Sound Effects

by L. J. Greene

  Greg wanted to roll the dice and take a chance on our dream, believing that over time, the label would grow increasingly comfortable with our creative choices. His pleading eyes told me so, and begged me to go along. But I had no faith in the men sitting before me, and less in those behind them with their calculators and their business agendas. I was my music, for better or for worse, and I simply could not live with any agreement that sought to change something so fundamental about me.

  So here we were at a crossroads, hope battling with doubt. We stood poised to sign a contract that could ruin what we were. And yet not signing the contract could have precisely the same effect. These three mates were my family–the first real one I’d ever known. And sitting here in this moment, my hands clenched in my lap, I could not fairly say what we stood to gain and what we stood to lose.

  A wave of anxiety washed over me, enveloping me entirely. The room began to spin, and I put the heels of my hands to my eyes to stem my growing disorientation and fear.

  “Hey, man,” Killian said with concern, laying a gentle hand on my arm. “Are you okay?”

  The room was very warm, and my heart was beating far too fast.

  “Here,” he whispered. “Take this.”

  I lowered my palms and he pushed a water glass into one of them. Shaking visibly, I lifted the glass to my lips and forced the cold liquid past the lump in my throat. I realized I was sweating, and wiped my brow carelessly with the back of my other hand.

  Killian was alarmed. He traded a quick glance with Nash, sitting three seats away, and leaned in close to my ear.

  “We can go outside if you need to.”

  I truly didn’t think I could stand up at that moment; I felt far too out of sorts.

  “No,” I said hoarsely, and cleared my throat.

  Killian grabbed another glass of water and handed it to me.

  “You need to look at this practically,” Richard was saying to Greg. “You have a long, promising career ahead of you.”

  It was a classic case of carrot and stick. I got the stick; Greg was getting the carrot. Richard must have sensed that if he could divide us, he could sign the band more easily and have the freedom to mold us into what he wanted. He’d give us just enough to draw us in, but never so much that we would feel we could be something without Spire’s backing. And the contract documents were right there on the table beside him; I didn’t have a clue how or when they’d appeared.

  Holy God, I’d always known we were swimming with sharks, but I hadn’t truly felt bitten until this very moment.

  Without a clear purpose in mind, I pushed my chair back abruptly and rose to my feet. All heads turned in my direction, and the conversation ceased.

  “Where are you going?” Richard asked sharply.

  I hesitated for just a moment, and then, as though by magic, I found a bit of clarity on the one thing I knew for sure.

  “I need to eat.”

  “We have a negotiation to finish.”

  I shook my head. “This is not a negotiation. It’s an insult.”

  Striding purposefully out of the restaurant and into the sanctuary of the cool San Francisco night, I promptly and thoroughly vomited into a bush on Washington Street.

  Chapter 19

  Jamie

  “I NEED TO EAT!? WHAT the fuck was that!?” Greg shouted as he charged through the front door of our flat. But there were so many other questions between us that needed to be asked and answered. Sitting on our old brown couch with a heart as heavy as stone, I wasn’t going to bother with that one.

  “What do you want, Jamie?” he demanded through my silence. “You want to dig holes and shovel shit for the rest of your life?” The mere suggestion made me physically bristle. “Because it sure sounded like that tonight.”

  The bus ride home and a turkey sandwich had gone some distance towards restoring my own equilibrium, but plainly the same could not be said for Greg. As I had feared, it was all beginning to come apart. We had stemmed the tide for as long as we could, knowing the deluge was inevitable, and at last it rolled in.

  “Is that so?” I fired back. “I didn’t realize. Because no one else at that table tonight said one bloody word in defense of the band. Not one bloody word!”

  “Defending us?” he choked out. “Is that what you call it? I’d call it jeopardizing everything we’ve been working for! How can you not get that?”

  His voice had been rising since the moment he stepped inside, Nash and Killian behind him, and now he threw his hands up in vast frustration. But he wasn’t the only one grappling with volatile emotions.

  “You’re accusing me of standing in the way of your plans while you’re not the least bit angry with the label for trying to sell us on a deal they know is shit?” I could not fucking believe what I was hearing. I truly thought I might lose my mind. “I’ve given everything I have to this band–every ounce of energy and every spare dime I’ve got. I ride a goddamned bicycle, and can’t even afford to take my girlfriend out for a proper meal!”

  I could feel an intense flush darken my face and realized that, somewhere in my venting, I had made it to my feet without any recognition of when that had occurred.

  “I’ve practically opened up a vein and bled myself dry, carrying for years the bulk of the responsibility for writing our material. And you so arrogantly now accuse me of putting our future in jeopardy?”

  Greg flinched, but I went on, my voice growing harder.

  “Don’t think for a minute that I don’t know that our music would not be what it is without you, without all of you–” I said, gesturing broadly to the group– “that’s why I insisted on sharing the songwriting credits equally among us for whatever financial gain that may mean.”

  “No one ever asked–”

  “No you didn’t,” I cut him off. “And it’s a decision I’d gladly make again. But don’t ye dare accuse me of bein’ selfish!”

  “And don’t accuse me of being naïve! You act like I don’t know–or somehow don’t care as much as you do about the risk we’d be taking. I just happen to believe that once we put together a great album, all of this bullshit back-and-forth on creative control goes away.”

  The angry color was beginning to fade from his face, but his blue eyes were still bright with passion. “Aren’t you tired of just scraping by and fighting for every inch of progress we make?” he asked in exasperation. “God, I am.” His shoulders slumped in such a way that I could see just how tired he was. We all were, really. “I just want us to get on with our lives; we’ve been killing ourselves long enough. And Christ, Jamie, we always knew we’d have to bend a little in order to get there.”

  “Bend on what?” I countered, wiping a hand carelessly across my forehead and into my hair. “Money? Fine. But never on authenticity. I don’t happen to share your optimism that what we think is great, Spire will find acceptable. I’m sorry, brother, but I’d rather keep shoveling shit as you so eloquently put it, than wake up every day and not be able to recognize the bloke I see in the mirror. He’s no great prize to begin with, but at least he’s true. At least I can say he’s honest.”

  He shrugged his shoulders, uttering a short, bitter laugh. “So that’s it, then? Doesn’t matter what the rest of us think?”

  “Of course it matters,” I said in dismay. “I want us to be of one mind on this.”

  Anger flashed across Greg’s features again as he stared hard into my face. “No, you want us to be of your mind on this.”

  “Meaning what, exactly? You think I’ve dismissed your opinions?”

  I turned to Nash, who was leaning his weight against the living room wall, and his face went pale with the realization that the deluge had now reached him precisely. He straightened, and faced it head on. Nash was not loudly spoken, but neither was he meek.

  “I’m a drummer, Jamie,” he said evenly, “not a songwriter. I’m always playing someone else’s material. So, I don’t know, maybe I am a little less passionate about that. I just know tha
t if you’re asking me for my vote, I vote for us. Whatever will get us back to the way we’ve been. Not the way it is now. I want Cadence. That’s what I want.”

  I nodded in reluctant acknowledgement–I wanted that, too, Lord knows. Then I shifted my focus to Killian.

  “I happen to like our sound the way it is,” Killian said succinctly. “I don’t want someone to come in and try to change it. But I agree with Nash that none of this means shit if we’re tearing each other apart. You two need to figure out what you can live with and, whatever that is, settle it between you. There’s only one side to take on this–and that’s the band’s side. Anything else is just wrong.”

  Each of us looked at the others for a long moment without speaking. What more was there to say except everything? We were in a dead split, none among us feeling like any progress had been made, and none sure where to go from here. Victims of our own success–the irony was pure fucking madness.

  I had never been one to blindly trust the universe to award favor based on merit, but it felt like a cruel joke that we should be given a Trojan horse when we’d merely asked for a pony.

  “So?” Greg finally asked me pointedly. And the look on his face told me that the distance between us was cavernous. “What’s it going to be, brother?”

  Chapter 20

  Mel

  WHEN THE BUZZER RINGS AT 2:27 a.m., most people would think apartment fire. I thought Jamie. And was right.

  It was a big night for the band and he promised he’d call when he got back from dinner with the Spire team but, of course he didn’t, and so I went to bed once again feeling the distance of a relationship conducted at arm’s length. As much as I felt for him, it was growing tiresome and a little lonely, if I was being honest. I hadn’t even had a chance to tell him about my cooking classes because he had so much on his mind and our time together was usually so frenetic: late night visits with early morning departures, gigs, quick conversations at work. We were trying, but it was hard.

  I thought a lot about what he had said to me on the road about musicians often craving isolation, and I was beginning to wonder if he had been trying to tell me something that he didn’t have the heart to say straight out. Our relationship was a big change for him–maybe it was too much change.

  On a positive note for the evening, I made short ribs. Edible ones, in fact.

  It took three hours, two pans, one shallot, finely minced, and a Martha Stewart cookbook, but I had done it. And while Martha may have been having her own challenges in the area of securities fraud and obstruction of justice, she was above reproach when it came to short ribs. I couldn’t wait to tell Jamie.

  But, as it turned out, this was not the night to tell Jamie.

  When I opened my front door, he was leaning heavily against the nearest wall, glassy eyed, blinking slowly, and intoxicated beyond any state I had previously seen him.

  Somewhat alarmed, I reached for his arm and pulled him inside. He was wearing his good navy shirt, but it was wrinkled and half untucked, and he smelled strongly of musky sweat and alcohol.

  “Hi,” he said stupidly with a tiny smile that pressed his dimples into service. His cheeks had a pink, ruddy glow, softening the blow of his rumpled appearance.

  “Jamie, how did you get here?” Given his current state, it was a fair question.

  He turned in the doorway, and pointed sloppily to his bicycle, which had been abandoned in the hallway in front of the stairwell where it obviously couldn’t stay.

  I was hesitant to let go of him, but he seemed, at the moment, relatively stable so I hurried to retrieve the bike, and rolled it into my dining room for the night.

  When I returned to the entryway for him, I noticed a sizeable bandage covering his entire right forearm where his sleeves were rolled up. It was gauzy and white, and secured on all sides with medical tape.

  “Oh, my God. What did you do?” It was very easy to imagine that he had veered his bicycle into a parked car or an unsuspecting telephone pole. But then, somebody had bandaged him up, and I was mad as hell that they had allowed him to ride off in this compromised condition.

  He heaved a breath as if my question was going to require some fortification.

  “A lot of things,” he said, and nodded once to underscore the point. “For one, I told the label to go ffffuck themselves.” His lashes fluttered with the effort of pushing the drawn-out expletive over the threshold of his lips. Then he belched into his fist.

  “Oh…” He drew his brows together as if he remembered something else. “And I think I might have banjaxed my band. That’s when I went to O’Malley’s for a bit of Old Rosie.”

  He’d had a lot more than a bit of Old Rosie. The night had obviously not gone well; I felt awful for him. And while this startling, albeit brief, account of his evening was sufficient to explain his level of intoxication, I held no illusion of getting any more in the way of lucid details tonight.

  Jamie was swaying on his feet now, and looking as though he wasn’t going to be vertical for long. So I took his uninjured arm and led him down the hall to my bedroom, hoping he’d make it before he passed out. Otherwise, he’d be spending the night on the floor, for all I could do to move him. He followed me dutifully with a wanton smile, as if he honestly believed he could be of some particular use to me in the bedroom tonight. I rolled my eyes at the thought.

  “Here,” I said, as we stood together next to my bed in the warm yellow glow of my bedside lamp. “Let me get you undressed.” He stood perfectly still, trying to be helpful, and also trying hard to focus properly on my face. He looked so young standing there. Jamie was young–younger than I, in fact, by a couple of years, but I didn’t imagine he’d ever had the luxury of being young.

  As soon as I placed my hands on his waist to pull out the tucked-in side of his shirt, he closed his eyes and let out a small sigh of contentment. Jamie liked to be touched, took more comfort in it than anyone I knew. He liked to be cared for.

  So I unbuttoned each white button slowly, letting him feel the warmth of my hands as they went about their work down his chest and stomach. A little smile lingered on his lips. When I finally had the shirt open, I stepped in closer so that he could feel the press of my body near his. I ran both my hands through his soft, thick hair, down his strong neck, and across his broad, sturdy shoulders, where I gently eased the shirt from his body to drape it neatly over my desk chair.

  The physical contact had him immediately aroused; his penis had clearly not gotten the memo that the rest of his body was in no condition for follow through.

  “You smell nice,” he murmured sleepily. “Like pie.”

  I had to laugh, pathetic as he was at that moment. Like pie. Well, there were worse things to smell like. Him, for example, though his smell was improving with each article of clothing I removed.

  Once I had his pants down and around his ankles, I tipped him over onto the bed with an “oof.” He was not light. But from there, the rest of his garments were easy to slip off and I was able to pull the blankets up around him.

  He seemed to hover on the verge of consciousness, not yet ready to let himself fully drift off into much needed sleep. So I sat on the bed beside him, leaning back against my headboard, and stroked his hair as he rested next to my hip. What had happened tonight? I wondered as I watched his chest rise and fall with each breath. He shifted beneath the sheets so that his body was now curled up against me, seeking closeness in the early morning hours. His hand cupped my thigh, making his bandage pucker slightly around the edges.

  Carefully, I peeled it back. I was curious to know the extent of his injury should I need to treat it in some way. But I found it wasn’t an injury, at all. Surprisingly, a large tattoo now graced his entire right forearm, a detail of his evening’s adventures that he seemed to have forgotten entirely.

  He must have felt my astonishment and opened his eyes, turning his wrist in my hand. He stared hard at his arm for a minute, reacquainting himself with the design.

 
The tattoo was really very beautiful and intricate, though the skin around it was mildly red and angry looking. It was a design of a treble clef that suggested the body of a bird, with eagle wings spreading out on both sides to wrap partially around his arm. At the bottom, near his wrist, the symbol was anchored by a shackle and key.

  “My captor and my liberator,” he said quietly, hearing my thoughts, and then closed his eyes again.

  I studied the design more closely, with its swirling lines and detailed application. There was definitely artistry involved here, though I was deeply suspicious of any all-night establishment that granted tattoos to the intoxicated. At least he hadn’t come out with Pac Man gobbling up his nipple, or ‘Never Don’t Give Up’ across his chest. Alcohol and tattoo parlors notoriously produced far more horrendous offspring than this poignant piece. It was actually very fitting for a man who both lived for, and lived in service of, his incredible talent.

  It’s a gift that can sometimes feel like a curse. I truly believed it.

  I had suspected the toll that all of this was taking on him, but didn’t fully appreciate the extent of it until tonight. He was strong, but he was only human.

  I rose from my bed, washed my hands and gently coated the new tattoo with antibiotic ointment.

  Jamie had spent the evening nursing wounds I couldn’t fix; but this was one I could–and wanted to, even if it was the smallest of all of the things he was dealing with.

  When I was finished with the aftercare, I slipped out of my own clothes, turned off the light and climbed under the covers behind Jamie, wrapping my arms around his waist and feeling the reassurance of flesh and rib. In the darkness, his fingertips found my outer thigh and he softly pressed a rhythmic pattern on my skin, as he often did just before he fell asleep. I squeezed him a little tighter in response, just to let him know, in case he could know such a thing from his slumbers, that it was right that he had come here. It would always be right–no matter what time of day or night–to come, lay down his burdens, and just rest for a while.