The Paradise Gig

by Laurence Shames

  “Pretty much, yeah.”

  The producer stubbed out his cigarette on the sole of his shoe and dropped the butt onto the floor. Then he rolled his tall chair closer to Sarge LeRoi so the base of it was almost between the young man’s knees. “Well, let me clue you in about a couple things,” he said. “First, stars’ lives are generally fucked up. And often brief. Bad shit just seems to find them. And they don’t get to do whatever they want. Not when it comes to the music, at least. Stars do what they’re told to do by the people who know how to make them stars. Then they do more of what they’re told to do in order to remain stars. I’m sorry to piss on your fantasy, but that’s just how it is. Ever hear of a guy named Nat King Cole?”

  “Yeah, sure, everybody’s heard of Nat King Cole.”

  “Right, because Nat King Cole did what his record label told him. He was a jazz pianist. Damn good one, too. Playing for a few bucks a night plus drinks. Label says to him, lose the jazz, Nat, you’re a ballad guy now. Ballad guy? I do jazz. I swing. Do ballads, Nat. America’s ready for a black star if he isn’t too black and he sings pretty songs about Mona Lisa and shit like that. Boom, Nat Cole’s on TV. Now let’s consider Elvis.”

  “Elvis?”

  “He’s playing Mississippi juke joints and getting airtime on fifty-watt AM stations that no one hears but farmers. Enter a very smart prick of a manager who gets him to smile a little more, shake his dick a little less, throw in some nice old-timey slow songs, even some religious ones. And suddenly Elvis is mainstream. Vegas. The movies. A fucking Christmas album, for chrissake. Huge. Now what about The Beatles? Fabulous musicians, but basically the world’s best garage band playing down-from-the-sidewalk crappy little venues, rocking their guts out all night for peanuts, until they hook up with a brilliant business guy who hooks them up with a genius producer who’s smart enough to stay out of the spotlight while controlling every last detail, and who gives them sounds that no one’s ever heard before, let alone put on a record, and they go from being four guys screaming themselves hoarse to the greatest studio pop act in the history of the universe. You see where I’m going with this?”

  Sarge thought he saw it well enough, and he wasn’t sure he liked it much. Feeling that he had nothing to lose anyway, he indulged in a bit of youthful petulance. “Yeah, where you’re going is that if I want to make it, I can’t really be myself.”

  Mondesi lit another cigarette and let the match burn almost to his fingernail before he finally blew it out. “If you don’t mind my saying so, or even if you do, that is a very unprofessional and unproductive way of looking at the situation. This being myself bullshit—come on, it’s childish. It’s meaningless. It’s tripe. And where does it get you? It gets you singing your own songs in your own way on a streetcorner with nobody listening or maybe in your parents’ basement. Is that really what you want?”

  The young man licked his lips, scratched an ear, said nothing.

  Mondesi kicked out his small feet, swiveled his chair around, rolled a little distance away, then, with a dramatic pivot, turned again to face the young musician. “I happen to believe you deserve better than that. I happen to believe you’re talented. And part of being talented means that you should trust yourself enough to change, adapt, grow. You don’t get hung up on just being who you are. Not to mention that you’re, what, twenty?”

  “Twenty-three.”

  “Okay, twenty-three. Do you really think that at twenty-three you even know who you are? So don’t get caught up in that bullshit. It’s a trap, a defense. It’s for chickenshits and losers. Winners don’t worry about who they are. They focus on who they could become. So if you can get over yourself just long enough to take some help and some advice from someone who actually knows how this fucked up business works, I think you might end up becoming someone. Interested?”

  Sarge LeRoi hesitated. After being built up and torn down and built up and torn down again, he didn’t really know how he should answer or even what he wanted. “What do I have to do?”

  “Have to do? You don’t have to do anything. I don’t work that way. But if you’re interested, I’ll make you a proposition. Might be the best thing that ever happened to you. Might be the worst. There’s no guarantees in life.”

  The singer felt himself leaning forward again, grasping the edge of the amp. In the young, hope just wouldn’t stay dead.

  “I’ll give you a song,” Mondesi went on.

  “What kind of song?”

  “A great song.”

  “You wrote it?”

  “Me? I’m no composer, kid. I know that about myself. Frankly, I wish more people could admit it. No, this would be a song by a friend of mine. Extremely experienced, a total pro. Lots of hits under his belt.”

  “Would I know his name?”

  “Yeah. Anonymous. Listen, him and me, we have a deal in place. Seems to work for everybody. He writes the songs. I match them up with singers or bands. Generally newcomers like yourself. We lay down some tracks. If we like the demo, we sign a contract for royalties. He gets a third, I get a third, the singer gets a third plus credit for the song.”

  Sarge blinked. He didn’t have much experience in business and this was a lot to take in all at once. “That last part. Could you run it by me one more time?”

  The producer did.

  “So the singer gets the credit for a song he didn’t write?”

  “Happens every day, kid. It’s part of how we build a brand.”

  “What about the guy who really wrote it?”

  “What about him? He doesn’t need the credit. He’s in it for the cash. The real money. Which comes in later, from the cover versions. Here’s how it works. Look at the great standards. “Stardust.” “Night and Day.” How many hundreds of times they been recorded? Rights owners get a payday every time. For decades. For life. Who cares or even remembers who first made the song a hit? Who cares whose name is on the sheet music? What matters is whose name is on the royalty checks. That’s the only place this guy wants to see his name. On the checks.”

  The young man looked down at his knuckles, which had gone dead white, and eased his grip on the edge of the amp. He didn’t exactly search his conscience; it was more that his conscience just bubbled to the surface. “Jeez, I don’t know. Taking credit for another guy’s song. It just doesn’t feel exactly right to me.”

  The producer’s response was quick and clipped. “Don’t do it then. Save your soul and go home. Like I said, I don’t twist arms. You don’t like the situation, walk away. No hard feelings. Nothing lost but an hour of each other’s time. I wish you luck.” He swiveled the chair and began to roll toward the steps to the control room.

  Sarge LeRoi stared at his guitar propped in its stand, then at Mondesi’s receding back. He heard himself say softly, “This guy’s songs. They’re really that good?”

  “They’re fucking beautiful,” said Mondesi, pivoting once more. “Deceptively simple. Catchy, fresh. Funny, sad, clever, haunting. Anything a song can say or do, this guy’s songs can do it. He’s got the touch.”

  The young man swallowed, squirmed, said without much breath behind it, “I just don’t know—”

  The producer said, “Want to see one of his songs? Just to take a look, I mean? See what you might make of it? Get a sense of how you’d sing it?”

  Sarge bit his lip. The whole thing felt wrong and irresistible, irresistible and wrong.

  “Just take a look,” Mondesi went on. “No obligation whatsoever. It’s your life, kid. Your decision.”

  10

  P ete charged the net but regretted it within a fraction of a second as Cooch’s perfectly placed lob floated softly but unattainably over his head for the final point of the match. Helplessly, he watched the ball land just inside the baseline then bounce against the fence that separated the tennis courts from the softball field at Bayview Park. Defeated, he retrieved the ball, jogged forward to the net again, shook his opponent’s hand, and said, “You know, Cooch, it just isn’t
fair.”

  “Fair? What? The shot?”

  “Nah, the shot was fine. What isn’t fair is that you don’t take lessons, you never practice, your racquet’s a piece of shit, you play in plaid shirts and cutoff jeans and high-top basketball sneakers and tube socks that don’t even match, and you beat me every time.”

  “Not every time,” Cooch said modestly as he looked down at his fraying strings. “Well, okay, almost every time.”

  It was mid-morning, not yet too hot, the air still fresh with newly opened hibiscus flowers and damp grass on the ball field—prime time at Bayview, a proud bastion of public tennis, especially the senior kind. Players waiting for a court were pulling on knee braces, ankle braces, wrist braces, elbow braces, braces that supported their sacroiliacs and braces that eased the pain in their arthritic thumbs. Kibitzers drank spiked coffee in the bleachers and on folding chairs behind the fence. As Pete and Cooch gathered up their stuff and prepared to leave the court, a stooped but eager foursome was already hobbling over to take their place.

  When the two friends had nearly reached the bleachers, Cooch said, “And whaddya mean, my socks don’t match? They’re tube socks. Of course they match. A tube sock is a tube sock.”

  Shaking his head, Pete pointed down to the place where Cooch’s dingy, sagging socks met his hairy shins. “They don’t match. One has a little red stripe on top, one has a green.”

  “Who gives a shit? Look, I buy ‘em in six-packs. The stripes have different colors. Like I’m gonna worry about this? Like I’m gonna waste my life sorting ‘em every time they come out of the dryer? Like it matters? Maybe this is part of your problem, Pete.”

  “Problem?”

  “Okay, not exactly problem. Let’s say difficulty. With tennis, I mean. Winning. You won’t be offended, right?”

  “How should I know if I’ll be offended? I don’t know what you’re going to say.”

  “Well, like with the socks. Yours match. Mine don’t. Or your tennis bag.”

  “What about my tennis bag?”

  “It’s the same brand as your racquet. Like the pros. Like you had a sponsor or some shit. Looks great. Me, I don’t even have a tennis bag. I carry my shit in a grocery bag from Fausto’s. But who usually wins?”

  “I lose because of my tennis bag?”

  Cooch waved away the question and went on. “Now let’s take strokes. Yours are way prettier than mine. You hit the ball right. I hit it like I hit it. Yours go out sometimes, mine usually stay in. So what am I saying here? I guess what I’m saying is there’s style and then there’s results. Not that a person can’t have both sometimes, but people sort of lean to one side or the other and you seem to lean toward the style side, which is fine, of course, but then don’t get all frustrated and glum if you lose nine times out of ten and make fun of the other guy’s tube socks. That’s all I’m saying. You’re not offended, are you?”

  Pete was not, or at least not very, but he was glad when his ringing phone pulled him away from Cooch’s rambling analysis. He fumbled around in his fancy bag to find the phone and answered it. It was Bert, calling to say he’d completely forgotten that he had a doctor’s appointment later in the day, and to ask Pete if he could help him out by picking up Callie’s things and bringing them to her at the beach.

  Hearing the request, Pete riffled through a familiar litany of emotions. First, as ever, resistance. Seeing Callie again had been nice but he had little appetite for getting more wrapped up in whatever she was or wasn’t going through. This familiar reluctance was followed by a familiar guilt. How could he be so aloof, such a habitual shirker? Then again, the fact was that he really wasn’t very good at shirking; he just wished he was. But of course he’d stop by Bert’s that afternoon. Of course he’d meet Callie at the beach. Of course he’d go blundering into disruptions and entanglements and responsibility, all the things he’d promised himself to fend off.

  He clicked out of the phone call and stepped from the bright sunshine of the tennis courts into the cool shade of the bleachers. His glasses immediately fogged up. He wiped them on his towel.

  Cooch, still walking at his side, said, “So you’re not offended, right?”

  “Hm?”

  “About the fancy tennis bag and the losing and shit like that?”

  “No. No worries.” He put his glasses on again. They were mostly unfogged except for oily spectrums at the edges. “Hey, have you seen Callie lately?”

  “Callie? Your old girlfriend from, like, years ago? Where the hell’d that come from? We’re talkin’ tennis. Style, outcome.”

  “I ran into her last night. Just wondering what’s she been up to.”

  Cooch tilted his head and scratched the place where the frizzy side-hair met the bald part with the freckles. “Jeez, I can’t remember the last time I saw her. Long time, though. I think maybe she stopped partying.”

  “Tough to imagine.”

  Cooch shrugged. “Well, who knows?”

  They were now walking toward their bicycles, which were lined up with maybe a dozen others just outside the fence. Without exception they were Key West clunkers; dented fenders, drooping baskets, rusty chains. Pete’s had mismatched pedals and a bell that no longer rang but could only make a tortured, grinding sound. Cooch’s had a torn seat and ridiculous high handlebars like a chopper. Looking sideways at his friend, he said, “You guys thinking of getting back together?”

  “No way, Cooch. Never happen. Just curious.”

  “You two looked good together.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Then again, always seemed like a bit of a stretch. Fire and ice. Yes and no. Hello and goodbye. Then again, opposites attract, right? Protons, electrons. Plus and minus. Yin and yang. Keeps the universe in balance, right? Anyway, too complicated, who the hell knows? But the old flame still burns a little?”

  “Let’s not even go there, Cooch.”

  “I take that as a yes. Not a howling, raving kind of yes, but a sort of maybe kind of yes, which makes sense because, let’s face it, Pete, you’re a maybe kind of guy. Like, really, honestly, no offense, even when you come to net.”

  “Net? So we’re back to tennis now?”

  “Hey, it’s all connected, right? Tennis, romance, this and that. There’s always this little bit of, like, do I really wanna go there? Is this really where I wanna be? But dude, you’re there. At net, I mean. Or wherever. So embrace it. Go wild. Why not? Anyway, good match today. Closer than the score. Lot closer. Really.”

  11

  I t was easy to spot Callie among the crowd on Smathers Beach because she was the one in the bright blue one-piece who was standing on her head. Pete, unseen, his hands clutching her spare mat and towel and water bottle, took a moment to admire the pose and to wonder when she’d started doing yoga and how she’d become so good at it. Then again, she’d always had impressive posture. The straightness of her back, the squareness of her shoulders; there was courage and candor in the way she held herself. It was the posture of a person who would not back down.

  He stepped closer through the hot mix of sand and coral nubs and called out a hello. Surprised to see him, she shot him an upside-down smile and came slowly and gracefully down from her headstand. With no seeming effort, she pivoted on a hip and settled into half-lotus.

  “Bert asked me to pinch hit,” he explained. “Said he had to go to the doctor.”

  Concern stretched Callie’s blue eyes and put a brief twitch in the sinews of her neck. “He okay?”

  “He’s fine. Except he’s a bit of a bullshitter. I don’t buy it that he’s going to the doctor. He set me up. I think he just wanted us to have some time together.”

  “Nice of him. I’m glad.”

  Pete just stood there.

  After a silent moment, she went on, “You glad, Pete?”

  “Um, yeah, I’m glad. I mean, I’m here.”

  She gave him the kind of look that can only pass between people who have some history together. “Still such an enthusiast,
huh?”

  “Sorry. Guess maybe I’m a little nervous.”

  “Maybe I’m a little nervous too. Sit?”

  She gestured. He unfurled the extra towel but didn’t place it right away. It was a dilemma deciding how close to her to put himself. Not touching close. Not couple close. Not taking anything for granted close. Should their towels overlap along their edges? Or was there too much intimacy in that, too much presumption? But leaving too much space would seem standoffish, maybe even insulting. So much to be read into even the smallest moments…He let the towel flutter down, left it to the breeze to decide. The breeze decided that the corners should just barely brush together.

  He sat. For an awkward moment, neither spoke. Waves hissed. Radios played. Frisbees floated by. Then they both started to talk at once. After a syllable or two, they both stopped, deferring. Finally, Callie said, “Pete, I owe you an apology. I’ve owed it for a long time now. The way I just walked out that night—”

  “What else could you do? I was a grump and a scold and probably a selfish asshole. You don’t owe me an apology. I owe you one.”

  She shook her head. “I was unfair. I was impossible. I remember something you said to me that night. You said my life was too disorderly.”

  “I said that? What a judgmental jerk.”

  “Yeah, it really pissed me off. But why? Because you nailed it. Except it was an understatement. My life wasn’t just disorderly, it was out of control. Drinking way too much. Drugging. Probably way more than you knew.”

  “I suspected. Pretended not to notice. Didn’t have the balls to rock the boat.”

  She shrugged, her collarbones lifted and settled again. “Wouldn’t’ve mattered. I would’ve kept on doing exactly what I was doing. Something big had to happen to get me to change. Bigger than just losing a boyfriend. No offense.”

  “None taken. So that big thing. It happened?”

  “Yeah, it did.”

  “Want to tell me what it was?”