Broken Piano for President (8 page)

She drinks all the Night Train

Riding on the bus

You know you’re getting old

When your momma hates your guts

Words rattle off in different cadences, trying to find a fit for the musical chaos.

And when the aerialist

Begins to blow you a kiss

You better slit your wrists

’Cause that’s when the credits roll

Nothing works, but Dean knows art takes time. His art takes a little more than most. After their first few months together, the band only has five complete songs—the ones recorded for the
Broken Piano for President
tape.

Dean digs for that
click
when the drums and the bass and his voice snap together to form some fire-lunged monster. They’d probably write more tunes, but Dean has a hard time remembering lyrics.

Today I found my brother

lyin’ in the gutter

Said, “your suit is full of holes

and it’s tearin’”

He wiped the dust from his pants

Looked me straight in the face

and said:

“If you were a carpenter would you be Jesus or Karen?”

That one strikes the target.

To Dean, Lothario Speedwagon just pushed the detonator on a stack of TNT. The explosion is narcotic. It’s the only time the world is all ears, nobody ignores him. How could they? In Dean’s mind, his parents—probably both sealed in boxes since last they spoke—finally sit up and take notice.

Dean smiles between swigs of wine, still coherent enough to catch that thrill. Far too often he’s blacked-out during these little victories and only catches a glimpse from boom box practice recordings.

Deshler’s tried a million different methods, but can’t write an ounce of a song without several pints of booze shaking his liver to death. While this is good for creativity, it cuts productivity out of the picture. Every band practice is walking a fine line even smaller than the one this morning with Malinta.

The band works up a thin layer of sweat and finishes more bottles. In the middle of a collective noise-demolition, Pandemic holds a metal sheet over his scuffed head, yelling: “Stop, stop, wait, hold on.” The band spins out of control with feedback and drunk muttering through the PA until the insect buzz of thousands of Christmas lights fills the room. “What time is it?”

Henry looks at his phone. “Only ten forty five, why?”

“Oh, man,” Pandemic pouts like a child with melted ice cream. “Why didn’t any of you tell me?”

They look confused.

“We’re done. Now I’m missing the webcast.”

“Webcast of what?” Deshler asks, again questioning everyone’s commitment. He slumps against a wall, his loose skull bobbing side-to-side.

“Jesus, dude. Come on. The Space Burger webcast.” Pandemic fetches a laptop and starts typing.

“Oh, shit, right,” Henry says. “You better hurry, Comrade.”

“Huh?” Pandemic looks at Henry.

“That sorta means, ‘dude,’ in Russian. I took some classes in college.”

“Some?”

“Minored.”

“Hey, we’re practicing,” Dean’s voice is like a nasty shove. “Don’t you guys care about this?”

“Man, we can listen to my fine-ass drumming later. This shit’s important.” Juan looks down at his screen, face glowing blue.

Through a haze of turpentine wine, Deshler thinks it is kind of odd that Pandemic has a laptop and even more unthinkable that this dump has Wi-Fi. “What are you guys so worried about?” Deshler says, annoyed.

“I swear, man, you are totally out of it. Do you know what year it is, who the president is?” Pandemic says.

“Cute,” Dean says.

“What did they teach you in orphan school?”

“I went to regular school,” Dean gets red. “Quit being a dick and tell me what’s up.”

“Okay, Oliver Twist. There is a spacesuit floating around in orbit. If you have the right burger wrapper number sequence, you can control the jetpack from Earth.”

“Why would you want to do that?”

“Duh, so you can feed the starving cosmonauts with all the hamburgers in the suit and become famous,” Pandemic says.

“And win four hundred and sixty thousand dollars,” Henry adds.

Pandemic says, “Yeah, I forgot.” He tugs hamburger wrappers from deep inside his sweatpants and smoothes them out. Each has a sticker with a different bar code. “It’s a real life video game. This is pretty much the most important thing in the world. Don’t blow it for me.”

“The further the suit floats away from the space station, the harder it gets to guide it back, obviously,” Hamler says.

“Big deal. What if nobody does?”

“That’s totally unlikely,” Pandemic says. “There are four hundred and sixty thousand winning numbers. You can enter your number at any time to control the suit, but anyone else with numbers can override you and steal the controls. The last person in command when the suit floats home is the winner. The whole country is a team. Get some patriotism, asshole.”

“Isn’t that kind of like
Cannonball Run
?” Deshler says.

“No,” Pandemic sounds blunt and mean. “Plus, the cosmonauts don’t have any other food. Not even freeze dried ice cream. Their lives are in our hands. So, stop being a total douche, and give a shit about all this.”

“So…what? Practice is over because of a hamburger?”

“Sorry, man. I guess I’ll have to save somebody’s life instead. I feel real bad about it.”

“Welcome back to
Cosmonaut Watch
,” our anchorman says, raising his voice, slowing his English to a crawl. “Dimitri…how-do-you-feel-up-there?” His jaw and hair are carved from the same rock.

The picture quality is bleak, hazed.

The screen fills with a floating head, covered in a scrubby beard and lonely eyes. “We are now fine, has only been one day,” the man says with a Moscow diplomat’s tongue. “The Russian Space Program has trained us to sustain such tragedies.”

“Do-you-miss-eating?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Do-you-miss-gravity?”

“Not too much, no.”

“How-long-can-you-and-your-fellow-cosmonauts-survive…”

The picture dissolves into black and white fuzz.

“Dimitri,
hello
?” The camera flashes from the scramble back to our anchor. “I apologize for the technical difficulties. I’m told we are having some satellite issues.”

“We are needing the America’s help,” the dark Russian accent says behind a wall of television quicksand, eloquent enough for a cocktail party. “It is up to you to eat hamburgers and save our lives. We cannot survive much longer.”

“Thank you, Dimitri. Godspeed,” our anchor says. “Chilling, truly chilling. Let’s take a look at the suit on the monitor, can we, Hank?”

The screen fills with a globe orbited by a cartoon space station. The animated suit floats further away. It has traveled one hundred miles and gives a countdown until the suit enters the atmosphere and burns up, essentially starving five Russian astronauts to death.

America has six days and fourteen hours to guide the suit back to the station.

A few sassy notes of
Broken Piano
crush through the Cliff Drinker’s ears. All is good until a Night Train headache jabs knitting needles where a brain used to be.

“C’mon, wonder boy,” some acidic voice calls. “We’re almost home.”

Deshler’s vision flickers. His bloodstream is still around fifteen percent booze. An opportunistic vampire would call Dean a cocktail party.

He smells leather or new car from a can. His body bounces, which is not a friend to headaches.

“You busted your ass tonight, kid. Just get some rest,” the voice snorts. “In your own bed, you know?”

Deshler sits up from a pretzel curl. Periodically his vision wipes the fog from its window. That confused look returns like it was tattooed across his face—mouth hanging open deep. Deshler is fifty percent sure this is a limo. The other fifty percent says it’s a hearse.

“Sorry, I must have dozed off,” he growls like someone is standing on his throat.

“Dozed my eye,” the man says. He’s at the opposite end with his back to the driver. An orange glow kisses the roof from dim lights, though not enough to lift the veil of darkness around the man’s face. He wears a black brimmed hat. “This song and dance is getting real old, young mister Dean.”

The mystery friend trend twists Deshler’s patience into stiff knots.
Gibby
, Dean decides,
would play along
. “Is this…is this a real limo?”

“Yep.”

Words slip from Dean’s mouth like they’re skating down soapy hallways—he can’t control them. “And I’m guessing we didn’t just get married.”

“It’s the boss’s limo, big shot,” he says, as if Deshler should know already. “I’m taking your ass home.”

“What time is it?” Dean hates asking that question. It’s always later than it should be. He—without fail—blacks out more hours than previously thought possible.

“Who knows? Wristwatches are for assholes. Sun’s not up yet, if that’s what you’re worried about.” His snorty words trip into a laugh. “Let me guess, you have to get to that stupid valet job.”

Deshler’s vision comes into full clarity. “So if this isn’t our honeymoon, what’ve we been doing?”

That voice turns red and sharp: “You drunk bag of shit, you’re a piece of work you know that?” A chasm of silence holds. “Burning the midnight oil on the new campaign, maybe? I swear, some nights you don’t know when to stop drinking and start thinking.”

Deshler’s clarity floats away like a sneeze. He manages to mumble, “Sounds like we’re old pals,” before a wave of cheap wine swallows all clarity.

“You’re a real case study, Dean.”

Deshler’s eyes don’t crack apart until the thin stranger drags him from the limo. As the Night Train swims away, Dean recognizes the red brick of home.