FAREWELL GHOST

by Larry Caldwell

  Half the tracks on my first album were about girls I’d loved and lost. Nothing wrong with a little pain in a songwriter’s life.

  Clay ventured over to Crossroads and sent the silver pinball rocketing up the launch. “We’re almost ready to record our demo. Our next gig will be fast on its heels. You think there’s something to worry about? Will the Hailmaker honestly give a shit about us?”

  You put his top moneymaker out of commission. He’ll admire your ambition, if nothin’ else.

  Slamming the flippers, Clay sent the ball ricocheting around the playfield of bleeping bumpers and spinners, soundtrack tires screeching, wrecking havoc. “And if he comes looking for us? Are you keeping a bandolier of holy water under the floor? How do we fend him off?”

  If I could answer that, I’d be sittin’ here in the flesh. I think a lot of people would.

  “You know, I saw him once. In Philadelphia. He was a she back then—and she knew my name. Whispered it to me on the other side of a peephole.” Clay shook his head. “Sometimes I feel like she’s still watching me, in the most random places.”

  Boyle paused for a long time. Fuck. That can’t be good.

  “What are my options then? Quit music? Find a good place to haunt?”

  One thing I know: The Hailmaker plays by his own set of rules. He won’t make you do anything. That’d be too easy. He’ll want you to force yourself. ’cept don’t think knowin’ that will be enough. If The Man wants something, he’ll be damn determined. And his toadies are everywhere in this business. If someone offers you something that sounds too good to be true, it is. Don’t sign anything till we’ve talked…. And be especially wary of offers to go to Maui.

  “I’m sorry—I think I have a little tinnitus ringing. Did you say Maui?”

  Or some paradise they’ll take you to, under the guise of gettin’ high, gettin’ laid, recordin’ a record. And after a few days, you’ll be as good as bought. It’s where I shot smack the first time. I was easy to manipulate after that.

  “What’s the alternative? Even if we could resist, what would the punishment be? Slow dismemberment? Watching terrible things happen to my friends? I think I’d rather give in.”

  He’d love to know you think that way. Boyle was close to Clay now, leaning in to emphasize the point. If he can’t have your soul, he won’t want the rest of you. I think he feeds off it, breathes the corruption in like we—or you, at least—breathe air. So don’t bite at his seduction, no matter how good it sounds. Eventually he’ll discard you, and find someone else to suit his needs. You’ll survive. Like I might’ve if I hadn’t been so desperate for fame.

  The pinball rolled straight down the center of the table and dropped into the black hole at the bottom. Almost instantly another ball entered the launch, but Clay laid off. He stared down into that black hole like it was a bottomless chasm. “All I want to do is play music. Bring a little excitement to a room full of people. In my wildest dreams, I change a few lives, the way you changed mine. Why does that cost so much?”

  I’ve come to believe flies show up wherever there’s something sweet. And what’s sweeter in life than music? Boyle didn’t bother waiting for a response. There was none. It’s our gift, and our curse. But you understand what’s comin’, at least. Most of us never had that advantage.

  Clay felt himself nodding. His head hurt, as if a thick length of barbwire was being jerked back and forth through his temples. He thought, My best friend is a ghost and the devil is coming for me. Then he was doubled over, shaking with laughter, cracking up loud enough to quiet the songbirds outside. “I think I need Advil. Hang on to that Telecaster.”

  Clay?

  “My mind’s going to burst, Roc, we’ll have to revisit this another time.”

  I wanted to say thank you. For jammin’ with me. It was damn good to get the dust off.

  “Oven mitts, my ass,” Clay said, and swatted the lights off.

  19

  SMELLS LIKE TEEN SPIRIT

  In track recording, vocals were put down last. So, after Clay had laid his riffs over Fiasco and Spider’s parts, everyone was left waiting for Savy. Unlike at practice, where her playing was spontaneous and raw, recording brought out Savy’s inner-perfectionist. She was self-conscious and short-fused about everything, fiddling endlessly with her tuner, changing pickups, complaining how the Generator was too hot (despite the cranked a.c.)—the guitar was a highly sensitive instrument, after all, susceptible to the most subtle temperature changes—and she demanded retakes on everything. “Christ, Sav, it’s only a demo,” Spider dared to remind her.

  “Yeah, what are you, the Stanley Kubrick of session players?” Fiasco added, sitting a good distance away—and with Delilah Jane and her porcupine quills of white hair to shield him.

  Savy looked around at her bandmates, saw their general agreement, and cracked a frustrated grin. “I don’t want anyone who hears us to even think about turning us down. I want it to be our passport into every club, into everything. That’s what we should be going for here. If any of you half-assed even one second of your parts, rip it out and let’s go again. Call me ego-fucking-tistical but I—”

  “Ego-fucking-tistical!” her band replied.

  In this fashion, it took them four nights to lay down the music for five songs, and they spent a fifth recording “In Rolls the Storm” live. They were going for a “big garage sound” (so Spider informed them)—with tremblingly amps, concussive drums, echoes and sustain—and that took time and patience.

  On the sixth evening, Clay ascended to the loft and stood before the screened microphone, just as Rocco Boyle had seven years (and, Clay sensed, seven minutes) before. They had set aside a week to record, which meant he had a night and a half to bark out all the lyrics he’d so far conceived, leaving the latter half of the final night for backing vocals and harmonies.

  “Wish me luck,” Clay told the empty loft.

  “What was that?” Spider, downstairs, asked in his headphones.

  “Nothing. Psyching myself up.”

  Like his hero/mentor/friend, Clay preferred singing alone in the dark, under the stars. It was easier to rekindle the emotions that had inspired the song without everyone staring at you. Through that first night, Fiasco and Spider were constantly climbing up between takes, offering words of encouragement—since hearing your voice on tape could have a humbling effect (even Boyle had admitted he didn’t sound half as good recorded as he did in his head). Savy, on the other hand, seemed preoccupied. It wasn’t until late afternoon of the second day that Clay grew suspicious.

  They were just starting “Houdini Nights” when Spider ran into a glitch downstairs and told Clay to take five. “Actually, make it fifteen. I need to sort this out.” Clay had zero knowledge of the technical aspects of recording; all he’d observed when delays of this kind occurred was Spider turning knobs, pushing faders, and frowning. Clay was reaching for his Syd Barrett biography when Savy caught his eye out the window.

  She was down on the lawn, texting with busy thumbs. Smiling at the replies. Clay knew that smile—and didn’t like that she was offering it, however indirectly, to someone else.

  There was a telescope that Peter insisted on keeping under the skylight and on a whim—an immature one, admittedly—Clay dragged it over and pointed the lens down at Savy. After a lot of wild aiming and adjustments, he managed to locate her phone, though the screen was a white blur, and he couldn’t make out so much as an emoji.

  Finally, she stepped out of view, and Clay scolded himself for playing the jealous lover, the voyeuristic creep. He lifted the scope behind the property. Daylight savings was still a few weeks away, and at this hour the sun lit the western face of the Verdugos in hues of yellow, brown, and maroon. Clay scanned the deep crags and high ledges for the bluff that Savy had told him about, the one where binocular-clad fans supposedly gathered to stare into his back yard.

  The floor behind him creaked and Clay turned, certain it would be Boyle.

  Savy was th
ere. “Who you spying on?” she asked.

  And for some reason, Clay told her, “I was trying to see who you’ve been texting.”

  Savy laughed at this like the joke it wasn’t. “You want some tea for your vocal cords? Or a humidifier? I brought one in case you get hoarse.”

  “I’m good. Just trying to stay in the zone. Like you said, we have to be great.”

  “You’ll crush it,” Savy said, starting back down. “I’ve no doubt.”

  “You have a boyfriend, don’t you?”

  She stopped. Long enough for Clay to note the irony in recording his voice, when he seemed to have so little control over it. “Or someone you hang with and tell none of us about? Did Mo ever tell you about the time I came by your grandma’s? I waited all night for you.”

  “Guys,” Spider shouted up. “Argue quieter. The mic’s still hot.”

  Savy went to the microphone and covered the foam in both hands. Her face was hard; her eyes soft. “It was a mistake, after the fire. And you’re only proving the point.”

  Clay threw his hands up, knocking the telescope askew. “I’m just asking.”

  Savy stared back, a pucker of flesh forming between her clenched eyebrows. For a moment, Clay’s inability to mind his tongue threatened to spread through his whole body, and he saw himself grabbing her, kissing her, leaving Spider to ponder the smacking sounds on the mic—first lips to lips, then likely her palm to his face. Though it went no further than an innocuous squeeze of Savy’s bicep before she stepped away. “Dream’s over,” she said. “Wake up now.”

  Savy’s feet had hardly receded on the stairs before another, more urgent pair began clomping up. “You’re killing it,” Fiasco Joe told him without expression.

  “First time for everything,” Clay said.

  “And you’re killing me.”

  “What now?”

  Fiasco drew as close as Savy had, which was to say uncomfortably close for anyone you hadn’t slept with. Though his breath was consistently better since Delilah had shown up in his life, minty-fresh, Tic Tac-inspired. “It’s not entirely your fault,” he allowed. “You’re a band virgin and Savy glossed over what happened with Bass.”

  Bass again. Emphasis on the “ass.” The Fishman who’d come before him.

  “She told you we parted ways because he wanted us to do a rock/hip-hop fusion thing,” Fiasco went on. “Truth is, Bass had great style and a vocal range that totally expanded our sound. It wasn’t till we were on the road that the shit hit the grit.”

  “What happened?”

  “What happened is they fucked,” Fiasco said. Following Clay’s eyes, he added, “The mic’s dead now. It’s just us boys talking.”

  “Savy and Bass were in a relationship?”

  “Everyone in a band is in a relationship, bro, icky as that sounds. What they were into was the bump-nasty whenever Spider and I weren’t around. It wasn’t real obvious before we were on the road together. Costly Creation had six gigs between Diego and Portland and Savy and Bass argued and bitched at every stop. One morning I drove Sav all around Eureka looking for ‘purple-flavored Red Bull.’” Here, Fiasco conducted with his hands. “‘They only had the orange kind,’ she’d say. ‘What’s wrong with the orange kind?’ ‘No, no, it’s got to be purple—let’s go to another pharmacy.’ Come to find out she was really after morning-after pills. Lies like that set our band back a year. And I’m not going through it again.”

  “So… is this a compliment? You think I have what it takes to land our band leader?”

  “Doubtful,” Fiasco said. “But there’s something you two aren’t telling me, and I don’t dig that. Just, fair warning—Savy stays no matter what. Any fallout from your whisperings lands on you.” Then Fiasco’s maestro hands dropped and he softened, a little. “And I’m starting to like you, so imagine my hurt feelings having to kick your ass out.”

  Clay paused until a proper retort came to mind, which was happening faster these days— with Fiasco constantly on his case about one thing or another. “Don’t fear the whisperings,” Clay crooned into his minty airspace. “It’s no secret we think you’re an asswipe.”

  Fiasco clapped Clay’s shoulder and Clay clapped him back. “Anyway, she has a boyfriend now, right?”

  “News to me,” Fiasco said, suddenly indifferent.

  He had come to like his discussions with Payton Alexander. Sitting there with his feet up, watching brightly colored fish drift by, occasionally playing the new Killers or Hold Steady albums while they talked. It was the most stable and reliable part of Clay’s week. That was the point, wasn’t it?

  “You don’t seem to mind Essie as much as you did at first,” Payton pointed out.

  “I have my own troubles these days.”

  “With Savannah, you mean?”

  “She subscribes to the love-and-music-don’t-jive ideology. But it does happen. Springsteen’s wife plays in the E Street Band. Johnny Cash and June Carter toured together most of their lives. And Fleetwood Mac—something was going on there, right?”

  “There were also divorces in Sonic Youth and The White Stripes,” Payton replied. “To say nothing of a thousand bands you never heard of for that very reason.”

  “Fine, be that way.”

  “You’re frustrated Savannah doesn’t feel the same as you do.”

  “It makes me think she doesn’t care nearly as much about me as I care about her.”

  “Could this be true?” Payton was especially skilled at this line of questioning. He liked to dump the thousand-pound gorilla in your lap and see how purple your face got.

  “No, I think she’s scared. I know she’s scared.”

  Payton took one loafer off and arranged it on his desk, as if for decoration in his bonsai forest. “You’ve told me a lot about her family. A brother with drug habits. A grandmother in poverty. Another brother who deserves better. These motivations existed long before you arrived. Your passion might have disarmed her, but she’ll always return to her magnetic north, and if she feels like Farewell Ghost is her chance, she won’t jeopardize that for anything.”

  “So suck it up? Be a man.”

  “You’ve seen what resisting gets you. Why not put your energies into the band and respect her wishes?”

  “Because she’ll know I’m faking.”

  “Or she’ll see you’re doing it for her.” Having scratched liberally at his socked foot, Payton snatched the loafer, gave the insole a quick sniff, and replaced it on his foot. “Sit down with her, listen to what she really wants. Life is a longer journey than you think.”

  “But we’re rock musicians,” Clay shot back. “It’s not cool to think about the future. Everything that’s happened since I joined this band has given me a heightened sense of living in the moment. Carpe diem. Just look at what happened to Davis Karney.”

  “Indeed.” A shiver passed through Payton’s bones. “Can you imagine the type of person who would kidnap a body from a hospital?”

  Clay hesitated, his train of thought derailed. “What?”

  “I guess you don’t listen to the news.”

  “We’re recording our demo. I stopped looking for a few days. Why?”

  “Davis Karney has gone missing from the burn unit at Cedars-Sinai.”

  “Are you shitting me?”

  “They suspect foul play. A demented fan, perhaps, with knowledge of the hospital and its security cameras—since nothing was caught on tape. Meanwhile another fan is offering a reward for the man’s return. But money might not be what a body snatcher is looking for.” Payton steepled his fingers and shook his head. “Truly, there are sick people in this world.”

  “Yes,” Clay mumbled. “Truly.” And it was unfair, expecting Payton to grasp the depth of Clay’s anxiety. Though he had spilled about his home and music life, Clay had confessed nothing of his… unique interactions with Boyle or Davis Karney. He wished he could have. He imagined Payton listening patiently, suspending his disbelief, gasping at the right moments, offerin
g sage advice with a straight face. But Clay wasn’t ready to take the risk and probably never would be.

  For some troubles, there was no earthly expertise.

  20

  CLOSER

  Farewell Ghost finished their six-song demo near the end of October. Spider hired a friend to help with the mixing and not long after they circulated their material to club bookers around town. The Viper Room was the first to come calling, offering a half-hour set on Halloween night.

  The Viper lived on the Strip, one block east of the Whisky a Go Go. Once owned by Johnny Depp, as well as the infamous site where River Phoenix—who Clay only knew as the lost Boy Scout in Indiana Jones—had met his overdose end, it was a smaller venue than most of its neighbors. Performers spoke fondly of the intimate connection with the audience. The stage was the size of a postcard (there wouldn’t be much jumping around up there) and curtained off between sets; and the room was lit only with battery-powered candles and a dim florescent-pink panel over the bar. If it had been a literal room of vipers, their fangs would have had a field day.

  Ghost was slotted in for 10pm, the third of five bands on the bill, but Clay arrived as soon as the doors opened. Their first two gigs had been wrought with anxiety and surprise, and he was determined to enjoy the experience for a change. Let the others backfire across Hollywood in BadVan, he wanted to catch the other acts, maybe even meet some—he couldn’t call them fans yet, could he?—people who had come to see them.

  The first act, Holy Toledo!, took the stage to an empty room. They’d driven down from Sacramento and had clearly been expecting a better crowd—it was Halloween night in Hollywood, for shit’s sake—but they soldiered on and thanked their audience, which consisted of their significant others, Clay, and the bartender, for filling the room with claps and whistles.

  Clay wondered if the place would be just as empty when Ghost took the stage. Halloween night couldn’t be wasted on a bunch of nobodies, right? After getting spoiled with large and raucous crowds, would they now have to deal with the sparse reception that all bands received in their infancy?