The Best of Michael Swanwick Read Free Page A

presentiment assured him he did not want to know the source of Kaplan’s expression.
    “A place called Peabody’s. You’ve heard of Janis Joplin, our famous national singer?”
    Wolf nodded, meaning no.
    “The show is a re-creation of her act. Woman name of Maggie Horowitz does the best impersonation of Janis I’ve ever seen. Tickets are almost impossible to get, but Hopkins has special influence in this case because—ah, here we are.”
    Kaplan led him down a set of concrete steps and into the basement of a dull brick building. Wolf experienced a moment of dislocation. It was a bookstore. Shelves and boxes of books and magazines brooded over him, a packrat’s clutter of paper.
    Wolf wanted to linger, to scan the ancient tomes, remnants of a time and culture fast sinking into obscurity and myth. But Kaplan brushed past them without a second glance and he had to hurry to keep up.
    They passed through a second roomful of books, then into a hallway where a grey man held out a gnarled hand and said, “Tickets, please.”
    Kaplan gave the man two crisp pasteboard cards, and they entered a third room.
    It was a cabaret. Wooden chairs clustered about small tables with flickering candles at their centers. The room was lofted with wood beams, and a large unused fireplace dominated one wall. Another wall had obviously been torn out at one time to make room for a small stage. Over a century’s accumulation of memorabilia covered the walls or hung from the rafters, like barbarian trinkets from toppled empires.
    “Peabody’s is a local institution,” Kaplan said. “In the twentieth century it was a speakeasy. H.L. Mencken himself used to drink here.” Wolf nodded, though the name meant nothing to him. “The bookstore was a front, and the drinking went on here in the back.”
    The place was charged with a feeling of the past. It invoked America’s bygone days as a world power. Wolf half-expected to see Theodore Roosevelt or Henry Kissinger come striding in. He said something to this effect, and Kaplan smiled complacently.
    “You’ll like the show, then,” he said.
    A waiter took their orders. There was barely time to begin on the drinks when a pair of spotlights came on, and the stage curtain parted.
    A woman stood alone in the center of the stage. Bracelets and bangles hung from her wrists, gaudy necklaces from her throat. She wore large tinted glasses and a flowered granny gown. Her nipples pushed against the thin dress. Wolf stared at them in horrified fascination. She had an extra set, immediately below the first pair.
    The woman stood perfectly motionless. Wolf couldn’t stop staring at her nipples; it wasn’t just the number, it was the fact of their being visible at all. So quickly had he taken on this land’s taboos.
    The woman threw her head back and laughed. She put one hand on her hip, thrust the hip out at an angle, and lifted the microphone to her lips. She spoke, and her voice was harsh and raspy.
    “About a year ago I lived in a row house in Newark, right? Livedon the third floor, and I thought I had my act together. But nothing was going right, I wasn’t getting any…action. Know what I mean? No talent comin’ around. And there was this chick down the street, didn’t have much and she was doing okay, so I say to myself: What’s wrong, Janis? How come she’s doing so good and you ain’t gettin’ any? So I decided to check it out, see what she had and I didn’t. And one day I get up early, look out the window, and I see this chick out there hustling ! I mean, she was doing the streets at noon ! So I said to myself, Janis, honey, you ain’t even trying. And when ya want action, ya gotta try. Yeah. Try just a little bit harder.”
    The music swept up out of nowhere, and she was singing: “Try-iii,Try-iii, Just a little bit harder…”
    And unexpectedly, it was good. It was like nothing he had ever heard, but he understood it, almost on an instinctual level. It was world-culture music. It was