The Music of Your Life (29 page)

“Well …” says Perry. “This has been … enlightening.”

“Hasn't it just?” says Thomas. He begins to pick up empty pretzel bowls and dead drink glasses.

“What are you going to do, Perry?” I ask.

He stands up, wobbly and flushed, but as determined as any Boy Scout, even an overaged one. Finally, like the foreman of a jury, he delivers his one-word proclamation:

“Compete,” he says. And he, too, finds his way out of Thomas's front door.

“And then there were two,” I whisper.

“I had no fucking idea, obviously,” says Thomas, “that Jake and Wynn were interested in each other. Give me your glass.” He begins to drop in ice and pour Absolut. “Say when.”

“That's a switch,” I say. “Earlier, it was like,
sober up, sober up!
”

“That was then, this is now.” He finishes making my drink, then replenishes his own.

The room is lit only by a few low-burning candles and the glow from a red lampshade on the end table. From the stereo, Patti LuPone receives thunderous applause for her final number, but then that, too, fades to silence.

“The lighting is very romantic in here,” I say. “You've done a great job with it. It makes us look years younger.”

“That's a cold comfort,” Thomas says. “But thank you. Those of us who are about to turn forty salute you.”

“We're still thirty-nine,” I say, lifting my glass and throwing my head back with pride, a drunk's pride. “Here's to still being thirty-nine.”

“Queer, queer!” he says. We clink. Then, slowly, he says, “My God, Jack. Thir-ty-nine … for-tee …”

“Well, don't say them phonetically!” I shout. “It makes them sound older. Say them quickly. Say ‘thirtynineforty.' See? ‘Thirtynineforty.' See how much more youthful it sounds when you say it fast like that? It takes
years
off the words.”

“You're insane,” he says. “And you were insane when I met you a hundred and fifty years ago. God … I just realized we've known each other more than half our lives.”

I cover my eyes with the back of my hand to shield them from the truth. “Yes … almost as long as these …
children
… have been alive.”

“Exactly. What are we doing here? What are
they
doing here?”

“Don't you know? We're team teachers at the Days of Wine and Roses Nursery School.”

“Don't berate the charms of youth,” he says. “It's unseemly.” He gets up and peers out the window. “What do you think they're all doing out there?” he whispers.

“Oh, you know, forging a new union.” I manage to hoist myself up and join him at the window. “Declaring themselves independent and free of the old ways. Which seems to be a theme of the evening.”

“Hmm … I think it's probably more like a gay
Midsummer Night's Dream
. Young lovers running around the woods like nymphs and sprites, undressing and cavorting.”

“Exactly. Yes. A bunch of fairies and one old jackass.”

Thomas sits back on the arm of his chair. “Poor Perry,” he says. “Poor, dear, cuckolded Perry. What's to become of him?” He collapses back onto the cushion.

“Thomas,” I say. “Do you remember that night in Mildew Manor, so
very
long ago, when I got sick out the window?”

He groans. “Lord, child. I've never seen anybody throw up more violently in my whole life. I had to go out and hose off the ground the next morning.”

“A belated thank you, then, for taking care of me.”

He smiles and lifts his glass in my direction.

“What
I
remember,” I say, “is that you were rubbing my back. And I was thinking, God, Thomas is so great, and … and … so sweet, handsome, such a good friend … all of that … of course
now
it seems like the perfect porn film setup, both of us there, alone, just in our briefs. The next shot would have been your hand sliding down my back …”

He laughs. “Yes.
Summer Stock Boys
.”

“Except—not to sound ungrateful at this late date—but I remember thinking, what if one of the dancers were rubbing my back? Chris, or … whatever their names were. I would have been so turned on.”

“Oh God, yes. And it's true. If you had been Chris, I would have gone for the gold, baby.”

“Ah. Then it would be Chris sitting here right now instead of me.”

“Wrong. He would have been on to somebody else in a month. We were eighteen! Please. I'm
glad
it's you sitting here.”

“But … can you imagine if we
had
ended up lovers instead of … this … we could have saved ourselves a lot of time. And money.”

“Time, money, bad dates … and all those lovely two- and three-month relationships through the years …”

“Especially those.”

He gets up for more ice.

“Thomas,” I say, “speaking of good old Mildew Manor … do you have any idea whatever happened to good old Lee?”

He turns around holding the ice bowl, and looks at me for a moment with a blank expression. “Lee. God, that's amazing. For a second I almost couldn't remember who you were talking about.”

He brings the bowl over to the coffee table and sits back in his chair. A candle burns itself down into its little self-made valley of red wax, and dies.

“Old Lee,” he says. “Old Lee was exactly the same age you and I are now, you know. How frightening is that. God, I wonder what did happen to him.”

“No doubt he's probably still choreographing
Damn Yankees
somewhere and trying to seduce the chorus boys.”

“Oh, Jackson. You're drunk again, Precious. You're drunk, and you're mean. But it's OK. You're safe here with me.”

We sit quietly, drinking, staring into the corners of the room; every now and then we glance back at each other, just to check in.

“What made you think about Lee?” he asks, after a few minutes.

I look into those big, searching brown eyes for a long, held, exquisite moment. “Oh. I don't know,” I tell him finally. “Just crossed my mind, that's all. But, look, he's already gone. Poof!”

He smiles, and looks down.

I hold up my glass. “More vodka, please, Precious,” I whisper, lifting my foot to his knee and giving him a gentle kick. He pours, without a word.

Laughter comes from somewhere outside. I keep looking at Thomas, but he's staring off now, lost in the thought of … something. More and more laughter floats in through the window, laughter that might have once been described in a Jane Austen novel as “gay.”

“Ah, listen to the fairies,” I say, holding the icy tumbler against my cheek.

“Yes,” he says, dreamily. “Well, here's my Ode to Youth: fuck youth.”

“I wish we could,” I say.

“Alas. Maybe someday.”

“Perhaps … but then again … perhaps not.” And we clink glasses.

Then we sit quietly for a while, saying nothing, just drinking, and more sounds of laughter and crickets and rustling leaves filter in from outside … and then the scent of honeysuckle and mountain laurel, ushered in on a breeze which blows the threadbare red silk curtains against the frame of a dilapidated old window where a boy in his underwear leans out, while another boy, also in his underwear, stands behind him rubbing his back, just rubbing,
gently, gently
, and that same hand moves from my back to the hand that I now have dangling across the arm of the chair, and Thomas takes my hand in his, and squeezes it, and then holds it, for what feels like a long, long time.

Friday, 10:30
A.M
.

The all points bulletin that I have to share with the citizenry of my town of Duck Island this morning is this:

“I, Talbert John Moss, have decided to end my self-imposed exile of nearly two weeks in which I have stayed in the bed mostly day and night. I am up and walking around now, and I am ready to be myself again. I know you all will be gladdened and filled with joy over this fact. Some of you anyway. Thank you to everyone who prayed for me during my exile, and thank you to everyone who brought food to my doorstep, especially the barbeque and the ham biscuits, the iced tea, and the two-liter bottles of Diet Coke. Much appreciated. I will see you soon. Love to all—or at least to many, T.J.”

I think I might even call up our radio station WAVE (this is the beach, after all) and ask them to read my statement over the air just like that. It's hard to know how they'd take it, though; they don't exactly have Rhodes scholars and Mensa candidates working over there. As is always the case, I fear my words could be misinterpreted by persons lacking a sense of humor, not to mention a sense of irony. Lacking both a sense of humor and a sense of irony is something that, in my humble opinion, applies to about 95 percent of the citizenry of Duck Island. It's as if at some point—some point before I got here, of course—a horrible epidemic like bubonic plague came along and wiped everybody's senses of humor and irony clean away. The Humor and Irony Plague, I believe it was called, the one that hit poor old Duck Island, in the mid-1970s, or thereabouts. That's my theory, anyway; they ought to consult with me before they next update the North Carolina history textbooks; I have a thing or two I feel should be included.

But I guess
some
body around here has a sense of humor, because this morning my alarm clock radio (set to WAVE) woke me up with this: “Now here's a song being sent to Talbert Moss from a secret admirer who wants to say, ‘Talbert, I love you, and I hope you'll be feeling better soon.' And so do we, Talbert, buddy, so do we. Now here's Miss Dionne Warwick singing the ‘Theme from
Valley of the Dolls
.'”

And I'm thinking:
Valley of the Dolls
? It is my favorite movie, after all. And, come to think of it, I
have
been kind of acting like Patty Duke's character in the movie, Neely O'Hara, because in order to stay in the bed for almost two weeks, I have had to drink the occasional Amstel Light and take my share of Extra-Strength Sominex, and the cumulative effect of that did start to make me feel like some boozy, blowsy ol' Hollywood starlet who lays up in the bed all day and night, weepy and hagged-out, insulting people all around her in foul-mouthed and unrepentant ways, eventually refusing to take any calls or visitors …

So I listened to the song, with Dionne singing all about getting off this ride, getting off this merry-go-round, all that carnival imagery that I think is intended to imply dizziness and a feeling of being disoriented, and I certainly started to see how that applies to me. I got to thinking that was a pretty nice thing for somebody to do, actually, to call up WAVE and dedicate that song to me because they cared enough about me to try to help me get up and get out of bed. The more I thought about it, the more I decided it really was a
sign
that I needed to get up and get moving again. A sign—yes. If not from God, at least from Dionne Warwick, and everybody knows how connected to the psychic and spiritual worlds she is.

So I was really taking in Dionne Warwick's message, really feeling it in my bones, really thinking how it just might be the thing to jump-start me. But then I heard the newsman come on with this: “There are still no leads in the disappearance of Donny Tyndall, the six-year-old Duck Island boy who was reported missing two weeks ago—” and then I had to snap the radio off immediately.

That was just so not what I wanted to hear, though I wasn't surprised to hear it.

Donny. Little Donny … when I first found out he had gone missing, well, that's about exactly when I decided to go into exile. It was just more than I could take, the thought of something bad happening to Donny. He was—and still is—my friend. And I knew things weren't too good for him, really, so I guess I shouldn't have been so shocked, but still … that news made me sick to my stomach with nothing but pure fear. I've always felt that if you're afraid of something that much, then it almost
has
to come true, so you'd better try real hard to beat that fear back and increase your odds for some kind of happy outcome, which is why I got out of bed this morning. After all, my laying in the bed wasn't doing Donny or anybody else a bit of good, and I know I should be doing my part to help find him. I repeat—Donny was, and still is, my friend. No matter what.

So I got up, and made my bed for the first time in nearly two weeks, which felt like a step, if not in the right direction, because how do you ever really know what the right direction is, at least a step in
some
direction.

Now I'm standing in my kitchen staring into my open refrigerator
desperate
for a Diet Coke only to discover that there aren't any. I must've drunk all my gift Diet Cokes, and there haven't been any doorstep deliveries in the last couple of days. There is only one pitiful pink and yellow can of Tab, whose sad expiration date I believe is extremely close to the time of the Berlin Wall coming down. But this might be a sign, too, since the 1980s were good for me, socially speaking; it was a decade in which I had not one, but two, long-term boyfriends.

The Tab doesn't taste all that bad, really; as my mother is always saying, “At least it's wet.”

That reminds me that I probably ought to call up Mama and Daddy and tell them that I'm out of the bed, but I'll do it later. Maybe after an Amstel Light.

I take the Tab out onto my back porch. Already it's a hot day; the humid, salty air blows all around me. Standing here in nothing but my boxer shorts, it actually feels good, even though I generally hate the heat and opt to preserve myself almost exclusively in air-conditioned environments from March to October; like certain animals and plants, I need a cool climate in which to function. Staring out over the low dunes now, I notice the tide is out and the ocean looks smooth and calm; it usually does this time of year, late October, when hurricane season is nearly over.

I watch the seagulls skittering around on the khaki-colored sand; they're so goofy, how they run to miss a wave when it comes lapping up on the shore. The waves rush away from the gulls too, as if they just came up to steal a quick kiss from whoever happened to be on the beach, only to run away from them like a shy child. Since I haven't been outside in a while, watching all this natural activity makes me think about how many beautiful things there are at the beach, or anywhere, really, when you look for them, and that is sometimes a very hard thing to remember when radio stations and local newscasts can only tell you how screwed up and awful everything in the damn world is, and I'm not just talking here about missing children but about everything else, too.

WAVE, in particular, just seems to love harping on armed robbery, car bombs, murder, petty theft, homelessness in our county, the sad state of agriculture in southeastern North Carolina, all that. But here's what just kills me about WAVE and its employees: After reporting all this negative, horribly tragic stuff, stuff that anyone with the least bit of human sensitivity is going to have their day just completely ruined by hearing about, they have the nerve to turn around and play songs like Captain and Tennille's “Muskrat Love,” or that “Piña Colada Song” (now there's a number that would actually
encourage
a body to drink and drive) or—and this strikes me as the worst—“Maneater” by Hall and Oates. I swear somebody down there at WAVE just loves “Maneater.” Now it doesn't take an Einstein to figure out that if you were the manager of a radio station in a town where a little boy has lately disappeared, in a place, mind you, where hungry wildlife and perhaps awful child snatchers are probably lurking around every corner of the shopping mall and various Quick Marts, you probably, if you're any sort of a compassionate person, should think twice about giving the thumbs-up to keeping “Maneater” on the daily playlist.

This is the kind of thing I have to deal with down here, so that's why staying in the bed, my bed with nothing but me in it, has been the most appropriate, and safest, place to be as of late.

Suddenly, I think of my reminder to myself to call Mama and Daddy.

On my way inside to the telephone, I catch my reflection in the one window on my back porch and I can see that I look like an absolute mess—not that I care all that much, really; looking a mess is expected when you're coming out of self-imposed exile. Most days, in nonexile periods, I'm not so bad, actually; I'm five eleven and weigh a hundred and sixty pounds; in the men's exercise magazines I belong to the “fit and trim” category in their little charts. I'd date me. But the sad reality is that I don't have the Paramount Pictures hair and makeup people fussing over me and making me look like a million bucks on a daily basis. So I look like what I look like, which this morning is disastrous, most definitely not like the Paramount and MGM goddesses of yesteryear—Jean Harlow, or Norma Shearer—or whatever male version of those women would be, since I don't mean to present myself as some kind of drag artist.

Inside, I sit down in my captain's chair, and, using my Sam's Club long-distance card (I'm glad to see it hasn't expired yet), I dial Mama and Daddy, but get a busy signal—they haven't yet taken up with call waiting. Maybe they're trying to call me at the same time, and the wires are crossing. Daddy would call that a coinkie-dink.

On second thought, maybe I don't want to talk to anybody yet, unless it's somebody who can tell me that they found Donny and he's doing OK. And it's not like I haven't had
any
human contact over the last two weeks. Yes, the phone has certainly rung, and various people have certainly been by, though I mostly would only peek out at them from under the covers to see if they had brought food, or maybe a CD or a video. The doctor came, Reverend Julian Stubbs, in the midst of praying for Donny Tyndall, came to pray for
me
, Mama and Daddy drove down from where they live in the middle part of the state, and I simply told them all the same thing, which is: “I just don't feel like getting up.” And they all said: “Talbert, are you sick? Are you depressed? Do you need to go to the hospital? What do you want us to do?” To which I said, as sweetly as I was able, “Will you please,
please
ask the disc jockeys at the WAVE station to reconsider their daily playlist and stop playing insensitive, inappropriate material?” And they all looked at me like I was talking out of my head, but now I believe that somebody finally understood my wish, and called up WAVE; hence Dionne Warwick and
Valley of the Dolls
at 9:15 on a weekday morning. It could be any one of a number of people around here who might have done that—and all of them would be more than happy to let me know they had done it so as to curry my favor and pass themselves off as a good friend slash samaritan. If I go out and start talking to people again today, as I think I might do, I'll see if anybody owns up to placing that musical order for me and my well-being.

While sitting in my captain's chair, trying to decide if I should try Mama and Daddy again or just let them call me, I take a good look around at my tiny little house, my “shack by the sea,” for the first time in two weeks. I'm glad to see it hasn't changed much during my self-imposed exile; I'm sure Mama straightened up the place when she was here, or maybe my friends Trey and Kelly came by and cleaned it. God bless 'em, they all know I utterly despise domestic work. I'm just happy to see my seashells are all still here, plus the stuffed sailfish my grandfather caught in 1958, which I am happy to see is still hanging intact above my couch. Hell, I'm even happy about this circa—Berlin Wall Tab in the refrigerator. I'm feeling a whole lot better.

That is, until I turn on the TV.

Because wouldn't you know the first thing I see, after missing every local newscast for two weeks, is that god-awful
Carolina in the A.M.
show, with that woman host I cannot abide, Claudia Davenport Shields, who was Miss North Carolina about a hundred years ago (well, probably in the early '70s, and before that, she was the statewide Miss Flue-Cured Tobacco for three years running—I know that because she will mention it on the air at the drop of a crown), and who still to this day sports pageant hair, big and poofy and as blond as Tweety Bird, and it hurts my eyes to look at her, not to mention having to look at the obvious little nips and tucks she's had done to her face—oh yes, I can always tell when surgery has occurred; I have a sixth sense for detecting plastic surgery. But the thing I hate most about Claudia Davenport Shields is how she tries so hard to speak and sound like a real network journalist, like her idol, Jane Pauley (she's always talking about her too), when we all know Claudia was born and raised in the pitiful hamlet of Cliston, whose populace grandly thinks of itself as living in an actual town, which I personally feel is a
generous
way of describing a landscape that includes one solitary stoplight, a self-service post office, and a run-down old Tastee-Freez sitting on the side of a long-shut Pure station at the edge of a tobacco field.