Fractal Paisleys Page 8

  The guys all eyeball one another.

  “King? Who’s he?”

  “The brother they made the holiday for.”

  “Oh, yeah.…”

  “You really known him, man?”

  I break my stalwart silence. “Does a bear shit in the woods?”

  This old chestnut sends the guys into convulsions. Is it possible they’ve never heard it before…? Whatever the case, when they recover, they are smiling. I take advantage of their good humor to question them.

  “Where’s the best and biggest record store nowadays?”

  “That be Tower Records, down on Broadway in the Sixties.”

  “O.K., all right; thanks, men; let’s shake.”

  These guys are so lame, they don’t even know how to shake hands. I gotta twist their thumbs upward in the proper grip. I leave them practicing the shake among themselves, and walk out to Broadway.

  The subway costs two dollars now! And they use plastic cards insteada tokens! Quality of the ride ain’t changed, tho: noisy, crowded, and rough. Car’s clean of graffiti, tho. I wonder idly why, until I notice a kid whip out a marker and try to write on the walls. The ink from his pen beads up like water on grease and rolls to the floor. The kid swears— “Shit, they told me this new pen would cut it! Five dollars down the tubes!”—and sits back down. I touch the wall; it’s dry. Heavy, man, some kinda Teflon Koating.…

  I mistakenly ride all the way to Columbus Circle and have to walk back uptown to get to Tower Records. Wow, these people are dressed weird! The chicks are all in their underwear—bras and colored leotards; and the men seem to be in their pajamas—wrinkled old suits with colored T-shirts. Don’t no one change outa their NIGHTCLOTHES no more? Hey, how come I’m the one getting all the stares? Must be my hair. Seems like no one else wears it down to the tailbone no more. Screw ’em. Wotta buncha squares.…

  Here is Tower Records. Wow, is this place garish! My eyes are hurtin just to look at it. There are more neons and fluorescents here than at Graceland. And to think I usta like light shows. Must be gettin’ old.… What’re all these televisions doin’ here anyway? Is this a music store, or an appliance discounter? And all playing snippets of bad imitations of Bunuel movies.… Oh, well, it don’t matter to me, just go on thru the door, under this weird SCANNER—beam me up, Scotty, hee-hee—and into the store.

  Boy, it’s crowded. Everyone’s got these little cordless buttons in their ears, groovin’ and boppin’ to some private beat. THIS LOUSY JOINT DON’T EVEN HAVE A PA SYSTEM! What kinds rock’n’roll community does that make for? Some of my happiest memories are of hearing new stuff in a store, and the whole place groovin to the same wavelength.… Hey, don’t see no salesclerks, just a lone cashier. What’re those people doin’? They’re ordering CD’s from a computer console that spits them outa a slot. This is hell, man.…

  I go to the cashier. She is about fifteen, and wears gold earrings shaped like scarabs that crawl up ’n’ down her ears on little mechanical legs.

  “Peace, lovely lady. Do you perchance have a selection of old LP’s for the serious collector?”

  “I dunno whatcha mean.”

  “LP’s: vinyl discs spun on a turntable at thirty-three-and-one- third revolutions per minute, the single analog groove of which, when interpreted by a stylus, produces music.”

  The waif pouts sullenly. “You’re yanking my rods. There ain’t no such thing.”

  “Is there anyone else I could talk to?”

  “I dunno. Check the back room.”

  I find a door I assume leads to the stockroom. Uncautiously, I open it.

  Brawny, sweaty laborers naked to the waist are wielding huge shovels with which they scoop up CD’s and DATs and DVD’s out of an enormous pile and dump them into a hopper that leads to the dispensing devices. A foreman wearing an eyepatch snaps a bullwhip over their scarred backs. He spots me and yells, “An intruder! Get ’im, boys, before he escapes!”

  Is this real?! Maybe I am just having like my worst nightmare, badder than that yage trip with Allen. BUT I CANNOT TAKE CHANCES! I slam the door and make like Kleenex and blow. Feets, don’t fail me now!

  Several blocks down Broadway, I stop, outta breath. Man, this is the most exercise I’ve gotten in years! I seem to have shaken my pursuers, the Devil Dogs of the Rekkkord Industry. I lean against a building to rest, and gaze around.

  An address across the street looks familiar. It comes to me then that I am staring directly at the building that houses the offices of Magnetic Moment! Wow, what synchronicity, man! I decide to go with the flow. I must enter and reveal myself to the staff. I am sure I will be enthusiastically received. Their most Senior Kontributor, the Human Encyclopedia of Rock, Mister Pop-Popularizer Himself.

  I enter the building; I ascend in an elevator that queries me for my destination mechanically; I emerge in a ritzy lobby. There is a gorgeous chick seated behind a desk. In her underwear, natch.

  “Peace, ma’am. Would you announce to all and sundry that Mister Beaner Wilkins has descended from the heights to greet the faithful and unclog their mental arteries with some Zany and Zesty Zen Zappers?”

  The chick glares at me with ill-concealed distaste. She thumbs an intercom button and says into the speaker, “Hello, Security, it’s another one.”

  Barely does she remove her manicured digit from the button, when four immense Anthropoids in suits emerge from concealed doors and make free with my personal limbs in a painful manner.

  “Hey, you pigs, what gives? Let me go, cut me loose, put me down, chill out! I didn’t do no thin’! I am a respectable staff member of this rag, and just wish to see my editor!”

  “That’s what they all say,” grunts one of the Musclemen, who has my neck held like a pencil between his thumb and forefinger.

  “All who? I don’t know any of these other jerks to whom you refer. I’m me, Beaner Wilkins, a Lone Wolf. I do not associate with any cliques, claques, covens, or cabals.”

  It’s no use. I am being hustled toward the elevator. My shouts have attracted a crowd of office workers, who cluster at doors watching my humiliation.

  “Emilio!” I yell. “Emilio Cuchillo!” I spot the shiny face of my young editor at the rear of the crowd. “It’s I, Emilio—Beaner!”

  He looks dubious, but does not attempt to restrain the Security Apes. I make a frantic move to break loose.

  “Hey, that does it,” says a guard. “Put the cuffs on him.”

  Bracelets clack shut on my wrist.

  “ARGH! Plastic! Get it off, get it off, gedditoff!”

  Somehow, Emilio is by my side. “It’s all right, guys; there’s been a misunderstanding. This fellow has an appointment. I’ll see him now.”

  Warily, the semisentient hulks comply. I am released into Emilio’s custody. Mustering all the dignity I can, I adjust my headband and untangle the long fringes of my leather jacket. Then I accompany Emilio into his office.

  When we are both seated, Emilio, leaning forward with forearms on his desk, stares at me for several minutes. At last he speaks.

  “It really is you. I can spot the likeness to that old picture we run above your column. You know, the crowd scene from Woodstock, where you’re covered in mud. Beaner Wilkins.… I can’t believe it. You know, sometimes we used to speculate whether or not you were actually dead, and the columns were being written by a computer.”

  “I am obviously not dead, man. I just value my privacy. Also, this modern-day world is not one I care to associate overmuch with. But listen—what made you jump in and save me?”

  “Well, first you have to understand that we get at least one nutcase a month showing up claiming to be Beaner Wilkins. There’s quite a myth surrounding you, you know. Seems to attract all the dissatisfied types from every new generation. So at first, I had no suspicion you might actually be telling the truth. It was the business with the cuffs that alerted me. I remembered that the real Beaner hated—hates—plastic.”

  I am relaxing a little now, and
feel I can afford to be generous with my praise. “It was, like, very astute of you, Emilio. I am glad your memory was so accurate, since I did not relish the prospect of greeting the pavement with my face.”

  “That fact always stuck in my head. I thought it was funny that someone whose whole life revolved around old-fashioned records would hate plastic so much. Sorta contradictory.…”

  “I do not ingest or wear records; therefore their plasticity does not bother me. However, food encased in hydrocarbon derivatives, or clothing fashioned of same, rubs me the wrong way.”

  Emilio sits back in his chair. “So, Beaner, what brings you out?”

  Before I can answer, I am suddenly seized by this Sahara-type thirst. The events of the day have parched my throat. “Got anything to drink, Emilio?” I ask.

  Emilio stabs an intercom. “Ms. Orson, please bring us a couple of Cokes—”

  “Hold on,” I demur. “Is it, like, in plastic cans?”

  “Why, of course— Oh, I see. Cancel that order, Ms. Orson. Beaner, I don’t know what to offer you—”

  My eyes have been roving over the office all this time, and now light on a trophy case containing a leather jacket, a pocket comb, a burned husk of a guitar—and A CAN OF YOO-HOO! Without asking, I go to the case, reach inside, and in a second have popped the Yoo-Hoo.

  Emilio screams!

  “Cool it, man,” I advise. “What’s wrong?”

  “That can! Do you know who last touched that can?”

  “No.…”

  “John Lennon, just minutes before he was shot!”

  “Oh.…” I look inside, and sure enough, there’re little cards by each item: Lou Reed’s jacket, Hendrix’s guitar, Elvis’s comb, Lennon’s Yoo-Hoo.… Oh, well, man.… Sic transit gloria, and all that.…

  Sitting back down, I explain the nature of my Kwest. Emilio, wiping the tears from his eyes, nods. When I am finished, he is mostly recovered.

  “You’ve really set yourself a chore, Beaner,” he says forgivingly. “Nobody except a few insane rich collectors wants those old LP’s anymore, and so hardly anyone sells them. Your only shot might be this one store down in the Village—”

  “Of course! The Village, the very birthplace of the Lovin’ Spoonful! Spiritual home to every malcontent and freethinker, every beatnik and hippie and punk who has ever walked the globe! Surely, in one of the myriad second-hand stores in the Village I will find a copy of my beloved album!”

  “Yeah, well, I think you might have a nostalgic view of reality—”

  “No way, man; I am still plugged in.”

  “Yeah, maybe.… but ‘plugged in’ to what?”

  I ignore Emilio’s sarcasm and arise, eager to be off. “Emilio, it has been extremely groovy to make your editorial acquaintance in person, but now I must split. I trust my columns have been satisfactory…?”

  “Yeah, they’re O.K. They pull in readers of your generation—who represent a big market share and have powerful demographics—and they give everyone else a laugh. But don’t you think you could lighten up a little on modern music? I mean, you haven’t praised anything since Madonna’s album with the reunited Dead, just before her granddaughter was born—and that was six years ago now!”

  “I will continue to call them as I see them, Emilio. Let musicians produce good music, and I will praise it. But I will not hype prefab shit.”

  Emilio shakes his head in mock woefulness and gets up to see me out. “Well, that’s hot as fusion, Beaner, and I’m on the downlink to your telemetry with minimal noise. Just hang in there, old survivor. What is it you used to say? Keep on trackin!”

  “That’s truckin’.…”

  “Oh. I thought it was like a tonearm.…”

  Emilio sees me down to the street. Then I am back on the subway, heading for the Village.

  I emerge in Union Square.

  Something is really wrong, man.

  There is a turreted wall around the northern border of the Village, all fake boulders and pennants fluttering in the breeze. There is a gate at Broadway guarded by Mickey Mouse and Goofy. They are wearing sidearms.

  Tentatively, I advance, gradually becoming one with a horde of tourists types, who I hope will provide me with some kind of cover.

  Mickey spots me in the crowd, tho, and gestures for me to step aside. I do not argue with mice bearing weapons; therefore, I comply.

  “Where the hell is your ID badge?” says the Famous Mouse belligerently.

  “Uh, I forgot it at home…?”

  “Jeez, you guys are getting too deep into your roles, being such screwups. All right, listen close: just this once, I’m gonna give you a temporary ID. Don’t let it happen again.”

  “I certainly won’t, Mr. Mouse. Thank you, thank you kindly.”

  With a hologramatic badge bearing the Disney logo pinned to my jacket, I am waved past the ticket-taker beyond the gates.

  I immediately experience a flashback to 1967.

  The streets are filled with the Children of Aquarius, long-haired guys ’n’ girls flashing the peace sign to each other and the tourists, posing for photos, smokin’ what smells like authentic reefer rolled as big as sausages. The Beatles blast out of every window.

  What the fuck is goin’ on here?!?

  When I cross Tenth Street and find myself surrounded by cats dressed all in black spoutin’ Allen Ginsberg, I dig the grotty scene.

  THE WHOLE VILLAGE IS NOW A DISNEYTHEME PARK!

  Sure enuff, there is a punk enclave over on the Bowery, buncha skinheads endlessly pogoing to an audioanimatronic Ramones.

  I sit down in the gutter.

  I begin to cry.

  When I am all cried out, I arise. All I wanna do is find my album and get outa here. Emilio said something about a second-hand record store.…

  I find the place over on Bleecker Street, next to a glitzed-up jazz joint that advertises Michael Jackson doing a show wherein he impersonates Charlie Parker (NITELY AT SIX AND EIGHT).

  Heartbroken, I go into the store.

  The place features Day-Glo posters and the smell of incense. The Jefferson Airplane is being piped out of hokey little lo-fi speakers: “Do you want somebody to love?” Yeah…! There is a young chick behind the counter, dressed in costume, but I ignore her in favor of the stock.

  Gotta hand it to the Disney Empire, they don’t spare no expense. It is all the Pure Quill here, rare original pressings from the ’Fifties ’n’ ’Sixties ’n’ ’Seventies, snug in their Mylar envelopes. The price tags are what you’d expect, most items under a thousand.

  Behind the black divider printed with the psychedelic L, I find it.

  Do You Believe in Magic? by the Lovin’ Spoonful, for only eight hundred smackers.

  I clutch the Sacred Disc to my breast and approach the counter. The girl smiles.

  “Checking out the old stuff on your break?” she asks. “I don’t blame you; it’s so much better than what passes for music nowadays.”

  I figure she is just laying the Standard Patter on me, so I merely nod and begin fumbling bills out of my pocket. However, all the cash I have amounts only to half a grand. Bummer! I dig out a royalty check from my last book, Dylan: The Final Years. It is for three thousand bucks.

  “Listen, I need this record badly, babe, and I don’t wanna wait any longer to get home. Can I just make out this check to you? You can cash it, and pocket the difference.”

  The girl examines the check. Her eyes get wide.

  “Beaner Wilkins? The Beaner Wilkins? Are you really him?”

  I straighten my spine. “Yeah, I’m me. Look.” I produce my long-expired driver’s license and pass it over.

  “Oh my God. I can’t believe this. I never thought when I took this job—I mean, to actually have you come into the store! Why, I read your column every month! And all your books—I’ve read every one at least twice! The things you’ve seen and done, the era you grew up in— It’s so wonderful, so—so magic! Not like these times—”

  “Yeah,
yeah,” I say, anxious to make tracks away from this farce, this parody of the glorious long ago. “Now, will you take the check or not?”

  “Oh, sure, Mr. Wilkins. For you.”

  I prepare to endorse the check over to her. “Name?”

  “Janis Smialowski. That’s J-A-N-I-S, not I-C-E.”

  I am momentarily interested. “Not after—?”

  She beams. “Yes. My folks loved her. My grandparents turned them onto Joplin as kids.”

  Completing the endorsement, I hand the check over to her. She studies it raptly, then says, “I might not cash this. I mean, I could keep it for your autograph. I’ll pay the store out of my own pocket.”

  Is this dollybird pulling my leg? I can’t figure her out. She is the nicest person I’ve met out here, but she makes me uneasy. All confused, I try to settle my thoughts by imagining my apartment full of music and memories, its warmth, the security, the peace, the lack of challenges—

  A tune I barely acknowledge as within my era—Steely Dan’s “Hey Nineteen”—starts up, and I realize I am listening to a premixed tape. No playing of whole sides allowed, too much chance for individual taste to enter.…

  Disgusted, bewildered, I make my exit, gripping my precious album tightly.

  The chick calls out to my back. “Please stop by again sometime, Mr. Wilkins. I enjoyed our talk!”

  I am out on the streets, halfway to the ghetto gate, heading home.

  I return to the store.

  When Janis sees me, she smiles like sunshine.

  “Janis, would you like to drop by tonight and groove to some old tunes?”

  “Oh, Mr. Wilkins—I’d love to!”

  This is, like, the best day of my life, man.

  Rock music weaves like a thread through most of these stories, a tribute to that form’s anarchic joy which the stories seek to emulate. From time to time, pop music forms the text as well as subtext. In this Nebula-nominated story, rock was also the compositional inspiration, as I fused two naggingly uncooperative ideas—psychic cords that bind, and magic spectacles—much in the manner of the legendary genesis of “A Day in the Life”.