2. On the Drag

John Linnell has his doubts, but Flansburgh's not feeling 'em!

 

It was as if their dealings of the past few months had never occurred. There they were again, back behind the locked gate of rockdom. Nothing left but to start over. Washed up before they were ever used. Even Linnell thought that he had never felt so hopeless.

When they had walked the floors up to John Sid Linnell’s old, yet intact apartment, Flansburgh had crashed back into his old sleeping quarters (Linnell’s lumpy ole couch) without much thought. John Sid’s mouth twitched into a nervous smile and he lurched over to the kitchenette, though it was so aversely similar to what had become John Flansburgh’s two stories below, that the nervous smile dissipated before it was fully registered.

            With one hand, John Sid slid a half-empty coffee pot into the microwave and stabbed the buttons. He rubbed his angular hand and flaky cast together numbly.

            “Thanks,” Flans mumbled into the cushions.

            “Yeah,” Linnell exhaled, drumming his fingers on the stained counter. The pain of the familiar beat, however, stopped him.

            The thrumming silence was intimidating. In all the years John Sid had known John Flansburgh, he had always heard him. Never had he been so hushed; not even after Jimmy died. John Sid’s throat close tight and looked at Flans. Presently, he was flopped out on the couch. His knee was not quite off the center cushion, yet it was just hovering over the heaps of his spiral notebooks that besieged the floor. Linnell thought the image was so unbelievably despondent of John Conant Flansburgh, that it was remotely perverted… He lowered his eyes.

            The microwave dinged.

            “I don’t want to call the cops, John.”

            John Sid stopped his finger from popping open the microwave door and turned to Flansburgh who was now resting on his elbow and eyeing Linnell intently.

“What do you mean, Flansy?”

            “I just want it to go away.”

            “It…won’t, John,” Linnell sighed, turning back to the nuked coffee.

“But, Sid, what are we going to do…”

            Linnell wanted to say anything to comfort Flansburgh, even if it only brought around false hope, but there was nothing even though it was in his place to do so. But he wasn’t the vanguard of words; that was Flansburgh. And how dare he go weak on him.

            “I’ll get you a new guitar, Mr. Flansburgh,” he said, finally. “A good one too.”

Flansburgh dragged himself up and shook his head, his rumpled short, inky hair seeming to stand on end at the thought.

            “No offense, Sid, but you’re a messenger boy with a broken wrist. You can’t work and you can’t play and no way could you make good enough money for a guitar. I don’t even have enough money for that. God…th-that was the first guitar I ever bought myself, John...” Flansburgh trailed off.

            John Sid shrugged miserably.

            “I have been saving for an accordion, actually. I was going to teach myself, but, y’know, the Farfisa’s fine…” He nodded haplessly to the bulky organ hunched against the wall.

            Blinking, Flans seemed to have suddenly jumped out of his space cowboy boots.

“No, that’d be real cool, actually. Accordion, huh? That’d sound great with the drum machine. Don’tcha think?”

            “Yeah. Yeah, that’s what I thought…”

            “But with the guitar, right?”
            Linnell winced inwardly.

            “Yeah…”

            “Sid, I don’t blame you, so don’t think that.”

            John Linnell was absorbedly searching the array of cupboards for two clean mugs.

            “I mean, robbers are robbers for a reason, Sid. They j-just, y’know, come out of nowhere. They’re sly.”

            John Linnell was keenly rubbing an old coffee stain off of his green, Christmas mug, when Flansburgh took it off him.

            “This whole thing,” Flansburgh said, pointing between himself and John. “Isn’t going to work if you don’t speak up. What is it?”

            “It is my fault, John,” said Linnell, finding the audacity to pour the now bitter coffee. “I was on your balcony when it happened. You’d think I would’ve heard ‘em. I don’t know why I didn’t…” Linnell shook his head. He gulped half the cruel coffee out of his green mug as Flans took the other, much bigger one. John Sid was sure that Flansburgh needed it more.

            “Cheers,” Flans said, grimacing. “And forget about it. It’s just a bunch of stuff. You… You had other things on your mind.

            “Yeah.”

            John Linnell and John Flansburgh avoided each other’s eyes. The barometer pressure in the room seemed to be rising.

            “Maybe you were right, Flans. Maybe we aren’t supposed to be doing this.”

“No. No, you were. I should have just stayed up here with you. I don’t know where my head was.” He eyed Linnell carefully. “But I was thinking, y’know, about that song service idea—”

“Oh, John, no…”

“It’d just be temporary, y’know,” Flans said quickly. He laughed, shaking a little. “Until we find better jobs, I mean.”

“This,” John Sid said, pointing between himself and John Flansburgh. “Was supposed to be our job.”

“Naturally,” Flans exhaled. “But the guitar, four-track, and all my worldly possessions have gone AWOL. And that drum machine was old hat anyway. We just gotta, like, start anew, I guess.”

Linnell drained his mug and tossed it in the sink, not caring much if it shattered. He leant against the counter and rubbed his good hand tiredly up and down his face, trying to get the caffeine moving.

“This is going to be impossible, Flansy,” he muttered.

“It’s only impossible if you say it is,” Flansburgh said brightly.

(s**t did I give him expresso?)

“C’mon, Sid, grab your coat.”

“God, Flans, what?”

“We’re going shopping, John!”

Unnaturally straight teeth flashed in the fluorescent lighting as Flansburgh grinned widely and thumped Linnell smartly on the head where a flare of pain lit up. John Flansburgh turned to rush out the door.

Linnell groaned and grabbed his denim jacket. He trudged after Flans, but not before checking and double checking that he had locked his door. Flansburgh was already halfway down to the main floor when John Sid Linnell called after him.

“Did I not just have a concussion fifteen minutes ago?”

The rise and fall of Flansburgh’s laughter filtered up to him through the tenement’s peeling stairwell. John Linnell was not aware that regardless of everything that day, he himself was smiling.

 

Reviews

[zig]

hey, these are good! great dialog, flows very well. id say more by i have hurry up and read the next chapter. zig