distorted power chords of Bad Religion seeped through the glass window of the practice room. Cam nodded his head and the adolescent smiled. Talent under development.
"He'll want to talk to me," I told Harley. "Tell him it's the dick motherfucker."
Harley started to laugh, then he saw I was serious. He scratched his beard. He pointed at me with his thumb and tried to frame a question.
"I don't know about the ribs," I amended. "I just did the forehead. And it was a beer keg. You get prettier bruises with a beer keg."
Harley searched his beard with his fingers a little more. Then slowly he cracked a grin.
He turned and started what he'd been doing before I came in—hanging guitar straps on a rotating display.
"Cam ain't much of a boss," Harley told me. "Be my guest."
I walked into the practice room. Cam was nodding his head and saying encouraging things about the adolescent's Fchord. Then they both saw me.
I winked at the kid and told him to keep up the good work with the Fchord. Then I looked at Cam, whose purplish forehead was turning almost flesh colour. "How you feeling?"
"Got a student," he managed to say.
"He can practice." I turned to the kid. "I bet you know 'Glycerine' already, don't you, Slick?"
The kid got that elated light in his eyes that beginning guitarists get when they actually know a request. He looked down and dutifully began plinking out the Bush song.
"Let's talk," I told Cam.
"Why you think I'd want to—"
"I went to see Alex Blanceagle last night. He looks a lot worse than you do. Jean paid him a visit."
Cam's beady, bloodshot eyes move an inch farther apart. He looked around uncomfortably, at his student, at Harley who was grinning sideways at us through the glass, waiting for some kind of show to start.
Cam put his guitar pick between his lips and spoke around it. "Upstairs. And you ain't gonna fuck with me again, y'hear?"
I held up my hands. Truce.
Harley looked disappointed when he saw we were taking our conversation elsewhere.
Cam led me out into the afternoon heat, then up the stairs and into his place. He headed straight for the refrigerator.
His apartment was about the same size as mine—one main room, closet, bathroom, side kitchen. An unmade twin bed set flush against the south wall was occupied by piles of laundry that still retained the upsidedown shape and crisscrossed texture of laundry baskets, like Jell0 out of the moulds. I counted three guitars in the room— two electrics in open cases on the floor? one black Ovation twelvestring on a corner tripod stand. The coffee table was a Sears appliance box covered with spare guitar tuning pegs and string packets and old Olympia cans and an extra large Funky Bird, the kind with the red hair and the hat and the big butt that bobs up and down. Instead of chairs Cam had guitar amps. The posters on the walls were all from the store downstairs—peeling advertisements of bikini girls showing off the latest thing in mixing boards or speakers or trap sets. The only thing in the room that reflected care and meticulous upkeep was the CD collection. That took up three levels of cinder block and board shelving.
I walked over and looked through the titles while Cam was rummaging for beer. The CDs were all kinds, rock and jazz and country guitarists, heavy on the Eric Clapton and the Chet Atkins and too light on the Blind Willie McTell for my taste. The titles were perfectly arranged in alphabetical order except that the top shelf started with Cam's own releases. I was surprised how many—at least fifteen different CDs. I pulled one.
The cover art was a bad photocopy of Cam's face, with his name and the title
"American Cowboy" and the rest of the liner notes in what looked like Cyrillic script.
Russian? Czech? I checked the other titles. Most were similar foreign releases. Only one was labelled Split Rail Records, dated five years ago and entitled The Best of Cam Compton. Probably went platinum, that one.
Cam opened himself an Olympia and walked over to the bed like he was in pain. He knocked the laundry off and sat down slowly, elbows out, the way you'd lower yourself into an extrahot bathtub.
"Your ribs are taped," I said. "Somebody gave you a talkingto last night."
"What the fuck business is that to you?"
I took the stack of Compton's own CDs and went over to an amp and sat down, facing him.