The Paper Man Escapes the Great Broken Heart
by George Potter
The guy who sold it to me, in a low rent downtown charm shop, said the paper man had actually belonged to Frank Zappa for several months in the early 90's. I'm pretty good at smelling a lie, and it was obvious that the salesman believed what he was saying. That doesn't make it truth of course, but it's a better indicator than none.
"Why so cheap then?" I asked, suspicious. Zappa is a god these days. Anything with his name on it is gold.
"Well," the salesman said, grinning, "I'll show you." He grabbed a box from a shelf in his storeroom and brought it over. He dropped it at my feet. He gestured for me to open it.
The paper man was packed carefully inside, in two dozen pieces.
"Ah. Damaged goods," I said.
The salesman held up a finger. "Not necessarily." He reached into the box and extracted a piece of the paper man, holding it out for study. It was the top half of the head.
"Look how clean the cuts are, how straight and smooth." The salesman was good. His pitch barely felt like a pitch, much smoother than the cuts he called attention to. "More than one appraiser has conjectured that the disassembly was done on purpose."
I took the half a head and studied it. It wasn't ordinary paper mache. Instead, it looked like sheet after sheet of notebook paper, carefully fused and shaped. The eyes were two brilliant rhinestones that caught the low light of the shop and flashed. I brought it closer. Were those the faint remnants of words scrawled and spiraling across the surface?
The salesman sighed. "And that's the problem, of course. Not knowing what the proper condition should be. Is it ruined as it is? Or is it ruined if you laboriously put it back together?"
I nodded, understanding. I kept studying the marks.
"Has anyone bothered to ask?"
The salesman looked a little affronted. "With that kind of price differential? Of course we did." He sighed. "No good. Zappa isn't answering questions. He ain't the ghost type."
The faint black marks were words, I decided.
"I'll take it," I said.
Roderick Brown, my office door says. Rock N' Roll Detective. The letters are tattered, being the cheap dollar store kind. I keep saying I'll re-do them and they keep peeling.
The door doesn't really lock, you just have to twist the handle a certain way, so I didn't have much trouble even with the burden of the box. I plopped it down on my desk, took a seat, and rummaged for a drink.
One shot in a giant bottle, almost comical. I thought about my bank balance as I knocked the remains back and grimaced despite the smoothness of the whiskey. The paper man cost me a hundred bucks, price difference or no, assembly required or not. A simple thaumaturgic charm could prove ownership by Zappa, and that was more than enough to make it hot.
Zappa was a god these days, almost literally, his creative spirit having charged bits of the world with wild magicks. Hell, chasing down such bits was the whole bread and butter for a rock n' roll detective, even the fancy sorts who called themselves "popular energy procurement agents."
The collectibles industry wasn't the only business changed by the return of the para-real.
Zappa was up there with Bogart and John Bonham, Elvis and Billie Holliday. On the surface this relic probably didn't pack as much juice as, say, the skeleton of Jimmy Cagney those Arabs stole and used to take over Iran. But I'm not that ambitious. I had little direct use for thaumaturgy, just a talent for finding the relics. I traded my finds for a simpler magick, the kind that came in thick green stacks.
And I had a feeling that this paper man was quite a bit more potent than anyone suspected.
My office was small, just enough room for my desk and a file cabinet that I never used, and a few souvenirs of my glory days. I had a secretary once, but I got tired of her sitting at my desk and she got tired of not being paid. It was a mutual split.
The size of my office makes it easy to light, and brightly. I had loads of lumens in here. Relic evaluation takes a lot of light, being all about the details. The power difference between an unmarked Jimi Hendrix guitar pick and one he has lightly scratched the word SHIT into while waiting for a sound check is vast. His initials would be even more powerful, of course, since popular thaumaturgy is all about the personal.
I laid out each piece of the paper man on my desk, and began studying them.
The paper man would have stood about three and a half feet tall, I estimated. His body would be slightly caricatured, with a partly hunched back and an oversize head. The hands were slightly oversize too, and far more detailed than the rest of the body. They boasted individual fingers with carefully molded joints, seeming articulate.
If my guess was right, though, the whole wouldn't matter much. Each piece would be a substantial relic, worth a fortune.
The notebook paper was my first clue. Those writing-like marks were my second. It was a gamble, but if my suspicions paid off it would mean that this was one of the most powerful relics ever unearthed.
I chose a segment of the head to test, the chunk with the vague indication of a mouth. Properly symbolic, I figured. When it comes to the para-real, symbolism isn't just an intellectual game. It matters.
I was careful. I used a scalpel and tweezers. Under a magnifying glass, and the good bright light of my office, I was vindicated. They were words, on thousands of layers of (yes) notebook paper, crisscrossing each other, melding into and out of each other in the structure of the paper body.
I found four consecutive. Should be sufficient to further test my theory.
I fired up the intranet, logging on and locating a Zappa shrine and searching the lyrics pages for a match with my four words. Using my out-of-date but still slugging along thaumaturgic material bus, I sacrificed the paper fleck with those same words in fire, and set the shrine's database to verifying the handwriting. This cost me a twenty dollar donation, also burn transferred through the bus.
The first search returned in seconds. They were indeed Zappa lyrics, from one of his later albums. I read them in their entirety, imagining them trailing into the meld of the paper man.
The verification would take longer, having to channel through the para-real and converse with spirits and the like. Some were talky, some taciturn. Both slowed the process down. You took it as a zen thing.
As I waited, I browsed the shrine, more tasteful and better designed than most of the popular celeb-sites. I re-acquainted myself with exactly why Zappa was such a fount of power despite never attaining the level of mass popularity of an Elvis or a Bogie.
The simplest and largest of the thaumaturgic levels was The Popular, the vast energy created by mass recognition and adoration. Their holidays were times of miracles and wonders. Even intense dislike could power the field, there were hate-fests too. All that mattered was that a hell of a lot of people felt it together. Deeper and more difficult to master was the level of The Creative, artists whose work held aspects of para-reality itself, that asked impossible questions and told unlikely stories.
Zappa was on this level, though he never knew it in life. So were a few rare others: Syd Barrett, Donovan, the Beatles in their later phases. Hendrix. It wasn't just skill, but for the way the art approached the mystical.
Some were actually dangerous. The Residents had been outlawed years before, and disappeared from this mortal plane. Or else were well hidden. Hard to say, since they'd been anonymous from the beginning. The exile of Maynard to an orbital habitat after most of California fell into the sea was still controversial.
Elvis and Bogie and Cagney were magic, sure. But Zappa and his kind were magicians. They created their relics with deeper intent, and what they left behind was more powerful than the shadow of mass attention the Popular relics could release; could be used more personally and directly.
It was musicians who most embodied that level, and rock musicians in particular. That's why I was a rock n' roll detective rather than a more general relic chaser, the aforementioned PEPA's or the paparazzi.
Still killing time, I read up on known Zappa relics. The painting that prophesied every day at noon and midnight, speaking riddles only understandable after the fact. The jacket in Chicago that healed the sick and cured the tone deaf. The copy of Joe's Garage that issued ghost voices from the day and year of recording, haunting snippets of conversation from across the gap of years.
Interesting stuff, sure, and most of it fairly removed from Zappa himself. Even the jacket was known to have belonged, not to Zappa, but an unknown fan. Zappa had found it and worn it a while , then lost it himself.
If I had what I thought...
The verification came through, announcing itself with a tinny MIDI rendition of "Trouble Every Day." I knew I'd struck gold when it was prefaced by a quick spiel from the Shrine itself, pointing out that the proper place for Zappa relics was the church that grooved in his holy name.
Yeah, right. They'd want to pay chickenfeed. Hell, they got their twenty bucks. I knew folks who would pay out of the vein for such a find. For a piece of such a find.
The handwriting belonged to Zappa. The paper man was almost certainly composed of his own notebook drafts of his lyrics.
Thousands and thousands of pages, perhaps his entire catalog.
In practical terms, I possessed one of the most magic-laden pieces of charm ever uncovered. A relic of incredible personalization and intentional design.
It was worth a fortune. Worth enough to let me retire, find some pleasant island, and enjoy the rest of my life.
I felt like celebrating, so I walked the three blocks to the liquor store and spent my last fifteen bucks on a bottle of Old Ruinmaker. I wouldn't be broke for long. I called Diane from the store's pay phone. The one in my office only worked sporadically and developed odd connection problems thanks to the relics I kept there. I wasn't in the mood to talk to the lonely dead or bored succubi. That's a lot less interesting than it sounds.
"Hello," Diane said, her tone one of brooking no nonsense. Her usual tone. "Get your suitcase packed and your bathing suit ready, baby," I told her, feeling warm and tingly even though I hadn't even broken into the Old Ruinmaker yet. "Daddy just hit the big time."
"What the hell are you talking about?" she asked. "Are you shit-faced again?" Diane knew me well. That she still put up with me despite that fact was her main virtue. That (and the fact that she was a pretty and well built lady) was why I loved her so much.
"Not yet," I told her cheerfully, then quickly explained before she could interrupt me again.
She was wary at first, but the excitement grew as she realized that I wasn't messing with her head or playing a drunken prank.
I told her to meet me at the airport in two days, fully packed and ready for a new life. She sounded more vibrant and cheerful than she had in years as we said goodbye. She even told me she loved me.
It's odd how a brightened up future, the sudden opening of prospects, can make even an average day seem beautiful. It was gray out, and a little damp. The city was its usual hazy, noisy self. But it might as well have been the prettiest day spring, to judge by my mood.
I took my time walking back, enjoying the breeze and the rare but charming bursts of sunshine through clouds. I smiled and nodded at passers-by. Most just looked at me suspiciously, not trusting the rumpled suit or the dirty slouch hat or the three day growth of stubble. I didn't care much, my smile -- and the good wishes behind it -- was sincere enough.
And, wonder of wonders, some smiled back, waved, even spoke a hello. I figured those were folks with their own secret reasons for happiness and cheer; their own widened prospects and brightened futures. We passed as strangers with something in common, and that secret connection set us apart from the rest of the surly masses infesting the streets.
As I strolled, I started to whistle, interrupting myself to laugh when I realized it was Zappa's "Catholic Girls." I'm the weird type who, when confronted with good-fortune, tends to look back on the misfortune of the past. This isn't a morbid or depressive streak. In my opinion it's no different than comparing a really good shot of liquor to that nasty rot-gut you had the night before: just another way to savor quality and good fortune. If not for comparisons, does quality even exist?
I passed a sidewalk shaman, hawking roll-ups, and looked over his wares. He was a little Chinese fellow, between old and ancient, dressed in colorful rags that, to my practiced eye, looked like a put-on. He was no more impoverished than I was rich. He probably tripled my own annual income with his little unlicensed smoke stand.
"All tasty smoke," he enthused, waving a hand over his wares. "All potent magic toke, one hundred percent!"
I nodded. He wasn't lying. When you've been in this business as long as I have, you get a nose for such things. This roll-up artist was the real deal.
He squinted, judging me. "You wise in many ways, friend," he told me, losing the sing-song sales pitch.
"What kinda high you looking for? I cut you good deal." His voice was low enough that I knew he was being earnest, not trying to engage the thrift and interest of possible customers passing by.
I pondered a moment, and decided to return his honesty with my own.
"I want something that will bring back sad memories," I told him, choosing my words carefully, "to contrast with happy news."
He seemed impressed by such an esoteric yet direct challenge. He dismissed the stock on his stand with a different sort of gesture. "Nothing here for that," he admitted. He reached behind the stand, into his hidey-hole, and pulled out material. "This'll be custom job." He seemed quite excited by the idea. It struck me that it must be a bore, selling the same old thing to the same old people day after day. A practitioner of his talent must long for a challenge on occasion.
I was flattered that he let me watch him work. His base elements were some extra-dry Turkish tobacco, a pinch of some really green looking cannabis, and tiny shreds from a dozen small pouches. Paper?
He saw my curious glance and grinned. "Autographs, mostly." This he whispered, with a wink. "Personal collection."
I laughed, and gave a little bow. He bowed back, twisted the careful mixture into a zig-zag paper, and handed it to me - along with a pack of matches - with a flourish.
That was when I remembered that I was flat broke. I was about to tell him this when he shook his head.
"On me. Can see it around you, glowing. No money, but good luck. Big change coming. You remember me when life better, hey?"
"A promise. And autographs, huh? Slick."
The old man beamed. "That was my obsession before the Change," he said quietly, all trace of the labored diction gone. "For sixty years I collected 'em, spent more money than I'd like to admit on 'em, too." He pondered a moment. "But doing what you love always pays you back." And just like that he slipped the mask back on and went back to work.
I saluted him with the trim number he'd rolled and wandered on, leaving him to call out for paying customers in his salesman singsong.
I found a clean bench and sat, considering sneaking a drink and deciding against it. Even more than the fear of copping a public intoxication charge, I was beginning to realize that what had been want and pleasure for most of my life was rapidly becoming need and addiction. Trouble every day isn't made better by booze every day, it's just piling bad on worse.
I popped the roll-up in my mouth, struck a match, and took a long drag. The little man was an artist all right. The hodgepodge of tobacco, herb and shredded paper not only burned smoothly, it tasted pleasant. I held the toke in for several long seconds, finally letting it woosh out in a single bluish gust.
Potent indeed. Memory washed over me. Not a pleasant memory, but in the warm glow of the shaman's smoke, I became philosophical, returning to the day I learned I'd never make it as a musician.
"Dude, don't take it so freakin' personal," Jimmy Caleb said in that snotty voice that made me want to break his jaw on the best of days. And this wasn't the best of days.
"Don't take it personal? You're kicking me out of my own god-damned band and you tell me not to..."
"All this emotion is really, like, unproductive, bro."
It took every bit of self control not to just pound the skinny son of a bitch. Aunt Agony was my freakin' band! Mine! I'd placed the ad, held try-outs, provided the damned equipment, scored us a rehearsal space, begged and did favors to insure gigs...hell, it was even my van we used to get back and forth!
And I was being fired? On the word of some tinpot Cassandra?
I clamped down on a string of venom. Rhythm guitarist. That brought it all back in spades. To start with, I'd been lead guitarist and vocalist. I'd eventually agreed that my vocals suffered when I tried to do both. I'd then let Carter, our bass player, weasel into singing because he had better pipes.
"And you're hung up on originals. Originals are over, bro. Fact. The big boys agree. Covers."
I had accepted all that. Even the repetitive nuisance of covering old, already power laden songs. Aunt Agony was important to me, so ego be damned. I did that, dropped into the background, gave up the creative urge, for the good of the band.
But this was beyond background. This was 'Sayonara, sucker. Thanks for the hard work. Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.'
"Maybe you could be our roadie or something," Jimmy suggested.
When the red receded, I managed two words:
"Get out."
"Can we still use the van for the Tamberly Hall gig this weekend?"
"Get out!" I screamed, shoving him, then slamming the door so hard it almost bounced out of the frame.
The memory faded as quickly as it came, and I was surprised to find myself laughing. Sitting on the bench, laughing, holding the stub of the roll-up. Still giggling, I flicked it away. With it went the last of the bitterness I'd held onto for too long. I shook my head. With the insulation of time, and the knowledge that I'd soon be rich, I could finally admit the truth, the awful fact that had enraged me more than any insult: the 'tinpot Cassandra' had been right.
Oh, I knew a few riffs, and had a fair voice, but I had already hit my peak. No matter how much I practiced I was not going to improve.
Even worse, I was far more interested in being 'in the band' than I was in making music. Girls and money and fame, rather than the act of creating art, were my real goals. If not, I'd have ditched them as soon as they refused to play originals. I stood, stretched, feeling the strangest glow of relief. I silently thanked the street corner shaman, and his clever smoke.
I grabbed my bottle and continued up the street, whistling once again.
I returned to my office in a high old mood. I broke open the whiskey and helped myself to several celebratory shots.
I studied the pieces of the paper man on my desk. That's when the idea came to me. What if the whole was greater than the sum of its parts? That was generally the way magic worked, and the relics of magicians were no different.
While it would be smart profit-wise to sell the paper man piecemeal, what if, by keeping him unreconstructed, I was missing out on some great secret or pronouncement he was designed to make?
I eyed the paper man with growing suspicion. A few more drinks only increased them. The smug, disassembled bastard was trying to keep something from me.
I thought about it. Zappa himself must have created the paper man. Either by his own hand or under direct supervision. Nothing else made sense.
The why of it was almost rhetorical: Zappa, like most magicians before the para-real returned to vindicate them, was a little mad. Eccentric. Prone to do things he couldn't explain rationally. Not until after the fact, at least.
That was reason enough for me.
I constructed the paper man and deconstructed the bottle, still celebrating. Both tasks went smoothly, the paper man sticking together readily without glue or pin. It took me less than ten minutes to put him together. Then I kicked back and admired him.
No great pronouncement. No wondrous secret. Just the odd form of the paper man, looking mostly as I thought he would look.
I was impressed at how well he hung together, and couldn't even see the seams. I was too drunk to care much.
One last shot, an urge to rest my eyes, and I was asleep at my desk. I dreamed of a warm tropical place with two suns, and a wonderful music emanating from somewhere close by...
I woke up in pain. My head was throbbing, my neck aching and half numb. I was stiff, and my mouth was the texture of sandpaper in the sun.
It took me a few seconds to get in a state to notice anything. It was dark, I hadn't turned the lights on before my nap. But I noticed one thing quickly enough:
The paper man was gone.
The desk was empty, otherwise untouched. I sat there frozen. Could someone have snuck in, stole him, while I was passed out? The room said no, seemingly untouched by anything but my snores.
God, my mouth was dry. I was standing to find water when I heard the sound from the other end of my office.
There was nothing back there but the tiny collection of relics I've held onto. Two very special guitars and some lesser things.
I heard the sound again. And I recognized it. Someone slipping on a strapped guitar and it settling into place.
I sat down and turned on the lights.
The paper man stood with the guitar hung low, those slightly oversize, articulate hands going where they were supposed to out of habit.
It had gone right to the guitars. No real surprise there. Both of them were, as I said, special. One had belonged to Rory Gallagher, the other to Tommy Bolin. Both had been magicians, masters of their craft on the level of The Creative.
The instruments were both lovingly customized Stratocasters and both were actually worth more as guitars than as relics. A shame really, and foolish, since they radiated power so strongly even a layman could feel it.
I refused to sell them as such, preferring to scrape for rent money and groceries rather than insult the magic by pretending it didn't exist. I may have been a prostitute in a sense, but nobody could call me a cheap whore. I'd kept both for years out of sentiment and respect.
No surprise the paper man went for Gallagher's axe, I realized. Rory had been one of Zappa's frequent colleagues, a favorite. The paper man gazed at the instrument, one of those oversize hands stroking the sleek form.
When fingers touched strings they glowed a little.
I took a long drink of Old Ruinmaker, needing something. It numbed my dry tongue and turned my hangover into cheerful drunkenness.
The paper man looked directly at me, demanding my attention with those cheap rhinestone eyes. They didn't look so cheap anymore. They gleamed with more glory than any ruby. The looked magnified, expanded, becoming windows to that interior spiraling of lyrics that created the paper man. That spiral glowed with unbearable light.
It began to play. And as it played he showed me a story.
Senses failed. I heard and saw and felt the song. Blues chords rang from strings, intent mutating them the way good rock always did, and I began to understand. Zappa appeared before me, obviously near the end of his mortal life. I watched him create the paper man from his collected notebooks, saw the care and ritual he put into it, felt the barely understood intent behind it.
Zappa fell, into a sickbed, a time of last words and goodbyes. Before him appeared the angel of death, which took form as a great splintered heart, the ultimate manifestation of sadness, cloaked in black and held up by shadows shaped into bat wings.
It began to feast on the magician, this ultimate sadness, this goodbye to light and sound and creation and sensation. This Great Broken Heart that comes to us all in the end.
But the magician was ready.
Before the Broken Heart reached his soul, the image of the paper man replaced the withered flesh man in the bed, stealing the soul - hiding it, protecting it - right from the teeth of death.
The Great Broken Heart screamed in rage. But it was denied the magician's deepest secrets. It vented fury on the paper man, slicing it with claws and teeth, cutting it into pieces. But it was balked and knew it.
The story ended and my office returned. Tears ran down my face. I understood. I felt something close approaching shame at what I had almost done, what I had almost sold. Once more the paper man stroked the guitar it cradled. It cocked its misshapen head at me. It wanted the instrument.
I nodded, mostly numb. Who was I to deny him, now that I understood?
It radiated satisfaction, and thanks. Onto the empty stand it dropped something, then turned and bowed to me. A gift, perhaps. Or a fee. A thank you.
Power crackled around the golem, the soul saver. It was getting ready to leave, I knew.
"Where are you going?" I asked, voice cracking with emotion, tongue still mostly numb.
It strummed a riff and I saw:
Other worlds, beyond time and space. Great throngs of alien audiences. Off and away, it told me, to do what I have always done. To create magic and lift spirits and bring joy. To become more than a magician. To become a god, benevolent and kind, who brought understanding and happiness rather than confusion and pain.
And with a last flourish of notes, and a blinding flash of power, it was gone.
He ain't the ghost type, I heard the salesman say in my ear, in my memory.
I laughed. That was truer than he knew. No ethereal drifting for Zappa, no half existence. No partly glimpsed apparitions or doubts about his existence. He'd escaped the Great Broken Heart of death whole, fully physical, soul saved in a mottled vessel made of his own words and thought.
How had he known? The question returned as I stared at the empty place where the paper man had waved goodbye. At the shimmer of something that still hung in the air. But I knew. And the truth was that he hadn't known, that he simply guessed, that he performed the magic and worked his miracle without any guarantee that it would work out in the end. Just as he'd made his music in life. Guided by instinct and secret voices from within.
Guessing, hoping, trusting in the magic even when it was hidden away. Confident that the creative would find a way.
So I finally laughed, despite the losses, despite the disappointment. I laughed, and shook my head, and found I couldn't begrudge him his escape, his triumph.
Still drunk, still shaking my head, I just went back to sleep.
And, I ask, what more could I have done?
I called Diane when I woke up to harsh sunlight, feeling worse than ever. I risked the talkative dead and succubi confessions, and told her to forget about it. She was pretty pissed. She said something mean about not being able to tell when I was drunk any more. Then she apologized, and we tried to laugh it off. But it felt hollow.
After I hung up I sat and considered what I had: a hundred and thirty five bucks blown ass-ways to the wind, a sometimes girlfriend who was pissed off for now, and half a bottle of Old Ruinmaker.
Thank god for small blessings, I thought as I reached for the whiskey.
And then it hit me, actually stopping the motion of the bottle to my mouth:
The gift. The paper man left a gift. Or a fee. It was mixed up in my head. Both, I thought.
I sat the bottle down and stood up. I walked over to the guitar's empty stand. There, cradled in the bottom prongs, was my gift. My fee for setting him free, helping him escape.
Fingers. Two fingers.
I picked them up and studied them. Ring finger and pinky, I noted. He had kept enough to form most chords, but it was still a substantial sacrifice.
A gift of great thanks, a fee of handsome sum.
I considered my life, closing my eyes and calling up an image of myself. Was the tone of my skin strangely pale, oddly paper like? Was the Great Broken Heart closer than I suspected, ready to end my adventure in a sudden squirming of loose ends? Of unfulfilled hopes and dreams?
I was no magician. The escape Zappa crafted was beyond me. My choice was to make my life something more while I had some left, or continue bumbling through a paper like existence, without even the depth of beautiful words spiraling through my clumsy form.
I thought of the money, of course, but it seemed to slide off my brain. I was thinking of the paper man's answer to my question. I was seeing the great expanse of time, and space as a distance more than I could imagine, and weirdly shaped peoples from the far away.
And I was wondering, probably the same as the paper man, if they all knew how to rock n' roll.
I called Diane again, and invited her on a different kind of travel, a different adventure. She told me she would believe me when she saw it.
I guessed I'd have to show her. When I hung up, I was smiling, already thinking of how I could do it.
The fingers contained a grand charge of thaumaturgic power, imbued there by a great magician. I could use it, drop by drop, and with it change my whole world.
I'd have to find the paper man of course, then travel for two to whatever piece of the universe he'd hied off to, past the great heart-break and in search of new audiences on bizarre new worlds.
I hoped Diane packed thoroughly.
We would seek out the paper man and see him rock, join the great grooving throngs of alien civilizations and audiences of pure mind, pure energy.
And I'd then offer my services. I was no musician. I was no magician. But that didn't mean I was worthless, that I had nothing to offer.
Rock star, magician, ascending god, it really didn't matter.
They all needed roadies.
George Potter was born in eastern Kentuky and has lived all over the country. He's a scholar of SF and fantasy and an appreciator of cats. His stories have previously appeared in The Sword Review and Aphelion.
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