Nine Volt Heart

by Annie Pearson

“Our father thinks she’s dating a music scholar.” Steven stood with his hands on his hips. “Are you lying to both of them?”

  “I haven’t lied to either of them.”

  “Don’t hurt her. She’s been jacked around enough in this life.”

  “We had a mutual misunderstanding about each other. I told her my name, but she didn’t recognize it. It was a rush, finding that she liked me without knowing that I’m somebody who—”

  “If she read the paper or Googled your name, she’d know who you are.”

  “She’s been in front of audiences with me all day. She must have noticed that we aren’t just some bar band. She doesn’t care. Ask her.”

  Steven shook his head, still staring at me with the same intense grey eyes as Susi. “Play your little game if you want, but she needs to know about your drug bust.”

  “What drug bust?” Susi stood in the doorway, the cowgirl mini exchanged for her formal black tunic, her laughing smile exchanged for a pale, frightened mask. I looked away from Steven, who in my romantic fantasies will be my brother-in-law when Susi and I begin to live happily ever after.

  “I went to jail last year, Susi. Twice. I don’t tell this story because it is ugly from start to finish.”

  “I suppose all such stories are ugly.” Susi’s voice was flat when she said this, so I couldn’t hear the tone or color of her feelings. “How do you know about it, Steven?”

  He glared at me. “It was in the papers last year. Everyone in Seattle knows about it.”

  She made a dismissive gesture with her hand. “I don’t read the Seattle papers. Tell me.”

  I said, “My uncle Beau—there hasn’t been time yet to tell you much about him.”

  “He died. I understood that from your song about him.”

  “Beau took me on after I lost my mother, acting as my manager and mentor. Last year, he went out on the streets of Tacoma to buy narcotics. I came along to protect him, because I felt sure someone would fleece him or beat him.”

  “Your uncle was a junkie?”

  “No. He was dying of stomach cancer, and his doctor didn’t give him enough morphine to kill the pain. He said he wanted to shop for more, and I pretended to believe him.”

  “What do you mean, pretended?” Steven asked, still scowling, still wanting me to crawl in a hole and die.

  “He wasn’t looking for pain control. He wanted to end it. I went along because I didn’t want him dying alone.”

  “So you were helping him commit suicide?” Steven stood ready to pin any crime on me. In spite of my fantasies about our future familial bliss, he was pissing me off such that I felt ready to meet the challenge.

  “Is that what you’d call it? Until I’m in the same position, facing certain death in great pain, I can’t judge whether it’s morally wrong. I just didn’t want Beau to be alone.”

  “Please tell the rest of the story.” Susi offered no clues about what she thought.

  “Unfortunately, I couldn’t protect him. Beau scored from a dealer who was under surveillance, and we all went to jail. When I couldn’t reach Karl—he’s my attorney—I called my wife. But she did nothing. It was the Friday night before a three-day weekend, neither of us was carrying ID, and no one was in a hurry to find me an attorney. So I sat for days in jail until Karl came home and found my message on his answer service.”

  “What happened to your uncle?”

  “They put us in different cells. Then Beau got so sick they took him to a hospital. He wouldn’t tell anyone his name, so it wasn’t until I got out and went to find him that we could get him back under the care of his own doctor. He was never fully conscious again. He died a couple of days later.”

  “I’m sorry,” Susi said. Yet I couldn’t tell if she understood. She just stared at me, as if her eyes could bore a hole into my soul.

  “He would have died anyway.” I have to shrug about that fact, but I have no illusions about it. “There were only two days left to hold his hand, with nothing more to say. All because my wife didn’t want to find an attorney for us.”

  “Why would anyone do that?” Steven asked. Instead of the angry cynicism he had expressed so far, he now sounded amazed. Susi looked solemn, her one eye brow raised, questioning me.

  “I don’t know.” This is so true that my mind whirls whenever I think about it. “She didn’t like Beau’s influence on me, and had developed some bizarre hatred for him. She wanted him out of the band and out of our house, though I had insisted he live with us when he fell ill.”

  “What about the second time you went to jail?”

  “I went into a rage. I’d learned before then that my so-called wife had been holding bedroom auditions for a better partner. I couldn’t swallow what happened to Beau. So I ended up arrested for domestic violence, though all I did was stand on the street and yell at her when she wouldn’t let me in the house.”

  “You told me about that earlier.”

  “Afterward, I just stayed away from Seattle. I didn’t see her again until a few weeks ago. All rumors to the contrary, I am not a wife beater.”

  She didn’t speak, looking instead at Steven, as if his reaction mattered. He said, “That story matches the public record.” What he didn’t say aloud—the qualifying “however”—hung like a pall. He didn’t like me, and he wouldn’t excuse me for anything.

  I said, “Susi, if you want someone to tell you what’s true, Karl is inside at the benefit.”

  “No, I don’t doubt you. I just wish I didn’t know,” she said. “I never wanted to know your secrets, and I still don’t want you to know mine. I wish that Steven had minded his own business.”

  “You don’t have to tell me your secrets, Susi. You can ask me anything you want to know.” A bubble of hope choked my ability to say more.

  She glanced at Steven, but he just shook his head and looked away. If I were to try to guess what he thought, he just wanted me to disappear off the face of the earth.

  She looked back at me. “Do you use drugs?”

  “No. Years ago I did enough to understand what trapped my father and then I stopped. A very long time ago.”

  “You used to be so well dressed, and now you don’t even shave some days. You are so distracted. What happened? What do you do all day?”

  “I work on music. I start at seven or eight in the morning to finish production on some older music. Then I work with Ian and the others to finish an album we have to deliver in June. At night we rehearse our back porch music with you and Angelia. After you leave, I try to solve musical problems I found during the day. What else do you want to ask, Susi?”

  “Your life seems so flakey. Like living in Ian’s basement. Plus all these people you owe money to everywhere.”

  “Flakey because I’m a musician?”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t know anyone else so odd. Except Arlo.”

  Ian popped his shaved head in at the open door. “We’re on in twenty minutes. They want you at the sound board now, Jason.”

  I touched her hand, scared out of my wits that she’d push me away. “Susi, will you still sing with us?”

  “Yes, of course. I said I would.”

  When I left, I said goodbye but did not shake Steven’s hand. That would have to wait until we were all living happily ever after.

  68 ~ “Understand Your Man”

  SUSI

  “YOU GOING TO LET that bother you, SusiQ?”

  “Hi, Sonny. I didn’t know you were out here.”

  Sonny was handsome in a dinner jacket, almost unrecognizable except for his ponytail. His ruined teeth showed when he smiled.

  “Just grabbing a smoke and taking a look-see. I shouldn’t of been listening, but how the fuck could I help it? It happened just like Jason says. I was there.”

  “You were in jail with him?”

  “He didn’t do what they said he did. He is such a fucking nice guy, he could hurt himself. Pretended that whole time in the cell that he didn’t recognize me.” Sonny toss
ed the burning end of his cigarette down the alley and then took out another and lit it. “But Jason played the club scene for so long, how could I help recognizing him? Everyone in Seattle knew him. Me and my buddies did what we could, but it was a rough time. Jason worked bars long enough that throw-up didn’t bother him, though he’s such a freaking hand-washer, you’d think he’d flip when a couple of the guys in the cell got dope sick. Jason just had a hell of a time staying mad and trying to deal with these people at the same time.”

  “Was it his wife’s fault he spent time in jail?”

  “Yeah. I ought to send that witch some goddamn roses. If he hadn’t been stuck in there, I’d be freaking dead by now. Oh shit, don’t tell him I know.”

  “Know what?”

  “He saved my fucking life. After Jason was sprung free, he got lawyers for some of us, got us into treatment. Me and Bobby Smith, we’d have fucking hosed ourselves by now if it wasn’t for him. We aren’t supposed to know, but I’m not stupid. No way the fucking fairy godmother was going to step in and save my ass.”

  “What happened to the others?”

  “Bobby is around, going to meetings. Gary’s dead. Mike Dee is still using, or maybe he’s dead. That’s pretty good, fifty percent. Pretty stupid of Jason to invest his money in junkies. Very poor return on your capital.” He stopped and took a drag on his cigarette. “Though I shouldn’t call myself saved. It’s just a day at a time.”

  “My husband used. Ex, I mean. I don’t have one now.”

  I could feel him studying me though I couldn’t see anything in the dark except the glowing end of his cigarette.

  “Then you know a worthless son of a bitch when you see one. And Jason ain’t it. Yeah, he’s been around, but his uncle kept him out of the worst of it, even living on the road most of his life like he has. Can you figure? It ends up being Beau Rufus gets him landed in jail? Can’t send that sucker roses no more though, so it’ll have to be the bitch bride that I thank, begging your pardon for the rough language.”

  He took another drag, and then looked at me. “My smoke bothers you, doesn’t it? Even out here?” He tossed the cigarette far down the alley. “I’d quit to please you, but I done all the quitting I can manage in the last year.”

  Sonny put his arm around me and we started back in.

  Randolph stood at the door, watching us, his hand jammed in the pockets of his tuxedo.

  69 ~ “Smack Dab in the Middle”

  JASON

  “YOU ARE DOING INCREDIBLE work, Jason.”

  “Hello, Ephraim. I saw you from the stage.”

  He wore a silk tuxedo and he came up to shake my hand, acting like he was still my friend.

  “Tonight was an unexpected pleasure, amigo. I had no idea this was the direction you were headed.”

  “Are you here alone?” I didn’t want his compliments. Ephraim is the same height as me, but has fifty pounds and ten years over me, and I hated that avuncular attitude he takes around me.

  “Dominique is visiting her sister. Don’t laugh like that.”

  “Sorry. She just isn’t very original. I suppose since it worked once, she has no reason to think it wouldn’t work the next time.”

  “I’m trying to decide if I even care.” Ephraim shrugged like he didn’t care, and then changed the subject. “You aren’t giving Albion Records any music like that, are you? None of that funky blues, playing bottleneck guitar with a comb?”

  “If you are planning to sue me, we’ll have to talk with Karl present. You and I both know Dominique can’t sing this.”

  “No. What you’re giving the label is commercial and solid. You and I both know Albion wouldn’t know what to do with this other material.”

  “What do you want, Ephraim?”

  “Work with me, Jason. It’s not raining in Seattle—wasn’t that part of your criteria for rapprochement in our artistic relationship?”

  “You are partners with my bitter witch of an ex-wife. You and I have no foundation upon which to build a relationship.”

  “This time next year, Dominique might be making twice as much money as you, whether or not she’s visiting her sister tonight. Twenty years from now, someone will be packaging retrospectives of your work, and Dominique will be a minor footnote. I can help you, if you let me.”

  “You made the decision last year about who you wanted to work for, Ephraim. You chose Dominique.”

  “Maybe we shared the same opportunity to make faulty decisions. Maybe that’s a foundation for a new relationship.”

  I’m great with quick come-backs on email and the phone, but not so great when the beast is staring me in the eye, daring me to sympathize. Or relent. Or sink to new depths with him. I didn’t know which.

  Karl came up, laying a hand on each of our shoulders.

  I said, “Come to the Showbox later, both of you. There’s more music that you haven’t heard, Ephraim.”

  Karl about swallowed his tongue. “The Showbox? You didn’t send a contract by me.”

  “We’re standing in for another band that can’t show. Just to close out a benefit they’re doing.”

  “Jason, you can’t do this shit without sharing the details with me. I mean, pulling this together last week was enough of a stretch. Could we just plan ahead a little, buddy?”

  “Can we not talk about it in front of someone who has a great potential for being an adversary in court, Karl? You’re supposed to be discrete.”

  Ephraim said, “I’m not going to sue you over anything, Jason. I want to help. Does this Susi person sing with your new band all the time? I need to sign her, too. Does she have an agent?”

  “Call Karl, and we will talk about this Monday.”

  “Are you going to make me get in line with every shark who’ll be calling you after this little debut? It is not a secret that you’ve about wrapped up your Albion Records obligation.” Ephraim smiled. That superior smirk of his was bugging me.

  Karl’s wife slinked up, slipping her arm through his. She smiled at Ephraim and treated me, as usual, like a slimy invertebrate that crawled across her shoe. Me, the bad influence from the other side of the tracks.

  “Karl, honey, it’s a party. You aren’t working,” she purred.

  “I’m always working, sweetheart. I just found out that I need to stay late tonight to take care of more business.”

  She said, “You’re sending me home alone?”

  “You’re welcome to come along, but you aren’t dressed for it. And I don’t think you’ll like the music.”

  She gave me death looks like Dominique used to cultivate. Ephraim managed a circumspect expression, as if he were wallpaper. She said, “But, Karl, what we talked about—”

  “When we talked, I said that work came first.” Karl was smiling, but his face looked like a mask.

  Her lip curled with distain. “And last. Always.”

  She left us, which didn’t bode well for Karl later that night.

  “You don’t have to come,” I said.

  “I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Karl said.

  “I think I’ll come with you,” Ephraim said.

  “Oh swell,” I said. “The torts-and-treaties twins are dating each other.”

  Karl looked thoughtful. “Your new music has the decided effect of making women not want to sleep with me. I don’t remember that from before, when we were on the road together.”

  Ephraim said, “I know what you mean about that particular effect.”

  Karl motioned to someone nearby who turned out to be Warren, the admin from his office. “Can you please make sure my wife gets home safely? I can’t take her, and she’s enjoying the wine. Call a limo for her?”

  “Right, Mr. Schwann. I’ll take care of it.”

  “Hey, man.” I shook Warren’s hand. “It’s nice to see you again.”

  He nodded to me, and then to Karl, and ducked away, leaving an opening for a ring of women who wanted autographs. I signed and chatted until Ian signaled that we were goin
g on stage.

  Karl walked back with me. “You complain about fans all the time, Jason, but then you act like the nicest guy in the world when they’re in your face.”

  “Here, it’s part of the job. I like these people when I’m at work. I just don’t appreciate it when I’m not working.”

  Ephraim breathed behind me. “For someone like you, the world is going to remain a twenty-four-hour stage. You have to get used to it.”

  ~

  The people at the landmines benefit loved Susi. And Angelia. They didn’t mind that we added a little electricity to the acoustic country set we’d done earlier at MOHAI. They liked the moody Celtic wails and the newly fuzzed out version of “Rhianna’s Song” from Woman at the Well, with Susi singing counterpoint against my lead. No one spit on me, and Sonny proved effective in shepherding people onto and off the stage, so effective that it felt almost as comforting as when we had Beau with us, making sure everything was taken care of.

  We paid a couple of Sonny’s friends to schlep equipment between halls, helping out a couple of our usual guys (who are Ian’s cousins, but bathe and have half a brain each), and Sonny’s friends proved to be experienced and careful. Nothing got broken or left behind. No fans were treated rudely. We had time to talk to people some more, instead of having to schlep everything ourselves. I hadn’t lost my temper even once by the time we were and several blocks across town at the Showbox.

  Sonny had also taken to shepherding Susi. I lost contact with her between the end of the set at the hotel and the loading dock outside the Showbox. We had so little time to get ready for the next show, that I couldn’t tell what I was feeling besides that uneasiness which descended whenever she wasn’t right by my side.

  If nagging doubts didn’t appall me, I spent idle moments wondering whether my stalker was just around the corner, causing me to watch that no stranger touched my guitars. Ian accidentally stepped back into me while guys were wrestling with the equipment. We were standing around like goons, because we didn’t want to muss our white dinner jackets. I didn’t even notice he stepped on my foot until he spoke.