A Quiet Life

“If you don’t mind my asking, professor, what do you do, like, after work?” a smooth voice inquired.

The professor could see her eyebrows jumping and her shoulders shrugging in her voice while she bent forward, curious and inquisitive.

He whirled round to face his petite student, “Ah, Susan! Well,” he started, “Not much. I go home, cook something for myself, maybe watch a bit of television. Why? Why do you ask?”

“Uh, Well… So you have a quiet life, professor?” her almond eyes remarked.

“You could say so,” he prodded along.

“Okay! I guess it needs some spicing up, doesn’t it?” she winked and bounced away in her faded denims.

A smile began travelling down his cheek like a snail trail and the professor chuckled to himself. He sat down on the leather of his chair and began strumming a tune. The fingers danced their way along the strings, while he hummed along. “Dancing in the dark,” he was Bruce Springsteen incarnate.

“Da-da. Da-da,” he played along, “Woo-hoo!” He jumped out and in a glissando of notes, eased down the doorway with his guitar case. The low hum of activity greeted him. Students milled about. The bell rang. It was three. The day had ended. A playful smirk played on the professor’s face. Marching ahead with the guitar case, he flowed down to his Corolla. A new job awaited him.

As dusk fell and the gong struck eleven, a bearded man emerged from the recesses of an unused warehouse in the suburbs. His eyes were as dark as the moonless night. The eyes shone through wiry spectacles. As the man entered downtown Los Angeles, he flipped his hood on. The air smelt of cheap beer and party. Falsetto screeches of pleasure danced around as he forayed into the labyrinthine maze of pubs and disco joints. He smiled. This was going to be fun.

A drunken couple stumbled out of Drinks‘N’More, blind with love and alcohol. The man whipped out his Bryan Adams mask from his duffel bag and chuckled inwardly. He brought out his guitar case and strode towards the statue in the centre of the crossroads. Accusing, angry honks swerved left and right, while the bearded man with a Bryan Adams mask walked straight ahead with cold determination. The traffic barely missed the guy. Commuters shot irate looks. It didn’t matter to him. He had reached the statue. Brandishing a mammoth-sized plier from his never-ending duffel bag, he wrenched out the seventh and last metal wire from the fence. The week had ended. It was time.

In a jiffy, he was up on the statue of another forgotten man in history. He took out his electric guitar and slowly played an agonizing tune that seemed to plead everyone out. The effect was magnetic. In a minute, the pubs had emptied. Men and women as convivial as Bacchus ran out for their favourite star. The man smiled.

“Who wants to party?” he yelled and shot a fist through the heavens, playing a metallic rendition of grunge. The crowds swerved along, shrieking wildly. Their hoots could have reached the moon had it not been for the man conjuring another magical tune with his almost invisible fingers. His left palm ran up and down, up and down the neck of the guitar strumming rock music in its purity. The people throbbed with him. Half of them climbed onto others; the other half thrust their arms up in the air.

“Woo-hoo! Woo-hoo! Woo-hoo!” the rock star sang.

“Woo-hoo! Woo-hoo! Woo-hoo!” the crowd chanted.

They were a wave: an emotion of wild partying. The man rocked along, bending forwards and backwards with the music he was creating. Then, he held up the guitar above his head and started strumming. The people went mad, with eyes larger than soccer balls and mouth, as wide as soccer fields, hooting loudly. He bent back, his fingers playing the guitar faster and faster and then, as he reached the zenith of his performance, he faced the heavens and yelled out loud, before ending his performance with an unalloyed string of tunes.

As the last tune shot through the air, the pubs behind the crowd erupted in flames. Glass shattered. Wood burnt with vicious ferocity. A freshet of half-burnt employees scurried out, their bodies flailing. The man cackled devilishly. The crowd shrieked, horrified. The man kept on cackling. All those intoxicated with the man’s music now scattered like rats. In a voice as calm and final as death, the bearded man mumbled, “A quiet life, Susan. A quiet life indeed.”

- Vedatman Sonpal