As a child I collected coins. It was exciting to dream that one day I might find in circulation a coin that would make me rich. But I never found anything worth much more than eight bucks. Too many people hoarded old coins. It you wanted a truly valuable coin you had to go to a dealer and pay what it was worth, hope for market appreciation and in the interim the joy of ownership. But coins are dull. They don’t sing songs. They contain no emotion, risk, love, no passion, art, memory, little history, and nothing human beyond the oil and dirt from spenders’ pockets and hands. Even if Shelly never made a plug nickel for all his effort, I marveled at what a cultural gold mine he’d amassed.
I was about ready to set “Rocket 88” on the turntable to hear it for the first time when the phone rang, startling me. No chance I would answer. Shelly would only be a city or two down the road. I glanced at my watch. Four rings and a stop. I wandered back down the hall, into the living room, and unplugged the phone from the wall, feeling guilty and wondering where Jackie Brenston was. Shelly’s guide told me that his Delta Cats weren’t even assembled at the time of the recording, and that Ike Turner composed the song, and what could that have been like, composing the first rock and roll song ever? Ike Turner would nevertheless be remembered for the rest of his life as the beater of his ex-wife Tina.
I checked the fridge to find nothing but shreds of cardboard from torn-open twelve packs and a few portion-control packets of Jack-in-the-Box hot sauce. The freezer was blocked with speckled ice. There was a sound down the hall, a sort of furry thump. I’d already explored every room, high and low, bed, closet, tub. Possibly I’d left the record player on, and the arm had kicked back on its own.
I told myself there was no one here. The intruders, the phantoms, were in my mind. The threats, as they were in the mountain cabin, and as I walked the streets of San Jose stealing suits and insulting strange women, were figments, residual at best, a torment that didn’t possess the substance to physically reach me. I had to get a grip. Still, I couldn’t sit or relax. I turned off the television. I didn’t want to play music anymore for fear I might be unable to hear the sound again. I returned to Donny’s room, the origin it seemed to me of the disturbance, and of all the noises before. I noted that the bedspread was rumpled as if someone had recently slept here. This is where the secret friend resides, I realized, though I couldn’t conceive of sleeping in what amounted to a dead boy’s altar. Again I checked the closet and looked under the bed. I promised myself I would not dwell in this room. It was, as Shelly described, a Donny Ray shrine. On the walls were San Diego Padres banners, Alice Cooper posters, a framed high school diploma, the lyrics of a Chicago song, “Colour My World,” written in felt pen in a feminine hand. There was a bottle of Hai Karate on the dresser along with a desiccated corsage, ticket stubs, and a religious trinket. Beads hung from the neck of a bust of Jim Morrison. Above the bed was a large portrait of the same girl who resided on Shelly’s TV set. I had asked Shelly if that was a girlfriend. It was apparently a girlfriend, just not Shelly’s. I opened a photo album and studied the many pictures of the same girl. She was leaned down, hands on knees, mouth open. She was diving for a volleyball. Here she was in a bikini, looking very trim. I sat down on the bed.
On a table to the left was a reel-to-reel player, a black Marantz model, state of the art in its day, a tape threaded in. Below the player in a milk crate were boxes of tapes. One was marked “Donny’s favorite songs, 1986.”
Nineteen eighty-six? He would’ve been many years gone.
I pushed the button on the reel-to-reel to hear the song “Venus” by Shocking Blue. I rewound about ten minutes’ worth and pressed play. The voices were from a distance. One was Shelly’s. The other was unintelligible. Shelly was upset: “I took the brunt of Dad’s shit. You went to the beach. I don’t care if you don’t remember. You said that Lily was your friend — well, I never felt that way . . .” A dog was yapping throughout. “Goddamnit, I told you not to answer the door.” There was a pause, the sound of footsteps, the sound of harsh breathing, then my voice, the front door closing, a conversation about Adolf Eichmann. I’d never liked the sound of my
