The Failure (15 page)
E
veryone—this is not, by the way, an original observation—is at his or her wit’s end. Everyone has reached his breaking point, and passed that point without breaking. Stretched like a snare across a hollow drum, filled with miserable air. Hit it once, the world shatters.
That’s what Guy thought, anyway. That was his guiding precept: the inherent frangibility of everything. Starting from that precept, Guy asked himself something:
How can this be good for me? How can I profit from World Fever?
There’s very little doubt the world is suffering from some kind of disease. From up close, it can look like a lot of little diseases, but when you take the long view, and Guy Forget always and ever only took the long view, to his credit, it’s clear there’s only one real disease. All the little ones are just variants, like different shades of the same kind of blue jeans. And you might as well call that macro-sickness World Fever, because everyone understands what it’s like to have a fever, and most people have enough imagination to apply that understanding to the world in general. The world feels like hell. The world wants nothing more than to lie in bed and watch TV for a solid week, but there’s no chance, because there are too many things that absolutely need doing. Things that
cannot
be put off. Besides, it’s not a really bad, untenable, can’t-even-function kind of fever, it’s low-grade, where you feel stupid even complaining about being sick, because compared to people who really are sick, you’re not sick at all. Stop being such a whiner. Get back to work. Take a couple aspirin, maybe one of those gelcaps that claim to push back inside your body all the worst symptoms, and
get back to work, World
.
You do that, though, I mean you do that for an extended period of time, where you don’t really ever get enough sleep and you keep slogging away at your boring and pointless job (and there is nothing more boring and pointless than being the World, as Guy would often take pains to point out), and eventually shit catches up with you and you get really, really sick, or you just get really, really sick of being sick, and you crash. Not the solid week of bed and TV crash, either—the month or two of soul-crushing depression for no discernible reason crash, where you alienate your friends, probably lose your job, and eventually, because you can’t think of any other way out and you’re old enough to know that self-medicating via substance abuse is not a workable solution, you go on some kind of anti-whatever medication, which lifts you up just enough to function, to beg forgiveness from your friends, who say “Sure,” but things are never really the same, and plead with your boss for your old job back, which either doesn’t happen and you have to find a new one that turns out to be worse and pays less, or happens but now you’re the prodigal worker and everyone treats you like dirt and you have to accept less pay too, as a condition for rehiring.
Guy was waiting, with whatever modicum of patience he possessed, not a lot, for that definitive crash. Not just waiting: preparing. His immediate plans might not have depended on the crash, but his long-term plans hinged like the gate to a mighty fortress on the coming collapse.
I
said I was sorry.
-It was the way you said it.
-What’s wrong with the way I said it?
-Mainly, I didn’t believe you.
-How’s that my fault?
-Because of all the other times you said you were sorry but you didn’t mean it.
-That’s a really negative way to go through life.
-What is?
-I mean, I’m sorry. I said I was sorry. Nothing else I can say will help. I should never have called you a … well, it’s no good repeating it, is it? The more you say, “A duck shits out more brains in five seconds than you’ll ever hold in your peanut-sized cerebellum,” the worse it sounds.
-You said a
baby
duck.
-Again. This is rehashing the past. Let’s move forward.
-It’d be easier to move forward if I didn’t have that mental image in my head. It’s not very pleasant.
-You think the guys at Anzio had pleasant images in their heads when they fought their way inland? They had hellish images in their heads. Body parts blown off their good buddies. Brains splattered on their sleeves. That’s just … I mean, how do you move past something like that? But they did. They moved past it. And so can you.
-What’s Anzio?
-It was in a movie. I don’t know. Some storming-the-beach thing. You know: war is hell.
-But we’re not at war.
-We’re not at war? You don’t watch the news? Or do you mean just you and me—we’re not at war with each other. That’s true. But the country, the United States of these Americas, we are most definitely at war, buster, and if you don’t get that, then you are as bad as a hippy, and possibly worse.
-It’s not like a real war. Like World War Two or the War of the Roses.
-Which was a very entertaining movie, but I do see your point. You’re saying it’s not a real war unless there’s a draft. Unless the children of privilege are sent to fight, no war can be considered true.
-I don’t know what I’m saying. Sometimes I feel like you put words in my mouth even when I say the words.
-Trust me, if I were going to put words in your mouth, I’d put better words.
-Exactly what I’m talking about.
-You’re right, that was uncalled for. Or maybe it was called for, but I should have not answered the call.
-Can we just get on with the … with whatever you have planned next?
-Here’s the problem, Billy. I didn’t really plan for next.
-Don’t tease me, bro.
-You know how much I hate when you call me “bro.” Or when you call anyone “bro.” Or when anyone calls anyone “bro.” Even ironically. Charlie did the same thing earlier. I don’t know what made me angrier, him calling me “bro” or him screwing up a plan that we were nice enough to name after him.
-Sorry.
-But I’m not teasing you. I made no contingency for this sort of thing. I did not expect we’d end up on top of a hill with no money and the cops probably looking for us. In a stolen car.
-You don’t know that it’s stolen.
-I have a pretty good notion. I got it from Sven, and Sven didn’t show. He’s either in league with Charlie, or just a flake. Either way: stolen car. Though I must say, if you’re going to steal a car, a Mini Cooper is not a bad choice.
-When you say no money, you mean not that much money. We’ve still got the one drawer’s worth. That’s like twelve grand, right?
-It is, or should be nearly exactly twelve grand. Which is exactly, or nearly, the same as no money. If I don’t have fifty grand, I don’t have anything.
-I’m just saying. As a contingency. We get six thousand dollars apiece, which is enough to probably get out of town and wait till things cool off.
-Billy. I’d tell you that I love you like a brother except I don’t like my brother very much, so in fact I love you more than like a brother, or better than, you get the idea. But things are not going to “cool off.” I don’t even know what that means, “cool off.” We bungled a burglary. We are on the run from the law, and we will always be on the run from the law.
-Always?
-Well, for a while. Until things cool off.
-You’re a fucking chimp.
-Don’t touch me.
-I said don’t fucking touch me. What part of “don’t fucking touch me” did you …
H
ow long have we known each other, Violet?
-I don’t know. Three weeks?
-Almost five months. Do you know how long five months is in friend slash lover years?
-Three weeks?
-It’s like Krazy Glue years. Permanent. We’re bonded together and nothing on earth or in heaven can ever separate us.
-I gotta go. By which I mean you should leave. Now.
-See you.
D
id I ever tell you the story about my friend’s band? It’s a good story. Well, it’s not really a good story, in fact it’s kind of a sad story and it doesn’t even have an ending, but there are good parts of the story.
-When did you ever know someone in a band?
-Years ago. Back in Dayton. It was just these four guys from Peeper’s Hollow, guys I knew from grade school. The singer was a jock but the guys in the band were freaks. When they started out they were really bad, and they had a really stupid name: Pantherz, with a “z.” They’d play around town and nobody liked ’em, not even their family or friends. So they stopped. For like five years, they just disappeared.
-What happened?
-I told you: nothing. They just stopped. They didn’t quit, or make any big pronouncements about quitting, and every once in a while you’d see someone from the band out at the grocery store or the gas station, so it’s not like they disappeared as people. They disappeared as a band. And then one day they came back. But they weren’t called Pantherz with a “z” anymore. They were called King Shit and the Golden Boys, and they were unbelievably great. They played a show at a local bar, I think they opened for Horned Infirmary, it was at … I want to say the Rock Lodge, but I don’t really remember, anyway it doesn’t exist anymore so what’s the difference? Place down in the Oregon District. Absolutely blew my mind. I’d never seen or heard anything that musically powerful before, or since. It was like they’d made some kind of Robert Johnson deal.
-But no.
-But no, they’d just spent five years practicing, getting really good, and writing much, much better songs. The lead guy, King Shit, obviously that wasn’t his real name, I never did know his real name except that people called him William, jumped around onstage like a madman and sang like a madman about just crazy stuff, like, “I am heaven’s circus act,” or whatever. They had a song called “Liars in Motion,” but I wouldn’t have known this if the singer hadn’t announced every title before starting the song. Except “starting the song” sounds tame compared to what these guys did. They
hurled
themselves at their songs, clattered through them like wild horses. Like they were desperate to get to the next song, and the one after that, because every song was better than the last.
-So then they got big?
-That’s the weird thing. Still nobody in town liked them. I didn’t understand that at first. I think maybe it’s hard for people in a small town to embrace unmediated greatness. It’s just hard to accept that these four guys, who look just like you and talk just like you and maybe you even know some of them or went to school with them, are any good. The argument being, I guess, well, if they’re so great how come they’re playing the Rock Lodge and not Scarlet Arena and how come they don’t have a record deal and I don’t hear them on the radio? If none of these things are true then it follows that they can’t be any good. Because I found out—I actually did some research on this, I was mystified why nobody liked this band—that most people are willfully tin-eared with respect to music of any kind.
-Okay, then, what happened?
-They left town, of course. Went on the road. Started playing shows everywhere but in town, and the strange thing about that is when you go to New York City, for instance, from a small Midwest town, all of a sudden you’re exotic, and therefore more interesting to a New York audience than a New York band would be. So you take exotic plus insanely great, which is a highly rare combination, and add a narrative, like, “How come we’ve never heard of these guys before, and did you know they never play out but just sit around in a basement drinking and playing music,” which adds a patina of authenticity to the band … People in New York are desperately hungry for something, anything authentic—for a really real experience—you wouldn’t believe it, and you also wouldn’t believe how hard it is to find authenticity in New York, which is the second most artificial city in the country after here. Whereas in the Midwest it’s hard to be anything other than what you are. In fact, it’s ridiculous to be anything other than what you are, despite which some people try, which is never pretty. The upshot being, King Shit and the Golden Boys are lionized in Gotham. Everyone loves them. Everyone is totally blown away. They sign a record deal within weeks, journalists fly in from London to interview them, celebrities come backstage to their shows. Everything changes. Until they return home, where nothing has changed. It’s not like word travels along some kind of jungle telegraph about an obscure band from the Midwest that achieves sudden success. There’s no way for the people in the band’s hometown to know that anything’s changed except that, well, they went out of town for a couple of weeks, which nobody would even notice because, as I said, even when the band was still called Pantherz nobody gave them much thought or noticed them. Noticed them particularly, is what I mean.
-I can imagine that would have been disappointing for them.
-More than just disappointing. It crystallized William’s attitude toward his hometown, which had always been ambiguous, and now became fairly schizoid. He hated traveling, he hated leaving town, because he’d spent most of his life there and he felt comfortable there, much as he grumbled about the lack of respect and recognition. But he absolutely despised his fellow citizens. He laughed at them, but it was a bitter, scornful laugh. Years of resentment were thinly disguised by that laughter. And therein lay the problem.
-What do you mean?
-The seeds of corruption had been sewn. King Shit and the Golden Boys faced a clear choice: they could try, and probably succeed, although just as probably fail, to become more and more successful in commercial terms, until they finally reached the point where the folks back home would understand, would recognize, the genius flowering in their own backyard. So to speak. Unfortunately, to reach that level of success, several kinds of compromise would be required—artistic compromise, you understand, not the good kind of compromise, where two political parties reach an agreement that’s in the best interest of everyone. The nature of politics is compromise. The nature of art is … I don’t know what the nature of art is. But it’s not compromise.
-So what did they do?
-They compromised. And it didn’t work, as it often doesn’t work. And they regretted it, after a few years of increasingly futile effort. And they jettisoned the whole idea, retreated to the basement, and made a record detailing their experiences called
The Power of Suck
. A great record. Maybe the greatest record.
-I’d like to hear it.
-You can’t. They destroyed every copy. There’s only bootlegged demos in circulation among die-hard fans, the shadow of the real record’s shadow.
-Why on earth …
-Because it was literally too good.
-That makes no sense.
-Probably not. That’s what makes, or I guess made, King Shit and the Golden Boys great. The only authentic act you can take as an artist is to destroy your creation. Anything else, any public display, is vanity. Just vanity.
-So they’re not around anymore?
-Oh, they’re around. But not making music. That was the end of the line for them. But there’s plenty more where they came from.
-Really?
-No. Or at least I doubt it.
-What’s the point of that story, then? asked Billy.
-The point of any story is the story itself, answered Guy, signaling Lucy for another drink. -Anyone who looks for morals or lessons in stories is worse than a fool, he is a coward.
-Seriously.
-All you need is love, said Guy, smiling at Lucy, who smiled back.