Maggie’s account was a charming one, but who are the Bukowski Brothers, really?
First, more on Leonora. The Brzezinski siblings’ mother was a notoriously sarcastic freelance saxophone player from the vibrant neighbourhood of Transcona. Everything Leonora did—from her choice of fashion accessories to her improvised melodies—had a tinge of irony to it. Though she almost never missed a gig, booking agents often made sure they had a back-up plan because they couldn’t tell if her acceptance to play was sincere or not.
She’d received two degrees in music and played masterfully, though her stage banter was terrible. Listeners memorized song titles as she introduced them, only to find later that the names led only to Gregorian chants or ancient polkas; on her albums the songs were titled only with serial numbers. Audiences left her shows exhilarated by the joy of music but with an uncomfortable feeling they’d been insulted at some point and hadn’t noticed. Growing up with such an influence, it was hardly surprising if the Brzezinskis’ music occasionally blurred the lines between artistry and farce.
Their father was a Polish private investigator. In his twenties he’d worked as a police officer, and he’d arrested Leonora for public indecency while she was on a European tour. She’d gone for a celebratory post-show swim in the river Vistula, then hung all her clothes on the Warsaw Mermaid and lain beneath waiting for them to dry throughout the summer night.
The unwitting man made the mistake of confessing to her an amateur passion for the clarinet, somehow allowed her to allow him to buy her a drink upon her release, and sobered up to find himself imprisoned in the poorly-lit wastes of central Canada with a couple of precocious toddlers. Such things could happen in the company of Leonora.
Brzezinski got his wits about him and planned an elaborate escape back to Poland. Warsaw could also get cold, but it was a kind of cold he could comprehend and come to terms with. He caught a plane.
In subsequent years he became disillusioned with police work and started his own P.I. business, expecting mostly to track down wayward teenagers and stalk cheating spouses. He was soon being celebrated throughout the country for catching all kinds of under-the-radar serial killers and minor psychopaths, details of which he clipped out of newspapers and faithfully mailed overseas to his little boys. He maintained a polite correspondence with his former partner but never quite understood that chapter of his life.
Years later, Leonora took another tour in his general direction. The cultured cities of Europe were calling to her, and North America was not buying what she had to sell. The trip resulted in the conception of Rex; it was never confirmed whether Leonora was still in love with the detective or just having trouble finding a bass player. The poor man was as baffled as anyone. He resolved to do a better job of keeping in touch—he made sure to email the children monthly, and never failed to send them each a jazz-themed Christmas card.
“So what genre are you, anyway?” A woman dressed entirely in horizontal black and white stripes had taken a promising interest in Jaymie as he carried his keyboard inside.
“Whatever genre you want me to be, baby.”
The woman had been speaking to Jaymie for about five minutes—the amount of time it takes, upon meeting an attractive stranger, to generate a rich backstory in your imagination and cast them as the hero of it. A certain ‘benefit of the doubt’ results, whereby any lapse of civility can be excused as self-aware and innocently flirtatious. Jaymie was aware of this phenomenon. He also guessed the woman was a few years older than him and clever, which he always felt exonerated him from anything he did to encourage the fantasy.
“How about acoustic sludge metal? With some throat singing thrown in?” she asked, sipping something rose-coloured and narrowing her long-lashed eyes at him. “No wait, I’m in a tranquil mood. An hour of binaural beats?”
“I get nervous playing my binaural set, but maybe if you can get a drink or two in me …”
Jaymie stepped closer to her, then cringed as Aaron materialized at his side, pulling on his shirtsleeve and looking about as frantic as usual.
“Jaymie Jaymie Jaymie, the door guy. The door guy is dead.”
Jaymie had always known there was something off about Aaron that went beyond the simple pain of being the slightly less handsome and charismatic twin. He knew at some point something had shaken Aaron up enough to interfere with the DNA chemistry that could have cultivated similar personalities in the two. But he never brought it up, out of respect, and he tolerated Aaron’s idiosyncrasies with all the tenderness and patience of unconditional love.
“Fuck off, Aar. I’m busy.”
“Did you hear me? He’s dead!”
“I heard—hang on, what? Sorry.” He glanced in apology at the woman. “Who’s dead?”
“The guy working the door—somebody killed him! And the pumpkins are gone! We need to get out of here, Jay. There’s some bad shit going on.” Aaron bounced on the balls of his feet and rubbed his knuckles, which was never a good sign.
“OK, calm down.” Jaymie knew about eight different tactics for de-escalating Aaron, and he chose one at random. “People die, Aar. We can’t quit music just because that’s a reality. It’d take a fucking worldwide zombie pandemic to stop this band! Right? I mean, obviously in that case we’d take a break, for the safety of the general public and—I digress. Look, the door guy, you said? I’m sure someone’s on it. In the meantime, you know what’s a good distraction?”
“Seriously?”
“Sharing the power of rock and roll! What ills could possibly befall us in front of a whole crowd of people?”
“Why did I think you were the right person to come to about this?”
“No use worrying—”
“Just habit, I guess.”
“You know what?” Jaymie clapped him on the back. “Round up the others. It’s time!”
“Yeah, no. I’m gonna call the cops and ask our kid sister to talk me through this.”
“Sibling.”
“Sibling! Kid sibling.” Aaron’s incredulity over this exchange appeared to have diverted him from his panic attack, which Jaymie noted with a sense of victory.
“Do you feel better?” he asked.
“Yeah, I can almost breathe again. Thanks for fucking nothing, Jay.”
The thing with anxiety, Jaymie mused, is that it can seriously sap your creativity. Chronic nerves could burn through countless watts of the precious energy that would otherwise be put toward things like songwriting, or developing hopes and dreams. But it wasn’t as though Aaron was a lost cause. Some people just needed a little extra care and reassurance.
“Sorry about that,” he said, turning back to the woman.
He needn’t have apologized; she’d used the extra minute to process the fact that the adorable man she’d been flirting with had an adorable look-alike and they were probably together all the time and maintained a constant adorable ironic rapport and gave people déjà vu whenever they passed a few minutes apart. There was no number of dead door-people that could stop her from giving him her number by the end of the night.
“It’s OK. No, actually I’m offended—whispers of death on a night like this! How will you make it up to me?” She tugged at the hem of her stripy dress and cocked her head to one side.
“I’m going to change all the names in our songs to your name,” Jaymie suggested. “Even the murder ballads.”
“Am I the murderer or the murderee?”
“You’re the murderess. Of … myy … heeaaaarrrtt …”
It was hard to tell, with musicians, whether they were perfectly enchanting or the absolute worst, but at least she wouldn’t be bored. Before he could fully burst into song, she laughed in his face, took his hand, and led him to the kitchen to share a delicious ironic raspberry vodka cooler with him.
Garrett, ex-drummer for the BBBFB, stood in his backyard with a scotch in hand, staring at the pumpkin-less vines that gripped the expanse of his garden. He was indulging in a vision of his plants as a sleeping beast, ready to awaken and rise from the earth, tentacles writhing into the alley as the monster mourned the loss of her babies.
Full of fury and retribution, she’d roil down the block toward the conveniently close house party, where she’d exact her strangulatory vengeance, bearing her victims home to be digested in the depths of the dirt. And Garrett would stand with his whiskey, and watch.
Unfortunately, the garden lay still, and Garrett knew that if he wanted justice he’d have to go out and demand it.
He also knew the Bukowskis hadn’t expected him to discover the missing pumpkins until the next day. He was supposed to be playing three sets with another band, and then he was supposed to go home and collapse into bed without ever glancing at his backyard.
But the bar had been shut down by health inspectors because of a bizarre fungus proliferating in an unmaintained grease-trap, and the show was cancelled.
Two days ago, Garrett had received his final email from the BBBFB, whom he’d been playing with as Aaron’s replacement for the past four months. It read only, “We no longer require your services.” And while Garrett knew the reason he’d been terminated, he still felt bitter that he’d never had an opportunity to share his side of the story.
Not that he still wanted to be in the band. He was a professional-level musician, and if there were more session work in the city, he’d be making a living at it. As it was, he’d practically been paying to play—their meagre payout from shows went in the band account, and practices cost him at least two nights out of his week. This was not the sustainable gig he needed. But he did need those pumpkins. Market-gardening in his large back and front yards supplemented his income enough to take the holidays off and go home to Steinbach for Christmas.
He drained his glass, pulled on a jacket against the growing chill, set off toward the party and, like a sane and reasonable person, called the police.
“Jo! Have you seen Rex? Actually, hey, look, oh my god, OK, I know this sounds crazy, but the guy charging cover at the door is for sure dead.”
“Dead? Dang. Let’s go take a look,” said Jo, who’d just gotten freshly baked for the show and was feeling amenable and up for anything. “You sure he’s not sleeping?”
“His eyes were wide open!”
“Or, like, took acid and wigged out? People do dumb stuff at these things. Could be ketamine, could be TwiLite …”
“He was all white, and there was blood—and his mouth was wide open—he was—I don’t—he wasn’t breathing—his fingers were like—”
“OK, don’t panic. That sounds rough.”
She followed Aaron through the throng to the front table, where a person in leopard print was accepting the ten-dollar “suggested donation” from new arrivals. A young couple stood nearby with their heads close together, speaking in furtive whispers. Jo remembered Jaymie greeting these two earlier; they were the organizers of the show.
“Oh my god, he’s gone,” said Aaron. “Nobody will ever believe me. Everyone will think I’m even crazier than they already do—”
“Hi! We’re so sorry. There was a death. We’ve taken care of it.” One of the organizers moved close to Aaron and Jo and put a hand on each of their shoulders, as though to console them. “Sorry everything’s starting late. Life is full of unexpected ebbs and flows,” she said.
“We adore your music, BTW,” said the young man.
“We’re super excited for the show.”
“Please help yourself to some artful beverages from the back porch. And feel free to share your tunes whenever you like.”
“Thanks, man. We will,” said Jo, suddenly loath to disappoint the earnest couple. As she spoke, she felt the itch to have her guitar in hand, and she imagined the soft click of her delay pedal as she tapped in the tempo of the first song. She glanced at Aaron, who didn’t appear placated. “But about the … ah … death. Is everything …?”
“Like, did someone call the police?” urged Aaron.
“Oh!” exclaimed the woman. “Police. Yes.”
“Most def. First thing.”
“Nobody loves cops—”
“—but sometimes it’s the right thing to do.”
“We just thought since the night was going so well.”
“So well. And no need to call off the music, when …”
“It’s just this has been happening lately …”
“People sort of know the risks by now.”
“We figured we can’t just stop having shows, right? Unless you’re not … If you don’t want to …” The woman looked up at Jo with pleading and very creatively outlined eyes.
“Yeah, we’ll play,” said Jo.
“Excellent, excellent. Don’t worry about anything. It’s all under control.”
“Totes.”
Jo looked to Aaron. He shifted back and forth, patted an agitated beat on his thighs, and finally shrugged and nodded.
They made their way back to the living room to find Jaymie adjusting his synths and Rex brandishing cat-ear headbands and syrupy-looking face paint in their direction, and they took up their guitar and drumsticks to play a show.
Bukowski's broken family band 
Leave a comment