Count Geiger's Blues

by Michael Bishop

  “A fisherman, a foolproof lure—’at’s more like it,” Grantham said. “Hey, Lee, where’s your philanthropic spirit?”

  “Blown clear at my last bassoon recital.”

  “And who’s to say he’ll even look at the ads section?” Xavier fretted.

  “Seems a long shot to me.”

  “The Urbanite’s full of concert hype, The Mick’s a Smite ’Em fan, the ads’re a popular ticket-exchange. Trust me, Xave, he’ll see the damned thing.”

  *

  That evening, exiting the elevator on floor 22, Xavier felt the carpet and the walls thrumming with inaudible, bone-conducted bass notes. The purr of a dentist’s drill could make your body tingle with a throb similar to that buzzing in the corridor. Feeling it, Xavier knew that Grantham’s ploy had worked, that the prodigal had returned, and that, hallelujah, he wouldn’t have to tell Lydia he’d chased her only child from the security of his apartment into the sin dens of Salonika’s worst neighborhoods. For what he felt was music: music cranked out at jet-engine decibels from Mikhail’s CD player and conducted through the building’s girders as vibration rather than sound. The retropunk brat had come home.

  When Xavier pushed open the bedroom door, The Mick was sprawled on his bed in filthy clothes tapping a pen on his knee in time to the deafening music. Turn that down, Xavier waved. The Mick merely stared at him.

  Xavier went to the CD player and turned it down. He ceased to quake so crazily. Thus, it would take a while for the floor to vibrate him back into the hall.

  “About time,” he said. “Past time, I’d say.”

  “Don’t rev up, okay? Just don’t rev up.”

  “You’re presuming to tell me how to behave?”

  The Mick said nothing.

  “If you hate me, Mikhail, what pulled you in out of the cold?”

  “Your ad. The tickets. I’ve like come to get ’em.”

  Xavier produced them from an inside jacket pocket. “Think I’d lie? I don’t lie, Mikhail. Not-lying’s what did me in with a certain person who’d’ve rather I sold out my standards than tell the truth as I saw it. Right?”

  “Truth’s relative, unc. You should know that by now.”

  “You’re relative, too, nephew. In fact, that’s the only reason you got into my life to begin with.”

  Mikhail yogi’d around on his mattress and punched his CD player all the way off. Silence. Motionlessness. “Don’t start, Uncle Xave. You’re s’posed to slay the fatted calf and throw me a killer wingding. That’d be a classy way to welcome me home.”

  “Would it? Well, your wingding’s Friday night, at the Grotto. Just like the ad promised.”

  “Promises, promises.”

  Xavier strode all the way into Mikhail’s sanctum, which had no uncluttered place to perch except the end of his bed, and even it hosted a pair of capsized tennis shoes, their fat, quilted tongues lolling out. He’d have to pace. Fine. He needed to pace. “Look, I’ve got a right to be angry. I was—”

  “—worried sick,” Mikhail preempted him.

  “And why not? Donel Lassiter and Bryan Cline saw you in P. S. Annie’s two nights ago hanging over a bowl of pokeweed. A hot one. Inhaling.”

  “No they didn’t.”

  “Don’t bullshit me. You were there again last night. Bryan tried to catch you.”

  “Whoa. Whoa there, okay?”

  Xavier didn’t want to let the kid fabricate an off-putting lie, but his refusal to shut up until Xavier shut up made it hard not to hear him out. His story was simple. He’d been hungry. So with a stevedoric assgrabber three times his age, he’d ventured into P. S. Annie’s for some crackers and a bowl of hot chicken stock. He was supposed to repay this guy in illegal tender of a type that Xavier could easily deduce for himself.

  “You weren’t doing salad gas?”

  “Naw. I was spooning soup. Oliver Twist-style.” This was a lie. Xavier would bet money on it.

  “Afterward, did you . . . pony up?”

  “You kidding? I scrammed from that fudge-packer. Flim-flammed him. But so it goes for AC-DCs, right?”

  “What about last night? Why’d you run from Bryan?”

  “Hadn’t seen your ad yet. Wasn’t ready to run on home. Knew I couldn’t cadge a meal while you and your swishy buddies were nosing around.”

  “Don’t talk like a bigot. You hungry now?”

  “Uh-uh. Mopped up on the leftovers in the fridge. Sorry.”

  “I’ll bet. Consider it your fatted calf.”

  Xavier peered sidelong at The Mick. A mixed blessing, having him back again. Would the kid light out every time one of his reviews hacked him off? Would Xavier have to pretend to like what he hated, or to hate what he liked, to keep his status as The Mick’s semi-tolerated proxy dad? Xavier asked these questions aloud.

  “You uptight about reviewing the Smite ’Em concert? ’Fraid I’ll scram if you dis ’em?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Hey, you’re prejudiced against Smite ’Em. And you’ve never even listened to a Smite ’Em CD.”

  “The dissonance seeping out of your headphones seems ripe for, uh, dissing.”

  “Well, if they’re as bad as you think, at least you’ll suck up a health-preserving energy rush.” Mikhail dared Xavier to prepare for the concert by listening to several Smite ’Em albums. They would give him a yardstick by which to measure the band’s musicianship on stage. Xavier, The Mick said, was a know-nothing about rock ’n’ roll. He knew even less about retropunks. So any preparation at all would be helpful. It might even allow him to get off on a set that had the rest of the crowd communion-juking. Xavier doubted that listening to STH&T before its concert would acculturate him to its idiosyncratic tribal sounds or its on-stage choreographies, but, working on the proposition that he would never attend an art exhibit without previewing the artists or a new stage play without first trying to read its script, he spent the next two evenings immersed in a gonzo rhythmic discord that violated most of his notions of what music was, how it was supposed to mean, and the way it should caress the ear.

  “Just remember McGudgeon’s Law, Uncle Xave.”

  Imprisoned between The Mick’s headphones, Xavier said, “What’re you talking about?” (McGudgeon’s Law sounded like the title of a TV cop show.)

  “From Gregor McGudgeon,” Mikhail said. “Smite ’Em’s front man, keyboard player, and lead guitarist. He’s also heavy into computer graphics, vitriform carving, and sci-fi poetry.”

  “Right. A Renaissance man.”

  “McGudgeon’s Law is personal, but has universal application: ‘Only five percent / Of what I do / Is deathless art. / The rest is meant / To buy us stew / Or ease my heart.’ Can you glom that?”

  “Probably not. I’m not a very good glommer.”

  Mikhail grimaced. “No, you ain’t. Maybe it’s got something to do with your wussy Philistine Syndrome.”

  Xavier made angry shooing gestures with the back of his hand.

  Actually, recently he’d been doing better, working Stamz’s beat—until his dutiful homework on Smite Them Hip & Thigh’s anarchic music. Now, he felt vaguely queasy, on the edge of the flu. What did that mean?

  He tried not to think about it.

  24

  Lydia Dearest

  On Thursday, Lydia and Bari whooshed into Lanier International Airport on separate flights. Their wide-bodied jumbo jets landed only twenty minutes apart. Xavier had Mikhail stay in the waiting area of the gate where his mother would disembark. He stood at the panoramic plateglass of a waiting area five gates nearer the main terminal. Lydia would want some time to talk to The Mick alone, and this arrangement would give her that even before they got to Xavier’s. Xavier, in turn, was looking forward to his reunion with Bari, who came off the plane utterly dragged out, in a charcoal-colored Dolce & Gabbana dress pleated with weirdly spaced clasps that reminded Xavier of aluminum locusts. The dress was from a decade-old collection. Had Bari worn it to mirror her morose mood and listlessness, or
had the gloomy dress triggered those conditions?

  Who knew? Bari was “really glad”—she claimed—to see him, but, although usually immune to the depredations of jet lag, today she didn’t want to meet Lydia, or come by his apartment, or make a date of any kind until next week. All she wanted was to return to her atelier, crawl onto the mattress under her cutting table, and sleep, sleep, sleep. In fact, to Xavier’s surprise, Bari insisted on taking a cab home. He could help by collecting her luggage—she gave him the tickets—and bringing it to her later.

  Presto! she hurried off.

  *

  Xavier walked back toward the reception gate where he’d left Mikhail to meet his mother. Most of that flight’s disembarked passengers had already cleared the area, but Lydia and The Mick were standing in the corridor arguing, going at it like sparring partners. Xavier grimaced and hung back. The only good thing about this was that Lydia was too engrossed in her spat to be disappointed or annoyed that Bari—the famous Bari of Salonika—had left the airport without saying hello. It hadn’t been a snub, anyway, and now Lydia would not be able to regard it as such. Xavier would say that Bari had wanted an introduction, but had been too embarrassed by her argument with The Mick to intrude. He steeled himself and strolled toward the pair.

  “You’ve got to come to San Diego,” Lydia was saying. “You have no choice.”

  Her tone echoed Xavier’s manner of dealing with staffers when he’d had a bad day. This was at once a startling and a depressing insight.

  “I don’t have to do nuthin’ you say.” The Mick held his nose a tissue’s width from Lydia’s. “You abandoned me here, shunted me onto a cubic geezer who can’t even play chess without catching a nosebleed.”

  “Your uncle? Are you talking about your uncle?”

  “Uncle? He’s a fucking know-it-all parole officer.”

  “Hello, Lydia.” Because she didn’t even bother to turn his way, Xavier kissed her lightly on the temple.

  She brushed at the spot as if a fly were trying to land on it. “Parole officer? He hasn’t done much to clean up your language. And what do you mean, abandoned you here? You wanted to come to Salonika.”

  “Lydia,” Xavier said, gingerly stepping back.

  “What I really wanted, Ma, was not to go to Pakistan.”

  “You wanted to live with Xavier, to explore a new part of the country.”

  “Sheeesh,” The Mick said, with a disbelieving sneer.

  “What’s going on?” Xavier asked.

  Lydia finally faced him. “Philip and I have been transferred from Pakistan to Bangladesh—to help three UN agencies and some people from the Ford Foundation with the medical side of flood relief there.”

  “Great,” Xavier said.

  “We’d like Mikhail to join us, but Mikhail doesn’t want to.”

  Why would they want Mikhail to join them? At this point, Xavier would’ve done almost anything, short of hiring a hit man, to be shut of the willful brat.

  “Only a masochist or a monsoon freak would move there,” The Mick said.

  “Is that how you see your father and me? As masochists? As monsoon freaks?”

  “No, ma’am,” The Mick said. “As bleeding-heart libsters with first-degree delusions of sainthood.”

  “Mick!”

  “Mama!” The Mick shot back.

  “You’re flying to San Diego with me tomorrow, young man. No ifs, ands, or buts. Well, the only if is this: If, after a week with me, you still don’t want to join us in Dacca, you can return to Salonika—assuming, that is, Xavier will take you back.”

  “A big ass-oooming,” Mikhail said.

  A huge ass-oooming, Xavier thought. Mikhail had disrupted his life. His motor mouth, retropunk attitude, and recent moronic defection to Satan’s Cellar had disillusioned Xavier, who actually wondered if The Mick’s presence had aggravated the effects of his Philistine Syndrome.

  Lydia turned to Xavier and picked with big-sister-knows-best impunity at his clothes. She straightened his tie knot, renotched his belt-buckle prong, and darted a finger around his collar to check for fraying. “I know you thought I’d have a few days to visit with you, Xavier, but I don’t. This new mission’s an urgent one, and I’ve got some stuff to do in Chula Vista to prepare for it. Would you object if I kidnap Mikhail? If he keeps refusing to join Philip and me in Bangladesh, I’ll send him back to you next week.”

  “I ain’t going to Bangladesh or to San Diego,” The Mick said. “No way.”

  “To San Diego at least,” Lydia said. “For some QT—quality time, I mean—before I have to fly out again.”

  “QT, huh? On the qt, Ma, your QT usually ain’t.”

  Feeling persnickety, Xavier said, “If you’re flying out tomorrow, Lydia, there’s another reason The Mick’s not anxious to go with you.”

  “C’mon,” The Mick warned. “Keep it on the qt, unc.”

  “There’s a Smite Them Hip & Thigh concert tomorrow night, I’m covering it, and my boss gave me an extra ticket.”

  “Ah, outgunned again.” Lydia looked at Mikhail. “Didn’t you see those yodeling banshees in Birmingham last year?”

  “Every show’s dif. And I got to make sure your ’iddle brutha gets righteously culture-briefed, don’t I?”

  Lydia handed Mikhail a baggage-claims ticket. “Go see my suitcase hasn’t been stolen. I need to talk to Xavier.”

  Mikhail snatched the ticket and swaggered toward the escalator to do what he’d been told to do, grateful for the excuse to absent himself.

  “Please let Mikhail stay on. His mind’s made up against returning with me.”

  “Lydia, he ran away for a week. Only an outright bribe brought him back. I was afraid you’d get here before he came home. I could imagine your wrath, and I would have deserved every reproach.”

  “But he did come back. You’re doing terrific, better than Phil and I seem able to.”

  “Then you lied when you foisted the little bugger off on me last fall.”

  “It would’ve been a very difficult foist if I’d told you the truth.”

  “We do semiokay sometimes, sis, but we haven’t done even semiokay for a while now. The Mick’s headstrong and tetchy. He’s . . . impossible.”

  “You’re a steadying influence, Xavier.”

  “His performance at Ephebus got worse each grading period. If that trend goes on this year, they’ll suspend or expel him. And I won’t be around all day to keep him from doing salad gas, tuning in the Pornucopia Channel, or computer-cracking the secret formula of Diet Coke. Who’s to say I could stop him even if I were around all day?”

  “But you’re a man. You’re providing him an accessible masculine role model.”

  “What’s Phil, then? An inaccessible hermaphrodite?”

  “The ‘inaccessible’ part’s on target. And, um, I’m” —Lydia sighed— “not much better, I guess.”

  Cripes, thought Xavier. The noose was tightening.

  “We’ll pay you. We’ll up Mikhail’s allowance, we’ll cover your rent and utilities, we’ll—”

  “No. Definitely not.”

  A concourse cart toting a handicapped passenger beeped at them, and Xavier pulled Lydia out of its way. “He ran away from us too,” said Lydia, heedless of the cart. “Stayed gone a month and a half. We had him declared a missing person. When he came home, we locked him in his room.” Xavier gave her a quizzical look. “It was a suite, actually. With a bathroom.”

  Lydia badgered, harangued, and cajoled as they strolled to the baggage carousels in the main terminal. By the time they got there, Xavier had agreed to let The Mick stay another year. The first one hadn’t been all azaleas, but neither had it been an utter disaster, and maybe attending a Smite Them Hip & Thigh concert with the boy would effect a rapprochement.

  Even if it didn’t, Xavier believed that Lydia had forgiven him, in advance, if The Mick cut out again, OD’d on salad gas, or came down with a fatal disease. Not that he wanted any of that stuff to happen, God knows,
but if something unforeseen and terrible did occur, he wouldn’t have to walk about the rest of his life under an ugly guilt-lined cloud. The Mick did have a way with words, and he did sometimes cook, and Bari didn’t regard him as an unrehabilitable yahoo. . . .

  *

  When Xavier got home from work on Friday, his sister was gone. Mikhail said that she’d taken EleRail back to the airport—he hadn’t wanted to go with her—to catch her flight to San Diego. Meanwhile, The Mick had dressed for the concert at the Grotto East, and he sported a reprise-punk outfit with face paint, shaved temples, a spiked collar, and ankle-high boots. As an obvious peace offering, he’d also prepared dinner—hot dogs with chili, oven-ready French fries, and, for dessert, microwaved apples.

  “This almost looks edible,” Xavier said. “But I don’t think I can eat.”

  “Yeah. I’m pretty excited too.”

  The fact that Mikhail might not see his mother again for a year or even two didn’t appear to distress him much. But he was used to not seeing his parents. Even in Chula Vista, Lydia and Philip had been upwardly mobile workaholics. The Mick had had to become, well, exactly what he’d become. Namely, The Mick.

  “Look,” Xavier said. “Could we declare a moratorium on feuding?”

  “Your ad said ‘Trooce,’ remember? I didn’t come back only for the Smite ’Em tickets—mostly, but not only.”

  Xavier didn’t remember that his ad had said “Trooce,” just that it had offered a bribe—but Grantham had written the ad, he hadn’t, and Xavier was inclined to think that the bribe had had more to do with Mikhail’s return than had the doubtful extension of an olive branch.

  25

  “Count Geiger’s Blues”

  At Grotto East, they sat front-row-center. On The Mick’s recommendation, Xavier had worn blue jeans (designer blue jeans, to the kid’s disgust), a white shirt, a pair of high-tech tennis shoes, and a navy-blue windbreaker. He didn’t look retropunk, but he didn’t look like some old fogey either. Earlier, Bari had told The Mick that such dress would probably get his uncle through the show without bringing down catcalls or a thrashing with bicycle chains—unless somebody there recognized Xavier. As a precaution, then, he had also worn a pair of granny glasses with cola-colored lenses.