Might As Well Read online

  (I’m—)

  (Just kidding.)

  “You’re quite a charmer. No wonder you’re single.”

  STELLA BLUE

  (Hey, Alison, do you hear that? They’re playing our song.)

  (What’s that?)

  (Listen.)

  “What? I want to know.”

  (Oh yeah, I hear it. I thought we made that up.)

  “Tell me!”

  (I bet everyone thinks they made it up.)

  “What? Mommmeee, I want to know!”

  (Shhhh, Stella… Honey, I’m sorry. I didn’t know what Aunt Jenny was talking about at first. I had to listen.)

  “What is it?”

  (Do you see those young women over there?)

  “Which ones?”

  (The ones who are skipping. Can you hear what they’re singing?)

  “Umm…”

  (All we need is one, all we need is one.)

  “Oh yeah, yeah. I can hear ’em now.”

  (Great. Now there’s a song that you might have heard on one of Mommy’s records or on the radio called ‘All You Need Is Love.’)

  “Is it a Grateful Dead song?”

  (No, honey, it’s a Beatles song.)

  “Are those the guys who sing about the octopus?”

  (Exactly, hon. You’re a smarty pants. Well those women are changing the words of the song from ‘all we need is love’ to ‘all we need is one’ so that people will know that they need one ticket.)

  “But I can’t hear them anymore.”

  (Jenny, why don’t you sing a quick verse for Stella?)

  (Oh sure, Aunt Jenny the walking jukebox.)

  “You’re my favorite walking jukebox.”

  (Why thank you, Stella. And you’re my favorite walking giggle box.)

  “I’m not a walkin”—giggle—“Hey! Tickling’s no fair!”

  (Okay, Jen, I’ll join you. Let’s do it.)

  (ALL WE NEED IS ONE!

  ALL WE NEED IS ONE! ALL WE NEED IS ONE!

  ONE!

  ONE IS ALL WE NEED!)

  (Which of you needs a ticket? I have an extra I can sell you.)

  (No, thank you. That was for instructional purposes only.)

  (We still got it, Jen.)

  (Maybe. Of course maybe that guy was a scalper and he goes up to everyone and offers to sell them a ninety-dollar ticket to the show.)

  (Maybe. And maybe he was just someone who dug our act. So anyhow, Stell Belle, that’s the song. Those two women just changed the words of a pretty song, ‘All You Need Is Love,’ to let people know that they need tickets to see the Grateful Dead. Isn’t that silly?)

  “Uh-huh, Mommy, it’s silly.”

  STEVEN

  So this is it.

  This is the real deal.

  This is THE SCENE.

  I sort of had an idea what it would be like and I definitely feel like I’m a part of it but it’s so cool to finally be here. I mean check out all the women in those hippie dresses, wearing bells and dancing or skipping. And those guys—like that guy right there with the robe and the long beard. He must be like forty-five years old. He could be one of the original people who listened to the Dead in the 1960s and he’s still following them around, enjoying the ride. I mean that’s cool. There’s something about the people here, you can see it just walking past them, it’s like they’re wise. They understand shit. I mean Deadheads are not usually stupid people. Some of them are some of the smartest people I know. It’s just they don’t use their heads the way that everyone wants them to. They keep their heads sacred.

  Sacred Heads with sacred heads.

  That’s what you have to do when you become a heavy-duty Deadhead. I mean I’m a Head but I’m not all that heavy-duty yet. Yet. This is my first show. This could be the one where I have that mystical magical Grateful Dead experience that changes my life forever.

  “Hey, what do you guys say to some food? I’ve got the munchies in a big way.”

  (Yeah, what do you say to that?)

  (In a little while. We have business to attend to first. We have to cover for Steven’s bunk move.)

  “What’s that?”

  (Doses. You said your cousin could hook you up, remember? That’s how you ended up with my extra ticket. Remember?)

  “I remember. I told you guys, she went back to college a few days early.”

  Not that I asked her.

  (Yeah, we’ve heard your story.)

  (Let it go. Stevie tried and now he’s here with us at his first show. Let him enjoy it.)

  “Nothing left to do but smile smile smile.”

  (Right on.)

  (And score doses.)

  “Well how are we supposed to get them?”

  (We don’t get them. They get us.)

  “How?”

  (Just keep your ears open, you’ll know.)

  (Hey, Jason, I’ve been meaning to ask you about that. I was talking to Meg last night in study hall and she says that she bought bum doses at her last show.)

  (So she bought blank paper?)

  (Not quite. There just wasn’t enough acid on the paper to totally get her off.)

  (Maybe it came off on her fingers when she was putting it on her tongue.)

  (That would still get her high. She would absorb it through her skin.)

  (No way. Impossible.)

  (Way. That’s what I’ve always been told. When you’re handing out doses to other people only touch the corner of the paper or else you’ll be taking someone else’s hit as well as your own.)

  (No, that’s not how it works.)

  (It is, you absorb it through your skin.)

  (Steven, what do you say? You’re the one who aced AP Chem.)

  “Well, Meg is world-renowned for her really dirty hands.”

  (Ha!)

  (Because she keeps stuffing them in Jason’s underwear!)

  (Maybe the question here should be what would happen if Jason rubbed a dose against his pecker.)

  (Well, Zack, you two boys can conduct that experiment a bit later in the privacy of your room.)

  (Hahhaa!)

  “I learned something of my own last week in Bio II. Did you guys realize that semen is full of Vitamin C?”

  (So?)

  “Well I want to find myself a babe with scurvy and nurse her back to health.”

  (Haaaaaa!)

  (Stevie, you’re always on point with your eighteenth-century disease references. And your spunk talk.)

  “I try… I do think Fletcher’s right though. If you touch the corner of a dose, logic dictates that a little bit should be absorbed by your skin. Now if you’re the one taking the hit, it shouldn’t matter. Although I assume it would absorb through her skin at a much more gradual rate than if she touched it all to her tongue. Maybe that was the problem. Unless the person who sold it to her had his hands all over it and absorbed a bunch of it.”

  (I say this is worthy of additional research.)

  (You just want to touch Jason’s custard launcher.)

  (Hey, I gotta be me.)

  (Haaaaa!)

  (Well you can do that by yourself.)

  “Which is how the magic happens. Beating Bobby McGee.”

  (Haaaa! Haaaa!)

  (Simmer down, Little Steven. Anyhow, someone told Meg that the best way to do it is just to go up to somebody in a microbus and ask them.)

  (I bought dope that way once.)

  (If we can’t get any, it’s worth a shot.)

  “Speaking of which, aren’t we supposed to meet Meg and the rest of them out here?”

  (Listen to him. The rest of them.)

  (Yeah, Stevie, like we don’t know what’s on your mind.)

  “Okay, okay, Shannon.”

  (No
, I told Meg we’d see ’em inside. They have seats behind the stage so they’re going to meet us by the entrance to our section.)

  (Are we going to stub them down?)

  (I don’t think we’ll have to. It’s not like we’re down on the floor or anything. It should be no prob.)

  (You think so? They were giving people shit last year. And have you ever been to a football game here?)

  (Yeah but that’s across the way at the stadium. This is the arena. Once we get inside they won’t give a crap.)

  (I hope you’re right. Besides there’s nothing we can do about it now, we have pressing concerns.)

  (Thanks to Saint Steven.)

  Okay, I didn’t ask my cousin. I just didn’t see her and it would have been too weird to call her. Maybe on some level I didn’t do it on purpose. I mean ACID. It’s a big thing. A scary thing. A fucking scary thing. When you say you’re tripping that doesn’t sound so bad but I still can’t get it out of my head that the thing you’re tripping over is acid.

  I’ve taken mushrooms plenty of times before. At least two or three. And you never hear of anyone having bad mushroom trips. I think that’s because when you take mushrooms you’re not really going on a trip. It’s because they’re organic. Nate says that mushrooms just make your body secrete more of some substance that’s already in there. But acid, I mean that shoots something into your body.

  And I don’t know. You hear about people who never come back. They say not to take it unless you’re stable and if you take it six or seven times then the government classifies you as legally insane. So what happens if the acid eats away at my brain and takes control and I can’t come back? Or what if I do come back but the acid does permanent damage and I become a vegetable? Or what if it messes with my head and I screw up my SATs? I’m supposed to take them in a couple of months. I mean what if all of a sudden because I put a piece of paper on my tongue I can’t get into college. Alec and Marg would flip. I’d have to apologize and say ‘I’m sorry, Mom and Dad. I’m sorry I couldn’t get into college because I dropped acid at a Dead show and lost my vocabulary.’

  They would bum big time.

  RANDY

  (Here you go Macho Man, I’ll see you in there.)

  “The hell you will.”

  (What do you have against the Grateful Dead?)

  “One, I have nothing against the Grateful Dead, although their fans seem a bit like phonies to me and B, my job isn’t inside, it’s outside.”

  (So remind me, what is it you do here?)

  “I do whatever the ornery crackpot tells me to do. He’s my boss. Actually my real boss is my coach and the ornery crackpot reports to my coach.”

  (It sounds like you’re good and cooked.)

  “That’s a Crock-Pot.”

  (Keep it mild, Julia Child.)

  “What’s with the Julia Child taunt? And do you really think that Julia Child uses a Crock-Pot?”

  (Of course not, Macho Man. Just because I fix cars doesn’t make me a Neanderthal. But if you’d give it any thought I think you’d recognize for the sake of argument—and that’s what we’re doing here, arguing—that the classic beef Bourguignon recipe can easily be adapted for a slow cooker. It’s a little less high maintenance and you can even do some of the prep work the night before to make things easier in the morning. Then it can simmer all day while you head off to work at—let us say hypothetically—an auto repair shop. Now who’s the brute?)

  “Can we call throw fingers?”

  (We can throw something. Why do you say the fans are phonies?)

  “This will get me more riled up than I need to be but last night we caught a bunch of these guys with their tie-dyes and their peace symbols using wire cutters on the fence in the back of the arena. They were trying to figure out how to sneak in. They were still a long way from pay dirt but we shut them down. Then they were up in my face, working themselves into a lather, barking away and blaming me, like it was my fault they couldn’t get in. One of them even took a swing at me. Not a good idea by the way.”

  (I’d give it a shot. Just for shits and giggles, mind you. I wouldn’t coldcock you, that would be no fun. I’d let you know it was coming.)

  “You’re a gentleman and a scholar. Maybe when I pick up the car. If I pick up the car. That’s Eddie’s car and Eddie’s business. My business is to put on my uni and report.”

  (Your uni? This ain’t football.)

  “Maybe not but there is some twisted form of gamesmanship happening out here though, as best I can tell. So it makes sense that I have a uni. I put on my yellow jacket and then—)

  (You sting.)

  “I stink? Well that’s not very polite. First you offer to punch out my lights—I know, shits and giggles—but now you insult my odor. That’s below the belt. The car broke down, I had to stand alongside an overheated highway for an hour waiting for a tow, while the clock was ticking away and I was literally sweating over the time as my job slipped away.”

  (You don’t stink, you sting. Well, actually, since you mention it, your personal fragrance is something in the vicinity of reek. But also you sting. You put on your yellow jacket and then you sting. What you need to do is go inside and see some good ol’ Grateful Dead, it’ll mellow your harsh.)

  (That will not happen.)

  “Well have a good show.”

  (That I will not.)

  ZEB

  I’d never rip off a Head but it can be hard to tell.

  Especially with tapers because sometimes they look like junior high school guidance counselors. Come to think of it, sometimes they are junior high school guidance counselors, like these dudes who gave me a lift last summer from Deer Creek to Alpine, with their golf shirts, Bermuda shorts and flip-flops. Turns out they hadn’t missed a summer tour in over a decade.

  I wouldn’t sell them bogus anything. Not that I’m hawking bunk shit.

  Okay, except for the occasional blank blotter. I have sold clean paper on rare occasion as a desperation measure but never to a Head, just to someone who didn’t need it anyhow.

  It’s like last year down in Charlotte, this Head hears that I’m selling doses and asks me if they’re good because he was driving ten hours straight to Miami right after the encore so he could be in town early for the next run of shows. He told me he needed something to keep him wired. Now that’s not my stimmy of choice. For that kind of journey, I’d go with the truckers’ pills, the mini-thins, but each to his own. So I told him I had some complaints and that my doses might be weak because they’d been out in the sun too much, whatever that’s supposed to mean. They weren’t weak, they were paper but I wasn’t going to admit that, I’m not that wacked. So not only did I tell him no but I also set him up with some doses from this guy who wasn’t even selling, he just had extras.

  That’s why it was so harsh when that dude sold me a bum ticket. He should have told me what it was. It looked right on and show time was at hand, so I might have bought it anyhow for less bread just to see if would get me into the show. If I had known I would have been a bit more strategic about picking the right line, so I’d end up with someone ripping my ticket who wasn’t paying close attention and didn’t feel the need to make a point of busting Heads with counties. I’d get behind some short hair Heads as well just to avoid any suspicious vibe. But that dude never warned me, he never gave me a chance.

  We need to stop these Head to Head collisions.

  BAGEL BOB

  (Hey, Paulie, get over here, check this shit out.)

  (What is it?)

  (Go ahead man, tell him your name.)

  “Bagel Bob.”

  (That’s it? Nothing more?)

  “Nothing more is required.”

  (Yes but Bagel Bob’s so informal. What if you go to a formal dinner?)

  (With the President.)

  (With the President of the United State
s. Not the President of the Fairy Wing Guild.)

  “Bagel Bob does not wish to meet the President of the United States at this time. Bob will acknowledge that he received his baccalaureate in tandem with the Chief Executive’s eldest son. However, lest you believe Bob’s avowed affection for skull and roses has weakened his resolve, he can offer no additional comment about Skull and Bones. However, this Fairy Wing Guild of which you speak—”

  (Fuck the Fairy Wing Guild.)

  “That seems an improper way to treat a mythical craft organization.”

  (Okay, screw the President…)

  “You’re quite the promiscuous private security detail.”

  (Which is precisely my point.)

  (You have a point here?)

  “That you are libidinous?”

  (That I am working security. I am paid to enforce the rules here and there’s a rule against vending—)

  (No, screw the vending thing for now. Let’s get back to the name. You’re at a dinner party with what’s his name, the main guy in the Grateful Dead…)

  (Jerry Garcia.)

  (Right, right. Jerry Garcia. You’re eating with him. What does he call you?)

  “He can call me anything he wants except late to dinner. Haaah-haaahh!”

  Bob loves that one.

  (You’re a fucking comedic genius, Bob, but tell me this, when he asks you your name, what do you say?)

  “Bagel Bob would suffice.”

  (Oh, it would? Not Robert, seeing how this is the Grateful Dead guy and all?)

  “Robert also would be adequate.”

  (DO YOU HAVE A LAST NAME?)

  “In what sense of the term?”

  (Let me see your driver’s license.)

  “Bagel Bob does not wish to comply.”

  (I don’t give a shit what Bagel Bob wants. AND STOP CALLING YOURSELF BAGEL BOB!)

  (Just hand over your license, pal.)

  (No, Bob, you don’t have to do that. That’s some bogus shit. These guys aren’t cops. They’re fucking security jerk-offs. These are the guys who weren’t good enough to become cops. So they come out here to play make-believe. They put on their yellow jackets and fondle each other’s walkie-talkies.)