Big Pulp Fall 2011
Smashwords Edition
Exter Press
Bill Olver, editor
Big Pulp Vol. 2, No. 1
September 2011
ISBN # 098364490X
Big Pulp is published quarterly in March, June, September and December by Exter Press. All credited material is copyright by the author(s). All other material © 2011 Exter Press
The stories and poems in this magazine are fictitious and any resemblance between the characters in them and any persons living or dead—without satirical intent—is purely coincidental.
Reproduction or use of any written or pictorial content without the permission of the editors or authors is strictly forbidden, with the exception of fair use for review purposes.
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Thank you for respecting the hard work of our writers.
Romance
Interrogate My Heart Instead by Elaheh Steinke
What Blooms in Winter by Marsheila Rockwell
Tears in the River by Djanjo Mathijsen
Fantasy
The Cinnamon Forest by Ferdinand Siregar and James Penha
Gregory Finds His Way by Jenny Gumpertz
Voice of the Witch: Tempting Gretl by Neesa Sunar
The Daimyo’s Harigata by James R. Stratton
Mystery
Woman In White by Michael Bracken
Beauty and the Punchline by Jason Ridler
Adventure
The Battle of Hutchinson’s Crossroads by Chris J. Peterson
In the Nick of Mime by Lee Hammerschmidt
Daddy’s Little Girl by Finn Clarke
Horror
Mrs. Kelly’s Aquarium by Kristine Ong Muslim
Dream elements from parcel #21 by Kristine Ong Muslim
Beadwork by Kristine Ong Muslim
Last of the Irish Rover by Ian Welke
Knock-Knock
by Michael D. Turner
Science
Fiction
Influx Capacitor by Eric Juneau
Spring Rites on Mars by Terrie Leigh Relf
Liver Today, Forget Tomorrow by Shannon Schuren
Saturday Station by Christopher Shearer
Cover illustration by Ken Knudtsen
Elaheh Steinke is a 23-year-old story writer. She studies Genetics at Tehran University and teaches English. Some of her previously published works are “IWIHKY Disorder”, “No Exception”, “Falling for the Second Time”, “When the Day Is Blue, I’m Sitting Here Wondering about You”, and “January Went Lost”. She has published her works at Best New Writing 2009 and 2010 and was the Hoffer award finalist of 2009/2010. Elaheh dedicates this story to her mom and to each and every person who fought for freedom.
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INTERROGATE MY HEART INSTEAD
He has forgotten that he used to exist and that he used to love him. He doesn’t even think about him while taking a shower. They have told him that if he stabs people in the chest or hits them in the streets of his own hometown, he would make God happy.
He has forgotten that he once wanted to become a lawyer to get his right to marry him. He has forgotten that blonde guys used to turn him on and he was the only brunette he ever wanted to be with. He was an exception but now he’s just like anyone who’s been captured because of protesting for ”Human Value”.
He’s looking for something that he’d never find: “The Meaning of His Life”. He can’t recall his past. He can’t even recall yesterday’s interrogations, innocent faces, shattered minds of young boys and girls in the room. What has he done! How many boys and girls he must have had screwed, physically and mentally.
She’s strong, beautiful even with the blindfold on, held together and ready. He doesn’t like the last part, READY. Readiness makes it hard to get over a genius mind. She won’t suffer, she won’t scream, she wouldn’t beg. He doesn’t like it. He has seen hundreds of young girls in the torture room. They all expect to be saved; saved by a call, a miracle, saved by God. But this one, this girl, she’s ready for everything to happen. The blindfold has made her even scarier.
Her indifferent smile, her crossed hands that have hugged her breasts, intimidates him. He wears his invisible mask and walks towards her. She won’t get out of here. That smile shouldn’t be seen outside these walls.
He wakes up from a dreamless sleep. It is the weekend but he has bones to crush, smiles to make disappear, lives to get. It’s a new day, it’s a new dawn and he’s gonna be a step closer to heaven and God.
He has forgotten that he couldn’t even think about fucking girls. He could like them, hate them, love them but he couldn’t fall in love with any. He couldn’t even manage to TRY to sleep with any. Ali was his first and he was meant to be the last one. But now his job wouldn’t be done if raping wasn’t included in the daily routine torture. God wouldn’t accept his prayers if he didn’t punish the protesters. Freedom isn’t something they are allowed to have. He has forgotten what Freedom meant to him. He can’t remember his nights at Ali’s, tears of happiness and then their devastating future image.
He has tamed her, she’s writing a
long fake confession. He wouldn’t remember this tomorrow, so what?
God is watching. Heaven is waiting.
Ali is in the other room; they call it “The Second Unit” of the city’s prison. They say if you get in there, there would be no way back. You’ll be gone forever. And that’s exactly where he is right now: Nowhere.
He walks in. Ali’s tied to the chair. The room is watching, God is watching. Freedom? He’s gonna give it to him right away: “You’ve got two options; die here or go live on television and take back your words.” Ali can’t tell if he is serious or it is all a big fucking joke. He smiles, just a faint smile and his spinal cord twitches. It takes a couple of seconds to realize the pain. The pain of forbidden love used to be more than this. The memory of the past draws a smile on his face. And it’s then that the second one falls on his fingers. He faints.
Darius or better say Ahmed, his new
religious name, keeps showing up every seven hours and each time he
asks the same questions: Why do you work for western countries?
Why do you lead the protests each Tuesday? What do you have on
your Facebook page? It is like he can’t remember the last time he
has been in this room. Ali can’t believe the man who was literally
torturing him used to be his best friend and then his boyfriend.
He has been brainwashed. Ali feels helpless, he has to save himself.
So he asks for a pen and paper; he writes anything they want to
hear. Confessions that are never true but they are the way out.
He crushes his ego, cries picturing himself as someone he never
was. He gets released right away. He flies to the US as soon as he
gets himself together. He is free but his heart is still full of
questions and murdered smiles.
Dear Darius,
It’s been three months and eleven days that I have not gotten to see you. In the cell, I would wake up every day with bleeding fingers in my pockets, cold and bruised body but a heart full of love and helplessness. I would wish to hear your steps walking in every—I don’t know how many—hours and hear you talking to me like you had never known me. It was so sexy. A tough game. The adrenalin rushing through my body, getting deep down to my core would save me. Now here in Boston I don’t want to get out of this warm bed knowing I wouldn’t hear your voice again. My body alarms every seven hours and makes me lay still and stare at the pillow that used to be yours. I smile at it and wait but there’s no hitting after each smile. There’s no slapping, no breaking body parts, there’s no pain.
I have saved all our photos together in Dena’s laptop. I drink my espresso and review each story behind every picture. The last picture of the album is the one I took when you were walking out of the door heading to join the army. I was proud of you, I can remember that strong feeling: “My boyfriend was going to save lives.” But did you ever save any?
Marsheila Rockwell is a Rhysling-nominated poet and a member of the SFPA, SFWA and IAMTW. In addition to serving as a poetry editor for Mindflights, she has authored two novels for Wizards of the Coast—Legacy of Wolves, 2007, and The Shard Axe, due out in September 2011—and is contracted for a third. A (fairly) complete list of her publication credits can be found at www.marsheilarockwell.com/.
__________________________________________________
WHAT BLOOMS IN WINTER
I wander
Beneath the dispassionate gaze
Of streetlights
Their incandescent regard
Freckled with snow
I don’t remember
This cold, this dark
These indifferent drifts
(And why do I keep expecting sand?)
Though the single set of footprints
(Altamas, military issue, size 12)
Assures me
I have come this way
Before
There is a glow up ahead
Our house, I think,
Though I cannot recall
Who would share a home with me;
Am vaguely surprised to realize
I have one
You greet me at the door
Scissors shaking in your hand
(Gardening shears, to be exact,
but what blooms in the dead of winter?)
Fear etched on your face
Like a fingernail drawing
On a frosted window pane
I try to shoulder my way past you
(What is your name?)
Into our home—my home –
And you jab wildly at me
Slicing the collar of my peacoat
Nicking my neck
I reach up
Both of us shocked
When my hand comes away bloody
(I see now
not all of it is new)
I reach down
Into my pocket
For a handkerchief
And find instead a semi-automatic
(9 mm Beretta; a piece of shit
but not the first
I’ve encountered tonight)
I pull it out and point it
At your frigid, frostbit heart
(But not so icy when I found you
riding him and laughing
though flat-on-your-back missionary
was all you’d ever do
for me)
This is how you wait for me?
This is my homecoming?
What was I fighting for
If not to come back to your embrace?
Only to find your arms already filled
First with his body
Then with his corpse
You scream and cry
Tell me the police are on their way
(We both know if they
could get through the storm
they’d have been here by now)
But you do not beg
You still have that much respect for me
At least
You say I’ll be court-martialed
Sent to prison
But I just shrug
(It’s not like there’s anything
out here for me now
anyway)
Inshallah, I say
And pull the trigger
Your chest explodes
In a crimson shower
(I watch, incurious
as tiny red buds blossom
across pale flesh and navy wool;
a sudden garden
unexpectedly warm)
And I remember, then
What blooms in winter
Christmas roses
Infidelity
And you
Bruce Millar is a mixed-media artist working out of Toronto, Canada. Bruce writes poetry in various styles, for children and adults, in a rainbow of tones. In addition to poetry, Bruce writes humorous stories, musical parodies, meditation music, flash fiction and short stories. Bruce has been published by The Plebian Rag online journal, (under the name ‘TheBruceDouglas’), The Ofi Press, Calliope Nerve, NavWorks Press, and by Neopoieisis Press.
__________________________________________________
DOUBLE PRINTS
I sit
at the photo kiosk,
sort images
to print.
Most are of us.
I choose borders
and matte finish
as our time together
was not glossy.
I change disks,
the order
aborts.
she is uncountable miles away
and now I don’t even have
her picture to touch.
I wonder
as my heart peels
like a stubborn sunburn,
how long until our romance
fades and frays
as the eight by ten
pain in my chest
pines for just one more frame.
At least this way
we cannot smudge our finish,
though I wonder
if an abortion is justified
at this point.
Is twenty-seven days enough time
for a fetus to develop
for a heart to truly beat?
And can you love someone
you have deep inside you
but cannot touch or see?
Dutchman Django Mathijsen was born in 1966 to professional musicians. He worked as a jazz-organist while studying engineering at the Eindhoven University of Technology, and was a technical consultant on the award winning British TV-programs Robot Wars and TechnoGames. As a science journalist and editor, he’s written over three hundred articles for English and Dutch magazines, and—combining music and technology—wrote a book about the Hammond-organ. He now concentrates on composing music and writing fiction. Django has been published in all Dutch SF&F magazines—Pure Fantasy, Wonderwaan and SF Terra—and his work has won the Unleash Award (twice), the Brugse Boekhandel Fantasy Award and the NCSF-prize. In March 2010, Mando Vidé en het Robotbevrijdingsfront, his first (Dutch SF) novel, was published by Books of Fantasy. “Tears in the River” is his first English fiction publication. Visit Djanjo online at www.djangomathijsen.nl.
__________________________________________________
TEARS IN THE RIVER
Chapter 1: The golden bottleneck
Perched on the edge of my bed, I stuffed foam under the strings of my guitar, near the bridge, to mute them so I wouldn’t wake my parents. I’d been practicing the Cross Road Blues all night, with a bottleneck that I’d made from an old Coke bottle.
It was an easy song. But I couldn’t get it to sound right. Sleepy though I was, I wouldn’t put my guitar away. I had to keep at it until it was perfect. So I played it, over and over again.
I was startled when my guitar slipped from my lap. I must have dozed off. A boy, as deeply and darkly red as the western horizon at nightfall, caught my guitar. He wore no clothes or jewelry, only a golden bottleneck on his left ring finger.
He knelt before me, my guitar in his hands. I don’t know why I felt no fear. I wasn’t even surprised that suddenly this boy had appeared in my room. Maybe I’d always expected this meeting to occur sooner or later.
The boy tuned my guitar and played the blues. In spite of the foam, my guitar was crying as if the world was about to end. It was exactly the way I’d always wanted to be able to play.
He laid my guitar flat on his hands and offered it back to me as if it were a tray. He looked me in the eye with unfathomably black irises. He spoke not a word. Still, I understood him. I knew the agreement I would seal if I were to play my guitar, tuned by him.
And play it I did. The Cross Road Blues cried under my fingers. The boy closed his eyes and nodded.
I was startled again when my mother opened the door. “But, child, have you been sitting there practicing all night again?”
Chapter 2: “Hello, beautiful Julia.”
It wasn’t eight o’clock yet. Broom, Tone Wheel and I had already put on our stage clothes. We stood on the sidewalk in front of the entrance of the “966 Muschi Bar”. I shivered. It was going to be another cold night.
The rain on the awning above us sounded as if gravel was being dumped on it. Passing cars on the brick-paved road behind me sounded like snare drums, the heels of passing pedestrians like claves.
“With Sputnik those sneaky bastards got the drop on us as well.” Wardrobe, the bouncer, took a puff on his cigarette. He thumbed the silver whistle he wore on a chain around his neck. With his wide body in a black seaman’s jersey, he stood in front of the closed red curtain. On either side of the doorway, thighs wrapped in fishnet stockings were painted on the wall.
“I’ve seen the nine Mercury astronauts on the color TV in the Telefunken shop-window.” Neon lights painted alternating color patterns on Broom’s face. “The Americans will beat those Russkies into space. I’m sure of it.”
Tone Wheel shook his head and pointed his cigarette at Broom. “The Russians are already secretly flying around up there. They’re watching us and preparing the invasion of Western Europe. High time to get out of this country and emigrate to America, while we still can.” He turned to me, put his cigarette into his mouth and spoke through his teeth: “Well, Livewire, are you finally coming with us?”
I sighed. “You know I’m never leaving Germany.”
“What’s holding you…”
Tone Wheel was interrupted by the squeaking of a passing streetcar. He cringed. The tip of his cigarette glowed. “That D-flat was off-key.” He closed his eyes and cramped up the middle finger of his right hand as if he were pressing down one of the black keys on his Hammond organ.
Suddenly, I heard tires screaming. I turned with a jerk. Through the rain curtain, I saw a pearly white Cadillac Eldorado go sideways. With locked tires it slid up to the curb and came to a halt.
A red Isetta behind it could just swerve onto the streetcar track. With a horn that squeaked like a stuffed animal, the little car passed the American leviathan.
Rainwater gushed from the body of the still rocking Cadillac. I saw the reflection of an “Agfa Photo” neon sign in the paintwork on the side of the car. The tail lights were glowing red as if they were gun turrets on Mercury rocket tail fins. The side window wound down. “Hello, beautiful Julia,” a male voice said to a lady on the sidewalk.
Her light blue raincoat was tied with a belt around her slender waist. Her long, blonde hair stuck in wet strands to her neck and coat. She held her hands in her pockets. Quietly she spoke: “Drive on, stupid Romeo.” Her alto voice sounded sultry and panting. Despite the rain and street noise, I could understand her crystal clear.
A lightning bolt cleaved the night sky behind the ‘Bavaria, St. Pauli’ facade across the street.
The eight cylinders of the Cadillac growled. Its back wheels clawed for grip on the slippery bricks. A thunderclap rent the sky. The lady watched the giant car tear off down the Reeperbahn.
I heard Broom laugh. “He must have thought he was in Herbert Street, where all the hookers are.”
“That guy is desperate,” Tone Wheel said. “I bet he’s going to turn right into David Street to get to Herbert Street.”
The lady’s raincoat left her slender calves uncovered. The seams on her black stockings were dead straight.
Suddenly I heard the tires of the Cadillac scream again.
I looked up. The Caddy’s front wheels were turning into David Street but the car slid straight on. A dull, metal thud followed. The car buried itself into the side of a VW Beetle parked on the corner. It pushed the Beetle onto the sidewalk and flattened it against the wall of the Aladdin Theater. The Cadillac ended up a smoking wreck. A hubcap rolled clattering against the wall. Cops ran out of the police station next to the Krause Hostel.
The lady turned on her black stiletto heels. She kept her head down and looked at me from under her thin, sharply demarcated eyebrows. With a grin, she seemed to take stock of me.
She lifted her right foot and swayed it back and forth on her ankle. I don’t know if she stretched her foot or hesitated in which direction to walk.
Wiggling her hips, she finally put one foot in front of the other and joined us under the canopy. “Boys, do you have some room left for a lady?”
“Always,” said Broom. “Shall I fetch you an umbrella? Or a towel?”
She turned her head slowly toward him and grinned. “What on earth for?”
“You’re so wet.”
“Do you mind if a girl gets wet?” She raised her left eyebrow.
“Yes…uh, no, I mean…”
“I like being wet.” She closed her eyes and laid her head back so the water that dripped off the awning fell onto her head. Water streamed down her cheeks and under the collar of her coat. She pulled her hands from her pockets. Gold-colored, sharp fingernails slowly brushed her wet hair back with long strokes.
“I love rainwater.” She pulled her head back from the drip and looked at me again from under those eyebrows. She opened her lips and licked her fingers. “It’s so deliciously sweet.”
She grinned as she let her gaze glide over our faces. She stepped closer and looked at me again. “I’m dying for a cigarette.”
“I don’t smoke, doll,” I said. “It’ll give you wrinkles.”
Broom held out his packet of Gitanes filter cigarettes. Without looking away from me, she took a cigarette between thumb and forefinger of her right hand and stuck it between her lips.
I heard a match being struck. Broom held the flame under her cigarette. With her left hand she grabbed hold of Broom’s wrist. She stooped to stick the tip of the cigarette into the flame. She held my gaze as she sucked the flame toward the cigarette. The tip glowed bright red, just as red as her lips.
I saw her breasts rise as she filled her lungs. She took the cigarette from her mouth and grinned. She held her breath and kept hold of Broom’s hand.
The flame danced along the matchstick and came ever closer to Broom’s thumb and forefinger. I saw his fingers cramping up to try and increase the distance to the flame.
Not until the flame hit the nail of Broom’s forefinger did she pout to blow it out, enveloping my face in a cloud of cigarette smoke.
She turned to Broom. “Thanks. I really missed this.”
“Aren’t you cold?” Broom asked.
“I’m never cold.” She took a step toward Broom and held the black lapel of his gold jacket between the thumb and forefinger of her left hand. She let her thumb slide up and down over the fabric. “Nice outfits.”
“We’re just about to go to work.” Broom pointed toward the poster of our trio in the window.
A Mercedes ambulance passed with deafening sirens and stopped at the crumpled up Cadillac. First-aid medics ran out and rolled a stretcher toward the Caddy.
“It looks like he’s really been flattened,” Tone Wheel said.
“High time the Reeperbahn gets an asphalt road deck,” Wardrobe said. “It’s carnage every time it rains with the bricks on that corner.”
The lady didn’t even glance at the spectacle. “The Electro Cats trio,” she read our poster aloud. “Are you famous?”
“We’re world famous in all of Germany.” Broom smiled and held out his hand. “They call me Broom.”
“Then you must be the drummer.” The lady ignored his outstretched hand.
Broom raised an eyebrow. “Smart girl.”
“Do you only play with brushes?”
“No, but I do prefer them to sticks.” Broom grinned and pointed toward Tone Wheel. “We call him Tone Wheel.”
“Hammond Organ?” She pressed her lips together and nodded. “Modern instrument. A B3, like Jimmy Smith?”
Tone Wheel shook his head. “Its bigger brother. An A100.”
“Heavy equipment to drag along. Do you have any roadies for that?” With her left hand she pinched Tone Wheel’s right arm. She smiled and pursed her lips. “No, you probably lift it yourself. Such a strong boy.”
“All of us help out to lift that heavy monster.” Broom pointed in my direction. “And that’s Livewire.”
“Livewire?” She looked at me from the corner of her eye. “So he’s the guitarist. Is he any good?”
“Livewire is the best jazz guitarist in the world.”
“Really?” She raised her eyebrows. “I thought Barney Kessel was the number one in the polls.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the man from the Cadillac being lifted onto the stretcher.
Broom’s mouth fell open. “You read the jazz polls in Down Beat?” He looked at Tone Wheel and me with a wide grin. “Guys, may I introduce you to my dream girl.” He turned back to her. “What’s your name?”
She took a drag from her cigarette. “Lora.”
Broom immediately sang the first line of the Johnny Mercer film ballad ‘Laura’. “My dear,” he said. “Barney Kessel has nothing on Livewire.”
“Then why are you guys playing here?” She turned up her nose and pointed her cigarette at the posters with pictures of scantily clad women in provocative poses on the windows of the 966 Muschi Bar.
“This is one of the few places where we can play jazz and blues in this country,” Broom said.
“Why don’t you go to America?”
Broom and Tone Wheel laughed. Tone Wheel looked at me, pursed his lips, nodded and pointed in Lora’s direction.
She walked between Broom and Tone Wheel to the wall and stared at the poster ‘Girls wanted’. “Oh, I get it. You guys are looking for me.”
She went to stand in front of Wardrobe.
He nodded, stepped aside and held open the curtain. “Hilda,” he cried inside. “There’s a girl here who wants to speak to the boss.”
Lora dropped her cigarette and stepped on it with the tip of her shoe. She turned and looked at me once more. “See you in a minute.”
She disappeared behind the curtain.
“I saw her first,” Broom said.
The ambulance tore off, sirens wailing.
Chapter 3: Voice Box
As always in the early evening, the place stank of the Lysol that was used to wash everything. Even the girls reeked of it. They thought it was an effective contraceptive. The Lysol couldn’t drive away the smell of stale cigarette smoke, sweat and alcohol. Everything was saturated with it. My guitars, my clothes and myself.
Nettie Page was the first act. She stripped to ‘Peter Gunn’, the theme of the TV detective. I threw my Fender guitar around my neck, and switched on the bridge pickup, so it sounded razor sharp. I plucked the opening riff. A stiletto heel appeared from the wings. The spotlight lit up a leg wrapped in a black fishnet stocking.
Sailors around a front table began to shout and whistle. A man at the bar gave them the evil eye. Other than that, the joint was empty.
Wearing a black trench coat and fedora, Nettie came onto the stage from behind the curtain. She danced with big hip movements, looking around as if she was being followed.
When she arrived at the middle of the podium, Tone Wheel started the theme, with all stops drawn out. The Hammond organ thundered like an earthquake. Nettie pretended to be hit by a bullet and fell onto the floor. She threw her hat into the audience, revealing her long black hair. One of the sailors caught it.
Nettie writhed rhythmically on the floor, her hair dragging across the stage. At the next big growl of the organ, she jumped up and began to open her trench coat buttons, staring seductively at the sailors.
* * * * *
Bullwhip Betty, stripping to “Lily Marlene” with a whip, wearing a black leather uniform, and Patty Pussy, stripping in crimson satin and lace on the slow blues “Night Train” by Jimmy Forrest, had already had their performances. The club was packed.
We accompanied Broom singing the “Just a Gigolo/Ain’t Got Nobody” medley with his best Louis Prima imitation. The spotlights, which were focusing on us, lit up the cigarette smoke like a white wall of fog. Through it, I could discern Nettie sitting at the table with the sailors, wearing her trench coat again.
One of the sailors was wearing her fedora. She laughed. The sailors had ordered the champagne buffet, which meant they had spent a lot of money on cheap bubbly. Nettie would stay at the sailors’ table as long as they kept the champagne flowing. Nettie herself only drank cola. The girls were prohibited by Minkmeister, the owner of the 966 Muschi Bar, from drinking alcohol. The orchestra and the staff weren’t allowed to drink alcohol either.
Someone walked through the light beaming off the spotlights. I blinked. Minkmeister was coming over, his right arm around Lora.
She was dressed in a short black, tightly fitting glitter dress with fringes on her thighs and large see-through parts revealing most of her bulging bosom.
They came to stand next to the orchestra podium behind the organ. Minkmeister kept his right arm around Lora’s waist, took his cigar from his mouth and beckoned us.
We went to the final chord. After a meager applause, Tone Wheel played our pause jingle.
* * * * *
I put my guitar on its stand and plunged next to Tone Wheel onto the organ bench. Probably the boss wanted to tell us that he had hired the new girl on trial. We had to discuss what music she would strip to. Almost every day there were new girls coming and going.
“Boys,” Minkmeister said. “Lora has auditioned for me in the office. She’s amazing. I’ve hired her for the rest of the month.”
I nodded.
“Okay,” Broom said.
“A really great jazz singer, just what you guys were missing.”
I looked at him in surprise.
“Boss,” Broom said. “We were hired as a trio. We don’t need a sing—”
“No discussions,” Minkmeister said. “This is my club. I decide who sings here. She is now your singer. You should be glad that I can recognize talent.”
“But, boss, the last talent you—”
“I can still hear you talking. Get behind those drum kettles and make it snappy. She sings and that’s final. I’m going to grab a beer at the bar and then I’m coming back to sit down here up front. Before my ass touches the chair, you’ll have started her song. Otherwise you guys are fired.” He turned and walked to the bar.
* * * * *
“Can I do a sound check?” Lora asked.
Broom grinned, pushed the tip of his nose up with his brush sticks and triumphantly mimed ‘sound check’.
“You just produce the sound, doll,” I said. “We’ll take the check.”
“Did I say something funny?” She lifted her head. For the first time I could clearly see her eyes. They were light blue like the ocean after sunrise.
“Sound checks are for amateurs with tin ears. Just tell us what you want to sing.”
“Don’t you like me anymore? You’re breaking my heart.”
“Listen, doll. No offence. It’s not that we don’t like you. But you can’t imagine how many girls with beautiful, big, uh….lungs, who think they are Peggy Lee, we’ve had to accompany in this place. We all get them dropped into our laps after they’ve had an oral audition with the boss. Not one of them could squeeze out even one correct note.”
She grinned. “I can.”
“Then let’s not talk about it. Let’s just do it.”
“A man after my own heart.”
“Come on, let’s get it over with.” Tone Wheel sighed. He glanced at the bar and rubbed his jacket with his right hand, just where the inside pocket was. I could tell from the look in his eyes that he wanted to whip out his hip flask to throw back a swig of rum.
“Which masterpiece will it be?” Tone Wheel yanked out a few drawbars of his organ and pushed a few others back. “Fever…My Heart Belongs to Daddy….Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend…”
“Cry Me a River,” Lora said.
Tone Wheel stopped abusing his organ. He pressed his lips together and stared at her.
Broom lifted his eyebrows and let his brushes slip into the holder next to his drum stool. That intimate jazz ballad was played without drums.
“By Arthur Hamilton? That song was so beautifully sung by Julie London,” I said. “Are you sure you’re up to it?”
“That song was so beautifully accompanied by Barney Kessel.” She looked at me again. Her light blue irises shone. “Are you sure you’re up to it?”
“The lady loves a challenge.” I grabbed my semi-acoustic Gibson guitar from the stand. “How many flats?”
“Flats?”
I hung the jazz guitar on my neck and grinned. “I mean: what key?”
“E minor.”
“That’ll be one sharp then.”
“Yeah, one sharp is enough to satisfy me.” She lowered her head and hid her eyes under her eyebrows again.
* * * * *
Tone Wheel’s left foot played the first bass notes on his pedals. I played the dramatic opening chords. The bustle in the room was so loud I could barely hear my own guitar. Tone Wheel built up the tension by closing off the intro with the bass line moving down.
Lora took the microphone up to her mouth and hit that first high note. She held it long, soft and panting, almost embracing it with her velvet voice, and then ending it in a fragile vibrato. Suddenly it was as if the rest of the world was sucked away into a vortex. I don’t know if the murmur in the club had really died down or if it was just me. I could perceive nothing else but that voice anymore.
She sang the first line of the melody down and held the last note in the back of her throat as if she were sucking in her audience. I realized that I’d forgotten to play my accompaniment chords. I came in again, gently propelling her forward with sparse chord progressions and fills.
When the song went to the bridge, I built up the tension. The drama grew in her voice. In her long notes she almost whispered, as if she were broken. She hit every note right on the nose.
As we struck the final chorus, my eyes were filled with tears.
She repeated the last sentence three times, becoming softer until the final note ended in a panting whisper.
It was deadly quiet. Through the highlighted haze of smoke, I vaguely saw how all the faces in the club were staring at us. Applause erupted, louder than I had ever heard it in the 966 Muschi Bar.
Lora bowed. She turned, looked at me with a grin and handed the microphone back to Broom.
Broom swallowed and cleared his throat. “Welcome to our band, Voice Box.”
Chapter 4: Oil Runner Ollie
Voice Box was sitting on a stool on stage, singing the last line of “My Funny Valentine” with her eyes closed. Wisps of smoke drifted through the beam of the spotlight that was pointing at her. Her white babydoll and her long, blonde mane shone. An angel with the voice of an angel.
During the applause, the waiter walked over. He spoke in Voice Box’s ear and pointed to Oil Runner Ollie, a regular who had earned a fortune smuggling furnace oil. Apparently he had ordered a champagne buffet for her. We had already gotten used to our new singer being just as popular as the dancers.
“She’s going to earn the boss a fortune.” I turned toward Tone Wheel and cranked up the volume of my amp, which was standing beside his organ.
Tone Wheel sat bent over, hiding behind his organ. He slipped the black leather hip flask back into the inside pocket of his jacket and shook his head. “Wardrobe told me that she’s refused a contract for next month.”
It was as if someone rammed a knife into my heart. “Are we going to have to play here without her next month?”
“Yes, without her.” Tone Wheel sat up. “But not here. The boss has just hired the Steiermark Chicks.”
“That’ll make the dancing girls happy. Those Steiermark girls can’t even play a blues. Do we have a new gig?”
He drew a wry face and tapped a few drawbars of his organ with a swift movement. “Our agent sorted out three months in Bad Reichenhall for us.”
My heart sank into my shoes. “The old spa hotel?”
Tone Wheel nodded and shrugged. “Well, at least the pay is better than playing here.”
I pointed at Voice Box. “And where is she…” I couldn’t finish my sentence. Broom started a swinging shuffle.
Tone Wheel followed and urged the rhythm on, running his foot over the bass pedals. On the manual keyboards he started the intro of “Lullaby of Birdland”.
Shirley Vulva came out on stage, rocking her hips in her white Shirley Temple dress. She had a baby hat on her blonde ringlets and fake freckles on her cheeks. In her hand she carried a stick with a two foot high, fake lollipop. Her smile and the dimples in her cheeks were real.
* * * * *
Shirley had already taken off her dress when I took the lead from Tone Wheel and started to improvise. I kept my eye on her to complement her movements. In white lingerie, laden with ribbons, she writhed on the stage, sticking out her perfect curves at the audience. She stuck out her tongue and licked her fake lollipop.
She wrapped her fingers around the lollipop stick and slid up and down. I made glissandos on my guitar neck so that my guitar seemed to admonish her. She took a wide-legged stance, nodded at me with an exaggerated smile and put the lollipop stick between her legs. She descended onto the stick and slid up and down along it, flattening the bow on her panties.
That’s when I heard a loud bang, followed by creaking and the sound of breaking glass. Shirley flinched and peered into the room with a frightened stare.
A shrill whistle cut through the place. I could only see a smoky haze and blinding spotlight. I held my hand in front of the light. Suddenly the beam was pointed away from the stage and into the audience.
A sailor stood at the table where Voice Box had been sitting. He raised his beer glass with a jerk. The glass shattered in Oil Runner Ollie’s face.
I turned around, grabbed my Fender from the stand and ran with both my guitars offstage behind Shirley. I opened the broom closet and carefully put my guitars against the wall between the Lysol bottles and the mop.
When I ran back, Tone Wheel had already closed the lid of his organ. Together with Broom he sat crouching in front of the drum set, both holding the wooden plank of a music stand in front of their faces.
We never rehearsed any songs, but we constantly practiced how to protect our instruments in a bar fight.
I loosened the wing nut of my music stand, and gave it a tap so it rolled itself off the bolt. I caught it in my hand, pulled the plank off the stand and squatted next to Broom.
The sailor was on top of Ollie, punching him in the face again and again, his fists covered in blood. Still he kept raising them and ramming them into Ollie. Wardrobe suddenly flew at him, grabbed the sailor at the back of his belt and lifted him off the floor. Wardrobe rammed the sailor head first into the bar. He dropped him onto the floor, where he lay motionless. Oil Runner Ollie was lying with his face in a pool of blood which was growing ever larger.
A beer glass flew through the air. I ducked behind my plank. I felt the blow to the board and heard the glass shatter.
When I looked up, four sailors were jumping Wardrobe. He pushed them away. Wardrobe was struck with an uppercut to his chin. He staggered. One of the sailors lifted a chair over his head.
That’s when the bouncers of Cafe Kix and the Koket Club came running in with the bouncers of The Red Mile and The Hot Little Room in their wake. They flew at the sailors’ throats. The lifted chair fell to the ground.
The four bouncers overpowered the sailors in an instant. They dragged them to the door, where a handful of other bouncers threw them out. Bar fights never lasted long on the Reeperbahn. All bouncers came to each other’s aid when one of them blew his whistle.
I saw that Voice Box was leaning on the bar in a relaxed pose. She looked down at the two men who lay motionless on the ground. She blew out a puff of smoke and dropped her cigarette next to the face of the unconscious sailor. She stepped on it with the tip of her shoe.
* * * * *
While the injured sailor was already being rolled to the red curtain on a stretcher, two medics were still trying to resuscitate Oil Runner Ollie.
Hilda, the barmaid, sat on her haunches with a dustpan to sweep up the shards of broken glass on the stage. I squeezed past her to put my Fender and my Gibson back onto the guitar stands next to my amp.
With an ice pack pressed against his chin, Wardrobe stood by the curtain talking with one of the policemen. The officer wrote something in a notebook. Another policeman sat at the bar with Voice Box. She smiled and wiped a speck of dust from his shoulder.
“That girl is no good.” Hilda sat up and pointed her dustpan at Voice Box. She sighed and brushed back a lock of hair which had dislodged from her ponytail.
“Why?” I looked at her in surprise.
“She deliberately set Oil Runner Ollie and that sailor against each other.”
“Aren’t you exaggerating? Every week guys are punching it out over some girl.”
She looked at me from the corner of her eyes and nodded. “She enjoys teasing men and driving them insane.”
“Can’t you say that about all the girls here?”
“Poor Ollie.” Hilda walked away, shaking her head.
The medics drew a sheet over Oil Runner Ollie’s face.
Chapter 5: No blues, no bebop
“What are you going to do when our contract here expires?” Voice Box tightened the belt of her raincoat and walked out through the red curtain.
“We have been condemned by our agent…” Tone Wheel spoke slowly and staggered out of the 966 Muschi Bar, following Voice Box. “…to three months Spa Hotel.”
“Three months of oofta-oofta.” I yawned, walked through the curtain and blinked. My eyes were burning from the light of the sun which had just come up over the horizon.
“Oofta-oofta?” She laughed.
I heard Broom behind me jumping to attention. He marched out singing the German folk song “The Faithful Hussar”, throwing in an “oofta-oofta” on every two beats between lyrics.
Tone Wheel doubled up with laughter. He staggered sideways. I grabbed him by the shoulder.
“Didn’t Louis Armstrong once make a swing version of that?” Voice Box asked.
“We’ve done that, too.” I rubbed my eyes. They were getting used to the light.
Every morning when our work was done, the Reeperbahn always looked strange. Instead of colorful neon signs, I could only see grays and browns: watery sunrays which were reflected by pavement, bricks and tiles. There were almost no people or cars passing. A gust of wind blew a piece of paper through the gutter. On the other side of the road, a man in a frayed captain’s jacket was leaning against the wall, his head bowed, a liquor bottle in his hand.
“No!” Tone Wheel put his left arm around Voice Box’s shoulder and his right arm around mine. He pressed us so hard against his body that the air was forced out of my lungs. Alcohol was steaming out of his pores. “I don’t want to remember that.” Tone Wheel looked at me, his breath nauseating.
“Why not?” Voice Box asked.
“It’s a disgrace!” Tone Wheel giggled and leaned forward, his weight on our shoulders. “That’s what they cried out. We were almost lynched.”
I held my finger against my temple. “Three months of marches and polkas. No blues, no bebop…” I pretended to squeeze the trigger on a gun.
Tone Wheel pressed me against his body again. He looked at me with moist eyes. “You are so wonderful. Do you know how much I like playing with you? I love you, man. Do you know that?” He spouted his alcohol saliva in my face and planted a smacker on my cheek.
“I didn’t know you guys were sleeping together.” Voice Box looked at me sideways. “So that’s why you haven’t made a pass at me.”
“I love you, too.” Tone Wheel turned his head toward her.
She saw him coming and quickly lifted her head.
Tone Wheel planted his lips on her neck and sucked the skin inside his mouth.
Voice Box laughed and tried to struggle free.
“Hey, fool, you’re not Dracula.” I laughed and pulled at his chin.
With a sucking sound, he let go of the skin of her neck. “I’m going to miss you. Girl, I’m going to miss you so much. Where are you going? Come on, tell us! Do you have a new gig lined up somewhere? You have to keep singing, you know. With those pipes of yours. Promise me that you will keep singing.”
“I’m booked on the MS Aglaphon, on a world cruise to America. Helgoland, the Orkney Islands, Rio, Miami…I’m going to get off in New York. I’ll try to find something in a jazz club there.”
Tone Wheel’s jaw dropped. “My gosh, that’s…” He closed his eyes and sighed. “So great for you…just great.”
“I’m going to need a trio to accompany me.” She glanced toward me. “Do you guys feel like joining me?”
My heart sank into my shoes.
Broom began to smile from ear to ear. But his face clouded over when he looked at me. He bit the inside of his cheek and took a drag of his cigarette.
“With you to America?” Tone Wheel’s eyes widened. “Really?”
Voice Box nodded. “Really.”
Tone Wheel let go of us and staggered backwards. “With you?” He made a grand gesture. “…Until the end of the world!”
He staggered back, grabbed Voice Box around her neck and whispered. “Really.” That’s when he turned his head and looked at me with a frown.
Suddenly all three of them were staring at me.
I bit my lip and shook my head. “I think it’s great for you guys and I wish you all the luck and success in the world.”
“Goddamn, Livewire! We can’t do it without you.” Broom threw his cigarette onto the ground and trampled it with his black dress shoe. I had never heard him swear before.
“You’ll find a replacement. You can find guitarists on every street corner. What about…”
“No guitarist’s as good as you.” Broom shook his head. “You and Lora…you’re just like Barney Kessel and Julie London.”
I pointed at Tone Wheel. “With such a good organist, you don’t need a guitarist.”
Tone Wheel let go of Voice Box and stomped on the floor like a child that’s lost its toy. “No! You must come, too.”
I shrugged my shoulders and raised my hands. “I can’t. I’m not allowed to. You know that.”
“Why can’t you?” Voice Box asked.
“That’s…that’s…” Tone Wheel held his hands up like he wanted to catch a ball. “Nonsense!”
“Who didn’t allow him?” Voice Box asked.
Tone Wheel turned to her and raised his hands above his head as if he wanted to jump her. “The devil!”
A wave of anger shot through my body. That was my secret. Except for Tone Wheel and Broom, nobody knew about it. I made a defensive gesture, turned and walked away.
I felt a hand on my shoulder pulling me back.
I turned with a jerk and knocked away the arm. I looked straight into Tone Wheel’s haggard face. I pushed him away. He staggered backward and fell over.
I jumped forward to grab him. But Broom had already caught him.
Tone Wheel straightened up, his shirt hanging out of his pants. With a jerk he tried to straighten his jacket but it only became more skewed. He blinked and looked at me with moist eyes. “Why are you leaving us?”
Voice Box looked at me again, her eyes hidden under her eyebrows. “Is someone going to tell me what this is all about?”
“Livewire believes he received his talent from the devil,” Broom said.
Voice Box stepped closer and looked at me from head to toe. “You have interesting acquaintances.”
I stared at the ground. “On the night after my eighteenth birthday, he appeared.”
“Really? Does he still do that?” Voice Box asked.
“He believes it, you know,” Broom said.
“He’d seen how hard I’d been studying on my guitar,” I continued. “He said I could be the best. That’s what he offered me.”
Broom shook his head. “You’re selling yourself short.”
I looked into Broom’s eyes. “He made me into the best jazz guitarist in the world,” I cried out. I turned to Voice Box. “But there was one condition: if I ever try to leave Germany, I die. He would come for me and I’d have to play for him for all eternity.”
Voice Box grinned. “The best jazz guitarist in the world, trapped in the land of polkas and waltzes. What an irony.”
“We’ve been playing together for six years now.” Broom shook his head. “That’s how long I’ve had to listen to your superstition.”
“It’s no superstition,” I said.
“You owe it all to yourself, not to the devil,” Broom continued. “You have your talent to thank and all those hours you’ve studied.” He turned to Voice Box. “We’ve played for ten hours now. And what do you think he’s going to do when he gets to his hotel room? He’s going to sit on his bed, plucking those strings for another five hours.”
“How can I convince you guys?” I cried out.
“You dreamed it,” said Broom. “Or you made it up. I’ve been hearing those excuses for six years now. I’ve had enough. You’re just afraid to take the plunge. Here you are the best. But that’s easy in Germany. There, across that big pond, you would have to compete with the greats. You’re afraid that you’ll no longer be the best then.”
“It really happened.” I shook my head. “It really happened. He appeared to me in…”
Broom let go of Tone Wheel and pointed at Voice Box. “If you pass up an opportunity like this, then you’re not worth a snap of my fingers. In this country you can’t achieve anything as a jazz musician. We’re turning sour here. It’s time to take it to the edge, to make the most out of ourselves. No more strippers, polkas and bar fights. But concert halls, record studios and interviews with Down Beat.”
“I can’t,” I said.
“Do you really want to throw away all your chances as well as the six years we’ve been playing together?”
“If I could, I would go. How can I prove it to you? Do you want to see me die when I take a step outside Germany?”
“What have you got to lose? Surely, this isn’t living?”
I bowed my head. “I can’t go.”
“You, you…” Tone Wheel suddenly flew at me. He grabbed me by my collar and shook me. “You’re not letting us down.”
Broom grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him away from me. Tone Wheel’s hands clawed at me. His right hand hit my chin. My teeth clapped together. A stabbing pain shot through my jaw.
I drew back and looked at Tone Wheel in surprise.
“Control yourself,” Broom said in his ear. “You can’t force Livewire.”
Tone Wheel put his left arm around Broom and leaned on him.
“If he believes that the devil will come to get him if he leaves Germany, then we’ll have to respect that.” Voice Box took Tone Wheel’s right arm and put it around her shoulder. “Come on, guys. He’s right. We don’t need him. We can do it, just the three of us.”
I stared after them as they walked away, my only friends. Working with monthly contracts, taking you somewhere else every month, barely gave you any time for family or other friends.
They formed a symmetrical unity. Tone Wheel, taller than Voice Box and Broom, staggered along between them. The seams of Voice Box’s black stockings were still perfectly straight. The clicking of her heels on the pavement tiles was drowned out in the din of a passing truck.
Chapter 6: “Play it for me, guitar devil.”
When I arrived at the 966 Muschi Bar, Tone Wheel, Broom and Voice Box were already talking with Wardrobe in the neon lights under the awning. Voice Box saw me coming. She nodded in my direction.
Tone Wheel looked at me. He waited until I stood by them. “Say, Livewire, everything I said. I was…the…uh…”
I nodded. “It’s okay. I understand and I’m sorry, too. I’m going to miss you guys as well. I hope you’re going to be a big hit in America.”
* * * * *
“Round Midnight.” Voice Box said. She took the microphone from Broom and sat down on her stool in the spotlight.
“The Thelonious Monk song?” I shook my head and nodded toward the crowd. “Too slow and complicated for this audience.”
“They love me,” Voice Box said. “And it’s our last night here with you. I want to do something challenging. Not for them, but for us.”
* * * * *
Tone Wheel played the opening. Broom caressed his snare drum with his brushes, his eyes closed.
Voice Box sang the first line in a sultry whisper.
I only needed to play an occasional chord. I felt a pain in my stomach. Did she really do this because she wanted to play that song with me? I already felt like the fourth man in their trio.
* * * * *
Voice Box sang the last line of the bridge of the song. Then she turned, looked at me and said: “Play it for me, guitar devil.”
She couldn’t mean that? I really had to improvise to this song? No one in this audience wanted to hear that. Surely, she knew that as well?
She put the microphone onto her lap and kept looking at me.
I was annoyed but I had no choice. Tone Wheel already went to the second chord. So I took the lead and began to improvise. After one bar I was already completely engulfed in it. No more doubts. The fingers of my left hand ran up and down the neck and my guitar sang with a warm voice, just as warm as Voice Box’s singing.
After I had played one chorus, I looked up to give her back the lead. She still had her microphone in her lap. She raised two fingers and nodded.
I played on. I could no longer see the world; I only heard the music in my heart and copied it on my guitar. My soul and brains flowed into my guitar and took me up to ecstasy, just like that night ten years ago, with that blues and that golden bottleneck.
Suddenly I heard loud banging. The music in my heart burst apart like a bubble. I looked up.
A head with bulging red cheeks looked at me with watery eyes. He had a beer glass in his right hand. He wiped his mouth. With his left he pounded onto the podium. “Hey, string picker, what is this? A funeral?” He pounded again. “Come on, tempo! We want to hear some lively music and not that graveyard plunking. Let’s party, damn it!” He turned to Tone Wheel, pointing his beer glass at him. Beer poured onto his hand. “Hey, organ grinder, throw some oars on that organ. Do you know the Radetzky March? I bet you can’t play that, can you?”
Tone Wheel looked at me helplessly. While his left foot kept playing the bass line, he took his hands from the manuals and made an asking gesture.
The man turned to Voice Box. “And what about you, you slut! You’ve already been sitting here like a bag of salt for more than half an hour. What are you doing here?” He turned to the room. Half the contents of his beer glass gushed out and splashed onto the floor. “Why are we paying so much for our beer in here? We want to see some tits, don’t we?” He turned back to Voice Box. “Show us those milk jugs! Come on, take off those rags…”
Wardrobe flew toward the man and grabbed him by the neck. “You’ve had enough for one night.” He escorted him out through the curtain.
Tone Wheel and Broom had now stopped playing as well.
I let my eyes glide through the room, past the faces of ‘Tigerfibel’ Pauly, ‘Knives’ Bodo, ‘Double Nose’ the tax inspector and a group of half drunk sailors. Their eyes were serious and bored.
“Play something fast,” Knives Bodo said.
Suddenly, I realized that I’d known grumpy faces like that for years. They always appeared sooner or later when we played something we really liked, something challenging, something to be proud of. For years, I had tried to avoid those faces. Suddenly the fear came over me that that was all that I was going to do for the rest of my life: keeping those faces happy. Suddenly I didn’t care anymore.
I looked at Voice Box, her big light blue irises looking back at me. She nodded as if she understood.
“Do you know that new song by Miles?” She turned to Tone Wheel. “So What?”
Tone Wheel nodded. “Sure. That modal ditty. No problem. It’s just two chords.”
“Eddie Jefferson has written some lyrics for it. And he sings it in breakneck tempo: around three hundred beats a minute.”
“Three hundred?” Broom sat up, his eyes lit up. He changed his brushes for drumsticks.
Tone Wheel began to giggle.
“You want fast.” Voice Box spoke into the microphone. She looked me in the eyes, grinning. “You’re going to get fast.”
Broom stepped onto the pedal of the hi-hat: more than five times a second.
“Faster,” Voice Box said and Broom stepped up the pace even further.
Tone Wheel’s left foot started to run over his bass pedals at the same pace.
Lora sung the lyrics and then went straight into a scat, making up acrobatic melodies and phrasings to the chords that Tone Wheel and I were playing. Her notes flowed out of her like an express train, always right on the beats. She hit every note and every phrase went seamlessly into the next.
At the end of her chorus she turned with a jerk towards me. I took over and proceeded the same way she’d started: making up original melody lines and note flurries. My fingers were flying. I played better than I’d ever had. I was unstoppable.
* * * * *
Suddenly a hand grabbed my right hand and pulled it away from the strings. My pick fell from my fingers. I looked up and saw the boss staring at me in shock.