SNEAKERS
John Tell had been working at Tabori Studios just over a month when he first noticed the sneakers. Tabori Studios was in a building which had once been called Music City but wasn't much anymore.
The sneakers were white, or had been once, when they were new. From the look of them that had been a long time ago. That was all he noticed about them then: just a pair of elderly sneakers under the door of the first stall of the men's room on the third floor. Tell passed them and went into the third and last stall. He came out a few minutes later, washed and dried his hands, combed his hair, and then went back to Studio F, where Paul Janning, the man who had hired him-and just maybe the first friend Tell had ever made-was mixing an album by a heavy metal group called The Dead Beats.
Tell had met Janning, a rock producer of some note, at a party following the premiere of a concert film. They knew some of the same people, and got along. Tell, who normally had problems with ordinary conversation, found he could talk easily and naturally to Paul Janning. Janning asked for his phone number and called him a few days later to ask if he would like to be part of the three-man team mixing The Dead Beats' first album. 'I don't know if it's really possible to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear," Janning had said, "but since Atlantic's paying the bills, why not try?"
A week or so after he first saw the sneakers, Tell saw them again. He only registered the fact that they were the same sneakers because they were in the same place: under the door of stall number one in the third floor men's. White-once, anyway-with dirt in the deep creases. He noticed an empty eyelet. Sneakers had laced one of them wrong. Must not have had your eyes all the way open when you did that, friend, Tell thought, and went on down to the third stall (which he thought of, in some vague way, as "his" stall).
This time he glanced at the sneakers on the way out and saw something odd: there was a dead fly on one of them.
When he got back to Studio F, Janning was sitting at the board with his head clutched in his hands.
"You okay, Paul?" Tell asked.
"No."
"What's wrong?"
"Me. I was wrong."
"What are you talking about?" Tell looked around for Georgie Ronkler and didn't see him anywhere. It didn't surprise him. Janning had periodic fugues and Georgie always left when he saw one coming on. He claimed his karma didn't allow him to deal with strong emotion. "I cry at supermarket openings," Georgie said.
"You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear," Janning said dully. He gestured at the glass between the mixing room and the performance studio. "At least you can't make one out of pigs like those."
"It's not that bad," said Tell, who knew he spoke only the truth: it was worse. The Dead Beats, comprised of four dull bastards and one dull bitch, were personally repulsive and professionally incompetent.
"Fuck you," Janning said.
"God I hate temperament," Tell said.
Janning looked up at him and giggled. A second later they were both laughing.
The mix ended a week later. Tell asked Janning for a recommendation and a tape.
"Okay, but you know you can't play the tape for anyone until the album comes out," Janning said.
"I know."
"And why you'd ever want to, for anyone, is beyond me. These guys make The Dead Kennedys sound like the Beatles."
"Come on, Paul. At least it's over."
He smiled. "Yeah. There's that. And if I ever work in this business again, I'll give you a call."
"That would be great."
They shook hands. Tell left the building which had once been known as Music City, and the thought of the sneakers under the door of stall number one never crossed his mind.
Janning, who had been in the business twenty years, had once told him that when it came to mixing bop (he never called it rock and roll, only bop), you were either shit or Superman. For the month following the Beats' mixing session, John Tell was shit. He didn't work. He began to get nervous about the rent. Twice he almost called Janning, but something in him thought it would be a mistake.
Then, near the end of May, the music mixer on a film called Karate Masters of Massacre died of a massive coronary and Tell got two weeks' work at the Brill Building (which had once been called Tin Pan Alley), finishing the mix. It was mostly library stuff in the public domain - and a few plinking sitars - but it paid the rent. He had no more than walked into his apartment following his last day on the show when the phone rang and Paul Janning was asking him if he had checked Billboard lately.
Tell said he hadn't.
"It came on at number seventy-nine." Janning managed to sound simultaneously disgusted, amused, and amazed. "With a bullet."
"What did?" But he knew as soon as the question was out of his mouth.
"Diving in the Dirt."
It was the name of a cut on The Dead Beats' Beat It 'Til It's Dead album, the only cut which had seemed to Tell and Janning remotely like single material.
"Shit!"
"Agreed, but I think it's gonna go top ten. And that probably means the album'll go top ten. A platinum-covered dog-turd is still a dog-turd, but a ref is still a ref, am I right?"
"You sure are," Tell said, pulling open his desk drawer to make sure his Dead Beats cassette, unplayed since Janning had given it to him on the last day of the mix, was still there.
"So what are you doing?"
"Looking for a job."
"You want to work with me again? Daltrey's new album. Starts in two weeks."
"Christ, yes!"
The money would be good, but it was more than that; following The Dead Beats and two weeks of Karate Masters of Massacre, working with Roger Daltrey would be like coming into a warm place on a cold night. The man might turn out to be an utter shit, but at least he could sing. And working with Janning again would be good. "Where?"
"Same old stand. Tabori."
"I'm there."
Roger Daltrey could not only sing, he turned out to be a tolerably nice guy. Tell thought the next three or four weeks would be good ones. He had a job, he had a production credit on an album that had popped onto the Billboard charts at number forty-one (and "Diving in the Dirt" was up to number seventeen and still climbing), and he felt safe about the rent for the first time since he had come to New York from Pennsylvania four years ago.
It was June, trees were in full leaf, girls were in short skirts, and the world seemed a fine place to be. Tell felt this way on his first day back at work for Paul Janning until approximately 1:45 P.M. Then he walked into the third floor bathroom, saw the same white sneakers under the door of stall one, and all his good feelings suddenly collapsed.
They are not the same.
They were, though. That single empty eyelet was the clearest point of identification, but everything else about them was also the same. Exactly the same, and that included their positions.
The only difference was that now there were more dead flies around them.
He went slowly into the third stall, "his" stall, lowered his pants, and sat down. He wasn't surprised to find the urge which had brought him there had entirely departed only sat there, listening for sounds. Little shifting noises. The rattle of a newspaper. Perhaps a little grunt of effort. Hell, even a fart would do.
There was no sound.
That's because I'm in here alone, Tell thought. Except, that is, for the dead guy in that first stall.
The outer door banged briskly open. Tell almost screamed.
Someone hummed his way over to the urinals. As he did, an explanation occurred to Tell and he relaxed. It was so simple it was absurd ... and undoubtedly correct. He glanced at his watch and saw it was 1:47.
A regular man is a happy man, his father used to say. Tell's father had been a taciturn man, and that (along with Clean your hands and then clean your plate) had been one of his few aphorisms. If regularity really did mean happiness, then Tell supposed he was a happy man. And if you were regular, he supposed that urge came on at about the same time every day ... at least it did with