Austin Nights

by Herocious

week.

  On the way out, I ask the piano teacher where he’s from.

  “I was born here,” he says. “In Austin.”

  7

  Abe confesses there were several months in the 1960s when he went back east to bum off his parents and try to become Bob Dylan.

  He carried around his guitar, wore funky shades, and hung out with musicians. He wrote songs, arranged instruments, and really tried to compose music that had a lot of worth and lots of guts.

  “Music that moved you,” he says.

  I listen to Abe talk and see him much younger and more nimble back in the old days when life was in black and white and shades of gray. He lights his third cancer stick and is about to launch into a personal story. This is the first time I notice his stutter. It isn’t severe, but it’s there, and it makes Abe self-conscious.

  “I had my sister drive me out to a four-day festival in Newport,” he says. “It was a big favor, but she did things like that for me. She’s dead now. It makes me feel good every time I have a reason to talk about her a little. Beautiful Anne.”

  Abe pauses to let me ponder what he said about Beautiful Anne. I stare up at a cut of the whitest sky and hear a grackle ignite the air with static.

  “Ooo whew, whew, whew, whew, whew,” goes the Grackle. “Crewhewwhew!”

  “Anne drove me out to Newport for this festival,” Abe goes on, “and I met all stripes of people. But what I’ll never forget is the day when Chuck Berry was headlining. Everyone wanted to see the great Chuck Berry play back then. He was a serious act. He got paid something like 20 grand a show, and he went through them like a businessman. He had the venue sign these contracts that obligated them to get him in a limo from the airport and have a band familiar with Berry music ready to go. If the band played well, he’d pay them a grand. If they blew it, he’d give them nothing. He’d walk onstage, plug in his guitar without tuning it, and move the crowd with his music. Then he’d get on to his next concert. He made serious money, but he was Chuck Berry.”

  Abe drags cancer and listens to the music in his head. He starts singing Chuck Berry. I vaguely recognize the tune.

  “But when the time came for him to play,” says Abe, “this guy tells the crowd Chuck Berry won’t be able to make it to the festival. About 25,000 people got instant depression. I’ve never seen that many people hang their heads and drop their arms together. It really was a testament to how important music can be for people. Luckily, the guy talking to us went on to say that instead we have Lovin’ Spoonful! Everyone perked right up and started going crazy as these four guys with long hair ran onstage and started singing, ‘Do You Believe in Magic.’ They really played beautifully.”

  Abe laughs. I can see him looking at me, but I know his mind is elsewhere.

  Memories are like that: you’ll be living in the moment and all of a sudden you’re in the past, in a place that’s almost completely lost. I love memories. I love remembering what I’ve seen and lived through. Remembering is more than an act of kindness. It’s an act of engendering. When you remember, like when Abe remembered his sister, you’re breathing new life into something that’s on the brink of permanent extinction.

  “But if I could do it all again,” says Abe, smoldering cancer, “I’d want to be the One Hit Wonder. I’d love to be the One Hit Wonder.”

  8

  Austin doesn’t charge an arm and a leg for avocadoes. Since we’ve been here, we’ve each had half an avocado with lunch every day.

  How can you beat avocado? If there’s a way, I don’t even want to know.

  There are some things in life like that. Things you love so much you don’t even want to know anything better. What you have is enough. It’ll always be enough.

  Like avocado, like honey, like rice: these will always be enough.

  No matter where I am in life, no matter what contents and discontents follow me out the front door, there will always be avocadoes, there will always be honey, and there will always be rice.

  This isn’t an exhaustive list as far as things are concerned, but it’s pretty close.

  Like the road, like the ocean: I’ve let these things define me.

  1

  Michael knows how allergic he is to bees and wasps and fire ants.

  He’s had enough close calls to make sure he’s prepared for the worst at all times. At least this is the way it should be, but I know it’s not. Michael doesn’t do well with preparation. He doesn’t take things seriously enough even when he knows he should.

  I’ve never been with him when he’s stung, but I heard about the most recent time at his grandparent’s house in Boca Raton. He was helping rearrange patio furniture when he ran into a nest of mud daubers on the fan cord. A wasp stung the top of his right ear. He says trying to swat it away made the sting worse.

  Within minutes, he was lightheaded and losing vision. Anaphylaxis is no joke. And in Michael’s case, it has gotten worse with each sting.

  His dad rushed him off to the hospital, and he was treated immediately. Apparently, the medics couldn’t even get a reading on his heart because it was pumping so slow and faint. They gave him a shot of epinephrine and everything returned to normal.

  If he had the shot on his person to begin with, like most people who have this fatal allergy, he wouldn’t have gotten so close to dying, and he wouldn’t have had to pay what he calls an outrageous hospital bill for nothing.

  For nothing, Michael? Really?

  He has an EpiPen now, but he still doesn’t carry it with him all the time. I can’t believe the guy! It makes me so nervous when he leaves home without his shot. It’s his lifeline.

  What’s it going to take for him to learn?

  6

  Bridget’s tucked in. Her callipygian body shapes our comforter. She wants to sleep. I, on the other hand, have a paragraph to finish writing.

  I can move into the living room, but that won’t do any good. Bridget can’t sleep until I get into bed with her. We have to become parentheses before we fall asleep. That’s our tradition. Sacred spooning to calm our nerves. And besides, I’ve finished.

  I close my netbook and stand from the edge of the bed to slide the glass door shut. It’s a cool spring night. No clouds, lots of forgiving breeze, but it’ll make me feel better if I shut and lock the sliding glass door. This feeling of security, however false, does a lot to counteract my paranoia, which has generated quite the disturbing image.

  In the stillness of an Austin night, the leprechaun elf leans over me while I sleep. He simply climbed the wrought-iron railings of The Oaks and let himself in through the sliding glass door. The wooden baseball bat will be too far away to help fend him off, and besides, he’ll have it in his claws.

  “Did you think I forgot about you?” he’ll say, “how could I forget you? Take one last good look at my face!”

  To stall for time, I’ll pompously ask, “What happened to the whole gun idea? I thought you were going to shoot me with a gun.”

  It’s all about stalling for time. Life’s about stalling for time. The more you stall, the more chances you have. Who knows? Maybe this logical question regarding the gun will stall enough to rattle his nerves. I’ll leap from the bed and swoop down on him with the heavy brass desk lamp I use as a reading light.

  Either way, I don’t want to risk anything remotely similar to this befalling our home, be it the leprechaun elf or some reprobate from the correctional facility across the street. Or even the crazy girl next door. All she has to do is skip the septum wall that divides our balconies and start screaming her unearthly obscenities.

  But in trying to lock the sliding glass door at 12:37AM, I wake the baby on the third floor. The little boy wails. The women immediately stir into action while the man of the house snores soundly on the sofa in the living room, that is, until the crying gets so bad the snoring stops and his deep voice sprays curse words. I think I hear Gloria tell him to shut up as she swiftly works to regain silence.

  Dear Lord, look what I’
ve done. Look at the conflict I’ve created.

  Why do I have to try multiple times to lock the sliding glass door after it doesn’t lock on the first try? Why if I know it makes sound on its railing, a heavy penetrating sound loud enough to stir an infant, especially when I make this sound several times as I try to slam the door tightly enough for the lock to catch, why?

  “You woke him up,” says Bridget, stating the obvious.

  “Shit,” I say. I say, “shit.”

  I stuff my face into my memory foam pillow and feel terrible about waking the infant. His wail amplifies and, in turn, amplifies my guilt.

  How can you be so careless, I think, rubbing my face into the memory foam to smear this guilt away, how can you be so careless and paranoid that, in trying to secure our home, which can only be falsely secured at best, you wake an entire household?

  The women’s feet shuffle to and from the kitchen, where the stove warms his bottle. Maybe, to stall for time, the mother has slipped half her pajama off her shoulder and suckles the boy.

  Meanwhile, on the other side of the bedroom, Honeyed Cat worries about not having free and clear access to the balcony. She plots in the dark.

  4

  There’s no time for hotels along the way, no time for restaurants, no time for walks on scenic routes. My mission is clear and imperative. I must get to Austin as quickly as possible and settle. Until then, there will be no rest other than when our safety is in