five VINCENT part 3
That morning at the airport was the first time I’d drank since the day I was fired. I’d gone almost one week without a drop living at Carl’s house, helping care for his mom until the morning Margaret tracked me down.
I was deep in a dream. A single frame of it remained when I awoke, the last flash of a coin flipped into a dark wishing well: a tall building, long and sandy gray. Green grass meeting stacked blocks of stone.
I rolled to one side in a saggy hammock of giggling springs to find Margaret standing over me.
Vincent. I need your passport.
Her face was empty of anything that could be interpreted as expression, positive or negative. I scooted back and made sure I could see both of Margaret’s hands.
She dumped my backpack, found my passport and photographed it with her phone, snapped it into her purse. Flatly rejected giving me a moment to get cleaned up, wouldn’t consider going someplace to talk over coffee and refused to wait while I got dressed.
This won’t take long, she said.
Margaret dragged a steel folding chair to my bedside, wiped it down with one of my socks. A fluffy surfline of lint and dust tumbled over the edge of the seat and fell to the carpet in slow motion. She sat in a whirling plume of dust motes lit by boxy blocks of sunlight from the basement windows. Held her purse on her lap with both hands like someone waiting for a bus in a bad neighborhood.
My brain’s buoyancy changed and it tipped, lifted free of the muddy bottom and rose slowly to the surface. Bobbed and rolled over and I heard her say:
I need you to listen. Can you do that? Shut your mouth and really listen to me?
I sat up and nodded, wrapped in my blanket, a wide-eyed survivor on the bumper of an ambulance at the scene of a disaster. Got my back burner lit, started warming up an apology and focused my remaining attention on the space between Margaret’s eyes. Put my listening face on and braced for the new demands, her latest terms. If I could get through this speech without interrupting, if I didn’t further fuck things up, then there was a good chance I was going home today.
This is business, Vincent.
She held up my new phone. Tapped the screen, played a video.
It was the two of us opening for Turner Cody in Chicago, maybe 2011. The Recession had eaten us alive by that point. We’d lost the house and sold the car to pay off bills and buy Margaret’s new MicroKORG, gambling that the short engagement might become the big break we dreamed about.
Look at the hits, she said. All the comments. This one from Brady Miles?
She pointed to an icon of a kid with gold teeth. Fingerpaint-thick tattoos on his face and hair styled like a hunchbacked crow doing something indecent to a lavender mop head.
Brady’s the lead singer of Five Ways. See this post? Two days ago he shared “Owen” with all his followers. That’s thirty-one million people, Vincent.
Margaret handed me the phone.
Here’s the deal Vincent. Are you listening? Okay. So their supporting act backed out and Five Ways have invited us on tour with them as special guests. They’re sending pre-paid per diem cards, Vincent. Nobody gets perks like that, okay? They really like us, just from that one video and they want us. We have representation, she’s new to the industry but she’s honest. She gets our sound and we got great terms. I just need your signature on this paperwork. Right now because we fly out tomorrow.
I scrolled through the comments. Refreshed the screen and when I saw the six-figure view count my skull was rocked by powerful waves. Sensations like physical blows. My ears crackled and my tinnitus roared.
Margaret opened her purse, held out forms for me to sign while she brought me up to speed.
The edges of my vision flickered and I did my best to keep up. Over and over my printed name hung under broad black lines flagged with arrow-shaped SIGN HERE stickers. Each instance of my signature was an improvised glyph, errata from an unknown equation. I questioned the spelling of simple four-letter words. Felt the frustration of a half-dressed man with a brain injury trying to tie a full Windsor in a funhouse mirror.
Dull disbelief gnawed a hole through the week’s worth of waxy opioid rind insulating the soft cheese of my brain, allowing some light of reason to leak in. There were only a few moving parts in this concept for me to track and master but nothing made a moment of sense to me. I could barely authenticate myself in the video. Didn’t remember playing that day or making that song sound so good. Couldn’t recall standing that close to Margaret, seeing her looking so happy.
I was further unable to reconcile the effect this three-minute performance was having on my destiny. It was fucking ridiculous. Lottery-lucky dumb.
Margaret pushed a twine-handled shopping bag across the floor with her foot.
I brought your good shoes, she said. And your suit. The charger and stuff for your new phone and there’s money for a haircut. We’ll have those debit cards tomorrow morning and I can drop yours off here but then I’m busy. The airport shuttle leaves the transit center at noon. Can you manage that?
I was dehydrated from the pills. My dusty voice croaked, broke up a bit when I told her:
I won’t let you down.
Margaret huffed. Curled her lip and looked past me. Stood and nodded toward no one, cocked her knee and tugged her skirt straight. Brushed the palm of one hand across her backside and sent a shower of particles boiling sideways and they rose like pixie dust in the warm sunlight.
She drew a deep breath. Closed her eyes as she exhaled, then spoke with a firm and final measure of patience.
I want you to get yourself a haircut. Pack a bag and be on that shuttle. And don’t lose that phone. I bought it on my plan.
Margaret’s 1940s style was working well for her, lace-collared shirt and a long gray skirt, wild hair stomped flat in braids against her head. Her hips had this real good sixgun swing to them as she tapped, clapped the worn fir treads with hobbled steps and twisted up out of Carl’s basement.
I heard Margaret’s heels peck and pop across the hardwood overhead and out the front door. Rolled over in bed and watched the video a second time. Read the comments, counted the hits and watched it again. Held my phone at arm’s length when the video went out of focus and my field of view was choked to a ragged aperture, gray growing in from the edges. My organs felt like someone was pouring a kettle of boiling water over them, poaching them inside me.
Did I just describe a panic attack? Then that’s what that was. I had my first fucking panic attack in my drummer’s mom’s basement and I’ll never again roll my eyes when someone says they’ve had one.
My mind conjured charging elephants and familiar faces from the textured plaster ceiling while I got myself through the scary part. Soon I was breathing without thinking about it, but it was an hour before I could stand and get dressed to head upstairs and tell Carl what happened, and ask for an upgrade in my medication.
©2017 J.R. Schaefers — all rights reserved