Listening for Jupiter

by Pierre-Luc Landry

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because I have no credentials as a poet, and my poems seem pretty insignificant to me. Plus I never let anyone read my stuff, except for Saké, who just went right ahead.”

  Chokichi chuckled.

  “What does that even mean, to ‘have credentials as a poet,’ huh? You write poetry… Shouldn’t that be enough?”

  “Well… er… yes. No. I don’t know.”

  “You’re gonna say that I don’t know anything about literature, but I think you’re being hard on yourself. Unlike Saké, I don’t think you could make a living at it. We both agree on that. I’m just saying you should keep writing. I really liked what I read so far.”

  “Thank you. I’ll keep at it, sure… but I need a project, something to keep me busy. I can’t just listen to music all day and write poetry all night. But I wouldn’t want to go to work just to kill time, you know? I need to be passionate about something. That’s why I decided to follow Saké to California in the first place. Because she was inviting me on this crazy, outlandish adventure. Now, though—and I’m not blaming either of you—I feel like I’m wasting my time, just when I happen to have so much of it on my hands.”

  “You already have something in mind, eh?”

  It was as if he’d read my mind.

  “Yes.”

  “And it would mean you’d have to leave?”

  I nodded.

  I turned to him and kissed him. It was the first time I had kissed him. Right then, Saké burst into the room.

  “You guys!” she cried, waving an envelope.

  We straightened up and Saké sat down beside us on the bed.

  “It’s my folks. Again. But different this time. Read it.”

  She tossed the envelope our way. I opened it and read the message out loud.

  Saké. Here’s a little something for your living expenses, as well as for Chokichi and Hollywood. Sending hugs to all three of you.

  There were ten one-thousand dollar bills, US. Nothing else.

  Chokichi took the money and counted it a few times.

  “Ten thousand bucks,” he said. “Ten grand!”

  Saké didn’t look amused. Chokichi asked her what was wrong.

  “My parents shouldn’t know I live here. They shouldn’t know your name, Chokichi. They shouldn’t know that Hollywood is here either. And they never had this much cash. We always had enough to eat, but we never went on vacation and didn’t own our home. Ever since they left, it’s like… I keep discovering all the things they were hiding from me the whole time. Like they were actually loaded, waiting for the right moment to hit the road and blow all their cash. OK, sure, it bothers me a bit that they disappeared, but not enough to throw a fit or whatever. What annoys me is that they can always find me, no matter where I go; I can’t leave without a trace, like they did. I don’t get it…”

  She collapsed on the bed and rested her head on my lap.

  “With all the money they sent, plus Chokichi’s pay, minus rent, food and travel, that leaves us about thirteen thousand dollars. I say we do something big. Something memorable. Something just for us.”

  Chokichi jumped to his feet.

  “Thirteen thousand bucks. That’s a ton of cash!” He was clearly excited about the whole thing. “We have to celebrate!”

  He ran out of the room and came back a minute later holding a bottle of rum, two bags of chips and a huge chocolate bar.

  “We don’t have caviar or champagne, but at least we’ve got rum. I didn’t bring the cucumbers,” he said, winking at Saké.

  “That’s OK. I’m done with cucumbers. Pass me the chips!”

  He tossed her the bag of prawn crackers, her favourite. He opened the bottle, took a swig and passed it around. I got up to put a new record on. I paused to think before choosing. Then I cleared my throat: “I picked a very special album for the occasion,” I announced. “It might surprise you; it’s not the type of music I tend to talk about. I found it at the music store over at the Plaza Center, the one on the corner of Hughes and Browns Ferry Road, and I bought it right away because it was the group’s only album I didn’t have. OK, so the others are in Montreal, but in any case, I love their stuff, and didn’t own this particular one yet. It’s their first, as it happens. I listen to these guys whenever I feel like spacing out and totally disconnecting from the real world that I just can’t shake. So to celebrate our new-found fortune, I propose we listen to Wu-Tang Clan’s Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers).”

  I brought the needle down on the first groove of Bring da Ruckus. I waited for the voiceover from Shaolin & Wu Tang (the movie) to end and then I closed my eyes. When Ghostface Killah began to sing, I started dancing. Saké screamed.

  She and Chokichi started laughing. They got up to join me at the turntable with the bottle of rum. The three of us danced until five the next morning. Three bottles of rum later, Chokichi threw up and Saké fell asleep on the bedroom floor. When Chokichi crashed on the bathroom floor, I sat down at the kitchen table with my little notebook.

  Hollywood

  Underground poem #37

  staring out the window at the yellow morn

  stifling daylight

  morning smog

  I belong to the red-eyed people, a sleepless tribe

  Xavier

  As well as zooey deschanel movies, I watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Dedication, thinking about the dunes half covered in snow and the deserted beaches, the ghost towns, abandoned by Manhattanites who usually flock to them the moment their overpopulated island becomes stifling. It was enough to convince me that the trip to Montauk would be worth it. I rented a small cottage that wasn’t quite as fancy as the beach house, without the piano or the envelope full of cash (theoretically, at least); a pretty little cottage with a wood-burning stove and French doors. I bought a few things, packed my bags and left on the morning of the third day, Wednesday.

  The snow had stopped the previous day, as if to make way for me. It was cold, minus fifteen, but the road was cleared and it wasn’t too difficult to get out of Pittsburgh. I left mid-morning, around nine thirty, to avoid traffic. I stopped twice for gas and food. On the way, I listened to NPR and the three She & Him albums. I crossed Pennsylvania heading east, then hit New Jersey. As I drove over the George Washington Bridge, I noticed that the Hudson River was still frozen. As was the Harlem River, under the Alexander Hamilton Bridge. I crossed the Bronx. Night had fallen. A few boats bobbed sleepily in the Long Island Sound. I took different highways to get to Route 27, which I followed all the way to Montauk, sometimes in the express lane, sometimes via the scenic route.

  I got into town around 10 p.m. I drove through it slowly, going less than forty kilometres an hour. It felt weird to see the neon lights of the stores and the windows of houses still lit up. Cars drove down the streets, pedestrians walked along the sidewalks; the town had come back to life. I passed the pharmacy and I wanted to laugh, remembering my bruised shoulder. I realized that the pain hadn’t followed me, that it had stayed in the dream. Then I pulled up in front of the cottage. I found the key under the mat, as the owner had said I would. I went in.

  I lit a fire in the big wood stove and went to get my bags from the car. I dropped my things in what would be my bedroom for the next two weeks.

  After I explored the house, I put on my coat and went out. The sky was clear, the wind had died down, a big moon was shining over the water and the little ripples expired almost soundlessly on the sand. All things considered, it wasn’t too cold: about minus ten degrees Celsius.

  I looked up to the sky; there was a clear view of Venus and Jupiter. I’d read something in the papers about it: these days, it seemed, we could thank our “lucky stars” that we were able to see five planets. I gazed at the sky long enough to see Jupiter move past Venus and climb higher in the celestial sphere; then the moon s
wung round to hover between the two planets. It all seemed to be happening at breakneck speed, but when I checked my phone I realized that I’d already been sitting on the little porch for nearly three hours. The movements of the planets and stars fascinated me. I set my phone on the ground and continued to watch the show. Every so often shooting stars would streak across the sky, and each time I’d make the same dumb wish: I want to be happy, I want to be happy, I want to be happy. I told myself that I was the only thing holding myself back, but I desperately asked the stars that fell into the sea: Please, little celestial bodies, please. Make me happy.

  Then I noticed four bright spots surrounding Jupiter. One on the left, and three on the right. I picked up my phone and went online and discovered they were moons: Europa, Ganymede, Io and Callisto. I immediately thought back to the TV documentary that I’d watched a few times. I ran inside the cottage; the lights were all out and the fire in the wood stove had turned to embers. I rekindled it with logs and dry wood, then rummaged through the living room, kitchen and nook, where I finally found what I was looking for: an old shortwave radio. I opened all the kitchen drawers and grabbed a roll of aluminum foil and some alkaline batteries. I went back outside.

  I changed the batteries and put together a makeshift antenna with the foil, taking care to split it in two after a bit and connect it to the coaxial cable. I turned on the radio and twisted the dial to change the frequency. I went too far: after 26 MHz I started to pick up truck drivers and the local police. I went back down to about 20 MHz. Then I landed on the right frequency: live from Jupiter, a sound like crashing waves mixed with forlorn whale songs. I lay down on my back, my eyes trained on Io, and I listened to the planet sing for a long time while I cried like a baby.

  A thud from the radio woke me with a start. I waited a few seconds, motionless, hoping to hear it again so I could try and figure out what it was, but nothing. That’s when I realized: I’d been sleeping. I got out my phone to check the time. It was dead, so I had no idea how long I’d been out. I switched the radio to FM and searched in vain for a 24-hour news station that could give me the time. The only stations I picked up were playing classical music. I turned off the radio and got up.

  I spun around to head back to the cottage, but it was no longer there. The beach house stood in front of me, just as I remembered it. The same one I had drawn in my notebook.

  Hollywood

  Around nine o’clock, I heard Chokichi get up and go lie down in the bedroom. At eleven, Saké walked into the kitchen. She virtually downed a tall glass of water and stretched for a good ten minutes before opening her mouth.

  “Morning.”

  “Morning.”

  She guffawed.

  “Do you want something to eat?”

  “Sure! Why not?”

  “Don’t you feel sick?”

  “Nah, I’m all right. I wasn’t that drunk… What knocked me out was all the dancing—and then the bedroom floor.”

  I made breakfast while she read what I’d written overnight. I made toast, fried eggs and bacon, and cooked breakfast potatoes from the freezer. Chokichi had been allowed to fill our fridge and shelves with ‘real food’ after finding out Saké’s diet was nothing but a lie. The smell woke him. He dragged himself into the kitchen and groaned as he sank into a chair.

  “I know I was sick yesterday, but I’m hungry now and my head is killing me, so you’re gonna give me something to eat. And Saké, you’re gonna let me have some of your headache pills. Right?”

  Ever since Saké had confiscated his gear, she’d been in charge of our medicine box, which she kept hidden somewhere among her things. She got up without saying a word and came back with two ibuprofen tablets for Chokichi.

  “Thanks,” he said, washing them down with a big gulp from my glass of water.

  I made breakfast for Chokichi too, and we all sat down to eat. It had been a rough night. We’d danced the whole time, and all we needed now was to recharge our batteries, which is exactly what we did as we stuffed our faces.

  “This is a nice change from cucumbers and herbs,” said Chokichi, his irony aimed at Saké.

  “Ha, ha,” she answered, munching on a piece of toast. “Shut up and eat.”

  Watching them tease each other like that made me smile: I’d never have guessed the three of us would be living together so soon, in a place as strange as Madison, Alabama; or that Saké would be singing the national anthem before softball games; or that Chokichi would be turning to the fast-food industry to buy me records; or that I would be writing lame poems every single night, watching the stars through the kitchen window. Which reminded me I had an announcement to make.

  “I have to tell you something…”

  Saké cut me off without looking up from her plate.

  “You want to leave. I know.”

  Chokichi put his fork down and looked me in the eye.

  “I do. But I want you guys to come with me. I know how we should spend our thirteen thousand dollars. And even if we didn’t have this much cash, I’d still ask you guys to come along. This isn’t about the money.”

  Chokichi smiled. He seemed relieved by what I’d just said. I don’t know if he really doubted my intentions, but it had been clear to me for a while now that I could never leave without them.

  “Where do you want to go?” Saké asked.

  “Montauk.”

  “Montauk? Where the hell is that?” asked Chokichi.

  “In the Hamptons, at the tip of Long Island. About two hundred kilometres from New York.”

  They didn’t need much convincing after I gave them a rough idea of the kind of place it was. Saké was won over when I told her Montauk was full of rich, upper-class people, artists and intellectuals who fled the city for the summer, and Chokichi was tempted by the sea, the beaches and the wind. But I still had to lay out my project, my plan, the reason I wanted to leave Madison, Alabama, and move to Montauk. It meant I’d have to tell them about Xavier, the hotel rooms and the beach house, and I didn’t want to. I wanted to keep all that to myself. That way, I’d be the only one disappointed if my plan didn’t work out—if I could never fall asleep again, or meet Xavier, or contact him again. I’d spent a long time thinking it through, until I came up with another reason for us to move to Montauk. That’s the one I decided to use.

  “I’ve spent of lot of sleepless nights surfing the net. I joined a couple of birding forums. More and more rare birds have been spotted near Montauk over the past few months. Yellow-billed loons, for instance. They’re waterbirds that typically breed in the Arctic tundra and winter on the coasts of Norway, the Pacific Ocean, Japan and off the Kamchatka Peninsula. They usually nest in northern Canada and Russia after the ice melts, but close to a dozen of them have been spotted in Montauk over the last five months, which is making some people think they might not be lost or blown off course but actually settling in the Hamptons. I’ve also seen pictures of Western tanagers, which are normally found in coniferous forests across western North America. And another polar bird, the king eider, has been spotted three or four times off Montauk Point. Climate change is affecting North American birds: these species aren’t usually that far east or south. And because it’s been so warm for so long, other species have been spotted in Montauk, as if they all decided to meet up there: a blue-throated macaw; an endangered Bolivian bird; and two purple-collared woodstars, which usually live in Peru and Ecuador. And get this: last week at Deep Hollow Ranch, a birder from New York spotted and photographed a couple of three-banded plovers from Madagascar. A whole team of volunteers is now combing the beach for nests, because these particular plovers are known to nest right on the shingles. I got in touch with the secretary of the New York State Ornithological Association, and he’s expecting us next week. We’ll be helping them with their research, taking notes, gathering evidence, guano, pieces of straw, that kind of thing. We’ll take pictures of birds,
record data in notebooks and save it all on the computer, making the research results and discoveries available to all. We won’t get paid, but the man I talked to gave me a few useful addresses. I found a small house to rent on the beach, not too far from town, within easy walking distance. Come on, pack up! We’re off to Montauk to do some birdwatching!”

  “Here we go…” Chokichi groaned.

  ∷

  We moved to Montauk exactly a week after I first brought up the idea. First, Chokichi got us a used car, an old clunker that was falling to pieces but still running and could probably make it all the way to Montauk. Chokichi was quite clear when he told the owner of the scrapyard we had a thousand miles to drive, but the guy insisted that the car would make it. “It may not go a lot further than that, but it’ll do the job. It’s a good car,” he said. Chokichi gave him three hundred-dollar bills in exchange for the keys, which, as it turns out, could only start the engine: the car doors wouldn’t lock. Saké went to tell the landlord we were leaving. We crammed our things into a few suitcases, the most unwieldy being the turntable. We packed up the car, bought food and gas for the trip and we were on our way. The sun was still blazing hot—one hundred degrees Fahrenheit—and the old brown clunker didn’t have AC. We drove for a couple of hours with the windows down and the radio up full blast, the static so loud we could sometimes barely hear whatever song was playing. Saké was in charge of the radio and only picked country music stations.

  “We’re off on our American road trip, full speed or nothing!” she yelled, her hair blowing in the wind and enormous sunglasses covering her face.

  In Chattanooga, we took Interstate 75 and drove up to the outskirts of Knoxville, Tennessee, where the engine died on us. Saké got out of the car and started waving her arms about, hoping someone would pull over and help us out. A mechanic, who was on his way home after his shift, stopped by the side of the road and took a look at the motor.