Whale Music (15 page)

“Take a few of these, Des,” said Geddy.

Another pharmaceutical adventure for Desmond Howl. These magic pills seemed to put me on equal footing with the universe.

Geddy took me to a cavernous nightclub, the band and most of the patronage black. The group was The Lamont Brothers,
three men of such disparate aspect that, if they were not lying about their relationship, Mrs. Lamont’s character would have to be questioned. The most memorable of the back-up musicians was the sax player, an overly tall boy of about seventeen. He was dressed in a pink tuxedo and ruffled shirt, as though he expected at any moment to be pressed into marriage.

This was the first player who I had ever heard go outside. Do you know what I’m talking about? A solo is like a little door in the song, and most instrumentalists step over the stoop, see what the weather’s like and duck back in. This young fellow, he ran out that door, sprinted around the block, he took the cross-town bus and hired a cab back. Granted, I was so zombied at the time perhaps Lawrence Welk would have sounded as good, but it was a critical experience for me.

After the set, Geddy Cole waved some members of the band over to the table, and they joined us, because Geddy had a reputation for holding good dope and was more than willing to spring for drinks. The sax player joined us, he brought his horn with him and throughout the break he toyed silently with the levers and buttons, his long fingers popping pads. He was introduced as Mooky Saunders. When he heard my name he raised his eyebrows. “You write that ‘Kiss Me, Karen’ thing?”

I nodded.

“Shee-yut,” said Mooky Saunders, grinning at me. “When you gonna fawk that woman, Desmond?”

When, indeed? Fay Ginzburg and I had kept up a correspondence throughout my ascension. Our letters were little more than basic rundowns on the weather and such, but I did notice something interesting happen to her sign-offs. They began with “Your friend,” then they gained this long-lasting character, “Ever your friend,” then those cute little
x’s
and
o
‘s started mushrooming, then
the word
appeared, “Love, Fay,” then “Lots o’ love, Fay,” and finally she was writing “All my love, Fay.” We had a big concert scheduled for Sausalito. Fay
and I agreed we would see each other afterwards and, in her almost illegibly scrawled words, “talk seriously.”

So though it might seem that all was right with the world, such was not the case. It was Daniel who pointed out that something was very odd. “Desmo,” he asked me one night, “are you rich?”

“Rich?”

“Yeah, rich. Do you have a lot of money?”

I took some out of my pocket, thinking that he was soliciting a loan. “I got maybe forty bucks, Dan-Dan. You need it?”

“Desmo, you wrote ‘Kiss Me, Karen’?”

“Yes.”

“It sold a million or three?”

“Yes.”

“Desmo, why ain’t you a milly-un-aire?”

The father seemed to be prepared for us. He was standing at the top of the stairway in his dressing-gown, smoke from a cigarette curling around his head. The father hadn’t shaved for weeks, but his whiskers were (like him) feckless things, they fuzzed up the soft lines of his face but stopped quite a distance short of becoming a beard. The father’s eyes raged. He pointed a finger at Dan and myself, riveting us in the foyer. “I
made
you!” the father screamed, “Just don’t forget that. Without me there is no Howl Brothers!”

“Daddy—” I began.

Danny cut me short. “What have you been up to, old man?”

“You boys.” The father shook his head wistfully. “So young, so carefree. You don’t know nothing about the way the world works. You don’t know business. You don’t even know how to copyright your own tunes. So, because I’m your father, I’m doing it for you.”

“Copyright them how?”

“Copyright them under Howell Music, Inc., what did you expect?”

“Who do you list as the writer?” shouted Danny.

“I
made
you!”

“He’s screwing us, Des.”

“You boys were underage, you couldn’t sign no contracts. What does it matter what it says on a piece of paper? It might say that I wrote a song, what does it matter?”

“I can’t believe this,” muttered Danny. “This is unreal.”

“Don’t worry, I’m setting aside money for you boys. You’re my sons. Besides, what do you need money for? Beer money, poontang money, that you got. What else do you need?”

This was certainly a kick in the head. The man at the top of the stairs suddenly weaved like a blade of grass blown by wind. I realized that he had been drinking.

“Besides, the stuff is
shit,”
said the father. “Think about my reputation.”

Danny suddenly said, “Is Maurice Mantle in on this little scam?”

“Maurice,” said my father. “Moe-fucking-reese? Moe-reese don’t know shit from sushi.”

“So you’re screwing us, and you’re screwing him.”

“I am
not
screwing you boys,” said the father. He sat down on the top stair. “Now, Maurice,” mused the father, “Maurice I’m screwing.” He had softened suddenly. “You see,” he said calmly, for the billionth time in his puny existence, “when a song hits big, then you’ll be sitting on Easy Street.”

“Where’s Mom?” I asked.

“Just never mind where your bimbo mother is. You boys are like your mother, do you know that, you got no consideration for my feelings, you just think you can do whatever you want and never mind if someone should get hurt.”

“Mommy is with Mr. Mantle?” I asked, or realized and spoke unwittingly.

“Affirmative, Desmond. You’re pretty smart for a jagoff.”

“Well, that’s too bad—” said Dan.

“Don’t give me
too bad
, Daniel. Do not stand there and give me
too bad.”
The father stood up wearily. “We’re a bunch of flies on a shitpile and it’s got nothing to do with
too bad
because
it’s all …” He lost his train of thought, the father grabbed ahold of the bannister. “So what do I get out of it? I get all the fucking money, boys. That’s not much to ask. I get all the fucking money. I’m headed for Easy Street.” The father turned, headed for his den.
“I made you!”
he hollered.

The father was a victim of limited imagination, that’s what Daniel said. Immediately after this encounter, Dan and I made for the bars, the scuz palaces. My brother and I pounded boilermakers in the company of lepers. Naked women paraded before us. Humanity’s last-ditch attempt to keep a lid on things.

“What,” said my brother, “a dipshit.”

“Why did he do it?” I wondered aloud.

“Why? ’Cause he had to.”

“Had to?”

“Man, he fed her all these stories. How great everything was gonna be. When a song fucking hits big. The way I see it, he had no choice.”

“So mom wanted money …”

“Desmond, you’re the same as the old man. You got a limited imagination. Mom never wanted money. She wanted fairy tales.” Danny took a moment to whistle a nearly-naked woman over to the curtain of the stage. He stuck a fifty-dollar bill into her g-string. “There’s more than one kind of goddam story. Didn’t the old man ever hear of
love stories?”

I wake up in the music room. My mouth is fuzzy and my head aches. I have a hangover, how quaint. This hangover doesn’t know what it’s up against, trying to inhabit the body of Desmond Howl.

I dreamt I was a whale. I swam in the ocean contentedly, occasionally rising to the surface for a little blow. I ingested huge quantities of plankton. Some dolphins told me that a silver star had fallen out of the sky and burst into flame upon the waters. Those crazy dolphins.

Fay was a great believer in dreams and was always after me to write down my dreams immediately upon rising. Then my dreams could be examined, my inner thoughts and feelings discerned. This dream, wherein I dreamt I was a whale, means that I want to be a whale. There, what’s the big deal?

The Yamaha 666 is asleep, perhaps dreaming machine dreams, producing a soft purr. I gently reach up and press its power button. The Beast lets out a sigh, the energy collapses.

The Whale-man is tired, these hours of drug-induced stupor do not really rest one, you know, they lay one out in a coma, allowing the various humours to conspire to more deviltry. The Whale-man is jangly, though, energetic and exhausted at the same time, my hands shake and there is a ball of gas about to go nova in my belly. Let’s face it, people, I have ended badly. Why couldn’t I have been a baseball player, why couldn’t my worst problem be that after four beers I like to arm-wrestle with guys named Sparky and Lynn?

I pull myself up gripping the Yamaha 666, the Stradivarius of emulators. I took the Beast so far outside that we started spotting igloos, and there was never a peep of rebellion. The Beast knows no fear.

Let us listen to the “Song of Congregation”. I wander into the control room, power-on, switch switches, the music pumps out octaphonically, the mouth of the Beast filling the world. This is okay. This sounds like Venusian footsoldiers, this says
whales, get the fuck over here
STAT!!

Now the real work begins. Mixing.

Even with the computers, the digitalizers, even with the sound enhancers and graphic equalizers, mixing is a tough game. What wouldn’t I give to have Freaky Fred sitting beside me, looking off into vacant space, staring almost
at
the music, suddenly reaching out towards a pod, panning a sound half a degree to the right, and
kerpow
, it’s like da Vinci getting the Mona Lisa’s smile just right: “Dattsa da teeket!”

Did you hear that? That sudden loud noise buried in the music? Oh my goodness, I hope there isn’t some imperfection on the tape. I throw it into reverse and listen again. Yes, there is a loud noise, but—I swack the power-off. A loud noise, but it’s coming from the studio itself, someone is stumbling around in the gloom, uncertain of their footing. I crouch behind the console and peer out. My eyes are used to it, night vision is my most acute sense, and I can see that it’s—
agh
—none other than Kenneth Sexstone, president of Galaxy Records.

Kenneth does not seem to have aged over the past many years. He claims that this is due to science. He has had his skin stretched, he has had pockets of fat liposuctioned away, he injects himself with megavitamins and is on some kind of meat-free, mucus-free, food-free diet, but I believe that he has bartered with Lucifer. He still looks about fifteen, he still resembles Howdy Doody. “Desmond?” he hails me in the gloom. “I know you’re here.”

I press the in-studio speaker button, I push up the levels until they make everything shake, I boom out, “Go away.”

“We have to communicate,” he calls back. He has figured my location, he stumbles towards the control room. “We must make speaks, Desmond.”

“Desmond Howl is not here,” I respond. “This is an automatic sentry system. In fifteen seconds strategically mounted Howitzers will commence firing. Consider this your final warning.”

“Desmond, toy not. Your ass is in a very serious legal sling.”

“Ten seconds. Mr. Howl covets his privacy.”

“Tremendously serious trouble. Contractual chicanery. Stab in the back.
Et tu
and all that. I mean only to help.”

“Mr. Howl doesn’t know what you’re talking about. This is your last chance. If you do not leave, you have chosen death.”

“Mr. Howl knows what I’m talking about. I talk of music. I talk of a song named ‘Claire’. A haunting though dirgelike ditty. But, Desmond, from what I understand, you gave the mastertape of this song to your mother. She and her husband have released it under the aegis of something called Mantlepiece Records. What do I feel, Desmond? I feel hurt. I feel pain. Stung by duplicity. After all we’ve been through, Desmond, after all our years of friendship, surely you know that you can’t record a fart without it being
mine.”

I think I’ll try the Yaqui Indian trick. Hold my breath, make myself invisible.

“DESMOND!!!”

New scientific research indicates that whales often bark to stun little fish. They produce a roar of such magnitude that the anchovy’s innards are busted all to pieces. Kenneth seems to have acquired this knack. Stupefied, I open the door, although it seems to me that for a recluse, a virtual locust-devouring hermit, I am seeing an awful lot of people lately.

Kenneth skips into the control room, the monkey-gland robustness of his face shines in the half-light. “Desmond,” he says, spotting me. “Good to see you, Desmond.”

“Kenneth. We missed you at the funeral.”

“The obsequies for young Daniel?”

“I played the accordion. ‘Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring’ on the titty-tickler. Many people came. They wept. Women wailed and keened for seven days and seven nights. Men became drunken and fought in the meadhalls. The country reeled with chaos, ruination.”

“I’m sorry I missed it.”

“You are a very busy man.”

“So, Desmond,” he says, “would you care to explain to me what goes on?”

“I gave my mother a tape?” This sounds vaguely familiar.

“Of the song ‘Claire’, a beautiful if threnodic avowal of passion. It is receiving airplay, Desmond. It
might—
note the uncertainty with which my voice is freighted—it might be a hit. Nothing mega, we’re not talking moving units to the Bozon tribe or anything, but this song might represent a respectable little piece of fruit on the tree of musical money. This I do not know for certain. What I do know is, the song should not be on Mantlepiece Records. Your contract clearly states that your next work is the property of Galaxy Records.”