Preston Falls : a novel (15 page)

"Yeah yeah, whip it out," says the little guy.

"You fuckin' guitar sharks," the drummer says. "Man just got here. Here, man—I forgot your name." He offers Willis a stubby brass pipe from an ashtray sitting on his floor tom.

"Oh right," says the one with the earflaps. "Get the fuckin' guy dusted, good idea. Everybody ain't a fuckin' animal like you, man, that they can play behind that shit." He picks up a Fender P-bass with most of the finish worn off.

"Fuck you, man," says the drummer. "Try to hoover up enough of that shit of yours to get off, man, I fuckin' choke to death."

"Gentlemen, gentlemen," says Reed.

"Why don't you plug in over there?" says the bass player. He points to a power strip that's plugged, in turn, into an orange cord snaking outdoors through a knothole.

"Here, I got some weed here that's just weed." Reed takes a half-smoked joint out of his shirt pocket.

Willis holds up a hand. "No, I'm good. I just had a bunch of coffee." He stopped smoking dope years ago: officially because it made it harder to stay off cigarettes, actually because it made people around him seem evil. These people already seem evil.

"Well, listen," says the bass player, taking his bass off again. "I'm a do a couple lines here and like whoever wants to join me."

"Ah hell," Reed says.

PRESTON FALLS

"Ho-yeah," says the little Strat guy. "Yeh-yeh-yeh." He puts his tongue out and pants like a dog, which is all Willis needs to cross him off.

"Twist my arm," says the drummer.

"Hey, twist my dick,'" says the bass player. "I thought you said you choke to death."

"Hey, I like to choke, man." General laughter. "Like those dudes that hang theirself to get a boner, you know?"

"Hmm," Willis says. "I guess a little of that never hurt anybody." Suddenly he feels like he has to shit: the excitement of being bad.

The bass player has taken the pushpins out of This Is Tommy Collins and set it on top of his amp. He pours white powder from a Band-Aid box onto Tommy Collins's sincere face, and hands the little guitar guy a box of plastic straws and a pair of orange-handled scissors. "Hey, anybody got anything with,some kinda edge?" he says. "Never mind, fuck it." He grabs a cassette, dumps out the tape and the paper insert—Stevie Ray Vaughn and Double Trouble—and uses the plastic box to chop and scrape and push the shit into a pair of parallel lines. The Httle guitar guy hands him a two-inch length of straw, and he bends down and hoovers them up. Then sinks to sit on the floor, snuffling and flogging his nose with his index finger, saying "Wowser."

Willis scrapes together a pair of lines half as long and half as wide, out of both good manners and caution. He snorts a line into each nostril; it stings his sinuses and begins dripping and burning down the back of his throat. Except that his heart's racing just a teeny bit—which is probably just psychological because he's all of, what, five seconds into this—he actually feels surprisingly great, though he does hope his heart won't start going any faster.

He watches the little Strat guy take his turn. Shit, these aren't bad people. He'd actually really like to get to know them. "So," he says, "you guys are all married?"

This gets a big laugh. Willis didn't realize what a really funny thing it was to say at this juncture, but he now feels privileged to have the secret key to cocaine humor: to be completely out there, yet at the same time right in there.

"Hey, Counselor," the little guy says, "you better step up to the plate. This shit is so fucking excellent, man. It's definitely Howdy Doody Time."

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"You're dating yourself," says Reed, straw poised above two ridges of powder,

"Fuck it," says the drummer. "I'm a fuckin' get ripped." He picks up his pipe and starts slapping at his shirt pockets with his other hand, right side, left side, right side.

"Like you ain't fuckin' ripped already." The bass player's back on his feet. "Here, this what you're after?" He hands the drummer a pink butane lighter.

"So we in tune here approximately?" says Reed. "Whew. Holy shit."

"Yeh-yeh-yeh, let's do it," says the little guy. "Break out that bad-ass Telecaster, man."

"Absolutely," says Willis. He opens his case, snap snap, and slings his guitar on. "Anybody got a tuner?"

Reed hisses and makes a vampire-repelling cross with his index fingers. "We're strictly organic here. Fuckin' goat cheese, whatever. Mitch, you're in with yourself, right? Whatta you got for an E?"

So they all stand there stoned as pigs, tuning for about eight hours. Twang twang. De de de de de. With the tuner this would take two seconds. But on the other hand it's great, like lights going down at the movies.

"Dan, you somewhere close?" Reed says.

"Fuck if 1 know." The bass player flips his amp off standby, twaddles strings with the first two fingers of his right hand, and big notes come booming out. "Somebody give me a fuckin' G?"

They all stroke G chords at him.

"Yeah, how about just one a you?" he says. The little guy plays a G chord and the bass player starts hitting harmonics and cranking at his tuning pegs, trying to get one howl up level with another howl. "Golden," he says, though it doesn't sound like he's improved things any. "So what are we doing?"

"Can you play Tar, Far Away'?" says Reed. "Rimshot—^where's the rimshot?" He turns around to the drummer. "Ah fuck." The drummer's lying on the floor; he's taken the round seat cushion off its chrome-plated tripod to pillow his head.

"Hey, what about 'Walk This Way'?" says the little guy. "You do 'Walk This Way,' right?" He plays the riff at Wfllis.

"You know I actually never have?" says Willis. Aerosmith was always too thug for him. "I mean, I know the tune."

PRESTON FALLS

"You'll pick it right up. Starts off in E, man, then the verse goes to C, like yah dah DART! up from B flat, like." He plays it to demonstrate, yelling yah dah DAHT! as he moves the bar chord up the three frets.

"Right," says Willis. Normally this would be within his scope. "Play the hook again? The E part?"

He plays it at Willis again and, amazingly, Willis plays it back at him. Either cocaine is a miracle drug or this hook is something a retard could play. "Yup," says the little guitar guy. "That'll work. Okay? 'Walk This Way'? Starts with the drum thing?"

"Let me get my shit together just a minute here," the drummer says from down on the floor.

"Oh fuck," says the little guy. "Fuckin' Sparky, man."

"Hmm," says Reed. "Looks like time to bring in Iron Mike."

The little guy winces. "Oh man? I hate fuckin' playing with a fuckin' drum machine. I mean, what do we have a fuckin' real drummer for?"

"Makes a great conversation piece," Reed says. "You got to give him that."

"No problem, man." The drummer's eyes are closed. "Use the thing for a couple songs, man. I'm gonna be right with you."

"Unbelievable," says the little guy. "Sparky, man."

"Fuck him. Forget it," Reed says. "So what are we doing, again?"

" 'Walk This Way,' " says the little guy.

"Okay, cool. You got the tune programmed in there, right?"

"That's not the point, man. You know what I'm saying? Last time we played the Cabin we played half the fuckin' night with the fuckin' drum machine."

"I don't know, I sort of dug it," says Reed. "Like with his head inside the bass drum? Crowd was into it."

"Hey," the bass player says. "The thing keeps better time than him."

"Hey, fuck you," says the drummer.

"Okay, so 'Walk This Way,' right?" Reed says. "Does it start in E?"

"Jesus," says the litde guy. "No, it starts in fuckin' W"

"And it goes to what, again?" says the bass player. "In that other part?"

"Come on, man. We played the fuckin' song last week. Through B flat to C. Right?"

"Right right right. Yeah, no, okay, man, I remember it. It's just weird to me. Comin' off a E to a B flat. It's like out of nowhere."

"Yeah, but then you're in C," says the little guy.

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"Yeah, I know you're in C, but what I'm sayin', Mitch, that little thing is still weird to me."

"Well, that's how the fuckin' song goes, man."

"But it seems like it would make more sense if you went A, B, C."

"Are we gonna play this fuckin' thing or what?" Reed says.

"No, let's fuckin' talk about it for another fuckin' hour," Mitch says. He takes off his Strat, goes back to the board, does something, and the drum machine starts up: Boom boom ba-doom-doom-DOOM. Boom boom ba-doom-doom-DOOM. Boom boom ba-doom —

"Too slow, too slow," the bass player yells.

"That's exactly where we had it last week," says Mitch.

"BuM/V."

"Okay, fine, man. You know so fuckin' much about this tune, man, you fix it how you want, okay?"

"Well, it's gotta go faster than that, man," says the bass player.

"Okay, so put it up where you want it. Put it up your ass, all I care. Can we just play the fuckin' song?"

"I hate this fuckin' song, you want to know the truth," the bass player says. "Why don't we just play a blues?"

"I suggest we play something,'' says Reed. "Not a blues, necessarily."

"Okay," says Mitch. "You fuckin' masterminds work it out and you let me know, okay?"

Willis wants to think this is still banter. But he doesn't know these people, and it's too much to process when you're having such a great time being high, which he really is.

"Okay, okay, fine," says Reed. "Mitch, why don't you just put the thing on sort of a shuffle, you know, doot ta-doot ta-doot ta-doot-ta, doot ta-doot ta-doot ta-doot-ta." He sings in embarrassing fake Negro: "Checkin' up own mah bay-bay, doot ta-doot ta-doot ta-doot, find out what she been puttin' daown, ta-doot ta-doot ta-doot ta-doot." The drum machine is still going boom boom ba-doom-doom-DOOM.

"So that's what you want to play now?" Mitch says.

"Well, not that, necessarily," says Reed.

"So you want like a medium shuffle."

"Well, yeah. Sort of medium."

"Five fuckin' hours later . . . ," says the bass player.

"Well? So what do you have in mind?" Reed says.

"I don't give a shit. Why'n't we just play the fuckin' song, man? That way we'll have it the fuck over with."

PRESTON FALLS

"Come on, it's a killer song, man," Mitch says. "It sounded fucked-up last week because nobody knew it."

"Like we really know it now," says the bass player,

"Hey, the new guy," calls the drummer, still on the floor. "I forgot your name, man. You do any Stones?"

"We're doing this now," Mitch says.

"I'm just askin' him, man," says the drummer.

The drum machine keeps going boom boom ba-doom-doom-DOOM.

"Shit, man," Mitch says. "I feel like I'm starting to crash already"

Boom boom ba-doom-doom-DOOM. Boom boom ba-doom-doom-DOOM.

"Hey, can't have that," says Reed. "You mind turning that thing off? Drive me fuckin' bananas."

"I'm just gonna be a second." Mitch takes his Strat off and sets it on the floor with that ugly clang of an electric guitar in standard tuning.

"Fuck this" The bass player takes off his bass and goes over and shuts off the drum machine.

"Sweet relief," says Reed.

The bass player looks over at Mitch, who's already snuffling and pawing at his face. "Shit. Is this going to be one of those fuckin' nights?"

"Here, while we're at it." Reed gets the joint out of his shirt pocket, lights it, takes a hit and passes it to the bass player, who takes a hit and holds it out to Willis.

He puts up a hand. "Some reason, I can't play behind that. I might go for a tad more of the other."

"Uh-oh," says the bass player. "I think we got another Spark-man on our hands. Hey, can you play drums?"

The drummer has rolled onto his side to light his pipe, his sloppy stomach bulging out his t-shirt. He sticks up the middle finger of the hand holding the lighter.

"I like to give him shit," the bass player says.

Willis snorts up a pair of inch-long lines. He wants more, but he can take a hint, if that was a hint.

Reed takes another hit off the joint, holds the smoke in, finally lets it out. "By the way. Since we're taking a break. Griff's got to have a name by tomorrow latest so he can put it in the paper."

"Great. We worry about this shit and meanwhile we're not even in tune,'' says the little Strat guy.

"You see?" Reed says to Willis. "Mitch's problem is that he still

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thinks this is about competence. But in a way that's cool too. Sort of that little edge of desperation. It's like, for him, he's been busted back down to a garage band. Whole different energy from just being in a garage band, you know what I'm saying?"

"Bullshit," says the drummer from down on the floor. "It ain't even that. Where's the fuckin' garage?"

"Figure of speech," says Reed.

"Fuckin' cows used to live here, man," says the drummer. "We're playing for like the ghosts of cows, man. Dig on it."

Reed looks at Willis. "This is what I'm up against. So, names. Who's got one?"

"Hey, what about the Grateful something?" says the bass player. "The Grateful Cowfuckers, man."

"Well, on some level that's perfect," Reed says. "But I don't think that's a level we can realistically be on."

"You should call yourselves the Robert Blys," says Willis.

"Love it," says Reed. "But—ah—" He goes Ssshewww! and zips his hand past his eyes. "See, he's too much the one thing and you're too, you know, the other. Anybody go for Confucius Say?"

"We already been that," says the bass player.

"We talked about it. We never actually used it."

"Neon Madmen," says Mitch.

"Too college," says Reed.

"Fuck it," the bass player says. "You want to call it that Jap thing, I don't give a fuck."

Mitch has put his Strat back on. "What about just Jap Thing?"

"I don't think so," says Reed.

"Jap thang," Mitch sings, and strikes some totally other chord. "You make mah heart sing."