The Best of Lucius Shepard (112 page)

“You think
you’re so funny! He comes up behind me in tight places. Like in the kitchen.
And he pretends he has to squeeze past.”

“He’s in our
kitchen?”

“You send
him up to use the treadmill, don’t you?”

“Oh ...
right.”

“And he has
to get water from the fridge, doesn’t he?”

I leaned
back in the chair and clasped my hands behind my head. “You want me to flog
him? Cut off a hand?”

“Would that
stop it? Give me a call when he’s gone, okay?”

“You know I
will. Say hi to Mom.”

A final
moue, a moue that conveyed a
soupçon
of regret, but—more
pertinently—made plain how much I would miss her spoonful of sugar in my
coffee.

After she
had gone, I sat thinking nonspecific thoughts, vague appreciations of her many
virtues, then I handicapped the odds that her intricate makeup signaled an
affair and decided just how pissed off to be at Stanky. I shouted downstairs
for him to come join me and dragged him out for a walk into town.

A mile and a
quarter along the Polozny, then up a steep hill, would bring you to the park, a
triangular section of greenery (orange-and-brownery at that time of year)
bordered on the east by the library, on the west by a row of brick buildings
containing gentrifed shops, and, facing the point of the triangle, by
McGuigan’s. For me alone, it was a brisk half-hour walk; with Stanky in tow, it
took an extra twenty minutes. He was not one to hide his discomfort or
displeasure. He panted, he sagged, he limped, he sighed. His breathing grew
labored. The next step would be his last. Wasn’t it enough I forced him to walk
three blocks to the 7-11? If his heart failed, drop his bones in a bucket of
molten steel and ship his guitars home to McKeesport, where his mother would
display them, necks crossed, behind the urn on the mantle.

These
comments went unvoiced, but they were eloquently stated by his body language.
He acted out every nuance of emotion, like a child showing off a new skill. Send
him on an errand he considered important and he would give you his best White
Rabbit, head down, hustling along on a matter of urgency to the Queen. Chastise
him and he would play the penitent altar boy. When ill, he went with a hand
clutching his stomach or cheek or lower back, grimacing and listless. His
posturing was so pitifully false, it was disturbing to look at him. I had
learned to ignore these symptoms, but I recognized the pathology that bred
them—I had seen him, thinking himself unwatched, slumped on the couch, clicking
the remote, the
Guide
spread across his lap, mired in the quicksand of
depression, yet more arrogant than depressed, a crummy king forsaken by his
court, desperate for admirers.

On reaching
the library, I sat on a middle step and fingered out a fatty from my jacket
pocket. Stanky collapsed beside me, exhausted by the Polozny Death March he had
somehow survived. He flapped a hand toward McGuigan’s and said, hopefully, “You
want to get a beer?”

“Maybe
later.”

I fired up
the joint.

“Hey!”
Stanky said. “We passed a cop car on the hill, man.”

“I smoke
here all the time. As long as you don’t flaunt it, nobody cares.”

I handed him
the joint. He cupped the fire in his palm, smoking furtively. It occurred to me
that I wouldn’t drink from the same glass as him—his gums were rotting, his
teeth horribly decayed—but sharing a joint? What the hell. The air was nippy
and the moon was hidden behind the alder’s thick leaves, which had turned but
not yet fallen. Under an arc lamp, the statue of Black William gleamed as if
fashioned of obsidian.

“Looks like
he’s pointing right at us, huh?” said Stanky.

When I was
good and stoned, once the park had crystallized into a Victorian fantasy of
dark green lawns amid crisp shadows and fountaining shrubs, the storefronts
beyond hiding their secrets behind black glass, and McGuigan’s ornate sign with
its ruby coat of arms appearing to occupy an unreal corner in the dimension
next door, I said, “Mia went back to her mom’s tonight. She’s going to be there
for a while.”

“Bummer.” He
had squirreled away a can of Coke in his coat pocket, which he now opened.

“It’s normal
for us. Chances are she’ll screw around on me a little and spend most of the
time curled up on her mom’s sofa, eating Cocoa Puffs out of the box and
watching soaps. She’ll be back eventually.”

He had a
swig of Coke and nodded.

“What
bothers me,” I said, “is the reason she left. Not the real reason, but the
excuse she gave. She claims you’ve been touching her. Rubbing against her and
making like it was an accident.”

This
elicited a flurry of protests and I-swear-to-Gods. I let him run down before I
said, “It’s not a big deal.”

“She’s
lying, man! I....”

“Whatever.
Mia can handle herself. You cross the line with her, you’ll be picking your
balls up off the floor.”

I could
almost hear the gears grinding as he wondered how close he had come to being
deballed.

“I want you
to listen,” I went on. “No interruptions. Even if you think I’m wrong about
something. Deal?”

“Sure....
Yeah.”

“Most of
what I put out is garbage music. Meanderthal, Big Sissy, The Swimming Holes,
Junk Brothers....”

“I love the
Junk Brothers, man! They’re why I sent you my demo.”

I gazed at
him sternly—he ducked his head and winced by way of apology.

“So
rock-and-roll is garbage,” I said. “It’s disposable music. But once in a great
while, somebody does something perfect. Something that makes the music seem
indispensable. I think you can make something perfect. You may not ever get
rock star money. I doubt you can be mainstreamed. The best you can hope for,
probably, is Tom Waits money. That’s plenty, believe me. I think you’ll be huge
in Europe. You’ll be celebrated there. You’ve got a false bass that reminds me
of Blind Willie Johnson. You write tremendous lyrics. That fractured guitar
style of yours is unique. It’s out there, but it’s funky and people are going
to love it. You have a natural appeal to punks and art rockers. To rock geeks
like me. But there’s one thing can stop you—that’s your problem with women.”

Not even
this reference to his difficulties with Sabela and Mia could disrupt his rapt
attentiveness.

“You can
screw this up very easily,” I told him. “You let that inappropriate touching
thing of yours get out of hand, you
will
screw it up. You have to learn
to let things come. To do that, you have to believe in yourself. I know you’ve
had a shitty life so far, and your self-esteem is low. But you have to break
the habit of thinking that you’re getting over on people. You don’t need to get
over on them. You’ve got something they want. You’ve got talent. People will
cut you a ton of slack because of that talent, but you keep messing up with
women, their patience is going to run out. Now I don’t know where all that
music comes from, but it doesn’t sound like it came from a basement. It’s a
gift. You have to start treating it like one.”

I asked him
for a cigarette and lit up. Though I’d given variations of the speech dozens of
times, I bought into it this time and I was excited.

“Ten days
from now you’ll be playing for a live audience,” I said. “If you put in the
work, if you can believe in yourself, you’ll get all you want of everything.
And that’s how you do it, man. By putting in the work and playing a kick-ass
set. I’ll help any way I can. I’m going to do publicity, T-shirts ... and I’m
going to give them away if I have to. I’m going to get the word out that Joe
Stanky is something special. And you know what? Industry people will listen,
because I have a track record.” I blew a smoke ring and watched it disperse.
“These are things I won’t usually do for a band until they’re farther along, but
I believe in you. I believe in your music. But you have to believe in yourself
and you have to put in the work.”

I’m not sure
how much of my speech, which lasted several minutes more, stuck to him. He
acted inspired, but I couldn’t tell how much of the act was real; I knew on
some level he was still running a con. We cut across the park, detouring so he
could inspect the statue again. I glanced back at the library and saw two white
lights shaped like fuzzy asterisks. At first I thought they were moving across
the face of the building, that some people were playing with flashlights; but
their brightness was too sharp and erratic, and they appeared to be coming from
behind the library, shining through the stone, heading toward us. After ten or
fifteen seconds, they faded from sight. Spooked, I noticed that Stanky was
staring at the building and I asked if he had seen the lights.

“That was
weird, man!” he said. “What was it?”

“Swamp gas.
UFOs. Who knows?”

I started
walking toward McGuigan’s and Stanky fell in alongside me. His limp had
returned.

“After we
have those beers, you know?” he said.

“Yeah?”

“Can we
catch a cab home?” His limp became exaggerated. “I think I really hurt my leg.”

Part of the
speech must have taken, because I didn’t have to roust Stanky out of bed the
next morning. He woke before me, ate his grits (I allowed him a single bowl
each day), knocked back a couple of Diet Cokes (my idea), and sequestered
himself in the studio, playing adagio trumpet runs and writing on the Casio.
Later, I heard the band thumping away. After practice, I caught Geno, the
drummer, on his way out the door, brought him into the office and asked how the
music was sounding.

“It doesn’t
blow,” he said.

I asked to
him to clarify.

“The guy
writes some hard drum parts, but they’re tasty, you know. Tight.”

Geno
appeared to want to tell me more, but spaced and ran a beringed hand through
his shoulderlength black hair. He was a handsome kid, if you could look past
the ink, the brands, and the multiple piercings. An excellent drummer and
reliable. I had learned to be patient with him.

“Over all,”
I said, “how do you think the band’s shaping up?”

He looked
puzzled. “You heard us.”

“Yes. I know
what I think. I’m interested in what you think.”

“Oh ...
okay.” He scratched the side of his neck, the habitat of a red and black
Chinese tiger. “It’s very cool. Strong. I never heard nothing like it. I mean,
it’s got jazz elements, but not enough to where it doesn’t rock. The guy sings
great. We might go somewhere if he can control his weirdness.”

I didn’t
want to ask how Stanky was being weird, but I did.

“He and
Jerry got a conflict,” Geno said. “Jerry can’t get this one part down, and
Stanky’s on him about it. I keep telling Stanky to quit ragging him. Leave
Jerry alone and he’ll stay on it until he can play it backward. But Stanky,
he’s relentless and Jerry’s getting pissed. He don’t love the guy, anyway. Like
today, Stanky cracks about we should call the band Stanky and Our Gang,”

“No,” I
said.

“Yeah,
right. But it was cute, you know. Kind of funny. Jerry took it personal,
though. He like to got into it with Stanky.”

“I’ll talk
to them. Anything else?”

“Naw.
Stanky’s a geek, but you know me. The music’s right and I’m there.”

The
following day I had lunch scheduled with Andrea. It was also the day that my
secretary, Kiwanda, a petite Afro-American woman in her late twenties, came
back to work after a leave during which she had been taking care of her
grandmother. I needed an afternoon off—I thought I’d visit friends, have a few
drinks—so I gave over Stanky into her charge, warning her that he was prone to
getting handsy with the ladies.