Blueberry Pancakes: A Novel

by Richards, Anton Lee

  “Stop, Duncan,” Marlene said, putting her arm around me. “I know what you’re thinking. Stop. Life is good.”

  * * *

  Our comfy living room couch enveloped me in relaxation when my cell rang.

  “Drop what you’re doing,” Marlene said to me before I could say hello on the phone. Once again, I would follow orders from Sergeant Marlene.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Robin and I got into a fight. A deal-breaker. How soon can you make it to Pancake Heaven?” She had a wilt in her voice that I’d never heard before.

  “It’ll take me thirty minutes to put on my face,” I said. My sarcasm was met with silence.

  When I got to the restaurant, she was already eating the new Cajun pancakes slathered in honey butter. She wasn’t crying then, but it was obvious she had been earlier. Guilt engulfed me for having such a good day myself. I nixed my plan of ordering a veggie omelet to save on carbs, but felt that would be insensitive in her time of need. Any good friend would eat sympathy pancakes.

  “I googled ‘Never Seen, Never Heard.’ You ever do that?”

  Why didn’t I think of that? All I ever did was search for ex-boyfriends—one in particular. I picked up her pink sparkly phone and searched. The results listed the movie as expected, instead of her website or upcoming shows. One review even mentioned her as an upcoming EDM artist.

  “That’s a good thing, right?” I took a piece of her pancake with my fork.

  “Since when did I become an electronic dance music artist, as if that’s all I do. If I get pigeonholed into this genre box, I’ll never be able to do anything else.”

  “Is it that cut and dry? I know famous artists that branch out into different genres.” I stood up and waved my arm in the air. After about thirty seconds of making an ass out of myself, I caught Char’s attention. I pointed to Marlene’s pancakes and then to myself. Char understood the internationally-recognized symbol for “give me some pancakes.”

  “That only works after success in their main genre. And it only works for people who have big successes.”

  “I don’t know how all that works, but I don’t think you should let this box you in. Do what you want, and the people will follow, especially if it’s different, new, and fresh. Imagine you wanted to do some of your blues stuff. Imagine a blues progression, not played on piano or guitar, but a thick synthesizer pad with other synthesizer arpeggios going wild but in a blues progression. Imagine using an electronic drum kit to play bluesy drum styles. Create a sound of your own.”

  Char brought my pancakes with an extra pat of honey butter, but said nothing. She could see Marlene was deep in thought and could not be bothered, even for honey butter.

  “I know I need to fit into a box for marketing, but not that box.”

  “What box do you want to be in?”

  “I’m a pop artist.”

  “You’re an artist with many genres.” I poured the butter on my plate and enjoyed swishing it around the pancakes with my spoon. Since the Cajun ones were so thin, they barely soaked up the butter.

  “That’s not how Robin sees it. He said it was his work with Silas that created a new sound that got the song in the movie, not my singing and not even your songwriting.”

  I stopped playing around with the butter. “Ouch. This is the love-child of all four of us. He knows that. It wouldn’t exist without one component. That’s how The Factory works.”

  “Especially you,” she said. “If it weren’t for your song, Silas wouldn’t have experimented with those sounds in the first place.” She dusted off her hands. “Robin said we should get other singers to try out different voices. He figured he and Silas could become their own Factory for a new electronic-rock sound. He said limiting themselves to one singer would hold them back.” She teared up and dropped her fork onto her plate.

  Char was on her way to check up on us, but I held my hand out to signal that we were fine. “He’s wrong,” I said, but Robin was probably right. Before, we were focusing on demos for other singers to record and also on her career. For the movie industry, we’d want a broad array of voices to submit. I wondered if The Factory was going in the wrong direction.

  “He thinks he can ditch the rest of us at the first opportunity. I don’t want to attach my career to people whose interests don’t fall in line with mine.”

  I shook my head. She was right, too. As a professional musician, Robin had to take gigs whenever he could get them. How could I keep the Factory together?

  We finished eating. She ate less than half the stack of pancakes. Per our standard ritual, she boxed them up, and I finished them at home – usually around midnight. She took her wallet out of her purse and pulled out a $20 bill. She set it down on the table and left Pancake Heaven without looking at me or saying another word. I wanted to give her some time before meeting her back at home.

  I picked up my phone and texted Robin.

  We need to get together and talk.

  He texted back a moment later.

  At The Factory meeting tomorrow night.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  GROWING A PAIR

  The front door to Silas’s condo was unlocked when I walked in and heard him arguing with Robin downstairs. In the kitchen, a pile of emptied microwave meal boxes filled the garbage can. Silas may not have missed Rachel, but he had to have been sick of the crap he’d been eating since she left. She was famous for her cooking, one of the few things Silas complimented her on. I crept downstairs, listening to them go back and forth. I stopped at the last step.

  “You and I created the sound,” Robin said. “Why would you take her side?”

  “I’m taking my own side. We need her too much,” Silas said.

  “What about the demos?” Robin’s voice cracked. “We can’t be promoting an artist’s career and at the same time have her singing demos. What if she hits it big? Is she going to want the rights to those songs she sang as demos? We need to be one or the other – either Marlene’s personal songwriting team or a songwriting team trying to exploit our talents for our own creative goals.”

  “We’re doing both,” Silas said. “That was our agreement. Duncan’s writing so many fricking songs, we have enough for both. What if we had other singers record the demos? Would that be so bad?”

  “She doesn’t want us bringing in any other singers, even for the demos,” Robin said. “She’s afraid we’ll replace her. Without her voice on the song, she’ll have contributed nothing to it. She’s holding us back from exactly that—our original agreement.”

  I tiptoed down the stairs. “Her voice will be the first voice on any song, even if we were to get other singers,” Silas said. “We can convince her, especially on songs where it makes sense to have a male voice. Duncan can sing.”

  “No, I can’t,” I said, emerging from the staircase, carrying my extra-large, navy backpack with my laptop from work. I set the bag down next to a box of guitar pedals that cluttered the studio floor.

  “She won’t go for that,” Robin said. “She wants it to be all her. It’s her name on all these songs, including the one from Find My Way Home. And even that isn’t enough for her.”

  “Where is she, by the way?” I asked. “I didn’t see her at home.”

  Robin drew a breath and held before exhaling. “You’d know better than I would. We haven’t talked.”

  Silas motioned with his hand for me to sit down on his puffy couch. He said, “Our group is falling apart.”

  “No, it’s not,” Robin said. “The three of us can make a great group with unlimited possibilities, even if Marlene doesn’t come back. We can hire singers like we hire drummers and bassists when needed.”

  Silas shook his head. “We need a singer for every single song. We would need to scope them out, make deals, and pay them. I don’t have any more money to put into this thing.”

  “Put it this way, man,” Robin said. “We had success with ‘Never Seen, Never Heard’ because of its groove. Any singer
could easily have sung those lines, and it still would’ve sold itself.”

  “Jesus-Allah-Buddha, don’t say it like that to her,” I said.

  “Already did,” Robin said. He picked up his guitar, still in the case.

  “Are you and Marlene arguing over music or is this personal?” Silas asked.

  “We can’t separate our personal lives from the music,” Robin said. “You know that.”

  Silas leaned back in his chair and raised his palms. “She’s a remarkable singer who wants to sit here while we create music and be available for every song. Do you know how many songwriters would kill for that sort of asset?”

  “But songwriters don’t want a singer who impedes the creation the music,” said Robin. “Right now, we’re arguing over Marlene rather than coming up with another groove. What does that say?”

  “It says that Marlene should be here right now,” Silas groaned.

  “I’m telling you, Marlene doesn’t want another ‘Never Seen, Never Heard,’” Robin said. He got up and packed up the rest of his equipment. “With her, we can’t even create the very thing that gave us success.”

  “Don’t leave yet,” I said.

  “Marlene’s the problem, okay? Not me.” Robin slung his guitar case over his shoulder and walked out the door.

  “Fuck,” I said, turning to face Silas. “What now?”

  “Let it sit. Just keep writing songs.”

  As I unpacked my bags, I noticed how empty the room was. I walked upstairs, thinking about how Silas had this place all to himself now. He cared about Marlene and Robin’s problems and how they affected the group, yet he was oblivious to what caused his wife to leave him.

  * * *

  Robin suggested we meet at a coffee shop in Wicker Park. He wore a leather shirt with metal spikes that did not look out of place. He was not the only one with a guitar case over his shoulder. We sat down. I ordered a sugar-free vanilla latte as they did not serve Red Bull, let alone the sugar-free version. I glanced out the window, wondering why I never went to that part of the city, despite its youthful energy. Tiny guys in black skinny-jeans looked like gazelles as they crossed the intersection in droves. I assumed none of them spent night after night eating pancakes.

  “Look, I need to get the group back together,” I said. “Without The Factory, my art is dead. It’s my life. I can’t fix you and Marlene, but you have to learn how to work together.”

  “That’s not going to happen, man” he said. Like usual, he kept his aviator sunglasses on even though we were inside and it was after dark.

  “Just tell me what happened.”

  “She was over one night and used my laptop. She searched for the song and found an article on the movie describing the soundtrack. It referred to her as an EDM artist, and that was it. She flipped her shit. She complained that she was a pop artist and that The Factory had boxed her into the EDM genre. I tried to calm her down by saying that one song would not define her.”

  “Yeah, we had the same conversation.” I looked around. Every person in the coffee shop dressed like they were at a photo shoot for a magazine that sells skateboards. Here I was, straight from work with my buttoned-up shirt and pleated pants that Marlene argued made me look twenty pounds heavier.

  “She said she didn’t like your songs, and that they were for other artists and you were ignoring her style.” I winced, not quite believing that.

  “She tells me outright when she doesn’t like one of my songs. I don’t know how to write songs for an artist. I just write songs. She doesn’t understand that yet.”

  “It was never supposed to be all about her career?” He scratched his scruffy beard. “The three of us aren’t her backup band. I wouldn’t mind it if she were a sure thing, but you never know about that stuff. In the meantime, we have this opportunity to make money, and she wants to thwart that because it’s all about her career. She doesn’t want another success like we had with the movie. It’s like she’s done working for it.”

  “I’m with you. We can’t throw that away.” I took a sip of coffee and shook my head.

  “So now do you see how this can’t work with her in the group?” he asked.

  The smell of donuts from the front counter tempted me as I tried to make sense of our dilemma. I understood both their points of view. If we didn’t get this fixed, I was the one who would be screwed. Robin could always play for demos and perform in bands. Marlene’s voice would always win her an audition somewhere. Silas could produce songs for bands and artists anytime, but I’d have nothing without them. I didn’t even understand how the business worked.

  “I can see why it would be so important to you, most of all,” he said. He turned around to face the storefront window, and I realized I had been staring over his shoulder at the men walking by in skinny jeans. He looked back at me and grinned. I shook my head back into attention.

  “When Marlene calms down, she’ll remember how The Factory is beneficial to her,” I said. “She can’t complain. Nobody else is handing her original songs and will spend time recording her. Most singers would kill for that type of opportunity. And I need a singer who’ll sing the songs I write while listening to me complain about my boyfriend.”

  “I’m a working musician. You have talent and your songs are marketable, but they aren’t my cup of tea. I wanna rock.” Robin laughed. “But I do what I need to do to keep my career alive. That means not always doing what I want to do. It’s a freakin’ job.”

  He was right. Marlene’s pop wasn’t my cup of tea either, but we were starting to see success. How many people have that opportunity? Too bad she wasn’t singing my songs with greater lyrical complexity, but I understood why. Today’s music is all about repetitiveness and she has to compete with what’s out there.

  A few seconds of silence passed, and Robin looked at me, twice, as though he were about to say something but couldn’t. “Marlene told me.”

  He had to be referring to Kenny. That bitch! She’s supposed to be my best friend and keep my secrets.

  “We’re all friends here.” Robin put his hand on my shoulder. “We keep each other’s back. She told me because she knew it would be painful for you to retell the story yourself.”

  He was right. “You probably think I’m fucked up.”

  Robin perked up. “Hell no! I think you’re badass. I would never think twice about crossing you.” He laughed until he saw that I wasn’t laughing. After a moment I found it a bit amusing. He turned his face away. “Tell me, man to man. Does she love me?”

  “Dunno,” I hesitated, turning my gaze away. “She’s never said so, per se.” He wanted to drag me into the middle of this drama. “I wonder if the scones are any good here.” Anything to change the subject.

  “You do know. You’re her best friend.” He would not let me off the hook.

  “Even if I did, I don’t think it would be my place to—”

  “Does she love me or not?” He grabbed and crumpled the napkins next to his coffee cup.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I can tell.”

  Robin leaned back and let out a huge breath.

  “But that doesn’t mean—”

  “Why?” He took his sunglasses off and bit his lip.

  “Just because she loves you doesn’t mean she’ll go back to you.” I put my hands on the table. “It’s not just the hurtful things you said.”

  “Isn’t it enough for two people to love each other?” Wishful thinking, my friend.

  “Nope. Some people will never be happy. Give them a dollar, and they’ll want two. It’s the craving, their need to need. Okay, I’m speaking more about me than Marlene. At least she dares to live her life, going after her goals without giving a shit what others think. She’s in it for the art. I’m in it for… I don’t even know what I’m in it for.”

  “You’re in it for the art too, man. If you weren’t, you would’ve given up long ago. Marlene, Silas, and I… we’re in it for the music. You’re in it because you need to vent your frustrat
ions through something. Music happens to be the best medium. If sculpting worked, you’d be doing that. You’d be throwing chunks of clay at the wall.” He laughed. “That’s what you need to do. Throw clay. Stop worrying about your fickle boyfriend and just throw stuff.”

  I didn’t have a response. Now all I had was an urge to throw clay.

  Robin tugged at my shirt collar and turned it upright before laughing. “So corporate. You and Silas are the same. You work that nine-to-five that you hate and you wonder why you’re so unhappy.” He shrugged his shoulders, waiting for my response, but the comment stung. With a pained look on his face he said, “Marlene and I have the same philosophy. Don’t wait for dreams to come true. Live the dream now.”

  Was it true? Were Silas and I neurotic fools afraid to give one hundred percent to our art?

  * * *

  Two weeks later, Robin and Marlene still hadn’t come to the Factory sessions. Silas and I were growing antsy, writing songs and loading them into Pro Tools. Marlene avoided our apartment more and more. That couldn’t go on. I had to fix things. I shot Marlene a text first.

  Pancakes on Tuesday? Let’s go for Cajun.

  Then I texted Robin: I want to meet again to talk about it. How does Tuesday sound?

  Marlene texted back: Why would I say no to pancakes?

  Robin texted a moment later: I want to talk about it too. It’s making me sick.

  I then texted Silas to join us, and he texted back a minute later.

  Sure, what flavor are you going to make me eat this time?

  I practiced what I would say in the mirror, and my nerves rattled me. Who was I to tell Marlene what to do? I printed out a proposal for them to sign right there. I hoped and prayed to Jesus-Allah-Buddha that Marlene and Robin would sit down together and agree to my changes. When Tuesday arrived, Silas, and I sat down at our usual booth in the corner and waited till we saw Marlene walking in, playing with the bangs of her hair. She gave us a self-righteous look.