“What, so you forgot how? It ain’t rocket science. Ya put some bullets in, ya pull the trigger.”
“Oh yeah, right. Just like that. La-di-da. Ya pull the trigger. Except the other guys are professionals, and we happen to be amateurs.”
“Speak for yourself,” the old man said. “But look, pullin’ the trigger, that’s only as a final, last resort. It ain’t the point, ya shoot somebody. Point is, ya show the gun. It’s a whaddyacallit, a detergent.”
“Deterrent.”
“Whatever.”
Pete felt Callie’s eyes on him. More than anything, he wanted not to let her down, but in that moment of choked-back panic he had no idea what she wanted him to do. Be the voice of caution? Which is to say, be his usual self? Or step a million miles outside his comfort zone and try to be a hero? Hoping to pull back from the brink, he said, “Look, can we maybe take a deep breath here before diving in to all this stuff about bodyguards and guns? I mean, let’s back up a sec. This big imagined shootout. What’s it really all about? With due respect to Sarge, it’s about a one-third share in a song that hardly anybody’s even heard yet.”
Bert raised a wrinkled and yellowish finger to disagree. “One-third? Who says it’s gotta be one-third?”
“Excuse me?”
“You read the contract same as me, Pete. Remember that last clause? Well, it cuts both ways, right? Somebody dies, the other guy gets his share. So if it so happens or you might say transpires that Marco is the guy that dies—”
“Now, hold on a second, Bert—”
“Look, I ain’t proposin’ murder or mayhem or any kinda unnecessary violence. I’m just sayin’ that if things get outa hand, which, let’s face it, things have been known to do, and if we’re lookin’ wit’ a cool eye at the whole range of what you might call outcomes, which would be synonymous wit’ sayin’ how it all shakes out, then we should at least consider or, to put it another way, be cognizant of the fact that certain outcomes would be very positive for our young friend here. Dead producer. Non-existent songwriter. Do the math. Sarge gets all the money.”
“I wouldn’t take it,” said Sarge. “Not if someone died. And it’s not even my own song.”
“Very commendable attitude,” said Bert. “Don’t decide till ya see the number onna check.”
Pete suddenly stood up. He hadn’t known he was about to stand, it was just that the adrenaline had been building and his legs just wouldn’t sit still any longer. “Look, we’re letting this just totally run away with us. First it’s bodyguards, then guns, now we’re already spending some dead guy’s royalties. And all this based on a couple of unproved hunches. It’s all guesswork. The only thing we know for sure is that this song is scheduled to be launched tomorrow at a party.”
“Which is all the more reason we gotta be there,” Bert insisted.
“Or all the more reason that Sarge should stay safe and call it off,” countered Pete.
Sarge lay there in the belly of the hammock. He’d been listening to the other men arguing back and forth, but most of the time he’d been looking at his Mom and she’d been looking back at him, the shape and color of their eyes so much alike. Finally, more to her than to Pete and Bert, he said, “Look, I’m sorry, maybe it’s dumb, but I can’t call it off. I can’t just walk away without knowing what would happen, knowing what might’ve been. Without watching all those people listening to me sing.”
There was a silence. Pete took off his glasses and tried to wipe some haze off them. The effort just spread the haze around. Bert fondled the chihuahua.
Callie tried to sound upbeat. “Well, I guess it’s settled then. We’re going. All of us.” To Pete and Bert she added, “You can be my guests.”
“Your guests?” said Pete, feeling a quick stab of that stubborn, idiotic jealousy. “You’re back on Marco’s invite list?”
“For this? Of course. Mother of the guest of honor.” She managed a proud smile directed at her son. “And besides, three bodyguards are better than two.”
25
W ho doesn’t love a party, right? And this one, from what Callie read off her printed invitation, sounded like a whopper: A Sixties Masquerade, Celebrating the Release of “Gone Tomorrow” by the Hot New Singer-Songwriter, Sarge LeRoi. Pre-Sunset Cocktails and Hors d’Oeuvres at 6 pm. Light Buffet Supper at 7:30. Song Premiere at 9. Period Dress Preferred.
Well, Master hears this and we are off to the races, so to speak, even though there’s a whole nother day before the big shebang. But when it comes to wardrobe, Master leaves nothing to chance. So we drive home, he stashes the car in a parking-space-and-a-half back in the garage, and right away he’s rummaging through his closet looking for appropriate outfits for us both. He unzips garment bags and I get a whiff of moth balls. He pulls open drawers and I smell what’s left of the little bags of dried flowers with maybe a cinnamon stick thrown in that his late wife must have put there way before I was even born. He ventures up a step-ladder—a terrifying sight, frankly—and comes down with old hats, old shoes, old scarves, old handkerchiefs.
I think it’s fair to say that Master does not like to part with his old clothes. Maybe they remind him of good times he had while wearing them. Or maybe he looks at the clothes but what he really sees is himself when he was younger and the clothes were new and probably he filled them out a little better, stronger arms, bigger chest, stuff like that. Or maybe he just thinks that, if he keeps these clothes for long enough, they’ll come back into style. Which is one of those human being things that I will never understand. Fashion, I mean. Say you have a certain garment. Everyone agrees that it looks great. A little bit of time goes by, and now everybody thinks that the exact same garment would be a geeky thing to wear. Why? It’s the same thing as it was before. This just makes no sense to me.
Anyway, since the occasion for the dress-up is a costume party, Master is actually way ahead of the game. From somewhere way at the back of the closet, he digs out these strange blue denim pants where the leg part gets wider at the bottom. At first, I don’t see the logic or advantage of this, that the pants get fat where the leg inside them gets skinny, but okay, I’m no fashion maven and I’m not here to judge. Different strokes, as they say. For a shirt, he finds something unlike anything I’ve ever seen him wear. It’s just plain white cotton, almost as thin as gauze, no piping, no monogram, not even a real collar. I think it’s called a peasant shirt, and with due respect to peasants, I can see why. It lacks pizzazz. To fancy it up a little, he puts on a necklace like the ones I’ve seen in shops down on Duval Street now and then. I think it’s called a peace sign.
That leaves the question of how to dress yours truly. Well, the options seem limited, but Master finds a way. One of my little jackets happens to be this plaid material that, when we got caught in the rain one day, the colors all leaked and bled together. Turns out this was how it was supposed to act. Madras, I think the stuff is called. Very sixties, apparently. So I get the madras jacket and a miniature peace sign necklace that matches Master’s, and we’re pretty much all set.
Except it turns out that I’m completely wrong about the wide-legged pants not having any practical advantage. Once he’s put them on, Master goes over to the dresser where he keeps his gun and also, way at the back with the balled-up socks, a holster that holds it snug just above his ankle. Propping his foot against a chair, he straps the holster onto his leg and settles the old revolver in it. Then he straightens up, lets the pants fall into place, and checks himself out in the full-length mirror. Nothing shows, not even the slightest lump or wrinkle.
I should have known he had a plan about the pants.
Sarge went back to his motel, even though his mother had urged him to spend the night at her little place on Whitehead Street. But the young man begged off on grounds of needing some time to try to calm himself and clear his mind, some time with his guitar as sole companion and confidante. And maybe he also had a hunch—he’d written a few wistful and ambi
valent love songs, after all—that Callie and Pete might welcome a chance to be together, just the two of them, after all the worry and tumult.
But after he was gone, conversation did not come easily to the former lovers. There was so much to talk about that it almost seemed like there was nothing to talk about at all. Talking about their fears for Sarge would only have made those fears more vivid. Talking about anything else would have seemed like an evasion. So for some moments they just sat in their chairs, glancing at each other then looking away as if they’d been caught at something. Caught, they looked instead across the porch railing at the low sun now slipping below the crowns of the palms, its diminishing brightness sliced up by the dangling silhouetted fronds. Then they glanced at each other once again, a bit more candidly each time.
Finally Pete said, “Would you mind if I got in the hammock?”
It was an entirely innocent and a very dangerous question.
“No,” she said. “I wouldn’t mind.”
He got up from his chair and walked the few steps to the hammock, gingerly placed his backside against the mesh and settled in. Once he was comfy, head propped on the small pillow that was attached with loops of braided cord, he said, “You know, I remember every detail of the view from here. The angles of the roofs across the street, the slots between the houses where the light comes through, the colors of the shutters. I even remember where there’s a crack in the pavement that the cars sort of plunk over as they pass. I’d hear that plunk all night the couple of times we slept out here.”
“You didn’t used to be so sentimental, Pete.”
“Was I being sentimental? I thought I was just remembering.”
“Same thing, maybe,” Callie said. “You wouldn’t remember if you didn’t care.”
He couldn’t disagree. He stayed quiet a moment.
“While you’re just remembering,” she said, “do you happen to remember what I said to you the night we met?”
“The night you picked me up?” he teased.
“The night we both decided to take a chance. I said I wanted to lie down next to you. Very bold of me. Not sure if I’m proud or embarrassed. Some of both, I guess. But I said nothing more than that. No promises. Just lie down beside you and see if it felt right. Remember?”
“Sure I do. I left my door unlocked and went to bed. I didn’t really think you’d show up.”
“I had no idea if I’d show up or not,” she admitted. “Then at some point there I was. Still not knowing what would happen. What I wanted. If I’d stay or go.”
“I’m glad you stayed.”
“So am I.” She paused, shot a half-smile at her former lover then looked beyond him at the dimming trees and the now amber-tinged sky behind them. “But, Pete, everything just feels so different now. I’m sober. I’m careful. I have Sarge in my life. I have responsibilities. Maybe I’m finally a grownup. Maybe not. I miss you. A lot. More and more every time I see you. But I can’t just pick up where we left off. It wouldn’t be honest. I’m not the same person.”
Pete dropped his eyes, turned his face away from Callie and toward the familiar view, and tasted a disappointment that had the same sad flavor as a spoiled wine. For a long moment, he lived unhappily with the letdown then finally said, “You’re right. We can’t just pick it up. So what if we just start from the beginning?”
“The beginning?”
“Clean slate. Like when we met. When neither of us knew what would happen or what we wanted. When we were open to trying. What if we just lie next to each other for a little while? Here. Now. No promises. No expectations. Just see if it feels right. You think that’s maybe worth a try?”
He slid over in the hammock and held out his arm.
26
A ccording to the clock, all hours are the same, sixty minutes of sixty seconds each, every increment alike. But that is not how hours are lived. Hours shrink and stretch. Some hours flash past so quickly that their duration barely registers, as if they’d been somehow stolen from the day. Other hours slog and stumble like a fat man in soft sand.
The hours leading up to the big party on No Name Key were more like that. The most routine things seemed to take a miniature eternity to happen. The water for Pete’s tea took forever to boil. In the diner up on Big Pine where Sarge took breakfast every morning, the waitress lagged like she was carrying trays against a headwind. On the small beach at the end of Duval Street, Callie grew impatient and achy in her yoga poses, as though her arms and legs were being commanded to lift and hold for intervals more appropriate to torture.
And, of course, time moved slowest of all for Bert. It hung suspended as he mixed a bowl of kibble and wet food for the dog. It stalled as his dented old espresso pot balked at pressing the steam through the coffee grounds. The toast needed to be toasted twice, and still the butter declined to melt.
For all of them, the sun got higher, the morning went from cool to warm to hot, but the grudging and indifferent clock refused to keep pace with their nervousness and their anticipation.
Around noon, Pete figured he’d better try to find his gun. Actually, he knew exactly where it was—in a cabinet in the music room, behind a stack of CDs that he hadn’t listened to in many years—but he hated even to think about the weapon, and so he pretended to himself that he’d forgotten where he’d hidden it. It was a Glock 9 mm single-stack. It had been fired exactly once, a long, long time ago, and, thank God, it had missed. Pete had no doubt that, if he ever had to fire it again, he’d miss again, whether on purpose or from lack of skill or lack of nerve; what did the reason matter, as long as he was spared the disgust of having shot someone? Best case, maybe he could bluff his way through just by wagging the muzzle and never even need to pull the trigger.
He’d given no thought to what he’d wear. It was a costume party but he was not a costume kind of guy. After a very minimal amount of thought, he decided he’d just let his hair frizz out, wear whatever the hell he wanted, and say he was going as Bob Dylan. Dylan didn’t care what he wore either.
At the Sea Dream motel, Sarge took the one crummy chair from his room and put it on the narrow sidewalk beneath the eaves next to his door. He brought out his guitar and started playing and singing very softly, mostly just bits and pieces, now and then playing a whole song through. He played a few of the songs he’d written himself, though he’d sort of fallen out of love with them since the moment Marco had pronounced them average, and it wasn’t easy to play a song that you used to think was the best you’d ever done and then to have it dissed like that. At some point a family—Mom, Dad, two girls maybe twelve and ten—came out of a nearby room. The parents were carrying a big beach cooler by either end. They paused shyly for a moment then sidestepped over and asked Sarge if they could listen. He said they were welcome to, and he played “Gone Tomorrow,” the song that was not his own but was the only one he still had faith in. The daughters listened, clapped, and asked if he would play one more. Their parents told them not to be a pain, but Sarge said it was fine.
So, full of doubt and a kind of secret self-mockery, he played a song he’d once been very proud of and which he now believed was amateur stuff, mediocre and probably embarrassing. The daughters clapped again. Sarge thanked them. The parents said he was very good. Sarge smiled at the daughters and asked them if they liked the songs. They said they did. He worked up his courage, braced for disappointment, and asked if they liked one more than the other. They looked at each other and giggled the way kids do before they venture an opinion in front of grownups, and the older girl said, “The second one.”
Sarge asked her why. She shrugged and said she didn’t know, she just liked it. That was enough. Sarge was young, and young people were like small, light boats without much keel or rudder underneath them; it didn’t take much to knock them off course, but it didn’t take much for them to right themselves either. He told the girl he was glad she liked the song, and though his face
didn’t show much, inside him it was like new air was filling up his lungs after they’d been half-empty for awhile. Confidence began to rebuild itself as an odd mix of gratitude and defiance. These people liked his song. Maybe they knew just as much as Marco did. And maybe so did Sarge himself.
He brought the chair and the guitar inside and started getting ready for the party.
Callie did not miss drinking. Or not much, at least. Or not most of the time, though she did remember with some wistfulness the phony comfort of it, the tipsy charade of pretending to play life free and easy. It had on occasion been a great relief to beat back bashfulness and worry for at least a little while; the problem was that bashfulness and worry had a lot of patience and were always willing to bide their time then burgeon up like evil genies from the bottom of the bottle; the dreaded bottom of the bottle. The wearing thin of the illusion. The nasty payback. No, all in all she didn’t miss it. But still, on such a fraught day as today…
No, she wouldn’t go there. She’d promised Sarge. She’d promised herself.
She went instead to the sunny windowsill where her latest batch of kombucha had been brewing. She poured herself a cup, took it out onto her balcony, and thought about how much her life had changed, filled up, in barely a week—a single week!—since the moment she’d been escorted off the beach and brought to meet the son she’d given away though never stopped loving in the melancholy, guilty, and sporadic way that a person can love a blank place in the world, an absence. Then, with head-spinning suddenness, Sarge went from absent to vividly present, and cherished, and in danger. And in the short space of the same few days, her former lover—recently another absence—was back in her thoughts and back in her hammock.
The Paradise Gig Page 16