The taxi ran like furious mercury, fleeing Redmond; his every glance out the window was like a jump-cut between rain-washed tableaus. Outside it was quiet; it was dark. The trees swayed wetly; the raindrops slid into the broken pavement. The people were removed, were wearing kerchiefs, were stirring stale air with their quiet breath.
Pushing his head clean out the window, turning towards the faint low roil of the sky, Amp whispered: “This is really happening. This is really happening.”
And it was. You could feel it; it was all there; one lived; one was alive. He was alive. That was a thing that could happen to people. They could say: “I am alive.” He could say that; it was not a tired mantra, worn down past use, not a phrase he twisted uselessly in his hands like some length of novelty beads. It was so.
How did this happen? You went to a concert and your mind was lit with blue fire. It was like the feeling he got after a very good movie, but in a new intensity. He shook with it. That feeling of clear-mindedness that was almost like being drugged. Everything was very sharply focused. Everything was of the utmost importance. He had gone home with his friends out of habit but, lying in the back of the car, known that he could not stay at home, could not sleep. The feeling never lasted the night; one always woke up afraid. He would not lie down and wait to yawn and forget. He would lie perfectly still in the back of the car, waiting for his friends to leave him, one by one, utterly unknowing (they could not know; they would not understand) and then he would be alone, with his new lucid life.
The taxi passed on.
“Amp Lee used to play for the 49ers,” said the man who was drinking the imitation absinthe.
“No, he used to play for Minnesota,” said another man, in a tired way. It sounded as if he were trying to gently smother the other man with his words. His eyes were vividly red; he said it was only the contact lenses.
“You know an awful lot about football for boys,” said Andra, laughing, the revolving blue and gray lights washing her face. “He played for the 49ers, and then he was traded to Minnesota. Then he went to pot. I bet he was lonely. He was lonely and he spent too much time looking out the window of his high-rise apartment at that big spoon with the cherry on it. It made him crave ice cream; he gained a lot of weight; his career was ruined. But that’s not the point. The point is: is that his real name?”
Nobody knew.
“I don’t think it was,” she said. “I assert that no one has ever been named Amp, darling, not even you.”
Amp was feeling darling. It was a strange word but it fit. Darling. He didn’t even care that she had guessed the truth about his name (Anthony was a tedious name to have, on nights when one was really alive); he was the darling of the night; he had been selected by a secret vote of very shadowy people, and given the hand of this girl whose eyes widened and closed with all the secret laughter of the evening.
“Well, that’s my name,” he said.
The taxi cut the mist into ribbons that were sewn up again behind it. The city lights rose like paper lanterns out of the mist.
Out over the sound, a solitary cloud passed overhead in a break of clear sky. To him she called, from out at sea, parting the crowds to signal him. She was why he could not sleep, why the concert was not enough, why the clubs shone this night, of all nights, with liquid midnight. He must follow her; he must brave the slouching multitudes. The dark spirit of evening glided through the dance-pulse sky in her cut silver dress. He must follow. He must go, to where the Nintendo troubadours beat their hyper-kinetic pulses out against the walls of old warehouses. There she would be, some body into which this spirit had slid, in the elbow of a hall, clinging to the end of a bar, with ashes in her hair.
“Shall we go to the after-party?” asked Andra, putting down another empty Henry’s. They had made a little cluster of them on the table.
“I thought this was the after-party,” said the man with the green bottle.
“No, this is still the party,” said the red-eyed man. “It can’t be the after-party yet. There are still six rooms of people dancing just down the hall.”
“Well, I’m done with all that. It’s the after-party for me.”
“Well then, get out. This is the chill room.”
“Is that what this is? Well, where is the after-party then?”
“Didn’t you get a flyer?”
A boy of about twelve had come through earlier, distributing flyers.
“Yes, I got a flyer.”
“It’s there. It’s only a few blocks.”
“Do you think it will be good?”
“Well, the flyers are very professional-looking. They’re not in crayon or anything.”
Everyone began making jokes that the host of the party was the boy of twelve. The party was going to be in his room, which was an enormous nursery. There were going to be rocking horses. Coloring books would be provided for all. It was tremendously promising; everyone was going to go. People began to rise and file out. But Amp stayed; Andra stayed. She gave him a level look.
“Do you want to go?” he asked.
“No, let’s not go.” she said. “Let’s not go there.”
“Alright then,” he said. “Where?”
He came out into heat and gas. If the person down whose neck he was being so insistently pressed had asked him where he thought he was, he would have said: “Venus.” The room rolled on downwards and was lost in whirling lights and mist-fields. The dancers were tilting planets, constellated around television images that shook, as though they might implode.
There was a surge from in front of him. He was thrown back into the hallway he had spent the past ten minutes trying to exit. He was squeezed backwards to the edge of the passage, his face pushed against a sweating wall. The dark paint was broken, flaked. If he pulled it, he knew, it would sheet off. Beneath it would be cold, crumbling rock.
Suddenly he felt very stupid. What was he doing? This was it, the height of ecstasy: to be alone, to have paid twelve dollars to be trampled, to be shoved against walls? He should have gone home after the concert. Going out again, he had ruined it. Only an hour ago, in the taxi, the world had been pristine, had been poised perfectly on the edge of a blade, now it had turned, was cold and cruel; it was a crumbling stone covered by cheap paint. He was a fool in a house of fools, defrauded so easily by some glittering adolescent dream. The dancers were not planets but bugs smoking desperate cigarettes. They were roaches with comb-overs. They were crickets with short haircuts, dressed in the Praying Mantis style, with tattoos of oriental characters that they hoped meant “Independent Spirit.” They were centipedes with mini-skirts and excessive eye makeup and many, many tiny handbags. They shook their carapaces through the pathetic night.
He looked all around the room. He looked at everyone; everyone looked miserable. They had all overpaid to get into this club and now they all had to act as though they had made a sound investment. If only it had been free, they would all leave immediately, but they could not. Everyone wore horribly pained expressions of gaiety, like so many cracked clown-masks. If you looked at them sidelong, you could see them secretly despairing, secretly thinking: “Let no one see! Let no one see how alone I am!”
And even if there were a woman, one that did not look like a bug, one that, though alone, did not appear to be at any minute crushed by loneliness, what then? His organs would all fail him; he would be shot through with Novocaine; he would not be able to speak. She would see through him and laugh; he would be cut into shards in the beat-rent air.
It was no use. He was powerless, was paralyzed. Everyone was paralyzed. The world spun and everyone, each man and woman alone, stumbled about in despair, each thinking all the others were carelessly dancing.
He turned away. Off to his right there was another passage; it was empty, an exit. He would take it; he would leave. He would walk down to the sound and rid himself of all his stupid dreams. He would dump them into the water; they would stain it with their garish colors (off in the distance, watching from bridges, others would see the colors quietly spreading, and say: “Look how beautiful. Look what beautiful colors the sound is tonight.”)
But the passage did not lead out. It led into another room. It was quieter; there was a small bar; there were couches. The lights here flipped lazily from blue to gray and did not spin. He went to the bar and ordered a Henry’s; it was overpriced, but cold and not watered down. He turned and looked out over the room. There was room to sit at the end of one of the couches. The people there were laughing with one another. Next to the empty space on the couch was a girl; the lights were blue and her long black hair sparkled; then they were gray and it seemed that it was full of ashes...
“So, here we are,” she said.
“Yes,” said Amp. “Here we are. It’s a nice place.”
“Thank you.”
“Sure.”
“Well,” she said. “Did we come here to do something or didn’t we?”
“I suppose we did.”
“Well alright,” she said, and walked out of the room.
What the hell, Amp thought. I hope I stop. I should have had another drink; that would have fixed me. I’ll just take some long breaths.
She put her head around the door.
“Well, are you coming?”
“What?” said Amp. “Sure.”
He got up and followed her into the other room. He noticed there was a bed in there.
“Here it is,” she said.
“Yes. There it is.”
“Yes. My beautiful book collection.”
“Oh. Yes.”
She looked at the expression on his face and laughed.
“You need to lighten up a little,” she said, smiling at him.
“Yes,” Amp said seriously. “You’re right.”
“Come and sit on the bed with me.”
He did this. So much for that racy spirit of the night stuff, he thought.
“Are you shaking?” she asked him.
“Me?”
“Yes.”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“It’s alright,” she said. “I’m glad about it.”
“I don’t think I’m shaking,” he said.
“It’s alright.”
“In a minute I’ll stop,” he said.
“Come get into bed.”
She took off some of her clothes and after a little while he did too. Just some of them. He got under the covers and the thick white bedspread and she turned out the light and slid in beside him. She was warm and he could feel her. She was all there.
What the hell, Amp thought.
“There, there,” Andra said, stroking his head.
He could see her face in the half-light that spilled in from the hall. Her irises were speckled with the grains of dead stars.
“You can sleep,” she said.
“Maybe I’ll try that,” Amp said. “I’ll just take a little nap and when I wake up it will be alright.”
He tried it. He lay there and buried his head in the pillow and breathed deeply and tried to stop. It was no good. He wasn’t going to sleep, and he wasn’t going to stop shaking. He rolled over to tell her this but she wasn’t there. It was darker than he had remembered.
He heard someone come into the room.
“Sleep well?” her voice asked.
“I guess I did. I’m still shaking, though.”
“Oh well. Looks like you’re going to have to shake, then.”
The covers were lifted up and again he could feel her, warm against him. He felt something hit the bedspread and then slide slowly off.
“What was that?” he asked.
She smiled shyly.
“Oh,” he said. He could feel her now; she was all there.
All of it was true, then. Life was not an adolescent dream that one outgrew. It was a thing that could happen to people. They could say: “I am alive.” They could go to concerts, and be lit on fire, and be thrown like smoke across the sky, and tumbled down against walls, and left for dead among bugs holding bottles of Michelob Light, and then resurrected by strange women with ashes in their hair. Turning among dark dreams, he had awoken, and the stars had risen, and it was day, really and truly. The days were short but there were days.
Were there? He felt a panic. Someone was only playing a light over him. They wanted him to get up so that they could turn out the light and he would be alone in the middle of all space. The world was not kind but cruel. He was an idiot to think otherwise. Andra would come back into the room, brushing the glitter from her hair, and say, “That will be three hundred dollars.” She would see the blind look on his face and laugh.
She came back into the room.
“I just had a funny idea,” he said.
“What is it?”
“Actually, no. It’s silly.”
“Tell me.”
“No. It’s no kind of a thing to say.”
“You brought it up. You want to say it.”
“No.”
“Yep. You do.”
“Don’t be offended.”
“I won’t.”
“I sort of, suddenly, thought…you might be a prostitute.”
“Oh really?”
“Yes.”
“You’re right. That is silly.”
“It’s a stupid thing to say, I know. Please don’t be offended. But people just don’t get lucky like this, like I’ve gotten. It doesn’t happen.”
She laughed lightly.
“Sometimes it happens,” she said.
Outside the sound shone through the glass. Amp put his hands down next to him on the bed.
“Yes,” he said, after a moment. “I guess it does sometimes.”
The taxi slid, with quicksilver quiet, home to Redmond. Outside the rain-washed scenes rolled on, but Amp, being asleep, did not see them. Out over the sound, a solitary cloud passed in space. Through the slits where it was rent, moonlight fell down. Some fell into the taxi, and played upon Amp’s face, and lit the ashes in his hair.
