Broken Piano for President (35 page)

• The sloshing band stomps into New Orleans funeral march. A hazy calendar flaps through our vision. About seven days flutter across the air.
  

• There is a fuzzy shot: bottle after bottle of cheap red wine emptying. A shot of Deshler sleeping at his desk fades into a quick upper-body shot of him dipping a long finger into the goo and licking his lips.
  

At this point in the montage the band peters out, the drum kicks randomly, the trombone slides as far as it can and the trumpets clear their spit valves.

The last shot has Deshler opening the mail. There’s a letter with no return address. Postmarked from his zip code, as usual. It’s a card congratulating him on the birth of his new daughter:

Roses are red, Violets are blue, I know where Clifford Findlay is, but do you?

Okay, right, I know, that last montage wasn’t very montagey. The ending, yes, but before that? Not so much. Agreed. Here’s another attempt. It’ll be better, I promise.

The next montage opens with primal electro-spy music thumping in the background. It’s cold as science.

“Dude,” Pandemic says, stabbing out a cigarette in a forest of crumpled butts. The highway melts across the window. “Tell her, tell Sonja that…that I’ll kill for them. I’m a soldier. I’ll do whatever needs to be done. Remind them who my dad is again and shit. That’s gold.”

“I am not,” Hamler looks over his shoulder and starts whispering, like the cosmonauts understand. “I am not telling them. You’re out of your mind. You’re not yourself. I’m sorry I got us in this mess. I’m really sorry. But we’re just going to have to sit tight.”

The drummer scoots closer with a face of breaking bad news. “Henry, I don’t think I need a bodyguard anymore.”

“What?”

“I’m not in danger.”

“Fine. At the rate I’m going that’s not a bad idea.” Henry’s head drops.

Juan Pandemic scratches his puffy pink mustache mark and digs under his eyes. “I’m sorry I’ve been an asshole. I…haven’t, you know…had a taste in a long while. It’s getting to me. Withdrawals, I think. But this shit’s serious, I’m not freaking here. I really want to help these space dudes. My old man ruined their lives, he ruined mine. If you think about it, he ruined yours, too. You know?”

Bleep-ba-bleeep-beep-beep-deedledeedledee
the soundtrack goes. Somewhere, a German lords over a turntable, nodding sad to the beat.

“But what about Deshler?”

“I don’t buy that shit. Stumpy pulled that name out of a hat.”

“Pandem…
Timothy
?” Hamler lifts a shaking head. “That’s not a name you make up at random. That’s impossible. Don’t you see what’s happening?”

“Dude, so she heard us mention him, whatever. Or well, okay, what if Dean does have this secret life? We’re not any better.” Pandemic waves a finger around the bus and points at the Russians. Sonja is asleep in the passenger seat. Keith cleans the handgun—it’s dislocated into a dozen little chunks. “Look at what we’re into here, man.”

“Dean always said you’re not yourself until you’re someone else.”

“That’s the first thing to come from your mouth that sounds right.”

“So…?”

“So, forget Dean.” The drummer is standing, near shouting, a geyser of energy. “We can’t even talk to him like a human lately. When’s the last time he
wasn’t
an asshole to you or me? We quit the stupid band. And you can quit being his roommate if that’s what’s bugging you. You can move into my place.”

Nodding, soaking up Juan’s words: “Maybe when all this junk is over, we can start a new band.”

“A pop band.”

Henry’s heart gets a spicy zing. The same electric charge it leapt with from love and candy, or rare applause, zips around the body. “A really catchy band. Like, lots of hooks and harmonies.”

“With a piano.”

“A guitar.”

“Tambourines.”

“Xylophone.”

“The Juan Pandemic band!”

Henry’s face goes crooked and Juan even shakes his head, laughing.

“The Hamler-Pandemic Experience.”

“How about Ham-demic?”

“When this is all over, dude, Hamdemic is on.” With this pleasant thought, the ghost of Henry’s misery and failure whisks away. Amusement has been in short supply since Los Angeles. Just as Hamler realizes he’s actually a little happy, his crushing depression sinks deeper.

Slinky disco beats and digital pulses fill the unusual silence between their conversation. It doesn’t fit the scene at first, but, then, oddly, it does.

“Just forget it, man. What are we going to do? This is all my fault. I’m a total failure.”

“Easy, Henry.”

“No, it’s true. I know that. Plus, I think it’s my job to, you know, stop them.” The bouncing bus ripples Henry’s flesh. “But, I don’t think that’s a good idea, do you? I’ll just get someone else killed. Probably me. Not that that’s a bad thing.”

“Let’s…” Pandemic pauses while highway rumble fills the space between them. “Let’s just be patient and see what happens. I like our odds.”

“Juan, no. We need to do something. I need to take action.”

“Just relax.”

“No.”

The soundtrack speeds up, but still sounds mysterious. The music bloops forward as Lothario Speedwagon’s former rhythm section blazes down the highway.

Montage Highlights

• Pandemic checks his phone, which reads:
  30 New Messages
  . He presses a button and listens. It’s Dean rambling, something about “possibly signing a record contract,” something about “not sure what’s going on,” something about “I know you probably don’t care, but I’d love to talk to you about it.”
  

• Hamler and Pandemic argue so hard the cosmonauts pull them apart.
  

• There’s a tender scene of Pandemic trying to communicate with Keith. It’s not clear whether young Mister Winters’ hand-signals translate into: “I want to help decapitate my dad.”
  

• The backside of a sniper takes center stage of this montage. He glares into the scope, sitting atop a billboard overlooking the highway. A silver flicker appears on the horizon. The sniper lifts his head and talks into a radio. It’s Hamler’s boss, Tony. He peeks through the scope again and yanks the trigger.
  

• Inside the bus, the chunky red-headed driver jerks the wheel and falls to the floor. Sonja leaps over the spurting corpse and grabs the controls.
  

• Finally, the bus pulls back onto the highway with a bloody lump wrapped in a blanket and an angry one-armed woman by the side of the road. Delia shakes a fist as dust clouds above her.
  

See, better, right?

Oh, not by much, huh?

Okay. Here’s a tight montage. You’re the boss. Stop getting grumpy, I said I knew you were busy.

The corporate montage is hardest to pull off. Best to simply plug your nose and dive right into the clichés, starting with the 1960s Motown classic,
Money (That’s What I Want)
.

• The first scene shows a young guy, decked out in blue and yellow, in Bust-A-Gut’s kitchen working his ass off to deep fry enough buns for the Mozza-Burger. Orders stack up like dollar bills at the US Mint. People can’t stuff enough deep-fried cheese in their stomachs.
  

• There is a bridge between scenes—a montage within a montage: bar charts and paper money exchanging hands, newspaper clippings tear like a tornado through a trailer park. “
  Burger Wars Heat Up
  ,” one reads. “
  Food Fight
  ,” another says. “
  Burger Giants Unfazed by Bad Publicity, Sales Up 23%
  ,” another reads.
  

• There’s a long line of puffy-eyed zombies inside a neon Winters mansion. One man
  a-choos
  into a ten-dollar bill and hands it over in exchange for three Flu-Burgers. This guy’s miserable and no amount of chicken soup cures his pale, sweaty face. In flashing shots, we see he can’t focus at work, can’t play with his kids…doesn’t even want to make love to his wife. Greasy blue cold syrup soaks through wax paper and leaks out in a halo before he severs off a hearty bite. The man is instantly cured. This renewed gent plays with the kids, knocks ’em dead in the boardroom and in the bedroom. He drives past a Winters billboard, it reads: “Don’t starve your cold or flu. Feed them both with Winters’ new Flu Burger.” The man gives the billboard a thumbs up.