Dasher Dooley, Talent Scout
Burning headlights skewering asphalt avenues and deadman curves. Blurred visions of a skin-smooth sand far below. The wind from the ocean tickling my nose like a lover’s strand of hair.
I feel a prickle scuttling forward like a roach beneath the roof of my skull.
Dasher?
The one thing I could never stomach about Santa Carla was all the darn telepathy.
Dasher. Bro. I can feel that you feel me.
Azeem! I try to project. You talk straight mind! …Cool.
Descending from the highest peaks. The Redwood Curtain sidling into the rearview. Clean, ocean air filling my lungs. A small coastal community rising from the sea.
So, when were you gonna tell me you were in town?
Soon, I respond.
I need my money, Dasher. It ain’t right that you don’t pay back what you borrow.
Soon, Azeem.
Downshifting into a sudden, sagging curtain of fog.
You know I can’t let you disrespect me without consequences, Dasher. Word gets around. Other people think maybe I’m going soft. You understand. There must be consequences. Nothing personal.
Azeem is good at this telepathy stuff. Me, I’ve never developed much of vocabulary for it.
Yes. Money soon. Promise. It hurts my head to project even those few words.
Glad you’re back in town, Dasher. We’ll settle-up real soon.
Unexpected turn. Braking. Throwing the wheel. Tires off the road, on the road. Fog thickening.
Settle-up? What did that mean?
Azeem breaks our connection… although I’m never totally sure that he gets completely out of my head whenever I come back into town.
The fog continues congealing, a soggy cotton sticking to everything, confusing my sense of place more than the three months I spent in psychoanalysis trying to figure out why my telepathic bowels are constipated. Turns out, I value my privacy and I try to keep people at an emotional distance. I could have told them that on day one and saved myself the benjamins.
Crawling my convertible through the murky white mist, I feel my way along the curb, knuckles out the window, eventually finding a parking space or maybe someone’s front lawn.
I cut the engine and check my look in the cloudy mirror: I need a haircut, a shave, and a good mouthwash rinse. Other than that… perfect!
I hop out of my car—a beautiful red, retro-style muscle-car that my first big discovery helped me to pay for—and peer through the grayish white murk. I know I left that darn coffeeshop around here somewhere.
Ghostly voices and the muffled sound of laughter come at me through the heavy atmosphere. Three-dimensional shadows float past. Sudden spurts of color, faces, clothing—all of it seeping again into the damp void behind.
Another skull-tickle.
You jerk!
Dodging poles and people as they spring from the white abyss.
Linda!
You said you loved me.
Linda’s cold, non-vocal whine scraping like fingernails across the chalkboard of my mind.
I love you large! It’s the best I can think-send.
Faces blossoming in the fog. Passing. Sinking. Gone.
I hate you.
Ducking into a doorway, thinking it’s the coffeeshop. Almost falling into the sticky embrace of a couple of teenagers exchanging bodily fluids. Two highly annoyed thought-streams drill into my skull—
Buzz off, perv!
Obliging. Falling back into the fog.
You no hate me, I try to communicate to Linda. You miss me. Sometimes hard know different.
We grow to hate what we miss too passionately…
Her creative telepathy classes —
…the hate growing inside us until we stillbirth a hard stone of petrified hope.
–showing like a slip.
But—
Falling off the curb. Oncoming headlights lunging from the whiteness. Linda blaring a horn in my brain–
My brother’s coming for you.
Frankie: a big brute of guy. Seven years in a box with bars. Attempted murder. Paroled last month. The man he tried to kill? Linda’s first boyfriend.
My head starting to throb. Where’s that coffeehouse? What was its name again? Maybe I passed it already. Ah!—music ahead. Shuffling forward.
We talk later, I think toward the place in my mind where Linda’s connection sits. Me work now.
We won’t be able to talk later, Dasher.
Why no?
Because my brother’s gonna kill you before you get back. I just told him where you are.
What?
I can hear you thinking, Dasher. I know you’re on the way to the Latte Dah coffeeshop.
Latte Dah! That’s the name of it! Wait… How did she pull the name out of my brain when I couldn’t do it myself?
Goodbye, Dasher. Enjoy your life… What’s left of it.
Feeling Linda leaving my mind-space.
Ducking into a hole exuding music and the sticky, sweet smell of coffee. The place is crowded, warm. Bluesy music floods from the stage. A bar runs along the wall.
Baristas: young, thin. Ironic T-shirts rumpling down their complacently healthy bodies. Expressions of boredom and contempt riding their smooth faces.
Customers: a wide mammalian variety of hoof and pelt. Standing. Leaning. Lazing at small tables. Lounging on thrift-store furniture yanked through a Polaroid fifty years old. Minds engaged and blessedly pre-occupied, no one trying to stab a mental icepick into my standoffish gourd.
I trade grimaces with an unsmiling, unspeaking woman behind the bar. She reads the order I didn’t know I had placed and sets a mug on the countertop and starts me a tab. Then she tells me that the idea’s intriguing, but she’s married.
Thanks, I think I think and turn and claim a patched recliner circa 1970 and sip my beer, trying my best to project an invisible shield around my skull and not accidentally proposition anyone else.
Onstage, the singer I came to see. Part country, part lounge. Brass-knuckled voice. Rough and beautiful. A real cactus flower. Hanging from her mike-stand like she’s dangling off a balcony.
Behind her, four waify boys: electric bass, two guitars, and drums. They chug along okay, I guess, but she’s on a different train. They might as well be playing on the moon. We can dump them. I just want the girl. I want to share her, promote her, let people know she exists.
Something in me has never been able to stand the thought of something beautiful blossoming in the desert, living and dying without ever having had its beauty acknowledged. I guess that’s why I’m in this business.
And I know, I know—the music industry tends to champion mediocrity camouflaged behind image and marketing genius. And yes, yes—it has a proclivity for rating looks above musical talent. But that’s showbiz, kid. Cry a tear in my beer. What can I say? Nobody wants to eat cornflakes out of a soggy box.
Me? I just provide the soundtrack.
We talent scouts and agents don’t have much marketable talent of our own, but we find our niche in bringing artists and connoisseurs together. Brokers of human bliss, call us. Latte dah.
I don’t have to go up to the girl when she’s done with her set. I’ve been feeling her thought-bristles whisking my mind from the stage. She knows why I’m here. She comes over, flushed from her performance, and sits on the arm of my chair, drinking her water from a translucent blue bottle.
So, how do you like the show so far? she thinks down at me.
Even her mind-voice is husky. She’s a dirty blond. Average height. Narrow, brown eyes. Broad wrists, expansive cheek bones.
I breathe in deeply of her with mine eyes, knowing first impressions linger, are the best chances we have to catch some of the truth sparking from someone.
She, patient as a rock, waits for my response.
“I think I can make you a Top Thirty download on MeDroog!,” I say.
She tilts some water into her mouth. A large mouth. Simultaneously repulsive and interesting. Like watching unhinged snake jaws slurp down a mouse head-first.
“I don’t want to be no pop star, mister.”
“First off,” I say, offering her my hand, “I’m not a mister. I’m Dasher Dooley, talent scout.”
She takes my hand, holding it only by the fingers and giving it a slight turn like she’s about to give my knuckles a gallant kiss. “Gretta Redding,” she says. She releases my fingers gently, as if she’s setting free a captured lightning bug.
I fall against the back of my chair like a fish cut from the line.
“I’m very glad to meet you, Gretta Redding. You know what I do, right? I promote musical excellence, not pop stars.”
She inclines her head at me. You think we’re good?
I look toward her backup band listlessly listing over the side of the bar in front of four mid-show beers. Haircuts like traffic accidents. Wearing more rings than a dormroom bathtub. Little pouty grimaces begging to be bloodied by the first passing war veteran. One of them is giving us an ugly look. I can’t tell if he’s angry or if his face was just made that way.
“I think you’re good,” I say. “The others? Well…”
She follows my gaze to her bandmates. I can’t help but feel the mixed emotions dancing inside her head. I get the impression that her and the mean-faced guy are telecommunicating about something.
“Listen, Gretta,” I say, trying to return her concentration to the business at hand. “I want the whole world to have a chance to hear your music.”
She points at me. You want to make a buck.
“I wanna make lotsa buck,” I say. “I want you to make lotsa buck. But more importantly, I want to turn my cactus flower into a second moon.”
What?
“Here.” Reaching into my pocket. “Here’s my upload card. Get in touch with me when you get serious about making it.”
She pockets my card without looking down at it, then glances around the coffeeshop. I can feel her disappointment with the size of the crowd.
We had a record guy stop by last weekend, she thinks at me.
I shake my head. “You don’t wanna sign a record deal.”
No?
“In the old days, record companies could offer artists like you production and distribution. And that was vital, necessary. But anyone can buy some decent equipment and a top-notch recording program now. And who needs the record companies for distribution when you’ve got the net? The music business today is wide open, Gretta. And that’s wonderful. But that’s also the problem.”
Pausing. Unable to tell if she’s listening. I figure I might as well wind out my spiel…
“You see, Gretta, as crazy as it sounds, there’s too much music. Too much, anyway for one tiny, global village. There’s a kid on every street with a guitar or beatbox, passable talent, and maybe some songs on the web. But it’s too much for everyone to sort through. That’s where I come in. MeDroog! provides both filter and funnel to get the good stuff to the true music lover. Once MeDroog! recommends an artist, people take that artist seriously. They listen. They share news of their discovery with their friends.”
The bandmate giving us the stink-eye from his barstool stands. Gretta turns to him as if she’s just been tapped on the shoulder.
“Listen, Gretta,” I say. “Here’s the bottom line. One recommendation from MeDroog! ripples out across the internet. What begins as a thousand downloads, turns into ten thousand, then into a million. And you get one-tenth of the haul. Well, more or less. I don’t know if you’re good at math, sweetheart, but if we make a million bucks, that means you make—“
“A hundred thousand dollars. I had simple percentages in fourth grade, Mister Dooley.”
“Of course, darlin’, of course. All I meant to say was that a hundred thousand dollars is a pretty big bowl of grits.”
Tilting up her water bottle, bubbles darting top to bottom.
“Listen, Gretta. It’s a tough time for artists. We’re coming down off a fluke in history, a century or two when artists became some of the highest paid people in the world. But that’s all coming to an end. The technology simply won’t allow it to continue. Acting, painting, writing, musicking… All the arts are feeling it. Anything can be duplicated, distributed. It’s the return of the starving artist, of creative people practicing their art for pleasure, not money. Not all bad, maybe. But the truth is, the rockstar is dead. In every field.”
Gee. Thanks for the peptalk, mister.
“You ain’t heard it all yet, darlin’. You sign with me, and I can help you maintain a comfortable lifestyle, with all the time you want to dedicate to your craft. That’s as much as anyone can promise you for the long haul. And if they promise more than that, then they’re just blowin’ smoke.”
I better get back on stage, she thinks, then adds aloud, “Thanks for stopping by, Mister Dooley.”
“Please. Call me Dasher. But more importantly, call me.”
“Goodbye, Dasher.”
She heads toward the stage. I lean back into the cushions of my ancient chair and tell myself that she’ll text. She’ll at least text.
Inside me, many musics playing. Ancient, primordial songs. Songs of my fathers. Songs of my childhood. Songs from yesterday. Songs from a few minutes ago. Happy music, sad music. Martial music, mourning music. Every person I’ve ever met, a song… a story, a rhythm, a need, an expression. A lonely cactus flower.
That’s a big chair for one person.
The thought is intrusive. Bullying.
Looking up, I’m surprised to find a petite young woman looming over me. Black hair, blacker eyes. An unzipped leather jacket hanging over a red blouse and short skirt.
Join me? I attempt to radiate, scooting against one cushiony arm.
She takes a sip from her glass and scooches in.
You’re a shy one, I think—not sure if I succeed in communicating the thought.
She stirs her drink by touching the face of a floating ice cube and giving it push, then turns toward the stage. Radio silence. Fine by me.
Gretta is crooning, but not through the speakers. She’s thought-synching to the music—not an easy feat, I’ve been told. Maybe I should be impressed. But I prefer the old-fashioned way. Lips, tongue, breath. Call me a romantic.
When the set ends, the girl sharing the big chair with me shoves her empty glass into my hand so she can stand and applaud. I stand, too, and decide to head to the bar to settle my tab.
“Nice meeting you,” I say.
I’ve seen you here before, the young woman emits with some force, grabbing my arm, colored blurs of light bouncing off her shiny black jacket. You came and saw Ashley here.
Who?
Ashley. She was with the Pie-Face Goofies. Remember them? The corners of her frown lengthen.
I search my memory. “Sure, I remember the Goofies. Industrial Goth with Pop sensibilities. What about ‘em?”
She respected you. Thought you were good at spotting new talent.
“Perceptive girl.”
Why didn’t you sign her? At least give her a kind word. Some encouragement.
“I never said they didn’t have potential. Besides, the important thing is that she loves what she does. If financial success comes, fine, but—“
“She’s dead.”
“What?”
She poured everything into her music. Heart and soul. Then you showed up and told her she had no talent.
“Wait a minute. I never told her—“
You robbed her of the only thing she had left. Her music. Her only hope of ever escaping this mindmelding dump of a town.
She steps toward me. I can feel the thought-cloud storming inside her head. Intense. Frightening.
What gives you the right to decide who gets to keep their dreams? Who do you think you are? God?
Wait, I mentally plead, leaning away from her. Wrong.
You’re not God. she thinks, those wide eyes of hers burning like two black flames. I can prove it!
She pulls her hand from her jacket. The glimmer of a blade.
I toss our glasses onto the chair cushions and start backpedaling toward the door. “I’m sorry about your friend. About Ashley. No one should be in that much pain.”
She’s moving forward quickly, tears in her eyes.
I stick out my arm, thinking she’s lunging at me with the knife. But she brushes past me, charging out of the coffeehouse and into the dense fog hovering at the doorway.
Feeling my heart dancing to a double-time beat, I head to the bar for a little medicine.
“How ‘bout another one?” I say, collapsing onto a stool.
The dude behind the bar gives me a bottle of something innocuous, and I stare toward the stage.
Before I know it, my thoughts have returned to Linda and her protective, ex-con brother. I feel a little sorry for her. She must be in a pretty lonely place to go chasing after a bum like me. Maybe I could have treated her better. Maybe I could stand to be a better person all around. Less selfish. More responsible.
You could start by paying your tab.
Spinning on my stool. The barista’s nudging a bill-tray in my direction. Do I really give off the vibes of someone who’d skip out on his tab?
Kinda, the barkeep thinks to me. Those bad debts are really haunting you, aren’t they?
I frown at him and reach for my wallet.
A scream from the stage.
I spin on my stool and see the ugly-faced bandmember giving Gretta a push, then grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking her. I have no idea what kind of abuse he’s shoving into her brain, but I can tell from the look on her face that she’s not liking it.
I move toward the stage, having no idea what I should do, if I should do anything at all.
The guy gives Gretta another push, and her back footsteps so close to the edge of the stage that I almost dive to catch her.
“There’s no way you’re cutting me loose!” he yells at her. “Not when we’re about to break into the big time. I built this band!”
I realize that he must have been telepathically eavesdropping on my conversation with Gretta earlier, the nosy jerk.
Who are you calling names? he thinks at me. Get lost, creep.
Can’t. I respond. Her new agent.
Who cares? I’m her boyfriend.
I look to Gretta. Her eyes don’t deny it. I’m disappointed. I thought she would’ve had better taste.
“Sorry, buddy,” I say. “That don’t trump.”
The boyfriend looks to the others and gives a tilt of his head. I don’t have to be able to read his mind to know he just ordered the other three to take care of the budinski cramping his caveman style. They jump off the stage and come my way.
Stay back, I try to emit. Stay back!
They keep coming anyway, glancing at each other, probably mentally discussing the best tactics on how to disorder my ruggedly handsome face. One grabs a bottle from a bus-tub and smashes it against the edge of a table so that he’s left holding a jagged shard of glass. I roll my eyes. How cliché.
Backing away, I find myself pressing up against the bar, my field of vision filling rapidly with nose-rings, overly ornate tattoos, and the ugliest sneers this side of Billy Idol. The sharp-edged, broken bottle rises toward my face.
STAY BACK! I think as hard as I can.
The popping of a cork. Sounds of breaking glass and overturning tables.
I realize I’ve closed my eyes and open them.
The three bandmembers coming at me have disappeared. Everyone else in the coffeeshop is staring at me.
I see some movement on the far side of the stage. It’s the bandmembers struggling to their feet. One has a bleeding nose. Another is cradling an arm that’s bendy in a way I don’t think it was bendy before. The third has blood dripping down the side of his face.
Gretta appears at my side.
I look at her. “Did I do that?”
She nods her head. “Not smart.”
“You’re welcome.”
Her four friends decide to get the band back together and start heading our way.
Gretta and I begin backing toward the gray cloud sitting at the door.
We’re not afraid of mindmancers around here, thinks Gretta’s boyfriend, his face screwed up like a wrung rag.
Mindmancer? Me?
“We’re over, Bobby!” Gretta yells painfully close to my ear.
“I’m the boss of this band,” retorts Bobby. “I say when we’re over!”
He and the boys crouch for their big attack. I suck in a big breath and shunt all the mental energy I can muster through the front of my head, imagining expanding, concentric circles radiating out from me Aquaman-style.
Nothing happens.
Well, I do get a crick in my neck from the strain.
“Dasher, look out!”
Gretta’s second shout finishes punching the hole in my eardrum that her first one started.
She shoves me aside just in time to miss the knife-thrust aimed at my lower back.
You made her feel like she had no talent!
The girl with the shiny black jacket is back, screaming at me with her mind.
I step behind her and wrap my hand around her knife-hand, keeping her arm fully extended in front of us and as far away as possible from the parts of me I prefer to keep, the knife now pointing straight at the pelvises of Gretta’s bandmates, putting a stutter in their step.
The girl mule-kicks me, a booted heel landing squarely on my shin.
“Dammit!” I groan. “Get her feet!”
What? thinks Gretta.
“Pick up her feet. She’s kicking me.”
Gretta bends down and grabs the girls’ legs so that we end up holding her horizontally beside us like a human battering ram.
“Stay back, boys. I got a crazy girl in my hands, and I ain’t afraid to use her.”
A shadow falls over us. A big, squeaky-bald old man steps between us and the bandboys. He’s easily two of me, and four of the kicking, screaming knife-girl whom Gretta and I are struggling to keep hold of. He could be anybody. Coffeeshop owner. Concerned citizen. Mayor. Who knows? But his air of authority is unquestionable.
He looks to Gretta’s band. “You boys got two-point-five-seconds to getchur butts back on that stage.”
Bobby leers at us, but I see his feet backing toward the stage.
We’ll take care of you later, he thinks at me. Then, shifting his menacing glare to Gretta. And you’re outta the band! Forever!
“Thank you!” she screams back, making full use of her well-exercised vocal tract just off my shoulder.
Luckily, that ear’s dead to me now.
The big man turns to us. You three! Outta here!
I want to tell him that I have no problem with that. It’s just… Well, I don’t know what to do with the knife-girl in my hands. I’ve got a wolf by the ears. I can’t keep holding her, but I can’t let her go.
She solves my dilemma for me by squirming free, landing like a cat on her feet and pivoting toward me, her knife aimed at my throat.
“I’m calling the cops,” says the hairless giant, throwing up his big, catcher’s-mitt hands and stepping behind the bar.
I look to Gretta. “Go to my car. On the left. Red Trans-Am. Firebird on the hood.”
Gretta stares down at the keys I’ve pressed into her palm. I figure she’s impressed by the cool ride.
“Trans what?” she says.
Hurry! I think.
She turns and passes through the coffeeshop’s doorway and out into the fog.
Me and knife-girl lock eyes. We both know it’s gone too far now. One of us could really get hurt.
“I’m sorry about your friend,” I say. “She must have been a wonderful person to deserve such a loyal friend as you.”
She stares at me with her angry, black eyes, her surging adrenaline causing the knife to shake in her hand.
Please, I think. Lower knife. We talk.
Her look of rage begins to diminish. Her dark-flame eyes soften. Her shoulders slump and her knife-hand slowly lowers.
I heave a sigh of relief. The crucial moment seems to have passed.
A hand grips my shoulder and wheels me around.
Standing there: a stoutly built man with an unhappy look and a jaw carved straight out of Mount Rushmore.
“Frankie?”
“Ya shouldn’ta did my sister dat way,” he growls.
The flash of a gigantic fist.
When I come to, Frankie and knife-girl are standing over me shooting mind-bullets at each other, probably arguing over which one of them gets to kill me. When they hear the sirens, they glance toward the misty, grayish white blanket at the door, then at each other.
Frankie, fresh on parole, decides the door is his best option.
Knife-girl, kicking me in the unwounded shin first, exits a few steps behind him.
I pull myself up with the help of a table and begin hobbling toward the exit. At least I have the consolation of knowing that the talented Gretta Redding is waiting for me in my car and that I’m about to have the pleasure of introducing her to the world.
I feel a tickle at the back of my skull.
Hello, Dasher. Congratulations on your newfound powers.
Who this?
Dasher! Help me! cuts in someone else’s thought.
Gretta?
Our mind-link snaps, and the first voice returns.
Meet me at the northern rim of the meteorite crash site. If you want to see your girlfriend again.
Azeem? That you?
I need your mancey powers for a job, Dasher. Then maybe we can talk about renegotiating the terms of your loan.
And Gretta?
Azeem severs our connection. I run toward the gray, formless cloud crouched in the doorway.
Some days it ain’t easy being me… Dasher Dooley, talent scout.
Zephyr Dorsey 