The tea kettle whistled just then, and she reached on a shelf behind the sink to take down a tea caddy, while I considered what else she would have learned about me if she’d spent enough time searching on Google to find my open-tuning explorations.
She said, “Earl Grey or Lapsang Souchung? It’s Murchie’s, so the Earl Grey isn’t over-perfumed.”
“Lapsang Souchung, even though it smells like bong water. A person can appreciate both Terry Riley and David Diamond. Do I come across as an uneducated heathen?” I had felt the intellectual pull of open tuning, but Dominique hated what she called atonal nonsense and banned it from the condo—and she considered headphones an insult to intimacy—so I hadn’t experimented on my own for quite a while.
“Of course not,” Susi said. “It’s just—I’m not being considerate. You can’t find it pleasant, people talking about you when you aren’t there. I know I hate it when my brother and friends have talked too much about me. It is unnerving when you meet people who have these preconceived notions about you. We should both try to forget what people have already said and pretend we’re two strangers.”
My head was swimming, drowning on London time. And the omelet had its origins near the district where the gates of heaven open. Greek olives and chunks of fresh tomatoes, after I’d spent weeks eating those pitiful grilled faux things they serve in Britain. Plus some other flavor.
“Cream cheese,” she said. “I didn’t have any feta.”
I looked up in surprise, not knowing I had spoken aloud.
“Cream cheese,” I repeated, and then laughed like an idiot.
“What’s funny?” she asked, as if suspicious that I was laughing at her.
“Susi and cream cheese. Like Frank Zappa. Susi. Susi Creamcheese.”
“Who is Frank Zappa?”
At that moment I realized that I’d slipped into a time warp between boarding that British Airways jet and disembarking in this woman’s living space. Like in those novels you find in airports. Except there were no Scottish warriors or oatcakes, just real food and music created before 1955. Where but in a world that exists in another dimension can you find a woman who picks you up in a bar, knows your tastes in music and food, and yet never heard of Frank Zappa?
Pondering it must have put me into another jet-lagged spin. I discovered that I’d inhaled the food and held the cup of tea in my shaking hands. The kitchen had mysteriously been restored to its former pristine order. As I tried to string words together that made sense, she looked at me curiously and then shook her head.
I was holding her hand, and I don’t know how it happened. I snatched my hand back and buried it in my lap, feeling as sheepish as a schoolboy.
“You must be done in, Jason. We were having so much fun talking, I forgot about your jetlag. Now it’s late. Do you want me to drive you home? I know it’s clear across town, but that’s not a problem.”
Thinking about what happens when I walk into Cynthia and Ian’s house after midnight, I shook my head. “It’s too late. I’ll get a cab to a hotel.”
“That’s silly. Don’t waste your money. Just stay here.”
She popped into the bedroom before I could stop her, to make her understand that I don’t sleep with groupies, however much research they do ahead of time, and I don’t eat food in other people’s houses, and I don’t go home with strangers. My attorney Karl would kill me, if my conscience didn’t get me first. Then she emerged with a pillow, blanket, and sheet, which she used to make up a bed on the Mission sofa.
“This is your last chance for the bathroom, because there is only one and I’m locking my door, since your reputation precedes you.”
“My reputation is grossly exaggerated,” I said, which was true.
“No matter. My brother says that this is the perfect house for peeing off the deck in the dead of night.” She pointed to the deck out back, which ran in front of the big picture window, both of which looked onto tall trees. “No one can see you.”
I touched the rich oak of the sofa’s arm. “This is the kind of couch a man would choose,” I said, apropos of nothing in this world. I sank down on it, really, really wanting to sleep.
“It was my father’s, like everything else. Nothing fits in the care facility, and we weren’t ready to let go of these old things. Anyway, goodnight. We can talk about the plan tomorrow morning.”
She shut her bedroom door just as Rose Maddox finished singing.
I stretched out on the man-sized Mission sofa and sank into the kind of physical comfort that you can find only when you are transported into another dimension.
9 ~ “Shame on the Moon”
SUSI
I CLOSED THE DOOR on my new friend, hoping to escape into sleep myself, but I made the foolish mistake of playing my telephone messages.
“Susi, it’s me. We have to talk. I want to spend time with you. We need to get closure over what happened.”
My ex. Logan Childs. Importuning on my time and attention. He’s been leaving messages lately, though it’s two years past the time that I would ever consider returning his call. Or allowing him in the same room with me. Just twenty seconds of phone messages was enough to destroy any possibility of sleep. Trapped in my bedroom, too anxious to either sleep or read, I felt desperate for diversion. Yet it was far too late to call my dad to chat, and both Angelia and my brother Steven had left town.
When I had to spend that ridiculous amount of time and money on counseling, one therapist had me keep a diary. It is trendy these days, as I understand it, to keep a journal to process life experiences, but I undertook the assignment like every other prescription at the time. Pain pills every four hours, not to exceed. Stretching exercises to tone what would never look natural again. Antidepressants together with morning meditations, until the brain-fogging was no longer pleasant. Sixty minutes of vigorous exercise, minimum. I could fill the diary with just a record of what I had been sentenced to endure in time-released tonics, plus physical therapy every Tuesday and Thursday at eleven.
I sound bitter, but I no longer want any remnants of that unhappiness around me. Anyway, with both insomnia and Jason in my house, I pulled the diary from the nightstand. There is no one I can tell about what I’m thinking. Angelia would want to be titillated, but it feels too perverse to share; my brother Steven would worry or judge; Dad would listen and say wise words, but I could give him even fewer details than I could Steven.
My guest is funny, bright, and intriguing, but disturbing, because I had found myself comparing Jason to Logan all evening. Comparing a near-stranger to my ex-husband felt as if I were rating Jason as a potential partner, which would be a ridiculous way to think.
In these notes I’m writing, I want to avoid thinking about Logan—though I seldom think of Logan anymore except as a symbol of my faulty judgment and poor powers of observation.
So in this diary, I intend to assess my new acquaintance in a rational way, without dredging up the unpleasant past.
First, Jason is too good looking, which must be at the heart of what Angelia describes as his fatal flaw in relation to women. I’ve known other absurdly good-looking men before—at university; when I performed; in everyday life. Their sense of entitlement is oppressive. If I don’t want to think about Logan, then Randolph serves as a prime example. However, this is to be a rational assessment, and therefore my logic appears to be this: extremely handsome men I’ve known turned out to be self-absorbed jerks; Jason is handsome; ergo, Jason is a self-absorbed jerk. He just hasn’t yet demonstrated what kind of a jerk he is. This judgment, however, may be open to criticism and re-examination, for the logic may be faulty.
This assessment is also incomplete in that I haven’t performed an inventory of what makes Jason handsome—another part of this analysis that I can’t share with Angelia, Steven, or my dad. He is tall and dark. I would think black Irish if I didn’t know that Angelia’s family came from Barcelona. He has a narrow jaw and high cheekbones. Long lashes and dark eyes, perhaps indicating
a propensity for brooding, even if he is quick-witted. A flashing smile and even teeth. Of course, he makes enough money at what he does that he can buy a perfect smile. Given that, it is kind of him to share that smile so often. I don’t want to focus too much on it, as a simple act of self-preservation.
Second in this rational assessment, he is immaculately dressed, even after fifteen hours of travel, with his shirt starched and bleached to shimmering whiteness, tucked into pressed jeans. His hands are manicured—so few men bother, except musicians and vain rich men. Because most men under forty in Seattle wear shirts hanging over jeans or khakis, I can’t say there’s anything overtly sexual about how he dresses. However, there’s a fringe of dark hair that extends beyond the cuff of his shirt along his wrist, and another fringe that appears where he has left the top two buttons of his shirt undone. When I found him, he hadn’t shaved since early morning. A dark shadow traced his jaw line, emphasizing his cheekbones. The shadow of a mustache framed and drew unwanted attention to his lips.
Third, his hips are narrow and he has muscles. It is trite of me to have noticed, but I know what he does for a living, and it doesn’t promote the kind of runner’s build he has. In addition to being well-formed, everything about him is too long. It creates an unfair advantage, so that I have to look up to him when we stand close. He has a long torso (he must struggle to keep his shirts tucked unless, as I suspect, he has them tailor made) and also has long legs (whose shape shows through denim too well).
Fourth, and the worst of it, he has the long fingers of an artist. He wrapped them around a mug of tea when I fed him, and I worried he’d notice that I couldn’t quit staring. I came close to grabbing his hand, to trace the sinews and webbing of the most beautiful hands I had ever seen. He touched me at one point and—well, it startled me, though the details about how I felt about being touched aren’t relevant to a rational discussion.
Fifth, he wears a silver buckle, like rodeo riders do. His long torso directs attention to the belt buckle above his narrow hips, and the gathered effect is to make one want to unbuckle it, proving what Angelia has said about him: he is a bad boy. I swore after wasting those years with Logan not to ever again glance a second time at handsome Peter Pans who want to be bad boys when they grow up.
Another distracting attribute is Jason’s voice. Mr. Eckhart, my first voice teacher, would love to have gotten his hooks into him. Of course, Mr. Eckhart would proceed to wipe out that smoky quality, to make Jason more of a pure tenor.
Why should I think about any of this? All I want from Jason is advice about our grant proposal and a not-too-unpleasant time while I have to entertain him. I want him to save my professional life, but I do not want anything else from him. The rational mind turns away in disgrace from any other consideration.
10 ~ “My Old Friend the Blues”
JASON
THE SUN SHONE FULL on my face when I woke, making me sneeze. I thought the airplane seat had grown strangely comfortable, until I realized it was Mission leather and sunshine that seemed strange. After spending the winter in Europe, I hadn’t seen much of the sun.
I sneezed myself into clear-witted awareness. First, I was sleeping in a strange woman’s house. Second, I had to pee. Third, I was naked under the sheet, though I couldn’t remember taking off my clothes. The instructions the previous evening had been to pee off the deck, but she meant that for the dead of night. The door that led to the bathroom was open, so I considered making a run for it, but just as I launched myself, I stubbed my toe in the devil’s worst way and then barked my shin on the coffee table.
Where I found my clothes, laundered, pressed, and folded. I grabbed them and lurched for the bathroom.
The house was tiny, so by the time I made it safely to the bathroom, it seemed clear that I was alone. A razor, wash cloth, and towel were laid out, and I lost myself in the bliss of a shower. I found everything as generic and sparse as her car: fragrance-free shampoo, soap, and deodorant.
To be straightforward about it: I did not snoop in her desk and bedroom. The one time I read a woman’s diary, I was nineteen (my excuse for moral lapse). I learned that I snore when I have a cold and I scream like a girl when someone puts icy feet on my balls. I also found out that the person I had been sleeping with didn’t know how to spell and couldn’t wait to tell her freinds [sic] how many times she came the night before. So I learned my lesson about that sin. The one time I snooped in a woman’s bedroom—I mastered that lesson quite young and have never needed a refresher.
In the kitchen, a plate with a croissant and a slice of Welsh cheddar sat on the counter beside a note promising her return shortly, when we could talk about her proposal.
Being both quick-minded and prudent, I determined the best strategy was to call a cab and be gone. In the cold light of day, I knew Karl would consider it imprudent to marry her for her music collection. However, in spite of thinking myself an intelligent man, I’m also a weak man. I caved to temptation, taking the croissant and cheese with me to the music cabinet, just for one more look. Then I pulled my laptop out of the pack, plugged it in to recharge the battery, and took quick notes on the titles. I could prowl used-CD shops for ten years—in fact, I had been—without discovering the gold in this woman’s oak cabinets.
When I plugged in my phone to recharge it, it rang, which meant it was Ian or Karl, since no one else has my number.
“Jason Taylor’s answer service.”
“It’s Ephraim. We need to talk.”
“How the hell did you get this number?”
“Your phone bill still comes to the condo. I tried to get the address changed, but gave up and just forward it to Karl every month. You should watch your business more closely. The details matter.”
“What do you want?”
“I want to make sure you don’t cause trouble for yourself. Or anything close to trouble for Dominique.”
“Ephraim, I have never said one bad word about her in public. If you feel you have to warn me about anything, talk to my attorney.”
“I talk to Karl every single day. I talk to him more than I talk to my own mother. This isn’t about your bad publicity. You are supposed to deliver a new album. June is just around the corner, and Albion Records needs new CDs in brick stores and tracks in online stores. You and I have a professional relationship. So let’s discuss your work.”
“Get your witch of a girlfriend to quit lying about me, Ephraim. Then you can talk to me about work.”
“As you know, she doesn’t take direction well. She will do whatever she wants. You and I, however, have business to attend to.”
“Karl does all my business.”
“That’s one thing we need to talk about. You need more than Karl. You need a real manager again. I think I should do that for you. You named me as a key man in your recording contract, and we had almost gotten to the business manager stage when you split.”
“You sleep with my wife. How can I do business with you? Are you on another planet?”
“The only co-respondent in your divorce is music. You married her for music, and you left her for music. And music—not Dominique—is where you and I have a common business interest.”
“I left her? That’s your concept of what happened? She left because the grass was greener elsewhere.”
“Let’s save that conversation for Karl’s office. I want to hear about what you’ve been doing and how you plan to meet your obligations. When can we get together to talk business?”
“On the last day it rains in Seattle.”
I turned the damned cell phone off, fuming, and buried my attention in the lower shelf of leather-bound graduate theses, trying to keep my thoughts in check while I leafed through those volumes. That woman Susi must have picked these up from some professor’s estate sale. She had more than a dozen texts on the folk tradition in North America (and I do not mean the Chad Mitchell Trio and Judy Collins), including a brilliant piece that mapped tonal shifts between twentieth century Cajun m
usic and Breton traditional music, which I wish I had the good fortune to write. Determined to take advantage of this opportunity, I began to type notes as though my brain was on fire.
How could Ephraim Vance have the gall to ask what I’ve been doing?
~
I have been doing what a man could do in the situation I am in: playing music. Everywhere I could. A couple of my friends in Nashville felt sorry for me and invited me to do session work with them. That was good, but former friends and fans, whether confused or pissed off, crossed the street to avoid me. New fans who bought Woman at the Well because they liked Dominique’s voice, and who followed the entertainment papers, wanted to spit on me. Or they were groupies who like to chase bad-boy guitarists.
And the word on the Internet is that Jason Taylor is the bad boy of indie music. Or indie singer-songwriters. No one can decide the appropriate category for our music—the portmanteau of cowboy grunge, “Americana” (whatever that is). That I ended up sorted into the bad-boy bin is the most ironic of the year’s events, even more ironic than women asking for my autograph in airports. Most choir boys dabble in greater evil than I do. Our band—Stoneway, named for the street near where Ian has lived since we were skater boys in junior high—may have torn up the clubs where we played, and our lyrics and aggressive use of stomp pedal and kick drum may give the impression that we thrash elsewhere. But Stoneway doesn’t tear up hotel rooms. We couldn’t even afford hotel rooms until a couple of years ago. I haven’t ended the night with my head in a toilet due to either drink or drugs since I was twenty-one. It is not that I don’t know how; I just don’t see why. I have never awakened either beside the road or beside a woman not knowing how I got there. It's not that I'm a sanctimonious folkie. I don’t care, for example, what people in the band do as long as they are sober in rehearsal and on stage.
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