Lionel Shriver - Checker and the Derailleurs

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.