“Don’t you start that shit again, Martin. I’m going to get her.”
“You’ll do no such thing,” Martin told her.
“Well, pardon me. Need I remind you that she’s my daughter?”
“And need I remind you that she’s capable of choosing her friends herself—”
“That guy looks like a nut!”
“Why? Because he’s not wearing Brooks Brothers? Get with it, Ann. All her friends back in the city dress like that.”
“Yeah, and they’re all nuts too!”
“How do you know? You’ve never even made the effort to meet any of her friends. And did you stop to think that maybe the reason Melanie feels so alienated is because you alienate her?”
Ann sputtered. He’s starting to sound like my mother. Could she help if it she didn’t want her only child hanging around with a guy who looked like he just stepped off the drug train? At least the girls looked normal.
“Trust her, Ann,” Martin went on. “Just because the guy looks different doesn’t mean they’re going in there to smoke dope.”
«« — »»
Zack removed the joint from his jacket pocket. He passed it and a lighter to Wendlyn.
“So how long are you in town?” he asked Melanie.
“Just for the rest of the week, I think,” she said, but she felt so distracted she barely heard her own words. Zack was a dream. Cool blue eyes, great haircut, great body. Under the black leather jacket he wore a NIN T shirt which was tight enough to show off his washboard abdominals. Zack was the last kind of person she’d ever expect to find in a town like Lockwood.
“Rena and Wendlyn said you live at the church.”
“Yeah, I take care of the place. They give me a room in the basement. It’s not a bad deal.”
Wendlyn and Rena huddled together on the couch. They passed the joint back and forth a few times. Then Rena passed it to Melanie.
“You sure this stuff isn’t pot?”
“We told you, it’s leahroot,” Wendlyn said.
“Go ahead,” Rena said.
Melanie looked at the tiny joint. She remembered how it had affected her last night. What the hell, she thought.
One hit, and Melanie felt weightless, giddy. She lazily looked around. Rena’s house was cramped and old but it was neat. It felt lived in, more like a real home than Melanie’s antiseptic condo.
“I had a dream about you last night,” Rena said.
Melanie looked at her. I had a dream about you too, she was tempted to reply but didn’t dare.
Wendlyn, oddly, seemed to be grinning.
“We’ll let you two get better acquainted,” Rena feigned in a floozy accent. Then she and Wendlyn went toward the back of the house.
Melanie wondered why she didn’t feel nervous. Ordinarily, she would be, suddenly sitting here with a near perfect stranger. But there was something about Zack, though he hadn’t said much, that put her at ease.
“Where are you from?” she asked.
“Kind of all over,” Zack said. “I was on my own for a while, when I was younger. Your grandmother sort of took me in. I owe her a lot.”
She wanted to ask him something commonplace, like about school, but then it occurred to her that he probably hadn’t had much education. Some people were more fortunate than others.
His jacket sported several Goth buttons. One of them read “Killing Joke.”
“Killing Joke?” she enthused. “That’s my favorite group.”
“Yeah? I saw ’em a few years ago when I was passing through D.C., before they broke up. I met ’em after the show—pretty cool bunch of guys.”
This astonished Melanie. “You met Killing Joke?”
“Yeah, backstage after the show. They autographed one of my CD covers. I’ll show it to you sometime.”
Melanie didn’t know if she believed this. To her, meeting Killing Joke was the equivalent of a priest meeting the Apostles.
“Only bad thing about Lockwood is not many people are into good music,” he said. “Come on, I’ll show you my music collection.”
Melanie was taken aback. Should she go? She’d like to. But where to exactly? “Where did Wendlyn and Rena go?”
Zack shrugged. “Who cares? We’ll run into them later. Come on.”
“Okay,” she said. Zack stubbed out the joint and pocketed it. Mom would love this, she thought, amused. He led her outside across some yards. More houses like Rena’s could be seen, small but picturesque. Melanie walked along, still high from the joint. Zack walked close behind her; he took off his jacket and slung it over his shoulder. God, she thought. The tight T shirt clung to a well developed back and shoulders. He was lean but well built. His biceps bulged.
“You’re probably bored here already,” he suggested.
“Why do you say that?”
“I mean, a girl like you—in Lockwood.”
“What do you mean, a girl like me?”
“You know. Classy. Educated.”
Melanie felt flattered. “I like Lockwood. It’s different.”
Zack seemed to snort a laugh. “You’re right about that.”
She wasn’t quite sure what he meant. Great ass too, she thought, taking a glance. “Did you really meet Killing Joke?”
“You don’t believe me?”
“Oh, I believe you, I just—”
“You’ll see,” he said.
She found his aloofness as attractive as his body. His slow casual gait somehow propelled him so quickly that Melanie nearly had to jog to keep up. She didn’t feel comfortable cutting between houses—someone might call the police; at least, in the city they would. In one window she saw several women sitting around a table; they seemed huddled. Then she saw the same thing in a window of the next house. Another room showed a man sitting alone. He was staring at the wall.
“That was quick,” she said.
The shortcut brought them to the town square in minutes. The sun was going down just over the peaked roof of the church.
That’s where he was taking her: the church.
What a strange place to live, she thought.
“Down here.”
In back, steps descended into a brick walled enclosure in the ground, and a door. A hinge keened.
“Home, sweet home,” Zack remarked. Light from a bare bulb lit a long cinder block walled room. One end was cramped with a small bed, a dresser, and a chair. But then she saw what most of the room was devoted to: rows of shelves which contained hundreds, if not thousands, of records and compact discs.
“Jesus,” she whispered.
“It ain’t Buckingham Palace, but it’s all I need.”
“No, I meant your collection.”
“Yeah, and check out my gear.”
Arranged at the back of the basement was a stereo system the likes of which Melanie could never imagine. Steel racks on floor points housed dual amplifiers the size of televisions, a Nakamichi DAT recorder, an ARCAM CD player, and a line conditioner. Another stand on points supported a turntable with a linear air bearing tone arm. A subwoofer separated two giant electrostatic speakers the size of doors.
“It’s my pride and joy,” Zack said. “Gotta leave the equipment on all the time or else it sounds edgy. A high end turntable blows compact discs away; most people don’t realize that. Of course, most people don’t spend twenty five grand on a stereo system.”
“Twenty five thousand ?” Melanie whispered.
“Sure. Music’s my only pleasure. I don’t cut corners.”
“They must pay you pretty well to clean up the church.”
Zack laughed faintly. “They don’t pay me nothing, ’cept they give me the room for free.”
“Then how can you afford…all this?”
“Odd jobs,” Zack replied. He walked over to one of the shelves and removed something. “Check this out.”
Melanie held it as if it were an icon. The CD version of Killing Joke’s Nighttime. It had been autographed by all members of the band, and inside was a Polaroid of Zack standing next to the lead singer.
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