Connect with Joe on Facebook The Brown Guitar
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I told you before that Georgie was an ex-musician married to Miss Elizabeth, the pretty and sweet witch, who was getting ready to steal Suzy’s baby, once the baby was born, or maybe even before. Georgie and Suzy had a little thing going, a little flirtatious thing, which could at any moment bloom into something more than flirtatious, if given the right circumstances. That’s just how things are, sometimes. I’m sure you know what I mean. They’d only just met. It was an arranged meeting. Elizabeth was there, and so was Pops, and Georgie was there, and so was Suzy. Elizabeth was saying stuff like, ‘Oh I cant wait! I cant wait! I am going to love this baby so much!’ Pops was kind of confused by the whole thing. He was scratching his head, so to speak, wondering, you might say, why this expensive and beautiful young woman wanted his girl’s child. It was supposed to be a voluntary handing over of the hostage. Of the baby, that is. Suzy was putting it up. And Elizabeth was snatching it up. And Georgie, married to Elizabeth, was going along for the ride. He was kind of amused. Humoring Elizabeth. And surprised that this little urchin, this Suzy with the big belly, somehow struck a chord in him, when their eyes met. A few days later, in the afternoon, Suzy stopped by the house, on some pretext. ‘Come on in,’ said Georgie, with that humorous, maybe a little condescending look in his eyes. He was the old maestro, that was him. Once had a real gig going, a real band, real music. Suzy walked in, looked around. She was always at her ease. Even though she was little and so young. Even though her belly was starting to pop out like a kettle drum.
And that’s the day she saw the brown guitar. ‘Whoa!,’ were her exact words, when she first laid eyes on it, as it sat in its stand, on the side there, in his music room, where he had all his trinkets and trophies from his bygone days, his glory days, when he rocked out with a real band. Not like nowadays, when he wrote jingles, little rhymes with the pitter patter of toe-tapping notes. Though the dollars were there, for that sort of drivel. It kept the house heated, right? ‘Is this yours?,’ she said. ‘Sure is,’ he said. ‘Can I play it?,’ she said. ‘Sure can,’ he said. So they sat down. He had another guitar, not quite as brown, which he picked up and held in his lap, while she held the brown guitar, the real brown guitar, in her lap, once she made a little room for it, by wiggling around her big belly. Nowadays, she even had breasts. That was something new, relatively speaking. When she strummed the brown guitar and heard those pure tones, her eyes lit up. His eyes lit up when he saw her eyes light up. And she noticed that his eyes lit up when he saw her eyes light up. And she liked that. And so did he. Without going into too many details, they both liked it. And she could play all right, she could play. She wasnt bad. She wasnt bad at all. ‘We had a band,’ she said, ‘Me and Johnny. But we kind of dont have it any more,’ and she looked down at her belly, and smiled, and he liked the way her smile was shy. She thought he had pretty eyes. But she didnt understand why he was sad, but sad in a way that was somehow unattractive. I mean, he had bucks, he had this house, this expensive wife who also knew how to work and make money, and he had this brown guitar.
‘She doesnt need to steal my baby,’ she said to him. She edged a little closer, sliding her little butt along on the piano stool she was sitting on. Their frets, the frets of their guitars, were practically touching. ‘I didnt know she was planning to steal it,’ he said, ‘I thought it was all legal, and all that. What was that lawyer for?’ ‘Nah,’ said Suzy, ‘She wants to steal it. Before it’s even born. She wants to do one of those transfers, those magical transfers.’ ‘You’ve been watching too many movies,’ he said to her. ‘You should make a baby with me,’ she said to him, ‘Or cant you do it? Is that why she cant have them herself? Because you cant do it?’ ‘I can do it,’ he said, ‘She’s the one who cant do it.’ ‘Then you should have one with me,’ Suzy said, ‘Then she wouldnt need to steal this one I’m having with Johnny.’ ‘What makes you think she wants to steal it?,’ he said, ‘And how can I have a baby with you, if you already have one in there?’ ’What do you mean?,’ Suzy said, ‘Dont you think it’s possible to make a double decker baby?’ ‘No, I dont believe it is,’ he said, ‘Though that’s the first time I ever heard such a term.’ ‘Well, there’s always a first time,’ she said, ‘And people shouldnt be discouraged, just because something’s never been done. They should believe in what might be possible. Like you, for example. Maybe you could be a musician again.’ ‘And me, for example,’ she said, still talking, ‘Maybe I could layer another baby right on top of this one.’ ‘Imagine how big you’d be,’ he said. ‘Let’s find out,’ she said, and she’d already put aside her guitar, and his, and she was already on his lap, and somehow she had already cleared away any articles of clothing which might hinder the process. ‘I dont believe you,’ he said, and she said, as she brought her mouth down to his, ‘Believing me has got nothing to do with it.’
It was one of those things, Sister, where everything gets out of proportion real fast. He was already bursting as she lowered herself onto him in the sweetest and gentlest and most considerate way possible. With all due respect. And as she brought her mouth down onto his, and he opened himself to receive her, it surprised him, it amazed him, how sweet her breath was. And he had never felt himself so bursting. Yet somehow she helped him refrain. Must’ve been how gentle she was. He didnt know where to put his hands. They were sort of flailing, off to the side. Or they were gently climbing up her back. But he couldnt get his hands under her shirt. Finally she had to help him. And oh man, that was the thing. That was the thing that really kicked it in for him. Finally getting his hands under her shirt. It was that warmth and that smoothness. Something unlike whatever he’d felt before, with whomever he’d been with before. She had her hands in his hair. That’s where she’d always wanted to put them, from the very first time she walked in through the front door, with her Dad beside her, good old Pops. It was one of those big phony double doors with leaded clouded glass in it. Just like everything else in the house was phony, including him, except for his hair. And now something else, what she had inside her, that wasnt phony. And she intended to keep it there, and not let him off the hook so easy. Now some say that it was exactly at this moment that Elizabeth came in. Or didnt come in completely, but stood in the doorway of this second floor room which she had allotted to her husband for his hobbies and his work. Some say all she said, as she stood there in the doorway, not coming in, was ‘Whoa!’ But according to Suzy, who afterwards told the story to Johnny, what Elizabeth really said was, ‘It will never work.’ And whatever she meant by that is still up for grabs.
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