The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)

Music Matters

Previously: "Money Matters" 

"I got plans," you mutter back at Diana. "Probably go out to the Warehouse. Or pick up another girl and another motel room."

You are busying yourself with unpacking the cello, but out of the corner of your eye you catch Aaron studying you with an intent but empty look on his face. I wonder what goes on in him? you briefly wonder, and almost instantly dismiss the thought that there are easy ways to find out.

Diana is starting to talk again, but Nathan interrupts. "Hey, I got something I want you guys to listen to," he calls out, and gestures you all to gather around his chair. He's got his phone balanced on the music stand with a video teed up.

"You know there's this arts festival thing coming up in December," he says, "and I'm pretty sure we can get a slot in it. I mean, fuck me, it's a twenty-four hour arts slam, and there ain't enough arts in this town for two hours," he snarks. "Anyway, I got an idea what we could do for it." He touches the screen, and tiny, tinny music starts to play.

It opens with a short, repetitive, dissonant motif, like a dentist scraping at a tooth with a metal hook. It's so repetitive, in fact, that after twenty seconds you growl, "Does anything fucking happen, or is this it?" Nathan hushes you as the music shifts into a series of slow, dissonant glissandos. You quickly peg it as something modernist and serial, probably from fifty years or sixty years ago. Not radically avant-garde, because it doesn't sound like any of the string players are using a hacksaw instead of a bow. But there's no direction to it, no pattern, no rhythm, and no reason as instruments jump in with a bang or slide out with a whine. Basically, it's music to piss people off: shit that sounds smart and intellectual because it's ugly and inscrutable. Like abstract painting, but for the ear.

"Yeah, I dig it," you say after a minute or so. "Perfect for arts festival fuckery."

Nathan frowns up at you. "You don't like it?"

"Yeah, sure," you shrug. (Kirkham is never one to gush over what he likes.) "And they'll dig it at the festival. They won't understand it, so they'll think it's better than it is. You got the sheet music?"

"I can find it."

"You better, if we're gonna play it. What is it, anyway?"

"It's by a guy named Charles Wuorinen."

"Well, find me the sheet music." You wander back over to your seat. "I wanna look it over before I commit to anything."

"Sure. He's got a piano quintet, too," Nathan adds. "You can find it on YouTube. Way killer. If we can get Spinks to throw in—"

"Oh, fuck me, Spinks? Ask him who he wants me to go down on. I'll go down on whoever, if Spinks does something with us." You fit the cello between your knees and tap the strings lightly with the bow before tuning up. Nathan snickers as he puts his phone away.

* * * * *

Though the Wendigo Quartet, under your and Nathan's prodding, leans heavily toward the modern, the alien, and the atonal, you're not all avant-garde all the time, because you do want to get money for playing, and most people don't like spending money (or time) to have their ears shredded. So the piece you're working on now, though by Hindemith, is one of his accessible works. For three hours you work through the first two movements, practicing and polishing and arguing over interpretation. When it's over, after Aaron and Diana have left and you're waiting for Chen to pick you up, you and Nathan relax in the garage—sitting on a big freezer—while passing a bottle of a microbrewery beer between you.

"You said you spent last night in a motel room with some girl?" Nathan says.

"When'd I say that?"

"When you came in. Jesus!" He swallows a great mouthful of beer, and belches.

"I just said that to shut Diana up." You tug the bottle from his tight grasp.

"It was Mindy, right?"

"Could'a been." You tip back the beer.

"Jesus!"

He's hunched over, staring with watering eyes out the garage at nothing in particular. Nothing in particular out in the street, that is: you're pretty sure in his mind's eye he's undressing some girl or other. He wipes his forearm across his forehead. "If I could get Madison into a motel room," he mutters. Still staring at nothing, he wrenches the bottle back from you.

"You just gotta be firm," you tell him as he pours another deep draught down his throat. "Look her in the face and tell her what she wants."

His eyes, their whites showing, swivel like marbles to lock onto yours. "You don't know Madison. I could beg, and—"

"You don't beg," you sneer. "You beg, you lose. And I guess you didn't hear me. I didn't say to tell her what you want. You tell her what she wants. Which is—" You lean in at him and lift your eyebrows.

"But she doesn't want it," he groans.

"Then what are you fucking around with her for?" You hop off the freezer and turn to give him your full attention.

"If she's one of the ones that don't want it, fine, you might as well try to fuck a wall," you tell him. "But there ain't that many of them. More of 'em out there," you grumble, "who don't deserve it than who don't want it. So does she want it or doesn't she?" You instinctively feel for a toothpick. But you left them all at home.

"Well, eventually, I assume, she—"

"Then what are you waiting for? Tell her she wants it now."

"I can't do that!"

"Then you're fucked." When he only stares back with boggled, watering eyes, you add, "Work on turning her loose, man. I could get her to turn loose. Fuck, give me ten minutes with her, I'll turn her into a waterslide. A hot, sudsy, dick-sucking water slide I'd have to beat back with a garden hoe to keep off me."

Nathan's eyes narrow, and his skin tightens until you can see the skull beneath.

"Is that how you get a new girl into a motel room every weekend?" he hisses.

"No, 'cos I don't get a new girl every weekend," you retort. "Too much filth out there. B'sides," you boast, "I like using 'em up, and that takes time. Turn 'em inside, turn 'em outside, turn 'em upside down. Do a Disneyland on 'em, take every ride there is. They ain't Kleenex, they don't turn to mush the first time you—" You ram the air with an up-thrusting fist.

"But I dunno," you sigh after Nathan only stares at you. His lips are bloodless. "Maybe you need a new girl. You sure as fuck could do better. You were doing better last year."

Chen picks that moment to pull up. "I gotta take off," you tell Nathan. "Find me that sheet music for that guy you want us to do. What's his name again?"

"Charles Wuorenin."

"Fuck me, you're gonna have to spell it. Text me a link to the shit you're thinking about us doing, including that one we wanna rope Spinks into. Any real chance him doing it with us?"

"I dunno, maybe. It's pretty out there."

"Yeah," you grumble. "Fucker's still got his head up Brahms' big ass. Tell him I'll give him a blow job before and after we do it, if he does it with us."

"Jesus, no! I'm not telling him that!"

"Well, tell him something. Oh, by the way," you add as you edge your way out. "I was talking to Kelsey Blankenship last night. She's got an in with the country club, she might be able to swing us a gig there. Maybe we could give 'em a dry run of the whatsisfuck you want us to do for the art fest."

You slipped that "last night" in because you wanted to see what Nathan would do with it, and he doesn't disappoint. "Was she the one you had in the motel room?"

"One of 'em, at least." You let him catch only a glimpse of your poker face before turning and swaggering off toward your ride.

* * * * *

All that talk of girls and fucking, of course, is a wild exaggeration. But there's enough truth in it that you'll never be called on your bullshit. If people can only find one case of your talking a girl down from sneering to snogging (that would be Mindy), and if there are only two or three girls who will admit to going to a motel with you (that would be Mindy and Ximena and maybe Molly Shaw if her tongue got loose enough)—

Well, that's enough to establish your cred. People always assume that what they see and hear and know is only the tip of the iceberg. Which means, mathematically, that you must have steamed ten girls out of their panties, and deflowered twenty to thirty out at the Donna.

You only wish.

Chen's got other stuff to do, so he drops you off. The house is empty, so you change into loose shorts and a floppy t-shirt, then prop yourself on your bed with your phone, a webpage of porn, and a hand down the front of your underwear. Fifteen slow, succulent minutes later and you're ready for the sock. Afterward, with the light off, you stare at the ceiling and mentally edit the images you jacked off to into a coherent movie. You wish there was a way to download it from your brain to your hard drive so you could watch it whenever, but maybe the technology will be there some day.

Without your noticing, you fall asleep.

You only know that you slept because your muscles are stiff when you wake, and the room is dark. You fumble for the phone and see that it's after seven. Damn, you think. Sun sure sets early these days.

Sydney told you the school play starts at eight, and though you told Diana you weren't going, you could still make it. Otherwise you'll have to wait until Monday to step up your campaign against Geoff.

Next: "A Mother's Love" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 4)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)"