“Like dead dead?”
“Built his tomb with my own hands.”
I sat down on the couch in the lobby. The bitchy receptionist I’d spoken to earlier brought me back a cup of coffee. The morning was slow and weird. I was jet-lagged. My broken hand was almost useable. I never had it looked at. I still could barely make a fist.
Cheryl took me out to brunch. I’d never been to brunch.
“It’s just what stupid white people call breakfast after 9 a.m.,” she said.
She bought me mimosas and bacon, eggs Florentine, fresh bread baked right there. I ate the garnish, not understanding. She ate it too so as to not make me feel bad.
“Tastes minty,” she said.
She probably just felt bad for me, but she said that she had some session work with a band if I was interested. I jumped on the opportunity. Their lead guitarist had wound up in rehab. Pills.
“Interested? Yeah.”
One thing led to another. Another session. Another session after that. Before long, I was living above a little coffee and donut shop, Top Pot, on Summit Ave.
I was hooked on Nick Drake, Pink Moon. I used to play it on a never ending loop. It’s hard for me to think about that time and that neighborhood without internalizing a Nick Drake song.
It was a cramped apartment, and I really didn’t have anybody. I used to go and sit down in Top Pot. I was lonely. I still carried around a photo booth snapshot from that night in Seaside when the Ferris wheel jammed and we played Mrs. Pac-Man and Frog Bog. June and K would forever sit there, in black and white, grinning like devils. The picture was right before we went to see Madame Woo-the Dead.
One afternoon, I took a black Sharpie and colored K Neon out of the photos. She disappeared into the black void of my forgotten pleasures; June Doom became brighter.
She hadn’t left my head at all really. That’s how it was. I thought about her too much. Where she was. What she was doing. I carried the snap shot around with me everywhere. And if I felt especially alone, I’d take it out. Then she was there. June … a whole row of her, grinning — each cell only slightly different than the one above it, and all of them with a blacked-out apparition.
Our nervy new wave band with the violin player started the tour at the Crocodile in Seattle. Shows followed at the Northern in Olympia, Washington. Then we slowly made our way south — the Doug Fir Lounge in Portland, the Chapel in San Francisco, the Fulton 55 in Fresno, the Constellation Room in Santa Ana, Muddy Waters in Santa Barbara, Echo and The Smell in Los Angeles — before finishing up at the Til-Two Club in San Diego.
Los Angeles. That was the worst. The whole time I was there, I felt like my blood was glue. My teeth were packed solid with grits of sand. I drank way too much and didn’t sleep. I thought about Seth the whole time and his big plan to get us out to Los Angeles. Here I was, doing what he wanted to do. He was dead. I was alive. But there was no joy in it at all.
The whole tour, I kept looking out at the crowd of people and hoping to see June. I never did. We weren’t in communication. She had no idea how I felt about her. I’d just figured it out myself. She didn’t have a crystal ball. …well, maybe she did. That wouldn’t surprise me.
When the tour was over, we went back to Seattle. I figured the band was probably done with me and that I’d go back to doing session work for the label, but their manager liked me and asked if I’d like to fly out to Idaho, where there they were from, to work on some new material. I agreed.
In the meantime, I was back in the apartment. I missed a lot of things about New Jersey. Mostly the weirdos I left behind. My place was small and cramped but clean. Where were all of Feral’s boxes? Where were his VHS tapes and records?
I took out the photo strip.
I stared at June.
I grabbed my bag that I never unpacked.
I went back out onto the street.
28
Texas sun. Sweat. I waited outside the entrance to the lecture hall building, pretending to read the campus newspaper. I’d never read a newspaper in my life. I could see in through the glass door. The security guard at his desk was splitting time between watching a basketball game and checking the IDs of kids walking in. I wondered if the security guard was gonna hurt me as bad as Boyd had that night at the boardwalk.
The second he stood up to use the bathroom, I slipped inside and past his desk.
There were two lecture halls. One was empty. The other one was crammed solid with kids. I opened up the door and walked inside.
I’d seen this kind of thing in movies, a college lecture hall, but was never in one myself. It could easily hold three hundred kids. I looked up at them as they sat amphitheater style: legs crossed, slouched in their flip-up plastic chairs, but “Where’s June Doom” was all I thought.
I scanned the rows. There were too many faces. I kept thinking I saw other people that I knew, but they had no purpose being in Texas (or in some cases alive). Maybe all the dead were here in Texas.
I was standing in the aisle far too long. The door opened again, and the man who must have been the professor walked in. He carried a leather briefcase. He wore a corduroy blazer. His hair was long, gray, and slicked back. He was running this show. He whisked past me as he made his way to the podium in the center of the lecture hall.
I was running out of time, or it felt like I was running out of time, so I took the stairs two at a time. I passed rows of oblivious kids, who were focused on the professor … not me. I needed to find June. I was going crazy. I really was.
Why did I have to find her right that minute? Was something bad gonna happen to my brain? I had no real idea. I couldn’t really explain it. The thought had just been growing and growing. It sent me away from Seattle in a dizzying circle.
I took a flight to Austin-Bergstrom International Airport. I hadn’t slept the night before. Nervous energy. So much nervous energy — a steamroller crushing my spine. On the flight, I downed Jack and Coke after Jack and Coke, but they didn’t have any effect on me. I couldn’t get drunk, so I just stopped. Completely.
That was that. The last drink I ever took.
Our jet skidded into a wall of heat and dust and still-air. Then, after a cab from the airport to the university, I just kept asking, asking around on campus, till I found a girl who knew exactly who June was.
“Red haired chick with the Joy Division shirt? She’s in my Classicism vs. Neo-Classicism course.”
I bounded to the top of the lecture hall. The professor started to talk on the microphone. He welcomed everyone and made a comment about what a nice day it was outside, about how all the birds were going crazy for it and would probably shit all over his Jaguar.
“That’s all they seem to enjoy. Who am I to stop them?”
There were some laughs. I took a seat and looked down at him. He told another joke.
“I’d like to save all that bird shit for a year and dump it on their tree from above in a hot air balloon. Wonder how that would make them feel.”
Everyone laughed at that. I settled into my seat, still scanning the backs of all the kids’ heads.
Where was June?
The lights began to dim. I realized the professor was going to have an audio-visual accompaniment with his lecture. I sank down into my seat, relaxed, became comfortable with the idea. I wasn’t gonna find her right now, but somehow I’d weaseled my way into a college lecture.
The professor began to show slides. He began to talk about them. It was done in such a way … a way I’d never even considered before. I found myself surprisingly enthralled. I got sucked into his lecture, entranced by everything he was saying. I almost had to slap myself.