Broken Piano for President (39 page)

Standing, measuring this pain, Dean soaks up each awful ache.
You deserve this
, he thinks,
you had this coming
.

The vibratory blasts are so dense, Dean hardly notices his pants pocket buzzing. He ducks into a bus shelter to answer.

“Dean…McComb here.” The voice is tight and belongs to his new science geek troll friend at the record company. “How goes it? You talked to the other Lotharios?”

“Huh?” His hangover is dialed to black hole proportions. Matter disappears at algebraic rates.

“Dean, we talked about this one. The Suits, the big wigs at Moral Compass, get a little nervous simply handing over five hundred grand, my man. You know, they kind of like to catch their new acts live. Very hands-on management. The Purple Bottle is booked for tomorrow night. Tell all your friends. We can use a receptive crowd for the Lothario Speedwagon showcase. Trust me, the Suits have never seen anything like your band. They’ll flip.”

The wind hums through the tiny phone. “Excuse me?”

“Hello, Dean? This is Deshler Dean, right? Lead singer for Lothario Speedwagon. Signee to Moral Compass Records. Soon-to-be rich bastard. Does any of this fit the description, man?”

“What showcase? Lothario Speedwagon…the guys aren’t even in town. The band broke up.”

Husky silence.

His head slumps against the Plexiglas bus stop. A stiff drink sounds perfect.
My mind
, he thinks,
works so much better that way
.

“Do
not
pull my leg today, buddy,” the exec says with a car salesman’s tongue. “I’m fit to pop, I’m so
excited
for you guys. No pressure, but this is the deal breaker. But don’t sweat it. The day before I signed the Butthole Surfers to Capitol, they were way tighter wound than you.”

“Gibby?”

“Of course, they didn’t try to convince me that their band broke up, either.”

“
The
Butthole Surfers. Gibby Haynes?”

“Dean, hello? God, you are nervous. Remember going over the papers, you said those were the magic words. Anyone who signed the Surfers is good enough for you. We just talked about this
again
the other night, remember? At the Indian joint? I’m not a big fan of repeating myself.”

“I did?” Deshler says, crossing the record contract off the list of things he hallucinated.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that.”

“I
did!”

“So, anyhow, I hope you have something knockout planned for the show. But remember, these guys aren’t as—” A bus pulls up and roars next to Dean.

“What? I…I’m on the street, I missed that.”

“Not as hip. The Suits aren’t as hip as you and I. So, you know, tone it down a few notches. I think it’d be best for your career. You know, for the band.”

Dean thinks about his hero. Dean remembers reading a story about how Gibby was an honors student and captain of the basketball team in college. Haynes even landed a prestigious job at an accounting firm after graduation. The man’s life was set—success and money and a house on a cul-de-sac were easily within reach. Gibby, though, gave it up for the puke and sweat and scum of being a touring musician.

People needed to listen. Haynes sacrificed stability for art. He poured the piss wand all over it.

Dean thinks about the boardroom full of happy people he just left. He thinks about the boardrooms full of unhappy people at Winters and Bust-A-Gut—people who never seem to be satisfied with him, even though they say, “Good work.” People who want more from him, people who say, “Yesterday is history, what have you done for me lately?” People who say, “How’s your workload? Well, too bad, here’s more.”

Man,
he thinks.
I never want to step inside an office again. That shit isn’t for me. That shit isn’t for artists.

“Yeah, totally, we’ll knock ‘em out. We’ll, you know, blow that place away.” His head is a single pinprick from exploding. Lying thins Dean’s skin to slime.
But am I lying
? he wonders. “Yeah, man, we’ll be there at nine.”

“Dean, we discussed this, sound check is at eight. You guys need to play your best.”

What would Gibby do
? Dean thinks.

With no idea where his bandmates are, or if they will ever speak to him again, or who the guy on the other end of the phone is, Dean summons the shit-faced gospel preacher voice he uses at concerts—the one that makes people’s heads jerk back and pay attention: “Lothario Speedwagon will be there and ready, count on it.”

Nightbeat
begins the same way it does every episode. Sharon Smalley’s voice is cool and professional. A very popular anxiety drug over two-million Americans rely on may deliver explosive seizures. Which one? Stay tuned to
Nightbeat
. She says geologists think there may be a way to prevent a catastrophic volcano blast, but maybe not. Find out in our second half.

“But first,” our host says, “The drug epidemic sweeping our drive-through windows. Which drug and what drive-through? Find out after our commercial break.”

No sign of ads for Winters’ Flu Burger or Bust-A-Gut’s mozzarella madness. Plenty of airtime for department store clearance sales, anxiety medication that may or may not be linked to seizure and laptops.

“Methamphetamine in powder form, better known as crystal meth, is a serious problem,” Sharon tells us from behind the desk. “The government and pharmacists across the country have made it harder and harder to obtain over-the-counter cold-and-flu-medicines containing pseudoephedrine, the main ingredient in the drug’s production. However, America’s top hamburger chain recently made it much simpler.”

She reviews the same basic ideas covered a few pages back on meth’s production, popularity and effects. She sounds much more professional than that chapter, though.

“It’s cold and flu season in America and this year over three-million sniffly noses have turned to Winters Olde-Tyme Hamburgers for the cure. The chain’s
Flu Burger
is a hamburger laced with symptom-fighting medicine. However, the sauce’s major ingredient is the aforementioned pseudoephedrine.”

A greasy stack of meat and cheese, frosted in blue cough medicine, gets a pornographic close-up.

A man with a scatter of teeth and a complexion of purple-red scabs is interviewed. His caption reads:
Ryan Miller, Chattanooga, TN – Age 18 – Meth Addict
. “Yeah, we used tuh have trouble getting the cold medicine fer our lab. But then we got the idea tah use the Flu Sauce from Winters. It takes uz some werk, but we gidit jus right for crystal. After a while, we jus paid off the night manager for gallon buckets of it, so we did’n have to scrape it off the meat n’more.”

Sharon is back on screen. “And that is how a
methademic
begins. No one we interviewed saw the beginning. And nobody sees an end in sight. An unnamed source from the FDA claims the green light for this product was a snafu, a one-in-a-million glitch that should have never occurred. The FDA denied further comment to
Nightbeat
.

“This, of course, begs the question: ‘Didn’t Winters Olde-Tyme Hamburgers foresee this problem?’ A spokesperson claims that, no, they felt that was the FDA’s territory. The spokesperson, who appeared on our program last week and still wishes to remain anonymous, claims, and I quote, ‘Winters’ only interest is providing great taste and flu relief to hungry sickness sufferers, you ignorant
expletive deleted, expletive deleted, expletive deleted.
’

“However, recently, while preparing this piece, one Winters employee did step forward. She, too, requests anonymity.”

The woman’s voice is a scrambled bomb threat, electronically slowed down and gutted into a distorted grunt. It’s hard to understand the first few words. “—yeah, heck yes, we knew. Me? I was working on the development. I asked my supervisor if this was wrong and he assured me what’s good for the company is good for me. I even mentioned the possibility of this sauce being used for drugs, but they…they silenced me. How? Well, let’s just say I no longer work for dod gamned Winters Olde-Tyme Hamburgers.” The woman’s face is hidden under a shadow, it makes her look like a giraffe. Just above the eyes, when the dim light hits her just right, there is a thick scar, a healing wound on her left temple.

“When given this evidence, an official Winters Olde-Tyme Hamburger representative denied
Nightbeat
a comment, claiming they are taking the high road.”

The shot turns to a Winters restaurant with the caption:
Gresham, OR
. There is a line of thin, jittery men and women waiting under green and gray Victorian gables. They claw at crusty faces and welty arms.

“When we return, what can be done to stop this epidemic and who is to blame? On
Nightbeat
.”

The two minute and thirty-second break is filled with an entire Healthy Wally’s commercial. Its slogan says: “At Healthy Wally’s, the only thing you’ll get addicted to is better health.”

Dean comes home and a birthday card is slid under the apartment door. It’s four months before his actual birthday. The card has a religious theme. The paper is baby blue. The handwriting is tiny, geometrically perfect angles.

Lothario Speedwagon, Live @ the Purple Bottle.

-See you there, Deshler.

“Whough!” Pandemic wheezes from the back of the bus. Loud, sinus-cleansing snorts briefly capture Henry’s attention. “Whough!” But Henry’s focus stays on the floor.

With his spine against the carpet, the rumble of the road spreads through Martin’s body. Martin was not greeted with the warm hellos he secretly hoped for when the bus bailed out of the gas station. After dodging stray bullets, Martin’s situation fell straight down a rusty chute to Hell. Currently, Keith is screaming with one foot on Martin’s neck, harsh interior lights flooding the bus. The gun is a fraction of a second from exploding into that small, black goatee.

“No, no, he’s not a bad guy,” Hamler says with all his lungs, then repeats in Russian.