LUCIUS SHEPARD

A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC

"Dead Men Can't Play Jazz."

"That's the truth I learned last night at the world premiere performance of the
quartet known as Afterlife at Manhattan's Village Vanguard.

"Whether or not they can play, period, that another matter, but it wasn't jazz I
heard at the Vanguard, it was something bluer and colder, something with notes
made from centuries-old Arctic ice and stones that never saw the light of day,
something uncoiling after a long black sleep and tasting dirt in its mouth,
something that wasn't the product of creative impulse but of need.

"But the bottom line is, it was worth hearing.

"As to the morality involved, well, I'll leave that up to you, because that's
the real bottom line, isn't it, music lovers? Do you like it enough and will you
pay enough to keep the question of morality a hot topic on the Donahue show and
out of the courts? Those of you who listened to the simulcast over WBAI have
probably already formulated an opinion. The rest of you will have to wait for
the CD.

"I won't waste your time by talking about the technology. If you don't
understand it by now, after all the television specials and the
(ohmygodpleasenotanother) in-depth discussions between your local blow-dried
news creep and their pet science-fiction hack, you must not want to understand
it. Nor am I going to was profound and speculate on just how much of a man is
left after reanimation. The only ones who know that aren't able to tell us,
because it seems the speech center just doesn't thrive on narcosis. Nor does
any fraction of sensibility that cares to communicate itself. In fact, very
little seems to thrive on narcosis aside from the desire...no, like I said, the
need to play music.

"And for reasons that God or someone only knows, the ability to play music where
none existed before.

"That may be hard to swallow, I realize, but I'm here to tell you, no matter how
weird it sounds, it appears to be true.

"For the first time in memory, there was a curtain across the Vanguard's stage.
I suppose there's some awkwardness involved in bringing the musicians out.
Before the curtain was opened, William Dexter, the genius behind this whole
deal, a little bald man with a hearing aid in each ear and the affable, simple
face of someone who kids call by his first name, came out and said a few words
about the need for drastic solutions to the problems of war and pollution, for a
redefinition of our goals and values. Things could not go on as they had been.
The words seemed somewhat out of context, though they're always nice to hear.
Finally he introduced the quartet. As introductions go, this was a telegram.

"`The music you're about to hear,' William Dexter said flatly, without the least
hint of hype or hyperventilation, `is going to change your lives.'

"And there they were.

"Right on the same stage where Coltrane turned a love supreme into song, where
Miles singed us with the hateful beauty of needles and knives and Watts on fire,
where Mingus went crazy in 7/4 time, where Ornette made Kansas City R&B into the
art of noise, and a thousand lesser geniuses dreamed and almost died and were
changed before our eyes from men into moments so powerful that guys like me can
make a living writing about them for people like you who just want to hear that
what they felt when they were listening was real.

"Two white men, one black, one Hispanic, the racial quota of an all-American TV
show, marooned on a radiant island painted by a blue-white spot. All wearing
sunglasses.

"Raybans, I think.

"Wonder if they'll get a commercial.

"The piano player was young and skinny, just a kid, with the long brown hair of
a rock star and sunglasses that held gleams as shiny and cold as the black
surface of his Baldwin. The Hispanic guy on bass couldn't have been more than
eighteen, and the horn player, the black man, hew was about twenty-five, the
oldest. The drummer, a shadow with a crew cut and a pale brow, I couldn't see
him clearly but I could tell he was young, too.

"Too young, you'd think, to have much to say.

"But then maybe time goes by more slowly and wisdom accretes with every
measure...in the afterlife.

"No apparent signal passed between them, yet as one they began to play."

Goodrick reached for his tape recorder, thinking he should listen to the set
again before getting into the music, but then he realized that another listen
was unnecessary--he could still hear every blessed note. The ocean of dark
chords on the piano opening over a shaky, slithering hiss of cymbals and a
cluttered rumble plucked from the double bass, and then that sinuous alto line,
like snake-charmer music rising out of a storm of thunderheads and scuttling
claws, all fusing into a signature as plaintive and familiar and elusive as a
muezzin's call. Christ, it stuck with you like a jingle for Burger
King...though nothing about it was simple. It seemed to have the freedom of
jazz, yet at the same time it had the feel of heavy, ritual music.

Weird shit.

And it sure as hell stuck with you.

He got up from the desk, grabbed his drink and walked over to the window. The
nearby buildings ordered the black sky, ranks of tombstones inscribed with a
writing of rectangular stars, geometric constellations, and linear rivers of
light below, flowing along consecutive chasms through the high country of
Manhattan. Usually the view soothed him and turned his thoughts to pleasurable
agendas, as if height itself were a form of assurance, an emblematic potency
that freed you from anxiety. But tonight he remained unaffected. The sky and
the city seemed to have lost their scope and grandeur, to have become merely an
adjunct to his living room.

He cast about the apartment, looking for the clock. Couldn't locate it for a
second among a chaos of sticks of gleaming chrome, shining black floors, framed
prints, and the black plush coffins of the sofas. He'd never put it together
before, but the place looked like a cross between a Nautilus gym and a goddam
mortuary. Rachel's taste could use a little modification.

Two-thirty a.m....Damn!

Where the hell was she?

She usually gave him time alone after a show to write his column. Went and had
a drink with friends.

Three hours, though.

Maybe she'd found a special friend. Maybe that was the reason she had missed
the show tonight. If that was the case, she'd been with the bastard for...what?
Almost seven hours now. Screwing her brains out in some midtown hotel.

Bitch! He'd settle her has when she got home.

Whoa, big fella, he said to himself. Get real. Rachel would be much cooler
than that...make that, had been much cooler. Her affairs were state of the art,
so quietly and elegantly handled that he had been able to perfect denial. This
wasn't her style. And even if she were to throw it in his face, he wouldn't do
a thing to her. Oh, he'd want to; he'd want to bash her goddamned head in. But
he would just sit there and smile and buy her bullshit explanation.

Love, he guessed you'd call it, the kind of love that will accept any insult,
any injury...though it might be more accurate to call it pussywhipped. There
were times he didn't think he could take it anymore, times--like now--when his
head felt full of lightning, on the verge of exploding and setting everything
around him on fire. But he always managed to contain his anger and swallow his
pride, to grin and bear it, to settle for the specious currency of her
lovemaking, the price she paid to live high and do what she wanted.

Jesus, he felt strange. Too many pops at the Vanguard, that was likely the
problem. But maybe he was coming down with something.

He laughed.

Like maybe middle age?

Like the married-to-a-chick-fifteen-years-younger-paranoid flu?

Still, he had felt better in his time. No real symptoms, just out of sorts,
sluggish, dulled, some trouble concentrating.

Finish the column, he said to himself; just finish the damn thing, take two
aspirin, and fall out. Deal with Rachel in the morning.

Right.

Deal with her.

Bring her breakfast in bed, ask how she was feeling, and what was she doing
later?

God, he loved her!

Loves her not. Loves. Loves her not.

He tore off a last mental petal and tossed the stem away. Then he returned to
the desk and typed a few lines about the music onto the computer and sat
considering the screen. After a moment he began to type again.

"Plenty of blind men have played the Vanguard, and plenty of men have played
there who've had other reasons to hide their eyes, working behind some miracle
of modern chemistry that made them sensitive to light. I've never wanted to see
their eyes-- the fact that they w ere hidden told me all I need to know about
them. But tonight I wanted to see, I wanted to know what the quartet was
seeing, what lay behind those sunglasses starred from the white spot. Shadows,
it's said. But what sort of shadows? Shades of gray, like dogs see? Are we
shadows to them, or do they see shadows where we see none? I thought if I could
look into their eyes, I'd understand what caused the alto to sound like a reedy
alarm being given against a crawl of background radiation, why one moment it
conjured images of static red flashes amid black mountains moving, and the next
brought to mind a livid blue streak pulsing in a serene darkness, a mineral moon
in a granite sky.

"Despite the compelling quality of the music, I couldn't set aside my curiosity
and simply listen. What was I listening to, after all? A clever parlor trick?
Sleight of hand on a metaphysical level? Were these guys really playing Death's
Top Forty, or had Mr. William Dexter managed to chump the whole world and
program four stiffs to make certain muscular reactions to subliminal stimuli?"

The funny thing was, Goodrick though, now he couldn't stop listening to the damn
music. In fact, certain phrases were becoming so insistent, circling round and
round inside his head, he was having difficulty thinking rationally.

He switched the radio on, wanting to hear something else, to get a perspective
on the column.

No chance.

Afterlife was playing on the radio, too.

He was stunned, imagining some bizarre Twilight Zone circumstance, but then
realized that the radio was tuned to WBAI. They must be replaying the simulcast.
Pretty unusual for them to devote so much air to one story. Still, it wasn't
everyday the dead came back to life and played song stylings for your listening
pleasure.

He recognized the passage. They must have just started the replay. Shit, the
boys hadn't even gotten warmed up yet.

Heh, heh.

He followed the serpentine track of the alto cutting across the rumble and
clutter of the chords and fills behind it, a bright ribbon of sound etched
through thunder and power and darkness.

A moment later he looked at the clock and was startled to discover that the
moment has lasted twenty minutes.

Well, so he was a little spaced; so what? He was entitled. He's had a hard
wife...life. Wife. The knifing word he'd wed, the dull flesh, the syrupy
blood, the pouty breasts, the painted face he'd thought was pretty. The dead
music woman, the woman whose voice caused cancer, whose kisses left damp
mildewed stains, whose...

His heart beat flabbily, his hands were cramped, his fingertips were numb, and
his thoughts were a whining, glowing crack opening in a smoky sky like slow
lightning. Feeling a dark red emotion too contemplative to be anger, he typed a
single paragraph and then stopped to read what he had written.

"The thing about this music is, it just feels right. It's not art, it's not
beauty; it's a meter reading on the state of the soul, of the world. It's the
bottom line of all time, a registering of creepy fundamentals, the rendering
into music of the crummiest truth, the statement of some meager final tolerance,
a universal alpha wave, God's EKG, the least possible music, the absolute
minimum of sound, all that's left to say, to be, for the, for us...maybe that's
why it feels so damn right. It creates an option to suicide, a place where there
is no great trouble, only a trickle of blood through a stony flesh and the
crackle of a base electric message across the brain."

Well, he thought, now there's a waste of a paragraph. Put that into the column,
and he'd be looking for work with a weekly shopping guide.

He essayed a laugh and produced a gulping noise. Damn, he felt lousy.

Not lousy, really, just ... just sort of nothing. Like there was nothing in his
head except the music. Music and black dead air. Dead life.

Dead love. He typed a few more lines.

"Maybe Dexter was right, maybe this music will change your life. It sure as
hell seems to have changed mine. I feel like shit, my lady's out with some
dirtball lowlife and all I can muster by way of a reaction is mild pique. I
mean, maybe the effect of Afterlife's music is to reduce the emotional
volatility of our kind, to diminish us to the level of the stiffs who play it.
That might explain Dexter's peace-and-love rap. People who feel like I do
wouldn't have the energy for war, for polluting, for much of anything. They'd
probably sit around most of the time, trying to think something, hoping for food
to walk in the door. . . ."

Jesus, what if the music actually did buzz you like that? Tripped some chemical
switch and slowly shut you down, brain cell by brain cell, until you were about
three degrees below normal and as lively as a hibernating bear. What if that
were true, and right this second it was being broadcast all over hell on WBAI?
This is crazy, man, he told himself, this is truly whacko.

But what if Dexter's hearing aids had been ear plugs, what if the son of a bitch
hadn't listened to the music himself? What if he knew how the music would affect
the audience, what if he was after turning half of everybody into zombies all in
the name of a better world? And what would be so wrong with that?

Not a thing. Cleaner air, less war, more food to go around . . . just stack the
dim bulbs in warehouses and let them vegetate, while everyone else cleaned up
the mess.

Not a thing wrong with it . . . as long as you weren't in the half that had
listened to the music.

The light was beginning to hurt his eyes. He switched off the lamp and sat in
the darkness, staring at the glowing screen. He glanced out the window. Since
last he'd looked, it appeared that about three-quarters of the lights in the
adjoining buildings had been darkened, making it appear that the remaining
lights were some sort of weird code, spelling out a message of golden squares
against a black page. He had a crawly feeling along his spine, imagining
thousands of other Manhattan nighthawks growing slow and cold and sensitive to
light, sitting in their dark rooms, while a whining alto serpent stung them in
the brain.

The idea was ludicrous-Dexter had just been shooting off his mouth, firing off
more white liberal bullshit. Still, Goodrick didn't feel much like laughing.

Maybe, he thought, he should call the police ... call someone, But then he'd
have to get up, dial the phone, talk, and it was so much more pleasant just to
sit here and listen to the background static of the universe, to the sad song of
a next-to-nothing life.

He remembered how peaceful Afterlife had been, the piano man's pale hands
flowing over the keys, like white animals gliding, making a rippling track, and
the horn man's eyes rolled up, showing all white under the sunglasses, turned
inward toward some pacific vision, and the bass man, fingers blurring on the
strings, but his head fallen back, gaping, his eyes on the ceiling, as if
keeping track of the stars.

This was really happening, he thought; he believed it, yet he couldn't rouse
himself to panic. His hands flexed on the arms of the chair, and he swallowed,
and he listened. More lights were switched off in the adjoining towers. This
was really fucking happening ... and he wasn't afraid. As a matter of fact, he
was beginning to enjoy the feeling. Like a little vacation. Just turn down the
volume and response, sit back and let the ol' brain start to mellow like aging
cheese.

Wonder what Rachel would say?

Why, she'd be delighted! She hadn't heard the music, after all, and she'd be
happy as a goddamn clam to be one of the quick, to have him sit there and fester
while she brought over strangers and let them pork her on the living-room
carpet. I mean, he wouldn't have any objection, right? Maybe dead guys liked to
watch. Maybe .... His hands started itching, smudged with city dirt. He
decided that he had to wash them.

With a mighty effort, feeling like he weighed five hundred pounds, he heaved up
to his feet and shuffle led toward the bathroom. It took him what seemed a
couple of minutes to reach it, to fumble for the wall switch and flick it on.
The light almost blinded him, and he reeled back against the wall, shading his
eyes. Glints and gleams shattering off porcelain, chrome fixtures, and tiles, a
shrapnel of light blowing toward his retinas. "Aw, Jesus," he said. "Jesus!"
Then he caught sight of himself in the mirror. Pasty skin, liverish, too-red
lips, bruised-looking circles around his eyes. Mr. Zombie.

He managed to look away.

He turned on the faucet. Music ran out along with the bright water, and when he
stuck his hands under the flow, he couldn't feel the cold water, just the gloomy
notation spidering across his skin.

He jerked his hands back and stared at them, watched them dripping glittering
bits of alto and drum, bass and piano. After a moment he switched off the light
and stood in the cool, blessed dark, listening to the alto playing in the
distance, luring his thoughts down and down into a golden crooked tunnel leading
nowhere.

One thing he had to admit: Having your vitality turned down to the bottom notch
gave you perspective on the whole vital world. Take Rachel, now. She'd come in
any minute, all bright and smiling, switching her ass, she'd toss her purse and
coat somewhere, give him a perky kiss, ask how the column was going . . . and
all the while her sexual engine would be cooling, ticking away the last degrees
of heat like how a car engine ticks in the silence of a garage, some vile juice
leaking from her. He could see it clearly, the entire spectrum of her deceit,
see it without feeling either helpless rage or frustration, but rather
registering it as an untenable state of affairs. Something would have to be
done. That was obvious. It was surprising he'd never come to that conclusion
before ... or maybe not so surprising. He'd been too agitated, too emotional.
Now . . . now change was possible. He would have to talk to Rachel, to work
things out differently. Actually, he thought, a talk wouldn't be necessary.
Just a little listening experience, and she'd get with the program.

He hated to leave the soothing darkness of the bathroom, but he felt he should
finish the column ... just to tie up loose ends. He went back into the living
room and sat in front of the computer. WBAI had finished replaying the
simulcast. He must have been in the john a long time. He switched off the radio
so he could hear the music in his head.

"I'm sitting here listening to a little night music, a reedy little whisper of
melody leaking out a crack in death's door, and you know, even though I can't
hear or think of much of anything except that shivery sliver of sound, it's
become more a virtue than a hindrance; it's beginning to order the world in an
entirely new way. I don't have to explain it to those of you who are hearing it
with me, but for the rest of you, let me shed some light on the experience. One
sees . . . clearly, I suppose, is the word, yet that doesn't cover it. One is
freed from the tangles of inhibition, volatile emotion, and thus can perceive
how easy it is to change one's life, and finally, one understands that with a
very few changes one can achieve a state of calm perfection. A snip here, a
tuck taken there, another snip-snip, and suddenly it becomes apparent that there
is nothing left to do, absolutely nothing, and one has achieved utter harmony
with one's environment."

The screen was glowing too brightly to look at. Goodrick dimmed it. Even the
darkness, he realized, had its own peculiar radiance. B-zarre. He drew a deep
breath . . . or rather tried to, but his chest didn't move. Cool, he thought,
very cool. No moving parts. Just solid calm, white, white calm in a black,
black, shell, and a little bit of fixing up remaining to do. He was almost
there. Wherever there was.

A cool alto trickle of pleasure through the rumble of nights.

"I cannot recommend the experience too highly. After all. there's almost no
overhead, no troublesome desires, no ugly moods, no loathsome habits . , . ."

A click-the front door opening, a sound that seemed to increase the brightness
in the room. Footsteps, and then Rachel's voice.

Wade?"

He could feel her. Hot, sticky, soft. He could feel the suety weights of her
breasts, the torsion of her hips, the flexing of live sinews, like music of a
kind, a lewd concerto of vitality and deceit.

"There you are!" she said brightly, a streak of hot sound, and came up behind
him. She leaned down, hands on his shoulders, and kissed his cheek, a serpent
of brown hair coiling across his neck and onto his chest.

"How's the column going?" she asked, moving away.

He cut his eyes toward her. That teardrop ass sheathed in silk, that mind like
a sewer running with black bile, that heart like a pound of red raw poisoned
hamburger, Those cute little puppies bounding along in front.

The fevered temperature of her soiled flesh brightened everything. Even the air
was shining. The shadows were black glares.

"Fine," he said. "Almost finished."

". . . only infinite slow minutes, slow thoughts like curls of smoke, only time,
only a flicker of presence, only perfect music that does not exist like smoke .
. . ."

"So how was the Vanguard?"

He chuckled. "Didn't you catch it on the radio?"

A pause. "No, I was busy."

Busy, uh-huh. Hips thrusting up from a rumpled sheet, sleek with sweat, mouth
full of tongue, breasts rolling fatly, big ass flattening.

"It was good for me," he said.

A nervous giggle.

"Very good," he said. "The best."

He examined his feelings. All in order, all under control . . . what there was
of them. A few splinters of despair, a fragment of anger, some shards of love.
Not enough to matter, not enough to impair judgment.

"Are you okay? You sound funny."

"I'm fine," he said, feeling a creepy, secretive tingle of delight. "Want to
hear the Vanguard set? I taped it."

"Sure . . . but aren't you sleepy? I can hear it tomorrow."

"I'm fine."

He switched on the recorder. The computer screen was blazing like a white sun.

". . . the crackling of a black storm, the red thread of a fire on a distant
ridge, the whole world irradied by mystic vibration, the quickening of the flesh
becoming cool and easy, the White Nile of the calmed mind flowing everywhere . .
. ."

"Like it?" he asked. She had walked over to the window and was standing facing
it, gazing out at the city.

"It's curious," she said. "I don't know if I like it, but it's effective."

Was that a hint of entranced dullness in her voice? Or was it merely
distraction? Open those ears wide, baby, and let that ol' black magic take over.

". . . just listen, just let it flow in, let it fill the empty spaces in your
brain with muttering, cluttering bassy blunders and a crooked wire of brassy red
snake fluid, let it cozy around and coil up inside your skull . . . ."

The column just couldn't hold his interest. Who the hell was going to read
it, anyway? His place was with Rachel, helping her through the rough spots of
the transition, the confusion, the unsettled feelings. With difficulty, he got
to his feet and walked over to Rachel. Put his hands on her hips. She tensed,
then relaxed against him. Then she tensed again. He looked out over the top of
her head at Manhattan. Only a few lights showing. The message growing simpler
and simpler. Dot, dot, dot. Stop. Dot, dot. Stop. Stop.

"Can we talk, Wade?"

"Listen to the music, baby."

"No . . . really. We have to talk!"

She tried to pull away from him, but he held her, his fingers hooked on her
hipbones.

"It'll keep 'til morning," he said.

"I don't think so." She turned to face him, fixed him with her intricate green
eyes. "I've been putting this off too long already." Her mouth opened, as if
she were going to speak, but then she looked away. "I'm so sorry," she said
after a considerable pause.

He knew what was coming, and he didn't want to hear it. Couldn't she just wait?
In a few minutes she'd begin to understand, to know what he knew. Christ,
couldn't she wait?

"Listen," he said. "Okay? Listen to the music and then we'll talk."

"God, Wade! What is it with you and this dumb music?"

She started to flounce off, but he caught her by the arm.

"If you give it a chance, you'll see what I mean," he said. "But it takes a
while. You have to give it time."

"What are you talking about?"

"The music . . . it's really something. It does something."

"Oh, God, Wade! This is important!"

She fought against his grip.

"I know," he said, "I know it is. But just do this first. Do it for me."

"All right, all right! If it'll make you happy." She heaved a sigh, made a
visible effort at focusing on the music, her head tipped to the side ... but
only for a couple of seconds.

"I can't listen," she said. "There's too much on my mind."

"You're not trying."

"Oh, Wade," she said, her chin quivering, a catch in her voice. "I've been
trying, I really have. You don't know. Please! Let's just sit down and . . .
." She let out another sigh. "Please. I need to talk with you."

He had to calm her. to let his calm generate and flow inside her. He put a hand
on the back of her neck, forced her head dawn on his shoulder. She struggled,
but he kept up a firm pressure.

"Let me go, damn it!" she said, her voice muffled. "Let me go!" Then, after a
moment: "You're smothering me."

He let her lift her head.

"What's wrong with you, Wade?"

There was confusion and fright in her face, and he wanted to soothe her, to take
away all her anxieties.

"Nothing's wrong," he said with the sedated piety of a priest. "I just want you
to listen. Tomorrow morning . . . ."

"I don't want to listen. Can't you understand that? I don't. Want. To listen.
Now let me go."

"I'm doing this for you, baby."

"For me? Are you nuts? Let me go!"

"I can't, baby. I just can't."

She tried to twist free again, but he refused to release her.

"All right, all right! I was trying to avoid a scene, but if that's how you want
it!" She tossed back her hair, glared at him defiantly. "I'm leaving . . . ."

He couldn't let her say it and spoil the evening; he couldn't let her disrupt
the healing process. Without anger, without bitterness, but rather with the
precision and control of someone trimming a hedge, he backhanded her, nailed her
flush on the jaw with all his strength, snapping her head about. She went hard
against the thick window glass, the back of her skull impacting with a sharp
crack, and then she slumped to the floor, her head twisted at an improbable
angle.

Snip, snip.

He stood waiting for grief and fear to flood in, but he felt only a wave of
serenity as palpable as a stream of cool water, as a cool golden passage on a
distant horn.

Snip.

The shape of his life was perfected.

Rachel's too.

Lying there, pale lips parted, face rapt and slack, drained of lust and
emotions, she was beautiful. A trickle of blood eeled from her hairline, and
Goodrick realized that the pattern it made echoed the alto line exactly, that
the music was leaking from her, signaling the minimal continuance of her life.
She wasn't dead; she had merely suffered a neccessary reduction. He sensed the
edgy crackle of her thoughts, like the intermittent popping of a fire gone to
embers.

" It's okay, baby. It's okay. " He put an arm under her back and lifted her,
supporting her about the waist. Then he hauled her over to the sofa. He helped
her to sit, and sat beside her, an arm about her shoulders. Her head lolled
heavily against his, the softness of her breast pressed into his arm. He could
hear the music coming from her, along with the electric wrack and tumble of her
thoughts. They had never been closer than they were right now, he thought.

He wanted to say something, to tell her how much he loved her, but found that he
could no longer speak, his throat muscles slack and useless.

Well, that was okay.

Rachel knew how he felt, anyway.

But if he could speak, he'd tell her that he'd always known they could work
things out, that though they'd had their problems, they were made for each
other. . . .

The light was growing incandescent, as if having your life ultimately simplified
admitted you to a dimension of blazing whiteness. It was streaming up from
everything, from the radio, the television, from Rachel's parted lips, from
every surface, whitening the air, the night, whiting out hope, truth, beauty,
sadness, joy, leaving room for nothing except the music, which was swelling in
volume, stifling thought, becoming a kind of thirsting presence inside him. It
was sort of too bad, he said to himself, that things had to be like this, that
they couldn't have made it in the usual way, but then he guessed it was all for
the best, that this way at least there was no chance of screwing anything up.

Jesus, the goddamn light was killing his eyes! Might have known, he thought,
there'd be some fly in the ointment, that perfection didn't measure up to its
rep.

He held onto Rachel tightly, whispering endearments, saying, "Baby, it'll be
okay in a minute, just lie back, just take it easy," trying to reassure her, to
help her through this part of things. He could tell the light was bothering her
as well by the way she buried her face in the crook of his neck.

If this shit kept up, he thought, he was going to have to buy them both some
sunglasses.