On the stage, bass fiddle groans, slaughtered as an incompetent fake draws the bow across its metal-strung throat. The remaining drunk, a train conductor, alone and damp,  briefly passes out at his table and bangs his cinder-bound head on an empty beer mug.  He shouts, “All the more for me, you cunts!” He dies at some point.

With mercy to art and civility itself, the electricity flowing to the the microphones and speakers is ceased and the loose voltage runs through the cracks in the stage.  The stagehands call them “Zap Lizards” and keep them as pets inside insulated mayonnaise jars labelled with hand-drawn lighting bolts so as to warn to the curious and just plain stupid.  The muted quartet of wretched musicians can do no more damage tonight.  At least not on this stage. The musicians climb inside the leather-clad cardboard cases, pulling the night with them because in November, even a thin blanket is better than nothing.

EARLIER:
She forgets the words to “Sentimental Journey” and instead improvises by singing the instruction insert from her box of Kotex which she has, for some reason, brought on stage with her.  Ashamed of herself for forgetting such a sweet and classic song and more ashamed still that she could think of nothing that rhymed with “vaginal.”  She settles for “magical”, which is a rookie choke for sure but no one seems to notice except for the Argentinian busboy who signals his disgust by urinating in the shrimp bisque.   The soup is a hit but the head chef, unable to reproduce the newly-popular recipe, decides to try highly addictive drugs to tamp down his anxiety.  (A WEEK AFTERWARD) the chef tries to stop a speeding milk-truck with his mind.  He succeeds, surprising himself and the deliveryman.  Days later, on his second attempt he is ground under the wheels of a truck carrying spare parts bound for a textile mill in Fort Payne, Alabama, “The Sock Capitol Of The World.”

LATER:
Clattering 16mm sins flicker and twitch.  Wallpaper tattoos writhe across the turgid images: a shopkeep selling sausage;  an electrical wizard  explaining the necessity of a good connection;  a Canadian Mountie, mounting.

The hotel room is hot and densely-atmosphered  with the thick vapors of gin-barf and ripe genitals.  The room is a  newsprint halftone in the gloom of the film projector, etching bits of yellow light into black anonymity.  The opulent beds and couches squeak.  Men of status and wealth lurch and heave like velvet beetles  as they attempt to unload their frustrated gravity into the flesh that suits them most.

Silk trousers unbuttoned, industrialist Isombard Kingdom Throckmorton struggles to keep his 74-year-old ding-dong vertical as it is expertly vacuumed by a real Parisian hoochie. He is distracted by the sight of the archbishop jamming the last few inches of a soda bottle into the skull of a room-service porter who brought up the last round of ice and beer.

“I said, Hail Merry!” the archbishop yells as he pounds on the bottle, “Get thee in!”

Throckmorton rolls his eyes in disgust and confides to the prostitute, “This is my main complaint about the Church.  They don’t know when to quit.”  Speaking past the withering dink in her mouth, the Paris native replies, “Ya’ll shore is right-smart, honeychile!  Smarter than a big mess o’ collard greens and deep-fried possum!”  The old man pretends to come by dumping a scotch and soda on her head.

IN THE INTERVAL:
The band manages to find it’s musical feet and gets most of the way through “Take The A-Train” before they slide into “The Theme  From Shaft” which had not even been written yet.  The patrons are stunned not only by the new rhythms (and electric guitar, which had not been invented yet) but by the casual use of the word “motherfucker” which was rarely heard outside of popular mouse-based cartoons that preceded feature films.

NIGHT’S END:
Almost imperceptible, the indigo sky takes on color.   A fraction: the day is coming.

For now the alley is a dark, rumpled castle of trashcans and soiled laundry.  Rats scuttle and hide as cooks, maids, busboys and porters clock out for the night.  They smoke cigarettes and pass a clay bottle of homemade corn-whiskey, allowing their voices to take wing again after hours of polite, subservient  sotto-vocé they reserve for the delicate and refined ears of the guests.

Still in his cook’s whites, Jimmy Murtz eases away from the loitering group and shouts a bawdy good-bye, “May ya cocks rot off, ya bastids!”  He is crowned by hoots and warmed by the whiskey as he steps from the alley into the gentle dusk breeze caressing the boulevard.   A few limos, long and hysterically garish, wait curbside, the drivers statue-still.   Jimmy quickens his steps until he feels the hotel no longer has its eye on his neck, and he laughs.  This one is for the sun.

Text and Images © Andrew Auten – All Rights Reserved