SOUTH OF THE SONG

Jay Fayden parked his bright green Suzuki Samurai between a woodside late-70s Ford Esquire station wagon and a white, new VW GTI, jerking the emergency brake lever. The Samurai bounced merrily on its shocks, buzzing at him when he opened the door before removing his keys from the ignition. His fuel gauge read well into the reserve tank, as did his checkbook and his stomach. It was winter in Myrtle Beach and the pickings were slim. They were always slim between September and spring break.

The checks rolled in of course, during the summer. A gritty film of fine gravel scrunched under the soles of his off-brand white leather high-tops as he rounded the corner to start up the steps to his one-bedroom apartment. It 'wasn't much' as he often said but he called it home.

For one of his jobs Jay wrote a column for the local daily newspaper; for another, he drove for a courier service between Myrtle Beach and various local cities; for a third, he worked part time for a music store in town. During the winter every single second, it seemed, was spent subsisting.

If it was true he shared that reality with most of the young adults in his area. Those who had chosen to remain in Myrtle Beach from his 1982 graduating class at Horry County High School -- those who were not bellhops at the Sheraton, selling real estate or unemployed and beyond caring -- worked at least two jobs during the winter. Winters weren't hard by climatic standards in Myrtle Beach, usually -- just rainy, windy and largely dismal -- but utility bills jumped and few rental units were adequately insulated for even mildly inclement weather. Jay's bathroom ceiling leaked. Even his fairly well-built apartment was cold at night, and harder to keep warm if the wind blew.

He was, thankfully, nearly a mile back from the ocean; the wind off the Atlantic was somewhat buffered by the two-blocks-thick ribbon of restaurants, hotels and shops. They were good for little else a month and a half before Thanksgiving, hunching idle in the stiff breeze, their darkened plate glass windows like glazed, blind eyes.

He turned the knob as he clicked the deadbolt left on the door, shoved its grudging barrier with most of his weight and followed it through. Pale sunlight diffused its way into the room through dirty windowpanes never completely covered by mini-blinds that hadn't operated right since the first day Jay had been in the apartment. Everything in his life, it sometimes seemed, was a pretty artifice with no supports. The moment he touched the surface, the veneer shattered and revealed the faulty or nonexistent substructure. Maybe, he thought, depressed with the idea just as much as he was fascinated with it, he was equally shallow and centerless.

A stack of bills greeted him where he had left them the previous day -- on his desk under the largest window. The season's last phone bill; the last cable bill. He had no time for either in the winter, so he discontinued both services from October to the following May. It was an extra fifty dollars or more each month, besides, for the rare nights he had time to go out. Fifty dollars a month was more than enough for his fairly monastic lifestyle; a few drinks at one of the three of four clubs still open along the Strand more than sufficed, most times. As a writer, he felt a certain responsibility to drink whenever possible. It wasn't possible when he was driving; it was, however, when he was working on his local-color column for the county daily and doling out guitar picks at the music store.

Jay worked at a music store, but he didn't consider himself much a musician. He'd taken up playing acoustic guitar to back up the lyrics he'd written, when he was a hormonally-inspired 15 year old. It hadn't exactly hurt his popularity index with the local girls.

Not that he had lusted after many local girls. Most of Jay's trysts -- or at least tetes -- had been with the Canadian and Ohioan girls who spent a summer week or long weekend at the beach with their parents. Those had been intense, intent, romantic and almost inevitably sexless affairs, full of meaningful conversation and physical frustration. It didn't pay to get involved with someone you'd have to at best stay with, or at worst ignore, through the ensuing months -- or years, or the rest of your life. For this reason, Jay had made it his policy not to bother with the local girls -- ever. Not that they'd been beating down his door.

There was a stillness in the room today as he settled in behind his desk to write out his deposit envelope for the paycheck from Strand Couriers he'd just received. It irritated him at first, the stillness, and then began to soothe him. Nothing had ever happened here; the apartment was a static place, almost like a womb. Like his old bedroom at home, which had been sacred -- his brothers hadn't been allowed to confront him in it; his parents had even honored his wishes and refrained from punishing him there. Like his old bedroom, no dramatic scenes had ever played themselves out in this small, leaky, cold apartment; it was all he had for haven, and he guarded its havenhood with an almost obsessive rigor.

He sealed two envelopes, one each for Horry County Electric and BellSouth, careful with the last two stamps in his beat-up leather wallet. One stamp showed a horned owl, the other a roadrunner. Jay thought briefly how remarkably ignorant he was about wildlife. All he really knew of the natural world was the water that dripped into a tin pan on his bathroom floor when it rained; the sea oats the Strand took pains to protect on the eroding, overdeveloped local beaches; the red tide which crept stinking along the coast every few summers.

His column was not due in until ten the next morning. He hadn't written it yet, of course. Thank God, he thought, it was a local-color type column. Even the fact he had nothing to write about could occasionally be parlayed into the required number of words, if nothing else had inspired him before nine o'clock on deadline morning. The master of that, and a southern man at heart -- if not by birthright -- was Dave Barry, who was originally from Pennsylvania but had in recent years sent in his columns from Miami. Jay had met Barry, once, at a midsummer news writers' convention in Orlando. Jay's impression had been of an accessible man who laughed a great deal and seemed a tiny bit baffled by his success. Humor and op-ed columns were not an easy way to make one's living. Jay was not able to make his own living with them.

Of course, Barry had not always done so, either, as a matter of fact. He had published, at the time Jay met him, eight collections of daily columns and other observations which, to his amazement, had sold well. Barry had offered Jay no advice, except he hoped Jay would forego writing about furniture, a subject like Gary Larson's Far Side cows, which was Barry's quarter-in-the-shoe.

Jay had also, at the same convention, met Lewis Grizzard. Grizzard seemed much as he wrote and spoke: bemused, just slightly aloof. Like Jay's, Grizzard's columns were frequently concerned with the drowning of what had once been a resolutely Southern culture in the relentless whirlpool of California-friendly, sunny, breezy homogeneity of attitude and style. They had discussed Jay's theory cable TV super-channels such as Ted Turner's news and MTV had invaded and, ultimately, devoured local cultures which had historically been free to define themselves by the tastes and attitudes of their resident communities. Now, 13-year-old girls in Myrtle Beach looked and sounded like 13-year-old girls in Minot, North Dakota and Portales, New Mexico. Unlike Barry, Grizzard seemed not at all baffled by his success. He took it in stride, like a modern Southern gentleman. Jay did not even waste time projecting himself into that scenario; he didn't have time to make an icon of himself through his columns. He was too busy most of the time simply trying to feed himself.

But a paperback or two on the shelf at B. Dalton would have left a warm spot in his heart. Maybe in his wallet, too.

It was just seven o'clock on a Thursday evening. Jay needed to entertain himself. There were no good movies out, that week. To find a decent repertory cinema he would have had to drive two and a half hours to Columbia. The last time he had found the trip worthwhile, the movie had been 'My Left Foot'. It was a damn long, depressing trip to make alone in the car, and a damn depressing way to see a movie -- alone in a crowd of strange people. Better to rent a movie at the convenience store and sit alone on his sofa. It was expected he would be alone there, at least. Well, it had been so for the year and a half he had been in the apartment. No woman but his mother had ever crossed its threshold, and she very rarely. Jay's was a single man's home, and it showed it; dishes maintained a steady encroachment on the counter. Those dishes used most often were washed and stacked in the drainer. The reserve line -- those he used on the rare occasion he had company or wanted to cook something elaborate for himself, like pancakes -- were rinsed and stacked just behind the drainer. He only washed them when he wanted to use them again. Last in line were the wok, waffle iron and vegetable steamer. Used once, they had never been washed.

The livingroom was spare -- a plain brown sofa, a recliner, a TV on a stand, a small stereo, a coffee table loaded with coupon booklets, back issues of the newspaper, stubs from his cashed paychecks, and the remnants of already-paid bills. It was the only real clutter -- Jay spent so little time in the apartment, he really didn't have time to mess it up other than to stack various papers on the coffee table.

He had stared at the same blank sheet of typing paper in his old Remington Standard for twenty minutes, rolled just into the carriage and waiting expectantly, when someone knocked on the door. Jay was embarrassed that the sound startled him; but it had happened only about a dozen times since he had lived there. He reached for his glasses and slipped them on as his long legs carried him the six steps to the door.

"Dude!" his younger brother Jon greeted, one foot already across the doorstep. "What's up?"

"Not much. Tryin' to figure out my article for tomorrow. Tough job -- glad I only do it four days a week..."

Jon's geometrically shorn hair stood vertically at his hairline like a row of cornstalks; made him look perpetually surprised. He was almost 18, and the athlete of the four brothers. There was a younger brother, Jerome, who was 12 and had not yet found his niche in the family history; and Jay's older brother, Jeff, who was a business superachiever. Jeff lived in New York City and seldom contacted anyone in the family other than his -- their -- father. Jay's parents were divorced; had separated during his senior year of college. Only Jon had taken the split harder than Jay himself -- Jerry had been too young, at four, to understand. Only Jerry and Jon still lived with their mother, and Jon shuttled back and forth, though their father really preferred not to be anyone's caretaker. At 18 and a high-school senior, Jon now required little care.

"Hear any more on your scholarship?" Jay asked, stepping to the kitchen. He took out two cans of Miller Lite, tossed one at his brother across the small room. Jon caught it without a slip, sat drumming his fingertips on the top of the can while Jay returned with his own.

"Yeah. Texas A&M really wants me. U of I wants me, too. U of I is probably a better school, but Texas A&M has better weather. Since I'll be wintering at school, I'll probably take Texas..."

Jay opened and swallowed from his can of beer, reaching for his cigarettes. He pretty much only smoked when he was drinking -- seldom otherwise, at least. Jon scowled briefly in disapproval, but said nothing. Jon had waged a losing five-year battle to try and convince their mother to quit. It had been difficult to enlist the help of his brothers when both Jay and Jeff smoked, and Jerry knew what a bitch she was when she tried to quit.

"It's a long way to go, either way. Like the idea?"

Jon grinned and finally opened his beer.

"Sure. Didn't you?"

Jay had a bachelor's degree in English from the University of North Carolina. It hadn't been a long way from home but, predictably enough, had seemed another world.

"It was the best four winters of my life. Too bad I couldn't have just gone to school forever..."

"Nobody dragged you back here, you know," Jon said quietly, working the tab on the cold aluminum can back and forth, over and over, between his thumb and forefinger.

"Jon, you needed somebody sane to be here for you. Mom wasn't even moderately sane, she never has been, and Dad and Jeff didn't want to take the responsibility of being there for you..."

"Yeah, but why do you still hang around?"

"Can't afford to leave. What would I go somewhere else and do, anyhow? Hell, 'bout the only thing I could do with my degree is teach English. I don't want to do that."

"You writing anything besides the column?"

Jay felt, suddenly, inexplicably and intensely agitated -- his 18-year-old brother didn't really know; couldn't really have any idea.

"This time of year, I barely have time to sleep, let alone write anything that's not gonna put food in my mouth tomorrow. I don't have time to play around..."

"Funny. I remember when you were in college, you didn't think of it as playing around."

"Hey, time changes things, Jon. When people are subsidizing your life financially, you can afford to be idealistic. When you're over twenty-five and subsidizing yourself, you start to learn to compromise."

"Is that a polite way of telling me to grow up?" Jon asked, half an ironic grin lifting one freckled cheek to wrinkle the still-tender, sun scorched skin under one blue eye. Jay grinned back, shaking his head, and fiddled with his glasses absently.

"No, not at all. I'm actually telling you to relax and enjoy the leisure to be idealistic while you still have it. It doesn't last forever, so hang on to it as long as you can. Life gets tedious eventually. You use your dick to make a few girls, use your brain to make a few bucks, eventually the days all start to take on the same shape. And so do the girls..."

"Jay, that sounds like dying. You're not dying."

"Sure I am. We all are. That's what life is, brother. It's a whole bunch of days, mostly the same, right up 'til the day they end and you don't have to do it anymore. Look, I'm sorry, Jon. You caught me at a bad moment -- I was payin' my bills and trying to come up with a column for tomorrow. Both pretty depressing pursuits sometimes, to tell you the truth."

Jon swallowed from his beer and gently dented the fragile sides of the aluminum can with his fingertips, evoking a quiet clinking sound in the process.

"Why don't you write for the paper full-time? They want you to..."

"I'd like to, but there's not enough to write about around here in the winter. I'd have to come up with a least seven stories a week, plus four columns. There's nothing happening here in the winter to do seven stories a week on. I'd lose the four columns, too, and I can't afford to take a chance on losing that."

"You could move back with Mom and Jerry and me."

"No, I couldn't. Not possible. What is this crusade to try and get Jay to change his lifestyle, all of a sudden? I may not be thrilled with it, but it's okay for right now."

"I think you're foolin' yourself, big brother. I don't think it's even okay. Even for right now."

"Yeah, you're still 17," Jay said, as if in answer, his voice gentle. "You have all the answers. Problem is, the questions don't come until later. You'll play hell tryin' to catch up when they start flyin' at you and you have to match them up. It's not quite the same when those questions keep comin' year after year. Enjoy havin' all the answers now, before you have to use them. And you're right -- my life isn't even as good as okay. It's barely tolerable. It's mostly that good because I have the satisfaction of knowing I'm barely scraping along all on my own, with nothing but moral support from Mom and Dad. I can at least be proud of that."

Jon frowned, stretching his muscular legs over the arm of the recliner.

"Sounds like that's as important to you as anything else, Jay."

"Busted -- you're absolutely right. It's very important to me to be independent, it always was. When you were born, I ran away from home. It was three days before Dad found me, and I didn't want to go home with him then. I just don't feel right about depending on other people too much."

"You want everybody to like you. You don't ever want to owe anything to anybody. You want to be off by yourself in your own little world."

"Yeah, you're right. Here's the question -- and I worked real hard to catch this one and match the answer up -- what is the best way for relatively intelligent, relatively sensitive grown people of either sex to live without hurting other people or hating themselves?"

"Hah -- if you make that overly intelligent and way too sensitive, I'll buy it."

Jay laughed, tipping up his can of beer to swallow the dregs. It was a little warm, and tasted of the can. He could do better, and would do so as soon as possible.

"Allow me my little fictions, kiddo. Don't you have football practice today?"

"Uh-uh. Game tonight, eight o'clock. Just stopped by for a minute and hoped you'd give me a beer, like you did."

"Sure you should right before a game?"

"Couldn't find a woman to drain my manhood into, so the beer's the next worst thing. I gotta go. Don't suppose I could expect you to come to the game..."

"I dunno, maybe. When's the varsity game start?"

"Nine-thirty, somethin' like that. Depends how long it is before they beat the shit outta the reserve guys. They ain't got anybody like me this year."

"Ain't had anybody like you since Jeff, and he got his shoulder screwed up first game his senior year. I think you're a better quarterback than he was anyhow. Your stats are better. You love the game more -- he just kept playin' 'cause he was so good at it. Anything he was better'n anybody else at, he'd keep doing whether he got any pleasure out of it or not."

"Then there's you -- afraid to be better than anybody else at anything. I gotta go, Jay. Maybe I'll see you later."

"Maybe I'll drag Tom to the game for a while. Good luck. Like you need it."

"Need it or not, it's nice to hear it."

Jay didn't escort his younger brother to the door -- neither of them, least of all Jon, really expected it.

He dangled the empty beer can from the tips of his fingers for a time, tapping it against the side of the chair at the desk where he sat studying the shape of the silence Jon had left in his wake. It was one of many forms of observation -- queer though they all happened to be -- which had driven Jay to write. Jon didn't understand that -- as much as anything else -- Jay's need to observe without disturbing his environment led him to this pathetic, sometimes grueling independence. There could, potentially, be days in the coming winter during which he slept away most of the hours to conserve food and gas. Not that it was really necessary. He simply did it to see what it felt like, and to remind himself how it felt to need. Too often, people did not need -- not if they could avoid it.

He carried both empty cans into the kitchen, shook out the last few, warm drops into the sink and crumpled both cans into a cardboard box in the corner. Recycling saved him perhaps three, perhaps five dollars each month. It seemed an awful lot to go through. Sometimes he emptied the box of cans into the box the elderly lady next door kept, just outside her door. He suspected she supplemented a fixed income with the cans, and was glad enough to help her do so.

Tom would be where he always was -- just leaving his second job as a part-time data entry clerk in the finance office at Myrtle Beach Air Force Base. His first job precluded a second full-time job. Tom worked four days of seven on 24-hour call for Myrtle Beach Search and Rescue. In an ocean resort, it was a career. Jay envied Tom the importance of his work. As a career, writing was pretty ineffectual in comparison. But Tom, likewise, envied Jay the flexibility and creative outlet the column provided.

They found little satisfaction in each other's envy. They had a sort of distant intimacy; both twenty-six and mostly alone, they often confided in each other fears and emotions Jay assumed men didn't usually share. They both were afraid of walking into a deep relationship with a woman; both afraid of wasting too much of the best of their lives on flirtations and shallow, just-for-amusement relationships. Both feared botching their marriages, when they finally managed them, though Tom's parents were still together. Both feared fatherhood and, equally, that they might never father children. They were, Jay thought, the same things all single men their age feared. The others very likely just didn't dissect them incessantly over several shots of Scotch whiskey night after night.

He and Tom met no less than once each week for drinks. Some weeks, they met every single night. Since both had returned to the area -- Jay from college, Tom from a self-imposed exile on his uncle's Austin, Texas farm -- they had started going to Paul F's, a locals-only establishment just the Myrtle Beach side of the bridge over the inland waterway. It was a small bar, and frequented almost solely by locals and a changing, select group of soldiers from the air base. As the airmen weren't in the area to exploit its tourist value, they were usually at worst tolerated by Myrtle Beach lifers. Sometimes, Jay and Tom shared DeWar's and conversation at the golden-lit mahogany bar with one or more of them. They had grudgingly admitted to themselves and each other it was heartening to see even the military guys their age were confused and frightened about their futures. Even though they had embarked -- either for a short period of time or a career -- on a route so inherently purposeful, they too doubted themselves and the implications of their decisions.

The wind had picked up again, skittering dry, browned leaves across the manicured stretch of four-lane leading from Myrtle Beach, toward Conway. Jay turned his radio on and off, turned it back on and punched the resting cassette tape back into the deck. Allman Brothers filled the small, airtight passenger compartment of the Samurai, and Jay reached into his pocket for the pack of cigarettes. The night still held a small spark of promise.

Tom was waiting at the bar with two shots of whiskey when Jay crossed the doorstep into Paul F's and dropped his keys into the pocket of his brown corduroy bomber. Tom, as always, wore a black, lined windbreaker with "MBSR" silk-screened on its back in a white latex arch over an embroidered patch with Search and Rescue's symbol, a green wedge of ocean and a white line of beach. Tom was proud of his work with Search and Rescue, and Jay usually felt a knife's edge of objectless hunger each time he glimpsed the jacket. It meant something to Tom perhaps no job would ever mean to him.

Tom turned around on the barstool, his lean face grinning, and lifted both shot glasses in his hands.

"You're late, pal -- I was just about to start without you."

Jay nodded, accepting one of the shot glasses from Tom's hand.

"Sorry. My brother showed up to bum a beer off me before the football game tonight. He's givin' me the old Texas try again."

"He's about 17, isn't he?"

"Yep," Jay grinned. Tom's sly scowl prefaced the words he said so effectively, he barely needed to say them.

"Well, then -- he knows all the answers. Let's drink these. I know you're gonna drag me out for at least part of the game, I want one under my belt before I put myself through it."

"If it's that incredibly difficult for you, we don't have to go..."

Jay slid up on the stool next to Tom's, facing the tarnished mirror behind the bar. Tom leaned back and met Jay's eye, shaking his head.

"Ain't so much the act of goin' to the game is tough on me -- it's watchin' you go through it that's hard. You always end up twisted up in a knot. That's no treat. Drink."

"Yeah, I guess that's true enough. I look at Jon and start thinkin' about that night I had to go to Conway and bail him outta holding for being drunk and disorderly when he was 14. Here, he was tryin' to get a scholarship and he was gettin' tanked every night and throwing toilet paper into the trees out in front of the police station. Think he's gonna go for A&M or University of Texas."

"Um. Probably best -- I think the weather up north would ruin him that first winter. It was, what, University of Illinois?"

"Yeah."

"He'd never be able to play through a winter up there. I got an uncle in Chicago, I guess it gets pretty cold..."

Jay sipped from the shot of DeWar's, rolled it over his tongue and swallowed it before he laughed.

"Tom, is there anywhere you don't have relatives? I swear, every place I mention, you've got an uncle or a cousin or something!"

"You think I'm makin' it up, Jason?"

Tom sounded mildly hurt. Jay laughed again.

"No, no -- I'm sure it's true. There just must be blood from your gene pool spread out all the way out to California. Could be worse, I guess. I can think of people whose gene pools oughtn't to be available to the world. Dan Quayle, for instance..."

"Ronald Reagan. David Duke. Jesse Helms..."

"Any politician you could name, hell with them. They're mostly rotten, seems like. What kinda' moron wants to get into politics? I mean, these are the people who run our country. Thomas Jefferson was about right -- the ones most fit to run a country are the ones least likely to seek positions of leadership."

"Yeah. They're most likely to sit around in bars sippin' whiskey and talkin' smug about the idiots who happen to get into it."

"I dunno, Tom. I guess we're smart enough, but I'm not sure either one of us is a big enough bastard to do it well. You gotta really be a masochist to get into that, especially the way things are these days... especially around here."

Tom smiled, but it was a thoughtful, serious sort of smile. That usually prefaced a suggestion that would get one or both of them hopelessly involved in a mess from which they would never quite extricate themselves.

"That last seat on city council is open again."

"Now, dammit, Tom -- hasn't Jesse Helms been enough to put you off Southern politics forever?"

"You don't understand, Jay. I wasn't thinkin' about me running for council. I thought you should run..."

"Me? Oh, that's a rich one, Tom! I couldn't get arrested in Horry County, let alone elected... Why me, anyway?"

"Because... Well, because you're qualified. And because you don't really want to do it. You're about as good as we've got. You could represent a new generation of Southern politicians -- first year after the baby boom, college educated..."

"Damyankee liberal, I'm afraid, too. I don't think I'd get past the courthouse doors with my politics, pal. They'd sniff me out for a radical in a minute, and ride me outta there with a post up my ass like a popsicle."

"You could pretend to be the usual Southern Democrat then change horses midstream..."

"Tom, you credit me with more wiles than I ever had."

Tom grinned and winked at Jay in the mirror.

"Bullshit. We both know anybody who gets by down here like we both do all year 'round can't be too witless."

"If animals can survive at the North Pole, it can't take too much human intelligence to survive here."

"I'm talkin' wits. Besides, most animals sleep through the winter."

"See -- even they're smarter than we are. Let's go to a football game and come back here later."

"You ain't too dumb, friend."

A quartet of girls' chirpy voices twined with the murmur of a crowd as Jay and Tom wound their way into the bleachers of the small stadium. Floodlit in the breezy autumn night, the grass, the band, the field and the players seemed faded; somehow insubstantial. Jay spotted a gap in the crowd and sidled cautiously along the row of feet until he reached it. Tom followed, though less carefully.

"Great night for it," Tom said, reaching for his cigarettes. Jay grinned -- there was an expected response.

"Whatever 'it' happens to be. Guess this is the varsity game already. Yep, there's Jon..."

His brother seemed as ghostly as the rest of the players as he waited in the formation. It was early in the game, and the visiting team from Georgetown was ahead by the only touchdown scored so far. With four minutes left in the quarter, the home players waited at Georgetown's 15-yard-line for play to resume.

"God, when did Jon get so big?" Tom insisted.

"He isn't very big, really. He'd only six foot, just a little under 200."

"Yeah, but he wasn't that big last time I saw him out on the beach."

"He packs on twenty pounds once the season starts. He's like us, a little -- he doesn't drink much 'til school starts, then he drinks on the weekends and eats fast food all winter."

"What's his coach think of that?"

Jay grinned and held out a hand until Tom handed him a cigarette.

"Where does a 500 pound canary sit? The kid's a pretty amazing quarterback. You don't tamper with success. I just hope he doesn't get himself hurt before he can get to college. That ruined Jeff, getting hurt his senior year."

"You've said yourself that was only about half the problem. What was the rest of it?"

Jay drew on the cigarette, straightened his glasses on his nose and noticed he was feeling just the slightest buzz in his head.

"Funny -- Jon and I were talking about that earlier. What really ruined football for Jeff was he played 'cause he was better than everyone else, not 'cause he loved sports. He could have recovered from what happened, football players get that same injury all the time -- if he'd loved it enough. Jon loves it. I think he'd have to get pretty busted up not to want to play anymore. One discouragement was enough to throw Jeff completely off track."

"I guess I'll never really understand that, loving sports like that. You and I barely lasted out one season on the tennis team, let alone make a career of it."

"I was never comfortable in my own body. It never seemed to fit right, especially when I was half-dressed and trying to feel competitive. I don't think we're all meant to be team players. Takes a few solitary people to do the kinds of things we like to do. I mean, on S & R, you have to be able to think for yourself in a situation or you're shot. I get paid to think on paper four times a week. Maybe we really are enough better at doing that, we should be doin' what we're doin'..."

"Maybe. What do you hear from the paper?"

"They keep offering, I keep declining. I just got a feeling I don't wanna tie myself up with it. Courier's job pays better, and that job would rule it out. Somebody else is coming, or some thing else. I -- hell, am I nuts to believe there's a better offer on the way?"

Tom smiled and shook his head, grinding out his cigarette and kicking the butt to the grass under the bleachers.

"Hell, no, Jay. It's what keeps us all alive, thinking that. I'm waiting for it, too."

"What exactly are you waiting for, Tom?"

Tom laughed and ran the tip of his index finger over his slightly shaggy moustache.

"Maybe I'm waiting for that city council seat. I don't write for the paper every week, I guess they'd never know about my damyankee liberal politics."

"I knew you were the one that wanted to do it. Why'd you try and get me to do it, if you're the one really wants it?

"Guess I'm afraid to admit to both of us that I want to do it. We both know Thomas Jefferson was right, and I have to wonder about myself for wanting it."

"Long a you keep wondering about it, I won't waste any time doing that myself. Not sure why you'd want it, truth to tell, but you'd be a good one for it. You've been somewhere besides down here, so that gives you a little perspective. You do a job where problems somewhere else play hell with yours. You've got a special perspective on it. Any perspective of any kind is more than the other six council members seem to ever have."

"Providing I'm gonna do this, will you work with me? I'll need somebody to be in charge of all that literature, all the stuff I should and shouldn't say, you know..."

"I know. You know what my success rate is like. I worked for Gary Hart in '88..."

"That wasn't your fault. Besides, you know I can't even cop a little heavy petting in the back of my Blazer, let alone get busted for keepin' two women at once!"

Jay studied Tom's vaguely Mediterranean profile; his dark hair, too long over his ears; his shaggy moustache.

"You need to cut your hair and trim your moustache. Get some pictures taken so we can paste up a couple of posters. 'I god, Tom, you picked a hell of a time to decide to do this. We got less than a month 'til the general election, no money...'I god..."

They stared at each other for a long moment, then laughed and nudged each other's shoulders roughly.

"Yeah, but what've we got to lose? A thousand bucks? Four weeks? At least I'll feel like I tried to do something I wanted to do..."

"I wasn't trying to talk you out of it. Just gonna have to make up about six months in about six hours. You got any DeWar's at your place?"

"DeWar's, tuna salad and cigarettes. Jon be upset if you leave?"

Jay grinned and nodded toward a dirt-smudged figure running offside below them, ball clutched to its chest, its face obscured in a silver helmet.

"You think he ever knew I was here? C'mon."

Thursday, October 9 199-

It's hard to comprehend it's this late in the century. It's less than ten years before the year 2000. Almost 150 years since the War Between The States. How far did that one get us? Now, it's just a little mole on the back of a giant red white and blue monster lumbering along, devouring everything in its path -- good and bad, nutrition and poison -- and excreting it as modern government. The monster is so big, we feel like nothing we could ever do would change it. We sit back in our chairs and watch it rumble and sway along in the blue light of our TVs; our government is constitutionally (no pun intended) unable to agree on even a stopgap measure to keep the wheels greased from October to October. It's our good fortune, at least, these fiscal crises hit about a month before the election in an election year.

What I mean is, keep an eye on your congressmen and senators. Notice how they play the game up the road in DC -- do they uphold principles you share, or ones you think are really, really out of line? Do they knuckle under on things you really think they ought to fight over for you -- and fight when you think they ought to compromise? Of course, it's probably difficult for a man of strong beliefs, commanding such power, to honestly serve his constituents every time he votes without injecting a little -- or a whole lot -- of his own ideas into his decision-making process. After all, that's how they get elected, isn't it? We send them up to the capital draped in bunting and sprinkled with confetti because we think that process is as close to our own as we can find...

No, we don't! Not all of us. Some of us vote for one candidate over another because of the way he wears his hair, or the car he drives, or the college he attended. It doesn't connect with some of us -- a man's brain is the thing we're sending up to DC, not just his body with its nice haircut. Let's get wise, here. One-issue voting is equally stupid. "Your" guy could feel the same way you do about taxes, but come the day you get a pink slip at work, he could be the reason you don't qualify for unemployment.

This may sound like a strange thing for me to say, knowing what you know about my education in politics and my belief we all ought to have a say in the electoral process, but this year I'm begging you people out there who vote for the suit -- or the dress -- or the hair, or the class ring, or the one issue a candidate will admit to a firm opinion on, stay home the first Tuesday next month. Educate yourselves, or please remove yourselves from the electoral process. You really should educate yourselves and vote, of course. I say this every year -- vote, or you've got no right to complain about what you get. I'm revising it, this year. Vote with some brains, or we're going to go through his same confusing mess year after year. Get a grip on your own beliefs, then throw in with the guy who comes closest, not the guy who looks best.

I'll see you guys tomorrow. Hopefully on election day, too.

"So, Mister Op-ed," a slouching redhead with her pink Nikes propped on a desk said, eyeing Jay over the three sheets of double-spaced, typed paper and the top of a pair of reading glasses. "How far over your 550 are you this time? How many little adjustments we gonna have to make?"

She sipped from her coffee and waited for her response.

"Last count, it was about 565. That's maybe one or two lines. Less than five points. You want to read that before you send it to typesetting?"

"Oh-oh. We gonna get in trouble?"

Jay adjusted his knees against his editor's desk. Her office in the old art-deco building was long and narrow -- sliced from what had originally been a hallway. She had refused to forfeit the old painted walnut desk, but said when she faced the length of the room, she felt like a high school teacher. Her desk faced the window, affording a view of one corner of a golf course. Golf nauseated Jay. He was glad enough to have it at his back.

"Darlene, we're just gonna put a burr under the blankets of a few people who'll never admit I was writin' about them. Read it."

She did so, stopping once to drop her glasses and grin. Jay drowsed in the warmth of the early morning sun that grazed the back of his head and one shoulder. He had not yet been to bed -- he was still slightly drunk, and had just stopped by his apartment to shower and brush his teeth before typing up his final draft of the column to drop off with Darlene.

"Late one last night?" she asked quietly. Jay started awake, disoriented, and dropped his glasses on the floor. One of the lenses popped out of the frame.

"Yeah. So late, it ain't over yet."

"Now, this is a nicely-written column, but I know you didn't give up eight hours of sleep for it. What were you doin'?"

Jay yawned and fixed his glasses as he responded.

"Tom Bailey's thinkin' about running for that vacant council seat. He wanted some advice."

"You don't think it'll cause you problems with the column?"

"I've got twenty of them backed up for vacations and emergencies."

"I don't mean that. I mean you express some pretty strong political sentiments in your columns. You don't think it'll compromise your ethics?"

Jay laughed aloud.

"This is pretty small beans, Darlene. I write four columns for a daily paper that sells 5,000 copies a day when there's a hurricane. Tom's not talkin' about running for governor, it's just a council seat. I won't let it run over, but if you want me to take a four-week leave from the paper to do it, I will."

"No, no, I don't see any need for it. Just don't write any more political columns between now and then, and try to keep your head down during the campaign. You're not a hard-news reporter or an editor, you're just an opinion-page columnist."

"Well, thanks a lot!"

"You know what I mean. It takes an awful lot to make people question the ethics of an opinion columnist."

"It's gettin' deeper," Jay grinned, leaning forward in the chair until his shoulders touched the rounded front edge of the desktop. "Go on, drive me to suicide, Darlene. My self-worth's fragile enough as it is."

"Yeah, I can tell you got a real complex, you..." she laughed, tapping his forehead gently with the rolled pages of his column. "Why don't you go home and get some sleep, kiddo. You look twenty-eight."

Like most of them, it was an old joke. When Jay had come to Darlene to pitch the idea of a column two years before, she had asked him what he planned to do about the column during the school year. He had told her he was out of school. She had then asked him if he was planning to go to college. When he had shown her his driver's license, she had finally had to believe he was over 21.

"I feel a few years older than that. Ten years older than you, Darlene. At least..."

She rapped his forehead with the paper in earnest, then, and he groaned and pulled himself out of the chair with the aid of the edge of the desk.

"Don't worry about it. Is he gonna pay you for doing it?"

"Probably in whiskey and tuna sandwiches, but yes. He's gonna pay to keep my phone hooked up, too. It's barter, basically."

"The heart of politics, honest or not. I'll see you tomorrow morning. Get outta here..."

Jay left the building and headed for his Samurai. The truth was, he had 85 pounds of scuba equipment to pick up in town and haul to the repair shop just north of the border in Wilmington. Once that was accomplished he could grab four hours sleep before he was due at Strand Music, the music store where he worked Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. It didn't pay much compared to the columns, for the time he spent on it -- he made fifty dollars for each column -- but there was something about being in the music store from three to eight each night that made him feel he was keeping in touch with the world.

The job wasn't difficult, though it was sometimes slow and tedious. He made no commission whether or not he moved any product, which suited Jay. Only on Friday and Saturday nights would the commission have been more than his salary. Picks and strings were throwaways -- no profit items to keep other merchandise moving. Surprisingly enough it did keep moving, even through the winter. Tuesdays and Thursdays, though, picks and strings were often all Jay sold.

He stopped at the 7-11 for an extra large coffee before heading north on Route 17 toward Wilmington. He wasn't a kid anymore, he reflected, but he could still keep running on very little sleep. It was a blessing, and would likely prove to be one in the next few weeks like it hadn't in some time.

The sun beat through the high passenger corner of his windshield as he rolled past Cherry Grove and North Myrtle Beach, toward the northern bridge over the Intracoastal Waterway. It figured -- the one time he didn't need for the sun to keep him warm, it was positively diligent.

There was no radio really worth listening, so Jay turned up the volume on the Allman Brothers. He wasn't really overly fond of them, either -- but he could never bring himself to listen to any band Rolling Stone would ever have described as 'slick' or 'blow-dried'. Somehow, there was a certain lack of feeling and generosity in most of the vacuous pop the local FM stations played. Since he had returned from college, three mainstream rock stations had been born in the spring, thrived through the summer, and died around Christmas. Frustrating, but not surprising -- the only real money for a rock station came from north of the Mason-Dixon, with the tourists. That dribbled down to virtually nothing each year just after Labor Day.

The cyclic nature of the tourist industry did, to some extent, make up for the blandness of the change of seasons in the area. Up North, in October, people were probably breathless with anticipation in the pause between bright green summer and the dismal winter weather, relieved for a too-short moment the weather was placid. In Myrtle Beach, it was a breathless pause between the love-hate cyclone of tourism and the blank-windowed abandonment of the winter months. Not dissimilar, in fact, at least psychologically.

Jay spotted an unmarked patrol car in the lot of a convenience store on his right; eased off the gas by reflex, though he hadn't been more than a mile or two over the speed limit. Lack of sleep was making him jumpy. Just 25 more miles and the deadhead back, then he could collapse for four hours.

In Wilmington he hefted the crate of equipment and lifted it down from the back seat of the Samurai, resting it on his knee to redistribute the weight before crossing the gravel parking lot. The sun was warming the air up, now -- it was after ten o'clock. As in M.B., the off-season traffic was slower here, though in the evenings, it picked up -- first, Wilmington was known in the area for its Calabash seafood; second, for its naval station. There was a bit more life here in the cooler months, though not much.

A sloe-eyed, plump blonde girl about Jon's age met Jay at the counter and led him back into a room which obviously served as the setup and repair shop. Jay didn't recognize more than a few of the tools and pieces of equipment strewn over the plywood tables. There was a compressor pump for refilling the tanks, and a portable welder -- otherwise, he would have been completely lost.

"Can you initial the receipt for this?" he asked, reaching into the crate for the envelope of paperwork. The girl hadn't spoken since he entered the shop.

"Yeah, sure," she said, reaching for the pink sheet of paper. "The pens are all up at the counter, though."

She glanced at his name, which the dispatcher had written on the lading bill, then stared up at him briefly before turning to leave the tiny room. Jay wondered vaguely if the look hadn't been a lazy sort of come-on, but decided to ignore it. Not that she wasn't attractive; he really wanted to go home and go to bed more than anything else in the world right then.

"You're from Myrtle Beach, right?" she asked as Jay rounded the counter and waited for her to rummage through the pens lying scattered across the glass.

"Yeah."

She tried one, discarded it in favor of a second, threw both in the trash and grinned in triumph when the third worked.

"I noticed your name is Jay Fayden. Do you know Jon Fayden?"

"Yeah -- he's my brother. Do you know Jon?"

"I sure do. I went out with him for a while, last spring. I guess he just decided it was too far to drive, to come up here to Wilmington all the time. Can't say I blame him..."

"Yeah, well... He's about decided to accept a football scholarship from Texas A&M, in Austin."

"He does love that football. Jon talked like his two older brothers were a whole lot older than him -- which one are you?"

"I'm Jay. Eight years is quite a bit older. I'm 26."

"Oh, yeah? Huh... You don't look it."

"I keep hearing that. I guess it's a good sign. What's your name, I'll tell him I saw you."

"My name's Pam, but I doubt it'd mean much to him if you told him. It was nice meeting you, Jay."

"You, too."

Jay started the now-empty Samurai and pulled across four virtually deserted lanes of highway to head south once more.

'Wouldn't have thought Jon would be so fickle,' he thought, grinning to himself. The sun was above the windscreen of the Samurai, now. He reached into the glove compartment for the pack of filter cigarettes Tom had abandoned there the previous night, lit one and lowered his window a few inches to release the smoke. The thermal cup wedged in beside the emergency brake still held a few ounces of warm, black coffee. He finished them and tossed the empty cup to the floor in front of the passenger seat.

He left the stereo silent in favor of a fishing session in his brain. When he was tired but still functioning, his brain often did its best work. Resolutions, or at least new angles on old problems, drifted to the surface easily when he was too worn out to worry about his life; his problems. Even if he did nothing else, he would probably come up with the next day's column.

The reflectors interrupting the yellow centerline on the four-lane divided highway brought Jay back to alertness as his tires droned over them. He had written the column, but almost at the expense of his driver's side door. Since he had quit driving on more than two drinks, nothing like this had happened to him -- nearly two years now, it had been. Jay had spent a terrible night then, stopped for DUI on a spot check -- had barely squeaked by on the breath test and narrowly avoided three days in the county jail and a 30 day revocation of his license -- and had sworn, as had Tom, to stop taking chances. Now, if 'having a few' meant more than three they had them at home, took a taxi or walked. They knew they shouldn't do it at all, really but the act of drinking exercised a certain pull. There was a bar six blocks' walk from his apartment, one half a mile up the road from the trailer Tom rented in Garden City. If they drank at home -- which they usually did during the tourist season -- they did it at Tom's trailer.

Jay turned on the stereo and grudgingly pushed in the Allman Brothers tape again. He cringed as his hand swept back up to the steering wheel. It was time to find some new cassettes to keep in the Samurai. Jay had been listening to the same tape for over a month. It was now, for him, like a mosquito buzzing around the inside of the vehicle. This was acceptable on this warm, crystalline morning; the irritant would serve to keep him awake until he got back to MB.

As often happened, Jay fell asleep on the sofa after setting the alarm on his watch. As far as he could tell, the sofa was about as comfortable as the bed anyway. Neither did much for his back or his neck -- the bed attacked the former; the sofa, the latter. Discomfort was part of life, especially his life. If nothing else -- and sometimes there seemed to be nothing else -- it reminded him he was alive. Sad evidence, that was, of a lack of inner harmony; but it was the truth.

Jay hadn't shaved or showered when he woke, only brushed his teeth and drunk two cups of instant coffee, changed clothes and jumped back into the Samurai. He didn't feel rested when he pushed open the swinging door at the music store.

"Oh-oh -- if you've got a cold, stay back!" the clerk behind the counter shouted, holding up his hands, index fingers crossed in a warding gesture.

"I'm not sick Kyle, just beat. That's not contagious. Unfortunately..."

Kyle grinned ironically, reaching over one shoulder to pull out the covered elastic band he wore to rein in a long sheaf of auburn hair while he worked behind the counter. He had what Jay often thought was an elfin face -- thin, expressive lips almost like a woman's; a broad, smooth brow; short, straight nose; dimples driven deep into his thin cheeks. It wasn't what one might call a traditionally Southern face, especially with all the hair floating around it and yet in fact it was. It was the face of a Southern diplomat or politician or artist. Kyle's pale blue eyes eerily reflected his family's somewhat embarrassing ancestral link to Jefferson Davis. Like most of his relatives Kyle had chosen the artistic route for dissipating his slightly manic, slightly demented wellspring of mental energy. Kyle was a good lead guitarist and currently played for a local electric jazz quartet. They had a year-round steady gig five nights each week in the lounge at the Sheraton, excepting those weekends they ventured to Columbia or Wilmington just to break the tedium. Kyle only worked in the music store to get discounts on his equipment and to ensure it was maintained and repaired correctly.

"Playing tonight?" Jay asked as Kyle shrugged into a hip-length, fringed black suede jacket. Its shoulders were inset with small-scale black-on-white zebra stripe.

"Nope. Getting trashed and laying on my old lady's lap tonight."

"Sounds good. Be nice to have a night. Or an old lady for that matter..."

"Play that Alvarez of yours out somewhere just once. Babes love a man with a guitar in his hands. Course, playin' acoustic you're likely to draw in the shy, sensitive type..."

"The female type would more than suffice, thank you very much. If I was Catholic I'd just about consider the priesthood at this point..."

"Yeah I guess it's been what, about two months since you had a date? No harder than I think you're trying I'd call that pretty good."

Jay blinked at Kyle who stood poised at the door, ready to spring into the warm fall afternoon.

"I guess you're right. It ain't been that long and I don't try that hard. Have a good night, Kyle."

"You too, Jay."

A cluster of small brass bells clinked against the glass as the door closed itself behind Kyle. Jay watched Kyle climb into his silver late-model Toyota Celica and don his sunglasses, then turned to his time sheet and pulled out his cigarettes. It was looking like a long afternoon. Sometimes Jay wished he could have a nervous breakdown so the days would at least seem to go by at a different pace. Right now, each day seemed interminable at its start and wasted far too quickly at its end. Not much seemed a worse prospect.

"I'm feeling sorry for myself. This has got to stop..." he said aloud. It never worked; had never worked before; wasn't working now. Anything was worth a try though, no matter how futile. In October Jay always felt like a lonely ant, setting up and preparing for winter. Knowing deep inside the grasshoppers would win out in the end. That was the most difficult part.

For half a minute Jay contemplated the grasshopper's lot. It involved a lot of begging, borrowing and cadging from the ants, who were in the majority. And hey, if you were an ant and you didn't dole out some of the things you'd so fiercely hoarded for yourself you were a bastard. You were no longer virtuous; you were selfish. It might have been fun, just one winter, to blow all his money before Christmas and let other people support him until spring break. It might have been fun but for the fact the guilt would have destroyed any pleasure he could possibly have taken, living his life in that fashion. But every winter while at his second -- or third -- job he would think about it for five or ten minutes before applying himself to the work of carrying a bread crumb twice his body weight up a huge sand hill one more time. Ants looked at their feet a lot, he supposed. They must. Jay did.

It wasn't the fact he was allowing an inbred pessimism to become steadily more cynical that disturbed Jay. More than that it was the way he was allowing himself to become progressively more bitter. He was turning into a pale shadow of his older brother. That, he couldn't stomach in himself. That was beyond excuse. Jay refused to allow himself to become a pale shadow of anyone.

The swinging door opened and closed, rousing him from his scowling reverie. He glanced involuntarily at the clock above the door. It was already four o'clock; he had blown an entire hour feeling rotten about his life. His eyes dropped to a tousled head of bright red hair, a pouting pair of Barbie-doll lips and a slick black outfit on a somewhat slim young woman. She looked like a more mature Molly Ringwald, as conceived by a Japanese cartoonist.

"Anything I can do for you?"

"Maybe. You keep any quartz tuners in stock?"

Jay glanced behind him, nodded and picked up a molded plastic case.

"Korg okay?" he asked, extending the tuner toward her. She accepted it from him with a hand clad in fingerless black suede gloves. She opened the case and slipped the tuner out.

"Great! This is just like the one I had -- it got stolen a few nights ago in Asheville. How much?"

"Forty-five."

"Would've been at least fifty-five in Asheville."

"You ain't in Asheville. That's a discontinued model, I think. We've got a 60 dollar one if you'd rather have it... There's no difference between the two, actually. They'll both tune your guitar..."

She blinked at him, her expression blank for a moment, then she grinned and reached into an inside pocket of her leather jacket.

"Guess I wasn't expecting to be teased. No offense, but most of the people I've met down here so far are about as thick as their accents."

"It's a Southern thing. It's where the expression 'fat, dumb and happy' was born, I suppose."

"You don't seem to be too dumb. Or fat... three outta three?"

"Admitting it will sound like bragging, but I guess you're right."

"If you weren't the first two, I don't see how you could ever hope for the third."

Jay felt an unfocused irritation with the young woman. It wasn't a conversation he wanted to be having at this moment. He was angry enough with himself for feeling the way he did without abiding a stranger's uninvited curiosity.

"If you choose to live here, happiness isn't all you're concerned with. There's some to be had, even if you're reasonably intelligent. It's just more work if you are. Where are you in from? Sounds like Pennsylvania, northern Ohio..."

"Very good -- PA. I lived all over. The guys in the band are all from Pittsburgh. That's where I was living when I got into this thing..."

"What's it like to travel all the time?" he asked, working his way through a receipt. He held himself back, writing it slowly to prolong her presence in spite of the irritation it represented.

"It's the only thing I don't like about all this. I'd like to stay home, play with the four-track, write some songs. But this is the dues part of it. Do you play?"

"A little acoustic. I was never very good. Good enough to play at parties but never quite good enough to try and make any money at it."

"I don't suppose I could get you to grab that Yamaha over there and embarrass yourself..."

Jay didn't want to do it. But if it would keep her there -- the only person he had spoken with in weeks who didn't rattle old bones stored in his head -- it might prove worth the trouble.

"You don't know what you're asking, but okay. I'll do it," he said, ripping the receipt from the carbon pad and slipping the store's copy and the two twenties and the five she had laid on the glass counter into the cash register. He tipped the six-string acoustic down from its berth on the wall and sat on the stool next to the register to tune the instrument to his ear and to itself.

Jay had never been technically proficient on the guitar. Considering he'd never taken a lesson -- most of what he knew he'd learned on his own from music theory books borrowed from the library and his high-school's music department -- he was good enough at moving around the fretboard. His forte, or so he had been told, was his ability to express himself in less technical ways -- a gift which almost elevated his playing above his lack of skill. It had been enough, in high school and college, to garner a small crowd any time he tuned a guitar and settled it on his thigh.

Jay hadn't written many songs, as such, to play on the guitar -- but he had developed several themes in different keys, both major and minor which accompanied well-read chapters from his emotional library. Being a writer, Jay thought he knew reading those chapters aloud in prose would have trivialized or cheapened them; playing their theme songs aloud only haunted the perimeters of their often melancholy shapes.

The telephone at his elbow jingled and jerked him to a rather abrupt halt; he reached for it, glancing up at the young woman as he spoke. It jolted him to recognize a tear had escaped the barrier of eyeliner and mascara -- apparently waterproof -- on one eye.

"Strand Music, this is Jay. How may I help you?"

"Jay it's Tom. How's it going?"

"Weird. Long story. You?"

"Ordinary. There's a band from Pittsburgh playing in North Myrtle tonight."

"Girl singer?"

"So I hear."

"She's here. I guess you want to go."

"You got anything better planned?"

"Yeah, right. C'mon..."

"I'll meet you at eight."

"Okay. See you."

Jay gently disengaged the phone, losing his excuse to hide from her. She smiled faintly but didn't mop the tear from her jawline.

"I'm sorry," she said, glancing at the pointed toe of one Cuban-heeled leather boot. "You surprised me, I guess. It's strange -- and sad, frankly -- to hear something that good come out of someone who's not a 'wanna be' like the rest of us."

"I'm not really that good," he said, stating it as a fact. He knew that he knew his limitations.

"Okay, fine -- I've learned never to argue with people over things like that. I'm impressed, whether you're good or not. Sounds like I'll be seeing you tonight, then..."

"I don't know. I'll be seeing you tonight. Whether or not you see me is a different story entirely. I'll be there. It's not very often we have anybody come through here from out of town playing anything but country or blues. I've seen all our local rock bands about 70 times apiece. There's a very good reason most of them are still here..."

"Hey, if it weren't for the fact we couldn't feed ourselves in Pittsburgh anymore we'd probably still be playing around there. I don't like traveling. I never meet anybody I can have a decent conversation with -- you have to meet somebody special... somebody so fast up here," she tapped her temple and let the sentence trail off, sinking one sharp eyetooth into her lower lip.

"Keep looking. I obviously have an accent..."

He grinned and she pressed the heels of her hands on the glass counter, her fingers brushing the sleeve of his sweatshirt, leaning until her nose was a mere few inches from his.

"I'm sure Schweitzer and Einstein had accents too, buddy. I don't have time to stand here and pet your mysteriously stunted ego amigo, much as I'd like to. I have to get going. Would you do me a favor?"

"What kind of a favor?"

"If I saved a table for you and your friend right up front would you sit there?"

Jay blinked and felt his grin widen. Southern girls were never so self-confident; at least not the ones he'd ever met. It was the main reason he preferred short liaisons with girls from up North. He and this woman would be old pros and in their elements -- he with a limited prospect, she with the same, both in a situation they'd experienced many, many times. If nothing else she would stand close to him again and be vulnerable as she was right now, the paler red hair at the crown of her head growing out behind the brighter dye. She smelled only of shampoo and leather and cigarettes. Maybe it would make him feel better about himself.

"Okay."

Before closing the store Jay balanced the register, swept off the counter with a flannel cloth, returned all guitars to their original positions and turned out all the lights. He left his time sheet atop the register along with Kyle's. Monday, when the accountant came in the sheet would represent his salary, such as it was. For once Jay didn't feel like he'd wasted the entire evening.

"Hey convict -- you look like somebody punched you in the stomach," Tom greeted as the door closed behind him. Even in the darkness he was able to estimate Jay's state of mind. In most ways it was a stability Jay needed greatly.

"I had a weird one going when you called. The girl who sings for that band was in here to buy a tuner and I'm not sure if she was coming on to me or not. And if she was I'm not sure how that makes me feel, since she'll probably be outta here before noon tomorrow and heading for Orlando or somewhere..."

Tom was quiet while Jay gathered his keys and his jacket and stood at the door, holding it open so Tom could step out on the sidewalk. Jay locked the door and stared at the cloudy sky.

"I don't know what I'm getting myself into, pal. Let's get drunk. You wanna call the cab or shall I?" he went on, idly jangling his keys.

"I'll call. Drop your car off at my place, we'll just crash there when we get home. I'll go ahead, call the taxi."

"Good enough. I need to get some gas, pick up some cigarettes, the usual. Tell you what, I'll run to my place and get a shower too, then I'll be there shortly."

"Okay."

One vision continued to superimpose itself on the red darkness inside his eyelids each time he blinked his eyes: the paleness of the skin of her fingers protruding from the night-black, light-eating suede gloves. Her hands weren't remarkable -- in fact the pale pink lacquer on her nails had been chipped and two of the nails were much shorter than the rest -- yet the image wouldn't desist. It was an exotic picture -- one which, chances were, he'd never have seen but for the odd circumstance of her tuner theft in Asheville a few nights before. Even if he'd seen the band playing -- and it seemed likely he would have done -- he wouldn't have been likely to have concentrated on her hands. Seeing the band would have been reduced to a safe, common, impersonal experience. He felt a slight yearning for that outcome but knew it had already been blown on down the road a mile or two, to be stuck to someone else's fence like one page of an abandoned newspaper.

He rushed through the shower and brushing his teeth and pulling on his grey denim Levi's Dockers and black turtleneck, still neglecting to shave. This night called for the leather bomber not the corduroy one; he pulled it from its wooden hanger in the closet, lifting the leather to his nose for a second as he had when he picked it up in the store and decided to buy it two Christmases before. It was grey, fashioned of leather that might as well have been beat on a rock for several weeks; looked like it had. 'Distressed' was what the stores called it. Distressed was what Jay had been when he had handed over his Visa card to buy the jacket but he'd promised himself to get at least three winters out of it. So far so good, he thought, grinning slightly as he slipped his arms through the taffeta lining in the sleeves. He transferred his wallet and a fresh pack of Marlboro cigarettes into the inside breast pocket, picked up his keys and put his glasses back on, then left the apartment.

The night was still and the sky had cleared considerably. Stars now stabbed, exceptionally bright, through the oily canopy overhead which meant it was probably going to get colder. The sky didn't bother to clear unless it was for a reason. Once in a while the Canadians managed to touch Myrtle Beach without ever leaving Ontario.

The Samurai was still warm when he started the engine and turned up the heater fan. The Allman Brothers tape was still in the deck as well. He flipped it out with the tips of his right hand fingers and slammed it into the back seat with a flick of his wrist. The case might have broken open and spilled coppery coils of tape all over the white seat -- he couldn't possibly have cared less at that point. The college station was still tuned in and was carrying a blues show; Screamin' Jay Hawkins reeled out of the speakers mounted behind the back seat, I put a spell on you... because you're mine... Jay grinned and nodded along as he wound through the apartment complex on his way to the four-lane. Something about Screamin' Jay searing through the tiny four-wheel-drive dramatically improved his outlook.

He turned off Muddy Waters grunting his way through one of several versions of Mannish Boy in front of the double-wide Tom rented in the Garden City mobile home park, pocketed his keys and dropped from the Samurai. At least the wind was right -- the paper mill in Conway was assaulting Conway for once, instead of the Beach, with its acrid, rotten pulp mill smell. Jay wondered if there were smells like the Conway paper mill everywhere people lived or if this was a brand of torment invented by Kali with him in mind. He rejected the idea with a laugh as too paranoid even for him, mounting the stairs to the trailer.

For the first time in perhaps months Tom was wearing something other than the rescue squad windbreaker -- a long black trench coat. Jay blinked in surprise, not even sure he recognized Tom without the windbreaker.

"I decided this is just gonna have to be one of those nights," Tom said, pulling the sleeves of the coat down over the cuffs of a dark green sweater. "We gotta get us at least some conversation tonight or I'm gonna hang myself from the drainpipe down at the rescue station."

"No shit, pal. You call the cab yet?"

"Yeah, few minutes ago. So you wanna talk about what happened to you in the store yet or is that just gonna fade into history?"

"I already told you all I knew -- it was weird, and I don't know if she was trying to come on to me or not. Hell, I don't even know her name! It was real strange, honest to God that's all I know for sure about it. She made me play guitar for her."

"Oh-oh. I remember the last time a girl did that to you. You broke her little Canuck heart if I remember right."

"Hell, Tom -- that was over two years ago. She was six years younger than us, almost Jon's age. Better I broke her heart than got my neck broken -- she wasn't even 18 yet."

"You wouldn't be so picky now, I bet."

"I'd still rather my women be old enough to buy drinks for themselves before I step into the bar to take over the job, thank you very much. Your level of discretion is your own business. Nice coat."

"Yeah. Mom bought it for me last winter, thought I'd try it out tonight -- guess it might be a little serious for what we're going to do but what the hell, right? Might need it in the next few weeks. Could come in handy..."

"Yeah, you could use it to cover up lots of things -- like your lack of a decent suit. And your lack of scruples."

"Since when were scruples ever a prerequisite for politics? Do you have any idea what kind of music they play, this band we're going to see?"

"Not really. I got the impression she was a singer but she came in looking for a tuner, too so she must play something. She was wearing black everything and she dyes her hair Lucille Ball red, even though it's not much longer than mine."

"How do you know she dyes it, pal?"

"She's not very tall. Her roots were showing. Oh right, Tom. Very funny -- every day women come in to the music store and drop their pants for me. Every day..."

Tom laughed. Jay reddened across the bridge of his nose then laughed along.

"Hey, you said weird -- you didn't say how weird!"

"If it was that weird I would've shaved to go up there tonight. She probably won't even bother to talk to us. She said she was gonna have a table saved for us up front but I don't know if that was bullshit or not. I guess we'll find out."

"Shortly," Tom said as a lighted 'Taxi' sign drifted up before the trailer. "Let's go."