Whale Music (20 page)

“Daddy,” I announced, “I’m getting married.”

“Good. You deserve it!” The father swayed in the quiet halls of justice. “Hey! Here’s Dan. Let’s have a frigging family reunion.”

Danny merely took a bent cigarette out of his pocket and lit it. A photographer drifted by, circling like a vulture, his camera raised menacingly. Danny shook his head. “Private family matter,” he said. The photographer worked his finger, a flashbulb exploded, Danny was on top of the guy in a second. I suppose Danny learnt to fight in reform school, but I had no idea he was so practised and vicious. The photographer’s face was bloody pulp within seconds. Mind you, if you’re going to severely beat someone, there are better places to do it than a Federal Courthouse, which typically has hallways lined with peace officers. Danny was carried off, arrested, the case would drag on for months, seeing as the photographer would later claim that one of Danny’s punches had affected his eyesight, therefore his career.

What a colourful family I have.

Fay and I got married about a month after that. It was a small affair. Daniel was my best man. Karen Hoffman the maid of honour, the Professor and Mrs. Ginzburg the sole witnesses to our union. Then we went on our honeymoon.

I should tell you, a month was how long it took for the royalties to be redirected my way. You likely have no idea how lucrative song-writing can be. Even a small hit, even the flip-side to a modest little number that never even grabbed A-rotation, even a downright flop can rake in the dough. Fay sat on my bed naked as a jaybird, tearing open the envelopes like a shark on a solo feeding frenzy. “Thirty-three thousand for ‘Stranger’?”

“Covered by Johnny Mathis. Used as the theme song to a soft-core pornographic movie, ‘How to Love a Stranger’. I believe also it pulled down some airplay in the midwestern states, don’t ask me why.”

“This is great!” she shrieked.

I could only nod vaguely.

We banked much of this money, but it seemed that the leftover nickels and coppers still totalled several tens of thousands, and Fay and I went on the Grand Tour. That is to say, Fay did. I myself went on the Great Wine Tasting, the most exorbitant binge ever. Spiritually it was no different than sitting in a parking lot and drinking Ripple with an old woman named Sasha, but materialistically I set some sort of record. The whole thing remains cloudy in the memory banks. I remember Portuguese wine. I remember that somewhere in England Fay informed me that she would under no circumstances give me a bee-jay. She cited reasons of hygiene. As far as any power struggle within my marriage was concerned, I was a lost puppy, a dead duck. I was sent out for cigarettes in the Sahara, dispatched for diet soft drinks in the Himalayas. It worked out fine for a while, I had a ready supply of yellow pills, Fay was nightly sating my physical needs, and then suddenly—on one of the Greek islands—my pills ran out, Fay decided that we were over-sexed, she cut us back to once a week but never told me which day!

And when we returned I discovered that in my absence a song called “The Great Blue,” which I thought was mere filler on the
Drive
album, had been released as a single and was racing up
the charts, grappling with the Beatles’ “Help!” for the number one position. Yes sir, those were the good old days, grappling with the Beatles.

We met the Beatles when we did that big concert at the Coliseum, the famous one, the only time the two biggest bands in the world shared a stage.

The dressing rooms were side by side, inner sanctums, tables laden with cold cuts and salads, vats filled with chilled beer and champagne. Our dressing room was packed with hangers-on, groupies, four or five sideburnt goonies and various family members, for example my mother and my wife. (Fay and my mother did not get along, from the very beginning it was like dropping two toms with chewed ears into the same trashbin and throwing on the lid. What they found to argue about is beyond me. They certainly weren’t bickering over which were my most sterling qualities, neither one had much of a kind word to say in that regard.) Professor and Mrs. Ginzburg were there. The good lady, although not personally responsible for all the food, still took it upon herself to get people to eat, she had special praise for the potato salad. Fred Head obligingly ate about a mountain’s worth. Fred had pushed his heft up to the three-hundred-pound mark, he was a mass of Jello wrapped in strange velours. He wore mirrored sunglasses and had a tiny ruby imbedded in the larger of his two front teeth. Professor Ginzburg talked to Daniel over in a corner, the old man gesticulating grandly, his arms waving like he was going fifteen rounds with hefty sprites, Daniel nodding, occasionally laughing. Kenneth Sexstone was there, imperturbable. He sat on one of the food tables in an elfin fashion, his ankles crossed and swinging back and forth. I never saw Kenneth get angry or excited in all our days together, when catastrophe fell he simply nodded, as if possessed of a sorceror’s foreknowledge.

At any rate, we were all having quite a good time—Monty Mann in pursuit of some high-breasted, bubble-bunned blonde, Sal Goneau dressing (tearing off one outfit, stripping
down to his skivvies in full view of us all, climbing into another, though essentially identical, costume), Dewey Moore consuming beer, leering at the woman who, if memory serves, became the first of his many wives—when the door to the adjoining dressing room opened and there stood Ringo Starr. He held a complicated and ambitious sandwich in his hands, something like the edible monuments created by Dagwood Bumstead in the Sunday funnies. Ringo had a look in his doleful eyes that suggested all was not right with the world. This look changed as soon as he saw that our food table held a huge tureen of mustard. He rushed in and slathered yellow goop all over the crown of his creation. Meanwhile, of course, our room had all but silenced, only Professor Ginzburg was unaware of Starr’s presence, he was busy explaining some aspect of physics to Daniel.

John Lennon poked his head through the doorway. “Ringo,” he said, “don’t bother these nice Howl people.”

You should have seen our groupies scatter! They are a fickle lot, those young girls, they scurried through to the Beatles’ side in a twinkling. I believe we were even deserted by a couple of sideburnt goonies and one or two family members. John gave us an apologetic grin. He singled me out with his dark eyes. “Hullo,” he said lowly. “How’s yer belly fer blackheads, mate?”

“The farbulous How Brossers,” said Paul McCartney, entering behind his partner. “Doosmin and Dinny.” McCartney chuckled at his strange little joke and shook my hand enthusiastically. “So vahry plissed,” he said. “So vahry, vahry plissed.”

“Here,” said Lennon, his hawklike eyes flying around our dressing room. “They have nicer digs than us.”

“Let’s trade,” suggested George Harrison, likewise entering behind Lennon.

“Yeh,” agreed John, and he turned back to his own side. “You lot! Come over here.”

Ringo, meanwhile, was contentedly munching his sandwich.

The Beatle entourage began to file into our side, soon the place was shoulder-to-shoulder.

“All right,” screamed Lennon, “the Howl people are not leaving! Come now, Howl people, let’s play fair! There’s a perfectly nice dressing room next door, pop along now!”

Paul got up on a table. “This is Pewl McCartley spikking. We must evarcuate immidzatly this rheum!”

“Eeee-v
acuate!” hollered Lennon.

“Eeee-
mediately!” responded Harrison.

Ringo Starr finished his sandwich and began to construct a new one. Mrs. Ginzburg watched him. I knew that look in her eyes, it meant that she was considering adoption.

One of the Beatles party, someone associated with their record company or publishing house (not Lennon himself, as Geddy Cole giddily scribbles on page 119 of his snotty little book
Howl! An Unauthorized Biography of the Howl Brothers)
, wandered over, plonk held high, to where my brother and Professor Ginzburg were talking. The professor was still oblivious to the pandemonium, busily disambiguating one of the universe’s little mysteries, stabbing at the heavens for emphasis. The Beatles’ hanger-on confronted these two, plonk sloshing over the side of his plastic cup, and exclaimed, “I say! The fabulous Howl Brothers. You must be Danny,” he said, pressing a finger into my brother’s shoulder, “and you must be Desmond,” pressing his bony finger into the good doctor’s shoulder. The buffoon misjudged, of course, how insubstantial Professor Ginzburg was. His one slight shove sent the old man careening backwards into a table full of cold cuts. The professor turned quickly to grab ahold of the table’s edge, and his face landed in a mound of potato salad.

Daniel executed one of his most brutal hoodlum moves. He grabbed the idiot’s collar and gave one short turn. At the same time he fashioned his hand into a fist—not your everyday pugilistic John L. Sullivan-type fist, a vicious hoodlum fist, the knuckle of the third finger protruding—and brought it up into the clod’s face. Danny knew how to fight in crowded places, he
made no attempt to get a wide arc on the punch, he used physics, turning his hand over as it came so that when it arrived at the dickwad’s nose it was as full of energy as an Englished billiard ball. There was a crunch, there was blood, there were screams from around the room.

“ ’Ere,” said Lennon quietly, coming through the crowd. “What’s this all about?”

“Fuck off,” said Daniel, who had gone to assist Professor Ginzburg. The little man, blinded by potato salad, held his hands in front of him and moaned like King Lear.

“This man has blood all over his face,” Lennon pointed out, picking up his associate.

“That man has shit in his brains,” remarked Danny.

“Oooo. Yer very nasty.”

“Fuck off outta here. Nobody asked you to come in here.”

McCartney screamed, “Just being ferndly!” Paul could be a real asshole.

Lennon stared at Dan for a long while. Finally he said, “Sorry.”

No one ever said Danny Howl was eloquent. “Fuck off.”

What we had was a hawk fighting with its mirror image, a drunken yahoo exchanging insults with his echo. “I said we were sorry,” said Lennon, stropping up the edge on his voice.

“And I said fuck off.”

Lennon turned away, supporting his associate, and mumbled something.

“What?”
roared Daniel.

“I said,” muttered Lennon, “that you’re likely in such a pisser because yer drummer’s a poof.”

“Right,” nodded Dan. “At least he leaves his own band alone. Not like your manager.”

This was a sore point with Lennon, this thing with him and Brian Epstein. If you don’t know the story, you won’t hear it from me. It’s in numerous Geddy Cole books, the rancid seedpicker always finds a way to work it in, I believe that Geddy wrote a bio of Pyng-Pong, an all-girl trio from Norway,
and still managed to work in this thing about John Lennon and Brian Epstein. At any rate, so sore a point was it with the Beatles’ rhythm guitarist that he raced at Danny and, being somewhat of a punk himself, managed to lay a fist near Dan’s mouth. Dan pummeled him in the stomach, Lennon’s air raced out and he sagged. Danny brought his shoulder up underneath Lennon’s chin and sent him flying. Naturally, our sideburnt goonies and their sideburnt goonies rushed each other, there was a sound like a thunderclap. In a matter of seconds the scene had degenerated into a donnybrook. Dewey Moore was doing the most serious brawling. Dewey had taken on the extra goonies from the Beatles’ team, when he finally hit the stage he was glowing purple-blue. Even I, by nature pacifistic, got involved to a certain extent. What I did was, I grabbed plates from the table and brought them down on people’s heads. I was rather indiscriminate in this, I’ll admit that, I believe I coldcocked Sal Goneau, but I did manage to aid our team, I K.O.’d the lout who’d started the ruckus in the first place, smashing a piece of china over his crown even as he stumbled about, still not fully recovered from Dan’s punch.

Kenneth Sexstone calmly picked his way to the door and opened it. No less than eight burly sentries stood there, diligently making sure that no one came into our dressing room. They were rather surprised to see a riot going on behind their backs. The guards came in and settled things down.

Claire is getting ready for bed. She has many ointments and unguents. I don’t understand half of what she does when she prepares for bed, but it doesn’t frighten me. Fay was another story. Sometimes when I watched Fay getting ready for slumber, a cold clammy fear started rotting in my inner turn.

“My aunt was there,” says Claire.

“Where?”

“At that concert.”

“People like to claim they were there.”

“No, she was. She told me. She blew somebody in one of the
bands. It wasn’t any of you guys though. The group had a genorky name, The Fantastic Sounds or something.”

“The Sounds Fantastic. I remember them. They stunk. Instrumental band. They turned good music into Gerber Baby Food.”

“Yeah. My aunt Fiona blew the sax player.”

“And this was something she related to you? Perhaps at Christmas, the fire burning brightly in the hearth, the turkey basting in the oven, your aunt sat you on her knee and recalled fondly how she blew this sax player?”