Richard Kadrey: Dead Set

Mr. Danvers smiled at Zoe. “Good addition, uh. .”

“Zoe,” she said.

“Good work, Zoe. Yes, stealing food might be rude, but it’s a lot more energy-efficient than hunting for it yourself.” Mr. Danvers unscrewed the jar and poured a pile of yellow-white animal teeth onto his lab table. “Everyone gather around up here. We’re going to see what predators and scavengers use to catch and eat their lunch.”

After class Zoe went to her locker and exchanged her books for a brown-bag lunch of leftover fried chicken. The blue-haired girl came over. “Cool shirt,” she said. “Very retro.”

Zoe had to look down at her shirt to understand what the girl was talking about. “Oh, I guess so,” she said. The shirt was black and much too big for her. She’d cut off the sleeves and collar. There was a large blue circle on the front and the words THE GERMS: GERMICIDE.

“I grew up with it, so I never thought of it as retro. It was my dad’s,” Zoe said. “He knew all these guys, back in the day.”

The blue-haired girl bugged her eyes in mock, sitcom shock. “Your dad hung with Darby Crash?”

Zoe nodded, nervous about the sudden and intense attention.

“Does he still do cool stuff like that?”

Zoe shook her head. “No. He’s. . he died.”

“Oh,” said the blue-haired girl. She took a step back. “I’m sorry. I’m pushy and I talk too much.”

Zoe shrugged. “No. It’s okay.”

“I’m Absynthe,” said the blue-haired girl. She leaned in conspiratorially. “Really Courtney. My mom says it’s for Courtney Love but I think it sounds like I should be on TV with a monkey sidekick. All my friends call me Absynthe. With a Y .”

“Hi. Absynthe with a Y . I’m Zoe.”

“I was headed down to the cafeteria of doom to meet some friends. You want to eat with us?”

Zoe hesitated. Sitting with people meant she’d have to talk, and talking was still a black and frightening thing. Plus, she’d found a shady spot under an emergency staircase where she could eat her lunch alone. Still, being around people all day and never saying a word to anyone was getting old.

“Okay,” she said. “Sure.”

They walked to the lunchroom and Absynthe led Zoe to a table where three other girls were sitting. “This is Jessie, Molly, and Rexx,” said Absynthe. “Everyone, this is Zoe. Her dad toured with the Germs.” Absynthe said the names fast enough that Zoe wasn’t sure she could put the right names with the right faces.

“He didn’t really tour with them,” said Zoe, sitting down. “He used to work in clubs and knew a lot of the bands.”

“That’s still pretty fucking hot,” said a tall blond girl in a fifties gas-station shirt with rolled sleeves. The name over her breast pocket read STEVE, but Zoe was pretty sure she was Jessie.

“Was your dad in a band? Would I have heard of him?” asked a girl in a shiny black PVC top. Rexx, thought Zoe. The girl slurred her words and giggled enough that Zoe knew she was high.

Zoe shook her head. “No, he didn’t play. Mostly he road-managed,” she said, then quickly added, “But he knew everyone. You can see his picture in a bunch of books and on even some live records around the L.A. punk scene.”

A short-haired, tough-looking girl in a black tank top and jean jacket said, “Your old man still into music? My band has a demo tape.” Molly, thought Zoe.

“No,” Zoe said. “He doesn’t do music stuff anymore.”

Out of the corner of her eye Zoe saw Absynthe trying to signal the other girls. When Molly started to ask about Zoe’s father again, Absynthe shook her head so the girl would drop the subject. Molly looked away. Zoe opened her lunch bag and closed it. Looking at the cold friend chicken, she suddenly wasn’t hungry.

“To the Germs and the other golden oldies,” said Rexx.

Golden oldies? thought Zoe. Then she remembered that not everyone grew up listening to twenty-plus-year-old punk bands. To these girls the Germs and X were as old as Chuck Berry and the Beatles.

“And your dad,” added Absynthe.

Rexx pulled a silver flask from her purse and poured vodka into the other girls’ Cokes. Not high. Drunk, Zoe thought. When Rexx saw that Zoe didn’t have anything to pour the vodka into, she looked baffled for a moment and then clumsily shoved the flask at her. “It’s okay. Take a shot under the table.”

Vodka splashed from the flask onto Zoe’s shirt and into her eyes, burning enough to make her eyes water.

“Shit!” she yelled, jumping to her feet. The bag of chicken fell on the floor. She left it there.

“You okay?” asked Absynthe.

“I’m sorry,” said Rexx, laughing so hard that she had to lean on Molly. She slurred, “Oh, man, I’m really sorry.”

“Yeah,” said Zoe. “I’ve got to wash this out of my eyes.”

She walked quickly out of the lunchroom, went to a bathroom, and rubbed water into her eyes until the stinging stopped. When she stopped, her eyes were bloodshot and looked like she’d been crying. Instead of going back to the lunchroom, Zoe headed for the nearest exit and pushed her way outside. She went down the stone steps and kept going.

That’s what you get for talking to people, she thought.

Her right eye hurt all the way home and her clothes were wet and carried the antiseptic reek of vodka. Zoe rinsed her face and the T-shirt in the bathroom sink. She was glad her mother wasn’t home so she didn’t have to explain why she stank of booze. She squeezed out the shirt in the sink and decided to hang it outside so that maybe the smell would evaporate. There was a fire escape outside her window, so she climbed out and up to the roof. A rusty pole that had once held part of a clothesline was a good enough place as any to leave the shirt. When she was done, she went back downstairs, wiping her wet hands on her jeans.

As she went, she remembered the last time she’d seen her father wearing the shirt. It was the day after his very last birthday party. He and Zoe’s mother had bought a new cabinet to store their huge collection of old vinyl records. Zoe was helping her father sort the collection, first by genre, then alphabetically. They concentrated and didn’t talk much, but it was a sweet and comfortable silence that said neither of them had to chatter just to fill the air with words. Still, Zoe couldn’t help herself when she thought of exactly the right question to spring on her father.

“Riddle me this, how many members did Black Flag have over the years?”

Her father looked up and set down a beat-up copy of Plastic Letters by Blondie.

“Uh, eighteen or so. Around that,” he said.

“Here’s the real question: who had more members, Black Flag or King Crimson?”

Her father leaned back, looked at the ceiling as if thinking, then back at her.

“I don’t know prog rock that well. Since when did you listen to the stuff?”

“I don’t. I just wanted a question that would stump you.”

“What’s the answer?”

“Excluding session players, King Crimson had twenty-five actual members, so they win.”

“You’re quite the little music geek these days.”

“Gee, I wonder where I get it from?”

Her father smiled at her.

They sorted records for a few more minutes. Zoe set aside a copy of Double Nickels on the Dime to listen to later. She said, “I know you were in bands back when dinosaurs still walked the earth-”

“What a lovely way to put it.”

“You know, you never told me why you quit.”

Her father put a stack of Martin Denny records to the side and paused for a second to scratch his ear. “I quit because I sucked,” he said. “Okay, I didn’t actually suck, but I was mediocre. One afternoon I was at the band’s rehearsal space in this old warehouse off Mission Street and I could hear another bass player practicing in the next room. I never saw who it was, but he or she was a monster. Really beautiful sound. Loud, aggressive, but smart, too, you know? I knew I’d never be able to do that, even if I practiced all day for ten years. I was mediocre and that’s all I’d ever be and I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life being second rate.”