Emerald City by Chris Nickson Page A

“That threat means someone killed Craig.”
    â€œI know. I kept hearing that voice all day.”
    â€œYeah, I know. Me too.” The words had traveled through my head more times than I could count, too, as I tried to make any possible sense of them. “I saw Mike and Warren. They were pretty broken up about it all.” I thought for a moment. “I guess a little bitter, too, like Craig’s death just cheated them out of their fame and money.”
    â€œDid you tell them someone had murdered him?”
    â€œNo. I’m not saying anything about that until I know more.”
    â€œThose guys were tight.” He swung his feet back to the floor and sat forward, his eyes intent and intelligent, hair flopping around his face. “And without them it would have sounded pretty ordinary, you know. They were the ones who put the bite in it. You remember Killer Days? That’s the one with the riff in a really odd time signature.”
    â€œYeah.” I could recall it. I didn’t think it was the best thing they’d done but it was still a good song, a downward spiral of a piece that exploded at the end. Every time they played it on stage the audience went wild.
    â€œCraig wrote that a couple of years back. I remember he played it once when a bunch of us were over at his place for a party,” Steve continued. “It was okay, but nothing special. It was Tony who came up with the riff and Warren who suggested the way to do it.”
    â€œI didn’t know that,” I said with interest. I’d always assumed that Craig had been the driving force and that the others had been mostly interchangeable.
    â€œYou’ve got to give them credit.” He stretched out lazily. “Anyway, what’s for dinner?”
    I glared at him until he held up his hands in apology, then said, “Just pizza.”
    I put it in the oven to cook and cleaned up the table where I’d been working. I felt as if I’d been running fast for the last couple of days, dashing from person to person only to hear the same words over and over again.
    We lazed around until eight-thirty, and I went to get ready for the show. A few years ago I’d have put on crazy makeup, somewhere between glam Bowie and Adam Ant. I’d toned it down since I hit my thirties, just some purple sparkly eye shadow and bright red lipstick. I spent a few minutes with hairspray and a comb, ratting my hair up, then stood back and looked in the mirror. Not too bad. There were lines around my eyes and mouth, but I’d earned them and I wasn’t going to hide them. An old CBGB t-shirt, black jeans that were washed out and tight, and heavy biker boots. To finish it off I put on a leather jacket with SEXUAL ANARCHY in a faded scrawl on the back. I’d found it sitting on top of a garbage can back in ’83 when I was walking to a gig, as if it had been waiting for me. The lining was torn but I’d mended it carefully with a needle and thread. The words brought comments and offers but it only took a dark, enigmatic smile to shut most people up.
    By nine-thirty we were at the Vogue, drinking Rolling Rock and saying hi to familiar faces, Scotty, Anne, Dave, Jane, the people who liked to hang out. A couple of girls in leather looked hungrily at Steve, then let their eyes pass quickly over me, so I grabbed him and gave him a long, deep kiss as they watched, just to piss them off. I loved this place. It was where the freaks came out at night, where Goth, fetish wear and anything went as long as it was black. I remembered when it had been called WREX, part of the small circuit of punk clubs dotted around downtown. Since those days it had developed its own identity, not quite gay, not quite straight, but past all that, pumping out dance music that let the Sisters of Mercy and Madonna slink side by side. On Tuesdays, though, it kept a grip on its past with live music. And tonight it was Jayne County.
    Jayne was