Broken Piano for President (31 page)

“Well, I’m not sure how much I have riding on anything. I might be fired at Winters…maybe the other guys, too. Everyone’s pissed.”

“Just stay focused, okay?”

“Did you crash here?”

“
Yes
.” She rubs swollen eyes. “I couldn’t take your snoring so I slept on the couch.” She flops down at the foot of Dean’s bed and kicks a pile of pants across the room. “Our kids wouldn’t get a minute of sleep, if we had some. What with Daddy sawing away—”

“Please don’t talk like that. Just remind me again where this contract came from,” he says, carefully holding the white paper like it was blood-soaked.

“Dean, Jesus,” she hisses and spikes eyes in his direction. Deshler watches the tight, angry lines in her face melt as she warms. It looks like sympathy. “I went to the Beef Club and…” She rubs at the gash. “Aren’t you tired of this? Don’t you think we can find an easier way?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Why is it always like this?”

“I wish I knew,” he says, knowing exactly why.

“So, everyone at the club said you were shitty drunk, spilling people’s drinks, crying. I’ve never seen the entire room so mad at one person. They were all talking about your
television appearance
. You’re lucky nobody kicked your ass again. I mean, come on, Dean. You’ve got a dod gamned job to do.”

“Very ladylike.”

“Jobs
to do, I should say. You know?” Her eyes try to hammer something home. He doesn’t get it.

“Like I said, those jobs aren’t necessarily mine anymore. Plus, I don’t remember that TV thing.”

“Well, forget about it. I’ll take care of loose ends. We need you to focus.”

Malinta leans her long giraffe frame across the bed and sinks her head into Deshler’s lap. Her legs curl together. Dean eyes over the contract, then her face. Malinta’s wound is hot and wet against his stomach. He dives in and kisses her. She clips Deshler’s lip with teeth.

“Oh, God, you taste terrible,” she says with a bitter face. “I think you got sick last night, hon.”

Deshler gives a relief pitcher’s nod. “That’s not out of the question.” He lights another cigarette and shares with Malinta. Things are silent and musty in the bedroom. This moment is good, wholesome and rare in Dean’s life. If the rest of the day were this calm, it’d be beautiful. But something inside the Cliff Drinker can’t help but kick it in the ribs. “Seriously, what’s with the contract?”

“What’s with the
band
? Lothario Speedwagon?”

“I, well, sorry. I guess I should have said something.”

“So many.” She gnaws her cheek for a bit. “Secrets.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, I mean, you’re an artist? Come on, I’m supposed to know everything about you. And according to that creepy Antonio guy, you’re a really brilliant one. You and I, we’re more than all this. Seriously, what else are you hiding?”

“So, wait, when did we meet last night?”

“Down the street…at a bar, that nasty dive, the Purple Bottle, you know? And you were sitting at a booth with this nerdy little guy and he’s pointing at
that
,” she finger flicks the paper.

“Who?”

“This guy, the record company guy, um,” she snatches the contract and runs a French manicured nail down it. “
McComb
, Antonio McComb. He looked like a troll, a science geek troll. And you guys were really deep in conversation.” She hands back the paper. “I had to practically scream to get your attention. But you were
really
stupid drunk.”

“So is this an honest-to-God record contract?”

“Beats me. He had me sign as witness. I don’t know a contract from a dinner menu. I can’t believe you’re in a band. You are such a little shit.”

Dean’s eyes go big and silly.

“Shut up. I’m talking about
trust
, are you familiar?”

“Look, it’s not. It’s…” He hisses the cigarette stub into the beer bottle. “Jesus, I don’t think the band is even together anymore. I don’t know if there
is
a Lothario Speedwagon.” This cranks the distortion pedal in his heart to MAX.

“Who’s talking about your band?”

“We…I…” Dean’s muscles go tight. “Fine.”

He doesn’t realize how helpless he looks. It forces Malinta to take a long breath. It forces her to rub her hands together, hoping nerves disappear. “Well, if it makes you feel any better, there’s only ever been one obese president.”

“Merci.”

“What?”

“
Thank you
.”

“Seriously. I’m talking stuck-in-a-bathtub-fat. Not Bill-Clinton-Chubby.” Her lips pucker and whistle a sweet note. “Seems pretty good, one out of forty-four.”

“Huh?”

“That son of a bitch loved beef. All the obese presidents do. Roosevelt, Clinton, Taft.”

“That’s a big help.” He smiles and looks down at Malinta. Dean is getting used to having her in his life. A little surprised, he realizes how much he’s enjoying being with her. While, yes, booze is probably partially to blame, it’s tough recalling life before Malinta Redding.

And that’s a good thing.

Winters’ and Bust-A-Gut’s corporate offices are one mile apart. Many years ago, when Bust-A-Gut was drawing blueprints for its headquarters, Winters’ skyscraper stretched seventy stories tall. The Globo-Goodness Corporation Family of Corporations sunk a
seventy-one
story tower in the ground as close as they could to their rival.

The Winters family has been trying to find a way to add two more stories ever since.

The city below these behemoths is freckled with parking garages, shoe stores, homeless people, taverns and the Beef Club. One storefront is under construction on the tight road connecting the two buildings. The fresh awning is striped white and red. It says—“Healthy Wally’s: A Division of Health Watch International.”

Inside, construction workers install an enormous rice cooker, three grills and a walk-in tofu refrigerator.

At thirty other locations around this country, the exact same plans are used to hammer together replicas. Each one is boxy and plain and clean enough for surgery. Every building has an enormous, cross-eyed Wally the Moose statue greeting customers.

The failure rate for a new business in America is higher than the divorce rate. The failure rate for a restaurant is even worse. But the proprietor of these establishments has an edge. She knows success in the restaurant business relies heavily on killer marketing and word of mouth. Actual food is a distant third.

She’s ready to strike, and almost has everything in place. She just needs the word of mouth.

Little Delia Ellery splashes thick drops of sweat on the tour bus floor. She calculates an escape route as the engine roars and the passengers jerk unbalanced. The bald cameraman nearly drops all that expensive equipment.

Delia retreats to a bunk after she realizes the only exit is guarded by one of the Russians—the girl with the gun. The Space Burger tour manager can’t focus with all this Kremlin talk.

Keith stomps up the cramped bus unzipping the bloody jumpsuit. He turns back to his sister as she leans against the door and rattles off a cayenne stream of Russian.

Keith slips out of the suit and past Delia’s bunk. The one-armed woman’s concentration hemorrhages from the realization that fresh human blood smells sweet and unlike anything from the butcher shop in her hometown.

Where are the police
? she thinks.

Minutes earlier, Keith and Sonja took a deep breath when the tidal wave of frightened hamburger fanatics flushed away from the stage. Sonja grabbed Dimitri and Delia’s frightened bodies by the collars, leading them back to the green bus. Lathered shiny and red, Dimitri apparently survived the gunfire. Sonja yelled at Hamler and walked the pack through the Children’s Playland toward the bus.

Keith fired his pistol in the air once and hollered some scrambled letters back to his bodyguard, then pointed the pistol at a fiberglass statue of Christopher Winters. “Dude, uh sir,” Hamler said in a loud, distracted tone. “You. Mister cameraman hiding behind the statue,” he said as a young bald guy with a black video camera popped his skull from behind the glossy ketchup red suit. “The guy with the gun says, unless you want to die, you are coming with us. Cool?” Hamler paused before the final word, shuffling the puzzle pieces together, realizing what a slaughter he just witnessed. One he should have stopped. Way to be a take-charge guy.

The man’s squeaky voice probably didn’t sound American to the Cosmonaut terrorists. It came out tiny, like a flute—a flute that just shit its pants. “Whatever you say comrades, I’m not the enemy. I don’t want to die. Tell them, tell them I don’t want to die. I’m a journalist.”

Slightly dizzy and surprisingly calm, Henry said, “Yeah, I think wanting to live is implied. Come on.”

The pack easily strolled to the idling tour bus where the driver, an older woman with red hair and bad skin, napped in a bunk. No police firefight. No outraged fans. Just the quiet scatter of a hundred carloads fleeing for their lives.

Juan Pandemic/Timothy Winters pulls off his mustache the way oil painters make clouds. His delicate stroke leaves a tattoo of inflamed skin under the nose. He slaps the lip fur on the window, breathes fog across the glass and draws two eyes as the Los Angeles cityscape zips past the bus.