A familiar tune plays over the elevator speaker.

So tonight I'm on my way up in the elevator, snail mail under my arm, and I'm already eating with chop sticks out of a box of chinese. Very faint over the elevator speaker, I pick up this marginally familiar tune.
When I arrive on my floor, there's a bum crashed against the hall wall, sucking cheap wine out of a box and playing blackjack on his pocket console.

A bum in the hall sucks wine from a box.

I ask him what floor the house DJ is on. "Forty four," he mumbles, not bothering to look up. I walk down, and the DJ is there behind a desk, spinning tunes off the net to pipe into the halls and stairwells and elevators of my building. I'd never talked with him before. A buddy of his is there on the screen, but they break off the chat when I approach.

The DJ is behind the desk, spinning tunes off the net.

I ask him if he's got anything on the Screaming Horse label. He leans back, frowning, and flips slowly through a rack of discs. "I don't sort by studio," he says, "what's the link ID?" I thought back. "T-D-P," I say, not really sure of it. "The Desert Peach," he says. "That's a German group, I think. Yeah, a new promo packet came in today ... " "I love that group," says the DJ's screen buddy from the monitor at the far end of the desk. The DJ is sorting through a mess of mail on his desk. "Here it is." He slides the latest issue of SPIN100 across the counter at me, and I see there's a torn shrinkwrap glued to the front cover, with a memorabilia 45 vinyl inside. "The Desert Peach" says the label in a fancy script, and there's a picture of the Peach, in his black leather, with his air guitar hanging loose at his side.

I pull my own copy of SPIN100 from the thin mail packet that's still tucked under my arm, and note the e-fund transfer voucher tacked to it's cover. The DJ is D-loading the album off the net, and when it's transferred to a fresh disc, he glances at the SPIN list and punches in the second track. It plays out loud on his local speaker set. First the drums, then the keys, and then in wonder I hear my own voice coming through on the backup vocal, with the air sax riffs between each verse. I'm smiling. "That's me on the sax," I tell the DJ. "Really?" He's impressed. "That's Peach's second album, their name album." He's nodding to the beat as he brings up the SPIN100 list on his screen. He's checking the credits. "You're Eddie Peece?" he asks me, and I nod my head yes. He looks back at the list. "You're at number nine and still climbing," he says.

"The Desert Peach" reads the label.

"I bet it'll go all the way to the top," says the DJ's screen pal, grinning. "The Desert Peach is a fuken great group," he says. "Cool."

T H E   E N D

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