An Augmented Fourth Read online

  At some point the storm outside stopped sounding like one lone voice to me and instead turned into a choir of howling, untethered singing. Part of me wished to stay there on that stairwell letting the sound fall down and wash over me. The sound was dissonant, yes, but it was agreeably dissonant. Like waking up on a beach hearing the ocean’s murmur. Part of me could listen to that racket forever. But the other part still wanted its smokes.

  I walked across the marble tile floor of the lobby, ignoring everything but the cluster of vending machines sitting beneath a massive mural of some sort of battle, a typical Yank celebration of death and war. The lobby was dimly lit from the large glass windows that covered most of the walls. The windows were choked with snow from bottom to top but a weak amount of sunlight could still be seen sneaking its way in here and there, and that and my Zippo gave me a pretty good look at the mural. Not that I cared enough to give it a proper study, I just wanted my smokes. There was a candy machine, a fizzy pop machine, and finally, oh yes, a cigarette dispenser. And wonder upon wonders they had my brand, Cherry Valleys!

  Then I reached into my pocket and found absolutely no money. In fact there was nothing in my pocket except for two guitar picks. Not even a lighter or a book of matches—I grinned, what a half-soaked fool I could be, I still had the lit Zippo in my hand for Christsake. And money wasn’t going to be a problem either obviously. I walked across the floor, the air in the center of the room felt especially cold, and I picked up the second smallest potted plant I could find, walked back and threw it into the cigarette dispenser. The dispenser was hard plastic and it did not break, merely cracked. I dropped the plant after three or four more vigorous attempts, then walked over to its larger compatriots. I was about to lift up one of the heavier ones when I saw the familiar red outline of an emergency box hung along the wall behind the miniature jungle I was set to uproot. I took the smallest plant in my arms and used it to break the glass, then I took out the axe. The axe made short work of the vending machine plastic after only a few well-coordinated thwacks. I was always pretty good with an axe. There was this one time on the road, six or seven years ago, when me and Sully got a right cob on and took a couple axes to Burt’s hotel room while he was god knows where. We weren’t in a row with Burt, not at all, we just were in the mood, had the axes for some reason, and were in Burt’s room at the time. Getting an axe stuck in a box spring mattress is a real drag when you’re in the midst of a proper man tantrum. Watching Sully Sullivan light said box spring on fire in subsequent frustration, however, is an indelible pleasure that made it all worthwhile.

  As I brushed away the plastic and picked up my pack of Cherry Valleys I found myself staring up at the Yank mural. A bunch of Bostonian Yanks butchering some of my countrymen with muskets over some land they both stole from the red man. Typical hypocrite Yank statement. At least in England we know we’re fucking awful. I left the mural and had already popped a fag in my mouth and lit it when another craving made itself known: hunger. I went to the front desk to search for complimentary mints, or maybe some chocolates if they had them, and found some peppermints in a large oblong bowl next to the bell. A tent card behind the bowl suggested, only take one please, but I thought better of it and took a handful.

  “What are you doing here?” The voice came from behind me, it was thin sounding, young, masculine but not yet a man, sort of squawky like a bird trying to sound bigger than it really was… American. I turned around to see a teenage boy in a bellhop uniform brandishing a flashlight like it was some sort of weapon. Which it was, I supposed since it hurt my damn eyes. His bellhop hat was askew on his head, betraying his long black hair which sprawled out well past his shoulders. Even in the dimly lit room I could see how greasy and acne-scarred his thin oval face was. When he opened his mouth again I saw the unmistakable glint of metal braces. “…You’re Codger Burton.” The bird didn’t sound so big then. And I thought I detected a faint trace of accent to his voice then. Mexican perhaps? “What are you doing here? I mean, I knew you were here but what are you still doing here?” The question I’ve been asking myself as of late. He lowered the flashlight from my face, baring his metal as his mouth hung open.

  “I must have slept through the evacuation.” I removed a mint from its wrapper and popped it in my mouth then took a short drag, letting the good thick smoke coat my bile-cut throat. “I will say that I’m surprised a place like this would hire someone like you who knows something like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like my name and who I am.”

  I think he blinked a total of seven times before his computation was complete and he could respond. “…I know, right? It’s not a bad job except that they make me wear a fucking ponytail. I look like a total pussy but I gotta work, at least that’s what my mom says. Oh man, Codger Burton! Check this out.” He lifted up his shirt before I could persuade him not to. Instead of the skinny zit-covered torso I expected to see, he was wearing a t-shirt underneath his uniform. Of course it was a Frivolous Black one; not a tour shirt I noted, it was the cover to Schizoid, the second album. The one everyone owns. The kid was pointing at his shirt in case I missed it and smiling with that metal shit all over his teeth the whole time. I hated this kid. His stupid fucking face, his stupid fucking shirt that had my stupid fucking band name on it. Then he said, “You’re my favorite lyricist and third favorite bass player…” At least he was being honest. “Frivolous Black is the entire reason I exist, man, it totally gives my life purpose!” Then his face dropped a little. “But I gotta say, that new singer guy fucking sucks, man. No disrespect, but without Sully and your words it doesn’t sound the same. When are you gonna fire that assleak and get Sully back in the band?”

  I liked this kid.

  “Also, it’d be an honor to smoke a bowl with the man who wrote ‘Hazel Daze.’ You want to toke up?”

  I really liked this kid.

  Hazel Daze

  The kid’s weed was complete shit. But I didn’t tell him that. I smoked worse when I was his age. In between puffs he told me his name was John. John Lopez. I think he said he was seventeen but he looked closer to sixteen to my eyes. Not that I was paying too much attention to him. The weed may have been shit but dear Christ did I need it. The withdrawals were still eating away at me terribly. The kid asked me if I had looked outside, did I know what was out there? How bad it had gotten… etc. I told him yeah, yeah, I knew all about the snowstorm, that we were probably stuck in here. He told me there was no probably about it. The kid waited about four tokes before he asked his first real question, “So… Mr. Burton, like, how did you guys make the first two albums so fast? I read it was like five days for Schizoid and only one day for the debut. How is that even, like, possible?”

  I took my drag; I’ve been answering Frivolous questions since I can remember. The same Frivolous questions too. I cashed the bowl. But… this kid was nice. “That’s right, mostly. The second album took a week but the self-titled was more like a day and a half. The recording was done in a day but the mixing was all done the next and I think that’s when we overdubbed the rainstorm and bell sound effects and all that other nonsense.” I handed him his pipe. “We out?” He nodded. “You know where to get us a bite?”

  “…Huh?”

  “Some fittle.” He looked at me like I was speaking bloody Japanese. And even though I hadn’t really expected him to understand me, my tone was curt. “Some food, man… Jesus.”

  “I don’t really know… actually there might be some food up in one of the supply closets.”

  “Supply closet? What, next to the mops and the chemicals and shit?”

  “Yeah, like sometimes the maids store snacks and whatnot in there.”

  This kid. “Are you going fucking yampy on me? Where’s the kitchen, man?”

  “You want to go to the kitchen?”

  “That’s generally where food is found, is it not?” The kid nodded. “Then how about we go there?”

  “You know the supply closet�
� I’m pretty sure I saw some crackers in there—”

  “‘Crackers’ he says? How high are you, kid? The supply closet is up them stairs, right?” He nodded again, a bit reluctantly I noted. “If this hotel is anything like all the other bleeding hotels I’ve been to, which it is because I’m an expert and they’re all the fucking same, that means that the kitchen is on the ground floor. Which we’re on, right? And they must have a fair amount more than some old lady’s stale crackers what have bleach spilled on them at the very least, right?”

  His shoulders sank, poor kid, not only was he too high to make any decent decisions, his hero was turning out to be a right prick. “Yeah, I guess.”

  “You know what the Latin word for old lady is?”

  “No.”

  “Anus. It is anus.”

  “…Oh, I thought anus came from the word for like, a ring?” He made a little circle with his finger in the air.

  The kid might have perked up an ear in school occasionally through his bong fog. “Fine, they’re two different words, a-nus and ah-nus, but they’re spelled the same.”

  “…Okay.”

  “So let’s pass on the anus crackers shall we? Right, to the kitchen then please, thank you.”

  The kid led us with his flashlight to the kitchen, said there should be plenty there for me to gnaw on. He never took his eyes off me. I thought he was going to walk right into a wall at least twice as we made our way to this kitchen. “So, like, on ‘Tetrahex,’ on the intro, that’s all you on the bass with the wah-wah, right? Like, even though it sounds like it might be Vinnie’s guitar it’s really just you, right?” He basically didn’t really want or need to learn anything. He already knew it all. He just wanted to hear me say it. He wanted to hear it repeated back to him.

  “Yeah, that’s just me.” We took a corner, the kid trailed me like some starving puppy dog.

  “How did you think of the words for ‘Visitation Rites’?”

  “I don’t know, I just heard the riff that Vinnie had and then the melody that Sully came up with and when me and Burt figured out the rhythm section the words just sort of came to me.”

  “Just like popped into your brain out of nowhere?”

  “No…” My brain felt like it was pressing against the inside of my skull trying to break out, maybe the kid’s weed was better than I gave it credit for. “More like the words were waiting underneath some sort of overgrowth or a thick skin, and all that had to be cleared away bit by bit until I could see what I was supposed to see there. Like it was waiting patiently for me to discover it.”

  “…That’s exactly how it is for me, like, when I write my songs too!” Of course it was. But I could tell where this was going because it always went there eventually. These kinds of fans, these young guys—always young guys, never ever a good-looking woman with a head on her shoulders—these boys, they always wanted to ask the one question. All the rest is just preamble. Them working up the guts to ask it. The kid opened his mouth, the silver in his smile flashed, and I knew it was coming: “So, like, Mr. Burton, when you guys wrote the first song, ‘Frivolous Black,’ the song itself, I heard… I mean, I read, the whole thing was about a real thing that happened to you. The black shape that appeared at the foot of your bed… the visitation and the Aleister Crowley book… is all of that true?”

  Just past him I could see the door marked Kitchen. I thought back to one cold night in Birmingham and what had happened to me there, how I lied about it ever since. How that lie changed my entire life. How I’d never tell anyone the truth. Not the whole truth. So I told the kid, “Not a word of it. That whole deal with the devil, sold my soul for rock and roll; complete and utter bullshit I’m afraid.” The kid lost his smile and I walked past him and headed into the kitchen.

  Inside I could still smell the ghosts of a thousand old feasts hanging in the air. Most recently some roasted chicken or possibly pheasant. It smelled good, actually it smelled delicious. Very delicious. I was starving. The kid put his flashlight down on one of the long silver prep tables. “There’s usually leftovers and prep stuff in the walk-in fridge,” he told me. “The power’s off but it’s so cold everything has probably kept,” he added. I didn’t care if the meat in there had portabellas growing out of it; I would eat any goddamn thing. “Just wait here and I’ll get you something.” He came back with some cold but already cooked fried chicken. He put the plate down on the table near the flashlight and I snatched a drumstick and tore into it instantly. I didn’t know the last time I had anything to eat; I could only remember things coming out of my mouth in the opposite direction.

  “Why are you still here, kid?” The meat was cold but not frozen. I stripped all the flesh from the bone and moved on to the next piece.

  “You want me to… leave while you eat?”

  I laughed. “No, no, I’m asking why you stayed back in this hotel after they cleared the place out. I told you my excuse, what’s yours?”

  He was standing just behind the beam of the flashlight which covered the wall to his right. His features were mostly hidden and his eyes, barely glints. “I… I knew you were staying here actually. At least there was a rumor you were staying here, the whole band. That’s why I got the job, a lot of bands coming through Boston stay here at the Alucinari. I got to meet the guys from Red Horse in July. Frankie Gideon is staying here right now too, but I don’t really listen to that fruity shit.”

  “Gideon is a legend. You Yanks are always five years behind, in half a decade you’ll be wearing his t-shirt.” I looked up from my chicken. “So you stayed here in hopes that I was left behind?” Flashes of Lennon on the street went through my mind.

  “What? No.” He shrugged his shoulders. He was either working out a story or working up the courage to come clean. I wanted to see his face better. Wanted to know how close any knives in this kitchen might be. “I… thought that since you and Friv might have been here I would check out your rooms… see if you left anything behind.” Was that it? He was looking for a keepsake?

  “You were hoping for a fucking guitar pick?”

  “That’d be cool… some drugs would also be nice.”

  “What makes you think I or any other musician would leave something as valuable as drugs behind whilst fleeing a hotel in the middle of a city as culturally stimulating as Boston, U.S.A?”

  “…Dude, I know, but people were leaving in a hurry. I already scored like fifty bucks and a pair of panties and I’ve only searched ten rooms.”

  This fucking kid.

  “You didn’t even know what rooms we were staying in?” I finished my drumstick, then took another piece of chicken. Wasn’t sure what to make of his story, maybe I should ask to see the panties? “What else you got in that fridge? If you have any mash I’ll take that if you don’t mind.”

  “Cold?”

  “Nothing wrong with a bit of cold mash. Used to eat it like that all the time.” Kid responded with a little smile that looked sort of sinister with the lighting and then he went to looking for what I’d asked. Kid wouldn’t be a half bad roadie actually. As long as he wasn’t another psycho killer like the fucker who shot Lennon. I was about to inform him of this fact, subtracting the Lennon murderer bit, to give him a little something to make up for letting him down outside the kitchen just now, when we heard screaming. It was coming from outside the kitchen walls. It happened again. Louder. It wasn’t quite clear if it was a man or a woman’s voice; it sounded human, but that’s all I could discern. Part of me wondered, almost wanted to delude myself, that there was no scream. That it was just the storm outside really letting it rip. But then we heard it again. No mistaking that, it wasn’t coming from the outside, it was in the hotel here with us.

  “Is anyone here with you?” the kid asked.

  “No, you?”

  He shook his head. “Should we… like, investigate?”

  I took another bite of chicken. “Yes, I suppose we should,” I told him through the mouthful.

  I took a couple o
f wings for the road and we made it out into the hall to complete quiet. No more screams, even the storm seemed to be resting. I was ready to propose we get back to the kitchen and get to finding that mash when the stop-start staccato of heeled footsteps came clicking and clacking in from the marble floor just around the corner. The sound started getting louder, faster. Then I realized it wasn’t one pair of footsteps. Behind the heeled shoes or boots there was another pair of feet. They sounded louder, deeper but not as rushed. But they were following the first pair, of that much I was certain. We kept moving away from the kitchen, the kid in front with his flashlight. With the sound bouncing off the walls and everything else bouncing off my skull in my current state, it was hard for me to determine which direction the steps were coming from. I looked to the right then to the left. There was a corner in either direction, maybe about twenty or thirty feet away, give or take, from where we were standing. But even as the steps neared the corner the heavier ones in pursuit never sped up. And still, the screaming had stopped.

  I made a guess that the footsteps were coming from the right corner. I looked at the kid and he had his flashlight at the ready like it was a service revolver… fucking Americans. For my part, I took the smallest bite of chicken wing I could manage and still be coherent if conversation threatened to conjure itself. Footsteps were even louder now. But nothing was in front of me. Then the sound was around the corner, the left corner; fuck me and my certainties. Running around the left corner to face us was something more terrifying than I could have possibly expected: a punk rocker.