“We’ve actually met, chief,” Double Harry says with a grin. “Haven’t we, guy?”
Deshler’s hand trembles and extends. “Yep, sure h-have.”
“Ha, I should have known. Wonderful,” Winters says.
“Nice chin,” Harry whispers. “Sorry, we got a little rough with initiation. All in fun, okay?”
“And this little lady is managing the entire Cosmonaut campaign. She’s really taken your baby and run with it, Dean.”
Her crow’s feet blossom and she wipes a gray flash of hair from an eye. “Delia Ellery, pleased to meet you,” she says, extending the good arm and focusing in on Dean’s swollen face and gashed chin.
Dean gives her the wrong hand and uncomfortably shakes a backward greeting.
There is more chatter over drinks and business plans.
After a few sips of soda, Dean agrees to work exclusively for Winters Olde-Tyme Burgers.
“Well, mister Vice President of Development,” Winters says with an intimidating seriousness, pretending he is a former governor. “What do you have for us? This Cosmonaut thing is only gonna last so long. We’ll move into our Christopher Winters Memorial campaign and then…” He looks at Double Harry.
“It’s your pageant kid,” Harry says, dead enough to win an Oscar.
Another executive crashes out a coughing jag and excuses herself. The table gapes at its newest member—wrinkled, pungent clothes and all—waiting for an answer. In the silence, half the room sniffles and sucks back the mucus of an early cold and flu season. One man looks like a baseball bat named influenza smashed him across the eyes. He sweats and breathes hard. He winces while swallowing.
Deshler suddenly gets hungry. “Flu…” his eyes close and this new job feels like it is falling through the slats in the floor. A miserable lifetime of valeting jams between his ears. A lifetime without Malinta. But, he reminds himself, there’s still the band.
So it’s over before it really started, he thinks. Big deal, right?
“Um, Flu Burgers.”
Winters squeezes his eyes together and kicks back a white wine. The sweaty CEO then softly blows his nose.
Double Harry rubs rugged cheeks. “What, Deshler?”
“Look, everyone is getting sick right now, right? What if we…what if there was a delicious hamburger that made your cold and flu symptoms go away? Medicine and meat, together.” All his recent lying habits start paying off. These words rip through the room like forest fires. This is how he writes song lyrics, just stream of consciousness. This, he assumes, is the Deshler Dean they know. The smooth, drunk Deshler. The guy who embraces a challenge. “Nobody’s ever fought hunger and sickness in one stroke. This will revolutionize the industry.”
Dean has no clue where this came from. Never in his life has he considered putting beef and medicine together. He’s never thought about grinding Tums into tacos or Halls in a hotdog, but here it is, rushing out of him like it’s printed on cue cards.
“What will revolutionize the industry?”
“We’re a little late in the game to get these out on time, cold weather’s already here, but if these hit during the dead of winter, we’ll destroy the competition for the rest of the fiscal year.” Deshler gulps soda, he’s never mentioned the words fiscal and year together, either. He’s pretty positive he’s never even said the word fiscal in any context. But, again, there it is, feeling kind of comfortable. “We’re the only restaurant that cares about serving great food and making our customers feel better. It can’t fail. Our clientele will go bananas.”
The group takes a sip from their drinks and focuses on Dean’s stained jeans. Winters and Double Harry give each other a glance and a nod that doesn’t say yes or no. The rest of the table stares at the two leaders, waiting for a sign.
In the lull, Dean notices he’s out of breath. His muscles are tensed from top to bottom. It’s a strange moment when he admits that he really wants this to work.
The CEO and Double Harry stand.
There’s a moment of tense nothing.
The leaders give a hearty clap. The rest of the table erupts like a homerun is hit. Someone actually shouts, “Go team.”
*Another excerpt from an eye-rolling conversation between Deshler and a friend.
Friend: This is the worst music I’ve ever heard.
Dean: Lighten up, it’s just expression.
Friend: That dude just sang a song about seeing an X-ray of a girl passing gas.
Dean: Well, sure, that’s rough…but it’s kind of like Wilson Pickett and Otis Redding, right?
Friend: Yeah, they always sang about farts.
Dean: Right, okay, probably not. But when they started screaming and hollering soul music, most listeners thought it was just noise because Sinatra didn’t sound like that.
Friend: So?
Dean: So, I’m saying, sometimes the population doesn’t start listening when you’re right underneath them. Sometimes it takes a long while to get the message across. But you have to keep plugging, they’ll catch up. Pickett and Redding just found a new way to express themselves. Just like Gibby.
Friend: I saw an X-ray of a girl passing gas?
Dean: Check it out, my dad—back when he acknowledged my brother and I were alive, before his problems started—told me his parents grounded him once just for saying Elvis’ name at the dinner table. The King was obscene to most of America. Now he’s on a postage stamp.
Friend: I saw an X-ray of a girl passing gas.
Dean: Give it a decade. It’ll be the new Heartbreak Hotel.
For once, the band practices on time. Ceremonies begin as Pandemic sits on his stool pounding a pickup truck suspension spring. There’s a wiggly doink each time he smashes the coil.
The overhead lights zip and pop Christmas colors at staggered moments. The wet air and stale beer aroma reminds Henry of his dorm. He sits on top of the amplifier cabinet—eight ten-inch speakers stacked tall—a mini-fridge of low-end bass. Plucked strings stir a seismic rumble up his body.
Deshler is splattered across the cement on his back, those sore ribs and chest sting less this way. He runs his tongue over gap teeth. One is cracked from Delia’s left hook.
Deshler’s microphone weaves through a dozen effects pedals until he sounds like an underwater drive-through window. The PA speakers are polka-dotted with gouges. Once, he is told, the Cliff Drinker drunkenly jabbed tiny holes in the tight fibers with a screwdriver. The amplifier blasts like CB radio traffic on Neptune. Deshler loves it.
Busted my tooth
On the twenty-eight rail
Picked up my pantleg
And stumbled back to jail
I go—bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang
Like a creepin’ kitten
Doin’ the midnight stalkin’
Why don’t you kiss my hands
And let my fingers do the talkin’?
Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-hey-hey-hey
Practice started an hour ago, but nobody’s actually played a song or jammed on an idea. The three sit around warming up, ignoring one another, each too wrapped up in his own crisis.
Doink Doink, go the drums. Blump, Blump, Blump goes the bass. Doink, donnng, blump blum.
Deshler rolls onto his stomach and chokes down the microphone, “Sscrrshttt, Krrrrath, chk, chk, chraaaah,” comes through the twisted amplifier system.
“Huh?” Pandemic screams, noticing the singer’s eyes are wild and focused in his direction.
Blump, ba-blump, blump, blump.
Deshler drops the microphone. The thump echoes like a gunshot down a well. “I said, what’s with your face? It looks…clean.”
“Man, give me some room. I’m not a bottle of vodka,” Pandemic’s voice lifts over the bass, finishing his sentence with an explosive snare shot.
Deshler reaches for a warm forty of malt liquor. “I hate vodka.”
“Vodka hates you, too.”
Blump, blump, blump, blump, blump, blump.
Henr
y watches his shoes hang a few feet off the ground. Most of a cigarette is a pile of ash in his lap. He can’t stop thinking about work or Martin’s goatee and shattered nose.
“How did you get that?” Hamler asked Martin back at the office, pointing to the spot where Dean busted the man’s face. Hamler wanted to rub Martin’s cheeks, sweetly kiss that nose. Henry wanted to whisper, “There, there, there,” in his ear.
Martin shrugged and mumbled. “Some asshole, this hotshot everybody hates, was talking shit at the Beef Club last night. This rookie spouting off about Bust-A-Gutters and Winters people. We shut him down. Sometimes little jerks like that have to be taught a lesson, kind of an initiation.”
Hamler pictured his roommate. This wasn’t a surprise, but it made him mad. Drunk Deshler ruining another part of his life. Son of a bitch, Henry thought.
“Anyway, it’s not important. You aren’t leaving me, are you?” Martin said.
“Oh, well, here’s the thing…” Henry said. He was sorry, but something better came along—something about delivering pizza. He was really sorry. He held the elevator until it impatiently pinged.
“Oh, okay, gee that doesn’t sound like you, Henry.”
“We should…” Henry managed to say until Martin’s eyes fell to the floor. “We could…” the doors slowly brought themselves together and sliced his heart in two. “Bye, Martin.”
Henry threw up twice in the ground floor bathroom. Waiting for the bus, cigarettes and a peanut butter cup didn’t make anything better.
Deshler rises from the floor and thumps his head on a low-hanging pipe wrapped in lights. “Dude, Juan, what are you talking about?” His walk jiggles a little, balance slightly lost. “Your scabs are all gone, you look…” Dean swoops close and squints through the green and red and blue flashes of light. Pandemic’s skin shines where crusty flesh used to welt. “Do you have a suntan?”
“Dude, I’m warning you,” the secret Timothy Winters says. He points a drumstick at the wobbly singer. “Drop it. It’s none of your business. Just lie back down and beat the shit out of your liver some more.”
Blump-blump-blump-bl-blummmmm. Low notes drown out their voices in Henry’s head. He syncs their lip movements with thick bass plucks. He dreams of kicking Dean in the nose.
This new job doesn’t sound as easy as Tony says, Hamler thinks. His mind wanders away from Deshler and Pandemic’s argument into a feathery dream. Killing Malinta sounds like hitting golf balls off the moon by comparison.
“Just tell me if you’re a cross-dresser,” Deshler says. “I’m okay with it. Everybody needs secrets. It’s what keeps people alive. Everybody feels important and special with them. Who wants to be themselves?”
“Then why would I tell you if I had a secret?”
“Because you didn’t keep it secret enough.” Deshler is close to his drummer’s face. He counts beige makeup spots covering meth-fueled scratches. Pandemic’s teeth are still a destroyed picket fence. “I know there is a secret, now you have to tell.”
“Lay off, man. I will break your stupid orphan neck.”
Dean’s face goes a little childlike. Its sharpness softens, like his eyes are preparing for tears. But tears don’t factor in. “Dick.”
“Leave me alone.”
“No,” he sneers, sick of being the only one ever expressing himself. “Tell me.”
Blump-blump-blump-blump-blump.
Pandemic’s movements go edgy, like he wants something proper to hit Deshler with. Dean might be bigger than me, he thinks. But still a skinny jerk. Pandemic hasn’t smoked in two days. He feels weak and empty. His bones stutter like the marrow is drained.
An icy clarity hits Hamler—a solution to his problems. The answer’s always been there, he realizes, but didn’t shine obvious until now.
Pandemic and Dean bicker on. Dean licks his thumb and leans toward the drummer’s head, like a parent rubbing at a kid’s sticky jelly cheeks. “Hold still. Hold still.”
Henry cuts in, determined to start living life on his own terms. “You know, I’ve been thinking.” There’ll be other Martins. There’ll be other jobs. This starts right here. “The band needs a change.”
The other two shoot stares as he blows smoke into the lights.
“What fun is art if people don’t enjoy it? I want to make music people will clap about. Something I won’t be embarrassed to let my mom hear. Something at least on CD.”
Deshler slugs down the rest of that warm bottle. Pandemic digs a rut into his cheek, centimeter by centimeter. A speck of purplish red scab shines through flaky makeup.
“Check it out,” Deshler smiles at the drummer. “Cat Stevens is playing bass now. Yeah, you buy an acoustic guitar and I’ll write some songs about my grandma and getting to bed on time. It’ll be a hit.”
This conversation reminds Henry of trying to tell Tony to stop giving him unwanted assignments. Nobody listens, he thinks. Take control. “Look at us, bro. We’re not going anywhere. This band is an enormous waste of time. People threw vegetables. What are we ever going to get out of this? It’s not supposed to be this way. This isn’t why I joined.”
“It’s art,” Deshler says, voice rising in defense. “Art isn’t supposed to be fun. It’s supposed to be challenging. It’s fun to shock people and make them think and express something.”
“Well, I don’t…agree. This just isn’t me.” He withers, but stops short, reminded of the confidence Martin’s affection brought.
“This band isn’t supposed to be who we are. It’s about those moments when you aren’t yourself.” A comfort arrives in Dean’s mind—reminiscent of the Winters lunch meeting. Here, like improvising the flu fighting hamburger, he’s winging it. The idea of not being yourself has never crossed his mind. But damned if it doesn’t sound right. “You aren’t really living until you are someone else. Don’t you,” he takes a deep, drama club breath. “Don’t you see? I thought we were on the same page with this stuff.” The singer’s head shakes, shocked that in all these months his best friend didn’t even learn that much.
“Um…I’m not saying I don’t want the band. Just maybe we could do things different.”
“Nobody listens to fun, Henry.” Deshler shoots Pandemic a can you believe this look and swings back toward the bassist. “You can’t have art and fun, that’s when things start to suck. That’s always when a good band goes wrong. That’s how you got the first couple Genesis albums.”
“We can be the first ones to do it right. That’s what I want, man. Take it or leave it.”
Deshler throws the bottle behind him. It plonks against the wall but doesn’t shatter. It rolls to a glassy, hollow stop at his feet. “Because that’s just…it’s…dude, people are finally coming to our shows and you want to change? We were in the newspaper!”
“I’d like to try something different, too,” Pandemic says over Deshler’s shoulder. Pandemic’s never thought about it before, but change sounds good now. Plus, he wants a way to dig claws a little deeper into Dean’s snotty orphan ass. “Yeah, something really different. You know, grow artistically. Make pop music.”
“Forget this shit,” Deshler huffs, shooting back-and-forth looks at the others. “Just forget it.”
The singer stumbles into the corner and grabs his coat. He turns around shaking his head, muttering.
“Oh, dude, also,” Hamler says, squishing into a sour face. Tony ordered him to cover up this new duty. His mission for the next seven days is top secret. “I can’t practice for about a week, I’ve…I’ve, uh, got to go home for a funeral. I’ll be out of town.”
“Oh, whoa, strange coincidence,” Pandemic says. “I can’t practice either, I forgot. Ahhh, yes-yes-yeah. I’ve also got a family funeral.”
The two eye each other, unaware of the real coincidence.
“I give up,” Deshler says as he climbs the stairs with a stagger in his steps. “Maybe we shouldn’t have any more practices ever.”
“Maybe.”
“Well, I…Maybe
.”
The next morning, Henry drags a suitcase up Olde-Tyme’s skyscraper and stops at the floor marked Lettuce Acquisitions. Technically, Winters Olde-Tyme Covert Operations doesn’t exist. Corporate smoke and mirrors, you see.
“Big man wants to chat, wants to give you a handshake or something before you leave,” Tony says in a hurry—sweat hanging from sideburns. “C’mon, we’ve got to move if you want to be on time for tonight.”
The office doesn’t look like a spying nerve center. With its blah name, eggshell walls and beige carpet, it looks like Lettuce Acquisitions. Just another boring department in an office building.
“Jesus, okay. Let me at least take my coat off.”
“I’m not joking around here. This is top priority, hustle up.”
Waiting for the elevator to the Executive Suite, a crowd of suits stuffs into another elevator. One voice buried in the mob snags Hamler with fish hook violence. “I’m thinking we can make it a sauce,” the familiar voice says. It growls deep and nervous—Isaac Hayes on a first date. “Like ketchup and Nyquil.” It sounds like the lead singer of Lothario Speedwagon. Or the former lead singer of Lothario Speedwagon. Hamler decides it’s just some stress hallucination. If it was actually Deshler Dean, he’d break that little shit’s nose—amongst other things.
Hamler and his boss ease into an elevator alone. “Why me? There have to be a dozen guys who can babysit.”
“Because, we think you need a new challenge. Okay?”
“This sounds like a load of bullshit.” Six dozen floors flush past them. Henry breathes and waits for the right moment. “Look me in the eye and tell me what’s the deal. Why do a bunch of Russians need me, of all people?” The doors wishbone apart. Hamler’s question is chopped off by a man he’s only seen in company promotional materials.
The CEO looks like governor Christopher Winters, but with a greasy mustache, an extra chin and a stain on his yellow tie.
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