Part 79: Xander

The K___________ Chronicles

1. Prologue

2. K_______ in Exile

3. Three Ghosts (A Visit In The Night)

         I. The Robber Baron

         II. The Soldier

         III. The Long Lost Love

4. witheveryWord ‘Farewell’

5. Bullet Train to Siberia

6. Letters and Leylines

7. Revengeance

8. The Keeper of the True Belief

9. Epilogue: K ______ in Excelsis

Xander spent most of the Pittsburgh show thinking about Kaitlyn. During “Mourning Person,” he decided she didn’t love him, she just loved the idea of him, just like all these girls in the crowd. (The ghost of Bobby’s voice asked, “What’s the difference?”) 

During “Sybartium,” he argued with her that therapy represented the commodification of empathy and understanding that should exist in our personal relationships, so it was really her who had the screwed up sense of things. 

And during “Holding Hands in the Oncology Ward,” he concluded that he couldn’t be selfish, because none of the songs he wrote were even about him. He'd never been in an oncology ward. And then the totality of circumstances did its magic and by the time he reached his hotel room, he had half an outline for The K________ Chronicles and, more importantly, the desire to create more.

It was happening, just like it had always happened before.

In the middle of the night, he briefly panicked that he was ripping off A Christmas Carol, but then recalled a line about how there are only four or five plots anyway, and that made him feel better.

In the morning, he finished the track list, recopied it onto a piece of hotel stationery, crossed a few things out and rewrote them - this was to be the definitive version, the one that would get scanned and uploaded to the website, so it had to show some signs of his Creative Process - and set about waiting until he could go see Bobby.

Xander reached into his backpack and pulled out the tour t-shirt. Next stop, Cleveland. A mercifully short trip. And not until tomorrow!

He stuffed the shirt back into its pocket and spotted the wooden owl. “You,” he said to it, holding it in his palm like Hamlet, “have been exactly zero help. You were a waste of money and time. You are not a symbol of anything, least of all me.”

This gave him another idea, so he grabbed another piece of hotel stationery and wrote frantically: “K________ talks to Owl - symbol?”

The thing about owls was they were nocturnal. Like Bobby, not him. And the second thing to know about owls was that they were wise. Unlike Bobby, unlike him. Like the bassist thought he was, maybe. But now the bassist had been reduced to his barest form: a foot-soldier, intent only upon frivolity and pleasure, indifferent to who he was ordered to kill. Now everyone had their place, their role, and there was no room for a damn owl.

Xander scratched out what he had jotted down, but this time it was a real scratching out.

“You know, paradoxically, writing about a fictional character allowed me to write more honestly about myself,” he said in the shower, imagining the inevitable interview, no longer a slog to get through but a joy. “I can’t say who, of course, but the truth is that the three ghosts who visit K______ in the third track are based upon three real people in my life, three real conversations that I had when I was working on this album . . .” Cue the speculation.

One would be obvious. You had to give them something easy to start, something for the real dummies of the bunch, or the twelve-year-olds who were just getting their feet wet in the interpretive ocean. But the second would be much more challenging, and the third damn near impossible.

What time was it? Nearly ten. Even Bobby, half-owl that he was, ought to be awake by now.

“It’s an story about the creative process, really, more than anything else,” he rehearsed, walking down the brightly-lit hallway, clutching the track list in one hand and the owl in the other. “I was really struggling for a while after Black Carousel to figure out what I wanted to write, and I suppose I felt an awful lot like K________. It’s all a bit meta, really.”

But how much to say, how much to hold back?

He knocked on the door to Bobby’s hotel room, suddenly feeling nervous. He realized they hadn’t spoken in days, that they had left things tense, formal, stiff. In his exuberance about the new story, he had forgotten all about the old one. The Letter, the speech, the article that damned journalist had written . . . but you can't take back a knock.

Inside, Bobby was sitting on the edge of his bed, peering at his Blackberry screen, waiting for the page to load. He’d ignore the first set of knocks, he decided. Whatever it was could wait until he knew whether that-fucking-guy had written the profile properly, or if he needed some grand gesture to get public opinion to where he needed it.

Finally, the page loaded. The Man Behind the Curtain by Cicero T. Jones. Fine title, a bit elementary, but it would do. He skimmed for key words. Manager, check. Puppet-master, check. Finances, check. All fine, but maybe too subtle? He scrolled further down. (He’d ignore the second set of knocks, too, since the first ones didn’t really count.) Doesn't cry when dogs die in movies. (The version of Camus's line that works for those with mothers.) Ah, good, he had delved into his background. Christian upbringing. Never returns to his hometown. Jacob calling him “amoral and self-serving, even as a child.” What he surely thought of as a great act of revenge, a chance to finally speak his truth.

And the end? Not that anyone would read to the end, but some of them might skip to the end, trained as they were on potboilers like Harry Potter to believe the end was the most important part. Ah, perfect, a quote from him, one that he didn’t actually remember saying but did sound like him: “All that matters at the end of the day are the numbers.”

All in all, a passable job. And light on the alliteration for once. Maybe he was finally moving out of that phase, which had dragged on a bit long but obviously couldn't go on forever, like a preschooler being breastfed.

A third knock. Persistent.

Bobby opened the door and saw Xander in his civilian form: no eyeliner, no product in his hair, not even a single dog tag or cuff around his wrist.

“Xander.”

“Bobby.”

“Come in, come in. I was just . . .”

“Oh, okay, sure, I just wanted to . . .”

It was awkward, like a hug between brothers: all that past tense, all that hedging. But it was necessary. And so was the next part, equally painful for both of them (they used to be above such formalities, they used to scoff at them):

“So first of all, I figure I probably owe you an apology,” Xander said, once the door was safely shut behind him.

“You probably know by now,” Bobby said, picking up his phone again, looking at the screen as he spoke, “that I’m not a particularly big fan of apologies. Particularly when the person giving them doesn’t even know what they’re apologizing for.” He tossed the phone back onto the bed and looked at Xander.

“Are you really going to make me say it?”

“I’m not making you do anything, Xander, you’re a free man, you’ve made that perfectly clear.”

“Alright, fine. I’m sorry that I dragged your name into this whole Letter mess, and put the spotlight on you, and ruined your master plan or whatever. I should have known to keep my mouth shut  like a good, obedient little client. So yeah, I’m sorry.”

“Hm. Not exactly heartfelt, but fine. I accept your apology, if that’s what you need to hear from me,” Bobby said. “See, that’s why I don’t like apologies, they exist to make the apologizer feel better, and the apologizee ends up feeling worse, like they’re supposed to apologize, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to apologize for - well, that’s the whole point, isn’t it, I’ve got nothing to apologize for. But anyway, none of that is really the issue here, in my view there are three problems with what you did, and if you were going to apologize, which again, I'm not saying you should - but it might as well be for one of those.”

“Yeah? And what are those?” Xander clenched the paper in his hand. He had to sit through Bobby’s speech - that was the real concession, the real show of being sorry - before they could switch topics.

“Well, first thing is timing, timing is crucial, it’s delicate, it’s an art form unto itself, really. You should have given the story a little more time to settle before you started going out there talking about from whence it came. Let them wonder, let them argue. Make them want to know first. Come on, I thought you understood all that.”

“I do, I was just . . . “

“And second thing, you played it all wrong. You weren’t supposed to praise me for writing it, you weren’t supposed to call me underappreciated, unsung hero, any of that - you should have been condemning me! Corrupt, business side of things, trying to force you into writing something you don’t want to, compromise your artistic integrity, so on and so forth. That’s the story they want. A feud, not a partnership. Christ, even that fucking journalist got that, thanks to his article we were able to save things, thankfully it overwrote the actual speech you gave.”

“Well, in that case . . .”

“I said three, didn’t I?” Bobby had evidently come to this meeting with an agenda as well, all the more impressive since he hadn't known about it. “Well, third thing, and this is the biggest one, it’s a countdown format we’re following here, not a journalistic, top-heavy, lede type thing - you should have told me.”

“I know,” Xander said, instinctively looking at his feet.

“I don’t mind playing the villain, but I’ve got to know I’m playing the villain. Otherwise, here I am walking around being polite to everyone, tolerating all their little . . . idiosyncracies, let’s call them - whereas if I had known, I could have been berating the staff, throwing temper tantrums, being generally difficult to work with, adding to the impression. But fine, we’ve got it all sorted out now, he’s written a whole profile where I’m the devil incarnate, so."

Xander found it hard to imagine Bobby being polite to everyone, but he was in the subservient position. “So that part I do feel bad about,” he said. “And I won’t apologize for it per se, but I do regret it, in case that means anything to you.”

“It doesn’t,” Bobby said cheerfully. He'd said his bit, he could relax. “Anyway, what’s that in your hand?”

“So this is what I really came here to talk about,” Xander said, laying the paper out on the desk so they could look at it together.

“No, the other hand.”

“Oh, that’s nothing,” Xander said sheepishly, noticing he was still clutching the wooden owl. He looked around for a trash bin, didn’t see one, so put it down on the desk as well.

“Is that an owl? Well, Christ, don’t put it there, don’t make it my problem just because you don’t want to deal with it.”

“Fine.” Xander picked the owl back up. “But I’m not here to talk about the owl. I’m here . . .”

“You finally wrote something?” Bobby grabbed the paper from the desk. “Great, good, perfect. Let’s see what we’ve got here.”

“Well, let me explain the whole . . .”

“Are these just the titles?”

“Yeah. It’s an outline. That’s how I always used to start.”

“Do you have any of the actual songs yet?” Bobby looked annoyed, as if he were the victim of a cruel bait-and-switch.

“Well, no, not exactly. But. Let me explain the whole conceit of the thing to you.”

“It’s based on The Letter, no? Isn’t that what you promised them the other night?”

“Well, it is and it isn’t,” Xander said carefully. A prepared line. Bobby sat down on the edge of the bed. “Alright, so here’s the idea. It’s not actually about the guy in the story, it’s about the guy who wrote the story, Aleksandr K________. And he’s living this really lonely, solitary life somewhere, in exile or something, I haven’t figured out exactly for what yet, but that’s the second song, after the prologue, the first real song, him being miserable, not knowing what to write. And then one night he gets visited by these three different ghosts - yes, I know it’s awfully Christmas Carol, I’ve already thought of that, but I figured it’s okay - and it’s in this super-long, three-part song, and each one kind of corresponds to someone in his real life, and each has their own advice for him, like what he should do, what he should write about.”

“Okay.” Bobby glanced down at the paper in his hands.

“The first one’s this old-timey robber baron type, mustache-twirling type . . .”

“So that’s me?”

Xander paused. “Well, yeah, but . . .”

“No, yeah, obviously we don’t say that, we let them figure it out for themselves. No, that’s good, that fits perfectly. Selfish, greedy, miserly, tries to tell K_______ he has to write such-and-such. Make him some money. Stand-in for his actual boss, I'm guessing? I like it. Go on.”

“So the second one’s a soldier, who . . .”

“Is that Omar?”

“Omar?”

“The bassist.”

“Yeah, it’s Omar.” Xander made a mental note, in case he ever did talk to Kaitlyn again. “How’d you know?”

“Well, I just figured, since he was in the military and all . . .”

“Right, yeah, exactly. So the soldier doesn’t care about anything besides, just, like, cheap carnal pleasures. Sex, drinking, eating. And so he tries to get K______ to give up his pretentions of being a writer and live a life of hedonism . . “

“Did you bring the Christian piece into this like I asked?” Bobby interrupted.

“Yes. I’ve thought of it all already. This does everything we need it to do. Can you just let me go through it all in order?”

“Can’t you save that for the interview?”

“No, because in the interview he’s going to ask me all these questions about it, kind of like you’re doing right now, I can’t just go through and explain the whole thing.”

“And that’s what you want?”

“Yes.” Xander hadn't known it, but that was exactly what he wanted. What he had always wanted. “That’s what I want.”

“You want to speak forever without ever letting the other person respond?”

“Well, when you put it that way it sounds awfully selfish.”

“Yes,” Bobby replied. “But only because it is."