Sean Beaudoin - Welcome Thieves

“Let’s drink,” Gay Don says.

“It’s not Tuesday,” Nikki says.

“Good point,” Robot says. “Let’s find a museum instead.”

“I only have eight bucks,” Nikki says.

“Which you should immediately spend on ointment for your vagina,” Marcellus says.

By the fourth place they’re shit faced.

Gay Don starts telling everyone who’ll listen they’re a band, mostly because Nikki brought the Thinline in its ratty swing-jazz case, not wanting to leave it in Robot’s Camry, which doesn’t lock. Gay Don says they’re playing the Attic at midnight. A couple girls are like Oh, really? not putting much in it. The bartender rolls his eyes, cuts limes. Someone checks the paper. Turns out there really is an Attic, a tiny dump across the river, but it’s closed tonight.

“Unannounced show,” Marcellus says, swears they’ll leave tickets at will call for anyone who buys a round. A few people actually do. Robot runs down the set list for them, how they rock Bon Jovi covers and Robert Johnson covers and John Cage covers. How they crush Black Sabbath covers and Black Flag covers and Black Uhuru covers. Nikki figures as the guitar player his gig is to hang back and be silent and cool and superior, one foot up on the rail. It’s worthy of some sort of paper, sociology or physics, how easily the rest fall into unspoken roles. Marcellus lead vocals and acne scars. Robot drums, tatted neck to wrist. Gay Don on eyeliner and bass.

None of them plays an instrument as far as Nikki can tell.

In some ways it’s better than actually being in a band.

From bar to bar the story is honed, more believable, less believable. Robot and Gay Don spin the Japanese tour, groupie orgies, failed label deals. People move closer, buy fresh rounds. Nikki concludes that a lie stumbled upon is infinitely more believable than a lie presented. That being a fool allows others to reveal themselves. That the power of belief is redemptive and carries a special allure for the perpetually bored.

On the other hand, it’s pretty clear they’re being dicks. It’s a question of how many drinks are required not to acknowledge it.

“We don’t get backup singers on our rider soon, it’s time for a new manager,” Robot tells an underage girl who claims to sing.

“Bullshit,” says a dyed waitress, two sticks of gum and a tray digging into her hip. “Tell me the name of this supergroup again?”

Gay Don looks at Nikki, mouths, Oh fuck.

It’s worthy of an entirely different paper, this one on the mathematics of sheer dumbassedness, the fact that it hasn’t come up yet.

“Yeah, man, what is your name?” says the big dude in a Tupac shirt who bought the last round. Doubt flares. Conversations stop. There are maybe twenty people in the bar, a group of sports guys with backward caps and team sweatshirts, a few townies and metal dudes wristing foosball. Nikki can feel an undertow, an ugly gravity, an inevitable beat down coming. For some reason the entire room turns to him as he leans on the guitar case with half a glass of someone else’s beer.

“We are Crustimony Proseedcake.”

It’s the first thing that pops into his head. The Tao of Pooh had been on the nightstand of the last girl he hooked up with, a yoga teacher who shot a killer game of nine ball. He’d read a few pages while she was in the shower.

There’s a lengthy silence.

Sun blares under the half-door, causes the rubber floor mats to steam.

And then Robot smashes a bottle on his forehead, yells, “Pro-fucking- seed -cake!’ ”

Solved.

Out come the vodka shots. Out come the backslaps and air jamming. Every ten minutes someone new walks in and the entire bar yells, “Pro- seed -cake!”

Crustimony hits two more spots, adds groupies and acolytes and believers and skeptics and marketing majors and homeless artists and lab assistants and lacrosse team wingers by the block. It’s late afternoon. Everyone is very drunk. Nikki has just been in the bathroom with a girl who had horrible breath and after a minute said, No no no, my breath , and pushed him away, stumbling back to where her friends sat on a broken Ping-Pong table.

The music pounds and people dance and then it’s time to leave, everyone promising to come see them that night.

“Sound check at ten sharp, y’all,” Robot says, one last salute at the door.

All the way back to the car they laugh, barely able to stand. It’s a running guy hug, a shoulder-squeezing, unbalanced affair. They punch and slap and checklist through the afternoon’s triumphs.

“How did you come up with the Attic?” Marcellus asks.

“Fuck if I know,” Gay Don says.

“And can you believe this character?” Robot says, arm around Nikki. “Pro- seed -cake? That was, seriously, a stroke of genius.”

Marcellus agrees. “You pick something one iota less weird and we were gonna get stomped.”

“First rule of performance art,” Gay Don says. “It can never be bullshitty enough.”

“I dunno,” Nikki says. “You can only fuck with people so long, you know?”

“Wrong,” Robot says. “You can fuck with them forever.”

They get back in the Camry and drive home.

DUFF CALLS FROM REHAB, apologizes. His teeth practically gleam over the phone. Huge surprise, he met a guy in group, a drummer who played with the Ainsley Lord Experience. Who played with Screaming Jim Slim. Duff and the drummer lift together three days a week, cardio on Saturdays. Trust exercises. Buy each other shots of wheatgrass, carry tractor tires up hills. Duff says they’re starting a new thing, “Super commercial, but hip, you know?”

“Not really.”

Duff says that Nikki has to move to Brooklyn. Has to bring his killer bass tone. “The plan is to slay New York first, then hit Japan, and eventually own all of music itself.”

There are whiffs of steps 4 through 7. There is the unmistakable resonance of true belief.

Tara listens to Nikki’s half of the conversation, rolls her eyes. Tara leans over his back, says, No way . Tara says, Thanks for nada . Tara says, Don’t let him do this to you again.

Nikki says thanks for nada.

“Wait, for real?” Duff says, preclick.

“I’m so proud of you,” Tara says, pulls Nikki onto the bed. Later they go to Blockbuster and rent Juno , split a bottle of cabernet, open a second one but leave it on the counter.

Eight months later Nikki sees Duff windmilling power chords next to Paul Shaffer, getting the band nod from Letterman.

Give it up, ladies and gentlemen, for the Torrentials!

NIKKI CALLS A LAWYER, who laughs. Thirty days later he wakes up thirty.

Three decades old.

Might as well be ten.

He hits the occasional open mic, doesn’t mind playing for beer, likes the feeling of a 90-watt spot on his face while a half-drunk softball team talks through the changes.

His best song is called “Rime of the Ancient Silas Marner.”

No one laughs.

There is some disappointment.

But no regrets, because he’s never going to be as good as the tool from the Strokes, let alone Charlie Parker, so why keep pretending?

Tara says he never wants to do anything fun.

Tara says he’s getting fat.

Tara splits after a long talk conducted on two sleeping bags zippered together.

She takes the Cabriolet, leaves Rose.

Nikki holds out as long as he can, another couple winters, finally pawns the Thinline for next to nothing. Sells his amps and speakers and heads and pedals and straps and cords and tuners for even less. He donates the sax to an elementary school. All that’s left is the acoustic, which he plays for his three-year-old daughter, who loves to dampen the buzzing strings with her tiny palm.