“Patrick Wensink reads like Christopher Moore on very strong acid.”
– Greg Olear, author of Fathermucker
“The last time I drank with Hemingway, wait sorry, it was not Hemingway, it was Jackie Collins. Anyway, the last time I drank with Jackie Collins she said to me that writing is not like dating in that when you write you have to commit. Every sentence. Every pause. Every juke, joke and feint has to mean something. This is especially true with absurdist writing, because what’s on the page is not what you know to be right. Which doesn’t make it wrong. Just warped. And different. Which is a good way to describe the endlessly fertile mind of Patrick Wensink.”
– Ben Tanzer, author of You Can Make Him Like You
“Deliciously dark and funny.”
– Louisville-Courier Journal
“This is Wensink’s special touch: to go as far out as possible with character and concept, but still drive a deeper meaning home. He does so by mixing his Palahniukian style with the kind of twisted humor you can normally only find on Adult Swim.”
– LEO Weekly
“In Wensink’s world ‘nothing special’ always turns ‘mucho weirdo’ before the story is over.”
– PANK
“One of those rare gifts we get every now and again.”
– The Fanzine
“Irreverent, outrageous, and fearless in his choice of material, Patrick Wensink has a true knack for absurdity.”
– JOEY GOEBEL, author of Torture the Artist
“In his collection of stories Sex Dungeon For Sale!, Patrick Wensink demonstrates a gift for darkly absurdist humor that (just guessing here) surely derives from watching either too much or not enough television.”
– JAMES GREER, author of The Failure
“Absurd, surreal, and funny.”
– Lance Carbuncle, author of SMASHED, SQUASHED, SPLATTERED, CHEWED, CHUNKED AND SPEWED
“Wensink has a sharp wit on display.”
– Jordan Krall, author of Tentacle Death Trip
A LAZY FASCIST ORIGINAL
LAZY FASCIST PRESS
AN IMPRINT OF ERASERHEAD PRESS
205 NE BRYANT STREET
PORTLAND, OR 97211
WWW.LAZYFASCISTPRESS.COM
ISBN: 978-1-62105-020-9
Copyright © 2012 by Patrick Wensink
Cover art and design copyright © 2012 by Matthew Revert
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written consent of the publisher, except where permitted by law.
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the authors’ imaginations. Where the names of actual celebrities or corporate entities appear, they are used for fictional purposes and do not constitute assertions of fact. Any resemblance to real events or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Champagne for my real friends.
Real pain for my sham friends.
–Tom Waits
Hi, welcome to Broken Piano for President. Turn down the lights and fix yourself a stiff drink. Better yet, pour a couple cocktails and fix yourself a hangover.
Don’t worry. Everything will be here when you wake up. Besides, our hero is sleeping off a bender of his own. Frankly, you’d be doing him a favor. He could use a few more hours of shuteye.
Boy, that was a doozey. How are you feeling this morning? There are some eggs on the stove. That always helps to get rid of a nasty headache.
Thanks, by the way.
Your dedication is appreciated. It’s not every reader who bonds with a story by sharing the old, early morning flu. But now that you’ve put a few drinks in the tank and scratched another notch into the Hall of Fame, you’ll have a deeper appreciation for what Deshler Dean is going through.
What? You don’t have a Hall of Fame?
You really should. It keeps things in perspective. Drinking without curating a Hall of Fame is like raising kids without taking pictures.
Deshler doesn’t have any kids, if you’re curious, but you better believe he has a Hall of Fame. Hustle up and tack this morning down in your new Hall, because somebody special is waking.
Good morning, Hell, Deshler Dean thinks after waking.
Hangovers are nothing new for our iron-livered friend, but that doesn’t mean they’re not annoying. Hangovers are some black hair floating in life’s martini. Worse yet, Dean would still be sleeping if not for this headache—a jagged rotation of skull-crushing bee stings and waves of calm.
Pain and peace.
Aches and angels.
The whole routine is so familiar. Familiar, except for this back seat.
Outside the car, birds start talking, morning sunshine grows full and windshield frost melts by the minute. That thin sheet of ice gets watery at the edges, white crystals evolving to something invisible.
Inside, he lifts from a leg-curled knot, yawns, rubs at stubble and glimpses around. The upholstery is white leather and smooth. The dash is wood-grained like antique tables. A golden hamburger swings from a thin chain around the rearview and captures Dean’s attention. The perfectly carved medallion seems heavy, freckled by solid gold sesame seeds. It locks his eyes for a few moments. He’s seen this thing before, but it’s still so foreign.
The morning takes further shape like so many before it: with Broken Piano for President scratching around the tape deck in his head.
Dry lips mouthing the words to his favorite song, Dean is maybe even a little proud for not sleeping outside again after such a boozy night. This isn’t Hell, he thinks, frisking his zipper. For one, I wouldn’t have dry pants in Hell. He smiles until both temples summon a lightning bolt of agony.
Even with heartburn sending lava up his chest, Dean’s anxious to tell friends about this caper.
Waking up in an expensive car. Wow. This could be—he pauses until the swelling skull softens—Hall of Fame material. This hangover morning is fast turning fine and rosy, filling with comforting plans for bacon, eggs and coffee.
Pints of coffee. With a sprinkle of sugar. No cream. A hot gulp so bitter it’ll shock away any headache for miles. Coffee sounds like magic as he admires his breath forming in the frigid air.
Dangling, that hamburger blinks golden Morse code. It’s all so familiar. Maybe.
Concerns of automobile jewelry and familiarity flash away when Deshler makes a serious mistake. Dean commits an error that might just punch a one-way ticket to federal prison. It’s a gaffe he doesn’t even know he’s committed until it’s over: Deshler Dean simply looks at the front passenger seat.
There, he sees it.
Or her.
Dean’s not sure how to classify this.
He rubs both eyes like a mirage, but this isn’t the desert. First off, it’s bone-breaking cold. Secondly, there’s just no escaping this disaster in the car’s white leather bucket seat. Period.
Good morning, Hell.
Dean coughs once.
He coughs louder.
He rips a long, fake cough. A bronchitis bark. Nothing moves but the burger around the mirror.
His throat drops to its normal Paul Bunyan growl, “Hello? Are-are you okay? Miss?” A hesitant hand shakes her shoulder with less-than-lifelike results. “Oh, shit.”
That settles things. He is not alone. Or, technically, he is. Do dead women count?
Broken Piano crashes back through Dean’s mind. The tune helps him focus and can’t be unstuck. The drums are roadside bombs and the guitar squeals like 747 tires touching down. Most people say it’s the worst song ever written.
&nb
sp; Dean takes that as a compliment.
Sunshine warms a hole in the iced windshield. It highlights Dean’s hands—fisted tight this whole time. His fingers sting and he is positive this morning isn’t Hall of Fame worthy.
One year ago: Dunkin’ Donuts.
Normally, this wouldn’t have been a problem. However, he woke up to a stunned morning manager kicking his feet. In a fit of drunken grace, apparently, Deshler broke into the locked shop without tripping an alarm and passed out on some sacks of flour. He escaped handcuffs by a cruller-width.
Four years ago: Marketing Theory 402.
Deshler had no idea why he was standing in front of the class, but realized everyone was staring. His panic kicked in when Professor Adlaf spoke up, “That was an excellent presentation, Mister Dean, truly original. But now I’d like to ask you a few questions about Guerrilla Marketing if I may.”
Two months ago: Mid-Fellatio.
Quick tip: If you come to consciousness with a short brunette between your legs, nothing kills the mood quicker than: “Have we met?”
Dean again glances at his problem. The corpse’s blonde hair is a deep red stain, brown in the center. Her posture is stiff, wearing a thin black top. She’s young and would be cute, if not for the whole dead-thing.
There is a stun in Dean’s thinking, in his heartbeat, in his memory. Focus, he tells himself, but those old gag reflexes kick in. Focus. Whenever something serious happens, his brain changes channels—it thinks only of the band. Focus. Dean remembers the high school nurse saying something about needing Ritalin. He finally admits she might have been on to something.
Buying a minute or two to sort things out, edgy fingers snatch cheap cigarettes from a jacket pocket. “Easy, easy,” Dean whispers, eyeing the blood-soaked girl. This stranger’s car gets more uncomfortable each passing moment. “Retrace your steps, there’s always a logical explanation,” his voice turns spiky with panic, lighting the smoke. “For, you know, stabbing someone.”
Our hero is a sliver of gristle and a mushroom cloud of hair. Exhaling smoke, Dean—ever the hungover mathematician—is fifty percent sure he didn’t kill this woman.
But still, his skin develops a shiver and his jaw clutches like those fists. Without any notice, the most important thing in his life, the band, feels distant and hazy—a trick door in a dream.
“Okay, lady,” he says, calm, like they chat on the phone every night. Or did, until her heart turned to meat. “I went to the bar with my bandmates, had a few beers…”
Thursday is Man’s Night and Pabst Blue Ribbon is a dollar, which is always a dangerous start. That’s how arms grow mystery bruises. That’s how wallets come up missing. Dollar beers are how people wake up next to dead girls.
The car’s hood is red and laced with thin ice. Dean’s flesh seems to be laced with the same frost. He whispers, head shaking, smoke trailing, “…and now, this.”
This happens a lot when Deshler drinks. Not so much ending up next to dead people, but waking somewhere he never intended. Friends call Dean the Cliff Drinker. Meaning, when our hero goes out and has more than two, he falls off a boozy edge and forgets everything. Whole evenings are redacted from memory like confidential documents. Doesn’t matter if it’s white wine, whiskey or hefeweizen—Dean’s recollections usually end up in the same state of disrepair. He cannot remember a time when he wasn’t a Cliff Drinker. Shocking, right? Not since before he and his brother snuck a flask into a rock concert the night Dad went away in an ambulance.
Dreams of dark coffee completely dead now, Dean’s parched mouth is flavored like nine-volt batteries. Smacking gritty gums and looking out the window, this part of town doesn’t look like somewhere he’d normally hang out—the buildings are clean and new, there are sidewalks and all the stoplights work. The car is in a parking lot and hangs among the smell of wet grass and fryer grease.
Dean’s teeth attack his fingernails. The gnawing begins, begging for a little clarity. There is an urge to push all this worry away, there’s an urge for another dollar beer.
From that window, the backside of a giant blue and yellow dome looks familiar. It’s impossible to miss Bust-A-Gut Hamburgers’ blister-shape, even from its rear parking lot, even from the back seat of a strange car, even with a dead body blocking your view.
Dean knows he needs to move fast. It’s only a matter of time, he realizes, until some teen fry cook discovers this mess. Prison doors slam in his mind. Guards throw away keys and issue buckets for toilets. Denim uniforms and forced haircuts. The possibility of thick concrete walls separating him and the band races a spark across his brain.
The woman’s butcher shop scalp reminds Dean of standing in front of an audience with the band’s sound whipping through him. Some nights, pushing the group further, he imagines he’s singing so hard—making the crowd listen so hard—his head bursts into a cherry pie mess like this. That sensation doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it smolders like sex.
The bloody head does not smolder any sensations but panic in Dean.
Witnesses, he thinks, there are no witnesses. It’s the perfect crime…or non-crime, whatever. Double checking for wandering eyes, his nose jams into the cold glass. He breathes smooth. The coast is clear. “I didn’t do anything.” He rubs throbbing eyes again and massages numb hands. “I’m not capable of this.” With pressure easing off his skull, he says, “Okay, I don’t know who did that to you, but I’m sorry. It’s time to go. There’s band practice tonight.”
Deshler loves Lothario Speedwagon.
When not passing out in strange places, that band dominates the Cliff Drinker’s attention. Dean knows he’ll die if he doesn’t hear Henry thump out the first notes of Broken Piano one more time. The Cliff Drinker’s body will rust and rot if Pandemic’s drums don’t shatter vibrations up his spine.
Lothario Speedwagon is the lone good thing in life. Pretty much every day since childhood Dean would have gladly traded places with a gored stranger. But then he formed a band and started singing. He wrote lyrics. He did unmentionable things on stage. Dean refuses to lose that.
Shifting against the cold, stiff seats—inching toward the door and a continued, sweet life as a singer—something sharp jabs his ass. An icicle breath holds, slipping a hand into a back pocket, digging out a mangled screwdriver. The tool’s been jammed and gouged until the fine silver point is a stump.
He inspects the shiny screwdriver. “A blunt object,” newscasters and reporters could call it. He nearly forgot the scrambled pile of bloody hair riding shotgun and adds the two together.
I couldn’t have, he thinks, picturing the amount of force necessary to stab someone. He can barely do a pushup. Impossible.
Our hungover mathematician is now about eighteen percent sure he didn’t kill the blonde woman, which makes the gravel kick up that much harder when he pops open the door and sprints off.
Run, he thinks.
Do not stop.
Jaywalk if you have to.
Unused leg muscles cringe and catch fire. His cheeks and nose go numb cold. His eyes dry from the air. Dean’s freedom sprint only gets halfway across the lot before he remembers the blunt object tattooed with prints and DNA. It’s still in the back seat.
He turns and slowly, casually, wanders back to the bright red car housing a bright red girl up front.
Move-move-move. Witnesses will not think this is cool.
Witnesses will not listen to reasonable explanations.
Witnesses will call police.
At the car, that cigarette drops to the ground. Dean’s eyes bloom wide, staring at the passenger seat. His aching brain has been working hard to catch up all morning, but now needs no explaining.
Good morning, Hell.
“Ow, my head,” a voice from the gutter of a woman’s throat says. Bold green eyes flip on and off. “I better not be late for work, Deshler.”
He recalculates his percentages.
Deshler’s bass player and roommate, Henry Hamler, wishes Ameri
ca’s most famous man was already dead.
Henry wishes this sour stomach would disappear.
More importantly, he wishes he could figure out where the candy is stashed.
An hour ago, Henry and his partner rolled up to Christopher Winters’ estate: an enormous green and gray eyesore. Hanna-Barbera’s idea of a Victorian mansion. The pair flashed credentials to a guard, walked into the home and set up shop.
Christopher Winters’ biography bulges with success in politics, food service and even a dabble of oral hygiene. One financial magazine called him: “Ben Franklin arm wrestling Colonel Sanders with four-out-of-five dentists cheering them on.”
Henry scratched nervous trails across his arms in preparation for this first face-to-face.
Now the young man stuffs a hand into suit pockets while wandering the halls, pretending to admire artwork painted before Ben Franklin flew his first kite. Henry rubs a thick beard and sighs. This dress shirt fits like spandex and these old slacks squeeze his junk. Henry pecks at M&Ms to hold off the shakes, but doesn’t realize he’s doing it until those sausage fingers scrape his lips. Shards of sugar coating stick to that mousy brown beard.
Winters’ massive oak den reminds Henry of ornate cathedrals with its tall ceiling and odd stained glass shadows. Books and dark wood wrap around the room. Across from a desk, Tony, the cameraman and producer for this mission, untangles the sound equipment. His scalp shines through thin hair. Those clothes are a decade out of style.
Watching Tony work, realizing there’s no turning back, Henry’s lungs mimic rusty mufflers. Tony, always a professional, ignores the noise pollution. A tall grandfather clock swings deep and its ticks reverberate among the rafters. Soft relaxation hums when a sweet smell reminds Henry of Grandpa Hamler: pipe smoke.
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