Count Geiger's Blues (12 page)
Xavier and Donel each held a loaned-out Uzi. Too many blotchy-faced men hemmed them in to be able to swing about and drench their antagonists—but the idea crossed Xavier’s mind and, he believed, maybe even Donel’s. No way was he going to abase himself or these young women by obeying the beetle-browed louts encouraging them to do just that.
“Shoot!” one former gunman shouted again.
“No,” Xavier said.
“ ’N’ why not?” the man asked. “You’re the hotshot who’s always quoting Nee-chee, aren’t you?” He sounded almost literate.
“What’s Nietzsche got to do with it?” Xavier shouted into the roar ballooning up from the men as the girl on the left—a heart-faced kid hardly out of her teens, with half-moons under her eyes and a cranberry birthmark on one haunch—slipped and put both hands on the bar to prevent a worse fall.
“Jes’ this! I read in a old column of yours, ‘
Man shall be trained for war, and woman for the recreation of the warrior: all else is folly.
’ I guess old Nee-chee said a mouthful there. So go on, Thaxton—pot ’er in th’ mouse!”
“No.”
Someone got behind him, applied a half-nelson with his forearm, dug his radius into Xavier’s Adam’s apple. “Shoot, Thaxton! Shoot her, you highbrow wuss!”
Hating himself, Xavier took off-balance aim at the woman on his right, the elder of the two dancers. She saw him. Her eyes were brown, the glazed brown of a roast turkey. With his own eyes, he tried to tell her he couldn’t help doing this, that another stream of stale beer couldn’t hurt her much more than the previous barrages. She got his message, but she no longer gave a damn, the game was too far gone, and when the stream from his fake Uzi hit her thigh, splattering like urine and dripping down her legs, she sucked in her cheeks, a signal of either acquiescence or contempt.
Laughter—appreciative laughter—from the Good Old Boys in camouflage fatigues, grease-stained khakis, bib overalls and string ties, white shirts and Levi’s. Yucks from the jumpsuited bullies cheerleading Donel and him. In fact, so happy with his reluctant marksmanship was this crew that once Donel squeezed off a token stream at the kneeling dancer, they reclaimed their water Uzis, flung Xavier and Donel aside, and even more fiercely renewed their own B-girl shoot.
Xavier and Donel, trading looks of wary disbelief, cut through P.S. Annie’s labyrinth of dens to the street.
*
Outside, Bryan was waiting for them. He gestured breathlessly down the bricked defile into the recesses of Satan’s Cellar.
“I lost him. . . . A guy could get killed in there.”
“Mikhail too,” Xavier reminded Bryan.
They stood at P. S. Annie’s weather-stained brick facade, near a pawnshop and a hole-in-the-wall Vietnamese restaurant, waiting for a cabby with spunk to drive up.
Donel had his arms crossed. “Why would you quote Nietzsche to the effect that men are warriors and women their toys?”
“I didn’t do it approvingly,” Xavier said. “I was reviewing an exhibit of martial art at the Upshaw.”
“Whatever you meant, you gave those rednecks intellectual justification for their vulgar game.”
“I can’t believe that idiot read my piece,” Xavier said. “It’s even harder to believe he
remembered
it well enough to toss a ‘Nee-chee’ quote back at me.”
“A redneck philosopher,” Donel said disgustedly.
“On some level, I’m being read,” Xavier noted. “On some weird level, I’m having an impact.”
“Right,” Donel said. “To justify the public humiliation of women dependent on bar work to earn a living. How does that feel?”
“Terrible,” Xavier said. “But I’m . . .
being read
.”
“People still read the Bible,” Bryan said. “Some of them wear sheets. Some of them bomb abortion clinics.”
“That’s a misapplication of what they’ve read,” Xavier said. “My work’s being misapplied, too, but at least it’s getting through to some of the yahoos.”
“In a twisted way,” Bryan said.
Donel said, “Somebody quoted you to those guys. Quoted you quoting Nietzsche, I mean. There’s no way
they
read your column. No way.”
A cab finally came. They rode it, minus Mikhail, back over the cobblestone bridge into Salonika proper.
23
Mikhail, Come Home
“Sorry, Lee. Sorry, Xave.
But I don’t want you to switch back to your old beats yet.”
“Walt,” Lee Stamz implored.
“Walt,” Xavier wheedled, echoing Stamz.
“I’m doing you a favor, Xave,” Walt Grantham said. “I’m going to help you get Mikhail home before your sis flies in from Peshawar or your lovely Ms. Carlisle from the Continent.”
“Yeah? How?” Xavier was thinking how lousily their jaunt into Satan’s Cellar had gone. Donel had emerged blaming him for the recreational perversities of lower-middle-class Suthren males. Bryan, traumatized by unrealized dangers, hadn’t showed up for work this morning. And Mikhail . . . Mikhail had fled.
“Actually, I’ve already done it,” Grantham said. “For the past two days, I’ve run an item for you in the
Urbanite
’s want ads.” He picked up a newspaper, shook it open, and pointed out to Xavier his miniature masterpiece:
Mick, chill out and phone home. I have 2
tckts for Frdy’s STH&T gig at Grotto. If
back by Thrsdy, we go f’ sure. Trooce, X.
“Ess, Tee, Aitch, and Tee?” Xavier said. “What’s that?”
“An acronym for Smite Them Hip & Thigh, whom The Mick, I hear tell, nigh-on to wets his pants over.”
Lee Stamz
leaned
into Grantham. “You’re sending Xave, the acme of
un
hipness, to a Smite ’Em gig? Meanwhile, Mister Walt, what ’m I s’posed to do?”
“The
Turandot
preview at the opera house. You see, the pop stuff Xave’s banging on, well,
that’s
selling papers.” Grantham thought better of this all-out stroking. “I mean, along with our sex-lives-of-school-superintendents series and Louis Duplantier’s daily ‘Computer Cannibals’ strip.”
“
Turandot!
Jesus, Walt.”
“I’d never write something like
‘we go f’ sure,’
” Xavier said, eyeballing the ad copy. “Never.”
Stamz said, “It’s amazing that a dude who’s gotta sign his name with an ‘X’ can write anything at all.”
“And he won’t phone me, either.” Xavier pursed his lips.
Grantham handed him two tickets. “These’ll bring him—bet you money. Who cares if he phones, s’long’s you get him home again?”
“Giving Thaxton those tickets is like giving a blind guy a paint-by-numbers kit. A man with no feet, shoes. A snake, a catcher’s mitt. Jesus, Walt.”
“A fisherman, a foolproof lure—’at’s more like it,” Grantham said. “Hey, Lee, where’s your philanthropic spirit?”
“Blown clear at my last bassoon recital.”
“And who’s to say he’ll even look at the ads section?” Xavier fretted.
“Seems a long shot to me.”
“The
Urbanite
’s full of concert hype, The Mick’s a Smite ’Em fan, the ads’re a popular ticket-exchange. Trust me, Xave, he’ll see the damned thing.”
*
That evening, exiting the elevator on floor 22, Xavier felt the carpet and the walls thrumming with inaudible, bone-conducted bass notes. The purr of a dentist’s drill could make your body tingle with a throb similar to that buzzing in the corridor. Feeling it, Xavier knew that Grantham’s ploy had worked, that the prodigal had returned, and that, hallelujah, he wouldn’t have to tell Lydia he’d chased her only child from the security of his apartment into the sin dens of Salonika’s worst neighborhoods. For what he felt was music: music cranked out at jet-engine decibels from Mikhail’s CD player and conducted through the building’s girders as vibration rather than sound. The retropunk brat had come home.
When Xavier pushed open the bedroom door, The Mick was sprawled on his bed in filthy clothes tapping a pen on his knee in time to the deafening music. Turn that down, Xavier waved. The Mick merely stared at him.
Xavier went to the CD player and turned it down. He ceased to quake so crazily. Thus, it would take a while for the floor to vibrate him back into the hall.
“About time,” he said. “Past time, I’d say.”
“Don’t rev up, okay? Just don’t rev up.”
“You’re presuming to tell
me
how to behave?”
The Mick said nothing.
“If you hate me, Mikhail, what pulled you in out of the cold?”
“Your ad. The tickets. I’ve like come to get ’em.”
Xavier produced them from an inside jacket pocket. “Think I’d lie? I don’t lie, Mikhail. Not-lying’s what did me in with a certain person who’d’ve rather I sold out my standards than tell the truth as I saw it. Right?”
“Truth’s relative, unc. You should know that by now.”
“You’re relative, too, nephew. In fact, that’s the only reason you got into my life to begin with.”
Mikhail yogi’d around on his mattress and punched his CD player all the way off. Silence. Motionlessness. “Don’t start, Uncle Xave. You’re s’posed to slay the fatted calf and throw me a killer wingding. That’d be a classy way to welcome me home.”
“Would it? Well, your wingding’s Friday night, at the Grotto. Just like the ad promised.”
“Promises, promises.”
Xavier strode all the way into Mikhail’s sanctum, which had no uncluttered place to perch except the end of his bed, and even it hosted a pair of capsized tennis shoes, their fat, quilted tongues lolling out. He’d have to pace. Fine. He
needed
to pace. “Look, I’ve got a right to be angry. I was—”
“—worried sick,” Mikhail preempted him.
“And why not? Donel Lassiter and Bryan Cline saw you in P. S. Annie’s two nights ago hanging over a bowl of pokeweed. A hot one. Inhaling.”
“No they didn’t.”
“Don’t bullshit me. You were there again
last night
. Bryan tried to catch you.”
“Whoa. Whoa there, okay?”
Xavier didn’t want to let the kid fabricate an off-putting lie, but his refusal to shut up until Xavier shut up made it hard not to hear him out. His story was simple. He’d been hungry. So with a stevedoric assgrabber three times his age, he’d ventured into P. S. Annie’s for some crackers and a bowl of hot chicken stock. He was supposed to repay this guy in illegal tender of a type that Xavier could easily deduce for himself.
“You weren’t doing salad gas?”
“Naw. I was spooning soup. Oliver Twist-style.” This was a lie. Xavier would bet money on it.
“Afterward, did you . . . pony up?”
“You kidding? I scrammed from that fudge-packer. Flim-flammed him. But so it goes for AC-DCs, right?”
“What about last night? Why’d you run from Bryan?”
“Hadn’t seen your ad yet. Wasn’t ready to run on home. Knew I couldn’t cadge a meal while you and your swishy buddies were nosing around.”
“Don’t talk like a bigot. You hungry now?”
“Uh-uh. Mopped up on the leftovers in the fridge. Sorry.”
“I’ll bet. Consider it your fatted calf.”
Xavier peered sidelong at The Mick. A mixed blessing, having him back again. Would the kid light out every time one of his reviews hacked him off? Would Xavier have to pretend to like what he hated, or to hate what he liked, to keep his status as The Mick’s semi-tolerated proxy dad? Xavier asked these questions aloud.
“You uptight about reviewing the Smite ’Em concert? ’Fraid I’ll scram if you dis ’em?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Hey, you’re prejudiced against Smite ’Em. And you’ve never even listened to a Smite ’Em CD.”
“The dissonance seeping out of your headphones seems ripe for, uh, dissing.”
“Well, if they’re as bad as you think, at least you’ll suck up a health-preserving energy rush.” Mikhail dared Xavier to prepare for the concert by listening to several Smite ’Em albums. They would give him a yardstick by which to measure the band’s musicianship on stage. Xavier, The Mick said, was a know-nothing about rock ’n’ roll. He knew even less about retropunks. So any preparation at all would be helpful. It might even allow him to get off on a set that had the rest of the crowd communion-juking. Xavier doubted that listening to STH&T before its concert would acculturate him to its idiosyncratic tribal sounds or its on-stage choreographies, but, working on the proposition that he would never attend an art exhibit without previewing the artists or a new stage play without first trying to read its script, he spent the next two evenings immersed in a gonzo rhythmic discord that violated most of his notions of what music was, how it was supposed to mean, and the way it should caress the ear.
“Just remember McGudgeon’s Law, Uncle Xave.”
Imprisoned between The Mick’s headphones, Xavier said, “What’re you talking about?” (
McGudgeon’s Law
sounded like the title of a TV cop show.)
“From Gregor McGudgeon,” Mikhail said. “Smite ’Em’s front man, keyboard player, and lead guitarist. He’s also heavy into computer graphics, vitriform carving, and sci-fi poetry.”
“Right. A Renaissance man.”
“McGudgeon’s Law is personal, but has universal application:
‘Only five percent / Of what I do / Is deathless art. / The rest is meant / To buy us stew / Or ease my heart.’
Can you glom that?”
“Probably not. I’m not a very good glommer.”
Mikhail grimaced. “No, you ain’t. Maybe it’s got something to do with your wussy Philistine Syndrome.”
Xavier made angry shooing gestures with the back of his hand.
Actually, recently he’d been doing better, working Stamz’s beat—until his dutiful homework on Smite Them Hip & Thigh’s anarchic music. Now, he felt vaguely queasy, on the edge of the flu. What did
that
mean?
He tried not to think about it.