A Visit From the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan [17]
No one is waiting for me. In this story, I’m the girl no one is waiting for. Usually the girl is fat, but my problem is more rare, which is freckles: I look like someone threw handfuls of mud at my face. When I was little, my mom told me they were special. Thank God I’ll be able to remove them, when I’m old enough and can pay for it myself. Until that time I have my dog collar and green rinse, because how can anyone call me “the girl with freckles” when my hair is green?
Jocelyn has chopped black hair that looks permanently wet, and twelve ear piercings that I gave her with a pointed earring, not using ice. She has a beautiful half-Chinese face. It makes a difference.
Jocelyn and I have done everything together since fourth grade: hopscotch, jump rope, charm bracelets, buried treasure, Harriet the Spying, blood sisters, crank calls, pot, coke, quaaludes. She’s seen my dad puking into the hedge outside our building, and I was with her on Polk Street the night she recognized one of the leather boys hugging outside the White Swallow and it was her dad, who was on a “business trip,” before he moved away. So I still can’t believe I missed the day she met the man, Lou. She was hitchhiking home from downtown and he pulled up in a red Mercedes and drove her to an apartment he uses on his trips to San Francisco. He unscrewed the bottom of a can of Right Guard, and a Baggie of cocaine dropped out. Lou did some lines off Jocelyn’s bare butt and they went all the way twice, not including when she went down on him. I made Jocelyn repeat each detail of this story until I knew everything she knew, so we could be equal again.
Lou is a music producer who knows Bill Graham personally. There were gold and silver record albums on his walls and a thousand electric guitars.
The Flaming Dildos rehearsal is on Saturday, in Scotty’s garage. When Jocelyn and I get there, Alice is setting up the new tape recorder her stepfather bought her, with a real microphone. She’s one of those girls that like machines—another reason for Bennie to love her. Joel, the Dildos’ steady drummer, comes next, driven by his dad, who waits outside in his station wagon for the whole practice, reading World War II books. Joel is AP everything and he’s applied to Harvard, so I guess his dad isn’t taking any chances.
Where we live, in the Sunset, the ocean is always just over your shoulder and the houses have Easter-egg colors. But the second Scotty lets the garage door slam down, we’re suddenly enraged, all of us. Bennie’s bass snickers to life, and pretty soon we’re screaming out the songs, which have titles like “Pet Rock,” and “Do the Math,” and “Pass Me the Kool-Aid,” but when we holler them aloud in Scotty’s garage the lyrics might as well be: fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. Every once in a while a kid from Band and Orchestra pounds on the garage door to try out (invited by Bennie), and every time Scotty ropes up the door we glare out at the bright day shaking its head at us.
Today we try a sax, a tuba, and a banjo, but sax and banjo keep hogging the stage, and tuba covers her ears as soon as we start to play. Practice is almost over when there’s another banging on the garage door and Scotty pulls it up. An enormous pimpled kid in an AC/DC T-shirt is standing there, holding a violin case. He goes, I’m looking for Bennie Salazar?
Jocelyn and Alice and I stare at one another in shock, which feels for a second like we’re all three friends, like Alice is part of us.
“Hey guy,” Bennie says. “Good timing. Everybody, this is Marty.”
Even smiling, there’s no hope for Marty’s face. But I’m worried he might think the same of me, so I don’t smile back.
Marty plugs in his violin and we launch into our best song, “What the Fuck?”:
You said you were a fairy princess
You said you were a shooting star
You said we’d go to Bora Bora
Now look at where the fuck we are…
Bora Bora was Alice’s idea—we’d never heard of it. While everyone howls out the chorus (What the fuck? / What the fuck? / What the fuck?), I watch Bennie listen, eyes closed, his Mohawk