What We Do Is Secret by Thorn Kief Hillsbery

you said that, back on the steps? I hit you, and it felt like a kiss?”
    But it’s words from a song. She thought I got it. She can’t believe I didn’t. Me. And it does sound way punk. Though it’s not, she says, more like power pop, old-school power pop, back in the beach party day, it’s hard to believe, but do I know what?
    She doesn’t care if I do.
    What?
    Believe her.
    About anything but this: I can tell her, when I’m ready.
    What I can’t tell myself.
    She squeezes my hand and I just say, “Cool.”
    And we walk on up the boulevard like that, holding hands, the only people out, just us and all those cars all stuffed with eyes, mostly guys alone, looking down the side streets, looking in their rearview mirrors, looking at us, but they don’t look long, Siouxsie laughs about it, she says it’s more of a glance, it’s so different walking with a chick. I mean, sometimes I walk down Santa Monica from Oki Dog on weekend nights with Tony or Stickboy and the air’s just electric, like at a really good gig, there’s the audience and there’s the performers and you can feel the excitement, you get seen by thousands of people, tens of thousands, and some of them never forget you, I’ve met dudes who remembered me from back in the day. But tonight I might as well be walking some nowhere street in the Valley, nobody even slows down, I could care, I don’t, we just talk about bands, we talk about songs we could write, songs about death and dying, and makeup we could wear so we look like corpses, Siouxsie knows all about makeup, one time at Oki Dog she held my hand and showed me how to put on eyeliner, right as rain on the plane to Spain, so it won’t run when you sweat.

11
    Back to black, as in cherry, and maybe even popping, depends on who did the dropping, there’s a pleasure trail of opened Trojan packets leading from the sidewalk up the factory steps and Siouxsie’s all, Vice check, vice check, but where’s the versa?
    “Nobody here but us Squidleys, boss.”
    And half a dozen blown-up condoms, knotted like balloons.
    “What the fuck?” Siouxsie says.
    Squid says some social worker laid them on Blitzer, and since he’s not exactly the baby-making—
    “Where is he?” I say.
    “He said he’ll be back in twenty or thirty. I know, I promised. But he’s closing some deal where we’ll all be like tour guides tonight. For a couple of out-of-towners he met.”
    “What kind of tour?” Siouxsie says. “What kind of out-of-towners?”
    “Blitzer said, and I quote, ‘totally nonsexual.’”
    “I’ve heard that one before.”
    “Well, it would be for us at least, sweetie. It’s not just a couple of dudes, it’s a couple, period. No, make that comma. A flamer couple. How did Blitzer put it? ‘Flamers with cash in the capital of trash.’ So I said yes. I’ve never done any of the tourist things. Like the wax museum. And they’re paying.”
    So Siouxsie’s all, Then we might as well start playing, do some MDA, trip up in the crib for a while. And she says
we
means me too. But after all it is the love drug. And I bet what they really crave is a private round of les-be-friends, so I just say I’ll kick it where I am, waiting for Blitzer.
    But I hate waiting.
    And while they’re climbing the planter behind me I back-plant on the tiles and realize the food’s making me sleepy and the egg-crate foam would be way more relaxing and I almost jam after them.
    Not quite, though. And then I guess I do drop off, it’s like I was sleeping and now I’m awake, but if this is a dream, no no no it can’t be a dream, in the dreams he never talks, it’s Darby’s voice, but he’s a ghost, and ghosts don’t talk, Rory Dolores told me he was walking up Vista the day after Darby died and he saw his ghost, his leather zipped up past his neck to his chin, standing up on a wall in a cactus garden. He said Darby stared at him with this completely pale ghost face and tried to talk, but couldn’t.
    “You’ll