“Hip Replacements” – a short story by William Torphy

“Hip Replacements” was a short-listed entry in our recently concluded 66th Short Fiction Contest, and is published with the consent of the author.

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photo via FreeRangeStock

Hip Replacements

by William Torphy

Jerry and I, both reeking from too much Old Spice after some hasty grooming, waited impatiently for my doorbell to ring. Hearing its tweeting birdsong, Jerry bolted from his seat, spilling coffee on his shirt front. “Oh, shit,” he murmured, buttoning up his tattered cardigan. I nearly entangled my feet in our instruments’ electrical cords as I rushed up the basement stairs to the front door. Our sole applicant peered up at me with animated brown eyes. All of five feet tall, and possessing a generous girth, she was well into her fifties, and wore a getup suited for performing in a nightclub.

…..She smiled, displaying startling white teeth, and offered her hand. “You must be Rob,” she said. “I’m Sandi.” Before I had time to ask her inside, she stepped past me. “That’s Sandi, spelled with an ‘i.’ My last name is Beach, as in sand.”

…..Her small body radiated forceful energy, as if she couldn’t stand still. With bright ginger hair surrounding her face like an affectionate fox, and wearing a silver sequined pantsuit with open-toe platforms, she reminded me of the old disco days.

…..“I’ve brought my own music for the audition,” she declared crisply. “Where’s your setup?”

…..Her confident manner told me that she didn’t suffer fools, even lightly. Jerry joined us, looming over our visitor like a mastodon. My friend had played basketball in high school, though he had lost four inches in the intervening years, besides gaining a good fifty pounds.

…..Sandi Beach took us both in formidably, her stance reminding me of a motivated crossing guard at rush hour, her eyelashes like alarming arachnids.

…..I shot Jerry a quick glance to check in with him. He nodded cautiously, so I led the way down the basement stairs. Our auditionee dragged her fingers across the dusty bar, eyeing the knotty pine paneling and the decades’ accumulation of family photos and knick-knacks that cluttered the shelves. “I love your retro rec room,” she declared. “It must have been decorated in the Sixties.”

…..“Actually, we renovated in the Eighties,” I corrected, feeling slightly insulted, even though Barbara and I had deserted it years ago for the age-accessible den upstairs.

…..Sandi stepped onto our makeshift stage, her platforms thwacking against the plywood, and glanced askance at my forlorn Hondo guitar, a relic from my attempt to play in high school, that was now lying on a chair as if existentially exhausted.

…..“Do you know ‘Midnight Train To Georgia’?” she asked.

…..“Of course,” I said, though it wasn’t exactly my kind of music. I hummed the first chords craggily. With a gron, Jerry settled on a stool behind his tarnished drums, and declared: “But we don’t dance like The Pips.”

* * *

I should probably explain how this event happened.

…..My idea had been festering for years. It was mostly theoretical, you see, but as vague notions sometimes do, it had recently become a master plan. Jerry and I had retired. Now we suddenly faced nothing but acid reflux and prostate problems stretching before us. Never mind our beleaguered wives, who bristled at the prospect of us hanging around the house annoying them.

…..My wife, Barbara, insisted that I get out of the house. I asked her if she was expecting a secret lover over. “I’m expecting that you’re driving me crazy,” she hissed, shaking a toilet brush at me with homicide on her face. I beat a hasty retreat and drove to Jerry’s, where I found him where I last left him: planted in his plaid lounge chair, grasping a stein of beer in one hand and clutching his remote in the other. With his widening circumference and retreating hairline that resembled a monk’s tonsure, he slouched like a brooding, disreputable abbot.

…..We went way back, Jerry and I, old friends since college. We’d met in a required English lit class in which we traded clever literary names for breakfast entrees—an omelet we dubbed The Hamlet, butter-less pancakes we named The Golightly.

…..Jerry pointed to a full pitcher and offered to fetch a stein. When I deferred, he breathed a sigh of relief, since fetching would require vacating his chair and shambling into the kitchen.

…..His wife, Shirley, had been attempting to evict him from the den since he retired, enjoining him to “please find something useful to do, for god’s sake, before moss starts growing under your ass.” His solution was to order instructions and supplies for homebrewing.

…..Threatened with separation, if not divorce, Jerry and I had already discussed several options to fill our time—volunteering at the Veterans Helpline, joining a book club, even taking on part-time jobs at Walmart. We dismissed them all. What good is retirement, we agreed, if we actually had to “do” something?

…..I told Jerry that I’d long been nursing a private scheme, something I had often fantasized about. I’d fiddled around with a used Hondo in high school, imagining playing guitar in a band would make me cool and irresistible to girls. My unflattering mullet and a bad case of acne had proved more of a chick repellent than magnet.

…..Jerry and I both played in our dorm-floor band at college. Neither of us had been any good. Fortunately, our lead bass player had kept me tolerably in synch, and Jerry certainly knew how to hammer on the drums. He worked summers in construction back then until he managed to land a desk job with the state. He often reminded me that his pension and benefits were better than mine as a former manager of the local Piggly Wiggly.

…..“We should form a band!” I squawked, as if I were still a pimply-faced adolescent.

…..Jerry eyed me as if I were dozy.

…..I argued for the defense, telling him we had nothing to lose but our nonexistent reputations. By the time he finished the third stein of his homebrew, my friend had warmed-up to the idea. I knew because he asked: “What will we call ourselves?”

…..I already had a name up my frayed sleeve. “How about ‘The Hip Replacements’?”

…..Jerry spit out a laugh, shooting a mouthful of brew that glanced off my shoulder.

…..“I’m serious,” I said. “Get it? Hip—as in up-to-date, in-the-know—plus The Replacements, that band of bad boys we wanted to emulate in the 80s.”

…..Jerry poured his fourth froth and mulled over my proposal. “It’s kind of crazy, but I like it.” Suddenly energized, he slid off his chair and loped to the kitchen, returning with a bowl of snacks and handing me a stein.

…..Stuffing my face with Cheetos and burping, I said, “It’ll be just like old times. Me on guitar and you on percussion.”

…..Jerry pawed a handful of peanuts. “I think my drums are still buried somewhere in the garage, unless Shirley snuck them to Goodwill.”

…..The Hip Replacements, we decided, would be an eclectic revival group, reprising easy-listening oldies from the 70s and 80s, peppered with the eclectic music Jerry and I liked to play during those long-lost decades—Led Zepplin, Black Sabbath, Christopher Cross. Though we’d pass on the stringy hair and eye-liner.

…..Our ideal demographic, we decided, would be seniors. Our venues retirement homes and senior centers. We’d have to tone down our presentation if we played for silver-haired widows and urologically-challenged widowers. Entertaining the droops, as Jerry called them, with down-tempo renditions of “Stayin’ Alive” and “Turn Up the Volume.” Jerry sarcastically suggested Black Sabbath’s “Children of the Grave.” I nixed it as too much of a downer.

…..Jerry exhumed his old drum set, and I bought strings for my long-abandoned Hondo. After several practice sessions in my basement, we decided that we weren’t terrible, despite the aggravating arthritis in my fingers and Jerry’s bum shoulder. We weren’t any worse than The Fractures, the aging cover group that played a gig at Eddie’s Bar on Tuesday nights. Anyway, we reasoned, since most of our geriatric listeners suffered from hearing-impairments, they wouldn’t notice our gaffes. And besides, we were guaranteed captive audiences, since they couldn’t exactly flee from their seats.

…..We could fake our instruments, but not our voices. Jerry would wheeze and I could only yodel. We required a knockout vocalist, someone who could grab the geezers’ attention. Preferably a dynamic woman who’d carry us on stage, though not literally, or at least not yet.

…..Since we didn’t have Linda Ronstadt’s phone number, I enlisted Clive, my daughter Reina’s twelve-year-old son, to help us write an ad for “Sound Mall,” a local online site for musicians.

Female Vocalist Wanted

Familiar with 70s & 80s hits

Experience not required

Sexy preferred.

…..“That last line is terribly sexist,” objected Reina. “Any woman reading this will see only “creepy lechers seeking distraction.”

…..I was a bit defensive, whining that we needed someone magnetic who could keep the codgers awake.

…..The ad was posted immediately: technology is truly a mystery to me. Unfortunately, the tsunami of responses we hoped for never arrived. Meanwhile, the din we were making downstairs, never mind the odor of hops emanating from the beer-brewing bath Jerry insisted I install, was driving Barbara batty. She suggested with surprising diplomacy that we start performing as a duo. She declared that seniors would be happy to see us two oldsters wield instruments of mass objection. I objected to her wielding that term—oldsters. “We aren’t old,” I objected, quoting Paul Simon, “just older than we once were.”

…..One stormy night, during a particularly disheartening practice session trying to perform “Jessie’s Girl,” the basement’s extension phone rang. “I’m answering your ad. Do you still need a vocalist? I’m interested in auditioning, but you need to forget the sexist part.”

…..The woman’s voice, hinting at cigarettes and highballs, exuded confidence. It held a craggy edge, reminding me of Bonnie Tylor and Stevie Nicks, two of my all-time-favorite vocalists.

…..“We’re still in the process of auditioning,” I lied. “But we haven’t made a choice yet.”

…..I gave a high-sign to Jerry, who was noodling on his drums and nodding.

…..“I can meet up with you tomorrow morning,” she said.

…..I gave her my address and hung up, shouting, “We have an audition tomorrow!” Jerry greeted the news with a raised glass. I risked diminishing his cheer when I suggested: “You better take a shower before she arrives.”

* * *

Sandi Beach, spherical of stature and bountiful of roseate hair, lowered the mic to match her Lilliputian height, waiting for Jerry and me to approximate “Midnight Train’s” introductory fanfare. After surprisingly effective strumming from me and deft taps from Jerry, she gathered her body like a tightly wound rocket and launched into it with startling power, rattling Barbara’s ceramic class pots and the grandkids’ superhero figurines on the shelves.

…..He’s goin’ back (dramatic pause) to find a simpler place in time…, Sandi belted out the lyrics, pounding out the beat and bolstering our confidence and pulling us from our dragging beat into a compatible upbeat groove. The world he left behind …

…..No doubt about it. Sandi’s stage presence was spectacular. She danced and swayed, slapping the mic against her hips from time to time that created a percussive accompaniment to her voice. She punched the air with her fists before hawking out the refrain’s final lines: I got to go! I got to go!… only to finish with a flourished bow.

…..Sandi gathered her sheet music, but before she vacated the improvised stage, I shouted, “Please, don’t go! I’d much rather live in your world than mine.”

…..She laughed, revealing deep-set dimples in her full cheeks. “We have a deal, then?”

…..I nodded, and she asked about compensation. I confessed that at least for the time being it was exactly nada. “But once we start playing gigs, and we’re in great demand… “I started.

…..She put up her hands “I kinda’ thought that was the case. I’ll see you on Saturday.”

…..Jerry offered her a glass of homebrew to celebrate. She shook her head and patted her stomach: “I need to keep trim for the show.”

…..Now with a hot mama on board (Reina would castigate me for that), Jerry and I ventured out to Music Mania and splurged on new gear. I finally possessed my dream Fender, and Jerry put out for a Pearl Roadshow drum set. We went online and ordered Spangly Indigo Jumpsuits ™ with the expandable waist option, and talked about purchasing a used van to hold all our equipment, including the new sound system, with one of those pop-ups for overnight stays while on tour.

…..We decided to rebrand ourselves as ‘Sandi Beach & The Hip Replacements.’ I made calls to book local gigs at places like Holiday Village and Heritage Court, imagining us knocking our audiences’ support hose off, me strumming a denture-rattling intro before Sandi launched into a riotous rendition of “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.” We’d ignore the audience’s bedtime curfews and agree to play encores. Maybe “Another One Bites the Dust” followed by a number from The Replacements to bring down the house and turn off the lights at last.

…..I imagined Jerry and me set upon by screaming octogenarian groupies begging us for autographs, while Sandi fended off codgers refusing their nightly medications and circling her in wheelchairs for selfies.

…..We got our first booking at the Riverview Nursing Home. Sandi asked where it was. Jerry told her it was “just a few steps from the River Styx.” We arrived an hour early to set up. Some residents lingered on the margins, reminding me of those lucky early boarders in wheelchairs at the airport. The activities director had warned us to go easy on the audience. “These people are on their last laps. We can’t afford having more investigations by the state.”

…..After our setup, Jerry mingled with the crowd, introducing himself with a debonair aplomb I had never seen him exhibit before—patting codgers on the back and taking the hands of widows, as he poured a portion of his homebrew into the refreshments.

…..Costumed in our spangly jumpsuits, we started our set with an easy listening number, The Carpenters’ “Close To You.” Sandi then added some grit to the sugar with a rousing rendition of the Bee Gees’ “Too Much Heaven.” After we slammed through several selections from 70s and 80s songbooks, Sandi wowed our audience with a rollicking rendition of “Rollin’ On the River.”

…..Meanwhile, Jerry’s joy juice had done its magic. Several widows rose from their chairs and began to boogie. They even forced some of the livelier men out of their chairs to join them. Seniors in wheelchairs soon formed a line-dance, sending the manager into a panic and ordering attendants to wheel the most compromised back to their rooms. He begged us to quiet things down, and so we complied, with Sandi delivering her brandy-toned version of “Immortality” to craggy whoops and arthritic clapping.

…..After packing up, Jerry and I were set upon by several elderly groupies. But it was Sandi, surrounded by an excited mob in wheelchairs and walkers, who generated the most excitement. The three of us celebrated our success at Eddie’s, where I hoped to get our band booked for the prized Friday night slot.

…..But two days after our debut, I received a call from Jerry’s wife, Shirley, who informed me that Jerry had been admitted to the hospital that morning. He required surgery for a stent, she said, and playing drums was off the table for the foreseeable future. I promised to visit, and broke the news to Sandi, who also delivered bad news. Bolstered by the band’s rousing success at Riverview, she had decided to sign with The Fractures, whose lead singer had suffered a breakdown.

…..Her star was ascending, ours stumbling.

…..“Sorry,” she apologized. “The Fractures pay. I like you guys, but them’s the breaks.”

…..Feeling magnanimous, I said, “I’m glad we could give you your first big break.”

…..She smiled, letting me know she was in on the joke.

…..I’m still holding tight to my rockstar fantasy, despite these setbacks and my joint pain. Barbara wants me out of the house now more than ever, preferably working to pay off the bills I’ve accrued since starting the band.

…..I told her that I plan to heft my Fender downtown and busk during lunch hour. I’ll wear my Indigo jumpsuit and call myself the Turned-out Troubadour. I’ll entertain them with a little dance, too, and try not to trip. I’m determined to avoid a hip replacement.

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William Torphy’s fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and journals, including Bryant Literary Review, The Fictional Café, Sun Star Quarterly and Chelsea Station, His cultural commentary has been featured in Solstice Literary, OpEdge and Vox Populi. His short story collection, Motel Stories, is published by Unsolicited Press. He has recently moved to Wisconsin from the San Francisco Bay area where he served the community as an exhibition curator. www.williamtorphy.com

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