Bluestown

by Geoffrey Becker

In the first chapter of Bluestown - which as a short story appeared in the 1995 Drue Heinz Prize-winning collection Dangerous Men - Geoffrey Becker emerges as a writer of unusual imagination and talent. Spencer Markus at fifteen wants to believe in his dad, Spider, a local musician whose life and career seem to be going nowhere. So when his dad shows up and pulls Spencer from school one afternoon, inviting him on a road trip, he is eager to go along. But the trip turns out to be Spider's strange way of saying good-bye, rather than facing up to the lies he's told, both to his son and to himself. Seven years later, Spencer is living in Brooklyn with his girlfriend and a roommate, and working in Manhattan answering letters for Mutronics, a musical-effects company under siege from both its unhappy customers and a union that wants to organize it. In the midst of an imminent breakup with his girlfriend, and with the labor dispute growing uglier and more violent daily, Spencer suddenly hears