by Tom Stern
“This is an apartment!” Walter yelled.
“So what?”
“And you are a pathetic hermit!”
Dennis physically recoiled from these words. He stepped back and cast an indignant, disbelieving stare at Walter. But Walter would not relent, standing his ground firmly and almost reveling in the long-delayed joy of overtly defying this man.
In a completely unexpected move, then, Dennis Milk cocked his right fist, rocked back, and drove a surprisingly sturdy punch across Walter’s chin.
Had Walter even remotely anticipated that Dennis was capable of such an action, he would have been able to easily duck the telegraphed blow. But as it was, Walter was still processing the surprising turn of events even well after the punch landed and forced Walter a few steps off of the contested spot on the floor.
Walter shook the shock and the sting from his jaw, blinked his eyes, and then he stepped right back in front of the TV. “Rock and fucking roll,” he explained, unable to suppress a smile, which released a trail of blood from a split in his bottom lip.
“I’d like you to move out,” Dennis shrieked, having no idea what the hell Walter was talking about. “You and whatever freak things come to visit you!” He still held his fists in front of his face, awkwardly mimicking what only a total novice might perceive to be a boxer’s stance, lowering only his right fist to remove from his pocket a ten dollar bill, which he extended to Walter.
“It’s nine o’clock at night…” Walter started to explain before catching himself. “Fuck it.”
Walter casually crammed his things into his suitcase, which took all of a minute.
“It’s always sometime,” Dennis stated, taking far too long to craft what he thought was a clever retort to Walter’s abandoned plea. It took Walter a moment to figure out what Dennis was even trying to say. And when he did, Walter didn’t bother with a response. Nor did he take the ten dollars still in Dennis’s outreached hand. He just made his way to the door before turning back and stating calmly and plainly, “And that was my fucking brother, you narrow-minded, judgmental shut-in.”
He seriously considered kicking a hole in the wall again, but decided instead to simply leave the front door open behind him, allowing the world’s peering eyes to infect the privacy of Dennis Milk’s lair. Dennis started toward the open door just as the commercial break ended, rendering him stone still smack halfway between the couch and the front door, plagued by the crushingly difficult decision as to which of his dually important, monolithic codes of conduct by which to abide.
Walter walked two blocks with the clarity and drive of a bullet before sitting down on a curb and attempting to figure out where the hell he was going and what the hell he was doing.
It was late.
He couldn’t imagine finding cheaper rent than what he had been paying, especially given his pressing and limited options at the moment.
Unless he simply slept under the stars.
Walter started across town to Mayne Ridge Park, on the northwestern side of the city. As he walked, he found himself pondering whether there was anything more to making music than simply deciding to make music. He started running through some vocal exercises he had read about, running through what he thought were his scales. In truth, he had no idea how close the sounds he was making actually were to what the notes of the scales were supposed to sound like. Then he started humming through possible melodies for “The Not Monster Song.” Several days ago, he had declared the original melody now officially forgotten and had decided to start over again. He hadn’t found anything close to right yet but had more or less decided to use something up-tempo and poppy to counterpoint the grim content of the story. But that was as much progress as he had made.
Before he knew it, he was approaching the entrance to Mayne Ridge Park.
But the gate to the park was locked, a possibility Walter had not even considered.
So he put his suitcase down and sat on the ground, propping his back up against the gate.
He was tired of thinking.
And it was comfortable enough right here.
So he slid his posture down closer to the ground. And soon enough, he fell asleep.
Walter woke up to the harmonic clang of a key rattling in the metal gate to Mayne Ridge Park. He squinted to find what appeared to be, from this angle anyway, an inverted and stocky man presumably in his late sixties, reaching over him. After a gentle struggle, the man pushed the gate open, sending Walter spilling into the mouth of the park.
“Good morning,” Walter spouted, a veritably autonomic reflex to reassure the man that he wasn’t just your run-of-the-mill homeless person. But no sooner did these words leave Walter’s mouth than did he realize that they weren’t particularly rock ’n’ roll.
The man said nothing, merely shaking his head in disapproval as he retreated to a pickup truck parked up on the adjacent sidewalk. No eye contact. Not a single sound made.
Walter sat up, rubbed his face with the palms of his hands. This one transgression aside, he still felt pretty fucking rock ’n’ roll.
“I’m looking to join a band,” Walter explained to a barista at the first coffee shop he happened upon as he made his way down Birch Street not an hour later. “I didn’t know if anyone performs here who might be looking for someone?”
The barista answered Walter’s question with a glassy, thick, open-mouthed stare.
“Do people ever play music here?” Walter tried again. “Are you that kind of coffee shop?”
The barista pointed to the ceiling, indicating the speakers piping music down into the storefront.
“Live music,” Walter could not believe he had to explain, pointing to a small stage area in the back corner of the room.
“Sometimes,” the barista finally said, the word falling indifferently from his saliva-shiny mouth.
“When?” he asked, keeping things direct and simple.
“Mondays,” came the apathetic reply. “And Thursdays.”
Walter took this in. Then asked, “What day is it?”
“Today?”
Walter nodded to avoid having to waste words on such a stupid question.
“It’s Tuesday.”
Walter headed for the door only to stop and turn back to ask, “How much is a coffee?”
“Two bucks,” the kid answered.
Walter waved his hand. “Never mind,” he said, knowing he could get a cup at the truck stop for a fraction the price.
“You play?” the tousled, handsome bartender at Pilot’s Bar asked Walter.
“I sing,” Walter said. “And I’m looking for some people that want to develop a sound with me.”
“Most of the bands that play here are already bands,” the bartender offered, clumsily.
“Right,” Walter answered while simultaneously wondering what life must be like as a ridiculously good-looking bartender.
“You play?” Walter asked the bartender.
“Me? No,” the bartender said from his chiseled jaw. “I’m in school.”
Walter wasn’t sure why playing an instrument and going to school would somehow be mutually exclusive, but he decided not to press the point.
“Not business school, I hope,” Walter answered.
“No. Junior college. Getting my general ed done while I build my reel. I’m an actor. Gonna move closer to the industry at some point.”
Walter nodded, waved, and headed for the door.
He stopped halfway there and turned back to ask, “How much is a beer?”
The bartender looked around at the entirely empty room before retrieving a bottle, prying off its top, and setting the beer on the bar.
“On me.”
Walter was confused.
“I can pay for it…” he explained, even though he really couldn’t. Or perhaps more accurately he shouldn’t. Because
it wasn’t really money, it was time to develop his craft. Whatever the case, he wasn’t sure why the gorgeous bartender would have leapt to whatever conclusion he had leapt.
“I’m a real musician,” Walter explained. “I’m not one of those people who says he is a musician as an excuse for not having done more with his life. I’ve done things with my life. I was a salesman. For years. More than a decade, even. And I’ve loved. And lost. And fought and lost. And fought and won. And I’ve slept with a call girl of sorts who might have even fallen briefly in love with me. And I’ve been other things, too. And I’m a musician now. I might not be a good one, I don’t know yet. But I am real. And I might even be good. I’m figuring that out. So, if that’s what you’re saying…”
The bartender just nodded, confused.
Upon reaching the still-open evening gates of Mayne Ridge Park after a full day of searching for but still not finding a band, Walter rummaged until he found a tattered styrofoam cup from one of his morning truck stop coffees. He restored as much of its structure as he could, just enough to get it to stand upright on its own, and placed it on the pavement beside the gate. Then he stepped up onto the ledge built into the stone fence that lined the park.
He closed his eyes. His heart was pounding. His limbs were numb.
He felt the overwhelming desire to simply, silently, and painlessly die. To dissolve and trail off into a cloud of nothingness, never to feel or think or want anything anymore.
But inasmuch as this was not an option, he pulled a deep breath into his lungs, opened his mouth, and pushed out some sounds. They were the first sounds that came to mind. A song he had always liked about a man hypothesizing what kind of ghost he might be when his time comes and the unexpected benefits that his after-lifestyle might offer. Walter could not remember how and where he had found this song, which sometimes was his favorite type of song. He also remembered that it was written by a guy who did not look like a rock star, which sometimes was his favorite kind of musician.
Passersby started glancing up, at first one or two. But quickly growing into a consistent contingency. Walter tried not to watch them, focusing instead on sinking further and further into the time and the melody of the song. But he could not help but notice that no one was stopping to listen. He pressed right on, though, through and past this itch of self-doubt. He had to keep up with the song. And the sound. And the story they combined to tell. And the feelings that rose up out of the story as it was projected out into the very world whose myriad foibles it attempted, at the very least, to illustrate.
He couldn’t be sure, but he felt like he sounded pretty good.
He felt good, anyway, sending out his admittedly miniscule voice into this quark-tiny corner of the unthinkably massive universe. Perhaps he was conflating the two, though: sounding good and feeling good. Either way, he was singing. And right now, at this very moment so fast that to name it would be to declare its passing, that was absolutely good enough.
After a blur of time spanning some fifteen to twenty songs chosen at random from the jukebox of his mind, Walter sat down, silent and spent.
He did not want to move.
He did not want to take in any more stimuli ever again. No information either. He wanted to stay right here, fixed and whole and just precisely like this.
But the very instant that he acknowledged this longing, the bliss started to recede, abating gradually and replaced complementarily by the inane buzz of the phenomena of the everyday. Eventually, Walter’s eyes landed on the coffee cup he had set on the pavement. It was no longer empty, sparsely inhabited by a crumpled and crinkled bill or two and afterthought coins.
As the performance slipped its way further and further into Walter’s memory, the misshapen cup and its modest contents nevertheless endured, its own uneven kind of dissonant reassurance that what had happened had, in fact, happened.
Walter woke the next morning to the ting of keys in the gate to Mayne Ridge Park before spilling again into the park as the gate pushed opened. This time he didn’t bother seeking the city employee’s approval. He patted his pockets to make sure last night’s earnings were still there. He had tallied the cup’s contents the night before. He had made just a bit more than twelve dollars, which he had decided to regard as his first paycheck since leaving Sheprick Consolidated.
Walter stretched and pulled himself up. He headed to the gas station where he used some of his earnings to purchase a twenty-five cent cup of coffee, which tasted better than any cup of coffee he had ever had before despite it being weak and faintly burnt.
In an inspired moment of ingenuity, he then headed over to a nearby YMCA, snuck in through a back door, and used fifty cents more of his earnings to store his possessions in a locker.
Then he took a hot shower.
He figured this could become a home base of sorts, perhaps. It would be an even cheaper living circumstance than living with Dennis Milk had been, actually buying him even more time to invest in building his burgeoning career.
As Walter stood under the perfect warm water of the YMCA shower, he turned over lyrics for “The Not Monster Song” in his mind. He remembered that he had heard once that it had taken Leonard Cohen ten years to write “Hallelujah.” And that it had taken Bob Dylan one night to write “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.” He presumed that many great songs probably fell in between those two time horizons as well.
When Walter eventually looked up, he discovered that he had been deep enough and long enough in thought that he had failed to notice the arrival of two men, one at each of the showers adjacent to him.
“Hello,” said Walter to one of the naked men, a seriously round and flabby gentleman without a single hair anywhere on his head or his body.
The man frowned at Walter and turned his back, which was almost identical to his front, by way of shape, texture, and hairlessness.
While Walter conceded the myriad ways in which a naked shower conversation with a stranger could quite easily be misconstrued by the non-initiating party, he nevertheless really felt like talking to someone on this so far quite brilliant day. And inasmuch as the man to Walter’s other side, a severely skinny and angular individual, was currently turning off his shower and quickly, briskly toweling off—presumably to avoid the threat of Walter’s attempt to initiate a conversation with him—Walter was left with no one else.
“I have committed myself to pursuing a life path as a musician,” Walter offered up. “I have decided to perform every night and to spend my days working on new material.”
The rotund man kept his back to Walter, hoping that responding to these advances a second time with his floppy, pale ass might drive home his disinterest in dialogue.
“Have you ever pursued a passion?” Walter went right on.
“Stop talking to me,” the rotund man threw back over his shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” Walter explained. “It’s just an exciting time for me right now. It’s scary, sure, but I also feel really good about…”
“Goddamn it!” the man yelled, turning off his shower and sharply wrapping himself in three towels, which still didn’t quite cover his girth, before storming off.
But Walter did not take it personally. He understood, even. And he chose not to let this dampen his spirits. His plan was a perfect plan. And it was based on a damn near perfect past twenty-four hours.
Over the next four weeks, Walter noticed a precipitous drop in revenue generated at each night’s performance. He also noticed fewer and fewer sustained stops and stares of passersby. Eventually he was fortunate if he had more than two dollars in his cup by the end of each night.
The money itself was not of chief importance to Walter. But the waning interest and enthusiasm that it represented mattered to him embarrassingly much. Not that he knew any of these people. Not that he knew what they were really thinking. Not that he knew their opinions to be qualified on the to
pic of music in the first place. But he nevertheless found their burgeoning indifference a point of focused consternation at the very least.
Soon Walter was second-guessing his voice, postulating throughout well more than just a few sleepless nights underneath the stars above Mayne Ridge Park that perhaps his control over his craft was simply not strong enough to sustain an audience’s devotion over time. Or worse, that perhaps his audience had simply lost interest in his overall sound. Or even worse still, that perhaps his audience viewed him as a mere novelty act that has already spent all of its charm. All of this doubt amounted to an increasingly dire desire to make some progress on his original material, which was coming along glacially. He had started spending his afternoons in the back booth of a greasy spoon diner called Smythe’s, where he ate off the $1.49 Special Value Menu while spreading out napkins and scraps of reconstituted paper from local trash cans so that he could draft out lyrics.
He began thinking about maybe trying to reinvent his approach to performing existing material as well. But he hadn’t enough musical training, inasmuch as he hadn’t any musical training at all, to come up with creative sonic solutions to that possible scenario.
So Walter decided to do the only thing he knew how to do: keep right on going as he had been and hope that some circumstance or factor would simply open up and change for the better.
But after just seven more days of exactly the same, the once-majestic feel of the concrete at the mouth of Mayne Ridge Park had grown cold and hard. And the taste of Walter’s twenty-five cent cup of morning coffee had turned dull and all too familiar. And even Smythe’s had turned uncomfortable and ill-suited to Walter’s creative pursuits, what with its greasy smells, loud patrons, even louder employees, and filthy tabletops always staining his lyrics.
Worst of all, however, Walter felt his performances had been affected, turning static and breathless and uninspired. At least that was how he couldn’t help but interpret his audience’s persistently diminished interest and enthusiasm.
Walter did not know what any of it meant anymore.