Justin Taylor - Flings - Stories

Mike envies musicians, and has always talked about trying to learn, but he’s always sort of known he’d never do it, and indeed he never has, which may explain why he cuts his son so much slack to be a slacker with — because he would rather view himself as indulgent than jealous. Mike knew Ken would come for the holidays. And knows that he’ll stay longer than originally planned, in no rush to make the long drive back upstate, grateful for access to a stocked fridge and free laundry. Angie, on the other hand — well, Mike doubts she’d even be here if not for the concerts. She’s leaving on New Year’s Day, the earliest flight she could get. So maybe he’ll introduce Lori to Ken next week at some point, like a test case, and if that goes well then Ken can sort of help soften his sister up about the whole situation and maybe next time it can be all of them together. If nothing else, the band’s bound to come through town again.

Which is funny, when Mike thinks about it, because when Angie was younger she hated the Phish like they were poison, dog shit, lepers, the scum of the earth. He’d forgotten about this but now, in the car, he remembers. The kids used to fight about music like it was some kind of religious schism. Which in truth is probably exactly what it seemed like from their perspectives at the time, Mike realizes, remembering a screaming match he once had with his father about a Jimi Hendrix record. Kids! Mike remembers Angie and her fat friend — what was her name? — the miserable girl who used to be over at the house all the time playing records by that Marilyn Manson, teaching Angie to wear fishnets and powder her face pale so she looked like a dead hooker — Dawn! Dawn was the fat girl’s name. Angie and Dawn used to cover their ears and scowl whenever Ken put his “hippie” music on. They’d run shrieking across the house to Angie’s room and slam the door. God how Mike had hated Marilyn shit-ass Manson. Would’ve liked to ban all that crap from his house, and probably would have, only Miranda believed in letting kids test boundaries, express themselves, whatever. Whatever the fuck Miranda had believed. But time heals all wounds, doesn’t it? Nobody thinks about Marilyn shit-ass Manson anymore, while Hendrix is still very much a god. Ken says the Phish sometimes cover “Bold as Love” in their encore. Mike’s got his fingers crossed.

Mike is about to ask Angie whatever happened with Dawn, but then thinks better of it. He seems to remember that the friendship ended abruptly — one day Dawn was a fixture in Angie’s life and then one day she wasn’t, and if he ever asked about it at the time he was surely rewarded with rolled eyes and frosty silence. Teenagers. And come to think of it, wasn’t Brad Rosen sometimes hanging around too in those days? Mike doesn’t remember the boy so much as he does his own annoyance, still visceral even at this late remove, at coming home from a punishing day at the office to a house full of other people’s kids. Miranda on the phone with the pizza guy, shrugging her shoulders as in, What can you do? Then one day Brad Rosen up and kills himself and Dawn stops coming around.

Angie eases the Saab into the exit lane. They pass below the monorail track, looking for a decent place to park. There’s something ominous about downtown Miami, an abandoned feeling even on streets where the city’s renaissance (Angie calls it “gentrification”) is in full swing. Not that this, where they are now, is one of those streets. Nobody’s on the sidewalk; a streetlight’s out. All the stores have Spanish signage and their metal gates down. Angie sees an open spot but Mike says to keep going.

They end up paying twenty-eight dollars to park in the garage at the Bayside Mall, conveniently adjacent to the arena, though Ken says they’ve got to “scope the lot scene” before they go inside.

Grilled cheese and veggie burritos cooking up on portable griddles set on truck beds and station wagon gates. Dread-headed guys in hoodies all over the place; Ken says half of them are cops. He’s on the lookout for a friend of his — this guy Adam from their high school, doesn’t Angie remember, he was in her grade — still nothing? Oh well.

A minute later a voice says, “Hey, whoa, meet the Becksteins!”

“Adam! Dude!” Ken and the guy embrace. Mike and Angie watch. Adam gives Angie a quick hug during which her arms remain firmly at her sides; then he shakes Mike’s hand. The kid’s wearing brown cargo shorts and skateboard shoes and an old holey T-shirt that identifies him as a staff member of a JCC youth camp in the summer of 1998, the same year as the “Mike’s Song” they listened to in the car, which Ken — staunch believer in omens — will certainly take for a promising sign if he notices.

“Hey, we’ll be right back,” Ken says. “Adam’s got some, uh, bootlegs in his car I want to see.”

“Right,” Angie says. “We’ll be over there.” She points down the row of parked cars to where two guys with guitars and a girl with a tambourine are giving an impromptu performance, playing acoustic covers of songs they’re hoping to hear tonight. Mike and Angie stand near enough to hear them but not so close as to make eye contact, perchance to be obliged to throw a bill into the guitar case open like a mouth at the players’ feet. Mike taps his own foot in time with the music, steals a glance at his phone.

Should he send Lori another message? He’d like to. But how many sweet nothings should you have to whisper before you get one back? He puts the phone away. It hasn’t been that long. Better to play it cool. Get it together, Mike, you fucking pussy . That’s what Barry would say.

Ken comes back empty-handed.

“Nothing you liked?” Mike asks. At first his son doesn’t seem to have understood the question, but then he snaps to something like attention.

“Oh yeah, well, I heard all those shows before.”

Angie guffaws. Everyone in the lot seems to be selling something: stickers, T-shirts, necklaces, glass pipes packed in custom foam cases or laid out loose on black cloths in the dirt. They can hear the hiss of a nitrous tank somewhere nearby but out of sight. A wide-eyed girl with hairy armpits and acne around her mouth walks past them, mumbling in singsong, “Goo balls, goo balls.”

Ken looks at his family. “I’d split one,” he says, in a tone perfectly calibrated to make it unclear which one of them he’s talking to or whether he’s even serious.

“Your friend didn’t want to walk in with us?” Angie asks.

“He doesn’t have a ticket.”

“No ticket? Gee, then what’s he doing here?”

“Waiting for a miracle, I guess.”

They leave the lot and head inside, make their way through the bottleneck at security, then get in an all-things-considered-not-too-terribly-bad line to buy foamy beers that cost eleven dollars apiece. Their seats are down on the floor, twenty rows back from the stage. You wouldn’t believe what these tickets cost. And the ones for New Year’s Eve? Forget it. A roar sweeps the audience as the house lights go down.

They open with a song Mike recognizes but can’t name. It’s got slowish verses that build toward this quasi-anthemic chorus that the whole crowd shouts along with. Ken produces a joint from somewhere on his person, lights it, puffs twice, then offers it to his sister. Mike is determined to be unsurprised no matter what his daughter does, but he doesn’t try to hide his curiosity — he’s staring at her, waiting to see. She only takes one toke, but it’s a good toke, then offers the joint to Mike. She’s holding her hand out but avoiding looking him in the eye — apparently unsure herself about what reaction to expect, but Mike made his decision about this earlier and so takes it without hesitation. Miranda will shit fire if she ever finds out — which fact he will remind his kids of, if and when he ever feels the need to play a card. Mike makes sure his toke is as long as his daughter’s. He hacks into his fist, then tokes again.