The Zone Calls (Steamer #2) by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview
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Chapter 15– Steamer’s Room
The room presents itself as a traditional bedroom, with a Queen Anne highboy, principal and primary, its key embracing escutcheons proud, pristine, protruding, and prominent. Its cabriole legs lift the lower case off the floor; as in a dance to the music of time.
The four poster bed, though large, behaves like a supporting actor here. A small nightstand sits to the right, almost apologetic in scale. A framed picture above it adds a bit of visual punctuation, but nothing competes with the highboy's silhouette.
The room feels orderly, traditional, and faintly ceremonial; like a space where the furniture has lineage. The highboy anchors the composition, giving the room its sense of height, history, and quiet authority. Everything else orbits it.
Then things shift again, exposing a “new” wall of psychedelia, and the band begins to play out loud.
From the Queen Anne calm of just a heartbeat earlier, the room had been all muted elegance; pale damask wallpaper, gracefully curved chairs, a writing desk with delicate cabriole legs; the sort of space where one whispers rather than speaks to psychedelic sixties explosion.
The walls ripple, literally ripple; as if the air itself is changing frequency. Color floods in. The wallpaper melts into swirling, saturated tie dye hues. Posters bloom across the walls like technicolor flowers; Quicksilver Messenger Service in electric blues and reds, Laura Nyro in soft focus portraiture, haloed by neon lettering.
A Janis Joplin style beaded curtain materializes over the doorway, lava lamps pulse on every flat surface, a reel to reel machine hums to life, feeding the room a wash of psychedelic guitar and layered harmonies. The floor even seems to soften into a shag rug that wasn't there a second ago.
Steamer takes this in stride. He’s been here before. This is as far as he's ever gone, but the house clearly knows him better than he knows himself. He stands in a space that feels alive, humming, almost sentient.
Who Do You Love
Quicksilver Messenger Service
Lengthy guitar solos of Duncan and Cipollina
I walked 47 miles of barbed wire
I got a cobra snake for a necktie
I got a brand new house by the roadside
Made out of rattlesnake hide
I got me a chimney made on top
Made from a human skull
Come on, take a little walk with me
Who do you love?
Who do you love?
Who do you love?
Who do you love?
Who, who, who, who?
Lengthy guitar solos of Duncan and Cipollina
Come on Maureen, take me by the hand
Let me know that you understand me
Who do you love?
Who do you love?
Who do you love?
Who do you love?
Ride nine times on the midnight train
Through the fire and cold rain
Who do you love?
Who do you love?
Who do you love?
Who, who, who, who?
Lengthy guitar solos of Duncan and Cipollina
I've got a tombstone hand in a graveyard mine
Just 22 and I don't mind dying
Who do you love? (Love)
Who do you love? (Love)
Who do you love? (Love)
Who, who, who, who?
Lengthy guitar solos of Duncan and Cipollina
Written by Quicksilver Messenger Service
Stoned Soul Picnic
Laura Nyro
Can you surry?
Can you picnic?
Can you surry?
Can you picnic?
C'mon, c'mon and
Surry down to a stoned soul picnic
Surry down to a stoned soul picnic
There'll be lots of time and wine
Red yellow honey
Sassafras and moonshine
Red yellow honey
Sassafras and moonshine
Stoned Soul
Stoned Soul
C'mon, c'mon and
Surry down to a stoned soul picnic
Surry down to a stoned soul picnic
Rain and sun come in akin
And from the sky
Come the Lord and the lightnin'
And from the sky
Come the Lord and the lightnin'
Stoned Soul
Stoned Soul
Surry on surry
Surry, surry, surry, surry
There'll be trains of blossoms
There'll be trains of music
There'll be music
There'll be trains of trust
Trains of golden dust
Come along a surry oh
Sweet trains of thought
Surry on down
Can you surry?
Can you surry?
Surry down to a stoned soul picnic
Surry down to a stoned soul picnic
There'll be lots of time and wine
Red yellow honey
Sassafras and moonshine
Red yellow honey
Sassafras and moonshine
Moonshine
Stoned Soul yeah
Surry on surry
Surry
Surry
Surry
...
Written by Laura Nyro
