Spiral

brings down into something that’ll play.”
    A few chords this time, more complicated and dissonant. I said, ”You’re not crazy about the band’s new music?”
    A gruff laugh that mixed with the next run of sounds from the speaker. ”The fuck of it is, I wasn’t that happy about the original shit from the seventies.”
    There was a resin folding chair near one of the octopus mikes coming down from the ceiling, so I took it ”How come, Mr. Lazar?”
    ”Hey, man. Mr. Lazar was my fucking father. Call me Gordo.’” A wink. ”You know what it stands for?”
    ”No.”
    ”Actually, it’s just short for ‘Gordon,’ which was my father’s name, too. But around the house, my mom always called me ‘Gordo’ to let us know which one she wanted. Then I kept it ‘cause the word means ‘fat man’ in Spanish. Helped me like differentiate myself from the rest of the bass players of the world.”
    ”I don’t think you’ve told me why you weren’t all that happy about Spiral’s original music.”
    ”Huh, guess I didn’t. Thought we should have turned more away from raunch and more toward straight heavy metal. There’s a cult market for that shit that keeps you going, no matter what the top-40 stations are passing off.”
    ”Meaning Spiral might have had a longer run than it did?”
    ”Back in the ‘good old days.’” Lazar got a fire in his eye. ”And man, they were good. I got to see the country, do things you probably never even heard of.”
    ”Such as?”
    ”Playing gooseshit bingo out by Idaho. A guy’d scratch this humongous bingo card in the dirt behind a bar, and every-body’d bet on which squares the geese would squat over. Or up in Baltimore, I went rat-fishing, these crazy fucks there going out with peanut butter as bait, smeared on glue pads, i When the rats’d ‘bite,’ the guys reel them in and beat the shit out of them with baseball bats. And then there was the time in Michigan, we had Christmas Day off between gigs. Spi always carried a machine gun in the luggage compartment of our bus, and—”
    ”A machine gun?”
    ”Yeah. You know, one of those tommy-guns like The Untouchables used on the boodeggers in Chicago, big round drum of bullets? Well, like I said, this one Christmas, we didn’t have fuck-all to do, and we’re in the middle of nowhere, so Spi drives the bus to a little, like, glade of woods. Peaceful as shit, snow on the branches of the pine trees. Only then Spi takes out his own ‘snow,’ and once he’s in the clouds, he takes out the tommy-gun, too, and he shoots the branches all to shit.”
    ”On Christmas Day.”
    Lazar shrugged and stroked his scar some more. ”Spi always did have a problem with holidays, man. Family baggage-”
    ”And his supply of snow?”
    Lazar used an index finger to tap the bridge of his nose. ‘Toward the end there, cocaine was everywhere. Used to be we’d snort it through rolled-up hundred-dollar bills as straws.”
    ”And now?”
    ”Now?” An evasive look. ”I wouldn’t lay out my own money for the shit, but I wouldn’t turn down a free line, either.”
    ”I was thinking more where Veronica Held might have gotten some.”
    ”Never saw her snort, so I can’t help you there. In fact— Delgis! About fucking time.”
    I turned as Reyes came through the padded door of the studio carrying a tray. I got up to make space for it on a plastic table littered with soda cans and candy-bar wrappers. When she set down the tray, I could see three sandwiches, three Sprites, and a bowl of com chips.
    I said, ”Delgis, you going to join us?”
    ”Hell, no.” Lazar came over to her, though, and ran his pick-hand down through the hair on her neck. ”Even if she had time, there’s just the two for me and the one for you.” More stroking of the hair. ”Besides, Delgis’s been sort of off her feed since Very got dunked and crumped in the pool.”
    Reyes hadn’t recoiled from the stroking, but now she turned away toward the studio door. ”You want some more, you call me.”
    ”Some more what?” said Lazar, the leer in his words as well as in his eyes.
    Reyes left the room without looking back in our direction.
    Lazar watched me as he walked to the food tray. ”Been punching that chick for the better part of three months now, and I can still embarrass her. Must be the Catholic upbringing.”
    After a beat, I said, ”You and Ms. Reyes have been seeing each other?”
    ”Well, yeah.” Half a sandwich disappeared into