Daron's Guitar Chronicles Volume 12

1030 Little Miss Can't Be Wrong

Little Miss Can't Be Wrong

Jonathan and his boyfriend (same guy I had met before) were in a three-bedroom place on the Upper West Side that apparently belonged to Davide's family. Court and I got there around the same time and went in together. She was in full on punk mode, in a secondhand leather jacket I didn't remember, a Mighty Mighty Bosstones T-shirt (remember this was before they hit the mainstream), and a pair of worn out jeans that I suspect were mine once upon a time. She'd added a second piercing to one of her ears–a pink triangle stud–and an undercut to her hair.

"You look nice," I said as I kissed her on the cheek. You know me. I was kind of curious what prompted the rebel girl look but I wasn't about to come right out and ask.

"Thanks," she said, taking my statement as sincere, which it was. "You look a little underdressed."

I was in my usual high tops, jeans, flannel shirt, and leather jacket. None of them jazzed up, just the everyday ones. "As usual?"

"As usual," she agreed. She told the door man who we were there to see and he waved us through to a narrow elevator door. "Although nice hair. You saw Bernard I'm guessing? How's he doing?"

"I ran into him just by luck while I was walking around. He's working at a salon in the West Village and he managed to fit me in." Was that the day we saw the lawyers? "I figured I wanted to look my best for all the meetings I have this week."

The elevator came and I opened the door for her. It was a small one, probably as old as the building, the kind with an inner door and an outer door that opened separately. "So, fill me in," she said as the elevator started to rise. "Lawyers, doctors, and...?"

"And A&R and who knows what else." I groaned. "Short version: Digger's the source of all our problems with BNC, money, and the law; my hand still hurts but it's really just scar tissue and maybe psychosomatic, and Artie wants another instrumental album out of me ASAP whether I can play or not."

"And are you going on tour with Ziggy?" she asked.

"I don't know. His plans for both album release and tour are contingent on–get this–what kind of movie role they develop for him next." We reached the tenth floor and got out. I could immediately hear the sound of boisterous chatting coming down the hall. "They're super concerned about how his image plays in the US market and it's all fucked up with genre expectations and other bullshit. Barrett just left for LA to take some meetings to try to get things moving from the movie-making end."

At the end of the hall the door into the apartment was open and a couple of people were milling in the hallway with plastic cups in their hands. They were wearing adhesive "Hello My Name Is" name tags.

"What kind of event did you say this was?" I said to Court.

"Primaries watch party," she repeated, like those words should mean more this time. "Davide and J. are doing fundraising for Paul Tsongas."

"Who?"

"One of the candidates," she said, instantly exasperated. "Wait, you knew that and you're pulling my leg, right?"

"I didn't know how to pronounce it," I said. "So this is a fundraiser?"

"No. It's more of a gathering of a bunch of the people involved in the fundraising. Come on. You know some of them." She pulled me between two women wearing campaign buttons who made greeting noises and gestures and pointed us at the name tags.

I wrote "Daron" in Sharpie on one and stuck it to the pocket of my flannel shirt. Court made a beeline for a familiar face, the Brown professor we'd met on the train and who I guess she'd had a kind of thing with although I'd missed it at the time? She was talking with another familiar face: the Columbia grad student who used to date Sarah. Small world, small world.