Broken Piano for President

by Patrick Wensink

  With the ink drying on Lothario Speedwagon’s death certificate, Timothy realizes being a Winters is all that’s left. This is the last chance to do something right and get back some of that old pride. Not many people can be part of a legacy, let alone an American legend, he decides. He tells himself art is for losers. When was the last time an artist bought a new car? When was the last time an artist was elected governor?

  The sloppy CEO waits for his son to bust into a laugh. He doesn’t, so Roland coughs. “Son, this is the smartest shit you’ve ever told me. I’m glad your head is finally out of your ass.”

  “I want to be a part of this company, Dad. It’s my legacy, you know? Maybe when this is done—”

  “Keep your trap shut about being my kid, though. If there’s another thing Joe America can’t stand, it’s nepotism. If there’s something Joanne Customer hates even more,” he says, waistline stretching tight across his stomach. “It’s nepotism in a contest. Jesus, that would ruin me.” He pauses and rubs that mustache, “Us. Take a second, Tim, and ask yourself, if your life was a tasty Winters Burger, would you be the tomato or the lettuce?”

  Juan removes the phony glasses and squints. “I don’t think you’re using that right. Anyhow, I can do that, Dad. But like I was saying, maybe when this is over in a few weeks I can come back and work with you. Learn the business. Be part of the family.”

  “Maybe, Tim.”

  This is how most of Pandemic’s debates with Dad end. But for the first time, maybe thanks to sobriety, it gurgles through his brain who has the advantage. “No, Dad, not maybe. I’ll do this, but you have to cut me in. I know a lot of things about this company. Grandpa told me a lot of stories. Things after the war, murders for recipes, you know?”

  “Your granddad was bat-shit crazy, I’m sorry to say. He made all sorts of stuff up. He earned everything in life through hard work and being an ax-murderer of a business man. When his mind started slipping he jazzed his resume up. It’ll happen to you someday, just wait. Dementia’s genetic.”

  “Well, I know what I know,” Pandemic says. Fingers lift to his face and scratch once, then the hand gently pulls into his jacket. He sucks in breath until his chest stings and the snake wiggles its rattle. This pride blocks his brain’s begging for crystal meth, but pride’s growing weaker. “And I know a lot of people want to hear.”

  “Mmmm-hmmmm,” his father says.

  “I can forget shit real easy, pop. I just want to be involved,” he waits a breath and quotes a brochure he read in the lobby an hour ago. “I just want to be part of America’s largest family-owned company.”

  “Son, I’ve been waiting to hear you say that for years. You meathead, I might just love you yet.”

  A few blocks from Winters headquarters, a giant stage was hammered together on a production lot. It’s a replica of an Olde-Tyme Hamburger restaurant, Victorian neon and all. The only difference is a missing fourth wall and the addition of studio seating for a few hundred.

  Henry and Timothy Winters/Juan Pandemic haven’t been in the same room since shaking hands several days back at Olde-Tyme Headquarters. Hamler spent most of the morning with Tony, learning to aim a gun and obtaining a last minute concealed weapon license. The bandmates find one another in a dressing room behind the fake restaurant.

  Cameras roll in a few minutes.

  Hamler isn’t fooled by the new disguise. He recognizes his drummer even with the addition of facial hair. He spots those huge hands and dynamite-blasted teeth under a fresh Magnum P.I. mustache.

  “Dude, what the?”

  Behind a black bushy lip and under a stack of imitation hair, Pandemic’s jaw tenses. “It’s nothing, man.”

  The two dance a tight circle around each other like stray alley animals. Pandemic in his getup looks as phony as pudgy Hamler in his fresh off the rack two-piece gray suit.

  “Nothing?”

  “Just, please, forget it’s me. I’m just some dude. I just want to get all this over with. Besides, what the hell are you doing here?”

  “I just landed this temp job, I had no clue I’d get to travel, much less, you know...” Hamler smiles, but is annoyed, having to conceal his real job as a spy. The new take-charge guy buttons up that anger and cracks a jawbreaker between teeth. “Be…your …bodyguard.”

  “Uh, yeah,” Pandemic says, stretching a rubbery yeah.

  “Juan, man, what’s going on?”

  Henry looks so pitiful Pandemic can’t hold back. “Well, okay, I won the big contest. I’m the guy. I guess you know that, though.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me, why did…” he trails off.

  “Sorry?”

  “What’s up with all this business?” Hamler says, scanning the drummer up and down.

  “Everyone does this. Everyone who gets famous.” Pandemic scratches his scalp, the toupee droops to one side. “I don’t want people stalking me and shit. Now that I’m a thousandaire.”

  Henry’s face twists into a skeptical mash. “Dude, please. Come on, give me something better than that.”

  The cosmonauts, wearing signature blue jumpsuits, are spread in a constellation throughout the room. The beefy ones flirt with young production assistants in broken English. Keith and Sonja, desert-island skinny, watch each other from opposite couches, not speaking. Sour faces saying: I need an appendectomy, quick.

  “Well,” Pandemic says and rubs a hand across his eyes. “Okay, well, you wouldn’t believe me anyhow.”

  “Dude, look at us. Look where we are. There is a short list of shit I wouldn’t believe about you right now.”

  Pandemic is a magician.

  This is a Candid Camera-type reality show, and Hamler just won a million bucks.

  The drummer from Lothario Speedwagon has a skull made of melted silver dollars.

  Candy bars give you genital rickets.

  Pandemic is the grandson of the guy who invented the electric toothbrush and heir to a hamburger fortune.

  “Alright, man, but you’ve got to promise to keep this under wraps. I can probably get in trouble or something. I’m trying to play shit cool, and let people know I’m a responsible dude.”

  “Responsible dude?”

  “Do you want this story or not?”

  “Well, I am your bodyguard. I should know everything, wouldn’t you say? For safety’s sake.”

  Pandemic nods. “So you know the Winters Hamburger place?”

  “The restaurant you won the contest for? The one paying my salary? Yeah, I’m familiar.”

  Juan Pandemic spreads apart the leaves of the Winters family tree and shows the branches that lead to: “Son of Roland.”

  “Get out of here. Bullshit, get outta…” Hamler’s fingers tense at odd angles while digesting this. Henry recalls stuffing a cufflink in the governor’s skin. Now Christopher Winters has a whole new identity and his ghost ties a fresh set of guilty weights around Hamler’s neck.

  “It’s true. I’m sorry I never told you, but, you know, there’s a lot of stuff that went down between my old man and me. There are about a million reasons why I do what I do.”

  “So you’re really going to get a job with your dad after this? You’ll be, like, a hamburger guy?”

  “Yeah, totally.”

  “I’ve never known one of those before.”

  “Me neither. Well, I mean, besides my dad…and my grandpa…and my uncle and some cousins. Aunt Pam, too, I think—”

  “Right, gotcha.”

  “That’s why I’m trying to play it cool. I know it sounds kind of lame. But I figure I can’t be drummer for crummy bands the rest of my life. This is a chance to do something with myself. It gives me butterflies thinking about it.”

  “Are you sure that’s not, you know.”

  “Man, I haven’t smoked in forever. I’m serious about this shit. Quit trying to bring me down to your level.”

  “That’s really cool. Good for you. I’ve kind of been thinking something similar.”

  “Meth? When did y
ou start smoking anything stronger than dicks?”

  “Funny.”

  “Man, I’m just kidding.”

  “I’m talking about bands. I’m too old for a band, you know?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I need to take charge of my life. Be an adult.”

  “You do, I agree.”

  Hamler doesn’t know if he should laugh. “I don’t want to be thirty and making shit money and have my hearing go out and smell like mustard. I think this,” he waves an arm, “is the life for me. Not exactly cool, either. But it feels safe. I don’t get to feel safe often.”

  An older guy in headphones swings the door open and announces curtain is in one minute. Timothy Winters is ushered away by assistant directors and makeup women. Hamler shuffles behind the crowd.

  The show opens inside the fake restaurant with the Moscow Five chit-chatting about the dramatic changes in their life since coming to America. Dimitri—captain and interpreter—answers rehearsed questions.

  Yes, they still eat hamburgers once a day.

  Oh, he’s not one to say, but yes, American girls are much prettier than Russian ones. No offense, Sonja.

  No, none of them are married.

  They love outer space for different reasons, but feel it is their duty to help all of mankind with their work.

  Yes, their parents are very proud back in the Mother Country.

  There’s a one minute commercial break, which includes a Bust-A-Gut spot honoring Christopher Winters, followed by another thirty-second spot on the same topic from Winters Olde-Tyme.

  The show returns. “If not for our next guest, ladies and gentlemen,” our wax dummy anchor says. “These five cosmonauts would still be in space. Starving, lonely, cold, drinking their urine.”

  Chatter buzzes among the crowd.

  “Moscow Five, are you ready to meet,” our anchor says, spreading a smile across the audience like jam on toast. “The American hero who saved your lives?”

  On cue, the five space travelers nod their heads in rehearsed awe, as if Gandhi were fixing his sarong on the other side of the door.

  Our host’s question, “What do you say, ladies and gentlemen?” is met with a roar. “Here he is, the Winters Olde-Tyme Hamburgers Space Burger Contest winner, Mister Juan Pandemic.”

  Pandemic trips over his feet under the brutally hot stage lights. The final ten minutes are spent discussing different reasons why the man with a bad haircut and worse mustache loves America and hamburgers. The climax comes when he says he hopes the Russians will take their second opportunity at life as a blessing.

  Backstage, Delia mumbles, “Damn it.”

  In rehearsal, Pandemic was ordered by the tour manager to say, “Blessing from God,” at this point in the interview. Marketing finds Winters burgers are not selling well in the southern United States. Religion, however, flies off the shelf in Dixie. So, Olde-Tyme Marketing assumes, tying a God-fearing Christian hero to their chain will bolster market share.

  During the interview, Henry stands stage left with Delia and her lonely arm. She checks a watch and flips through script pages. Henry peeks under his jacket every few minutes to make sure his gun hasn’t sprouted wings and flown away. It tugs heavy on his shoulder, it carries with it a dangerous sort of tingle—a gravity of purpose. He plugs two fingers into the opposite jacket pocket occasionally and slips a few Milk Duds behind his teeth. It slows that hammering chest and settles his vision.

  The two don’t talk. Besides the time Juan failed to give the thumbs up to God, Delia’s lips are silent the entire program.

  During the final minutes, Pandemic is presented with a cardboard check as tall as a basketball hoop for $460,000. The astronauts hug him, the music plays, the crowd claps, and they invent smiling small talk during the credits.

  Spotlights go cold and the group walks offstage.

  The cramped hallway is a jungle gym of old props and extra lighting equipment. Pandemic struggles to carry the check. In an open space where the backstage area shatters into a thousand dim alleys, two teenage girls with faces painted green and gray begin squealing. The knobby one with braces has a t-shirt that says, SPACE. The other girl, plump and pimply, wears a shirt that reads, BURGERS.

  “Oh my God,” they scream, parting a sea of angry cosmonauts like some guy in the Bible. “Juan, Juan! We love you, Juan.”

  Pandemic jerks backward and nearly falls out of the toupee. He holds the check over his head with two hands like a spear.

  “I want your baby, Juan,” the one with braces snarls, shoving Keith to the ground. “Get me pregnant!”

  Henry jumps from behind the contest winner and clotheslines both girls before their greasy fingers touch Pandemic.

  Flat on their backs, the young ladies take a communal gasp and stare at the babyfat bodyguard. “I’m sorry girls,” Henry rehearses the words Tony fed him earlier. There’s a growl in his voice—the kind Henry imagines a take-charge man would have. “Being an American Hero is quite exhausting. Mister Pandemic would love to impregnate both of you, but is terribly tired.” His new suit jacket flaps open as neurons plunge hot rivets into his brain. Holy cow, I just stopped two psychopaths, he thinks.

  Henry’s exposed jacket provides a top-notch view of that gun from the girls’ angle. The Pandemic fans scramble, say sorry, and run down the hall.

  This is what I was born to do. Nothing’s felt this dead-on since…Henry thinks of making out with Martin at that bar, but quickly extinguishes the urge.

  “Wow, Henry,” Pandemic says. “You’re the best bodyguard ever. You totally smashed those chicks. And they were ugly. Good eye. I will only be impregnating the cute ones!”

  Keith watches the girls scurry off, sitting on his ass. His face is a bonfire. He rattles off a clipped Russian burst directed at the Pandemic fanatics. The cosmonaut lifts up and punches the cardboard check, splitting it in two novelty chunks. The angry spaceman starts sprinting after them.

  “No, no, no,” Hamler says, grabbing Keith by the shoulders as the skin and bones cosmonaut flies past. He breathes into the space adventurer’s face and speaks slowly, lumbering through the Cyrillic alphabet. (Keith,) he says in Russian with a thick American accent. (Relax, those stupid horses have now moved.)

  Hamler’s mangled Russian delivers Keith a smile. He holds a hand up to say truce. The spaceman’s face drops back into seriousness and grapples Henry Hamler’s arm. (I did not know you spoke the mother tongue,) Keith says in the mother tongue.

  “Dude,” Pandemic says, fixing his fake mustache. “When did you pick that up?”

  “I told you, man, I needed a minor in college.”

  Keith yanks Henry close, the sweaty heat of anger steams through his jumpsuit collar. The spaceman says, (We will be good friends soon. There is a need for men like you.)

  “Best bodyguard ever.” Pandemic smiles and slaps Henry’s back.

  Commercials roll after the Cosmonaut show. Two spots declare Monday night the new Thursday night. These comedies are wholesome enough for families, but raunchy enough for fraternity brothers. Here’s what TV Guide has to say…

  One car ad boasts a bigger gas tank and the same square footage as a motel room. The next claims to be the only automobile J.D. Power and Associates rated as “Indestructible.”

  It’s ten and America’s favorite news source begins. “Tonight on Nightbeat Live,” our female announcer says. “Is your mechanic ripping you off? Benjamin Lambers goes undercover to find the hidden truth beneath your hood.” Televisions across the country feature men in grease-smeared overalls shielding faces from the camera. “And later…a cannibal in the White House? We may be closer than you think.” A shot of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue flies in. “But first,” the woman’s voice lowers dramatically. “Are your hamburgers really safe? Could America’s passion for fast food have a connection to its mysterious rise in obesity? Find out next on,” synthesized newsy music swoops in, “Nightbeat…Live.”

  More commercials—brown soda, sitcoms, extrem
e green soda, prescription anxiety drugs.

  “Welcome back,” the voice from the opening says. It’s attached to a light-skinned black woman with short hair named Sharon Smalley. Her blazer is red, her glasses are tortoiseshell. “It’s no secret Americans are gaining weight,” she looks into the camera. A graphic appears over her shoulder. It reads, “Death Burger?” in bloody scrawl that compliments her suit. “But who’s to blame? Some say it’s fewer physical activities due to technology. Some say it’s simply genetics. But recently there has been some discussion in the medical community claiming our waistlines are directly tied to fast food consumption. Nightbeat’s Leah Pullem takes a closer look.”

  A silent fade to black washes over the screen. “Studies say your chances of dying from a falling coconut are greater than a shark attack,” an over-rehearsed, less professional voice says during split images of palm trees and great whites. “Almost six times greater. Find that hard to swallow? Well, your chances of dropping off a ladder and breaking your neck are higher than dying in a terrorist attack, too.”

  The camera shifts to a short female reporter with spunky reddish-brown hair in front of a Winters Olde-Tyme Hamburgers. “However, hardest to swallow are your chances of dying from heart failure. Studies suggest one in every two-and-a-half Americans die from coronary disease. Of that group, over half of those heart sufferers dine here.” The camera pans to include the familiar green and gray Winters sign in front of a Victorian drive-through window.

  Leah cuts to the artery of this problem. Studies reveal a single Space Burger, while only one-eighth the weight of a bacon double cheeseburger, contains nearly four times the daily fat and calories required by a human body. The list of preservatives sounds like a Swahili lesson.

  She asks unsuspecting customers if they are aware of these statistics. An elderly woman is shocked and asks if they make a Salad Burger. A skate punk says, good, he wants to die young anyhow, and orders two more. A young mother and father drop their jaws, pluck space-age beef from their children’s thick fingers and toss the discs in the trash.