Read Run for Free Online

is playing loud enough to sizzle the little plastic speaker.
    Hurdy gurdy he sang
, and CK’s actually trying to sing along and it’s a good thing the volume’s topped out because I do not want to hear him sing.
    Faggot music, Mackie says, but CK just keeps going.
    I said—
    Heard you, CK tells Mackie. He rolls down the sound a little and he stares over at me and he says:
    You know who’s playing lead guitar?
    I say: What?
    And he says: Do you know who played lead guitar on this song?
    I say: No, who played the lead guitar? Which right about now is growling down, real fuzzy, and starting to make me think we’re going someplace I don’t want to go.
    CK drops his boots from the table and looks at me like he’s won the lottery.
    Jimmy Page, he says.
    I decide it’s best to look suitably impressed. Huh, I say.
    But Mackie leans in. Who the fuck is Jimmy Page?
    I don’t believe you, CK says. I don’t fucking believe you.
    Then CK turns right back to me and says, So?
    And I say, So?
    Which is a mistake, because then he says:
    All right, so do you know who’s playing drums? On this song? Who put sticks right onto the pads on this song?
    CK, I tell him, you got me, you know? This time you really gotme, man, because I don’t know who played the lead guitar and I don’t know the guy who’s singing and I sure as hell don’t know who’s playing the drums.
    The airy-fairy guy’s singing something about the Roly Poly Man now.
    And I tell CK: Okay, was it like Ringo Starr or what?
    CK moves his lips nice and slow, like he’s the teacher and I’m the retard, and he says: John Bonham.
    Mackie burps out the kind of mad laugh at CK that only a guy’s partner can make and stay standing. Me, I have to walk the line.
    Roly poly roly poly roly poly he sang
.
    So I say: Uh, CK, help me out with this one, okay? Like, who is John Bonham?
    You guys. That’s all he says, shaking his head and closing his eyes. You fucking guys. His hand rubs at his temple,
hurdy gurdy he sang
, and sooner or later the song ends, and CK reaches over and spins down the volume on a Pepsi commercial all the way to off.
    How many times you heard that song?
    CK—
    I start to tell him something, but Mackie says: Too many.
    Fuck you, man, CK says to Mackie, and then to me: Fuck you too. You just don’t get nothing, do you? That song is poetry, man. You know what poetry is? That’s these pretty words that mean something. Poetry, man. And not just this I-love-you, will-you-love-me bullshit. The guy is telling us something. The song means something. Poetry.
    He pulls the shotgun, a Remington Combat 870, up from its case and sweeps the radio, the filthy ashtray, and a folded newspaper from the tabletop like bread crumbs. His left hand dumps double-ought buckshot shells across the chipped wood surface.
    Don’t you get it? Don’t you ever get it?
    He shovels one of the shells into the shotgun and grabs for another one.
    The song is about death, he says.
    Then he pumps the shotgun, chambers the first shell.
    This is when Mikey walks into the room. Or maybe I like toremember it that way. We could have waited twenty minutes more, for all I really know, but that’s what I remember: those words, CK loading that shotgun, and then Mikey walking into the room.
    Mikey is wearing a suit and a tie. Mikey is carrying one of those dull silver briefcases, the Haliburton hard-shell drug-dealer thing, and he looks at CK and he looks at Mackie and he looks at me and he says:
    Hey.
    That’s what else I remember. He said: Hey.
    To which he got the greetings all around.
    Hey.
    Hello, Michael.
    Mikey, good to see you.
    The last is CK, and right about now I’m almost convinced that Mikey is going to sit in the folding chair on the far side of the table and he is going to open his suitcase and he and CK are going to do their deal.
    Mikey even reaches for CK’s hand and the two of them have a kind of shake across the table, as if the shotgun isn’t there for all to