Nine Volt Heart

by Annie Pearson

  You can give yourself CPR by coughing during a heart attack.

  J.F.K. standing in Berlin claimed to be a jelly donut.

  The rock formation on Mars is a model of a human face made by extraterrestrials.

  Ironing your mail will kill anthrax spores.

  Perhaps ironing my email would kill the spores of hatred and vexation that I received every day. I didn’t need to browse the Internet for bad news, for I had Randolph to appear just at the start of lunch period.

  “I’m so sorry, Susi.” He looked like someone died. “The foundation has rejected your grant.”

  “I’m sure you’re really broken up about it, Randolph.” Of all things, this was not a surprise. Rather than an announcement of a death, it was only a statement that the internment was complete. Alas! Poor Yorick, and all the rest of the graveyard scene.

  “Susi, you didn’t used to be so cynical. Your new friends have not been a good influence.”

  “I don’t have new friends. All I have is teaching, Randolph. It’s my entire life.”

  “If you’re coming back to the real world, Susi, you know that I’m always right here for you.”

  “The real world?” Perhaps it was lack of sleep, but the idea of Randolph representing the real world struck me as ludicrous. I laughed aloud.

  “Shall we have lunch together, Susi?” He ignored my outburst, but he has always ignored anything to do with the real world that I live in. Or wanted to live in.

  “No, thank you. I brought my lunch. I’m going to get it from my car and eat it in the courtyard with the students.”

  “I’ll walk out with you.”

  “That is so thoughtful.” It wasn’t his fault. Still, I wanted to rake my nails across his flesh anyway. I took the faxed rejection letter from his hand, folded it into a square, and tucked it into my pocket with my car keys.

  In the courtyard, a local news station was filming an interview with several students and Hector Henderson, so the whole area was clogged with students. Even the ones usually out smoking behind the gym were there.

  “It’s the jazz band,” Randolph said. “Prescott fielded state champions for the first time in ten years.”

  I tried to spot among his students which of them were the leaders who, like Jason, had pulled or pushed the rest of them to a championship. I couldn’t quite tell. Jeremy Simpson stood among the students, talking into the TV microphone, but the reporter could have selected him because he was the best looking member of the jazz band. That sad-sack newspaper friend of Arlo’s stood with the other reporters, taking notes. Chastity Keller hung at the far edge of the knot of students, the blankest possible expression on her face, blank enough to frighten me.

  “You!”

  A hand on my shoulder half spun me around.

  “You bitch!” A hand slapped me before I saw who it was. For the second time in a murderously long week. “I don’t care if you fuck my bastard husband, but don’t you dare fuck with my boyfriend. I still need him. You are not taking everything I’ve worked for!”

  When the sting subsided enough that I could see, it was a tall, auburn-haired Fury who must be Jason’s wife. She was one of the most beautiful people I’d ever seen, but she was also more stunningly angry than should be possible for a human. What else could I see? The thrilled faces of three dozen students turned on us, with a camera in the midst.

  “Let’s step away from here,” I pleaded, wrenching away and sprinting for the parking lot. Surely the burden of the camera set-up would delay their following, if indeed a mere cat fight interested Channel Four News.

  “Come back, you little bitch!”

  I stopped where she’d parked her car—students at this school also drive Porsches, but they weren’t allowed to park them in the faculty/guest lot. Hers ticked, cooling alongside my modest Corolla. That pretty much described the baseline differences between us. She was like a thoroughbred racehorse against my Welsh pony. One absurd thought crossed my mind as she came toward me: How could Jason choose me? Then the next thought: But he did.

  “He chose me,” I said aloud, though I shouldn’t have. This angry person needed pacification.

  “You lying bitch! You made Ephraim throw me out. I need one more album with the band. You’re stealing my place. Why would he choose a nobody like you?”

  “For several good reasons,” Angelia said. “For one, she can sing.”

  Angelia stood with Cynthia and Arlo at her side, and for once I took comfort in Cynthia’s girl-with-a-razor-in-her-shoe demeanor.

  Dominique sniffed at Angelia. “Who are you? You’re nobody, too.”

  “I’m in the band. You’re not.”

  Cynthia said, “On one side we have you, playing bitch goddess. On the other, the band is playing music. The two don’t exist in the same universe.”

  Behind us, the cameraman and Arlo’s newspaper friend had emerged from the courtyard, and the principal and Hector Henderson loped alongside, arguing against the change of focus.

  “I’m leaving,” I said. “No good can come of this fracas.”

  I had my car key in my hand, prepared to do just what I said, when Dominique advanced on Cynthia and I found myself tossed aside in the clash between the two battling goddesses. As I fell, my key raked down the side of her car.

  Dominique shrieked as the camera focused on us. “You bitch! You fucking bitch!”

  “Not very original,” Cynthia remarked. “Those aren’t lyrics that Stoneway could ever use. Perhaps you could join a punk band. Though as Ryan Adams pointed out, you would have to be able to sing.”

  Just as Dominique chose to slap Cynthia, who could hold her own, blue lights flashed and a Seattle patrol car whipped into the lot.

  While the officers approached, Zak walked up from the other side, looking around before recognizing us. He exchanged a hippie-like handshake with Arlo, who repeated his usual spacey greetings.

  “I thought you were playing music, man.”

  Zak said, “Jason canceled the morning session. We aren’t playing until later. Maybe you can give me a ride back.”

  Randolph stepped up, moving into the bullying posture he used with the boys when he prepared to administer discipline. “You no longer have business here, Mr. Lukas. You withdrew from school, which makes your presence here trespassing.”

  “I came to empty my effing locker. You were always the king of assholes, Randolph. It is the one true thing my mother said.”

  “I don’t have to tolerate such language from you, young man.”

  “There isn’t a person standing here who can’t recognize a flaming asshole when the light from the flame is shining right in their faces.”

  A murmur rippled through the students, like the famous Wave cheer.

  “People here can’t speak up, but I can.” Zak turned to the crowd of students. “Seize the day, like you learned in Miss Neville’s class. Declare freedom from the tyranny of assholes!”

  “Officer, we’d like you to remove these trespassers from the school. It is distracting and dangerous to our students.”

  “Oh stuff it, Randolph,” I said. “The police aren’t going to get you out of this. Zak, can you please leave? I don’t need your mother raining hellfire down on me again.”

  Once I spoke, attention turned back on me.

  Dominique said, “Arrest her! She vandalized my car.”

  “She fell,” Cynthia said, “because your big butt pushed her.”

  Dominique didn’t have a big bottom at all, but it was an obscenity-free insult, and some hideous devil called forth joy in me, because that line might make it on the evening news, unlike anything else that had been said so far.

  A second squad car came, and the four officers divided us up, asking each of us for identification.

  The officer questioning me stood close by, looking at the picture on my school identity badge, asking if there was anything with my address inside the car. While I fetched papers from inside my car, Arlo and Zak looked in the back window—
standing far too close to the officer who had already asked them twice to step back.

  “Frickin’ hell, Susi, that’s the box of Jason’s stolen tapes.”

  Zak gestured at a box in the backseat, which I know wasn’t there when I parked the car. I was distracted, because Zak had taken to using Jason’s pet expletive.

  “Susi has the stolen tapes?” Angelia said.

  “What tapes?” I asked, but the policeman had already focused on the word “stolen,” and the whole conversation took a left turn.

  “Ma’am, I need you to unlock all the doors and open the trunk.”

  “I didn’t steal anything.” I bent my head to open the door for him. “Oh, it isn’t locked.”

  Cynthia said, “She couldn’t steal anything. She pretends to be a goody-goody type, but she’s just chicken-shit.”

  “I am not,” I said.

  “You’re scared of Jason.”

  “I am not.”

  “Ladies, can it,” one of the officers demanded. A third was taking a guitar case from the trunk of my car.

  “Hello!” he said. “This is that guy’s guitar that Lee Page was all over us to help find. Look, it says Beau Rufus on the case.”

  The officer at my elbow said, “Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to step over to the squad car with me.”

  “She didn’t steal it,” Zak said. “I put it in there when we were rehearsing at her house. Weeks ago.”

  “Then if you’ll both step over here, please.”

  “She vandalized my car,” Dominique said, after staying quiet for several moments.

  “Take a leap at the moon, Dominique,” Cynthia said. “Call your insurance agent. Maybe he can also find you a spot in a half-rate band, one that auditions for free snatch instead of talent.”

  Dominique slapped her, hard enough that Cynthia fell back against one of the officers, who toppled too, landing at the feet of the cameraman, who panned down and then back to the rest of us.

  “How could Jason Taylor ever sleep with you, you silly twit?” I knew I’d weep later for having said it aloud.

  “Fuckin’ A,” Arlo said.

  96 ~ “In My Hour of Darkness”

  JASON

  MARTHA CALLED MY CELL phone to say the police asked me to come recover my lost property. It would take a poet instead of a songwriter to come up with such a twisted metaphor.

  When we got there, Dominique had already paid bail and left. Ian arrived when we did, and we found Arlo, wanting to tell us what happened.

  “What the hell were you doing there, Arlo?” I hadn’t had my fill of pounding Arlo or satisfied myself that he wasn’t the source of all havoc in my life.

  “Peace, man. I love you like my own brother, if I had one.”

  “Screw that. What were you doing there?”

  “I was eating breakfast with Cynthia when she read a post on your fan site, saying Dominique would kill Susi when she found out Stoneway had replaced her in the band.”

  “Good lord.”

  “Then a guy called the house to say Dominique was looking for Susi and he worried for Susi’s well-being.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t talk to him. Cynthia said it had to be your stalker guy. So we went to go find Susi to help—”

  “Oh shit, man, just don’t. There’s no fucking way in the world you could do anything that would help.”

  “Fuckin’ A, man. You don’t have to act like I’m some asshole.”

  He was right. For the next catastrophe of the day, I had to admit it.

  Karl helped Ian free Cynthia, but Susi would have nothing to do with his offer to help her. Ian took both Cynthia and Arlo home, which kept me from wringing his cousin’s neck for lack of anyone better to attack. While Karl and I tried to figure how to help Susi, Zak came down the hall with his mother and a guy whose suit and briefcase screamed “attorney.” Zak stopped to shake my hand, though I was quaking too much to get a grip.

  “Sorry we missed work this afternoon. We’re playing tomorrow morning, right? Eight o’clock?” he asked, as if nothing had happened and we weren’t standing in the hallway of the effing city jail.

  “Not till Monday, man. Everyone needs a break.”

  Gwyneth had adopted the most hostile posture possible for a woman of her station in life. Her long nails clawed at the sleeves of her sweater as she folded her arms and tapped her foot, which showed the great restraint that her manners taught her, for she wanted to scratch my eyes out.

  “Let’s go, Zak.”

  “You can go, Mother. I’ll get a ride to Toby’s.”

  “You should come home.”

  “Thanks, but I’m living at Toby’s now.”

  “I blame you.” Gwyneth turned on me, tapping a nail on my chest. “You are the jerk who caused all this.”

  “It’s all a misunderstanding,” I said.

  “Zak isn’t going to college because he wants to play music with drug addicts and wife beaters. You call that a misunderstanding? It’s your fault.”

  “Mom, forget it. I wouldn’t have gone, even if I hadn’t met Jason.”

  “You asshole.” She got me on the sternum with a stabbing nail.

  “Stop. You’re just embarrassing yourself, Mom.” Zak jammed his hands in his pockets and walked down the hall and out the door.

  Her attorney hustled her away, and my own attorney shrugged and allowed as to how he ought to go home, too, since there wasn’t squat he could do here, while at home he could at least fight with his wife.

  That left me alone in the hallway with an older man who leaned on his cane, having had the opportunity to enjoy the floor show we offered. Glasses thick as the proverbial cola bottles and a Karl Marx beard that any old lefty would be proud of, he regarded me with more than idle curiosity, until it struck me who he was.

  “You must be Chas Neville,” I offered my hand, hoping against hope he would take it, relieved as hell when he did. “I’m the one who caused this. My name is—”

  “Jason Taylor. I thought that might be you.”

  “I’m so sorry for this.”

  “From what I heard, you didn’t cause it and couldn’t have prevented it. Except maybe she wouldn’t have to deal with that crew out there if it weren’t for you.” He motioned to where the press waited to pounce.

  “I told her last night that we were more than a bar band. We got sidetracked when I learned what she’d been hiding from me.”

  “She doesn’t ever talk about what happened.”

  “It was excruciating to learn. I’ve been harassing her to sing in public. I confess, I thought her reticence was a kind of cowardice that she should overcome. What a self-righteous fool I was.”

  “It’s good you got her out. Steven told me about it. I’d like to have heard her that night, though I suppose I’ll get a lot more chances. When are you playing live again?”

  “I don’t think she’ll speak to me after this.”

  “She might need to be righteous for a little while. She’s just like her mother that way. You can’t blame me for that.”

  “I want to marry her. I’ve been begging her since we met, but she wouldn’t consider it seriously because she thought I was a broke guitarist from a bar band. Now she thinks—oh lord.”

  “She’ll come around. Did you sleep with her?”

  “I—yes, sir. I did. I—”

  “Spare me the details. But if she slept with you, she’ll marry you. She’s like her mother that way, too. I always said it limits her options and reduces new chances for self-knowledge, but she won’t listen to me.”

  “I don’t know how I’m going to explain myself to her.”

  “When I looked for you on the Google, to see what Susi had gotten herself into, I found that you’ve had quite a mess on your hands for a considerable while now.”

  “I’m mortified, sir.”

  “No reason to be. Reading all of your history in one sitting gives me a different perspective than you had while livin
g through it. Pretty brave of you, leaving your old blogs up after your wife had pretty much done you in. The only part I don’t understand is how a guy as smart as you could be so naïve about a woman. Of course, I’m assuming that the part about wife-beating isn’t true.”

  “It isn’t.”

  “Didn’t think it could be after I listened to your music.”

  “I’m having a rather odd moment with this, sir. I’ve lived the last few years of my life on the Internet, but I didn’t expect my girlfriend’s father to browse my archives.”

  “This arthritis keeps me from moving around, but the Internet keeps me from being shut out from the world. That’s how I found you before Susi did. I listened to several of the bootleg recordings. I didn’t care much for that one CD, but I got Silver Platters to send me your albums from before you met that woman. I liked those fine.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You sound so much like Jesse Rufus. Only better practiced. More disciplined. Shoot, I must have I upset you with that question last night.”

  “As I said, I hadn’t considered it until you asked, but I’ve been thinking about it every spare moment since. It’s Jesse. I’m sure of it. I have replayed in my mind every gesture between my mother and Beau Rufus, every word they ever said to me. I’m sure it’s Jesse.”

  “I can’t find anything in those papers to indicate Jesse ever knew.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Beau did more for me than Jesse ever could have.”

  “That new boot that’s all over the Internet, with all that wailing grief. That song is about Beau Rufus?”

  “Yes. It’s Susi’s voice.”

  He stopped at that and stared at the floor, and in that fleeting moment, I tried to imagine how he and Steven would hear the echoes of Liù wailing in the new music. Then Chas shook his head and came back from his brief reverie, wiping one eye.

  “I read all your lyrics and the guitar tabs on your fan sites. I’m betting you correct people when they get the tabs wrong.”

  “I feel rather exposed.”

  “Can’t say I drew any conclusions that others wouldn’t. I see a self-made man who overcame considerable obstacles. I see a man who spent years teaching himself what he couldn’t learn in school. I hear a great musician who has a lot to offer the world.”