Imperfect Solo

by Steven Boykey Sidley

  We finish the set. I head over to the bar and order a double vodka, losing the will to maintain sobriety. Why, I ask myself? To whose benefit? I check my phone. There are no messages.

  Gordon comes over.

  “You are on fire, my brother. Crowd is loving it.”

  “It happens, sometimes.”

  “Keep it up, the booze is flowing.”

  “So are you going to pay us more tonight?”

  “Only if I can pay you less when you sound like shit. Can get you laid, though. Anyone you fancy?”

  “Gordon, you are a generous human being. I’ll take money instead.”

  “No can do, hombre. Too valuable.”

  I head into the alleyway. Mike is bathed in sweat and smoking furiously, laughing with Tim, their previous altercation clearly long forgotten. They are discussing a singer who sat in with us a few weeks ago who was so off-key that we suspected she was deaf. Van is sitting on a trash can, rolling a joint intently. Billy the monosyllabic bass player is not around, most likely trawling for sex somewhere, which is his primary motive for playing music in the first place. He is very good at it.

  “Good gig tonight, guys.”

  There are various grunts and disinterested nods. When you have been playing together for a long time, everyone knows that sometimes you flame and sometimes you flame out. It is just part of the territory. No need for great analysis.

  Van calls me over.

  “Want a hit?”

  “Nah. Driving tonight. Makes me crash into poles.”

  “What’s with the sky falling and all?”

  “Ah shit. Another time. I’m having fun.”

  The second set begins with a mash-up, which has become something of a signature for us. We mash Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’” with Ravel’s “Bolero” with the theme from Glee. It sounds smart, funny, and bizarrely right, but the arrangement nearly broke us when it was suggested by a drunk Van one night a few months ago. Tim is our resident genius in the mash-up department, his arrangements coming from a place of deep musical perversity.

  I am having such a good time that I am starting to forget the audience, concentrating largely on the singular and rare perfection of our ensemble performances, where everyone seems to be suddenly telepathically connected, a blue moon occurrence. We end the set with the Piazzolla tango called “Oblivion.” It is played slowly, majestically. The alto plays the melody, which starts on a low concert G and jumps tragically up a single octave for the second note, as the band nails the traditional tango rhythm to the stage. It is an unbearably beautiful melody, full of unrequited love, intimations of anger, blind hope and broken dreams. As I move into the solo I sail over the accordion arpeggios, eyes tightly shut, transporting myself to dark halls in the working-class favelas of Buenos Aires in the early part of the last century where strangers came to dance and to drink and to love and to regret and to forget the world in which they toiled. I am above the chords now, composing, not improvising, sliding from harmonic underpin to emotional intent, above algorithms, above structure, singing the body fucking electric, surfing the tsunami, seeing God, inventing myself again and again and again.

  The song ends quietly. I open my eyes. As always, most of the audience has heard nothing. This was not dance music—the audience had returned to more immediate concerns of the evening’s chase. I catch a few nods and smiles here and there, but it doesn’t matter. When I play that good, it doesn’t matter.

  I make my way to the bar, order another double. Check my phone. Nothing. A large hand comes down gently on my shoulder.

  “Damn, that was pretty.”

  It is Innocent. It is not Sanborn, not Brecker, not Parker. It is Innocent.

  And I cannot imagine anyone else making me feel as good.

  CHAPTER 32

  AFTER TALKING TO his nonresponsive mother for an hour, and holding her slack hand, Innocent has taken a cab from the hospital to the bar.

  The gig is over; we are heading to Cantor’s for a late-night snack.

  “So, what did you say to her?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “I just do.”

  “It’s private.”

  “Do you think she heard you?”

  “No, I don’t. But I heard me.”

  We are silent for a while. I negotiate traffic along Santa Monica and swing onto Fairfax and park. Cantor’s is a Jewish deli of such Hollywood iconography that you can smell the echoes of dreams and hopes ranging over fifty years. The restaurant is quiet. We get a table by the window, ordering the comfort food of our ancestry—borscht with boiled potatoes and sour cream.

  “There is something we need to talk about, Innocent.”

  “Besides Mom?”

  “Yes.”

  “You mean my coke-addled friend, Wanda?”

  He is not looking at me as he says this; he knows what is coming. It reminds me of the rare occasions when I was called in by Grace to inflict a small measure of patriarchal displeasure after he had committed some misdemeanor or other. I hated it. He hated it. But we walked through the charade together.

  “You’re getting warmer.”

  “You mean me?”

  “Warmer.”

  “You mean me and drugs?” We are here now. The rub is upon us, and I want to differentiate this from our historical “talks.” This is much more serious shit. This is hard drugs. This is the fork leading to one life or another.

  “Bingo.”

  He nods a while, says nothing. I wait.

  “Yeah, I partake occasionally.”

  “What does ‘occasionally’ mean?”

  “I’m not sure this is a conversation I want to have with you. I’m an adult who makes his own decisions now.”

  “Not really. You’re on my payroll. That gives me employer oversight.”

  “I don’t need your money, Dad, I can get a part-time job. If you’re going to pay for my education, the only way I will take the money is on a no-strings basis.”

  He has me, of course. But he knows he is lost here. This is not an academic debate. I am tired, emptied out, want to sleep. But I have to be heard. This is my child. You do anything to protect him from harm.

  “OK, I retract. But I want to talk about it.”

  “Not sure I want to.”

  “Innocent, I’m an old hand here. I have done almost every drug you can think of and some of them I have overdone. Consider me a wise elder in these matters.”

  “I know, Dad. I would watch you when you took me to gigs when I was growing up. It was pretty obvious. I was kind of proud—my dad was the kind of guy who would take risks, he was out there, experimenting, on the edge. It was impressive to me. So if you want to know why I partake, it’s because I had a role model.”

  Shit.

  “Yeah, well, I wasn’t always a good role model. And the drugs were mainly a great big nonsense.”

  “Yes, that’s the point of drugs, Dad.”

  Shit again.

  “OK. Let me try this, without trying to mimic your average drug counselor. The problem with drugs is that, firstly, they’re worth less money than you pay for them. You wouldn’t spend $100 on a film, so why would you spend that money on a gram of coke, which is never as valuable and usually not as long-lasting as a good film? Secondly, the experience itself, while perhaps fun under the influence, is never fun in retrospect. What you are when you are flying, in everyone’s eyes except your own, is an asshole who talks too fast about himself and nothing else. Thirdly—and I do sound like a counselor here—is that it is truly addictive. As in, I-can’t-leave-home-without-it addictive. Which eventually makes it more important than anything else in your life, and that’s just a sad blues. Fourthly, nobody ever did anything useful on drugs.”

  “Uh huh. I know all this, Dad. And you’re sounding like a counselor because you’re not being honest.”

  “How so?”

  “Plenty of people did useful things on drugs.”

  “Who?”


  “Charlie Parker on heroin.”

  “Heroin killed him.”

  “Yeah, but he did something useful. Sigmund Freud on coke.”

  “Perhaps, but he also wanted to fuck his mother. And he stopped doing it.”

  “Even so.”

  “OK, I retract objection number four.”

  “You’re also generalizing, Dad.” This is the problem with a smart kid. He has seen you traffic in the gray areas of moral dialectic for years. He has learned the tricks of debate, he can find the loopholes. He can justify anything. “If you are going to have this conversation with me you really, really, really have to have your arguments ready.”

  “How am I generalizing?”

  “All drugs are not the same. Do you object to my getting drunk occasionally?”

  “Yes. No, not really.”

  “Do you object to me having the occasional joint?”

  “Uh, no.”

  “Crack a tab of E and go dancing?”

  “OK, I get your point.”

  “Well, then, define your terms.”

  My fatigue totters toward parental irritation. At an empty Hollywood deli in the dead of night, with a son who may or not be falling off the edge.

  “Don’t be a wise guy, Innocent. This is serious shit and I am your father. I don’t want you to do coke. You’re too smart to do anything stronger, but I definitely draw a line at coke. It’s a vampire squid that will suck you dry. It nearly did me.”

  “Really?”

  “Long story, not important now. It is an evil succubus cunt. I can’t put it more strongly than that.”

  “That’s pretty strong.”

  “How much are you doing?”

  “Every couple of nights. When we party.”

  “You know the golden rule about drug confessions, Innocent?”

  “What?”

  “Multiply by five. That means you are doing it every day.”

  “I’m not.”

  There is a particular incident from a certain period in my life that stands out. I was living with Tamara, a sweet and trusting soul. An artist, who spent long days drinking tea and singing softly to herself while she painted gentle landscape vistas festooned with otherworldly flora. I was all over the place at the time. I had recently graduated and had not yet started my career. I was playing a lot, gigging, partying, rehearsing, seeing bands. And starting to slip grindingly into cocaine dependency. A bump before playing. Then a line during the breaks. A line to wake up. A line when I felt good. A line when I felt bad. Then a friendship with a friendly dealer, then a come-rain-come-shine stash in my back pocket, then an experiment with smoking it. Then more of an experiment. And finally, a pustulent lifestyle, shrouded in secrecy and deceit, with Tamara an unsuspecting backdrop. A classical study in drug advancement.

  During this period, I took a job as a programmer, speeding cocaine-fueled through complex programming tasks, sometimes not sleeping for days. One day, a Saturday, I told Tamara that I had to go to work, when in fact I was looking to flame the soldier. I headed into Hollywood, made my score, and sat in the car in a darkened side street smoking, until paranoia took hold, as it always eventually did. I drove around, scored again and then again, until my bank card would no longer function, shut down by some auto-fraud-detection software at my bank, which assumed that more than three withdrawals in an hour meant trouble. I had told Tamara I would be home not-too-late. It was no longer that. I called her from my cell phone, panicked at the come down, panicked at my inability to score, panicked that she would divine the truth and the whole edifice would collapse.

  “Honey, sorry I’m late, it’s going to be a while. I have had a flat tire. I have to do the whole jack-and-change thing.”

  “How long will you be?”

  “I don’t know. An hour maybe.” Padding it a bit, in case I found a spare twenty in my pocket.

  And then I find a pen knife in the glove compartment. Get out of the car. Plunge it into the rear tire. Change the tire. Crawl under the car. Run my hands under the undercarriage, till they are black with oil and whatever the hell else congeals under there. Wipe it on my face, my clothes. Make a small cut on my hand to attract the sympathy vote. And then drive back to Tamara, in my costume of duplicity. She bought it and I disappeared into the bathroom to throw up from guilt and shame.

  Innocent won’t hold my gaze.

  “You’re doing it every day. This conversation is over. Tell me you’ve heard me.”

  “I’ve heard you.”

  “Tell me again.”

  “I’ve heard you.”

  I kiss him on the head. I can do no more.

  “Let’s go see Grace before we head home.”

  He is quiet as we leave the restaurant. He has heard me.

  CHAPTER 33

  WE ARE ONLY a few blocks from the hospital and as I turn into Beverly there is the familiar heart-stopping whoop from a siren behind me. It is LAPD.

  Shit.

  Saying shit is standard fare for being stopped for a possible traffic offense. If you are stopped in London, you say damnation. If you are stopped in Paris, you say merde. If you are stopped in Congo, presumably the same sort of word comes to mind, perhaps with a tad more astringency. I am a mostly law-abiding citizen. I pay my tickets, don’t do drugs anymore, only think about killing people, my license and registration are current, and I had, what, two drinks at the bar? Three maybe? The barkeep and I are friends. Did he double me up? I am vaguely aware that blood alcohol levels in California require little more than a half-glass of slightly turned milk to trigger Breathalyzers. And I am also aware of, and am indeed supportive of, the medieval edicts of torture and evisceration for drunk drivers.

  But, hey, the corrupt and brutal cops of L.A. Confidential are ancient history. These guys are now the pinnacle of civility and professionalism. The last time there was a corruption or brutality case was, well, a long time ago. These guys are so perky and bursting with rectitude, you almost look forward to an encounter with them. A dark shape appears at my window, a torch sweeping the inside of my car.

  “Evening, officer. Did I do something wrong?”

  “Good evening, sir. May I see your license and registration please.” Not really a question, more of a command.

  I glance over at Innocent. He is grinning. I am not sure why. Maybe he wants to see how his hero handles the cops. I hand over the documents.

  “Please remain in the car, sir.” I like the whole sir thing. I believe every word of it. The man clearly has a great deal of respect for me.

  He heads back to his vehicle and busies himself with his dashboard. There is now evidently all sorts of fancy communication going on between the vehicle and disembodied servers over encrypted radio networks, matching my ID and car to fabulously articulated databases, all seeking transgressions and misbehavior of any kind. I am amused and pleased by our police procedure, our technology, our adherence to law and order, our modernity and fairness.

  Mr. Nice Policeman is now standing ten feet from my window, gun drawn.

  “PUT YOUR HANDS ON THE STEERING WHEEL!”

  “What?”

  “PUT YOUR HANDS ON THE STEERING WHEEL—NOW!”

  There is a second cop, next to Innocent’s window. His gun is also drawn.

  “PASSENGER! LET ME SEE YOUR HANDS!”

  The word shit is no longer appropriate. The word fuck similarly milquetoast. Even cunt is pabulum.

  However, the word dread does come to mind.

  The next few minutes blur by. I am on the asphalt. There is a painful handcuffing, a Miranda recital, and something about being arrested for something felonious. I can’t be sure, but I think the word assault-with-something-or-other is mentioned. Innocent is standing ashen-faced with both hands on the car, obviously not a suspect in whatever terrible thing I have done. I tell him to call my cousin Mendel, a low-life, ambulance-chasing, immoral schmuck, but a criminal lawyer nevertheless. The last time I saw Mendel was at his son’s bar mitzvah about
five years ago. I had to leave after getting into an argument with Mendel about certain earnest matters relating to truth and justice, and then calling him a low-life, ambulance-chasing, immoral schmuck. In addition, his son was utterly tone deaf, screeching his dissonant way through a long haftarah piece about Elijah, I think.

  I am working on the assumption here that blood is thicker than water and that Mendel has forgiven me and will arrive to get me out of jail before the gang rape, which is no doubt currently being planned, whereupon Mendel will present me with a startling bill to cover his humiliation at the bar mitzvah, under the guise of legal services rendered. It will be capitalism at its finest.

  The cops do the nice gentle don’t-bump-your-head maneuver and put me in the car. We drive off, leaving a bewildered Innocent on the sidewalk, trying to use his cell phone with shaking hands.

  The black-and-white travels nice and slow along Beverly, the cops chatting amiably about sports. They are casting aspersions on my favorite quarterback and this irritates me, but I am too distracted by other matters to mount a spirited defense. I am in the back, hands secured, running through rape avoidance scenarios. A tiny but pertinent thought fights its way through a particular scene I am now wrestling with, which involves a toothless gangster trying to force a broken beer bottle up my rectum. And this little thought is that I have never actually assaulted anyone. In my life. Except for that guy who vomited in my sax while I was playing it. But that was very long ago and my attempt to gouge his eyes out was comically inept, and surely our stolid justice system would see the justification in that.