“I don’t need to get rich, Ephraim. I don’t need three million so-called fans screwing up my life. I need to make my own music.”
“Jason, after last year’s success, you can get your label to let you do that. What you don’t need is a reputation for being difficult to work with. You complain that Dominique’s a diva, yet you play prima donna. Be professional. Finish this album. Then re-sign with your label.”
“You guys put every musician into the packages you know how to sell. You have Dominique, who’s dying for that. I never fit the mold, and you know I never will. I don’t need the mainstream fans you dug up for me.”
“Stop looking down your nose at your new fans. If you get rich, your indie fans will hate you. It has nothing to do with the quality of your music. Listen to yourself, not your bitchy little indie fans. You always know what’s best for the music.”
“I sold out once. I need to buy my soul back.”
“Quit reading about yourself on the blogs, Jason. ‘Sell out’ means you made money, so people feel jealous. ‘Different direction’ means you aren’t churning out the same sounds people liked a year ago. When you make money, you can buy the opportunity to go in another direction. But, my friend, you need to listen to advice.”
“I’ve had the experience twice now of a studio making my music into something that isn’t what I want. Six years ago, the studio made our sound over into retro rockabilly. You made me sound like—oh geez, I don’t know. It wasn’t what I intended.”
“You had a more than reasonable hit six years ago, a less modest one two years ago, and now a big one. You’re twenty-eight. No one can afford to get that second opportunity and then let it go by.”
“In between I got to write and play what I wanted. That’s all I need out of the rest of my life.”
“In between you ate happy-hour bar food and brushed your teeth at freeway rest stops.”
“We got very good and very tight doing it the way we did. I created a repertoire of songs that will keep me in chicken feed until I die.”
“Jason, you can’t throw away this kind of opportunity. You won’t take advantage of your father’s legacy, which I understand. But you can’t throw away your own legacy before you have a chance to create it.”
“I feel like I’m listening to Satan on the mountain top.”
“For the temptation I’m offering, you aren’t required to commit any sin. Just compromise a bit.”
“There’s that word. I knew it was coming.”
“It’s what adults do, Jason. Damn, it’s easier to work with a truckload of self-destructive jerks like your father than it is to work with one self-righteous jerk like you.”
“It’s self-confidence, not self-righteousness. It gets the work done.”
“You are just like your father, aren’t you? You’ll end up the same way, with a miniscule cult following and no one else remembering you ten years after you die. You’ll be sleeping with barmaids just to have a home to go to at night.”
“When I’m alone with myself, I can stand the company, Ephraim. I’m better than my father in that way at least.”
“You pathetic bastard. My request still stands. Please consider it.”
“It’s raining in Seattle, Ephraim, so I won’t be considering it today.”
“I’m an optimist. Perhaps the sun will shine tomorrow. Tell me, where did you find the new vocalist? Is it that woman I’ve seen you with? Her voice is a fantastic fit with your material. I had to keep Dominique from listening, because I know she won’t like it.”
“How did you hear? We aren’t recording at the studio.”
“That cut on your blog. I heard it this morning.”
“Oh fuck me. Hang up. I need to call Karl.”
53 ~ “If Money Talks”
JASON
“KARL, I NEED—”
“Good god, as clients go, you are the neediest mo’fo’ I have the pleasure to bill. I earned my retainer today, my friend. You win the DNA war. It’s all yours. One hundred percent. The judge declared it this afternoon.”
“Do you mean Beau’s estate?”
“Not a single one of those pretenders could prove a DNA case for himself as Jesse’s son. Funny that it was all lost sons coming after a piece of it. No lost daughters. By the way, your archivist friend contacted me. Do you know who he is?”
“Give him whatever access he wants. I can’t think about it right now. That effing stalker managed to snatch tapes of our rehearsal two nights ago and then hacked a music file onto my blog. I had my site manager take the MP3 down. What else can I do? Come on, Karl. You wasted your time in law school when you could have been our manager. Tell me how to control this creep.”
“I’m equipped to do contracts, not criminal law. If you don’t know who it is, you can’t get a restraining order. I have to think about it. Do you want the security guys to work Ian’s house?”
“I already have friends of Sonny’s doing that.”
“Oh, that’s reassuring. Are they watching your little Susi’s house, too? I can call her to arrange—”
“No. Do not call her. Let me emphasize. I do not want her to know.”
“You haven’t told her who you are yet, have you?”
“She knows all about the real me. She doesn’t need to know the sordid parts. Do you tell your wife everything?”
“I can’t because of attorney-client privilege.”
“So, Karl, did you tell your wife about the time you were in Phoenix with us and you—”
“No. She doesn’t need any additional proof that I’m a jerk. She finds her own proof every chance she gets.”
“I rest my case. I’m trying to get Susi to admit she’s in love with me. Of all the attributes I want her to admire, ‘pursued by scummy stalker fan’ is not one that promises to be an aphrodisiac.”
“The Phoenix event consisted mostly of humiliation and vomit. Knowing about it wouldn’t help my wife keep herself safe.”
“I’m taking care of that.”
“Why am I not made easy by that idea, Jason?”
“What’s a good vegetarian place to eat in Madison Park? I don’t want to go downtown tonight.”
~
I paid a waiter I didn’t even know a hundred bucks to keep people away from us. We were at the dead end of Madison, down where the streets are lined with BMWs and Saabs while their drivers enjoy their Friday dinner, and out of deference to Susi’s taste in manners, I went hatless. I’d shaved the week’s stubble into a goatee.
We were dining on tofu, four-dollar-a-pound wild spring greens, and shiitake mushrooms. Susi became animated and talkative, relaxed to be with me, loving the food and telling me about how she got one of her voice students to agree to a summer session at Julliard in advance of going there this fall, which would be the girl’s salvation. I didn’t understand the point of the story, but it was clearly important to her, so I was listening closely.
Then some jerk pounded on the window to wave hello to me.
Frickin’ hell, do we have to eat in the effing kitchen to be let alone?
Touching Susi’s hand because it had startled her, I nodded and smiled at our would-be friend, who fortunately didn’t look like the slimy stalker type, just a good ol’ boy with no sense and worse manners.
At the same moment, a skanky guy in torn jeans and a work shirt spun our friend around and laid a finger on his chest. The greeter swatted the finger away, and skank-man pushed him again with two fingers.
I had a pretty fair notion that I’d set a bad scene in motion.
“Excuse me.” I left Susi to the shiitake mushrooms and waded out into the flotsam and jetsam of my life.
“Hey, friends.” I shook the greeter’s hand while laying my other hand on my protector’s shoulder.
“Shoot, you’re Jason Taylor. Man, I used to see you play at the Tractor Tavern ten years ago. I was there the time you opened for Neil Young in Portland.”
“How you doing?” I gave him the old hippy grip with my right ha
nd, while feeling my protector hunch up under my left hand. “No offense meant here, but my buddy was trying to help me have a quiet dinner with my lady friend.”
“Man, I’m cool with it. My old lady is going to freak when she finds out you were eating right where we had dinner last week. She really digs on your new album.”
I let go of my protector and felt in my shirt pocket for a pen. All I had was a bus pass from coming across town to meet Susi, but I signed it, addressing it to the guy’s woman friend. He left happy enough, and then I had to turn and make friends with my guardian.
“Thanks for your help,” I said, shaking his hand, too.
“I’m Russ. A friend of Sonny’s.”
“I appreciate what you are doing.” I took out my wallet and advanced him the hundred bucks he was supposed to get paid for lurking in the night. “Please go easy on people, though. Better if you call the police than create a scene.”
Russ laughed. “Me? Call the cops?”
As if on cue, a police cruiser pulled up to the curb, and the officer on the passenger side stepped out. It was Officer Lee Page from days before, now cruising on the other side of town.
“How are you gentlemen tonight?”
Standing as close as I was to Russ, I felt a fight-or-flight jolt surge through him. He stayed though. We both rode out the officer’s request for identification.
“A woman on a cell phone reported an altercation. We were in this neighborhood and happened by.”
“She must have misunderstood,” I said. “We were just saying hello to an old acquaintance. I’m about to rejoin my friend for dinner.”
“Happy to hear it, gentlemen. Mr. Taylor, if we might have a word.”
Officer Lee invited me to sit in the patrol car while we chatted. It was far friendlier than the last time I sat in the rear of a patrol car, with the officer commenting on the coincidence of being transferred to this neighborhood and then meeting me here. It wasn’t more than half a second, though, before Russ disappeared.
“That gentleman used to sell smack a little farther up the street. Word is, he’s clean now, but we wanted to be sure of your well-being.”
“He tried to stop someone from harassing me, as a friendly gesture.”
“Just so we know you’re safe. Did you make any progress on your lost instrument, Mr. Taylor?”
“No. My friends and I took pictures to several pawn shops and promised a reward, and we faxed pictures to a bunch of other stores. Thanks for making that suggestion.”
“Wish we could help you solve that problem. If we can help in any other way, please be sure to call.”
“I appreciate it.”
“You know, my wife about lost it when I told her I met you again.”
I didn’t have another bus transfer, but he gave me a piece of paper, and I wrote a greeting to his wife, too, with a line from her favorite song. Once again we parted friends.
I could see as I returned to the café that my companion had lost her enthusiasm for the food, her success with young musicians and, apparently, her pleasure in dining out with me.
“We all went to junior high together,” I said, like an effing idiot. On the next beat I managed to come up with a lyric line that seemed to salvage the evening. We talked about the music that we’d worked on over the past week. What we heard in Toby’s and Angelia’s duets. Her amazement at finding a dedicated musician under Sonny’s jagged exterior.
“I understand Zak better now,” she said. “Paul said Zak had enormous potential in the recommendation he wrote to Berklee. I only understood Zak’s enthusiasm before, not what he was struggling to master. Now I know why he prefers the drums when he’s so gifted at the piano.”
“He certainly has enthusiasm in spades.” I didn’t know about Zak and the piano. It caused me to lose track of what she was saying for a moment.
“Now, if he would only come to class.”
“He’s learning plenty at our night school. How about you, Susi?”
“Playing with your friends has felt like a baptism or an initiation into a secret club I didn’t know existed.”
“Do you enjoy the work?”
“Joy is too small a word for it.”
“You can’t know how happy that makes me. May I come play music with your bluegrass friends on Sunday night?”
As soon as I asked, I realized that I was impinging where I shouldn’t and began back-pedaling.
“Actually, I don’t know if I’ll be able to. I shouldn’t have asked.”
“It’s OK, Jason. Yes, please come.”
“How are your other plans are coming? Have you heard anything about your grant?”
“We had phone calls asking us for more information. I’m still holding my breath.”
“Will you let me know if I can help find more money for you?”
She gave me a funny look that I strained to interpret and couldn’t. “You’ve done enough,” she said.
When we finished dinner and headed for the door, she said, “Gambling debts again? Is that what you do all day? Play cards?”
“No, that was an old debt. I play music all day.”
“What a nice way to spend your time. Who were those men really?”
“Old friends,” I said. “Since I’ve lived in Seattle all my life, I run into people everywhere.”
Oh geez, busted again. I can’t lie for shit. This wasn’t going to work.
She went home. Alone.
I didn’t get lucky, though I hadn’t begun the evening with much hope. It wasn’t as if I thought that I could write a stupid song she liked to sing and then she’d sleep with me again. Back to playing the fox hoping to out-wait the Little Prince. Or was it the other way around?
What kind of joke is it anyway, pretending as if being with her means the same as “getting lucky”? I went to an after-hours club, but there wasn’t an invitation to sit in with anyone playing and no magic to the music, compared to what had been happening in Ian’s living room. I took the world’s longest shower and reduced the pretentious goatee to a soul patch, since a beard didn’t prevent a single person from recognizing me. Now I’m sitting here in my own private Internet café—Ian’s basement—drinking coffee and listening to music through headphones (because Cynthia came down and reminded me that I’m a self-centered effing asshole with no consideration for others), keyed up because I’m alone. After spending all of last year celebrating that I could finally be alone again at night, glorying in the freedom of solitude, here I am writing another letter to myself—my email box is full of them now—complaining to myself that I’m here instead of where she is.
I’m down to sending email to myself and answering hardly anyone, except a handful of musicology friends like Chas who have nothing to do with my every-day life in Wallingford. I haven’t posted anything to any of my blogs in days and days. If anyone else saw how monomaniacal the inside of my mind has become, they would shrink in horror.
I always thought that high-lonesome crap in love songs was made up, just a pose to make girls feel sorry for you.
54 ~ “That’s Not the Issue”
SUSI
AFTER SPENDING ALL OF Saturday putting my household back in order and grading papers, I went to visit my dad for the evening, then came home and went to bed early. I took a long run on Sunday morning, putting off the chore of my diary. Most of the entries in the past week consisted of writing down lyrics to the new songs to ensure that I remembered them, though I have never failed to learn lyrics after a first trial. I’m trying to create the same notations that I’d seen Jason do for his music.
Every few minutes I think I should call my dad to say what I couldn’t make myself tell him last night: “I’m all mixed up over a man. He wants to marry me, and it sounds so logical whenever I see the hair on the back of his wrist. Or if I look at his belt buckle. What do you think?”
Before I can make myself call, I try to think of what Dad would say, and it stops me before I can dial. Soon, I have to tell Dad that I�
�m singing every night, that I plan my whole day around being with these musicians, that I drive across town like a junkie looking for a fix—and believe me, I do not choose that conceit without considering everything it implies.
I made more notes about the songs we were working on—the kind of “artist’s impression of working with greatness” pap that would embarrass any diva trying to flatter a maestro in order to get hired again. Things I’d never consider writing at any time in my life. We are talking about pop music, for heaven’s sake.
To prevent embarrassing myself, I stopped writing and spent the rest of the afternoon making bread and wishing it would be evening soon, so I could go sing with Jason, wondering if everyone had played together on Saturday and didn’t invite me. How perverse is that? I would say it felt like high school, which is what Jason said when he complained about my indecisiveness, but I didn’t remember feeling like this in high school. I remember auditioning for parts that I wanted badly, and holding my breath when the phone rang. This felt like that, except my stomach was tied in knots, instead of just my brain racing and rationalizing.
Hence, when a knock sounded at the door, I leapt up, tipping over my tea. I tried to hear whether a tall person knocked, or was it lower? It couldn’t be Angelia, for she never knocked and she was too busy these days to speak to me outside of rehearsal. I mopped up tea with a kitchen towel and then carried it with me, like a brainless idiot, to answer the door.
That Logan stood on the porch shouldn’t have surprised me. That it wasn’t Jason distracted me, with the result that I invited Logan inside.
Which I had promised myself I would never do.
“Hi, Susi. I’ve been calling, but never hear back from you. So I stopped by on my way out of town.” His skin had that deep hickory color that people get when living in Texas, but when he took off his sunglasses, the skin around his eyes was ashen white, almost grey. He seemed ill under the robust color of his skin. As ever, he dressed at the expensive end, even in casual travel togs.
“You shouldn’t have.”
“It’s no bother. I wanted to see you.”
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