Whale Music

by Paul Quarrington

  “I don’t want to see Dewey Moore. He’s a born-again Christian and he wants to convert me.”

  “Well, you’re the guy that invited him, Des. He just got married—”

  “Again?”

  “And you said, come on over for dinner. Which, by the way, I have cooked, and it took me a fuck of a long time, and it’s Bouillabaisse for god’s sake, and it’s not as if you can buy Bouillabaisse Helper in the grocery store. So are you getting dressed or are you pissing me off? Them’s the choices, babe.”

  “Agh.”

  “Quit going agh.”

  “It’s a sound I make when deeply distressed.”

  “Where do you keep your gotchies?”

  “How should I know?”

  Claire buckles her hands on her hips, she glares at me. Then she marches over to the chest of drawers and bangs around for a bit. She finally comes up with a pair of underwear which has seen better days.

  “Are you gonna put these on?” she demands.

  “All right, all right. Give them to me.”

  She tosses them hard, they hit my face. I drag my legs over the side of the bed and slowly draw on the underpants.

  “Satisfied?” I ask.

  “For fuck’s sake.” She tosses me my trousers. “Jump in.”

  I pull them on. Amazingly, they fit. Claire flings a shirt at me. I stick my arms through and do up the buttons. Claire marches over and tucks the tail into my trousers.

  “You look good,” she announces, appraising me.

  “You lie, alien.”

  Then the doorbell rings. Claire sticks a little finger at my face. “You say agh, Des, and so help me I’ll scream.”

  “Company!”

  “That’s right. We got company.”

  “Say, though. I’ve just had an idea for the Whale Music. If you would excuse me for no more than twenty minutes—”

  “Sure. And then four days later you’ll show up again.” Claire grabs a hairbrush, scrapes my scalp and beard. “Let’s go.” She turns. Perhaps one small and soothing major seventh chord. I spread my hand like an eagle’s talon, poise it over the keyboard. “Desmond!” Claire hollers before it can alight.

  “Coming.”

  As I descend the staircase, Dewey Moore is entering. Look at Dewey, his silver hair and beard perfectly sculpted. He has a pot-belly, but he seems proud of it, like it was a bowling trophy. Dewey is dressed entirely in black, in his hands he is holding a dark Stetson bordered with huge pieces of silver. Dewey wears a lot of jewellery, more than I’ve seen on anyone, even Fay. He turns, watches me come down the stairs. He smiles, and for a second he’s a shit-kicker again.

  “Desmond,” he says.

  “Dewey.”

  Dewey opens his arms, I realize with horror that he means to hug me. I would stop, but heft like mine produces a certain amount of momentum. I have no choice but to waddle into his embrace. Dewey squeezes tightly, kisses the nape of my neck. “You are looking okay,” he says. His voice is so low these days that it is almost infrasonic. (Infrasonic? I’m getting ideas.) Dewey releases me, turns and says, “And now I want you to meet Bobby Sue. My wife.”

  Bobby Sue is a small woman. Before I can stop her she has rushed forward and put her arms around me as far as they can go. She is chesty, there are large firm globes pressing into my belly. I gaze down on her red hair. “Desmond,” she says, “God bless you.”

  “Yes, well, He’s the man for the job, all right.” I manage to tear her off like a three-day-old Band-aid. “Have you met Claire?”

  “Yo,” says Claire. “We been through it.”

  “So, Des,” says Dewey, “what have you been up to?”

  “Oh, you wouldn’t be interested.”

  “I wouldn’t be interested in what my favourite musical genius has been up to?”

  “Well …” I grab him by the arm, I haul Dewey towards the music room.

  “Desmond,” says Claire, “we’re eating in half an hour.”

  “Absolutely. I’m merely being sociable. Dewey expressed an interest in the Whale Music. You and Bobby Sue get acquainted.”

  “Claire,” asks Bobby Sue, “have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Saviour?”

  “Half an hour!” shouts Claire as I disappear.

  “I’m just saying,” says Dewey, “there’s gonna be litigious hell to pay if I don’t get a big credit here, likely as not on the front of the album cover.”

  I nod, I am running a microphone cord into the echo chamber, I’m not really paying much attention to Dewey Moore and his little worriments.

  “I mean, Des, I am big news right now. Everybody wants me on their records. Everybody. Willie, Waylon, Crystal, Dolly. And I won’t do it. But for you, old buddy, I’d go to Hell and get a pizza. Lookee-here, I haven’t even mentioned money.”

  “Mention money, Dewey, it’s all right.” I am using a special German microphone, very sensitive, I’m going to be able to pick up the sound of Dewey’s nostril hairs waving in the breeze.

  “I ain’t mentioning money.”

  “I’ve got some. Just ask Claire where it is and help yourself.”

  “Now that Claire, she’s a fine-looking young girl. Where’d you find that Claire?”

  “I didn’t find her. She found me. She crash-landed on the sofa in my living room. From Toronto.”

  “I was up there,” says Dewey. “Got so cold I could use my balls for ice cubes.”

  “I had no idea you were so well travelled.”

  “I been everywhere, boy. I’d been practically everywhere before I met you. And where’d we get to? Australia, England, India. Hey, man. Remember India?” Dewey laughs, he has a laugh like a coyote that owns a meat freezer. “Babboo Nass Fazoo talking about peace and shit, I’m laying the pud to all them hippy girls. Excuse me.” Now that Dewey is a born-again Christian, he always says “excuse me” after talking filthy.

  “Are you sure you know the lyrics?” I ask Dewey.

  “Shit, everyone knows this old chestnut. My daddy used to sing it whilst straining over his stools.”

  “I want it low.”

  “So you keep saying. You want low, you got low. This will be down to where you got to reach way up to scratch your foot.”

  “And slow.”

  “Slow as molasses over on the soft shoulder, Des.”

  I power-on the Yamaha 666. It screams—for a moment I imagine licks of flame shooting from it—but I pull a few levers, press some buttons, feed the Beast a handful of microchips, it eventually calms down to where I can touch the keyboard. I invert the chords, odd intervals in the bass. The music boils and bubbles volcanically. I complete the chord progression, nod at Dewey Moore. He reaches up and pulls his headset just slightly off his ears, the better to hear his actual voice, and then he begins to sing. I am recording all this at double speed, so when I play it back this song will plummet like rocks from the sky. The whales should like it, unless I’ve missed my guess.

  “The pipes, the pipes …” sings Dewey.

  I slap the Yamaha 666, it begrudgingly does a flawless string section imitation. I add some soft lines, wisps of mist around mossy tree trunks.

  “For I’ll be there,” sings Dewey, up to the high note, which in this case means that the floorboards stop vibrating. The Beast yawps, I bring a fist heavily down on its top.

  “I love you so,” concludes Dewey, and I try to soothe the Yamaha 666, to stop it without resorting to the tranq-gun. Gently I release my fingers from the keyboard, and a final chord skitters around the floor before racing out the door and into the universe.

  “I don’t think it’s a hit, man,” says Dewey Moore. “People like a bit of pep these days.”

  “People would,” say I.

  “Des,” says Dewey, “I just want you to know that Danny is a lot happier now.”

  “Say, you don’t have any heavy-duty dope, do you?”

  “He’s with his Saviour right now. Nestled in His bosom.”

  “I’ve just got a s
light hankering for, say, nineteen lines of snow and fourteen speedballs.”

  “That’s what I wanted to come over and tell you. Because just a week before his accident, Dan-Dan came to see me. And he was born again.”

  “Please, Dewey …”

  “We knelt and held hands. The tears came to your brother’s eyes. First he asked for forgiveness …”

  I play upon the Beast, hoping for a roar, but it is strangely quiet and emits only a tiny sweet sound.

  “The Lord forgave him. And then he was filled with the Spirit. So don’t you worry about him anymore. Well, my man …” Dewey slaps his belly. “What do you say we go chow-down?”

  “Yes, yes. You go on ahead, Dewey. I’m just going to rewind this tape.” That was pretty cagey. That’s one thing you learn in mental hospitals, how to fake these sensible moments so that people will leave you alone. Dewey nods and slips out the door.

  I know all about this Jesus fellow. You are dealing with a man who is constantly on the prowl for salvation, a stupid fat tomcat climbing into holy trashbins. One night, I was seated in front of the TV, the drugs had conspired to keep my eyeballs popped open, and suddenly there was Tammy Faye Bakker exhorting me to invite Jesus into my heart. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I dropped to my knees, weeping every bit as profusely as Tammy Faye, and I invited Jesus into my heart. He peered into my heart from the stoop, decided that the place was too messy. That’s the last I heard from Him.

  So I don’t believe Dewey, because Danny’s heart was hurricane-hit. Nothing but debris.

  The night, the night, Danny’s home. I am prowling outside my own house, peering through windows, making sure that the guests have gone away. There is only gloom in there, so I think I am safe. I slide my body through the sliding doors.

  Look. A bottle of wine that is still half-full, or half-empty depending on how you look at things, a philosophical nicety that I don’t really bother with, seeing as in about two seconds it’s going to be neither. (Any signs of you-know-who, Farley fucking O’Keefe?)

  “Some friggy-diggy half hour, Des.” The alien Claire is sitting on the sofa. She is bristling.

  “I was working.”

  “Whoopee-shit.”

  “I just had to do a few over-dubs. A cretinous tambourine. A pump organ, as played by Mrs. Peabody. She is very pious. Worried about her husband’s drinking. She suspects he may be a latent homosexual and therefore puts her money on the Man Upstairs.”

  “Shut the fuck up.”

  “Yes. Er. Um. I’m sorry if I missed dinner.”

  “Well, don’t worry your gnarly little head about it, okay, because dinner sucked sewer water through party straws. We ate some of that Bouillabaisse stuff and just about gagged.”

  “Let me try it.”

  “It’s no good now, it’s all cold and shit.”

  “We could heat it up.”

  “ ’Cause the thing of it is, Des, I said half an hour, and you were gone for four. You ignored your house guests—”

  “I lose track of the time …”

  “Couldn’t you just take some portion of your mind and make it hang chicky, you know, keep an eye out for things taking place in the real world?”

  “I’m going to go reheat the Bouillabaisse.”

  “I’ll reheat the stuff for you, goofus. I don’t think you know how to work a stove.”

  “I have tamed the Yamaha 666. I am not daunted by mere kitchen appliances.”

  Claire huffs into the kitchen, she starts banging pots and pans around.

  I follow meekly. “Is all this noise really necessary?” I sit down at the kitchen table, play with an automatic card shuffler. It chews up the deck and spits little pieces of cardboard at me. Optimistically, I gather together the remnants and stuff them back into the machine. You must never assume the nonexistence of magic.

  “If this stuff stinks, just say so. I don’t think we should lie to each other.”

  It’s a no-go here on the automatic card shuffler front, I have created a small pile of mulch.

  Claire sticks a bowl of food on the table, hands me a spoon. She takes a napkin, unfolds it and stuffs it down the neckhole of my shirt. I lift a spoonful, hover it beneath my nostrils. Fish. Ironically, the Whale-man loathes fish. Claire watches me, she tilts her head quizzically at my hesitation. “What’s wrong?”

  “I thought it might be too hot.” I ram the spoon into my mouth. This is some sort of fish stew, the various nuances of fishiness are intermingled, it takes all my self-control not to vault this food all over the far wall. “Very good.”

  Claire stares at me and slowly starts to grin. “You fucker,” she says. “You hate fish, don’t you?”

  I nod meekly.

  Claire laughs. “Quelle flaque.” She reaches forward, messes my hair. “I’m tired,” she announces. “I’m going to bed.”

  “An excellent notion.”

  “You know, Des, we could sleep in the same bed. I got no particular objection to that scenario.”

  “Except for I, you know, am rather irregular in my habits.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking. Like, if we slept together, then I could say, hey, it’s time for bed, and hey, it’s time to get up.”

  “Do you think it would work?”

  Claire shrugs. “It’s worth a try.”

  We are trying. I have the whole of my carcass teetering on the left side, about a sixteenth of the mattress. The alien occupies the rest of the bed, all flayed limbs and waterfalling golden hair. Suddenly, though, with a small muffled cry, Claire scrunches up into a tiny ball. She draws her knees into her chest, she wraps her arms around herself. A kind of evil electricity affects her, she twitches and gnashes her teeth. I touch her shoulder with my fat fingers—the resulting scream is short but terrifying. Claire climbs out of the bed, she stands in the darkness and tries to remember where she is. She stares at me without tenderness. “Gotta piss,” she says, and disappears.

  Seems to me it’s rise-and-shine time. I’ll just check the old bedside clock here—3:14 A.M. Perfect. I stretch, yawn, slap my gums contently. I certainly enjoy domestic life.

  I was eighteen when I met Fay Ginzburg. She was seventeen, in the company of her best friend, Karen Hoffman, the pair of them standing directly beneath me during a concert in Sausalito. This was surprising. I looked and saw that there was a bit of space available beneath both Monty Mann and my brother, ample room under Dewey Moore, so why these two girls should be right there was baffling. I was so shocked I misplaced my hand on the organ keyboard. I made some clammy notes and threw them into the engine of “Torque Torque”.

  Karen Hoffman was a tall girl, flat-chested, she closed her eyes and weaved back and forth, a creature in search of a Svengali. Her lips were thick and very red, and she always looked to be pouting (always was, in fact, pouting). I took one look at those lips and was covered with goosebumps. My hands tossed fishy black notes all over the music. Even Monty Mann noticed, that’s how rank my playing suddenly became. Beside this tall and amply lipped person was Fay Ginzburg. She danced like a prizefighter, a masculine bob-and-weave, left-hooks and uppercuts whistling through the air. The other patrons gave her a wide berth. Fay Ginzburg’s breasts were like a division of Panzer tanks crushing the border at dawn. And she was similarly endowed at the other end, a very serious keester indeed, a huge battering ball of flesh. Fay Ginzburg’s hair was red, when I first saw her it was a pile on top of her head like autumn leaves about to be torched. Her eyes were grey or black, depending on her mood, and the most conspicuous thing about her was a large, birdlike nose. (Later a doctor whittled away at the beak until it was a button.)

  Not that I was at the time fascinated by Fay Ginzburg. No, all my attention—all my heart, so I fancied—was given over to the tall, gorgeously lipped creature with dreamily vacant eyes. I felt nauseated, my throat got tight, I was suddenly made aware of my elephantine awkwardness. After the set I went backstage and had a sip from Dewey Moore’s flask, I filched two beers o
ut of a sink and popped them back. Bolstered, I walked into the larger dressing room, found it to be full of people as it always was, and discovered the object of my love (and her shorter, frightening friend) in conversation with my brother Danny.

  I fired up a cigarette, a scrawny, ill-made affair, a taste like medieval peatmoss.

  “Desmond!” Danny hailed me. “Come here and meet these womens. This here is—”

  “Fay,” said the same, even though Danny’s finger had been aimed at the taller girl. “Fay Ginzburg. And this is my friend Karen Hoffman. You know Hoffman’s Drugs?”

  Already my field of expertise, but I could only shrug uncertainly.

  “That’s her uncle,” said Fay.

  “Ah,” said I. I tried to think of something to say to Karen, to tell her, for example, what a noble line of work I felt her uncle was in, but Fay was sticking her finger into my chest. “What are you doing after the show?”

  Danny answered, “Probably going for something to eat.”

  “You want to come back to my place?”

  “Hey,” said Danny. He looked at Karen. “Are you going back there?”

  Karen produced an elaborate shrug, one full of philosophy and world-weariness. She did this quite a bit, and the effect would have been striking except that she usually did it in response to simple yes/no questions.

  “So—” The girl Fay Ginzburg was poking me in the stomach. Throughout our brief interview she prodded me constantly, checking for weak spots. “We’ll see you after the show.”

  “Absolutely,” said Dan. “My brother and I are looking forward to it.”

  The two girls walked away.

  “Well, well,” marvelled Danny.

  “Daniel,” I spoke quite earnestly, “I want Karen.”

  “You do, do you?” Danny lit up a cigarette, pretended to be reflecting seriously, but as he did so he stuffed the butt up his nostril.

  “Desmo,” asked Daniel, “did you dig the lips?”

  “The lips,” I agreed.

  “Think of the things you could do with those lips.”

  I nodded lasciviously, although I could only think of kisses, and rather chaste ones at that. (A melody popped into my mind, an airy gossamer affair, a spider’s web.)