DJ Scribble crashed his speeding moped into a heap of empty beer cases between two dumpsters, emerging after a brief pause to ensure the bike was completely hidden by cardboard. He let the blasting earphones slide down his neck to expose his ears to the first throbbing beats faintly echoing from storm drains below his feet. The DJ Chaos door pass was slipped under his door just hours ago, and ever since then, he patted his back pocket every few minutes to ensure it was still there. All the entries back here were dark, but only one came with a big black, leather vested man hedged by a garden of cigarette butts around his feet. DJ Scribble produced the little red card and held it in plain sight for the big man to see.
“Show’s closed, kid,” the big man said. “It’s full up.”
“Skoop boop be woop!” DJ Scribble shouted. “Ka goop bleh bleh shoo.” He flapped his arms in odd shapes.
“Ok?” the big man asked.
“This is the truth, brotha. Klam floo hoohaw!” His contortions now involved swift leg jerks. “This is what the world actually consists of—shaw dida coom few!”
He stopped the gyrations, but the big man didn’t stop crossing his arms. The wildly erratic beats of the show continued below. The man obviously hadn’t heard of entropy before. He obviously didn’t know what was going on downstairs, what was eventually going to happen up here—to him. To his club. His city. The universe. He savored the big man’s naiveté. “Just work here, huh? Don’t know, right? Second law of thermodynamics?” He pointed over the big man’s shoulder. “They do. That’s why I came, brotha. It’s my church down there. Last year, my place of conversion. Just let me in, man. They’d have me with em, if they knew I’zere.”
“Does that thing have FM?” the big man asked softly.
DJ Scribble looked down at his beat up tape deck. “Yeah.”
“Let me see it.” He nodded his head towards the door. “Cause brother. They’re all faken it down there. Not your crowd. Here’s the tunes for true believers—like you.”
DJ Scribble unclipped the tape deck from his belt. The man leaned over and grazed both dials with his finger and watched the thin kid move the speakers over his ears.
“It’s just static.” DJ Scribble hollered.
“Yup.”
