“Hey Joey, Spider’s sister’s passed out in your laundry room. We think she’s okay, but… ‘you know’…”

Know? All I know is I’m getting way too old for this shit. It’s Saturday night, and right now, Mike Hagler, neighbor and stock boy at the retail superstore where I work, is giving me a shrug of the shoulders and a flabbergasted, double-digit IQ gaze. I peer over his black t-shirted shoulder to spot my baseball-themed wall clock, and its Louisville sluggers indicate it’s nearly two a.m. And although it’s Saturday night, it’s still a “school night” for me; my next day off is Wednesday. So in about six hours I’ll again be supervising Mike Hagler and those like him. As I said, I’m getting too old for this shit.

“Wanna line?”

“No thanks,” I tell the girl who’s found her way to my glass coffee table and is busily chopping powder with her ATM card only a few feet from where I sit, practically in my lap.

Since I inherited this place two years ago, parties seem to find their way here. Nancy always hated that. Cars would pull up late at night, the doorbell would ring, and I’d say, “Oh, yeah. I forgot to tell you…” Nancy would go ballistic at times, but hey, my friends were far more interesting than hers.

Really, it’s hard to believe this is the same home I grew up in. The vibe’s done a 180. I’ve got the place geared for sight and sound, with Bose speakers blasting out selections from my top-line stereo and HDTV system in the living room, and an iMac computer in my bedroom with a king-size, flat-screen monitor and all the computer game software you can imagine. When my folks ruled the home it was pristine, without all the techno crap I’ve come to favor. Framed prints of photos by Ansel Adams and Richard Avedon lined the hallways. The great novels of our time and tomes and tomes of Encyclopedia Britannicas rested upon tabletops and filled the book shelves in the den and master bedroom. In the garage were a silver Mercedes 450 SL and a Volvo wagon. Now that it’s my place what’s framed are rock posters and concert paraphernalia from decades of shows, including several from smaller gigs I once jammed in. My “reading” material consists largely of magazines and alternative weeklies like High Times and Penthouse, Club Beat and Nightlife. Publications in whose pages you’ll find a pretty picture or a place to go, but won’t really learn anything. And the garage is now home to my Kawasaki Ninja motorcycle and the same TAMA drum kit I’ve pounded on for the past dozen years. Although less frequently as time moves on, I’m getting too old for that too.

“How’s it going, April?” asks some dreadlocked kid, also half my age, as he beams down into the girl’s space, seemingly unaware of my presence. The two exchange turns shoving a straw up their noses. First her turn, then his; then hers, then his; and over and over again. Other stragglers are making the path to and out the door, but I doubt Spider’s sister’s among them.

The night’s countless bong hits, shots and chasers are exacting a toll. I expect to feel like hell in the morning. But it’s already morning I remind myself, and realize this is heaven compared to how I’ll feel when daylight hits and my alarm goes off. When I’ll have forty minutes to shit, shave and shower before hitting the road for AmeriMart. Did I say two a.m.?  It’s now nearly three, and I’m fading fast. Very fast.

“’Night, boss,” Mike Hagler calls out. He addresses everyone by “boss,” but in my case it’s literal. Mike’s accompanied by Spider—so named for his endless Internet surfing and weaving of the Web—and a pair of young women, one being the Spiderman’s sister, I hope. (If not, I may need to make a frantic call to paramedics in a few hours before walking out the door for work.)

“Cool party, mister,” the girl says from below. She and the dreadlocked guy are sitting side by side on the carpet, nearly joined at the hip. They share lines as cozily as newlyweds sipping champagne from the same glass. Perhaps it’s the alcohol and THC clouding my perspective, or because it’s been six weeks since Nancy ran out on me, announcing to the neighborhood how I’ll “never grow up!” as she packed her car, but this young thing chop-chopping lines gets more attractive by the second. She’s got eyes like Bambi’s, and long stringy brown hair streaked with pink. When she leans forward her cotton tank top rides up and I can see an Egyptian scarab tattoo on the small of her back. For a moment, I wonder if it could be a conversation starter, but then think better of it. Some people don’t like to discuss their tats. Particularly those with second thoughts about the ink adornments they’ll carry for an entire lifetime.

“You Joey?” the guy turns and asks me. White flecks dot the lower rim of his nostril caverns.

“That’d be me,” I say.

“Cool,” he says. “I’m Seth, this is April.” And the girl gives me a warm smile. “You knew my bro, Kevin Finnegan. Worked in the electronics section of AmeriMart.”

“Oh yeah,” I say. “Kev was a good guy. It’s terrible about what happened.”

“It sucks,” Seth says. “You never think someone can die from an asthma attack, you know. Especially your big brother.” He looks at me with a vacant stare, then reaches for the beer in his lap and takes a swig.

It’s become clear that the rest of my company has set sail. And if I don’t crash soon I may morph into part of the couch, like the coffee and nicotine stains. But I find I like these two and don’t want to shoo them off just yet.

“Let’s hear some music, a few tunes before calling it a night,” I say. “Gotta work in the morning Seth, April.”

“That’s cool. We can split now if you like,” says April. She starts to fold the bindle that had been set on the glass, but I wave her off.

“What bands are you guys into?” I ask.

“System of a Down, Tool, stuff like that,” Seth says, and April concurs with a nod.

“What about Rush?”

“Don’t really know Rush,” Seth says.

“My uncle’s into them, I think,” April offers.

I leap from the couch—staving off light-headedness—and skim through my CD collection by the stereo. I deftly finger one of Rush’s early albums. These kids need to know what real rock and roll sounds like. I insert the disc, adjust a few knobs and hit the play button.

I’ve cranked the volume, admittedly, and the band’s music stops April in the midst of her chopping. She gazes intently at one speaker before turning to the other, like she wonders just what has entered the room. Seth does a line and smiles. Then he sways back and forth and taps his knee in rhythm as the music really gets going.

“Wow, they’re amazing!” April says, and pretty soon Seth starts drumming air as if he’s Neil Peart himself.

I’ve sent them forward in time to 2112, and they’re under the spell of priests, those guarding the temples of Syrinx. Minutes from now they’ll discover the “ancient miracle” of a guitar, and all its beauty. Then they’ll enter the twilight zone, and later, take a passage to Bangkok, and burn the midnight oil. All in the span of a half-hour or so, which will pass like lightning for my new friends, wired as they are, their brains moving at warp speed.

I get a bit twinkle-eyed, and not just from need of rest. The music brings me back to the wild times of my youth. Not much different really, in terms of activities and interests, than life as I know it today. But I had a youthful optimism then, an appreciation for life’s things, great and small. I was deeply moved by things like Rush’s 2112. Just like the young couple now sitting in awe in my living room.

I like these people, April and Seth, and think I’ll invite them back for dinner tomorrow night. I’ll turn them on to Hemispheres, Farewell to Kings and Permanent Waves. Maybe we’ll barbecue.

Roland Goity lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. His stories appear in more than 25 literary publications, including Fiction International, Scrivener Creative Review, Underground Voices, Talking River, Bryant Literary Review, and Word Riot. He is fiction editor of the online journal LITnIMAGE.