How to Kill a Rock Star by Tiffanie Debartolo

think I loved her for that. Especial y when a train pul ed in, her skirt did a Marilyn Monroe, and I almost saw her underwear.
    “Take a look,” she said, pointing into the ground. “Just for a second, you can stil stand on the sidewalk. Just LOOK.” I peeked over the edge. It was six feet down, tops.
    “Even if you fel through,” she said, “it’s not like you’d die or anything. You probably wouldn’t even break your leg.” She pul ed me over until I was on top of the grate and I stood there for like, fifteen whole seconds. I’d like to say it was an act of bravery, but I was only able to do it because she was holding my sleeve.
    This is what I mean about epiphanies. With her, I’d had the strength to stand there. Without her, I would have run.
    People who have something against cities, people who don’t like New York, they’re always whining that you can’t see stars at night. This is no exaggeration—as I was having my epiphanies I
counted thirty-three stars above the block I was on, and they seemed so bright and so close I was sure that if I held a match up as far as my arm could reach, it would have caught fire.
    I looked down and realized I was back at Rings of Saturn.
    John the Baptist laughed when he saw me. He fil ed a glass with ice and lifted Captain Morgan from the shelf, but the last thing I wanted was a goddamn drink. I asked him for coffee and his operative eye glanced in the direction of a portable burner fil ed with something that looked like molasses. He said it’d been there since noon but I didn’t care if it’d been there since the goddamn bicentennial.
    He said, “Ever jumped out of an airplane, Hudson?” I told him I had not.
    “Take this to heart,” he said. “If you’re gonna jump out of a plane, remember you’l be fal ing at terminal velocity, and that’s nothing to monkey around with. Check your gear and make sure your parachute is operational.” As usual, he was spewing a lot of crap, but I got the feeling he and I were on the same wavelength. I asked him if he’d noticed the way Eliza listened to the music, how she’d gazed at the speakers like God was talking to her.
    He told me terminal velocity is about one hundred thirty miles per hour.
    I could fal hard for a girl who listens to music like that.
    “Sometimes when you open the chute at a high speed,” John said, “the G force is so strong it breaks your arms. It’s not common, but it’s happened.
    Happened to a buddy of mine in
    ’Nam.”
    I asked John if it was a crime to want to live in a world where girls with falcon eyes and pretty underwear believe in the saving grace of rock ’n’ rol and he said, “Just check your chute before you jump, that’s al I’m saying.” Gotta get some sleep.
    Over.
    Vera gave me a sticker to put on my shirt. An al -access pass al owing me to roam Rings of Saturn as I wished. “Michael makes them,” she said with pride.
    The pass was electric yel ow and shaped like a banana.
    But it was a suggestive, tongue-in-cheek banana. A penis disguised as a piece of fruit, to be exact. I stuck it to my chest and, in lieu of actual y using it, e.g., possibly running into Paul in the dressing room, Vera and I made our way to a smal table to the left of the stage.
    “ Yay . You’re here,” Vera said, patting me on the back.
    “Michael’s nervous. He real y wants you to be impressed.” I was nervous too, though surely not for the same reasons as Michael.
    Minutes before the band was scheduled to go on, a girl dashed out from behind the curtain. She was striking in a brazen way, with dark, Cabernet-colored lips, Medusa hair, and she burned down the stairs in a violent flash.
    “Oh, boy, she didn’t look happy,” Vera said. “Then again, would you be happy if you were dating Paul?” I heard an involuntary noise escape my throat.
    “Dear al Paul Hudson lovers,” Vera said to no one in particular. “Give it up.”
    Most of the people who had been down at the bar were