Nine Volt Heart

by Annie Pearson

  “Thank you. It means a great deal that you would say that.”

  “And I think I see a good boy who’s been in a lot of pain.”

  Chas curved his hand around mine, like you do when you’re trying to show a certain fingering on a guitar.

  “Lots of men have been through worse, and done better than I managed.” I was choking on the lump in my throat.

  “From what I’ve read you have plenty to complain about—watched your last relative die in pain, that woman has humiliated you in public for months, people you’ve never met hate you for things you didn’t do. That are morally repugnant to you.” Chas sucked at his moustache, thinking. “Then there’s the fact that I can read all about your pain on the Internet.”

  “I’m past feeling sorry for myself,” I said, gritting my teeth so hard that my jaw ached. “There’s nothing I can do about it.”

  “You already did. I want to hear more of the music you made from it.”

  For the first time in the whole nightmare, I lost it. Chas was polite enough not to say anything when his hand got wet or when it took me several minutes to quit shaking. He put his hand on my shoulder when it was too obvious that I couldn’t choke it back enough to speak.

  He said, “Steven will take Susi home and stay with her tonight. Why don’t you help me get back to my place and stick around for a while? I don’t get about so good, and I could use some company.”

  “I don’t drive. I don’t have a car.”

  “You’ve got that there cell phone. Call us a cab.”

  97 ~ “A Fool Such As I”

  SUSI

  WHEN YOU DON’T SLEEP, the best thing is a run, the week’s long run, not some three-mile jog.

  It was going to be a sunny day—it had started with fog over Lake Washington—and since it would be the first day of the rest of my life, it needed to start in the garden. There needed to be some other hard physical work that required a great deal of concentration.

  Waiting for the sun to break through and find my garden, I set to screening rocks out of that patch I wanted to reclaim for flowers. Or maybe trailing-vines like pumpkins. Or cucumbers. I think there might be sufficient sunshine through the season to allow cucumbers to ripen.

  Or melons. Melons would be a fine fruit to harvest.

  “You forgot gloves, SusiQ.”

  Sonny sat on the deck, swinging his legs over the edge, watching me. He was right about the gloves, but I wasn’t in the mood for advice.

  “Blisters are good for you,” I said.

  “Yeah, especially when you wipe good old dirt in them. Best balm for the soul in the world.” He wasn’t smoking.

  I didn’t answer, just heaved another shovel full of glacial till into the screen I used to sift out the rocks.

  “Takes your mind off the pain in your soul,” he said.

  I stuck the shovel into the ground, and stomped it in with my boot heel so that it would stand on its own.

  “Do not,” I said evenly, “give me another lecture about Jason and true love. It infringes on the bounds of friendship.”

  “I got nothing to say about Jason,” Sonny said.

  “Good.”

  I screened rocks, stopping for gloves because shoveling is one kind of blister, but mechanically rubbing rocks through a screen really requires a leather second skin. Sonny whistled “Angel Band” while I worked.

  “What if—”

  “I’m done with existential questions,” I said, not looking up. “What if people minded their own business, and left me out of their dramas?”

  The sun had peeked through the clouds at last, so Sonny now cast a shadow. He nodded his head at my last question.

  I screened soil in blessed silence, and then fetched my shovel again.

  Stomp, hoist soil, drop into the screen. Begin freeing soil from scree.

  “What if you never sang in public again?”

  “That’s been the plan for two years,” I said.

  “No lovers?”

  “I have a family. And friends.”

  “What if you shrank your world so there was only you?” he asked. “No directors. No collaborators. No audience. Nothing greater than what you do yourself. Alone. Like I was before Jason brought me back.”

  I didn’t answer.

  “No band?” he said. “You didn’t have a band before, did you, SusiQ? In your other life? You didn’t even know what being in a band meant then, did you? Back when you were a diva.”

  I didn’t look up for several minutes. When I did, Sonny was gone.

  98 ~ “Badlands”

  JASON

  “I TALKED TO HER LAST night, Jason. I offered her generous compensation.”

  “What the hell, Karl? Why were you even speaking to her? You said you were going home.”

  “I ran into your Susi in the courthouse when she was on her way out. I was backing the press off so you wouldn’t have to deal with them. After the hassle, it seemed like a good time to ask her to not sue you.”

  “Just great. Her first conversation is with my attorney instead of me. I cannot express my gratitude.”

  “That sounds disingenuous, Jason. Seriously, you should be grateful. Anyway, she says she won’t sue. She won’t sign anything that has your name on it for any purpose in the world.”

  “So you called to tell me this to cheer me up?”

  “Yes, actually. I’m honing a highly professional skill that specializes in pacifying your ex-lovers, since I already invested in asbestos underwear. For a nice guy, you sure know how to piss girls off.”

  “It’s a special talent. So why am I supposed to cheer up?”

  “She said she never wants to see or hear you again.”

  “Yeah, I’m happy now, Karl.”

  “She said, ‘Hear you.’ Get it? I said to her, ‘So you don’t want to hear from him?’ And she said—”

  “Spare me.”

  “She went into a rage. She said, ‘I don’t want to hear his voice. I don’t want to hear his guitar. I don’t want to hear him breathing by my ear. I don’t want to see his hands. I don’t want to see him walking across the room, smiling at me. I don’t want to sing his music again. Ever again.’ Then she started crying.”

  “No, she didn’t. She never cries. Nothing makes her cry. Except that time I turned out not to be Angelia’s cousin. That night with Mozart. And the first time—”

  “She didn’t start crying right away. It wasn’t until Sonny said—”

  “Sonny was there? What was Sonny doing there?”

  “Waiting for her to get out of jail, I guess. He went off with Susi and her brother. She didn’t start crying until Sonny said, ‘Never is a long time, SusiQ. Does it start right now?’”

  “OK, you made her mad. You made her cry. You have nothing over what I’m capable of. I’m still the master at creating utter despair around me.”

  “Don’t you get it, you jerk? She’s in love with you. She doesn’t care about anything but you.”

  ~

  “Come on, Susi. Don’t make me stand out here and yell until the cops come.”

  Something dropped and she screamed, I think, but she didn’t answer. I had called all morning, but first there was no answer, and then there was a busy signal for the last hour. I wanted to warn her I was coming, as she had once asked. However, I couldn’t wait any longer.

  “We’ll only get through this by talking about it. I’m standing in the street in front of God and everybody admitting that we have to talk.”

  After several hideous long moments, while I listened to her talking to herself, she said distinctly, “Stop pounding on my door.”

  “Come on, Susi. I’m just a musician.”

  “Please go away.”

  Her voice cracked at the high end from stress. That my wanting to talk with her created such distress was intolerable. Darting around the garage to the path behind her house, I swung myself onto her deck and then just stood by the open door. She looked at me from behind her kitchen counter,
her eyebrow lifted in surprise. And—dammit—dismay. It was if she was afraid of me.

  “Susi, at least let me tell you that I didn’t send those letters to you. Or to Dominique.”

  She shook her head, looking down. She leaned on the counter as if in abject misery. Her posture, the stress in her voice, the whole scene roiled my insides, and I took a breath to find enough courage or recklessness to proceed. Knowing I had hurt her felt like a knife in my heart.

  “Susi, there’s this loony guy, a nut who follows me. He thinks he’s my brother. He pretends to be me. He wrote those letters. I’m not the stupid, mean-spirited half-wit you think I am.”

  I stepped from the deck through the door.

  “Please talk to me, Susi. I can’t live with—”

  As I reached out my hand to her, something cold and hard pressed up against my neck. A scratched and bleeding hand grabbed my forearm.

  “Please don’t hurt him,” Susi said.

  “But Jason hurt you, Miss Neville.”

  I knew the voice, though it was pitched near to tears.

  “Warren?”

  He stood in front of me so that at last I gazed into my shadow. He wasn’t doing any too well. Though he still dressed like me, it had been a couple of days since he’d put on those clothes. The waxy, grey pallor of his skin seemed ghastly, and his eyes darted wildly as I spoke.

  “Hey, buddy. It’s me. Come on, Warren, we’re friends. What’s up?”

  “Friends? You liar. I know what you think of me now. You said on the phone you hate me. You want me to die.”

  “Hey, guy. I didn’t know it was you. I thought it was a stranger trying to spook me.” As I took a step, he moved closer to me, the knife unsteady in his hand. I could feel sweat break out, running down my neck, prickling across my forehead. Thirty seconds in the room, and I’d never been so effing scared in my life. “I don’t think that about you, Warren.”

  “You made me get fired. Now I don’t have anywhere to go and I can’t be your brother anymore.” His voice was pitched in pain and hysteria so that it cut as badly as his knife could.

  “Let’s go talk to Karl. He’ll know what we should do to fix things.”

  “God will slay Karl right after he slays you, Jason. You are both scions of the same devil.”

  At this, Susi made the slightest sound of dismay. I tried to see her, as much as the pressure on my neck would let me turn. As lily-white as she was, it wasn’t paralyzing fear that marked her face. Her eyes darted as if trying to make a plan. I didn’t want her to move from where she stood.

  “Please help me out here, Warren. I’m worried about Susi. We should let her go outside while we talk.”

  “You are going to screw her over, like you did all the others. Susi isn’t like the others.”

  “No, she is not like anyone else, Warren.” He must have been able to hear my heart pounding.

  “You shouldn’t talk to her. You shouldn’t be in the same room with her.” His voice sounded like it was bleeding at the edges.

  “I love her, Warren, and she loves me. Tell him, Susi. Tell Warren you love me. He’s not going to hurt anyone. He’s just scared. Isn’t that right, Warren?”

  “I’m not scared of you. Dominique made you evil. You used to be a good guy, Jason. You were a great guy. Then you made love to an evil woman, and it made you evil too. I don’t want evil to touch Susi.”

  I could see Susi swallow, trying to speak. “Jason isn’t evil, Warren.”

  “You’re an angel. You can’t see evil, Miss Neville.”

  “Warren, let’s make sure Susi is safe. We both care about her, so please let her go outside while we talk.”

  “You don’t care about her, Jason. You just drive her crazy. Like you drive me crazy.”

  “I do care about her, Warren, more than you can imagine.”

  “You said mean things to her. You made her cry. She was crying all night. It made me so crazy, I couldn’t think what to do. Now you won’t go away and leave her alone.”

  She spoke softly. “Warren, Jason didn’t do anything mean to me.”

  “I heard you fighting. He yelled at you the other night when you wouldn’t let him in. I heard you crying this morning.”

  “We just have—artistic differences. Isn’t that right, Jason?”

  “Yeah, Warren. She knows better than me, and I wouldn’t listen. I’m listening to you right now. What do you want, Warren?”

  “I just want to hear her sing. Without you around to make her unhappy. You make her so unhappy.”

  “No, Warren, he doesn’t. If you want to hear me sing—”

  She began singing “Angel Band,” her voice high and piercingly clear.

  “Oh, come come Angel Band

  Come and around me stand

  Oh bear me away

  On your snow white wings

  To my immortal home.”

  In the middle of the chorus, the knife eased away from my neck and he stepped back.

  “I can’t stand it. You hate me. You all hate me. Susi hates me.”

  Warren was turning the knife on himself, and I lunged to stop him just as Sonny stepped in the doorway and put a chokehold on him. We were so close that Warren fell toward me, and I collapsed with him, pinioning the poor guy.

  “Had a cop do that to me one time,” Sonny said. “Swore I would never let that happen again.”

  “Geez, Sonny. What do we do now?”

  “You keep sitting on him. He is too frail to take my weight, but we had best hold him down. SusiQ, take Jason’s phone and call 911.”

  “How do I make it work? OK, I turned it on. Where’s the dial tone?”

  “For crissakes, Susi, punch the numbers and press Talk.”

  “You don’t have to criticize, Jason.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Hello, this is Susanna Neville at 4305 Leschi Place. There is a disturbed man who entered my house uninvited.” She sounded as calm and sensible as she ever did. “He was threatening suicide. My friends have subdued him, but we need the police. Yes, I’ll stay on the line. He is unconscious, but he’s breathing fine. I don’t think he’s injured. To find Leschi Place, they should drive south on Thirty-Fourth Avenue and turn east on Denny.” She paused. “How could they be?”

  Holding the phone away, she said, “The neighbors complained about Jason and the noise, so the police are already on the way. Isn’t that nice?”

  She directed the cops to her door, managed the scene, answered questions, and listened as I answered the ones she didn’t know. Then she sent them all away again, and we restored order in her house, so there was no trace of what had happened. When it was all quiet, Sonny kissed her on top of the head and said, “See you, SusiQ.”

  Then she turned to me, after having confessed that she loved me in an effort to save me from being killed.

  “You ruined my life.”

  99 ~ “Changed the Locks”

  SUSI

  “THEY FIRED ME, JASON. They ordered me to stay off school property and not to have contact with any students.”

  “I’m sorry. I never intended—”

  “Now I have no way to make a living, and my dreams of the music institute are nothing but ashes. Gwyneth has her attorney taking action against me because of Zak.”

  “Karl can take care of those problems if—”

  “My neighbors have called the police six times, because either the press or those thugs you paid to watch my house keep trespassing on their property. Their attorney called me, just before your good friend Warren interrupted.”

  “Karl will talk with them to—”

  “Your wife has harassed me by email for weeks. Your damn wife—to whom you are still married, all the while you’ve been begging me to marry you. Is she moving in here, or do I move in with her? Or do we all live with you in Ian’s basement?”

  “That’s almost solved. It’s just a matter of time—”

  “You blamed her for everything that happened in the last year,
instead of taking charge of your own destiny. What is that about? What does Ephraim have to do to prove that you can have everything you want? You just need to take responsibility for making it happen.”

  “Actually, we worked that out so—”

  “Then your wacko stalker destroyed what little peace I could find in my own home. If you’d told me who you really were, I’d expect that sort of person in your wake. It’s not as if I haven’t dealt with it more than once myself. The creep who menaced me in Turin was much worse than your friend Warren. That one managed to bleed all over my dressing room. If you had only told me.”

  “I wanted to know—”

  “You said you loved me, but then your attorney tries to keep me from suing you. Why would I ever care how much money you have or want a penny of it?”

  “I didn’t tell Karl to—”

  “I have been subjected to more humiliation across all the local news media than a human should have to endure. My brother told me what they said on that stupid radio program. I can’t walk out in public unnoticed.”

  “I didn’t mean to—”

  “If I had a dog, it’d be dead by now from what you didn’t mean to do.”

  “What dog?”

  “You said you wanted to take care of me. Like how mafia hit men take care of people? Is there more of my life you want to take care of?”

  “We still need to have kids together. And I’m hoping you’ll tour with us this summer. You pretty much need to decide about the touring part today. Or Monday. Otherwise, we can’t use your name to sell tickets.”

  “Are you insane? Do you need professional help? You ruined my life.”

  “I won’t be half as crazed if you’d just agree to tour. You can start your institute in the fall, since you’ll have plenty of your own money by then.”

  “My own money?”

  “What you earn touring. Plus your institute has my portion of songwriting royalties from Woman at the Well. If it goes the way I plan, you should also have an advance from our new recordings before fall.”