The Listeners (17 page)

He held up his left hand. It was pale and smooth and empty; he could have been making a fist. The fingers could have been hiding. The thumbnail, I saw, was clean. “Makes it a little difficult,” he said.

“I'm sorry,” I said.

“For what?”

I scrunched my cheeks.

He waited.

“For that incredibly stupid question.”

Cam nodded. We cleared our throats and sipped our coffees. For the next fifty-two minutes our talk was
entirely small. I spoke of the bookstore and its demise; he described being a tax attorney and how it differed, in ways good and bad, from teaching tax law. Our parents were asked after and reported to be fine. Romantic statuses were touched upon: me, a dry season; him, a girlfriend of three years he hadn't gotten around to proposing to. She was a lawyer too, but not tax.

At the fifty-third minute, he apologized for a dinner meeting he needed to get to, adding that it was great to see me and he hoped I would take care.

“WHAT WOULD WE
be called, though?” Cam said.

“I've been making a list,” I said.

“It can't be mediocre or grows-on-you. Has to be instantly recognizable as good.”

“My list is long,” I said.

“And who's going to play guitar?”

“Me, of course.”

“Are you serious?”

“Fuck off,” I said. “And Clarissa is not going to play tambourine, or anything else for that matter.”

“Never said she was.” Cam smiled. “Her talents lie elsewhere.”

I'D EXPECTED TO
give the Cam coffee report to Mink or Geck, but I found myself wanting to tell Riley.

The morning bird was rust quivering on a lash. Hello, bird. What kind are you? I knew no names, only the colors they made. A cat screaming at night was a fling of red. Cat and bird lived together in the red department. Riley's name belonged to the blue department; my own belonged to the black. Rinsed sky, finger branches, window glass hot on my cheek. People on the street were happy it was the weekend and not raining anymore. They had flocked here to shop and to stroll. They were flirting. They were going for brunch. The radio puffed out its tame Sunday smoke—harpsichord, clavier.

I missed my old neighborhood, which never had shoppers. I wondered how Two Thumbs was doing. Had his nub wound healed? Did he mourn the loss of its powers?

Pine had been a twig on Riley's couch all morning, reading a book about dirigibles while she waited for cups
of poison to kill the roaches in her kitchen. “Did you know,” she called, “that during World War I the German military and its abettor, Count Zeppelin, thought they'd found in the dirigible the perfect weapon to sink the British navy?”

“I did
not
know,” said Riley, sweeping a floor that was already quite clean.

“Well, the fact was, zeppelins were almost totally ineffectual as bomb throwers. They were stymied by cloud and darkness. The damage they inflicted in the war was negligible.”

“Do you want to have brunch?” he said.

“You don't have much food,” she pointed out.

“No I mean we could go somewhere.” Riley turned back to the street. “Look, Quinn, see that dungeony person? He goes to Mrs. Jones constantly. He is like her best customer.”

I glanced down.

“Hey wait a minute,” I said.

“Do you see him? He loves fortunes.”

“Yeah and I
saw
him—like, just the other day—on Observatory.”

“How can you tell it was the same person?”

“Well, how many people wear hooded capes who aren't in movies about racism?”

Maybe I'd been a little neezled at my parents', furnished myself a false memory? Déjà vu in reverse.

“All right, I'm done with this chapter,” Pine said, stretching. “Let's brunch ourselves into a coma.” Jesus, would she never leave us? “Do you want to come, Quinn?”

“You two go,” I said, hoping Riley would notice my wanting-to-talk face and opt to stay.

“Okay,” he said. “See you.”

“RILEY, GET YOUR
hand away from your mouth; it's really not very becoming.”

“I said—”

“
What?
I cannot understand you when you speak through your fingers.”

“If she was alive, she would be old enough to get her driver's license.”

“
Were
alive,” Mert corrected.

She ladled stew onto Fod's plate, then my brother's and mine and her own.

I went on peeling my thumb.

Riley said, louder, “She would've turned sixteen this year.”

Fod said, “This tastes wonderful!”

“Cilantro,” Mert explained, “and garlic, plenty of garlic.”

“Wonderful,” Fod repeated.

I laid three peels next to my plate and waited for them to notice.

She, she, she. Never the name.

“HEY I GOT
in!” Cam yelled through the phone.

I said nothing.

“Hello?”

“I'm here.”

“Well aren't you glad for me? I fucking
got in
.”

“Sure,” I said, “but how can we start our band if you're all the way up in New England?”

Another silence, longer. Then he said, “Oh.”

“I mean, I know it's an incredible school and all. So, whatever.”

“Maybe I could defer a year,” he said.

“SORRY,” MINK SAID,
“but no.”

“You have to! It's the
law
.”

“Geck, you're already drunk. I'm not—”

“Your job is to serve beverage to people who can pay for it, and I can pay for it, and I am not drunk. Breathalyze me!”

She walked to the other end of the bar, wiping her lip on her sleeve, humming one note.

“Please, Mink?”

He had been doing good for a while. He had been looking better.

“Mink!” he hollered. “Fucking come give me a drink!”

Her face was in her hand.

“Hey Geckers,” I called down the bar.

He was painstakingly counting a tiny sheaf of cash. “Hold on, I'm getting a—”

“I don't think you are,” I said. “Let's take a turn around the neighborhood.”

“Turn?”

“A walk. Come take a walk with me.”

“What for?”

“Our healths.”

I prodded him off the stool; he didn't put up much of a fight, though he grumbled: “It'll be all cold.”

“It's seventy degrees out.”

“God
dammit
,” he said.

I slowed my stride to match the shamble of his bad leg. It was a weeknight, so not crowded, and late enough that most storefronts were dark. “Might be good to hit a meeting tomorrow,” I told him. “You still going to those?”

“
Those
,” he muttered.

“They were helping for a while, right?”

“Yeah, they helped me
throw up
because of so much complaining. I swear to the Lord, you want some cheese with that whine? It's all just bitches bitching and that midget eating cashews from a ziplock. And some sparklers who think it's
awesome
to be addicts but aren't really. And, like, a guy talking for nine hours about how he ate so many hot wings one summer he started bleeding from his butt and had to wear an anal tampon. Is that really worth discussing?”

“Well, maybe it is to him.”

Geck snorted and pulled up short, fishing in his jacket for a deck.

It was safe to assume he would not find one. I handed him a cigarette.

“Ta, as the British say. Anyhoo, where the fuck are we going? I don't even know where I'm laying my head
tonight. The familial compound is far far far. At some hour the buses stop running.”

“You can sleep at my brother's. But only this one time.”

“Tight,” he said.

 

I woke to him in a heap on the floor, body pretzeled and yellow hair ahoo. He had slept the very same way on Nebraska couch, Minnesota pool table, Ohio café linoleum, Wisconsin turret rug. When I stuck out a leg to kick him, I was alarmed to see how thick my calf hairs had grown.

He grunted, “Whut.”

“Time to exit before you are seen.”

But Riley padded in, smiling, then not smiling when he noticed the blanketful of body.

“Hello?”

“Don't be afraid,” I said, “it's only Geck.”

“Hi Riley!” he yelled from underneath.

“On your way to the salt mines?” I asked.

My brother nodded. “About tonight—want to meet at F-D-E?”

“What for?”

“Observatory Place.”

“Shit. I forgot.”

“See you then, then?”

“Yes, captain.”

Geck climbed out from under the blanket. “What the fuck is F-D-E?”

“Six forty-five,” I explained. “It's a code for time.”

“Nerfy.” He stretched, yawned. “What about some coffee?”

“What about it.”

“Like why don't you make some?”

“Not a restaurant,” I said.

“One cup of jehosophat for an old comrade? You have an urgent appointment or some shit?”

“I have things to do.”

He laughed. “What, like not work?”

“I'm waiting on some leads.”

“Right. Me too.” He stood up, and I saw his member hanging out of the boxers, in all its uncircumcised glory.

“Jesus, Geck.”

“What?”

“Put that
away
.”

“Oh!” He swiveled, rearranging himself, and stomped to the bathroom.

I filled the kettle. He was big, I'd give him that. Bigger than anyone I'd ever slept with, except for that kneesocked kid in Arkansas. I couldn't help comparing, once upon a time, Geck's pizzle to Cam's. One uncut, bulky, brown; the other pink and willowy. In Milwaukee, right before the accident, I had held Cam's and thought about Geck's.

Geck slurped his coffee like a wood-hog.

“So I saw Cam,” I said.

“Did you say hello?”

“No, we hung
out
. In a planned way.”

Into his cup he dumped another spoonload of sugar. “No shit. Wow.” He did not sound sufficiently impressed.

“It'd been ten
years
,” I reminded him.

“Was he balding?”

“What?”

“I bet he's lost some of that goddamn hair, right?”

“Actually, his hair is still great.”

“Oh.”

“And he didn't seem mad at me,” I added. “We just talked about current events.”

Geck shrugged. “You can't always tell with that guy. As I recall, he had a tendency to be emotionally stealth.”

CAM FROWNED WHEN
the yellow-haired boy came up the alley carrying a hardcase—we were outside taking a break—and said hello in a voice that was higher than you'd expect. I had invited him without telling. “Come on in!” I cried, and Cam was speechless, and Mink fluffed back her hair. Geck took out his guitar, a lime-and-white hollow body with a scarred black pickguard, and he said, “Want to play one of your songs and I'll figure something out?”

“He's fucking fantastic!” I said later.

“I wouldn't go
that
far,” Cam said, shoving his hand into the potato chip can.

At first I reassured myself that it was the combination, the combustible parts together, that made a band; you could not isolate one part and say
That
is what we owe it to!—rather, everyone was necessary. But the honest part of me knew, ever since the first song Geck wrote, that he was the reason we started getting somewhere. Something about his guitar.

We faced them together, slicing their breath, hands fast, we swayed together hip-high in the noise, the audience dragged us out, reaching, reaching, we stayed down and away from the regular day. But we
are
secretly normal, Cam said, we are these normal people who rinse dishes and take shits and want houses. I don't want a house, I said. Our van was the freight car, our backpacks the kerchiefed stick. On stages we did not need to look at each other. And Geck made us buyable, and Mink made us photogenic. Her prettiness wasn't her fault, but it was the only thing she added. Anyone can play three notes for three minutes. She stood like a statue, drawing the eyes. Every band needs a beautiful girl, Uncle Seven said. He did not say beautiful
girls
.

NORMALLY WE'D GOTTEN
spanked on the bottom or slapped in the face, but once, when Riley was in third grade, Fod had punched him straight in the stomach. My brother had been so stunned he didn't cry, at first. He couldn't breathe enough to make a sound. We watched his throat stretch for air.