She’d come out of the closet shortly after I left the Divine, spent a bunch of years knocking around the whole coffeehouse/nouveau folkie scene, and then, mirabilis! she’d become a star.
“‘Silver-tongued dyke with a gold-plated mike,’” said Baby Joe dryly, reading to me over the phone from an article in On Our Backs! “Huh. But she’s great, you should hear her.”
That spring it was impossible not to hear her. The video of her version of “She Is Still a Mystery,” with its Georgia O’Keeffe backgrounds and the waltzing figure of Annie herself in full George Sand drag, had been getting heavy rotation on MTV. Then there was the notorious cover for Our Magazine, Annie dressed as Nijinsky in “L’Après-midi d’un Faun,” simulating orgasm with an Hermes scarf before an audience of captivated bluestockings. I couldn’t walk into a club or Galleria without Annie’s husky contralto seeping into my thoughts like fragrant oil. Baby Joe said she lived somewhere in the Berkshires with her lover, and although she had changed her name to Annie Harmony, that was the only cute thing about her.
“She looks dangerous, man. Shaved head and all these piercings. I hear she has a gold ring through her clit. I know she has one in her nipple.” He laughed. “Maybe you should try it, hija. Get you out on a date with something besides a lawyer.”
Baby Joe regarded my social life (or lack of it) with even more horror than my musical taste. About once a year he’d come to D.C. to visit old friends from the Divine and to see me. We’d go to small, pleasingly gritty clubs to hear bands with monosyllabic names that were easy to remember, though their music was hard to dance to.
Anyway, by then I wasn’t dancing much anymore. I’d kept up with the times: turning off, drying up, straightening out. I worked out three days at week. I lived in a rented carriage house on Capitol Hill and walked to work. I had a VCR, PC, and an aging VW Rabbit, though I resisted getting a CD player. It seemed an unnecessary expense, since I wasn’t buying much new music. And I didn’t care for CDs—they looked too much like the videodiscs I’d given my life to, they looked too much like what had happened to everything around me, people and things all getting sleeker, shinier, harder, bright reflective surfaces that put a spectral gloss on the world, but it was no longer the world I wanted to see.
That spring I learned that Hasel Bright had died.
“Bad juju, hija. I mean, real bad shit.”
Baby Joe called me at home one evening, his voice slurred. In the background I could hear distorted music and laughter, someone yelling for a Kamakazi shooter.
“You at Frankie’s?” That was the local dive where Baby Joe spent his few nights off.
“Yeah. Uh, Sweeney—something bad happened.”
I sucked my breath in. “You okay? What—”
“Not me, hija. Hasel. Very bad.” A pause. I heard ice clattering in a glass. “Shit. Listen, Sweeney—I gotta go. It’s bad. But tomorrow—”
“For god’s sake, what happened?”
Another pause. Finally, “I can’t now. I got a flight out of LaGuardia, I’m going to Charlottesville for the funeral. His wife called me. But I got a letter for you from him—”
“From Hasel? To me?”
“No. I mean, he wrote it to me, but I’m sending it to you. A copy. I have to go. I’ll call you when I get back. Be careful, okay, hija?”
The line went dead.
“Shit,” I said. I paced into the kitchen and pulled out the bottle of Jack Daniels. I did a shot for myself, and another one for Hasel.
Two days later I got the letter, a bulky envelope so swathed in packing tape I had to open it with a steak knife. When I turned it upside down, out slid a wad of paper, along with a note scrawled on a Frankie’s cocktail napkin.
Sweeney—
don’t tell anyone.
The Xeroxed pages that followed were on letterhead from Hasel’s law firm, neatly laser-printed and justified left and right, amended here and there with Hasel’s precise tiny printing.
June 25
Dear Joe,
Thanx for the Gibby Hayes interview, pretty funny. Sorry I couldn’t get into this on the phone the other night but I felt so weird talking about it I figured I’d be better off writing. Only chance I get to write these days anyway other than briefs and memos to Ron Scala. Forgive the typos and stuff, obviously I can’t have the paralegals do this for me.
Ok, so this is weird, but I think for obvious reasons you might make sense of it after you finish reading this. I didn’t tell Laurie, because she’s heard me talk about Angie and might take it the wrong way, so don’t mention it to her on the phone or something, ok?
Remember that place we went a few years? Out in the country, a few guys from UVA went with us and we went fishing? I go fishing there a lot, usually later in the season. This year I haven’t even got my license yet but I went out anyway. I never catch much though one of the partners here says there’s some good-sized bass, the stream gets all clogged up in the winter with brush and stuff and makes a little pond. Anyway I usually leave my house about three a.m., it takes about forty-five minutes to get there and slog through the woods and all that, so it’s just about dawn when I finally reach the stream.
I went there last Saturday. Laurie pulled a double shift otherwise she would have come and the girls have dance class Saturday morning, so I went alone. It was a very clear night and there were a lot of stars out. I got off a little late so it was closer to dawn than I would have liked but anyway I got there. Afterwards Laurie reminded me that it was the summer solstice. That kind of made my hair stand on end. (I told you this was weird.)
But I didn’t know that then. It was a real pretty early morning or late night, however you want it. Listened to that bluegrass station out of Warrenton til the signal faded past Crozet, pulled the van over and got my stuff and walked in.
There were a few mayflies left and the fish were definitely biting. I don’t use flies so I went for a popper, didn’t get anything so I dug around and finally found a couple of worms. That’s illegal, to use live bait right now, but who’s going to check, right? Anyway it didn’t matter because I didn’t catch anything. I mean I didn’t catch any fish—it was still pretty dark and I snagged a bat, that happens sometimes cause they hear the line I guess and they go for the bait, they think it’s an insect. Usually happens to fly fishermen but this time it was me.
Now, bats don’t bother me really but you don’t necessarily want to be there in the dark with a bat flopping around on your line. I couldn’t tell if I snagged its wing or what, but I don’t think the hook was in its mouth. It fell in the water a few feet in front of me, pretty shallow mucky water and thrashed around. Weirdest thing was how you’re not supposed to be able to hear bats, but honest to god I could hear this one—a very strange high-pitched crying sound. Like wires or something, you know when you pluck a wire? And then I could start to hear other bats, Joe, it was creepy as hell. They were looking for it I guess and calling out and it was answering them. The poor little bat’s just struggling in the water, I guess I could’ve found the hook but I was afraid it would bite me. Plus, it’s a goddamn bat.