For you and yours I now render and infuse every note, riff, vibration, every syllable, with the potentiality described above.
YOU ARE FOREWARNED.
BEWARE.
DON’T SAY I DIDN’T TELL YOU.
YOU WILL REAP TEARS FROM THE FILTH YOU HAVE SOWN.
And happier I could not be.
Yours in Hate,
(here he scrawled his indecipherable signature)
Lou never mentioned the letter after he gave it to me that day. It remains in my possession but is now sealed.
twenty-two
We stood on the corner of Second Avenue and 1st Street. Veronica said we were waiting for one of her sister’s friends. I had a good idea what she meant by this but was not sure how I was going to fit into the picture. I asked her if it was Barry. She shook her head and stared me down.
“You’re not gonna chicken out on me, are you? I can trust you to handle yourself and watch my back, right?”
“Of course you can.” Even though I had no idea what I was agreeing to and ignorant of what support I was offering.
“If you want to back out, please do it now. I’ll understand and won’t think any less of you. I promise.”
But I knew if I were to retreat she would never speak to me again, my cowardice a permanent black mark. Banished for life.
“I’m with you. I’ll go wherever you need to. Just tell me where it is we’re going.”
“Uptown. To someone’s house. He’s picking us up any minute. I don’t want to go into details, but if you’re willing, I don’t think you’ll regret it.”
“I’m willing. I would just rather have some idea of what it is you need me to do.” This was as forceful and assertive as I’d been all day.
She leaned in and kissed me, grabbing both my arms below the shoulders and pulling me in close. She kept her lips against mine for a long time and though she pressed them tightly, they were soft and relaxed.
And everything about it was right: the grip of her hands as they dug into my arms, the temperature of her mouth, the taste of its moisture, the smell of her face and hair, the pounds per square inch of pressure between her lips and mine, the tension in her tongue. Everything as it should be.
When she finally pulled away, she did it slowly and gradually. With our heads a safe distance apart, she looked into my eyes and said: “You’re my work in progress. And coming along quite nicely.”
A small white car pulled up to the corner where we stood. Veronica looked to the driver and gave a little wave. Even though it was starting to get dark, I could see the features of the lone person inside the car, behind the wheel. He was in his thirties and had long, dark, shaggy curls on the sides and back of his head. The hair on top was cut shorter. He had a thin mustache and a small triangle of a beard below his bottom lip. He smiled at Veronica with a tight little grin. I disliked him immediately.
Veronica grabbed my hand and led me to the two-door Honda. The driver reached over and unlocked the passenger side. Veronica swung it open and the man reached back, pulled a lever, and pushed the front seat forward. Veronica and I climbed into the back. The man returned the seat to its proper place, sealing us in the back without access to the door handle. He stepped on the gas and pulled away from the curb.
“Hi, Smitty, this is Matt,” she said as she squeezed my knee, reassuring me that all would be okay.
“Hi, Matt. I’m Smitty . . . Do you like beer?” He had a thin, reedy, asthmatic voice.
I turned to look at Veronica.
“I don’t,” she said.
“Me neither,” I added.
“Okay. We’ll go straight home then. I got soda and chips.” He stared at me through the rearview mirror. His eyes were small and narrowly spaced behind wire-rimmed granny glasses.
“I like gin,” I said. The confidence in my voice surprised me. I think it surprised Veronica too. She squeezed my knee even tighter.
Smitty looked at me again. He was sizing me up, I could feel it. “With tonic and lime?” he asked.
“Just tonic is fine.” I grabbed Veronica’s hand as we turned onto Houston Street on our way west.
twenty-three
Lou would never forget the name he created for me. But he would always forget that I lived in the same building he did.
“Tim, what are you doing here?”
I was waiting for the elevator in the lobby. He came up from the storage bins in the basement holding some small cardboard boxes. I was about to explain to him, for the fourth or fifth time, that I lived on the sixth floor, but before I could he put his hand on my shoulder.
“Can you come up and see me later on? I need help with an amplifier.” Lou was out the front door before I could reply.
A few hours later I stood at the threshold to his apartment on the eighth floor. The door was halfway open but I could see them both in the living room. I knocked on the jamb but neither one heard me. They were in the exact same positions as the first time I was there. Except this time Rachel’s head was tilted down and her shoulders were shaking a little bit.
Lou was at the reel-to-reel deck which sat on the low table in the middle of the room. He was playing a fifteen-second stretch of tape over and over. It sounded like the strangulation and mutilation of a dozen guitars in a room with a hundred radios and TV sets all tuned to different frequencies of static. It was the sound of the city itself, distorted through a fish-eye lens and held to the eye of a man who’d
