Here’s a short excerpt from Phil's Siren Song, a sequel to Your Silent Face which I hope to release this winter. If you aren’t familiar with my first novel, you can check it out here.
Nickel’s Arcade is an enclosed alley in downtown Ann Arbor. The red-bricked walk through is lined with shops that sell expensive items. The elongated glass roof lets in the pale sunlight. We linger here for a moment to gaze upon expensive men’s accoutrements before emerging onto State Street at the Diag. But my thoughts are stuck in the arcade. No matter how many times I have passed through, it requires an adjustment when I exit at the other end. There is something elegiac about the echoing scrape of leather-soled shoes, and the subdued, dislocated voices. It is like entering a church in the middle of the afternoon while a humble group of plainly dressed lay women are cleaning the sacristy. The soft, reverent murmurs; the silent eyes: the hush. However, something is off. I have never seen anybody making a purchase. Quite often a number of the shops are closed. I have never entered a single one of them. I pass through like a wand of light every time I return to Ann Arbor to score more candy. The enclosure is like a snow globe or an aquarium. The sensations are trapped. There are no enclosed alleys in Flint. The expensive clothing, the art prints, the gold-plated watches and tie clips, the vintage antiques possibly contain a message: You do not belong here, buddy. I stubbornly refuse to feel anything, but I can’t help the sensation. Stuart senses something too: “Do you ever feel like suddenly ripping off your shirt and sprinting into the street and just running balls out for several blocks?” he asks.
“You mean like right now, this very minute? No. But I think about running—”
“You’re going to leave Flint, just like Nigel did, ain’t cha?”
When it comes to fetching the drugs, I would totally be lying if I said that I did not experience a spasm in the bicep, a sudden flutter in the groin. I sometimes question all of this, but it’s simple: One can’t work their way through college slinging pizza. Especially someone who has been winging it on his own since the age of sixteen. One day I walked out of my mother’s apartment on an afternoon much like this afternoon. I had not decided in that precise moment that I would not return, but that is exactly what happened. I dropped out of school. I crashed with friends. I rode my skateboard. I couch surfed for a while. I went to shows. It became an implied emancipation, a de facto separation from my mother without any explicit agreements. I had had more than I could stand of her dumb ass boyfriends.
Everything converges at the Diag. The traffic stagnates. People lazily multiply and converse and smoke. Sidewalks intersect. The pool hustlers gather in the billiards hall on the first level of the Union. In the summer, the grass and trees and flower beds compete with the brick and pavement.
Eventually, a young kid wearing flowing cargo pants and worn out checkered Vans screeches to a halt beside me just as I am lighting a clove to try and blend in.
“So the guy yer meeting looks like Charles Manson before he went to prison,” he says, casually dismounting from the skateboard.
Ignoring sudden declarations, I take this opportunity to inquire about something that has been bothering me. “Come on, man, how did you know it was me? What do they tell you? I’ll give you five bucks.” There will come a time when I need to speak with somebody else.
“He’s wearing a Yankee’s hat.”
“Okay, ten bucks.”
The familiarity of the sound of the wheels of the retreating skateboard grinding on the sidewalk give me pause. I survey the scene. There is opportunity here. A wide range of customers. Basically, wealth up the ass. A punk rock couple walking by with spiked Mohawks plastered with shiny gel cannot fool me. I find a crazed guy wearing a Yankee’s baseball cap in the Union pool room, but his scraggily beard, gold Ray-Bans, hippie beads and army jacket remind me more of Dennis Hopper as the insane journalist in Apocalypse Now more than Charles Manson.
My Dennis Hopper is watching a guy named J Dog run the table. They are playing straight pool. The pool hall, itself, is like a scene in a film. J Dog and Stuart were tight in high school. While Stuart was wait-listed by the University of Michigan, J Dog was accepted. We have chatted about his college life down here. He has made it sound attractive. Great bands, like INXS and the Violent Femmes, have played at Hill Auditorium.
On nights back home, after my candy has run out, I have watched J Dog run many racks at El Oasis.
I sit beside Dennis Hopper. “He’s kicking your ass, isn’t he?”
“You know him?”
“He’s a homie.”
“He can play pool, that’s for damn sure.”
“I’m it. The guy from Flint.”
“Really? No, duh. I know who the fuck you are, man. Meet me in the men’s room in fifteen minutes.”
“Does it have to be so dramatic?” I wonder. Everything is going very well. It is nice to see J Dog.
Dennis Hopper gets up to take a shot.
“Phil,” J Dog says.
“J Dog.”
“What’s up, man?”
I shrug. “Oh, the usual. Are you taking this guy’s money? I guess we’re going to take our business to the men’s room.”
In the bathroom, I ask the guy if he’s seen the film, Apocalypse Now. We go into adjacent stalls. I pay for the drugs. In exchange for the wad of cash, he slips me a brown bag. “You like totally remind me of the Dennis Hopper character,” I am saying, coming out of the stall, having stuffed the candy deep inside my backpack, but the hippie guy has vanished. J Dog is packing up his cue in the pool room. “Hey, man, Stu’s wandering around here somewhere,” I say, but he isn’t too interested because he needs to get to an exam for a computer class. “Computers?” I say. “It’s probably going to become my major,” he says. “Who could have predicted Dennis Hopper?”
The thought makes me chuckle.
