Checker and The Derailleurs
A Novel
Lionel Shriver
To someone who doesn’t deserve it,
as he very well knows
Well I have tried to be meek
And I have tried to be mild
But I spat like a woman
And sulked like a child…
And I can still hear his laughter
And I can still hear his song
The man’s too big
The man’s too strong
DIRE STRAITS
“The Man’s Too Strong,”
Brothers in Arms
Contents
Epigraph
1 / Blinded by the Light
2 / Blood and Crystal
3 / Bad Company
4 / The House of the Fire Queen
5 / Bye, Bye, Miss American Pie
6 / Simply Red
7 / My Love Is Chemical
8 / Hot Rocks, or: The Igneous Apartment
9 / In Defense of Subjective Reality
10 / Howard and the Flow State
11 / The Newlywed Game
12 / Don’t Be Cruel
13 / Too Much Information
14 / Close to the Edge
15 / It’s Hard to Be a Saint in the City
16 / Why We Fought World War II
17 / The Checkers Speech
18 / The Party’s Over
19 / The Last Supper
20 / Into White
21 / A Cappella in the Underpass
22 / A Little Help from My Friends
23 / The Ghost in the Machine
24 / Comfortably Numb
25 / Spirits in the Material World
Epilogue / Oh, You Mean That Checker Secretti
Index of Song Titles
P. S. Insights, Interviews & More…
About the Author
Praise
Other Books by Lionel Shriver
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
Checker’s favorite color is red
1 / Blinded by the Light
Foreboding overcame Eaton Striker well before The Derailleurs began to play. Much as Eaton would have preferred to chum obliviously with his friends, he could only stare at the stage as the drummer stepped up to those ramshackle Leedys and the damned skins began to purr.
“Who is that?” asked Eaton, not sure he really wanted to know. The drummer percolated on his throne, never still, bloop, bloop, like coffee in the morning—that color; that welcome.
“Checker Secretti,” said Brinkley, with irritating emphasis. “Where have you been, the moon?”
“He’s talking to his traps!” exclaimed Eaton, in whose disturbed imagination the instruments were answering back.
“Yeah, he did that last time,” said Brinkley the Expert. “Checker’s a bit touched, if you ask me.”
“I didn’t.” Eaton slouched in his chair.
The humidity here was curiously high. A plumbing problem in the basement dripped right on the heater, so the whole club felt like a steam room—there was actually a slight fog; vapor beaded on the windowpanes. A proliferation of candles sent soft, flickering profiles against the walls. With its vastly unremarkable decor, Eaton couldn’t explain the crawling effect of the place as he nestled down in the seductively comfortable chair, taking deeper, slower breaths and saying nicer things to his friends. Eaton squirmed. He tried to sit up straight. He looked suspiciously into his Johnnie Walker, thinking, Black, hah! since places like this bought gallons of Vat 69 and funneled it into name-brand bottles. Yet this was confoundingly good whiskey, some of the best he’d ever tasted. The waitress, though definite woof-woof material at first glance, now looked pretty. Eaton felt he was drowning and fought violently to rise to the surface, to breathe cold, hard air, to hear his own voice with its familiar steeliness, instead of the mushy, underwater murmur it had acquired since they’d sat down.
The drums sounded so eager, so excited. Checker laid a stick, once, bip, on the snare and it jumped; so did Eaton. Every time a quick rat-tat rang through the room, the audience looked up; the waitress turned brightly to the stage. When Checker nudged the bass to adjust the blanket curled inside its shell, women at tables stroked their own hair; men extended languorously into the aisles. The beater sent a shudder through the length of Eaton’s body.
Eaton had been taking drum lessons from an expensive instructor in Manhattan since he was seven, and though he hardly ever heard a song that was fully to his liking, when that rare riff floated over the airways a cut above the ordinary fill, he took notice. Eaton was a snob, and would admit it to anyone, but in some ways he really was better than these people, rightfully not at home in provincial Astoria. He was bright; he had an uncanny sense of other people, even if it was largely for their failings; and he knew excellence. So while somewhere in the boy’s mind he was aware that he didn’t hear it when he himself played, he was hearing it now.
The first phrase rose and fell like a breath. Sticks rippled like muscle, and teased, tingling, resting on the edge of the ride. Again, Eaton involuntarily inhaling with them, the blond sticks curled up to the snare and spread to the toms, the crash, to ting, ting, ting… Someone laughed. Checker skimmed his tips across the supple ridges of the brass, raising the long, dark hairs on Eaton’s arms. Yet Eaton could see Checker was just loosening up, ranging around the drums as if stretching at the start of a day. He kept low through the whole of “Frozen Towels.” Slowly through “Fresh Batteries,” though, a strange blissful smile crept onto his face, and the music began to move underneath like lava with a crust on top—the cooler surface would crack in places, show red, let out steam; all at once the music would move forward, rushing into the club like a flow, veined with the sure signs of a dangerous interior. The keyboardist had to stand up, pushing his chair back; the musicians out front gradually stepped away to give the drums more space, until, there, pouring from the back of the stage, came an unrestrained surge of rhythm like a red wall of melted rock.
Yet later Checker slowed the lava, the blood, to a sly trickle. The restraint hurt to hear. The rest of the band, too, retreated to small, stingy sounds. The club grew stupendously quiet. Not a drink clinked, not a shoe scuffled. The sax thinned to a spidery thread of a note; the keyboard took to a small high chord; the bassist and lead guitarist hugged their instruments selfishly to their bodies, and no sooner struck a note than took it back. But quietest of all were the drums, pattering, the sticks like fingertips, until Checker was no longer on the heads themselves but only on the rims, ticking, rapid, but receding all the more. The audience was leaning forward, barely breathing. But the sound, meanly, left them, though it was a good five seconds before they realized that the band had ceased to play.
In the midst of this silence Checker began to laugh. “Clap, you sons of bitches!” And they did.
Eaton excused himself to go to the men’s room. He leaned over the sink, bracing his hands on either side of the porcelain, panting. Looking up in the mirror, he found his usually handsome, narrow face pasty, with sweat at the hairline. Eaton leaned against the wall with his eyes closed and waited there through the entire break.
For the second set, Eaton could listen more clinically. He noted the tunes were original and several had to do with bicycling, of all things, like the name of the band: “Cotterless Cranks,” “Big Bottom Bracket,” “Flat without a Patchkit on the Palisades” “Cycle Killer” and “Blue Suede Brakeshoes.” Or “Perpendicular Grates,” to which Eaton caught most of the words:
Don’t jump your red tonight,
You big yellow Checker.
I’m coming through the light
At its last yello
w flicker.
Shine your bulging brights
Right into my reflectors.
Listen close and you might
Hear my freewheel ticker-ticker.
Hey, city slickers:
Lay perpendicular grates!
Chuck those rectangular plates!
One pothole on Sixth Avenue
Goes all the way to China.
I am a midtown
Pedal pusher.
I am a traffic
Bushwhacker.
My brakes are clogged
With little children.
Greasy strays
Keep my gears workin’.
Doggies, watch your tails;
Old ladies, hold your bladders.
Scarvy starlets, trim your sails
Or choke on Isadora tatters.
Better step back to the curb—
Enough women are battered.
Brave Lolitas, round the curve,
You don’t want to be flatter.
Hey, hard-hatters:
Lay perpendicular grates!
Chuck those rectangular plates!
One pothole on Sixth Avenue
Goes all the way to China.
I am a midtown
Pedal-pusher.
I am a traffic
Bushwhacker.
My brakes are clogged
With little children.
Greasy strays
Keep my gears workin’…
Eaton told himself that songs about bicycling were silly. He even managed to turn to Brinkley between tunes and advise him, “You know, technically, the guy’s a mess.” True, Checker played as if he’d never had a drum lesson in his life. He held his sticks like pencils. Yet Eaton had never seen such terrific independence, for Checker’s hands were like two drastically different children of the same parents—one could read in the corner while the other played football. What was Eaton going to do? Bitchy carping from the sidelines wouldn’t improve matters. And everyone looked so happy! The band and the audience together swayed on the tide of Checker Secretti’s rolling snare. How does he do it? Even the little singer, a perpetually dolorous girl by all appearances, had a quiet glow, like a night-light. Eaton actually wondered for one split second, since he knew percussion better than anyone in the club, why he wasn’t the happiest person here. But that moment passed, and had such a strange quality that he didn’t even retain a memory of it, until Eaton was left at the end of the last set wishing to plant Plato’s and everyone in it three miles deep in the Atlantic, safely buried below schools of barracuda, in airtight drums like toxic waste.
Yet, more or less, Eaton had decided what to do.
After the applause and catcalls had died down, Eaton turned to Brinkley and said severely, “Brink, you dungwad, you told me that Secretti was okay.”
“I didn’t say he, like, raised the dead or anything.”
“Could’ve been playing trash cans with chopsticks,” said Gilbert. “Not like Eat here. Now, Eat’s a drummer.”
“Uh-huh,” said Eaton, turning to Rad. “And what did you make of Secretti?”
Rad twisted a little. During the performance he’d been nodding his head and tapping the table with the heel of his beer. “Bang, bang. Another local band. They’ll be gone soon. The world won’t have changed much.”
Eaton surveyed his compatriots in silence. All three of them were nervous and weren’t sure why. “So you three”—Eaton rolled the ice around his glass—“think he sucks? Basically?”
They shuffled and nodded.
“Then you all have dicks for brains.”
“What?” they asked in unison.
“The man is brilliant. Steve Gadd raised to a goddamned power. One fresh piece of cake in a pile of stale Astoria corn muffins and you guys don’t know the difference.”
“But you said technically he’s a mess—”
“Unorthodox. May not have much training. All the more impressive, then. The man’s a genius.”
Eaton’s three henchmen were staring at their friend as if he’d just announced he was giving up rock and roll for polka music.
“Yeah, well,” said Brinkley. “I said he was okay, right?”
“Okay!” Eaton rolled his eyes and stood up. “With this crowd I need drink.” He walked away and didn’t come back.
“That was exemplary.”
Plato’s may never have heard the word “exemplary” before; its syllables queered against the walls.
“I was humbled,” Eaton went on, bent formally at the waist, as if he’d watched too much Masterpiece Theatre. “You’re a giant. And far better than these people know.”
“I think they know us just fine,” said Checker, looking disconcerted. Compliments made him queasy. Checker himself didn’t think about the way he played. He didn’t want to, either.
“You’re better than you know,” Eaton pressed. “It’s time someone told you. So, please.” Eaton handed Checker his card. “I know the names of some club owners in Manhattan. Or if you need anything at all, please call. Good night, all.” With a quick flourish Eaton made a swift departure. After all, he wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep this up.
In the defined caste of high school, Eaton Striker had played a precise role, exactly shy of stardom. He passed that crucial test: more students knew his name than he knew theirs. He was The Drummer, and relished sitting in the cafeteria with a drumstick stuck behind his ear, ticking paradiddles on his tray with silverware. Yet while his traps and his rock bands saved him from obscurity, they didn’t secure him quite the premier position he felt he deserved. There was always one more table next to his where every student yearned to sit, and they’d settle for Eaton’s only when the first was full.
In every area Eaton was plagued with not-quiteness. There was a particular lancet-witted brunette, Stephanie, whose quips in his direction prickled his skin like the sting of a slap, but that was all the tribute he could win from her; on the other hand, Stephanie’s slightly less attractive, slightly less sharp best friend showed up for every one of Eaton’s early gigs. Now, he did finally acquiesce and take Charlotte as his girlfriend, enjoying the pleasant lopsidedness of the relationship—she typed his papers and packed his drums and ruined a perfectly good denim jacket with embroidery as a “surprise.” All he had to do in return was treat her badly, for which Eaton seemed to have been born with a certain gift. But seeing Charlotte with first prize was torture. Eaton was dating the kewpie doll while someone else was wrapped around the big stuffed bear.
All second prizes are insults. Eaton believed that. When in the senior talent show his band, Nuclear War, was awarded second place, Eaton strode from the stage and in front of the whole assembly stuffed the certificate perfunctorily in a trash can. When Eaton’s cronies nominated him for student council office, it was for vice president; he lost to a girl.
Even Eaton’s grades were never perfectly straight-A. There was always one teacher who had it in for him in one of those mealy subjects—English, social studies—where the teacher’s feeble judgment came into play. Eaton preferred math—his work was right or wrong, whether or not the instructor despised him. For while Eaton was never directly insolent, his sly, grimly bemused expression nagged his teachers like a persistent hangnail. Whenever they talked to him after class he turned his head to watch them out of the corners of his eyes, his responses laconic; he always seemed to indicate that a great deal was being left unsaid. On any point of conflict his teachers quickly abandoned personal appeals and fell back on brisk legalistic resolutions.
These were uneasy relationships. Eaton’s intelligence would never redound to his teachers’ glory. Rather, each would shine at the expense of the other. That was the stanchion of Eaton’s world view, and it was contagious.
So Eaton was the hero of the B + students, revered by the type in elementary school picked third or fourth for a kickball team of ten. Burdened by Eaton’s disappointment, his following had a high turnover; his rock bands were always brea
king up. At the moment, out of school over half a year now, Eaton was once more without a band, and it was harder to assemble a new one without high school; he paged through the ads in the SoHo News listlessly on Saturday afternoons. Eaton yearned for caliber. The idea of collecting one more second-rate rock band filled him with a precocious exhaustion.
That Eaton would end up at Plato’s was inevitable. By January he had been actively avoiding the place, spending Friday nights instead at Billy’s Pub, Grecian Gardens, Taverna 27, bars that never managed to persuade you they were anything more than rooms with bottles, full of bowlers and plumbers all too eager to confide the trials of the kind of life Eaton planned to transcend. Yet even Taverna 27 was better than the chromier corners, decorated like Alexander’s at Christmas and cranking out Van Halen on the juke, cramped with high-school juniors constantly combing their hair. Eaton was only nineteen, but he’d said goodbye to all that.
There was always Manhattan, but Eaton hated coming back at four in the morning on the subway with all the plebes who couldn’t afford a car. Eaton couldn’t afford a car, either, but he was the kind of person who really should have been able to, and a pretty damned nice car at that. (Eaton’s sense of justice was frequently confounded. Eaton should have X and Eaton did have Y, and the disparity didn’t anger him exactly—his reaction was deeper than that. It disturbed him. When Eaton didn’t get what he deserved, he felt the earth—move—under his feet—Carole King. Yich.) In the city, scrunched against the bar with his friends, Eaton would slip the straw of his screwdriver between a gap in his teeth, having to repeat three times over the music how these clubs were “tedious,” though he privately considered them far more evil than that—the heaving, shifting mass of dancers would undulate and suck against him like some lowlife sea creature, swallowing him in anonymity, digesting him alive and spitting his remains out the door at three, forty dollars poorer.