Chapter Seven

"Hey bro how ya doin'?" he asked as he settled himself in my spot in my room. "You must be Pablo. I'm Bobby. Hey, your mom's a real trip you know that? And your dad's a freak. I haven't met him, not really you know, but I've been in your store a few times. This one time he said I should get me a trumpet. Said I had the right aura whatever that means. Hey man they say you can't talk is that right? Oh I see, yeah, the sign. I didn't notice at first. Man, if I had to wear a sign like that I bet they would make it say 'ASSHOLE'."

At this he snorted and stomped his right foot on the floor about five or six times and so hard that the lemonade came flying out of his glass and went dripping down his chin, which only made him laugh harder.

"But man like I was saying", he continued, "I'm sort of between lifetimes right now, you know what I mean? It's like that philosopher Plato said about how the world is just shadows flickering on the walls of a cave? It's beautiful. And like I say wherever there's smoke there's fire and that's what I want to do, set the world on fire, just let her rip and blaze away. Not that I would ever, you know, play with matches. Dangerous. It's a manner of speaking you know what I mean?"

I was used to fast talkers so I sat there and listened. It was one of those times when I wished I could just blow my whistle and hold up my stop sign, but it wouldn't have done any good most likely. He just kept talking, all the while making these little twitching movements that seemed to migrate down from his nose to his lips to his shoulders to his hips to his knees and his feet, and then back up again. Down and up and down and up in a predictable sequence he fidgeted and shifted and twitched.

"Like the man say, they try to keep me down but no way, Jose, I mean Pablo, get it?" he said, snorting and stomping and laughing again. "No, really, bro, it's just this fix I'm in, I've been in worse. Your mom, though, she's a trip. I'd fuck her! Hell, what is she, sixty five and still a babe? That's trippy. No offense, I mean, about your mom. But still. She helped me out. I'll bet she helps a lot of people out and that's just sexy, what I meant, that do-gooder thing, it's cool. Say, you play all these instruments?"

He jumped up off the couch and strutted around the room like a chicken, literally like a rooster with his hands behind his back and his head bobbing up and down like he was pecking at my keyboards, drums and other stuff. At every stop he made on this inspection tour he'd nod and say "okay" or "cool" or "trippy" or some other idiotic comment. I wasn't interested in his opinion or opinions but I heard plenty of them. His conversation ranged far and wide and it was only luck when one vague thought led logically to the next. He went from modern jazz to Schopenhauer to the Pelopponesian War to hard hats to still life paintings with flowers. Whatever the topic, like a bee he landed on it momentarily, sampled its pollen and headed out. It was a whirlwind of nonsense, a treasure trove of inanity. I thought with training this guy could be a politician!

"Do you mind if I ask you a question? Not that you have to answer", he said, "but only if you want to. Are you in a band? Because it looks like you could be a one man musical army with all this shit you got piled around this room. You do recording?"

I nodded. It was the first time I had responded in any way to any of his remarks. He took that as a carte blanche 'yes' to everything that followed.

"We ought to get together, burn some tracks", he told me. "I've got a lot of songs. I write 'em like crazy. Lyrics, tunes, you name it. Look", and from his back pocket he pulled out a small spiral bound notebook and pushed it into my hands. I opened it at random and saw that the pages were filled with the tiniest illegible scrawl. Page after page were like this. Bobby leaned over me and pointed out how there were three, sometimes four complete songs on each little page, written in some odd form of annotation he'd clearly invented himself.

"That's just this month's tally", he told me, and grabbing it back he flipped through the pages to show me there were only a few blank ones left.

"I write all the time", he said. "It's basically how I spent the last few years down there in ... where I was."

He didn't want to go into that. Wherever "it" was, the mere mention of it was enough to make him pipe down for the first down since he'd entered my room. He took his seat - my seat that is - on the couch again and lapsed into a weird sort of silence. He was looking straight up at the ceiling and twisting his left ankle this way and that at a rapid pace while also working both of his thumbs back and forth in a rhythm. There was something obviously messed up with the guy. I assumed that "it" was either jail or a mental institution, but I wasn't about to dig to find out. I was hoping this would be the end of the visit, that he'd talked himself into a state that would require him to physically leave the room and hopefully never return. I was wrong about that. Instead, he recovered after a couple of minutes, and launched right back into it.

"I see you like the sun", he commented, apparently in reference to a mirror I had on the wall which had a golden frame around it.

"Very ancient Aztec", he approved. "So your mom's an Indian, right? And you dad's Chinese? That's awesome. Where'd they meet? Bangalore? I hear that is one crazy scene over there with all the kids they are selling for food. You ever know anyone who ate a child? Just wondering. Not me. No how, no way. But I'm no vegan thank you very much. I like my meat and I like it raw same as I like my women and my rock and roll. You like rock? I figured from the posters and all. Can I hear some of your stuff? You want to hear some of mine? If I can borrow your guitar over there for a sec", and sure enough he jumped up and helped himself to one of my acoustics. He sat back down on the couch with the thing and a remarkable transformation took place. As soon as he had the guitar on his lap the twitching just stopped. He relaxed. Even his mouth stopped moving. He placed his fingers on the frets for a C and strummed a few times.

"It's my favorite chord" he quietly said. "I could live in the C", and he smiled.