Thirty-Three

“It wasn’t as bizarre as I expected. What am I saying? It was utterly bizarre, but a lot of the time I forgot it was me they were carrying on about and just enjoyed the music.” Roc leaned back into the old studio sofa. “So they’re going to do a tribute album, I guess.”

“They being Strange Savage Productions. I love that name. You’re lucky, you haven’t had to witness the secret handshake and the weird growly thing they do. You want another beer?” Eddie moved toward the fridge as Roc nodded. “So you’re sure it was Tabatha?” he asked, returning to the hot topic of the phone call.

“Oh yeah, and I blanked and answered in this Neanderthal voice — ‘No Roc, he gone.’ I panicked when the phone rang while Uncle was doing his spiel. Guess who was the strange savage at that moment?”

Eddie was laughing at the absurdity of it all, now that the seriousness of the security breach had receded with the last beer. “I suppose Mr. Clean doesn’t have to know about this. I couldn’t take another Zen reprimand.”

“Not without laughing my ass off. Did you notice the other day that he kinda got stuck in his lotus position in the studio? I think that little cushion at the office must be spring-loaded.”

“Maybe his butt fell asleep. Does that ever happen to you?” At this moment, Roc became aware of how many Tuborgs into the night they were. “When did all that master of time and space crap start anyway?” Eddie said.

Roc paused to recollect before answering. “I remember Uncle studying tai chi at the Y, and when we were at parties, he’d all of a sudden get up in mid-conversation and do this thing he called ‘repulse the monkey.’ Looked like he was operating a set of pedals with his hands in slow motion. No one really paid much attention, but some of the girls took to calling him Elvis, and he eventually stopped.”

“Hey, check this.” Eddie picked up the remote and unmuted MTV. Some dork in a Porter Wagoner outfit was balancing on a surfboard with a couple of babes, obviously shot on bluescreen in a studio, singing, ‘He’s a cowboy dude, don’t give him no ’tude.’”

Roc peered at the screen, not quite believing what he was seeing. “What the fuck? Eddie, that’s the weirdo with the knife from the parking lot at the Sunset. Remember I told you about him?”

“You’re kidding. Is it just me, or does that look a bit like Barry gone Nashville?” Eddie gestured at the TV and at the rotund bassist crammed into a white suit with little appliquéd slices of pie floating around on it.

“Wet suit and Stetson, a bible and a tan

He’s a cowboy dude, a Wild West coast man.…”

The bikinied girls crossed themselves in time to the music and cozied up to the grinning singer as he delivered those lines.

“That’s Barry all right, and check out Danny in the little scarf behind the drums. This must be Uncle’s idea of developing new projects. Sad. I think I chose the right time to bail from the music business.”

They both watched mesmerized as the surfboard morphed into a bucking bronco carrying the singer, identified as Delray Jackson, and his backups, the Rayve-ups, into the horizon.

“You know, I heard about some hick who was cutting a song Danny wrote. This must be him,” said Eddie, still staring at the now-muted TV.

“As long as a song is all he’s cutting. This is bizarre. I love that I have to watch fucking MTV to find out what fearless leader is up to,” Roc added grimly. “Anyway, I’ve got a song that wants to be written, so I’ll see you tomorrow, Ed.”

Emma flicked off the remote and tossed it on the bed, dumping a bowl of corn chips in the process. “I felt sorry for that guy’s date at the show; you know, the new age come-on bullshit and then the air guitar solo. Now the rest of the world has to put up with him.”

“Hangs with the surfers and walks with the Lord!” Stick was standing on the bed, pretending to surf. Emma pulled him down, sending the chips, the remote, and a pair of drumsticks to the floor. She kissed him, and they lay nose to nose, sharing a pillow.

“Was it too weird for you to hear all those people talking about your dad?”

“I was proud of him. I realized that I knew almost all of those songs, even though most of them were popular when I was a little kid. The guitar rising out of the stage thing was absurd, but that guy in his band made me want to cry. I’m so glad you were with me, Richard. Thank you.”

“Hey. Yeah, I know those songs too. I can remember some of the early ones being recorded at my dad’s place. I’m not a big fatalist, but I have to admit that us being here together is pretty out there. So, Emma, did it make you wish you’d gotten to know him or even met him once?”

Emma smiled enigmatically and went over to the bureau for her laptop. Climbing back into bed, she booted up and leaned on Stick’s shoulder. In the silence between them, a car passed nearby, and they both stared at the city below through the bedroom window. Emma’s voice was low and serious. “I’m taking, or was until a couple of weeks ago, a course called ‘Exploring Multimedia’ at college. We’re combining text, audio, photo, and video images, and it’s based around the ideas of Walter Benjamin.”

“Was he Grandpa on the ‘Real McCoys’?” Stick asked without breaking a grin.

Emma punched him gently in the arm. “Walter Benjamin examined the relationship between modernity and everyday life. He had a really cool way of looking at things. He said, ‘Strength lies in improvisation. All the decisive blows are struck left-handed.’ You’re a drummer; you must be able to relate to that?”

Stick nodded knowingly. “Of course. I mean, was it Descartes or Ringo who said, ‘I like to sit in front of the telly and go bang bang’?”

She regarded him as an indulgent mother might. “Richard. Oh, never mind. Just look at this.” Emma pulled up the QuickTime box with the footage of Roc’s descent from the clouds toward the Beach Blast set and ran it top to bottom with audio and commentary, such as it was, from Chad Sparx.

“Now, there’s a thinker,” said Stick, indicating the show host. Emma, ignoring him, reran a segment without audio and froze a frame of Roc spread-eagled with the backdrop of the parachute. Stick, intrigued, leaned closer to the laptop as she clicked off single frames and enlarged one to fill the screen in which the parachute momentarily flapped to one side.

“There,” she said, pointing at a blurry line rising up from the rear of the harness into the clouds above, “what does that look like?”

“A bad root canal, I don’t know.”

“To me, it looks like a cable attached to the chute.”

“Don’t those things have cables galore to support the sky diver?” Stick suggested, clearly puzzled.

“Not one going above the parachute itself.” Emma indicated the white line that continued to the top of the frame. “I know it’s pretty grainy, but this doesn’t look like any video glitch I’ve seen. The way the sun bounces off it, I’d say it’s heavy-duty metallic cable, like you’d use in a rescue operation.” She skipped ahead a couple of frames, and the parachute flapped back to fill the space it had formerly occupied. “Easy to miss, but once you’ve seen it, hard to ignore.”