“I changed my mind,” she says.
“Me too,” Veronica says to Tristan.
“Zoe?” I say.
“Hi, Dak,” she says, smiling shyly. “Lola came over to see me. She explained what happened with you and Jerry. I wanted to surprise you by showing up tonight.”
“I’m surprised,” I say, my heart throbbing, my head feeling lighter than air.
“Lola?” Tristan says. “I thought you had a meeting with your anti-racism group.”
“I sent somebody else,” she says, breathless. “Listen, guys. Sung Li got a call after you guys left for the gig tonight. It was Billy VandenHammer. He’s coming tonight after all. He should be here in the next half hour.”
“He called personally, from his limo,” Sung Li adds, bouncing on her toes.
“We would have been here sooner, but I got pulled over for speeding,” Veronica explains.
“There’s a huge lineup outside,” Sung Li exclaims. “Word on the street is that you guys are blowing the roof off the place!”
Tristan summarizes all of the thoughts that are racing through our heads. “Holy crap!” he says.
“Where’s Jimmy T?” Lola says, “I have to find him and tell him the news!”
She rushes away through the crowd.
I turn to Zoe.
“It’s great to see you,” I tell her.
“I missed you, Dak,” she says. “I’m sorry about . . . you know.”
“It’s okay,” I say. “These things happen. Especially to me.”
“Look, Dak,” she says, “maybe it’s time we . . . ”
“Come on, Dak,” a hyper-energized Tristan interrupts, “let’s get our asses up on stage and rock this joint!”
“And blow away Mr. Billy VandenHammer!” Akim adds from over Tristan’s shoulder.
I look apologetically at Zoe.
“It’s okay,” she says, “we can talk later. Get up there and impress this Billy VandenHammer.”
The only person I really care about impressing is her. I follow the others through the crowd toward the stage, the hairs on my skin all standing on end. Tristan and Akim tune their guitars, and I quickly tune up my drum skins. If ever we needed our sound to be perfect, tonight’s the night.
Again I think I’m hallucinating when I see Jimmy T sprinting toward the stage from the men’s washroom at the back of the barroom, his hands cupped over his crotch, since he’s wearing no pants. Or underwear. Then the rock bunny that disappeared with him earlier also scrambles out of the men’s room, pulling her skirt down over her hips as she flees. Then Lola bursts through the door, charging after Jimmy T.
“You sonuvabitch!” Lola screams. “I trusted you!”
“Help!” Jimmy T cries to us as he climbs onto the stage, mooning the crowd with his naked butt.
I keep a big towel onstage for wiping the sweat from my face between songs. I toss it to Jimmy T, who quickly wraps it around his waist.
Lola climbs the stage behind him. Her face is beyond red, almost purple. Lines of tears streak her face.
“You heartless bastard!” she screams, “You know how hard it is for me to trust anyone! You know!”
Jimmy T stumbles backward as she shoves him.
“Lola, honey,” he stammers, “I know how it must look to you, but . . . ”
“What? what? Doing some P.R. work for the band again? You bastard!”
She shoves him again. Jimmy T falls backward, knocking his guitar off its stand. Lola grabs the fallen guitar, grips its the neck with both hands, then raises it high in the air like an executioner’s axe.
“You bastard!” she screams again, smashing the body of the guitar against the stage.
“Lola!” Jimmy T cries, “Stop!”
Lola swings the guitar up in the air again. Jimmy T scrambles to his feet, tries to stop his guitar from hitting the stage again. The guitar’s body blurs through the air, slams against Jimmy T’s hands, the force of the blow knocking him on his ass again. “AAAAAAAAA!” Jimmy T cries, “My hands!”
The guitar is deflected sideways, sails through the dusty stage light beams, then cracks against the edge of the stage and falls onto the floor below, its neck snapped clean from the body. Several people in the crowd below — perhaps believing that they’re witnessing an episode in rock ‘n’ roll history, perhaps just very drunk, swarm to claim a souvenir piece of the guitar.
“I hate you, Jimmy T,” Lola spits at him.
She stands in front of him, holding a one-fingered-salute in front of his face. Then she jumps from the stage and pushes her way through the crowd, and kicks open the door of the men’s washroom. When she emerges seconds later, holding Jimmy T’s pants above her head, many in the crowd cheer loudly. Lola then exits the bar, waving Jimmy’s pants like a captured enemy flag.
Jimmy T just stands there dumbly, wearing only my sweat towel around his lower half, his wrists bent at awkward angles, his fingers swelling like breakfast sausages.
Then a tall, barrel-chested man enters the Twelve Tribes, like a gunslinger striding through the doors of a saloon in an old western movie. He’s got shimmering silver hair pulled back into a long ponytail. He’s wearing ultra-hip glasses with purple-tinted lenses, a crisp black shirt and tie under a flawlessly tailored purple suit. The Purple Messiah. Billy VandenHammer is here.
Two other men, even bigger than VandenHammer, both dressed in black suits and black turtlenecks, file in behind him and position themselves on either side of the renowned record producer. VandenHammer says something to one of his bodyguards, and the black-suited hulk walks purposefully towards the stage.
Jimmy T turns to the rest of us, wincing slightly.
“Shit, I think my wrists are broken,” he says. “My fingers, too.”
We are all speechless, our brains still trying to comprehend everything we’ve just witnessed, but Jimmy T is already formulating a damage control plan.
“Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do. I obviously can’t play guitar now, since my hands and my guitar are wrecked, so I’m gonna go talk to VandenHammer as if I’m just the band’s manager. You guys will just have to play without me.”
“What about Lola?” Tristan wonders.
“Oh,” Jimmy T barks, “screw Lola! This ship’s setting sail without her, dumb broad.”
Akim says, “What about . . . ”
“Seriously, screw Lola!”
“Jimmy,” Akim says, “are you planning on schmoozing The Purple Messiah of Rock ‘n’ Roll with no damned pants on??”
“Oh,” he says, “right. I’ll get some. I’ll buy somebody’s pants if I have to!”
Jimmy T leaves the stage holding his swollen hands against his chest, in search of something to cover his lower half. Vanden‐Hammer’s bodyguard appears at the foot of the stage seconds later.
“Mr. VandenHammer would like to have a word with your band’s representative.”
Akim and Tristan look at me.
“Um, our agent will be with you in just a moment,” I stammer.
“He had to, uh, cover something at the last minute.”
“Mr. VandenHammer is a very busy man,” the black-suited giant says, “I wouldn’t suggest that your agent keep him waiting long.”
The bodyguard pushes his way to the back of the bar, resuming his position beside the boss.
“Shit,” Akim says, “we’d better go talk to him ourselves.”
Just as we arrive before Billy VandenHammer, who stands like a purple statue of Buddha, Jimmy T rushes in front of us, wearing a plaid kilt he’s borrowed from one of the waitresses.
“Aye, Mister VandenHammer,” he says, using a passable Scottish accent, “So delighted to meet yuh!”
“Who are you?” VandenHammer asks.
“I’m James Tanner, the manager of this talented young group you’ve some to see tonight,” he says, tentatively extending his hand.
“What’s with the skirt?” VandenHammer says.
“It’s me trademark,” Jimmy says
. “Me kilt, eh? Kinda like yer purple suit.”
“Ah,” VandenHammer says, crushing Jimmy’s crippled hand in his vice-like grip. Jimmy’s face turns white, but he heroically absorbs the pain of the handshake. “Where’s the girl? My source told me you’ve got a girl singer. Where is she? I want to see her.”
“Uh, do you need to see her, uh, right now?” Jimmy stutters, dropping the Scottish accent.
“She’s what we’re here for,” VandenHammer says. “But, of course, as the band’s manager, I don’t have to tell you what a hot thing female singers are right now. No girl, no contract. That’s the way it is.”
A look of desperation washes over Jimmy T’s face. “I’ll go get her! Be right back!”
He makes his way over to the table where Sung Li, Veronica, and Zoe have been observing the whole exchange. Akim, Tristan and I stand there in front of Billy VandenHammer and his posse, unsure of what to do or say next. After a few eternal minutes pass, Jimmy T returns, towing Zoe behind him. VandenHammer scans her from head to toe, then he reverses course back to her chest.
“Well,” he says to one of his boys, as if we’re not even here, “not exactly what my contact described, but she’s pretty hot anyway.”
He peers over the purple lenses of his glasses and looks directly at Zoe with his steely eyes.
“Okay, sweetie, show us what you’ve got.”
“What?” she says, crossing her arms over her chest.
VandenHammer shakes his head a little, grins slightly.
“I’m a music producer, baby. Get up there and sing for me, for chrissakes.”
“You heard the man!” Jimmy T barks. “Show him what the Featherless Bipeds are all about.”
He turns and stands beside VandenHammer, crossing his arms in a similar pose. One of the bodyguards grabs him by the shoulders and pulls him away from the boss.
Zoe looks dazed as she follows us to the stage.
“Can you actually sing, Zoe?” Tristan asks.
Zoe nods.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” I ask her.
“I’m sure,” she says. “I want this producer to hear you guys play.”
The crowd hoots and hollers as we take our positions on stage.
Zoe turns to me and says, “Can we do ‘Invitation’?”
“Do you know the words?” Tristan wonders.
“I’ve known the words since I first heard them in high school,” she says. She is still looking at me when she says this.
Then, Zoe slowly turns to face the spotlight, and something amazing happens.
RULE NUMBER ONE
For the Featherless Bipeds, the balance tipped the night Zoe was thrust into the band. I never would have imagined that Zoe could sing like she does until I heard her that night at the Twelve Tribes. Since then, our powerchord rock songs have become sparer sounding without Jimmy T’s rhythm guitar playing, but Zoe’s voice fills and overflows the spaces left behind.
She has the power and control of an opera diva, the passion and guts of a blues singer, the casual elegance of a jazz crooner, and a certain extra mystique that I still can’t quite compare to anything else. Her voice has transformed our songs into something more complex, something that still eludes easy categorization. And to think that I’ve loved her for all these years and never realized she had this voice locked away inside her, a voice as complex and evasive and beautiful as Zoe herself.
Akim, Tristan and I play every show as if it’s the last time, struggling to match the mysterious, otherworldly quality of Zoe’s singing. As if someone has waved a magic wand, we have been transformed from a struggling bar band into the Next Big Thing. As we’re shipped from concert hall to radio station to recording studio, I still get this strange feeling that I’m watching it all happen from just outside myself, as if none of this is completely real.
Nothing feels more surreal than the day we all gather in Billy VandenHammer’s plush, oak-panelled office to sign our recording deal with Big Plastic Records.
“By the way,” Billy says as Zoe reaches for the silver pen to sign her name on the contract’s dotted line, “nobody in the band is allowed to have sexual relations with anyone else in the band. Is that clear? It’s all about the music now.”
“How is that any of your business?” I sputter.
“It’s totally my business!” VandenHammer says. “That kind of shit destroys bands. Look at Ike and Tina Turner. Look at Fleetwood Mac, for crying out loud, all screwing each other, all but ruined now. And look what happened when Yoko Ono got her claws into John Lennon. Poof! No more Beatles.”
“Okay,” Akim grins, taking the pen from Zoe and signing the contract, “I promise I won’t hump Tristan anymore.”
He hands the pen to Tristan, who signs like he was in a speed-writing competition.
Zoe and I look at each other, then at VandenHammer.
“Rule Number One, kids,” he says, peering at us over the purple lenses of his glasses. “No sexual relations of any kind amongst band members. I’m not investing in you so you can have jealous fights and break up. No way. It’s all about the music.”
Jimmy T hovers behind us. “Does Rule Number One apply to me, too, Billy, or am I allowed to sleep with Zoe?”
“Dream on!” Zoe scowls at him.
“You can call me Mr. VandenHammer, Mr. Tanner. And it applies double for band managers.”
Zoe looks at me for a moment. Then she sighs, signs her name, and hands me the pen without making eye contact again.
“It’s all about the music,” I tell myself as I add my signature to the page.
Now we are on our first cross-country road trip, in support of our newly released first album, Socrates Kicks Ass! The tour has been organized by Jimmy T, despite Billy VandenHammer’s offer to get someone at the record company to put the tour together. Jimmy T, Tristan and Akim share the job of driving the rented U-Haul equipment van, while Zoe and I take turns behind the wheel of her rust-perforated Toyota.
It is after three am, and we are somewhere between our Friday night gig in Winnipeg and our hotel in Regina, where we will play on Saturday. While Zoe sleeps in the passenger seat, I struggle to keep my heavy eyelids open, and curse Jimmy T for booking such distant gigs on consecutive nights. It’s all I can do to keep the Toyota within visual range of the van’s tail lights, since Jimmy T is driving at his usual homicidal velocity.
Out of nowhere comes a howling prairie blizzard. It takes all of my concentration to keep the featherweight car on the road. Snow blasts through the headlight beams, concealing the road, rendering the world around us dimensionless; it was like flying through a dense field of stars in a spaceship.
It is a miracle that I am able to see the neon glow of a roadside motel. I pull into the driveway.
“What’s going on?” Zoe asks, still groggy from sleep.
“Blizzard. I lost site of the van.”
“Are we in Regina?”
“Not sure exactly. There’s a motel. I think it might be safer for us to stay here for the night.”
Zoe stretches and yawns. “Okay,” she says. In a semi-trance, she follows me through the whistling wind into the motel.
At the front desk, a clerk with basset hound eyes pries himself away from the glow of his twelve-inch TV.
“Yep?” he says.
“We need two rooms.”
“We got one left.”
“Two beds?” I ask.
“One.”
I turn to Zoe. “It’s okay. I’ll sleep on the floor.”
The room is dimly lit and claustrophobic. There are velvet paintings of cowboys and horses hanging on the painted plywood walls. Wind hisses at the windowsills, rattles the siding outside. A neon sign flickers and hums outside the window.
Zoe immediately falls onto her back atop the spongy double bed, arms and legs splayed outward.
“I’m exhausted,” she sighs.
The long, wiry muscles in her arms are stretched tight, like high-voltage wires in the chill
of winter. Every line, curve, and shadow of her body appears to quake, to shiver. Each part of her that is not consumed by shadow leaps forth, vibrating, visually crackling from the neon sign buzzing outside the window. The bed and walls of the motel room flicker at the same frequency, sharing the tension.
A volatile emulsion of guilt and desire bubbles inside me.
“It’s freezing in here,” she said. “I’m getting under the covers.”
Zoe arches her back, wriggles out of her jeans, kicks them onto the floor, then, without removing her sweatshirt, twists free of her bra, which lands on the cold floor beside her jeans. Like a swimmer springing feet-first from a diving board, she kicks her feet up in the air, then in one fluid motion her body slips beneath the sheets.
Split-second images whirl though my head: an edge of black pubic hair peeking from the crotch of her panties as she pulls off her jeans, a glimpse of a chill-shriveled nipple as she tugs the bra from beneath her sweatshirt, the O-shape of her lips as she plunges beneath the cold sheets.
Blood throbs inside me like the thunder of ritual drums. I turn around, pretend to look out the window at the swirling snow, so she won’t see the physical effect she is having on me; the effect she’s had on me since we were together in high school.
“I’ll, um, sleep on the floor, then,” I manage to say.
Her eyes peek out from under the blankets.
“Oh, come on Dak, you’ll freeze out there. We can share for tonight.”
“What about Rule Number One?”
“Desperate times cause for desperate measures,” she says. “We’ll just have to behave ourselves.”
So I strip down to my T-shirt and boxer shorts, careful to keep my back to her. Under the sheets, I roll over on my back, careful to turn slightly to one side so I won’t raise the blankets too much.
“God, Dak,” she says, her voice slightly hoarse from singing, “you’re like an oven.” She snuggles up beside me, saying, “You have to share the heat.”
I stare up at the ceiling, which continues to vibrate with the neon glow from outside the window. Zoe is probably already asleep when she slides her hand across my chest and her leg crosses over mine. She nestles her face between my chest and shoulder.
Featherless Bipeds Page 15