cookies. 'Statement on other side of this paper indubitably false.' And then the same thing on the other side. That makes as little sense as you and I getting those two heavy cookies in the first place.'
They reached Folk City and Sean opened the door for her. 'I think you had it right in the first place. It's just Joe fucking around.'
'Maybe. But my instinct says no. If he really did it and then acted the way he did, he's suddenly gone weird. I mean, I've known him for a while. Either way, something's weird.'
'Maybe the world is lying.'
Andrea laughed and picked her way to the stage through a crowd that had filled out considerably. That was normal for the ten o'clock show. It was just as well, because having an audience to sing to might level out her head a little bit.
An audience? An audience of who? Everyone and no one?
She'd written out the songs she wanted to do for the second set and dropped the list into her guitar case but now she couldn't find it. That panicked her a little because sometimes when she went onstage without a list she blanked out and couldn't remember a single song she knew. But the audience was restless and suddenly she found the chorus to a song running around in her head…
Ripple in still waters Where there is no pebble tossed Or wind to blow
She knew it was the damned fortune cookies that had done it to her. She'd never done 'Ripple'-not once. She knew the words but she didn't know the chords. She'd have to fake them; work them out as she went through. And she was supposed to use a flat pick or finger picks?
Suddenly she saw the whole chord-pattern laid out in her head. GCG… etc. The finger-picks put themselves onto her fingers and she turned to the microphone, tested the volume, and set off on an intro.
The audience was charmed.
They were more charmed when she'd finished.
She didn't know what she was supposed to do next but she found herself doing 'The Circle Game' for the first time in four years. Her voice was clear and strong and haunting. It danced from note to note like a carefree child jumping from rock to rock across a stream.
As the next song came to her she realized that she felt more stoned than she'd ever been on dope. She'd always been a meticulous performer. She'd never done a song in public that she hadn't done at least fifty times to her own satisfaction at home. And now-the name of the song hit her like a safe dropped from a ten-story building- she was going to do 'Into The Mystic,' a Van Morrison creation that she'd heard exactly once while stoned on mescaline.
'We were born before the wind
'Also younger than the sun… '
Her voice filled the room with an eerie, erotic, lyre-like sound.
'As we sailed into the mystic… '
Her fingers tripped over the guitar strings in elegant and intricate patterns. She felt the vibrations in the guitar's sound-box penetrating her stomach and harmonizing with those sent through her body by her voice. She felt the images stirred up by the song harmonizing with the music, as though the music produced the sound-track one would hear in the world of the song's story;
'Hark now, hear the sailor's cry Touch the sea and feel the sky Let your soul and spirits fly Into the mystic… '
There was no doubt about it. This was the best she'd ever sung. She was like a new singer. She could feel it in the reverent silence of the audience. It was…
The door burst open and Andrea could have sworn a dozen voices joined her for the last chorus. She could have sworn she heard it because she did hear it.
'I want to rock your gypsie soul Just like way back in the days of old And together we will fold Into the mystic!'
Cymbals clanged and tambourines rattled and on the word 'mystic' a siren-wail shook the rafters.
The singers were a procession that wound its way through the litter of chairs and tables and bodies.
The girlfriend of the of the Rutgers types fainted into her sloe gin fizz. Raoul and Harvey cracked their heads together in a gawking competition. People gaped and muttered and fell off bar stools. The middle-aged ladies stirred from their communal stupor and frowned in studied disbelief.
It was an orgy.
It was a sacrament.
It was ridiculous.
A gaggle of barely and oddly clad teeny-boppers careened and caroused in spirals toward the bandstand. There was one dripping with strings of animal fur-and nothing else-whose pendulous breasts flopped out and brushed against leopard and bearskin. There was one in a pair of coveralls that had been attacked with a paper- punch until she looked as if she was wearing a blue cloth colander. Her pubic hair stuck out of the holes in tufts. One monstrous redhead was made up like a clown. All in all the gyrating lovelies were dressed and painted to make the Hari Krishna chanters look like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
As they surged up and spread out in front of the bandstand Andrea, holding her guitar limply and staring in a dazed stupor, caught sight up two bare-chested wrestlers. They were carrying the front end of something. Something covered with a canopy of red silk. A sedan chair. And two more hulks had the back end. Behind them came two silent, ravishingly beautiful women dressed as haremites. One was oriental, the other black. They seemed to be presiding over the flight from rationality of the babbling teeny-boppers under their charge.
Andrea couldn't see past the bobbing of tanned limbs and the shaking of fringe, feathers, baubles, boobies and beads into the sedan chair. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Sean taking in a pair of coltish haunches that pranced into the corner of his eye-nearly taking off his nose. He shrugged his shoulders with the equanimity of a hardened New Yorker.
The girls burbled incomprehensively syllables and receded, allowing the wrestlers bearing the sedan-chair- which Andrea could now see was fully curtained-to bring it to within three feet of the bandstand and turn it sideways. Through a small rift in the curtain Andrea caught sight of a pair of pale, knobby knees against the background of gold cushions. There was a shifting and a crotch rather inadequately covered with a lavender loincloth jerked forward and then settled back. Whoever was inside was readjusting his position.
The wrestlers held the chair stiffly.
The knees inside shifted again.
From all over the bar people crowded around-some of them angry that the show had been interrupted, some fascinated, some insensed and indignant at the displays of indecency. But all of them were captivated by the act- many thought Andrea had planned it-and shussshed each other to catch any sounds that might come from beneath the curtain.
The silence was deafening.
And then, finally, the awaited-for pronouncement and clue and proverb and adverb came forth: 'All right you dumb fuckers, put me down already!'
The apes obeyed sheepishly. Everyone guffawed and tittered and slapped the best thighs they could find. When the uproar quieted the voice took stern control:
'Okay! Let's get this landing over with! We're coming in at ten thousand feet bombed out of our minds in a heavy fog with no radar but the clarity of clairvoyance, right?'
'RIGHT!' the chorus responded.
'Now the first thing I do is call the control tower. Okay. Wait a second till I get the radio cranked up.'
There was a guttural noise like static from under the canopy. A skinny flat-chested girl in a pink 36-D bra and a man's Speedo tank suit (green) stepped to the fore and, like a second-grader reciting a poem about her dog, chanted.
'Ra-di-o,
Ho Ho Ho,
Wa-vies come and Wa-vies Go… ' six times, rolling her head around as though she had a ball-bearing in her neck.
'Hey! Control tower! Cheatahoutafishwiferakaho-medadough! National security business! Orders to secure a beachhead in the first lady's underwear! Acknowledge incoherence!'
