said proudly.
“You do good work,” I said, and gave him the original thirty he had asked for.
“Why do you always gotta fuck with me, Nicky?”
“’Cause I like you, Freddie.” I slapped his arm, which should have been on a meathook. “Thanks, buddy.” I put the ID and extra photos in my wallet and left the store.
Two doors down was a combination lunch counter, bar, and arts house called the District Seen, where one could get a decent sandwich, listen to some music, and hear anything from readings by modernist beat poets to a capella new wave. Though the acts more often than not were sophomoric, there was that sad and noble quality in them of the intrepid amateur.
I picked up the latest copy of City Paper at the door and had a seat at the black and white tiled bar. At this early hour the bartender was the only employee in the front of the house, though there was the sound of prep work coming from the kitchen.
The bartender was a burly, balding, redheaded guy I had seen working in several clubs through the years. Gregory Isaacs, the “cool ruler” of reggae, was pouring through the Advents on either side of the bar.
I ordered a club, a cup of split pea soup, and coffee, and opened the tabloid to the arts section, skipping over the paper’s customarily unfocused cover story. Joel E. Siegel, the most intelligent film critic in town, who made waste of the Post’s hapless duo (the gushing Hal Hinson and the unreadable Rita Kempley), had reviewed a couple of interesting documentaries. And Mark Jenkins, who on the plus side was a Smiths fetishist but on the minus side a Costello basher, had done an enthusiastic review of the neo-psychedelic Stone Roses.
After my dinner I ordered a dark beer and drank it as I finished reading the paper. I nursed a second as the place began to fill up and become noisier. When the bartender switched over to Pere Ubu on the stereo, I settled up and left.
It was dark now, between eight and nine o’clock. Working Washington was safe in the suburbs, leaving this part of the city virtually deserted. The storefronts, mostly shoe shops displaying the latest Bama-ish styles, were closed and secured with drawn iron gates. This section of town had its own smell in the early evening, of dried spit and alley dirt in the wedges of cracked concrete.
Pigeons fluttered as I turned right off of Ninth and moved down F. Some punks were hanging outside the entrance of the Snake Pit, smoking cigarettes and looking patently sullen. The all-black dress and hairstyles had changed very little in ten years.
I maneuvered around them and entered a long hallway postered with announcements of shows around town. As I neared the doorway, humid, smoky air rushed towards me, along with the sound of a chainsaw electric guitar.
I paid for a ticket through a box office window and handed it to the doorman, a slight kid in black jeans and an army green T-shirt, with a bleached blond brush cut on his pale head. He ripped the ticket in half and returned the stub with his soft hand.
The main room was half-filled with young people dressed in dark clothing, blending in against the black walls of the club. They were an odd mixture here of artsy college students, punks, black hipsters, geeks, and even a few rednecks who dug the music. An overweight computerscience major who haunted used record stores could fit in just as well at the Snake Pit as the latest trendy.
I moved past the main bar and stage and headed for the back bar, which was located at the end of another long hall. The DJ was blasting through a set of garage rock, segueing from early Slickee Boys to the Hoodoo Gurus. The volume lessened as I entered the back room.
I removed my jacket, hung it on a peg, and took a seat on the wall stool at the far end of the bar. Cocktail napkins were fanned out on the bar like white flowers blooming randomly from the dark wood.
Bartenders at the Snake Pit generally had the look of the undead. The one who placed a coaster in front of me had thin, druggy arms and was sloppily dressed in purple on black. Her face was bloodless and set off by eggplant-colored lipstick, though not entirely unpleasant.
“What can I get you?”
“A Bud bottle,” I said, “and an Old Grand-Dad. Neat.”
She hooked me