Checker and the Derailleurs

9. in defense of subjective reality (#litres_trial_promo)

10. howard and the flow state (#litres_trial_promo)

11. the newlywed game (#litres_trial_promo)

12. don’t be crue (#litres_trial_promo)

13. too much information (#litres_trial_promo)

14. close to the edge (#litres_trial_promo)

15. it’s hard to be a saint in the city (#litres_trial_promo)

16. why we fought world war II (#litres_trial_promo)

17. the checkers speech (#litres_trial_promo)

18. the party’s over (#litres_trial_promo)

19. the last supper (#litres_trial_promo)

20. into white (#litres_trial_promo)

21. a cappella in the underpass (#litres_trial_promo)

22. a little help from my friends (#litres_trial_promo)

23. the ghost in the machine (#litres_trial_promo)

24. comfortably numb (#litres_trial_promo)

25. spirits in the material world (#litres_trial_promo)

epilogue. oh, you mean that checker secretti (#litres_trial_promo)

footnotes (#litres_trial_promo)

index of song titles (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Book (#litres_trial_promo)

Praise for Checker and The Derailleurs (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Also by Lionel Shriver (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

Checker’s favorite color is red

1 / blinded by the light (#u01109050-7a1b-5d9c-9735-849b24773c94)

Foreboding overcame Eaton Striker well before The Derailleurs began to play. Much as Eaton would have preferred to chum obliviously with his friends, he could only stare at the stage as the drummer stepped up to those ramshackle Leedys and the damned skins began to purr.

“Who is that?” asked Eaton, not sure he really wanted to know. The drummer percolated on his throne, never still, bloop, bloop, like coffee in the morning—that color; that welcome.

“Checker Secretti,” said Brinkley, with irritating emphasis. “Where have you been, the moon?”

“He’s talking to his traps!” exclaimed Eaton, in whose disturbed imagination the instruments were answering back.

“Yeah, he did that last time,” said Brinkley the Expert. “Checker’s a bit touched, if you ask me.”

“I didn’t.” Eaton slouched in his chair.

The humidity here was curiously high. A plumbing problem in the basement dripped right on the heater, so the whole club felt like a steam room—there was actually a slight fog; vapor beaded on the windowpanes. A proliferation of candles sent soft, flickering profiles against the walls. With its vastly unremarkable decor, Eaton couldn’t explain the crawling effect of the place as he nestled down in the seductively comfortable chair, taking deeper, slower breaths and saying nicer things to his friends. Eaton squirmed. He tried to sit up straight. He looked suspiciously into his Johnnie Walker, thinking, Black, hah! since places like this bought gallons of Vat 69 and funneled it into name-brand bottles. Yet this was confoundingly good whiskey, some of the best he’d ever tasted. The waitress, though definite woof-woof material at first glance, now looked pretty. Eaton felt he was drowning and fought violently to rise to the surface, to breathe cold, hard air, to hear his own voice with its familiar steeliness, instead of the mushy, underwater murmur it had acquired since they’d sat down.

The drums sounded so eager, so excited. Checker laid a stick, once, bip, on the snare and it jumped; so did Eaton. Every time a quick rat-tat rang through the room, the audience looked up; the waitress turned brightly to the stage. When Checker nudged the bass to adjust the blanket curled inside its shell, women at tables stroked their own hair; men extended languorously into the aisles. The beater sent a shudder through the length of Eaton’s body.

Eaton had been taking drum lessons from an expensive instructor in Manhattan since he was seven, and though he hardly ever heard a song that was fully to his liking, when that rare riff floated over the airways a cut above the ordinary fill, he took notice. Eaton was a snob, and would admit it to anyone, but in some ways he really was better than these people, rightfully not at home in provincial Astoria. He was bright; he had an uncanny sense of other people, even if it was largely for their failings; and he knew excellence. So while somewhere in the boy’s mind he was aware that he didn’t hear it when he himself played, he was hearing it now.

The first phrase rose and fell like a breath. Sticks rippled like muscle, and teased, tingling, resting on the edge of the ride. Again, Eaton involuntarily inhaling with them, the blond sticks curled up to the snare and spread to the toms, the crash, to ting, ting, ting … Someone laughed. Checker skimmed his tips across the supple ridges of the brass, raising the long, dark hairs on Eaton’s arms. Yet Eaton could see Checker was just loosening up, ranging around the drums as if stretching at the start of a day. He kept low through the whole of “Frozen Towels.” Slowly through “Fresh Batteries,” though a strange blissful smile crept onto his face, and the music began to move underneath like lava with a crust on top—the cooler surface would crack in places, show red, let out steam; all at once the music would move forward, rushing into the club like a flow, veined with the sure signs of a dangerous interior. The keyboardist had to stand up, pushing his chair back; the musicians out front gradually stepped away to give the drums more space, until, there, pouring from the back of the stage, came an unrestrained surge of rhythm like a red wall of melted rock.

Yet later Checker slowed the lava, the blood, to a sly trickle. The restraint hurt to hear. The rest of the band, too, retreated to small, stingy sounds. The club grew stupendously quiet. Not a drink clinked, not a shoe scuffled. The sax thinned to a spidery thread of a note; the keyboard took to a small high chord; the bassist and lead guitarist hugged their instruments selfishly to their bodies, and no sooner struck a note than took it back. But quietest of all were the drums, pattering, the sticks like fingertips, until Checker was no longer on the heads themselves but only on the rims, ticking, rapid, but receding all the more. The audience was leaning forward, barely breathing. But the sound, meanly, left them, though it was a good five seconds before they realized that the band had ceased to play.

In the midst of this silence Checker began to laugh. “Clap, you sons of bitches!” And they did.

Eaton excused himself to go to the men’s room. He leaned over the sink, bracing his hands on either side of the porcelain, panting. Looking up in the mirror, he found his usually handsome, narrow face pasty, with sweat at the hairline. Eaton leaned against the wall with his eyes closed and waited there through the entire break.

For the second set, Eaton could listen more clinically. He noted the tunes were original and several had to do with bicycling, of all things, like the name of the band: “Cotterless Cranks,” “Big Bottom Bracket,” “Flat without a Patchkit on the Palisades” “Cycle Killer” and “Blue Suede Brakeshoes.” Or “Perpendicular Grates (#litres_trial_promo),” to which Eaton caught most of the words:

Don’t jump your red tonight,

You big yellow Checker.

I’m coming through the light

At its last yellow flicker.

Shine your bulging brights

Right into my reflectors.

Listen close and you might

Hear my freewheel ticker-ticker.

Hey, city slickers: