The Wishbones (20 page)

“What's the theme?” Dave asked.

“Big-time stuff,” Cookie chimed in. “One-world government and why it can't happen here.”

Just then a bunch of guys in softball uniforms piled into the room. Genial Jim and Cookie excused themselves to say hello to the newcomers, leaving Dave to glare at Artie in speechless bewilderment.

“Don't start with me,” Artie warned him.

“Do you know what these people
are?”

“I do now.”

“You didn't before?”

Artie shook his head. “It was that douche bag Lenny. He called and said his friend was looking for a band for his TV show. We didn't get too deep into the politics. I mean, shit, Dave, the guy calls himself Genial fucking Jim. I figured he was a comedian or something.”

“He's a riot all right.”

They watched Buzzy emerge from the kitchen, smiling ecstatically, a beer stein in one hand and a plate in the other. The plate held a single enormous sausage, pinkish-gray in color, and nothing else. Lenny trailed behind him, carrying the bass and garment bag like a roadie.

“By the way,” Artie reported. “Ian canceled on me.”

“Oh, great.”

“It's not really a problem. We're only slated for two numbers, and Jim wants to sing both of them himself.”

Lenny gave the signal to begin taping a few minutes after seven. The Wishbones struck up an improvised
Tonight Show-style
intro while Cookie did his best Ed McMahon voice-over through Ian's microphone.

“From Larry's Wursthaus in the heart of the New World Order, it's
The Genial Jim Show
, with your host, Genial Jim, and Jim's guests, Al from Pennsylvania and Otto from New Hampshire. Rest assured, friends,
The Genial Jim Show
is
not
brought to you by the United Nations, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, the Trilateral Commission, the OJ. Simpson Defense Team, or anyone named Goldberg. And now heeeere's … Jimmy!”

The Banquet Room burst into hearty applause as Genial Jim bounded onto the stage, still wearing his Tyrolean hat, and took a seat behind a green metal desk. A narrow glass vase containing a single red rose decorated one corner of the otherwise bare desktop.

“All right,” he said with a big smile, pushing his palms against the air to suppress the ovation. “Good crowd tonight. We've got a great show coming up. Two friends from the great states of Pennsylvania and New Hampshire are here, and they're gonna tell us about plans they're making to resist the coming one-world government, so you won't want to miss that. But before we bring them out, I'd like to do one of my Top Five Lists.” The room erupted with shouts of approval; Genial Jim's lists were apparently a popular feature of the show. “I know, I know, one of these days I'm going to have to kick David Letterman's butt for ripping off my idea.”

Cookie climbed onto the stage with an armful of posters,
which he laid facedown on the desk. He cleared his throat, signaling his readiness to proceed.

“All right,” said Genial Jim. “Without further ado, here are the top five reasons why gays
should
be allowed in the U.S. military.”

Cookie lifted the top poster of the stack and showed it to the crowd.

“It's upside down,” someone called out.

Cookie flipped it over.

“Reason Five,” said Genial Jim. “They need something to do when they retire from the ATF.”

The crowd hooted; Cookie tossed the poster over his shoulder and reached for the next one.

“Reason Four: Bill Clinton would finally have a good reason to serve his country.”

Cookie presented the third card, but Genial Jim was laughing so hard he couldn't read it. He had to signal for a time-out.

“You want me to take over?” Cookie asked him.

Genial Jim shook his head. “That's okay. I'm better now.” He wiped the grin off his face like a schoolkid. “Reason Three:
Hillary
Clinton would finally have a good reason to serve
her
country.”

Dave had played a lot of weird gigs in his time—sad weddings, dances where nobody danced, a graduation party at which his amp exploded—but this was, without a doubt, the low point of his career, the nadir, the crawl space below the basement. He should have just packed up his guitar and left—they all should have—but some inexplicable sense of obligation kept him standing there, frozen by a paralysis familiar from bad dreams.
I'm just a musician
, he reminded himself.
This has nothing to do with me.

“Reason Two: Janet Reno looks good in green.”

By now the audience had reached a fever pitch of enjoyment. Genial Jim turned toward the bandstand.

“Drumroll, maestro.”

Stan looked at Artie. Artie nodded. With an obvious lack of enthusiasm, Stan produced a drumroll.

“And now, the Number One Reason why gays
should
be allowed in the U.S. military—”

Cookie flipped the poster, his shoulders already heaving with unsuccessfully suppressed mirth.

“Blacks are allowed, so what the heck's the difference!”

The crowd roared; Cookie dispatched the last poster and sat down in a folding chair set up next to the desk.

“You know what?” he told his boss. “That may have been your best list yet.”

“You say that every show,” Genial Jim reminded him.

“I always mean it,” Cookie insisted.

“It's possible,” Genial Jim conceded. “I just keep getting better.”

“I see we have a new addition tonight,” Cookie said, pointing his finger at the Wishbones.

“That's right. These handsome fellows are our new house band.”

Dave saw Lenny's camera swing in his direction and quickly bent down to tie his shoe.

“Why don't you sing a song with them?” Cookie suggested.

“Oh, I couldn't do that,” said Genial Jim, suddenly the picture of shyness and humility.

“Sure, you could. Why don't you sing that John Denver song, ‘Country Roads.’ I know you've always wanted to do that on the show.”

“It's true. He writes pretty good songs for a tree-hugging, granola-sucking pansy.” Genial Jim appealed directly to the crowd. “What do you think? Is a song in order?”

Cookie waved his arms, inciting applause. Genial Jim didn't seem to notice. He seemed as surprised and touched as he would have been by a spontaneous ovation.

“What the heck!” he said, leaping up from his desk. “It's my show. I can sing if I want to.”

Al from Pennsylvania and Otto from New Hampshire both wore paper bags over their heads, a ploy Buzzy found hysterical despite the fact that he had to take a wicked piss. He didn't know how long he'd be able to last before laughing out loud, the way he had during Genial Jim's embarrassingly terrible rendition of that pathetic John Denver tune. As it was, he kept snickering under his breath, despite Artie's repeated attempts to glare him into submission.

“I've got a dozen AK47s in my basement, a rocket launcher in the trunk of my car, and personal access to an armored personnel carrier in the event of an invasion by the Blue Helmets,” Al from Pennsylvania boasted through his mouth hole. He was a rangy guy in camouflage pants and a khaki T-shirt; his right leg bounced up and down as he spoke, which only made Buzzy that much more aware of the fact that his own bladder was on the verge of exploding.

“An armored personnel carrier?” Genial Jim's voice hovered somewhere between admiration and disbelief. “How do you get hold of one of those?”

Al grinned inside the bag. “Let's just say I have some good friends down at the armory.”

“Same goes for New Hampshire,” Otto added in his laryngytic wheeze. “The armed forces of this country are crawling with white Christian warriors who are not about to lay down and die when Boutros Boutros-Ghali decides it's time to impose his globalist tyranny on American soil.”

The need to laugh was an itch that demanded scratching, but Buzzy wasn't so drunk that he didn't know that laughing at Nazis—even Nazis with bags on their heads—was probably a bad idea,
at least in present company. As quietly as he could, he unhooked the strap on his bass and set the instrument carefully against his amp. Ignoring the question on Dave's face, he stepped off the bandstand and tiptoed through the obstacle course of tables, chairs, and combat boots in the Banquet Room, smirking as he went. He was conscious of drawing a few dirty looks, but the hostility of these armchair storm troopers wasn't a major concern of his at the moment. He burst through the swinging doors and broke into a full-scale trot down the hallway, laughing all the way to the bathroom.

Unzipping his fly, he groaned with a relief so intense it was indistinguishable from pleasure. It occurred to him that he'd been drinking steadily for close to four hours and hadn't taken a piss since he'd started. It had to be some kind of record.

Pissing is an underrated pleasure
, he thought, listening to the satisfying hiss of urine colliding with porcelain.
I feel like a fucking fire hose.

He had barely gotten started when the skinhead with the bad complexion pushed open the door and entered the bathroom. Buzzy nodded over his shoulder to acknowledge the new arrival, but the kid responded with a sixteen-year-old's idea of an icy stare.

Buzzy returned to the business at hand, mildly perplexed by the presence of the kid so close to his back. There were, after all, two unoccupied urinals at his disposal.

“You think something's funny?” the kid snarled.

Buzzy ignored the question. His stream had begun to abate, but he wasn't anywhere near finished. A lot of piss can build up in three and a half hours.

“You hear me, dickhead? I asked you a question.”

“I heard you,” Buzzy sighed.

Buzzy was forty-one years old, and he'd spent much of the past
quarter century in biker bars and at metal shows. He'd slam-danced, rumbled, and gotten into his share of drunken altercations. He was retired from all that, but his old instincts remained intact. His body filled with a strange sense of calm.

“I saw that smartass look on your face,” the kid told him, his voice tight with fury. “Believe me, cocksucker, nobody comes here and disrespects Genial Jim like that. Especially not a faggot like you.”

“What look?” Buzzy replied, still buying time. He couldn't believe how long it was taking for him to empty out. “I don't know what look you mean.”

The kid shoved him hard in the back. Buzzy stumbled forward, only keeping his balance by slapping his free hand against the wall in front of him.

“During the song. I fucking
saw
it.”

Buzzy heard the hysterical edge in the kid's voice. Whatever was going to happen was going to happen soon, probably before he was ready. He didn't see much choice but to engage in a preemptive strike.

“What can I tell you, Spike?” He turned around and calmly pissed on the kid's leg, waggling his dick for maximum coverage. “Genial Jim sucks dog shit.”

Despite his shaved head and weight lifter's physique, the kid was just a kid; he couldn't get over the fact that he'd just been pissed on. He stared down at his splattered pants in amazement, as though time had stopped. Buzzy almost felt sorry for him. He'd had a bad complexion as a teenager and knew how much it hurt.

“You're guh—” the kid began, but the rest of his sentence collided with Buzzy's fist.

The impact was like nothing Buzzy had ever experienced before. He felt everything crumple at once—his hand, the kid's face. The poor kid stumbled backwards, his head slamming into the paper towel dispenser. He didn't actually collapse; he just sat down
on the floor, put one hand over his mouth and nose, and started to cry like a baby.

Something terrible had happened to his right hand—Buzzy knew it right away. He had to put his dick away and zip up with his left, and it was harder than he expected. When he was finished he looked down at the bawling skinhead and shook his head.

“You're lucky,” he said. “Twenty years ago I would've kicked your teeth down your throat.”

At the door he turned around. Blood was oozing from between the kid's fingers.

“And do yourself a favor,” he added. “Get some fucking Clearasil.”

By the time they got to the hospital, Buzzy's hand bore a faint but unmistakable resemblance to a baseball glove. It was too painful for him to let the injured arm hang at his side, so he held it in front of him, cradled against his chest.