Waking up after the show, I was still in a daze, unsure, unclear, woozy, and weak. I heard the bells of St. Florian’s, first at noon, then one o’clock, before I got out of bed. My rooms were in the oldest wing of the Angelus, on the seventh floor. Being that far up, and having windows that faced out to the east, I could see the sun rise over the city if I wanted to. If I got up early enough, I could see dawn break over St. Florian’s with its twin steeples, then the Duce’s Dome, the Bridge of Tears, and even a little glimpse of the Maxima, down by the Great Canal.
That afternoon I didn’t listen to any of the albums. I knew it wouldn’t be as good as live, or it would blur what I remembered of the sound and the feel. Of course, I knew that soon enough I’d go back and listen another thousand times. But for a day or two, I wanted to hold onto what I had, in my brain and in my hands and the bones of my skull.
So I got out my stack of Creedos and went through them, looking at all the pictures. There was one cover story that showed the whole band: Rudy Lasher on gamba, Simon Faruk on baryton, Mick St. Clair on drums. And Django clutching the mic stand like he was getting electrocuted. He had carrot-orange, fuzz-spike hair and wore a see-through shirt and tight snakeskin pants. Even though he was definitely a guy, there was something pretty—almost beautiful—about him. Lighter than air, hot and cool, above and beyond. He was a gorgeous, first-class freak, but he was my freak, even if there’d been five thousand fans screaming his name the night before. He was mine—when I had my door closed and a towel under it to block out the light, and when I had the headphones clamped tight on my ears and the Reptiles’ riffs were coming hard and fast, bright as mirror-shine.
That year, I’d read all I could find about Django, in fanzines and music papers. Creedo did a cover story about him when the “Moon” tour started. I bought two copies, one to keep and one to cut up for the pictures. And there was Django, taped up on the back of my bedroom door, when I woke the next day with the noon sun making a fever glow on the backs of my amber silk curtains. He’d watched all night as I slept, and he was there when I got up.
Django Conn wasn’t his real name. According to Creedo, it was something normal. But he made the true mutation and turned himself into Django Conn, and it was like there’d never been the other, normal guy. He’d vanished, or maybe the day the Apollonauts walked on the moon, the world he came from had vanished. Django invented himself with his new name and did some records solo. Then he formed the band, the Albino Reptiles from Dimension X, though everybody just called them the Reptiles. They put out Gimme Back My Phantom Limbs then Man in the Moon in the Man. And that’s when it all started to happen: the write-ups in Creedo, radio play, and the tour.
Lying there in bed, half in and half out of sleep, I had an uneasy thought. What if the girl hadn’t really existed until I saw her at the show? What if she wasn’t really there until I noticed her? I don’t mean that I dreamed her out of nothing. But what if I somehow called her up, conjured her to be there? Not exactly like a black magic conjuration, but just because I wanted her to be there, she’d appeared. Or maybe another way of seeing it would be like alchemy. A pinch of white powder into the flask, a glug of sour-smelling yellowy goo, some milky stuff, and a handful of black, crumbled crystals. Then turn on the flame underneath. Maybe it would boil over all frothy or suddenly turn perfectly clear and calm. And there she was, conjured up.
It doesn’t quite make sense anymore, but that was the way my mind was working the morning after the show. Django was the alchemist. The music and the lights were the heat, and his lyrics were the spells. And all the fans packed into the Maxima were the secret ingredients to make something that had never been before.