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“Concept?” said Ian. “What concept is that?”
Artie stared at him like he was an idiot. “Whaddaya mean, what concept?”
“Whaddaya mean, what do I mean?” Ian shot back. “I asked what concept.”
“They're a bunch of old guys,” Artie explained. “That's the fucking concept.”
“What about Joey?” Dave asked.
“What about him?”
“He's our age.”
“That's right,” said Artie. “And if Stan doesn't get his shit together, maybe Joey wouldn't mind a chance to play with some guys who don't belong to the American Association of Fucking Retired People.”
“That's a good organization,” Buzzy told him. “Don't knock the AARP.”
“Mel's a pretty hot sax player,” Ian pointed out. “Maybe we could use him too.”
“Eat me,” said Artie.
They were Still standing on the lawn ten minutes later when Alan Zelack pulled up in front of the funeral home in his red Mitsubishi Eclipse, which Artie liked to mock as a “poor man's Porsche.” In a soft voice, Ian began singing “Stairway to Heaven” as Zelack climbed out of the car, pausing in the street to straighten his tie and run his fingers through his expensive haircut. Dave remembered him breathing into Phil's mouth, pressing on his chest.
“Hey, guys.” Zelack seemed delighted by the opportunity to stop and chat. “It's a shame about Phil, huh?”
“You did a good thing the other night,” Dave told him. “The mouth-to-mouth and all.”
Zelack shrugged. “My father died of a heart attack a couple years ago. Shoveling snow. He died right there on the sidewalk. Nobody in the whole neighborhood knew CPR.”
“Shit,” said Buzzy.
“What can you do?” said Zelack.
The conversation dropped off a cliff. Zelack's glance strayed to the front door of the funeral home. He didn't look all that eager to go inside.
“Hey, Alan,” Artie said. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Who was that fox you were with the other night?”
“Oh.” Zelack grinned like a guy who'd just hit the lottery. “That's Monica. I met her at a gig a couple weeks ago. She was the maid of honor.”
“Monica.” Artie shook his head at the injustice of it all. “Figures she'd have a name like that.”
Zelack rubbed his chin with the tip of his thumb. “I'm in love, man. I'm so fucking in love I can't believe it.”
Dave looked at the ground. He felt a hollowness in his abdomen, a sensation something like a hunger pang. He forgot about it when Buzzy slapped him on the back.
“Speaking of the L-word,” he said, “our man Dave here has an important announcement.”
“No way,” said Ian.
“No fucking way,” said Artie.
“It's true,” Buzzy insisted. “Little Daverino's getting married.”
Dave nodded to confirm this information, a little uncomfortable about suddenly being made the center of attention. Smiling as graciously as he could, he stood on the plush lawn of the funeral home and accepted the congratulations of his friends and colleagues.
The first funeral home Stan visited was full of grief-stricken uniformed cops. In the second one, all the mourners spoke Spanish. The third happened to be located just a few blocks from Feeney's, a corner bar in Cranwood with one of the best jukeboxes around.
It was early, and the place was nearly empty. He dropped a couple dollars’ worth of quarters on Merle Haggard and George Jones, then pulled up a stool and called for a Jim Beam on the rocks. He could only tolerate country music under certain circumstances, and this was one of them.
Since joining the Wishbones, Stan had grown accustomed to drawing stares in public places. This time they came from an older gentleman a few stools down, a dapper, pickled-looking guy in a mustard-colored suit.
“What happened?” he asked, eyeing Stan's tux with sympathetic curiosity. “She leave you at the altar?”
Stan wanted to laugh, but the sound never quite made it out of his throat.
“She should've,” he said, tossing back his drink in a single gulp. “It would've saved a shitload of time.”
He pulled Up in front of Warneck's Funeral Home at a few minutes past nine. Except for a lone figure sitting on the front steps, the place looked empty, closed for the night.
Squinting into the darkness, he recognized the guy on the steps as one of the old farts from Phil Hart's band. Walter, the piano player, the one he privately thought of as “Shaky.”
He got out of the car and headed up the front walk. The old man watched him from the steps, a shock of white hair framing the vague outline of his face.
“Hey,” said Stan. “Am I late?”
“Depends for what.”
“The wake.”
“You missed it. Viewing hours are from six to eight.”
“Were the Wishbones here?”
The old man cleared his throat with a violence that made Stan cringe. “The who?”
“The Wishbones. The band that plays after you at the showcase. I'm the drummer.”
“You guys really call yourselves the Wishbones?”
“Yeah.”
Walter whistled through his teeth, as though a pretty girl had just walked by. “Where'd you find a stupid name like that?”
Stan didn't answer. He'd always thought the Wishbones was a perfectly good name for a band. Walter reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. It was painful to watch him extract one and guide it to his lips. Stan had to look away when Walter brought out his lighter. He didn't turn back until he smelled the smoke.
“Your friends left about an hour ago,” Walter reported.
“Figures.” Stan shook his head. “I'm having one of those days, I'd forget my dick if it wasn't screwed on.”
Walter coughed out a dry chuckle. “My age, I'd be grateful for a day like that.”
A sudden image struck Stan like a wave of nausea. Susie drinking champagne in a fancy restaurant. Black dress, bare shoulders. Happy Birthday. He made a noise.
“You okay?” Walter asked.
“Not really. Mind if I sit down?”
He felt a little better once he unhooked his cummerbund. He hated the frigging thing, the way it squeezed all the air out of him. Walter sat beside him, thoughtfully gumming his cigarette.
“This must be a tough time for you,” Stan observed.
“How so?”
“You know.” He pulled the cummerbund out from under his jacket and laid it on the steps. “This thing with Phil. It must have been awful for you.”
Walter worked his cigarette like a baby sucking a bottle. “Phil was an old man. Everybody's got to go sometime.”
“Still, watching a friend die in front of you like that …”
“We had our differences,” Walter said curtly.
“What kind of differences?”
“Creative.” Walter ejected the cigarette from between his lips. It landed on the sidewalk in a small shower of sparks. “I thought the band was starting to get a little stale.”
“How long were you together?”
“Too fucking long. Thirty-three years I took orders from that sonofabitch. I finally feel like I can breathe again.”
Stan didn't bother to pretend he was shocked. He'd been a musician long enough to know how it could come to this. There were nights when he'd lain awake writing Artie's obituary in loving detail, nights when he'd imagined committing murder.
“Can you do me a favor?” Walter asked.
“What's that?”
“Help me find my car.”
“Whaddaya mean, find your car?”
Walter gestured at the world spread out in front of them. His voice was small now, a little bit frightened.
“It's around here somewhere,” he said.
(#ulink_83749343-bd76-5546-8a1d-14621f8944d4)
IT'S YOUR WEDDING (#ulink_33cd763c-97da-5e14-bd52-9deb38b7de4f)
“I think I'm going to ask Tammi to be my Maid of Honor,” Julie told him on their way to the mall on Saturday morning. “I'm just worried that Margaret's going to be upset.”
“She'll still be in the wedding, right?”
“Of course. But you know how she is. Any little thing could set her off. And the last thing we need is a disgruntled bridesmaid.”
She shook her head as though exasperated, but Dave wasn't fooled. He could see how happy she was to be talking about the wedding. Her face glowed with it; she spoke in a bright girlish voice he hadn't heard for a long time. It was gratifying to know that he could be responsible for such a major improvement in her mood, though it made him wonder if he hadn't been equally responsible for the mild depression that had plagued her for the past couple of years. He'd blamed it on the fact that she'd been unable to find a public school teaching job, despite her degree in Elementary Ed, and instead seemed resigned to a career in customer service. But maybe that was only part of her problem, and maybe not even the most important part.
“Do what you want,” he told her. “It's your wedding.”
She pulled down the sun visor and studied her face in the little mirror, puckering her lips as though preparing to kiss the glass.
“Ever since she got married, all she wants to do when we get together is complain about Paul. I mean, sometimes I just want to say, ‘Look, Margaret, if the guy's such a jerk, why don't you just divorce him?’ “
Dave punched on the radio and began fiddling with the tuner to dramatize his lack of interest in Margaret and Paul. Julie pretended not to notice.
“He's like from another era. She works longer hours and makes more money than he does, but it never even occurs to him to pitch in around the house.”
The radio was a Saturday-morning wasteland. The best song Dave could find was “Movin’ On” by Bad Company, a band about whom he had profoundly mixed feelings. As stale and mediocre as they seemed now, he could never forget what it had meant to hear them for the first time in Glenn Stella's bedroom in 1975—like being struck by lightning, visited by some rock ‘n roll version of the holy spirit. He'd walked home in a daze and announced to his parents at the supper table that he needed a guitar.
“You know what he does? He just sits in front of the TV playing his stupid computer games while she vacuums around his feet.”
“You think she should divorce him because of that?”
“That's as good a reason as any, considering that he has no redeeming qualities whatsoever.”
“He's not so bad,” Dave said, defending the guy out of some vague sense of gender loyalty, even though he despised him even more than Julie did. “He probably does a lot of chores around the house. Mowing the lawn and whatnot. Taking out the garbage.”
“That's not the worst of it.” Julie lowered her voice, in case people in passing cars might be trying to eavesdrop. “He insists on having sex with her every night, right after the weather report on the eleven o'clock news.”
“Every night?”
“That's what she says.”
“Even when she's sick?”
“I'm sure there are exceptions,” she conceded. “But the basic pattern is every night.”
Dave gave a small shiver of disgust that was only partly for Julie's benefit. Paul was a 240-pound furniture salesman who collected baseball cards and believed that Hotel California was one of the high points in the history of human civilization. Margaret was a formerly pleasant person whose personality had been ruined by constant dieting; Dave couldn't remember the last time he'd seen her when she wasn't carrying around a plastic baggie full of carrot slivers. The thought of the two of them having sex was almost as difficult to get his mind around as the thought of his parents getting it on in a motel room while vacationing at Colonial Williamsburg.
Julie pulled down her bottom lip and inspected her gum line in the mirror. Then she pulled up her top lip and did the same.
“He claims he can't get to sleep without it. If she says no he whimpers and thrashes around until she finally gives in just to get it over with.”
“Aren't there laws against that?”
“Every night,” Julie said, her voice touched by wonderment. “Imagine watching the news with that hanging over your head.”
