Very Last Gig!
(August 10-13, 2017)
23: Running on Empty
The days, says an old, old song, dwindle down to a precious few.
Just think of how fast the hours fly.
3:00 PM.
Stanley Pines had been in and out of the office about six times since coming in with Wilmer. Nothing big, straightening out a squabble between a customer and a vendor, arranging to get one band to lend another one a G-string when one broke and the guitarist realized he had no backup and went into a full-blown panic attack, little stuff like that.
On returning, he always found Wilmer hiding in the bathroom.
And, heck, he found himself feeling sorry for the guy. He eventually heard Wilmer's whole life story, from the Amazing Vanishing Dad to Mom's Having to Work to the Resentful Wicked Aunt. He'd heard about Wilmer's taking off on his own while still a teen, chasing some undreamed dream he couldn't even imagine.
The rotten temporary scut jobs, the dreary hitchhiking, the gut-pain of not eating over three or four days—but for the grace of God, there goes Stanley Pines, he thought.
OK, so technically I'm an atheist or the other thing, what Ford says, an agnostic, but Jeeze, I came so close to being Wilmer Gunzell!
Stan opened up about his own background, just a little. "Ya think a Texas jail's tough, just hope you don't ever see the wrong side of prison bars in Colombia!" he advised. And "OK, you gonna hitchhike, first rule, ya gotta keep yourself clean. And wear a backpack so's you don't look like a carjacker or a mugger. Learn to size up a driver—some of 'em's gonna want to hustle you for drugs or sex, some of 'em's gonna preach at you, whatever. Pay attention and watch people. They say you can't judge a book by its cover, but you see one with DANGER SCHIZO HOMICIDAL MANIAC in great big red letters, just let that one pass on by."
Wilmer asked Stan if Sev'ral Timez might consent to take Bratsman back on as their manager.
"Not one chance in hell," he said. "The guy they got now, Tad Strange, well, ya wouldn't think it to talk to him, but he's got two things that rhyme and make him a great match for those boys. Smarts and heart, that's what Tad's got. He went into the business not knowing squat, but by the end of the first year, he was managing those guys like a pro. They like him and they're loyal."
"What if Mr. Bratsman gets hold of Mabel?" Wilmer asked in a small voice.
"He does that," Stan said with a cheerful smile, "he won't live long enough to bargain with the guys." He caressed the knuckle dusters with a reminiscent chuckle.
4:00 PM
"Aw, come on!" Mabel said in an irritable voice. "He's not here. I can go to the bathroom by myself!"
"Nope," Wendy said. "Not without me, you can't."
"You'd think I was a little baby or something," she grumbled as they left their seats. At the moment, the Ranting Ravens were messing up badly in a cover of "Hanginaround." It sounded as if the lead guitarist had broken a string or something, and the vocalist kept getting thrown and glaring back at the band.
Stan had invited the gang to use the restroom in his office, but the mobile Shack was closer, so they went there. Wendy stood sentry outside the unisex bathroom, watching the last-day crush of concert attendees buying merch—some of them even scoring CDs, that dying technology. Others were loading up on music-logo trucker caps and tee shirts and other crapola, as Stan would say.
The RV had a chemical toilet, so no flush, but Mabel came out smelling of hand disinfectant and wiping her palms on some tissues. "Wanna go?"
"Nope," Wendy said again. "I'm good."
They started back to the stands. "I think this was all just paranoia, anyway," Mabel grumbled. "Nobody's laid a hand on me, and the weird guy who we thought was a stalker turned out not to be. Big foofaraw over nothing!"
"Foofaraw?" Wendy asked.
They got back to their seats in time to hear the Ravens vocalist finishing an apology—huh, the guitarist had broken a string, but now it was fixed—and they did a reprise of the number, sounding better. Not much, it would never go platinum, but a little better.
The old-timers' block came up at five—songs from the fifties, the forties, even, though many were played or sung ironically, so that was all right. However, the four friends took advantage to go off-site for an early dinner. Because they were so early, Los Hermanos Brothers wasn't jam-packed, and they settled in for tacos and burritos.
And though none of them were aware of it, Ergman Bratsman, now badly sunburned, had watched them go and had balled his pudgy fists and was now grinding his teeth as he kept looking at his expensive Rollover wristwatch.
What was taking so long? Where was that damned demon?
Things were moving so slow!
9:00 PM: As the sun went down, the stands began to feel cooler. To Dipper's surprise, at about a quarter-past nine, a tribute group ("That," Stan had once explained, "is a polite term for 'rip-off artists') called BLABBER took the stage. They were all shaggy blondes, two guys and two girls, the guys wearing plum-colored jumpsuits, the girls in sky-blue ones.
One of the guys took the mike while the keyboardist vamped. "Hiya dere," he said in a transparently fake Scandinavian accent. "How you doin' den? Hey, anybody out dere remember the eighties? Yah? Well, den, you must remember a group called BABBA, and ve ain't dem. But ve're gonna do our best to make you recall dere top-forty hits, and ve're startin' off wit' 'Disco Girl!" He handed off the mike to one of the girls and picked up a guitar.
"By Yiminy!" Wendy finished for him. "Mr. Pines, may I have this dance?"
Grinning all over his face, Dipper stepped into the aisle and as the two girls on stage started to sing and the two guys played the music, the original, they danced to an eerily precise recreation of BABBA's greatest hit.
Weekend's here and the sun is down,
Nobody wants just to hang around,
Let's go out girl and make the scene,
And you'll be my dancing queen.
Wendy and Dipper did the silly disco step called the Rabbit, lots of backward leaping, lots of arm swinging. Others jumped up and joined in, dancing in the aisles and the space between the seats and the stage. More than half of the crowd sang along as the chorus began:
Disco girl, coming through,
That girl is you-ooh-ooh!
Mabel and Teek joined in. The band, obviously happy, reprised the chorus three times, and then the music stopped and everybody applauded. The first girl vocalist, with no trace of a phony accent, said, "Wow! That's what I'm talking about! Hey, gang, let's go into 'Discomaniac!'"
That had never been a top-forty hit for BABBA, but it had a good beat, and even more people got up to dance.
At one point, Mabel elbowed Dipper. "Look at you! You used to be too shy to ask Wendy to dance!"
"She asked me!" he shot back, happily.
They traded partners, and Dipper did a variation of the TLC dance with Mabel. It wasn't really from the BABBA era, but it fit the beat. After that one, BLABBER segued into "Kensington," a slower ode to a station on the London Underground, and they sat down again.
Mabel leaned over Teek and said, "Dip! I won't tease you about liking girly groups ever again. If they make you happy, go for it!"
Dipper, a little winded, gave her a smile and a thumbs-up.
11:00 PM: The office wasn't really all that large, but Stan had arranged to have a folding cot brought in. He sat at his desk, surfing the Net, the only light coming from the computer screen as Stan played fake poker for nothing on a few sites and smilingly resisted their urging him to buy some real chips. "Yeah," he said quietly to the screen. "Whattaya think I am, a dummy? Do that, you switch decks, my luck goes south real fast."
And over on the cot, huddled on his side, Wilmer Gunzell slept, now and then groaning a little—not from physical pain, but from flitting, transitory dreams, or dream images, nothing so shaped as a dream with a story.
The day he'd just flat dropped beside a humming highway on a broiling Texas day, too long between drinks of tepid water, sun-dazed. A guard had prodded his buttocks with the toe of a boot. "Git up, mope!"
He tried but couldn't make his knees hold him. The guard picked up his fallen shovel and pressed its blade flat against Wilmer's naked back. In 105-degree sun, it felt like a hot iron.
That had happened. In bad flashes of dream, it happened again.
And another lightning blast of dream-memory: Bratsman's weird books. The one Wilmer had cracked out of curiosity. The page bookmarked with a thin trifold menu from a barbecue joint:
HOW TO SUMMON A DEMON OF WEALTH.
And he almost woke up with a sense of dire urgency.
Like a basketball player who's three inches too short, he rose toward consciousness, rimmed the ball off the net, and fell back again.
It's coming closer. It's almost here.
And at 11:38, finally, Wilmer woke up and tumbled out of the cot.
Stanley, who'd been holding aces and deuces and was ready to draw one card in hopes of a full house, jumped up. "You OK?" He hurried around the desk and helped Wilmer to his feet.
"The girl!" he said. "Hurry. Bratsman. He—he—"
"What?" Stan asked, resisting the urge to shake it out of the man. He looked so frail that he might just break into pieces.
"He's trading her life to the devil for the boys in the band!" Wilmer gasped.
His head spun. What he had just said was more than he knew for a fact, but somehow, he knew it was a fact.
"What!" Stan bellowed.
"At midnight!" Wilmer heard himself say. What's happening to me? I feel like a ventriloquist's dummy!
Stan had punched a button on his phone. When the other party answered, he bellowed, "Ford! It's about to hit the fan! Let's roll!"
Wilmer was in sock feet, but that didn't stop Stan from grabbing his arm and dragging him outside. "Come on!"
In the stands, Mabel said, "Sev'ral Timez is coming up to close the show in a few minutes. I'm gonna hit the bathroom one last time."
Wendy got up, too. Mabel sighed. "If it hasn't happened yet—oh, come on!"
The rolling Shack was closed, and the office looked dark, so they continued to the ranks (in more senses than one) of porta-johns. The first two were vacant, but on opening the doors, Mabel had said, "Ah, no."
"The ones at the far end should be better," Wendy said. "They won't have been used as much."
The one at the very end of the row was no daisy, but it was an improvement. "Just be a minute," Mabel said as she closed the door. The little sign in the handle turned to OCCUPIED.
Meanwhile, Ford, with Wilmer in tow, had reached the VIP section. "Where's Mabel?" he yelled, not caring that his voice overrode the metal sounds of Thunderation onstage.
Dipper put his hands on either side of his mouth. "WENT TO THE BATHROOM!"
"Let's go! Now!"
Teek and Dipper vaulted over the rail and set off running as Stan hustled Wilmer off toward the exit. A Security guy stepped forward, saw Stan was leading them, and let them pass. Ford emerged from somewhere and, without asking a question or putting in a word, joined them as they ran.
Meanwhile, a heavyset woman in a muumuu—remember those?—stood, her hands clenched in fists of rage, and a weird thing happened.
"Dude!" said a guy who had been sitting behind her, "Did you see that? That lady just turned into a dude, dude!"
"Wicked gnarly," said his buddy. "Hey, gimme another brownie."
Ergman Bratsman, brandishing his cane the way a Highlander might brandish his Claymore, shoved and swatted and swore his way down the aisle to the steps. He was wearing his green trousers, suspenders, white shirt, and regular black walking shoes, and the probably-fake blonde hair had vanished, leaving him bald as a turkey egg, but the eyebrow pencil, eye shadow, rouge, and lipstick had unaccountably remained on his face.
Not that they made him particularly stand out. Not at Woodstick.
Back outside the portable john, Wendy heard a strange sound, like something gasping. She knocked on the door. "You OK in there?"
No response. She pounded on the door. "Mabel? Answer me!"
People came running up. Stan yelled, "She in there?"
Wendy futilely rattled the potty door. "She's not answering!"
"Bust the door!"
Wendy politely axed her way in. The stinky cubicle, lit by one dim yellow bulb, was empty. No Mabel.
"You sure she was in there?" Stan yelled.
"Yes! She couldn't have left, I was standing right outside the door—"
"Quick!" someone yelled. "I'll help. Come on. We have to take my van!"
Nobody even asked a question.
They all hurried, following Love God.
It was nine minutes to midnight.
Sev'ral Timez waited in the wings to take the stage.
For their farewell performance.