Read Online Mira Corpora by Jeff Jackson - Free Book Online Page A

cup. It’s a king’s crown with a line through it. As I ease myself inside, the metal prayer bell tied to the door handle gives a harsh jingle. The trio spins around.
    I stumble a few steps toward them. My mind stammers. I’m dumbstruck, or terrified, or maybe just overexcited. No emotion stands still long enough to name. I have no idea how to explain myself, so I remove the plastic tape case from my sweatshirt and hold it out. By way of introduction.
    The trio silently consults one another, then motions me over to their booth. None of them seems surprised by my presence. “We were wondering when we’d run into you,” the girl says.
    Looking at them sitting here, next to a fish tank filled with stunted carp and surrounded by strains of pinched Eastern folk music, something occurs to me. The obviousness and enormity of it buckles my knees. In a hushed and imploring voice, I ask: “Did you make the music on this tape?”
    It’s impossible to read the contorted shapes their faces make, the cryptic crisscrosses of furrowed brows and creased lips. They look like I’ve just complimented their dead mother’s ass. The girl finally speaks up. “That’s not us,” she says. “The singer on that tape is Kin Mersey.”
    The trio introduce themselves. The girl calls herself Lena. Her hair is a tangle of red, yellow, and black ringlets, the roots of previous dye jobs aggressively on display. The ratty locks almost seem like an apology for her delicate and classically beautiful features. The boy caressing the back of her neck is Hank. He
flashes a high-wattage grin. His bare arms are covered in elaborately primitive designs, but these interlocking totems resemble magic marker scrawls more than actual tattoos. I try not to stare at the other boy whose disfigured profile seems to be the result of a terrible burn. Markus has sparkling eyes that belie his taciturn expression. He slides over to make room for me in their booth.
    Lena takes out a wallet constructed of black duct tape and extracts a photograph that’s been folded into eight equal-sized squares. She arranges the image in front of me. “This is Kin,” she explains.
    It’s a grainy shot of a small rock club. There are low ceilings, black curtains tacked against the walls, a set of speakers dangling above the wooden stage. Several pasty guys play an assortment of drums, trumpets, dismantled synthesizers, and cable patches. But the focus is on the lead singer with his frizzy blond curls and a red scarf wrapped around his squat neck. This has to be Kin Mersey—his mouth open wide and his teeth bared. He’s captured mid-yawp. He coddles a battered acoustic guitar in the crook of his arms like a sleeping infant and appears utterly lost in the undertow of the song.
    â€œThis is from his final show,” Markus says. “It’s the last confirmed picture of him.”
    â€œHe quit in the middle of the tour,” Hank adds. “He sold all his instruments on a street corner and vanished. Nobody has seen him in years.”
    I examine the photo more closely, as if it’s one of those optical paintings where you adjust your focus and an embedded image suddenly emerges. There is something unsettling about the way Kin seems so absorbed in the moment, his eyes as white as boiled eggs, rolled back into their sockets.
    â€œWhy’d he quit?” I ask.
    â€œNobody knows,” Lena says. She takes a long sip of tea and
swallows hard. I notice the dusting of silver spray paint on her knuckles and the base of the cup.
    â€œI saw the graffiti,” I say. “I wasn’t sure what it meant.”
    Lena flips over the photograph of Kin Mersey. On the backside, there’s a smaller image of Kin sitting on a stoop wearing a paper crown on his head. It’s rakishly askew. He probably got it from a fast food restaurant but it still manages to look defiantly regal. “The crown is his