Chapter 20: Rebirth

Chapter 20

Rebirth

I like to think that it was right after the orgy that I started playing the piano again, but it was actually a couple of days later. It was Bach's Prelude in C Major, the famous one. I had first learned it when I was eight or nine; I can't tell if I played it better then or right after the orgy. My first settlement check came in. It was enough to buy a house, but brunette Holly encouraged me to wait until after the election, as the housing market was too unstable right now.

“Obama's going to win,” she said.

“How do you know that,” I asked. “The news says...”

“Fuck the news, let me show you the real source.” She took me to a website called 

FiveThirtyEight.com, which tracked polling data and provided a mathematical model for who was going to win. It also talked about online betting casinos which had Obama as a 9-to-1 favorite.

“It's really going to happen, then. A black President.” I felt that as a nation, we'd grown up somehow.

I bought a Lexus sedan and a new arranger keyboard, a Korg M3 with 88 keys. I bought silly things, including 10 pairs of Converse All Star Chuck Taylors, the old type, in 10 different hues. Trout loved the different-colored shoes, and I liked the way the high tops hid my prosthetic foot. Brunette Holly suggested I buy a Mac Book Pro. Blonde Holly suggested I buy a Vitamix blender. I bought both. I got the new iPhone.

All of this covered the darkness that lay hidden beneath the surface.