AFTER THE LIVESTREAM

Robert Rincon, called "Malvolio" by friends for reasons that he had long since forgotten, and that he hadn't understood to begin with, was in the basement thinking about playing guitar when the police banged (loudly) on the front door and shouted (even more loudly) that they were coming in, and then began a count that he assumed would end at three, ten at most, but which went on far past that, to twenty, to forty, to a hundred, to the point where Malvolio was no longer afraid that they would enter but beginning to despair that they would not. "What are they doing?" he said on the phone to his girlfriend, who had been someone else's wife until a month before. Her husband had owned the guitar that Malvolio was playing now. Malvolio had buried the man, his former rival, in the backyard about a week before he went into the car to retrieve the guitar. He did the math. That was three weeks ago, right? He had waited until his girlfriend gave him the high sign. The dispatch and disposal of the former rival had been her idea entirely. "Not everything lasts forever," she said, with a flippant tone that was intended to conceal an undercurrent of seriousness that verged on philosophy. "An undercurrent of..." He had read the phrase in a book about theater artists of an earlier time. It's what he once dreamed he would do. He started in music, left it for theater, then left that for tiny pills that were placed in his hand by a man who increasingly took all his money. From there he went to the sporting goods store for a knife, and then went back for a gun. This was ten years ago, before his first six to nine for armed robbery. He hadn't even met Hannah then, which meant that he hadn't met her husband. He moved his fingers about an inch above the strings, but made sure not to let them touch. Before he had gone into the dead man's car, he hadn't played a note on that guitar or any other since he was sixteen, half a lifetime ago. "You should play," Hannah had said when he came back from the car. "You're a regular..." This was a joke. She knew plenty of names: Reinhardt, Segovia, Burton, Page. But what she didn't say was always louder than what she said. This was the case on the phone now. "What are they doing?" Malvolio said again, louder this time. Panic crisscrossed his voice. "I don't think they will..." she said. Something clicked, either on the phone or off it. "Don't worry about..."

©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas