They progressed to the bedroom, where Tiffany proved to be an experienced participant and also a loud one, as she announced to her neighbors, the city of Dallas and most of north-central Texas how rough she wanted it, and in what orifice. Either her neighbors were deaf or they just rolled over in bed and said, “Oh, that’s Tiffany being Tiffany,” because nobody banged on the wall. Tiffany wanted to do things that would’ve made her Barbies blush, but Nomad hung in there. But as Tiffany thrashed about on top of him, he had the disturbing image of Ariel on stage, bathed in blue light, playing her acoustic guitar and singing,
This song is a snake, winding through the woods,
It’s full of bitter venom and it would bite you if it could.
This song is a snake, coiled beneath the bed,
And if you love another girl there it will rattle by your head.
“Harder, harder, harder!” Tiffany shouted, but he could still hear the rattle.
When all was screamed and done, they slept. Then Nomad awakened when the man was standing next to the bed.
“Who are you?” His voice cracked. He grabbed the sheet and pulled it up to his chin like a naughty fop in a British sex comedy. But it wasn’t funny, because this kind of scene was why his father was dead. Nomad was ready to fight for his life if the guy pulled a gun.
The dude was skinny, had a mass of tangled blonde hair and wore glasses. He had good musical taste, though, because he was wearing a black T-shirt with the symbols on it, in white, from Led Zeppelin’s Zoso album. He was also either drunk or high, from the frozen grin on his face and the way he couldn’t keep from drifting side-to-side. “Tiffany?” he said, shaking her starry shoulder. “Come on, Tiff, talk to me. Okay?”
She was wiped, and she muttered something into her pink pillow and swatted at him as if he were a tsetse fly. He kept on pleading for her attention like a sad child.
Nomad decided it was time to pull on his drawyas and get out. He slid from the bed, got dressed in a hurry, but careful not to make too much noise in case the punk went ballistic. Before Nomad could get out of the room, Tiffany sat up, rubbed her eyes and started talking to the guy. It was one of those do you really really want another chance and why should I give you one conversations, made totally bizarre when Tiffany seemed to remember Nomad was there and she said, “You can use the phonebook in the kitchen…call a cab.”
“What’s the address here?”
She shook her head, unable to process the numbers, and the Zeppelin fan who obviously had apartment key privileges said without looking at Nomad, “Just tell ’em the Zone apartments on Amesbury Drive. They’ll know the place.”
Nomad just bet they would. He remembered passing a twenty-four-hour Arby’s near the entrance to the apartment complex, and when he called the cab company he said he’d be there waiting. He went out the door to the sounds of Tiffany’s voice whiplashing the guy and the poor sucker nearly sobbing.
Rock’n roll, baby!
So it was that Nomad approached the door of the suburban house on the weeping side of three o’clock. He tried the doorknob and found it was, sensibly, locked against people like him. He was about to turn his thoughts toward curling up on the porch when the door cracked open and a familiar face peered out.
“Hey, bro,” Mike whispered. He opened the door wider. “Heard a car pull up, figured it was either you or Berke.”
“Berke? She’s not here?”
“Must be a good party they’re havin’. She and her friends left not too long after you went off with your chiquita. George saw you go. Watch it!” Mike warned, because in the dim light coming from a hallway he saw that John had almost stepped on Terry, who was wrapped up in a sleeping-bag on the carpeted floor. A few feet away from Terry, Ariel was also in a sleeping-bag. George was on the sofa since he knew the guy who owned the house and had worked it out for them to spend the night here.
Nomad saw that a backyard light was on, and that the sliding glass door that led out was partway open. “You sleeping outside?”
“Nope. Woke up a while ago. I was just sittin’ out there, thinkin’.”
“Sounds heavy.”
Mike shrugged. Ariel suddenly stirred and lifted her head, and she looked groggily at the two figures, squinting to make out who it was. “John?” she said.
“Yeah.”
“Some of us are asleep,” she told him, and then she returned to her slumber.
Nomad thought that all fucking decent citizens were asleep at this hour, and everybody else was just thrashing around in their cages.
< >
“Hey,” Mike whispered, “you want a cigarette?”
Nomad nodded. He followed Mike out through the glass door and slid it shut. Out back, in the glare of a pair of security floodlights mounted on the underhang of the roof, a few concrete steps led down to a fenced-in area with a small lawn. There was a picnic table, a playhouse meant to look like a wilderness fort, and a kid-sized plastic pool decorated with decals of smiling seahorses. The family who owned the house had two children, both under ten. They were sleeping in a back room, safely away from the scummy musicians. In fact, their father had been a roadie a few years ago, had travelled with some bands who were successful enough to need roadies and actually pay them money, but that was then and now he was the manager of an AMC theater that he was proud to say had sixteen movie screens.
On the picnic table was a coffee cup that Mike had been using for an ashtray. Beside it was his pack of smokes, his Zippo lighter bearing the logo of the New Orleans Saints, a small notebook with a green cover, and a ballpoint pen. By the light of the floods, Nomad saw three or four butts in the cup. He knew that Mike was waiting for Berke to come home, or what for the moment served as home.
“She can take care of herself,” Nomad said, and realized this was a remark he’d made several times in the past, on occasions just like this.
And Mike’s answer was the same, too: “Oh yeah, I don’t worry about her, bro.”
They sat at the table, one on either side. Mike offered Nomad a cigarette, took one for himself, and he lit both of them up with the Zippo.
Nomad blew smoke into the night air. “You guys hang around much longer?”
“Not much. Caught about half of Gina Fayne’s set. Tight band, and she’s got some pipes, I swanee.”
“Yeah.” She was compared to Janis Joplin on the Mudstaynes’ website. Maybe not so much roughness in her voice, but she was only twenty. Nomad heard she was catching up to Janis in the department of drinking and drugs, and he hoped somebody wasn’t stupid enough to let her try heroin to complete the picture. He glanced at the pen and notebook. “You writing something?”
Mike frowned, as if this question was improper. “Just playin’ around.”
“With what?”
“My dick,” Mike replied, which meant it was not to be talked about any further. He smoked his cigarette some and listened for the noise of a car pulling up out front. That dog started barking in the distance again and another answered, but otherwise the neighborhood was Sunday-morning silent. “Nice house they got here,” he said. “I like that pool. Hot night, you could curl up right there.”