EXCERPTS FROM "DON'T FEAR THE NIGHT DUENDE"

Rocky came pounding down the stairs, “Come on, guys, everybody come on, I’m about to start!” She had a Pabst can in one meaty little fist, and two crammed into the other. She spied Rhoda. “Holy shit. Fucker!” And tumbled her like a baby tiger.

Rhoda gripped her glass but the last precious swallows of vodka slipped away as Rocky took her to the floor. Rocky’s red face was up in her’s. She looked like an angry baby. “Rhoda—fuck you, man, fuck you.” Then she put her face close to Rhoda’s as if to kiss her but like she didn’t know how. Breathing heavy, she just put her open lips near Rhoda’s cheek.

Rocky jumped off Rhoda and sat with her hands between her knees, panting and looking at the wall, then back at Rhoda. “Who said that? My gear? No—it was a friend of a friend, I think. Someone who cased the place, it was at Murder’s someone took it from Murder’s.”

“Sorry, Rocky.” She sat up.

“You’re a fucker, Rhoda.”

“Go play.”

The air was dense with spirits. Mirrors and purple lights filled the black painted stage. Boarded up window were at the other end where the sound guy’s perch. Skate ramps arced up in the dark and small golden lights lit up the ceiling of pressed tin.

Soon Rhoda was drunk in a corner where she liked it. Her phone vibrated and she pulled it out, nearly throwing it—she should get rid of it.

Will: [the place where you were in the bed is read I panted it with polish I got from the walgreens] Will was in California—far far away. But he knew she was from Cleveland. He was a carnie. She’d have to be out of town by the time he got here, because he would find her. She wanted to toss the phone out.

Rocky worked on stage, while the crowd, standing in black, nodded and smiled imperceptibly: the sound was called hate, but it made them all feel good. Rhoda knew it was not hate, but love. A fierce Kali love, a love at the mother destroying the rapist, a love to burn through all impurities, of the pizza job, the smug customers, the middle-class con, the clothes on our backs made by children somewhere else on this round planet. The Earth herself raging. Noise is a birth pain. Noise is the last straw.