Once my queasy stomach settled and the cold air/heat ratio found a tolerable equilibrium, I tried to get Mercy talking about herself. The more time we spent together it seemed the less I knew about her, which made me even more self-conscious and reluctant to ask personal questions. What kind of lousy friend was I for not knowing the Mercy basics at this point? Sure, she was evasive, and my already fuzzy head seemed to get fuzzier whenever we hung out, and at this point in our relationship I still worked and worried the wording and tone of what I said and what I would say later, terrified of scaring her off. It was possible she’d already told me all sorts of personal details (even the silly ephemera, the stuff most of us are only remembered for: Favorite color? Dog person or cat person? Coke or Pepsi? Pickles or no pickles?) and I’d blanked because I was hopelessly lost inside myself. Now we had all this time ahead of us in the car and I was determined to learn something beyond eccentric instant photography and punk music.

I made you fuzzy wuzzy?

“How is school going?”

“Fine.”

“How many classes are you taking?”

“Too many.”

“Right. Did you do anything cool during the week?”

“The usual.”

“Where do you work again?”

“I don’t want to talk about work on the weekend.”

“Oh, sure. Um, where did you grow up?”

“You taking notes over there?” Mercy sighed. “Rhode Island. We’re going to my ancestral home. I’ll introduce you to the family, then bury you in the basement and grow flowers from your corpse.”

“You’d only get wallflowers.”

Mercy laughed. It was rare to get anything more than a smirk from her, so I reveled in it, attempting awful pile-on jokes that weren’t funny but were in that moment. It loosened her up enough to give me the following information: Orange, obviously; Dogs, but they didn’t like her; Dr Pepper (blucky); and dill pickles (the monster).

When we hit Providence, Mercy showed me where her favorite music club, the Living Room, was. She idled on Promenade Street, and I jumped out to peer into the darkened windows and run my hands over posters from past and upcoming shows. As excited as I was to see the vaunted club, it was disappointing to find notices for shitty, cheesy bands like Extreme next to Living Colour and the Ramones. Even more of a bummer, I’d hoped against hope to see the promo for the 1987, November 11 Hüsker Dü show, as the band broke up exactly one month later.

Mercy said, “Punk is dead. You missed it. Bad luck, man. Long live punk.” She said it like she attended Bowery shows in 1976. It pissed me off because she was right, even if I aspired to fake it in a lifelong way.