“Okay, I get that,” Nomad said. “But what’s so special about it?”
“It sings like a woman’s voice,” Terry answered. “And more than that. Dr. Cleave says it was built to be like…a mood ring of instruments. Says somehow Gherosimini engineered life into it, that the tones change depending on your mood, on the state of your mind. He says it spooked everybody out, but the few times he heard it played no two people could get the same sound from it. And we’re talking early tech, guys. Like primitive, before the big synthesizers that came along. I want to hear it. Just hear it, that’s all.”
A silence fell. The Five was scheduled for a gig at Staind Glass in Albuquerque on Saturday, the ninth of August. George figured, as he knew Terry already had, that if this visit to Eric Gherosimini was going to happen, it would probably be the following day, Sunday the tenth. And then Ariel broke the silence by saying, “I don’t think that’s all, Terry. I think that more than anything, you want to play it.”
Terry nodded. “Yeah,” he replied quietly. “That would be the truth.” He saw a Shell gas station over on the right, at the next exit. “Gas time,” he said, and took the ramp. As he left the highway, he noted in the sideview mirror that the dark blue pickup that had been behind them for many miles also took the exit. Terry turned again to the right at the end of the offramp; the pickup turned to the left, and drove away across the overpass.
“Get me somethin’ to eat,” Mike said, stretching forward so his back cracked. He had removed his earbuds and had heard most of Terry’s story. “Terry,” he said as the Scumbucket pulled up to the pumps under a yellow plastic sunshade, “it’s been a long time since ’68. I hope Lady Frankenstein don’t turn out to be a snaggle-toothed hag that couldn’t hum for her supper, bro.”
Terry didn’t respond; he was thinking of something Dr. Cleave had told him over the telephone, in one of their early conversations: I’ll have to caution you that sometimes the past is best left alone. But…if you really want me to write him…if you really do… I will.
It was time for bathroom breaks and for getting replenished with soft drinks or coffee, candy bars, popcorn or whatever was available in the station’s store. The place was painted yellow with red trim around the windows. Out in front was an ice machine and next to it a gizmo with a hose and nozzle to dispense air for fifty cents. Written on the plate-glass window in white soap-chalk were prices for sixpacks of various beer brands, liters of Coke and quarts of motor oil. There was a stack of tires for sale, though there was no garage facility. George had the credit card they used for gas, so he started pumping while the others stretched their legs, used the bathrooms around back or went in to buy something.
The station was being run by a heavy-set Hispanic woman and her teenaged son, who wore a black baseball cap bearing the purple Nine Inch Nails logo. Nomad bought a bottle of water from the cooler and drank half of it down as he walked back and forth alongside the Scumbucket and trailer, from shadow to searing sun and back again. The heat today was a beast, probably a hundred degrees in the shade. Ariel emerged from the station with a bottle of cold water and also an Almond Joy candy bar, which melted in its wrapper before she could eat both pieces. As she came over to join Nomad, she saw a Texas Highway Patrol cruiser slide up to the pumps opposite the Scumbucket, and a trooper got out.
Inside the station, where the air-conditioning rattled as much as the Scumbucket’s but worked at least twice as well, Terry bought a Coke and Butterfinger, and behind him Mike was ready with a ginger ale, a half-dozen glazed doughnuts and a bag of beef jerky. At the back, Berke had decided she didn’t want coffee and was making a choice among the brands of bottled tea in the cooler.
She had had an interesting night. After her drumkit was safely packed up in the trailer and the Mudstaynes’ set had ended, she’d gone off with some friends from Dallas and some friends of friends, two girls who knew Victoria Madden from Victoria’s Inkbox tattoo parlor in Austin. They were numero uno fans of the Mudstaynes, and they were going to a party at this other girl’s condo up in Highland Park, and later on Gina Fayne was supposed to drop by. So, since Berke was always open to the moment, she had climbed into the back of a cream-colored Mercedes CLK-350 convertible and, jammed in with sisters who smelled of Miss Dior Cherie and Amber Romance, went racing with the moon.
The party was full-on by the time Berke got there, maybe sixty women strong. Little lights twinkled in the indoor trees, candles burned where they wouldn’t get knocked over and burn holes in the Persian rugs, Gina Fayne snarled from Bose speakers, the scent of weed swirled around, Cosmos and Appletinis were poured into glasses with Glowstick stirrers, and caps popped from bottles repping a dozen microbreweries. Berke watched a fashion parade of beaters and plaid board shorts dance past. Somebody put a girly gangbang video on the TV, but it was hollered off. Second up was some gay male porn, again shouted off. The next time Berke glanced at the flatscreen, somebody had put on 13 Going on 30, and it was the part where Jennifer Garner starts doing the “Thriller” dance. That seemed to strike the right chord.
Berke was hit on almost continuously, by one or two or three at a time. She knew it was her cut guns, mostly. And though she was always open to the moment and had no problem instigating things, sometimes she just liked to find a place to sit, drink a beer, and observe. So she got a seat on the brown leather sofa, fashionably distressed, and watched the drama unfold. With sixty—and more coming in every few minutes, it seemed—lesbians in one condo, the alcohol flowing and the grass freely available, lethal drama was inevitable. Berke figured there had to be at least two hundred and twenty-four personalities in the place, and half of those would be derranged or embittered in a way that just saying “Chi Ku!”—swallow the bitterness—could not soothe. It might start with a rupture between two dyke-a-likes, or over the noise and music you’d hear somebody shout “I am Switzerland!” which meant war had been declared or a peace treaty broken and the girl in the middle was trying for diplomacy. A liplock might be attempted, an avoidance or pushaway countering it, and then the anger would uncoil like somebody’s black snake. Or, on the other hand, a successful public liplock and tongue massage might be for the benefit of an ex, show her she’s not the only game, and Berke had seen an ice-bucket dumped over firehouse-red curls due to that particular twist of the stiletto-heel.
It was a very entertaining show, this show after the show.
Berke noted that there were lots of young chicks in here. Like nineteen, twenty, twenty-one years old. Some really beautiful girls. Carried themselves with style and attitude. But everybody was looking for something, and hardly anybody knew what it was. Sex? Sure, but that was just the flesh-deep layer. It was hot flesh, it was freckled and moon-white, it was tanned and smooth, it was ebony and lustrous, it was young and soft and pliable. It was why everyone was here, it called the sisters together, and many would say this was what life was all about, this was the whole picture, this was the reality and essence of sex and domination and at the end of the night a last tender kiss or a caustic comment thrown like a slap. But, Berke thought, hardly anybody here really knows what they’re looking for…which puts us right where straights are.