The Wishbones

by Tom Perrotta

  “Fuck you, Dave.” She turned sharply, wrenching her shoulder out of his grasp. “Don't patronize me. I hate it when men do that.”

  “I was just making an observation.”

  He tried to put his hand back, but she brushed it away like an insect. She drew her knees up to her chest, and wrapped her arms around them. She sat that way for a long time, gazing straight ahead, through the window to the brownstone across the street.

  “You think this is easy for me?” she said finally. “Being involved with a guy who's getting married in a month?”

  “Seven weeks,” he corrected.

  “Excuse me. I must have misplaced my invitation.”

  “It isn't easy for me either,” he said, neglecting to tell her that the invitations hadn't gone out yet. “If I'd met you a few months earlier, I might not be engaged at all.”

  She seemed to soften a little. She turned her head, revealing to him her stricken face. He hadn't realized she'd been crying.

  “This is just a really vulnerable time for me, Dave. I've been lonely for too long. My defenses are really low.”

  “I tried to be honest with you. Right from the start.”

  “Well, you sure waited long enough,” she said, laughing in spite of herself. “Your pants were around your ankles when you finally broke the news.”

  “It all happened so fast. I'm not used to having that kind of effect on women.”

  “It's been a long time since I've lost my head like that. I hadn't met a decent guy for so long, I'd forgotten what it felt like.”

  Dave wanted to ask her about Rockin’ Randy, but knew that the moment was all wrong. He put his hand back on her shoulder. This time she let it stay there.

  “I'd forgotten, too,” he told her.

  “So what are we supposed to do now?” she asked, her voice breaking with emotion.

  She fixed him with a wild, nearsighted stare. They sat motionless for what felt like minutes as the fan swept back and forth across the room like a searchlight. It seemed to him that she really wanted an answer.

  WAR PIGS

  Ian picked an unfortunate moment to quit the band. He did it at Wednesday-night rehearsal, a few minutes after Artie had made what he called a major announcement: he'd gotten the Wishbones booked as house band on The Genial Jim Show, a cable-access program none of the other guys had heard of.

  “Genial Jim?” said Buzzy. He was reclining on the wicker love seat that was the only piece of real furniture in Artie's basement. “Who the fuck is that?”

  “Just a middle-aged guy with a talk show,” Artie explained, perched atop his computerized exercise bike, lazily pedaling. “He's a shipping clerk over at Merck.”

  “What is it?” Stan wanted to know. “Some kind of Wayne's World--type thing?”

  “Probably.” Artie pedaled harder, raising his voice to compete with the hissing of the flywheel. “He's supposed to send me a videotape.”

  “So what kind of commitment is this for us?” Dave inquired.

  “Minimal. One night a month. The show's taped in the back room of a restaurant in Union Village. All we have to do is play during the opening and closing credits, fill in between guests, and back Genial Jim for a song or two. This is not a difficult gig.”

  “Whaddaya mean?” said Buzzy. “Back Genial Jim for a song or two?”

  “The guy likes to sing,” Artie replied with a shrug.

  “Fuckin’ amateur hour,” Buzzy muttered.

  “What's it pay?” Stan asked. He was sitting on the stool behind his drum kit, curling twenty-pound dumbbells, the veins in his forearms bulging like drinking straws.

  Artie stared at him like he was an imbecile. Stan stopped curling and looked to the other guys for support.

  “What? All I asked was what does it pay.”

  Artie spoke slowly and carefully, as if for the benefit of someone with an imperfect grasp of English.

  “This is a cable-access show, Stanley. It's not Jay Friggin’ Leno.”

  “Exactly,” said Buzzy. “So what's in it for us?”

  “What's in it for us?” Artie's face took on the weary, headachey expression he adopted whenever someone questioned his business decisions. “Are you kidding me? What's in it for us is sixty minutes of free TV time a month, plus a promotional announcement at the end of every show with our phone number included. Do you have any idea what advertising like that would cost if we had to pay for it?”

  “What advertising?” scoffed Buzzy. “Probably ten people are watching the show and five of them are the guy's immediate fam-ily.”

  “That's where you're wrong,” Artie informed him in a superior tone. “From what I understand, Genial Jim has a real cult following. There's gotta be at least a thousand people tuning in for every show. I guarantee you we'll be seeing jobs as a result of this exposure. You guys gotta trust me on this.”

  Finally Ian spoke up. He was sitting against the wall on an old weightlifting bench bandaged with duct tape. Dave had been surprised by his silence on an issue of this magnitude. Usually he'd argue with Artie about what day of the week it was just to get his two cents in.

  “When does this start?”

  “Next Thursday.”

  Ian's lips disappeared inside his mouth. He looked at the floor.

  “I won't be there,” he said. “I'm giving my notice. I can't do this anymore.”

  Artie stopped pedaling. “Do what anymore?” he demanded with a nervous laugh. “We haven't even done it once.”

  “I'm not talking about that.” Ian's voice was gentle, apologetic. He looked around the room. “I'm talking about this.”

  For half an hour they went around in circles, trying to get him to change his mind. Artie got more and more worked up as time went on, unable to accept the fact that Ian's decision was final, and not just some cagey negotiating ploy.

  “What is it?” He had climbed off his bike and stationed himself in front of the weight bench. “You want more money?”

  “This isn't about money, Artie. You know me better than that.”

  “What's it about then? Recognition? You want top billing? Ian Mickiewicz and the Wishbones? I'm willing to consider something like that. I'm sure the other guys wouldn't object.”

  Artie looked pleadingly around the basement. One by one the other Wishbones nodded their assent. Sitting atop his TV-sized amp, Dave was touched by Artie's desperation on behalf of the band, even though he could see it was useless.

  Ian smiled sadly. “Believe me, guys. That's the last thing I'm looking for.”

  “Is it the ceremonial Wishbone thing?” Artie asked, grasping at straws. “Say the word and it's gone. You won't ever have to do it again.”

  Ian combed his fingers through his pretty hair, keeping his gaze fixed on the wall above the love seat. There was a Heineken mirror up there, along with an old travel poster for Jamaica, featuring a woman with huge breasts standing in waist-high crystal blue water, nipples erect beneath her skimpy bathing suit.

  “You're not listening to me. This part of my life is over. I'm moving in a whole new direction.”

  “What direction is that?” Buzzy asked, generating a surprising amount of bitterness for someone who was flat on his back, feet elevated on a pillow.

  “I'm gonna miss you guys,” Ian went on. “I mean that. I loved being part of this band.”

  “So what's the problem?” asked Stan. “You like us, we like you. Let's just keep going.”

  Ian winced. “I don't mean to sound like a dick, but I'm not really a lounge singer. I'm an artist. I've been denying that side of me for too long. I feel like I owe it to myself to start nurturing it for a while.”

  “What about us?” Artie asked in a plaintive voice. “Don't you owe anything to us?”

  Ian thought about it for a few seconds.

  “No,” he said. “I don't see that I do.”

  Ian left a few minutes later. Artie followed him outside, still begging him to reconsider. Dave, Buzzy, and Stan remained in the basem
ent, exchanging uneasy looks.

  Dave was surprised by how guilty he felt. Hard as he tried, he couldn't shake the conclusion that he was somehow responsible for this mess. He was the one who had fixed Ian up with Tammi, and he knew, without Ian's so much as mentioning her name, that she was the real catalyst for his decision. People got brave new ideas about themselves when they fell in love. Tammi had told Ian he was a genius, and Ian had decided to start believing her. And now it was the Wishbones who were going to have to pick up the pieces.

  Dave's guilt on this front was only compounded by his lingering sense of good fortune on another. Three weeks after their lunch at the Bayway, he still hadn't formally accepted or declined Zelack's offer to join Shiny Angels. Despite his distaste for religious rock, some sixth sense—not to mention a deep-seated fear of becoming the Pete Best of the Christian Beatles—had warned him that the smart strategy was to string things along for a while, to keep his options open and see what developed. And now that something had developed, the smart strategy was looking even smarter, especially since Zelack had departed for a weeklong camping trip in the Smokies, giving Dave that much more time to figure out his next move.

  4'Well, how do you like that?” Buzzy said, sitting up straight on the love seat. He took off his Yankees cap and scratched so vigorously at his bald spot it looked like he was trying to file his nails on his scalp. “I'd forgotten what it feels like to watch a good thing go down the toilet.”

  “Not me,” said Stan. “It feels pretty fucking familiar.”

  “He's been restless for a while,” Dave pointed out. “I guess we should've seen it coming.”

  “Everybody's restless,” Buzzy told him. “But you've got to be pretty fucking stupid to jump ship on a moneymaking operation like this. The guy doesn't even have a day job.”

  “Maybe he'll change his mind,” Stan suggested. “Maybe he's just depressed or something.”

  “I doubt it,” said Dave. “He sounded pretty definite.”

  Buzzy stood up and grabbed his crotch in the manner of Michael Jackson.

  “I'm an artist,” he said, shaking his head in sorry amazement. “Good luck, buddy.”

  He walked over to his amp and strapped on his bass. He turned the volume up as high as it would go and began thumping out a slow angry riff that Dave heard through the soles of his feet as much as he did with his ears. The music seemed vaguely familiar, like the face of a kid he'd known in high school but hadn't thought about since graduation. Buzzy repeated the riff eight or ten times, then stopped and looked around, a gleam of challenge in his dark eyes.

  “What's the matter?” he said. “Don't you assholes know any Sabbath?”

  Dave plugged into his ancient fuzz pedal and did his best to keep up. Buzzy had not only the music, but also—amazingly—the lyrics of “War Pigs” committed to memory. He did a decent job with the vocals—it was the first time Dave had ever heard him sing lead —and his bass made the foundation of Artie's house shake and rumble as though in the grip of a minor earthquake. Stan complemented him with a malicious assault on the drums.

  It had been so long since he'd played at this volume that Dave had forgotten what it felt like. When the din reached a certain level you lost the sense that you were actually creating it and entered this space where the noise just seemed to exist, surrounding you, independent of the movement of your fingers on the frets and knobs. You were inside it, your bones and teeth humming, your body pumped full of voltage and adrenaline. It was a giddy, grinding, out-of-control feeling, like driving through an avalanche on a rickety old school bus.

  They segued into “Iron Man” and were halfway through “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath” when Artie finally returned. As soon as they saw him, they slammed on the brakes. Silence crashed down, almost as loud as the music it replaced.

  “Jesus,” said Buzzy. “What happened to you?”

  Artie stood in front of them for a few seconds, hunched over, hands on his thighs, trying to catch his breath. His pink polo shirt was torn and stretched at the neck and his usually manicured hair hung in a shock over his forehead. There were grass stains on both knees of his off-white Dockers.

  “Did you guys have a fight?” Dave asked in disbelief, his voice echoing weirdly over the ringing in his ears.

  Artie stood up and shook his head. A trickle of blood ran from his left nostril down into his mouth.

  “Not a fight per se. More like a heated discussion.”

  “Who won?” asked Stan.

  Artie wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, smearing the blood. “He's gonna sing with us for the rest of the month. That'll at least give us a little leeway to try and find someone new.”

  Buzzy and Stan decided to grab a beer after practice, to sit around and mourn the passing of Ian. As much as he wanted to be part of the wake, Dave had to take a rain check. He'd promised Julie he'd come over around nine to help her address the invitations, and he didn't want to upset her by changing plans at the last minute.

  Keeping two women happy—or at least not seriously unhappy —was harder work than he'd expected, and Dave had found himself feeling unusually frazzled of late. His whole life seemed to have reduced itself to pure logistics—planning the wedding, working, stealing a few hours to see Gretchen, getting to gigs on time, keeping straight the various lies he'd told to different people. He'd developed a sudden sympathy for Stan, an understanding of how it might happen that you showed up at the wrong banquet hall or got stuck in traffic when you least could afford it. One fire was always flaring up while you were busy extinguishing another one. Everywhere you went, there was someone you needed to apologize to. The only upside to this hectic balancing act was that it didn't leave a lot of time left over for thinking about why the hell you were doing it in the first place.

  Right now his main worry was Gretchen. She'd seemed distracted and unhappy for the past couple of weeks, and Dave had the feeling he needed to do something drastic to get their relationship back on track. One of her main complaints was that they never got to spend the night together—or any other quality time for that matter—so he had made arrangements to spend Friday night and Saturday morning in Brooklyn to help celebrate her birthday. It was a risky gesture, but he wanted her to know that he was doing the best he could to take her happiness into account.

  On his last visit, she'd refused to go to bed with him and had instead taken him for a walk in Prospect Park. Dave had been surprised by the number of people with free time in the middle of a hazy Tuesday afternoon, not just kids but lots of adults too, biking, running, Rollerblading, flying kites, drinking, reading, sunbathing, as though it were some sort of holiday only celebrated in New York City. Even the cops seemed to be enjoying themselves, patrolling that green and bustling world on horseback, on expensive-looking mountain bikes, and in these weird little roofed-in electric carts. Gretchen sat him down on a bench near the road that encircled the park and spoke to him at length about her unhappiness with their situation, her loneliness at night, her jealousy of Julie's claim on him.

  “Don't be jealous of her,” he said, patting her bony, rectangular kneecap. She was wearing a baggy tank top over skintight biker shorts, and he would rather have been touching her in a less brotherly way. “She's the one being cheated on, not you.”

  “She's the one getting married,” Gretchen said bitterly. “Not me.”

  “Is that what you want?”

  She looked away. Two lanky black guys with dreadlocks and identical teardrop helmets whooshed by on Rollerblades, swinging their right arms in perfect unison, like Olympic speed skaters.

  “Eventually,” she said. “Maybe not right this minute.”

  “Huh,” said Dave.

  He understood exactly why Julie wanted to get married. It was part of the natural course of her life. She was tired of living with her parents, bored by her job, eager to move on to the next phase of adulthood. But Gretchen was independent, a poet, a single woman in the city. Her life looked pretty great to Dave. It hadn
't occurred to him that she'd be in any kind of a hurry to trade it in for a different one.

  “I'm not getting any younger,” she reminded him, as a Muslim woman jogged by in a baggy sweatsuit, panting beneath her veil. “I'll be thirty next week.”

  By the time Dave showed up, Julie and her mother were almost done with the invitations. Two neat stacks of sealed, addressed envelopes rested on the dining-room table, along with a bottle of wine, two glasses, a checklist, and several books of stamps.

  “Anything I can do?” he asked.

  “Not really,” said Julie. “All we have to do is lick a few stamps and we're finished.”

  “I've got a tongue,” he said, doing his best Gene Simmons imitation to prove it.

  Mrs. Müller averted her eyes from this display, as if reliving her traumatic glimpse of another of Dave's protuberant organs. How many years would he be required to walk on eggshells, he wondered, just because his mother-in-law had once laid eyes on his hot pink manhood?

  “Why don't you go downstairs and relax,” Julie told him. “I'm sure my father could use a little company.”

  “It's true,” said Mrs. Müller, risking another glance in Dave's direction. “He's been alone since suppertime.”

  Entering the rec room, he was greeted by the sound of explosions and the triumphant voice-over of a World War II documentary: The mighty Allied war machine rolled on toward Berlin, encountering only sporadic resistance from the demoralized Nazi forces. Dave recognized the narrator from football highlight films he'd watched as a kid.

  “Hey,” he said, crossing between Mr. Müller and the TV to take his inevitable seat on the couch.

  Mr. Müller muted the set. He was still wearing his jacket, tie, and tasseled loafers, as if he'd just come home from work five minutes ago. In all the years he'd known his prospective father-in-law, Dave had never seen him in shorts, or shirtless, or barefoot, or unshaven. Julie claimed to have no memory of her father that involved a bathing suit, or even pajamas. Except for a small strip of shin that poked out from between the top of his socks and the bottom of his pants, his legs were purely theoretical.