Beautiful City of the Dead (2 page)

"I never told you a lot of things."

"You're serious? You can really play?"

I was serious. And yeah, I could play.

But he didn't give me the OK yet. "I'll have to talk to Butt and Jerod. There was this other guy we were going to check out."

"Sure. I understand."

I plugged in that night and let it rip. I figured I could make with the rolling thundergod sound for about fifteen minutes before the neighbors called the police. It felt good to wrap my hands around the neck of my Ibanez. It felt good to stand in front of the amp and have the bass throb deep inside me.

Other than me and the Ibanez, the house was empty. Most nights that was how it went. My dad worked as a cook at the Chimes Diner and usually was gone before suppertime. So I had the house to myself.

I dug through my records. Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest: the ancient kings of metal, all on vinyl from the olden days.

I cranked my tunes pretty loud when my dad wasn't home. I played along, real heavy and hard. And I synched up my heartbeat with the steel throb. The bass and my pulse together as one.

I kept asking myself.
What kind of a name is Relly?
I wrote it out a couple of times in my special notebook, just to look at it. Big letters. Small. Fancy. Plain. I even did one version like it was made out of chrome, raised letters all shiny. But anyway I wrote it, the name didn't make any sense.

Lots of kids I know had stupid Deadhead names like Casey Jones and Panama and Garcia. Then there was the J squad: Jeremy and Jessica, Jason and Jennifer. Some were from the flower-power days: Moonwise, or Windstar. I swear I knew a kid in seventh grade named Breathe.

So the next day I asked, "What does 'Relly' mean?"

"What difference does it make?" he said.

"I don't know. I just figured I should—"

"Well, where does your name come from?"

"I told you. My dad got it from some murder mystery. You know, square-jawed guys with guns, beautiful ladies
in slinky silk dresses. All he does when he's not working is read old paperbacks."

Relly gave me that dead-serious look again, like he was a sniper and aiming down the sights of his gun. "You really want to know?"

"Yeah. I never met anyone before who—"

"It came to my mom in a dream." He waited for me to laugh. I didn't. He kept going. "The night before I was born, she had this dream. The name came out of nowhere. Later, she looked it up in a hundred books, old ones, new ones, and the name can't be found."

"So you think it means something?"

"It's got to, right? Every name means something."

"I guess so."

We were hanging around in the hall, waiting for the buses. Most everyone was gone home by then. "I asked Butt and Jerod about you trying out for the band," he said. "They're not thrilled about it. Still, they said it was OK. You got to understand: Butt's like a little kid. I mean he's the best drummer I've ever played with. Only he's kind of immature. I mean, his jokes are pretty scabby. You'll have to get used to that. And Jerod said he'd been in a band with a girl once before and he hated it."

"If you don't think it's a good idea, we'll just forget it."

'"That's not what I'm saying."

"All right. Then when do I come over?" I asked.

"Tomorrow night. You don't have to haul your amp. I've got one you can use."

H
E TOLD ME HE LIVED
on Slime Street. It was really called South Lime, but the sign on the corner was pretty beat. The period was missing after the
S
. So Relly ran the letters together and made
Slime.

His block wasn't exactly a slum. But it sure wasn't the best part of town. Once the sun was down on Slime Street, there wasn't anyone around except Relly and his mom and a few stray cats.

There weren't any real neighbors. Just abandoned warehouses and old boarded-up stores. Hardly any cars, nobody walking. All the buildings kind of leaned together like sick creaky old men. Most of the windows were dead black. That first night I went, a tongue of cold air came licking down from the north and got caught on Slime Street. It turned and turned, and made a little whirlwind, sucking up paper cups and dead leaves and bits of plastic.

His house was three stories tall. And real narrow. So,
between two empty lots, it looked like a tower.

I stood at the front door for a while, thinking I should just turn around and go home. They wouldn't want me. We'd go through a couple of tunes and they'd give me that fake little smile that means "Thanks, but no thanks."

It was actually a double door, with an arched top, like the entrance to an old church. The paint looked about a hundred years old, peeling off in long curls. No doorbell. He'd told me that already. "There's some rocks on the front step. Just use one of those to bang on the door. My mom will hear it."

And she did. The door came open. "You're the girl," she said. No "hello," or "come on in." She just stood there looking me over. "You're the girl," she said again.

That wasn't obvious? "Yeah. Relly said I should—"

She opened the door wider and I figured that meant I should go in.

My bass case kind of banged against the door. I was trying to pass through without getting too close to Relly's mom. "Sorry, sorry," I said. But she wasn't the type to care about a few digs in the woodwork.

She was no suburban mom. Not by a long shot.

Like Relly, she was tall and thin. And she had the same long black hair. From the way he'd talked about her, I thought she'd be an old stoner metalhead. She actually remembered going to see Orion Hedd. "Totally changed my
life." He repeated this to me. And it sounded like he'd heard her say it about a hundred times. "I'll tell you that. Nothing was ever better. It was like a shimmering magic wind came blowing through. Right down from the stars, a cold wind from the seventh heaven."

But with me, she didn't get into the '70s trippy weirdness. At least not that first night.

She pointed to the stairs. "You'd better leave your coat on. It gets cold up there." And that was that.

S
O
I
CLIMBED THE
three flights of steps to the attic. The stairs didn't creak. They whispered. Or that's what it seemed like as I went up. Faint voices from far away.

At the first-floor landing, I heard the steady thump of Butt's kick drum. At the second, a low growling riff reached my ears. By the third floor, the whisper of the stairs was drowned out by drums and guitar and someone's maniac yells.

I got to the attic and pushed open the door. A wave of sound broke and poured around me. They were good. Already I could tell.

"Hey, all right!" Relly said. "You came."

"I said I would."

He pointed to Butt, behind his drum set. "There he is. Don't smell so good and can't hardly talk. But he can drub those drums better than the best." Relly had a different way of speaking now. A little louder. Kind of brash and
bragging. This was his turf, unlike school. These were his friends, his allies, his band mates. He could be more himself here than in a school filled with two thousand strangers. "And this is Mr. Jerod Powers, the Golden Boy."

Jerod was so good-looking I almost had to turn away. I mean it was too much, all that wild blond hair and piercing blue eyes and pouty lips. I guess every band needs a pretty boy. Didn't matter if he could sing. But as it turned out, he was pretty good.

"So what do you think?"

I didn't answer at first. What did he want me to say? "Yeah, Butt's a shaved gorilla and Jerod should be in the movies?"

Then I understood. He meant the attic, and what they'd done to make it a practice space. "It's great, it's great," I said. And I wasn't just talking. It truly was an amazing place.

The ceiling went way up, with dozens of weird angles like a cathedral. It was all raw boards. And the ooze of hundred-year-old sap hung down in hard amber drops.

They'd pushed mountains of abandoned junk to the edges of the attic to make room for the band. There was a wardrobe full of old clothes, wooden crates and cardboard boxes, stacks of books, toys, rusty tools. I saw a floor lamp in the wreckage. The shaft looked like bone and the shade like dried animal skin. An old army helmet hung on the
wall, along with a velvet painting of a snarling black panther, and a wedding dress in a tattered plastic bag.

The other band I'd played in, and that was only for a few weeks, had practiced in a cellar. Relly's attic was full of junk, too. But it felt just the opposite of some wet, smelly basement. With no close neighbors, they didn't have to insulate for the noise at Relly's. No mattresses on the Walls. No foam on the windows or layers of Curbside Special carpet nailed to soak up the sound.

What I liked best was the space over our heads. It seemed to go up and up forever.

"Y
OU CAN PLUG IN OVER HERE,
" Relly said, pointing to a bass amp all covered with stickers and spray paint.

So I unpacked the Ibanez and uncoiled my cord and got ready.

Jerod said, "It's just a tryout, OK? We're thinking about other guys too. We've got to find exactly the right one. So don't get your hopes up."

And Butt kept looking at me, staring, actually. I guess he was wondering if I had what it took. The bass player and the drummer have to be locked in like two gears in a machine. They've got to mesh and turn together perfectly. He looked at my hands, which aren't huge. And he looked at my bass, which wasn't huge or flashy either. I'd saved for two years to buy the Ibanez. Flipping burgers, "Do you want fries with that?" never getting the smell of grease out of my hair, saying "Have a nice day" to mean, huffy customers. Two years of fast-food stink so I could buy the
bass. Butt looked me over and he didn't say a word.

"So what do you know?" Relly asked.

"You guys do any Zeppelin?"

Butt nodded. Relly whanged his Strat, making a big grinding chord. Jerod grabbed the mike with both hands.

"How 'bout 'Black Dog?'" I asked.

A little pause. A little gap of silence, like they were taking in a deep breath, all three of them at once. I thought maybe I'd said the wrong thing, that I'd shown myself to be a feeb and a loser.

But no, it was exactly the right choice. Did they know "Black Dog?" Oh yeah. Could they play it? Oh yes indeed.

Maybe it was all strutting showoff. Or it could have been they wanted to blow away the girl wannabe bass player. Or maybe it was meant to be. Because afterward Relly told me they'd never played like that. Butt nodded, grinning and working his kick drum pedal. And even Jerod had to admit they'd never sounded better.

We ripped into the first tune like we'd been playing together for years. Butt was heavy as ten sledgehammers. Me and Relly doubled the snakey riff, note-for-note perfect. And Jerod was on top, doing his best sexy tomcat yowls.

And the whole band seemed to lift right off the ground. I mean it: like suddenly we went from being lowly humans to brilliant angels. It was an amazing feeling, a scary, gasping buzz. My fingers moved and the logical part of my brain kind of shut down. Pure sound came roaring out. Loud and wild and relentless. And we rose, all four of us, rose up free as flames, no longer trapped, pouring ourselves up and out.

U
NTIL THAT NIGHT
, Relly wouldn't tell me the name. This seemed kind of stupid. How was he going to get famous if he wouldn't reveal the name of his band?

"Not till everything is in place," he'd said. "When we're ready, then we conquer the universe."

He wiped the neck of his Strat and looked at the other two guys. "Well?" he said.

"She's in," Butt said. He did a drumroll and then whacked a crash cymbal. "I say she's in."

Jerod shrugged. "Sure. Whatever."

Relly nodded. "Welcome to Scorpio Bone."

"That's the name of the band?" I asked.

"Scorpio Bone," he said again, louder.

Then he played a dark, crawling riff. Butt joined him, just tom-toms and kick drum, a deep throb. Finally Jerod wailed on top of the noise, "Scorpio Bone!" like this was the theme music to some monster metal movie.

"You're in," Relly said when they'd finished. "Welcome."

We played another hour or two. It was mostly covers. A lot of Black Sabbath and Judas Priest, and one more Led Zeppelin tune, a weird, looming version of "The Ocean."

Then Relly taught me the bass line for one of his originals, "The Three-Prong Crown." It didn't come easy. But it came right. I mean I had to work at it. Still, the line fit my hands and the chords fit the words. And the sound fit my brain.

"B
UT SCORPIONS DON'T HAVE BONES
," I said the next day at lunch. "They have a shell, right? Like armor. They're arachnids. They don't have any bones."

Up till then I thought Relly was just plain weird. But I didn't know how weird till he started explaining the name. "Don't you see?" he said, whispering like it was some earthshattering secret. "That's what makes the name so cool. It's something that doesn't exist but it's real. Like if scorpions had bones, what would they be? They'd be us."

Butt took two pieces of baloney off his sandwich and ripped holes in the middle. Then he slapped them on his face like a mask and started singing the old
Batman
theme music.

"I don't get it. How can something be real and not real at the—"

"That's the whole point."

We were in the cafeteria, me and Butt and Relly, at a table off in the corner. "Did you believe in Santa Claus when you were little?" He didn't let me answer. "You sure did. And it was cool, right? Some fat magic maniac comes out of the sky with presents and a sleigh and zero-gravity reindeer. Christmas Eve was the best, right? But it's not real. Not like school and pizza and scumpack teachers yelling is real. So our name is ten times more cool. Like in some other world scorpions do have bones."

In some other world? "What are you talking about?"

"Nothing is what it seems to be," Relly leaned close and whispered. "You know, like the whole world is wearing camouflage. Everything and everyone is hiding." Butt wasn't paying much attention. He could only take so much of this weirdness. "They're all like puppets. Only, they don't want you to see their strings. Every person in the world. They all tell lies. They all wear a mask."