The Musician

by Douglas Gardham

  He wondered what Sydney knew that he didn’t. He unlocked the front door of his parents’ house and pushed it open.

  CHAPTER 18

  He saw her.

  It wasn’t possible, yet there she was. Her silky brown hair was shorter. He was in IGA, grocery shopping. She stood at the checkout counter. It was like seeing a ghost. His thoughts seemed to prompt her. She turned to face him. Her brown eyes were magnificent in their power over him. Her smile pulled at something attached to his heart. Something was written on her T-shirt. He recognized the script:

  Here lies an angel

  with broken wings.

  Her eyes still watch;

  her voice still sings.

  Her lips moved, but he couldn’t hear her. A mist-like smoke came between them. When it cleared, her lips were still moving.

  “Beware, my dear,” she said. It was her voice—Mila’s, a voice he would never forget. It was perfect in its melody, yet he sensed warning in its tone. He was certain of what he heard: “Deception is near.”

  Then, as if discovering that familiar face was instead a stranger’s, she picked up her purchases and walked away. She did not look back.

  Alarmed by her aloofness, he wanted to catch up with her, only to find he could hardly move, as if his legs were immersed in deep water. He tried to call out, to make her wait, but like his leaden legs, his mouth refused to move. Everything around him appeared normal as he watched her disappear; one moment she was there, and the next she had vanished. It was as if he alone were stuck in a viscous medium.

  His whereabouts grew about him, and he felt the hard surface of the counter against his thighs. His hand was on the rubber conveyor that moved the groceries to the cashier. He recognized the cashier who stood behind it. It was someone he hadn’t seen in a long time. She smiled. Her olive skin would have been velvety smooth to touch. Her chocolate-brown eyes pulled him in, melting something inside. Gold hoop earrings—elegant, not gaudy—hung from her ears, shining their sparkling reflection of sunshine he didn’t see.

  This is a dream?

  He didn’t think so but couldn’t tell. He didn’t want it to end. He was frustrated and saddened that he couldn’t remember her name. There was something else about this statuesque woman standing in front of him. She looked up at him. Her eyes, rimmed in dark mascara, opened wider and seemed to light up.

  “Ethan,” she said, her crimson lips inviting his.

  “Christa?” he whispered, reading the black-and-gold name tag pinned to her cotton blouse. He knew her better than the name tag suggested.

  “Ethan, it’s me,” she said, leaning forward to bring her face closer to his, implying a familiarity he did not share.

  He stepped back, caught off guard.

  The woman frowned but quickly regained her composure, as if understanding something he didn’t. “Christa.”

  “Christa?” he heard himself say, though it sounded as if it came from somewhere else—someone else. Something shifted—like missing frames in a movie reel causing a scene to shift unnaturally on the screen. For an instant, he thought he would throw up, feeling nausea at the back of his throat. But the feeling passed. Sweat broke out across his forehead and ran down the sides of his face. As he wiped the wetness away, light-headedness came over him, forcing him against the counter and then down. He slid sideways against the counter, unable to get a grip on anything to stay upright. Gravity sucked him to the floor.

  Unaware of how long he’d been down, he opened his eyes to the same brown eyes that had pulled at his heart before. Concern contorted the woman’s pretty face. Her thin eyebrows were close above her caring eyes.

  “Are you okay?” she asked, gently touching the side of his head. “You took quite a tumble.”

  She moved back to give him space, pulling her hair back as she did. Her long hair touched his face. He did know her, but how? His head was like a programmed calculator with the wrong program loaded in his memory.

  She’s dead, Ethan.

  “I was never dead,” the woman from behind the counter, now kneeling beside him, replied, as if he’d spoken his thoughts out loud.

  Never dead?

  He wasn’t talking.

  “Did you see a coffin?” she replied, a smile on her red lips. She leaned in closer. “Did you see me in it?”

  Ethan tried to remember a funeral. He recalled wisps of a family, a big man, and a sad absence. He couldn’t recall a coffin or her.

  It’s not possible.

  “It’s possible because it’s in your head. But I’m not.”

  “Ethan!” He heard someone call his name from a distance.

  “And Browning Station?” the woman with the Christa name tag asked. He was on a floor hard like cement, but it wasn’t cold. The book was beside him.

  What about Browning Station?

  “It’s important to you,” she replied, again answering a question he’d only thought about.

  Two things were in his hands now: a script in his left and a book in his right. Both had the title Browning Station. He was on the spotted tiles of the small bathroom floor in his hospital room. He felt saddened; he didn’t want to be there, but he’d found his copy of Browning Station.

  “Exactly,” she said as she pulled her brown hair back into a ponytail. She wrapped something elastic around it. “Your dad put it in the car when you left.”

  “How do you know?” he asked, hearing the words come out of his mouth.

  “Because you know,” the woman said. She leaned in closer to him. “How do you feel?”

  He wanted to feel her silky hair against his face again, maybe for the last time. It wasn’t a dream, and it was perfect.

  “Better,” he said.

  He moved to get up. His head seemed clear, but the woman was gone. He was alone on the hard floor of the gray bathroom.

  “Ethan?”

  He stirred. Maybe he wasn’t where he’d thought he was. He was on his stomach; his head was on a soft pillow. He was in bed—his bed.

  He opened his eyes. The room was dim.

  It was hard to take in where he was and what had happened. Even with his eyes open, he was disoriented, but thankfully, he wasn’t in the hospital.

  The door to his room opened.

  “Ethan, for the last time,” his mother said, “you’re going to be late for work.”

  As he fought to bring his head together, his brain was like a vacuum sucking through his thoughts to find the right ones. He looked up.

  “No work today, Ma,” he answered, thinking of a golf club, a pretty woman helping him off the floor, and the large stage lamp. He turned his head back into his pillow and smiled.

  He wasn’t in the hospital.

  CHAPTER 19

  Friday, July 13, 1984

  Ethan woke up a few hours later. It was almost noon. He vaguely remembered the dream. He had a fuzzy memory of a woman, but even that was fading. He recalled no who or what, only a feeling—a good feeling. It was hopeful, but he didn’t have enough memory of it to re-create an image or even where he’d been. What had happened was like a mirage and now gone. He wished he could remember more.

  He pushed down his covers and the waistband of his pajamas, exposing himself to the open air. He was hot, almost sweaty. His sleep had left him erect. The cooler air felt good. He touched himself, but the dream was gone. He was left with only the sweet feeling of want that had begun to fade as the emptiness of Mila’s absence returned. Once again, failure and inadequacy flooded his heart. He often woke that way.

  He forced himself out of bed, as if the physical act would push away the thoughts hijacking any remaining sweetness from his dream and pulling him into the dark abyss of self-loathing.

  The events of the night before crowded in—Uncle Al, the show, the nurse. All that had led up to sitting with Sydney in her aunt’s car in h
is parents’ driveway. They’d talked a lot.

  A place the band could call home would be cool. But could they really do it? Everyone had bought in last night, but things had a way of changing, especially after a night of adrenaline and drinks. Thinking of the band living together made him remember the song he’d started with Sydney and the words he’d written down. Where had he put the envelope? In seconds, he was digging through the pockets of his jeans. Relieved, he pulled the white envelope out of a back pocket and headed to his bedroom door. As he passed the mirror above his bureau, he saw the blood on the side of his face. He stopped and looked closer, remembering the cut on his hand and what he’d done. He touched the still-tender lump on his head. The stage lamp had done a job. The swelling had gone down, but his head was still pretty sore. He licked his fingers and wiped the bit of blood from his face.

  Still staring in the mirror, he remembered his promise to Randolph. He’d better call before he forgot.

  As he’d hoped, he was alone. There was a note on the refrigerator, wishing him a good day and ending with “We have to talk.” He poured himself a glass of orange juice and dialed Randolph’s number.

  “Randy Baseman,” Randolph said after the first ring.

  The name caught Ethan off guard. Despite knowing who was on the other end, he replied, “Randolph?”

  “Of course,” Randolph said, seeming to know Ethan’s voice right away, “and to what do I owe the privilege of speaking with the Actor today?”

  As usual, Randolph was ahead of him.

  “Randy Baseman?” Ethan asked, his voice becoming distant as he spoke. He felt as if he were trying to hold on to a handful of sand that was slipping through his fingers in slow motion. But it wasn’t his fingers it was slipping through; it was his mind. “You use Randy often?”

  Ethan did his best to focus and push away the strangeness that seemed intent on taking him somewhere else.

  “All the time,” Randolph said. Something in the timbre of his voice smiled.

  Ethan liked that. It helped stop the pulling-away feeling that was preying on him.

  “That’s what you called me in the hospital. Rachel says it’s cute. Kinda catchy for this new world I find myself in.”

  “Really,” Ethan said, still feeling himself pushing back at whatever seemed intent on pulling him out and trying to overrule what he was thinking, leaving him with the feeling of forgetting something.

  “Yeah, really, dude,” Randolph replied, laughing. “So what’s happening with you?”

  “Lots,” Ethan said, excited by Randolph’s question. Thinking of the band helped push away whatever else was there. “I’ve put a band together. We played last night.”

  Ethan talked of his chance meeting with Sydney on the way back to Toronto, his discovery of Gus while cutting the lawn, and his high school friend Greg’s return from Boston.

  “And you?” he finally said, realizing Randolph hadn’t said anything.

  “Thought you’d never ask, but I want to know more about this band thing. How does the Actor-turned-Musician thing work?”

  “Pretty simple. I was in a band before coming to Ottawa. Thought I’d try again.”

  “Really?” Randolph sounded surprised. “I didn’t know.”

  “Yeah, kind of crazy, isn’t it? We’re called the Release.”

  “The Release? From Browning Station?”

  “Yeah. You’ve read it?”

  “Pretty much,” Randolph said, saying his words unusually slowly, as if he were savoring their taste. “You got anything to listen to yet?”

  “We’ve got one song on tape and are working on some more.”

  As he spoke, Ethan wished the band had more happening besides the few lines he’d written on the back of the envelope in his hand.

  “Can you send me a copy?”

  “Sure,” he said, unsure of whether Gus or Greg had the tape and feeling the strange pull coming back. “So what’s up with Randolph—Randy Baseman?” he said.

  As the words left his mouth, a rush of images blew through his head: a yellow taxi, a manila envelope, and the image of a woman he recognized but didn’t know. Immense monolithic buildings were close around him. Bright colors of fire engine red and canary yellow flashed by. There was no apparent order to any of it; he simply saw a dizzying array of marvel that raced through his mind like the chaotic LSD scenes of Easy Rider.

  “It’s fucking amazing, Ethan,” Randolph was saying. “I’m almost finished. It’s a big comic book—the clash of good and evil in everyday life. I’d have never considered it if I hadn’t seen it on your father’s dashboard. Then Rachel had it in her hands. For God’s sake, it was on your nightstand for weeks. It was all there right in front of me. The story is disturbing in its ordinariness.”

  “You’re talking about Browning Station,” Ethan said, interrupting, engaging back in the conversation.

  “You bet your ass I am. It’s fucking extraordinary!” Randolph roared, his voice exploding over the phone. “I don’t know how it’ll work out exactly. A couple of guys, Corben and Metzger, started calling them graphic novels in the seventies. It’s like a novel-sized comic book.”

  “Cool,” Ethan said, trying to put together Browning Station, Randolph, and the many sordid images flying through his head.

  “There was a paperback called Blackmark two guys put together—Gil Kane and Archie Goodwin.”

  Randolph kept talking. He was excited. Ethan tried to listen but had a hard time. Browning Station had been in the car, but where had it gone? He hadn’t seen it since the hospital.

  “Blackmark is recognized as the first graphic novel but wasn’t called that at the time.”

  Randolph’s words trickled past him as he tried to remember unpacking the car back in May but instead remembered the book’s character William Avery. That bookstore downtown with the giant letters in the windows … Books at …

  “I don’t know what’s gonna happen.”

  Ethan wasn’t quite sure what Randolph had said, but he noticed Randolph had stopped talking.

  Ethan didn’t say anything.

  Randolph’s voice returned. “So what do you think?”

  Ethan could feel himself being pulled by some kind of current intent on sweeping him away. It seemed as if things that were otherwise unrelated were drawing him somewhere else. It dawned on him that he hadn’t taken his medication, as he’d slept late. He figured that might be the culprit leading to the bombs dropping on vulnerable places in his head, each targeted to knock him off center. He’d dodged them all so far. He’d take an Orap as soon as he hung up.

  “Ethan?”

  He didn’t reply; it seemed he couldn’t.

  “Ethan?”

  Conflicted, his thoughts jumped between how to answer and where his copy of Browning Station lay. He remained silent, as words eluded him.

  “Ethan?” Randolph asked a third time, his voice lower and less enthusiastic.

  “So you like Browning Station?” Ethan said, his mouth finding the words that his brain couldn’t.

  “Yeah,” Randolph said, his tone flat and colorless, “there’s so much that’s visually appealing. I could draw from it all day.”

  “Cool,” Ethan said, trying to push away Browning Station and whatever else was pulling him.

  “Fuckin’ right it’s cool,” Randolph said, almost shouting. “It’s manna from heaven.”

  He paused, as if intentionally waiting for Ethan to say something. Ethan didn’t.

  “Your call couldn’t have been better timed,” Randolph said, his voice rising. “I’m in Toronto next week. You around? Maybe we could grab dinner or something.”

  “I am,” Ethan replied, seeing his way out. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to talk to Randolph; he just needed a break to get his head straight, take his medication, and stop whatever was trying to take
him out. “What day are you thinking?”

  “Midweek. Wednesday or Thursday.”

  “You’re on,” Ethan said, putting his hand in the front pocket of his jeans. He found another piece of paper—the note from the bartender.

  “I’ll call you Tuesday,” Randolph said, his voice sounding more businesslike.

  “That works for me. It’ll be good to see you.”

  His reply sounded rehearsed, but it was the best he could do.

  “Right back at you, guy,” Randolph replied, his voice again sounding excited. “See you next week.”

  “Ciao,” Ethan said, and he hung up.

  He couldn’t remember ever being so relieved to end a phone conversation yet didn’t know why. Randolph had triggered something in his head he didn’t like. He needed his pills.

  But there was something else. He could feel it again. The big, heavy padlocked door keeping him away from something. There was no sign on the door. There was no need. The size of the door and lock were clear enough: Keep Out. It was a door only for him, likely intended as a reminder, Dr. Katharine had tried to explain. She’d encouraged him to open the door—to find a way in—but instead had helped close it more tightly and made the padlock feel even bigger. Nothing was getting in, but seemingly more important, nothing was getting out. The medication was there to serve and protect him against that happening.

  Don’t disturb what you don’t understand.

  He looked at the note he’d pulled from his pocket, bringing him back from where his thoughts wanted to stray. He read it again. The questions started before he’d finished the first sentence: “I’m not supposed to talk to you.”

  Why? He couldn’t imagine anyone stalking him, but seeing him must have been important enough to risk losing a job over. He didn’t know anyone who wasn’t supposed to talk to him. The notion sounded crazy but not that crazy. He knew what real crazy was. That crazy didn’t write notes. If it was from the woman who had helped him, why the note? Why hadn’t she just talked to him? But maybe it wasn’t from her.