Rudolph Wurlitzer - Slow Fade

A.D. sat up and lit a cigarette. Fuck Arthur somebody. The room looked like it had been shaken down by a junkie. Everything was on the floor, including a two-foot cactus. The girl next to him rolled over on her side, moaning softly in her wretched dreams. He no longer loved her and she no longer loved him. All that had been decided the night before.

“I need you in Santa Fe for two weeks,” Arthur was saying. “A grand a week plus expenses.”

A.D. was already reaching for his traveling shoes.

“Santa who?”

“Fe. The road manager split. The group is Gang Greene. Melissa Greene’s attempt at a comeback. She’s lost her pipes and half her cerebellum as well, but a gig is a gig. Right?”

“Right. Fifteen hundred and I’m your man.”

“Call it twelve,” Arthur said and hung up.

He called his ex-wife and told her he was paying her five hundred of the three grand he owed her. He didn’t make any other calls, not even the necessary ones. He didn’t wake the girl and he didn’t write a note. All of that was understood. He just colored himself gone and flew out to Albuquerque, New Mexico.

In Albuquerque, A.D. rented a Chevy Malibu and drove up to Santa Fe, purple clouds drifting across the evening sky like giant bones. Halfway there he pulled over to the side of the road, inhaling the vast sweet desert. He felt light-headed and goofy although he wasn’t on anything but the intoxication of being snatched out of New York at just the right time. Over the long dirty haul A.D. was an escape artist, not a prime-time player, and he was ready to pull the plug on New York. He had come there six months ago from Miami for a record gig that never happened and he had never found his stroke. He was always half on the street, half in somebody else’s set of descriptions, his days a sullen list of distractions that kept him slightly stoned, hustling the minimum number of gigs to get by, writing a few songs for a few people, never testing his solitude or the courage of any one action. So a roll toward the West was a welcome roll, especially if it ended in L.A. He knew how to survive in L.A. His rhythm felt better, and he could always find work as a studio musician or drift into some semi-hard hustle on the edge of the entertainment world, shooting location stills, best friend to a declining star, shiatsu foot massages for Beverly Hills matrons. If all else failed there was always dealing dope or flying back to New York, honing in on his old action like a mutated animal trying to rediscover a genetic pattern. All of which made him a coast-to-coast man. Except for those miles in between, which he now had to think about.

A.D. always bought his wardrobe on the road, believing that it gave him an edge to wrap himself in something new. In Santa Fe he bought a pair of blue and white Tony Lama boots, a black Levi jacket, and a gray Stetson. He was a large fleshy man in his early forties with an unkempt red beard and pale unfocused blue eyes, and the new threads, rather than cushioning a generally wasted appearance, only made him seem more sinister. Which he liked, he decided, checking himself out in a full-length mirror before he went down to the Fried Adobe on the outside of town.

The Fried Adobe stood between a Taco Burger stand and a Texaco station. Inside, a tired country and western trio sang “Moon over Tulsa” to a table of drunken college kids and two silver-haired businessmen arguing over their bill. After a brandy and soda at the bar, A.D. went back to the dressing rooms. Gang Greene were all there and they weren’t waiting for him.

Melissa Greene lay on a badly sprung couch, her eyes hidden behind dark glasses. Her long legs were wrapped in tight leather pants, her broad shoulders and sagging breasts in a green silk shirt. Her braided hair had been dyed green and her fingers, wrists, and neck were covered with green jewelry. The three members of the band sat around a table, drinking Wild Turkey from a bottle and dipping slabs of roast beef and ham into a large jar of mayonnaise. They all wore green suits with thin green ties and green basketball sneakers. Their dyed green hair was cropped short, all except for an emaciated black man whose oblong head was completely bald.

“I’m the new roadie,” A.D. said.

No one answered or acknowledged him, an attitude that A.D. accepted and even welcomed.

He sat down at the table and lit a cigarette. After he had smoked half the cigarette, he asked what time the set went on.

“No time,” the black man said. He stood up and looked down at Melissa Greene, his eyes full of malignant confusion. “There ain’t going to be no set. No nothing. Nowhere.”

Melissa swung her long legs over the edge of the couch and took off her glasses. Her eyes were flat and glazed.

“You have a contract, Charlie,” she said, looking at the floor.

“I got a contract with myself, baby,” Charlie said. “And that’s the name of the game and that’s it.”

Melissa stood up. Through the layers of makeup she looked old and stretched and burned out.

“Then get the fuck out,” she screamed. “You’ve been sandbagging me from the beginning.”

“You’ve been sandbagging yourself, not that you got that much to sandbag. You’re a psychotic wreck, sugar. I mean that sincerely.”

Melissa picked up the jar of mayonnaise and turned it over, a large glob falling on Charlie’s shoulder.

He stood there letting her do it.

“You always wanted to be an albino,” said the drummer, a thin-lipped man with empty blue eyes. “Green never did suit you.”

The other member of Gang Greene picked up his guitar.

“That cuts it,” he said and left the room.

Charlie watched him go, then ripped Melissa’s silk shirt from her body. He slowly wiped off the mayonnaise before he walked out the door.

The drummer wrapped up the roast beef and ham in a napkin.

“For the road,” he said and followed Charlie.

Melissa went back to the couch and sat down. A small elegant tattoo of a red dagger pointed down between her breasts. She looked at A.D.

“Fuck me,” she said.

“I don’t think that would be appropriate.”

“What’s appropriate?”

“I won’t be able to get it up.”

“You’ll never know unless you try.” She sighed, her impulse over. A.D. asked if he would get paid.

“No,” she said. “Everyone’s on their own from here on out.”

He offered her his jacket, which she absently accepted.

“You can drive me back to the house for my things,” she said. “I’m clearing out.”

Melissa drove. She told A.D. the story of her life but he didn’t listen, having too much trouble with his own story. She turned off the main highway and followed a dirt driveway ten miles to its end. Two station wagons and a VW van were parked in front of a broken-down pickup truck. To one side stood a barn and a corral hosting three horses. Beyond the corral lay the shimmering moonlit desert.

“We’ve been staying here like some fucking commune,” Melissa said. “It’s the club owner’s hobby ranch. The whole thing is a nightmare.”

He followed her around the side of the house where she turned to face him on a brick veranda framed with earthen jars of cactus and portulaca.

“They think I killed the other piano player. Owen.”

“I pass no judgment,” A.D. said. “I just want to get to L.A.”

Melissa sat down on a white wicker couch. Leaning back against a pillow, she shut her eyes.

“I suppose in some way I helped Owen do himself in,” she went on. “In those vicious little ways we all contribute to the general death of a relationship. Can you catch the song in that?”

“Probably,” A.D. admitted. “The melody anyway.”

“Now that my career has gone down the toilet, I’m going to pack and drive to L.A. Why don’t you help me open the new chapter of my life? I’ll pay for your car and your gas and your motels, and you’ll help me drive and explore my needs, which are considerable.”