Like Garbo

One fuchsia-bright feather boa wound around the head of the memorial stone cherub overlooking BeatNick’s frequently-vandalized gravesite; a scratched and dented Fender Stratocaster guitar minus two strings stood propped against his tombstone, rain-swelled and sun-bleached; letters and picture postcards scattered about with clippings from vintage Tiger Beat and Rolling Stone magazines kissed with lipstick in shades spanning the color spectrum; one dog-eared, personalized, autographed 8x10 addressed to ‘Cathy’, signed: ‘Love, BN.; a pair of wedgie platforms, cushioned insoles imprinted by soiled feet; nearby a deck of naked-lady playing cards under a pen which, with a left turn, disrobed a pin-up; cigarettes, spliffs, matches, lighters, candles; solitary roses, assorted bouquets and mourning wreaths all left by fans—and tonight—three almost-full pints of whiskey and the dregs of assorted spirits in airplane bottles—whoopee!

Clothilde, first to arrive, promptly draped the stone cherub’s bright boa around her shoulders. Boris toddled up soon after, extracting two cigarettes from a half-empty pack of BeatNick's purported favorite brand and lighting both with a matchbook advertising a local club—one of BeatNick’s rumored favorite haunts. He handed a lit cigarette over to Clothilde, who replied, “Thanks, Sheik.”

Vincent Smuckers appeared next in his fastidiously clean burial tux and dapper top hat, along with his missus in her silvery moth-or-maggot eaten Art Deco shift; tagging along was their three-year-old son, Hamish, who wailed incessantly and who no one wanted around, though they were all too polite to complain.

Mr. Smythe staggered in, steadying himself by grasping Boris’s tie so he could stand upright among the group, heaving from side-to-side in futile attempts to maintain balance, while hugging an empty whiskey bottle from last week to his chest and repeating: “S’only thin’ evah meh me happy.”

Brittany Bostanski cheekily and cheerfully smacked revelers on the ass with her surfboard upon arrival—her typical greeting. In view of 1970s-bikinied Brittany’s skin's goose-pimpling in the chilly October past-midnight, Mrs. Bushdecker offered her mink.

“Ugh!” Brittany held her nose as if Mrs. Bushdecker’s stole stank. “I wouldn't be caught dead in fur!”

Rufus Elway, blues musician and one-time headliner from underground jazz clubs began strumming the Fender Stratocaster minus two strings.

They all gathered round BeatNick's grave, their usual gathering place. It was a reliably steady source of spirituous libations, thanks to BeatNick’s devoted fans leaving behind, among other things, copious amounts of their beloved, departed star’s favorite whiskey, in bottles filled to varying degrees: half-full, half-empty and thankfully, mostly full this night.

Even down two strings, Rufus gamely strummed Over There and Keep the Home Fires Burning nearly perfectly. Even though he’d never played them before or even known them during his lifetime, he felt each note as if channeled through his bones. The songs were specially requested by a Lieutenant Hasspieler, a trembling flying ace who showed himself among the crowd for the first time; Lieutenant Hasspieler, who, in perpetual shellshock, shot down during the battle of St. Mihiel more than a century ago, manifested aboveground-and-underground quaking so severe it disturbed his resting place to those astute few six-feet-above sufficiently attuned to notice.

Farside, suicidal standup comic, reenacted Mr. Groenig's heart attack as part of her developing act. After her set, Mr. Groenig asked his wife: “Is that how mine went, Hortense?”

“Face first in your mashed potatoes at the Frobringer's fiftieth,” Mrs. Groenig said. “If you weren’t dead, I'd have been so embarrassed!”

The Echonans celebrated their centennial wedding anniversary.

“One hundred years, Edna.” Mr. Echonan wagged his finger—still mad at his wife about the poisoning.

Mr. Groenig proposed a toast, as they passed around whiskey bottles, dedicating their final swigs to BeatNick: “Maybe one of these days he’ll grace us with his presence.”

“Or not!” Mr. Smythe reached for the nearly-drained bottle. “More for us!”

The following morning, cemetery workers Reggie and newbie trainee Homer arrived to discover BeatNick’s grave littered with the party’s detritus: cigarette butts and emptied bottles of BeatNick’s supposed favorite whiskey (a couple smashed to smithereens, evidently, over the stone cherub’s head, gauging by the resulting shrapnel’s trajectory and landing pattern).

Reggie, head groundskeeper, shook his fist to the heavens. “Since this guy’s been buried here, we’re stuck cleaning up after!” Then, abruptly, he bent over to start clearing the mess; Homer didn’t immediately follow Reggie’s initiative.

“Help, Homer!” Reggie spoke impatiently, noticing Homer standing there, watching him, doing nothing.

Before starting, in a misfired attempt to lighten Reggie’s dark mood, Homer donned the vivid fuchsia feather boa he found slung over the worn monument of someone named ‘Clothilde,’ the engraving of her name almost completely eroded away over time. The boa’s feathers tickled Homer’s lips; Reggie glared at Homer until Homer removed it, placing it among the rubbish.

“Remember, this is your probationary period, Homer,” Reggie said. “We’re trying to determine whether you’re suitable for this job and I’m…not seeing it yet. Gotta be truthful.”

Homer got the message and concentrated on his work, so much so that he lost track of grouchy Reggie as he went about spearing cigarette butts stained with various shades of lipstick and stooping to sweep up shattered bits of glass, which had embedded themselves seemingly all over the damn place.

Homer whistled a medley of BeatNick’s tunes softly as he worked. Maybe this job wouldn’t be so bad if he didn’t have to work too closely with grumpy Reggie—it could even be peaceful.

Homer stopped to read the monument he worked around: “Lieutenant Earl Hasspieler.” He checked the date of birth and death: poor kid died more than one hundred years ago.

Homer swept some glass that landed atop Earl’s headstone and as he did so, he discerned a distinct shuddering sensation beneath his feet. Earthquake? Nah. They weren’t in earthquake country.

Homer stood perfectly still, and yes, the soil around Earl’s monument absolutely subtly trembled consistently, as if an old-fashioned wind-up bedside bell-style alarm clock was buried down there beside Earl’s body, to shrill everlastingly, never to wake him; or maybe Earl was turning over in his grave like a rotisserie as Homer stood there, six feet above, working. Didn’t one have to be careful walking over graves? Wasn’t there some associated superstition?

Nah. Homer’s imagination was getting away from him. The “earthquake” he swore he detected was probably some minor tremor, a shudder, a hardly-seismic register on the Richter scale—the most clashing tectonic plates could muster up in this lithosphere resulted in these vaguely discernible tremors demonstrated here in the earth surrounding Earl’s grave. Yes. That had to be it. Homer believed there was a scientific explanation for everything.

Homer moved back toward BeatNick’s grave where plenty of mess still awaited him. He wanted to impress Reggie, especially after the pink boa misfire.

Approaching BeatNick’s grave, Homer noticed a flicker of the pink feather boa out of the corner of his eye: Reggie. Reggie wore it now.

Aw, Reggie must have dug it out of the rubbish bin to make amends, to signal that everything was cool between them now. Probably felt sorry for being sharp with Homer earlier—after all, Homer was a newbie on the job and really felt he wasn’t doing that badly.

Homer quickened his gait, but as he approached within earshot, Reggie spoke:

“Your whistling’s giving me a headache.”

It was like the guy had eyes in the back of his damn head, still facing away from Homer. And despite the playful pink boa, Homer could hear it in Reggie’s voice: still cranky, no respite from The Boss’s bad mood.

Reggie kept his back to Homer, and his voice, for that matter, was strange—as if in imitation of someone—Homer wasn’t sure who.

“Sorry,” Homer told Reggie, “but you have sharp ears. I was waaaaay over there.” Homer pointed to Earl’s grave, but Reggie didn’t turn to see the direction Homer pointed in.

“Do you mind keeping it down? I’m resting. And not peacefully.”

“Oh?” Homer didn’t really understand. “You’re taking a break now, Reggie?”

“Who the hell’s Reggie?” The figure turned around.

Homer sucked in his breath. Jesus Christ, he needed glasses. He really needed glasses.

This wasn’t Reggie. Everyone knew that grizzled, life-worn, now gone-from-life iconic face:

BeatNick.

He shouldn’t be here? Upright? With opposable thumbs? Dead? Not in his grave? Homer swallowed hard and took a step backward, away, afraid. Where the hell was Reggie?

Reggie! Reggie!

Homer wanted to call for Reggie, but his voice croaked and died in his throat, curled up in a fetal position; all vocalizations, unformed syllables, the primitive utterances of fear, stifled, froze, and choked within.

Homer ransacked his brain for an explanation, one of his scientific ones, and felt relieved to come up with something plausible fairly quickly: okay, maybe (most likely!) BeatNick had pulled an Elvis or Jim Morrison-style urban legend disappearance, with rumored death (though not really dead), having simply grown tired of the overexposed celebrity life, riches, and fawning adulation of fans. He had decided to live unrecognized, off the grid and had therefore faked death, which (for some) was an escape.

Yes, that had to be it. There was no other explanation.

Because BeatNick stood before him, the real BeatNick: alive and well and evidently checking out his “gravesite” to see how the hell his fans, and the world, honored his posthumous reputation—and look! Not trying to disguise himself in any way, not even wearing shades or making the vaguest attempt at an incognito visit.

Such hubris! Who visits their own “grave”? Rich bastards like BeatNick, that’s who.

“Please stop whistling my songs—I’ve heard enough to last a lifetime. And another thing: these late-night parties—I was promised peace. I’ve complained too many times to management already and nothing’s been done about it.”

“Am I being pranked? Are you pranking me? I mean really…really—I mean—B—”

“Don’t say my name.” BeatNick shook his head vehemently and raised a finger to his lips to shush Homer. “Please don’t say my name: they’ll hound me, they’re already calling for me to join them and I want to be left alone! Like Garbo. Ever heard of Garbo? Greta Garbo? She wanted to be alone and that’s all I want, too.”

And with that, before Homer’s eyes, BeatNick, like a figure made of pixels, a hologram, collapsed before him, insubstantial, as if the gravity of his false being became too weighty to sustain, and all the colors: his eyes, his skin, his hair—every part of him—including the pink boa—dropped back into the earth, like a whoosh, a vamoose, a reverse-cyclone of melting, bright glittering particles dulling as they camouflaged with the grass, the soil, the stones, the trees to appear like nothing had been disturbed.

Homer stared, immobile, at the patch of grass BeatNick had seemingly dissolved into without a part left over, leaving behind not so much as a strand of hair, or any evidence. Not even a bright pink feather from the boa. All vanished.

What was the scientific explanation for this?

Reggie snuck up from behind to catch Homer not working. Again!

“Homer, what are you doing?”

“Jesus Christ!” Homer cried out, startled, nearly jumped out of his skin.

“I catch you doing nothing again! You’re supposed to impress me, Homer, not slack—” Reggie stopped short and stared at Homer’s face.

“Oh, no,” Reggie paused, scrutinizing Homer’s face. “Don’t tell me you saw BeatNick.” He pointed at Homer’s face, laughed. “Exactly how I looked, too, when I first saw him!”

“You saw him?” Homer asked.

Reggie nodded. “Sure. All the time! He thinks I’m the manager.” Reggie pointed to his chest and stuck it out proudly. “Can you imagine?”

Homer looked hard at Reggie after that statement, trying to make sense of Reggie’s priorities here.

“Don’t I look like the manager?” Reggie asked Homer.

“It’s not that. It’s…”

“Oh, you’ll get used to seeing him,” Reggie waved a casual hand. “All of them. BeatNick’s our first celebrity. I didn’t realize stars were such a pain in the ass—or that their fans made such messes.

“There’s Farside, too—well—I don’t get her humor but—

“Oh—hey—you haven’t met Earl yet,” Reggie pointed to Earl’s grave; Homer’s eyes went to the dandelions sprouting from the earth packed around Earl, trembling ever-so-slightly, perpetually, in the breeze, in the still air...

“Earl’s a nice guy. He doesn’t come around much—he’s pretty shy, but I should warn you....”

Reggie leaned closer to Homer to whisper, in case Earl was listening, evidently:

“…for when you meet Earl, Homer, I’ll tell you: Earl’s got shellshock. World War I, you know? Shakes all the time. Nerves shot, you know? All the time.

“Poor guy, like a walking earthquake or worst case delirium tremens imaginable. Like, serious, I mean. When you see him, pretend not to notice and make like everything’s cool, okay?”