Dagger Key and Other Stories

  “Definitely not a current,” said Rudy.

  Except for the fact that Rudy didn’t show, the EP release went well. The music was great, the audience responsive, we sold lots of CDs and souvenirs, including Average Joe dogtags and a Joe Stanky’s Army khaki T-shirt, with the pear-shaped (less so after diets and death marches) one’s silhouette in white beneath the arc of the lettering. This despite Stanky’s obvious displeasure with everyone involved. He was angry at me because I had stolen his top hat and refused to push back the time of the performance to 10 o’clock so he could join the crowd in front of the library waiting for the return of Black William (their number had swelled to more than three hundred since the arrival of the science team from Pitt, led by a youngish professor who, with his rugged build and mustache and plaid wool shirts, might have stepped out of an ad for trail mix). He was angry at Geno and Jerry for the usual reasons—they were incompetent clowns, they didn’t understand the music, and they had spurned the opportunity to watch TV with him and Liz. Throughout the hour and a quarter show, he sulked and spoke not a word to the audience, and then grew angry at them when a group of frat boys initiated a chant of “Skanky, Skanky, Skanky…” Yet the vast majority were blown away and my night was made when I spotted an A&R man from Atlantic sneaking around.

  I was in my office the next morning, reading the Gazette, which had come late to the party (as usual) and was running a light-hearted feature on “Pennsylvania’s Brain Capital,” heavy on Colvin Mason quotes, when I received a call from Crazy Ed in Wilkes-Barre, saying that he’d emailed me a couple of enhancements of Pin’s photograph. I opened the emails and the attachments, then asked what I was looking at.

  “Beats me,” said Ed. “The first is up close on one of those white dealies. You can get an idea of the shape. Sort of like a sea urchin. A globe with spines…except there’s so many spines, you can’t make out the globe. You see it?”

  “Yeah. You can’t tell me what it is?”

  “I don’t have a clue.” Ed made a buzzing noise, something he did whenever he was stumped. “I assumed the image was fake, that the kid had run two images together, because there’s a shift in perspective between the library and the white dealies. They look like they’re coming from a long way off. But then I realized the perspective was totally fucked up. It’s like part of the photo was taken though a depth of water, or something that’s shifting like water. Different sections appear to be at different distances all through the image. Did you notice a rippling effect…or anything like that?”

  “I only saw it for a couple of seconds. I didn’t have time to get much more than a glimpse.”

  “Okay.” Ed made the buzzing noise again. “Have you opened the second attachment?”

  “Yep.”

  “Once I figured out I couldn’t determine distances, I started looking at the black stuff, the field or whatever. I didn’t get anywhere with that. It’s just black. Undifferentiated. Then I took a look at the horizon line. That’s how it appeared to you, right? A black field stretching to a horizon? Well, if that was the case, you’d think you’d see something at the front edge, but the only thing I picked up was those bumps on the horizon.”

  I studied the bumps.

  “Kinda look like the tops of heads, don’t they?” said Ed.

  The bumps could have been heads; they could also have been bushes, animals, or a hundred other things; but his suggestion gave me an uneasy feeling. He said he would fool around with the picture some more and get back to me. I listened to demos. Food of the Gods (King Crimson redux). Corpus Christy (a transsexual front man who couldn’t sing, but the name grew on me). The Land Mines (middling roots rock). Gopher Lad (a heroin band from Minnesota). A band called Topless Coroner intrigued me, but I passed after realizing all their songs were about car parts. Around eleven-thirty I took a call from a secretary at Dreamworks who asked if I would hold for William Wine. I couldn’t place the name, but said that I would hold and leafed through the Roll-o-dex, trying to find him.

  “Vernon!” said an enthusiastic voice from the other side of creation. “Bill Wine. I’m calling for David Geffen. I believe you had drinks with him at the Plug Awards last year. You made quite an impression on David.”

  The Plugs were the Oscars of the indie business—Geffen had an ongoing interest in indie rock and had put in an appearance. I recalled being in a group gathered around him at the bar, but I did not recall making an impression.

  “He made a heck of an impression on me,” I said.

Pleasant laughter, so perfect it sounded canned. “David sends his regards,” said Wine. “He’s sorry he couldn’t contact you personally, but he’s going to be tied up all day.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  “David listened to that new artist of yours. Joe Stanky? In all the years I’ve known him, I’ve never heard him react like he did this morning.”

  “He liked it?”