I am going over to the Purple Hippo to have myself a root beer float, said Chauncy. Dylan looked up for a moment from the pile of cigarette butts he was organizing into something meaningful and for a moment, both of them stared at the door to the back bedroom. Behind that rotten old piece of wood, they could both hear Alice.
Alice Cooper. He operated the fry grill at the Frontier and besides that was loopier than the Big-I at rush hour. Between shifts, he would hole up in his room and laugh and laugh while the same scratchy record played over and over again. It was a tired 45 rpm copy of a song by a band called the Kreeg. That outfit had stopped gigging while Alice was still in the gifted program over at Jackson Middle School, but Cooper had never forgotten the day they played in front of the campus as part of their farewell tour of the town.
On that day, the April winds blew dust and moth wings all over the parking lot and Alice Cooper laughed and laughed as students and parents, faculty and administrators, ran for cover while the Kreeg just kept on rocking and rocking. By the end of the semester, the rumor around school was that the musicians had done that on purpose, ruining their guitars and amps and drum-kit so that they would never have to play again.
Even the band teacher said it could be so, though he concurred because he found the rock and roll music to be a distraction from his attempts to teach the kids how to play The Stars and Stripes Forever.
Anyway, all that legendary status stuff imbued the little black vinyl disk in Alice Cooper's possession with magical properties. For instance, the record would talk to him at night, telling him how he was gonna be a rock star in his own right someday and that he ought to call himself after a famous musician because that was a helluva lot more exciting than the name Steve Mason would ever be.
Otherwise he would dream of flying around town on it, impressing the gals and shaming all the kids who told him he was crazy because he painted his fingernails black and hardly ever washed his teeth.
Dylan got up from his seat at the coffee table and crushed out the Marlboro Menthol he had been hot-boxing. He sighed and gritted his teeth and wobbled over to the hallway, feeling the last gulp of Thunderbird churning away in his belly.
Hey dude, we are going over to the hippo for some Ice cream, if you want to come along. For a long moment there was silence as the hi-fi went quiet. Chauncy whistled through his crooked front teeth, to relieve the tension.
The door yanked open and Cooper appeared. He was still wearing his Frontier uniform, but had replaced the hat with a green necktie that had been fashioned into a headband. It was obvious he had been crying and black mascara was running down his pale cheeks.
I Am Alice! he screamed as loud as he could. Then he cackled at his two befuddled apartment-mates and shoved the door closed.
Chauncy and Dylan wandered up Silver Avenue to Harvard. At the corner of those two streets, Dylan crept into the alleyway and took a leak. Carlos the ragman was asleep on a piece of cardboard just down the way a bit, so Dylan took a moment to walk on over and lay a fiver on him. Being a waiter sure had its benefits, he thought, as Mr. Lincoln flew out from his pudgy fingers and onto the ragman's oily blanket.
At the Hippo he had a brownie sundae and Chauncy savored his root beer float. Before heading back to their cherished dump, they got a pint of pistachio, to go. Maybe Alice, or whoever he really was, would be feeling better, would be hungry for more than memories and western style hashbrowns, when the two returned.
Charlie Jones knew his so-called relationship with Sandy wasn't worth a good god-damn and he'd tell himself that little fact every morning while he was shaving at the kitchen sink, while she was stuffing her clothes and jewelry and books and records into the big straw bag she carried with her everywhere, getting ready to go back to wherever in the hell she went every morning as the sun was coming up.
Scrape, scrape, scrape, scrape went the sound of the razor against Jones' chin and cheeks. Crap, it was summertime and the Ford dealership was doing just fine. No one seemed to give a rat's ass whether he came in hung over. He could waltz into the showroom with eyes like a raccoon and the orange-y perfume of last night's vodka rising up through his prodigious sweat and folks still thought Charlie was dressed up fine enough to have lunch with Clyde Tingley himself.
Sandy screamed something loud and ugly from the bedroom. She couldn't find her key to the truck and was cussing like a mechanic does when that one important bolt just won't come off. Charlie appeared at the door, wiping Barbasol from his face and suggested she go outside and have a look-see. Sure enough, the key was still in the ignition, so she came back in, shot Charlie a dirty look and ran off barefoot, clutching her bag in one hand and a pair of maryjanes in the other, saying she'd call him tonight. The door banged shut and she roared off toward old town.
Jones looked around his room and then quickly grabbed the empty bottle of good red wine from off the bed, gave his dog Dutchess a wink and a pat on the head, and then headed for the kitchen, where he poured himself a strong cup of coffee and smoked a Pall Mall. Sandy. They were wrong for each other and he knew it. There had to be another man someplace, he thought, but the booze had made his head fuzzy and he just couldn't figure it out.
And so it went on and on like that. His phone would ring after midnight and a about an hour later you could hear her truck chugging up the hill to Ridgecrest, because folks had rolled up the streets in Albuquerque by then and the only other sounds were from nightjars and the trains coming and going at the east downtown station. Charlie and Sandy would get drunk on whatever treasure was available, listen to records she brought over which were mostly swing, and then make love for the rest of the night, like the world was going to end the next day. In between rounds, she'd talk about the movies she'd seen at the Sunshine or the State, and tell him about the books she was reading and they were mostly British authors she liked.
Charlie didn't know much about any of that sort of thing, but sometimes he liked to listen to Sandy talk. She had a voice like a bird when she was smashed and that only lent to the crazy attraction he had for her, because during the daytime the way she sounded, when she was hung over or sober, drove him nuts. It didn't help that she yelled a lot or that his hearing was shot from booze and bar fights, either.
Just then, Dutchess started barking and Jones' realized he was late for work, again. He rose, crossed himself and made sure to check the castle door before he left for the day. It's locked, I shook it, he muttered as he headed out into the bright and cloudless Albuquerque day. As he walked down the hill to the shop, he hoped like hell he'd sell a car today, it was the Friday before the Fourth and he'd be god-damned if there wasn't some patriot out there he couldn't talk into a Ford.
Rudofo Carrillo's work has appeared in a wide range of publications. His experimental writing website, Infinity Report, was recognized in 2007 as one of the best blogs in New Mexico, and has been graciously linked to by Internet poet laureate Ron Silliman on Silliman's blogroll. In February 2012, he presented his work at the 33rd convocation of the Southwest/Texas Popular Culture/American Culture Association.
Additionally, Carrillo is the Managing Editor of Things in Light, a hep and expansive blog about New Mexico that he co-authors with his wife, Samantha Carrillo, a local music critic and American Studies scholar.
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