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Show All the Variables & Other Love Stories 89 Work always seemed to come between Feste and his ambitions. Mark was but an example. Responsibility offended Feste's grindcore sensibilities. When he had been promoted to line-cook supervisor he'd thought about quitting but then decided living a too principled life to be the antithesis of grindcore. A month later the restaurant had fired Feste for selling heroin out of plastic to-go cups, and to celebrate his new job throwing freight at the Utah Schoolbook Depository he'd bought a vintage Mannlicher-Carcano bolt-action rifle complete with faulty site. Everyone thought the rifle in poor taste. Feste had shrugged the criticism off. The proper posture of the truly grindcore toward politics was indifference, since no fundamentally grindcore school of thought existed. Fascism was grindcore in theory, Feste conceded, but didn't work in practice. This Rachmaninoff business made Feste nervous because he really believed in this band. They were on the verge of something special. He could feel it coming. They were a band practice or two away from a morbid new sound that would genuinely make the ears of lesser mortals weep blood. He explained all this to Lindsay, who nodded amiably and said, "Do you think Travis is okay?" Feste grunted and shrugged. He kissed the nightingale birthmark under Lindsay's clavicle that fell between her breasts. The bird had been tattooed on her mother's belly, Lindsay explained, and had been inherited by Lindsay as a red scar against her alabaster skin. Feste sat on the edge of the bed while Lindsay propped her head on an elbow, a sheet folded across her breasts the size of lemons, and watched him dress. |
