Back to 411. "Do you have a listing for a Lois DiMaggio?"
The computer came on the line. "The number is 718-555-5678. The number is 718-555-5678."
Gibson dialed the number.
"Yeah?" It was Cupcake.
"I don't know if you remember me, my name is Joe Gibson."
Cupcake was suspicious and hostile, her regular demeanor with strangers, except Gibson had known her as long as he had known Tony. "I don't remember you. Should I?"
"I was a friend of Tony Ramos."
"Is this some kind of fucking joke?"
"I'm just trying to get ahold of him."
Now Cupcake was angry. "What are you, pal? Some kinda ghoul? All of Tony's friends know that Tony died eight months ago. So unless you've been out of town or something…"
Gibson felt ill. "Yes, yes, I've been away. What the hell happened?"
"The asshole OD'd on dope."
Gibson could see why her voice was so full of anger and bitterness. Cupcake had never made any secret of how much she loved Tony Ramos. It was one of those Sid-and-Nancy things. "I'm sorry."
"So am I, pal."
Gibson called for another Scotch. He needed it. Tony had always gone in for bouts of dopefiending, and, eight months ago, Tony Ramos had indeed OD'd, except that he had OD'd at Gibson's apartment, and Gibson had called the paramedics and Tony had pulled through. In this new world, where Gibson didn't seem to exist, he hadn't been there when Tony had scored the ultra-pure, miraculously uncut China White that had fucked him up, and Tony Ramos had died. Gibson couldn't shake the sick feeling that somehow he was responsible.
The porter came by with more booze. "You're drinking heavy."
Gibson nodded. "Yeah, I got problems."
"Take it easy, okay?"
Gibson nodded again and tipped the man. "I'll do my best."
He had to get out of there. The hotel room was getting claustrophobic, and he knew he wasn't going to learn anything more or come up with any solution by just sitting on the bed, drinking, watching TV, and making phone calls to people who couldn't remember him.
Out on the street, he took it into his head to walk down to Tower Records. The record store should show if any trace of his music remained. He started down Twenty-Third Street until he reached the Flatiron Building; then he turned south, heading downtown. He also stopped at a couple of taverns on the way. He realized that he was building to a full-scale drunk and that might not be such a smart idea, but a certain recklessness had come into the picture. What did he expect from himself? He'd lost his past, his history, his home, and he had found out that one of his best friends was dead, and he certainly had reason enough to get as disgustingly drunk as his mood indicated and damn the torpedoes.
It was with much the same attitude that he entered Tower Records. The uniformed security guard just inside the front door gave him a hard look, but Gibson walked the walk with such stunning arrogance that, despite the fact he looked like some ten-day drunk out of a Charlie Bukowski story, the man backed off. Gibson went straight to the Rock H section and found, with the feeling of a drowning man who can't even find a straw, that there was no subsection for the Holy Ghosts and not even any of their recordings in H General rack. That did it. He was beginning to lose it. His music was gone and that was too much. When he'd set out, he hadn't imagined he would feel it so strongly. The controls were snapping and slipping away. The newly acquired strength that had been maintaining him intact since Slide had pulled him out of Luxor was draining out of him. He wasn't even aware that his fists were clenched so hard that his nails were cutting into the skin of his palms and he was muttering to himself under his breath.
"I don't fucking exist, I don't fucking exist."
Shoppers around him were beginning to tense. In New York City, the individual who talked to himself was treated like an unexploded bomb in a crowded store.
He moved on for one final try. His solo albums had sold nothing like the numbers of the ones with the band, but it was worth checking. There was nothing under G, either. Gibson looked around the store. Some of the names were comfortingly familiar: Lou Reed, Miles Davis, Cher, Bruce Springsteen, Elvis, The Who, and The Clash. They were all there, just as they should be. There were others, however, that meant nothing to him. Who the hell were Belinda Carlisle, Stevie Nicks, or Page Seven? None of them had existed when he'd left for Luxor, and now they seemed to be established stars with long careers behind them.
"Now it's me that doesn't exist."
He was most upset by a band called the Rolling Stones. Before all this, there hadn't been any Rolling Stones. He went to their bin and found that they had dozens of records on sale, records going back to the early sixties. It was insane. They had taken his slot in history. The look, the image, the attitude, it was pure Holy Ghosts. The only difference seemed to be that the Rolling Stones had kept it together while the Holy Ghosts had fucked up.
It was while he was looking through the Rolling Stones records that the tilt sign lit up in his brain. He had no clear memories of what happened next. He knew that he had started screaming and people had stampeded away from him.
He screamed at a blond girl behind the checkout. "Where are my fucking records? What happened to my fucking music?"
The security guard had attempted to subdue him and Gibson slugged him. At some point he'd also been throwing records and CDs around. "What happened to my fucking music?"
Along the line, the police showed up, and he could vividly remember the firm hand on his head, stopping him hitting it on the doorframe as they lowered him into the blue-and-white.
They put him in a holding cell on his own. This was probably because he'd had over a thousand dollars in cash on him, which separated him from the average, run-of-the-mill drunk. He sat in the corner on the floor, feeling completely drained and mindless. The sooner they took him across to Bellevue the better.
A lot later, an NYPD detective came to talk to him. "Do you realize that you don't exist?"
Gibson, who had recovered a little by that time, looked up, slack-faced. "That's what I was trying to tell them in the store. I'm not even history anymore."
"You're not in anyone's files, either. We've run you through both local and federal. You don't show up anywhere. You care to comment on that?"
Gibson shook his head. "Not really."
"Have you ever been fingerprinted?"
"Dozens of times."
"So why is it that they aren't on record anywhere? Do you have a driver's license?"
"Haven't had a driver's license in years. I used to be driven everywhere."
"That must have been nice."
"You get used to it."
"So life was good for you?"
Gibson nodded. "Sure, life was good. I was a big-ass fucking rock star."
"So how come no one has ever heard of you?"
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."
"Try me."
"I went off to another dimension and when I came back things were different. Not very different, but different enough that I didn't exist."
The detective's face didn't even flicker. "And what did you do in this other dimension, Joe? It is Joe, isn't it?"
"Yeah, it's Joe."
"You want to tell me what you did there?"
Gibson's voice was flat. "I shot the president, narrowly avoided a nuclear war, and talked to a god."
"It's sounds like you had quite a time."
"It was actually very stressful."
"You take drugs, Joe?"
Gibson nodded. "Sure, all the time."
"What kind of drugs, Joe?"
"What've you got?"