“She was having a rough pregnancy,” he says. “A week ago, she lost the baby. Moved back to Columbus. Don’t know for how long. Told ya last time—buzzkill.”
“I, uh,” I say. “Shit.”
“It happened. Nothing you can do,” he says. “I’ll call everyone. We’ll party. Now, I didn’t come over only to show you this.” He waves the Reader at me. “Now that Tanya’s not here running the family’s Chicago properties anymore, I am. And I’m not really family. So they started looking over the books. And they want to start collecting rent on this space.”
“Rent?”
“They wanted fifteen hundred a month.”
“Jesus!”
“Hang on. I pointed out that isn’t market value for this neighborhood. I showed them articles about the drive-by shootings. The Party People and Latin Kings’ turf battle is practically next door. So, bottom line, I got them to accept a grand a month. For, I’m guessing, a year or so.”
“A thousand dollars.”
He nods his head.
“Whoa, that’s …”
“Not right now. You’ve got a few weeks. And I’m the one who reports to them, sooo …”
“A grand a month.”
“I’ve got your back. Don’t worry. Now, get to work. I’ll make sure we have a party here for you when you get home.”
Tossing my bag over my shoulder, I walk out into the street feeling as if nothing is real anymore: not the cars, not the ‘L’ tracks overhead, not even the city.
Chapter 27
Beaters
—Jonathan—
The days before we play our second gig at the Sound Kitchen have been an alternating succession of afternoons and evenings waiting tables at Le Moloko and rehearsing our set until late, tightening the four songs we’ll lay down at Soundworks. Mornings are always slept through. Not once have we talked about our new rent or how we’re going to pay for the recording session at Soundworks, as if our best strategy is to ignore everything and hope it all walks away on its own. I’m too tired to try to look at it head on, other than knowing that Scott and I will have to take on extra shifts whenever we can.
Then, yesterday, Nancy came in with the whole deposit for Soundworks. That means we can record, but getting the physical recording—that’ll take more money.
Chris did a good job on the flyer, using a couple of choice quotes from the Reader. She took some to Smart Bar and Neo with Jennifer, giving them out to all of their friends. We hit all the bars we know with stacks of them. I took fliers to work and got a couple of vague promises, but I’m not getting my hopes up about the waitrons.
The Friday before the show rolls around. That afternoon Ron’s here, and I’m getting into my starched work shirt for my shift while he sets up for a paid shoot for a new sushi joint. He’s taken over a chunk of the south wall, near the windows, which he’s washed off again. The sunlight’s pouring in onto a card table. Two large lamps on stands blare light onto the tabletop, erasing the shadows. He holds a light meter next to a plate and then moves one of the lamps a few inches away.
The money from this will help with the electric bill. Still, I hope he’s gone when I get home. I need sleep: I have to close tonight and work brunch tomorrow and then get to the show.
It’s past midnight when I drag myself up the four flights of stairs after work. Ron’s cleared out, so it’s quiet. Plus I can sleep in now: I was able to trade my brunch shift tomorrow for one Sunday. I’ll have to work a double Sunday, but better sucking on the floor than sucking onstage.
I wake up the afternoon of the show with the sun pouring through the windows. I try to squeeze out a little more sleep by pulling a sock over my eyes. I’m too anxious to actually sleep, but I lie there anyway, until the sound of AnnMarie arriving makes that impossible. I drag myself from bed.
That evening, AnnMarie, Scott, and I are packing all the equipment onto the elevator when Nancy and Ron get here, and then we haul everything through the back hallway to the loading dock, and finally into the hearse. The damned W-bins barely fit.
It’s one of those nasty midsummer days in Chicago: hot, hazy, and humid. I have to shower to cool down, but by the time I’m done drying my legs off, my face is already covered in sweat again. In the hearse, the AC feels like heaven.
We park in the alley behind the Sound Kitchen and unload while the opening band plays. I can taste the sweat dribbling down my face. It stings my eyes, so I go in to rinse my face off in the bathroom sink. On the way back, I linger to check out the crowd and stay cool in the AC. The place is full, but I recognize no one—not even Chris, and it’s her posters that got people here.
“Manager thinks it’s gonna be another twenty minutes before we can set up,” Scott tells me. “This time we can’t even buy drinks until after we play. ‘Long way to the top, getting ripped off ‘n’ under-paid.’”
I can’t worry about that or who did or didn’t show; I’ve got bigger problems, just like last time: I’ve no one to perform for. Not Jennifer—she couldn’t be bothered to show up tonight. So I go over the setlist in my mind, imagining the opening notes and how each song has felt when I’ve performed it before, hoping this’ll be good enough to pull me though the show.
The opening band finishes up, and the jukebox kicks back on with “Terminal Joy” by Terminal White.
“Time to roll,” Scott says.
When the back door opens up, disgorging the opening band’s members, equipment in hand, I’m sweating like hell. I pick up a crate, and we start lugging the gear in. I repeatedly wipe my face off with a towel. Once everything’s onstage, I wipe my face off again and assemble my keyboard and mic. By the time we finish the sound check, the only person I’ve recognized is Lynda, but she—I cannot sing to her. Wouldn’t feel right. At all. Yet I’m naked up here again, without someone to live the truth I’m singing, but then I remember that cryptic chick, Michele. She’s not here either, but she wasn’t supposed to be, and that matters, somehow. So, with her in mind, I start the show, and we play a tight set.
After our second encore, the whole bar is clapping and whistling.
Thanks for listening, Michele—and not asking any questions.
After we break down for the next band—Acumen Nation—we haul our gear back out to the alley and repack the hearse.
“Guys,” Scott says, “let’s celebrate at Smart Bar after we drop off the equipment. Kenny can get us all in free tonight. Good AC too.”
I’m so not in the mood.
Completely drained and annoyed at so many things, I climb inside the hearse. I keep silent, and so does Ron, until we’ve made a few turns.
“Eight,” I say. “We only had eight fliers—even after that great write-up in the Reader. Eight whole bucks.”
“Full house.”
“For who?”
“Who cares?” he says. “They all saw you. They had a great time. They’ll be the ones who show up next time.”
“Always gonna be next time. Never this time.”
“Dunno what to say.”
“Nothing,” I say, and then I scoff at myself. “You’re right. It was a good show. The new material went over great. So … It’s good. Next time is better than never, right?”
When we pull through the intersection of North, Damen, and Milwaukee, I see Chris leaning up against the wall next to the door to the loft, and beside her is Jennifer. I’m not sure if I’m pleased or pissed. We pull around the building and into the back alley, where we stop under the door of the loading dock.
The two walk down the alley. Chris, as always, is in her plain, loose T-shirt, beat-up jeans and no makeup. Jennifer is in cutoff jean shorts, fishnet stockings, and a sleeveless black shirt, with oxblood lipstick and all those earrings.
“So,” Chris says. “How was the show?”
“Good,” I say. “Actually, very good. Too bad you didn’t see it.”
“Her car died,” she says. “By the time I could come get her, you guys had already started. So … headed here.”
I hear the loading-dock doors being unbarred and pushed open.
“Well,” I say, motioning my hand at the hearse, “gotta get this …” I look up at the doorway. “Why don’t you guys head up?”
It’s cooled down some, so unloading the gear doesn’t suck quite as much as loading it. After lifting the cases, W-bins, and crates onto the loading dock, we haul them down the narrow hallway and into the elevator; and then, on the fourth floor, we unload the elevator, lugging everything back to the center of the loft. It takes a couple of trips.
“Now,” Scott says. “To Smart Bar.”
“I’ve gotta bail,” I say. “I’m beat. Have to work a double tomorrow. Brunch. Bright and early. Have a cocktail or three for me.”
“Lightweight,” Nancy says, grabbing Kenny’s arm and leading the way out into the night.
In a few moments, only Chris, Jennifer, and I are left.
“Jennifer and I are going to be heading home soon. About an hour or so. We can take you back when we leave.”
“I don’t know …” I say. “It’s—”
“Look. Here,” she says, handing Jennifer some keys. “I’ll hitch a ride there. Come pick me up whenever you’re ready.”
“You sure?” Jennifer asks.
“You’re the one who had the shitty day. Stay. Mellow out.”
She looks down at the handful of keys.
“I can always grab a cab back here if it sucks.”
“Okay,” she says with a shrug. “Sure.”
Once Chris leaves, I step over to the couch, still wondering at Jennifer being here at all.
She follows me, casually.
Sitting on the couch, I scooch over. As she turns to join me, the oversize hoop earrings in each ear flare out, and the light catches the dozen or so small hoop earrings in her left ear, which I have a sudden urge to nibble on, followed by her ear, and then her neck, and then—
“Car trouble, eh?” I ask, hoping she can’t read on my face what I was thinking of doing.
“Yeah. Starter, generator, battery. Don’t know this time. Happens. She’s a beater. But she gets me where I’m going. Most of the time.”
“Hear ya. Had one in Ohio. Ages ago.”
We nod in agreement, sharing our understanding of what beaters are like, but eventually our heads stop bobbing. Then it’s so quiet and we’re sitting so close, and it feels like the loft is pushing us together, as if it wanted her to miss the show so we’d be here, alone, together, just like that Friday, years ago, when everything seemed to conspire to get me to show up at a party I’d decided to skip: my running out of cigarettes and having to go to buy another pack, giving me the chance to change my mind and show up at the party after all—the party where Amy was.
Changing my life.
Here Jennifer is—alone, so very close. I want to reach out and touch her. Change my life again.
Wait. Wait. Wait. She’s not Amy. No one is Amy. This is so—
“Do you like living here?” she asks.
The sound of her voice scatters these thoughts.
“I mean,” she says, “for parties, rehearsals—sure. But living here? It’s so much … emptiness.”
“Well, we have ideas, to, you know, fill it up,” I say, quickly gathering myself together to not say anything straight-up stupid. “But right now. No money.”
“Like what? Pretend you have the money.”
“Well, in back,” I say, reaching my hand out toward the far end. “We’re going to build raised bedrooms.” I stand up, showing her how high. “About seven feet up. With a sitting area between to separate them. Right there, at the head of a wide staircase”—I walk over to the middle of the loft, where I imagine this being, and sweep my hands up to show the expanse of the staircase I hold in my mind—“There’ll be a balcony running the whole width of the room.” I motion both hands out toward one wall and then the opposite wall.
“Brocade drapes. Blocking off each bedroom’s entrance, for soundproofing. Sliding doors too. Drapes on all the windows.” I point to the banks of windows on each wall. “Heavy, dark bastards so we can sleep right through the middle of the day. There, a real kitchen with a tiled floor.” I indicate the card table and the rows of boxes, cans, and bags of ramen noodles on the floor. “Then a living area there, where you are, full of couches. A theater of couches with a projection TV. And right there”—I point to a large space on the windowless wall between the front door and our makeshift kitchen—“I want a concert-size poster of Joy Division’s ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart.’”
She’s staring where the imaginary poster hangs.
“You know what one I’m talking about?”
“Um,” she says, shaking her head.
“From the single. Black background, with the angel lying on the ground, a wing open, one arm thrown to the side, her other hand covering her eyes because she cannot bear to see what’s in front of her.”
“Sounds dramatic and awesome, like something I’d see in Details or Interview,” she says. “But it’s not bullshit. You’re actually here, doing something about it. Which is a major change from all the talkers.”
“I’ve been lucky,” I say. “A friend of ours—her family owns this building. So it’s not like I’m a rock ’n’ roll star, here, swimming in money. We wait tables to pay for this.”
She looks around again, with an expression like she’s reassessing the place. I’m not so sure I like being judged like that—for being honest.
“So that’s what I want,” I say. “What about you? What do you want? From life?”
“I don’t know.” She lolls her head to the side, pouting in a vague, I-don’t-like-to-talk-about-it way. “Get my own place, first of all.”
“Still with the parents, eh?”
She looks down and barely nods, and I remember about her friend Charlene, who was thrown from her apartment’s balcony; they were supposed to be roommates.
“So, you think it’ll really be like in Details?” I ask.
“Oh, um,” she says, looking surprised I’m here. “Yes. Well, depends.”
“On?”
“If you can do it. If you do, like you said, yes. If you end up like a talker”—she shakes her head—“no.”
“My, honesty. Brutal and right out there”
“Prefer lies?”
I shake my head. “Just don’t hear it often. Unadorned. Unspun. It’s a compliment.”
She smiles.
“That, and,” she says, “it’s going to sound insane, but I want to be happy like the people in magazine adverts, doing whatever it is they’ve done that makes them that way.”
She holds her hand up to stop whatever I might have started to say.
“Yes, I know. They’re selling something. Beer. Jeans. Whatever. But that’s not what I’m talking about. I want to feel the way they look. Laugh the way they appear. I want to be happy like that.”
“They’re in ads.”
“I know that. I do work at a modeling agency. I make my living doing this.”
“Then you know it’s only an idea of what happy looks like, cooked up on Madison Avenue.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about what they’re pretending to be. I want to really be what they pretend to be: not pretend happy, forcing a smile to sell jeans, but real happy—without the jeans.”
“What makes you think that kind of happy is real at all?”
“You,” she says.
I sit back.
“You look like them when you play. I’ve seen it. It’s like you are what they’re pretending to be.”
“Do I?” I place two fingers to my lips. “I’ve never seen myself playing so I … Okay.”
&n
bsp; “And, here,” she says, pointing into the loft. “Like in a magazine ad. But I’m here. It’s real. I feel happy about it. Do I look happy?”
“You know, I think you just might.”
Her smile breaks wide.
“Oh yes,” I say, nodding. “Now you definitely do.”
“See,” she says, “just like in magazines. My car died, and I missed your show, but I’m smiling. Happy.”
“Yes you are,” I say.
She takes my right hand and turns it palm up.
“Do your hands ever get sore from playing?” she asks.
“Sometimes,” I say. “Especially when I can’t get a song to work.”
“Are they sore now?”
“Actually, tonight went really well.”
“Oh,” she says, laying my hand down.
“I mean, yes, tonight went well, but there’s a song I’m working on I can’t get right, so yes, my hand is a little sore.”
“Have you ever had a hand massage?”
“Can’t say I have.”
She picks my hand back up, drives her thumbs deeply into the flesh of my palm, and then intertwines her fingers with mine, pushing my hand backward over my wrist and then pulling it forward, quickly, three times in a row. Then she curls two fingers, pinches my forefinger between them, and pulls them down its length, dragging all tension out from the tip of that finger, and then the next finger, and the next. I stay as silent as she. Then she gives my other hand this bliss. My eyes close to slits as I watch her work. She’s intent and very serious, as if nothing else exists but our hands.
You should see yourself now. You look happy. Imagine it’s the same way as when I’m playing.
Then she wraps both hands around my forearm near the elbow and, gripping tightly, draws them down to and over my wrist and hand, and then finally off the tips of my fingers, dragging all stiffness out; and then she does the same to my other arm.
This feels unreal.
Proudly, she looks at me.
“That was like heaven,” I say. “Do you like doing that?”
“I don’t like getting paid for it, if that’s what you mean. I like giving it away.”
A Perfect Blindness Page 18