He went down to the Reliant, parked by the brown Dumpster in the corner of the lot. He had stopped the car when he had made it over the Maryland line, pulled over on a side street to transfer the pillowcase to the trunk. Leaning into the trunk, he couldn’t resist, he had to have a look at the money again. And take a couple of hundred out for his pocket. Walking-around money, that’s all it was, until he could figure out what to do next.
Right now, Eddie felt kind of loaded down. There was the money in his wallet, twenties and tens, and it felt fat in the back pocket of his jeans. Also the cocaine inhaler in his front pocket, loaded with blow he had just bought from a neighbor, a scientific-looking guy named Leonard who dealt out of his cat piss — smelling one-room on the third floor. His car keys and Donna’s apartment keys in the other pocket. A half pack of ’Boros and a full hardpack, one in each pocket of his jacket. All of this made him feel heavy and slow, a funny feeling for a skinny guy like him. And naturally he felt jumpy, too.
After Eddie had copped the blow from Leonard he had gone back downstairs to his own place, got out of his concert clothes, and changed into Wheaton bar dress, a pair of jeans and a flannel shirt. He cut out a couple lines for himself, snorted them using one of the fresh rolled twenties, had a few drags off a cigarette, then went and had a seat on the can. Leonard’s coke was cut heavily with mannitol, and the baby laxative had loosened him up right away. He came out of the head and called Donna, left a message on her machine. He did some more coke, sat on the couch alternately smoking and wringing his hands, then packed himself up and booked, as the closeness of the apartment was driving him nuts.
He drove over to Hunter’s, a bar at the corner of Georgia Avenue and University Boulevard, and went inside. The place was loaded with the usual Friday night crowd, young white people, blue- and gray-collar, most of them already half in the bag. Eddie got a beer from the bartender, a guy who wrestled All-Country for Northwood High, and found his friends at a four-top near the small stage, where a Southern boogie band in the Marshall Tucker/Rossington-Collins mold was tuning up. The table was crowded with Buds and Miller Lites, a couple of dirty ashtrays, and three shot glasses holding the smell of Jack Black.
“Play some Krokus, man!” yelled one of Eddie’s friends to the guitar player, and the rest of Eddie’s friends laughed.
Eddie’s friends were freelance installers, just like Eddie, who worked on commission for several local appliance dealers. They made half of each installation fee, which sounded good on paper, but there were frequently call-backs and cancellations, which Eddie and his friends always blamed on the salespeople who never bothered to ask the right measurement questions when the customers were in the stores. Many of the salespeople were Jewish, making them the further target of Eddie’s friends’ anger and jokes. Eddie’s friends had a name for Jews: tapirs, after the long-nosed mammals one of them had seen once in a picture book.
Eddie himself was Jewish, but he had never gotten around to telling his friends. A name like Golden, you’d have thought they would have known, but they had assumed that Eddie had adopted one of those Vegas strip, crapshooter-cum-good-time-boy names like Bobby Montana or Nicky Diamond, and Eddie never told them different. He had grown up out in Layhill, in a mostly upper-class Jewish neighborhood, and his family had belonged to that Jewish country club out there, Indian Springs, which Eddie’s friends of course called “Israel Springs.”
Eddie had been the only one out of all his young relatives to end his education at the high school level, and after a couple of years of watching Eddie lie around the house blitzed on green, his parents had cut him off and told him he was on his own. This was okay by Eddie, who was embarrassed by his mother’s loud manner and his father’s loud clothing. He’d had it up to there with his successful cousins and the annual Passover dinner, which he could give two shits about, and the Atlantic City ashtrays and the other tchotchkes spread out all over the house. Eddie was a Jewish boy who had been raised right and with plenty of opportunity. But Eddie didn’t want to be Jewish. His secret ambition was to be a redneck, just like his friends.
“Thought you had a date,” said Mike Frane, a heavyset guy with big arms.
“Nah,” said Eddie. “I didn’t want to go to that show anyway.”
“Bunch of tail gunners,” said Frane, “down in D.C.”
“What about your girlfriend, though?” said Dave Marshall, the meanest of the bunch, sharp featured and thin lipped. “She go to that bunny-hop show alone?”
“I guess. I don’t know. So what?”
“Bet she’s got guys sniffing around her right now like a bunch of big dogs.”
“She’ll be all right.”
“Sure she will, man.”
“Come on,” said Eddie, suddenly noticing his empty bottle and looking around for a waitress. “Let’s drink.”
Eddie bought a round of beers and shots. They drained the shots and lit up smokes. It was early, but Marshall, Frane, and the third man at the table, a stupid, quiet guy named Christianson, all looked cooked. “Fuck or fight” was their motto, but none of these guys had a chance of getting laid, so Eddie knew the way the night would turn out. He got up and went to the pay phone, dialed Donna’s number. He left another message on her machine.
Eddie went back to the men’s room off the main bar, got in the stall, did a couple of jolts from the inhaler. Out in the main room he said hey to a nice guy named Tony, lit a cigarette, stepped up to the bar, and ordered another round. He carried the beers back to the table, went back for the shots. He had a ton of energy. He didn’t really want to sit down. He didn’t know what else to do.
Dave Marshall said something to a weak-looking guy who was on his way out the door. Marshall was a coward and had made sure the guy was alone before he called him a “fucking girl.”
The table was completely covered now with bottles and shot glasses.
“Thanks for the beers, man,” said Marshall.
“Yeah, Eddie,” said Frane. “What’d you do, hit the fuckin’ number or somethin’?”
Eddie winked and thought of his parents’ address. “Eighty bucks. Played seven-three-seven on the box.”
“Well, all right,” said Christianson.
“Was wonderin’ what it was,” said Marshall. “You’re spendin’ money like a nigger in a Seven-Eleven.”
Everyone laughed. Eddie Golden closed his eyes, drank down his Jack. He wiped his chin with his sleeve.
Eddie looked around the bar. He missed Donna. He wondered where she was.
Donna Morgan stood at the left corner of the stage at the 9:30, drinking down the last of her beer. Dimitri Karras was pushing through the crowd, a couple of Buds in his upraised hands, trying to get to Donna.
The bass man, second guitar, and drummer were out and prepping their instruments while “How Soon Is Now” played through the sound system. This would be the single Karras would think of when he thought 1986, the way “Brass in Pocket” would always mean 1980 and “Dancing with Myself” would always trigger 1981 in his head.
He got to Donna, handed her a beer. She leaned against the black wall and drank. Her forehead was bulleted with sweat. The place was ass-to-elbow, humid year round, and always smelled like something between piss and perspiration. It was the best live music venue in town.
Karras had wanted her to see the headliner, Tommy Keene, telling her that this was what the “real shit” was all about. He had talked about it all the way downtown, as they traded hits from Karras’s amber vial, and down the long hall entrance to the club, where Cure-cut Robert Smith look-alikes in long overcoats and other kids in mostly black lounged around, talking and smoking cigarettes. Karras was so excited that Donna didn’t have the heart to remind him that she had been in the audience the night Keene opened for Graham Parker at the Wax, the same night she had run into Karras when he had affected his new-wave mask. Karras had always been slow on the uptake when it came to memories; he liked to say that he “lived in the moment,” which Donna knew was his way of sugarcoating but not excusing his thoughtless nature.