Dion and Robin sat in the bear garden of the Ale House, where Dion came from time to time, to work on one of Alastair’s assignments, to ingratiate himself with the waitresses, beautiful as Dixie, Catalonia, or Ireland, uniformly sailors in the art of cursing.
Dion had been pumping Robin for glimpses into the ur-Mary, the pre-annunciation. He respected, and was fascinated and frustrated by Robin’s caginess regarding his cousin, which only red-lined his intuition that the two had got something violet and dark to hide. Guarding against too early an onset of drunkenness, Dion stopped one of the black-stockinged girls and ordered a plate of fried potato skins. Robin demurred, ordered another St. Pauli.
Robin had just reminded Dion that his own youth was spent in a military school, chapel at 6:00 a.m., on the playing field at 6:30, come rain or shine or ice and bitter ball-shriveling wind. Mary had gone wild, that was obvious, he just wasn’t an eye-witness except twice, three times at the most per year.
Dion’s disappointment was palpable as he thumbed a smear of sour cream from his lip.
-I do remember one time though, and he paused while Dion selected another spud and began its dismantling.
-we were both in tenth grade, although I suspect Mary’s attendance was spottier than mine. A couple of days after Christmas, we were done with the few traditions my mother attempted to keep going at holidays, and I tagged along with Mary to a party in Maryland, across the river. Nothing too depraved, no needles or gang bangs, or whatever she was normally used to, just soft drugs and booze and music.
Dion chewed and listened. He could imagine the details which Robin left out. That was his talent, his weakness.
*********
As a child Mary got the days of the week mixed up, couldn’t tell left from right, 11:30 from 6:00. But she could remember album titles, and the songs and their order, and became, thereby, a parlor-game her friends trotted out to amuse themselves and amaze the newcomers and the newly met.
-Show me.
There was one in every crowd. The cat who knew all the latest slang, the out-of-date stuff as well, knew all the stories and their contradictory versions, who couldn’t wait till the laughter or outrage had died down before niggling in with a deflating prick of their pin, who never noticed the attendant eye-rolling when the niggle and the dirigible-collapse were underway.
-I bet I can stump her, someone would always say, watching the second hand on their wristwatch to make sure the rule of 1.5 seconds of stylus to LP was strictly observed. One second and a half of sound and they’d lift the needle and look at Mary.
-Go.
-Um. That’s it for the other one new potato caboose born cross-eyed alligator caution do not stop on tracks.
-Album?
-‘Anthem Of The Sun.’
-Next …………….. Go.
-She said yeah talkin’ about you you better move on look what you’ve done the singer not the song route 66 get off my cloud I’m free as tears go by gotta get away blue turns to grey I’m moving on. ‘December’s Children.’
-See? Told ya.
-The Stones one was easy. Try this one.
-Ready?
Mary smiles yes, leans forward, brushes hair back behind her ear and cups it, serious as the Cincinnati Kid.
-Go …
Mary frowns, fakes them out, then flashes her widest smile and runs it extra fast, just because the doubting thomas had tried to select something hard.
-Ko-ee-o-addi there the minotaur’s song witches hat a very cellular song mercy I cry city waltz of the new moon the water song there is a green crown swift as the wind nightfall.
-Album?
-‘The Beautiful Hangman’s’, oops, ‘The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter.’
-So she’s not perfect. But pretty damn close!
The doubter looked unconvinced.
-Let’s pull out all the obvious ones and set ‘em aside.
And so there was a stack of LPs which any monkey should safely know. Revolver, Highway 61 Revisited, Are You Experienced?, Disraeli Gears, Clouds, Music From Big Pink, and thirty more.
Mary noticed that the doubter’s girlfriend was looking bored. No matter that he was being shitty to a stranger, he was still expending way too much energy on something other than herself. So Mary, mischief-maker, clever-boots, made a point of passing the joint to her out of turn, asking her about her moccasins and had she beaded them herself?
-Okay. We’re ready.
Mary’s booster made too free with the album cover and was scolded.
-No! Put that away! She can’t have any clues.
Moccasin chick whispered:
-Mmm, he’s really lovin’ this. Better put on your thinking cap.
Mary nodded, although she knew it had nothing to do with thought.
A steely twang, a soft drum beat, a microsecond of cym::::
-Go.
-Um. Yeah. Okay.
Mary clears throat, looks up at the ceiling like she’s saying her prayers.
-Payday biloxi blues the brand new tennessee waltz that’s a touch I like yankee lady quiet about it skip rope song rose shy black dog the nudge.
So far, Mary had outlasted all previous doubters, with a standing record of eighteen albums before they gave up.
A whoosh, like wind through treetops.
-Go.
-My sunday feeling someday the sun won’t shine for you beggar’s farm move on alone serenade to a cuckoo dharma for one it’s breaking me up cat’s squirrel a song for jeffrey round.
And so on, through albums by Savoy Brown, Elvin Bishop, The Charlatans, John Mayall, Cactus, Moby Grape, The Mothers, Wishbone Ash, Pentangle, Ramses, Birnham Wood, Taste, and a cunning no-one-knows-this-one ‘Satanic Majesties Request’.
Midway through, the moccasined girlfriend had bared perfect teeth in an ostentatious yawn and turtled her neck into her red-checked winter jacket, folding her arms for a nap.
-Should I let him win? Mary whispered.
Moccasin opened her eyes.
-If not, we’ll be here all night. He won’t give up, believe me.
She winked at Mary in sly solidarity and subsided again.
And then, the slipknot magically came undone.
-Go ….
-Pharaoh’s dance bitches brew in a spanish key john mclaughlin miles runs the voodoo down sanctuary.
Silence.
And doubter’s voice, slow, triumphant, like a cop Miranda-izing a suspect.
-The third song is ‘Spanish Key’. Not ‘In A Spanish Key’. ‘Spanish Key.’
-That was fun, Mary said, scrambling to her feet, toes and ankles alive with pins and needles.
-and now I gotta go, my bladder’s on fire!
An hour later, sitting on the front porch and staring up at the stars shepherding over Prince Georges County, with the guys inside arguing at high heat over some flea-cracking detail regarding Pink Floyd, the chick with the moccasins bummed Mary’s matches, sat down beside her, and said:
-I’m not the only one who thinks you won.
Mary, high, careless of pressures from without, slipping free of every yoke, pointed up at what might or might not be the black and ice-cold belly of the Little Bear.
-It’s just a dumb game. It’s all cool.
Robin had joined Mary and Moccasin-girl on the chilly porch.
-Hi, I’m Robin.
-Hi, I’m Kelly.
-He’s my cousin, Mary said, noting that Robin was still nursing only his second Black Label of the evening, not that she was judging, counting.
She smiled up at him, her strange distant friend, and handed him a cigarette which he took but did not light.
-Do you remember the New Year’s eve party last year? Kelly asked.
-Which one? Mary said.
-The one here, at this house.
-Um. Not really.
-You guys had played at the YMCA, with the Hissy Fits and Fat Chance. Remember?
-Vaguely. Were we good?
-I thought so. There was this one drunken guy, big beer-bellied biker, named Firebird, or Fireturd, or something, kept hassling you while you were playing ‘Wild Thing’.
-Oh, Mary said, squinting slightly.
-did I do something I should be embarrassed about?
-I don’t think so. You were trying to ignore him and then finally you turned your back on him, your guitar started feeding back, and …
-I took my pants off.
-Yeah, Kelly was laughing, you dropped them and bent over and mooned him.
-Oh god, Mary winced and glanced at Robin, who was doing his best to remain unreadable.
The truth, as Robin explains to Dion, was that he was petrified and trying not to show it. That party was only his third experience of underage drinking, he’d managed to politely evade every joint passed his way and he was feeling. What, exactly? Impressed, in a strange way, thinking that here was his cousin, still herself, that peculiar combination of manic recklessness and shyness, and feeling that maybe it was him who had changed. Maybe she hadn’t gone wild so much as he’d gone dull, dead. He was, in short, both attracted and repulsed. Dion nodded like he knew what was meant.
Kelly had elaborated. How the drunk biker had started to climb on the makeshift stage, presumably to stage some sort of moon landing on mockingbird Mary, had grabbed hold of one of those speaker thingees …
-Monitors, Mary said, piece-of-shit monitors to be exact.
… and had ripped it up out of its frame, along with a flap of carpet belonging to Fat Chance, a sign of their apostleship to the Dead, the whole kit and caboodle borne backwards onto the dumbfounded biker.
-And then, Kelly added, looking up at Robin, she straightens up, turns round, cool as a cucumber, and plays some really pretty guitar with her pants still around her ankles.
-And then everybody came back here to sing ‘Auld Lang Syne’? Robin smiled.
-Oh yeah, and it got pretty wild. Remember that skinny chick from Boston, or Philadelphia, senator’s daughter, real stuck up?
-The one with the ‘Let It Be’ tee-shirt and the mink stole?
-See? You do remember!
-What did she do? Robin asked.
-Someone had to take her to the hospital, I think.
-Yeah, Kelly said, she came out of the bathroom after fixing, sat down on a couch and jumped up screaming bloody murder because she still had the needle sticking in her ass.
And both Mary and Kelly trembled with a that’s-so-horrible sort of laugh and Robin gasped and asked:
-Was she okay?
Mary shrugged and Kelly, bright-eyed and sunny, said:
-Who knows. I think they dropped her off in the parking lot and then came back to the party.
-And you two met at this party? Robin asked.
Mary looked at Kelly, still fog-memoried.
Kelly took a long drag on her cigarette and burst out laughing.
-Nah, I don’t think we actually met, not in the shake hands and say hello way. I saw your band driving up, but then I got heavily distracted in the den.
Mary raised her eyebrows.
-Ooh, now I do definitely remember the den. Strobe light, tons of candles, six or seven naked guys and …
-And me. I was the main event under the pile-on.
Mary smiled. Kindred spirit.
-No wonder I didn’t recognize you. Sorry. But man, you sure had their attention!
-Yeah, well, you know how it is.
-Yeah, I know exactly how it is. So, your boyfriend? Somehow he doesn’t seem like …
-Oh god no! I hadn’t met Greg yet, and he doesn’t know what I used to do so no little birdie stories, promise?
-Promise. But take it from me, Kelly, it all comes out. Sooner or later. Believe me, I know.
-Yeah, I guess I’m just trying to buy time. Fucking exhausting though, having to race ahead of him everywhere we go so I can scope out the scene and remind any guys I run into that they’ve got to be cool, no funny war stories, if they need a blowjob it’ll just have to wait, no more …
-Showing your tits every time Led Zep comes on the radio?
-You too? Kelly laughed and gave Mary a comradely elbow in the ribs.
The two swapped a few more tales of gruesome narrow escapes, bitch-fights and gangbangs, providing Robin a hilarious, harrowing glimpse of their Valkyrie-ride across a smoking landscape bristling with bright needle and hard dick.
When, in the course of a cockteasing third degree from Kelly it emerged that he was a veteran at an elite military school, her perfect smile went positively vulpine. She tilted her head back till it rested on Mary’s shoulder, eyes still on Robin, and stage-whispered, Transylvanian and breathy:
-One way or the other your cousin’s getting laid before he goes back to school.
Mary peered at Robin, crossed her eyes to let him know it was all in fun.
-Wouldn’t that be nice.
And then they went back inside, where Pink Floyd was still spread-eagled on the dissection slab. They sat at the dining room table, fresh beers beading pools of moisture on the heirloom Norwegian wood. After a while Greg joined them, expansive and charming, arm lovingly around Kelly’s shoulders, sharing with them his plans to take his beautiful girlfriend to visit the national parks in California. Kelly laughed and said how much she was looking forward to it, as her moccasin tapped slowly up and down the length of Robin’s leg.
*******************
-And did you? Dion asked.
-Did I what? Robin said.
-Get laid?
And Robin leaned back from the picnic table, fishing in his pocket for something, and appeared as though he were about to reply when Becky ‘Perfect Fit’ Dolores swept up to their table and gave Dion a hug from behind.
-Hey guys! Mind if I join you?
And Becky’s subsequent hurricane of gossip and rumor, lies and twice-told tales evaporated the unanswered question into the starry Houston night.