Who are the Bukowski Brothers, really?

First, more on Leonora. The Brzezinski siblings’ mother was a notoriously sarcastic saxophone player from the musically robust neighbourhood of Transcona. Everything Leonora did—from her choice of fashion accessories to her improvised running eighth-note melodies—had a tinge of irony to it. Though she rarely missed a gig, booking agents often made sure they had a back-up plan because they couldn’t tell if her acceptance to play was sincere or not.

She’d received two degrees in music and she played masterfully. She could double on soprano saxophone and flute as easily as if they were her first instrument. Her stage banter was terrible. Audience members memorized song titles as she introduced them, only to search for them later and find the names only led them to Gregorian chants or ancient polkas; the real songs on her albums were titled only with serial numbers. Audiences left her shows with souls filled to the brim with the joy of music and an uncomfortable feeling they’d been insulted at some point and hadn’t noticed.

Their father was a Polish police officer who had arrested Leonora for public indecency while she was on one of her European tours. She’d gone for a celebratory post-show swim in the river and then hung all her clothes on the Warsaw Mermaid and lain beneath waiting for them to dry throughout the night. It was a warm time of year.

The unwitting man made the mistake of confessing to her an amateur passion for the clarinet, somehow allowed her to allow him to buy her a drink or two upon her release, and sobered up a while later to find himself imprisoned in the dark wastes of central Canada with a couple of precocious toddlers. Such things could happen in the company of Leonora.

The man got his wits about him and planned an elaborate escape back to Poland. Warsaw could also get cold, but it was a kind of cold he could comprehend and come to terms with. He caught a plane. In subsequent years he was promoted to Police Detective, and was soon being celebrated throughout the country for his work catching all kinds of serial killers, sexual predators, and minor psychopaths, details of which he clipped out of newspapers and faithfully mailed overseas to his little boys. He maintained a polite correspondence with his former partner in Canada, but never quite understood that chapter of his life.

Years later, Leonora went on another tour in that general direction. The well-cultivated cities of Europe were calling to her, and North America was not buying what she was selling. The trip resulted in the conception of Rybecca; it was never confirmed whether Leonora was still in love or just liked the idea of all her children having the same last name. The poor detective was as baffled as anyone. He resolved to do a better job of keeping in touch—he made sure to email the children monthly, and never failed to send them his police team’s annual Christmas card.

***

“So what genre are you, anyway?” A slender woman dressed entirely in horizontal black and white stripes had taken a promising interest in Jaymie as he carried his keyboard inside.

“Whatever genre you want me to be, baby.”

The woman, legal aid and dedicated patron of the local scene, had been speaking to Jaymie for about five minutes. Five minutes, incidentally, is the amount of time it takes to trick yourself into feeling you have an idea of what someone is like, and, especially if they’re attractive, giving them the benefit of the doubt when they say things that are annoying or mildly heinous. Any lapse in civility can be taken as a self-aware and lightly flirtatious joke.

Jaymie was aware of this rule. He was also fairly certain that the woman was a few years older than him and clever, which he always felt exonerated him from any predatory behaviour.

“How about acoustic sludge metal? With some throat singing thrown in?” She took a sip of something rose-coloured and narrowed her long-lashed eyes at him. “No, wait, I’m not really in the mood. What about an entire set of only binaural beats?”

“I get nervous playing my binaural set, but maybe if you can get a drink or two in me…”

Jaymie leaned closer but cringed imperceptibly as Aaron materialized at his side, pulling on his t-shirt sleeve and looking about as frantic as usual.

“Jaymie Jaymie Jaymie, the door guy. The door guy is dead.”

Jaymie had always known that there was something off about Aaron that went beyond the simple pain of being the slightly less handsome and charismatic twin. He knew that at one point something had scared Aaron badly enough to alter the chemistry of the matching genetic material that should have caused them to have more or less the same personality. But Jaymie never brought it up with him, out of respect, and he tolerated Aaron’s idiosyncrasies with all the tenderness and patience of unconditional love.

“Fuck off, Aar. I’m busy.”

“Did you hear me? He’s dead!”

“I heard—what? Sorry,” he glanced apologetically at the woman. “Who’s dead?”

“The guy working the door—somebody killed him. All the pumpkins are gone! We should get out of here, Jay. There’s some bad shit going on.” Aaron bounced on the balls of his feet and rubbed the knuckles of his hands alternatingly, which was never a good sign.

“Okay, calm down.” Jaymie knew six or eight different tactics for deescalating Aaron’s anxiety, and he chose one at random. “People die, Aar. We can’t stop making music just because that’s a reality. Everything is going to be okay. The door guy, you said? I’m sure someone is looking into it. In the meantime, you know what’s a good distraction?”

“Seriously?”

“Playing a set of music. What ill fortune could possibly befall us while onstage in front of a whole crowd of people?”

“Christ. Why did I think you were the right person to come to about this?”

“Aaron. Everything is going to be—”

“Just a habit, I guess.”

"You know what?" Jaymie clapped him on the back and grinned. "Round up the others. It's time to start!"

“Yeah, no. I’m gonna go call the cops and ask our kid sister to talk me through this.”

“Sibling.”

“Kid sibling. My bad.” Aaron’s incredulity over this exchange appeared to have diverted him from his panic attack, which Jaymie noted with a small feeling of victory.

“Do you feel better now?” he asked.

“Great, yeah, I can almost breathe again. Thanks for fucking nothing, Jay.”

The thing with anxiety, Jaymie mused to himself, is that too much of it can sap your creativity. When experienced chronically, it burns countless watts of precious mental energy that would otherwise be put toward things of actual value; for example, writing songs that capture some of the essence of the human experience, or making little jokes to yourself in your head until one day you find you have a reputation for being a funny person. Or, for instance, having hopes and dreams.

But it wasn’t as though Aaron was a lost cause. Some people just needed a little extra care and reassurance.

“Sorry about that,” he said, turning back to the woman.

He needn’t have apologized; poor Mira Reyes had needed the extra minute to take in and process the fact that the adorable man she’d been flirting with had an adorable look-alike and they were probably together all the time and maintained a constant adorable ironic rapport and gave people deja vu when they passed them a few minutes apart—it was almost too cute to handle. There was no amount of dead door-people that could stop her from giving this man her number by the end of the night.

"It's no problem. No, come to think of it, I'm offended. How are you going to make it up to me?" She adjusted the hem of her stripy dress and cocked her head to one side.

"I'm going to change all the women's names in all our songs to your name," Jaymie suggested. "Even the murder ballads."

“Am I the murderer or the murderee?”

“You’re the murderess. Of… myy… heeaaaarrrtt…”

She was delighted. She'd met her share of musicians, and she considered him the perfect parody of how awful the beautiful men who fronted rock bands could be. Before he could fully burst into song, she interrupted him by laughing in his face, taking him by the hand, and leading him to the kitchen to share a delicious ironic raspberry vodka cooler with him.

***

Colin stood in his backyard with a scotch in his hand, staring at the empty pumpkin vines that gripped and smothered the expanse of his garden. He half expected the sleeping beast that was his plants to awaken and rise from the earth, green tentacles writhing and spilling out into the alley as the monster mourned the loss of her babies.

Full of fury and retribution, she’d roil out of the garden and down the block toward the conveniently close-by house party. Then she’d exact her strangulatory vengeance and bear her victims home to be digested in the depths of the dirt. And Colin would only sit with his whiskey, and watch.

Unfortunately, the garden lay still, and Colin knew that if there was going to be any justice it would be his responsibility to go out and demand it.

He knew they didn’t expect him to discover the missing pumpkins until the next day. He was supposed to be playing a show downtown with his other band, at a venue that kept the music going until past two, and then he was supposed to drive home and stagger in his front door and collapse into bed without ever glancing at his backyard.

But the bar had been shut down by health inspectors the day before because of a bizarre fungus that had proliferated in an unmaintained grease-trap and was thought to be developing sentience, and now the show was cancelled.

It had been two days since Colin had received his final email from the Bukowskis, whom he'd been playing with for the past four months. It read only, "We no longer require your services." And while Colin knew the reason he'd been terminated, he still felt bitter that he'd never had an opportunity to give them his side of the story.

Not that he still wanted to be in the band. He considered himself a professional-level musician, and if there were more session work in the city it was likely he’d make a living at it. As it was, he’d practically been paying to play—the meager payment they got at shows went in the band account, and practices cost him at least two nights out of his week. Factor in the cost of keeping his equipment in good working order, and this was not the sustainable kind of gig he needed.

But he did need those pumpkins. Market-gardening in his large back and front yards supplemented his income in the autumn enough that he could take the holidays off and go home to Steinbach.

He drained the last of his glass, pulled on a jacket against the growing chill of the evening, set off down the alley toward the party and, like a sane and reasonable person, called the police.

***

“I know this sounds crazy, but the guy charging cover at the door is for sure dead.”

“Let’s go take a look,” said Jo, who’d just gotten freshly baked for the show and was feeling amiable and up for anything.

She followed Aaron through the throng of people to the front table, where a girl with very thick black eyeliner was accepting the ten-dollar "suggested donation" from the party's newest arrivals. A young couple stood nearby with their heads close together, speaking in furtive whispers. Jo remembered Jaymie greeting them as they loaded in; they were, presumably, the organizers of the show.

“Oh my god, he’s gone,” said Aaron. “Nobody is ever going to believe me. Everyone will think I’m even crazier than they already do—”

"Hi! We're so sorry. There was a death. We're taking care of it." One of the organizers moved close to Aaron and Jo and put a hand on each of their shoulders consolingly, as though the victim had been personally close to each of them. "Sorry the show's getting a late start. We didn't really see this coming," she said.

“We love your music,” said the young man.

“We’re super excited for you guys to play.”

“It’s truly awesome you can be here. I think we got a pretty good crowd. Help yourself to drinks from the back porch. And feel free to start playing whenever you like.”

"Thank you, we will," said Jo, suddenly feeling loath to disappoint the earnest young couple. As she said it, she felt the itch to have her guitar in hand, and imagined the soft click of her tremolo pedal as she tapped the tempo of the first song in with her foot. She glanced at Aaron, who didn't appear entirely placated. "But... about the dead person. Is everything... uh...?"

“Like, did someone call the police?” asked Aaron.

“Oh!” exclaimed the woman. “Police! Yes.”

“Most definitely. First thing.” The man nodded enthusiastically.

"We just thought, well, the night is going so well, no need to call off the music, when..." She trailed off helplessly.

"It's just, this has been happening at so many shows lately—people sort of know the risks by now," said the man.

“We figured, we can’t just stop having shows, right? Unless you’re not… if you don’t want to…” She looked up at Jo with a gently pleading expression.

“Yeah, we’ll play,” said Jo.

“Wonderful! Don’t worry about anything! It’s all under control.”

Jo turned to Aaron and raised her eyebrows hopefully, wondering if he'd be satisfied by this encounter. He rubbed his forehead and shrugged. They wandered to the back of the living room, where Jaymie and Rex were playing an experimental first few notes in the corner designated as the stage, and took up their guitar and drumsticks, an action which was somehow more comforting than any reassurance one of their bandmates could have given them.