The Barrens & Others (45 page)

"He sorta kinda liked your stuff," she says.

"Who?"

"Bob. He was impressed."

"Really?" I say, cool as the legendary cucumber on the outside but inside I want to grab her shoulders and shout
Yeah? Yeah? What did he say?
Instead I say, "What makes you think so?"

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe it's because as he was listening to you guys he turned to me and said, "I am impressed.'"

I laugh to keep from cheering. "Yeah. I guess that'd be a pretty good indication."

I like her. And now that she's close up, I recognize her. She's Sally something. I'm not sure anybody knows her last name. People around the Village just call her the Speed Queen. And by that they don't mean she does laundry.

Sally is thin and twitchy, and she's got the sniffles. She's got big dark eyes too, and they're staring at me.

"I was pretty impressed with your stuff too," she says, smiling up at me. "I mean I don't dig rock and roll at all, man, what with all the bop-shoo-boppin' and the shoo-be-dooin'. I mean that stuff's nowhere, man. But I kinda like the Beatles. I mean a bunch of us sat around and watched them when they were on Ed Sullivan and, you know, they were kinda cool. I mean they just stood there and sang. No corny little dance steps or anything like that. If they'd done anything like that we would've turned them right off. But no. Oh they bounced a little to the beat maybe but mostly they just played and sang. Almost like folkies. Looked like they were having fun. We all kinda dug that."

I hold back from telling her that she and her folkie friends were watching the death of the folk music craze.

"I dig 'em too," I say, dropping into the folkster patois of the period. "And I predict they're gonna be the biggest thing ever to hit the music business. Ten times bigger than Elvis and Sinatra and the Kingston Trio put together, man."

She laughs. "Sure! And I'm going to marry Bobby Dylan!"

I could tell her that he's actually going to marry Sara Lowndes next year, but that would be stupid. And she wouldn't believe me anyway.

"I like to think of what I play as 'folk rock'," I tell her.

She nods her head and considers this. "Folk rock...that's cool. But I don't know if it'll fly around here."

"It'll fly," I tell her. "It'll fly high. I guarantee it."

She's looking at me, smiling and nodding, almost giggling.

"You're okay," she says. "Why don't we get together after your last set."

"Meet you right here," I say.

*

It's Wednesday morning, 3 a.m., when we wind up back at my apartment on Perry Street.

"Nice pad," Sally says. "Two bedrooms. Wow."

"The second bedroom's my music room. That's where I work out all the band's material."

"Great! Can I use your bathroom?"

I show her where it is and she takes her big shoulder bag in with her. I listen a moment and hear the clink of glass on porcelain and have a pretty good idea of what she's up to.

"You shooting up in there?" I say.

She pulls the door open. She's sitting on the edge of the tub. There's a syringe in her hand and some rubber tubing tied around her arm.

"I'm tryin' to."

"What is it?"

"Meth."

Of course. They don't call her the Speed Queen for nothing.

"Want some?"

I shake my head. "Nah. Not my brand."

She smiles. "You're pretty cool, Troy. Some guys get grossed out by needles."

"Not me."

I don't tell her that we don't even
have
needles when I come from. Of course I knew there'd be lots of shooting up in the business I was getting into, so before coming here I programmed all its myriad permutations into my wire.

"Well then maybe you can help me. I seem to be running out of veins here. And this is good stuff. Super-potent. Two grams per c-c."

I hide my revulsion and take it from her. Such a primitive-looking thing. Even though AIDS hasn't reared its ugly head yet, I find the needle point especially terrifying. I look at the barrel of the glass syringe.

"You've got half a c-c there. A gram? You're popping a whole
gram
of speed?"

"The more I use, the more I need. Check for a vein, will you?"

I rub my fingertip over the inner surface of her arm until I feel a linear swelling below the skin. My wire tells me that's the place.

I say, "I think there's one here but I can't see it."

"Feeling's better than seeing any day," she says with a smile. "Do it."

I push the needle through the skin. She doesn't even flinch.

"Pull back on the plunger a little," she says.

I do and see a tiny red plume swirl into the chamber.

"Oh you're beautiful!" she says. "Hit it!"

I push the plunger home. As soon as the chamber is empty, the Speed Queen yanks off her tourniquet and sighs.

"Oh, man! Oh, baby!"

She grabs me and pulls me to the floor.

*

I lay in bed utterly exhausted while Sally runs around the apartment stark naked, picking up the clutter, chattering on at mach two. She is painfully thin, Dachau thin. It almost hurts to look at her. I close my eyes.

For the first time since my arrival, I feel relaxed. I feel at peace. I don't have to worry about VD because I've had the routine immunizations against syphilis and the clap and even hepatitis B and C and AIDS. About the worst I can get is a case of crabs. I can just lie here and feel good.

It wasn't easy getting here, and it's been even harder staying. I thought I'd prepared myself for everything, but I never figured I'd be lonely. I didn't count on the loneliness. That's been the toughest to handle.

The music got me into this. I've been a fan of the old music ever since I can remember – ever since my ears started to work, probably. And I've got a good ear. Perfect pitch. You sit me down in front of a new piece of music and guaranteed I'll be able to play it back to you note for note in less than half an hour – usually less than ten minutes for most things. I can sing too, imitating most voices pretty closely.

Trouble is, I don't have a creative cell in my body. I can play anything that's already been played, but I can't make up anything of my own to play. That's the tragedy of my life. I should be a major musical talent of my time, but I'm an also-ran, a nothing.

To tell you the truth, I don't care to be a major musical talent of my time. And that's not sour grapes. I loathe what passes for music in my time. Pushbutton music – that's what I call it. Nobody actually gets their hands on the instruments and wrings the notes from them. Nobody gets together and
cooks
. It's all so cool, so dispassionate. Leaves me cold.

So I came back here. I have a couple of relativesw in the temporal sequencing lab. I got their confidence, learned the ropes, and displaced myself to the early-mid 1960s.

Not an easy decision, I can assure you. Not only have I left behind everyone and everything I know, but I'm risking death. That's the penalty for altering the past. But I was so miserable up there that I figured it was worth the risk. Better to die trying to carve out a niche for myself here than to do a slow rot where I was.

Of course there was a good chance I'd do a slow rot in the 1960s as well. I'm no fool. I had no illusions that dropping back a hundred years or so would not make me any more creative than I already wasn't. I'd be an also-ran in the Sixties too.

Unless I prepared myself.

Which I did. I did my homework on the period. I studied the way they dressed. the way they spoke. I got myself wired with a wetchip encoded all the biographies and discographies of anyone who was anybody in music and the arts at this time. All I have to do is think of the name and suddenly I know all about him or her.

Too bad they can't do that with music. I had to bring the music with me. I wasn't stupid, though. I didn't bring a dot player with me. No technological anachronisms – that's a sure way to cause ripples in the time stream and tip your hand to the observation teams. Do that and a reclamation squad'll be knocking on your door. Not me. I spent a whole year hunting up these ancient vinyl disks–"l.p.'s" they call them. Paid antique prices for them but it was worth it. Bought myself some antique money to spend back here too.

So here I am.

And I'm on my way. It's been hard, it's been slow, but I've only got one chance at this so I've got to do it right. I picked the other band members carefully and trained them to play what I want. They need work so they go along with me, especially since they all think I'm a genius for writing such diverse songs as "Jumpin' Jack Flash," "Summer in the City," "Taxman," "Bad Moon Rising," "Rikki Don't Lose That Number," and so many others. People are starting to talk about me. And now Dylan has heard me. I'm hoping he'll bring John Hammond with him some time soon. That way I've got a shot at a Columbia contract. And then Dylan will send the demo of "Mr. Tambourine Man" to
me
instead of Jim McGuinn.

After that I won't need anyone. I'll be able to anticipate every trend in rock and I'll be at the forefront of all the ones that matter.

And so far, everything's going according to plan. I've even got a naked woman running around the apartment. I'm finally beginning to feel at home.

"Where'd you get these?"

It's Sally's voice. I open my eyes and see her standing over me. I smile, then freeze.

She's holding up copies of the first two Byrds albums.

"Give me those!"

"Hey, really. Where'd–?"

I leap out of bed. The expression on my face must be fierce because she jumps back. I snatch them from her.

"Don't ever touch my records!"

"Hey, sorreeeee! I just thought I'd spin something, okay? I wasn't going to steal your fucking records, man!"

I force myself to cool down. Quickly. It's my fault. I should have locked the music room. But I've been so wrapped up in getting the band going that I haven't had any company, so I've been careless about keeping my not-yet-recorded "antiques" locked away.

I laugh. "Sorry, Sally. It's just that these are rarities. I get touchy about them."

Holding the records behind me, I pull her close and give her a kiss. She kisses me back then pulls away and tries to get another look at the records.

"I'll say they are," she says. "I never heard of these Byrds. I mean like you'd think they were a jazz group, you know, like copping Charlie Parker or something, but the title on that blue album there is "Turn! Turn! Turn!" which I've like heard Pete Seeger sing. Are they new? I mean they've gotta be new but the album cover looks so old. And didn't I see 'Columbia' on the spine?"

"No," I say when I can finally get a word in. "They're imports."

"A new English group?"

"No. They're Swedish. And they're pretty bad."

"But that other album looked like it had a couple of Bobby's tunes on it."

"No chance," I say, feeling my gut coil inside me. "You need to come down."

I quick put the albums back in the other room and lock the door.

"You're a real weird cat, Troy," she says to me.

"Why? Because I take care of my records?"

"They're only records. They're not gold." She laughs. "And besides that, you wear underwear. You must be the only guy in the Village who wears underwear."

I pull Sally back to the bed. We do it again and finally she falls asleep in my arms. But I can't sleep. I'm too shaken to even close my eyes.

I like her. I really like her. But that was too close. I've got to be real careful about who I bring back to the apartment. I can't let anything screw up the plan, especially my own carelessness. My life is at stake.

No ripples, that's the key. I've got to sink into the timeline without making any ripples. Bob Dylan will go electric on his next album, just like he did before, but it will be
my
influence that nudged him to try it. "Mr. Tambourine Man" will be a big hit next summer, just as it's destined to be, but if things go according to plan,
my
band's name will be on the label instead of the Byrds. No ripples. Everything will remain much the same except that over the next few years Troy Johnson will insinuate himself into the music scene and become a major force there. He will make millions, he will be considered a genius, the toast of both the public and his fellow artists.

Riding that thought I drift off to sleep.

*

Dylan shows up at the Eighth Wonder the very next night in the middle of my note-perfect imitation of Duane Allman on "Statesboro Blues," perfect even down to the Coricidin bottle on my slide finger. There's already a good crowd in, the biggest crowd since we started playing. Word must be getting around that we're something worth listening to. Dylan has about half a dozen scruffy types along with him. I recognize Alan Ginsberg and Gregory Corso in the entourage. Which gives me an idea.