Fifty in Reverse

by Bill Flanagan

  “You know this?” the mogul cried.

  “Yeah,” said Rocky. “I know it blows.”

  Lou Pitano turned off the radio. “Oh, you think it blows, do ya?” he said. “Uh-huh. And how about ‘My Baby Loves Lovin’ ’ by White Plains. Do you think that blows, too?”

  “Pretty much,” Rocky admitted. The DeVilles’ awe of the mogul was rubbing up against their instinctive contempt for authority figures. Rocky was measuring the contrasting rewards of continuing to be deferential to Lou versus pantsing him and peeling off his hairpiece.

  Lou the mogul was reaching his thesis: “What would you teenage experts say if I told you that ‘Gimme Dat Ding’ by the Pipkins, ‘My Baby Loves Lovin’ ’ by White Plains, ‘Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)’ by Edison Lighthouse, and by the way ‘United We Stand’ by the Brotherhood of Man were all in reality the same singer recording under four different names?”

  “I’d say somebody better shoot that motherfucker,” Rocky replied.

  “It’s true!” Mogul Lou said triumphantly. “What I’m telling you is completely confidential and known to only a handful of music-industry insiders. All four of those groups don’t really exist! There’s a producer in London who puts these records together and uses session musicians and a singer named Tony something and they put band names on them and look at what he’s done—he’s got four big international hits at the same time, and nobody knows there is no White Plains, there are no Pipkins, there’s no such place as Edison Lighthouse!”

  Now Peter spoke up. “Sounds like a really good deal for the producer. Not so great for Tony Something, the singer with four big hits and nobody knows who he is. Think it’s safe to guess that Tony Something was paid a flat fee for his services and isn’t seeing any royalties.”

  Lou looked at Peter as if he had just presented DNA evidence that the mogul’s mother was a donkey. He said, “What are you, Jack—a lawyer? I happen to know that Tony the singer is driving around London in a new Porsche with a famous miniskirt model. Tony is doing just fine, thank you. Now, what I envision is a similar production setup for myself and my company right here in this vicinity. I plan to pay for studio time for a number of young musicians and singers to come in and record tracks that I’ll use my connections to place with major record labels and for which I expect to sustain national radio airplay. Are you gentlemen interested in being part of such a project?”

  “Yeah,” Ricky said.

  “Yes,” Rocky said.

  Peter said, “What’s the financial arrangement?”

  For one second Lou the mogul looked like he wanted to attack Peter’s throat with a can opener. Then he smiled and said, “How much cash investment do you want to contribute? I’m paying for the studio, I’m absorbing all the costs, and I’m the one with connections in the record and radio world that are virtually priceless.”

  Peter began to say that in the music business, “priceless” often turned out to be “worthless,” but he held his tongue. Lou said, “And you boys are contributing what?”

  “The songs,” Peter said. “That little thing.”

  “I have not heard a song here today,” Lou said gravely, “that has the lyrical depth of ‘United We Stand’ or the melodic sophisticatedness of ‘Love Grows.’ You got a song like that?”

  “Yeah, I got a song like that,” Peter said. He took a deep breath and hurled himself into Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.”

  When he got to the end, Lou smirked and said, “You got a guy tied to a chair and a chick taking a bath on the roof. I don’t know what you were smoking when you wrote that, kid, but do me a favor and don’t get behind the wheel. Anything else?”

  Peter hated the little creep. He sang him the cheesiest song he could think of: “Billy Don’t Be a Hero” by Paper Lace.

  When it ended, Lou Pitano’s eyes darted behind his glasses, and the tip of a lizard tongue shot out and swept his thin lips. He shouted, “That’s a hit! I’ll give you two hundred bucks for that song, right now!”

  “Five hundred,” Peter said, “for half the publishing for six months. You place it by Christmas, you get to keep your half. Otherwise it reverts to me. And I keep the whole writer’s share.”

  “Kid,” the mogul said, “that ain’t how this business works.”

  “Sure it is, Lou,” Peter told him. “I got a subscription to Billboard.”

  The DeVilles were confused, leaning toward hostile. The mogul was supposed to have come to discover their band. Now Peter was making his own deals in legal language they didn’t understand. Not wanting to be disloyal or get punched in the eye, Peter told Lou the Mogul, “I want to cut the band in on the writer’s share. Ten percent for each of them.” He turned to the DeVilles and said, “Where I go, you guys go with me.”

  Lou Pitano shrugged like he figured if the kid was stupid enough to give away thirty percent of his royalties to three goons in a shed, there would be plenty of future opportunities to outsmart him.

  “Now, Mr. Pitano,” Peter said, “you think we can make a date for the band here to get into your studio and record ‘School’s Out’ and ‘Smokin’ in the Boys’ Room’?”

  “I get a producer’s fee!” the mogul declared. “That’s standard industry procedure.”

  “We coproduce,” Peter told him. “The band gets paid four hundred bucks for the session at the session. After that we’ll all waive our fees until the money comes in, at which point producers’ fees, musicians’ royalties, and publishing will be dispersed at the same time. We get paid when you get paid.”

  Lou Pitano’s face hardened. Whatever really drove him out of New York—and it wasn’t the hunt for fresh talent in the provinces—was in the back of his eyes. He hadn’t come to the sticks to be dicked by a fifteen-year-old kid. If Peter wasn’t careful, Lou’s greed for his songs would be overrun by a pride that had already taken a lot of kicks. He said, “You think you know how the business works, huh, kid?”

  Peter downshifted. He said, “I don’t know as much as I’d like to, Mr. Pitano. I’m anxious to learn what you can teach me.”

  Mogul Lou didn’t trust the sudden display of respect, but it allowed him to back off from telling Peter to take his little songs and blow them out his ass. He said, “I’ll record your songs, but—no offense, kid—you ain’t a professional singer. You stick to the guitar, and I’ll bring in a vocalist radio could play.”

  Ricky DeVille finally had something to say: “Let’s get the guy who did ‘Gimme Dat Ding.’ That dipshit will sing anything.”

  FIFTEEN

  “What do you know about reincarnation, Dr. Canyon?”

  The psychiatrist lit up. “Samsara! The wheel of existence. Part of Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism. The Greek philosophers discussed the transmigration of souls. The Celts and the Persians. Belief in reincarnation is common to cultures and religions across history and on all populated continents. In Central America I spent a lot of time—”

  Peter stopped the doctor before he could recount his mind journeys with the Yucatec.

  “Suppose reincarnation exists, but we have it wrong.”

  “There’s a rule book?”

  “Suppose we don’t go from body to body. Suppose we reenter our own bodies over and over.”

  “Life on a loop.”

  “Right. When we die, we rewind and begin again. Only maybe we don’t necessarily rewind all the way. Maybe with each incarnation we start over at the point where we fucked up. Over a thousand lifetimes we have a shot at eventually getting it right all the way through.”

  “And then what? On to Valhalla?”

  “I have no idea. Maybe at that point you become a cow.”

  “How did you land on this theory?”

  “I’m trying to figure out what’s happened to me. I’m entertaining all ideas because, let’s face it, the reality I’m living through is more ridiculous than any explanation I could come up with.”

  “You’re back in 1970 to fix something you did wrong the first time?”<
br />
  “Maybe. Maybe there was a screwup. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to remember my last fifty years. Some cosmic quality control officer was asleep at the conveyor belt and put me back here without erasing my memory of 1970 to 2020.”

  Peter studied the doctor, who was searching for an appropriate response. Peter said, “It sounds far-fetched when I say it out loud.”

  “No, no,” said Terry. “Any system that helps you reckon with your delusion and move forward is worth exploring. Look out the window. Up and down this street are intelligent, educated people who pray to Yahweh that their kid gets into prep school and light candles for the souls of the faithful departed. I have people I went to Harvard with who camp on ley lines and praise Gaea. Whatever floats your ark, man.”

  “Is it off-limits to ask what you believe, Dr. Canyon?”

  “It’s all in the mind, kid.”

  There was a knock on the office door. Protocol was being breached. The doctor got up, annoyed. His assistant apologized for breaking in. She said the hour was up, Mrs. Wyatt was outside, and she knew the doctor and Peter would both want to hear what was on the news.

  The Vietnam War was over. Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia had worked. Faced with America extending the combat across Indochina, the Russians and Chinese had pressured the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong to accept Kissinger’s peace plan. A formal cessation of hostilities and recognition of the 1965 borders by both sides would be signed in Paris in three days. North and South Vietnam agreed to hold free, multiparty UN-monitored elections within ten months. It was May 19, 1970, and the war was over.

  The doctor whooped and hugged his assistant.

  “Hate to see those fuckers get the Nobel Peace Prize,” he said, “but whatever gets us out of there…”

  He looked at Peter, who was pale.

  “Not how you remembered it,” the doctor said.

  “No. It didn’t happen this way where I came from.”

  The doctor said, “This is better, though, right?”

  “I suppose it is.”

  The doctor motioned to his assistant to leave them and close the door.

  “Peter, I want you to consider that maybe this world you woke up in is an improvement over the one you left. The Beatles are still together. The Vietnam War is over. You have your whole life ahead of you, knowing all kinds of stuff other people don’t figure out until they’re too old to do anything with the information. Don’t think of your being here as a malady to be cured. Try to think of it as a blessing.”

  “My wife.”

  “Maybe she’ll still come into your life, man. Maybe you’ll find her in twenty years on a journey down the Nile. Maybe when you’re thirty you’ll see the name of her band in a newspaper and live that part of your life over again. Don’t waste the second youth you’ve been given worrying about things you can’t control that won’t happen for years anyway. I don’t understand what happened to you, Peter, but I know you’re greatly gifted. Maybe what we’ve been calling a delusion is the biggest gift of all. Grab it.” He gathered his papers and walked to the door and added, “Show the universe some gratitude.”

  “ ‘Ooh La La,’ ” Peter said.

  “What?”

  “ ‘I wish that I knew what I know now, when I was younger.’ It’s another great song waiting for me to write it.”

  The doctor asked if the boy had any idea what he did wrong last time that he had been sent back to correct.

  “I’ve been going over that,” Peter said. “My life worked out well. I have no regrets, at least no regrets from high school.” He stopped and stared at the wall. The doctor let him come around.

  “One thing I did always feel was a missed chance. I mean, when I was a teenager. It was nothing really. In the scheme of a whole life it was nothing.”

  “Spit it out, kid.”

  “Did I mention Amy Blessen to you already?”

  “Remind me.”

  “She was the most beautiful girl. Partly because she didn’t know she was beautiful. She wasn’t a cheerleader type. She was an athlete. What we used to call a jockette—she played on all the girls’ sports teams. A lot of boys were intimidated by that because she could sink a basket and mount the parallel bars and hit a softball better than they could. And I think she was self-conscious about not being girly. Anyhow, I was crazy about her.”

  The doctor asked Peter if he’d ever dated her.

  “Anytime I was around her, I got flustered and said something stupid. Then, toward the end of tenth grade, spring of 1971, I heard her talking to her friends by the lockers. Her family was going to move to the next town during the summer. Instead of my having two years to figure out a way to get her to go out with me, I had four weeks.”

  Dr. Terry said, “You say this girl is shy and doesn’t have a lot of boyfriends. Why don’t you just go up to her and say, ‘Hey, Amy—want to see a movie?’ ”

  Peter reacted like the psychiatrist was a slow learner.

  “Well of course I would do that now. As a grown man. I would have done that if I had known her when I was twenty or twenty-five or thirty or anytime I had some experience with women. But this girl paralyzed me. I’d projected all my adolescent desires onto her. If she came up to me and smiled, I got so self-conscious I walked away.”

  “Where are we going with this, Peter?”

  “Spring of 1971. I’m sixteen. I start forcing myself to say hello to her every day.”

  “You’re a regular Robert Wagner.”

  “She’s so sweet! She always smiles. We start talking almost every day. She tells me about the girls’ track team and how in the summer she sails a little sunfish around the bay and she asks if it’s true I have horses. This fantasy girl I’ve been staring at for two years is becoming someone I can really talk to.”

  The doctor slid his vision to the wooden clock on the shelf behind the boy’s head. They were way into overtime.

  “So it’s June 1971. It’s the last day of final exams. Now, I should explain that by that time my mother had gotten a new car and I was driving her old station wagon. I’d installed an eight-track and put some Grateful Dead skull stickers and a Rolling Stones tongue on the bumper. I was fully loaded.”

  “What’s a Rolling Stones tongue?”

  “It’s coming soon. So this is the last day of school. Kids are roaming the halls in cutoffs and flip-flops. The teachers have given up caring about anything but getting out for the summer. Everybody’s loose and happy. John North comes up to me, dragging along this skinny girl with crossed eyes and no bra and says, ‘Hey, let’s drive down to the beach, Alice has some Zest Tabs.’ I say, ‘No, man, I have an English final.’ He says, ‘Blow it off, you got the car.’ I say I can’t do that, but of course it’s not really about the English final—it’s about my last shot with Amy Blessen. I can see John North is frantic to be with this girl, so I hand him my car keys and say ‘Bring it back to my house before suppertime’ and he splits. I don’t care about anything but seeing Amy.

  “I get to the classroom and get a seat next to Amy and we take our exams, and it’s English, it’s easy, we both finish early. Pretty soon every kid in the class has turned in the exam and someone asks if we can go. Our teacher is a real ball buster and she says, ‘No, we all stay in this room until the final bell rings.’ Which is about thirty minutes away. All the other kids groan but I’m so happy because it gives me half an hour with Amy. And she’s in a great mood; she’s telling me about all her plans for the summer and asking about what I’m doing and where I’ll be over vacation, and we’re really talking and I figure maybe I can work the conversation around to my going to see Taj Mahal in the park next week and hey, maybe she wants to come, and then—it’s like she’s looking straight into my brain—she says, ‘Gee, I’m supposed to be back here at three thirty for our final girls’ volleyball game and I have to go home first and there’s no way I can make it all the way to my house and back here in half an hour. I don’t know what I’m going to do.’

&n
bsp; “Doctor, time stopped. Everything froze in place, and I realized that this is the moment I’ve been waiting for all year. Amy needs a ride. And I have a car. I will politely offer to drive her home, I will meet her mom, I will sit in her living room drinking a ginger ale while she grabs her stuff, and then we will drive back to the school together and she will thank me and I will say, ‘Hey, Amy—why don’t you come over to my house this weekend and we’ll go horseback riding.’

  “My whole future is laid out in front of me. I’ve scored the goal at the bell. After the last class we will ever have together, I’m going to give Amy Blessen a ride home.

  “Except… I gave my car keys to John North, and right now he’s parked at the beach getting stroked by cross-eyed Alice. I have no car. I cannot offer Amy a ride. All I can do is look at her stupidly and say, ‘Well, good luck with that.’ ”

  Peter looked like he was recounting the fall of Troy.

  “And then the bell rang and we went in opposite directions for the rest of our lives.”

  The doctor took a moment to be sure the monologue had ended. He said, “Let’s break down this story.”

  Peter said, “In 2020 they would say ‘Let’s unpack it.’ ”

  “Why would they say that?”

  “I don’t know, Doctor. In the future they charge double for any shit labeled ‘bespoke,’ too. People take pictures of their dinners and text them to their friends. Things are strange in the future.”

  “It’s getting a little goofy in the present here, too, Pete. I hate to ask, but—does Amy Blessen exist in this reality? The one outside my window?”

  “Oh yeah, she’s playing freshman field hockey. I saw her the day before yesterday.”

  “Well, why don’t you ask her to the dance, man?”

  “What dance?”

  “I don’t know what dance—the Spring Fling, the Freshman Frolic. Ask her to come over and swim in your duck pond.”

  “Doctor, you have an optimism I would call charming if it didn’t suggest your having lost all sense of context. I’m the crazy kid, remember? I’m the loon who took his clothes off in class. This is not the moment for me to spring a rendezvous on a fourteen-year-old girl who has at this point never been on a date, never been kissed, and certainly would be horrified to be approached by the school lunatic. No, I have to get certified sane by you, let a year go by, ease back into the adolescent flow, get my driver’s license, do push-ups for a solid twelve months, clear up my complexion, grow sideburns, reconstruct my slow approach to Amy Blessen, and—most essential—tell John North he can’t borrow my car on the last day of tenth grade so when Amy needs a ride home I’m there with keys in hand.”