more than anything. And she wanted to send this song out to you. She knows you’re listening, too.”

The song began, a song that didn’t seem to connect to words said that shouldn’t have been said or to “the whole future,” but the song was good and the singer sounded as if he really had been hurt somewhere along the line, had that in his voice the way Darren Price had a smile in his.

“I’m union. AFTRA,” Price said as he pulled off the headphones and killed the music in the monitors. “We’re all union.” It was a way of saying he made good money, more money than he made when he was under brighter lights, when people knew who he was, when he was right there in front of them at Big Daddy’s when Big Daddy’s was the place to be.

There are all kinds of deaths, Jimmy thought.

“What was Tone Espinosa like?” he said.

Price squinted as if somebody had turned on the overhead lights. “This is about Tone?” he said.

“No,” Jimmy said. “It’s not.”

“We got along all right,” Price said. “He didn’t ever really get it.”

“Get what?”

“He hated it when Saturday Night Fever came along. That’s just an example. When it got big, he said it was over.”

Jimmy didn’t say anything.

“Does that make sense to you?” Price said, real perplexity in his voice.

“I guess I know what he meant.”

Price shook his head. “Well, I never did. He was about to get fired when he finally quit. They just ran cables downstairs and I played both rooms. I mean, I’m not glad the guy got killed or anything . . .”

The phone never stopped ringing. It was silent, just blinking lights. Price punched one button.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Hey.” It was a soft little voice, up past her bedtime. “It’s Andrea.”

“Hey.” Price looked at Jimmy.

“I just wanted to thank you for playing the song,” she said.

“Shouldn’t you be keeping the line open for . . .” Price looked at a Post-it note stuck on the mic stand. “Carmen?”

“I have call waiting,” she said, sexy.

Price was still looking at Jimmy when he said, “I hope things work out for you guys.”

“You’re so sweet,” she said.

“Not really,” he said, as a sexy threat.

“Yeah-h uh,” she said.

“I want you to call me, whatever happens,” he said. “On this line, OK?”

She said yes and he said he had to go and cut her off.

“I’m like a priest,” Price said as her light went out.

“Yeah, I was just thinking that.”

Jimmy told him who he was, what this was, a version that left out murders and executions and little girls orphaned, that almost made it sound like Elaine Kantke had lost her purse or one of her shoes like Cinderella and had hired Jimmy to get it back, all the way back from Disco ’77.

“The Jolly Girls,” Price said. He used a slanted intonation, like a comic. The Jolly Girls . . .

“So you remember them.”

“There were three of them, four of them. They were babes. They were all older than I was. I was, I don’t know, twenty-four. They were maybe thirty. It seemed like a real difference at the time, but they were still babes.”

“And they always came to the club with their husbands,” Jimmy said.

“Yeah, right, I remember that distinctly.”

“Who was the leader?”

“Elaine, I guess. I don’t know. It’s all kind of a blur, if you know what I mean.”

Jimmy knew. “Did they do coke?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.”

Jimmy had said they in a way that meant, “Did they do coke, too?” The DJ wasn’t insulted. Lloyd-the-Void had tried to fill the void with one of the things you try to fill the void with. Step One was to accept that you were powerless . . .

“I wouldn’t say they were the biggest Hoovers among the regulars,” Darren said. “But then again, that bar would have been pretty high at Big Daddy’s at that particular time.”

“Did you talk to her much?”

“I talked to all of the regulars. It was part of the job. But I liked doing it. I was kind of a star. I got that kind of response from people, the regulars.”

And he began to talk about the nights there. I love the nightlife, I love to boogie. He described each one of the lighting effects suspended above the dance floor, how they had been brought in from New York, how there weren’t any lights anywhere else in L.A. like those lights. Turn the beat around, turn it upside down. He remembered the wattage of