Hari Kunzru - Gods Without Men

He came out of the place brushing bits of food off his clothes and decided to have a gander round town. The only place that looked at all enticing — in fact the only place in walking distance that wasn’t boarded up or selling fast food — was a bunkerlike thrift store. Toys and furniture were piled up on the pavement outside. Two supersize women reclined on unplugged massage chairs either side of the door, like a pair of obese ornamental lions. Both gave him the evil eye as he walked up. Inside, the place was a consumer graveyard. The wreckage of every cultural fad since the late seventies had been piled up on long metal shelves. Games cartridges, Barbie dolls, VHS tapes, dusty framed posters of cars and airbrushed Coke cans. A slurry of Reader’s Digest s spilled out of a cardboard box in one aisle, blocking the way to the crockery. The rear opened out onto a large back lot filled with appliances and laminate furniture and racks of paperback books bleached pale yellow by the sun. A Jet Ski was surreally beached in front of a row of fridges marking the yard’s back boundary. A rack of clothes, mostly desert fatigues, had a Marine’s dress uniform at one end. Nicky slipped on the jacket. Nice. Team it with some glitter and it’d look fierce on Brick Lane. Still wearing it, he wandered back inside, half aware of someone hovering about behind him.

Finally, he found the vinyl, stacked up in milk crates in a corner. Usual crap. Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass, Two Hundred Million More Yuletide Classical Faves Sung by a Tit in an Orange Tie . There were a couple of good sleeves, eighties people with neon clothes and flammable hair. Then he turned up something with a hand-drawn cover featuring a dog-headed figure with cartoon lines emanating from its body. It was standing beside a Joshua tree in front of a weird, organic-looking thing that was probably supposed to be rocks. It looked somehow familiar, though he couldn’t remember where he’d seen it before. Seemed to be a Krautrock record. Time of Transposition/The Ashtar Galactic Command . That certainly sounded German.

It was hard to say whether Time of Transposition was the name of the band or the album. He flipped it over and reflexively slid the inner out of the sleeve. The disk was a bit dusty, but otherwise in good nick. The center label read 1971, and it was obviously some kind of private press thing. On the back of the sleeve was a track listing (two long tracks, “Time of Transposition” 1 and 2) and a blurb, which was written in blurry purple type that was impossible to read.

Probably worth a bob or two.

Even so, it was exactly the kind of hippie crap Noah had been waving at him for months and he didn’t feel inclined to buy it. He took the Marine jacket and a couple of the eighties records to the counter, waiting for one of the enormous women to rouse herself and make it over to the till. He had a feeling she didn’t like selling him the jacket. Not that he gave a toss. He put it on as he walked out of the door, flashing her a tin-soldier salute. He sauntered down the block, feeling quite fuck you; he was peering through the window of something called a Weight Loss Club trying to see if it was full of fat people doing exercises, when some kid came up behind him and said hey. He looked about thirteen and kind of Pakistani and was dressed as your standard-issue mini gangsta — everything two sizes too big, baseball cap with the sticky label still on the brim.

“Bro, are you Nicky Capaldi?”

“Yeah.”

“Awesome! I knew it was you! She said it wasn’t, but it was. Laila! Laila! It’s him.”

A girl was standing halfway down the block, looking mortified. Her black hair hung in a curtain over her face. Despite the heat she was dressed in full emo black. Dress shirt buttoned up to the neck, jeans, ten-hole steel-toe Docs, silver jewelry. She trudged forward and raised a hand in a weak greeting.

“Sorry,” she said. It wasn’t clear what she was apologizing for.

Nicky was over meeting fans. It always got weird. They gave you stuff: knitted portraits, poems written in their blood. It was better if they were hot, but that came with a whole other set of problems. More than once he’d had to call for Terry after getting himself cornered in a dressing room or toilet cubicle by some girl who was now threatening to cut herself/him/cry rape/not eat/tell their boyfriend/brother/dad if he didn’t do whatever it was he no longer felt like doing. This one was clutching a record behind her back.

“Do you want me to sign that?”

“Whatever,” she said. “I saw you looking at it. That’s all.”

It was the hippie album he’d left in the shop.

“Oh, right. I thought it was one of ours.”

“No. Sorry.”

The boy piped up. “Laila tried to go see you when you played in San Diego, but our uncle wouldn’t let her.”

“Shut up, Samir.”

“He brought her back from the bus station.”

“He strict, then, your uncle?”

The girl shrugged and flicked her hair. As she tilted her head to the side, he saw the dark skin of her throat. She’d powdered her face chalk-white. He figured her for about seventeen.

“Yeah,” she said. “Compared to Americans.”

“Where you from, then?”

“Greatest nation in the world!” butted in the boy. “U.S. of A.!”

“Iraq,” said the girl. “Though my ADD brother tells people he’s American. I’m Laila, he’s Samir. Not Juan-Carlos or Scarface or whatever he told you.”

“Eat me.”

“You are so fucking lame.”

Nicky was confused. “You’re Iraqi. And you’re out here — what — on holiday?”

“We live in this shithole. Our uncle works on the base.”

“So, he’s in the Army?”

“Let’s talk about something else, OK?”

“Laila has a picture of you inside her Spanish grammar book,” Samir mentioned confidentially.

“Well,” said Nicky, eyeing the distance to his car. “That’s great. I’m glad you’re feeling the music and everything. It makes it all worthwhile.”

Laila looked stricken. “Don’t go,” she said. “Just one more minute. My brother’s a retard, but you have no idea how fucked up our world is. If I could have made it to that show, I would have. Your music’s about the only thing that keeps me sane.”

“Thanks,” said Nicky. “I appreciate it. You take it easy.”

She pointed to the records in his hand. “You have a record deck, right? What am I saying? You’re probably staying in a fancy place, with like a widescreen and a pool.”

“I’m just in a motel.”

“Because we’ve got one at our place.”

“Right.”

“And Uncle Hafiz has all this cool old Egyptian pop music.”

“Sounds like cats,” said Samir. “No bass at all.”

“I’d love to, but you know how it is.”

“Sure.”

“But it was good to meet you.”

“You too. It’s the best thing that’s happened to me all year.”

Samir jumped back and took a couple of pictures with his phone. Automatically Nicky smiled, putting his arm round the girl’s shoulders. She molded herself to his side.

“OK, guys, I should get on.”

He walked back towards his car, the high collar of the Marine tunic rubbing at his neck. When he turned round, he saw the two kids were just standing there on the pavement, watching him.

On the way to the motel he stopped off at a market and bought toiletries, booze, a pack of white vests and a pair of surf shorts with a picture of a palm tree on the arse. Back at the motel he put on the shorts and went for a swim, sculling on his back and blinking into the sunlight. He thought about the band and about the album and nothing much good came to mind, which made him start to think about drugs. A nibble on one of those buttons might help take the edge off. He could sit out by the pool, watch the sunset, then drive to get a pizza once the rush had worn off. Plan. He was air-drying on one of the loungers, smoking a self-congratulatory fag, when a policeman came and started talking to the big-haired motel manager. Dude was actually wearing a cowboy hat, which reminded him of how many movies he’d seen the previous night. Mentally he tallied up what he’d done lately. He couldn’t think of anything particularly illegal, unless somehow they’d found the gun. If they’d found the gun he’d have to call Terry. But the cop just talked to the manager and went away again, didn’t even look in his direction.