“I was just imagining your state of mind that night.” Checker didn’t look her in the eye.
“Can I see those lyrics?” asked Eaton.
“Sure.” Checker handed him the sheaf.
“Sort of the male version,” said Eaton with a faint smile.
Checker found himself appealing to Eaton more and more these days. There was an edge to Eaton, no doubt about it, but it could cut to the heart of a matter with a scalpel precision that was sometimes useful; so when the rest of the band dispersed that afternoon and Striker remained behind to watch Check face the wall with his forehead pressed against the paneling, his fingertips resting on the wood. Checker didn’t say see you later, but waited and finally blurted, “It’s Carl!”
Eaton took a seat and lit a cigarette. “Why, Carl is the one person in this band who couldn’t have said a word against you. He can’t talk.”
Checker turned around. “He does to me.”
Eaton raised his eyebrows. “You mean with words. And everything?”
“He’s not deaf, for Christ’s sake, he’s a keyboardist. It’s not that he can’t talk—he won’t. Except to me.”
“But not anymore.”
“Ever since Rache—I thought he and I just hadn’t been alone. But before rehearsal today, we were the first ones here, and I said, How’s it going, Q.C., and he didn’t say anything, and I said, Listen, we’ve got to add a couple keyboard riffs after each refrain in ‘Here Is the Party,’ something high and minor, and he didn’t say anything, and I said, Q.C., come on, it’s me, what’s with you, and blank, nothing, his face looked like set cement, Eat—flat and gray and about as talkative.”
“Any theories?” asked Eaton, genteelly tapping an ash, watching Checker thrash around the room.
“Rachel. He has a thing for her, Strike, it’s one of those.” As he said this last sentence with loathing, Checker was struck by an image of a long string of men and women encompassing the entire population of the world, all facing the same direction and chasing the person in front, one loving the next one in front, who loves the next one in front, who loves the next one in front…to finally connect back to the beginning and churn in a perpetual circle of despair and self-destruction, like a lizard nipping its own tail.
“He obviously blames me,” Check went on, “and he probably should, since she’s worse than ever and I don’t know what to do…Eat, what’s happening? Why is everything falling apart? What’s going wrong?”
Eaton looked up at Checker with passing sympathy, wondering in a rare moment of self-examination whether he was simply hoping to win this boy over to himself so that no one else could have him—to cage this miraculous creature off away from the others like a nightingale with traps. Further, he even allowed himself to wonder if there were bands with two drummers, or if they could form the first one, snare to snare, bass to bass, each facing another set of drums like staring into a mirror. But the picture quickly faded. Who wanted to peer into a looking glass that only told you of someone far more fair?
“Nothing’s falling apart, Irv,” said Eaton smoothly. “Or nothing unusual is happening, anyway. Entropy is a universal principle. And I’ve been trying to alert you for a while now—when you insist on ignoring all the nastiness in the world and tiptoe through the tulips, it’s bound to get the best of you eventually. Better to face up to it, use it. There’s a lot of meanness and disappointment and pettiness out there. Just ignoring it doesn’t make it go away. In fact, sometimes it does peachy keen when your back is turned, friend. Sometimes it positively thrives.”
Eaton put out his cigarette on CS + LS and dusted his hands. The truth was harsh, but he’d delivered it quietly, almost kindly, he thought, though it was too late for warnings, as he very well knew.
19 / The Last Supper
He got up early and dressed with care, pulling out the charcoal slacks and sponging them damp where they’d folded over the hanger and wrinkled; he let them dry flat on the bed, patiently. He felt calm this morning, even serene. The salmon leather squeaked as he knotted his tie. Jutting his chin in the mirror, he decided not to shave. The three-day growth made him look older.
He chose his pink, blue, and gray argyles and laced the blue suede shoes. They scuffed so easily, he saved them for special occasions. Nestling his shoulders into the padding of the dove-gray jacket, he experimented with the effect of buttoned or open, standing with his hands in his pockets checking out the side view. He wet his comb and scooped the thick shock of black hair back from his forehead, feeling the floor through the thin soles of the expensive Italian leather. Dazzling.
For the final touch, he slipped five crisp twenties, cold and unfolded, fresh from the bank, into his wallet. Eaton had decided to take taxis.
First stop: CBGB’s. Eaton dipped in the dark doorway; his step faltered. He’d tipped that taxi driver thirty, forty percent. Way out of line. Probably seemed like an out-of-towner. Idiot.
His eyes had to dilate after the bright sun. The place seemed dingy during the day, the black paint chalky, posters tattered, and the smell of stale tobacco unpleasant even for a smoker. It was sickeningly quiet. When he bumped his foot on the passing table leg, he knew: first scrape on the blue suede shoes.
“Hey, slick, what you want?”
“I—left a demo here.” Eaton’s voice was unrecognizably high.
“Office.” The man gestured.
Around the corner a girl with itinerant red curls perched on her desk, nattering with an attractive man as he cleaned his nails with a guitar pick.
“I’m Eaton Striker.”
“Oh, you’re Eaton Striker!” she exclaimed.
“That’s right.” His best smile.
“It was a joke, honey. Now’d you get the turkey with no mayo? A hundred calories a tablespoon, and you guys slathering that stuff on so it glops—”
“No,” said Eaton.
“Then you cart it right back. This time I’m serious—”
“I mean I’m not here about sandwiches. I’m a bandleader. I left a demo here, and he said two weeks—”
“Harry!” she shouted to the next room. “Kid to pick up a demo! Whassa name of the band, honey?”
“Taxi.”
“Back shelf!” someone shouted through the door.
The redhead fumbled among piles of paper and crusts of bread, rattling though cassettes, some without their jackets. “Oh, here.” She held it out, not looking at him.
Eaton fingered the tape. Its lettering was smeared, and the tiny checks Eaton had penned on either side of the label seemed to have gotten wet and bled. Those silver tabs had been hard to find. “Um,” said Eaton, who didn’t usually say “um” and disapproved of people who did. “What’s the word, then?”
“The word?” She seemed surprised he was still there.
“Did you like it? Are you interested?”
It still took her a minute to understand the question. Then she said, “No.”
“Oh, okay,” he said gratefully. “Thanks.” He tried to keep from running, so he was still in the club when she called him back.
“Hey.” She held out a couple of cards. “Passes for Wednesday night? Consolation prize.” She smiled.
“Sure. Thanks, really. Thanks. Thanks a lot.”
He did run this time. “Sort of sweet, huh?” he heard behind him, and laughter.
Eaton hurried up the Bowery as if avoiding an aggressive panhandler who smelled. His breath was shallow, his steps quick and small. He looked around as if he might be followed. He glanced down at his favorite shirt, checking for stains. Crazy, but that’s the way he felt: stained.
By 14th Street Eaton had straightened his tie, combed his hair, and lengthened his stride. Galileo was considered a crank; Van Gogh lived off his brother. Oil shortages might come and go, but the planet’s supply of ignorance was inexhaustible. So CB’s didn’t want Eaton Striker. That redhead would live to tell her girlfriends about the day Eaton Striker walked into her office like just anybody. They wr
ote articles about this sort of thing, you know. Huey Lewis had kicked around for years, scraping, and now look. Eaton hailed a taxi.
But by mid-afternoon, even with inspiration from Area and the Palladium, Eaton had run out of examples of genius unrecognized. Cassettes stacked in his pockets, ruining the line of his pleated pants, rattling against his thigh.
“That last track,” a man at the Ritz said as Eaton was about to flee one more club. “The vicious little tune—”
“What about it?”
“Well, that one had—something. Kinda stuck in my head, you know? Maybe that’s the right direction for you.”
“Yeah, maybe,” said Eaton, though somehow this admiration of “You Think You’re So Great You’re Not” didn’t improve his mood.
At the Pyramid he inexplicably passed Howard Williams coming out the door. Both looked down, pretending they hadn’t seen each other.
Eaton took the subway home. It got stuck under the East River for half an hour—typical—and he took the time to survey the wreckage: his tie had twisted oddly to the side, its knot turned to his collar; the shirt was half untucked, the pants creased. If his shoes had once been the color of a bright blue summer sky, they’d suffered a temperature inversion.
Back home, he peeled off the costume and stuffed it in his hamper, closing the lid tightly and walking away as if from the clothes of a homicide, for to Eaton the acrid sweat of failure marked them like blood.
As The Derailleurs collected by the track, dragging amps from Caldwell’s van and testing connections, Howard slumped on a nearby park bench and didn’t help. Once the equipment was unloaded, he announced morosely that before Check and Rahim arrived they should talk. Everyone ignored him, as always. “I said we have to talk.”
They stopped. Howard whined, but never demanded. Something was up.
“Listen.” He sighed. “I made a tape of you guys a while ago. Playing at Plato’s. I made copies with my dual cassette deck. I didn’t tell Check—he wouldn’t like it—but I took them around to some clubs in Manhattan, and to a couple recording companies. I went around today and picked them back up.”
“What happened?” asked Caldwell.
“None of the clubs is interested.”
“You just did a pirate? With what machine?”
“My Walkman.”
“Jesus, Howard! You do a demo, you record it at least on 8-track, if not 24! You go to a studio and—no wonder they turned us down—”
“Sweets,” Howard interrupted, “I’m not finished.”
Howard had a headache. In an effort to make the little rim of flab over his belt less repellent, he’d been taking off his shirt in the park the last few days to get some sun; he’d overdone it. Howard thought contemptuously to himself that he was just the sort of person who would sunburn. He didn’t have any allergies yet, but he’d heard you could acquire them later in life; he was waiting. And where was the asthma? Anyway, he was beginning to peel, everywhere. They were all watching and this was important and he tried desperately to keep himself from picking at the little shreds of skin on his stomach between the buttons of his shirt.
“The tapes must have been good enough for them to hear something,” Howard went on. “The Pyramid and the Limelight both said the drumming was ‘rad.’ Rad?”
“Radical,” Caldwell explained.
“And that’s good?”
“That’s real good.”
“And they said—” Howard didn’t look at the others now. “The rest of the band was mediocre, but they liked the songs. This guy at SOB gave me the name of two ‘rad’ bands looking for new drummers. He said Check could take his pick.”
They were all quiet. Finally Caldwell asked, “Whose songs were they?”
“I taped ‘Gridlock,’ ‘Eaten by Salt,’ and ‘Pedestrians Are on Drugs.’”
“Checker’s.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, you know, the bad recording,” Caldwell roused, “it might not have done justice—”
“I’m not finished,” said Howard heavily. “There’s no problem with the recordings. I said I went to some companies. Warner Brothers, Atlantic—nix, the usual, they probably didn’t even listen to it—”
“They don’t,” said Eaton.
“Some of them do,” said Howard. “At CBS they took me inside. I said I was the manager. They got me a cup of coffee. We sat around a big round table—”
“Howard, what?”
“They don’t want The Derailleurs, either! They love the songs! They say he’s a good drummer and they want Check, Sweets, Check and only Check, and they want him to sign!”
It would be a lie to claim that no one knew what to say. They all knew very well: I’m so happy for him. But it isn’t possible to be happy for someone else. It is necessary to feel happy oneself. No one said a word.
Finally Howard admitted with self-loathing, “And if I really am the manager, I get a cut.”
“Too much, man,” said J.K.,” and you never so much as strung a guitar—”
“I wouldn’t take it,” Howard hurried to assure him, beginning to pick frantically at the skin peeling on his stomach.
“Howard, you sure know how to get a band in the mood for a concert,” said J.K. “Great management.”
“You going to tell Check, Howard?” asked Caldwell.
“I have to, don’t I? Besides, CBS will contact him eventually even if I keep quiet. But maybe not tonight?”
They all agreed to put off the upcoming powwow and try to enjoy the concert; this new turn of events had many “implications,” as Eaton observed, which this was a poor time to address. Meanwhile, Eaton, Caldwell, and J.K. conferred quietly away from the others.
Check and Rahim showed up bustling with ice chests in which the rest showed little interest. If you’re happy you’re stupid. Ecstasy as fraudulence. Blinded by the light. Why haven’t you noticed that no one is talking to you? Who needs your idiot good humor if it means when none of your friends will look you in the eye you rachet those drums and hum and make jokes we don’t laugh at and it’s all the same to you? You live in a fog like your mother. The whole world thrills you because yours isn’t real. You’re insane, you know that. We suffer, but at least we’re intelligent. Our jacks are in the right holes. God, what do you need us for, really? We could be green trees, good weather. We keep our backs to you for half an hour and you see the other side of shapes. So go ahead, sign with a label, leave us. Don’t think we care. Fine, fine. Don’t think we care—
The Derailleurs had never performed quite like this before. It was like a free trip to Great Adventure. The music would climb up, up, until, whoosh, you were in free fall, your stomach lining ruined for life. For no sooner would the audience begin to sway or dance under the bridge, the runners step up their pace around the track, the early-evening tennis players pick up their games, than: boom, a stinker. Everyone dove for their coolers for more beer. What was going on here? A run of old favorites, the funny one about the peanuts, and then this bullshit about toxic waste? And that last one with the little girl and all that suicide, that was the final clinker—Downervista, man. Parties of picnickers moved their blankets farther from the band.
Though they had planned to finish with “Take Me with You, David Lee,” J.K. himself suggested “Walkmans Make Creepy Squealy Sounds” instead, always a crowd pleaser. “Creepy Squealy” did arouse applause, but not strong enough for encores. The clapping petered out; The Derailleurs began to pack up. Unusually few fans lingered by the stage. The band caught passing phrases: “uneven” “sentimental” “played out” “Still, the drumming—” The drumming. The drumming. They’d heard that refrain before.
“Hey, skip breakdown and load-out for a while,” Check proposed. “I picked up some shit for a picnic. Thought maybe we could hang out. Have some beers. What d’ya say?” Checker found he was actually frightened they would turn him down.
“Sure,” said Eaton, for all of them. “Why not?”
Relieved, Ch
eck unbagged two jars of roasted peanuts and two jars of macadamia nuts. He unwrapped a loaf of First Avenue sourdough and opened a cooler with a flourish; inside, nestled in ice, three dozen oysters on the half shell. Voilà: a truce.
“And I got these dynamite little forks—”
“Check,” said Rachel, “how could you afford—”
“Don’t worry about it.” He’d needed an advance from Syria, but when Checker threw a party he did better than play on lines from his songs—he unpacked cold cuts, fruit, cheese, Veniero’s pastries, a gallon of the old reliable Carlo Rossi, since no one in the band knew good wine from drain cleaner, but they did know beer—Bass ale, Dos Equis, a few stouts. Check wasn’t big on money, but when he spent it he enjoyed it, since there was no reason money should be different from anything else.
“All right, Eat, first oyster’s yours.”
If raw oysters are an acquired taste, one dinner out with your parents won’t do the trick. Eaton buried the quivering gray creature with a gob of cocktail sauce and tossed it down like the stoic winners of “Gross Out” in junior high. He shot Checker an unsteady smile. “We’ll work some class into you yet, Irv. Are these bluepoints?”
Checker himself examined and sniffed his for a minute or two before he speared the shellfish with the slender three-pronged fork and swallowed. He thought about it. He nodded. “It’s like—the ocean. It’s like eating the ocean. You got a point, Strike.” He went enthusiastically for another and, with “ocean” rather than “slug” as the predominant metaphor, charmed both Caldwell and Carl into trying more than one. Rahim set about draining lemon over the lot, and spreading out cold cuts in decorative fans.
With a glass of wine in one hand and a chunk of Check’s precious sourdough in the other, Eaton asked, “So when do you announce that we’re eating your body and drinking your blood?”
“If this is the Last Supper and I cop the lead,” asked Checker uneasily, “who does that make you, Strike?”
“Don’t worry,” said Eaton. “I’m not going to kiss you. I’m just one more fervent disciple, right? Among so many.” Eaton took a pull on the Carlo. “You familiar with Superstar?”