Know Your Beholder: A Novel by Adam Rapp

Author:Adam Rapp
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Humorous, Literary, Satire, Fiction
ISBN: 9780316368919
Publisher: Little, Brown
Published: 2015-03-03T07:00:00+00:00

Glose.

Day 6.

We were listening to the Alan Parsons Project’s Eye in the Sky, whose first two songs, “Sirius” and the title track, are prog-rock masterpieces. The rest of the album has a hard time measuring up.

Glose was still sporting his kelly-green Girl Scouts of America T-shirt but had degenerated to wearing nothing from the waist down. Meaning he was half-naked and it was the wrong half. And the bottom of his T-shirt was rolling up, so his fleshy, simian stomach was sort of spilling out indiscriminately, his navel an unseen, unsolved mystery. I have no idea what became of his corduroys. Perhaps they were so threadbare they simply dissolved.

Unbeknownst to me, Glose and I were about to embark on our first full-fledged conversation since his arrival.

From out of nowhere, with Alan Parsons’s rueful voice singing in the background, Glose said, “I do think about doing stuff.”

Out of respect for the rarity of the Third Policeman’s drummer actually sharing a thought approaching the complexity of self-examination, I let a few measures play. “Like what?” I eventually asked.

But he drifted off like he was on Vicodin and Blue Nun wine, which used to be his favorite little post-gig cocktail.

“Like getting a job?” I tried again.

“Maybe,” he replied, drifting back.

I told him that gainful employment is never a bad thing.

He said that his skill set was sort of limited.

Beyond the drums, I tried to make a mental list of Glose’s various abilities. One thing he can do is foretell the future, mostly bad stuff that’s between people. Like who will stop loving whom and who will cheat on whom first, that sort of thing. Or on a less dramatic, smaller scale, who will forget their cell phone during the load out or who has enough money to buy him breakfast at the nearest Denny’s. It goes without saying that he’s an incredibly talented parasite, but in terms of one’s skill set that would be useful only on like some new reality TV series about competitive mooching.

“I like plants,” he said, somewhat proactively. “I could work with plants.”

“Like at a nursery,” I offered.

“Or at a floral shop.”

He seemed to follow the thought around the few feet of airspace between him and my bookcase as if it were a pulsating firefly…but then something short-circuited and his head returned to rest.

I asked him if he’d consider asking for his job back at the stand-up MRI clinic.

He said he couldn’t go back there.

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because they caught me peeing on the ficus tree,” he answered.

Clearly, nontoilet urination is a thing with Glose. Is this why he liked plants? So he could have a place to go to the bathroom?

I said, “You could teach drums.”

But he said he’d sold his kit in Morgantown, West Virginia, for five hundred dollars, which meant he’d no doubt sold it for two-fifty.

“That kit was worth a grand, Rodney. You sold your cymbals too?”

“I sold everything.”

“Those cymbals were artifacts,” I said. He could’ve gotten five hundred for the cymbals alone. They were incredible—warped and cracked, producing sounds that any drummer would give an eye for.

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