ISSN 1758-6488
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A to B Fiction |
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“I don’t get it, Jules,” Stephanie said. “I don’t get what happened to you.”
Jules stared at the glittering skyline of Lower Manhattan without recognition. “I’m like America,” he said.
Stephanie swung around to look at him, unnerved. “What are you talking about?” she said. “Are you off your meds?”
“Our hands are dirty,” Jules said.
Stephanie parked in a lot on Sixth Avenue, and she and Jules picked their way into Soho through crowds of shoppers holding room-sized bags from Crate and Barrel. “So. Who the hell is this Bosco person?” Jules asked.
“Remember the Conduits? He was the guitarist.”
Jules stopped walking. “That’s who we’re going to see? The guy I met at your wedding? The skinny redhead?”
“Yeah, well. He’s changed a little.”
They turned south on Wooster, heading for Canal. Sunlight skipped off the cobblestones, releasing in Stephanie’s mind a pale balloon of memory: shooting the Conduits’ first album cover on this very street, laughing, jittery, Bosco powdering his freckles while the photographer fiddled. The memory mooned her as she rang Bosco’s bell and waited, praying silently: Please don’t be home please don’t answer please. Then at least the charade part of the day would be over.
No voice on the intercom, just a buzz. Stephanie pushed open the door with a disoriented sense that maybe she had arranged to meet Bosco at ten. Or had she pressed the wrong bell?
They went in and called for the elevator. It took a long time to descend, grinding inside its tube. “Is that thing healthy?” Jules asked.
“You’re welcome to wait down here.”
“Quit trying to get rid of me.”
Bosco was unrecognizable as the scrawny, stovepipe-panted practitioner of a late-eighties sound somewhere between punk and ska, a hive of redheaded mania who had made Iggy Pop look indolent onstage. More than once, club owners had called 911 during Conduits shows, convinced that Bosco was having a seizure.
Nowadays he was huge — from medications, he claimed, both post-cancer and antidepressant — but a glance into his trash can nearly always revealed an empty gallon box of Friendship Rocky Road ice cream. His red hair had devolved into a stringy gray ponytail. An unsuccessful hip replacement had left him with the lurching, belly hoisting walk of a refrigerator on a hand truck. Still, he was awake, dressed — even shaven. The blinds of his loft were up and a tinge of shower humidity hung in the air, pleasantly cut by the smell of brewing coffee.
“I was expecting you at three,” Bosco said.
“I thought we said ten,” Stephanie said, looking inside her purse to avoid his gaze. “Did I get the time wrong?”
Bosco was no fool; he knew she was lying. But he was curious, and his curiosity fell naturally on Jules. Stephanie introduced them.
“It’s an honor,” Jules said gravely.
Bosco scrutinized him for signs of irony before shaking his hand.
Stephanie perched on a folding chair near the black leather recliner where Bosco spent the bulk of his time. It was positioned by a dusty window through which the Hudson River and even a bit of Hoboken were visible. Bosco brought Stephanie coffee and then began a juddering immersion into his chair, which suctioned around him in a gelatinous grip. They were meeting to discuss PR for A to B. Now that Bennie had corporate bosses to answer to, he couldn’t spend a dime on Bosco beyond the cost of producing and shipping his CD. So Bosco paid Stephanie by the hour to act as his publicist and booking agent. These were mostly symbolic titles; he’d been too sick to do much of anything for the last two albums, and his lassitude had been roughly matched by the world’s indifference toward him.
“Whole different story this time,” Bosco began. “I’m going to make you work, Stephi-babe. This album is going to be my comeback.”
Stephanie assumed he was joking. But he met her gaze evenly from within the folds of black leather.
“Comeback?” she asked.
Jules had been wandering the loft, eyeing the framed gold and platinum Conduit albums paving the walls, the few guitars Bosco hadn’t sold off, and his collection of pre-Columbian artifacts, which he hoarded in pristine glass cases and refused to sell. At the word “comeback,” Stephanie felt her brother’s attention suddenly engage.
6
