Читать книгу: «Checker and the Derailleurs»

Foreboding overcame Eaton Striker well before The Derailleurs began to play. Much as Eaton would have preferred to chum obliviously with his friends, he could only stare at the stage as the drummer stepped up to those ramshackle Leedys and the damned skins began to purr.

“Who is that?” asked Eaton, not sure he really wanted to know. The drummer percolated on his throne, never still, bloop, bloop, like coffee in the morning—that color; that welcome.

“Checker Secretti,” said Brinkley, with irritating emphasis. “Where have you been, the moon?”

“He’s talking to his traps!” exclaimed Eaton, in whose disturbed imagination the instruments were answering back.

“Yeah, he did that last time,” said Brinkley the Expert. “Checker’s a bit touched, if you ask me.”

“I didn’t.” Eaton slouched in his chair.

The humidity here was curiously high. A plumbing problem in the basement dripped right on the heater, so the whole club felt like a steam room—there was actually a slight fog; vapor beaded on the windowpanes. A proliferation of candles sent soft, flickering profiles against the walls. With its vastly unremarkable decor, Eaton couldn’t explain the crawling effect of the place as he nestled down in the seductively comfortable chair, taking deeper, slower breaths and saying nicer things to his friends. Eaton squirmed. He tried to sit up straight. He looked suspiciously into his Johnnie Walker, thinking, Black, hah! since places like this bought gallons of Vat 69 and funneled it into name-brand bottles. Yet this was confoundingly good whiskey, some of the best he’d ever tasted. The waitress, though definite woof-woof material at first glance, now looked pretty. Eaton felt he was drowning and fought violently to rise to the surface, to breathe cold, hard air, to hear his own voice with its familiar steeliness, instead of the mushy, underwater murmur it had acquired since they’d sat down.

The drums sounded so eager, so excited. Checker laid a stick, once, bip, on the snare and it jumped; so did Eaton. Every time a quick rat-tat rang through the room, the audience looked up; the waitress turned brightly to the stage. When Checker nudged the bass to adjust the blanket curled inside its shell, women at tables stroked their own hair; men extended languorously into the aisles. The beater sent a shudder through the length of Eaton’s body.

Eaton had been taking drum lessons from an expensive instructor in Manhattan since he was seven, and though he hardly ever heard a song that was fully to his liking, when that rare riff floated over the airways a cut above the ordinary fill, he took notice. Eaton was a snob, and would admit it to anyone, but in some ways he really was better than these people, rightfully not at home in provincial Astoria. He was bright; he had an uncanny sense of other people, even if it was largely for their failings; and he knew excellence. So while somewhere in the boy’s mind he was aware that he didn’t hear it when he himself played, he was hearing it now.

The first phrase rose and fell like a breath. Sticks rippled like muscle, and teased, tingling, resting on the edge of the ride. Again, Eaton involuntarily inhaling with them, the blond sticks curled up to the snare and spread to the toms, the crash, to ting, ting, ting … Someone laughed. Checker skimmed his tips across the supple ridges of the brass, raising the long, dark hairs on Eaton’s arms. Yet Eaton could see Checker was just loosening up, ranging around the drums as if stretching at the start of a day. He kept low through the whole of “Frozen Towels.” Slowly through “Fresh Batteries,” though a strange blissful smile crept onto his face, and the music began to move underneath like lava with a crust on top—the cooler surface would crack in places, show red, let out steam; all at once the music would move forward, rushing into the club like a flow, veined with the sure signs of a dangerous interior. The keyboardist had to stand up, pushing his chair back; the musicians out front gradually stepped away to give the drums more space, until, there, pouring from the back of the stage, came an unrestrained surge of rhythm like a red wall of melted rock.

Yet later Checker slowed the lava, the blood, to a sly trickle. The restraint hurt to hear. The rest of the band, too, retreated to small, stingy sounds. The club grew stupendously quiet. Not a drink clinked, not a shoe scuffled. The sax thinned to a spidery thread of a note; the keyboard took to a small high chord; the bassist and lead guitarist hugged their instruments selfishly to their bodies, and no sooner struck a note than took it back. But quietest of all were the drums, pattering, the sticks like fingertips, until Checker was no longer on the heads themselves but only on the rims, ticking, rapid, but receding all the more. The audience was leaning forward, barely breathing. But the sound, meanly, left them, though it was a good five seconds before they realized that the band had ceased to play.

In the midst of this silence Checker began to laugh. “Clap, you sons of bitches!” And they did.

Eaton excused himself to go to the men’s room. He leaned over the sink, bracing his hands on either side of the porcelain, panting. Looking up in the mirror, he found his usually handsome, narrow face pasty, with sweat at the hairline. Eaton leaned against the wall with his eyes closed and waited there through the entire break.

For the second set, Eaton could listen more clinically. He noted the tunes were original and several had to do with bicycling, of all things, like the name of the band: “Cotterless Cranks,” “Big Bottom Bracket,” “Flat without a Patchkit on the Palisades” “Cycle Killer” and “Blue Suede Brakeshoes.” Or “Perpendicular Grates,” to which Eaton caught most of the words:

Don’t jump your red tonight,

You big yellow Checker.

I’m coming through the light

At its last yellow flicker.

Shine your bulging brights

Right into my reflectors.

Listen close and you might

Hear my freewheel ticker-ticker.

Hey, city slickers:

Lay perpendicular grates!

Chuck those rectangular plates!

One pothole on Sixth Avenue

Goes all the way to China.

I am a midtown

Pedal pusher.

I am a traffic

Bushwhacker.

My brakes are clogged

With little children.

Greasy strays

Keep my gears workin’.

Doggies, watch your tails;

Old ladies, hold your bladders.

Scarvy starlets, trim your sails

Or choke on Isadora tatters.

Better step back to the curb—

Enough women are battered.

Brave Lolitas, round the curve,

You don’t want to be flatter.

Hey, hard-hatters:

Lay perpendicular grates!

Chuck those rectangular plates!

One pothole on Sixth Avenue

Goes all the way to China.

I am a midtown

Pedal-pusher.

I am a traffic

Bushwhacker.

My brakes are clogged

With little children.

Greasy strays

Keep my gears workin’ …

Eaton told himself that songs about bicycling were silly. He even managed to turn to Brinkley between tunes and advise him, “You know, technically, the guy’s a mess.” True, Checker played as if he’d never had a drum lesson in his life. He held his sticks like pencils. Yet Eaton had never seen such terrific independence, for Checker’s hands were like two drastically different children of the same parents—one could read in the corner while the other played football. What was Eaton going to do? Bitchy carping from the sidelines wouldn’t improve matters. And everyone looked so happy! The band and the audience together swayed on the tide of Checker Secretti’s rolling snare. How does he do it? Even the little singer, a perpetually dolorous girl by all appearances, had a quiet glow, like a night-light. Eaton actually wondered for one split second, since he knew percussion better than anyone in the club, why he wasn’t the happiest person here. But that moment passed, and had such a strange quality that he didn’t even retain a memory of it, until Eaton was left at the end of the last set wishing to plant Plato’s and everyone in it three miles deep in the Atlantic, safely buried below schools of barracuda, in airtight drums like toxic waste.

Yet, more or less, Eaton had decided what to do.

After the applause and catcalls had died down, Eaton turned to Brinkley and said severely, “Brink, you dungwad, you told me that Secretti was okay.”

“I didn’t say he, like, raised the dead or anything.”

“Could’ve been playing trash cans with chopsticks,” said Gilbert. “Not like Eat here. Now, Eat’s a drummer.”

“Uh-huh,” said Eaton, turning to Rad. “And what did you make of Secretti?”

Rad twisted a little. During the performance he’d been nodding his head and tapping the table with the heel of his beer. “Bang, bang. Another local band. They’ll be gone soon. The world won’t have changed much.”

Eaton surveyed his compatriots in silence. All three of them were nervous and weren’t sure why. “So you three”—Eaton rolled the ice around his glass—“think he sucks? Basically?”

They shuffled and nodded.

“Then you all have dicks for brains.”

“What?” they asked in unison.

“The man is brilliant. Steve Gadd raised to a goddamned power. One fresh piece of cake in a pile of stale Astoria corn muffins and you guys don’t know the difference.”

“But you said technically he’s a mess—”

“Unorthodox. May not have much training. All the more impressive, then. The man’s a genius.”

Eaton’s three henchmen were staring at their friend as if he’d just announced he was giving up rock and roll for polka music.

“Yeah, well,” said Brinkley. “I said he was okay, right?”

“Okay!” Eaton rolled his eyes and stood up. “With this crowd I need drink.” He walked away and didn’t come back.

“That was exemplary.”

Plato’s may never have heard the word “exemplary” before; its syllables queered against the walls.

“I was humbled,” Eaton went on, bent formally at the waist, as if he’d watched too much Masterpiece Theatre. “You’re a giant. And far better than these people know.”

“I think they know us just fine,” said Checker, looking disconcerted. Compliments made him queasy. Checker himself didn’t think about the way he played. He didn’t want to, either.

“You’re better than you know,” Eaton pressed. “It’s time someone told you. So, please.” Eaton handed Checker his card. “I know the names of some club owners in Manhattan. Or if you need anything at all, please call. Good night, all.” With a quick flourish Eaton made a swift departure. After all, he wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep this up.

In the defined caste of high school, Eaton Striker had played a precise role, exactly shy of stardom. He passed that crucial test: more students knew his name than he knew theirs. He was The Drummer, and relished sitting in the cafeteria with a drumstick stuck behind his ear, ticking paradiddles on his tray with silverware. Yet while his traps and his rock bands saved him from obscurity, they didn’t secure him quite the premier position he felt he deserved. There was always one more table next to his where every student yearned to sit, and they’d settle for Eaton’s only when the first was full.

In every area Eaton was plagued with not-quiteness. There was a particular lancet-witted brunette, Stephanie, whose quips in his direction prickled his skin like the sting of a slap, but that was all the tribute he could win from her; on the other hand, Stephanie’s slightly less attractive, slightly less sharp best friend showed up for every one of Eaton’s early gigs. Now, he did finally acquiesce and take Charlotte as his girlfriend, enjoying the pleasant lopsidedness of the relationship—she typed his papers and packed his drums and ruined a perfectly good denim jacket with embroidery as a “surprise.” All he had to do in return was treat her badly, for which Eaton seemed to have been born with a certain gift. But seeing Charlotte with first prize was torture. Eaton was dating the kewpie doll while someone else was wrapped around the big stuffed bear.

All second prizes are insults. Eaton believed that. When in the senior talent show his band, Nuclear War, was awarded second place, Eaton strode from the stage and in front of the whole assembly stuffed the certificate perfunctorily in a trash can. When Eaton’s cronies nominated him for student council office, it was for vice president; he lost to a girl.

Even Eaton’s grades were never perfectly straight-A. There was always one teacher who had it in for him in one of those mealy subjects—English, social studies—where the teacher’s feeble judgment came into play. Eaton preferred math—his work was right or wrong, whether or not the instructor despised him. For while Eaton was never directly insolent, his sly, grimly bemused expression nagged his teachers like a persistent hangnail. Whenever they talked to him after class he turned his head to watch them out of the corners of his eyes, his responses laconic; he always seemed to indicate that a great deal was being left unsaid. On any point of conflict his teachers quickly abandoned personal appeals and fell back on brisk legalistic resolutions.

These were uneasy relationships. Eaton’s intelligence would never redound to his teachers’ glory. Rather, each would shine at the expense of the other. That was the stanchion of Eaton’s world view, and it was contagious.

So Eaton was the hero of the B+ students, revered by the type in elementary school picked third or fourth for a kickball team of ten. Burdened by Eaton’s disappointment, his following had a high turnover; his rock bands were always breaking up. At the moment, out of school over half a year now, Eaton was once more without a band, and it was harder to assemble a new one without high school; he paged through the ads in the SoHo News listlessly on Saturday afternoons. Eaton yearned for caliber. The idea of collecting one more second-rate rock band filled him with a precocious exhaustion.

That Eaton would end up at Plato’s was inevitable. By January he had been actively avoiding the place, spending Friday nights instead at Billy’s Pub, Grecian Gardens, Taverna 27, bars that never managed to persuade you they were anything more than rooms with bottles, full of bowlers and plumbers all too eager to confide the trials of the kind of life Eaton planned to transcend. Yet even Taverna 27 was better than the chromier corners, decorated like Alexander’s at Christmas and cranking out Van Halen on the juke, cramped with high-school juniors constantly combing their hair. Eaton was only nineteen, but he’d said goodbye to all that.

There was always Manhattan, but Eaton hated coming back at four in the morning on the subway with all the plebes who couldn’t afford a car. Eaton couldn’t afford a car, either, but he was the kind of person who really should have been able to, and a pretty damned nice car at that. (Eaton’s sense of justice was frequently confounded. Eaton should have X and Eaton did have Y, and the disparity didn’t anger him exactly—his reaction was deeper than that. It disturbed him. When Eaton didn’t get what he deserved, he felt the earth—move—under his feet—Carole King. Yich.) In the city, scrunched against the bar with his friends, Eaton would slip the straw of his screwdriver between a gap in his teeth, having to repeat three times over the music how these clubs were “tedious,” though he privately considered them far more evil than that—the heaving, shifting mass of dancers would undulate and suck against him like some lowlife sea creature, swallowing him in anonymity, digesting him alive and spitting his remains out the door at three, forty dollars poorer.

Furthermore, Eaton was underage, and though he usually cooled his way past the bouncer by paying the cover with an unusually large bill, Eaton craved legitimation. He hated being nineteen. He remembered with humiliation the other night at Van Dam’s, when the thirtyish man beside him had asked him, as a drummer, what did he think of “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida”?

“Amusing, but finally bogus. I didn’t go along with the brouhaha over the album when it first came out.”

“Come on!” said the man. “It came out in ’68! You were listening to Iron Butterfly when you were one?”

Eaton couldn’t wait to turn thirty and do the same thing to kids sitting next to him. In the meantime, he listened to the radio with a pencil, and haunted the aisles of Tower Records like a law student in the stacks, studying jackets like torts, reading the fine print—dates, producers. He put together histories of who left what band and started this one, reading Rolling Stone cover to cover, determined never to be caught out by aging rock has-beens in Manhattan again.

Eaton yearned for a club where patrons knocked him on the shoulder and cleared room for him at the bar, where the waitresses knew him by name and remembered his liquor brands. Eaton liked to be recognized, and Astoria should have been the place for that; a small-towny Greek neighborhood in Queens with friendly shopkeepers and good-old-boy bars, Astoria would transplant easily to the middle of Iowa. Eaton’s failure to carve a niche even here was one more of those disconcerting challenges to his stature, for if he went to the same bar several nights running, Eaton would sure enough get recognized, but no one seemed very happy to see him.

Besides, everyone said Plato’s was “good,” though the word had put Eaton off distinctly. They said it the way you’d say a “good woman,” meaning ugly. Plato’s was a “good club” the way you’d say Jerusalem was good, somewhere in the Bible.

The following Friday night Eaton kept putting on his coat and taking it off again. He’d flounce in a chair, tap his fingers, turn up the radio—Journey. Awful. Off. Tap, tap, tap. Finally, he grabbed the cashmere once and for all and rushed out the door.

Gliding in with his crew, Eaton glanced hastily around the club; when he failed to find what he was looking for, his stomach sank, just as it had when Charlotte showed up at his gigs without Stephanie. The place suddenly felt flat. This time, Eaton wondered why he’d concerned himself with Plato’s at all—low-lit and woody, with no track lighting or rippling bulbs around the bar, the club made no effort at any kind of effect. Furthermore, at almost midnight, there was no music. Maybe The Derailleurs were on a break, but if so they couldn’t have bubbled anybody’s hormones—the immediate feeling of the crowd was subdued, even depressed. No one was talking very loud, and everyone seemed sober.

“This place is sure different from last time,” said Brinkley.

“This isn’t a club, it’s a morgue!” said Gilbert.

They sat in the corner, refreshingly disgusted.

“I thought there was supposed to be live music here,” Eaton charged the waitress.

She sighed. “Well, it’s happened again. You know. Check. Maybe next week. Maybe even tomorrow.”

“You lost me.”

She looked at Eaton more closely. “Oh, you’re new here, aren’t you?”

“I have to be a member?”

“No, it’s just regulars are used to this. Checker—disappears.” Raising her eyes enigmatically, she swished her tray to the next table.

That explained it, for the rest of The Derailleurs were all propped at the front table. Breathing in her cloying wake reminded Eaton of passing cosmetics counters, with their nauseating reek of mixed perfumes.

Standing abruptly in the middle of Brinkley and Gilbert’s riveting debate over tequila-salt-lemon vs. tequila-lemon-salt, Eaton swirled his black cashmere greatcoat around his shoulders and strode to the lead guitar.

“Not playing tonight?” Eaton inquired.

“Our head man just won an all-expenses-paid trip to Florida,” said the blond longhair dourly.

“That’s surprising, for a band with your reputation—”

“What have you heard about The Derailleurs?” asked the straight kid, whose ears stuck out from his head.

“We don’t need to hear about The Derailleurs, Howard,” said the longhair. “We are The Derailleurs. We know all about us already.”

“I was wondering,” said Eaton, “since your delinquent member—”

“Nobody said he a delinquent,” said the big black bassist.

“Your man in Florida, then.”

“Our man,” said the bassist firmly, “period.”

Eaton took a breath and smiled. “Of course. It’s just, I’ve kicked around the drums myself. I’m only so good, but if you stuck to covers I could keep a steady three-four. I wouldn’t presume to equal your own stunning percussionist. But for the hell of it, maybe I could fill in?” Eaton looked gamely around the table.

“As the manager—” Howard began.

“Howard listens,” said the guitarist.

“Would he like to listen tonight?” asked Eaton solicitously.

“No.”

They turned toward the end of the table. The Middle Eastern saxophonist had folded his arms. “We half our drummer.”

“On the contrary,” said Eaton, “it seems that you don’t.”

“You say you not so good. Why we play with you, not-so-good?”

“Excuse me, but can he understand me? I see we have some second-language problems here.”

“Rrreal fine, slime mold,” said the saxophonist for himself.

“Aw, can it, Hijack,” said the bassist. “Check on vacation, pull this night out somehow. Let’s play.” Rolling to a stand, he led the rest of the band to the dais.

Eaton took his seat on the throne and pulled his own drumsticks out of his greatcoat. He tested the tom and it went thwap! What? The heads were completely loosened—and no wonder. Calf skins! There wasn’t a rock drummer in this country who used calf skins. With annoyance, Eaton went through the tedious process of racheting the lugs tight and testing around the rim to get them even. Somehow they—resisted. The heads weren’t interested in attaining the tautness Eaton required.

Eaton tried the tuning with a snappy run around the pieces. God, what a pile of tin cans. The hardware rattled. There was a buzz in the bass. And the whole set was ancient, big band or before, though Eaton did admire the Zildjian-K’s—you hardly ever saw those nowadays, hand-hammered Armenian cymbals, exquisitely thin. Even the ride rang with a long resonant shimmer at the touch of his stick, though to Eaton’s taste they were a little oversensitive; they—winced. He eyed the set; it seemed to eye him back. But Eaton knew how to discipline inanimate objects. Whenever his possessions broke, which was often, he imagined he was getting the last laugh.

“Boys and girls, you may have heard we’ve been caught out Checkless,” the lanky guitarist began. “However, with a volunteer from our studio audience, we’ll proceed. In consideration of our guest, only familiar favorites, please.”

When they began with “Louie, Louie,” the whole band had their ears cocked for Eaton’s drumming, though that proved unnecessary—they could barely hear anything else. The guitarist forced his voice; the bassist turned up his level; the keyboardist, something of a delicate touch the weekend before, torqued up his electric piano. When Hijack opened into a sax solo, Eaton bore down all the more, until the horn player was inserting the mic in his bell.

At the end of the song, the saxophonist turned to Eaton behind him. “You break Sheckair’s head,” he said quietly, “I break yours.”

As they grated through Hard Cheese’s “Two Is a Crowd” and on to “Johnny B. Good,” Eaton pushed the tempo when the lead slowed down; he dragged just as the bass thrummed forward. Because drums set the standard, this left the musicians out front sounding out of sync. Further, even when the band was playing together, they all rushed toward the song’s conclusion, as if to end was to win, as if the reason to play it was to get it over with. And it wasn’t only Eaton, either. They all lashed their instruments, spitting the words out like projectiles they hoped would hit someone on the head. You got the feeling that after listening to a song like that Johnny would be very, very bad.