Blink
by Nik Korpon

Cleveland, Heartbeat of the Apocalypse Tour
Blink and cities flicker by our van window like a slideshow. The venue is in a neighborhood so non-descript it might not exist. Streetlight drifts through fog hugging the asphalt. Rising like a red tombstone, a phone booth stands on the corner. I open the door, step into a cloud of urine, vomit and pot-smoke. Drop a coin into the slot. A hooker lounges on a bench across the street like a lazy cat.

Plastered on the glass of the booth is a poster for our tour. I draw heart-rhythm lines under InksplatteredDagger to emphasize our name. The opening band, Devil Children, sits at the bottom of the flyer, some vague blurb about up-and-comers and vampire rock. I’ve always thought it was a lame act, but—

‘Dad!’

‘Hey, Dylan! How’s it going, bug?’

‘Awesome. I made Peter drink a bottle of hot sauce because he bet I couldn’t hit the ball farther than him.’

‘Dylan, if you torture all your friends you won’t have anyone to play with.’ If he’s this much of a monster at twelve, I can only imagine what he’ll be like when the hormones kick in.

‘It was awesome. He crapped himself running home.’

Across the street, the hooker tries to peddle her wares with half-hearted catcalls. She hasn’t bothered to strut along the street yet, or even sit upright.

‘Dad!’

‘Yeah, that’s a lovely image. How far did you hit the ball?’

‘I asked if you were coming home soon.’

Fuck.

‘I’m sorry, bug.’

‘Why not?’

‘I’m trying to get a deal for our band and there was a guy here tonight who really dug us and he’s supposed to come tomorrow.’

‘I thought you were done tomorrow.’

A crumpled paper bag blows down the vacant street like tumbleweed. The street shimmers with condensation.

‘Just a little longer, Dylan. Remember, if you don’t jump, you can never grab your dreams.’

His little sigh whispers in my ear. ‘You always say that.’

‘I did hear something pretty cool was headed your way.’

‘A new Nintendo?’ he squeals.

‘Uh, not quite. But somebody asked Devil Children to send a signed CD and t-shirt to their number one fan for his birthday.’

‘No way! Peter’ll shit a brick.’

‘Don’t let Mom hear you talk like that.’ A car pauses by the bench. She leans into the window and her hair hangs in clumps like a bleached mop. ‘Is she around?’

I yank the phone away from my ear when he yells for her. In the static background of our living room, Merle Haggard pines for lost love. If Merle’s playing, I’ll have to check the doors for booby-traps because home will become a silent war field full of implied threats and stilted dinners.

‘She has a unquiet migraine.’ His voice is softer, tempered.

‘Unrequited, D. Don’t worry about it, I’ll call back later.’

‘If you’d like to continue your call, please insert more coins now.’

Patting my pockets, I find some change and feed the box. The hum of electric lines fills the gaps between our breaths. He’s probably flamingo-standing in the kitchen, winding the phone cord around his finger like a corndog, the way he does when he’s on the phone with his half-deaf grandmother.

‘You promise you’ll be home soon?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Swear on me?’

‘I swear on you Dylan. I love you. I’ll see you soon.’

He says I love you and the line whispers a dial tone. The car pulls away, tendrils of exhaust caressing the hooker. She looks up and down the street like a dog whose owner has abandoned it, then extracts a cigarette from somewhere and flops back to the bench, and I suddenly feel very close to her.

---

Cincinnati, The Unbecoming Tour
Blink and three years pass. I scrape at them, dig my nails into their skin but they’re smooth like fish scales and I loose grip and find myself in a phone booth in Cincinnati. Lift the receiver and set a few coins on top of the box.

Plastered on the brick wall outside the glass case is an ad for the latest tour. I drop the phone and stand in front of the poster. It dwarfs me like something from 1984. I set an upturned trashcan against the wall, climb up and tear a strip from the top of the poster. Devil Children hangs limp in my hands. Crumpling it into a ball, I walk back to the phone booth and almost trip on a man sprawled on the bench. He’s slumped like a broken timepiece eternally reading two o’clock, sleeve rolled above his elbow. Dots like obsidian wormholes cover his forearm. I feed the phone two coins.

‘Dylan! How’s it going?’

‘Hey, Dad. How’s tour?’

‘The crowds are great, kids are really digging us. There’s a really cool feeling in the air, like something fantastic is about to happen.’

‘That’s awesome, Dad. Really, I’m happy for you.’

The man on the bench isn’t moving and I wonder if he’s dead. My hands smell of milk left in the sun and vegetable stew from the garbage can.

‘So, you still planning on being home next week?’

I scratch my cheek, push on my jawbone. ‘Yeah, next week—’

‘Next week you were going to take me to the driving test.’

‘No, I know. It’s just—’

‘It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.’

‘Let me finish my sentence, Dylan. I’m coming home, but I can’t just leave tour whenever you ask. Devil Children asked us to stay on another few weeks.’ I flake away pieces of rust on the edges of the booth, press them between my fingertips. ‘And we met a guy who owns a club in LA and he asked us to play two nights because he has a friend that’s a rep who would dig us…’

‘If you don’t jump, you can’t grab your dreams, right?’ He gives a quick laugh, though I don’t know if it’s at my expense.

‘Exactly.’ I cop the bad Austrian-villain accent I used to do while chasing him around in his Ninja Turtle outfit, try to lighten the mood. ‘Now you are vinally learning somevink.’

His breath flows in quiet waves through the mouthpiece. I imagine the smell of Doritos and Cherry Slurpee, see the orange fingerprints he leaves on the couch and all the chairs. The man on the bench jolts upright with a gasp, like he’s been held underwater for eons, then collapses again. A needle tinkles on the concrete.

‘Okay, Dylan, how many feet before a stop sign do you need to turn on your turn signal?’

He coughs, ‘What?’

‘I want to help you study for your test.’

‘Dad, it’s a driving test. As in, driving a car.’

‘Oh.’

‘If you’d like to continue your call, please insert more coins now.’ I pull a coin from my pocket, flip it in my palm.

‘Don’t worry. I’ll get Mom to take me.’

‘How’s she doing these days?’

‘Fine. She’s seeing some guy. A professor or something.’

I shove my last two coins into the slot. ‘Oh yeah?’

‘Yeah, he’s okay. Kind of boring.’ His voice trails off, like he’s pulled the phone from his mouth.

‘You know what college he—’

‘Hey, Peter just got here. I gotta go.’

‘Yeah, sure, no problem.’ The glass booth is cool against my forehead. ‘I love you, Dylan.’

‘Love you too, Dad. Good luck in LA. You guys are going to do great.’

The dial tone hisses in my ear. I set the handpiece on the hook and watch the man on the bench deteriorate. An hour or a week later, Devil Children’s tour bus pulls up next to the phone booth. The driver waves his hand and I board.

Dayton, Devil Children, Unite! Tour
Blink and three years scream past. I coast along their currents, scraping to keep myself oriented. Then a wire fizzes or a breaker snaps and I’m like a hummingbird in front of a jet engine.

‘Sound check isn’t for ten minutes,’ I tell Gerry with a G, the manager of Devil Children. ‘I need to call my son.’ He yells something that might be Russian then tears into someone else. I drop my tool belt and headset on the mixing board, grab my sound tech assistant by the arm. ‘Just make sure the levels are right and I’ll adjust the tones when I get back.’ He says it’s his first week but I leave before he can protest more.

Two blocks down, I find a phone booth. I feed the box a few coins, tapping my fingers on the edge, willing Dylan to answer the phone. Even this far away, the club’s marquee lights turn the street artificial daylight. They cast a corpse-pallor over the tenement across the street, broken windows dripping tears of glass on the sidewalk. The answering machine picks up.

‘Hey, Dylan. It’s Dad. I guess you’re on the way to school. I’m really sorry I missed you. The sound tech broke his arm last week and I had to stay on for another leg of the tour, and, well, shit you know how it goes. Contracts and all. Maybe when you get to be a big lawyer you can help me renegotiate my deal.’ I chew the inside of my check and massage my forehead. A shadow moves behind the window of the tenement. ‘Shit, bug, I’m really sorry. You know I wanted to be there. It’s just… hell, I don’t know.’

‘If you’d like to continue your call, please insert more coins now.’
I laugh despite myself. My pockets are silent and empty. ‘You’ve got a good following of Goth chicks if you ever want one. I’ve got your picture on my mixing board—that one from the baseball article the paper did on you—and they’re always saying they don’t go for jocks but they’d make an exception for you. Not that you’re a jock, but you know what I mean.’ Another shadow in the tenement. It meets the first, like amoebas engulfing or lovers embracing, and disappears. ‘Just remember that college is going to be hard, D, but it’s okay. Remember what I always say? If you don’t jump—’

The line clicks. ‘Dad, don’t. Don’t jump, don’t call. Just…’ breath courses into the mouthpiece, ‘just don’t.’

And the dial tone doesn’t bother to show. Silence hangs in the booth like smoke. Outside of the club, Gerry with a G’s silhouette paces like a confused animal.

Receiver in my hand, I whisper to Dylan, ‘If you don’t jump, you’ll never fall,’ and hang up the phone. The tenement looms tall, the ghosts of life evaporated into exhaust and artificial daylight. A shard of glass falls from the second floor and shatters with a hollow tinkle. I exit the booth and trudge back to the club, back to my soundboard, and return to the picture of my boy.