A Song for Julia

Julia? Are you drunk?”
    “No, of course not.”
    “Okay … do you want me to drive?”
    She blinked her eyes. “No. I’m sorry. Get in.”
    “Can you unlock the doors?”
    She nodded and hit the button. I got in, placed my guitar carefully in the back seat, and she backed out. This time she looked out the rearview mirror.
    “Okay, where to?” she asked as she pulled to a stop.
    “Can you get us to 93? Bang a left up here at the light.”
    She nodded and carefully pulled out of the parking lot. Just a moment later, we were in traffic, and she came to a stop at a red light. After a moment, she took a deep breath. She was calm now and clear.
    “I’m so sorry about your car. I’ll take care of the damage, I promise. It was so totally my fault.”
    I coughed just a little and then asked, “What happened?”
    “What?”
    “What happened? You backed out of there like someone was chasing you.”
    She swallowed. The streetlights distort everything, but I’d swear she blushed. That was interesting.
    “I was having an argument with my mother.” She gestured vaguely toward the back seat.
    “Your mother? She’s not in the back … did you run her over?”
    “No!” she gasped out a laugh. “On the phone!”
    I shrugged. “Best not to argue on the phone and drive at the same time, I guess.”
    “Yes, I guess.”
    The light turned green, and traffic started to pull away, and we rode in silence. Not a nice, pleasant silence like you have with an old friend. This was more like the silence before the jury delivers the verdict, the silence of a last meal, the ominous silence you hear in the dead of night on a dark street downtown with no traffic. I didn’t like it, and I said, “Got any music?”
    She nodded and pressed the power button on the CD player. Instead of Coldplay or Justin Timberlake or some other pop shit that would have made me vomit, the sounds that burst out of the speakers widened my eyes. I concentrated a moment. “Is that Killing Joke?”
    She nodded. “Yeah. It’s a remaster. The song’s called “Bloodsport.””
    I grinned. “I know that.”
    She looked at me. “Oh right, you would.”
    “I didn’t expect you to.”
    She shrugged. “I may not be in a rock band, but music … means a lot to me. I like those guys. Nobody knows about them, but a hundred bands in the eighties imitated them.”
    “So what do you think of the album?”
    “It’s angry. Primitive.”
    I let out a loud belly laugh. “Primitive” was the title of one of the songs.
    “I’m intrigued. What else do you listen to?”
    “A little of everything,” she said. “I’m kind of eclectic. Comes from exposure to, um … a wide variety of stuff.”
    “Like what?” I asked.
    She gave a slight laugh and smirked at me. “Pass me that case at your feet.”
    I did, and at the next red light, she quickly paged through a CD case stuffed full of CDs. Finally, she pulled one out. It had a flimsy paper cover of a Chinese guy surrounded by a flame, holding his arms up in the air. She ejected the CD in the dash and replaced it with the Chinese guy.
    Immediately, a bare electric guitar, backed with raw drums and an odd, almost ragtime piano filled the car. It was punk, no question. But odd, like nothing I’d ever heard. Ever. And it was good.
    “Who is this?”
    “He Yong … Garbage Dump. It came in, I think 94 or maybe 95? The Chinese government was cracking down on rock musicians then, so everybody had gone underground. I’m not sure exactly when it came out. You can borrow it if you want, though I have to get it back … I don’t think it’s replaceable.”
    I took a deep breath. “Hell, yeah, I want to borrow it. It’s awesome.”
    Before I knew it, she had us on 93 south headed into Boston, the windows were down and she cranked the music up. The sound in this car rocked.
    “Mind if I smoke?” I shouted. I was having trouble not banging my head and bouncing with the music.
    “Go ahead.”
    I lit up, careful to blow my smoke outside. When the song was over, we were just getting close to downtown Boston, and I said, “Couple more exits. That was amazing.”
    She smiled. “I thought for sure you would have heard it.”
    “Frickin’ Chinese punk rockers? Never would have guessed there were any. That’s wicked.”
    She grinned.
    “You don’t seem like the punk type.”
    She shrugged. “Appearances aren’t everything. And I’m into a lot of different music—I considered majoring in music, but my