Broken Piano for President (36 page)

• The cosmonauts are a hot topic on talk radio and news-centric cable stations. People nowhere near associated with Winters Olde-Tyme Hamburgers end up in huge screaming matches—always a ratings grabber. One faction says that since Yuri and Pavel were essentially lying to the American people, we should forget them and not give this matter any more attention. Otherwise we’re just supporting murderers. The opposite faction says not to forget the fallen actors. Yes, they were lying, or so Dimitri claims (Winters Olde-Tyme Public Relations has denied comment, saying the allegations are “fictional.”) This faction wants people to remember that two innocent men died and there are crazed murderers with a bus out there. They call for a boycott of the burger giant and anything Russian, which basically comes down to top-shelf vodka and furry winter hats.
  

• The final scene in the collage is a kaleidoscope of sunshine, vegetables and tofu burgers. The pristine white and red awning over a local Healthy Wally’s opens to the inside of the restaurant. There are a few dreadlocked customers ordering Flaxseed Soy Shakes and Broiled Spinach Tots. An older man holds the door for a young, professionally-dressed woman. The restaurant is nearly empty. Business isn’t as good as the restaurant hoped. The skinny teller yawns. The finely dressed lady walks up, she is tall and looks like a giraffe. She mouths the words, “Salad Burger,” over our money-themed music.
  

She turns and we see Malinta Redding.

Deshler punches digits into a phone halfway through another Beef Club night. After a few Rusty Knives there’s a familiar magnetic tug in his pelvis. “Bon soir!”

“Son of a bitch.”

“That’s no way for a lady to talk.”

“This is the call I get?” Malinta says. Her voice is dense and Antarctic.

“Hey, c’mon, what are you doing tonight?”

“I’m going to drink some tea, watch
Nightbeat
, put on my pajamas and go to bed…alone. There is a very important meeting tomorrow.”

Deshler clamps both eyes shut until the right words emerge, the ones that will change her mind. “Well that’s too bad.
Nightbeat
is really boring.”

“Is this all you have for me, Dean?”

“Malinta, hey,” the rest of his plea thrashes against voices at the Club. Yes, okay, she sees right through his call. It’s about sex. Big surprise. But a tender side of Dean—a side Gibby Haynes would have used as a urinal cake—knows what else sex means and he craves it. With sex comes that closeness, that calm. Malinta, by just being herself, pushes out all the unwanted anxiety from Dean’s life.

He’s come to depend on it more heavily than he realizes.

Malinta’s voice is knife-edged: “Sounds like things are picking up there. You’d better let me go now.”

“Hey, whoa, hey. Are you mad? We’ve been getting along so great.”

“Deshler…there’s too much going on to keep catching you up.”

“I just wanted to see if you and I could hang out…you know.”

There is no patience in her voice: “How much longer do you think I can do this? In case you haven’t noticed, alcohol is starting to destroy certain plans—”

“Catch me up? Baby, I’m winning this biathlon. I’m on top of my shit. I’m busting my balls doing—” He turns to the corner out of earshot. “Doing
two
jobs right now. Don’t you think I deserve a little slack? I sure as hell think so.”

Dean is balanced against a corner, pressed as far as possible from the joyous Beef Club sounds. An inside urge tells him to continue, to wear her down. The silent treatment will work, this urge says.

That quiet holds and holds and holds.

“Today’s six months.”

That quiet holds and holds and holds, and it scratches at Dean—it draws blood.

“Six months until what?” Deshler’s throat braids tight during the silent hum. He whispers, “Six months until
what
?”

She sighs.

“...’till what?”

The dead air opens raw: “I’m saying it’s our six month anniversary. I’m saying we’ve been dating, me and you, boyfriend and girlfriend, for
six
months now. And it feels like one random hookup after another. Does that sound like a healthy relationship to you?”

Six months?
The Cliff Drinker is shocked. He’d have guessed a month at most.

He answers truthfully. “I don’t think so.” Dean’s never minded the blackouts, mystery bruises and brutal hangovers. He can live with drunkenly landing a job and signing a record contract. But he finds it disappointing the Cliff Drinking style blocks out regular love and affection from a beautiful woman. Not to mention the bedroom stuff.

“No, you don’t. Well, I’m not going to sit around while you forget another half year. I’m a good person. You might not think so, but I am. And I don’t deserve to be treated like this. What if I got pregnant? What kind of world would we be bringing a kid into?”

“You’re not, right?”

“Good luck with your mission and all.”

“My what?”

“I’m not falling for this. I know you better, Dean. You’re not going to push me away by being a…a dick. And then pull this clueless, cutesy shit with me.”

“Easy.”

“You are not going to make me feel guilty again, because those days are long gone.”

“Okay,” he says. Dean’s redwood baritone grinds into sawdust.

“All I’ve wanted the last six months is to improve myself. To maybe have you make that trip with me.”

“That sounds nice.”

“But all I get in return is a big pile of shit—crap.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“Goodbye.”

There is nothing on the phone. The roomful of revelry sounds far off, though he could grab a Beef Clubber he’s so near.

Suddenly, Dean has no control over the way his neck sways or his eyes cross. He sips at a Rusty Knife and thinks,
Why the hell did she talk to Harry and Winters if she’s been holding this anger inside?
Deshler briefly chalks it up to women being a mystery, but he knows that’s not the whole deal. He hopes there isn’t a pea-sized deal brewing in her, either.

Our hero doesn’t get a chance to let this phone call sink in before he is interrupted. “Mister Dean,” his young assistant says, running to the distant corner. Austin has never been allowed in the Club and jerks his head like a pigeon. “Mister Dean, there’s something serious going on with the Cosmonaut Campaign.”

That old urge for control wants to snap at Austin, but Dean instead rubs both eyes and counts for several seconds. When he reaches five or ten, stress has eased.

“I know, it’s screwed. It’s dead. Take the high road, go home, man.”

“It’s not that. Mister Winters wants to see you in his office now.”

“It’s, like, ten.”

“Sir, I don’t want to scare you. But I heard some guys talking today.” Dean’s assistant looks around for eavesdroppers. “The cosmonauts are coming back to town.”

“What, do they want their paychecks before scurrying off to Russia?”

“No, sir.”

“Okay?”

“They’re coming back to kill you.”

“
Fan
tastic,” Dean says.

“Wait, what does that mean,” Timothy Winters says, wearing the toupee backward as a joke, eyes covered in hair, trying to get a cosmonaut to laugh. “Mission
objectives
?”

The bullet hole in the tour bus windshield spreads like tree roots. A constant white noise crinkles the cabin air, leaving moist highway scents and confusion. Keith has been at the wheel for the better part of the day. The sun sputters its final rays across the horizon. Luckily, the bus has been bullet-free since he inherited driving duties.

Dimitri could very well be dead. No one has checked for a pulse in hours.

“I think he just means they need a plan A, a plan B, and so on,” Henry says. His stomach suffers in empty pain. The bus ran out of food hundreds of miles back and no one’s mentioned stopping at a candy store. “It doesn’t exactly translate perfectly.”

(We need more gasoline before entering the city,) Keith yells back from the driver’s seat. (The bus will not travel much further.)

Keith enjoys piloting the monstrous machine. (Very similar to steering rocket from launch pad to space station,) he told Hamler earlier. (That is, if I was ever given chance to steer rocket. Real Dimitri always at control panel. Mister Big-Shot.)

“What did Keith say?” Pandemic asks. “He’s with me, isn’t he? He’s knows I’m black metal. I’m hardcore, baby.”

“No, dude, he was talking about fuel.” The undersides of Henry’s eyes build fatty lumps, his shoulders twist thick. The stress of interpretation and guns and buses and guilt erase his brainwaves down to pocket change. More than once he’s thought about curling up and crying. Exactly once, however, he’s thought about leaping out the bus window at eighty miles-an-hour.

Sonja, dark hair strung tight into a ponytail, turns to her brother. (Well, just stop at the next petrol station. Are you listening to the plan?) She stands and looks out the movie widescreen windshield. The road is a limitless dead stretch of uptilled farmland and naked trees on both sides. (Keith, are you paying attention to the mission objectives?)

(Sister, we are no longer in military. We have no mission objectives,) Henry deciphers him say. (We are…I do not know what we are. I no longer know who we are. We are not ourselves. Will any mission make us feel better?) Keith’s bony shoulders slump forward, like he’s hunched over a typewriter.

The cosmonauts stop and glance in Henry’s direction until he begins paying attention to what they are saying. They pick back up.

(The drive is making you weak. I will relieve your shift at the filling station. Your mind must be sharp for our mission. And, yes, we need a mission. We need a goal. Without one, our lives are wasted like comrades on space station.)

The bus plows on, heavy and shaky as a motel massage bed.

Timothy Winters’ voice quickly distills to a grainy hush. His hands cover his belly. “Henry, tell them I’ll be right back. Don’t go over the mission without me. I need to know.” Pandemic’s face wilts, nearly sucking down his tongue. “I’m gonna be sick, man.”

The wannabe Russian terrorist pushes his bandmate out of the booth. Hamler catches a full glimpse of his friend, a whisper of his old self. “Is it, you know, because of the
drugs
?”

“Yeah, man, you don’t have to whisper,” he says, wobbling to the bathroom. “It’s not some secret. This is what happens when you stop smoking
the
drugs
.” Veins in Pandemic’s arms and neck are deep blue tattoos. His scalp has a brushy growth of fresh hair, revealing a receding line.

Without warning, the bus jerks under the canopy of a quiet gas station. Around the pumps, dull neon yellow fills the bus. There’s nothing for miles except horizon, farmland and the faint purple sky of the city.

“About time,” Pandemic manages to spit up as the wheels chug to a stop and he bursts from the restroom. He gains balance by latching onto a countertop. “I need some fresh air.” His throat gurgles with evil, messy possibilities.