Excerpt from All Tomorrow's Parties by Rob Spillman, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"A rave," he replies, all business.

"'Rave'?"

"Ja, rave. A big dance, mostly illegal, held in big, illegal spaces."

"Like here?" I ask, not getting it. I look to Elissa, but she also doesn't understand.

"How do you mean?" Michael asks.

I point to the street names on the flyer and his confusion cracks into a smile. "No, no. We meet here. Tomorrow night, starting at midnight, every half hour, one of us will come here and take you to the place of the rave."

"Which is where?" I ask.

"You Americans are funny, yes?"


We debate going to the rave, whatever a rave is, but it isn't much of a debate. Of course I'm going to jump into the abyss. That's what I do—throw myself into the unknown. So, twenty-four hours later, flyer in hand, at exactly midnight I jump on the back of the sparkling blue Vespa, driven by a young East German I hardly know, who has promised to take me someplace secret and spectacular. Michael takes off before the other Vespa, sparkling red, pulls to a stop in front of Elissa. She scrambles behind the unknown woman and they set off after us. I hold tight and we fly the two-block length of Helmholtzplatz park, then past the even smaller Kollwitzplatz park, weaving our way through scattered cobblestones and torched Communist cardboard cars, Wartburgs and Trabants, stacked like charred logs under the dead street lamps. I feel like I'm in Fellini's Roma, a camera mounted on a scooter gliding through Rome at night, the Vespa's soft, sweeping light illuminating ancient fountains and statues. But in reality, in the here and now, this Vespa's narrow beam of weak white light is cutting through the stark blackness, catching obstacles so that we don't crash out on the cobbles.

Last night's battle between the skinheads and anarchists has coated the streets with smashed Molotovs. Michael tries to avoid the bigger shards as we zigzag out of Prenzlauer Berg and toward the Wall. Around the corners I check behind for the trailing Vespa's yellow beam. I briefly wonder if Elissa is scared or thrilled—she doesn't speak German and I don't know how much English her driver has. I shelve that worry, as we are now heading straight for the Wall, but a short block away, Michael lurches us hard right along a road that parallels the clean gray slabs of concrete.

We cruise past long-abandoned warehouses and industrial buildings and at each intersection I see the Wall, a hundred feet to the left, its faintly iridescent whitish gray visible for a second, then gone, glimpsed, gone again.

"Hang on," Michael says, and switches off his light. He drives blind for a bumpy minute, then swings the Vespa left, toward a warehouse, a large dark door coming into focus. It opens right before we reach it, then slams shut as soon as we are inside. Pitch black. Where is Elissa? Should I run out? Before I reach full-on panic, the door flies open and the second Vespa coasts in. The door bangs shut with a metallic clang and several flashlights click on.

"Here. You will need this," Michael says, and hands me a small plastic flashlight.

I aim the light at Elissa, who gives me a questioning look, and I shrug.

"Bitte, gehen sie jetzt," a young man says, impatiently pointing his flashlight toward the water-stained back of the room. His eyes are all pupil and he is sweating, his jaw fiercely working over a piece of gum.

I wave goodbye to Michael and follow the sweating man to the other side of the small, white-tiled room and through a set of steel doors that lead to a stairwell. Banish all bad thoughts— we're not going to get rolled. It's all good. Follow the signs. I squeeze Elissa's hand to reassure her, and myself. We skip down one flight of steps, then another, trying to keep up with our hopped-up leader. Two floors below street level, our Orpheus pushes open a creaky black metal door, revealing a vast, flooded basement, strewn with rubble and industrial detritus.

Excerpted from All Tomorrow's Parties by Rob Spillman. Copyright © 2016 by Rob Spillman. Excerpted by permission of Grove Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.