REGGIE
Sometimes he jogged, like a person concerned with health, and sometimes he slowed to a despondent shuffle. His laps didn’t mean anything but that didn’t seem like a reason not to do them. On the bar one day he noticed a box, a slim green box sitting there where a drink would’ve sat if Reggie ever drank. He opened the box and a harmonica was inside. He took the harmonica in his hand and turned it in the weak light, the instrument winking at him. It was more lustrous than the bar implements and it was the perfect weight. Reggie breathed neutrally into it and it produced a whimper.
Reggie carried the harmonica back over where the piano and guitar were and set it down in its own space on the floor. Here was something else, sitting up on the body of the piano — a framed picture. Reggie turned the picture toward him and took it in. His chest felt crowded. It was a picture of a house but more importantly it was a picture of a yard. Mr. Dunsmore’s yard. He was a friend of Reggie’s parents who lived down the street. When Reggie had gotten old enough and realized what he wanted to do for a living, this man had given Reggie reign over his almost-acre. The deal was that Mr. Dunsmore would not pay Reggie, but Reggie had an unlimited budget to put toward the property. Mr. Dunsmore added Reggie’s name to his tab at the nursery. Mr. Dunsmore had never had a son, just a string of daughters, and he taught Reggie to play chess and taught him some things about grilling. Mr. Dunsmore tried to let Reggie win at chess, but Reggie had no aptitude for the game. He wasn’t strategic and didn’t like to think about more than one thing at a time.
Reggie leaned against the piano and examined the picture, picking over the landscaping choices he’d made like someone picking friends out of an old graduation photo. This yard was his masterpiece, his pride. A yard wasn’t like a song; it wasn’t catching lightning in a bottle. A yard was like a person. It could grow distinguished. It could be dragged down by its flaws. Mr. Dunsmore would let the yard go now. He wouldn’t let anyone lay a hand on it. The yard was surely in disrepair already, but in this photo it was perfect: hemmed at each side by hand-watered ironwoods, a smoke tree hiding the shed, arrow-straight pathways through the blackbrush, an agave guarding the porch steps, pebbles of cloud-gray surrounding the garnet pumice in the flower beds. Reggie could smell each plant. He remembered the smell of Mr. Dunsmore’s deck shoes and remembered the perfume Mr. Dunsmore’s youngest daughter wore, home on weekends from school down in Las Cruces.
Reggie was letting it happen again. He was being manipulated, his emotions guided and coaxed. Someone wanted him to think about Mr. Dunsmore and his yard. Reggie looked at the bureau. He’d stashed the chorus program and the belt buckle from his uncle in the top drawer. He looked at the guitar and harmonica. The bar had appeared. Before all that, the library. Of course, the piano. It had been here waiting on Reggie when he arrived and it was still waiting. Reggie slid the picture of Mr. Dunsmore’s yard out of the way and folded his top half forward onto the piano, resting his cheek against the wood. It looked grainy but was slick as a car hood. Reggie closed his eyes and went limp. He was supposed to write songs. That’s what he was being nudged and nudged toward. It was songs. He wasn’t waiting. Whoever was in charge was the one waiting. Whoever was in charge had been trying to tease songs out of Reggie, to trick him into writing. That was it. Reggie had a talent and someone wanted to exploit it or exhaust it. Reggie wasn’t waiting, he was being held captive. The instruments weren’t meant to comfort him. They weren’t hospitality. Even the afterlife wanted something from you. The only thing of value you had left.
Reggie took the picture of Mr. Dunsmore’s yard and placed it in the top drawer of the bureau with the other items. He stood in front of the open drawer. There was something bubbling up in him that he’d rarely felt in the living world. It was anger. Anger at injustice. At powerlessness. He picked up the harmonica and squeezed it almost hard enough to break it. Inspiration was being engineered in Reggie. He was a cow and his udders had been getting massaged since the moment he arrived. Reggie tipped his head back and gazed up into the inscrutable low sky that constituted the roof of his quarters. He wasn’t even sure he had more songs. What if he didn’t? Reggie wondered if the songs were a simple bribe — his music in exchange for a pleasant eternity. Maybe heaven was like a third-world country, you had to grease a few palms. Reggie had died free of debts and he didn’t owe anyone anything now. He wasn’t going to be bullied. He hated a bully. His anger was everywhere, in his organs. He felt that something inside him had been wound and wound as he completed lap after lap around the main hall and now that something was spinning loose. That’s how he felt on the inside but he concentrated on keeping his outward bearing calm and deliberate. It was easy to forget, until something reminded him, that he was being watched, and he wanted whoever was watching to be startled by what he was about to do. He put a shoulder to the bureau and gently moved it away a few paces and then carried the guitar in its stand to a safe distance. He ran his hand over the piano and then hoisted and propped its heavy lid. He got hold of the bench and raised it over his head. It felt neither heavy nor light, same as the harmonica had felt to Reggie, same as a good gun had always felt, back in life. Reggie sidled around and gathered his breath and brought the bench down with all the force he could muster into the innards of the piano, and a sour shout filled the room. Reggie felt good about what he was doing, relieved, after walking in circles for ages, at the physical decisiveness of the action he was taking. He disentangled the bench, drawing moans from the piano, and posed with his weapon above his head before crashing it down over and over into the delicate workings of the colossal instrument, splintering the soundboards and bashing loose the bass strings and then the treble strings and jarring the bridges loose at painful angles. The red leather of the bench was scuffed and in two places torn open. Reggie was sweating lightly. He took a couple more whacks and then tossed the bench into the piano, where it rested on top of the rubble it had created, legs sticking into the air.
CECELIA
She opened her passenger door and reached through the car and pushed open the driver’s door, which was still broken and was going to stay broken, then she walked around and got into the driver’s seat and rested her forehead against the steering wheel. Crossing campus, she’d seen a flyer Nate had pinned up. He was calling his new band Thus Poke Sarah’s Thruster. His tryouts were in two days. Cecelia opened her window and reclined her seat, not ready to be in traffic. She looked at the white sky, the sun stuck up there like the bottom of a pail. She hadn’t done anything about Nate, hadn’t taken any action, hadn’t begun to figure out what action she could take. She was afraid, was the truth. At times her anger felt stronger than her fear, but other times she felt paralyzed. And sometimes she wondered if it was Nate she was angry with or if she was fed up with the whole world and frustrated with herself. She had too many enemies. She needed to find some mindless courage. People said bullies were cowards but that wasn’t true. It was the victims who had no courage. And she’d only been Nate’s victim since she’d refused to keep on with the band. Before that, she’d benefited from his single-mindedness and from his resources. She’d been afforded the chance to perform music, to play Reggie’s songs for people who lived to hear them. Maybe in a weird way Cecelia missed Nate. She missed the gigs. She missed the band’s following, roughly a dozen fans who’d been committed enough to seem deranged. The twelve fans had been nervous around Reggie but spoke easily to Cecelia and Nate. They treated Cecelia and Nate like they were fans themselves, fans that got to play in the band. These people were overqualified community college types who showed their devotion by holding their heads against the speakers during the upbeat songs and solemnly swaying, eyes shut, during the slow numbers. They wore gloves to the shows — driving gloves, brightly colored mittens, fingerless gym gloves. They had a way of intimidating strangers who wandered into the venues. Nate had tried booking gigs in secret, with little or no publicity, but there was no escaping these fans. They had told Cecelia and Nate that if Shirt of Apes ever had T-shirts or bumper stickers or key chains made, the items would be rounded up and destroyed. The items would be confiscated and burned.