The Last Days

Chapter 5

It was still blaring its horn, because that was clearly helping, and the two guys on the back of the garbage truck were laughing, pointing their giant-gloved fingers at me. A pair of bike messengers shot past in polka-dotted Lycra, me and my dogs just another bunch of clowns at the rodeo.
The whole procession swerved around some street work ahead, and suddenly my feet were slipping across an expanse of loose sand. I spotted an abandoned pizza box and planted my sneakers on it. Then I was skidding, my free hand in the air, riding the box like it was a boogie board at the beach.
Just when it was getting fun, the garbage truck began to slow, pulling up in front of a big apartment building with long, turd-shaped garbage bags piled outside. The truck filled the whole street, leaving nowhere for the pack to go.
Our momentum stalled, and the pack's energy wrapped itself into a tightly wound bundle of nipping and barking. By now the little dogs could hardly even stand, reduced as they were to a spaghetti mishmash of leashes and legs. Even the mastiff was tired out, her long, curving tongue lapping at the air.
One of the garbage guys swung himself down to work a big lever on the side of the truck, its huge maw opening in front of us with a metal screech. The other jumped off and shouted at me through the din.
"Hey, boss! You didn't take those pooches into that alley back there, did you?" He pointed over my shoulder, but I knew which one he meant.
"Um, yeah?"
He shook his head. "Bad idea. Even we don't go down there no more. Not worth it."
I blinked, still trying to catch my breath. "What do you mean?"
"Didn't you hear about the crisis? Way things are going, you got to be respectful. Let the rats have some of the city back, you know?" He laughed, patting the rumbling metal expanse with his gloved hand. "Especially if you don't got a big truck to protect you. Bunch of pooches isn't enough these days."
He turned to the pile of bags behind him and kicked one viciously. Waiting for a second to make sure no tiny creatures scattered from it, he shouldered the bag and began to feed its length into the giant steel maw.
I blew out a slow breath, knelt down, and started to untangle my dogs, wondering what they and the Sanitation Department knew that I didn't. Moz had said some paranormal stuff about the woman who'd tossed him her guitar - that she was part of something bigger - and I'd read there was a crime wave now, to go along with the heat and the garbage.
But wasn't it always like this in the middle of every long summer, brains beginning to zigzag in the fawesome temperatures?
Of course, the day before, Moz and I had watched that black water spraying out of a fire hydrant, as if something old and rotten had been dredged up beneath the city. Despite the heat bouncing off the asphalt, I shivered, thinking about what I'd seen back in that alley. That cat was in charge of all those rats, one glance had told me. Like my dogs, those glowing eyes were one big pack, but the feline had total control, no jostling or butt-sniffing required, like they were all family. And that just wasn't natural.
The delivery truck guy blared his horn at me one more time - like it was me in his way and not the garbage truck - so I gave him the finger. On the other side of his glass, his face broke into a smile, as if a little disrespect was all he'd been looking for.
Before the garbage truck was done, I got the pack unwound and back onto the sidewalk. We headed across town, toward the bottom end of Times Square, where we were supposed to meet Moz.
Maybe we could see my drummer after all. The hundred-yard dash had finally worn my dogs out, and the mastiff trotted ahead, tail high, having taken over through the mysteries of dog-pack democracy. Maybe it was because she'd led us down the street to safety, or because the Dobermans had fled first from the rat-infested alley.
Whatever. At least it was all decided now, and someone other than me was in charge.
8. CASH MONEY CREW
-  MOZ-
Times Square was buzzing.
Even in broad daylight, the battery of lights and billboards rattled me, rubbing my brain raw. Huge video screens were wrapped around the curving buildings over my head, shimmering like water in the rain, ads for computers and cosmetics flickering across them. News bites scrolled past on glittering strips, punctuated by nonsense stock-ticker symbols.
I was an insect in a canyon of giant TVs, mystified and irrelevant.
And penniless.
I'd never felt poor before, never once. I'd always thought it was moronic to ogle car ads and store windows, but now that I needed it, I saw money everywhere - in silver initials on thousand-dollar handbags, woven like gold threads into suits and silk scarves, and in the flickering images overhead. On the subway coming up here, I'd coveted the dollars invisibly stockpiled in magnetic strips on MetroCards, even the change rattling in beggars' paper cups.
Money, money, everywhere.
I couldn't go back to my piece-of-crap guitar after that Stratocaster. I had to own that same smooth action, those purring depths and crystal highs. Of course, maybe it didn't have to be a '75 with gold pickups. In the music stores on Forty-eighth Street, I'd found a few cheaper guitars I could live with, but I still needed to scrape together about two thousand bucks before the crazy woman returned.
Problem was, I had no idea how.
I'm not lazy, but money and me don't mix. Every time I get a job, something always happens. The boss tells me to smile, pretending I want to be at work when I'd rather be anywhere else. Or makes me call in every week to ask for my hours, and it turns into a whole extra job finding out when I'm supposed to be at my job. And whenever I explain these issues, someone always asks me the dreaded question, If you hate it so much, why don't you just quit?
And I say, "Good point." And quit.
In that flickering canyon of advertising, two thousand dollars had never seemed so far away.
Zahler was waiting at the corner where he'd said to meet, seven dogs in tow.
He was panting and sweaty, but his entourage looked happy - gazing up at the signs, sniffing at tourists passing by. It was all just flickering lights to them.
No jobs, no money. Lucky dogs.
"How much you get paid for that, Zahler?"
"Not enough," he panted. "Almost got killed on the way down here!"
"Yeah, sure," I said. One of the little ones was nibbling me, and I knelt and petted him. "This guy looks deadly."
"No really, Moz. There was this alley... and this cat."
"An alley cat? And you with only seven dogs." One of which was gigantic, like a horse with long, flowing hair. I stroked its head, laughing at Zahler.
Still panting, he pointed his free hand at one of the little ones. "It's all his fault, for peeing."
"Huh?"
"It was just - never mind." He frowned. "Listen, you hear that drumming? It's her. Come on."
I grabbed the monster-dog's leash from Zahler, and then two more, pulling the three of them away from a pretzel cart whose ripples of heat smelled like seared salt and fresh bread. "So, you think Pearl will approve of this drummer?"
"Sure. Pearl's all about talent, and this girl is fexcellent."
"But she plays on the street, Zahler? She could be homeless or something."
He snorted. "Compared to Pearl, you and me are practically homeless. Didn't you see that apartment?"
"Yeah, I saw that apartment." I could still smell the money crammed into every corner.
"And there were stairs. More floors than we even saw."
"Sure, Pearl's insanely rich. And this is supposed to convince me she can deal with a homeless drummer?"
"We don't know that this girl's homeless, Moz. Anyway, all I'm saying is that if Pearl can deal with you and me, she's no snob."
I shrugged. Snob wasn't the word I would've used.
"Are you still bummed because of what she did to the Riff?"
"No. Once I got used to the idea of flushing all those years of practice down the toilet, I got over it."
"Dude! You are still bummed."
"No, I mean it."
"Look, I know it hurts, Moz. But she's going to make us huge!"
"I get it, Zahler." I sighed, angling my dogs away from a hot-dog cart. Of course, practicing yesterday had hurt - but so did getting a tattoo, or watching a perfect sunset, or playing till your fingers bled. Sometimes you just had to sit there and deal with the pain.
Pearl had rubbed me raw, but she knew how to listen. She could hear the heart of the Big Riff, and she hadn't done anything I wouldn't have if I'd been listening. I'd had six years to figure out what she'd recognized in six minutes. That's what made me cringe.
That and the whammy she'd put on Zahler. He wouldn't shut up about how brilliant Pearl was, how she was going to make us big, how things were finally going to happen. Like all those years with just the two of us had been a waste of time.
Zahler had a total crush on Pearl - that was obvious. But if I said so out loud, he'd just roast me with his death stare. And talk about wasting time: girls like her were about as likely to hook up with boys like us as Zahler's dogs were to pull him to the moon.
"Okay, I thought you said she was a drummer."
"What?" Zahler cried above the rumble. "You don't call that drumming?"
"Well, she's got drumsticks. But I thought drummers were to supposed to have drums." I shook my head, trying to keep my three curious dogs from surging into the rapt crowd of tourists, Times Square locals, and loitering cops surrounding the woman.
"Yeah, well, imagine if she did have drums. Listen to how much sound she's getting out of those paint cans!"
"Those are actually paint buckets, Zahler."
"What's the diff?"
I sighed. Painting had been one of my shorter-lived jobs, because they just gave you the colors to use, instead of letting you decide. "Paint cans are the metal containers that paint comes in. Paint buckets are the plastic tubs you mix it up in. Neither of them are drums."
"But listen, Moz. Her sound is huge!"
My brain was already listening - my mouth was just giving Zahler a hard time out of habit and general annoyance - and the woman really did have a monster sound. Around her was arrayed every size of paint bucket you could buy, some stacked, some upside down, a few on their sides, making a sort of giant plastic xylophone.
It took me a minute to figure out how a bunch of paint buckets could have so much power. She'd set up on a subway grate, suspending herself over a vast concrete echo chamber. Her tempo matched the timing of the echoes rumbling up from below, as if a ghost drummer were down there following her, exactly one beat behind. As my head tilted, I heard other ghosts: quicker echoes from the walls around us and from the concrete awning overhead.
It was like an invisible drum chorus, led effortlessly from its center, her sticks flashing gracefully across battered white plastic, long black dreadlocks flying, eyes shut tight.
"She's pretty fool, Zahler," I admitted.
"Really?"
"Yeah. Especially if we could rebuild this chunk of Times Square every place we played."
He let out an exasperated sigh. "What, the echoes? You never heard of digital delay?"
I shrugged. "Wouldn't be the same. Wouldn't be as big."
"Doesn't have to be as big, Moz. We don't want her playing a gigantic drum solo like this; we want her smaller, fitting in with the rest of the band. Didn't you learn anything yesterday?"
I glared at him, the anger spilling out from the place I thought I'd had it tucked away, rippling through me again. "Yeah, I did: that you're a total sucker for every chick who comes along with an instrument. Even if it's a bunch of paint buckets!"
His jaw dropped. "Dude! That is totally unfool! You just said she was great. And you know Pearl's fexcellent too. Now you're going to get all boys-only on me?"
I turned away, thoughts echoing in my brain, like my skull was suddenly empty and lined with concrete. Between the Stratocaster that wasn't mine, the other guitars I couldn't afford, Pearl's demolition of the Big Riff, and now the thought of paint buckets, it'd been too many adjustments to make in forty-eight hours.
I almost wished it was just Zahler and me again. We'd been like a team that was a hundred points behind - we weren't going to win anything, so we could just play and have fun. But Pearl had changed that. Everything was up in the air, and how it all came down mattered now.
Part of me hated her for that and hated Zahler for going along so easily.
He kept quiet, wrangling the dogs while I calmed myself down.
"All right," I finally said. "Let's talk to her. What have we got to lose?"
We waited till she was packing up, stacking the buckets into one big tower. Her muscles glowed with sweat, and a few splinters from a stick she'd broken rolled in the breeze from a subway passing underneath.
She glanced at us and our seven dogs.
"You're pretty good," I said.
She jutted her chin toward a paint bucket that was right side up and half full of change and singles, then went back to stacking.
"Actually, we were wondering if you wanted to play with us sometime."
She shook her head, one of her eyes blinking rapidly. "This corner is mine. Had it for a year."
"Hey, we're not moving in on you," Zahler spoke up, waving his free hand. "We're talking about you playing in our band. Rehearsing and recording and stuff. Getting famous."
I cringed. "Getting famous" had to be the lamest reason for doing anything.
She shrugged, just a twitch of her shoulders. "How much?"
"How much... what?" Zahler said.
But it was obvious to me. The same thing that had been obvious all day.
"Money," I answered. "She wants money to play with us."
His eyes bugged. "You want cash?"
She took a step forward and pulled a photo ID card from her pocket, waved it in Zahler's face. "See that? That's from the MTA. Says I can play down in the subway, legal and registered. Had to sit in front of a review panel to get that." As she put the card away, a little shiver went through her body. "Except I don't go down there anymore."
She kicked the upturned paint bucket, the pile of loose change clanking like a metallic cough. "Seventy, eighty bucks in there. Why would I play for free?"
"Whoa, sorry." Zahler started to pull his dogs away, giving me a look like she'd asked for our blood.
I didn't move, though, staring at the bucket, at the bills fluttering on top. There were fives in there - it probably totaled a hundred easy. She had every right to ask for money. The world was all about money; only a lame-ass bunch of kids wouldn't know that.
"Okay," I said. "Seventy-five a rehearsal."
Zahler froze, his eyes popping again.
"How much for a gig?"
I shrugged. "I don't know. One-fifty?"
"Two hundred."
I sighed. The words I don't know had just cost me fifty bucks. That's how it worked with money: you had to know, or at least act like you did. "Okay. Two hundred."
I held out my hand to shake, but she just passed me her business card.
"Are you crazy, Moz? Pearl's going to freak when she finds out she has to pay for a drummer."
"She's not paying anyone, Zahler. I am."
"Yeah, right. And where are you going to get seventy-five bucks?"
I looked down at the dogs. They were staring in all directions at the maelstrom of Times Square, gawking like a bunch of tourists from Jersey. I tried to imagine rounding up customers, going door-to-door like Zahler had, putting up signs, making schedules. No way.
My plan was much better.
"Don't worry about it. I've got an idea."
"Yeah, sure you do. But what about the Strat? You can't save up for a guitar if you're paying out seventy-five bucks two or three times a week."
"I'll figure that out when its owner shows up again. If she shows up."
Zahler let out his breath, not sure what to make of this.
I looked down at the card: Alana Ray, Drummer. No address, just a cell-phone number, but if she could make a hundred bucks a day in cash, somehow I doubted she was homeless.
It had been so simple hiring her, a million times simpler than I'd imagined. No arguing about influences, getting famous, or who was in charge. Just a few numbers back and forth.
Money had made it easy.
"Moz, you're freaking me out. You're, like, the tightest guy I know. You never bought your own amplifier, and I've only seen you change your strings about twice in the last six years."
I nodded. I'd always waited until they rusted out from under my fingers.
"And now you're going to pay out hundreds of dollars?" Zahler said. "Why don't we find another drummer? One who's got real drums and doesn't cost money."
"One who's that good?"
"Maybe not. But Pearl said she knew a few."
"We don't have to run to her. We said that we'd handle this. So I'll pay." I turned to him. "And don't tell Pearl about the money, okay?"