The Parallel Apartments (13 page)

Burt ended the song by holding a single chord for several minutes, until it finally vanished. The club grew quiet and still, so that only the
yng
of the bartender's cash register and the occasional smoker's cough could be heard. Burt gazed dreamily into the mirror at his flock. He looked like he might close his eyes and fall asleep.

One of his bedmates appeared to be genuinely asleep; her face was slack, and one of her sandal-shod feet twitched in a decidedly narcoleptic way.

Burt began to monkey with a couple of knobs on his guitar, and then strummed one quiet chord. Gradually, he turned up the volume and treble. Soon, the cash-register sounds and the smoker's coughs were swallowed up by the amplifying chord. Burt worked another knob until Wolford's
vibrated and shuddered like the
Saturn V
escaping Earth.

The groupies began to undulate again, a little faster this time, except for the sleeper, who simply threw a leg over Burt's thighs, an arm over his belly, and buried her face in his rib cage under his strumming arm.

Burt held the one chord for several minutes, decorating it with the fuzztone pedal clamped to the feet-end of the bed, which he manipulated with his toes. Jerry laid a lonesome, trippy melody over the noise.

Burt began to sing.

Water and holes like ye kitchen sponge

Is my love of you today.

Plastic circles in ye Spirograph game

Are my thoughts of you today.

Ye tortoise in ye rocketship

A microbe on ye paper clip

Are things only you can say

How much they weigh. Today.

Brenda's song? God, please, no. Not a song with a declaration of love in it. Livia thought she might cry.

Majestic goose, she paddles in ye water

For only you today.

Rods of metal I join without ye solder

For only you today.

From you I hear “Why why why?”

Because I have no choice, aye

I love only you this way

Like ye dormouse loves his cheese. Today.

Burt's hypnotic croon soon made Livia forget about crying, about Brenda. The wandering sustain of his guitar made her forget she was flattened against a treacly wall. The way he was able to dance just ever so slightly while lying down made Livia forget about her mother, her grandmother, the treacheries of high school. Livia wished more than anything that she was a groupie, onstage and in bed, right now, while he played the love ballad.

She closed her eyes. Goose bumps metastasized over her entire body, reaching even the backs of her thighs and the soles of her feet.

Like ye chocolate milk in ye carton jail

My love cannot run free today

Like ye jar of fireflies or skeeters or snails

My love cannot fly today

Unless you are mine, and wish to be

Ye Moppe Hedds' hedd groupee

To free ye love trapped inside of me

Like ye scofflaw in ye penitentiaree

Brenda. Brenda's song. Livia was surprised by the speed and force with which the dejection and crestfall flattened her goose bumps and took her over: the familiar inflation just under the breastbone, tears like hot glycerine, and a feeling of dizzy buoyance, as from a pause in gravity. She pressed her face into the back of the sharp-scapulaed man's leather vest and drowned it in waves of sobs. He seemed not to mind.

A squeal poked through the din. A commotion near a bank of speakers by the bar. In the dark, Livia could detect only bobbing heads of hair. A shiny, ginger-blond hairdo soon distinguished itself by its steady advance toward the stage.

Brenda climbed onstage and yanked a groupie off the bed, then another. Brenda directed both groupies off the stage and into the crowd. She went around to the other side to pull off a third groupie, but this one simply jumped off the bed and helpfully ran away.

It seemed to Livia that Burt didn't even notice that there were contentions all around him; he continued to sing and play without missing a note.

O like ye jam and Skippy all mixed up

Be ye insides of my lunch sandwich today,

Or ye scary
Boo!
to cure ye hiccup

Be a Curad on my heart today.

Ye fair maiden riding the Lassie dog

Ye yellow shirt shining in ye lunchroom fog

Save me from ye lesser maidens today.

And help keep them away from me. Today.

“Did he say
yellow
?” Livia, screamed into the ear of the man whose leather vest she'd just glazed with heartbreak. His mouth formed the continuum of shapes of the word
what?
and Livia mouthed
never mind,
to which he answered with another
what?

Brenda grabbed the sleeping groupie's long braid with one hand and her jute-macramé belt by the other, and pulled. The sleeper woke up. She grabbed Burt's belt and hooked her leg in the crook of his knee. Brenda karate-chopped the groupie's thigh and wrung her braid like a wet towel. The groupie wasn't able to defend herself without letting go of Burt, but she showed no sign of loosening her grip. The madding saloon rocked and thundered.

Brenda let go of the groupie's braid; her head recoiled and bumped Burt in the rib cage, causing him to hit a rotten, un-balladlike note. He opened his eyes and glanced up at Brenda for a second, the first time he'd shown any indication that he was aware there were other people onstage with him. He closed his eyes again, and began his refrain.

Night and charcoal and certain stones, yeah yeah yeah

Ye brunette head is blacker than, woah woaaahh.

Racetracks and noodles and ye sacred banana, yeah oh yeah

Ye figure is way curvier than, woah yeah woaaahh…

Livia screamed into her leathered barroom confrere's ear: “Did he say
brunette
?”

This time, he smiled brilliantly and mouthed,
Yes.

She put her arms high in the air, squeezed past him, and began to make her way, fan by fan, to the stage. The going seemed to get easier as she got closer, as if the crowd were parting for her, as if she were a bride on her way to the altar. As if they knew it was her immutable destiny to be onstage, in bed, with Burt Moppett.

Brenda continued to hammer and chop at the groupie barnacled to Burt. Brenda stopped, stepped back, and put her hands on her hips. Her black T-shirt was soaked through with sweat, reflecting the stage lights like a wet sea lion in the sun. After a moment Brenda approached the groupie and jammed her clawed fingertips into the girl's armpits.

The groupie shrieked and rolled up into a ball to protect her ticklish areas. Like lightning Brenda grabbed her by the head with both hands and pulled her off the bed before she could recover enough to regain a purchase on Burt. Brenda dragged her to the edge of the stage. Just as she pushed the tenacious groupie off, Livia started to climb up on the other side. When Brenda first saw her, she smiled and clapped, and went over to help her up.

Burt sang.

Ye magical lamp rubbed on one side

has lots of little pillows

and chairs and Jeannie from TV inside.

Trapped be she, until Master the lamp uncorks,

Trapped be me, until ye set me free,

Like ye tiny finch-bird in ye finch-bird egg,

Like ye catfish in ye bubble bath, you see,

Is helpless and lost without ye, dear Libby.

Brenda stopped smiling.

Livia darted over and jumped into bed with Burt, who paused for an instant to give her a wee buss on the apple of her cheek. Livia looked up in the mirror at the spasming crowd.

Brenda stared at Burt and her friend. She stared and stared and stared. Burt patted the mattress, inviting her to lie next to him on the other side. She did not move. She stared.

The crowd, smelling blood, screamed like the bleachers at a circus maximus. Burt began his refrain.

Brenda approached the bed. And, with the kind of superhuman ease that sometimes allows a panicked mother to lift up a crashed car under which her child or corgi is pinned, Brenda flipped the bed so Burt and Livia and the mattress and covers wound up all over the stage. Burt's guitar went arcing into the drum kit, causing a couple of the speakers to feed back. Brenda began to attack anything within reach. She caught Gary by the shirt, took his bass away and threw it at Jerry, who, along with his organ, collapsed. Something in the ceiling popped, raining down sparks. The lights went out. The pitch of the crowd changed to one of disappointment, quickly transforming into one of we-want-our-money-back indignance, then of confusion, then panic.
Brenda screeched, long and loud, momentarily defeating the roar of the powerful ruck. Then, a crash.

The only thing that could make that kind of racket was a Marshall stack falling over and landing on a drum kit.

Burt, who had crawled under the mattress, found Livia's hand and pulled her with him into the perfect darkness.

“Hi!” shouted Burt.

“Hi!” shouted Livia.

The pops and clangs of what sounded like a can-and-bottle fight began to escalate. Something big shattered, certainly the mirror above them. They lifted an edge of their mattress harbor to see spears of silvered glass falling, knifing, slicing, sticking into the black plywood floor around them. Brenda could be heard huffing and growling somewhere in the black bar.

Without another word, Burt and Livia listened to the wails of the police and fire engines, the shouting and threats of the cops and bartenders, the insults and protests of the arrestees, the honking and screeching of tires out on the street, the
chnk
of the electricity going back on, the gravelly scrape of glass and wet trash being swept up, the lock and bolt of a strong door, and, finally, perfect silence. Rain.

“Do you think we're alone?” said Burt. His breath smelled like teaberry gum under the tent of the mattress.

“It seems like it. I don't want to look, though.”

“Me either,” he said. “I'm comfortable under here with you.”

The rain came down harder.

“I wonder what happened to Brenda,” said Livia, whose own breath she noticed smelled like antique salad. “She was pretty mad.”

“Yeah. She's bananas.”

“I don't think we're friends anymore.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

Burt sighed. He gave Livia's hand the merest squeeze.

“My mom says hi.”

“I love you, Libby.”

* * *

A week after Livia had spent the night with Burt under the mattress at Wolford's, she brought him to the house to meet Mère and Charlotte. Charlotte gave him a warm hug, a magnificently gooey smile, and a kiss on the cheek, delighting Livia, mortifying Burt, and repelling Mère, who refused to acknowledge the lovefest in her living room, and instead selected a folding pinochle chair, placed it in a corner, her back to the living room, sat down, and remained facing the corner until he left. That evening, Mère and Charlotte had an argument at the pinochle table over Burt. Mère and Charlotte quit speaking.

“Mère,” Livia'd said about a week following, “are you mad at me, too?”

Mère was sitting on the divan squeezing Elmer's into a seam of one of her bowling shoes.

“Are you going to take me to the Dart Bowl or do you have to go see an evil man play rock music again tonight?”

“See, you are mad.”

“You labor in confusion. I am just worried. It's your mother I'm mad at.”

Some glue spilled onto the carpet.

“May God herself fell this devil man Elmer,” said Mère under her breath.

Livia sat on the floor.

“Give me the glue, Mère.”

She did. Livia carefully filled the splitting seams of her grandmother's shoes. Mère leaned back on the divan.

“Mère. I love Burt Moppett and we're getting married.”

Mère did not move.

“You and your mother,” she said. “You and your mother.”

Charlotte came in. She was smiling wildly. She had her hands clasped in front of her bright red face.

“So?” she said. “Have you two been talking about anything in particular?”

“I told her, Mother,” said Livia. “Can't you tell?”

Mère was still leaning back on the divan, looking deceased, as she was wont to do when visited by odious surprises.

“Mère,” said Charlotte, taking her mother's hands and massaging the thin bones. “Burt's a very nice boy. I see him every day at the bank. Polite, intelligent, respectful. And you know he was nearly murdered. By Charles Whitman.”