Free Losing in Gainesville (9781940430331) by Brian Costello Page B

left blank, and then you’re hired.” Jeremy slides out of the booth.
    â€œHell yeah, buddy,” Stevie says, extending a grease-laden hand to shake. Jeremy looks at it, smiles, turns away, says, “Your first job is to clean up your booth here.” He walks to the kitchen, turns, adds, “And clean yourself up before starting tomorrow at five.”
    From the open window between the kitchen and the pass, Table Replacement and Replenishment Coordinator Brooks Brody watches Stevie deliver the twenty-odd plates he had used during today’s assault on the buffet, walking back to his booth, swinging his arms in irregular unfluid air-karate motions. Jeremy approaches to the left, pats Brody on the shoulder. “You about ready to punch out and go home?”
    â€œDid you hire that weirdo?” Brody asks, watching the same back-and-forth of remnants to the counter, air-karate to the booth.
    â€œHe’s a modern-day warrior, Brooks,” Jeremy says, smiling in malicious adolescent vengeance. “He’ll be Dale’s worst nightmare.”
    Brody shrugs.
    â€œWipe down his table, and you’re out of here,” Jeremy says, basking in power, in anticipation for tomorrow, for getting out of here in August.
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    PLAY THE PIANO DRUNK LIKE A PERCUSSION INSTRUMENT UNTIL THE FINGERS BEGIN TO
    BLEED A BIT: THE BAND (NOT THE BOOK)
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    So the audience stands there with all their tattoos, howling along to the songs, pulling their arms to the sides of their heads like they’re in a great deal of trauma. And maybe they are. Even the most privileged members of Western Civilization must get the blues from time to time. The shirtless band—Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit, they are called—you know, after the Bukowski book?—have beards and muscletone and short hair and tattoos and they are one of those—they call them emo bands—who, when they sing, put a lot of feeling into stretching out their vowels. This, ergo, expresses the pain and intensity and uncertainty of life. Whatever they are howling about is very important to everyone packed into the Nardic Track on that Thursday night. To Ronnie, it sounds like they are worked up over paper cuts, like they’re singing—“It hurrrrrrrrrrts / paaaaaaaaaper cuuuuut / feeeel the buuuuurrrrrrn / from the fresh copies,” but “It can’t be that,” Ronnie thinks, in the middle of the audience, silently, shyly, observing . . . and the dozens concaved around the band will soon enough be hundreds and soon enough be thousands.
    Honestly, Ronnie doesn’t get it. He never will. His band, The Laraflynnboyles, sounds nothing like this. He doesn’t wax emotional about every stupid thing that has gone wrong in his life. He doesn’t want to, and can’t imagine what it would accomplish if he did. He isn’t sure how “feeling” and “sincerity” means stretching out your vowels when you sing—or, how there is a direct correlation between the two. But that’s what Gainesville seems to believe with the fervency of Eastern mystics. Because the way the band sings and the way the audience sings with them and how everyone is on the verge of tears at the minimum and mass catharsis at the maximum has the air of the fervor in a tent revival. At shows, Ronnie used to get bumped by kids dancing. Now, here, he’s getting bumped by, to his left, some pork-skinned joker wearing nothing but camo cutoffs half-covering a pair of plaid boxers and at the feet the inevitable pair of black Chucks—he keeps crouching down then crouching up, hands behind his head, pulling his head into his chest—and to his right, some bleach-blonde short haired squat-bodied girl shrieking the words and punching the air at the start and end of each elongated word that’s sung by the band. This band will be successful;