The Listeners

by Leni Zumas

  At the fifty-third minute, he apologized for a dinner meeting he needed to get to, adding that it was great to see me and he hoped I would take care.

  “WHAT WOULD WE be called, though?” Cam said.

  “I’ve been making a list,” I said.

  “It can’t be mediocre or grows-on-you. Has to be instantly recognizable as good.”

  “My list is long,” I said.

  “And who’s going to play guitar?”

  “Me, of course.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Fuck off,” I said. “And Clarissa is not going to play tambourine, or anything else for that matter.”

  “Never said she was.” Cam smiled. “Her talents lie elsewhere.”

  THE NIGHT HAS eyes in northern wilds: black bowl of stars, peeks of animals on parking lot fringe. I write in the dark while others lose greel inside. On some native reservation in midst of nothing. Day off and everyone in bad moods and it’s either get drunk which is not new or gamble which is more novelty. Gecko was the most excited all huffy blowing dog breath right in my face. He goes I’m’a throw us a windfall since we’re not making anything any other way! But he doesn’t know since we haven’t told him about the Offer. Only C and me know. I think about it a lot but don’t talk since that’s crass and annoys C who is worried, very worried about my sellout potential.

  I’D EXPECTED TO give the Cam coffee report to Mink or Geck, but I found myself wanting to tell Riley.

  The morning bird was rust quivering on a lash. Hello, bird. What kind are you? I knew no names, only the colors they made. A cat screaming at night was a fling of red. Cat and bird lived together in the red department. Riley’s name belonged to the blue department; my own belonged to the black. Rinsed sky, finger branches, window glass hot on my cheek. People on the street were happy it was the weekend and not raining anymore. They had flocked here to shop and to stroll. They were flirting. They were going for brunch. The radio puffed out its tame Sunday smoke—harpsichord, clavier.

  I missed my old neighborhood, which never had shoppers. I wondered how Two Thumbs was doing. Had his nub wound healed? Did he mourn the loss of its powers?

  Pine had been a twig on Riley’s couch all morning, reading a book about dirigibles while she waited for cups of poison to kill the roaches in her kitchen. “Did you know,” she called, “that during World War I the German military and its abettor, Count Zeppelin, thought they’d found in the dirigible the perfect weapon to sink the British navy?”

  “I did not know,” said Riley, sweeping a floor that was already quite clean.

  “Well, the fact was, zeppelins were almost totally ineffectual as bomb throwers. They were stymied by cloud and darkness. The damage they inflicted in the war was negligible.”

  “Do you want to have brunch?” he said.

  “You don’t have much food,” she pointed out.

  “No I mean we could go somewhere.” Riley turned back to the street. “Look, Quinn, see that dungeony person? He goes to Mrs. Jones constantly. He is like her best customer.”

  I glanced down.

  “Hey wait a minute,” I said.

  “Do you see him? He loves fortunes.”

  “Yeah and I saw him—like, just the other day—on Observatory.”

  “How can you tell it was the same person?”

  “Well, how many people wear hooded capes who aren’t in movies about racism?”

  Maybe I’d been a little neezled at my parents’, furnished myself a false memory? Déjà vu in reverse.

  If you were introduced to the dungeoner, what would you say? If you asked the dungeoner why he wears a hood, how would the dungeoner reply? If the dungeoner is not a he but a she, how would—

  “All right, I’m done with this chapter,” Pine said, stretching. “Let’s brunch ourselves into a coma.” Jesus, would she never leave us? “Do you want to come, Quinn?”

  “You two go,” I said, hoping Riley would notice my wanting-to-talk face and opt to stay.

  “Okay,” he said. “See you.”

  “RILEY, GET YOUR hand away from your mouth; it’s really not very becoming.”

  “I said—”

  “What? I cannot understand you when you speak through your fingers.”

  “If she was alive, she would be old enough to get her driver’s license.”

  “Were alive,” Mert corrected.

  She ladled stew onto Fod’s plate, then my brother’s and mine and her own.

  I went on peeling my thumb.

  Riley said, louder, “She would’ve turned sixteen this year.”

  Fod said, “This tastes wonderful!”

  “Cilantro,” Mert explained, “and garlic, plenty of garlic.”

  “Wonderful,” Fod repeated.

  I laid three peels next to my plate and waited for them to notice.

  She, she, she. Never the name.

  “HEY I GOT in!” Cam yelled through the phone.

  I said nothing.

  “Hello?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Well aren’t you glad for me? I fucking got in.”

  “Sure,” I said, “but how can we start our band if you’re all the way up in New England?”

  Another silence, longer. Then he said, “Oh.”

  “I mean, I know it’s an incredible school and all. So, whatever.”

  “Maybe I could defer a year,” he said.

  “SORRY,” MINK SAID, “but no.”

  “You have to! It’s the law.”

  “Geck, you’re already drunk. I’m not—”

  “Your job is to serve beverage to people who can pay for it, and I can pay for it, and I am not drunk. Breathalyze me!”

  She walked to the other end of the bar, wiping her lip on her sleeve, humming one note.

  “Please, Mink?”

  He had been doing good for a while. He had been looking better.

  “Mink!” he hollered. “Fucking come give me a drink!”

  Her face was in her hand.

  “Hey Geckers,” I called down the bar.

  He was painstakingly counting a tiny sheaf of cash. “Hold on, I’m getting a—”

  “I don’t think you are,” I said. “Let’s take a turn around the neighborhood.”

  “Turn?”

  “A walk. Come take a walk with me.”

  “What for?”

  “Our healths.”

  I prodded him off the stool; he didn’t put up much of a fight, though he grumbled: “It’ll be all cold.”

  “It’s seventy degrees out.”

  “Goddammit,” he said.

  I slowed my stride to match the shamble of his bad leg. It was a weeknight, so not crowded, and late enough that most storefronts were dark. “Might be good to hit a meeting tomorrow,” I told him. “You still going to those?”

  “Those,” he muttered.

  “They were helping for a while, right?”

  “Yeah, they helped me throw up because of so much complaining. I swear to the Lord, you want some cheese with that whine? It’s all just bitches bitching and that midget eating cashews from a ziplock. And some sparklers who think it’s awesome to be addicts but aren’t really. And, like, a guy talking for nine hours about how he ate so many hot wings one summer he started bleeding from his butt and had to wear an anal tampon. Is that really worth discussing?”

  “Well, maybe it is to him.”

  Geck snorted and pulled up short, fishing in his jacket for a deck.

  It was safe to assume he would not find one. I handed him a cigarette.

  “Ta, as the British say. Anyhoo, where the fuck are we going? I don’t even know where I’m laying my head tonight. The familial compound is far far far. At some hour the buses stop running.”

  “You can sleep at my brother’s. But only this one time.”

  “Tight,” he said.

  I woke to him in a heap on the floor, body pretzeled and yellow hair ahoo. He had slept the very same way on Nebraska couch, Minnesota pool table,
Ohio café linoleum, Wisconsin turret rug. When I stuck out a leg to kick him, I was alarmed to see how thick my calf hairs had grown.

  He grunted, “Whut.”

  “Time to exit before you are seen.”

  But Riley padded in, smiling, then not smiling when he noticed the blanketful of body.

  “Hello?”

  “Don’t be afraid,” I said, “it’s only Geck.”

  “Hi Riley!” he yelled from underneath.

  “On your way to the salt mines?” I asked.

  My brother nodded. “About tonight—want to meet at F-D-E?”

  “What for?”

  “Observatory Place.”

  “Shit. I forgot.”

  “See you then, then?”

  “Yes, captain.”

  Geck climbed out from under the blanket. “What the fuck is F-D-E?”

  “Six forty-five,” I explained. “It’s a code for time.”

  “Nerfy.” He stretched, yawned. “What about some coffee?”

  “What about it.”

  “Like why don’t you make some?”

  “Not a restaurant,” I said.

  “One cup of jehosophat for an old comrade? You have an urgent appointment or some shit?”

  “I have things to do.”

  He laughed. “What, like not work?”

  “I’m waiting on some leads.”

  “Right. Me too.” He stood up, and I saw his member hanging out of the boxers, in all its uncircumcised glory.

  “Jesus, Geck.”

  “What?”

  “Put that away.”

  “Oh!” He swiveled, rearranging himself, and stomped to the bathroom.

  I filled the kettle. He was big, I’d give him that. Bigger than anyone I’d ever slept with, except for that kneesocked kid in Arkansas. I couldn’t help comparing, once upon a time, Geck’s pizzle to Cam’s. One uncut, bulky, brown; the other pink and willowy. In Milwaukee, right before the accident, I had held Cam’s and thought about Geck’s.

  Geck slurped his coffee like a wood-hog.

  “So I saw Cam,” I said.

  “Did you say hello?”

  “No, we hung out. In a planned way.”

  Into his cup he dumped another spoonload of sugar. “No shit. Wow.” He did not sound sufficiently impressed.

  “It’d been ten years,” I reminded him.

  “Was he balding?”

  “What?”

  “I bet he’s lost some of that goddamn hair, right?”

  “Actually, his hair is still great.”

  “Oh.”

  “And he didn’t seem mad at me,” I added. “We just talked about current events.”

  Geck shrugged. “You can’t always tell with that guy. As I recall, he had a tendency to be emotionally stealth.”

  CAM FROWNED WHEN the yellow-haired boy came up the alley carrying a hardcase—we were outside taking a break—and said hello in a voice that was higher than you’d expect. I had invited him without telling. “Come on in!” I cried, and Cam was speechless, and Mink fluffed back her hair. Geck took out his guitar, a lime-and-white hollow body with a scarred black pickguard, and he said, “Want to play one of your songs and I’ll figure something out?”

  “He’s fucking fantastic!” I said later.

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” Cam said, shoving his hand into the potato chip can.

  At first I reassured myself that it was the combination, the combustible parts together, that made a band; you could not isolate one part and say That is what we owe it to!—rather, everyone was necessary. But the honest part of me knew, ever since the first song Geck wrote, that he was the reason we started getting somewhere. Something about his guitar.

  We faced them together, slicing their breath, hands fast, we swayed together hip-high in the noise, the audience dragged us out, reaching, reaching, we stayed down and away from the regular day. But we are secretly normal, Cam said, we are these normal people who rinse dishes and take shits and want houses. I don’t want a house, I said. Our van was the freight car, our backpacks the kerchiefed stick. On stages we did not need to look at each other. And Geck made us buyable, and Mink made us photogenic. Her prettiness wasn’t her fault, but it was the only thing she added. Anyone can play three notes for three minutes. She stood like a statue, drawing the eyes. Every band needs a beautiful girl, Uncle Seven said. He did not say beautiful girls.

  NORMALLY WE’D GOTTEN spanked on the bottom or slapped in the face, but once, when Riley was in third grade, Fod had punched him straight in the stomach. My brother had been so stunned he didn’t cry, at first. He couldn’t breathe enough to make a sound. We watched his throat stretch for air.

  “Poor Coyote,” my sister said, resting a hand on his belly button. “Does it hurt still?”

  Riley nodded.

  “He’s so terrible,” she said with relish. “I can’t wait till Mert comes home.”

  “But you can’t tell!”

  “Why not?”

  Riley shrugged, shutting his eyes. “I don’t want you to.”

  “But Ri, he’s terrible.”

  Riley coughed.

  “See, he punctured your lung. I hate him,” she declared. “If he ever tries to punch me I’ll do him a mischief. He’ll get it in the eye—with scissors.”

  And I thought, As soon as I’m tall enough…

  But the Edinburgh Lane doorway of pencil marks ended up no use. I never grew as tall as my father. By the time I had concluded I was stuck where I was, not yet unassailable, Fod had stopped assailing. No measurements were ever taken on Observatory Place. It was a smaller house, one of many brick boxes; but there was still a garden for the non-football months, and the TV was huge. My parents were not television people, they were book people—so they always said—though I suspected Mert of watching parlor mysteries when Fod wasn’t around, and Fod, maybe, of ordering a bit of pay-per-view when—

  “Dinner in five minutes,” Mert called to me.

  Mother in the kitchen, rattling. Father in the garden, plucking. Son at the table, setting. Daughter in the living room, flipping. It was still light out and birds talked near the window. I landed on history, a nice channel because most of the topics were remote. “Dragon’s teeth,” the announcer announced, “was the name for pyramids of fortified concrete used in World War II to herd tanks into killing zones where they could be picked off by antitank weaponry. Each tooth was four feet high, and land mines were often planted between them. Because so many were built and they were so durable, rows of dragon’s teeth can be seen today in Germany and France.”

  “Quinn, time to eat!”

  “Hold on,” I shouted.

  “In Switzerland,” added the announcer, “they are still used as strategic defensive devices—designed to spring up, for instance, out of roads—and are called toblerone after the chocolate bar.”

  “Turn it off, please.”

  How much is a one-way ticket from the airport to the Fourteenth Street bridge?

  Turn that crap off!

  But Mert, it’s funny—

  Making fun of people dying is funny?

  I slid into the chair and poured myself a glass of white. Waited as long as possible to take food; the worm was near.

  “So, Coyote,” started Mert in the fake-casual voice, “anytime you’d like to invite your, ah, friend from work to have dinner with us, you’re welcome to. I heard that she made a very nice meal for you and Quinn.”

  My brother’s eyes swerved to me, furious.

  “Hey Mert, what’s in this soup? It’s an intriguing blend of flavors. Did you use dill? It tastes sort of dillish.”

  “I did indeed,” she said.

  “Dill was her most hated herb,” I remarked.

  “Pass the okra,” said Fod.

  “She really couldn’t stand it, remember? Said it was like having porcupine eyelashes in your food.”

  Our father thanked our mother for passing the okra.

  “How has work been going?” Mert
asked Riley.

  But I would push an inch more: “My point is, she would not have been a fan of this soup.”

  HELLO, IS THIS Air Florida? Can you tell me the fare for a one-way ticket from the airport to the Fourteenth Street bridge?

  But the joke wasn’t funny, because a man had given a woman the rope instead of taking it himself. He waited for her to be pulled up into the helicopter. Another woman next—he helped her hands catch the swinging cable—and he waited too long, went blue in the ice-chunked water. Frozen pressure sensors had caused the aircraft to stop short in the sky. Nobody had turned on the plane’s anti-icing systems, even though it was a frosty January day. Dead: seventy passengers, four crew, four motorists on the bridge. Alive: one crew member and four passengers, including the women the dead man guided to the rope.

  “WHAT WERE YOU doing?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Yes you were—your face is all—” I took her fist and pried it open. Sandpaper, red-smeared. “You were sanding your face?”

  My sister shrugged.

  “What for?”

  She touched her bleeding cheek. “To get the pimples off.”

  RILEY IN YELLOW-DUCK boxers loomed up in the doorway. “You can’t smoke in here!”

  “Oh, what?” I mashed out the butt in my teacup.

  “God,” he said, waving a hand in front of his face, spinsterlike.

  “Sorry, I forgot.”

  “No you didn’t. You didn’t care.”

  “That’s not—”

  “Open a window,” he said, and slammed back into the bedroom.

  Octy watched me pop in the cartridge, finish off one can and crack another while it loaded. Much skill, I informed him, was required for this particular contest. Perfect eyesight, hair-trigger reflexes, and courage. Bravery was key. The night was cold. The snow was coming. Ice everywhere, but you couldn’t see it. Did you know that about ice, Octy? The octopus stared back. Well, you might not have to deal with this in the ocean, but on land, ice impersonates the road. You’re tooling along thinking it’s a road but really it’s a rink. See, look—