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Authors: Patrick Wensink

Tags: #Fiction, #Satire

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BOOK: Broken Piano for President
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Good morning, Hell
, Deshler Dean thinks after waking.

Hangovers are nothing new for our iron-livered friend, but that doesn’t mean they’re not annoying. Hangovers are some black hair floating in life’s martini. Worse yet, Dean would still be sleeping if not for this headache—a jagged rotation of skull-crushing bee stings and waves of calm.

Pain and peace.

Aches and angels.

The whole routine is so familiar. Familiar, except for this back seat.

Outside the car, birds start talking, morning sunshine grows full and windshield frost melts by the minute. That thin sheet of ice gets watery at the edges, white crystals evolving to something invisible.

Inside, he lifts from a leg-curled knot, yawns, rubs at stubble and glimpses around. The upholstery is white leather and smooth. The dash is wood-grained like antique tables. A golden hamburger swings from a thin chain around the rearview and captures Dean’s attention. The perfectly carved medallion seems heavy, freckled by solid gold sesame seeds. It locks his eyes for a few moments. He’s seen this thing before, but it’s still so foreign.

The morning takes further shape like so many before it: with
Broken Piano for President
scratching around the tape deck in his head.

Dry lips mouthing the words to his favorite song, Dean is maybe even a little proud for not sleeping outside again after such a boozy night.
This isn’t Hell
, he thinks, frisking his zipper.
For one, I wouldn’t have dry pants in Hell
. He smiles until both temples summon a lightning bolt of agony.

Even with heartburn sending lava up his chest, Dean’s anxious to tell friends about this caper.

Waking up in an expensive car. Wow. This could be
—he pauses until the swelling skull softens—
Hall of Fame material.
This hangover morning is fast turning fine and rosy, filling with comforting plans for bacon, eggs and coffee.

Pints of coffee. With a sprinkle of sugar. No cream. A hot gulp so bitter it’ll shock away any headache for miles. Coffee sounds like magic as he admires his breath forming in the frigid air.

Dangling, that hamburger blinks golden Morse code. It’s all so familiar. Maybe.

Concerns of automobile jewelry and familiarity flash away when Deshler makes a serious mistake. Dean commits an error that might just punch a one-way ticket to federal prison. It’s a gaffe he doesn’t even know he’s committed until it’s over: Deshler Dean simply looks at the front passenger seat.

There, he sees it.

Or her.

Dean’s not sure how to classify this.

He rubs both eyes like a mirage, but this isn’t the desert. First off, it’s bone-breaking cold. Secondly, there’s just no escaping this disaster in the car’s white leather bucket seat. Period.

Good morning, Hell.

Dean coughs once.

He coughs louder.

He rips a long, fake cough. A bronchitis bark. Nothing moves but the burger around the mirror.

His throat drops to its normal Paul Bunyan growl, “Hello? Are-are you okay? Miss?” A hesitant hand shakes her shoulder with less-than-lifelike results. “Oh, shit.”

That settles things. He is not alone. Or, technically, he is. Do dead women count?

Broken Piano
crashes back through Dean’s mind. The tune helps him focus and can’t be unstuck. The drums are roadside bombs and the guitar squeals like 747 tires touching down. Most people say it’s the worst song ever written.

Dean takes that as a compliment.

Sunshine warms a hole in the iced windshield. It highlights Dean’s hands—fisted tight this whole time. His fingers sting and he is positive this morning isn’t Hall of Fame worthy.

 
  • One year ago:
    Dunkin’ Donuts
    .

Normally, this wouldn’t have been a problem. However, he woke up to a stunned morning manager kicking his feet. In a fit of drunken grace, apparently, Deshler broke into the locked shop without tripping an alarm and passed out on some sacks of flour. He escaped handcuffs by a cruller-width.

 

 
  • Four years ago:
    Marketing Theory 402.

Deshler had no idea why he was standing in front of the class, but realized everyone was staring. His panic kicked in when Professor Adlaf spoke up, “That was an excellent presentation, Mister Dean, truly original. But now I’d like to ask you a few questions about Guerrilla Marketing if I may.”

 

 
  • Two months ago:
    Mid-Fellatio
    .

Quick tip: If you come to consciousness with a short brunette between your legs, nothing kills the mood quicker than: “Have we met?”

Dean again glances at his problem. The corpse’s blonde hair is a deep red stain, brown in the center. Her posture is stiff, wearing a thin black top. She’s young and would be cute, if not for the whole dead-thing.

There is a stun in Dean’s thinking, in his heartbeat, in his memory.
Focus,
he tells himself, but those old gag reflexes kick in.
Focus.
Whenever something serious happens, his brain changes channels—it thinks only of the band.
Focus.
Dean remembers the high school nurse saying something about needing Ritalin. He finally admits she might have been on to something.

Buying a minute or two to sort things out, edgy fingers snatch cheap cigarettes from a jacket pocket. “Easy, easy,” Dean whispers, eyeing the blood-soaked girl. This stranger’s car gets more uncomfortable each passing moment. “Retrace your steps, there’s always a logical explanation,” his voice turns spiky with panic, lighting the smoke. “For, you know, stabbing someone.”

Our hero is a sliver of gristle and a mushroom cloud of hair. Exhaling smoke, Dean—ever the hungover mathematician—is fifty percent sure he didn’t kill this woman.

But still, his skin develops a shiver and his jaw clutches like those fists. Without any notice, the most important thing in his life, the band, feels distant and hazy—a trick door in a dream.

“Okay, lady,” he says, calm, like they chat on the phone every night. Or did, until her heart turned to meat. “I went to the bar with my bandmates, had a
few
beers…”

Thursday is Man’s Night and Pabst Blue Ribbon is a dollar, which is always a dangerous start. That’s how arms grow mystery bruises. That’s how wallets come up missing. Dollar beers are how people wake up next to dead girls.

The car’s hood is red and laced with thin ice. Dean’s flesh seems to be laced with the same frost. He whispers, head shaking, smoke trailing, “…and now,
this
.”

This
happens a lot when Deshler drinks. Not so much ending up next to dead people, but waking somewhere he never intended. Friends call Dean the Cliff Drinker. Meaning, when our hero goes out and has more than two, he falls off a boozy edge and forgets everything. Whole evenings are redacted from memory like confidential documents. Doesn’t matter if it’s white wine, whiskey or hefeweizen—Dean’s recollections usually end up in the same state of disrepair. He cannot remember a time when he wasn’t a Cliff Drinker. Shocking, right? Not since before he and his brother snuck a flask into a rock concert the night Dad went away in an ambulance.

Dreams of dark coffee completely dead now, Dean’s parched mouth is flavored like nine-volt batteries. Smacking gritty gums and looking out the window, this part of town doesn’t look like somewhere he’d normally hang out—the buildings are clean and new, there are sidewalks and all the stoplights work. The car is in a parking lot and hangs among the smell of wet grass and fryer grease.

Dean’s teeth attack his fingernails. The gnawing begins, begging for a little clarity. There is an urge to push all this worry away, there’s an urge for another dollar beer.

From that window, the backside of a giant blue and yellow dome looks familiar. It’s impossible to miss Bust-A-Gut Hamburgers’ blister-shape, even from its rear parking lot, even from the back seat of a strange car, even with a dead body blocking your view.

Dean knows he needs to move fast. It’s only a matter of time, he realizes, until some teen fry cook discovers this mess. Prison doors slam in his mind. Guards throw away keys and issue buckets for toilets. Denim uniforms and forced haircuts. The possibility of thick concrete walls separating him and the band races a spark across his brain.

The woman’s butcher shop scalp reminds Dean of standing in front of an audience with the band’s sound whipping through him. Some nights, pushing the group further, he imagines he’s singing so hard—
making the crowd listen so hard
—his head bursts into a cherry pie mess like this. That sensation doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it smolders like sex.

The bloody head does not smolder any sensations but panic in Dean.

Witnesses
, he thinks,
there are no witnesses. It’s the perfect crime…or non-crime, whatever.
Double checking for wandering eyes, his nose jams into the cold glass. He breathes smooth. The coast is clear. “I didn’t do anything.” He rubs throbbing eyes again and massages numb hands. “I’m not capable of this.” With pressure easing off his skull, he says, “Okay, I don’t know who did that to you, but I’m sorry. It’s time to go. There’s band practice tonight.”

Deshler loves Lothario Speedwagon.

When not passing out in strange places, that band dominates the Cliff Drinker’s attention. Dean knows he’ll die if he doesn’t hear Henry thump out the first notes of
Broken Piano
one more time. The Cliff Drinker’s body will rust and rot if Pandemic’s drums don’t shatter vibrations up his spine.

Lothario Speedwagon is the lone good thing in life. Pretty much every day since childhood Dean would have gladly
traded places with a gored stranger. But then he formed a band and started singing. He wrote lyrics. He did unmentionable things on stage. Dean refuses to lose that.

Shifting against the cold, stiff seats—inching toward the door and a continued, sweet life as a singer—something sharp jabs his ass. An icicle breath holds, slipping a hand into a back pocket, digging out a mangled screwdriver. The tool’s been jammed and gouged until the fine silver point is a stump.

He inspects the shiny screwdriver. “A blunt object,” newscasters and reporters could call it. He nearly forgot the scrambled pile of bloody hair riding shotgun and adds the two together.

I couldn’t have
, he thinks, picturing the amount of force necessary to stab someone. He can barely do a pushup.
Impossible
.

Our hungover mathematician is now about eighteen percent sure he didn’t kill the blonde woman, which makes the gravel kick up that much harder when he pops open the door and sprints off.

Run
, he thinks.

Do not stop
.

Jaywalk if you have to.

Unused leg muscles cringe and catch fire. His cheeks and nose go numb cold. His eyes dry from the air. Dean’s freedom sprint only gets halfway across the lot before he remembers the
blunt object
tattooed with prints and DNA. It’s still in the back seat.

He turns and slowly, casually, wanders back to the bright red car housing a bright red girl up front.

Move-move-move. Witnesses will not think this is cool.

Witnesses will not listen to reasonable explanations.

Witnesses will call police.

At the car, that cigarette drops to the ground. Dean’s eyes bloom wide, staring at the passenger seat. His aching brain has been working hard to catch up all morning, but now needs no explaining.

Good morning, Hell
.

“Ow, my head,” a voice from the gutter of a woman’s throat says. Bold green eyes flip on and off. “I better not be late for work, Deshler.”

BOOK: Broken Piano for President
7.54Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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