Eyes by William H. Gass

Author:William H. Gass
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2015-10-13T04:00:00+00:00

Don’t

Even Try,

Sam

Not that key.

Not that key. That’s the yellow key. The one that hates to come back up. Once depressed, it is reluctant to recover. You know, dear heart, if you really want to play me, keep the pressure on evenly. It is never necessary to hammer. I take a hint better than a holler…I’ve been in storage you know. Not much call for my kind anymore. Not that it matters a whole lot where I stand. Most storerooms are more song and story than these movies I was made for. All I get to count as screen time is a little tinktanktunk in the sound track, a passing angled shot of the keyboard and my highball-ringed, butt-burnt top—oh, and then the lower half of whoever’s sitting at me, with a finger or two from a fat-wrapped, shirt-armed plinkplanker visible, as if he were in action at the board—before the lens is away to frillyville and the muddy boots of the town saloon. The camera has to find its way through extras pretending to be a crowd, everybody moving their mouths faking monkey business—cocottes galore—and sitting on breakeasy chairs that could give way and dump their rumps in sawdust. What a bore. Bar as long as a Pullman car. Bar as long as a Pullman car. Not that key, honey. The key with the hairline crack. Yes, that one. Yum. My G-spot. So ask away.

I gathered from what I could glean…whoa…try that passage again…the hairline has a habit of—ever break a nail? It’s like that…I gleaned from what I could gather of the plot that there weren’t going to be any fistfights scheduled, shootout showdowns, or barroom brawls, though there’s one close call—a lapel grabber, that’s all. No one confides in the piano of course…Well, that info was a relief to my keys and strings—my keys relaxed, my strings sighed—they hate all those loose chair legs flying about. The piano player usually runs for cover as if anybody cared but the piano has to stay put so some klutz can get a laugh by chording the keyboard on his way down. Very funny, Charlie. But I understood this cheesy heart-tugger was to be set in French North Africa. The good guys would be wearing shoes. The way the on-set people were acting (beg pardon for the word), I could see they were about to shoot the entire film or damn near it on a single soundstage as if this were going to be a murder-in-the-mansion movie. Outside would be a city scene adapted from a previous flick. I had a moveable friend who kept me wisz. Oops. I remember…I remember the ashtrays. God, the number of cigarettes they burned up in the movies those days. The most emotional moments occur when smoke curls out of an actor’s nose.

That was when they were starting to use girls as couriers because of the war, and young fems were scooting about the set like flies from fruit to roast delivering lines for the actors to learn on the spot, and fresh directions for the crew.

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