Tale 23

Behind the Risers

‘the old Castle Inn’ from the southwest

as it looked in early November, 2018

Bill put his empty cocktail glass down and chewed on the last of three olives, having finished off the liquid hours ago, it seemed.

"I love these stories," he said, sounding a friendly intimate at last, a way he sounded only when he was not storytelling, which meant rarely: "I used to sit over at Tommy's bar listening all night to Tommy telling about the road." It was nostalgic, almost. He couldn’t decide whether to attack Fred again or not,... maybe.

He dug into piles of papers on the table and handed mj several mimeographed pages stapled together.

Then he got up and went to the kitchen, Betty Ann behind.

The storytelling wasn't over for the night quite yet, maybe. But the fairy tale had to be over, certainly; and not just over, but completely and thoroughly done for.

Mj clicked off the recorder and hauled Bill’s paper handouts in one hand and his gym bag in the other to the bathroom; locked the door; relieved himself finally; then closed the commode lid, sat on it and opened the gym bag. The high priest of US American music would need help if the Huron nation should happen to sack him again in the person of Bill Blackburn: five peyote buttons at least would be needed, considering how useless mj had been to the great white father of music up to this point on a mere three buttons thereabouts. So he chewed an amount of Joey’s mix he thought close to five peyote buttons instead of three, recognizing it might not be peyote at all, of course; and yet – just in case – assuming an attitude as religious as possible despite practicing no religion in the ordinary sense and being on a toilet. Because: you had to take peyote seriously, and a mix of hallucinogens even more seriously, especially if you had no knowledgeable good friend like Joey on hand to talk you through it, if it got crazy. A hallucinogen could overturn a world fast, for better or worse.

Years later mj would write to Sammy about this moment, reminding him of the answer don Juan had given Carlos when he asked his teacher in shamanic wizardry, several years into his apprenticeship, “Why did you make me take those power plants so many times?”[1]

“’Cause you’re dumb,” don Juan had said lightheartedly, not intending to be mean, of course.[2] For, the purpose of ‘power plants’ in the world of the Native American, was almost always to raise understanding to a higher level of intelligence, to help you perceive your existence from a new angle, a newer way that might give you more ‘power’ than you had possessed before. 

Chewing on the dry, bitter stuff, working it into a paste to get it down, mj looked through Bill’s Waring PR, meaning ‘public relations’, handout. Further Huron assault was inevitable, and he needed a way to defend Fred’s battered log palisade of a reputation, which had suffered breaches with every story almost. And now the Blackburn team seemed to be getting really serious, so things could only get more complicated for Fred’s defense.

Press Kit[3]     Public Relations Department

Fred Waring's Pennsylvanians

What Did Al Capone and Dwight D. Eisenhower

Have in Common?

Both were fans of Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians. Yes, the only place some famous personalities would be caught together dead or alive was in a Fred Waring audience!

Now here was a fairytale tidbit. Why couldn't they talk about things like this? The page was full of fairytale eye-catchers Bill had written up as Fred Waring's promotions man. To promote the Fred Waring road show, Bill had mailed these corny, barely believable yet true vignettes to disk jockeys and reporters in Denver and Peoria and Chattanooga and a hundred other sizable all-American U.S. towns where Bill had booked Fred, hoping that such pure corn, when read by carefully chosen music radio station announcers, would sell tickets to the road show.

Now Bill wanted to leave Fred Waring. He had flip-flopped, in other words. He was anti-promoting him now.

Back at the couch, which mj thought of as his, practically, his cocktail glass was pitifully empty, and it bothered him more than it should have. Joey’s concoction was risky enough! Why add booze, and two kinds of booze at once, even, not just one, when he had been seeing into the heart of things for years with no substance help at all, and the likely effects of this last giant dose in the bathroom were a seventh grade druggie’s guess?

Weren’t things out of control enough already? asked his critics later, just as he asked himself.

Tack on gin and vermouth and five buttons more; or pot; or mushrooms; or whatever it was; and you might as well open Pandora’s Box here and now and get it over with.

Mj sank into the Blackburns’ couch cushion irritated; nervous; and yawning.

They scrapped in the kitchen, disagreeing about Fred. His own name could be heard but not details. Betty Ann was probably saying that Bill should lighten up. And he was saying, “But it’s time mj learned the truth,” and she: “Yes; but he’s writing a book; and you are not being fair to Fred,” and so on.

And anyway, how could Fred be ‘mellower’ when he was ‘the worst tyrant that ever walked the face of the earth’, ‘this year and every year’? Bill had said every one of these things within a minute’s time.

The living room, a second home for young mj, usually, felt as warm and cozy as a moon landscape at the moment.

Mj clicked the two RECORD buttons on the tape recorder at once. The reels went around and around in a way that were calming, even mesmerizing; and mj lorenzo, ‘once again’, as elements of the press and public complained later, ‘saw things that were not there’. He glimpsed in the spinning reels the heart of a deep cave, an underworld cavern lit up with torches. Three figures in ancient robes, two men and a woman, sat on the cave floor drinking mind-altering herb. Two of them left through a labyrinth of passageways, while the second man disappeared along the way; because when figures were next seen, outside the cave in bright moonlight now, only one man and one woman remained. The blonde goddess was waiting beside an ancient wooden cart made from shellacked planks while her man grabbed an ox ambling by and hitched the cart to it. The man climbed up into the seat first and helped her up; then he beat the ox with a stick and they rumbled off by moonlight down toward the wine-dark sea.

The oxcart driver wore a lion skin like Hercules, while his stately earth-woman goddess in long white robe sat beside him as he drove, clinging to his arm. They argued.

Now a new figure appeared from nowhere and walked up to the cart, an old man looking aristocratic in the ancient way, dressed in a white tunic that had a little bit of blue border. Hercules walked back across the rickety cart and helped the old man up, so he could ride on the back edge, feet dangling sandaled, as in ancient Greece or Crete.

The cart moved up the beach in moonlight and vanished in an area of moon shadow and tall natural rock monoliths.

After a lapse, these three figures showed up on foot, in the sand, with no cart now, and Hercules leading the ox by a rope tied to its big bronze nose ring.

They reached the edge of the dark sea finally, wiping night sweat from brows, and climbed into an ancient Cretan rowboat, a monster rowboat. Hercules sweet-talked the reluctant ox in, and they shoved off on a dark, moon-splashed sea, ox and all.

And the whole scene, from torch-lit cavern to sea, as mj recalled later, transpired in less time than it took Bing Crosby and the Pennsylvanians to croon,

"Of-aaaAAAAhll, the-girls, I-knohhhhhhhhw."

He looked at the spinning reels again.

In the big rowboat the earth goddess faced Hercules serenely from the seat at the opposite end, the way Betty Ann always sat at the other end of the long coffee table from Bill. The ox stood (!) between them, and Hercules rowed the huge rowboat over the shimmering black surface, sweet-talking the ox the whole time like a shamanic animal-charmer, into not rocking the boat. The beardless old man with the face of Fred Waring sat beside the goddess. He had a wreath on his white head and looked similar to representations of Dionysus, the Greek god of wine on ancient vases.

Dionysus had been the god not just of wine, as a matter of fact, but of all nature’s flowing and life-giving juices, from breast milk and semen to rivers and the spring sap in trees. And he was also the god of ecstatic identification with deity; of intensely pounding and driving, protracted, rhythmically complex chanting and dance; of drunken earthy libidinous pandemonium to the point of orgy; of live religious dismemberment; of death; and of spiritual rebirth. Dionysus and Demeter were from the old Greek religion, the very ancient earth religion, the Stone Age matriarchal religion, back when goddesses reigned, before Greek religion and life became patriarchal. Whereas Hercules was from more recent patriarchal Bronze Age days, after Zeus had taken over the pantheon, whereafter males were in charge in heaven, as on earth.

But aside from what it all might have meant in detail, it certainly did not seem far-fetched to figure it referred to the night at hand. The three of them, Bill, Betty Ann and mj, had done various mind-altering substances already. That was easy to see. The rest was the night to come, most likely. Every piece of it was a metaphor probably. A metaphoric oxcart ride would happen, probably soon, then a metaphoric boat ride. And everybody would go on the metaphoric rides but mj. The Blackburns would take a metaphoric ox along, but not take mj, he gathered, since he had dropped out of the vision after the intoxicating substance in the cave.

They would not take mj along with them, probably because he had started off the night drinking and hadn’t defended his fairy tale; whereas they had drunk the same amount he had, but were still talking about what they had wanted to talk about all along; while he was not. That was how he interpreted it.

The two scrapping crows returned from the kitchen with fresh martinis at last. The martinis were the good news.

Bill sat down and lowered his bushy grey vulture eyebrows at mj: "I've been telling you I can't take this job with Fred any more. And I don’t think you understand why."

Mj nodded: ‘like the dummy puppet of an invisible ventriloquist he was’, as critics said later; but Bill was right about mj not understanding. He did not get why Bill wanted to leave Fred, and he felt he had the right, somehow, to question the wish until he comprehended it; maybe because the two couples had done so many big things together in two years, and Bill’s leaving Fred, if he were to do so, as he was planning, was bound to affect them all, the four of them, in ways yet unknown; and he saw himself as the ‘family’ Questioner, you could say, the one of the four who asked relevant and important questions that needed answering, the only one who kept asking until an answer was found. That was why he was looking at Bill, and waiting.

"Here’s a story," Bill said, "that beGINS to explain a little." He was off, flying on his oxcart, his white hair flopping each time he beat the beast with a stick. He was deep within a bizarre trip already, about how, when he had first met Fred in Manhattan and was first forming an impression of the man, Fred had said, "'I want you to come up to the Poconos and hear this organ'!" Bill's tone was less than reverent.

So Bill had driven from Manhattan to the Poconos and talked to Fred a second time, and Fred had said with excitement, "'You go over to the Gap, and there's gonna be an organist over there 'n you tell him I sent you'!"

It wasn't the Fred Waring mj had grown up on, of course, the TV artist. It was the wrought up man in a golf shirt Bill knew as Fred.

Bill said, "So I did. And I went back to Fred." He searched mental files for a clown act and came up with a childlike, wide-eyed Fred: "'Did he play that sound for you? Did he play that sound’?" Then a loud jowly Fred: "'I want you to do a special arrangement!'

"I thought, 'Geez! on a Fred Waring show?'!"

Bill played himself as young and innocent because this had been many years before he had even moved up to the Poconos, way before he knew Fred Waring very well at all.

"So I went back to see George and we did this thing that started off T-t-k-t-k-. And it was To-niiiight, DRIVING, and roll-off on the drums and then BANG! It comes to a stop and then," Bill whispered the melody from Bernstein's 'West Side Story', "Ma-REEE-a...."

"And that," Bill said, "was supposed to be the organ playin' that trumpet: great musicianship and character." Bill's eyes closed and he leaned his head back to laugh soundlessly, then said, "The thing went on for five minutes, every song in the 'West Side Story', a Kenton-type arrangement."

The oxcart was lost. Mj said, "Whose arrangement was it?"

"George and I!"

But Bill had known how to write a book about Fred Waring, or so he had claimed just a few minutes before (though before that he had refused to write one at all, on the very same subject; and had challenged mj to do it instead). And plus, he had done public relations and promotions for the man; but the man wasn’t happy with that; and Bill had produced Fred’s records; and now he was arranging music for Fred. So Bill Blackburn had to be the least appreciated Renaissance Man of the Huron Nation!

In other words, they were going nowhere and Betty Ann thought it funny. She laughed.

And to add to the mess, the Pennsylvanians began a stupid old song in the corner, an irreverent Dixieland 'Jada'.... Jada!.. Jada-jada jing jing jing! a Mardi-Gras howl, with trumpets wailing and clarinets squawking.

"So," said Bill, "we come up here and George says, 'I think it's a shit arrangement.'

"I said, 'I'm tellin' ya it's gonna blow Fred's mind!'" Bill sighed, irritated. He tilted his fresh martini, studying it a second.

The band in the corner did a noisy Dixieland riff, raspberrying Bill's oxcart, as it seemed.

"So we go down to the rehearsal with this chart. And,” Bill whispered, “this is how I spotted Fred!" He beat back a laugh with so much effort his eyes teared up.

Mj squeezed his own cold glass and sucked on an ice cube.

He was sick to his stomach, which was churning already.

"Y'see," said Bill, "all the way up I'm going over this thing note by note, and I'm not a schooled musician. It's getting whshh!!" He acted dizzy in his seat, and it made mj dizzier and sicker.

Betty Ann cut in. “Bill conducted BY EAR,” she said to mj.

"Right!" Bill said loudly. "This is how I started!"

She said, looking at Bill, "You can't read the score;" then quick, when Bill’s head was down, she beamed a look of mock trepidation at mj, her musical soul brother, telling him not to offend Big Chief Renaissance Huron, Conductor-by-Ear, with further questions on this particular ‘ear’ thing topic, or whether he could read the score; and she looked back down at her lap and sewed a stitch like it was monthly Sewing Day, a very holy day when she always sewed day and night religiously, nonstop, and never spoke to anyone for any reason, not one single word.

Had someone said something?

"Oh, I can read it," he said. "I knew what was happening where." He leaned forward and bounced. "So I go down there and I think, 'God, Fred's gonna be there and if this thing doesn't work I'm in trouble’!"

Fred's 'JaDa' filled peyote airwaves then died with a whimper. It seemed like a recording of a live concert on the road. You could hear an audience stirring in a brief silence, and now there was the smooth fatherly voice of Fred Waring known to the country’s radio fans in the 30’s and 40’s, and all the TV fans of the 50’s, including mj. The voice gave mj chills, reminding him he had been programmed irrecoverably by 50s TV and his parents. The godly voice boomed with effete Olympian savoir faire and dry humorous inflection, the loving and smooth voice of a classy, slippery church minister, actually, How can we help the longhairs enjoy that Junk? Quite simply, by giving it DIG-ni-ty; we present now, in all seriousness, "ZhaDAAAAH!!" Fred hit the God-nerve and the sex-nerve both at once with that little stunt somehow, so that a respectable church lady in his audience with permed white hair felt struck; and she shrieked, and shocked her hubby of fifty years. And the whole, mostly white-haired audience rustled, snickering like blooming teenagers.

Strings and glee club held a pedal tone.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm-...[4]

Bill choked on a laugh. "I'm not gonna let anybody see I'm worried about this. And I get down and the thing is really cookin'. Now George comes in. He says, 'That's WRONG!' I said, 'Who are you tellin' what's wrong'?!"

Bill sat back. "And all the while," he said, "I don't know it, but FRED... – ... is THERE. Now the way this hall is set up –."

Betty Ann broke in. "He's hidin' in the back."

"In the back!" Bill clamored.

She gave his punchline away: "Fred's famous,” she said, “for standin' in the back!" She wrecked his supreme suspense build-up a second time!

Her loving hubby didn't mind this suspense-killing help though, surprisingly.

Mj was lost. "Where was this!?"

"At the Gap," she said.

"At 'the Gap'," repeated Bill, "the rehearsal hall; Delaware Water Gap."

They rode his back, virtually; because two love-crows always heckled and jeckled their ox, on an oxcart to hell. He was disgusted. He lacked faith in the story at the moment, or in any story of theirs, to get him somewhere worthwhile. But he shut up to please Bill and not look squirrely, since Bill seemed to know what was up with all these goofy stories, and where he was leading mj with them.    

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm-mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm-…

The Pennsylvanians hummed, reassuringly.

Bill said, "There's this big 'U' set-up, with risers where you can teach a chorus to sing and stuff, there's seats like an amphitheater. Well, round in back of the risers there's a lot of space to walk."

"Where he does the Workshop," Betty Ann jeckled.

"In Water Gap," Bill heckled.

"Where Bill has his office," she said. “Where he works every day.”

"The old ‘Castle Inn’," he said.

"Right," mj said to get it over with: "behind the risers."

And to this the piano and clarinet did a longhaired Rachmaninoffian duet.

"Behind the risers!" Betty Ann repeated. The poor boy must have looked like he wasn't taking a word of it in. And maybe that was because he wasn’t.

"You see," said Bill, "Fred goes down the road and parks behind some building and sneaks in the back. George and I are fighting in front of the band. I said, 'That's the way I want it.'

“around the back”... of “the old Castle Inn”

"You see," said Bill,

"Fred goes down the road and parks behind some building and sneaks in the back.

George and I are fighting in front of the band.

I said, 'That's the way I want it.'”

"George said, 'I told ya it didn't fit!'

"I said, 'SHUT UP!' So we kick off the band again, and meanwhile this organ player isn't there and there's this blank space. Fred decided not to have the organ. Now we've gotta rewrite this thing. So George stands up to them to straighten this out and when he's doing that I'm seething and I go walking in the back." Bill peeked through the risers and lowered his voice. "And I look and I spot this little white hair coming through."

Bill looked at mj like he might understand this: "Right?!"

"Fred," mj said, helping the oxcart along.

"And back there, here's Fred Waring going –." Bill examined the frayed fabric on the buxom arm of his storyteller’s chair and got a sugary laugh from Betty Ann.

"Like he's looking at things," Bill peered again.

She screeched with affection. "He does that all the time!"

Bill peered into the chair arm a third time. "Like, 'I've gotta have this repaired. Now why isn't this right’?"

"Ye-eahh!" she cooed, turned to mush by Fred and an imaginary damaged riser.

Behind mj the tenors did a suggestive Zhah-dah!

"I'm back there," Bill said, "pretending I'm mad, to hear what George is doing so when I go conduct I'll be right. And here's Fred Waring doing this to me. When I conduct he's gonna listen so he'll know! Well," Bill sighed, "I thought, 'This phony S.O.B! Who does he think he's kidding’?

"But then I realized, 'I'm just as big a phony as he is'!" Bill took a sip of recognition, one sober sip. He’d meant it to be funny, then realized it wasn’t.

The piano mocked the tenors with a drawn-out series of split diminisheds and falling chromatics. Zhah-dah, zhah-dah, zhing! zhing! zhing...

"So I go back and George goes, 'It's straightened out, Maestro’.

“I was ready to deck him.

"And now I'm out there and I go berserk. We come to this big ending and I jump up in the air like this, and put my hands like THAT!!" Bill popped out of his chair like a bucked bull rider, hands crossed on the reins.

Hercules would drive a cart by actually riding the back of the bull, of course, at least sometimes, without a doubt.

Betty Ann laughed with her mouth closed.

The percussion crescendoed, BOOM!

A cymbal went CRASSSHH-H-H-X-XXxx

It  goooooes –

"Yeeow!" said Bill. "It was the most exciting thing I ever heard, the Big Band, the Big Band under your control.

"So I walked away and I says, 'Sonofa –! George, did you hear that’? Suddenly—!..."

Bill sucked on martini and sat erect: "...a car drives in the yard." Bill stiffened as if hearing something suspicious. "He must have driven around the back. FRED WARING drives in where everybody can see him and walks in and says, 'Oh Bill, you made it. That's good. Did you bring the arrangement’?"

Betty Ann was electrified. Bill had gotten Fred’s hypocrisy down to a T.

"I said, 'Yes we did, Mr. Waring’. I'm too hip to say, 'I just SAW you in the back'!!"

In descending split major and minor sevenths, a soprano wailed a very baroque zhah-dah.

Bill's Fred was innocent: "'What is it of’?" He was almost prissy, in fact.

"I said, 'Well we did a whole thing on the 'West Side Story'."

"'I hate Bernstein'!"

Zhinnngg!

The Fred in the cherry-framed mirror had thrown cold water on everything.

MMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!

"I said, 'Well, I didn't realize that’." Bill acted young and respectful: “‘And you went ahead and you said, "Do something for the organ"’."

"'Well I don't want the organ anymore’!" Fred shouted in young Bill's face.

MMmmmmm-...

Men joined women humming a symphonic crescendo.

-MmmmMMMMMMM M M M! M! ! !

"I says, 'You didn't tell me that either. We finished this whole big arrangement'."

Bill played Fred with an indignant and patronizing scowl. “‘Well, I'll listen to it'!

And he sits down at his little rehearsal table.

"I'm not about to conduct with Fred Waring there!"

The glee club overdeveloped 'Zhing' like Handel or Bach would have: Oh zha-da zhing-zhing-zhing-oh-zha-dah!

"Fred says, 'I'm waiting to hear it'!" It was a tellingly affected portrayal.

The piano did a tiny, delicate, Zhing !

"And the whole band is sitting there!" Bill acted traumatized. "So George looks at me and says, 'Allright, Maestro!' So I go up and I conduct this, and when I finish, Ptooow!!" Bill jumped up like a bucked porcupine and signaled CUT! "And I walked away as if to say, 'Now you tell me you don't like that chart’!"

A man deserved his due.

"And! The band stands up and applauds." Bill did a bucked porcupine clapping like a seal now.

"And the singers!" Bill added; the delighted mammal bounced and clapped some more. "And they do this in front of Fred! I walked away, man. I whipped the world!

"Fred just–;" Fred was dignified: "'Very nice. Now let me see. Do you mind if I interject some thoughts'?" It was the dean of U.S. choral music, seeking a lost bar, politely, and through bifocals, up and down the score. "'Let's see, uh, where would that be, now? Oh, here it is! I think. BAR 32’!

"All the way through," Bill explained, "Fred was looking at the score. This man stood up, and THIS I'll give him: every change he made, made that thing more exciting."

"Yeh," Betty Ann said sweetly. "I've seen him do that, Bill."

The glee club began a background Zhiiiiiiiiiiii-iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii-

"And with all –."

"With all the bee ess," Betty Ann helped sweetly.

"That man with all his B.S. is not gonna B.S. me, because he was doin' the same thing I was doing!"

Spying from behind the risers.

-iiiii-iiiii-iiiiiiii-iiiiii-ii-ii-ii-

Bill spoke softly. "But mj!” Bill wanted mj’s full attention for this point: “When he raised his two hands, it sounded like night and day! I felt like two cents 'cause I was gonna show the man how great I was. It's like lightning strikes. And I've seen him do that to conductors that hold doctorates. 'My God!' Fred says, 'I've heard children sing better’. Then he'll transform it."[5]

Bill's humble cart was stopped now. Fred was an endearing old devil of a musical genius, you could say, if you combined Betty Ann’s reaction with Bill’s. So what was new?

The glee club held, -iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii- the whole time, while a tenor did a long hairy trill, ZHI-i-I-i-I-i-I-i-

"The funny thing is," Bill said...

Mj braced for more fool's gold.

"...on 'West Side Story', Fred thought it was a fantastic arrangement. And I thought, 'Wow, now I'll go to the show this year and we're gonna hear this tremendous production’. But he didn't use it, because he does not like Bernstein."

"Really!" Mj stared at Bill Blackburn with absolute surprise. He was more baffled than he’d thought he was. This was the real end of the story, apparently. A trick ending. The oxcart had suddenly stopped, and mj lorenzo was all tangled up in the mess of the reins somehow.

"Now that shows you," said Bill, "what kind of a man he is. I'm not exaggerating. Everyone said it was the best arrangement they had that year!"

It was frustrating. Mj had no idea how to defend such a Fred. "You said he liked your arrangement!"

Was this the attack he’d felt was coming?

"I don't know. He just refused that arrangement."

"Bee-ill," sang Betty Ann, "we did a lot of 'West Side Story' when we did ‘The Last Television Show’."

Another trick ending. Very helpful.

"Then I don't know why," Bill said.

If she knew, she wasn't saying.

Bill possessed limited understanding of his boss. Great. The boss was hard to fathom. So was life sometimes. Where did it get them?

Bill bounced on his seat. "This proves beyond a shadow of a doubt," he said, "Fred could not read music. He's not musically trained. He had to listen to it first, before he conducted. Then when he comes in and takes over like that, it's a dramatic event."

"Especially if it's your arrangement," mj said. If the shrink empathized, they said, therapy might move faster. That’s what they had taught him.

Bill spoke dreamily of the sweet organ and the repetitious thing building up to the bongos and drums rolling off. "It came into a drive," he said. "It was one of the most inventive things I've ever done, mj. And the man did not use it. And I still haven't figured out why."

Mj grabbed his drink, more sympathetic toward Bill than he had planned on being. The Great Golden Fairy Tale was dead in the water. The Huron siege had resumed, it seemed, and mj had a problem. He wanted to defend Fred Waring, but felt sympathy for the other side too.

Zhing!!

Waring fans answered Fred's mock-classical "Zha-dah" with sparse applause, as they had all week on the 33 rpm record Bill had given mj.

It felt like he’d have to defend Fred the whole rest of the night, and that was irritating mj.

On the other hand, something might be salvaged from it. Maybe Bill could work for the man, if they could only find the source of the friction and help him past it. Other people worked for Waring despite friction, no doubt. No one should expect a great artist to be easy. Then why couldn’t Bill accept Fred’s failings and plug away like always, especially when he had no other job to go to? Didn’t his family like to eat? Somebody had to be sensible; and Dr. mj lorenzo would have to be the one and only sensible one, then, apparently.

Stories like this were no help at all, though. Why tell stories you didn’t understand, breaking your own storytelling rules? Did you screw screws with sawed off screw drivers? Tools needed teeth. Stories were tools. Stories of situations where Bill knew the source of the friction: that was the kind of helpful tool a good shrink like mj lorenzo needed, to put things right again.