Nicholson Baker - Traveling Sprinkler

Hummus is made of chickpeas, plus a lot of garlic. And then I thought: garbanzo beans. Chickpeas are garbanzo beans. Garbanzo, garbanzo, garbanzo! It’s a great word partly because it has a slight suggestion of garbage in it, garbage gone gonzo, and yet it’s not garbage at all, it’s a bean. It’s a living edible bean that some call a chickpea. Sometimes you’re in the mood for a short, peckish, two-syllable word, “chickpea,” and sometimes you’re in the mood for a long, suggestive word like “garbanzo.” It’s all a matter of mood.

I spent fifteen minutes trying to substitute “garbanzo” for “Guantanamo” in the Guantanamo song. I’d like to say it was a perfect fit, but it wasn’t. I sang, “Wash it away.” And then, “Dance it away.” Then, “Rinse it away.” Then I went back to “Wash it away.” “Wash” is a good word. Sometimes you’re in the mood for a word like “wash.” There’s a part of England that’s called the Wash — a low area on the east coast where the ocean washed over the land before they lured in the Dutch engineers in the seventeenth century and built the dikes. The past washes over all of us. And when it washes over us, it comes and it goes. It’s a palindrome of oceanic activity.

I’ve got a headache now, frankly, and I’m out of Faustos. I’m reduced to smoking a mild no-name cigar from a sample pack, and it’s just not the same. If you’re going to smoke a cigar, you might as well smoke a dark one from Nicaragua that really smacks your brain.

I’VE BEEN SHRINK-WRAPPING in the afternoons. It’s hard work, and I’ve slowed down a bit with the songwriting. I did make part of a short one. Raymond sent me a toothsome bassline and some beats and I added chords on the Talky Klav and some Middle Eastern sounds using a plug-in I’ve discovered called Alchemy. A plug-in is a whole separate piece of software, with its own samples, that works inside Logic. Alchemy has some exotic instruments, including one that’s halfway between a harp and a xylophone, and a whole set called Steamworx made by a sound designer, Martin Walker, who sampled an old clock and his dog’s water bowl and many proto-industrial sounds of rending and crunching and letting off steam. In an instrument called Churchyard, Walker includes a note: “An entire horror film soundtrack could be played with this preset!” But I wasn’t interested in making a horror film soundtrack, no, thank you. What I wanted, as always, I guess, was to write a love song. My chorus goes, “I’m curious, just a bit curious, whether fate will hurry us, to a nice place.” Raymond said kind things about it, although it isn’t exactly his sort of music. He really is a great kid, and it’s a completely different feeling to be writing a song with the help of another person.

This morning, Jeff and his crew were working on the new floor to the barn and they made a lot of noise. They left at about eleven, and in the beautiful quiet I made another mix of “Take a Ride in My Boat” and of “Marry Me,” panning the instruments to the right and left for a good stereo effect. I smoked two Faustos and a Bone Crusher and felt burpy and sick and burned a hole in my pants. Then I spent an afternoon at the boatyard and got paid. I drove to Kittery Trading Post and walked up and down the racks of canoes. There was a new red Old Town canoe marked down because it had a minor scratch. I bought it, along with two new orange life jackets, and strapped it on my Kia.

At six I called up Roz to find out how she was.

“I’m having my staples out tomorrow,” she said. “Ellen the gynecologist is going to be paying a house call!”

“And you feel good?”

“I’m much more mobile. I can make it from the bed to the bathroom in under five minutes.”

“Great. Listen, I have three questions for you. The first one is, I found a book of yours in the bookcase. It’s The Genius , by Theodore Dreiser. Do you want it or should I keep it here for you?”

There was a brief, complicated silence. “You keep it there, I think.”

“I read a little of it, something about a faded crumpled memory of a hat. It was pretty good.”

“I’m glad you’re reading it.”

“And the second question is — do you want to go dancing with me at Stripe?”

“What’s Stripe?”

“It’s a dance club, right here downtown on Chapel Street.” I told her that Nan’s son Raymond was DJ’ing there soon and that Nan and her boyfriend Chuck were going to hear him. “You wouldn’t have to dance, obviously,” I said. “But if you’re feeling mobile already, maybe by then you’d like to get out into the world and do something. I don’t think you ever met Chuck.”

“I don’t think I did,” Roz said.

“Anyway, we wouldn’t stay long. We’d just sit and be supercool older people and take in the ambience. I’ll bring the sunglasses.”

“That’s a nice invitation—” Roz didn’t say anything for a while.

“It might be fun,” I said. “Raymond’s going to be playing some of his songs and remixes, and he says he might play something that he and I worked on together. I used the words that you sent me in it. It’s called ‘Take a Ride in My Boat.’ You didn’t know you wrote a song, did you? — but you did. So do you want to go with me?”

“Sure, I guess. It depends on how I’m feeling. But yes, if I can.”

“Great. And the third question is, Can I come over tonight and hear about your lurid Vicodin dreams?”

“Oh, you don’t want to hear about those — just a lot of group groping in trees. And tonight isn’t so good, because Lucy’s moving back to her own place tomorrow and this is our last dinner together. She’s been an incredible help, but she needs to sleep in her own bed. So I’ll be on my own tomorrow. You could come by after I’ve gotten my staples out.”

“Will Harris suddenly show up with a potted plant?”

“No chance of that, he’s in Washington. There’s a big pharmaceutical conference where he’s planning to ask some awkward questions. Come by tomorrow.”

• • •

WIKIPEDIA HAS a short article on Tibetan music, which seems to have influenced Philip Glass’s soundtrack to Kundun. I listened to some of Kundun and then I listened to a man in Tucson bang Tibetan bowls and blow on his didgeridoo. It probably wasn’t at all like what Roz had heard during her Reiki massage, but it wasn’t bad. I made some more adjustments to my songs and burned a CD of them. I emailed one of the songs, the one about the right of the people to peaceable assembly, to Tim, and I called the boatyard to say I couldn’t do any shrink-wrapping that afternoon. After de-cigarring myself thoroughly, I drove Smacko to Concord. I opened Roz’s door a bit and called her name.

“Up here!” she said. She was sitting in bed, watching Judge Judy . “Please don’t look at me, I’m a mess.”

“You look pretty.”

“No I don’t, but Judge Judy is fascinating.”

“She’s full of wisdom,” I said.

“She gets to the heart of the problem fast,” said Roz. “This one’s about a hit-and-run. That’s the boyfriend.” We watched Judge Judy look at a photograph of a car and pepper the plaintiff with pertinent questions. Then a commercial for dryer sheets came on and Roz turned off the TV. The dog had found some of her dirty laundry and was napping contentedly on it. “So what’s been going on? Tell me everything.”

“Did I tell you that Tim got arrested at a drone protest in Syracuse?”

“No. Tim is unstoppable. He’s impressive. I wish he’d stayed together with Hannah.”

I asked her if the gynecologist had come and taken out her staples.

“She did indeed,” said Roz. “She came and she was very chatty and proud of her handiwork. She said I was doing well.”