The shoot began at the ungodly hour of 5:30 a.m. and wrapped sometime after one in the afternoon. True to form nobody had gotten a wink of sleep the night before. We were filming “live” concert footage, meaning playing the same song over and over and over for the cameras, each time putting 1,000% of the band’s energy into it, as if they were onstage at the Garden in front of 20,000 screaming fans instead of crowded onto a platform in a church downtown in the Village.

 

You’d expect the band to be wiped out and ready to collapse when they finally wrapped. I know I was. Instead they celebrated with an impromptu afternoon party. In the confusion and chaos and revelry it was hours before anyone realized Happy was missing. Sneezy was first to notice, and began getting concerned while the others were still busy partying.

 

The first person she alerted was of course me, Pinky Tourette, manager extraordinaire, producer of the shoot, and general babysitter to the stars. I assured her Happy was around somewhere having a good time, and then I went looking to find her. Many of the band’s fans were still hanging around, basking in the afterglow. I bopped between clusters looking for Hap, asking if anyone knew where she was. Answers: no, no, no, no, and no. I tried calling her cell and it went straight to voicemail. Apparently she hadn’t turned it back on after the shoot. Gradually I started to get worried. The word “kidnapped” didn’t cross my mind. Not yet.

 

None of the crew members packing up the equipment had seen her. Nor had the local members of our fan club – The Touristas – that we had invited to come down and fill the audience. They had been real troupers, showing the same roaring enthusiasm over and over, each of the 30 or so times we played “Oscar and the Golden Globes,” our upcoming single, while Steadicams, jibs, and handhelds swooped and jockeyed to capture the scene from every angle imaginable.

 

After checking with pretty much everyone in the main area I started making my way through the adjacent rooms, downstairs and up. The shoot had taken place inside Judson Memorial Church, one of our favorite charities. They’d been a progressive leader in the community for generations, supporting countless social and civil rights causes including providing assistance to early AIDS victims, drug addicts, runaways, and homeless youth, as well as advocating for immigrant and women’s rights and the decriminalization of prostitution.

 

On the artistic front, they offered early exhibition space to artists from Robert Rauschenberg and Claes Oldenburg to Yoko Ono and Martha Graham; hosted experimental theater from playwrights and authors like Lanford Wilson and Sam Shepherd; even staged controversial multimedia performances featuring Kate Millet and Abbie Hoffman.

 

In other words, a fine and worthy cause, and we were happy to throw them a few dollars in rental fees along with our undying support. The building, designed by noted architect (and yes, predator, pedophile, rapist, and eventual murder victim) Stanford White, creator of the Washington Square Arch and many other landmarks, had a sleek Italianate interior with marble pillars and walls, finely carved wooden arches and ceiling supports, rows of huge stained glass windows designed by John La Farge, a stage with a century-old marble frieze, and a balcony choir loft overlooking the nave. All in all, a prime setting for a music video.

 

Nowhere within those elegant walls could I find Happy. Still no answer on her phone. By now Doc had clued in to her absence and joined me in the search, followed shortly by Dopey and the others. After we had explored all the nooks and vestibules and turned up no sign of Hap, Doc strode to the edge of the balcony overlooking the crowd, called out for their attention, and asked when was the last time anyone saw Happy.

 

Hours ago was the answer, shortly after the shoot ended. A few people had noticed her talking to one of the Touristas, a big guy with disheveled red hair. He had been to a few previous fan events. Friendly, talkative, obviously a knowledgeable fan of the band, although no one knew him personally or even his name. I recalled seeing him earlier and not paying any particular attention. In retrospect that seemed like a mistake.

 

The video entourage included two security personnel who spent the bulk of their time ensuring nothing happened to the equipment. As soon as they realized what was going on, they hightailed it up to the balcony to confer with us. No, they hadn’t seen anything unusual, and they seemed genuinely perturbed that Happy had vanished on their watch. What could they do to help?

 

Doc asked if there were video surveillance cameras and they said they’d find out, hurrying downstairs to drum up someone from the church.

 

It was Dopey who suggested I start going through the list of invitees and checking off names. Maybe it sounds to you like we were overreacting. That’s because you don’t know Thee Tourettes, and you don’t know Happy. As the youngest, tiniest, and most fragile member of the band, she’s the baby sister in our little Partridge Family. Only Happy is far more talented and beloved than the tambourine-playing Partridge sprite, whatever her name was. And yes, I’m fully aware I’m the Reuben Kincaid of this analogy, so let’s just drop it and move on.

 

Put it this way: Happy is happy. Constantly. The eternal innocent, the unquenchable optimist, the childlike, rose-colored-glasses-wearing believer in the moral decency of man and the spiritual goodness and charity that powers the human soul. Boundless energy and an appetite to match. She consistently eats more than Doc, who is three times her size, and burns off every calorie through pure exuberance.

 

In another age, she’d have been a hippy, a flower child. Hell, in this age she was a hippy flower child. She was such a radiant beacon of positivity and idealism that one couldn’t help adoring her. And wanting to protect her. For while she was fearless as a lion, she was innocent as a lamb.

 

So here we were, just hours after Happy vanished, rallying our forces like we were launching a search party for the Lindbergh baby. I opened my laptop and called up the list of Touristas that we’d invited to attend the shoot – the top 200 from the tristate area based on their online activity and merch purchases. Presumably Redhead was among them. Grumpy dragged over a small wooden desk and chair for me and I began calling out names one by one. Fans answered if they were here, or if they recognized the person with that name and could attest it wasn’t Redhead. Everyone seemed willing – no, eager to help.

 

Then the lights went out. It was late afternoon – 4:10 p.m. to be exact – and a dim, colored light drifted through the stained glass overhead. There was a bit of commotion among the Touristas at first, quickly settling down. A circuit must have blown belatedly after the shoot, that was all.

 

That wasn’t all. It was Thursday, August 14, 2003. The day of the blackout that took down half the East Coast of the United States.

 

But we didn’t know that yet, not immediately. I sped through the list on the laptop, checking off names. Someone brought back news that the whole city had gone dark, and then we heard that it was far more extensive than that. By now the audience was antsy and thinning out.

 

When I finished checking off names, less than half of them had been accounted for. Not very helpful. Still over a hundred possibilities. And even at that, we were grasping at straws, assuming Happy wandered off with the red-haired Tourista and that his name was on the list. What if that wasn’t what happened?

 

The video surveillance was a dead end. By the time we rounded up someone with access, it was too late. Power out, no video.

 

As the sun passed out of sight behind the buildings outside we lit candles and talked over alternatives. Going to the police was pointless. Happy had been missing, what, three hours, tops? They wouldn’t even bother to write up a report at this point – and that’s if they weren’t already preoccupied by a goddamn blackout blanketing the city.

 

Someone suggested calling our friend Maya in Jersey, where we were staying, to see if maybe Happy had headed back there. We tried one at a time on our phones, and every time got the same message: all circuits are currently busy, please try again later.

 

That left limited options. We could wait here and hope she came back. Or we could head over to Jersey and wait there. We decided to do both. Doc would remain at the church and the rest of us would return to Jersey. Dopey elected to visit the nearest precinct, fully expecting them to shoo her away, but what the hell, it was worth a shot.

 

Outside, the streets were crowded. It was late summer and it was hot. Hot enough that everyone had been blasting their air conditioners, triggering the overload that shut down first one power plant and then cascaded through an antiquated and inefficient grid blowing out generators across the board, eventually knocking out power for 50 million people in eight states and Canada.

 

That’s how hot. And now, with no AC, the entire population of New York poured out onto the streets. We headed north through the crowds, me and Grumpy and Bashful and Sneezy and Sleepy. Along the way we kept dialing Happy, and Maya in Jersey, and Doc at the church for updates, rotating between our phones to keep from running anyone’s power down. Never got through. Same message repeatedly. All circuits busy. Try again later.

 

Even with dusk coming on, the streets were steaming. The subways were knocked out, as were traffic lights, so vehicular transportation was at a standstill. Hordes of people trudged through the nearly traffic-free streets, mostly heading uptown, like us, toward Port Authority or destinations beyond. Strangely, instead of annoyance or outrage there was an almost carnivalesque atmosphere among the people we passed. It was hot, it was dark, so let’s get it on. Boomboxes blasted. People clustered in doorways drinking and laughing, or danced on the sidewalk. I heard later that liquor stores did massive business during the early hours of the blackout.

 

Somewhere in the 30s a cop stood in the middle of Broadway with a bullhorn announcing that Port Authority was closed. We should all head to the river instead. Ferries would take us to New Jersey.

 

Made sense, once you thought about it. Without electricity, the huge turbines that recycled the air inside the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels would shut down. Without recycled air, the tunnels were death traps of choking car exhaust. No route out of New York that way, other than in a coffin.

 

And so to the river we headed. The banks of the Hudson were thronged with commuters, all migrating westward ho. New Yorkers had certainly learned from the experience of September 11, less than four years earlier. This time the evacuation was far more organized. Volunteers handed out water bottles to hot, thirsty, exhausted pedestrians waiting on winding lines demarcated by signs and cones. People were generous and supportive to a fault. New York at its best.

 

I don’t know how long we were on line, just that we trudged blocks north, then blocks south again. Eventually we were herded aboard a Circle Line cruise ship, one of the many vessels of all shapes and sizes that had gathered to ferry people out of the stricken city. It took us to the Port Imperial Ferry Terminal in Weehawken, where buses and vans were waiting to disperse people across the region. We caught one to Hoboken, hopped out at 14th Street, and walked up the viaduct to Jersey City Heights and Maya’s house. Total time door to door: five hours and 48 minutes.

 

Maya was relieved to see us, after trying to get through all afternoon on the phone. I filled her in on the situation while the girls sat in front of an open window eating her ice cream before it melted and drinking her beer before it warmed. Still no luck getting through to Happy, Doc, or Dopey.

 

And that was pretty much the story for the rest of the night. Dopey showed up at some point, well past midnight, carrying an armful of rapidly defrosting frozen dinners. A bodega owner on Paterson Plank Road was handing them out for free rather than letting them spoil. We tossed them in the oven while reviewing where we stood.

 

The police had reacted as predicted. It was too soon to do anything about Happy’s disappearance, and no officers were available to take a statement anyway. Even from Maya’s house we could hear sirens in various directions. If they weren’t rushing around for criminal emergencies, then for medical ones. Respiratory and monitoring equipment shutting down. Invalids trapped at home. Portable gas generators quietly filling rooms with deadly exhaust fumes. Insulin and other medications spoiling without refrigeration.

 

Our barely-missing tambourine player didn’t begin to compare. We napped in shifts, checking the phones occasionally without results. I wondered if by some chance Happy had eventually returned to the church. We wouldn’t know. She could be perfectly safe with Doc and we’d still be here worrying. On the other hand…

 

No, no sense thinking along those lines. So we slept, we ate, we watched the sun rise, we sat on Maya’s front porch and fanned ourselves. The day crept past like a lazy snail. By now we knew the extent of the outage, and were careful to conserve any remaining power, calling Doc and Happy only once an hour. Still no service.

 

Along about dark, Dopey decided to head back into the city to give Doc a break, let her head home for some rest. We were just reviewing options for how to make that happen with the trains and buses out and no tunnel access, when the lights flickered on. Outside we heard cheers erupt throughout the neighborhood. It had been 29 hours since the blackout hit.

 

Immediately we jumped on the phones. Same message. Just in case the power was only on temporarily, we plugged in all the phones and devices to charge them up, shutting off the AC to keep our power usage down. Moments later, my phone rang. The display said, “Happy.”

 

I snatched it up and put it on speaker and the first words out of my mouth were Where are you?

 

It wasn’t Happy. A male voice answered instead. Thin. High. Tired. He said Happy was fine. She was great. She was wonderful. She wanted to come home.

 

Dopey was talking now. Who are you? What happened? What did you do to her?

 

The guy said his name was Gary and he repeated that Happy was fine. Could we please come get her, please?

 

There were three possible Garys in the database. I asked his last name. Delamonte. Got him. Rego Park. I read him the address from the database and he confirmed. Moments later we were hurrying to the Tallywhacker, our converted senior citizen transport vehicle. On the way Dopey called Doc and, miracle of miracles, got through. Dopey filled her in and said we were heading to Queens and we’d all meet back at Maya’s.

 

Rather than drive through Manhattan and risk running into hordes of vehicles clogging the streets in a mad sprint home, we shot north to the GWB to the Cross Bronx and down the Whitestone into Rego Park. Gary Delamonte lived in a drab brick building a couple blocks south of Queens Boulevard. Sneezy and Sleepy waited in the Tallywhacker while the rest of us trooped into the lobby and rang upstairs. Nobody asked who were; we were just buzzed in. Gary’s apartment was on the ninth floor. The elevator smelled like burnt bacon and dogshit.

 

Happy opened the door with a huge grin on her face. She was glowing and vivacious, even more so than usual, like the blackout had been a glorious fiesta. Gary was slumped in the center of a faded couch, staring at a coffee table in front of him cluttered with dirty plates and utensils and empty soda bottles. Behind him on the wall I spotted a poster of the band, surrounded by setlists snatched off the stage after different gigs and pages clipped from magazines.

 

Before I even set foot inside, Dopey marched across the room and slapped Gary across the face, saying I don’t know if I should report you to the police or just castrate you right here. He barely blinked. Didn’t lift a hand, simply sat there looking deflated.

 

Following Dopey into the living room I was a little overwhelmed by all the Tourettes memorabilia. Up until that moment I hadn’t even realized how much merch we’d produced, but Gary had it all. Lunchboxes, bobble-heads, signed 8x10s, t-shirts. He had every album and single and EP in various international editions and all the CD and colored vinyl variants, and broken guitar picks scooped up at countless shows. Facing the sofa was a crudely painted mural of the band’s logo, taking up most of the wall.

 

I didn’t mean any harm, he said meekly. Dopey stood over him with clenched fists, ready to pummel him into powder, and if he was twice her size and four times her weight, that just meant he’d go down harder. She had the wrath of a wronged Tourette, and there’s nothing more dangerous than that, let me assure you.

 

Happy defused the situation in her usual way, indicating she was starving. She was already outside the front door, tapping her foot restlessly. Could we go?

 

I slid between Dopey and Gary and nodded toward the door. After a moment of seething, Dopey turned to leave. I told her I’d meet them downstairs, then lowered myself into a sad recliner next to the sofa.

 

It didn’t take much to get Gary to open up. He was a megafan and an obsessive collector and although didn’t say it in so many words, he must have determined somewhere in his misfiring synapses that there’d be no greater addition to his collection than an actual Tourette. And who better than tiny, effervescent Happy?

 

Only he hadn’t reckoned with the degree of her effervescence – or her appetite. He had fully stocked up beforehand with a fridge full of steaks and chicken and burgers and hot dogs, but with the power outage his electric stove was out and he couldn’t even use the microwave. That meant keeping her satiated with a steady supply of takeout, which entailed trudging up and down nine flights and searching the neighborhood for places that were still open and willing to sell him meals. Filling her insatiable maw. Lugging shopping bags full of soda and snacks. At one point she threw up in a flowerpot. A whole bag of Skittles had been a bridge too far. And, of course, now that she had purged, she was hungry again.

 

Far more important, Gary hadn’t taking into consideration the overwhelming Happyness of her. The constant, battering barrage of positivity. The lack of an “off” button. He had tried to keep her entertained without a TV or videogames or even lights, and quickly found he couldn’t keep up. She was bouncing off the walls, a bundle of unrepressed energy, nonstop, incessant, hammering him with happiness, sapping his spirit, sapping his very essence.

 

Happy is a white hole, so relentlessly upbeat that she attracts and eventually absorbs all surrounding positivity, gobbling it up, ingesting it, leaving breathlessness and exhaustion behind. Make no mistake, a short time with hurricane Happy will light you up – while spending extended time in her presence can become debilitating, grueling, it can tear you down, it can reduce a grown man into a quivering mass of weariness and regret. It can, and it did.

 

Within the band, the family, Thee Tourettes, it’s a different situation. Happy is a fragment of a larger whole, a piece of the puzzle, a spice in the recipe. She brings a certain flavor to the mix, with the others to balance her out. She’s the sugar in our meal. A measured amount enhances the flavor. Solo, it’s overpowering. And too much, well, say hello to cavities, diabetes, misery, and remorse.

 

Amid the discards on the coffee table lay a leatherbound notebook with the word “autographs” engraved on the cover. Flipping it open, I saw it was completely filled. Autograph after autograph. all Happy’s. Every inch, every centimeter: Happy, Happy, Happy. Over and over and over again. Big scrawl, little scrawl, overlapping scrawl. Nothing but Happy. She had filled the space with Happy until there was no room left for anything else.

 

Closing the book, I told him I’d take him off the Tourista list and stood to leave.

 

Thank you, he said, looking directly at me for the first time. Tears filled his eyes. Dear God in heaven, thank you.