“So, what happened to the finger?”
“GAH! Easy on the poking!”
“I’ve got to figure out where it broke.”
“I thought doctors were supposed to PREVENT pain…”
“Nasty break – and you’re going to need stitches, too. What caused this?”
“It’s sort of complicated. You know that big concert the symphony orchestra was doing tonight?”
“Yeah. You’re one of the musicians, aren’t you.”
“The tuxedo tip you off?”
“A little. Anyways, how’d this happen?”
“Like I said, it’s complicated. You see, everyone was a little tense throughout pretty much every rehearsal, and it kind of came to a head right at the concert.”
“Difficult music?”
“No, no, the music was fine. But the principal trombonist was sleeping with the second violinist’s wife. OW!”
“Sorry, caught me a bit by surprise there. Go on.”
“Jeez… anyways, everyone sort of knew about it – except for Jeff.”
“The violinist?”
“Yeah.”
“I used to play the violin.”
“Good for you. Anyways, he was really suspicious, but he felt like he needed to be one-hundred-per-cent-sure before calling either of them on it. I have no goddamn idea why, Matt –“
“…the trombonist?”
“Yeah. Matt was practically smirking every time he looked at Jeff, and they kept sniping at each other on and off pretty much whenever they saw each other.”
“Got it. And?”
“Well, there’s always a bit of tension right before a concert, and it sort of mingled with the arguing, and they almost got into a fistfight offstage during intermission. The tuba guy pulled them apart though.”
“My son plays the tuba.”
“Really? This guy doesn’t – he plays harp.”
“Then why did you call him…“
“We all call him that; he’s shaped like one. Anyways –”
“He’s shaped like a tuba player?”
“No, like a tuba. Can I finish this story?”
“Go ahead.”
“Good. Right, well, we got into position, the conductor – Perkins, a terrifying man with a world-ending moustache – came onstage, and then just as he raised his baton, Matt leaned over and sort-of whispered to Jeff – it was loud from clapping, right, so he had to speak up a bit, and the rest of the orchestra sort of had to overhear: “You’re a violinist, all right. You need a lot of little sticky products to get up and running, and you get all high-pitched and whiny at a climax just before you break a string and go flat.” And then he made a pumping gesture with his trombone and said “burn, bitch!””
“My niece plays the trombone.”
“That’s nice. Well, Jeff’s face went from white to red to post-apocalyptic sundown and then he made a sound like a man being neutered in the woman’s washroom and chucked his music sheet at him. It sort of spun sideways, like a shuriken.”
“I had an aunt that used to know ninjitsu.”
“Really? What happened to her?”
“A rival clan sent three of its finest warriors to kill her. She felled them all in honourable combat but was mortally wounded by a clever ninjaken strike just as she dispatched the last of her foes.”
“Ah. You know, you don’t look Japanese.”
“I’m adopted.”
“Ah. Anyways, the music sheet sort of sliced into Matt’s nose and gave him an enormous papercut from cheek to cheek. He fell over backwards and almost decapitated the guy on third French horn with his trombone.”
“My grandfather decapitated a man once.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Or rather, he had him decapitated. He would not listen to his generous business offer and remained stubbornly convinced of his need for financial independence, and so he was offered a separation agreement.”
“Ah. The separation of his head from his body?”
“Grandpapa was a thorough man.”
“Ah. Anyways, the whole hall sort of froze, and then Jeff launched himself at Matt with his bow in one hand and violin in the other. He crossed the stage in two big bounds with a warlike yodel and if the tuba guy hadn’t snatched up Matt’s music stand and blocked his bow-blow, I don’t like to think what would’ve happened to Matt’s face. He was aiming for the nostrils.”
“Spectacularly cruel.”
“Yes. It was pretty unsporting, but then again, so was what Matt had said. Then Jeff smashed his violin into the tuba guy’s head, but he had a pretty thick skull and he just grabbed Jeff in one hand and his instrument in the other, and shoved him right into it.”
“Gracious. That must’ve been hard on the poor harp.”
“What? No, it was a tuba.”
“But you said –”
“No, no, no that was the tuba guy, THIS is the tuba guy. Different people.”
“I… see. Did I mention my son plays the tuba?”
“Yes. Well, Jeff was a pretty well-liked guy in the string section, and they’d been pissed as hell at Matt for acting the way he did, and that was all the excuse they needed to mount a charge. A pretty fearsome sight it was, too – a solid wedge of violins, tipped by a heavy force of cellos, with double bass backup.”
“My cousin used to play the double bass.”
“Good for him. Why’d he stop?”
“He played a song grandpapa didn’t like.”
“Ah. Anyways, I was one of the flutists, and we were sort of caught between the hammer of the onrushing strings and the anvil of the hurriedly fortifying brass god DAMNIT that hurts!”
“Stitches do that. Go on.”
“Well, the woodwinds looked to be in trouble, and I confess, we reacted poorly – not a shred of the discipline of the opposing sections that threatened us. Half of us ducked for cover, the other half tried to form a sort of defensive formation. I was in the formation, and I can tell you, it was no picnic. Ever tried to perform a coordinated life-or-death defence with a three-hundred pound, five-foot-five double bass player bearing down on you at full speed with bass set to ramming position?”
“No, thank goodness.”
“Well, that’s what was coming at me, and I looked down and all I’ve got is this little flute, and so I did the only thing I could.”
“You ran?”
“No, I stepped smartly to one side and let him ram the guy behind me. It was a pity – I always liked Phil – but he was a piss-lousy clarinettist, so no great loss. Besides, I dispatched the fat bastard with my flute while he was trying to shake Phil off his bass.”
“How did you do that?”
“Sharp blow to the forehead. Dropped him like a load of tubby, Twinkie-eating bricks.”
“My mother ate Twinkies.”
“You don’t say. Regardless, when I looked up –”
“And sucked on them, too, as well as putting them down her shirt. They weren’t real ones though; they were props made from gelatine and pre-chewed liquorice. She didn’t really like it, but it was specified in the movie contract, and father wouldn’t let her wriggle out of it; or the leather straps, for that matter. He did, however, allow her to opt out of the clause that stated that scene five had to be performed with a monkey and a big bowl of marijuana jell-o. She said afterwards that it might’ve been better with a monkey and that the jell-o would’ve at least let her pretend she was in a happier world rather than the exhausted hell-life she found herself in on that dastardly shoot. From that day onwards, she cried whenever she saw liquorice, and so I was never allowed in a candy store again. Father’s laughter echoed around the house every Halloween.”
“Ah. Fascinating.”
“Sorry, I do tend to go on. Continue, please.”
“Right. Well. Anyways, I found myself to be in the rubble of the woodwinds. The strings had simply ploughed through us and were even then hurling themselves against the shining metal of the brass section. An ugly business – both sides were evenly matched. I saw a trumpet player fencing with a violist before taking him down with a thrust to the beer gut, only to fall beneath the merciless garrotte of a thin, delicate-fingered cellist called Jim-Bob. The tuba guy was trading dim-witted blows with the tuba guy, and Matt and Jeff were fighting literally tooth and nail. It was madness.”
“It sounds terrifying indeed. Last stitch, then on to splinting.”
“Excellent. Well, old Perkins was hellish mad at seeing his orchestra tearing itself apart, and he banged his baton on his podium and roared for order as loud as he could. One of the oboe players was so panicked that he just threw his music stand at him, like a spear. I never saw anything so eerie in my life as how Perkins handled that; he just sort of swayed his upper torso to one side and caught the thing with one hand, then hurled it straight back at him. It ran him right through.”
“I used to run through malls when I was younger, looking for my friends. They would always hide from me and whisper dark hints as to their location directly into my tiny little prepubescent brain. They always hid in the ladies changeroom, and I always got in trouble when I tried to find them. One time, I had to cut the manager to get away in time. I didn’t mean to do it, but my friends made me. I never found them again, but sometimes I hear them whispering whenever I pick up something with a sharp edge.”
“Ah. Perkins pretty much leapt off his platform and landed in a duelling stance besides three of the violinists and a trumpet player. The man was a whirlwind with that baton; they all just sort of flopped to the ground, screaming in agony at their ruptured nerve pressure points, alive but in really terrible pain.”
“Your conductor reminds me of my uncle Gary. He made a study of human endurance under extreme conditions, with careful hypotheses supported by extravagant amounts of testing. Why, he sent no less than eighteen experimental subjects into a single booby-trapped hallway in order to determine the exact point, down to the decimal, at which a blast of super-intense heat can literally melt flesh from bones, yet preserve the subject’s psyche long enough for them to emit a shriek of spine-shredding pain.”
“Ah, fascinating. Well, Jeff and Matt were on their feet again, though both had lost their instruments and resorted to wrenching off their ties and using them as lasso-nooses, each seeking to strangle the other. They both managed to get one around the other’s neck at the same time, and when they each tried to deliver the killing yank they both were too weak from oxygen loss to manage it. Total stalemate, and the rest of their sections were too busy with their own fights – including Perkins, who, by the way, was indiscriminately laying about with aim to incapacitate.”
“Well, it’s better to rough up the employee that steps out of line than to do away with him entirely. Rule by fear is more effective when you allow second chances. But only second chances – infinity leniency is foolish. Don’t go out of your way to make examples, but if you must, make it a good one. My staff around here smartened right up after they got to work one day and all that was at my secretary’s desk was her fingernails. Good ol’ grandpapa always knows where to find the best guys to get stuff done.”
“Right. Well, the woodwinds sort of got together and decided that we were going to give ol’ Perkins a hand, seeing as he was taking on the sections that had just handed our asses to us on a platter. We charged the strings from behind and just zipped past them and into the brass; it’s much easier to penetrate a heavy defensive line when you’re carrying a piccolo than a cello.”
“I’d imagine so. I think one of my nephews plays the piccolo.”
“Yes, and the lighter instruments are much better for close quarters. I took out the tuba guy and two trombonists without breaking a sweat before I ran into a violinist. That was tougher. He had enough elbow room to use bow and instrument in combination, and he nearly got my eye.”
“Was that how you sustained this injury?”
“Eh? No, no. A French horn player clobbered him from behind, and I got off narrowly. All in all, the brawl was sort of winding down by then, especially since Perkins had reached Matt and Jeff and bashed their heads together several times. Within four minutes, it had ceased entirely.”
“Really? Then how did you get this injury?”
“Thanks for the fix by the way, the splint looks really nice. Well, it’s sort of embarrassing. We were all starting to remove the dead and wounded under Perkin’s direction, and then the audience started to clap. Apparently they thought it was some sort of performance art.”
“This relates to your finger how…?”
“You see, the adrenaline had worn off by now and a lot of us, myself included, were sort of shell-shocked. One little old lady in the front row stood up and started yelling “encore,” and I was so pissed off that she appreciated the hell we just went through that I leaned over the edge of the stage, face to face with her tiny, wrinkly eyeballs, and gave her the finger.”
“This finger?”
“Yes. Do you know that the little hag actually had fanged dentures?”
“What a coincidence, you’ve just perfectly described my great-aunt. You’re lucky all you got was a mangled finger. She simply can’t abide rudeness. I crafted those dentures myself, you know. They’re made from the finest illegal elephant ivory, tipped with the black sorrow diamonds that are hewn by slave-child-miners in the hell-pits of Yar-Cuchcha.
“Did you just make that up?”
“Not more than anything else I’ve said to you.”
“You’re a real kidder, doc. Those lines you cracked were better than morphine.”
“Thank you. By the way, since you’ve been such a good patient, why don’t you take this with you.”
“A handgun?”
“It has some incriminating fingerprints on it, but don’t worry; the investigation has just been thrown into confusion, so there shouldn’t be any further pursuit.”
“‘Further’ pursuit?”
“Yes, the gentleman that came in just before you was the head detective on that particular case. Would you like his shoes too? Size twelve, and in fine condition.”