Broken Piano for President

by Patrick Wensink

  “However, recently, while preparing this piece, one Winters employee did step forward. She, too, requests anonymity.”

  The woman’s voice is a scrambled bomb threat, electronically slowed down and gutted into a distorted grunt. It’s hard to understand the first few words. “—yeah, heck yes, we knew. Me? I was working on the development. I asked my supervisor if this was wrong and he assured me what’s good for the company is good for me. I even mentioned the possibility of this sauce being used for drugs, but they…they silenced me. How? Well, let’s just say I no longer work for dod gamned Winters Olde-Tyme Hamburgers.” The woman’s face is hidden under a shadow, it makes her look like a giraffe. Just above the eyes, when the dim light hits her just right, there is a thick scar, a healing wound on her left temple.

  “When given this evidence, an official Winters Olde-Tyme Hamburger representative denied Nightbeat a comment, claiming they are taking the high road.”

  The shot turns to a Winters restaurant with the caption: Gresham, OR. There is a line of thin, jittery men and women waiting under green and gray Victorian gables. They claw at crusty faces and welty arms.

  “When we return, what can be done to stop this epidemic and who is to blame? On Nightbeat.”

  The two minute and thirty-second break is filled with an entire Healthy Wally’s commercial. Its slogan says: “At Healthy Wally’s, the only thing you’ll get addicted to is better health.”

  Dean comes home and a birthday card is slid under the apartment door. It’s four months before his actual birthday. The card has a religious theme. The paper is baby blue. The handwriting is tiny, geometrically perfect angles.

  Lothario Speedwagon, Live @ the Purple Bottle.

  -See you there, Deshler.

  “Whough!” Pandemic wheezes from the back of the bus. Loud, sinus-cleansing snorts briefly capture Henry’s attention. “Whough!” But Henry’s focus stays on the floor.

  With his spine against the carpet, the rumble of the road spreads through Martin’s body. Martin was not greeted with the warm hellos he secretly hoped for when the bus bailed out of the gas station. After dodging stray bullets, Martin’s situation fell straight down a rusty chute to Hell. Currently, Keith is screaming with one foot on Martin’s neck, harsh interior lights flooding the bus. The gun is a fraction of a second from exploding into that small, black goatee.

  “No, no, he’s not a bad guy,” Hamler says with all his lungs, then repeats in Russian.

  (You are lying, I have seen him before. I know his kind. This is clearly a trap, Little Henry.)

  “Whough!” Pandemic snorts from the rear.

  (Shoot him, Keith. He will destroy us,) Sonja screams from the driver’s seat, foot deep on the accelerator.

  (Henry, Henry,) Keith says. (Ask what he planned to do with us. Ask who sends this Martin here to murder us.)

  Hamler asks, trying to sort out the translation with his heart smashing into his chest.

  “Okay, okay, easy man,” Martin says with arms stretched above his head, knuckles dug into the carpet. “Henry, does this guy understand that I could break his leg in three places right now?”

  “Martin, come on. What…” Hamler’s face is the color of Christopher Winters’ suits. “What am I supposed to tell them?”

  “Just explain that you know me, I’m not a threat.” Martin coughs from the boot crushing his Adam’s apple. “I’m the good guy, you know that. Tell them my bosses sent me to help. I’m an Intelligence Officer at Bust-A-Gut. I have some explosives, some guns, candy, water…I’m here to help.” His head twists for breathing room. “I need you to vouch for me here, Henry.”

  Keith steadies the gun sight. Martin studies the Russian’s quiver-lipped stare and jerky movements. The gunman is clearly uncomfortable with the prospect of killing.

  Henry sweats and worries about never feeling Martin’s scruffy beard again. About never wrapping their fingers together again. The tension is beyond any panic he’s known before.

  Another snort rips from the back room and stabs the silence.

  Suddenly, the bus jerks like a wooden roller coaster hitting an embankment. Everyone pushes into the wall. Keith’s handgun shatters eardrums when the trigger trips.

  For a snap of time the cabin is construction site loud.

  They’re the family dog and some kid is blowing a tiny silver whistle.

  Gray smoke lifts and Martin sits up, gooey blood leaking across his sideburns. “MARTIN! Martin!” Hamler drops to the floor, scooping the bloody man in his arms.

  “Owwwwww. God…shit…owwwww,” Martin howls, groping his ear. “I’m fine, it just grazed, shit, it just grazed me.”

  Henry digs his nose into Martin’s hair—that smell and his warm body make Henry happy. Panic is still dashing all around, though.

  (What was that, Sonja? I…I, oh Jesus, I nearly killed the prisoner.)

  Sonja cranks the wheel hard and the bus rocks the opposite way with a violent, stomach-flipping thud.

  (Pull together, Brother. We are being attacked.)

  Out the window, a black van steams to the side of the bus.

  Pandemic walks from the bathroom, clearing nasal wreckage. “What is everyone looking at?” His voice is electric as a birthday clown’s. His nostrils are spackled white.

  Hamler pulls back from the window. “Get down, dude.” He notices Timothy’s lips aren’t green anymore. His scabs have faded into healthier tones. Shit, meth addiction suits him.

  “Some of us,” the man also known as Juan Pandemic says. “Are trying to get some work done here. I can’t…you know, do my thing…oh, forget it.”

  Martin zips open his duffel and metallic clanging fills the bus. Keith holds the handgun close to his chest. The barrel soaks heat through the blue jumpsuit and warms the skin.

  “Whooo, that van looks pissed. Henry, tell the cosmonauts I said that,” Pandemic says, hardly taking a space between words. The white rocks he crushed and snorted race wild through his brain. His fingers beat a manic drum solo against the window. His breaths are short jets. “Whooo shit, that’s a big gun, dude.”

  Martin’s blood soaks into his shirt collar, leaving a sticky trail from the ear. He shatters the window behind Hamler with the ass end of an assault rifle.

  Henry’s chest fills with champagne bubbles. He falls in love all over.

  The gun sputters and flames spit out the end. It shocks Henry how graceful and silent it is. Bullets move faster than Pandemic’s eye blinks.

  Keith aims the pistol out the window and pops a shot, gives a yelp and drops the gun on the nighttime highway. It’s hard to see out the window with the interior lights on. The cabin smells like bottle rockets.

  For a handful of seconds the bus is peaceful, the only sound is the road and the wind whipping through broken windows. Then, Martin pings and donks around that long duffel bag. Everyone monitors his moves.

  The electric tingle of a ringing phone jitters Juan Pandemic and wildly flashes his skull around. “That…uh, whuh, that’s mine.”

  From the workout bag, Martin yanks a dark metal lump the size of a Bonzo Breakfast Sandwich.

  “Hey, Deshler, man, hey!” Pandemic says into his cell, plugging one ear with a finger. “Yeah, dude, things are great. No, it’s not too late to call, you know me. I’m having a blast! Um…the funeral is really cool, how’ve you been, bro?”

  Henry peeks out the shattered window as the black van pulls next to the bus. Hamler catches eye contact with his boss, Tony, in the passenger seat. The bus window spreads enough exterior light to see the senior spy’s receding hair flutter in the wind. Tony holds a gun that needs both hands. Henry falls to the floor and covers his ears.

  Martin and Keith drop quick. A dozen metal puncture noises—like popping open beer cans—rip through the cabin. The dome light shatters and things go black. Henry can’t tell the difference between eyes open and eyes clenched shut. During a quiet spread, lasers of moonlight crisscross through the bus, outlining bullet paths.

/>   Before Hamler catches his breath, Tony’s firing squad gives an encore.

  More peace and white noise from the broken window bully through the bus. Then more bullets shred the walls into an aluminum web. Another beat of silence before a scatter of bullets chop the bus interior to chunks.

  Hamler’s stomach tickles like it did after murdering Christopher Winters. He reminds himself how simple it was to stuff that syringe into the governor’s neck and how close he came to strangling Malinta. He wonders how easy it would be to fire a gun at Tony. A defensive fire grows where the tickle used to live—Hamler imagines delivering a bullet to Tony’s skull so the man will stop attacking Martin.

  Henry opens his eyes and sees his love yanking a metal pin from the grenade and counting. “One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three Mississippi.” Martin leans out the busted window. The wind whips loose blood from Martin’s ear back into the cabin.

  “Oh, wow, no shit,” Timothy Winters says via phone. “Dude, yeah, water under the bridge. Man, I love Lothario Speedwagon. I’ve really been missing it.” He doesn’t mention Hamdemic’s plans for world pop domination. There is no talk of xylophones or saxophones.

  Martin throws the bomb softball-style. It bounces under the engine and shreds the black van into a seventy-mile-an-hour scrap yard. Fiery orange lightning fills the bus and quickly fades.

  Pandemic speaks louder: “Oh, that? Car trouble. Backfire. No sweat…So, yeah, let’s do this. Tomorrow night, huh? Yeah, Lothario rides again! Okay, yeah, no I’ll call Henry. Don’t sweat it.”

  The busload stares at one another. Henry frisks himself for holes. The wheels spin ahead. A strong arm moves around his neck. Martin pulls himself tight against Hamler and whispers sweet into his ear.

  (Who was that?) Keith asks.

  Henry relays the message.

  “Tell Keith that was his home office paying a visit,” Martin says. “Roland Winters saying hello.”

  “Whoa, what was that?” Pandemic says. His body jerks like it was under a strobe light. “It was all boom and kak-kak-kak-kak around here. I was trying to make a phone call, you know?”

  There are muscles within Hamler that want to grab the phone and smash it under his shoe. Quickly, Henry realizes how lucky he is to be alive and in love. He takes in a sweet, full breath and asks the first happy thought that comes to mind. “Did you ask Dean about the cosmonaut campaign?”

  “Oh, no, it slipped my mind. Besides we’re both supposed to be at funerals, you know?”

  “Just about had my own,” Hamler says.

  “What?”

  “Forget it.”

  “Did I miss something?”

  Still marveling at having a beating heart and relieved he didn’t need to shoot Tony, Hamler decides some disclosure is in order. “Okay, uh, I’ve gotta tell you guys something,” he says in a stiff voice. Henry repeats it in Russian. “I’m a spy for Winters Hamburgers and that guy was my boss.” He repeats his side of the story: Killing Christopher Winters, stealing secrets from Bust-A-Gut as a temp and nearly murdering Malinta. This does wonders for Hamler’s guilt—tense muscles thaw, wrinkles of stomachache smooth, red-hot asthmatic lungs go icebox.

  Martin admits his role in this mess, too. He was supposed to monitor Henry’s spying tactics for Bust-A-Gut. This isn’t the first time he’s murdered for the hamburger giant. Frankly, it happens all the time. Orders from the top.

  The black smoke hanging in Pandemic’s brain takes in Hamler’s confession. Grandpa is dead because of his best friend. His heart fires like Martin’s assault rifle. Pandemic can’t lock together the pieces of that story, but saves them for later. In a slobbery crumple of words, Juan manages to tell the others he’s actually the son of Roland Winters. Grandson, obviously, of the murdered Christopher Winters. Caught up in the moment he also says obvious things like: “I think I might have a drug problem,” and “I haven’t seen a dentist in ten years.”

  Sonja and Keith trade serious squints. The wounded cosmonaut Dimitri huddles in the corner shivering and watching every word.

  Dean stumbles into the Club. The bartender is just shutting off the lights, but lets his best customer grab a stool. Deshler slugs a drink and listens to phone messages.

  Cigarette smoke soon fills his tired vision.

  The Beef Club is cold and lonely this time of night or morning—whatever. Dean likes the quiet—mind humming numb with rare focus. There is some delicate, yet weighty, quality to the world in this silent moment. The entire city has finished making its rattles and thumps, and time moves slow. From the blackest corner of his memory, Dean is shocked by a thought.

  Finally, Deshler understands why Dad needed silence so badly.

  Dean’s voice was just starting to crack and his brother’s driver’s license was fresh the last time the whole family was together, enjoying Bust-A-Gut’s new Teriyaki Jerky Burger. In the dining room of their cramped house, surrounded by paintings of pine trees, the legs of Dean’s life began their wobble.

  The commercials encouraged folks to eat teriyaki jerky sandwiches using chopsticks. Unfortunately, Dean’s mom didn’t see the future burger genius give Dad a set of sticks. Doubly unfortunate, because Dean didn’t know about Dad’s problem back then. The young boy knew Dad wasn’t allowed to hold anything more dangerous than a spoon after returning from another trip to the hospital. Young Dean knew knives, forks and screwdrivers were off limits. But the little wooden sticks just slipped his mind that meal.

  Like most dinners, it didn’t take long for the two teenage sons to start moaning for Father’s attention. Dad always demanded silence, hardly recognizing the boys, choosing to crawl into a cocoon of internal focus. Muttering about percentages—a holdover from days vanished. Days as a professor.

  That internal focus that won him so much praise in the Statistics Department eventually cost Dad his job. Mom was supporting the group pulling double shifts at the restaurant, developing shaking hands and twitchy eyes in the process.

  “Dad, did you hear about that?” “Dad, check this out.” “Dad, Dad, hey Dad.” It was nothing special, but it was the last spark before Father’s wick blew out. All young Dean wanted was a taste of Father’s time. Just a moment where the man would listen. The boys yelled louder and louder until Daddy Dean’s circuits popped.

  Sitting over his burger, a perfume of soy in the air, Dean’s father grabbed a chopstick and lanced both eardrums so fast nobody knew why the man was shrieking until blood rained onto his shoulders.

  That was the last time Dean saw his father. Later that day, his older brother fed the young Cliff Drinker schnapps and introduced Gibby.

  Dean knows he doesn’t need the silence as bad as Dad. But now there is a brief appreciation for that quiet desire. There is such a pleasant electricity running through the world when you don’t want to be heard and nobody is listening, anyhow.

  At this hour, most executives are passed out and home. Dean’s eyes wander around and the ice shuffles in his Rusty Knife. The Cliff Drinker’s never noticed the far corner of the Club before. The room is so empty he now sees that end is clearly taller by a foot.

  Dean remembers flipping through that pictorial history of the hotel sold in the lobby. The place was once a landmark of elegance. The Club used to be a small ballroom with chandeliers and tall murals and swing bands.

  Looking up at the hacksaw patch job on the ceiling, it’s pretty clear where the chandelier hung. Deshler assumes the other end of the Club is the tiny stage where bands jazzed it up.

  He takes a quiet, pleasant sip and checks a phone message. “Dean, Thurman Lepsic here. Call us immediately. Mister Findlay wants to strike while the iron’s smoking. I’m sure you’ve heard, but we had to fire Malinta for her participation in that stupid show. Impersonating a Winters employee…well, technically I’m supposed to call the show stupid and careless and disavow any approval. But wow, what a woman. She sacrificed herself for Bust-A-Gut. You’re a lucky bastard. We’ll have to make a statement, of course, but, a
s you know, people never listen to apologies. Damage’s been done. Anyhow, every news outlet in the country is picking up on this Winters crystal meth story. Their head is through the guillotine. We just need…need to pull the rope, I guess. Chop. This is beyond urgent. We have to come up with something hardcore. Or something classy. Which do you think? Call me.”

  Next message: “Deshler, it’s Double Harry, holy shit, we’re everywhere. How did we miss this? Jesus, the news is saying that little kids, eleven-year-olds, are smoking this stuff. I don’t even know what crystal meth is, let alone that it could’ve been made from hamburgers. Dean, Mister Winters is bouncing off the walls. We haven’t heard from Tony, which means the bus is still in play. I repeat, the bus is still in play. You need to get here immediately. Jesus H., I don’t know what’s going on. We’ve got PR and Marketing thinking it over. This is DEFCON One stuff. Yes, I said, one. Did you know most people misuse that term? Five is the least serious, one actually means nuclear war imminent.

  “Regardless, get down here immediately, got it?”

  Next message is a whisper, barely more than static. Dean strains to listen: “Deshler, old buddy, hey man, hey hey hey, this is Pandemic. I’m making this quick. Everyone else is sleeping except for Sonja. Funny, I can’t get a wink of shuteye, myself,” he sniffles. “Man, I’m totally down with signing a contract and playing a gig. But, um, we’re kind of underground here. I didn’t tell you this before, but I’m the Space Burger winner. Henry and I have been going around the country with some Russian dudes. He’s my bodyguard. It’s a long story. Anyway, I don’t know if the Purple Bottle is the best place for us to be seen. I’m pretty sure we’re wanted by the police. Call me. Oh, we’re back in town now, so let’s get a move on. One more thing, shot in the dark here, but you don’t happen to work for Olde-Tyme Hamburgers or know some one-armed chick named Delia by any chance?” An endless, grainy pause fills the message. “Oh yeah, and Hamler killed my grandpa…he’s a douche bag. Long, long story.”