Also by M.T. Bass
Go to Crossroads Page at mtbass.net
“If Alfred Hitchcock and the Rolling Stones spawned a bastard child of a story, it would be Crossroads.” ~Roger Thornhill
Cleveland, 1977 — Grappling with a foreign policy crisis, the U.S. government identifies and targets a hapless rock-and-roller as a Russian spy in a classic case of mistaken identity for an innocent, ordinary, ‘Wrong Man’ hero…or is he?
Unlike any novel you have ever read, this one has a soundtrack. After all, a story whose characters are musicians should have… well… music. Right?
“The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.” ~Hunter S. Thompson
***~~~***
Click to Watch Crossroads Video
Chapter 1
The telecommunications machine rang through and connected. The print head tracked backwards across the page slowly, its drive motor whirring harshly.
"I know. I know. I know. My head, too," he said, believing the machine was letting out a primal scream of electronic pain.
DECCI WPAFB, the machine in Dayton answered the call. His machine began transmitting. Sure that the message was going out properly, he leaned back in his chair and quickly dozed off, ignoring the noise of chattering machines sending and receiving teletype messages. The door to the small office overfilled with machines opened and a girl with long blonde hair stuck her head into the room.
"Hey. Hey you. Wake up. It's break time. You can sleep after we get back."
"Oh, huh? Right. Just give me five," he said, blinking his eyes and sitting up straight in his chair. "I've got to get this one out before we go. I'll be out in a flash."
"Okay, I'll wait," she said and pulled the door closed after her.
He rubbed his eyes with his fists. Absently pulling at the end of his mustache he looked at the message printing out, but it slowly unfocused and disappeared from sight as his eyelids dropped.
"Naughty, naughty. Caught you twice today." The girl was back again. "I just wanted to ask if you are going to need a ride home from work tonight."
"Yeah. Sure. That'd be great," he yawned.
"Okay." She disappeared and closed the door.
Sitting up straight in his chair and concentrating intensely, he read the message that was printing out as it was being transmitted to Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio:
DECCI WPAFB
OHIO BELL TELCO
100 ERIEVIEW PLAZA
CLEVELAND, (216) 526-1718
04-18-77, JM
****EXPEDITE****EXPEDITE****
TO: UNIT COMMANDER, D CLASS/SEC II
RE: CIRCUIT ROUTING TROUBLE NOTIFICATION
ORG: MTL
TERM: WPAFB/NORAD TRUNK FEED
CLASS: DATA, 4-WIRE HARD, PRIORITY II
WARNING -- DOWN LINE FAILURE ENROUTE MODEM COUPLING PER E.C.O. #77-316.
WARNING -- TLD/OUTAGE CONDITIONS STATIONS C-9, C-11, D-4, E-5, F-1, F-2.
ATT/BELL LABS WILL COORDINATE SERVICE LINE IMPLEMENTATION BETWEEN CANADA BELL AND OHIO BELL.
LONG LINES ACCOUNT COORDINATOR HAS BEEN NOTIFIED PER PRACTICES AND STANDARDS PT. 1, SEC. 2.6, PARA 6A.
CANNOT PROVIDE IN-SERVICE DATE AT THIS TIME. ATT WILL ADVISE SECTION CHIEF, WASHINGTON BUREAU WHEN INFORMATION BECOMES AVAILABLE.
REGARDS,
C.N.DEVAULT
NETWORK ENGINEERING SPECIALIST
OHIO BELL TELEPHONE COMPANY
****EXPEDITE****EXPEDITE****
END OF MESSAGE
OBT 0845 EST
At the end of the message, the bells he normally coded into the paper tape to wake himself up rang. He switched the machine to manual mode.
PLS ACK, he typed.
DECCI WPAFB, was typed back slowly, letter by letter. The machine fed up the paper to the next page.
SO, GOOD MORNING, GENERAL. HOW ARE YOU DOING THIS BRIGHT AND SUNNY DAY, he typed.
OH I'M DOING PRETTY GOOD, the machine answered back. HOW ABOUT YOU?
EXCEPT FOR THE FEELING THAT SOMEONE SNUCK INTO MY BEDROOM LAST NIGHT AND STUCK A TIRE PUMP IN MY EAR AND INFLATED MY HEAD TO 60 PSI, I'M DOING OK.
OUT CRUISING AGAIN? NO WONDER. FOR SHAME. FOR SHAME.
YEAH, I'M MY OWN WORST ENEMY SOMETIMES. I GOTTA GO RIGHT NOW -- BREAK TIME, YOU KNOW.
ARE YOU WORKING ALL DAY TODAY?
YUP. ALL DAY LONG. OH BOY! OH BOY!
I'VE GOT MORE TO SEND, BUT THEY WANTED THIS ONE TO GO RIGHT AWAY. SOME HOT STUFF NO DOUBT. HOW ABOUT IF I RING YOU UP LATER AND TYPE AT YOU SOME MORE THEN?
OK. I'LL BE HERE. DON'T GOT NOWHERE TO GO. I'LL BE WAITING.
SAY HI TO CINDEE AND THE REST OF THE TROOPS FOR ME. TALK TO YOU LATER -- JOEY.
LATER--SIGNING OFF--CASSIE.
The page ejected up and out of the machine. The machine went dead. Joey went on break.
***~~~***
"AHHHHHHHHH!" Lenny screamed as loud as he could from the passenger seat. "I don't want to die I don't want to die I don't want to die!"
"Whoa, could you ease up a bit? My ear drums only flex so far, you know," Will said, staring out the windshield, keeping his eyes on traffic as he drove.
"You know," said Lenny, now sounding as if he were about to calmly tell Will of an interesting article he read in the Plain Dealer that morning, "You know, I have promised myself that I am not going to die in Cleveland — there is no way, I promised myself, I just won't do it."
"Lord, will you look at that." Will took a deep breath as if smelling the air. "Cooking those ribs right out on the street corner. I think we should turn off the factory air and roll down the windows so we can partake in all the sights and smells of springtime in the big city."
"Are you crazy?" Lenny was screaming again. "Are you fucking nuts?"
"You know, my mouth just starts to watering when I think about those ribs. I mean, they have to be good. They just have to be," Will drawled in his dude ranch-sounding voice. "And if anybody can cook ribs up right, those old coots can. I'm half-tempted to stop for a slab, eh? I'm telling you they just have to be good. The best, I'll bet."
"Oh my god oh my god oh my god," Lenny said to himself, looking out his side window. "It's not like we're too obvious — the two whitest guys to be found in a twenty-mile radius and we have to be riding in a frigging, bright red pick-up truck for Christ's sake!"
"Why don't you just get a looser grip on your reins, there. I swear, you'd break a poor horse's neck for sure. Just relax. I ain't saying we got to eat them here. We can get the ribs to go."
"I don't care what Face says, I don't care how good it is, no dope is worth dying for — watch out for that old guy stepping off the curb there, you hit him and we're in for it, there wouldn't be enough left of us to roll up into a number and smoke."
"I'm not going to bushwhack nobody," Will said, looking over at Lenny.
"Jesus Christ! You just ran a red light!" Lenny screamed. He started rummaging through the glove compartment. "Where's my cyanide pill, where is it? They'll never take me alive — never, I've seen what happens to the safari hunters in Tarzan movies, I've seen it."
"What are you stampeding the herd about this time?"
"You don't know, do you? You don't know, huh?" Lenny laughed in nervous disbelief. "I'll tell you, I'll tell you what happens, the natives grab you, see, and then they tie one of your legs to a fire hydrant or something and then they bend down a telephone pole or a street lamp until the top touches the ground and they hold it down and tie it to your other leg, see. Then the musician natives beat on the hoods and fenders of the sacred, abandoned Cadillacs while the others dance themselves into a frenzy around and around and around in circles until at the very zenith of their tribal insanity, they let loose the telephone pole and zip, it zings back up into the air and you get ripped in half, right up the middle — if your head goes with the part of your body up into the air on the top of the street light, it's considered a good omen, that the sacrifice has been accepted by the gods, but if your head stays with the part of your body still tied to the fire hydrant, it means a hard winter will come to fill the streets with many, many pot holes."
“Man, oh, man — that is bad. Do you hear yourself? Do you even know how awful that sounds?”
“Hey, I’m an equal opportunity asshole — and, so, that goes for you, too, you cow-poking pile of steer manure.”
"You are acting crazier than a rattlesnake cut in two."
"I'm crazy? What about you? You're the one that insists on taking Kinsman to get across town — you are the one that's nuts."
"Oh well, nothing like an early morning ride through injun country to get the blood pumping out to the extremities. No harm done. Now look, see that MacDonald's up there? After that is Shaker Heights."
"Shaker, ah, wonderful Shaker — a haven for the weary traveler."
***~~~***
Warren woke up, but kept his eyes closed. It was blissfully quiet. He savored the zero db surrounding him. Warren always slept best when he sacked out on the floor of the studio. There were no windows to let in any light. The thickly carpeted floor was firm, but comfortable. The insulated and padded walls, along with the acoustically tiled ceiling stuffed with rock wool, kept outside sounds out and absorbed any sound in the room like a drop of water on a dried out sponge.
Warren rolled over on his back and looked up at the ceiling. A stray beam of light came in through the control room window and reflected off of the microphone stands gathered in the corner by the piano. Warren put on his glasses and stood up to look into the control room. It was empty. He scratched his mussed up hair and tucked in his shirt tail that never stayed in his pants. Putting his shoulder to the thick, heavy door to push with the weight of his entire body, he stepped out into the brightly lit office.
"Karl?" Warren called out hesitantly. "Karl, are you here? Is that you?"
Warren looked in the tape library room and in the maintenance room, but no one was there. He looked at the desk and saw a half-smoked cigar that had been left to die in the ashtray. He crushed it out and opened the outside office door to air out the cigar smell. Karl had come in to work on the books that morning and did not even know that Warren was there in the studio. Warren stuck his head into the control room and saw that Karl had forgotten again to turn off the control board, the power amps, the turntable and the reverb unit. He shook his head and went to make a pot of coffee for himself.
"Shoot!" he muttered to himself as he yanked off the note, which was taped to the top of the coffee maker. "Warren, don't leave the machine on 'brew', because you will burn out the heating element. Signed, Karl — he's so darned worried about his precious Mr. Coffee machine but he goes off and leaves all the lights on and forgets to turn off half the stuff in the control room."
Warren crumpled up the note and angrily threw it away in the trash can by the desk. He momentarily forgot about making the pot of coffee and absently turned on the answering machine to check for messages. There were two. He recognized his mother's voice right away.
"Warren, are you going to stay at that studio all night? I asked you to pick me up some cigarettes and milk on your way home. You better not forget or your brothers and sisters won't have any breakfast tomorrow before school. You better not forget."
A four hundred hertz tone sounded.
"Warren, you better turn off this goddamn machine and answer this goddamn phone or I'm going — "
He silenced her harsh, angry voice by turning off the machine.
***~~~***
"I'm off on my appointed rounds," Joey said, holding up a handful of teletype messages for his supervisor, Andrea, to see. He paused at the door and said dramatically for all six of the girls that worked in his office to hear, "Neither rain nor sleet nor snow nor gloom of night nor gum stuck to the bottom of my shoe, nor Jean Dixon's predictions in the National Enquirer nor any — "
"Go," Andrea ordered with a tolerant smile.
"Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera," Joey said as he walked out of the Corporate Information Center where he worked. He walked down the hall to the elevators and pushed the 'up' button, then stepped over to the doorway to the nearby Steno Pool as he waited.
"May I help you, troublemaker?" asked Helen, one of the clerks.
"Just checking to see if there was a life guard on duty here."
"Huh?"
The bell for the elevator rang and Joey ran back to get on before the doors closed. He pushed fifteen and sang softly to himself on the empty elevator:
Click to Watch Won’t Get Fooled Again Video
The elevator stopped at the tenth floor. He slid into a back corner and watched as an older black lady pushing a mail cart got on.
"Hiya, Dorothy. How are you doing today?" Joey asked.
"Oh, I can't complain. Can't complain," she said, pushing the eleventh floor button.
"Well, I surely could," he said with a big smile, "But nobody will ever listen, and believe me, I've tried. They just won't listen."
Dorothy shook her head and laughed.
"It makes me feel like singing the blues. Would you teach me how, Dorothy? I'll bet you've got a voice like Billie Holiday."
"If I did, I wouldn't be pushing this here cart." The doors opened on the eleventh floor and she pushed her cart out. "Besides, you're not black enough to sing the blues, son."
"I could learn to be black. I'd study real hard," he called out after her as the doors closed. He rode up to the fifteenth floor and got off. He went into the Secretary/Treasurer's office. He held up two teletype messages for the secretary to the Secretary/Treasurer to see and said, "Bad news — the phone company didn't make the rent payment last month and they want us all out of here by Friday."
"What are you talking about?" The secretary grabbed the messages out of Joey's hand.
"You know, on my last pay check, the decimal point was still in the same place. Now, you promised me you would move it over to the right a few digits."
"I never promised any such thing. Now be quiet so you don't disturb Mr. O'Toole."
"That's okay. I understand," he whispered, enunciating every syllable carefully. He winked and gave the secretary an okay sign with his hand as he backed up towards the door. "Mum's the word — but next pay check, then? Right?"
"Go on. Get out of here."
"That's okay. I have to give the Man his morning news from Big Mama back in New York and boy is he going to be hot when he finds out that we're getting evicted. Then your boss is really going to have some ‘splainin’ to do."
Joey sang the chorus as he waited for the elevator to take him down to the executive suites on the fourteenth floor, “And I'll get on my knees and pray, we won't get fooled again.”
***~~~***
"Ah, cubicle, sweet cubicle," Will said, stepping into his own partitioned space at the Physics Department of Cleveland State University. "Is this really that to which I aspire? Oh Lord — if you be — I sure could use a sign."
Because Will forbid the janitors from cleaning up his cubicle at night, it resembled an unkempt garden. Crumpled notebook papers seemed to sprout up everywhere like weeds. Notebooks and open books were piled all about like rocks and boulders. Green and white striped computer paper grew like ivy off the desk onto the bookcase then down across his side chair and onto the floor. It seemed to be making its way towards the door. Will never knew when he might need to find that one thought, note or formula that he might have too hastily discarded because it did not fit into the theory he was working on at the moment. It was an utter mess, but Will was confident that he thought he knew where almost everything was, perhaps.
"Now where are those god dang smokes?" Will asked himself aloud as he sat down at his desk. He began to search through the papers that covered his entire desk to a depth of five or six inches. He found his calculator. He turned it on and squinted at its faint LED display. He shook it and squinted again. "As reliable as an injun full of whiskey. Now what am I going to do? Where are those batteries? I know I bought some, now where are they?"
Will continued his search through the papers, now looking for his calculator batteries. He expanded his search into the dark unknown depths of his desk drawers. A tall, slender brunette appeared at the doorway to Will's cubicle. She seductively leaned against the doorway, her clinging dress pulled tight across her hips. She brushed her long, black hair back over her shoulders and silently watched Will search. He muttered unintelligibly to himself as he shuffled papers back and forth, all the while oblivious to her presence behind him. Everything outside of the immediate problem was tuned out.
"Ah ha! Dr. Marlboro, I presume," Will exclaimed with delight, accidentally finding the red and white box of cigarettes instead of the batteries for his calculator. He put one in his mouth. He felt the pockets of his flannel shirt. "Aw crap, now where are those god dang matches?"
"Here," said the tall brunette, bending over beside Will and flicking a Bic lighter in his face.
"Oh Lord, is this my sign?" he mumbled around the cigarette in his mouth. He took in the view her low cut dress offered.
"What?"
"Nothing." Will lit his cigarette. "Thanks."
"Did you get all your papers and references in for the little field trip the good doctor has planned?" She pushed all of the papers off of the chair beside Will's desk onto the floor. She kicked them out of her way and sat down, sinking into a slouch and slowly crossing her long, firm legs.
"Yeah. Yeah, I'm, um, ah, sure I did." Will began shuffling through the papers on his desk again, keeping an eye on her legs as he searched. No matter how hard he tried, Will's brain always turned to inert matter in front of Mona, the Physics Department Secretary. "I'm, ah, sure I did. Just give me a minute, okay?"
"Sorry, but you don't have a minute. Dr. Milhouse wants to see you right away. He was looking for you this morning, but you were nowhere to be found."
"Right now?"
Mona nodded.
"Crap. I ain't even seen a paper — what did the Tribe do?"
"So, where were you this morning, hmmm?"
"Nowhere — just, ah, running errands. Did they win, I hope?"
"What do you think?"
"Damn. Who whipped them?"
"Baltimore, eight to three."
"Milhouse will be out to bushwhack my ass. They dropped the whole five game series."
"Say, Will," Mona paused and pursed her lips, "where's the weirdest place you've ever done it?"
"Done it?"
"Yes, done it." Mona smiled with half of her mouth and turned her head away to look sideways at Will.
"Aw, Mona… " Will looked at her dark, almond-shaped eyes, her straight black hair, her low-cut dress and her long slender legs. "I ain't got enough lariat to lasso this one right now. I've got to go see Dr. — "
"I've done it on an autopsy table with a medical student at Case University." Mona slowly licked her lips. "Sends a shiver up your spine."
"I'll bet." Will swallowed hard.
"Well, they were stainless steel, and you know how cold that can get." She stared at Will.
"Yeah." Will stared at Mona. The ash on his cigarette grew long and fell onto the papers on his desk. He broke off his stare and tried to brush away the ashes so that a fire would not start.
"You have to go see the good doctor, Will. Right away." Mona stood up quickly and walked out.
***~~~***
Lenny sat at the kitchen table with the telephone loosely held to his ear. He doodled: a stick man with arrows going through his body in every possible direction, with more arrows on their way, some about to strike, others still half-way to their target, launched from off of the page. And when the stick man could hold no more arrows, Lenny resurrected him for another wave on a clean part of the paper. Nikki came in and dropped her canvas book bag by the back door.
"I'm starved," Nikki said, going over to the refrigerator. "Anything edible in here?"
"Hey, what can I say? Enter at your own risk," Lenny said, still doodling.
"Are you guys practicing again tonight?"
"As soon as everybody shows up."
"You guys practice all the time — and when you're not practicing, you're playing out somewhere in some crummy bar."
"That's my thing, you know?"
"Yeah, but every night this week and last week, too. You never have any time to think about anything else — including us."
Lenny shrugged his shoulders. "So, you gonna stick around for practice?"
"Nah," Nikki sighed. "I might as well just go home and get my lesson plans done. Who are you talking to anyway?" she asked, pointing at the phone.
"Does it look like I'm talking? Who is it that you call on the telephone for the expressed purpose of not talking?"
"Ernie?"
"Count Ernie's Horror of the 3-D Hold of No Return — showing now at a theater near you."
"Did he call? Does he have a job for you?"
"Yeah, he's got us as the opening act for the Burns and Allen reunion tour. The deal's been set, he's just got to work to get everybody's hands out of their pockets so they can shake on the deal — George just won't work unless he shakes hands with somebody — anybody, he doesn't care."
"Really? Wow, that's great — wait a minute." Nikki stopped digging through the refrigerator and looked over the door at Lenny. "Wait a minute. Gracie Allen is dead. Doesn't Ernie know — ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer. What a space cadet I am."
"So how was the war in the trenches? What's new with the wee folk in Berealand?"
"Do you know what Principal Kermit Pike commanded today? He told me he would not tolerate any drug-oriented music whatsoever in the classrooms at his school. And I asked him what he meant by 'drug-oriented music' and he said whatever it was I was playing in my classes. He didn't even know what we were listening to, and I tried to explain that not all rock music —"
"You should have told him that Benny Goodman used to take off his mouthpiece and cram his clarinet up his nose to snort cocaine — that's how he hit the high notes, you know."
"Well, I'll tell you, I sure gave him a piece of my mind. I told him he could take his — "
"Ernie — Ernie," Lenny said into the phone, waving at Nikki to be quiet. "Oh my God, it speaks. Ernie, this is Lenny from — yup, that's right — so how are you Ernie? I heard that you were in an automobile accident and lost the use of your index finger, I figured that's why you hadn't called. Any good news from the doctors at the Cleveland Clinic? Will you ever dial again? I hear they can work wonders with digits there."
"Lenny, you're going to make him mad again," Nikki warned.
"Uh-huh." Lenny shrugged his shoulders. "Ernie, don't call me babe, okay? It bugs me — it just bugs me — so where the hell are all the jobs? What in the hell do you mean, too loud?"
"Is that the wedding he had you play down in Medina?"
"I told you that, and you told us they wanted to rock, that they really wanted — well, Ernie, if we're too loud for you, then you are too old for us."
"You're going to get him really mad."
"Yeah, sure, I know you've been busy, but the point is that we're not busy at all, which means you haven't been doing diddly for us — no, I don't want to hear about Joey Bishop."
"Joey Bishop?"
"I know you're a big, important agent — goddamn it, Ernie, you tell me that frigging Bob Hope story one more time and I'm going to reach right through this telephone and choke you like a duck — I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear it!"
"Lenny, humor him. He lives in the past."
"Ernie, do you know what I'm doing right now? I'm taking down my copy of the Guinness World Book of Records, and I'm looking up — yes, here it is — Ernie Kingman, you have just immortalized yourself by becoming the human being to commit the most stupidities in a single life time, it's a record which will stand for decades — nay, centuries to come."
"Oh God, no. No, Lenny, no."
"What's that you say? We'll never work again in this town? Well, you know what? I can solve that little dilemma. That's right, I can solve it by firing you, because right now you are the biggest reason we aren't working in this town — parting is such sweet sorrow, but, tell you what, we'll survive. Bye-bye Ernie — and, hey, Ernie, send us a Christmas card, okay? You know, around the end of the year." Lenny slammed the receiver down.
"Lenny, I can't believe you did that. Why in the world did you fire Ernie?"
Lenny crumpled up the piece of paper with the little stick man and the arrows and tossed it into the trash can.
***~~~***
"Thanks for buying me dinner," said Alice, the blonde from Joey's office.
"What, for this? Hey, no problem. It's only MacDonald's. I owe you for all the rides home from work anyway. Besides, I have to eat out, and I don't like to eat alone. It's depressing, you know?"
"Why do you have to eat out?"
"I just don't think I can hack another dinner of potato salad — not Will's potato salad, anyway. You can smell that stuff all the way down to the bus stop." They walked over and sat down at a booth that overlooked the traffic on West One Hundred Seventeenth Street. "You know, it's kind of crazy. A couple of years ago, I was, like, just coming into these places to make time with the counter girls and to try to figure out a way to get into their little panties after they got off work. Now my little sister — she's sixteen — works at one of these places back home in Dallas."
"Face it, Joey, you're getting old."
"Yeah, old at twenty-three. Give me a break. But I'll tell you what, my sister's some kind of lead counter girl or something, and they have got her really, really pumped up on MacDonald's — like, Yeah! Go Team Go! Grill Them Burgers! Fry Them Fries! Shake Them Shakes! Ra-Ra-Ra! I swear it's all she talks about. She even walks around the house humming the MacDonald's theme song from the TV commercials. You know, You deserve a break today," Joey sang.
"Oh, I'll bet it's not that bad."
"Oh no? My parents are seriously considering hiring de-programmers to kidnap her off her shift and re-brainwash her back to normal. You laugh, but it happens. Look at how the phone company brainwashes us every day."
"Come on, Joey, they don't brainwash us."
"You don't know about the sub-auditory tones, do you?" he asked in a hushed voice.
"The what?"
"The sub-auditory tones," he whispered. "You probably think that stuff coming out of the ceilings is just Muzak, huh?"
"What's it supposed to be?"
"It's simply an excuse to broadcast the sub-auditory tones that go to work on the frontal lobal areas of your brain to minimize aggression and to make you generally placid, receptive to management suggestions and highly productive in terms of telephony."
"Come on. I've never heard these tones you're talking about."
"Of course not." He looked around the MacDonald's dining room suspiciously. "That's because they're sub-auditory. You can't hear them. Once you're under their spell, though, the supervisors go to work to mold your personality to make you a better worker, to instill the ideals of the Company in your head, to make you willing to give your life for universal phone service."
"Really? I didn't know that. Do they really do that?"
"Sure. Why do you think I work back in that little office with all of those machines? The noise they make effectively masks the sub-auditory tones, rendering them ineffective. Hey, I'm not going to be a phone company zombie."
"Are you serious? I can never tell when you’re serious."
Joey smiled and took a bite of French fries.
"Well, if you aren't going to be a phone company zombie, then what are you doing there in the first place?"
"Why does anybody work?"
"Yeah, but you went to college, right?"
"Yup. Yup. I are, what do you call, a college gra-du-ate."
"Well, how come you have a lowly group three job in our office? You should be a manager or something, shouldn't you?"
"Bite thy tongue. Me? A boss?"
"Then what are you doing there at all?"
"You know, I should be really good at answering questions like that."
"Why's that?"
"Because of my hobby."
"What hobby?"
"Did you ever try to figure out what character you are when you watch television? I do. That's my hobby."
"You can't be a character. You just watch TV. How can you be in it when you are supposed to be watching it?"
"See, every story has got to have a point-of-view. That's like a set of eyes that sees everything in the story that's going on. And when you sit and watch the tube, you are a point-of-view, a set of eyes. I just think about looking at the scene that's happening on the screen like what I am seeing is really happening in front of me — like it's not a picture, it's real and I should fit into what's going on somehow.
“Did you ever think about soap commercials for instance? I always think, who in the hell am I supposed to be here? I see I'm in this shower with a girl and she's blabbering away at me bright and cheerful the first thing in the morning, and of all things, she's talking about soap. Now, I have to figure that maybe I'm some guy she picked up in a bar the night before, right? And I must have been real drunk, because I don't even recognize her — though I might have a slight sense of deja vu, you know? But she's not bad looking — they never are. And maybe I'm really tired or it's just real early in the morning and I'm still semi-comatose. After all, I'm letting her go on and on and on about soap. Or maybe I'm just keeping my mouth shut and hoping that once we leave the apartment I'll never see her again, because of her bizarre sexual habits.
“Sometimes I think, hey, maybe I'm Norman Bates in my little granny dress and I've got a knife from the kitchen and I'm going to stick her like Janet Leigh, but she keeps telling me about the soap and how creamy and mild it is and I'm so crackers, I can't stick a woman while she's talking about soap. Sometimes, there's another guy in the bedroom you can see through the door. Who the hell is he if I'm there? Maybe I picked up his wife and he came home early from a business trip and I have to hide in the bathroom like a Three Stooges movie and she comes in to take a shower to keep him out. I'm worried about her husband mangling me if he comes in and finds me and she's going on and on about the soap."
"Really?" Alice looked at him suspiciously out of the corner of her eye.
"There's all kinds of possibilities, and it's fun making up all those stories. After all, who cares about the soap, really? So, you might as well make good entertaining use of the dead spots between the programming."
"I don't know if I can ever believe you." She shook her head. "So, you never did tell me what you're doing working at the phone company."
"Let's just say that it's a commercial message, and we'll be back to our regularly scheduled programming in just a moment."
***~~~***
Warren's haven was the control room, that small, padded room full of electronic equipment. He could lock himself in there with the beings he could relate to best — the old, reliable two-track, the temperamental four-track, the muscular eight-track — someday there would even be a sixteen track. The space was there already. He could lock himself in there with those he knew best and lock out the rest of the world, freeing himself of the annoyingly irrational people that always seemed to be after him for one illogical reason or another. His machine friends were not like that at all. They had their roles rigidly specified for them, and if they got out of character, he could diagnose and treat their problems with a voltage output meter, a screwdriver and a soldering iron. He could make them all as good as new: heads clear, motors humming and meters bright and full of life.
Warren's favorite time to work was late at night. Nobody else was in the building and nobody was likely to call on the phone. Sitting in the control room with the overhead lights off and only the meter lights, the equipment power bulbs and the red, green and amber LEDs glowing around him, he could immerse himself totally in his work. In the dark, his hearing was a hundred times more acute. He could hear a gnat cough. Sounds being magnetically etched onto the tape became a physical sensation that he could actually feel, not just the movement of a needle he could watch.
His favorite work was the post-production mixing of music master tapes. The annoying job of getting the musicians to put the music down on the tracks correctly was over. He could then do his work. He could take all of those musical parts and mix the voices and the instruments into a whole finished song, ready to be played on the radio, ready to be heard by people. Without him and his creativity, all of the musicians' efforts would be nothing more than random noises and sounds littering the universe for a brief moment before disappearing forever. He was the one that brought order out of their chaos and preserved the songs against time.
Unfortunately, it was the commercial work that paid the bills and kept the juice flowing to run the machines. Right now, he had to get back to work to finish the editing on the first section of a marketing seminar tape for Exxon. It was not exactly the most exciting work, but it was work he could do alone in the control room. It was satisfying to work with his hands and satisfying to complete an editing job, sit back and listen to his own magic efforts at making the announcer's speech absolutely perfect — you would never even think the speaker ever took a breath. Warren enjoyed the work well enough, and he got to be with his mechanical friends. What more could he ask for? He sat in front of the two-track with headphones on and listened to the tape until he heard an offensive gasp or stutter. Then, he stopped the tape and rocked the reels with his hands to find exactly where the offending sound was, marking its boundaries with his orange grease pencil. Once marked, he pulled down that section of tape and slit the noise right out with a razor blade, then mended the cut ends with editing tape. When Warren finished with the last of that section, he rewound the tape to the beginning to listen for any last minute fixes. There was something very soothing and hypnotic about simply watching the reels turning on the spindles. He stopped the rewind and pushed 'Play'. He stood up to stretch his legs as he listened. He took a drink of Coke, throwing back his head and lifting the bottle up over his head.
"All right, give me all the money in this joint," said a voice from behind him.
Warren felt the sharp jab in his back and coughed up a swallow of Coke. It came back up through his nose. He recognized the deep, clear voice and was not afraid. It was a familiar voice. It was the voice on the tape. But the violation of his sanctuary surprised and upset Warren. Part of the Coke in his nose drained into the back of his mouth, and he sucked it down his lungs. He coughed and hacked, trying to get it out.
"Hey, Tiger, what do you say? Gave you quite a scare, huh?" Bob, a dumpy, balding man in his fifties, slapped Warren on the shoulder. "So, hey, I was on this side of town and I thought I'd stop in and see when you wanted me to do those over-dubs."
Warren could only cough, trying to get the Coke out of his lungs. He was still coughing when he got to the house. He knocked once and went right in. The television was on in the living room, but no one was there watching it. Upstairs, a radio was blaring out The Kid Leo Show on WMMS. He walked through the living room noticing the posters of Ferraris, Lamborghinis, P-51 Mustangs and Linda Ronstadt on the walls. He was careful not to bump the coffee table that might topple the case of empty Rolling Rock beer bottles gathering there for the past week. He dropped his bass off next to his amplifier in the dining room and went to get a beer out of the refrigerator. No one was in the house, so he went out into the backyard to watch Lenny and Will argue vehemently about whether the shuttlecock had landed in or out of bounds.
Alice pulled up and parked her Trans Am in the street in front of the house. She and Joey got out and walked up to the front door.
"I forgot my books in your car. Let me see your keys for a minute. You can go on ahead and help yourself to a beer or a soda out of the frig. I'll be in in a sec," Joey said.
The front door was open, so Alice went in. Joey went back out to the car to get the books he had bought downtown during lunch. Just as he was about to lock the car door, he heard a blood-curdling scream. It sounded like Alice, but why would she be screaming, he wondered. Joey stopped and tried to figure out whether it was because of Will or because of Lenny. As he stood next to the car thinking, another scream — like a gut-shot Comanche, as Will would say — came out of the house. No, not both of them. They wouldn't both do that, Joey told himself as he closed the car door and headed for the house.
Joey came into the living room from the entry way just as Will, Lenny and Warren came in through the back of the house. Alice had squeezed herself into a far corner of the room and seemed to tremble with fright.
"Joey! Get it out of here! Get it away!" Alice screamed hysterically.
In unison, they all stepped closer to see what was generating such fear in Alice.
"Fyodor! Bad boy! Bad boy!" Lenny scolded.
At Alice's feet, snapping its jaws and hissing menacingly, was a three-foot long alligator.
"Ali, it's okay. It's just Fyodor, our watch-alligator," Joey said. "He won't hurt you."
"Watch-alligator?" Alice asked softly. What Joey had said was like a calming slap to her face.
Will stepped into the kitchen. He came back into the living room waving a hunk of unsliced bacon. "Come on, Fyodor. Come on you rascal. Let's go. Ain't no call to be harassing such a pretty young thing." Will waved the bacon at Fyodor. "Come on you. I may admire your taste, but I swear, your manners ain't for shit."
Fyodor turned and scurried after Will, following him through the dining room and into the kitchen. There, Will picked him up by the tail and carried the alligator down to the basement where Joey had built an artificial swamp for him to sleep in.
Alice, still a bit dazed from being greeted in the living room by a live alligator, meekly followed them all out to the back yard. Not even the dining room full of amplifiers, keyboards, microphones and drums registered as she passed through. She mechanically took the beer Joey offered her. They sat down together on the back steps and watched Lenny and Will continue the argument that had been briefly interrupted by her screams.
"See, we brought him back with us from Ft. Lauderdale when we were down there for spring break," Joey tried to explain.
***~~~***