He'd always been an impatient man, but a miserably unsuccessful impatient man. And so his impatience mainly manifested itself as impatience for the success he lacked.
Herb used to stay away at night, counting the small piles of currency that strangers pelted into his upturned bowler cap as he played popular songs downtown during lunch hours.
As he counted, Herb multiplied by swelling sums. He had it coming to him. The blood running through him was that of a rich man, that much he knew. But for some reason, try as he may, he couldn't bleed enough while performing to let the public know the same.
His voice was clear and beautiful, rasped just enough to lend authenticity, like the smudged words and bent corners of a palimpsest. The sound of the accordion, no matter what tune was played, was as warm and familiar as your best memory.
But still he failed in those early years, just as he fails now.
You might not remember this, but 1996 was the year of the great accordion revival. Grunge and its offshoots were crashing to the ground like limply-tossed meteorites and the boy band epoch hadn't yet began. And so 1996 was the year of the accordion.
Revisers of history have redacted it from the books, so I wouldn't recommend researching those brilliant times when accordions filled their lungs and bellowed loudly throughout the world, holding everyone rapt.
And we have Herb to thank for it. He was the trailblazer, the pack leader, the showman to end all showmen.
For that period of twelve months, Herb, with his dark sunglasses and bowler, was everywhere. He played inaugurations, Central Park, the world stage. He made love to countless gorgeous anonymous women. And men. He was a gossip column golden boy.
Best of all, his success made him so goddamn rich that, even when he counted without embellishment, the sums were so high that they made him woozy. So he hired someone to do the counting for him.
But now we're here, December 15, 2008, on the low point of the downward curve of Herb Harp's success. Everything inside his body feels dismal, dull, and pointless. He aches, his arms have almost atrophied, but still he squeezes out some ugly sound. He's staring into his bedroom mirror, looking foolish, he knows, in his dark glasses and bowler.
He's mouthing to himself, "By god. By god. I wish to buy God." It sounds like the chorus to a song that was never written. And he know that, at this second, he's so broke that he couldn't even afford salvation, as if that were even desirable or an option.
In the end, after Herb superglues the shatter of his life the best he can, the only only thing that that will preserve him is the same thing that preserves any of us. And that's the thought that there's some other place out there in the pitch ether where time slacks so much that who you were when you became who you think you should be is the you who will live forever.
2 comments:
Off to a great start!
That's a great ending.
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