Deborah Harry, formerly of Hawthorne, New Jersey, sits there. Deborah Harry, who arrived at the Seventies from the Sixties in a Camaro, eats tuna salad from a little cardboard container with a little plastic fork. Deborah Harry scratches her knee and speaks.

"Sorry I'm late," she says. She gestures toward the tuna salad in vague defense. The tuna is silent.

"How old are you?" I ask.

"I'm not telling." She laughs. The tuna doesn't.

"Come on. I won't snitch." I have made three different bets around town that I could get her to reveal her age. I'll bet on anything. Even broads.

"No, I'm not telling." She doesn't laugh this time.

"Why not? You can't be that old. You still menstruate, don't you?"

It's a Mexican stand-off. Thirty bucks down the drain. Maybe I can win it back at three-card monte. Life's like that. I pour grape juice into a coffee mug. I add club soda. I take a sip and light a Camel. Next question.

"Do you plan to still be rocking when you're 40?"

"I don't know. If I still have legs, I guess."

"Your legs. They're great. Do you shave them, or do you wax them?"

"Ugh! I pluck them. One hair at a time. I like the pain. I like the slow approach."

"Do you start from the ankle or the thigh?" Now we're talking.

"I work from the bottom up. It takes about a week for each leg."

"The ancient Romans were big on plucking. There's that great phrase from Persius, 'uolsas loeuia'—plucked smooth."

We speak for many minutes of legs and their lore. Each of us learns a great deal from the other. A mutual respect is born. In an atmosphere of great (albeit tuna-scented) ease, we pursue lesser matters.

"In a lot of stuff, like 'Rip Her To Shreds' and 'Just Go Away,' you come off pretty nasty. Do you think of yourself as a mean bitch?"

"No. I'm very nice to people. I mean, I have my bitchy side, but I don't think I'm really nasty. I think that a lot of other people probably think that I am. Fuck them."

"I think that love Is better when you're straight."

"Do you get a lot of groupies?" I'm fast today.

"Urn. Yeah, well, I have a lot of fans. I don't have sex with them, though. I live with Chris, and we're working together constantly, so I don't fool around. So far, nobody's been overly aggressive."

"What sort of fans does Blondie attract? I saw a bunch of beatniks at one of your shows."

"We get everybody. Our favorite audiences are those that applaud or dance. I like noisy crowds. I like them to yell. Whatever age, I don't care."

"Do you like foreigners?"

"Oh, yeah. It's really great over there. The English are really traditional rockers, really wild. At least they are for us. They get up and go crazy. A constant shouting and leaping and swaying. The audiences here are generally tamer. We always get encores in the States. That's not the problem. It's the general attitude, the general response. Appreciation is expressed differently here.

"Nobody in America is a 40-year-old rocker. Except for Jerry Lee. There are middle-aged rockers in England. Fortyyear-old guys with kids.

"Things take longer to catch on here. Everything is really spread-out and regional. I think the American people suffer from a lack of press: European press is very important. Here, television is what's important. Press makes more of an organized statement. The printed word is where it's at. Not some creep sitting on TV saying, 'Hi, there. Blah, blah, blah. Bye, there.' American culture has no definition because TV has no awareness. I think that the future hope of TV lies in video cassettes."

"The most satisfying feeling I have is when I'm straight."

"How come you don't have your own TV series? Blondes always do great on TV. Look at Suzanne Somers, or Hillary Brooke. Or how about movies? You could be in movies."

"I know. Yeah. A lot of our titles are stolen from movies. 'Kung Fu Girls,' 'Pretty Baby,' 'Heart Of Glass.' 'The Attack Of The Giant Ants' sounds like a movie title, but it isn't. Them was the movie with the giant ants.

"Our original title for 'Heart Of Glass' was 'The Disco Song,' which was kind of stupid. Mike Chapman, the producer, suggested we use 'Heart Of Glass.' It's the title of a German movie. I've never seen it."

"There's no such movie."

"Why would he lie to us?"

"The human mind has its mysteries. Why did Richard Speck kill eight nurses?"

We sit in silence and ponder the meaning of it all. The tuna salad is gone. Someday we, too, shall be gone. Our minds reel with revelation, and our lips curl slowly in wisdomful smiles. We know. Yes, no matter how fleeting our time, we know. Our souls are seeds in the wind of a vast and loamless dark. And I have to go to the bathroom.

"Tell me about your new album," I ask, with piss on my fingers.

"On one side, we're gonna do a 30-minute disco extravaganza. And I met Gene Simmons the other day. He's gonna write us a scenario for the other side."

"No country songs?"

"Nah, I'll leave that to the Ramones. Besides, there are already too many female country singers. There's no room for me in country music."

"Do you have housewife instincts?"

"I wouldn't mind being a mom. I already am a housewife, I guess. I vacuum once in a while."

"Don't wanna take pills and watch TV all day?"

"Oh, god, no. I think the top of my head might hit the ceiling."

"Do you like drugs?"

"Sometimes. I know it sounds crazy coming from somebody like me, but the most satisfying feeling I have is when I'm completely straight and accomplishing something. The feeling of accomplishment is what I really like, what I really get off on. I think that love is better when you're straight, no matter what anybody says. Everything is better when you're straight, except fucking up.

"I wouldn't mind being a mom. I already am a housewife."

"Lately, whenever I take anything, I regret it. But there have been times in my life when I really enjoyed taking dope. Right now I don't. I like what I do a lot. Dope is for when you're not satisfied with what you're doing. Drugs subtract. I'm talking about booze, too."

"What kind of birth control do you use?"

"Let's get back to music."

"For you, anything. In a lot of your stuff, especially early cuts like 'X Offender,' I hear the influence of classic girl groups, like the Crystals. Is that really there?"

"That was definitely there. That was Richard Gottehrer, the producer. He put that on there. He felt that it would really make 'X Offender' work better. We didn't write that intro, he did."

"Do you feel any ties to music of that era?"

"Oh, yeah, sure. I don't really wanna wallow in nostalgia, but I can't help but acknowledge the fact that Ronnie Spector's voice and Fontella Bass's voice were great inspirations to me. I love them. That style of music isn't really what I wanna do now. I don't even know if I could do it well, really."

"Do you see yourself as an extension of those girls?",

"No, because, despite what a lot of people think, I wasn't that old to be thoroughly living that existence. Music back then didn't mean all that much to me. In the mid-Sixties and date-Sixties, music had much more impact on me. Hendrix, Cream, the Beatles, the Stones, Janis. All that stuff."

"How come everybody calls Blondie a new wave group?"

"Um, well, I don't know. We're a pop group. We feel that we're part of the new wave, but when it comes down to musical definitions, we're definitely a pop group. We always tried to be a pop group."

"Did you start writing when you were a kid?"

"I seriously started to write in '64, '65. Poems. They weren't very good. I used to write little stories. Creative writing classes."

"Where'd you go to, school?"

"Hawthorne. I guess some people have fun in school, but I thought it was dull."

"Hawthorne is near Paterson, right?"

"Yeah. Both my grandmothers lived in Paterson."

"A lot of people don't believe that there is such a place. In the London Times, in 1965, there was a piece about William Carlos Williams's poem Paterson. They said that, 'Paterson is an imaginary town in New Jersey which Williams created as his symbol of America.' Thirteen miles outside Newark, and those limey intellectuals thought it was a myth."

"Paterson's a great fuckin' place. They're renovating a lot of the old buildings there. They're turning all those factories near the waterfall into SoHo-type lofts. Compared to Miami, where! was born, Paterson is a vision of paradise."

"Next time you pass through Newark, drop by my old man's bar."

"What's the name of it?"

"Nick's. Tell him you're a friend of mine. He'll give you a free glass of water."

"I'll do it."

"Deborah?"

"Yes, Rick."

"Nick."

"Nick."

"Say something deep "

"Deep. Let's see."

Deborah Harry reveals that she is intrigued by the subliminal effects that music has on people; that she thinks people should try to understand the psychic phenomena that exists within themselves; and that she is looking forward to taking space shuttles. In layman's terms, no less.

Far away, in the cold Atlantic, a spear pierces the lung of a tuna. Evening is upon us. We part.