“It’s really something.”
“You seen anything like it before?”
“Heard about it, for sure. This kind of thing used to happen more often before my time. I really like it.”
He wasn’t just saying that, I know that he liked it. He had his fancy spectator shoes on, so he was going somewhere else, he was here as a favor. I wonder what he’d been told. He looked to be in a good mood, but it wasn’t always easy.
“So did you ask Jack about blowing it up?”
“Not exactly. I didn’t know exactly what to ask him, but I think I understand a little better.” I wanted to tell him about the basement, about how the whole thing seemed like it would collapse in on us, how I was not afraid, but my knees buckled anyway. I wanted to, but it was Cashman, so I let him talk for a bit, as he was invited.
“What do you think you understand? About all this?” He looked away from me and at the rhythmic pulsing mass. Everything seemed to have regularized, there was a sense of beat but it was no less ominous and doom-portending, at least from where I stood. He didn’t wait for me to answer.
“You think anyone would care if it fell down?”
“I assume the people inside would!” I wondered if he was trying to bait me. That was not his usual tactic. “I certainly would. Jack is in there, I think with someone else.” I avoided mentioning Moist on the roof, for reasons of which I am uncertain. I didn’t reference the keyboard either, though I quickly wished I had, to get his thoughts on how that fit in.
“Ah, Jack’ll be fine. You think Dallow is in there?”
So he did know something about what was happening. I decided on another tact.
“I have to be honest, it all makes me really sad.”
He looked at me with soft, empathetic eyes. Those are never a put-on with him, not Cashman, whatever his faults. The eyes were genuine. “It makes me sad too, but I know it’s right. How long ago did he go in there?”
I was embarrassed to guess, so I told him I didn’t really know, which was technically true.
“So you want to get him? I really don’t have time to get him, and I’m not sure he’d want me to anyway.”
There was a theme developing: who wanted to be got, and by whom. I wanted anyone to get me at this point. I wondered if I should go to Cashman’s party, which was probably on the next-to-top floor of a mostly abandoned, disused factory, right on the edge of nowhere, which had passed through various legal battles only to remain threatened to be snatched away by the pigs or politicians, and in which would be held either an ornate, multifarious spectacle of barely imaginable scale, or else a deeply intimate, look-everyone-else-in-the-room-directly-in-the-eyes-for-more-than-twenty-seconds-at-a-time, communal gathering, possibly including cooking a meal together. But the choir, it was in there, that quavering domicile before us, bubbling just under the doom. It was not hope, but it was harmony, human and full, which was almost as good.
“Did I ever tell you about Jack and the underground church choir? You ever meet Donny Exasperated? He was a great guy, lived in the neighborhood for years. But he would drive Jack crazy with his complicated parties. I kinda liked the challenge, to be honest. It was always like a scavenger hunt trying to figure out where the show was. But his band was great, Exasperated Warriors. I think you’d really like it, you should check ‘em out. There’s some stuff out there. So anyway, Jack knew the gig was in this church that we thought was abandoned, because it was right next to the newer church building, which still held masses. They’d leave the doors open Sunday, and the gospel choir would do songs in different languages. German stuff, Spanish stuff, Latin I think—it was great. Anyway, Jack didn’t like to miss these parties, and he was supposed to sing some Bauhaus songs at this one, but it took him twenty minutes just to find an open door, and I know he was getting ready to just give up. But when he finally gets into this door, which required crawling over a fence to begin with, he ends up in a basement, on completely the wrong side of the building, and winds up in the old rectory, so he sits down in a pew and starts practicing the Bauhaus songs! I actually heard him because I was outside, smoking with Admiral J—you ever meet that guy? He’d just walk around the neighborhood with an old naval cap, and he’d get pretty violent if you asked him too many questions about it. Other than that, great guy, he’d always find my cats if they went missing—and I knew where the other stairs were, so I got to him pretty quickly. It was really funny; he really thought someone would just find him, midway through ‘Dark Entries,’ and then I did! The party was almost at the top of the building anyway! So we sat there for a second and had a little of my flask before we heard steps, like a bunch of steps, and then voices. But they were choir voices, really loudly echoing down the hallway, all singing the same note. And then they walked out, there were like fifteen people, in purple robes, and they didn’t even seem surprised to see us. Man, they only sang one song, but it was long. It was crazy, I can’t believe it happened, thinking back on it! I think we were down there for almost an hour, and by the end of it, we were both in tears. It was just…overwhelming, I wasn’t sad at all, but it was the only way we could react. We didn’t really look at each other or talk about it, we just wiped our eyes and sniffled a little, and then I took him up to Donny’s party.”
I thought Cashman was tearing up a little as he slowed his cadence a bit during his description of the music. I did not want to ask him what the point was, and I figured if there was one, it would come out naturally. And it did, more or less.
“I guess you should wait for someone to call you before you go looking for them.”
I found this rather absurd, and laughed a dry, humorless laugh, more just an exclamation than any expression of distinct emotion. He looked at me and collected himself a bit. “You sure you don’t want to come with me to this thing?”
But he did not need me to vocalize my demurral, and so instead left me with another story.
“That’s cool, I get it. I ever tell you about when Jack got that drug that made him want to pretend to die? I knew that stuff was bad, Anthony Brazil gave it to him, and that guy always had weird stuff. I think his dad was a pharmaceutical rep or something like that. He is a nice enough guy, but if there weren’t drugs around, you never knew what might happen.” Cashman was in full story mode at this point, and it did in fact distract me from my nagging dread which was gradually turning to burning curiosity at the evolving sounds and their incredible stamina.
“So he gives Jack a handful of different pills and tells him they’re all fine, but maybe don’t mix them, which is exactly the same thing he always said. Sparkles was with them, and he said ‘I don’t know Jack…remember last time,” and of course Jack remembered last time. But he remembered it was great, and he halfway remembered setting the back curtain of the bar on fire, and he did not remember accidentally elbowing Anthony and chipping two of his teeth on the way out. Good times…”
Cashman drifted off here, and I had already decided to go into the house anyway, but it seemed best to let him see this through, so I murmured a “hmm” to get him started again, which he did.
“So Sparkles thought about it for a minute and Jack was distracted, so he reached out to grab the pills, but Jack’s reflexes kicked in and he got a couple of them down. Anthony said it was all right because they were all the same anyway, and it didn’t seem like anything was happening, so we all went to the gig to meet Jack’s ex. I think it was a pretty good night, definitely no one’s teeth got chipped that I can remember, and we got to see Constant Interference, and this was back when they would hand out masks to the crowd, and everyone acts differently when they’ve got a mask on. So we are all going back to the bar under Jack’s apartment, when Jack suggests we go upstairs, which is strange, you know he doesn’t like to entertain, but I had a pint of whisky for some reason, so I knew that would get us through. I didn’t need to drink much more anyway. When we got up there, though, Jack just collapsed on the couch, and I couldn’t tell if he was acting or not. He started talking about how it was time to die, and pulling his ex towards him. Not in a romantic way, but he kept saying he had to give her some ‘final notes.’ I still don’t know what that means, ‘final notes,’ but I don’t really know what any of it means. It might mean nothing. It definitely looked like a play, the way he lay on that couch and held this person that I think still cared about him. She really got into the part too, putting the back of her hand on her forehead like an old movie actress. His voice got real tight, like he was straining just to get the words out, and he asked me to put his feet up and turn off most of the lights. I didn’t see the point in fighting it, so I just sat in the chair by the couch and kept vigil. Sparkles stood in the corner, shaking his head, and I think he may have taken one of the pills, too. It was a weird scene, at the deathbed of someone who was perfectly fine, definitely not going to die. He put out his hand and asked for Sparkles, who took Jack’s hand but wouldn’t look at him, so Jack whispered to the ex instead, but I could hear him. He whispered “remember the last time, remember the last time,” over and over. I think he tired himself out. We let him lay there for a few minutes, and I was going to put on a record, but then he said “everybody please leave, except Cashman,” and we all kind of snapped out of the trance. He only wanted me to stay to close the blinds and put a bottle of wine near the couch anyway. Man, he hates too much light in the morning.”
I felt the urge to strike Cashman at the end of this tale, as it was ridiculous and though he was good-natured throughout, I wanted him to go away, and just take my chances with whatever was inside. A phased boom alternated from the sides of the house, like tympani or Taiko drums had been set to project through the parallel walls. I clenched my fist, but decided to give him a hug instead, and all the anger melted back into the sickly warm pool of melancholy.
“All right, I gotta go. Just make sure you’re only a part of the play if you want to be.”
There were volumes in this last piece of advice, and I doubt Jack or Moist or Dallow would have disagreed.
