted. "Stop it," she said, but he wouldn't stop it. He continued to cry, either for tonight or tomorrow, not that that mattered. She hated seeing him whenever he was like this, hated it more than not having cash or space to practice. How many times had she told him to be strong, to at least make an attempt to be tougher? How many times had her words entered deaf ears? The world didn't feel the tears that stained the soil; she felt her upper lip rising to reveal teeth, fingers curling. "Stop it right now!" she shouted.
He raised a hand to hide his face, but he didn't stop. He just wouldn't stop. Charlie felt her feet move forward and bring her up to him. She grabbed his hand and ripped it away, seeing his makeup running in dark rivers like heavy rain, turning his tears black. Her other hand cut through the air and slapped him hard on his face. It sounded like a pistol shot ringing through the evening heat. "I told you to stop it!"
He looked at her, green eyes big like emerald moons, but at least he stopped. She knew she'd feel awful somewhere down the road from now, but not right now. He needed someone to look after him; she wrapped her arms around his waist and held him. He probably wouldn't forgive her, not that she'd ever forgive herself anyway, but right now she didn't care about the next day or the next hour. There was only now, their mingled warmth and sweat-stink and untethered hopes.
Selkie murmured something behind her, something she didn't hear and didn't bear repeating. She mumbled an acknowledging sound and patted his back.
[ ]
"What about this?"
Charlie looked up at the computer Selkie had fished out from the guts of the dumpster. She hated doing this, feeling like a raccoon or a rat or worse, whatever else slinks through the muck and filth and comes up with something that makes it feel just a little better off. The computer screen was dead black, a running lightning scar along the glass. She shook her head and sighed. "Toss it. If we can't sell it for top dollar, no point in even grabbing it."
Selkie grumbled. He let the bulky tangle of molded plastic and poly-glass drop back into the canister. Charlie rummaged through a pair of garbage cans, looking for something they could salvage, some bit of treasure that could earn them enough money for food, finding nothing but scum, finding trash, finding bits of black tangled hair that were too small to belong to a dog. Charlie yawned, still tired but not wanting to quit. They'd been at this for twenty minutes, invading waste disposal units from Thule Avenue and heading south, following the grimy sweaty veins between buildings. Just like rats, she thought bitterly. The filth and dust was sticking to her and suffusing into her slick skin, creating a dark scum that likely wouldn't wash off too soon.
"Charlie?"
"Yeah?"
"Is the band still together?"
Charlie looked up at him, raccoon-eyed and dirty, her brother in grime. The only friend she still retained after graduating high school and all the others had faded away, dispersing throughout the country and forgetting all about her. After high school, after a year and a half touring the same community college together, it had been the idea of The Band that kept their heads above the water. The Band was everything to them, a dream that never left their waking eyes, a deity they could sacrifice everything for. They both lived for music, for the music and the dreams they shared; it had been a rough start, after the drama from their families had finally petered out, but they had been doing alright. Up to now, Charlie mused.
They were both still trying to flog copies of their album to whomever or whatever, that collection of songs and spoken verse they had recorded with Dan's cousin's recording equipment in some abandoned textile mill. Basement level, brick walls and steel pipes, the dim yellow-orange lighting they had jerry-rigged making it all look like Freddy Krueger's boiler room. Simple packaging and simple artwork, high-contrast shot in black and white, grainy photo of a raven picking meat off a bone she had taken in the spring. It looked like a Rorschach test, and maybe that was what she had been going for. Either way, she felt that it was a good representation of their music. They sold the copies to friends and passersby on the street, but not enough. Not nearly enough.
Then the money dried up. Charlie took to a series of Joe jobs; Dan had a family, apparently; Selkie was performing at nameless clubs here and there. In the center, their band still clung shakily to reality.
Now Danny was gone. Danny had been their manager as well as their drummer, chosen because of the three of them, his tongue had the most silver in it.
"Yeah, we're still together," Charlie told him, giving him a smile. He smiled back and looked away, and the heat she still felt on her hand, stinging heat memory of slapping his face, faded away just a little. She didn't know if the lie was for Selkie's benefit or her own. Not that it mattered now; Charlie kicked over one of the cans and looked to another. She flipped open the lid and tossed it away, reaching in and rummaging.
"You hesitated."
She didn't reply to that one, didn't care to. Her fingers wrapped around the steel rim of something large and round. She looked in and saw the edge of an old snare drum, slightly tarnished but the steel still glinted like the edge of a razor. She sniffed, sour-sweet moments half-remembered as she looked at it. An unbroken snare drum still had a price; she pulled at it, lifting it up out of the rubbish.
She pulled it up into the air and nearly screamed when she saw that another hand was attached to it. A face appeared from under the trash, wide-eyed, half hidden by a huge tangle of wild platinum hair, flecked with garbage. Lilac-skinned girl, short and sturdy girl, black top and the rest of her hidden inside the garbage can. That ain't a rat, Charlie shouted in her mind.
The girl tilted backward, upending the garbage can onto the ground. The momentum had ripped the snare drum out of Charlie's hand; without saying a word, the girl did a magnificent backward roll and jumped up onto her feet, taking off down the alleyway, long grime-strewn hair trailing behind her like a comet's tail.
Charlie chased after her, savage anger blaring in her eyes; that was her drum. "Hey!"
Selkie popped his head up out of the dumpster, a black-haired gopher. "What?"
"Get her! She's got my drum!"
"Who?"
Charlie broke into a sprint. After several years in track and leisure time spent being chased by club bouncers and police, her legs were toned and powerful. She'd once read that Charles Manson, who was five-foot-two, during one of his trials had leapt from his seat at the defendant's table all the way up to the foot of the judge's podium in a single bound because he'd only ever strengthened his legs when he was in jail. She also read he had bad lungs. She didn't know why she thought of that just now, and it didn't much matter. The drum was hers, rightfully hers, and she was going to get it. Already far behind her, Selkie stumbled and swore loudly into the evening. She ignored it, eagerly careened down one alley into another, following the sound of heavy steps and trying to keep them in front of her.
She angled into an alley, the smell of Chinese herbs and spices filling her nose from a nearby diner, and stopped after realizing she had lost the trail. The girl was there and gone, absconded with the item she had found, and therefore with her money. Charlie swore and beat at her hip, heading back to Selkie.
Just then, the sound of clattering garbage can lids and a snare drum being broken in tore apart the night and competed against the rush of the vehicles in the street. It was a rhythmic percussion beat, very smooth and solid, something that she found quite catchy if it didn't sound like someone was using rubbish for instruments. Selkie came up behind her, eyes wide and nervous. He was about to say something but Charlie shushed him, told him to be quiet and listen. He cocked his head, brows knitted, and before he could make a comment Charlie began walking toward the sound, lulled and lured by it.
They found the girl at an intersection between buildings, where the brick and concrete victims of gentrification lay tall and broken like titanic weather-eaten tombstones. An array of trash lay before her, upside down fire buckets, garbage bin lids suspended from a coat rack, and Charlie's snare drum. She was attacking all of them with energetic fury, with wild abandon and not without a sense of rhythm. Her face was a mixture of calm and anger, full lips pursed in concentration. She didn't notice them, or if she did, she didn't care that they were there. Charlie and Selkie stood in awe, flabbergasted as they absently began comparing her to Danny and to musicians whose names they couldn't remember but clearly heard through the stereo every day. "good" wasn't a word apt enough to describe her. She was excellent.
Percussion rang out like automatic machine gun fire, bounding off the walls and returning tenfold. Rats were disturbed from nests and flies became angry, but Selkie and Charlie stood among them in silent wonder.
Selkie tilted his head down to her. "We have to have her," he whispered.
"Seconded."
The girl manipulated sound and music with rubbish, and Charlie wondered what she could do with genuine equipment. The song petered out to a rumble on the snare drum, then a double strike on that and the bin lid, and there was a silence that the streets filled in. The girl flipped her platinum hair back, a fishbone skeleton ripped itself out of the strands and landed against the brick behind her. She opened her violet eyes and fixed them on Charlie and Selkie. "Hey," she said, and saluted with a wooden kitchen spoon she'd been using as a stick.
"That was awesome," Selkie said, smiling wide. The girl nodded, lips tilted in a grin, looking like she knew damn well what it was.
"Yeah, I know."
"Where did you learn to play drums like that?" Charlie asked.
"I dunno, man, I just do it. When I pick up these sticks and I think about what I want to play, I just play it. That's how it works, dude."
Charlie was about to reply when the girl said "Yeah, right. Actually, I just like to hit things!"
Pretty modest, Charlie muttered in her head. That could be a detriment, but right now they were in desperate need for a drummer.
Charlie was about to speak when a man erupted from a corner, spilling out of a mound of month-old garbage bags. He was dressed in rags, his head as threadbare as his clothes and shiny with a sweat-sheen. He gibbered and gesticulated at the lilac girl, his eyes wide in fright. "Stay away from her! She's a monster! I saw, old Joe saw everything! She came down on a road of light, and she turned into a dog and chased Joe's cats away! She—she—You stay away from her!"
The denizens of the streets were familiar with Mr. Monopoly, or Old Joe as he calls himself. They called him that because he resembled what they imagined Mr. Monopoly to look like if he struck chapter eleven and lost all of his money. Selkie and Charlie glanced at each other, half smiles playing on their faces. The girl turned to the old man, struck a Lugosi pose. "Boo!" she shouted, and Mr. Monopoly ran away, mumbling down the street.
In the silence that followed, Charlie cleared her throat. "Hey, you want to join our band or something?"
The girl looked at her, one eyebrow raised. The moment lengthened, lengthened and stretched out and Charlie was certain she would say no. Then—
"Sure."
Application approved.
[ ]
"Goodnight, you sick bastards!"
The crowd at Green Man was wild and vicious, dead babies all dressed in black latex and shiny leather or tight dim denim, a black rainbow of hair spiked or coiffed or buzz-cut or hanging over one side of their faces straight like black rivers, the air above them hazy with cigarette smoke and hair spray. No one was fighting or making out in dim corners by the bar. Tonight, the crowd belonged to them. Charlie wiped the sweat out of her eyes before she put the microphone back into the stand and followed Selkie and Amethyst off the little stage, the bellowing cheers of yesterday's ravens following them.
"That was military-grade perfection, I think," Selkie said, adjusting his guitar strap over his shoulder. His hair hung far back behind him like a dark waterfall, a tinge of lakewater blue on the edge like his lipstick and nail polish. The black latex dress he wore glimmered in the dim light, smoky pantyhose covering long pale legs, big black pumps like knives. He wiped at his forehead and his makeup smeared.
"Yeah, only a few people said we sucked," Amethyst grumbled. She looked like she only ever had one style of clothing, purple shirt and tight black pants, little cut-out stars on the front. Charlie smacked her with a little towel she stole from the bathroom.
"Those are the ones that listen to us," she said, the smile not leaving her face. She headed off to the washroom down the hallway, really a tiny closet in this place, but it was all she needed. In the dirty mirror, chip missing in the top right corner, she thanked their good fortune that surely had been building up and finally released, potential energy converted into kinetic. Doing her business, she wondered how in the world Selkie had managed to finagle back the deal they were sure had dried up. When Johnny saw them in the doorway, already done up and ready to go, the look on his face made Charlie want to break his nose, but to her shock he had let them in. Maybe it was Amethyst. Maybe good luck followed her around like a little pet, little intangible and invisible familiar. She knew nothing like that ever followed her or Selkie. Maybe.
She pulled up her ratty jean shorts and stepped to the mirror. Hair cut short and blackened from shoplifted dye, one lens of her sunglasses cracked, tiny sleeveless leather vest marked with scrounged punk kitsch, band and road map symbols, spikes and studs and steel wire. She had stitched a razor under the collar in case someone wanted to get fresh, but no such chance afforded itself. There were dark stains on her otherwise white t-shirt, "Leaping Lizards" printed in basic black and meaning who knows what. She looked down at her boots, "headthumpers" her aunt had called them, mosh pit monsters.
What a night, she thought, and she was so tired, and so hopped up on adrenaline, her body feeling like a single contusion, that there was no more room for any other thoughts. What a night. She finished up and walked back out into the hall, Amethyst and Selkie already standing at the door waiting for her. Johnny walked past her, keeping his head low and his eyes averted.
Charlie watched him for a moment, a tinge of confusion stabbing through her. Odd, she thought, wiping it from her mind. Amethyst was twirling her sticks when she walked up to them, Selkie handing her back her Stratocaster. He was looking furious.
"I'm gonna kill him."
"What?"
"Johnny! That creep stiffed us out of eighty dollars!"
Charlie gritted her teeth and turned on her heel, already seeing Johnny's smooth black shirt disappearing round the corner. She knew she should have gone after him, forced him to give them what they were owed. But she found that the energy from the stage was still residing in her, and her anger had no more room to go. To her amazement, she felt this development roll right over her. "It's alright, babe," she said.
"Huh?"
"It's cool. We still got a good sum out of it, and eighty ain't half that. Let's just leave it as is this time."
Selkie kicked at the door, startling a passing civilian. "No! He needs to be taught a lesson! He said he'd pay us and he still has to give us the eighty bucks. I'm not leaving here without it."
Charlie watched him, saw the hate blazing in his eyes, wondering where all of this was coming from. She put her hands on Selkie's arms, rubbing off the cold sweat and trying to be as sisterly as she could. "It's okay, Selkie! There'll be more gigs for us, we can make up the cash down the road. Just let this go."
"But—"
He sputtered, ran a hand through his hair and tried to say something, his mind working faster than his mouth. "Just calm down," Charlie told him, repeating it until he did. He sniffled, looking pitiful.
"Hey," she said.
"What?"
"You should tell Zsa Zsa Gabor she did a lousy job with your makeup."
Selkie laughed and shook his head. He smiled at her and she smiled back, glad that another crisis had been averted. She looked at a little green rabbit tattoo on the center of his chest, wondering where he'd gotten it, wondering why, wondering why she was thinking about something as inconsequential as that. She hugged him. Amethyst watched all of this with intense interest, munching on a handful of peanuts she had swiped and likely stored in her pockets.
The next few weeks followed in like manner. Charlie was correct in one thing, in that there were plenty of low-level venues lying around for them to pick up. Charlie had her aunt ferry them out of the city whenever they got a gig in a different town, a different area, which was such a breath of relief, since the air always smelled sweeter out of the city. Success was not rampant, but came to them in a trickle, which was just fine for Charlie. They found an apartment for "rent" in one of the abandoned buildings in the city, a complex that for whatever reason couldn't afford to remain and now played host to other bands and squatters living on a less-than-shoestring budget. They practiced during the day and entertained each other by night, campfire stories of their lives, the parts that they wanted the others to know, that they wanted themselves to remember.
Amethyst regaled them with her tales of woe, of being oppressed by her friends because she was the smallest, the strangest, the youngest one. Nobody listened to her, nobody took her advice to heart. Selkie and Charlie both nodded sagely at all of this, this being a language they were not unfamiliar with.
People asked for their album, suddenly remembering that they had one. A DIY packaging company for nighthawking bands and groups came to them and wanted to help with sales, and that was a tremendous boon. Their fans, the few that somehow heard where they would be appearing, made it a point to show up to every event. They suggested more songs, more lyrics, something to show off Amethyst's skills. Soon enough, there was even talk of a new album. Charlie saved every article that contained the name of their band, flyers and newspaper mentions. When she took a break from listening to cassettes and listened to the radio and suddenly heard their song "Tomorrow Again" playing like the smile of a skull from the speakers, she jumped out of her chair and laughed like a Bedlam madwoman.
Summer passed away and the cold tongue of autumn announced itself. On the first of October, Charlie was given the proposition to play Deadhead, a music festival held in the center of the city during every Halloween. She needed no second opinion or moment of thought; she said yes, and on the thirty-first of October, the three stood behind the huge rigged stage, listening to a crowd of hundreds all lit and lit up by the powerful orange and green floodlights and lasers, dried-ice fog swirling serpentine between legs.
"I don't know about this, you guys," Amethyst said, casting a darting eye to the crowd. They hadn't dressed up for the show, not in the costume-and-candy sense, didn't want to bother with adding more sweat than was necessary. She stuck her sticks into a back pocket and picked at her nose. "That's a lot of people out there."
Selkie was drumming his fingers against the body of his bass, his nerves not as hard as Charlie had thought. Tonight saw him in a leaopard-print coat, black shirt and fishnet underneath that, stockings and garter just visible enough to command attention over knee-length heels. "Yeah, Charlie, and they all look like metalheads, too. I think we should play our harder set."
"No. We do the set we practiced with. It's all gonna be fine." The orange-yellow light framed her face for an instant, jack o' lanterns in her face, before she flipped the lighter shut with a metallic snap and breathed out nicotine dragon smoke into the cool air.
"But Charlie—"
"It's fine, guys! Nothing's gonna go wrong."
And no, nothing went wrong. In front of the sea of costumed horrors and freaks and girls and boys and everything in between and what Charlie was certain had been a News Station Six camera, nothing went wrong. They played the set, played every note perfectly as they had practiced it. Charlie gave one final tapering riff, and then it was up to Amethyst and Selkie to say goodbye to the audience, dull rumble and sharp sting of fuzzy electric. The crowd cheered for them, though they didn't stay long enough to hear it.
They gathered back behind the stage and waited for the festival coordinator's associate to pay them up. Selkie had made it clear ages ago that he wasn't going to stand idly by while people screwed him out of what he was owed, out of his dreams, and Charlie gladly took a backseat to his ire. The man came and left, and so did they, exiting out the north end of the park and into the streets. They considered taking a cab, but Charlie said it was a nice night for walking, so they walked.
There was no heating in the apartment, but a generator had been purchased, and Amethyst had come home armed with a bulky heater. A system had been jerry-rigged to provide to the upper floors, and the broken windows were covered with cardboard and newspapers. It was a quiet tumbledown life, which was exactly how they wanted it. But they were on a roll, Charlie felt; money was coming in at a fine pace, enough so that they could afford an actual apartment if they wanted one. Their name was everywhere she turned, and now she no longer cared if the news was positive or negative. She even agreed with one article her aunt sent her from the Duluth News Tribune, that they did have an outdated sound with tired riffs, but that could fixed. Rough corners can be smoothed out. She was adrenalized by the music and what her music was doing, and she had no intention of stopping what had been created. It was taking her for a ride, and she was more than happy to roll down the window and stick her head out.
A couple weeks after Deadhead, Charlie burst through the door into the living room they shared. Red-gold sunlight shone through and spotlighted dust motes and the corpses of insects, lorded over by the skeleton of a rat lying like a strange hieroglyph in the corner. The sun was hanging low on the horizon, already knowing that the dark would soon hold a deeper power in the coming winter. Selkie was perusing a Tank Girl comic while Amethyst was reclining on a mattress.
"Alright, guys, I got awesome news. You know Bat House Records, the guys that Ransom signed over to?" She waited for their replies. "They heard our song on the radio and they want us to sign! Just called us up out of nowhere and asked for us personally! How sweet is this?"
Their reaction was less than what she had hoped for, had fantasized about the very moment she got off the phone with Dick Sheffield, the manager of the company. What she expected was wide-eyed amazement and raucous cheering, a group hug like in the movies, maybe a quick kiss on the cheek from either of them. What she saw more than put her off. Amethyst just sighed and tossed her long hair over her face, one eye unconcealed, and Selkie merely tried to manage a smile, forced it back.
"Guys, come on. I said Bat House Records want us."
Selkie stood up off the floor and wiped the dust off his pants. He glanced at Amethyst for a moment, the eye in the platinum hair blinked once, and he cleared his throat. "That's nice, Charlie, it really is. It's just that we, uh…um…"
"We're kinda tired," Amethyst said.
"What? How can you guys be tired at a time like this? We got way too much going on right now! We can't just sit around while this machine's running!"
Selkie looked at her, crossed his arms over his chest-hugging shirt. "Is that what you think we are now, Charlie? A machine? You think machines can't break down once in a while?"
"The hell're you talking about?"
Amethyst tossed her hair off her face and flipped off the mattress, landing cat-spry on her feet. She put her hands on her hips. "You mean you honestly can't see what you're doing here, Charlie?"
"What?"
"You've been running us ragged for months. All of us, even yourself. The problem is that you're so caught up in planning the next big thing that you can't see what's going on right now, what's right here in front of your eyes. We all need a break, Charlie. I think that the best thing for us to do is to just hold off on playing for a little while."
"What!?"
"Just a little while! We can get back to playing when we've had a rest—"
"No! We can't stop now! We can't blow this chance just because you guys are tired."
Selkie winced when he coughed. He took a step forward, still keeping a good distance away from her. "Amethyst is right, Charlie. Ever since we got off the ground, you've been calling all the shots, and you've been burying us in this thing like we don't have a say in it. I love the music, Charlie, but this is just crazy what you're doing."
She stared at him, eyes narrowing into grim slits. "You're taking her side now, Silky?"
"Charlie, my throat hurts. I've got band-aids on all my fingers. I haven't slept right in three days and I'm tired of hearing the same songs over and over again…I'm exhausted."
"Yeah, man, Selkie's exhausted. Let's just go out and we can talk about this later—"
"Butt out, Amethyst! You do not have any say in the matter."
Selkie reached out to put his hand on her shoulder. The moment she felt the air around her skin waver she reeled back, rounded on him with bared teeth. "Get away from me! Both of you just stay away from me! The last thing I need is advice from some freak who doesn't know if he wants to be a man or a woman. You know, maybe you wouldn't be complaining if you stopped thinking about what's wrong with the world and just grew a pair. You're spending so much money on crap you wear once and just forget about until the next time you see it like some tranny bitch. That's not helping us, Selkie. Look at yourself! You look like a dead damn prostitute! I'm the only one that's keeping this thing going. I'm the only one that's making sure we don't end up where we were, or did you already forget about that? Has all that hairspray finally gone to your head? You're not fooling anyone, and you don't fool me!"
Selkie just looked at her, eyes darkening and already moistening, and Charlie couldn't stand to see that anymore. She felt if she saw one more tear fall down his smooth cheeks she would knock the rest out of him. As she turned and stepped through the door, feeling like she could rip apart this whole stupid building if she wanted to, she heard Amethyst shout at her back. "Hey! Where do you think you're going!? You get back here and apologize right now!"
She sniffed, huffed, stormed down the hall. A big guy in a black Crüxshadows shirt opened a door and told her to knock off the racket. She drove her fist into the wall beside the door, powdered plaster and splintered wood digging into the red ripped skin of her knuckles and she didn't pause or hesitate to hear what the man had to say about that.
[ ]
Charlie sat at the smooth blue-green Formica table at the far end of the studio. Smoke rose up in a single quivering ghost of a worm from her last cigarette smashed into the blue-glass ashtray. Their new manager had sent them a list of figures, quarterly sales records for "Rose-Fingered Dawn" and she was the only one that wanted to look at them. They were doing alright. Not excellent or incredible, but decently alright. Selkie and Amethyst were in the sound room packing things up, done for the night, trying to brush shoulders against the layers of egg carton boxes stacked against the walls for soundproofing. Charlie heard the door open and shut, heard heavy footsteps and a sigh being milked for all it was worth. She turned around and tried to avoid their eyes, evade the month-old scorn and scars that she knew she had made.
Selkie was rubbing at a bruise on his neck, and she wondered where he'd gotten it. He'd been showing up late to practice, eyes red-rimmed and shot with sleeplessness. He'd been making mistakes, obvious ones that he should have been catching. And now the bruises.
Life works itself into grim circles, moments comprising themselves of the time around which they are interwoven. Charlie watched, feeling as though the world around her were a dream, watched as though all of this were an illusion or a broadcast made just for her and she had no say or part in the matter. The lights from the sound room bloomed brighter and the shadows of the reception room increased as well, in defiance or defense. Her senses had heightened and honed though she felt nothing, only stood and watched with the sales records still in her hands.
Amethyst sniffed, not deigning to look at her, and went to the little refrigerator that stood against the wall. They were both tired of yelling at each other, sick to death of nitpicking over tiny meaningless things that they held up as important for the sake of warfare. She opened the door and leaned in, grumbling to herself. Selkie looked at her, tired and sad green eyes there as he reached into his bag and pulled out a thick envelope. He fingered the edge, ran the skin of his index over the corner before he set it on the couch. He smiled at Charlie, tired and forlorn smile and she felt something in her stomach knot up and tighten. He turned around to walk through the door, his leopard-print coat and black choker staining her memory as the catch snapped closed.
Charlie felt like she had just put her foot out to touch the last step on a stairway to find that there were no more steps, gooseflesh crawling over her like worms and a constricted sensation in her throat. Amethyst cracked open a can of Coca Cola and looked at her. "What's your problem?" she said, one eyebrow raised, but Charlie wasn't paying attention to her. She ran past her, felt the whisper as the fabric of their shirts barely kissed and grabbed the envelope, ripped it open and stepped back as a dozen or so twenty dollar bills fell out onto the floor. She grabbed them, barely aware that she was tossing them onto the couch in a loose pile.
A letter was a white subversive in the sheets of pale green. She grabbed it and read it, read the words over again, blue lipstick kisses on the bottom by his name, ran a shaking hand through her hair. "Oh, god," she muttered. Amethyst said something to her, something that didn't bear to be heard again, and she was already out the door anyway.
"Selkie!"
She flew down one hall into another, following the pipes and old caged Klieg lights that hung from the walls, snakes and snake eyes. The shadows flew past her like a Victorian lantern show, kaleidoscopic masonry wheeling past in her and blending in her mixture of rage and fear. She wanted to hit her head on the pipework, wanted to climb up to the ceiling and jump down the four floors onto the edge of Munroe Avenue because she knew this was all her fault. It had been her words that triggered this chain that tore itself through her gut.
My fault, she repeated once and again in her mind, a mantra of grisly caliber. This is my fault.
She ran outside the building, her boots banging on the walkway and eyes darting through faces that were no more important to her than ants or flies. The evening was retiring the sun, painting the sky in oranges and pinks and causing tombstone shadows to writhe throughout the city. The wind whispered through her hair, another winter coming around the next corner, maybe tomorrow, maybe not. Two choices, West or East, fifty-fifty chance. She ran West down the street, hoping against hope that she would see him coming back, saying he'd made a mistake, and they could go home and everything would be fine.
Finally, she found him standing by himself on the corner of the street between Munroe and Third, leaning his shoulder against the lamppost. The yellow spotted fur of his coat, as fake as his confidence, seemed as if to bristle when she ran up to him. She grabbed him by the shoulder and twisted him to face her. His green eyes flared with fear and anger, then softened into that familiar look of shame. She hated seeing him cry, but seeing that tearless crushed look seemed infinitely worse.
"Selkie, what the hell are you doing?"
"What does it look like?"
"You know what it looks like! Look, come on, man. Let's just go home and we can talk things over."
There was a pause that the wind greedily devoured, neither of them wanted to fill it in. After a moment, Selkie looked over his shoulder, then back to her, his brittle emerald eyes framed in Kohl and resolve.
"I want the yelling to stop, Charlie. I just want all of us to get along again, like we used to. If this is what it takes, then I want to do it. I mean, you and Amethyst are all I've got, and when you two go at it every single day, it just…it really hurts me to see that, Charlie. I can't stand this anymore. I know that you care about the money so much, so I wanted to do something where you didn't have to worry about it."
A gust blew through them then, ghosts or succubi or wraiths or recollections of the other nameless forgotten refuse of the city, but Charlie knew it was just the wind. "I just want everyone to be happy," Selkie said, and the smile that plays on his blue lips drives the very air from her lungs.
"We are happy, Silky. I…we can still all be happy together. Amethyst and I can get along, I think. Look..." she paused as she sought the right words she wanted to say, the magic phrases that could bring him back to her. "I know everything has been my fault, Selkie. I know what I've been doing to you guys, I can see it. I just don't want us to be the way we were before all of this. I want us to be together, too!"
"What about the money?"
"I just don't want to live in poverty anymore. I don't want me or my friends to scrounge in the muck like pigs or rats. I don't want to see people giving us dirty looks just because we decided to take the same bus they did, or because we were just looking for something to eat. I'm tired of smelling like cat piss and rotten garbage. I want us all to be names that people can smile at, and if they think of our music as awesome or bad, I don't care. I guess that's too much, huh?"
"Not really, no. You know, Charlie, ever since high school, I saw you as this unstoppable, immovable entity. I knew that whatever you did, nothing was going to stop you. I loved that about you. You were the one that kept me safe from everything. You're the best friend in the whole world, Charlie."
Charlie wiped at her eyes and allowed herself a brief and shaky smile. She hadn't seen the little blue diamond-shaped crystal set into his choker; it looked nice. "You're being a stereotype, Silky. You know that, right?"
He smiled, too, small scar of his parted lips peeling to show near-perfect teeth. "Which one?"
She didn't say anything to that. By the time she thought of something to say, a royal blue Durango (if this were a movie, it would be black, Charlie thought), as sleek and sharp as a combat knife, slid expertly up to the curb. The engine rumbled like the sound of the earth falling apart, and a tinted window rolled down. A lanky man that looked like a warm corpse was seated behind the wheel, with Dracula eyes and a werewolf beard. When he spoke, it looked to Charlie that his teeth had been filed down to piranha points. All the better to—et cetera, et cetera….
"Hey, there." He had an undertaker's voice, too, just as she knew he would.
Selkie turned to him, smiled and raised one index finger, a small benediction for time. He turned back to her, and his rabbit tattoo seemed to glare at her, taking on a shade of green in this fading light that reminded her of rot and disease and of things that bubbled and spat inside the beakers mad scientists kept in their laboratories. He took her hand, caged it in fingers that were both calloused and as impossibly smooth as white porcelain.
"I'm not going away forever, Charlie. I'll come back after a few days, four at the most. Promise me you'll keep the heater running?"
"Yeah, man. We'll keep the place warm for you, Amethyst and me. We'll have a party, yeah?"
"Yeah. I'd like that."
Selkie leaned in and kissed her on the cheek, his smile and his touch searing into her brain, and the feel of his hand just before it slipped through her fingers. She watched him walk back to the man in the blue Durango, couldn't hear the conversation because the wind was crushing against her ear. She turned away and walked back to the studio, didn't need to see the hero in her life lean against the man's door peering through the window, see him open the door and climb in, shut the door and watch them both take off down the street.
She heard it all anyway.
[ ]
And Charlie's stomach rumbled. She told it without any words to shut up. She wasn't hungry, not really. She sat at the window, the only one in the apartment that hadn't been covered by plastic packing wrap, this one covered in wooden slats and she was peering through them, watching the sky darken as the sun began another personal apocalypse into the horizon. An elbow braced against the wall, head in hand, eyes to the hungry orange sky. She had stopped crying bitter salty tears, nothing left after the tide had washed everything else all away. The flesh around her eyes were red and raw and stung when she blinked, and it was so cold even with the heater running. Last week had been snow, and next week would be snow, but today the northland was granted a brief reprieve. Not that it mattered much.
And she heard Amethyst knock on the frame of the doorway. Charlie didn't stir, didn't blink. She heard the heavy footsteps creep closer and heard the shuffle of fabric as Amethyst sat down on the mattress, one of many purchases they had made for their friend's return. "You haven't rooted to the floorboards, have you?" she says, and the corner of Charlie's mouth twitches. She tries to say no, but no sound comes out.
"You should eat something, Charlie. You should get up and move around, do something. We can go hang out at the park, you and me, show those skater punks how to really roll."
No, thanks, she couldn't say. There is a clattering somewhere in the hallway outside of the apartment, a raised clamor, an opening and shutting of doors and shouts of confusion. There are voices she doesn't recognize, didn't want to.
And "Wait a minute," Amethyst says, and she gets up and heads out the door to find the source of the sound, leaving Charlie alone, alone. A dog barks somewhere on the floor above her. She thinks that pets weren't allowed in the apartments until she remembers that this was just an old husk of a complex that the city didn't want anymore, no regulations to bind them.
And it had been two and a half weeks since she overheard on the radio a news blip about a body that had been found in an alleyway outside of the Red Lobster, and that was all the way on the other side of town; Caucasian male, black hair, strangled and looted, lustmord. No identification, missing cash. Not him, she told herself, not him, not him. That was a description that fit sixty-five percent of the entire city. It could not be him.
And Amethyst shouting, shouting at whomever or whatever was making the noises that had stopped, but the voices were in the apartment, two voices and Amethyst, the world encroaching in on Charlie's sanctuary, or sepulcher, whatever it was that she wanted to call it and couldn't say out loud. The shouting stops, three pairs of footsteps seem to enter the room, and the silence was deafening.
"Hey, uh, Charlie?"
And she doesn't move. What's the point? What good would come of it? The sky looked so pretty.
"I guess I have to go now."
And with mountain-moving effort, Charlie turned her head, ignored the stiffness in her neck, and saw Amethyst standing in the middle of the room, looking uncharacteristically sheepish. Behind her, in the doorway, stood two figures, one very thin and frail-looking, the other tall and powerful, both women, both regarding her with curious and severe faces. "My friends want me to go back home with 'em," Amethyst explains, kicking at a loose nail in the floor, its disc-like head sticking up like an industrial mushroom. "Like, right now. You, uh…you stay strong, alright? I mean, it's what he would have wanted."
And Amethyst gave her a febrile smile before she turned away and stepped out of the apartment and out of her life. Her friends followed her, three shadows vanishing through the rooms and down the hall, footsteps of memories walking out of her mind. Her stomach rumbled as she turned back to the open window. With enough strain, she forces her vocal chords to work, opens her mouth and says "Good luck."
Yeah, she thinks to herself, he would have wanted it.
And the past-tense phrasing makes her want to throw up.
And she grabs her Stratocaster and strums a quiet chord.
And the sky looks so pretty.
[ ]
Author's notes for We're All Too Young:
Not a whole lot to say about this piece. The title was taken from the song "Too Young," one of my favorite songs of punk rock group The Adicts. I didn't want to call this piece by that title, as I had already written a story with that name for a collection of punk rock stories I had wanted to publish for a while now, and I hate to repeat myself or reuse material from other stories. It's essentially the same premise. I also think this story was very rushed; I have a problem with impatience whenever I get stuck with writer's block, and the usual results are A) a complete diffusion of the drive to write, which can last for days upon days, or B) an obvious rush job.
There's DNA from plenty of stories by Caitlin R. Kiernan and Poppy Z. Brite flooding this piece, almost all of their early works about shattered bands and torn hopes, fears of a goth youth and not-quite tough-as-nails crossdressers and gender nonconformists that deserve their own novels [I'm referring entirely to Kiernan's character Rabbit, who makes me cry every time I see his name], which makes my story seem [to me] to be just a little unoriginal.
Still trying to figure out how to show scene transitions on this site, hence the ugly brackets. Apologies for my ignorance.
Too young to laugh
Too young to cry
Too young to live
And too young to die
-"Too Young" by The Adicts