Aquinas took a drag, tossed the lighter back to Mary and passed off to Maurice:
-Four hours, two songs each, what’s that come to?
-Six, said Charlemagne.
-Eight, Aquinas corrected.
-Not if two of them suck, Charlemagne countered.
-Enough for a gig? Maurice asked.
-We need at least three more, Aquinas said.
-Fifteen-minute bass solo, said Mary.
-Twenty-minute drum solo, said Charlemagne, and added:
-the guitar solos are long enough already.
-Aw, Mary smiled.
Maurice told them a story about work, the punch line and moral straight out of Aesop. Charlemagne offered to top it and told them a lightning and thunder nightwatch episode from the El Campo oilfields. Aquinas topped them all with his latest reading of the sheep’s entrails, certain his job was on the verge of disappearance. Mary started to say something but was beaten to it by Charlemagne, teasing Aquinas on the never-ending saga of workplace apocalypse.
-If they were going to fire you they’d have done it before now, man.
-They’re waiting, Aquinas said patiently.
His employment, according to him, was like the eclipse of a Persian dynasty, nothing happened overnight. The redundancy, the collapse, would take a lifetime, and at moments the decline appeared to stall, to stabilize as though about to correct its slow yet ineluctable deathward slide. That this never actually happened, that the expected pink slip turned each time into promotion, ever upwards, was mere quibbling. The necessary note in Aquinas’ personal drama was to feed and fan the illusion that somewhere, in some administrator’s coffin-comfy office, there was a memo pad featuring a scrawled cartoon, a stick figure labeled ‘Spengler’, pencil-neck jacked in taut stretch across a chopping block.
Mary never talked about work nor did any of her band mates ask. Speculation there might be but the physiological vibes which she put off when pestered, however politely, kept the canvas blank, a neutral snowy zero.
Aquinas had his theories, had her cosmology’s starchart mapped and measured by the third rehearsal.
Strictly flea market, with occasional gems like pimentos in a dish of flash.
A lot of death, a lot of sex, a dash of Isis, a shredded strand or two of bloodthirsty Latino Catholicism, all bound loosely with a length of barbed wire dipped in Medusa’s rose water and tempered in Rossetti’s sperm.
He guessed she’d been some Bolshevik’s wet doxy. Had never gotten over it, o boo hoo hoo. Suspected she claimed from the sad glad experience divinatory gifts and premonitory dreams out of all proportion to the messy stab and cry of the quick act itself.
But she could play guitar, looked dreamworthy when bathed in sweat and blue-lit on the edge of the stage, which was, as he considered the weekend guide of the latest Gesellschaftsnuze, more than could be said of their nearest competitors.
And on further consideration, noting in particular a band which Charlemagne had dismissed as pastel pretty boys, he asked:
-You guys ever thought of buying a tuner?
-You wanna buy one, buy one, Charlemagne said.
-maybe we’ll use it maybe we won’t. What about you, Mary? Do you think we need a tuner?
-About as much as we need a capo.
-Meaning? Aquinas asked.
-Ooh, dude, Charlemagne laughed, I think she just called you a pussy.
Mary laughed and Aquinas shrugged.
-I’m a big boy, I can take it. I’m just thinking of the audience is all.
-They’re going to love us, Maurice interjected, a note of hope regarding the as-yet-unseen.
-I’m the audience, Charlemagne said, I go out to hear bands rock not to hear ‘em be nice to me.
-Guess we know who won’t be providing stage patter, Mary said.
-No kidding, Aquinas agreed, you all just leave it to me then, I’ve got the diplomatic chops, you all can just brood in your shadows and blow ‘em away …
-Pass the joint before it burns out, Maurice interrupted.
-Once more round and let’s get back to work, Aquinas said.
-No peace for the wicked, Mary said, standing up, arching her back and windmilling an F sharp minor to the lip of rumbly feedback.
-That’d be a cool name for a song, Charlemagne said.
-It is, Mary smiled, I wrote it last night, wanna hear it?