Nine Volt Heart

by Annie Pearson

  Sebastian: There’s a set of instruments that carries this interwoven melodic line, with brass keys suspended over resonating bamboo tubes. You strike a key with a mallet and then dampen it as you strike the next key.

  Chas1933: Like a xylophone?

  Sebastian: You could say, but only because there’s nothing else like it in a Western orchestra. Another instrument is made up of a series of small gongs mounted on string carriages. That takes two or four players, which is more cooperation than I could manage as a rank beginner playing with strangers.

  Chas1933: Now I’m going to Google for pictures, because I’m seeing jingle bells in my mind, and that can’t be right.

  Sebastian: Nope, not right. The gamelan also has a set of gongs with amazing, pure tones plus several pairs of pitched drums and cymbals.

  Chas1933: OK, I know you play guitar. Did you pick up playing in the gamelan quickly?

  Sebastian: That interwoven melody means a faster line of music than one man or woman alone can create, so I had to learn what everyone else was doing simultaneously. The result brought them a lot of amusement. Though they were too polite to laugh out loud.

  Chas1933: Like trying to learn a new language as soon as you step off the plane in another country?

  Sebastian: Maybe that’s a good analogy. I had to think in a different scale, a different rhythm, unusual manipulation of the instruments and musical notation in Bali. It stretched way beyond patting your head and rubbing your stomach while learning to blow bubbles and jump rope—on a five-tone scale.

  Chas1933: Man, I got to see this. Take pictures and record it next time.

  That’s the world I want to inhabit, where people trade ideas and learn new things. Rather than the brave new world I live in, where people step up uninvited and insert themselves into your personal life. The exchange with Chas calmed me down a little, reminding me that I have friends in the world, and all is well. And also reminding me that I needed to let my best friend know what the heck had happened to me. I hit call-back on my phone to raise Ian.

  “Ephraim Vance.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Jason? I’m glad you called.”

  “It was a mistake.”

  “Don’t hang up.”

  “I have made enough mistakes in this life already.”

  “That’s what we need to talk about, Jason. Dominique says she couldn’t persuade you to change the song list.”

  “I’m never persuaded to choose songs based on whether Dominique wants to sing them.”

  “However, I want to persuade you to make a successful record. I want at least three-quarters of the album to be new songs from you. No covers. I want you to do the production.”

  “You have the songs. She can effing learn to sing them. I won’t have that woman standing over my shoulder again.”

  “It is far more peaceful if we just pull in studio musicians to work with her, or else have her sing against taped tracks. I learned how to get more from her by doing things you never would.”

  “Like what?”

  “Coddling her. Telling her she’s good before asking more from her. She’s cooperative when she knows how much it costs her to horse around.”

  “So you have had her in the studio alone?”

  “I couldn’t trust that you’d show up, Jason. She needs to have a new record out to keep up momentum.”

  “What songs?”

  “None of yours.”

  “What then?”

  “Cover songs. Works in the public domain.”

  “That’s why you don’t want us doing cover songs on this album.”

  “It’s just business. Original music was always in your contract. Let’s be professional, Jason.”

  “Your profession is to suck musicians’ souls, and mine is to play real music. Where does that leave us, as professionals?”

  “You signed the contract, Jason. It’s your business to write and record songs. It’s my business to make sure that your choices earn as much money as possible for all of us.”

  “Thank you for your concern.”

  “And?” Ephraim fished for more from me.

  “Nothing else.”

  “Come on, Jason. You always want the last bitter word.”

  “Hang up and leave me alone.”

  “What did you mean last night when you said to watch the phone bills?”

  “That’s how I learned she was shopping herself around, in search of better players.”

  “You don’t even check your own phone bills.”

  “She turned them in to the accountant as business deductions, along with her hotel receipts and plane tickets.” I’m too chicken to cheat on my taxes, so the accountant watches everything. “Karl called to ask why she was entertaining at expensive hotels while supposedly visiting her sister.”

  “I see.”

  “I always like it when my attorney calls to give me good news, don’t you, Ephraim?”

  “You didn’t want to keep her.”

  “I didn’t mind her leaving. What got to me was all the destruction she felt compelled to wreak on her way out. Watch your back.”

  21 ~ “Money Honey”

  JASON

  TYPING FURIOUSLY TO CAPTURE new notes from the library, I worked to forget Ephraim and recapture sensations from the morning in the gamelan shed. The rhythm of typing got me rushing again over those feelings until I had to just put the laptop away and use that sheaf of music manuscript paper from my pack to write down what I’d heard. As I pondered what the notation should be for a particular sound that makes one’s wrist bones go into a harmonious vibration, she came out of the bedroom.

  More than my wrist bones were vibrating.

  “You look like an Italian opera star. Maria Callas going to a tea party.”

  She seemed startled, but what else could I say? People in Seattle don’t dress that way. She wore a spring-flowered dress that must be worth as much on eBay as everything else in her house together. Silky and substantial at the same time, it had a flared skirt and tight shimmery green bodice that showed all her swimmer’s power. She wore a drama-inducing bra, rather than none, as she had at the beach. Although the high-collared bodice covered her neck and arms, that covering made the body under it even more enticing than uncovering it.

  I’m focusing on the dress, because the total effect created an image that I could hardly stand. I mean, I was once married to a beautiful woman and maybe that altered my susceptibility, but this is the first time I had looked at a woman and had this particular visceral response. The sole thought I could form was, This is way out of your reach, beyond anything you can have. Her boyish blond hair was moussed into place, and she had done her makeup to enhance her eyes. She wore strappy high heels and still moved with a fluid ease that I was becoming familiar with. Katherine Hepburn for the trustees meeting, Audrey Hepburn for Sunday luncheon.

  “We’re late,” she said, grabbing her keys and bag.

  In the car, she kicked off her high heels to drive, where I noticed she was barefoot and her toenails were painted. I couldn’t shake off the sensations she created, even as intimidated as I felt.

  “So this is for Gwyneth, right?” I said. “You’re dressed like that so she can’t out-do you.”

  “No, it’s for her father-in-law. He considers himself a patron of the arts, and I intend to get everything I can from him. I know how he likes to be titillated, and I intend to please him today.”

  “I can’t believe you would prostitute yourself, Susi.”

  “I’m not going to catch any diseases flirting with a seventy-five-year-old man. Do you know what? I want this institute so bad I will do anything for it. Within the bounds of human decency.”

  “Dressing so an old man can leer at you, that’s decent?”

  “What’s wrong with it? Women do it all the time.”

  “You seem pretty comfortable in that.”

  “When a dress costs this much, it’s comfortable.”

  That wasn’t what I
meant.

  “So how far would you go, Susi? Would you sleep with a rich man to get his money?”

  “That is a definite no.”

  “Would you change your curriculum for a generous donor?”

  “Add something, perhaps. For my work, it would have to be an idea that deepened what I’m trying to do.”

  “Would you sell the rights to your project just to get the teaching part of the gig?”

  “I don’t know.” She bit her lip, thinking. “It depends on what I lost and what I gained.”

  We were in the driveway of a house on Capitol Hill. It wasn’t particularly ostentatious on the outside, except that the surrounding grounds took up half a city block.

  “This is a bad idea, Susi. I’ll just give you all the money you need.”

  “That’s a kind thought, but you saw how much I need from the financials we reviewed.”

  Actually I only had enough spare change for the first year of her plan. I figured I could find more money after that. I need to save my capital in order to gamble with my own business.

  “I’ll prostitute myself, Susi. Better me than you. I’m used to it.”

  “Jason, I hope you’re being kind, and not teasing.”

  “I don’t like you having to do this.”

  “Not relevant. I can take care of my own business. It’s no different than wearing a suit to a board meeting and observing common conventions of business etiquette. It’s how this kind of work is done.”

  “You asked me to help you—”

  “But not to tell me how to behave or what to do, Jason.”

  I am old enough not to seethe and pout like a jealous fourteen-year-old. Only just barely. I grabbed a leather strip from my pack and tied my hair back, and then took a different earring from my wallet.

  “What are you doing, Jason?”

  “If I have to pimp someone, it’s going to be me. Our hostess bumped into me enough yesterday that I’m sure she’s in the market.”

  22 ~ “Slippin’ and Slidin’”

  SUSI

  GWYNETH TOUCHED HIS BOTTOM when she greeted us at the door, giving Jason one of those New Age hugs and then resting her hand right on his tight rear end while introducing him to Freeman Lukas.

  “You look like the divine incarnation of a pop star,” she said, gazing up at him with her seven-thousand-dollar, capped-tooth smile. She was wearing Prada casual pajamas, and her midriff peeked through whenever she moved. Like when she put her hand on Jason’s bottom.

  “I hear that’s why I make big money, because of my looks,” he said. She pretended that he was witty. With her hand still on his bottom.

  While she chatted him up, Jason nodded. That silly dangling silver cross he had in his ear shook, so that I scarcely heard Freeman greeting me.

  “Oh, you darling girl,” he said. “You are looking so well, one could hardly know.”

  He had his arm around me as he led me over to sit by him on the sofa in the living room. The western wall, all glass, opened out to let in the light and view from the backyard woodlands. A dogwood with just the tips of its branches turning a dusty pink served as the focal point in the view, with cherry trees glimmering white among the cedars and magnolias in the background. Freeman patted my knee through the skirts of my dress, consoling me as if I were still struggling with recovery. I was trying to convince him that things were fine now, truly, when Gwyneth and Jason joined us from the hallway. She had her finger in the belt-loop of his jeans.

  She chirped—well, that’s what it sounded like to me when she spoke, and I’m disappointed in myself for thinking the things about her that I did—saying, “The Simmones canceled. They are so sorry not to see you again, Susi, but his father is ill. And Bill is at a conference in San Diego.” Bill is her husband, whom I have never met and who could be a fictitious person, although I have seen his picture in the paper occasionally. “So it’s just us, but that’s cozy, don’t you think?”

  She got all cozy with Jason on the other sofa, so that I had to see them in a tête-à-tête any time I looked up to glance out the window. Whatever he was saying, she listened with wide-eyed, breathless attention, crossing her legs so that her calf rested against his. He asked about the collection of ethnic music instruments decorating her walls, wanting to take one down and play it, but she thought he was joking.

  Freeman wanted to hear about what we had come there to discuss, but he wanted my personal narrative. I did what I came to do, focusing all my attention on Freeman, telling him about teaching music theory with a twist on folk and Americana. After my story about how much I enjoy teaching teenagers, Freeman was again shaking his head and patting my knee.

  “You have a brave heart, my girl. I know whatever you put your head to, it will succeed. I’d be proud to help you in any way I can.” He was saying what I wanted to hear. “I would want to help you no matter what, because I feel so sorry for you.”

  Which I have so hated hearing. However, that’s what I was prostituting myself to, a pity party to raise funds for music education.

  After the single most important chat of the day dwindled to a trite discussion of how music could lead to world peace, Gwyneth invited us to the table. I excused myself to wash my hands.

  In the hallway, before I could open the powder room door, Jason’s arm came around me from behind, blocking the way, and he leaned over me. Heat emanated from his body, which I sensed as cloying as perfume. I couldn’t possibly smell him. He had showered only an hour before. Yet I had the distinct sensation of being trapped by a large animal.

  “What are we doing here, Susi?”

  “We’re raising funds for music education.”

  “I mean what are we doing, you and me? Don’t give me that bullshit line you did yesterday. When I stand this close to you, when you look over at me, it’s as if—” Jason stopped mid-sentence. “I’m sorry. My imagination runs away with me at times. I’m famous for it.”

  “They’re waiting for us.”

  “I hate sucking up to the rich and powerful.”

  “I thought you did it for a living, Jason.”

  “Touché. For a nice girl, you know how to cut deep. But that guy treats you like an invalid or a child who needs coddling.”

  “He’s giving me a half million dollars this year and a promise for more later. What will you get from Gwyneth?”

  “If I follow her lead, herpes and late-night, teary phone calls. Maybe a public remonstrance about my unfaithful heart. You win, Susi. You are much better at this than I am.” He traced his hand down my cheek and lifted my chin. “Still, it would be worth a million bucks not to see that guy’s hand on your knee.”

  Gwyneth chirped from the other room. “Are you lost?”

  “In more ways than one,” Jason called back to her.

  I turned away, and Jason whispered after me.

  “I hate your effing ex-husband. This is all his fault.”

  ~

  Shamelessly, I used the telephone in the powder room to dial long distance, hoping that Angelia had her cell phone turned on, even if they are the invention of the devil. Wherever I found her, it was noisy with the clatter of china and dinnerware and multiple voices.

  “Angelia, did you tell Jason about Logan?”

  “He knows you were married once.”

  “You know what I mean. Did you tell him?”

  Her silence was telling.

  “Angelia, how could you?”

  “May I ask what is happening that it matters?”

  “Nothing is happening. We are talking to donors and raising funds.”

  “Then why do you sound like Lady Macbeth after the murders?”

  “He just walked away saying it was all Logan’s fault.”

  “It was Logan’s fault.”

  “I don’t want Jason to feel sorry for me. I wish he didn’t know about Logan. It’s so humiliating.”

  “Are you sure it’s Jason we are talking about?”

  “Definitely. He has Gwyneth wrapped
around his artistic fingers, just as you predicted. Though she hasn’t volunteered her own money yet. However, because Jason is so persuasive, she and the trustees agreed to let us use the school this summer.”

  “If that’s all my cousin does for us, it’s plenty. Did he make his big move on you yet?”

  “We decided that this isn’t a good time for either of us to pursue anything personal.”

  “Oh brother. I hope you’re lying.”

  “What I’m not doing, Angelia, is telling him any of your secrets the way you told mine.”

  “I don’t have secrets. Life will go more smoothly if you stop thinking that you do. None of it was your fault.”

  ~

  After the accident, I blamed myself for a long time. Before the accident, I was hardly ever home, since the way I earned opportunities to perform was to be in the cities where any production wanted me. My career rose faster than Logan’s. I tried to be sympathetic about how he felt, but we both knew that I was more talented. I suspect that I’m smarter, but my judgment remains clouded. While we were together, I thought it was smarter to have finished school as I did, rather than leaving a year short as Logan did, taking the first orchestra position offered him.

  Long before the accident, I had talked myself into being satisfied with my handsome Peter Pan husband. Just before the accident, I was blaming myself for how distant and uncaring we had become with each other. When the accident happened, and I had to face certain truths, I assumed it was my fault. I didn’t listen to what my father said, or what my friends told me, and I couldn’t understand what the paid counselors were saying. When the health insurance money ran out, I was at bottom and went to an Al-Anon meeting for junkies’ partners. Maybe going to that meeting was the step I had to take, but at last I heard what everyone was saying: Logan was just a junkie. It wasn’t my fault.

  He wasn’t the second trombone in the village band. He was second trumpet in a reputable civic symphony. He wasn’t ever going to be first chair, and I’m not going to bother to understand at this late date whether that had anything to do with being a junkie. Back then, before the accident, I thought like most everyone else with a comfortable home and a good job, that junkies are those other people who live on the margin. Bikers and public-housing rejects, street people and pop singers, and super models without sufficient brains to know better. Not the guy wearing a five-hundred-dollar dinner jacket, sitting at a table with friends in a nice restaurant, stepping into the men’s room for a moment and coming back in a different and better mood.