Later that night Checker was keeping time to the end of the Music Marathon with his drumsticks on the body of the car, trilling up and down its decals as the flames on the hood licked at their tips. But it was the snap of the umbrella that did the trick. Clear and pretty, the turn of a key in a lock. Checker changed what happened. He went in and tampered and fixed things. He tinkered with events as if nosing through the engine of a car.
As the sun set behind her, the lights of Manhattan just beginning to rise, the Triborough was in a delicate and passionate temper. The sun trembled, red like the furnace early that morning. The lines of the cables shimmered and distorted. Poignant, fleeting, something about the quality of the light transferred to Checker’s sense of the evening itself, as if he knew that the Saturdays he and the band would spend in the uncomplicated flush of each other’s company were painfully numbered. In the approaching darkness, each remaining ray sliced Checker’s chest like a shard of glass.
“Listen,” said Checker.
“What?”
“Sssh.”
The band was quiet, and for a moment only heard the murmur of cars from the bridge, the whir of a helicopter doing traffic reports, the rev of a nearby Trans Am; but gradually they each heard it, a tinkling and lapping, a singing and breaking, a sad shattering tune below the embankment on which they stood.
“Beer bottles!” said Howard.
True enough, the entire shoreline didn’t show an inch of sand or dirt but was covered instead with broken glass where locals had thrown their empties in summers past. Yet, rather than littering the bank, the bits of brown and green winked opulently in the sun. The wake of passing barges picked up pieces and threw them against each other with an Oriental pinging sound, dissonant and unlikely.
“I got a new job,” said Check.
“I thought being a bike messenger was the most majorly up-jacking job in the whole world,” said Caldwell.
“It was. Not anymore.”
“You go back there,” said Rahim heavily.
“Had to, Hijack.”
“Did not.”
“Had to.”
“She is not normal lady, Sheckair.”
“Sure as hell not.”
“I have this—”
“I know,” said Check. “So do I.”
Those two talked in this way all the time.
“Do you mind?” asked Caldwell.
“Syria Pyramus,” said Check, leaning into his italics.
Rahim clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “That is the name.”
“Of WHO?” demanded Caldwell.
“Take care, Sheckair. That furnace is hungry.”
“Yeah, it wants something. Always dangerous, you want something.”
“You two looped, you know that,” said J.K.
“It roars,” said Rahim in his throat, so that big J.K. stepped back.
Checker laughed. “Like a great bloody animal. I like it.” Though “like it” was inaccurate. He was attracted to the furnace, an ambivalent sensation with an object that hot. Much the way great heights made him want to jump, the furnace enticed Checker to crawl in.
With both Caldwell and J.K. now glaring over the rail at a passing tugboat and pointedly asking nothing, Checker broke down and explained. “There’s a glassblower up on the Boulevard. She needs somebody to clean up, shovel cullet—”
“Cullet?” asked Rahim.
“All that broken glass. Boffo word, huh?” With his good hand, Checker selected his favorite brand from among the bottles at his feet and sent the green glass careening splendidly to shore—the cullet-strewn shore. “Anyway, people,” he announced. “We have an agenda.” “Agenda,” like “cullet,” curled with unreasonable relish over his tongue.
“You’ve decided you’re too good for us and you’re accepting an offer from David Byrne.”
The band turned away from Caldwell. No one laughed.
“Sweets,” said Checker gently, “you’re going to have to stop that.”
They all knew exactly what Checker was talking about. Caldwell was terrified that these evenings on the river, the nights in Plato’s, were the times he would remember wistfully in his middle age. He was overcome by a sensation of living the Good Old Days, and he wasn’t sure what this called him to do. When seasons changed, Caldwell panicked; he would refuse to wear any but the lightest jacket even through November, as if that would slow the weeks down. Caldwell had a way of looking at the band as if he were calling roll. And surely someday he would be extra nervous; he’d be a little older, and a few of those long strands of white-gold hair would fall out in his hand. One of the band members could very well have left or married; Caldwell would whip his head from side to side, the vein at his temple bulging like a son of a bitch—and it would happen. The Good Old Days would be over, right then. He would never get them back, and he would have it, what he expected—death and memory. So then he’d slow down and get a gut, hard as it was to imagine on that tall skinny kid now. He’d put his feet up and tell stories. It’s strange how often you get exactly what you’re afraid of.
“I’m here. You’re here,” Check reassured him, not for the first time. “We’re all here.”
“You’re not always here,” Caldwell shot back.
“True,” Check conceded. “That’s what I wanted to talk about.”
“It’s all right,” said Rachel. “We understand.”
“We do not,” said Caldwell.
“No, Rachel sweetheart, it isn’t all right.” Checker had a way of talking to Rachel, like crooning to a pet. He could as well have reached out and stroked her hair. “So this man Striker. Why not use him as a backup?”
“Look, just give us notice, we make other plans—”
“I can’t,” said Check. “Even me, I can barely—” He stopped. “You don’t really want to know.” He sounded regretful.
“We take your word, then,” said J.K. glumly.
Checker looked around the band, amazed as he always was by their deference. They really wouldn’t make him say. Supposedly they were being respectful. That was a lie. It was easier and they knew it—their deference let them off the hook; it simplified matters enormously. Checker was still tired. It had taken longer to get back this time. He hoped this wasn’t a development, some kind of sign. No, it’s just some times were different from others. Take care of this here. Forget about that, there’s the band now. They like what they see. They choose what they see. They’ve created you. Be a sport.
“Okay,” J.K. agreed sulkily. “Guess I play with this dude Striker ’steada watch the paint flake off my ceiling.”
“Sheckair,” said Rahim, with unusual softness, “this is worst idea you ever have. You don want this boy in your band. You remember I warn you later and feel vedy