These Dreams of You

~ ~ ~

Anna softens a bit. “Can’t say he’s not worrisome.” She takes a chair and indicates the sofa across from her. “Coke,” she says, “amphetamines. Lots of coke. More coke than I’ve seen a single human being suck up. Problem is he still does function, still gets it done. I know that’s what they all say but in his case it happens to be so. Five albums in two years? And the last two sold best of all. It’d be better for him if they hadn’t. Course I know you folks just want to squeeze another out of him before it’s too late.”

“They don’t want to squeeze another,” says Jasmine, “they want to squeeze another five. If they cared only about another they’d be less worried about trying to save him and more worried about getting him into the studio every available moment while they have the chance.”

Anna leans forward as if divulging a secret. “He’s losing his mind. You hear what I’m saying? Down that hallway,” Anna points back to where the women came in, “behind that door is some extremely strange shit — black magic, voodoo, old nefertiti wah-wah,” indicating the house with the sweep of her hand.

“I’m aware,” says Jasmine, “that I’m house-mothering a Nazi.”

Anna laughs. “I know — and he’s with me? But the man,” she says with some weariness, “is not a Nazi. He’s not into the politics, he’s into the weirdness. Maybe that’s no better but when he’s got it together, he’s smarter than any musician I’ve known. Reads all the time, always onto whatever’s coming next before anybody else — and someday if he hasn’t killed himself he’s going to look back on the Nazi nonsense and think, What the fuck? In the meantime he’s coming undone. In hotel rooms he sees people fall from the sky. In the backseat of the car he hears kids’ voices crying from the trunk. Swears up and down bodies are buried in the walls of whatever room he’s in.”

“When is the tour over?”

“Tonight’s the last night. He’s in. . Denver? How he’s managed to pull it off this long nobody can figure. Gets back day after tomorrow.”

“Mind if I go meet his flight?”

“Flight?” Anna laughs again. “My dear, Mister Twenty-First Century travels by good old fashioned train.”