by IGMS
And about four stools down, Uncle Jack slowed, stuttered, and stopped. And there he stood, with the weight on his good leg so the other could swing free to upend somebody, but too afraid to take a step closer. "Take your damned squeeze box and get out," he said.
But the Polka Man only laughed. A pleasant laugh, the kind friends have whenthey call each other names they'd punch a stranger for using. "You liked my music well enough once," he said.
Uncle Jack looked guilty, and it took some of the anger out of him. "Well, I don't like it now," he said.
"Shall I unplay it then?" the Polka Man said. It didn't make any sense to me, but he said it as if he was perfectly willing to do it.
My uncle hung his head and gave a deep sigh and said, "What's done's done."
The Polka Man smiled as if Uncle Jack was complimenting his playing. "None ever sorry they danced to my music," he said.
"But I won't dance again," my uncle said.
"Not you," the Polka Man said. Then he looked at me.
Uncle Jack came another half step forward; you could see he was more scared than ever, but he couldn't hold back. And he couldn't go forward. There was a lot more fear in his voice than rage, and it almost sounded like he was begging. "Not him," he said, "he's too young."
"Old enough for my song," the Polka Man said.
My uncle looked at his leg, and took another step and a half forward. He was close enough to grab hold of the Polka Man with a lunge, but he didn't do it. He was starting to sweat, and he was sort of shivering like something was pushing him forward just as hard as fear was holding him back and he was stuttering between the two. "No!" he said. But you could see he knew he had no power over the Polka Man and couldn't really command him to do anything. Then he swallowed hard and said, "Aww, to hell with it, then. Take the other one and be damned."
That made the Polka Man laugh, not a mean laugh, or a superior laugh, but the kind of laugh when somebody says something he doesn't know is funny but everybody else does. "I'm not here for your leg, you daft bugger." He held up a finger to stop what my uncle was going to say next. "And I'm not here for his." The idea of it seemed preposterous to him, and he seemed like he was trying not to laugh. But it didn't put me much at ease. I didn't know what was going on, but it was clear it was about me, and I didn't like it.
"No, you're here for pain," my uncle said. "Just like the last time."
"I am," the Polka Man said. "But I promise you I won't take any that isn't here already."
My uncle looked a little mollified. "And you won't harm him," he said. It was as much a warning as a question.
The Polka Man's eyes twinkled. "What a question," he said. "Of course I won't harm him!" But it was perfectly clear that he could, and there was nothing my uncle or anybody else could do to stop him.
I looked for the door, but somehow I knew I couldn't get out it, and the Polka Man gave me such an affectionate look I wasn't sure I wanted to, even if I was at risk. And I wanted to know what was going on, more than I wanted to get away, so I stayed where I was until the Polka Man and my uncle finished negotiating. I could see that was what they were doing, even though it was clear my uncle had no power over the Polka Man. Finally, the Polka Man said, "I give you my word, no pain that isn't here already."
My uncle looked skeptical, and the Polka Man gave a smile. "Did your leg hurt? Didn't you get everything I promised?" he said. "Did I ever lie to you?" My uncle shook his head reluctantly. "Did I cheat you? Do you want it undone?" the Polka Man said.
Uncle Jack shook his head again. "I won't have him hurt," he said doggedly.
The Polka Man gave an exasperated sigh. "I take the pain away," he said. He looked like he carried it away inside himself. "Who knows that better than you?"
Uncle Jack threw up his hands and went back around the bar. "It's up to him, then," he said.
And the Polka Man turned to me. "I want your pain," he said. "I'll deal for it fair and square. You make the decision."
I didn't know what was going on, but I knew I didn't want a bar and I needed two legs to play on, but since it was up to me, I was willing to listen. "I want my legs," I said.
The Polka Man laughed so hard it took him two minutes to stop. "I don't collect legs," he said. "What kind of silliness have you been telling him about me?" he said to my uncle.
"He knows nothing about you," Uncle Jack said. "Nor where you come from."
"Well," he said to me, "I'm from right here, you know. Just not Right Now." I had no concept of time as a place then, so I thought he meant he was born in the Valley but didn't live there any more. "And around here," he said, "I'm called the Polka Man."
He picked up his instrument and moved it apart and together. All it sounded like to me was a gang of men and women being crushed to death, and I told him that. "Those were the black keys," he said. "Wait'll you hear the white ones." But he didn't play them. "I'm collecting for the white keys now," he said.
I believed him that he wasn't after legs, but I didn't know what he was after. So I asked him.
"Pain," he said. "You can't have great music without pain. That's the root of all art." And as soon as he said it, I could see how the polka was just a way of letting a whole lot of pain out in one great joyous rush.
"I take it back away with me." He looked like there was a lot more to it, but he didn't know how to explain it any way I'd understand.
I didn't like the idea of being mined for pain, but I was young then, and I didn't know the Red Circle Company was mining all of us for pain everyday, and the bar and the polkas and the fights were just ways of trying to get away from it. So it didn't make sense to me. "What do you want it for?"
He looked like I'd ask a hard question, one he'd asked himself more than once. Finally he said, "When I come from," he said, "nobody's ever been in pain. Nobody I know even knows what it is."
"They never get hurt?" I said. "They never fall down or get hit by a car or anything?"
"There's all kinds of pain," he said. "But no, they don't fall down, and there aren't any cars, and they're never sad. And they never dance." He looked like that was the greatest pain of all. "But they will," he said, "as soon as I've tuned my instrument." He looked like he thought they weren't going to be very grateful to him at first. "That's what I need your pain for," he said. "For my instrument."
"Are you an angel?" I said. I didn't know anything else that could take away pain, and the place he was talking about sounded a lot like heaven the way I understood it.
He had the same rueful smile Uncle Jack had whenever he talked about his leg. "You have to be ruthless as the Devil to be an artist," he said. "Especially with yourself." He never said so, but I believe he felt each pain every time he played a note. "Now your uncle," he said, "he was a black key." Then he hit one note full of quavers that sounded like something being ripped, and I felt like he'd torn a piece off me.
"You made him lose his leg," I said. I didn't know why, but I didn't hate him for that. My uncle clearly didn't, much as he feared him, and he knew a lot more about it than me.
"No, I didn't," he said. "He was going to lose it anyway." I looked at my uncle, but he was polishing glasses like none of it was any of his business. "All I took was his pain." He played the note again. It was dreadful. "For my instrument."
I must've looked scared of the thing, because he played another note, only this one didn't have any fear or horror in it at all. But it was so sweet and sad it made me want to cry. "There's all kinds of pain," he said. He looked like he'd had them all. And he played another note, a low, hollow sound that made me feel empty inside. Then he hit another key, and nothing came out. "That's your pain," he said.
I was sure nothing hurt me, and I didn't want to know if some accident was going to happen to me any minute that all I could do was sell the pain to. "You know the pain I mean," he said.
And when I thought about it, I did. It was the worst pain in my young life, and until he walked into the bar, it was burning me like hell fire.
And the moment I thought of Grace Powers, it started hurting me again, but a hundred times worse, because now I knew I could be rid of it. It wasn't just that I had this longing for her that I couldn't even define. It wasn't even that she didn't know I was alive, because she did, it was that no matter how much I loved her, wanted her, I could never have her.
It wasn't just that she was so beautiful and I wasn't. Or that I was short for my age, and she wasn't. Or that she was graceful and clever and sweet, and I was awkward and stupid and ruthless, though I didn't know then that I was ruthless. I believe all the Polka Man did was let me know what my pain really was; he didn't make it, he just made me fully aware of it, and it hurt worse than anything before or since. I could see that the pain was that I could never have her. She was the banker's daughter, and I was the runt nephew of a one-legged bartending ex-coal miner.
I could see that we would grow up along side one another and go to high school together and I would want her more and more the more ways I found out there was to want somebody, but I would never have her, and I would watch her get married to somebody who didn't love her at all, and beat her up, and keep her pregnant until her looks wore away, and she would never in her most desperate dreams think of loving me as even a possibility.
She would never think of me as anything but an ugly little runt who would go down into the mines and come up blackfaced and hollow eyed until I coughed myself to death trying to cough up all the coal dust I'd swallow before I was fifty. And that was all I would be, just a drunk in pee-stained underwear sitting in my Uncle Jack's bar and coughing my lungs up into a hanky and looking at it to see how long I had to live.
I could see that life inescapable as destiny, and seeing it hurt so bad I started to cry, even though I knew I was too old for that and my uncle was watching me and all. But I bawled and bawled, and the Polka Man let me go on until all I had left was sobs, and when I was all cried out, I looked at him and it was all there, fresh as if I hadn't grieved any of it away. I knew I was going to feel that terrible pain all my life, every waking moment from then on, and it would never get any better and it would never go away, and I'd never feel it any less than I did right then.
When I stopped crying for a moment, the pain didn't go away it was just like somebody turned the volume down and it was still playing in the background. And I said, "That's what you want?"
And he nodded. And I didn't know why, but I hated him for wanting it, even though I knew I was going to give it to him no matter what. I don't think I thought at all about the people wherever he came from who would hear it as part of his music, but I've thought a lot about them ever since. I can't help wondering what it did to them the first time they heard it. What it must have been like to people who never felt any pain at all. I think of that sweet sad note he played for me and what it did to me, and I'd heard music before. I don't really like to think about what it did to them.
I suppose if he told me they'd feel just what I was feeling every time they heard it, I would have sold it to him anyway. Hell, I'd have probably given it too him just to be rid of it, no matter who had to suffer it instead. "And I won't feel it any more?" I said.
"You'll never feel a thing when you think about her," he said.
"Take it," I said.
And Uncle Jack leaned over the bar and said, "Show him what he gets."
And the Polka Man started to play a polka, and everything that I knew was going to happen to me started to flash before my eyes again, but he played the white keys mostly, and all of it changed, and I could see myself grow up taller and better looking than I ever dreamed of being, and I played football and went away to college, and there was a long line of girls like Grace Powers doing things to me I couldn't even identify, and as soon as one left there was another along, and I loved all of them, and not one of them had the power to hurt me like Grace Powers.
So I let him take away the pain of first love, and when he touched my key, I still couldn't hear it, but my uncle heard it and big tears rolled down out of his eyes.
And when the Polka Man played out his song, I knew it was over because I thought of Grace Powers, and it didn't hurt. I didn't feel a thing.
But what I didn't know was that it not only wouldn't hurt, but that in all those beds and all those bodies, I'd never feel anything as painful or as good as I'd felt then, and much as I like the life I bargained for, like my Uncle Jack, when I think of it, and that emptiness I feel instead of love comes to me, I smile ruefully just like he did, and wonder if it wouldn't have been better to have kept the pain after all.
And when I do, I know what it is that makes my bargain and Uncle Jack's look good, bad as things get, because we don't have to be those poor painfree demi-angels, laying around in their endless luxury, when the Polka Man finally gets his instrument tuned and starts to play. And better still, when that pain floods into them and floods back out mixed with their own newly created agony, we don't have to be the Polka Man.
Original Audrey
by Tammy Brown
Artwork by Raffaele Marinetti
* * *
Elvis Presley watched Audrey Hepburn eat her breakfast in front of the Tiffany's window in the Caesar's Palace Mall. He loved how she managed to devour the food without spilling a drop on her black evening dress. He wondered if today he would walk over and introduce himself.
But where to begin? Haven't I seen you somewhere before? Hey, come here often? I couldn't help but notice that you're a clone of a famous person and I'm a clone of a famous person, so I guess we both have something in common. Or maybe he should just try a more classic approach. Can I buy you a diamond tiara?
He knew he was being stupid. He was just so tired. The wedding party he had been hired to emcee had gone on all night. Judging by the numerous requests for Blue Suede Shoes, even a hundred years after the King's death, he was still as popular as ever.
More people were beginning to fill the mall. Marilyn Monroe walked by, flashing her shapely legs and a coy smile. He caught himself blushing and immediately dropped his lower lip into a snarl. His namesake, Original Elvis, would roll over in his grave if one of his progeny blushed just because a pretty girl smiled at him.
Then the blood rose to his cheeks again, but for a different reason. A young boy, and his mother were hurrying past him. It was Elvis at age six. The woman had even dyed the child's hair black just like his own mother had dyed his, as soon as he had hair to dye. He wondered if she had been a big enough fan to know ahead of time that Elvis was actually a natural blond. Would it help if he stopped her and talked, yelled or pleaded until she understood that her child was more than a life-sized collector's doll? Could he convince her to just let the child be himself. Probably not. It wouldn't have changed his mother.
Audrey's breakfast was almost finished. He wasn't in the mood to approach her now. Maybe he should wait until another day. He had told himself that every day for the past three months. The night before, when only the thought of her had sustained him through the endless repetitions of "Thank you very much," he had promised himself that he wouldn't let another week go by.
There was something special about this woman. He had felt it every time he had seen her. It wasn't just her beauty. He had seen other Audreys before. No, it wasn't the beauty. It was the moments that she didn't think anyone was watching her that made him fall for her. The look on her face would become wistful, and sad and haunting all at the same time. He recognized that look. He saw it every morning in the mirror. Something inside of her was trying to speak from behind her famous face. He wanted to know what it would say.
His throat tightened as he walked up behind her. "Do we know each other?"
"Why, do you think we're going to?" She answered with her back to him, probably bored by what she must have heard a million times.
"How would I know?"
"Because, I already know an awful lot of people and until one of them dies I couldn't possibly meet anyone else."
"Hmmm. Well, if anyone goes on the
critical list, let me know." Any moment now she is going to laugh in my face and walk away.
"Mmmm, quitter. You give up awfully easy, don't you?" She turned to him, and stared him with amazingly clear, blue eyes.
"See anything you like?" He pointed at the rows of diamond necklaces and rings that filled the display.
"So many choices and so little -- money." She scrunched up her nose in mock disappointment.
"Just say the word."
"And you'll buy me my favorite?"
"No, but say the word anyway, I like to hear you speak."
"Well, you're no help." Again, she held him in her eyes.
This was it. "You have the most beautiful, blue eyes."
Her lip pouted and her forehead crinkled. "I hate my eyes. They should be brown. Beautiful, doe-like, brown eyes."
Fix it! His mind screamed at him. "Blue is nice." Lame. Really lame. Next time tell her that you think she's swell. That'll reel her in.
"Original Audrey had brown eyes. A clone should look exactly like the original. You look exactly like Original Elvis. Pre-fat days of course."
Why did everyone feel a need to comment on that? When you know for a fact that your genetic predisposition is to gorge on fried chicken, you just never eat it at all. If you do, at least ten people feel compelled to point out your genetic future.
He must have frowned without realizing it. "I meant that as a compliment," said Audrey.
"Actually, I'm not so perfect. I have a mole on my butt that's shaped like Illinois. I don't think he had one. You want to see?" He hoped he could coax a smile back on her face.
"Sure." She paused expectantly and then gave a wicked little laugh when he panicked at the thought of baring his bottom. "Just kidding. I guess like anything else, cloning can't be perfect. That's why I have fake ones."
"Excuse me?"
"I have fake eyes. I mean contacts. My eyes were tired so I took them out."
Neither spoke for a minute. "So, come here often?" He couldn't believe he just said that.