Publish and Perish, part 11: An Honest Dream

[Context: read the previous part or start from the beginning. TW: bad amateur fiction!]

Gerald was looking at … what was he looking at? The Lincoln Monument statue of Abe Lincoln sitting in a chair? But this was outdoors. The statue was a replica, he thought, approximately the same size as the original. Where was he? A large overhead banner declared, “Our 16th President is buried here…Someday YOU can join him!”

He was second in a line of people approaching a booth. He caught snatches of the conversation ahead of him. “I’m just not sure I’m worthy of that,” the man ahead of him was saying. “Are there any other options besides Lincoln?”

The woman in the booth pointed down the road to her left. “There’s always Buchanan,” she said matter-of-factly.

“James Buchanan?!” the man said incredulously. “There are people who sign up to be buried with JAMES BUCHANAN?!”

“He was a president,” said the woman. “Not an especially good one, but a president nonetheless. And there’s a nice view of the river.”

Gerald looked above the woman’s head and took in the slightly morbid menu that was posted there. Apparently he was in line to learn about having his ashes deposited in the cemetery where Lincoln was buried. Apparently this option was available to anyone who could afford it.

Gerald had to admit there was some appeal to the idea of hunkering down with Honest Abe for all eternity. Still, the formula for calculating cost according to proximity to Lincoln’s tomb struck him as gauche. How in the world had he wound up here? He exited the line and found a nearby bench….

And now the bench was a piano bench. Gerald was at the family piano that he had played as a teen. His high school friend Noel was standing next to him, gripping an electric bass. Now they were all grown up and then some, with receding hairlines and advancing wrinkles.

“Shall we try it?” Gerald was saying. Noel nodded. “OK, I’m just going to wing it…” He launched into the “Time Warp Theme” from the Rocky Horror Picture Show, pounding the piano percussively while half-speaking, half-singing: “It’s astounding… Time is fleeting… Madness takes its toll.” This half-singing stuff was really fun; why hadn’t he ever tried it before? “…Let’s do the Time Warp again!”

And then before he knew it he was howling at the top of his lungs: “Aah-ooooo!” They had moved on to Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London,” it seemed. Never an especially competent or comfortable improviser, Gerald continued to smash the keys without hesitation or fear, missing some notes but maintaining the momentum. And then he was backing off a bit, then arpeggiating his way into an early-80s soft-rock crescendo: “If you get caught between the moon and New York City….” He was harmonizing with himself in real time. He knew it was crazy, but it was true.

He looked over at Noel. Noel’s eyes were shut as his head bobbed and his fingers galloped along gamely.

“The best that you can do…. The best that you can do….” Since when could he sing high notes like a young Christopher Cross, anyway? “The best that you can do is fall….”

Gerald sat up in bed, wide awake and tingling from the sensation of having been an unstoppable musical force just moments ago. His chills and itchy skin from earlier in the night were gone. It was 1:30am.

He bounded out of bed and opted for tea rather than coffee.

[Update: the story continues with part 12.]