The Bazaar of Bad Dreams

Although Stefano had his foot on the necks of a great many groups and solo artists, he is especially noted for ruining the careers of the Grenadiers, the Playful Mammals, Joe Dean (who committed suicide after Stefano refused to renegotiate his contract), and of course Andi McCoy. Not content with killing her career, Stefano choked her to death with a lamp cord while high on methamphetamines. He is survived by three grateful ex-wives, five ex-partners, and the two record companies he managed not to bankrupt.

It went on in that vein for another hundred words or so, and was not one of my better efforts (obviously). I didn’t care, because it felt right. Not just because Peter Stefano was a bad man, either. It felt right as a writer, even though it was bad prose and part of me knew it was a bad thing. This might seem like a sidetrack, but I think (actually I know) it’s at the heart of this story. Writing is hard, okay? At least it is for me. And yes, I know that most working stiffs talk about how hard their jobs are, it doesn’t matter if they’re butchers, bakers, candlestick makers, or obituary writers. Only sometimes the work is not hard. Sometimes it’s easy. When that happens you feel like you do at the bowling alley, watching your ball as it rolls over just the right diamond and you know you threw a strike.

Killing Stefano in my computer felt like a strike.

I slept like a baby that night. Maybe some of it was because I felt as if I’d done something to express my own rage and dismay over that poor murdered girl – the stupid waste of her talent. But I felt the same way when I was writing the Jeroma Whitfield obit, and all she did was refuse to give me a raise. Mostly it was the writing itself. I felt the power, and feeling the power was good.

My first compu-stop at breakfast the next day wasn’t Neon Circus but Huffington Post. It almost always was. I never bothered scrolling down to the celebrity dish or the side-boob items (frankly speaking, Circus did both of those things much better), but the Huffpo headline stories are always crisp, concise, and late-breaking. The first item was about a Tea Party governor saying something Huffpo found predictably outrageous. The next one stopped my cup of coffee halfway to my lips. It also stopped my breath. The headline read PETER STEFANO MURDERED IN LIBRARY ALTERCATION.

I put down my untasted coffee – carefully, carefully, not spilling a drop – and read the story. Stefano and the trustee librarian had been arguing because Andi McCoy’s music was playing from the overhead speakers in the library. Stefano told the librarian to quit macking on him and ‘take that shit off.’ The trustee refused, saying he wasn’t macking on anybody, just picked the CD at random. The argument escalated. That was when someone strolled up behind Stefano and put an end to him with some kind of prison shiv.

So far as I could tell, he had been murdered right around the time I finished writing his obit. I looked at my coffee. I raised the cup and sipped. It was cold. I rushed to the sink and vomited. Then I called Katie and told her I wouldn’t be at the meeting, but would like to meet her later on.

‘You said you’d come,’ she said. ‘You’re breaking your promise!’

‘With good reason. Meet me for coffee this afternoon and I’ll tell you why.’

After a pause, she said: ‘It happened again.’ Not a question.

I admitted it. Told her about making a ‘these guys deserve to die’ list, and then thinking of Stefano. ‘So I wrote his obit, just to prove I had nothing to do with Jeroma’s death. I finished around the same time he got stabbed in the library. I’ll bring a printout with a time stamp, if you want to see it.’

‘I don’t need to see a time stamp, I take your word. I’ll meet you, but not for coffee. Come to my place. And bring the obituary.’

‘If you think you’re going to put it online—’

‘God, no, are you crazy? I just want to see it with my own eyes.’

‘All right.’ More than all right. Her place. ‘But Katie?’

‘Yes?’

‘You can’t tell anybody about this.’

‘Of course not. What kind of person do you think I am?’

One with beautiful eyes, long legs, and perfect breasts, I thought as I hung up. I should have known I was in for trouble, but I wasn’t thinking straight. I was thinking about that warm kiss on the corner of my mouth. I wanted another, and not on the corner. Plus whatever came next.