What We Do Is Secret Read Free Page B

peels it off, says it’s courtesy of Triple-A, and slots it into the ignition.
    And turns over the engine while I fumble two-handed for the door release.
    And in this Father Superior I-showed-you-so voice he says, “I know you’re tough, but you be care—”
    The door wrenches open, with no help from me. I fall out, I’m pulled out, out and away, from a shotlike crack on glass and muffled soft aftershocks, crackle-crackling, from the sudden catapulting car, from roar and squeal so loud so close with silence after so complete I wonder, Am I deaf now?
    Am I dreaming?
    Blitzer doesn’t let go or balance me on my feet. He holds on tight. He rakes his blunt thick long strong fingers through my hair, over and over, raking raking raking, his fingers fingers fingers. Then he says Rockets? and I say Yeah? and he asks if I’ll take off with him, get out get out get out, go somewheres.
    I will, when?
    What hey, tonight, now.

4
    What better reason then, to sing sing like jailbirds in his native Zoo York, walking west on Lexington, after this hooker hits us up for superglue, she’s barefoot, carrying stilettos.
    Roadrunner, roadrunner!

Go a thousand miles an hour!
    It’s the first song the Pistols recorded, a studio demo, and Paul Cook comes in with the guitar intro but Johnny can’t remember the lyrics, he just mumbles nonsense stuff then giggles, “I don’t know the words” and “C’mon Paul, shout out how it starts.” So Paul says, “One, two, three, four, five, six,” and that’s word how it does start, but Johnny doesn’t con the dots and pours piss and vinegar into his voice by the imperial gallon, snarling, “If you’ll start at the beginning, Paul,” like a jocko-homo gym teacher piling push-ups on a sissy-homo kid, and they go back and forth like that from here to infirmity with Johnny all rewind-repeat, “I don’t know the words,” till he finally catches on.
    Then at the very end he asks, “Do we know any more fuckin Beatles songs that we could do?” And that was always Darby’s cue to blow beer out his nose, because it’s the Modern Lovers, it’s no Beatles song at all.
    And if it was I’d hate it hard, the day Darby died there were nothing but Beatles songs, on and off the radio, blaring here, blaring there, blaring everywhere across the fuckin universe.
    December 7, 1980.
    Though on KROQ Rodney at least alternated Beatles and Germs.
    And Black Randy and the Metro Squad did a show at the Starwood that night, I’d been nabbed by Defective Services but Hellin Killer told me Randy came out in a long hippie wig, little round wire-rim glasses, one of those fringy sixties leather vests, but wearing a Circle One armband too, and sang, “Imagine there’s no Darby.”
    And Blitzer went on the radio and told a college DJ Darby’s favorite Beatle was John Lennon.
    But who was Darby’s favorite boy?
    My life my leather my love goes to Bosco.
    That’s all he wrote, in his suicide note. But somehow it’s Blitzer who ended up with the jacket, who knows how but I know this: Rory Dolores hates him for it.
    “Can I ask you something, Blitzer?”
    On the corner of Mansfield, thick jacked steaks, still freezer-case cold in a bottom-feeder’s hands.
    “What hey, ask away.”
    Filet mignon, two bucks.
    “How was it you got tight with Darby? The first time, I mean.”
    Filet mignon, buck fifty.
    “When I tried to talk to him after we met he was ignoring me.”
    Drive-by dumbfuck Valley boys.
    “So I started eating this aluminum can.”
    Hey, punk rock!
    “Just tearing it up.”
    Hey, Devo!
    “That got his attention.”
    We corner onto Orange, black cherry again, it’s steam from the Jell-O vats venting, so it lingers all night long. We climb the factory steps, then the planter, and boost ourselves up to the crib.
    I’ve slept here with him how many times?
    Five?
    But we only slept.
    Twice when I was here already, he showed late both times and scared at first I woke hearing him below, it was cold