As the Dervish Whirls
by Pinky Tourette

I was awakened by Sleepy moving around the room, peeking out the window at snow-covered Zambak Street just off Taksim Square, pinning up her long hair and bundling herself up in thermal and fleece for an early morning jog. I heard her pause for a moment, then ask, What’s this?

 

Opening one bleary eye, I told her it was a gift from a fan. We get them all the time. This one was left at the front desk the prior night with the band’s name taped to it. Among other things, I, Pinky Tourette, am the official gift wrangler for the band. That way if it goes boom or spritzes powdered botulism upon opening, the girls are safe and it’s only me who goes to intensive care.

 

This one didn’t boom. A classic nazar boncuğu, it was shaped like a thick pancake about five inches round, made of translucent cerulean blue glass with a beautifully crafted white and pale blue eye in the center like the yolk of an alien fried egg. They’re everywhere in Turkey. Supposed to protect against the evil eye. Popular gift.

 

Sleepy said something I didn’t catch and I grunted. There’s a little window in the bottom, she said again, did I see that? I didn’t respond. It didn’t warrant a response. Not at that hour. I’m an early riser, which is why we often bunk together on tour. But not this early.

 

It says Eat Something New, Sleepy said. Try sleeping pills, I thought to myself, keeping my trap shut. Eat something new, she repeated thoughtfully, putting down the trinket and resuming her preparations. Soon I heard the door open and shut and I was alone. Alone, awake, and irritable. I got up, showered, dressed, brewed some çay. After last night’s gig at Club Peyote, I had a lot of arranging to do but it was too early to make phone calls locally, and we were seven hours ahead of New York so no use calling the states. Instead I hit the emails and got busy responding to fans and handling remote business.

 

Eventually Dopey called to gather me for breakfast. We met in the tiny dining area on the first floor, joined by Doc and the rest of the band, to discuss our game plan. Theirs was simple: go sightsee. Most of the girls were planning to check out the Grand Bazaar, visit the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia and Topkapi Palace. The usual stops. Dopey was heading to the music stores on and around Istiklal Caddesi and then had a hankering to see the underground crypts where scenes in From Russia with Love were filmed.

 

Me, I had a different agenda. The band had really hit it off with the openers last night, a local band called Metempsychosis. It was the first time the two bands met in person, after being long-distance fans of each other’s work. The gig ended with both bands together onstage jamming to Roky Erickson’s “You’re Gonna Miss Me” and Thee Tourettes’ “Just Another Frankenstein.” It felt and sounded so good they all decided on the spot to record something together.

 

And since we had a few days downtime before heading home, it was up to me to arrange it. Our original plan to visit Cappadocia and ride in hot air balloons over the stark otherwordly landscape would have to shift back a couple days.

 

After a tasty meal of börek, fresh pastries, fruit preserves and honey, we split up to go our separate ways. I retired back to the room and waited till a reasonable hour to start making phone calls.

 

Yusuf, the singer for Metempsychosis, had given me the number for the studio Avrasya Müziği, located in southeastern Beyoğlu, not too far from where we were staying. I connected with them as soon as they opened and was pleased to hear they had already gotten a heads-up from Yusuf that I’d be in touch. Apparently Turkish bands are more on the ball than their American counterparts. In the states, a promise from a bandmember lasts as long as it takes to score the next ingestible or line up the next groupie.

 

I made arrangements to visit the studio at 4 p.m. and texted the band an update. After that I resumed the email grind until it was time to head out.

 

To my surprise Doc and Dopey were at the studio ahead of me, along with Yusuf and Gökçe, the guitarist for Metempsychosis. Together we checked out the facilities and discussed our plans with the engineer, a strikingly tall guy with long black hair and tinted glasses. Very Joey Ramone. Everything seemed to click, so we booked the place for the next few days to record and mix. That left only one minor detail. The bands had to write material.

 

Doc and Dopey didn’t seem to think that would be a problem, and neither did I. The two of them are creative dynamos and I’ve seen them whip up the skeletons of a dozen songs in a single afternoon. Metempsychosis had an angular edge that appeals to a certain breed of alternative music fans, with an ethnic, percussive, vaguely psychedelic flavor inspired by Moğollar, Bunalim, 3 Hür-El, and other classic Anatolian rockers. Gökçe alternated playing guitar and saz and they even covered a song by their hero Erkin Koray in their live set.

 

In other words, they sounded nothing like Thee Tourettes. But they were hugely creative and had tremendous hooks. A collaboration between the two would fit together like meshing gears.

 

After settling the business with the studio we all headed out for an early dinner at a place Yusuf recommended. I texted the rest of the girls and they arrived halfway through the appetizers, fresh from a cruise on the Bosphorus. Sleepy didn’t seem to give a hoot when we told her we’d secured a studio; instead she wanted to rave about her amazing day, the highlight of which was apparently lunch. She’d opted to Eat Something New and had dined on Izgara Köfte at Sultanahmet Köftecisi, nearby Hagia Sophia.

 

It had changed her life, she insisted, and for dinner she promptly ordered everything she couldn’t pronounce on the menu. The meal was a blast, and Yusuf and Gökçe were funny and talkative hosts, plying us with raki. The two of them looked like nondescript accountants with their neatly trimmed hair and thick glasses, but we already knew they could rage like monsters onstage, and it turned out they could drink like beasts, too.

 

The next morning Sleepy woke me again, puttering around the room prepping for her jog. I was feeling the raki and drew the blanket over my head to fend off the day. I was just drifting back to dreamland when Sleepy tugged back the blanket and showed me the nazar boncuğu. It says, Take the Scenic Route, she told me.

 

That’s wonderful, I grumbled. Or maybe I grumbled a curse upon her ancestors. Either way, she said she was going to Take the Scenic Route and would meet us at the studio later. Good for you, I said. Well, it ended in “you,” anyway.

 

I told Dopey when she called that I was skipping breakfast and had some business to attend to and I’d meet them at the studio later. Then I drank a gallon of water and burrowed back into the bed. When I got up I felt like a sock full of turds and dragged my ass into the shower for a steaming soak.

 

While very slowly getting dressed I spotted the nazar boncuğu and picked it up. You can get them everywhere in Istanbul and quality varies from cheap tourist doodads to finely crafted art. This one was on the high end. Turning it over, I saw the window I had missed when the receptionist first handed it to me at the front desk. A little round opening in the bottom, inside of which was the message Sleepy had read to me. Take the Scenic Route.

 

Aha. Now I got it. Simply a magic 8 ball in different guise. Ask it a question, shake it up, and it spits out a generic answer. A kid’s game, gussied up in fancy cultural veneer.

 

By the time I got to the studio I had gobbled down half my body weight in çay and was feeling almost simian again. I was delighted at what I heard when I stumbled into the control room. Doc and Gökçe were jamming and it sounded terrific. Gökçe was playing the saz and it meshed beautifully with Doc’s guitar. It wasn’t yet a song but was well on its way.

 

Over the course of the afternoon the music took shape, with some sections growing and others discarded. Dopey and Yusuf both helped steer with hummed vocals that became words, budding into a recurring lyrical motif that became the title: "In the Medina." It reminded me of the scene in Clouzot’s Le Mystère Picasso where the artist creates a painting live, transforming by accretion from a flower to a fish to a chicken to a face and from stark black and white to color. I never tire of experiencing that with the band.

 

Other members of both bands were also observing, piping up with ideas, adding percussion. Eventually the stragglers arrived and we were all present. Sleepy was last to show up, carrying a large plastic bag.

 

Sometime in the mid-afternoon Doc called a time-out and they took a break. We were all psyched at what we’d heard, and made sure to say so, over some çay and strong Turkish coffee and böreği and baklava the engineer had made appear.

 

After we’d snacked a bit and the excited conversation died down, Sleepy opened the plastic bag and said she had something to show us, pulling out a 12-inch picture disc of Thee Tourettes. Very appealing product, a great photo of the band on die-cut vinyl with a sort of pale green, glow-in-the dark background. Something to be proud of. Except we’d never put it out or licensed it.

 

The studio had a turntable so we put it on and gave a listen. It was a decent quality bootleg of a live performance from the “Hate Love Songs” tour. Bash guessed it was from the Paradiso in Amsterdam. Sounded like a slickly-recorded audience tape, someone with pro equipment and a good vantage spot.

 

Sleepy told us she found it at a shop called Barbary Coast. She was hitting side streets, Taking the Scenic Route, exploring off the beaten path when she stumbled across the place. Yusuf and Gökçe both groaned. They knew the place well. It was the bane of the local music industry, run by the Turkish mafia, with a pressing plant in the rear and a bootleg shop up front selling everyone from Kanye West and Taylor Swift to The Residents and Shonen Knife. Numerous attempts had been made to shut it down but the mob was too powerful and owned the local police like silver ornaments dangling from their charm bracelets.

 

The place was crammed with bootlegs from everyone, Sleepy told us. Prince and Michael Jackson, Nirvana and Soundgarden, Butthole Surfers and Venom. Doc asked if anyone recognized her in the shop. She didn’t think so. She was bundled up against the cold, swathed in a balaclava and wraparound shades, with her trademark long hair tucked up out of sight. Besides, the two burly clerks were too busy to pay much attention to customers, instead watching daytime TV while leaning on the counter next to a massive hookah.

 

Sleepy had taken down the address so I immediately called our lawyers to get the place padlocked. I didn’t tell them it was mob-connected and that it would be challenging to shut them down. I didn’t have to. Instead they told me that international law was sticky and enforcement was lax and cooperation was negligible and that they’d get to work on it but I shouldn’t hold my breath. Which I already knew.

 

It put a damper on my mood, although I brightened up again when the band got back to jamming. This time all the other members joined in on their instruments and the sound filled out even more. It was happening. The piece was coming together. When I left they were still playing.

 

I was asleep when Sleepy got back and I didn’t hear her come in. She still managed to be up before me in the morning, though, and woke me with a laugh.

 

It says Buy an Apple, she told me. I thought about telling her where to stick her apple. Do they have amazing fruit here, she wondered. No response from me. After a while she got her act together and left me alone in the room. I got up and hit the emails. The lawyers had reached out to get things moving. Nothing pertinent to report yet. I took care of sundry business until Dopey called for breakfast.

 

Together we ate a hearty meal and then headed to the studio. Doc and Dopey and Bashful had stayed up late the night before, crystalizing the arrangement for "In the Medina," mixing the rock skeleton with a delicious middle-eastern drone, so the morning was spent laying down instrumental tracks. We rehearsed it with the combined band for a while to consign it to muscle memory, then recorded it live a few times, gaining in strength with each iteration. After that a couple overdubs, and by lunchtime we had the makings of a hit.

 

Over a takeout lunch in Styrofoam boxes, Yusuf happened to mention that a friend of his was in town, Ad-Darazi. I thought Dopey would have a meltdown. She was a huge fan of the Darazites, an Iranian punk band that operated in the dark fringes of the country’s highly restrictive music scene, constantly getting harassed and denounced for their rebellious attitude and scathing lyrics. With a sound somewhere between the Dead Kennedys and Jesus Lizard, they had a killer frontman in Ad-Darazi, a maniac with short black hair and a long, straggly beard that whipped the audience when he headbanged, which was often.

 

The Darazites had played a gig in Istanbul a few nights earlier and he was hanging around for a few days before heading back home. Call him, Dopey pleaded. Get him to come down here and record guest vocals. He can do the bridge.

 

Yusuf called and left a voicemail. Once the bands got back to work they seemed even more energized. Not usually the case after lunch. Typically there’s a lull after eating. This time they launched right into some inspired jamming that they quickly began culling into a B-side. Meanwhile Dopey kept asking if Ad-Darazi had called back yet. She was hyped.

 

We were at dinner when Ad-Darazi returned the call and agreed to come by and sing the following day. Dopey hit the roof and snatched the phone from Yusuf to say how excited she was and how much she admired the Darazites, then handed it to me to make arrangements. I told Ad-Darazi to plan on recording around noon and gave him my cell number. As soon as I hung up, Dopey called for a round of raki.

 

I demurred, having learned my lesson. The rest of the band had joined us by now and Sleepy seemed a little muted. I sidled over and asked what was up. She told me she tried a local apple and it was nothing special. Not knowing what to say to that, I shrugged and told her to check out the figs, something Turkey is renowned for. That wasn’t the point, she said.

 

She was still a little quiet when we got back to the room. I flipped on the TV and found Al Jazeera for background chatter while I lay down on the bed with the laptop and caught up with emails. It must have been 20 minutes later that Sleepy burst out with a barking laugh that startled me into practically kicking the laptop in the air. Did you hear that, she asked. Hear what? The news! I focused back in. There had been a big stock market rally today, led by tech stocks. So? Meant nothing to me. We had no significant investments in tech stocks that I was aware of.

 

Snatching up the nazar boncuğu, Sleepy pointed to the window on the bottom and again laughed out loud. It doesn’t say buy an apple, she explained. It says Buy Apple.

 

And so it did. I didn’t see the big deal. Sleepy certainly did, explaining that the nazar boncuğu had been telling her to buy Apple stock. Like the past two messages, it was sending instructions to her, special guidance to enhance her day.

 

Well, I’m as superstitious as the guy next door, assuming the guy next door isn’t very superstitious, and I told her that sounded like bunk. The message was generic. The nazar boncuğu was a toy, a cheap gimmick. It meant what she thought it meant. Buy an apple.

 

Not true, she insisted, and I wasn’t up to the argument so I let it go. Somehow it both pleased and rankled to see how Sleepy’s mood had completely flipped. Suddenly she was all smiles, humming to herself happily until it was time to crash.

 

Next morning the toy’s message was more cryptic:

 

23

14

 

Sleepy woke me and shoved it in my face, asking what I thought it meant. Good morning to you too, I grumbled. In reply she yanked the blanket off me.

 

Slumber was obviously over so I headed into the bathroom to do my business while Sleepy stood outside the door mulling over interpretations. She’s a linear thinker, a logical, geometric mind, so she played out different numerical scenarios. First line 2 + 3 equals 5. Second line 1 + 4 also equals 5. That’s 5 over 5, or 5/5 = 1. Did that mean something? On the other hand, add everything up, it equals 10. Was that the point? For that matter, adding the 1 and 0 in 10 again gets you 1. Might be a message there. Or was there meaning in the fact that reading clockwise from bottom left gave you 1-2-3-4?

 

Her calculations, I must admit, got me percolating. Only I’m not so mathematically minded. I’m a language person. Words. Symbols. Representation. Maybe the numbers represented letters. The numbers 2 and 3 could represent the second and third letters of the alphabet: BC. And the bottom 1 and 4: AD. Interesting. BC and AD. Something about time? Years? Religion? Another option: the 23rd letter is W, the 14th is N. Did WN mean something? Willie Nelson? Wayne Newton?

 

It was probably half an hour before I realized I’d tumbled down a rabbit hole and was reading way too much into a simple plaything designed to distract children and entertain drunk partyers, and told Sleepy I was going to take a shower. I was on my way back to the bathroom when my cell buzzed.

 

The screen read Ad-Darazi. It was now a little after 9 a.m. He was supposed to record at noon. This didn’t bode well. Dopey would be crushed if he flaked on us. I connected and put him on speaker.

 

He sounded like he’d shotgunned half a dozen cups of coffee and was hot-wired on caffeine. This, I later discovered, was his natural state. He was talking fast, tossing out sentences that seemed only vaguely connected to one another. I had to tell him to slow down, then stopped him cold and had him answer simple questions with yes or no before I could get a coherent story out of him.

 

Like many vocalists, Ad-Darazi had a particular microphone that was his chosen muse. It captured exactly the sound he heard in his head, and he carried it from gig to gig, session to session, almost like a good luck charm, a talisman. He’d brought it to Istanbul for the gig the other night and it was here with him at his hotel. That’s where the problem started. After talking to us last night about cutting a track, he’d been so hyped he’d gone out partying.

 

I knew already where this was headed. A lost microphone, left behind in some basement dive after too much raki. I was ready to tell him the studio had an excellent supply of mics of all shapes, styles, sized, and we’d be sure to find him something he’d be happy with.

 

I was wrong. He was smarter than that. He’d locked up his microphone in the safe in his hotel room before heading out carousing. So what was the problem? He couldn’t remember the combination, and the hotel couldn’t find the key.

 

Fine. An inconvenience, not a tragedy. Again, the studio had plenty of options, we’d find him a mic that fit his needs. Oh no, he couldn’t record without his microphone, he said. They were psychically linked. It made him him. Without it he couldn’t sing.

 

Sometimes I hate musicians. They’re idiosyncratic to a fault. It’s what makes them interesting and unique, and it’s what makes them so damn infuriating. I was about to start arguing when Sleepy leaned into the phone and told him to try 2-3-1-4.

 

I looked at her like she was a talking rabbit. Musicians. What can you do with them? They’re a walking collection of superstitions, quirks, and eccentricities.

 

Long story short, he tried it, and it worked. We could hear him whooping from across his room when the safe sprung open. A moment later he snatched up the phone and said he should have remembered. It was the date of his first gig with the Darazites: February 3, 2014. 2/3/14.

 

I’m not going to pretend I was convinced. I wasn’t. There was nothing supernatural about it or about the nazar boncuğu, of that I was sure. Well, pretty sure. Surely that was just one hell of a coincidence, right?

 

A few hours later we recorded Ad-Darazi’s vocals for the bridge. Dopey hadn’t finalized the verses’ lyrics yet but she’d focused on his portion and fed him some dazzling lines, and he totally nailed it, adding an ethereal wail. Everyone was stoked.

 

For lunch we dropped by a place owned by a friend of Gökçe’s and ate a brilliant meal of stuffed eggplant and manti. Afterwards they all headed back to get cracking on the B-side. Dopey had a title for it, "Stone Cold Evil," and some lyrical ideas for signifyin’, dozens-style verses. I bowed out, with a different plan for the day.

 

It wasn’t hard to find Barbary Coast. They didn’t exactly hide the place, despite being fiercely illegal. The storefront was a huge plate glass window crammed with posters and LPs and CDs and t-shirts, not a one of which was legit. Overhead, a stylized Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow grinned down at passersby.

 

The first thing that hit you as you walked through the door was the sharp aroma of mint, spice, and tobacco. The place was dimly lit and crammed with musical ephemera. T-shirts hung from pipes overhead. Rows of albums divided the shop into two aisles, with CD shelves lining the right and left walls and a glass counter along the back. Two bored-looking guys with faded tattoos on muscular arms leaned on the counter, the tall hookah and a dragon-shaped lighter in front of them. They paid absolutely no attention to me, watching a fly-specked TV as I poked around, finding numerous Thee Tourettes bootlegs, along with many of our friends’ bands. None of whom would see a penny from these sales.

 

In the far corner behind the counter a doorway led into a noisy room. Strings of faded beads hung in the opening, allowing a partial view of large machinery beyond. The pressing plant.

 

I bought one of everything Thee Tourettes, including a couple of unauthorized shirts, a keychain, and a bottle opener, paying in cash. One of the two employees rang me up without a word or a smile, and I kept mum throughout. Back in the hotel room, I snapped pictures of everything and sent them off to the lawyers, along with photos of the front of the shop. They told me they were working on it with local law enforcement and promised to step up proceedings now that they had proof of what the shop was selling.

 

The next morning I sprung awake early, even earlier than Sleepy. I tiptoed to the bathroom to pee and when I returned she was sitting up with the nazar boncuğu in hand. Despite myself, I was eager to see what it had to say. When I asked, instead of reading it she handed it to me, a perplexed look on her face.

 

Jalapeños on

Halloween

 

We looked at each other, saying nothing. Yesterday’s message had been meaningless at first. This one was equally nonsensical on the face of it. Finally she asked what I thought. Not a clue, I told her.

 

And with that we got ready for the day, headed to breakfast with the rest of the band, and then over to the studio, where we got to work recording the instrumental tracks for "Stone Cold Evil." Things went smoothly, the bands enjoyed cutting loose on the flat-out rocker, and we got a satisfactory take in no time. I don’t think anyone was blown away, but we had tight time constraints and it was a B-side. Sometimes you take what you get.

 

After lunch it was time to start laying down vocals. Dopey and Yusuf started with "In the Medina," reading off lyric sheets on music stands, and it came together beautifully. We started to get even more excited about the track. They recorded a few takes, improvising a bit and playing off each other. Stellar stuff, if I say so myself, and a joy to behold. Every note, every syllable added to the rush, and it all meshed magnificently with Ad-Darazi’s pre-recorded break vocals.

 

Once that was in the can and we had finished congratulating each other on our collective genius, we turned to the B-side, "Stone Cold Evil," doing a rough vocal run-through just to see how it sounded. I could tell by the look on Dopey’s face that she wasn’t happy, although I wasn’t sure why. It sounded solid to me.

 

The Joey Ramone-looking engineer asked if we wanted to hear a playback and I said sure. I watched Dopey’s face as the song played. She started off tentative and about halfway through got a pained expression. When I asked what was wrong she said the lyric was off. She couldn’t quite get a handle on it, and it was bugging the crap out of her.

 

Fine, I said. Let’s take it line by line and let me know what strikes you sour. The engineer ran it again.

 

My baby stands eight feet tall

Voice like thunder and a face that appalls

Got two-tone boils and ten-ton balls

Built like an outhouse in overalls

 

Simple enough. Throwback to old bawdy blues. Nothing to win a Pulitzer, but perfectly serviceable as a driving, raucous B-side. Dopey said nothing as it played. So far, so good. We continued.

 

My baby is miles past mean

Drinks moonshine mixed with kerosene

Breath like a Mardi Gras latrine

Toughest sucka you ever seen

 

On the last line, Dopey pointed at the control room and said That.

 

I didn’t see the problem. Dopey sure did. The last line’s flat, trite, dead, she said. It drags the song down. It’s cardboard. I can’t find the right words.

 

That’s when Sleepy spoke up. Hands out jalapeños on Halloween, she said.

 

I got goosebumps. Dopey sat up straight and looked at Sleepy. You’re a genius, she said, and snatched up a pen to scratch out the rejected line on the lyric sheet and scribble in the new words.

 

The rest of the session was superb. Dopey was suddenly in a rapturous mood. She sang better, and Yusuf followed. Together they cut a fantastic back-and-forth lead, then overdubbed the chorus and inserts. Once that was done they decided to try the A-side again and with their renewed energy they made it infinitely better.

 

Dinner was celebratory. Everyone was upbeat and in party mode. I cut out early, leaving them to revel in their success. As for me, I went back to the hotel room, picked up the nazar boncuğu and carried it down to the front desk, where I asked who had left it for us. The desk clerk and his manager didn’t know the answer and promised to ask around. Some time later they called up to the room and said nobody could remember who dropped it off. It just seemed to appear. I blew up at them. What the hell kind of security was that? What if it had been full of Ebola and their negligence wound up infecting the entire band? Would they have told the cops, Gee I dunno, whoops? I slammed down the phone at their excuses.

 

The message next morning was simple: Be Wild.

 

That could mean anything, I said to Sleepy. She didn’t respond, just sat on the edge of the bed looking at the nazar boncuğu with a thoughtful expression.

 

She didn’t join us for breakfast that day, saying she’d meet us at the studio. It was mixdown day. Basic tracking was done. Today was reserved for editing the songs into final shape. Maybe a few final overdubs if necessary.

 

The members of Metempsychosis were already there when we got to the studio, along with Ad-Darazi. To our surprise, two members of the local press were there as well. Yusuf had reached out to çirkin yaratık, a local entertainment magazine to let them know about the collaborative session, and they had sent a writer and a photographer. Yusuf had kept it quiet as a surprise. I’d have preferred to know about it in advance so we could primp and prepare and be at our best.

 

The writer asked the obvious questions about how the session came about, what was everyone’s role, how the collaborative process worked and how the final product differed from our usual music. The girls gave good quote, as always, with Yusuf and Gökçe adding sharp and funny observations. The photographer shot some pics of the interview and then more shots us listening to playbacks and working on the mix.

 

And then Sleepy arrived and our jaws dropped. Be Wild, it had said. That’s all. Very nonspecific. Open to interpretation. Could mean anything. Do drugs. Get laid.

 

Or cut off all your long, beautiful hair.

 

Sleepy walked in, bald as an egg, having completely shorn her trademark locks. She looked… transformed. Whereas before she was a classic beauty, now she was far edgier, an androgyne warrior out of Thunderdome. The quiet act of shaving her head had completely changed her. She was a different person, a more formidable, assertive person. We all felt it.

 

Especially the photographer. His eyes lit up and his camera snapped to attention. For the next I don’t know how long, he shot her in every manner possible: listening to playbacks, lounging on the leopardskin couch, posing with instruments. And she reveled in it. I’d never seen her so engaged in a photo shoot. She looked supremely confident and in charge. At one point we gathered all the musicians together for a group shot, and instead of the usual focus on the singers, it was all about Sleepy, and the rest of the bandmembers were reduced to extras.

 

In other circumstances, that might have led to resentment. Not here. We were all too awed by Sleepy’s remake/remodel, and all too happy to let her revel in it.

 

Eventually the writer dragged the photographer away despite his protests, and we finished mixing the tracks. Everyone agreed the collaboration was a huge success. The songs were tough and catchy and clever and it was to our credit that we were able to whip them up from scratch in a matter of days.

 

Our final dinner together was bittersweet. There was a lot of hugging and quite a bit of drinking and generous mutual praise and promises to work together in the future. It got loud and rather sloppy and I almost missed the phone call from the states.

 

It was Roy Lucas from Rolling Stone. He had seen the post about the band’s collaboration with Metempsychosis and wanted to do an interview, were we available?

 

Well, let me think abou—YES! We were available. We could do a phoner or an in-person either with one of their European stringers or back in the states when we returned in a few days. Roy said great, he’d arrange it. By the way, what did I think about a cover shoot for Sleepy?

 

My head was spinning when I got off. Before telling the girls, I checked my texts and saw that rave comments were pouring in about a çirkin yaratık post. Checking their site, I found several of the photos already online, prominently featuring Sleepy. Somewhere buried in the text it mentioned the rest of the band and the session with Metempsychosis and Ad-Darazi, almost as an afterthought. Their social media was on fire with likes.

 

The party only got wilder when I passed around my phone to the girls.

 

The next morning I slept late. It was a pleasure. No commitments, no need to get up early. Nobody woke me. I crawled up out of sleep with cactus growing in my mouth and sand in my eyes and a big grin regardless. Istanbul had treated us well.

 

I dragged myself out of bed and got up to pee and that’s when I noticed Sleepy was gone. It took a moment to remember whether she’d come back last night. The answer was yes, we had returned together by cab. Her bed was slept in. She must have gone out to jog.

 

I was brushing my teeth when a jagged thought stabbed my mind. It punctured my euphoria and I felt my mood start to deflate. Part of me was sure it was nothing. No reason for concern, right? Right. Sure. Of course not. Um.

 

Only one way to be sure.

 

Back in the bedroom I picked up the nazar boncuğu and gazed into the alien pale blue eye for a moment before turning it over. There was a new message for the new day.

 

Commit a

Random Act

of Violence

 

Immediately I grabbed the phone and called Sleepy’s number. It went directly to voicemail. Turned off. Not good. Not good at all.

 

She was smart, I reminded myself. Too smart to do something rash, something dangerous. Especially on the advice of a cheap toy. Even a toy that had an outstanding track record of wise and prescient suggestions.

 

I considered calling Doc and decided against it. No need to get everyone in a panic. I was sure Sleepy had just gone out for a jog. Wasn’t I?

 

Her phone went to voicemail the next three times I tried. I left messages and texts to call me. I paced. I opened up the laptop and tried to concentrate. The lawyers had written back that they were still hard at work although they were stymied by arcane copyright laws and the iron grip of the Turkish syndicate.

 

I jumped up when I heard the knob turning and was in her face the moment Sleepy entered. She looked calm, measured, placid. Catlike was the word that crossed my mind. And wet. It must have been raining outside. Where were you, I asked.

 

Jogging.

 

You didn’t do anything… foolish?

 

No, she said. I did something wise. That hit me like a fist and I sat down on the bed. Tell me, I said.

 

She had gone out jogging. No destination in mind. Wherever her feet took her. Which turned out to be Barbary Coast. Curiously for this hour, the lights were on so she tried the door and it was unlocked. Inside, the store was empty, although she could hear machinery pumping in the back.

 

Wandering the aisles, she snagged a bootleg Thee Tourettes LP and brought it to the counter. Nobody was there. So she picked up the dragon lighter and lit it on fire.

 

My heart sank. Commit a Random Act of Violence. I pictured the front of the shop with Johnny Depp’s face blackened by smoke billowing out the front door. I pictured the fire department racing to extinguish the flames, shattering the plate glass windows to beat back the fire within. I pictured fire spreading to neighboring buildings, residents clutching their most precious belongings and rushing outside, or worse, not waking up in time.

 

Then, Sleepy said, I lifted the burning LP and held it up to the sensor overhead until the sprinklers kicked in.

 

The image in my mind changed. Not fire but water. Raining down on the rows and rows of LPs, of CDs, of posters, soaking them, ruining them. I had to smile, despite myself. Nobody hurt, just stock destroyed. Countless dollars flushed, dollars that would have been stolen from the pockets of hard-working bands and diverted to mobsters and criminals. No victims other than thieves. No losses other than contraband. Not such a bad outcome, really. Right?

 

That’s what I was thinking when I heard the crash. We both turned to see the nazar boncuğu lying on the floor. How a flat object managed to roll off the desktop I cannot begin to imagine. Nor, for that matter, how it shattered on the soft carpet.

 

I couldn’t resist picking it up and checking the window, now spiderwebbed with cracks. Have a Nice Day, it said.

 

So we did.