Nine Volt Heart

by Annie Pearson

  “‘Many fish’ll bite if you got good bait,’” she said, quoting from the fishing song Ian had taught me.

  “Am I supposed to satisfy your curiosity so everyone can gossip about it later?”

  “You know how much the band gossips, Susi. Close to zero, I believe.”

  “It isn’t anyone’s business whether I sleep with Jason.” I tried saying it to see how much bravado I had left.

  “Most of us don’t care whether you sleep with him—though it makes it a hell of a lot easier to be around him—as much as we care whether you’ll stay with the band.”

  “As long as I’m invited, I’ll come to rehearsal—at least, whenever my schedule allows.”

  “I believe that Jason’s point was that there’s rehearsal, and then there’s the real world. You have to make a choice, Susi.”

  “I’ve made my choice. I choose to be a teacher. I’m not a performer.”

  “You also seem to believe that your choices only affect you. Nothing matters outside the little paradise you created in this charming cottage.”

  Cynthia doesn’t know about subtlety. We stopped speaking at that point in the evening. Angelia and Toby couldn’t be talked into staying late, which was no surprise, and at midnight Cynthia and Ian went home. Sonny finished the last of the dishes with me, being almost as meticulous as Jason is. The result of his efforts removed every trace from my house of what we had done for the past six hours.

  Then Sonny left, and I was alone.

  I took a shower, just to relax the tension that had built since Randolph walked into my office in the morning. Afterward I slipped naked and alone between the sheets, wanting to pass into oblivion so that I didn’t need to think any longer.

  The sheets touching my breasts made my nipples erect. The quilt settling down over me felt so insubstantial. It had been just one night—or a few hours early in the morning—so how could I already miss that weight pressing me into the bed, or miss that mass of male energy and heat filling the space beside me?

  It had to be wrong to feel this way. I’d complained for weeks about how distracting all that testosterone was, and now I lay alone in my bed, missing it. I was alone because I had pushed him away, and not even done it subtly. Jason noticed and pushed back.

  If I closed my eyes, lying in the safest place in the world (my own bed), dangerous images and sensations flooded in. Jason above me, aroused and filled with a trepidation that I had created through indecisiveness (which is more uncharacteristic of me than anything else in the last month). Jason beneath me, his beautiful face contorted in an agony of pleasure (which we had created together). Jason’s hands around my wrists, holding my arms above my head, encouraging me to move against him, and then stopping to play chords on my wrist and asking if I knew what song it was (“Hymn for a Rusty Angel,” that first one he wrote for me to sing).

  Then I pictured again the folder Randolph laid on my desk, and how it had roused every fear that my experience with Logan taught me.

  I have to stop seeing Jason, which means I have to stop singing in the band. In the morning, I needed to carry out my obligation to perform with them for that single day, and then say goodbye to all of them before I let passion destroy the peace I had eked out for myself in the past year.

  ~

  Angelia called me at seven a.m., to ask what I was wearing.

  “Black,” I said. “I don’t know the audience. I don’t know the customs. So, black.”

  “What should I wear? I never looked good in black. That was always reason enough to give up the symphony.”

  “Wear the clothes you always wear outside of school. Toby loves how you dress. Maybe his type of audience does too.”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “You’ll feel more comfortable if you look like yourself.”

  Her second call—I have never had to hold her hand to assuage nervousness in the fifteen years I’ve known her—delayed my leaving, so I didn’t arrive in the Market until ten minutes to nine. The clatter of early shoppers scrambling for parking and delivery trucks rumbling along the cobblestones orchestrated a cacophony of noise and confusion. That early, the air smelled of Puget Sound, though walking along the crowded street you can also smell vegetables and flowers from the truck-farmers’ stalls and, of course, the smell of coffee wafted over the truck fumes.

  Like most Seattle natives, I seldom enter the Market, especially on sunny weekends, except to sneak in to the Spanish Table and other specialty shops. I’d never come there to stand on a street corner by the Sanitary Market (how the language has changed since they named that structure), buffeted by busy pedestrians, the cool marine air raising goose bumps on my bare knees.

  Jason already stood at the designated corner, his guitar case leaning against his leg. He smiled when I came around the corner, and I tried to read that smile—happy to see me? surprised?—but I couldn’t tell what he thought. I didn’t know what my own smile meant, since I hadn’t followed my own advice for how to dress. Instead, I appeared in costume, because it seemed a better approach to public performance.

  “Where did you get that shirt?” Jason asked. “I’m so jealous.”

  “At the Pendleton Rodeo when I was in high school. It was a family vacation, and I fell under the spell of the place.” I’d spent half a year’s allowance on an embroidered rodeo-queen shirt in black and silver, with matching belt buckle and boots. Who’d guess it survived for years, until I found it when we cleaned out my father’s attic last summer.

  “Will you please be careful in that skirt?”

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  “It’s perfect. Except something about it makes me want to take it off you, and I don’t want others thinking the same thing. What shall we sing first?”

  “‘I’m Thinking Tonight of My Blue Eyes.’”

  “OK. But yours are grey. I was thinking about them all last night.” When it was his turn to choose, Jason named another song for me to sing while he noodled on the guitar. When I chose something for him to sing, he said, “You lead. I’ll come in on harmony.”

  We made it through six of the songs we first sang together—and made about four dollars and some cents in change—when Ian’s cousin Arlo appeared with a friend.

  “Oh man, fuckin’ A.”

  “Hello, Arlo,” I said. Jason came as close to outright rudeness I had ever seen in him, not greeting either of the men.

  “Man oh man. Has anyone freaking recognized you?” Arlo’s voice carried across the street and down the way so that people turned to look.

  “I hope not,” I said, keeping my voice cool and even, though I‘d spent half the night worrying about just that.

  “Oh shit. My manners. Susi Neville, this is Quentin Henderson who writes for the Seattle Buzz. We’re thinking about writing a novel together about rock-and-roll.”

  “Is it plot driven or character driven?” Jason asked. Without giving either of them a second to answer, he said, “We have to keep playing music if we are going to make any money.”

  “Fuckin’ crack me up, man. Jason Taylor is playing in the freaking Pike Place Market and people walk right past. I’m taking pictures.” He had his camera up and began snapping before I had time to turn my head away.

  “Can it, Arlo,” Jason muttered. “Just let us play music.”

  “All right. I’m cool. Later, man.”

  “‘I Am a Pilgrim,’” Jason said. We began singing as Arlo and his friend walked away laughing. Arlo caught someone by the arm up the street, turned him around and pointed at us.

  Whether it was Arlo’s noise or that he sent friends to watch, we soon had a crowd that spread to the street, blocking traffic. A bicycle policeman came, directing people to move out of the street. Several people held video cameras or cell phones over the heads of other listeners, and everyone clapped and cheered, though Jason wouldn’t let them have their fill of clapping before he called out another song title and strummed through the lead-in chords.

  Then whe
n I most needed a drink and a break, Sonny appeared, handing me a bottle of water and positioning himself between us and people pressing too closely. Jason put his guitar away, wrapping the change we earned into the bandana that had been tied around his wrist.

  “That’s it, folks. We have another gig to get to.”

  “Will you sign this for me?”

  Someone thrust paper and a Sharpie pen under Jason’s nose, and he smiled. “We’re playing a benefit at MOHAI this afternoon. If you come, I promise to sign after the show. Sonny?”

  Some understanding between the two men caused the crowd to part, and we headed up the street.

  “Where did you park, Susi?”

  “Near Virginia and First Avenue. Do you want a ride?”

  “Yes, please. May I take you to lunch? Susi, this isn’t your car.”

  I explained that mine was in the shop, and then found that “taking me to lunch” meant driving him to the Museum of History and Industry—MOHAI—and walking the Chesiahud trail around Lake Union until we found a picnic table, where he shared apples, cheese, bread and a bottle of water from his pack. As he cut the apple into pieces with a pocket knife, he said, “I was mean last night, and I apologize. You must have recognized it as the adolescent defensive maneuver that it was.”

  “Actually, I’m sorry.”

  “You have nothing to apologize for, Susi. Every time you allow me close to you, I rush in and demand more. I understand that you need to proceed at a slower pace. That is, I understand it intellectually. I have a hard time modifying my behavior.”

  “Do you want me to explain myself better?”

  “Gosh, no, Susi. Then I’d have to explain myself, which would be humiliating. Thanks for showing up today. Your being here helps me feel a lot more confident.”

  “Are you nervous, too? Angelia called this morning, very nervous, and she’s never been nervous before a performance in her life.”

  “I’m not nervous about playing. I just wasn’t popular the last time I played in Seattle.”

  “Because of your music?”

  He shook his head. “When I was married, my wife called the police on me when I was shouting at her to unlock the door to my house. She told them that I had caused her untold suffering. It was a lie, and the police saw through it.”

  “What does that have to do with playing music today?”

  “What happened—a lot of people know about it, or think they know from rumors. She hasn’t taken any opportunity to tell the world it isn’t true. Some of those people will be sitting in the audience today. Here, this afternoon, for sure. Perhaps in the later shows too.”

  At that moment, I owed telling him how I’d become acquainted through email with the nature of the woman to whom he’d been married. The opportunity came and I let it pass. If we had to acknowledge what I knew about his ex, I’d owe reciprocity. The idea of Jason knowing about Logan remained intolerable to me. To have lived through that humiliation once had been painful. To relive it, or to see it again through Jason’s eyes, seemed like more torture than I should have to bear.

  “You know me, Susi. You don’t believe it, do you?”

  “Of course, I don’t.”

  He sighed. “Then nothing else matters.”

  We went back to the museum and watched the other acts from the wings, since there wasn’t much to be said for walking around Lake Union in ostrich-skin cowboy boots and a gaudy shirt.

  ~

  Dan, Pete, and my friends from the Sunday bluegrass service came on stage near the end of the program and played those beautiful hymns we’d been doing together. Jason slipped out onto the stage with them, standing at the back to play guitar, half turned away from the crowd. Four songs into their performance, I found myself longing to be with them and felt no qualms at all when Dan said, “Our friend Susi Neville is here, and we’re hoping she’ll join us.”

  It was unlikely that anyone there knew me, but the etiquette of the folk crowd was such that they clapped for my entrance as if they did. We visited our favorites together, like “I’ll Fly Away” and “Take Me in Your Lifeboat.” The polite but eager audience applauded and greeted each new song with increasing enthusiasm.

  Then Dan introduced the musicians.

  “For our last song, we want to bring up a new friend who is now like a brother to us, along with our little sister Susi. Jason Taylor, come show ‘em you can yodel.”

  Most of the audience clapped like they were supposed to. A couple of ululating calls also echoed through the auditorium. When Jason stepped to the microphone and the noise dropped, some people were hissing.

  “Thanks, Dan. This is one to sing when you leave the church at night and head on down the road.”

  He sang “Lovesick Blues,” his smoky tenor reverberating through the monitors so that it felt like it vibrated up through my boots to my very core. When Jason finished and most of the audience was clapping, Pete introduced himself and explained about the Sunday night service, inviting the audience while his hand rested on Jason’s shoulder.

  When the audience finished expressing appreciation for our homegrown mountain music, Pete put his arm around Jason’s shoulder and mine, and invited the audience to stay to hear the Jason Taylor Band for their first performance before a live audience.

  The band began with a mountain song about lost love, the kind I just don’t understand.

  67 ~ “I Walk the Line”

  JASON

  WE DID IT. WE STEPPED in front of the most personal of audiences, and they didn’t boo me off the stage. Let’s ignore the fact that I hid behind Susi’s very short skirt. The sweet mania of Angelia’s fiddle and Toby’s mandolin kept the audience from pondering the nature of my past offenses. Starting with Susi leading on mountain songs, and working our way down to the psychedelic hillbilly boogie of lower Wallingford, most people seemed to forget about what they thought of me last year. They called us back for two encores, even though we’d shifted from familiar songs to the hybrid Celtic wails in our new material.

  Afterwards, plenty of people stayed to get autographs and to say, “Glad you’re back.” Only one person said, “I used to hear Stoneway all the time, back before you sold out,” and no one spit on me.

  Quentin Henderson played a mild-mannered Clark Kent, scratching notes. I didn’t have to ask him what a heavy-duty indie rock fan was doing at MOHAI, because Arlo was also there, snapping pictures, an old-fashioned mini-recorder strapped to his chest, which meant someone would be downloading MP3s with Arlo’s heartbeat keeping rhythm.

  Angelia and Susi signed with the rest of us, and we ended up late in heading out for the landmines benefit—a benefit against mines, not for them. It was a black-tie affair where people paid a thousand bucks a ticket or bought whole tables for fifteen thousand, and then begged their friends to come and enjoy the no-host bar.

  “I hate playing rooms like this,” Ian said. “The sound shoots for the ceiling and then bounces back to shatter on the floor.”

  We had just enough time for a sound check before they shooed us out to let in the paying customers to dine on catered chicken. White sauce or green sauce, I don’t remember.

  ~

  “She says she doesn’t want it, but then can’t get enough.”

  Cynthia said, “Lordy, Jason, I don’t want to hear about your sex life. Too much information.”

  “I meant singing in front of an audience. She loves it. She’s fearless.”

  “Then maybe we can stop worrying about whether she’ll tour with the band. I’m going to take a risk while I’m booking gigs and demand a no-smoking policy, without waiting to find out whether she’s in the band.”

  We sat eating sandwiches in the dressing room they gave us at the hotel. That is, other people were eating sandwiches. I had to give the waiter fifty bucks and beg for egg salad or cheese for Susi and me. While we waited for food, Cynthia let me cry on her shoulder, metaphorically speaking.

  “What’s she talking to Sonny about?” The two of them h
ad been laughing at the other end of the room ever since they let the last waiter in.

  “Fishing. It’s what they always talk about.” Cynthia was filing her new fire-orange nails.

  “How did they get to be best friends?”

  “She’s best friends with everyone in the band. You’re pouting, Jason. It’s not a cool look on you.”

  Everyone decided to go for a walk or a smoke, since we had thirty minutes before we went on. As people milled around the door, the jerk-face pretty boy who drove her home in that BMW last Sunday night stood in the doorway, and I realized it was his car she had now. Susi was all over him, hugging, kissing, laughing. I would have blown my own brains out, except I don’t believe in carrying personal firearms. He was prettier than I’d recognized—if Susi was an angel, then he was of a related tribe of seraphim. He seemed affable, and Susi had every effing Judas in the band shaking his hand as they walked past. Then there was just us three.

  “Jason Taylor, this is my brother, Steven Neville.”

  That Jason is an unbalanced bozo who has a moth-to-the-flames attraction to your sister, she did not say. He could read it in my face, the way that I read recognition in the clenching of his jaw.

  She said, “I’m dying for you two to meet, but I’m also dying of hunger and I have to change clothes. I’ll go change, find that waiter, and then be right back.” Susi ducked out, as if it were safe to leave me with her relatives.

  Her big brother, for all his sophisticated élan, said, “What the hell are you doing with my sister?”

  “I’m in love with her.”

  “She doesn’t know who you are. What kind of love is that?” Steven was so much like Susi that seeing fury on that face was disconcerting.

  “Could we just talk?” I sank into one of the club chairs, hoping he’d sit down too, so it would be more difficult for him to kick me in the face if he felt so inclined.