called the hotel, where three hours earlier he had delivered his surly passenger. But despite giving the desk clerk and then her supervisor four possible alternate spellings, they could find nobody registered there under the name of Dr. Alton Schwimmer.
NINE
In the pictorial dictionary of rock and roll there’s a drawing to illustrate the word ROADIE: open vest, shaggy blond Buffalo Bill hair, droopy moustache, shoulders slumped from hauling amps, personality of an onion soaked in tobacco juice and Drano. The real-life model for that illustration was Stein’s long time pal and co-conspirator, Winston Frenneau. High in the mountains in Katmandu in the early seventies and high in a mescaline haze, Winston had allowed some girl to stick a pair of earring studs into his lobes. It turned out they were loaded with mercury. When he got back to civilization the bottom half of both of his ears had to be amputated below the pinna.
Stein had hung out with him for the full month that his head was wrapped in bloody bandages. And since the name Winston sounded so much like Vincent, and he had lost both his ears, Stein thought that pluralizing the name Van Gogh and calling him Winston Van Goze was pretty damn witty. Most of life’s ironies are horribly cruel, but on rare occasions sweet fruit grows out of bad soil and Winston’s story was one of them. After the operation on his ears, once the gauze and dressings were removed, those little stubs on the side of his head could differentiate variations of pitch on a guitar string to a hundredth of a VPS. Where he had not given that much of a shit about music before, he turned his gift into an avocation and then a most lucrative way of life. Every serious acoustic player wanted one man to tune his strings and that man was Winston Frenneau.
McKarus’s Folk Emporium was the last surviving acoustic club from back in the day. The Long Timers called it “McFolks.” Martini bars and chic clothing stores were lately popping up on all sides as another neighborhood gentrified. With rents going into the stratosphere, McKarus’s future was tenuous.
It was just past noon when Stein got there. The box office hadn’t opened yet. Posters were up advertising the group that was coming in tonight, The Ravens Family Four. These were five generations of Appalachian fiddle players, ranging from Grandpa Cyrus, who was somewhere between ninety-four and the age of rocks, down to three-year-old Baby Raven, who (as the story goes) pulled her daddy’s guitar down off the kitchen table at the age of eleven months and hammer-picked “Shady Grove” in E-flat.
Stein knocked a few times and hallooed but got no answer. He tried the front door, which to his pleasant surprise was unlocked. It was dark inside. The vestibule contained the box office and a display of tapes and CD’s. Its musty walls were covered with posters for shows, some dating back twenty years. Unoccupied. Stein continued down the narrow corridor that led to the stage. The interior walls were lined with hundreds of guitars, mandolins and banjos; an acoustic cathedral. Once his eyes acclimated to the dark, he saw Winston sitting on the stage, his back to the door, his hair down to his shoulders, stringing Baby Raven’s fiddle.
From twenty feet away, Stein rumbled in the stylized gravelly voice that they used to use with each other. “Van Goze.”
Winston didn’t look up from the fret he was filing and answered back, “I can hear you man. You don’t have to yell.” He turned around to face the interruption, affecting an aura of casual annoyance. “Shit, that couldn’t be who I think it is. I heard he was dead.”
“Reports of his demise have been exaggerated,” Stein said as he climbed up the three steps to the stage. Winston appraised his flaccid body. “Not by much, I can see. What the hell happened to you?”
“Fame. Fortune. The love and admiration of my fellow man.”
Winston took the long drag of his Marlboro and blew out a voluminous cloud that made its way across the room in shafts of brilliant stage light to engulf Stein.
“They let you smoke in here?”
“They let me do whatever the fuck I please.”
Winston tightened the string just so, touched it with his index finger and laid his ear across its sound plane.
“You think you could put the thing down and say hello?”
Winston adjusted the string, touched it again and held it to his ear. Stein got the message and wheeled around to leave. “Swell. Nice seeing you, too.”
“Don’t be a putz. Have a carrot juice.” Winston grabbed a half-pint bottle out of the ice chest and lobbed it underhand across the twenty-foot stage. Stein caught it in one hand. “Sounds like a slogan for the Carrot Advisory Board. Don’t Be A Putz. Have a Carrot Juice.”
Winston nodded without pleasure. “You got that slick ad-man thing going pretty good.”
“Yeah that’s me. Mister Madison Avenue.” He twisted off the cap and took a swig of the juice. It was surprisingly cold and sweet. “This is great. Did you make it?”
“Why does everything you say sound like complete bullshit?”
“How about fuck you. Does that sound sincere?”
“Not bad.”
“Says the man who’s making the world safe for the Beverly Hillbillies.”
“It’s music. What are you doing?”
“Making a living. Just like you, Vincent.”
“Not even remotely just like me. And nobody I know calls me Vincent. Or Van Goze.” Winston put the guitar down, closed the ice chest, was about to say what had been on his mind for ten years but figured why bother, then said it anyway. “You sold the bus, Harry.”
“Only my ex-wife calls me Harry.”
“How could you sell the fucking bus?”
“The bus? Are you talking about the 1969 VW-”
“How many goddamn buses did you have?”
“Let me understand this. You’re pissed at me for an event that happened how long ago?”
“There’s no statute of limitations on suicide of the soul.”
“The bus was my soul?”
“The fact that you don’t understand is testament to its demise.”
“I drive my daughter to school. Ok? As if any of this is your business. It embarrassed her. So, I got rid of it.”
“It was an icon, man. You don’t sell an icon.”
“It leaked oil and poisoned the rose bushes.”
“You know who I fucked in that wagon?”
“Yeah. All my overflow.”
Winston crunched his empty juice bottle and tossed it into the can, laid his ear across the strings and played another note. “You meant something to people before you died. People bought into your shit. They like to think they can de-pants the president.”
“Then people should.”
Winston plucked a string. It vibrated full and true and resonated with all the A-strings of the instruments hanging on the walls. The room sang. “You hear that? A over middle C. Four-forty every time. Once you have your note that’s your note.”
“The fuck are you talking about?”
“You changed your tuning, man. Now I don’t know who you are.
“You’re talking about strings, not people.”
“No difference.”
“I would have given you the goddamn wagon if I knew you wanted it.”
Winston still refused to make conciliatory eye contact. “I wouldn’t drive that weak piece of shit. You know that beast Arnold drives in the movies?”
“The Hum something?”
“Word is they’re coming out with them for civilians. That’s my ride.”
“Where do you hear this shit?”
