Music Through the Floor by Eric Puchner

Author:Eric Puchner [Puchner, Eric]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2005-10-10T07:00:00+00:00

In San Francisco, Desmond worked for an ad agency called Product: Reality. His job was to come up with founding myths for various household products. They told him it couldn’t be done, but retracing the path of his ancestors to the bodegas of Modena, Italy, Stan Lugliani had a dream for a better domestic vinegar—rich, well-matured, savoring of integrity, like the old world itself. Desmond didn’t mind seeing his words on the backs of vinegar bottles. Sometimes he even convinced himself it was a good and worthy thing, turning ordinary men into heroes. For all he knew, Stan Lugliani might have had a dream of vinegar, though he had a sneaking suspicion it was just a name someone had cooked up in the marketing department. Italian, of course—but with a homey midwestern forename.

Everything had a legend these days. Desmond’s latest assignment was the Zylar stud sensor, a home-improvement tool that looked like a ray gun from one of those old UFO movies. You could point it at a wall, and it would beep at the first detection of a stud. He’d been racking his brain for a week, trying to think of a legend, but couldn’t find the right blend of utility and pathos. After damaging the walls of his daughter’s room, trying to hang a hook for her crutches, Bob Zylar decided to create a better tool—one that he could count on for his family.

Desmond did his job as a copywriter and tried not to dwell on it. Still, when anyone asked about his work, he felt a vague creeping sickness and sometimes left out the “copy” part. At parties, especially, he was apt to stretch the truth.

“Oh? Do I know anything you’ve written?”

“The legend of Zylar.”

The person—a web designer usually, because they all were—would mutter the name to himself with his head bowed in thought. “Zylar? Is that part of the Lair of the Serpent trilogy?”

Now, strolling down to the jardín with his wife, Desmond imagined the legend he’d write to describe their own humble beginnings. After meeting the girl of his dreams, the loveliest midwife in town, Desmond failed to preserve her from his own mild failure and discovered his heart had aged improbably. The sun leaned into his face. They had to walk in the middle of the street because the sidewalks were too crowded with churchgoers, drowsy-looking families hugging the margin of shade. (In the afternoons, when the shade crossed the street, everyone swarmed to one side and the town looked deserted from certain windows.) Desmond stared at the colonial roofs and strenuous, Escher-like stairways, wondering how the heart attack rate compared to America’s. The only stores open on Sunday morning were the taquerías, men tending the spits already in their aprons, wielding knives long as swords and sculpting their gleaming diamonds of pork. Meredith studied the guidebook as they walked and kept a full stride ahead of Desmond, the camera swinging at her hip. She was wearing a straw hat she’d bought at a gift shop and loose-fitting pants to protect her legs.

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