Paula Guran - The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu

Looking over what I’ve written, I realize I’ve failed almost completely to do justice to the music I listened to constantly, every time I was in the car, and soon when I was in my room — I dug out an old cassette recorder that had a single earplug for quiet listening which practically took up residence in my left ear. I’ve made The Subterraneans sound like a concept band, an exercise in performance art, and conveyed nothing of their immediacy, of the immanence in their songs, the overriding impression they gave that there was something they were on the verge of saying, a revelation they were on the cusp of delivering. I went to sleep with their music filling my ear, and their songs followed me into sleep, into dreams where I stood on the streets of a city I did not know while the wind chased paper bags and Styrofoam cups across the pavement.

The following Friday, Lorrie invited me to join her and her friends. If she hadn’t, I would have asked to. Of course I wanted to meet her outside of school, where our respective schedules permitted us to see one another in only a few classes, but I was eager to talk to Jude, as well, about the tape whose songs were playing in my head whether I was listening to them or not, which had become the soundtrack of my life — or, I’m not sure if this will make any sense, but it was as if my day’s activities had become an extended illustration of the music, a featurelength video for it.

The principle difference between this night and the previous Friday was I spent it sitting beside Lorrie on the hood of her car, my feet resting on the front bumper, hers crossed under her legs, so she had to lean against me to keep from sliding off. I wasn’t daring enough to put my arm around her, but I placed my hand on the hood behind her and pretended to support myself with it, when its actual purpose was to allow a maximum portion of me to come into contact with a maximum portion of her as unobtrusively as possible. An hour and half with a pretty girl pressed into me was more than sufficient compensation for the remainder of the night being a virtual repeat of the week before, from another carton of vegetables in a strange-tasting and spicy sauce to further conversation to which my contribution was minimal. In addition, Jude was not in attendance. I asked Lorrie about his absence while she walked me to my car. She shrugged and said, “He’s got a lot going on.” I wasn’t exactly disappointed, especially since the kiss I received at this departure was significantly longer and — more involved, I guess you might say. But when Lorrie suggested I might like to meet with her and her friends the next night, some small measure of what prompted me to say, “Sure, yeah,” was the prospect Jude would be present.

He wasn’t, and since the weekend after was the prom, I didn’t see any of Lorrie’s friends. I saw her, and the large house where she and her parents lived, and D’Artagnan, her standard poodle, and her parents, who were younger than mine and glowed with money, and the elaborate royal blue dress she wore. Your grandfather had rented an Oldsmobile to ferry us to the prom, held in the catering hall of the Villa Alighieri, an Italian restaurant. Later, he chauffeured us to an after-prom party being held at someone’s house out in Millbrook, and still later to retrieve us from the smoldering embers of the party and return us home. Lorrie and he hit it off, and the night went as well as these things do. The meal and music were adequate, the company at our table pleasant.

What I remember most about the prom is that The Subterraneans’ music colored it, too. In fact, were it not for my subsequent experiences at The Last Chance, I likely would have identified a moment at the dance as the weirdest thing that ever happened to me. It occurred while the DJ was playing the prom theme (for the record, Madonna’s “Crazy for You”). Lorrie and I were slow dancing, her head resting on my chest. Underneath the homogenized sentimentality of Madonna’s lyrics, The Subterraneans’ singer was declaring it was always Halloween, here. The space around the dance floor dimmed, as if the lighting there had been lowered almost completely. Where the tables and chairs had been, tall forms moved from left to right in a slow procession. I had the impression of heads like those of enormous birds, with sharp, curving beaks, and dark robes draped all the way to the floor. Then the light returned, and the figures were gone. What I had seen was weird with a capital W, but it also vanished so quickly I was able to blink a couple of times and put it out of my mind. The girl leaning against me, in her stockinged feet because she’d removed her uncomfortable shoes, swaying in time to the theme, facilitated this. For the remainder of the prom, the vision did not return, nor did it during the after-party events, when I was engaged in more pleasant pursuits. The night concluded with a goodbye kiss on the front step of Lorrie’s parents’ house, after which, your grandfather took me for breakfast at McDonald’s.

One month after the prom, Lorrie broke up with me. It was less traumatic than you might suppose. Although I had continued to join her and her friends at the DCCC parking lot for takeout Chinese on Fridays and Saturdays, school, sport, and work commitments kept me from seeing any more of her. Not to mention, one of the girls on the track team, a cute sophomore, had told me she thought I resembled the lead singer of the band, ABC, and he was cute . While I had never been quickest on the uptake when it came to such things (a fact to which your stepmother will attest), even my limited powers of perception could detect this new girl’s interest in me. So when Lorrie called to say, “It isn’t working,” I found it easier to sigh and agree than I might have otherwise. I was still welcome to hang out with her and her friends, Lorrie said, which I took as a formality but appreciated nonetheless. I said I might. After I hung up the phone, I was sad, and briefly angry, at things not working out between Lorrie and me, but I was also more philosophical, more mature about it than I believe I have been about the end of any subsequent relationship, which is a strange thing to realize.

Lorrie and I remained friendly, although I returned to the college parking lot only once to eat with her and her friends. As luck would have it, Jude was there as well, for the first time since the night he had handed me the tape of The Subterraneans. I wondered if he remembered passing me the cassette, but of course he did. Since I was no longer seated next to Lorrie, it was easier for him and me to lean our heads toward one another and talk. He didn’t ask me if I’d listened to the tape. He knew. He said, “Well? What do you think?”

“I think I can’t stop listening to that tape,” I said. “It doesn’t matter if it isn’t playing: I’m still hearing it, you know?”

Jude nodded. “Anything . . . else?”

“What do you mean?”

“Have you seen anything?”

“Have I . . . ?” But I had, the robed forms moving past the dance floor at the prom.

Jude caught it in my face. “You did,” he said. “What? What did you see? The Black Ocean? The City?”

“People,” I said. “I think they were people. They were tall — I mean, seven feet plus — and wearing these costumes, bird masks and long robes. At the prom,” I added.

“The Watch,” he said. “You saw members of the Goddamned Watch.”

“Is that good?”

“As long as they didn’t see you — they didn’t, did they?”

Did they? “No,” I said.

“Then you’re fine,” he said. “Holy shit. You know you’re the first person I’ve met who actually saw something? Amazing.”

“I don’t understand,” I said. “I’m sorry. I mean, I get that something important has happened — to me — but I don’t know what it is.”