Orfe

  “You haven’t changed much.”

  “Neither have you, really. Have you?”

  I laughed. “Not if you don’t think so.”

  “I don’t. Other than growing up, of course,” Orfe said. “Other than growing. I do want you to come hear us. Hear me, I mean. Would you? You want to? Do you mind pretty hard-core music?”

  I decided not to lie. “That doesn’t matter.”

  “I hope,” Orfe said.

  * * * * *

  Mushroom clouds in a row lined the walls of the room, shining in the dim light, fluorescent green mushroom clouds, fluorescent orange, fluorescent yellow. Small tables crowded back against the wall, across the room from the narrow wooden platform that made itself a stage by being elevated on wooden crates. Black amplifiers gleamed at the sides of the stage against a brick wall; silver microphones stood guard over the arrangement of drums and cymbals and pedals; wiring lay coiled black and shiny. I was taken to the girlfriends’ table by the door. The room was so crowded and noisy that even if I had felt any inclination to talk, it wouldn’t have been possible. Four spotlights burned overhead.

  When a group of people, Orfe among them, worked their way through the crowd and mounted the stage, they were greeted with hoots and whistles. They wore black leather boots and black leather jackets; they wore belts, bracelets, and anklets of silvery studs fixed into black leather. The lead singer wore black leather trousers and a strip of white, like a skunk’s stripe, in his long, dark hair. He stood in a spotlight, stage center. He raised his arm straight overhead, pointing, then lowered his stiff arm to point at the drummer, who flourished his sticks and played a roll, concluding with a thwack on the cymbals. The band played.

  It felt as if the room were a moving vehicle and had just crashed up against a wall of sound. It felt as if a wall of sound had fallen into the room. Sound pulsed up, trapped in the small space, the drum pounding along beside the electric bass. The lead’s voice slipped between drum and bass, riding the guitars—the voices of the audience rose in competition.

  I couldn’t listen because I couldn’t hear. The room was too small, the amplifiers too powerful, the audience too inattentive. I wished myself elsewhere.

  But I was there to see Orfe. She had her hair jammed into a black knit hat, and she was placed to one side of the platform. She attended only to the guitar under her hands, the left hand motionless on the neck, the fingers of the right moving on the strings in an unvarying pattern. The lead singer—Jack, I assumed—dominated the stage because he moved on it, hips fluid, long hair thrown from one side to the other, back and forth, his eyes most often closed as he screamed out the anger of his song.

  The standing crowd swayed and chanted, “Not me, you won’t get me.” Some groups danced, sometimes slamming into one another. “Black man, red man, Chinaman’s chance.” Jack’s face twisted into grimaces, his eyes squeezed shut, and his free hand reached desperately for the zipper of his jacket, which in the extreme of his emotion he pulled down and up, down and up. Number followed number. Every song seemed unwilling to end.

  Finally, Jack pointed to Orfe. She took off the hat and shook her head. Her hair shone coppery red. She lay down the guitar and brought only the microphone forward with her. The audience quieted, anticipating.

  “It’s too soon,” one voice from the crowd said. “I couldn’t ’ve waited anymore,” another spoke. “Maybe she won’t—,” a third asked. I looked but couldn’t distinguish who was speaking. It was hot by then and close, sweaty, the air dense with the acrid gray smell of tobacco and the muskier, greener odor of pot. The band’s instruments were muted, even the drum; this number seemed to be a duet, a lamentation for two voices, a dialogue between the two voices, almost merely a list of words Jack chanted, to which Orfe responded in chorus. It sounded like Jack was chanting newspaper headlines. “It makes me sick,” Orfe sang in response, never looking away from his face, “It makes me sick.” He leaned toward her, microphone touching his lips, as if he loved his words.

  More and more Orfe accompanied her line of choric song with an odd hunching gesture of her shoulders. Then she stumbled, almost doubled over. When she started to vomit I rose in my chair—

  “What’re you doing?” one of the girlfriends asked.

  “She’s sick, I—”

  Her hand tethered me to the table and forced me back into my seat. “Cool it. You want to ruin the show? Kee-rist,” she said, disgusted. I was out of place, stupid. The girlfriend’s hand was locked around my wrist. I didn’t know if I ought to be trying to twist free. I didn’t know why she was telling me to shut up. I didn’t know anything.

  Meanwhile, on the platform, the song went on. Jack chanted headlines. Sometimes Orfe sang the chorus through, sometimes she just threw up, sometimes she got two or three words out before—

  The audience crowded close, as if asking to be spattered. “It makes me sick,” they sang along.

  And I remembered that Orfe used to be able to throw up at will, and I sat back—

  It was not pleasant to watch. It didn’t even go on that long, Orfe didn’t even projectile vomit that many times—

  But then there’s only so much food you can cram into your stomach—isn’t there?—so you can vomit it out.

  —but even so, however cynical my thoughts, I had to notice that by the end Orfe looked as if she were actually sick, pasty-faced, her hair a tangled mess, spattered—her eyes not focusing on anything in the room—her mouth slack, as she wiped her hand across it to try to go on singing as if . . . as if the song were true.

  The audience loved it. “Whoo yeah yeah, you know it, tell it like it is, baby, me too, me too, Ooowhee.” The room rang with applause.

  “That’s it.” The girlfriend’s voice came close to my ear. “Are you okay?”

  I wasn’t, but I wasn’t about to tell her. I didn’t know what I could do about it anyway; I couldn’t do anything.

  The audience pushed close, trapping the performers on the stage. I heard voices: “I never felt . . .” “not ever before . . .” “felt . . .” “never felt before—”

  “Sometimes, the first time,” the girlfriend said, quietly, almost friendly now, “people—it makes them a little sick, you know? Nobody actually has, but lots of people think—are you okay?”

  I nodded my head, although I felt sick, and I wished I could be sick to get rid of that feeling, because how I felt and why I felt that way—well—vomiting seemed to me to be the only response that had any integrity.

  I remembered again that Orfe could make herself throw up.

  I asked her that night, back in my dormitory room. Orfe had showered and wrapped herself up in my bathrobe, still pale but sitting cross-legged on my bed, holding an acoustic guitar in her lap, the music flowing out of it, floating. “Are you faking it, Orfe?” I asked.

  Orfe didn’t answer. Her hands drew music from the guitar and after a while she asked me, “You want to hear one of my songs?”

  By then I was unwilling to interrupt the sound of the guitar even by my own voice speaking only one syllable.

  “I hate it,” Orfe mumbled, and I knew what she meant by it.

  I nodded. I didn’t care what she said. Her words had no meaning, no importance—as long as the music went on; it didn’t matter what I thought or feared or doubted, as long as the music went on; as long as the music went on, everything would be all right; nothing signified, everything could be lost, but as long as the music went on . . .

  “Listen.”

  She played all that night, song after song, all from memory. I listened, tireless. By morning, when the fresh young air came in through the grimy window, when Orfe stopped playing, singing, my room was filled with people, as was the hallway beyond. Then she answered my question: “I don’t know.”

  * * * * *

  The difference is that nobody ever wanted to say to Orfe, “You were terrific.” Even when she was in the spotlight, “What a song,” they would say and never “What a singer.” Most often th
ey would say nothing because speech hinders hearing. All words can do is tell the feelings. My feeling was: I didn’t want the music to end, not once, not ever. I felt embraced, empowered. Secure in my own strength. Enchanted. Humbled, made into nothing. Exalted. I felt released from the prison of myself.

  * * * * *

  Once I had found her again, I never missed hearing Orfe perform, even with Jack and the Jackets, whom I disliked more each time I heard them, and saw them, especially the duet. They called it “Current Events,” but the audience called out for it under the name of “It Makes Me Sick.” There’s no way around it. The duet was the purpose of every performance: Jack pursued her with words and eventually, inevitably, Orfe threw up. The audience expected that finale, anticipated it, stopped dancing and crowded up around the platform, breathing with the driving drums and words until it happened—after which the audience sighed, satisfied. Then they returned to tables, finished drinks, gathered up belongings, murmuring or silent, and left.

  Afterward Orfe stood, not even accepting applause, while the band and Jack bowed, grinned, applauded themselves. She stood still, her skin white, her copper hair glowing like a crown. We would go back to my dormitory room, Orfe and I, and they would be waiting—in the reception room, along the halls, in my room unless I had remembered to lock the door, sprawled on my bed in a tangle of legs, sprawled on the floor, at the chair at my desk, and on the windowsill. I had classes to go to and courses to pass, so Orfe would lead everyone out into the reception room. I thought at first that I wouldn’t be able to sleep; I thought the music would call me out of bed, but I was wrong. It seemed as if the music took me by the hand, and I was asleep almost the minute my head went down on the pillow. I slept long and deep, and I rose refreshed from those nights. In the mornings I sat up in bed to see Orfe asleep on the floor, a giant caterpillar in the cocoon of her sleeping bag, her bright hair snarled into elflocks by the exertions of her day and her night and her sleep.

  Jack and the Jackets played every other week, then every week, then two nights a week. Orfe could no longer manage the walk home, or even the steps up into a bus, so we took taxis. She seemed, coming offstage, pale and strengthless. People still waited for her return to the dormitory, in still increasing numbers, and she played her own songs for whatever remained of the night and whatever remained of her strength.

  I tried to talk sense to her, but she didn’t hear me, I was carrying her guitar by then and her black leather airman’s jacket. One night she was so exhausted she stumbled into the glass door. The crowd didn’t say anything or move in any direction; they stood and waited for the music to begin.

  I lost my temper. I’d had it with everyone, Jack the egomaniac and Orfe the martyr and the waiting crowd before me and the panting crowd we’d left behind. “She’s not going to play tonight,” I announced. “Everybody go away. Not tomorrow either. I’ll let you know when. I’ll post a notice. I’ll post a notice on the bulletin board in Main.” They didn’t question my words or my right to pronounce. They drifted away. Nobody complained. Nobody minded, it seemed, as long as there was a future performance promised.

  That night I put Orfe into my bed and took the sleeping bag for myself. She didn’t notice where she was. She slept with her arms flung out, exhausted. I sat for a while, a textbook in front of me as if I were studying. I wasn’t studying. I was just sitting, arms wrapped around my knees, waiting to be tired enough to sleep.

  I did sleep, eventually, and woke and went to classes, and when I returned Orfe was sitting on my bed. “Don’t do that again,” she said.

  “Do what?”

  “Give me your bed. If you do that, I’ll have to move out. Do you want to be my manager? Remember, we talked about it?”

  “What?” I emptied my armload of books onto the made bed. “You mean back then? That was just kids talking. I’m a full-time student, I’m going for a degree. Orfe,” I repeated, “that was years and years ago, and besides, I don’t know anything about it.”

  She was at my desk. “You’re smart enough, you could do it and still go for your degree.”

  She was right about that. I hadn’t known that, but once Orfe pointed it out to me I knew she was right.

  “But I don’t know anything, I wouldn’t know how to do anything. Or work with Jack,” I admitted. “I don’t like—” I couldn’t begin to make a list of all the things I didn’t like about Jack and his band. “I don’t like—”

  “The first time, Jack didn’t know. That’s the truth,” Orfe said. “At first he had no idea what would happen, but ever since then—I do try,” she said. “But he pushes the words into my stomach, they ride in on the music? He says the audience needs it.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “I don’t know. Sometimes I think I just act out what they feel, what they’re feeling, sometimes. The ones who come more than once—it can’t be shock value anymore. I can feel them waiting, wanting, hoping. . . . You don’t know.”

  “You’re right, I don’t.”

  “Asking me to do it, for them, so they won’t have to do it for themselves? Because they can’t? I don’t have any choice.”

  “You could quit.”

  “I can’t. That’s why you should be my manager.”

  She came back to the subject more than once. And “I can’t quit,” she said, more than once.

  “What do you mean?” I finally asked. “You’re not afraid of anyone. Are you? You never were. Or anything.”

  “It’s not about being afraid,” Orfe said. Her head was bent down, her face hidden.

  I’d only been thinking about why I couldn’t be anyone’s manager. Now I asked her, “I don’t understand.”

  Her hair moved as she nodded her head; she agreed with me. “Whenever I tell Jack I’m quitting, he says he’s sorry, he says he wants me to stay, he says he’ll do a couple of my songs and we won’t do ‘Current Events.’ ”

  “I’ll just bet he does,” I said. “And how many times has he made that promise?”

  “And he always means it,” Orfe’s voice said. “He does, I know he does. Then when he’s out there, when we’re actually doing the show, he doesn’t do what he said. Up until he doesn’t do it, he means to. But the audience wants . . . Jack can’t help it. I feel sorry for him.”

  “What about you?” I was beginning to wonder if having me for manager might not be preferable to having no manager. “Don’t you feel sorry for yourself?”

  Orfe lifted her face and her eyes spoke to me. She didn’t need to say it, but she did, “Ashamed.”

  “Okay, I’ll try it. I’ll try managing you,” I decided, the quickest decision of my life. “I’ll talk to Jack. What kind of a contract did you sign?”

  “No contract.”

  “Orfe, without a contract, you can leave whenever you want.”

  “Jack says all I’ve got going for me is a pair of tits and an okay voice.”

  I stared at her. “Do you believe that?”

  “Mostly not.”

  “He’s lying. The guy’s an asshole.”

  Orfe grinned at me. “I know that, and you know that, but what if he isn’t?”

  “Your voice is better than okay,” I pointed out. “Much better than okay.” But Jack was a professional, and he’d been in the business for years. “Isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Orfe said. As I talked myself out of confidence, she gained it.

  “And your tits—”

  She started to laugh. “Aren’t much at all. I’m not faking it,” she told me. “I always mean it, every time. I can’t help it—When he sings those words at me, I can’t help swallowing them, and feeling them, and it makes me sick. I promise. I wouldn’t do it if I were faking it. I’d get a job flipping hamburgers and never write another song, never sing again, if I had to fake anything. You’ve known me longer than anyone, you should know that.”

  “I do.”

  Orfe watched my face. “You do believe me?”

  “I do.”

 
“Because if you don’t, I don’t think anybody should.”

  “I’ll be your manager. I’ll talk to Jack. If I can, I’ll do everything I can.”

  The next day I wore a suit to classes, my pin-striped job interview suit, and met Jack for coffee on the way back. I put my books and notebooks authoritatively down on the table beside me and announced bluntly that Orfe was quitting the band. Then I sat tense, looking—I hoped—calm.

  Jack offered no resistance.

  “I knew it.” He stirred his coffee. “I knew she’d do this to me. It’s that guy, isn’t it?”

  What guy? But I didn’t ask. You did it to yourself, I didn’t say. All I did was take out of my notebook the release form I’d spent lunch hour in the school library writing and typing up in triplicate. I passed all three copies across to Jack and offered him my ballpoint pen. “Sign here and here and here.”

  “You don’t know about Yuri? She hasn’t told you?”

  “You ought to read this before you sign it,” I advised.

  “As a friend of hers, I oughtta tell you, warn you. He’s bad cess,” Jack said. “I tried to tell her, but you can’t tell Orfe anything. Where do I sign? I can’t sign fast enough. But she doesn’t need this, we never had any contract written down, whatever she’s told you.”

  “Then it doesn’t matter that you sign,” I said. Patiently. The release was an extra safeguard for Orfe, in case Jack ever decided it would be worth his while to come along with a lawyer and sue.

  He scrawled his name, once, twice, three times, and shoved the papers back toward me. I signed one and gave it back to him. He studied it. “What am I going to do?” he asked. “What about me?”

  I didn’t meet his eyes. I gathered together the papers and kept my face expressionless, as if I were invulnerable to pity. When Jack spoke again, I was glad to hear bitterness. “You’re going to be her manager, is that it? That’s a joke. I’ll get a lot of laughs out of that, the two of you, no idea at all what the game is really like. You’ve got no idea how tough it is.”