Abby tugged at one of the short dreadlocks at her forehead, twisting it gently between her knuckles. I recalled a baby goat scratching tender, nubby horns against a gate, something I'd witnessed in Vermont a hundred or a thousand years ago. When she felt my gaze Abby looked down, stared at her own bare knees. Her mouth worked slightly but formed nothing. I thought I could smell that she had made herself a little excited hectoring me.

"You seem a bit down," I said.

"What?"

"A little depressed again, lately."

She looked up sharply. "Don't use that word."

"I meant it sympathetically."

"You have no right."

With that she suddenly took herself out of the room, peeling the Meat Puppets shirt off over her head as she descended the stairs and moved out of sight. I only got a flash of back. A minute later I heard the shower. Abby had a seminar today, the second of the new semester. She ought to have spent the summer months writing a segment of her dissertation-as I likely should have been drafting my screenplay. Instead we'd fought and fucked and, increasingly, lapsed into separate glowering silences in our two rooms. Now, just as Abby was going in to face her mentors more or less empty-handed, I'd be winging down to Los Angeles to talk out a hot notion for which I'd not scribbled even the first hot scrap of note.

My sometimes-editor at The L.A. Weekly The L.A. Weekly had arranged the pitch meeting, my first. Over the last two years I'd slowly ground myself into $30,000 of credit card debt as a freelancer, my recent livelihood consisting mainly of the work I'd been doing for a Marin-based reissue label, Remnant Records. My dealings with Remnant's owner, a graying beatnik entrepreneur named Rhodes Blemner, vexed me. So today's pitch was a bid for freedom. had arranged the pitch meeting, my first. Over the last two years I'd slowly ground myself into $30,000 of credit card debt as a freelancer, my recent livelihood consisting mainly of the work I'd been doing for a Marin-based reissue label, Remnant Records. My dealings with Remnant's owner, a graying beatnik entrepreneur named Rhodes Blemner, vexed me. So today's pitch was a bid for freedom.

I must have lapsed into some kind of fugue, because the next thing I knew Abby was dressed and back at the top of my stairs. She wore jeans and a black sleeveless top and knee-high boots which raised her above my height. The boots still needed to be laced through their elaborate upper eyelets. She stood rubbing moisturizer into her palms and elbows and regarding me with steely fury.

"I don't talk about the hardest parts of my life only to have you throw them back at me," she said. "If I've ever been depressed at least I've had the nerve to admit it. I don't want you to ever use that word with me again, do you understand?"

"Sure you've got a nerve. Apparently I touched it. That's called letting someone know you intimately, Abby."

"Oh, yeah? What's it called when you don't know yourself yourself intimately?" intimately?"

"What do you mean?"

"Why didn't you tell me your father was coming, Dylan? How could you let me twist like that?"

I stared.

"You're depressed, Dylan. That's your secret from yourself. You don't let it inside. Your surround yourself with it instead, so you don't have to admit you're the source. Take a look." depressed, Dylan. That's your secret from yourself. You don't let it inside. Your surround yourself with it instead, so you don't have to admit you're the source. Take a look."

"It's an interesting theory," I mumbled.

"Fuck you, Dylan, it's not interesting interesting, it's not a theory theory. You're so busy feeling sorry for me and whoever whoever, Sam Cooke, you conveniently ignore yourself."

"What exactly do you want, Abby?"

"To be let inside, Dylan. You hide from me, in plain sight."

"I suppose that's another way of describing one person sparing another their violent shifts of mood."

"Is that what we're talking about here? Moods Moods ?" ?"

"One minute you're jerking off on the carpet, now this outburst. I can't take it, Abby."

"You think you've spared me your moods moods ? What do you think it's like for me, living under your cockpit of misery, here?" She gestured at the wall I'd been contemplating, covered with fourteen hundred compact discs: two units each holding seven hundred apiece. "This is a ? What do you think it's like for me, living under your cockpit of misery, here?" She gestured at the wall I'd been contemplating, covered with fourteen hundred compact discs: two units each holding seven hundred apiece. "This is a wall wall of moods, a wall of of moods, a wall of depression depression, Mr. Objective Correlative." She slapped the shelves. They rattled.

"Wow, you've really drawn up an indictment." I was fumbling for breathing room, nothing more.

"That's what you call it when I won't play depressed depressed for you? You switch to your little Kafka fantasies? I don't have the power of for you? You switch to your little Kafka fantasies? I don't have the power of indictment indictment, Dylan. I'm just the official mascot for all the shit you won't allow yourself to feel. A featured exhibit in the Ebdus collection of sad black folks sad black folks."

"That's unfair."

"Let's see, Curtis Mayfield, "We People Who Are Darker Than Blue"-sounds like depression to me." She chucked the CD to the floor. "Gladys Knight, misery, depression. Johnny Adams, depression. Van Morrison, total fucking depression. Lucinda Williams, give her Prozac. Marvin Gaye, dead. Johnny Ace, dead, tragic." As she dismissed the titles she jerked them from the shelf, the jewel cases splitting as they clattered down. "Little Willie John, dead. Little Esther and Little Jimmy Scott, sad-all the Littles are sad. What's this, Dump Dump ? You actually listen to something called Dump? Is that real? Syl Johnson, ? You actually listen to something called Dump? Is that real? Syl Johnson, Is It Because I'm Black? Is It Because I'm Black? Maybe you're just a Maybe you're just a loser loser, Syl. Gillian Welch, please, momma. The Go-Betweens? Five Blind Boys of Alabama, no comment. Al Green, I used to think Al Green was happy music happy music until you explained to me how fucking until you explained to me how fucking tragic tragic it all was, how he got burned with a pot of hot grits and then his woman it all was, how he got burned with a pot of hot grits and then his woman shot shot herself because she was so very herself because she was so very depressed depressed. Brian Wilson, crazy. Tom Verlaine, very very depressed. Even depressed. Even you you don't play that record. Ann Peebles, don't play that record. Ann Peebles, I Can't Stand the Rain I Can't Stand the Rain. Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, blecch. "Drowning in the Sea of Love," is that a good thing or a bad thing? David Ruffin, I know he's a drug addict. Donny Hathaway-dead?"

"Dead," I said.

"The Bar-Kays, it sounds sounds happy, but I get a bad feeling, I get a bad vibe from this disc. What's going on with the Bar-Kays?" happy, but I get a bad feeling, I get a bad vibe from this disc. What's going on with the Bar-Kays?"

"Uh, they were on Otis Redding's plane."

"The Death-Kays! " She overhanded it to shatter against the far wall and rain onto the pillow. " She overhanded it to shatter against the far wall and rain onto the pillow.

"Okay, Abby." I held out my palms, pleading. "Peace. Uncle." My spinning brain added, Sprite! Mr. Pibb! Clitoris! Sprite! Mr. Pibb! Clitoris!

She stopped, and we both stared at the crystalline junk around her feet.

"I have some happy music," I said, dumbly adopting her terms.

"Like what?"

"'You Sexy Thing' is probably my favorite single song. There's a lot of disco-era music I like."

"Terrible example."

"Why?"

"A million whining moaning singers, ten million depressed songs, and five or six happy songs-which remind you of being beaten up when you were thirteen years old. You live in the past, Dylan. I'm sick of your secrets. Did your father even ask if I was coming down with you?"

My face was hot and no speech emerged.

"And all this this shit. What shit. What is is this shit, anyway?" Alongside the box sets on the shelf above the CD cases were arrayed a scattering of objects I'd never shown off or named: Aaron X. Doily's ring, Mingus's pick, a pair of Rachel's earrings, and a tiny, handmade, hand-sewn book of black-and-white photographs titled "For D. from E." Abby's unlaced boots crackled in the broken plastic cases as she walked. "Whose little shrine is this? Emily? Elizabeth? Come on, Dylan, you put it there so I could see it, you owe me an explanation already." this shit, anyway?" Alongside the box sets on the shelf above the CD cases were arrayed a scattering of objects I'd never shown off or named: Aaron X. Doily's ring, Mingus's pick, a pair of Rachel's earrings, and a tiny, handmade, hand-sewn book of black-and-white photographs titled "For D. from E." Abby's unlaced boots crackled in the broken plastic cases as she walked. "Whose little shrine is this? Emily? Elizabeth? Come on, Dylan, you put it there so I could see it, you owe me an explanation already."

"Don't."

"Were you once married? I wouldn't even know."

I took the ring from the shelf and put it in my pocket. "This is all stuff from when I was a kid." It was a slight oversimplification: E. was the wife of a friend from college, the gift of the book commemoration of an almost almost which was really a which was really a just-as-well-not just-as-well-not.

Mingus's comic books were in a box in my closet, mingled with mine.

She grabbed the Afro pick. "You were already taking souvenirs from black girls when you were a kid? I don't think so, Dylan."

"That's not a girl's."

"Not a girl's." She tossed the pick onto the bed. "Is that your way of telling me something I don't even even want to know? Or did you buy this off eBay? Is this Otis Redding's pick, stolen from the wreckage? Maybe it belonged to one of the Bar-Kays. I guess the truly want to know? Or did you buy this off eBay? Is this Otis Redding's pick, stolen from the wreckage? Maybe it belonged to one of the Bar-Kays. I guess the truly haunting haunting thing is you'll never know for sure." thing is you'll never know for sure."

I lashed out. "I guess I have to listen to this shit because you don't feel black enough, Abby. Because you grew up riding ponies in the suburbs."

"No, you have to listen to it because you think this is all about where you grew up and where I grew up. Listen to yourself for a minute, Dylan. What happened happened to you? Your childhood is some privileged sanctuary you live in all the time, instead of here with me. You think I don't to you? Your childhood is some privileged sanctuary you live in all the time, instead of here with me. You think I don't know know that?" that?"

"Nothing happened to me."

"Right," she said with heavy sarcasm. "So why are you so obsessed with your childhood?"

"Because-" I truly wanted to answer, not only to appease her. I wanted to know it myself.

"Because?"

"My childhood-" I spoke carefully, finding each word. "My childhood is the only part of my life that wasn't, uh, overwhelmed by my childhood."

Overwhelmed-or did I mean ruined ruined ? ?

"Right," she said. And we stared at one another for a long moment. "Thank you," she said.

"Thank you?"

"You just told me where I stand, Dylan." She spoke sadly, no longer concerned to prove anything. "You know, when I first spent a night in this house, you don't think I didn't walk up here and check out your shit? You think I didn't see that pick on your shelf?"

"It's just a pick. I like the form."

She ignored me. "I said to myself, Abby, this man is collecting you for the color of your skin. That was okay, I was willing to be collected. I liked being your nigger, Dylan."

The word throbbed between us, permitting no reply from me. I could visualize it in cartoonish or graffiti-style font, glowing with garish decorations, lightning, stars, halos. As with the pick, I could appreciate the form form. Most such words devaluate, when thrown around every day on the streets by schoolboys of all colors, or whispered by lovers such as myself and Abigale Ponders. Though it had been more than once around the block of our relationship, nigger nigger was that rarity, an anti-entropic agent, self-renewing. The deep ugliness in the word always sat up alert again when it was needed. was that rarity, an anti-entropic agent, self-renewing. The deep ugliness in the word always sat up alert again when it was needed.

"But I never was willing to be collected for my moods moods, man. You collected my depression, you cultivated it like a cactus, like a sulky cat you wanted around to feel sorry for. I never expected that. I never did."

Abby was talking to herself. When she noticed, a moment after I did, her expression curdled. "Clean up your room," she said, and went downstairs.

The airport shuttle's horn had been sounding for some time now, I realized. My room would have to wait to be cleaned, and the five or six CDs I'd selected would have to be enough. The Syl Johnson record, Is It Because I'm Black Is It Because I'm Black, had skated to the top of the small heap of discs and plastic left behind where Abby had been. I fished it up and added it to the wallet.

At the kitchen table Abby stood, one boot up on a chair, cinching the endless laces. She'd already refreshed the Africanoid jewelry in her piercings. It would seem an absurd costume for a student in a classroom, if I hadn't known how hard her fellow students dressed for the same occasion. The boots were only a little obstacle to the art of dramatic exitry-she'd surely meant to be out the door before me, meant her last words upstairs to be conclusive.

I grabbed the bag at the door. Her face, when she looked up, was raw, shocked, unmade. The van honked again.

"Good luck today," she said awkwardly.

"Thanks. I'll call-"

"I'll be out."

"Okay. And Abby?"

"Yes?"

"Good luck, too." I didn't know if I meant it, or what it was meant to apply to if I did. Was I wishing her good luck in leaving me? But there it was, our absurd coda completed, good luck good luck on all sides. Then I was gone. on all sides. Then I was gone.

chapter2.

It was September 1999, a season of fear-in three months the collapse of the worldwide computer grid was going to bring the century's long party to a finish. Meanwhile, as the party waned, the hottest new format in radio was a thing called Jammin' Oldies. Los Angeles's MEGA 100, recently reformatted (or in radio parlance, "flipped") to the new trend, was playing in my cab-the song was War's "Why Can't We Be Friends?"-as I instructed the driver to take me to the Universal Studios lot and we swung away from the LAX curbside, into palm-lined gray traffic. The trees looked thirsty to me.

San Francisco had a Jammin' Oldies station too. All cities did, a tidal turning of my generation's readiness to sentimentalize the chart toppers of its youth. Old divisions had been blurred in favor of the admission that disco hadn't sucked so bad as all that, even the pretense that we'd adored it all along. The Kool & the Gang and Gap Band dance hits we'd struggled against as teens, trying to deny their pulse in our bodies, were now staples of weddings and lunch hours in all the land; the O'Jays and Manhattans and Barry White ballads we'd loathed were now, with well-mixed martinis or a good zinfandel, foundation elements in any reasonably competent seduction. From the evidence of the radio I might have come of age in a race-blind utopia. That on the other end of the dial hip-hop stations thumped away in dire quarantine, a sort of pre-incarceration, no matter. Not today, anyway, not for one borne in the backseat of a taxicab helmed by one Nicholas M. Brawley, through sun-blanched smog, toward a meeting with a Dreamworks development executive, nope.

"You like this song?" I asked Nicholas Brawley's fortyish gray-coiled neck.

"It's all right."

"You know the Subtle Distinctions?"

"Now see that's some real fine music."

At the guard-post gates of the Universal lot was proof I was expected, so Brawley's cab could be waved through, to wend past the curbed Jeeps and the long windowless hangars and the brick huts which appeared to have been thrown up just that morning. Dreamworks' building resided what felt to be a mile or so inside the compound, behind a tree-sheltered parking lot requiring a special pass for entrance. None had been issued, so Brawley dropped me at the inner gate.

"You have a card?" I asked him. "I'll need a ride out of here in, I don't know-maybe an hour?"

He jotted a number on the back of the company's card. "Call my cell phone."

As I crossed the shade-spangled lot to the entrance a well-dressed lackey was just crossing it in the other direction, moving for a break in the eucalyptus trees. He carried an Oscar. Palms cupping the statuette's base and shoulders, he appeared to be looking for someone to bestow it on. I wondered if his whole job was to cross this lot all day with the golden prize, back and forth, reminding any visitor of the local stakes.

Inside, I was directed upstairs, where I gave my name to a pretty girl with a headset. She fetched me a bottled water before abandoning me to a flotilla of couches and magazines. There I plopped my sad little overnight bag, hitched up my pants to cross my legs and tried not to look too demoralized beneath the smirk of framed posters. Time passed, phones rang, carpets sighed, someone whispered around a corner.

"Dylan?"

"Yes?"

I dropped Men's Journal Men's Journal and a boy in a sharp-creased suit took my hand. "You're the music guy-right?" and a boy in a sharp-creased suit took my hand. "You're the music guy-right?"

"Right."

"I'm Mike. Great to see you. Jared's just ending a call."

We moved to Mike's little office, an intermediate space, a staging area, apparently, for encounters with Jared. You had to meet Cats-in-the-Hat-A-through-Z before you got to the One True Cat. At least we were all on a first-name basis.

"Mike?" said an intercom voice.

"Yes."

"I'm ready for Dylan."

Mike gave me a thumbs-up endorsement to cross Jared's threshold, and a wink for luck.