Freedom [176]
They were on the shabby outskirts of town when his BlackBerry sang its cerulean song, making official their return to civilization. The call was from a Twin Cities number, possibly familiar, possibly not.
“Dad?”
Walter frowned with astonishment. “Joey? Wow! Hello.”
“Yeah, hey. Hello.”
“Everything OK with you? I didn’t even recognize your number, it’s been so long.”
The line seemed to go dead, as if the call had been dropped. Or maybe he’d said the wrong thing. But then Joey spoke again, in a voice like someone else’s. Some quavering, tentative kid. “Yeah, so, anyway, Dad, um—do you have a second?”
“Go ahead.”
“Yeah, well, so, I guess the thing is, I’m sort of in some trouble.”
“What?”
“I said I’m in some trouble.”
It was the kind of call that every parent dreaded getting; but Walter, for a moment, wasn’t feeling like Joey’s parent. He said, “Hey, so am I! So is everybody!”
ENOUGH ALREADY
Within days of young Zachary’s posting of their interview on his blog, Katz’s cellular voice mailbox began to fill with messages. The first was from a pesty German, Matthias Dröhner, whom Katz vaguely recalled having struggled to fend off during Walnut Surprise’s swing through the Fatherland. “Now that you are giving interviews again,” Dröhner said, “I hope you’ll be so kind as to give one to me, like you promised, Richard. You did promise!” Dröhner, in his message, didn’t say how he’d come by Katz’s cell number, but a good guess was via blogospheric leakage from the bar napkin of some chick he’d hit on while touring. He was undoubtedly now getting interview requests by e-mail as well, probably in much greater numbers, but he hadn’t had the fortitude to venture online since the previous summer. Dröhner’s message was followed by calls from an Oregonian chick named Euphrosyne; a bellowingly jovial music journalist in Melbourne, Australia; and a college radio DJ in Iowa City who sounded ten years old. All wanted the same thing. They wanted Katz to say again—but in slightly different words, so that they could post it or publish it under their own names—exactly what he’d already said to Zachary.
“That was golden, dude,” Zachary told him on the roof on White Street, a week after the posting, while they were awaiting the arrival of Zachary’s object of desire, Caitlyn. The “dude” form of address was new and irritating to Katz but entirely consonant with his experience of interviewers. As soon as he submitted to them, they dropped all pretense of awe.
“Don’t call me dude,” he said nevertheless.
“Sure, whatever,” Zachary said. He was walking a long Trex board as if it were a balance beam, his skinny arms outstretched. The afternoon was fresh and blustery. “I’m just saying my hit-counter’s going crazy. I’m getting hot-linked all over the world. Do you ever look at your fan sites?”
“No.”
“I’m right up at the very top of the best one now. I can get my computer and show you.”
“Really no need for that.”
“I think there’s a real hunger for people speaking truth to power. Like, there’s a little minority now that’s saying you sounded like an asshole and a whiner. But that’s just the player-hating fringe. I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“Thanks for the reassurance,” Katz said.
When the girl Caitlyn appeared on the roof, accompanied by a pair of female sidekicks, Zachary remained perched on his balance beam, too cool to make introductions, while Katz set down his nail gun and suffered examination by the visitors. Caitlyn was clad in hippie garb, a brocade vest and a corduroy coat such as Carole King and Laura Nyro had worn, and would certainly have been worthy of pursuit had Katz not, in the week since he’d seen Walter Berglund, become preoccupied again with Patty. Meeting a choice adolescent now was like smelling strawberries when you were