Tommy

Literary Review, Spring, 2004 by Rem Reynolds

Diane stood in the cramped room of a midtown New York hotel, in the arms of a mental outpatient, her husband's bland encouragements in her ear. The man's name was Tommy. Her face pressed against his chest so that she could only see out of her left eye. What she saw was her husband Lance, smiling and flashing her the thumbs-up. She wondered what, exactly, he thought to be so winning, then she focused on the powerful arms and the rough cloth against her cheek, and panic rose in her stomach like a startled bird.

Then Tommy let go, and Lance clapped his hands together.

"Great Tommy!" he said. "Diane, can you tell Tommy thanks for the hug?"

She didn't hear the question. The force of Tommy's embrace hadn't left her yet. She imagined the vapors of his identity hanging in her clothes like cigarette smoke.

Lance was saying her name. "Hello?" He waved a hand in front of her eyes. "Hello?"

"Don't do that," said Diane.

"If you were any cuter you'd beat Christmas," said Tommy.

He beamed at her from above. She hadn't expected him to be so tall, but she guessed he was close to seven feet. His red curly hair was cut short in the front and on the sides, but the back ballooned into a bushy mullet. He wore a faded camo hunting jacket and blue jeans, and his feet were bare.

"Please tell Tommy that you appreciate the hug." Lance gave her an expectant look. Apparently he now counted the handling of mentally ill people as one of his many fields of expertise, and in his diagnosis Tommy's stability depended on Diane's appreciation of his embrace.

"Thanks for the hug," she said.

"Now everyone knows each other. Isn't that great!"

"Sure, sure. Cool it, man," said Tommy, rubbing his stomach and nodding. He leaned down toward Diane and whispered, "You and me could have a good time."

Diane laughed, too loudly it seemed to her, and then looked down, embarrassed, at Tommy's feet. Pale and huge, strangely alien. So large they almost demanded sentience, to be set free from the rest of the body as well as the diseased mind. She imagined his autonomous feet fleeing across a desert floor, glowing under the moon, reflecting its light back to the sky. She didn't know why that image came to her. That was the way things were going lately.

The sound of rushing water flooded the room as Marty Singer stepped out of the bathroom with a hand on his zipper, yanking it upward. The coppery taste of resentment swirled in Diane's mouth. Marty had set everything in motion. His friend worked as an orderly at a high-end clinic that treated Atlanta's chemically imbalanced wealthy. One day, while administering meds to some of the patients, he heard a man singing. The music led the orderly to a room where he found the singer perched on the edge of his bed, head tilted back and belting away. That was Tommy, who'd been checked in that very day after failing to drown himself in the deep end of his parents' swimming pool. A few days later the orderly lent Tommy a guitar and recorded him for several hours as he strummed and sang, moving seamlessly from song to song with no interruptions, all of them about a girl named Claire. The orderly played the tape for some people, including Marty, who owned a local record store. Marty immediately called his friend Lance in New York. Lance had graduated from NYU four years ago and was running a fledgling record label with an Afrobeat funk band as its centerpiece. Tommy was released from the clinic after two weeks, and within days of hearing the tape Lance signed him to a recording contract, with Marty serving as his agent. They took the original tapes and gave them to a semifamous indie producer, who remixed them and added glitches, guitars, ambient sounds, beats. When the record came out, college DJs across the country touted Tommy as a genius. Naif art, found art, whatever. Kids liked it. Suddenly there was money, and the possibility of more of it, so Marty and Tommy flew up to the city for Tommy's New York premiere. The tickets had sold out within hours.

"We have to go," said Marty. He slapped the little potbelly pushing against the thin fabric of his t-shirt.

"Righto," said Lance. "You ready, Tommy?"

Diane found her husband's tone, the same he'd use with a dog or a small child, to be uncomfortably familiar.

Tommy laid down on the bed. "I'm going to need something to drink first," he said.

Marty and Lance cautiously eyed each other.

"What do you want?" Marty asked.

"Screwdriver."

"I don't know, Tommy. We have a lot of stuff to do to get you ready for tonight."

"When has one screwdriver ever stopped anyone from getting ready?" asked Tommy.

"We don't have time," said Marty. "Tonight's a big deal. After the show."

Tommy sat up. "Look, if you don't get me a screwdriver I'm going to tear this place apart." He stood and swept his arm to indicate what he was willing to destroy for a cocktail.

Diane regarded Lance's thin arms. She looked at Marty's soft round belly. Her mind sped through unhappy equations of mass, force, and speed.

"Quit being such a jackass," said Marty.