“Fred,” I announce, “I’m going out.”
“Out?” Fred Head quakes visibly. “Why?”
“It is no big deal,” I claim, fooling no one. “I am merely going out for a constitutional. I shall visit a few of the local emporiums, make discreet inquiries. Perhaps I shall effect some purchases. Groceries, for example. Have you not noticed that you have been subsisting almost entirely on jelly-filled doughnuts, some of which have antebellum best-before dates?”
“When will you be back?”
“I shall be back when—” The time has come for truth-telling. “I shall be back when I find her, Fred.”
“How in the world are you going to find her? How are you going to find her in the world?”
“They used to set out in longboats made of reeds. They rode the waves by night, navigating celestially, Cassiopeia’s chair to Orion’s belt. Necromancers sat at the front of the boat and examined the entrails of albatross, of seal-pups.”
Fred Head remains unconvinced.
“The real world holds no fear for me,” I assure him. “I know what goes on out there. Kingsley Charlesworth, the scurrilous knave, is secretly bedding his own stepsister Amanda’s twin cousin.”
“It’s not her twin cousin,” Fred informs me urgently. “It’s her. It’s Amanda pretending to be her own twin cousin so that she can sleep with Kingsley.”
“Deceit! Treachery!” I take a few deep, calming breaths. “Point well taken, Fred. I must never let down my guard.”
“But what about the mixing?”
“You can handle the mixing, Fred. Truth to tell, I wouldn’t be of any use. I can’t concentrate. She is a mousy little girl, for all her vivacity she is as emotionally crippled as the next guy, she causes me consternation and grief, but there you have it.”
Fred is thinking. When Fred thinks, he toys with his features quite ruthlessly, as if to rearrange his face. “I had a girlfriend,” Fred Head informs me. “Marsha Lem. And one day they took her away. And I thought, go out and find her, Frederick. I packed my bag. I snuck down the hallway at night. I even had a map and knew which road would take me into the city. But the nurse caught me, and I never went. But do you know what, Desmond? I knew the nurse would catch me. I didn’t tip-toe, I made a lot of noise, I knew that Mrs. Ames would step into the hallway and say ‘Just where are we going, young man?’ ” Fred Head shrugs, finishes his patching job. He flicks a switch on his strange machine and lights flash. “So maybe …,” he says—he aligns all the frequency levels, begins to shave off those at either end of the spectrum—“So maybe you’re telling me this because you think I’ll say no, Desmond, you can’t go, you have to stay with me.” Fred Head looks up at me. “Maybe?”
“Maybe,” I admit.
“I can make myself things to eat,” says Fred. “I can go to bed when I get tired. I can mix this music by myself.”
“Can you?”
“Go, Desmond. Don’t come back without Claire. I want you to promise because you owe me one.”
“I owe you one?”
“If it wasn’t for me,” says Fred Head, isolating track thirteen, Mooky’s delphinoid herald, “you’d be the biggest fuck-up ever.”
So it’s down the golden hallway (platinum, too, in my youth I was quite the rock star) and, laying my hand upon the doorknob, which feels icy cold, into the—
Now is the time to bolt if ever a time there was. Now is the time to race upstairs, climb into nappies and scurry between the sheets.
—real world.
Talk about your bright sunshine, that orb is suspended about thirty feet overhead, it’s giving out with a Tarzanian yodel. My eyes, even hidden behind the Polaroids, shrivel into tiny annulated beans. And hot, phew, it’s like the sun has grabbed me by the collar of my makeshift smoking jacket and is demanding what did you do with the money, huh? Still, my eyes will adjust in time, and a few flaps with my arms direct a soothing breeze across my chest.
My front yard is ruinous, three or four species of weed are battling it out for possession, the only competition coming from garbage. Empty liquor bottles stud the lawn (I have vague recollections of pitching dead soldiers out of windows, hoping to outwit Farley and the missus), but I likewise suppose that my yard has become a nocturnal hang-out for alcoholic transients. I don’t care. What’s the difference between me and alcoholic transients? Several million dollars.
Agh. You remember agh, don’t you, the idiosyncratic little kecking sound I make when deeply distressed? I make it now because what has appeared from around the side of the house but a snarling dog, fangs bared and hackles raised. It is a small dog, an unruly collection of mottled cowlicks, but its teeth are pointy and its eyes are red.
I give out with a little of the nice dog, good dog, but this mutt is too intent on its yawping to heed me. Then I say, “Excuse me. Do you realize that I am Desmond Howl? I own this house. I don’t remember retaining you, and if I did in some drug-and/or alcohol-induced state, all agreements are null and void. Now, I beg your pardon.”
Curiously, the dog falls silent. It is quite the silliest hound I have ever seen. Its eyes are crossed, its tongue hangs out almost a foot, it is splay-footed, and the fur on its paws is too long by several inches. I haughtily step by it and stumble on my way. Even with shades I seem to be blind as a mole, I must hold my arms out and describe wide circles with them lest I run into the black iron fence that contains my property. And already I am sweating, I haven’t gone ten feet, this expedition was a bad idea. How about a nice refreshing flop in the pool, how would that be? But then, you see, what happens is, the mere thought of the pool conjures an image of Claire poolside. Her buttocks presented to Phoebus like an Incan offering. I must keep going.
There is a squeal, my feet get caught up and it is extremely lucky that I don’t go tumbling can over tea-kettle. That mutt has gotten underfoot, I curse like the next-door neighbour in a comic strip, “*@*?!!!” The dog whimpers, and without thinking I shoot a clownish hoof. I catch its belly in the crook of my foot and lift the cur into the air. The pooch adds a high, surprised whine. It executes several acrobatic manoeuvres before collapsing on the pathway. Whap! A black iron bar catches me squarely in the face, I reel backwards and flop on my keester. Another squeal, this is not going at all well, my nose is bloodied, my sunglasses are askew, a tooth is loose, and I believe I have rendered a relative innocent into a puppy pancake.
I stand up (after much rolling about) and see that the dog has escaped death. Death likely tossed the scrawny arfer back. The dog stares at me, his eyes filled with world-weariness and philosophy, silently demanding, “Why, oh why, did you do such a thing to me?”
“I’m sorry.” I dust myself off, try to adjust my shades, but the best I can hope for is to cant my head backwards and hope that they stay balanced on my nose. “I’m off to find Claire. If you care to accompany me as far as the next grocery store, I shall purchase you some Gainesburger.” And never fear, I remembered to bring money. You likely thought, oh no, the Whale-man will waddle into the store, cover the counter with stuff, dog food and huge quantities of Whale-man food, and then slap pitifully at his empty pockets. I can see how I must be tiresome at times, but I am doing my best to change.
I open the gate, the hinges howl like something from a grade X horror film—come to think of it, my once palatial estate is looking distinctly Lugosian—and I take a step out onto the sidewalk. This is where the real fear begins. There are other people on this sidewalk. Here comes one now, a bearlike black woman attempting to set a record for most shopping bags carried. She is huffing and puffing, little bits of spit flying every which way, I hurtle off to one side, woe betide the man who interferes with this monumental tote.
Which way do I go? I had forgotten about all the choices one is confronted with. I elect to go left, based on the fact that the action of always going to the left is called sinistrality, which is fairly catchy. “This way, dog.” The dog turns, a paw shoots out, his legs buckle, this dog is a moron.
> Do you know who lives right across the road? Henry Mancini. I’ve never met the man, but Fay once attended a party over there. This is quite the street I live on. I understand that a tour-bus drives along it four times daily while one of those oversized Barbie dolls intones, “On your right, the house of composer Henry Mancini. The doorbell plays the familiar riff from ‘The Pink Panther Theme Song.’ On your left, the house of reclusive rock star Desmond Howl. He has a series of Howitzers mounted the length of his sentry gates. Each of the six corner towers is manned by an escaped Nazi war criminal.”
Here comes a car of ogling tourists, I can tell by the way it slows, by the way it wanders about the road, the driver distracted by the Mancini mansion. A tiny river has been built across Henry’s front lawn, the rapids powered by an underground generator, a huge sign proclaiming it MOON RIVER. I think Henry must be a bit of a dork. Fay reported he was nice enough, claimed that he made a pass at her. Then again, Fay could have a private audience with the Pope and afterwards claim that he made a pass at her.
Fancy this, the car has veered across the road and pulled up to the curb in front of my house. I bolt into some shrubbery, peer through the branches at this. I want to see how my fans are looking these days. A car door opens—what guts, these people are going to attempt a frontal assault—and, agh, look who it is!
Dr. Tockette, his long many-shaded hair shooting out from under a Los Angeles Dodgers baseball cap. He politely extends a hand back to the car and out climbs that Mandy journalist person. She is wearing a suit, skirted and tailored for a woman, but essentially a blue pin-striped suit of the sort favoured by the best Wall Street pigfuckers. Who else shall clamber out of this automobile? Aha! A cop. He is wearing street clothes, but even my buddy the pooch here pegs him for a cop and issues forth a low and vicious growl. The cop has a moustache and is clutching in his hand a very official-looking piece of paper. Things are beginning to make sense. Things become crystal clear as Kenneth Sexstone prances out of the car, and if you think it’s hard to prance out of cars, you’re right, it is necessary that one be Kenneth Sexstone. Oh, Kenny, let me guess. Dr. Tockette has made an official assessment of my sanity, based on facts verified by that Mandy woman, the cop has some sort of paper that enables you to have me thrown into a soft room, whereupon you will have access to all my old master tapes.
Fortunately (not to mention miraculously), I’m not home. You’re going to have to catch me, Kenneth.
The dog and I light out for the territories.
The thing about Daniel is—and I tread carefully, for what man can truly say what the thing about another is?—he was of two minds. One of them I could relate to. This was the mind that sent him hurtling through life like a slobbering sheepdog. This was the mind that made him vomit in public places. That got him arrested at four in the morning, accused of being a menace to the world as we know it, a threat to the universe as we conceive it. Go, Danny, go. The other mind was alien to me. (As alien as the lithe Torontonian.) This other mind of Danny’s decided to rescue and revive—to give the breath of life to—the Family.
He met and wooed, around this time, the famous movie actress Lee B. Bennie. God created Lee B. Bennie when He decided that men in general were breathing too much. This should put a stop to that, thought the Almighty, and He placed Lee down somewhere in New Jersey. Immediately, much air was left fresh and unused wherever Lee went.
Daniel courted her in an old-fashioned, chivalrous manner. He brought her flowers and candy. At the end of their first two dates he kissed her chastely and vanished into the night. When they did go to bed together, Danny dug down deep into his memory banks and came up with the old missionary position. How do I know all this? How do I know all this? Oh, because he told me, Dan-Dan did, when it was all over, he would hang his head low, consume cheap whiskey and unburden himself of such things. So, anyway, when Dan decided to marry Lee, his course of action was plain. Silly and damned, like the man himself, but plain. He would introduce Lee to his family.
So Fay and I received an invitation to dine at a place called Benito’s. Thanks, but no thanks, said I. Fay informed me that not going was not an option. And look, this is the kind of insight she had into her lifemate. “But, dorkums,” she told me, already dressing for the event, some three days away, draping lace things over her nakedness, “a lot of celebrities eat at Benito’s. There’s always photographers there. Everybody who’s anybody dines at Benito’s.”
Fay had this strange power over me, I could either do as she asked or suffer in a little hell that made Hades look like Disneyland. I went to Benito’s, I even dressed for the occasion in a three-piece suit, sandals, my hair in a fastidious pony-tail. Fay wore something that looked like a chiffon prizefighter’s robe. Photographers made our picture as we approached the front door.
Danny and Lee were already seated inside. Indeed, they were the only people seated inside, Danny had squandered his life savings and rented the entire establishment.
“Desmond, I want you to meet the love of my life. The girl of my dreams. My soul partner—”
“Oh, yes, Daniel, but do you mind if I just sit down first? I’m feeling a little faint.”
Fay scowled. Fay was a beauty, but a mere mortal after all.
“Hi, Desmond,” said Lee, touching my arm, soft as Vermont snow settling on a woodpile. “I love your music.”
Those first few minutes were rather pleasant. Waiters descended in a swarm, booze (I shouldn’t call thousand-dollar bottles just booze, but, given the way Dan and I imbibed, why not?) was brought.
Fay and Lee engaged in a desultory conversation. Daniel and I drank and told jokes. I recall laughing several times. And then, heralded by an explosion of flashbulbs beyond the single window, the door opened and in walked my mother and her new husband, Maurice Mantle.
Shortly after this, my mother would take to wearing sedate clothes, the pinnings of a businesswoman, but that evening represented one of her last plunges into spectacular dress. Plunge being the operative word. Every move my mother made threatened to expose her bosom. The effect was breathtaking, a sartorial Evil Knievel. (Several photographers followed her into the restaurant, only to be shooed out like barn cats.)
There was mass confusion for a while. My mother hadn’t known I was going to be there, and she was not talking to me. Her new hubby took control, leading her to the table. Maurice had borrowed God’s striped sportsjacket, His beige silk trousers, a shirt rendered out of priceless metals. “Hello, all!” he said. He kissed Fay on the cheek (what?), he shook Danny’s hand, his breath caught only slightly in his throat as he was introduced to Lee, and finally Maurice confronted me, proferring that hand. It looked as if he kept it in the fridge, only bringing it out for special occasions. “No hard feelings,” Maurice said.
It was neither a question nor a statement, so I said nothing.
“Families,” said Danny, “can’t do business together. I think we should forget about all that stuff.”
“Families,” argued my mother—a waiter came with a broom, there was a sneaky little photographer crouched underneath the table—“families are supposed to help one another.”
“Families,” I finally spoke up, “are supposed to eat turkey and mashed potatoes. I am supposed to shove the peas off to one corner of my plate, I am not partial to them. Families are supposed to watch Ed Sullivan. To moan en masse when Ed introduces Topo Gigo, the little Italian mouse. Families are supposed to yawn, to stretch their arms. Everyone puts on pee-jays. The children are ushered upstairs, put to bed with stories concerning fairies and sprites. The parents give each other knowing winks and smiles …”
This little speech was interrupted by a voice from outside. A voice that sounded like beavers felling a dead tree. “What do you mean, who the fuck am I? Who the fuck are you?”
Some answer must have been given, because the voice continued. “I made the Howl Brothers. Take my photograph. Donna, smile. Take the gum out of your mouth.”
The weary pop of a
single flashbulb.
Then the door flew open.
“Dad!” exploded Daniel.
“Dan-Dan!” responded the father. “What the hell’s going on?”
“Family reunion.”
“Shit.”
The father was dressed in a manner he thought was hip, a shirt opened to his navel, several medallions around his neck, bell-bottomed trousers and platform shoes. Beside him, Donna glanced around bewildered. “Wow,” she muttered, reinserting the gum into her mouth. Donna wore a halter-top and either a minidress or a maxi loincloth.
Had it not been for her, the father would have fled, the evening might have ended. But that young girl knew class when she saw it, probably recognized that this was as close as she was going to get in her lifetime. “Hankies,” she said, “Donna’s hungry.”
“Donna can eat somewhere else.”
“No, Donna can’t. Donna must eat here. If Donna doesn’t, Donna will be weak. Weak, Hankies.”
“Oh,” said the father. He made up his mind. “I’m gonna come sit down over there. But I don’t want to talk to none of you. Except for maybe Danny and—” The father looked at Lee for the first time. He collapsed.
The waiters, some twenty-eight of them, began to ferry out food from the kitchen. This smoothed the situation for a little while, everyone sat at the big table and ate. The only talking was done by Donna. “You know who eats here with great regularity? Paul Newman. Old Blue Eyes. No, wait a sec, that’s Frank Sinatra. I don’t know if he eats here. Probly. But Paul Newman for sure. I love Paul Newman. I’ve told Hankies, I said, if we marry, which he hasn’t asked me to, but if he did and if we did, I would be absolutely faithful. Except for if Paul Newman hit on me. Then Hankies would be history.”
As good as the food was, do you know what was better? That’s right, the booze. Yummy-yum. Before long I was not using my wineglass, I was picking up those bottles by their necks and draining them. The room began to spin, but pleasantly. I preferred the room spinning. I never had to look at any one person for too long.
Whale Music Page 18
