“Can you hear that, babe? Can you hear it constructing itself? A melody perfect and self-arisen out of the ether. Like the iron filings between the plastic cover and the drawing of the farmer’s face. You know the toy I mean? Woolly Billy . . . Willy Bully . . . You push the magnetic pencil around and pull the filings into the form of a beard or a mustache? . . . It’s like that only it’s automatic, happening on its own accord, out of complete randomness . . . Do you understand what that means? . . . What I’ve proven? . . . Melody existing as a primal force in the universe, inherent in nature, underlying and permeating the mitochondria of cells, lying dormant under existence itself . . . Can you hear it, babe? Can you hear the beauty? The innate intelligence of organized sound completely independent from the mind of man. Fucking Mozart would be jealous, and I’m not comparing me to him ’cause it’s not me who did it . . . IT’S SIMPLY THERE . . . always was and will be . . . We have to be careful here . . . I have to be very cautious how I go about this . . . the FBI, the FCC, without a doubt they’ve banned some of these frequencies . . . they keep these beauties for themselves and the CIA . . . they must be on a list somewhere in Washington . . . subversive potentialities. Extraterrestrial intelligence, sound arranged by sound itself, by nature and electricity . . . positive and negative ions, the celestial poles!! . . . Do you know what this proves??!”
I had arrived at a critical point. Lou was Dr. Frankenstein, minutes after the slabbed cadaver was lowered from the sky where it bathed in the fires of heaven. Salivating at the smell of charred meat, he pressed his stethoscope to the Monster’s chest and heard the lub-dub of its borrowed heart. Life! A corpse no more!
“There’s clarity beneath all the chaos of the universe and this is the empirical evidence.” As the words fell from his mouth, he saw me in the doorway.
“Tim me boy!” He stood up, kissed me on the head, and told me to have a seat. I sat cross-legged on the floor right across the table from where he was sitting. Rachel didn’t move at all, I wasn’t sure if she knew I was there. I could see that tears were flowing down her face, smudging her black mascara and streaking crooked lines down her Cherokee cheekbones.
“What are you doing here, Tim?”
“You told me you needed help with an amplifier.”
“I did? . . . I do. Yes. I told you that today, right?”
“Yes, a few hours ago.”
“Right, right. It’s over here.” He pointed to a corner of the room where a hulk of rectangular something was covered in a white sheet. He unveiled it, revealing a gargantuan speaker cabinet and amplifier head. It sat there big and menacing.
“Did you bring a dolly? We’re gonna need a dolly.”
Before I could tell him I didn’t have a dolly, Rachel stood up and started shouting what I figured were Spanish curse words. She didn’t look at either Lou or myself, she just marched away. As she continued her tirade, things started to get smashed inside the bedroom.
Lou chuckled and shook his head. “Can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em.” He put a fatherly arm around my shoulder. “Do you have a girlfriend, Tim?”
“I do . . . kind of.”
“Well, here’s the secret to the fairer sex,” he said, unfazed as another crash erupted. “What I’m going to tell you is the law of the jungle and there’s no way around it, so it’s best you learn it now. Okay? . . . In essence it’s very simple . . . here it is . . . You can’t win. That’s it. Get it? . . . When it comes to an argument, a disagreement? Forget it . . . You can’t win . . . It’s impossible. The other thing is, when a problem or an issue arises, a woman wants to be heard, she wants her feeling understood. But a man wants to fix it, he immediately wants to find a solution . . . but that’s not important to the woman in the midst of her emotions and feelings. No! She simply wants to be listened to.”
He paused as something made of glass hit the bedroom door and shattered. He smiled.
“She is so beautiful, man. She is a genius.” His head was turned toward me but his eyes were scouring the room like they were following the path of a mosquito. “So, Tim my man, once you understand the rules, once you accept it as truth, life becomes a whole lot easier . . . Got a cigarette?”
“No. I don’t. Sorry.”
“That’s okay, Tim. That is okay . . .” Lou patted the amplifier. “Now how the fuck we gonna get this thing into a cab?”
There was no way on earth we were getting it into a cab.
“I think we need a van or a truck, Lou.”
“What about a station wagon? Would a station wagon work?” he said as he dashed to his bright red telephone. He picked up the receiver, dialed three numbers, and paused.
“A station wagon would probably be okay,” I said without really being sure.
Loud hammering came from the bedroom. Lou shook his head, smiling again, and said as if to himself: “I tell you, man, she is something else. Just brilliant. Nothing short of a philosopher queen.” He hung up the phone and continued, now directly to me: “Okay . . . where can we get a station wagon today? My van guy broke his driving foot jumping out a window. He’s afraid to get behind the wheel
