Whale Music

by Paul Quarrington

  At any rate, we were all having quite a good time—Monty Mann in pursuit of some high-breasted, bubble-bunned blonde, Sal Goneau dressing (tearing off one outfit, stripping down to his skivvies in full view of us all, climbing into another, though essentially identical, costume), Dewey Moore consuming beer, leering at the woman who, if memory serves, became the first of his many wives—when the door to the adjoining dressing room opened and there stood Ringo Starr. He held a complicated and ambitious sandwich in his hands, something like the edible monuments created by Dagwood Bumstead in the Sunday funnies. Ringo had a look in his doleful eyes that suggested all was not right with the world. This look changed as soon as he saw that our food table held a huge tureen of mustard. He rushed in and slathered yellow goop all over the crown of his creation. Meanwhile, of course, our room had all but silenced, only Professor Ginzburg was unaware of Starr’s presence, he was busy explaining some aspect of physics to Daniel.

  John Lennon poked his head through the doorway. “Ringo,” he said, “don’t bother these nice Howl people.”

  You should have seen our groupies scatter! They are a fickle lot, those young girls, they scurried through to the Beatles’ side in a twinkling. I believe we were even deserted by a couple of sideburnt goonies and one or two family members. John gave us an apologetic grin. He singled me out with his dark eyes. “Hullo,” he said lowly. “How’s yer belly fer blackheads, mate?”

  “The farbulous How Brossers,” said Paul McCartney, entering behind his partner. “Doosmin and Dinny.” McCartney chuckled at his strange little joke and shook my hand enthusiastically. “So vahry plissed,” he said. “So vahry, vahry plissed.”

  “Here,” said Lennon, his hawklike eyes flying around our dressing room. “They have nicer digs than us.”

  “Let’s trade,” suggested George Harrison, likewise entering behind Lennon.

  “Yeh,” agreed John, and he turned back to his own side. “You lot! Come over here.”

  Ringo, meanwhile, was contentedly munching his sandwich.

  The Beatle entourage began to file into our side, soon the place was shoulder-to-shoulder.

  “All right,” screamed Lennon, “the Howl people are not leaving! Come now, Howl people, let’s play fair! There’s a perfectly nice dressing room next door, pop along now!”

  Paul got up on a table. “This is Pewl McCartley spikking. We must evarcuate immidzatly this rheum!”

  “Eeee-vacuate!” hollered Lennon.

  “Eeee-mediately!” responded Harrison.

  Ringo Starr finished his sandwich and began to construct a new one. Mrs. Ginzburg watched him. I knew that look in her eyes, it meant that she was considering adoption.

  One of the Beatles party, someone associated with their record company or publishing house (not Lennon himself, as Geddy Cole giddily scribbles on page 119 of his snotty little book Howl! An Unauthorized Biography of the Howl Brothers), wandered over, plonk held high, to where my brother and Professor Ginzburg were talking. The professor was still oblivious to the pandemonium, busily disambiguating one of the universe’s little mysteries, stabbing at the heavens for emphasis. The Beatles’ hanger-on confronted these two, plonk sloshing over the side of his plastic cup, and exclaimed, “I say! The fabulous Howl Brothers. You must be Danny,” he said, pressing a finger into my brother’s shoulder, “and you must be Desmond,” pressing his bony finger into the good doctor’s shoulder. The buffoon misjudged, of course, how insubstantial Professor Ginzburg was. His one slight shove sent the old man careening backwards into a table full of cold cuts. The professor turned quickly to grab ahold of the table’s edge, and his face landed in a mound of potato salad.

  Daniel executed one of his most brutal hoodlum moves. He grabbed the idiot’s collar and gave one short turn. At the same time he fashioned his hand into a fist—not your everyday pugilistic John L. Sullivan-type fist, a vicious hoodlum fist, the knuckle of the third finger protruding—and brought it up into the clod’s face. Danny knew how to fight in crowded places, he made no attempt to get a wide arc on the punch, he used physics, turning his hand over as it came so that when it arrived at the dickwad’s nose it was as full of energy as an Englished billiard ball. There was a crunch, there was blood, there were screams from around the room.

  “ ’Ere,” said Lennon quietly, coming through the crowd. “What’s this all about?”

  “Fuck off,” said Daniel, who had gone to assist Professor Ginzburg. The little man, blinded by potato salad, held his hands in front of him and moaned like King Lear.

  “This man has blood all over his face,” Lennon pointed out, picking up his associate.

  “That man has shit in his brains,” remarked Danny.

  “Oooo. Yer very nasty.”

  “Fuck off outta here. Nobody asked you to come in here.”

  McCartney screamed, “Just being ferndly!” Paul could be a real asshole.

  Lennon stared at Dan for a long while. Finally he said, “Sorry.”

  No one ever said Danny Howl was eloquent. “Fuck off.”

  What we had was a hawk fighting with its mirror image, a drunken yahoo exchanging insults with his echo. “I said we were sorry,” said Lennon, stropping up the edge on his voice.

  “And I said fuck off.”

  Lennon turned away, supporting his associate, and mumbled something.

  “What?” roared Daniel.

  “I said,” muttered Lennon, “that you’re likely in such a pisser because yer drummer’s a poof.”

  “Right,” nodded Dan. “At least he leaves his own band alone. Not like your manager.”

  This was a sore point with Lennon, this thing with him and Brian Epstein. If you don’t know the story, you won’t hear it from me. It’s in numerous Geddy Cole books, the rancid seedpicker always finds a way to work it in, I believe that Geddy wrote a bio of Pyng-Pong, an all-girl trio from Norway, and still managed to work in this thing about John Lennon and Brian Epstein. At any rate, so sore a point was it with the Beatles’ rhythm guitarist that he raced at Danny and, being somewhat of a punk himself, managed to lay a fist near Dan’s mouth. Dan pummeled him in the stomach, Lennon’s air raced out and he sagged. Danny brought his shoulder up underneath Lennon’s chin and sent him flying. Naturally, our sideburnt goonies and their sideburnt goonies rushed each other, there was a sound like a thunderclap. In a matter of seconds the scene had degenerated into a donnybrook. Dewey Moore was doing the most serious brawling. Dewey had taken on the extra goonies from the Beatles’ team, when he finally hit the stage he was glowing purple-blue. Even I, by nature pacifistic, got involved to a certain extent. What I did was, I grabbed plates from the table and brought them down on people’s heads. I was rather indiscriminate in this, I’ll admit that, I believe I coldcocked Sal Goneau, but I did manage to aid our team, I K.O.’d the lout who’d started the ruckus in the first place, smashing a piece of china over his crown even as he stumbled about, still not fully recovered from Dan’s punch.

  Kenneth Sexstone calmly picked his way to the door and opened it. No less than eight burly sentries stood there, diligently making sure that no one came into our dressing room. They were rather surprised to see a riot going on behind their backs. The guards came in and settled things down.

  Claire is getting ready for bed. She has many ointments and unguents. I don’t understand half of what she does when she prepares for bed, but it doesn’t frighten me. Fay was another story. Sometimes when I watched Fay getting ready for slumber, a cold clammy fear started rotting in my inner turn.

  “My aunt was there,” says Claire.

  “Where?”

  “At that concert.”

  “People like to claim they were there.”

  “No, she was. She told me. She blew somebody in one of the bands. It wasn’t any of you guys though. The group had a genorky name, The Fantastic Sounds or something.”

  “The Sounds Fantastic. I remember them. They stunk. Instrumental band. They turned good music into Gerber Baby Food.”


  “Yeah. My aunt Fiona blew the sax player.”

  “And this was something she related to you? Perhaps at Christmas, the fire burning brightly in the hearth, the turkey basting in the oven, your aunt sat you on her knee and recalled fondly how she blew this sax player?”

  “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 Mont
y’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.”