Black Mad Wheel

Now the drummer is blushing. Thinks he’s being put on. The band’s manager, Arthur, a rich kid from Birmingham, looks bothered. He’s standing by the leather couch in the control room.

“Fellas, we hired you to make a record, not decorate Fred’s drum kit!”

“You see that yellow-and-black blanket there, Art?” Larry asks him, pointing with a pencil through the glass to an unmade cot against the far wall.

“Yes. Of course I see it.”

“That’s the same one we used on ‘Be Here.’”

The manager crosses the control room quickly. He takes the microphone from Larry.

“Freddie,” he says. “How about the yellow-and-black blanket on the mattress by your knees?”

The drummer’s pants slide down his butt as he bends to get it.

Philip plants a hand on the manager’s shoulder.

“You know what your boys need?” he asks.

“What?” Art checks his watch. He keeps checking his watch. He’s worried about time. Time and money.

“Your boys need an afternoon out of the house.”

“No way,” Art says, holding out both palms toward Philip. Philip sees a flash of what Art will look like when he’s older, when managing bands is a novelty item on the shelf of his past. “We’ve been here for two hours and still haven’t done a lick of work.”

“What do you mean?” Duane asks. “We picked out the blanket, didn’t we?”

Philip takes the manager by the wrist.

“Take your watch off,” he says.

Art covers his watch with his other hand. As if he’s being mugged. By Philip. The Danes have that quality about them.

“What is it with you, Tonka?”

“I mean it. Take your watch off.”

Hesitantly, the manager does. He hands the watch to Philip.

“What are you going to do with it?”

“I’m gonna smash it.”

“Wait!”

Philip smiles.

“I’m gonna wear it is what.”

Philip puts it on his wrist, adjusts the clasp.

“Hey, Tonka! We agreed on a price, fair and square!”

“We did,” Philip says. “But that’s half the problem.”

“You want to renegotiate? Dammit, I knew I couldn’t trust you guys!”

“Who said anything about renegotiating? Relax. We agreed. Fair and square. The ‘square’ is the problem.”

“What do you mean?”

Philip leans over the control room microphone.

“Gentlemen,” he says. “Set your instruments down. We’re going out.”

Behind the glass the band looks scared.

“There’s a hole in your soul,” Duane tells the manager. “Big enough to swim through.”

“And you’re going to fill it?”

“Not all in one afternoon,” Larry says, already putting on his leather jacket. He runs his callused fingertips through his long hair. “But we’re gonna try.”

Art is shaking his head, pleading, whining, as Duane slips into his black leather coat and Philip checks his jean jacket for money. The Sparklers enter the control room, slumped, confused.

“Come on, guys,” Philip says.

“Where?” the guitarist asks.

“We’re going to get inspired.”

On the way out, as they’re leaving the studio, the phone rings. Philip pauses at the door and looks.

Some rings, Philip thinks, are more loaded than others. As if a man might be able to hear an important call … before answering.

He locks the studio up and follows the others outside.

3 (#ulink_8161beff-da3f-5444-9017-8ca88084759a)

Philip can move more today than he could yesterday, but that little is frighteningly small. He remembers all of it: The Danes. Africa. The desert. The sound. But right now these memories must wait; the current state of his body is all that matters.

And the hospital. The motives behind this place. Philip has been around enough military to know that almost none of it is on the level. And the stuff that is is uneven at that.

He wants a drink. So badly he wants a drink.

He’s alone, looking to where the beige wallpaper meets the powder-blue ceiling, the colors of the Namib at noon. To his right, where he can’t see, a fan whirs. A radio plays, a quiet drama that does battle with the sound of classical music coming from another room farther down the hall.

Philip’s room is big. He knows this because he’s speaking out loud, gauging its size by the length of the echo on his voice.