Whale Music (21 page)

“I got a weird family. What can I tell you?” Claire bounces towards the bed. “Shove over, Whale-man.”

I move my carcass to the side, Claire climbs under the blankets. “We never had a Christmas like that, anyways.”

“No. We didn’t either.”

She flicks off the bedside lamp, and starlight spills into the room.

“Des?”

“Yes?”

“I think maybe it might be all right if you touched me.”

Well, all right. Maybe I am a genius. When I listen to the Whale Music, something happens. I horripilate, the elflocks dance upon my head. My scrotum contracts, my stomach becomes acrobatic. Good stuff, very good stuff.

It is now—wait for it—three o’clock in the afternoon! Furthermore, I think it’s Thursday. Very well, I’ll confess, the
Thursday is just a wild guess, but it very definitely is 3:00
P.M
. I shall work for a couple of hours more, then go up for dinner.
What, macaroni and cheese again?

This mixing is a sticky business. Working with echo is like working with quicksilver. It’s impossible to keep hold of the stuff, it slips through your fingers, it spills onto the floor, it’s messy and sloppy and generally a pain in the butt. However, it has to be done. Echo is a little piece of galactic space, it’s God-wrought and beautific, it shades the higher frequencies of the Yamaha 666’s unearthly caw.

“Desmond?” Claire is always hesitant about entering the music room, frightened by the technology.

“Oh-oh. It’s not three o’clock?”

“You got visitors, babe.”

Mayday, mayday! I shut down all systems, the computer regurgitates its floppy disks, the Beast wheezes into silence. “I am an isolationist,” I bellow. “I do not receive house guests!”

Claire enters the control booth, she is wearing her number twenty-one Maple Leafs sweater. “It’s that guy used to be in your group. Monty Mann.”

Bleak.

“And his daughter.”

Gruesome.

“And some other chick.”

“I assume you informed them that I was dead, at the very least dying.”

“Baby, it’s no big deal. Right? You just give out with a
hey, howya doin’?”

“Monty Mann is a disciple of Babboo Nass Fazoo, the fuzzy little mountebank. You have never heard insipid until you’ve heard Babboo Nass Fazoo’s philosophy secondhand through the mouth of Monty Mann. Beth Mann, if you can believe it, is my erstwhile sister-in-law, Monty’s eighteen-year-old daughter is Danny’s widow. She is currently contesting Daniel’s will. She is a stupid girl, she has not yet grasped the basic notion:
Daniel had no fucking money!
And you inform me there is a
mystery guest? What sort of woman would keep company with those people?”

“Why don’t you go find out, Des? They’re sitting in the living room.”

“You let them in?”

“It’s what people do, Desmond. We can be normal. Somebody knocks on the door, you say come on in, take a load off.”

“You had no right to do that.”

“No right?”

“Absolutely none.”

“Well what the fuck have I been doing here all this time?”

“I don’t know.”

“I thought that you and I were sort of happening.”

“I happened a long time ago, Claire.”

“So what am I here for, blow-jobs and cooking?”

“And leaving me alone when I’m trying to work.”

“Fuck you.”

“The Whale Music is important.”

“Oh, for sure. More important than practically anything.”

“I need to concentrate.”

“You’re just a weirded-out fat man.”

“Yes, yes, yes. Are you just now arriving at this realization? I believe Beth Mann may have found her intellectual match.”

“Fuck you.”

Oh, fine. An argument. Of the sort of bitterness, rancour and barely contained violence that distinguished my fights with Fay.

“And I’ll tell you another thing, fat man. I only came here because groupie-wise I was scraping the bottom of the barrel. I hope you realize that. I was living with The Holy Goats, who are these out-of-their-heads Satan worshippers who do ritual animal sacrifices and are always too drugged-out to even talk, and those assholes threw me out. So when I heard about the weird Howl guy up on the hill, I thought, shit, it’s either him or Barry Manilow. And another thing. I thought you were your
fucking
brother
, man. I thought you were the cute one. Not the fucking … the fucking
genius
. I’m outta here, fat man. I’m history. I hope you and your whales are happy together.”

Claire turns away, crying, her face instantly so wet that anyone would think she commenced weeping the day before yesterday. She flees the music room, in the gloom of the studio she bumps into the Yamaha 666, stubs her toe, a furious Claire kicks the Beast’s underbelly. It wails, whimpers, and is silent. Claire has killed the Beast.

God, You there with the flowing beard and gown, might I just mention what a poor concept this two-sex business turned out to be? It’s true that we have these interlocking bits, but that strikes me as rather simple-minded, especially from the fellow who makes every snowflake not the same! Because, You see, we aren’t hacking it, Sir, men and women do not appear to be getting along. The pistils and stamens are all well and good, God, they do fit nicely, but You do realize that You have square-pegged us, round-holed us, in the heart department. There appears to be no way to get those frail organs to mesh.

I personally have dealt with the situation. I have rendered my own inner bosom into a little lump of flesh about the size of a piece of coal, just enough to keep various drugs coursing throughout the body on a river of whiskey. Whiskey, that’s what I need, I must mourn the death of the Beast, I must hold a Celtic wake for the Yamaha 666. Whiskey, or, if whiskey is not available, any kind of methylated liquid solvent. If memory serves—and I’m going to have to trust it on this one—there is a bottle of wine in the kitchen. The kitchen, of course, lies beyond the living room, wherein lurk the intruders. Fortunately, I am an old hand at dealing with trespassers. I mean, being psychotic and wigged-out has certain advantages, the main one being it’s easy to alarm people. Monty Mann and his little entourage shall suffer, hmm, oh,
clamorous whale ejaculations
, as performed by Mr. Desmond Howell. That should frighten them away. Then, it’s on to the kitchen where I bolt back the grape and pop into oblivion.

And you thought I wasn’t on top of things.

I draw in my cheeks, cup my fat hands around my mouth, and let loose a beauty. The Whale-man storms through the sliding glass doors.

“Hi, Des,” says Monty Mann.

“The bull and cow have been separated,” I explain. “She was exploring a little fjord—you know how women are—when suddenly the tide went out, the water hauled away by the moon.”

They don’t seem especially alarmed. Monty is used to me, I suppose, Beth is a little dim-witted, and the third party, a woman who is attractive enough in a real estate agent sort of way, seems positively interested. I up the intensity.

“The rocky promontory breaks through the water. Bull sees cow on the other side and gives forth with this sound.” I fill my chest and let loose. Beth covers her ears and giggles, but there is no stampede for the door. Monty Mann nods appreciatively, and the other woman stares at me. In some moments I abandon the call. There is no negotiating the rocky promontory.

“Hey, Des,” says Monty, “this is Mandy.”

“Monty and Mandy, is it?” Monty can’t do anything without its being cute, not even select a short-term partner.

Mandy reaches out and shakes my hand. “Glad to know you,” she says. She is a very matter-of-fact sort for one of Monty’s companions. He usually likes them confused to the extent that they carry crib sheets marked
walking
and
breathing
.

“So,” says Monty, “what’s this about a reunion?”

“A reunion? Danny’s dead.”

Beth begins to weep. Does this mean she’d forgotten about Dan’s demise until I reminded her?

Monty went bald, by the way, about seven years ago, and he had tufts of hair sewn right into his skull. His hair has a scientific aspect to it. “But the four of us,” he says. “Me, Dewey, Sal and you. We could have a reunion.” Monty has been playing the Holiday Inn circuit, him and a rinky-dink
rhythm machine,
MONTY MANN
, the posters read,
STAR OF THE HOWL BROTHERS
. Monty plays a few of the old hits, between numbers he extols the philosophy of Babboo Nass Fazoo. Do you think this goes over big in Akron?

“Des,” asks Mandy, “is it true that you have been seeing Dewey and Sal?”

“Well, yes. Dewey was over for dinner.”

“And Sal Goneau?”

How do you figure this Jack Webb question-asking technique?

“Yes, Sally was here. He’s very ill, Monty.”

“Well, that’s what you get.”

“So,” surmises Mandy, “the Howl Brothers are getting back together?”

“My brother is
dead!!
We cannot get back together. He drove his car through a guardrail at a very high speed. The force of impact rendered him mush. It particulated him! The car exploded, licks of flame touched the clouds. Whales crowded around.”

“I loved Danny!” shrieks Beth. “How can you say those things?”

“Does this mean,” says Monty Mann, “there isn’t going to be a reunion?”

Mandy grins cannily. Aha! They have played me for a fool, but now I see what’s up.

I stick a finger in Mandy’s face. “Let me guess.
Personality?”

“Bingo.”

“Are you ready for an invasion of privacy suit?”

“Absolutely, Desmond. Are you ready to be locked up? Are you ready for them to throw away the key? Bellowing and talking gibberish, I mean, really.”

“A man can bellow and talk gibberish in his own home if he feels like it.”

“I’ll be fair. Your mental state is obviously due to your brother’s death.”

“All I know is,” says Monty Mann, “Kenneth thought that maybe there was going to be a reunion.”

“Kenneth? You’ve been talking to Kenneth?”

“He’s, you know, phoned.”

“I spy the hand of Kenneth Sexstone behind this. It all makes sense.”

Beth Mann, young and pale, continues to weep.

I believe Danny married Beth Mann just to illustrate a point. The point being that life is such a complicated and gnarly thing that sometimes the only solution is to reduce it to a joke. Hoot and holler, kick up your heels, laugh until you shit your pants. At least, that was Daniel’s philosophy. Monty Mann got Beth out of a drug-addled young woman who went by the name Starflower. They were married, briefly. When Beth was five, Starflower committed suicide, in tandem with the boy who was her lover. They left behind reams of bad poetry. Beth was sent away to be raised by her grandparents in Spokane.

When she reappeared, at age sixteen, the Howl Brothers had ceased to exist as a group. I was here, in the house. Danny had made a solo album, which had its moments, but he was too far gone with the booze and pharmaceuticals. Dr. Tockette got his hands on Danny. He slapped his face and threw him into a clinic. They kept Danny there for three weeks, and he emerged bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked.

And then, of course, Danny did the most outrageous thing he could think of. He upped his intoxicant intake and took as a bride the sixteen-year-old virgin daughter of one of his best friends. He had affairs with several well-known female singers and actresses at the same time. Indeed, no less than four of these women showed up at his wedding! Danny was denounced from every pulpit in the country. When reporters caught up to him, or found him passed out in some honky-tonk, engulfed in the fumes of cheap wine and cheaper women, they often asked just exactly what he was up to.

“Me?” Danny would mumble. “Working on new material.”

“Where’s Claire?” I demand.

“Who’s Claire?” asks Mandy.

“Never mind who she is, just tell me where to find her.”

Mandy lights a cigarette. “I think she ran out the front door about half an hour ago.”

I’m giving the Beast a proper Celtic death knell.

I am Celtic by heritage. Indeed, the profession I am best suited to, according to many tests administered by psychiatrists and social workers, is that of Druid. Can’t you see me wandering the hills, my sackcloth robe rustling, warm moonlight shining on my fat face? Can’t you hear me singing to the ocean, can’t you hear my lamentations for the lost souls of sailors, poor men misled by the errors of high priests and mathematicians?