City on Fire (9 page)

“Oh, I … that’s mine.” He stooped to retrieve it from a puddle of what he could only hope was beer. When he stood back up, the girl was exchanging frantic charades with someone across the room. Probably making fun of him; Charlie thought he’d detected the international symbol for drunk—thumb to mouth, pinky lifted like an elephant’s trunk. Well, screw her. “I’m going to go stand over here now,” he said.

“No, wait.” She grabbed the upper part of his sleeve. “I like the way you dance. Like you don’t give a shit who sees you. You’re not one of these grad-school poseurs just trying to fit in. People are afraid to let themselves go crazy like that anymore.”

She must be on something, Charlie thought, to make her eyes glassy like that, with the Christmas lights glimmering there like cheap stars; something that made her seem older and cooler than he was. He shrugged. “They’re only like one of my favorite bands.”

“Get the Fuck Out?”

“Beg pardon?”

“If you like Get the Fuck Out, wait till you hear the headliner.”

His mistake embarrassed Charlie. No wonder he hadn’t liked it that much. “No, that’s what I meant,” he said. “Ex Post Facto. Or Nihilo.”

“Nihilo,” she said, with a short i.

“Sure. They’re the best.”

“Really? My boyfriend does their sound. I could probably get you backstage. But you’d have to do something for me in return. Oh, fuck. I love this song. Come dance with me.”

“I don’t even know your name.”

“Call me S.G.,” she said over her shoulder as she forced her way past eddies of punks.

“Charlie,” he said, or mumbled. Then the record changed. A voice like an old friend’s came over the speakers: Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine. In the graffiti’d mirror above the bar, he still looked a mess, but someone apparently thought different, and who cared if she was a little overweight? His only regret was that Sam wasn’t around to see him.

They danced near a chest-high two-by-four running along the wall. Charlie might not even have noticed it except for the lemminglike rows of plastic cups crowded there, ice in various colors melting against the sides. He took one of the drinks so S.G. wouldn’t see he was underage. It was hard to remember himself that he was only seventeen, a timorous weed sprouting from his combat boots. As the song neared escape velocity, Charlie did, too. Impossible, that this was the same place he’d felt so lonely minutes before. In every direction were people, musky, funky, undulant. And here was this broad soft broad in her oversized jersey, boogieing closer, and when his chest accidentally smooshed against her tits, she just smiled, like there was a TV on the wall behind him and she’d seen something funny. Charlie tipped back the last of his translucent blue goo and with it still numbing the roof of his mouth and luffing the surface of his face away from his skull, he put an arm around her. “I’m glad you decided to talk to me,” he yelled. He was just assaying the wisdom or stupidity of explaining how he’d been stood up when she raised a finger to his mouth.

“Wait. This is the best part.”

He leaped over the half-second when his feelings might have been hurt and gave himself to the rest of the song, the blissed-out drone in the flashing smoky room with his sweaty hair stuck to his forehead and his jacket in his hand like a pom-pom.

When the record ended, Charlie looked at the Nazgûls circulating around them, any of whom might have been the boyfriend he’d just remembered. He was unsure what he was supposed to do next; his crotch bestirred itself happily when, in the invisible understory below shoulder height, she let the back of her hand rest against it.

“So hey, Charlie, about that favor. Are you holding?”

“Holding?”

“Like more of what you’re on. ’Cause whatever it is I definitely want some.”

“Um … fresh out,” he said. Sam had been the one who bought the drugs, when there were drugs. He wouldn’t have known who to talk to besides the guys at school who sold Valiums snuck from their moms’ medicine chests. And now the girl would pull away, disgusted; her hand had already drifted from between his legs.

“Bummer,” she said, tossing her long hair. “I totally would have made it worth your while.” She didn’t sound especially crushed, though. Maybe she was already too high to care. “But Sol can probably scrounge up something, if you want to come backstage with me. I just need ten bucks.”

Sol was the name of that lunkhead Sam knew; it must have been him outside, after all. “Wait. Solomon Grungy is your boyfriend?”

“Yeah, the sound engineer. I thought you said they were your favorite band.”

Which was when the lights went out again. The recorded music stopped mid-syllable. People began to surge forward, nearly knocking him down. “Listen up, scuzzballs …,” said a voice, and the rest was lost in the roar rising all around Charlie. It swept him forward, and though the crowd grew denser with every step—his advance was checked several yards short of the stage by a wall of spike-studded leather jackets—he was now closer than he had ever been to live music, save for at his bar mitzvah. The sheer monophonic power of this sound blew away any impression those tuxed fucks had left. It was an avalanche, hurtling downhill, snapping trees and houses like tinkertoys, taking up every sound in its path and obliterating it in a white roar. As Charlie felt himself being taken up into it, totally, unable to decide whether it was good or bad—unable, even, to care. On record, in their Ex Post Facto versions, the songs had been taut and angular, with each instrument playing off the others: the spastic drumming, the laconic bass, and Venus de Nylon’s summer-bright Farfisa. It was, in particular, the gap between the arch, faux-English talk-singing and the passionate squall of guitar that had drawn Charlie in. It was like the guitar was articulating the pain the frontman, Billy Three-Sticks, couldn’t allow himself to name. Now everyone from the record sleeve was gone except the drummer. One guitar was in the hands of a black guy with green hair, and the other was around the thick neck that had just appeared above him. It was the new lead singer, Sam’s latest friend. He was buzz-cut, dark-haired, savage, powerfully built. A person who did things, she’d said on the phone, ambiguously. His wet white straining face was only a few feet away, leaning out over all of them. He seemed to promise complete freedom, on the condition of complete surrender. And surrender happened to be what Charlie Weisbarger did best. His hands were on the shoulders of strangers. He was launching himself toward the singer to chant back at him the words that had once belonged only to Charlie and Sam: City on fire, city on fire One is a gas, two is a match and we too are a city on fire.

EVENTUALLY, IT WAS OVER. The lights were up, the room deflating. A disembodied voice was saying the band would be back at midnight for the second set, and Charlie felt himself contracting painfully back to the size of his regular body. By way of medication, he grabbed another half-empty drink from the rail along the wall, but it was mostly ice-melt. Then he spotted S.G. at the side of the stage, talking to another biker-looking guy. It was Charlie’s turn to grab her arm. It seemed to take her a minute to remember who he was. “What?” she said.

“We’re going to go backstage, aren’t we?”

“I thought you’d split.”

“I’ve got a twenty in my wallet. Don’t make me beg.”

She shrugged and turned back to the biker. “Cool if my friend comes, too?” The guy yawned and unhooked a mangy velvet rope from its bollard.

Backstage turned out to be a labyrinthine subbasement lit by bare bulbs and so crowded with staples and tags and tatters of old fliers that you couldn’t see what color the paint had been. They came to a squat room with a drain sunk into its floor. The only concessions to hominess were some votive candles and a snot-green sleeper-sofa, on which the singer was slumped. From the doorway, he appeared foreshortened, a narrow waist swelling into sturdy legs, legs giving way to massive shit-kicking boots. He had a chin-beard and a chipped front tooth and was covered from the neck down with tattoos. On the front of his sleeveless tee, the words Please Kill Me were scrawled in black marker. The sight of S.G. seemed to bring him to life. He patted the cushion beside him. “Hey, you. Get over here.” In two steps, she was across the room and landing knee-first on the couch. She put her arm around the singer’s shoulders and stared back at the doorway, obscurely victorious. Charlie couldn’t remember all of a sudden what people did with hands.

“You guys were righteous. Oh, Nicky Chaos, this is, ah …”

“Charlie,” Charlie said. Should he say something else? Great show? Oh, no, not Great show—anything but that! But Nicky Chaos wouldn’t have cared anyway. He had put his head close to the girl’s to whisper something. Charlie was confused; he’d thought her boyfriend was Sol Grungy. He couldn’t leave without showing weakness, but couldn’t stay without calling attention to his lack of a reason for doing so. Members of Get the Fuck Out were moving guitars and amps in the hallway behind him. From farther off came the buzz of the crowd, distorted by the cement floor. Then Nicky’s eye was on him again. “Are you gonna say something, Charlie, or are you just going to watch?”

“Which do you want me to do?” It just slipped out, really, and was sincerely meant: Charlie was ready to do whatever was expected of him. But it sounded, even to his own ears, like smart-assery. Nicky Chaos became intensely still, as if trying to reach some decision.

“Somebody get this guy a beer,” he said finally, “I kind of love this kid”—though the person to whom he was talking appeared to be Charlie.

Someone from out in the hallway set a cold beer on Charlie’s shoulder. The green-haired black guy, the guitarist. Charlie tried not to let his hands shake, but the beer rose away from him at exactly the same speed as he reached for it, recalling those kids on the LIRR. Then it stopped. His fingers closed, grateful, around the can.

When he looked back at the couch, S.G. appeared to have conked out with her head on a cushion. The singer looked down at her like she was money someone had dumped in his lap. “So how do you know our friend here, Charlie?”

Charlie blushed. “We just met.”

“Well, make sure to wear about three condoms if you plan on touching her,” the guitarist said dryly behind him.

“Hey. That’s my old lady you’re talking about, Tremens,” said another voice from the hall. It was an impossibly tall skinhead with safety pins through his eyebrows and both ears and a face like he’d sucked a lemon. Yep: Solomon Grungy, with whom Charlie had had the distinct displeasure that one other time, last Fourth of July. He’d been intimidating then, but seemed now like a watered-down Nicky Chaos. Similarly brawny, but larger and paler and less hairy. And less smart.

“Yeah, well, you’d better keep her away from Charlie here. I think she was about to give him a hummer,” Tremens said.

Charlie looked at the wall while Sol inspected him. Sniffed. “I know you. You’re Sam’s little lapdog, from the summer. You couldn’t get head from a cabbage.”

Tremens laughed, but Nicky Chaos said, in a steely voice, to leave Charlie alone.

“Yeah, well, tell him to stay away from my girl,” Sol said. Then he turned and stalked away, grumbling about the soundboard.

“Sounds like someone’s got the property disease again,” Nicky told the girl, who had opened her eyes at something someone had said. “It’s counterrevolutionary. Preposthuman. You’ll have to work on him.” Then, to Charlie: “Hey, were you planning to drink that?”

Charlie gulped down half of the beer, aware that at any minute they could tire of him and ask him to leave, and then he’d no longer be fucking hanging out with Ex Whatever. The drummer, Big Mike, had now wandered in, along with the new organ player, each nodding at Charlie as if they’d been expecting to find him here. The pop-tops of Rheingolds exhaled contentedly, and another cold one found its way into his hand. He wondered where they were coming from: a fridge, a cooler, some inexhaustible aluminum tree sprouting deep in the warren of wonders that was “backstage.”

Listening to them talk about who was in the audience reminded him that this was their first real performance. That gallery fag Bruno was out there, did you see him? And Bullet’s Angels, scary dudes, man, scary dudes. Plus the dissertationists, your Nietzsche Brigade. But has anyone seen Billy? Little bastard is probably too … Hey.… All the while, the girl on the sofa, sitting up again, gazed at Charlie. “So you know Sam,” she said. “You never told me that.”

“Yeah, we’re like best friends.”

Nicky seemed to grow interested, though Charlie had the feeling he was trying to hide it. “Sam Cicciaro? She here with you?”

“Well, she was, sort of, but she had to run uptown to take care of something. Hey, do you guys know where the 72nd Street IND is? I’m supposed to meet her up there if she doesn’t show soon,” he said, importantly. “I’d hate to miss the second set, but …”

S.G. got to her feet. “Speaking of which, let me go talk Sol down from the ledge before he fucks up your mix. Come on, D.T. You’ll be too fucked up to play.” Charlie made to follow her and the guitarist until she stopped him. “Sol can get pretty jealous. Probably not the best idea he sees you with me.” Laughter throbbed in the close chamber of the room.

“No, I just—” Except she’d left him behind. He wanted to explain to the newcomers, She was decent to me, but instead found himself saying, “She was going to give me a …”

Nicky Chaos laughed, and this was enough to drown out the little voice of self-hatred. “That’s good, man.”

Someone else said, “Oh, man. Charlie’s just a baby.”

“He needs a handle, though.”

“A handle?”

“Yeah. Like your lady friend there. How about Backstage Charlie?”

“Charlie Boy, Charlie Baby,” Nicky said. “Charlemagne. Don’t Squeeze the Charmin.”

“Or Charlie Blowjob. Chuck Fellatio.”

Charlie couldn’t see what was so funny, or whether they were laughing with him, at him, on him … Nicky Chaos’s hand on his shoulder was reassuring. “Come on, Char-man Mao. I want to show you something.”

Pretending not to see him wink, Charlie let himself be led deeper into the bowels of the club. There was no beer tree—just ceilings getting lower and lower, naked bulbs and dangling flypaper. “Watch your step,” the singer said. All kinds of crap crunched underfoot: wires, chicken bones, bits of shadowy brick. Charlie was getting nervous again. It was, what was the word, sepulchral. Catacomb-y. They stepped over the threshold of a tiled and doorless bathroom. “We’ve still got to play another set,” Nicky Chaos said. “You know what that means?” He drew a bit of plastic from his pocket. “Zoom zoom.”