The Wishbones (14 page)

She bobbed her head from side to side, looking thoughtful. “Okay,” she said. “Maybe you've got a point.” “You're going to have to use your imagination,” he warned her. “The show opens with JFK and Jackie waking up in the White House on the morning of November 22, 1963. Jackie gets out of bed, pulls open the curtains, and sunlight comes streaming into the bedroom. Then she turns to Jack and starts singing the first song, ‘Let's Not Go to Dallas.’ It's this sweet romantic fantasy about being normal people for once, rather than the president and First Lady. ‘Let's not go to Dallas/Let's stay home instead/Let's dispense with Texas/How ‘bout breakfast in bed?’ At first Jack protests, but then he gets into the spirit. They sing the last chorus together, dancing around the bedroom in their pajamas. Then they share this long, passionate kiss, which is interrupted when a valet knocks on the door. ‘Mr. President,’ he says. ‘Time to go to Dallas.’ “

“Okay,” said Tammi, still looking a little skeptical, “I think I'm getting the picture.”

Ian put his finger on the play button.

“Oh yeah,” he said. “One more thing. I'm singing both parts on the tape, so it might not sound like a duet.”

Something was wrong, Dave thought. Gretchen had been wild and athletic their first night together, grunting and yowling like Monica Seles in the throes of a tiebreaker, but now she seemed strangely subdued. She lay beneath him, limp and contemplative, watching him the way she might watch a television.

His own concentration was beginning to drift, too. Instead of attending to the here and now, he kept returning to that moment in Gretchen's poem when the woman opens the box and finds the liver inside. She pulls it out—” a slick slab of meat, dull and floppy” —and hugs it to her chest. “This is the test,” she thinks. “To love even this sad gift, simply because it has been given.”

Dave couldn't pinpoint exactly what it was that bothered him about the poem. Was it just that it was disgusting to imagine someone hugging a liver? Or did it have something to do with the cryptic nature of those concluding lines, the idea that love could be some sort of test? Or was his uneasiness somehow related to his awareness of Gretchen's hands on his lower back, somewhere in the neighborhood of his own liver?

He closed his eyes and without any conscious effort, found himself thinking of Julie and the sudden turn his life had taken. Just a few weeks ago, they'd gone shopping for an engagement ring, and now here he was, in a bedroom in Brooklyn, making love to a woman who called herself Marlene Fragment and wrote poems he wouldn't be able to understand if he lived to be a hundred. Instead of guilt, he felt an electric surge of power hum through his body.

“Marlene,” he whispered, opening his eyes.

“Yes,” replied Gretchen. Her legs tightened around his waist.

“Marlene,” he whispered again, moving with a new urgency. “Marlene Fragment.”

“Yes,” she repeated, again and again and again.

Ian considered the last song of
The Grassy Knoll
to be his masterpiece, potentially on a par with “The Impossible Dream” or “Tonight, Tonight.” He imagined people streaming out of the theater, wiping tears from their eyes, yet feeling somehow enlightened and purified by their sadness.

He wanted it to be staged like the Zapruder-film sequences in
JFK
, a black convertible parked onstage against a grainy black-and-white freeze-frame of Dealey Plaza. A lone cello would introduce the song, repeating the main theme over and over in a frail, mournful tone as Jack and Jackie and the Connallys waved in slow motion from inside the car. The freeze-frame would advance every few seconds to provide the illusion of movement toward the Book Depository and the inevitable tragedy.

When the suspense had reached an almost unbearable level, the cello would fall silent. A blinding flash of light would paralyze Jackie and the Connallys in mid-wave. Only Jack would be spared. He would climb out of the car, walk up to the edge of the stage, and break into the final number.

When Ian first hit upon this device, he'd assumed that the song would have to be about JFK. The first version he wrote was called “I'm No Hero,” a lackluster anthem in which the dead president acknowledged his faults and errors (ambition, lust, Bay of Pigs), and expressed disapproval of his elevation to the status of modern-day martyr:

I'm no hero

No saint carved out of wood

Just a man who lived and loved and bled
I did the best I could

 

The breakthrough came when Ian realized the song could move in an entirely different direction—instead of being about JFK, it could be about the audience. Once he had this insight, the lyrics pretty much wrote themselves. The song was called “Where You Were,” and Ian conceived of it as a kind of posthumous thank-you note from John F. Kennedy to the country that had mourned him:

They say that you remember

The moment when I died

They say a cloud blocked out the sun

And millions of you cried

 

He goes on to reflect upon the tragedies of the sixties (Vietnam, the other assassinations, cities on fire, parents at war with their children), as well as the triumphs (civil rights, Neil Armstrong's giant step), then loops back to the beginning of the song:

Just know that I'll remember, too
I know just where you are
All of you
—America—
You're with me in the car
All of you
—America—
You're with me in the car

 

When the music stops, the soon-to-be-murdered president turns around and walks back to the convertible. As soon as he takes his seat, his wife and the Connallys begin waving again. The
freeze-frame advances. Then the lights go out. We hear gunshots. The picture of Dealey Plaza is replaced by a rapid series of images —the president's grieving widow, Oswald taking his own bullet, little John-John saluting the flag-draped coffin, the eternal flame at Arlington Cemetery. Then the president himself, smiling that unforgettable smile.

Of course, Tammi had no way of knowing all this. All she knew of
The Grassy Knoll
were the songs themselves, a dozen of them, sung by Ian and recorded on his woefully inadequate eight-track system. But it seemed to be enough. When he turned to her, she was staring at him in openmouthed wonder.

“So,” he said. “What do you think?”

“My God,” she said. Her eyes were shining with admiration and disbelief. “You wrote that?”

Ian felt a hard-earned pride swell up behind his rib cage.

“Yeah,” he said. “I guess I did.”

RANDY BY STARLIGHT

 

“So I hear It went pretty well.”
Julie told him over dinner at the Stock Exchange.

“Huh?” Dave tore his gaze away from the last slice of his pepperoni-and-roasted-pepper personal-size pizza, which he'd been eyeing with an emotion that verged on longing. He'd decided to start dieting the night before, a few seconds after Gretchen poked her finger into his spare tire and affectionately addressed him as
my little doughboy.
“What's that?”

“The big date. Ian and Tammi.”

“Oh, right. They hit it off?”

“Apparently so.” Julie grinned, the owner of good information. “Tammi called me at work. She didn't get home until four in the morning.”

“Four in the morning? Does that mean what I think it means?”

“You'll have to draw your own conclusions. I'm sworn to secrecy.”

“Unbelievable.” Dave shook his head, registering the quick pang of jealousy that accompanied the news of anyone else's sexual triumph. This reaction was completely irrational, rooted in powerful feelings of early adolescent deprivation. It made no difference that he'd been out until two-thirty the same morning enjoying his own sexual adventure.

“By the way,” she said. “Did you know that Ian wrote a musical?”

“Yeah. He told me the other night.”

“Did he tell you what it was about?”

“We didn't get that far.”

“The Kennedy assassination,” she informed him. “Ian wrote a musical about the Kennedy assassination.”

“Come on.” Dave laughed. “He did not.”

“He did too. Tammi listened to the whole thing.”

“You can't write a musical about that,” he explained. “It's not allowed.”

“It sounds weird,” Julie agreed, “but Tammi says it's incredible. Good enough to be on Broadway.”

Dave began humming “Springtime for Hitler,” feeling slightly guilty as he did so. It wasn't right to be making fun of Ian behind his back. Maybe his musical was better than it sounded. It was possible that Dave's contempt for the genre was interfering with his judgment.

“All done?” the waitress inquired, swooping down on them from out of nowhere. Like all the employees at the Stock Exchange, she wore a white apron with dollar signs on the front, a pink Oxford shirt with a black bow tie, and a visor with a green eyeshade.

Feeling virtuous but ambivalent, Dave pushed the pizza pan toward the edge of the table. Julie looked at him in amazement. In all the years they'd known each other, he'd never left a slice uneaten.

“So,” said the waitress. “How about some dessert?”

“Not for me,” Julie said.

The waitress turned her attention to Dave, the eyeshade casting an eerie green glow on her forehead.

“I recommend the Death by Chocolate. It's my all-time absolute favorite.”

Dave felt his willpower start to erode. He thought of the luscious chocolate mousse cake he and Gretchen had shared at the end of the Lambrusco wedding, the creamy morsel she'd fed him, like a bride, from the tip of her own plastic fork. His diet could wait another day.

“Bring it on,” he said.

The waitress was delighted.

“Excellent,” she said. “One Death by Chocolate.”

“You can't,” Julie cut in. “We don't have time.”

“Why not? The movie doesn't start till nine.”

“We have an eight o'clock appointment with that DJ.”

“Excuse me?” This was the first Dave had heard about a DJ.

“I'm sure I told you. We're supposed to meet with that guy my father works with. Rockin’ Randy.”

“Rockin’ Randy?” the waitress exclaimed. “He's the coolest.”

Dave shot her an unencouraging look. Her face went blank; she slipped her pad and pencil into her apron pocket.

“I'll give you guys a few more minutes to decide,” she said, retreating as she spoke.

“Sorry,” Julie told him. “I can't believe I forgot to tell you. There's so much to keep track of these days.”

Dave felt blindsided, but decided not to make too big a deal about it. Given his own transgressions, he figured he owed Julie a little slack. On the other hand, he thought he'd already cut her quite a bit of slack simply by agreeing to see
The Bridges of Madison County
instead of the new
Batman.

“You know how I feel about DJs,” he told her.

“I know,” she said. “But he works with my father. And he's offering us a really good deal.”

Dave closed his eyes and massaged the center of his forehead. The image of Rockin’ Randy leading the conga line through the lobby of the Westview lingered unpleasantly in his mind.

“Listen,” he said, “that guy could shine my shoes and give me a blow job and it still wouldn't be a good deal.”

Julie stared at him, unamused. Although she had no objection to oral sex as a practice, she disapproved of the term
blow job.

“Sometimes you have to say it,” he explained, reaching out to rescue the last slice of pizza as the busboy lifted the pan off the table. “Sometimes no other word will do.”

Julie Opted for the silent treatment in the car, gazing morosely out the window at the familiar landscape of houses and drought-stricken lawns. Dave marveled at her ability to seize the offensive when she was clearly in the wrong, to sulk as though she were the one being dragged on a disagreeable errand that had been sprung on her at the last minute, an errand, moreover, that violated one of her most deeply held principles.

“The thing about DJs,” he said, “is that they're parasites. You might as well pay someone to come to your house and change the channels on your TV.”

“He'll give us four hours of music for five hundred dollars. What would the Wishbones charge?”

“It's not the same thing. There are five of us. We actually
make
the music.”

“That's not the point, Dave. My parents aren't rich. If we can save a couple of thousand dollars by hiring a DJ, then I can't see how we can afford not to do it.”

Dave understood the math; there was no getting around it. But there was also no getting around the fact that he was not going to have a DJ at his wedding. No way in hell.

“Maybe we can just make some dance tapes ourselves. Save your parents the five hundred bucks.”

“Oh, that's classy,” she said. “And we can hold the reception at a bowling alley. Ham sandwiches and Oreos for everyone.”

“Sounds good to me.”

She sighed in a way that reminded him of his mother. “You're not being very helpful. Planning a wedding is a lot of work. I don't have the energy to fight over every little detail.”

“This is not a little detail. This is like”— he groped for a metaphor—” like inviting Hitler to your wedding.”

“Hitler?”
she said. “Are you out of your mind?”

“All right,” he conceded. “So it wasn't the best comparison.”

She shook her head and turned back to the window. Dave caressed the steering wheel with his thumbnail, wondering where Gretchen was, what she was doing, wishing he could be there with her, far away from Rockin’ Randy and
The Bridges of Madison County.
He thought of the subway turnstile, the thrilling
chunk
it made as you pushed your way through, into that musty, gum-paved underground world.

“Turn right at Cumberland Farms,” Julie muttered.

Rockin Randy lived in Chestnut Gardens, an old-fashioned apartment complex that consisted of six or seven squat brick buildings laid out along a cul-de-sac near Echo Lake. It was another beautiful night, planes blinking overhead, fireflies rising like dreamy sparks from the grass outside Randy's unit.

“2B,” Julie told him as they approached the front door.

“Or not 2B,” he added, more out of reflex than a desire to make a joke.

She shook her head. “Explain to me again why you didn't graduate from college.”

“That is the question,” he declared, in his best Shakespearean baritone.

In spite of herself, Julie smiled.

“You're a real idiot,” she informed him, as if this were something to be proud of.

“Thank you,” he said, pressing the buzzer.

Dave almost didn't recognize Randy when he opened the door. Sleepy eyed, dressed in khaki shorts, a faded blue T-shirt with radio station call letters printed across the front, and rubber flip-flops, his hair untamed by lubricant, the DJ bore an uncanny resemblance to a normal human being who had just woken up from a nap. Dave felt bad about comparing him to Hitler. Randy scratched his head and blinked a few times, as though the twilight hurt his eyes.

“You must be Julie,” he said, sticking out his hand. “Your dad's a cool guy.”

“Cool?”
Julie seemed genuinely astonished by this concept. “Are we talking about my biological father?”

Randy backtracked. “Not cool in the usual sense. He's just, I don't know, off in his own category.”

“That's one way of putting it,” Julie agreed.

Randy's eyes narrowed with concentration as he shifted his attention to Dave. He brought his thumb and index finger to his forehead and maneuvered them as though adjusting a knob.

“I know you,” he said. “I just can't figure out from where.”

“I'm a wedding musician. I play with a band called the Wishbones. I saw you at the Westview last month.”

Randy tilted his head, framing Dave between his hands like a photographer. What he saw seemed to startle him. He glanced from Dave to Julie, then back to Dave again, as though something fishy were afoot.

“You look different without your tuxedo,” he said.

“You look different, too,” Dave told him.

“No shit.” Randy clapped him on the shoulder, shaking his head in cosmic wonderment. “Small fuckin’ planet, man. Small fuckin’ planet.”

Entering the DJ's living room, Dave experienced an immediate jolt of recognition, a funny feeling that if he'd had an apartment of his own, it would look a lot like this—simultaneously spartan and unkempt, a cool place to hang out and listen to music, if you weren't too particular about things like dust and crumbs and dirty socks draped over the lampshade like melted clocks. There was a big unframed poster of Miles Davis taped to the wall above the entertainment console; the other walls were occupied floor-to-ceiling by homemade cinder-block-and-pine-board shelves packed tight with CDs, tapes, albums, and 45s, all of them arranged by category and in alphabetical order.

“I'd offer you something to drink,” Randy told them, “but I haven't been out to the store in a couple of weeks. I'm afraid to open the refrigerator and find out what's inside.”

He pulled up a plastic milk crate and sat down on top of it, leaving the couch for his visitors. It was a green velour monster, balding in the high-traffic areas and mottled with uninviting stains. Dave sat down next to Julie and tried to ignore the elastic waistband of a pair of jockey shorts stuffed in the crevice between two cushions. The familiar blue and yellow stripes identified them as Fruit of the Loom, the brand Dave had been wearing since the day he graduated from diapers.

“The place is kind of a mess,” Randy admitted. “I've got this insane schedule, you know? Full-time day job, plus the DJ gig on weekends, and then the radio show on top of everything else.”

“Radio show?” said Dave.

Randy shook his head, apparently mystified by his own life. “In Bridgeport fuckin’ Connecticut, if you can believe that. Every other Thursday from two to six in the morning. Randy by Starlight. It's a jazz show for insomniacs, truck drivers, and people who work graveyard.”

“Bridgeport?” said Dave. “That's like two hours away.”

“More like an hour and a half. They got this great listener-supported station up there. Anyone can apply for a show. There's not a lot of competition for the 2
A.M.
slots.”

Julie seemed concerned. “So you drive up there at midnight, do your show, then drive back at six in the morning and put in a full day at Prudential?”

Randy nodded. “The Fridays after the show are brutal for me. I just drag myself around like a dead man for eight hours. That's why you caught me napping just now.”

“It can't pay very well,” Dave speculated.

“Doesn't pay at all.”

“So why do you do it?”

“Because I'm the man,” Randy replied, as though this were the most obvious reason in the world. “I spin the wax. I have no idea why you're driving through Connecticut at four in the morning, but that's my music jumping out of your radio, man. What could be cooler than that?”

“What kind of stufft”

“Bebop mostly. Bird, Miles, Dizzy. The usual suspects. I'll feature lesser-known guys too, the sidemen who held their own with the greats. Or else I do birthday or death anniversary shows or just let the music reflect my mood. Last night was a tribute to Bill Evans.”

“Wow,” said Dave. “I wish I'd heard it. I'm not too familiar with his stuff, but what I've heard blows me away.”

“I taped it,” Randy said. “I'll make you a copy.”

“Really?”

“No problem.”

Julie glanced at her watch and pointedly cleared her throat. “Boys,” she said, “I hate to interrupt, but our movie starts at nine.”

Randy's Sales pitch for the wedding gig was low-key, almost perfunctory, centered on his complete lack of personal investment in the work. He declared himself open to just about anything.

“I'm totally flexible about this. If you want me to wear a tux and play dinner music all night, I'll wear a tux and play dinner music all night. If you want me to dress in a gorilla suit and bang on a tin can between songs, I'm happy to discuss that as well, though I generally charge extra for making an asshole of myself.”

“We're not looking for an MC,” Dave advised him. “DJs should be seen and not heard.”

Randy didn't even blink. “No problem. I can do it either way, but I'm happy to just hang back and play the tunes.”

“And no conga lines,” Dave threw in for good measure.

“Why not?” Julie asked, a bit miffed by this instruction. “What's wrong with conga lines?”

“They're embarrassing.”

“No, they're not.” She turned to Randy for confirmation. “They can be a lot of fun.”

Randy held up both hands, refusing to arbitrate. “It's up to you guys. Speaking from experience, I've found that conga lines are a good way to break the ice at the tenser receptions. The ones where the families aren't mingling. It's kind of hard to ignore someone who's been shaking their booty in your face for the past five minutes.”