The Listeners (18 page)

“Poor Coyote,” my sister said, resting a hand on his belly button. “Does it hurt still?”

Riley nodded.

“He's so terrible,” she said with relish. “I can't wait till Mert comes home.”

“But you can't tell!”

“Why not?”

Riley shrugged, shutting his eyes. “I don't want you to.”

“But Ri, he's
terrible
.”

Riley coughed.

“See, he punctured your lung. I hate him,” she declared. “If he ever tries to punch
me
I'll do him a mischief. He'll get it in the eye—with scissors.”

And I thought, As soon as I'm tall enough…

But the Edinburgh Lane doorway of pencil marks ended up no use. I never grew as tall as my father. By the time I had concluded I was stuck where I was, not yet unassailable, Fod had stopped assailing. No measurements were ever taken on Observatory Place. It was a smaller house, one of many brick boxes; but there was still a garden for the non-football months, and the TV was huge. My parents were not television people, they were book people—so they always said—though I suspected Mert of watching parlor mysteries when Fod wasn't around, and Fod, maybe, of ordering a bit of pay-per-view when—

“Dinner in five minutes,” Mert called to me.

Mother in the kitchen, rattling. Father in the garden, plucking. Son at the table, setting. Daughter in the living room, flipping. It was still light out and birds talked near the window. I landed on history, a nice channel because most of the topics were remote. “Dragon's teeth,” the announcer announced, “was the name for pyramids of fortified concrete used in World War II to herd tanks into killing zones where they could be picked off by antitank weaponry. Each tooth was four feet high, and land mines were often planted between them. Because so many were built and they were so durable, rows of dragon's teeth can be seen today in Germany and France.”

“Quinn, time to eat!”

“Hold on,” I shouted.

“In Switzerland,” added the announcer, “they are still used as strategic defensive devices—designed to spring up, for instance, out of roads—and are called
toblerone
after the chocolate bar.”

“Turn it off, please.”

I slid into the chair and poured myself a glass of white. Waited as long as possible to take food; the worm was near.

“So, Coyote,” started Mert in the fake-casual voice, “anytime you'd like to invite your, ah, friend from work to have dinner with us, you're welcome to. I heard that she made a very nice meal for you and Quinn.”

My brother's eyes swerved to me, furious.

“Hey Mert, what's in this soup? It's an intriguing blend of flavors. Did you use dill? It tastes sort of
dillish
.”

“I did indeed,” she said.

“Dill was her most hated herb,” I remarked.

“Pass the okra,” said Fod.

“She really couldn't stand it, remember? Said it was like having porcupine eyelashes in your food.”

Our father thanked our mother for passing the okra.

“How has work been going?” Mert asked Riley.

But I would push an inch more: “My point is, she would
not
have been a fan of this soup.”

HELLO, IS THIS
Air Florida? Can you tell me the fare for a one-way ticket from the airport to the Fourteenth Street bridge?

But the joke wasn't funny, because a man had given a woman the rope instead of taking it himself. He waited for her to be pulled up into the helicopter. Another woman next—he helped her hands catch the swinging cable—and he waited too long, went blue in the ice-chunked water. Frozen pressure sensors had caused the aircraft to stop short in the sky. Nobody had turned on the plane's anti-icing systems, even though it was a frosty January day. Dead: seventy passengers, four crew, four motorists on the bridge. Alive: one crew member and four passengers, including the women the dead man guided to the rope.

“WHAT WERE YOU
doing?”

“Nothing.”

“Yes you were—your face is all—” I took her fist and pried it open. Sandpaper, red-smeared. “You were sanding your
face
?”

My sister shrugged.

“What for?”

She touched her bleeding cheek. “To get the pimples off.”

RILEY IN YELLOW-DUCK
boxers loomed up in the doorway. “You can't smoke in here!”

“Oh, what?” I mashed out the butt in my teacup.

“
God
,” he said, waving a hand in front of his face, spinsterlike.

“Sorry, I forgot.”

“No you didn't. You didn't
care
.”

“That's not—”

“Open a window,” he said, and slammed back into the bedroom.

Octy watched me pop in the cartridge, finish off one can and crack another while it loaded. Much skill, I informed him, was required for this particular contest. Perfect eyesight, hair-trigger reflexes, and
courage
. Bravery was key. The night was cold. The snow was coming. Ice everywhere, but you couldn't see it. Did you know that about ice, Octy? The octopus stared back. Well, you might not have to deal with this in the ocean, but on land, ice impersonates the road. You're
tooling along thinking it's a road but really it's a rink. See, look—

The game began: two black lanes, headlights, your fingers pale on the wheel. The road twisted through a forest. Above, stars, but it wasn't advisable to look up. Keep your eyes on the. Keep your speed under the. Don't reach down to change the. Don't be drunk when you.

NEW TO THE
band, Geck had never gone with us to the diner and didn't know the rule. We didn't hear him order because I was too busy slapping water on the small fire I had made from ashing into a napkin and it wasn't his fault, as Mink reasoned later, because how could he possibly have known?

I lifted my head, alert like a hunting animal; the waitress hadn't even reached our table but I could smell what she was carrying, the death on her arm, sizzle of cooked sister.

“What the
fuck
, did somebody get pancakes?”

“I did,” Geck said uncuriously.

“You what?”

“Blueberry,” he nodded.

The waitress was about to set down the plate but I pushed it away and it sailed to the carpet.

“Christ,” said the waitress.

“That was my
food
,” said Geck.

“I'm still charging you for that,” she warned.

“Fucking fine,” I said, flicking and flicking the rubber band.

 

The first song Geck wrote for us went into heavy rotation on college stations. They screamed for it at shows. Our
hit
. Cam hated the song because it was the kind of thing we had promised each other, at the start, never to play: catch and froth, as close to sugar as we would ever get. We did not play it sweetly; I grunted, shouted, refused to actually sing; yet it could not be anything but a sing-along song. It made people who had never heard it feel as if they'd heard it before—to hum with it, mouth lyrics when they didn't know them, and to declare at once
Oh I love this one, what it's called again?
I knew it was second-rate but could not hate it, because it sent us into every basement in America, and the record sold so well that the scouts began to sniff.

I IMAGINED HIM
on his plaid-spread single bed under a shelf of elementary-school swimming trophies, toes brushing a carpet dusty with shed skin. He sipped from a plastic cup of vodka and strummed his guitar. His fingers were clumsy, getting fatter like the rest of him. Thank you, tapioca! Thank you, plum-sauced brisket! Dejected, Geck got the cane from under his bed. Rubbed its brass knob. He had not believed at first that the cane had really been made from a bull's diddler, but the gift giver had sworn it was genuine beef-cock. They used taxidermy, he explained, to cure the tissue, then they stretched it over a metal rod. Geck had been impressed; the cane was three and a half feet long. What happened to the balls? They made them into Rocky Mountain oysters, his buddy said.

“Jonathan? Dear? Quinn is on the phone.”

He knotted the drawstring on his sweatpants. “Medicine woman!” he jovialed into the receiver.

“Never call me that,” I said.

“Sorry, sorry. How are you?”

“Fine, you?”

“Not good. Thanks for never calling me back.”

“We're on the phone right now,” I pointed out.

“Yeah, after
three days
.” I could hear him taking another sip. “So, want to go to a meeting with me?”

My neck flinched: what was he implying?

“I keep slipping,” he went on, “and the likelihood of me getting to a meeting improves rapidly if another person goes with me.”

“Such as your sponsor,” I said, relieved.

“Such as
you
. Come on, Quinn, I don't have that many friends.”

 

The commute to his neck of the woods—train and bus and walk through grummy dusk—took over an hour. Geck's parents were retired enough to live in Florida but didn't. The living room smelled of old people's mouths. Mrs. Geck asked if I wanted something to drink; Geck shooed her away before I could answer.

“May I offer you a nail,” he said, “for the lovely box your coffin is sure to be?”

I stuck it between my teeth, slapped my jacket for matches. He was already on my nerves. That tends to happen if you've slept with a person, no matter how long ago: your irritation threshold is lower.

“Jonathan,” came a call from the next room, “would you like some cookies?”

“No, Ma,” he shouted, “we're fine.”

“I wouldn't mind a cookie,” I said.

“Yeah, well, you don't get one. She
hovers
like a goddamn chopper.”

Out on the sidewalk, I asked, “Isn't it against the rules to be drunk at a meeting?”

“Are you drunk?”

“I'm serious, Geck, can't they kick you out?”

“
Hail
no. The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. As long as you don't cause disturbance, you can be as fucked up as you want. Which, by the way, I am not. Just because I'm not acting suicidal doesn't mean I'm—”

“But you've obviously had a few.”

“A few does not drunkenness make.”

“Pick up the pace. We'll be late.”

“Good,” he said. “It's fucking misery-town up in there.”

The church basement smelled like burnt chicken. A circle of souls on folding chairs. Everyone stared at this one woman, who was sniffling: “One spoonful! I told myself one spoonful…”

“She likes to party with the cough syrup,” Geck leaned to whisper. His breath was shocking.

“Is your sponsor here?”

“Um…” He craned around, subtle as a hammer. His eyes stopped on a woman with some of the profoundest cleavage I'd ever seen in person.

I elbowed his elbow.

“I don't see him,” he hissed.

The syrup eater thanked us for listening, and now it was a baseball-capped kid, who said: “I've been getting suggestions from people to just go ahead and spill it, stop keeping secrets and just hand it over to the group and to my higher power. I know the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, so I'm, like I said, trying something new and opening up a little, even though I'm really…”

“Arrive at the point!” spat Geck, fingering his pockets. Suddenly he stood, and I was afraid he would outright leave, which seemed bad, especially as the boy had just begun sharing about sexual molestation; but he was only headed to the refreshment table. He returned with a fistful of beige cookies, dropped two into my lap, and whispered, “Pecan sandies. Lowest of the low.”

“YOU WILL REGRET
this,” Cam said. “It won't end well.”

I forked a bite of coleslaw. “What the hell do
you
know.”

“Well, I know that you sleeping with our guitar player is a bad idea.”

It was six months after Geck had joined.

“We're not doing it in
front
of you.”

“It tends to cause problems,” he said.

“No problems so far,” I shrugged.

“Except maybe for you. The embarrassment of having sex with someone who has a fifth-grade vocabulary?”

“
What
?”

“I mean, doesn't it get a little lonely?”

“Fuck you,” I said.

He stood, pocketed his deck, and walked out of the diner without leaving a cent.

“Little baby,” I called after him.

 

A scout from the label was blithering on about how much she liked us, and Cam said, “My lady kind of doth
protest too much!” and she paused, first confused, then irritated. After we left the bar I whispered: “If you wreck this, I'm never speaking to you again.”

I was quite advanced in the maturity department.

And for three days we didn't talk. He was stunned that I would put so much faith in a raggly little scout who, after all, was not making any signing decisions; she could only recommend; but I believed that this label, a major less evil than the others whose stable included bands we respected, was heaven-sent. More than dollars: it meant we would be known by everyone—kids on farms!—not just outcasts and aficionados.