The Paradise Gig

by Laurence Shames

  So now my attention is riveted, as the saying goes, and I look harder at the two guys up on stage. One guy is very tall and has a funny way of leaning, swaying, even when he’s standing still. The other guy is short and has no neck, his head erupts directly from his shoulders, and he has a mat of stiff black hair. And I suddenly realize, holy shit, these are the two guys from the beach, the guys who pushed Callie down from her headstand, the guys who started this whole cockamamie story.

  So of course I’m somewhat agitated and I start sort of spinning around in Master’s lap. My sharkskin jacket skids across his sharkskin pants, except when the weave lines up a certain way, then it catches like Velcro. Master, with his ancient eyes, apparently hasn’t yet figured out who these new performers are, so he grabs me and tries to calm me down as if my sudden antsiness was random, which, by the way, it never is.

  There’s a little messing with the karaoke machine and the microphone, and then the intro to the song that these guys are about to do comes on. It’s an upbeat number. The intro is brief and frisky, just like ba-da-DA-DA, ba-da-DA-DA, ba-da-dada-ba-da-dada-ba-da-dada-ba-da-DAAA…And then, right on the money, well-rehearsed, no hesitation, these guys start singing about some girl who has a certain something that makes them really want to hold her hand. The lyric, let’s face it, isn’t Cole Porter or any of those other clever guys with fancy rhymes whose stuff Master has on LPs, but it gets the point across. She should let him hold her hand. If that works out, then maybe she’ll let him be her man. I mean, what could be more sweet and basic? But okay, so much for the lyrics, which who really cares that much about anyway? The main thing is that the song is rockin’ and, to my amazement, these two knuckleheads are singing it really well, in tune, on the beat, and with so much, well, I guess you’d have to call it infectious enthusiasm, that within fifteen, twenty seconds, all these people who’d been like maybe half-listening are now really dialed in, tapping their feet and slapping out the rhythm on the bar. But here’s when it really amps up. Most of the time these two guys are singing the same note, in unison I guess you call it, but there’s this one place where, in a manner that I think you’d have to call orgasmic, the words come back to I-wanna-hold-your-HAND, but this time they break it off into harmony, and the no-neck guy goes really high but the leaning guy goes even higher, and they nail the notes, and hold them, and the whole time they’re holding them, they’re shaking their heads really fast and the crowd goes nuts.

  I mean, everyone is swept up, including me by now, and you can just tell that everyone agrees that that was the best part of the song, and we’re all waiting on the edge of our seats for it to circle back and come again, and I guess everyone is confident that that’ll happen because things generally do circle back in songs, which is part of why everybody loves them, I guess. Anyway, that HAND part starts coming around again, and you can feel the whole joint sort of building up to it together, and then, when it happens—the really high harmony, the head-shaking—I don’t know what comes over me, I can’t help myself, it isn’t planned, it’s like a mania, and I suddenly hear myself singing along. Somewhere along the line, don’t ask me exactly when or how, I must have jumped up onto the bar, and now I’m standing there in my sharkskin jacket with my head thrown back, my eyeballs pulsing, veins throbbing in my neck, singing along in tune, or so it seems to me at least, as loud as I can, and people are staring at me and laughing and applauding until the song is over, at which point they gradually seem to remember that they should also be clapping for the two guys up on stage. So, from their point of view, I guess the ending was a little bit of an anticlimax, and I slightly regret that. I mean, I wasn’t trying to upstage them, but let’s face it, a singing chihuahua in a sharkskin jacket sort of can’t help but steal the show.

  Anyway, these guys come down from the stage and they get a few high-fives and backslaps from people in the audience, but it’s clear they’re not too happy. They go right up to the bartender and the short one says to him, “Why you let fucking dogs in here? That mutt ruined our act.”

  The comment puts the bartender in sort of a difficult and thankless situation, and besides, it’s clearly meant for me and Master to hear, so of course Master jumps right in to defend me and also get the bartender off the hook, not to mention insert himself into the middle of any possible controversy. “Excuse me,” he says, “but my dog didn’t ruin your act. In fact he raised it to another level. I mean, look at all the laughs youse got.”

  The tall one leans in, not smiling and in fact the opposite of smiling, and says, “We don’t sing to be laughed at.”

  I guess this is a fair point, and Master backtracks a little. “Okay, okay, I don’t means laughs exactly. I mean attention. The whole joint was payin’ good attention.”

  “Yeah, to the dog,” the short one says.

  “And to you,” Master suggests.

  “In that order,” the tall one puts in. “The dog, and by the way, us. After all the fucking time and work we put in to get that song exactly right.”

  Well, at this point, this guy who’s been sitting on the other side of Master and who hasn’t said a word all night but has been drinking many shots of tequila, seems to get the bright idea of stepping in to smooth things over, and he says, “Come on guys, lighten up. It’s only karaoke.”

  This turns out not to be a good approach. The short guy says, “Only karaoke? That’s all it is? Only fucking karaoke? So happens some of us take karaoke very serious.”

  Sort of in an undertone, the tequila guy says, “Yeah, real serious. Serious enough for the early show on Tuesday night.”

  “And what the fuck is that smartass remark supposed to mean?” says the tall guy.

  So as this is going back and forth I detect a certain smell that any dog would instantly recognize as the musk of aggression, a funky threat or warning emerging from the pores, the rank tang of a fight waiting to happen. Master seems to pick up on it also, though in his case I think it has less to do with olfactory acuity than with long experience of fights in bars, so he speaks up softly and, gentleman that he is, takes the onus upon himself. “Listen, fellas, please, this whole brouhaha, it’s all my fault. I shoulda controlled the dog better. But no one’s meaning any offense or disrespect. What say I buy youse all a drink?”

  Well, these are magic words. Abracadabra. Open sesame. Free drink! The offer doesn’t exactly dispel the tension but at least it suggests a face-saving alternative to a brawl. The tall guy and the short guy consult with their eyes and don’t say no. The other guy mutters a thanks-but-no-thanks and makes the surprisingly intelligent decision to quit while he’s ahead and leave. As he’s heading out toward the crush on Duval, he says, “Nice suits.”

  I can’t be sure, but I think I hear a trace of sarcasm in his tone.

  Anyway, that leaves the four of us in our matching sharkskin. Our guests have been given scotch and water. Master’s on his third Old-Fashioned and I’m getting looped on boozy cherries. Moment by moment, things are getting at least a little more relaxed. These guys, I guess they had some adrenaline pumping from being up on stage and it’s taking some time to simmer off. Finally the short one shakes his head and almost smiles. “Upstaged by a howling mutt,” he says. “Well, that’s show biz.”

  He and the tall guy clink glasses, and it’s just at that moment that Master, who for all his savvy can be a little slow on the uptake sometimes, though often I suspect that he’s only pretending to be, as one of his many strategies for sticking his nose in things, finally lets on that he recognizes these two guys. “Hey, I seen youse before,” he says.

  The two guys puff up a little bit. The tall one says, “Yeah, this is the fourth, fifth time we done this gig.”

  I’m thinking gig? One song, no pay, this qualifies as a gig? Well, I guess people have to start somewhere or at least imagine that they’ve started.

  Master says, “No, not here. Somewhere else.” He thinks a little more. “Onna beach. That’s where it was. Onna beach.”

  The
two karaoke artists deflate a little.

  “Youse were abductin’ a lady I know.”

  The comment instantly kills the relaxation trend. The short guy chokes a little on his drink and starts turning reddish at the hairline. He says, “Abducting? We don’t abduct people, bud.”

  “I was speakin’, ya know, figurative.”

  “Well, maybe you shouldn’t,” says the tall guy. “Maybe you should be more literal. More accurate.”

  “Well, it’s just, ya know, youse guys looked very tough and all, the goodfellas outfits, the sorta modified gorilla walk—”

  “Modified gorilla?” says the short guy.

  “Nothin’ personal. But ya know, kinda slow and menacing, knuckles half-clenched. You get the picture. For a minute I thought youse was the real deal.”

  “Real deal?” says the tall guy.

  “Ya know. Goombahs. Knee-breakers. Call it what you will.”

  “I got a better idea,” the short guy says. “How about you mind your fucking business and don’t call it anything?”

  “Jeez, ya don’t have to get all touchy.”

  “Actually,” says the tall guy, “we do have to get all touchy ‘cause you keep giving us things to be touchy about. First the howling dog. Then the crazy accusations.”

  “Accusations?” Master says. “Hey, wait a sec. You guys got me wrong. I’m not makin’ accusations or castin’ aspersions or anything like that of an insinuatin’ nature. I’m just curious. I seen youse onna beach lookin’ a certain way and doin’ a certain thing. Now I see youse here dressed very different and doin’ somethin’ very different. So I’m curious. Who wouldn’t be?”

  “Listen, old man,” the tall guy says, leaning in a little more than he was already leaning, “here it is, nice and simple. We got a day-job, okay? Like about a hundred million other people. Maybe more like a billion. We got something that we love to do, and so far it doesn’t pay the rent. So we also got stuff that we need to do. That’s life. That’s what it comes down to. And that’s all that you or anybody else needs to know.”

  But Master, of course, couldn’t quite let it go at that. “It have a name, this day-job? Like, a job title?”

  At that, the two guys look at one another. They don’t really seem mad anymore, just worn down and exasperated. The short one says, “Let’s just get out of here. This fucking guy’s impossible.”

  I’m about to growl by way of protest, but Master shoots me a tiny smile so I know he’s not insulted in the least and in fact he’s rather pleased with how things are going.

  “Thanks for the drink,” the tall guy says, slapping it down half-finished on the bar. “But do us a favor and leave the dog home next time.”

  And the two of them turn to leave. No handshake or anything like that. They just walk out, suits flashing when they catch the light. Another act is on by then, singing a song about some very disturbed guy named Maxwell who keeps killing people with a silver hammer and mostly getting away with it. Frankly, I think it’s a pretty dumb song and I don’t really see the point of it.

  15

  S arge was intimidated but trying his damnedest not to let it show as he was introduced to the session musicians who’d been summoned down from Miami to record with him. The drummer was named Pinky because he was missing part of one. The bass guy was Robert and it was clear from his hipster solemnity that you wouldn’t call him Bob. The lead guitarist was known as Fly, whether for his finger-speed or because of the way his eyes looked behind thick and tiny granny glasses, it was impossible to know. What was clear to Sarge was that these guys were just so cool. They lolled around the studio with the practiced nonchalance of ballplayers on a baseball diamond during warm-ups. Somehow they’d overcome their awe of the setting, absorbed the mythic power of the place, made it part of who they were. They just looked like they belonged there. They set up their instruments and played little riffs and doo-dads without looking at each other. Sarge imitated them though his knuckles felt nervy and his throat was dry.

  Marco Mondesi, dressed in black from head to toe and carrying an enormous mug of coffee, handed out the charts then took up his solitary post in the control room. Headset in place, he settled into the rolling chair at the window that offered a godlike perspective on the studio below. His disembodied voice came through the speakers. “Okay, let’s get started. Sarge here has written an amazing song.”

  So the session opened with a lie. Welcome to the music business.

  “Play it once through, Sarge,” Mondesi went on. “Solo. Slow and easy. Any way you feel it.”

  The other musicians were looking at him and for a moment the young man froze. His hands felt like he had mittens on and it was as if a hunk of bread was glutting up his gullet. He’d played the song five hundred times and suddenly he couldn’t remember the first word or in what key he played it. He looked at the floor. He closed his eyes. He took a breath. He squeezed the neck of the guitar. And he started.

  His eyes were still closed when he finished the song and somehow over the course of three verses and a break he’d forgotten that he was no longer in his motel room and that there were other people listening, so he was surprised when he heard Fly’s coolly laconic reaction. “Beautiful.”

  “Nice,” said Pinky.

  “Sweet,” said Robert.

  The producer’s voice boomed through the studio. “I think it’s going to work.”

  Sarge nodded modestly and allowed himself only a small smile that he hoped would not look uncool.

  Three hours and fourteen takes later, Mondesi had what he needed from the session guys: A brooding and contemplative bass line from Robert, mostly retro-sounding brushes and muted tom-tom from Pinky, and from Fly a quietly virtuosic lead that seemed to wrap the melody in a kind of helix, sometimes soaring above the tune, sometimes purring below it, sometimes ahead of the beat and sometimes trailing, fading, dwindling away, creating, at least for those who listened closely, an ache of gain and loss, then and now, before and after.

  The producer paid the band and sent them back to Miami. He dismissed Sarge and said he’d call him later.

  “Like, when later?” the young man asked.

  He asked it humbly, bashfully, but Mondesi seemed annoyed by the question anyway. “Like, when it’s finished. Other than that, I have no idea.”

  So Sarge went back to his crummy motel but was too wired to sit there in his room. He drove to a nearby marina to watch the sun go down but was more focused on the weight in his pocket of the phone that did not ring. He took himself out for a fried shrimp dinner and realized halfway through that he hadn’t noticed the taste of his food. He was completely given over to the weird activity, or non-activity, of waiting, the kind of waiting that left room for nothing else, that obliterated the present and left only a jumpy void for the future to burst into. Hopeful, fretful, thrilled and scared, he was waiting for his own life to be born.

  

  “All I’m sayin’,” said Bert, “I’m sayin’ there’s somethin’ not quite kosher with those two guys.”

  “Look,” Pete reasoned, “I spoke with Callie yesterday. Nice long talk. She was not abducted. She told me that herself.”

  “Then why were those guys so touchy?”

  “Why? Wouldn’t you be touchy if someone just came out and accused you of abducting someone?”

  It was nine o’clock or so on a mild, salty evening, and Bert had asked Pete to join him and Nacho on their nightly constitutional out to White Street Pier, a long cement finger that Key West poked into the soft belly of the Atlantic Ocean. The pier, as usual after sundown, was empty except for an occasional lonely guy on rollerblades and a few fishermen who didn’t seem to mind not catching fish spread out at wide intervals along the rail. Nacho sniffed at their bait pails and occasionally sneezed. The tide was low and the sulfurous smell of rotting seaweed was both rank and comforting.

  Bert had his answer ready. “Touchy?” he said, “No, I would not be touchy. And I will explain to y
ou exactly and precisely why I wouldn’t be, in strict accordance or you could say logical agreement with the laws of nature, by which I’m not talkin’ trees and frogs and flowers and such, ya know, the outdoor kinda nature, but rather, the kinda nature that pertains to how people act and why they act like that way, namely human nature. Capeesh?”

  Pete said, “I think I capeeshed the beginning and I think I capeeshed the end. The middle got a little long and murky.”

  “Okay, sorry, I’ll keep it simple. Say I’m sittin’ in a crowded bar somewhere, and there’s music and there’s noise and everybody’s screamin’ in each other’s face, and somebody outa the blue accuses me of abductin’ someone. What’s gonna happen? One of two things. The most likely, wit’ the noise and all, is that I’d think I didn’t hear it right and I’d simply say Excuse me? The other thing that might happen is that I’d figure it was some kinda lame joke because the whole idea of me abductin’ someone is so far-fetched and even whaddyacallit, preposterous, that I’d just kinda laugh it off even if I didn’t quite see the humor. I mean, it would be too ridiculous to take personal. Now here’s what I wouldn’t do. I wouldn’t get all touchy and mad and defensive unless I had let’s say a guilty conscience or unless I was the type of person who maybe, possibly, it would not be inconceivable, that I would abduct someone. I mean, why else would I bother gettin’ bothered about some passin’ comment in a bar? So, in other words, I lobbed these guys a hunk of bait and they took it, which I why I still suspect they aren’t kosher.”

  By the time Bert paused for breath, they’d come to the end of the pier, where an enormous painted compass rose gleamed dull red and blue in the middle of the pavement. A light wet breeze blew off the ocean. Pete’s glasses fogged up and he mopped them on his handkerchief. He said, “Thanks for keeping it simple.”