Checker and the Derailleurs

Checker and the Derailleurs Lionel Shriver From the Orange Prize winning author of We Need to Talk About Kevin this is a novel about what it takes to make it in music. How charisma is worth its weight in gold. And how jealously can grow until it has eaten away at a musician’s heart.He has that thing that they’d all pay for but can’t buy: on stage and off, the 19-year-old rock drummer Checker Secretti is electric. When he plays with his band The Derailleurs, the natives of Astoria, Queens clamour for a piece of him. But charisma comes at a price. A Salieri to Checker’s Mozart, the fiercely envious fellow drummer Eaton Striker is eager to sow discord among the Derailleurs, that he might replace the exasperatingly popular goody-goody in the close-knit neighbourhood’s affections.An examination of the passion, the jealousy and the friendship of young musicians trying to break out, Checker and The Derailleurs is also about cycling, rock lyrics, glass blowing, the marriage of convenience, and—most of all—the mystery of joy. Copyright (#u01109050-7a1b-5d9c-9735-849b24773c94) The Borough Press An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1, London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk) Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2015 First published in the USA by Farrar, Straus and Giroux 1988 Copyright © Lionel Shriver 1988 Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2015 Cover photograph © Shutterstock.com (http://www.Shutterstock.com) Lionel Shriver asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it, while at times based on historical figures, are the work of the author’s imagination. The author gratefully acknowledges permission to quote from the following published works: “Bang the Drum All Day” by Todd Rundgren, copyright © 1983 Fiction Music, Inc./Humanoid Music (BMI), all rights reserved / “Eleanor Rigby,” words and music by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, copyright © 1966 Northern Songs Ltd., all rights for the U.S., Canada and Mexico controlled and administered by Blackwood Music Inc. under license from ATV Music (MACLEN), all rights reserved, international copyright secured, used by permission / “Darkness” by Stewart Copeland, copyright © 1981 Reggatta Music, Ltd., administered by Atlantic Music Corporation / “Dancing in the Dark” by Bruce Springsteen, copyright © 1984 Bruce Springsteen, all rights reserved, used with permission / “Blinded by the Light” by Bruce Springsteen copyright © 1973 Bruce Springsteen, all rights reserved, used with permission / “Save the Life of My Child” by Paul Simon, copyright © 1968 Paul Simon, used by permission, Inc., all rights reserved, used by permission / “Love over Gold” by Mark Knopfler, copyright © 1982 Chariscourt Ltd. (PRS), all rights administered in the U.S. and Canada by Almo Music Corp. (ASCAP), all rights reserved international copyright secured / “The Man’s Too Strong” by Mark Knopfler, copyright © 1985 Chariscourt Limited (PRS), all rights administered by Rondor Music (London) Ltd., administered in the U.S. and Canada by Almo Music Corp (ASCAP), all rights reserved, international copyright secured. The drawings reproduced in Checker and The Derailleurs are by Lionel Shriver. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books Source ISBN: 9780007564033 Ebook Edition © 2015 ISBN: 9780007564040 Version: 2015-01-13 Dedication (#u01109050-7a1b-5d9c-9735-849b24773c94) To someone who doesn’t deserve it, as he very well knows (#u01109050-7a1b-5d9c-9735-849b24773c94) Well I have tried to be meek And I have tried to be mild But I spat like a woman And sulked like a child … And I can still hear his laughter And I can still hear his song The man’s too big The man’s too strong DIRE STRAITS “The Man’s Too Strong,” Brothers in Arms Table of Contents Cover (#u6bd234eb-9984-585c-b6be-34a3b484735f) Title Page (#u8160323d-86d7-5b1b-99d5-4338dc890e9e) Copyright (#u5b10c8c0-84ce-5a3f-a870-0326cf7df146) Dedication (#uea349b4f-0e01-508c-8e19-3d0394b0b672) Epigraph (#ud67b25d5-5da2-55f2-a9d1-875cd4cb0c09) 1. blinded by the light (#u77c2fddc-e021-5e9a-8382-884e0d041b15) 2. blood and crystal (#u54e6e9fb-4811-55c2-a558-f892603646d2) 3. bad company (#u8f3ce3f4-657d-5a3f-8a31-3a2b97b0ab31) 4. the house of the fire queen (#ub19e3abe-cb07-5b21-83bb-6aa1f33e5137) 5. bye, bye, miss american pie (#u5bd53287-8c92-5904-816c-3320e3103660) 6. simply red (#litres_trial_promo) 7. my love is chemical (#litres_trial_promo) 8. hot rocks, or: the igneous apartment (#litres_trial_promo) 9. in defense of subjective reality (#litres_trial_promo) 10. howard and the flow state (#litres_trial_promo) 11. the newlywed game (#litres_trial_promo) 12. don’t be crue (#litres_trial_promo) 13. too much information (#litres_trial_promo) 14. close to the edge (#litres_trial_promo) 15. it’s hard to be a saint in the city (#litres_trial_promo) 16. why we fought world war II (#litres_trial_promo) 17. the checkers speech (#litres_trial_promo) 18. the party’s over (#litres_trial_promo) 19. the last supper (#litres_trial_promo) 20. into white (#litres_trial_promo) 21. a cappella in the underpass (#litres_trial_promo) 22. a little help from my friends (#litres_trial_promo) 23. the ghost in the machine (#litres_trial_promo) 24. comfortably numb (#litres_trial_promo) 25. spirits in the material world (#litres_trial_promo) epilogue. oh, you mean that checker secretti (#litres_trial_promo) footnotes (#litres_trial_promo) index of song titles (#litres_trial_promo) About the Book (#litres_trial_promo) Praise for Checker and The Derailleurs (#litres_trial_promo) About the Author (#litres_trial_promo) Also by Lionel Shriver (#litres_trial_promo) About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo) Checker’s favorite color is red 1 / blinded by the light (#u01109050-7a1b-5d9c-9735-849b24773c94) Foreboding overcame Eaton Striker well before The Derailleurs began to play. Much as Eaton would have preferred to chum obliviously with his friends, he could only stare at the stage as the drummer stepped up to those ramshackle Leedys and the damned skins began to purr. “Who is that?” asked Eaton, not sure he really wanted to know. The drummer percolated on his throne, never still, bloop, bloop, like coffee in the morning—that color; that welcome. “Checker Secretti,” said Brinkley, with irritating emphasis. “Where have you been, the moon?” “He’s talking to his traps!” exclaimed Eaton, in whose disturbed imagination the instruments were answering back. “Yeah, he did that last time,” said Brinkley the Expert. “Checker’s a bit touched, if you ask me.” “I didn’t.” Eaton slouched in his chair. The humidity here was curiously high. A plumbing problem in the basement dripped right on the heater, so the whole club felt like a steam room—there was actually a slight fog; vapor beaded on the windowpanes. A proliferation of candles sent soft, flickering profiles against the walls. With its vastly unremarkable decor, Eaton couldn’t explain the crawling effect of the place as he nestled down in the seductively comfortable chair, taking deeper, slower breaths and saying nicer things to his friends. Eaton squirmed. He tried to sit up straight. He looked suspiciously into his Johnnie Walker, thinking, Black, hah! since places like this bought gallons of Vat 69 and funneled it into name-brand bottles. Yet this was confoundingly good whiskey, some of the best he’d ever tasted. The waitress, though definite woof-woof material at first glance, now looked pretty. Eaton felt he was drowning and fought violently to rise to the surface, to breathe cold, hard air, to hear his own voice with its familiar steeliness, instead of the mushy, underwater murmur it had acquired since they’d sat down. The drums sounded so eager, so excited. Checker laid a stick, once, bip, on the snare and it jumped; so did Eaton. Every time a quick rat-tat rang through the room, the audience looked up; the waitress turned brightly to the stage. When Checker nudged the bass to adjust the blanket curled inside its shell, women at tables stroked their own hair; men extended languorously into the aisles. The beater sent a shudder through the length of Eaton’s body. Eaton had been taking drum lessons from an expensive instructor in Manhattan since he was seven, and though he hardly ever heard a song that was fully to his liking, when that rare riff floated over the airways a cut above the ordinary fill, he took notice. Eaton was a snob, and would admit it to anyone, but in some ways he really was better than these people, rightfully not at home in provincial Astoria. He was bright; he had an uncanny sense of other people, even if it was largely for their failings; and he knew excellence. So while somewhere in the boy’s mind he was aware that he didn’t hear it when he himself played, he was hearing it now. The first phrase rose and fell like a breath. Sticks rippled like muscle, and teased, tingling, resting on the edge of the ride. Again, Eaton involuntarily inhaling with them, the blond sticks curled up to the snare and spread to the toms, the crash, to ting, ting, ting … Someone laughed. Checker skimmed his tips across the supple ridges of the brass, raising the long, dark hairs on Eaton’s arms. Yet Eaton could see Checker was just loosening up, ranging around the drums as if stretching at the start of a day. He kept low through the whole of “Frozen Towels.” Slowly through “Fresh Batteries,” though a strange blissful smile crept onto his face, and the music began to move underneath like lava with a crust on top—the cooler surface would crack in places, show red, let out steam; all at once the music would move forward, rushing into the club like a flow, veined with the sure signs of a dangerous interior. The keyboardist had to stand up, pushing his chair back; the musicians out front gradually stepped away to give the drums more space, until, there, pouring from the back of the stage, came an unrestrained surge of rhythm like a red wall of melted rock. Yet later Checker slowed the lava, the blood, to a sly trickle. The restraint hurt to hear. The rest of the band, too, retreated to small, stingy sounds. The club grew stupendously quiet. Not a drink clinked, not a shoe scuffled. The sax thinned to a spidery thread of a note; the keyboard took to a small high chord; the bassist and lead guitarist hugged their instruments selfishly to their bodies, and no sooner struck a note than took it back. But quietest of all were the drums, pattering, the sticks like fingertips, until Checker was no longer on the heads themselves but only on the rims, ticking, rapid, but receding all the more. The audience was leaning forward, barely breathing. But the sound, meanly, left them, though it was a good five seconds before they realized that the band had ceased to play. In the midst of this silence Checker began to laugh. “Clap, you sons of bitches!” And they did. Eaton excused himself to go to the men’s room. He leaned over the sink, bracing his hands on either side of the porcelain, panting. Looking up in the mirror, he found his usually handsome, narrow face pasty, with sweat at the hairline. Eaton leaned against the wall with his eyes closed and waited there through the entire break. For the second set, Eaton could listen more clinically. He noted the tunes were original and several had to do with bicycling, of all things, like the name of the band: “Cotterless Cranks,” “Big Bottom Bracket,” “Flat without a Patchkit on the Palisades” “Cycle Killer” and “Blue Suede Brakeshoes.” Or “Perpendicular Grates (#litres_trial_promo),” to which Eaton caught most of the words: Don’t jump your red tonight, You big yellow Checker. I’m coming through the light At its last yellow flicker. Shine your bulging brights Right into my reflectors. Listen close and you might Hear my freewheel ticker-ticker. Hey, city slickers: Lay perpendicular grates! Chuck those rectangular plates! One pothole on Sixth Avenue Goes all the way to China. I am a midtown Pedal pusher. I am a traffic Bushwhacker. My brakes are clogged With little children. Greasy strays Keep my gears workin’. Doggies, watch your tails; Old ladies, hold your bladders. Scarvy starlets, trim your sails Or choke on Isadora tatters. Better step back to the curb— Enough women are battered. Brave Lolitas, round the curve, You don’t want to be flatter. Hey, hard-hatters: Lay perpendicular grates! Chuck those rectangular plates! One pothole on Sixth Avenue Goes all the way to China. I am a midtown Pedal-pusher. I am a traffic Bushwhacker. My brakes are clogged With little children. Greasy strays Keep my gears workin’ … Eaton told himself that songs about bicycling were silly. He even managed to turn to Brinkley between tunes and advise him, “You know, technically, the guy’s a mess.” True, Checker played as if he’d never had a drum lesson in his life. He held his sticks like pencils. Yet Eaton had never seen such terrific independence, for Checker’s hands were like two drastically different children of the same parents—one could read in the corner while the other played football. What was Eaton going to do? Bitchy carping from the sidelines wouldn’t improve matters. And everyone looked so happy! The band and the audience together swayed on the tide of Checker Secretti’s rolling snare. How does he do it? Even the little singer, a perpetually dolorous girl by all appearances, had a quiet glow, like a night-light. Eaton actually wondered for one split second, since he knew percussion better than anyone in the club, why he wasn’t the happiest person here. But that moment passed, and had such a strange quality that he didn’t even retain a memory of it, until Eaton was left at the end of the last set wishing to plant Plato’s and everyone in it three miles deep in the Atlantic, safely buried below schools of barracuda, in airtight drums like toxic waste. Yet, more or less, Eaton had decided what to do. After the applause and catcalls had died down, Eaton turned to Brinkley and said severely, “Brink, you dungwad, you told me that Secretti was okay.” “I didn’t say he, like, raised the dead or anything.” “Could’ve been playing trash cans with chopsticks,” said Gilbert. “Not like Eat here. Now, Eat’s a drummer.” “Uh-huh,” said Eaton, turning to Rad. “And what did you make of Secretti?” Rad twisted a little. During the performance he’d been nodding his head and tapping the table with the heel of his beer. “Bang, bang. Another local band. They’ll be gone soon. The world won’t have changed much.” Eaton surveyed his compatriots in silence. All three of them were nervous and weren’t sure why. “So you three”—Eaton rolled the ice around his glass—“think he sucks? Basically?” They shuffled and nodded. “Then you all have dicks for brains.” “What?” they asked in unison. “The man is brilliant. Steve Gadd raised to a goddamned power. One fresh piece of cake in a pile of stale Astoria corn muffins and you guys don’t know the difference.” “But you said technically he’s a mess—” “Unorthodox. May not have much training. All the more impressive, then. The man’s a genius.” Eaton’s three henchmen were staring at their friend as if he’d just announced he was giving up rock and roll for polka music. “Yeah, well,” said Brinkley. “I said he was okay, right?” “Okay!” Eaton rolled his eyes and stood up. “With this crowd I need drink.” He walked away and didn’t come back. “That was exemplary.” Plato’s may never have heard the word “exemplary” before; its syllables queered against the walls. “I was humbled,” Eaton went on, bent formally at the waist, as if he’d watched too much Masterpiece Theatre. “You’re a giant. And far better than these people know.” “I think they know us just fine,” said Checker, looking disconcerted. Compliments made him queasy. Checker himself didn’t think about the way he played. He didn’t want to, either. “You’re better than you know,” Eaton pressed. “It’s time someone told you. So, please.” Eaton handed Checker his card. “I know the names of some club owners in Manhattan. Or if you need anything at all, please call. Good night, all.” With a quick flourish Eaton made a swift departure. After all, he wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep this up. In the defined caste of high school, Eaton Striker had played a precise role, exactly shy of stardom. He passed that crucial test: more students knew his name than he knew theirs. He was The Drummer, and relished sitting in the cafeteria with a drumstick stuck behind his ear, ticking paradiddles on his tray with silverware. Yet while his traps and his rock bands saved him from obscurity, they didn’t secure him quite the premier position he felt he deserved. There was always one more table next to his where every student yearned to sit, and they’d settle for Eaton’s only when the first was full. In every area Eaton was plagued with not-quiteness. There was a particular lancet-witted brunette, Stephanie, whose quips in his direction prickled his skin like the sting of a slap, but that was all the tribute he could win from her; on the other hand, Stephanie’s slightly less attractive, slightly less sharp best friend showed up for every one of Eaton’s early gigs. Now, he did finally acquiesce and take Charlotte as his girlfriend, enjoying the pleasant lopsidedness of the relationship—she typed his papers and packed his drums and ruined a perfectly good denim jacket with embroidery as a “surprise.” All he had to do in return was treat her badly, for which Eaton seemed to have been born with a certain gift. But seeing Charlotte with first prize was torture. Eaton was dating the kewpie doll while someone else was wrapped around the big stuffed bear. All second prizes are insults. Eaton believed that. When in the senior talent show his band, Nuclear War, was awarded second place, Eaton strode from the stage and in front of the whole assembly stuffed the certificate perfunctorily in a trash can. When Eaton’s cronies nominated him for student council office, it was for vice president; he lost to a girl. Even Eaton’s grades were never perfectly straight-A. There was always one teacher who had it in for him in one of those mealy subjects—English, social studies—where the teacher’s feeble judgment came into play. Eaton preferred math—his work was right or wrong, whether or not the instructor despised him. For while Eaton was never directly insolent, his sly, grimly bemused expression nagged his teachers like a persistent hangnail. Whenever they talked to him after class he turned his head to watch them out of the corners of his eyes, his responses laconic; he always seemed to indicate that a great deal was being left unsaid. On any point of conflict his teachers quickly abandoned personal appeals and fell back on brisk legalistic resolutions. These were uneasy relationships. Eaton’s intelligence would never redound to his teachers’ glory. Rather, each would shine at the expense of the other. That was the stanchion of Eaton’s world view, and it was contagious. So Eaton was the hero of the B+ students, revered by the type in elementary school picked third or fourth for a kickball team of ten. Burdened by Eaton’s disappointment, his following had a high turnover; his rock bands were always breaking up. At the moment, out of school over half a year now, Eaton was once more without a band, and it was harder to assemble a new one without high school; he paged through the ads in the SoHo News listlessly on Saturday afternoons. Eaton yearned for caliber. The idea of collecting one more second-rate rock band filled him with a precocious exhaustion. That Eaton would end up at Plato’s was inevitable. By January he had been actively avoiding the place, spending Friday nights instead at Billy’s Pub, Grecian Gardens, Taverna 27, bars that never managed to persuade you they were anything more than rooms with bottles, full of bowlers and plumbers all too eager to confide the trials of the kind of life Eaton planned to transcend. Yet even Taverna 27 was better than the chromier corners, decorated like Alexander’s at Christmas and cranking out Van Halen on the juke, cramped with high-school juniors constantly combing their hair. Eaton was only nineteen, but he’d said goodbye to all that. There was always Manhattan, but Eaton hated coming back at four in the morning on the subway with all the plebes who couldn’t afford a car. Eaton couldn’t afford a car, either, but he was the kind of person who really should have been able to, and a pretty damned nice car at that. (Eaton’s sense of justice was frequently confounded. Eaton should have X and Eaton did have Y, and the disparity didn’t anger him exactly—his reaction was deeper than that. It disturbed him. When Eaton didn’t get what he deserved, he felt the earth—move—under his feet—Carole King. Yich.) In the city, scrunched against the bar with his friends, Eaton would slip the straw of his screwdriver between a gap in his teeth, having to repeat three times over the music how these clubs were “tedious,” though he privately considered them far more evil than that—the heaving, shifting mass of dancers would undulate and suck against him like some lowlife sea creature, swallowing him in anonymity, digesting him alive and spitting his remains out the door at three, forty dollars poorer. Furthermore, Eaton was underage, and though he usually cooled his way past the bouncer by paying the cover with an unusually large bill, Eaton craved legitimation. He hated being nineteen. He remembered with humiliation the other night at Van Dam’s, when the thirtyish man beside him had asked him, as a drummer, what did he think of “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida”? “Amusing, but finally bogus. I didn’t go along with the brouhaha over the album when it first came out.” “Come on!” said the man. “It came out in ’68! You were listening to Iron Butterfly when you were one?” Eaton couldn’t wait to turn thirty and do the same thing to kids sitting next to him. In the meantime, he listened to the radio with a pencil, and haunted the aisles of Tower Records like a law student in the stacks, studying jackets like torts, reading the fine print—dates, producers. He put together histories of who left what band and started this one, reading Rolling Stone cover to cover, determined never to be caught out by aging rock has-beens in Manhattan again. Eaton yearned for a club where patrons knocked him on the shoulder and cleared room for him at the bar, where the waitresses knew him by name and remembered his liquor brands. Eaton liked to be recognized, and Astoria should have been the place for that; a small-towny Greek neighborhood in Queens with friendly shopkeepers and good-old-boy bars, Astoria would transplant easily to the middle of Iowa. Eaton’s failure to carve a niche even here was one more of those disconcerting challenges to his stature, for if he went to the same bar several nights running, Eaton would sure enough get recognized, but no one seemed very happy to see him. Besides, everyone said Plato’s was “good,” though the word had put Eaton off distinctly. They said it the way you’d say a “good woman,” meaning ugly. Plato’s was a “good club” the way you’d say Jerusalem was good, somewhere in the Bible. The following Friday night Eaton kept putting on his coat and taking it off again. He’d flounce in a chair, tap his fingers, turn up the radio—Journey. Awful. Off. Tap, tap, tap. Finally, he grabbed the cashmere once and for all and rushed out the door. Gliding in with his crew, Eaton glanced hastily around the club; when he failed to find what he was looking for, his stomach sank, just as it had when Charlotte showed up at his gigs without Stephanie. The place suddenly felt flat. This time, Eaton wondered why he’d concerned himself with Plato’s at all—low-lit and woody, with no track lighting or rippling bulbs around the bar, the club made no effort at any kind of effect. Furthermore, at almost midnight, there was no music. Maybe The Derailleurs were on a break, but if so they couldn’t have bubbled anybody’s hormones—the immediate feeling of the crowd was subdued, even depressed. No one was talking very loud, and everyone seemed sober. “This place is sure different from last time,” said Brinkley. “This isn’t a club, it’s a morgue!” said Gilbert. They sat in the corner, refreshingly disgusted. “I thought there was supposed to be live music here,” Eaton charged the waitress. She sighed. “Well, it’s happened again. You know. Check. Maybe next week. Maybe even tomorrow.” “You lost me.” She looked at Eaton more closely. “Oh, you’re new here, aren’t you?” “I have to be a member?” “No, it’s just regulars are used to this. Checker—disappears.” Raising her eyes enigmatically, she swished her tray to the next table. That explained it, for the rest of The Derailleurs were all propped at the front table. Breathing in her cloying wake reminded Eaton of passing cosmetics counters, with their nauseating reek of mixed perfumes. Standing abruptly in the middle of Brinkley and Gilbert’s riveting debate over tequila-salt-lemon vs. tequila-lemon-salt, Eaton swirled his black cashmere greatcoat around his shoulders and strode to the lead guitar. “Not playing tonight?” Eaton inquired. “Our head man just won an all-expenses-paid trip to Florida,” said the blond longhair dourly. “That’s surprising, for a band with your reputation—” “What have you heard about The Derailleurs?” asked the straight kid, whose ears stuck out from his head. “We don’t need to hear about The Derailleurs, Howard,” said the longhair. “We are The Derailleurs. We know all about us already.” “I was wondering,” said Eaton, “since your delinquent member—” “Nobody said he a delinquent,” said the big black bassist. “Your man in Florida, then.” “Our man,” said the bassist firmly, “period.” Eaton took a breath and smiled. “Of course. It’s just, I’ve kicked around the drums myself. I’m only so good, but if you stuck to covers I could keep a steady three-four. I wouldn’t presume to equal your own stunning percussionist. But for the hell of it, maybe I could fill in?” Eaton looked gamely around the table. “As the manager—” Howard began. “Howard listens,” said the guitarist. “Would he like to listen tonight?” asked Eaton solicitously. “No.” They turned toward the end of the table. The Middle Eastern saxophonist had folded his arms. “We half our drummer.” “On the contrary,” said Eaton, “it seems that you don’t.” “You say you not so good. Why we play with you, not-so-good?” “Excuse me, but can he understand me? I see we have some second-language problems here.” “Rrreal fine, slime mold,” said the saxophonist for himself. “Aw, can it, Hijack,” said the bassist. “Check on vacation, pull this night out somehow. Let’s play.” Rolling to a stand, he led the rest of the band to the dais. Eaton took his seat on the throne and pulled his own drumsticks out of his greatcoat. He tested the tom and it went thwap! What? The heads were completely loosened—and no wonder. Calf skins! There wasn’t a rock drummer in this country who used calf skins. With annoyance, Eaton went through the tedious process of racheting the lugs tight and testing around the rim to get them even. Somehow they—resisted. The heads weren’t interested in attaining the tautness Eaton required. Eaton tried the tuning with a snappy run around the pieces. God, what a pile of tin cans. The hardware rattled. There was a buzz in the bass. And the whole set was ancient, big band or before, though Eaton did admire the Zildjian-K’s—you hardly ever saw those nowadays, hand-hammered Armenian cymbals, exquisitely thin. Even the ride rang with a long resonant shimmer at the touch of his stick, though to Eaton’s taste they were a little oversensitive; they—winced. He eyed the set; it seemed to eye him back. But Eaton knew how to discipline inanimate objects. Whenever his possessions broke, which was often, he imagined he was getting the last laugh. “Boys and girls, you may have heard we’ve been caught out Checkless,” the lanky guitarist began. “However, with a volunteer from our studio audience, we’ll proceed. In consideration of our guest, only familiar favorites, please.” When they began with “Louie, Louie,” the whole band had their ears cocked for Eaton’s drumming, though that proved unnecessary—they could barely hear anything else. The guitarist forced his voice; the bassist turned up his level; the keyboardist, something of a delicate touch the weekend before, torqued up his electric piano. When Hijack opened into a sax solo, Eaton bore down all the more, until the horn player was inserting the mic in his bell. At the end of the song, the saxophonist turned to Eaton behind him. “You break Sheckair’s head,” he said quietly, “I break yours.” As they grated through Hard Cheese’s “Two Is a Crowd” and on to “Johnny B. Good,” Eaton pushed the tempo when the lead slowed down; he dragged just as the bass thrummed forward. Because drums set the standard, this left the musicians out front sounding out of sync. Further, even when the band was playing together, they all rushed toward the song’s conclusion, as if to end was to win, as if the reason to play it was to get it over with. And it wasn’t only Eaton, either. They all lashed their instruments, spitting the words out like projectiles they hoped would hit someone on the head. You got the feeling that after listening to a song like that Johnny would be very, very bad. With “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” Plato’s moist air turned acrid with evaporating sweat. The crowd, though not seemingly disappointed, was unusually rude; one patron in the back kept yelling, “Kill ’em!” waving his hands until he spilled his beer. A fight broke out by the bar; waitresses got testy and started carding; boys got grabby and girls got bitchy; customers recklessly mixed their poisons and threw up in the bathroom. Still, they were all apparently convinced they were having a wonderful time. When the band took a break, The Derailleurs save the Middle Eastern muttered something to Eaton about “good job,” but their remarks were muffled and short. Everyone but the girl went to swill down something stiff. Eaton felt the victim of a great lack of generosity. He may not have ever experienced genuine, spontaneous acclaim, but he knew this wasn’t it. When Eaton sat down for the next set the drums glared at him like prison labor. Eaton outdid himself. The toms tippled in their brackets; the bass edged gradually from his foot; the Zildjian-K’s began to tremble from the shadow of his hand. He broke five hickory drumsticks. The guitarist suggested they do a slow song and let the girl sing. Rachel DeBruin had a sweet, mournful presence that could surely calm the band down, and maybe the crowd, now growing unruly. The band never had her sing too often, since she made audiences pensive; she recalled lost summers and first loves. On good nights she could raise a napkin to the corner of a biker’s eye. Tonight, however, they would settle for quiet. Yet when she sang “The Last Time I Saw Richard,” its sweet romantic disappointment bittered; the other musicians harmonized in their heads. Welsher, thought Caldwell, the guitarist. His “friend” J.K. had owed him fifty dollars since July. Strumming next to Caldwell, J.K. felt his bass droop; he’d been lugging mail sacks for the post office all week, and his arms were tired. Two of his friends had left for Jamaica earlier in the week, but J.K. couldn’t go, no—as usual. He had a wife and daughter to support. What a hero, he thought sourly. All day long postcards had spilled from his sacks, of palm trees, greased-up girls, with messages like “Water warm, rum cheap.” The keyboardist, Carl Ming, kept forgetting the chords, but helplessly remembering everything else—fifth grade came at him like a submarine torpedo: four boys, a big brass spatula for a paddle, and a fence. Since his childhood was enough of a torment the first time, “Quiet Carl” wasn’t the nostalgic type; memory itself was assault. Howard glared from the front table. They thought they were so hot, prancing around on stage. All the errands he ran for those guys, their thanks jokes at his expense. Airheads. Howard recited to himself his very high SAT scores. Meanwhile, the Middle Eastern saxophonist glanced disdainfully down at the audience. Self-satisfied Americans. Rich land, good weather, all those cars, completely wasted on 240 million fat sheep. In the song, a woman sits in a bar getting drunk, mooning over an old boyfriend; the place is about to close, and the waitress wants her to finish her drink. That’s me, thought Rachel. Twenty years from now, that’s me. Same bar, same man. That bastard. Some days I don’t know what I want more, to slit his throat or mine. Yet Eaton, insofar as he was capable of the emotion, was perfectly happy. So there you have The Derailleurs—a motley or tropical crew, depending on your mood. The picture of that obscure Queens rock band, tripping over frayed cords fat with electrician’s tape, could appear credibly striking, but you have to look at them right. Otherwise, especially with indigestion or maybe just an indigenously surly disposition, you might notice how Caldwell is overdrawn, like a cartoon—his nose is enormous, his arms are too long, a vein on his temple protrudes. He jitters around the stage in a panic, constantly adjusting amp settings and checking the jacks, in the grip of some terror, but only nineteen—what is there to be afraid of? Rachel, lost in her big maroon sweater half unraveled down the front, is arguably mousy. She always looks at the floor. Rachel is Bowie’s original China Doll, perched on the edge of the stage—when she shatters you won’t want to be around to pick up the pieces. Someday someone will have to take the blame for Rachel DeBruin. J.K.? One more hunky black kid, likes his beer, his rock and roll—a known quantity. Hijack, whose real name is Rahim Abdul, is too pretty for a boy. And in New York you sure get tired of foreigners. Those accents aren’t quaint or exotic anymore after about week 6 here. From then on, it’s just, I need a cabbage, a small one; Excuse—? A cabbage! Like that. Quiet Carl never says a damn thing, and who needs that. As for Howard Williams, their “manager”? Squid. Boat shoes! Oh, he isn’t exactly ugly—Howard has even, regular American features with nice thick brown American hair—but to whatever degree looks are style, Howard is hideous. However, it would be possible to execute a little turn like flicking the channel over and back again; the picture, black and white a moment before, blushes to color. Suddenly the spotlight on stage shadows Caldwell’s face with the exotic expressions of a Kabuki mask. He has long, elegant fingers. His hair is bright gold. True, he’s frightened, but at nineteen there’s plenty to be afraid of, like the rest of your life. Rachel is no longer mousy, but delicate. If you circled your thumb and middle finger around her wrist, both end joints would overlap. J.K. is big rather than fat, comfortable and unpretentious as an overstuffed armchair. And so what if Rahim is pretty? Beautiful teeth—matched pearls, a two-string smile. Further, sometimes it’s possible to recuperate that delight in foreigners you had when you first came to New York. His r’s roll like water. Quiet Carl has a story, and you like stories. Howard is handsome, and you’re dying to tell him that. You want to take him shopping and buy him some shirts with color and jeans that don’t hike up like that, Hi-Tops instead of boat shoes. But you won’t. And Howard will keep buying the pale plaids and jeans that are big in the waist and short in the leg, and that makes you smile, because people are astonishingly consistent, so carefully themselves. You don’t mind. Why, he’s the only person you know who wears boat shoes. What if you added Checker Secretti to this picture? Well, if your mood is sour, Checker isn’t very impressive. Few people seem to notice that he isn’t very tall, but you would notice. His brown skin, kinky hair, and blue eyes would disturb you, for you can’t quite tell what race he is, and it’s stressful when people resist normal categories. You might say he’s “cute,” but he’s no head turner. Not even as straight-out good-looking as, say, Eaton Striker. In fact, you would think this specifically: Not as good-looking as Eaton Striker, since, if you were eyeing Checker Secretti with just this narrow annoyance, you would be Eaton Striker. But if you feel fine? If you understand that people are attractive not just for their strengths but for their shortcomings? Then how would Checker Secretti look? You might see the shadow of a nose, the flicker of a hand, a rolled-up sleeve of bright red cotton, but you wouldn’t see the man from head to toe, and it wouldn’t occur to you to wonder whether he was a head turner, because, leaning in the frame of the door, you would have to be Checker Secretti himself. 2 / blood and crystal (#u01109050-7a1b-5d9c-9735-849b24773c94) … and when you finally reappear / at the place where you came in / you’ve thrown your love to all the strangers / and caution to the wind— “Sheckair!” Rahim stopped cold in the middle of “Love over Gold” and unstrapped his sax to bound from the stage. The rest of the band dribbled off; Eaton was the last to stop playing. Running to the doorway, Rahim clapped Checker’s hand and turned him fully around like a square-dance figure, laughed, and planted a big, unembarrassed kiss on each of Checker’s cheeks. Between three and five, Plato’s usually settled down to a small core of customers; The Derailleurs would put away their instruments and everyone put his feet up. The drinking slowed to a trickle, and even diehard rockers grew philosophical. Not tonight. They all pulled on their coats when Check walked forward, slinking out of the club hastily as if leaving the scene of a crime. “You just get here?” asked Caldwell, fidgeting with his gig bag. “Caught some of that last set.” “Yeah, well.” A strap was caught in the zipper, and Caldwell went about solving the problem intently. “Just screwing around. You weren’t here.” “We’ve been through this.” “Well, you can’t expect us to be any good,” Caldwell burst out, “without you.” Checker’s eyes were steady, neutral. “It was interesting.” “You are toast, man,” said J.K. “I am a little tired.” Checker turned. “Howard, you arranged a substitute. Good management.” Howard envied Rahim’s leaping Virginia Reel, but could only swing an awkward, premeditated hug. “You look terrible!” “Thanks, Howard.” “No, I mean—” “You mean I look terrible. Mr. Striker?” Checker pulled a tattered paper from his pocket and read, “Drummer Extraordinaire.” Eaton felt embarrassed by his own business card, and glared as if the pretentious tag was Checker’s fault. Checker only looked back at him with exposing directness. Eaton felt discovered. Yet when Eaton glanced away and back again, Checker’s expression no longer appeared incisive. There was a deadness or calm in the corners of his blue eyes—blind spots. If Checker were a car, it seems, Eaton Striker would be positioned perfectly behind the right back fender. “Some drumming,” said Checker. “It’s a battle, with these tubs.” “The drums are supposed to be on your side.” “These aren’t very responsive.” “Calf heads are subtle.” “I don’t think of drums as a subtle instrument.” “Yes. I can see you don’t.” Checker smiled slightly, and Eaton felt condescended to. His chin rose in the air. “Antiques, aren’t they?” “’Forty-eight,” said Check. “A good year.” “Might consider replacing them. The shells made now are smaller, tighter, sharper. These are muddy.” “Thanks for the advice. But I’ve had these since I was nine. If I replaced them they’d be hurt.” “And when you forget their birthday, do they cry?” “I don’t know,” said Check mildly. “I’ve never forgotten their birthday.” Check eased into a chair and leaned his neck over the back, closing his eyes. Rahim dipped a napkin into the ice remaining in a drink and wiped across Checker’s forehead. “Sheckair don sleep?” “Not much, Hijack.” No one asked him where he’d been. No one asked him why he hadn’t slept. While Check dozed, Rahim cooled the drummer’s neck and patted it dry with the tail of his shirt, rearranged Checker’s collar, and finally stood at attention beside him like a bodyguard, eyeing Eaton occasionally as a potential assassin. The rest of the band quietly packed up and helped the waitress clear drinks. No one talked, but gently the acid dispersed from the room, the heat clanking up from the basement with a fresh burst of steam. Shyly they found each other’s picks and spare strings. Sweeping up, Caldwell decided that fifty dollars wasn’t very much money, after all. J.K. realized that he’d only want to go to Jamaica if he could take Ceil and the kid with him; that people who counted on you were burdens or assets, all depending on how you looked at them. Carl helped wash the dishes and noticed how the waitress managed to talk to him in a way that didn’t demand he answer back, but still made him feel like part of a conversation. Wisps of childhood memories were still trailing through his mind, but he also recalled some other classmates—the girl with buck teeth, the little boy who smelled bad—who were tormented along with him. When he smiled at the waitress while she dried, she blushed. Howard felt liked. Rahim felt American. Rachel felt sad, but Rachel always felt sad. And in the quiet, steamy closure of the dark club, surrounded by the sound of Checker’s breathing and the hollow expansion and contraction of the pipes below, Eaton Striker had to leave. As Rahim walked him home Checker wheeled his bicycle between them, the clicking of the back hub ticking off the moments in precise, perfect points like the stars overhead, bright from cold. Checker said, “I want to show you something.” They detoured to a run-down industrial block of Astoria Boulevard. The sidewalk shook under their feet as they approached the building, whose sign said VESUVIUS, nothing more. Directly in front, they heard a dull ominous roar. Checker put his hands gently on the front door, like cracking a safe; it trembled under his fingertips. Putting his finger to his lips, he led Rahim down an alley and pointed to a small window. Rahim climbed a trash can to see. The pane buzzed in its frame; the glass tickled his hand. Here the sound was louder, huge and ceaseless, like a lion that never inhaled. Through the muddy window Rahim could see dimly inside, though he didn’t understand what he was looking at. Fire framed a square of black like an eclipse. As he watched, the black square moved to the side, and a long stick plunged into pulsing vermilion. Lit only by this hellish glow, an unearthly woman pulled the rod from the fire. She was tall, which always unnerved Rahim in women. She wore a long industrial apron and dark glasses that flashed yellow when they caught the light. Her hair was tied back carelessly, but most of it was escaping. Cut jaggedly in different lengths, it was the hair that made this figure so amazing. Thick and wild, it raged from her head like black flames. Rahim felt he was witnessing some satanic worship service, with a lean, terrible shaman prodding a dangerous god. While he told himself she was only a woman, Rahim felt even at first glance that this one demanded a whole other word. Trying to rub the window cleaner, Rahim stood up on his toes and took a step closer; his foot missed and he tumbled off the can. The barrel itself fell and made a terrific crash, for it seems the whole container was filled to the brim with bits of broken glass. Checker laughed softly and helped him up. Together they began to throw the glass back in the barrel. “Sh-sh!” said Checker, still laughing, when Rahim tossed a piece in the can and it smashed loudly hitting bottom. It was hard to see, and grasping for hunks in the dark Check exclaimed, “Jesus!” and pulled back. Rahim didn’t have a chance to ask what had happened before he looked up to find a molten glob pointed menacingly at him on the end of a metal pole. “Move and you’re fried,” said a voice. “A minute ago this lump was twenty-four hundred degrees. It may be cooling fast, but it’s still hot enough to turn your face into a pork chop.” Rahim froze, crouching; Checker, despite the warning, stood up. The woman pointed a flashlight at Checker like a second weapon. “What is that?” asked Checker, not sounding very frightened. “It’s fantastic!” All three of them turned to the glob, changing quickly from a rich yellow to a duller, more smoldering red. As Checker reached toward it, the woman jerked it away. “Hot glass, toddler. And what have you done to your hand?” In the beam of the flashlight was a second red glob, on the end of Checker’s arm. There was a quiet, regular patter-patter; the woman trained the light on the ground, where Checker’s blood was spattering onto the chunks of clear glass. The glass sparkled, and the red drops bounced and drizzled over its crystals like expensive rain. Strange. It was beautiful. “Sheckair!” Quickly Rahim shed his jacket and tore off his shirt, and began to wrap Check’s hand. “Don’t use your dirty shirt,” she said sharply. “I have medical supplies inside. I suppose you can come in.” She led them reluctantly in the door and smashed the rod against the cement floor. The glass, now black, cracked off; she tossed the rod in a barrel and went to get first aid. “Christ,” Check heard her mutter on the way, “I start to run off hoodlums and end up playing Sara Barton.” “That’s Clara Barton,” he shouted after her. Unexpectedly, she laughed. Checker didn’t seem very concerned with his hand, more delighted to have weaseled his way in here. He and Rahim approached the furnace. Inside, the roar was deeper, striking a broader range of tones. Checker couldn’t take his eyes off the fire though at a certain point he stood back from the heat. In fact, the whole room was sweltering, and recalled the febrile interior of Plato’s Bar. When she returned she switched on a light, to Rahim’s disappointment—it ruined the satanic religiosity of the scene. As she rinsed out Checker’s cut in warm water over her sink, they both stared at the glassblower, not quite as mysterious without the glow of the furnace, but no less intimidating. Everything about her was long: her neck, her waist, her face. Her cheeks were hollow and drawn; her expressions were conducted in the narrow range between amusement and irritation. As she tended his hand, her face sharpened in an intentness that seemed usual. Her oversized green shirt billowed under her apron with accidental style. Her jeans shone with dirt. The musty smell wafting from them suggested she’d been in these clothes for a while. “You’re filthy,” Check observed joyously as his blood ran in diluted swirls down the drain. “You’re stupid,” she shot back. “Why were you and your friend crawling around in a pile of broken glass at four in the morning?” “Watching you,” said Check. As she went for the antiseptic, he followed her hands. They looked older than the rest of her—fiftyish, sixtyish even—scarred and craggy, with abused nails. Her fingers were long like Caldwell’s, but ancient and knuckly. They tended his cut with care but authority, like a good mechanic’s. “What are all these little scars?” she asked about his own hand, which was covered in small white lumps. “From drumming.” A look. “Violent.” “Passionate.” She laughed. “Why is that funny?” “Well, how old are you?” “What does that have to do with passion?” “Maybe nothing,” she admitted. Her motions were jagged, like her hair. When she turned to find the gauze, a peak of hair touched his face; Checker reached up as if to brush it away, but really to feel it—a little coarse; he noticed a few strands of gray. “How old are you?” “Why?” “Cause I can usually tell. You, I can’t place within ten years.” “Twenty-nine.” “I’d have guessed older.” “Real diplomatic.” “You’re not insulted.” She stopped wrapping his hand and looked at Check as if seeing him for the first time. She seemed surprised by what she saw. “No?” “It doesn’t matter to you, looking young,” Check explained. “Just now—I think you were flattered.” The woman sucked in her cheeks and shot him a sour, bemused little smile. “Maybe.” “You must finish wrap.” This whole time Rahim had been following the medical process suspiciously, examining the label on the antiseptic; when she stopped working on the bandage Rahim couldn’t contain himself. “What?” “Wrap,” said Rahim staunchly. “You spy on my work and knock over a whole barrel of cullet and I still take you in to patch up your bloody bungling and I don’t do it fast enough. So sorry.” “’Sokay,” said Rahim, who had no sense of American sarcasm. “Just finish quickly, please. Sheckair vedy tired. I take him home now.” “Well, I’m a little tired myself,” she said with genuine annoyance. Disappointed, Checker watched her tie up his hand summarily and stand, hands on her hips. She was taller than both of them. “Come.” Rahim took Checker’s good hand and began to pull him toward the door. The Iraqi had his proprietary side, like a severe, overly protective secretary. Check dragged. “Can I come back?” “What for?” “The glass. I want to watch.” “You’ve been watching.” “Tomorrow!” At last Rahim succeeded in hauling Checker out the door, but not before he’d gotten one last glimpse of the glassblower, who was looking at him, he thought, terrifically hard. She had the same drastic features as Caldwell Sweets, and she certainly did look older than twenty-nine, but Checker, who had a lot of experience with looking at people right, knew full well that she was gorgeous. 3 / bad company (#ulink_93b7ab99-4b2f-53cc-9ec0-1a1eea9264a2) Astoria Park is bordered by two bridges—on its northern end by a lumbering rusted railroad bridge called Hell Gate, named for the dangerous eddies that churn below its girders. Several workers lost their lives in its construction; gruff and awkward, Hell Gate would have bid them farewell without ceremony. It has the terse, groggy, and potentially violent character of heavy drinkers; accessible only by the desperate clambering of lonely adolescents, it isn’t a trellis to which you’d ordinarily appeal. Still, Hell Gate is comforting in its way, quiet, protective, and steady. Whenever it rained, the band huddled under its belly, leaning up against the rough concrete abutments to smoke. The Triborough, on the southern end, is an entirely different animal. Constructed in 1936, she’s young, for a bridge. While Hell Gate arches downward, the Triborough is a classic suspension span, with the grace and desire of a cathedral. Unlike the craggy umber of her senior upriver, the Triborough is painted a soft blue-gray; while even more enormous, she never gives the impression of weight. From that vain sally over the river, the swoop and cinch of her waist, Checker had detected her feminine nature, but she still seemed to have a boyish sense of fun. Riding the powerful rise and fall of her pedestrian ramps, he could tell she was athletic, well-toned. Checker had respect for Hell Gate; he was glad the old man was there, and did sometimes consult the older bridge on difficult and purely masculine matters, but his heart belonged to the Triborough. In spring he bounded across her walkways in new tennis shoes; in winter, Checker and his bicycle, Zefal, scrumpled fresh squeaky tracks in her snow. While the two bridges embrace all of Astoria Park, a lush, well-populated recreation area old as the neighborhood itself, another finger of public land extends north of Hell Gate called Ralph DeMarco, recently developed with the help of nearby Con Edison to spruce up the rather bleak city projects across the street. Like so many good deeds, Ralph DeMarco has an overplanned, overdeliberate quality that defeats it. Ralph DeMarco is a failed park. It has no intermediate vegetation, for example—only very short grass and whole young trees, sunk in lifelessly regular rows. The trees themselves are pretty but too exotic—willows, cherries, and beeches; foreigners like the Indians who live here, they don’t fit in. Benches are set in optimistic semicircles, as if to encourage the kind of warm community closeness no one here feels—unwed mothers sit facing each other blankly, not talking. The railings by the river are painted a shocking shade of plum, a color some commission must have hoped would be brightening but which ended up simply peculiar. Lately Astoria Park was thriving, overcrowded in summer, but Ralph DeMarco was nearly deserted even when it was warm, and Checker felt sorry for it. Ralph DeMarco was hanging on by a thread. He sometimes took the band here evenings just to cheer it up. The little park broke Checker’s heart. It tried too hard. It reminded him of Howard. Besides, the relative quiet of the place had advantages, like the time last summer Danno’s Late Show was playing a Perfect Album Side from Talking Heads’ Speaking in Tongues. Caldwell never tired of telling the story, because that night a Corvette braved the terrifying void of the land from Con Ed and parked right in front of The Derailleurs’ ghetto blaster, challenging the Heads with loud, ill-tuned Judas Priest. Checker had approached the man in leather leaning against the hood. “Can’t you get NEW in that car?” “Can. Won’t. Gotta problem?” “Actually, yes,” said Checker, with that disconcerting innocence of his that made the rest of the band’s skin crawl; for once it was apparent that Check was small. Still, he stared up at the tough with his odd Sicilian-blue eyes. “I’d appreciate it if you’d either tune into the same station or park a block or two away. They’re coming up on my favorite song.” “And this lunk,” Caldwell would recall later, “some Hulk or Bubba or Crusher, cracks his Bud with his teeth. I don’t give a livin fuck, suck-ah. Howard here is creaming. Old J. de K. is rolling up his sleeves, so for once we’re glad the man’s had a few too many pancakes. Q.C. starts getting that Chinee squint, like maybe he’s studied karate, though all us knowing good and well Carl hasn’t even studied algebra. Rache gets this High Noon look, with hair everywhere … All the while the Heads bouncing through ‘This Must Be the Place,’ the Priest screaming, I don’t know, Hate-your-sister-smush-your-mother-kill-the-whole-world—you’ve heard their stuff. It was tense, boy. Crusher, he steps forward from the ’vette. Check, he’s had his hands behind his back the whole time, okay? And he doesn’t step back. He smiles this tiny don’t-fuck-with-me smile. The tunes, they break at exactly the same time. And for two, three seconds there’s total silence, even the wind stops. In the break, behind Check’s back, there’s a click. Oh, God. You know that sound, man. That little blade sound, and that is it, man, that is the end of the old hangout-in-the-park-one-more-summer-night kind of thing and into this, oh shit— “Or that’s what Crusher figures, anyway, and you can see his face twist up and he reaches inside his jacket and—” J.K. always starts laughing here. “Shut up, man, you’ll ruin the story!” “I heard the story a hundred time, Sweets—” “They haven’t heard it! So don’t—” “It a umbrella.” “What?” asks the new audience. J.K. keeps laughing. “The snap! Check don’t have no blade, man! It one of these portable suckers, see—” “Shut up, J.K., it’s my story—” “Everybody story, longhair. Real small and real sweet. Jus like a candy, that night a little candy night.” It was, small and perfect, it lay on your tongue. That’s what nights with Checker were like. Before the man in leather had reached all the way into his pocket Checker brought the little umbrella out front and propped it pleasantly on his shoulder. “They say,” he said, “it might rain.” His hand still in his jacket, the man released a single, unintentional guffaw. It’s funny how people will deal with you on the level you choose for them. Suddenly everything got very subtle. The smiles. The shifts of stance. The eye contact, the looking away. “Okay, Fred Astaire,” said Crusher. “Hey, Bilgewater,” he said to the man in the passenger’s seat. “NEW.—Just for a while.” Then he raised his beer with a weird sort of—suavity. The whole thing became an excruciating, delicate joke. Checker twirled the parasol gaily on his shoulder. Checker tried to explain later: it’s easier to change the station. All most Crushers need is a look in two blue eyes that say: The river is rushing black and furious tonight, the wind is whipping at the cherry trees and sweeping the branches of the willow like Rachel’s High Noon hair; it will rain later, lashing the rocks and bottles below us—you see, there are enough battles already. Instead, take the lights of the Triborough bright in my eyes, feel the cut of the air before a storm, try my station and roll onto the balls of your feet, coiling your calves and rippling the tops of your thighs. Keep the fight in your body. Besides, said the eyes, there is so much else to do—let me introduce you to the miracle of your neighborhood. This is Ralph DeMarco. Later that night Checker was keeping time to the end of the Music Marathon with his drumsticks on the body of the car, trilling up and down its decals as the flames on the hood licked at their tips. But it was the snap of the umbrella that did the trick. Clear and pretty, the turn of a key in a lock. Checker changed what happened. He went in and tampered and fixed things. He tinkered with events as if nosing through the engine of a car. As the sun set behind her, the lights of Manhattan just beginning to rise, the Triborough was in a delicate and passionate temper. The sun trembled, red like the furnace early that morning. The lines of the cables shimmered and distorted. Poignant, fleeting, something about the quality of the light transferred to Checker’s sense of the evening itself, as if he knew that the Saturdays he and the band would spend in the uncomplicated flush of each other’s company were painfully numbered. In the approaching darkness, each remaining ray sliced Checker’s chest like a shard of glass. “Listen,” said Checker. “What?” “Sssh.” The band was quiet, and for a moment only heard the murmur of cars from the bridge, the whir of a helicopter doing traffic reports, the rev of a nearby Trans Am; but gradually they each heard it, a tinkling and lapping, a singing and breaking, a sad shattering tune below the embankment on which they stood. “Beer bottles!” said Howard. True enough, the entire shoreline didn’t show an inch of sand or dirt but was covered instead with broken glass where locals had thrown their empties in summers past. Yet, rather than littering the bank, the bits of brown and green winked opulently in the sun. The wake of passing barges picked up pieces and threw them against each other with an Oriental pinging sound, dissonant and unlikely. “I got a new job,” said Check. “I thought being a bike messenger was the most majorly up-jacking job in the whole world,” said Caldwell. “It was. Not anymore.” “You go back there,” said Rahim heavily. “Had to, Hijack.” “Did not.” “Had to.” “She is not normal lady, Sheckair.” “Sure as hell not.” “I have this—” “I know,” said Check. “So do I.” Those two talked in this way all the time. “Do you mind?” asked Caldwell. “Syria Pyramus,” said Check, leaning into his italics. Rahim clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “That is the name.” “Of WHO?” demanded Caldwell. “Take care, Sheckair. That furnace is hungry.” “Yeah, it wants something. Always dangerous, you want something.” “You two looped, you know that,” said J.K. “It roars,” said Rahim in his throat, so that big J.K. stepped back. Checker laughed. “Like a great bloody animal. I like it.” Though “like it” was inaccurate. He was attracted to the furnace, an ambivalent sensation with an object that hot. Much the way great heights made him want to jump, the furnace enticed Checker to crawl in. With both Caldwell and J.K. now glaring over the rail at a passing tugboat and pointedly asking nothing, Checker broke down and explained. “There’s a glassblower up on the Boulevard. She needs somebody to clean up, shovel cullet—” “Cullet?” asked Rahim. “All that broken glass. Boffo word, huh?” With his good hand, Checker selected his favorite brand from among the bottles at his feet and sent the green glass careening splendidly to shore—the cullet-strewn shore. “Anyway, people,” he announced. “We have an agenda.” “Agenda,” like “cullet,” curled with unreasonable relish over his tongue. “You’ve decided you’re too good for us and you’re accepting an offer from David Byrne.” The band turned away from Caldwell. No one laughed. “Sweets,” said Checker gently, “you’re going to have to stop that.” They all knew exactly what Checker was talking about. Caldwell was terrified that these evenings on the river, the nights in Plato’s, were the times he would remember wistfully in his middle age. He was overcome by a sensation of living the Good Old Days, and he wasn’t sure what this called him to do. When seasons changed, Caldwell panicked; he would refuse to wear any but the lightest jacket even through November, as if that would slow the weeks down. Caldwell had a way of looking at the band as if he were calling roll. And surely someday he would be extra nervous; he’d be a little older, and a few of those long strands of white-gold hair would fall out in his hand. One of the band members could very well have left or married; Caldwell would whip his head from side to side, the vein at his temple bulging like a son of a bitch—and it would happen. The Good Old Days would be over, right then. He would never get them back, and he would have it, what he expected—death and memory. So then he’d slow down and get a gut, hard as it was to imagine on that tall skinny kid now. He’d put his feet up and tell stories. It’s strange how often you get exactly what you’re afraid of. “I’m here. You’re here,” Check reassured him, not for the first time. “We’re all here.” “You’re not always here,” Caldwell shot back. “True,” Check conceded. “That’s what I wanted to talk about.” “It’s all right,” said Rachel. “We understand.” “We do not,” said Caldwell. “No, Rachel sweetheart, it isn’t all right.” Checker had a way of talking to Rachel, like crooning to a pet. He could as well have reached out and stroked her hair. “So this man Striker. Why not use him as a backup?” “Look, just give us notice, we make other plans—” “I can’t,” said Check. “Even me, I can barely—” He stopped. “You don’t really want to know.” He sounded regretful. “We take your word, then,” said J.K. glumly. Checker looked around the band, amazed as he always was by their deference. They really wouldn’t make him say. Supposedly they were being respectful. That was a lie. It was easier and they knew it—their deference let them off the hook; it simplified matters enormously. Checker was still tired. It had taken longer to get back this time. He hoped this wasn’t a development, some kind of sign. No, it’s just some times were different from others. Take care of this here. Forget about that, there’s the band now. They like what they see. They choose what they see. They’ve created you. Be a sport. “Okay,” J.K. agreed sulkily. “Guess I play with this dude Striker ’steada watch the paint flake off my ceiling.” “Sheckair,” said Rahim, with unusual softness, “this is worst idea you ever have. You don want this boy in your band. You remember I warn you later and feel vedy foolish.” “Why?” asked Checker flatly. “I know.” “That is a load of mystical crap.” Something in Rahim’s face corkscrewed. Checker was no longer playing. “You played with him last night—” “It was not same!” cried Rahim. “Big deal, it doesn’t have to be—” “Something bad happen, Sheckair!” Checker sighed. Sometimes he got tired of it. It just seemed stupid. He wanted only to lean over with J.K. and talk about strings and amp gain. “The thing is, he said he had connections,” Howard contributed. “Could be worth it, if he could even get us a toe in the door of a company, and, Check, it’s times like this we should have a demonstration tape ready—” “We don’t need to make a record, Howard,” said Check patiently, no longer paying much attention. Across the river, the yellow bricks of Rikers prison glowed like the color of a sandlot when your team is winning. “Check, The Derailleurs have the sound, the style—!” “We play in Plato’s, Howard. That’s fine. That’s enough. We’re plenty jacked there already.” Howard kicked a piece of cement in frustration; it hurt his toe. “Check, you’re a great musician, but you have no ambition.” “That’s right, Howard,” said Checker, watching intently as the very last disk of sun slipped behind the Empire State Building. “Not a bit.” Eaton was convinced he came down to the river out of almost chemical perversity. How disgusted can a person get without spontaneously combusting? Evenly clustered along the rail like the trees in Ralph DeMarco, boys shivered because back home they looked better in the mirror in open jackets, the girls this year huddled in those horrific square sweaters and squat little pedal pushers, the strip of their exposed ankles red from cold. Block after block, the posed slouches and raised hoods, carburetors polished like candelabra for anniversary dinners—it was all so trite Eaton could cry. Why, this strip couldn’t have changed since 1955. These kids must take Teenager Lessons, the way they used to take Cotillion. Sit-on-your-car. Toss-your-hair-from-your-face. Above all, try not to look self-conscious. These guys had read up. The whole parade was so obscenely obedient, even stiff, that it could have been an audition for a marching band. Yet from half a mile away a single face caught the last ray of the setting sun and went gold. It shone at the end of the strip like a burn hole. From that point the plastic flatness of this canvas shrank back, as from a lit cigarette poked through cellophane. Clumps on hoods flowered open and cliques on the rail did flips, balanced on their hipbones, skipped rocks on the river, twisted to old Rolling Stones songs. Eaton knew only that he was surrounded by many children playing. And he looked down the row knowing very well that nothing had changed. Five ninety-five for a turkey sandwich,” said Brinkley. “Like, this place thinks it’s a restaurant.” While they ritually mocked the diner’s na?ve attempts at haute cuisine, snickering at the awkward murals with statuary and Corinthian columns, for some reason Eaton could hear only how often Brinkley said the word “like,” Gilbert said “you know,” and Rad said “I mean.” Soon Eaton had lost track of what they were talking about altogether, for he could discern only a horrifying repetition of verbal tics that was slowly driving him insane. “Eat wasted Secretti last night. I mean, compared to Eat, Checkie’s like puh, puh, puh—” Suddenly Eaton blanched. He coughed and rolled his eyes, but no, these doorknobs didn’t get the message; the man in the entranceway turned his head to their table when he heard his own name. When their eyes met, Eaton was once more afraid, as he’d been the night before, of discovery. Nodding weakly, he shoveled a forkful of shrimp salad and looked back to Brinkley with an absorption the boy never deserved. Eaton’s hands were clammy and he no longer had an appetite. When his friends had finally noticed The Derailleurs at the big round table and had therefore switched into their seeming-to-have-a-good-time mode, Eaton found their cries for more beer and their leering after the waitress embarrassing. Abruptly he stood up, said he needed to say hello to someone, and walked away. “Well, la-di-da,” said Brinkley, seeing where Eaton was headed. “Eat’s got himself new little friends.” For some reason it never bothered Brinkley when his emotions were transparent. “Careful. Pond scum,” Rahim warned. “Evening.” Eaton nodded. “Come here often?” Feebly, he resorted to an old pickup line. “Yes,” said Checker. “We love the murals. They’re so—innocent.” “They’re ugly,” said Eaton automatically. “Why would you want to look at them like that?” “I enjoy hating them.” Checker laughed. “So you must come here often, too. For the murals.” Fondly he reached for the saltcellar and stroked up and down its facets, cleaning off fingerprints. Waves of hot and cold crossed Eaton in ripples; the hair raised on his arms. Each object Checker reached for seemed to glow. “I like their saltshakers,” said Check. “I like their napkin holders with the rounded sides. I like their waitresses and their garnishes and their slaw, and the little diamond shapes in the floor. And after thorough research the band has concluded they have the best home fries in all of Astoria.” Check looked up; Eaton stepped back. “Is there anything you don’t like?” “You.” “Hijack,” said Checker. “Why the bandage?” asked Eaton, ignoring Rahim. “My hand fell in love with a piece of glass,” Check explained. “It was a destructive relationship.” “So you can’t play tonight? I mean, was it serious?” “Pain is always serious, that’s what makes it exciting.” “You mean you enjoyed cutting your hand?” Checker pulled at his bandage, looking inside at the cut with contemplation. “Well, yes.” “There are words for people like that.” Checker smiled. “I like blood. I like the color.” “You also into animal sacrifice?” Checker laughed. “Pull up a chair.” With a flicker of hesitation, Eaton did so, but when he tried to intrude between Checker and Rahim, the Iraqi wouldn’t move over. Checker eyed the saxophonist until Rahim finally screeched aside, though only far enough for Eaton’s chair to jam tight between them. Eaton was forced to climb into his seat with just the kind of awkwardness he particularly detested. “We need a backup drummer,” said Checker. “You game?” Eaton’s face flushed, whether from insult or flattery it was impossible to tell. “To calm the belligerent fans when the star has a headache?” “Something like that …” said Check, looking Eaton up and down like a new amp, searching for the plug. “What you did last night. You were—challenging.” “He was poison.” Eaton turned on Rahim. “Where are you from that they insult people for no reason who are about to do you a favor?” Rahim said nothing more, only sat looking calm, almost pleasant. “Iraq,” said Checker. “Where they have lots of funny feelings.” “I see. And you’re in our country visiting?” Rahim remained quiet. “He doesn’t understand your question,” said Checker. “I mean, you’re not a citizen, isn’t that right? This is the way you act as a guest.” “Hijack lives here,” said Checker. “Yes. But under what auspices?—I assume I can use ‘auspices,’ since he seems to have a translator.” “No,” said Check, though Eaton had continued to look only at Rahim. “The translator doesn’t know an auspice from a hole in the ground.” “He means—” Howard began. “I mean,” Eaton interrupted, “he’s wet, isn’t he? From head to toe.” The band squirmed. No one answered. “Come on,” said Eaton. “I’m in the band now.” Eaton smiled. “See,” said Rahim. It happened the next weekend, and was over in surprisingly short order, though that is the nature of most events—with a few gory exceptions, murders are over in seconds; the most hurtful remarks often use the fewest words; neither falling off a cliff nor running a car into a telephone pole is a lengthy enough process to require scheduling into your day. The band hadn’t taken the man seriously at first when he clumped over to The Derailleurs on their break—with the big biker boots and shredded T and bright pink bandanna knotted at his neck; why, the costume wasn’t even coherent. At the flap of his ID, they resettled in their chairs and time got very fat. The whole table was suspended in the interface between two alternate universes. Change is like that: you are no longer where you were; you are not yet where you will get; you are nowhere exactly. Rahim answered the man’s questions idly, readjusting the brim of his Astoria Concrete hat, toying with the tail of the hattah he routinely wore underneath it—a winter one this time, with the black Armenian stitching. He stroked the little pom-pom on one corner like a rabbit’s foot not likely to do him a hell of a lot of good. If Rahim seemed a little sluggish, he was in hyperspace—journeying from the universe in which he was trying to remember if he still had a can of stew left in the room he rented above the fruit market to the universe in which he was being arrested by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service and in real danger of being summarily shipped back to Iraq. It was a big trip for thirty seconds. “Excuse me,” Checker interrupted politely. “But could I consult with my friend for a moment? He’s new in the States and could use a little advice.” The agent began to explain about lawyers and rights, but Checker had already raised a just-a-moment finger and ushered the Iraqi smoothly through the back door labeled RESTROOMS. Checker’s advice was fast and straightforward and supremely American. As soon as the door closed quietly behind them, he grabbed Rahim’s arm and pulled him through the exit to the back hall, where they’d often helped waitresses take out the garbage. Checker dribbled Rahim down the basement stairs and curled him around the back of the dripping water heater like sinking a shot. “Stay!” was all Check took time to say; whipping off Rahim’s Astoria Concrete hat and hattah and shoving it on his own head, he was off again, up the stairs and careening down the back hall at just about the time the INS agent had finished checking the bathrooms. When the man opened the last door he caught only the flap of an orange bill and a flurry of headdress as it flew out to the alley and past the trash cans. As the agent rushed after him, Checker consumed Ditmars Boulevard with wider and wider strides, laughing out loud, leading the man into Ralph DeMarco. A big, sharp night, isn’t it? Feels good to run, without a coat, and it must be twenty degrees. But you aren’t cold, you’re excited. You loved our gig, didn’t you? Sure, you used to play a little guitar way back when, and you gave it up; you went to school, you kicked around and ended up working for the government, and you haven’t quite digested that yet. You never expected to be on this side of things, chasing a kid for Immigration—you haven’t run in a while and you’re panting and he’s laughing at you, he’s waiting for you to catch up, he’s rolling, clutching his stomach on that little knoll at the end of the park right in front of the Con Edison plant, and That’s the drummer, where is the wetback? “Man, how the hell you get into this line of work?” asked Checker, still laughing on the grass. The agent shook his head and caught his breath, collapsing on the hill, noticing how brightly the lights shone from the garbage-processing plant across the river. “Jesus,” he said. “That’s a long story.” Which he told. Even Eaton Striker is afraid of Syria 4 / the house of the fire queen (#ulink_4f9ec709-b691-5c9c-b745-49a9f379c823) People had always talked to Checker, they never knew why. Even for chronic truancy, his high-school teachers preferred asking Check to stay after school to turning him in. They’d get feverish toward the end of sixth period, rushing the lesson, anxiously shredding spare mimeos after the bell, afraid he wouldn’t come. But usually, in his own sweet time, Checker would appear at the door, humming, and glide to the desk, a small secret smile pointed at the floor; he’d glance up shyly, down again, back, down, then suddenly, when they least expected it, whoom, he’d carve straight into their pupils, coring their eyes like apples. It was terrifying. Have a seat, please. Sure. The pads of his fingers on the desk rippling. His leg jittering up and down so the floor trembled. In trouble, and perfectly happy. No matter how severely the teachers began, his eerie blue irises flashed like heat lightning, his smile, a joke, would trigger an aside, and before they knew it they were talking about their children, their wives or husbands or lovers, the problems of teaching bored people, then all about what boredom was exactly, whose fault it was, until pretty soon Checker’s feet would be up on the desk and his chair tilted back on two legs; the teachers, too, would be leaning back and playing with their pencils and jabbing excitedly with the eraser to make a point. Checker would finally remind them that it was six or seven and dark, so the two of them would stroll out and stand another half hour in the parking lot, an hour if it was spring; only out of a reluctant sense of duty and decorum would the teachers pull into their dumpy cars and away from this—this—student. Sometimes they gave him a ride home. Checker was not precisely rebellious; he simply had his own agenda, and if that happened to coincide with the school’s, good enough; but if it diverged, he didn’t let it “rattle his cage,” as Check would say. He cooperated with authority but didn’t recognize it; he was no more or less conciliatory with a principal than with the boy at the next desk. He was pleasant and attentive when called in, unless another matter took precedence, like a science exhibit on refraction at the IBM Building, or a variety of orchid in the Botanical Garden peaking that afternoon, in which case he might pencil a neat and polite note declining the invitation to the principal’s office, ending with the genuine hope that they could reschedule sometime soon. Dazed, the principal would read it over three or four times: Looking forward to our talk. Until our next mutual convenience, Checker Secretti. With even more incredulity, the man would find himself courteously negotiating with Checker over the phone, trying to find an afternoon he was “free.” By the time Check showed up, the principal would feel grateful and offer the boy the big armchair and a cup of tea. After all, appealing to his mother was hopeless. Lena Secretti was illiterate; Check had been signing her name to permission slips and even money orders to Con Ed since the age of six. His mother had borne children much the way she scrounged junk from trash piles—she carted them from the hospital and placed them in the apartment and sometimes, at moments, would remember having brought something interesting home once and look around for what had happened to it. After picking up the roll of bubble wrap, checking behind the broken adding machine, and moving the big box of paint-sample strips, nubby crayons, and plastic surgical gloves, she would dig up a dirty, hungry, but contented son playing Olympics with roaches. Now, Lena Secretti was not exactly insane, and no one ever died or got permanently misplaced in her care, but she was not the kind of woman you sent curt notes about truancy. In his obliviousness of rules and even of law, Check had been accused of being “unrealistic,” but in fact his world was profoundly concrete. He understood tangibles, like, there is an agent who wants to ship your sax player back to Iraq, so you take your friend away from the man. Checker tried to explain. “But we’ll get him eventually, and you could get prosecuted yourself, bucko,” said the agent the next day at Plato’s. The club was closed for The Derailleurs’ rehearsal on Sunday afternoons, which the man had interrupted with his enthusiastic investigation. “Aiding and abetting, harboring fugitives. We’re arresting Catholics for that shit lately, for Christ’s sake. Think we’d bat an eye at a black rock drummer?” But somehow the agent, Gary Kaypro, didn’t sound very threatening. Like all the high-school teachers before him, he was leaning back with Checker Secretti, waving his cigarette, trying desperately to entertain. “Gary,” said Check affectionately, “we have a gig next weekend. I can’t find another sax player in five days.” “Play here, man, your buddy won’t be around for the encore.” Gary Kaypro said “man” a lot. He’d shed the pink bandanna from the night before, but still propped heavy leather boots on the table. He’d managed to emphasize early how very much guitar and saxophone he’d played in high school. The agent was vaguely middle-aged, for from the vantage point of nineteen anything between thirty and sixty is simply not young; after sixty you are old. Kaypro himself knew this, and though he kept trying to intrude the fact that he was only thirty-six, he guessed correctly that they didn’t care. “Well, say we toe the line,” Check proposed. “How can I get my sax man legit? You must know immigration law—how does it work?” Kaypro shrugged with casual expertise. “There’s the political-asylum gambit. Say they’re going to flay the kid with a potato peeler if he sets foot in Iraq.” “They would,” said Check. “He’s a draft evader.” “Still a bad bet,” said Kaypro. “None of that shit is flying lately, see. With the Cubans, the Haitians, and now the Salvadorans, we’re burned out on the but-they’ll-shoot-me routine. Pretty much the U.S. says, So what? Unless you’re Eastern European or Soviet. And you ever read the newspaper?” “Only the little articles on the inside pages.” “Well, the big articles are full of Middle Eastern maniacs blowing up Americans and shoving them out of planes. Imagine how overjoyed the INS gets when they apply for asylum. We figure most of them belong in one.” “So what’s another angle?” “He could disappear. Get out of New York, or at least never show up here, or at his room on Grand.” “No good. What else?” “He could marry an American.” “No kidding.” “Sure. Even gets you citizenship eventually. But—only if it’s for real.” “What do you mean?” “We’re on to that scam, see. We do interviews now, in intimate detail. Ask the couple the colors of their underwear? Any moles? Form of birth control? The works. Sometimes split them up, compare their stories. I’ve done it. A scream, really. Catch these guys, picked up a wife for three thousand dollars, can’t even remember her first name. Man, they’re on the plane by sundown, bingo.” “But if Hijack got married this week, you couldn’t arrest him?” “I could. He’s still illegal until he goes through channels.” “But would you?” “What are you trying to pull here, bucko?” “I’m shooting straight, Kaypro. If he gets married, will you leave him alone and let him go ‘through channels’?” “You have a lady in mind?” “I might.” “Depends,” said the agent, clicking his eyeteeth together. “You know the INS is famous for corruption, don’t you?” He smiled. “We don’t have any money, Kaypro.” “No, no. What I want I can’t buy. I—” He seemed flustered. “I’d like to play with you guys!” “What?” said the band. “Just a set once in a while. I used to get in my licks, see? And—you’re half decent, Secretti. Three-quarters, even.” Checker laughed. “Deal’s on.” “But the kid has to do the whole bit,” the agent added. “Someone turned him in; I have to report. And if the marriage is a fraud, they’ll skewer him and the girl both. Likewise, you don’t get wedding bells to chime before I find him, the ax is gonna fall. I’ll look the other way if he’s got a solid claim to living in this country, but as of now he’s moist, through and through. I’d like to beat out a few oldies with you kids, but I’m not a sleazebag—I do my job.” With that moment of officiousness, he left the club. “Well, that’s the ticket,” Check announced. “Ticket’s on the family plan,” said J.K. “What about La Se?orita, Jack?” “Well …” Check drawled, moving to his Leedys to tune the heads for their upcoming rehearsal. “That’s the one tiny hole in an otherwise flawless scheme, isn’t it? Rache, why don’t you run down and tell Hijack we’ll get him out of that steam bath before the week’s out.” “Tell him he has Super Check on his side. Mild-mannered rock drummer by day, wild-man immigration lawyer in a phone booth.” Checker turned to the door, unable to decipher Eaton’s tone. Eaton kept a straight face. So many of Eaton’s compliments would have this quality—balanced perfectly between admiration and mockery. Never quite sardonic, never quite sincere. “Right,” said Check uncertainly. “Guys, I thought Strike should rehearse with you instead of me today, learn our tunes.” “When I talked to you last, you were all in a tizzy,” said Eaton, languishing in a chair. “Now you’ve solved everything?” “We just have to find him a wife.” “The Sheik doesn’t have a sweetheart, does he?” asked Caldwell. “Who needs a sweetheart,” said Eaton, “when your band leader has such a pretty smile?” Checker looked at Eaton with anthropological curiosity. “Surely, Secretti,” Eaton proceeded, “with those big broad shoulders and wide blue eyes and that impressive set of drums there, you must have quite a harem. Just point. Marry your friend? Sure. Anything for you, Checker. Whatever you say.” “Now that,” said Check, ratcheting his keys, “is a laugh.” “Check don’t have no harem,” said J.K. “He got a death squad.” “Remember Janice?” said Checker, pointing to four faint white scars scraped parallel down his arm. Checker remembered Janice. Sure. Last summer, right here. More than once that wiry little creature waited all night for some joker to finish his beer, methodically splintering the edge of The Derailleurs’ regular table with her nail file. The way she dug into that wood and twisted as it got so damn late and the son of a bitch ordered another one. But she liked it on the table, hard and half off the edge. She said she sat here during sets and kneaded the varnish, watching Checker drum. She said she liked knowing what they did there and no one understanding why she was smiling. So she’d chip away until the waitress packed out; Checker had a key. It was the last time he remembered, best and worst. Before, he’d always figured her a hellion, a vicious little animal survivor, with long, stringy muscles and wary eyes. He didn’t worry about her. Janice was thin, but more flexible than fragile, like Rachel. That afternoon she’d been to the beach; sand still stuck to her skin. Stubble had risen on the sides of her pelvis, where she shaved for her bikini, leaving only a little black tuft in the middle, like a Mohawk. Checker needed a shave, too, so between them the grind of their bodies had a satisfying grit, a resistance. She never liked it too smooth, too perfectly, simply good. And she wouldn’t let him roll her onto her back. The positions she preferred were more contorted, and she’d wrestle to stay on top. There was nail in her caress, bite to her kiss. Sand imbedded in his pores. She was bony, without cushions; their hipbones jarred. At last she bit too deep, and reflexively he pulled her off him by her ragged wet mop, surprised to find that with the strands pulled taut he could feel her heart beating in her hair. That was when he noticed the frantic pulsing everywhere, the way her arteries exploded on the sides of her neck, at her throat, her armpits, in the shaved cups of her hips—it was amazing, this girl stripped so thin she was like a Compton transparency of the circulatory system. He stared at her veins, their rapid beat and alarming syncopation. “Musicians,” she’d whispered over him; he moaned a half step lower each inch her hand descended from his shoulder. She meant it was not all cacophonous grappling, that he understood distinctions, different notes: here not there, and no longer—sustain, cut; press, lift. She would extend her hand and then delay; she played like funk, behind the beat, the little stop, the little reluctance. Checker smiled and thought, Give this girl sticks, but she was more keyboard really, resting her hand light and relaxed like a good pianist—Checker could have balanced pennies on her wrists. Her chords down his side grew increasingly deft, his pecs, nipple, under the ribs, off, to the hip socket, off, less and less, only tickling over the hairs now, right by his balls, but refusing, because it was too obvious, to touch the genitals themselves, like lyricists who leave a line at a rhyme so inevitable that they don’t sing the word at all. Only at the end did he shrink back, from the long, scrappy fingers with the tight-in, pointed nails, black—an urchin’s. The urgency went too far. She clutched his collarbone like a ledge; he could see her hanging. His hands slid from her sides, and she slipped down his thighs. Checker’s prick sucked out, bent down, and sprang free of her like a perch that wouldn’t bear her weight. Her knees hit the table. She fell only three inches between his legs, but far enough for Janice to see he wouldn’t hold her up. She had wanted him, but getting him didn’t solve anything. She would need to find later there was nothing to solve, but he refused to teach her that much. He was a man and enjoyed this. He loved her childlike clambering, her skinny athletic daring, the way she climbed and swung and gripped at his limbs like at the rungs of a jungle gym. But he was not her father or brother or rescuer, and her wide brown eyes saw that in horror and went wild, then flat. She rolled completely off him onto her back, her palms to the wood, breathing at the quick, inconceivable pace of a hamster, the tiny rib cage filling up and down, her nostrils quivering, her short black hair frayed and chopped-looking, stricken. She would look only at the ceiling. He stroked her forehead, but would not comfort her too much, because he wouldn’t take back what she’d discovered. They all thought they needed saving. They all got a surprise. And sooner or later, the nails came scraping over his arms, eyes clawing at his face. They screamed. Janice was the worst, since of course some of them were calm, pretend-cold, but he could always see the fingers opening and closing at their sides, the muscles springing in their jaws, hear the air grating through their teeth. Checker would spread his hands. He thought he’d given them what they wanted. Instead, he’d come too close—he gave them more than the others and stopped. He let them touch what they could not own. So many Alices, longing for the tiny garden, who couldn’t reach the key. For the girls it must have been worse than nothing. All his memories of that table had an edge in them, like Halloween apples filled with razor blades. Little wonder none of these lovelies sprang to mind as Rahim’s bride-to-be. The last favor Janice did him was slashing her initials in the head of his snare, and Checker had known her well enough to see that the gesture cost her some restraint. “What about your vocalist here?” Eaton proposed. “You mean Rache?” asked Caldwell, no one looking straight at her. Rachel immediately began to unravel her sweater, from a moth hole, with such concentration it was like knitting in reverse. “Rache do enough for the band, man, I don’t know you want to involve—” “Checker,” Rachel interrupted J.K. softly, “would you want me to?” She looked up at the drummer. “Would you like me to marry Hijack?” Rachel’s hair was loose today, and washed; it wafted out from her head, and her face was lost inside it. Looking into her eyes was like staring into a dark ball of fur which, with the slightest puff of air from the stage, would tumble away. Checker found himself actually holding his breath. He said absolutely nothing. That was enough. A moment later the ball of fur blew out the door, caught on the breeze of its own shudder. “You should have said no right away, man,” said Caldwell. “I know,” said Checker. “I was thinking of Hijack. Back soon as I can.” They all think they need saving. Checker pulled on his jacket and jogged out of the club. “Are they …?” asked Eaton. “No!” the band answered at once. “It’s just, that wasn’t a great suggestion, Strike,” said Caldwell. “Rachel—” Howard hesitated. “Rachel is a romantic.” “How the hell did I offend her?” “Rache and Check—” Caldwell began. “Sweets!” said Howard. “Everybody know, Howard,” said J.K. “Everybody knows if you tell everybody,” said Howard. “Okay, okay.” They sat in silence. “I’ve never figured out how she stands it,” Caldwell remarked. “It’s very delicate,” said Howard, his delight in analysis getting the better of his loyalty. “Like photosynthesis. A perfectly balanced chemical process that by all rights shouldn’t work—” “Where you get that?” asked J.K. “The point is”—Howard glared—“if plants can turn air to branches, anything is possible.” “Howard’s right, Big J.,” said Caldwell. “There’s something real incredible about those two. Like, it’s a miracle little Jackless hasn’t killed herself.” “Where is Checker Secretti?” A shadow cut the length of the club. “What you want with Check?” braved J.K., whose voice sounded strangely high for a 210-pound bass player. “His ass in my glassworks.” She stepped into the light and the whole band subtly recoiled. Even Eaton wasn’t inclined to say anything smart and private-school. Once more the woman was in her apron and earthy, ancient, unwashed clothes. She hadn’t bothered with a coat, nor had she taken off her dark glasses. Her hair, askew as usual, glittered with sleet. She appeared like the Wicked Witch of the West and Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother all wrapped into one enthralling but appalling creature. You did not know whose side she was on. “He got business,” said J.K. “He has business with me,” Syria boomed. “You tell him he’s late. You tell him I don’t have time to chase him down in his little clubhouse. You tell him he shows or I throw him in with the next load of cullet. Got that?” “Cullet,” Caldwell repeated softly. “What?” “Check taught us the word yesterday,” he explained meekly. “Broken glass.” “My, my,” said Syria. “A for the day, rock star.” She stopped and looked down at him. “You’re cute.” “Thank you,” said Caldwell formally. “You tell your drummer friend, one more hour, he’s fired.” Bang. She vanished. “The Towering Inferno!” exclaimed Caldwell. They marveled over the apparition until Checker returned. When told of his employer’s visit, Checker seemed pleased. Before he hurried out again, Check assured the band that Rachel was all right now—once more, air had been turned to branches. Sorry I’m late,” Checker panted. “I had a problem.” “What do you know about problems?” “Plenty.” She took off her glasses, sifting Checker up and down through a queer mesh; her eyes were green. She seemed to see him differently from other people. Checker felt exposed, and pulled his jacket closed, raising its collar around his neck. “Sweep.” She handed him a broom. “When do I get to work with the glass?” Check shouted. All their conversation was loud. It had to be. The roar of the furnace was voracious. She didn’t answer, and from then on, apart from giving him orders, she ignored him completely. Once again she was at her own work, which soon sufficiently absorbed her that she didn’t notice he’d run out of things to do. Checker settled quietly behind her to watch. Syria gathered a lump of molten glass, then swung the pipe like a pendulum until the glob elongated; it cooled and darkened, and she returned it to the top of the furnace, propping the pipe on a stand and rolling it in quick, regular circles until the shaft was warm again. She repeated this process until the glass stretched into a rod with a knob on its end; she hung it glass down and made another form like it on a separate pipe. After reheating the first, she plunged the two shafts together, filed into the glass on one pipe, and cracked it off clean with a rap on the metal. Though working with a huge amount of material that must have been heavy, she manipulated the now three-foot-long piece like balsa wood, swinging it with grace and, he could see, pleasure, feeling its momentum, finding the fulcrum point on the pipe. All her motions were rapid and sure, without excess; they reminded him of good basketball. They reminded him of good drumming. They reminded him of anything he had ever done right. Syria hefted the pipe over to a chair with flat arms and rolled it in front of her with her left palm, all the while shaping the middle knot with a wet wooden cup. Steam rose from the glass, hissing at her touch, a whisper of pain—cold water and hot glass don’t mix, but Syria would marry them, anyway. Checker remembered how she tended his cut: this will hurt but it will heal you. She was a person who would do something terrible for your own good. It was only when she’d cracked the shaft into the annealer that Check realized that while he’d been waiting for her to blow a vase, a bowl, she wasn’t making a vessel. She was making a bone. At last Checker noticed a dark corner room, and ducked inside to turn on the light. There they were. All over the walls, stacked shelf after shelf: glass bones. Clear, glistening femurs. Ice-blue rib cages, fragile, almost breathing. Strange assemblages of knuckles and kneecaps, like remnants of a mass grave turned mysteriously to crystal—deep sad greens and buried ambers. Some of the longer bones were distorted, curved, as if they were melting. Checker felt dizzy. It was like walking into a glass morgue, shuddering and deadly, but beautiful, too, shimmering in the glow of the low-wattage bulb. The walls hurt to look at. Nothing should be that disturbing and that attractive. As his intestines began to gather, he closed the door tightly behind him, like shutting the top of Pandora’s box. Checker felt woozy and weaved to a nearby bench. “So what was so funny?” “What?” “When I was working. You laughed.” “The way you moved,” he remembered. “I played a song in my head and you danced to it.” She smiled. “Which one?” “‘Burning Down the House.’” “Three-hun-dred-six-ty-five-de-grees. It’s hotter than that.” “You know the Heads!” “What do you think I grew up on, Frank Sinatra?” “Sorry.” Checker took a deep breath. “You don’t look well.” “Give me a second.” The sensation was receding, but not quickly enough, as if he’d woken a sleeping dragon—even if it only yawned and went back to sleep, the ground rumbled. “So you went into the crypt.” “Yes.” “And?” “I don’t know.” “What a critic.” “That room is dangerous!” he burst out. “Sure,” she said casually. “Being alive is dangerous.” “The red ones.” “Yes?” “The red ones,” Check repeated, shaking his head. “I don’t know.” Somehow she seemed pleased with his reaction, though Check had said nothing nice. “You sell those things?” “Not very hard. Nobody understands them. But once they’re cooled they don’t matter. I like hot glass.” Her eyes glittered like the sleet that afternoon. Checker returned the next night, on time. Rahim was on his mind, for earlier he’d visited the Iraqi in the basement, where it was hot and dank and boring, and they couldn’t think of any girls. Yet it had been impossible to stay moody, with the rise coming up through his All-Stars all the way to his throat. In the park the car radios had played the right songs, marathon; at six o’clock the sky was purple; the pavement was still icy from Sunday’s sleet, radiant with orange streetlights. The river swept the skyline into dizzy, turgid swirls. The broom swished around the concrete, curling dust like whirlpools under Hell Gate, glass tinkling in its wake like the shores of the East River; Checker could feel every individual hair of the brush stroke the floor. Unloading the annealer, he loved all the student pieces. Lurching off center, bubbled and drooped, each vase and goblet charmed him, each bowl would hold ripe fruit. All the while he could feel Syria as heat source move from room to room. He liked it best when he was perfectly between the two of them, the woman and the furnace; the sweat would pour evenly down his body. Each drop traced his spine like the tip of a finger. Later, the cleanup done, she showed him how to work the furnace; Check felt on friendlier terms with the animal once he could control it. Finally she let him thread one of those sturdy pipes into the mass itself, and wear his own pair of glasses. The heat stung; he wondered how she got used to it. His face stiffened and his knuckles sung. Sweat showered down his chest. Even with the dark glasses he couldn’t focus on the glass itself—it shifted uneasily before him, rippling like flesh. He could tell when the pipe hit the glass only from a tugging, a nagging when he pulled it back. Awkwardly he withdrew a drizzling glob, like Little Jack Horner pulling a plum from a pie. She showed him how to blow the first bubble, putting her mouth around the pipe. Checker stared. “Don’t just stand there. This is your piece.” When he pressed his lips to the metal he was surprised how hard it was to blow; nothing happened. The sharp taste of steel mingled with something musty. Syria. “It’s too cold now. Heat it up.” When he was finished, Check had made a tiny cup he knew was ridiculous, though that didn’t keep him from being enormously proud. It was thick, with a lip that curled accidentally inward, but smooth and round, later to rest perfectly in his hand, like a small breast. It was three in the morning; only the glow of the furnace lit the shop. Checker lay on one of the benches, exhausted, having perspired away about five pounds. Syria turned down the gas, so the furnace settled to a steady purr; it was easier to talk. She leaned up against a post and studied her new assistant. Syria herself seemed a little tired, softer; her hair had relaxed. “So what’s your story?” she asked. Checker laughed. “I drum.” His voice vibrated the bench. “I love—things.” She waited. “I love this,” he explained. “Glass and color. Heat. Work. Shapes. And shit, the sky tonight—” “Fuchsia.” “You saw!” “You own the sky?” “Yes.” She was so jagged, he was surprised by the roundness of her laughter. “Well, so do I.” “I own every color,” Check went on. “I own this neighborhood. Most of all I own the Triborough.” “I’ve wondered whose that was.” “Mine. Shore to shore. We’re in love.” “I’m jealous.” Checker’s whole body was humming; the furnace and the rhythm of their voices were both trembling in the wooden bench now, as if a good song was playing loud. He closed his eyes. “My bicycle is jealous, too. Sure, Zefal’s pretty, thin, tight. But there’s something about a frame so big. Like a tall woman.” Hmm. At that point Checker decided to open his eyes and shut his mouth. Syria had edged away to turn down the annealer. “And what’s your story?” “When you’re twenty-nine, there isn’t one anymore, there are hundreds. And I don’t feel like telling any of them tonight.” “Don’t,” Checker chided. “Maybe later,” she said more kindly. “You said you had a problem tonight. What is it?” Checker explained about Rahim. “So,” he finished, “I need a woman.” “Common complaint. Where will you get yours?” Lying on the bench, Checker felt a wave of nausea ripple from his feet to his throat, just as the elation had risen earlier that evening. He swallowed, the taste of his own saliva sour. He waited for the sickness to pass, and used the silence to make his next question seem to be changing the subject. “Are you married?” “No.” “Why not?” “By the time most men reach thirty they’re picking out their headstones already. All that’s left is to fill in the dates. I’m not interested.” “Do you ever want to get married?” “Stop it.” “Stop what?” “Go ahead.” Check said nothing. “I said, go ahead.” Maybe something flew into the furnace, something live. A strange smell passed over the two of them, like singed hair. His saliva was viscous from dehydration. “Syria,” he said thickly, “will you marry Rahim?” “That’s better,” said Syria. “Now we’re there.” She sat down on the bench at his feet. “Now, you explain to me why I should do such a thing.” She patted his ankles. “To do me a favor.” “Oh?” She seemed amused. “You really think I’d be doing you a favor?” “Both Hijack’s brothers were murdered in Iraq. If they send him back he’ll be axed right off the plane. Even if they don’t bother, he’ll be drafted. And Hijack says—he says it’s not a nice war.” “What’s a nice war?” she asked mildly, not paying much attention. She held the toe of his tennis shoe. Checker turned on his side away from her, resting his cheek against the warm wood of the bench as if it were a pillow. He felt like a small boy wishing he could clutch a ragged one-eyed bear. Instead, he reached down and stroked the leg of the bench, conscious of how hard it was. Checker almost never felt sorry for himself; it was a funny curled sensation, shaped like a sickle with a point on the end or like a very sharp question mark. “He’s my friend and he’s in trouble.” “Why should I care?” She pulled her hand away and leaned back. “I met you ten days ago spying on my shop and making a mess of my alley. You’re a total stranger.” It would be different if she was really trying to give him a reason why the whole idea was ridiculous. But no, she was forcing him instead to make a good case. “I’m not a stranger,” he said muddily, his cheek against the wood. “We’re alike.” “That’s arrogant.” Yet she didn’t seem offended, and expected him to go on. He couldn’t. He felt as if soon he’d have to go deeply and dreamlessly to sleep. “Don’t women usually get paid for this sort of thing?” “About three thousand dollars.” “And how much money do you have?” “Forty.” “Thousand?” “Dollars.” Checker sat up and pulled a scrumple of bills from his pocket. “Forty-three. But it’s not all mine, it’s the band’s. My share would be six … fourteen. Plus Hijack’s … $12.28, then.” “Well. That’s at least six beers. Two apiece. A party.” “How’s that?” “For the three of us. You, me, and my husband.” She let him hear the sound of it. Checker winced. “How are you going to pay off any woman with $12.28?” “And a lifetime’s admission to Plato’s?” “Well, what’s the cover?” “Two dollars.” Syria did a quick calculation. “So, if I went every weekend, I’d start to break even after twenty-seven years.” “Want to watch me drum that long?” “Maybe.” Checker kept waiting for this to be a joke. They both sat facing each other, leaning against opposite posts, their feet on the bench. Sensing they’d reached an impasse, Checker began to cheer up. “You know, I’ve never much wanted a husband …” said Syria thoughtfully. “But I wouldn’t mind a wife.” “What?” “I teach all day, do bones at night. I get tired of carrots and bad Astoria pizza. My apartment looks like glacial slag. At the end of the month my clothes have gotten so filthy that I have to throw them away. I’ve lived this way for years. But it might be refreshing to clean up my act. Only, though, if someone else did the cleaning.” “Are you serious?” “What else could I possibly get out of this?” Checker tapped the bench. “What all would you want him to do?” “Cooking, shopping, picking up. Laundry, phone bills. I would like to see out my windows again, maybe even find the floor. Fresh flowers. I have a little money, can you believe it? The stuff accumulates from neglect, like dust. I wouldn’t mind having someone to spend it, which is only work to me. And once in a while he could have the afternoon off to go to the hairdresser’s or the garden club or to buy a new hat.” She laughed. “There’s just one person won’t find this funny,” said Check uneasily. “He’s Muslim, isn’t he?” “Very.” “This could be quite an education, then.” “Maybe,” Checker warned, “for both of you.” “You are talking about that lean, bright-eyed, dark thing at your heels last Friday, with the pretty teeth? A puppy dog. Needs housetraining.” “If Hijack is a puppy, he bites. I don’t think he does windows.” “He could learn.” “I’m trying to tell you—Hijack has some ideas about women—” “That can be changed.” “I’ve never met anyone who was actually more optimistic than I was.” “Do you think he’d rather clean up the mess his head would make rolling on the runway or my living room?” “Good point.” Checker was confused. It was lucky for this to work out, wasn’t it? Then why did he feel so depressed? “There’s another thing,” he added. “The INS is getting tougher. You’d have an interview—” “Sounds entertaining.” “And you’d have to live together, for a while, anyway.” “How else would he fix me breakfast?” Syria, Check was all too aware, didn’t know what she was getting into. He tried to imagine Rahim rising cheerfully in the morning to stand at the stove in a little white apron, making sure to put in the toast so that it would pop up just when the eggs were still loose; maybe in the other room Syria would be ordering more oxides, to stride into the kitchen immediately angry if the coffee wasn’t already dripped. He tried to see the Iraqi cringing and apologizing, slipping a spoon between the cone and the filter to make the coffee drip faster, a little trick he’d picked up from the neighbor next door— No way. “Your Iraqi friend, does he have a lover?” “Only me.” “Oh?” “Not like that. But Hijack is—around.” “He adores you.” “We’re friends.” “That must mean a lot to you, then.” “I tried to explain before. Everything means a lot to me. Bridges. Water. So you can figure how I might feel about human beings.” “What about yourself?” “What do you mean?” “Never mind.” “So we have a deal?” “He’d have to work. I’m not the Statue of Liberty.” Checker went to get his coat, feeling chilly, though even with the gas low it must have been ninety degrees. They stood side by side before the furnace, staring at the eclipse around the door. “Now, Checko,” she said softly, right by his ear. “Now you may get out of it.” Checker leaned down and picked up a long glass drip he’d failed to sweep up, and held it up to the light of the fire. The bead at its end was crimson, frozen at the end of a thread of glass like a crystal tear. Sheckair! A wet napkin smoothed over his forehead; r’s rolled over his ears. “No,” said Check with a sigh. “I’m in.” It was over. So many dramas are decided in minutes, though the consequences may loiter in for decades, as leisurely as they are inexorable. Don’t worry. Sit back. Watch the show. It’s like after the polls have closed and there’s nothing to do but follow the returns, staring at the screen with Scotch as the numbers change, digit by digit. Once the votes are cast, it’s almost relaxing. They shuffled on their wraps with a curious embarrassment; the evening, especially the first of it—what is your story, long and easy on the bench—would not return. You are my good friend’s fianc?e. I am the matchmaker, the go-between. The employee, too; a business relationship. Checker felt almost formal. “I’ll be in at nine tomorrow night.” “Just hold on there.” “What?” “How about my twelve dollars?” Checker laughed and fished out the tattered bills, counting them fondly one by one into her beautiful hands, so full of scars and hard work and twenty-nine years of stories. “Uhn-uhn.” She stopped him as he started to leave. “Twelve twenty-eight.” The last thirteen cents of Syria’s bride price were in pennies. Checker is about to make a mistake 5 / bye, bye, miss american pie (#ulink_9b481840-ddad-5467-a7a8-91d7a5888e56) Just to play the devil’s advocate,” said Eaton, “don’t you think this inundation of aliens has to be stopped? According to Kaypro, the U.S. is on its way to being a full third Spanish.” “Hijack isn’t Spanish,” said Checker. “By the turn of the century, over half the school-age kids in this country will be Spanish.” “Hijack isn’t Spanish,” said Checker. “We’re being overrun by Hispanics.” “Hijack isn’t—” “Foreigners, then.” “This country is made of foreigners.” A tired point. “Granted. But while personally we all like Rahim—” Caldwell guffawed. “Come on, Strike. That little terror would send an army of raving Shiites after your ass in a minute. He hates your ever-loving guts. Let’s not play pretty.” Eaton sat tapping his foot. It was impossible to have an intelligent discussion with these people. “I’m trying to approach this politically. While I’m not saying you’re doing the wrong thing with Rahim—” “Then why make the point?” “There’s something to be said for ideological discourse,” said Howard. “What?” asked Check. Howard shrank, and shrugged. Howard was often paralyzed by direct questions. “See, I’m not much of an intellectual,” Check went on, “like Howard here—” Howard beamed. “—But ideas in the air. They’re funny animals. They seem to come kind of—afterward. Like, you decide you don’t like some Iraqi, or Spanish people, and then you grab one of these flying things and make it squawk.” “You’re saying all abstraction is invalid?” “Just seems like a shifty business, you know? To talk about Hijack but to say that the one thing we can’t talk about when we talk about him is—Hijack.” Checker raised his eyebrows innocently. “That make sense?” “Not much,” clipped Eaton. “Let me put it this way. Hijack goes back to Iraq—” “Thwack,” said Caldwell. “Exactly. Or at least he gets drafted, and this thing with Iran—” “Which isn’t America’s problem.” “Everyone is everyone else’s problem,” said Checker promptly. “That sounds—burdensome,” said Eaton. “How do you take it all on and keep from killing yourself?” Checker studied the table. “Interesting question.” Eaton took a shrewd look at the other drummer. “The point is: personal loyalty is one thing. But if you look at the big picture, our borders are being overrun. It’s practically a national emergency. And you’re about to engage in immigration fraud. Sure, you want to help your friend. But morally—even if you won’t recognize the category—your operation is iffy.” Finally Checker responded, with unusual gravity. “I live in a little picture. It’s the only picture I have. You say personal loyalty is one thing. I don’t think so. I think it’s everything. It’s the beginning of everything, anyway, Striker. It’s the bottom line.” Checker had closed his eyes; finished, he opened them and the whole band applauded. Eaton didn’t know what had gone wrong. Checker slid down the basement rail, swung around a water pipe, and tripped into the tiny alcove by the heater where Rahim was once more dripping along with the candle. Check threw the Iraqi a beer. Keeping Rahim hydrated was a full-time project, but with his nights in the glassworks Checker was getting used to cooling his own body like a nuclear reactor and never forgot to bring the hideaway something to drink. He whisked around the cramped back room picking up gyro wrappers and soda cans, noticing how in only a minute or two the steam from the leaky heater began to condense and bead on his skin. The wide cuff he wore on his left wrist shifted; constant perspiration was making the leather slick and Checker carefully readjusted it. In the light of the candle his muscles gleamed, the veins down his forearm shone in golden branches, and water ran in runnels between his tendons. Checker stopped to admire the shine. Sweat reminded him of Syria. “Sheckair?” Rahim whispered, sitting in a puddle on the greenish concrete floor. “Not complaining and thanking you so much for the many drinks and the books and the tapes, but—” “It’s hot here and this sucks,” Checker finished quietly for him, taking Rahim’s waste pail from the corner and running it unsqueamishly upstairs. “So,” he announced on his return, “a deal.” “Wife?” “Sort of, but you’re not going to like it.” Rahim wilted a little further. “She is ugly?” “No,” said Check, smiling at the picture. “She’s a knockout.” “So how is problem?” Rahim immediately cheered. “I marry pretty girl, stay in Amedica.” “She’s no girl, believe me.” “How she is pretty, she is old dog?” “English lesson, Hijack. Pretty is for sweet girls with pastel sweaters and heart-shaped lockets around their necks. Pretty girls had braces. Pretty girls take a shower at least once a day and never have dishes in the sink. They keep their nails trimmed and their shoes match their pocketbooks. Or they may even wear black leather and metal studs and ride a Harley, but they still have a way of looking at you, a way of smiling, that means they’ll never hurt you in a million years. They like to hold hands and they’re nice, they’re relaxing. But Syria Pyramus isn’t a girl and she’s not pretty and she’s definitely not relaxing.” Rahim’s eyes widened. “Fire lady?” “Yes, but—” Rahim leaned back and stretched out his legs as much as he was able. “Not bad, Sheckair. But she need discipline.” Checker groaned. “That’s what she said about you.” “I work at my market. She make supper. Have rooms clean, flowers—” “Hold everything.” Checker took the candle and placed it ritualistically between them, crossing his legs on the floor. “This is the scam, my man: You make the supper. You have the rooms clean. You buy the flowers.” Rahim Abdul, loyal Muslim and recent Iraqi immigrant, born and faithfully raised in the bosom of paternity, looked genuinely confused. “What you say?” “She wants—an assistant,” said Check uncomfortably. “To cook and clean and shop. She wants—” “Slave!” Checker shrugged. “Yeah. Take it or leave it.” “Leave it!” As Rahim glared, Checker stood back up and stretched, pointedly knocking his arms into the pipes overhead. “Well, I guess we could get you a little lamp here, a table. And maybe a TV, though with Kaypro around all the time you couldn’t use the sound …” “Don make funny.” “Well, is it a joke, Hijack? That they’ll shoot you for draft evasion, was that just a good story?” “No story,” said Rahim glumly. “Only—shoot if lucky.” “And we might be able to rustle you out of here, but you could never come back. You’d have to leave The Derailleurs—” “I never leave Derailleurs!” “Sh-sh!” There was scuffling in the upstairs hall. “All right, then,” said Checker softly when the steps retreated, kneeling to his saxophone player. “This is the real thing, Hijack. Pulling this off is going to be tricky. We’re going to marry you in a wet basement, real quiet, no champagne. And even when you’re married, the INS is going to investigate you down to the drawer you keep your underwear in. Frankly, they don’t like Iraqis. I’ve done the best I can and we don’t have any money, the woman has to get something out of this, okay? But I don’t want to see you ground into a falafel just because you’re too much of a man to fix her one yourself.” The expression on Rahim’s face changed, and Checker wasn’t sure he liked it. “We make me Amedican,” said Rahim, eyes glittering with complicity. “Then we teach this Fire Lady to make her husband falafel with warm, fresh pita and walk three steps behind him in street.” “No way, Hijack—” Rahim raised his hand. “I do how you say.” “You do what Syria says and agree to it now or we can’t go through with this.” “No problem,” said Rahim mildly, who had learned this neutralizing phrase only lately and found it immensely handy. “You mean you agree?” “No problem,” Rahim repeated. “There’d better not be,” Checker warned. “Is one more thing.” Rahim put a hand shyly on Checker’s arm. “She is—clean?” Checker guffawed. “Syria?” “No, I mean—she is not used?” Checker paused, and said carefully, “I’m sure Syria hasn’t ever done anything like this before.” He had the sensation with this statement of balancing on a very thin beam—he held his breath, every word a smooth, sure step, as long as he didn’t look down. He knew Rahim. “Excellent,” said Rahim. “Because in my country, if she—” “You really don’t need to worry about that,” said Checker hurriedly. “We have a deal? With cooking and cleaning?” Rahim only rose and said eagerly, “I can go now?” “Kaypro likes it here, bridegroom. You stay put.” Checker left the Iraqi in the basement to stew, much like shutting a child in his room to restore his good behavior. But Checker remembered grimly that the tactic just created wilier, more rebellious children in the long run. Sure enough, when Checker returned upstairs Gary Kaypro was back again, this time commiserating with Eaton about how the last thing you found in New York nowadays was “a real American.” Kaypro was drinking Wild Turkey, bemoaning the incompetence of the INS, and Checker wondered how Rahim had gotten snagged in one of its rare moments of effectiveness. As Kaypro went on about their tiny budget and ludicrous responsibilities, though, Check did start to feel sorry for him—though he wanted to play sax with The Derailleurs, Kaypro didn’t seem corrupt really, and he had a stupid, impossible job. “But it’s flattering, isn’t it?” Checker intruded gently. “Immigration?” “Yeah, how?” “Well, we can’t let everybody in. But it’s nice to run a place that everybody wants into instead of out of. Nobody’s beating down any doors to get into Iraq.” “God, no,” and Kaypro proceeded with a string of Middle Eastern horror stories, then back to nightmare bureaucracy and fraud. “You know, for a couple hundred dollars any wet can outfit himself with birth certificate, driver’s license, and social security card? They sell them in packets.” Checker restrained himself from asking. “Where?” During the week Checker dragged a doctor down to the basement and over to Vesuvius for blood tests, and stood in line for forms at City Hall. Most of his pocket money went to buying Rahim six-packs, most of his time to finding a minister, rushing pizza slices down Plato’s back stairs before the cheese congealed, and calming Syria after she inflamed at the least inconvenience this odd project cost her. But Checker didn’t mind being busy—he loved all forms of motion. He ran his errands with Zefal, and in January the roads were uncluttered with other cyclists, the air slapping his skin, sharp in his throat. Winter coloration in New York has a subtle palette—the ashen crust of dried salt on macadam, the dun scrub of dead grass in the parks, the dapple of tabloid pages flapping down cracking sidewalks, the flat cardboardy bark of beeches and ginkgos, the leaden loom and pulse of the sky—all these grays, depressing to some, were tender to Checker. Friday, Kaypro showed up at Plato’s with his saxophone. He’d returned to the club every night that week, on the pretense of doing his job. Eaton, especially, seemed to like talking to the man, scattering their conversation with brands of shells and pedals and guitars, testing Kaypro’s knowledge of obscure bands and backup musicians. Eaton liked to prickle these games with “Of course, at your age …” “You must not get to …” “I don’t suppose you’ve heard of …” Check watched each “your age” hit Kaypro like a little dart. Eaton would casually refer to late-night recording sessions and wild impromptu coke parties by the river, full of spontaneous pranks and backslapping camaraderie. He must have enjoyed the pinched, left-out look on the officer’s face, an expression not even of nostalgia but of pure deprivation—Kaypro’s own youth wouldn’t have been like that, because nobody’s was. While the agent didn’t seem to mind Eaton, picking up the latest jargon and memorizing the names of hot bands and clubs, he virtually leaped at Checker whenever The Derailleurs’ drummer walked in the room. Yet Checker himself began to avoid the man. The carefully ripped T-shirts the agent appeared in every night embarrassed him, the same way fat people did who insisted on wearing pants three sizes too small. And Kaypro said “used to” and “I remember” far too frequently for Checker’s taste. He would lean too far over the knotty pine tables, he talked too loudly, he laughed too long, and in his rare pauses Kaypro’s wistfulness trailed under Checker’s nose like the smell of an electrical short. Kaypro was losing his hair and weighed too much and showed up every night in a different hat, trundling into the club with a panicked expression until he found one of The Derailleurs at the bar. He was a terrible influence on Caldwell. Later Checker wrote a song about their gig with Kaypro Friday night, though he never showed it to Gary for fear of hurting the man’s feelings. To this day Check hasn’t allowed his band to play “In the Pocket” publicly in case the agent might hear. For archival interest, though, this is the song, though Checker wouldn’t even approve of our printing it here: In the Pocket (#litres_trial_promo) Last week tooted a few tunes through— Kids look younger than they used to. Rapped so fast with all new lingo. (We don’t say “rapped” now, Mr. Kaypro.) My reed kept rasping through their song; When they stopped I still blew strong. I missed the beat, I lost the key— But who wants teenage sympathy? My life’s on digital delay, Echoes the rate of my decay. Hey, Warhol, what are we to do When our fifteen minutes Are through? Extension cord Won’t reach the socket. Can’t seem to play In the pocket. On the charts in ’69— I’m a scratched-up 45. Fingerprinted, grooves grown moldy, Sunday morning Golden Oldie. I was once a pretty boy, Crooned a sax with purple joy. Was it good as I recall? Has purple haze obscured it all? My life’s on digital delay, Echoes the rate of my decay. Hey, Warhol, what are we to do When our fifteen minutes Are through? Still on stage But off the docket. I used to play In the pocket. It was a sad song. He’d thought Syria would find the afternoon amusing. She didn’t. He’d thought he would find it amusing. He didn’t. Oh, the band was having a good enough time. They’d snuck with muffled laughter down the back stairs, with napkin bow ties twist-tied to their collars. Caldwell buzzed the Wedding March softly on his kazoo. J.K. had snatched up a beer-can pop-top and a radiator hose clip for rings. Sure. Ha-ha. But as Check had escorted the bride to their ad hoc chapel she’d said practically nothing. “You don’t seem like the sentimental type,” he commented. “Are you?” “This sucks,” she said simply. Only several blocks later did she volunteer, “When I was growing up we thought everything was a joke—the prom, graduation. We mooned principals, crashed formal dances in patched jeans. But the joke was on us. It was a cheat.” “Why a cheat?” “Those ceremonies were for us. We only sabotaged ourselves.” She said sabotage. She said travesty. She even said violation. All she didn’t say out loud was disappointment. The basement was in top form, a steam engine. By this time Rahim’s complexion was the pasty, bloated color of some of the creatures that washed up on the rocks in the park. His hair had twisted into damp jerricurls; his fingers were pruny, and he claimed the back of his neck was beginning to mold. Checker introduced the minister, a Quaker who saw Rahim as a persecuted political refugee and who was therefore feeling liberal and pleased with himself. He was elaborately understanding when Rahim began to carp: in a Muslim wedding, men and women should stand on opposite sides; though in the cramp of Plato’s basement it was more practical to divide them into separate layers. Wasn’t Syria going to sit the Seven Days, with seven different dresses, each more exquisite than the last? “No, we’ll do a variation,” Syria proposed. “For a week I’ll wear the same green work shirt, and every day it will get a little bit dirtier. Then finally the big night will come, just the two of us, and you can wash it.” Rahim didn’t laugh. As the minister began, mopping his forehead between vows, Checker didn’t look at the couple but down at the pop-top in his hands; by the time he offered the ring to Rahim, he’d twisted the tab off, leaving the aluminum jagged; slipped on Syria’s finger, it must have scratched. “Best man.” He thought about the term. It was a role he could tire of. Instead of “I do,” Syria said, “I suppose.” Rahim had finally stopped whining. Through the ceremony he kept slipping his gaze over to Syria, rippling his eyes up and down her lanky figure, darting incredulous glances at the wild Picasso angles of her face. Little by little he was starting to smile, until his small even teeth were spread so wide and white that he had to look down at the floor. He couldn’t have stopped smiling if he’d tried. When the minister said, “You may kiss the bride,” Rahim’s smile spread more extravagantly than ever, and Syria paused to examine her new husband; perhaps for the first time he was real to her, an attractive, exotic boy soon to be installed in her apartment. She leaned over with exploratory care and kissed him on the cheek; but Rahim reached over to that serpentine neck and kissed his new property on the lips with victorious possessiveness. Syria laughed, uneasily at first, but soon with real humor, and she tied her apron under her eyes like a hajab. They went upstairs to the club, closed in the afternoon, and drank beer out of plastic champagne glasses. Syria belly-danced to the refrain “Never gonna do it without the fez on” with Rahim, then to “The Sultans of Swing” with Checker, until, abruptly, she stopped in the middle of the song, untied the apron, and announced coldly that she had to get to work. She was such a strange combination of flamboyance and rigidity, Checker couldn’t figure her. Rahim called forlornly after her, “Don stay with husband?” but already he was making entreaties rather than firm Muslim demands. The two of them watched Syria stride away, her hair shooting by the yard behind her like a train, her big work shirt billowing like a gown, both wondering whether any bride in white lace could be more splendid. Why are you so angry?” Syria threw the punty halfway across the studio like a javelin; it landed in the barrel with a clang. “I’m not angry,” she said, tossing the pieces she’d just made crashing into the trash. “I’m normal.” “Why are you normally so angry?” “Why aren’t you?” There was more tinkling and clattering; Syria slid the door of the furnace fully aside, the gas up high; it roared so that Checker couldn’t answer her question, which was fine—he didn’t understand it. When she’d finished swinging her glass around the shop, wielding punties in the big turns of a baton twirler, she reluctantly rolled the door shut again. He’d never seen her motions more graceful or more dreadful, either. “So,” she turned to him. “This is my wedding night.” She whipped off her apron and threw it up so it looped around a pipe over the ceiling. “Tell me,” she said, with the dark glasses still on, “you did everything for the license, didn’t you?” Checker shrugged. “And that kid isn’t going to know how to apply for a green card by himself, is he?” “Maybe not.” “But of course you’ve already found out how it’s done.” “Federal Plaza.” “That’ll take days, you know that. All the forms?” “Yes.” “Why?” “I don’t understand.” “Why all this? Why everything?” “Why not?” He’d never seen her look so disgusted. The emotion suited her. The only thing he could imagine as more flattering was full-fledged disdain. “Are you always so good? Because it’s gross to be around. You still use that word, ‘gross’?” “Not much.” She couldn’t stand still, and kept ranging around the studio, throwing her coffee cup in the sink so the last sip splotched over the counter. She drank it strong and black. “Don’t know if I can stand you around here five nights a week. You annoy me.” “Sorry,” said Check, and a quiver ran through him, a ripple of distortion like a wave of heat. She turned fast enough to catch it. “Don’t wilt! Say, Fuck you! You’re a mess, you know that?” Another ripple. “Say, I am not. Say, Leave me alone. Say, I do my work and this is none of your business.” “It’s your business if I annoy you.” “God!” She looked around the studio and, finding nothing to smash, turned on Checker—he would learn not to clean up so well. “Those friends of yours,” she said. “They’re sickening.” “Why?” “The way they coo and prate over you. Really, it makes me want to puke. But they ever do anything for you, mister?” “They’re good musicians. They make me laugh—” “I’m not impressed.” She cut him off. “And what’s this about your being so happy all the time?” “I get pretty—worked up. They like it.” “You don’t seem that happy to me.” “At the moment I’m having trouble.” Checker was sitting on a bench; she glared down at him. “Why don’t you tell me to cram it? Why don’t you say, Leave my friends out of this?” Checker was frantically sifting through everything he’d done in the last few hours for what could possibly have offended her. “I’m sorry I got you involved with Hijack—” “You damned well better be. And sorry now? Just you wait.” “I’ll do what I can to make it easy—” Syria pushed the bench with her boot and it toppled over, Check with it. He picked himself up and dusted his hands of glass slivers. “You’ll do what you can! Tell me, You said you’d marry him, no one forced you! Say, You accepted, it’s not my problem!” “You did say yes,” Check conceded. “Oh, that’s powerful,” she taunted him. “And do you have anything to say about being thrown on the floor just now? That was fine, you just pick yourself up and clear your throat?” Checker decided that doing anything she told him to do, saying anything she told him to say, would drive her all the more into a rage from his sheer obedience. He stood, then, quietly. She breathed at him, and if there had been fire shooting from her nostrils, not hard to imagine, it would have been in the ensuing silence gradually reduced to smoke. “Do you,” said Check with perfect gentleness, “ever do anything else at night? Anything but glass?” “Why?” “Answer me.” “… No.” “Do you ever wish you did something else, once in a while?” “Like what?” “Just go to a bar. To a movie. Go dancing.” “I’ve done those things before,” she said warily. “I need glass now.” Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». 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