Beast called ZuZu

The back door of the club hung by one hinge in the early grey, and only one Beast in the lane was looking at it.

Beast called ZuZu had walked in out of the morning a minute before and stopped at the lane mouth. The walls there were pasted so thick with posters that the brick was a rumour. All of Ramone Alley was going to bed. Shutters came down with a rattle. A band dragged an amp past the hanging door without a glance, the way the Alley walks past a poster it has already pasted over twice.

On the club steps a Clown was sweeping flattened paper cups. They leaned the broom on the rail, and it slid. “Sorry, sorry,” the Clown told it, before it had finished falling. Then they looked at the door and said, quite firmly, “That’s the wind.”

“Night, Sorry Sorry,” the amp band called up the lane.

“Sorry, night, mind the drain, sorry.”

Beast called ZuZu watched a long while from among the posters before crossing to the step.

The screws lay where the hinge had spat them out, nine of them, threads packed with splinters. A hand-painted arrow on the wall read THE PIT, DOWN, and beside it a fresh bill promised a show tonight, as there had been every night since July. Beast called ZuZu picked up every screw. The frame was splintered from the inside, the wood pushed outward, as if the door had been slammed open hard, many times.

They tore a strip off an old bill, folded it small, and packed the stripped holes.

Sorry Sorry came down, wiped their hands on their coat, and lifted the door square in its frame. “Doors at nine. Sorry. It has to shut by nine.” Then: “Monday wind. It comes down the stairs.”

The posters on the walls hung flat and still. Not one corner lifted. The cups lay in a heap exactly where the broom had left them.

Kneeling, Beast called ZuZu felt a paper slip from their pocket. Sorry Sorry caught it: an old setlist, taped and taped again along every fold. “You drum, do you, or...” The question stopped. They handed it straight back, and Beast called ZuZu put it away.

The edge of an old coin made a fair screwdriver. The last screw bit. The door swung, and shut, and stayed.

Sorry Sorry’s left lace trailed on the step.

In the Alley, a Clown who leaves one shoe untied in the street is saying sorry for something bigger than a broom. Beast called ZuZu knew none of that. They saw a broken lace, and knelt and took it up to splice it.

It was whole, end to end, both tips neat.

Sorry Sorry pulled the foot back. “It’s broken,” they said. As the coat swung, a folded paper showed in its outside pocket, the back ruled with a column of pencil ticks. The last tick looked fresh.

A second band came up the lane, pushing a snare drum in a pram. “What happened to your door?”

Sorry Sorry opened their mouth.

“Wind,” said Beast called ZuZu.

The band nodded and went on.

“There’s a floor upstairs,” Sorry Sorry said after a while, not looking round. “Newcomers sleep warm over the Pit.” A pause. “It’s right over that door. Sorry.”

Beast called ZuZu looked at the stairs, then sat back down on the cold step beside them.

Sorry Sorry slid the folded, pencil-ticked paper from the outside pocket of their coat to the inside one, on the side away from Beast called ZuZu, and shifted over on the step to make room.

Monday, the set minutes off, and Beast called ZuZu was on their knees at the Pit’s back door, turning a fourth screw into the hinge with the edge of the coin.

The lamp burned on its hook above them. It burned all night every Monday, by Sorry Sorry’s rule. On the steps Sorry Sorry was taping the bill to the stair rail, and an elbow knocked the rail.

“Sorry,” Sorry Sorry told it.

Beast called ZuZu held up a spare screw. Sorry Sorry fumbled it and watched it hop down the step. “Sorry, sorry, my fault,” they said to it, going after it on one trailing lace. “Always my fault. Stay there.”

Through the floor, the Monday drummer counted in. “One, two, one two three four.”

Feet came down the lane at a run. A Beast with a brush in each hand and a paste pot swinging on a string pulled up at the lane mouth, shouting before they’d stopped. “Backline’s dark past the fourth post, the rig’s lamp gets four posts and gives up, and the one from the bunk next to yours is out past the fifth, went the long way, and they’ve stopped answering. I need loud. I’ll take an amp, I’ll take that lamp.”

“Nettle, sorry, it’s Monday,” said Sorry Sorry. Their hand was already flat on the back door. It had begun to shiver in its frame, with no wind in the lane at all.

The Beast from the next bunk had gone out at dusk with a message for the next Beasthood over. Sorry Sorry sent everyone there by the road.

“You fixed it,” Sorry Sorry said to Beast called ZuZu. “You keep it shut. One set. Sorry. Then I’ll carry the amp myself.”

“When the set’s done there’ll be nobody out there to play to,” said Nettle.

The first song came up through the boards. Beast called ZuZu looked at the screws, four bright heads in fresh wood, then at the dark top of the lane. The screws held only while somebody sat by them. A Beast out on the road held only while somebody was loud. And every other loud Beast in the Alley was downstairs, on the bill.

Beast called ZuZu reached up and lifted the lamp off its hook.

Sorry Sorry looked at the empty hook, then took their hand off the shivering door and held it out, palm up.

Beast called ZuZu put the coin into Sorry Sorry’s palm, closed the fingers over it, and dragged the practice amp out from under the stairs.

At the lane mouth the back door banged open behind them, hard, in the first verse. The step behind it was dark, on a Monday, for the first time since July.

“Sorry,” Sorry Sorry said. It went to the door.

The Backline ran along the top of the lanes, a row of lamp-posts older than any wall in the Alley, every one of them dark. A borrowed rig threw a white glare down the first four, and Nettle’s arrows shone on those in orange and pink. Past the glare the arrows had gone the colour of old newspaper, and then there were no arrows, only posts. Beast called ZuZu stood a while at the rim of the light, watching the dark ones. Then they picked up the amp by its handle and walked past the fourth post into the dark.

They hung the lamp on the fifth post, taped their old setlist flat along the amp’s handle, and turned every knob as far as it went.

Beast called ZuZu played anyway, loud. Below them a door was banging in a basement, and a crowd was deciding whether to stay. They kept their eyes on the dark posts and hit the chord again.

Nettle came up beside them with the paste pot. “The Grey doesn’t wait for the encore,” Nettle said, and slapped the brush on the post.

Far out, past the eighth post, past where the road had any colour left, a small light swung low, a hand’s height off the ground. It dipped once, the way a lamp does when the hand holding it changes grip.

Nettle pasted a bright arrow on the post, pointing home. Then, without asking, Nettle slapped a second one flat across the top of Beast called ZuZu’s amp and brushed it down hard at the corners with the left brush.