Wyat’s ‘cruel gentians’ had come early to Houston, their violent splendor sheathed in long-eared encasements of fragile, unrippled ice. In the grave lot beside the rehearsal hall, cleverly disguised as a Drew Street pissoir, the winter wind was whistling the theme to ‘The Girl From U.N.C.L.E.’ and waiting for some stray dog to torment.
Inside the hall, which they shared with several better known bands, the Billets Doux were in a state of immaculate disarray. Maurice was sullen, rolling a joint with such quiet deliberation that this very act of industry was provocative. Mary sat in the shadows beneath a decaying poster of a decaying Lou Reed, circa ‘Coney Island Baby’. Despite the darkness of the hall she was wearing her shades, her hair slicked back along the contours of her birdlike skull. She was fiddling with the knobs on her tiny overdriven amp, peaking it into a series of barking, fartlike squeals. The dimple which appeared now and then in one cheek revealed just how aware she was, in spite of her air of detachment. She knew how much feedback annoyed the others, therefore she reveled in it.
Aquinas, who had invited Dion along to tape the rehearsal, was doing his best to project world-weary understanding and sympathy but nothing was getting past those shades.
It was already two hours into their rehearsal time and so far the BDs hadn’t played a single note. Aquinas glanced at Maurice, who was passing the fourth joint of the afternoon between Charlemagne and Otis, the tentative rhythm guitarist. Mary lit a cigarette with one hand, went on fiddling stalled car noises with the other.
The hall was a still-life of utter frustration. Aquinas eased up from his perch and cried, to the room in general, but to no one in particular:
-Come on, you guys. Let’s run through the fuckin’ song. At least once.
Charlemagne also stood up.
-Hey man, whatever. I mean, my rap is this: minimal is where it’s at. Two-chord songs? Great. A minor to F? That sounds hot as shit. But G to C? Dumb chords, man, dumb chords.
The song in question was a new one of Mary’s, an exercise in stasis called ‘Just Becuz I Don’t Believe’, nicked for simplicity’s sake as ‘Fear’. She was into a phase in which she was refusing to play any of the old material, insisting that they start from scratch. According to Aquinas, this was a recurrent problem with the girl and he suspected, as he had told Dion in confidence, that it was somehow connected either with the lunar phases or with Mary’s menstrual cycle. Or possibly both.
-‘Heroes’ only has two chords, Aquinas ventured, eager to be conciliatory.
He was repeating an earlier remark of Mary’s, made before the great silence had descended.
Charlemagne sneered and turned towards Mary.
-No offense, M, I mean you’re a hot guitarist, but you’re not Robert Fripp.
When Mary and Dion came out of the hall it was still light outside, but the wind had turned even more icy. At the edge of the lot two mongrels attempted a copulation but fell apart in an excess of benign savagery, nuzzling their snarling muzzles along each other’s necks.
-So, Mary, what do you think of Spengler? Dion asked.
-Hmmm. Aquinas, Aquinas, Aquinas. I find him kind of inspiring. I mean he’s so easy to write songs for and he’s so intense, you know, wanting to know what my songs are about. Shit, I don’t know. I suppose I’d have to say that I do love him. I mean I want to protect him somehow, but I can’t even keep myself out of trouble.
Mary sighed and looked up. Following her gaze Dion saw, from behind a bank of massive, rosily incandescent clouds, the white pinprick of an airplane. It drew across the darkening blue sky, formed briefly a triangle with a pair of emerging stars and passed on, sharpening to a trefoil of light, still tiny within the bare fringe of its black structure. A knout of ice-white wind struck his face and the moving lights fractured in a sudden wavering of tears.