Mary received a postcard from her cousin Robin, the first in many years, informing her of the death of his mother, her aunt, funeral service to be held …. a month ago. Oh well, she might have sent flowers. She’d light a candle and put out a tumbler of gin on the next Dia de los Muertos. Might he come for a visit? He made the decision easy by scrawling “if I don’t hear from you I shall take it as a yes”.
And now, as she walked up the driveway with Dion, here he was, sitting on the stairs, bathed in Houston’s August light, single suitcase at his feet. Cecilia sat behind him on a step up, as though he had looked over his papers and passed grudging permission for him to hostel down.
Robin stood up in time to catch Mary’s flying embrace, which surprised even herself. They hugged tight for a moment and then she pulled slightly back, dripping in their mingled sweat.
-Your city is hotter than hell, he said.
-Of all the months to visit you choose August?
She turned and made the introductions and Dion offered to go round to Sunny’s and buy some beer, some ice, some ice cream. Mary handed him a twenty and agreed to all three.
When they were inside Mary gave him her condolences, and asked him where he was staying.
-Well, he began.
-Oh, stay here, she smiled, I’ll throw you out when we’ve had enough of each other.
-Deal, he said, and all quarrels too far in the past to dredge and apologize for, the cousins allowed themselves a sudden full-minute, full-mouthed kiss, hands sedately chaste, but hipbones lightly touching, withdrawing, touching.
Mary gave him the brief tour, showed him where the hangers were, which pile was laundry, which was clean, which window stayed open for Cecilia, even in the hellish heat.
Dion chuffed up the stairs, case of beer rhyming chimes against the bag of ice.
Dion was shocked. Cousins, yes, and childhood friends, but their freedom left him both envious and mildly disapproving.
-What have you been up to? her cousin asked, his smirk indicating he was ready for brawls, and art, and bawdy sea stories.
-Counting my pennies, modeling for lonely rich guys, and fucking losers and poseurs every chance I get. How about you?
-Racking up student loans right now. I’m just getting started on my Master’s.
-Details, please.
-You’ll laugh. Sociology, out of University of San Diego. I was originally going to study sex-tourism in Tijuana but, believe it or not, it’s a crowded field.
-I believe it, Mary said, and other than the commercial beauties of Tijuana, how’s Cupid these days?
-Awkward, claustrophobic, Robin laughed.
-part of my reason for fleeing the wild west.
-Yeah? Clinging girlfriend, clinging boyfriend, what?
-A bit of all the above. I’ve foolishly been ensnared in a polymorphously perverse menage-a-quatre with my faculty adviser, her bisexual husband, and her principal T.A.
-The T.A. is male, female, both?
-Oh, aggressively female, I assure you. There was talk of the four of us decamping for northern California this fall, to do research. So instead I’m doing field work, collecting oral histories from rock and roll musicians who are on the margins of the business.
-Like Mary? Dion asked, eager to ingratiate himself.
-Exactly, her cousin said.
-How’d you know I was still playing music? Mary asked, lifting the bottle of Dos Equis to cool against her throat.
-Umm, lucky guess? Okay, actually I ran into somebody in the photography department at San Diego and it just so happens that you …
-I know him, yeah …
-Reg Lancaster.
-Yeah, he was here last year and I did some shoots with him. I think you might have met him, D. He was hanging from the rafters at the ConArts benefit that time? Everybody was making bets that he’d fall before he got all the way across.
-That sounds like Reg.
-Oh, I remember, Dion said.
-tall guy, prematurely balding. He took those nice black and whites of you sleeping on Anais’ studio mattress, right? Should have known he was an academic from the way he grilled Anais about what was it?
-Praxiteles. Venus’s backside. And something to do with anal sex which I couldn’t follow. He was lucky Anais didn’t alter him. So, Reg busted me and it just so happens that I’m an easy chit for you.
-Yes, and here I am. A change of underwear and my trusty tape recorder.
-You really want to interview me? Mary asked, less relaxed than before.
-Yes, I really want to interview you. I have to write a chapter on methodology as part of the thesis and so I’m still making it up as I go along. But here’s how it works. I look, with your permission, of course, through your collection of records, tapes, etc., try and get an idea of where you’re at musically. Or where you’re at these days. Then I fill in some historical stuff, or rather, I ask a set of questions which you answer in as much detail as you like, and then, when I’ve compiled all my stats and similarities and dissimilarities, I basically see whether there’s a trend, a common thread running through your community.
-I like that, Dion said, the idea that there’s a community of marginal musicians.
-I like it too, Mary laughed, but I’m not sure I’m that keen on an outsider, sorry, love! interloping their diagrams and theories all over me. And anyway, you know this stuff already, Robin. My musical tastes? Same as they ever were.
-Oh, come on, it’ll be fun. As I remember, you loved to talk about yourself, when we were kids.
-No, when we were kids we both loved to talk about what we were going to do when we grew up. Well, I’m as grown up as I’m likely to get and I’ve done and am doing those things. Do-ing them, not talking about them.
-Give it a shot. If you hate it, we can have a bonfire and burn the tapes.
-Like Nixon should have done.
The cousins laughed.
-Sorry, Robin said to Dion, private joke.
Mary explained.
-Robin’s mom, who was my guardian through the fateful, vital years of my girlish youth, just half kidding, worked in the Justice Department during the Nixon regime.
-Nixon administration, Robin said.
-Okay, Mary conceded, and when we have our bonfire we have to dance naked round it, you too, Dion.
-Sure, Dion laughed, not quite sure if he was equal, lamb, or butt.