by Luke Geddes
Why the hell was she acting this way? Lee pushed his way through the crowd to get a look at the television. On-screen, Seymour was being interviewed under the glow of a streetlight by a bottle-blond reporter with bleached teeth and a tan like a carrot:
“And do you have anything you’d like to say to Lindy? Or perhaps some words of hope for the community after this harrowing ordeal?”
Seymour thought for a moment before his eyes lit up. “To the people of Wichita, I say: Get out of your car once in a while. It’s no crime to go on a harmless little walk, and yet the people around here act like—”
“And what a fateful walk it was. Tell us again about the daring rescue. How did you know where to find Lindy?”
“Well, I just happened to be around. Right place, right time.” Seymour pointed off-screen. “She’s the one who, let’s say, neutralized the threat.”
The camera swung and the reporter pivoted to—why, it was that batty Barbie lady from Heart! “And you, Delores Kovacs, recount the events from your perspective.”
Delores stared unblinkingly into the Barbie doll she held with both hands, her makeup taking on a clownish mien under the lights. She nodded at it, faced the camera, leaned into the microphone, and said, “No comment,” before wheeling around and staggering off into the darkness.
“Overwhelmed with emotion, obviously,” said the reporter.
The camera panned back to Seymour. “I kicked the door down. You should have seen it. Like a Bruce Lee movie.”
“And when you saw what was going on, you called the police?”
“What? No! They were already on their way. Some friendly neighborhood narc called the fuzz on me. ‘A suspicious person appearing to case the neighborhood.’ It’s called taking a stroll, people!”
They kept repeating the same clips—the interview with Seymour, footage shot at a respectful distance of Lindy being reunited with her grateful family in the back of what the reporter called a “crisis van,” a creepy still image of the suspect’s basement where Lindy was held captive—so it didn’t take long to piece the story together. The culprit was a man named Ronald Marsh, that pathetic old guy from the Heart of America. The same awkward photo they used for the mall’s dealer directory flashed on-screen.
“Him?” Lee said in astonishment. “The postcard guy?” The newscaster said investigators had yet to determine a motive for Mr. Marsh, but they did confirm Lindy was found locked in his basement dungeon.
“Guy lived just a couple blocks from here,” someone said. “Some lonely old widower. Who woulda thought?”
Lee sat and watched TV in a daze. Periodically someone would come up and shake his hand; without Seymour around, he was the next best thing. Finally he belonged, he was not just tolerated but accepted and embraced. After all he’d done to ingratiate himself with the community, it was Seymour—elitist Seymour, who referred to the neighbors as “those Kansans,” whose snobby East-Coaster persona Lee was surer and surer was not just an affectation, who had treated their move back to Wichita (“back for you, not me, sweetheart,” he’d said) like a prison sentence—who’d won their approval.
Veronica had been on the phone for a while by then, talking to her contact in the police department. Periodically she’d set the receiver down and mute the television to make an announcement to the din of cheers and hollers. And whoops.
“No signs of sexual abuse!”
Keith Stoller stumbled into the room, raised his beer, and said, “I’ll drink to that.” He chugged till the bottle was empty, then reached into a nearby cooler for another. When he saw Lee, he collapsed onto the couch, put his arm around him, and leaned in to his ear. “Where’s that guy of yours? I could plant a kiss on his smacker. You ever feel like things are finally starting to go your way? You ever notice that good things only happen when you’ve given up all hope and are considering—seriously considering—faking your own death for the insurance money?”
Veronica returned with an update: “No signs of significant physical abuse!” She was like a campaign manager on election night. Seymour would love this; it was burlesque. Lee wished he, too, could find the humor in it, or moreover could share it with Seymour.
They used to have such fun. What happened to them? Whose fault was it? They were each miserable but expected the other to jolt himself out of his own misery, if for no other reason than only one of them should be allowed to be miserable at a time. Seymour had first attracted him with his easygoing sociability, his eagerness to go out and do things, and above all to be seen doing them. That joie de vivre had given way to curmudgeonliness as they grew closer and older. “I’d think you were embarrassed of me,” Seymour said one drunken night, “but the truth is worse: you’re boring.” He was probably right, but Lee had bit his lip and inhaled his own accusation: Seymour was shallow.
Yet look at what his boyfriend had done. Lee snaked free of Keith’s grasp, rose from the couch, and headed out the door, ready to explain that the man of the hour was probably looking for him. But no one asked.
The phone was ringing when he got home. He regretted answering as soon as he picked up—it was probably some reporter hunting for a quote. What was he supposed to say? He held the phone to his ear but didn’t speak.
“Hello?” A tentative voice answered itself. “Is this the residence of Lee Fallon?”
“Hello.”
“Lee Fallon the musician?”
It had been a long time since he’d played music. “This is Lee Fallon,” he said. “Who is this?”
“Simon Kurtzman.” Lee knew the name, but he had trouble connecting it to a person. “Sluggo.”
Of course, Simon “Sluggo” Kurtzman, onetime lead guitarist for Tears in the Birthday Cake. Sluggo had been known more for his stage presence than for his musical ability, at least at first. Iggy was his hero, and in the early days when the band had only four songs, he’d extend the set with an impromptu jam in which he’d strum his Les Paul with his erect dick. It was gimmicky, reckless, desperate in theory but awe-inspiring in practice. Sluggo was one of those gifted few capable of performing with a total lack of self-consciousness, who really did not care what the audience thought of him, and wasn’t just good at acting like it. (Seymour claimed to this day that the dick strumming had been his thing first, that Sluggo had copied his idea after seeing Foxy Nazi, but Lee insisted that playing a theremin with your dick and playing a guitar with your dick were two separate things.)
“This is Lee Fallon,” he said again.
“I guess you can guess what this is about.” The voice on the phone was both familiar and unfamiliar, marked by years passed, not gravelly or aged but different, devoid of Sluggo’s usual stoned drawl.
Oh god, Lee thought. He’s gone Jehovah. Or Scientologist. Or he had an STD—he and Lee hooked up one night early on, before Seymour. But that was so long ago—there must be a statute of limitations on that sort of thing. “Just tell me.”
“You never told us you were in a band with Mickey Gordy! Jesus, me and the guys, our minds were blown when we found out. Shit, back in the day you shoulda been hounding him to give us some opening slots.”
Was this one of Seymour’s pranks? If so, it only confirmed he’d developed quite a cruel streak. The last thing Lee wanted to talk about with his ex-bandmate was Mickey fucking Gordy. “It’s kind of a bad time—”
“Aw come on, man. We don’t need an answer right away—well, we kind of do, actually. After the Mickey Gordy thing they won’t stop calling. My email exploded. How’s it been for you?”
“Who keeps calling? You’re the one calling me.”
“Everyone,” Sluggo said, exasperated. In the background, children’s voices whined for Dad. Sluggo ignored them. “Mickey’s big publicity tour for the new album. He’s been name-dropping us left and right since it came out. Rolling Stone a couple weeks ago. The feature on Pitchfork. Even NPR, if you can believe it. Don’t tell me you don’t keep up with the music press anymore, you old fogy.”
Now Le
e was getting annoyed—or he’d been annoyed from the moment he’d answered the phone and he was just now realizing it. This was no prank call but it felt like one. “Sluggo”—the name felt heavy and awkward on his tongue—“what the hell are you talking about?”
“They want Tears to get back together.” He went on, explaining that Mickey Gordy had dug a copy of the Tears record out of a two-for-a-dollar bin at a flea market and fallen in love. It was the main influence on his latest album and he’d been extolling them in interviews ever since. Bootleg copies (they’d only been able to scrape together enough money to press three hundred) were blowing up the blogosphere. Sub Pop wanted to reissue it along with a bonus compilation of demos and live tracks. Now Gordy was offering the band a tremendous amount of money to reunite for his TrashRiot music festival in Atlanta. It wasn’t a Morrissey-Marr-level payday, but it was plenty more than Lee had ever expected to make off his short stint as a semiprofessional musician. “I haven’t spoken to him directly, but Mickey’s—what do you call ’em? his people or whatever—they say Mickey wants you. He won’t do it without you. You know his mystic tip. When he found out you were in Tears and his first band way back when, he flipped, says it’s fate or kismet or whatever. Hey, I found some Sodashoppe Teens tracks on YouTube—Christ, they’re awful.” Lee barely listened as Sluggo filled him in on the where-are-they-nows of the other Tears alumni. They were all either lawyers or teachers. “And you were the hardest to find. Where the hell have you been keeping yourself? Oh, and I forgot to say, depending on how the TrashRiot show goes there’s talk of a tour. We’re convening here in Mass.—I’m outside Amherst—for practice in about two weeks. You in?”
Lee looked at the door, hoping Seymour would burst in. He didn’t. “Can I call you back?”
“All right,” Sluggo said, disappointed. “Listen, do yourself a favor and Google ‘Tears in the Birthday Cake.’ Read the thing in Pitchfork. You’ll see what I mean. Would you ever have imagined—”
“Okay,” Lee said and hung up.
He went upstairs to the record room. The Tears album, all ten copies (most still shrink-wrapped) in plain white sleeves with handwritten track listings onto which Seymour had pasted collages of old porno mag scraps, were still sitting out from when he’d compared his discography with Mickey’s the night before. Lee hadn’t played it in decades, and listening to it up here, with the full fidelity of his rig, in the intimacy of this room, would be too much, so he took the opened copy—it smelled like beer and weed—downstairs and plugged in the portable toy Osmond Family–branded record player. The volume turned as low as a whisper, he dropped the needle and listened.
Not bad, pretty good even. Good enough that he could forget for a moment here and there he was listening to his own band. He was surprised from the opening chords that he remembered the names of each song—“Sorry to Die,” “Refractory Period,” “Her Stitches”—and moreover the choruses, the lyrics, each and every note were tattooed somewhere deep in his brain.
The front door swung open as Lee was really starting to get into it, fingering the keys of an imaginary saxophone. As quick as he could he flicked the record player off and slammed the lid shut. Donny’s dimpled face smiled up at him. He’d have preferred to have been caught masturbating.
Seymour looked exhausted, bags under his pallid eyes, sweat stains dampening the armpits of his shirt, a bizarre plastic lawn ornament slung over his shoulder. He’d always had a taste for the ugly, but this was something else. “I don’t wanna talk about it.” He dropped the lawn ornament onto the floor; it made a hollow noise like an out-of-tune flute.
“You’re home.” Lee could think of nothing more to say. He ran his fingers through Seymour’s moist blond hair and wished he hadn’t; Seymour could use a shower. “Where’d you get it?” He pointed at the giraffe and its jockey.
“No, you’re off-script. Who cares about that? Little Lindy Bobo? My daring rescue?”
“You said you didn’t want to talk about it.”
“Don’t ask. It’s nothing. I was out for a walk. Wrong place at the wrong time. Or right time, I don’t know. It was that batty Barbie bimbo. Don’t ask.”
Lee didn’t, although Seymour was clearly waiting for him to.
“Anyway, I’m sure Veronica Samples will be pleased. I’m the neighborhood hero. I kicked the door down. You should’ve seen this weirdo’s basement. He had his own little talk show studio.”
“I saw on the news. What kind of sick shit was this guy into?”
“Who knows? One of the reporters said the staff of the Eagle have been arguing over what to call him. They haven’t had such a hit on their hands since BTK. Apparently—” Seymour craned his neck. Following his nose like a dog, he shoved past Lee and went right for Donny. He flipped the lid—“Ha!”—and found the record sleeve behind a table lamp, holding it between two fingers like a tossrag. “Who knew? Even Lee gets the nostalgies.”
Recounting the call from Sluggo was tedious. As he listened to himself speak he marveled at how depressed he sounded. It was a dream come true burdened by the many years that had passed since he’d given up on it. “It’s called TrashRiot. They want us to play, but I don’t know.”
“Shit! This is fantastic. I mean, shit.”
Lee had almost forgotten about this part of Seymour, his genuineness of feeling, his generosity of pride. There was no envy in him. Back in the day, Lee had considered Seymour’s band a rival. Art was a contest and success was in limited supply; every show another band booked, every favorable write-up in a zine or alt-weekly it garnered, every clap of applause for someone other than him, diminished his own opportunities. Seymour talked the snob in public, but in truth Lee had never known a more generous appreciator of art. He believed in goodness for goodness’ sake, that good music and good art should be promoted because it was good, not because it was cool, that there was no cost to someone else’s success. No one would ever demand a reunion of Seymour’s band. They were awful. But Seymour didn’t care.
“I don’t know,” Lee repeated. “We’re broke.”
“Exactly. People call this sort of thing a windfall. People are supposed to be happy about this sort of thing.”
“It’s not that easy. Who knows if the money will even come through, or when? And we’re supposed to up and leave without knowing what will really happen.”
“Fuck money who cares you’re doing this.” He said it like it was one sentence. It was what Lee wanted, what he needed Seymour for: to be persuaded to do what he wanted to do but was too afraid to. “I haven’t touched a sax in years. And what about the house and—”
“Fuck it, we’ll abandon it if we have to. We’ll sell everything. We’re doing this. We’re starting over.” He picked up the lawn ornament and slammed it into the floor. “We’ll sell it all. I hate this stuff. It’s stuff. Fuck it.” He wrapped his arms around Lee and tried to lift him. He was not strong enough, or Lee was too heavy, so he grabbed Lee’s butt instead.
“Lumpy mashed potato butt,” he whispered in Lee’s ear. “Fuck it. We’ll get rid of everything. Fuck it.”
“Everything?”
“Everything.”
SUNDAY THE NIGHT BEFORE
20 KEITH
Keith felt at this moment that nothing could be better than having a sit-down dinner in the company of his family, a ceremony of life-enriching acts of kinship and love, the conversation and food providing not only reinforcement of already-strong familial bonds but also decompression after another long day on this lovely planet we called Earth. He had prepared a cheesy potato-and-cornflake casserole (it was only slightly burned) with microwaved vegetable medley (it was only slightly mushy) for the occasion, and what a pleasure and honor it was to share this handmade meal with his wife and beautiful daughter.
Things were finally looking up, all was well, his vision of the future was boffo, and the incredible hangover acquired at last night’s celebration was only a reminder of his great fortune. Last night, once he’d finally c
onvinced the late-working intern to forward his call to a real person, Keith pitched it as a human interest story: it was two of the mall’s own dealers who had come to Lindy Bobo’s rescue. (He left out the fact that a third dealer was involved as the kidnapper himself.) The producers were thrilled. Mark and Grant would love it. The TV shoot was back on, baby!
Even the unhappy silence emanating from his wife and daughter as they sat together in the dimly lit dining room of his beautiful, overvalued Eastborough home would not dull Keith’s optimism or curb his appetite. Stacey scraped food around her plate like the morose teenager her daughter actually was, biding her time till the end of another online auction. Ellie, meanwhile, had been sulkier than usual, her dreams of the reward money, though she’d done little more to locate Lindy than meander about the neighborhood with headphones on, quashed by the telegenic heroism of Seymour and Delores. And yes, she only grunted when Keith asked how her day had been and pretended not to hear when he asked her to pass the ketchup. But that she had joined her parents at the dining room table at all, when ordinarily she ate alone in her bedroom, often in the middle of the night while watching television on her laptop, Keith counted as a win.
Nope, nothing was going to go terribly wrong, not as long as Keith could help it. There was no way, for instance, that the producers could call and announce they’d canceled the taping owing to the Heart of America’s unseemly association with a(n alleged) local child-napper. He’d already thought of that and had arranged to have every trace of the man excised from the premises. Nor was there a chance that this feeling of tightness in his chest was a terminal heart attack, because he’d thought of that, too. It was just those most unfamiliar of feelings: Hope! Excitement! The absence of his customary black drowning dread!
He scraped a gob of casserole into his mouth whereupon tongue and teeth met a slick nonfood substance. Without registering disgust, he spit the object into his palm and held it like a magician who’d pulled an improbably long handkerchief from his sleeve. It was a plastic-wrapped whistle, presumably from the cornflakes box, in the shape of a cartoon monkey he recognized from a program Ellie watched as a girl, about an intergalactic princess and her cadre of sapphic girl-servants. “Wow,” he said, almost smiling, halfway jolly at the pure, random surprise of it. “I didn’t think they put prizes in cereal boxes anymore.”