3. Dark and Metric

Flansy's late night search in Manhattan reaps unexpected results.

 

John Sid Linnell choked as he rounded the corner of 5^th and 22^nd, colliding into the saxophone player. He fumbled for a dollar in his back pocket and hastily tossed it inside the player’s case and immediately regretted it. The man stopped his wailing soliloquy long enough to say a pleading “god bless” and then continued, grinning against the reed.

            John Sid wished he had that dollar back.

Hand and cast as deep as they could go in his pockets, he trudged past the faded buildings, near-sighted by the freakish procession of street lamps. Darting his eyes over the head of traffic, he dodged his way across another street. It had been at least a good two hours since he had lost the path of his friend, John Flansburgh. And New York was a big place.

John Sid didn’t particularly like walking alone in Manhattan, especially with a broken wrist and no handgun; not that he had one, but Linnell’s good hand twisted nervously around the plastic bag carrying the new drum machine. He began to hum nervously along to something in his head by Elvis Costello, but his mind drew a blank on what it was. He had incessantly been wracking his mind for it when he had run headlong into the busker and now John Sid couldn’t help but start thinking about it again, but with a little more alertness to his surroundings.

A group of drunken twenty-somethings pushed by him and he stopped his humming, embarrassed by their odd stares.

Kids. Why couldn’t they be more like him?

He placed his cast-protected left hand gently into his denim jacket’s pocket and sauntered on. Flansburgh had disappeared—something that was becoming a regular occurrence. His sudden departures did not yield good results, if today was any evidence. In the past two hours, thei situation had gotten a lot tighter. And Flansburgh was treating it with the level of maturity that he granted everything else.

John Sid sighed and rubbed the outside of his denim pocket where his cast was refusing to budge. He had no job now. He couldn’t ride his bike at all. He had done something stupid, acting like a damn kid and fooling around on the clock—

Sure, I can make that light, he had thought with gusto—

John Sid’s nose crinkled at the memory.

(stupid kid stupid stupid stup)

            “Yo! Linnell! Hey, Sid!”

            John Sid wheeled around. John Flansburgh was sprinting up the street with the four-track they had managed to salvage earlier from certain damnation at an alleyway music store.

            “You’ve been carrying that thing the entire time?”

            “Damn right I did,” Flans said, grinning and wiping his sweaty cheek against his shoulder, despite the chilly air. “What else would I have done with it? We’re, like, a half-hour ways away from Brooklyn, John.”

            Linnell shrugged and turned his back, strolling away. Behind him, Flansburgh huffed, carrying their equipment.

            “Where were you? I’ve been looking for you for hours or something.”

            Still walking, Linnell cocked his head at him.

            “What, me? I’ve been carrying this stupid bag around looking for you. I was in the back section of that boho bookstore and when I looked up you were gone.”

            “Oh,” Flans simpered, his face flushed. “What section?”

            “I don’t know, I think ‘music theory’ or something,” Linnell said, rubbing his eyes.

            “Ah, y’see, I wouldn’t be there,” Flans said. “Despite what you think, I don’t read so much, John. I’m fine just getting by on magazines. Yeah, that’s probably why I left you.”

            “Oh, right,” John Sid sighed. “Can’t we just go home now? I really think I have a concussion, Flans.”

            Flans sped up a little to walk evenly with him.

            “Aw, not just yet, Doodles, we haven’t found what we’ve been looking for!”

            “What do you mean?” John Sid asked slowly. “We got what we came for. Four-track and drum machine. No way are we going to be able to find you a guitar at eleven at night.”

            “Didn’t you hear me talk about the song service thingy?”

            “God, John, I hear you talk about a lot of things, and yeah, I already told you what I think about that.” The words fell out of Linnell’s mouth thickly and awkwardly. Had he ever not been contrite with Flansburgh before? Of course, that was immature. Flansy was twenty-four, he was twenty-five. Who did have the upper hand then?

            He was surprised to hear Flansburgh laughing from beside him. John Sid’s dark eyes buried themselves back into his face.

            “Can’t we do it tomorrow? I mean, fine we can do it n’all, just—please, man?”

            “You have no idea how good it is to hear that, Sid.”

            Linnell watched his shoelace bounce on and off the pavement.

            “Mhm,” he mumbled.

            They arrived on a corner and Flansburgh stopped, surveying the lanes of traffic.

            “Yeah, let’s go back to your place, man,” he said, shifting the four-track’s weight into the crook of his elbow. “There’s not more we can do tonight. We probably lost some seriously valuable rehearse-time searching for this junk.”

            They turned down the avenue to head back to Brooklyn Bridge when Flans stopped again.

            “Flans, come on, it’s late—” John Sid tugged at his elbow like a child to a schoolmarm and he immediately hated himself for it.

            “No, no, I just thought I saw—something—something cool…”

            Flans backtracked down the sidewalk, the four-track threatening to fall. Linnell, though virtually carrying no major luggage but the drum machine, still struggled to keep up with him.

            Flansburgh plastered his face against a dime store’s grey window.

            “I want that.”

            “Well, I’ll just put it on your Christmas list, won’t I? Come on…”

            “No, John, look.”

            John Sid had looked and even more, he had seen it, but he couldn’t explain the feeling in his chest. Was it pain, fear, exhilaration? Hell, could it be hope or just something cool?

(something some thing cooool)

He felt a giggle bubble in his throat, but he held it off. Flans stared at him with imploring eyes in the Manhattan gloom.

            “It’s an answering machine, Mr. Flansburgh.”

            “Yeah, I know!” His hands flew up to his hair in his excitement. “It’s perfect, right? We need it like we need ice water!”

            “What kind of analogy is that? John, it’s freezing out here,” John Sid said, forcing himself not to sound too henpecked. The uneasy feeling in his chest was beginning to bother him. How could a five-and-ten’s half-priced answering machine do this to someone?

            “Aw, I can’t believe it’s closed!” Flansburgh feigned a kick at the cage securing the door. “You’ll come down tomorrow and get this for me while I’m at work before someone else gets it, yeh? Come on, let’s go. It’s freezing out here.”

 

 

Reviews

[zig]

man, great dialog! really moving, pushing pulling. great stuff