“I thought it didn’t matter, being good,” Howard recalled as they strode down Twenty-first Street. “I thought it was so terrif when anyone did anything. You said.”
“I think I said what matters isn’t excellence, but feeling excellent. But when we play your songs, Howard, we don’t feel excellent. In fact, we feel downright under the weather.”
“But why?”
“Because they’re lousy!”
“Says you.”
“Says the whole band, Howard, don’t make me say this anymore. I don’t enjoy it.” Checker flopped down on a bench.
“I thought you enjoyed everything.”
“I’m not a sadist.”
Howard looked at Checker with new interest for a moment. The drummer did look less than ebullient. The weather was hot, overcast, and oppressive; they’d stopped under the bridge, where it was rubbly; there were rats. Checker’s shirt hung off him with uncharacteristic limpness, and Howard noticed for the first time that the bandleader had lost weight—his arms had narrowed; his jeans rode down his hips. It was a little irritating. Checker didn’t need to lose weight, but Howard did. Howard had a weakness for local gyros; between them and the ice cream he lackadaisically shoveled at work, when he bent down the snap of his jeans would sometimes burst open.
“You should eat more,” said Howard.
“I know. I’ve been drinking Weight Gain in the morning, but it doesn’t seem to help.”
The last thing someone who needs to drop a few pounds wants to hear is that you’re drinking Weight Gain.
“But you’ve always liked to eat.”
“I don’t care lately.”
“Check, you care about everything!” Buck up, now. People were supposed to be a certain way, and they damn well better stay that way. Howard scuffed his shoe against the dirt and kicked Checker’s leg.
“Hey!”
“Sorry.”
But at least Check was sitting up straighter now. “Listen. When you write a song, do you feel—” Checker leaned forward and brought his thumb and middle finger together in the air, as if holding something infinitely small, like a perfect geometric point.
“No,” Howard admitted.
“Why do you have to write rock songs, Howard?”
“You—” Howard was about to explain, but he’d already explained. It was a positively elegant moment of brevity.
Checker sighed. “Howard.” Well, they’d arrived. “You know how sometimes a yacht torques down the East River, and there’re all these people on deck drinking top shelf, the music cranked so loud you can sing along in the park? They’ve got white leather shoes, and stainless flannel slacks, and shirts with little anchors on the pocket, and they wave?”
“Uh-huh.”
“What do you feel when that boat passes by?”
“I guess I wish I was on board.”
“You are on board, understand? Those suckers should be looking at you, wishing they were hanging out in the park with all your great friends. You are the party.”
“What does this have to do with writing rock songs?”
“When you watch us play at Plato’s, how do you feel?”
“I guess sometimes I wish I could play, too. I hear all that applause and stuff. You know.” Howard had the most bizarre tendency to tell the truth.
“You have a good time those nights?”
“No.”
“Do you think you’re a natural musician? Do you think you could be up there, too, if we only let you?”
Howard grubbed his sneaker in the dirt and mumbled, “I tried the clarinet in high school. I was last chair.”
“How do you feel other times?”
“Well. Once in a while, people come up to me and ask if I know you. I say yeah. They’re impressed. I say I’m the band manager. They ask me my name. I like that.”
“And?”
“I sing along on your sets. I know all the words. You guys come and sit with me on your breaks. I get a little wasted. You know. It’s neat.”
Checker smiled and put his hand on Howard’s shoulder. “See? You know exactly what I’m talking about.”
They started walking again.
“It just seems,” Howard confessed shyly, “that the party is where you are.”
“Of course it is. For me.”
“But don’t you think it’s better to be some people than others?”
“Sure. If you think that way, it’s better to be anyone but you.”
“I don’t get it.”
“If you think it’s better to be somebody else, then it is better. You’ve lost the ball game. Besides,” said Checker, a little flustered, “what’s the point, you are Howard. You can’t be anyone but Howard, it’s not your job!”
“But I don’t want to be Howard!”
“Don’t be delinquent,” Checker chided. “Somebody’s gotta do it. Because I’m glad you’re Howard, old man.”
The air packed around them like protective cotton. It was Sunday, before rehearsal; traffic wheeled lazily by, and the neighborhood scurried pleasantly with ten-year-old girls. Howard was flattered that Checker Secretti was spending the afternoon with him, though he hadn’t been listening carefully enough to think that Checker should be flattered, too.
“I’ve been figuring, though,” said Howard, hands in his pockets jauntily, hoping that someone would see him with Check. Check and I were talking the other day, and we decided, you know, those yachts down by the river…? “I was hoping you could help me out here. I need a nickname.”
“Why?”
“Even Quiet Carl has one, and nobody ever talks to him, he doesn’t need it! Everybody’s got one but me!”
“Caldwell doesn’t—”
“Who needs a nickname when your name is Caldwell Sweets? You need a nickname when your name is Howard Williams.”
“But you look like a Howard. You are Howard.”
“What about H.W.? The H. Big H.!”
“I think H is a problem letter.”
“Check, I hate my name! A name,” he theorized sternly, “has power. It’s not just a label—it calls up an image, it makes people! Can you imagine if Sweets were called George or Wimpy or something? Why, if I weren’t called Howard I might not be a Howard. Check, let’s come up with something here! You know, Spike or Rap or Banger; I mean, if I were called Spike I might start acting like a Spike—”
“You want me to call you Spike?”
“No, Spike’s not right,” Howard moaned. “Something—brainy, but not stilted. Mysterious, but not creepy. Interesting, but not too fussy.”
“I don’t think this is the way people get a nickname, Howard.”
“Come on, we could try it! You could start using it, and I could say at Plato’s, Hi, I’m Ripper, and then everyone—”
“Ripper!” Checker burst out laughing.
“Well, that was just—”
“It sounds like a dog!”
Howard stamped his foot. “See! It has to be the right one! I just want a neat name, and maybe then I’d think my life was a party. I could be a great guy, but only as Zap or Crack or Wrecker. I want something like—” Howard stopped.
“I don’t think I can,” said Check, reaching out and tousling Howard’s thick brown American hair, “but if I could I would, How baby. I’d be glad to give you my name if that would make you happy.”
“Thanks, Check. But I wouldn’t take it, buddy. You can keep your name.”
“Thanks.”
So Checker, still Checker, and Howard, still Howard, walked down Hoyt Avenue South arm in arm. As they headed for Plato’s, Check looked over at his friend in wonder, thinking the boy really was doing a grand job of being Howard Williams, for Howardness had to do with yearning.
Checker perked into Plato’s, drumsticks on everything that tinkled or sounded hollow. “Howard’s shopping for a nickname. Keep your eyes peeled.”
“We’ve got a few names for Howard,” said Caldwell, with a sly smile at Eaton.
C
hecker stopped drumming down the bar and looked at the band. They were arranged differently today—curded in funny cohesive clumps.
“Checker,” said Eaton, “you born in a cab or something?”
“No, in my mother’s playroom, why?”
“So is Checker your real name?”
“It’s real.” Check shrugged. “Use it, I turn around.”
“But what’s on your birth certificate?”
“My mother wanted to call me Tonka.”
“Like the truck?”
“Yeah. It’s what she was leaning on when I was born. She says she got a bruise on her back from the crane. But Dad—he hadn’t skipped out yet, but he was already tired of my mother and her playroom. He was already—”
“What?” asked Howard, who loved stories of Checker’s parents.
“My father grew up,” said Check. “She never forgave him.”
“The name,” said Eaton, unentranced.
“Dad nabbed the birth certificate. No way he was going to call his firstborn after a toy tow truck. When Mom found out, she was furious. She never used the name, either. I was Tonka until five or six. Then my friends started calling me Checker, and she liked that okay. She used to hang out with us, let us play with her toys. She always liked my friends, except now they’re a little old for her. My mother liked ten, I think.”
“Yo momma is ten,” said J.K.
“Yeah, well. Sometimes I think my father’s seventy-nine. Anyway, they were at war at the time. Dad got in a good shot with my name—solid, conservative, normal. But when she had Romaine he’d cut out and she could name her kids after lettuce if she liked.”
“So what did your father name you?” asked Eaton, one more time.
“After his bank.” Checker licked his lips. “Irving.”
Eaton hit the table and laughed, though the air through his teeth was a little forced. “Irving puts a whole new light on you, Secretti.”
“Sheckair is no Irving!”
“No shit, bro,” said J.K. “Irving, like, sell wholesale paper towel, know what I mean?”
“Yeah,” said Checker. “Irving’s afraid to piss in the shower.”
“Irving folds his underwear,” said Caldwell.
“What’s wrong with folding your underwear?” asked Howard.
J.K. and Caldwell looked over at Howard in unison, and Howard shrank. “I mean, Irving,” said Howard shakily, “eats strained peas and riced potatoes.”
“Lima beans,” said Checker.
“Irving thirty-seven years old and still get zits!”
“Irving uses toilet bowl freshener.”
“Irving goes to bed at nine o’clock,” said Check, “and calls the police when The Derailleurs play too loud next door.”
“Irving’s allergic to dust,” said Caldwell. “And you’re not allergic to dust, are you, Check?”
“Ain’t no doubt about it,” said J.K., “Irving never see a drum in his damn life. He find a snare, he use it for a TV table.”
“Irving watch reruns of Partridge Family!”
“Can’t be Check,” said J.K., laying the dispute to rest. “No offense, honkies, but Irving a white boy.”
As they set to rehearsing, Eaton noted how slyly Check had headed off derision by joining in the game himself. But a weapon as powerful as Irving didn’t dismantle that easily, and Eaton slipped it in his back pocket next to Checker’s last song.
For all the jocularity of Irving and the Lima Beans, the rehearsal quietly soured. Eaton suggested several times from the sidelines that he couldn’t hear Caldwell’s guitar over the drums, until Checker was playing so softly that the songs began to steer aimlessly around the club like cars without drivers. They couldn’t agree on which songs to do, and gradually the band—clumped again. J.K.-Caldwell-Eaton. Rachel-Carl-Howard. Rahim with Checker, who was thinking, Well, why should I expect every rehearsal to be a Bing Crosby Christmas? Wasn’t the party metaphor overextended? Still, it had never been like this before. Checker couldn’t help but wonder: Before what?
Near the end Caldwell confessed with agitation that he’d written a song and would like the band to try it; Checker said, “Great!” but not after he read the lyrics:
Fine
Don’t think I care.
I’ll work, die, remember.
I guess it’s fair—
had May, I’ll take December.
Give it up,
it’s over,
we’re older—
fine, fine.
Hang it up,
give it over,
we’ll molder—
fine, fine.
My life’s a pill.
I’ll swallow, put my feet up.
A lousy swill—
I’ll gargle, turn the heat up.
Give it up,
it’s over,
we’re older—
fine, fine.
Hang it up,
give it over,
we’ll molder,
fine, fine,
don’t think I care—
fine, fine,
don’t think I care—
fine, fine,
don’t think I care—
“Pick it up!” shouted Caldwell in exasperation the third time through. “It’s supposed to be fast!”
Checker closed his eyes. “I know,” he said softly, caressing the rim of his tom. “But it’s depressing.”
“It’s sure depressing the way we’re playing it.”
Checker rubbed his temples with the tips of his sticks. The nightclub seemed to shimmer, tremble, blink out. He stood abruptly from the throne. “I have to go.” Checker hurried off the dais and stumbled out the door.
“Jesus,” said Caldwell, kicking over his guitar stand. “What’d I say?”
The band dispersed in a desultory fashion. Out of sheer entropy, perhaps, Rachel DeBruin stayed longer than the rest, propped before the stage as the thin Sunday-night crowd threaded in and out again. Eaton eyed her, left, and caught Brinkley and Gilbert by the river; they acted hurt now and a little aloof when Eaton appeared. “Not spending the night with your little Derailleur friends?” was the way Brinkley greeted him. But Eaton didn’t care and was distracted and returned to Plato’s later to find Rachel still there.
She was playing with a candle, smearing hot drips around the table. When Eaton swung next to her, the girl’s fingers were covered with dried wax up to the second knuckle, peeling off like the scales of a dread disease. She started guiltily, and tried to hide them with each other.
“So what’s a pretty girl doing all alone in a dank nightclub looking like Madame Tussaud’s?”
Rachel looked overcome with that particular terror of simply not having anything witty to say. “I—Just thinking—”
The wax, the stutter, made Eaton feel pleasantly urbane by comparison. “Can I stand you a drink?”
She shrugged. “Seltzer with a twist.”
“I think we can do better than that.” He ordered her a kir instead, tooling up to the bar and checking out his reflection in the mirror there: dastardly good looks. He’d finally found a shirt whose collar would stay upturned.
Eaton returned to hold her kir to the light of the candle; bloody cassis swirled seductively into the pale wine.
“It’s beautiful,” said Rachel, having managed to scrape some of the wax off her hands while he was gone.
“Suits you, then.”
Rachel began compulsively to paw the candle again.
“Irving not back yet?”
She winced. “I wish you wouldn’t call him that.”
“It’s his name.”
“It is not.”
Eaton nodded. “Check said you were loyal.”
“Oh?” Rachel’s eyes momentarily focused.
“Too bad he’s not as protective of you.”
Eaton expected her to ask, “What do you mean?” but instead Rachel’s long dark hair seemed to frizz around her, rising about her face like a black fog. She twi
sted it in her fingers, and flakes of wax stuck to the strands.
“You have an exquisite voice,” said Eaton, backing off from the bad weather across the table like a plane from a fogged-in airport; he would have to wait and make a second approach. “You hope to be a singer?”
“I am a singer.”
“Mint Secretti.”
“Thank you.”
“You just seem wasted here.”
“Nothing’s wasted here.”
“But you could do very well—”
“I am doing very well.”
She was stronger than he’d thought. “Don’t you ever wish—”
“No. I like Checker’s songs. The Derailleurs, this club—”
“If you’re so all-fired happy, why do you look so hangdog all the time?”
Rachel pulled a thick strand of her hair directly in front of her face, but the nose of Eaton’s plane was diving now, fog or no fog. “Checker says my nature—”
“I’ve heard plenty from Secretti, but not from you. You’re a spectacular chick, beautiful, talented, and you walk around as if your pet just died. What’s the problem?”
“Nothing,” she said staunchly.
“All right.” Eaton took a gulp of his Scotch, as if needing to fortify himself. “You know what Checker says your problem is, don’t you? What he’s told everybody, even me? And I don’t even know the guy very well, I have no idea what he’s telling me for.”
“What,” she said darkly, not a question but more a threat.
“That you’re hung up on him, of course.”
You do not name other people’s secrets, even if they’re not secrets—or especially then. Rachel stared back at Eaton, her pupils agape.
“That may not be true,” Eaton added. “But that’s his theory.”
“I’ve never said such a thing.”
“I don’t know, Rachel,” said Eaton, raking his fingers tortuously through his hair. “You seem like such a sweet girl, and however you feel about him, you’re a real friend to that guy. It just wrecks me up to see it doesn’t work the other direction. Because some of the stuff he told me—I shouldn’t say this, I’m sorry. I should shut up.”
Eaton waited a moment for her to say, “No, go on. What exactly did he tell you?” but Rachel DeBruin’s world was up to this point still, barely, intact, and she aimed to keep it that way.