“Hey. I loved your set. I’ve never heard anything like it.”
In the half-synthetic darkness of Anna’s son’s room, Adlai Parker’s fingers forgot the promise they had made four months earlier, after everything had fallen apart, and formed the green shape of an open G chord in the palm of his left hand.
“Everything will be all right once you get to Oslo.”
It was 4:37 PM, and Adlai had been in Oslo for about an hour. He lay in bed, desperate to sleep, but couldn’t. Because for a moment in transit, after hours of sitting with his hopes and anticipation building, his mind and limbs turning unquiet, frantic to escape themselves, he had absently turned on the in-flight movie and heard Siegfried Voss narrating his latest documentary in that heavy Teutonic accent of his…
“In ze darkest corners of the vorld, zere are people who dare to test ze limits of zere souls against a hungry vilderness, a vilderness born from the spiritual depths of humanity itself.”
The accent was beautiful. God. Oh, God. Beautiful. How it chimed and jangled. It sounded like children laughing in tune. But oh fuck, how it stung. It unburied memories, reminding him of HER. They had watched one of Voss's other docs together, the one about the guy who made crop circles in the middle of Nebraska or another one of those flat states. It was the third time they had hung out. A funny word for it. They watched it in her apartment with her roommate: their three bodies smushed on that vomit-green couch. And then, months later, she left the voicemail in an imitation of Voss's accent, her playfulness promising that a sacred and private thing was happening between them, and soon he wouldn't be trapped on the outside anymore, staring.
“Hello, zis is…”
They met at a performance of his old band, The Great Basin Society. It was their second or third show and the first of several occasions they played at the Strange Jade Restaurant. The prospect of free food excited Simon. She was one of a crowd of a dozen. She walked up to him just after they finished their set. He was putting away his guitar.
“Hey. I loved your stuff. I’ve never heard anything like it.”
That was the funny thing. She had approached him.
“Thanks.”
“My name is Denise, but everybody calls me Amplifier.” She touched his shoulder. A glittering sign. The first of many.
“Adlai.”
That had been eight months ago. Everything seemed so fast back then. Adlai had moved to Panay Mountain to go to school. Within a few weeks, he had met Simon and formed a band, and then, suddenly, there she was, letting the maple syrup drip off her plate and onto the table, a viscous river forming to the sound of the Beach Boys.
“The track captures a vulnerable moment where promises resolve into either fulfillment or disappointment, two minutes and forty-five seconds forever hanging in that space where all possibilities dance before they collapse into the real.”
Music, music, music.
Adlai had to get some sleep. He had to. Somewhere in the house, a TV talked. He heard its static rumble. He couldn't make out if it was in English or Norwegian. It must be the TV-addicted grandmother that the little girl had mentioned on the ride from the airport. She was a strange kid. The moment he got on the escalator, he could see her running towards him, screaming his name like he was one of the Beatles or something.
Adlai, Adlai, Adlai.
Screaming.
If only Amp could just see him. If she only knew where she was. Then everything would change.
“Your music has this haunted folk vibe. It reminds me of Leonard Cohen before he got into drum machines.”
How could she even hear him at all over Simon’s feedback?
“Thanks.”
“Have you and that other guy been playing long?”
“A few weeks. I only moved here a month ago.”
“That explains it. I wondered why I hadn’t seen you around before.”
After the show, they went to The Devil's Diner. She poured too much syrup on her pancakes, and it ran onto the table. “This always happens,” she laughed. He remembered the grain of that table and the blue geometric pattern on the beige-white plates.
Then an anonymous 60s song started, a brilliant thing, the lead vocals all “boy, girl, broken promises, lost love, forgotten love, love as sharp as a razor, love, love, love” accompanied by a soaring wall of reverb-drenched drums and strings and girls singing “sha-la-la-las” and for two verses and as many choruses, a middle-eight then returning one more time to the chorus, now transformed into a sonic wall of celestial desire, all two minutes and ten seconds of the song testifying of an eternal teenage night driving in hot-rods with surfboards in the back, into a landscape of neon-lit drive-ins and endless beaches and dead man’s curves, patient and waiting, flying towards wide open spaces of asphalt and pavement, glittering suburbs with lovers’ lanes and make-out points over-hung with Technicolor stars, the hot rods driving on and on towards some dream already receding into the horizon, a promised never-never land atomized long before Adlai and Amplifier had even been thought of. Luckily, the record just keeps spinning at 45 rpm—the grooves just don’t know any better—and the drums and the strings and sha-la-las, the grain of the table, and the plate’s blue geometric patterns and the pancakes with dripping syrup, lives inside the record’s 4/4 beat, and she sits there, meeting the light, smiling and talking about raiding her brother’s record collection when she was fourteen, accidentally discovering the first Beautiful Skins record, transforming her before the second chorus of the opening track melted into the bridge, and him, not believing what he was hearing, the almost exact same thing with the same record had happened to him, making him everything that he was, but he was too afraid to tell her, hoping that his eyes and the gleaming lines of his face would show all, his silence and hesitation crystalizing that moment into a lost something soaked in such stunning longing. Who could stand it?
“I’m so glad I met you.”
For five months, he had reason to hope. They hung out all the time. They texted. “There's no one in town that I feel closer to.”
Oh, Heavenly Father…
The band played weekends, mainly at the Strange Dragon. They were just a garage band and not a great one, but kids started coming to the shows anyway. After three or four shows, the place teemed with hipsters, scenesters, artists, college kids, and bored adolescents. People talked. A few articles appeared, and then McBride signed them and rushed them into his barely-there studio to record “My Cat is an Island,” five songs of inept garage enthusiasm.
Despite their best efforts, they had arrived. “College Town Famous.”
Up and up and up…
And every show, Adlai looked for her in the crowd; he always found her.
Golden.
She was everything. She was even Mormon.
Yes, yes, yes. Finally, everything was turning around.
Golden.
Finally, Heavenly Father was rewarding for the two years he spent as a missionary in the Filipino heat, two precious years spent wandering through the barangays and puroks of Molo, Passi, and Pentavedra, walking through ankle-deep mud and along beaches littered with unspeakable things, two years talking to women washing clothes at hand-pumped wells, telling them that there was a way that they could live with their family together forever if only they would give fifteen minutes of their time, just fifteen minutes, two years preaching the gospel in Ilonggo, a language so obscure even God barely acknowledges its existence, two years riding a jeepney into the bukid to an enclave of nipa huts and concrete houses surrounding the ruins of a sugar-cane plantation that the NPA had burned down twenty years before, a half-day evaporated attempting to reactivate some new members who couldn't attend church because jeepney fare was too expensive and no matter how much he bore his testimony of Christ and Joseph Smith, and Book of Mormon, no matter how strong his faith was, he couldn’t change that.
Two years.
“Kabalo ko buhi ang Dios.”
Again! And with feeling this time! Dig deep and put your whole soul into it!
Kabolo ko…
Ho, ho, heh, heh, ha, ha, ho, ha!
“You wanna hear a joke? So, they sent me across the world, on a seventeen-hour flight to another continent to preach the gospel. They made sure I had all my shots. Every day, they reminded me that they were giving me the best training possible. They told me that the eternal salvation of precious souls was on the line. They guilted me for even the slightest idle thought, the smallest wasted moment. The only problem was that they taught me the wrong language. Yes, folks. For two whole months, sixty days, eight hours each day, they taught me Cebuano. And they speak Ilonggo in my mission, not Cebuano.”
Laughter.
“They made us study and sweat over Cebuano and guilted us if we didn’t get the pronunciation perfect.”
“We are all striving for perfection, Elder.”
Laughter!
“Sometimes basic competency suffices.”
“Don’t worry. Everyone in your mission understands Cebuano. They don’t speak it, but they understand it.”
“Of course, they neither spoke nor understood Cebuano. Because even though they are similar languages, they are NOT the same. This is a fun fact you learn the hard way the first time you teach the first discussion and very tentatively and nervously and sheepishly ask, “Usang pagbati mo mahitungod kang Dios.” And the investigator looks at you, then turns to your companion and asks what the heck the ‘kano is trying to say. Do you realize how humiliating that is?”
More laughter.
“Apparently, ladies and gentlemen, God, the Master of the Universe, the Great I AM, the Beginning and the End, doesn’t even know which dialect the people in the Western Visayas speak. He can make the world in seven business days, but the difference between Cebuano and Ilonggo is beyond HIM!”
The audience roars! One middle-aged accountant can’t contain himself and must be escorted out of the theater for health reasons.
“And to top it all off, one night, on your way back from all your teaching appointments, you accidentally step in an open sewer.”
Her laughter.
You pathetic and unrighteous soul.
He opened his eyes. So not even jet lag could overcome this, this… What was it? This, this... empty sinking? Yep, yep, yep. All that sacrifice but no reward. All that hoping and praying, sincere pleading. “Heavenly Father. Let it be her. Let it be her. Please.” But nothing waited at the end, not even a final, tearful goodbye on a railway platform in the fog and the rain, between eternal lovers with a love so impossibly profound that it isn't meant to be, waving to each other through a train window, blowing kisses, miming words. Nothing but an empty feeling he couldn't escape. Walang katapusan. 'Without end.' And in the dark, he thought he could almost…
“Hello, zis is…”
Amplifier? Is that you?
“…”
Amplifier? Amplifier?
“…”
She left him a message, speaking in that accent so playfully, and everything felt right. He waited for an hour and called her back. She picked up on the second ring. And answered in that accent. Yes, oh yes. They talked for ten minutes, and then she said what she said, and his hope disintegrated in the silent beats between each word.
Then, a few days later, Simon did what he did, and the band broke up. But he didn’t care anymore anyway. Why bother? He would quit it with the music. Quit playing altogether. He even made a vow…
Crap.
A vow he realized his wayward hand had tried to break, its fingers wrapped in an open g-chord and all. But a promise is a promise is a promise. So, he spread his hand wide-open on his chest. Good. That would fix it. After all, it was just muscle memory. Right? Right?
“…”
He closed his eyes again. He had to get some sleep. At any moment, the front door would open and close, followed closely by chatter and the smell of Big Macs and fries. That would be the signal. Anna had said that the Solstice celebrations lasted all night. “Get some sleep while you can.” Oh yes, yes, of course. Capital idea. Yes, it sometimes was hard to sleep on planes. And no, he didn't want to miss any of the Midsummer fun. After all, it was his first night here. All he needed was just a couple of winks. And within moments, Adlai was all tucked in, ready to go night-night. He said his prayers like the righteous young man that he was. “Dear Heavenly Father, I thank thee for arriving safe in Norway. I am thankful for the wonderful hours I spent at the airport in Amsterdam. I am thankful I was not tempted by anything I saw there. I am thankful that the weird sausage rolls I ate for lunch did not make me sick. Maybe I should have gotten Sbarro or even McDonald's. I am thankful for all the little gift stalls and shops with those wonderful blue and white ceramic windmills held together with bits of wire. I am so thankful that I could look at the paintings at the airport even if I didn't know any of the painters. And I'm thankful for being with my family and the warm welcome they gave me…”
That little Dagmar ran to him like she did, screaming his name the moment he stepped off the escalator like he was Ringo or something.
“Heavenly Father, I ask Thee…”
And then she materialized from the background, not missing her cue to speak to him in the accent from the in-flight movie.
“Hello. Is zis who I zink it is?”
This time he would do it all differently.
“Yes. No. I don’t know. Who do you think this is? I can be anyone you want. I will change my name, get plastic surgery, lose thirty pounds, gain thirty pounds, whatever you want. I will learn how to salsa dance, play the ocarina, speak Farsi, memorize Robinson Crusoe, collect thimbles, and reenact Napoleonic War battles. Anything, anything. I will even go to dental school! Just give me two weeks. Yes, yes, yes. All I need is two weeks, twenty-six words of encouragement, and a welcoming smile.”
“Vell, I zink you got…”
“Would you like to hear my piece about ‘When Doves Cry?’ I’ve been working on it for weeks and weeks, and I’m hoping it’s good enough to get into the Classic Track Section of Mudshark Magazine. Now let’s see what I can remember.”
“Vell…”
“Just tell me what you think. Are you ready?”
“Vell, maybe. Perhaps I…”
“Prince’s “When Doves Cry” is nothing less than the soundtrack to a long-forgotten myth that rents a flat in the funkiest neighborhood of the collective unconscious. The purple bard's six-minute-long cry of familiar and personal despair contains so much sonic wizardry that it doesn't need a bass line to keep it all together."
“…”
“What do you think? I could make it longer. Maybe it needs a few hundred more pages to make it pop. I could add footnotes, graphs, diagrams, dioramas. Maybe even those little pictures in the bottom corners that make a moving cartoon when you flip the pages. You know what I'm talking about, right?”
“I don’t know vat you are talking about. Dioramas, zey vill me with nausea. I zink you have zee wrong idea. Oh, it must be getting late. Maybe I should…”
“No, no, no. Please, don’t hang up. Please. I have to get to sleep somehow. I just got to. Anna’s son will be back any second now with Scandinavian McDonald’s. So you see, I must get to sleep, and Anna’s son will be home any time now...”
“He wanted so much to be here, but he is with a friend of his, working on a project. Top secret stuff.”
“No, no. I vas just calling to say zat I vould perhaps like to get togezer and verk on a project. But now, I don’t...”
Now, what was the son’s name again? Anna had said it more than once. Yes, definitely more than once.
“Und before I let you go, I alzo vanted to ask you how zee table get all sticky? And vhy does it smell of…”
He turned onto his side, crunching his legs into his body, his thoughts wandering to the exactness of his McDonald's order. Did he remember to tell Anna that he preferred Double Quarter Pounders with Cheese over Big Macs? Did he remember to ask for extra-large fries and a shake? It had been hard to concentrate with Dagmar, that weird kid, pulling at his shirt, talking non-stop about Vikings in a mix of Norwegian and English, with Anna having to remind her that Adlai was from America and that he spoke English, not Norwegian, just like they had discussed. For a moment, she would stop and then would begin again, little Dagmar tugging, chattering away in English, until eventually sliding back into Norwegian, leaving him behind. And then Dagmar insisted on pulling his roller bag into the house, even though it was bigger than she was. She said that Thor would give her strength.
So, with the crazy kid and her Vikings pulling at him and the absent son and the voice speaking in that accent and his interrupted circadian rhythms, it was no wonder that Adlai couldn't remember which one of the crappy hamburgers made him less nauseous. And, of course, he had forgotten to ask if it would be too much trouble to get a milkshake instead of a regular drink, and while he preferred cookie dough, mint chocolate chip or strawberry would also be fine. And has it occurred to you yet that you are finally in Europe?
Everything will be all right when you get to Oslo.
Europe. Scandinavia. Norway. Oslo. Bygdøy. Yes, this was it. This was the same place Mom and the rest of the family had stayed on those childhood vacations.
If only that in-flight movie hadn’t just up and ruined everything…
What was the son’s name again?
“Don't worry; Magnus doesn't mind sleeping on the floor.”
Magnus. Magnus. Yes, that was it. Magnus.
Magnus, Magnus, Magnus, Magnus.
Hadn’t Mom said he was a filmmaker or something?
When you get to Oslo, everything will be all right.
Yes, it would. For a month, Adlai had been counting on that promise. He was meant to come here. It would change everything. He knew it to be true. The top of his skin bore witness. On the flight, the Spirit had whispered to him through the hum and rumble of the jetliner, through the movement and murmuring of the passengers, through the smiles of the flight attendants when they asked if he wanted the chicken, beef, or vegetarian option and when they passed him packages of cookies and plastic cups and cans of Koala Cola, telling him, “Yes, you've been in the wilderness for so long, but not to worry. You're nearly out of it. Yessiree, Bob, it won't be long now. Heavenly Father has a plan. Yes, yes, yes. Even for a soul as pathetic as yours.” And the Spirit whispered and sang these things with the voices of an eternal stretch of spirits: mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, reaching back to Adam, each and every one of them pulling for their Adlai from across the veil that separated worlds.
He knew these things to be true. He felt them with every fiber of his being. But just like Grandma J. always said, “an untested testimony is no testimony at all,” because surely there must be an opposition in all things, and so came the test, appearing as nothing more dramatic than an in-flight movie. But when Adlai heard Voss himself, speaking the same accent that she had so adorably imitated on her last voicemail, his faith in God’s plan cracked. That message. Her message. It waited on his phone. Even after six Sundays of fasting and prayer and two solid weeks of temple hopping, he hadn’t erased it.
Had it really been four months?
“I was zinking…”
She wanted to be in a band with him. And then, all casual, she tossed off the name of some…
If only he had just gotten his Alexandria e-reader from his carry-on and dipped into I Heart Honey and the Hydrogen Bomb like he had been meaning to since before…
Maybe somewhere, right at that moment, she spoke in that accent to…
“Amplifier.” He said her name, and there she was in his imagination and beyond his imagination, so alive, so vivid, speaking and moving in ways he had never seen or imagined. Whispering. Smiling. She made exhilarating noises she wasn't supposed to make and said things she wasn't supposed to say, causing a dangerous feeling to bloom inside him. And then. And then. His old adversary, four years buried, crawled out of its tomb. It rose and reformed its bones, skin, teeth, and sinew. It extended two great and terrible wings of shit and piss and blood and bile and cum. “Like a dog to its vomit.” Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God. And she cooed to him and someone else at the same time. “I've been vanting zis—” THAT accent. “—vor ages und ages.” Snatches of sounds and images, her and him, him and her, them together, their voices, expressions, movements, freckles of light falling on their bodies, fed into each other and back into themselves, resonating more and more with each new cycle, increasing, increasing, increasing…
“I'm a good girl, but I can't help myself.” He felt like he was outside his body, flying, just like when he was thirteen, just like the first time it happened. He hadn't meant to do it. He was looking at a magazine picture of Brit Scotland, supermodel extraordinaire, standing knee-deep in a Southeast Asian Lagoon, wearing only a black bikini bottom, hands cupping her breast, hair wet, mouth half open, eyes playing the camera, an unreal girl surrounded by jungle, water, and heat. A whole scene rose within him: the sound of her voice, the touch of her skin, the mole on her left breast, and her smell mixed with the air. Leaves. Trees. Jungle. Water. He ascended, yes, up and up, beyond his body, flying towards something he didn't even know the name of, yes, and then, suddenly, descending. Fallen. He didn't understand what had happened. He hadn't meant to do it. It was an accident. And now, she spoke that accent to someone else, someone she shouldn't. No, no, no, no, no, no. Chills. All freaking over! And she spoke in that accent. THAT accent. Once he started, he couldn't stop. She's whispering to someone she shouldn't be whispering to. Once he started... “I'm a good girl.” If he moved his hand. Chills. Once he started... But she's speaking in THAT accent. Ja, ja, ja, ja. If he moved his hand, it would be all over. Flying. Flying. Chills. Move your hand! Ascending— He couldn't stop. Yes! —right out of his body. What difference would it make? No impure thing… Once he started. “Sometimes, I can't help myself.” All freaking over. Once he started… Flying. I should never have turned on that dang… “Ja, ja, ja.”…in-flight movie. Once he— Chills. The body speaking. —started— Skin. Mouth. Tongue. —he couldn't stop. “Suffer in eternity…” Flesh. You made a covenant! “…for a moment of pleasure.” The body… “I've been vanting—” Flying. “—zis—” Tongue. Skin against skin. “—vor ages und ages—” The natural man— An Unreal body. “—und ages.” A secret birthmark. —is an enemy to God. “Ja, ja, ja….” Someone she shouldn’t be with. Chills. “I'm a good girl...” Move your hand! “Ja, ja, ja.” For your eyes only. “...but I can't help myself.” No impure thing… “That accent.” Doing things that he had never seen her do. The body speaking. “God, that accent!” The secrets of— If he moved his hand… “Ja, ja, ja, ja.” —heaven. “I'm a good girl.” Whispering. “I vant you.” Once he— You can't do this. “But I can't help myself.” You made a covenant. —started— Speaking in that accent. —he— Skin. Flesh. Flying. “A good girl...” —couldn't stop. Skin against skin. Singing. Beyond flesh. “Someone she shouldn't be with.” Flying. Moving. No, no, no. The body. “I can’t help—” Move your hand! Whispering. The Spirit singing. Hair, lips, tongue… Chills. You made a covenant with God! In that accent. Move your hand! “—myself.” Once he started. Once he started— Someone she shouldn’t be with. —he couldn’t stop. Skin, mouth, tongue… “I’m a good girl.” Once he… “This is for your eyes only.” Flesh speaks. Once— She will let him do things. Chills. Chills… —he— “I’m a good girl.” —start— Hair, lips, tongue. —ed… The body remembers. Chills. A person she wanted… All over. …a person he would never be. Chills. Chills. Chills… Eternity lost… All over! Flying. “Are you really doing this?” …for a moment of pleasure. The body. Chills. Knows. “Flesh.” Chills. Once—
“No,” he said. He opened his eyes, breathed in and out in 2/2 time, and counted to ten: “isa, duha, tatlo, apat, lima, anum, pito, walu, siyam, napulo,” listening to the sound of the numbers and the breaths between them. He mumbled through the first verse of 'Come, Come, Ye Saints,' picturing the words move on a field of blue on an MTC video monitor as companies of dysentery-lean handcart pioneers trudged, ankle-deep, through the snow-blind plains somewhere out in the vast emptiness between Council Bluffs and the Great Salt Lake City. One of them stopped, turned her head, and looked right at Adlai, blue eyes gleaming inside her frost-lined bonnet. The distance between them disappeared, and he could see her clearly through the thinning veil, robed in a cotton dress, torn at the shoulder, frayed, and fading into saintly skin. She looked only about fifteen or sixteen, maybe even younger, too young to be crossing the plains alone, through the big nothing to a destination she only dimly understood, a destination little more than a divine name. She smelled of green timber and frosted sweat. Freckles laced her face, narrow and elegant. Stray strands of strawberry hair cut streams around her cornflower eyes. Her half-parted lips, chapped canyon deep, veiled faintly crooked teeth. She lit a picture that reminded Adlai of a recurring dream he had as a small child, a dream where a bonnet-framed girl sang to him in an unknown language, her voice weaving around a curious melody, sweetly out of tune. Her expression changed slightly. A certain coldness blossomed beneath her mouth and eyes that looked right through him, reading every sick little thought of his sick little soul, marking what he was: a waste.
Finally, her gaze faded, and she turned away, disappearing into the snow, taking the rest of the company with her towards Zion, oblivion, or a combination of the two. Adlai’s hands remained on his chest. He had passed the test. And then it really and truly hit him: he was in Europe.
By the time the opening bars of 'Don't Worry About the Government' bounced, vinyl warm, from the next room, followed almost immediately by the sharp sound of the opening and the closing of the front door and the chatter of voices greeting each other in exotic words, Adlai, fingers forming an open G chord in the palm of his hand, had finally drifted off to sleep, the melodious coo of her voicemail roaming his dreams, always and forever singing in that peculiar accent from the in-flight movie.
“Hello, zis is Siegfried Voss, noted film director and vinner of several fancy avards. I’m planning a project, and I’m hoping zat you might vant to be involved. But before ve go any furzer, there is von question I must know ze answer to: Do you happen to own an el...”
It’s great stuff, really enjoying it. Right up my alley for sure.
Leonard Cohen references and Mormon stand-up comedy in the same episode, excellent job.