“Well, don’t let me stop you.”
“Well, don’t go yet.”
“I’m not,” she said. “Just need to pee like a banshee.” She shuffled off into the privacy of the shadows and scrub to do her deed, and Clay stepped into the ghost of the house to do his.
The square footage was limited, claustrophobic even without the walls. His instructions had been to deliver the bottle to the base of the chimney, and that was what he did now. The Ganeks had left a bunch of tools in the gardener’s shed, so Clay had pocketed a trowel, which he used now to stab at the thickly packed grit where a chunk of foundation was missing.
To use both hands, he set the bottle on the broken hearth, and in the moonlight its glass was frostier than ever (Clay only hoped Savy hadn’t noticed that particular detail).
Now that Deidre wasn’t yelling at him or throwing guitars, Clay could admit his sympathy for her. She’d lost her life, and her love, too soon and would never get them back. What she had done to him as a ghost had been out of an instinct to protect her home. And she had been terribly afraid. Of what, Clay didn’t fully understand.
“Rest in peace,” he whispered, sincerely, when the shallow grave was dug. He grabbed the bottle by its cold neck and lowered it sideways into the earth. Then he shoved at the mound of dirt with both hands, pushing it over top.
Savy was waiting for him on the far end of the ruins, lost in her own thoughts. Clay dropped onto the concrete slab that had once been a front stoop and they watched the city lights, side by side, without speaking.
The silence got to Savy first: “Before ten o’clock,” she said, “you can watch the jets taking off from Bob Hope. That’s actually what they call the Burbank Airport—Bob Hope!”
“He hosted The Tonight Show?”
“No, that was Johnny Carson. Bob Hope, I don’t know—he made faces and people cracked up. On the comedian timeline, he’s before Eddie Murphy, after Abbott and Costello.”
“Oh-kay.”
“Anyway, I like watching the planes take off. Makes it look so easy to leave, to just go off to a different life. Like you did.”
“There wasn’t much holding me in Philly,” Clay admitted.
Savy nodded. She gestured as she spoke and her bracelets clacked as she gestured. “I was just thinking how, right now, my band is more like a lead balloon than a jet. No upward trajectory, no going anywhere. We had a full lineup for maybe eight months, then Bass, our singer, wanted all our songs to sound like Rage Against the Machine. And I love Tom Morello, he’s one of my heroes, but his style is so distinct, I wasn’t going to spend hours on stage ripping him off. So Bass left to do his Great American Rap Record and we’ve been auditioning his replacement longer than he was in the band. One of us always has an excuse to shoot the candidates down. Then we’re all a year older, with nothing happening—and I’m really done with that. I want to go somewhere.” She looked at Clay then, stared him straight in the eye. “So I was thinking we give you a chance.”
Clay blinked back. “A chance to, what?” He waited on the punchline. Or to snap awake in bed and realize that all of this—Savy, Boyle, Deidre, the band, the caterpillar stitches—had all been an elaborate dream.
“Our next rehearsal’s Wednesday,” she said, dead-serious. “Can you make it?”
“But before, I thought you said—”
“I don’t recall saying anything before. But yes, I’m making an executive band decision here. Spider will be overjoyed to have a singer again.”
“And Fiasco Joe?”
“Oh, he’ll bark and bitch and cry,” Savy told him, “but he’ll come around.” She leaned in. “He’s kind of afraid of me.”
Despite everything that had happened tonight, the notion that three other musicians (or at least one of them) were willing to give him a chance, to see if he could step up and deliver them to the life they wanted so badly, floored him the most. “Let me just make sure I’m on the same page right now,” he told Savy. “I’m in the Terrible Genuises?”
“You are,” she laughed. “Except now Fiasco is calling us either The Queefs or Hot for Horsie. So basically he’s off band-naming duty forever, and we’re open to suggestions.”
Clay watched the city lights twinkle and shimmer on distant airwaves, and he couldn’t help his big, dopey grin. “I think I might have one,” he said.
PART II:
WATCH IT BURN!
10
WE LAUGH AT DANGER
(AND BREAK ALL THE RULES)
As summer passed into fall, the L.A. weather only grew hotter. Clay marveled at this phenomenon, so contrary to the alignment of seasons back east, and he marveled at the new reality he had stepped into. His anxiety about jamming with Savy, Fiasco, and Spider lasted only as long as their first practice. Savy had a way of making you feel like you belonged, and Spider was cool and easygoing, and Fiasco Joe, for all his initial hostility, at least accepted that Clay would be in his orbit.
Practice itself was every bit as edifying as their first time on the Knickerbocker roof. Every song Clay wrote (with a little help from his not-quite-imaginary friend), Savy and the guys made better. They tested Clay, challenged him, forced him to practice harder, faster, to treat his guitar like an extension of his own body, and to never settle for anything that sucked in the slightest. If it took six months to fine-tune a song, so be it.
Vocal-wise, Clay felt like he was improving by the day. He would never have Boyle’s melodic growl, or Freddie Mercury’s four-octave range, but he was developing a sound and style all his own. What was more, and what really took their songs to a new level, were the two-part harmonies that he and Savy pulled out of thin air. When she locked word-for-word on his choruses, when she added the “Wooooooahs” and “Heeeeeys” to accentuate a verse, there was an audible magic that translated on even the shittiest one-track recordings. Not even Fiasco Joe denied it. However raw, they had something here.
If any further validation was needed, Boyle confirmed Clay’s belief when he listened to their first rehearsal tape; and he seemed to take pride in the fact (not only could Clay hear the disembodied voice of a dead man, he had a solid ear for rock tunes as well).
Two nights a week, after Savy’s day of mopping floors and serving geriatric meals at the Knickerbocker, the band jammed in a concrete laundry room behind Spider and Fiasco’s apartment in Eagle Rock.
On Fridays, practice shifted to the Generator. Playing in the same space as their Rocket Throne idols gave these sessions an added gravitas, with Savy demanding that they play “as if Throne were there to witness the performance”—and what could Clay do but bite his tongue?
Afterward, they barbequed in the outdoor kitchen and were treated to Fiasco’s rants on everything from L.A. drivers to major record labels. “Grammy Awards, record-release parties, skeezy execs who wouldn’t know great music from the trumpeting of their ass—that shit’s totally dead now. Long live indie music! Self-distribution and grassroots marketing!”
Sometimes they swam under the stars in the heated pool, and Clay did his best not to gawk at Savy in her one-piece. He failed more often than not, as did Fiasco and Spider—so that Savy began to “forget” her bathing suit and sit with her feet in the water while the rest of them backstroked and cannonballed. The notion wasn’t lost on Clay—Savy had won their respect as a musician, as their band leader, but in the pool she was still flesh to their libidos. After awhile he quit going in too, and not long after that, the pool went unused.
Once Fiasco’s ’85 Dodge van—which had been dubbed “BadVan” by all who dared ride in it—rolled off for the night, Clay returned to the Generator and listened as Boyle offered feedback for the songs in general, and praise for Savy in particular. At one point, when the smack was gettin’ over on me, I considered hiring another guitar to help me through the tour schedule. If Savy had tried out, I’d have hired her in a second. I’d have hired her if she was a hundred pounds overweight with bad acne—she’s that damn good.
�
��She’s not even fully aware how good,” Clay agreed.
That’s the beauty of true talent. Self-awareness ruins it.
“Savy doesn’t have a problem there.”
No, the problem’s with you, my friend. You want to make music with her and you also want to fall for her. I understand the desire, believe me. But lovin’ in bands? Don’t work, brother.
This seemed one of the true paradoxes of the universe—that a band could bond so fiercely through the intercourse of music, but the moment the sexy boom-boom asserted itself, everything went to shit. Was it like married couples who worked together—too much time in each other’s company? Was it the groupies lingering at every stage door? Or that two members had a closer relationship than the rest of the band? Clay couldn’t say.
There’ll be girls aplenty, Boyle assured him. But truly great guitarists come along once a career. Heed the warning. Don’t let your cock crow—heed the warning.
Still, Clay never missed an opportunity to spend time with Savy. Several times a month they ventured into Hollywood to catch bands at the Whisky, The Roxy, The Mint; everything from locals legends with cult followings to up-and-comers on self-funded van tours to electronica played by shirtless hipsters on laptops. They saw Springsteen at the Pantages, the Foo Fighters at The Forum, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds at Ace Hotel. They caught Against Me! at Spaceland, The Raveonettes at The Echo, The Airborne Toxic Event at El Rey, Five Finger Death Punch at a venue Clay never learned the name of, Dream Theater at the Fox Performing Arts Center, the Melvins at the Troubadour, Florence + The Machine at The Wiltern. They lingered in booths at Fred 62 and House of Pies and In-N-Out, discussed the strengths of each performance, the choice of set lists, and what they hoped to include in their own eventual stage show.
They made weekly pilgrimages to Amoeba Records, that warehouse-sized haven of music, to lose themselves among the aisles of vinyl and CDs (such things still existed here and in great number); or to ascend to the DVD loft and people-watch in the aisles below—here, some indie kids in black-framed glasses, there a gang of ravers in neon spandex, and over yonder a mohawked bride in zombie makeup. A love of music seemed the only prerequisite. Even Boyle couldn’t resist writing a detailed list of albums he’d been longing to hear, and in the absence of Spotify in the Generator (the WiFi being iffy and resistant to extenders in the guesthouse), Clay was happy to hook him up. An existence without music truly sounded like hell.
They drove into Venice to witness the parade of tattoos and tourists, the loin-clothed skinny man with his boa constrictor, the repenting Satan stumbling along with his giant wooden cross, the artists and skaters and beach bums and Anthony Kiedis lookalikes and Post Malone lookalikes. Fiasco had a friend who lived on one of the old canals and that friend threw parties every Saturday night. Savy, Clay noticed, steered wide of the bong circles and upstairs hookups, preferring to hang out on the roof-deck with Mr. Eddy, the resident Bullmastiff, or sit out front in the rowboat tied to the dock, strumming her acoustic with her bare feet up. And though he made a serious effort not to follow her around, Clay often encroached on her solitude. He was here to be with her, after all, not his drunken, bro-hugging drummer or his angry, philosophizing bass player—and certainly not for the temptation of the increasingly harder drugs that were showing up at the canal house. He remembered Savy’s warning and that, if nothing else, kept him on the straight-edge path. His addiction to her company was a safer alternative, whatever the side effects. He loved her patience as she schooled him in the Circle of Fifths and the pentatonic scale. He loved the ten-dollar vocabulary she sometimes used—ambisinister, vainglorious—in everyday conversation, and how she frequently inserted profanity into the middle of words: Every-fucking-where I look, there’s some vainglorious dumbass with a tribal tattoo. And he loved the way Savy had listened to him when he finally told her about his mother, finding her crumpled and dead at the bottom of the stairs, and how the memory seemed to hurt her as much as it hurt him. Empathy was a gift that could heal the world, Boyle once sang, and Savy had it stockpiled.
One night, halfway through a particularly rowdy get-together, they bailed and walked from the canals down to the beach with Mr. Eddy. Savy found the rooftop where the Chili Peppers had filmed their “Rain Dance Maggie” video and the rooftop (she had a real thing for rooftops, this one) where Jim Morrison had spent the summer of ’65, sleeping under the stars. She’d brought her guitar along and they did an unrehearsed Doors tribute, Clay crooning “The End” and “Indian Summer” down at the passing crowd, who didn’t miss a beat, shouting “Jim?” at the silhouette above. Others simply scowled and invited Clay to take a running leap, splatter himself across the sidewalk.
Sometimes they stayed out late enough to watch the dawn-patrol surfers hit the water. Then it was back to BadVan and, after relieving Randy’s of many crullers and cream-filleds, a led-footed sprint through the Sepulveda Pass before L.A. could wake up and throw a traffic jam in front of them.
Looking back, Clay would know these weeks as the best in his life; in the company of new friends, creating music, growing his hair out, and discovering a sprawling urban wilderness that was fast becoming home.
Then came the day when Fiasco Joe announced he’d landed them a gig, and even as Clay’s excitement rose and his self-doubt flooded in, he was already lamenting the fact that the first chapter of his life in a band was coming to an end.
Things would only get more complicated from here.
“Am I ready? Really?”
Clay was bringing three hours of practice to a close the way he usually did—with a state-of-the-union with his ghostly mentor. The Generator had changed in recent weeks, from a storage room to the recording and rehearsal space it originally had been. Peter, seeing his son (eventually) repair the master suite and the cracked window, and perhaps feeling a bit guilty about his relationship with Essie, after all, had given Clay full run of the place, and Clay spent his caretaker salary on a decent amplifier and a gently-used Regan-puke-green couch. Savy found a leopard-print rug at a yard sale and Spider resurrected a few dusty, fat-cushioned chairs from the Knickerbocker’s basement. Having moved his plans for a home gym into the main house, Peter nevertheless equipped the Generator with recess lighting and added a dart board and Crossroads, a vintage rally car-themed pinball machine in which he, Peter, accrued the highest score on and which Clay’s bandmates had been trying to best ever since.
“Ignoring my question doesn’t fill me with confidence,” Clay told Boyle.
We played our first show in the parking lot of The Forum, came the reply. After weeks of communicating, Clay sometimes forgot there wasn’t another body in the room. I’m sure you read about that somewhere.
“They say you guys snuck into the parking lot of an Aerosmith show and started a riot.”
We had a generator for the amps and did it guerrilla-style. Jumped from our SUV like the A-Team and played about two and a half songs before the cops surrounded us. If anyone caused a riot, it was them. Everyone else was dancin’ and havin’ a grand time.
“We’re not doing anything that awesome,” Clay said. “I mean, all it is is some girl’s 16th birthday. A bunch of high-school sophomores who’ll probably spend our set texting each other. But a gig’s a gig, right? I want to play well.”
Never worry about the crowd. If you play good, if you play fierce, they’ll go from skeptics to believers in seconds.
Clay understood the simple wisdom in that. Their songs were catchy punk, folk, metal, hardcore, post-hardcore rock tunes and Clay needed to have confidence in them. Still, even if he and Boyle had written most of the songs together, and even if Savy and the gang had helped perfect them, Clay couldn’t shake the suspicion that all he would ever be was a disillusioned loser from Philadelphia. Could he really bring a song to proper life in front of an audience?
The springs of the adjacent chair groaned as Boyle shifted his weight. He was doing things like that recently, human things, playing the pinball machine or
longingly spooning up Clay’s baked ziti, even pounding out Keith Moon beats when Spider left his drums behind. Almost as if, Clay thought, he forgets he’s dead sometimes.
“There’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you, man. But I don’t want to piss you off.”
Don’t worry, I don’t expect writing credit or residuals on any of our songs. Exploit me to your fullest potential.
“Not what I was getting at.” Clay hesitated, tapping his fingers. “I was wondering why being a rock star—why it wasn’t ever enough for you?”
The mood in the room shifted, as Clay knew it would. It was everything I wanted and more, Boyle replied.
“And you still long for it. That’s obvious.”
I long for the music, the creation, that’s true. I wasn’t strong enough to defeat the darkness I stepped into though. In the end, I couldn’t save myself, or Deidre, from what came for us.
“It’s hard to wrap my mind around. I always think as being larger than life, above everything. Problems especially.”
I once thought the same, man. But the more you sell, the more you buy into.
Tap, tap, tap went Clay’s fingers. “You didn’t kill yourself. Did you, Rocco?”
The room was still, as still as a photograph.
“Come on, it’s been weeks since I laid Deidre to rest. I think we’ve earned each other’s trust.” Suddenly Clay realized how righteously adamant he felt about this. And he took a stab at the conclusion he suspected: “Rooster killed you, didn’t he?”
Yes, Boyle told him. And no.
“Someone else was there?”
Forget it.
Clay glared at the empty chair beside him. “How can you say that? Do you know how many people had their hearts ripped open the day you died? Everyone you knew. And plenty you didn’t. People like me and Savy. We all thought you’d hung yourself. Now you’re telling me that’s not what happened and I should forget it?”
If you knew the truth, what would you do with it? Go to the police? Tell them a little ghost whispered in your ear? All that’ll do is attract the wrong attention. And if you’re afraid to play to a few teenage girls… you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
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