Dervis told me he wanted to “sleep on it” but after lunch, he’d already had an answer for me, so I guess he napped on his lunch break. He was not going to let me come back. His feeling was, “Yeah, sorry, you can’t go on vacation for two months and expect to keep your job.” I tried explaining that a tour is not a vacation. For bands like mine, it’s a bad dream. It’s dying of boredom in a van with no A/C surrounded by people with no communication skills, and the van dies daily, and you finally get to your gig and you’re going on way later than you thought, and even though you might have a few fans scattered about, no one’s dying to watch your set, so there’s a nagging feeling of futility and despair that you drink heavily to escape, knowing that tomorrow will be the exact same except now you’ll be hungover.
So why do I bother? Because the alternative is I stay in this warehouse and keep working for Hal Dervis. What can I say, I still think our band’s gonna be huge.
Friday was my last day and I left without a goodbye to anyone. Every one of my co-workers is either a divorced mom or the delinquent son of one of those moms. I don’t know how the trend started of the moms bringing their scary sons on board, but the sons sure do make their presence felt. They took over the radio so that there is always nu metal or countrified rap-rock playing, and if you don’t have anything to say about paintball or Fortnite, you get left out of most conversations. There are also some retired guys supplementing their social security, and a couple dudes in their twenties who are screwing a couple of the moms, unbeknownst to the sons. I don’t have anything against any of these people, I just never had anything to say to them and that includes “goodbye.” I did catch Dervis’s eye on my way out and gave him a vaguely threatening look, one I hope communicated, “You are a punk and a lowlife and no one on earth will remember you when you are gone. Working for you has sucked.”
As I was getting into my car, I saw Kurt across the lot—he was smoking a cig by the loading dock—and I felt a rush of guilt. I’d needed work desperately a few months back, and even though we were barely speaking, Kurt hadn’t hesitated to get me this job. Sure, all he’d had to do was ask his dad (yep, the Rod Korver of Rod Korver Hospitality Supplies), but still, he asked. And in all the three months or so that I worked in the warehouse, I’d never once gone to the offices next door to check in on Kurt and see how the social media management was coming along (poorly, I figured, since Kurt has no social media skills and his dad only gave him the job so he could put something on his resume that’s not Dairy Queen or Pizza Hut).
I felt I owed it to Kurt now to go tell him I was leaving, though I couldn’t imagine him caring and really didn’t want to talk to him.
“Hey man!” I said as I approached, big fake smile on my face.
He answered, “Yo,” in a low voice, almost a moan, smoke leaking out of his head. He looked philosophical, brooding, but sort of consciously brooding, as if playing the part of “guy with stuff on his mind.” It didn’t suit him.
“Wanted you to know it’s my last day,” I said.
“Shit, really?”
I told him about Dervis calling my tour a vacation. Then I told him about the tour. Then I asked if I’d told him about it already. Then I thought, Why the fuck did I ask that? I knew I hadn’t told him and that he wouldn’t want to hear about it. But it used to be all we talked about, music stuff. Going on tour was a dream we’d once shared. Now I was living it and he was not, would never.
Kurt put out his cigarette and said, “You’ll get your job back. Don’t worry about Dervis, fuck him.” It seemed pointed that he made no mention of the tour I had just mentioned.
I could tell something was wrong but couldn’t bring myself to ask. We’d spent lots of time together but never discussed feelings, or anything very personal, unless drunk. I don’t know who’s to blame for that. I think I’m a sensitive guy, in touch with my emotions and whatnot. Girls I’ve dated have told me I am, anyway. But I was never in touch with Kurt’s emotions.
Not knowing what else to say to him, I asked, “Do you wanna hang before I leave?”
He hesitated, then mumbled, “Sure.” Pissed me off that he didn’t seem to care either way, when I thought me asking him to hang was a huge deal since we hadn’t in so long and I didn’t even want to. Maybe it sounded to him that I was inviting him to celebrate the start of another My Favourite Bastard tour, to toast my success. So I added, “Been a while.”
“I know,” he said. “Are you asking to hang out because of what’s happening with my folks?”
“Huh? What about your folks?”
“They’ve separated. My dad’s fucking one of the sales ladies.”
“Jesus, are you serious? What the fuck?”
He told me Mr. K.’s been seeing this lady—I don’t know which lady—for like six months. His mom found out a few weeks ago and he doesn’t know where his dad’s staying.
“I gotta quit this fucking job,” he said. “I have to see him every day and act like…but what can I do? Go back to Pizza Hut?”
“How’s your mom?”
“Not good.”
“Fucking dads,” I said. Not sure why I said that. My dad’s probably the most supportive person in my life, and because he toiled so long in shit jobs before finally opening his own restaurant at 46, I still believe I can have a music career and he believes it too. Kurt knows all this and probably resented me saying “fucking dads” as if we were in the same Sons of Shitty Dads support group.
“Look,” I said, “you have social media experience, you can tweet for whoever.”
“There’s more to it than tweeting. You have to know SEO and all that.”
“What’s SEO?”
“I don’t know. Fuck! I’m so stupid.”
“You’re not,” I said, putting my hand on his shoulder. How odd it felt to do that. When had I last touched the guy’s shoulder, or shaken his hand even? Had we ever hugged? We must have, at some point. Probably while wasted.
Kurt said, “Well, I’m around tonight if you want to come over. My dad left all his booze in the basement, the real top-shelf bottles.”
This excited me. I had sorry thoughts about Kurt’s family situation, but those thoughts were outshined by excited thoughts of drinking Macallan 12 Single Malt in his basement. I also had a guitar I’d left there years ago and it’d be nice to have it back. It’s an Ibanez, this sparkly blue junker I got for a couple hundred.
“Dude, I’m there,” I said.
Kurt and I met in high school, started a band, played together almost weekly in his parents’ basement, planning to tour the world as a guitar-and-drums duo like the White Stripes or the Black Keys, only we wouldn’t suck. We were called the Gray Slits. I loved that name. It meant nothing, but I liked that it was ambiguously offensive. My dad asked me if it was a reference to old ladies’ vaginas (it wasn’t, but I liked the idea of people thinking it was).
I played guitar and Kurt played drums. He wasn’t amazing but I knew my playing was good enough that he didn’t need to be. And I was fairly sure I had charisma, which sounds weird to say, but now that I’m in My Favourite Bastard I’ve had people confirm that I have onstage charisma. Not enough to take the focus off Melanie, our singer, but people look at me.
The Gray Slits never played a show. Coming up with the name was the first and final order of official Gray Slits business. Everything beyond that was talk. Kurt seemed content to jam and fantasize forever; I was desperate to be in a real band, so I found one. But after joining My Favourite Bastard I still had occasional practices with Kurt, which were awful. I’d conjure some workaday riff (my best ideas went to Bastard) and Kurt, knowing my allegiances lay elsewhere, would half-heartedly play along until we were both drunk enough on Bass Ale to quit for the night and go play NBA Jam.
Then one night he got up from his drums and, without a word, left his own basement through the sliding glass door, got in his car, and drove away. When he came back 45 minutes later I was upstairs in the living room, eating Cheetos and watching Everybody Loves Raymond with Kurt’s mom (many of our practices ended with us watching CBS programming with Mrs. K. so it wasn’t weird that I was doing this).
I said, “Where’d you go?” Trying to be nonchalant.
He said, “Just drove around.” He took a seat on the couch and we watched the episode in silence. During commercials, he said, “I don’t know what we’re doing down there anymore. I think I’m having a bad time. Aren’t you?”
It was our final practice.
We stopped hanging out, too. Things got busy with my band and Kurt went to work for his father. Sometimes I’d lay awake wondering why Kurt seemed to take for granted that he could keep my Ibanez. Then I’d think about Kurt and his lack of ambition and I’d become inexplicably furious. Eventually, I stopped thinking about him. Then one day after a tour in which I lost pretty much all my savings I called him and asked if his dad might be hiring warehouse guys, and here we are.
I pulled up to his house at about 7:30. I sat in my car a few minutes, suddenly having second thoughts about going in, about seeing Mrs. Korver looking all spurned and betrayed. What’s the appropriate way to act around your ex-best-friend’s mom who’s just been spurned by her husband who is your boss? It would have been a good idea to have a couple beers before coming here, and I wished I had a bottle of something tucked under the seat or in the glove box.
But when she opened the door, I just wanted to hug her. She looked the same as always: cheerful, put-together, delighted to see me. She wasn’t on a six-day bender, shuffling around in pajamas with her hair in a huge ratty mess. Maybe she’d been doing those things but had put herself together knowing I was coming.
“Sammy!” she cried, bringing her hands together. “Where have you been?”
We caught up. She’s still at the same veterinary clinic. She asked about my band, I said it was going fine, though I made sure to portray tour life as bleak. We got to the kitchen and Kurt came up from the basement. I felt disappointed to see him then. I’d been enjoying Mrs. K, who, if she was depressed, at least put on a happy face, whereas Kurt looked almost petulantly glum.
Mrs. K. offered us wine and I really wanted to stay with her, but Kurt said, “We’re going downstairs.”
“Come with us,” I said.
“No,” she said, laughing. “I hate it down there.”
Kurt went downstairs without another word and when he was gone Mrs. K. poured me some wine and said, “Take a glass anyhow.”
Everything was pretty much the same in the basement. Boxes piled up, pieces of old furniture, and Kurt’s champagne-colored DW drums, the most beautiful kit I’ve ever seen. I hate to think of them not being played, just wasting away in Kurt’s basement. I ran my finger along one of the cymbals and showed Kurt the dust.
“Not practicing much?” I asked.
“What for?”
“Fun? Or just to stay on top of it?”
“Nah, one day, maybe.”
“It’s a beautiful kit, you know, if you ever wanted to—”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll get back into it,” Kurt said. “Hey wanna see the bar? You’ve never seen it.”
I’d been scanning the room for my Ibanez. I’d left it in its stand right by the drums. Where was it? I followed Kurt to the bar, figuring I’d ask about it after a couple Macallans.
The new bar was not new anymore. There was a big mirror that had a huge decal of the mascot from the college Mr. K. went to, and there was this long crack along the mascot’s chest. The floor tiling looked dirty. And there was a clear plastic bowl, half-filled with an obviously stale salad of Cheetos, ridged potato chips, and pretzel sticks, in the corner. I said, “I take it that’s not a snack you just whipped up.”
“Oh fuck!” Kurt said. He was looking at the shelves next to the mascot. “Where’s all the…dude, where the fuck is the good shit? Mom!” He bolted upstairs. I looked at the shelves and I saw what he meant. There really was no good shit. No Macallan 12, no Lagavulin, no Johnnie Walker Blue, or even Johnnie Walker Black. What remained was Seagram’s, Dewar’s, Jim Beam, Evan Williams, Wild Turkey—how had all this rotgut accumulated? Why would Mr. K. have this crap to begin with?
I drank the rest of the wine Mrs. K. had given me and looked at my phone. There were new messages in the My Favourite Bastard group chat.
Melanie: Hey Bastard bros! So psyched for the tour kickoff! Looks like we can leave a couple hours late tomorrow since we’re not scheduled to play in Cincinnati until like midnight. Also I’ve been listening to this Cyndi Lauper song and we NEED to cover it!
Chip: I love Cyndi! And great news about Cinci!
Richard: [surf’s up emoji]
I put my phone away. I didn’t want to leave late and play a show at midnight. I felt exhausted just thinking about that. And I didn’t want to learn a fucking Cyndi Lauper song. I was growing tired of Melanie’s whims and relentless chipper attitude.
Kurt came back looking defeated. “It’s gone,” he said, “he took it all. Came one day to get his golf clubs and other shit and apparently took the good booze as well.”
He went behind the bar to take a frowning inventory. He got the Wild Turkey bottle and showed it to me, displaying it like a sommelier presenting a rare Bordeaux.
“I got him this. He said I was drinking too much of his scotch and needed to contribute something.”
“And you contributed Wild Turkey?”
“The price was right.”
“It isn’t scotch.”
“I don’t know much about whiskey.”
“Wild Turkey’s not a great one.”
Kurt then sort of slammed the bottle down. I was surprised it didn’t break.
“He left it as a fuck-you to me,” he said. “There’s no other way to see it.”
“He probably just doesn’t like bourbon,” I said, but Kurt’s theory was just as likely. Anyway, not leaving the Macallan 12 or even one nice bottle was the real fuck you.
“Not much of a bar now. See that mirror? My dad had his friends over to watch the Rose Bowl and they got shit-faced and one of them, probably my dad, fell into it. There was blood. My mom had to clean it.”
When he mentioned the Rose Bowl, I was reminded of something, and I probably shouldn’t have brought it up but I was feeling bad.
“Remember like five Rose Bowls ago? We had the chance to play that college party at Pete’s, but you chickened out once you saw all the people there?” I was trying to laugh about it, but it wasn’t funny to me.
He got quiet. “Yeah,” he finally said. “They were just drunk Abercrombie & Fitch types, they would have hated us.”
“That’s what would have made it fun.”
“Not for me.”
We started drinking heavily. He opened the Wild Turkey and got down two glasses and poured us each a big shot. I quickly downed mine and poured another as he drank his. He made a disgusted face and said, “Okay, I get why Dad left this.”
I agreed it was awful and said, “Let’s try a different one.” I got down the Jim Beam. We had some of that, then the Seagram’s, then Evan Williams. It was all so terrible.
“Why are you still living here, man?” I asked when I was starting to really feel the
booze. “When are you gonna get your own place?”
“You sound like my dad.”
“Why couldn’t you try harder in our band? Why were you so chickenshit?”
“Wasn’t chickenshit. Just didn’t have the desire like you did.”
I was drunk now. The whiskey pours were getting longer. My thoughts returned to the Ibanez, and I thought of a clever way of asking Kurt to find it.
“We should jam,” I said.
“Jam?” he repeated like he’d never heard such an idea. I didn’t care for his judgmental tone.
“Yeah. Grab that Ibanez I left here. We’ll fuck around.”
He looked troubled and weird. “I’ve never heard you say jam,” he said. Which is bullshit, I’ve always said jam. He was trying to hurt me. “So that’s what you do in your band, jam?”
“Yes, we jam, Kurt. It’s how bands write songs.”
“That’s cool, don’t get offended.”
“Well don’t get sour.”
He laughed. “Yo, listen—”
“And what’s with the yo? You never used to say yo. What’s with that?” (And actually he used to say yo quite a bit but it always seemed unnatural and I never called him on that, so this was my way of finally calling him on it and getting him back for saying I never say jam.)
He said, “I’m not sour about your band or anything to do with you at all.”
“So you’re not at all sour about me being in a touring band and you doing SEO for your father while not knowing what SEO is?” I felt cruel saying that so I laughed to ease the blow. But the laugh sounded cruel, too.
“It’s a job, so what. I’m sorry being in a band wasn’t my calling.”
“Social media is your calling, then.”
“I don’t have a calling.” Then he called me a dickhead under his breath.
After a tense period of quiet, I asked, “Where is that Ibanez, anyway?”
He took a deep breath and sighed, not looking at me. “The Ibanez isn’t here. I gave it to my mom.”
“Your mom plays guitar now?”
“I gave it to her for her church drive.”
“Church drive. As in, a sale?”
“To raise money for the church, yes.”
“Why did you give my Ibanez to your mom to sell at her church?”
“She asked if I had any stuff to donate and—you were never gonna come get that thing, come on. You always said it’s a piece of shit.”
“But it was my piece of shit. I was keeping it here, but—”
“You left it here.”
“Maybe I liked knowing it was here.”
He didn’t get that and neither did I because hadn’t I hated knowing it was here in his basement? I kept talking: “Maybe that kept us connected in my mind. As long as your drums and my guitar were here, it meant…”
We heard glass break above us—Mrs. K.’s wine glass. We looked at each other then ran upstairs, which was unnecessary, as Mrs. K. probably knew how to handle broken glass, but I think we wanted to escape the awkward moment we’d found ourselves in.
She already had the dustpan out and was saying, “Relax, relax, I’m just a klutz, it’s fine.” But it was clear from her concentrated, ineffective sweeping style that she was in bad shape, maybe as drunk as us.
“You okay, Mrs. K?” I asked.
“Fine,” she said, standing with the dustpan despite several glass shards still shining on the tile.
“Careful,” I said.
“She’s fine,” Kurt said. “Let’s go.”
But I didn’t want to go back downstairs. I thought I’d call a cab or go sober up in my car, even take a long walk by myself. Mrs. K. dumped the dustpan out into the wastebasket while I stood guard over the remaining bits on the floor. In the joining living room, I could see the TV was showing a trailer for a new Sonic the Hedgehog movie. It looked cozy in there.
I said, “What’s on?”
“Becker,” she answered automatically, pouring more wine.
“You like Becker?”
She took a big swig of Cabernet. “I love Becker.”
Kurt went downstairs and I suggested he come back with some shitty whiskey and then we could all watch Becker, but he didn’t acknowledge me at all. I swept the remaining glass and then joined Mrs. K. on the couch as the Becker theme song started.
“Damn, this guitar part really rips,” I said. Mrs. K. laughed. I tried to focus on the show but I worried Kurt wouldn’t come back. Then I was scared he would come back because, unless I was imagining it, Mrs. K. was very close to me on the couch. I turned to her and she was looking at me.
“It’s so nice to have you back here, Sammy,” she said.
“Oh, yes,” I said. “Good. Happy to be here.”
“So, are you seeing anyone now?”
“Uh, no, not at the moment.”
It seemed our faces were nearly touching. I’d never had fantasies about Mrs. K. and never in my right mind would try to kiss a friend’s, or even an ex-friend’s, mom, but when drunk I assume anyone this close to me wants me to kiss them, and I’ll kiss anyone. Thank God I had enough presence of mind to snap out of it and look away.
“I should check on Kurt, probably,” I said. She nodded, maybe in disappointment, I couldn’t say. I went downstairs.
He was not at the bar, or in the backroom they used for storage. I called his name, checked the bathroom. I went to the sliding glass door and found it unlocked. I opened it and stepped out into the cold. The Korvers have a lot of property, with woods behind their backyard, and I wondered if Kurt was out there.
“Kurt,” I yelled. Nothing answered. I went around to the front. His car was gone. I called his phone, which went to voicemail. I texted him, Where are you? Don’t be stupid. Trust me, you don’t want a DUI. Seriously. Don’t fuck around like this.
I went back in through the front door and went into the living room and sat beside Mrs. K, putting distance between us this time, but not much, if I’m honest.
“Everything okay?” she asked.
“Kurt’s gone.”
“Oh,” she said. “He’s been doing that a lot. Leaving without a word. I’m sorry. He’ll come back.”
After a few minutes, I put my hand on my leg, but because we were so close it was basically on her leg. My pinky was definitely touching her leg. I felt her looking at me and I was sure that as soon as I turned my head toward her we’d be kissing. Then I turned my head toward her—I was right about her looking at me and, while we did not immediately start kissing, we definitely would if we continued staring at each other like this.
I was drunk enough so I leaned in for it. But then she turned away and cleared her throat. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Sorry, I…I’m going through—you know, and…”
“Don’t be sorry,” I said. “It’s okay.”
She laughed at herself, or maybe at both of us.
“Mrs. K.,” I said.
“You might as well call me Cheryl.”
“Cheryl…”
“What?”
“That guitar Kurt gave you, the blue Ibanez? You sold it at your church drive? mine. I really want it back. Do you have the details of who bought it? I’ll buy it back if the guy wants. Is there a record of who bought it?”
“What’re you talking about, Sammy?”
“The guitar. You sold it at your church.”
“I didn’t sell a guitar,” she said. “No.”
“Yeah, you did. The blue Ibanez? Kurt said—”
“He has a guitar in his room,” she said. “I know that. He’s been learning to play it.”
I looked at the ceiling as if I’d be able to see into Kurt’s room. “Is it blue?”
She shrugged.
I excused myself and went across the room to the stairs.
I hadn’t seen Kurt’s bedroom in years; it felt like a violation of his privacy to go in there without him. But him keeping my Ibanez and lying about selling it at a church drive was a way bigger violation, I think. But then also, I’d tried to kiss his mom, so we were probably square.
The room was oppressively messy. I had to wait for my vision to adjust as there was so much crap on the floor vying for my attention. But quickly enough my eyes found the Ibanez. It was on the rug by his bed tangled up in some shirts. I picked it up, feeling victorious for a moment, then suddenly despondent. I put the strap over my shoulder and checked the tuning. It really was a piece of shit, this guitar. But it’s what I’d come here for and I wasn’t leaving without it—which seemed so pathetic, that I couldn’t just leave it. But I couldn’t.
I started walking back downstairs with the guitar still strapped over my shoulder. Mrs. K. saw me like that and immediately laughed, which was appropriate as I looked like I was about to burst into an emotional staircase guitar solo.
She stood and came toward me. We met at the bottom of the stairs. She put her hands on my chest, her right hand moving under the guitar strap. I hadn’t realized before how much taller than her I was.
“Found it,” I said.
She launched her head at mine, kissed me. An ungentle, hard kiss, her tongue lashing inside my mouth. It was weirdly unsettling and arousing at the same time. I felt disgusted with myself and with her a bit as well—what a betrayal of Kurt—and yet I really wanted to see where this would go. I started putting my hands anywhere I wanted—her body, her face, her hair. This was insane.
The front door opened.
“I’m back,” I heard Kurt say. “Now we can party.”
Mrs. K. darted back to the sofa and was almost sitting down when he got to the room. Kurt was holding up a bottle of Macallan 12, which he let drop to his side when he saw us. He looked back and forth between us, his mom breathing heavily and her hair a mess, me probably with lipstick on my face and holding the guitar he’d lied about giving away and all I could think was I wonder if this means he’s not going to share that whiskey.
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