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tikificTitle: Amplifier
Author: tikistitch
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Charles straightens out the books for proto-Dethklok.
Warnings: There's an OFC I imply has slashed with Pickles
Notes: This is the second chapter of the story that started with Husker Du. It's pretty much a genfic so far, about how the band might have gotten together.
Charles Foster Ofdensen waved his mighty fountain pen.
"Accountants," he ordered. “Assemble!”
"We have the receipts, your imperial majesty," a cowering acolyte told him. They all huddled before him, holding their accountancy cloaks tightly to their persons.
"And what of the invoices?"
"They are all neatly filed, your worship," another minion told him.
"Very good," said Charles.
Suddenly, a barefoot servant came forward, kneeling before his chartered throne. "What is it?" snapped the Grand Poobah of Numeracy.
"Your highness, do you know how to make coffee?" the barefoot servant asked, raising high a coffee pot.
Charles looked up, blinking, from where he had face-planted in the middle of his spreadsheet. He scowled and felt for something that had got stuck in his nose. A cigarette butt. He sighed and flicked it to the floor, where it would surely mix with other butts of various kinds, beer cans, Dimmu burger wrappers and styrofoam coffee cups and perhaps create a new life form.
"I'm sorry?" The voice from his dream. He looked up. A girl was hovering, coffee carafe in her hand. "I just wondered if you knew how to use the coffee pot?"
In his going on three months of occupying the living room couch here, Charles had learned many things. Among the most surprising had been, as it turned out, Pickles of Snakes and Barrels - rock star, libertine, and human songbook - was an awesome roommate for a struggling law student.
Even habitating, as he currently did, smack dab in the middle of the musician's living room, Charles barely ever saw Pickles on weekdays. Charles usually left for class in the morning before Pickles had arisen, and then would return in the evening after Pickles had gone out … well, wherever it was he spent his days. And then Charles would stay up, sometimes quite late, studying, but still never quite late enough to catch Pickles' special guest appearances at his own apartment.
He sometimes would see the girls. In the mornings. The one with day jobs - the ones who weren't strippers or waitresses or whatever else - often had to get up to get to the office. Like this one, hovering sweetly in her (newly borrowed, he presumed) Snakes and Barrels concert T shirt. Charles wondered dimly if Pickles kept a box of them cached somewhere in his bedroom specifically as special prizes for snagging a rock star.
"Let me do it," Charles offered, standing and stretching out the crick in his back and taking the carafe from the girl.
"Thank you," she said. My hero, he thought. She was very cute. They were inevitably very cute.
"There's milk and cereal," he muttered, gesturing vaguely towards the cupboard and pulling tap water into the carafe.
"I'm Azalea!" she told him brightly.
Charles, measuring coffee into the grinder, resisted the notion to say, "No, you're not, you're Mary or Jane or Stacey," and instead murmured, "Charles," hoping she wouldn't quite hear it over the sound of shattering coffee beans.
Sometimes there were two, or even three Azaleas. Or Saffrons. Or Meadowflowers. Three was probably the limit, Charles thought, as Pickles' breakfast table only had four chairs. Although last night Charles had crashed fully clothed, he had learned very quickly to put on at least undershorts and a T shirt before he bedded down for the night. It wasn't just for modesty's sake: he didn't really relish any of the girls seeing how scrawny he'd gotten. He hadn't been eating a whole lot in the months before Pickles ... Well, rescued him probably wasn't too strong a term.
"Is this your book?" she was asking, pointing to a contract law text open on the well worn kitchen table. He noticed she had politely brought out a cereal bowl for him as well.
He nodded. "Uh. Law school."
"Oh! That's what Pickles told me last night! 'Don't wake him up! That man is my attorney!'"
Charles placed her coffee mug on the table and then, blushing, sat down, attempted to hide behind his cereal bowl. "I'm just still a student," he told her.
"I'm a paralegal!" Azalea told him, fluttering clear blue eyes. "But I'm thinking about going back to school!"
"That's nice," Charles told her, all the while wondering why such a lovely creature as she would ever have to trouble herself with such this as earning a living.
"Oopsie!" she said, shaking the box. "You're out of cereal!"
Before Charles left for school that morning, he grabbed a couple dollars for milk and cereal from Pickles' wad of cash he left lying on the coffee table. And then, thinking again, he grabbed a few more. Pickles surely couldn't begrudge him a pack of smokes?
Money was an issue for Pickles and his ... well, Charles was reluctant to actually term the entity a "band," in the sense of actually getting together for purposes other than card-playing and going to strip clubs.
And it wasn't earning that was an issue. All of the musicians Pickles currently associated with, including the bouncer it appeared, occasionally played live gigs, and some of them (particularly Skwisgaar and Pickles) had served as session musicians on other peoples' recordings. Nathan apparently had several co-writing credits, including to some kind of advertising jingle for instant coffee.
The biggest trouble, as it turned out, was figuring out who the fuck owed what to whom. It was all a terrible jumble, and none of them seemed to have any head for it.
In frustration, Charles had finally called on all of them to give over any physical records they might have, and ended up with shoeboxes, grocery bags and guitar cases full of receipts, invoices, guitar strings, Post It notes, condom packets and lint. He had just spent the better part of his free time one week transferring it all to a large spreadsheet.
"Yoo still workin' on dat, dood?” inquired Pickles, as he arose, finally, Saturday, at the crack of noon.
Charles nodded. "You realize, that's just a cigarette?" Charles asked as Pickles helped himself to a Marlboro.
"Dat's cool," nodded the redhead, lighting up. "So, am I rich?"
“Yeah. You see this column? All the numbers? That's stuff other guys owe you guys.”
“Sweet!” said Pickles, his eyes lighting up at the numbers. “We're rich, huh, accountant dood?”
“You know, I'm not really an accountant. I took a couple of classes sophomore year....”
“Dat's OK, yer OUR accountant!”
“Well, anyway. We're not quite rich, but I think we can make it through 'til you guys get some paying gigs.” Charles was about to broach the subject of exactly when that might be when the phone rang and the answering machine clicked on to a familiar voice. Charles braced for the storm.
“Pickles, call yer muthur!” came the nag that could only be a relative of the same. “I know yer there. We're all so worried about yoo.”
Charles glanced nervously over at Pickles. He had rarely met a more sweet-tempered person, but those phone messages seemed to bring out a dreadlocked Mr. Hyde. “Douche bags,” the redhead muttered darkly. Pickles inevitably deleted the messages, but they would put him in a crappy mood, sometimes for hours.
“Uh, your folks?” Charles tried.
“Dey caught me wearin' mascara – WEARIN' MASCARA! - an' kicked me out. And den when S an' B hit it big, dey got my number an' started callin'.”
“Well, maybe....” started Charles.
“Maybe WUT?” demanded Pickles, his face a warning mask.
Trying another tack, Charles told him, “I don't talk to my family.”
That seemed to calm the storm, or at least send it in another direction. “Yeh. Wut happened t' yoo, dood?”
Charles hesitated. Well, he was living under the man's roof, and stealing his money for coffee and Captain Crunch. “Uh. My dad.... Didn't really understand.... I wanted to do entertainment law....” And play a guitar. And shave my head, he thought, rubbing the still too short hair atop his head.
“Is he a lawyer dood too?”
“Was a lawyer. Uh. Passed away. Recently.”
“Yeh? An' yer mom?”
“It's not my mom,” Charles answered sharply. His hands balled into fist. “Its... I dunno. Third or fourth wife. I quit counting. Anyway, she's got kids. And....”
“Dey gaht everyt'ing?”
Charles shrugged. But then he was relieved of any further self-disclosure, as the phone rang again, and this time, the party on the other end did not wait for the tone.
Nathan Explosion awaited no beep.
"PICKLES WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU GET YOUR WORTHLESS ASS OVER HERE WE'RE REHEARSING," There was a muffled voice in the background. "AND PICK UP STRAWBERRIES. We're out of strawberries for the Margaritas!"
"Yoo heard him, Driver Dood, git yer ass in gear," Pickles laughed, logging Charles his own car keys. Pickles picked up a pair of drumsticks, and Charles grudgingly took the Civil War sword Pickles now stubbornly insisted he carry everywhere.
They got to the little Honda Civic, which now, after off-loading some crap into Pickles' living room closet, had room for five people if one of 'em wasn't too big and nobody got carsick. Charles actually smiled slightly as he popped in a cassette tape. He had thought his musical taste was a bit arcane, but it never took Pickles more than one listen to get any song.
"Oh, dis is a good one, dood, turn it up! She'd taken everyt'ing! She took his car, she took his bike, she took everyt'ing she t'ought he liked, and what she couldn't take she found a way to break! She left his...."
"I just wanna see him. Before I go."
"As I have told you and told you, I don't think it will be a very good idea at the present moment. The doctors say he shouldn't be upset. And you.... Well, as you will be the first to admit, your relationship is.... Fraught." she pulled the ashtray on Father's desk closer and tapped at her Virginia Slim.
"Maddy, I-"
"Madison," she spat.
Charles looked into her eyes. Yes, Madison. This wasn't the girl, barely older than himself, who had shown up on Father's arm a few short years back. Back then, her smile still reached her eyes. There was no laughter in these eyes. Father had a way if doing that. This, he guessed, would be the one who ended up with everything: the estate, the trusts. Lucky girl. He hoped, for her sake, it had been worth it.
"Madison," he said evenly. "I might not be able to see him again. Do you understand...."
"Quit being such a little drama queen, Charles. We have only the best doctors for him. And perhaps if you had chosen an east coast law school, as he so wanted...."
"Maddy, I'm not gonna discuss the fucking will! I just wanna fucking say goodbye."
"Watch. The. Language," she scolded. "There are children present."
Charles stood. He wasn't gonna get on his knees to Maddy. That was something he just wouldn't do. "Very well," he muttered, turning to go.
"And one more thing," she told his back.
"Yeah."
"That... THING. That you drive."
He turned back, now confused. "Yeah?"
"Well, it doesn't look very good, does it? In the front drive like that? Next time, I need you to take it round," she said, making a dismissing motion with her long-nailed hand.
"You want me to park around the back?"
"Yes. It would be better. For all of us."
He stood and stared, his hands balled into fists. "You want me to use the servant's entrance?" he said, voice now shaking ever so slightly.
"Yes. Exactly." Now she wouldn't meet his eyes. She made a big show of tapping ashes.
He leaned over, palms now flat on top of Father's desk. He waited for Maddy to steal a glance up at him.
"Let me put it this way," he said, very slowly and quietly and evenly, leaning forward just the slightest. "You won't have to worry about my car on YOUR property. Ever again."
And he turned and left.
"DID YOU GET STRAWBERRIES?" Nathan demanded.
"Naw dood, I got dese Cool Ranch Doritos."
"AWESOME!"
Charles immediately grabbed a beer, thinking he'd need one. These band rehearsals were as perplexing as Nathan's grocery orders. He had seen many rounds of poker (they usually insisted that he join them, even though he had no money to bet). And sometimes one of them - usually Nathan or Skwisgaar - would bring a record album, and they would sit and listen and then sadly shake their heads. "NOT BRUTAL ENOUGH!" Nathan would declare, and they would all go back to cards.
“Doods! Look at wut Charles did,” said Pickles, suddenly wielding Charle's spreadsheet. “Dis is money we're owed by other doods!”
The sheet was flattened onto the card table, where Charles cringed as it immediately became a repository for beer bottles and chips.
Nathan declared, “You're not only our ninja lawyer, you're OUR ACCOUNTANT!” and then slapped Charles on the back hard enough to make him nearly choke on his beer.
"Scho," said the bouncer - Murderface, as it turned out, was his name. His real name. "Scho," said Murderface, running his thumb along the edge of a hunting knife. "We juscht have to schtab some guysch, and get our money?" He demonstrated by impaling Charles' now beleaguered spreadsheet with the blade.
"Look. You're not gonna have to stab anybody," Charles tried to explain, gingerly plucking out the knife and attempting to rescue his tall sheet.
"Den, waddoo we doo, chief?" Pickles inquired, grabbing the sheet. "I want mah column!" he said, pointing.
"I ams wants alls from column As to Bs!" declared Skwisgaar, snatching the sheet as well.
"Guys," Charles said. "This is your money. You just gotta ask."
"You're gonna ask for us, right?" declared Nathan. "Because everyone knows, you're our MUSCLE."
"Well, uh, I dunno..."
"Then you can be our ninja lawyer driver accountant ENFORCER!" said Nathan.
Charles looked around, not entirely certain why the hell they all seemed to trust him with this stuff.
"I can ask for you. I guess. Is at what you all want?"
"Will you usche the schword?" Murderface asked, hope shining in his eyes.
"Uh. If I have to?"
"AWESOME," said Nathan, handing the spreadsheet back over to Charles with a flourish. Charles smoothed the still too short hair on his head. Nathan's "awesomes" appeared to be the equivalent of "motion carried" with these guys.
"But, would you guys do something?" Charles asked.
"Ja?"
"Schould we beat up schome dude?"
"Uh, this other column I have here? This blank column?"
"It's totally blank!" marveled Pickles. “Dat's so zen dood!”
"Could I get you guys to fill it in?"
"What do we have to do? SOME ACCOUNTING SHIT?" wondered Nathan.
"It's for gigs you play. You know. AS A BAND?"
There were blank looks.
"Oh yeah!" said Nathan finally. "If we hit on a sound and got some songs and rehearsed and decided on a name and arranged some gigs.... PEOPLE WOULD PAY US MONEY!"
It was undeniable.
"All right!" said Nathan. "It's a plan. Maybe after this hand..."
"Den maybes you ams go outs for more chips?" Skwisgaar asked Charles, flourishing an empty container that once held Cool Ranch Doritos.
"We need more?" asked Charles, carefully folding up what was left of the band's accounts.
"Ja. Den you ams our lawyers enforcers drivers BUTLERS," Skwisgaar tartly informed him, plucking on his guitar.
"Wait, Charles, dood, where yoo goin'? We jest gaht here!"
"Why are yoo packin' dat box, dood?" Pickles inquired. Charles had not said a word the entire trip back, and now he was ransacking Pickles' hallway closet.
"I am not," explained Charles as he tossed textbooks and a pile of shirts into a cardboard box, "gonna be your accountant, or your driver, or you ninja, or WHATEVER THE FUCK, any more." He threw a couple of fencing plaques on top of the box. "You guys are on your own!"
"Oh, well, dat's too bad. Cuz, Nat'an likes yoo, an' he don't like most anybody," Pickles mused. "But, why are yoo packin yer stuff?"
Charle's face was red. He dropped the box and balled his fists. "I told you. I'm not gonna work for you guys."
"Yeh. I heard dat. Why are yoo movin' yer stuff out?"
"Pickles! Aren't you letting me live here to drive you around and do your shit work?"
Pickles shrugged. "I need a driver, yeh. But, I let yoo crash cuz.... Yoo needed a place t' crash."
Charles searched Pickles' eyes for a long moment.
The phone rang, and the answering machine clicked. "This is Nathan and WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU. PICK UP because I know you're there and SKWISGAAR has something to say.".
In the background came a muttered exchange, "I ams nots knows what's to say. I ams not knows what I did wrongs." "Skwisgaar it's LIKE A CHICK, you never know what you did wrong, just ACT APOLOGETIC!"
Pickles grabbed the phone, and, after a muttered, "Yeh," handed it to Charles.
"This ams Skwisgaar and I ams kapologizicing, for whatever it is I ams done. Dere, ams dat its?"
"OK," came Nathan's voice, "so we're all good now and we can move on and get money in the blank column and get rich and famous and ALL THAT OTHER SHIT?"
"Uh. Yeah," said Charles, toeing the cardboard box.
"And you'll MANAGE US?”
"Uh. If you want me to? Yeah."
"AWESOME! OK on your way back you need to tell Pickles to stop and get some GODDAM CHIPS because we're out again. COOL RANCH IS AWESOME."
Charles put down the phone, although unsure as to being included in the exact same category of relative wonderfulness as taco chips.
"Uh, Nathan wants chips," he told Pickles.
"Cool! Let's stop by DA LIQUOR STORE on da way den. An git Kahlua!”
"And maybe we could stop by a pet store and get Nathan a puppy," Charles proposed.
"Hey, Dat's a great idear! Dat's usin' yer noggin," said Pickles as they walked out the door.
Author: tikistitch
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Charles straightens out the books for proto-Dethklok.
Warnings: There's an OFC I imply has slashed with Pickles
Notes: This is the second chapter of the story that started with Husker Du. It's pretty much a genfic so far, about how the band might have gotten together.
Charles Foster Ofdensen waved his mighty fountain pen.
"Accountants," he ordered. “Assemble!”
"We have the receipts, your imperial majesty," a cowering acolyte told him. They all huddled before him, holding their accountancy cloaks tightly to their persons.
"And what of the invoices?"
"They are all neatly filed, your worship," another minion told him.
"Very good," said Charles.
Suddenly, a barefoot servant came forward, kneeling before his chartered throne. "What is it?" snapped the Grand Poobah of Numeracy.
"Your highness, do you know how to make coffee?" the barefoot servant asked, raising high a coffee pot.
Charles looked up, blinking, from where he had face-planted in the middle of his spreadsheet. He scowled and felt for something that had got stuck in his nose. A cigarette butt. He sighed and flicked it to the floor, where it would surely mix with other butts of various kinds, beer cans, Dimmu burger wrappers and styrofoam coffee cups and perhaps create a new life form.
"I'm sorry?" The voice from his dream. He looked up. A girl was hovering, coffee carafe in her hand. "I just wondered if you knew how to use the coffee pot?"
In his going on three months of occupying the living room couch here, Charles had learned many things. Among the most surprising had been, as it turned out, Pickles of Snakes and Barrels - rock star, libertine, and human songbook - was an awesome roommate for a struggling law student.
Even habitating, as he currently did, smack dab in the middle of the musician's living room, Charles barely ever saw Pickles on weekdays. Charles usually left for class in the morning before Pickles had arisen, and then would return in the evening after Pickles had gone out … well, wherever it was he spent his days. And then Charles would stay up, sometimes quite late, studying, but still never quite late enough to catch Pickles' special guest appearances at his own apartment.
He sometimes would see the girls. In the mornings. The one with day jobs - the ones who weren't strippers or waitresses or whatever else - often had to get up to get to the office. Like this one, hovering sweetly in her (newly borrowed, he presumed) Snakes and Barrels concert T shirt. Charles wondered dimly if Pickles kept a box of them cached somewhere in his bedroom specifically as special prizes for snagging a rock star.
"Let me do it," Charles offered, standing and stretching out the crick in his back and taking the carafe from the girl.
"Thank you," she said. My hero, he thought. She was very cute. They were inevitably very cute.
"There's milk and cereal," he muttered, gesturing vaguely towards the cupboard and pulling tap water into the carafe.
"I'm Azalea!" she told him brightly.
Charles, measuring coffee into the grinder, resisted the notion to say, "No, you're not, you're Mary or Jane or Stacey," and instead murmured, "Charles," hoping she wouldn't quite hear it over the sound of shattering coffee beans.
Sometimes there were two, or even three Azaleas. Or Saffrons. Or Meadowflowers. Three was probably the limit, Charles thought, as Pickles' breakfast table only had four chairs. Although last night Charles had crashed fully clothed, he had learned very quickly to put on at least undershorts and a T shirt before he bedded down for the night. It wasn't just for modesty's sake: he didn't really relish any of the girls seeing how scrawny he'd gotten. He hadn't been eating a whole lot in the months before Pickles ... Well, rescued him probably wasn't too strong a term.
"Is this your book?" she was asking, pointing to a contract law text open on the well worn kitchen table. He noticed she had politely brought out a cereal bowl for him as well.
He nodded. "Uh. Law school."
"Oh! That's what Pickles told me last night! 'Don't wake him up! That man is my attorney!'"
Charles placed her coffee mug on the table and then, blushing, sat down, attempted to hide behind his cereal bowl. "I'm just still a student," he told her.
"I'm a paralegal!" Azalea told him, fluttering clear blue eyes. "But I'm thinking about going back to school!"
"That's nice," Charles told her, all the while wondering why such a lovely creature as she would ever have to trouble herself with such this as earning a living.
"Oopsie!" she said, shaking the box. "You're out of cereal!"
Before Charles left for school that morning, he grabbed a couple dollars for milk and cereal from Pickles' wad of cash he left lying on the coffee table. And then, thinking again, he grabbed a few more. Pickles surely couldn't begrudge him a pack of smokes?
Money was an issue for Pickles and his ... well, Charles was reluctant to actually term the entity a "band," in the sense of actually getting together for purposes other than card-playing and going to strip clubs.
And it wasn't earning that was an issue. All of the musicians Pickles currently associated with, including the bouncer it appeared, occasionally played live gigs, and some of them (particularly Skwisgaar and Pickles) had served as session musicians on other peoples' recordings. Nathan apparently had several co-writing credits, including to some kind of advertising jingle for instant coffee.
The biggest trouble, as it turned out, was figuring out who the fuck owed what to whom. It was all a terrible jumble, and none of them seemed to have any head for it.
In frustration, Charles had finally called on all of them to give over any physical records they might have, and ended up with shoeboxes, grocery bags and guitar cases full of receipts, invoices, guitar strings, Post It notes, condom packets and lint. He had just spent the better part of his free time one week transferring it all to a large spreadsheet.
"Yoo still workin' on dat, dood?” inquired Pickles, as he arose, finally, Saturday, at the crack of noon.
Charles nodded. "You realize, that's just a cigarette?" Charles asked as Pickles helped himself to a Marlboro.
"Dat's cool," nodded the redhead, lighting up. "So, am I rich?"
“Yeah. You see this column? All the numbers? That's stuff other guys owe you guys.”
“Sweet!” said Pickles, his eyes lighting up at the numbers. “We're rich, huh, accountant dood?”
“You know, I'm not really an accountant. I took a couple of classes sophomore year....”
“Dat's OK, yer OUR accountant!”
“Well, anyway. We're not quite rich, but I think we can make it through 'til you guys get some paying gigs.” Charles was about to broach the subject of exactly when that might be when the phone rang and the answering machine clicked on to a familiar voice. Charles braced for the storm.
“Pickles, call yer muthur!” came the nag that could only be a relative of the same. “I know yer there. We're all so worried about yoo.”
Charles glanced nervously over at Pickles. He had rarely met a more sweet-tempered person, but those phone messages seemed to bring out a dreadlocked Mr. Hyde. “Douche bags,” the redhead muttered darkly. Pickles inevitably deleted the messages, but they would put him in a crappy mood, sometimes for hours.
“Uh, your folks?” Charles tried.
“Dey caught me wearin' mascara – WEARIN' MASCARA! - an' kicked me out. And den when S an' B hit it big, dey got my number an' started callin'.”
“Well, maybe....” started Charles.
“Maybe WUT?” demanded Pickles, his face a warning mask.
Trying another tack, Charles told him, “I don't talk to my family.”
That seemed to calm the storm, or at least send it in another direction. “Yeh. Wut happened t' yoo, dood?”
Charles hesitated. Well, he was living under the man's roof, and stealing his money for coffee and Captain Crunch. “Uh. My dad.... Didn't really understand.... I wanted to do entertainment law....” And play a guitar. And shave my head, he thought, rubbing the still too short hair atop his head.
“Is he a lawyer dood too?”
“Was a lawyer. Uh. Passed away. Recently.”
“Yeh? An' yer mom?”
“It's not my mom,” Charles answered sharply. His hands balled into fist. “Its... I dunno. Third or fourth wife. I quit counting. Anyway, she's got kids. And....”
“Dey gaht everyt'ing?”
Charles shrugged. But then he was relieved of any further self-disclosure, as the phone rang again, and this time, the party on the other end did not wait for the tone.
Nathan Explosion awaited no beep.
"PICKLES WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU GET YOUR WORTHLESS ASS OVER HERE WE'RE REHEARSING," There was a muffled voice in the background. "AND PICK UP STRAWBERRIES. We're out of strawberries for the Margaritas!"
"Yoo heard him, Driver Dood, git yer ass in gear," Pickles laughed, logging Charles his own car keys. Pickles picked up a pair of drumsticks, and Charles grudgingly took the Civil War sword Pickles now stubbornly insisted he carry everywhere.
They got to the little Honda Civic, which now, after off-loading some crap into Pickles' living room closet, had room for five people if one of 'em wasn't too big and nobody got carsick. Charles actually smiled slightly as he popped in a cassette tape. He had thought his musical taste was a bit arcane, but it never took Pickles more than one listen to get any song.
"Oh, dis is a good one, dood, turn it up! She'd taken everyt'ing! She took his car, she took his bike, she took everyt'ing she t'ought he liked, and what she couldn't take she found a way to break! She left his...."
"I just wanna see him. Before I go."
"As I have told you and told you, I don't think it will be a very good idea at the present moment. The doctors say he shouldn't be upset. And you.... Well, as you will be the first to admit, your relationship is.... Fraught." she pulled the ashtray on Father's desk closer and tapped at her Virginia Slim.
"Maddy, I-"
"Madison," she spat.
Charles looked into her eyes. Yes, Madison. This wasn't the girl, barely older than himself, who had shown up on Father's arm a few short years back. Back then, her smile still reached her eyes. There was no laughter in these eyes. Father had a way if doing that. This, he guessed, would be the one who ended up with everything: the estate, the trusts. Lucky girl. He hoped, for her sake, it had been worth it.
"Madison," he said evenly. "I might not be able to see him again. Do you understand...."
"Quit being such a little drama queen, Charles. We have only the best doctors for him. And perhaps if you had chosen an east coast law school, as he so wanted...."
"Maddy, I'm not gonna discuss the fucking will! I just wanna fucking say goodbye."
"Watch. The. Language," she scolded. "There are children present."
Charles stood. He wasn't gonna get on his knees to Maddy. That was something he just wouldn't do. "Very well," he muttered, turning to go.
"And one more thing," she told his back.
"Yeah."
"That... THING. That you drive."
He turned back, now confused. "Yeah?"
"Well, it doesn't look very good, does it? In the front drive like that? Next time, I need you to take it round," she said, making a dismissing motion with her long-nailed hand.
"You want me to park around the back?"
"Yes. It would be better. For all of us."
He stood and stared, his hands balled into fists. "You want me to use the servant's entrance?" he said, voice now shaking ever so slightly.
"Yes. Exactly." Now she wouldn't meet his eyes. She made a big show of tapping ashes.
He leaned over, palms now flat on top of Father's desk. He waited for Maddy to steal a glance up at him.
"Let me put it this way," he said, very slowly and quietly and evenly, leaning forward just the slightest. "You won't have to worry about my car on YOUR property. Ever again."
And he turned and left.
"DID YOU GET STRAWBERRIES?" Nathan demanded.
"Naw dood, I got dese Cool Ranch Doritos."
"AWESOME!"
Charles immediately grabbed a beer, thinking he'd need one. These band rehearsals were as perplexing as Nathan's grocery orders. He had seen many rounds of poker (they usually insisted that he join them, even though he had no money to bet). And sometimes one of them - usually Nathan or Skwisgaar - would bring a record album, and they would sit and listen and then sadly shake their heads. "NOT BRUTAL ENOUGH!" Nathan would declare, and they would all go back to cards.
“Doods! Look at wut Charles did,” said Pickles, suddenly wielding Charle's spreadsheet. “Dis is money we're owed by other doods!”
The sheet was flattened onto the card table, where Charles cringed as it immediately became a repository for beer bottles and chips.
Nathan declared, “You're not only our ninja lawyer, you're OUR ACCOUNTANT!” and then slapped Charles on the back hard enough to make him nearly choke on his beer.
"Scho," said the bouncer - Murderface, as it turned out, was his name. His real name. "Scho," said Murderface, running his thumb along the edge of a hunting knife. "We juscht have to schtab some guysch, and get our money?" He demonstrated by impaling Charles' now beleaguered spreadsheet with the blade.
"Look. You're not gonna have to stab anybody," Charles tried to explain, gingerly plucking out the knife and attempting to rescue his tall sheet.
"Den, waddoo we doo, chief?" Pickles inquired, grabbing the sheet. "I want mah column!" he said, pointing.
"I ams wants alls from column As to Bs!" declared Skwisgaar, snatching the sheet as well.
"Guys," Charles said. "This is your money. You just gotta ask."
"You're gonna ask for us, right?" declared Nathan. "Because everyone knows, you're our MUSCLE."
"Well, uh, I dunno..."
"Then you can be our ninja lawyer driver accountant ENFORCER!" said Nathan.
Charles looked around, not entirely certain why the hell they all seemed to trust him with this stuff.
"I can ask for you. I guess. Is at what you all want?"
"Will you usche the schword?" Murderface asked, hope shining in his eyes.
"Uh. If I have to?"
"AWESOME," said Nathan, handing the spreadsheet back over to Charles with a flourish. Charles smoothed the still too short hair on his head. Nathan's "awesomes" appeared to be the equivalent of "motion carried" with these guys.
"But, would you guys do something?" Charles asked.
"Ja?"
"Schould we beat up schome dude?"
"Uh, this other column I have here? This blank column?"
"It's totally blank!" marveled Pickles. “Dat's so zen dood!”
"Could I get you guys to fill it in?"
"What do we have to do? SOME ACCOUNTING SHIT?" wondered Nathan.
"It's for gigs you play. You know. AS A BAND?"
There were blank looks.
"Oh yeah!" said Nathan finally. "If we hit on a sound and got some songs and rehearsed and decided on a name and arranged some gigs.... PEOPLE WOULD PAY US MONEY!"
It was undeniable.
"All right!" said Nathan. "It's a plan. Maybe after this hand..."
"Den maybes you ams go outs for more chips?" Skwisgaar asked Charles, flourishing an empty container that once held Cool Ranch Doritos.
"We need more?" asked Charles, carefully folding up what was left of the band's accounts.
"Ja. Den you ams our lawyers enforcers drivers BUTLERS," Skwisgaar tartly informed him, plucking on his guitar.
"Wait, Charles, dood, where yoo goin'? We jest gaht here!"
"Why are yoo packin' dat box, dood?" Pickles inquired. Charles had not said a word the entire trip back, and now he was ransacking Pickles' hallway closet.
"I am not," explained Charles as he tossed textbooks and a pile of shirts into a cardboard box, "gonna be your accountant, or your driver, or you ninja, or WHATEVER THE FUCK, any more." He threw a couple of fencing plaques on top of the box. "You guys are on your own!"
"Oh, well, dat's too bad. Cuz, Nat'an likes yoo, an' he don't like most anybody," Pickles mused. "But, why are yoo packin yer stuff?"
Charle's face was red. He dropped the box and balled his fists. "I told you. I'm not gonna work for you guys."
"Yeh. I heard dat. Why are yoo movin' yer stuff out?"
"Pickles! Aren't you letting me live here to drive you around and do your shit work?"
Pickles shrugged. "I need a driver, yeh. But, I let yoo crash cuz.... Yoo needed a place t' crash."
Charles searched Pickles' eyes for a long moment.
The phone rang, and the answering machine clicked. "This is Nathan and WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU. PICK UP because I know you're there and SKWISGAAR has something to say.".
In the background came a muttered exchange, "I ams nots knows what's to say. I ams not knows what I did wrongs." "Skwisgaar it's LIKE A CHICK, you never know what you did wrong, just ACT APOLOGETIC!"
Pickles grabbed the phone, and, after a muttered, "Yeh," handed it to Charles.
"This ams Skwisgaar and I ams kapologizicing, for whatever it is I ams done. Dere, ams dat its?"
"OK," came Nathan's voice, "so we're all good now and we can move on and get money in the blank column and get rich and famous and ALL THAT OTHER SHIT?"
"Uh. Yeah," said Charles, toeing the cardboard box.
"And you'll MANAGE US?”
"Uh. If you want me to? Yeah."
"AWESOME! OK on your way back you need to tell Pickles to stop and get some GODDAM CHIPS because we're out again. COOL RANCH IS AWESOME."
Charles put down the phone, although unsure as to being included in the exact same category of relative wonderfulness as taco chips.
"Uh, Nathan wants chips," he told Pickles.
"Cool! Let's stop by DA LIQUOR STORE on da way den. An git Kahlua!”
"And maybe we could stop by a pet store and get Nathan a puppy," Charles proposed.
"Hey, Dat's a great idear! Dat's usin' yer noggin," said Pickles as they walked out the door.
