"Lobster
Chuckles" - excerpt
It is nine p.m, and the
studio’s covering of oaks sways and whispers in the night breeze. Children
can be heard some distance away, arguing about some minor infraction of
the rules of the game they’d been playing. It is not raucous chatter, though,
since peals of laughter float through the air as well, punctuating the
obvious mock-seriousness of the proceedings.
Slim locks the door of
his latest project-car, the old Charger. It sports a fresh coat of
dull, clay-colored primer. He opens the door and heads toward the control
room.
“Hey Wildman. Didn’t think
you’d be back so soon. Hey listen, did Azz or Bob call you?”
“Yeah, I heard, but I
was coming in anyway. I had a funny idea and wanted to work with it for
a while before the rest of ‘em showed up... anything new?”
“Naw,” Limbo, the studio
owner replied, “Bob is picking Knobs up from the ER, and they’re going
to meet at his place, see if they can get some food down him. He’s pretty
doped up.”
“Good. What are you going
to do?”
“Call some people, see
if I can find an intern or something. Grit can work the board, he just
needs a helper. What’s this funny idea you had?
“I don’t know if I wanna
mess with it, now.”
“Aww, c’mon, if it’s half
as funny as you think, then it’ll lift everyone’s spirirts.”
“All right. Listen to
this,” he says, arranging himself behind the drum kit.
“I dunno what to call
it yet- it’s just a short intro to a tounge-in-cheek rap kinda thingie,”
he adds before launching into a shuffle sort of beat.
“Weeellllll, I’m not your
knight in shining armor, doncha you know I’m no Kid Galahad, I’m the one
that’s known as the sound & the furor, the one that wipes the tear
from your eye, then sez, ‘too bad.’ Here to extricate you from your sorry
situation, won’t prevaricate when it’s time for my prognostication. Not
your Prince Charming sent to save you with a kiss, it’s just my style’s
so disarming that you won’t want to miss- it is astounding the way I run
up in your problems, like an Israeli tank running up into Nablus. Not your
boyfriend’s back, he’s here to save ya’, when I’m finished taking care
of business, I might want to nail ya’.”
He tops it off with a
flourish and a roll, then murmurs, “An ode to the death of chivalry.”
Limbo is howling with
laughter behind the glass of the control booth. He cuts into the stillness
of the studio with the intercom, “Man, am I glad I had the burner going.
The rest of the guys are gonna love that. Might cut into your time with
the ladies, though.”
“I know. When I scatted
it out to Kari this morning, she left in a huff.”
“If you could get an operation
to make you black, sort of a reverse Michael Jackson thing, you may have
a promising career as a hip hop artist.”
“Geez, don’t make so much
of it. It was just a joke.”
They share a few more
jibes, then listen to the playback.
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