The Metropolis Case_ A Novel - Matthew Gallaway [6]
“So?” Jay asked after side two ended, less than thirty minutes after side one began. “Crap or not crap?”
Martin observed Jay’s wiry arms, which like those of any geek looked as if they would have been taxed holding anything heavier than a pair of dice, except there was something ungeekish about Jay that fascinated Martin. It was not only the music he liked and his obvious facility at getting high but also his thick, expensive-looking chinos—even though they were beyond wrinkled and had one ripped knee—and button-down oxford-cloth shirt, which unlike Martin’s was frayed around the collar and tucked into his pants in a few random spots. “I can’t decide if it’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard,” Martin managed with an almost bashful smile, “but right now let’s say it’s the best.”
SOME TWENTY-FIVE YEARS later at Demoiselles, as Martin watched the elongated flecks of chandelier in the curving silver handle of his butter knife, he tried to decide why the memory—as much as he would always love Jay and the Ramones—left him uneasy. He considered his vague if incessant dissatisfaction with work and thought about whether—questions of finances aside—he could ever really “retire,” as Jay had recommended. Cutting back on his hours would be one thing, but—as much as he understood the impulse—it seemed like an option better left in the realm of the hypothetical, at least without a more concrete reason. Health problems aside, he could see himself shrugging off the same idea a year from now and, to be fair, wasn’t horrified. As he saw Jay walking back to the table, he remembered something else from high school, which left him with none of the melancholy of the earlier memory. Again he heard music, although it was nothing he could place beyond an ethereal dissonance—a wash of distortion—and a slow, hypnotic beat that perfectly matched that of his pulse. He knew he was drunk but didn’t care; he felt limber and relaxed as he peered through the smudges on his wineglass and welcomed the forgotten scene. This time, it was a few days later and they were at the window of their third-floor dorm room, flinging Martin’s Led Zeppelin LPs against the Dumpster outside, where each of the broken shards reflected a different fragment of the bright September sun.
4
Il n’existe pas deux genres de poésies; il n’en est qu’une
NEW YORK CITY, 1960. It was almost noon when Anna heard a knock at her bedroom door. Her domestic entered carrying a silver platter covered with telegrams from friends and colleagues both old and new, offering congratulations and making requests to consider this or that role or to talk to so-and-so, while at least five claimed to know that critics from the Times and—even better—This Is Our Music planned to write rave reviews. With her head buzzing, she went to the kitchen and ate two soft-boiled eggs and a roll, along with drinking some very strong coffee—Viennese by birth and temperament, she was not partial to tea—before making a round of phone calls. As exciting as it was to consider what she had done, to rehash the details left her jittery and anxious in the solitude of the afternoon, and as she contemplated the prospect of singing in London, Paris, Milan, perhaps even Vienna, she could not escape a premonition of what the days after these spectacular nights might offer. To this point her out-of-town commitments had been relatively light, nothing