The Wishbones

by Tom Perrotta

As though his ear muffs picked up brainwaves, Randy unlidded his eyes and looked straight at Dave. By way of greeting, he turned his hands into pistols and fired several shots in the direction of the door, using both barrels in rapid succession. Then he blew on his fingertips to cool them off and calmly returned to his dancing, spinning one fist over the other while bobbing his head around in a moronic fashion.

  Dave looked away in disgust. Aside from the dense clump of guests bearing down on the bartender, the room was sparsely populated by early birds loading up on hors d'oeuvres. He was startled—but only for a second—to see Buzzy lurking at the edge of the dance floor, beer in hand, reaching out like a friend of the family to snag a cocktail weenie from a passing tray.

  He dropped the quarter into the slot and played the abbreviated touch-tone tune that was Julie's number (it sounded like the intro to “Peace Train,” the Cat Stevens anthem later covered by 10,000 Maniacs). The pay phone was located right outside the ladies’ “lounge,” an arrangement that didn't offer a lot of privacy, especially since it seemed like every woman who arrived at the West-view made a beeline for the rest room. The night was young, but already a line had formed and was snaking out the door.

  “Yes?” Dolores answered with her customary gasp, as though she'd been sitting by the phone, awaiting ransom instructions from a kidnapper.

  “Hi, Mrs. Müller.”

  “Oh, hi Dave.”

  “Julie around?”

  “She's right here. We're making stuffed peppers. I'll put her on.”

  Several seconds elapsed. Dave listened to nothing while surreptitiously admiring a woman in a daring black dress who was rummaging through her purse while waiting her turn for the bathroom. The dress was sleeveless and defiantly short; its back plunged in a dramatic V held together by a web of crisscrossing laces. She didn't really have the body to carry it off—the dress seemed loose where it was supposed to be tight and vice versa —but Dave appreciated the effort anyway. Risky fashion statements were part of what kept his job interesting week after week.

  “Yeah?” Julie's voice was all business.

  “Hey.” He turned away from the woman, who seemed vaguely puzzled by the contents of her purse. “What's up?”

  “Didn't you hear?” Julie's bubbly tone was incomprehensible except as sarcasm. “We're making stuffed peppers.”

  “Sounds exciting.”

  “Yeah, and after that, Uncle Danny and Aunt Dot are coming over to play cards. They're bringing a No-Fat cheesecake.”

  “No-Fat? Is that possible?”

  “Apparently. The word on the street is that you can't taste the difference.”

  Dave wanted to make a joke about Danny and Dottie, both of whom were fatter than ever since their discovery of the brave new world of lite desserts, but this didn't seem like the right time to be poking fun at her relatives.

  “So,” she said. “Anything else I can help you with?”

  “Not really. I just had a little down time and wanted to see how you were doing.”

  “I'm fine.”

  “Great.”

  “You don't sound like you believe me.”

  “Why wouldn't I believe you?”

  “I don't know.” Her voice was flat and chilly. “Why don't you tell me.”

  Dave breathed an inaudible sigh. He felt like apologizing, even though he hadn't done anything wrong. If anything, she owed him an apology.

  “Listen,” he said. “Why don't you go to a movie or something?”

  “By myself?”

  “You could call Tammi.”

  “I already did. She's got plans.”

  “Lots of people go to the movies by themselves.”

  “Not me,” she said. “Not on Saturday night.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don't feel like having two hundred couples staring at me, wondering why I can't find a date, okay? That's not my idea of a good time.”

  “What, you'd rather hang around with Dottie and Danny eating No-Fat cheesecake? That's your idea of a good time?”

  Julie didn't answer, and he quickly spotted his blunder. After fifteen years, he should have known better than to make her points for her.

  “I have to go,” she said sweetly. “It's time to stuff the peppers.”

  She hung up before he could say good-bye, sealing her victory. Dave listened to the dial tone for a few seconds, then gently set the phone in its cradle. At almost the same moment, he yelped and spun around.

  “Whoa!” said Buzzy, his watery eyes dilating with alarm. “Easy, partner.”

  “Jesus,” said Dave. “Don't do that.”

  “Sorry.” Buzzy held out the frosty bottle of Molson he'd just pressed against the back of Dave's neck. There was a tiny smudge of mustard by the corner of his mouth. “Thought you might like a cold one.”

  “Thanks,” said Dave. “Don't mind if I do.”

  “Don't thank me.” Buzzy fished around in his pocket and pulled out a glossy white matchbook, squinting to read the embossed golden lettering. “Thank Barb and Larry, Two Hearts Beat as One.”

  A Study in Contrasts greeted Dave as he stepped into the basement men's room. Alan Zelack and a priest stood side by side at the urinals, one tall and blond in garish red sequins, the other short and balding in funereal black. As though they'd rehearsed the maneuver, the two men flushed and whirled simultaneously, capping the routine with a synchronized zip. Dave felt like he'd wandered onto the set of a creepy musical.

  “Hey,” Zelack said, instinctively thrusting his hand in Dave's direction. “Long time no see.”

  Despite a qualm or two on the hygiene front, Dave saw no recourse but to shift the beer to his left hand and shake. It was possible that he shook hands frequently with people who hadn't washed up since last using the bathroom, but rarely was he presented with such irrefutable evidence.

  “This is Father Mike,” Zelack added, draping his arm around the priest's shoulder with a proud grin. “We went to high school together.”

  Father Mike offered his hand as well, but Dave didn't mind shaking it. On some deep, irrational level, he didn't believe that a priest's hands could really be dirty.

  “Mike and I haven't seen each other in what—thirteen or fourteen years?” Zelack grimaced as he performed the calculations.

  The priest nodded. Despite his pleasantly boyish face, his wirerimmed glasses and receding hairline gave him an air of gravity and wisdom.

  “My parish is in Arizona,” he said. “I just flew up for my sister's wedding.”

  “Mike and I used to get stoned before gym class,” Zelack announced with a laugh. He shook his head at the mysterious workings of the universe. “I still can't believe you're a priest.”

  Father Mike reddened slightly. “That was a long time ago, Alan. We've both changed a lot since then.”

  “What happened?” Zelack asked. His curiosity seemed genuine. “Did you have some sort of religious experience?”

  Dave found himself curious as well, even though the priesthood ranked near the bottom on his scale of occupations, way down below prison guard and clerk at the DMV. The celibacy thing was a real sticking point.

  “I don't know.” Father Mike consulted his clunky black shoes, which, to Dave's surprise, turned out to be Doc Martens. “I took this solo hiking trip up to the Adirondacks the summer after my freshman year in college. My last night there was this incredible thunderstorm. Like the sky was breaking open. I took off my clothes, stood outside the tent, and let myself get drenched.” Father Mike held his open hands out in front of his chest, as though presenting Dave with an invisible gift. “That was when I realized that my life belonged to God.”

  “Really?” said Zelack. “You became a priest because of a thunderstorm?”

  Father Mike thought it over. He seemed troubled by the question.

  “I guess so. That's the closest I can come to explaining it. Nothing was the same for me after that.”

  The door behind Dave swung open; three college-age
guys in suits squeezed into the rest room, creating a severe shortage of Space. In the confusion, Zelack and Father Mike slipped out the door without washing their hands.

  Dave set his beer down on the sink, stepped up to the urinal, and unzipped. On the porcelain lip below, he saw two red sequins and a pubic hair.

  Ian's keyboard was a scary instrument, more computer than piano. It was programmable, possessed extensive memory, and could simulate drums, a horn section, and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, all at the same time. As a guitarist, Dave wasn't terribly threatened by it—something about the guitar remained resistant to mechanical reproduction—but bass players and drummers looked upon these machines with all the enthusiasm of candle makers pondering their first lightbulb. Already one- and two-piece wedding bands were sprouting up, promising all the music for a fraction of the price. Luckily for Buzzy and Stan, humanity hadn't yet caught up with technology—most people, if they wanted live music at all, still preferred a full-sized band, the more pieces the better. But it didn't take much imagination to visualize a future in which musicians and DJs melted into a single category of performer, and live wedding entertainment became a kind of glorified karaoke. Dave just hoped he was dead by then.

  As it was, Ian and his multitalented keyboard handled the cocktail hour by themselves, while the rest of the Wishbones cooled their heels in some out-of-the-way place, ideally after having secured a plateful of chicken wings, baked ziti, and green beans almondine from the buffet table, which they much preferred to circulating trays of greasy, mysterious, invariably disappointing doodads.

  Ian was normally one of the first Wishbones to arrive at a job, but that night he didn't show up until twenty to six. By that point, Artie had worked himself into a serious lather, mainly because Stan was also AWOL, and the stage looked naked without his drum kit.

  “See?” Artie said to everyone and no one as Ian unzipped the padded bag that encased his deceptively compact instrument. “What did I tell you? This is what happens when one guy in the band decides to become a fuckup. Everybody else figures it's okay for them to be a fuckup too. It's the Domino Theory of Fucking Up.”

  “You need a new theory,” Ian told him, unfolding the metal stand that supported his keyboard. “The Domino Theory is widely recognized as a crock of shit.”

  Artie ignored this objection. He had entered the Rant Zone, a place he liked to visit at least once per job.

  “I should have fired him last month,” he said, feverishly capping and uncapping his pen. “All the warning signs were there. But you guys had to keep defending him. Poor Stan. He's going through a hard time. Poor Stan. His wife left him. Poor Stan my ass. He's not going to show, and we're the ones who are gonna be left holding the bag.”

  “Why don't you call him?” Buzzy suggested.

  Artie's head snapped in Buzzy's direction. His sleepy features only really came alive when invigorated by anger or contempt.

  “Gee, Buzzy, why didn't I think of that?” He paused for effect, laying two fingers contemplatively on his chin. “Maybe it's because I've only left six frigging messages on his frigging answering machine in the last ten minutes. Maybe because I do happen to be familiar with the miraculous instrument your people call a telephone.”

  “It is miraculous,” Buzzy pointed out between sips from a bottle of Sam Adams that had somehow fallen into his possession. “Sometimes we forget.”

  The lugubrious, exceptionally tall maitre d’ stepped into the Black Forest Room and beckoned to Artie, who had no choice but to interrupt his rant and obey the summons. On the Wishbone hierarchy of wedding types, maitre d's generally ranked only slightly higher than DJs. The guys at the Westview weren't bad, though. They looked the other way on questions of food and drink, and sometimes plugged the band to patrons who hadn't yet made a decision on the entertainment. (If Artie paid a kickback for this service, Dave didn't know about it.)

  “So what happened?” Dave asked, stepping onto the stage to address Ian. “Did you meet Scotty?”

  Ian looked up from his fat briefcase full of fake books and photocopied sheet music.

  “He never showed.”

  “You're kidding.”

  “Nope. His plane had engine trouble in Pittsburgh.”

  “That's a good one,” said Dave. “Scotty stuck in an airport. Air travel must be a real comedown for him.”

  Ian nodded. “The Trekkies didn't take it too well. We almost went on a rampage.”

  Cocktail hour was halfway in the bag by the time Stan finally showed his face. Dave and Buzzy were lounging in the conference room, contentedly sucking on chicken bones, when the drummer suddenly appeared in the doorway, a hulking figure wearing sunglasses and carrying a cymbal under each arm.

  “Artie around?” he asked cautiously. His shades weren't quite big enough to hide the discoloration under his right eye.

  “Check the pay phone,” Buzzy advised. “He's describing you to the hit man.”

  Stan set the cymbals down on the table; they clanged with a quick metallic huff. “You guys want to help me get unloaded? If we hustle, I can be ready by seven.”

  “Sorry,” Buzzy said, quickly rising from his chair. “I was just about to get seconds.”

  Stan looked at Dave. Even through the dark glasses, Dave could sense the pleading in his eyes. Stan's drum kit wasn't that elaborate—-just a bass drum, floor torn, rack torn, snare, hi-hat, and cymbals—but setting it up in twenty minutes would be a real bitch, especially since he'd have to do it on a crowded stage, without disturbing Ian.

  “Okay,” Dave said with a sigh, eyeing the last lonely scraps of fettucini plastered to his plate like bandages. “I guess I'm done.”

  “Thanks,” said Stan. “I owe you one.”

  “You owe me about twelve,” Dave corrected him.

  They hurried past the Black Forest Room, where Ian was playing “Misty” for the chitchatting friends and family of Staci Lambrusco and PJ. DiNardo, then continued down the stairs and through the lobby. Dave had to shade his eyes from the daylight in the parking lot; the evening breeze made him groan with gratitude.

  “I'm parked way the fuck over there,” Stan informed him, waving his hand at the western horizon, where the sun was blazing like a fat penny. “I tried to pull up to the door, but that asswipe security guard wouldn't let me.”

  They trudged past row upon row of more or less well-maintained vehicles until they reached Stan's LeBaron, a beat-up piece of crap that looked like someone had been using it for sledgehammer practice. The body was dented in half a dozen places and the rear bumper hung at a precarious tilt; even the license plate seemed inexplicably battered, as if someone had crumpled it into a ball like a piece of paper, then smoothed it out by hand in an attempt to remove the wrinkles. In a new touch, a piece of green garbage bag filled the space that should have been occupied by the rear driver's-side window.

  Stan popped the trunk and handed Dave the bass drum, open side up like a big round box. In the natural light, his eye looked worse than before, not so much black as a repulsive amalgam of green and purple.

  “Jesus,” said Dave. “Where'd you get that shiner?”

  Stan reached into the well and pulled out the pillow he used to muffle vibration inside the bass drum. The pillow was an eyesore, shapeless and sweat-stained, a sack of old feathers and bad dreams. The least he could've done was hide it in a pillowcase.

  “You really want to know?”

  “I'm not sure.”

  Stan stuffed the pillow into the drum.

  “Walter,” he said. “The piano player in Phil Hart's band.”

  “The old guy with the shakes?”

  Stan nodded. In spite of everything, he seemed amused.

  “I've been hanging out with him the past couple of weeks. He's a great guy.”

  “So why'd he slug you?”

  Stan grabbed a foot pedal from the trunk and set it down on top of the pillow.

  “We had one too many. I said some things I shouldn't have.”
r />   “Like what?”

  Stan's tongue made a thoughtful tour of his mouth, poking at one cheek, then the other. His expression remained inscrutable behind the glasses.

  “Well, for one thing, I said Thelonious Monk could suck my dick.”

  Dave couldn't help laughing. “He hit you because of that?”

  “That was part of it.” Stan looked up at the sky. “Then I said something about Brubeck. That was when he popped me.”

  “What'd you say?” “I can't repeat it. It's too disgusting.” “Come on,” said Dave.

  Stan blew a weary raspberry and shook his head. “I'm serious,” he said. “You wouldn't believe me if I told you.”

  ARE YOU DAVE?

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Artie said, slipping easily into his MC mode as the band struck up a sprightly Spyro Gyra instrumental, “on behalf of Shelley and Frank Lambrusco and Pat and Dick DiNardo, I'd like to welcome each and every one of you to the Westview Manor on this lovely spring evening. If you're not taking photographs, would you be kind enough to please take your seats and join me in offering a very warm welcome to our bridal party.”

  He paused while the guests drifted back to their tables. An honor guard of amateur photographers formed a wall around the dance floor, which was empty except for the camcorder mounted on a six-foot rolling tripod with a small, white-hot spotlight burning at its summit. The videographer, a nerdy, ubiquitous guy named Lenny, stood beside it with an air of proprietary importance, a battery pack wrapped around his waist like an ammunition belt. The professional still photographer, whom Dave had never seen before, was crouching in front of the three-tiered wedding cake, his camera aimed at the doorway, where a bridesmaid and usher now fidgeted, awaiting their introduction.

  “o-KAY,” Artie resumed, reading from an index card supplied by the maitre d’. “How about a big round of applause for bridesmaid Antoinette Lambrusco and usher Paul Cross.”

  Arms locked, Antoinette and Paul strode past the wedding cake and across the dance floor. A bodybuilder with a profusely moussed crewcut, Paul acknowledged the tepid ovation with magisterial nods, while Antoinette clutched a bouquet of spring flowers to her chest and beamed ecstatically, as though she herself were the bride. After they passed the video camera, the maitre d’ escorted them off the dance floor, and Artie moved on to the next couple.