The Last Gig

by Norman Green

  “Are you crazy?” Ellison shouted, red-faced. “The Who is one of the largest selling acts in the history of the fucking universe! Every one of those guys is a multizillionaire!”

  TJ shook his head. “You don’t get it, do you?”

  “I don’t get what?”

  “Look,” TJ said. “Here’s what you do: you go tell Cliff, you go tell Doc, you go tell the rest of those guys it’s fucking Trent or it’s me. Got it? Because you know as well as I do, a second-banana guitar player is a hell of a lot easier to come by than a musical genius.” He turned, looked in Alessandra’s direction, and winked. “Give ’em a half hour to think it over,” he said, walking in Al’s direction. “Then come find me, I’ll be hanging.”

  “Goddamn you, TJ, don’t do this to me!”

  TJ held up a one-finger salute without slowing down or looking back.

  “Don’t do it to yourself, TJ! This could be the best shot you’ll ever have!”

  TJ continued in Al’s direction. He smiled at her when he got close. “Can I buy you lunch? I know it’s a little late . . .”

  She nodded. “Sure. Since you just blew up this gig, I should accept while you’ve still got a buck in your pocket.”

  He put a hand on her shoulder, turned her to walk next to him. “Hey,” he said, “one of the many things I excel at is being broke. Come with me, I know a nice Greek place right around the corner. Cheap, too.”

  “So you don’t sing.” He seemed astonished at that; it was the third time he’d asked her.

  “Not even in the shower,” she told him. They were sitting in a small hole-in-the-wall eatery a block from Astoria Studios. The cooking was done at an open charcoal grill in the front of the place, giving the restaurant a smoky, garlicky aura. “I hope the food here is as good as it smells.”

  “You won’t be disappointed,” he said. “But listen, I’m having a hard time letting this go. You don’t sing, you don’t play any kind of instrument? What if I told you I could get you a backup-singer gig with a band I was sitting in with this morning? What would you do?”

  “Run,” she said. “My theory, there’s a performer’s gene, you know what I mean? Everybody’s got an aunt, you get a couple of margaritas in her and she gets up to sing with the guitar player in the Mexican restaurant, right? She’s got the performer’s gene. She might not have anything to go with it, like the voice or the face or the legs, but she doesn’t care, because she’s got the gene. I don’t have it. Standing up in front of a bunch of people and doing anything—speaking, reading, telling jokes, forget about singing—that’s my idea of Hell. I would rather have my toenails pulled out.”

  “Wow,” he said, shaking his head. “You’re not kidding, are you?”

  “No. Why? You know somebody who needs a backup singer?”

  “I do, as a matter of fact. But you’ve got to be the first person I’ve met in about ten years who’d turn it down. In the business, you know, everyone you meet, every engineer, every sound guy, every groupie, band manager, roadie, and bus driver, what they really want is to be in my shoes. They want to be up on the stage.”

  “Must be oppressive, after a while. Every person who talks to you wants your job.”

  “I always thought of it like hitting the lottery,” he said. “Not that I’ve ever done that. But imagine it, you buy a ticket, the next day you wake up rich. But all your so-called friends, right, the first thought that comes into their head when they see you is, that fucking bastard. That son of a bitch, that no-good, no-talent, no-voice, ham-fisted hack of a guitar player, how the hell could he hit when I can play circles around him and I can’t get arrested? God hates me, that’s what it is, God must fucking hate me. And all the time, right, they’re in your face, they’re telling you how much they love your stuff, they got all your records, they been to see you play so many times, all of that. But you can see it in their eyes: all they want is what you’ve got, they want it so bad they’d kill you if they thought that would get it for them. And what happens, after a while, it kind of turns you into an asshole, which is what I acted like when I met you up in Boston. I apologize.”

  “Not necessary,” she said. “What happened this morning? I think I missed out on all the fun. Were you serious, what you said to Sandy, back there? Would you really quit BandX over what’s-his-name? The guitar player.”

  “Trent? He’s no guitar player, he’s a poser. No, hey, listen, couple things you got to know about musicians: we’re drama queens, every freaking one of us. I can’t just say, ‘Back off, Trent, you’re giving me a pain in my ass,’ I have to throw a tantrum or he won’t take me serious. If I don’t break something and threaten to quit, he won’t hear me at all.”

  “So what did you do? Break your guitar?”

  “No,” TJ said, laughing. “I broke his.”

  “You’re kidding. No offense, but he’s a much bigger guy than you. Weren’t you afraid he’d do something to you?”

  TJ shook his head. “Trent’s all noise. Now Doc, he’s a different story. Doc will throw down on you in a second, but Trent gets by on bluster, and when that don’t work, he don’t know what to do.”

  “So what got all this started? Were you late or something?”

  “Not me, not when you’re paying for studio time. They were the ones who were late. Doc usually rides herd on them, gets their sorry asses to the church on time, but he didn’t get it done this morning. No big thing, you understand, it ain’t Doc’s fault, it’s got to get old after a while, being the designated adult. But I’m sitting around, right, I see a couple of guys I know, they’re having trouble with one of the tracks they’re working on. Sometimes you try too hard, you get so close to something you can’t hear it anymore. So I’m not doing anything, right, I sit in, they play me what they got, right away I see what’s missing. Not that I’m that smart, I’m not trying to sound like that, but you call a plumber, he’s gonna see what you got wrong with your plumbing. Right? I’m a guitar player, I hear a guitar-shaped hole in their cut, and what they need is a riff.” His fingers played it in midair and he whistled it for her: a mournful plaint, six or seven seconds long. “I pick up a guitar and I do it. They think about it for maybe ten seconds, next thing you know I’m in the sound booth ripping it off, over and over, and then another one, a little variation, sort of a coda for the end of the piece. Doesn’t sound like much, right, but it takes like two and a half, three hours before we get it down, and of course right away they want to change it and I got to fight them off. So by the time I come back out, BandX has been cooling their heels for a while, and I’m the bad guy. Well, they were the ones that were late, so screw them, right? And it kinda went downhill from there.”

  “Who was it for? The piece you worked on this morning.”

  “I told you, couple guys I know. One’s an engineer and the other’s a producer.”

  “Yeah, but who’s the artist? Who’s the singer?”

  He shrugged. “I dunno. They didn’t play me the vocal.”

  “So how do you get paid for what you did?”

  “Please. Anyhow, they were friends, I was just helping out. No, listen, I love this shit. I would pay them to let me do it. To me, there’s nothing better. I hear what you got, and I give it something, right? I take it to the next level. Even if nobody else hears it, even if it never sees the light of day, doesn’t matter. It’s doing it. It’s sitting those two hours in the studio just to get eight or ten seconds of sound that turns something ordinary into something beautiful. That’s why I’m here.”

  She’d been looking at his face as he talked, saw him now as he caught her watching and went a little red. “You’re not kidding,” she said.

  “No,” he said. “I really would do it for free.”

  “You said there was a couple of things about musicians, but you only told me the one thing, that you were all drama queens. What’s the other thing?”

  He tilted his head back. “Fear.”

  “What do you mean?”

  �
��Fear. Musicians are all driven by fear. Let me put it this way. I am goddamn good with a guitar, and I know it. Okay? But here’s something else I know: there’s maybe ten guys on the planet who can play most of the shit I can play, but there’s ten thousand who can fake it, and most people don’t know enough about music to tell the difference. So you know what the real difference is between me and them? I got the gig, they don’t. Clarence Clemons and Bill Clinton, they both play the sax, okay? Clarence ain’t half bad, and neither is Bill. But Clarence has the gig. So Bill plays in his garage. You know what I’m saying? And Clarence knows in his gut, if The Boss hears some new horn player and he likes the guy better, Clarence could show up for work tomorrow and find some other guy parked in his spot, security won’t even let him into the building. Hey, don’t look at me like that, shit like that happens all the time. Those guys in the Tonight Show Band, they’re all happy and shit, they live in the big house and they drive the Corniche or whatever the fuck. But the only difference between them and half the dudes playing in bars? They got the gig. They’re not better musicians, they don’t work any harder, they’re not any smarter or more virtuous or anything like that. They got the gig, the other guy don’t. End of story. So every working musician wakes up with this one fear, and he goes to bed with it, every day: what if this is the last gig I ever get? What if Jay Leno wakes up and decides to shitcan the whole band? Which he ought to do, by the way. Those guys are a joke. What if Springsteen decides to do Nebraska again? What if this is the last time I make a real paycheck playing my music?”

  “So you’re not afraid the guys will pick Trent over you?”

  “Never happen. It ain’t about that, anyhow, I don’t mind Trent that much. Here’s how it will play: they’ll yell at Trent for the rest of the afternoon, then tonight or tomorrow morning they’ll yell at me for a while, then we’ll get back together. He’ll stay out of my face and I’ll try not to make him look stupid. At least until the next time.”

  “You’re not afraid this is the last good gig you’ll ever have?”

  He inhaled, started to answer, then laughed and shook his head. “I been making a living with my guitar for almost twenty years, okay? So part of my brain knows I can find something else if this falls apart. But I won’t lie to you. If they go find another guy, I’m gonna be suicidal until I find the next thing.”

  She looked at him. Why can’t you fall for some nice guy with a job and a pension, she asked herself. Why you gotta flip over some dude five minutes out of friggin’ rehab? The only reason you’re even talking to this guy is because you think he might be involved with the enterprise that’s moving product through Daniel Caughlan’s business . . . And what if he’s the one who killed Willy? But there was something compelling about him. She didn’t know if it was his outlaw aura or maybe just the way he seemed to speak whatever was on his mind, but she felt an undeniable attraction. Tall, dark, and fucked up, she thought, just the way you like ’em . . . So what are you gonna do, hold a knife to his throat while you hijack his dick for ten minutes? You gonna hold him out over a balcony, shove a gun in his face, what? Because you know you’ll never trust him enough to let him come to you the way normal people do it . . .

  The waiter had just cleared the plates away and they were waiting for coffees when she showed up. She had long, straight brown hair that went with her tall, thin frame, she wore a pair of bell-bottom jeans and a Radiohead T-shirt with no bra underneath it. She came through the front door of the restaurant and looked around. When she saw Alessandra and TJ looking back at her she broke eye contact, but she walked across the floor and stood by their table. “Hi, guys.”

  “Hi, Laurie. Al, did you ever meet Laurie?” TJ said.

  “No,” Al said. It took an effort to bring her mind back around to the present. “But I’ve seen you before, right?” She remembered the hair and the nipples, sharp under an old T-shirt. “You were at the show up in Boston.”

  “Yeah.” Laurie looked at the floor. “I, um, I’m supposed to give TJ a message.”

  “Go ahead, Laurie,” TJ said. “She’s with us.”

  “Um, Mr. Ellison says, um, he bitched everyone out, especially Trent, and um, can you, you know, come back tomorrow, and everybody will try to be cool and stuff.”

  “Tomorrow? What about this afternoon? What about all the complaining about studio time costing Ellison half his budget?”

  “Um, we got bumped, so it doesn’t matter.”

  “What do you mean, we got bumped?”

  “Um, Shine, um, showed up, and they’re, like, giving her your slot.”

  “You’re kidding. Is that what they told you?”

  “No, I saw her, she’s really there.”

  “Serious? You saw God?”

  Laurie glanced up at him. “I’ve met Shine before. She’s actually very nice.”

  “Unlike certain other . . .”

  She turned red. “I never said that.”

  “I love you, Laurie, you know that. When are you going to come away with me?” He was earnestly phony.

  “Of course you do. Do I tell Mr. Ellison you’ll come back in the morning?”

  “I’ll be there. Tell him the rest of those assholes better be on time.”

  “Okay.” She looked at Alessandra, then quickly away. “You were the one who was asking about Willy Caughlan. The other night, up in Boston.”

  “That was me,” Al said.

  “Call me sometime,” she said. “I’m in the book.”

  TJ’s mouth fell open as Laurie turned to go. “What’s your last name, Laurie?” Al asked her.

  “Villereal,” she said. “I’m in Queens.”

  TJ closed his mouth and swallowed. “How can you leave me like this, Laurie? You’re breaking my heart.”

  “Breaking your heart?” She scowled at him. “How can I break something you haven’t got? Now that would really be something.” She turned and walked out of the restaurant.

  TJ looked at Alessandra. “I’m in shock,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “She’s so shy, but she actually asked you to call her. I’ve never known her to be so brave.”

  “Brave? She’s a pussycat.”

  “She’s a mouse. Listen, it seems my calendar for this afternoon is suddenly open. Whaddaya say we blow this joint? There’s a big Impressionist exhibit at the Met, I was gonna go Saturday, but it’ll be much less crowded today. You interested?”

  Her answer at times like this was so automatic it was almost out of her mouth before she could think about it, but she reeled it back in. It was always “no,” no to the movies, no to dinner, no to a good-night kiss, no, now and forever, either no or hell, no. But she’d never been to the Met, never known anyone other than Anthony who’d go there.

  And besides, she liked the guy.

  “Why not,” she said.

  He restrained himself when he saw the Astro, just looked at her once with eyebrows raised and that was it. Maybe the guy is used to a certain amount of weirdness, Alessandra thought, maybe it’s no big deal to him. Anyhow, she was tired of apologizing for the van, so she didn’t comment, she just let it ride. TJ climbed into the passenger seat and belted himself in.

  How old is this cat? The voices started up as soon as she got behind the wheel. The voices were ageless and without gender, but the questions they asked sounded suspiciously like the ones her father would ask. So what is he, thirty? Sixty? And he’s on probation for some kind of drug rap, did you forget about that? Does he have a real job? Has he ever had a real job? And his face looks like it was sewed together out of old shoes, do you actually find that attractive? And where are you gonna go with this anyhow? You really think you got that kind of courage? “So,” she said, pulling away from the curb. “What do you do when you’re not playing for BandX?”

  He shrugged. “There’s a couple of other bands I work with. I do a little bit of session work, although there ain’t much of that anymore. I buy and sell guitars, and I do some custom work for player
s who are looking for a specific sound or a certain look. There’s a few sound guys and composers who call me in for this and that. And if worse comes to worst, I can always paint.”

  “Paint? As in oil on canvas?”

  “Hah. Latex on walls, babe. I got an uncle in the business, and whenever things get bad enough, he puts me to work for a while until it picks up again. I mean, it ain’t my favorite thing, you know what I mean? I always feel, like, ‘how bad did you fuck things up to wind up back doing this?’ But I refuse to do fucking weddings and bar mitzvahs, and the gig with my uncle pays the bills when there’s nothing else going on.”

  “Nothing worse than frustrated genius,” she said, curious to see how he’d take it.

  “Unless it’s a frustrated moron,” he said, grinning. “Hey, listen, like the man says, you can’t always get what you want.”

  “I’ve heard that,” she said. “Truthfully, I think I have to respect someone who’s willing to support his art. I guess I have that prejudice that musicians are a bunch of rich, lazy, spoiled, womanizing, coke-addled prima donnas.”

  He laughed. “Subtract the ‘rich’ part,” he said, “and you’re not that far off.”

  “Is it worth it?”

  “You asked that before,” he said. “Up in Boston.”

  “Did I? Sorry.”

  “That’s all right. I don’t remember what I told you last time. But you know what I think, really? It’s just me. It’s what I do. If I gotta paint or whatever, you know, shovel shit for a while just to keep it going, then that’s just my tough luck. But I found my thing, I found my groove. This is what I want. So I don’t suffer from that trip where you sit around second-guessing yourself, ‘oh, I shoulda went to school for this or that,’ or whatever. Maybe I am wasting my life, I don’t know, but I’m just trying to hang on to what I want.” He looked at her. “What about you? How’d you come to do what you do?”

  Careful, she told herself. “I don’t think life equipped me for anything else. I’m no good at any of the traditional female things. I don’t like being around sick people, I hate school, I’m not very maternal—about a half hour with somebody’s kid is enough to last me for a month—and I have a low tolerance for bullshit. So I can’t be a nurse or a teacher or a librarian or a mom or a nanny. I’m like you, in a way.” She surprised herself, saying that. “I found something I think I’m good at, so, yeah. I’m trying to hang onto it.”