Jo’s new band was in the process of stealing every one of the round, ripe pumpkins vine-nestled in their former drummer’s backyard garden. The group had been making some changes to their lineup.
It had been six weeks since the Bukowski Brothers, in search of a lead guitarist, had plucked her from a local musicians-for-hire website. She’d attended thirteen rehearsals with their now-scorned percussionist, but tonight—an hour before her first show with the band—she found herself waiting in the shadows of his back alley in the passenger seat of a getaway vehicle. She cracked her window to expel a breath of smoke into the soupy dark, then slid her pipe back into her bag. Beside her, the driver was having a panic attack, as she’d been informed he would.
Aaron Brzezinski, the band’s once-and-future drummer, had been restored (reluctantly) to his rightful drum throne earlier that day, replacing the banished pumpkin gardener. Aaron did not cope well with stressful situations.
“Why did he have to fuck everything up?” he mumbled into the steering wheel, massaging his freckled forehead against it. “Everything was going fine. He’s a better drummer than me. It should be him playing tonight.”
“You’re doing a good job?” Jo tried. She’d been introduced to Aaron less than half an hour ago and unofficially delegated as band therapist around the same time.
She wondered how her other bandmates were doing with the pumpkins; the drummer must have grown a bumper crop, judging by the size of the empty crates Jaymie and Rex had disappeared through the gate with.
“This is a terrible idea. We shouldn’t be here,” Aaron muttered.
“Well, it wasn’t my idea.” Jo tried to keep the accusation out of her tone, reminding herself that Aaron couldn’t be held responsible for the whims of his mad twin. He didn’t reply.
Outside, the alley was silent under a swampy October sky. Snatches of conversation floated from the street, where people wandered to and from Friday night events, unaware of the theft occurring just beyond the fence. Behind a garage roof, a ruddy harvest moon lurked, feigning ignorance about the pumpkins and likely to deny any involvement later.
Jo settled into her seat and investigated the glove compartment for CD options. Aaron stared out the window and began a compulsive rhythmic tapping on the wheel, likely without any awareness he was doing it.
Jo had been in unconventional bands before. She felt that most good bands were unconventional by nature, or else they probably played boring garage rock in front of boring audiences. She was determined to take Aaron’s eccentricities as a positive.
A dog barked twice. She glanced up from a handful of CDs clearly collected from local DIY shows—The BMI Babies, Shifty Principals, Gunt—but concluded that the sound came from too far away to have been caused by her bandmates’ misdemeanours.
“Oh my god, we’ve gotta go.” Aaron was working himself into even greater agitation, and Jo felt a pang of alarm. She sat up straighter and checked that the alley was empty before reminding herself not to get caught up in the energy of his fear; being stoned always made her susceptible to catching other people’s vibes.
“It’s cool, that pup’s way down the street. Hey, do you guys listen to the Ballet Llama?” She held up one of the CDs. “Did you know I played on this album?”
“What? Sure. Oh shit!” Not to be redirected, Aaron twisted around to monitor the zone behind the car, and jumped as the dog barked again.
“Jaymie and Rex must be almost done by now.” Jo tried to sound reassuring.
“No, we have to—we can’t—” A sheen of sweat threatened at the edges of Aaron’s pale face. “I’m afraid of dogs,” he admitted.
“Oh. OK, well, it’s outside the car …”
Jaymie’s instructions had been simple: “Aaron, this is Jo. Jo, Aaron! He has a panic disorder! So, you guys stay here and do something … calming. Remember, this is fun!” And then, pointlessly, “We’re all a band now! Yay …” He’d given the kind of sparkling wink characteristic only of talking cartoon animals and Jaymie Brzezinski, then hefted the empty boxes into his arms and darted after Rex into the darkness of the unfortunate gardener’s yard.
“Want me to drive?” Jo asked, trying to think of a way to help.
He sized her up. “How high are you?”
“Barely.”
Aaron grappled visibly with the choice between trusting a stoned driver versus handling a car while dealing with the grim knowledge that dogs exist, but finally he said, “Yes. Please.”
Jo tossed the CDs back into the compartment and reached for the door handle.
“Omigod don’t open that! There’s a dog out there!”
She was at a loss. She closed her eyes and allowed herself a synesthetic vision of the guitar line that began the first track on the new EP, the hook that had charmed her into this band and made her excited for her first rehearsal. She moved her fingers over imaginary frets, and a comforting contour of melody rose and fell before her closed eyelids.
She forced herself back to the situation at hand. “Should we … switch?” she asked. Aaron drummed his palms on the wheel, calculating and accurately assessing Jo’s hips to be wider than his own, her body more unwieldy.
“You just hop over the middle,” he instructed. “I’ll go overtop.” He slid the driver’s seat back and climbed onto the dashboard, nimbly folding his slight form between the dash and windshield. His legs stretched over the gear shift in the gap between the two front seats.
“You don’t want to just jump into the back seat for a minute?”
“It’s too late for that now.”
Grumbling, Jo pulled her feet up onto the seat, then swung her left sneaker over Aaron’s knees. She hoisted her hips over his shins. A thigh cramp caused a retreat; a satisfying pop in her hip got her back on track. Her shoe caught in the loose seatbelt.
“If you just—”
“Here, I’ll slide over.”
“Ow, just wait, I’m almost there!”
“Sorry, I’ll—”
“Ok move your foot. Not like—never mind!”
And she was free, about to descend gracefully into the driver’s seat, when a tap on the door startled Aaron into a headlong sprawl against her chest. Two bearded and beer-toting Friday-nighters hailed them from outside.
“Never seen it done that way before,” one of them commented, as Jo further lowered the window.
“Sorry to interrupt,” said the other. “But there’s a house party one street, three blocks over. Two seventy-one Lipton.” He gestured down the alley. “Costumes encouraged. Sick band playing later. We’re trying to get lots of people out. So. When you guys are all finished …” He raised his eyebrows at them. “Also, not the best alley for this. Lots of foot traffic.”
Jo, stoned enough for a bit of hazy paranoia, tensed, thinking he knew about the burglary occurring a few feet across the fence, but then remembered she was sitting in the dark with her feet splayed across the dash and a headlights-frozen deer of a man in her lap. She relaxed.
“Two seventy-one. You’ll hear it!” He set off, cheers-ing his twelve-pack in their direction as Jo gave a bland grin and Aaron nodded dumbly in her arms.
Her new bandmate might take some getting used to. But then, they all took some getting used to. She deposited him in his seat and pulled her right leg over the stick shift, settling in.
“Feel any better?” she asked.
“Distractions always help.”
A moment later they heard the click of the trunk opening and felt the soft shudder of the car accepting several heavy pumpkin crates. Into the back seat tumbled an exuberant Jaymie, followed by placidly smiling seventeen-year-old Rex, the youngest member of the Bukowski Brothers’ Broken Family Band.
Jaymie leaned into the front, arms circling Jo and Aaron’s seats, freckles dancing in the dim alley light, his face a fuller, crooked-smiling version of Aaron’s.
“We got our merch,” he beamed. “You kids ready to play a house show?”
Jo Connors was Rex’s new favourite thing about band practices—mostly because she was terrifying. She was the sort of formidable musician woman Rex might have wanted to grow up to be in five or ten years, if Rex still expected to grow up to be a woman, which Rex—they/them, or he if you felt like it—no longer did.
Jo had the enigmatic charm of someone who either has a complicated past or has simply spent all of your encounters with them politely concealing how inebriated they are. She was six foot one—taller than any of the three Brzezinski siblings—and with her slippery black hair and seemingly unshakable poise, she was also the most intimidating of the four band members.
But what really delighted Rex was Jo’s angular, jangly lead guitar playing. Rex loved to have something interesting to lay a bassline under, and it didn’t hurt that Jo’s history included a brief era playing in one of Rex’s favourite defunct local punk bands. As far as Rex was concerned, Jo was a monster on her instrument and a wonder to behold on stage and too high most of the time to have a real conversation with, which only added to her allure even more.
The Bukowskis made it out of the garden with no altercations, drove back to the jam space to swap the car for their van and gear, and still had time to draw thirty-six BBBFB logos in black sharpie on thirty-six stolen pumpkins before heading to the party at number 271.
Now, as Rex maneuvered their too-heavy bass amp through a kitchen packed full of stylish twenty-somethings, they were especially grateful for Jo’s presence ahead of them. She carved a wide path with her amp, guitar, and the suitcase containing her pedal board. Rex estimated that the pumpkin picking might have gone in half the time with her helping, but knew that Jaymie was trying to be considerate about the amount of illegal activity they involved their new guitarist in.
Rex’s best friend, Maggie, appeared at their side with Rex’s bass on her back—she’d no doubt encountered their van on her way in.
“What a bunch of hipsters,” Maggie muttered into Rex’s ear. “Kill me if I’m dressed like that at twenty-five.” She jerked her chin derisively at a woman wearing an ocean-blue onesie and ten thousand wooden bangles. Maggie was barely sixteen, but Maggie had Lived.
“Your mom let you come!” said Rex, instantly more at ease among the polished (or intentionally unkempt) strangers.
“She had nothing to do with it. And since when have I ever missed a Bukowski show?” She did another scan of the room, upon which the mid-October Halloween spirit was overlaid like a subtle Instagram filter; about half the party-goers had taken up the costume suggestion, and a few vampires, personified puns, and skimpy cats mingled with those sporting more conventional autumn finery.
They brought the gear to the living room, a carpeted space without furniture. The walls were a mosaic of cult horror film posters and hand-drawn art that depicted warped humanoids with too many eyes and noses and gave the distinct impression of being not just seasonal décor. It screamed artist house, and Rex felt a swell of excitement at the venue’s dingy glamour.
“So, I heard Aaron’s back in the band? Didn’t he, like, bail on you guys and swear never to play another show or something? And Jaymie un-twinned with him and then they weren’t best-friends-slash-brothers anymore? What’s the deal?”
Maggie knew everything. Maggie being out of the loop on band intel was unthinkable; Rex knew she was just looking for another take on the drama.
“Tell you later. I have a bunch of pumpkins to set up. Want to help?”
Maggie said, “Hmm,” and conveniently caught the eye of one of the few other teenagers with enough cred to know about the show. She waved him over.
“So who’s the band?” asked her new conquest. He had a red toque pulled low, and Rex vaguely recognized him from school.
“You don’t know?” Maggie cried, as though being unfamiliar with an on-again-off-again local indie band were the worst faux pas imaginable.
Rex smiled, gave a teenaged-yet-tasteful roll of their eyes, and set off to find the merch table as Maggie zeroed in on her victim. Behind them, Maggie’s voice was swallowed by the din as she said, “Ok, I’ll tell you.”
Maggie, as the founding member of the BBBFB’s official fan club (four members and counting), was intimately aware of their history. The band had been formed two years and ten months ago by the three siblings, whose origin she also knew the gist of: they’d been born Jaymes, Ayryn, and Rybecca Brzezinski—in that order—to serve as sidemen in their mother’s various musical projects. A celebrated jazz musician, Leonora McLeod had need of a backing band who would not require payment. Such were the times for professional musicians.
The training of Leonora’s accompanists, as Maggie liked to tell it, had taken longer than anticipated, and in the meantime she’d taken on a semi-permanent gig with a Cirque du Soleil show in Las Vegas, which kept her away from her family for gradually increasing chunks of each year. Her offspring, unable to eschew their intended destiny, had compulsively maintained regular rehearsals, which were mainly directionless (and occasionally combative) improvised jams, until the day her eldest had commandeered the band to his own ends.
Rex, quiet and amenable, had taken to the bandstand since the day their bass was placed in their infant fingers, but of the identical Jaymes and Ayryn, only Jaymie had inherited his mother’s passion for the performing life. Aaron was less than enthusiastic.
Just out of earshot from where Maggie regaled her friend with his life story, Aaron grudgingly set up his battered kit on a grubby carpet, in a house slathered in trashy posters and garish homemade art and filled with people who were mostly drunk and unnecessarily loud. Halloween had been half-heartedly splattered across everything like a spreading stain.
He adjusted the cymbal height. He dutifully made sure the snare was off so it wouldn’t bother Jaymie during his stupid introductory soliloquy. He placed a stash of drumsticks easily accessible for when his nervous hands inevitably dropped or flung the ones he started with.
Then he went to see if Rex was still setting up merch in the front hall, only to find that all thirty-six pumpkins had disappeared and the man charging cover at the door was slumped over the cash box, his tiny, circular glasses askew, quite dead.
A slender band of blood striped across the man’s neck. Aaron’s pulse quickened. He felt the too-familiar pressure in his chest, like his ribcage was a room in a sci-fi movie, rigged so its Jenga-block walls would fold in piece by piece until his heart and lungs could either agree to work together to solve some kind of depraved puzzle or else be crushed to death. He wished, not for the first time, that he had more control over his body’s adrenal impulses.
He exhaled harshly, ran his damp hands through his hair, and tried to steady his breathing. Situations like this were exactly why he’d quit the band in the first place.
Bukowski's broken family band 
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