Checker and the Derailleurs. Lionel Shriver
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went to buying Rahim six-packs, most of his time to finding a minister, rushing pizza slices down Plato’s back stairs before the cheese congealed, and calming Syria after she inflamed at the least inconvenience this odd project cost her. But Checker didn’t mind being busy—he loved all forms of motion. He ran his errands with Zefal, and in January the roads were uncluttered with other cyclists, the air slapping his skin, sharp in his throat. Winter coloration in New York has a subtle palette—the ashen crust of dried salt on macadam, the dun scrub of dead grass in the parks, the dapple of tabloid pages flapping down cracking sidewalks, the flat cardboardy bark of beeches and ginkgos, the leaden loom and pulse of the sky—all these grays, depressing to some, were tender to Checker.
Friday, Kaypro showed up at Plato’s with his saxophone. He’d returned to the club every night that week, on the pretense of doing his job. Eaton, especially, seemed to like talking to the man, scattering their conversation with brands of shells and pedals and guitars, testing Kaypro’s knowledge of obscure bands and backup musicians. Eaton liked to prickle these games with “Of course, at your age …” “You must not get to …” “I don’t suppose you’ve heard of …” Check watched each “your age” hit Kaypro like a little dart. Eaton would casually refer to late-night recording sessions and wild impromptu coke parties by the river, full of spontaneous pranks and backslapping camaraderie. He must have enjoyed the pinched, left-out look on the officer’s face, an expression not even of nostalgia but of pure deprivation—Kaypro’s own youth wouldn’t have been like that, because nobody’s was.
While the agent didn’t seem to mind Eaton, picking up the latest jargon and memorizing the names of hot bands and clubs, he virtually leaped at Checker whenever The Derailleurs’ drummer walked in the room. Yet Checker himself began to avoid the man. The carefully ripped T-shirts the agent appeared in every night embarrassed him, the same way fat people did who insisted on wearing pants three sizes too small. And Kaypro said “used to” and “I remember” far too frequently for Checker’s taste. He would lean too far over the knotty pine tables, he talked too loudly, he laughed too long, and in his rare pauses Kaypro’s wistfulness trailed under Checker’s nose like the smell of an electrical short. Kaypro was losing his hair and weighed too much and showed up every night in a different hat, trundling into the club with a panicked expression until he found one of The Derailleurs at the bar. He was a terrible influence on Caldwell.
Later Checker wrote a song about their gig with Kaypro Friday night, though he never showed it to Gary for fear of hurting the man’s feelings. To this day Check hasn’t allowed his band to play “In the Pocket” publicly in case the agent might hear. For archival interest, though, this is the song, though Checker wouldn’t even approve of our printing it here:
Last week tooted a few tunes through—
Kids look younger than they used to.
Rapped so fast with all new lingo.
(We don’t say “rapped” now, Mr. Kaypro.)
My reed kept rasping through their song;
When they stopped I still blew strong.
I missed the beat, I lost the key—
But who wants teenage sympathy?
My life’s on digital delay,
Echoes the rate of my decay.
Hey, Warhol, what are we to do
When our fifteen minutes
Are through?
Extension cord
Won’t reach the socket.
Can’t seem to play
In the pocket.
On the charts in ’69—
I’m a scratched-up 45.
Fingerprinted, grooves grown moldy,
Sunday morning Golden Oldie.
I was once a pretty boy,
Crooned a sax with purple joy.
Was it good as I recall?
Has purple haze obscured it all?
My life’s on digital delay,
Echoes the rate of my decay.
Hey, Warhol, what are we to do
When our fifteen minutes
Are through?
Still on stage
But off the docket.
I used to play
In the pocket.
It was a sad song.
He’d thought Syria would find the afternoon amusing. She didn’t. He’d thought he would find it amusing. He didn’t. Oh, the band was having a good enough time. They’d snuck with muffled laughter down the back stairs, with napkin bow ties twist-tied to their collars. Caldwell buzzed the Wedding March softly on his kazoo. J.K. had snatched up a beer-can pop-top and a radiator hose clip for rings. Sure. Ha-ha.
But as Check had escorted the bride to their ad hoc chapel she’d said practically nothing. “You don’t seem like the sentimental type,” he commented. “Are you?”
“This sucks,” she said simply. Only several blocks later did she volunteer, “When I was growing up we thought everything was a joke—the prom, graduation. We mooned principals, crashed formal dances in patched jeans. But the joke was on us. It was a cheat.”
“Why a cheat?”
“Those ceremonies were for us. We only sabotaged ourselves.”
She said sabotage. She said travesty. She even said violation. All she didn’t say out loud was disappointment.
The basement was in top form, a steam engine. By this time Rahim’s complexion was the pasty, bloated color of some of the creatures that washed up on the rocks in the park. His hair had twisted into damp jerricurls; his fingers were pruny, and he claimed the back of his neck was beginning to mold.
Checker introduced the minister, a Quaker who saw Rahim as a persecuted political refugee and who was therefore feeling liberal and pleased with himself. He was elaborately understanding when Rahim began to carp: in a Muslim wedding, men and women should stand on opposite sides; though in the cramp of Plato’s basement it was more practical to divide them into separate layers. Wasn’t Syria going to sit the Seven Days, with seven different dresses, each more exquisite than the last?
“No, we’ll do a variation,” Syria proposed. “For a week I’ll wear the same green work shirt, and every day it will get a little bit dirtier. Then finally the big night will come, just the two of us, and you can wash it.”
Rahim didn’t laugh.
As the minister began, mopping his forehead between vows, Checker didn’t look at the couple but down at the pop-top in his hands; by the time he offered the ring to Rahim, he’d twisted the tab off, leaving the aluminum jagged; slipped on Syria’s finger, it must have scratched. “Best man.” He thought about the term. It was a role he could tire of.
Instead of “I do,” Syria said, “I suppose.”
Rahim had finally stopped whining. Through the ceremony he kept slipping his gaze over to Syria, rippling his eyes up and down her lanky figure, darting incredulous glances at the wild Picasso angles of her face. Little by little he was starting to smile, until his small even