Concerning the Music

  The outer room was unchanged when Taylor stumbled back into it; empty, overbearing in shades and an inattentive bartender. The music was still somewhere at the edge of hearing, but Taylor didn’t recognize what it was. Upon request the man with the paperback managed to scry out some Advil from behind the counter, at no charge. Never able to take pills dry, Taylor bought a drink.
  He toyed with the glass a bit, watching the liquid swirl, trying to join thoughts. It wasn’t such a weighted matter, the loss of the Walkman and the manila envelope, Eric had left him with an address to call upon if ever something like this happened. It was sort of ineluctable really, human nature and the golden-egg-laying goose. No, now it was more trying to analyze the jagged edges of his existence and find a point where they formed a decent hole. The thing with bathrooms still bothered him. He could chalk it up to repeatedly bad experience, but it was the Music that drove him to further attention, and there was where his train of thought met with bandits.
  Sometimes he almost thought he could hear it, he thought he knew that elusive thought or knowledge that he though -- or he knew he thought -- no, thought he almost knew what he was thinking, had the key to that locked room, like the radio signal only needed to get just a bit closer. Just on the tip of his tongue, metaphorically speaking. Had to keep at it.
  And once more he felt his resolve to ride it out, stay abreast, be overwhelmed by the proportion of the wave, felt he had toppled off the board and went under.
  With a sigh, he changed the thought-line. It was best to strike the task at hand while it was still hot, or whatever the simile was. He scoured his coat pockets for the scrap of paper holding the address -- the instructions thereof had long ago been shorn off and incinerated.
  He left some money on the counter and exited.