Christa Faust - Fringe The Zodiac Paradox

“Oh, look,” she said, pointing to a doorway at the back of the stage. “Here they come.”

The band took the stage to enthusiastic cheers from the small but vocal crowd. Roscoe was dressed in a dragon-print Oriental jacket with no shirt underneath and white bell-bottom pants. He winked at Abby as he sat down at the keyboard and adjusted the mike to the level of his smirking lips. Behind him, Chick Spivy was wearing a dark green suede suit and snakeskin boots, slinging his famous hand-painted Les Paul over his shoulder and waving, a big stoned grin on his beaming face.

Next up were Oregon Dave and Alex, dressed twinlike in jeans and matching shirts. Dave’s shirt was blue with red stars and Alex’s was red with blue stars. Last up was Iggy, resplendent in royal purple bell-bottoms and a ruffled white shirt, open to his navel to unleash his thick, brambly chest hair.

He sat behind his drum kit and looked over at Roscoe, who in turn looked over at each of the other members, then nodded. Iggy clicked his sticks together and then they broke into a slower, dirtier, funked-up version of “She’s Doing Fine.”

Walter cheered freely, so happy in that moment in such a pure and uncomplicated way. It was a miracle to him that something as simple as music had the power to take away all his worries and anxiety, and transport him back to a better place. He’d been a college freshman when he first heard Violet Sedan Chair’s seminal album Seven Suns, and it had opened his mind as surely as the acid he’d dropped for the first time that same year.

Life had seemed so different back then, so full of magic and potential. He’d been convinced that things were really going to change for the better, that love and music really could defeat fear and war. But then, somehow, it had all turned dark and ugly. Acid, mushrooms, and marijuana had been replaced with speed, cocaine, and heroin. Hippies were replaced by Hell’s Angels. The gentle, open-minded spirituality and self-exploration of the late sixties had degenerated into the hard-partying glitter and hedonism of the seventies.

Their musical idols were dying, and being steadily replaced by plastic corporate pop stars and super groups.

Yet here Walter was, basking in the musical genius of one of his personal heroes, on a par with Tesla and Einstein. The incomparable Roscoe Joyce was in rare form on stage, coaxing new resonance and meaning from old hits and exploring uncharted territory in selections from a complex and profoundly spiritual rock opera that Walter had never heard before.

He glanced over at Bell, unable to stop smiling, and noticed that his friend seemed a little bored by the concert, checking his watch and looking impatient as Iggy thundered off into yet another ten-minute drum solo. Didn’t Bell appreciate the layered complexity and meaning in this music? He’d seemed to like the band well enough when Walter had first played “Seven Suns” for him back in 1966. And he’d been intrigued by the rumor of the lost track “Greenmana” and its supposed hallucinogenic effect.

Now, he just looked annoyed.

Walter felt a sudden hot rush of embarrassment, and even guilt. Of course Bell was impatient. Walter should be, too. They weren’t in the club to enjoy music. They were there to convince Roscoe and the band to help them defeat a dangerous killer.

* * *

“Thank you!” Roscoe howled into the mike, fist in the air as he got up from his keyboard bench.

“Thank God,” Bell muttered under his breath as the band put down their instruments and left the stage. But Walter knew they would never end the set without doing “Seven Suns.” That was their one commercial hit, the one song that they were best known for. Besides, if they were really done, they would have taken their instruments with them.

Sure enough, less than a minute later the band came back up onto the stage, hands in the air. The small crowd made up for their lack of numbers with wild enthusiasm, cheering and chanting.

“Se-ven Suns! Se-ven Suns! Se-ven Suns! Se-ven Suns! Se-ven Suns!”

“You have got to be kidding,” Bell said, rolling his eyes.

“You can’t get rid of us that easy,” Roscoe said, grinning into the mike. “This song is a little ditty I wrote a few years back. Maybe you’ve heard of it.”

Alone on the keyboard, he broke into the first bar of “Seven Suns” and the crowd went crazy, hollering and cheering. The rest of the band joined in and the crowd started to quiet down, swaying together as if hypnotized. Abby and her pregnant friend Sandy sang along, loud and off-key, as the song ebbed and flowed like a tide over the ecstatic crowd.

Bell and Nina were the only ones who were unswayed.

Walter found himself wondering if the Zodiac might have been so brazen as to follow them into the venue. He couldn’t see the bespectacled killer as he scanned the faces of the crowd, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t there.

He wondered if the killer was enjoying the music, too, or if he was even capable of enjoying anything other than killing.

* * *

On the album, Walter was pretty sure that the song was about four minutes long, but more than fifteen minutes had passed and the band showed no signs of wrapping it up any time soon. He actually found himself getting impatient, and if that was the case, Bell must have been crawling out of his skin.

* * *

It was nearly a full hour and six encores later when the band finally gathered up their instruments and left the stage for good. With Walter and Bell in tow, Nina immediately pushed her way through the crowd and through a beaded curtain to a doorway that led backstage.

“Backstage” was probably a fancier name than the area deserved. The band was hanging out behind the stage, so Walter had to give it that, but his idea of what it might be like to be “backstage” with his favorite band wasn’t anything like this.

It was more like a vestibule with a crooked mirror bolted to one wall and crates of booze and beer kegs lining the other. A forlorn yellow plaid loveseat that was missing all but one of its threadbare cushions had been shoved into a corner, and a trio of spindly wooden folding chairs had been placed beneath the mirror.

The guys were all laughing and joking and putting away their instruments. Several joints were being passed both directions around the room. Two of the girls from the large group had found their way backstage and were giggling and flirting with Alex and Chick.

Abby was there, too, arms locked possessively around Roscoe’s skinny waist.

“Little Bobby loves ‘Seven Suns’,” she was telling him. “He always kicks when you play it.”

“Hey,” Roscoe said when he spotted Walter and Bell. “It’s the professors!” He grinned and passed a joint to Walter. “Did you dig that last song? It’s called ‘Gateway,’ and it came to me during that amazing trip we had with you guys. Just came to me, to all of us like it was already written. We barely even had to rehearse, we just knew it, man. We felt it—you dig?”

“That’s fascinating,” Walter said, taking a hit off the joint. “Do you have any plans to record it? I’d love to study the structure in depth.”

“Walter,” Bell said, taking the joint out of his hand and raising his eyebrows.

“Ah, yes,” Walter said with a slight frown. “Well...”

He had thought that Nina was going to talk the band into helping, since she was already friends with them. He’d had no idea that he would be called upon to do the convincing.

“Say, professor,” Roscoe interrupted. “You got any more of that righteous special blend of yours? I feel like ‘Gateway’ is just the tip of the iceberg, man. I can sense a whole concept album in there, just waiting for me to plug in, you know? I feel like this is exactly what the band needs to take us to a higher level.”