I tell them I robbed a store. It's easier to explain, and it's in accord with Rasham's final instructions. He's placed a lien against me that I will be paying off the rest of my days, in the coin of Jah: Always keep a warm bed and a full plate for the hungry stranger who comes in His name. I spend a lot of time about the row houses, making sure that everyone who knocks is welcome, for we all come in His name, whether we know it yet or not.
Perhaps my motives are less than pure. I also spend a lot of time among the squatters in hopes that Jimmy Twist will again show up or that I will again find Rasham in some stranger's eyes. For you see, part of being a famous musician is meeting the thousands of kids who wish they were you.
Most stars consider them a nuisance. Myself? I want to introduce them all to Rasham.
Afterword To head off the questions everyone asks after reading this story: no, I've never lived in a squat in London. No, I've never been arrested for vagrancy in Amsterdam. Yes, but the penicillin cleared it right up. And as for that fourth question: just like the president, I never inhaled.
All the gritty, realistic details of this story were researched by my good friend, Thomas R. Smith. A disciple of Robert Bly, Smith is a superb poet in his own right, and his many collections and anthologies are well worth tracking down.
Tom once met Philip K. Dick in Metz, France, and gave him the translation of the Sufi poet Kafir that is quoted in Dick's The Golden Man. He also once served as the unwilling target of an unwarranted and gratuitous personal insult from Harlan Ellison, which cracked up an entire room at a WorldCon. He coached me through writing the first draft of "Cyberpunk" in
1980, and now, with "Jimmy Twist," Tom has made his fourth contribution to the world of SF.
Pretty good work for a poet.
© Bruce Bethke 1988, 1998
This story first appeared in the May 1988 issue of Amazing Stories.