The Fortress of Solitude (47 page)

“Dead,” I said.

“The Bar-Kays, it
sounds
happy, but I get a bad feeling, I get a bad vibe from this disc. What’s going on with the Bar-Kays?”

“Uh, they were on Otis Redding’s plane.”

“
The Death-Kays!
” She overhanded it to shatter against the far wall and rain onto the pillow.

“Okay, Abby.” I held out my palms, pleading. “Peace. Uncle.” My spinning brain added,
Sprite! Mr. Pibb! Clitoris!

She stopped, and we both stared at the crystalline junk around her feet.

“I have some happy music,” I said, dumbly adopting her terms.

“Like what?”

“‘You Sexy Thing’ is probably my favorite single song. There’s a lot of disco-era music I like.”

“Terrible example.”

“Why?”

“A million whining moaning singers, ten million depressed songs, and five or six happy songs—which remind you of being beaten up when you were thirteen years old. You live in the past, Dylan. I’m sick of your secrets. Did your father even ask if I was coming down with you?”

My face was hot and no speech emerged.

“And all
this
shit. What
is
this shit, anyway?” Alongside the box sets on the shelf above the CD cases were arrayed a scattering of objects I’d never shown off or named: Aaron X. Doily’s ring, Mingus’s pick, a pair of Rachel’s earrings, and a tiny, handmade, hand-sewn book of black-and-white photographs titled “For D. from E.” Abby’s unlaced boots crackled in the broken plastic cases as she walked. “Whose little shrine is this? Emily? Elizabeth? Come on, Dylan, you put it there so I could see it, you owe me an explanation already.”

“Don’t.”

“Were you once married? I wouldn’t even know.”

I took the ring from the shelf and put it in my pocket. “This is all stuff from when I was a kid.” It was a slight oversimplification: E. was the wife of a friend from college, the gift of the book commemoration of an
almost
which was really a
just-as-well-not
.

Mingus’s comic books were in a box in my closet, mingled with mine.

She grabbed the Afro pick. “You were already taking souvenirs from black girls when you were a kid? I don’t think so, Dylan.”

“That’s not a girl’s.”

“Not a girl’s.” She tossed the pick onto the bed. “Is that your way of telling me something I don’t
even
want to know? Or did you buy this off eBay? Is this Otis Redding’s pick, stolen from the wreckage? Maybe it belonged to one of the Bar-Kays. I guess the truly
haunting
thing is you’ll never know for sure.”

I lashed out. “I guess I have to listen to this shit because you don’t feel black enough, Abby. Because you grew up riding ponies in the suburbs.”

“No, you have to listen to it because you think this is all about where you grew up and where I grew up. Listen to yourself for a minute, Dylan. What
happened
to you? Your childhood is some privileged sanctuary you live in all the time, instead of here with me. You think I don’t
know
that?”

“Nothing happened to me.”

“Right,” she said with heavy sarcasm. “So why are you so obsessed with your childhood?”

“Because—” I truly wanted to answer, not only to appease her. I wanted to know it myself.

“Because?”

“My childhood—” I spoke carefully, finding each word. “My childhood is the only part of my life that wasn’t, uh, overwhelmed by my childhood.”

Overwhelmed—or did I mean
ruined
?

“Right,” she said. And we stared at one another for a long moment. “Thank you,” she said.

“Thank you?”

“You just told me where I stand, Dylan.” She spoke sadly, no longer concerned to prove anything. “You know, when I first spent a night in this house, you don’t think I didn’t walk up here and check out your shit? You think I didn’t see that pick on your shelf?”

“It’s just a pick. I like the form.”

She ignored me. “I said to myself, Abby, this man is collecting you for the color of your skin. That was okay, I was willing to be collected. I liked being your nigger, Dylan.”

The word throbbed between us, permitting no reply from me. I could visualize it in cartoonish or graffiti-style font, glowing with garish decorations, lightning, stars, halos. As with the pick, I could appreciate the
form
. Most such words devaluate, when thrown around every day on the streets by schoolboys of all colors, or whispered by lovers such as myself and Abigale Ponders. Though it had been more than once around the block of our relationship,
nigger
was that rarity, an anti-entropic agent, self-renewing. The deep ugliness in the word always sat up alert again when it was needed.

“But I never was willing to be collected for my
moods
, man. You collected my depression, you cultivated it like a cactus, like a sulky cat you wanted around to feel sorry for. I never expected that. I never did.”

Abby was talking to herself. When she noticed, a moment after I did, her expression curdled. “Clean up your room,” she said, and went downstairs.

The airport shuttle’s horn had been sounding for some time now, I realized. My room would have to wait to be cleaned, and the five or six CDs I’d selected would have to be enough. The Syl Johnson record,
Is It Because I’m Black
, had skated to the top of the small heap of discs and plastic left behind where Abby had been. I fished it up and added it to the wallet.

At the kitchen table Abby stood, one boot up on a chair, cinching the endless laces. She’d already refreshed the Africanoid jewelry in her piercings. It would seem an absurd costume for a student in a classroom, if I hadn’t known how hard her fellow students dressed for the same occasion. The boots were only a little obstacle to the art of dramatic exitry—she’d surely meant to be out the door before me, meant her last words upstairs to be conclusive.

I grabbed the bag at the door. Her face, when she looked up, was raw, shocked, unmade. The van honked again.

“Good luck today,” she said awkwardly.

“Thanks. I’ll call—”

“I’ll be out.”

“Okay. And Abby?”

“Yes?”

“Good luck, too.” I didn’t know if I meant it, or what it was meant to apply to if I did. Was I wishing her good luck in leaving me? But there it was, our absurd coda completed,
good luck
on all sides. Then I was gone.

chapter  
2

I
t was September 1999, a season of fear—in three months the collapse of the worldwide computer grid was going to bring the century’s long party to a finish. Meanwhile, as the party waned, the hottest new format in radio was a thing called Jammin’ Oldies. Los Angeles’s MEGA 100, recently reformatted (or in radio parlance, “flipped”) to the new trend, was playing in my cab—the song was War’s “Why Can’t We Be Friends?”—as I instructed the driver to take me to the Universal Studios lot and we swung away from the LAX curbside, into palm-lined gray traffic. The trees looked thirsty to me.

San Francisco had a Jammin’ Oldies station too. All cities did, a tidal turning of my generation’s readiness to sentimentalize the chart toppers of its youth. Old divisions had been blurred in favor of the admission that disco hadn’t sucked so bad as all that, even the pretense that we’d adored it all along. The Kool & the Gang and Gap Band dance hits we’d struggled against as teens, trying to deny their pulse in our bodies, were now staples of weddings and lunch hours in all the land; the O’Jays and Manhattans and Barry White ballads we’d loathed were now, with well-mixed martinis or a good zinfandel, foundation elements in any reasonably competent seduction. From the evidence of the radio I might have come of age in a race-blind utopia. That on the other end of the dial hip-hop stations thumped away in dire quarantine, a sort of pre-incarceration, no matter. Not today, anyway, not for one borne in the backseat of a taxicab helmed by one Nicholas M. Brawley, through sun-blanched smog, toward a meeting with a Dreamworks development executive, nope.

“You like this song?” I asked Nicholas Brawley’s fortyish gray-coiled neck.

“It’s all right.”

“You know the Subtle Distinctions?”

“Now see that’s some real fine music.”

At the guard-post gates of the Universal lot was proof I was expected, so Brawley’s cab could be waved through, to wend past the curbed Jeeps and the long windowless hangars and the brick huts which appeared to have been thrown up just that morning. Dreamworks’ building resided what felt to be a mile or so inside the compound, behind a tree-sheltered parking lot requiring a special pass for entrance. None had been issued, so Brawley dropped me at the inner gate.

“You have a card?” I asked him. “I’ll need a ride out of here in, I don’t know—maybe an hour?”

He jotted a number on the back of the company’s card. “Call my cell phone.”

As I crossed the shade-spangled lot to the entrance a well-dressed lackey was just crossing it in the other direction, moving for a break in the eucalyptus trees. He carried an Oscar. Palms cupping the statuette’s base and shoulders, he appeared to be looking for someone to bestow it on. I wondered if his whole job was to cross this lot all day with the golden prize, back and forth, reminding any visitor of the local stakes.

Inside, I was directed upstairs, where I gave my name to a pretty girl with a headset. She fetched me a bottled water before abandoning me to a flotilla of couches and magazines. There I plopped my sad little overnight bag, hitched up my pants to cross my legs and tried not to look too demoralized beneath the smirk of framed posters. Time passed, phones rang, carpets sighed, someone whispered around a corner.

“Dylan?”

“Yes?”

I dropped
Men’s Journal
and a boy in a sharp-creased suit took my hand. “You’re the music guy—right?”

“Right.”

“I’m Mike. Great to see you. Jared’s just ending a call.”

We moved to Mike’s little office, an intermediate space, a staging area, apparently, for encounters with Jared. You had to meet Cats-in-the-Hat-A-through-Z before you got to the One True Cat. At least we were all on a first-name basis.

“Mike?” said an intercom voice.

“Yes.”

“I’m ready for Dylan.”

Mike gave me a thumbs-up endorsement to cross Jared’s threshold, and a wink for luck.

The room had earth tones to spare. No posters here, nothing jarring—it was like a shrink’s office. Sunlight sliced through a couple of potted rubber trees, to ornament the carpet. Jared launched from behind his desk. He was jacketless, blond, thick and soft and relaxed in his body, a gym junkie, I guessed. I’d have kicked his ass at stoopball, though.

A conclave with Jared Orthman was meant to be the next best thing to an audience with Geffenberg himself. A thousand or a million writers hungered for what I had today. I hoped not to blow it, not so much on their behalf as on that of my own shriveled prospects and swollen debt.

“Here, let’s sit here.” He guided me away from the desk, to a pair of facing love seats across the room, the pitch zone. I dropped my bag, which sagged like a Claes Oldenberg sculpture, seeming to stand for an artist’s impotence in corporate surroundings. I wished I’d packed my Discman and change of underwear in something more like a briefcase. We sat, smiled, crossed legs.

Jared frowned. “Did you get water? Did they give you water?” he asked anxiously.

“I left it outside.”

“Do you want something? Water?” He looked ready to provide the vital essence if he had to wring it from stones.

“I’m fine, thanks.”

“So.” He smiled, frowned, widened his hands. We studied one another and tried to remain friendly. Jared and I were probably the same age but otherwise had traveled from opposite ends of the universe to this meeting. My black jeans were like a smudge of ash or daub of vomit in this cream-and-peach world.

“I’m a friend of Randolph’s,” I reminded him. “From the
Weekly
.”

“Riiight.” He nodded, considering it. “Just . . . who is Randolph?”

“Randolph Treadwell? The
Weekly
?”

He nodded. “I think I know who you mean.”

“Well, he, uh, set this up.”

“Okay. Okay. So, uh, what are you doing in my office?”

“Sorry?” The question was so bald. I was astonished as if he’d asked
Why do I hold this job, as opposed to, say, anyone else? Can you explain that, please?

“Just a minute,” he said, holding up one finger and springing from the love seat. He leaned over his desk and pushed a button. “Mike?”

“Yes.”

“What’s Dylan doing in my office?”

“He’s the music guy.”

“The music guy.”

“You remember. He’s got a movie.”

“Ahhhh.” Now Jared turned and smiled at me. This was all pleasure. A movie! How perfectly unexpected. “Who’s Randy Treadmill or something?” he said to the intercom.

“He’s that guy you met when you were talking about the thing.” Click, buzz. “On the boat.”

“
Ahhhh
. Okay. Okay.” He released the intercom. There was a hierarchy of remembering here, I understood. Mike remembered for Jared the sort of things Jared had once remembered for someone else, on his way up through the ranks. Someday Mike would have someone remembering things for him as well, and be free to abandon the skill.

Jared returned to the love seat and again pointed a finger at me, but now it was a happier finger.

“You’ve got a
movie
,” he said warmly.

“Yes.”

“I’ve been wanting to hear this.” He didn’t know the first thing about it, I saw now. I could have offered him a comedy about a rookie vibraphonist for the Boston Pops, or a thriller about a spy who kills by ultrasonic whistle, any of the many things a
music guy
would be likely to concern himself with.

“I’m closing my eyes,” said Jared. “It means I’m listening.”

I was left to consider his tanned lids, immaculate desk, twin rubber tree plants. I was the ant who had to move them, apparently.