Brett and Leslie: Chapter 13

Cool

“Lucy, if you miss this fill one more time, I am going to bake you in a pizza and feed you to Paul.”

“HEY! YOU’RE the one who doesn’t know when the chorus ends, Lezzzzzlie!”

I threw the stump of the drumstick I had broken during the chorus at Leslie’s head; meanwhile, Brett was muttering:

« Ending up as part of Paul… that’s the worst punishment in history. You could wind up as part of his balls!”

“Ew!” I said, while Leslie giggled and ducked the missile. We didn’t know yet that basically everything is assault.

“I wrote the song, I’m the bandleader, and you two suck,” Leslie deduced. “So I can change where the chorus ends whenever I want. Your job is to follow me. So get on the ball!”

“Um… I’m pretty sure I wrote this one, didn’t I?” Brett said. “I mean, it started with the bass line…”

“And I ended it—like that fight you were losing with your little sister, Melissa!”

Brett, fumbling for an insulting name to call a lead guitar player in riposte, with no success, hit his beer and strangled the neck of my headless cherry-red bass like it was Leslie’s neck.

That bass was the most metal thing I’ve ever owned; Leslie had a shockingly nice Stratocaster. The rest of us didn’t want to know whence he stole it. But when you added in my drum kit—left there by yet another delinquent roommate, it was mostly Pearl components held together with duct tape, with a hot piccolo snare—I’m pretty sure we thought we looked cool as hell.

Maybe we even did. Granted, I probably looked dirty. Leslie definitely looked dirty, and he smelled. But since the drug bust, Brett was now firmly in his shirt-made-of-fishnet-stockings era, and I think he used his bellhop money to get brand-new red patent shoes. Then again… that shirt was so unwashed, it could have stood up and played the bass itself.

Anyway—I said nothing, hoping to avoid the shrapnel of yet another “Ringo.” Like a coward, I let him continue gloating at Brett as we attacked the chorus again. It was a week to the show, and I had never seen a couple of goons work like that. We were down to half-case of Huber a day.

Halfway through the next song, there wasn’t a knock on the front door. There was no front door. The cops weren’t really worried about our future safety when they smashed it off the hinges, and we were all too lethargic to replace it.

I think our logic was that the general public was hardly more of a risk to us than we were to each other.

Granted, we hadn’t seen Goober in weeks. Smacky had—much to the dismay of his wife’s wife—scuttled off to hide at his wife’s house; neither Goober nor Smacky had got caught with contraband, but they left behind the faint impression of something that had best remain at a distance from law enforcement. Same for the other goofball with the dog. Except for Paul, nobody had anything worth stealing, and Paul was still in jail.

So Paul’s lawyer barged right into the practice room, swinging some expensive cranberry-flavored six-pack like it was the head of Goliath. (Craft brews were like cell phones then: Only @ssholes even knew about them.) Guess we were finally getting what we’d thought we wanted: Ours was now one of those buildings where people who imagined they had business strolled in like it was a Shopko.

Leslie visibly sneered. Rainbow, the lawyer, beamed back in delight, setting his beer on a television and producing a Grateful Dead lighter with a flourish. “Hey, dudes! And dudette. I’m back for more research.”

None of us had ever met a lawyer before. But this one seemed to think we were the coolest people on the planet. With all the time he spent trying to hang out with us, at Paul’s dad’s expense, you’d think he’d have gotten the little wiener out of jail already— but we were happy to impede him as long as the dad kept paying Paul’s rent.

His next trick was to take out a joint. We all recoiled.

“Seriously, Moon Unit?!” Leslie slapped it out of his hand.

“I already got fired from one job!” I reminded him, not that he cared. “What the f@ck are you doing here?”

“Hey, uncool!… Uncool, man, that’s a holy plant. »

The other half of my drumstick sailed past his head.

« Uh… uh, same as usual, I’m here on duty,”Rainbow mumbled. He used the need to fall on his knees searching to help him pretend the drumstick didn’t happen. “I gotta research the case… I thought you dudes would appreciate some good brewskis. You know, loose lips.”

“You’re not supposed to warn the enemy,” I said. I pointed at him like he was a zoo animal: “I think he’s stoned already.”

“Always, always,” Rainbow grinned. I guess he was bragging.

Brett found the joint first and stomped it into the floorboards. “Cool, cool. You mind not getting us arrested again?”

“Heyyyyyyy! C’mon, I thought you guys were cool.”

“We wish you wouldn’t,” Leslie said. I stared at him. It took a lot for Leslie to not want somebody to think he was cool, but the raid had probably been more frightening for him than he would ever consider letting on.

“Is Paul paying his rent this month?” I asked.

“If you let me smoke my joint, sure.” Unbelievably, the little weasel pulled out another one.

“Just give us the beer,” Leslie snapped. I sighed… as obvious as Rainbow was, so were we.

Rainbow sat on the back of one of the couches, stroking his abomination of a ponytail. I guess the hippy ponytail was the grandfather of the man-bun—including its symbiotic relationship with microbrew, aesthetic horror, and an uneasy marriage of needy money-grubbing, patrician roots, and utopian political BS. Rainbow had probably credited the greasy wad with getting him laid in 1967 and had been thinking it didn’t make him look like a goober ever since.

“So! Are ya guys flattered?”

“Huh?”

“Do you have any idea how much the city spent raiding you?”

“Are those two questions related, or are we supposed to be flattered that you’re getting paid to bother us?”

“Ha ha! I’m glad we’re getting to know each other well enough that we can joke. Here, have another beer. Anyway, TEN GRAND.”

“Huh?!” I don’t think Leslie had eaten in a couple days, and the microbrews were basically wine.

“The city spent TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS in police overtime and stuff busting THIS house!” He waved his arms around like he was showing us the room where they signed the US Constitution, or where Caesar died. “Paid by us, the taxpayer. Can you smell the oppression?”

“Well, I did lose my job,” I said.

“That might not be all you lose. Might I ask… besides my client, do you guys know who in this house was actually on the lease?”

Thinking fast, I saw Leslie’s mouth start to open and I stomped on his foot.

“Iiiiiiy!” he yelled.

“No, stupid, you’re not on the lease,” I said. “NONE of us are on that lease. We’re just, like, groupies.” It was quick thinking on my part, indeed, but in the end it didn’t matter. If your luck is bad enough, you’d be better off stupid. Your actions mean nothing, smart or not; History will roll over you—and stupidity at least seems to dull the pain. No matter what, the Fates will care for their pet morons, their beloved bigots—you know, the one who screams racial epithets at you because she’s mad that you have more street cred than she does—their wealthy welfare frauds; behold, the Universe provided Paul with a lawyer and my TV-VCR, after he brought this sh@t down on all our heads.

At least for the moment we could hope he got nice long sheets in jail.

And for a few beats I felt relieved. The other Mosquitos caught on and dragged Rainbow back to his decoy subject:

“Ten grand, huh?” Leslie said, grinning sharkishly. “Is that how much free pot the guy they were looking for gave your client?”

“Yeah!” Brett said cheerfully. “You know what their deal was? Paul brought the guy into our house, and made a deal that he got free weed in exchange for giving this drug dealer half our house for no extra rent. Did Paul tell you about that part—huh?”

“Uh… I don’t think I should know that,” Rainbow said, suddenly sounding like he couldn’t handle his weed. “Yeah… I wish I didn’t know that. Well, great talking to ya, dudes, but I feel my pager buzzing, I gotta go make a phone call, ha ha…”

“Didn’t you have evidence you needed to look around for or something?” Brett yelled after him.

“Don’t let the door hit you!” Leslie yelled: “—Oh, wait, we don’t have a door, asshole, ‘cause of YOUR FRIEND PAUL!”

“Brats and pigs,” I muttered. “This beer tastes like a fruit bat’s asshole, but I’m already shnockered.”

“That’s what he wanted,” Leslie said. “Trying to get us in trouble somehow instead of Paul. Good thing we’ve inoc-incul-incockulated ourselfs—I’m not drunk, I can still talk…”

“Ha ha, you said cock!” Brett was always a happy drunk.

“INOCULATED!”

“Yeah, we’re sober, all right,” I said. “Damn… I think he tricked us into ending practice.”