Day 53: Music Room

[rocksthecourt]

Well, if it wasn't his favorite time of the week. They say distance makes the heart grow fonder. Of course in this case, distance makes Klavier feel like an abused, neglected animal who was only now being allowed a taste of actual food. These people were such savages. It was still absolutely absurd that they were allowed access to this room so

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[its_the_mileage]

Therapy hadn't illuminated much, but interesting things were happening on the bulletin board, notably the reintroduction of maps. This set was cruder than the one Indy had copied shortly after his arrival, with the staff-only rooms unmarked--an effort to evade the recent spike in censorship, evidently. Still, it was good that knowledge was getting out there.

He didn't have anything planned for this shift, so he just let the nurse lead him to the music room once he'd finished checking the bulletin board. Indy briefly amused himself with the idea of turning up to Pilgrim's "Sex Bob-Omb" (kids these days) auditions, if only to see the look on the kid's face. (His actual ability to contribute was probably limited; he hadn't seen any saxophones around here.)

After a few seconds, he decided that no matter how much his dignity had been curtailed over the last few weeks by his being forced to wear a ridiculous uniform and be led around by the hand by a bunch of condescending nurses, he drew the line at even pretending to be interested in the musical opportunities presented by a group called "Sex Bob-Omb." So he just picked up a small drum for the sake of looking compliant and took a seat on one of the couches where he could watch the audition process. Comedy hour didn't count as progress, but in Indy's book it was better than nothing.

[its_the_mileage]

Indy wasn't surprised to see Peter Parker saunter in, although the sling was new. "I doubt they're looking for an old guy like me," he answered with mock self-deprecation. On second thought, he realized he was glad Peter of all people had turned up; he was probably the best candidate here to explain the sociocultural context of a band like this. "You know," Indy began, "something tells me the term 'Bob-omb' is a little after my time. Any idea what that is, or is it just a nonsense phrase?" If Indy had to guess, he'd venture it was a corruption of the word "bomb," although what sex had to do with bombs, and what either of them had to do with the questionable-looking sheet music Pilgrim had posted, he couldn't begin to speculate.

That reminded him; there was something else he needed to ask Peter as well. "And by the way, have you seen Keman around in the last day or so? The bandleader--" the ironic glance in the direction of the audition space didn't to much to mask the seriousness of the question, "--asked me that this morning and I realized it's been some time."

[its_the_mileage]

"Who bas tank?" Indy just shook his head. In his experience, bands were named after their leaders (e.g., The Benny Goodman Band, The Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, etc.), and by God, that was the way things ought to be.

But as soon as the question about Keman was out of Indy's mouth, Peter got antsy, and Indy had his answer before he heard it. No, he'd missed the answers to that particular note.

So Keman was missing. Indy was silent for a moment while he digested that. He'd known people who'd vanished here; Pierson's disappearance in particular hadn't been easy to accept. But he couldn't really have called Pierson a friend, and Keman had certainly been that. He recognized his current thought process as the same one you had when someone died unexpectedly, the one that always brought him back to the period after Mom's death: you wondered if they'd been happy; you tried to justify the terms the two of you had been on. Indy knew Keman hadn't been any happier at Landel's than anyone else, but at least the last time they'd talked, he'd finally managed to earn Indy's credence about the dragon claims, at least to an extent. Indy found himself hoping that acceptance had had some measure of resolution to it, made Keman feel slightly better about things.

Not that any of that navel-gazing would bring the kid back. Normally Indy's impulse would've been to go look for him, but he'd never heard anything to suggest that any of the people who'd tried (and there must have been many) had ever had any success. Like Dad, if they were here, the missing patients were somewhere inaccessible to him--at least for now. Keman's disappearance didn't change the fact that all he could do was keep investigating in the hope of eventually hitting on something that would let him figure out what was going on here. Indy was no stranger to soldiering on after that sort of loss.

"Thanks," he said, moving his gaze away from the opposite wall and back to Peter. "I'm sorry to you, too. I'll look at the note when I get a chance, but do you happen to know the name they gave him or anything else that might help us find his file?"

[its_the_mileage]

"Don't worry about it," Indy said, waving one hand in an attempt to dismiss Peter's obvious discomfort. "If I need it, I can always try to find his roommate."

It was clear that Peter was uneasy with the conversation, which made Indy wonder--not for the first time--if he ever had a talk with these kids that didn't make them more unsettled. (After that first night, Pilgrim didn't count. If being turned into a woman didn't permanently unsettle that guy, nothing Indy could say was likely to do it.) His students were simple enough to handle--a few pointers about the course material and a couple of words of encouragement and they were on their way--and he'd gotten along well with Shorty, but he still felt inadequate, here. Maybe Venkman had been onto something when he'd referenced what the Jones boys might have in common.

He was getting lost in his thoughts again. He reached up instinctively to adjust the brim of his hat, remembered he wasn't wearing one, and put his hand back down, trying to think of a good response. How did you explain something like this? "I don't know if that 'Temple of Doom' film showed this, but during that trip, I lost a friend," he began after a minute. "His name was Wu Han, and we'd been on a number of adventures together over several years. And he got shot by some crime lord's son." The memory still made him clench his fists, three years later. "I needed to get out of there, so I just left his body lying in the club. That wasn't the only time I'd done something like that, either.

"What I've learned over the years is that you don't always get the time you want to to mourn. Sometimes all you can do is press on and tell yourself that's what they would've wanted you to do."

Indy rubbed the back of his neck, a touch self-consciously. "In other words, I'll be all right. Sorry for the lecture. Force of habit."

[its_the_mileage]

Indy'd seen it too. That was the so-called "toymaker," wasn't it? Shouldn't be difficult to find. He'd take a look at that note on the way back to his room and try to get in touch with the roommate tomorrow.

Peter's attitude had shifted from vague sadness about Keman's disappearance to a deeper, more general grief. Indy let him talk, wondering all the while what kind of fights the teenaged self-made superhero and his friends got into that led to them being impaled through the chest by poles.

"You don't forget them," he objected when Peter had finished, speaking with a conviction he wasn't sure he felt. Plenty of faces ran together over the years, people who'd been lost in one way or another, and this place seemed to accelerate that process. How often, really, did he think about Pierson--or Deirdre, for that matter?

"Listen, Peter," he tried again. "If you gave things their full weight, mourned every loss in here the way it deserved, you'd get crushed by it. There'll be a time for that, once we get out of here, but right now, the best way to honor them is to keep going. There's still a chance we can help them." If even some of the visitors actually were previous patients, they couldn't be killing them all. There was someplace they were holding people like Dad, and Indy was determined to find out what it was and get them out of it.

Peter's burst of enthusiasm dragged a smile out of him, despite the grim tone of the conversation. "Hopefully there'll be time for that too, kid."