The Wishbones

by Tom Perrotta

  Dave himself still hadn't completely surrendered his dream of the Big Time, but he had moved it to the back burner. Someday, maybe, the perfect band would come along, a band so good that no one would be able to say no to them. Until then, though, Dave was a Wishbone, and it was a helluva lot better than nothing.

  Afterwards, because the event came to seem so significant in retrospect, he sometimes found himself trying to reconstruct it in his memory, as though the smallest detail might hold the key to some larger mystery.

  The Wishbones had just finished setting up when the Heart-string Orchestra broke into “Like a Virgin,” their next-to-last tune of the night. If Madonna had happened to wander into the Sundown to check out the showcase, Dave thought she would have approved. Phil Hart gave the song a hilarious deadpan interpretation, as though it had never entered his mind that some people might find it amusing to see a seventy-three-year-old man with artificial hips doing a dignified shimmy at the mike stand as he sang about being touched for the very first time.

  Dave leaned his guitar against his amp and stepped down from the rickety wooden platform that served as stage #1. He waved to the waitress, a brassy-haired woman of indeterminate age named Hilda, and mimed the act of bringing a glass to his mouth. Hilda nodded, but moved across the lounge in the opposite direction to wait on some paying customers, a young couple holding hands across the table and gazing at each other with that blissful prenewlywed intensity that would somehow evolve over the next two decades into the vacant stares of the long-married. It wasn't until Ian sidled up to him a few seconds later that Dave realized he'd been frozen in place, the invisible empty glass still tilted to his lips.

  “Mick Box,” said Ian.

  “Shit,” said Dave.

  At every Wishbone function, Ian tried to stump Dave with a piece of rock trivia. He specialized in obscure British musicians from second-rate bands of the early seventies.

  “Take your time,” Ian taunted. “It'll come to you.”

  “Mick Box,” Dave chanted. “Mick Box … Mick Box … Mick Box …”

  “You probably haven't thought about this band for fifteen years.”

  A face began to take shape in Dave's mind. Narrow, ferrety features. The obligatory hair.

  “I'm seeing a mustache,” he said.

  “If it's a Fu Manchu, you're definitely getting warmer.”

  “I want to say Mott the Hoople, but that's Mick Ronson.”

  Dave's eyes strayed around the lounge as he attempted to place the mustachioed Mick in a band he hadn't thought about for fifteen years. Up on stage #2, Phil Hart was twisting his way through a musical interlude in “Like a Virgin.” On stage #1, Artie was lecturing Stan about proper Wishbone attire, frowning and jabbing his finger in the direction of the offending work boots. Stan kept nodding like a kid, mouthing the words, “Okay, okay,” over and over again.

  “I give up,” said Dave. “Is it Slade?”

  “Close,” groaned Ian. He winced as though pained on Dave's behalf. “Mick Box was in Uriah Heep.”

  “Damn. I used to love Uriah Heep.”

  “Easy Livin',” agreed Ian. “One of the great tunes of all time.”

  “Mick Box,” laughed Dave. “What the fuck kind of name is that?”

  In the middle of the lounge, the gazers were still enraptured with one another while Hilda stood by, pencil in hand, looking bored. At a nearby table, Alan Zelack touched wineglasses with a ridiculously beautiful woman in a slinky black dress who appeared to have materialized out of nowhere. With the sixth sense of a complete asshole, Zelack turned slowly, grinning with triumphant smugness, and raised his glass in greeting. Dave pretended not to notice.

  “What the fuck kind of name is Uriah Heep?” Ian wondered.

  That was when it happened. Dave looked up just in time to watch Phil Hart stop singing in the middle of the final chorus. A look of mild surprise passed across his face—recognition, Dave would later decide—as he turned slightly to the left. He wobbled— there was no other word for it—and the microphone slipped through his fingers, bouncing off the stage with a percussive cough of static.

  Joey stopped drumming and looked around in alarm. Phil remained upright for a moment, empty-handed and wonder stricken, before sinking, almost gently, to his knees. Walter kept pounding his electric piano, oblivious to everything but the final measures of the song. Phil's eyes got big. He flung his arms wide like Al Jolson, as if to embrace his fate, and then pitched suddenly forward, landing facedown on the stage in a position he never would have chosen if he'd been offered even the slightest amount of choice in the matter.

  Two hours later, drained and without flowers, Dave pulled up in front of Julie's house. He sat in the car for a few minutes listening to the engine tick, trying to work up the energy to open the door.

  For the first time in his life, he had actually watched someone die—a man he liked and admired—and for the moment, at least, everything else seemed insubstantial, not fully serious. The thought of facing Julie's parents no longer disturbed him. Instead he felt a strange tenderness, as though he were preparing to visit them in the hospital.

  It hadn't taken Phil Hart a long time to die, but an eternity seemed to have passed between the moment of his collapse and the arrival of medical assistance. At first the whole room seemed paralyzed, as though everyone were simply waiting for Phil to leap up and finish the song. Finally, Mel, the arthritic sax player, bent down with visible difficulty and retrieved the fallen microphone.

  “Phil's hurt,” he announced, in a voice too calm for the circumstances. “Would someone be kind enough to call an ambulance?”

  The Sundown burst into a hectic flurry of motion, with people scattering in several different directions at once, shouting for a telephone. Dave and Ian rushed across the lounge to check on Phil.

  “Is there a doctor in the house?” Mel inquired. “How about a nurse?”

  By the time Dave reached the edge of stage #2, Joey had already emerged from behind his drum kit, rolled Phil onto his back, and begun loosening the buttons of his ruffled shirt. Phil submitted patiently to these ministrations, his awestruck face turned to the ceiling. Even then, from a distance of about ten feet, Dave could see that he was gone.

  “Grampa,” Joey implored him. “Grampa, please.”

  “Is there a doctor in the house?” Mel repeated. “Does anyone know CPR?”

  Dave hunched his shoulders and took a step back from the stage, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible. He had taken a CPR class in high school, but all he remembered was that Ralph Vergiliak had pretended to hump the dummy, earning himself a week's detention.

  “Grampa.” Joey's voice was stern now, as though he were scolding the dead man for his lack of cooperation. He grabbed hold of Phil's shoulders and gave them a hard shake. “Come on now, Grampa.”

  From the corner of his eye, Dave caught a brilliant flash of red. Before he understood what he was looking at, Alan Zelack had rushed across the stage, shoved Joey out of the way, and begun CPR. The whole sequence came back to Dave as he watched—the head tilt, the sweep of the mouth with one finger, the pinching off of the nostrils. The multiple chest compressions for every breath of air.

  Zelack performed these actions with ostentatious competence, his blond hair flying, his red tuxedo shooting off tiny urgent flares. Dave's first, ungenerous impulse was to resent him for hogging the spotlight even in a tragedy, but that quickly passed, replaced by a grudging sense of respect. Like everyone else gathered around the stage, Zelack must have known that Phil was already dead. And yet he kept trying fiercely to bring him back, pumping his chest and filling his lungs, minute after interminable minute, until the ambulance finally arrived, and Phil's body became the property of professionals.

  The Wishbones played their set anyway. They thought about canceling, but a couple had traveled all the way from Belvidere with their wedding consultant to check them out, and didn't want to have make the trek again. As a courtesy to them, Artie decide
d that the show must go on.

  Dave felt a little weird about it, but as soon as he strummed the first chord of “Jailhouse Rock,” his reservations vanished. The music jolted him like an electric shock. It seemed to pass through his body on its way from the guitar to the amp, cleansing him, reminding him of how good it felt to be alive.

  And it wasn't just Dave, either. Buzzy, who usually stood stone-faced and motionless while he played, was grinning with amazement, rocking from side to side as he plucked out the pulse of the song. Ian had abandoned his usual two-bit Elvis impersonation and was singing like he meant it, while Stan pounded the drums as though exorcising the demons from his life. Even Artie caught the wave. The solo jumped out of his horn, every note of it a fresh squawk of pleasure. It seemed to Dave that the song had never existed before, that they'd invented it on the spot.

  Somehow they kept the momentum for ten more tunes, finding something real in even the tiredest old standards. When they had run the gamut of their repertoire, from disco to pop, from polka to R&B, Ian surprised them all by breaking into one last song on his piano, something the Wishbones had never done before.

  “This is for Phil,” he said. “Rest in peace, brother.”

  The chords were simple, and Dave recognized them right away. He hadn't played “Knockin’ on Heaven's Door” since high school, back when he was lead guitarist in a band called Exit 36. Listening to the words now, colored as they were by death, Dave wondered what they could have meant to a bunch of teenagers in a suburban garage in 1979, kids whose idea of heaven was half an ounce of Colombian Gold and a girl with big tits to smoke it with.

  But then he stopped wondering and gave himself up to the song. He closed his eyes and sang the chorus with every ounce of strength in his body. It was a blessing. Rest in peace, brother.

  Julie answered the door in gray sweatpants and a baggy orange T-shirt. In her hand was a fat paperback with a tortilla chip marking the page.

  “You lucked out,” she whispered, jerking her thumb in the direction of upstairs. “They went to bed.”

  As he had on countless nights before this one, Dave followed her down the carpeted stairs to the rec room. As always, Julie left the door open, a somewhat discredited token of good faith to her parents. He pulled off his tuxedo jacket and draped it over the armrest of the brown-and-beige-plaid couch.

  “Sorry I'm late. Things got messed up at the showcase.”

  She shrugged. “It's probably better this way. They still haven't really forgiven you. Or me, for that matter.”

  “You can't really blame them.”

  Julie didn't respond one way or the other. She plopped down on the couch and stretched her legs out in front of her, resting them on the coffee table next to the bowl of chips that had supplied her bookmark. One leg of her sweatpants was pushed all the way up past her knee, while the other one extended down to her ankle. She put her hands behind her head and smiled up at him.

  “So what happened at the showcase?”

  Dave opened his mouth to tell her about Phil Hart, but something went haywire in his brain. He looked at her and thought how pretty she was, smiling up at him, rubbing her heel over her bare shin, waiting for his answer. He thought of how much they'd been through together, and how crazy he was to imagine that he would ever want more from life than she'd be able to give him. He spoke without intending to, and didn't really gauge the significance of his words until it was too late, until she was already off the couch and in his arms.

  “Let's get married,” is what he'd told her.

  WE'RE SOOOO THRILLED

  He woke the next morning with a consciousness—it felt something like a hangover—of having made a terrible mistake. He couldn't figure out how it had happened, how he'd allowed years of resolve to crumble in a single moment of weakness. In the half darkness of his bedroom, he fantasized about calling and rescinding the offer.

  “I'm not ready,” he'd explain. “I don't have a steady job or any money in the bank. You deserve someone more reliable, a husband you can count on.” He figured he'd leave out the part about not believing himself capable of a lifetime of sexual fidelity.

  “So why'd you do it?” she'd ask, more curious than upset. “Why'd you propose if you didn't mean it?”

  “I—I really don't know. I was just in a weird mood or something.” He could hear the lameness of his excuse. “I love you, but I'm just not prepared for this.”

  The imaginary Julie listened carefully, her brow knitting into wavy lines of concentration. “I understand, Dave. It would be crazy for us to get married right now. But I do want to continue having sex with you.” Her voice dipped into a more sultry register. “In fact, I want to have sex with you right now.”

  He threw off the covers and forced himself to get out of bed. This was no time to get sidetracked. He really did have to figure out a way to tell her that he hadn't actually meant to pop the question (though it wasn't even a question, now that he thought about it), but had somehow taken leave of his senses as a result of Phil's sudden death and that pushed-up leg of her sweatpants …

  It wasn't going to be easy, he could see that. But maybe he wouldn't have to convince her. Maybe Julie was having second thoughts, too. Maybe she'd opened her eyes that morning and had the same realization as Dave—that they were acting rashly, that this was precisely the wrong time to be making such a momentous decision. He resolved to go downstairs, have a cup of coffee, and call her at the office. It was entirely possible that they could straighten out this mess in a matter of minutes, and maybe even laugh about it afterwards.

  As usual, he had the house to himself. His mother left at seven to catch the train to Newark, and his father left at eight for his part-time retirement gig as a deliveryman for a local printer who called himself “Mr. Speedy.” Dave did the same sort of work, driving on a freelance basis for a courier service owned by Artie's brother, Rick. Mostly he worked afternoons, but his schedule was erratic. Some days he drove for three hours, some for twelve. It all depended. Some days he didn't work at all.

  He should have been used to it by now, but being alone in the house on a weekday still made him feel like he was back in high school and had just put one over on his parents. All sorts of exciting and illicit behaviors offered themselves up for consideration. He could smoke a joint, phone an escort service, fry up a whole box of breakfast sausages. In the end, though, all he ever did was sit down in front of the muted TV and strum his acoustic guitar.

  On the way to the coffeemaker, he stopped to read the note his mother had left on the kitchen table. She never failed to dream up an errand or two to fill his morning, as though she couldn't bear the thought of a grown man alone for a few hours with absolutely nothing to do. But today's message was completely er rand-free.

  “CONGRATULATIONS!!” it said. “We're soooo thrilled. Julie's a wonderful girl.” Then, at the bottom of the page, in tiny letters: “P.S.— It's about time.”

  His mother answered on the second ring. “Mr. Nordberg's office.” There was a singsong lilt in her voice, a sunny, professional note that still caught him off guard after all these years of calling her at the office.

  “It's me,” he said.

  “HELL-loo,” she cooed, shifting to a more maternal, but equally cheerful tone. “I was just about to call. Your father and I are so happy, honey.”

  “How'd you find out?”

  “Dolores called this morning, right before I left. Didn't you hear the phone?”

  “I must have slept right through it.”

  “Have you picked a date?”

  “Not yet.”

  “September's a good month.”

  “This September?”

  “August is too hot. And lots of people are away. I think you should hold off till September.”

  “You mean four months from now?”

  “It's May now, so let's see … June, July, August … Four months sounds about right.”

  “That's a little soon, don't you think?”

&
nbsp; His mother laughed. “When you've been dating the girl for fifteen years, honey, you don't need a long engagement.”

  “Mom,” he said, making an effort to control his exasperation, “we haven't been going out for fifteen years. Everybody says that, but it's just not true.”

  “On and off,” his mother said, correcting her error. “Fifteen years on and off.”

  “Okay, whatever. It's really not worth arguing about.”

  “Anyway, for what it's worth, I still think September is a good month.”

  “I'll keep that in mind.”

  A brief silence ensued. When his mother spoke, her voice had dwindled into a worried, confidential whisper. “She's not … in trouble, is she?”

  “In trouble?” Dave teased. “You mean with the law?”

  “Ha ha,” she replied.

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Good.” Another phone rang at her end of the line. “I have to grab that, honey. Bye.”

  “Okay,” he told the hum that had replaced his mother. “Talk to you later.”

  Julie Called before he'd swallowed his second sip of coffee.

  “Hey, sleepyhead.”

  “Oh, hi.”

  “What's wrong?” she asked quickly. He caught the barely perceptible note of fear in her voice.

  “Nothing.”

  “You don't sound too good.”

  “I'm fine.”

  “Are you sure?”

  He saw the opening, but couldn't bring himself to take it. The kind of talk they needed to have, you couldn't do over the phone, he realized, especially during business hours.

  “I didn't get to tell you last night. Phil Hart died at the showcase. He collapsed right onstage.”

  “Phil Hart?”

  “You know,” Dave told her. “Phil Hart and His Heartstring Orchestra. The guy with the artificial hips?”

  “He collapsed onstage?”

  “Right in the middle of'Like a Virgin.’ I'm not sure if it was a stroke or coronary or what.”