Chances Are

by Richard Russo

  “Seriously?” Lincoln frowned.

  “Hey, musicians are nocturnal. When I was younger I’d still be up at dawn, which meant I could eat breakfast before heading home. Double stack of pancakes, side of greasy sausage, pile of home fries, toast. Kill the hangover before it starts. These days I’m home by three at the latest, which means I’m down to a single meal.”

  “Well”—Lincoln shook his head—“this one’s a doozy.”

  “Tedmarek,” Mickey said, shifting gears. “Why the hell are you rushing back to the Rust Belt tomorrow? Come hang out with me on the Cape for a few days. I’ve got a pullout sofa.”

  Okay, Teddy thought, so who is Delia? The conversation he’d overheard part of earlier had sounded intimate, but whoever she was, this Delia person must not be living with Mickey, or he wouldn’t have extended the invitation so cavalierly.

  “My dog won’t like you sleeping on it,” Mickey conceded, “but his affection and forgiveness can usually be bought with chocolate.”

  “You have a dog?” Lincoln said, surprised.

  Mickey nodded. “Clapton.”

  “Clapton?”

  Mickey turned to Teddy. “Again,” he said, “can you tell when he’s joking?” When Teddy shrugged, he continued, “He wandered in one day. He’s old now. Blind. Arthritic. Occasionally incontinent.”

  “You make staying with you sound really attractive,” Teddy told him.

  “Hey, don’t turn your nose up. By the end of the week I’ll have you eating real food again. I bet I could cure you of that Mumford and Sons disorder, too.”

  “Hey, what was the upshot with that guitar?” Teddy asked.

  Mickey blinked at him. “What guitar?”

  “You said some guy had a Rickenbacker for sale.”

  “Oh, right,” Mickey said, pushing his plate toward the center of the table and stifling a well-earned belch. “He wants too much, so I’m letting him sweat a bit. I may call him again before heading home.”

  It was still fifteen minutes until the first set, but Rockers, nearly empty when they got there, was starting to fill up. Having drunk two pints of beer, Teddy was, too. On his way to the men’s room, he passed the stage and marveled again at how crammed it was with sound equipment. Back at Minerva all Mickey’s band had required was a couple amps and a small, portable PA system. How much did all this extra stuff cost? he wondered. There were two bass drums, their facings covered with drop cloths for some reason (had the drummer recently quit a band with another name to join this one?) as well as two snares and four cymbals of varying sizes. Did a local rock band really require a keyboard and a synthesizer? What was with all the foot pedals? The musicians had apparently done their sound check earlier because the amps were humming with static electricity, the mics picking up an ambient buzz of conversation from nearby tables. At one of these, off to the side, lounged four wraithlike guys who had to be the band. Only four, Teddy thought, counting the instruments again. In addition to the keyboards and drums, an electric bass and two six-string guitars were propped on their stands. One of them, he now noticed, was an old Rickenbacker that looked to be in cherry condition, as Mickey had put it.

  Teddy was still chuckling to himself when the door opened and Mickey appeared in the men’s room mirror, unzipping at an adjacent urinal. “Asshole,” he said. “You figured it out, didn’t you?”

  “Yep.”

  “Don’t you dare tell Lincoln.”

  “I won’t.”

  They peed side by side, two men with prostates that, like the rest of their organs, had seen better days. “All kidding aside,” Mickey said when Teddy zipped up and moved to the sink. “You should come hang out on the Cape for a few days.”

  Had he and Lincoln been talking? Not that it mattered. Nothing he’d told Lincoln about his spells had been in confidence. Of course it was also possible that Lincoln hadn’t said a thing. Mickey might’ve looked him over and concluded he was in a bad way. “I wish I could.”

  “Why can’t you? You’re done teaching, right?”

  “Yeah, but I need to get back.”

  Mickey made a don’t-shit-a-shitter face. “BS,” he said. Friendly enough, but a challenge nevertheless.

  Teddy decided to be forthright. “You can’t help me, Mick. I appreciate the concern, but I’ll just have to soldier through it, like always.”

  Mickey zipped up and joined him at the sink. “Maybe it’s time to try something different,” he offered, “though for the record, the invitation wasn’t about you. There’s somebody I’d like you to meet.”

  “Yeah? Who?” Because if there was somebody new in Mickey’s life, Teddy was happy for him, even if that happiness was tinged with envy.

  “No dice,” Mickey said. “It’s a surprise.” He grabbed a fistful of paper towels from the dispenser. “Anyway, think about it.”

  When their eyes met in the mirror, it occurred to Teddy that his friend might actually be asking for a favor. If so, it would be his first ever. “Okay,” he promised, “I will.”

  When they returned to the table, their plates had been cleared away, and the musicians were casually mounting the stage. “You’re gonna like these guys,” Mickey said, draining the last of his beer.

  The waitress came by to see if they wanted another round, and both Lincoln and Teddy nodded. Mickey shook his head almost imperceptibly, a gesture Lincoln didn’t catch, though he did notice when Mickey and Teddy grinned at each other. “What?” he said, immediately suspicious.

  “Nothing, Your Honor,” Mickey assured him.

  “Nothing,” Teddy agreed.

  When the drummer hit the rim of his snare, it sounded like a gunshot played through a bullhorn, and the bassist thumped a note that Teddy didn’t so much hear as feel in the pit of his stomach. The keyboard player adjusted his dials so that the instrument sounded like a honky-tonk piano. One of the bartenders, a muscle-bound, goateed, midthirties guy in a white T-shirt, both arms sleeved with tattoos, yelled, “Rock and roll!” The drummer, arms raised above his head, clicked his sticks—one, two, three—and the rhythm guitarist and keyboard man came in on the downbeat, which started the crowd clapping. The Rickenbacker guitar sat unclaimed in the middle of the stage. “Well,” Mickey said, grinning over at Lincoln. “I guess I’ll see you boys later.”

  The audience was no longer looking at the stage but instead had pivoted in their direction, and suddenly a spotlight blinded them. The look on Lincoln’s face, Teddy had to admit, was priceless. “I don’t—” he began, bewildered and blinking, until the spotlight left them to follow Mickey as he strode to the stage, which he bounded onto with one leap. The drummer had removed the drop cloths that had covered his two bass drums, one of which now read BIG MICK and the other ON POTS, the name of Mickey’s old band. The drummer also joined in literally with both feet. Slinging the Rick-enbacker over his shoulder, Mickey stepped to the mic, his voice filling the room with thunder. “Church house, gin house!”

  To which the other singers and the crowd responded, “School house, out house!”

  Mickey: “Highway number nineteen!”

  Crowd: “People keep the city clean!”

  Teddy recognized the song, “Nutbush City Limits,” the old Ike and Tina Turner hit, and of course he thought again of Jacy, because this was exactly the kind of song she would’ve belted out back in the day. Only there was no Jacy anymore, so it was the Bob Seger version they were playing, Mickey’s voice all rasp and grind.

  “Nutbush!” he called.

  “Nutbush City!” the crowd roared back.

  “Nutbush City Limits!”

  Everyone in the room agreed. “Nutbush City Limits!”

  Teddy glanced over at Lincoln, who was shaking his head but also grinning ear to ear, having finally realized that he was the only one not in the know. “Tell me something,” he shouted, so as to be heard over the roar of the guitars and the pounding drums and the frenzied crowd. “How did I get such dicks for friends?” But he had his phone out and Teddy w
atched him switch it from photo mode to video. With everybody in the joint on their feet, his only chance of getting a clear shot of the band was to climb up on a chair, so Lincoln did. Teddy followed suit, sorry all over again that Theresa was no longer in his life. If he, too, made a recording, he’d have no one to share it with.

  Maybe, he thought, Mickey was right. Maybe it wasn’t too late to try a new tack. Maybe give the monastery a chance. What he couldn’t quite decide was whether that would constitute a bold new direction or just a timid recycling of the old divinity school idea. At twenty-one, having given up on love, cloistered life had seemed a sensible option. Like so many serious young men back then, he’d been genuinely taken with the idea (Merton’s, actually) of a simple, consecrated life, far outside the madness of the secular world. But now? Who was he kidding? At some point, probably not long after starting Seven Storey Books, it’d dawned on him that he in fact hated Merton and despised how he’d turned his back on the world in favor of religious devotion. Ego-driven, self-deceived little shit that he was, old Tom had been every bit as competitive about piety as he’d been in the pursuit of carnal pleasure. Perhaps because so many people had concluded wrongly that Teddy was gay, he’d always rejected any suggestion that Merton might be, but now he wasn’t so sure. Why had he been so vague and coy about his sexual adventures in Seven Storey Mountain? Why did he seem to hang out only with men? Even Aramis, Dumas’s middle Musketeer, a serial adulterer even as he prepared for the priesthood, had been less dishonest.

  “Nutbush!” Mickey howled, the song’s refrain having come back around again, and the emotion on his friend’s face was one Teddy hadn’t felt in such a long time that he at first couldn’t identify it. Joy. Pure, unadulterated joy. What Mickey loved now—rock and roll played at a very high volume—was what he’d loved as a boy. Recognizing what filled his soul to bursting, he’d cleaved to it, and across the decades they had remained the most faithful of lovers. It also occurred to Teddy that his not letting him and Lincoln in on whose band was playing tonight was exactly the kind of secret Mickey loved to keep and then reveal at the precise right moment, as if to prove that the world truly was a magical place full of wondrous surprises. Otherwise, just as Lincoln said earlier, he really was a what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of guy. He’d stayed in the steamy sorority-house kitchen washing pots because he preferred doing that to flirting with pretty girls in the front room. There was only one Theta he ever cared about, and he never pretended otherwise. He’d punched that SAE pledge because those stone lions out front, whatever they represented to him in that drunken moment, had in fact pissed him off. Why, at the last possible moment, had he changed his mind and gone to Canada instead of reporting for duty in Vietnam? Well, okay, Teddy didn’t have a clue, but he was confident that the answer, if revealed, wouldn’t be complicated, because Mickey himself wasn’t complicated. No general studies major, he knew who and what he loved; in other words he knew who he was. If Troyer had arrived at a different conclusion, he was full of shit.

  “Nutbush City!” the crowd roared, their fists pumping in the air.

  “Nutbush City Limits!” cried Mickey.

  Cried the crowd.

  Cried Lincoln.

  Cried Teddy himself, his own fist pumping with the rest.

  “Nutbush City Limits!”

  Lincoln

  Mickey, surrounded by fans, came over to the edge of the stage when Lincoln called to him. “Jesus, Face Man. Don’t tell me you’re leaving?”

  “No,” Lincoln assured him. “I just need to return a call.” He waved his phone, which had vibrated during the set—no doubt Anita responding to the video he’d sent.

  “So what’d you think?”

  “You’re good. Great, actually.”

  Mickey shrugged. “After four decades, you’re supposed to be, right?” But Lincoln could see that the compliment pleased him.

  “What I don’t understand is why you aren’t deaf.”

  “What?”

  “I said …” Lincoln began, then got it. “Oh, right. So … how come you told Teddy what was up and not me?”

  “I didn’t. He figured it out. Seriously, is he going to be okay? He doesn’t look so hot.”

  “I wish I knew.”

  “I’m trying to get him to hang out on the Cape for a couple days, but he won’t.”

  “I know.” He consulted his watch. “How long’s your break?”

  “Half an hour. Give Anita my love.”

  Since he hadn’t told Mickey who he was phoning, he said, “I could be calling someone else, you know.”

  “Yeah, but you’re not.”

  Outside, night had fallen, and the chill in the air was autumnal. Half of Rockers’ audience was now smoking on the narrow sidewalk, so Lincoln headed into the Camp Meeting Grounds, which, this late in the season, felt abandoned. The silence, after the pounding music, felt preternatural.

  Anita answered on the first ring. “Lincoln.”

  “Pretty crazy, huh?” he said. “The band’s actually called Big Mick on Pots, just like back in Minerva.”

  “Lincoln.”

  This time he heard the urgency in her voice. “Wait, didn’t you get the video I sent?”

  “Something came through, but I haven’t looked at it. Your father’s in the hospital. It looks like he’s going to be okay, but it was scary.”

  “What happened?”

  “We were having dinner and all of a sudden he went rigid, like he’d stuck his finger in an electric socket. Then he slumped over and started speaking gibberish. Anyway, we got him to the hospital—”

  “We?”

  “Angela and I.”

  “Angela.”

  “His lady friend. At least that’s what I’m assuming she is. She doesn’t speak much English.”

  “What language does she speak?”

  “Spanish, of course.”

  “But Dad doesn’t speak Spanish.”

  “I know that. What’s important here? Your father’s health or his living arrangements?”

  Lincoln opened his mouth to respond, but his phone vibrated again. He half expected the caller to be Dub-Yay himself, determined to take over the narrative as always, but this was a local number.

  “Lincoln? Are you still there?”

  “Sorry. I had an incoming call.”

  “This one is more important.”

  “I know that. I’m sorry. I’m just feeling a bit blindsided.”

  “Should I continue?”

  “I’m listening.”

  “So the doctors are still running tests, but the initial diagnosis is a TIA, what they call a ministroke. Apparently he’s been having them for a while.”

  “You got this from a woman who doesn’t speak English?”

  “No, from your father. The language impairment from strokes like these doesn’t last long. By the time the ambulance arrived, he was making sense again. He might say bike when he means rake, but you can kind of figure it out.”

  “Put him on, then.”

  “He’s resting. The doctors say he’ll probably sleep through till morning. The strokes are exhausting, even the baby ones. But here’s the thing. Each one is like a valve that relieves pressure, but then the pressure builds back up again. There’s apparently a bigger one coming.”

  “When?”

  “Unknown.”

  Lincoln sighed. “I’m really sorry, babe. This should not have happened on your watch.”

  “I’m just glad I was here. Meanwhile, he’s comfortable and in no immediate danger. Angela and I are heading back to the house now.”

  “You and Angela.” His phone vibrated again. Whoever called earlier had apparently left a message. “The old bastard.”

  “Lincoln.”

  “I’m just saying.”

  “I know what you’re saying, but you’re awfully hard on him. The only thing he’s ever really wanted is to be important.”

  “What he wants is his own way.”

  “Yeah, and t
here’s a lot of that going around.” When he didn’t respond to that, she said, “Sorry, that sounded like I meant you, and I didn’t.”

  “You sure?”

  “Pretty sure.”

  He was silent for a moment. “Have I mentioned recently that I love you?”

  “I know you do. I never doubt that.”

  “I really wish you were here.”

  “Right this minute, so do I.”

  “That’s good. You prefer me to Angela, at least?”

  “I do, yes. Wait, you sent a video?”

  “Watch it. It’ll cheer you up.” He knew he should let her go, but he didn’t want to. “You should see Mickey on that stage. He’s like a kid.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Of all of us, he’s the one who seems to be living the life he was meant to.”

  “Are you saying you’ve lived the wrong life?”

  “No, only that I don’t feel about commercial real estate like Mick feels about rock and roll.”

  “He isn’t married. He doesn’t have kids. Kids whose educations your hard work paid for.”

  “Our hard work.”

  “We did what needed doing. Both of us.”

  “I know. Okay, I’ll shut up now.”

  “Finish your business on the island and come home. You are coming back, right?”

  “Of course I’m coming back.”

  “Good. I miss you. So does your father.”

  “You think?”

  “He loves you.”

  “Because he thinks I’m his clone. Loving me is just another form of self-love. And this Angela woman—”

  “What does it matter, if she makes him happy?”

  “Why should he be happy? Did my mother get to be happy?”

  “Do you know that she wasn’t?”

  “Not for a fact, no.”

  “Look, I know she’s on your mind. It’s natural. Just finish up and come home.”

  Rockers was even more jammed when he returned. It took him forever to elbow through to their table in the back of the room. For some reason Teddy was peering intently at the stage, as if it posed a riddle. “Everything okay?” he asked, before looking Lincoln in the face.