I looked toward the coolers and they were completely silent. Those turds. I could guarantee none of the guys had any money on them.
I glanced at Grandma Van, and discovered that she was staring approvingly at the bouncer. “Ahem,” I said, wondering what exactly had happened to her brain while she was in shock. “Grandma Van, can we borrow a little cash?”
Still staring, she made a small flirty growl. I decided to run with it. I wiggled her purse out from underneath the cooler in the scooter’s basket.
“Yes, we are good with money,” I said to the tinted window. “I’ll bring it to you?”
“Sure. And that manager, too.”
Em stood, a kale ghost. “Finally,” she said. “A little respect.”
I hoped I hadn’t created a monster. There was a fine line between Em being impressed with me and Em being impressed with herself.
“Take your time,” said Grandma Van, waving us on. “Dirk, young man, come tell me about your educational background.”
“Keep an eye on my grandmother?” I whispered to Howe. He nodded nervously. We both knew it was an impossible job.
With me guiding her, Em and I made our way to the door and carefully up the stairs. They were steep, and I let her go first so I could catch her if she tripped. We were halfway to the top when she stopped. “Fovea?”
Not until she said it did I realize that this was the first time we’d been alone together since That Day. She’s going to apologize, I thought, hope filling my cells like oxygen. This is it. “Yeah?”
“Don’t you think it would be more convincing that I’m the manager if I’m not tied up?” she said.
My cells breathed out.
“I’ll think about it,” I told her. It was too soon, but at least she wasn’t complaining anymore.
Nussbaum called down, “You kids get lost? We don’t have all night here. Let’s go, let’s go.”
The room at the top of the stairs was tight. It had a single large window on one wall, the one that we’d seen from the bar. On the bar side, the glass was tinted, but on this side you could see through it, and the height gave us a clear view of the whole room spread out below. The rest of the space was filled with equipment, each one with a little green or red light that blinked. In the middle of it all sat Nussbaum.
She was on a stool, one leg hitched up so she could tap impatiently on it. She wore cowboy boots and had three-foot-tall hair. Rings covered every one of her fingers. She looked like she might be the ruler of a small country of rock musicians.
“I’m Nussbaum,” she said, sticking out her hand for me to shake. “That’s an interesting…outfit.”
“I’m a left kidney. My name is Fovea and this is Em.”
Nussbaum reached out to shake Em’s hand, but since Em couldn’t see her hand and also didn’t have a free hand herself, it sort of fizzled.
“Good evening,” said Em, professional and oblivious at the same time.
I handed over Grandma Van’s credit card, and as Nussbaum scanned it with a little swipe of her phone, I looked around, spotting a whole rack of headphones. Perfect.
“We need to talk business,” I said to Nussbaum. “But maybe our, um, manager here could listen to something else you’ve recorded? So she knows your, um, style?” I wasn’t sure style was a thing in recording music, but it sounded legit. Nussbaum looked at Em skeptically, but stood and grabbed a set of headphones. In a minute, Em was listening to something—something good, apparently, because she was jamming out.
Nussbaum sat back down on the stool and looked at me expectantly. Boy, did she not expect this.
“So we’re okay?” I said. “With the privacy policy?”
“Sure, kid. Now let’s get moving. What do you need, four mics? Is the vegetarian manager singing, too?”
“No, actually. Neither am I, neither is my grandmother. You should probably meet the other guys. Can you turn on that overhead PA system again?”
Nussbaum looked skeptical, but she hit a button and I heard the click.
“Howe,” I said, startled at the sound of my voice suddenly everywhere. “Howe, can you please introduce Nussbaum to the guys?”
He gave us a thumbs up, and then made for the football cooler. I crossed my fingers as Howe grabbed the edges of the lid and opened it. I was really counting big time on that privacy policy.
“Well, hello,” I heard Andy say.
“Can somebody get me out of here?” growled McMullen. We couldn’t see them properly at this angle, but before I could tell Howe to tilt the cooler, Grandma Van drove her chair closer, directly in the way. “Oho!” she said. “Two more!”
“Sorry about my grandmother,” I said. I pointed down at the cooler. “You can’t quite see them, but that’s Andy and McMullen.”
“Where?” Nussbaum asked, trying to get a better view.
It was tough because Grandma Van was now leaning out of her scooter, directly over the cooler. “You got chopped, too, huh,” she was saying. “It’s an epidemic! A neck-idemic!”
I thought I heard Lake laughing from inside the small cooler.
“I can’t quite…” Nussbaum stepped close to the glass.
Andy’s voice came from the big cooler. “I prefer the term ‘abbreviated at the neck,’ ma’am.”
“Call me Van.”
“Van.”
She smiled, patting down her hair, and leaned back. Dirk took her place, peering in, and one second later, we all watched as the giant bouncer wobbled and then slowly toppled over. Even through the thick glass, we could hear the loud thump as he ate it, right onto the checkered dance floor.
“What did they do to Dirk?” Nussbaum asked angrily.
“Nothing.” I watched as Howe tried to help, but clearly found even Dirk’s arms too heavy to lift. “He just met the other guys.”
“What other guys?”
“They’re down there. Just kind of low profile,” I said. I clicked on the PA system again. “Howe, will you show Nussbaum the guys? We don’t have such a good view.”
Howe obliged, tipping the cooler slightly so she could see. “They don’t have bodies,” he explained.
“Convenient,” emphasized McMullen, his face pressing against the side of the tilted cooler. “We don’t have bodies convenient. We have them, they just aren’t around.”
Nussbaum shook her head and stepped closer to the window. Then, without a word, she brushed past me, through the door, and down the stairs. I shot Em a quick glance and left her listening to whatever was on the headphones, racing down after Nussbaum.
Back in the bar, things had deteriorated somewhat.
Nussbaum was already standing over the cooler with her hands on her hips, and Howe was running between her and Grandma Van, trying, I discovered, to keep my grandmother from harassing the unconscious bouncer.
“Those sure are some muscles,” Grandma Van was saying philosophically. “Just let me have a pinch.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Howe said, his arms out to block her. Hopefully, she wouldn’t rush him. Letting him handle that situation for a minute, I turned my attention to Nussbaum. I wasn’t sure she’d blinked yet.
“Hello,” Andy said, looking up out of the cooler.
Nussbaum nodded back at him.
“You’re still going to do it, right?” I asked. “The recording?”
“Well, you already paid.”
Whew.
“Though I believe…” she said, looking back down into the cooler. “I believe you’re going to need a few stools.”
The two coolers rested on the edge of the stage, tops off, and Howe sat next to them, dangling his legs. Nussbaum paced in front and they all talked about the plan for the recording session.
That left me and Grandma Van to take care of the unconscious bouncer a few feet away.
“You should get up,” she said to him. He didn’t move. She nudged him a little with her scooter. Nothing. She leaned toward his face and said loudly, “Just think, we could ro
b this place blind if we wanted to.”
The conversation in front of the stage went silent.
“Ummm…” said Nussbaum.
Grandma Van shrugged innocently. “I was trying to inspire him.”
Nussbaum attempted a small smile and then they went back to figuring out the details. I wasn’t sure it was the best idea, but I left Grandma Van with passed-out Dirk while I made my way behind the bar and grabbed a glass. As I ran water into it, I realized you could see the whole room from back there: the old wooden stage, the worn-down dance floor, the little round tables scattered here and there. For a dirty old bar, the place was kind of cool. Something about the way the dim light fell over everything. And how quiet it was, too, except for the low conversation on the edge of the stage. Maybe most of all, though, it was the way there was a promise inside the building that Something Was Going To Happen.
I was excited, despite everything.
I brought the glass of water over to Dirk and poured a little on his face, accidentally letting some roll into his nose. He woke up gasping. “Heads! They’re heads!”
Grandma Van nodded. “It does throw a bit of a curveball into things, doesn’t it?”
He glanced toward the stage, going pale again as Lake yelled, “Let’s get this party started!” Dirk did not look ready to party. He put a shaky hand to his damp forehead and closed his eyes. “How many?”
“Of the guys? Three.”
“Where are their bodies?” His voice wavered.
“Great question!” said Grandma Van with delight. “Just fantastic, right?”
Dirk shuddered.
“On the upside,” I said, “they turn out to be pretty good singers.”
“My goodness. Decapitated and melodious,” murmured Grandma Van, motoring around us and going to join the gang by the stage.
“All right, folks,” Nussbaum announced. “We’ve got a plan. Mics up?”
“Sounds good,” Dirk said weakly.
“You get used to it,” I whispered.
He nodded like he didn’t, not for one second, believe me.
Once he had something to focus on, Dirk seemed a little sturdier. He got to work, setting up the front edge of the stage with towel-cushioned stools and microphones and black cables that snaked around his ankles.
I followed Nussbaum back to the small room, explaining as we went that Em could absolutely not see the heads. I lied and said that Em might freak out. I definitely didn’t mention that I wanted her to have fun without considering me an Igor. Thankfully, Nussbaum bought my explanation, and when we got into the room, she set Em, still blindfolded, next to her stool. “I’m going to talk you through this recording with the blindfold still on,” she said to Em, “so you can concentrate on the music.”
Em seemed to consider it. “Okay.”
Nussbaum and I nodded over her head, and then I went back downstairs to help. I really couldn’t expect anybody else to do the dirty work.
We went fast. Howe found a spot onstage while I popped on the oven mitts and placed the heads on the stools, one by one. Dirk followed behind me, setting each person’s microphone to stool/head level, and pulling the glasses down from the top of his head for the up-close adjustments. Huh. They weren’t sunglasses at all. They were reading glasses.
While we were doing all the prep, Grandma Van slowly drove her chair back and forth in front of the stage telling a story about the time she saw Elvis Presley live when he played once in Manila. I’d never heard her talk about the past before. I’d really never heard her talk about anything other than her impending death and her nemesis, Julia Klinger. This was blowing my mind. “Sure, Elvis was handsome,” she was saying, “but that night, he sounded flat, on every single song. The moral of the story is: you can’t get away with just being good-looking.”
“Thank you,” said Lake.
“You were also a singer in your youth? Or a musician?” Andy asked her as I settled him onto his stool.
“I was more of a critic,” said Grandma Van. “I find that people in the world need to be told what to think, more often than not.”
Howe started to twist his hair, and I didn’t blame him. I was a little worried, too. Grandma Van was veering toward a menace-to-society mood. I changed the subject. “So what are you guys going to call the barbershop quartet?”
That turned out to be a perfect distraction, since everybody had plenty of opinions. They still hadn’t picked a name when Dirk and I finished, but they went ahead and started warming up with the microphones. They didn’t need me anymore, so I went to the back, where there were stools against the wall.
Onstage, there was a sound check and a little practicing. Grandma Van asked to use the bathroom. Dirk pointed the way. For the first time all night, everything felt pretty calm. Thank goodness.
Several microphone tests later, Dirk came over to chill on a stool near me, and then Nussbaum announced that she was going to bring up some color to help with the atmosphere. Suddenly there were lights on the stage, dreamy blue and red splashes of colored light that caught all the dust in the air and bounced off the guys, making them look almost young. Healthier. Not recently deep-frozen and thawed. Howe didn’t look so bad either.
But it didn’t just change the four of them. The whole bar instantly felt different. The moment the lights hit the stage, everything was more. More interesting. Realer. Bigger. Even me, back there in the dark, dressed as a kidney. I wished Em could see it all, not just because it was so incredible, but because I wanted, so badly, to be in that magically cool experience with her.
It could be like it had been at the hologram museum. Us standing side by side, thinking the same thing and not even having to talk about it. I wanted that back.
Removing the blindfold was completely off the table, of course, on account of the guys being out and about. It may have worked for the original Igor, but I was definitely not mixing fun and the transportation of body parts. We just have to get through this first, I told myself.
“That’s what I’m talking about,” Lake said from onstage, smiling and closing his eyes against the light, almost as if he was going to lean all the way into it. Oh no. He was. He was leaning into it.
“Lake!” I yelled, jumping up from the stool and just about giving Dirk a heart attack. “You’ll tip over!”
Lake wobbled for a moment and then caught himself. “Thanks, Fovea! Close call!” With a glance sideways at the other guys, he said, “I have this sneaking suspicion I might not be cut evenly on the bottom. Anybody else ever feel like that? No?”
And then they began.
The three heads and Howe: they were like any other band now, the four of them, lined up onstage in the pools of light, singing their hearts out. And they looked so happy. All that time planning it in the body freezer, working out the details while chilling between the stacks of arms and legs and whatever. And the work I did, calling places and finding Howe. It was all paying off. Even Grandma Van clapped with surprising enthusiasm.
I realized this was the promise of Nussbaum’s Musicalarium.
THIS was the thing that was Happening. And I was part of it. I was the reason it had happened at all.
It felt incredible. I realized that maybe, if I looked at it in a certain light, Em had been right, at least so far in my life. Maybe she wasn’t being mean. Maybe she was calling it like it was. I had been boring. I hadn’t done anything. Maybe I was a bookmark, holding on to a space and waiting for the right time.
And this, this was the time.
If I overlooked the fact that the heads were currently gooping up some barstools that could never be used again, everything was going really, really well. The guys seemed to be getting more used to each other as they went along, and every song got tighter, seemed to be better than the last.
They were nearly done when my pocket started vibrating.
I reached into the costume, pulled Whitney’s phone out, and the screen glowed bright in the dark. Unknown was calling. Unknown! Whitney! I look
ed around to see where I should answer it. Dirk pointed me toward the door, so I smothered the phone against my stomach and ran outside.
“Hello!” I answered. “Whit—”
I didn’t get any further because of the great amount of honking and snorting on the other end of the phone. It didn’t sound like Whitney at all. It sounded like a man. A blubbering man. “You’re on your way, right?” cried the blubbering man. “I can’t stand the suspense! All this waiting! Are you on the way, Whitney?”
Crud. I turned the phone off. Inko was losing his cool.
And if Inko was losing his cool, then I might already be out of time. I needed to make sure the missing head was back in place. I needed to end this. I’d been so distracted by the guys and Howe and having Em around, but there wasn’t time to be distracted anymore.
I turned and pushed into Nussbaum’s again.
Back on my stool, I watched without really watching, thinking how the sooner the recording was done, the sooner we could get back to the lab, do whatever celebrating they wanted to do. Then I could find out where the other head was, and this could be over.
“I can’t believe you missed it,” Lake was saying as I lowered him into his cooler. Or that’s what I deduced he said. One of my oven mitts was smushing his mouth.
Howe was trying not to be too obvious about keeping an eye on Grandma Van as she followed Dirk around while he took down the microphones and rolled the cables. We’d discussed it, and somebody needed to protect the bouncer. Nussbaum and Em were still up in the little room.
I settled Lake in and moved on to Andy. “I only missed like five minutes.”
Lake sighed dramatically. “But it was an outstanding five minutes.”
“It’s perfectly all right, dear,” said Andy.
McMullen appeared to be napping. When I picked him up, he yawned and blinked a few times.
I put the lids on the coolers, and the place suddenly felt hollow. The stage lights were off and the whole bar seemed colder, emptier than it had when we’d first gotten there. All that promise had been spent.
I collected Em from the upstairs room, despite the fact that she didn’t want to go. “We can’t go yet! I have so many more questions! We only covered the basics! How am I supposed to be a good manager if don’t know whether to remix or lay down the tracks as they are?” We set her on the cooler again as she talked about EQ adjusting and made our way back outside, where she went on about sound balance something or other. I was glad she was finally having fun, even if I didn’t understand a word she was saying. And right then, I didn’t really have time to figure it out. I had a lovesick cremator to neutralize.
The Mortification of Fovea Munson Page 13