We play our break number and then I head for the back of the room. But by the time I get there, his table’s empty. I look around but Dylan’s gone.
“Shit!” I say to myself. Missed him. I wanted a chance to talk to him.
I step over to the bar for a beer, and the girl who was sitting with Dylan sidles over. She’s wearing jeans and three shirts. Hardly anybody in the Village wears a coat unless it’s the dead of winter. If it’s cool out, you put on another shirt over the one you’re already wearing. And if it’s even cooler, you throw an oversize work shirt over those.
“He sorta kinda liked your stuff,” she says.
“Who?”
“Bob. He was impressed.”
“Really?” I stay cool as the proverbial cucumber on the outside, but inside I want to grab her shoulders and shout, “Yeah? Yeah? What did he say?” Instead I ask, “What makes you think so?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe it’s because as he was listening to you guys, he turned to me and said, ‘I am impressed.’ ”
I laugh to keep from cheering. “Yeah. I guess that’d be a pretty good indication.”
I like her. And now that she’s close up, I recognize her. She’s Sally something. I’m not sure anybody knows her last name. People around the Village just call her the Speed Queen. And by that, they don’t mean she does laundry.
Sally is thin and twitchy, and she’s got the sniffles. She’s got big, dark eyes, too, and they’re staring at me.
“I was pretty impressed with your stuff, too,” she says, smiling at me. “I mean, I don’t dig rock and roll at all, man, what with all the bop-shoo-boppin’ and the shoo-be-dooin’. I mean, that stuff’s nowhere, man. But I kinda like the Beatles. I mean, a bunch of us sat around and watched them when they were on Ed Sullivan and, you know, they were kinda cool. I mean, they just stood there and sang. No corny little dance steps or anything like that. If they’d done anything like that, we would’ve turned them right off. But no. Oh, they bounced a little to the beat, maybe, but mostly they just played and sang. Almost like folkies. Looked like they were having fun. We all kinda dug that.”
I hold back from telling her that she and her folkie friends were watching the death of the folk music craze.
“I dig ’em, too,” I say, dropping into the folkster patois of the period. “And I predict they’re gonna be the biggest thing ever to hit the music business. Ten times bigger than Elvis and Sinatra and the Kingston Trio put together, man.”
She laughs. “Sure! And I’m going to marry Bobby Dylan!”
I could tell her he’s actually going to marry Sara Lowndes next year, but that would be stupid. And she wouldn’t believe me, anyway.
“I like to think of what I play as ‘folk rock,’ ” I tell her.
She nods and considers this. “Folk rock . . . that’s cool. But I don’t know if it’ll fly around here.”
“It’ll fly,” I tell her. “It’ll fly high. I guarantee it.”
She’s looking at me, smiling and nodding, almost giggling.
“You’re okay,” she says. “Why don’t we get together after your last set?”
“Meet you right here,” I say.
It’s Wednesday morning, three a.m., when we wind up back at my apartment on Perry Street.
“Nice pad,” Sally says. “Two bedrooms. Wow.”
“The second bedroom’s my music room. That’s where I work out all the band’s material.”
“Great! Can I use your bathroom?”
I show her where it. is and she takes her big shoulder bag in with her. I listen for a moment and hear the clink of glass on porcelain and have a pretty good idea of what she’s up to.
“You shooting up in there?” I say.
She pulls open the door. She’s sitting on the edge of the tub. There’s a syringe in her hand and some rubber tubing tied around her arm.
“I’m tryin’ to.”
“What is it?”
“Meth.”
Of course. They don’t call her the Speed Queen for nothing.
“Want some?”
I shake my head. “Nah. Not my brand.”
She smiles. “You’re pretty cool, Troy. Some guys get grossed out by needles.”
“Not me.”
I don’t tell her that we don’t even have needles when I come from. Of course, I knew there’d be lots of shooting up in the business I was getting into, so before coming here I programmed all its myriad permutations into my wire.
“Well, then maybe you can help me. I seem to be running out of veins here.