A Visit From the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan [14]
He drew back and looked at his son. The baby he and Stephanie had nuzzled and kissed—now this painful, mysterious presence. Bennie was tempted to say, Don’t tell your mother about the medicine, craving an instant of connection with Chris before he went inside. But he hesitated, employing a mental calculation Dr. Beet had taught him: Did he really think the kid would tell Stephanie about the gold? No. And that was his alert: Betrayal Bonding. Bennie said nothing.
He got back in the car, but didn’t turn the key. He was watching Chris scale the undulating lawn toward his former house. The grass was fluorescently bright. His son seemed to buckle under his enormous backpack. What the hell was in it? Bennie had seen professional photographers carry less. As Chris neared the house he blurred a little, or maybe it was Bennie’s eyes watering. He found it excruciating, watching his son’s long journey to the front door. He worried Sasha would speak—say something like He’s a great kid, or That was fun—something that would require Bennie to turn and look at her. But Sasha knew better; she knew everything. She sat with Bennie in silence, watching Chris climb the fat, bright grass to the front door, then open it without turning and go inside.
They didn’t speak again until they’d passed from the Henry Hudson Parkway onto the West Side Highway, heading into Lower Manhattan. Bennie played some early Who, the Stooges, bands he’d listened to before he was even old enough to go to a concert. Then he got into Flipper, the Mutants, Eye Protection—seventies Bay Area groups he and his gang had slam-danced to at the Mabuhay Gardens when they weren’t practicing with their own unlistenable band, the Flaming Dildos. He sensed Sasha paying attention and toyed with the idea that he was confessing to her his disillusionment—his hatred for the industry he’d given his life to. He began weighing each musical choice, drawing out his argument through the songs themselves—Patti Smith’s ragged poetry (but why did she quit?), the jock hardcore of Black Flag and the Circle Jerks giving way to alternative, that great compromise, down, down, down to the singles he’d just today been petitioning radio stations to add, husks of music, lifeless and cold as the squares of office neon cutting the blue twilight.
“It’s incredible,” Sasha said, “how there’s just nothing there.”
Astounded, Bennie turned to her. Was it possible that she’d followed his musical rant to its grim conclusion? Sasha was looking downtown, and he followed her eyes to the empty space where the Twin Towers had been. “There should be something, you know?” she said, not looking at Bennie. “Like an echo. Or an outline.”
Bennie sighed. “They’ll put something up,” he said. “When they’re finally done squabbling.”
“I know.” But she kept looking south, as if it were a problem her mind couldn’t solve. Bennie was relieved she hadn’t understood. He remembered his mentor, Lou Kline, telling him in the nineties that rock and roll had peaked at Monterey Pop. They’d been in Lou’s house in LA with its waterfalls, the pretty girls Lou always had, his car collection out front, and Bennie had looked into his idol’s famous face and thought, You’re finished. Nostalgia was the end—everyone knew that. Lou had died three months ago, after being paralyzed from a stroke.
At a stoplight, Bennie remembered his list. He took out the parking ticket and finished it off.
“What do you keep scribbling on that ticket?” Sasha asked. Bennie handed it to her, his reluctance to have the list seen by human eyes overwhelming him a half second late. To his horror, she began reading it aloud:
“Kissing Mother Superior, incompetent, hairball, poppy seeds, on the can.”
Bennie listened in agony, as if the words themselves might provoke a catastrophe. But they were neutralized the instant Sasha spoke them in her scratchy voice.
“Not bad,” she said. “They’re titles, right?”
“Sure,” Bennie said. “Can you read them one more time?” She did, and now they sounded like titles to him, too. He felt peaceful,