Look Down, This is Where It Must Have Happened

by Hal Niedzviecki

  Jesus, I say. You don’t even know.

  He gestures at the phone — in pieces. He shrugs as if to immure himself to the fate of his own culpability; go ahead, he’s thinking: blame me.

  I feel out of control, someone says.

  Get dressed, I suggest. We’re going home for the funeral.

  He clears his throat. Obstruction. Obsfucation. A nervous prayer.

  Time passing. Time spent waiting for the bus. Even a corpse is only a corpse for a temporal moment. Then it’s a body, a skeleton, a shame, and a triumph.

  They were friends in high school. Mickers was the wild one, Shauna the cute and protective one, Brado appears between them in snapshots, one arm slung over each of their shoulders.

  Mickers hates the idea of keeping in touch. Two cities two-and-a-half hours apart. Nothing in between but distance. He tries to imagine Shauna, gets all jealous, but he’s not sure of what. Someone must have died. There’s a guy in his apartment. He’s spoken to the guy a few times. On the phone. Always considered him a bit like the secretary to the head of the department: someone you don’t fuck with unless you have to.

  Breakfast, Mickers says, his slick hair not dry enough, shower water running down his matchstick arms.

  You don’t look like I thought you would, I say.

  I’m broke, he says.

  From the pictures, I say.

  There are things you can’t help but feel responsible for. You want to show them what kind of man you are, but you aren’t sure at what point that might be appropriate. Is it too late after you’ve already been on your knees and felt the space between you and the damp blades of grass you’re crushing? Shauna asked me to do it.

  It’s getting set to be morning.

  He slides a sweatshirt over his head.

  I apologize for the bruising, remind myself that I’m trying to learn how to care all over again. Trying.

  He eats. He dines. He doesn’t know.

  It’s worse than that: He really doesn’t want to know.

  I pay the bill with money she gave me.

  We’re exactly where we should be. Toast crumbs stuck in his stubble. He tries to go in the obvious direction but I grab his arm and steer him toward the river.

  Look, I tell her later. I was there.

  Mickers isn’t going to get all emotional about it. All of a sudden it’s that in-between season — the weather cheats you, things happen, unpredictable things. In the meantime, a cool breeze slithers up the flap of Mickers’s trench coat and prickles his butt.

  We get to the top of the bridge and pause on the shoulder. Cars spurt exhaust as they hit the straightaway. From our vantage point, you can see the mess they’ve made down below. A dry river, a gaggle of cranes and bulldozers standing still like topiary figments in some joke outdoor museum for kiddies who love construction.

  Mickers digs his hands into his baggy jeans and starts scratching. I give him a shove. People in cars slow to stare. He stumbles forward, still pretending.

  What if the truth were possible? What if you could hold on to somebody and have them hold on to you as if that was everything that was meant to happen that day? I’ve got a range of friends and acquaintances. I’ve got family and circumstances beyond my control. The long grass ripples under the elevated causeway, reminding me of early wheat. Shauna makes golden bread, the shape of her loaf perfect. Steams when you rip it open. Butter on a chunk that should have been a slice. Comes out of the oven looking like a coffin.

  She gets home and I’m sitting there. She smiles and she means it. She makes bread, gives me flour kisses, leaves powder on my cheek. Doesn’t mind that I ate the last of the peanut butter with a spoon. Lunch, I shrug.

  Up ahead is where he did it.

  Mickers? Are you getting any of these messages? C’mon, the funeral’s tomorrow, this isn’t funny, it’s not a joke. You’ll be there, right? Where are you? I can’t face this alone. I sent my boyfriend to pick you up. Is he there with you?

  Good old Mickers, pale and trembly and looking like he usually looks: his worst. He climbs up on the safety wall, just a little wider than his long flat feet. He’s wearing dickhead deck shoes, makes me think of a Rodney Dangerfield movie, the eighties, growing up and being stupid and taking things for granted and having the privilege of being able to find certain things funny.

  Mickers stands up there, one hand shielding his forehead like the sun’s in his eyes. But it’s not. He’s thinking of sunsets and peach cobbler evenings. A car horns a warning. His knees touch. Look, the last thing anybody needs is another tragedy. We’re old enough now to always know what time it is. Mickers holds on to the afternoon with the white soles of his docksiders. Those shoes! They look brand new. Social engagements. Missed express buses. Shauna doesn’t usually say what she thinks about things. Things that matter; things that will never matter. A little something to liven up an otherwise useless day. Look down and cry if you still can. Look down, this is where it must have happened.

  Punk Rock Role Model

  Being alive means doing something you can never take back.

  Bangs says to me: Do you know who I am?

  I shrug.

  I’m nobody, he says.

  Me too, I say.

  He gives me a broom. Sweep, he says. Cigarette butts, ashes, dust balls pushed over a piece of cardboard. I take it outside, throw it into the street. He exhales a thick cloud, crushes a smoke under his boot.

  You want the goddamn job?

  I shrug.

  Then shut the fuck up, he says.

  He limps into the back room. Slams the door.

  This isn’t his story.

  I sell cheap electric guitars to factory workers and zitty high school rock and rollers. Made in Taiwan, that kind of shit, you put a Fender sticker over it, tell ’em it’s the low end of a high-class company. Cherry red, cut like a lightning bolt, tight jeans acid-wash stuff.

  It’s not busy, and there’s no actual mention of paying me.

  I take half of everything and sleep behind the counter.

  That’s what it’s like on the payroll of a legend.

  Not that he ever breaks down and tells me stories of the bad old days. With us it’s strictly business:

  That you making a fucking racket?

  They gotta play ’em for me to sell ’em.

  Keep it fucking down. Goddamn it. Can’t even fucking hear myself think.

  What’s he got to think about? Takes two aspirins an hour, smokes pot like a baby sucking tit. The kind of pain nothing dulls. A chronic distaste for life. A Dixs reunion out of the question, I guess.

  Not that I give a shit.

  Cheap fuck.

  At night, I work a battered acoustic, tease it, animals whining, licking their wounds. I play slow and quiet, crooning from my stomach.

  I’m waiting for him to trust me, because guys like that always end up trusting someone.

  I close my eyes.

  Sheils is fishnet stockings, shiny long legs sticking out of a ripped Catholic schoolgirl skirt that barely covers her ass. She has pink hair and gives great head. We moved in together, set up shop in a low-rise stinking of cabbage and curry. I was hungry all the time. We had a TV and a mattress. Sheils went to school and stole money from Daddy. I stayed home and watched Happy Days. We watched TV all the time. Even when she was sucking me off, I was thinking about Joanie and Marion. Don’t get me wrong. She loved it. It turned her on.

  Best year of my life.

  I hate fucking music, all that goddamn noise, who needs that shit? We didn’t ever listen to music.

  I told Sheils: I want to live it, you know, I want to be there, living it.

  That’s what she loved about me.

  One night, we drank Mad Dog, broke the bottle, and cut our wrists. It was like a pact.

  I wake up alone, the shop all streetlight shadows. I hear someone coughing and it’s terrible, not like a dream, but the kind of instant that takes over everything and leaves your whole day foggy and diseased.r />
  A pact’s a pact though, and I won’t let her forget.

  As far as I can tell, Bangs has been reduced to a diet of white bread, soft cheese and yogurt. That explains the sour smell, like a used condom under a couch. I so much as mention it and he rips my weaselly head off.

  Fuck you, kid.

  Comes downstairs a couple of hours later, eyes all glassy. How many painkillers can a guy take in one day?

  When he was something it was a long time ago.

  Says: Good for the bones. Getting old, you know. He coughs this weird laugh, spits a wad of thick cheesy pale phlegm on the counter, looks at me.

  He’s dying, I guess. I mean, whatever, but Jesus.

  Can you live on just cheese? Why should I care.

  How do you live the big life? How do you open your arms and take it all with you?

  I want to tell Bangs about my woman, about the scar on my wrist.

  Late at night I put a paper bag on my face, sniff too much glue. It’s like being really alive except you’re not, except you’re dead. I spasm and puke, out of control. I’m thinking: this is it, this is it, and I can feel the layers of skin peeling off, reality, you know. My eyes bursting like lightbulbs. I knock over a stand of cheap ukuleles from Poland. They’re made outta balsa wood. My head on the floor, firecrackers going off inside my skull. And then it all becomes obvious. Because if you can hold on to the floor and get it all to stop spinning that has to matter, something has to matter, you choose, you know, you make your choice, but you stick with it.

  He comes down wearing nothing but a pair of cowboy boots. He limps over to where I’m lying on the ground humping on the floor and he kicks me as hard as he can which really isn’t that hard.

  Next thing I know I’m crying, blubbering, and he’s pressing my pukey face to his skintight chest, just holding me, not saying anything.

  Eventually, I start hearing this horrible music rasping against my eardrum, like a derailed train, the conductor on his way to the world to come.

  He’s singing to me. Jesus Christ, he’s singing.

  I barf on his balls.

  I’ll tell you what happened to us.

  Before, it was great. It was:

  You wanna —

  Yeah —

  Oh baby, oh man, oh man, that’s good.

  Mmmm —

  Joanie loves Chachi, you know what I mean?

  I shouldn’t have done what I did. Or else she had it coming.

  It was that fucking brother of hers, real yuppie prick, in law school, if you can believe it, gonna be a lawyer just like Daddy. So the brother gets himself in a car accident, one too many highballs after court, sucks to be him. Ends up paralyzed from the neck down. Sheils starts putting on outfits and heading for the hospital. Comes back crying every night.

  How is it different? She hated him. Is it any different? I can just hear them taking her aside, whispering: Come home, dear, your old room’s just like you left it. It’s like Fonzie’s got a new girlfriend and Richie’s jealous.

  She comes in, takes one look at me, runs into the shitter, locks the door. After a while, she comes out, sits on the mattress, starts crying again.

  He keeps talking about killing himself, she blubbers.

  Oh, yeah? Well he can’t anyway. So forget about it.

  I put my arm around her. I slide a hand up her shirt. She pulls away.

  I figure there are things you do and there are things you do if you have the balls to do them, if you know what I mean.

  And then, before you know it, the super is up here looking for the rent she’s supposed to pay.

  Punk rock’s a feeling. It’s like a paper cut. You narrow down the wound to something so thick and deep you can’t even feel it.

  I don’t know how to play the guitar. But I’m learning.

  He was a hero. The skinny dying little prick.

  I hike through backyards as smooth as golf courses. Maybe they are golf courses. Fall setting in, how long’s it been since I’ve seen her? I’m thin and useless. I’m nothing. I’m nobody. Isn’t that the way I wanted it to be? I’ve got my Dixs T-shirt on. Not much good when it gets dark and you can feel the wind on your nips and a dog starts barking at you when you light a joint in a gazebo — a gazebo! — so you bark back and then you think you hear sirens somewhere down the road and you get the fuck out of there.

  We all have something to hide. Does it really matter? That’s the million dollar punk rock question.

  Running across front lawns, I can feel everything. I can feel the stiff grass pushing up through what’s left of the soles of my shoes. I can feel perfect blades crushed under the bottoms of my feet, pins and needles, remember that, Sheils? I wrote a song for her, just came to me one day, a different time, a different place, song like that could have taken us both all the way, you know what I mean?

  needles and pins

  needles and pins

  they stick them in

  pins and needles

  c’mon kids

  momma’s hiding under the bed

  hiding from your old school friends.

  Kinda shit that doesn’t mean anything, really, except that we all know exactly what it means, don’t we? Sheils loved it.

  Squirrels stopping to watch me.

  I’ll never be back.

  I’ll be back.

  When it all started happening the kids were ciphers, a stack of blank slates, and when the music played you could see it slowly filling us up till the whites of our eyeballs were the colors of rage.

  I mean, he hasn’t exactly spelled it out or anything, but after a while you get to know someone even if they don’t want to be known. You can’t get anymore broken down.

  Call Sheils again, her waspy little mother answers. Bet she wishes it was me filling nappies in a wheelchair. I breathe heavy like a cripple trapped in a crosswalk. “Do not walk” flashing, you know what I mean? She hangs up.

  The man’s a mad genius. They never knew him, they never saw right through his stretched skin.

  And the emptiness there.

  He’s lying on his back, white sheet, huge window, sun hitting, cutting strips into his pallid flesh. I put a hand over his mouth. He’s still sorta breathing. Get him into a sitting position, fix him up with some glue. The bag over his face. He coughs once then he can’t stop coughing. His whole body shaking, Jesus Christ, I’ve killed him, I’ve killed a legend.

  Then he says: If you let the cat out, I’ll cut your throat.

  Cat? I say.

  —

  Quite a place you got here, I say.

  All at once he pisses himself.

  Fuck, he says. A pink rash seeps up his cheeks.

  Girl comes in, starts whaling on a Yamaha. She’s screaming and cutting up the strings with her long pink nails.

  You’re pretty good, I say.

  She ignores me.

  This as loud as it gets? she says.

  She reminds me of Sheils: fresh-faced privilege, tartan skirt, attitude.

  Fifty percent off if you blow me, I say.

  You’re disgusting, she says.

  I turn up the amp, think of Bangs lying upstairs. I suppose I should call a doctor. Or at least, I should have a week ago.

  His ears buzzing old concerts, bleeding fingers aping ripped-off chords, cracked tongue whispering hackneyed lyrics about dead cat guts and the fascist state. How many more aspirins? How many more joints?

  Girlie rocks out, gets really into it. I can’t hear anything.

  Please, I beg.

  Feed him yogurt, smoke him up. Lean in to wipe his cheesy face. He grabs me in a headlock, pathetic — I’m thinking, C’mon, you old fart, you can do better than that.

  You’ll have to do better than that.

  He says: Who am I?

  Who is he?

  I have his heart, he has a heart that beats like it matters.

  What the fuck, I say.

  So this is the thanks I get.

  I use his last five bucks t
o buy a bottle of sherry. Was even gonna let him have some, pour little capfuls into his mouth.

  But surprise surprise, he’s managed to drag himself down the stairs.

  What the fuck did you do, he says, you cheap shit motherfucker. You little cocksucking motherfucker.

  You should be dead by now, I point out.

  He pulls a pistol out of the waistband of his pyjamas, wavers it in my direction.

  I’m taking you with me, he says.

  Today, tomorrow, what’s the difference? Sheils, I think, I’m coming for ya. I want the whole story. This is my story. I want to be really alive, even if it’s just for a second. I’m thinking about a song. A song so pure nothing can touch it.

  If this is living, then nothing can touch it.

  After, I’ll look back and see just a blinding flash of smoke, an amp on fire, and one way or another, the dream will keep coming true.

  Stay yourself, I yell. Don’t ever change.

  It’s a few hours later but it feels like minutes, feels like I never left. I’m suppressing the urge to break the windows of luxury four-wheel-drive recreational vehicles imported from the Continent to ferry gas-guzzling idiots to and from the Price Club.

  The old world is dead. Read it in the papers.

  I throw my empty bottle down the road where it skitters into the ink-blot patches of darkness between ornate street lamps. Doesn’t even break. That’s ’cause it’s snowing, it’s starting to snow. I’m freezing to death, be the best thing for everyone. I imagine it this way, then that way. Bangs with a gun. Makes you sad, the way things have to turn out. I hold my hand up. I’m not surprised to see right through.

  So this is it. This is being alive.

  Bangs burns a hole in his head, lingers a little with the bullet lodged in his soft punk rock role model brain.

  I get to the house, let myself in through the newly added cripple door. Nice and spacious. Very convenient.

  Feel my way into the brother’s room.

  He’s just lying in his bed, inert, impossible. I think of a record spinning, everything going in circles.