Broken Piano for President (14 page)

FRIEND:
I’ll be sure to send him a card.

The rabbit ears of the Cliff Drinker’s senses twist and dip until they pull in a decent signal. Dean’s eyes are closed. Blood beats through his head like cymbal crashes and he’s out of air. Someone is jumping on him. A rib starts cracking. Feminine breaths huff like pumping weights.

Dean can’t remember the lyrics to
Broken Piano for President
at this exact moment, but the music is there, wandering his skull.

A voice moans: “
Ohhh
.”

There’s a twenty-five percent chance this involves bench pressing.

Deshler’s eyes open. A nude woman bounces into his groin—blonde hair scurries over her face and stops at a bare chest. She is thin enough to count ribs.

“
R-R-R-RRR
, yeah,” she says.

There is a zero percent chance she is pumping iron. Squat thrusts are another story.

He’s seventy-five percent sure they are having sex.

The woman has a white bandage around her head.

“Ahhhh, whuuuuuh?” Deshler moans. He’s one hundred percent sure this is sex. With Malinta, no less. A wave of amazement floods over his body. Like most of his previous hookups, Dean had no idea he is smooth enough to reach this point, but he’s not arguing.

“There you are…I thought—” She slows to breathe deep a few times. “I thought you died on me.”

“Wha…huh? Oh, yes! No, I’m alive,” he hoots, wondering if this is an accident.
Maybe she tripped and fell?
he thinks.

“Don’t stop, I’m close, I’m—” she gasps. For a split second, looking into her green eyes, Deshler’s crushing skull ache disappears.

Do not forget this moment
, he thinks.
Don’t forget her skin. Don’t
push her away
. He stops to take in a sober glance.
Don’t do anything stupid.

Yellow bangs flop back over her face and Deshler goes cross-eyed again.

Dean returns to consciousness with gravity bullying him around. He can’t lift an arm or wiggle a toe, but his eyes crack a flinch.

“Wake up, softie,” Malinta nursery rhyme sings. She is curled into his body. “Wake up, softie. I won’t tell anyone.”

“Tell
what
?” he says, waterlogged.

“I won’t tell anyone that you went soft on me. Lucky I finished or I’d tell your little buddies at Beef Club,” she smiles. Her fingers dance through Dean’s chest hair. “You feel okay?”

“I’m fine. Just tired,” he says, smelling Malinta’s hair, the shampoo sweetness planting fresh flowers in his lungs. “I played a show last night, I’m beat.”

“You played a
what
?”

Thanks to the newspaper article, Lothario Speedwagon sold more than a few tapes at last night’s gig. They actually offloaded the remaining stock of
Broken Piano for President
due to the overwhelming attendance. The article’s picture didn’t hurt either. In it, Deshler hung from his knees on a drainpipe in a dingy basement club. His bright orange mask was stained down the middle from a bloody nose, he howled into a microphone and yanked a frightened woman by the hair like a caveman.

For some reason, he wore this same getup walking around before last night’s show. The blood was now crusty and browned. Mask recognition meant half the packed club bought our neon-faced hero a shot of bourbon.

Lothario was headlining a three-band bill at The Purple Bottle. The club is the musty basement of a downtown carpet cleaning service which hosts rock shows and a bar. Lavender paint snowed from the walls when Lothario cranked amps to max. The cigarette smoke near the stage was so thick it acted as a makeshift fog machine. Add that to their dozen black lights and fluorescent face gear and the Lothario’s heads floated through dark haze like atomic particles.

Besides house parties, The Purple Bottle is the only place in town Dean, Hamler, and Pandemic can still get a gig. But even when the Bottle is packed, it’s no great feat. The crowd couldn’t fill a bus.

Deshler doesn’t remember ever touching the stage. Lying next to Malinta on cool, clean sheets, he hopes it went well, especially with the big performance piece planned for the show.

Morning light slashes through window blinds and burns on Deshler’s bare stomach. The bedroom is a foreign country. The walls are empty and cheddar yellow, trimmed in blue. It’s so clean he doesn’t even see any clothes on the floor.

“Hello,” she snaps her fingers. “You played a show, Deshler?”

“Nuh, nothing, forget it.”

She sighs and rolls off the bed with a squeak. “Come on, get up Mister Secret, I’ll make some coffee.”

His performance art piece was supposed to mimic the meat grinder of society. Gibby cleared the forest, now Dean had to make a statement amongst the leftover wreckage.

Nobody listens unless you force them,
he thought before the show, complimenting himself on being such an artistic genius
. This isn’t pissing into a baseball bat
,
but it’ll do
.

Deshler bought ten pounds of stale hamburger buns, three heads of lettuce, seventeen tomatoes and value-sized containers of mustard and ketchup. He planned to cover the audience with these ingredients, making one large human hamburger while the band did its thing. The ketchup and mustard would be tossed out in Ziploc baggies.

The French press whiffs through the bathroom while Dean unrolls a condom into the toilet. His piss lasts exhaustingly long. From the mirror reflection, Deshler thinks about checking into a hospital—his hair is another night’s sleep from knotting into a single dreadlock, his arms and legs are covered in blue-purple bruises and his chest stinks like condiments. Every step is like stumbling around on stilts.

Dean’s mouth, however, hangs unchanged, still confused as ever. His lip is plump and split open.

He flushes and pauses for a second, wishing he could remember what convinced Malinta to jump into the sack. It’s starting to get on his nerves, this Cliff Drinker’s memory. He’s amazed at his ability to pull Malinta close and gets anxiety knowing he’ll eventually push her away like all the others.

The kitchen’s electric yellow walls and blue trim are exactly like a Bust-A-Gut dome, too. Deshler worries about Malinta’s psychological state and overzealous job loyalty when the plates and mugs match this paintjob.

“Un, deux, trois, quatre…” Dean discovers her pulling cups from a cabinet—speaking quietly, privately, and with an accent. “Quatre…q…q—”

“Cinq,” he says.

“How’d you know that?” She turns, eyes surprised.

“Three years of French in high school.”

“Me too. I used to be able to read whole French novels, but I just let it go. Isn’t that sad?”

“I don’t know.”

“I think so.”

“Are you going to Paris or something?”

“No. I just think I should relearn it. It’s a shame to let talent go to waste. A good person wouldn’t just waste all these valuable bleeping skills to sell hamburgers. She’d be well-rounded.”

“I’ve never had one thought about cinq until today.”

“Drink your coffee.”

“Café.” He grins and sips.

Her eyes don’t say
funny
, but they don’t disagree, either. She passes him a full, hot mug.

Sitting at the table, the black coffee cuts Deshler’s tongue like a branding iron. “Do you have any crème?”