Nine Volt Heart

by Annie Pearson

  “It is such a come-hither song. I don’t know how you can resist him.”

  After we drank coffee, Jason wanted us to learn another song, but he didn’t have lyrics for it yet, so I had to improvise an old-timey version of scat singing. More typically he just looks at his instrument while he’s playing, or he keeps an eye on Toby or Angelia. Yet he watched me the entire time we worked over that song with no words.

  ~

  Friday morning, after four nights of playing into the wee hours, Jason and Ian were both asleep in their chairs when I woke. Toby and Angelia had departed. Which had become their usual thing.

  I dressed for work and started the coffee for Jason and Ian. It was a borderline possibility, but it seemed like I might get to work on time.

  “Hey, Susi,” Jason whispered, looking up at me. His whiskery face reminded me of early Monday, which seemed like a year ago, and I reached out and touched his lips without thinking. He caught my hand and kissed my fingers, softly, slowly. “Can we have a date tonight? Go out to dinner?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you like my song? Will you marry me now?”

  “Yes. I’m flattered. But no, I’m not going to marry again.”

  “Susi, I’m not the kind of guy who has children without marrying their mother first.”

  “I’m late for work. I have to go.”

  “Don’t you feel anything, Susi? After all of this?”

  “I feel like Snow White in reverse.”

  “Like the touch of your fingers awoke Prince Charming?”

  “Like I have to go to the mines while the Seven Dwarves get to sleep in my charming cottage in the woods. Heigh-ho, it’s off to work I go.”

  I’m getting to be a really good liar.

  ~

  The whole time the principal reprimanded me for tardiness, Randolph sat pursing his lips like he was trying to keep from speaking. Don’t vice principals have to recuse themselves the same way that judges do when they have a personal investment in the issue under judgment?

  Zak was absent from all his afternoon classes. I begged Angelia and his English teacher to ignore it. It’s too late in the year to be honest on the attendance rolls.

  To cap a bad work day, that bastard Logan left a message with the secretary for me to call him, like the wicked witch leaving a poison apple. I will not bite.

  41 ~ “Mean Woman Blues”

  JASON

  “EVERYONE IS LOOKING AT US, Jason.”

  “Are you bragging or complaining, Dominique? You’re the one who suggested the highest traffic coffee bar in Seattle. Did you get my fax, Ephraim? The song list?”

  “Yes. That’s why I thought we should all get together. Without any attorneys.”

  “Are you sure you feel safe being with me, without the protection of the law, Dominique?”

  “Jason, that wasn’t my fault.”

  “Karl doesn’t allow me to say the word ‘fault’ when he’s not present.”

  “Knock it off, both of you. This is just business. These are really good songs, Jason.”

  “Of course they are. For the others that I sent before, I changed the key and reworked the vocal part. I have the notation and lyrics here. We’ll have all the rehearsal demos for her to work with by the end of next week. We’ll make your June deadline if you can persuade Dominique to spend even five minutes practicing—”

  “I practice.”

  “What? ‘Practiced at the art of deception’? You’re a star, Dominique.”

  “You are such a self-righteous prick, Jason. Why don’t you bend over and screw yourself?”

  “Stop it, you two. The vocal range is fine, Jason. I’m concerned that this might come off as too rockabilly for Dominique’s direction. She is aiming for a higher sensibility.”

  “Too bad she won’t be able to hit her target.” I sipped tea. She sucked her chai latte.

  “I have succeeded at everything I ever tried, you brat. Which is more than you can say, since you haven’t—”

  “Stop it, Dominique.” Ephraim was firm. “I don’t want to hear more from either of you. Jason, you know what I’m saying about the music.”

  “The underlying music will be densely textured, and I’m not asking her to bend notes or add twang in the vocals. I am in all sincerity trying to give you what you want—commercial music that appeals to a wide and undereducated audience.”

  “I knew you were a smart boy.” Ephraim sat back. He seemed satisfied with my song list. Or maybe just with his triple espresso.

  “I want out from under both of you. If this is acceptable, then let me off the hook. Let Karl file the papers without any more bullshit.”

  “There is still the tour to discuss, Jason.”

  “I’m out of here. We discuss everything only when Karl is present.”

  Dominique gasped as if in pain. “Damn it, Ephraim. Make him sit down. That bitch-boy writer who trashed me in the Seattle Buzz is sitting over there watching us.”

  “So let him watch. Dominique, you love every column inch you get.” I waved at Quentin

  “You are just saying that because he took your side, Jason. He wants to go to bed with you himself, the fool.”

  “I didn’t see the story. Quentin has to be radical and rude to keep his job. He trashed my music long before I met you because there’s too much melody. He thinks I should revive the post-grunge scene in Seattle. Don’t take what he writes personally.”

  Dominique rapped the table in frustration. “We’re supposed to be recording together. He’ll start all kinds of stories if he sees us like this.”

  “Like what?”

  “You being all pissy and superior, Jason.”

  “I left my positive mental attitude in the studio, where it has value.”

  “Kiss me.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t run off without kissing me goodbye.”

  “Geez, you duplicitous witch. I need anti-venom, quick.”

  “Ephraim likes it fine.”

  “He must have got all his shots at the vet. Here, Ephraim. That’s the complete notation for all the music. A courier will bring tracks over to your house. Which, please remember, is actually my house.”

  42 ~ “The Weight”

  JASON

  PART OF THE TIME, it felt like I was back in high school, trying to make up for skipping too many classes and delaying term projects for too long, cramming a half a year’s work into a week or two. However, once I finished the notation for the vocalist, it felt like a weight had been lifted. No, it felt like I had pried Ephraim’s foot off my face.

  After the first few days back in the studio, I had sorted my thinking into categories, since it felt jumbled the first day we came to plug in. The work at night, when it was possible to play without thinking too much about it, kept me calm enough that by Friday I knew where I was going.

  With the music, I mean.

  Agitating Ephraim wouldn’t get me out from under Dominique or Albion Records. Since I was smart enough to figure that out by lunch on Monday, it didn’t take much to plan what would satisfy him as the Albion key man. Then he’d take care of Dominique in relation to the music. As angry as I felt about what had happened between us, I knew to take Ephraim’s advice about the business end of the music. He had no motivation except to make money. Once I decided to roll over, the solution lay in how fast I could transcribe the music.

  Toby and Ian accepted my argument for what it was, and we’d played together too long for it to take more than a series of afternoons to work out the basic music, since the solution was to pick the obvious answer to every musical question. Toby decided that if he had to do it, he was going to do the best possible job, as long as I promised that the instruments would be heard in the final mix. Ian just did what he always does, elegantly, which is to read my thoughts before I think them.

  We had all been having too much fun at night to complain about workingman’s blues from noon to seven in the studio.

  Mornings, I clea
red up the notation work quickly, because I wanted to remix some older live recordings. We were giving Albion Records one last goodbye kiss. Then we’d do what any ambitious band can do if it has sufficient capital and only modest desires for fame: work without a major label; distribute through the Internet. To do this, we needed viable material right off the starting blocks. I’d been playing historical tapes every morning, but it took me until Thursday to recognize how our sound had shifted as soon as Dominique began to sing with us that fateful night in L.A. In the ten months of sound-board tapes from when we had been together (if you can call it that), the sound drifted off. I don’t mean it was experimental. I mean we didn’t know where we were going.

  Me. I didn’t know.

  A radio talk-show therapist could have diagnosed the early demise of my marriage. The dynamic I’d always had with Toby and Ian leaked away, with no new foundation replacing it. The resulting music, when I struggled to merge Dominique’s vocals with our old guitar sounds, was not collaboration. It was more like a shotgun marriage.

  So I took a digital knife and cut out Lady D from everything up until I sent the Woman at the Well masters to Ephraim so he could make the masters with his new mistress. These made decent instrumentals, though it was unmoored sound seeking anchor. Then I tweaked the recordings Ian and I made on our European anti-valedictory tour. The tectonic shift was profound. You could hear it now when we played at night. Ian and Toby are having fun again. We could bring others in to play with us in the mornings to explore the same vein we mined each evening.

  However, the studio time was costing me a personal fortune. We needed to do our work efficiently and get out. We had to build our future on work in three basic piles in the studio. One pile was the older, pre-Dominique work, saleable as classic Stoneway. Another was last year’s confused effort, which the Dragon Woman co-owned. She wanted Stoneway’s name as the price for my freedom, and I needed to be free to continue with the third pile, our modest recordings from Susi’s and Ian’s houses.

  No one could help me find the straight line through the mess. I can’t ask Karl for advice about music. Ian and Toby are waiting for me to tell them what’s up. Fundamentally, that’s why Ephraim ticked me off so much. I once thought I could trust him; I believed he could help untwist the musical confusion that began when I let Dominique sing with us.

  I can’t rely on others. I have to figure this out on my own.

  43 ~ “Little Honey”

  JASON

  “MARTHA, DID ANY OF THE pawn shops call back about Beau’s guitar?”

  “You know I’d tell you the minute they did.”

  “How about any of the bass players you called? Are any available?”

  “No, sorry. Do you want me tomorrow, Jason? There’s food coming at noon. I left breakfast for you in the refrigerator.”

  “No, thanks. You’ve done a spectacular job.”

  “If I don’t come tomorrow, are you going to take care of that girl’s breakfast? Should I make sure she doesn’t need a doctor? I’m worried about her. I still don’t think it’s a good idea to let her sleep here.”

  “What girl?”

  “The one your brother sent here. It’s hard for me to be quiet about this, Jason. I think he took advantage of that girl just because he’s your brother.”

  “Martha, I don’t have a brother. What girl?”

  “That one sitting under the tree on the corner. She spent the day hanging around, waiting for him to come. She had a note from you that said, ‘Do whatever is necessary.’ I didn’t want to disturb your work this week.”

  ~

  We couldn’t get much of a story out of her, except her name was maybe Crystal. Or maybe that is what she used instead of food and she had gotten the two confused. She had that wasted, red-rimmed look in her eyes that meant her skeletal thinness didn’t come from suburban anorexia. Clearly under age, she wasn’t telling us her name, rank, and serial number because she didn’t want to get sent home. So we tried to learn the man’s identity, which I needed to know for my own purposes.

  “What does the guy look like who sent you here?”

  “Like you, but shorter. He’s your brother, isn’t he? Though you are a lot better looking in real life. I can’t believe I’m meeting you.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Is this a joke? He’s your brother.”

  “Crystal, I don’t have a brother. Someone played a trick on you.”

  “I can’t believe it. He seemed like a good guy. He was real sweet and kind of shy. He knew everything about you.”

  “He isn’t a good guy.”

  “But he used a rubber. That’s how you tell if he’s a good guy.”

  Even Martha, who solves all problems on the material plane, was at a loss for what to do with her, but we decided to try the YWCA for shelter.

  “Where did she get the note?” Martha asked. “I feel so guilty now for not asking more questions.”

  “It is not your fault, Martha. It’s the original note I faxed to Karl from my hotel in London.”

  “She surely didn’t follow you from London?”

  “No, but my low-rent doppelganger did. Can you find that card from Officer Page and call tomorrow? I guess we need security, though I don’t know who I pay to stop a creep from using my name with street girls. Here, take this money for dinner and the shelter, but don’t give her any of it. Stop at that twenty-four-hour clinic on Denny to see if she has anything that needs medical attention. Good god, I shouldn’t ask you to do this.”

  “It’s not your fault either, Jason.”

  “The worst problems seem like they’re never my fault. Yet there’s such a pattern, it makes me wonder.”

  Crystal kissed me before Martha took her away, exhaling a sugar-laden, druggie breath and whirling her dirty blond hair across my face when she turned away, which left me feeling like I needed medical attention myself. I went back in the studio and brushed my teeth in the can, twice, trying to resist the impulse to wash with sink cleanser before saying good-night to the remaining crew at Temple Bell.

  44 ~ “Tougher Than the Rest”

  SUSI

  BY DRIVING ACROSS TOWN as soon as class ended on Friday, I managed to pick up sheet music on Stone Way by three-thirty. Then I thought I’d take a quick run around Green Lake, even if it is crowded most afternoons. The Wallingford-Green Lake neighborhood is a former working-class mélange of bungalows and post-Victorian farm houses snuggled up hip to shoulder, remodeled to accommodate small families and urban professionals, the parking strips now plowed into drought-free gardens full of lavender and santolina, oregano, and Pampas grass. Green Lake has been a destination site for the last twenty years for runners, moms teaching their five-year-olds how to ride bikes, and rollerbladers who enjoy skating backwards in a crowd. In spite of how busy the path around the lake can get on the weekend and just after work, it’s still a pathway that allows you to see wildlife in the winter and a host of urban life in the spring and summer. If you can find a place to park.

  Jason was standing near one corner of that complex, five-way stop on Green Lake Way, kissing a woman.

  A tall, gorgeous woman in a long red leather coat looked over his shoulder while he kissed her, as if to see who saw them. She caught me watching. When she broke away from him, he turned and handed something to a man standing with them and then loped up the street. I had no choice but to take my turn to drive through the intersection, just as the beautiful woman pushed away the other man’s arm from around her shoulder and stalked into Starbuck’s.

  The run around Green Lake was relaxing in spite of the people, or perhaps because of them. It was a rare but glorious spring afternoons—we get beautiful weather in February, and then March is schizoid, neither here nor there, and April breaks your heart because the cloud cover descends depressingly, with rain falling like tears, washing away the cherry blossoms before you have a chance to enjoy them. However, on that Friday afternoon the sun glinted on the water so that you ha
d to squint against the glare. The mallards and Canada geese had hatched their babies for this year, and they all thought it a great afternoon to paddle in the lake. The mean-spirited farm geese at the north end of the lake felt too lazy in the sun to chase anyone. It was warm enough to dampen the skin during exercise, and everyone seemed delighted to be wearing t-shirts and sunglasses again and to walk around the lake with their dogs and their children and their boyfriends.

  We only play music together. We aren’t—going together. I don’t have any feelings. I know how to prevent that.

  ~

  Trying to find Ian’s house, I got lost between the North and the Northwest street names, and ended up driving the lower Wallingford back streets, looking for the collection of low-rise warehouses that Ian said surrounded his house. There was Jason on the corner of a street again, in one of the four-corner business districts, a remnant of old Wallingford, with a dental office and what had once been a greengrocer and now sold liquor and espresso. Jason was giving money to a thin, severe-looking woman in jeans, who walked away with her arm around a rail-thin waif in a black leather jacket, who resembled a drop-out from the heroin-chic clothing ads of the early Nineties. The waif ran back and kissed Jason, wrapping her arms around his neck and raking her fingers through his hair.

  She had a cross tattooed on her cheek. I myself would never think of doing that to attract men.

  I am also much better at governing my impulses.

  The disturbing sensation came when I turned my head away so that I wouldn’t see. It felt like every time I’d turned away to avoid seeing what Logan was doing.

  45 ~ “Hey, Mister, That’s Me Up on the Jukebox”

  JASON

  ON THE WALK TO IAN’S house, I remembered a guy I met the first time I went to jail, and began to wonder if he knew anything about creep management. It wasn’t a guy I could ask Martha to call for me.