Silent Her Part 6

All the best to you and yours for the holiday season- Marty "Ho ho ho," said Tony. "Another day, another lawsuit. Now-"

He started clicking around, looking at the New York Times headlines, checking Amazon for the standing of the first three Maronis alb.u.ms. Even twenty-odd years later, these sold well enough to generate modest but reliable royalties-if, of course, any of the surviving band members could have collected them. He was just starting to compare the sales figures for various musical rivals, when a shadow drifted across the keyboard.

"You know, I always figured there'd be a Tony Maroni Web page."Tony looked up to see Brendan, holding a gla.s.s of water. He still wore his sweatpants and rumpled T-s.h.i.+rt, his face stubbled and eyes bleary as though he'd been on a three-day toot, rather than the losing end of a minor skirmish with three quarters of a bottle of expensive semillon.

"You guys were so big in j.a.pan," Brendan went on, pulling up a chair. "I would've thought you'd at least have a Web site."

"Well, yeah, sure. I mean, actually, there's a lot of them. A lot for me, I mean. I don't know about the others."

Brendan raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean, a lot? Like how many?"

Tony bounced out of the Amazon page, nibbling thoughtfully at a long strand of hair. "I dunno.

Like fifty, maybe? I forget."

"Fifty? Fifty Tony Maroni Web pages?"

Tony looked embarra.s.sed. "Well, yeah. But, I mean, none of 'em's authorized."

Brendan laughed. "How come none of 'em's ever helped you get the rights back to your stuff?"

"I dunno. Sometimes they offer to, you know? Like some big LA lawyer writes me about it.

But-I guess I just don't care so much anymore, with all the other guys being gone." Tony sighed. "We wrote all that stuff together. It just wouldn't feel right."

Brendan nodded. "Yeah. Well, I guess I can see that."

He leaned forward, and Tony caught the faint reek of wine and sweat and unwashed clothes, that sad tired smell he a.s.sociated with church meeting rooms and the long tearful exegeses of weekend binges-conventions where sales reps got locked out of their hotel room after closing time, college students missing the crucial exam after a beer bash, mothers forgetting to feed their kids. Brendan sipped his water and Tony waited, hoping there wasn't going to be an apology.

There wasn't. Instead, Brendan ran a finger across the computer screen, raising a little trail of electrified dust. "Okay." He c.o.c.ked his finger at Tony and smiled. "So, like, where's Chip Crockett's Web page?"

Tony's head bobbed up and down. "Aw right," he said, relieved. "Check this out, man, you're gonna love this-"

Tony hunched over the keyboard, fingers tapping eagerly. Brendan sank back into his chair and watched him. He rubbed his forehead, hoping he looked better than he felt-although what he felt wasn't even hung-over so much as some pure distillation of humiliation, depression, and exhaustion, with a healthy dollop of anxiety about just how Teri was going to react when she heard about him falling off the wagon. It hadn't happened once in the years since he'd joined AA, and somehow he suspected it wouldn't happen again. Brendan didn't drink because he was depressed, or lonely, or even just out of habit. He used to drink when he was happy, in that long joyous sunny rush of years between high school and the failure of his marriage. Back then he'd drink with his friends, in bars and at the beach, at ballgames and concerts. He drank because he liked it, and everyone else he knew liked it. He drank because it was fun.Even now Brendan wasn't sure what had gone wrong. He suspected there was some sort of malign convergence between his body chemistry and the way the world had suddenly changed, round about the time he saw Lou Reed s.h.i.+lling for Honda motorbikes. After that, when he drank he saw the world differently. It was as though all his worst fears were confirmed, and after a while, he was drinking just so they would be confirmed. Marriages were doomed. Mothers drowned their children. Your father developed Alzheimer's disease and died without remembering your name. That guy you used to play softball with wasted away with AIDS, and you never even knew. Your favorite TV show was canceled, your dog had to be put to sleep. The music you loved seeped away from the radio, and all of a sudden when you walked down a street where you'd lived for twenty years, there were strangers everywhere. One day you had a toddler who'd always been a little colicky, but who smiled when he saw you and crawled into your lap at night. The next day you had a changeling, a child carved of wood who screamed if you touched him and whose eyes were always fixed on some bright horizon his parents could never see. The terrible secret Brendan kept was that he hadn't quit drinking to save his marriage, or himself, or even his child. He'd quit because he now knew, irrefutably, that the world had become the wasteland. And he no longer needed any confirmation of that.

"Okay, Brenda Starr." Tony pecked at one last key, grinning. "Technical difficulties, please stand by. I control the horizontal, I control the vertigo ..."

"Vertical," said Brendan.

"Whatever. I control it." With a flourish Tony straightened. "Do not adjust your screen! We have liftoff!"

Brendan blinked. On the monitor in front of him, that morning's New York Times headlines glowed, flickered and disappeared. For an instant the screen was black. Then, very slowly, a scrim of sky blue and white scrolled down. The white became clouds, the sky s.h.i.+mmered and melted like summer afternoon. In the center of the screen a small rectangle appeared, holding the black-and-white image of a man leaning on a stage-set Dutch door. He had neatly combed blond hair, side-parted, and a boyish, smiling face. He wore the kind of suit Brendan a.s.sociated with the second Beatles alb.u.m, a light-colored Glen plaid, and beneath that a white s.h.i.+rt and skinny dark tie. Above his head, small letters floated in a streaming red banner: WELCOME TO CHIP CROCKETT'S WEBPAGE!.

"Well," said Tony. He sucked at his lower lip and looked sideways at Brendan. "There he is."

Brendan didn't say anything. He stared at the screen, then reached out and traced the outline of Chip Crockett's picture. The monitor crackled a little at his touch, and he shook his head, still silent.

Because there he was. He hadn't seen him for-what? thirty years, at least-but now it was like looking at a picture of his father when he was young. The same haircut; the same skinny tie. The same magically complicit smile, which he'd only seen on his father at the Fourth of July or Thanksgiving or Christmas, but which Brendan had seen twice a day, every day, on The Chip Crockett Show.

"Wow," whispered Brendan. "Chip Crockett."It was like dreams he had, that his dog was alive again. He pulled his chair up closer, inadvertently nudging Tony aside. "Sorry-but hey, this is great." His voice was husky; he coughed, took another swig of water and cleared his throat. "This is really, really great."

Tony laughed. "That's just a picture. Actually, it's the same picture from the obituary in the News.

But here-"

He moved the mouse, and more phantom letters filled the screen. Brendan recognized the printout Tony had brought to the Childe Roland a few weeks ago.

BROADCAST HISTORY.

PHOTOGRAPHS.

ARTICLES & OBITUARIES (NEW).

THEME SONG.

THE GREAT FIRE OF 1966.

CHIP CROCKETT'S CHRISTMAS SPECIAL.

Without thinking, he reached over and took the mouse from Tony's grasp. "Oops-sorry-but you, would you mind if I-"

Tony smiled. "Go for it."

Brendan clicked on < p="">

There were more-a s.p.a.ceman, a beatnik, a dog-but the only puppet that was upright was a figure with small beady eyes and an enormous nose, his mouth cracked in a huge, slightly demonic grin, his tiny cloth longyears clapped together as though he were about to witness-or perform-something wonderful.

"Ooga Booga," whispered Brendan. "Holy cow. I totally forgot what he looked like -- I'd even forgotten his name, till you showed me that obituary."

He drew a long breath and leaned forward, clicked on an icon. A moment when all was still. Then the song began: a jouncy chorus of horns and strings, those unshakably chipper background voices you heard on records in the early '60s. Elevator music, but this was an elevator that only went up.

"b.u.m b.u.m b.u.m b.u.m," sang Tony happily. "b.u.m b.u.m b.u.m b.u.m!"

Brendan started to cry. Knowing it was stupid, knowing it was the sort of thing you did on a jag,when you'd lost it completely, when you were so far gone you'd sit around all day long surfing the Net for the names of girls you'd had a crush on in the second grade, or listening to Muzak and commercial jingles.

Didn't matter, didn't matter, didn't matter. He squeezed his eyes shut, eyelids burning as he willed himself to stop: another Irish Catholic trick that Teri hated. Back when they'd first started trying to understand what was wrong with Peter, back when they barely even knew there was something wrong-back then, it was one of the first things Teri had accused him of- "This f.u.c.king Irish Catholic thing, you guys can never cry, you can never show anything, any emotion at all-and now, now-look at him-"

Pointing at the silent toddler crawling across the floor, but crawling in that awful horror-show way he had, dragging himself on his elbows and knees, head canted sideways so he could stare at the ceiling but not at what was in front of him; and never, ever, at his parents.

"-look at him, look at him-"

Her voice rising to a shriek, her fists pounding against her thighs as she stood there screaming.

And Peter never looked, never even noticed at all, and Brendan- Brendan walked away. Only into the next room, saying nothing, feeling rage and grief and sorrow swelling in his head until he thought blood would seep from his eyes; blood, maybe, but never tears. His entire body shook, but he wouldn't cry; just stood there like a human Roman candle waiting to ignite; waiting for the house to grow silent once more.

"Wanna hear something else?"

Brendan blinked. The theme song was over. Before he could say anything, Tony clicked on another icon, and the faint oozy strains of Chip Crockett's closing theme began to play.

"... danke schoen ..."

"Jeez ..." Brendan shuddered. "I forgot about that."

"Yeah. Maybe we better not. Here, listen to this one."

Tony clicked on < p="">

"That's my boy-Ogden Orff!"

"Let me!" Brendan poked Tony's arm. "C'mon, c'mon, c'mon, To-neee-"

Tony laughed. "Be my guest."

Brendan looked at the pictures, black-and-white publicity stills of Chip Crockett as his most notorious character: the weirdly Edwardian Ogden Orff, a man dressed as a boy in black jacket and trousers, with a long floppy tie and his hair slicked down. Ogden never spoke; only listened as Chip Crockett's sonorous off-screen voice offered him advice and the inevitable admonition-"No, Ogden, noooo!"

-but always ending with the same triumphant announcement- "That's my boy-Ogden Orff!"

There were other characters, too. Ratnik, the beady-eyed beatnik puppet who carried around a copy of No Exit and ended each of his scenes by failing to find his way off the set. There was Captain Dingbat, navigating the Sloop John B through New York Harbor and calling the Statue of Liberty a Hotsy-Totsy. There was the Old Professor, quoting Groucho Marx instead of Karl; and Mister Knickerbocker lip-synching "Mr. Ba.s.sman." And last of all there was Chip Crockett himself again, sitting with a copy of Millions of Cats on his knees and reading to a studio audience of a dozen entranced children.

Only of course these were only pictures. No voiceovers, no soundtrack, no living color, except in Brendan's head. Just pictures. And there were only nine of them.

"That's it?" Brendan tried to keep his voice from breaking. "What about, you said something about some video clips?"

"Yeah. Well, sort of. There's nothing from the actual show, just a couple of outtakes. But they're not very long. Everything was lost." Tony sighed. "Just-lost. I mean, can you believe it? They just taped over all of it. That's like taping over the moon landing, or Nixon's resignation or something."

"Not really," said Brendan, and he grabbed back the mouse.

The videoclips were about the size of Brendan's thumbprint, framed within a little grey TV screen. < p="">

"Wow," said Brendan. A timer underneath the little screen indicated how long each clip was.

Sixteen seconds. Twenty-seven seconds. Thirty-two seconds. "There's not a lot of him left, is there?"

"Nope. But you know, I was thinking-like, maybe there could be like a hologram or something, you know? Like cloning someone. You have a tiny piece of their DNA and you can make a whole person. So, like, you'd only need a tiny piece of Chip Crockett, and you could bring back a whole episode."

"Tony." Brendan stopped himself before giving his automatic answer of thirty-odd years: Tony, you're an idiot. "Tony, you're the Steve Wozniak of Ma.s.sachusetts Avenue. Do I just click on this?"

Tony nodded. Brendan clicked. A swirl of black-and-white-and-grey dots filled the tiny screen, danced around jerkily while a hollow voice intoned something Brendan could barely understand, though the words "Cocoa Marsh" seemed prominent. It took nearly sixteen seconds for Brendan's eyes to force the pixels into an image that resembled a man's face and a puppet. By then the clip was over."That's it?"

"That's it."

Brendan played it again. This time he could make out the image more easily, a closeup of Chip Crockett and Ooga Booga, the puppet holding a gla.s.s and trying to drink from it while Chip encouraged him.

"That's right, Ooga Booga! Drink your Cocoa Marsh-"

Bam: the image froze, the screen went blank. Brendan ran it six more times, trying to fix it in his mind's eye, see if it stirred any memory at all of the original commercial. It didn't; but just that tiny clip was enough to bring rus.h.i.+ng back the wonderful sound of Chip's voice, the deep and deeply humorous tones that were the echo of some great benign Everydad. You could imagine him telling knock-knock jokes over the barbecue grill of your dreams, holding Ooga Booga as he tucked you into bed at night, taking sips from a can of Rheingold between verses of "They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha Ha!" You could imagine all of this, you could live all of this, and sometimes it seemed that you had.

"Check these out, man!"

He started, as Tony ran the other clips. They resembled the first: fuzzy black-and-white pointillist figures, tinny voices beamed from a million light years away; cheap sets. The last few notes of Chip's theme song faded and the screen cut to Ooga Booga nestled against Chip's face, his little longyears clapping spasmodically and Chip's lips moving, seemingly by remote control.

"... now Ooga Booga, tell all the boys and girls what you just told me-"

The image froze. It was over. No matter how many times you played it back, you'd never hear Ooga Booga's secret.

"Man, this really bites," said Brendan. He replayed the blooper clip, Chip b.u.mping into a boom mike and pretending to wrestle it. "There's really nothing else?"

"Nope." Tony pulled his hair back, making a ponytail with his fingers. "But if you read through all the letters people have sent, there's, like, all these rumors of other stuff. Like a couple of people say they've heard about some bootleg tapes that were shown on Italian TV in the '70s, tapes of actual shows that somehow got s.h.i.+pped over there or something. So there's this entire Chip Crockett Mafia trying to track them down, a bunch of fans and this retired video cameraman from New York. If they find them, they can broadcast them over the Net. They could probably broadcast them on TV, one of those stations that plays old stuff all the time."

"I doubt they could do that, Tony. Even if they found the tapes. Which they won't."

Tony swept the curtain of hair from his face and gave Brendan a hurt look. "Hey, don't believe me. Here, look-"

Another click, and there were the e-mails from devoted fans: kids grown to doctors, lawyers, teachers, garbage men, rock stars, TV weathermen, editors.I'm 45 years old and boy, was I amazed to find an entire Web site devoted to Chip Crockett....

They were all pretty much like that, though surprisingly well-written and grammatically correct for e-mail. Brendan imagined an entire invisible electronic universe seething with this obsessive stuff, billions of people crowding the ether with their own variations on Chip Crockett -- obscure baseball players, writers, musicians, cars, books, dogs. He scanned the Chip Crockett messages, all variations on the themes of Boy, was I amazed and Gee, I remember when and Oh if only, a long lamentation for videos perdus.

If only they'd saved them!

If only WNEW knew what they were losing when they erased those tapes!

If only the technicians had done something!

If only I'd been there!

Brendan sighed and ran a longyear across his face. "You know, this stuff is sort of depressing me. I think I'm gonna get the coffee going."

Tony nodded without looking away from the screen. Reflexively, Brendan glanced back, saw a brief message that seemed to be the very last one.

Happy T'giving, everyone! Has anyone else heard about a bootleg of "Silent Her" that's supposed to air on Christmas Eve? I'd like time/station info so I can tape it.

"You know about that, Tony?"

"Uh-uh." Tony frowned, leaning forward until his nose almost touched the screen. "That's kind of weird. Where would you hear about something like that? I mean, apart from this site?"

"Probably there's a thousand other sites like this. You know, weird TV, collectors' stuff. Christ, Tony, move back, you're gonna go blind."

He put his longyears on Tony's shoulders and gently pulled him away from the screen. "Come on.

Time for breakfast. Time for Cocoa Marsh."

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm coming." Tony stood, reluctantly, and yawned. "Christmas. Wow. How could I forget it was Christmas?"

"It's not Christmas. It's the day after Thanksgiving," said Brendan, seeing the first faint flickers of that other movie starting to burn around the edges of his head. Very deliberately he blinked, snowflakes melting into slush, a forest of evergreens flaming into ash and smoke, a black boot disappearing up a chimney that crumbled into rubble. "You have a whole month to remember Christmas." But Christmas was what Brendan was already trying to forget.

The truth was, over the last few years Brendan had become an expert at forgetting about Christmas. A few days after the start of the Official Holiday Shopping Season, the ubiquitous background soundtrack of "Silver Bells" and "Silent Night" and "Christmas at K-Mart" haddiminished to nothing more than a very faint whining echo in his ears, choir boys and rampaging reindeer and Bing Crosby relegated to that same mental dungeon where he banned homeless people on the Metro, magazine ads for starving children, stray cats, and junkies nodding out at Dupont Circle. It didn't snow, so a whole gauntlet of joyfully shrieking kids on sleds or s...o...b..ards or big pieces of cardboard could be avoided. But it was cold, that frigid dank D.C.

cold that seeped into your pores and filled the newcasts with reports of homeless people freezing in alleys and cars stalling on the Beltway on their daily exodus to the sprawl.