Whale Music (17 page)

Mrs. Ginzburg gets ahold of the other arm and makes for the kitchen. “Who could play chess on an empty stomach?”

“What, you need strength to pick up the pieces?”

“Brain work is hard work!” returns Mrs. Ginzburg.

Fay stands back and watches the battle. Part of her new image involves a stinginess as regards energy and emotion.

“We’ll play chess, you keep an eye on us. Just when it looks like we’re about to keel over from exhaustion, rush in with the refreshing soup, save our lives, my darling. Desmond, follow me.”

Mrs. Ginzburg lets go of my arm, retreats into her kitchen. The professor and I sit down on either side of an elaborate board, the pieces intricately carved ivory. “You be white,” says the professor. “I fight best when I’m fighting back.”

(But this is Dreamland, don’t forget, the pieces resemble the father, the mother, Maurice Mantle and Kenny Sexstone, the
pawns are all tiny replicas of Dr. Tockette, him and his legion of impersonators.)

I can play chess, you know, rather well. Many weird people can play chess (although I don’t for a minute buy this Sexstone Response to the Queen’s Pawn Gambit business). Freddy Head was a keen player, he and I had quite a few memorable games, we would even play in the truck as we journeyed from bad hotel to bad hotel in the early days. Fred Head and I would imagine the board, we had no need of the actual pieces. We would call out moves to each other and chortle appreciatively. The other lads were mystified by the process. Danny often pretended to be mystified, although if one of us should make a bad move, Danny would blow a raspberry. Then he’d catch himself and pretend to be mystified once more.

Professor Ginzburg’s opening moves are crude and clumsy. He has no concept of the subtleties, the intricacies of the game. He’s tough, though, I’ll say that for him, he plays like a Mama Grizzly, ferocious in his protection of even the lowliest pieces. It takes me more than an hour to do away with Professor Ginzburg, an hour in which we speak of composers, an hour in which Mrs. Ginzburg ferries out any number of vittles.

Fay and I descend into the basement, ostensibly to listen to records. Fay puts an album on the phonograph, and then she removes her sweater and bra and bounces on my lap. Her breasts are rather impressive, more than enough for a boy to fool around with for an hour or two. There is much kissing, Fay is a great one for kissing. In fact, if sex consisted solely of French kissing and breast caressing you’d get no argument from Fay Ginzburg. I blame Dr. Tockette for changing her mind. I think he convinced Fay to get into more sophisticated satisfactions as a political move.

(Don’t forget we’re in Dreamland, though, which explains the presence of the alien Claire, who just slipped through a doorway and started pulling off a pair of bluejeans.)

As content as I am with Fay’s breasts in my hot little hands, our tongues duelling as in a Saturday matinee, I find myself
growing distracted by the music coming from the phonograph. It features two voices, one sweetly resonant, the other strident and nasal. This combination shouldn’t work, the voices should repel each other, but instead they come together like swans in love. The music is odd, twangy guitars (a twelve-string here and there?), a bass that is not content to lurk in the bottom registers but romps up whenever it feels like it, a huge and friendly sheepdog, and in the background the most cretinous sort of drumming, a persistent hammering at the wash cymbal, covering the music in metallic clouds. Even as I toy with Fay I listen to the music, my efforts on the breast front become somewhat desultory.

“Play with my tits, Des,” whispers Fay.

“Who,” I ask, “is playing this music?”

“Who?” This is apparently a funny question, because Fay laughs, which adds a bit of sport and spice to the breast fondling. “It’s the
Beatles
,” she says.

And I say, “Oh.”

You’ve likely heard stories that what drove me to my present state was the weirdest kind of jealousy as regards the Beatles, that I was embittered by the
Sergeant Pepper
album, which predated the release of my so-called concept album,
Grin
, by a scant two weeks. People like to claim that I was tinkering with the mixes too long, throwing out perfectly good tracks only to start again, that my eccentricity was my undoing, and there is a tiny grain of truth somewhere in there. There is even more truth, though, to the assertion that it was Kenneth Sexstone’s fault, that man has all the artistic courage of a football, he delayed release for months on end.

Things are getting interesting here in Dreamland because, if you’ll recall, the alien Claire is pulling off her jeans. Underneath she wears no panties. Her buttocks are firm. Don’t mind me, this is what dreams are for. And now she pulls off her number twenty-one Maple Leafs sweater. She has small breasts, sporty models as opposed to Fay’s Sherman tanks. The
alien Claire is brushing her hair now. I study her body, her flesh bounces with animation, with life. Look what happens in Dreamland! The loins stir, the penis rears its head, a grinning little brute. Only in Dreamland. Dr. Tockette can tell you that I have certain quote-unquote hang-ups, that erections do not happen my way under the normal course of events. But in Dreamland I appear to be unafflicted, this boner is a biggie. The alien Claire bounces this way, over to the bed. Do you think I should attempt a spiritual, astral-type coupling? Claire jumps onto the bed, and, my, how lifelike, the little vibrations, the aftershock of her landing reverberates in the mattress. I appear to be fully sensate here in Dreamland, good news indeed.

“Hey, babe. You finally went to bed, eh?”

Peachy, a naked dream figment that wishes to converse. Such is my lot in life. Let’s see how I do. “Yes.” That was easy enough.

“I went out, bought some food and stuff.”

Food. Again we are reduced to physical tediums. I can only take so much. “Excuse me,” I say, “but here in Dreamland I seem to be possessed of an erection, a veritable chub. I’d appreciate it if we could elevate the level of our concerns.”

“A hard-on? Let’s take a gander.” The blanket is peeled back, a sudden rush of cooling air, aha, I see you’ve figured it out long before the befuddled Whale-man. I have drifted back to the realm of Wakey-wakey without realizing it.

“Yo!” exclaims Claire.

I smile sheepishly. “I was sleeping,” I explain.

“Well, you ain’t sleeping now.”

“So I see.”

“Oh, Desmond.” What she means by this, I’ve no idea.

“This often happens to men upon waking,” I explain. It doesn’t to me, but there’s no reason to mention that. Danny was often roused from slumber by his own member tapping him on the chest. Danny would grab hold of the thing and it would lead him into the washroom.

“Well, man, I think I can help you out.”

“It will wither and die.”

“Too many things wither and die, Des.”

“You speak truth.”

“You want me to, you know, give you a blow-job?”

A bee-jay! If memory serves, a truly delightful experience.

“Well, yes, please.”

“Okay. But don’t, you know, touch me. Just lie there. And don’t say anything.”

“May I grunt inarticulately?”

Claire giggles. “Yeah.” She lowers her head. Her hair spills onto my belly.

The Howl memory, so faithless in the past, has this time served me well.

How does this sound to you? I’m going to put in eight hours down in the music room, then Claire is going to prepare me some spicy Mexican food, which I shall eat with all the grace I can muster, then perhaps we shall sit around and watch television (I hope things are still basically all right up on “Love Mountain”), and then it’s back to bed, where, with any kind of luck, I can inspirit Wee Willy. And you know what else I just realized? A whale, for all his majestic insouciance, has never had a bee-jay! This may not be a lot—I mean, it hardly balances the scales—but it’s nice to know that God didn’t put all the picture cards into the cetacean deck.

Why, if it didn’t involve going
outside
, I believe I might
even go for a walk on a day such as today. However, I’ve too much to do.

Down to the music room.

Ignore the face pressed against the glass doors leading to the flagstone patio. It is ghastly sight, a swarthy visage gutted by the most savage of diseases. No self-respecting ghoul would dress so foolishly, a satin smock, leather pants, gaudy jewellery the length of the withered body. Have no fear, this is merely residual pharmaceutical after-burn, quite common in a brain such as mine.

Mind you, this vision is banging against the glass door—weakly, barely audibly—and also seems to know my name.

“Desmond,” it says.

It might be the ghost of Post-Holocaust Christmas.

“Desmond …”

“I’ll change my ways, I’ll change my ways. Watch. Here, lad, do you know the turkey in the shop around the corner? Yes, that’s right, the one as big as you. What a remarkable lad, what an intelligent lad!”

Agh
. The creature is demanding that I let it in, and I suppose I must, if only because it bears a very slight resemblance to Sally Goneau. I slide the glass door open. The sun is bright today, it tweaks my cheeks and I feel like a favourite nephew.

“Um, I’m sorry, I’m extremely busy today.”

“Too busy to talk to me?” The creature puts on an enfeebled display of happiness, it stretches a loose mouth into a clownish grin, it opens grey eyes widely.

“Is this a vision of things as they must be? Is it too late to change?”

The ghost walks by me, thankfully without the accompaniment of chain-rattling, although the jewellery sends up quite a racket. “Too late to change, Gertie. It was always too late to change.”

“Your hair finally tumbled off your head.”

“Well, you know, I’ve had wigs, but Christ, are they ghastly.
And I don’t wish to discuss my appearance, thank you very much, because it’s out of my hands. But
you
, my dear, you are looking more than a little porcine. Excuse me for saying so, but your Aunt Sally cares. Aren’t you going to offer me something? A coffee, maybe?”

“Coffee?”

“Yes, thank you. And don’t bother. Just show me the kitchen.”

“This way.” I lead the creature—it is my friend Sal Goneau undergone some hideous transformation—down the gold and platinum record hallway.

“I’m sorry I missed the funeral,” Sal says. “I was in the hospital at the time.”

“The mourners wailed for seven days and seven nights. The golden hills rang with jeremiads.”

“I read the article in
Personality
magazine. Really. That bitch Lee saying how much she still loved Danny. Give me a holiday, Lee-baby, buy me a ticket on the bus out of town. And if you don’t mind me saying, you looked horrid at the funeral. You have got to take pride in your personal appearance, Desmo. Your Aunt Sally cares.”

“The towns became empty places, no flowers bloomed. There has been naught but desolation since.”

We are in the kitchen. Sal putters around the coffee pot, putting grounds into a filter.

“So,” he says, “what’s new, Petunia?”

“Nothing much. I’ve been working on the Whale Music.”

“Kenneth told me. That man, I swear, he’s been varnished or something. I mean, is he well preserved or what, not that he was ever anything worth preserving.”

“You talk to Kenneth Sexstone?”

“I work for Galaxy Records. I’m the head A and R man. You remember that, don’t you?”

“Are you here to talk to me about the Whale Music?”

Sal merely grins. “What’s this I hear about a female in the house?”

I suppose I blush.

Sally lets out a squeal. “Tell me
everything.”

“She’s from Toronto, which is a planet in the Alpha Centauri galaxy—”

“Hold it right there, Minerva.”

“I could be wrong about the galaxy.”

“Toronto is a city in Canada. It’s even kind of a nice city, very modern and fashionable, although every few blocks they have these fur-traders and hockey players who like to beat you up.”

“Canada?”

“We played there, some time in the seventies, a concert in some soccer stadium. There was us, let me see, Sly and the Family Stone, The Band, Van Morrison—”

“And Stevie Wonder.”

“That’s right.”

“Is Stevie all right these days?”

“As far as I know.”

“Good.” I should talk to him one of these days, give him a few pointers on Yamaha 666 training. The fact that he’s blind leaves him particularly vunerable to surprise attacks.

“So. Toronto is a city in Canada, this we know. What else can you tell me about this female?”

“She’s pretty.”

“That’s good.”

“She can be very sad, sometimes, but when she laughs I feel a bit better.”

“What do you take in your coffee?”

“Drugs and liquor, thank you, Sal.”

“Uh-uh. Not while Aunt Sally’s here, you don’t.”

If Aunt Sally wasn’t here I probably wouldn’t have this longing for intoxicants. This is one of God’s crueler jokes, what He’s done to Sal Goneau. I think I should take it lying down. “Who do you think you are?” I demand a bit petulantly. “Farley O’Keefe?”