Steel Guitar

by Linda Barnes

  “You sound like you’d be more than willing to do her a favor,” Mooney said softly.

  “Look, there was a time I’d have given my left leg to be Dee Willis. I admire her, and I love her, and I guess I hate her too. And it plain doesn’t matter. She’s a music person. Nothing really matters to her but the music.”

  “But the two of you were real close?”

  “Yeah. We were best buddies.”

  Mooney shifted on the bench, stared at a tuft of brownish grass. “Dee—uh, she ever come on to you?”

  “You want to hit me with that again?” I said.

  “Look, Carlotta, we found this Brenda woman bare-ass in Dee’s bed. I’m not saying—Shit. I’m just asking: She ever come on to you?”

  “We used to massage each other’s feet. That turn you on?”

  “Might of at the time,” Mooney said.

  “Dee Willis has always had an eye for guys,” I said.

  He wiped his face with a paper napkin, scrunched it into a ball, and sighed reproachfully. “And you never introduced me.”

  I said dryly, “I introduced a guy to Willis once.”

  “Yeah?”

  “My ex-husband. That’s the last guy I introduced to Dee Willis.”

  Mooney grinned ear to ear. “I didn’t know you cared,” he said.

  “You ready to go?”

  “One more thing. I happened to see a memo on Joanne Triola’s desk.”

  Shit, I thought.

  “Why are you asking about Mickey Manganero?”

  “I met him at a party,” I said truthfully.

  “And you’re having Triola check him out as a future date?”

  “Mooney,” I said, “the party was a big free-for-all tossed by Dee’s recording company. I wondered what he was doing there, that’s all.”

  “You see him talk to Brenda? To anybody?”

  “Yeah. He was talking to me.”

  “He’s a piece of shit,” Mooney said.

  “That’s why I called Triola instead of Boy Scouts of America,” I said.

  “Ask your boyfriend about him yet?”

  “I haven’t seen Sam lately.”

  “Good,” Mooney said.

  “You’d rather I was dating Dee Willis?”

  “Geez,” Mooney said. “You’re impossible.”

  Twenty

  “What do you mean, you don’t know where the tube went? A yard-long bright red tube? Ouch!” Hot bacon grease spattered my arm as I let the flame get too high under the skillet.

  “Az der moygen iz leydik der moyekh oykh leydik.” “When the stomach is empty, so is the brain.” That’s another one of the Yiddish sayings my grandmother passed along to my mom. It must be true. I certainly felt lightheaded listening to Roz.

  “Calm down,” Roz murmured. My mother used to say that a lot, too, in Yiddish and in English. Not when I was frying bacon. My mother, rest her soul, would have had heart failure if anybody had tried to cook bacon in her kosher kitchen.

  Bacon is one of my favorite foods. Anything unkosher is one of my favorite foods. I sometimes wonder if this indicates unacknowledged hostility toward my mother—or just a good set of taste buds.

  Lemon, that wise teacher of the martial arts, said nothing.

  “It went in,” Roz reported. “Nine forty-two, mailman brought it.”

  “And?”

  “Gone.”

  “What do you mean, gone?”

  “Me and Lemon, we’re both looking for a red tube.”

  “Yeah?”

  “So some guy comes out with a big box, a real big brown cardboard box. Like for a TV set or something.”

  “Oh, no,” I said.

  “After he drove away, Lemon said something about how the box seemed light, you know, for its size.”

  “Right,” I said, spearing bacon slices with a fork, flipping them over.

  “I went up to the secretarial-service place and the tube was gone. Guy picked it up twenty minutes ago.”

  “Tell me more,” I said.

  “Stop waving that fork at me!”

  I lowered it. “Well?”

  “Well, they’re a mailing service, right?” Roz said defensively. “First off, they don’t want to tell me anything. Then one of the young chicks, maybe a newcomer, says that the guy started out the door with the tube, then turned around and asked if he could buy a carton, something the tube would fit in. He bought their largest size.”

  “Smart,” I said. “Too damned smart.”

  “Then this frizzy-haired biddy started yelling at the girl, saying, ‘We never discuss the clientele.’ I got bounced.”

  I said, “And he just drove away?”

  “Pickup truck.” Roz stared at the dirty linoleum. “And we didn’t get the license. We weren’t interested in a guy moving a TV set.”

  “You sure it was a guy?”

  “Uh, not a hundred percent.”

  “What did he or she look like?”

  “He wore a cap. I only saw his back. Thin. Sneakers. I’m pretty sure it was a man, but I couldn’t swear to it.”

  “Limp?”

  “Huh?”

  “Did the guy, the girl, whatever, limp? Walk funny?”

  Roz looked at Lemon. He stared back at her. “I, uh, don’t think so,” Roz said faintly.

  “Damn.” I lowered the flame, broke two eggs directly into the pan, fished out a sliver of shell with a fingertip. My mother used to break each egg separately in a small glass dish, so that if any shell got in the egg or, God-forbid, a rotten or blood-blemished egg appeared, she wouldn’t have to start over again.

  I’d been hoping Dunrobie would stroll unthinkingly into the trap and make my list of music bars—my proposed evening’s entertainment—unnecessary.

  “I’m real sorry.” Lemon finally said something, shrugging his sloping shoulders. “I won’t even charge you for the time. And believe me, business is bad.”

  Lemon’s “business,” besides free-lance karate lessons, involves juggling and passing a hat in Harvard Square. The pass-a-hat line has never been lucrative.

  “Going out tonight?” I asked Roz.

  “Yeah.”

  “Good.” It would have been a shame to waste her outfit on me. She was wearing a Day-Glo lime-green T-shirt that proclaimed: “Sailors get blown offshore.” To complement it, she’d chosen hot-pink spandex tights and orange hightop sneakers. The ensemble went well with her skunk-striped hair.

  “Yeah.”

  “The Rat?” I inquired, naming one of her favorite Kenmore Square dives, where groups with names like “Slimeball Slugs on Meth” play to audiences dressed in dog chains.

  “The Rat, the Roxy, a couple others.”

  I said, “Can you ask around for a guitar player named Davey. Six feet, white, skinny. Heavy drinker. Druggie. If you get a hit, see if they know his last name.”

  “Which is?”

  “Dunrobie. Don’t spread it around.”

  “So then I’ll be working for you tonight?”

  I raised an incredulous eyebrow. “You want me to pay you?” I couldn’t blame her for asking. The only way I’d go to those places is if somebody else paid. “Forget it,” I said.

  “Hey,” she said. “Worth a try. Don’t worry. I’ll ask about the guy. To make up for today, okay?”

  I carefully slid the eggs out of the pan, breaking both.

  And I forgot to ask about the locks.

  Twenty-One

  I changed clothes several times before deciding on the appropriate attire for a bar crawl. I wanted to look approachable, but not eager. Above all, I did not want to look like a working woman, and prostitutes are hard to peg, since they don’t constrain themselves to TV producers’ ideas of what they ought to wear.

  Unaccompanied men can walk into bars without raising many eyebrows, but you need a bit of protective coloring to fit in as a lone woman. A waitress’s outfit would be ideal. Or a nun’s habit, the old-fashioned full-dress version, complete with wimple.

&
nbsp; Lacking such body armor, the best way to avoid trouble is to arrive with an escort. I considered my choices. Mooney would be delighted, if he wasn’t working. But Mooney looks too much like what he is, and his presence often gives the most willing gossip a temporary case of lockjaw. My other option was Sam Gianelli.

  I met Gianelli when I first drove a cab for Green & White, back in college. He hired me, and taught me many things, like never sleep with your boss. I’m descended from cops; he’s descended from robbers, his dad being a local Mafia underboss. The only thing we have in common is that old boy-girl stuff I never understand. There are probably a thousand guys who’d be better for me than Sam Gianelli.

  What I could use right now is a twenty-year-old bimbo-lifeguard type, unmarriageable and unchallenging. Restful.

  What Sam needs is a submissive Italian Catholic virgin, certified fertile, so Papa Gianelli can have a pack of grandkids.

  We’ve both been married before. After Cal, I retired; never again. Sam, on the other hand, just got back from Italy, where he visited the old-country side of the family. One of the items on his agenda turned out to be a surprise trip to the Vatican to petition for an annulment. Papa arranged it; he believes in marriage even more than Sam does.

  Half-Jewish divorcée that I am, if I did want to marry Sam, his father would probably have me garroted, shot for good measure, and dropped into Boston Harbor.

  I decided to go alone. I called a cab. Cheaper than a traffic ticket or a parking lot.

  Midnight the Kat’s was the fourth bar I hit, after Harper’s Ferry, Ryles, and Dixie’s. I’d started out on beer and was still sober because I’d long since switched to club soda with a twist of lime, a drink that can pass for a vodka-and-tonic anyday.

  Midnight’s is near Auditorium Station. I remember when it was called the Vanity, which dates me, but I got into the blues scene young. The Vanity’s where I heard the Reverend Gary Davis, the awesome blues preacher himself, play. He was an old man then. Dee got me the tickets. She was studying with him, five bucks a lesson, paid up front, and the lesson could last all day if the teacher stayed pleased with his pupil.

  Midnight’s is half bar, half performance-hall. You walk into the bar first, heavy with cigarette smoke, then descend three steps to the music room with its pine-board floor and rickety tables.

  The sign over the door says the fire department allows fifty-five patrons. I’ve never counted, but I think the management must pay somebody off, weekends at least. You don’t get the superstars at a small place like this, not even the second rank. People on the way up, or the way down. Some are pretty damn good, and often the best seem on the slide rather than on the make.

  I shrugged out of my raincoat for the fourth time. I’d decided to dress down, as usual. Most of my shoes have flat heels, since at six one I don’t need to emphasize my height. In good beige slacks and a turquoise shirt, with a tapestry vest, and a gold chain around my neck, I looked, to my eye at least, like a stock analyst, or a lawyer. Somebody who’d arrived early and was waiting for the rest of the group.

  I eyed my watch conspicuously to go with my cover story, comparing it with the wall clock. Ten minutes to twelve. Then, with a sigh, I took a seat at the bar. I ordered my club soda from a man with hairy arms and an anchor tattoo. The TV was tuned to the Red Sox game, which was still in rain delay. The umps would call it at one if the rain didn’t quit by then. The sportscasters were drowned out by music, somebody’s mushy version of “Kind Woman.” The control panel for the stage amps was behind the bar along with the rest of the sound system. Lights flashed as the volume of the music rose and fell.

  The stage was an irregularly shaped platform in the far corner of the music room, lit by three baby spots fastened to a low-slung horizontal iron pipe. Loops of cable wrapped the pipe and disappeared into the false ceiling.

  I asked the hairy-armed barkeep who was playing tonight. He made a show of staring at a sign posted behind the bar, a calendar with print so small he had to squint.

  “Windshear,” he said. “New group. First set coming up. Start in maybe fifteen, twenty minutes.”

  I sipped and crowd-watched until a young man came out and fiddled with the microphones, making sure all the cables were plugged into the right jacks, checking the amps on either side of the stage.

  He had long pony-tailed hair, black jeans, and a faded black T-shirt. He looked familiar, but that was because I’d talked to somebody just like him at the past four bars.

  The crowd had changed from the office escapees of the earlier hours. They were younger, dressed more for display than the muggy August night. There were a couple of serious drinkers at the bar, maybe businessmen far from home, nobody who looked smashed. A few regulars called the bartender Artie.

  The pony-tailed man brought out a guitar and placed it on a stand, stage left.

  I got up and checked out the brand name.

  “Hey,” he said, “careful.”

  “That a DeArmond pickup?” I asked, taking a step away from the guitar, which was a nice old Gibson SJN, electrified for the occasion.

  “Yeah,” the guy said.

  “Yours?”

  “I wish.”

  “You with the band or the house?”

  “The band,” he said, starting to preen a little. “I’m the boards. I play synth, mini-Moog, the whole thing.”

  “I’m guitar.”

  “Play local?”

  “Yeah. Some.”

  “Got an ax as nice as that one?”

  “Pretty good,” I said.

  We traded brand names and who-do-you-knows until I’d established my bona fides. I asked him if he’d heard Chris Smither play at Johnny D’s, and when the last time the Zydeco band had been through, and then I asked him if he knew a Davey who played a big old whanging Gibson Hummingbird.

  If Davey had kept anything from his pre-alcoholic life, that would be it. He loved that guitar.

  Maybe I’d have to try pawnshops, used instrument shops.…

  “Hey,” the guy said, “this a joke?”

  “No.”

  “I know a guy plays a Hummingbird, but he ain’t no Davey.”

  “Who?” I said.

  “Plays bass mainly,” he said. “Cal. Some kind of Cajun last name. He’s with the band.”

  Twenty-Two

  I ordered a quick double bourbon from the hairy bartender and carried it to the most inconspicuous table I could find. I slid one of the two chairs over to a table for six, hoping they could seat seven and I could have privacy. Plunk your butt at a table with an empty chair, guys tend to come over to chat. It’s almost a formal invitation.

  I took a gulp of whiskey. I wanted to be alone when the lights dimmed, and not entirely sober.

  If he’d had plastic surgery I’d have known him. I could watch those hands on that bass, just the hands, and know them.

  The startling thing was how little he’d changed. His hair was short, his beard gone. Why had he kept the mustache? I wondered irrelevantly.

  Why had I assumed I’d know if he were back in town? Why had I assumed Dee would know, would tell me? “He left a long time ago,” she had said; that’s all. I’d made up the rest, embroidered my own acceptable tale: he’d walked out on tour, settled on the West Coast. Why had I placed him in California? Maybe he’d mentioned it once or twice, wanting to go to Los Angeles, play studio stuff, bask in the sunshine.

  I ordered another drink from a waitress with waist-length brown hair. It took me a while to get her attention. She was scouting the band, eyeing Cal. I’d never gotten over that in the short time we’d been married, the way women would watch him, the way I was watching him now.

  He wore a black short-sleeved T-shirt, tight enough to show muscle and rib. I checked his arms carefully. He never wore short sleeves near the end, not after he’d started shooting cocaine. He still held his left arm oddly, awkwardly, to give his thumb more reach, he always said, more strength on the frets. During his first solo break, the spotlight
picked up the mother-of-pearl inlay work on his bass. It was the same bass he’d always had. I was surprised he hadn’t hocked it to pay for dope.

  He could have been playing alone in the bedroom. That’s the way he always played, like he was the only one alive on a desert island, just him and the song. His eyes were half open, but they might as well have been blind. He didn’t see the waitress. He didn’t see me. He was just there in the music.

  I sat through three long sets. The lead guitar, a guy with a kerchief headband and a reedy tenor, was too gimmicky by half, in love with his technology. He leaned on the whammy pedal, distorting all over the place, bending notes that didn’t ask to be bent. He was the kind of guitar player who wants to show off his sixty-fourth notes when sixteenths would suit the song.

  Windshear didn’t impress me; they didn’t seem to have a sound yet, just four players: guitar, bass, boards, and drums. No lightning sparked. They did steady twelve-bar blues, a little classic rock and roll.

  Nothing caught fire until Cal’s last solo break, and I wasn’t sure if the heat transferred to the rest of the audience or if it started and stopped with me, rising slowly from my toes to my cheeks. I’ve long since given up on Prince Charming, but if mine ever comes calling, he’s not going to tote a glass slipper or ride a white steed. He’ll play bass like Cal Therieux. Sing close harmony in a grumbly baritone, always right on key.

  Trying to wrench my mind back to business, I wondered when Cal had bought Davey’s old Hummingbird.

  No way to tell unless I asked.

  Twenty-Three

  Near the end of the final set I found myself wondering what Miss Manners would advise about consulting an ex-husband on a business matter.

  Probably to avoid watching him in concert if his bass playing still turns you on. I tried not to watch Cal’s hands, which was impossible.

  When the encore ended to scattered applause, the stragglers shuffled through a haze of cigarette smoke, hesitated at the doorway, yanking out umbrellas. I listened to the rain pelt the sidewalk. The waitress yawned as she bused my table.

  Cal was arguing with the lead guitar. He reached over and plucked the man’s A string, grimaced at the flat twang. The pony-tailed keyboard player gave me a glance when I stood, and murmured something to Cal, who turned to look at me, shading his eyes from the spotlight glare.