Checker and the Derailleurs

by Lionel Shriver

  Later that night Checker was keeping time to the end of the Music Marathon with his drumsticks on the body of the car, trilling up and down its decals as the flames on the hood licked at their tips. But it was the snap of the umbrella that did the trick. Clear and pretty, the turn of a key in a lock. Checker changed what happened. He went in and tampered and fixed things. He tinkered with events as if nosing through the engine of a car.

  As the sun set behind her, the lights of Manhattan just beginning to rise, the Triborough was in a delicate and passionate temper. The sun trembled, red like the furnace early that morning. The lines of the cables shimmered and distorted. Poignant, fleeting, something about the quality of the light transferred to Checker’s sense of the evening itself, as if he knew that the Saturdays he and the band would spend in the uncomplicated flush of each other’s company were painfully numbered. In the approaching darkness, each remaining ray sliced Checker’s chest like a shard of glass.

  “Listen,” said Checker.

  “What?”

  “Sssh.”

  The band was quiet, and for a moment only heard the murmur of cars from the bridge, the whir of a helicopter doing traffic reports, the rev of a nearby Trans Am; but gradually they each heard it, a tinkling and lapping, a singing and breaking, a sad shattering tune below the embankment on which they stood.

  “Beer bottles!” said Howard.

  True enough, the entire shoreline didn’t show an inch of sand or dirt but was covered instead with broken glass where locals had thrown their empties in summers past. Yet, rather than littering the bank, the bits of brown and green winked opulently in the sun. The wake of passing barges picked up pieces and threw them against each other with an Oriental pinging sound, dissonant and unlikely.

  “I got a new job,” said Check.

  “I thought being a bike messenger was the most majorly up-jacking job in the whole world,” said Caldwell.

  “It was. Not anymore.”

  “You go back there,” said Rahim heavily.

  “Had to, Hijack.”

  “Did not.”

  “Had to.”

  “She is not normal lady, Sheckair.”

  “Sure as hell not.”

  “I have this—”

  “I know,” said Check. “So do I.”

  Those two talked in this way all the time.

  “Do you mind?” asked Caldwell.

  “Syria Pyramus,” said Check, leaning into his italics.

  Rahim clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “That is the name.”

  “Of WHO?” demanded Caldwell.

  “Take care, Sheckair. That furnace is hungry.”

  “Yeah, it wants something. Always dangerous, you want something.”

  “You two looped, you know that,” said J.K.

  “It roars,” said Rahim in his throat, so that big J.K. stepped back.

  Checker laughed. “Like a great bloody animal. I like it.” Though “like it” was inaccurate. He was attracted to the furnace, an ambivalent sensation with an object that hot. Much the way great heights made him want to jump, the furnace enticed Checker to crawl in.

  With both Caldwell and J.K. now glaring over the rail at a passing tugboat and pointedly asking nothing, Checker broke down and explained. “There’s a glassblower up on the Boulevard. She needs somebody to clean up, shovel cullet—”

  “Cullet?” asked Rahim.

  “All that broken glass. Boffo word, huh?” With his good hand, Checker selected his favorite brand from among the bottles at his feet and sent the green glass careening splendidly to shore—the cullet-strewn shore. “Anyway, people,” he announced. “We have an agenda.” “Agenda,” like “cullet,” curled with unreasonable relish over his tongue.

  “You’ve decided you’re too good for us and you’re accepting an offer from David Byrne.”

  The band turned away from Caldwell. No one laughed.

  “Sweets,” said Checker gently, “you’re going to have to stop that.”

  They all knew exactly what Checker was talking about. Caldwell was terrified that these evenings on the river, the nights in Plato’s, were the times he would remember wistfully in his middle age. He was overcome by a sensation of living the Good Old Days, and he wasn’t sure what this called him to do. When seasons changed, Caldwell panicked; he would refuse to wear any but the lightest jacket even through November, as if that would slow the weeks down. Caldwell had a way of looking at the band as if he were calling roll. And surely someday he would be extra nervous; he’d be a little older, and a few of those long strands of white-gold hair would fall out in his hand. One of the band members could very well have left or married; Caldwell would whip his head from side to side, the vein at his temple bulging like a son of a bitch—and it would happen. The Good Old Days would be over, right then. He would never get them back, and he would have it, what he expected—death and memory. So then he’d slow down and get a gut, hard as it was to imagine on that tall skinny kid now. He’d put his feet up and tell stories. It’s strange how often you get exactly what you’re afraid of.

  “I’m here. You’re here,” Check reassured him, not for the first time. “We’re all here.”

  “You’re not always here,” Caldwell shot back.

  “True,” Check conceded. “That’s what I wanted to talk about.”

  “It’s all right,” said Rachel. “We understand.”

  “We do not,” said Caldwell.

  “No, Rachel sweetheart, it isn’t all right.” Checker had a way of talking to Rachel, like crooning to a pet. He could as well have reached out and stroked her hair. “So this man Striker. Why not use him as a backup?”

  “Look, just give us notice, we make other plans—”

  “I can’t,” said Check. “Even me, I can barely—” He stopped. “You don’t really want to know.” He sounded regretful.

  “We take your word, then,” said J.K. glumly.

  Checker looked around the band, amazed as he always was by their deference. They really wouldn’t make him say. Supposedly they were being respectful. That was a lie. It was easier and they knew it—their deference let them off the hook; it simplified matters enormously. Checker was still tired. It had taken longer to get back this time. He hoped this wasn’t a development, some kind of sign. No, it’s just some times were different from others. Take care of this here. Forget about that, there’s the band now. They like what they see. They choose what they see. They’ve created you. Be a sport.

  “Okay,” J.K. agreed sulkily. “Guess I play with this dude Striker ’steada watch the paint flake off my ceiling.”

  “Sheckair,” said Rahim, with unusual softness, “this is worst idea you ever have. You don want this boy in your band. You remember I warn you later and feel vedy foolish.”

  “Why?” asked Checker flatly.

  “I know.”

  “That is a load of mystical crap.”

  Something in Rahim’s face corkscrewed. Checker was no longer playing.

  “You played with him last night—”

  “It was not same!” cried Rahim.

  “Big deal, it doesn’t have to be—”

  “Something bad happen, Sheckair!”

  Checker sighed. Sometimes he got tired of it. It just seemed stupid. He wanted only to lean over with J.K. and talk about strings and amp gain.

  “The thing is, he said he had connections,” Howard contributed. “Could be worth it, if he could even get us a toe in the door of a company, and, Check, it’s times like this we should have a demonstration tape ready—”

  “We don’t need to make a record, Howard,” said Check patiently, no longer paying much attention. Across the river, the yellow bricks of Rikers prison glowed like the color of a sandlot when your team is winning.

  “Check, The Derailleurs have the sound, the style—!”

  “We play in Plato’s, Howard. That’s fine. That’s enough. We’re plenty jacked there already.”

  Howard kicked a piec
e of cement in frustration; it hurt his toe. “Check, you’re a great musician, but you have no ambition.”

  “That’s right, Howard,” said Checker, watching intently as the very last disk of sun slipped behind the Empire State Building. “Not a bit.”

  Eaton was convinced he came down to the river out of almost chemical perversity. How disgusted can a person get without spontaneously combusting? Evenly clustered along the rail like the trees in Ralph DeMarco, boys shivered because back home they looked better in the mirror in open jackets, the girls this year huddled in those horrific square sweaters and squat little pedal pushers, the strip of their exposed ankles red from cold. Block after block, the posed slouches and raised hoods, carburetors polished like candelabra for anniversary dinners—it was all so trite Eaton could cry. Why, this strip couldn’t have changed since 1955. These kids must take Teenager Lessons, the way they used to take Cotillion. Sit-on-your-car. Toss-your-hair-from-your-face. Above all, try not to look self-conscious. These guys had read up. The whole parade was so obscenely obedient, even stiff, that it could have been an audition for a marching band.

  Yet from half a mile away a single face caught the last ray of the setting sun and went gold. It shone at the end of the strip like a burn hole. From that point the plastic flatness of this canvas shrank back, as from a lit cigarette poked through cellophane. Clumps on hoods flowered open and cliques on the rail did flips, balanced on their hipbones, skipped rocks on the river, twisted to old Rolling Stones songs. Eaton knew only that he was surrounded by many children playing. And he looked down the row knowing very well that nothing had changed.

  “Five ninety-five for a turkey sandwich,” said Brinkley. “Like, this place thinks it’s a restaurant.”

  While they ritually mocked the diner’s naïve attempts at haute cuisine, snickering at the awkward murals with statuary and Corinthian columns, for some reason Eaton could hear only how often Brinkley said the word “like,” Gilbert said “you know,” and Rad said “I mean.” Soon Eaton had lost track of what they were talking about altogether, for he could discern only a horrifying repetition of verbal tics that was slowly driving him insane.

  “Eat wasted Secretti last night. I mean, compared to Eat, Checkie’s like puh, puh, puh—”

  Suddenly Eaton blanched. He coughed and rolled his eyes, but no, these doorknobs didn’t get the message; the man in the entranceway turned his head to their table when he heard his own name. When their eyes met, Eaton was once more afraid, as he’d been the night before, of discovery. Nodding weakly, he shoveled a forkful of shrimp salad and looked back to Brinkley with an absorption the boy never deserved. Eaton’s hands were clammy and he no longer had an appetite. When his friends had finally noticed The Derailleurs at the big round table and had therefore switched into their seeming-to-have-a-good-time mode, Eaton found their cries for more beer and their leering after the waitress embarrassing. Abruptly he stood up, said he needed to say hello to someone, and walked away.

  “Well, la-di-da,” said Brinkley, seeing where Eaton was headed. “Eat’s got himself new little friends.” For some reason it never bothered Brinkley when his emotions were transparent.

  “Careful. Pond scum,” Rahim warned.

  “Evening.” Eaton nodded. “Come here often?” Feebly, he resorted to an old pickup line.

  “Yes,” said Checker. “We love the murals. They’re so—innocent.”

  “They’re ugly,” said Eaton automatically.

  “Why would you want to look at them like that?”

  “I enjoy hating them.”

  Checker laughed. “So you must come here often, too. For the murals.” Fondly he reached for the saltcellar and stroked up and down its facets, cleaning off fingerprints. Waves of hot and cold crossed Eaton in ripples; the hair raised on his arms. Each object Checker reached for seemed to glow. “I like their saltshakers,” said Check. “I like their napkin holders with the rounded sides. I like their waitresses and their garnishes and their slaw, and the little diamond shapes in the floor. And after thorough research the band has concluded they have the best home fries in all of Astoria.” Check looked up; Eaton stepped back.

  “Is there anything you don’t like?”

  “You.”

  “Hijack,” said Checker.

  “Why the bandage?” asked Eaton, ignoring Rahim.

  “My hand fell in love with a piece of glass,” Check explained. “It was a destructive relationship.”

  “So you can’t play tonight? I mean, was it serious?”

  “Pain is always serious, that’s what makes it exciting.”

  “You mean you enjoyed cutting your hand?”

  Checker pulled at his bandage, looking inside at the cut with contemplation. “Well, yes.”

  “There are words for people like that.”

  Checker smiled. “I like blood. I like the color.”

  “You also into animal sacrifice?”

  Checker laughed. “Pull up a chair.”

  With a flicker of hesitation, Eaton did so, but when he tried to intrude between Checker and Rahim, the Iraqi wouldn’t move over. Checker eyed the saxophonist until Rahim finally screeched aside, though only far enough for Eaton’s chair to jam tight between them. Eaton was forced to climb into his seat with just the kind of awkwardness he particularly detested.

  “We need a backup drummer,” said Checker. “You game?”

  Eaton’s face flushed, whether from insult or flattery it was impossible to tell. “To calm the belligerent fans when the star has a headache?”

  “Something like that…” said Check, looking Eaton up and down like a new amp, searching for the plug. “What you did last night. You were—challenging.”

  “He was poison.”

  Eaton turned on Rahim. “Where are you from that they insult people for no reason who are about to do you a favor?”

  Rahim said nothing more, only sat looking calm, almost pleasant.

  “Iraq,” said Checker. “Where they have lots of funny feelings.”

  “I see. And you’re in our country visiting?”

  Rahim remained quiet.

  “He doesn’t understand your question,” said Checker.

  “I mean, you’re not a citizen, isn’t that right? This is the way you act as a guest.”

  “Hijack lives here,” said Checker.

  “Yes. But under what auspices?—I assume I can use ‘auspices,’ since he seems to have a translator.”

  “No,” said Check, though Eaton had continued to look only at Rahim. “The translator doesn’t know an auspice from a hole in the ground.”

  “He means—” Howard began.

  “I mean,” Eaton interrupted, “he’s wet, isn’t he? From head to toe.”

  The band squirmed. No one answered.

  “Come on,” said Eaton. “I’m in the band now.” Eaton smiled.

  “See,” said Rahim.

  It happened the next weekend, and was over in surprisingly short order, though that is the nature of most events—with a few gory exceptions, murders are over in seconds; the most hurtful remarks often use the fewest words; neither falling off a cliff nor running a car into a telephone pole is a lengthy enough process to require scheduling into your day.

  The band hadn’t taken the man seriously at first when he clumped over to The Derailleurs on their break—with the big biker boots and shredded T and bright pink bandanna knotted at his neck; why, the costume wasn’t even coherent. At the flap of his ID, they resettled in their chairs and time got very fat. The whole table was suspended in the interface between two alternate universes. Change is like that: you are no longer where you were; you are not yet where you will get; you are nowhere exactly.

  Rahim answered the man’s questions idly, readjusting the brim of his Astoria Concrete hat, toying with the tail of the hattah he routinely wore underneath it—a winter one this time, with the black Armenian stitching. He stroked the little pom-pom on one corner like a rabbit’s foot not likely to do him a hel
l of a lot of good. If Rahim seemed a little sluggish, he was in hyper-space—journeying from the universe in which he was trying to remember if he still had a can of stew left in the room he rented above the fruit market to the universe in which he was being arrested by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service and in real danger of being summarily shipped back to Iraq. It was a big trip for thirty seconds.

  “Excuse me,” Checker interrupted politely. “But could I consult with my friend for a moment? He’s new in the States and could use a little advice.”

  The agent began to explain about lawyers and rights, but Checker had already raised a just-a-moment finger and ushered the Iraqi smoothly through the back door labeled RESTROOMS.

  Checker’s advice was fast and straightforward and supremely American. As soon as the door closed quietly behind them, he grabbed Rahim’s arm and pulled him through the exit to the back hall, where they’d often helped waitresses take out the garbage. Checker dribbled Rahim down the basement stairs and curled him around the back of the dripping water heater like sinking a shot. “Stay!” was all Check took time to say; whipping off Rahim’s Astoria Concrete hat and hattah and shoving it on his own head, he was off again, up the stairs and careening down the back hall at just about the time the INS agent had finished checking the bathrooms. When the man opened the last door he caught only the flap of an orange bill and a flurry of headdress as it flew out to the alley and past the trash cans.

  As the agent rushed after him, Checker consumed Ditmars Boulevard with wider and wider strides, laughing out loud, leading the man into Ralph DeMarco. A big, sharp night, isn’t it? Feels good to run, without a coat, and it must be twenty degrees. But you aren’t cold, you’re excited. You loved our gig, didn’t you? Sure, you used to play a little guitar way back when, and you gave it up; you went to school, you kicked around and ended up working for the government, and you haven’t quite digested that yet. You never expected to be on this side of things, chasing a kid for Immigration—you haven’t run in a while and you’re panting and he’s laughing at you, he’s waiting for you to catch up, he’s rolling, clutching his stomach on that little knoll at the end of the park right in front of the Con Edison plant, and That’s the drummer, where is the wetback?