These comments went unvoiced, but they were eloquently stated by his body language. He acted out every nuance of emotion, like a child showing off a new skill. Send him on an errand he considered important and he would give you his best White Rabbit, head down, hustling along on a matter of urgency to the Queen. Chastise him and he would play the penitent altar boy. When ill, he went with a hand clutching his stomach or cheek or lower back, grimacing and listless. His posturing was so pitifully false, it was disturbing to look at him. I had learned to ignore these symptoms, but I recognized the pathology that bred them—I had seen him, thinking himself unwatched, slumped on the couch, clicking the remote, the Guide spread across his lap, mired in the quicksand of depression, yet more arrogant than depressed, a crummy king forsaken by his court, desperate for admirers.
On reaching the library, I sat on a middle step and fingered out a fatty from my jacket pocket. Stanky collapsed beside me, exhausted by the Polozny Death March he had somehow survived. He flapped a hand toward McGuigan’s and said, hopefully, “You want to get a beer?”
“Maybe later.”
I fired up the joint.
“Hey!” Stanky said. “We passed a cop car on the hill, man.”
“I smoke here all the time. As long as you don’t flaunt it, nobody cares.”
I handed him the joint. He cupped the fire in his palm, smoking furtively. It occurred to me that I wouldn’t drink from the same glass as him—his gums were rotting, his teeth horribly decayed—but sharing a joint? What the hell. The air was nippy and the moon was hidden behind the alder’s thick leaves, which had turned but not yet fallen. Under an arc lamp, the statue of Black William gleamed as if fashioned of obsidian.
“Looks like he’s pointing right at us, huh?” said Stanky.
When I was good and stoned, once the park had crystallized into a Victorian fantasy of dark green lawns amid crisp shadows and fountaining shrubs, the storefronts beyond hiding their secrets behind black glass, and McGuigan’s ornate sign with its ruby coat of arms appearing to occupy an unreal corner in the dimension next door, I said, “Mia went back to her mom’s tonight. She’s going to be there for a while.”
“Bummer.” He had squirreled away a can of Coke in his coat pocket, which he now opened.
“It’s normal for us. Chances are she’ll screw around on me a little and spend most of the time curled up on her mom’s sofa, eating Cocoa Puffs out of the box and watching soaps. She’ll be back eventually.”
He had a swig of Coke and nodded.
“What bothers me,” I said, “is the reason she left. Not the real reason, but the excuse she gave. She claims you’ve been touching her. Rubbing against her and making like it was an accident.”
This elicited a flurry of protests and I-swear-to-Gods. I let him run down before I said, “It’s not a big deal.”
“She’s lying, man! I…”
“Whatever. Mia can handle herself. You cross the line with her, you’ll be picking your balls up off the floor.”
I could almost hear the gears grinding as he wondered how close he had come to being deballed.
“I want you to listen,” I went on. “No interruptions. Even if you think I’m wrong about something. Deal?”
“Sure…yeah.”
“Most of what I put out is garbage music. Meanderthal, Big Sissy, The Swimming Holes, Junk Brothers…”
“I love the Junk Brothers, man! They’re why I sent you my demo.”
I gazed at him sternly—he ducked his head and winced by way of apology.
“So rock and roll is garbage,” I said. “It’s disposable music. But once in a great while, somebody does something perfect. Something that makes the music seem indispensable. I think you can make something perfect. You may not ever get rock star money. I doubt you can be mainstreamed. The best you can hope for, probably, is Tom Waits money. That’s plenty, believe me. I think you’ll be huge in Europe. You’ll be celebrated there. You’ve got a false bass that reminds me of Blind Willie Johnson. You write tremendous lyrics. That fractured guitar style of yours is unique. It’s out there, but it’s funky and people are going to love it. You have a natural appeal to punks and art rockers. To rock geeks like me. But there’s one thing can stop you—that’s your problem with women.”
Not even this reference to his difficulties with Sabela and Mia could disrupt his rapt attentiveness.
“You can screw this up very easily,” I told him. “You let that inappropriate touching thing of yours get out of hand, you will screw it up. You have to learn to let things come. To do that, you have to believe in yourself. I know you’ve had a shitty life so far, and your self-esteem is low. But you have to break the habit of thinking that you’re getting over on people. You don’t need to get over on them. You’ve got something they want. You’ve got talent. People will cut you a ton of slack because of that talent, but you keep messing up with women, their patience is going to run out. Now I don’t know where all that music comes from, but it doesn’t sound like it came from a basement. It’s a gift. You have to start treating it like one.”
I asked him for a cigarette and lit up. Though I’d given variations of the speech dozens of times, I bought into it this time and I was excited.
“Ten days from now you’ll be playing for a live audience,” I said. “If you put in the work, if you can believe in yourself, you’ll get all you want of everything. And that’s how you do it, man. By putting in the work and playing a kick-ass set. I’ll help any way I can. I’m going to do publicity, T-shirts…and I’m going to give them away if I have to. I’m going to get the word out that Joe Stanky is something special. And you know what? Industry people will listen, because I have a track record.” I blew a smoke ring and watched it disperse. “These are things I won’t usually do for a band until they’re farther along, but I believe in you. I believe in your music. But you have to believe in yourself and you have to put in the work.”
I’m not sure how much of my speech, which lasted several minutes more, stuck to him. He acted inspired, but I couldn’t tell how much of the act was real; I knew on some level he was still running a con. We cut across the park, detouring so he could inspect the statue again. I glanced back at the library and saw two white lights shaped like fuzzy asterisks. At first I thought they were moving across the face of the building, that some people were playing with flashlights; but their brightness was too sharp and erratic, and they appeared to be coming from behind the library, shining through the stone, heading toward us. After ten or fifteen seconds, they faded from sight. Spooked, I noticed that Stanky was staring at the building and I asked if he had seen the lights.
“That was weird, man!” he said. “What was it?”
“Swamp gas. UFOs. Who knows?”
I started walking toward McGuigan’s and Stanky fell in alongside me. His limp had returned.
“After we have those beers, you know?” he said.
“Yeah?”
“Can we catch a cab home?” His limp became exaggerated. “I think I really hurt my leg.”